ROUND ROCK, Texas (AP) ? Dell's earnings plunged 79 percent in the latest quarter as the shift to smartphones and tablets reduced demand for the company's personal computers.
The dismal performance announced Thursday actually might work to the advantage of Dell Inc.'s board. That's because Dell's directors are trying to persuade shareholders to accept a $24.4 billion buyout offer from CEO Michael Dell and other investors. Some shareholders say the sales price of $13.65 per share is too low, but Dell's board contends it's a good deal in light of challenges facing the company.
The results for the fiscal first quarter, which ended May 3, should reinforce the board's point. At the same time, opponents of that proposal may question whether the company is deliberately finding ways to make the results look as bleak as possible in an effort to get the deal done.
A shareholder vote is supposed be held by Aug. 2. Two of Dell's largest shareholders, billionaire Carl Icahn and Southeastern Asset Management, are trying to block the sale to Michael Dell with an alternative proposal that would keep the company public traded. If Michael Dell's offer is accepted, it would end Dell's 25-year history as a publicly traded company.
Dell earned $130 million, or 7 cents per share, in the latest quarter, compared with $635 million, or 36 cents per share, a year earlier.
If not for certain items unrelated to its ongoing business, Dell said it would have earned 21 cents per share. That figure was below the average estimate of 35 cents per share among analysts polled by FactSet.
The shortfall doesn't come as a shock. Speculation that Dell missed analysts' earnings target mounted earlier this week after the Round Rock, Texas, company disclosed that it would release its results ahead of schedule. The report originally was supposed to be released next Tuesday.
Dell's revenue for the period dipped 2 percent to $14.1 billion, about $600 million above analyst predictions.
The company benefited from an improvement in business software and other technology services, an area that Michael Dell wants to expand. Revenue in that business rose 12 percent from last year.
But as the world's largest seller of PCs, Dell's business still revolves around laptop and desktop machines, which are going out of style as more people embrace smartphones and tablets. Dell's revenue in its PC division dropped 9 percent in the latest quarter.
Dell's stock shed 6 cents in extended trading to $13.37.
One email confirmed officials removed information about CIA warnings regarding an al Qaeda threat before the attacks in Benghazi, Libya in September 2012 from talking points the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations presented to the public. The administration released the emails in an effort to seem more transparent.?
By Jeff Mason,?Reuters / May 15, 2013
A portion of a page of emails that the White House released Wednesday is seen at the White House in Washington. These emails document how the Obama administration crafted its public talking points immediately following the Sept. 11, 2012, deadly attack on a U.S. diplomatic post in Benghazi, Libya.
AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin
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The?White House?on Wednesday sought to defuse controversy over its handling of last year's killing of four Americans in Benghazi, releasing emails that show how?Obama administration?officials presented a scrubbed-down version of the attacks to the public.
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The documents gave a glimpse into the administration's message control as officials carefully debated via email which details U.S. Ambassador to the?United Nations?Susan Rice should highlight when she went on talk shows five days later to discuss the Sept. 11 assault on the?U.S. mission?in Benghazi,?Libya.
There was little in the roughly 100 pages of emails about Rice's "talking points" that had not been leaked previously.
They included an email confirming perhaps the most damaging charge that administration officials removed mention from Rice's talking points that the CIA had warned of an al Qaeda threat in the area of the eastern Libyan city before the attacks.
The exchange between?White House, State Department and intelligence officials showed the talking points went through a series of revisions that scrubbed them of references to terror warnings before Ambassador?Chris Stevens?and three other Americans were killed.
While awkward for the?White House, releasing the emails was an effort to counter complaints from Republicans and the media that President?Barack Obama's administration?is secretive.
It came as the government was battling criticism on several fronts, including a scandal over the?Internal Revenue Service's targeting of conservative groups for special scrutiny.
In the Benghazi?emails, then-State Department spokeswoman?Victoria Nuland?raised concerns about references to intelligence about the threat from militants in?eastern Libya.
Nuland wrote that she had "serious concerns" that the talking points would provide members of?Congress?with material to "beat the State Department for not paying attention to (Central Intelligence) Agency warnings" about threats in the region.
Those references were deleted from the final talking points that Rice used on the Sunday morning talk shows on Sept. 16.
Nuland noted in one of her emails that changes during the draft process "don't resolve all my issues or those of my building leadership," suggesting officials above her at the State Department were also concerned.
WASHINGTON (AP) ? Lawmakers say they're outraged that for the second time this month a member of the armed forces assigned to help prevent sexual assaults in the military is under investigation for alleged sexual misconduct.
The back-to-back Army and Air Force cases highlight a problem that is drawing increased scrutiny in Congress and expressions of frustration from Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel. Lawmakers said it was time for Hagel to get tough with the military brass.
"This is sickening. Twice now, in a matter of as many weeks, we've seen the very people charged with protecting victims of sexual assault being charged as perpetrators," Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., said. "It's an astonishing reminder that the Pentagon has both a major problem on its hands and a tremendous amount of work to do to assure victims ? who already only report a small fraction of sexual assaults ? that they are changing the culture around these heinous crimes.
"Secretary Hagel needs to act swiftly to re-examine sexual assault services across the department to ensure that these disturbing betrayals of trust are ended," Murray said.
Hagel said he was directing all the services to retrain, re-credential and rescreen all sexual assault prevention and response personnel and military recruiters, his spokesman, George Little, said after Tuesday's announcement that a sergeant first class at Fort Hood, Texas, was accused of pandering, abusive sexual contact, assault and maltreatment of subordinates.
The soldier, whose name was not released, was being investigated by the Army Criminal Investigation Command. No charges had been filed.
Little said Hagel was angry and disappointed at "these troubling allegations and the breakdown in discipline and standards they imply." He said Hagel met with Army Secretary John McHugh earlier Tuesday and ordered him to "fully investigate this matter rapidly, to discover the extent of these allegations and to ensure that all of those who might be involved are dealt with appropriately."
The Fort Hood soldier had been assigned as an equal opportunity adviser and coordinator of a sexual harassment-assault prevention program at the Army's 3rd Corps headquarters when the allegation arose, the Army said.
"To protect the integrity of the investigative process and the rights of all persons involved, no more information will be released at this time," an Army statement said.
House Armed Services Committee Chairman Howard P. "Buck" McKeon, R-Calif., said in a statement he was "outraged and disgusted by the reports out of Fort Hood."
McKeon, noting he has a granddaughter in the Army, said he saw "no meaningful distinction between complacency or complicity in the military's latest failure to uphold their own standards of conduct. Nor do I see a distinction between the service member who orchestrated this offense and the chain of command that was either oblivious to or tolerant of criminal behavior. Both are accountable for this appalling breach of trust with their subordinates."
He called on Hagel to conduct a review of the military and its civilian leadership "to determine whether they continue to hold his trust and his confidence to lead in this area."
Just last week an Air Force officer who headed a sexual assault prevention office was himself arrested on charges of groping a woman in a Northern Virginia parking lot.
Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said in a statement his panel was considering a number of measures to counter the problem, including changes to the Uniform Code of Military Justice, and will act on them next month.
"Tragically, the depth of the sexual assault problem in our military was already overwhelmingly clear before this latest highly disturbing report," Levin said.
Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., said she intends to present new comprehensive legislation on Thursday to overhaul the military justice system by removing chain-of-command influence from prosecution of sex abuse crimes.
"To say this report is disturbing would be a gross understatement," Gillibrand said.
"The sad thing is that this is not a unique case,"Anu Bhagwati, former Marine captain and executive director of the Service Women's Action Network, said in an interview. "Week after week, we're hearing of cases across the branches of military leaders taking advantage of their positions of authority. "
The Pentagon is struggling with what it calls a growing epidemic of sexual assaults across the military. In a report last week, the Defense Department estimated that as many as 26,000 military members may have been sexually assaulted last year, based on survey results.
Of those, fewer than 3,400 reported the incident, and nearly 800 of them simply sought help but declined to file formal complaints against their alleged attackers.
There also is an ongoing investigation into more than 30 Air Force instructors for assaults on trainees at Lackland Air Force Base, Texas, and the recent arrest of the Air Force's head of sexual assault prevention on charges of groping a woman.
An Arlington County, Va., police report said Air Force Lt. Col. Jeffrey Krusinski was drunk and grabbed a woman's breast and buttocks in a parking lot earlier this month. The woman fought him off and called police, the report said. A judge has set a July 18 trial date for Krusinski.
Congressional anger over these incidents and two recent decisions by officers to overturn juries' guilty verdicts in sexual assault cases has precipitated a storm of criticism on Capitol Hill.
Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., is holding up the nomination of Air Force Lt. Gen. Susan Helms, tapped to serve as vice commander of the U.S. Space Command, until McCaskill gets more information about Helms' decision to overturn a jury conviction in a sexual assault case.
___
Associated Press writer Lolita C. Baldor and AP Radio editor Mike Gracia contributed to this report.
___
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May 14, 2013 ? Consumers engage in superstitious behavior when they want to achieve something but don't have the power to make it happen, according to a new study in the Journal of Consumer Research.
"Preference for lucky products (those associated with positive outcomes) increases when a strong desire for control is combined with lower perceived ability to exert control. Consumers who make superstitious choices believe they will be effective in helping them achieve the desired outcome," write authors Eric J. Hamerman (Tulane University) and Gita V. Johar (Columbia University).
Sports fans are well known for their superstitious behavior. A current Bud Light commercial with the tag line of "it's only weird if it doesn't work" shows the odd ways in which NFL fans root for their teams. Robert De Niro's character in Silver Linings Playbook engages in deeply superstitious behavior that will supposedly help the Philadelphia Eagles win.
In one study, right-handed consumers played rock-paper-scissors. Those who won more often using their left (vs. right) hand preferred to continue playing with their left hand. This was more likely to occur among consumers with a stronger desire for control, and those who preferred to play left-handed after associating this hand with victory tended to believe they were more likely to win in the future.
Consumers can become conditioned to associate certain products with success or failure. For example, a sports fan who was drinking a Dr. Pepper while watching his favorite team win a game might later drink Dr. Pepper -- even if he would actually prefer a Coke -- while watching future games in the hope that he's giving his team an extra edge.
"Conditioned superstitions are formed when consumers associate products with success or failure. Depending on how much they wish to control their environment -- and their perception of whether they can do so -- consumers who make these associations may be more likely to act on them, thereby creating an illusion of control over future outcomes," the authors conclude.
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Eric J. Hamerman and Gita V. Johar. Conditioned Superstition: Desire for Control and Consumer Brand Preferences. Journal of Consumer Research, October 2013
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Hospitals promote screenings that experts say many people do not need Hospitals hoping to attract patients and build goodwill are teaming up with medical-screening companies to promote tests they say might prevent deadly strokes or heart disease. What their promotions don?t say is that an influential government panel recommends against many of the tests for people without symptoms or risk factors.
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Making gold green: New non-toxic method for mining goldPublic release date: 14-May-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Megan Fellman fellman@northwestern.edu 847-491-3115 Northwestern University
Scientists launch 'nano gold rush' by replacing cyanide with cornstarch
Northwestern University scientists have struck gold in the laboratory. They have discovered an inexpensive and environmentally benign method that uses simple cornstarch -- instead of cyanide -- to isolate gold from raw materials in a selective manner.
This green method extracts gold from crude sources and leaves behind other metals that are often found mixed together with the crude gold. The new process also can be used to extract gold from consumer electronic waste.
Current methods for gold recovery involve the use of highly poisonous cyanides, often leading to contamination of the environment. Nearly all gold-mining companies use this toxic gold leaching process to sequester the precious metal.
"The elimination of cyanide from the gold industry is of the utmost importance environmentally," said Sir Fraser Stoddart, the Board of Trustees Professor of Chemistry in the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences. "We have replaced nasty reagents with a cheap, biologically friendly material derived from starch."
Sir Fraser's team discovered the process by accident, using simple test tube chemistry. A series of rigorous follow-up investigations provided evidence for the competitive strength of the new procedure.
The findings will be published May 14 in the online journal Nature Communications.
Zhichang Liu, a postdoctoral fellow in Stoddart's lab and first author of the paper, took two test tubes containing aqueous solutions -- one of the starch-derived alpha-cyclodextrin, the other of a dissolved gold (Au) salt (called aurate) -- and mixed them together in a beaker at room temperature.
Liu was trying to make an extended, three-dimensional cubic structure, which could be used to store gases and small molecules. Unexpectedly, he obtained needles, which formed rapidly upon mixing the two solutions.
"Initially, I was disappointed when my experiment didn't produce cubes, but when I saw the needles, I got excited," Liu said. "I wanted to learn more about the composition of these needles."
"Nature decided otherwise," said Stoddart, a senior author of the paper. "The needles, composed of straw-like bundles of supramolecular wires, emerged from the mixed solutions in less than a minute."
After discovering the needles, Liu screened six different complexes -- cyclodextrins composed of rings of six (alpha), seven (beta) and eight (gamma) glucose units, each combined with aqueous solutions of potassium tetrabromoaurate (KAuBr4) or potassium tetrachloroaurate (KAuCl4).
He found that it was alpha-cyclodextrin, a cyclic starch fragment composed of six glucose units, that isolates gold best of all.
"Alpha-cyclodextrin is the gold medal winner," Stoddart said. "Zhichang stumbled on a piece of magic for isolating gold from anything in a green way."
Alkali metal salt waste from this new method is relatively environmentally benign, Stoddart said, while waste from conventional methods includes toxic cyanide salts and gases. The Northwestern procedure is also more efficient than current commercial processes.
The supramolecular nanowires, each 1.3 nanometers in diameter, assemble spontaneously in a straw-like manner. In each wire, the gold ion is held together in the middle of four bromine atoms, while the potassium ion is surrounded by six water molecules; these ions are sandwiched in an alternating fashion by alpha-cyclodextrin rings. Around 4,000 wires are bundled parallel to each other and form individual needles that are visible under an electron microscope.
"There is a lot of chemistry packed into these nanowires," Stoddart said. "The elegance of the composition of single nanowires was revealed by atomic force microscopy, which throws light on the stacking of the individual donut-shaped alpha-cyclodextrin rings."
The atomic detail of the single supramolecular wires and their relative disposition within the needles was uncovered by single crystal X-ray crystallography.
The research -- a prime example of serendipity at work, brought to fruition by contemporary fundamental science -- is poised to find technological application. This basic science has been forged by the team into a practical labscale process for the isolation of gold from scrap alloys.
###
The Defense Threat Reduction Agency and the National Science Foundation supported the research.
The paper is titled "Selective isolation of gold facilitated by second-sphere coordination with ?-cyclodextrin." In addition to Stoddart and Liu, the other authors of the paper are Marco Frasconi, Juying Lei, Zachary J. Brown, Zhixue Zhu, Dennis Cao, Julien Iehl, Guoliang Liu, Albert C. Fahrenbach, Omar K. Farha, Joseph T. Hupp and Chad A. Mirkin, all from Northwestern, and Youssry Y. Botros of Intel Labs.
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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.
Making gold green: New non-toxic method for mining goldPublic release date: 14-May-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Megan Fellman fellman@northwestern.edu 847-491-3115 Northwestern University
Scientists launch 'nano gold rush' by replacing cyanide with cornstarch
Northwestern University scientists have struck gold in the laboratory. They have discovered an inexpensive and environmentally benign method that uses simple cornstarch -- instead of cyanide -- to isolate gold from raw materials in a selective manner.
This green method extracts gold from crude sources and leaves behind other metals that are often found mixed together with the crude gold. The new process also can be used to extract gold from consumer electronic waste.
Current methods for gold recovery involve the use of highly poisonous cyanides, often leading to contamination of the environment. Nearly all gold-mining companies use this toxic gold leaching process to sequester the precious metal.
"The elimination of cyanide from the gold industry is of the utmost importance environmentally," said Sir Fraser Stoddart, the Board of Trustees Professor of Chemistry in the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences. "We have replaced nasty reagents with a cheap, biologically friendly material derived from starch."
Sir Fraser's team discovered the process by accident, using simple test tube chemistry. A series of rigorous follow-up investigations provided evidence for the competitive strength of the new procedure.
The findings will be published May 14 in the online journal Nature Communications.
Zhichang Liu, a postdoctoral fellow in Stoddart's lab and first author of the paper, took two test tubes containing aqueous solutions -- one of the starch-derived alpha-cyclodextrin, the other of a dissolved gold (Au) salt (called aurate) -- and mixed them together in a beaker at room temperature.
Liu was trying to make an extended, three-dimensional cubic structure, which could be used to store gases and small molecules. Unexpectedly, he obtained needles, which formed rapidly upon mixing the two solutions.
"Initially, I was disappointed when my experiment didn't produce cubes, but when I saw the needles, I got excited," Liu said. "I wanted to learn more about the composition of these needles."
"Nature decided otherwise," said Stoddart, a senior author of the paper. "The needles, composed of straw-like bundles of supramolecular wires, emerged from the mixed solutions in less than a minute."
After discovering the needles, Liu screened six different complexes -- cyclodextrins composed of rings of six (alpha), seven (beta) and eight (gamma) glucose units, each combined with aqueous solutions of potassium tetrabromoaurate (KAuBr4) or potassium tetrachloroaurate (KAuCl4).
He found that it was alpha-cyclodextrin, a cyclic starch fragment composed of six glucose units, that isolates gold best of all.
"Alpha-cyclodextrin is the gold medal winner," Stoddart said. "Zhichang stumbled on a piece of magic for isolating gold from anything in a green way."
Alkali metal salt waste from this new method is relatively environmentally benign, Stoddart said, while waste from conventional methods includes toxic cyanide salts and gases. The Northwestern procedure is also more efficient than current commercial processes.
The supramolecular nanowires, each 1.3 nanometers in diameter, assemble spontaneously in a straw-like manner. In each wire, the gold ion is held together in the middle of four bromine atoms, while the potassium ion is surrounded by six water molecules; these ions are sandwiched in an alternating fashion by alpha-cyclodextrin rings. Around 4,000 wires are bundled parallel to each other and form individual needles that are visible under an electron microscope.
"There is a lot of chemistry packed into these nanowires," Stoddart said. "The elegance of the composition of single nanowires was revealed by atomic force microscopy, which throws light on the stacking of the individual donut-shaped alpha-cyclodextrin rings."
The atomic detail of the single supramolecular wires and their relative disposition within the needles was uncovered by single crystal X-ray crystallography.
The research -- a prime example of serendipity at work, brought to fruition by contemporary fundamental science -- is poised to find technological application. This basic science has been forged by the team into a practical labscale process for the isolation of gold from scrap alloys.
###
The Defense Threat Reduction Agency and the National Science Foundation supported the research.
The paper is titled "Selective isolation of gold facilitated by second-sphere coordination with ?-cyclodextrin." In addition to Stoddart and Liu, the other authors of the paper are Marco Frasconi, Juying Lei, Zachary J. Brown, Zhixue Zhu, Dennis Cao, Julien Iehl, Guoliang Liu, Albert C. Fahrenbach, Omar K. Farha, Joseph T. Hupp and Chad A. Mirkin, all from Northwestern, and Youssry Y. Botros of Intel Labs.
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?
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.
We are now outrageously close to the premiere of a whole new season of "Arrested Development" on Netflix. As you prepare to binge watch all 15 episodes in one sitting, more sneak peeks have popped up online as the stars promote the new episodes. Portia De Rossi stopped by Jimmy Fallon last night to talk [...]
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Public release date: 14-May-2013
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