Settlement reached in 'Spider-Man' B'way musical

NEW YORK (AP) ? A settlement has been reached between the producers of "Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark" and its fired director, Julie Taymor, ending a bitter legal fight that had marred what has become a Broadway success story.

"All claims between all of the parties in the litigation have been resolved," both sides said in a statement Wednesday. No details about the settlement or how it was reached were immediately revealed.

Taymor, who was the original "Spider-Man" director and co-book writer, was fired after years of delays, accidents and critical backlash.

The show, which features music by U2's Bono and The Edge, opened in November 2010 but spent months in previews before officially opening a few days after the Tony Awards in June. It has become a financial hit at the box office.

In November 2011, Taymor slapped the producers ? led by Michael Cohl and Jeremiah J. Harris ? as well as Glen Berger, her former co-book writer, with a federal copyright infringement lawsuit, alleging they violated her creative rights and haven't compensated her for the work she put into the $75 million show. The producers' filed a counterclaim asserting the copyright claims were baseless.

"We're happy to put all this behind us," said a statement by Cohl and Harris. For her part, Taymor was quoted in the release as saying: "I'm pleased to have reached an agreement and hope for the continued success of 'Spider-Man,' both on Broadway and beyond."

Taymor's lawsuit sought half of all profits, gains and advantages derived from the sale, license, transfer or lease of any rights in the original "Spider-Man" book along with a permanent ban of the use of her name or likeness in connection with a documentary film that was made of the birth of the musical without her written consent.

It also sought a jury trial to determine her share of profits from the unauthorized use of her version of the superhero story, which it said was believed to be in excess of $1 million.

Manhattan federal Judge Katherine Forrest had set a May 27 trial date after lawyers for Taymor asked that the case move forward because a settlement was never finalized. But that looming showdown is now off.

The legal wrangling revealed a behind-the-scenes atmosphere that was secretive and slightly paranoid. Taymor alleged that Berger was told to quietly work on changes to the story without Taymor's knowledge ? called "Plan X" ? that in an email Berger complained led him to lead a "double life" ? both working with and against Taymor.

The stunt-heavy show has been doing brisk business ever since it opened its doors and most weeks easily grossing more than the $1.2 million the producers have indicated they need to reach to stay viable.

Taymor had alleged that the show has not been re-imagined and that what audiences are seeing at the Foxwoods Theatre is essentially the same show she directed. "The producers' current suggestion that they have created a 'new' show after a mere three-week shutdown is false and incredible," the filing says.

After Taymor left, Philip William McKinley, who directed the Hugh Jackman musical "The Boy From Oz" in 2003, was hired to take over. He was billed as creative consultant when the musical opened.

When the show finally opened in June 2011, and Taymor received a standing ovation and kisses from cast members, as well as Bono and The Edge.

___

Follow Mark Kennedy on Twitter at http://twitter.com/KennedyTwits

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/settlement-reached-spider-man-bway-musical-153139234.html

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Faster than silicon: Redesigned material could lead to lighter, faster electronics

Apr. 10, 2013 ? The same material that formed the first primitive transistors more than 60 years ago can be modified in a new way to advance future electronics, according to a new study.

Chemists at The Ohio State University have developed the technology for making a one-atom-thick sheet of germanium, and found that it conducts electrons more than ten times faster than silicon and five times faster than conventional germanium.

The material's structure is closely related to that of graphene -- a much-touted two-dimensional material composed of single layers of carbon atoms. As such, graphene shows unique properties compared to its more common multilayered counterpart, graphite. Graphene has yet to be used commercially, but experts have suggested that it could one day form faster computer chips, and maybe even function as a superconductor, so many labs are working to develop it.

Joshua Goldberger, assistant professor of chemistry at Ohio State, decided to take a different direction and focus on more traditional materials.

"Most people think of graphene as the electronic material of the future," Goldberger said. "But silicon and germanium are still the materials of the present. Sixty years' worth of brainpower has gone into developing techniques to make chips out of them. So we've been searching for unique forms of silicon and germanium with advantageous properties, to get the benefits of a new material but with less cost and using existing technology."

In a paper published online in the journal ACS Nano, he and his colleagues describe how they were able to create a stable, single layer of germanium atoms. In this form, the crystalline material is called germanane.

Researchers have tried to create germanane before. This is the first time anyone has succeeded at growing sufficient quantities of it to measure the material's properties in detail, and demonstrate that it is stable when exposed to air and water.

In nature, germanium tends to form multilayered crystals in which each atomic layer is bonded together; the single-atom layer is normally unstable. To get around this problem, Goldberger's team created multi-layered germanium crystals with calcium atoms wedged between the layers. Then they dissolved away the calcium with water, and plugged the empty chemical bonds that were left behind with hydrogen. The result: they were able to peel off individual layers of germanane.

Studded with hydrogen atoms, germanane is even more chemically stable than traditional silicon. It won't oxidize in air and water, as silicon does. That makes germanane easy to work with using conventional chip manufacturing techniques.

The primary thing that makes germanane desirable for optoelectronics is that it has what scientists call a "direct band gap," meaning that light is easily absorbed or emitted. Materials such as conventional silicon and germanium have indirect band gaps, meaning that it is much more difficult for the material to absorb or emit light.

"When you try to use a material with an indirect band gap on a solar cell, you have to make it pretty thick if you want enough energy to pass through it to be useful. A material with a direct band gap can do the same job with a piece of material 100 times thinner," Goldberger said.

The first-ever transistors were crafted from germanium in the late 1940s, and they were about the size of a thumbnail. Though transistors have grown microscopic since then -- with millions of them packed into every computer chip -- germanium still holds potential to advance electronics, the study showed.

According to the researchers' calculations, electrons can move through germanane ten times faster through silicon, and five times faster than through conventional germanium. The speed measurement is called electron mobility.

With its high mobility, germanane could thus carry the increased load in future high-powered computer chips.

"Mobility is important, because faster computer chips can only be made with faster mobility materials," Golberger said. "When you shrink transistors down to small scales, you need to use higher mobility materials or the transistors will just not work," Goldberger explained.

Next, the team is going to explore how to tune the properties of germanane by changing the configuration of the atoms in the single layer.

Lead author of the paper was Ohio State undergraduate chemistry student Elizabeth Bianco, who recently won the first place award for this research at the nationwide nanotechnology competition NDConnect, hosted by the University of Notre Dame. Other co-authors included Sheneve Butler and Shishi Jiang of the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, and Oscar Restrepo and Wolfgang Windl of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering.

The research was supported in part by an allocation of computing time from the Ohio Supercomputing Center, with instrumentation provided by the Analytical Surface Facility in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry and the Ohio State University Undergraduate Instrumental Analysis Program. Funding was provided by the National Science Foundation, the Army Research Office, the Center for Emergent Materials at Ohio State, and the university's Materials Research Seed Grant Program.

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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Ohio State University. The original article was written by Pam Frost Gorder.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.

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Journal Reference:

1. Elisabeth Bianco, Sheneve Butler, Shishi Jiang, Oscar D. Restrepo, Wolfgang Windl, Joshua E. Goldberger. Stability and Exfoliation of Germanane: A Germanium Graphane Analogue. ACS Nano, 2013; : 130326123449003 DOI: 10.1021/nn4009406

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/top_technology/~3/w9fiRPZ0kZo/130410131502.htm

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Auditor for Herbalife and Skechers resigns amid insider trading probe?

Javier E. David , CNBC ? ? ? 7 hrs.

KPMG was forced to resign as auditor for both Herbalife and Sketchers, both companies announced on Tuesday, after a senior partner at the center of an insider trading probe was fired by the accounting firm.

In separate statements, Herbalife and Sketchers acknowledged that KPMG had resigned as their auditor. The shares of both companies were halted during early trading, with speculation rife about the nature of the move.

In a statement, KPMG confirmed that it was leaving two clients but did not mention either by name.

The accounting giant said that a senior partner based in Los Angeles provided inside information to an unnamed individual, who then used the information to engage in stock trades of key companies on the West Coast. According to the firm, the partner acted "with deliberate disregard for KPMG's long-standing culture of professionalism and integrity."

Herbalife and Sketchers said in a statement that KPMG found no problem with the company's financial statements, and was resigning only because the auditor viewed its independence as impaired.

Initially, it was Herbalife that drew most of the attention, as market watchers speculated the resignation might be connected to a roiling controversy over Herbalife's business model.

For months, the nutritional supplement company has been at the center of a high-profile fight between two hedge fund titans, dubbed "the battle of the billionaires" by Wall Street watchers. Hedge fund manager Bill Ackman has publicly attacked Herbalife as a "pyramid scheme," while placing a $1 billion bet against its stock.

Meanwhile, activist financier Carl Icahn has championed Herbalife, buying its shares while pushing back forcefully against Ackman's claims.

The stock of Skechers rose by 2.6 percent after the halt was lifted, while Herbalife's shares fell modestly.

? 2013 CNBC LLC. All Rights Reserved

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Don Keeps Falling

Don Draper (Jon Hamm).

Photo by Michael Yarish/AMC

Slate?s Mad Men TV Club writers Hanna Rosin and Seth Stevenson were on Facebook on Monday to chat with readers about the season six premiere. The following transcript has been edited for length and clarity.

Seth Stevenson: What did everyone think of the premiere last night?

Patrick McGough: I just found the whole thing underwhelming and hard to connect to. I liked Seth's take on it in his Slate review, but it all left me cold.

Donna Lyman Semar: Thought it was quite boring. Very disappointed.

Michael Leone: I thought it was strained. Don is becoming dull. Enough with his brooding! The Betty sequence I thought completely unbelievable, and moreover, I don't give a crap about her. Even the office scenes felt tired and played out. Roger's sequence was the most interesting and amusing. I was missing Joan.

Hanna Rosin: Wow, am surprised at the negativity. Was it Don's mute moping that turned everyone off? Roger on the couch?

Jill Elswick: Roger on the couch was the best part! That speech about doors. Death was at every turn in this episode, and the male leads seemed to have lost their way (Don wrote a dud ad that turned out to really be about death!). On the other hand, Peggy and Megan?and even Betty?seemed purposeful.?Roger's tears at being confronted with the death of the shoeshine man was a key development, and it contrasted well with his lack of feeling about his mother's passing.

Hanna Rosin: Jill?you just pre-empted my Slate entry. I totally agree, the women were doing something, while the men were spinning in circles. Roger can talk?I can luxuriate in Roger talk all day. Woe to the psychiatrist who falls asleep with Roger on the couch. But it's just talk. Whereas Betty at least ventures out, talks dirty, walks down the path with a modicum of curiosity.

John Swansburg: I gotta say, I found last night's episode pretty slack. I read that AMC pressured Weiner to open the season with a two-hour episode, and this felt padded out to me. I did love when Ken Cosgrove dressed down that sycophant, though it portended bad things to come for someone.

Seth Stevenson:?Ever-amiable Cosgrove took on a much harsher edge last night. Ken's always been a bit of a fringe character, if beloved by the literary-minded New Englanders among us. Maybe bigger things are in store for him this season?

Hanna Rosin: Yes, why were they all so harsh to that poor fan boy on the couch? And personally, I like having Ken's clueless amiability as a counterpoint to all the scheming.

Steve Robertson: Pete is a full partner. Ken is a senior accounts exec. There's a new generation of juniors coming in. Juniors with the same mix of ambition and incompetence that Pete once had. Only now they look at Pete with the same type of awe and jealousy that Pete held for Don.

Seth Stevenson: Perhaps Ken is attempting to nip Pete's burgeoning fan club in the bud.

Seth Stevenson: ?Maybe it's me but I found the premiere riveting. This isn't a show like Breaking Bad or the Sopranos, where it's a breeze to chuck in some violence to goose the action whenever things are flagging. I thought there was plenty of emotional drama. Roger dealt with his mother's death, we learn that Don is cheating on Megan, Peggy is becoming a creative rock star. ... Stuff happened!

Byron Boneparth: I think the parts you mention were riveting or at least very interesting. But the whole Betty/Sandy plotline was sort of dull and seemed a bit pointless, and that was a good chunk of the episode. I would have liked more Pete and/or Joan and less of the comparatively less compelling Francises.

Seth Stevenson: I am always in favor of more Joan. And yes, in general, my energy level seems to drop a bit whenever we cut to the Francis abode.

Daniel Noa: Mad Men is about a man falling. It's a continuous fall. Not two steps forward one step back. And Don's addiction (womanizing?seduction more than sex) is not Betty's fault or Megan's fault, which is the whole point. It's his fault and he cannot exorcise his demons without drastic action (we'll see if the show can even go there). More likely, he will be emblematic of a culture and generation that destroyed itself in pursuit of, as Don calls it, "the moment before you need more happiness."

Hanna Rosin: Matt Zoller Seitz?s recap in Vulture ends on a great question: Are these fundamental human flaws or flaws of the age. Is this something the late ?60s did to us, or is this the nature of humanity? That seems to be a question overhanging this season, because Don is unchanging and seems unaffected by the times. He would be cheating on his wife if it were 1932. And in some ways, the "age" is setting them up to be better men, to open up and understand themselves better, even if it will take a few decades to get there.

Source: http://feeds.slate.com/click.phdo?i=f151a9f708cc538e5eb28be3ad1e4209

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Private manned Mars mission racing time

Progress made during the next year or so will determine whether a private manned Mars mission can get off the ground in 2018 as planned, its organizers say.

The pressure is on the nonprofit Inspiration Mars Foundation, which intends to launch two astronauts on a flyby mission around the Red Planet in January 2018. If the team misses this window, the next one won't open until 2031, when Earth and Mars are again suitably aligned for a fast roundtrip trek.

"We acknowledge the reach that this represents," Taber MacCallum, Inspiration Mars' chief technology officer, said of getting everything organized in less than five years. "The next year of effort on this is really going to tell, I think, whether or not we are able to close this as a mission."

Manned mission to Mars

Inspiration Mars, which was founded by original space tourist Dennis Tito, unveiled its ambitious plans in late February. The organization's proposed "Mission for America" would send two people ? a man and a woman ? on a 501-day roundtrip journey to Mars, punctuated by a close flyby of the Red Planet in August 2018. [Photos: Private Manned Mars Mission in 2018]

While the Inspiration Mars team wants to aid humanity's push out into the solar system, it also hopes to inspire the next generation of American scientists and engineers, much as NASA's Apollo moon program did in the 1960s and early 1970s.

"If we're not competitive as a nation in the sciences, we're going to continue to fall behind," MacCallum, who's also CEO of Arizona-based Paragon Space Development Corp., said Wednesday (April 3) during a presentation with NASA's Future In-Space Operations working group. "That's the only lever America has left internationally."

Making it happen won't be easy, as astronauts have never ventured beyond the vicinity of the moon, just 250,000 miles (400,000 kilometers) or so from Earth. If the Mission for America explorers succeed, they'll be about 38 million miles (61 million km) from home when they cruise past the Red Planet.

Big challenges ahead

One of the biggest challenges for Inspiration Mars is developing an environmental control and life support system (ECLSS) that can be counted on for 500 days in deep space, far from any help, MacCallum said. [Manned Mars Flyby Mission Explained (Infographic)]

"There has never really been an ECLSS system built that was designed without an abort option for these kinds of durations, and with the level of recycling that would be required for this kind of a mission," he said.

The Mission for America's ECLSS will likely be far less automated than the one aboard the International Space Station, with tasks such as the cleaning and replacing of filters being performed by hand.

"That simplifies the overall design, the idea being conferring more reliability," MacCallum said, adding that Inspiration Mars hopes to have an ECLSS test facility up and running by early next year.

The relatively high radiation levels of deep space also pose potential problems, which could be mitigated by a combination of factors. Water could be used as shielding, for example, and older astronauts ? people in their 50s, say ? could be selected (because their lifetime risk of dying from the radiation dose accumulated during the flight would be lower than that of younger folks).

The psychological impact of a 500-day spaceflight is also a concern. Inspiration Mars officials hope to minimize possible problems by launching a married couple whose relationship has weathered many storms over the years.

They're also studying how people have behaved during lengthy stretches of isolation, such as on Antarctic research trips, the Mars500 mock mission to the Red Planet and the Biosphere 2 project in Arizona.

"These range of environments taken together actually provide a pretty good idea of what the behavioral health issues might be like," said MacCallum, who spent two years inside Biosphere 2 in the early 1990s.

Coming home at record speed

The Mission for America astronauts will spend much of their time in a relatively roomy habitat module. But they'll need to return to Earth in a hardy capsule, which will hit our planet's atmosphere at about 31,700 mph (51,000 km per hour).

"No one's ever come back to our planet, that we know of, at that entry speed," said Mission for America team member John Carrico, of Applied Defense Solutions, Inc.

Researchers at NASA's Ames Research Center, in Moffett Field, Calif., are helping Inspiration Mars devise a thermal protection system that will enable the return capsule to survive the intense heat of re-entry, Carrico added.

Inspiration Mars officials recognize how difficult it will be to meet all of these challenges in less than five years. But Tito's deep pockets should help give the team a fighting chance to pull off history's first-ever manned Mars mission.

Tito "has committed to two years of funding to get the mission off the ground, so we've got runway and altitude, and we are really beginning to engage the industry now," MacCallum said.

Follow Mike Wall on Twitter?@michaeldwall.?Follow us?@Spacedotcom,?Facebook?or?Google+. Originally published on?SPACE.com.

Copyright 2013 SPACE.com, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/private-manned-mars-mission-break-time-105025539.html

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Tumblr for Android gets overhauled with new interface

It looks like April is the month for major Android apps to get a visual overhaul. Following Twitter's refresh last week (and Facebook's decidedly more ambitious effort), Tumblr has today released its own app update that offers a whole new user interface. As you can see above, that includes some Path-esque expandable controls for creating various types of posts, as well as new post animations and a general appearance that's more consistent with Android's "Holo" theme. There's no indication yet of that new interface heading to iOS, which just got its own Tumblr update last month.

Filed under: Cellphones, Internet, Mobile

Comments

Source: Google Play, Tumblr

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/04/08/tumblr-for-android-gets-overhauled-with-new-interface/

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North Koreans don't show for work at Kaesong factory park

By Christine Kim and Joyce Lee

SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korean laborers did not show up for work on Tuesday at a factory complex operated with South Korea, companies with operations there said, effectively shutting down the zone for the first time since it began shipments in 2004.

Pyongyang's decision to halt work at the Kaesong industrial park coincided with speculation it would carry out a missile launch, or even another nuclear test, in what has become one of the worst periods of tension on the peninsula since the end of the Korean War in 1953.

About 475 South Korean workers and factory managers remain in Kaesong, a few kilometers inside the border with North Korea. The South Korean government said 77 would return on Tuesday.

Many South Koreans have been reluctant to leave, worried about the impact on their companies and jobs.

"North Korean workers didn't come to work today, and production has halted in our Kaesong facilities," said a spokeswoman for Shinwon, a women's clothing maker.

A spokesman for textile company Taekwang Industrial and at least two other firms also said North Koreans workers did not show up on Tuesday and that production had stopped.

More than 100 representatives from businesses operating at Kaesong were holding an emergency meeting at the complex that started at about 9 p.m. ET, Reuters witnesses said.

An executive at another South Korean apparel firm running a factory in Kaesong said late on Monday his employees had told him they would stay.

"I don't know what to do, honestly. I can't simply tell my workers to leave or stay," said the executive, who requested anonymity.

Tension has been rising since the United Nations imposed new sanctions on the North for carrying out its third nuclear test in February. Pyongyang has been further angered by weeks of military exercises by South Korean and U.S. forces and threatened both countries with nuclear attack.

"SHOCK THERAPY"

Few experts had expected Pyongyang to jeopardize Kaesong, which accounts for $2 billion in annual trade and employs 50,000 North Koreans making household goods for 123 South Korean firms.

North Korea said on Monday it would suspend operations at the park, its sole remaining major project with the South. No decision had been made on closing Kaesong permanently, it said.

"They're using this as shock therapy because, regardless of what they say, if they close Kaesong the damage they will sustain will not be small," said Moon Seong-mook, a retired South Korean brigadier general who took part in previous military talks with the North.

"This is just another negotiating card they can use with South Korea."

The North's official KCNA news agency said Seoul was trying to "turn the zone into a hotbed of war" against the North. It did not elaborate.

North Korea has also bridled at suggestions from Seoul that it would keep the park open because it needed the cash. The zone generates more than $80 million a year in cash in wages - paid to the state rather than to the workers.

South Korean firms pay between $8 million and $9 million in wages a month for about 53,000 North Korean workers in Kaesong. Any delay in payment of those wages could become another flashpoint because the North could demand payment of interest on the delayed wages, Yonhap reported.

The turmoil has hit South Korean financial markets, which have usually shrugged off the North's rhetoric.

Seoul stocks have fallen nearly 3 percent since Wednesday, when the North first blocked access to the zone amid steep foreign selling. Shares in some firms known to have operations in Kaesong fell sharply on Tuesday.

The won currency has fallen by more than 2 percent against the dollar since access to the park was first barred.

"SUNSHINE POLICY" CLOUDS OVER

The zone is practically the last vestige of the "Sunshine Policy" of rapprochement between the two Koreas and a powerful symbol that the divided country could one day reunify.

South Korean companies are estimated to have invested around $500 million in the park since 2004.

But corporate giants such as Samsung Electronics and Hyundai Motor, the sort of companies that could sustain losses from the park's closure, do not have operations in Kaesong.

South Koreans had been leaving the park gradually in the past week as raw materials and food run out.

North Korean authorities told embassies in Pyongyang they could not guarantee their safety from Wednesday, after saying conflict was inevitable amid the joint U.S.-South Korean military exercises due to last until the end of the month. No diplomats appear to have left the North Korean capital.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry visits Seoul this week and the North holds celebrations, and possibly military demonstrations, next Monday to mark the birth date of its founder, Kim Il-Sung - grandfather of the current leader, 30-year-old Kim Jong-un.

Pyongyang has shown no sign of preparing its 1.2 million-strong army for war, indicating the threats are partly intended for domestic purposes to bolster Kim, the third in his family dynasty to rule North Korea.

But it has moved what appears to be a mid-range Musudan missile to its east coast, according to media reports last week.

U.S. Deputy Defense Secretary Ashton Carter urged China - the North's sole financial and diplomatic backer - to use its influence with the North, something he said Moscow wanted Beijing to do as well.

"I think Russia, like others beholding this situation in North Korea, would like to see China exercise more of the influence that it evidently has with North Korea," Carter told a forum in Washington.

China's leaders rebuked North Korea at the weekend but most experts believe Beijing will not push too hard to punish Pyongyang because of concerns its troublesome neighbor could collapse.

Some experts also say China's influence over North Korea has waned over the years.

(Writing by Dean Yates; Editing by Paul Tait)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/north-korea-suspends-last-project-south-putin-cites-001526987.html

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