A Carnegie Mellon University scientist who has developed methods of analyzing complex biological patterns has received a major award from the International Society of Computational Biology.

Ziv Bar-Joseph, an associate professor at CMU, is getting the Overton Prize from the society, which promotes the use of computers to unravel how genes, proteins and cells work. He will give a keynote address in July at the International Conference on Intelligent Systems for Molecular Biology in Long Beach, Calif.

Mr.

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Facebook will start requiring people to switch to a new profile format known as Timeline, making photos, links and personal musings from the past much easier to find.

Timeline is essentially a scrapbook of your whole life on Facebook. By contrast, Facebooks traditional profile page is more of a snapshot of you today.

Although some people have already voluntarily switched to Timeline, Facebook hadnt made that mandatory. Beginning Tuesday, Facebook is telling some users that they have seven days to clean up their profiles before Timeline gets automatically activated. Facebook is rolling out the requirement to others over the next few weeks.

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For a few hours Friday, it looked like the First Family might be seriously looking at purchasing the newly renovated Katharine Hepburn estate in Connecticut on the Fenwick waterfront.

At least that was the rumor reported Friday by Hearst Newspapers, picking up on an earlier report of speculation by venerable gossip columnist Liz Smith — and it was soon bouncing around Twitter.

But the White House moved swiftly to squelch the speculation with a short statement: “It’s not true.”

Democratic political consultant and author William Curry said Friday he would have been surprised if the rumor turned out to be fact. I

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Chinese gold and copper miner Zijin Mining Group Co Ltd said on Tuesday that it would acquire 45 percent of Gold Eagle Mining Investment Ltd for 1.44 billion yuan ($226.7 million).

Gold Eagle owns a 100 percent interest in Tibet Tian Yuan Minerals Exploration Limited, the owner of the Tibet Xietongmen gold and copper project. - Reuters

Fed proposes new, tougher rules for big banks

The Federal Reserve on Tuesday said the largest U.S. banks and financial companies should hold extra cash on their balance sheets to cushion against financial crises. The proposal will affect banks with over $50 billion in assets. There are even stricter rules for companies with more than $500 billion, such as JPMorgan Chase & Co., Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Citigroup Inc. Fed officials didn’t give a timeline but said the final rules will be released only after the regulators have a chance to incorporate comments from the public. The Fed is accepting comments for 90 days.

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Jersey Central Power & Light should immediately review its communications strategies for weather events, and should start communicating with its customers not just through its website, but using social media, state staffers told the Board of Public Utilities yesterday in a report.

The BPU staff report is the first action by the state to come out of a series of hearings held to investigate utility responses after Hurricane Irene.

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When Ann Marie Virgo was laid off from her parking attendant job, she didn’t bother to apply for unemployment right away.

After all, her two sons had summer jobs in West Hartford, one at a movie theater and one at a grocery store, and she figured she could go to work with one of them.

But their employers didn’t respond, nor did McDonald’s, Wendy’s or the many stores where she’s put in applications for cashier jobs.

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