Mediaboss Marketing

MILPITAS, CA--(Marketwire -06/28/12)- Sigma Designs, Inc. (SIGM), a leading provider of connected media platforms, today announced that it is mailing the following letter to its shareholders:

Dear Fellow Shareholder:

We are writing to provide you additional information that you may find helpful in voting at Sigma Designs' Annual Meeting of Shareholders to be held on August 7, 2012. We urge you to use the enclosed WHITE proxy card to vote for Sigma's approved slate of directors for the reasons outlined below. We urge you to discard any Gold proxy card you may receive from Potomac Investment Partners III, L.P., a dissident hedge fund, as submitting it will cancel any previous vote you have submitted.

SIGMA CONTINUES TO EXECUTE ON ITS STRATEGIC PLAN; IF POTOMAC'S NOMINEES TAKE CONTROL OF THE BOARD, THEY WILL DISRUPT THE STRATEGIC PLAN YOU HAVE INVESTED IN JUST AS IT GAINS MOMENTUM

Sigma has developed a strategic plan to transform itself into the leading provider of semiconductor solutions for intelligent media platforms, building on the Company's significant role in the delivery of digital entertainment throughout the home. As a result of its intense research and development efforts and strategic acquisitions, Sigma is poised to leverage its leading technologies in the IPTV set-top box, home connectivity, SmartTV, connected media player and home control and automation markets to provide a comprehensive solution for the Digital Connected Home.

The development and execution of this strategic plan all comes under the leadership of the current Sigma Board. This strategic plan was created through the vision of your Board members who are industry veterans, intimately familiar with Sigma's target customers, end markets and industry trends. As the result of their extensive operational experience, each of your Directors also understood that significant investments in leading technologies, through internal development and strategic acquisitions, take time to develop into operational success. But, with a solid foundation of compelling product solutions across the entire Digital Connected Home, this strategic plan is beginning to bear fruit and the Sigma Board is excited about what lies ahead.

By contrast, Potomac is seeking control of your Board and company with three out of four directors, but refuses to tell you what it plans to do with such control - what is its program to create shareholder value. Not only does Potomac refuse to tell you this important information, in their most recent communication they claimed that their costly, disruptive proxy fight for three out of four directorships was "not seeking control of Sigma"!

Now is not the time to turn over control of your Company to a hedge fund operator and his hand-picked nominees who do not have the knowledge and experience to oversee the successful implementation of this program, who refuse to tell you their plans if they do gain control of your Board and Company and who even refuse to acknowledge the self-evident fact that they are seeking control of your Board and Company.

While we have serious concerns about the future of Sigma if the Potomac nominees were in control of the Board, we also believe that it is not in the interests of the shareholders to have a costly and disruptive proxy fight. As Potomac had suggested originally, we have offered to establish a five member Sigma Board that would include two Potomac representatives.

Instead, Potomac, a 7.9% shareholder, is distracting you from the simple questions that it refuses to answer: (1) what does Potomac intend to do with control of your Company, (2) why will Potomac not pay you a premium for that control and (3) why does Potomac continue to believe that 75% control of the Board is appropriate for a 7.9% shareholder instead of the 40% representation previously offered by Sigma's Board?

Original post:
Sigma Designs Challenges Qualifications of Potomac's Nominees to Control the Board of Directors

The Irish Times - Friday, June 29, 2012

KIERAN GUILBERT

Social networking websites are being accessed by a significant number of Irish children aged between nine and 13, despite rules banning under-13s from signing up, according to a report by Dublin Institute of Technology (DIT) researchers.

The report on social networking among Irish nine- to 16-year-olds was discussed yesterday at a seminar at DIT.

The report found half of 11- and 12-year-old children, and one in five between the ages of nine and 10, have profiles on either Facebook or Bebo despite both sites requiring members to be 13 or older.

The authors of the report, Dr Brian ONeill and Thuy Dinh, said the findings show age restrictions are ineffective and young children are taking greater risks online. About 18 per cent of Irish children aged between nine and 10 have not changed their privacy settings the highest of any age grouping which means their profiles are public for anyone to see. However, children in Ireland are the least likely in Europe to have a social network profile.

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Underage children use social networks

ScienceDaily (June 29, 2012) Both innate and adaptive immune responses play an important role in controlling influenza virus infection, according to a study, published in the Open Access journal PLoS Computational Biology, by researchers from Oakland University, Michigan, and Los Alamos National Laboratory, New Mexico, USA.

Influenza, as a contagious respiratory illness remains a major public health problem worldwide. Seasonal and pandemic influenza results in approximately 3 to 569 million cases of severe illness and approximately 250,000 to 500,000 deaths worldwide. Although most infected subjects with intact immune systems are able to clear the virus without developing serious flu complications, the biological factors responsible for viral control remain unclear.

To investigate the factors for viral control, the researchers developed mathematical models that included both innate and adaptive immune responses to the virus. These models were used to study the viral dynamics of the influenza virus infection in horses. After infection, viral levels rise rapidly, reach a peak and fall, then they attain a low plateau that can be followed in some animals by a second peak. Ultimately, viral levels decline and the infection is cleared. By comparing modeling predictions with experimental data, researchers examined the relative roles of availability of cells susceptible to infection, so-called target cells, and innate and adaptive immune responses in controlling the virus.

The research showed that the two-part innate immune response, generated by natural killer cells, and the antiviral effect caused by interferon, a naturally produced protective molecule, can explain the first rapid viral decline and subsequent second viral peak. The second peak comes about because as the viral level falls, the immune response also falls allowing the virus the opportunity to grow back before the adaptive ultimately clears it.

However, for eventual viral clearance it is the body's adaptive immune response that is needed.

The data analyzed were from equine influenza virus infection in horses. However, similar viral kinetic profiles have been observed in humans infected with the influenza virus. The authors conclude that the study can be used to explain the viral and interferon kinetics observed during a typical influenza virus infection.

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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Public Library of Science.

Originally posted here:
Both innate and adaptive immune responses are critical to the control of influenza

The country has been officially known as Myanmar since 1989 when its military rulers decided the name 'Burma' was a legacy of British colonial rule which reflected the domination of its majority Burman tribe. The name Myanmar has deeper and more inclusive history, they said.

But the National League for Democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi and her supporters ignored the change on the grounds that it was imposed by a military junta and continue to use 'Burma.' In a speech on the lawn of her Rangoon villa during her by-election campaign earlier this year, she joked that foreigners should continue to use 'Burma' because 'Myanmar' was too difficult for them to pronounce correctly.

Her repeated use of the old name Burma during her visit to Britain and Norway this month has irked senior government figures who reprimanded her publicly in the official New Light of Myanmar newspaper earlier this week.

A statement by the state Election Commission suggested she was in breach of the country's constitution by using the country's former official name. Daw Suu, as the paper calls refers to her, had sworn allegiance to the constitution when she became a member of parliament following her party's landslide victory in a series of by-elections last April.

"The state shall be known as The Republic of the Union of Myanmar', no one has the right to call (the country) Burma. Daw Aung San Suu Kyi called Myanmar 'Burma' in her speech to the World Economic Forum in Thailand on 1 June, 2012," the statement said, and "again, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi called Myanmar 'Burma' in her speeches during her Europe tour," it added.

Britain, the United States and other Western countries continue to call the country 'Burma' in unofficial statements in support of Aung San Suu Kyi's democracy movement, but there have been growing calls for them to recognise the country's official name now its former military rulers appear to have embraced a fast paced programme of democratic reforms, including political prisoner releases, trade union rights, press freedoms and free and fair elections.

Derek Tonkin, Britain's former ambassador to Thailand and chairman of the Network Myanmar group has suggested Britain and the United States could now recognise the name Myanmar as a concession to acknowledge its progress towards greater democracy. The group, which was formed to campaign for political reform and international engagement with the country, believes the term Myanmar was endorsed in the 2008 referendum on its new constitution, in which 98 per cent voted.

Most countries are waiting for Aung San Suu Kyi to make a statement, but he believes change is now inevitable. "The Australians have started using Myanmar, the Americans have hinted at it, and I suspect Britain will be the last to change. But I think by the end of the year Myanmar will be accepted unless something happens," he said.

See the rest here:
All in a word: Burma's rulers tell Suu Kyi not to call it Burma

Five candidates were from Philadelphia, officials said, but job seekers were promised confidentiality unless they agreed to go public.

Both Martinez and Hite met parents, teachers, students, elected officials, and others in a daylong series of meetings. They faced questions on everything from charter schools to student safety.

Hite, 51, has a classroom background - he's been a teacher, principal, and central office staffer in Virginia, Georgia, and, most recently, Maryland. He's credited with bringing stability to a politically tough district of about 135,000 students.

Martinez, 42, was trained as an accountant but has worked as chief financial officer of the Chicago public school system and most recently overseen academics in Washoe County (Reno), Nev., and Las Vegas. Martinez helped boost graduation rates in both Nevada districts and closed big deficits in Chicago.

Philadelphia's ailing school system has been led since January by Thomas Knudsen, who was appointed to the temporary position of chief recovery officer by the SRC. Knudsen was tapped to help the district through an atrocious financial situation - it cut about $700 million in the 2011-12 school year and must borrow at least $218 million in 2012-13 to operate - and to entirely restructure its operations.

Knudsen's contract expires in late July.

Former Superintendent Arlene C. Ackerman left Philadelphia on bad terms last summer after collecting a $905,000 buyout, and the good-government group Committee of Seventy this week urged the SRC to avoid some of the mistakes the district made with Ackerman, and to make "broad parameters" of a new superintendent contract public before it is signed.

Pritchett, in response, said the SRC planned "to make this process as transparent as possible and will be releasing further information regarding the contract process in the near future."

Contact Kristen Graham at 215-854-5146, kgraham@phillynews.com or on Twitter @newskag. Read her blog, "Philly School Files," at http://www.philly.com/schoolfiles.

See more here:
Philly superintendent finalists now can only await word