YouTube Space Lab Winners from U.S. and Egypt Watch Their Experiments LIVE From Space on Thursday, September 13

Press release:

YouTube Space Lab Winners from U.S. and Egypt Watch Their Experiments LIVE From Space on Thursday, September 13

Live Stream Hosted by Bill Nye “The Science Guy” and transmitted from the International Space Station to the world via YouTube

New York, NY & London, England (August 29, 2012) – YouTube and Lenovo today announced the culmination of the YouTube Space Lab competition in which astronauts will reveal the results of the two winning experiments live from the International Space Station (ISS) and share them with to the world on YouTube.  The live stream will connect the ISS to YouTube’s London creator space on Thursday, September 13 beginning at 1:30 PM GMT/8:30 AM EST and will be hosted by Bill Nye “The Science Guy” and include the two global winners, Amr Mohamed from Alexandria, Egypt; and Dorothy Chen and Sara Ma, from Troy, Michigan in the U.S.
YouTube Space Lab, which launched in October 2011 with partners including Space Adventures and in cooperation with National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the European Space Agency (ESA), and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), is a worldwide science competition that challenged 14-18 year-olds to design a science experiment that can be performed in space.  The world will now see the winning experiments performed by astronaut Sunita Williams during a live stream on YouTube from 250 miles above Earth aboard the ISS.  The forty-minute live program will begin with host Bill Nye interviewing the global winners and special guests via Google+ Hangout, and feature the story of Space Lab told through videos since its launch last year. Then, NASA's Mission Control Center will connect the studio to the ISS for a conversation with U.S. astronaut, Sunita Williams, and the results of the winning experiments.  
"Students from around the world came up with experiments that could only be performed where there is no gravity— the International Space Station,” said Bill Nye “The Science Guy” and host of the YouTube Space Lab live stream event.  “You and I will meet the winning young scientists and talk with astronauts in orbit.  So tune in to YouTube Space Lab and turn it up loud." 
Amr Mohamed (17-18 year old age group) and Dorothy Chen and Sara Ma  (14-16 year old age group) were named the winners at a ceremony in Washington, DC, in March.  The event was attended by Space Lab partners including NASA, ESA, and JAXA.  Now these winners will discuss the results of their experiments with the astronauts performing them aboard the ISS.
Amr Mohamed, 18, came up with an experiment to explore the question: “Can you teach an old spider new tricks?” As part of his prize, he went to Russia for a one-of-a-kind astronaut training experience in Star City, Russia, the training center for Russian cosmonauts. He proposed investigating the effects of microgravity on how the zebra spider catches its prey, and whether it could adapt its behavior in space.
Dorothy Chen and Sara Ma, both 16, created an experiment that asks: “Could alien superbugs cure disease on Earth?”.  Their experiment investigates whether compounds and nutrients can block bacterial growth differently in microgravity, which ultimately could lead a path to fighting germs more effectively on Earth.  As part of their prize, Dorothy and Sara toured JAXA facilities and watched the rocket with the winning experiments blast off from southern Japan.
Space Lab founder, Google’s Zahaan Bharmal added, “Our hope is that this live stream from space will be the world’s largest, coolest scientific classroom. Today’s Space Lab winners - as well as the millions of other young minds watching the stream on YouTube - represent tomorrow’s space explorers. They may one day walk on Mars!”
“For nearly 20 years – aboard the ISS and numerous space shuttle missions -- Lenovo ThinkPad laptops have played a critical role in space exploration and research,” said Tracey Trachta, vice president, Brand Experience, Global Marketing, Lenovo. “The YouTube Space Lab competition places technology and opportunity into the hands of tomorrow’s space explorers, and we’re thrilled to be a part of such an effort.”
For more information, please visit: https://sites.google.com/site/ytspacelab/press.
About YouTube
YouTube is the world’s largest online video community, allowing millions of people to discover, watch, and share original videos. YouTube provides a forum for people to connect, inform, and inspire others across the globe and acts as a distribution platform for original-content creators and advertisers large and small. YouTube, LLC, is based in San Bruno, California, and is a subsidiary of Google Inc.
About Lenovo
Lenovo (HKSE: 992) (ADR: LNVGY) is a $US21 billion personal technology company serving customers in more than 160 countries, and the world’s second-largest PC vendor. Dedicated to building exceptionally engineered PCs and mobile internet devices, Lenovo’s business is built on product innovation, a highly-efficient global supply chain and strong strategic execution.  Formed by Lenovo Group’s acquisition of the former IBM Personal Computing Division, the company develops, manufactures and markets reliable, high-quality, secure and easy-to-use technology products and services. Its product lines include legendary Think-branded commercial PCs and Idea-branded consumer PCs, as well as servers, workstations, and a family of mobile Internet devices, including tablets and smart phones. Lenovo has major research centers in Yamato, Japan; Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen, China; and Raleigh, North Carolina.  For more information see www.lenovo.com.
About Space Adventures
Space Adventures, the company that organized the flights for the world's first private space explorers, is headquartered in Vienna, Va. with an office in Moscow. It offers a variety of programs such as the availability today for spaceflight missions to the International Space Station and around the moon, cosmonaut training, spaceflight qualification programs and reservations on future suborbital spacecraft.  A wholly owned subsidiary, ZERO-G (www.gozerog.com) conducts weightless flights.  The company's orbital spaceflight clients include Dennis Tito, Mark Shuttleworth, Greg Olsen, Anousheh Ansari, Charles Simonyi, Richard Garriott and Guy Laliberté. Cumulatively, Space Adventures’ clients have spent almost three months in space, traveling over 36 million miles. For more information, please visit www.spaceadventures.com.

A Renewed Multilateral Effort to Protect East European Banks

Excerpt from an article in

The New York Times

Thursday, March 15, 2012

A Renewed Multilateral Effort to Protect East European Banks

By JACK EWING FRANKFURT — A group of officials and bankers who helped prevent Eastern Europe from being thrown into the financial crisis in 2009 has reconvened, seeking to avoid a credit squeeze and economic downturn caused by problems at parent banks in Western Europe.

The International Monetary Fund, European Commission, World Bank and other institutions this week formally revived an effort known as the Vienna Initiative, which three years ago succeeded in preventing panicked West European banks from draining capital from their subsidiaries in Eastern Europe.

Vienna Initiative 2.0, as it has been named, is concentrating on ensuring that national regulators do not work at cross purposes, inadvertently provoking a flight of capital as banks respond to pressure to reduce risk.

The first Vienna Initiative “was based on voluntary commitment by banks,” said Otilia Simkova, an analyst at the consulting firm Eurasia Group in London. “Now it seems everything is focusing on regulators.”

Banks in the euro area supply 80 percent of the foreign lending in emerging Europe, which includes countries like Poland and Hungary as well as Turkey. That means problems among euro area banks can quickly spread east.

In fact, West European banks drained $35 billion from the region in the third quarter of 2011, according to figures published this week by the Bank for International Settlements in Basel, Switzerland.

A shortage of credit would undercut economic growth at a time when countries like Romania are still recovering from the last crisis.

Next Time, Greece May Need New Tactics

Excerpt from an article in

The New York Times

Saturday, March 10, 2012

Next Time, Greece May Need New Tactics

By LANDON THOMAS Jr.

LONDON The Greek government was able to legally strong-arm most of its private bondholders into accepting the debt reduction deal it completed Friday. But next time — and experts predict there will almost certainly be a next time — Greece might have much less leverage.

That’s because as a result of Friday’s deal, the bulk of Athens’s 260.2 billion euros ($341 billion) in remaining government debt will now be held by the International Monetary Fund, the European Central Bank and the individual European nations that have lent Greece money and contributed to the region’s bailout fund.

Politically, Greece would be hard-pressed to force debt losses on such a formidable international group, the way it did with the private banks and hedge funds that have just been forced to accept a 75 percent loss on their Greek bond holdings. Greece’s main creditors, in effect, are now foreign taxpayers — who are likely to be much less malleable than the private creditors if Greece needs to renegotiate its staggering debt load a year or two down the road.

“From now on, whatever happens in Greece, it will be a matter between Greece and the taxpayers of the rest of the euro area,” said Jacob F. Kirkegaard, an analyst at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington.

The final private creditor deal announced Friday was agreed to by nearly 86 percent of the bondholders; the number was expected to rise to 95 percent after Athens invoked a so-called collective action clause forcing others to join in. Without such a deal, Greece had strongly implied, it might default altogether, with no one getting paid. The outcome has enabled Greece to reduce its debt load by just over 100 billion euros, or about $132 billion.

Later in the day, the International Swaps and Derivatives Association ruled that the agreement was nonetheless a technical default by Greece — a ruling that will mean payouts on some insurance contracts, known as credit-default swaps, that various investors had taken out on the privately held Greek debt. Around $70 billion in default swaps on that debt are outstanding, although analysts expect the net payout to end up at only $3.2 billion or so.

Greek Credit-Default Swaps Are Activated

Excerpt from an article in

The New York Times

Saturday, March 10, 2012

Greek Credit-Default Swaps Are Activated 

By PETER EAVIS

Greece's debt restructuring will prompt payouts on credit-default swaps tied to the country's government bonds.

The decision by the International Swaps and Derivatives Association ends months of speculation that a Greek default might not set off the swaps, a result that could have undermined their role as insurance against debt defaults.

"We saw today that the credit-default swap market worked," said the association's chief executive, Robert Pickel. "Market participants expected it to work."

Still, doubts about the instruments' effectiveness may linger. European officials initially shaped the Greek debt restructuring to avoid activating them. The concern is that future restructurings could be arranged to stop swaps from paying out.

"This is the right result, through a very circuitous path," said John Sprow, chief risk officer at Smith Breeden Associates, a fund management firm.

While Greece's debt exchange has been in the works for weeks, the restructuring activated the swaps only after the country made a legal move on Friday.

The Greek government chose to apply so-called collective action clauses, which it had earlier inserted into its bonds registered under Greek law. The deal maximized total debt relief for the country, but it also forced losses on bondholders - a credit event, and therefore a trigger, for the swaps.