They had previously discovered them in Lakes Superior, Huron and Erie last year and new summer research uncovered small concentrations also in Lake Michigan and Lake Ontario.Mary Balcer, director of the Lake Superior Research Institute at the University of Wisconsin-Superior, who has studied more traditional Great Lakes threats such as zebra mussels, said plastics are a new culprit on the list of Great Lakes ecological troubles.
“The accumulation of plastic particles is a great threat to our natural ecosystem and to the humans who use Lake Superior for our drinking water supply,” Balcer said.Fresh off the research boat, Lorena Rios-Mendoza, assistant professor of chemistry at the University of Wisconsin-Superior, presented her preliminary findings to reporters Thursday.
She said Lake Erie seems to hold the highest concentrations of plastics, probably because the particles float downstream from the upper lakes, according to the Duluth News Tribune.The plastic has also been found in Lake Superior sediment, meaning it’s not just floating on the China beads, Rios-Mendoza said.
“It was very shallow where they were found, but they were in the sediment,” Rios-Mendoza said.The researchers dragged fine-mesh nets across the surface of lakes. Some of the plastic can be seen only under a microscope.So far, Rios-Mendoza’s hypothesis is that the plastic in the Great Lakes starts small, possibly as scrubbing beads in household or beauty products, facial scrubs and even some toothpaste.
The particles are tiny enough to slip through the screens at wastewater treatment plants and then start their journey across the Great Lakes.Not only is the plastic itself an issue, she noted, but research has found that plastic can absorb persistent toxic chemicals, some of them known endocrine disrupters. So the floating plastic beads act like tiny, toxic sponges.
Two Melia Trees in Grey Street outside Gisborne Motors will be removed as part of Gisborne District Council’s focus on actively managing street trees. The health of the 80 year old trees is in decline, and they are causing significant damage to property, says parks and community property manager Grahame Smail. "Trees don’t last forever and council is committed to maintaining a streetscape with healthy trees. Where trees are sick or becoming a hazard we want to remove them before they cause injury to passers-by."
Council looks after 4700 street trees planted on the sides of roads within the city and at Wainui, Makaraka, Manutuke, Patutahi, Te Karaka and Tolaga Bay. This is in addition to thousands of trees planted in the parks throughout the district.
"Our abundance of street trees adds a unique character to the city and council wants to keep it that way. They are an important asset recorded in our tree register which keeps track of the age, species, health and expected lifespan of all street trees."
"This will help us to identify when trees need to be replaced. We are also developing replacement guidelines for street trees. The aim is to ensure the right trees are planted in the right places. For instance the Melia trees planted in Grey Street have caused issues for business owners and passers-by for years. Melia trees drop beads and leaves four times a year. They are a large tree with an intensive root system that lifts and breaks paving causing a trip hazard. They will be replaced with trees that are not so large and do not drop as much onto our footpaths but suit the style of our city centre."
Four palms will be removed in Heipipi Park by the Courthouse. "They were never meant to have been planted there under the original landscaping plan. One is obscuring the lights that illuminate the canoe prow (Tauihu) that was carved by Te Aturangi Nepia-Clamp in 1990. They overshadow the iconic sculpture and are obscuring an important acknowledgement to that site. "Tauihi gives recognition to the district’s voyaging ancestors who settled our turquoise beads. This is a theme that will become more apparent as we move towards 2019, 250 years since the arrival of the Endeavour. The palm trees have been planted where additional sculptures were proposed in the original landscaping plan. Their removal opens up this significant area for alignment with the Tairawhiti Navigations project," says Mr Smail.
Once again the summer has flown by much faster than I thought possible. I make plans, certain projects that seem 'Summerperfect' and only a few come to fruition. One favorite ongoing project is the memory project. There are certain memories from our childrens' childhood that are classics. They are the ones someone is bound to bring up at family gatherings, "Remember the time we ..."
Some were planned and some just happened. I have more time with the grandkids and take great delight in developing adventures and memories to hold on to.
We made a few over the summer, from the planting of certain flowers and watching them bloom to the introduction of lychee nuts in their spidery, scary raw form.
The trip was Nya's first train trip. The autotrain was made to order for making memories. We left in the middle of the night and drove to Lorton, Va. Nya was fascinated as she watched them load our van onto the train. The ride is from 4 p.m. Friday and an arrival at 9:30 a.m. Saturday, in Sanford, Fla.
There is a community feel to train travel that delights me. We quickly got to know our neighbors from Connecticut. David and Jossetta Andrews and their three children, Corin, Caylee and Cash were on their first trip to Disneyworld. The grownups chatted and we settled everyone in. Toddler Cash giggled and shouted Disneyworld. It was Caylee that sealed the friendship. After talking to Nya and admiring her afro puffs and beads, Caylee wrote a note to Nya that said: "Do you want to be my friend? Circle one, yes or no" They were coloring buddies for the rest of the trip.
Nya giggled along the wobbly walks to the bathroom, the lounge car to play Uno and war and the dining car. She was pleasantly surprised that we were having dinner on the train car that looked like a restaurant with tables and linen napkins and very good food. Nya tasted my braised beef sirloin, her grandfathers' lemon pepper cod and decided her chicken tenders were the best. Our server was Kevin Clement , a wonderfully kind and efficient young man, who made it seem his only wish was to serve Nya as he balanced trays with grace. We toasted: "Here's to you, kid!" with chardonnay for Andy and I and apple juice for Nya. We renamed the autotrain the dream train as we settled in for the night.
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2013年9月2日星期一
2013年7月7日星期日
McKenzie can end this cultural cancer
The biggest rugby match on Australian soil in a decade and these two players let the team down yet again. What should have happened is they should have been evicted from the Wallabies on match day. It would have caused pandemonium. It would have caused chaos. And it would have brought the Wallabies together like nothing else.
But, of course, nothing happened. The expedient thing was to bury the whole episode and pretend it never happened. It was the smart thing to do. It was the practical thing. And it was utterly the wrong thing to do because it showed everyone within the Wallabies who really cares -- which is just about everyone -- that the cultural cancer within the team was utterly out of control.
And to think Robbie Deans stubbornly held Quade Cooper at arm's length, manufacturing reasons why he hadn't been selected -- what better man, incidentally, to have sent into the fray when Australia slid behind 29-16 on Saturday night? -- while embracing players whose toxic impact on the Wallabies was evident to all the world.
We've reached the end of the Deans era and, like most endings, we approach it with some sadness. He promised so much at the beginning. When he spoke of "playing what's in front of us" we all oohed and aaahed and wondered why on earth none of us had ever thought of it. As a game plan, it was somewhat short on detail but the assumption was that Deans was holding back all the good stuff, all the deep and fascinating detail that would make it work. It was only over time that the realisation set in that whatever else was happening within the Wallabies, attention to detail wasn't one of them.
Like his two immediate predecessors, John Connolly and Eddie Jones, the trigger point for assembling Deans's firing squad was a scrum that failed him miserably. He inherited a shambles and now he will pass one on to either Ewen McKenzie or Jake White.
But how did it get to that? Yes, there have been some promising moments for the Wallabies at set-piece time over the past year or two but the scrum has always been Australia's Achilles heel so why was it that the match was only 13 minutes old before French referee Romaine Poite was pleading with James Horwill to do something about it?
Even through the "ref's ears" it was possible to hear the desperation in his French-accented voice. He didn't want to have to go to a yellow card but in the end -- well, 10 minutes later -- he decided he had no IC card.
Technically, the Wallabies' scrum is deficient, so why wasn't it tactically smart? If Japan can clear its scrum ball in the blink of an eye using channel one, why is it so difficult for the Wallabies? If the Wallabies weren't going to get the right-hand side of their scrum up, why weren't they using a heap of left-hand scrum plays?
The Australian Rugby Union now is going about the grim process of regime change. Bill Pulver already has sounded out both the Reds and the Brumbies to make certain they are prepared to release McKenzie or White, whichever one is needed. Former Wallabies flanker and ARU high-performance manager Brett Robinson is understood to be heading the committee to decide which of the two worthy candidates will become the next Australia coach.
I believe White would do an excellent job with the Wallabies and I recall urging him to apply for the position when, by chance, I happened to be booked into the same Parisian hotel as the Springboks before the 2007 World Cup. The work he has done with the Brumbies over the past two seasons has been nothing short of outstanding.
But I am going to break ranks with the mob and urge the ARU to go with McKenzie instead. When I suggested this to Pulver just over a week ago, he laughed and said I had my Reds hat on.Naturally I blustered and protested and argued, quite persuasively I thought, that I had even supported him when he was coaching NSW. But on reflection I had to concede there was a lot of truth in what Pulver said.
But consider this -- everyone involved in Queensland rugby, from QRU chairman Rod McCall and CEO Jim Carmichael all the way down to the lowly media who each day troop out to Ballymore for press briefings, has nothing but admiration for McKenzie and the way he goes about his business.
This is an important point given the mudslinging coming from critics who barely know him -- the people who know McKenzie the best sing his praises the loudest.
His attention to detail is breathtaking yet he is a big-picture man, capable of looking beyond the Reds to identifying how Australian rugby needs to rebuild. He has the Reds playing a brand of rugby that left the Lions and the British media agog and while Queensland ultimately lost that match, it might very well have been a different story had the Wallabies released a lineout jumper or two.
He won a World Cup as a player, he helped take the Wallabies to a World Cup final as an assistant coach. He has been the most successful Super Rugby head coach in the history of both NSW and Queensland, has coached in Europe and returned to resurrect the Reds and in the process break Deans's own record for most Super Rugby matches as head coach.When he said in 2006 he wasn't ready to coach the Wallabies, he showed that for all his ambition he was a realist. We believed him then. Believe him now when he says he is ready.
I'm not entirely sure why this is critically important but somehow it is. Deans last week came down hard on a journalist who attempted to get him to explain what he had learned from coaching Australians that he didn't know when he came into the job back in 2008 and he basically batted the question out of court. All Blacks, Springboks, Wallabies -- all pretty much experience the same thing so they're all pretty much the same, was the Deans response.
Well, clearly they're not and while Micky Arthur never had any real contact with the Black Caps, he was head coach of both the Proteas and the Australians and the sad evidence is that while he took South Africa to No 1 in the world, he just didn't work for the Aussies.His chemistry with the Australian cricketers wasn't right, just as Deans's chemistry with the Wallabies has fluctuated from acidic to alkaline.
McKenzie sets high standards and it's noticeable that almost all the trouble Cooper has ever been embroiled in has happened while he was on duty with the Wallabies. But as rigid as McKenzie is on cultural issues, he's a flexible tactician. If the Lions game represented the breathless end of his tactical spectrum, the hard-nosed, hard-bitten end surfaced in 2011 when the Reds kicked the Stormers off the park at Newlands to begin their epic run to the title.
The brand of rugby the Wallabies play is absolutely central to the growth of the code in Australia. As the Wallabies play has shrunk in recent seasons, so too has popular support for the game. A McKenzie-coached Wallabies would have a crack. Nothing is more certain. It's time for Australia to reclaim the Wallabies.
Click on their website www.smartcardfactory.com.
But, of course, nothing happened. The expedient thing was to bury the whole episode and pretend it never happened. It was the smart thing to do. It was the practical thing. And it was utterly the wrong thing to do because it showed everyone within the Wallabies who really cares -- which is just about everyone -- that the cultural cancer within the team was utterly out of control.
And to think Robbie Deans stubbornly held Quade Cooper at arm's length, manufacturing reasons why he hadn't been selected -- what better man, incidentally, to have sent into the fray when Australia slid behind 29-16 on Saturday night? -- while embracing players whose toxic impact on the Wallabies was evident to all the world.
We've reached the end of the Deans era and, like most endings, we approach it with some sadness. He promised so much at the beginning. When he spoke of "playing what's in front of us" we all oohed and aaahed and wondered why on earth none of us had ever thought of it. As a game plan, it was somewhat short on detail but the assumption was that Deans was holding back all the good stuff, all the deep and fascinating detail that would make it work. It was only over time that the realisation set in that whatever else was happening within the Wallabies, attention to detail wasn't one of them.
Like his two immediate predecessors, John Connolly and Eddie Jones, the trigger point for assembling Deans's firing squad was a scrum that failed him miserably. He inherited a shambles and now he will pass one on to either Ewen McKenzie or Jake White.
But how did it get to that? Yes, there have been some promising moments for the Wallabies at set-piece time over the past year or two but the scrum has always been Australia's Achilles heel so why was it that the match was only 13 minutes old before French referee Romaine Poite was pleading with James Horwill to do something about it?
Even through the "ref's ears" it was possible to hear the desperation in his French-accented voice. He didn't want to have to go to a yellow card but in the end -- well, 10 minutes later -- he decided he had no IC card.
Technically, the Wallabies' scrum is deficient, so why wasn't it tactically smart? If Japan can clear its scrum ball in the blink of an eye using channel one, why is it so difficult for the Wallabies? If the Wallabies weren't going to get the right-hand side of their scrum up, why weren't they using a heap of left-hand scrum plays?
The Australian Rugby Union now is going about the grim process of regime change. Bill Pulver already has sounded out both the Reds and the Brumbies to make certain they are prepared to release McKenzie or White, whichever one is needed. Former Wallabies flanker and ARU high-performance manager Brett Robinson is understood to be heading the committee to decide which of the two worthy candidates will become the next Australia coach.
I believe White would do an excellent job with the Wallabies and I recall urging him to apply for the position when, by chance, I happened to be booked into the same Parisian hotel as the Springboks before the 2007 World Cup. The work he has done with the Brumbies over the past two seasons has been nothing short of outstanding.
But I am going to break ranks with the mob and urge the ARU to go with McKenzie instead. When I suggested this to Pulver just over a week ago, he laughed and said I had my Reds hat on.Naturally I blustered and protested and argued, quite persuasively I thought, that I had even supported him when he was coaching NSW. But on reflection I had to concede there was a lot of truth in what Pulver said.
But consider this -- everyone involved in Queensland rugby, from QRU chairman Rod McCall and CEO Jim Carmichael all the way down to the lowly media who each day troop out to Ballymore for press briefings, has nothing but admiration for McKenzie and the way he goes about his business.
This is an important point given the mudslinging coming from critics who barely know him -- the people who know McKenzie the best sing his praises the loudest.
His attention to detail is breathtaking yet he is a big-picture man, capable of looking beyond the Reds to identifying how Australian rugby needs to rebuild. He has the Reds playing a brand of rugby that left the Lions and the British media agog and while Queensland ultimately lost that match, it might very well have been a different story had the Wallabies released a lineout jumper or two.
He won a World Cup as a player, he helped take the Wallabies to a World Cup final as an assistant coach. He has been the most successful Super Rugby head coach in the history of both NSW and Queensland, has coached in Europe and returned to resurrect the Reds and in the process break Deans's own record for most Super Rugby matches as head coach.When he said in 2006 he wasn't ready to coach the Wallabies, he showed that for all his ambition he was a realist. We believed him then. Believe him now when he says he is ready.
I'm not entirely sure why this is critically important but somehow it is. Deans last week came down hard on a journalist who attempted to get him to explain what he had learned from coaching Australians that he didn't know when he came into the job back in 2008 and he basically batted the question out of court. All Blacks, Springboks, Wallabies -- all pretty much experience the same thing so they're all pretty much the same, was the Deans response.
Well, clearly they're not and while Micky Arthur never had any real contact with the Black Caps, he was head coach of both the Proteas and the Australians and the sad evidence is that while he took South Africa to No 1 in the world, he just didn't work for the Aussies.His chemistry with the Australian cricketers wasn't right, just as Deans's chemistry with the Wallabies has fluctuated from acidic to alkaline.
McKenzie sets high standards and it's noticeable that almost all the trouble Cooper has ever been embroiled in has happened while he was on duty with the Wallabies. But as rigid as McKenzie is on cultural issues, he's a flexible tactician. If the Lions game represented the breathless end of his tactical spectrum, the hard-nosed, hard-bitten end surfaced in 2011 when the Reds kicked the Stormers off the park at Newlands to begin their epic run to the title.
The brand of rugby the Wallabies play is absolutely central to the growth of the code in Australia. As the Wallabies play has shrunk in recent seasons, so too has popular support for the game. A McKenzie-coached Wallabies would have a crack. Nothing is more certain. It's time for Australia to reclaim the Wallabies.
Click on their website www.smartcardfactory.com.
2013年6月27日星期四
Color of cutlery could change how food tastes
In the research, participants thought white yogurt tasted sweeter than pink-colored yogurt when eaten from a white spoon, but the reverse was true when a black spoon was used.
These findings could help people improve their eating habits by reducing portion sizes or the amount of salt they add to their food, the researchers said.
"How we experience food is a multisensory experience involving taste, the feel of the food in our mouths, aroma and the feasting of our eyes," said Vanessa Harrar and Charles Spence of the University of Oxford, in the United Kingdom. "Even before we put food into our mouths, our brains have made a judgment about it, which affects our overall experience."
They found that yogurt seemed denser and more expensive when eaten from a plastic spoon. White yogurt was rated sweeter, more liked and more expensive than pink-colored yogurt when they were eaten from a white spoon. These effects were reversed when the two colors of yogurt were eaten from a black spoon.
When participants were offered cheese on a knife, spoon, fork or toothpick, they said the cheese from the knife tasted saltiest, according to the study, which was published in the journal Flavour.
"Subtly changing eating implements and tableware can affect how pleasurable, or filling, food appears," Harrar said. "When serving a dish, one should keep in mind that the color of the food appears different depending on the background on which it is presented and, therefore, tastes different."
This may also be used to help control eating patterns such as portion size or how much salt is added to food. Alternatively, people may be able to make better food choices if their ingrained color associations are disrupted by less constant advertising and packaging.
Well, it’s usually me that eats all the chocolate, but in the case of Cadbury’s new integrated campaign featuring a new TVC, online games and in store presence, it is a sexed-up version of Goldilocks as Executive Barbie.
The three bears also feature, but as subservient chocolate brand creators with a winning new recipe. It’s cute and follows the Cadbury theme of big chocolate productions, beautifully illustrated, filmed and/or animated which get our attention. From delightful dancing monks to airborne cows, the magical chocolate factory and chocolate flavoured world of ‘Joyville’ are as delicious as previous campaigns. The online gaming component boasts particularly impressive animation and graphics.
Cadbury wants to own the “essence of joy” with this campaign. The TVC is by Ogilvy Johannesburg and directed by Mike Middleton of Jump and features the “famous glass and a half recipe”.
Coke commissioned several crate men for South Africa, the other notable one in Johannesburg, for the 2010 Fifa World Cup. But this one, designed by Porky Hefer, was the big daddy of them all.
Designed to highlight Coke’s recycling initiatives, it was built to be 15 metres high and made out of 2600 plastic Coke crates.
The construction of the Coca-Cola Crate Fan was an engineering feat. Being able to keep such a huge structure stable, meant that the foundations needed to include steel cabling, giant water bottles, weighted sandbags and further reinforcements along the harbour wall to support the weight.
The dismantling of the structure involves a rigid program, including barricading the entire surrounding area off and using carefully positioned scaffolding so that the crates can be removed one by one and lowered to the ground using ropes.
Oasis Water is trying to encourage consumers to reuse and refill its retail water bottles for only R1 a litre by running a competition over the winter months to create awareness of this service.
“Refilling with Oasis Water is safe and hygienic. It saves our customers money and saves on the use on new plastic bottles, thus ensuring that we look after the environment as well, said Oasis Water’s brand director, Brahm van Wyk.
They have created a competition/loyalty card with Z-Card.“We wanted to give our loyal consumers something back. As such, once they’ve collected 10 stamps, they can enter a competition to win a cruise. The draw takes place on 31 August 2013.”
“We are incredibly honoured to have won in Las Vegas on the back of our recent EXSA Awards achievements. All credit goes to our extremely talented design team,” says 3D Group sales and marketing director, Conrad Kullmann.
“Modular exhibits are hotter than ever as exhibitors, along with exhibit and event companies, are increasingly looking for ways to reconfigure and recycle their exhibit properties, positively impacting their bottom line and the environment.”
Trends influencing the industry, says Kullmann, include: convention bureaus; international exhibitions coming to South Africa; international corporate buy-outs of exhibition companies; build up times; and the overlapping of shows which puts a strain on industry resources; as well as the ‘next big thing’ – digital technology, including the use of augmented reality.
Click on their website www.smartcardfactory.com for more information.
These findings could help people improve their eating habits by reducing portion sizes or the amount of salt they add to their food, the researchers said.
"How we experience food is a multisensory experience involving taste, the feel of the food in our mouths, aroma and the feasting of our eyes," said Vanessa Harrar and Charles Spence of the University of Oxford, in the United Kingdom. "Even before we put food into our mouths, our brains have made a judgment about it, which affects our overall experience."
They found that yogurt seemed denser and more expensive when eaten from a plastic spoon. White yogurt was rated sweeter, more liked and more expensive than pink-colored yogurt when they were eaten from a white spoon. These effects were reversed when the two colors of yogurt were eaten from a black spoon.
When participants were offered cheese on a knife, spoon, fork or toothpick, they said the cheese from the knife tasted saltiest, according to the study, which was published in the journal Flavour.
"Subtly changing eating implements and tableware can affect how pleasurable, or filling, food appears," Harrar said. "When serving a dish, one should keep in mind that the color of the food appears different depending on the background on which it is presented and, therefore, tastes different."
This may also be used to help control eating patterns such as portion size or how much salt is added to food. Alternatively, people may be able to make better food choices if their ingrained color associations are disrupted by less constant advertising and packaging.
Well, it’s usually me that eats all the chocolate, but in the case of Cadbury’s new integrated campaign featuring a new TVC, online games and in store presence, it is a sexed-up version of Goldilocks as Executive Barbie.
The three bears also feature, but as subservient chocolate brand creators with a winning new recipe. It’s cute and follows the Cadbury theme of big chocolate productions, beautifully illustrated, filmed and/or animated which get our attention. From delightful dancing monks to airborne cows, the magical chocolate factory and chocolate flavoured world of ‘Joyville’ are as delicious as previous campaigns. The online gaming component boasts particularly impressive animation and graphics.
Cadbury wants to own the “essence of joy” with this campaign. The TVC is by Ogilvy Johannesburg and directed by Mike Middleton of Jump and features the “famous glass and a half recipe”.
Coke commissioned several crate men for South Africa, the other notable one in Johannesburg, for the 2010 Fifa World Cup. But this one, designed by Porky Hefer, was the big daddy of them all.
Designed to highlight Coke’s recycling initiatives, it was built to be 15 metres high and made out of 2600 plastic Coke crates.
The construction of the Coca-Cola Crate Fan was an engineering feat. Being able to keep such a huge structure stable, meant that the foundations needed to include steel cabling, giant water bottles, weighted sandbags and further reinforcements along the harbour wall to support the weight.
The dismantling of the structure involves a rigid program, including barricading the entire surrounding area off and using carefully positioned scaffolding so that the crates can be removed one by one and lowered to the ground using ropes.
Oasis Water is trying to encourage consumers to reuse and refill its retail water bottles for only R1 a litre by running a competition over the winter months to create awareness of this service.
“Refilling with Oasis Water is safe and hygienic. It saves our customers money and saves on the use on new plastic bottles, thus ensuring that we look after the environment as well, said Oasis Water’s brand director, Brahm van Wyk.
They have created a competition/loyalty card with Z-Card.“We wanted to give our loyal consumers something back. As such, once they’ve collected 10 stamps, they can enter a competition to win a cruise. The draw takes place on 31 August 2013.”
“We are incredibly honoured to have won in Las Vegas on the back of our recent EXSA Awards achievements. All credit goes to our extremely talented design team,” says 3D Group sales and marketing director, Conrad Kullmann.
“Modular exhibits are hotter than ever as exhibitors, along with exhibit and event companies, are increasingly looking for ways to reconfigure and recycle their exhibit properties, positively impacting their bottom line and the environment.”
Trends influencing the industry, says Kullmann, include: convention bureaus; international exhibitions coming to South Africa; international corporate buy-outs of exhibition companies; build up times; and the overlapping of shows which puts a strain on industry resources; as well as the ‘next big thing’ – digital technology, including the use of augmented reality.
Click on their website www.smartcardfactory.com for more information.
2013年6月26日星期三
Arresting journalists at work is a double-negative
Government surveillance of news media operations ranging from The Associated Press to Fox News has made national headlines for more than month now.
But there’s an ongoing government-press conflict that also is important in its effect on journalists’ ability to gather news and report to the rest of us, and to the proper role of a free press under the First Amendment.
Journalists — reporters and photographers — are being arrested while reporting on public demonstrations or police activity on matters of public interest. In a latest example, Charlotte Observer religion reporter Tim Funk was arrested June 10 at the General Assembly building in Raleigh, N.C., while interviewing local clergy involved in legislative protests.
As seen in a video of the arrest posted on Facebook, Funk, a veteran reporter, was interviewing members of the protest group while wearing a Charlotte Observer identification card on a lanyard around his neck. He continued to do interviews with several protesters after police ordered the group to disperse. He is standing in front of, not among, the group.
Funk first is grabbed by the arm and then handcuffed with a plastic tie. Later, the reporter was escorted away by three uniform officers. An Observer news story said Funk “was taken along with the arrested protesters to the Wake County magistrate’s office to be arraigned on misdemeanor charges of trespassing and failure to disperse.”
“We believe there was no reason to detain him,” said Cheryl Carpenter, the newspaper’s managing editor said in an Observer story about Funk’s arrest. “He wasn’t there to do anything but report the story, to talk to Charlotte clergy. He was doing his job in a public place.”
Gathering news — and in the process, performing the Constitutional duty as a “watchdog on government” that the nation’s founders envisioned for a free press — requires more getting a few facts from official sources. It means being at the scene, talking with those involved, observing the news first-hand.
If Funk’s arrest were a single incident, it still would be of concern. But, according to a website set up to track arrests of journalists in recent years who were reporting on the Occupy movement, in the year ending in September 2012, “more than 90 journalists have been arrested in 12 cities around the United States while covering Occupy protests and civil unrest.”
Add in a sizeable number of arrests in recent years of photographers for taking pictures at the scene of police actions and traffic incidents, and also those swept up in mass arrests of protesters at national and international conferences in the last decade, and there’s more reason to worry.
Mickey Osterreicher, general counsel for the National Press Photographers Association (NPPA), said he deals with such arrest issues involving photojournalists “every day, all across the nation.” He works with police departments to educate officers on the rights of journalists — and the public — to take photos. He said catch and release police actions have no legal foundation, and that the increase in arrests may stem from a “perfect storm” of more cell phone cameras, and easier distribution and more visibility because of the Web.
Certainly, there are times when situations are chaotic and police must act to protect public safety. In such instances, it may be impossible to sort out the protester from the person reporting on the protest. But in Funk’s case, for example, there was no chaos and he visibly — with ID on and notebook in hand — was working as a reporter.
The rights to assemble, peaceably petition the government for change, and to raise one’s voice in doing so, are all protected freedoms under the First Amendment — along with the right of a free press to gather and report the news without government sanction or disruption.
If police are arresting demonstrators for what they say and do out of legitimate concerns for public safety or for trespassing or such, having an independent news media there to accurately observe and report is a plus for officials and for our society.
Ignoring that “plus” for whatever reason produces a double negative: Doubt over the unreported motives and actions of police and other officials, as well as the trampling of First Amendment rights.
About 50 middle school students have touched human organs, learned about emergency preparedness and designed their own space suits at the ExxonMobil Bernard Harris Summer Science Camp at Texas A&M this week. Students also learned that while Bernard A. Harris Jr. himself was in space, he helped line up goldfish crackers for a fellow astronaut who floated through the shuttle, gobbling them up like Pac-Man.
Harris, the first African-American to walk in space, completed missions in 1993 and 1995, logging more than 438 hours and 7.2 million miles in space. Harris holds several appointments at universities and companies and is the founder of the Harris Foundation, a nonprofit organization that supports math and science education and crime prevention programs for youth across the nation.
Click on their website www.smartcardfactory.com for more information.
But there’s an ongoing government-press conflict that also is important in its effect on journalists’ ability to gather news and report to the rest of us, and to the proper role of a free press under the First Amendment.
Journalists — reporters and photographers — are being arrested while reporting on public demonstrations or police activity on matters of public interest. In a latest example, Charlotte Observer religion reporter Tim Funk was arrested June 10 at the General Assembly building in Raleigh, N.C., while interviewing local clergy involved in legislative protests.
As seen in a video of the arrest posted on Facebook, Funk, a veteran reporter, was interviewing members of the protest group while wearing a Charlotte Observer identification card on a lanyard around his neck. He continued to do interviews with several protesters after police ordered the group to disperse. He is standing in front of, not among, the group.
Funk first is grabbed by the arm and then handcuffed with a plastic tie. Later, the reporter was escorted away by three uniform officers. An Observer news story said Funk “was taken along with the arrested protesters to the Wake County magistrate’s office to be arraigned on misdemeanor charges of trespassing and failure to disperse.”
“We believe there was no reason to detain him,” said Cheryl Carpenter, the newspaper’s managing editor said in an Observer story about Funk’s arrest. “He wasn’t there to do anything but report the story, to talk to Charlotte clergy. He was doing his job in a public place.”
Gathering news — and in the process, performing the Constitutional duty as a “watchdog on government” that the nation’s founders envisioned for a free press — requires more getting a few facts from official sources. It means being at the scene, talking with those involved, observing the news first-hand.
If Funk’s arrest were a single incident, it still would be of concern. But, according to a website set up to track arrests of journalists in recent years who were reporting on the Occupy movement, in the year ending in September 2012, “more than 90 journalists have been arrested in 12 cities around the United States while covering Occupy protests and civil unrest.”
Add in a sizeable number of arrests in recent years of photographers for taking pictures at the scene of police actions and traffic incidents, and also those swept up in mass arrests of protesters at national and international conferences in the last decade, and there’s more reason to worry.
Mickey Osterreicher, general counsel for the National Press Photographers Association (NPPA), said he deals with such arrest issues involving photojournalists “every day, all across the nation.” He works with police departments to educate officers on the rights of journalists — and the public — to take photos. He said catch and release police actions have no legal foundation, and that the increase in arrests may stem from a “perfect storm” of more cell phone cameras, and easier distribution and more visibility because of the Web.
Certainly, there are times when situations are chaotic and police must act to protect public safety. In such instances, it may be impossible to sort out the protester from the person reporting on the protest. But in Funk’s case, for example, there was no chaos and he visibly — with ID on and notebook in hand — was working as a reporter.
The rights to assemble, peaceably petition the government for change, and to raise one’s voice in doing so, are all protected freedoms under the First Amendment — along with the right of a free press to gather and report the news without government sanction or disruption.
If police are arresting demonstrators for what they say and do out of legitimate concerns for public safety or for trespassing or such, having an independent news media there to accurately observe and report is a plus for officials and for our society.
Ignoring that “plus” for whatever reason produces a double negative: Doubt over the unreported motives and actions of police and other officials, as well as the trampling of First Amendment rights.
About 50 middle school students have touched human organs, learned about emergency preparedness and designed their own space suits at the ExxonMobil Bernard Harris Summer Science Camp at Texas A&M this week. Students also learned that while Bernard A. Harris Jr. himself was in space, he helped line up goldfish crackers for a fellow astronaut who floated through the shuttle, gobbling them up like Pac-Man.
Harris, the first African-American to walk in space, completed missions in 1993 and 1995, logging more than 438 hours and 7.2 million miles in space. Harris holds several appointments at universities and companies and is the founder of the Harris Foundation, a nonprofit organization that supports math and science education and crime prevention programs for youth across the nation.
Click on their website www.smartcardfactory.com for more information.
2013年6月24日星期一
There's More!
Tustin Ranch’s Ron Cummings, on camera in the studio of Sydney’s TVSN channel, is momentarily taken aback. “I’ve called to perv on Ron a bit,” the caller had just said in her thick Australian accent. Perv? It isn’t until later that someone explains to the skin-care entrepreneur that in Aussie slang, it’s a verb that means, “I think you’re hot.”
That itself isn’t so disconcerting, because, after all, Cummings is in the business of looking good. In his early 50s, he’s got the trim, athletic build that suits business casual attire, plus a lush mane of graying hair and a smile that gleams like fine china. But those details just enhance Cummings’ calling card—his skin—which looks almost preternaturally smooth and supple, even in a low-budget YouTube video. He’s a walking advertisement for the restorative powers of the products he pitches, especially as a guy who’s overcome the ravages of adult chickenpox.
But while Cummings enjoys the compliment, he prefers to keep the friendly caller chitchat to a minimum. This is a business where you get a few minutes of free TV time to reach millions of potential customers, in exchange for providing thousands of units of your product for the network to sell directly to viewers. All that matters is how often the phones ring, and how many units you move. That number is displayed on a studio monitor so that on-air pitchmeisters such as Cummings can see in real time how well (or badly) they’re doing.
“You’ll say something, and you’ll see the sales spike, and the producer will be saying in your ear, ‘Do that again!’ ” he says. And making the connection with viewers sometimes means wrestling the conversation away from a host who likes to control it, or a caller who just wants to talk. “You live and die by your sales per minute,” he says. “Nobody knows for sure how you’re going to do until you get out there. ... Sometimes, God bless ’em, they’ll ramble on and on. You can’t rudely interrupt them, but you realize that’s precious time going by.”
In no trade is the equation of time and money more apparent than for a TV pitchman such as Cummings. His company, Newport Beach-based AminoGenesis Skin Care, has sold $30 million worth of products in the last two years during short, intense sales pitches on home shopping networks. He’s flown across the Pacific just to spend a few minutes selling one of his amino acid-laden rejuvenating preparations to an audience of presumably ruddy-complected, outdoorsy Aussie Shielas, hoping like hell they’ll call. The director talks into Cummings’ earpiece, pushing him through his gig while both keep an eye on that monitor’s second-by-second tab of units sold.
Cummings, who can make—or not make—tens of thousands of dollars in the time it takes most of us to find the remote control, is a man in the fast lane. When he founded his company 14 years ago, he was an ordinary Joe with an engaging smile who used his garage as a warehouse and peddled jars of cream from a cart in front of the Robinsons-May department store at Fashion Island, dreaming of being big enough to earn a spot at the cosmetics counter inside.
Millions of dollars later, Cummings has bigger ambitions. For the past several years, he personally has sold his wares on domestic channels such as QVC, the Home Shopping Network (HSN), and ShopNBC, and now is branching out into the global marketplace, from Turkey to Taiwan. In some countries, Cummings hires salespeople who speak the native language and trains them to mimic his carefully choreographed presentation, which he’s perfected down to the precise moment that they demonstrate the product. “It’s like a play,” he says. “They have to memorize exactly how it’s done.”
It’s an entrepreneur’s dream, he says. “Instead of hoping a salesperson at a store will know enough to tell your story to one customer, you’re able to go on yourself and tell your story to millions of people at once. ” But that high-stakes gamble also can be a potential nightmare of on-air glitches, inappropriate ad libs, and real-time callers with uncertain agendas.
Here’s how it works: A network typically invites someone such as Cummings to appear. The pitchman doesn’t pay the network for the airtime, but he does have to ship a large order of his product to its warehouse. Then he appears on camera to hawk his merchandise. If viewers like him and his product, they call and order it from the network, which then pays the company and keeps a cut for itself. Cummings only gets paid for the jars of skin cream sold; the rest are sent back to him, and he eats the shipping costs.
He went home demoralized, thinking that he’d blown his shot at the big time and knowing the network would return tens of thousands of dollars in unsold inventory. But he’d managed to move just enough units that the network execs gave him another try. Two months later, he went on at 3 a.m. for a six-minute stint. His numbers still weren’t good. “It seemed like the end of the road,” he recalls.
That’s why Cummings was startled to get a call from a product scout at HSN who saw potential in his early-morning debacle. The scout’s network wasn’t quite as stingy with its on-air time as QVC, and he figured that Cummings’ personable style—the one he’d developed working the kiosk at Fashion Island—might come across better in the network’s format. A few months later, Cummings again found himself in a green room nervously awaiting his 6 a.m. appearance. The 12 minutes went by in a blur, but when he returned to the green room, network executives hurried over to congratulate him. He’d sold $48,000 worth of skin cream, about $4,000 worth per minute—33 percent above target. The network put him before the camera repeatedly over the next two days, and on the plane home, a new reality began to sink in. He’d just sold $250,000 worth of products, and the network wanted him back in a couple of months.
But as Cummings quickly learned, TV pitchmen have precious little job security. Have one subpar outing, and you start hearing whispers that your numbers need to rise. There’s no malice to it. “When a person gets canceled, it can be a real downer for everyone involved,” he says. In the end, what matters is whether the public likes you. “You can be like a TV show that everyone [at the network] likes, but still gets canceled.”
Indeed, Cummings later had an HSN outing in which his sales inexplicably plummeted, and he found himself on the outside looking in. Fortunately, buyers at ShopNBC got wind that he’d just developed a new product, a wrinkle reducer called Gone in 60 Seconds. “By some strange bit of karma, I was getting yet another chance,” he says. This time he nailed it. Gone in 60 Seconds became one of the biggest-selling skin-care products in the network’s history.
Click on their website www.smartcardfactory.com for more information.
That itself isn’t so disconcerting, because, after all, Cummings is in the business of looking good. In his early 50s, he’s got the trim, athletic build that suits business casual attire, plus a lush mane of graying hair and a smile that gleams like fine china. But those details just enhance Cummings’ calling card—his skin—which looks almost preternaturally smooth and supple, even in a low-budget YouTube video. He’s a walking advertisement for the restorative powers of the products he pitches, especially as a guy who’s overcome the ravages of adult chickenpox.
But while Cummings enjoys the compliment, he prefers to keep the friendly caller chitchat to a minimum. This is a business where you get a few minutes of free TV time to reach millions of potential customers, in exchange for providing thousands of units of your product for the network to sell directly to viewers. All that matters is how often the phones ring, and how many units you move. That number is displayed on a studio monitor so that on-air pitchmeisters such as Cummings can see in real time how well (or badly) they’re doing.
“You’ll say something, and you’ll see the sales spike, and the producer will be saying in your ear, ‘Do that again!’ ” he says. And making the connection with viewers sometimes means wrestling the conversation away from a host who likes to control it, or a caller who just wants to talk. “You live and die by your sales per minute,” he says. “Nobody knows for sure how you’re going to do until you get out there. ... Sometimes, God bless ’em, they’ll ramble on and on. You can’t rudely interrupt them, but you realize that’s precious time going by.”
In no trade is the equation of time and money more apparent than for a TV pitchman such as Cummings. His company, Newport Beach-based AminoGenesis Skin Care, has sold $30 million worth of products in the last two years during short, intense sales pitches on home shopping networks. He’s flown across the Pacific just to spend a few minutes selling one of his amino acid-laden rejuvenating preparations to an audience of presumably ruddy-complected, outdoorsy Aussie Shielas, hoping like hell they’ll call. The director talks into Cummings’ earpiece, pushing him through his gig while both keep an eye on that monitor’s second-by-second tab of units sold.
Cummings, who can make—or not make—tens of thousands of dollars in the time it takes most of us to find the remote control, is a man in the fast lane. When he founded his company 14 years ago, he was an ordinary Joe with an engaging smile who used his garage as a warehouse and peddled jars of cream from a cart in front of the Robinsons-May department store at Fashion Island, dreaming of being big enough to earn a spot at the cosmetics counter inside.
Millions of dollars later, Cummings has bigger ambitions. For the past several years, he personally has sold his wares on domestic channels such as QVC, the Home Shopping Network (HSN), and ShopNBC, and now is branching out into the global marketplace, from Turkey to Taiwan. In some countries, Cummings hires salespeople who speak the native language and trains them to mimic his carefully choreographed presentation, which he’s perfected down to the precise moment that they demonstrate the product. “It’s like a play,” he says. “They have to memorize exactly how it’s done.”
It’s an entrepreneur’s dream, he says. “Instead of hoping a salesperson at a store will know enough to tell your story to one customer, you’re able to go on yourself and tell your story to millions of people at once. ” But that high-stakes gamble also can be a potential nightmare of on-air glitches, inappropriate ad libs, and real-time callers with uncertain agendas.
Here’s how it works: A network typically invites someone such as Cummings to appear. The pitchman doesn’t pay the network for the airtime, but he does have to ship a large order of his product to its warehouse. Then he appears on camera to hawk his merchandise. If viewers like him and his product, they call and order it from the network, which then pays the company and keeps a cut for itself. Cummings only gets paid for the jars of skin cream sold; the rest are sent back to him, and he eats the shipping costs.
He went home demoralized, thinking that he’d blown his shot at the big time and knowing the network would return tens of thousands of dollars in unsold inventory. But he’d managed to move just enough units that the network execs gave him another try. Two months later, he went on at 3 a.m. for a six-minute stint. His numbers still weren’t good. “It seemed like the end of the road,” he recalls.
That’s why Cummings was startled to get a call from a product scout at HSN who saw potential in his early-morning debacle. The scout’s network wasn’t quite as stingy with its on-air time as QVC, and he figured that Cummings’ personable style—the one he’d developed working the kiosk at Fashion Island—might come across better in the network’s format. A few months later, Cummings again found himself in a green room nervously awaiting his 6 a.m. appearance. The 12 minutes went by in a blur, but when he returned to the green room, network executives hurried over to congratulate him. He’d sold $48,000 worth of skin cream, about $4,000 worth per minute—33 percent above target. The network put him before the camera repeatedly over the next two days, and on the plane home, a new reality began to sink in. He’d just sold $250,000 worth of products, and the network wanted him back in a couple of months.
But as Cummings quickly learned, TV pitchmen have precious little job security. Have one subpar outing, and you start hearing whispers that your numbers need to rise. There’s no malice to it. “When a person gets canceled, it can be a real downer for everyone involved,” he says. In the end, what matters is whether the public likes you. “You can be like a TV show that everyone [at the network] likes, but still gets canceled.”
Indeed, Cummings later had an HSN outing in which his sales inexplicably plummeted, and he found himself on the outside looking in. Fortunately, buyers at ShopNBC got wind that he’d just developed a new product, a wrinkle reducer called Gone in 60 Seconds. “By some strange bit of karma, I was getting yet another chance,” he says. This time he nailed it. Gone in 60 Seconds became one of the biggest-selling skin-care products in the network’s history.
Click on their website www.smartcardfactory.com for more information.
2013年6月20日星期四
Hands-on with Razer Blade and Blade Pro
After getting hands-on with Razer's new gaming laptops at E3 2013, we found that those who love the metallic unyielding one-piece sleekness of a MacBook and everything that a PC laptop offers, may want to raise an eyebrow in the direction of Razer's new 14- and 17-inch gaming laptops, the Razer Blade and Blade Pro, respectively.
The Blade measures 0.66 inches thick and weighs 4.14 pounds. Its guts consist of a fourth-generation Intel Core i7 processor — Intel's "Haswell" chipset - and 8 GB of DDR3L memory. It also touts a 2 GB Nvidia GeForce GTX 765M video card and Intel HD4600 integrated graphics.
The 14-inch display is a 1600x900 screen with an LED backlight. According to Razer, the Blade offers as many as six hours of battery life. The Blade Pro weighs 6.5 pounds at 0.88 inches of thickness. According to Razer it is the thinnest in its 17-inch class.
After having the 14-inch resting on my lap, it looked like I had a flat screen TV floating on my knees, but it certainly didn't feel like I had an-old school phone book resting on lap — like most performance laptops do.
The Blade Pro boasts a 17.3-inch 1080p LED screen, and Razer will offer the laptop in models with a 128 GB, 256 GB or 512 GB SSD. It also has Razer's Switchblade interface resting next to the keyboard, which consists of an LCD trackpad and 10 keys to give users quickly access to creative software such as Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Premiere Pro and Maya.
Ease of access to well used programs and apps is all good, but the question is how long the sensitivity on the LCD trackpad will last or even how long it will work for before it becomes deadspace? With both laptops, the finish didn't have that plastic Fisher Price toy feel, nor did it have the almost scratchy rough surface feel of a MacBook's brushed aluminum surface.
"So this is the Blade Pro, we actually launched it about two years ago and we have taken a totally different direction from other gaming laptops which tend to be 2-inches thick, 10-pounds," Razer CEO Min-Liang Tan. "So our focus has been to get really performance and portability at the same time. So two years ago we launched this, we recently updated this to the latest Intel Haswel CPUS."
The demo had Metro Last Light running on the machine, which ran smoothly and quietly, zero fuss from the machine. "So on top of this GPU so it runs all of the latest games it has an incredible frame rate and stuff. We are not trying to put all of the power in there because it would get insanely hot to really get it into a really powerful laptop that runs the latest games that runs at beautiful resolution. This is 17-inches and this is as hot as it gets, it has been running all morning."
Although, in my experience, track records with performance laptops dishing out crotch burn after a few months of service is not uncommon. The intakes are around the back between the body and the hinge, so it is out of the way of the user. "Even the thermal problem with performance laptops is that they get really hot. Now this gets really hot too, but what we did was get a propriety cooling system in there and we focused it getting it hot in areas that would generally be out of the way, so if you use it for gaming it will be perfectly fine."
What we have discovered is that hardcore gamers really like this but a lot of them said that we want something better with a smaller footprint," said Tan. "And you know we looked at the 14-inch laptops and again they really tend to be either really thick and have like gaming laptops but I really like the MacBook Pro because it was really thin and light. This is the most laptop with the smallest form factor ever."
The machine's keyboard was responsive, light to the touch. There was no need to pound the keys for it to register a keystroke nor was the keyboard awkwardly spaced out. "We spent a lot of time on the keyboard, making sure there is enough travel we didn't cheap out on the keyboard, which some guys do," he said.
We closed the machines lid and it registered a muted thwump which caught Tan's attention. "We put this in a chamber to get the sound of this perfect," he said. "We put this in an actual volume chamber with little mics all around it and we built a little robot just to be able to do that."
And so it was with Lake Lakota. I remembered nothing more than a monstrous farm pond set in a pasture of short grass grazed to the limit. There were no trees, just rugged hills. There was no swimming beach, no facilities of any kind. The lake had been built a few years before. If memory serves me right it went dry or almost dry at one time because it didn't hold water. If that was before my visit or after, I cannot recall, but it does hold water now. I am told it provides good fishing for bass, bluegill, catfish and perch.
As I gazed across the water, my eyes searched for the tiny cove where I had made an incredible catch of bass 40 years ago. I've done better in other places many times since, but this one I remember. I was using a new technique for fishing plastic worms. Lakota's big bass loved it.
I finally made out a small divot in the shoreline far across the lake. That had to be the spot. It was a long ways from the road, but 40 years ago nothing seemed a long ways away to me.
This was in the days before catch and release, and after only a few casts I had strung a limit of bass ranging from 3 to 4 pounds. That was not particularly notable compared to some of the Iowa farm ponds I had been fishing for several years, but for anywhere in southeastern South Dakota it was phenomenal. I've never understood why I never went back.
The magic lure, and in those days I believed in them, was a plastic worm and a new method of fishing it. I had learned about it in a book entitled "Super Fresh Water Fishing Systems," by Col. Dave Harbour. I have it beside me as I write this. Inside, on the first page, in a lot better hand writing than I have now, is my name and under that is "May, 1972."
Click on their website www.smartcardfactory.com for more information.
The Blade measures 0.66 inches thick and weighs 4.14 pounds. Its guts consist of a fourth-generation Intel Core i7 processor — Intel's "Haswell" chipset - and 8 GB of DDR3L memory. It also touts a 2 GB Nvidia GeForce GTX 765M video card and Intel HD4600 integrated graphics.
The 14-inch display is a 1600x900 screen with an LED backlight. According to Razer, the Blade offers as many as six hours of battery life. The Blade Pro weighs 6.5 pounds at 0.88 inches of thickness. According to Razer it is the thinnest in its 17-inch class.
After having the 14-inch resting on my lap, it looked like I had a flat screen TV floating on my knees, but it certainly didn't feel like I had an-old school phone book resting on lap — like most performance laptops do.
The Blade Pro boasts a 17.3-inch 1080p LED screen, and Razer will offer the laptop in models with a 128 GB, 256 GB or 512 GB SSD. It also has Razer's Switchblade interface resting next to the keyboard, which consists of an LCD trackpad and 10 keys to give users quickly access to creative software such as Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Premiere Pro and Maya.
Ease of access to well used programs and apps is all good, but the question is how long the sensitivity on the LCD trackpad will last or even how long it will work for before it becomes deadspace? With both laptops, the finish didn't have that plastic Fisher Price toy feel, nor did it have the almost scratchy rough surface feel of a MacBook's brushed aluminum surface.
"So this is the Blade Pro, we actually launched it about two years ago and we have taken a totally different direction from other gaming laptops which tend to be 2-inches thick, 10-pounds," Razer CEO Min-Liang Tan. "So our focus has been to get really performance and portability at the same time. So two years ago we launched this, we recently updated this to the latest Intel Haswel CPUS."
The demo had Metro Last Light running on the machine, which ran smoothly and quietly, zero fuss from the machine. "So on top of this GPU so it runs all of the latest games it has an incredible frame rate and stuff. We are not trying to put all of the power in there because it would get insanely hot to really get it into a really powerful laptop that runs the latest games that runs at beautiful resolution. This is 17-inches and this is as hot as it gets, it has been running all morning."
Although, in my experience, track records with performance laptops dishing out crotch burn after a few months of service is not uncommon. The intakes are around the back between the body and the hinge, so it is out of the way of the user. "Even the thermal problem with performance laptops is that they get really hot. Now this gets really hot too, but what we did was get a propriety cooling system in there and we focused it getting it hot in areas that would generally be out of the way, so if you use it for gaming it will be perfectly fine."
What we have discovered is that hardcore gamers really like this but a lot of them said that we want something better with a smaller footprint," said Tan. "And you know we looked at the 14-inch laptops and again they really tend to be either really thick and have like gaming laptops but I really like the MacBook Pro because it was really thin and light. This is the most laptop with the smallest form factor ever."
The machine's keyboard was responsive, light to the touch. There was no need to pound the keys for it to register a keystroke nor was the keyboard awkwardly spaced out. "We spent a lot of time on the keyboard, making sure there is enough travel we didn't cheap out on the keyboard, which some guys do," he said.
We closed the machines lid and it registered a muted thwump which caught Tan's attention. "We put this in a chamber to get the sound of this perfect," he said. "We put this in an actual volume chamber with little mics all around it and we built a little robot just to be able to do that."
And so it was with Lake Lakota. I remembered nothing more than a monstrous farm pond set in a pasture of short grass grazed to the limit. There were no trees, just rugged hills. There was no swimming beach, no facilities of any kind. The lake had been built a few years before. If memory serves me right it went dry or almost dry at one time because it didn't hold water. If that was before my visit or after, I cannot recall, but it does hold water now. I am told it provides good fishing for bass, bluegill, catfish and perch.
As I gazed across the water, my eyes searched for the tiny cove where I had made an incredible catch of bass 40 years ago. I've done better in other places many times since, but this one I remember. I was using a new technique for fishing plastic worms. Lakota's big bass loved it.
I finally made out a small divot in the shoreline far across the lake. That had to be the spot. It was a long ways from the road, but 40 years ago nothing seemed a long ways away to me.
This was in the days before catch and release, and after only a few casts I had strung a limit of bass ranging from 3 to 4 pounds. That was not particularly notable compared to some of the Iowa farm ponds I had been fishing for several years, but for anywhere in southeastern South Dakota it was phenomenal. I've never understood why I never went back.
The magic lure, and in those days I believed in them, was a plastic worm and a new method of fishing it. I had learned about it in a book entitled "Super Fresh Water Fishing Systems," by Col. Dave Harbour. I have it beside me as I write this. Inside, on the first page, in a lot better hand writing than I have now, is my name and under that is "May, 1972."
Click on their website www.smartcardfactory.com for more information.
2013年6月19日星期三
Mobile technology gains ground as settlement option
When a large corporate embarks on a mission to enhance visibility of cash, it does so with a view to freeing working capital and allowing for better cashflow forecasting. One way to achieve better cash visibility, as well as cutting down on operational cost, is to move payments from cash and cheques to electronic means.
Regardless of location, paper-based processing of payments and receivables is more expensive than electronic alternatives and puts the corporate at greater risk of fraud. One common solution that transaction banks will propose is the implementation of internet-based portals through which suppliers and customers can, respectively, submit invoices and initiate payment (through automated clearing house transfers, for instance). Yet, technological innovation is rapidly adding alternatives to these portals.
In many Asian markets, suppliers and distributors of a large corporate may not be inclined to register and utilize these portals, due to unreliable access to broadband internet or, for some, the lack of a bank account. Providing these business partners with alternative methods of digital payments becomes critical in reducing cheque processing.
Adds Gautam Jain, global head of client access at the bank: “Insurance providers could benefit if the agents were in a position to collect premium payments through mobile devices, rather than having to wait for checks to clear and display in the insurance provider’s accounts days later. From a geographical perspective, B2B mobile money solutions make sense in countries with large upcountry check collection processes”.
As a result, Standard Chartered has launched in one of its Asian markets a collections product via mobile, which caters to large producers with wide distribution networks. “At the moment, we collect the paper check and the courier goes to the central treasury where it is presented so the goods can be released,” explains Jain. “This is a relatively easy process to which we introduce the mobile. The courier now takes the image of the check, it goes to the system and we are eliminating around eight hours of the collection cycle because the process is all image-based on mobile.”
The case study demonstrates how mobile devices aid in the digitization of receivables, thereby shortening the collection cycle and yielding benefits to both producer and distributor. “From a client perspective,” Jain elaborates, “information is received much earlier, and hence the retailer can receive the goods faster, enabling him to turn around his inventory quicker. His working capital and inventory are optimized.”
The next stage in this evolution is achieved when a corporate’s numerous distributors make payment using their mobile devices from the start, eliminating the need to capture the image-based cheque on a mobile device. In India, the Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation – more prominently known under its trademark Amul – receives a growing share of payments from its retail distributors through mobile-initiated transactions. Amul’s distribution comprises some 5,000 dealers and one million retailers. (See April issue, p40.) In order to avoid non-payment, Amul used to rely on receiving post-dated cheques in advance of shipment and thus incurred large overhead costs of storing cheques and managing clearance information.
As one part of the solution that Amul’s banking partner BNP Paribas proposed, starting last year distributors have been able to transfer funds to Amul using their mobile phones. Targeted especially at those smaller distributors that may not be able to make payments through India’s RTGS or NEFT systems on a regular basis, the mobile channel builds on the country’s Interbank Mobile Payment Service (IMPS) and allows secure access to bank accounts to facilitate fund transfer without a computer. Amul receives and confirms payment quicker and can release goods to its retailers faster. Remitters receive a so-called MMID (mobile money ID) that is known to Amul and thus allows for quick reconciliation. Typically, funds are credited to Amul within 15 to 30 seconds.
Initially conceived for private or consumer-to-business transactions, IMPS was successfully introduced in this FMCG setting to yield benefits to both parties. Arvind Ronad, senior executive product strategy and marketing at technology vendor Fundtech, has followed the evolution of IMPS and asserts: “We see IMPS poised for growth, and it is just a matter of time before it obtains a critical mass of active users and transaction volume. Corporates and their supply chains will start exploiting it once they become more aware of the capabilities and benefits.”
With arguably more relevancy to Asia’s mature markets, credit card-based solutions are an alternative way to digitize payables. Vendor payment is a central treasury function that incurs significant operational costs, especially when this is still based on distribution of cheques. Card issuers have proposed that their networks can deliver secure payments in a B2B setting, provided that suppliers accept card payments. In this business model, payments are typically made using virtual credit cards that the treasury issues to its suppliers; each card modified with a unique card number, expiration date and the amount due. The cards are sent as an image via e-mail or even mobile devices. The supplier then processes the payment like a regular credit card, knowing that the invoice is settled immediately.
Virtual card solutions so far have seen strongest pick-up in the travel and entertainment industry, observes Vincent Patru, head of commercial products for Asia-Pacific, Middle East, and Africa (APMEA) at MasterCard Worldwide: “Web-based travel aggregators, for example, spend millions on reconciliation. Our virtual account number solutions works like a card but without the plastic. Whenever there is a trip generated on their platform, MasterCard will generate a unique 16-code number to the end provider, restricted for a certain amount, merchant and validity. One number for each transaction allows the client to link payment to one specific trip.”
In industries with such high volume of transactions, a portal solution would make limited sense. In terms of industries, the greatest opportunities lie beyond travel and entertainment corporations, believes Patru. “You can imagine this for the public sector where agencies can pay their multiple suppliers,” he maintains. “It also makes sense for insurers or hospitals. Paying their suppliers through traditional money transfers is a mess. Introducing the virtual card brings a lot of cost-saving.”
Patru is keen to point out the size of the market in general: “In Asia, B2B payments are the largest opportunity out there. Looking at Asia, the Middle East and Africa, B2B transactions account for roughly US$33 trillion and out of this the potential that could easily be handled via cards is about US$6 trillion. So far, this number stands at about US$350 billion, both plastic and virtual. It takes time to go after CFOs and treasurers to make them understand the benefits.”
Read the full story at www.smartcardfactory.com!
Regardless of location, paper-based processing of payments and receivables is more expensive than electronic alternatives and puts the corporate at greater risk of fraud. One common solution that transaction banks will propose is the implementation of internet-based portals through which suppliers and customers can, respectively, submit invoices and initiate payment (through automated clearing house transfers, for instance). Yet, technological innovation is rapidly adding alternatives to these portals.
In many Asian markets, suppliers and distributors of a large corporate may not be inclined to register and utilize these portals, due to unreliable access to broadband internet or, for some, the lack of a bank account. Providing these business partners with alternative methods of digital payments becomes critical in reducing cheque processing.
Adds Gautam Jain, global head of client access at the bank: “Insurance providers could benefit if the agents were in a position to collect premium payments through mobile devices, rather than having to wait for checks to clear and display in the insurance provider’s accounts days later. From a geographical perspective, B2B mobile money solutions make sense in countries with large upcountry check collection processes”.
As a result, Standard Chartered has launched in one of its Asian markets a collections product via mobile, which caters to large producers with wide distribution networks. “At the moment, we collect the paper check and the courier goes to the central treasury where it is presented so the goods can be released,” explains Jain. “This is a relatively easy process to which we introduce the mobile. The courier now takes the image of the check, it goes to the system and we are eliminating around eight hours of the collection cycle because the process is all image-based on mobile.”
The case study demonstrates how mobile devices aid in the digitization of receivables, thereby shortening the collection cycle and yielding benefits to both producer and distributor. “From a client perspective,” Jain elaborates, “information is received much earlier, and hence the retailer can receive the goods faster, enabling him to turn around his inventory quicker. His working capital and inventory are optimized.”
The next stage in this evolution is achieved when a corporate’s numerous distributors make payment using their mobile devices from the start, eliminating the need to capture the image-based cheque on a mobile device. In India, the Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation – more prominently known under its trademark Amul – receives a growing share of payments from its retail distributors through mobile-initiated transactions. Amul’s distribution comprises some 5,000 dealers and one million retailers. (See April issue, p40.) In order to avoid non-payment, Amul used to rely on receiving post-dated cheques in advance of shipment and thus incurred large overhead costs of storing cheques and managing clearance information.
As one part of the solution that Amul’s banking partner BNP Paribas proposed, starting last year distributors have been able to transfer funds to Amul using their mobile phones. Targeted especially at those smaller distributors that may not be able to make payments through India’s RTGS or NEFT systems on a regular basis, the mobile channel builds on the country’s Interbank Mobile Payment Service (IMPS) and allows secure access to bank accounts to facilitate fund transfer without a computer. Amul receives and confirms payment quicker and can release goods to its retailers faster. Remitters receive a so-called MMID (mobile money ID) that is known to Amul and thus allows for quick reconciliation. Typically, funds are credited to Amul within 15 to 30 seconds.
Initially conceived for private or consumer-to-business transactions, IMPS was successfully introduced in this FMCG setting to yield benefits to both parties. Arvind Ronad, senior executive product strategy and marketing at technology vendor Fundtech, has followed the evolution of IMPS and asserts: “We see IMPS poised for growth, and it is just a matter of time before it obtains a critical mass of active users and transaction volume. Corporates and their supply chains will start exploiting it once they become more aware of the capabilities and benefits.”
With arguably more relevancy to Asia’s mature markets, credit card-based solutions are an alternative way to digitize payables. Vendor payment is a central treasury function that incurs significant operational costs, especially when this is still based on distribution of cheques. Card issuers have proposed that their networks can deliver secure payments in a B2B setting, provided that suppliers accept card payments. In this business model, payments are typically made using virtual credit cards that the treasury issues to its suppliers; each card modified with a unique card number, expiration date and the amount due. The cards are sent as an image via e-mail or even mobile devices. The supplier then processes the payment like a regular credit card, knowing that the invoice is settled immediately.
Virtual card solutions so far have seen strongest pick-up in the travel and entertainment industry, observes Vincent Patru, head of commercial products for Asia-Pacific, Middle East, and Africa (APMEA) at MasterCard Worldwide: “Web-based travel aggregators, for example, spend millions on reconciliation. Our virtual account number solutions works like a card but without the plastic. Whenever there is a trip generated on their platform, MasterCard will generate a unique 16-code number to the end provider, restricted for a certain amount, merchant and validity. One number for each transaction allows the client to link payment to one specific trip.”
In industries with such high volume of transactions, a portal solution would make limited sense. In terms of industries, the greatest opportunities lie beyond travel and entertainment corporations, believes Patru. “You can imagine this for the public sector where agencies can pay their multiple suppliers,” he maintains. “It also makes sense for insurers or hospitals. Paying their suppliers through traditional money transfers is a mess. Introducing the virtual card brings a lot of cost-saving.”
Patru is keen to point out the size of the market in general: “In Asia, B2B payments are the largest opportunity out there. Looking at Asia, the Middle East and Africa, B2B transactions account for roughly US$33 trillion and out of this the potential that could easily be handled via cards is about US$6 trillion. So far, this number stands at about US$350 billion, both plastic and virtual. It takes time to go after CFOs and treasurers to make them understand the benefits.”
Read the full story at www.smartcardfactory.com!
2013年6月7日星期五
US Consumer Credit
Economists forecast consumer borrowing increased $13.5 billion in April from March, according to a survey by FactSet. The Federal Reserve will release the report at 3 p.m. EDT Friday.
In March, consumers increased their borrowing by $8 billion from February to a seasonally adjusted $2.81 trillion. While that was a record high level for borrowing, the March increase was the smallest in eight months. And nearly all of the gain was in a category that measures auto and student loans.
Consumers barely increased their credit card debt, continuing a trend of resisting high-interest debt that began during the Great Recession. Economists believe consumers will continue to resist their plastic this year, in part because of higher Social Security taxes have reduced most paychecks. They are also more cautious because job growth, while steady and solid, is still not strong enough to rapidly lower the unemployment rate.
The credit report doesn't separate auto loans from student loans. But according to quarterly data compiled by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, student loan debt has been the biggest driver of borrowing since the recession ended in June 2009. Student loans reached $986 billion in the first three months of this year. That's up from $675 billion in the second quarter of 2009.
Consumers increased their spending from January through March at the fastest pace in more than two years. However, they had to trim the pace of their savings to finance their purchases. After-tax income dropped at an annual rate of 7.5 percent in the first quarter. That drop reflected in part the increase in Social Security taxes that took effect on Jan. 1.
Economists are hoping that hiring will remain solid and counter some of the drag from the tax increase and federal spending cut that began on March 1.
The overall economy grew at an annual rate of 2.4 percent in the January-March quarter. The expectation is that growth is slowing in the April-June quarter to around 2 percent.
The Federal Reserve's borrowing report covers auto loans, student loans and credit cards. It excludes mortgages, home equity loans and other loans tied to real estate.
In order to compete with retail giants during the holiday season, it is important to stand out from the crowd with your product or marketing strategy. One point that Custom Wooden Cards identified is that shelves in stores have become over-saturated with plastic gift cards. One way to stand out with product differentiation could include creating a custom shaped wood gift card, a laser engraved wood gift card, or a wood gift card.
In terms of marketing strategies, it could be important to reflect an eco-friendly image to consumers. According to The 2006 Cone Millennial Cause Study, 74% of consumers are more likely to pay attention to a company’s message when they see that the company is very committed to a cause, such as being environmentally conscious. Consumers like to see passion, and many of them like to see passion in a cause that can better the planet.
In terms of online advertising strategies, it has been proven that buzz words like "free shipping" perform much better than percent off discounts. Instead of offering percent off discounts, offer free shipping to help increase sales around the holiday season.
I'm a fan of Harmonix, to be perfectly clear. When I first purchased an Xbox 360 way back when, one of the earliest titles in my collection was "Guitar Hero 2," and boy did I play that thing until the buttons on my fake guitar got stuck, making the experience rather difficult. When "Rock Band" came along, I didn't buy it because it was released on the same day as the original "Mass Effect" — a game I was legally obliged to purchase — and also because my bank account was rather empty, and I didn't have enough room on my credit card to drop $200 on more plastic instruments.
And then I got a Kinect sensor, and to date I have enjoyed only one series of games on it: "Dance Central." I still think that the only reason to have this generation of Kinect is so you can play "Dance Central," as I didn't find any of my other Kinect experiences — be them full-motion games like "Rise of Nightmares," which were too exhausting and awkward for me to really enjoy, or standard controller games with voice commands like "Mass Effect 3," which were just dumb — worth any sort of investment. But I like dancing, and Kinect made it possible for there to be a dancing game that wasn't utterly stupid. Harmonix definitely delivered there.
All that aside, I was wary of the studio's impending announcement of a new game that was related to neither "Rock Band" nor "Dance Central." We'd known for a while that it was working on something new, and last year it had been reportedly seeking a "combat designer" to add to the team, which to me indicated it was branching beyond music. That scared me, frankly. "Harmonix" is not the full name of the studio, after all; it is actually called Harmonix Music. The possibility that they were working on a non-music property just seemed weird.
And so in the lead-up to its announcement of this new game Tuesday morning, I was pretty skeptical. I didn't really know what to expect, and given the evidence it might be straying outside its wheelhouse, I was curious but not necessarily optimistic. Bah, everyone told me. It's gonna be awesome, whatever it is, they said. I wasn't convinced.Click on their website www.smartcardfactory.com for more information.
In March, consumers increased their borrowing by $8 billion from February to a seasonally adjusted $2.81 trillion. While that was a record high level for borrowing, the March increase was the smallest in eight months. And nearly all of the gain was in a category that measures auto and student loans.
Consumers barely increased their credit card debt, continuing a trend of resisting high-interest debt that began during the Great Recession. Economists believe consumers will continue to resist their plastic this year, in part because of higher Social Security taxes have reduced most paychecks. They are also more cautious because job growth, while steady and solid, is still not strong enough to rapidly lower the unemployment rate.
The credit report doesn't separate auto loans from student loans. But according to quarterly data compiled by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, student loan debt has been the biggest driver of borrowing since the recession ended in June 2009. Student loans reached $986 billion in the first three months of this year. That's up from $675 billion in the second quarter of 2009.
Consumers increased their spending from January through March at the fastest pace in more than two years. However, they had to trim the pace of their savings to finance their purchases. After-tax income dropped at an annual rate of 7.5 percent in the first quarter. That drop reflected in part the increase in Social Security taxes that took effect on Jan. 1.
Economists are hoping that hiring will remain solid and counter some of the drag from the tax increase and federal spending cut that began on March 1.
The overall economy grew at an annual rate of 2.4 percent in the January-March quarter. The expectation is that growth is slowing in the April-June quarter to around 2 percent.
The Federal Reserve's borrowing report covers auto loans, student loans and credit cards. It excludes mortgages, home equity loans and other loans tied to real estate.
In order to compete with retail giants during the holiday season, it is important to stand out from the crowd with your product or marketing strategy. One point that Custom Wooden Cards identified is that shelves in stores have become over-saturated with plastic gift cards. One way to stand out with product differentiation could include creating a custom shaped wood gift card, a laser engraved wood gift card, or a wood gift card.
In terms of marketing strategies, it could be important to reflect an eco-friendly image to consumers. According to The 2006 Cone Millennial Cause Study, 74% of consumers are more likely to pay attention to a company’s message when they see that the company is very committed to a cause, such as being environmentally conscious. Consumers like to see passion, and many of them like to see passion in a cause that can better the planet.
In terms of online advertising strategies, it has been proven that buzz words like "free shipping" perform much better than percent off discounts. Instead of offering percent off discounts, offer free shipping to help increase sales around the holiday season.
I'm a fan of Harmonix, to be perfectly clear. When I first purchased an Xbox 360 way back when, one of the earliest titles in my collection was "Guitar Hero 2," and boy did I play that thing until the buttons on my fake guitar got stuck, making the experience rather difficult. When "Rock Band" came along, I didn't buy it because it was released on the same day as the original "Mass Effect" — a game I was legally obliged to purchase — and also because my bank account was rather empty, and I didn't have enough room on my credit card to drop $200 on more plastic instruments.
And then I got a Kinect sensor, and to date I have enjoyed only one series of games on it: "Dance Central." I still think that the only reason to have this generation of Kinect is so you can play "Dance Central," as I didn't find any of my other Kinect experiences — be them full-motion games like "Rise of Nightmares," which were too exhausting and awkward for me to really enjoy, or standard controller games with voice commands like "Mass Effect 3," which were just dumb — worth any sort of investment. But I like dancing, and Kinect made it possible for there to be a dancing game that wasn't utterly stupid. Harmonix definitely delivered there.
All that aside, I was wary of the studio's impending announcement of a new game that was related to neither "Rock Band" nor "Dance Central." We'd known for a while that it was working on something new, and last year it had been reportedly seeking a "combat designer" to add to the team, which to me indicated it was branching beyond music. That scared me, frankly. "Harmonix" is not the full name of the studio, after all; it is actually called Harmonix Music. The possibility that they were working on a non-music property just seemed weird.
And so in the lead-up to its announcement of this new game Tuesday morning, I was pretty skeptical. I didn't really know what to expect, and given the evidence it might be straying outside its wheelhouse, I was curious but not necessarily optimistic. Bah, everyone told me. It's gonna be awesome, whatever it is, they said. I wasn't convinced.Click on their website www.smartcardfactory.com for more information.
2013年5月13日星期一
Lansdale man among trio nabbed in alleged interstate marijuana scheme
A Lansdale man and two other men face felony drug charges after allegedly attempting to pick up a large shipment of marijuana — hidden inside a pallet of boxes — that was sent from California to the K’NEX toy manufacturing facility in Hatfield last month.
Nghia Binh Thach, 37, of the 600 block of Whitaker Place, along with Hieu Thach, 26, and Hai Danh, 33 — both of Camden, N.J. — have been arrested and charged with possession with intent to deliver a controlled substance, conspiracy to deliver a controlled substance and related offenses.
According to the affidavit of probable cause, on April 12 police were notified by K’NEX staff that they had received a delivery of 10 boxes on a pallet, wrapped in plastic, that had been shipped from California to the factory at 2990 Bergey Road, and that paperwork associated with the shipment indicated that K’NEX was the intended receiver.
Police said the boxes contained cases of martini shakers, and further inspection revealed a total of 47 pounds of marijuana — packaged in one-pound bags — inside six of the boxes, with an estimated street value of $164,500 to $282,000.
Around 7:30 a.m. on April 16, the affidavit states, Hatfield detectives received a call from K’NEX advising them that a male was on location at the factory requesting to pick up the pallet. Police responded to the scene and took the man, Nghia Thach, into custody and, according to the affidavit, found a U-Haul Self Storage security access card in his RFID tag.
A subsequent search of the storage locker turned up an additional 15 pounds of marijuana — also packaged in one-pound bags, with a total street value of $52,500 to $90,000 — along with 115 cases of martini shakers, the affidavit states.
Around 2:20 p.m. April 18, Hatfield detectives received another call from K’NEX alerting them that two Asian men — later identified as Hieu Thach and Hai Danh — were at the facility asking to pick up the same shipment of 10 boxes, police said. When detectives arrived, the two men had departed, but a man called K’NEX shortly after, inquiring about the pallet and asking if he could send his drivers back to pick up the shipment of martini shakers; a detective got on the phone and told the caller he could send his drivers back, according to the affidavit.
Pure has made a start with its on demand service for the Avalon 300R, adding BBC iPlayer catch-up and YouTube web videos. It can’t compete with the likes of Samsung, though, as that manufacturer includes ITV player, 4OD and Demand 5 on its hard disk recorders. There’s also no Netflix or LoveFilm, which may come as a disappointment to film fans. The one saving grace could be Pure Connect, which lets you access thousands of internet radio stations, listen-again programs and podcasts, and stream music from Pure’s extensive library.
DLNA support is also included, so you’ll be able to play files stored on a networked PC or NAS device. It has fantastic file format support, too, which meant we could play all our test videos including MKV, DivX and MOV clips. You should be able to play any videos, regardless of their file type.
The Avalon 300R stands out from other PVRs with its gorgeous and intuitive interface. A picture-in-picture overlay gives you a preview of each channel as you browse through the EPG, without taking over the screen or obscuring what you’re currently watching. If you just want to see what’s on now and next, a separate menu appears from the side of the screen. There’s a small delay before you get a picture, but it’s certainly better than not being able to see it at all. Everything has a transparent background to avoid blocking as much of the currently playing channel as possible, and looks crisp on a 1080p resolution TV.
All these effects require some serious horsepower, which is why Pure has used an Intel Sodaville processor and PowerVR graphics. This would be overkill for a more restrained interface, but it proves its worth when you activate the numerous channel transitions that slip, wipe, dissolve and ripple the screen as you change to a different program. We found this rather gimmicky, and we’d rather just change as quickly as possible without having to sit through fancy effects. Thankfully, there’s an option to turn the transitions off should you prefer not to see them.
Freeview+ HD might be lacking channels compared to subscription TV services such as Sky or Virgin, but it’s steadily increasing its collection of high definition content, with BBC One HD, BBC Two HD, ITV 1 HD and Channel 4 HD all available. Unfortunately, the Avalon 300R doesn’t have a CI card slot, so you won’t be able to use it for your subscription TV services.
Nghia Binh Thach, 37, of the 600 block of Whitaker Place, along with Hieu Thach, 26, and Hai Danh, 33 — both of Camden, N.J. — have been arrested and charged with possession with intent to deliver a controlled substance, conspiracy to deliver a controlled substance and related offenses.
According to the affidavit of probable cause, on April 12 police were notified by K’NEX staff that they had received a delivery of 10 boxes on a pallet, wrapped in plastic, that had been shipped from California to the factory at 2990 Bergey Road, and that paperwork associated with the shipment indicated that K’NEX was the intended receiver.
Police said the boxes contained cases of martini shakers, and further inspection revealed a total of 47 pounds of marijuana — packaged in one-pound bags — inside six of the boxes, with an estimated street value of $164,500 to $282,000.
Around 7:30 a.m. on April 16, the affidavit states, Hatfield detectives received a call from K’NEX advising them that a male was on location at the factory requesting to pick up the pallet. Police responded to the scene and took the man, Nghia Thach, into custody and, according to the affidavit, found a U-Haul Self Storage security access card in his RFID tag.
A subsequent search of the storage locker turned up an additional 15 pounds of marijuana — also packaged in one-pound bags, with a total street value of $52,500 to $90,000 — along with 115 cases of martini shakers, the affidavit states.
Around 2:20 p.m. April 18, Hatfield detectives received another call from K’NEX alerting them that two Asian men — later identified as Hieu Thach and Hai Danh — were at the facility asking to pick up the same shipment of 10 boxes, police said. When detectives arrived, the two men had departed, but a man called K’NEX shortly after, inquiring about the pallet and asking if he could send his drivers back to pick up the shipment of martini shakers; a detective got on the phone and told the caller he could send his drivers back, according to the affidavit.
Pure has made a start with its on demand service for the Avalon 300R, adding BBC iPlayer catch-up and YouTube web videos. It can’t compete with the likes of Samsung, though, as that manufacturer includes ITV player, 4OD and Demand 5 on its hard disk recorders. There’s also no Netflix or LoveFilm, which may come as a disappointment to film fans. The one saving grace could be Pure Connect, which lets you access thousands of internet radio stations, listen-again programs and podcasts, and stream music from Pure’s extensive library.
DLNA support is also included, so you’ll be able to play files stored on a networked PC or NAS device. It has fantastic file format support, too, which meant we could play all our test videos including MKV, DivX and MOV clips. You should be able to play any videos, regardless of their file type.
The Avalon 300R stands out from other PVRs with its gorgeous and intuitive interface. A picture-in-picture overlay gives you a preview of each channel as you browse through the EPG, without taking over the screen or obscuring what you’re currently watching. If you just want to see what’s on now and next, a separate menu appears from the side of the screen. There’s a small delay before you get a picture, but it’s certainly better than not being able to see it at all. Everything has a transparent background to avoid blocking as much of the currently playing channel as possible, and looks crisp on a 1080p resolution TV.
All these effects require some serious horsepower, which is why Pure has used an Intel Sodaville processor and PowerVR graphics. This would be overkill for a more restrained interface, but it proves its worth when you activate the numerous channel transitions that slip, wipe, dissolve and ripple the screen as you change to a different program. We found this rather gimmicky, and we’d rather just change as quickly as possible without having to sit through fancy effects. Thankfully, there’s an option to turn the transitions off should you prefer not to see them.
Freeview+ HD might be lacking channels compared to subscription TV services such as Sky or Virgin, but it’s steadily increasing its collection of high definition content, with BBC One HD, BBC Two HD, ITV 1 HD and Channel 4 HD all available. Unfortunately, the Avalon 300R doesn’t have a CI card slot, so you won’t be able to use it for your subscription TV services.
2013年4月11日星期四
Paying with your smart phone
An increasing number of apps are offering different ways to pay. They're called digital wallets. Consumer Reports Money Adviser took a look at several to see if you really can leave your wallet at home.
Maryssa Menkin pays for some services using Square Wallet's free application. The digital wallet app links to her chip card, which she finds very convenient.
"I hate carrying a lot of things and, you know, I find that I do always have my phone on me. So it's just very simple," said Menkin.
Starbucks is one of the hundreds of thousands of businesses nationwide that have signed up for Square Wallet.
Square is compatible with a number of iPhone and Android models, and Consumer Reports Money Adviser says it's pretty easy to use. But other digital wallets are not as widely accessible.
"For instance, Google Wallet and Isis aren't available on iPhones and only work with some service providers. They also require a wireless technology that only some stores can use," said Amanda Walker, Consumer Reports.
Some digital wallet apps will only link with a few credit cards. So you may need to link to a prepaid card, which can incur additional fees.
That may also mean you don't have the best protections if you lose your phone or someone breaks into your account.
"Prepaid cards, whether in your hand or on your phone, have no guaranteed protections against unauthorized transactions, so you could lose whatever balance is on the card," said Walker.
Still, if, like Menkin, you like leaving your bulky wallet at home, Consumer Reports says use an app like Square that links to a credit card for the best consumer protections.
The one month mark is Saturday for the year-long initiative that the library does hope to extend should enough funds be raised, and nearly 30,000 people have taken them up on their offer so far.
“As of this morning, we’ve had over 19,000 people renew their library cards and we’ve given out almost 9,000 new cards,” Vicky Varga, associate manager, Circulation and Interlibrary Loans Services, said Thursday. “So this equates to about three times… what we would have seen previous to the free cards.”
Along with signing people up for free cards at branches, there were three pop-up membership drives on March 13 – something that will continue into the fall.
Library staff will be at the Mom, Pop & Tots Fair this weekend, Southgate Mall April 20 and Commerce Place April 30. In May, people will be able to sign up for cards at Century Park and Clareview LRT stations, as well as the Telus building, Bell Tower, Kingsway Mall, City Market Downtown and even the Edmonton International Airport.
By standardizing smart pump settings and better managing alerts, pharmacists at the Cleveland Clinic Health System were able to improve the large-volume pump system that goes across all 10 of its hospitals and its 19 family health and ambulatory surgery centers, according to Silvana Balliu, PharmD, RPh, a smart pump pharmacist at the health system.
Noting that alert alarm management is a key factor in reducing health technology hazards, Dr. Balliu described how Cleveland Clinic pharmacists focused on “decreasing the number of alerts received, to make them clinically significant to our caregivers.”
After reviewing continuous quality improvement (CQI) alarm report data and documenting the number of alerts received, a team at Cleveland Clinic tailored the audio alarm settings for alerts based on care areas and practice settings. The analysis revealed that many alerts received during infusion programming of pressors were caused by caregivers, who, when titrating doses downward ended up administering dosages lower than the lowest soft limits required by the smart pump’s settings. The health system significantly decreased alerts in this area by removing alerts for the lowest soft limits settings.
To reduce the risk for infusion pump programming errors related to high-risk medications, Dr. Balliu said they programmed high-risk medications in the pump to be given as primary, not secondary, infusions. Also, they prohibited secondary medications from being programmed with high-risk medications.
Cleveland Clinic also standardized settings between the smart pump and the electronic medical record (EMR) to provide clinicians with consistent information regarding dosage, duration and concentration, Dr. Balliu noted.
For heparin infusions, the CQI analysis revealed that some alarm alerts were caused by caregivers attempting to enter the volume per hour versus the dosage. The team eliminated this practice by implementing the lowest hard dosage limit for heparin.
Pharmacy works closely with nursing and anesthesia representatives during implementation and maintenance to “provide education and to make the library files transparent to them,” Dr. Balliu added. By making these types of improvements to the smart pumps, the number of alarm alerts decreased 50% from the fourth quarter of 2010 to the fourth quarter of 2011 (figure). Today, Dr. Balliu added, Cleveland Clinic is working toward its goal of having a library compliance rate of 98%.
Maryssa Menkin pays for some services using Square Wallet's free application. The digital wallet app links to her chip card, which she finds very convenient.
"I hate carrying a lot of things and, you know, I find that I do always have my phone on me. So it's just very simple," said Menkin.
Starbucks is one of the hundreds of thousands of businesses nationwide that have signed up for Square Wallet.
Square is compatible with a number of iPhone and Android models, and Consumer Reports Money Adviser says it's pretty easy to use. But other digital wallets are not as widely accessible.
"For instance, Google Wallet and Isis aren't available on iPhones and only work with some service providers. They also require a wireless technology that only some stores can use," said Amanda Walker, Consumer Reports.
Some digital wallet apps will only link with a few credit cards. So you may need to link to a prepaid card, which can incur additional fees.
That may also mean you don't have the best protections if you lose your phone or someone breaks into your account.
"Prepaid cards, whether in your hand or on your phone, have no guaranteed protections against unauthorized transactions, so you could lose whatever balance is on the card," said Walker.
Still, if, like Menkin, you like leaving your bulky wallet at home, Consumer Reports says use an app like Square that links to a credit card for the best consumer protections.
The one month mark is Saturday for the year-long initiative that the library does hope to extend should enough funds be raised, and nearly 30,000 people have taken them up on their offer so far.
“As of this morning, we’ve had over 19,000 people renew their library cards and we’ve given out almost 9,000 new cards,” Vicky Varga, associate manager, Circulation and Interlibrary Loans Services, said Thursday. “So this equates to about three times… what we would have seen previous to the free cards.”
Along with signing people up for free cards at branches, there were three pop-up membership drives on March 13 – something that will continue into the fall.
Library staff will be at the Mom, Pop & Tots Fair this weekend, Southgate Mall April 20 and Commerce Place April 30. In May, people will be able to sign up for cards at Century Park and Clareview LRT stations, as well as the Telus building, Bell Tower, Kingsway Mall, City Market Downtown and even the Edmonton International Airport.
By standardizing smart pump settings and better managing alerts, pharmacists at the Cleveland Clinic Health System were able to improve the large-volume pump system that goes across all 10 of its hospitals and its 19 family health and ambulatory surgery centers, according to Silvana Balliu, PharmD, RPh, a smart pump pharmacist at the health system.
Noting that alert alarm management is a key factor in reducing health technology hazards, Dr. Balliu described how Cleveland Clinic pharmacists focused on “decreasing the number of alerts received, to make them clinically significant to our caregivers.”
After reviewing continuous quality improvement (CQI) alarm report data and documenting the number of alerts received, a team at Cleveland Clinic tailored the audio alarm settings for alerts based on care areas and practice settings. The analysis revealed that many alerts received during infusion programming of pressors were caused by caregivers, who, when titrating doses downward ended up administering dosages lower than the lowest soft limits required by the smart pump’s settings. The health system significantly decreased alerts in this area by removing alerts for the lowest soft limits settings.
To reduce the risk for infusion pump programming errors related to high-risk medications, Dr. Balliu said they programmed high-risk medications in the pump to be given as primary, not secondary, infusions. Also, they prohibited secondary medications from being programmed with high-risk medications.
Cleveland Clinic also standardized settings between the smart pump and the electronic medical record (EMR) to provide clinicians with consistent information regarding dosage, duration and concentration, Dr. Balliu noted.
For heparin infusions, the CQI analysis revealed that some alarm alerts were caused by caregivers attempting to enter the volume per hour versus the dosage. The team eliminated this practice by implementing the lowest hard dosage limit for heparin.
Pharmacy works closely with nursing and anesthesia representatives during implementation and maintenance to “provide education and to make the library files transparent to them,” Dr. Balliu added. By making these types of improvements to the smart pumps, the number of alarm alerts decreased 50% from the fourth quarter of 2010 to the fourth quarter of 2011 (figure). Today, Dr. Balliu added, Cleveland Clinic is working toward its goal of having a library compliance rate of 98%.
2013年4月7日星期日
Moffitt ovarian cancer research aids international effort
Ovarian cancer has long been called the "silent killer," its symptoms going unnoticed until the disease is so advanced it is all but untreatable.
Moffitt Cancer Center researchers have helped identify four DNA hotspots associated with higher risk of chip card the fifth-deadliest cancer among women. Two large studies compared the genetic material of more than 18,000 women who had ovarian cancer with that of 26,000 healthy women.
Mutations in the so-called BRCA genes were identified years ago as a high genetic risk factor for breast and ovarian cancers. By zeroing in on new regions of the genome, the Moffitt studies indicate there are other genes or other mechanisms that might contribute to ovarian cancer, said Tom Sellers, Moffitt director and a senior author on the two new studies.
While the findings are not yet ready for clinical use, they are another step toward creating a genetic test to identify women with higher-than-average risk for ovarian cancer.
"It's very early in the game still, but I think it's inevitable" that such a test will be developed, Sellers said.
What if women knew from genetic testing they stood a strong chance of developing ovarian cancer? Sellers said they could not only make sure their doctors monitor them for the earliest signs of disease, they also could take steps to help prevent it.
"Ovarian cancer is one of the malignancies for which we can greatly lower risk," he said.
Using oral contraception reduces ovarian cancer risk, for instance, Sellers said. Women in the highest-risk categories may also consider having their fallopian tubes tied or even their ovaries removed before disease begins, he said.
The Moffitt studies are part of a massive international investigation into the genetic basis of hormone-related cancers, including those of the ovaries, breast and prostate. That project, known as the Collaborative Oncological Gene-environment Study, nearly doubled the number of genetic signposts known to be linked with these cancers.
The project resulted in a coordinated series of 13 publications in scientific journals late last month. Most of the research was financed by the European Union, the U.S. National Institutes of Health and Cancer Research U.K.
Moffitt joined that work due to Seller's ongoing affiliation with the Ovarian Cancer Association Consortium.
Each year, about 20,000 women in the United States are diagnosed with ovarian cancer, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The five-year survival rate is over 90 percent if the disease is caught in the early stages, according to the National Ovarian Cancer Coalition. But due to ovarian cancer's vague symptoms and the lack of early detection tests, less than 20 percent of all cases are found at this early stage.
Knowing one's genetic history doesn't necessarily make medical decisions easy. Consider women who test positive for changes in the BRCA gene mutations. They face any number of difficult choices — from intensive monitoring to preventive mastectomies or removal of healthy ovaries. Not even doctors agree on the best approach.
But one breast cancer study that was part of the international project suggests researchers may one day be better able to better guide women with the BRCA mutation by separating those at the highest cancer risk (more than 80 percent) from those with lower risks.
Prepare ahead of time. If certifications, licenses, and diplomas, need to be gathered or copied, this is a great time to do the footwork. Many times a resume never gets updated because the candidate cannot find the time to gather needed documentation.
A candidate needs to realistically identify what they want to accomplish in their professional career. If the list of goals is longer than one, the goals should be prioritized. Job goals could be a new job, a new career, a promotion within the same organization, etc. Establishing what one is after helps make the rest of the decisions easier.
Action plan. After establishing and prioritizing career goals, this would be a list of the required steps to take in order to get underway. The list needs to be written, and each step should have a realistic timeline. Putting a date on the day an updated resume will be done gives more teeth to the task.
Brush up on job skills. Even if a candidate is good at what they do, they can take the time to become better at it. If a perspective employer sees that the candidate has the latest training and expertise, their resume looks all that much better. Options include brushing up on skills from a local community college or an online learning center.
Interviewing. A candidate needs to arrive ten minutes early for an interview, and be dressed for success. One tip is to drive to the interview location the day before so there is no chance of getting lost.
Follow-up. Following-up on an interview or a sent resume is critical in a job search. Hiring managers see hundreds of resumes when they advertise for a job. Keeping in touch, whether it's through a phone call, email, or a card, keeps a name and face in front of the hiring manager.
Stay on top. Reading the latest business journals and industry news will keep a candidate informed of what is going on in their respective field. When an interview comes up, a hiring manager will keep candidates in mind who know the latest news and findings in that particular field.
Tenacity. It is very easy to get discouraged when looking for a new job. It doesn't take long for doubt to creep into the mind of the most qualified candidates. But anyone who has been through the job wringer will share their story, and the word tenacity will come up. It's never easy to achieve lofty goals.
Moffitt Cancer Center researchers have helped identify four DNA hotspots associated with higher risk of chip card the fifth-deadliest cancer among women. Two large studies compared the genetic material of more than 18,000 women who had ovarian cancer with that of 26,000 healthy women.
Mutations in the so-called BRCA genes were identified years ago as a high genetic risk factor for breast and ovarian cancers. By zeroing in on new regions of the genome, the Moffitt studies indicate there are other genes or other mechanisms that might contribute to ovarian cancer, said Tom Sellers, Moffitt director and a senior author on the two new studies.
While the findings are not yet ready for clinical use, they are another step toward creating a genetic test to identify women with higher-than-average risk for ovarian cancer.
"It's very early in the game still, but I think it's inevitable" that such a test will be developed, Sellers said.
What if women knew from genetic testing they stood a strong chance of developing ovarian cancer? Sellers said they could not only make sure their doctors monitor them for the earliest signs of disease, they also could take steps to help prevent it.
"Ovarian cancer is one of the malignancies for which we can greatly lower risk," he said.
Using oral contraception reduces ovarian cancer risk, for instance, Sellers said. Women in the highest-risk categories may also consider having their fallopian tubes tied or even their ovaries removed before disease begins, he said.
The Moffitt studies are part of a massive international investigation into the genetic basis of hormone-related cancers, including those of the ovaries, breast and prostate. That project, known as the Collaborative Oncological Gene-environment Study, nearly doubled the number of genetic signposts known to be linked with these cancers.
The project resulted in a coordinated series of 13 publications in scientific journals late last month. Most of the research was financed by the European Union, the U.S. National Institutes of Health and Cancer Research U.K.
Moffitt joined that work due to Seller's ongoing affiliation with the Ovarian Cancer Association Consortium.
Each year, about 20,000 women in the United States are diagnosed with ovarian cancer, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The five-year survival rate is over 90 percent if the disease is caught in the early stages, according to the National Ovarian Cancer Coalition. But due to ovarian cancer's vague symptoms and the lack of early detection tests, less than 20 percent of all cases are found at this early stage.
Knowing one's genetic history doesn't necessarily make medical decisions easy. Consider women who test positive for changes in the BRCA gene mutations. They face any number of difficult choices — from intensive monitoring to preventive mastectomies or removal of healthy ovaries. Not even doctors agree on the best approach.
But one breast cancer study that was part of the international project suggests researchers may one day be better able to better guide women with the BRCA mutation by separating those at the highest cancer risk (more than 80 percent) from those with lower risks.
Prepare ahead of time. If certifications, licenses, and diplomas, need to be gathered or copied, this is a great time to do the footwork. Many times a resume never gets updated because the candidate cannot find the time to gather needed documentation.
A candidate needs to realistically identify what they want to accomplish in their professional career. If the list of goals is longer than one, the goals should be prioritized. Job goals could be a new job, a new career, a promotion within the same organization, etc. Establishing what one is after helps make the rest of the decisions easier.
Action plan. After establishing and prioritizing career goals, this would be a list of the required steps to take in order to get underway. The list needs to be written, and each step should have a realistic timeline. Putting a date on the day an updated resume will be done gives more teeth to the task.
Brush up on job skills. Even if a candidate is good at what they do, they can take the time to become better at it. If a perspective employer sees that the candidate has the latest training and expertise, their resume looks all that much better. Options include brushing up on skills from a local community college or an online learning center.
Interviewing. A candidate needs to arrive ten minutes early for an interview, and be dressed for success. One tip is to drive to the interview location the day before so there is no chance of getting lost.
Follow-up. Following-up on an interview or a sent resume is critical in a job search. Hiring managers see hundreds of resumes when they advertise for a job. Keeping in touch, whether it's through a phone call, email, or a card, keeps a name and face in front of the hiring manager.
Stay on top. Reading the latest business journals and industry news will keep a candidate informed of what is going on in their respective field. When an interview comes up, a hiring manager will keep candidates in mind who know the latest news and findings in that particular field.
Tenacity. It is very easy to get discouraged when looking for a new job. It doesn't take long for doubt to creep into the mind of the most qualified candidates. But anyone who has been through the job wringer will share their story, and the word tenacity will come up. It's never easy to achieve lofty goals.
2013年4月1日星期一
Nokia CEO Avoids the Inquiry on the Upcoming Lumia
In Finland, Nokia CEO Stephen Elop recently made a controversial appearance on MTV3's "Hjalliksen kanssa." Host Hjallis Harkimo inquired about the Nokia Lumia 928 smart phone but the CEO avoided answering the question and even tossed the host's Apple iPhone on the smart card.
The TV show host showed the Nokia CEO his Apple iPhone but claimed that he would like to get his hands on a Nokia smart phone. "Oh, how embarrassing! I can take care of that for you right here," Elop stated as he took the iPhone and threw it. "There you go, it's gone," Elop added.
Hjallis Harkimo further prodded the Nokia CEO about the Nokia Lumia 928. "I want to have a Nokia phone because I believe in you and I believe in Nokia. But I want to have that Lumia 928. So when do I get it?" Harkimo asked.
Though Stephen Elop remain tight-lipped on that matter, the Nokia CEO assured Harkimo that he will replace the tossed iPhone with a Nokia Lumia smart phone. Elop insisted that he will not discuss the Nokia Lumia 928 but would generally talk about the future plans of Nokia.
Numerous reports surrounding the Nokia Lumia 928 indicate the upcoming smart phone could be Nokia's latest smart phone that will battle with rivals such as Samsung Galaxy S4 and HTC One. Nokia Lumia 928 reportedly has a 4.5-inch OLED screen display, a great processor, a microSD card slot for expanded internal storage capacity and remarkable camera features.
The all-aluminum Lumia 928 body is reportedly 10.2mm thin with a somewhat curved spine design making it lighter compared to the Nokia Lumia 920. Nokia Lumia 920 has undergone the United States Federal Communications Commission's test and the smart phone is predicted to arrive this April 2013 in Verizon for the equivalent LTE bands 4 and 13 that matches the carrier's network.
You don’t see bumper stickers touting “My child is a D+ student.” That’s because it’s not something to boast about, and neither is the D+ rating that our nation’s infrastructure earned in the American Society of Civil Engineers’ 2013 Report Card for America’s Infrastructure.
The ASCE’s report presents a sobering assessment of our nation’s current infrastructure and transportation conditions and needs across 16 sectors, including our nation’s roads, bridges, ports and electrical grid. If your child comes home with this report card, then you know it is time for a parent–teacher conference on what actions are needed to turn things around.
The same can be said for our neglected roads and bridges, our inadequate ports, our strained electrical grid and our outdated aviation system.
A well-functioning infrastructure is fundamental to our competitiveness and economic survival. Families depend on the electrical grid to turn on the lights in their homes. To thrive, communities count on safe drinking water and sound wastewater systems. Manufacturers and businesses rely on safe and reliable roads to transport goods to domestic and international markets.
However, it is easy to miss the larger economic role infrastructure plays in our lives. In addition to having a direct effect on long-term economic growth, infrastructure increases gross domestic product, employment, household income and exports.
This D+ rating serves as a much-needed wake-up call to prioritize investment in our infrastructure. Not only will investment in our infrastructure bolster U.S. global competitiveness and help lower the cost of manufacturing in the United States, but it will provide businesses efficient means to deliver goods here and overseas. This investment will attract businesses to our country, create jobs and increase federal revenue.
Without it, our country will face deteriorating conditions across multiple sectors and miss the opportunity to begin modernizing infrastructure systems critical to manufacturing in the United States. Our global competitors are already undertaking vast infrastructure projects; falling behind them is not an option, but it is becoming a reality.
Infrastructure in the United States was ranked first place in 2005 by the World Economic Forum’s annual Global Competitiveness Report, but by 2012, the nation had fallen to 14th in the world.
Unfortunately, a cohesive vision to direct strategic investment to our infrastructure has been nonexistent in Washington for too long. By restoring fiscal order and making infrastructure investment a critical legislative priority, we can lay the foundation for sustained economic growth that will shore up confidence in our economy and put Americans back to work.
The promising news from the ASCE report is that when smart, strategic investments are made by both the public and private chip card, we see real improvements in our infrastructure that boosts our competitiveness.
For example, in 2009, Pennsylvania split a $95 million investment with a major company to create an intermodal rail and truck facility. The return on this investment has been the creation of more than 10,000 new jobs from businesses that located distribution centers near this transportation hub. Pennsylvania ended that year 2 points lower than the national unemployment average and the lowest among the industrial states in great part because of its policy in making significant investments in its infrastructure.
The TV show host showed the Nokia CEO his Apple iPhone but claimed that he would like to get his hands on a Nokia smart phone. "Oh, how embarrassing! I can take care of that for you right here," Elop stated as he took the iPhone and threw it. "There you go, it's gone," Elop added.
Hjallis Harkimo further prodded the Nokia CEO about the Nokia Lumia 928. "I want to have a Nokia phone because I believe in you and I believe in Nokia. But I want to have that Lumia 928. So when do I get it?" Harkimo asked.
Though Stephen Elop remain tight-lipped on that matter, the Nokia CEO assured Harkimo that he will replace the tossed iPhone with a Nokia Lumia smart phone. Elop insisted that he will not discuss the Nokia Lumia 928 but would generally talk about the future plans of Nokia.
Numerous reports surrounding the Nokia Lumia 928 indicate the upcoming smart phone could be Nokia's latest smart phone that will battle with rivals such as Samsung Galaxy S4 and HTC One. Nokia Lumia 928 reportedly has a 4.5-inch OLED screen display, a great processor, a microSD card slot for expanded internal storage capacity and remarkable camera features.
The all-aluminum Lumia 928 body is reportedly 10.2mm thin with a somewhat curved spine design making it lighter compared to the Nokia Lumia 920. Nokia Lumia 920 has undergone the United States Federal Communications Commission's test and the smart phone is predicted to arrive this April 2013 in Verizon for the equivalent LTE bands 4 and 13 that matches the carrier's network.
You don’t see bumper stickers touting “My child is a D+ student.” That’s because it’s not something to boast about, and neither is the D+ rating that our nation’s infrastructure earned in the American Society of Civil Engineers’ 2013 Report Card for America’s Infrastructure.
The ASCE’s report presents a sobering assessment of our nation’s current infrastructure and transportation conditions and needs across 16 sectors, including our nation’s roads, bridges, ports and electrical grid. If your child comes home with this report card, then you know it is time for a parent–teacher conference on what actions are needed to turn things around.
The same can be said for our neglected roads and bridges, our inadequate ports, our strained electrical grid and our outdated aviation system.
A well-functioning infrastructure is fundamental to our competitiveness and economic survival. Families depend on the electrical grid to turn on the lights in their homes. To thrive, communities count on safe drinking water and sound wastewater systems. Manufacturers and businesses rely on safe and reliable roads to transport goods to domestic and international markets.
However, it is easy to miss the larger economic role infrastructure plays in our lives. In addition to having a direct effect on long-term economic growth, infrastructure increases gross domestic product, employment, household income and exports.
This D+ rating serves as a much-needed wake-up call to prioritize investment in our infrastructure. Not only will investment in our infrastructure bolster U.S. global competitiveness and help lower the cost of manufacturing in the United States, but it will provide businesses efficient means to deliver goods here and overseas. This investment will attract businesses to our country, create jobs and increase federal revenue.
Without it, our country will face deteriorating conditions across multiple sectors and miss the opportunity to begin modernizing infrastructure systems critical to manufacturing in the United States. Our global competitors are already undertaking vast infrastructure projects; falling behind them is not an option, but it is becoming a reality.
Infrastructure in the United States was ranked first place in 2005 by the World Economic Forum’s annual Global Competitiveness Report, but by 2012, the nation had fallen to 14th in the world.
Unfortunately, a cohesive vision to direct strategic investment to our infrastructure has been nonexistent in Washington for too long. By restoring fiscal order and making infrastructure investment a critical legislative priority, we can lay the foundation for sustained economic growth that will shore up confidence in our economy and put Americans back to work.
The promising news from the ASCE report is that when smart, strategic investments are made by both the public and private chip card, we see real improvements in our infrastructure that boosts our competitiveness.
For example, in 2009, Pennsylvania split a $95 million investment with a major company to create an intermodal rail and truck facility. The return on this investment has been the creation of more than 10,000 new jobs from businesses that located distribution centers near this transportation hub. Pennsylvania ended that year 2 points lower than the national unemployment average and the lowest among the industrial states in great part because of its policy in making significant investments in its infrastructure.
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