text: Three centuries ago, Antoni van Leeuwenhoek made hundreds of simple microscopes. He experimented with at least three methods to make their tiny lenses but kept his techniques secret. Based on scholarly research, this video made by The Corning Museum of Glass demonstrates how van Leeuwenhoek might have made his lenses. Learn more in Revealing the Invisible: The History of Glass and the Microscope, on view April 23, 2016 through March 19, 2017.
  NEW YORK, July 20, 2016 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Greystone, a real estate lending, investment and advisory company, today announced it has provided a $7,500,000 Fannie Mae Delegated Underwriting and Servicing (DUS®) loan to refinance 134 units in an apartment community in Raleigh, NC. The loan, provided to Forest Edge Townhomes, LLC, was originated by Dan Sacks and Elie Gabay.
  The 10-year fixed rate loan for Forest Edge Townhomes includes a 30-year amortization. Forest Edge Townhomes is a fractured condominium property in which the borrower owns 134 of the 138 units.
  "The loan structure of this deal represents our tenacity to develop creative financing solutions within clients’ time constraints – this one being closed in less than a month," said Joe Mosley, Executive Managing Director and head of Agency lending at Greystone. “In addition, all of the units in this community have rents affordable to renters earning 80% or less of the area median income which helps meet Fannie Mae’s goal of providing workforce housing.”
  “Greystone’s expertise in Agency loans and their tenacity in executing beyond our expectation made this refinance one of our most satisfying finance experiences to date,” said Josh Lapides, Managing Member, Forest Edge Townhomes, LLC.
  As Twitter plunges after its earnings report, one analyst is cutting his price target on the stock as he draws a grim parallel between the social media outfit and a notoriously tattered tech company.
  Twitter is "the Yahoo of social media," Wedbush analyst Michael Pachter proclaimed in a Wednesday note, days after Verizon announced an acquisition of Yahoo's operating business for a fraction of what the internet pioneer was worth at its peak.
  "Management appears complacent about the status quo and unfocused on the lack of user growth," the analyst wrote. "Until Twitter is focused on attracting new users, driving increased use by its existing users, and demonstrating its value proposition to people who don't use the service, we expect it to grow very slowly."
  Even worse, "its service is too complicated and difficult to use for the average Internet user despite multiple changes."
  After a beat on earnings, a miss on revenue, weak guidance and flattish monthly active users, Pachter reduced his price target on the stock to $14 from $20. On Wednesday, Twitter fell below $16 per share.
  He wasn't the only analyst cutting expectations. Cantor Fitzgerald analyst Youssef Squali reduced his rating on the stock to hold from buy, and his price target to $18 from $23, based on his anticipation that it "reigniting growth is likely to take longer," as the company loses share to Facebook and to Alphabet's Google.
  SOLON, Ohio, Sept. 12, 2016 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Energy Focus, Inc. (NASDAQ:EFOI), a leader in LED lighting technologies, today announced the appointment of Wayne Steinhoff as its Chief Revenue Officer. Steinhoff, with extensive leadership experience in lighting from venture capital-funded LED lighting startups to business units totaling $660 million in annual sales, will be responsible for overseeing the company’s sales, business development and customer service operations. He will be an integral part of the team to spearhead the company’s entrance into additional LED lighting market segments, verticals and international markets.
  “We are thrilled to have Wayne join us at a time when LED lighting adoption in the enterprise market is accelerating and when our commercial sales are becoming a significant component of our total sales,” said James Tu, Executive Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer of Energy Focus. “Wayne is a highly accomplished and respected leader in the global LED lighting industry with a proven history in building world-class teams and pursuing absolute excellence for sales organizations. With Wayne’s expertise, experience and market knowledge, we look forward to strengthening sales, expanding geographic presence, and further elevating the company’s exceptional level of customer service.”
  Steinhoff forged his lighting career at Osram Sylvania. After progressing through a number of sales, marketing and strategic planning roles, he went on to become a member of the senior executive management team, where he held the positions of Global Vice President of Sales & Marketing – Precision Materials & Components Division, President of Osram Sylvania Canada, and Vice President & General Manager of three separate divisions – including the LED Lighting business. He then joined Fawoo LED Technology as North America President & CEO, followed by his appointment as President & CEO of Alternative Lighting Technologies. Most recently, Steinhoff was Principal at GPL Group, where he consulted primarily for LED lighting companies and financial firms that were investing in or acquiring LED lighting companies.
  “I am elated to join Energy Focus,” Steinhoff said. “The company’s outstanding team, industry-leading product portfolio, innovative approach to market, robust strategic plan, and commitment to extraordinary growth demonstrate that Energy Focus has the potential to become one of the most impactful companies in the world in energy efficiency, sustainability, and health and well-being. I very much look forward to contributing to achieving the company’s mission and its growth goals.”
  Steinhoff is a graduate of The Ohio State University with a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration, and of the Babson College Consortium for Executive Development program.
  Italy's government is ready to pump 15 billion euros into Monte dei Paschi di Siena and other ailing banks, sources said, as the country's third-largest lender pushes ahead with a private rescue plan that is widely expected to fail.
  The world's oldest bank has until Dec. 31 to raise 5 billion euros ($5.2 billion) in equity or face being wound down by the European Central Bank, potentially triggering a wider banking and political crisis in Italy.
  If needed, the government will pump 15 billion euros into the Siena-based lender and several other smaller banks to prevent that, two sources close to the matter said on Thursday.
  One source said unlisted regional banks Banca Popolare di Vicenza and Veneto Banca, which were rescued this year by a state-backed fund, would also get support from the state.
  The government would make the 15 billion euros available in a decree on Dec. 22, La Repubblica newspaper said on Thursday, adding that Banca Carige could also benefit.
  Italy's banking sector is saddled with 356 billion euros of bad loans, around a third of the euro zone's total and a legacy of the 2008-2009 global financial crisis when, unlike Spain or Ireland, Italy did not act to help its banks.
  Monte dei Paschi di Siena, advised by investment banks JPMorgan and Mediobanca, plans to raise equity to remove 28 billion euros in bad loans from its books.
  Italy's opposition 5-Star Movement has called for JPMorgan's fees to be voided if taxpayers have to come to the rescue.
  "We would have never done a deal like that with JPMorgan. In any case we would not pay the commissions (if the bank had to be nationalized," Alessio Villarosa, a 5-Star lawmaker, said.
  The JPMorgan-led plan calls for Monte dei Paschi to raise 5 billion euros in equity through a share sale and an offer for holders of its subordinated bonds to convert them into shares.
  Monte dei Paschi is in the process of renegotiating fees with JPMorgan and the other banks that will try to sell the bank's stock after they walked out of a deal to underwrite the share issue, sources have said. Back in October, its CEO Marco Morelli had said that commissions for the cash call would only be paid in case of success.
  Monte dei Paschi said on Thursday that 65 percent of the share sale would be reserved for institutional investors. It would also extend its debt-swap offer to include investors who hold 1 billion euros in hybrid securities known as "Fresh 2008".
  It also wants retail investors to convert their subordinated bond-holdings, totalling 2.1 billion euros, into shares. Italian market watchdog Consob approved the offer late on Thursday, a source close to the matter said, paving the way for it to start as early as on Friday.
  In a sign of doubts still surrounding the plan, Monte dei Paschi said it had set a range of one to 24.9 euros per share for the new equity. Even at 1 euro, the bank would be demanding a higher valuation than nearly all its domestic rivals.
  Another source close to the matter also said Qatar's sovereign wealth fund, which bankers have said could invest 1 billion euros in the bank, had yet to make up its mind.
  If Rome bails out the lender, European Union rules require that private investors share in its losses -- a politically dangerous condition for Italy's main ruling Democratic Party given early elections are looming next year.
  Hundreds of thousands of ordinary Italians have invested in shares and bonds of local banks. A bailout of four small banks last year hit thousands of small savers.
  Italy is in talks with the European Commission over ways to shield retail bondholders who would see their notes converted into shares in the event of a state bailout, sources have said.
  As in the case of the four rescued banks, the Commission would allow the government to spare small bondholders only if they can prove they were victims of mis-selling and did not understand the risk in their investment, one source said.
  Michael Arrington, whose influential TechCrunch blog covers Silicon Valley, has started a venture capital fund to invest in start-ups, including some that he and his staff write about.
  The $20 million CrunchFund is the latest example of Mr. Arrington’s casting aside one of traditional journalism’s cardinal rules — that reporters should avoid conflicts of interest by maintaining distance from the people, organizations and issues they cover — and raises questions about whether industry bloggers are journalists.
  Like most news providers, AOL, which reportedly paid $30 million to acquire TechCrunch last year, prohibits reporters at its media sites, including those at The Huffington Post, from investing in the companies they cover.
  But AOL has made an exception for Mr. Arrington, who has been the site’s editor. He will take a backseat role at TechCrunch, which is hiring a new managing editor. He will continue to report to Arianna Huffington, who runs AOL’s media properties.
  “TechCrunch is a different property and they have different standards,” Tim Armstrong, chief executive of AOL, said in an interview.
  “We have a traditional understanding of journalism with the exception of TechCrunch, which is different but is transparent about it.” Not only has AOL approved the fund, it is financing it. AOL invested about $10 million in the CrunchFund, which will operate separately from AOL Ventures, the venture capital fund that AOL brought back to life last year.
  Mr. Arrington said that his investments would never influence TechCrunch’s coverage, and that he would continue to disclose that he had invested in start-ups across the site, including on each post about the start-ups.
  The fund’s contract with its investors says that Mr. Arrington can continue to publish critical or negative posts or disclose confidential information about the investors or the companies in which they have invested.
  “I don’t claim to be a journalist,” Mr. Arrington said, though he breaks news and writes prolifically. “I hold myself to higher standards of transparency and disclosure.”
  He argues that his investments would produce less of a conflict of interest than the other conflicts that all journalists have as human beings, because their views are shaped by friendships, romances and personal opinions.
  “Friendships and marriage are far more potent than financial conflicts,” he said. “I firmly believe that the reason we are a popular site is because we have built reader trust, and the only way to build reader trust is not to trick them. That’s the most important thing to me.”
  The arrangement immediately raised ethical questions. “Journalists write with the principle of public illumination,” said Edward Wasserman, the Knight professor of journalism ethics at Washington and Lee University. “If it’s helping a group of investors make decisions or advancing one’s own portfolio, you’re not really in the journalism business. You’re in the private enrichment business.”
  Many of the top firms in venture capital, which Mr. Arrington also covers on TechCrunch — including Sequoia Capital, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Greylock Partners — have invested in Mr. Arrington’s fund. Accel, Benchmark Capital and Andreessen Horowitz have also invested.
  The CrunchFund will generally invest $25,000 to $500,000 in young start-ups. The fund, which is fully subscribed and not accepting new investors, will invest only alongside other venture capitalists, Mr. Arrington said. He will run the fund along with Patrick Gallagher, his college friend and an investor at VantagePoint Venture Partners.
  Mr. Arrington, a former Silicon Valley lawyer, started TechCrunch in 2005 and rapidly turned it into one of the most-read blogs in the tech world. It had 3.6 million visitors in July, according to comScore.
  Mr. Arrington is well-connected in Silicon Valley. He runs TechCrunch Disrupt, a business conference; provides entrepreneurs with advice, introductions to investors and sometimes a couch to sleep on; and counts venture capitalists as close friends.
  The line between blogging and investing had already been blurry for Mr. Arrington. On TechCrunch, he wrote the first article about Zaarly, for buying services and goods from people nearby, which was a boon for the start-up, said Bo Fishback, its founder. “Every time you get crunched,” he said, using slang for being covered on TechCrunch, “there’s a good bump in traffic.”
  Then Mr. Arrington introduced Mr. Fishback to Ron Conway, a prominent Silicon Valley investor, who gave $50,000 to Zaarly. Mr. Arrington eventually invested in Zaarly, too. In coverage of Zaarly, TechCrunch writers have noted that Mr. Arrington is an investor and they have written at least one negative post on the company.
  His network is what feeds TechCrunch’s scoops. It will also make him a savvy investor, his financiers said, because he can scout start-ups and introduce entrepreneurs to engineers and other investors. “His value is with his Rolodex,” said Mr. Conway, who contributed money to the CrunchFund.
  Reporting on tech companies is good experience for investing in them because reporters learn the right questions to ask, said Roelof Botha, a partner at Sequoia, which invested in the CrunchFund. Michael Moritz, Sequoia’s star investor, was formerly a journalist with Time Inc.
  Though rare, AOL’s exception to the rule for Mr. Arrington is not unprecedented. Other niche blogs, including the Motley Fool, which is about finance, and GigaOm, also about tech, allow their writers to invest in companies covered on the sites.
  Mr. Arrington has also invested in start-ups previously, though he stopped in 2009 because, he wrote at the time, it had become “a weak point that competitors and disgruntled entrepreneurs use to attack our credibility.”
  Readers have no way of knowing, for example, whether TechCrunch does not cover a company because Mr. Arrington has invested in a competitor. But Professor Wasserman said that in a changing media landscape, the insight from figures like Mr. Arrington might be worth the gamble.
  “Is the public on balance better off having access to this guy’s thinking, all things considered, even if he’s got his own agenda?” he asked. “If I were active in the market and this guy has a proven track record, then sure, I’d want to read it.”
  I need help with a macro. The macro runs automatically, imports a .txt file, then saves the worksheet with a new name.
  I need to make the macro delete itself, then resave the file under a new name. I don;t know if this is even possible, since it's still running. Can someone help me out with this?
  http://www.mrexcel.com/archive/VBA/15657.html notes you can fire such a macro from the command line. And pass parameters. As such you just need to improve your macro to work when the proper commandline is used.
  The other reply sounds like good info. Here is a macro that runs automatically, imports a .txt file and then saves itself as you requested. It also asks for a users input... but you can hardcode that if you like. You can put this code in a specific excel file or put in in your Personal.xls file. Hope this helps...
  Jedi Mind decides to change its name to Mind Technologies after LucasFilm sues the company for trademark infringement, and it removes all mention of Jedi from its offerings.
  The small software developer announced on Tuesday that it has changed its name to Mind Technologies. In a statement, the company said it decided to change its name "to avoid potential infringement of trademarks owned by LucasFilm."
  Mind Technologies has also redirected its former Web site, JediMindinc.com, to its new MindTechnologies.com.
  Mind Technologies' name was just one part of the issue LucasFilm had with the company. It also didn't like that it used "Jedi" in the name and descriptions of some of its products. In response, Mind Technologies has now removed all mention of Jedi from its offerings. It has also renamed the former Jedi Mouse to the Mind Mouse.
  Last week, LucasFilm filed a trademark infringement lawsuit against the former Jedi Mind, claiming that the company violated its trademark over any and all mentions of the Jedi Mind trick.
  LucasFilm has yet to say if it will drop its case against Mind Technologies, but it seems rather likely at this point that it will.
  Shaking up its U.S. organization, SAP will spotlight new customer relationship management products in an effort to surpass Siebel Systems as the largest CRM company.
  SAP will spotlight new customer relationship management products at its user conference in June as part of its effort to surpass Siebel Systems as the largest CRM company by next year, an SAP vice president said Wednesday.
  The German business-applications company plans to release a new version of its CRM applications in September and redouble its sales efforts in the U.S. market, said Carol Burch, who on Thursday was appointed SAP's senior vice president of global sales operations.
  Burch concedes that overtaking Siebel will be tough. Siebel commands nearly 45 percent of the multibillion-dollar CRM market, according to projections from banking group ABN AMRO. SAP is a distant second, with 16 percent of the market.
  "We will take the market next year," said Burch, who previously was senior vice president of SAP's global CRM business development. "It becomes a matter of time, but I'm sure it will happen."
  Also Thursday, SAP announced a shake-up of its U.S. organization, splitting the region in two and naming an acting chief executive to replace the existing CEO.
  SAP named the current chief executive of the Americas region, Wolfgang Kemna, as executive vice president, Global Initiatives--a new division set up to focus on faster-growing customer and supply-chain manufacturing software products. In addition, the company named its head of Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA), Leo Apotheker, as its new head of global sales.
  Apotheker, a 14-year SAP veteran, will also become the acting head of SAP's North American operations. SAP also said Les Hayman, president and CEO of the Asia-Pacific region, would become chairman of the EMEA region. Hans-Peter Klaey will assume the role of president of Asia-Pacific.
  The shake-up is the second time SAP has reorganized its U.S. operations in the last two years, an effort by the German software company to expand its market share in the region. Kemna had been named CEO of SAP America in April 2000, taking over from then-CEO Kevin McKay, who held the position for just a year.
  The rivalry between Siebel and SAP became particularly heated after a Siebel ad campaign in Europe, SAP's home turf, claimed that Siebel is the No. 1 CRM company among SAP customers. SAP took Siebel to court over the ads, and a German court ordered Siebel to stop running them last month.
  Burch said that the campaign was wrong because more than 1,500 companies purchased SAP's CRM applications, and that Siebel had no more than 400 customers that are also SAP customers, she believes. Tom Siebel, chief executive of Siebel Systems, maintains that the ads are absolute fact.
  The rancor between the companies erupts as overall sales of business applications, including the once high-flying CRM market, are in decline. At the same time, the market is growing more crowded, with Microsoft planning to release a CRM product by the end of the year.
  Goldman Sachs cut its earnings forecast Wednesday for Siebel, SAP and 24 other software companies, and predicted that corporate spending on business applications would remain stagnant this year. Shares of both SAP and Siebel fell on the news.
  SAP, with over $6 billion in revenue last year, introduced its first set of CRM products only two years ago, and has been playing catch-up to Siebel ever since. SAP's revenue from its CRM products last year totaled $412 million, compared with Siebel's $2.05 billion in revenue last year.
  "Siebel is a formidable competitor, and they've owned the market," said Burch. "Certainly they have competition now."
  SAP's license revenue from CRM products grew 8 percent year over year in the first quarter of this year. Siebel reported that its first-quarter license revenue declined 27 percent.
  "SAP will continue to do very well, gain market share and will have a much higher growth rate, but they are currently one-fourth of Siebel revenue," said Joanie Rufo, an analyst at AMR Research.
  To bolster its efforts, SAP is now working to expand the number of CRM sales experts on staff in the United States from 45 to all 275 U.S. sales executives, said Burch.
  The United States is the key to SAP's growth in the CRM market, said Burch. Her goal is to grow CRM sales as a percentage of overall license revenue to 20 percent this year, up from 17 percent last year. She expects 60 percent of new CRM license revenues to come from U.S. accounts this year.
  A new commercial version of Apache, the most popular Web server used on the Internet, is now shipping with performance enhancements that make it run significantly faster in secure mode.
  A new commercial version of Apache, the most popular Web server used on the Internet, is now shipping with performance enhancements that make it run significantly faster in secure mode than previous versions.
  Stronghold 3.1, developed by Community ConneXion with Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) security built in, is being marketed on the Net for $495. The latest version, which can be evaluated free for 30 days, is based on Apache 1.1.1.
  Stronghold 1.3 supports "session ID caching," which allows servers to process connections from users as much as 800 percent faster in limited performance tests.
  "With session ID caching, the SSL protocol is not noticeably slower than not using the encryption protocol," said Sameer Parekh, president of Community ConneXion, a two-year-old firm with six employees. "There is no excuse not to encrypt everything."
  Parekh describes Stronghold, which runs on various versions of the Unix operating system, as the first commercial version of Apache SSL. A Windows NT version is in the works.
  Parekh's first customers were primarily Internet service providers, but lately the firm has seen more corporate interest in using Stronghold for intranets or for sharing certain information with partners, two uses where security is important.
  Because Stronghold is based on Apache, a large number of third-party modules to provide new functions are available for the server. Those include modules for Perl and CGI scripts and database connectivity.
  Stronghold provides technical support and has simplified certain aspects of Apache Group's technology. Parekh is also a member of the Apache Group.
  Other new features include more authentication of users, which assures that the right people can see sensitive corporate data, and a new "status" feature that lets Webmasters monitor who's using their Web site in real time. Stronghold's source code is also available with the product.
  According to the Netcraft server survey, Apache Web servers are the most popular on the Internet, with a 35.68 percent market share. Stronghold, for example, has 1.43 percent compared to Netscape's 14.62 percent and Microsoft's 5.49 percent.
  The back of the Blu Life Play sports an eye-catching electric-blue hue. The phone also comes in pink, grey, white, and yellow. Located on the back as well is the 8MP camera.
  You'll find that the Blu Life Play's camera app snaps pictures quickly, and it comes with plenty of features and settings.
  Don't expect a slick keyboard on the Blu Life Play. Text entry is very basic without even Google gesture typing.
  The Blu Life Play has a tiny speaker on its back left corner which is easily muffled when the phone is resting right-side-up on a flat surface.
  Rare among U.S. smartphones, the Blu Life Play has two SIM card slots (a standard and mini). There's a microSD card slot as well, plus a removable battery.