BEIRUT (Reuters) - Syrian air force jets bombarded rebel targets on Friday close to the Damascus airport road and a regional airline said the violence had halted international flights to the capital.
Activists said security forces clashed with rebels trying to topple President Bashar al-Assad around Aqraba and Babilla districts on the southeastern outskirts of the Damascus which lead to the international airport.
Internet connections and most telephone lines were down for a second day, the worst communications outage in a 20-month-old uprising in which 40,000 people have been killed, hundreds of thousands have fled the country, and millions been displaced.
The mostly Sunni Muslim rebels who are battling Assad, from Syria's Alawite minority linked to Shi'ite Islam, have been making gains around Syria by overrunning military bases and have been ramping up attacks on Damascus, his seat of power.
A resident of central Damascus told Reuters he could see black smoke rising from the east and the south of the city on Friday morning and could hear the constant boom of shelling.
"Airlines are not operating to Damascus today," said a Dubai-based airline official. EgyptAir and Emirates suspended flights to Syria on Thursday.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a British-based opposition monitoring group, said jets were bombarding targets in rural areas around Aqraba and Babilla, where rebels clashed with Assad's forces.
The Observatory's director, Rami Abdelrahman, said the airport road was open, but there was minimal traffic.
Syrian authorities said late on Thursday that the airport road was safe after security forces cleared it of 'terrorists' - the label Damascus uses to describe Assad's armed opponents.
MORTAR FIRED
Rebels said that at least one mortar round was fired at the airport during clashes on Thursday.
"We want to liberate the airport because of reports we see and our own information we have that shows civilian airplanes are being flown in here with weapons for the regime. It is our right to stop this," rebel spokesman Musaab Abu Qitada said.
U.S. and European officials said rebels were making gains in Syria, gradually eroding Assad's power, but said the fighting had not yet shifted completely in their favor.
A Damascus-based diplomat said he believed the escalation in fighting around the capital was part of a government offensive which aimed to seal off the state-controlled centre of the city from rebel-held rural areas to the south and east.
Activists say Assad's forces have also been shelling the Daraya district to the southwest of the city, trying to prevent rebels from cementing their hold of an area which could give them a presence in a continuous arc from the northeast to southwest of the capital's outer districts.
"I don't know whether the shelling has succeeded in pushing back the FSA (rebels) - experience shows that they return very quickly anyway," the diplomat said. "We seem to be entering a decisive phase of the Damascus offensive."
Syria's Internet shut down on Thursday, a move which activists blamed on authorities but which authorities variously attributed to a 'terrorist' attack or a technical fault.
CloudFlare, a firm that helps accelerate Internet traffic, said on its blog that saboteurs would have had to simultaneously cut three undersea cables into the Mediterranean city of Tartous and also an overland cable through Turkey in order to cut off the entire country's Internet access.
(Additional reporting by Oliver Holmes in Beirut, Praveen Menon in Dubai and Jim Finkle in Boston; Editing by Anna Willard)
Don't even try to wrap your head around this twisted plywood hanger. It's clearly only designed to support the shirts, belts, scarves, and other accessories of the world's greatest mathematicians and physicists. No one else has any chance of understanding the mysteries of the universe that let this hanger exist. More »
Payroll software EzPaycheck adds new feature to simplify payroll tasks and speeds up paycheck printing for restaurants. 30-day free trial is available at www.halfpricesoft.com.
Payroll and check printing software solution provider halfpricesoft.com released the new ezPaycheck payroll software for small businesses, non-profits and accountants. The new version includes the MICR check feature.
Designed with simplicity in mind, ezPaycheck payroll software speeds up and automates the payroll tax calculation, paycheck printing and tax reporting for small businesses and non-profits. ezPaycheck developing team hope this new feature also make it easier to write a check for 1099 contractors, pay employee reimbursements and pay bills.
ezPaycheck developers believe small business needs simple, reliable and affordable payroll solution. Other latest changes also include updated graphic user interface which makes it ease-of-use by those who have only basic computer skills and little accounting know-how.
?We intentionally engineered ezPaycheck payroll tax software for those end-users who are not professional accountants and payroll tax expert, so small businesses can set up ezPaycheck quickly and easily," explains Dr. Ge, President and Founder of halfpricesoft.com.
Small business owners who are seeking productivity-booting solution are welcome to start the free test drive of ezPaycheck payroll software without charge or obligation for up to 30 days at http://www.halfpricesoft.com/payroll_software_download.asp
EzPayCheck?s many time- and money-saving features include:
- Updated tax tables and tax rates for all 50 states, Washington D.C., and federal taxes - Print paychecks in choice of check formats: check-in-middle, check-on-bottom or check-on-top - Print paychecks with stubs on blank check stock or pre-printed checks - Print Forms W2, W3, 940 and 941 - Mask employee Social Security Numbers on check stubs - Customizable deductions and withholding for unique needs -- ideal for churches and nonprofits - Robust reporting features - Data export for use with Halfpricesoft.com?s ezW2 or other compatible software - Auto-fill for check data that speeds up payroll - Support multiple accounts with no extra charge
To open ezPaycheck payroll solution to more non-profits, Halfpricesoft.com also launched special promotion in October, 2012. With this offer, business owners can purchase the full version paycheck software at just $59, which is 33% off the regular price $89.
To start the 30-day free test drive, visit the site at: http://www.halfpricesoft.com/index.asp
About Halfpricesoft.com Halfpricesoft.com is a leading provider of small business software, including payroll software, employee attendance tracking software, check printing software, W2, software, 1099 software, and barcode generating software. Today Software from halfpricesoft.com is trusted by thousands of users and help small business owners simplify their payroll processing and business management.
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A Delta flight operated by Pinnacle Airlines was set to land in Cincinnati on Saturday when it pulled up because of another plane that had not yet cleared the runway.
Delta Connection Flight 3972 from St. Louis had been cleared for landing Saturday evening at Cincinnati-Northern Kentucky International Airport, said Pinnacle Airlines spokesperson Joe Williams.
Air traffic control directed pilots of the CRJ-200?jet?to "go around" and return for a landing, Williams said. The plane landed?safety?and without incident at 7:32 p.m. ET.
"It was a routine missed approach," said FAA spokesperson Kathleen Bergen. "It was not an incident. It was a safe, routine procedure."
Passenger Patrick Steitz, of Laurel, Md.,?was among the 49 passengers on?board and?told The Associated Press?the pilot explained to them what happened over the loudspeaker. Passengers?were relieved the plane didn't attempt to land, he said.
HANALEI, Hawaii ? When compiling a list of places that may be described as paradise, Hanalei Bay on the rugged north shore of the island of Kauai surely qualifies.
The perfect crescent bay, rimmed by palm trees, emerald cliffs and stretches of white sand, has always had a dreamy kind of appeal. It was on these shores that sailors in the movie "South Pacific" sang of the exotic but unattainable "Bali Ha'i."
The problem is what lies below the surface of the area's shimmering blue waters.
Since June, a mysterious milky growth has been spreading rapidly across the coral reefs in Hanalei and the surrounding bays of the north shore ? so rapidly that biologist Terry Lilley, who has been documenting the phenomenon, says it now affects 5% of all the coral in Hanalei Bay and up to 40% of the coral in nearby Anini Bay. Other areas are "just as bad, if not worse," he said.
The growth, identified by scientists at the U.S. Geological Survey as both a cyanobacterial pathogen ? a bacteria that grows through photosynthesis ? and a fungus, is killing all the coral it strikes, and spreading at the rate of 1 to 3 inches a week on every coral it infects.
"There is nowhere we know of in the entire world where an entire reef system for 60 miles has been compromised in one fell swoop. This bacteria has been killing some of these 50- to 100-year-old corals in less than eight weeks," Lilley said. "Something is causing the entire reef system here in Kauai to lose its immune system."
The discovery of the new coral disease is only one of a number of ailments afflicting nearly all the world's coral reefs, which are threatened by poisonous runoff, rising oceans, increasingly acidic waters and overfishing.
But this one could jeopardize a multibillion-dollar tourist industry in Hawaii, which depends on the stunning displays of color and wildlife for divers and snorkelers. That is especially true along the beaches of Kauai, where the north shore with a few exceptions remains a place of pristine natural beauty.
"It's very alarming," said Wendy Wiltse of the federal Environmental Protection Agency in Honolulu. "All of us are concerned about it. We want to do more. Part of the problem is we don't know what to do, especially in the case of a disease that's spread by a pathogen. It's not like we can put antibiotics in the ocean."
Researchers at the U.S. Geological Survey reported last week that the disease had reached epidemic proportions. "This is the first time a cyanobacterial/fungal disease on this scale has been documented in Hawaiian corals," Thierry M. Work, USGS wildlife disease specialist, said in an analysis released Wednesday.
Scientists say there are no signs so far that the bacteria killing the coral are dangerous to humans or wildlife, though they are conducting further tests.
But Lilley, who does not hold a graduate degree but dives daily around the reefs all across the north shore, said he has documented a large number of cases of black-and-white toby fish feeding near diseased corals that turned completely black, lost their fins and died.
He has also videotaped a sea turtle, seen feeding on seaweed growing out of an infected coral, whose eyes seemed to have rotted away. When Lilley saw it, the creature was bumping blindly into the reef in an attempt to find food.
The disease was first spotted around Hanalei in 2004, but "at very low levels," and is the fourth coral disease outbreak documented in the state since 2009, said Greta Aeby, a coral expert with the University of Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology who has been working with Lilley to document the phenomenon.
"Hawaii's reefs are in decline. They are faced with the chronic stressors of land-based pollution, overfishing and human use. The reefs have been dealing with these problems for years, and are starting to show the signs," she said. "We need to help people understand the seriousness of the situation before it is too late."
Lilley said the rapid growth of the coral disease this year followed two years of heavy sedimentation traveling down the Hanalei River, which he believes could be traced to development upstream and heavy rains.
Thick mud often coated the corals, he said, and studies paid for by a community group showed high levels of heavy metals in the water ? studies that were dismissed by the state Department of Health, which said such metals were natural to the volcanic soil of Hawaii.
Wiltse said other studies had shown high levels of sewage-related bacteria in the Hanalei River, probably because the town of Hanalei has no sewer system and homes are connected to cesspools and septic systems.
"There have also been some studies of sediment and nutrients, primarily in Hanalei River, and during rain events, there is excessive suspended sediment in the river, exceeding water quality standards," she said. "I've seen plumes extending into the ocean. I've seen sediment settling on corals."
But is that what led to the recent outbreak of a bacterial infection? No one can say. Lilley theorizes that pollution could have weakened the coral and made it more susceptible to a bacterial outbreak, but can't be certain.
In a preliminary review in September, the USGS said the general health of coral reefs along Kauai's north shore was poor. "The overall picture was one of a severely degraded reef impacted by sediments and turf algae," the agency's report said, with symptoms of "chronic stress."
Work, the USGS scientist, said the loss of coral meant a danger of losing the fish, turtles and various invertebrates that depend on it for sustenance and shelter.
"A lot of people come to Hawaii in part because it is a beautiful place both on land and in the water, so coral reefs are a resource with tangible economic value," he said. "Like it or not, ecosystem health is closely intertwined with human and animal health."
NEW YORK ? Two years ago, as WND reported, the Obama administration was proceeding with a novel way to finance trillion-dollar budget deficits by forcing IRA and 401(k) holders to buy Treasury bonds by mandating the placement of government-structured annuities in their retirement accounts.
Remarkably, those financial professionals specializing in private retirement savings and the U.S. citizens investing in private retirement plans now face the possibility the Obama administration and its allies on the political left will impose rules and regulations that effectively abolish the private retirement savings and investment markets.
Recent evidence suggests government officials continue to eye the multi-trillion dollar private retirement savings market, including IRAs and 401(k) plans, eyeing the opportunity to redistribute private retirement savings to less affluent Americans and to force the retirement savings out of the private market and into government-controlled programs investing in government-issued debt.
Government takeover?
An Investment Company Institute study published this month found that U.S. retirement assets totaled $18.5 trillion at the end of the second quarter 2012, of which 3.5 trillion was in IRAs and $5.1 trillion was in 401(k) plans.
Since 2010, the U.S. Treasury Department and the Department of Labor have been holding combined hearings on various plans designed to introduce government-mandated retirement plans and investment options, including government annuities invested primarily in U.S. Treasury debt, into the private retirement savings market.
?This hearing was set up to explore why Americans are not saving as much for their retirement as they could,? explained National Seniors Council National Director Robert Crone, describing a recent Treasury-Labor hearing held in the Labor Department?s main auditorium.
?However it is clear that his is just the first step toward a government takeover. It feels like the beginning of the debate over health care and we all know how that ended up.?
?Automatic IRA?
With the issuance of the White House 256-page Budget Proposal for Fiscal Year 2013, the Obama administration endorsed ?Automatic IRAs,? a plan introduced into Congress in 2010 by Sens. John Kerry, D-Mass, and Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., in which private companies would be automatically enrolled into government-mandated IRAs, forcing those businesses to contribute on behalf of their employees a ?default amount? equal to 3 percent of an employees pay, unless an employee specifically opts out of the plan.
The FY 2013 Budget proposal notes that currently 78 million working Americans, roughly half of the work force, lack employer-based retirement plans.
According to testimony given by David C. John of the Heritage Foundation to the House Committee on Ways and Means on April 17, most of the 78 million working Americans not participating in employer-based retirement plans are part-time employees of smaller businesses, women, members of minority groups or all three.
The remedy proposed on page 147 of the FY 2012 Budget Proposal is ?a system of automatic work-place pensions that will expand access to tens of millions of workers who currently lack plans? by providing their employees with a government-mandated ?direct deposit IRA account,? exempting only businesses with 10 or fewer employees and providing participating businesses with tax credits to compensate for the businesses implementing and administering the plans.
While the Automatic IRA would serve the purpose of extending private retirement plans to disadvantaged and generally poorer workers, the innovation would place additional costs upon employers. It would require employer contributions to the plans, even if tax credits fully complemented the businesses for implementing and administering them.
Retirement USA
The Service Employee International Union, or SEIU, a key labor union ally of the Obama administration, has mounted an effort to create government-mandated worker retirement accounts as an entitlement program, with the possibility that a portion of all private retirement funds could be forced into U.S. Treasury debt.
Branding the program ?Retirement USA,? the SEIU has joined with the AFL-CIO, the Economic Policy Institute, a Washington-based economic left-leaning think tank that receives substantial labor funding, and two other left-leaning interest groups, the Pension Rights Center and the National Committee to Preserve Social Security.
The Retirement USA idea is promote the concept that all workers in the U.S. have a right to a government retirement account that would fund a secure retirement with adequate dollars, in addition to Social Security and private ERISA-retirement workplace retirement programs such as 401(k) programs.
?Our goal is to involve all workers and all employees in a government-mandated retirement program, with the government putting up the difference for lower paid employees,? Nancy Hwa, a spokeswoman for the participating Pension Rights Center, told WND in 2010.
Put simply, the Retirement USA government-mandated workplace retirement account would require by law employers and employees to contribute to a retirement account for every employee and demand that a portion of that contribution go into a federal-government created annuity that would be funded by purchasing Treasury debt.
?Retirement USA is basically an effort that amounts to nationalizing 401(k)s and IRAs,? David John, a senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, told WND when the Retirement USA idea was proposed two years ago.
Under the guise of making workplace retirement savings accounts available to all Americans and insuring that existing retirement savings accounts pay lifetime income, the SEIU-led Retirement USA effort is quietly exploring strategies that would create ?Universal IRAs? or ?Guaranteed Retirement Accounts? for all workers.
Following lead of Argentina
Writing in the London Telegraph in October 2008, business and economics editor Ambrose Evans-Pritchard warned that G7 nations, including the United States, may begin following the path of Argentina in forcing privately managed pension funds to be invested in government-issued debt.
In 2008, Argentine sovereign debt was trading at 29 cents on the dollar, reflecting the devalued state of the Argentine peso, with the result that private pensioners holding government debt in their retirement accounts could not be assured those bonds would have any meaningful value at maturity.
?Here is a warning to us all,? Evans-Pritchard wrote. ?The Argentine state is taking control of the country?s privately managed pension funds in a dramatic move to raise cash.?
He warned the same could happen in the United States and Europe.
?The G7 states are already acquiring an unhealthy taste for the arbitrary seizure of private property, I notice,? Evans-Prichard warned. ?It is a foretaste of what might happen across the world as governments discover that tax revenue and the bond markets are unwilling to plug the gap.?
Currently, as reported Friday by the Financial Times, Argentina is facing yet another bond default after U.S. District Court Judge Thomas Griesa ruled that an upcoming payment to holders of the debt-swap bonds Argentina issued in 2005 and 2010 must be accompanied by a payment in full of $1.3 billion. The payment is to be made to two U.S. hedge fund creditors that did not accept the 2005 and 2010 debt swaps proposed for the bonds Argentina defaulted on in 2001.
Do you think Obama is after your retirement savings?
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PHILADELPHIA (CBS) ? There?s a new twist on Black Friday this year. Businesses are using much more social media to promote their sales.
How big of a role does social media play in the Black Friday hype?
?Kohl?s in 2009 didn?t post a tweet throughout the entirety of Black Friday weekend,? says Advertising Age reporter Cotton Delo. ?You know, three years later you definitely wouldn?t see that. Retailers are getting savvier. It?s not just an in-store event they need to focus on.?
Users can expect to see ads in their timelines and newsfeeds, but this year there is a new social network in the mix.
?Retailers are really kind of mobilizing on Pinterest. I just looked at CNN.com and JCPenny has bought some ads there that you can actually click through to pin Black Friday goods. Pinterest was not really a very big deal for brands or retailers a year ago.?
Stores want to make holiday shopping easy for consumers this year by offering interactive social media programs and promotions.
A team of IRCM researchers, led by Dr. Fr?d?ric Charron, recently uncovered a nerve cell's internal clock, used during embryonic development. The discovery was made in collaboration with Dr. Alyson Fournier's laboratory at the Montreal Neurological Institute. Published today in the prestigious scientific journalNeuron, this breakthrough could lead to the development of new tools to repair and regenerate nerve cells following injuries to the central nervous system.
Researchers in Dr. Charron's laboratory study neurons, which are the nerve cells that make up the central nervous system (brain and spinal cord). They want to better understand how neurons navigate through the developing embryo to arrive at their correct destination.
"To properly form neural circuits, developing axons (long extensions of neurons that form nerves) follow external signals to reach the right targets," says Dr. Fr?d?ric Charron, Director of the Molecular Biology of Neural Development research unit at the IRCM. "We discovered that nerve cells also have an internal clock, which changes their response to external signals as they develop over time."
For this research project, IRCM scientists focused on the Sonic Hedgehog (Shh) protein, which gives cells important information for the embryo to develop properly and plays a critical role in the development of the central nervous system.
"It is known that axons follow the Shh signal during their development," explains Dr. Patricia Yam, research associate in Dr. Charron's laboratory and first author of the study. "However, axons change their behaviour once they reach this protein, and this has been a mystery for the scientific community. We found that a nerve cell's internal clock switches its response to external signals when it reaches the Shh protein, at which time it becomes repelled by the Shh signal rather than following it."
"Our findings therefore showed that more than one system is involved in directing axon pathfinding during development," adds Dr. Yam. "Not only do nerve cells respond to external signals, but they also have an internal control system. This discovery is important because it offers new possibilities for developing techniques to regenerate and repair damaged nerve cells. Along with trying to modify external factors, we can now also consider modifying elements inside a cell in order to change its behaviour."
Injuries to the central nervous system affect thousands of Canadians every year, and can lead to lifelong disabilities. Most often caused by an accident, stroke or disease, these injuries are very difficult to repair. New tools are therefore required to repair damage to the central nervous system, including techniques that could potentially regenerate nerve cells.
"The Canadian Institutes of Health Research is delighted to support research aimed at improving the lives of individuals with damage to the brain or spinal cord," says Dr. Anthony Phillips, Scientific Director of CIHR's Institute of Neurosciences, Mental Health and Addiction. ''Nerve cell repair and regeneration remains an important health challenge, and we believe that Dr. Charron's research findings will contribute to the solution."
###
Institut de recherches cliniques de Montreal: http://www.ircm.qc.ca
Thanks to Institut de recherches cliniques de Montreal for this article.
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Over the last two days I have reported the findings of a survey looking at the IT services plans of businesses in Europe and North America. This survey was compiled by TechTarget, which is Computer weekly's parent company.
Part one looked at how IT services budgets will change next year. See it here.
Part two revealed what the drivers for I service budget increases and decreases are. See it here.?
Part three revealed the main influences on supplier selection in Europe. See it here.
Today in part four, I can reveal which technologies European businesses are planning to outsource. Next week technology by technology I will report which suppliers are being chosen.
See table below for results.
Does your organization plan to use outside services to aid in any of the following in the next 24 months. (select all that apply)
Here are a few tips on how to find a commercial real estate lender and other ways to get financing if you are denied a home loan.
Q: I have been investing in real estate since late 2009. My business partner and I have accumulated eight single family homes, all held in a limited liability corporation (LLC). These are lower income properties, but our returns have been fantastic.
I have some money set aside and I want to replicate this strategy personally. I am running into a number of problems, and it just so happens that I saw your tweet about investing in real estate. So I thought I?d ask for some help.
Here?s my situation: Many banks and credit unions are instantly turned off because I have so many properties financed as it is. I have had problems getting banks and credit unions to do loans for smaller dollar amounts (say, $20,000 to $50,000).
My wife and I have been fortunate enough to save a substantial amount in our 401(k) and IRA accounts, and wouldn?t mind using that cash for investments. But we?re turned off and worried about the multitudes of the IRS rules in using those funds. I have also considered buying properties in cash, with hopes to refinance and pull equity out, but I keep running into the problem of lenders being turned off by the number of properties I own and the prices I want to pay.
What is someone in my situation to do? Am I just working with the wrong banks? Thanks in advance for any advice you can give me!
A: Congratulations on your real estate investing success. The problems you?re running into stem from the fact that you?ve outgrown the regular residential financing system. Residential mortgage lenders are not equipped to finance your 10th, 20th, or 100th property purchase.
You?ve grown your way into the ranks of commercial lending, but because most lenders have lost money in the real estate world, they are extra careful about financing large scale residential deals these days. The fact that you?ve made money in the past is irrelevant to most of them. Now, it?s all about how the numbers work.
You have two choices: you can start shopping around for a new lender, or you can finance your next round of purchases in cash, using your savings and converting your IRA to a self-directed IRA, which allows you to purchase investment properties as long as you use a third party to make sure you?re on the up and up.
If you start to investigate commercial banks in your area, you?ll want to look at big national banks, regional banks and local banks. You may even find that there is a credit union or two that wants to do business with you. If you look a bit harder, and talk to your accountant and real estate attorney, you might find that they know of investors who?d want to back you in this venture, and loan you the cash you need to cover these investments. They might want some equity, or not, but that would be subject to negotiation.
You?ll find that commercial lenders charge more, and require more in equity, but can create loans that are more flexible. For example, you might be able to combine all of the loans on the 8 properties you own into one big loan ? and there are plusses and minuses to doing that, by the way. You might purchase these next 10 properties on your own, and then refinance them to take out 50 percent of the equity to use to finance additional purchases.
What you may want to do is find a commercial loan broker who, along with your real estate attorney, can discuss how the financing might work for these purchases, what your options are and how much it?ll cost. Don?t forget to check in with your accountant, as all of these options are linked to tax consequences.
By engaging in a broader discussion, at least you?ll have some sort of context in which to measure the financing opportunities as you uncover them.
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Google takes your search query and then points you toward websites that probably have the right answer. Wolfram Alpha takes your query and then rolls up its sleeves and tries to answer the question by itself. The website can solve trigonometric functions, list every airplane in the sky above your location, pair complementary colors, lay out music theory, and calculate that there have been four times more episodes of "The Simpsons" than of "Law & Order."
Wolfram Alpha is a warren of powerful tools and fun time-wasters. As the three-year-old website continues its quest to quantify the world, it recently tapped a rich new vein of data: your social life.
Wolfram Alpha can now mine Facebook activity, delivering insights on you, your habits, and your friends.
With your permission, Wolfram Alpha digs into your past. The website finds out which of your Facebook messages drew the most comments, and even which words you use most often. It charts when you play with Facebook applications, possibly revealing patterns you never knew you had.
The results can be fascinating, nostalgia inducing, and sometimes a little creepy.
One of the coolest features is Wolfram Alpha's "friend cloud." It takes all of your Facebook friends and maps out the connections between them. The tool groups mutual friends, guesses how people know each other, and lays out everything like a TV detective's bulletin board of suspects.
For example, in my friend cloud (see chart, above), each dot represents a person. Wolfram Alpha figured out which of my friends I met in college (the red cluster), which are from work (tan), and which share the most friends in common (the larger dots).
You can dig into your own profile by heading to WolframAlpha.com and searching for "Analyze my Facebook data."
Before the site can start number crunching, you will need to give it permission to access your Facebook profile. The tool can also pull up information on your friends ? how much information depends on them. Wolfram Alpha can only see what your friends have opted to make public in their Facebook privacy settings.
Hello, you must be interested in doing a roleplay with me. Splendid! However there are some things that you must know first.
Terms
1. Literacy and the assurance that you will be posting (on average) 900 - 1200 words is necessary. I want you to have good spelling, punctuation, and grammar. Do not contact me if you do not meet that requirement, it is by far the most important thing that I ask. A good reply cannot be done in a sentence. I also want to make sure that by you accepting the role as my roleplaying partner will try and post their best at all times, yes WritersBlock infects us all at some point, but sometimes you just have to push through it.
2. Your characters cannot be in any way cliche, unoriginal, and how can I say it.... uh- boring. Yes we get it your girl is an emotional wreck and your guy just wants to be a player. Wow, they should really name you the god(ess) of originality. (If you couldn't tell I was being sarcastic.) I want your characters to be deep, mind-boggling, and someone that I will have to consider responding to in a realistic and decent manner. In an agreement I will try my upmost to make my characters interesting, if at any point you have any concerns with my character, and believe that they do not match status then please tell me. I'll try my best to give them an unexpected twist, I want to make you happy, like you should want for me.
3. I prefer to play males over females, I find them much easier to control and have a better grasp and concept of playing them to their strengths. I can play females fine and dandy however, and so you don't need to worry. However be warned that my characters all have tempers and are sarcastic lil' monsters, no matter what the gender is. They're also between the ages of 22 - 32, please don't have a problem playing within this age range.
4. I'm not sure if this site has a designated place for 1x1s and group roleplays, however I am always better at doing roleplays by topic rather than PM. While I'll stll do them by message, doing them by topic is often much easier for me to be able to keep track of. (Besides I enjoy reading over our past work, I always feel like I'm reading a novel!) Just state your preference and I'll see what can be done.
5. I do have a life, I have a lot of things to stay up to date on and so I can't be on 24/7, however I always try to make the best with the time I got, and I can always be found thinking of replies when I'm not supposed to. That's another thing, I like to think about my replies and often it will be a few days to a week before I respond again (unless I'm having a muse overload.) So don't think I'm abandoning you if I don't respond just after you post.
6. You must be willing to help contribute to the roleplay as much as I am. I have been in roleplays where I've always had to pull most of the weight, and I don't like that. If you want to roleplay with me then you're going to have to be willing to help put in some effort. Think of it as a 50/50 deal with business partners. Our product can only succeed if both partners play their part.
7. I'm sorry to anyone who likes/loves romance, but it's not my thing. I will do it as a brief subplot but nothing that will affect the roleplay drastically, I will most certainly never do a roleplay which is founded off of romance, I hardly got through 'The Notebook' without ripping my eyes out. I only play heterosexual males, and bisexual females. Sorry I don't do gay romance. (Lesbian is fine though.)
Original Will Do's
Anything fantasy or sci-fi that is an original plot. (I Enjoy; Dark Magic, Reincarnation, Xenophillic Relationships, Action, Suspense, Inclusion of Deity(ies), Prophecy, Colonization, Time Travel, Etc...)
Pre-Made Will Do's
- Mass Effect - Dragon Age - Heavy Rain - The Elder Scrolls (TES)
Cebu Chamber of Commerce and Industry (CCCI) members are all invited to the 2012 Badminton Tournament to be held at the Metro Sports Badminton Club, Salinas Drive, Lahug, Cebu City on November 24, 2012.
The Badminton Tournament is part of the series of annual recreation and sports activities organized by the Membership Development Division (MDD) of the Chamber. The event aims to promote camaraderie, networking and an active lifestyle for CCCI members.
Participating teams of members may play in one of the following categories: (a) Doubles ? Men, (b) Doubles ? Women and (c) Doubles ? Mixed.
Registration fee per team is Php 2, 000.00 ? the fee is inclusive of snacks, lunch, court rental and shuttlecock. Participants are expected to bring their own rackets for the tournament. Registration of participants is on-going until November 20, 2012.
The top three teams at the end of the tournament will receive trophies and cash prizes: the champion will receive Php 5, 000.00; the 1st runner-up Php 3, 000.00; and the 2nd runner-up will receive Php 2, 000.00.
Members who are interested to participate or ask about the badminton tournament may contact Joy, Jen or Sheila of the MDD at telephone # 232-1421 local 110 or 111.
Rice University scientists have unveiled a revolutionary new technology that uses nanoparticles to convert solar energy directly into steam. The new "solar steam" method from Rice's Laboratory for Nanophotonics (LANP) is so effective it can even produce steam from icy cold water.
Details of the solar steam method were published online today in ACS Nano. The technology has an overall energy efficiency of 24 percent. Photovoltaic solar panels, by comparison, typically have an overall energy efficiency around 15 percent. However, the inventors of solar steam said they expect the first uses of the new technology will not be for electricity generation but rather for sanitation and water purification in developing countries.
"This is about a lot more than electricity," said LANP Director Naomi Halas, the lead scientist on the project. "With this technology, we are beginning to think about solar thermal power in a completely different way."
The efficiency of solar steam is due to the light-capturing nanoparticles that convert sunlight into heat. When submerged in water and exposed to sunlight, the particles heat up so quickly they instantly vaporize water and create steam. Halas said the solar steam's overall energy efficiency can probably be increased as the technology is refined.
"We're going from heating water on the macro scale to heating it at the nanoscale," Halas said. "Our particles are very small -- even smaller than a wavelength of light -- which means they have an extremely small surface area to dissipate heat. This intense heating allows us to generate steam locally, right at the surface of the particle, and the idea of generating steam locally is really counterintuitive."
To show just how counterintuitive, Rice graduate student Oara Neumann videotaped a solar steam demonstration in which a test tube of water containing light-activated nanoparticles was submerged into a bath of ice water. Using a lens to concentrate sunlight onto the near-freezing mixture in the tube, Neumann showed she could create steam from nearly frozen water.
Steam is one of the world's most-used industrial fluids. About 90 percent of electricity is produced from steam, and steam is also used to sterilize medical waste and surgical instruments, to prepare food and to purify water.
Most industrial steam is produced in large boilers, and Halas said solar steam's efficiency could allow steam to become economical on a much smaller scale.
People in developing countries will be among the first to see the benefits of solar steam. Rice engineering undergraduates have already created a solar steam-powered autoclave that's capable of sterilizing medical and dental instruments at clinics that lack electricity. Halas also won a Grand Challenges grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to create an ultra-small-scale system for treating human waste in areas without sewer systems or electricity.
"Solar steam is remarkable because of its efficiency," said Neumann, the lead co-author on the paper. "It does not require acres of mirrors or solar panels. In fact, the footprint can be very small. For example, the light window in our demonstration autoclave was just a few square centimeters."
Another potential use could be in powering hybrid air-conditioning and heating systems that run off of sunlight during the day and electricity at night. Halas, Neumann and colleagues have also conducted distillation experiments and found that solar steam is about two-and-a-half times more efficient than existing distillation columns.
Halas, the Stanley C. Moore Professor in Electrical and Computer Engineering, professor of physics, professor of chemistry and professor of biomedical engineering, is one of the world's most-cited chemists. Her lab specializes in creating and studying light-activated particles. One of her creations, gold nanoshells, is the subject of several clinical trials for cancer treatment.
For the cancer treatment technology and many other applications, Halas' team chooses particles that interact with just a few wavelengths of light. For the solar steam project, Halas and Neumann set out to design a particle that would interact with the widest possible spectrum of sunlight energy. Their new nanoparticles are activated by both visible sunlight and shorter wavelengths that humans cannot see.
"We're not changing any of the laws of thermodynamics," Halas said. "We're just boiling water in a radically different way."
###
Rice University: http://media.rice.edu
Thanks to Rice University for this article.
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TAMPA, Fla. (AP) ? A documentary about an inmate on Florida's death row says the convicted killer might have been involved in the murder of O.J. Simpson's ex-wife and her friend.
The Investigation Discovery show, "My Brother the Serial Killer," will air Wednesday.
The film is a look at Glen Rogers, who was convicted by a Florida jury in 1997 for killing a woman.
Rogers was also convicted of murder in California and is a suspect in homicides in several other states.
Rogers, who is from Hamilton, Ohio, met Nicole Brown Simpson in 1994 when he was living in Southern California, his family says in the documentary.
A criminal profiler in the film says he received paintings by Rogers with clues possibly linking him to the 1994 murders of Simpson's ex-wife and her friend, Ronald Goldman.
Simpson was accused in those killings but the so-called "trial of the century" in Los Angeles ended with his acquittal in 1995.
Simpson never testified at the criminal trial, but memorably demonstrated in court that a glove found near the slaying scene did not fit his hand. He testified at length in a wrongful death trial that led a Los Angeles civil court jury in 1997 to find him liable for damages in the case.
Much of the film is narrated by Rogers' brother, Clay Rogers, who used to rob homes with Glen Rogers as a teen but in 1993, called police on his brother after finding a body at the family's Kentucky cabin.
Clay Rogers said that in 1994, his brother told him about meeting Nicole Brown Simpson.
"They've got money, they're well off and I'm taking her down," Clay Rogers recalls Glen Rogers saying.
Other family members also said Glen Rogers talked about meeting Simpson's ex-wife.
In a statement, Goldman's sister criticized the new documentary.
"I am appalled at the level of irresponsibility demonstrated by the network and the producers of this so-called documentary," Kim Goldman said. "This is the first time we are hearing about this story, and considering that their 'main character,' Glen Rogers, confessed to stabbing my brother and Nicole to death, you would think we would be in the loop."
Simpson is currently serving a prison sentence in Nevada after being convicted in 2008 of leading five men, including two with guns, in a September 2007 confrontation with two sports memorabilia dealers and a middleman at a Las Vegas casino-hotel.
>>wrote that this crisis could become a giant political
hot potato
for the president. we will talk more about that. so the president has kept a close eye on this situation while he's been on that visit through asia, making repeated calls to
benjamin netanyahu
, the
israeli prime minister
and keeping close contact with the
egyptian president
, morsi, who is overseeing some type of cease-fire and now we know that
hillary clinton
is being dispatched to the region. for the president, how important of a
diplomatic crisis
is this to come out looking as if the u.s. was able to broker and help with the cease-fire of what we have been watching over the last week?
>>it's kind of a necessary role for the
united states
where it's trying to figure out the new geopolitical landscape. how is iran factoring into hamas? with the
israeli elections
about to happen, you know, what is the new and post-
u.s. election
what is the new geopolitical landscape. so the
united states
really cannot afford to have another hot bed, potential big, big problem on its hands again in the
middle east
with israeli/palestinian relationship. so, you know, the
united states
has to play a crucial role. the president understands that. and that's why you see secretary of state clinton there.
>>the money that the u.s. promises in aid to
egypt
, $2 billion is that enough leverage to be able to keep mohamed morsi overseeing this process and peace in the region, continuing not only to be a partner to the u.s., but once again considered an ally?
>>well, we have seen a difference between the public rhetoric of morsi and the
muslim brotherhood
run government in
egypt
and what it knows
behind the scenes
, what's known on the
behind the scenes
,
egypt
being a key player in trying to negotiate at least a cease-fire in the region. because they know that they have the -- the big card it does have is that billion-plus dollars in aid that goes -- that goes to
egypt
. now, the u.s. still has a close relationship with the
egyptian military
and that's why you see, you know, morsi having to play his own
political game
to try to figure out what kind of role he can play, keep the u.s. at least if not happy, pacified. and not see this thing blow up on its watch.
TreasureTrooper Take Surveys, Complete Offers, Signup For Free Trials, Refer Friends Get Paid Paid For All Types Of Signups
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TreasureTrooper is a website that helps it's members make money by taking paid surveys and completing advertising offers. Unlike other get-paid-to sites Treasure Trooper has a lot of offers to choose from and actually passes on a decent portion of the profits.
The payouts at Treasure Trooper per survey average out to about one dollar, while the rewards for completing offers can range from 5 to 50 dollars. They also have one of the highest paying referral programs that will let you earn a residual income from two tiers.
The downside to TreasureTrooper is that if you're not a US resident then you can't get the full rewards potential. You can still make some extra cash with some of the surveys but the majority of the high paying rewards aren't available.
There are also other forms of rewards from TreasureTrooper, in the form of prize redeemable tokens. It can take a really long time but if you're persistent you can save up enough to get cool gifts such as an ipod.
The best way of earning with Treasure Trooper is their referral program. They pay a really high 20% commission on the first level and 5% on your second level. Many members have reported that they are earning hundreds of dollars with the referrals.
The thing that took me by surprised and gave me proof this was a legitimate site was Treasure Trooper?s forum. I?m glad that people are able to openly talk and interact with each other. Many of these ?get paid to? sites try to silence your complaints and you don?t really have a say in anything. The forum allows you to interact with the staff and find out what?s working for other members.
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ScienceDaily (Nov. 16, 2012) ? Maternal vitamin C deficiency during pregnancy can have serious consequences for the fetal brain. And once brain damage has occurred, it cannot be reversed by vitamin C supplements after birth. This is shown through new research at the University of Copenhagen just published in the scientific journal PLOS ONE.
Population studies show that between 10-20 per cent of all adults in the developed world suffer from vitamin C deficiency. Therefore, pregnant women should think twice about omitting the daily vitamin pill.
"Even marginal vitamin C deficiency in the mother stunts the fetal hippocampus, the important memory centre, by 10-15 per cent, preventing the brain from optimal development," says Professor Jens Lykkesfeldt. He heads the group of scientists that reached this conclusion by studying pregnant guinea pigs and their pups. Just like humans, guinea pigs cannot produce vitamin C themselves, which is why they were chosen as the model.
"We used to think that the mother could protect the baby. Ordinarily there is a selective transport from mother to fetus of the substances the baby needs during pregnancy. However, it now appears that the transport is not sufficient in the case of vitamin C deficiency. Therefore it is extremely important to draw attention to this problem, which potentially can have serious consequences for the children affected," says Jens Lykkesfeldt.
Too late when damage is done
The new results sharpen the focus on the mother's lifestyle and nutritional status during pregnancy. The new study has also shown that the damage done to the fetal brain cannot be repaired, even if the baby is given vitamin C after birth. When the vitamin C deficient guinea pig pups were born, scientists divided them into two groups and gave one group vitamin C supplements. However, when the pups were two months old, which corresponds to teenage in humans, there was still no improvement in the group that had been given supplements. The scientists are now working to find out how early in the pregnancy vitamin C deficiency influences the development of fetal guinea pigs. Preliminary results show that the impact is already made early in the pregnancy, as the foetuses were examined in the second and third trimesters. Scientists hope in the long term to be able to use population studies to illuminate the problem in humans.
Vulnerable groups
There are some groups that may be particularly vulnerable of vitamin C deficiency: "People with low economic status who eat poorly -- and perhaps also smoke -- often suffer from vitamin C deficiency. Comparatively speaking, their children risk being born with a poorly developed memory potential. These children may encounter learning problems, and seen in a societal context, history repeats itself because these children find it more difficult to escape the environment into which they are born," says Jens Lykkesfeldt. He emphasises that if pregnant women eat a varied diet, do not smoke, and for instance take a multi-vitamin tablet daily during pregnancy, there is no reason to fear vitamin C deficiency. "Because it takes so little to avoid vitamin C deficiency, it is my hope that both politicians and the authorities will become aware that this can be a potential problem," concludes Jens Lykkesfeldt.
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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by University of Copenhagen.
Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.
Journal Reference:
Pernille Tveden-Nyborg, Lucile Vogt, Janne G. Schjoldager, Natalie Jeannet, Stine Hasselholt, Maya D. Paidi, Stephan Christen, Jens Lykkesfeldt. Maternal Vitamin C Deficiency during Pregnancy Persistently Impairs Hippocampal Neurogenesis in Offspring of Guinea Pigs. PLoS ONE, 2012; 7 (10): e48488 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0048488
Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.
Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.
MEXICO CITY ? In the United States, some on the nativist fringe suspect that Mexican Americans are reconquistas.
As if we're agents of the Mexican government working quietly to undermine U.S. sovereignty in the Southwest and hasten the day when that real estate reverts to its previous owner. That's loco.
But here in the most populous city in North America, I've just heard a competing argument that is just as far-fetched. Some Mexican politicians and intellectuals now want to bestow another title upon the estimated 35 million Mexican-Americans who live north of the border: ambassador. They want us to represent Mexico, and its people, in the United States.
I've come to Mexico City as part of a delegation of Mexican American and American Jewish leaders organized by the Latino and Latin American Institute of the American Jewish Committee, a global Jewish advocacy organization, with the goal of strengthening relations between Latinos and Jews in the United States.
Perhaps Mexicans view Jewish people as the model. They see American Jews advocating for Israel and sending millions of dollars to the Holy Land to build schools, museums and hospitals, and they want the same things from Mexican-Americans living in the United States. Both groups are part of the diaspora ? people forced to live outside their ancestral homeland who have historically been subject to prejudice. Speaking of ancestral homelands, I've come back to the country where my grandfather was born ? at almost the centennial of that destiny-altering moment when a young boy and his family crossed what was at the time little more than a line in the dirt. The hundreds of thousands of Mexicans who fled their country during the Mexican Revolution, from 1910 to 1920, weren't so much immigrants as refugees. Many of them didn't come just for better lives but, to save their lives.
Now, as their children and grandchildren take their place in American society, some Mexicans are calling the new generations to come back ? at least in spirit. They want Mexican-Americans to reconnect with Mexico.
?We need a closer relationship with the Mexican American community in the U.S., because there is a tremendous opportunity there,? Luis de la Calle, a scholar and political analyst, told us. ?We need to make an effort so that this community sees Mexico as an asset. And Mexico needs to see the Mexican-American community in the U.S. as an asset ? in terms of business, of course, but also in terms of representing Mexico in the U.S. We need to see Mexican-Americans as our ambassadors. It's a difficult thing for Mexicans to accept, but that is exactly the way we should see them.?
Timeout. How about we take a minute and consider how Mexican Americans see Mexicans and, for that matter, Mexico? This ambassador thing isn't just difficult for Mexicans to accept. For many Mexican Americans, it'll be a nonstarter.
One Mexican American in the delegation pushed back against the idea. If we are ambassadors for Mexico, he told de la Calle, then we are ?ambassadors without portfolio.?
Part of the reason, he said, is that we have a ?love-hate relationship? with Mexicans who often consider us to be ?not Mexican enough.?
That's absolutely right. Those in the Mexican ruling class were indifferent to our parents and grandparents, and now they're insulting to us. Our Spanish will never be good enough, our roots never strong enough.
I'm not alone in my resentment. Show me a Mexican American, and I'll show you someone with a family tree that includes an expatriate who fled to the north because Mexico had nothing to offer. Ironically, many of the economic opportunities that Mexico now enjoys come from expatriates living in the north ? the dishwashers in Las Vegas, the housekeepers in Phoenix, the gardeners in Dallas.
These expatriates send home more than $20 billion in remittances. It's a generous gift that helps sustain the Mexican economy, but many of the Mexican elite are too proud to acknowledge it. They like to think they're the ones keeping Mexico afloat. Now, Mexican officials want to enlist Mexican Americans to help give Mexico a makeover.
The relationship is still an open wound, and yet they expect us ? the children and grandchildren of the throwaways ? to open our wallets.
That's not going to happen, amigos. First, acknowledge the wound. And do whatever you can to heal it. Then we'll talk.
Housewives On Trial In China For Smuggling In iPhones - Slashdot
apple.slashdot.org
Quillem writes "Last year, Hong Kong residents were finding it hard to get their hands on the latest Apple iGadget even though supply was plentiful. An investigation revealed that most of the iPhones and iPads that made it into HK were being smuggled sans import duties into mainland China?wher...
Here are a few tips on how to find a commercial real estate lender and other ways to get financing if you are denied a home loan.