Einstein is proved right... yet again..

This article beautifully explains Einstein's General Theory of Relativity along-with explanation of another extreme test to test this theory.. So far Prof. Einstein is proving right..

Though, I still wonder, there has to be some fundamental explanation of Gravity itself.. and there has to be more explanation of relationship between time, space, energy and gravity etc....

Definitely recommend reading this article. Hopefully WSJ won't remove this link..

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324743704578444913060125542.html?mod=djemTEW_h


Here is another link which is slightly more technical..

http://www.tgdaily.com/space-features/71221-einsteins-theory-of-relativity-highlighted-by-pulsar-and-white-dwarf

Is it really Seismic shift in tech world?

These type of stories simply remind me of India's caste system and caste based politics. I don't know why media has to hype such irrelevant facts which are based purely on someone's origin or birth rather than how we perform in the real world.

To my best of the knowledge, in tech world or in any other business world, only one thing matters.. performance.. which is same as value for money.. It is ridiculous to say that one particular group of people are being kicked out the workforce.. how can that happen when the top of same tech world is still controlled by that same particular group?? It is pure business and in pure business, only one thing matters.. performance..

Instead of cribbing about such things, media should highlight stories which should generate interest in so called STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering & Maths) subjects during early age of child's development. The facts mentioned in the article themselves tell us where to invest if we want so called balance in tech world..

As far as hispanics and black are concerned.. what percentage of high school students actually finish these STEM subjects with flying grades. Now we can start saying that there is discrimination or drive to push out at high school level as well? Come on..

All these things should have been thought way back in 80s or 90s when we decided to off shore our so called menial or low paying jobs.. As a business strategy we decided to do high tech or high value added work in US.. Government totally encouraged off shoring of manufacturing and other low value services jobs.. However, we totally forgot about mentoring or preparing our students for these remaining high tech or high value jobs.. which needed much more intensive studies and focus on STEM subjects. So when these jobs were exponentially getting created there were hardly any engineers to fill in them.

Combined with H1b and internal US engineering focus, slowly, over a period of time, ratio of non-whites kept on decreasing.. but that doesn't mean that there is any kind of discrimination against anyone. I still see many non-asian top class engineers/developers.. It is all about interest or I should say generating kids interest into this beautiful area of high tech world.. there are lot of work going on in this area and slowly, sooner or later parents and kids will start focussing back on this area and should result in great talent seeping back into this high tech world..

There is no need to create or highlight these group based statistics.. instead of this, we need to work on root of this problem..

DOUBLE-DIGIT EMPLOYMENT GAINS

Seismic shift in tech world

Asians skilled in science andmath nowamajority in Bay Area’s workplaces

By Dan Nakaso

dnakaso@mercurynews.com 

Asian-Americans make up half of the Bay Area’s technology workforce, and their double-digit employment gains came from jobs lost among white tech workers, according to an analysis by this newspaper of Census Bureau data released Thursday.

The dramatic shift in the changing composition of the high-tech workforce represents a new generation of homegrown and imported workers drilled in science, technology, engineering and math studies. But the shift in workplace demographics — at least among tech companies — fails to reflect the gains of California’s Hispanic and Latino population, which lost ground in tech jobs along with African- Americans.

“It’s the new world — a world in which whites are not the majority,” said Jan English-Lueck, associate dean of the college Cultures Project. “Other people are being displaced.” 

The percentage of Asian tech workers grew from 39 percent in 2000 to just more than 50 percent in 2010 in Santa Clara, San Mateo, Alameda, Contra Costa and San Francisco counties combined, according to Census Bureau statistics. 

At the same time, white workers saw their more than 50 percent majority of tech jobs in 2000 fall to nearly 41 percent, according to the numbers released Thursday. 

African-American and Hispanic tech workers each saw slight decreases: Positions held by African-American tech workers fell from 2.8 percent to 2.3 percent; those held by Hispanic workers dropped from 4.6 percent to 4.2 percent. 

The Census Bureau changed the way it categorized some computer and related jobs in 2000, so the Mercury News analysis of the latest data was based on tracking the changes in categories that appeared both in 2000 and 2010. 

Yolanda Lewis, president and CEO of the Oakland- based Black Economic Council, sees trouble in the increased importation of Asian tech workers. 

Tech companies, Lewis said, “do not want to employ Americans. They import labor from overseas, pushing for H-1B visas. Check the job boards. They basically say, ‘H-1B Visa. Americans need not apply.’ For years, women, blacks and Latinos have been kept out of the tech job market. Now white men are being forced to train their replacements.” 

Lewis has organized protests against tech companies, demanding more transparency into their work forces because, she said, “You can be next in the unemployment line.” 

Several high-profile tech companies contacted by this newspaper did not respond to requests for comment. 

“Diversity actually increases the profitability of these companies,” Lewis said. “In California, the minority is now the majority. How do you market your products and services to people you don’t understand? How can your business survive? These companies still don’t get it.” 

The tech employment picture hardly represents the growing number of Hispanics and Latinos who make up 27 percent of Santa Clara County, English-Lueck said. 

But it does reflect the young and growing number of Asian-Americans “who were raised with a very strong STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) background” and are going into high tech. 

Asian-American software developers, in particular, saw huge gains all around the Bay Area: from nearly 45 percent of those workers in 2000 to more than 53 percent in Alameda County; and from nearly 50 percent to nearly 60 percent in both San Mateo and Santa Clara counties, the center of Silicon Valley. 

Ryan Shelby, a 28-yearold African-American doctoral candidate in mechanical engineering at UC Berkeley, said young African- American and Hispanic students are often raised in communities that don’t stress science and math curriculums that are likely to guide them into tech jobs. 

Shelby grew up on a farm in Letohatchee, Ala., where his love for engineering started by working on his father’s tractor. 

“I’ve been beating my head over this,” Shelby said. “There’s a lack of mentorship early on for a lot of these young students, who don’t have these facilities and teachers to expose them to math, science and technology early on.” 

So Shelby supports greater outreach to women and underrepresented minorities at UC Berkeley’s College of Engineering, which now has an associate dean of “Equity and Inclusion.” 

While 34 percent of African- American and Hispanic students start out in engineering across the country, only 13 percent leave with degrees, he said. 

Meredith Leu grew up studying STEM courses surrounded by other Asian-American students and graduated with honors from Mission San Jose High School in Fremont. 

Now, as a 19-year-old junior at SJSU studying computer science, Leu said many non-Asians don’t appreciate “the Asian culture, where there is a deep work ethic that America hasn’t really bought into yet.” 

“Do I worry about a backlash?” Leu asked in response to a question. “It’s not so much a backlash against Asians, but … there needs to be a balance. I’m just trying to find it.” Mercury News Library Director Leigh Poitinger contributed to this story. Contact Dan Nakaso at 408-271-3648. Follow him at Twitter.com/dannakaso. 




PATRICK TEHAN/STAFF 

Meredith Leu, who studied science and math at Mission San Jose High, works in the Computer Science Club in MacQuarrie Hall at San Jose State. 

Amazing.. just beautiful.. Rover Landing on MARS!!!

I watched it live on NASA TV and was truly salute all these scientists and engineers who achieved this great feet for human kind. The kind of system they are putting in place is remarkably powerful and hopefully pave way for many more discoveries about past life and more importantly future human life on our dear red planet.

Moreover, the technologies put in place to achieve this feet are remarkable and hopefully lead to more greater achievements in future both for US and humankind in general.

Despite what many people say about spending billions of dollars on such missions as waste when more than three fourth population on earth won't even understand what has been achieved.. forget about caring about such things as they are still worried about clean water and decent food for themselves.

My rationale is.. this money is million or zillion times better spend than other inefficiencies in the systems. For US and developed countries.. Wars are biggest example of wasteful expenditure.. for developing countries, before they ask anything morale about spending so much, they should ask their politician's swiss bank account balance.. I only wish, we could spend more on such scientific achievements.. Hopefully, NASA has bootstrapped this field enough that capitalism will take care of next steps and even greater achievements.

check it out..
mercurynews.com/science

To satisfy Curiosity, signs of life are sought

Rover will check systems for 10 days before rolling out

By Lisa M. Krieger

lkrieger@mercurynews.com 

The whole purpose of the Mars rover is to explore the possibility of life.

So why is it so obsessed with rocks?

Only moments after Curiosity’s safe landing — decelerating from mind bending speeds to a gentle and accurate touchdown — it began sending home photos: Dust. Shadows. Rock.

For a public raised on pulp sci-fi films and literary thrillers, the images fell short of the hopedfor glimpse of dramatic vistas, green goblins or aliens. Now that Curiosity has landed safely, the thrill is gone. We can return our attention to the Olympics.

But for 200 to 300 scientists, turning toward many 16-hour days in Curiosity’s two-year search for signs of life, the excitement is just starting.

“You can see a gravel field,” said an elated John Grotzinger, project manager of NASA’s 

Mars Science Laboratory mission, describing a grainy black-and-white photo at a Monday briefing at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

The rocks, say scientists, will reveal if Mars ever supported germ-sized life. If so, what did it look like? Where did it go? And is it still there, hiding?

Curiosity will look for carbon-based building blocks of life. It will look for habitats that could have once supported life. And it will look for chemical “biosignatures” in rocks that will suggest that Mars may once have sustained life.

On Sunday night, Curiosity landed in a swirl of fine-grained soil in a crater, thought to have once been one of the planet’s wettest places. It’s just north of the sand dunes that fringe “Mount Sharp,” a mountain higher than Mount Whitney.

For the next several days, the rover will start a gradual rev-up of the 10 science instruments and cameras it carries to make sure nothing was damaged during the long journey and dramatic landing.

One of the early tasks will be to check the health of a small nuclear battery. Then the rover will unpack, raising a mast and weather monitoring instruments. By “sol 10” — the10th of the planet’s 24.66-hour days — it will begin wheeling and working.

On Earth, researchers will be living on the slightly longer Mars day, incrementally pushing downloaded data and uploaded instructions 40 minutes later every day. Eventually, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory team in Pasadena will be attending 3 a.m. science and planning meetings.

One of their main interests will be in Martian soil. A robotic arm will scoop and dig the iron-laden sands to test in the rover’s mini laboratories. It is not looking for signs of life — but signs that life may be or have been possible.

Life needs energy and water and certain elements. Energy? Check. It’s there. Water? Check, though not liquid.

Chemical elements that serve as the building blocks of life? That’s the $64,000 question. No one knows.

“So we’re searching for things like carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, sulfur and nitrogen,” said Bruce Barraclough, designer of the ChemCam instrument, in a Monday radio interview.

“We are not designed to find microbes or fossils but find the elements that life could have evolved from, in specific environments that are hospitable to life,” he said.

Another tool, known as Sample Analysis at Mars, or SAM, can detect methane in the Martian atmosphere. Methane breaks down quickly, so there must be some ongoing source. On Earth, it comes from biological creatures like cows. What creates it on Mars?

SAM can break down the distribution of carbon isotopes to determine whether the gas was created biologically or geochemically, perhaps by volcanos.

In the South Bay, NASA Ames senior scientist David Blake designed CheMin, short for chemistry and mineralogy, which uses Xray diffraction to analyze soil and rock samples.

The Red Planet has been a source of legends since early human history. In the 1950s, some scientists concluded that some of its colors that mimicked those of chlorophyll that gives a green color to plants.

But we lost interest in the 1960s, when early Mariner missions sent home photos of a rocky, barren and apparently dead planet.

Hopes were raised — prematurely — in 1976, when Mars Viking mission scientists asserted that they saw evidence of biological activity on the Red Planet. It happened again in 1996, when researchers at Johnson Space Center said they had found nanofossils inside a meteorite from Mars.

In 2004, other researchers suggested that methane gases detected on Mars hinted at the presence of life.

So NASA is very cautious, and uses the “L word” — life — very carefully.

No one expects to find living bacteria or fossils in this rock.

But if Mars ever bore life, once wet sediments from 4 billion years ago preserved in neatly layered years would be the perfect place to find its record.

“Things may seem slow,” said NASA Ames’ Blake. “But we have a precious resource up there. It’s worth much, much more than the $2.5 billion that has been invested.

“We want to preserve it, and keep it doing things for years. We will not hazard this rover. We’re here for the long haul.”
Contact Lisa M. Krieger at 650-492-4098.

---

NASA VIA ASSOCIATED PRESS

NASA took a picture of the gravel on the surface of Mars’ Gale Crater, where the Curiosity rover landed late Sunday. On the horizon is the rim of the crater. Part of the lens cover can be seen on the bottom right.

Another US jobs safe heaven going down?

I thought that this was happening long time back. I don't think this is new. However, interesting thing is how they are blaming new Obama care for acceleration in this area.. Apparently, as per new law insurers have to limit administrative costs below certain percentage of overall healthcare costs. Which makes sense.. but there is administrative work.. somehow it has to be done.. there is no magic into it.. unless you think outsourcing it to cheaper places.

I was thinking that this are was pretty much safe for US due to data privacy laws, but I am sure these guys must have figured out way to keep patient data safe some how ;-) For that matter, that data isn't that safe even in US. Actually, it could be more safer as they implement these outsourcing processes..

As long as I keep on getting better and cheaper care I don't mind whom I am talking to or who is giving me that care. Let the Capitalism take care of it. It is another lesson for US, to pour in more money into science and maths education and making college education more cheaper and affordable. Somehow, the scare against science and maths needs to go away from kids.. Despite one of the best education system, kids are not able to take advantage of it and many kids still drop out after high school to pick up basic service jobs. Currently there are plenty of jobs and it seems that for a young person they can make good enough money for that person to survive. However, these type of basic admin and service jobs will continue to get reduced.. Young kids and generation has to move into better high intellectual jobs. They better understand now vs.. when it will be too late..

Whatever, they are talking about getting manufacturing jobs back in US is just minor aberration at the best.. First of all, they are very few.. second, they are coming back only when there is no unions or essentially salaries are really very low as compared to what used to be. Capitalism will find its way to save money and generate more efficiencies and productivities. It is up to you how you benefit out of this capitalist system..


Big shift in health care jobs overseas

Many companies outsourcing work to Philippines, India

By Don Lee

Los Angeles Times

WASHINGTON — After years of shipping data-processing, accounting and other back-office work abroad, some health care companies are starting to shift clinical services and decision-making on medical care overseas, primarily to India and the Philippines. Some of the jobs being sent abroad include so-called pre-service nursing, where nurses at insurance firms, for example, help assess patient needs and determine treatment methods.

Outsourcing such tasks goes beyond earlier steps by health care firms to farm out reading of X-rays and other diagnostic tests to health professionals overseas. Those previous efforts were often done out of necessity, to meet overnight demands, for instance.

But the latest outsourcing, which have contributed to the loss of hundreds of domestic health jobs, is done for financial reasons. And the outsourcing of nursing functions, in particular, may be the most novel — and possibly the most risky — of the jobs being shifted. At the forefront of the trend is WellPoint, one of the nation’s largest health insurers and owner of Anthem Blue Cross, California’s biggest for-profit medical insurer.

In 2010, WellPoint formed a separate business unit, Radiant Services, aimed at advancing outsourcing and other cost-saving strategies. WellPoint has eliminated hundreds of jobs in the U.S. over the past 18 months as it has moved jobs overseas, a company spokeswoman acknowledged.

The spokeswoman, Kristin Binns, said WellPoint’s shifting of clinical jobs overseas was a small part of the outsourcing and being done through Radiant because it has the technical expertise and can ensure compliancewith laws. Nursing organizations, however, were cautious. “It’s obviously a very disturbing trend,” said Chuck Idelson, a spokesman for the California Nurses Association. “There are serious questions if you’re talking about utilization reviews ... and making recommendations on procedures.” Nursing experts said there also may be licensing issues as states generally require certification for those practicing and dispensing health information. 

Current and former Radiant executives declined to comment or weren’t available. It’s not clear how many other U.S. health care firms have contracted with Radiant or other outsourcing specialists, but industry experts said companies were increasingly looking at more health care tasks that could be outsourced globally as they face greater cost pressures and sweeping changes in how they do business. Aetna has an arrangement with EXL Service, a U.S.-based company with operations in Manila, to provide “targeted caremanagement support,” spokeswoman Cynthia Michener said. Health Net, which is laying off dozens of information technology and accounting workers whose jobs are being sent to India, said its outsourcing has generally been confined to administrative and IT functions. UnitedHealth Group, the nation’s largest health insurer, didn’t respond to inquiries. Outsourcing jobs out of the country has become a hot issue in the presidential campaign: President Obama is pounding Republican challenger Mitt Romney for his private equity firm’s involvement with companies that sent jobs abroad. Although such outsourcing has been going on for years, American manufacturers in recent years have brought some jobs back to the U.S. as labor costs have risen in China and elsewhere. 

Some experts argued that sending jobs abroad could help U.S. companies by enabling them to tap global talent and efficiencies, making them more profitable. When U.S. companies are stronger, the thinking goes, it creates more opportunities for American workers. Also, shifting operations to lower-wage countries can help consumers by holding down prices. 

Labor costs 

Outsourcing jobs to places such as the Philippines can save U.S. health care firms 30 percent in labor costs, according to experts. But the practice remains controversial, especially with the U.S. unemployment rate hovering above 8 percent. Patient advocates worry about crucial decisions involving a patient’s care being in the hands of foreign insurance adjusters. Analysts said there was another concern as well: patient privacy. Even something as straightforward as medical transcription can raise questions, said Uwe Reinhardt, a health care economist at Princeton University. Over the last year, Iowa Health System and hospitals in Utah and Washington state have joined other medical centers that have outsourced the transcribing of doctors’ notes and other records. 

“Suppose I’m an AIDS patient,” Reinhardt said. “That person in India would know — and ‘the information’ could be valuable to someone. ... For the U.S., there’s nothing more personal than health care.” Dr. Kaveh Safavi, head of the North American health practice for Accenture, a major consulting and outsourcing firm that has partnered with Well-Point’s Radiant, said nearly all countries have laws for protecting patient privacy. 

And to safeguard patients’ records, he said, health care companies store and maintain their records locally. 

As for outsourcing services that are more clinical in nature, he said, “People are looking at all the tasks that can safely and responsibly be moved. It’s still an emerging market. We’re still trying to understand the market’s tolerance for it.” 

In general, hospitals are moving more slowly than health insurers to send jobs overseas. But with financial pressures intensifying and the uptake of electronic record- keeping accelerating, analysts and industry people see more consolidation and outsourcing ahead. 

Virtual call center 

“Whenyouhavepeople’s medical, billing and other records kept electronically, then it opens it up to establishing a call center virtually anywhere,” said Steve Trossman, a Los Angeles spokesman for the Service Employees International Union, which represents hospital workers. “There is no longer a reason for it to be physically in the same place as the paper records.” 

Moreover, the health care reform law could prod insurers to move more jobs to cheaper-wage countries. The new law requires companies to spend 80 percent to 85 percent of premiums on medical care, limiting the amount available for administrative expenses. 

Few have been as aggressive as WellPoint, which made a profit of $2.65 billion last year on revenue of $60.7 billion. WellPoint’s total employment at the end of last year was 37,700, down from 40,500 two years earlier. 

In one of its recent efforts, WellPoint laid off pre-service nurses in Colorado and Nevada so the work could be done in Manila, according to a Labor Department filing by a WellPoint human resource manager in Denver. Well-Point spokeswoman Binns said none of the decisions that involve denial of procedures or treatment for patients are made overseas. 

Overall, Binns said, fewer than 2.5 percent of the 37,000 employees, or at most 925 workers, had lost jobs in the last 18 months as a result of work sent overseas. Only about 50 of those positions involved clinical management of care, she said. 

WellPoint’s “sourcing strategies have enabled us to make our services more effective, accessible and affordable to our customers, while allowing us to expand our programs and maintain our service levels,” she said. 

Shannon Cunningham of Columbus, Ohio, who processed medical claims for WellPoint, was laid off last month after a colleague went to the Philippines to train people to do her job. 

Cunningham, 43, said she received eight weeks of severance pay. She and others working in medical claims earned $30,000 to $40,000 a year with health benefits, she said. 

“I know other countries need work,” said Cunningham, a company employee for three years. But “I just felt like it wasn’t fair. We’re having a rough time too.” 




MICHAEL J. DOOLITTLE/BLOOMBERG NEWS 

Health insurer Aetna has a deal with EXL Service, a U.S.-based company with operations in Manila, to provide “targeted care-management support.” 

God Particle or Goddamn Particle?

Where does this leaves us? I think after discovery or let us say certain statistical validation or statistical certainty that Higs boson exist.. we are going for another round.. Scientific community is cheering as this was one of the most important milestone what human brain could think off.. and after all, billions of dollars were invested to find it out. So.. there has to be celebration..  

In general I am happy for this great scientific victory.. We do need to continue research in fundamental physics so we can overcome fear of God from human brain. 

Question is what next.. do we understand how mass is created? I don't know if we have final answer to that or no. It seems that this discovery was suppose to achieve that.. I am way too illiterate to understand exact interactions of mass and energy or energy fields.. But if they can find out or more accurately guess for our reason of existence.. that would be great.. there are so many fundamental questions about nature still unanswered.. 

MILESTONE’ DISCOVERY

Physicists eye elusive particle

By Dennis Overbye

New York Times

ASPEN, Colo. — Signaling a likely end to one of the longest, most expensive searches in the history of science, physicists said Wednesday that they had discovered a new subatomic particle that looks for all the world like the Higgs boson, a key to understanding why there is diversity and life in the universe. The elusive boson has been coming slowly into view since this past winter, as the first signals of its existence grew until they practically jumped off the chart.

“I think we have it,” said Rolf-Dieter Heuer, the director general of CERN, the multinational research center headquartered in Geneva. The agency is home to the Large Hadron Collider, the immense particle accelerator that produced the new data by colliding protons. The findings were announced by two separate teams. Heuer called the discovery “a historic milestone.” 

---

CERN VIA ASSOCIATED PRESS

In this image, two high-energy photons collide in the search for the Higgs boson particle.

He and others said that it was too soon to know for sure, however, whether the new particle is the one predicted by the Standard Model, the theory that has ruled physics for the past half-century. The particle is predicted to imbue elementary particles with mass. It may be an impostor as yet unknown to physics, perhaps the first of many particles yet to be discovered. 

That possibility is particularly exciting to physicists, as it could point the way to new, deeper ideas, beyond the Standard Model, about the nature of reality. 

For now, some physicists are simply calling it a “Higgslike” particle. 

“It’s something that may, in the end, be one of the biggest observations of any new phenomena in our field in the last 30 or 40 years,” said Joe Incandela, a physicist at UC Santa Barbara and a spokesman for one of the two groups reporting new data Wednesday. 

At the Aspen Center for Physics, a retreat for scientists, bleary-eyed physicists drank champagne in the wee hours as word arrived via webcast from CERN. It was a scene duplicated in Melbourne, Australia, where physicists had gathered for a major conference, as well as in Los Angeles, Chicago, Princeton, N.J., New York, London and beyond — everywhere that members of a curious species have dedicated their lives and fortunes to the search for their origins in a dark universe. 

In Geneva, 1,000 people stood in line all night to get into an auditorium at CERN, where some attendees noted a rock-concert ambience. Peter Higgs, the University of Edinburgh theorist for whom the boson is named, entered the meeting to a sustained ovation. 

Confirmation of the Higgs boson or something very much like it would constitute a rendezvous with destiny for a generation of physicists who have believed in the boson for half a century without ever seeing it. The finding affirms a grand view of a universe described by simple and elegant and symmetrical laws — but one in which everything interesting, like ourselves, results from flaws or breaks in that symmetry. 

According to the Standard Model, the Higgs boson is the only manifestation of an invisible force field, a cosmic molasses that permeates space and imbues elementary particles with mass. Particles wading through the field gain heft the way a bill going through Congress attracts riders and amendments, becoming ever more ponderous. 

Without the Higgs field, as it is known, or something like it, all elementary forms of matter would zoom around at the speed of light, flowing through our hands like moonlight. There would be neither atoms nor life. 

Physicists said that they would probably be studying the new particle for years. 

The results announced Wednesday capped two weeks of feverish speculation and Internet buzz as the phys-icists, who had been sworn to secrecy, did a breakneck analysis of about 800 trillion proton-proton collisions over the past two years. 

The finding affirms a grand view of a universe described by simple and elegant and symmetrical laws — but one in which everything interesting, like ourselves, results from flaws or breaks in that symmetry. 

BAY AREA JOB MARKET - Tech hiring leaves rest in the dust

Good News from our local San Jose Mercury News.... but at the same time creating friction between haves and haves-not..  will it?? instead of that, shouldn't it create aspirations for better focus on academics, maths, science?? Everyone should understand that there is no point in unnecessary grudge against math/science.. fortunately or unfortunately, under current circumstances, most of the hiring could be done locally instead of opening up or adding more H1Bs as it was done during dot.com boom.. But US needs to fix their education system and spend more focus and energy on  academics and maths and science.. and leaders should be be clear in their message.. their is no running away or escaping from hard work or maths/science.. otherwise, the jobs being created now in this sector will be ultimately taken away or will be gone to India/China.. and that would be real catastrophe.. as American companies will survive but American's won't.. 

Tech hiring leaves rest in the dust 

While industry surges, other sectors in region are shrinking, slowing

By George Avalos

gavalos@bayareanewsgroup.com 

Tech hiring in the Bay Area next year will outpace other industries — contributing to the creation of two economies whose fortunes have diverged, a report released Thursday said.

Bay Area technology companies are expected to increase their local workforce by 5 percent over the coming 12 months, stated a study commissioned by NOVA, a Sunnyvale­based economic development agency.

That could mean 28,000 new jobs in tech, based on this newspaper’s analysis of the number of technology jobs in the Bay Area, which was roughly 556,000 at the end of September.

Still, the sturdy gains predicted for tech represent a slowdown in hiring plans for the sector compared with a May survey of Bay Area tech companies. That report projected tech companies in the area planned to increase employment by 11 percent over a one-year period. 

An estimated 58 percent of tech companies participating in the latest survey intend to hire more workers. The survey also found that 34 percent intend to keep staffing levels the same, while 2 percent plan cutbacks and 6 percent weren’t sure of their hiring plans. BW Research surveyed 50 technology companies in the South Bay, Peninsula and San Francisco, ranging from Fortune 500 companies to midsize and startup tech firms.“High tech is one of the industries you really want to be in,” said Josh Williams, president of BW Research, which conducted the survey in November for NOVA. “There is real demand to hire technology workers.”

Yet the surge in technology also has produced stark contrasts in economic fortunes in the region.

“Clearly there are two economies in Silicon Valley,” Williams said. “Tech is growing. But there are certain parts of the economy that are still shrinking.”

The seasonally adjusted jobless rate in Santa Clara County was 9.8 percent in October and 8.1 percent in the San Francisco-San Mateo- Marin region. In contrast, about 3 percent of tech workers in the Bay Area are unemployed, according to estimates supplied by Williams and other analysts.

“The tech industry is outpacing the rest of the economy,” said Brad Kemp, director of research with Beacon Economics.

If tech employment expands by 5 percent in the coming year in the Bay Area, that would be triple the growth rate for all industries in California and the nation that occurred over the year that ended in October.

“This is a perfect example of a core industry that is leading a recovery,” Kemp said.

Companies nationwide and worldwide are investing in equipment and software, hoping to squeeze every possible iota of productivity out of their workers and operations.

“Silicon Valley continues to benefit from a deep talent ecosystem that produces innovative products and services demanded throughout the world,” said Kris Stadelman, executive director of NOVA.

The survey, though, also determined that tech companies struggle with a scarcity of qualified workers.

“We found that 77 percent of the companies are having great difficulty or some difficulty in hiring people,” Williams said. “The recruitment process appears to be pretty challenging.”

Some technology employers said technology innovations are so rapid that even their existing workforce can’t keep up in some cases.

“We are moving into new market areas where our current people do not have experience in building or selling thetechnology,”onecompany representative told NOVA, which kept confidential the names of the companies that were surveyed.

Tech companies typically use a recruiting process that requires about eight to 10 weeks to scout for, and then hire, people with the right skill sets, NOVA found.

“The core skills that companies want are people with backgrounds in engineering, software design and programming,” Williams said. “Beyond that, they are also looking for specialists in mobile applications, cloud computing, and a convergence of skills in cloud and social media.”
Contact George Avalos at 925-977-8477. Follow him at twitter.com/george_avalos.

Debt Ceiling Craziness

I am really surprised on the craziness surrounding this so called "debt ceiling". First of all, why everyone is so crazy on this Ceiling number itself. Does it matter if you have 10 or 11 or 12 or 13 or whatever number of you put before letter "T"..  As long as it is in "T" in trillions I don't care anyhow. This is crazy to have a so called super-powered economy based on debt and then on top of that we have some kind of artificial ceiling as well.

I know, to most of these so called economists I may seem to be moron, which I am behaving any how right now. But basically, all my principle fails to explain this absolute number on ceiling. Does any bank or financial institution gives you some arbitrary number like this. All the numbers are based on some defined numbers like your net worth, pay-back capacity, credit score etc etc. Why can't we also have this number based on certain factors like percentage of GDP, tax revenue, reserves/assets or pay-back chances, if any. All my economical sense fails to explain this arbitrary number before "T".

Then comes this foolishness around "Debt" itself. I think it was designed to trap and link all other economies with US economy.. So right now all these "T" worth of debt is acting as credit in rest of the world's economies. This I guess is to ensure that they can never let US economy sink.. It will be rest of the world's responsibility to save US if needed. Otherwise, all these "T" numbers which appear as credit in their account be junk in a moment. Jokes apart, I am unable to explain this debt numbers.. We as a nation to understand one simple fact.. there is no free lunch.. no pain no gain.. This countries forefathers had done terrific job of building infrastructure and economy of this country.. if they would have also decided to off-shore all the jobs and manufacturing to rest of the world at that time we would have never seen this great nation.. We need to understand and work with very clear goal of coming back to our roots and do what we have been doing for such a long time.. Hard work and continue progress on Science and Technology.. Without these things very soon we will be talking about increasing this debt ceiling in "G"s instead of current "T"s.. that to if we can continue to keep trap around rest of the economies, like we have right now..

Guys.. Come back to what one of my great college senior used to say "Wastwikta Ka Dharatal" or simply put.. back to basics or foundation..

Amazing and innovative but little scary peek into future..

I was watching podcast on economist about futuristic Contact lenses.. Some very innovative and amazing research into this area...

Generally it is going in right direction of making our lives easier but at the same time I any how feel toooo much connected and wired and these things will make me zombie in future..

On Funnier note.. I am hoping that they won't be driven by Windows OS ;-) or connected using ATT network ;-) I don't want them to crash in my eyes or drop connection in the middle of my meeting/discussions and all of a sudden I become blank.. Just kidding.. but I am sure there will be many more different kind of problems.. Biggest I see is EMP burst.. as we are more and more connected and wired.. we are more and more vulnerable to this force of nature.. Which is very real possibility in any time and can create real havoc on our planet. Nothing to worry about it..

Here are links for details:
http://www.economist.com/node/18750624

this is for video:
http://www.economist.com/blogs/multimedia/2011/06/smarter-contact-lenses