Confirmed: Couch Potatoes Have Lower Sperm Counts

Men, here's another reason to work up a sweat: It boosts your sperm count.

According to new research, couch potatoes who watch lots of TV have fewer sperm than men who exercise moderately or vigorously each week.

Sperm count is a measure of semen quality, which has mysteriously declined in U.S. men in recent decades. Low sperm count is linked to infertility as well as testicular cancer, prostate cancer, and cardiovascular problems later in life.

(Related: "Deep-Voiced Men Have Lower Sperm Counts, Study Says.")

That's why scientists have been searching for ways that men can improve their sperm—including changing daily behaviors.

"We know little about how lifestyle may impact semen quality," said study leader Audrey Jane Gaskins, a doctoral student in nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health.

Her discovery that two changeable behaviors—exercise and TV watching—"could have a big impact on sperm count is pretty exciting," she said.

"Impressive" Sperm Finds

For the study, Gaskins and colleagues asked 189 young men, mostly college students from the University of Rochester in New York, to fill out questionnaires on their physical activity, diet, stress, and other lifestyle factors.

Each man then provided a semen sample in a medical clinic. (See "Sperm Recognize 'Brothers,' Team Up for Speed.")

The results showed that the men who reported exercising more than 15 hours a week had 73 percent higher sperm counts than men who exercised fewer than 5 hours a week. And men who watched more than 20 hours of TV had 44 percent lower sperm counts than men who watched little to no TV.

These are "pretty impressive differences," said Gaskins, whose study appeared February 4 in the British Journal of Sports Medicine.

The team also ruled out smoking and being overweight—two clinical causes of low sperm counts—as contributing factors among participants in its study.

Why couch potatoes produce less sperm is unknown, although there are two theories, Gaskins said. One is that exercise produces more antioxidant enzymes that can prevent a natural process called oxidative stress from damaging cell membranes in the body. This damage can disrupt the creation of new sperm cells. (Find out how a man produces 1,500 sperm a second.)

The other reason is somewhat controversial: That when men watch TV, their scrotums get squished against their bodies, making that region hotter and possibly preventing new sperm from being made.

Some research has shown that sperm production slows if the scrotum temperature rises 1.8 to 3.6ºF (1 to 2ºC) above normal body temperature, Gaskins said. But other studies have also shown that warmer scrotums have no bearing on sperm creation.

Get Moving, Men

But the study also raises some more questions about sperm count, experts noted.

Oddly, the sedentary subjects' sperm didn't show any changes in their physical structures or in how well they swam—two soft indicators of sperm health, noted Phillip Mucksavage, a urologist at Pennsylvania Hospital in Philadelphia who was not involved in the study. (See "Sperm Tracked in 3-D-A First.")

Though there are fewer of them, "the sperm that are there still look good."

Mucksavage added that the study's results would have been stronger if the scientists had found other sedentary activities—such as sitting at a computer or reading a book—had the same affect on sperm count as did watching TV.

What's more, said T. Mike Hsieh, a urologist at the University of California, San Diego, the study doesn't have any implications for fertility, one of the main reasons men are concerned about sperm count.

That's because one semen sample is not enough to determine fertility. That requires a more thorough analysis, including multiple semen samples and blood work, said Hsieh, who wasn't involved in the study.

It's not like if you "stop watching TV you'd go from infertile to fertile," he said.

But all the experts agreed on one thing: you should get active if you aren't already.

Said Hsieh: "I would use this as a piece of evidence to motivate my patients to get off the couch and start working out."

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Galaxy May Be Full of 'Second Earths'

You may look out on a starry night and get a lonely feeling, but astronomers now say our Milky Way galaxy may be thick with planets much like Earth -- perhaps 4.5 billion of them, according to the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

Astronomers looked at data from NASA's Kepler space telescope in orbit, and conclude that 6 percent of the red dwarf stars in the Milky Way probably have Earth-like, habitable planets. That's a lot by space standards, and since red dwarfs are very common -- they make up three out of four stars in our part of the galaxy -- we may have a lot more neighbors than we thought.

The nearest of them, astronomers said today, could be 13 light-years away -- not exactly commuting distance, since a light-year is six trillion miles, but a lot closer than most yellow stars like Earth's sun.

Video: Are We Alone? Kepler's Mission

David A. Aguilar/Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics

"We thought we would have to search vast distances to find an Earth-like planet. Now we realize another Earth is probably in our own backyard, waiting to be spotted," said Courtney Dressing, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center, in announcing the findings today. The results will be published in The Astrophysical Journal.

David Charbonneau, a co-author, said, "We now know the rate of occurrence of habitable planets around the most common stars in our galaxy. That rate implies that it will be significantly easier to search for life beyond the solar system than we previously thought."

Red dwarfs are older, smaller and dimmer than our sun, but a planet orbiting close to one could be sufficiently warmed to have liquid water. Dressing and her colleagues cited three possible planets that were spotted by Kepler, which was launched in 2009. One is 90 percent as large as Earth, and orbits its red sun in just 20 of our days.

There is no saying what such a world would actually be like; the Kepler probe can only show whether distant stars have objects periodically passing in front of them. But based on that, scientists can do some math and estimate the mass and orbit of these possible planets. So far, Kepler has spotted more than 2,700 of them in the small patch of sky it has been watching.

There are estimated to be 200 to 400 billion stars in the Milky Way -- which is probably a pretty average galaxy. So the new estimate implies a universe with tremendous numbers of Earth-like planets, far beyond our ability to count.

Pictures: Final Frontier: Images From the Distant Universe

Could they be friendly to life? There's no way to know yet, but space scientists say that if you have the right ingredients -- a planet the right size, temperatures that allow for liquid water, organic molecules and so forth -- and the chances may be good, even on a planet that is very different from ours.

"You don't need an Earth clone to have life," said Dressing.

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Today on New Scientist: 5 February 2013

Engineering light: Pull an image from nowhere

A new generation of lenses could bring us better lighting, anti-forgery technology and novel movie projectors

Baby boomers' health worse than their parents

Americans who were born in the wake of the second world war have poorer health than the previous generation at the same age

New 17-million-digit monster is largest known prime

A distributed computing project called GIMPS has found a record-breaking prime number, the first for four years

Cellular signals used to make national rainfall map

The slight weakening of microwave signals caused by reflections off raindrops can be exploited to keep tabs on precipitation

NASA spy telescopes won't be looking at Earth

A Mars orbiter and an exoplanet photographer are among proposals being presented today for how to use two second-hand spy satellites that NASA's been given

China gets the blame for media hacking spree

The big US newspapers and Twitter all revealed last week that they were hacked - and many were quick to blame China. But where's the proof?

Nobel-winning US energy secretary steps down

Steven Chu laid the groundwork for government-backed renewable energy projects - his successor must make a better case for them

Sleep and dreaming: Where do our minds go at night?

We are beginning to understand how our brains shape our dreams, and why they contain such an eerie mixture of the familiar and the bizarre

Beating heart of a quantum time machine exposed

This super-accurate timekeeper is an optical atomic clock and its tick is governed by a single ion of the element strontium

A life spent fighting fair about the roots of violence

Despite the fierce conflicts experienced living among anthropologists, science steals the show in Napoleon Chagnon's autobiography Noble Savages

Challenge unscientific thinking, whatever its source

Science may lean to the left, but that's no reason to give progressives who reject it a "free pass"

Need an organ? Just print some stem cells in 3D

Printing blobs of human embryonic stem cells could allow us to grow organs without scaffolds

Ice-age art hints at birth of modern mind

An exhibition of ice-age art at London's British Museum shows astonishing and enigmatic creativity

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Dell unveils private equity buyout worth US$24.4b

NEW YORK: Dell unveiled plans to go private Tuesday in a $24.4 billion deal giving founder Michael Dell a chance to reshape the former number one PC maker away from the spotlight of Wall Street.

"I believe this transaction will open an exciting new chapter for Dell, our customers and team members," Michael Dell said in unveiling the deal with equity investment firm Silver Lake, and backed by a $2 billion loan from Microsoft.

The company said it had signed "a definitive" agreement to give shareholders $13.65 per share in cash -- a premium of 25 percent over Dell's closing share price on January 11, before reports of the deal circulated.

The move, which would delist the company from stock markets, could ease some pressure on Dell, which is cash-rich but has seen profits slump, as it tries to reduce dependence on the slumping market for personal computers.

The plan is subject to several conditions, including a vote of unaffiliated stockholders.

It calls for a "go shop" period to allow shareholders to seek a better offer.

The company founder said Dell has made progress in its turnaround strategy "but we recognize that it will still take more time, investment and patience, and I believe our efforts will be better supported by partnering with Silver Lake in our shared vision."

"I am committed to this journey and I have put a substantial amount of my own capital at risk together with Silver Lake," he added.

Under terms of the deal, Michael Dell, who currently owns some 14 percent of Dell's common shares, would remain chairman and chief executive and boost his stake with "a substantial additional cash investment," a company statement said.

Additional cash for the deal will come from Silver Lake, a major tech investment group, and MSD Capital, a fund created to manage Michael Dell's investments.

The plan also calls for a $2 billion loan from Microsoft, rollover of existing debt, and financing committed by Bank of America-Merrill Lynch, Barclays, Credit Suisse and RBC Capital Markets.

Analysts have said the deal may give the company a chance to regain some footing in a market in which smartphones and tablets are overtaking laptop and desktop computers.

"Michael has been trying to turn Dell into a supplier of enterprise solutions for a long time," said Roger Kay, analyst with Endpoint Technologies.

"He has pleaded with Wall Street to give him time."

Kay told AFP that going private would make a transition easier by avoiding the spotlight of "ugly results," which could come from scaling back the PC business.

"The commodity PC business has been suffering," Kay said.

"Dell may probably keep the higher margin consumer lines, but maybe look at rest of the portfolio."

Kay added that Microsoft's participation in the deal suggests that Dell would remain in PCs and the Windows-based ecosystem.

Deutsche Bank's Chris Whitmore in a research note this week that Dell "would be free to execute his turnaround without the scrutiny of the public market" with "flexibility to do what he sees fit in order to drive long-term value."

The analyst added that Dell "could get more aggressive" in its enterprise software and cloud services, to make the company less dependent on PCs.

The Texas-based computer maker, which Dell started in his college dormitory room, once topped a market capitalization of $100 billion as the world's biggest PC producer.

Dell is now the number three global PC maker, behind Hewlett-Packard and Lenovo, according to the latest report from market tracker IDC, showing Dell's market share of 10.6 percent in the fourth quarter.

Rival HP said in a statement that Dell "has a very tough road ahead" with "an extended period of uncertainty and transition that will not be good for its customers," adding that HP "plans to take full advantage of that opportunity."

Microsoft's participation further clouds the role of the Windows software maker, which has begun its own hardware efforts with the Surface tablet.

Microsoft said in a statement it "is committed to the long-term success of the entire PC ecosystem and invests heavily in a variety of ways to build that ecosystem for the future."

-AFP/ac

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Where were you when the lights went out?

CBS News was inside the NFL operations booth when the lights went out.

Where was I when the lights went out?

I was at my post for the game in the CBS operations center inside the Superdome, sitting next to our head of NFL sales and our director of operations. As with every Super Bowl, we stayed in constant communication with the production truck to make sure all the commercials and promo spots played as scheduled. There are formats, rules, and procedures, and our job is to oversee them. We are there for quality control, and usually it all goes right.

Nothing prepared us for what we heard over the director's intercom: "The lights just went out in the stadium! Standby!"

Then we lost power in our area and the TVs went out. We did not know what was on the air -- or not on the air.

Did you ever see your life flash before your eyes? Childhood. School. Friends. The '60s (nice!). Marriage. Kids. Ice cream. That was it.

So many questions ran through my head: What was happening? Why? What would this mean? How long until it's fixed? What if it's not fixed? Are we safe? What happens to the commercials? And importantly: how does this affect CBS?

I left the trailer and headed inside the stadium tunnel; there was confusion, tech people running, bewilderment. But ultimately, and most importantly, there was calm.

It seemed that people were thinking, "What can I do, and how can I help?" And it showed.

I went back into our control room and we were on the air, reporting from a field camera that had power. I later learned that we had never gone off the air. The cause of the power outage is still unknown. But in the end, we had two football games separated by a mystery drama -- just what CBS does best!

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Life Found Deep Under Antarctic Ice For First Time?

For the first time, scientists believe they have collected life-forms from deep under the Antarctic ice.

Last week, a team found and collected microbes in a lake hidden under more than a half-mile of ice. (Related: "Race Is On to Find Life Under Antarctic Ice.")

Among other things, the discovery may shed light on what lies under the icy moons of Jupiter and Saturn.

The newfound life-forms have little connection to life on the earth's surface and many apparently survive by "eating rocks," team member Brent Christner said in an interview from the U.S. McMurdo Station, after spending several weeks working at a remote field site at Lake Whillans.

That may explain how life on other celestial objects—such as on the moons of Jupiter and Saturn—survive in the absence of carbon.

"The conditions faced by organisms in Lake Whillans are quite parallel to what we think it would be like on those icy moons," Christner said.

"What we found tells us a lot about extreme life on Earth, and also how similar life might make a living beyond Earth."

Making a Living in Ice

A 50-member U.S. team broke through to the 20-square-mile (50-square-kilometer) subglacial lake on January 28, and had two days of 24-hour sunlight to bring up samples before the borehole began to close. A day of reaming the hole was followed by two more days of sample collection.

The scientists are now returning with a four-day haul of lake water, lake bottom sediments, and hundreds of dishes of living organisms that are being cultured for intensive study in the United States.

An early task will be to make sure the newfound microbes were not introduced while drilling through the ice into the lake, which involved a hot-water drilling technique designed to greatly reduce or eliminate any contamination that might come from other kerosene-based drilling technology, Christner said.

Christner said that a commonly used dye was added to the water to illuminate the DNA of the microscopic organisms, and a substantial green glow told scientists that microbes were indeed present. Many of the organisms are likely chemolithotrophs, which rely on inorganic compounds of iron, sulfur, and other elements for nourishment.

Montana State's John Priscu, chief biologist of the Whillans Ice Stream Subglacial Access Research Drilling (WISSARD) program, said lab work at the drill site determined that microbial cells were present—and that they were alive. (Take an Antarctic quiz.)

"I believe it is safe to say that subglacial lake beneath the Whillans Ice Stream supports a microbial assemblage that is growing within this dark and cold habitat" of 31 degrees Fahrenheit (-0.5 Celsius), he wrote in an email.

DNA sequencing in the U.S. "will tell us who they are and, together with other experiments, tell us how they make a living."

Hidden Lakes

The U.S. team is one of three digging into what is now known to be a vast system of lakes and streams deep below the surface of Antarctica. (See "Chain of Cascading Lakes Discovered Under Antarctica.")

A British team attempting to drill into much deeper Lake Ellsworth had to return home in December because of equipment failure, but a Russian team is also at work now retrieving a core of water from Lake Vostok.

With much fanfare, the Lake Vostok core was pulled up last year from more than 2.5 miles (4 kilometers) below the frigid surface. Vostok is much deeper and larger than any other Antarctic lake, and both it and Ellsworth lie under much colder ice and are believed to have less deep subsurface water flowing in and out than does Whillans.

The existence of subglacial lakes and streams in Antarctica is a relatively new discovery, and the size of this wet world under the ice has only been grasped in recent years. (See Antarctic pictures by National Geographic readers.)

Helen Fricker, a glaciologist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and a principal investigator of the Whillans team, first described Lake Whillans in 2007.

Using satellite data, she and her colleagues discovered a periodic rising and falling of the ice surface above the Whillans Ice Stream between 2003 and 2006, and concluded that a lake was likely underneath.

The dynamics of Antarctic ice has taken on a much greater significance in the era of global warming, since some 90 percent of Earth's fresh water sits on the continent.

Although the lakes themselves are not affected by warming, how they interact with the region's ice is important to predicting the future behavior of the ice sheets.

For instance, understanding whether the ice is moving more quickly toward the surrounding ocean is a key goal of the WISSARD project, which is part of a larger U.S. National Science Foundation project to understand the ice movements, glaciers, and biology of the ice sheet of West Antarctica.

More Work to Be Done

For Christner, a specialist in Antarctic biology at Louisiana State University, the work has only just begun. (Also see "Pictures: 'Extreme' Antarctic Science Revealed.")

Two labs were brought to the Whillans site by a caravan of trucks from McMurdo: One to perform a quick analysis of the lake water, and the other to examine sediment.

Christner's team is charged with culturing samples in dishes so they can be studied more extensively later. He said some of the microbe species, including bacteria and archaea, may be unique, but many may well be found elsewhere—at great ocean depths and deep underground.

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Sierra's Family Selling Photos to Cover Funeral, Kids

The family of Sarai Sierra, an amateur New York photographer slain while on a trip to Turkey, put her photos up for sale today and quickly sold enough photographs to pay forher funeral, the woman's brother said today.

The photos remain on sale and the profits will now be going to her two young sons, the family said.

Sierra, 33, was found bludgeoned to death near a highway in Istanbul on Saturday. Her iPhone and iPad, the tools she used to share her photos with her thousands of Instagram followers were reportedly missing.

The Staten Island mother of two traveled to Turkey alone on Jan. 7 after a friend had to cancel. It was Sierra's first overseas trip, and she kept in contact with her family the entire time, they said, sharing stories of her journey and posting photos online.

"Sarai's passion for photography and love for capturing the beauty we see in culture, architecture and scenery was her reason for traveling to Istanbul," her brother, David Jimenez, wrote on a website set up to sell his sister's photography.

Among the photos for sale are Istanbul sunsets, and shots of Sierra's beloved New York City.

Courtesy Sarai Sierra's family

New Clues in Death of Missing American Mother Watch Video

Sarai Sierra's Body Found: Missing New York Mom Found in Turkey Watch Video

Body Found in Search for Missing Mother in Turkey Watch Video

By this afternoon, Jimenez put out another message saying, "Hey Instacanvas, Thank you for all the support in purchasing Sarai's pictures. Quick update, all expenses for Sarai's funeral have been paid for! From here on out any picture of hers that you purchase will NOT be going towards her funeral. All funds will be going to her children. Thank you for your support. David"

Sierra had been scheduled to arrive home at Newark Liberty International Airport on Jan. 22. When her husband, Steven Sierra, called the airline, he was told his wife never boarded the flight from Istanbul.

Steven Sierra and Jimenez traveled to Istanbul to aid in the search.

An intense two week search for for Sarai Sierra ended when her battered body was found.

An autopsy was completed Sunday, but results aren't expected for three months. Turkish officials however said Sierra was killed by at least one fatal blow to her head.

A casket holding the Staten Island mother was taken to a Istanbul church Monday where it remains as Sierra's family makes arrangements to bring her home.

Turkish police hope DNA samples from 21 people being questioned in the case will be key to finding the perpetrators, state media reported. A motive is not yet clear.

"They're still investigating so they might think it might be a robbery, but they're not sure," said Betsy Jimenez, Sierra's mother, said Monday.

The family also faces the heartbreaking task of telling Sierra's two sons, ages 11 and 9, that their mother is dead.

The boys have been under the impression that their father has gone to Turkey to bring their mother home - alive.

"It's going to be the hardest thing he's ever going to have to do in his life," said Rep. Michael Grimm, (R-NY) who added that the Staten Island family isn't sure when Steven Sierra will be able to bring his wife's body home.

ABC News' Josh Haskell contributed to this report.

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Ice-age art hints at birth of modern mind

Sumit Paul-Choudhury, editor

Figurines from the Don river valley (Images: Kirstin Jennings)

The world’s oldest portrait, the world’s first fully carved sculpture, the world's oldest ceramic figure, the world’s earliest puppet - there’s no shortage of superlatives in the new exhibition of art from the ice age at the British Museum in London

But focus too closely on the exhibits’ record-breaking ages alone, and you might miss the broader point: these beautiful objects are the earliest evidence we have of humans who seem to have had minds like ours.

Consider, for example, the "lion man" found in 1939 in south-west Germany’s Stadel cave (pictured above). As the name suggests, this statue, standing 30 centimetres tall, harmoniously combines human and leonine features: the head is unmistakeably a lion’s, while the body and lower limbs are more human.

This is clearly the product of artistic creativity rather than a naturalistic drawing from life - suggesting that whoever carved it some 40,000 years ago had the capacity to express their imagination, as well as to replicate what they saw around them.

The temptation to speculate about what symbolic meaning the lion man might have had is, of course, irresistible. It was clearly valuable, taking around 400 hours and enormous skill to carve from a single piece of mammoth ivory.

The exhibition also includes a second, much smaller, feline figure found in another cave nearby, pointing to the idea that such imaginative objects might have cultural significance, perhaps as ritual objects within a shamanic belief system, rather than being isolated art objects.

Given what we know of modern traditions, that would make sense - but there is no hard evidence that anything resembling those traditions existed in Europe during the ice age.

Almost every object on show invites similarly thought-provoking consideration. Thumb-sized figurines from settlements along Russia's Don river (top) seem to present a woman's perception of her own pregnant body in an age before mirrors: no face, bowed head, the shelf of the bosom, the protrusion of the hips and buttock muscles and the swell of the belly. Were they carved by the women themselves, perhaps as protective talismans for themselves or their unborn children? And if so, what are we to make of those that were apparently deliberately destroyed subsequently?

Only a few of the animal models found at the Czech site of Dolní Věstonice are intact. The rest had shattered into thousands of clay fragments when they were heated while still wet. This must also have been deliberate: was the dramatic shattering part of a rite?

A tiny relief of a human figure with upraised arms invites interpretation as a celebrant or worshipper. Was he or she participating in a ceremony to promote social cohesion during tough times - perhaps to the accompaniment of music played on instruments such as the flute displayed nearby, which is precisely carved from a vulture's wing-bone?

Such interpretations deserve a healthy dose of caution, of course. The note accompanying an elegantly carved water bird (perhaps a cormorant) found near the smaller lion man drily reads: "This sculpture may be a spiritual symbol connecting the upper, middle and lower worlds of the cosmos reached by a bird that flies in the sky, moves on land and dives through water. Alternatively, it may be an image of a small meal and a bag of feathers."

In the total absence of documentary evidence, there is no way of telling which is correct: archaeological material might help clarify the utilitarian perspective, but it is far less helpful when it comes to discovering any symbolic value.

In any case, there is very little archaeological evidence on display at the British Museum. Curator Jill Cook says she was keen to avoid exhausting visitors with copious background material about the evolutionary and environmental contexts in which these objects were made.

Humans were capable of complex behaviour long before they reached Europe - as demonstrated by discoveries such as the 100,000-year old "artist's workshop" in South Africa's Blombos cave - but Cook thinks the explosion of art among Europeans 40,000 years ago may reflect changing social needs during the ice age.

When Homo sapiens first arrived in Europe some 45,000 years ago, "the living was initially probably reasonably easy", explains Cook. They would have found temperatures only about 5 °C lower than they are now, she says, and grassy prairies would have been well stocked with bison. As the human population grew, they would have had to find new ways of building, socialising and organising themselves.

“And as it turns desperately cold, around 40,000 years ago, suddenly we have all this art," she says.

That may have reflected the need to communicate and develop ideas - a need pressing enough for people to spend hundreds of hours creating objects that generally seem to have had little quotidian function.

"This is all about planning and preconceiving and organising and collaborating and compromising," suggests Cook, "and that is something art and music helps us do."

The dazzling array of objects on display, spanning tens of thousands of years, anticipate practically every modern artistic tradition. The first portrait, dating back 26,000 years, includes closely modelled details of its female subject's unusual physiognomy, perhaps the result of an injury or illness.

But nearby is an extraordinary figure of similar age whose facial features are utterly abstract, resembling a visor with a double slit in it.

Another (above) has a body whose angular patterns anticipate Cubism by some 23,000 years: Picasso kept two copies of it in his studio. Elsewhere, there are doll-like models of women with stylised faces, and female forms streamlined into little more than slender, strategically curved lines.

Representations of animals, too, come in all forms, from incredibly realistic illustrations scratched onto stone or ivory, to elegantly minimal sculptures; there are even carvings designed to create the illusion of movement when viewed from different angles or rotated (above) - a form of prehistoric animation.

The masterpieces in the latter part of the show include - and sometimes combine - both precisely observed, superbly rendered naturalism, and more abstract work that is still beautiful, but much harder to interpret.

Carved mammoth tusks

"The brain likes to tease us," says Cook. "We don't just represent things with great realism and naturalism, we like to break things down into patterns. That sparks your imagination, and makes you curious and questioning.

“What’s so spectacular about the modern brain, and the mind that it powers, is that it doesn't just make everything simple, it pushes us to new ideas and new thoughts."

After tens of thousands of years, the objects displayed in this extraordinary exhibition still have the power to do just that.

Ice Age Art: Arrival of the modern mind runs at the British Museum from 7 February 2013

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Romney son Tagg rules out US Senate run

WASHINGTON: Defeated US Republican White House candidate Mitt Romney's son Tagg ruled out running for Senate on Monday after speculation that he might jump in to seek a newly open Massachusetts seat.

"I have been humbled by the outreach I received this weekend encouraging me to become a candidate for the US Senate," said Tagg Romney, in a statement issued after reports that he was preparing a run.

"I love my home state and admit it would be an honour to represent the citizens of our great Commonwealth. However, I am currently committed to my business and to spending as much time as I can with my wife and children."

"The timing is not right for me," he said, a comment that left open the possibility of a future run.

Tagg Romney is Mitt Romney's oldest son and runs a private equity firm.

He had not said he was running in the special June election to fill the seat vacated by newly-confirmed Secretary of State John Kerry, but The Boston Herald had earlier said it "has learned" he was considering a run.

The 42-year-old, a fixture on his father's failed 2012 campaign to oust President Barack Obama, would have been a plausible choice to mount a run this year in Massachusetts, where the elder Romney had been a popular governor.

Republicans are scrambling to find a viable challenger after former senator Scott Brown, who lost his high-profile re-election bid in November to consumer protection advocate Elizabeth Warren, announced he would not run.

William Weld, another popular Republican governor in Massachusetts, has also reportedly opted out of the race, leaving Democrats the strong favourites.

The Herald reported at the weekend that Republican heavyweights were pushing for either Tagg or his mother Ann Romney, who had a star turn on the Republican convention stage during her husband's campaign, to run for the seat.

But a family friend and advisor was quoted as saying that Ann Romney, who has never run for public office, was unlikely to take the plunge.

Democrats are rallying around Congressman Ed Markey, although he could face a primary challenge from fellow Congressman Stephen Lynch.

- AFP/jc

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Report: Twitter buys social TV analytics company BlueFin Labs

A graphic used on Blue Fin Labs' Web site to illustrate its report on which Super Bowl commercials worked the best, and why.

(Credit:
Blue Fin Labs)

Twitter has reportedly acquired BlueFin Labs, which generates social TV analytics, in a deal which is said to be the social networking giant's biggest-ever.

According to Business Insider, Twitter has closed a deal to buy BlueFin, a company that specializes in helping media companies understand how people use social media in conjunction with their TV watching.

As Business Insider wrote, "Twitter's move into social TV makes a lot of sense. It hired a Head of TV last fall and there's a strong correlation between people watching shows and tweeting about them. Just look at last night's Super Bowl. With the help of a lengthy blackout, it was the most social event to ever air."

On its Web site, BlueFin is currently advertising its report on last night's Super Bowl. "On advertising's biggest day, which commercials succeeded in driving the social conversation and which fizzled? Our detailed report analyzes social chatter for Super Bowl spots: the winners, losers...and why."

Certainly, having the inside scoop on such information would help Twitter as it attempts to become more of a media company, and as it tries to bolster its advertising revenue by working hand-in-hand with brands and with TV networks. BlueFin has aimed to become a leader in the space by offering top-tier analysis of how "brands, agencies, and TV networks can tap into viewer commentary about shows and commercials to power insights, ad sales, and media buys."

Twitter did not respond to request for comment by CNET.

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