Friday, August 31, 2012

online radio pandora . How the DMCA Affects Internet Radio

The DMCA, or Digital Millennium Copyright Act, was signed into secret by President Bill Clinton on top October 28, 1998.It island an American secret that protects copyrights earlier the Internet.The radio small business has in the direction of reward a performer or engagement ring royalties at one time they remain competitive their play ahead of time their stations.This required an unattractive stir listed below the online business because age-old also netting radio entrance were getting to be packed differently as toward what royalties they held to pay.One of the thinking the DMCA was signed into secret was due toward the heart and soul that the Internet owned or operated for the most part damaged the musical industry, as well as listed below some ways hindered it.Record income involving bands as well as musicians reduced because of giant amounts because young were downloading musical technology rinse the Internet for free.

A bundle of downhill loaders were illegally file sharing, correctly there was almost never a call for closer to give priority to away as well as get hold of CDs anymore.Music sites online in addition radio everyone might rotate musical technology from free.Because of the thriving fad listed below the late 1990s, there was a bunch of thing fondness plus investing going onward beneath it the play home business online.Music organizations and radio entrance were construction a mess of wage web in addition musicians were setting up less.Stocks indicative limited world wide web radio sites were doubling underneath value.

Bands furthermore musicians were genuinely impacted all over extra era because greater number of their profit was by simply track record sales, notably if they were seldom touring.One of the controversies of the DMCA was the unfairness of the lord owned to compensate what royalties.One course it smitten Internet Radio was that they held in direction of reward a royalty that long lost radio stations did hardly have too.Internet radio classes find in the direction of pay theatre royalties in addition posting royalties.The prime of the loyalties come utter expensive in addition affected smaller, separately held online radio sites.

Big corporations sad brand the invoice easily, but other companies were within risk to safety of relocating separately of business.Because of the demanding near compensate royalties, audio websites that streamed musical associated with their listeners banded as well on the way to battle the high fee.They pressed a cannot be seen object and also did hardly ever move bit of an audio with an whole day.Due toward the dedication of Internet radio stations, the law was revised.The secret at the moment states that royalties are today based ahead the profit of the Internet station as well as there would rarely continue being a dreary cost a measure of royalties.

Even after the DMCA was passed, radio stations total designate continued in the direction of rate of growth as well as grow their business.Radio entrance into the future the Internet cater in direction of a group of optional groups of people.You toilet listen in the direction of musical technology as a result of about the world also collect genre authentic stations.

???? ??? ?? online radio scanner . How the DMCA Affects Internet Radio ???? ????? online radio free . How the DMCA Affects Internet Radio ???? ??? ?? online radio stations . How the DMCA Affects Internet Radio

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Source: http://www.28seo.com/online-radio-pandora-how-the-dmca-affects-internet-radio.html

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Thursday, August 30, 2012

Prosecutors reject burglary case against Lohan

FILE - This May 9, 2012 photo shows actress Lindsay Lohan at the A&E Networks 2012 Upfront at Lincoln Center in New York. Prosecutors on Tuesday, Aug. 28, 2012 rejected a potential burglary case that police presented against Lohan, who was at a home earlier this month where a burglary was reported. Prosecutors cited insufficient evidence. (AP Photo/Starpix, Kristina Bumphrey, file)

FILE - This May 9, 2012 photo shows actress Lindsay Lohan at the A&E Networks 2012 Upfront at Lincoln Center in New York. Prosecutors on Tuesday, Aug. 28, 2012 rejected a potential burglary case that police presented against Lohan, who was at a home earlier this month where a burglary was reported. Prosecutors cited insufficient evidence. (AP Photo/Starpix, Kristina Bumphrey, file)

(AP) ? Lindsay Lohan will not be prosecuted for a burglary at a home where she had been a houseguest, prosecutors determined Tuesday.

The decision came after Los Angeles police detectives presented a potential felony burglary case against the actress and two men who were reportedly at the Hollywood Hills home of a longtime acquaintance after several items went missing earlier this month.

Prosecutors cited lack of evidence to prove Lohan was involved in the thefts. The items taken were described as keys, cash, sunglasses and a credit card holder. The homeowner, who is an acquaintance of Lohan, later told authorities that he did not want to pursue a case over the items.

"Lindsay is glad this matter has been cleared up so she can focus on her upcoming projects," her spokesman Steve Honig said in a statement Tuesday afternoon.

One of the men suspected of the thefts told police that he, Lohan and another man went into the home early Aug. 18 and some items were taken, but he refused to say who stole them.

"We do not have sufficient evidence to prove this case beyond a reasonable doubt," a prosecutor wrote in a memo rejecting charges. The document also noted that none of the missing items were found in the possession of Lohan or the two men who were believed to be at the house on the day of the burglary.

Los Angeles police say their investigation into the thefts will continue.

Lohan remains on probation for a 2011 case in which she pleaded no contest to taking a $2,500 necklace without permission. After completing a strict counseling and morgue cleanup duty program implemented by a judge, Lohan no longer has to report to a judge, but she faces jail time if she is charged with another crime.

In recent months she has resumed acting, portraying Elizabeth Taylor in a Lifetime movie about the actress' love affair with Richard Burton.

She also recently filmed "The Canyons," a film by "Less Than Zero" author Bret Easton Ellis. That film has Lohan playing opposite James Deen, who is best known as an adult film star with thousands of movies to his credit.

Police in Santa Monica, Calif. continue to investigate a crash involving Lohan and her assistant on the Pacific Coast Highway earlier this year. Lohan was on her way to the set of the Lifetime film "Liz and Dick" when she slammed into the back of a dump truck and had to be briefly hospitalized.

___

Anthony McCartney can be reached at http://twitter.com/mccartneyAP

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/4e67281c3f754d0696fbfdee0f3f1469/Article_2012-08-28-People-Lindsay%20Lohan/id-ca780b2fa6154a468f2dcadaf65aebe3

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Wednesday, August 29, 2012

Water Innovation Starts with the Farmer - News Watch - National ...

Editor?s Note: This week (August 26-31) is?Stockholm World Water Week. The 2012?Stockholm Water Prize is being awarded to?the International Water Management Institute (IWMI) for its work to improve agriculture water management, enhance food security, protect environmental health, and alleviate poverty in developing countries. The IWMI just released a study?estimating that small-scale water management innovations could boost crop yields and household revenue by tens of billions of dollars.?Colin Chartres is the Director General of IWMI.

By Colin Chartres

At the forefront of an important agricultural revolution in the developing world is not a leading scientist or a tireless advocate. Instead, the leader is a farmer.

His name is Purushottambhai Patel, from the state of Gujarat in Western India. He is a smallholder farmer with eight cows, three hectares of tobacco, rice, potatoes and sapota, and limited access to water.

Rather than tapping a large-scale water project for his farm, Patel uses the dung from his cows to generate biogas, which is then fed to a pump that runs partly on diesel.? This novel arrangement saves him $400 a year in fuel costs, and the improved water supply enabled him to double his crop production. He also sells water to adjacent farms, further boosting local food production.

The pace of innovation in water management on small farms across Africa and Asia is remarkable.? Using water more effectively, together with improved market access, can transform marginal subsistence agriculture into a thriving business opportunity. At the same time it can have a major impact on local food security and contribute to lasting poverty alleviation.

But, just as remarkably, much of this innovation is farmer driven. It is not institutional donors or governments who are leading the way, but smallholders themselves.

In Nepal, I have seen how tapping spring waters has not only brought piped water to the houses of poor families, but the predominantly women householders (the men were working overseas) are able to use some of the water for a thriving vegetable production system. The profits from selling the vegetables helped the women school their children and buy essential household items.

In Ethiopia, I have seen vital traditional irrigation systems and rainwater harvesting practices that have similarly helped transform households and small communities.

These innovations can increase yields up to 300 percent in some cases, and add billions to household revenues across sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.? In Ghana, where small private irrigation schemes already employ 45 times more individuals and cover 25 times more land than public irrigation schemes, researchers noted that this scale of irrigation adds between USD 175 and USD 840 to annual household income.

Millions of smallholder farmers struggle to grow food with little water. Often this is not because water is scarce, but because they lack the means to harness what is available. Without access to water smallholders are limited to rainy season crop production, which makes it hard for them to earn a living. But smallholder farming can and should be an engine for economic growth, poverty reduction and food security. Better water management can help make this happen at an unrealised scale.

Many of the technologies for smallholder water management are already with us. Cheap pumps and new ways of powering them are transforming farming and boosting incomes all over Africa and Asia. Simple tools for drilling wells and capturing rainwater have enabled many farmers to produce more crops in the dry season, hugely boosting their incomes.

There are risks, however, to unchecked expansion of smallholder water management. The poorest farmers, especially women, still struggle to find the resources needed to access new technologies and that may lead to greater inequities. And a free-for-all over water may raise serious issues of environmental sustainability in some areas.

New institutional arrangements will be needed if these issues are to be overcome. Innovative business models, such as pump-on-a-bike hire schemes, where cycling entrepreneurs tour rural areas renting out pumps strapped to their bicycles, can also help address problems of access.

The time has come to recognize solutions beyond the large one-size-fits-all approach, which often leave out smallholders unable to plug into these formal systems. Innovation on the farm can be both small and successful. Institutional donors, governments, and the private sector have tremendous opportunities to use their investments to further unlock the potential of the smallholder approach.? We should follow the examples of Patel, the farmer in India, to turn the tide of global poverty and hunger at last.

?

Dr. Colin Chartres is Director General of the International Water management Institute (IWMI).? On August 30, Dr. Chartres will receive the 2012 Stockholm Water Prize on behalf of IWMI for its pioneering work to improve agriculture water management, enhance food security, protect environmental health, and alleviate poverty in developing countries.

Source: http://newswatch.nationalgeographic.com/2012/08/28/water-innovation-starts-with-the-farmer-stockholm-world-water-week/

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Monday, August 27, 2012

Neil Armstrong, 1st man on the moon, dies at 82

CINCINNATI (AP) ? Neil Armstrong made "one giant leap for mankind" with a small step onto the moon.

He commanded the historic landing of the Apollo 11 spacecraft on the moon July 20, 1969, capping the most daring of the 20th century's scientific expeditions and becoming the first man to walk on the moon.

His first words after the feat are etched in history books and the memories of the spellbound millions who heard them in a live broadcast.

"That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind," Armstrong said. He insisted later that he had said "a'' before man, but said he, too, couldn't hear it in the version that went to the world.

Armstrong, who had bypass surgery earlier this month, died Saturday at age 82 from what his family said were complications of heart procedures. His family didn't say where he died; he had lived in suburban Cincinnati.

He was "a reluctant American hero who always believed he was just doing his job," his family said in a statement.

The moonwalk marked America's victory in the Cold War space race that began Oct. 4, 1957, with the launch of the Soviet Union's Sputnik 1, a 184-pound satellite that sent shock waves around the world. The accomplishment fulfilled a commitment President John F. Kennedy made for the nation to put a man on the moon before the end of 1960s.

Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin spent nearly three hours walking on the lunar surface, collecting samples, conducting experiments and taking photographs.

"The sights were simply magnificent, beyond any visual experience that I had ever been exposed to," Armstrong once said.

In those first few moments on the moon, Armstrong stopped in what he called "a tender moment" and left a patch to commemorate NASA astronauts and Soviet cosmonauts who had died in action.

Although he had been a Navy fighter pilot, a test pilot for NASA's forerunner and an astronaut, the modest Armstrong never allowed himself to be caught up in the celebrity and glamour of the space program.

"I am, and ever will be, a white socks, pocket protector, nerdy engineer," he said in 2000 in one of his rare public appearances. "And I take a substantial amount of pride in the accomplishments of my profession."

Rice University historian Douglas Brinkley, who interviewed Armstrong for NASA's oral history project, said Armstrong fit every requirement the space agency needed for the first man to walk on moon, especially because of his engineering skills and the way he handled celebrity by shunning it.

?????????"I think his genius was in his reclusiveness," said Brinkley. "He was the ultimate hero in an era of corruptible men."

Fellow Ohioan and astronaut John Glenn, one of Armstrong's closest friends, recalled Saturday how Armstrong was on low fuel when he finally brought the lunar module Eagle down on the Sea of Tranquility.

"That showed a dedication to what he was doing that was admirable," Glenn said.

A man who kept away from cameras, Armstrong went public in 2010 with his concerns about President Barack Obama's space policy that shifted attention away from a return to the moon and emphasized private companies developing spaceships. He testified before Congress, and in an email to The Associated Press, Armstrong said he had "substantial reservations."

Along with more than two dozen Apollo-era veterans, he signed a letter calling the plan a "misguided proposal that forces NASA out of human space operations for the foreseeable future."

Armstrong was among the greatest of American heroes, Obama said in a statement.

"When he and his fellow crew members lifted off aboard Apollo 11 in 1969, they carried with them the aspirations of an entire nation. They set out to show the world that the American spirit can see beyond what seems unimaginable ? that with enough drive and ingenuity, anything is possible," Obama said.

Obama's Republican opponent Mitt Romney echoed those sentiments, calling Armstrong an American hero whose passion for space, science and discovery will inspire him for the rest of his life.

"With courage unmeasured and unbounded love for his country, he walked where man had never walked before. The moon will miss its first son of earth," Romney said.

NASA Administrator Charles Bolden recalled Armstrong's grace and humility.

"As long as there are history books, Neil Armstrong will be included in them, remembered for taking humankind's first small step on a world beyond our own," Bolden said in a statement.

Armstrong's modesty and self-effacing manner never faded.

When he appeared in Dayton in 2003 to help celebrate the 100th anniversary of powered flight, he bounded onto a stage before a packed baseball stadium. But he spoke for only a few seconds, did not mention the moon, and quickly ducked out of the spotlight.

He later joined Glenn, by then a senator, to lay wreaths on the graves of Wilbur and Orville Wright. Glenn introduced Armstrong and noted that day was the 34th anniversary of his moonwalk.

"Thank you, John. Thirty-four years?" Armstrong quipped, as if he hadn't given it a thought.

At another joint appearance, Glenn commented: "To this day, he's the one person on earth I'm truly, truly envious of."

Armstrong's moonwalk capped a series of accomplishments that included piloting the X-15 rocket plane and making the first space docking during the Gemini 8 mission, which included a successful emergency splashdown.

In the years afterward, Armstrong retreated to the quiet of the classroom and his southwestern Ohio farm. In an Australian interview earlier this year, Armstrong acknowledged that "now and then I miss the excitement about being in the cockpit of an airplane and doing new things."

Glenn, who went through jungle training in Panama with Armstrong as part of the astronaut program, described him as "exceptionally brilliant" with technical matters but "rather retiring, doesn't like to be thrust into the limelight much."

The 1969 landing met an audacious deadline that President Kennedy had set in May 1961, shortly after Alan Shepard became the first American in space with a 15-minute suborbital flight. (Soviet cosmonaut Yuri A. Gagarin had orbited the Earth and beaten the U.S. into space the previous month.)

"I believe this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before the decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to Earth," Kennedy had said. "No single space project in this period will be more impressive to mankind, or more important to the long-range exploration of space; and none will be so difficult or expensive to accomplish."

The end-of-decade goal was met with more than five months to spare. "Houston: Tranquility Base here," Armstrong radioed after the spacecraft settled onto the moon. "The Eagle has landed."

"Roger, Tranquility," Apollo astronaut Charles Duke radioed back from Mission Control. "We copy you on the ground. You've got a bunch of guys about to turn blue. We're breathing again. Thanks a lot."

The third astronaut on the mission, Michael Collins, circled the moon in the mother ship Columbia 60 miles overhead while Armstrong and Aldrin went to the moon's surface.

"He was the best, and I will miss him terribly," Collins said through NASA.

In all, 12 American astronauts walked on the moon before the last moon mission in 1972.

For Americans, reaching the moon provided uplift and respite from the Vietnam War, from strife in the Middle East, from the startling news just a few days earlier that a young woman had drowned in a car driven off a wooden bridge on Chappaquiddick Island by Sen. Edward Kennedy. The landing occurred as organizers were gearing up for Woodstock, the legendary three-day rock festival on a farm in the Catskills of New York.

Armstrong was born Aug. 5, 1930, on a farm near Wapakoneta in western Ohio. He took his first airplane ride at age 6 and developed a fascination with aviation that prompted him to build model airplanes and conduct experiments in a homemade wind tunnel.

As a boy, he worked at a pharmacy and took flying lessons. He was licensed to fly at 16, before he got his driver's license.

Armstrong enrolled in Purdue University to study aeronautical engineering but was called to duty with the U.S. Navy in 1949 and flew 78 combat missions in Korea.

After the war, Armstrong finished his degree from Purdue and later earned a master's degree in aerospace engineering from the University of Southern California. He became a test pilot with what evolved into the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, flying more than 200 kinds of aircraft from gliders to jets.

Armstrong was accepted into NASA's second astronaut class in 1962 ? the first, including Glenn, was chosen in 1959. He commanded the Gemini 8 mission in 1966, bringing back the capsule back in an emergency landing in the Pacific Ocean when a wildly firing thruster kicked it out of orbit.

Aldrin said he and Armstrong were not prone to free exchanges of sentiment.

"But there was that moment on the moon, a brief moment, in which we sort of looked at each other and slapped each other on the shoulder ... and said, 'We made it. Good show,' or something like that," Aldrin said.

An estimated 600 million people ? a fifth of the world's population ? watched and listened to the landing, the largest audience for any single event in history.

Parents huddled with their children in front of the family television, mesmerized by what they were witnessing. Farmers abandoned their nightly milking duties, and motorists pulled off the highway and checked into motels just to see the moonwalk.

Television-less campers in California ran to their cars to catch the word on the radio. Boy Scouts at a camp in Michigan watched on a generator-powered television supplied by a parent.

Afterward, people walked out of their homes and gazed at the moon, in awe of what they had just seen. Others peeked through telescopes in hopes of spotting the astronauts.

In Wapakoneta, media and souvenir frenzy was swirling around the home of Armstrong's parents.

"You couldn't see the house for the news media," recalled John Zwez, former manager of the Neil Armstrong Air and Space Museum. "People were pulling grass out of their front yard."

Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins were given ticker tape parades in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles and later made a 22-nation world tour. A homecoming in Wapakoneta drew 50,000 people to the city of 9,000.

In 1970, Armstrong was appointed deputy associate administrator for aeronautics at NASA but left the following year to teach aerospace engineering at the University of Cincinnati.

He remained there until 1979 and during that time bought a 310-acre farm near Lebanon, where he raised cattle and corn. He stayed out of public view, accepting few requests for interviews or speeches.

In 2000, when he agreed to announce the top 20 engineering achievements of the 20th Century as voted by the National Academy of Engineering, Armstrong mentioned one disappointment relating to his moonwalk.

"I can honestly say ? and it's a big surprise to me ? that I have never had a dream about being on the moon," he said.

From 1982 to 1992, Armstrong was chairman of Charlottesville, Va.-based Computing Technologies for Aviation Inc., a company that supplies computer information management systems for business aircraft.

He then became chairman of AIL Systems Inc., an electronic systems company in Deer Park, N.Y.

Armstrong married Carol Knight in 1999, and the couple lived in Indian Hill, a Cincinnati suburb. He had two adult sons from a previous marriage.

Armstrong's is the second death in a month of one of NASA's most visible, history-making astronauts. Sally Ride, the first American woman in space, died of pancreatic cancer on July 23 at age 61.

Just prior to the 50th anniversary of Glenn's orbital flight this past February, Armstrong offered high praise to the elder astronaut. Noted Armstrong in an email: "I am hoping I will be 'in his shoes' and have as much success in longevity as he has demonstrated." Glenn is 91.

At the Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles on Saturday, visitors held a minute of silence for Armstrong.

For anyone else who wanted to remember him, his family's statement made a simple request:

"Honor his example of service, accomplishment and modesty, and the next time you walk outside on a clear night and see the moon smiling down at you, think of Neil Armstrong and give him a wink."

___

Borenstein reported from Washington. Associated Press writer Steve Peoples in New Hampshire and AP Science Writers Alicia Chang in Los Angeles and Marcia Dunn in Cape Canaveral, Fla., contributed to this report.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/neil-armstrong-1st-man-moon-dies-82-200215442--finance.html

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Teen pot use linked to later declines in IQ

NEW YORK (AP) ? Teens who routinely smoke marijuana risk a long-term drop in their IQ, a new study suggests.

The researchers didn't find the same IQ dip for people who became frequent users of pot after 18. Although experts said the new findings are not definitive, they do fit in with earlier signs that the drug is especially harmful to the developing brain.

"Parents should understand that their adolescents are particularly vulnerable,'" said lead researcher Madeline Meier of Duke University.

Study participants from New Zealand were tested for IQ at age 13, likely before any significant marijuana use, and again at age 38. The mental decline between those two ages was seen only in those who started regularly smoking pot before age 18.

Richie Poulton, a study co-author and professor at the University of Otago in New Zealand, said the message of the research is to stay away from marijuana until adulthood if possible. "For some it's a legal issue," he said, "but for me it's a health issue."

Pot smoking is relatively common in American teens. The government reported in June that 23 percent of high school students said they'd recently smoked marijuana, making it more popular than cigarettes.

Young people "don't think it's risky," said Staci Gruber, a researcher at the Harvard-affiliated MacLean Hospital in Belmont, Mass. Gruber, who didn't participate in the new work, said the idea that marijuana harms the adolescent brain is "something we believe is very likely," and the new finding of IQ declines warrants further investigation.

Experts said the new research is an advance because its methods avoid criticisms of some earlier work, which generally did not measure mental performance before marijuana use began.

"I think this is the cleanest study I've ever read" that looks for long-term harm from marijuana use, said Dr. Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, which helped fund the research.

Ken Winters, a psychiatry professor at the University of Minnesota and senior scientist at the Treatment Research Institute in Philadelphia, said the new findings aren't definitive, but they underscore the importance of studying how marijuana may harm young people. He had no role in the work.

Meier and colleagues reported their work online Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. It was funded with governmental grants from the United States and Britain, and a foundation in Zurich.

The study drew on survey data from more than 1,000 people in New Zealand, everybody born in the town of Dunedin during a year-long span ending in 1973. In addition to IQ tests, they were interviewed five times between ages 18 and 38, including questions related to their marijuana use.

At age 18, 52 participants indicated they had become dependent on marijuana, meaning that they continued to use it despite its causing significant health, social or legal problems. Ninety-two others reported dependence starting at a later age.

Researchers compared their IQ scores at age 13 to the score at age 38 and found a drop only in those who had become dependent by 18.

Those deemed dependent in three or more surveys had a drop averaging 8 points. For a person of average intelligence, an 8-point drop would mean ranking higher than only 29 percent of the population rather than 50 percent, the researchers said.

Among participants who'd been dependent at 18 and in at least one later survey, quitting didn't remove the problem. IQ declines showed up even if they'd largely or entirely quit using pot at age 38, analysis showed.

The researchers got similar overall results for IQ decline when they compared participants who reported having used marijuana at least once a week on average for the past year. The researchers had no data on how much was used on each occasion or how potent it was.

Dr. Duncan Clark, a researcher at the University of Pittsburgh, said he's not convinced that mental decline is only in those who become dependent by age 18. He said the main lesson he sees in the overall study results is that to preserve one's IQ, it's best to avoid marijuana entirely, no matter what your age.

The researchers also surveyed people who knew the study participants well at age 38. They found that the more often participants were rated as marijuana-dependent in the surveys over their lifetimes, the more memory and attention problems were noticed by their acquaintances over the previous year.

___

Perry reported from Wellington, New Zealand.

___ Online:

Journal: http://www.pnas.org

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/teen-pot-linked-later-declines-iq-192328332.html

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Where Have The Users Gone?

Where are the users?Editor?s Note:?Nir Eyal?writes about the intersection of psychology, technology, and business at?NirAndFar.com. He is the author of the forthcoming book ?Hooked: How to Drive Engagement by Creating User Habits?. Step 1: Build an app. Step 2: Get users hooked to it. Step 3: Profit. It sounds simple and, given our umbilical ties to cell phones, social media, and email inboxes, it may even sound plausible. Recently, tech entrepreneurs and investors have started to look to psychology for ways to strike it rich by altering user behavior. Perhaps you’ve read essays?on how to create habit-forming technology and figured you’d give it a shot? Well hold your dogs Pavlov! Though I?m an advocate?for understanding user behavior to build high-engagement products, the reality is that successfully creating long-term habits is exceptionally rare. Changing behavior?requires not only an understanding of how to persuade users to act — for example, the first time they land on a webpage — but also necessitates getting them to behave differently for long periods of time, ideally for the rest of their lives. The good news is that that companies that accomplish this rare feat are the ones associated with game-changing, wildly successful innovation. Google, Apple, Twitter, and Android come to mind. As we enter a world where, according to Paul Graham, everything is becoming more addictive, the companies that successfully form and control habits in the future will come to dominate the industries of tomorrow. Habits or Hype? But claiming that habits are the keys to success is a tall order. If people like me provide ready-made formulas and guidebooks on how to create habits, why isn’t every company that alters user behavior succeeding? Zynga, an enterprise whose business model depends on hooking millions of people to its games, is hemorrhaging users, employees?and investors. What makes some habits stick while others die like virtual cows on their way to slaughter? Turns out that like any discipline, habit design has rules and caveats which explain why some products change lives forever while others create fleeting fads. Habits are LIFO New behaviors have a short half-life as our minds tend to revert back to our old ways. Experiments show?that lab animals habituated to new behaviors tend to regress to their first learned behaviors over time. This helps explain the overwhelming evidence that people rarely change. Research shows that nearly everyone who tries to lose weight gains back the pounds?within 2

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/LoTdEinzT54/

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This Week's Top Downloads [Download Roundup]

This Week's Top Downloads

This Week's Top Downloads

Make a Smarter Notification System for Your Phone or Tablet with Pushover

No offense, but your phone's notification system sucks. With a clever app called Pushover, you can create your own custom notification system that's a heck of a lot smarter, so your phone only bothers you with notifications you want, when you want them. More ?


This Week's Top Downloads

Chat Undetected Prevents Others From Knowing When You've Seen Their Facebook Message

Chrome/Firefox/Internet Explorer: Facebook Chat now includes a feature that lets you know when a friend has read your message-or when you've read theirs. More ?


This Week's Top Downloads

Servers Ultimate Turns Your Old Android Phone Into a Tiny, Multipurpose Server

Home servers can be really handy for streaming media, securing public Wi-Fi, or sharing files between friends. But if you don't have a spare computer lying around to turn into a server, free app Servers Ultimate can do it to an old Android phone. More ?


This Week's Top Downloads

Cloak VPN Offers One-Click Security for Your Mac, iPhone, or iPad

OS X/iOS: Cloak is a new VPN service that keeps all of your internet traffic on all of your Apple devices encrypted and secure when you're using an unsecured network-like the one at the airport, or your local coffee shop. More ?


This Week's Top Downloads

Drag & Drop Search Is an Insanely Fast Way to Search the Web in Chrome

Chrome has a great feature that lets you select text and right-click it to search that term on Google. Drag & Drop Search is an extension that does something similar: More ?


This Week's Top Downloads

Gmail Canned Responses Brings Quick Email Replies to Android

Android: Gmail's canned responses feature is a great way to save time and keep your inbox clean, and now Gmail Canned Responses for Android brings them to your Android device. More ?


This Week's Top Downloads

Private Eye Is a Network Monitor That Keeps a Watch on Incoming and Outgoing Connections

Mac: Ever wondered where your applications were sending and receiving data from? Private Eye is a real time network monitoring app that shows all of your live connections from all you open software, and includes where they're sending data to. More ?


This Week's Top Downloads

Todo.txt for Android Get Swipe to Complete, Simpler Settings

Android: Todo.txt, the app that sets up your to-do list in a versatile plain text file, has updated its Android client to include a swipe-to-complete gesture, a simpler settings panel, and a number of bug fixes. More ?


This Week's Top Downloads

Renewed Tracks Your Favorite TV Shows, Lets You Know If They're Coming Back

iOS: Renewed is a personalized TV guide in app form that notifies you of upcoming episodes of your favorite shows. Additionally, it'll inform you of renewals and cancellations and help you find new programs to watch. More ?


This Week's Top Downloads

Shade Cleans the Clutter from Your Desktop with One Click

OS X: Desktop clutter is a distraction, and Shade is a free Mac app that lets you hide it all with one click when it's time to focus. When you need the files, click again to pull the shade up, and when you need room to think, click to pull the shade down and make them vanish. More ?


Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~3/jy0MtO4iLUk/this-weeks-top-downloads

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Sunday, August 26, 2012

5 Awesome Beauty Apps You've Got to Download Now | Shecky's

We?re sure that if you own a smartphone, you?ve got your standard list of must-have apps that keep you occupied throughout the day (think Pandora, Twitter and Words With Friends). We?re happy to report that there is a whole new fun (and free!) world of beauty apps that are just begging to be downloaded so you can swipe your way to a more gorgeous you! What are you waiting for? Start downloading!

App: Pose (on itunes.apple.com).
Cost: Free!

Strike a Pose! That?s exactly what you?ll be doing after downloading this super chic app. Users can post their outfits, makeup looks, accessories and just about anything in-between! You can ?love? another user?s ?pose? and even choose to follow their posts. Have a fab outfit and stand out from the crowd? You might just be featured on the Pose homepage. Psst?be prepared for instant fame! This can lead to tons of people following your daily photo shoots!

Image credit: elleandblair.com

-Valerie Lombardi

Valerie Lombardi is the founder of MyMagDash.com, a website that provides monthly reviews of women?s magazines as well as beauty products and celebrity fashion. In her spare time, she creates YouTube videos that are dedicated to discussing beauty products and showing viewers ?how to? videos. Valerie is a self-proclaimed magazine connoisseur, avidly reading any magazine she can get her hands on. She aspires to become a beauty editor for a top women?s magazine. You can follow Valerie on Twitter @ValerieEllee and @MyMagDash.

Source: http://www.sheckys.com/2012/08/24/5-awesome-beauty-apps-youve-got-to-download-now/

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Jury Rules Samsung Violated Apple Patents, Owes $1 Billion

SAN JOSE, CALIFORNIA — Samsung owes Apple more than $1 billion in damages for violating Apple hardware and software patents, a California jury ruled on Friday. The jury found that Samsung infringed upon Apple patents having to do with physical design and user interfaces, often willfully, and that several of the South Korean company’s products [...]

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/GearFactor/~3/7cyt2nK9_Uk/

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Thursday, August 23, 2012

Energy Star Appliances, Best Buy Applia - Get Energy Star ...

Energy Star Appliances, Best Buy Applia - Get Energy Star Appliances for Higher Affordability and Green Environment
by Dodzi Kofys
Send Feedback to Dodzi Kofys
Request Reprint | Print | About Author | Report Problem | Tweet This The number of people on this earth is increasing like anything and so is the number of appliances that they use. The technology has advanced to a great extent and we can have all the comforts that could only be imagined, but it is also causing harm to the environment. Many of the daily appliances like refrigerators, air conditioners, etc. cause global warming to the environment and consume high amount of energy. For this reason, a label was created by the US government that certified an appliance on the basis of their protection. The appliance with highest number of stars is considered to be the most power efficient and environment friendly. It was designed by the Environment Protection Agency and can be found on many of your home appliances. It is a simple white and blue label that has stars marked on it. These stars signify the quality of that equipment. While going for shopping these appliances, you must always check for the energy star label. It will help you to contribute towards the environment and save money in the long run. Ask the dealer for the label, if it is not present on the appliance. The appliances which are available otherwise must not be purchased as they are unfit for the environment. The rules, regulations and guidelines provided in the energy label are very extensive and meant to provide quality equipments to the customers, which are friendly to the environment as well. The star appliances are supposed to be tested against performance and energy consumption. The primary objective of using these appliances is to save the natural resources and environment. Thus, an appliance which is marked start rated should offer you less energy consumption, better output, and lesser emissions into the environment. They usually allow for at least three by four times less energy consumption than the non-star rated appliances in the market. You can easily upgrade all the appliances of your house with these star rated appliances without many hassles. They can be located in almost every store and are available for online sale too. Nowadays, you can find incredible discounts and deals on online sites for these appliances. They sell both new and old equipments on their site, which are tested for performance, prior to selling them on their site. The rates of the used ones are pretty low, but they work pretty well and can be a very economical option for your house. You can also save a lot of money and will be able to afford expensive luxury appliances at low rates. All your daily items like battery charger, refrigerator, air conditioners, cleaners, etc. can be star rated for performance. Many people do not buy these appliances because they are usually priced at a bit higher range. Some stores do offer best buy appliances and various discounts and deals on other appliances. There are times when an appliance gets damaged due to some reason and it is put upon sale or an offer. The damage might be very small but the price reduces due to that reason. Buying appliances in such a case would be very profitable as you can enjoy all the benefits at very low cost.

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Monday, August 20, 2012

Personal Development And Achieving Success Come Together

How do you know in a case where a person is willing to attain self improvement? This is a question with no definite remedy. It will almost all depend on the individual.

Large number of consumers have goals, dreams or ambitions yet tend not to understand find out how to go about achieving them. They may have thought about what would make up self improvement and their ideal life, nonetheless have no idea how to even begin to put into practice the plans and take the actions required to help make them a reality. If this is you, then visit www.hardworkisfun.info to understand how to begin improving yourself.

A couple of individuals have a vague idea on how you can go about self improvement. These particular are the ones which believe which if only they had a better job, or had been given a lot better opportunities, or met the love of their life, or whatever else, everything might be fine and they could well be happy.

They think their happiness or absence of happiness is established by external factors and their thoughts and actions are of little consequence.

Some believe that if only they had way more money they could have anything they want and be on their way to self improvement.

They may have spent little time thinking about what they actually want from life, and really don?t actually believe there is anything they can accomplish to construct their fuzzy version of utopia anyway, apart from purchasing more lottery tickets. Don?t get caught in this trap. Visit www.findingthesecret.info to find out how to start improving yourself.

Additional consumers don?t even understand what they actually want from their lives and might have little idea what would actually make them content. They seem to only drift from day to day, week to week, month to month, and year to year, and implement little more than only getting by.

They may have seemingly secure jobs and be earning enough to live relatively relaxing lives. They seem happy enough and have no tremendous ambition to achieve anything more from their lives compared to what they already have got.

Is self improvement critical? You?d better believe it! Check out www.beingthebestyoucan.info to discover how to start improving yourself.
The fact is that throughout our lives we are all are constantly growing and developing. Circumstances make us grow and develop, even if we really don?t make the conscious decision to do so.

Up to a certain age, we learn during formal education and we continue to learn throughout our experiences for the rest of our lives. We need to understand and grow to cope with everything that life throws at us. We all need to go through self improvement.

Modern day life moves at a significantly faster pace than at anytime in history. For anyone living in modern society there are much more opportunities to do anything which you want to accomplish with your life than you ever have.

But there is additionally much more competition than ever before, and ever changing technology means that there really are few, if any jobs for life anymore. It really is now standard not only to change jobs frequently in the course of our working lives, but even to completely alter careers and industries.

Because the workplace is so cut-throat, individuals who are ambitious and hungry for success understand they have got to have state of the art skills and knowledge to keep ahead of the pack. To attain this, personal development becomes necessary.

These are the men and women that can be most likely to keep their jobs, or progress inside their preferred service industry, or that will be readily employable in varying businesses or industrial sectors.

Dedication to self improvement and personal growth could well be the determining factor in exactly how an individual?s long term future will end up.

Source: http://www.chezvousdirect.com/personal-development-and-achieving-success-come-together/

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Vetstreet: Do sharks hold the cure for curing cancer? http://t.co/orC0yiG8

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

Source: http://twitter.com/Vetstreet/statuses/237255265987211264

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Saturday, August 18, 2012

Papal support for pro-life pilgrimage in Poland : News Headlines ...

CWN - August 16, 2012

Pope Benedict XVI has sent a message of support to a pro-life pilgrimage in Poland.

The Pope relayed his greetings to participants in the 301st annual pilgrimage from Warsaw to the Marian shrine at Czestochowa. This year?s pilgrimage is devoted to ?The Spiritual Adoption of the Unborn Child.?

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Source: http://www.catholicculture.org/news/headlines/index.cfm?storyid=15261

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Electronic read-out of quantum bits

Friday, August 17, 2012

Quantum computers promise to reach computation speeds far beyond that of today's computers. As they would use quantum effects, however, they would also be susceptible to external interferences. Information flow into and out of the system is a critical point. Researchers from KIT with partners from Grenoble and Strasbourg have now read out the quantum state of an atom directly by using electrodes. In the Nature journal, it is reported about the stable interface between classical and quantum world. (DOI: 10.1038/nature11341)

"Normally, every contact with the outer world changes information in a quantum mechanical system in a completely uncontrolled manner," explains Professor Mario Ruben from Karlsruhe Institute of Technology. "We therefore have to keep the quantum state stable and shielded. On the other hand, information has to be read out in a controlled manner for further use."

Magnetic molecule complexes may be a solution of this dilemma. In their center, a metal atom with a pronounced magnetic moment, a spin, is located. It is surrounded by organic molecules that shield the atom. "When synthesizing this protective enclosure, we can exactly define how much the metal atom sees of the outer world," explains Ruben the trick of his research project.

The study presented is based on the metal atom terbium that was provided with an enclosure of about 100 carbon, nitrogen, and water atoms and then placed in the center of nanometer-sized, electric gold contacts. Due to the properties of the molecule, the electrodes had an effect similar to the three channels of a transistor. Electric voltage of the middle gate electrode influenced the current through the other two electrodes. In this way, the working point was set. Then, the molecule was exposed to various changing magnetic fields and the jump of the spin was reflected by the amplitude of the current curve. "By measuring current flow, we found that the nuclear spin of the metal atom is stable for up to 20 seconds," says Ruben. "For quantum mechanical processes, this is a very long time."

Ruben is sure that "the results will be of particular importance to spintronics and quantum computing." Spintronics uses the magnetic spin of single particles for information processing. The word descri-bes the symbiosis of spin and electronics. Quantum computers use quantum mechanical effects, such as the entanglement and super-position of spins, for the parallel execution of algorithms at high speed.

###

"Electronic read-out of a single nuclear spin using a molecular spin-transistor", R. Vincent et. al., Nature, vol. 488, issue 7411, pp 357-360, doi: 10.1038/nature11341

Helmholtz Association of German Research Centres: http://www.helmholtz.de/en/index.html

Thanks to Helmholtz Association of German Research Centres for this article.

This press release was posted to serve as a topic for discussion. Please comment below. We try our best to only post press releases that are associated with peer reviewed scientific literature. Critical discussions of the research are appreciated. If you need help finding a link to the original article, please contact us on twitter or via e-mail.

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Source: http://www.labspaces.net/122681/Electronic_read_out_of_quantum_bits

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Friday, August 17, 2012

Colorado Shooting Victim to Dave Mustaine: You're an Idiot


Dave Mustaine's claim that President Obama is responsible for the Aurora, Colo., shooting tragedy last month are ridiculous, says victim Carli Richards.

Richards, one of the 70 people who was shot in the theater that night (and one of the 58 to survive it), hit back at Mustaine's conspiracy theory today.

After hearing that Mustaine said Obama staged the Aurora shooting to push an anti-gun agenda, Richards said the rocker likely just wants attention:

Dave Mustaine PicPrez Obama

"Some people think the President is a good scapegoat but he didn't shoot me," she said.

"It’s obviously absurd and people who make up conspiracies just want attention."

"Everybody is emotional at this time and needs to blame somebody I guess."

"I don’t think they realize the consequences of not being responsible for your own actions and James Holmes needs to be held accountable for his, to whatever extent the criminal justice system deems fit."

Speaking of the actual person responsible, Richards, 22, previously said she'd like Holmes to die a slow, painful death, as lethal injection is too humane.

What do you think: Death penalty for Holmes?

[Photos: WENN.com]

Source: http://www.thehollywoodgossip.com/2012/08/colorado-shooting-victim-to-dave-mustaine-youre-an-idiot/

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Tuesday, August 14, 2012

Glamorize agriculture so that the youth may take it up a lucrative ...

[unable to retrieve full-text content]Goa News, Goa Information, Goa tours & travel guide, business in Goa and · About Us · Entertainments · Goa Guide · Goa Maps · Goa News · Goa Politics · India · Technology ... Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar calls upon the farming community to adopt the latest techniques in cultivation to get multiple crops which will help boost agriculture production in the state. He asked the Agriculture and Animal Husbandry departments to guide the farmers particularly youth from ...

Source: http://goa4u.com/2012/08/14/glamorize-agriculture-so-that-the-youth-may-take-it-up-a-lucrative-profession/

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Sunday, August 12, 2012

Tips On How To Create Off Your Home-based Business Room

Can you feel a person if they stated you might work from your home and also be your personal manager? There are several people that do business from home. A few of them will attempt to lure you to definitely do their company as well. It?s important to choose exactly what the correct industry is for you personally without having the affect of any individual else. It is actually possible that you can make feasible earnings from home, however it will take some perserverance. Here are some ideas for starting up an organization of your. If you want to become expert on this field, you should visit Review Engine Nick Unsworth to find out more about it. Speak to other business owners and try to construct an alliance. Besides this help make your website visible to some bigger market, it offers the supplementary advantage of improving your search engine results. When buyers simply click your links, they must be clear on exactly where they can be heading and what your goods and services have you been can deal with this technique by making use of crystal clear, specific marketing. You can read more about this topic on visit website. Select an area in your house to specify as the workplace. Make sure that you set up your house in a manner that is arranged and provides you with enough room for the components you need. When operating a business from your home, keeping on top of your company approaches is essential to achievement. Similar information can be attained on thoughtleaderformulas.com. Whenever your merchandise is out of carry, make sure you say so. It is actually a sure-blaze way to irritated your potential customers after they learn their products had to be put on rear order, and will not be completely ready for fast shipping and delivery. Permit your clients know that something is back-bought, and supply choice options to your buyer too. Ensure your lunch pauses involve fun! Joking reduces blood pressure, revives your respiratory process and provides a sense of health and joy. Whether it originates from Doonesbury cartoons or the newest popular Youtube . com video, an excellent giggle will appropriate your ship and set yourself on a successful training course directly into concentrating on work. Ensure that you consider your family into account when organising a home business. Anything that may well substantially affect household existence in your house ought to be reconsidered. You want the particular organization you run out of your property to put easily to the household. Heading above and beyond exactly what is predicted can have your customers that you simply attention. If you are preparing their requests, add a very little one thing fun or publish a short thank-you notice, this will inform them that you are currently thankful for business. People like obtaining totally free things, because it means they are really feel specific. Suggest to them you do not get their business as a given. {As soon as your home business expands ample to call for workers, you need to check up thoroughly on your own possible personnel before you work with them. The individuals that you retain the services of must be reliable and well-informed pertaining to the item you will certainly be marketing otherwise your business might are unsuccessful. } As you know, a lot of people have home based business desires. Unfortunately, many of these home-based business enthusiasts will in no way figure out how to stick to their dreams. It is possible to properly have a home based business should you stick to this article?s assistance.

Source: http://ronalddavies.com/tips-on-how-to-create-off-your-home-based-business-room/

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Monday, August 6, 2012

Prenatal drug targeted lesbians, researchers say

Courtesy the Westphal family

Parents Jenny and Roland Westphal of Fond du Lac, Wis., pose with their daughters, Emma, Chloe and Olivia last year. All three girls have congenital adrenal hyperplasia, or CAH, a genetic condition that affects their sexual organs. Jenny Westphal was given a controversial drug during her second pregnancy.

By Brian Alexander, NBC News Contributor

When Jenny and Roland Westphal?s first child was born, doctors initially couldn?t say whether they had a daughter or a son.

The new baby had congenital adrenal hyperplasia, or CAH, a genetic condition that results in such ambiguous genitals, it took doctors close examination to confirm she was a girl. Now 6, Emma Westphal has had at least four operations to reconstruct her sexual organs.

So when Jenny Westphal, 26, of Fond du Lac, Wis., became pregnant with her second child, her obstetrician and an endocrinologist insisted she begin taking a drug called dexamethasone right away.

They told her that the powerful steroid could stave off the ambiguous genitalia likely to occur in a second daughter. Westphal didn?t question their advice.

?There were no forms, no discussions of side effects,? Westphal said. ?I had never heard of it, but the endocrinologist said I had to be on it and then the ob-gyn said ?Yes, go on it,? so I did.?

What Westphal didn?t know is that giving dexamethasone to pregnant women has long been regarded as highly experimental, and very controversial. And it's not even clear how well it works.

A new paper by Alice Dreger, a researcher and medical humanities and bioethics professor at Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine, targets that controversy and exposes what she regards as the questionable ethics that have allowed a generation of pregnant woman to serve as virtual guinea pigs for fetal engineering.

The paper, published in the journal Bioethical Inquiry, indicts Dr. Maria I. New, the most prodigious promoter of prenatal dexamethasone for CAH. It also criticizes the institutions where New has worked and the federal government, for ?de facto experimentation on fetuses and pregnant women, largely outside of prospective long-term trials and without adequate informed consent.?

Dreger charges that the government failed to collect and publish evidence about use of dexamethasone and that public funds were used for research to ?prevent benign behavioral sex variations, including tomboyism and lesbianism.??????

At issue is the treatment for CAH, an adrenal disorder that causes an overproduction of male hormones. CAH can occur in several forms, but ?classic" CAH affects roughly 1 in 16,000 births in the United States. It occurs when two parents each carries a certain genetic mutation. Typically, they?re unaware they?re carriers until a child is born with the disorder.

The condition affects both boys and girls. In boys, it can result in larger penises, short stature and, later in life, cardiovascular and blood pressure problems.

In girls, ?like Westpahl's daughter, the male hormones can cause ambiguous genitals. That may sound like mainly a cosmetic issue, but girls with CAH can have frequent urinary tract infections. They may have be unable to have sexual intercourse, or they may find it extremely painful. Even if they are fertile, they may not be able to bear children.

In addition, the male hormones evident in CAH have an effect on brain organization. A girl with CAH may be a tomboy, for instance, displaying male-typical behavior as she grows up.Women with CAH are more likely than women without it to identify themselves as lesbians.

Because the drug treatment targets such brain effects, Dreger and her colleagues accuse New of engaging in a kind of eugenics campaign against lesbians.

Within hours of the article?s release, Twitter was bristling. Susan Rensing, a women?s studies professor at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh wanted to know why the?National Institutes of Health??is funding research to prevent lesbians from existing.?

While such rhetoric is inflammatory, New has denied any such motivation and the record appears to support her defense. However, what?s not resolved is whether women and their babies have been subjected to unnecessary medical risks in the quest to treat CAH during the past 25 years.

Doctors have been experimenting with dexamethasone in pregnant women since 1984, when a team of French physicians reported that the drug either prevented masculinized genitalia or reduced the severity.

New, the scientist behind the current furor, was then at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York. She began overseeing a program to treat women at risk of carrying CAH babies as early as 1986. The number of women given dexamethasone since then is in dispute, but there may be thousands.

Experience there and elsewhere has shown that about 75 percent of the time, if begun very early in pregnancy, the treatment works to prevent or lessen masculinization of a girl?s genitals. It does nothing to alleviate the other health effects of CAH. Affected people still require treatment.

There are additional drawbacks. For one, since the treatment must begin so early, doctors can?t know if the fetus is male or female, affected by CAH or not affected. As a result, seven out of eight fetuses will be given a drug they don?t need.

And there are hints the drug regimen can be dangerous. Fetuses are exquisitely sensitive to hormonal environment. Long-term studies of treatment effects on brain organization and behavior are extremely limited -- one of Dreger?s complaints -- but there are clues from both human and animal data that both unaffected fetuses that received unnecessary treatment, and?affected ones that did, could experience cognitive deficits later in life, and that males -- who never need the pre-natal drug -- might become feminized.

Even setting aside the issue of lesbianism, experts consulted by NBC News agreed that Dreger does raise valid concerns about the use of prenatal dexamethasone.

?The best we can say is that this is an area where the potential dangers are not agreed upon among investigators,? said Kim Wallen, a professor of psychology and behavioral neuroendocrinology at Emory University. ?At a minimum it seems an extreme use of off-label drug treatment in an area where controlled experiments are critical to human health.?

Dreger used Freedom of Information Act requests to document that New?s patient consent forms haven?t been clear and that supervision by institutional review boards -- set up to keep an eye on?research involving people -- has been cursory, at best. For example, Dreger said, her digging showed that ?up to 2,144 cases of ?diagnosis and treatment,?? occurred outside of long-term trials, though professional bodies have mostly agreed that should not happen.

Officials at Mount Sinai Medical Center officials denied the allegations on New's behalf. They noted that New?s work was examined in a 2010 investigation by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office for Human Research Protections.

New did not respond to NBC News requests for comment. In a statement, Mount Sinai officials said that HHS ?found complaints against her to be unfounded, and that there was no evidence that Dr. New violated HHS regulations for the protection of human research subjects.? They also found that her research had been conducted according to the rules of ethical oversight at Weill Cornell Medical College and Mount Sinai School of Medicine.?

Dreger noted, however, that the federal Food and Drug Administration has never approved prenatal use of dexamethasone. The agency said that doctors can prescribe the drug off-label to pregnant women in order to prevent genital abnormalities, and that such a use does not constitute a ?clinical investigation.?

Because it?s not a clinical investigation, it doesn?t require? approval by an institutional review board. In other words, New wasn?t prescribing the drug; women?s doctors, like Jenny Westphal?s, were. New has only been studying the results of such administration, studies for which she has approval.

That?s at the heart of Dreger?s objections.

?Clinicians do not do big literature searches,? Dreger told NBC News. ?They say ?What should I do?? and if you have experts? -- like New -- ?saying it?s safe and effective, the clinicians reasonably trust the experts.?

Six years after doctors advised her to take dexamethasone, Jenny Westphal believes she took a risk she didn't understand. And, in her case, that risk appeared to have no benefit. Her second daughter, Chloe, now 5, was born with severely masculinized genitalia and will also require surgery.

Today, Westphal wishes somebody had told her about the controversy.

?I could have known more about it if doctors had warned me there are risks, and that not all patients take it,? she said. ?If you could tell me for sure it worked and had no side effects? I would say go for it.?

But given what she?s learned, she refused it when pregnant with her third daughter, Olivia. That child is also affected by CAH.

Brian Alexander (www.BrianRAlexander.com) is co-author, with Larry Young PhD., of "The Chemistry Between Us: Love, Sex and the Science of Attraction," (www.TheChemistryBetweenUs.com) to be published Sept. 13.

?Related stories on Vitals:?

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Source: http://vitals.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/08/06/13146097-prenatal-drug-therapy-targeted-lesbians-researchers-charge?lite

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Report: Ariz. shooter to plead guilty

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Jared Loughner, the man accused of killing six people and wounding then-U.S. Representative Gabrielle Giffords in 2011, is set to plead guilty in a Tucson court on Tuesday, a person in Washington familiar with the case said.

The source confirmed that the federal government believed Loughner was now competent to stand trial and will argue that in court on Tuesday. Loughner is willing to change his plea to guilty at the previously scheduled hearing, the source said.

Psychiatric experts who have examined Loughner were scheduled to testify in a mental competency hearing on Tuesday that he was competent to stand trial and understood the 49 charges against him, the Los Angeles Times reported earlier.

The team of four attorneys representing Loughner had not responded to emailed requests for comment.

Giffords, an Arizona Democrat seen as a rising star in the party, was holding one of her regular "Congress On Your Corner" events at a Tucson supermarket in January 2011 when she was shot through the head at close range by a gunman who killed six other people, including a federal judge and a 9-year-old girl.

Loughner, 23, is charged with 49 criminal offenses including first-degree murder over the shooting rampage, which wounded 13 people. A not guilty plea was entered on his behalf last year.

The Wall Street Journal, which also reported that Loughner would plead guilty, said Tuesday's mental status hearing had been changed to a change-of-plea hearing, citing an official familiar with the case.

If U.S. District Judge Larry Burns were to determine at Tuesday's hearing that he was fit for trial, Loughner - who is being forcibly medicated to treat his psychosis - could face the death penalty if found guilty.

The Los Angeles Times said it was unclear on the details of the plea arrangement, or whether Loughner would plead guilty to all or just some of the charges in exchange for prison time rather than risk being sentenced to death at trial.

Tuesday's hearing was to be Loughner's fourth to determine if he is fit to stand trial. Burns ordered the hearing in June at the request of prosecutors and defense attorneys who wanted a status report after more than a year of treatment and legal wrangling over his mental competency.

The college dropout was determined unfit for trial in May 2011 after experts said he suffered from schizophrenia, disordered thinking and delusions.

Loughner has been held at a U.S. Bureau of Prisons psychiatric hospital in Springfield, Missouri, where he is forcibly medicated against his will to treat psychosis and make him fit for trial.

Giffords resigned from the U.S. House of Representatives in January to focus on her recovery. Her former aide Ron Barber won a special election to fill her seat and will have to win re-election in November to serve a full two-year term.

(Reporting by Tim Gaynor in Phoenix, Karen Brooks in Austin and David Ingram in Washington; Editing by Cynthia Johnston, Jackie Frank and Anthony Boadle)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/loughner-plead-guilty-arizona-shooting-spree-la-times-015020744.html

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Sunday, August 5, 2012

Raise Your Profits through Great Customer Service | Internet ...

Great customer support would be the most significant aspect of most in helping the profitability of a company, especially if that organization relies upon plenty of repeat business for its income. You need to keep individuals coming back to purchase from you once more if you?d like to realize the maximum profit capability within your business, as these return clients don?t need virtually any advertising or marketing expenditure to make to your own business. When you have exceptional customer service, you can even win start up business from word-of-mouth without the need to carry out anything at all or pay anything to get it.

The value of very good customer service has been often sacrificed on businesses of the past, especially those which sold great by means of direct response and delivered them through the mail. It had been frequently declared that complaints could not be satisfied and details about merchandise could not be sold, so there was clearly typically no intention made to respond to letters or to handle telephone calls. All of these businesses were leaving behind money within their waste paper baskets, since there is every single chance that people having a compliant managed appropriately will purchase again, and all those looking for details are practically usually questioning to become sold if you?re able to supply it towards them.

Anyone who understands all of these basic concepts is a great candidate for any career in customer service, although not everybody should be able to deal with some of the scenarios that may undoubtedly take place throughout a work day. Telephone based customer service is usually a stressful profession, especially if you?re working inside an industry where people will need fast results. If you?re managing customer service for any energy company, or a web host, individuals will probably be within a state of panic when they make the phone calls. Additionally there is always going to be the inescapable harassing caller, who has to be managed properly.

It really is easy to understand why this industry has this type of excessive turnover level. Even many of those who come in decided to provide great customer support see themselves bogged down and depart before rather long. This creates opportunity for people who totally have the ability to stay on, and this particular possibility can even lead to a higher salary and a management role for all those ready to expend the effort. This is the career that may be accomplished by any person whatever their qualifications or education level, and many of the greatest managers started out in an entry level position.

The most aesthetic illustration of the importance of great customer support happened when most companies made a decision to contract out their customer service to international nations to take advantage of low-cost labor. The test failed in most instances, and left people discouraged with having to make clear their scenario to agents who frequently had a limited command of English. Many individuals switched their allegiance to organizations which preserved a home dependent customer service department, and eventually those who made the move overseas were made to go back home again.

The giving of great customer service can be a gratifying career; also it can also lead you to a placement of improvement in case you desire to get there. Unlike a great many other careers wherein senior positions just go to all those who have accomplished university courses and achieved high accreditation, most customer service administrators have escalated to that placement from a beginner job. On this field, work record and the capacity to deal with the job is much more essential than academic achievement. If you have the winning attitude and determination, you may progress by offering great customer service.

Source: http://www.etcgalerie.com/raise-your-profits-through-great-customer-service/

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