After years of cancer treatments failed, Stacy Erholtz was out of options. So she let doctors at the Mayo Clinic infect her with a genetically engineered version of the measles virus.

As the virus spread through her blood stream it specifically attacked her cancer cells, shrinking tumors, putting her cancer in remission, and triggering a slew of headlines saying that measles cured her cancer and claiming that her cancer was "killed" or "destroyed."

Yes, it's an amazing story. It showed cancer can be treated with a virus but calling it a "cure for cancer" goes way too far. Nowhere in the study do the researchers claim that the woman's cancer was "cured."

Why the measles virus?

The idea isn't a new one. For decades, scientists have been researching how they could take viruses that target specific cells and use them to fight cancer by modifying them so they only infect and kill the rapidly spreading tumor cells and leave the healthy ones alone, according to Justin Kline, a blood cancer specialist at the University of Chicago, who was not involved in the research.

As the researchers point out in the study, this technique has been effective in mice and in treating tumors in one location, like a melanoma on the skin. But it hadn't been shown to work with a cancer that has spread, like multiple myeloma — which targets blood plasma cells in bone marrow in locations throughout the body.

The modified virus that the researchers chose — which is routinely administered to humans as a measles vaccine — was selected because it targets cells with a specific protein that is common in these myeloma cancer cells but not in healthy cells. That means the virus targets the cancer without making the person sick.

The two women in this study were both "at risk for imminent death" after other cancer treatments failed. That alone is a reason to try an experimental therapy, but there was another important factor at play: their own immune systems.

These women weren't immune to the measles virus like most of us are. That's lucky because doctors believe immunity would prevent the virus from gaining a foothold in the patient's system. The study doesn't say why they weren't immune — either they were never vaccinated in the first place or they might have lost their immunity due to cancer or a side effect of treatments they'd undergone, according to Kline. He says that people who receive chemo are usually later vaccinated again, since they can lose past immunity.

If this didn't cure cancer, what did it do?

Both women were given the "highest feasible dose" of the virus, 100,000 times more than doses used in previous trials, according to an editorial in the journal by John Bell of the Centre for Innovative Cancer Research.

Previously they've found that the amount of virus needs to be very high to overcome the body's immune system threshold and start an infection powerful enough to take on the cancerous cells.

During the intravenous dosing, Stacy Erholtz, who has been the subject of most headlines so far, got a severe headache that had to be treated before continuing with the dose. After the transfusion, she developed a strong fever, elevated heart rate, nausea, vomiting, and a blood clot in her arm.

But here's the good news: a tumor in her forehead started to shrink within 36 hours. It could no longer be felt six weeks later. All five of her tumors showed substantial improvement, and abnormal cells in her bone marrow disappeared. Cancer became less detectable in her blood, though 9 months later, doctors detected a "minimal increase" in the cancer and one tumor started to grow again, but it was treated successfully with radiation. The Minneapolis Star Tribune reports that she's currently doing well.

The second patient, a 65-year-old woman, developed a similar fever and headache after treatment. Abnormal cells did disappear from her bone marrow, and initially, the cancer cell count in her blood dropped, but rebounded by the six week point. But, her tumors didn't shrink. Doctors think that perhaps she may have needed an even stronger dose of the virus in the first place.

What this means

Despite receiving similar doses, the virus gained a much stronger foothold in Erholtz's system, pushing her cancer that went into remission. Bell notes that different patients seem to respond differently to the virus — changing the efficacy of the treatment.

Kline points out that after going through years of treatments, Erholtz's case is very specific and general conclusions can't be drawn from one person's success story.

In a video about the research published along with the study, Dr. Stephen Russell of the Mayo Clinic says "what we're really excited about with this particular approach is that we believe it can become a single-shot cure," which is an exciting idea to look forward to, but he also describes this as a proof that this type of treatment can be effective, not the cure for cancer or a treatment that's ready for prime time.

Kline says that this case is "interesting" and "potentially promising," but notes that many people are immune to measles and that we don't know how a larger population of patients would respond to the treatment in general.

The Mayo Clinic says that they plan to launch further clinical trials.

It's still a fascinating story. But it doesn't mean that cancer has been cured.

SEE ALSO: In 2000, Measles Was Basically Eradicated In The US — Here's Why It's Now At An 18-Year High

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A Mississippi political activist and blogger has been arrested after he allegedly sneaked into a nursing home and photographed Republican Sen. Thad Cochran's wife without her consent.

According to the Clarion-Ledger, which first reported the news, Clayton Thomas Kelly, the blogger, allegedly used the photograph as part of a video "hit piece" on Cochran. 

The Madison Police Department said Kelly was arrested after the department received information on Thursday about the "possible exploitation of a vulnerable adult resident" at the nursing home.

The resulting investigation determined that the 28-year-old Kelly had "illegally and improperly obtained an image of a vulnerable adult resident without their consent for his own benefit." Kelly is currently being held on $100,000 bond.

Kelly maintains a blog, "Constitutional Clayton," where he posted the video, which The Clarion-Ledger reported as being "anti-Cochran" and favorable to Chris McDaniel, Cochran's intra-party challenger.

The video has reportedly been taken down. The newspaper also reported that Rose Cochran has been living in St. Catherine's Village facility since 2000. She suffers from progressive dementia.

Don Clark, an attorney who represents the Cochrans, told Business Insider in a statement the picture was "taken inside of Mrs. Cochran’s room near her bedside."

"We believed a crime may have been committed and we immediately notified the City of Madison Police Department," Clark said.

"The police conducted an investigation, still in progress, resulting in the arrest last night. As you can imagine, Senator Cochran’s first concern was that of the safety of his wife as well as the invasion of her privacy and dignity."

The arrest comes only a few weeks before the Republican primary in what has been one of the most intense GOP establishment vs. grassroots fights of the 2014 campaign.

McDaniel moved quickly to distance himself from Kelly, who posted a number of favorable items toward McDaniel, including one that asked whether he might be "the next Rand Paul."

"I've reached out to Senator Cochran directly to express my abhorrence for the reprehensible actions of this individual. This criminal act is deeply offensive and my team and I categorically reject such appalling behavior," McDaniel said in a statement released by his campaign.

"My thoughts and prayers are with Senator Cochran and his family. Politics is about the exchange of ideas and this type of action has no place in politics whatsoever and will not be tolerated."

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'Tis the season for caps and gowns.

An estimated 1.6 million students will graduate with a bachelor's degree this year — and hundreds of thousands of them will flee to new cities to begin their professional journeys.

But, new research by CareerBliss shows that those grads will be far happier in some cities than others.

CareerBliss analyzed more than 25,000 independent reviews from employees with jobs that require less than two years of work experience to determine which cities have the greatest number of young professionals with high levels of career-related happiness.

Those who provided reviews were asked to evaluate 10 factors that affect workplace happiness, including their relationship with their boss and coworkers; compensation; growth opportunities; company culture; daily tasks; and control over the work they do on a daily basis.

They valued each factor on a five-point scale and those numbers were combined to find an average rating of overall employee happiness for each respondent. The scores were then sorted by location. CareerBliss took into account the average cost-of-living-adjusted salary, which they found by looking at the median pay for new grads in each city and the cost of living in each area, measured by the American Council For Community and Economic Research.

"We work with experts and millions of users to understand where grads are finding rewarding and fulfilling careers. And it is no surprise that the heart of Silicon Valley — San Jose — ranks No. 1," says Heidi Golledge, CEO and cofounder of CareerBliss. "Technology jobs in this region offer unique experiences for today's young grads, as well as incredible opportunities to learn and earn."

Here are the 10 best cities for new grads, in terms of overall career happiness in conjunction with the average cost-of-living-adjusted salary: 

SEE ALSO: The 10 Highest-Paying Jobs That Don’t Require A Bachelor's Degree

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If you go see "Godzilla" this weekend, you'll likely be blown away by how scary-real the 355-foot monster looks.

But the road to creating that giant lizard was a long one. YouTube user Jim Casey pieced together an amazing three-minute video that highlights some pivotal scenes showing the evolution of visual effects over the last 100+ years.

Check out some of the earliest film effects:

The video starts with a nod to the motion photography of Eadweard Muybridge. His series of photographs of a running horse proved the idea that during its gait, all four of the horse's hooves were off the ground at once:

In 1896, Georges Melies stopped his camera in order to create the illusion of making a woman disappear:

This clip from 1900 was simply called "The Railway Collision."

"The Thief of Bagdad" came out in 1924 — note the fast cut to show the second jump:

This is a scene from Fritz Lang's 1927 classic dystopian film, "Metropolis."

The "Invisible Man" un-wrapped himself in 1933:

In 1939, "The Wizard of Oz" made a splash for its use of Technicolor and the flying monkeys:

This giant was far less complex than today's movie monsters:

This is a scene from the 1953 science fiction film "War of the Worlds" by H.G. Wells:

In the 1956 movie "The Ten Commandments," viewers were blown away when Moses parted the Red Sea:

This clip shows a metamorphosis scene from 1981's "An American Werewolf in London."

After this, the effects start moving too fast to get a good capture, but the rest of the hypnotic video is totally worth a watch:

(Hat-tip to The Verge where we first saw this video.)

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Note from dshort: This commentary has been revised to include May updates for Real Retail Sales and Industrial Production, data through April.

Official recession calls are the responsibility of the NBER Business Cycle Dating Committee, which is understandably vague about the specific indicators on which they base their decisions. This committee statement is about as close as they get to identifying their method.

There is, however, a general belief that there are four big indicators that the committee weighs heavily in their cycle identification process. They are:

• Industrial Production
• Real Personal Income (excluding transfer payments)
• Nonfarm Employment
• Real Retail Sales (a timelier substitute for Real Manufacturing and Trade Sales)

The Latest Indicator Data

The April Retail Sales data released earlier this week can now be adjusted for inflation with yesterday's April Consumer Price Index. Nominal sales rose 0.09% month-over-month. However, real (inflation-adjusted) sales declined 0.17%. Year-over-year nominal sales are up 4.05%, but the real YoY is up only 2.05%. For a more detailed analysis, see my latest update on Real Retail Sales Per Capita.

April Industrial Production declined 0.6% MoM. Here is the Federal Reserve overview:

Industrial production decreased 0.6 percent in April 2014 after having risen about 1 percent in both February and March. In April, manufacturing output fell 0.4 percent. The index had increased substantially in February and March following a decrease in January; severe weather had restrained production early in the quarter. The output of utilities dropped 5.3 percent in April, as demand for heating returned toward normal levels. The production at mines increased 1.4 percent following a gain of 2.0 percent in March. At 102.7 percent of its 2007 average, total industrial production in April was 3.5 percent above its level of a year earlier.

The chart and table below illustrate the performance of the Big Four with an overlay of a simple average of the four since the end of the Great Recession. The data points show the cumulative percent change from a zero starting point for June 2009. We now have three of the four indicator updates for the 57th month following the recession. With one data point left for March, the Big Four Average (gray line below) is showing the two strongest advances of the past twelve months.

Current Assessment and Outlook

The overall picture of the US economy had been one of a ploddingly slow recovery from the Great Recession, and the data for December and January months documented a sharp contraction. The recovery in subsequent months appeared to support the general view that severe winter weather was responsible for the contraction, and that the slippage was not the beginnings of a business cycle decline. However, April weakness in both real retail sales and industrial production suggests a more cautious assumption about the ongoing recovery.

The next update of the Big Four will follow the releasee of the April Personal Income less Transfer Payments on May 30th.

Background Analysis: The Big Four Indicators and Recessions

The charts above don't show us the individual behavior of the Big Four leading up to the 2007 recession. To achieve that goal, I've plotted the same data using a "percent off high" technique. In other words, I show successive new highs as zero and the cumulative percent declines of months that aren't new highs. The advantage of this approach is that it helps us visualize declines more clearly and to compare the depth of declines for each indicator and across time (e.g., the short 2001 recession versus the Great Recession). Here is my own four-pack showing the indicators with this technique.

Now let's examine the behavior of these indicators across time. The first chart below graphs the period from 2000 to the present, thereby showing us the behavior of the four indicators before and after the two most recent recessions. Rather than having four separate charts, I've created an overlay to help us evaluate the relative behavior of the indicators at the cycle peaks and troughs. (See my note below on recession boundaries).

Click for a larger image

The chart above is an excellent starting point for evaluating the relevance of the four indicators in the context of two very different recessions. In both cases, the bounce in Industrial Production matches the NBER trough while Employment and Personal Incomes lagged in their respective reversals.

As for the start of these two 21st century recessions, the indicator declines are less uniform in their behavior. We can see, however, that Employment and Personal Income were laggards in the declines.

Now let's look at the 1972-1985 period, which included three recessions -- the savage 16-month Oil Embargo recession of 1973-1975 and the double dip of 1980 and 1981-1982 (6-months and 16-months, respectively).

Click for a larger image

And finally, for sharp-eyed readers who can don't mind squinting at a lot of data, here's a cluttered chart from 1959 to the present. That is the earliest date for which all four indicators are available. The main lesson of this chart is the diverse patterns and volatility across time for these indicators. For example, retail sales and industrial production are far more volatile than employment and income.

Click for a larger image

History tells us the brief periods of contraction are not uncommon, as we can see in this big picture since 1959, the same chart as the one above, but showing the average of the four rather than the individual indicators.

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The chart clearly illustrates the savagery of the last recession. It was much deeper than the closest contender in this timeframe, the 1973-1975 Oil Embargo recession. While we've yet to set new highs, the trend has collectively been upward, although we have that strange anomaly caused by the late 2012 tax-planning strategy that impacted the Personal Income.

Here is a close-up of the average since 2000.

Click for a larger image

Appendix: Chart Gallery with Notes

Each of the four major indicators discussed in this article are illustrated below in three different data manipulations:

1. A log scale plotting of the data series to ensure that distances on the vertical axis reflect true relative growth. This adjustment is particularly important for data series that have changed significantly over time.
2. A year-over-year representation to help, among other things, identify broader trends over the years.
3. A percent-off-high manipulation, which is particularly useful for identifying trend behavior and secular volatility.

Industrial Production

The US Industrial Production Index (INDPRO) is the oldest of the four indicators, stretching back to 1919. The log scale of the first chart is particularly useful in showing the correlation between this indicator and early 20th century recessions.

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Real Personal Income Less Transfer Payments

This data series is computed as by taking Personal Income (PI) less Personal Current Transfer Receipts (PCTR) and deflated using the Personal Consumption Expenditure Price Index (PCEPI). I've chained the data to the latest price index value.

The "Tax Planning Strategies" annotation refers to shifting income into the current year to avoid a real or expected tax increase.

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For a visual sense of the relative size of Personal Income and Transfer Receipts (Social Security, etc.), here is stacked area chart of nominal values. Many people assume that Transfer Receipts (Payments) are a larger source of income than they really are.

Total Nonfarm Employees

There are many ways to plot employment. The one referenced by the Federal Reserve researchers as one of the NBER indicators is Total Nonfarm Employees (PAYEMS).

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Real Retail Sales

This indicator is a splicing of the discontinued retail sales series (RETAIL, discontinued in April 2001) with the Retail and Food Services Sales (RSAFS) and deflated by the seasonally adjusted Consumer Price Index (CPIAUCSL). I used a splice point of January 1995 because that date was mentioned in the FRED notes. My experiments with other splice techniques (e.g., 1992, 2001 or using an average of the overlapping years) didn't make a meaningful difference in the behavior of the indicator in proximity to recessions. I've chained the data to the latest CPI value.

Click for a larger image

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Note: I represent recessions as the peak month through the month preceding the trough to highlight the recessions in the charts above. For example, the NBER dates the last cycle peak as December 2007, the trough as June 2009 and the duration as 18 months. The "Peak through the Period preceding the Trough" series is the one FRED uses in its monthly charts, as explained in the FRED FAQs illustrated in this Industrial Production chart.

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26 Sexist Ads Of The Mad Men Era >>

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Arsenal won their 11th FA Cup and first since 2005 with a 3-2 win over Hull City.

Hull looked like they were on the way to winning their first FA Cup when they jumped out to a 2-0 lead in the first eight minutes.

Arsenal equalized in the 71st minute and just when it looked like the final would go to penalty kicks, Aaron Ramsey won the match in the 109th minute with a goal after a beautiful back-heel feed from Olivier Giroud.

Here is another angle. What a pass.

Arsenal lifts the cup as the final team standing in the 737-club tournament that began in November.

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Protests against the World Cup in 13 cities have marked the worst day in another terrible week for Brazil as the government struggles with strikes, public unease, and crime less than a month before the tournament kicks off.

From early Thursday anti-World Cup protests and strikes against the government spread from São Paulo to other major cities like Rio de Janeiro, Belo Horizonte, Recife, and the capital, Brasilia.

Unions of teachers, bus drivers, police and other state-employed workers strike in order to obtain higher salaries and better work conditions.

The strikes coincided with protesters against World Cup spending where thousands took their dissatisfaction to the streets.

“We love the World Cup and our national team. But we are not ready to host the tournament, and the money is better used on infrastructure, schools and hospitals,” said Juan da Silva, a sociology student from São Paolo University.

“Brazil has too many problems to deal with before we are ready to invest billions in huge sport events like the World Cup and Olympics”.

Juan da Silva was one of the approximately 8,000 protesters that rallied in São Palo during the evening. The protesters planned to march to the center of the city, but police quickly scattered the crowd using tear gas and rubber bullets.

In a speech on Thursday, President Dilma Rousseff attacked critics of her government's Cup preparations and called on the nation to welcome Cup visitors with "the warmth and hospitality that is part of the Brazilian identity," the Globo newspaper reported on its website.

The pressure rises on Brazil as the government scraps with the last preparations before thousands of tourists and journalist will go to South Americas biggest country.

Brazil's last-minute rush to complete stadiums claimed another life on Thursday when a worker was electrocuted at the Arena Pantanal.

In Brasilia protesters carried banners decrying the deaths of stadium workers in the rush to finish before the tournament.

Eight workers died during the construction and renovation of the 12 stadiums that will be used during the World Cup. 

Meanwhile a survey conducted by the Brazilian newspaper Folha de Sao Paulo shows that less than half of the facilities are ready.

From the 167 announced work interventions, only 68 are ready, representing 41%.

Other 88, or about 53%, are still incomplete and will be delivered after the World Cup event, while 11 construction works were abandoned and will not get off the ground.

More strikes and demonstrations are scheduled during the upcoming weekend. 

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"Everything has been figured out, except how to live."—Jean-Paul Sartre

In a recent Quora thread, users responded to the question: What life lessons are counter-intuitive or go against common sense or wisdom?

We trawled through the list looking for the best and most surprising advice. Many of these insights have been confirmed by social science. 

Here are the takeaways. 

1. If you strongly dislike a trait in someone else or are critical of something, you're probably that way yourself. Freud called it projection, or "the attribution to others of one's own rejected tendencies." For example, people worried about their looks call others ugly, and folks that are self-conscious about salaries and status criticize others' jobs. —Anonymous

2. Behavior is controlled more by your environment than your willpower. Situations tend to make people virtuous or nasty, focused or distracted. In other words, sell your TV and unsubscribe from Netflix if you can't stop procrastinating. —Alan Rutledge

3. When you "sit with" a feeling, you can move beyond it. If you flee from having to experience an unpleasant emotion — feeling incompetent when first learning a skill, for example — then you end up being controlled by it. If you can't handle feeling incompetent, it's going to keep you from trying new things. —Alexis Bright

4. Being interesting comes from being interested. Being a fascinating, charismatic person is a result of being fascinated by the humans, history, and objects outside of yourself. —Jamie Beckland

5. Money can buy happiness. If you spend it on the right things: investing in a nicer bed will give you better rest at night and more energy in the day, while moving closer to your work and reducing your commute will directly improve your happiness levels, according to research. —Yishan Wong 

6. Conflict can be healthy. Productive disagreement is a hallmark of successful teams (just ask Jeff Bezos). —Benjy Feen

7. Flaunt your weaknesses. If you're open about the things you're awful at, then it's harder for jerks to attack your insecurities, plus you'll seem more honest and trustworthy in the process. —Dean L Longmore 

8. Laziness can be a great trait for a leader. Insanely hard workers have a tough time delegating, while the constructively lazy are happy to delegate tasks to the team, thus making their direct reports feel happier and more empowered. —Jeremy Liew

9. It's not all about intelligence. Beyond IQ, successful people have grit and are conscientious. —Will Mitchell 

10. Thinking about your death can be good for you. Reflecting on your mortality forces you to consider your life as a whole, plus the legacy you want to leave behind. This helps you to better distinguish between seeking meaning and pleasure. —Alice Rebekah Fraser

11. We suck at predicting what will make us happy. For example, getting a ridiculously high raise isn't going to be sufficient for making you happy at work in the long term, since it's just a "hygiene factor."—Steve Upstill 

12. Vulnerability can be a good thing. Sociology shows that vulnerability isn't weakness; it can be a conduit to creativity and successful relationships. —Aimee Whitcroft 

13. Some of the best opportunities come from distant acquaintances. Social science shows that job opportunities and dream dates come from the full extent of your network. —Heidi M. Petersen

14. "Getting out" your anger just makes you an angrier person. Rather than "venting" your frustrations, expressing your anger whenever you feel the urge just reinforces a pattern of aggression. —Brock Atkinson

SEE ALSO: 14 Surprising Things That Affect Your Willpower And Decision Making

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A big part of the American Dream for many people involves going out and building your perfect home. However, what the perfect home looks like has changed over time.

The U.S. Census Bureau provides information on different characteristics of newly built houses from the 1970s to 2012. We looked at how those characteristics have changed over the last few decades.

Houses are getting taller, with an increasing share of new houses having at least two stories. Split-level houses, while popular in the mid-twentieth century, have all but vanished:

Houses are also getting more bedrooms. The share of houses built in 2012 with at least four bedrooms reached 41%, nearing the 46% of new houses with three bedrooms:

Going along with the themes of bigger and more, in every year since 1998, a majority of new houses were built with at least two and a half bathrooms:

Basements, on the other hand, have been going out of style. Since 2002, a majority of new houses have been built with a slab-style or other foundation, without a basement or a crawlspace:

Exterior wall materials have dramatically changed over the last few decades. In 1973, 65% of newly built houses had wood or brick exteriors. In 2012, only 30% of new houses had these traditional exteriors. About a third of houses in 2012 were built with vinyl siding:

Central air conditioning has gone from being a rarity outside the South to being nearly ubiquitous:

Along those lines, heat pumps, which can double as heating and air conditioning systems, have become somewhat more common in recent years, although warm-air furnaces are still the most common method of heating a house:

Fireplaces rose in popularity throughout the 1980s, with about two-thirds of new houses built in 1990 having at least one. Since 2010 however, less than half of newly built houses come with this amenity:

All these bedrooms, bathrooms, fireplaces, and air conditioning units have more and more space to fit into. Aside from a short dip from 2007-2009 in the wake of the housing bubble and financial crisis, houses have been getting bigger since the 1970s:

SEE ALSO: Here Were The Most Popular Baby Names In Each State In 2013

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Online video ads are one of the fastest-growing ad mediums, far outpacing growth in spending on television and other digital formats. Online video ad viewing exploded in 2013. Over 35 billion video ads were viewed in the U.S. in December. 

It's not hard to understand what makes online video so compelling to advertisers. Video ads provide a level of visual and narrative richness that nearly equals television, while offering all the advantages of digital, including advanced targeting, tracking, and increasingly, automated buying of video ad units.

In a new report from BI Intelligence we explore the key drivers of the skyrocketing growth of video ads, examine the cost and performance of the emerging digital ad format, and look at the major players that are shaping the industry.

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Here are some of the key trends we explore in the report:

• Online video ad revenue will reach nearly $5 billion in 2016, up from $2.8 billion in 2013, while TV ad revenue will decline by nearly 3% per year during the same time period.
• Video ad views exploded in 2013, topping over 35 billion views in December, averaging over 100% year-over-year monthly growth during the year.
• Online video ads are significantly more expensive than other formats, but prices are steadily declining as more publishers rush into video, and placements open up.
• Video ads have an average click-through rate (CTR) of 1.84%, the highest click-through rate of all digital ad formats.
• Viewability, the question of whether video ads are actually seen by multitasking online viewers, has emerged as an issue, but we believe that overall demand for online video is too high for viewability to put too much of a crimp in the video ad market.
• Streaming devices and connected TV accounted for just 2% of online video ad views in the fourth quarter of 2013, but companies like BrightLine are experimenting with formats to grow this new niche market.

In full, the report:

• Explores the key drivers of the growth of online video ads
• Examines how video ads stack up against other digital advertising formats in terms of both cost and performance.
• Looks at the issue of viewability, and explains how the problem could impact future spending on video ads.
• Outlines the major players in the video ad space.
• Explains how startups like BrightLine and Alphonso are using innovative approaches to bridge the gap between digital and TV ad spend. 

For full access to all BI Intelligence's charts and analysis on the video industry, sign up for a free trial.

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Sugar is a cheap, seductive pleasure. But its sweetness belies a bitter history. For centuries it was a commodity harvested by slaves and refined into something white. Lately sugar has also become the villain of choice in the campaign to fight obesity. Leave it to Kara Walker, a provocative American artist, to turn the crystals into a work of art.

Last year Ms Walker was asked by Creative Time, a New York-based non-profit organisation that specialises in presenting art in public spaces, to create something for a cavernous disused sugar factory in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Ms Walker was a clever choice.

For more than 20 years, she has been making work that is visually compelling even as it condemns some of the darkest moments of America's slave-owning past. Her best-known pieces use Victorian-looking silhouettes to depict brutal, racist scenes from the antebellum south. Surprisingly, these works don't nag. Rather, they are repulsively titillating, as if she is seizing skeletons from the country's closet and making them dance.

Ms Walker, now 44, has had her share of big museum shows, but she has never before filled a space as large or as freighted with history as the Domino sugar factory. More challenging still, she decided to confect her work out of the sweet stuff itself, in all its sticky grit.

The full name of the installation (capital letters included) says it all, and perhaps too much: "A Subtlety, or the Marvelous Sugar Baby, an Homage to the unpaid and overworked Artisans who have refined our Sweet tastes from the cane fields to the Kitchens of the New World on the Occasion of the demolition of the Domino Sugar Refining Plant".

The work itself is more subtle, and more powerful. A procession of amber-coloured boy sculptures, five-feet high, sweet-faced and creepy, guide visitors to the main attraction. At the far end of dark factory, hunched and glowing, is a gigantic sugar-coated sphinx.

With stereotypically black features, her hair wrapped in a bandanna, she crouches suggestively--perhaps submissively, despite being more than 35-feet high. Her powdery skin contrasts with the molasses-caked walls. A saccharine smell hangs in the air.

A monumental mammy sphinx hardly sounds nuanced.

And yet the work is both surprising and complex, evoking not only the slaves of the sugar trade, but also the women who became sex toys, as disposable as lollipops.

Like the sphinx in Egypt, this one presides over a site of ruins--after the show ends on July 6th, the factory is destined for the wrecking ball.

A shiny new waterfront development will be raised in its place.

Working with sugar was a challenge. Sculptures either melted or broke into pieces. Some of the boy figures fell apart days before the show opened. "No one works with sugar," says Nato Thompson, the curator. "Now we know why."

But for Ms Walker the real work involved transforming her ideas for the piece (which could sometimes be "finger-waggingly angry") into a work of art. Her aim was to create something that would be "sweet on the eyes", albeit a bit tough going down.

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A former Florida governor who is seeking re-election said Saturday he was in favor of lifting a US embargo on Cuba.

Washington has had an economic embargo clamped on the communist-run Caribbean country since 1962, and the two have never moved off a Cold War footing in their ties.

"I have come to the conclusion that we need to lift the embargo," Charlie Crist told reporters on the sidelines of the inauguration of his campaign headquarters in Little Havana, a Cuban neighborhood in Miami.

"The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result."

Crist said he wanted to personally visit Cuba, saying he thought it "important to go and see and learn, and see for myself."

Florida is home to a sizable Cuban-American community.

Crist was Florida's Republican governor between 2007 and 2011. He is seeking re-election to the post this year, but as a Democrat.

The US embargo on Cuba was imposed during the presidency of John F. Kennedy, with the confrontation between the United States and Cuba one of the world's last Cold War-era disputes.

A study out in February showed that a majority of Americans were in favor of a change in policy toward Cuba.

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The war of words over the firing of former New York Times executive editor Jill Abramson raged on over the weekend with a new statement from the paper's publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. and an Instagram post from Abramson's daughter that declared, "The story isn't over, not even close."

In his statement, Sulzberger repeated his claim reports Abramson was fired after discovering she was paid less than her male predecessor and confronting management are "untrue."

"Perhaps the saddest outcome of my decision to replace Jill Abramson as executive editor of The New York Times is that is has been cast by many as an example of the unequal treatment of women in the workplace," Sulzberger said. "Rather than accepting that this was a situation involving a specific individual who, as we all do, has strengths and weaknesses, a shallow and factually incorrect storyline has emerged."

The allegation Abramson was fired after complaining about unequal pay has been reported by multiple media outlets, including the New Yorker, which published specific figures indicating her salary was as much as $84,000 less than that of Bill Keller, who preceded her as executive editor. Sulzberger has maintained Abramson's "total compensation" including stock and other benefits was actually higher than Keller's. He repeated this assertion in his statement Saturday and also detailed the reasons he said he fired Abramson. 

"Jill is an outstanding journalist and editor, but with great regret, I concluded that her management of the newsroom was not working out," said Sulzberger. "During her tenure I heard repeatedly from her newsroom collegaues, women and men, about a series of issues including arbitrary decision-making, a failure to consult and bring colleagues with her, inadequate communication and the public mistreatment of colleagues." 

Sulzberger's statement came after an Instagram post from Abramson's daughter, Cornelia Griggs, posted Friday that referenced her mother's firing. Griggs' post was a photo of a text message exchange in which a friend told her they were "steamed" about Abramson's termination.

"Love to your mom - we should all aspire to be so pushy," the friend wrote.

"Couldn't agree more," responded Griggs.

Griggs included a caption under the photo.

"Big thank you to all the #pushy #bossy #polarizing women and men who get it," she wrote. "The story isn't over, not even close."

This wasn't the first time Griggs addressed her mother's firing on her Instagram page. On Thursday, a day after Abramson was fired, Griggs posted a photo of her mother working out with a punching bag on the social media site.

"Mom's badass new hobby," she wrote.

The accusation Abramson was fired after disputing an alleged pay disparity could be consequential. On Friday, attorney Gloria Allred, who specializes in employment discrimination, told Business Insider it could constitute a violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act if the allegations are true.

Abramson did not respond to a request for comment from Business Insider Saturday.

View Sulzberger's full statement and Griggs' Instagram post below. 

Arthur Sulzberger just released new statement addressing growing controversy over Abramson's firing. Story coming! pic.twitter.com/fwwIKxUu78

— Ravi Somaiya (@ravisomaiya) May 17, 2014

More from @JillAbramson's daughter's Instagram feed: "The story isn't over, not even close"pic.twitter.com/uLZtZprkXq

— katierosman (@katierosman) May 17, 2014

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Success isn't always about being more talented, luckier, or working harder than everybody else. It can come from thinking a little differently about the way you do business.

This is a theme we've heard from some of the most successful people across industries — from entrepreneurs and executives to famous artists.

With this in mind, we've put together some of the most amazing insights we've found on how successful people think differently than everyone else.

Instead of leaving unproductive policies in place, they change them.

When Donna Morris joined Adobe in 2002 as a senior director of global talent management, she noticed that the annual performance-review process wasn't serving anybody in the company. 

"We fundamentally believed people were our most important asset," she tells Business Insider, "yet once a year we had a process that pitted person against person." 

So she soon abolished it. Goodbye annual performance review, hello regular check-in.

Reflecting on the experience, she says that "people should have the courage to disrupt a process that might no longer be providing the company with value."

Instead of just having a job, they have a craft.

If you spot popular talk-show host and comedian Bill Maher on a plane or in the back of a car, he'll be scribbling on a yellow notepad. This is his craft, he says, the incremental work of perfecting a joke. 

The craft is in "moving one word around, from the middle of the sentence to the end of the sentence," he says. "It's moving one joke that works pretty good over here, moving it behind this other joke, and now it's a giant laugh."

He compares his approach to comedy as that of making violins — a profession that takes decades to master.

Instead of trying to change everything about a company, they focus on one important factor that ripples out.

When Paul O'Neill became the CEO of aluminum manufacturing giant Alcoa, he stepped on stage before a crowd of Wall Streeters and decreed that the company would have a newly committed focus. Not on revenues or R&D but safety. 

"If you want to understand how Alcoa is doing," he said, "you need to look at our workplace safety figures."

O'Neill's emphasis didn't just increase safety; it changed the company. Over his tenure, Alcoa dropped from 1.86 lost workdays to injury per 100 workers to 0.2. A year after O'Neill's speech, profits hit a record high, and when he retired 13 years later, the company's annual net income was five times higher than when he started.

"I knew I had to transform Alcoa," he says. "But you can't order people to change. So I decided I was going to start by focusing on one thing. If I could start disrupting the habits around one thing, it would spread throughout the entire company."

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McDonald's Brazil now serves rice and beans because its employees refused to eat hamburgers and french fries during their lunch breaks.

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