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Thursday, January 31, 2013
'How I Met Your Mother' to end run, mystery
This undated image released by CBS shows, from left, Jason Segel, Alyson Hannigan, Josh Radnor, Neil Patrick Harris and Cobie Smulders in a scene from "How I Met Your Mother." The sitcom will air its ninth and final season next fall and will at last answer the question about who the mom is, the network said Wednesday, Jan. 30, 2013. That would be the mystery woman with whom Ted, played by Josh Radnor, ultimately has a family. (AP Photo/CBS, Cliff Lipson)
This undated image released by CBS shows, from left, Jason Segel, Alyson Hannigan, Josh Radnor, Neil Patrick Harris and Cobie Smulders in a scene from "How I Met Your Mother." The sitcom will air its ninth and final season next fall and will at last answer the question about who the mom is, the network said Wednesday, Jan. 30, 2013. That would be the mystery woman with whom Ted, played by Josh Radnor, ultimately has a family. (AP Photo/CBS, Cliff Lipson)
LOS ANGELES (AP) ? CBS says the big reveal is coming for "How I Met Your Mother."
The network said Wednesday the sitcom will air its ninth and final season next fall.
And CBS Entertainment President Nina Tassler promised that TV's "most mysterious mother" will be unveiled as the show wraps up.
That would be the mystery woman with whom Ted, played by Josh Radnor, ultimately has a family.
The sitcom's cast also includes Neil Patrick Harris, Cobie Smulders, Jason Segel and Alyson Hannigan.
20th Century Fox Television says all the actors will return for the 2013-14 season.
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Wednesday, January 30, 2013
L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, again, cast as possible transportation secretary
L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, again, cast as possible transportation secretary
The departure of U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood raised new questions over what Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa would do if he is offered the job - either now or after July 1, when his term as mayor expires. | Also: Doug McIntyre on the mayor's next move
Villaraigosa was in South Korea for the Special Olympics and is not expected to return until Thursday.
However, the mayor told The Wall Street Journal last week that he would not say what conversations he has had with the Obama administration, and he told the newspaper: "When you have a conversation with the president, you say 'Yes,' or 'Yes, sir."'
Villaraigosa has been a key political ally for the president both in this most recent election and four years ago, actively campaigning in the Southwest to get out the Latino vote.
The mayor was at this year's inauguration and has been to Washington numerous times lobbying for funds and programs.
Transportation has been a major part of Villaraigosa's efforts since he was elected mayor, first pushing for Proposition R, the half-percent sales tax, and its offshoot, America Fast Forward, in which the city is seeking an advance on the $40 billion that will be generated by Proposition R over the next 30 years to speed up project construction.
He also has pushed for the multibillion-dollar modernization of Los Angeles International Airport, with one of his first acts as mayor being to resolve a lawsuit filed against the project.
In addition, he has sought to reduce air pollution from trucks and ships at the Port of Los Angeles, while also pushing the deepening of the channel to compete with the Panama Canal expansion.
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Slow-release 'jelly' delivers drugs better
Tuesday, January 29, 2013
Duke University biomedical engineers have developed a new delivery system that overcomes the shortcomings of a promising class of peptide drugs ? very small proteins ? for treating diseases such as diabetes and cancer.
There are more than 40 peptide drugs approved for use in humans and more than 650 are being tested in clinical studies. One example is the hormone insulin, a peptide that regulates the metabolism of carbohydrates in the body and is used as a drug to treat diabetes.
Despite their effectiveness, peptide drugs cannot achieve their full potential for a number of reasons. They are rapidly degraded in the blood stream and they are cleared rapidly from the body, which requires multiple, frequent injections. Because of this, peptide concentrations in the blood can rise precipitously just after injection and fall dramatically soon thereafter, causing unwanted side effects for patients.
One popular method to solve this problem involves loading peptide drugs into polymer microspheres that are injected under the skin and slowly degrade to release the peptide drug. Microsphere-release technology has proven useful, but has many issues related to its manufacture and ease of patient use, the researchers said.
"We wanted to know if we could create a system that does what the polymer microspheres do, but gets rid of the microspheres and is more patient-friendly," said Ashutosh Chilkoti, Theo Pilkington professor of biomedical engineering in Duke's Pratt School of Engineering.
The new approach involves making a "fusion protein" that consists of multiple copies of a peptide drug fused to a polymer which is sensitive to body heat. The fusion molecule is a liquid in a syringe but transforms into a "jelly" when injected under the skin. Enzymes in the skin then attack the injected drug depot and liberate copies of the peptide, providing a constant and controllable release of the drug over time.
Miriam Amiram, former Chilkoti graduate student and first author on the paper, dubbed the new delivery system POD, for protease-operated depot.
In the latest experiments, published on-line in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the researchers fused glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1), a hormone that regulates the release of insulin, with a genetically engineered heat-sensitive polymer to create the POD.
"Remarkably, a single injection of the GLP-1 POD was able to reduce blood glucose levels in mice for up to five days, which is 120 times longer than an injection of the peptide alone," Chilkoti said. "For a patient with type 2 diabetes, it would be much more desirable to inject such a drug once a week or once a month rather than once or twice a day.
"Additionally, this approach avoids the peaks and valleys of drug concentrations that these patients often experience," Chilkoti said.
Unlike peptide-loaded microspheres, PODs are also easy to manufacture, because the peptide drug and the heat-sensitive polymer are all made of amino acids. They can be built as one long stretch of amino acids by engineered bacteria.
"This new delivery system provides the first entirely genetically encoded alternative to peptide drug encapsulation for sustained delivery of peptide drugs," Chilkoti said.
###
Duke University: http://www.duke.edu
Thanks to Duke University for this article.
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Source: http://www.labspaces.net/126509/Slow_release__jelly__delivers_drugs_better
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Gulf leads UN appeal for major boost in Syrian aid
KUWAIT CITY (AP) ? Gulf nations answered U.N. calls to boost humanitarian aid for Syria with $900 million in pledges Wednesday even as more refugees poured into neighboring Jordan and its leader warned his country's resources were strained to the limit.
The Gulf promises at a donors' conference hosted by Kuwait ? along with earlier relief fund increases by the U.S. and European Union ? pushed the total beyond the United Nations' appeal for $1.5 billion in immediate aid, said the U.N. chief. But the funds are only expected to cover the coming months, highlighting the massive burden to cope with needs from Syria's civil war and its spillover in the region.
The pledges also will likely face close scrutiny on how quickly the money will reach over-stretched aid groups directed by the U.N. and other agencies. Officials in Egypt and elsewhere have complained that many generous international offers for help after the Arab Spring upheavals have not yet materialized.
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon opened the gathering by calling for an end to the fighting "in the name of humanity," yet noted that the violence shows no signs of easing and that the refugee exodus to places like Turkey and Jordan could intensify.
Jordan's economic council said the country was already near the breaking point. The kingdom has spent more than $833 million on aid for refugees ? accounting for nearly half the estimated 700,000 people who have fled Syria ? and that it was unable to sustain a financial burden that has so far siphoned off about 3 percent of its GDP. Some U.N. officials say the refugee figures could approach 1 million later this year if the conflict in Syria does not ease.
Speaking at the U.N.-led gathering in Kuwait, Jordan's King Abdullah II said sheltering and assisting the wave of refugees is above the country's "capacity and potential."
"We have reached the end of the line. We have exhausted our resources," he said.
Last week, the king amplified his appeal for international help at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, saying "the weakest refugees are struggling now just to survive this year's harsh winter" and up to 3,000 a day are still crossing the Syria-Jordan border.
Ban used his opening remarks Wednesday to urge all sides "and particularly the Syrian government" to halt attacks in the 22-month-old civil war that the U.N. says has claimed more than 60,000 lives.
"In the name of humanity, stop the killing, stop the violence," Ban told envoys from nearly 60 nations, including Russia and Iran, key allies of Syrian President Bashar Assad's regime.
Aid officials estimate that more than 2 million Syrians have been uprooted or are suffering inside the country as the conflict widens - including what peace envoy Lakhdar Brahimi called "unprecedented levels of horror" in an address to the U.N. Security Council after at least 65 bodies were found Tuesday in a what appeared to be a mass killing in Aleppo.
Before the latest donors' conference, Ban described the international humanitarian response to Syria as "very much limited" in comments to the official Kuwaiti News Agency.
But the meeting leveraged more pledges. Kuwait's ruler, Sheik Sabah Al Ahmad Al Sabah, promised $300 million in a move that was quickly matched by Gulf partners Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, which are all major backers of Syrian rebel factions. Ban said additional donations on Wednesday included $184 million from Gulf non-government groups and charities.
On Tuesday, the European Union and the U.S. promised a total of nearly $300 million.
The head of the U.S. delegation, Assistant Secretary of State Anne Richard, lauded the donations from Gulf nations, which often bankroll their own aid efforts but are not traditional top donors to U.N. programs. She noted, however, that the humanitarian funds are only to deal with immediate needs over the coming months.
"It's good for now, but predictions are that it's not going to be over soon," said Richard, who deals with refugee and migration affairs.
Ban described the situation in Syria as "catastrophic and getting worse by the day."
He listed a "cascading catalog of horrors" facing Syrians, including shortages of food and medicine and abuses such as "sexual violence and arbitrary arrests and detention." Half of public hospitals have been damaged, he added.
"The use of heavy weapons in residential areas has destroyed whole communities and neighborhoods," Ban told delegates.
While international aid channels are open to refugee camps in places such as Turkey and Jordan, there is far more limited capacity to organize relief efforts inside Syria ? where hundreds of thousands more are internally displaced people ? because of the fighting and obstacles from Assad's regime.
Paris-based Medecins Sans Frontieres, or Doctors Without Borders, said the U.N. and others need to open more routes for aid to reach rebel-held areas, which now receive only a "tiny share" of international humanitarian help.
"The current aid system is unable to address the worsening living conditions facing people who live inside Syria," MSF president, Marie-Pierre Allie, said in a statement.
The escalating hardships in camps outside Syria also can be used by Assad's government as potential fodder in its claims that rebels are responsible for the country's collapse, said Fawaz Gerges, head of the Middle East Center at the London School of Economics.
"The misery of the refugees, their suffering in neighboring countries, provide the ammunition for Assad, who is saying to them, 'See, you have no one else but your country, so come home,'" Gerges said.
___
Associated Press writer Dale Gavlak in Amman, Jordan, contributed to this report.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/gulf-leads-un-appeal-major-boost-syrian-aid-132907518.html
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Tuesday, January 29, 2013
National Academy of Inventors honors 3 University of Houston professors
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Public release date: 29-Jan-2013[ | E-mail |
Share ] Contact: Laura Tolley
ljtolley@uh.edu
713-743-0778
University of Houston
3 UH faculty members have been honored by the NAI for their outstanding contributions to scientific and technological innovation
Three University of Houston faculty members have been named Charter Fellows of the National Academy of Inventors (NAI) for their outstanding contributions to scientific and technological innovation.
UH faculty members Benton Baugh, an adjunct professor in mechanical engineering, Paul Chu, a physics professor and chief scientist of the Texas Center for Superconductivity at UH (TcSUH), and Dan Luss, a professor in chemical and biomedical engineering, are among 101 innovators awarded NAI Fellow status.
NAI Fellow status is a high professional distinction accorded to academic inventors who have demonstrated a prolific spirit of innovation in creating or facilitating outstanding inventions that have made a tangible impact on quality of life, economic development and the welfare of society.
The new fellows represent 56 universities and non-profit research institutes, and together they hold more than 3,200 U.S. patents. They include eight Nobel laureates, 14 presidents of research universities and non-profit research institutes, 53 members of the National Academies (National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, Institute of Medicine), two fellows of the Royal Society, 11 inductees of the National Inventors Hall of Fame, five recipients of the National Medal of Technology and Innovation, four recipients of the National Medal of Science, and 31 AAAS Fellows, among other major awards and distinctions.
The NAI Charter Fellows will be inducted by Margaret A. Focarino, the U.S. Commissioner for Patents, at the Second Annual Conference of the National Academy of Inventors, on Feb. 22, in Tampa, Fla.
Academic inventors and innovators elected to the rank of NAI Charter Fellow were nominated by their peers for outstanding contributions to innovation in areas such as patents and licensing, innovative discovery and technology, significant impact on society, and support and enhancement of innovation.
Baugh has more than 50 years experience in oilfield and subsea systems and is active in management, design and consulting. Baugh has developed numerous tools and novel solutions to equipment design, leading to more than 100 U.S. patents. He is recognized for a strong technical background for analysis, design and development of oilfield equipment. Currently, he is president of Radoil Tool Company, Inc., which manufactures a variety of offshore and oilfield products and provides general consulting services.
Baugh has written numerous technical papers on subsea applications that have been presented at various conferences. His patents have been issued on a variety of subjects, including gas compressor systems, drilling chokes, subsea wellhead systems, wellhead connectors, tubing hangers, subsea flowline systems, gate valves, hydraulic control systems, electro-hydraulic control systems, subsea re-entry systems, riser buoyancy systems, coiled tubing units, power slips and consumer products. He has patents pending.
Chu is founding director and chief scientist of TcSUH. In 1987, Chu and his colleagues achieved superconductivity at a temperature that would usher in a new era in materials science. Currently, Chu is actively engaged in the basic and applied research of high temperature superconductivity. His research activities also extend beyond superconductivity to magnetism and dielectrics. His work has resulted in the publication of more than 590 papers in refereed journals.
Chu has received numerous awards and honors for his outstanding work in superconductivity, including the U.S. National Medal of Science and the International Prize for New Materials. He also was elected as a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Chinese Academy of Sciences (Beijing), the Academia Sinica (Taipei), the Third World Academy of Sciences, the Electromagnetic Academy, the Russian Academy of Engineering, and The Academy of Medicine, Engineering and Science of Texas, and is a fellow of the American Physical Society and the Texas Academy of Sciences. In 1990, he was selected the Best Researcher in the U.S. by US News and World Report.
Luss has spent more than four decades researching and teaching chemical engineering at UH's Cullen College of Engineering, where he chaired the chemical engineering department for more than 20 years. He has published more than 300 journal articles and was named to the National Academy of Engineering in 1984. His research contributions were recognized by several American Institute of Chemical Engineers awards, including the Founders Award, the Wilhelm Award, the Professional Progress Award, the Allan P. Colburn Award and eight Best Paper Awards, as well as the Amundson Award from ISCRE and the ASEE Curtis McGraw Award and the Chemical Engineering Division lectureship Award.
Luss' research group develops policies that prevent chemical reactors from "runaways," or rapid, uncontrollable temperature excursions that may lead to explosions. His recent research is concerned with the reduction of particulate particles (soot) and nitrogen oxide emissions by diesel engines. The main thrust of his research was to increase the efficiency of chemical processes. His studies of the large-scale synthesis of advanced ceramics, such as superconducting materials led to patent for production of high-temperature superconducting powders. Another patent was awarded for the development of a method of carbon combustion synthesis of oxides, which enables a more economic production of these products.
###
About the University of Houston
The University of Houston is a Carnegie-designated Tier One public research university recognized by The Princeton Review as one of the nation's best colleges for undergraduate education. UH serves the globally competitive Houston and Gulf Coast Region by providing world-class faculty, experiential learning and strategic industry partnerships. Located in the nation's fourth-largest city, UH serves more than 39,500 students in the most ethnically and culturally diverse region in the country.
About the National Academy of Inventors
The National Academy of Inventors is a 501c3 non-profit organization comprised of more than 45 U.S. and international universities and non-profit research institutes, with over 2,000 individual academic inventor members, and growing rapidly. It was founded in 2010 to recognize and encourage inventors with a patent issued from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, enhance the visibility of academic technology and innovation, encourage the disclosure of intellectual property, educate and mentor innovative students, and translate the inventions of its members to benefit society. The NAI publishes a newsletter and edits the multidisciplinary journal, Technology and Innovation Proceedings of the National Academy of Inventors, published by Cognizant Communication Corporation (NY). www.academyofinventors.org
[ | E-mail | Share ] ?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Public release date: 29-Jan-2013[ | E-mail |
Share ] Contact: Laura Tolley
ljtolley@uh.edu
713-743-0778
University of Houston
3 UH faculty members have been honored by the NAI for their outstanding contributions to scientific and technological innovation
Three University of Houston faculty members have been named Charter Fellows of the National Academy of Inventors (NAI) for their outstanding contributions to scientific and technological innovation.
UH faculty members Benton Baugh, an adjunct professor in mechanical engineering, Paul Chu, a physics professor and chief scientist of the Texas Center for Superconductivity at UH (TcSUH), and Dan Luss, a professor in chemical and biomedical engineering, are among 101 innovators awarded NAI Fellow status.
NAI Fellow status is a high professional distinction accorded to academic inventors who have demonstrated a prolific spirit of innovation in creating or facilitating outstanding inventions that have made a tangible impact on quality of life, economic development and the welfare of society.
The new fellows represent 56 universities and non-profit research institutes, and together they hold more than 3,200 U.S. patents. They include eight Nobel laureates, 14 presidents of research universities and non-profit research institutes, 53 members of the National Academies (National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, Institute of Medicine), two fellows of the Royal Society, 11 inductees of the National Inventors Hall of Fame, five recipients of the National Medal of Technology and Innovation, four recipients of the National Medal of Science, and 31 AAAS Fellows, among other major awards and distinctions.
The NAI Charter Fellows will be inducted by Margaret A. Focarino, the U.S. Commissioner for Patents, at the Second Annual Conference of the National Academy of Inventors, on Feb. 22, in Tampa, Fla.
Academic inventors and innovators elected to the rank of NAI Charter Fellow were nominated by their peers for outstanding contributions to innovation in areas such as patents and licensing, innovative discovery and technology, significant impact on society, and support and enhancement of innovation.
Baugh has more than 50 years experience in oilfield and subsea systems and is active in management, design and consulting. Baugh has developed numerous tools and novel solutions to equipment design, leading to more than 100 U.S. patents. He is recognized for a strong technical background for analysis, design and development of oilfield equipment. Currently, he is president of Radoil Tool Company, Inc., which manufactures a variety of offshore and oilfield products and provides general consulting services.
Baugh has written numerous technical papers on subsea applications that have been presented at various conferences. His patents have been issued on a variety of subjects, including gas compressor systems, drilling chokes, subsea wellhead systems, wellhead connectors, tubing hangers, subsea flowline systems, gate valves, hydraulic control systems, electro-hydraulic control systems, subsea re-entry systems, riser buoyancy systems, coiled tubing units, power slips and consumer products. He has patents pending.
Chu is founding director and chief scientist of TcSUH. In 1987, Chu and his colleagues achieved superconductivity at a temperature that would usher in a new era in materials science. Currently, Chu is actively engaged in the basic and applied research of high temperature superconductivity. His research activities also extend beyond superconductivity to magnetism and dielectrics. His work has resulted in the publication of more than 590 papers in refereed journals.
Chu has received numerous awards and honors for his outstanding work in superconductivity, including the U.S. National Medal of Science and the International Prize for New Materials. He also was elected as a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Chinese Academy of Sciences (Beijing), the Academia Sinica (Taipei), the Third World Academy of Sciences, the Electromagnetic Academy, the Russian Academy of Engineering, and The Academy of Medicine, Engineering and Science of Texas, and is a fellow of the American Physical Society and the Texas Academy of Sciences. In 1990, he was selected the Best Researcher in the U.S. by US News and World Report.
Luss has spent more than four decades researching and teaching chemical engineering at UH's Cullen College of Engineering, where he chaired the chemical engineering department for more than 20 years. He has published more than 300 journal articles and was named to the National Academy of Engineering in 1984. His research contributions were recognized by several American Institute of Chemical Engineers awards, including the Founders Award, the Wilhelm Award, the Professional Progress Award, the Allan P. Colburn Award and eight Best Paper Awards, as well as the Amundson Award from ISCRE and the ASEE Curtis McGraw Award and the Chemical Engineering Division lectureship Award.
Luss' research group develops policies that prevent chemical reactors from "runaways," or rapid, uncontrollable temperature excursions that may lead to explosions. His recent research is concerned with the reduction of particulate particles (soot) and nitrogen oxide emissions by diesel engines. The main thrust of his research was to increase the efficiency of chemical processes. His studies of the large-scale synthesis of advanced ceramics, such as superconducting materials led to patent for production of high-temperature superconducting powders. Another patent was awarded for the development of a method of carbon combustion synthesis of oxides, which enables a more economic production of these products.
###
About the University of Houston
The University of Houston is a Carnegie-designated Tier One public research university recognized by The Princeton Review as one of the nation's best colleges for undergraduate education. UH serves the globally competitive Houston and Gulf Coast Region by providing world-class faculty, experiential learning and strategic industry partnerships. Located in the nation's fourth-largest city, UH serves more than 39,500 students in the most ethnically and culturally diverse region in the country.
About the National Academy of Inventors
The National Academy of Inventors is a 501c3 non-profit organization comprised of more than 45 U.S. and international universities and non-profit research institutes, with over 2,000 individual academic inventor members, and growing rapidly. It was founded in 2010 to recognize and encourage inventors with a patent issued from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, enhance the visibility of academic technology and innovation, encourage the disclosure of intellectual property, educate and mentor innovative students, and translate the inventions of its members to benefit society. The NAI publishes a newsletter and edits the multidisciplinary journal, Technology and Innovation Proceedings of the National Academy of Inventors, published by Cognizant Communication Corporation (NY). www.academyofinventors.org
[ | E-mail | Share ] ?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Source: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2013-01/uoh-nao012913.php
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5 (of many) Things to Consider in Your eCommerce Solution ...
Keith Neubert - Vice President
By: Keith Neubert ? Bayshore Solutions? Vice President
At Bayshore Solutions we deal with a wide variety of interactive projects, all of which have their own unique requirements, challenges and solutions.? But with global online sales exceeding 1 trillion dollars (census.gov), the appeal of implementing, or expanding an ecommerce solution makes this project type especially common. So with that in mind I thought I?d offer up a quick list of discussion points and questions that will help you get your project started.? Contrary to what the title of my blog may imply, this is certainly not an all-encompassing list, just a few to get you started.
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1. ?Platform ? Choose Wisely.? If it?s not obvious already, the platform you choose is very important.? You?re about to get engaged and you need to make sure this is someone you can spend a lot of time with.? Sure you can always switch, but just like in marriage, its costly and causes a lot of headaches.? The key here is working with your solution provider to evaluate your specific requirements, compare to the feature set of the various ecommerce platforms and identify the gaps.? Think about what you need now versus what you may need a year from now.? Your solution provider should be able to help you understand the pros and cons of each platform based on your requirements, how that platform will grow with you and how it will be maintained along the way.
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2. ?Products ? What are you selling?? Depending on the type of product you?re offering and its attributes there are several ways your ecommerce platform could be setup.? Take the basic example of a t-shirt.? You have sizes and colors, maybe even fabrics and collar types.? How many attribute combinations do you have?? At what point does product selection become product configuration? Perhaps some of these attributes, or some combination of these attributes together create changes in pricing?? Will you sell gift cards?? What about virtual products that are electronically deliverable such as software?? These are important questions to start with as you map out how customers will navigate through your store and what they will see, not to mention how you will setup and manage.
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3. ?Payment & Taxes ? There are several subtopics that fall under this in which I could spend more space than this blog offers discussing, so I?ll touch on a few key items you need to be thinking about.
- ?Who is your payment gateway?? There are a ton of them out there, chances are you?ve heard of the big ones: PayPal, CyberSource and Authorize.net.? Why is this important?? Well if it?s your first venture into the world of online payments then there is a whole other set of considerations, perhaps the topic of another blog, but for the business that already has a payment gateway chances are you?re not going to just switch without a good business case, so you need an ecommerce solution that can integrate with your payment gateway.? Most platforms provide ?out of the box? support for the popular gateways, some require customizations.? Make sure you?re communicating which gateway you have and what specific service from that gateway you?re using.
- ?Payments ?? At this point you have the means to process payments, now you need to define exactly how you want to charge your customers.? Are you charging them at the time of sale (known as auth/capture) or do you need to authorize (auth) their card and charge them at the time of fulfillment?? Do you need recurring payments?? On what schedule? What about foreign transactions and currencies?? Lots of questions can start emerging here, but it?s important to think through all of them because they can affect how your ecommerce solution is built or which platform is selected.
- Taxes ? What you need to do and who you need to charge what and when is a question best answered by your accountant or counsel familiar with your business and Internet Taxation, however from a technology perspective it usually falls into a one of two buckets, fixed or dynamic.? Meaning you can manage them manually through the backend (fixed) or you can use a third party provided like StrikeIron (dynamic) to automate tax based on the most up to date rules specific to the addresses of your customers.
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4. ?Discounts and Promotions ? Speaking of big topics?.? Most popular ecommerce platforms these days provide a wide variety of built-in discounts and promotions enabling your marketing team to rapidly deploy, manage and report on campaigns.? The list of possibilities would probably span pages, but just for the sake of giving some common examples: percent off, dollar off, discount off order total, discount off shipping, free shipping, number of times used per customer, use by role type, number of times used overall and many more.? This is an area in which it?s easy to want every combination, so make sure you have a good list of your wants vs. needs.? Give your solution provider examples and have them document what is built-in vs. custom.
?
5. Shipping ? Similar to taxes, shipping requirements generally fall into one of two categories, fixed and dynamic.? Perhaps your business deals with very niche shipping providers or limited products, then all you may need is a fixed amount for shipping, meaning you specify a flat shipping fee ($) applied to all orders.? More commonly, the likes of UPS, USPS and FedEx are enlisted to give customers real-time quotes and options to their address.? These services are generally free and provide a shipping estimate which is then applied to the customer?s order.? The next step up would be integrating something like UPS? WorldShip product which while giving the customer the shipping charges, also creates the actual shipment and allows you to provide a tracking number and print shipping labels on the backend.? Again, this is a topic in which there are many options and the possibility for a lot of customization.? Fortunately though, many ecommerce solutions have these services built in and it?s just a matter of configuring it through the administration area.
?
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Thinking through all of the above and asking your solution provider how their solution will meet those requirements will? certainly get you off on the right foot.? This quick list only scratches the surface, there are other BIG topics such as PCI Compliance, search engine marketing considerations, inventory management, fulfillment (topics in a future blog) and reporting to name a few.? All necessary areas of discussion in your project and perhaps the topic of a future blog.
?
At Bayshore Solutions, we?ll work with your team to go through all of your ecommerce requirements and ask the right questions.? Our goal is to thoroughly understand your business and how you want to run it online.? As your internet experts we understand the wide variety of ecommerce options, technologies and platforms out there to give your online business the best chance for success.? Remember with technology the answer to a question that starts with ?can you make it do?? is almost always going to be ?yes? but the real value your solution provider should be bringing, the value that Bayshore Solutions brings, is having the expertise, experience and foresight to do it efficiently and cost effectively to grow your business online.
?
Keith Neubert is a Vice President at Bayshore Solutions?a Tampa Web Design, Web Development, and Internet Marketing Company.
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Cancer Study Suggests Lumpectomies May Be More Effective Than ...
ST. LOUIS (KMOX) - The latest evidence suggests less may be more when it comes to treating certain types of breast cancer.
A new study finds women with early stage breast cancer who had a lumpectomy and radiation actually had a better survival rate than those who underwent a mastectomy.
?There are lots of women who think the more [treatment] they do, the better they will do,? said researcher Dr. Shelley Hwang, chief of breast surgery at Duke Cancer Institute. ?This refutes that.?
But a breast cancer surgeon at St. Louis University Cancer Center, Dr. Teresa Schwartz, says this was just an observational study and she would not feel comfortable telling her patients that a lumpectomy is the better way to go.
?I would definitely not tell a patient that, based on this one observational study, that having a lumpectomy is superior to having a mastectomy,? she said. ?I do not have the literature to back that.?
?It is still a completely individualized decision that has a lot of patient-related factors and a lot of pathological-related factors that come into the decision-making process. This paper doesn?t clear all of that up.?
Women 50 and older saw the greatest benefit in this study: they were 13 percent less likely to die from breast cancer when they had the less radical surgery.
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Monday, January 28, 2013
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'Fruitvale,' 'Blood Brother' win Sundance Awards
PARK CITY, Utah (AP) ? The dramatic film "Fruitvale" and the documentary "Blood Brother" won over audiences and Sundance Film Festival judges.
Both American films won audience awards and grand jury prizes Saturday at the Sundance Awards.
"Fruitvale" is based on the true story of Oscar Grant, who was 22 years old when he was shot and killed in a public transit station in Oakland, Calif. First-time filmmaker Ryan Coogler wrote and directed the dramatic narrative.
"This project was about humanity, about human beings and how we treat each other; how we treat the people that we love the most, and how we treat the people that we don't know," the 26-year-old said as he accepted the final prize of the night. "To get this award means that it had a profound impact on the audience that saw it, on the people that were responsible for picking it up. And this goes back to my home, to the Bay Area, where Oscar Grant lived, breathed, slept, loved, fought, had fun, and survived for 22 years."
Fox Searchlight founder and Sundance juror Tom Rothman said "Fruitvale" was recognized for "its skillful realization, its devastating emotional impact and its moral and social urgency ? and for anyone out there who thinks for one second that movies don't matter and can't make a difference in the world.
"This will not be the last time you guys walk to a podium," he added.
Coogler said he felt personally connected to the story because he's from Oakland and was born the same year as the subject of his film.
"So I'm the same age, same demographic. So when I saw the footage, initially I was heartbroken, frustrated, and the biggest thing was that Oscar looked like us, you know what I mean?" he said. "He looked like any one of my friends ? could have been me, could have been them, and these situations happen again and again."
The U.S. documentary winner, "Blood Brother" follows a young American, Rocky Braat, who moved to India to work with orphans infected with HIV.
"This means so much to so many kids," director Steve Hoover said as he accepted the award.
Other dramatic winners at the ceremony hosted by actor-director Joseph Gordon-Levitt included Lake Bell, who accepted the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award for her directorial debut, "In A World," and Jill Soloway, who won the directing award for her feature debut, "Afternoon Delight."
Soloway thanked Bell and the other "lady directors" making their debuts at the festival.
"I feel like we all crossed the street together holding hands," she said. "We're all out there together exposing ourselves and I love being here with you guys."
Cinematographer Bradford Young was recognized for his work in two dramatic films, "Ain't Them Bodies Saints" and "Mother of George."
Documentary winners included Zachary Heinzerling for directing "Cutie and the Boxer" and Matthew Hamachek for editing "Gideon's Army."
The Cambodian film "A River Changes Course" won the grand jury prize for international documentary, and a narrative film from South Korea, "Jiseul," claimed the grand jury prize for dramatic world cinema.
Having a film at Sundance serves as a stamp of approval, Coogler said.
"Audiences trust this film festival more than any other festival in the country," he said, "and they know if a film plays here, it's a film that should be seen."
___
AP Entertainment Writer Sandy Cohen is on Twitter: www.twitter.com/APSandy .
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/fruitvale-blood-brother-win-sundance-awards-040057340.html
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Alternate Organization of K-12: Part One ? Scope - Reanimating ...
The purpose of this first blog in a series is to propose that the present US model of a public school has hardened into a stereotype.? That model seems based on the assumptions that a K-12 school system is somehow unique, unaffected by organization theory, developments in research on human behavior irrelevant, and the only way present K-12 learning can be structured.
Paradoxically, that homogeneity of public K-12 systems contradicts the mantra of local control invoked by most public education defenders.? The specific strategic and operating environments of any organization are not usually subject to manipulation to accommodate an extant organization, though in monopolies that anti-social attempt may be made. ?Normatively, the organization is structured to deal with its environments.
This follows as well from the observation that public education in general, including its collegiate schools, has too frequently isolated itself intellectually from the basic disciplines that actually foot its practice.? Causes may be defensiveness, ignorance, fear, or just the sociology of protected, strongly associative reference group behavior augmented by the teachers? unions?? An answer would help understanding, but reality is that whatever drives present beliefs has cemented in place an over one hundred year-old model for formal organization and for envisioning critical public K-12 learning.
Subsequent posts will propose alternative K-12 models, and their implications for management of the resources powering present public primary and secondary education.
It is not absolute that the present grade, curricular structure, management arrangements, or other systems structure generally employed or present in public K-12 are wrong or automatically demand radical change.? What is assumed is that there has been far too little work executed to test the logic of present K-12 public organization.? Indeed, in the literature search for this post, fewer than 10 percent of the references viewed ? chosen from work in this century because of some reference to alternate K-12 structures ? actually explored that question.? There were five times as many references to the organization or critique of online learning.
The key suggested rule for this journey is central to creativity in any venue:? The need to temporarily suspend disbelief in options to truly scope the issues.? Detailing, critique, challenge, spotting logical holes, all come in due course to assess thinking out of the box.? But not enabling initial openness for options, simply chases any exercise back to what is already in place, creativity?s automatic disruptor.? This was illustrated this weekend by the musings of an otherwise competent, nationally recognized educator, Larry Cuban, in a post to ?The Answer Sheet,? creating a straw man to critique in the current evolution of MOOC (massive online open-source courses), versus reflecting how that innovation might in some form interact with, and nudge K-12 process.? This may be a challenge in our present US knee-jerk society, so sharpen the knives for critique, but keep them sheathed until the options are on the table.
Conventional wisdom would suggest that this journey?s topics are primarily grade span and the titles on the blocks of a school organization chart.? But conventional isn?t the melody for this song.
Organization of any human activity in both the private and public sectors in this century is either a replication of past patterns, or evolution of a past formulation, or by design, or simply occurs in an unplanned trajectory.? The latter is not as uncommon as one might believe.? Many 21st century start-ups just happen, without deliberate specification of a model for creating work, and a preconception of needed change to accommodate growth; they wind up requiring painful realignment with growth, or the lack of resilience of the start-up model drags the firm down.
Public K-12 education, not pejorative but pragmatically, has overall both ignored modern organization theory and demonstrated little awareness that, though their ?numbers? as a system have not experienced dramatic shifts, the environments for their functions and for the product they were created to nurture have dramatically changed.
For perspective, the nation?s children entering K-12 in 2013 will (at least a fraction) exit secondary education in 2025, postsecondary education and the job market by 2030.?
A data point is the sum of outputs from The World Economic Forum, meeting this past week in Davos, Switzerland.? Whether one applauds or scorns our industrial largest and most influential, their beliefs and choices will power most of our economy into the future.? Their views:? ?Climate change?will cause tremendous economic upheaval;?? ?water is the new oil;? ?one of the great concerns should be the employment effects of technology, with so many jobs being rendered obsolete by scientific or technological advances;? new technologies for analyzing the brain will change how we learn.? Pointing up the education challenge was former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown:
?
??huge advances in the Internet and technology are enabling young people to connect with each other and this is opening up the world in a way that has never happened before.? ?Young people are beginning to see that the gap between the opportunities and rights they have been promised and the opportunities and rights that are delivered to them is wholly unacceptable. And the sense that they are being deprived of these opportunities and rights is, I think, going to be the big motivating force over the next few years.?Our scientific, technology, and even business literature now regularly assert that the knowledge and economic world, as we presently know it, won?t be a smooth extrapolation of the present.? Should it be business as usual for K-12 public education, and how it has been organized and strategized?
?
In the absence of public K-12 reinvention, a new word may be needed to describe its relevance by 2025-2030.? The calls for change in K-12 education, as perverse and ignorant as the present reform movement has been in creating the challenge, should not be a mystery.? Based on the trajectories of what today?s K-12 matriculating students will inherit by the time they are job-ready, some genuine reform is way overdue. There is a rich literature on organization theory and caveats for designing organizations.? Still, few students of the genre think in those terms, rather, using the principles and models of organization to try to explain behavior within an existing organization, or internally adjust one?s parameters to improve its outputs, or assess participant satisfaction, or its learning, or explain why one is not performing as anticipated.? But the notion of actually designing a system to do work is neither new nor does it require new tools. What it does require is a very high tolerance for inputs.? Once past the fiction that an organization is effectively described by, for example, the typical organization chart, the building material explodes.? The variables effecting an organization?s specifications are complex and layered, subject to both the internal missions of the firm and its actors, and equivalently effected by all of the exogenous factors that portray an organization?s environment, present and projectable.? The following figure tries to portray at least the chapter titles of the factors influencing an organization?s survival properties in its venue:Most of the factors are self-explanatory though subject to major contents expansion.? The figure is color coded to try to portray the different classes of factors:? The largest frame of society and national strategy; subsidiarity, a term recently employed by California?s Governor Jerry Brown to indicate the functions that can be appropriately dedicated to the Federal or states? governments; learning variables, where DOUPP refers to knowledge ? defining, organizing, updating, prescribing, and protocols for dissemination; factors potentially controllable by a system; and the local environments that face a system.
Isn?t this unnecessarily complicating the issue of K-12 mission delivery?? Unquestionably it explodes the determinants, but when digested and hardened, the factors that impact a local system could be many of the above, but are more likely selectively and variably material to the local system.? The factors sorted can be reduced for a system based on their specific materiality.
How might the actual process of organization design work?? Again, at a conceptual level, one perspective is displayed in the diagram below.? Key assumptions of the mission, and deployment and management of resources come from recognizing the school?s major environments.? More finely tuned ?goal criteria for organization design? were detailed in the last post.? ?Organizational process? considerations were also detailed in the last post.? The triangulation of the three inputs produces something not magic, but likely some alternative forms a system might take to best reflect its environment, using the practical dimensions of what the organization is and does.At the risk of repetition, isn?t this unnecessarily complicated?? Why change what more or less works?? Why chase scarce human resources, with time constraints through this complex process??
Multiple answers.? The process stimulates recognition of variables that impact learning goals and subsequent performance.? It would necessitate that those who manage the massive resources America devotes to public education, actually question their own beliefs and assumptions, a reality check.? It kicks those managing the system out of their comfort zones.? And it is a discovery path for alternative and more creative or productive ways to achieve learning goals consistent with a rapidly changing environment, and to use the scarce resources invested.
Where the Rubber Meets the RoadReaders with a conscientious distaste for theory and conceptualization may not find the above very satisfying, perhaps impractical, perhaps spacey??
In fact, as a long time consultant dealing with corporate strategic planning, teaching it at a high level, and doing it in my own firms managed, the process works.? Per force, the models that one can employ at a grass roots level need to be shaped and polished to work in the real organizational environments.? This post simply introduces the sweep of issues that might impact reformulating K-12 efforts.? The next several posts will seek to bore in on how some of the historically highest impact factors might fit retooling of public K-12 schools? organization.
Further, little reinvention of educational wisdom is necessarily involved, excepting the ramping discovery of better explanations for how learning works, from the neural biological and neural net simulation work underway.? In the course of research for the series, a powerhouse of existing principles for improving K-12 learning could be found.? The unifying attribute of much of that work; it did not originate in our schools of education, or in the material most frequently cited as the bases for present K-12 pedagogy.
Lastly, an example to set up the next post and demonstrate that the kind of probing above has merit.? It is likely that the closest things to widely attempted (but difficult because of uncontrolled variables) experiments to specify K-12 organization change have been the studies of grade span.? They are everywhere, even in the last century, and proliferated in this one until NCLB took hold and dominated priorities.? In the literature review for this post, one finally quit counting those studies typically executed at a system level.?
But the research results have been anything but consistent, though generally favoring a K-8/9-12 stratification over the various middle-school options.? The lack of some definitive answer has been almost universally attributed by study authors to the lack of sophisticated statistical tools that can account for concomitant and intervening variables in creating performance differences from alternate transitions.
Another point of view, the wrong question was emphasized.? The most robust finding from this population of studies has been that student performance is primarily impacted by the transitions introduced by grade span elections. ?Studies show transition effects appear to dissipate within roughly a year, but seemingly never asked, what specifically are the behavioral causes and effects on students from the transition(s), and precisely how do they impact current learning?? For as long as there are grades, without some functional mechanism to mitigate the losses of learning performance traceable to any transition, the child will see not just the grade span effect, but a dozen transitions. ?
One cogent explanation resides in the socialization between student and teacher that must be rebuilt at each transition;?cumulative effects of transitions might also be expected to peak for students where learning is?challenged by socioeconomic and cultural status that impedes socialization adjustments. ?Another explanation is the effect on present capacities for teacher recognition and use of prior learning, a factor that has been repeatedly empirically demonstrated to greatly influence present learning.
Viewed from the above perspectives, there may be organizational fixes for the problem; one that incorporates a longitudinal strategy will be advanced next post.
And oft-used quote, but one that never ceases to challenge how we measure accountability for K-12 by something with greater validity than a state?s school grades based on standardized tests.? By Irish poet, William Butler Yeats:? ?Education is not the filling of a pail but the lighting of a fire.? ?Designing public K-12 for that destination should be the mission. ?Part two will dig deeper to suggest how real world school organization can still be adjusted to improve the learning that will be needed in our futures.
Source: http://edunationredux.blogspot.com/2013/01/alternate-organization-of-k-12-part-one.html
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Sunday, January 27, 2013
Technology kills jobs for middle class | TribLIVE
By The Associated Press
Published: Saturday, January 26, 2013, 12:01?a.m.
Updated 5 hours ago
NEW YORK ? Five years after the start of the Great Recession, the toll is terrifyingly clear: Millions of middle-class jobs have been lost in developed countries the world over.
And the situation is even worse than it appears.
Most of the jobs will never return, and millions more are likely to vanish as well, say experts who study the labor market. What?s more, these jobs aren?t just being lost to China and other developing countries, and they aren?t just factory work. Increasingly, jobs are disappearing in the service sector, home to two-thirds of all workers.
They?re being obliterated by technology.
Year after year, the software that runs computers and an array of other machines and devices becomes more sophisticated and powerful and capable of doing more efficiently tasks that humans have always done. For decades, science fiction warned of a future when we would be architects of our own obsolescence, replaced by our machines; an Associated Press analysis finds that the future has arrived.
?The jobs that are going away aren?t coming back,? says Andrew McAfee, principal research scientist at the Center for Digital Business at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and co-author of ?Race Against the Machine.? ??I have never seen a period where computers demonstrated as many skills and abilities as they have over the past seven years.?
The global economy is being reshaped by machines that generate and analyze vast amounts of data; by devices such as smartphones and tablet computers that let people work just about anywhere; by smarter, nimbler robots; and by services that let businesses rent computing power when they need it, instead of installing expensive equipment and hiring IT staffs to run it. Whole employment categories, from secretaries to travel agents, are starting to disappear.
?There?s no sector of the economy that?s going to get a pass,? says Martin Ford, who runs a software company and wrote ?The Lights in the Tunnel,? a book predicting widespread job losses. ?It?s everywhere.?
The numbers startle labor economists. In the United States, half the 7.5 million jobs lost during the Great Recession were in industries that pay middle-class wages, ranging from $38,000 to $68,000. But only 2 percent of the 3.5 million jobs gained since the recession ended in June 2009 are in midpay industries. Nearly 70 percent are in low-pay industries, 29 percent in industries that pay well.
In the 17 European countries that use the euro as their currency, the numbers are worse. Almost 4.3 million low-pay jobs have been gained since mid-2009, but the loss of midpay jobs has never stopped. A total of 7.6 million disappeared from January 2008 through last June.
Experts warn that this ?hollowing out? of the middle-class workforce is far from over. They predict the loss of millions more jobs as technology becomes even more sophisticated and reaches deeper into our lives. Maarten Goos, an economist at the University of Leuven in Belgium, says Europe could double its middle-class job losses.
Some occupations are beneficiaries of the march of technology, such as software engineers and app designers for smartphones and tablet computers. Overall, though, technology is eliminating far more jobs than it is creating.
To understand the impact technology is having on middle-class jobs in developed countries, the AP analyzed employment data from 20 countries; tracked changes in hiring by industry, pay and task; compared job losses and gains during recessions and expansions over the past four decades; and interviewed economists, technology experts, robot manufacturers, software developers, entrepreneurs and people in the labor force who ranged from CEOs to the unemployed.
The AP?s key findings:
? For more than three decades, technology has reduced the number of jobs in manufacturing. Robots and other machines controlled by computer programs work faster and make fewer mistakes than humans. Now, that same efficiency is being unleashed in the service economy, which employs more than two-thirds of the workforce in developed countries. Technology is eliminating jobs in office buildings, retail establishments and other businesses consumers deal with every day.
? Technology is being adopted by every kind of organization that employs people. It?s replacing workers in large corporations and small businesses, established companies and start-ups. It?s being used by schools, colleges and universities; hospitals and other medical facilities; nonprofit organizations and the military.
? The most vulnerable workers are doing repetitive tasks that programmers can write software for ? an accountant checking a list of numbers, an office manager filing forms, a paralegal reviewing documents for key words to help in a case. As software becomes even more sophisticated, victims are expected to include those who juggle tasks, such as supervisors and managers ? workers who thought they were protected by a college degree.
? Thanks to technology, companies in the Standard & Poor?s 500 stock index reported one-third more profit the past year than they earned the year before the Great Recession. They?ve also expanded their businesses, but total employment, at 21.1 million, has declined by a half-million.
? Start-ups account for much of the job growth in developed economies, but software is allowing entrepreneurs to launch businesses with a third fewer employees than in the 1990s. There is less need for administrative support and back-office jobs that handle accounting, payroll and benefits.
? It?s becoming a self-serve world. Instead of relying on someone else in the workplace or our personal lives, we use technology to do tasks ourselves. Some find this frustrating; others like the feeling of control. Either way, this trend will only grow as software permeates our lives.
? Technology is replacing workers in developed countries regardless of their politics, policies and laws. Union rules and labor laws may slow the dismissal of employees, but no country is attempting to prohibit organizations from using technology that allows them to operate more efficiently ? and with fewer employees.
Technological innovations have been throwing people out of jobs for centuries. But they eventually created more work, and greater wealth, than they destroyed. Ford, the author and software engineer, thinks there is reason to believe that this time will be different. He sees virtually no end to the inroads of computers into the workplace. Eventually, he says, software will threaten the livelihoods of doctors, lawyers and other highly skilled professionals.
Many economists are encouraged by history and think the gains eventually will outweigh the losses. But even they have doubts.
?What?s different this time is that digital technologies show up in every corner of the economy,? McAfee says.
Peter Lindert, an economist at the University of California, Davis, says the computer is more destructive than innovations in the Industrial Revolution because the pace at which it is upending industries makes it hard for people to adapt.
Occupations that provided middle-class lifestyles for generations can disappear in a few years. Utility meter readers are just one example. As power companies began installing so-called smart readers outside homes, the number of meter readers in the United States plunged from 56,000 in 2001 to 36,000 in 2010, according to the Labor Department.
In 10 years? That number is expected to be zero.
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Subscribe today! Click here for our subscription offers.Source: http://triblive.com/business/headlines/3351101-74/jobs-technology-software
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'Dateline NBC,' the signature broadcast for NBC News in primetime, premiered in 1992. Since then, it has been pioneering a new approach to primetime news programming. The multi-night franchise, supplemented by frequent specials, allows NBC to consistently and comprehensively present the highest-quality reporting, investigative features, breaking news coverage and newsmaker profiles.
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Saturday, January 26, 2013
How Technology Is Changing Work Patterns - Web2, Cloud ...
Guest post by Michelle Dale
Online business is a fairly new concept in the grand scheme of things, but from the way technology is changing and allowing us to adapt to an abundance of situations, teamed with the shaky global economy, it?s also one of the fastest growing ways to make a living.
Since 2005 I have been able to work entirely online, but since then my mission has been taking my business entirely paperless, and from 2007, in less than 2 short years, that was all made possible.
Limitless Possibilities
Part of what I love about working online is utilising technology to create that offline environment through the internet. The possibilities this can open up for my clients are limitless, in many cases allowing them to staff their business entirely online, to have all their business systems backed up in the cloud, and to? service their clients and customers through the internet. There are so many benefits to this (if you have an internet connection) including being able to work from anywhere in the world, with anyone in the world, and to be completely mobile. Not only this, moving your business online can be very cost-effective, and operations costs tend to be very low when you shop around for the best systems to fit your individual business needs.
This is where hiring an experienced online business consultant or manager can come in very handy, for example when clients hire me I can take a bird?s-eye look at their business operations and systems, with some very specific goals in mind, the first is moving everything digital, the second is saving them money, the third is making the daily operations more efficient, and finally giving them the support they need to operate effectively in their new online environment.
Virtual Assistant
Technology is making what seems like almost anything possible. Over the years, with the rise of virtual assistants and teams and online selling, we are able to work like never before. We?re replacing physical contracts with online ones that need to be signed with digital signatures, we?re moving the old style ?bookkeeping? from books into state-of-the-art online accounting systems, automating transactions via bank feeds, we?re no longer providing physical invoices or writing cheques, we?re sending digital invoices with interactive buttons allowing people to pay online.
Online trends show we?re now moving our traditional advertising and marketing from billboards, newspapers and magazine into social media, with Twitter and Facebook becoming a hive of activity with billions of users all doing business together. Take this a step further and traditional offline networking events are being replaced with webinars and online summits, and now rather than handing over a business card, we?re providing potential customers and clients links to our LinkedIn or Plaxo profiles. Online we?re reaching a much wider audience than has ever been possible before.
Digital Nomad
I am a digital nomad, which means that I?m moving around the world, without a home base. Often times I never know where I?ll be from one year to the next, but this doesn?t impact the operations of my business in any way ? this is a very powerful and liberating way to run a business, because it allows the kind of freedom a physical business could never offer. For example, since 2005 I have made all my calls ? local and international, online using Skype, for a fraction of the cost that I would have been charged by a phone company. I?ve been using a travel sim card so no matter where I am, I can receive calls on the same local rate mobile number, from anywhere in the world free of charge.
If you are running a business and you think it?s not possible to move your operations online, it?s well worth exploring the possibilities before dismissing anything, because in all likelihood what you?ve read has only slightly touched on the technology available, and there is so much more to discover.
Michelle Dale is an accomplished online business consultant and virtual assistant who has been in the industry for 7 years, developing her business while travelling through 6 countries. Along the way she met her husband and now has 2 children. Michelle has expanded www.virtualmissfriday.com into a multi-6 figure, multi-VA team supporting a global client base. In addition to working with clients she now mentors colleagues in the industry with achieving their own online service business goals through her business programmes, resources and one-on-one mentorship which can be found at www.thevaroadmap.com.
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Congress making budget promises it can't keep
8 hrs.
Next time you hear someone in Washington come up with a long-term plan to balance the federal budget, take it with a Capitol Building-sized grain of salt.
As the tax and spending battle rages on in the nation?s capital, Democrats and Republicans are vowing to replace temporary, stop-gap budget measures with a long-term plan to narrow the gap between how much the government raises in taxes and how much Congress agrees to spend.
Though bitterly divided over how to pull it off, both sides agree that a gradual, long-term, budget-balancing plan would do less damage to the economy than the steep, short-term spending cuts set to take effect in a few weeks.?Earlier this week, House Republicans set a 10-year timetable for bringing revenues and spending into line.
"Balancing the budget over the next 10 years means that we save the future for our kids and our grandkids," House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, said when the deal was announced.
Even if every member of Congress agreed with that goal, it?s a promise none of them can keep.
Any long term budget is subject to a long list of unknowns ? from disasters and wars, to recessions and financial crises - that can quickly knock it off course.?The list includes a future Congress that decides to tear up the plan and replace it with a new one.
?You can talk about a budget as a establishing a sense of direction but you can?t talk about a long term budget as a precise point of arrival,? said William Galston, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and a policy advisor in the Clinton administration. ?All sorts of things can alter the assumptions that underlie any long-term planning.?
Congress hit the pause button in the ongoing budget battle this week) by delaying a looming deadline to prevent the government from borrowing to pay its bills. The deal lets the Treasury Department continue to sell bonds to make up the gap between the taxes it collects and the spending Congress has authorized.
That measure effectively postponed the debt ceiling crunch until mid-May. The exact date is difficult to predict because the Treasury is able to juggle its bills for a few weeks as it approaches the borrowing cap.
The next hard deadline comes with automatic budget cuts ? the spending side of the so-called ?fiscal cliff? ? that were delayed until March 1 and pared down by $24 billion in the last-minute, year-end deal that raised taxes on the wealthiest households.
Those cuts, the so-called ?sequester,? were enacted in July 2011 after the last debt-ceiling standoff.
The hope was that the impact of the cuts would be so dire that the deadline would force a compromise in the long-standing budget deadlock. Republicans and the White House remain on a collision course over a long-term plan to replace the sequester?s meat clever approach to spending cuts.
Both sides agreed to come up with a long-term budget plan ? or forego their paychecks. (That?s another promise easier made than kept. The 27th Amendment requires that any change in elected representatives? salaries apply only to the next session of Congress. So the move is largely for show.)
Replacing the short-term budget measures with a 10-year plan begins with a series of guesses about future spending that are all but impossible to make. Will the U.S. fight a war in the next decade? How many natural disasters like Superstorm Sandy will prompt emergency relief spending? Will the cost of health care continue rising faster than the rate of inflation?
There are even bigger wild guesses embedded in the economic projections used to estimate how much money the government will take in through taxes. Will there be a recession in the next 10 years? If so, will it be mild or severe? Short or long?
Like any long-term plan, a relatively small miss on that estimate can have a big impact down the road. If the current $16 trillion U.S. economy grows at the 50-year historical average pace of about 3 percent, for example, in 10 years gross domestic product ? a rough measure of the nation?s income - will hit $21.5 trillion. If that growth rate continues at the current, roughly 2 percent pace, GDP will hit only $19.5 trillion ? generating less tax revenue from businesses and households even if tax rates remain steady.
?You can solve a lot of problems if you simply build in the kind of economic performance that we saw in the last six years of Reagan or the last five of Bill Clinton,? said Galston. ?It?s possible to do anything on paper if you don?t care what you?re doing.?
Source: http://www.nbcnews.com/business/economywatch/congress-making-budget-promises-it-cant-keep-1C8115972
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