FILE – In this Friday, Oct. 23, 2009 file photo, shoppers visit a J.C. Penney store in New York. J.C. Penney’s stock plunged 18 percent on Wednesday, May 16, 2012 ? the biggest drop by percentage since the market crash in 1987. The decline comes a day after the retailer reported a larger-than-expected first-quarter loss largely because customers were turned off by its new everyday low pricing strategy. (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan, File)

NEW YORK (AP) ? Wall Street doesn’t seem to like J.C. Penney’s new everyday low pricing any better than Main Street does.

The department store chain’s stock plunged nearly 20 percent on Wednesday ? the biggest decline in at least four decades, including the 1987 stock market crash. The drop came a day after Penney said it would stop paying dividends and blamed its large first-quarter loss on a poor reception from shoppers for its strategy of getting rid of hundreds of sales each year in favor of offering predictable low prices every day.

The plan, rolled out Feb. 1, aims to stop the cycle of heavy discounting ? and discourage customers from waiting for sales to shop. But the reaction by investors and shoppers shows how difficult it will be for Penney to change the mindset of consumers who have been conditioned to expect blockbuster deals from Penney during the economic downturn.

It also puts more pressure on new CEO Ron Johnson, a former Apple executive who is trying to transform Penney from a has-been to a retail darling. The same investors who initially supported the man who masterminded both Apple’s successful retail stores and Target’s cheap chic strategy prior to that, now seem to be losing confidence in Johnson’s plan.

“The honeymoon is definitely over for Johnson,” said Brian Sozzi, chief equities analyst at NBG Productions, an independent research firm. “He sold the (pricing) story hard.”

Penney did not return calls seeking comment, but Johnson asked investors to be patient during a meeting with them on Tuesday. He acknowledged that Penney has a long way to go to convince shoppers not to wait for sales.

But he said he needed to make this bet on predictable pricing because Penney has been struggling in recent years with the downturn and increased competition. Going forward, he said the company will do more to communicate the benefits of the new pricing strategy to shoppers in ads.

“Our first 90 days are a little tougher than we expected,” Johnson told them. “We learned. Coupons are a drug. They really drove traffic.”

Penney has long said the pricing plan would take time to work. But Johnson has tempered his tone since January when he announced the strategy to make pricing simpler. Unlike Wal-Mart’s everyday low pricing, Penney’s strategy doesn’t try to undercut competitors but focuses on predictable prices.

Penney rolled out a series of ads intended to familiarize customers with its three-tiered strategy. The plan features everyday prices that are about 40 lower than a year ago, monthlong sales on selected items and clearance events on the first and third Friday of each month.

But observers say Penney’s latest ads ? which mimic rival Target’s whimsical style ? are confusing. In one TV spot, a dog continuously jumps through a hula hoop that a young girl is holding. The text reads: “No more jumping through hoops. No coupon clipping. No door busting. Just great prices from the start.”

Wendy Ruud, a resident of Boca Raton, Fla., says she doesn’t understand the commercials. She has stopped shopping at Penney because it no longer sends her coupons.

“I haven’t really tried to educate myself” on the plan, said Rudd, 49. “But then I shouldn’t have to.”

The first sign that Penney’s new pricing plan wasn’t resonating with customers came last week when Macy’s CFO Karen Hoguet told analysts that sales were rising at her company’s stores that share malls with Penney stores.

Then, on Tuesday, J.C. Penney Co. reported that it lost $163 million, or 75 cents a share, in the three months ended April 28, compared with a profit of $64 million, or 28 cents a share, a year earlier.

Revenue dropped 20 percent to $3.15 billion for the quarter as customer traffic slipped 10 percent. Meanwhile, revenue at stores open at least a year ? a comparison used to measure a retailer’s health ? fell 18.9 percent. That’s much steeper than the 11.4 percent drop Wall Street was expecting.

Penney, based in Plano, Texas, also said it would discontinue its 20-cent-per-share quarterly dividend to save $175 million to fund its transformation.

Investors, who had sent Penney shares soaring 24 percent to about $43 after Johnson announced the pricing plan in late January, already had pushed Penney’s shares down around $34 since the strategy was rolled out in stors.

Then on Wednesday, a day after Penney reported the disappointing results, its stock fell 19.7 percent, or $6.57 to close at $26.75.

That’s the largest percentage drop since at least 1972, when FactSet’s daily stock price records begin. On Oct. 19, 1987, Penney’s shares slid 19.2 percent to $19.50.

David Abella, a portfolio manager at money-management firm Rochdale Investment Management, said the stock price drop may have created a buying opportunity. But he says he’s holding off because he finds Penney’s 20 percent drop in sales worrisome when many other retailers’ enjoyed much better results.

“This only reinforces my skeptical feeling,” said Abella, who added that he may buy Penney stock if he sees signs that shoppers are warming to the new pricing plan. “I haven’t ever seen anything that bad in a decent market.”

Associated Press

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It’s a ritual: we publish a review of a laptop with a 1366 x 768 display, the best-rated comment is from someone crying out for 1600 x 900 — nay, 4K resolution. If you’re in the latter camp, you’re going to be disappointed by even this article, but for those of you who’ve merely been craving something, anything crisper than mere HD, we have some hope: Samsung is mulling the idea of a 13-inch, PLS display with a 1920 x 1080 pixel count. Earlier today a company rep told a group of reporters that the PC division is considering a 1080p panel of that size, which would be unusual, to say the least. The outfit isn’t ready to make any promises, much less commit to an ETA, though we can’t say we’d be surprised if the company made such a display for its 13-inch laptops first — after all, for instance, some of its 13-inch panels make use of IPS-like PLS technology, whereas its 15-inch ones don’t yet. We’ll let you decide if that’s even necessary — both the 13- and 15-inch Series 9 already have 1600 x 900 resolution — but suffice to say, the company has a good track record of squeezing in extra pixels when other ultraportable makers don’t.

Samsung considering a 13-inch, 1080p, PLS panel, display snobs get their hopes up originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 16 May 2012 19:14:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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What can a fish tell us about human brain development? Researchers at Duke University Medical Center transplanted a set of human genes into a zebrafish and then used it to identify genes responsible for head size at birth.

Researchers at Duke University Medical Center transplanted a set of human genes into a zebrafish and then used it to identify genes responsible for head size at birth.

Head size in human babies is a feature that is related to autism, a condition that recent figures have shown to be more common than previously reported, 1 in 88 children in a March 2012 study. Head size is also a feature of other major neurological disorders, such as schizophrenia.

“In medical research, we need to dissect events in biology so we can understand the precise mechanisms that give rise to neurodevelopmental traits,” said senior author Nicholas Katsanis, Ph.D., Jean and George Brumley Jr., MD, Professor of Developmental Biology, and Professor of Pediatrics and Cell Biology. “We need expert scientists to work side by side with clinicians who see such anatomic and other problems in patients, if we are to effectively solve many of our medical problems.”

The study was published online in Nature journal on May 16.

Katsanis knew that a region on chromosome 16 was one of the largest genetic contributors to autism and schizophrenia, but a conversation at a European medical meeting pointed him to information that changes within that same region of the genome also were related to changes in a newborn’s head size.

The problem was difficult to address because the region had large deletions and duplications in DNA, which are the most common mutational mechanisms in humans. “Interpretation is harrowingly hard,” said Katsanis, who is also director of the Duke Center for Human Disease Modeling.

The reason is that a duplication of DNA or missing DNA usually involves several genes. “It is very difficult to go from ‘here is a region with many genes, sometimes over 50′ to ‘these are the genes that are driving this pathology,’” Katsanis said.

“There was a light bulb moment,” Katsanis said. “The area of the genome we were exploring gave rise to reciprocal (opposite) defects in terms of brain cell growth, so we realized that overexpressing a gene in question might give one phenotype ? a smaller head, while shutting down the same gene might yield the other, a larger head.”

The researchers transplanted a common duplication area of human chromosome 16 known to contain 29 genes into zebrafish embryos and then systematically turned up the activity of each transplanted human gene to find which might cause a small head (microcephaly) in the fish. They then suppressed the same gene set and asked whether any of them caused the reciprocal defect: larger heads (macrocephaly).

The researchers knew that deletion of the region that contained these 29 genes occurred in 1.7% of children with autism.

It took the team a few months to dissect such a “copy number variant” ? an alteration of the genome that results in an abnormal number of one or more sections of chromosomal DNA.

“Now we can go from a genetic finding that is dosage-sensitive and start asking reasonable questions about this gene as it pertains to neurocognitive traits, which is a big leap,” Katsanis said. Neurocognitive refers to the ability to think, concentrate, reason, remember, process information, learn, understand and speak.

Many human conditions have anatomical features that are also related to genetics, he said. “There are major limitations in studying autistic or schizophrenic behavior in zebrafish, but we can measure head size, jaw size, or facial abnormalities.”

The single gene in question, KCTD13, is responsible for driving head size in zebrafish by regulating the creation and destruction of new neurons (brain cells). This discovery let the team focus on the analogous gene in humans. “This gene contributes to autism cases, and probably is associated with schizophrenia and also childhood obesity,” Katsanis said.

Once the gene has been uncovered, researchers can examine the protein it produces. “Once you have the protein, you can start asking valuable functional questions and learning what the gene does in the animal or human,” Katsanis said.

Copy number variants, such as the ones this team found on chromosome 16, are now thought to be one of the most common sources of genetic mutations. Hundreds, if not thousands, of such chromosomal deletions and duplications have been found in patients with a broad range of clinical problems, particularly neurodevelopmental disorders.

“Now we may have an efficient tool for dissecting them, which gives us the ability to improve both diagnosis and understanding of disease mechanisms,” Katsanis said.

The current study suggests that KCTD13 is a major contributor to some cases of autism, but also points to the synergistic action of this gene with two other genes in the region, named MVP and MAPK3, Katsanis said.

###

Duke University Medical Center: http://www.dukemednews.org

Thanks to Duke University Medical Center for this article.

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Moving along a similar path to his previous untethered jailbreak for iOS 5.0, hacker pod2g has followed up announcements of an untethered jailbreak for the iPhone 4 and iPad 3 running iOS 5.1 with a quick demo video (embedded after the break) as evidence. The video shows a jailbroken iPad 3 that manages to stay that way even after a reboot, the key difference from the current tethered hack already available. There’s still no word on when the community at large may get a crack at the software, although tweets mention “stabilizing the payload” before taking a crack at the recently released iOS 5.1.1, and that the new Apple TV may not be able to come along for the ride.

Continue reading iOS 5.1 untethered jailbreak gets a video demo, not yet ready to meet the public

iOS 5.1 untethered jailbreak gets a video demo, not yet ready to meet the public originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 10 May 2012 21:43:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We saw a lot of things back at CES, and from the PC makers, it was mainly new Ultrabooks. Samsung, however, did present a pair of “regular” notebooks, and it looks like they’re just about to stretch their legs in the UK. The Series 5 550P is available in 15- and 17-inch varieties, sporting 1366 x 768 and 1600 x 900 displays respectively. Calling the shots will be quad-core Ivy Bridge Core i7 chips supported by 8GB of RAM. Graphics are dished up by a 2GB GeForce GT 650M, and there’s a Blu-ray optical drive plus capacity for up to 2TB of storage. Like the Series 7, sound is handled by integrated JBL speakers complete with “Max Bass Boost” subwoofer — crikey! Lower specification models will also be available (swapping the Blu-ray for DVD, and using shared graphics) when they hit UK stores this month.

Continue reading Samsung outs new Series 5 550P notebook in the UK, Ivy Bridge and numeric keypad onboard

Samsung outs new Series 5 550P notebook in the UK, Ivy Bridge and numeric keypad onboard originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 08 May 2012 16:57:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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