31 July 2012 Last updated at 02:34 ET

China's 16-year-old swimming star Ye Shiwen has denied taking performance-enhancing drugs after smashing a world record at the London Olympics.

She spoke out after a leading US coach described her performance in the 400m individual medley as "disturbing".

Ms Ye swam the 400m individual medley seconds faster than she ever had before and - on the last 50m - faster than the winner of the men's event.

There is no evidence against her and all medal winners are drug-tested.

On Monday, Ye Shiwen took at least five seconds off her personal best to break the world record by more than a second and win the gold medal in the individual medley.

In the last 50m she swam faster than US star Ryan Lochte in the men's event.

Commentators were stunned, including the BBC's Clare Balding who said questions would be asked about the swimmer's performance.

American coach John Leonard, executive director of the World Swimming Coaches Association, said her performance was "unbelievable" and "disturbing".

"History in our sport will tell you that every time we see something, and I will put quotation marks around this, unbelievable, history shows us that it turns out later on there was doping involved," he told the UK's Guardian newspaper.

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China swimming star denies doping

PALO ALTO, CA--(Marketwire -07/30/12)- HP (HPQ) today announced an all-solid state drive (SSD) configuration for HP 3PAR P10000 Storage to improve organizations' application performance while reducing operational costs and IT complexity.

Organizations with massive cloud and virtualized environments are turning to SSDs to address application performance gaps and improve infrastructure efficiency. However, integrating SSDs in legacy IT environments can be challenging and costly. Limitations on the number of SSDs per array can force clients to buy multiple systems, which in turn increases physical footprint, power usage and cooling expenses.

In addition, administrators are often required to move data manually between storage tiers to optimize service levels. This extremely time-intensive process increases data-center maintenance requirements, which can eliminate the performance and cost benefits that SSDs deliver.

The new all-SSD configuration for HP 3PAR P10000 Storage eliminates these issues with a single tier of solid state storage while also delivering the same industry-leading(1) performance as the existing HP 3PAR P10000. By supporting up to 512 SSDs per array, the all-SSD HP 3PAR system reduces equipment costs, data-center footprint and energy expenses. Client cost per input/output operations per second is reduced by 70 percent, and cost per kilowatt hour is cut by more than 80 percent, making all-SSD HP 3PAR P10000 Storage ideal for performance-driven applications.(2)

HP 3PAR P10000 systems also allow clients to combine SSDs with traditional Fibre Channel drives and deploy HP 3PAR Adaptive Optimization software to achieve autonomic storage tiering. Adaptive Optimization distributes data to the right storage tier at the right time, reducing data-center management costs and maximizing system performance.

"Before our move to HP 3PAR Adaptive Optimization Software with solid state, service levels were being compromised and substantial time was spent moving between tiers reactively," said Ken Kirchoff, director, Unix Systems and Storage, Priceline. "Now that data is automatically tiered, our total cost of ownership has dramatically improved, and our staff has more freedom to concentrate on strategic growth opportunities."

Seamless server-to-storage SSD integration improves performance, reduces costOnly HP Converged Infrastructure integrates SSDs seamlessly across servers and storage, allowing clients to improve application performance while reducing operational complexity and cost.

The new HP Smart Cache for the HP ProLiant Generation 8 (Gen8) servers will soon be available with advanced functionality that utilizes SSDs for caching to accelerate workload performance. The solution will use HP Smart Analytics technology to intelligently assign frequently accessed "hot data" to high-performance SSD drives. By providing workload-aware intelligence to optimize system operations, this "smart caching" capability helps clients achieve six times higher performance for transactional workloads(3) as well as 50 percent more performance for video-streaming applications, compared to previous generations.(4)

HP also is extending the functionality of HP Smart Cache within HP ProLiant Gen8 servers to a converged solution with HP 3PAR Storage solutions. This collaborative-caching capability will autonomically copy data in real time from the HP 3PAR Storage arrays to the HP Smart Array SSD cache on the HP ProLiant Gen8 server. This innovative capability enables clients to improve performance while reducing costs and latency, resulting in more agility when responding to service-level demands.

"While SSDs deliver critical performance for cloud and virtualized workloads, legacy infrastructures fail to maximize the technology's return on investment by requiring intensive data-tiering administration," said David Scott, senior vice president and general manager, Storage Division, HP. "The ability to intelligently automate data mobility between HP ProLiant servers and HP 3PAR systems within array tiers fully actualizes SSD performance and efficiency so clients can focus more time growing the business instead of managing the back office."

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HP Boosts Application Performance With HP 3PAR Solid State Technology

You are here : Bernama News

July 30, 2012 12:07 PM

OLYMPIC: Chef-De-Mission Praises Performances Of Shooting And Fencing Athletes

LONDON, July 30 (Bernama) -- Malaysia's chef-de-mission to the 30th Olympic Games here, Tun Ahmad Sarji Abdul Hamid said although Malaysia are still chasing their first gold medal, the performance of several athletes who had competed in the final events of the Games had shown their personal best achievements.

He said it was still too early to evaluate the actual performance of the contingent as the games officially had only entered its third day today (Monday), and out of the five final events where Malaysian athletes were in action so far, two had shown some improvement.

"The two final events participated by Malaysian athletes, namely shooting and fencing, had shown better personal achievements," he told Bernama, here today.

Ahmad Sarji said the solitary national woman shooter, Nur Suryani Mohd Taibi succeeded in placing herself among 34 of the top 56 world shooters in the Women's 10m Air Rifle.

"This will raise her world ranking and prepare herself for subsequent championships," he said.

-- BERNAMA

We provide (subscription-based) news coverage in our Newswire service.

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OLYMPIC: Chef-De-Mission Praises Performances Of Shooting And Fencing Athletes

If you've always had a bank account, it's hard to imagine life without writing a check, hitting the ATM or swiping a debit card at the grocery store.

But for more than a million Californians, life without a bank account is the norm. They're known as the "unbanked": those who don't own a traditional bank account, either checking or savings.

Instead, they typically stash their cash at home and often rely on high-cost services that provide payday loans or check-cashing.

For the past several years, the state's "Bank on California" program has been working to change that, offering free or low-cost checking accounts at banks and credit unions to those who normally wouldn't qualify. Recently, Golden 1, the state's largest credit union, launched a similar program to aid the unbanked.

"Without a bank account, everything is more difficult: paying rent, your utilities " said Alana Golden, spokeswoman for the state Department of Financial Institutions, which oversees the Bank on California program.

Since December 2008, more than 214,000 free or low-cost "Bank On" accounts have been opened in California. In addition, the program conducted more than 2,000 financial education workshops for low- and moderate-income families.

"The hope is they'll open a checking account to pay their bills, but also to start saving," Golden added. "It's an important step in becoming financially independent."

Estimates vary, but in a 2009 study, the FDIC said more than 1 million California households are unbanked. Nationally, it pegged about 9 million households with 17.1 million adults as unbanked. Statistically, they are younger, less educated and lower-income families.

Since first launched as a pilot project in San Francisco in 2006, the Bank on California program has grown to eight communities statewide. More than 30 banks participate, including Bank of America, Bank of the West, Wells Fargo, and SAFE and Schools Financial credit unions.

Golden said the Department of Financial Institutions is actively looking for more financial partners in rural areas, as well as major metropolitan regions like San Diego. Each of the eight programs has a coalition of financial partners, nonprofits and local government agencies that offer the starter bank accounts, as well as financial education workshops.

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Personal Finance: New help for the 'unbanked'

BALTIMORE -- The Ravens were hoping Bryant McKinnie would show up for the start of training camp slimmed down and in better shape.

Instead, the troubled left tackle didnt show up at all and its unclear when or if he will. Given little choice, the Ravens placed McKinnie on the reserve/did not report list after he didnt show up for Thursdays first full-squad practice of training camp.

His absence cast his future with the Ravens very much in doubt and added even more questions for an offensive line that is in flux as camp opens.

He contacted us through a representative. Hes dealing with an issue right now, Ravens coach John Harbaugh said. I dont really want to speak for him on that. Ill just let him speak for himself on that when the time comes.

Asked if McKinnies absence could be a long-term issue, Harbaugh said, In all honesty, I really dont know. We should know more here soon.

However, Harbaugh did not sound like a coach expecting an imminent return. He said Michael Oher, who started every game at right tackle last season, is the left tackle until further notice, and there will be a training camp competition at right tackle.

My point is we have to find a right tackle, Harbaugh said.

McKinnie and defensive tackle Haloti Ngata were the only two unexpected non-participants in Thursdays official start of training camp, which played out in front of a couple of hundred fans at the Under Armour Performance Center in Owings Mills and in stifling temperatures that hovered around 100 degrees.

Ngata, who talked during the mid-June mandatory minicamp about playing at a higher weight this season after he felt like he wore down last year, tweaked his hamstring and was unable to pass the teams conditioning test. He was subsequently placed on the physically unable to perform list and will likely be out a little while.

Were going to take it slow and make sure hes OK, Harbaugh said.

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Bryant McKinnie a no-show for personal matter; no timetable for arrival

When Danny Boyle was asked to produce the opening ceremony of the London Olympics, he thought about his father.

My dad was a mad Olympics fan. I mean seriously lunatic, the acclaimed British film director told reporters Friday afternoon. Boyle recalled how his father, Frank, sat up late into the night, watching Games coverage from Mexico and other far off places. He introduced me to the Olympics, he said adding that Frank would have turned 91 Friday. Sadly he died about 18 months ago, he added. He didnt quite make it.

Explore Canada's summer Olympic medals, 1900 to today

For Boyle the opening ceremonies represent a personal take on Britain, its history, culture and contributions to the world. And it is a varied rendition, covering everything from Shakespeare and the industrial revolution to Peter Pan, James Bond, pop music and even a tribute to the National Health Service.

We are almost unique in having universal health care, he explained.

Its very near and deer to peoples hearts.

Boyle said he created the show he wanted and didnt cater to the whims of politicians or organizers. You do it for yourselves, he said noting that he started planning the performance with three other people two years ago. I did it because Ive never done anything like this before. You want to keep testing yourself.

The program is certainly ambitious. It includes 10 separate scenes, 40 farm animals, 7,500 volunteer performers and 70,00 pixels for each member of the audience to wave and create special effects. Paul McCartney will sing Hey Jude, JK Rowling will read from Peter Pan and actor Rowan Atkinson will offer a skit. Theres also appearances by Mary Poppins, Cruella de Vil and Captain Hook.

Boyle said he knows not everyone will enjoy it and some will find parts genuinely baffling. He also had to cut out one sequence involving a bicycle routine because the show ran too long. And he had dust ups with Olympic organizers over camera positions and other artistic issues.

But he said his intention over all was to create a portrait of Britain as a proud, but modest country.

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Opening ceremony represent Boyle’s personal take on Britain

When Danny Boyle was asked to produce the opening ceremonies of the London Olympics, he thought about his father.

My dad was a mad Olympics fan. I mean seriously lunatic, the acclaimed British film director told reporters Friday afternoon. Boyle recalled how his father, Frank, sat up late into the night, watching Games coverage from Mexico and other far off places. He introduced me to the Olympics, he said adding that Frank would have turned 91 Friday. Sadly he died about 18 months ago, he added. He didnt quite make it.

For Boyle the opening ceremonies represent a personal take on Britain, its history, culture and contributions to the world. And it is a varied rendition, covering everything from Shakespeare and the industrial revolution to Peter Pan, James Bond, pop music and even a tribute to the National Health Service.

We are almost unique in having universal health care, he explained.

Its very near and deer to peoples hearts.

Boyle said he created the show he wanted and didnt cater to the whims of politicians or organizers. You do it for yourselves, he said noting that he started planning the performance with three other people two years ago. I did it because Ive never done anything like this before. You want to keep testing yourself.

The program is certainly ambitious. It includes 10 separate scenes, 40 farm animals, 7,500 volunteer performers and 70,00 pixels for each member of the audience to wave and create special effects. Paul McCartney will sing Hey Jude, JK Rowling will read from Peter Pan and actor Rowan Atkinson will offer a skit. Theres also appearances by Mary Poppins, Cruella de Vil and Captain Hook.

Boyle said he knows not everyone will enjoy it and some will find parts genuinely baffling. He also had to cut out one sequence involving a bicycle routine because the show ran too long. And he had dust ups with Olympic organizers over camera positions and other artistic issues.

But he said his intention over all was to create a portrait of Britain as a proud, but modest country.

I hope the show feels gracious. I hope it doesnt feel bombastic or messaging, Boyle said. We have no agenda other than [to say] actually something that was true, values that we feel are true...Theres no bull in it.

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Opening ceremonies represent Boyle’s personal take on Britain

By Neha Chamaria - July 27, 2012 | Tickers: DD, HUN, MON, SYT, DOW | 0 Comments

Neha is a member of The Motley Fool Blog Network -- entries represent the personal opinions of our bloggers and are not formally edited.

Top line misses, but bottom line beats. Yearly guidance range is re-affirmed, but forecast is skewed toward the lower end. That sums up DuPonts (NYSE: DD) second-quarter results, not for me but for everyone else. For I could actually see a handful of positives in its second quarter, enough to tell me this ones not worth a miss.

Green rules DuPonts agriculture divisions strong second-quarter performance didnt come as a surprise. The quarter coincided with the peak planting season in the United States, and the fact that corn plantations were at record highs this year isnt news anymore. Peer Monsantos (NYSE: MON) stellar numbers last month had already given us an idea of what to expect from DuPont. As was the case with the seed king, robust sale of corn and soybean seeds and traits drove DuPonts ag divisions sales up by 13% from the year-ago period.

It would be wrong not to give credit to the huge array of new products DuPont had launched in March through its Pioneer Hi-Bred seed business to tap the upcoming planting season. In fact, an amazing 75% of the higher pricing DuPont can demand from the market is driven by the innovation its products offera fact that speaks volumes of the high quality of its products.

Unearthing opportunities DuPonts innovation will continue to be visible in its products lined up for the next few years. Some, like its pest-resistant soybean varieties to be out by 2014, are specially targeted at high-potential markets like Brazil. Most players, including Monsanto and Syngenta (NYSE: SYT) are betting big on the Latin American market, with DuPont expecting strong business from the region in the second half of the year.

Another market with immense opportunities is Africa. DuPont is stepping into it in a big way by partnering with seed company Pannar Seeda move that must be giving sleepless nights to Syngenta, which dominates the market and was even eying Pannar to strengthen its foothold.

In fact, new products together with the emerging markets growth will be keys to DuPonts ag business performance moving on. Sales from these markets were up 11% during the second quarter, and look set to climb higher as DuPont innovates and expands.

The whites catching up Sales in DuPonts performance coatings and performance chemicals divisions didnt really grow as I had thought, but remained almost flat as high prices offset low volumes. Higher prices have almost become a norm with titanium dioxide producers since last year when they aggressively started passing-on-the-buck to consumers. Yet, the good news is the sequential improvement in volumes, thanks to stability in end markets like automotive. Momentum is in fact picking up fast in markets like Asia, particularly China (yes, DuPont feels the Chinese governments stimulus to boost consumption is working for the TiO2 market). These factors, along with shrinking industry TiO2 inventory levels, signal high chances of a bounce back.

Peer Huntsman (NYSE: HUN), which is about to report its second-quarter numbers next week, is also expecting better TiO2 volumes for the quarter. The company didnt even rule out further price increases for the rest of the year. Interestingly, while many are predicting the TiO2 market to remain soft for long, the worlds largest TiO2 producer remains bullish. Not only does DuPont expect volumes to grow sequentially in the forthcoming quarters, it even expects its performance chemicals division margins for the full year to come in at the same level as last year (i.e., 25% as pre-tax operating income margin).

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Why Disappointing Numbers Have Re-affirmed my Positive View on this Stock

Research shows business owners are increasingly relaxed about employees doing personal tasks during the workday. Here's why that's the right approach.

shutterstock images

You pay your workers, obviously, to work. Sure, you understand that they also have busy lives outside of the office and, just like you, struggle to fit in all the errands, emails, trips to the bank, and kids' activities that clutter their calendars.

But if you catch members of your team doing personal chores during the workday, you're still going to be annoyed, right?

Wrong, argues a recent post on Knowledge@Wharton Today, which recommends business owners and managers make a conscious decision to chill out about their employees doing personal chores during company time. Why? First off, you'll be in increasingly good company, according to recent research. The post explains:

The study of 1,000 employees and employers from the United States, Great Britain, Germany, France, and Ireland found that many managers are taking an increasingly relaxed attitude toward how workers structure their days, in part because the bosses assume--correctly, according to the study results--that many are putting in time outside the office to finish work tasks.

Smart bosses, in other words, are starting to grasp that work is something you do, not a place or a set of hours. "In the pre-Internet world and in the manufacturing-based economy, your physical presence was really the thing that mattered," explains Wharton management professor Stewart Friedman in the post. "Performance management systems were created around the idea of time as the essential metric," he says. But time plays a different role these days in many businesses.

If you run a retail business, say, where physical presence is key, employees actually being available the entire workday is obviously essential. But if your business is about information, and productivity is measured in the output of the mind not the quantity of effort or amount of personal touch, then it's less of an issue if you're employees are slipping off to the bank in the middle of the afternoon.

As The Chief Happiness Officer blog has explained, the idea of productivity being a direct function of time is a relic of an industrial age when the longer you stood on the production line, the more widgets you'd produce. In the information economy, where inspiration is more valuable, new rules of productivity apply, according to the post. These dictate that longer hours don't always equal greater results, output varies wildly over time (and that's OK), and happiness is good for productivity.

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Employees Doing Personal Chores at Work? Let Them!

IT director Karriem Shakoor noticed a trend among high-performing athletes: They all had personal performance coaches. It made him wonder: Should he get a coach to up his professional game?

His own boss supported the idea, and his research showed that many CEOs hire executive coaches. So Shakoor, who has worked in IT since 1991, hired a coach to help him take his leadership skills to the next level.

"I felt that in order for me to really assess my strengths and weaknesses, I had to engage with a coach who could step back to observe me, provide feedback and then help me tweak my performance," says Shakoor, who, as the senior director of IT shared services at Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan, manages eight direct reports and just over 300 full-time employees.

Shakoor started meeting with coach John Baldoni in 2009 for scheduled face-to-face meetings, interspersed with phone calls to discuss additional topics as they arose. A coach, he says, is different from a mentor or a boss. "What he really is, is a person who has an understanding of my strengths and weaknesses and how they translate into my style as a leader."

The initial goal was for Shakoor to improve his executive presence and executive style. Even though a six-month assessment showed he had indeed improved in those areas, based on feedback from company executives, Shakoor continues to meet with Baldoni for an hour every month or two as he aims to earn a CIO position in the future.

Shakoor can't point to any one work situation where coaching helped him score rather than strike out; rather, it's his overall ability to assess and successfully navigate various management challenges that's improved. "As an executive in a very fast-paced, demanding field, I view myself as an athlete, and having a coach who keeps me well-tuned as a corporate athlete has been a great benefit," he says.

Could a coach do the same for you?

Typically, IT professionals haven't engaged such services at the same pace as other senior managers, say coaches, CIOs and other corporate leaders. But that is changing as tech executives -- and their companies -- see that IT can gain as much from coaching as the others in the C suite. In fact, IT leaders may even benefit more, particularly those who rise through the ranks on the strength of their technical expertise rather than their management experience.

The good news: As CIO demand for coaching services increases, they're able to engage coaches who have experience in either IT management or coaching IT leaders, further bringing value to the service, says Suzanne Fairlie, the founder and president of national executive staffing firm ProSearch in Ambler, Pa., who frequently recommends coaching to CIOs.

Who gets coached, and when

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IT careers: Do you need an executive coach?