Pixels guide the way for the visually impaired

Mar. 1, 2013 ? Images have been transformed into pixels and projected onto a headset to help the visually impaired in everyday tasks such as navigation, route-planning and object finding.

Developed using a video camera and mathematical algorithm, the researchers from the University of Southern California hope the pixels can provide more information and enhance the vision of patients already fitted with retinal implants.

Lead author of the paper, James Weiland, said: "Blind people with retinal implants can detect motion and large objects and haveimproved orientation when walking. In most cases, they can also read large letters."

"At the moment, retinal implants are still low-resolution. We believe that our algorithm will enhance retinal implants by providing the user with more information when they are looking for a specific item."

The findings have been presented today, March 1, in IOP Publishing's Journal of Neural Engineering.

A total of 19 healthy subjects were involved in the study, who each undertook training first to get used to the pixelated vision. During the study, they were fitted with a Head Mounted Display (HMD) and took part in three different experiments: walking an obstacle course; finding objects on an otherwise empty table; and searching for a particular target in a cluttered environment.

A video camera was mounted onto the HMD which collected real-world information in the view of the subject. Mathematical algorithms converted the real-world images into pixels, which were then displayed onto the HMD?s screen in front of the subject

The algorithms used intensity, saturation and edge-information from the camera?s images to pick out the five most important, or salient, locations in the image. Blinking dots at the side of the display provided the subjects with additional directional cues if needed.

All three of the experiments were performed with and without cues. When subjects used the directional cues, their head movements, the time to complete the task and the number of errors were all significantly reduced.

The subjects learnt to adapt to pixelated vision in all of the tasks, suggesting that image processing algorithms can be used to provide greater confidence to patients when performing tasks, especially in a new environment.

It is possible that the device could be fitted with voice description so that the subjects are provided with cues such as "the red target is to the left."

"We are currently looking to take this a step further with object recognition, so instead of telling subjects that ?the red object is to the left?, it will tell them that ?the soda can you want is to the left?,"continued Weiland.

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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Institute of Physics (IOP), via AlphaGalileo.

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

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Journal Reference:

1. N Parikh, L Itti, M Humayun, and J Weiland. Performance of visually guided tasks using simulated prosthetic vision and saliency-based cues. Journal of Neural Engineering, 2013; 10 (2) DOI: 10.1088/1741-2560/10/2/026017

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/~3/ZOqaSxH-vhU/130228194657.htm

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Key military players in Syria's civil war

Free Syrian Army fighters from the Knights of the North brigade move to reconnaissance a Syrian army forces base of al-Karmid, at Jabal al-Zaweya, in Idlib province, Syria, Wednesday, Feb. 27, 2013. Syrian warplanes carried out airstrikes on rebels trying to storm a police academy outside Aleppo on Wednesday, while jihadi fighters battled government troops along a key supply road leading to the southeastern part of the city, activists said. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)

Free Syrian Army fighters from the Knights of the North brigade move to reconnaissance a Syrian army forces base of al-Karmid, at Jabal al-Zaweya, in Idlib province, Syria, Wednesday, Feb. 27, 2013. Syrian warplanes carried out airstrikes on rebels trying to storm a police academy outside Aleppo on Wednesday, while jihadi fighters battled government troops along a key supply road leading to the southeastern part of the city, activists said. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)

BEIRUT (AP) ? A list of key military players in the Syrian civil war:

?SYRIAN REGIME: Despite major defections and the loss of significant territory to rebels, the Syrian military remains a potent force against a poorly armed opposition. President Bashar Assad's inner circle has largely remained cohesive and united, avoiding high-level defections that sapped the strength of other regimes, such as Moammar Gadhafi's in Libya, during Arab Spring uprisings. Assad's closest advisers include his younger brother, Maher, who commands forces protecting the capital, as well as the heads of four intelligence agencies that are playing key roles in the government's crackdown.

?PRO-REGIME MILITIAMEN: Shadowy fighters, known as shabiha, recruited from the ruling elite's Alawite sect operate as hired muscle for the Syrian regime. They are believed to be carrying out some of the most brutal attacks of the conflict, allowing Assad's government to deny direct responsibility for them.

?SUPREME MILITARY COUNCIL: Syria's main rebel units, known together as the Free Syrian Army, regrouped in December under a unified rebel command called the Supreme Military Council, following promises of more military assistance once a central council was in place. The Western-backed council is headed by Gen. Salim Idriss, who defected from the Syrian army, and a 30-member group of senior officers. Idriss spent 35 years in the Syrian military and is seen as a secular-minded moderate. The non-lethal aid the U.S. pledged Thursday in Rome will be directed to the military council.

?LOCAL BRIGADES AND MILITARY COUNCILS: Local units made up of tens of thousands of autonomous rebel fighters have very little, if any, central organization or command structure. Many of the fighters defected from the military; others are Syrian citizens who took up arms against the regime.

?JABHAT AL-NUSRA: An Islamist extremist group that has been behind some of the rebels' most significant battlefield successes. The U.S. has designated al-Nusra a terrorist organization, saying it is affiliated with the al-Qaida network. Al-Nusra has claimed responsibility for most of the deadliest suicide bombings targeting regime and military facilities. The presence of Islamic extremists among the rebels is one reason the West has not equipped the Syrian opposition with sophisticated weapons, such as anti-aircraft missiles. Al-Nusra has gained popularity among some rebels for its effectiveness while alienating other, more secular-minded fighters.

?FOREIGN FIGHTERS: Syria has become a magnet for foreign fighters and jihadists who also flocked to the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. No credible count of them exists, but anecdotal evidence suggests fighters from Libya, Yemen, Tunisia, the Netherlands and Britain are fighting against Assad's regime. Rebel commanders downplay the presence of foreign fighters, saying the conflict is purely a Syrian uprising.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/cae69a7523db45408eeb2b3a98c0c9c5/Article_2013-02-28-AP-ML-Syria-Military-Players-Glance/id-ed4068c09612400a8facfe3ec2ef0efa

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Scientists discover molecule that does double duty in stopping asthma attacks

Thursday, February 28, 2013

Scientists from Brigham and Women's Hospital are on the brink of the next treatment advancement that may spell relief for the nearly nineteen million adults and seven million children in the United States suffering from asthma. The scientists discovered two new drug targets in the inflammatory response pathway responsible for asthma attacks.

The study will be published on February 27, 2013 in Science Translational Medicine.

Researchers studied the lungs and blood of 22 people with mild and severe asthma. They saw that immune cells called natural killer cells and type 2 innate lymphoid cells played significant roles in airway inflammation in study participants with severe asthma.

Natural killer cells decreased airway inflammation by encouraging programmed cell death in immune cells called eosinophils, whereas type 2 innate lymphoid cells promoted airway inflammation by secreting cell-signaling molecules called interleukin-13.

Both mechanisms were controlled by a molecule called lipoxin A4 which is responsible for resolving inflammation. To achieve this, lipoxin A4 acted in both pro-resolving and anti-inflammatory ways. The researchers saw that lipoxin A4 encouraged natural killer cells to decrease inflammation by facilitating eosinophil cell death. Lipoxin A4 also discouraged type 2 innate lymphoid cells from promoting inflammation by blocking interleukin-13 secretion.

"Stopping airway inflammation is similar to putting out a forest fire," said Bruce Levy, MD, Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine Division, BWH Department of Internal Medicine, senior study author. "Firefighters tackle forest fires in two ways?dousing the fire with water and clearing away dry brush that could fuel the fire. Lipoxin A4 does just that to resolve inflammation. It is an airway inflammation fighter that performs the double duty of dampening pathways that ignite inflammation while at the same time clearing away cells that fuel inflammation."

In previous studies, Levy and his team discovered that lipoxin A4 production was defective in patients with severe asthma. Together with their new findings, this observation provides researchers and drug manufacturers with a new direction toward boosting lipoxin A4 in severe asthmatics when designing next-generation asthma therapies.

"Most patients with severe asthma have chronic airway inflammation that never fully resolves. This can lead to daily and often disabling symptoms despite available therapies. Our study provides new information on cellular targets that regulate inflammation and will enable the development of lipoxin-based therapeutics to decrease chronic inflammation in asthma and other diseases." said Levy.

###

Brigham and Women's Hospital: http://www.brighamandwomens.org

Thanks to Brigham and Women's Hospital 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/127055/Scientists_discover_molecule_that_does_double_duty_in_stopping_asthma_attacks

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Vimeo Adds ?Looks? To Its Enhancer Toolbox, Powered By Visual FX Specialist Vivoom

Vimeo is helping its creators to improve their videos through a series of visual effects that it?s calling ?Looks.? The new feature will provide more than 500 different filters its creators can use to enhance their videos, all of which can be added, previewed, and selected through a cloud-based editor on Vimeo?s site. They?ll be able to see how effects look compared against their original videos.

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

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Wall Street advances, on track for third day of gains

NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. stocks edged higher on Thursday, pointing to a third straight day of gains in the wake of some strong economic data, though a further advance may be limited with major averages near multi-year highs.

While some data released Thursday were rosy, a read on economic growth was weaker than expected, and analysts said a pullback may be in store a day after major equity indexes posted their biggest daily advance since early January.

Over the past two sessions, the S&P 500 has gained 1.9 percent, rising back above the closely watched level of 1,500. The Dow Jones industrial average moved within striking distance of an all-time high.

"The market is looking choppy, and I think investors should use this as an opportunity to sell into strength," said Matt McCormick, a money manager at Cincinnati-based Bahl & Gaynor. "This seems like an environment where someone should be conservative instead of aggressive."

The U.S. economy grew 0.1 percent in the fourth quarter, a weaker pace than expected, although a slightly better performance in exports and fewer imports led the government to scratch an earlier estimate of an economic contraction.

Separately, the number of Americans filing new claims for unemployment benefits fell more than expected last week, while the February Chicago Purchasing Managers Index unexpectedly rose to an 11-month high.

While equity markets suffered steep losses earlier in the week on concerns over European debt, they have since recovered, with the gains fueled by strong data and recent comments by Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke that showed continued support for the Fed's economic stimulus policy.

"Growth is still anemic and there are still issues with Europe. People seem to be ignoring the signs that would otherwise give them cause for concern," said McCormick, who helps oversee $8.2 billion in assets.

The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> was up 27.27 points, or 0.19 percent, at 14,102.64. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> was up 5.13 points, or 0.34 percent, at 1,521.12. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> was up 13.75 points, or 0.43 percent, at 3,176.01.

The benchmark S&P 500 has gained 1.4 percent in February, the Dow is up 1.7 percent and the Nasdaq has added 1 percent.

J.C. Penney Co Inc slumped 18 percent to $17.32 as the S&P's biggest decliner after the department store reported a steep drop in sales on Wednesday. Groupon Inc also slumped on weak revenue, with the stock off 25 percent at $4.50.

Mylan Inc jumped 6.5 percent to $30.45 on the Nasdaq after the generic drugmaker posted a 25 percent rise in fourth-quarter profit.

Investors were keeping an eye on the debate in Washington over sequestration - U.S. government budget cuts that will take effect starting on Friday if lawmakers fail to reach an agreement on spending and taxes. President Barack Obama and Republican congressional leaders arranged to hold last-ditch talks to prevent the cuts, but expectations were low that any deal would be produced.

With 93 percent of the S&P 500 companies having reported results so far, 69.5 percent have beaten profit expectations, compared with a 62 percent average since 1994 and 65 percent over the past four quarters, according to Thomson Reuters data.

Fourth-quarter earnings for S&P 500 companies are estimated to have risen 6.2 percent, according to the data, above a 1.9 percent forecast at the start of the earnings season.

(Editing by Bernadette Baum)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/stock-index-futures-point-slightly-higher-open-090532234--finance.html

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How Bad Did Analytics Bugs Fool Facebook Pages? Reach Looked Down 14% When It Wasn?t

Months of mysterious Insights bugs duped Facebook Page owners. The median Page's analytics showed it reached 14.39 percent fewer people than it actually did, according to early data and graphs from EdgeRank Checker, a Facebook analytics startup that gave us the first look. The bugs may have caused people to mistakenly undervalue their Pages, change strategies or buy ads to make up for "lost" reach

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/Olgc5UTBlXc/

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Lillehammer 2016 Youth Olympic Village targets lasting legacy ...

By Lauren Mattera at the World Sports Congress in London?

February 26 - Lillehammer 2016 promises its Winter Youth Olympic Village will act as a catalyst for future development in Norwegian sport and is set to leave a lasting legacy as one of the strongest development regions in Northern Europe.

The Norwegian city assures a strong legacy will result from its future Olympic Village - one of the few venues to be built from scratch ahead of the Games - which will provide the region with 360 student housing units for the Lillehammer University College and the Norwegian College of Elite Sport, claimed?Magnus Sverdrup, head of project management at Lillehammer 2016, here today.?

"The 2016 Youth Olympic Village will be part of a 10-year plan and will be the engine and tool to identify and develop talent in Norwegian sport," said Sverdrup.

"The Youth Olympic Village represents infrastructure that creates further development in terms of sport and education.

"It will help us find our future athletes, coaches and our future Olympians."

For a city which still benefits from the legacy created in the 1994 Winter Olympic Games, with the majority of venues having originally been built for thoseGames, a sustainable legacy has no doubt been at the heart of the design and construction of the infrastructure.

The Olympic Village, which will be located in the centre of the Olympic Park, has been specifically designed to reduce carbon footprint and is suitable for recreation facilities,?Sverdrup claimed.

It will act primarily as athlete accommodation with each housing unit holding up to four of the athletes competing in the Games, and will convert back into student accommodation for both the Lillehammer University College and the Norwegian College of Elite Sport post Games.

Lillehammer 2016 will host the Second Youth Winter Olympic Games after Innsbruck 2012

Lillehammer, which now has a population of around 26,000, has had to accommodate for its ever growing population through major infrastructure developments.

Lillehammer University College has witnessed an impressive rise in the number of its top sports students, from 13 in 1999 to 155 in 2010 - with a quarter of the country's top sport students living or training in the Lillehammer region.

"As the region is a centre for major national and international Winter Sports events in Norway," said?Sverdrup.

"We believe it [the Youth Olympic Village] will further boost this development.

"This is important for both the Norwegian National Olympic Committee and Lillehammer as a whole.

Construction on the facility is planned to get underway in August this year and will finish in March 2015 - allowing the city a whole year to test the facilities.

Meanwhile, out of the academic calendar the Youth Olympic Village will be used to welcome young athletes and coaches to come and train at the facilities.

Lillehammer, the only candidate city at the time, won the right to host the second Youth Winter Olympic Games in December 2011 after losing out to Innsbruck to hold the first in 2012.

Preparations for the Games were given a boost after their plans were highly praised following their first inspection from the International Olympic Committee (IOC) Coordination Commission late last year.

Contact the writer of this story at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Related stories
October 2012:?Lillehammer 2016 Winter Youth Olympics gets early boost from IOC Coordination Commission
February 2012:?Exclusive - Lillehammer 2016 promise to bring own identity to Winter Youth Olympics

Source: http://www.insidethegames.biz/olympics/youth-olympics/2016/1013083-lillehammer-2016-youth-olympic-village-targets-lasting-legacy

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Historical Echoes: Cash or Credit? Payments and Finance in ...

Historical Echoes: Cash or Credit? Payments and Finance in Ancient Rome
Marco Del Negro and Mary Tao

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Imagine yourself a Roman citizen in the 1st Century B.C. You?ve gone shopping with your partner, who?s trying to convince you to buy a particular item. The thing?s pretty expensive, and you demur because you?re short of cash. You may think that back then such an excuse would get you off scot-free. What else can you possibly do: Write a check? Well, yes, writes the poet Ovid in his ?Ars Amatoria, Book I.? And since your partner knows it, you have no way out (the example below shows some gender bias on Ovid?s part. Fortunately, a few things have changed over the past 2,000 years):

But when she has her purchase in her eye,
She hugs thee close, and kisses thee to buy;
?Tis what I want, and ?tis a pen?orth too;
In many years I will not trouble you.?
If you complain you have no ready coin,
No matter, ?tis but writing of a line;
A little bill, not to be paid at sight:
(Now curse the time when thou wert taught to write.)

In a previous Historical Echoes post, we describe some of the characters in early Roman high and low finance. Here, we look at their modus operandi.

Large sums of money changed hands in Roman times. People bought real estate, financed trade, and invested in the provinces occupied by the Roman legions. How did that happen? Cicero writes, in Epistulae ad Familiares 5.6 and Epistulae ad Atticum 13.31, respectively: ?I have bought that very house for 3.5 million sesterces? and ?Gaius Albanius is the nearest neighbor: he bought 1,000 iugera [625 acres] of M. Pilius, as far as I can remember, for 11.5 million sesterces.? How? asks historian H. W. Harris (in ?The Nature of Roman Money?)??mechanically speaking, did Cicero pay three and half million sesterces he laid out for his famous house in the Palatine . . . . That would have meant packing and carrying some three and half tons of coins through the streets of Rome. When C. Albanius bought an estate from C. Pilius for eleven and half million sesterces, did he physically send the sum in silver coins?? Harris? answer is: ?Without much doubt, these were at least for the most part documentary [i.e., paper] transactions. The commonest procedure for large property purchases in this period was the one casually alluded to by Cicero [De?Officiis 3.59] . . . ?nomina facit, negotium conficit? . . . provides the credit [or ?bonds??nomina], completes the purchase.?

What exactly are these nomina??from which, by the way, comes the term ?nominal,? so commonly used in economics. In his Ph.D. dissertation ?Bankers, Moneylenders, and Interest Rates in the Roman Republic,? C. T. Barlow writes (pp. 156-7): ?An entry in an account book was called a nomen. Originally the word meant just that?a name with some numbers attached. By Cicero?s day . . . [n]omen could also mean ?debt,? referring to the entries in the creditor?s and the debtor?s account books.? And this ?debt was in fact the lifeblood of the Roman economy, at all levels . . . nomina were a completely standard part of the lives of people of property, as well as being an everyday fact of life for a great number of others? (Harris, p. 184). Pliny the Younger writes, for example, (in Epistulae 3.19): ?Perhaps you will ask whether I can raise these three millions without difficulty. Well, nearly all my capital is invested in land, but I have some money out at interest and I can borrow without any trouble.?

For concreteness, say that some fellow, Sempronius, owes you one million sesterces. You?or in case you?re a wealthy senator, or eques, your financial advisor (procurator?Titus Pomponius Atticus was Cicero?s)?would record the debt in the ledger. What if you suddenly needed the money to buy some property? Do you have to wait for Sempronius to bring you a bag with 1 million sesterces? No! As long as Sempronius is a worthy creditor (a bonum nomen [see Barlow, p. 156]; in the modern parlance of credit rating agencies, a triple-A creditor), you?d do what Cicero says: transfer the nomina, strike the deal. For example, Cicero writes to his financial advisor Atticus (Ad Atticum 12.31): ?If I were to sell my claim on Faberius, I don?t doubt my being able to settle for the grounds of Silius even by a ready money payment.? As Harris (p. 192) observes: ?Nomina were transferable, and by the second century B.C., if not earlier, were routinely used as a means of payment for other assets . . . . The Latin term for the procedure by which the payer transferred a nomen that was owed to him to the seller was delegatio.?

So, we?ve seen that Romans could settle payments by transferring nomina. But was there a market for nomina, just like there?s one today in, say, mortgage-backed securities? According to both Barlow and Harris, the answer is yes. They claim that the Romans took the transferability one step further and essentially turned ?mere entries in account books? into ?negotiable notes? (see Barlow, p. 159, and Harris, p. 192). Not everyone agrees. The economic historian P. Temin (?Financial Intermediation in the Early Roman Empire?) also reports evidence of assignability of loans, opening the possibility of ?wider negotiability, but,? he adds, ?we do not have any evidence that it happened? (p. 721). Yet some indirect evidence is there. For instance, the idea of negotiable notes appears to be well understood by Roman jurists, such as Ulpian (The Digest of Justinian XXX.I.44): ?A party who bequeaths a note bequeaths the claim and not merely the material on which the writing appears. This is proved by a sale, for when a note is sold, the debt by which it is evidenced is also considered to be sold.?

What if you had to transfer money to somebody in a different part of the globe? As the Roman dominions expanded into Greece, Spain, North Africa, and Asia, Roman finance actually faced this logistical problem. If you?re in Rome and want to, say, finance Caius? mines in Thapsus, North Africa, how do you get him the money? He needs the silver to buy material, slaves, and other things, but you?re naturally very reluctant to see your money sail away for Africa, as the chances of it getting there aren?t that high (see pirates, shipwrecks, etc.). ?Permutatio, the transfer of funds from place to place through paper transactions, was Rome?s great contribution to ancient banking? (Barlow, p. 168). It worked as follows: The publicani were private companies in charge of tax collection in the provinces (as well as many other tasks; see ?Publicani,? by U. Malmendier). They had a branch in Rome and one in Thapsus. So, you?d give them the silver in Rome (or transfer them some nomina) and they?d divert some of their tax collection in North Africa to Caius. This is also how the Republic would finance its public spending overseas. Since taxes were collected throughout the provinces, by trading claims on taxes Romans could transfer funds across the globe?or at least to the part of the globe they had conquered.

Interestingly, some historians measure the sophistication of Roman finance ?by the extent banks were present? (Temin, p. 719). While it is true that we have no evidence of a 1st Century B.C. Wells Fargo, this may not necessarily imply lack of sophistication. Prior to the Great Recession in the United States, a large chunk of financial intermediation didn?t involve banks?it went through the ?shadow banking system.? Roman high finance ?functioned primarily on the basis of brokerage? (K. Verboven, ?Faeneratores, Negotiatores and Financial Intermediation in the Roman World,? p. 12), and hence was a bit like a proto-shadow banking system, as we suggest in our prior post. Like the shadow-banking system in the United States, it was fragile. Going back to our earlier example, we note that if whomever you want to buy property from starts wondering about the creditworthiness of Sempronius, she will not accept his nomina in payment and will want cash. That?ll force you to call in the loan to Sempronius, who in order to pay you will call in his loan to Titus, and so on. But financial crises in ancient Rome are the subject of a future post.

We are grateful to Cameron Hawkins of the University of Chicago for help navigating the literature.

Source: http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2013/02/historical-echoes-cash-or-credit-payments-and-finance-in-ancient-rome/

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Kristen Stewart Oscars Dress: Grade It!

Source: http://www.thehollywoodgossip.com/2013/02/kristen-stewart-oscars-fashion-grade-it/

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Small Business Internet Marketing Best Practices

The small business online internet marketing company is constantly devising new strategies for their clients. Best practices for online marketing strategies include a number of technical and traditional aspects for the best results. For starters, the website needs to be developed properly in order for any marketing method to work. Essentially, Internet marketing begins with the website. This is why design and planning are so critical.

Internet marketing techniques should be integrated into the website from the outset. Many novices are unaware that critical aspects such as keywords, meta tags and headers should be designed according to the products and services offered, in addition to appealing to the target audience.

Good website designs need to be properly researched and planned. Technical user friendly aspects are important, but it is every bit as critical to understand how search engine optimization can affect business sales. For example, a business can have one of the best looking and most cutting edge websites around - but if it is not designed for search engine friendliness, the public will not be able to find it.

All of the information that a reader needs should be readily available and easy to access from the moment they hit the landing page. Web searchers do not have the patience to go through slow pages and large amounts of data to find what they are looking for.

Also, content should be engaging so that the visitor is enticed to stay on the website as long as possible. The longer a web visitor stays on the site, the better the chance that they will eventually buy something.

All websites are not created equal. Therefore, a professional and experienced small business internet marketing company will devise specialized strategies that are tailored according to the company's service or product and its target audience.

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Source: http://www.news4press.com/Small-Business-Internet-Marketing-Best-P_720187.html

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Non-brittle glass possible: In probing mysteries of glass, researchers find a key to toughness

Feb. 26, 2013 ? In a paper published online Feb. 26 in the journal Nature Communications, a Yale University team and collaborators propose a way of predicting whether a given glass will be brittle or ductile -- a desirable property typically associated with metals like steel or aluminum -- and assert that any glass could have either quality.

Ductility refers to a material's plasticity, or its ability to change shape without breaking.

"Most of us think of glasses as brittle, but our finding shows that any glass can be made ductile or brittle," said Jan Schroers, a professor of mechanical engineering and materials science at Yale, who led the research with Golden Kumar, a professor at Texas Tech University. "We identified a special temperature that tells you whether you form a ductile or brittle glass."

The key to forming a ductile glass, they said, is cooling it fast. Exactly how fast depends on the nature of the specific glass.

Focusing on a new group of glasses known as bulk metallic glasses (BMGs) -- metal alloys, or blends, that can be extremely pliable yet also as strong as steel -- researchers studied the effect of a so-called critical fictive temperature (CFT) on the glasses' mechanical properties at room temperature.

When forming from liquid, there is a temperature at which glass becomes too viscous for reconfiguration and freezes. This temperature is called the glass transition temperature. Based on experiments with three representative bulk metallic glasses, the researchers said there is also, for each distinct alloy, a critical temperature that determines the brittleness or plasticity of the glass. This is the CFT.

Researchers said it's possible to categorize glasses in two groups -- those that will be brittle because in liquid form their CFT is above the glass transition temperature, and those that will be ductile, because in liquid form their CFT is below the glass transition temperature.

They previously thought a liquid's chemical composition alone would determine whether a glass would be brittle or ductile.

"That's not the case," Schroers said. "We can make any glass theoretically ductile or brittle. And it is the critical fictive temperature which determines how experimentally difficult it is to make a ductile glass. That is the major contribution of this work."

The finding applies theoretically to all glasses, not metallic glasses only, he said.

"A glass can have completely different properties depending on the rate at which you cool it," Schroers said. "If you cool it fast, it is very ductile, and if you cool it slow it?s very brittle. We anticipate that our finding will contribute to the design of ductile glasses, and in general contribute to a deeper understanding of glass formation."

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Story Source:

The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Yale University. The original article was written by Eric Gershon.

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

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Journal Reference:

1. Golden Kumar, Pascal Neibecker, Yan Hui Liu, Jan Schroers. Critical fictive temperature for plasticity in metallic glasses. Nature Communications, 2013; 4: 1536 DOI: 10.1038/ncomms2546

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/top_science/~3/IAkXMDL7waM/130226114023.htm

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Renton coach, Hazen team honored with All-Seamount awards | GYMNASTICS

By BRIAN BECKLEY
Renton Reporter Assistant Editor
February 20, 2013 ? 5:31 PM

Renton's Alicia Cunningham was named All-Seamount gymnastics Coach of the year Tuesday and the Hazen Highlanders were given the sportsmanship award.

Lindbergh sophomore Jenna Louise and Freshman Autumn Doolittle were each named to the All-Seamount first team, as was Renton senior Elizabeth Murtaugh.

Making the second team were Lindbergh senior Makia Williams and junior Marissa Leonard. Hazen junior Kylie Magar also received second-team honors.

Renton's Cynthia Fang and Kimberly Hoang, along with Lindbergh's Lindsey Pfluger and Jasmine Rua were all named honorable mentions.

Source: http://feeds.soundpublishing.com/~r/rensports/~3/z0LNUMkDtgI/192160751.html

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Boba Tea, Milk Teas, Taiwanese, Bobalife, Bubble, Fung Brothers ...

I have admittedly not been a huge fan of boba tea in the past. In fact, I kind of don?t like tea in general (I know, I know, it?s amazing, yadda yadda). I do drink it, though, because it?s a much healthier alternative to most flavored drinks. Nevertheless, I have always had an aversion to boba tea until very recently when I went to Tea Chai Te here in Portland. There, I found out you can actually get flavors of the boba beads that are super fruity and a little tart; as a result, I am now completely obsessed. If only I?d listened to my friends who have been raving about boba for ages, much like the comedy duo Fung Brothers,?whose parody video ?Bobalife? is both hilarious as well as a rather accurate depiction of how enamoring boba tea actually is.

The video also features?Kevin Lien,?Priscilla Liang and?Aileen Xu, according to Channel Apa, all singing to the tune of Carly Rae Jepson?s ?Good Time? and eventually to what my limited radio knowledge thinks is ?Faded? by Tyga. The boba team touts the benefits and wonders of this Taiwanese drink, which are actually pretty awesome. You can get boba milk green tea and get all that fantastic stuff we regularly talk about here at Blisstree.

While I realize bubble tea is incredibly popular, I don?t think I?d ever given it quite this much thought before, but now I have a feeling I?ll be thinking about my boobs every time I drink it. Thanks, Fung Brothers! But seriously:?I suggest not drinking while watching this video, as you will probably spray liquid (and tapioca beads, perchance) all over your computer screen. Without further ado, I present you with ?Bobalife?:

[via?Huffington Post]

Source: http://www.blisstree.com/2013/02/24/food/boba-tea/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=boba-tea

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Foreigners To North Korea To Get Uncensored 3G

Foreign visitors going to North Korea will be able to receive uncensored 3G data, starting Mar 1. Koryolink, a joint venture between Egyptian company Orascom Telecom Holding and North Korean state-owned Korea Post and Telecommunications Corporation (KPTC), has set up a 3G service for visitors into the country. The service, which is not available to locals, won?t come cheap. A $100 Wi-Fi hotspot and $200 SIM card will be needed, after which 2 Gb of data will cost $300, and 10 Gb for $525. Phone calls abroad will cost $0.50 a minute to European countries like Switzerland and France, and $7 a minute to the US. Calls to South Korea, however, are blocked. According to the AP, services typically banned like Twitter and Skype will be available on Koryolink?s network. North Koreans are blocked from the global Web, and only allowed some 3G services such as MMS messaging and subscriptions to the state-run paper, Rodong Sinmun. Calls to foreign numbers are also blocked. This news comes just after the country started to allow foreigners to bring their own phones into the country to use with Koryolink SIM cards. It?s not clear if the new uncensored service will be extended to SIM cards that are available to visitors, so you can skip on buying the hotspot. Koryolink is 75 percent owned by Orascom. Orascom has a 3G license in North Korea that was awarded in 2008. Its censored service to the locals had about 1 million subscribers as of February 2012. The country?s capital of Pyongyang has a population of about 2 million.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/umYf-_iE9EE/

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President's personal life hits French stage

PARIS (AP) ? A vow to keep his private life out of the public eye helped sweep Francois Hollande to power last year as France's president, attracting voters tired of his flashy predecessor's amorous exploits. Now, the words of the one-time dull Socialist are back to bite him in a new play.

"Mr. Normal, His Women and Me," a comedy of errors set in the presidential Elysee Palace, is inspired by a real-life Twitter scandal involving his glamorous live-in girlfriend, journalist Valerie Trierweiler, and the elegant and influential mother of Hollande's four children, politician Segolene Royal.

The affair last year shook up Hollande's carefully cultivated dull image and hurt his popularity. And it immediately caught the attention of director and writer Bernard Uzan.

"When I first saw the tweet... it was a vaudeville before my eyes," said Uzan, referring to a message sent by Trierweiler during last June's legislative elections expressing support for Royal's political opponent.

Days later, Royal lost her bid for a parliamentary seat. Widely criticized as a vindictive move, the tweet went viral and dominated French media for days.

When writing the play, Uzan says he interviewed real politicians and used genuine quotes and anecdotes.

Indeed, the characters are very thinly disguised. The play features a portly, bespectacled protagonist called Francois Gouda ? named after a Dutch cheese ? who's chased around the Elysee by an obsessive ex-partner, Marjolaine Loyal, and bossy First Lady Nathalie Valtriere, who likes designer dresses.

Though it is fictional, the play ? which opened on Jan. 24 ? points out some uncomfortable truths about the last nine months, which have seen Hollande's popularity plunge at the same speed as the country's economic fortunes.

"I, as president, won't expose my private life to the eyes of the French," says Gouda, evoking Hollande's pledge a month before his election victory in May to not mix up his public and private lives.

Hollande's words were calculated to distance himself from his conservative predecessor Nicolas Sarkozy. He was criticized for letting his private life get too public during his presidency, divorcing his second wife Cecilia and marrying his third, former supermodel and singer Carla Bruni-Sarkozy while in office.

Two months after winning the election, it was Hollande in the hot seat, answering an uncomfortable question on Bastille Day about his own love triangle. His 27-year-old son, Thomas, was dragged into to the affair, dubbed "tweetgate," to defend his mother, Royal.

Mirroring the image political satirists paint of Hollande, the play shows the presidential character as incapable of controlling the two warring women who throw insults at each other.

To chuckles, an exasperated Gouda says, "I never asked to be here ... Why can't I just resign, like the pope?"

Actor Daniel Jean Colloredo plays the president as a weak, ridiculous leader ? steered by the characters around him, including his aide who tries to teach him the confidence to say "I am a winner" to a mirror. He eventually manages with a weak "we-we-winner."

"He really doesn't have the strength of character to choose either woman," said Colleredo.

Hollande's ex-partner Royal was back in the news this week causing controversy, with an announcement of her appointment as vice president of the new government-funded Public Investment Bank.

Top business leader Laurence Parisot questioned Royal's experience for the job, while journalists have called it a political appointment from the Elysee to keep Royal happy ? a charge she vehemently denies.

The play also tries to address the key question on everyone's lips: What is the irresistible appeal of Hollande, who has been nicknamed "flanby" after a bland custard dessert?

"We asked ourselves this, too. How can this (love triangle) have come about?" says Dominique Merot, the actress who plays Loyal. "He must have a lot of charm behind closed doors."

____

Follow Thomas Adamson at http://Twitter.com/ThomasAdamsonAP

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/presidents-personal-life-hits-french-stage-142356808.html

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Can escape clause save voting rights provision? (The Arizona Republic)

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

Source: http://news.feedzilla.com/en_us/stories/politics/top-stories/287032175?client_source=feed&format=rss

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R.J. Reynolds Asks Florida Supreme Court To Hold Case In Abeyance

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

Source: http://www.lexis.com/research/xlink?canceldest=form&keyenum=25271&keytnum=0&searchtype=get&search=26-12%20Mealey's%20Litig.%20Rep.%20Tobacco%201%20(2013)&view=full&ORIGINATION_CODE=00144%20target='_blank'

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Little Becks to net whopping 50million pounds as Chinese football ambassador

Shanghai News.Net - Saturday 23rd February, 2013

Embattled tech firm Nokia will start manufacturing cheaper mobile handsets in a bid to fend off growing competition from Chinese rivals at the lower end of the market, it has emerged. The new ...

Chinese official sacked from Communist Party over grinning at accident images

Shanghai News.Net - Saturday 23rd February, 2013

A Chinese official has reportedly been expelled from the Communist party and is facing charges, after public outrage over images showing him grinning at the scene of a 2012 fatal bus crash. Yang ...

Little Becks to net whopping 50million pounds as Chinese football ambassador

Shanghai News.Net - Saturday 23rd February, 2013

Football ace David Beckham is set to gain a massive 50 million pounds for being an ambassador for Chinese football and an international representative for the Chinese Super League (CSL). The former ...

Two Chinese liquor giants fined for price fixing

Shanghai News.Net - Saturday 23rd February, 2013

China's top two liquor makers, Kweichew Moutai and Wu Liangye, were fined a total of 449 million yuan ($71.41 million) for price fixing, according to price regulators. The Guizhou-based Moutai and ...

350 held in China for online train ticket scalping

Shanghai News.Net - Friday 22nd February, 2013

Police in China have arrested 353 people for using unauthorised online services to book an excessive number of train tickets and reselling them for profit. In the crackdown on illegal use of the ...

China has over 53 mn private cars

Shanghai News.Net - Friday 22nd February, 2013

The number of registered private cars in China reached 53.08 million by the end of 2012, the National Bureau of Statistics said. The figure was up 22.8 percent from a year earlier, Xinhua ...

Obama Abe Discuss North Koreas Provocative Action

Shanghai News.Net - Friday 22nd February, 2013

U.S. President Barack Obama says he and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe discussed North Korea and a response to Pyongyang's "provocative" action. The president said he and Mr. Abe are ...

Is this the HQ of the worlds new secret war Chinas hacking unit is exposed

The Guardian - Saturday 23rd February, 2013

When a US computer security company identified the base for the Chinese army's cyber espionage team, it was just the latest revelation of a new era when transnational attacks can come at the ...

Indias rice revolution Chinese scientist questions claim of massive harvests

The Guardian - Saturday 23rd February, 2013

People work on a rice field in Nalanda district, Bihar, India, where world record yields are said to have been achieved. Photograph: Chiara Goia/Observer Food ...

China energy use rises 4

IOL - Saturday 23rd February, 2013

Beijing - Energy consumption by China, the world's leading emitter of C02, rose 3.9 percent in 2012 from the previous year but fell by 3.6 percent per unit of gross domestic product, the ...

Do you really love China

China Daily - Saturday 23rd February, 2013

Hello, I am Minic! how are you! hope you are fine and in perfect condition of health.I went through your profile today and i read it and took interest in it,if you don't mind i will like you ...

Consensus reached on Central China Economic Belt

China Daily - Saturday 23rd February, 2013

/enpproperty--> WUHAN - Mayors of four provincial capital cities in Central China on Saturday signed a strategic partnership agreement vowing a coordinated effort in building the Central China ...

China to Produce Abroad 3 Mn. Barrels of Oil A Day by 2015.

MENAFN - Saturday 23rd February, 2013

(MENAFN - Qatar News Agency) Chinese oil companies will produce three million barrels of oil a day at foreign oil fields by 2015, the Chinese media says on Friday with reference to a report of the ...

Moodys Sees Chinese Economic Growth at 8

MENAFN - Saturday 23rd February, 2013

(MENAFN - Qatar News Agency) Moody's rating agency expects expansionary monetary and fiscal policy in China to continue and growth to be stronger this year.China s economy has entered the year ...

Chinas Renewable Energy Generation Soared in 2012

MENAFN - Saturday 23rd February, 2013

(MENAFN - Qatar News Agency) China's renewable energy power generation in 2012 rose 30.3 percent from a year earlier to 968 billion kilowatt-hours, according to the State Electricity Regulatory ...

Chinas 2013 growth to reach 8.23 pct report

Global Times - Saturday 23rd February, 2013

Economic growth is expected to pick up 0.43 percentage points from last year to reach 8.23 percent in 2013, according to a report released Saturday.Export growth will accelerate to 12.22 percent ...

Former Taiwan leader sentenced to 20 years in jail

Global Times - Saturday 23rd February, 2013

Former leader of Taiwan Chen Shui-bian on Friday was sentenced to 20 years in prison as a combined punishment for a list of crimes he committed.Taiwan's High Court on Thursday also announced a ...

Vice Premier pledges support for Chinas SMEs

China Daily - Saturday 23rd February, 2013

has pledged. During his two-day inspection tour in the northern port city of Tianjin that ended on Friday, Zhang called for favorable policies and market environment, as well as better social ...

Slide Snake Town in East China

China Daily - Saturday 23rd February, 2013

Copyright 1995 - 2010 . All rights reserved. The content (including but not limited to text, photo, multimedia information, etc) published in this site belongs to China Daily Information Co (CDIC). ...

Taiwan police arrest tomb raider report

West Australian - Saturday 23rd February, 2013

TAIPEI (AFP) - Police in Taiwan have arrested a suspected grave robber thought to have stolen gold jewellery worth more than half a million dollars from hundreds of tombs across the island, a report ...

Taiwan shares close up 0.49

Taiwan Headlines - Saturday 23rd February, 2013

Taipei, Feb. 23 (CNA) Taiwan share prices closed up 39.17 points, or 0.49 percent, at 7,986.89 Saturday on turnover of NT$53.54 billion (US$1.81 billion). (By Frances ...

China unlikely to join looming currency war experts

Global Times - Saturday 23rd February, 2013

The finance ministers and central bankers of G20 member countries tried to talk down the risk of a currency war in a meeting held earlier this month.However, the world's major economies may not ...

Source: http://www.shanghainews.net/index.php/sid/212774427/scat/9366300fc9319e9b

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Automatically Clean Up Gmail on a Schedule with This Script

Maintaining inbox zero and dealing with old emails takes work (for some, too much work!). This Google Apps script lightens the load a bit by automatically archiving or deleting old emails that are cluttering your inbox, based on a schedule you set.

Whipped up by John Day, these time-based Gmail filters will move old read emails to the trash or auto-archive them.

So, for example, you could automatically get rid of expired daily deals emails or other promotional emails that are more than two days old. First, create a Gmail filter that automatically applies the label "delete me" to that semi-spam when it comes in.

Then the Google Apps script, which you'll need to authorize for your Gmail account, takes care of deleting emails with that label that are older than two days. You can adjust the number of days before messages are moved to the trash in the script (see the delayDays variable and change the 2 to another number) and under the Resources > Current project's triggers... option, set the script to check your inbox every half hour or other interval.

For those old, read emails you want to keep but move out of your inbox, there's another function that archives them. (In the script you can also adjust the older_than search to something other than 2d and add or exclude other labels.)

For more details, see John's post, where he offers the code for you to paste into a new Google Apps Script. I've shared this Google Apps script with the two functions pasted in, so you can just make a copy of it to your account and run it per John's instructions.

Create time-based Gmail filters with Google Apps Script | Johneday via adayzdone

Photo by Storozhenko (Shutterstock)

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~3/xZ08jk-BMz8/automatically-clean-up-gmail-on-a-schedule-with-this-script

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New grants to innovation corps 'nodes' further enhance public-private partnership

Public release date: 22-Feb-2013
[ | E-mail | Share ]

Contact: Maria C. Zacharias
mzachari@nsf.gov
703-292-8454
National Science Foundation

Awards to 3 university consortia will connect academic researchers with technological, entrepreneurial and business communities, and foster innovation education

Today the National Science Foundation (NSF) announced the latest round of grant awards made under the NSF's Innovation Corps (I-Corps) effort. I-Corps is a public-private partnership to help develop scientific and engineering discoveries into useful technologies.

The three awards, totaling $11,239,921, went to three consortia of universities, which will act as I-Corps "nodes" to support regional needs for innovation education, infrastructure and research. The three consortia are:

The I-Corps Node: NSF Bay Area Regional I-Node Program, led by Richard Lyons at the University of California, Berkeley's Haas School of Business, and Silicon Valley entrepreneur Steve Blank, who teaches at Berkeley and Stanford, in collaboration with University of California, San Francisco and Stanford University.

This $3,750,000 award is supporting the consortium's efforts to produce an extensive entrepreneurship platform that is built on the scientific, technology, and engineering strengths, business thought leadership, and external ecosystems of the three universities. The node is applying and disseminating the Lean LaunchPad methodology through classes, focused training, and mentoring services to help drive the creation of science and technology-based startups. The partners are investigating how I-Corps Node training influences research commercialization outcomes and exploring ways to better understand the early stages of team formation and evolution, formation and evolution of advising networks, timing and content of decisions, and real-time attention allocation. The node is also studying the formation of entrepreneurial teams and ways to measure team evolution and effectiveness, in order to better understand how they can be supported in their efforts to commercialize invention.

The I-Corps Node: DC, Maryland, Virginia Region, led by Dean Chang at the University of Maryland, in collaboration with George Washington University and Virginia Tech

This $3,749,804 award is supporting the consortium's implementation of two initiatives that are specifically designed to increase the success rate of participating teams: (1) establishing a formal DMV I-Corps Mentor Network designed to attract, train, and retain top-notch mentors and (2) offering a post I-Corps Support program to help teams with a series of follow-on activities (e.g., continued customer development, minimum viable product prototyping, technology transfer and licensing, fundraising, legal services, and hiring executive talent). The node is implementing an Online Nodal Network (ONN) that ties together and augments existing tools, addressing the needs that are particularly valuable to the nature of I-Corps teams. In addition, the node is studying the effect of I-Corps training on: (1) any adjustments in orientation toward firm creation, (2) the proportion of teams that reach initial profitability, (3) the time required to reach initial profitability, and (4) the resources expended (time, money) in the start-up process. The node is also engaging underrepresented minority participation and HBCUs through cooperation with the Graduate Degrees for Minorities in Engineering and Science, Inc. consortium.

The I-Corps Node: New York City Regional Innovation Node (NYCRIN), led by Gillian Small at the City University of New York, in collaboration with New York University and Columbia University.

This $3,740,117 award is supporting the consortium's work in leveraging the existing innovation ecosystem present in New York City (NYC) to provide innovators throughout the United States with a structured portal for access to the unique NYC-regional combination of world-class universities, venture capital investment resources, and one of the nation's fastest-growing technology start-up environments. The node will develop an open-source software suite for Lean analytics and Lean startup operation, integrating tools on which Lean entrepreneurs rely. NYCRIN is offering scalable workshops, seminars and counseling sessions to disseminate best practices and the Lean LaunchPad methods. The node also includes a wide range of other universities in a four-state region, providing them with open-source tools and online access to information to more broadly disseminate NYCRIN activities and outputs.

By instilling an understanding of innovation and providing opportunities for knowledge transfer between academia and industry, NSF will equip more faculty and students to be creative, technologically-savvy leaders. These nodes add to existing I-Corps nodes at Georgia Tech and the University of Michigan.

"These new nodes will significantly expand our reach in bringing innovation education to faculty and students," said NSF Program Director Don Millard. "The three consortia, with different and distinct industries in their region, are excited about the impact they will have, on and beyond their campuses. The addition of these nodes will significantly help advance the I-Corps program's National Innovation Network."

"The nodes are the foundation of a national innovation ecosystem, and focus on the front lines of local and regional commercialization efforts. We are looking to them to provide long-term, critical education infrastructure and feedback to the programs that support the commercialization of our nation's basic research portfolio," said Errol Arkilic, NSF I-Corps program director.

The nodes will work cooperatively to build, utilize and sustain a national innovation ecosystem that further enhances the development of technologies, products and processes that benefit society. The interconnected nodes of this network may be diverse in research areas, resources, tools, programs, capabilities and in geographic locations, while the network will have the flexibility to grow or reconfigure as needs arise.

###

---

[ | 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: 22-Feb-2013
[ | E-mail | Share ]

Contact: Maria C. Zacharias
mzachari@nsf.gov
703-292-8454
National Science Foundation

Awards to 3 university consortia will connect academic researchers with technological, entrepreneurial and business communities, and foster innovation education

Today the National Science Foundation (NSF) announced the latest round of grant awards made under the NSF's Innovation Corps (I-Corps) effort. I-Corps is a public-private partnership to help develop scientific and engineering discoveries into useful technologies.

The three awards, totaling $11,239,921, went to three consortia of universities, which will act as I-Corps "nodes" to support regional needs for innovation education, infrastructure and research. The three consortia are:

The I-Corps Node: NSF Bay Area Regional I-Node Program, led by Richard Lyons at the University of California, Berkeley's Haas School of Business, and Silicon Valley entrepreneur Steve Blank, who teaches at Berkeley and Stanford, in collaboration with University of California, San Francisco and Stanford University.

This $3,750,000 award is supporting the consortium's efforts to produce an extensive entrepreneurship platform that is built on the scientific, technology, and engineering strengths, business thought leadership, and external ecosystems of the three universities. The node is applying and disseminating the Lean LaunchPad methodology through classes, focused training, and mentoring services to help drive the creation of science and technology-based startups. The partners are investigating how I-Corps Node training influences research commercialization outcomes and exploring ways to better understand the early stages of team formation and evolution, formation and evolution of advising networks, timing and content of decisions, and real-time attention allocation. The node is also studying the formation of entrepreneurial teams and ways to measure team evolution and effectiveness, in order to better understand how they can be supported in their efforts to commercialize invention.

The I-Corps Node: DC, Maryland, Virginia Region, led by Dean Chang at the University of Maryland, in collaboration with George Washington University and Virginia Tech

This $3,749,804 award is supporting the consortium's implementation of two initiatives that are specifically designed to increase the success rate of participating teams: (1) establishing a formal DMV I-Corps Mentor Network designed to attract, train, and retain top-notch mentors and (2) offering a post I-Corps Support program to help teams with a series of follow-on activities (e.g., continued customer development, minimum viable product prototyping, technology transfer and licensing, fundraising, legal services, and hiring executive talent). The node is implementing an Online Nodal Network (ONN) that ties together and augments existing tools, addressing the needs that are particularly valuable to the nature of I-Corps teams. In addition, the node is studying the effect of I-Corps training on: (1) any adjustments in orientation toward firm creation, (2) the proportion of teams that reach initial profitability, (3) the time required to reach initial profitability, and (4) the resources expended (time, money) in the start-up process. The node is also engaging underrepresented minority participation and HBCUs through cooperation with the Graduate Degrees for Minorities in Engineering and Science, Inc. consortium.

The I-Corps Node: New York City Regional Innovation Node (NYCRIN), led by Gillian Small at the City University of New York, in collaboration with New York University and Columbia University.

This $3,740,117 award is supporting the consortium's work in leveraging the existing innovation ecosystem present in New York City (NYC) to provide innovators throughout the United States with a structured portal for access to the unique NYC-regional combination of world-class universities, venture capital investment resources, and one of the nation's fastest-growing technology start-up environments. The node will develop an open-source software suite for Lean analytics and Lean startup operation, integrating tools on which Lean entrepreneurs rely. NYCRIN is offering scalable workshops, seminars and counseling sessions to disseminate best practices and the Lean LaunchPad methods. The node also includes a wide range of other universities in a four-state region, providing them with open-source tools and online access to information to more broadly disseminate NYCRIN activities and outputs.

By instilling an understanding of innovation and providing opportunities for knowledge transfer between academia and industry, NSF will equip more faculty and students to be creative, technologically-savvy leaders. These nodes add to existing I-Corps nodes at Georgia Tech and the University of Michigan.

"These new nodes will significantly expand our reach in bringing innovation education to faculty and students," said NSF Program Director Don Millard. "The three consortia, with different and distinct industries in their region, are excited about the impact they will have, on and beyond their campuses. The addition of these nodes will significantly help advance the I-Corps program's National Innovation Network."

"The nodes are the foundation of a national innovation ecosystem, and focus on the front lines of local and regional commercialization efforts. We are looking to them to provide long-term, critical education infrastructure and feedback to the programs that support the commercialization of our nation's basic research portfolio," said Errol Arkilic, NSF I-Corps program director.

The nodes will work cooperatively to build, utilize and sustain a national innovation ecosystem that further enhances the development of technologies, products and processes that benefit society. The interconnected nodes of this network may be diverse in research areas, resources, tools, programs, capabilities and in geographic locations, while the network will have the flexibility to grow or reconfigure as needs arise.

###

---

[ | 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/2013-02/nsf-ngt022213.php

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Nokia Set To Go Cheap, Releasing Bargain Smartphones

The once mighty Finnish company is set to release a number of cheap feature phones and smartphones at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona next week.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/GearFactor/~3/Cvhq7TGEU5Q/

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Office Web Apps update brings web image pasting, PowerPoint slide editing and more

Microsoft's Office Web Apps are great for those with a SkyDrive account and any device with an IE, Firefox, Chrome or Safari browser who don't want to lug the full Office 365 suite around. Since functionality can be a tad limited, however, Redmond's just added more features with the latest update. For starters, you can now copy and paste pictures from the web into Word, PowerPoint and OneNote Web Apps. Other new functions include cursor-following tools in all the programs, the ability to rearrange slides in PowerPoint Web App along with comment viewing, touch-based chart resizing and more in Excel Web App. Microsoft's posted some sample files that work without a SkyDrive account, so if you want to give it a whirl, hit the source.

Filed under: Internet, Software, Microsoft

Comments

Source: Office Web Apps

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/02/22/microsoft-office-web-apps-update/

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