A hangover pill? Tests on drunk mice show promise – CWEB.com

Yunfeng Lu, University of California, Los Angeles

“Civilization begins with distillation,” said William Faulkner, a writer and drinker. Although our thirst for alcohol dates back to the Stone Age, nobody has figured out a good way to deal with the ensuing hangover after getting drunk.

As a chemical engineering professor and wine enthusiast, I felt I needed to find a solution. As frivolous as this project may sound, it has serious implications. Between 8 and 10 percent of emergency room visits in America are due to acute alcohol poisoning. Alcohol is the leading risk factor for premature deaths and disability among people aged 15-49 and its abuse leads to serious health problems, including cardiovascular and liver cancer. Despite these sobering facts, current treatments for alcohol overdose largely rely on the body’s own enzymes to break down this drug.

I decided to design an antidote that could help people enjoy wine or cocktails or beer without a hangover, and at the same time create a lifesaving therapy to treat intoxication and overdose victims in the ER. I chose to create capsules filled with natural enzymes usually found in liver cells to help the body process the alcohol faster.

Together with professor Cheng Ji, an expert in liver diseases from Keck School of Medicine at the University of Southern California, and my graduate student Duo Xu, we developed an antidote and tested it in mice.

Inspired by the body’s approach for breaking down alcohol, we chose three natural enzymes that convert alcohol into harmless molecules that are then excreted. That might sound simple, because these enzymes were not new, but the tricky part was to figure out a safe, effective way to deliver them to the liver.

To protect the enzymes, we wrapped each of them in a shell, using a material the U.S. Food and Drug Administration had already approved for pills. We then injected these nanocapsules into the veins of drunk mice where they hurtled through the circulatory system, eventually arriving in the liver where they entered the cells and served as mini—reactors to digest alcohol.

We showed that in inebriated mice (which fall asleep much faster than drunk humans), the treatment decreased the blood alcohol level by 45 percent in just four hours compared to mice that didn’t receive any. Meanwhile, the blood concentration of acetaldehyde — a highly toxic compound that is carcinogenic, causes headaches and vomiting, makes people blush after drinking, and is produced during the normal alcohol metabolism — remained extremely low. The animals given the drug woke from their alcohol-induced slumber faster than their untreated counterparts — something all college students would appreciate.

The ability to efficiently break down alcohol quickly should help patients wake up earlier and prevent alcohol poisoning. It should also protect their liver from alcohol—associated stress and damage.

We are currently completing tests to ensure that our nanocapsules are safe and don’t trigger unexpected or dangerous side effects. If our treatments prove effective in animals, we could begin human clinical trials in as early as one year.

This sort of antidote won’t stop people from going too far when consuming alcohol, but it could help them recover quicker. In the meantime, we plan on drinking responsibly, and hope that you do too.

Yunfeng Lu, Professor Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, University of California, Los Angeles

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

How the US withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal will effect Iran’s economy – CWEB.com

Negar Habibi, King’s College London

Donald Trump’s decision to unilaterally pull the US out of the Iran nuclear deal doesn’t just have important political and security implications. Because sanctions are at the heart of the deal, it will also have a significant economic impact. Just how big this is depends on the response of the European signatories to the deal — the UK, France and Germany.

The Iran deal did not have as big an effect on Iran’s economy as it might have had. It was reached in November 2015, shortly before the start of the US electoral season and almost all the US presidential candidates took a harder line on Iran than Barack Obama. So, although the deal removed major legal barriers to trade with Iran, many businesses were waiting for the outcome of the US elections before approaching the Iranian market.

Some European businesses entered Iran following the nuclear deal, but the most disruptive banking restrictions effectively remained in place, as major European banks refused to work with Iran, especially once Donald Trump was elected. As a result Iran did not receive the full economic benefits it expected from the deal, even before Trump’s decision to withdraw.

Despite this, the deal did have some major effects on Iran’s economy. It resulted in a doubling of Iran’s oil exports, helped stabilise the foreign exchange market, created jobs and — most importantly — optimism to the overall trend of the economy.

The US withdrawal will weaken all the deal’s achievements but will not necessarily do away with them entirely. That depends on the rest of the world’s response.

If Europe ignores the US …

Europe now has a major role in determining the fate of the Iran deal. It will be very difficult to maintain the deal without the US as many of the unilateral US sanctions, are secondary sanctions that penalise non-American firms for trading with Iran. From a purely economic point of view, Europe might not find it worthwhile to confront the US over Iran, as it will be costly to oppose the US secondary sanctions.

But Europe has a lot to lose if the deal collapses from a security and political point of view. Trump’s move has been a humiliating rejection of the advice of his European counterparts to keep it. Its collapse and the potential for tensions to escalate poses a major security threat to the Middle East, which European leaders want to avoid. So, despite the economic costs, Europe might still decide to oppose the US, as Trump is effectively gambling Europe’s security to please his voters.

If Europe, along with China and Russia, decides to ignore the US, a non-dollar method of payment will be needed to secure Iranian oil transactions and protect European firms doing business with Iran from the US sanctions. In that case Iran will get access to its oil money. Plus, major industries like petrochemicals and cars, whose main trading partners are in Asia and to a lesser extent Europe, will continue to benefit.

As for the private sector, many businesses might still decide not to enter Iran, as it remains a high-risk environment. But at least those who have already entered the country will not be forced to leave. It will also create some confidence in the economy, which will help the Iranian private sector and small and medium firms.

Worst case scenario …

If Europe fails to find a way to avoid the US secondary sanctions, things will return to the situation between 2010-15. The significant loss of oil revenues will result in further devaluation of Iran’s currency, the rial, which has already lost its value against dollar by almost three times due to the recent uncertainties around the deal.

At the wider economic level this bring with it higher inflation and lower growth. For Iranian companies it will increase their operating costs, particularly those that rely on foreign markets for either their inputs or exports.

The sense of urgency in the sanctions environment will justify higher government intervention in the economy, which could lead to price and capital controls. The Iranian government has already put a tight capital control in place in anticipation of reduced oil revenues.

Government controls along with blockage of formal routes of financial transactions will create an incentive for smuggling and black markets. The main beneficiaries of these are the people and institutions involved in money laundering and other forms of illegal activities — not only inside Iran but also in its neighbouring countries.

In the long run, the Iranian economy under sanctions will become more reliant on the government and public sector. Sanctions weaken the private sector and small and medium firms who cannot bear the high costs of operating under them. This means a shrinking of the middle class, which will only increase support for populist politicians that are more confrontational towards the West.

Negar Habibi, PhD Candidate in Political Economy, King’s College London

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Smart Tips to Protect Your Identity in Search Engines – CWEB.com

By: Leslie Cohen

Managing Editor/CWEB

The web is an open source model for your personal information to get into the wrong hands.

“It’s time to get educated about identity theft. You need to be a little wiser, quite a bit smarter, and there’s nothing wrong with being skeptical. We live in a time when if you make it easy for someone to steal from you, someone will.” Frank Abagnale

Identity theft, stalkers, lawyers, collection agencies, nosy co-workers, potential employers doing background checks, data hackers, creepy guys on dating sites, and stalkers are sniffing for information to abuse your personal information.

How to protect your personal information from public view.

Make sure to adjust your privacy options when signing up for social networking sites. It is recommended to use an alias name as a screen name, and never place your date of birth, real zip code, real phone number, and address in any website that involves social networking or dating.

Even if you have no plans to use a social venue, it’s a preventative measure to register a profile with your real name if that name has not registered. The same holds true for businesses looking to protect their identity. This helps to protect duplicate information of your business name for someone to pose as you.    If you own the intellectual property, domains, and trademarks, register all these names on every social site. It’s valuable online real estate. A little more on this below.

For example, Instagram is not for everyone or every business. Think of the venue or any other social networking platform as “free valuable real estate” for your personal use or business promotional use.

Is this Fail proof?   Of course not!    Advanced data stealers have a more sophisticated way around this.

Not all social networking sites work this way, there are hundreds of people with the same name allowed, such as on Facebook or LinkedIn.

If you’re lucky enough to get emails with all the free email sites with your full name, you can do that too- but it  guarantees no cloak of protection to the sophisticated perpetrator, using spam bots utilizing email addresses for identity fraud. It is best to use different emails for your social accounts and bank accounts. Banks and other websites have a two-step protocol, where you can get a text confirmation code to log on in addition to your password.

Protecting a Valuable Asset- Your Intellectual Property

If you are a domain holder, it is advised to register your domain as a private registration. Private domain registration will prevent email spamming, as your email, address and points of contact remain under the privacy cloak of private registration.

If you are a trademark holder, or holder of any pending registrations and have not appointed an attorney with an address on the record, set up a corporation in a state such as Delaware where owner information is not publically listed online. You can use a mailing address at a UPS store, or a U.S. Post Office box valid to receive correspondence. Everything listed in registering a trademark or patent is public information, even in the pre-registration application stage.

It’s been publicized that Twitter bots are stealing social media identities for profit.

The IFTF is a research company that makes sense of merging trends that are forces in changing the world. The institute purchased thousands of retweets for a research test for a monetary fraction and the bots retweeted up to 10,000 times for the holder of their account within a few days.

Twitter says in their policies it works to prevent any  manipulation. In today’s plethora of fake news and scammers, web users must err on the side of caution and approach certain things with a subjective view. The debacle of Cambridge Analytica and Facebook should not be surprising. As of this writing- Cambridge Analytica is shutting down.

Was this a big deal? Yes- personal information was leaked out all over the web to app developers.

Facebook will now tell users which websites are tracking them on the web and give users the option to delete their personal data. The program called “Clear History”  will let you opt out; your data will be cleared and so will all the cookies stored. When your data kept intact, cookies can make your user experience on Facebook a better one, as it already has your preference stored.

The only people that should have personal information about you should be your family, your banks, your medical doctor, and the IRS. Make sure you opt out of any 3rd party affiliates at your bank soliciting for home loans, credit cards, and new business. If you need these services, contact the banks directly. Don’t allow 3rd party affiliates to have this information from you from your banks. Your information is most likely to be resold over and over again.

Banks are now required by law to let you opt out of 3rd party advertisers. Contact each of your banks for the procedures to keep your information private and not offered to affiliates.

Your profiles on Facebook, Instagram, My Space, LinkedIn, and Classmates.com, and genealogy websites should be in private mode so only your online friends can view your information. LinkedIn and Facebook allow you to keep parts of your profile private and some public. While these are still are not fail-safe solutions, as any data can be compromised. It is best to choose the most private options available to you.

 What is Seeding Your Information?

There is a real truth on how data from your social networks get into the hands of data mining companies. Trackers can obtain your private information with seeding, which means where you are marketed to a link that offers a prize with a contest. You fill out the online survey request and your data is targeted along with your other friend’s data on your friend’s list, and then they begin to receive the same survey. Instead of using typical browser date, canvas fingerprinting utilizes the HTML 5 element to identify you instead of traditional cookies.

Data is usually collected by companies like Intellidyn, Tower Data, formerly Rapleaf, and Exelate. Exelate, a Nielson company. The company tracks your web searching and does have an online opt-out page to prevent your web searching from being analyzed.    They don’t ask for information from you when you opt-out, it is quite obvious they can see your IP and cookies automatically when opting out. Click the link to opt out of Exelate and then scroll down. You will see the data that they know about you, such as household income, age, and demographics.

Additionally, you check the other sites for their options such as NetworkAdvertising.org and AboutAds.info. You can contact these companies to help manage your privacy online. They work with the clearing houses and offer information on how to opt out of member ad networks.    You may search the term “opt-out of lists” in Google Chrome and Mozilla links to further the opt-out process with other types of reporting agencies.

Solutions To Keep You Safer.

Search your name and see if it appears on a website like Spokeo.com, My Life.com, Intellius.com, People Search.com, Emailfinder .com. Archives.com and a host of other sites. You will need to contact these companies directly and tell them that you want your information removed.

Instead of paying some of these websites to remove your information such as Reputation.com, you can also ask Google to remove it. Maybe you see a dead link for your business you want to be removed.

Run a search on Google not using the “Safe Search” filter and see if any derogatory information comes up on you before contacting Google. In addition, sign up for a Google account for the Google webmaster tool. The webmaster tools help webmasters control information or images that appear in the Google search.

If you find a page in Google search results that lists your personal info such as a credit card or social security number, contact Google to submit the request to contact the websites hosting company to request that the page, and have it taken down immediately.

To start the process to remove the information from its search results, email removals@google.com to eliminate your personal information from the Google index and cached pages. For that sensitive information, also contact law enforcement as that publically endorsed information is a federal crime.

If you see your phone number displayed in Google Search, fill out this form here for a removal request at .https://www.google.com/help/pbremoval.html

Google states this on the page “To remove your residential listing information from the Google phonebook, please fill out the form below, entering all information exactly as it appears in your phonebook entry. Doing so will mean your residential listing does not appear in Google for any phonebook search, even searches conducted on your name instead of your phone number. This removal is permanent, and   it’s not possible to add your phone number again in the future.” Be cautious about this if you are a business,  listed in Google.   A business phone will enhance your visibility and exposure online.

How To Remove A Listing From Public Phone Search Sites

Removing a listing from Google will not remove personal information from other pages on the web or from other reverse phone listing lookup services, such as SpyDialer.com, Anywho, White Pages.com Reverse Phone Directory, Phonenumber.com, and Smartpages.com. These companies have listing removal links to request the removal of information. By law, these services must comply with the law. Proving ownership of the data is required.

Set up a Google Alert for  your name and phone numbers. When this information appears and gets indexed an email alert will be sent to see where the link is. Step Rep is another monitoring system https://www.steprep.com/. It allows checking up how business competitors stack up against your business in online searches.

There is a browser extension that can control ads and tracking technologies to speed up page loads, eliminate clutter, and protect surfing data. Downloading Ghostery at www.ghostery.com, which is a browser extension that lets users see who is tracking them when  visiting websites. It allows the ability to block scripts from untrusted companies, delete local shared objects, and the ability to block images. PrivacyChoice.org lists tracking data for over 250 sites and helps people opt out.

Reputation.com claims to remove and or bury data in the Google search engine and others for a monthly fee. The company claims will spend time adding back in positive data about you in the form of press releases and article mentions, and how to raise reputation scores higher than normal, so the other data gets buried. Only a legal action with the search engine can remove information that has caused defamation or libel against that has caused relevant harm. Contact an attorney that can execute a cease and desist request to the perpetrator.

Yahoo and Lycos’s People Search is powered by Acxiom. To remove basic search info from Yahoo, visit Yahoo Privacy Policy and other search engines, and view the privacy policy links.

Be sure to check the cell phone carriers and landline carriers. Verizon will no longer allow customers cell phone information to be purchased from companies that use your phone numbers in any public databases. The cellphone carriers were selling data to sites such as Intellius and others that list phone number searches and reverse lookups.

Make sure to understand the  ”Terms of Use”, because without reading or understanding them, like those apps on your cell phone you sign up for, they can be harvesting your personal information and selling it. The credit bureaus give away your information, which is how the credit card companies market to you, when you get those credit card offers in the mail. Don’t look away from those pesky telemarketers. You can register at https://donotcall.gov/ to keep your phone number on the “Do Not Call” List for telemarketers.

Can Property Records be Removed?

If you own property in your name it is likely to be searched and found on Zillow.com, the state’s local assessors’ office, county recorder’s office, and property record search websites to name a few. Property records are not private. Type in the name of a property owner and their address, city, and state and the top listings are companies that list real estate property records.

Can You Remove Information From State and City Records?

It’s almost impossible to remove information on deed searches, and conveyances in the chain of title. Deeds filed at the county clerk’s office are public record, as are taxes, and liens etc.    It is best to form an LLC /Corporation that will own the real estate.

Open Government Guide lists the open laws of each state.

Vpn’s Are They Worth It?

You can sign up for a VPN (Virtual Private Network) service which hides your actual I.P address, but they may be just a glorified proxy.    VPN marketers can use other metrics to identify you. That can be anything from a user-agent to a fingerprinting profile. A VPN cannot guarantee your anonymity. It has been said that VPN’s merely funnel the secure keystrokes through a proxy that can log them. Additionally, it may be safer to use the secure (https:) If you use TOR, the IP address you connect to changes about every 10 minutes, and often more frequently than that. This makes it much harder for websites to create any sort of consistent profile of Tor users. The Tor Project website delves deeper into that process.

In Final

Search yourself on the web with reverse phone lookup websites. Check these sites periodically to see how all your telephone numbers, name and addresses appear on the internet.

Make sure to monitor your credit report every 30 days. Sign up for a monitoring service that alerts to any changes in your report. There are many services out there such as Lifelock.com, Equifax-ID, Patrol, and ID Watch Dog to name a few. Start with a free credit report at Equifax or Trans Union. By law, you can get a free one every year.

Set up a Google Alert with your name and phone numbers. If your name appears and gets indexed, you will receive an email alert to see the link. Furthermore, make sure to monitor how your business competitors stack up against you in online searches, monitor reviews and ratings, and listings of your business with a   reputation monitoring program Network Solutions product – Reputation Alert

Your shampoo, hair spray and skin lotion may be polluting the air – CWEB.com

Matthew Coggon, University of Colorado

Millions of Americans apply personal care products every morning before heading to work or school. But these products don’t stick to our bodies permanently. Over the course of the day, compounds in deodorants, lotions, hair gels and perfumes evaporate from our skin and eventually make their way outdoors. Now there’s new evidence to suggest that these products are major sources of air pollution in urban areas.

For decades, motor vehicles were considered the primary source of air pollutants in major U.S. cities. Vehicle exhaust contains multiple pollutants that worsen air quality, including nitrogen oxides, particulate matter and volatile organic compounds (VOCs) — a group of reactive gases that contribute to smog formation.

Thanks to advances in catalytic converters and improvements in fuel economy, combined emissions of common pollutants from cars have decreased by 65 percent since the 1970s. Air pollution is still a problem in urban areas like Los Angeles, but only a fraction of it can be attributed to vehicles. Today, scientists are finding that other non-combustion sources — including common household products — are also major contributors.

A unique fingerprint

In a recent study with U.S. and Canadian colleagues, our lab found that these sources can include personal care products. We analyzed urban air in two cities: Boulder, Colorado, and Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

In Boulder, our lab had recently invested in new instrumentation, which we wanted to use to measure wood stove emissions during winter months. For five weeks we sampled air from the roof of the NOAA David Skaggs Research Center in hope of measuring air parcels contaminated with smoke from residential wood stoves. Surprisingly, we noticed a signal that stood out unexpectedly from all the other data. This compound, which we identified as decamethylcyclopentasiloxane (or D5 siloxane), contains silicon, which uniquely differs from the organic compounds we normally detect.

By reviewing scientific literature, we learned that pure D5 siloxane is produced mainly as an additive for deodorants and hair care products. On average, people use products that contain a total of about 100-200 milligrams of D5 every day — roughly the weight of half an aspirin tablet. Some fraction of these products end up going down the drain when we shower, but the majority of what remains on our bodies ends up in the atmosphere. D5 can also be found in many other places, including soil, oceans and the tissues of fish and human beings

Many labs have studied the environmental fate of D5, but from our perspective it is particularly useful because it acts like a fingerprint. If we detect D5 in the atmosphere, we know that the air mass we measured was influenced by emissions from personal care products. By comparing the amount of D5 in the atmosphere to other fingerprint markers, such as compounds present in vehicle exhaust, we can estimate how important personal care products are as an emissions source relative to better-understood sources.

Emissions spike during morning rush hour

In Boulder and Toronto, we found that D5 was present in urban air at mass concentrations comparable to those of benzene, a chemical that is a marker for vehicle exhaust. (Benzene is a known carcinogen and is also found in industrial emissions and cigarette smoke.)

D5 concentrations were highest in the morning — the time when most people shower, apply personal care products and then leave the house to commute to work. We also observed a peak in benzene emissions in the morning, when people drive to work. During morning rush hour, we found that emissions of D5 and benzene were almost equivalent.

In other words, at this time of day, people emitted a plume of organic compounds that was comparable in mass to the plume of organic compounds emitted from their vehicles. Researchers still have a lot to learn about how these chemicals react in the atmosphere to form smog, so the air quality implications of these morning emissions remain unclear.

Benzene emissions remained high throughout the day as people drove around the city, but D5 emissions eventually tapered off as personal care products evaporated from users’ skin. We estimate that, on average, the entire population of the city of Boulder emits 3 to 5 kilograms (6 to 11 pounds) of D5 per day, and that their cars emit about 15 kilograms of benzene in vehicle exhaust.

VOC emissions from your medicine cabinet

While these numbers may seem surprisingly high, our findings support recent modeling work conducted by Brian McDonald, a co-author of this study, which showed that personal care product VOC emissions in Los Angeles now rival VOC emissions from gasoline and diesel exhaust. Taken together, these two studies demonstrate that our urban air is remarkably different from what it was decades ago. Cars today emit fewer smog-inducing organic compounds, while other sources are now becoming important contributors to air pollution.

D5 is only one component of personal care product emissions, and many other compounds could be emitted with it. To fully assess how seriously these emissions may affect the environment and human health, researchers have to answer many more questions. What other compounds enter the atmosphere after we apply personal care products? Once in the atmosphere, what happens to them? Are they capable of contributing to smog formation? Our lab and others around the country are considering these questions now in hopes of improving our understanding of urban air pollution.

Matthew Coggon, Research scientist, University of Colorado

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9TXBP1t2rUc&w=560&h=315]

This article was originally published on The Conversation.

How to Wrestle Your Data From Data Brokers, Silicon Valley and Cambridge Analytica – CWEB.com

It can be done but it’s not easy.

by  Jeremy B. Merrill

April 30, 5 a.m. EDT

Cambridge Analytica thinks that I’m a “Very Unlikely Republican.” Another political data firm, ALC Digital, has concluded I’m a “Socially Conservative,” Republican, “Boomer Voter.” In fact, I’m a 27-year-old millennial with no set party allegiance.

For all the fanfare, the burgeoning field of mining our personal data remains an inexact art.

One thing is certain: My personal data, and likely yours, is in more hands than ever. Tech firms, data brokers and political consultants build profiles of what they know – or think they can reasonably guess – about your purchasing habits, personality, hobbies and even what political issues you care about.

You can find out what those companies know about you but be prepared to be stubborn. Very stubborn. To demonstrate how this works, we’ve chosen a couple of representative companies from three major categories: data brokers, big tech firms and political data consultants.

Few of them make it easy. Some will show you on their websites, others will make you ask for your digital profile via the U.S. mail. And then there’s Cambridge Analytica, the controversial Trump campaign vendor that has come under intense fire in light of a  report  in the British newspaper The Observer and in The New York Times that the company used improperly obtained data from Facebook to help build voter profiles.

To find out what the chaps at the British data firm have on you, you’re going to need both stamps and a “cheque.”

Once you see your data, you’ll have a much better understanding of how this shadowy corner of the new economy works. You’ll see what seemingly personal information they know about you … and you’ll probably have some hypotheses about where this data is coming from. You’ll also probably see some predictions about who you are that are hilariously wrong.

And if you do obtain your data from any of these companies, please let us know your thoughts at  politicaldata@propublica.org. We won’t share or publish what you say (unless you tell us that it’s OK).

Cambridge Analytica and Other Political Consultants

Making statistically informed guesses about Americans’ political beliefs and pet issues is a common business these days, with dozens of firms selling data to candidates and issue groups about the purported leanings of individual American voters.

Few of these firms have to give your data. But Cambridge Analytica is required to do so by an obscure European rule.

Cambridge Analytica:

Around the time of the 2016 election, Paul-Olivier Dehaye, a Belgian mathematician and founder of a website that helps people exercise their data protection rights called  PersonalData.IO,  approached me with an idea for a story. He flagged some of Cambridge Analytica’s claims about the power of its “psychographic” targeting capabilities and suggested that I demand my data from them.

So I sent off a request, following Dehaye’s coaching, and citing the UK Data Protection Act 1998, the British implementation of a little-known European Union data-protection law that grants individuals (even Americans) the rights to see the data Europeans companies compile about individuals.

It worked. I got back a spreadsheet of data about me. But it took months, cost ten pounds – and I had to give them a photo ID and two utility bills. Presumably they didn’t want my personal data falling into the wrong hands.

How You Can Request Your Data From Cambridge Analytica:

1. Visit Cambridge Analytica’s website here and  fill out this web form.
2. After you submit the form, the page will immediately request that you email to  data.compliance@cambridgeanalytica.org  a photo ID and two copies of your utility bills or bank statements, to prove your identity. This page will also include the company’s bank account details.
3. Find a way to send them 10 GBP. You can try wiring this from your bank, though it may cost you an additional $25 or so – or ask a friend in the UK to go to their bank and get a cashier’s check. Your American bank probably won’t let you write a GBP-denominated check. Two services I tried, Xoom and TransferWise, weren’t able to do it.
4. Eventually, Cambridge Analytica will email you a small Excel spreadsheet of information and a letter. You might have to wait a few weeks. Celeste LeCompte, ProPublica’s vice president of business development, requested her data on March 27 and still hasn’t received it.

Because the company is based in the United Kingdom, it had no choice but to fulfill my request. In recent weeks, the firm has come under intense fire after The New York Times and the British paper The Observer disclosed that it had used improperly obtained data from Facebook to build profiles of American voters. Facebook told me that data about me was likely transmitted to Cambridge Analytica because a person with whom I am “friends” on the social network had taken the now-infamous “This Is Your Digital Life” quiz. For what it’s worth, my data shows no sign of anything derived from Facebook.

What You Might Get Back From Cambridge Analytica:

Cambridge Analytica had generated 13 data points about my views: 10 political issues, ranked by importance; two guesses at my partisan leanings (one blank); and a guess at whether I would turn out in the 2016 general election.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9TXBP1t2rUc&w=560&h=315]

They told me that the lower the rank, the higher the predicted importance of the issue to me.

Alongside that data labeled “models” were two other types of data that are run-of-the-mill and widely used by political consultants. One sheet of “core data” – that is, personal info, sliced and diced a few different ways, perhaps to be used more easily as parameters for a statistical model. It included my address, my electoral district, the census tract I live in and my date of birth.

The spreadsheet included a few rows of “election returns” – previous elections in New York State in which I had voted. (Intriguingly, Cambridge Analytica missed that I had voted in 2015’s snoozefest of a vote-for-five-of-these-five judicial election. It also didn’t know about elections in which I had voted in North Carolina, where I lived before I lived in New York.)

ALC Digital

ALC Digital is another data broker, which says that its info is “audiences are built from multi-sourced, verified information about an individual.” Their data is distributed via Oracle Data Cloud, a service that lets advertisers target specific audience of people – like, perhaps, people who are Boomer Voters and also Republicans.

The firm  brags in an Oracle document posted online  about how hard it is to avoid their data collection efforts, saying, “It has no cookies to erase and can’t be ‘cleared.’ ALC Real World Data is rooted in reality, and doesn’t rely on inferences or faulty models.”

How You Can Request Your Data From ALC Digital:

Here’s how to find the predictions about your political beliefs data in Oracle Data Cloud:

1. Visit  https://www.bluekai.com/registry/. If you use an ad blocker, there may not be much to see here.
2. Click on the Partner Segments tab.
3. Scroll on through until you find ALC Digital.

You may have to scroll for a while before you find it.

And not everyone appears to have data from ALC Digital, so don’t be shocked if you can’t find it. If you don’t, there may be other fascinating companies with data about who you are in your Oracle file.

What You Might Get Back From ALC Digital:

When I downloaded the data last year, it said I was “Socially Conservative,” “Boomer Voter” – as well as a female voter and a tax reform supporter.

Recently, when I checked my data, those categories had disappeared entirely from my data. I had nothing from ALC Digital.

ALC Digital is not required to release this data. It is disclosed via the Oracle Data Cloud. Fran Green, the company’s president, said that Aristotle, a longtime political data company, “provides us with consumer data that populates these audiences.” She also said that “we do not claim to know people’s ‘beliefs.’”

Big Tech

Big tech firms like Google and Facebook tend to make their money by selling ads, so they build extensive profiles of their users’ interests and activities. They also depend on their users’ goodwill to keep us voluntarily giving them our locations, our browsing histories and plain ol’ lists of our friends and interests. (So far, these popular companies have not faced much regulation.) All three make it easy to download the data that they keep on you.

Firms like Google and Facebook firms don’t sell your data – because it’s their competitive advantage.  Google’s privacy page  screams in 72 point type: “We do not sell your personal information to anyone.” As websites that we visit frequently, they sell  access  to our attention, so companies that want to reach you in particular can do so with these companies’ sites or other sites that feature their ads.

Facebook

How You Can Request Your Data From Facebook:

You of course have to have a Facebook account and be logged in:

1. Visit  https://www.facebook.com/settings  on your computer.
2. Click the “Download a copy of your Facebook data” link.
3. On the next page, click “Start My Archive.”
4. Enter your password, then click “Start My Archive” again.
5. You’ll get an email immediately, and another one saying “Your Facebook download is ready” when your data is ready to be downloaded. You’ll get a notification on Facebook, too. Mine took just a few minutes.
6. Once you get that email, click the link, then click Download Archive. Then reenter your password, which will start a zip file downloading..
7. Unzip the folder; depending on your computer’s operating system, this might be called uncompressing or “expanding.” You’ll get a folder called something like “facebook-jeremybmerrill,” but, of course, with your username instead of mine.
8. Open the folder and double-click “index.htm” to open it in your web browser.

What You Might Get Back From Facebook

Facebook designed its archive to first show you your profile information. That’s all information you typed into Facebook and that you probably intended to be shared with your friends. It’s no surprise that Facebook knows what city I live in or what my AIM screen name was – I told Facebook those things so that my friends would know.

But it’s a bit of a surprise that they decided to feature a list of my ex-girlfriends – what they blandly termed “Previous Relationships” – so prominently.

As you dig deeper in your archive, you’ll find more information that you gave Facebook, but that you might not have expected the social network to keep hold of for years: if you’re me, that’s the Nickelback concert I apparently RSVPed to, posts about switching high schools and instant messages from my freshman year in college.

But finally, you’ll find the creepier information: what Facebook knows about you that you  didn’t  tell it, on the “Ads” page. You’ll find “Ads Topics” that Facebook decided you were interested in, like Housing, ESPN or the town of Ellijay, Georgia. And, you’ll find a list of advertisers who have obtained your contact information and uploaded it to Facebook, as part of a so-called Custom Audience of specific people to whom they want to show their ads.

You’ll find more of that creepy information on  your Ads Preferences page. Despite Mark Zuckerberg telling Rep. Jerry McNerney, D-Calif., in a hearing earlier this month that “all of your information is included in your ‘download your information,’” my archive didn’t include that list of ad categories that can be used to target ads to me. (Some other types of information aren’t included in the download, like other people’s posts you’ve liked. Those are listed  here, along with where to find them – which, for most, is in your  Activity Log.)

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This area may include Facebook’s guesses about who you are, boiled down from some of your activities. Most Americans’ will have  a guess about their politics  – Facebook says I’m a “moderate” about US Politics – and some will have a guess about so-called  “multicultural affinity,”  which Facebook insists is not a guess about your ethnicity, but rather what sorts of content “you are interested in or will respond well to.” For instance, Facebook recently added that I have a “Multicultural Affinity: African American.” (I’m white – though, because Facebook’s definition of “multicultural affinity” is so strange, it’s hard to tell if this is an error on Facebook’s part.)

Facebook also doesn’t include your browsing history – the subject of back-and-forths between Mark Zuckerberg and several members of Congress – it says it keeps that just long enough to boil it down into those “Ad Topics.”

For people without Facebook accounts, Facebook says to email  datarequests@support.facebook.com  or  fill out an online form  to download what Facebook knows about you. One puzzle here is how Facebook gathers data on people whose identities it may not know. It may know that a person using a phone from Atlanta, Georgia, has accessed a Facebook site and that the same person was last week in Austin, Texas, and before that Cincinnati, but it may not know that that person is me. It’s in principle difficult for the company to give the data it collects about logged-out users if it doesn’t know exactly who they are.

Google

Like Facebook, Google will give you a zip archive of your data. Google’s can be much bigger, because you might have stored gigabytes of files in Google Drive or years of emails in Gmail.

But like Facebook, Google does not provide its guesses about your interests, which it uses to target ads. Those guesses are available elsewhere.

How You Can Request Your Data From Google:

1. Visit  https://takeout.google.com/settings/takeout/  to use Google’s cutely named Takeout service.
2. You’ll have to pick which data you want to download and examine. You should definitely select My Activity, Location History and Searches. You may not want to download gigabytes of emails, if you use Gmail, since that uses a lot of space and may take a while. (That’s also information you shouldn’t be surprised that Google keeps – you left it with Gmail so that you could use Google’s search expertise to hold on to your emails. )
3. Google will present you with a few options for how to get your archive. The defaults are fine.
4. Within a few hours, you should get an email with the subject “Your Google data archive is ready.” Click Download Archive and log in again. That should start the download of a file named something like “takeout-20180412T193535.zip.”
5. Unzip the folder; depending on your computer’s operating system, this might be called uncompressing or “expanding.”
6. You’ll get a folder called Takeout. Open the file inside it called “index.html” in your web browser to explore your archive.

What You Might Get Back From Google:

Once you open the index.html file, you’ll see icons for the data you chose in step 2. Try exploring “Ads” under “My Activity” – you’ll see a list of times you saw Google Ads, including on apps on your phone.

Google also includes your search history, under “Searches” – in my case, going back to 2013. Google knows what I had forgotten: I Googled a bunch of dinosaurs around Valentine’s Day that year … And it’s not just web searches: the Sound Search history reminded me that at some point, I used that service to identify Natalie Imbruglia’s song “Torn.”

Android phone users might want to check the “Android” folder: Google keeps a list of each app you’ve used on your phone.

Most of the data contained here are records of ways you’ve directly interacted with Google – and the company really does use the those to improve how their services work for me. I’m glad to see my searches auto-completed, for instance.

But the company also creates data about you: Visit the company’s  Ads Settings pageto see some of the “topics” Google guesses you’re interested in, and which it uses to personalize the ads you see. Those topics are fairly general – it knows I’m interested in “Politics” – but the company says it has more granular classifications that it doesn’t include on the list. Those more granular, hidden classifications are on various topics, from sports to vacations to politics, where Google does generate a guess whether some people are politically “left-leaning” or “right-leaning.”

Data Brokers

Here’s who really does sell your data. Data brokers like the credit reporting agency Experian and a firm named Epsilon.

These sometimes-shady firms are middlemen who buy your data from tracking firms, survey marketers and retailers, slice and dice the data into “segments,” then sell those on to advertisers.

Experian

Experian is best known as a credit reporting firm, but your credit cards aren’t all they keep track of. They told me that they “firmly believe people should be made aware of how their data is being used” – so if you print and mail them a form, they’ll tell you what data they have on you.

“Educated consumers,” they said, “are better equipped to be effective, successful participants in a world that increasingly relies on the exchange of information to efficiently deliver the products and services consumers demand.”

How You Can Request Your Data From Experian:

1. Visit Experian’s  Marketing Data Request site  and  print the Marketing Data Report Request form.
2. Print a copy of your ID and proof of address.
3. Mail it all to Experian at
   Experian Marketing Services
   PO Box 40
   Allen, TX 75013
4. Wait for them to mail you something back.

What You Might Get Back From Experian:

Expect to wait a while. I’ve been waiting almost a month.

They also come up with a guess about your political views that’s integrated with Facebook –  our Facebook Political Ad Collector project  has found that many political candidates  use Experian’s data to target their Facebook ads  to likely supporters.

You should hope to find a guess about your political views that’d be useful to those candidates – as well as categories derived from your purchasing data.

Experian told me they generate the data they have about you from a long list of sources, including public records and “historical catalog purchase information” – as well as calculating it from predictive models.

Epsilon

How You Can Request Your Data From Epsilon:

1. Visit Epsilon’s  Marketing Data Summary Request  form.
2. After entering your name and address, Epsilon will answer some of those identity-verification questions that quiz you about your old addresses and cars. If your identity can’t be verified with those, Epsilon will ask you to mail in a form.
3. Wait for Epsilon to mail you your data; it took about a week for me.

What You Might Get Back From Epsilon:

Epsilon has information on “demographics” and “lifestyle interests” – at the household level. It also includes a list of “household purchases.”

It also has data that political candidates use to target their Facebook ads, including Randy Bryce, a Wisconsin Democrat who’s seeking his party’s nomination to run for retiring Speaker Paul Ryan’s seat, and Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, D-Hawaii.

In my case, Epsilon knows I buy clothes, books and home office supplies, among other things – but isn’t any more specific. They didn’t tell me what political beliefs they believe I hold. The company didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Oracle

Oracle’s Data Cloud aggregates data about you from Oracle, but also so-called third party data from other companies.

How You Can Request Your Data From Oracle:

1. Visit  https://www.bluekai.com/registry/. If you use an ad blocker, there may not be much to see here.
2. Explore each tab, from “Basic Info” to “Hobbies & Interests” and “Partner Segments.”

Not fun scrolling through all those pages? I have 84 pages of four pieces of data each.

You can’t search. All the text is actually images of text. Oracle declined to say why it chose to make their site so hard to use.

What You Might Get Back From Oracle:

My Oracle profile includes nearly 1500 data points, covering all aspects of my life, from my age to my car to how old my children are to whether I buy eggs. These profiles can even say if you’re likely to dress your pet in a costume for Halloween. But many of them are off-base or contradictory.

Many companies in Oracle’s data, besides ALC Digital, offer guesses about my political views: Data from one company uploaded by AcquireWeb says that my political affiliations are as a Democrat and an Independent … but also that I’m a “Mild Republican.” Another company, an Oracle subsidiary called AddThis, says that I’m a “Liberal.” Cuebiq, which calls itself a “location intelligence” company, says I’m in a subset of “Democrats” called “Liberal Professions.”

If an advertiser wants to show an ad to Spring Break Enthusiasts, Oracle can enable that. I’m apparently a Spring Break Enthusiast. Do I buy eggs? I sure do. Data on Oracle’s site associated with AcquireWeb says I’m a cat owner …

But it also “knows” I’m a dog owner, which I’m not.

Al Gadbut, the CEO of AcquireWeb, explained that the guesses associated with his company weren’t based on my personal data, but rather the tendencies of people in my geographical area – hence the seemingly contradictory political guesses. He said his firm doesn’t generate the data, but rather uploaded it on behalf of other companies. Cuebiq’s guess was a “probabilistic inference” they drew from location data submitted to them by some app on my phone. Valentina Marastoni-Bieser, Cuebiq’s senior vice president of marketing, wouldn’t tell me which app it was, though.

Data for sale here includes a long list what TV shows I – supposedly – watch.

But it’s not all wrong. AddThis can tell that I’m “Young & Hip.”

Takeaways:

The above list is just a sampling of the firms that collect your data and try to draw conclusions about who you are – not just sites you visit like Facebook and controversial firms like Cambridge Analytica.

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You can make some guesses as to where this data comes from – especially the more granular consumer data from Oracle. For each data point, it’s worth considering: Who’d be in a position to sell a list of what TV shows I watch, or, at least, a list of what TV shows people demographically like me watch? Who’d be in a position to sell a list of what groceries I, or people similar to me in my area, buy? Some of those companies – companies who you’re likely paying, and for whom the internet adage that “if you’re not paying, you’re the product” doesn’t hold – are likely selling data about you without your knowledge. Other data points, like the location data used by Cuebiq, can come from any number of apps or websites, so it may be difficult to figure out exactly which one has passed it on.

Companies like Google and Facebook often say that they’ll let you “correct” the data that they hold on you – tacitly acknowledgingly that they sometimes get it wrong. But if receiving relevant ads is not important to you, they’ll let you opt-out entirely – or, presumably, “correct” your data to something false.

An upcoming European Union rule called the General Data Protection Regulation portends a dramatic change to how data is collected and used on the web – if only for Europeans. No such law seems likely to be passed in the U.S. in the near future.

The man responsible for making March Madness the moneymaking bonanza it is today – CWEB.com

Rick Eckstein, Villanova University

In a legendary “South Park” episode lampooning the NCAA, the character Eric Cartman asks a university president if he can purchase some of his “slaves” — er, “student-athletes” — who play men’s basketball.

“How do you get around not paying your slaves?” Cartman wonders.

The outraged university president kicks Cartman out of his office. But if the president were being honest, all he would have to do is utter one name: Walter Byers.

Byers served as the NCAA’s first executive director from 1951 to 1988. During this period, the NCAA evolved from an insignificant advocate of athletic integrity into an economic powerhouse.

One critical piece of this growth was the creation of a narrative about the amateur purity of college sports. Walter Byers, who made “student-athlete” part of the American lexicon, played a central role in this enterprise. The NCAA, meanwhile, would become increasingly reliant on March Madness to finance its operations.

Cashing in on March Madness

Contrary to popular belief, college football provides the NCAA with almost no revenue.

A landmark 1985 U.S. Supreme Court decision found that TV revenues for college sports would go to the various athletic conferences rather than to the NCAA. The NCAA still “regulates” college football. It just doesn’t get a piece of the pie.

The same is true for regular season and conference tournament college basketball games. Only March Madness makes money for the NCAA since it is run by the NCAA and schools are “invited” to play in it. Indeed, for many years schools often chose to play in the more prestigious National Invitation Tournament, which, since it was held in New York City, received much more of the media attention that colleges craved.

By the end of the 1960s, though, the NCAA tournament started to become more appealing to colleges than the National Invitation Tournament. Under Byers’ quiet direction, the NCAA invited a larger number of teams to its tournament and paid all of their expenses. This subsidy was made possible by the organization’s then-significant broadcasting revenue from college football (which would subsequently end in 1985). The National Invitation Tournament couldn’t compete with this business model and eventually faded to second-class status.

Just how important is March Madness to the NCAA’s current financial health?

The annual tournament generates roughly US$900 million per year, good for over 80 percent of the NCAA’s total annual revenue. The NCAA uses the bulk of its income to run the organization, give payments to conferences and subsidize nonrevenue sports championships. Even so, the NCAA accumulated a surplus in 2014 of $81 million. Tournament revenue is slated to reach $1.1 billion per year after 2025.

It wasn’t always that way. In the 1970s, the tournament itself probably cost more than it made, although there is only scant anecdotal data on this. In 1982, the tournament generated about $17 million per year. Thus, tournament revenues increased 5,200 percent over 35 years, significantly outpacing inflation over that same period.

Expanded competition for broadcasting rights, fueled by the birth of cable channels like ESPN, turned this once sleepy tournament into the NCAA’s organizational cash cow.

The ‘student-athlete’ is born

But this moneymaker might not have developed at all if Walter Byers hadn’t coined the term “student-athlete” in the mid-1950s.

The term emerged as the NCAA defended itself in a worker’s compensation claim by the widow of Ray Dennison, who had died in 1954 while playing football for Fort Lewis A&M in Colorado. His widow likened college football to a full-time job, and argued that his death should be covered by state labor laws.

Byers and the NCAA’s lawyers countered that Dennison was a “student-athlete” participating in an extracurricular activity that just happened to be more dangerous than, say, singing in the glee club. The courts agreed with the NCAA.

Since then, Byers’ “student-athlete” moniker has become the semantic centerpiece for the NCAA’s claim that college sports is inherently noncommercial. You’ll rarely hear anyone in the college sports industry not use the term “student-athlete” when referring to varsity players.

Regrets, he had a few

Whether or not there really is such a thing as a “student-athlete,” the idea behind the phrase has served the NCAA well for over 60 years.

It allows the NCAA to advertise college basketball as a fundamentally different product than professional basketball — and a better product at that. They can say that March Madness isn’t filled by professional athletes and team owners only interested in making a buck. Rather, the participants are student-athletes who simply love playing the game.

Throughout the tournament, the NCAA will regularly tout the fact that 97 percent of student-athletes won’t become professional athletes. Video vignettes air during commercial breaks and on jumbotrons reminding fans that these players ask questions in class and will one day put away their uniforms and sports equipment in favor of lab coats and briefcases.

But the student-athlete moniker isn’t just about selling a product. It’s about maximizing the revenue from these products. By claiming that college sports is educational rather than commercial, the NCAA can maintain its IRS 501(c)(3) tax-free status. If subjected to federal and state taxes, the $880 million of March Madness revenue could be reduced by 40 percent or more. (The NCAA also doesn’t pay property taxes on its palatial headquarters in Indianapolis.)

One of the great ironies in all this is that Walter Byers eventually learned to loathe the college sports behemoth he helped create.

In his 1997 autobiography, Byers lamented that modern college sports were no longer a student activity — that they had instead become a high-dollar commercial enterprise. He argued that athletes should have the same rights as coaches and be able to sell their skills to the highest bidder.

In short, he came to agree with Cartman: The term “student-athlete” is merely a euphemism used to ensure schools and the NCAA can maximize their profits.

Rick Eckstein, Professor of Sociology, Villanova University

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Apple Cuts Ties With Barclays Bank – CWEB.com

Leslie Cohen
Managing Editor.

Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) partnering with the investment bank Goldman Sachs to launch of a new joint venture credit card that will use Apple Pay branding. The card could be available in early 2019.

This partnership will terminate its partnership with Barclays. The Barclays card offered an Apple rewards program.   The new Goldman Sachs bank partnership will offer in-store loans for Apple customers purchasing iPhones and Apple products.

The use of digital wallets is increasing. 16 percent of global iPhone owners were reported to have activated Apple Pay.

Apple AAPL (NASDAQ) has been an outstanding stock. As of today 5/18-2018 it has reached a new high of 189.98+2.62 (+1.40%) As of 1:11PM EDT. Market open.

Glassdoor Sold for $1.2 billion- Could an IPO be in the works? – CWEB.com

Leslie Cohen

Managing Editor

Japanese HR Company Recruit has agreed to buy Glassdoor for $1.2 billion. With 59 million monthly members, Glassdoor will accelerate growth into international markets.   The deal with HR Company “Recruit” is expected to close in September 2018. Recruit also own the jobs employment website “Indeed.”

Glassdoor runs the second-largest job website in the U.S. Haitong International Japaninvest KK analyst Yushi Kawamoto mentions that Recruit has paid 7 times earnings, which was a sweet spot in the deal.

Two years ago, the company was valued at $860 million. Decisions will be made if the company will go public to raise more money. Could an IPO on the horizon for Glassdoor? Sutter Hill Ventures, Battery Ventures, and Benchmark were early investors in Glassdoor.

Job seekers look to reviews about the companies they are applying to gain feedback and insight on a company’s culture, salary and interview styles. Glassdoor allows people to stay anonymous when posting a review about their job experience at a company they work for or previously worked for. People can give reviews as to what management can do to improve from an employee’s point of view when they have worked at a company.

Are the figures correct in the salary data that is listed on a company’s profile?   The wage speculation can be quite wide for what employees are paid in particular departments. Of course, data reflecting CEO’s compensation is more accurate as that is public data if the company is publically traded.

The company Comparably takes things a step further allowing you visualize deep data about salaries and the work culture environment. The site has many tools to use for salary data and other tools to help you comprise data for your next salary negotiation. Comparably offers visitors to their site an Infographic user survey tool with a drop-down menu in a question and answer format. The breakdowns are divided into demographics of the participants who took the survey.

For example, the survey question, Q: How long did you have to wait before you heard a response to your last interview? The answer comes up with an easy to use Infographic that allows you to see the data for each gender. You can see the disparity between the Caucasian group, which received a reply from an interview of “Within a week at the most among all other ethnicities,” compared to African Americans who answered “4+ Weeks after an interview,” which were the least among all other ethnicities.

Comparably has a quick salary tool where you can punch in the job title, salaries, and zip code to see data for a specific job title in a specific industry. When you are in your salary negation phase of a job opportunity, the data is quite useful for seeking out salary data categorized by department.

Job seekers can anonymously rate their workplaces, discover company cultures that better fit their needs, and compare salaries and equity compensation. Employers can embrace the website comparing their own company culture, and industry benchmarks to other companies to help recruit top talent.

Jason Nazar, CEO & co-founder of Comparably, a new HR focused startup, and an active entrepreneur who started Docstoc which had over 50 million members. The company was sold to Intuit in 2013. Jason is currently serving as one of two Entrepreneurs in Residence for the City of Los Angeles, appointed by Mayor Garcetti. Jason was named one of the “Most Admired CEOs in Los Angeles” by the LA Business Journal

Chief executive and co-founder, Robert Hohman, will remain at the helm of Glassdoor.

Most successful entrepreneurs are older than you think – CWEB.com

Benjamin F. Jones, Northwestern University and J. Daniel Kim, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

The romanticized image of entrepreneurs is a picture of youth: a 20-something individual with disruptive ideas, boundless energy and a still-sharp mind. Silicon Valley has bet on this image for years.

But is this right?

Far from it, according to our recent research with Javier Miranda of the U.S. Census Bureau and Pierre Azoulay of MIT.

Our team analyzed the age of all business founders in the U.S. in recent years. We found that the average age of the most successful entrepreneurs is 45 — and that founders in their 20s are the least likely to build a top firm.

The myth of the young entrepreneur

The idea that the most successful new business ventures come from the young, even the very young, is widespread.

Younger people are often thought to be less beholden to current thinking and thus more naturally innovative and disruptive. Many observers (perhaps enviously) believe the young have more time and energy, with fewer family responsibilities like nightly dinner with the kids or financial demands like mortgages. Besides, as Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg said, “Young people are just smarter.”

Young founders also make for a dramatic story. The college dropout or young corporate drone shakes off conventional expectations to launch a new business with a ragtag team of fellow 20-somethings. After countless late nights, they emerge with the new killer app or consumer product that takes the market by storm, landing them on the cover of Inc., creating enormous personal wealth, and reminding stuffy executive types that hungry young upstarts can and will eat their lunch.

This stereotype has meaningful consequences. In Silicon Valley, for example, venture capitalists show a clear bias toward investing in younger founders, often leaving older founders out in the cold. The perceived link between youth and success is so prevalent that some tech workers reportedly seek plastic surgery to appear younger.

Prime time for entrepreneurship is middle age

But the image of the young entrepreneur didn’t hold when we looked at the data.

Past studies of high-growth entrepreneurship and age have yielded conflicting results, based in part on small and selected data sets that researchers studied.

To examine the question more definitively, we conducted an internal project at the U.S. Census Bureau. That enabled us to examine all businesses launched in the U.S. between 2007 and 2014, encompassing 2.7 million founders. We compared founder age to firm performance measures, including employment and sales growth, as well as the “exit” by acquisition or IPO.

Successful entrepreneurs are much more likely to be middle-aged, not young. For the top 0.1 percent of fastest growing new businesses in the U.S., the average age of the founder in the business’ first year was 45.

Similarly, middle-aged founders dominate successful exits. By our estimation, a 50-year-old founder is 1.8 times more likely than a 30-year-old founder to create one of the highest growth firms. Founders in their early 20s have the lowest likelihood of building a top-growth firm.

Why would entrepreneurs get better with age? It’s not clear, but we have a few theories. More seasoned entrepreneurs may draw on greater experience in management or deeper industry-specific knowledge. They may also have greater financial resources and more relevant social networks to leverage the founder’s business idea. For example, our study showed that prior work experience in the startup’s specific industry more than doubled the chance of an upper-tail growth success.

Even some of the most famous young founders tend to peak toward middle age. For example, Steve Jobs and Apple found their blockbuster innovation with the iPhone, released when Jobs was 52.

Change the narrative

By continuing to associate entrepreneurship with youth, investors are likely betting too young. If venture capitalists and other early-stage investors take our findings to heart, they’ll consider founders from a broader age range and may thereby back higher-growth firms.

By the same token, middle-aged would-be entrepreneurs may feel more confident about their chances — and more likely to win the resources they need to bring business visions to life.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9TXBP1t2rUc&w=560&h=315]

On an even broader scale, the emphasis on young entrepreneurs has likely skewed innovation and its funding toward problems that the younger segment understands best. Updating views of the entrepreneur’s life cycle — and peak performance within it — may shift innovation toward areas that older individuals know better.

The myth of the young entrepreneur is an age-old image, but perhaps one whose number is finally up.

Benjamin F. Jones, Professor of Entrepreneurship and Strategy, J. L. Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University and J. Daniel Kim, PhD Candidate in Management, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

This article was originally published on The Conversation.

Driverless cars are already here but the roads aren’t ready for them – CWEB.com

Mark Wilson, Michigan State University

The recent deaths of a woman struck by a car Uber was testing in driverless mode and of a man whose Tesla Model X crashed when his hands were off the steering wheel because he was letting the car do some of the driving may shift the debate over autonomous vehicles.

Those tragic fatalities are raising overdue questions about whether people and places will be ready when this new technology moves from beta-testing to a full-throttled rollout.

As an urban planner who has analyzed how technology affects cities, I believe that driverless vehicles will change everything that moves and the stationary landscape too. Until now, the public and governments at all levels have paid too little attention to how letting these machines drive themselves will transform urban, rural and suburban communities.

Critical juncture

Driverless vehicles are closer than you may realize to moving out of testing mode. General Motors, for instance, plans to start producing ride sharing models as soon as 2019.

But public awareness and consumer acceptance will take far longer, perhaps decades. It will depend on the machines’ safety record, plus the time it takes to implement legal and political changes like enacting local laws governing the use of self-driving cars.

This shift requires everyone from automakers to consumers, insurers to planners and officials at all levels of government to work together. Being proactive about guiding this technological change is essential. Rather than waiting until it happens or leaving it for the last minute, now is the time for education, thoughtful discussion and planning.

This juncture resembles what happened when automobiles replaced horses and the internet gained traction. In those cases, the technology changed how people lived, worked and got around. And the transformation occurred before the public or governments were ready.

When the internet first became popular in the 1990s, few people — if anyone — predicted the social and behavioral changes in store.

Likewise, the advent of motorized transportation more than a century ago completely changed cities, towns and suburbs. Replacing horses with the internal combustion engine demanded wider, better roadways and the invention and proliferation of traffic lights, gas stations, automotive dealerships, public parking lots and private garages. Governments had to regulate who could drive and which vehicles were roadworthy.

Driverless transportation, likewise, will demand new infrastructure and laws as it changes commuting and travel patterns in ways that few communities are contemplating today. Depending on what happens, the results could be positive or negative.

Picture this

Ideally, self-driving vehicles will make it easier for people who can’t drive for any reason. These vehicles also promise more relaxed and productive commuting and excursions for everyone else.

Additionally, they could make the roads safer. Almost 6,000 American pedestrians and more than 37,000 drivers and passengers die in car crashes every year. Despite the two recent fatalities tied to autonomous driving, it’s likely that this number would be lower without people in the driver’s seat.

If these contraptions stoke ride-sharing growth, traffic may subside and pollution may decline. The amount of space occupied by roads and parking could shrink.

More homes and businesses will make do with smaller garages or none at all. Entrance ramps and other prime real estate hogs will be repurposed. Pollution will probably decline if in all likelihood most autonomous electric vehicles run on electricity, rather than gasoline or diesel and they draw a rising share of power from wind and solar energy.

Just think about what your community might be like. Picture wider sidewalks, new cycling and jogging lanes, and additional green space. It’s no wonder that urban planners are already pondering the possibilities.

Unanticipated consequences

Yet this technology might have serious downsides.

What if autonomous vehicles were to drive about empty, rather than parking? That would increase congestion rather than abate it. Public transit use could decline once commuters have the freedom to do whatever they wish aboard their vehicles. If they become more tolerant of longer trips to work, driverless cars could potentially increase sprawl.

The truth is, no one knows what to expect. While engineers have been developing the technology for decades, social scientists, politicians and government officials have only recently started to grapple with its repercussions. And public opinion and engagement is further behind.

Leaving everything up to market forces and consumer whims could possibly create more problems than autonomous vehicles would solve. That’s why I believe in taking the planning side of the transition to driverless vehicles off autopilot.

Mark Wilson, Professor and Program Director, Urban & Regional Planning, School of Planning, Design and Construction, Michigan State University

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.