The Dow Jones industrial average moved between small gains and losses Friday morning. It was down 16 points at 15,066 as of noon Eastern Daylight Time. Other indexes rose slightly.

The Dow is up 0.6 percent for the week and 15 percent so far this year.

Prices for commodities including crude oil and gold fell sharply as the dollar continued to strengthen against other currencies, especially the Japanese yen.

Priceline.com and chipmaker Nvidia rose sharply after reporting higher earnings.

The Standard & Poor's 500 index was up a fraction of a point at 1,627.

The Nasdaq composite was up 12 points at 3,421.

LONDON (Reuters) - A panel of UK lawmakers will next week grill representatives from Google Inc and its auditor, Ernst & Young, following a Reuters report that highlighted inconsistencies in Google's statements about its UK activities.

The Public Accounts Committee (PAC) said on its website that the representatives would testify on May 16.

Google has attracted the ire of British lawmakers for the way it pays almost no income tax on billions of dollars of UK sales each year.

At an earlier hearing in November, Google's Northern Europe boss, Matt Brittin, said that all UK sales were conducted from Ireland and that no sales took place from Britain.

At a PAC hearing in January, John Dixon, head of tax policy at Ernst & Young in London, told lawmakers his firm checked to ensure a tax client's activities on the ground matched what was claimed in their accounts.

Last week, the committee's chairwoman, Margaret Hodge, said she planned to recall Google and Ernst & Young, after Reuters revealed that the Internet search giant had described its London offices on its website as a base for sales teams and advertised dozens of London-based sales vacancies.

Google declined comment on the scheduled hearing but referred to its comments last week before it received a formal invitation, in which it denied that Brittin had misled the PAC in November and said it would be happy to testify to the committee again to explain its position.

Ernst & Young said it welcomed the opportunity to help the committee's inquiry.

"We support improving certainty and transparency in the global tax system and compliance with it," it said in a statement.

Last week a spokeswoman said the auditor and tax adviser stood by Dixon's testimony and said it followed all audit rules.

(Editing by David Cowell and Kenneth Barry)

The attendees came to the first-ever Space Hacker Workshop on Saturday and Sunday (May 4 and 5) to learn about how they could build and fly experiments on a new generation of manned suborbital vehicles such as XCOR Aerospace's .

The event, which was sponsored by the Silicon Valley Space Center and Citizens in Space, attracted high-school and college students, university professors, space professionals, scientists, technology experts and others interested in this emerging field. []

New reusable vehicles slated to come online soon will provide affordable and repeated access to space for professional and amateur scientists and help to revolutionizeand science education, said Citizens in Space founder Ed Wright.

"With the suborbital vehicles being developed...there's going to be an opportunity to fly many thousands of small payloads on suborbital vehicles every year," Wright said.

Citizen space scientists

Citizens in Space is a program run by Wright's Texas-based organization, the U.S. Rocket Academy, which has purchased 10 flights aboard the two-seat Lynx just for research. Ten lucky citizen scientists will get to fly in the passenger seat of the vehicle and operate the experiments that they have designed and built. Five of those slots already have been filled.

So, just how cheap will it be to fly experiments in space? Wright said that while a typical tinymight cost between $3,000 and $5,000 to build and another $100,000 or more to launch into orbit, developing and flying scientific payloads aboard the Lynx will be many orders of magnitude cheaper.

"At the base level, you're going to have people who are able to build an experiment for $200 or less and have an opportunity to fly in space through programs such as Citizens in Space, and I think this is just going to change everything," Wright said.

"We may reach the point in five or 10 years where every high school science major will have the opportunity to build and fly a payload in space during the course of his academic career before he graduates, he added.

The development of suborbital vehicles such as the Lynx andis coming at a time when maker spaces are popping up all over the country. Wright said these joint work spaces are perfect places for people to build the types of do-it-yourself science experiments that Citizens in Space wants to fly.

Wright's academy is developing the Lynx Cub Payload Carrier, a unit that can hold up to a dozen small experiments in a space behind the pilot's seat. The carrier will give XCOR the ability to flyin the passenger's seat while also carrying scientific experiments as secondary payloads.

A seat on Lynx costs $95,000, while a ticket to fly on SpaceShipTwo which last week made its will set you back $200,000 at the moment. (Virgin Galactic founder Sir Richard Branson said recently that ticket prices would soon temporarily rise to $250,000.) []

A range of experiments

Four XCOR employees traveled 300 miles (500 kilometers) north from the town of Mojave, where they are building the first Lynx, to address the Space Hacker audience and answer questions.

Khaki Rodway, XCOR's director of payload sales and operations, gave an overview of Lynx's capabilities and a progress update on the assembly of the first vehicle, which could fly by the end of this year.

"We're doing it because there's lots of stuff to do," Rodway said of the emerging market for experiments.

During the two-day workshop, participants heard talks about the experiments that will be carried out in the microgravity environment and vacuum of space. These experiments will range across many different fields, including materials processing, fluid dynamics, life sciences, protein crystal growth and technology demonstrations.

NASA astronaut Yvonne Cagle talked about sending odd "water bears" into space. Water bears, also known as tardigrades, are tiny organisms that are virtually impervious to heat, radiation and vacuum conditions. Cagle believes that by studying water bears, scientists can learn a great deal about how to help humans adapt to space.

Jason Reimuller, president of the company Integrated Spaceflight Services, told the audience about his Polar Suborbital Science in the Upper Mesosphere (PoSSUM) campaign, which will use a Lynx to study the dynamics of clouds over the North Pole. The vehicle will operate out of a high-altitude spaceport in either Alaska or Sweden, Reimuller said.

Ryan Gillespie, an aerospace engineer from Sunnyvale, Calif., said he is interested in pursuing Citizens in Space's High Altitude Astrobiology Challenge, which is offering cash prizes of up to $10,000 for the development of a device that will collect micro-organisms living at the edge of space.

I'm not so much interested in the $10,000 it's more the fact that when you come up with anything, it needs a purpose," Gillespie said. "Here's something that actually has a purpose for mankind."

Driving technology forward

Richard Mains of Mains Associates, who works with the NASA Flight Opportunities Program that funds experiments on , said these new spaceships are driving technology development at a much faster rate than traditional NASA programs tend to do.

"I think what's actually going on here with these reusable suborbital launch vehicles is kind of a whole new paradigm where you're not putting a payload up onfor six months," Mains said. "And these vehicles aren't that big. But they are flying very often, So these payloads now have to be small, smart, autonomous very very easy to kind of activate and deactivate, reprogram, get data out of."

"I see all of that driving technology in a very, very interesting fashion," Mains added, mentioning the emergence of open-source platforms as another powerful driver. "So I'm very excited about what I've heard here."

Silicon Valley was a perfect location to hold the workshop given that it's at the leading edge of technology development, Mains said.

Wright said he was extremely pleased with the workshop, which sold all of its 95 tickets and had a waiting list on Saturday morning.

"I think it's gone very well," Wright said. "It's really been a great turnout. It's been very exciting for everyone here. The people from the NASA Flight Opportunities program were very excited about this. XCOR was very excited about this."

Wright says he hopes to conduct five or six additional workshops in cities across the country over the next year.

Follow us , or . Original article at .

Jackson, who has been a judge on the show since its start in 2002, made the announcement amid falling ratings and rampant rumors about the future makeup of the celebrity panel.

"Yo! Yo! Yo! To put all of the speculation to the rest, after 12 years of judging on American Idol I have decided it is time to leave after this season," Jackson told entertainment news outlet E! News.

"I am very proud of how we forever changed television and the music industry. It's been a life changing opportunity but I am looking forward to focusing on my company Dream Merchant 21 and other business ventures," the record producer said.

Entertainment website TheWrap.com reported this week that producers were considering a major shake-up of the panel after the end of the season on May 16.

Citing unidentified sources, TheWrap said singers Mariah Carey, Nicki Minaj and country artist Keith Urban, who were brought in this year in a bid to refresh the show, would all be replaced as judges for the 2014 season.

Fox television declined to comment on the report.

Ratings have slumped this season for "American Idol," which last year lost its eight-year crown as the most-watched show on U.S. television.

Fox is a unit of NewsCorp.

(Reporting By Jill Serjeant; Editing by Xavier Briand)

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Telling the parents of babies who spit up and cry frequently that their child has gastroesophageal reflux disease, or GERD, makes them more likely to want medicine - even if they're also told it isn't likely to help much, a new study suggests.

Most babies who spit up don't have an acid reflux problem, researchers said, just a not-quite-developed upper stomach valve.

Still, an increasing number of those kids are being labeled as having GERD - even though a definitive diagnosis normally requires an invasive test.

"Roughly 50 percent of babies during the first six months are spitting up enough to bother their parents," said Dr. William Carey from The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, who wrote a commentary published Monday with the new study.

"I never offered medication for a kid who was just spitting up and gaining weight well and happy," he told Reuters Health. "I could confidently tell the mother, Look, it's going to be a nuisance until about six months, and then it's gradually going to get better.' It's an irritating variation of normal."

For their study, Laura Scherer from the University of Missouri in Columbia and her colleagues handed out surveys to 175 parents with a hypothetical scenario: their one-month-old infant was spitting up and crying a lot.

The researchers asked parents what they would do if the doctor diagnosed their child with GERD versus if the condition wasn't labeled, as well as what they would do if the doctor told them the medication to treat the condition was ineffective - as research suggests it is - or didn't say anything about its efficacy.

Survey participants were more likely to want medication if their hypothetical infant was given a GERD diagnosis. Even when parents were told the medicine probably wouldn't work, they rated their interest in treatment at about 2.5 out of 5.

However, with no disease label and with information about the medicine's lack of efficacy, parents rated their desire to treat below 1.5 out of 5, the researchers reported in Pediatrics.

"It shows how these kinds of labels can influence how people respond to symptoms," Scherer told Reuters Health. "Words can make an otherwise normal process seem like something that requires medical intervention."

She said current guidelines say the case of an irritable infant who cries and spits up frequently should probably not be treated as GERD - but that if doctors rule everything else out, they can try a two-week course of acid-reducing medication.

That caveat could further confuse doctors and parents into thinking medicine is likely to help, Scherer said.

"It's really becoming pretty clear that GERD in infants is overdiagnosed and overtreated. One reason for this could be that doctors' use of this GERD label could unintentionally increase people's (desire) for medications," she said.

Carey compared what's happening with GERD symptoms to the rising number of very active kids being diagnosed with and treated for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).

"Parents need to know that there are some annoying or insignificant variations of normal which one really needs to just put up with and not treat as a disease," he said.

"Be darn sure that there is an abnormality before treating it as such."

SOURCE: http://bit.ly/jsoh2P Pediatrics, online April 1, 2013.

ARLINGTON, Va., May 6, 2013 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The Retail Industry Leaders Association (RILA) issued the following statement in response to an overwhelmingly bipartisan vote in the United States Senate to pass the Marketplace Fairness Act, legislation aimed at giving states the power if they so choose - to better enforce their sales tax laws and to level the playing field for Main Street merchants.

The legislation, sponsored by Senators Mike Enzi (R-WY), Richard Durbin (D-IL), Lamar Alexander (R-TN) and Heidi Heitkamp (D-ND), passed the Senate by a more than two to one margin.

"The Senate's overwhelmingly bipartisan passage of this legislation foreshadows the end of the special treatment of big online businesses at the expense of retailers on Main Street," said Bill Hughes, senior vice president for government affairs. "After such a resounding vote in the Senate, we look forward to a constructive debate in the House to level the playing field for all retailers this year."

Similar legislation in the U.S. House of Representatives introduced by Representatives Steve Womack (R-AR) and Jackie Speier (D-CA) has generated strong bipartisan support. It currently has over 60 House cosponsors.

"For too long the Main Street retailers that are an integral part of their communities have faced tax rules that put them at a disadvantage to their out of state, online-only competitors. The Senate has voted to ensure that the market, not government, determines winners and losers," said Hughes. "We are confident the House will reach the same conclusion."

The Marketplace Fairness Act was outlined in RILA's 2013 public policy agenda as one of the top priorities for the industry:

RILA is the trade association of the world's largest and most innovative retail companies. RILA members include more than 200 retailers, product manufacturers, and service suppliers, which together account for more than $1.5 trillion in annual sales, millions of American jobs and more than 100,000 stores, manufacturing facilities and distribution centers domestically and abroad.

SOURCE Retail Industry Leaders Association

[More from BGR: ]

However, there is still one area where Microsoft reigns supreme over its competitors: Gaming.

[More from BGR: ]

Both Windows-based PCs and the Xbox console remain the top platforms in the world for gaming andsuggests that it will be both a terrific gaming console andthat should give Microsoft a much-needed boost this holiday season.

Notice how I said almost everything, however. If the rumors are true that , it could throw the companys whole strategy into disarray.

If , its that gamers really dont like it when you force them to be online for single-player games, especially if server crashes make the games they bought unplayable for extended periods of time. To make matters worse, weve heard rumors that , which would be a truly obnoxious move that would further anger the consoles core base of customers.

To be clear, we have no firm confirmation yet on whether Microsoft really is planning to implement such a scheme on the next Xbox. Butindicate that the company has at least been batting the idea around ,and it has never denied rumors of an always-online Xbox despite multiple opportunities to do so. Whispers about an always-online Xbox have been around for months now and, given the grumbling theyve caused among Xbox fans, its reasonable to think that Microsoft might have quashed them by now if there were no truth to them.

So please, Microsoft, Im asking you now as both an Xbox fan and as someone who still loves using my PC for gaming: dont mess this up. I really want to buy a new Xbox when it comes out in December. But if you force me to be online to play single-player games Ive already shelled out $60 for and if you wipe out my ability to play used games, I will give the PlayStation 4 a very close look.

This article was

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Looking for contrived, useless add-ons? The Galaxy S IV is the device for you, says Mossberg: 

If you’re a nut for lists of new features, love Samsung or crave an even bigger display, the Galaxy S 4 may be for you. It’s a good phone, just not a great one.

Not even the geeks are quite sure that's what they want out of a phone, :

While our geek senses keep tingling at the thought of so many market-topping specs contained within the same chassis, we also aren't overjoyed, per se, with excitement. The design doesn't feel fresh, especially not next to the HTC One, but we can't deny that it's an improvement over the GS3.

is certain it's not what he wants:

At the end of the day, it’d be foolish to think that the Galaxy S4 isn’t a top-notch phone. Where specs, performance and software innovation are concerned, the company is clearly making strides. But in playing with this phone for a while, adjusting to the new features, trying to make the most of them, and sometimes failing miserably, I keep returning to the idea of “Keep it simple, stupid.”

If all the swiping and eye recognition stuff appeals to you, know that those things only work in Android's "crummy" browser, :

But all that business of waving your hand or moving your eyes to scroll while reading — it only works in the crummy Android browser. It does not work in Chrome, where I do all of my browsing. It doesn’t work in Google Reader or Flipboard or Instapaper or the Kindle app, where so much reading happens. Looking away from the screen doesn’t pause a video in YouTube, only in the Samsung video player.

If you can get past that, however, this phone has a lot to offer, :

None of this takes away from the performance of the Galaxy S 4, though. It's an extremely solid phone, and it's going to be hard to go back to the S III after a week with this one. It feels great to hold, it's comfortable to use throughout the day, and it takes much better photos than its predecessor. The aluminum ring on its chassis makes the handset look more modern than its predecessors. The display doesn't hurt either—it's really something to look at. Samsung definitely has another hit on its hands.

Although, it's build is a bit chintzy, :

As long as you don't mind a bunch of plastic, you'll be perfectly happy with the Galaxy S4. 

Ultimately, though, if you're in the market for an Android phone,  you consider the HTC One:

The Galaxy S4 is fast and impressive, but it's also noisy and complex. The One is refined, quiet, comfortable, beautiful, and above all simply pleasant. I love using that phone, in a way I haven't experienced with anything since the iPhone 5. That's why, when my contract is up in June, I'll probably be casting my lot with HTC instead of Samsung.

... as does Mossberg:

I urge readers looking for a new Android smartphone to carefully consider the more polished-looking, and quite capable, , rather than defaulting to the latest Samsung.

... as does :

And the S4 is still made of plastic — lightweight and grippy, but not as classy as the iPhone’s glass or the HTC One’s metal.

... as does Kovach:

But is it the best phone? No. You're still much better off with the iPhone 5 or the HTC One if you like Android.

:

I just wish Samsung had put that same attention into the design of the physical phone. The HTC One and the iPhone 5 are simply better-designed and crafted pieces of hardware.

So, yeah, if you're going to get a new Android phone, consider the HTC One. 

RELATED:

The increase is the result of the government last year lowering the threshold for lead poisoning, so now more children are considered at risk.

Too much lead can harm developing brains and can mean a lower IQ. Lead poisoning used to be a much larger concern in the United States, but has declined significantly as lead was removed from paint and gasoline and other sources.

The new number translates to about 1 in 38 young children. That estimate suggests a need for more testing and preventive measures, some experts said, but budget cuts last year eliminated federal grant funding for such programs.

Those cuts represent "an abandonment of children," said David Rosner, a Columbia University public health historian who writes books about lead poisoning.

"We've been acting like the problem was solved and thiswas a thing ofthe past," he added.

Lead can harm a child's brain, kidneys and other organs. High levels in the blood can cause coma, convulsions and death. Lower levels can reduce intelligence, impair hearing and behavior and cause other problems.

Most cases of lead poisoning are handled by tracking and removing the lead source, and monitoring the children to make sure lead levels stay down. A special treatment to remove lead and other heavy metals is used only for extremely high levels.

Often, children who get lead poisoning live in old homes that are dilapidated or under renovation. They pick up paint chips or dust and put it in their mouth. Other sources include soil contaminated by old leaded gasoline, dust from industrial worksites and tainted drinking water

Lead has been banned in household paint since 1978 and was gone from gasoline by the late 1980s.

After lowering the standard, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention went back and looked at old blood tests from 1,653 children under 6 to determine how many would have lead poisoning under the new definition.

About 3 percent of them or about 50 kids had blood lead levels higher than the new threshold of 5 micrograms of lead per deciliter of blood. Using that result, CDC officials calculated that an estimated 535,000 young children have lead poisoning.

A year ago, when the threshold was 10 micrograms, experts estimated that somewhere between 77,000 and 255,000 young kids had high levels of lead.

These estimates have focused on children younger than 6, who have been considered most at risk of neurological problems due to lead.

Overall, the new CDC study found lead counts were higher on average in children who were poor or African-American, said the CDC's Mary Jean Brown, an author of the study.

Those kids are more likely to live in old housing or in neighborhoods with greater exposure to lead, she added.

The good news: Even with the lower threshold, lead poisoning appears to still be declining. Years ago, some local health departments began tracking the number of kids with blood levels at 5 or greater, and they say those numbers have been dropping steadily.

However, it's likely that many children with lead poisoning have not been diagnosed. In the CDC study, elevated lead levels were discovered for a third of the children only when they were tested by researchers.

"When you look for it, you find it," Columbia's Rosner said.

Once lead poisoning is diagnosed, doctors often refer parents to local health departments to get their homes checked out to try to find the source of the problem. But as demand for investigations grows, there's less money to pay for them. Congress last year cut CDC lead program's budget from about $29 million to $2 million. That ended CDC grants to local health departments for their programs.

Detroit's lead program was all but eliminated because of the federal cut and state and local funding problems, said Bob Scott of Michigan's lead poisoning prevention program.

Other places are struggling to keep up with lead work at the same time they are cutting staff. The Cleveland area has been aggressive about lead poisoning prevention but the loss of CDC funding hurt those efforts.

For example, Cuyahoga County which includes Cleveland saw its staff for blood testing of children and public education drop from 2 1/2 positions to 1.

"It's unsustainable," said Terry Allan, the county's health commissioner.

____

Online:

CDC report: http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Over a quarter of babies brought to one Wisconsin hospital after severe physical abuse had a history of minor injuries, according to a new study whose authors suggest early detection may prevent later harm.

"In that group of definitely abused infants, 27.5 percent of them had that history of relatively minor injuries," said Dr. Lynn K. Sheets, the study's lead author from Children's Hospital of Wisconsin in Milwaukee.

"That should have and could have raised concerns about abuse, but for whatever reason did not," added Sheets, who is the hospital's medical director of child advocacy and protection services.

Previous studies had already found a link between minor injuries in babies too young to get around on their own and more serious abuse later on, according to the researchers. But no study looked at the number of abused babies who had a history of bruises.

For the new study, Sheets and her colleagues combined data on four groups of babies younger than 12 months old, who were evaluated for signs of abuse between March 2001 and October 2011 at the Children's Hospital of Wisconsin.

Two groups were watched over seven years, and definitely suffered abuse, according to the researchers. Those injuries included head trauma that's typically the result of shaking a baby.

Those groups were then compared to two other groups. One - followed for five years - was a group of babies that may or may not have suffered abuse. The other - followed for four years - was found to have not been abused.

Overall, 55 of the 200 babies who definitely suffered abuse had previous injuries observed by at least one parent. That compared to 8 of the 100 babies who may or may not have been abused, and none of the 101 babies who weren't abused.

The majority of bruises were on the babies' heads, followed by their arms and legs, stomachs and backs.

"If we recognize these, not only can we protect kids form serious injuries, but sometimes we can help families get the help they need to parent effectively without turning to abuse," said Dr. Andrea Asnes, an assistant professor of pediatrics at the Yale School of Medicine in New Haven, Connecticut.

"It's doesn't mean it's definitely abuse, but it warrants some serious looking," said Asnes, who was not involved with the new research. For example, doctors could use X-rays or CT scans to look for previous injuries, and refer to Child Protective Services if they suspect abuse.

'EVERYBODY NEEDS TO KNOW'

Sheets told Reuters Health everybody who is involved with a baby should know that bruises are not usually caused by normal handling, and questions and concerns should be raised if they're noticed.

"Not saying they're all abused, but everybody needs to know this if you're ever around a baby," she said.

According to the researchers, who published their findings in Pediatrics on Monday, 23 of the 55 babies with a history of bruises were reportedly seen by medical providers. But only some of those providers suspected abuse.

Asnes told Reuters Health some states already have laws that require doctors to call Child Protective Services if they suspect abuse.

"We have a lot of education to do with medical providers. Many medical providers will just see it as a bruise," said Sheets, who added that it may be the first sign of abuse.

Evaluating bruises and preventing severe child abuse later on could also lead to cost savings, write the researchers. Each case of child abuse, they write, is estimated to cost over $200,000 over a child's lifetime.

"This is really a hopeful message. This is an opportunity to prevent over a quarter or more serious abuse in infants. It's a huge opportunity. If we pay attention to these early sentinel injuries," said Sheets.

SOURCE: http://bit.ly/YS7Fj1 Pediatrics, online March 18, 2013.