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The U.K. Financial Conduct Authority is scrutinizing how prices are set in the $20 trillion gold market, according to a person with knowledge of the review who asked not to be identified because the matter isn’t public. The London fix, the benchmark rate used by mining companies, jewelers and central banks to buy, sell and value the metal, is published twice daily after a telephone call involving Barclays Plc (BARC), Deutsche Bank AG (DBK), Bank of Nova Scotia, HSBC Holdings Plc (HSBA) and Societe Generale SA. (GLE)

The process, during which gold is bought and sold, can take from a few minutes to more than an hour. The participants also can trade the metal and its derivatives on the spot market and exchanges during the calls. Just after the fixing begins, trading erupts in gold derivatives, according to research published in September. Four traders interviewed by Bloomberg News said that’s because dealers and their clients are using information from the talks to bet on the outcome.

Now, the Israeli businessman behind hits like “Pretty Woman,” ”Fight Club” and “L.A. Confidential” has finally come forth with a stunning admission — for years he served as an Israeli spy, buying arms on its behalf and boosting its alleged nuclear program.

Although the technology is still at an early stage, the ability to print batteries and other electronics could make it possible to manufacture new kinds of devices. Think of self-powered biomedical sensors, affixed to the skin, that would continuously transmit vital signs to a smartphone. Or existing products could be made more simply and efficiently.

The software, developed in collaboration between IBM and Baylor College of Medicine, was set loose on more than 60,000 research papers that focused on p53, a protein involved in cell growth implicated in most cancers. By parsing sentences in the documents, the software could build an understanding of what is known about enzymes called kinases that act on p53 and regulate its behavior; these enzymes are common targets for cancer treatments. It then generated a list of other proteins mentioned in the literature that were probably undiscovered kinases, based on what it knew about those already identified. Most of its predictions tested so far have turned out to be correct.

“We have tested 10,” Olivier Lichtarge of Baylor said Tuesday. “Seven seem to be true kinases.” He presented preliminary results of his collaboration with IBM at a meeting on the topic of Cognitive Computing held at IBM’s Almaden research lab.

Lichtarge also described an earlier test of the software in which it was given access to research literature published prior to 2003 to see if it could predict p53 kinases that have been discovered since. The software found seven of the nine kinases discovered after 2003.

“P53 biology is central to all kinds of disease,” says Lichtarge, and so it seemed to be the perfect way to show that software-generated discoveries might speed up research that leads to new treatments. He believes the results so far show that to be true, although the kinase-hunting experiments are yet to be reviewed and published in a scientific journal, and more lab tests are still planned to confirm the findings so far. “Kinases are typically discovered at a rate of one per year,” says Lichtarge. “The rate of discovery can be vastly accelerated.”

Lichtarge said that although the software was configured to look only for kinases, it also seems capable of identifying previously unidentified phosphatases, which are enzymes that reverse the action of kinases. It can also identify other types of protein that may interact with p53.

He also made the simple wooden roof frame and thatched it himself with straw from his fields. The 300 sq ft of floor space features floorboards rescued from a skip, while an old windscreen from a lorry provided glass for the windows.

Saygin and her team conducted an experiment scanning the brains of 20 subjects aged 20 to 36 while they were looking at three different things: a human, a mechanical-looking robot, and a human-like robot.

Interpreting the results from the fMRI scans, the researchers suggested that the cause for the valley is a mismatch between at least two neural pathways: that of recognising a human-like face and that of recognising different kinds of movement. These pathways meet on the parietal cortex of the brain.

There, information from the visual cortex relating to bodily movement is integrated with information from the motor cortex that contains mirror neurons, the brain cells that register that what we are seeing is “one of us”. Alarm bells go off in the brain when there is a perceptual conflict between the human-like features of the robot and its inhuman movement.

While this bleak vision assumes a number of seemingly distant technological and political developments, some ideas currently driving robotics research may, for some, bear an uncomfortable resemblance to those of the 80s sci-fi smash.

In particular, one area where life seems to be imitating art is the fledgling field of ‘swarm robotics’, in which scientists are creating teams of robots that can work together toward a single goal — from mending a leak to clearing mines — with minimal or no input from humans.

The cache contains documents generated by the NSA and other agencies and includes names of U.S. and allied intelligence personnel, seven current and former U.S. officials and other sources briefed on the matter said.

The data is protected with sophisticated encryption, and multiple passwords are needed to open it, said two of the sources, who like the others spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence matters.

The passwords are in the possession of at least three different people and are valid for only a brief time window each day, they said. The identities of persons who might have the passwords are unknown.

Spokespeople for both NSA and the U.S. Office of the Director of National Intelligence declined to comment.

One source described the cache of still unpublished material as Snowden’s “insurance policy” against arrest or physical harm.

U.S. officials and other sources said only a small proportion of the classified material Snowden downloaded during stints as a contract systems administrator for NSA has been made public. Some Obama Administration officials have said privately that Snowden downloaded enough material to fuel two more years of news stories.

The findings are consistent with research suggesting all that idle sitting and exposure to advertisements may fuel poor eating habits (see Reuters Health story of May 9, 2012, here:).

Many parents believe their children are getting a reasonable amount of recreational screen time, Mark Tremblay said. But most U.S. and Canadian kids exceed the recommended two-hour maximum per day.