Sunday, September 30, 2012

Storm speeds out of Japan after injuring dozens

TOKYO (AP) ? A weakening tropical storm was speeding out of Japan on Monday after bringing gale-strength winds to Tokyo and injuring dozens of people, causing blackouts and paralyzing traffic to the south and west of the capital.

Japan's Meteorological Agency had warned Tokyo residents to stay indoors while Typhoon Jelawat passed Sunday night. The storm then had winds of up to 126 kilometers (78 miles) an hour but weakened to a tropical storm with 108 kph (67 mph) in the morning.

On Sunday, Nagoya city issued an evacuation advisory to more than 50,000 residents because of fear of flooding from a swollen river. A similar advisory was issued for more than 10,000 people in the northern city of Ishinomaki that was hit by last year's tsunami.

The typhoon left 145 people with minor injuries in southern and western Japan, about half of them on the southern island of Okinawa, public broadcaster NHK said. Tens of thousands of homes were without electricity.

Kyodo news agency reported one fatality, a man who was swept away by seawater while fishing in Okinawa.

Dozens of trains were halted in coastal areas around Tokyo and many stores inside the capital closed early Sunday as the storm approached. It is expected to move into the Pacific Ocean early Monday.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/storm-speeds-japan-injuring-dozens-004531771.html

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My Everything Corner: Headed Home

It seems like moments ago I was journalling about how much I was looking forward to our road trip, and now we're on our way home. Sometimes I wonder if it was ever worth leaving home at all. Thinking back over the last couple of days, the scenery, our first real road trip with our children, feeling nostalgic because this how we started our marriage, (roadtrips), it wasn't only worth it, it was necessary. Giving the kids the experince of travel is a source of education you just cannot replicate in the classroom. Enjoying my husband's company without all the demands of work and home has been so refreshing. Giving myself a different perspective, and taking a break from the everyday routine of being a housewife has been very nourishing. My own bed, my creative space, my pets and time to myself are all good reasons to go home and get resettled. Not to mention all the wonderful photos I now have of the Jasper scenery and of my family with gorgeous backdrops and beautiful, big smiles. This scrapbook is going to be fun to do.

Source: http://myeverythingcorner.blogspot.com/2012/09/headed-home.html

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Republicans dump voter registration firm after fraud reports

MIAMI (Reuters) - Election officials in Florida were scouring their records for fraudulent voter registration forms on Friday after the Republican Party said it had fired a company hired to gather new voters because of reports its employees may have submitted bogus forms.

The Palm Beach County elections office first reported finding 106 potentially fraudulent registration forms earlier this week that had been submitted by Strategic Allied Consulting (SAC), a Virginia firm hired by Florida's Republican Party.

Since then scores more suspicious forms have been detected in at least five other Florida counties where election officials say SAC worked to register voters.

Federal Election Commission reports from the state Republican Party show it paid SAC more than $1.3 million this summer for voter registration services.

SAC was also hired to do voter registration work for the Republican Party in four other key swing states - Nevada, Virginia, Colorado, and North Carolina - for a total of $2.9 million, according to the Republican National Committee (RNC).

"When we learned on Tuesday about the instances of potential voter registration fraud that occurred in Palm Beach County, we immediately informed the Republican National Committee that we were terminating the contract with the voter registration vendor we hired at their request because there is no place for voter registration fraud in Florida," state Republican Party Executive Director Mike Grissom said in a statement.

The RNC, as well as the Republican Party in the other four states, also severed ties with SAC. "We have zero tolerance for any threat to the integrity of elections," RNC spokesman Sean Spicer said in a statement.

SAC issued a statement late on Friday saying the forms in question were "isolated incidents of individuals trying to cheat the system."

It said it had registered more than 500,000 voters over the last eight years in more than 40 states, and criticized the "likely libelous comments" by the Florida Republican Party about its efforts in the state.

"Strategic took swift action and terminated the identified individual (in Palm Beach) the same day that the alleged fraud was brought to Strategic's attention," the statement said.

"Strategic is committed to working with state officials and law enforcement agencies to identify and prosecute those individuals responsible for voter registration fraud," it added.

The company was formed in June by Nathan Sproul, a conservative Arizona political consultant and a former executive director of the state's Republican Party, according to The Los Angeles Times.

In 2008, ACORN - the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now - registered more than 1 million mostly low-income voters, who tend to vote Democratic. Thousands of those registrations ended up being fake, submitted by ACORN-hired workers who were paid based on how many names they registered.

The scandal led to the demise of ACORN and inspired some of the anti-fraud laws impacting registration drives this year.

'EQUAL OPPORTUNITY OFFENDERS'

The alarm over the latest potential fraud was first raised by Palm Beach County Elections Supervisor Susan Bucher, who flagged 106 "questionable" registration applications turned in by SAC this month. Bucher said her staff had raised questions about suspiciously similar signatures and incorrect addresses and dates of birth on the forms.

Some of the applications were for new voters while others were for changes to address or party affiliation, Bucher told Reuters. While the 106 application forms all bore the Republican Party of Florida's identification number, there did not appear to be an overwhelming partisan bias in the forms.

"They were equal opportunity offenders. They were being paid an hourly wage so I think that was the motivation," she said.

In a few cases the party affiliation was changed from Democrat to Republican and in some cases the addresses of real people were altered, potentially affecting their ability to vote.

Bucher, who was elected on a nonpartisan platform but supports the Democratic Party, said she turned over copies of the applications to the State Attorney's office this week. Officials have not said if an investigation of the company's actions is underway.

Election supervisors in at least five Florida counties were checking forms submitted by the Florida Republican Party for similar problems, she said.

Paul Lux, supervisor of elections in Okaloosa County, located in the northwest Florida Panhandle, wrote an email on Thursday to other state election supervisors warning them "to be on the lookout," for bogus forms.

More than 2,600 registration forms were submitted to his office by SAC, said Lux. He said dozens of forms contained suspicious data including fake-looking signatures and phony addresses, and had been turned over to the State Attorney's office. Others were still being reviewed.

About 100 suspect forms also showed up in nearby Santa Rosa County, he said.

Submitting deliberately false voter registration information, or altering information on an application without consent, is a third-degree felony, punishable by up to five years in prison and a $5,000 fine.

(Additional reporting by Michael Peltier in Tallahassee and Deborah Charles in Washington; Editing by Claudia Parsons and Xavier Briand)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/republicans-dump-voter-registration-firm-fraud-reports-042818444.html

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Saturday, September 29, 2012

Woods benched for 1st time at Ryder Cup

USA's Tiger Woods reacts after making a putt on the first hole during a four-ball match at the Ryder Cup PGA golf tournament Friday, Sept. 28, 2012, at the Medinah Country Club in Medinah, Ill. (AP Photo/Chris Carlson)

USA's Tiger Woods reacts after making a putt on the first hole during a four-ball match at the Ryder Cup PGA golf tournament Friday, Sept. 28, 2012, at the Medinah Country Club in Medinah, Ill. (AP Photo/Chris Carlson)

USA's Tiger Woods reacts after making a long birdie putt on the 11th hole during a four-ball match at the Ryder Cup PGA golf tournament Friday, Sept. 28, 2012, at the Medinah Country Club in Medinah, Ill. (AP Photo/Chris Carlson)

USA's Tiger Woods reacts after missing a putt on the third hole during a foursomes match at the Ryder Cup PGA golf tournament Friday, Sept. 28, 2012, at the Medinah Country Club in Medinah, Ill. (AP Photo/Chris Carlson)

MEDINAH, Ill. (AP) ? For the first time in his career, Tiger Woods will be on the bench at the Ryder Cup.

U.S. captain Davis Love III has decided not to play Woods in the Saturday morning session of foursomes. Woods had played every match since making his debut at Valderrama in 1997. He did not play in the 2008 matches while recovering from knee surgery, and he only played four matches in Wales two years ago because the matches were reconfigured due to rain.

Love had said all week he didn't want players to be in all five matches so they could conserve energy for the singles matches on Sunday.

Woods played poorly in a foursomes loss Friday morning and was sent back out. He made seven birdies Friday afternoon in a fourball loss and was benched.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/347875155d53465d95cec892aeb06419/Article_2012-09-28-Ryder%20Cup-Woods%20Benched/id-a781a05795b74dda8479b2ea0195a30c

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Snakes on a plane slither in engines

After algorithms spot a problem, snake-like robots may one day be used to investigate faulty engines, saving time and money

JUST sometimes, snakes on a plane can be a good thing. Snake-like robots wielding UV lasers may soon slither deep inside aircraft engines to seek out and repair damage, according to the British jet engine maker Rolls-Royce. Once it is up and running, the technology should help airlines deal with potential engine problems on the spot to keep planes in the air and avoid delays for passengers.

The idea for the snake robot stems partly from the fact that engine makers like Rolls-Royce and General Electric in the US routinely use intelligent algorithms to monitor the health of plane engines in flight. The software analyses data sent from around 100 pressure, temperature and vibration sensors embedded in each engine. These algorithms flag up trouble spots. But taking a plane out of service to strip down the engine can cost an airline millions of dollars - so technologies that can quickly inspect them are needed.

Right now, such checks are performed using a fibre-optic instrument called a borescope, a heavy-duty version of a medical endoscope. It is inserted in one of many 10 millimetre-wide ports dotted around a jet engine, allowing an engineer to look for, say, bird-strike damage to a fan or compressor blade. The trouble is, with Rolls-Royce monitoring 14,000 of its engines, flown by 500 airlines on 4000 aircraft worldwide, there are not enough borescope experts at all the airports the planes visit to do this diagnostic work.

"We don't have enough specialists to go around so we need to automate this capability," says Rolls-Royce senior vice-president Pat Emmott. The firm's answer is to develop a robot that a relatively unskilled engineer can bolt on to an engine and leave to do its job. The snake robot would then go into the engine and feed images back to an expert who controls it remotely, a bit like telesurgery, he says. An engineer could then fix any problem.

Rolls-Royce is developing the technology as part of a ?4 million European research project dubbed Miror, alongside industrial partners, who also need robots that can wriggle into small spaces. The snake robot prototype should be completed by July 2014, Miror project engineer Salvador Cobos Guzman of the University of Nottingham, UK, told a conference on mechatronics in Linz, Austria, on 19 September.

While Rolls-Royce's snake-like mechanism is under wraps - pending patent filings - its aim is to have the robot carry far more than a camera. A UV laser would make the edges of blade fractures fluoresce, and a miniature grinding tool could sand down a compressor blade damaged by bird corpse debris or stones sucked into an engine, for example. The main challenge is beating gravity, says Rob Buckingham, managing director of OC Robotics in Filton, UK, a pioneer in industrial snake-like robots. The longer the snake, he says, the more likely it is to become droopy and hard to control at its far end.

The thinnest snake robot that OC robotics have developed is just 12.5 millimetres wide - pretty close to what Rolls-Royce is aiming for - but it is only 60 centimetres long. Buckingham doubts that kind of length will be of great utility in a jet engine. "The more joints you add, the more difficult it becomes to maintain the curviness," he says.

Rolls-Royce is also developing robust camera chips that can be installed around the engine's 2000 ?C core. The idea is that on engine shutdown, certain of the cameras in this interior CCTV network can be activated remotely by staff at Rolls-Royce's operations centre to give an instant picture if algorithms have suggested damage - before even the snake robot gets a look in.

"These cameras won't have to operate at engine temperatures - just survive them," says Emmott. "So we're going to need some interesting ways to keep them cool."

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Down Syndrome Awareness Center Set to Open in Cicero | NCC ...

? 2012 Casey Garrow

By Casey Garrow SYRACUSE (NCC NEWS) ? GiGi?s Playhouse is a national organization dedicated to helping people with Down syndrome.

A new center is currently under construction and will open to all children and adults with Down syndrome in November.

The?mission is to help people with the disability achieve their highest potential. The center will provide educational, therapeutic, physical fitness, recreation and other services.

Ally Donofrio is a mother of a 2-year-old with Down syndrome and felt inspired to start a center locally. Donofrio is opening GiGi?s Playhouse with the help of friends and other parents.

The center will specifically?include literacy and?math rooms for one-on-one tutoring, a stage for performances and a fitness room.

?I think having the kids being able to come into their own space and having their own special space is?really important,? Donofrio said.

Educate, inspire, achieve

The concept for the center started in the suburbs of Chicago in 2003. GiGi?s?Playhouse in Cicero will be the?13th location for the organization.

The nonprofit is run by volunteers around the community and funded entirely by donations.

The volunteers include parents, retired teachers, and elementary teachers and people whom simply love working with the kids.

?Anyone that has a passion for the kids and has the patience to work with the children then we will train them,? Donofrio said.

Psychologist, Dr. Carroll Grant, who specializes in developmental disabilities in young children such as Down syndrome, said it?s important to have centers like GiGi?s Playhouse offered to the community.

?The stronger we can be to help families support their child. The more strength they have to be available to their child and to promote the child?s development,??Dr. Grant said.

GiGi?s Playhouse hopes to the fill a gap in this community for many children and their families who need a support system.

Donofrio is still open to any?suggestions from the public as they prepare to open the center in a few short weeks.

Watch the story here:

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Source: https://nccnews.expressions.syr.edu/?p=60128

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Friday, September 28, 2012

Student health plans - HEALTH, BEAUTY & FITNESS

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5 Great Everyday Uses For Evernote - Legal Productivity

How great is Evernote? It?s the one application I have open all day, every day on my computer. Well, maybe the Chrome browser also. Mail, calendar, Skype, word processing, Twitter, all other applications are shut down at some point during the day.

Not Evernote. I rev it up in the morning when I power up my computer and it?s the last thing I shut down when I power down at night.

Why? Because it can handle just about everything. The reason why so many great applications fail is because they?re one of 25 that we try to use every day. But since I know I?ll be using Evernote every day, I can configure it to perform whatever functions the myriad other apps provide. Here are a few:

1. Blog post ideas ? If you blog consistently, or write for a publication or are authoring the great american novel, Evernote makes your job much easier. Create a ?blog post ideas? notebook and as ideas occur, create a note. When you come across related images, links or references, add them to the note. I have over 150 notes in this folder. It?s probably time to weed. But I?m never at a loss for topics to write.

2. Meeting notes ? Before a Skype, GoToMeeting or in-person meeting, I open a note in my Evernote ?Meetings? Notebook on my laptop or smartphone. No more unrecognizable scrawl or lost slip of paper. Notes can then be sorted by the date created, date updated, or title. Or searched by keyword.

3. To Do Lists ? So many great to-do lists applications out there, but who has the time to access yet another app? Since I?m already in Evernote, I?ve created a ?to-do? folder which has a ?daily? note, ?bucket list? note, ?to read? note, and so on. Evernote has a great checklist option so you can add checkboxes to your to-do lists and check them off as you go along.

4. Project management ? Creating ?project? folders in your email client or dumping them into a big ?archive? folder is a losing proposition. Instead, create a ?projects? folder in Evernote and forward related emails directly into the folder with the unique email that Evernote provides. Find a few related websites? Use Evernote?s webclipper or import browser bookmarks into the project notebook. You can even send tweets directly into your Twitter account.

5. Expense reports ? Going on a business trip? Use Evernote to capture your receipts as you get them by snapping a picture with the built-in camera. Add notes and email the completed report right from Evernote to your accounting department. I now do this on my way back from luncheons, meetings and business trips. Never miss another business reimbursement again. If you own your business, it?s great for when tax time rolls around.

These are just a few of the ways you can use Evernote on a daily basis to ramp up your productivity and streamline processes. Any others?

RELATED POSTS:
Legal Productivity Tech Tutorial- Evernote It!
Resources From The Blogosphere For Lawyers And Evernote
How To Increase Your Blogging Productivity With Evernote


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Source: http://www.legalproductivity.com/get-productive/7-great-everyday-uses-for-evernote/

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Finding Gainful Employment

Senior year means it?s time to apply to graduate school or start looking for work. Because I?m interested in getting a graduate degree in something other than engineering (business, law, communication, etc.) later on in my career, I?ll be focusing on finding an entry-level job. Luckily for me, there are a number of resources available for USC students looking for jobs or internships:

1. ConnectSC

Connect SC is a very useful tool where USC students can view companies that are hiring directly from USC. Companies will periodically list jobs and internships on ConnectSC and students can login to view the opportunities, submit resumes, and apply for positions. These companies will often hold their first round interviews directly on campus in the Career Center, which is quite convenient for the busy USC engineer!

2. Career Fairs

Each semester, USC holds both a University Wide Career Fair and a Viterbi Career Fair. The university career fair was held last week. I attended and spoke to companies like Price Waterhouse Cooper, Boeing, and GE. Next week, on the engineering quad, Viterbi will hold its own career fair inviting companies from a wide variety of engineering industries. This is a great opportunity for students to get an idea of the different opportunities for USC engineers and get experience talking to recruiters.

Engineering students lining up to talk to recruiters at the Viterbi Career Fair

3. Viterbi Career Conference and Networking Events

Viterbi also holds more intimate events where students can get one-on-one interactions with recruiters. The Viterbi Career Conference (which is happening tomorrow!) gives students an opportunity to polish interview and job search skills through a series of workshops. Afterwards, a dinner is held where students can socialize with recruiters and distribute resumes.

Additionally, each semester Viterbi puts on the Viterbi Industry Networking Event, or as I call it: ?speed dating? with recruiters. Students rotate through tables and have about five minutes to talk to a recruiter and hand out their resume. This is a great way to build interview skills and find out about internship opportunities.

Dinner at the Viterbi Career Conference

In my job search, I am making use of a combination of these opportunities because I am looking for jobs in a wide variety of fields. I will also be attending the Out for Undergraduate Business Conference in New York next week, which will be another opportunity to talk to recruiters!

Be sure to check out the VSA twitter hashtag #ViterbiCareers for tweets about jobs and internships!

Until next time,

Will

Source: http://viterbivoices.usc.edu/will/finding-gainful-employment/

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Thursday, September 27, 2012

Broaden your Horizons: Love, Family, Relationships. | Breakthrough ...

September 27, 2012 ? 3:58 pm

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Source: http://breakthroughretreats.wordpress.com/2012/09/27/broaden-your-horizons-love-family-relationships/

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NFL 2012

Golden Tate Seahawks The play that ended the NFL referees lockout, which one owner described as more about ideology than finances.

Photo by Otto Greule Jr/Getty Images

Tuesday night, as the NFL and its locked-out refs were progressing to the?"Screw it, let's start leaking to Mort" phase of negotiations, an unnamed NFL owner gave the whole game away?to the?Wall Street Journal:

According to one owner who has been briefed by league officials on the issue, the disagreement with the referees is more ideological than it is financial.

And that's it. That was the stupid, preening essence of a stupid, preening work stoppage, which more or less came to an end with?last night's tentative agreement. Under the terms of the deal, NFL commissioner Roger Goodell will temporarily lift the lockout so the regular officials can work tonight's Cleveland-Baltimore game; if the union ratifies the agreement in a vote on Friday or Saturday, the refs will be back en masse on Sunday.

Goodell and his owners may have lost the PR battle on Monday when their sport turned into the last 10 minutes of?Horse Feathers, but they won the ideological fight our anonymous owner alluded to above. It was nominally about retirement benefits, but in fact it was a struggle over what it means to be a worker or an employer under our dyspeptic yet triumphal contemporary brand of capitalism.

The NFL locked out its referees in the name of taking away their pensions. It was not that the pensions were a threat to the long-term fiscal survival of the league?again and again, we were reminded that the sums involved were pocket change in a growing, multibillion-dollar enterprise. It was that the pensions existed at all. The mere existence of a defined-benefit retirement plan offended an ownership class that had looked around and seen that every other business owner in America had already broken that particular contract. The referees' old deal was deemed insufficiently hard-edged or market-driven. That was the most vulgar thing about the lockout. It was ??aesthetic.

Two weeks ago, Goodell?whined to the Huffington Post's Dave Jamieson?that?he?didn't have a pension; why should the refs?

"From the owners' standpoint, right now they're funding a pension program that is a defined benefit program," said Goodell, who was in Washington on Wednesday attending a luncheon hosted by Politico's Playbook. "About ten percent of the country has that. Yours truly doesn't have that. It's something that doesn't really exist anymore and that I think is going away steadily."

"What we agreed to do and offer as ownership," he added, "is that they would have a defined contribution plan, in the form of 401(k), so they'll still have a pension plan but the risk, like [for] most of us, would be on individuals."

If it's bad enough for the rest of us, in other words, it should be bad enough for them, too. And on that count, the only one that really mattered to the league, the NFL won. The refs will keep their pensions, but beginning in 2017, the defined-benefit plan will be frozen, and new hires will get thrown into 401(k)s.

The pension deal is a concession mainly of principle for the current refs, a minor one on its face that will surely have all the usual nutless cherubim playing all the usual harp music for Goodell's assiduously fair-minded statesmanship. But these losses matter; they move the timberline back and normalize whatever new privation has been introduced into working life, which is why Dumbass Pericles and his ilk pick the fights in the first place.

This?was?Goodell's fight, too. Apologists for the commissioner, like ProFootballTalk's Mike Florio, argue that the commissioner was "simply doing what the NFL owners want him to do." (Florio went so deep into the tank for Goodell on Wednesday that I don't think he'll surface until the playoffs.) But note, when the?Wall Street Journal?brings up the ideological stakes, who was doing the briefing and who was getting debriefed. The political line originated with the league office.

How does ripping up the pension program identifiably serve the league's practical interests, anyway? One of the selling points of 401(k) plans is that they're better suited to a dynamic economy in which workers frequently change jobs. But the league doesn't want refs ducking in and out. They're essentially lifers.

Goodell talks incessantly about protecting "the shield." He means the league's heraldic corporate logo?its brand?not any useful sort of shield. His whole tenure has been a prolonged and infinitely smarmy exercise in shifting risk and liability off the league and onto the help. He changes the rules midseason to put the onus for player health onto the players themselves. He wages an "ideological" battle to expose the refs to the whims of the market. "It's ironic that you, the NFL, is what's screwing this brand up right now," ESPN analyst Trent Dilfer intoned in the weird aftermath of Monday night's game, when he and Steve Young and Stuart Scott all started talking like Ralph Nader. Dilfer's right, and not just about the quality of play. The refs, with their pensions and their moonlighting, are vestiges of an older NFL. The lockout wasn't just a war on them; it was part of the NFL's ongoing battle with its former self.

Source: http://feeds.slate.com/click.phdo?i=ce4cdcf4d1734e7b78797f4da25609bb

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Simple Techniques And Strategies To Adhere To For Weight Loss Goals

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Wednesday, September 26, 2012

Apple dumped Google Maps on iOS 6 one year earlier than it needed to

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Video: Slow-moving rocks better odds that life crashed to Earth from space

Tuesday, September 25, 2012

Microorganisms that crashed to Earth embedded in the fragments of distant planets might have been the sprouts of life on this one, according to new research from Princeton University, the University of Arizona and the Centro de Astrobiolog?a (CAB) in Spain.

The researchers report in the journal Astrobiology that under certain conditions there is a high probability that life came to Earth ? or spread from Earth to other planets ? during the solar system's infancy when Earth and its planetary neighbors orbiting other stars would have been close enough to each other to exchange lots of solid material. The work will be presented at the 2012 European Planetary Science Congress on Sept. 25.

The findings provide the strongest support yet for "lithopanspermia," the idea that basic life forms are distributed throughout the universe via meteorite-like planetary fragments cast forth by disruptions such as volcanic eruptions and collisions with other matter. Eventually, another planetary system's gravity traps these roaming rocks, which can result in a mingling that transfers any living cargo.

[Images and video can be seen at http://www.princeton.edu/main/news/archive/S34/82/42M30. To obtain high-res images, contact Princeton science writer Morgan Kelly, (609) 258-5729, mgnkelly@princeton.edu]

Previous research on this possible phenomenon suggests that the speed with which solid matter hurtles through the cosmos makes the chances of being snagged by another object highly unlikely. But the Princeton, Arizona and CAB researchers reconsidered lithopanspermia under a low-velocity process called weak transfer wherein solid materials meander out of the orbit of one large object and happen into the orbit of another. In this case, the researchers factored in velocities 50 times slower than previous estimates, or about 100 meters per second.

Using the star cluster in which our sun was born as a model, the team conducted simulations showing that at these lower speeds the transfer of solid material from one star's planetary system to another could have been far more likely than previously thought, explained first author Edward Belbruno, a mathematician and visiting research collaborator in Princeton's Department of Astrophysical Sciences who developed the principles of weak transfer.

The researchers suggest that of all the boulders cast off from our solar system and its closest neighbor, five to 12 out of 10,000 could have been captured by the other. Earlier simulations had suggested chances as slim as one in a million.

"Our work says the opposite of most previous work," Belbruno said. "It says that lithopanspermia might have been very likely, and it may be the first paper to demonstrate that. If this mechanism is true, it has implications for life in the universe as a whole. This could have happened anywhere."

Co-authors Amaya Moro-Mart?n, an astronomer at CAB and a Princeton visiting research collaborator in astrophysical sciences, and Renu Malhotra, a professor of planetary sciences at Arizona, noted that low velocities offer very high probabilities for the exchange of solid material via weak transfer, and also found that the timing of such an exchange could be compatible with the actual development of the solar system, as well as with the earliest known emergence of life on Earth. Dmitry Savransky, a Princeton mechanical and aerospace engineering doctoral student, conducted the simulations.

The researchers report that the solar system and its nearest planetary-system neighbor could have swapped rocks at least 100 trillion times well before the sun struck out from its native star cluster. Furthermore, existing rock evidence shows that basic life forms could indeed date from the sun's birth cluster days ? and have been hardy enough to survive an interstellar journey and eventual impact.

"The conclusion from our work," Moro-Mart?n said, "is that the weak transfer mechanism makes lithopanspermia a viable hypothesis because it would have allowed large quantities of solid material to be exchanged between planetary systems, and involves timescales that could potentially allow the survival of microorganisms embedded in large boulders."

All about velocities

The Princeton-Arizona-CAB paper cites two previous studies that present the odds of solid matter from one planetary system being captured by another as being more or less dismal.

The first, a 2003 paper published in Astrobiology by Jay Melosh, a Purdue University earth and atmospheric sciences professor, questioned the probability that meteorites have ever escaped a terrestrial planet in Earth's solar system and wound up on a terrestrial planet in another system. The report concluded that the chances ? about one in 10,000, or 0.01 percent ? are "overwhelmingly unlikely" considering the speed a meteorite would need to travel (about six kilometers per second) and the roominess of space.

Belbruno and his co-authors calculated that under this scenario of high velocities and dispersed planetary systems, the probability of solid material from any planetary system striking another falls to as little as five in 100,000, or 0.005 percent.

Star birth clusters, which are tightly confined groups of stars and planetary systems, were introduced as a possible setting for lithopanspermia in a 2005 Astrobiology paper by David Spergel, Princeton's Charles A. Young Professor of Astronomy on the Class of 1897 Foundation and chair of astrophysical sciences, and University of Michigan physics professor Fred Adams.

Factoring in velocities of two to five kilometers per second, Spergel and Adams found that the chances of an exchange of life-bearing rocks between star systems clustered in groups of 30 to 1,000 could be as unlikely as one in a million to as good as one in 1,000, or 0.0001 to 0.1 percent, respectively. Spergel and Adams, however, limited their study to binary stars ? or planetary systems with two stars ? which might elevate star-to-star solid matter exchanges, Moro-Mart?n said.

Nonetheless, in clusters similar to those considered by Spergel and Adams, weak transfer involves relative velocities of no more than one kilometer per second, which substantially increases the probability of capture by other stars in the cluster. In other words, star clusters provide an ideal setting for weak transfer, Belbruno said.

Chaotic in nature, weak transfer happens when a slow moving object such as a meteorite wanders into the outer edge of the gravitational pull of a larger object with a low relative velocity, such as a star or massive Jupiter-like planet. The smaller object partially orbits the large object, but the larger object has only a loose grip on it. This means the smaller object can escape and be propelled into space, drifting until it is pulled in by another large object.

Belbruno first demonstrated weak transfer with the Japanese lunar probe Hiten in 1991. A mechanical malfunction left the probe with insufficient fuel to enter the moon's orbit the traditional way, which is to approach at a high speed then fire retrorockets to slow down. Instead, Belbruno designed a weak-transfer trajectory that got the probe into orbit around the moon using a minimal amount of fuel.

Adams, co-author of the 2005 paper with Spergel, said that the work by Belbruno and his co-authors succeeds at pulling together the various factors of earlier lithopanspermia models and adding a substantial new element ? chaos. Adams is familiar with the study but had no role in it.

"This paper takes the type of calculations that have been done before and makes an important generalization of previous work," Adams said. "Their work on chaos in this context also carries the subject forward. They make a careful assessment of a process that is dynamically quite complicated and chaotic in nature.

"They are breaking new ground from the viewpoint of dynamical astrophysics," Adams said. "Regarding the problem of lithopanspermia, this type of weak capture and weak escape is interesting because it allows for the ejection speeds to be small, and these slow speeds allow for higher probabilities of rock capture. To say it another way, chaos, in part, enhances the prospects for lithopanspermia."

To the simulator!

Star birth clusters satisfy two requirements for weak transfer, Moro-Mart?n said. First, the sending and receiving planetary systems must contain a massive planet that captures the passing solid matter in the weak-gravity boundary between itself and its parent star. Earth's solar system qualifies, and several other stars in the sun's birth cluster would too.

Second, both planetary systems must have low relative velocities. In the sun's stellar cluster, between 1,000 and 10,000 stars were gravitationally bound to one another for hundreds of millions of years, each with a velocity of no more than a sluggish one kilometer per second, Moro-Mart?n said.

The team simulated 5 million trajectories between single-star planetary systems ? in a cluster with 4,300 stars ? under three conditions: the solid matter's "source" and "target" stars were both the same mass as the sun; the target star was only half the sun's mass; or the source star was half the sun's mass.


The researchers explored the likelihood that our solar system exchanged solid matter with its closest planetary-system neighbor during the first hundreds of millions of years it existed. At that time, our sun belonged to a tight-knit star cluster filled with other planetary systems. The above simulation shows that two planetary systems (green and blue dots) -- about 3.26 light years apart -- orbit a common center of mass. Over a period of roughly 8.7 million years, various objects (black dots) are pulled in and repelled by the systems' gravity. Displaying weak transfer, one object (red dot) first wanders into the green system's gravity boundary and partially orbits it before being cast off. The red object then drifts before being pulled in by the blue planetary system. Credit: Video by Dmitry Savransky

The odds of a star capturing solid matter from another planetary system under these three scenarios are 15 (0.15 percent), five (0.05 percent) and 12 (0.12 percent) in 10,000, respectively, the researchers report ? probabilities that exceed those under the conditions proposed by Melosh by a factor of 1 billion.

To estimate the actual amount of solid matter that could have been exchanged between the sun and its nearest star neighbor, the researchers used data and models pertaining to the movement and formation of asteroids, the Kuiper Belt ? the solar system's massive outer ring of asteroids ? and the Oort Cloud, a hypothesized collection of comets, ice and other matter about one light year from Earth's sun widely believed to be a primary source of comets and meteorites.

The researchers used this data to conclude that during a period of 10 million to 90 million years, anywhere between 100 trillion to 30 quadrillion solid matter objects weighing more than 10 kilograms transferred between the sun and its nearest cluster neighbor. Of these, some 200 billion rocks from early Earth could have been whisked away via weak transfer.

For lithopanspermia to happen, however, microorganisms first have to survive the long, radiation-soaked journey through space.

Moro-Mart?n and Malhotra consulted a 2009 paper an international team published in the Astrophysical Journal that determined how long microorganisms could survive in space based on the size of the solid matter hosting them. That group's computer simulations showed that survival times ranged from 12 million years for a boulder up to 3 centimeters (roughly one inch) in diameter, to 500 million years for a solid objects 2.67 meters (nearly nine feet) across.

The researchers estimated that under weak transfer, solid matter that had escaped one planet would need tens of millions of years to finally collide with another one. This falls within the lifespan of the sun's birth cluster, but means that lithopanspermia by weak transfer would have been limited to planetary fragments at least one meter, or about three feet, in size.

Matching the theory with life

As for the actual transfer of life, the researchers suggest that roughly 300 million lithopanspermia events could have occurred between our solar system and the closest planetary system.

But even if microorganisms survived the trip to Earth, the planet had to be ready to receive them. The researchers reference rock-dating evidence suggesting that the Earth contained water when the solar system was only 288 million years old and that very early life might have emerged before the solar system was 718 million years old.

The sun's birth cluster ? assumed to be roughly the same age as the Earth's solar system ? slowly broke apart when the solar system was approximately 135 million to 535 million years old, Moro-Mart?n said. In addition, the sun could have been ripe for weak transfer up to 700 million years after the solar system formed.

So, if life arose on Earth shortly after surface water was available, there were possibly about 400 million years when life could have journeyed from the Earth to another habitable world, and vice versa, the researchers report. If life had an early start in other planetary systems and developed before the sun's birth cluster dispersed, life on Earth may have originated beyond our solar system.

The paper stops short of calculating the likelihood of extrasolar life taking root on a terrestrial planet such as Earth, but the higher probability the researchers determined for solid-matter transfer makes that a more worthwhile pursuit, Moro-Mart?n said.

"Our study stops when the solid matter is trapped by the second planetary system, but for lithopanspermia to be completed it actually needs to land on a terrestrial planet where life could flourish," Moro-Mart?n said. "The study of the probability of landing on a terrestrial planet is work that we now know is worth doing because large quantities of solid material originating from the first planetary system may be trapped by the second planetary system, waiting to land on a terrestrial planet.

"Our study does not prove lithopanspermia actually took place," Moro-Mart?n said, "but it indicates that it is an open possibility."

###

The paper, "Chaotic Exchange of Solid Material between Planetary Systems: Implications for Lithopanspermia," was published Sept. 12 by Astrobiology

Princeton University: http://www.princeton.edu

Thanks to Princeton University for this article.

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10 Tips To Improve Productivity In The Workplace | Business 2 ...

Stress levels on a typical work day...

Image by GDS Infographics.

While employees are certainly responsible for the level of productivity in a business, the level of organisation and other factors from the management side are just as important. Here are a few things to take into consideration when trying to raise the level of productivity.

1. Create a Pleasing Environment

If your team is a team and not a pit of gladiators fighting against each other, your company will get a lot more things done.

It?s a lot better to have a group of people who work together, help and feed ideas to each other, than people who need to watch their back and try to keep all good ideas for themselves for fear of the competition.

2. Make Your Employees Happy

Underpaid, overworked employees will eventually flee your company in droves. Give them good benefits, a good pay for the work they do and occasional rewards when they excel, and you?ll have them stay, providing step 1 is in place.

3. Assign Proper Roles

If things don?t get done it might be for several reasons:

a. Someone is incompetent along the line ? due to either not knowing their job or to not being particularly on the ball

b. The workflow bottlenecked somewhere

c. There is no one in charge or there is no position to take care of it

You solve these issues by:

a. Training your personnel and locating the ones that are not capable of doing their job and put them onto some other task

b. Reorganise the workflow and redistribute the workload, but if those aren?t enough hire more personnel

c. Put someone in charge or be quick at spotting where a new position needs to be created to deal with the traffic that is meeting a dead end

4. Make Sure Your Employees Have All They Need

If they are going to do work that needs a powerful computer, while trying to keep the costs down, make sure you give them one that is capable of doing the functions it needs to do. Getting a slightly more expensive computer now might save you money by cutting down execution times.

Make sure they have enough printer toner if they have a printer for example, and make sure it?s stocked up or quickly ordered. A secretary would find it very hard to send your personalised letters by the end of the day without it.

Same goes for supplies and office stationery.

5. Communicate

Be transparent when possible. Hold staff meetings, let people know they can reach you whenever they need to, within limits of course. If you are the manager of a company with 700 people it might be a little hard to speak to everyone.

Regardless there should always be clear communication between people in a business, a misunderstood order might cause a lot of hassle later.

6. Encourage and Motivate

Don?t give feedback only when it?s negative. It?s all well and good to consider perfection as the norm so that it goes unacknowledged, until you realise that nobody?s perfect and the lack of recognition makes people think they good efforts are not valued.

7. Set Realistic Targets

You can?t really get anything done without targets. Sometimes there will just be situations where you have to get things done quickly, but a frantic workplace can?t be the norm unless you want to stress your employees to death.

It?s also a very good idea to encourage your employees to set targets by themselves. If they do they will gain more control over their workload and will realise they can produce more.

8. Plan When Needed

Plans are important. Don?t forget to set them and let your employee knows what they are so that they can move in the right direction. Hold meetings when required.

9. Act When Needed

Which should be way more often than when you hold meetings. You need to have people actually do the jobs, if you just bombard them with meeting after meeting after meeting they will not get anything done.

10. Implement Options for Training

Things evolve, especially technology. Make sure you keep your staff up to date with courses or in-house training.

Do you have any tips for improving productivity ? or, even better, any horror stories of productivity drives gone wrong?

Let us know in the comments!

Source: http://www.business2community.com/strategy/10-tips-to-improve-productivity-in-the-workplace-0292671

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Tuesday, September 25, 2012

Better Metrics of Green Benefits Needed ... - Business Review Europe

NEW YORK, Sept.?24, 2012 /PRNewswire/ --?McGraw-Hill Construction, part of The McGraw-Hill Companies (NYSE: MHP), today released its latest SmartMarket Executive Brief: Determining the Value of Green Building Investments: A Perspective From Industry Leaders on Triple Bottom Line Decision Making, in partnership with URS, at the White House's 2012 GreenGov Symposium. The report provides the findings of qualitative research conducted by McGraw-Hill Construction through interviews with sustainability leaders in the education, healthcare, retail, manufacturing and federal government sectors on their perspectives about decision making for green building investments.

The report reveals that in order for green building to continue to gain market share at a comparable rate to the past decade, more far-reaching benefits need to be documented and demonstrated to organizational leadership for them to increase their level of green investments. These include benefits across the spectrum of financial, environmental and social benefits?often referred to as the "triple bottom line."

"To date, owners have acted on compelling benefits from their green investments, mainly savings in energy, water, waste and lowered operating costs," said Harvey Bernstein, Vice President of Industry Insights and Alliances at McGraw-Hill Construction. "However, these are only a fraction of the advantages offered by green buildings?missing is a quantification of the full triple bottom line benefits from these investments, especially around the social benefits to human performance and well-being."

The study includes recommendations on actions needed in the industry in order to accelerate green investments across the built environment:

  • Evaluate social, environmental and financial goals together when making decisions on green building investments;
  • Create green building benchmarks through standardization and disclosure of operational building costs;
  • Compile data and case studies that establish the value of nonfinancial benefits of green building;
  • Create better tools using a more thorough, industry-consensus definition of lifecycle costing based on impacts across the triple bottom line;
  • Assemble a?public database of green project measures across the triple bottom line.

"The data confirm that sustainability is vital to business growth, for us and for our clients. The demand for business to demonstrate its ability to create value for all its stakeholders is paramount," said Lidia Berger, Vice President, Sustainable Practice Director ? Facilities at URS. "URS understands how to design, implement and measure the value of sustainable investment. Most importantly, we can provide our clients with a measurable return on investment based on projects' economic, social, and environmental impacts."

Through in-depth interviews with sustainability leaders, the report finds that organizations are using lifecycle cost analysis of operational savings to demonstrate the ROI of green and to justify green building projects. However, most respondents report there is a need for more data about the non-financial benefits of green to encourage their organizations to increase their investment in green building. This report also reveals the need for standardized measures that can fully capture the impact of green building across the triple bottom line.

The results of the study will be presented today at 3:15 p.m. as part of the Economic Valuation session at the White House's 2012 GreenGov Symposium in Washington, DC.

For a copy of the report, visit http://analyticsstore.construction.com/index.php/smartmarket-executive-brief-determining-the-value-of-green-building-investments.html.

About McGraw-Hill Construction:

McGraw-Hill Construction's data, analytics, and media businesses?Dodge, Sweets, Architectural Record, and Engineering News-Record?create opportunities for owners, architects, engineers, contractors, building product manufacturers, and distributors to strengthen their market position, size their markets, prioritize prospects, and target and build relationships that will win more business. McGraw-Hill Construction serves more than one million customers through its trends and forecasts, industry news, and leading platform of construction data, benchmarks, and analytics. To learn more, visit www.construction.com.

About The McGraw-Hill Companies:

McGraw-Hill announced on September 12, 2011, its intention to separate into two companies: McGraw-Hill Financial, a leading provider of content and analytics to global financial markets, and McGraw-Hill Education, a leading education company focused on digital learning and education services worldwide. McGraw-Hill Financial's leading brands include Standard & Poor's Ratings Services, S&P Capital IQ, S&P Dow Jones Indices, Platts energy information services and J.D. Power and Associates. With sales of $6.2 billion in 2011, the Corporation has approximately 23,000 employees across more than 280 offices in 40 countries. Additional information is available at http://www.mcgraw-hill.com/.

Media Contact:
Kathy Malangone, Senior Director, Marketing Communications, McGraw-Hill Construction, +1 212-904-4376, kathy_malangone@mcgraw-hill.com

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SOURCE McGraw-Hill Construction

Source: http://www.businessrevieweurope.eu/press_releases/better-metrics-of-green-benefits-needed-according-to-new-mcgraw-hill-construction-smartmarket-execut

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Human finger in Idaho trout belongs to wakeboarder

SPOKANE, Wash. (AP) ? A human finger found inside a fish at Idaho's Priest Lake has been traced to a wakeboarder who lost four fingers in an accident more than two months earlier.

Fisherman Nolan Calvin found the finger while he was cleaning the trout he caught Sept. 11. He put it on ice and called the Bonner County, Idaho, sheriff's office, the Spokesman-Review newspaper reported.

Detectives were able to get a fingerprint off the severed digit. They matched it to a fingerprint card for Haans Galassi, 31, of Colbert, Wash., and called him Tuesday morning.

Investigators learned that Galassi lost four fingers from his left hand in a June 21 accident on the same lake where the fish was caught.

"The sheriff called me and told me he had a strange story to tell me," Galassi said Tuesday. "He said that a fisherman was out on Priest Lake, and I pretty much knew exactly what he was going to say at that point.

"I was like: Let me guess, they found my fingers in a fish."

The fish was caught about eight miles from where Galassi had lost his fingers, the sheriff's office said.

Galassi had been on a camping trip at the scenic lake when he decided to go wakeboarding. He told the newspaper his hand got caught in a loop in the towline, and he couldn't pull it out before the line tightened behind the boat that was going to pull him.

When he finally broke free, he didn't feel much pain. But then he looked at his hand.

"I pulled my hand out of the water and it had pretty much lopped off all four fingers," he said. "It was a lot of flesh and bone, not a lot of blood."

He was taken by helicopter to a Spokane hospital.

Galassi has been undergoing therapy twice a week for his injured hand. He still has half of his index and pointer fingers on that hand.

"I can still grip things and grab and hold the steering wheel with it," Galassi said.

The sheriff's office offered to return the finger, but Galassi declined.

"I'm like, 'uhhh, I'm good,'" he said.

Detective Sgt. Gary Johnston of the sheriff's office said the agency will keep the digit for a few weeks in case Galassi changes his mind.

"There's still three more, too," Johnston said. "It's hard to say where those are going to end up."

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/human-finger-idaho-trout-belongs-wakeboarder-213629550.html

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