Strong company earnings boosted stocks on Wall Street Friday. Investors also saw a chance to add to their holdings after declines earlier in the week.
Nike reported a surge in profit, sending its stock price to a record. Tiffany topped earnings predictions, boosted by demand from customers in Asia.
A strong run-up in stocks this year is encouraging investors to buy whenever the market dips, says Ron Florance, managing director of investment strategy at Wells Fargo Private Bank.
"We still have an astonishing amount of money sitting on the sidelines," says Florance.
The Dow Jones industrial average rose 90.54 points, or 0.6 percent, to 14,512.03 Friday. The Standard & Poor's 500 index rose 11.09 points, or 0.7 percent, to 1,556.89. The Nasdaq composite gained 22.40 points, or 0.7 percent, to 3,245.
Nike's stock hit an all-time high, rising 11 percent to $59.53 after the company reported a spike in quarterly profit. Tiffany's stock rose nearly 2 percent to $69.23 after it reported strong earnings.
Despite Friday's gains, the S&P 500 was down for the week, falling seven points, or 0.3 percent. The index was weighed down by another debt crisis in Europe and disappointing corporate news.
The Dow had its worst week in more than a month, shedding a fraction of a percentage point.
The markets got hit on several fronts.
The Mediterranean island nation of Cyprus, a banking haven, struggled to devise a plan to avoid financial collapse.
Oracle reported weak sales. FedEx, a bellwether for the economy, posted a drop in quarterly profit and cut its annual earnings forecast.
As a result, the S&P 500 logged only its second weekly decline of the year. The first came the week of Feb. 22, when investors were spooked by the minutes from a Federal Reserve policy meeting. The minutes revealed disagreement over how long to keep buying bonds in an effort to boost the economy.
A pause in the stock market run-up is due, says Terry Sandven, chief equity strategist at U.S. Bank Wealth Management. Gains this year overstate the improvement in the economy, he says.
The biggest risk to the market run-up will come when the Fed faces increasing pressure to end its stimulus program. That could happened if the economy continues to improve and stock markets rise, says Sandven.
The yield on the 10-year Treasury note rose to 1.93 percent from 1.92 percent.
Among other stocks making big moves Friday;
? Micron Technology rose 97 cents, or 10.7 percent, to $10.05 despite reporting a loss in its fiscal second-quarter later Thursday. The chipmaker said that revenue grew 3 percent, to $2.08 billion, better than analysts had expected.
? Anacor Pharmaceuticals Inc. climbed $1.24, or 25.6 percent, to $6.08 Friday, after the drug developer reported strong data from a mid-stage study of a potential chronic rash treatment.
? Marin Software, a marketing software company, rose $2.26, or 16.1 percent, to $16.26 on its market debut. The San Francisco-based company raised $105 million in its initial public offering.
? AK Steel Holding fell 16 cents, or 4.6 percent, to $3.31, after projecting a larger-than-expected first-quarter loss because a previously expected seasonal increase in demand for steel hasn't materialized.
Perhaps the second screen experience for HBO megahit show A Game of Thrones provided through Xbox 360's SmartGlass functionality and HBO Go's iPad app isn't enough for you? And maybe you want a bit more of a George R. R. Martin touch to your Game of Thrones book companions? This week's release of "A Game of Ice and Fire" for Android -- the previously iOS-only Game of Thrones app that acts as an "official guide" to the series and its myriad characters / relationships / political struggles / etc. -- is clearly for you. And yes, it goes beyond what just the show covers; it can even be customized for spoilers based around how far you are.
The initial cost to download is nothing and comes with several characters as well as a companion for the first book, but for books two through five you'll need to grab the upgrades: $1 apiece, or $5 for those four plus an additional "InfoPack" which would otherwise cost $2 by itself. Those $2 "InfoPacks" include, "new characters and places and additional data and background info" (whatever that means), and more are expected in the future. The third season of A Game of Thrones kicks off on March 31st, and wouldn't you know it, this app is perfectly timed to accompany it. That's what we call synergy. Head to the Google Play link in the source link and grab it for free, or risk *paying the iron price.
*Thankfully, in this case, that price is just potentially looking ignorant about A Game of Thrones. So ... not that big of a thing, actually.
iMore is looking for a full-time assistant editor. We're looking for someone with excellent industry knowledge, both about Apple and about mobile and consumer electronics in general, and the ability to communicate that knowledge to a wide-ranging audience, from experts to mainstream to first time users. We're looking for someone to be responsible not only for creating original content, but helping coordinate content creation with the rest of the iMore staff, and the Mobile Nations network. We're looking for someone who'll wear many hats and do many different things. News, app and accessory reviews, how-tos, opinion, audio and video, trade shows and conferences -- it'll all be in a day's work.
If you're interested, you'll need the ability to focus and get things done, and have a relentless drive to be the absolute best. It's an amazing job, but it's a demanding job.
If you have the experience necessary to help run a site the size and scope of iMore, and you want to join the best, brightest team on the web, email dreamjobs@imore.com. Include a short introduction, tell us why you would be suited for the job, and include relevant samples of your work and a resume.
We won't be able to respond to everyone, but rest assured we?ll be looking at every single email.
WASHINGTON (AP) ? The Defense Department will delay furlough notices for its civilian employees for about two weeks while officials analyze the impact of a new spending bill on planned budget cuts, the Pentagon said Thursday.
The delay comes as defense officials continue to wrangle over how many civilians should be exempt from the unpaid leave requirement, including how much of the U.S. intelligence community should be excluded. A senior defense official said Thursday that as much as 10 percent of the department's 800,000 civilian workers overall could be exempt from the furloughs. The official said the exact numbers were still being worked out.
The official was not authorized to speak publicly about the furlough exemption number and spoke on condition of anonymity.
Under the current planning, about 24 percent of the Army's 330,000 civilians would not face furloughs, and roughly 5 percent of the 200,000 Navy and Marine Corps' civilians would be exempt. Of the exempt Army civilians, nearly 2,600 are deployed to combat zones and more than 28,800 are in jobs paid from non-appropriated funds. The Air Force refused to reveal how many of its civilians would be subject to furloughs.
Some of those workers include civilians in the war zone and in critical public safety jobs, as well as people whose jobs are not paid for through congressional funding. As an example, some employees may be contractors or people working in facilities that pay for operations out of their earnings ? such as some recreation jobs or foreign military sales.
Another example would be civilian mariners who are working for the Navy on ships at sea.
Intelligence officials are arguing that a certain number of workers are needed in order to adequately monitor and protect the U.S. from national security threats. Officials will not say, however, how many intelligence workers across the Defense Department or government-wide will be exempt.
The U.S. intelligence community is made up of 16 different organizations, ranging from the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency to the highly secretive National Security Agency and the National Reconnaissance Office. Altogether the agencies have about 100,000 workers.
Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper has warned that the across-the-board budget cuts would shave about $4 billion from intelligence budgets and would affect operations. He said that collecting intelligence through personal contacts as well as by technical spying would be reduced.
The Pentagon had planned to begin issuing the furlough notices on Friday, but Congress on Thursday approved legislation to keep the government open through the end of September, moving more than $10 billion into Pentagon operations and maintenance accounts. That shift could reduce the number of unpaid furlough days employees would be required to take.
Officials said the extra money is not likely to widen the pool of employees eligible to avoid the furloughs.
In a statement, the Pentagon said no final decisions have been made on whether changes can be made to the number of furlough days. Initially, officials had said civilians would face one furlough day per work week for 22 weeks.
The legislation did not add money but instead shifted funds from investment and acquisition accounts to operations accounts, so that savings would have to be found elsewhere.
The furloughs are the result of automatic spending cuts agreed to in a 2011 budget pact.
Novel insights into the evolution of protein networksPublic release date: 21-Mar-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Thomas Rattei thomas.rattei@univie.ac.at 43-142-777-6210 University of Vienna
This press release is available in German.
System-wide networks of proteins are indispensable for organisms. Function and evolution of these networks are among the most fascinating research questions in biology. Bioinformatician Thomas Rattei, University of Vienna, and physicist Hernan Makse, City University New York (CUNY), have reconstructed ancestral protein networks. The results are of high interest not only for evolutionary research but also for the interpretation of genome sequence data. Recently, the researchers published their paper in the renowned journal PLOS ONE.
The cells of all organisms consist mostly of proteins, which develop various functions through their complex interactions. These functions range from metabolism, maintenance and control of the cellular structure to the exchange of signals with other cells and the environment. Proteins rarely act alone only their system-wide network makes organisms viable. "The knowledge about function and evolution of these protein networks is currently one of the most fascinating questions in biology and relevant e.g. also to cancer research", explains Thomas Rattei, Head of the Department of Computational Systems Biology at the University Center Althanstrasse.
In pursuit of the blueprint of protein networks
The combination of 20 different building blocks amino acids results in an enormous variety of theoretically possible protein variants; many more than the estimated number of stars in the universe. The random formation of an interaction between proteins seems therefore extremely unlikely. Thomas Rattei, Professor of In-Silico Genomics at the University of Vienna, and Hernan Makse, Professor of Physics at the City University New York (CUNY), and their teams investigate how complex and manifold protein networks could still evolve in present-day organisms.
Starting point of the joint research project was a hypothesis emphasising the importance of the duplication of proteins in the course of evolution. If the gene encoding a protein is duplicated in the genome, which often happens in evolution, original and copy will interact with the same partners in the protein network. Once original and copy diverge over time, novel proteins with individual features and own partners in the network will emerge. Interactions in the network would thereby not be newly created but evolve through duplication and divergence from simpler ancestors.
Protein networks of extinct ancestors were reconstructed
The two workgroups around bioinformatician Thomas Rattei and physicist Hernan Makse tested and improved this hypothesis in an elaborate computational experiment. They developed a novel method for the reconstruction of protein networks of extinct evolutionary ancestors from the genomes and networks of present-day species. Data of seven species from various domains of life were used: from bacteria, fungi, plants, animals to humans.
Present-day networks complex structures through simple mechanisms
The comparison of these reconstructed ancient protein networks yielded a surprisingly clear result: the present-day networks can be explained almost exclusively through the mechanism of duplication and divergence. Novel interactions between proteins emerge on rare occasions. This principle seems to be universal in the evolution of species as it was confirmed by the data obtained from all species analysed in this study. This principle could also explain the dynamics of other biological networks and it explains special features of protein networks such as self-similarity (fractality) in a straightforward way.
Useful for the interpretation of genome sequences and evolutionary biology
The results of the joint research project of the University of Vienna and CUNY will not only be relevant for evolutionary biology. They particularly support the interpretation of genome sequence data, which has become a powerful tool in many areas of biology and medicine in the last years. This is also the goal of many other current research projects of the Department of Computational Systems Biology, which focuses on research on pathogens, microbial communities and molecular interactions between species adopting a system-oriented approach.
###
Publication in PLOS ONE:
The evolutionary dynamics of protein-protein interaction networks inferred from the reconstruction of ancient networks. Yuliang Jin, Dmitrij Turaev, Thomas Weinmaier, Thomas Rattei, Hernan Makse. In: PLOS ONE, 2013.
DOI: http://dx.plos.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0058134
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Novel insights into the evolution of protein networksPublic release date: 21-Mar-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Thomas Rattei thomas.rattei@univie.ac.at 43-142-777-6210 University of Vienna
This press release is available in German.
System-wide networks of proteins are indispensable for organisms. Function and evolution of these networks are among the most fascinating research questions in biology. Bioinformatician Thomas Rattei, University of Vienna, and physicist Hernan Makse, City University New York (CUNY), have reconstructed ancestral protein networks. The results are of high interest not only for evolutionary research but also for the interpretation of genome sequence data. Recently, the researchers published their paper in the renowned journal PLOS ONE.
The cells of all organisms consist mostly of proteins, which develop various functions through their complex interactions. These functions range from metabolism, maintenance and control of the cellular structure to the exchange of signals with other cells and the environment. Proteins rarely act alone only their system-wide network makes organisms viable. "The knowledge about function and evolution of these protein networks is currently one of the most fascinating questions in biology and relevant e.g. also to cancer research", explains Thomas Rattei, Head of the Department of Computational Systems Biology at the University Center Althanstrasse.
In pursuit of the blueprint of protein networks
The combination of 20 different building blocks amino acids results in an enormous variety of theoretically possible protein variants; many more than the estimated number of stars in the universe. The random formation of an interaction between proteins seems therefore extremely unlikely. Thomas Rattei, Professor of In-Silico Genomics at the University of Vienna, and Hernan Makse, Professor of Physics at the City University New York (CUNY), and their teams investigate how complex and manifold protein networks could still evolve in present-day organisms.
Starting point of the joint research project was a hypothesis emphasising the importance of the duplication of proteins in the course of evolution. If the gene encoding a protein is duplicated in the genome, which often happens in evolution, original and copy will interact with the same partners in the protein network. Once original and copy diverge over time, novel proteins with individual features and own partners in the network will emerge. Interactions in the network would thereby not be newly created but evolve through duplication and divergence from simpler ancestors.
Protein networks of extinct ancestors were reconstructed
The two workgroups around bioinformatician Thomas Rattei and physicist Hernan Makse tested and improved this hypothesis in an elaborate computational experiment. They developed a novel method for the reconstruction of protein networks of extinct evolutionary ancestors from the genomes and networks of present-day species. Data of seven species from various domains of life were used: from bacteria, fungi, plants, animals to humans.
Present-day networks complex structures through simple mechanisms
The comparison of these reconstructed ancient protein networks yielded a surprisingly clear result: the present-day networks can be explained almost exclusively through the mechanism of duplication and divergence. Novel interactions between proteins emerge on rare occasions. This principle seems to be universal in the evolution of species as it was confirmed by the data obtained from all species analysed in this study. This principle could also explain the dynamics of other biological networks and it explains special features of protein networks such as self-similarity (fractality) in a straightforward way.
Useful for the interpretation of genome sequences and evolutionary biology
The results of the joint research project of the University of Vienna and CUNY will not only be relevant for evolutionary biology. They particularly support the interpretation of genome sequence data, which has become a powerful tool in many areas of biology and medicine in the last years. This is also the goal of many other current research projects of the Department of Computational Systems Biology, which focuses on research on pathogens, microbial communities and molecular interactions between species adopting a system-oriented approach.
###
Publication in PLOS ONE:
The evolutionary dynamics of protein-protein interaction networks inferred from the reconstruction of ancient networks. Yuliang Jin, Dmitrij Turaev, Thomas Weinmaier, Thomas Rattei, Hernan Makse. In: PLOS ONE, 2013.
DOI: http://dx.plos.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0058134
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
RAMALLAH, West Bank (Reuters) - President Barack Obama voiced opposition on Thursday to Israeli settlement building but pressed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to drop his demand for a freeze before Middle East peace talks can resume. After an effusive welcome in Israel, Obama traveled to the Israeli-occupied West Bank, where disillusioned Palestinians held out little hope that their moment in the spotlight of a U.S. presidential visit would speed their quest for statehood.
Iran will destroy Israeli cities if attacked: Khamenei
DUBAI (Reuters) - Iran's clerical supreme leader said on Thursday the Islamic Republic would destroy the Israeli cities of Tel Aviv and Haifa if it came under attack from the Jewish state. "At times the officials of the Zionist regime (Israel) threaten to launch a military invasion but they themselves know that if they make the slightest mistake the Islamic Republic will raze Tel Aviv and Haifa to the ground," Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said in an address to mark the Iranian new year.
Kurd rebel leader orders fighters to halt hostilities
DIYARBAKIR, Turkey (Reuters) - Jailed Kurdish rebel leader Abdullah Ocalan ordered his fighters on Thursday to cease fire and withdraw from Turkish soil as a step to ending a conflict that has killed 40,000 people, riven the country and battered its economy. Hundreds of thousands of Kurds, gathered in the regional center of Diyarbakir, cheered and waved banners bearing Ocalan's mustachioed image when a letter from the rebel leader, held since 1999 on a prison island in the Marmara Sea, was read out by a pro-Kurdish politician.
ECB gives Cyprus bailout ultimatum, banks face cutoff
NICOSIA/FRANKFURT (Reuters) - The European Central Bank gave Cyprus until Monday to raise billions of euros to clinch an international bailout or face losing emergency funds for its banks and inevitable collapse. The ultimatum came as the island's leaders struggled over a "Plan B" to try to raise 5.8 billion euros demanded by the EU under a 10 billion euro ($13 billion) rescue, after angry lawmakers threw out a tax on deposits as "bank robbery".
U.N. to launch probe of alleged Syria chemical arms attack
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Thursday announced that the United Nations will launch an investigation as requested by the Syrian government into allegations that chemical weapons were used in Syria. "I have decided to conduct a United Nations investigation into the possible use of chemical weapons in Syria," Ban told reporters. He said the investigation will focus on "the specific incident brought to my attention by the Syrian government."
Timbuktu suicide attack reopens front for French in Mali
BAMAKO (Reuters) - A suicide car-bomber killed a Malian soldier and wounded six others in a raid on the airport in Timbuktu overnight, just a day after Paris said a French-led campaign had nearly driven Islamists out of all of northern Mali. France said 10 Islamist fighters were killed in the raid on the ancient desert trading town, the first suicide attack there since French and Malian troops chased al Qaeda-linked militants from Timbuktu nearly two months ago. It comes weeks ahead of the planned start of France's withdrawal from Mali.
Egypt's Brotherhood vows to defend HQ against protesters
CAIRO (Reuters) - Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood said it would defend its headquarters against protesters if necessary, raising the possibility of a confrontation at a demonstration planned in Cairo on Friday. Anti-Brotherhood protesters clashed with riot police firing tear gas outside the building earlier this week, the latest burst of street unrest in a country still struggling to restore law and order since its 2011 uprising.
Scotland independence referendum set for September 18, 2014
EDINBURGH (Reuters) - Scotland will hold its independence referendum on September 18, 2014, First Minister Alex Salmond said on Thursday, starting the countdown to a vote he hopes will take his nation of 5 million out of the United Kingdom. Salmond's pro-independence Scottish National Party (SNP) won a majority in the Scottish parliament in May 2011 elections, giving the charismatic politician what he has called a "once-in-a-generation" chance to break ties with London.
South Sudan presses ahead with alternative pipelines study
ADDIS ABABA (Reuters) - South Sudan said on Thursday it is pressing ahead with studies into new oil pipelines to Kenya and Djibouti following a deal to restore exports through onetime civil war foe Sudan. Information Minister Barnaba Marial Benjamin said South Sudan has hired Germany's ILF Consulting Engineers to assess the feasibility of pipelines to Lamu in Kenya and through Ethiopia to Djibouti.
Blast kills 17 at Pakistani camp for displaced people
PESHAWAR, Pakistan (Reuters) - At least seventeen people were killed by a car bomb as they waited for food at a camp in northwest Pakistan for those displaced by fighting between government forces and Islamist militants, police said. The bomb exploded on Thursday in the Jalozai camp in Nowshera in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, an area bordering Afghanistan and a stronghold for insurgents bent on toppling Pakistan's U.S.-backed government.
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Public release date: 21-Mar-2013
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