Margery Egerton

Saturday, June 9, 2012

Cost to lunch with Warren Buffett: $3.5 million

FILE - Warren Buffett, chairman and CEO, Berkshire Hathaway, Inc., speaks during the Economic Club of Washington's 25th anniversary celebration dinner in Washington, in this June 5, 2012 file photo. The cost to dine with investor Warren Buffett has apparently spiked in value, with one deep-pocketed bidder forking over nearly $3.5 million during a charity auction Friday night June 8, 2012. (AP Photo/Cliff Owen, File)

OMAHA, Neb. (AP) ? The cost to dine with investor Warren Buffett has apparently spiked in value, with one deep-pocketed bidder forking over nearly $3.5 million during a charity auction.

The annual auction for a private lunch with the Nebraska billionaire closed following a flurry of activity in the final hours Friday night. In the end, the highest bid was a record-breaking $3,456,789.

The auction benefits the Glide Foundation, which helps the homeless in San Francisco. Buffett has raised more than $11.5 million for the group in 13 past auctions. The event provides a significant portion of Glide's roughly $17 million annual budget that pays for social services to the poor and homeless.

"We just had a most amazing, shocking experience occur in our great city," Glide's founder, the Rev. Cecil Williams, said in a statement Friday night. "We are shouting, dancing, rejoicing and celebrating."

The organization said Friday's winner bidder wished to remain anonymous. Williams said 10 people actively engaged in bidding.

Buffett became one of the world's richest men while building Berkshire Hathaway into a conglomerate. But he says most of the questions he gets at the lunches aren't about investing.

As in past auctions, the bids didn't reach astronomical levels until close to the end. Within the final hour of the auction's 9:30 p.m. CDT closing, bids jumped from $1 million to the final $3.46 million.

Buffett has supported the San Francisco organization ever since his late first wife, Susan, introduced him to Williams. Buffett says Williams is a key reason why Glide has been able to help so many people after the world had given up on them.

"He's changed thousands of lives that would not have been changed otherwise," Buffett said before the bidding closed.

The previous four winning bids have all exceeded $2 million with records set every year. Last year's winner, hedge fund manager Ted Weschler, paid $2,626,411.

In fact, Weschler paid nearly $5.3 million to win both the 2010 and 2011 auctions, and he wound up getting hired by Buffett last year to help manage Berkshire's investment portfolio. Buffett says he doesn't expect to find another new hire through the auction.

Buffett's business brilliance and remarkable record of investment success as Berkshire's chairman and chief executive is a big part of the draw for bidders, though he won't talk about potential investments.

And Buffett has also made a mark on the world of philanthropy, so past winners of the lunch have also wanted to discuss giving. Buffett has slowly given away his fortune since 2006, and he plans to eventually divide most of his shares of Berkshire stock between five charitable foundations. The largest chunk will go to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Buffett and Gates have also been encouraging other wealthy people to give away at least half of their fortunes. Nearly 80 of the nation's wealthiest families have signed the pledge.

The Glide auction's winners traditionally dine with Buffett at New York's Smith and Wollensky steak house. The restaurant donates at least $10,000 to Glide each year to host the auction lunch.

Past winners of the auction have said they believe the time with Buffett was well worth the price they paid in the auction. The lunches often continue for several hours as Buffett answers their questions.

Buffett says many of the questions he gets at the lunches are about nonbusiness subjects such as family and philanthropy.

Buffett's company owns roughly 80 subsidiaries including insurance, furniture, clothing, jewelry and candy companies, restaurants and natural gas and corporate jet firms, and has major investments in such companies as Coca-Cola Co. and Wells Fargo & Co.

___

Associated Press writer Erin Gartner contributed to this report from Chicago.

___

Follow Business Writer Josh Funk at www.twitter.com/funkwrite

___

Online:

Buffett Lunch Auction: www.GlideLunchWithWarrenBuffett.com

Berkshire Hathaway Inc.: www.berkshirehathaway.com

Glide Foundation: www.glide.org

Associated Press

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Friday, June 8, 2012

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From LibraryCloud Wiki

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Understanding Features Of CompTia A+ Certifications

If you want to enter into the computer field and have no idea where to start then the CompTia A+ Certifications is a great place to start. They provide an entry level point for those wanting to get started and help you land a job once you pass the exam. The test is endorsed by Microsoft, Dell, Intel, Lenoveo, Ricoh, and others. Before you sign up you should be certain that you are capable of passing the exam as well as having experience troubleshooting and working on computers.

Most entry level computer careers require that the person has some knowledge before they are hired. They may have on the job training, but they want to know if they have the aptitude. This is why you will want to take the exam and get this certification under your belt. It will be your stepping stone towards higher levels of employment.

There are two parts to the exam. The first part has 100 questions and tests your knowledge on basic computer skills. You should have at least 500 hours of working knowledge to be able to pass the test. The second part also has 100 questions and you need to know all of the specific computer parts as well as how each one works, how they exist with one another, and how to build a computer. If you can answer this then you should be ready. Each test takes 90 minutes to complete. You will not get the complete certification until you have passed both exams.

Some of the job titles that you will be able to apply for once you have fully completed and passed the exams are technical support specialist, IT support technician, IT support administrator, IT support specialist, and field service technician. You will get to learn many new things while on your job while also using what you already know.

If you pass your exams on the first try there is a component to retaining your certification status. As technology is constantly changing and being updated so it is recommended that you do the same. You will need to continue to update your knowledge to through continuing education courses and learning. This is to your benefit as you will always be up to date on the latest development in computer technology.

Another aspect that many people do not realise is that attain the certification is not the only requirement for many positions. Companies want people that are knowledgeable, but also have the ability to work with customers, or other employees. If you are not a people person then you should not apply for any support function positions. You should have a professional manner when dealing with others.

It is possible to find a job with the certification alone. However, most find that having a college degree can also aid you in getting a position. If you want to move up and get other positions then this is a great starting point and having the ability to troubleshoot and determine what is wrong with the computer or any of the hardware components would help.

CompTia A+ Certifications is a way that allows people to set the standard for what a person knows and understands. Prior to the exam creation there was no way to judge how well one person could adequately perform their job duties. This allows an employer to feel comfortable hiring a person with this certification. This test allows one to prove their knowledge of basic computer functions as well as basic networking, preventative maintenance and installation.

more about CompTia A+ Certifications to upgrade yourself is not hard. If you are looking for courses on CompTia A+ Certifications, review the information available here to find out more.

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Mapping genes: New risk factors for neurodegenerative diseases found

ScienceDaily (June 7, 2012) ? Using a new and powerful approach to understand the origins of neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer's disease, researchers at Mayo Clinic in Florida are building the case that these diseases are primarily caused by genes that are too active or not active enough, rather than by harmful gene mutations.

In the June 7 online issue of PLoS Genetics, they report that several hundred genes within almost 800 brain samples of patients with Alzheimer's disease or other disorders had altered expression levels that did not result from neurodegeneration. Many of those variants were likely the cause.

"We now understand that disease likely develops from gene variants that have modest effects on gene expression, and which are also found in healthy people. But some of the variants -- elevating expression of some genes, reducing levels of others -- combine to produce a perfect storm that leads to dysfunction," says lead investigator Nilufer Ertekin-Taner, M.D., Ph.D., a Mayo Clinic neurologist and neuroscientist.

"If we can identify the genes linked to a disease that are too active or too dormant, we might be able to define new drug targets and therapies," she says. "That could be the case for both neurodegenerative disease as well as disease in general."

Dr. Ertekin-Taner says no other lab has performed the extent of brain gene expression study conducted at Mayo Clinic's Florida campus. "The novelty, and the usefulness, of our study is the sheer number of brain samples that we looked at and the way in which we analyzed them. These results demonstrate the significant contribution of genetic factors that alter brain gene expression and increase risk of disease," she says.

This form of data analysis measures gene expression levels by quantifying the amount of RNA produced in tissue and scans the genome of patients to identify genetic variants that associate with these levels.

Mayo researchers measured the level of 24,526 transcripts (messenger RNA) for 18,401 genes using cerebellar autopsy tissue from 197 Alzheimer's disease patients and from 177 patients with other forms of neurodegeneration. The researchers then validated the results by examining the temporal cortex from 202 Alzheimer's disease patients and from 197 with other pathologies. The difference between these samples is that while the temporal cortex is affected by Alzheimer's disease, the cerebellum is relatively spared.

From these analyses, the researchers identified more than 2,000 markers of altered expression in both groups of patients that were common between the cerebellum and temporal cortex. Some of these markers also influenced risk of human diseases, suggesting their contribution to development of neurodegenerative and other diseases regardless of their location in the brain.

They identified novel expression "hits" for genetic risk markers of diseases that included progressive supranuclear palsy, Parkinson's disease, and Paget's disease, and confirmed other known associations for lupus, ulcerative colitis, and type 1 diabetes.

"Altered expression of brain genes can be linked to a number of diseases that affect the entire body," Dr. Ertekin-Taner says.

They then compared their eGWAS to GWAS data on Alzheimer's disease, conducted by the federally funded Alzheimer's Disease Genetics Consortium, to test whether some of the risk genes already identified promote disease through altered expression.

"We found that a number of genes already linked to Alzheimer's disease do, in fact, have altered gene expression, but we also discovered that many of the variants in what we call the gray zone of the GWAS -- genes whose contribution to Alzheimer's disease was uncertain -- were also influencing brain expression levels," Dr. Ertekin-Taner says. "That offers us new candidate risk genes to explore.

"This is a powerful approach to understanding disease," she says. "It can find new genes that contribute to risk, as well as new genetic pathways, and can also help us understand the function for a large number of genes and other molecular regulators in the genome that are implicated in very important diseases."

The study was funded in part by National Institutes of Health grants and the Mayo Alzheimer's Disease Research Center. The complete results are being made available to the scientific community.

Study co-authors include Fanggeng Zou, Ph.D., High Seng Chai, Curtis Younkin, Mariet Allen, Steven Younkin, M.D., Ph.D., and Minerva Carrasquillo, Ph.D., who also provided genotypes for the Mayo Alzheimer's disease GWAS; Dennis Dickson, M.D., Julia Crook, Ph.D., Shane Pankratz, Ph.D., Neill Graff-Radford, M.D., and Ronald Petersen, M.D., Ph.D.

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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Mayo Clinic, via Newswise.

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

Journal Reference:

Fanggeng Zou, High Seng Chai, Curtis S. Younkin, Mariet Allen, Julia Crook, V. Shane Pankratz, Minerva M. Carrasquillo, Christopher N. Rowley, Asha A. Nair, Sumit Middha, Sooraj Maharjan, Thuy Nguyen, Li Ma, Kimberly G. Malphrus, Ryan Palusak, Sarah Lincoln, Gina Bisceglio, Constantin Georgescu, Naomi Kouri, Christopher P. Kolbert, Jin Jen, Jonathan L. Haines, Richard Mayeux, Margaret A. Pericak-Vance, Lindsay A. Farrer, Gerard D. Schellenberg, Ronald C. Petersen, Neill R. Graff-Radford, Dennis W. Dickson, Steven G. Younkin, Nil?fer Ertekin-Taner. Brain Expression Genome-Wide Association Study (eGWAS) Identifies Human Disease-Associated Variants. PLoS Genetics, 2012; 8 (6): e1002707 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pgen.1002707

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

Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

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