Winter Conditions Threaten Lives of Syrian Refugees in Iraq

International disaster relief organization, ShelterBox, is delivering emergency shelter and supplies to Syrian families who are living in the Domiz refugee camp in northern Iraq as a result of Syria?s growing violence, political conflict and economic hardship.

Sarasota (PRWEB) October 24, 2012

International disaster relief organization, ShelterBox, is delivering emergency shelter and supplies to Syrian families who are living in the Domiz refugee camp in northern Iraq as a result of Syria?s growing violence, political conflict and economic hardship.

ShelterBox, which responds to disasters such as earthquake, volcano, flood, hurricane, cyclone, tsunami or conflict, has deployed a highly trained ShelterBox Response Team (SRT) to deliver boxes of aid that will help families rebuild their lives.

?This is an international crisis and it is affecting the entire Middle East and the broader region,? Kurdish Foreign Minister, Falah Mustafa, said. ?There are already many shortages but these will become more critical as winter sets in.?

Approximately 15,000 people are living at the camp, with an average of 200 new people arriving each day. The Kurdistan region of Iraq continues to welcome Syrian Kurdish refugees, but concerns are growing over the threat of winter weather to these refugee camps.

Because temperatures in this region often reach or drop below freezing from November through March, boxes sent to the Syrian refugees have been tailored to sustain the approaching winter weather conditions.

?As winter is approaching, there is a real need at the camp for winterized tents and ShelterBox provides a special thermal layer that goes between the inner and outer tents, which keeps warmth in,? said Becs Novell, an SRT member deployed to the area.

ShelterBox has sent essential disaster relief tents with thermal liners and sets of hats, gloves and scarves for adults and children in addition to the water filtration kit, blankets and groundsheets, and solar lamp in each box.

As part of its Clinton Global Initiative commitment, ShelterBox is also responding to extensive flooding and ongoing conflict in the Sahel region of West Africa, and continues to monitor the need of families affected by an earthquake in Iran, flooding in Nigeria and Senegal, and conflict in Jordan.

Since 2000, ShelterBox has provided shelter, warmth and dignity following more than 180 disasters in over 80 countries. ShelterBox?s American affiliate, ShelterBox USA is headquartered in Sarasota, Florida. Individual tax-deductible donations to ShelterBox USA can be made at http://www.shelterboxusa.org, 941-907-6036 or via text message by sending SHELTER to 20222 for a one-time $10 donation.

Tiffany Stephenson
ShelterBox USA
(941) 907-6036 102
Email Information

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/winter-conditions-threaten-lives-syrian-refugees-iraq-195626226.html

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Canadian Youth Converge in Ottawa for Environmental Conference ...

Michael Wrobel ? Published October 26, 2012 |

Approximately 50 students from Concordia University and 1,000 youth from across Canada will assemble in Ottawa this weekend for Power Shift, a three-day conference on climate change and renewable energy.

?We?re convening for what we think is a historic economic and climate convergence in Ottawa, to build a broad and diverse movement to tackle the root cause of climate change, which we think is a fundamentally unsustainable economic system based on corporate greed and perpetual growth,? says Martin Lukacs, one of the conference?s organizers.

Speakers, workshops and networking will be the cornerstones of the weekend-long event which begins Friday in Ottawa. Presenters include Naomi Klein, Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois and ecologist Mikael Rioux. Workshops will address a range of topics and issues including effective storytelling, online campaigning and non-violent disobedience.

The conference concludes on Monday with a protest on Parliament Hill which will demand that the federal government invest in renewable energy projects and end its subsidization of the fossil fuel industry.

?We think that an important first step in our transition towards a more just, equitable and clean society is ending the $1.4 billion a year that the federal government hands out to the dirtiest, richest corporations in the world,? says Lukacs.

That money, he says, can be better spent on renewable energy, post-secondary education, public transit, social housing and other government programs.

But Power Shift is also about uniting youth from across Canada to build an ?environmental and climate change justice movement? that operates outside the realm of electoral politics.

?We don?t think that solutions to the climate crisis are going to come from the top, are going to be handed down by politicians, by business councils, by companies,? Lukacs says. ?The viable alternatives are going to emerge from the grassroots.?

The conference also focuses on building positive change in other areas of advocacy, including education, mobilization, and collective action.

The Concordia Student Union organized a bus to transport students to Ottawa. CSU VP Sustainability Andrew Roberts will attend the conference.

?I think people are really interested [in the conference] because it gives a more grounded approach to dealing with national policy issues, which are pretty daunting,? he says, adding that the workshops will tackle things we can do ?at home, in the community and at school.?

Roberts believes it is important that Concordia students be present at the conference.

?This is a pressing time,? he says. ?If we want to step up as stewards and leaders in our communities?and possibly in our country and our province?this is a great opportunity to be networking, to be learning, to be engaging with people who might be doing similar things across the country.?

?This is a pressing time. If we want to step up as stewards and leaders in our communities?and possibly in our country and our province?this is a great opportunity to be networking, to be learning, to be engaging with people who might be doing similar things across the country.?
?CSU VP Sustainability Andrew Roberts

A motion was put forward in the School of Community and Public Affairs Students? Association to endorse the conference and encourage students to attend.

?Concordia has an interesting history in political activism,? says SCPASA member Anthony Garoufalis-Auger. He says climate change has been dormant as a national issue in recent years and that it will be good for Concordia students to meet with other Canadian youth to mobilize on the issue.

Conference tickets are being subsidized by the Sustainability Action Fund, which supports sustainable infrastructure and student projects at Concordia. That means the cost for Concordia students has been reduced from $45 to $20.

Many participants look forward to hearing from Montreal-born activist Naomi Klein, author of No Logo and The Shock Doctrine, and from Quebec student activist Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois.

Sustainability Action Fund coordinator Jeffrey Riley says participants might learn a lot from Nadeau-Dubois about communications strategy.

?Getting your message across, reaching out to the public can be a very difficult task,? he says. ?I think we can use his experience in helping us get the climate change message out there.?

Hannah McCormick, a coordinator of the Zero-Waste Campus campaign at Concordia, is definitely excited that ?big names? like Klein and Nadeau-Dubois will be speaking at the conference.

?I?m also looking forward to hearing from people who have participated recently in direct environmental actions and have first-hand experience on what went well and what didn?t,? she says.

Students from McGill University and Dawson College also plan to attend the conference.

Check Tuesday?s newspaper for The Link?s coverage of the conference.

?with files from Hillary Lutes

Source: http://thelinknewspaper.ca/article/3387

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Fermented tea in boy's lunchbox brews trouble at school | alcoh ...

The Newport-Mesa Unified School District will re-examine its disciplinary practices, and its hard-line policy against alcohol, after an 11-year-old student brought to school a bottle of kombucha tea containing a tiny amount of alcohol.

The boy, a seventh-grader at Ensign Intermediate School in Newport Beach, originally got in hot water for having a glass bottle in his lunchbox on Tuesday, Oct. 9. School officials noticed that the label on the bottle of fermented tea said it contained less than 0.5 percent alcohol by volume. District policy states that anyone who possesses products with even trace amounts of alcohol could be subject to discipline.

Here are three of the seven flavors of Bucha-brand kombucha tea. The one on the left, guava mango, is the flavor an 11-year-old boy at a Newport Beach intermediate school drank last week, igniting a debate about natural foods and school policy.

PHOTO COURTESY OF BUCHA LIVE KOMBUCHA

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According to a district spokeswoman, the boy was questioned by the vice principal the next day, with a school resource officer from the Newport Beach Police Department present. The boy was told that the consequences of possessing alcohol could include a referral to a program to treat youth substance abuse. The vice principal initially recommended a five-day suspension, but officials later decided against any such punishment.

"There hasn't been time to change policies at this point," district spokeswoman Laura Boss said by e-mail. "However, the discussions have begun as to how we can work to develop a more nurturing approach when dealing with issues regarding discipline that don't fit the standard 'black and white' drug and alcohol issues."

The boy was kept out of class the rest of the school day Wednesday and studied in an administrative office as school officials tried to reach his mother. The mother met with the vice principal, Mary Jo Vecchiarelli, later that day, but it didn't go well. "My meeting with her made me feel, ridiculous, confused, outraged, ridiculed and blamed," the mother wrote on her own blog, called Fresh and Free in OC.

The mother could not be reached for comment, and on her blog she refers to herself only as Leslie G. Neither she nor the district has identified her son.

Kombucha (pronounced "kom-BOO-cha") is made by combining live bacteria with yeast in sweetened tea. Some devotees of the 2,200-year-old beverage say it has a range of therapeutic benefits, from aiding in digestion and building immunity against diseases to preventing cancer and stopping baldness, although there's little modern scientific evidence to support the claims. Other fans simply like the carbonated taste and drink it as an alternative to sodas and juices.

However, ethyl alcohol is a natural by-product of the fermenting process. Any drink that has less than 0.5 percent alcohol is not classified by the federal government as an alcoholic beverage, so anyone under 21 can buy it. The alcohol content is so low it won't cause drunkenness; by comparison, a can of domestic beer is 4 percent alcohol by volume. Home brews of kombucha often produce higher concentrations of alcohol, and some companies have created 21-and-over versions whose alcohol content runs from 1 percent to 3 percent.

Commercially bottled kombuchas for sale to the general public are labeled as having less than 0.5 percent alcohol. But in June 2010 a problem was revealed when Whole Foods announced that several popular brands of kombucha had been voluntarily pulled from store shelves after some samples were found to have alcohol levels ranging from over 0.5 percent to 2.5 percent.

The beverage-makers that survived the withdrawal reformulated their products, and now, two years later, kombucha is gaining momentum again. GT's of Beverly Hills dominates the U.S. market, with its Enlightened Kombucha and Enlightened Synergy drinks. The brand Leslie G. packed for her son was Bucha Live Kombucha, made by B&R Liquid Adventure LLC of Torrance. The company's website states the drink has less than 0.5 percent alcohol, and the particular flavor Leslie G's son drank, Guava Mango, usually has much less ? 0.22 percent, said founder Bern Galvin.

"That's next to nothing," Galvin said.

On her blog, Leslie G said her son has attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, and that this had contributed to past behavioral problems at school. She said her family's healthier diet, which included kombucha, has had a positive effect on him. "He LOVES our new lifestyle. He LOVES Kombucha. He LOVES educating the other students on the detriments of processed food and sugar," she wrote.

After the unsatisfactory meeting with the vice principal, Leslie G took her story to Sarah Pope, who writes the Healthy Home Economist blog. Pope's blog post last Friday unleashed her army of readers. It has generated 19,000 Facebook "shares," and nearly 400 comments on the post alone, many of them brimming with outrage for the school administrators and their tactics. On Friday, Leslie met with Principal Gloria Duncan, who "determined no discipline was necessary despite the violation of the policy," said Boss, the district spokeswoman. The district also posted a statement on its website noting that the student had not been suspended.

Leslie wrote on her blog that Duncan was "very nice and receptive," but that she "held firm" to the zero-tolerance policy on drugs and alcohol. "It really made me look into home schooling, but I don't want to further make my son feel bad," Leslie wrote.

Boss said in an e-mail that school administrators had never encountered kombucha before, and although it technically violated policy, "unfortunately, during the routine discovery process, the incident escalated and a reasonable reaction by the school site administration got out of hand and was misunderstood."

She said kombucha itself won't be banned from campuses in the district. "However, the current district policy remains that products containing any traces of alcohol on campus may be subject to the discipline policy.

"This is an area that needs to be more closely reviewed."

Contact the writer: lhall@ocregister.com or 714-796-2221

Source: http://www.ocregister.com/articles/alcohol-374907-kombucha-school.html

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Cops: Huge 'bomb' in Federal Reserve plot was fake

A 21-year-old Bangladeshi national appeared in court late Wednesday after he was arrested for allegedly hatching a terror plot to blow up the Federal Reserve building in New York City. NBC's Jonathan Dienst reports.

By Jonathan Dienst and Shimon Prokupecz, NBCNewYork.com

Updated at 8 p.m. ET: NEW YORK -?A suspected terrorist parked a van packed with what he thought was a 1,000-pound bomb next to the Federal Reserve building in Lower Manhattan and tried to detonate it Wednesday morning before he was arrested in a terror sting operation, authorities said.

The suspect, 21-year-old Quazi Mohammad Rezwanul Ahsan Nafis, is a Bangladeshi national who came to the U.S. on a student visa in January for the specific purpose of launching a terror attack here, authorities said. He allegedly told an undercover agent last month that he hoped the attack would disrupt the presidential election, saying "You know what, this election might even stop," according to the criminal complaint against him.

"He clearly had the intent of creating mayhem here," Police Commissioner Ray Kelly told reporters Wednesday, saying his actions went "way past aspirational."?

The complaint said Nafis wrote a statement claiming responsibility for what he thought would be the Fed attack, saying he wanted to "destroy America" by going after its economy. He referred to "our beloved Sheikh Osama bin Laden" in the statement, which was stored on a thumb drive.

NBC News security analyst Michael Leiter discusses Quazi Mohammad Reswanul Ahsan Nafis' alleged attempt to blow up the New York Federal Reserve, including how the FBI helped identify him early as a radicalized student.

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More about the alleged plot on NBCNewYork.com

He also proposed various other targets beyond the Fed building at 33 Liberty St., just blocks from the World Trade Center site, prosecutors said. He considered targeting a "high-ranking U.S. official"?as well as the New York Stock Exchange.

Kelly said he knew who the official was but refused to name the person, saying only that any details not in the complaint would be revealed in future court proceedings.

The FBI has arrested a 21-year-old man from Bangladesh who was riding in a van carrying a powerful bomb meant for the Federal Reserve in Manhattan. Federal agents say the suspect came to the U.S. in January on a student visa. NBC's Pete Williams reports.

Nafis, who lives in Jamaica, Queens, attended Southeast Missouri State University for a semester, studying cybersecurity as a sophomore from January through May 2012, a school spokesman said. He sought a?transfer to a New York City ESL program and left Missouri after the spring, according to a law enforcement official.?

Federal criminal complaint filed against?Quazi Mohammad Rezwanul Ahsan Nafi (PDF)

He allegedly sought out al-Qaida contacts to help him, unknowingly recruiting an FBI?source in the process. At that point, the FBI and NYPD began monitoring him as he developed the plot, prosecutors said.

This Twitter profile picture, obtained by AFP, allegedly shows Quazi Mohammad Rezwanul Ahsan Nafis of Bangladesh.

An undercover FBI agent posed as an al-Qaida facilitator, supplying him with 20 50-pound bags of what he thought were explosives to use in building his bomb. Nafis also visited the Lower?Manhattan site multiple times as he planned the attack, officials said.

The complaint said he told an agent in July that he wanted "something very big ... that will shake the whole country."

Prosecutors say Nafis met the agent Wednesday morning and put the bomb inside a van before driving to the Fed building, assembling the detonator while he drove.

The pair parked the van by the Fed, got out and walked to a hotel, where Nafis covered his face, put on sunglasses and recorded a video statement he meant to be released after the attack. He then tried to detonate the bomb through a cell phone detonator, officials said.

More on NBCNewYork.com:?Man pleads guilty in plot to kill Saudi ambassador

Law enforcement officials stress that the plot was a sting operation monitored by the FBI, Homeland Security and NYPD and the public was never at risk. The materials he believed were explosives had been rendered inoperable, officials said.?

Nafis was charged with attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction and attempting to provide material support to al-Qaida. His attorney declined comment after a court appearance.

"Attempting to destroy a landmark building and kill or maim untold numbers of innocent bystanders is about as serious as the imagination can conjure, " said Mary Galligan, FBI?acting assistant director in charge.

?The defendant came to this country intent on conducting a terrorist attack on U.S. soil and worked with single-minded determination to carry out his plan," said U.S. Attorney Loretta Lynch. "The defendant thought he was striking a blow to the American economy. He thought he was directing confederates and fellow believers. At every turn, he was wrong, and his extensive efforts to strike at the heart of the nation?s financial system were foiled by effective law enforcement.??

Jonathan Dienst is WNBC's chief investigative correspondent. Shimon Prokupecz is a WNBC investigative producer.

The FBI and NYPD arrest a suspected terrorist involved in an apparent plot to attack the Federal Reserve of New York, reports WNBC's Jonathan Dienst.

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Source: http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/10/17/14514354-plot-to-attack-federal-reserve-in-nyc-suspect-thought-he-had-1000-pound-bomb-authorities-say?lite

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Mice at risk of asthma, allergies can fight off skin cancer ...

?

Contact: Julia Evangelou Strait
straitj@wustl.edu
314-286-0141
Washington University School of Medicine

A molecule involved in asthma and allergies has now been shown to make mice resistant to skin cancer, according to scientists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.

The molecule, called TSLP (thymic stromal lymphopoietin), is produced by damaged skin and activates the immune system. Chronic low levels of TSLP are suspected in making the immune system oversensitive to what should be a harmless environment, leading to the skin rashes and overproduction of mucus common in allergies and asthma.

?But at extremely high levels, TSLP appears to train the immune system to recognize skin cancer cells, and target those cells for elimination,? says Raphael Kopan, PhD, the Alan A. and Edith L. Wolff Professor of Developmental Biology. ?These experiments demonstrate that there is a way for a natural molecule to help immune cells recognize and reject tumors, at least in the skin.?

The study appears online Oct 15 in Cancer Cell.

These findings are surprising because most current evidence suggests that the allergic inflammation and release of TSLP increases ? not decreases ? the risk of tumor development.

The disparity may be explained by the amount of TSLP that is produced. The mice that were resistant to skin tumor growth had blood levels of TSLP that were 1,000-fold higher than normal. And levels in the skin ? where it is made ? may be even higher.

?This is an example of where hyper-vigilance of the immune system may end up paying dividends,? Kopan says. ?Not only does it respond aggressively to an innocuous allergen, but it begins to monitor, survey and destroy cells that are mutant.?

The results are supported by another study in the same issue of Cancer Cell also showing TSLP prevents skin cancer in mice.

For Kopan?s group, the new research is the culmination of work that began more than six years ago. He and then graduate student Shadmehr Demehri, MD, PhD, wanted to investigate the defects found in mice born without a certain signaling protein in the skin. The protein, called Notch, is vital in properly forming many of the body?s tissues, including skin.

Kopan calls it wonderful detective work, beginning with linking TSLP produced in the Notch-deficient skin with asthma. That study was published in PLoS Biology in 2009. And though they couldn?t explain it at the time, they saw that many of these animals appeared to be immune to skin cancer.

?We were just trying to understand what was going on with our mice,? Kopan says. ?We did not set out to find a way to stimulate the immune system to eradicate tumors. But it?s often the unexpected observations that lead to practical outcomes.?

Since the mice expressed elevated levels of TSLP for genetic reasons related to abnormal Notch signaling, Kopan, Demehri and their colleagues asked whether TSLP would likewise protect normal mice from skin cancer. They tested a drug called Calcipotriol that dermatologists prescribe to treat psoriasis. Calcipotriol is considered a vitamin D ?mimic? and is known to cause the skin to produce TSLP.

The researchers found that applying Calcipotriol to the skin of normal, healthy mice protected them from developing skin tumors when exposed to cancer-causing agents. In addition, they saw that existing skin tumors in otherwise normal mice shrank when Calcipotriol was applied.

?We already have treatments in clinical practice, often for other conditions, that induce the skin to produce TSLP,? says Demehri, now a dermatology resident who treats patients at Barnes-Jewish Hospital. ?So the next step is to find out if these topical drugs will be helpful in treating pre-cancerous skin lesions in humans.?

Kopan stresses that more work must be done to fully understand the role of TSLP in skin cancer. In particular, these short-term studies were limited to the skin of mice and could not completely explain why Calcipotriol protected the healthy mice from skin cancer.

?In the Calcipotriol experiments, we have not fully separated whether the drug?s beneficial effects are due to the production of TSLP, or the fact that the drug mimics vitamin D,? Kopan says.

According to Kopan, future studies will also investigate whether TSLP might have similar effects on other types of cancer.

###

Demehri S, Turkoz A, Manivasagam S, Yockey LJ, Turkoz M, Kopan R. Elevated epidermal thymic stromal lymphopoietin levels establish an anti-tumor environment in the skin. Cancer Cell. Online Oct. 15, 2012.

Di Piazza M, Nowell C, Koch U, Durham A-D, Radtke F. Loss of cutaneous TSLP dependent immune responses skews the balance of inflammation from tumor-protective to tumor-promoting. Cancer Cell. Online Oct. 15, 2012.

Demehri S, Morimoto M, Holtzman MJ, Kopan R. Skin-derived TSLP triggers progression from epidermal-barrier defects to asthma. PLoS Biology. May 19, 2009.

The work was supported by grants from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences (GM55479-16), the American Asthma Foundation and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) (2 U19 AI070489-09 and P30 CA091842).

Washington University School of Medicine?s 2,100 employed and volunteer faculty physicians also are the medical staff of Barnes-Jewish and St. Louis Children?s hospitals. The School of Medicine is one of the leading medical research, teaching and patient care institutions in the nation, currently ranked sixth in the nation by U.S. News & World Report. Through its affiliations with Barnes-Jewish and St. Louis Children?s hospitals, the School of Medicine is linked to BJC HealthCare.

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Source: http://engineeringevil.com/2012/10/18/mice-at-risk-of-asthma-allergies-can-fight-off-skin-cancer/

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Tune in Tokyo-style with This Vintage Space Age Tube Radio [Past Perfect]

This vintage Japanese Space Age radio, for all its clean lines and stylish details, might seem limited today. The thing is, it only gets AM stations. But you could say it just has firm roots in its late-1950s origins—FM, you know, didn't take off until the 1960s. More »

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/MLw2NyPzZis/tune-in-tokyo+style-with-this-vintage-space-age-tube-radio

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Schools Take Aim at Popular Flamin' Hot Cheetos

Oct 16, 2012 8:54am

???????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????? (Image Credit: ABC News)

School districts in California and New Mexico are trying to ban the popular snack food Flamin? Hot Cheetos because they say it is a health hazard to students.

School officials say the concern is their nutritional value, or lack thereof. Each bag of Flamin? Hot Cheetos contains 26 grams of fat and a quarter of the mount of salt that?s recommended for the entire day.

One school district in Illinois, which used to sell about 150,000 bags each year, has already taken the snack off its menu.

?If children were to bring in snacks that are high in fat, high in calories, that?s their choice,? Rockford School District Interim Superintendent Robert Willis said. ?We?re not going to be providing those kinds of foods.?

On top of the artificial coloring and flavoring, some experts say the Cheetos are ?hyperpalatable,? meaning they?re highly addictive.

?Our brain is really hardwired to find things like fat and salt really rewarding and now we have foods that have them in such high levels that it can trigger an addictive process,? said Ashley Gearhardt, a clinical psychologist at the University of Michigan.

Frito Lay, which makes and sells Cheetos, says it is ?committed to responsible and ethical practices, which includes not marketing our products to children ages 12 and under.?

While Flamin? Hot Cheetos are under fire in schools, kids can?t get enough of them. So much so that there is a YouTube video featuring kids rapping about their love of the snack.

?Got my fingers stained red and I can?t get them off me. You can catch me and my crew eating hot Cheetos and takis,?? one boy raps in the video.

Takis are a chili pepper- and lime-flavored corn snack.

The video has already been viewed more than 3.3 million times and there are even Facebook fan pages dedicated to the snack.

One fan page has more than 49,000 ?likes,? with many fans posting photos and videos with the snack.

?Don?t feel like leaving to get food,? one person writes. ?So I?m eating Flamin? Hot Cheetos.?

?

SHOWS: Good Morning America

Source: http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/health/2012/10/16/schools-take-aim-at-popular-flamin-hot-cheetos/

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Twitter Tools And Techniques To Power Your Marketing

Twitter is emerging as the lead dog over Facebook in many mobile marketer minds. It is a no-win argument, though, because there?s value in each platform.

I?ve created this Twitter tools slideshow that includes 4 tips to make your time spent tweeting more meaningful and productive. Plus, I?ve included 9 more apps or tools to help you analyze your Twitter experience and tweets.

Like many of the lists I create, there is a lot of overlap. Some tools or apps will work better, depending on how you like information displayed, for instance. All of the nine tools have a free level, but quite a few offer premium paid levels and include more powerful results.

The first four slides are tips and the tools follow those.

After viewing the slideshow, share in the comments the tools you are using to manage and track your Twitter activity.

Let?s get started, click the blue ?Start Gallery? button below to begin viewing the slideshow.

Twitter Photo via Shutterstock

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1. Post A Tweet From Chrome

My first tip is to tweet directly from the Google Chrome browser.

Go into the Settings (upper right part of your browser window), click Settings, then Manage Search Engines, then create a name for your new ?engine?, add a keyword, and add this exact URL string in the URL box:

?https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?text=%s?

Save it, then go to your address bar and type in your keyword, in my case I entered only the letter ?t,? then hit the space bar. You can now add your tweet content, then press the return or enter key, which takes you to the tweet window within Twitter, nothing else. No distractions.

I know this may not be perfectly clear, so I created a short setup tutorial, with screen by screen explanations, to walk you through:

Instructions to Post A Tweet Directly From Google Chrome.

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2. Use Advanced Search

Most people don?t think of Twitter as a search tool. But you can get a lot done by a few simple commands via the Advanced Search function.

You can figure out some good stuff:

• Find the top trending topics, only the most current or all of it, and just pictures, too.
• If someone is mentioning you, without the @ symbol, you can see that via this advanced search option.
• You can track multiple profiles
• Eavesdrop on your competitors
• Follow links from certain people

For example, you can search a topic with or without links that people retweet by checking the box at the bottom of the advanced search form. ?You can read Twitter?s guide to advanced search.

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3. Create A Recommend Follow List For People Who Sign Up

This is a little known tip. ?Warm Sign Up? is a feature that enables you to present your own list of Twitter friends or allies to brand new Twitter users when they sign up specifically through your Twitter URL.

Here?s how you do it in a few short steps. If you need more info, visit this Twitter help file that explains how to promote your profile.

A. In your account, create a?Twitter list?of accounts you recommend. Name the list.

B. In the description of the list, include the term #WelcomeToTwitter. This lets Twitter system know to present it to new users. See example here of the Top 100 Small Biz Bloggers that I created.

C. To validate that this is working properly, log in to Twitter from another account and follow the account where you just created the list (e.g., in the example above, you?d follow @tjmccue from your other account).

You should now see users that are on that list presented as ?People You Should Follow.?

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4. Hash Tag Tracking

The beauty of hashtags is you can add a simple term along with the hash mark # and easily track the conversation.

Here?s another article for American Express OPEN Forum on how to use hashtags.

Simply append #SmallBusiness or whatever term you want to track. No space after the hash mark and your term, though.

Hashtags.org lets you quickly jump to trending hashtags on its site.

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5. Followerwonk

I have to say that I love the reports from Followerwonk. This one shows where my followers reside.

This service lets you analyze your followers by different criteria: location, who they follow, and more. It allows you to compare Twitter accounts and search bios.

It was recently acquired by SEOmoz, the search engine optimization software folks.

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6. Tweet Archivist

This powerhouse web service (also available as a desktop application) allows you to search for a Twitter user, a keyword, or phrase. It states you can find, analyze, and archive your tweets.

That?s the key: Archive. It lets you download the search as a spreadsheet. For this sample search, I looked up ?small business? as a term and it returned almost 1,500 tweets and the usernames of who tweeted it, the tweet itself, and other details.

Pretty useful if you are searching for people to follow or potential clients, perhaps.

Another part that I liked: When I searched for my name without the @ symbol, it showed me tweets where my name was not mentioned in the tweet itself, but the underlying post or link contained my name. Pretty savvy.

Tweet Archivist is one to use.

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7. Foller.me

Foller.me is a beta offering that will give you a profile glimpse of your or someone else?s Twitter life.

In this slide, I?ve selected the @SmallBizTrends account profile to see which terms and hashtags would show. Naturally, entrepreneur, small business, and a wide range of events that benefit small business owners dominate this profile.

The service gives you stats and figures like how many tweets, when the account profile was started, tweets with @ mentions, tweets with #hashtags, tweets with links, to name just a few of the insights you can glean from this service.

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8. Tweriod

Tweriod?wants to help you understand the best time to send your tweets. It works in conjunction with Buffer (an app where you upload your tweets and they parse them out at an even interval, or at least not in a rapid fire procession, which is generally considered better form).

Tweriod reveals the best times when your tweet will get the most exposure, based on your followers and when they are online.

---

9. Twellow

Twellow is really similar to a phone directory, but the nice thing about the service is it looks at your profile and breaks it up into categories, based on the content in your profile bio.

At a fast glance, it gives you a sense of what you have been sharing on Twitter.

Sometimes, of course, the categories it selects don?t quite represent what you think of yourself, so it offers a way for you to self-edit those categories.

---

10. TwitterMap

TwitterMap is exactly what you?d expect from the name.

Enter Twitter Search Terms, and visualize tweets by a user?s location on a map. It is a super simple app that just gives you an idea of where a topic is more popular geographically. It is leveraging Google Maps combined with Twitter data. It takes a little while to populate the map, so do a search, then stop back in a few minutes.

When you hover over the red pushpin, it reveals the actual tweet at the top of the screen.

---

11. Twitter Counter

TwitterCounter offers a free level, but you really need premium paid levels to see much data.

The one cool thing that I like about it is how it shows your follower growth. It even forecasts how many followers you will have 30-days out, based on your current growth trajectory.

If you are into growing your follower base, this fast estimate may allow you to figure out how to improve.

---

12. Topsy

Topsy is a real-time social search engine. They recently started offering a pro analytics account that I tested, but haven?t posted on yet. But just using their search engine you can find new users to follow, and dig deeper into a topic.

I like that it gives you the stats (on the left side column) of how many times a term has been shared or mentioned over different time periods.

So, in this example, ?entrepreneur? is mentioned 73,000 times over the last 30 days.

---

13. Twitonomy

Twitonomy is one of my favorite tools on this list. They offer a very fast web interface for seeing your statistics in ways you may not have before.

For example, I can pull up a summary of how many times my username was mentioned, how many of my users mentioned me, and who mentioned me the most, on one page. It will also let me see this on a map. The map option takes a bit of time to load, but you see the pushpins dropping onto the map itself, and it bounces around the world if you have a decent follower count.

I had 458 mentions in 225 locations. Kinda cool.

---

Source: http://smallbiztrends.com/2012/10/twitter-tools-techniques-power-marketing.html

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The Veracious Vegan: Rogue 24, DC

In a city once known only for its political prowess, DC has been quickly climbing the charts in the upscale dining rankings over the past ten years, partly attributable to RJ Cooper?s effort to raise the bar with his first restaurant--Rogue 24. Although the city has not yet joined the ranks of NYC, LA, Chicago, Las Vegas, and San Francisco in being deemed Michelin-star worthy, RJ?s restaurant will most certainly be rated when this guide expands its US rankings to DC. It is a restaurant that is ahead of its time in many ways--offering gastronomic exploitations via 24-, 16-, and 4-course prix fixe meals in a former auto garage hidden in an alley in an unexpected area near the DC Convention Center.
?
And, yes, my friends, they offer the 24-course Journey vegan-style.
Zach and I entered the restaurant through the dirty confines of Blagden Alley and were immediately transformed into a magical land. We came a few minutes early and were immediately seated in the lounge in the front of the restaurant, completely sectioned off from the dining area. Even though we planned to take the full Journey with drink pairings and all, we couldn?t help but be intrigued by the cocktails offered in the lounge. Knowing that Bryan Tetorakis, a famed mixologist in this city, was in charge of the drink list, I just had to try the Mobi ? a delightful cocktail that included Plymouth gin and hibiscus.
Soon thereafter, we were escorted through the dining room and seated right next to where RJ Cooper himself was standing. The design of the restaurant is quite astonishing as the 52-seats surround the open kitchen so that the patrons can watch the chefs' and their staff?s every move. Rogue 24 is best described as a well-orchestrated theater performance. RJ, Zach, and I exchanged some entertaining banter as he asked me why the hell I was a vegan, then opted to table the discussion until after I had had several drinks (his idea, not mine). After watching the excitement in the kitchen as they feverishly began preparing each dish, RJ turned to me and said, ?Are you ready?? to which I replied an excited, ?Yes!? Then, the production began.
Menus were not provided as the element of surprise is as important in the Journey as the food and drink themselves and I must say it was incredibly exciting being served dish after dish with no idea of what was coming next. The menu was divided into six sections of four dishes each. Each dish was not only an amazing piece of visual artwork, it was also spectacularly crafted using gastronomic principles. Zach and I spent the entire time being awed by the complexity of each dish as Chef de Cuisine Ryan Moore, formerly of the minibar, explained each dish. The drinks were equally as impressive as Mixologist Bryan Tetorakis greeted us with explanations of each drink as well. Because of the sheer number of dishes and drinks, I couldn?t possibly post pictures or describe them all so I?ll just take you through a few in The Journey. In the first section, the cucumber shooter with soft, compressed cucumber wading in cucumber water along with sprouted quinoa and edible flowers was delicately flavored while the teeny, tiny carrots included in the farm-to-table potted vegetable dish were seasoned just right. The drink pairing was a gin and absinthe-based drink called the ?corpse reviver.?
The second section featured this amazing dish that consisted of a cold watermelon compress similar to tuna topped with a warm tofu cheese and herbs along with an amazing gazpacho roll with thinly shaved avocado rolled into what appeared to be an upscale take on a mandu roll garnished with cherry tomatoes, flowers, and salt. Other dishes included a fried eggplant with violet mustard and fall risotto made with Farro and nasturtium. The drink pairing was the mizbasho with ginjo and sake. Outstanding!
The third section featured a soy sashimi made of soy sauce and agar agar over rice with avocado. The flavor in this dish was really impressive. Another incredible dish was the cremini ?katsu,? which was a potato chip-encrusted cremini mushroom in ketchup. Other dishes included an upscale version of Cracker Jack and a hearts of palm dish. The wine pairing was 2011 Rainer Wess Gruner Veltliner from Austria.
The fourth section featured shashito, which was deep-fried quinoa in an avocado paste with a padron pepper and chili threads. By this point, it had become my favorite dish. The house fried rice was also amazingly delicious with its black puffed rice and carrots. Other dishes included pickled tofu with soy dashi and fennel tomato arepa with black garlic and mustard. The pairing was a white IPA from Anchorage Brewing and despite my usual dislike of beers in general, I thought this one went nicely with the meal, in fact, very nicely.
The fifth section is where it really got complicated. From spaghetti noodles made from sweet potatoes to meatballs made from cacao and pecans to a vegetable shabu shabu, this section was very unique. Perhaps our favorite creation just due to the humorous creativity was the Vegan Turducken. How hilarious is that?! Chef took celery then layered it with pureed carrot and red miso, then stuffed it into an onion to create his version of a vegan turducken. Brilliant! This was paired with a 2011 Sinister Hand wine from Columbia Valley.
Lastly was the dessert course where we enjoyed an absolutely amazing array of desserts like the strawberry balsamic sorbet with pistachios, hemp, citrus, and tangerine lace and another that consisted of frozen coffee, soy milk, and cacao nibs. The final plate was an assortment of small bites that led to a happy ending.
When the chef served the final course, I remarked that I was never going to leave and that we?d like to stay to enjoy the food forever. At that point, Zach informed me that we had been there for five hours to which I replied with surprise, ?really?? I had no idea. The dishes kept coming, the staff kept explaining, and I just kept watching the theater. Time flew by as we enjoyed every bit[e] of the 24 courses.
This was a truly amazing experience and one I am tacking onto the one of the best meals and experiences I?ve ever had in my life board. It was like a sensory explosion with each dish being an amazing balance of flavors and each drink being the perfect pairing all while watching the artistry of the chefs in their kitchen performing live. So while in the end the meal was about $500 inclusive of food, drinks, tax, and tips, it was worth every penny. Where else can you go where they?ve spent the week preparing an individual vegan dining experience like this one complete with 24 unique courses? This should be on the vegan foodie traveler?s list of places to visit. Having only served six vegan meals since their opening in July of 2011, the chef told me he?d absolutely love to serve more and I?d love to help him accomplish that so be sure you tell them that I sent you. In the meantime, I?ll be waiting for their newest venture, Rogue Spirits, to open?-a new bar next door that promises to serve amazing drinks and small plates. If it is anything like Rogue 24, it will be worth the wait.

Rogue 24
922 N Street NW (rear)
Washington, DC 20001
(202) 408-9724

Source: http://www.theveraciousvegan.com/2012/10/rogue-24-dc.html

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Ohio: Is this where Mitt Romney's bump stops?

Sorry, Readability was unable to parse this page for content.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/video/crosstabs-post-debate-electoral-map-181333961.html

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How Quantum Mechanics Was Born From the Need For a Better Lightbulb [Video]

Some of mankind's most remarkable scientific discoveries came to light as a result of research that had nothing to do with the breakthrough itself. And such was the case with quantum mechanics. Back in the early 1890s the German Bureau of Standards asked Max Planck to design a lightbulb that produced the maximum amount of light with the minimal amount of energy. And his research into saving the bureau a few dollars on its energy bills led to the study of quantum mechanics which could one day let us unlock the secrets of the universe. More »

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/EUssbKNN09A/how-quantum-mechanics-was-born-from-the-need-for-a-better-lightbulb

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Former Sen. Arlen Specter dead at 82 (CNN)

Share With Friends: | | Politics - Top Stories News, News Feeds and News via Feedzilla.

Source: http://news.feedzilla.com/en_us/stories/politics/top-stories/255471458?client_source=feed&format=rss

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Marketing In Business: Service Business Marketing Tip #4 - Up ...

Marketing In Business: Service Business Marketing Tip #4 ? Up-Selling Clients

Podcast: Play in new window | Download | Embed

Marketing In Business: Service Business Marketing Tip #4 ? Up-Selling Clients

Are you using your Marketing in Business to gain a competitive advantage? Do you want to get more sales with better marketing for your business?? How about leveraging Up-Selling Clients?

Recently I had the opportunity to do a webcast on the 12 Ways to Double Your Sales, which was aimed at people in the service industry.? One of the topics we went over was about Up-Selling Clients.? I have attached the audio from the presentation.

To see a full 1 hour video on Marketing in Business and the 12 ways to Double your Sales, click here.

In this Video on Marketing In Business you will see:

• Which customers spend 33% more
• What influences 65% of all sales, yet only 18% of sales people do this
• Where a home contractor gets 70% of their business and what can increase this 10-fold
• Learn where to find customers that are willing to buy from you
• See what marketing strategy has a 4352% return on investment for your Marketing in Business

Here is a copy of the presentation:

Contact me to see how you can implement different marketing strategies that will have a significant impact on your sales.

You can reach me at:

Chris@SalesTipADay.com

1-877-782-2864

403-630-1243

Keywords:?Marketing In Business, Up-Selling Clients

Tags: Marketing In Business

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 14th, 2012 at 12:01 AM and is filed under Advice, how to, Marketing. You can follow any comments to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.

Source: http://salestipaday.com/2012/10/14/marketing-in-business-service-business-marketing-tip-4-up-selling-clients/

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Al-Qaida leader urges holy war over Prophet film

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Business News ? Workplace safety for your employees

Workplace safety for your employees

Filed under: Employees ? admin @ 9:32 am

Accident at work claims are a threat that employers have looming over them if they fail to take health and safety standards seriously. Having to pay out compensation is not only costly in terms of money, but in terms of the time and effort that can be spent trying to defend yourself as an employer.

Of course, it?s not just because of money that you should care for your employees, however, as an employer, you have a moral obligation to keep the people who work for you safe. Moreover, by showing that you care for your employees they are less likely to seek out accident claim solicitors, such as Irwin Mitchell, in the event that they are involved in an accident at work.

Your Legal Obligation

As an employer, you are legally responsible for the people who work for you and you are legally obliged to ensure that your employees are safe in their place of work. This means, that as an employer, you must make sure that any wherever your employees are, if they are working under your charge, that they are safe. Failure to do so could leave you open to personal injury claims.

Your employees have various basic rights. You need to ensure that they are able to work in a safe and healthy environment that has been risk assessed and removed of any immediate danger. As an employer, you also need to make sure that you provide your employees with any safety equipment and safety training that they may require to carry out their work as safely as possible.

What to Expect of your Employees

Of course, the onus of health and safety does not fall solely at your feet, your employees have responsibilities too. As the employer, you should expect that your workers to take reasonable care of their own health and safety, such as dressing appropriately or tying back long hair or headscarves should they be working with machinery.

Striving for safety together

Because health and safety is such a vital issue, it is important that as the employer, that you are seen to be taking charge of the issue. It can help if you hold health and safety seminars with workers to discuss how either party feel about the safety standards at work. Here your employees can be openly encouraged to air any concerns that they may have about working conditions, which can be a lot less intimidating for them than having to report concerns directly by their own accord.

By working side by side, you and your employees should be able to build mutual trust and improve health and safety standards together.

Related posts:

1. Safeguard Your Business From Health and Safety Mishaps Accidents occur in the workplace every day in the UK....
2. Scaffolder Fined for Endangering Himself and Others A self-employed scaffolder from Hastings has been prosecuted by the...
3. Advice for employers over staff playing the stress card Bibby Consulting and support, the employment law specialists, have issued...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Source: http://www.blwy.co.uk/workplace-safety-for-your-employees/

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'Sinister' offers effective, if thin, scares

Summit Entertainment

Ethan Hawke in "Sinister."

By John DeFore, The Hollywood Reporter

REVIEW: A true-crime author stumbles onto something beyond his beat in Scott Derrickson's "Sinister," which follows Ethan Hawke's Ellison Oswalt as he grows increasingly obsessed with a missing-girl case he hopes will lead to a bestselling book. Occasionally stupid (stretching even fright-flick conventions) but scary nonetheless, the pic should please horror fans.

When Oswalt's wife (Juliet Rylance), just uprooted to a new town (so he can investigate the new story) and already getting bad vibes from neighbors, asks "We didn't move a few doors down from a crime scene again, did we?" he assures her they didn't. She asked the wrong question: Oswalt has bought the very house in which four members of a family were slain, with the fifth abducted. An ornery sheriff (Fred Thompson) stops by before the boxes are even unloaded to warn the author he's not a fan of his books, and doesn't cotton to a fame-hungry scribbler second-guessing his department's work.

CineEurope adds Ethan Hawke horror film "Sinister" to indie lineup

Local lawmen are soon the least of Oswalt's worries. He finds a box of Super-8 films in the attic, each showing a family being murdered in a uniquely grisly way. Believing he's stumbled across his own "In Cold Blood," ?he stays up nights scrutinizing the films and looking for connections between killings whose locations and victims are still unknown.

Derrickson borrows the vibe of Joel Schumacher's "8MM" as Hawke, swigging whiskey and giving the crease between his eyebrows a workout, struggles with the horrible things he's seeing. But the film soon shifts into bump-in-the-night mode, with an unseen visitor leaving clues for Oswalt in his own house and taunting him with increasingly unsettling (and harder to explain) stunts.

Setting aside Oswalt's infuriating unwillingness to turn on the lights when homicidal intruders infiltrate his home at midnight, the movie has him doing some pretty unjustifiably dumb things -- like walking with a butcher knife thrust in front of him when he has every reason to think his sleepwalking young son might suddenly leap out at him.

Ethan Hawke horror film "Sinister" getting sneak screening in Austin

We allow him some of this, thanks to the picture's coy suggestions that Oswalt might be going a little nuts due to the nature of his investigation. But Derrickson and co-screenwriter C. Robert Cargill are eager to draw in more familiar supernatural elements -- an occultologist (Vincent D'Onofrio) identifies a crime-scene marking as a pagan symbol "dating back to Babylonian times" -- and the movie's proceduralist pleasure takes a backseat to ghosts and a mysterious figure known as "Mr. Boogie."

The scares are effective throughout, helped a good deal by Christopher Young's glitchy electronic score. While the end clearly points toward a possible franchise, though, many of the ingredients that make "Sinister" compelling wouldn't make sense a second time around. Some of them barely hold up for the first.

Related content:

Also in NBC News Entertainment:

?

Source: http://entertainment.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/10/12/14390292-sinister-offers-effective-if-thin-scares?lite

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New wave of Technology: Computing in car

Cloud computing is a term that has been in broad use in the web hosting and business information technology circles for some time now. The benefit of cloud computing is the ability to utilize data and processes on remote servers over a broadband network connection. This Ability can not only be utilized for web servers or for large enterprise business applications, but can also be utilized for personal computing such as storing backup files from home computers or sharing media remotely so it can be utilized on several local computing devices in the individual?s home such as a cell phone, game system, laptop or desktop. With the advent of increasingly computerized and intelligent cars, the benefits of cloud computing can also be realized in your automobile.

New high end cars have offered to ability to hook up your MP3 player directly to a port in the dashboard. The makes it unnecessary to use clunky devices such as a tape deck pass-through or radio frequency over ride device to play media files from your MP3 player or computer. With new cloud based media systems such as the Apple iCloud, however, new automobiles will be able to read your data stored on the cloud just as any other device would and play it through your sound system without having to connect additional wires or even save any data locally in your car.

Online GPS systems can also gain a boost to usability through cloud services. Instead of downloading maps directly to a single GPS device, your car could directly access GPS data from a cloud server and make updates to things like construction information or road changes in real time, without the need to update a downloaded map with any software downloads. This could also be handy for a user who may be able to save special maps that they have paid for in their cloud server and access them from multiple cars instead of having to download them, and possibly pay separately, for each car that they own, or any new car that they buy.

Car manufacturers are able to utilize computing in cars through the cloud to make the driving experience much safer for everyone on the road. By collecting real time information on the car?s driving data, analysis can be done on driving conditions and defrost windows automatically, for instance, based on the local weather. More importantly, it can also sense possible issues in the engine or required service updates or safety recalls and notify the driver accordingly.

New sensor technology such as sonar and automated braking could to help prevent roadside accidents. There are also new car computing technologies in the works that could help with lane changing, which would be a great benefit to anyone who has ever had issues with seeing cars in their blind spot when changing lanes. This could be based on sonar sensors detecting the presence of other cars in the area, coupled with devices that track what lane you are in. The lane tracking features could also be employed to help drivers who may swerve unexpectedly from their lane to stay between the lines.

A last bit of safety technology that we may see in the near future is the ability by car computers to disable wireless devices such as cell phones when reaching certain speeds. The data showing the dangers of cell phone usage, and especially texting, at excessive speeds while driving is overwhelming. While this may not be a popular technology with everyone, if it is enforced by local officials there is no doubt that it will cut down on the amount of accidents.

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Source: http://www.aksindiblog.com/2012/10/car-computing-technology.html

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Women use emoticons more than men in text messaging :-)

ScienceDaily (Oct. 10, 2012) ? Women are twice as likely as men to use emoticons in text messages, according to a new study from Rice University.

Emoticons are graphic symbols that use punctuation marks and letters to represent facial expressions to convey a person's mood, help provide context to a person's textual communication and clarify a message that could otherwise possibly be misconstrued.

The study, "A Longitudinal Study of Emoticon Use in Text Messaging from Smartphones," used smartphone data from men and women over six months and aggregated 124,000 text messages. The participants were given free iPhones to use for the test period but didn't know what researchers were investigating.

"We believe that our study represents the first naturalistic and longitudinal study that collects real emoticon use from text messages 'in the wild,'" said Philip Kortum, assistant professor of psychology at Rice and one of the study's authors.

Texting has become one of the most popular forms of communication in society worldwide. This year alone, it is estimated that 8 trillion text messages will be tapped out.

In the Rice study, 100 percent of the participants used emoticons, but they did not use them very often, with only 4 percent of all their sent text messages containing one or more emoticons. Other researchers have found differing rates, but those studies relied on users to self-report their emoticon usage. One benefit of the current field study is the realistic look at the ground truth of what actually occurred and what users really do.

"Texting does not appear to require as much socio-emotional context as other means of nonverbal communications," Kortum said. "It could be due to texting's simplicity and briefer communication, which removes some of the pressures that are inherent in other types of non-face-to-face communication, like email or blogs."

The study also confirms previous research that women are more emotionally expressive in nonverbal communication; however, in this research, the authors found that while women may use emoticons more than men, the men used a larger variety of emoticons to express themselves.

Participants in the Rice study texted a wide variety of emoticons. Seventy-four different emoticons were used, but the top three emoticons -- happy, sad and very happy -- made up 70 percent of the total emoticons sent by the study participants.

Kortum and his co-authors pointed out that their study is a glimpse into the complex nature of real mediated communications. They said that additional inquiry in real-world settings are needed to understand the complexities of human communications through technology.

The study's co-authors were Chad Tossell, Clayton Shepard, Ahmad Rahmati and Lin Zhong, all of Rice University, and Laura Barg-Walkow at the Georgia Institute of Technology. The study was funded in part by the National Science Foundation and appeared in the journal Computers in Human Behavior.

The data collected from the smartphones included all text messages sent and received with the timestamp, number of words and amount and type of emoticon(s) used. Privacy was maintained by making the users anonymous and by permanently masking the textual content.

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Story Source:

The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Rice University. The original article was written by David Ruth.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.

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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.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/~3/JopJ3K1wsuA/121011102301.htm

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U.S. foreclosures at lowest level in five years: RealtyTrac

(Reuters) - Foreclosure filings on U.S. homes in September fell to their lowest level in five years, but some states are still seeing their foreclosures rise, a report from RealtyTrac said on Thursday.

The overall decrease put the combined number of reported default notices, scheduled auctions, and bank repossessions at 180,427 - the lowest total since July 2007. That's also 7 percent less than August' s foreclosure rate, and down 16 percent from September 2011.

"The five-year low, combined with the fact that the year-over-year decrease in foreclosures was in its twenty-fourth straight month, is evidence that we're past the worst of foreclosure crisis," said Daren Blomquist, vice president of RealtyTrac.

September's decreased foreclosure activity helped drop foreclosures for the third quarter down to the lowest level since the fourth quarter of 2007.

Foreclosure starts - initial default notices or scheduled auctions - were down 12 percent nationwide in September from August, and decreased in 31 states.

The news is not universally good. Fewer foreclosure starts, said Blomquist, could mean an increase in short sales. Short sales, which take place before a home is formally repossessed, can drag down housing prices by increasing supply.

Still, Blomquist said, short sales are "still the lesser evil: foreclosures tend to sell at even lower prices."

And some states - particularly those that make lenders go through the courts to foreclose on properties - registered a year-over-year increase in the number of foreclosures in the third quarter because they are still dealing with a backlog.

The average number of days it took lenders to foreclose hit a record 382 days overall.

"Much of the downward trend is good news, but part of it is exaggerated by the fact that it's taking longer to foreclose, which automatically reduces the foreclosure numbers," said Blomquist. "A longer process means a bit less pain in the short-term, but it means it takes longer for the housing market to fully rid itself of the foreclosure albatross."

Only four states with non-judicial foreclosure rules registered an increase in activity in the third quarter. Washington state saw a 70 percent increase from the previous quarter, and was up 15 percent from the third quarter of 2011.

Florida, a judicial state, ranked highest in the nation in September and the third quarter for the first time since 2005. One in 117 Florida housing units had a foreclosure filing in the third quarter, more than twice the national average of one in 248 housing units.

(Reporting By Atossa Araxia Abrahamian; Editing by Tim Dobbyn)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/u-foreclosures-lowest-level-five-years-realtytrac-040635935--business.html

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Cuisinart CPB-300 SmartPower 15-Piece Compact Portable ...

Cuisinart CPB-300 SmartPower 15-Piece Compact Portable Blending/Chopping System, BlackReviewed by on Oct 12 You?ll find many easy ways to prepare savory, healthful drinks, sauces and more with your Cuisinart SmartPower Compact Portable Blending/Ch You?ll find many easy ways to prepare savory, healthful drinks, sauces and more with your Cuisinart SmartPower Compact Portable Blending/Chopping System. 350 watts of blending power make whipping up drinks, grinding spices, and creating home made baby food a breeze. Includes BPA free 32 ounce blender jar, 8 ounce chopping cup, and four ounce travel cups.The reciPosted by 220.55

• Powerful 350-watt motor with a sleek electronic touchpad and LED indicator lights
• ABS housing with stainless steel front panel
• Standby Mode; Safety interlock and Auto Stop features
• High, low and pulse controls with a patented ultra sharp stainless steel blade
• BPA-free tritan 32-ounce blender cup, 8-ounce chopper cup and a set of four 16-ounce "To-Go" cups

You?ll find many easy ways to prepare savory, healthful drinks, sauces and more with your Cuisinart SmartPower Compact Portable Blending/Chopping System. 350 watts of blending power make whipping up drinks, grinding spices, and creating home made baby food a breeze. Includes BPA free 32 ounce blender jar, 8 ounce chopping cup, and four ounce travel cups.The recipe booklet priovdes simple recipes, including some old Cuisinart favorites as well as some creative combinations that are sure to ple

Source: http://hobrosolutions.com/cuisinart-cpb-300-smartpower-15-piece-compact-portable-blendingchopping-system-black/

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