Many passionate followers of American football who were denied ownership of National Football League franchises decided to set up their own league. It was started in 1960 and was named professional American football league. From the beginning, it was pitted against the established NFL. Initially, the league had ten teams and eight of them were part of the project from the start. What made it worse, most of them were in the cities which did not have NFL franchises. During early days, the league was not respected but gradually it earned the respect of professional footballers by displaying their skills and proving themselves equally good on the field.
Now, the American football has come to India with the founding of professional football league in India and Asia. No doubt, it would offer a great opportunity to broadcasting businesses and people in general.
However, it has to be seen that how the league performs as India? considering the fact that is a country which is crazy about cricket. Not many sports have been able to shoo the public away from the lure of cricket. American football is no doubt a fantastic game but it? will certainly face competition in getting audience because of soaring popularity of cricket. But the way it has been going ahead with its publicity campaigns it might just as well get steam.
Elite football league of India(EFLI) has done its home-work well and is going in the right direction. The league has roped in former NFL players and other administrators helping the league in setting up the sport in India. Moreover, the sport will be modeled after the American football league schedule. With the league looking to start its? official operations in India in November, there is lot of work to be done as coaches and players have to be trained in the sport as most of them have not even heard of the sport.
American football will be regulated on the lines of professional American football league.
For the promotions of the sport, the Elite Football League of India is not leaving any stones unturned. It is looking to package the sport in a way so as to make it one of the most sought-after franchise in the world. First of all, it is looking to popularize the sport with the TV audience. For the survival of the sport in the long run, it is essential for the sport to become? popular enough to merit broadcast on popular TV channels.
ScienceDaily (Mar. 30, 2012) ? At the UK-Germany National Astronomy Meeting NAM2012, the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS) team has just announced the most accurate measurement yet of the distribution of galaxies between five and six billion years ago. This was the key 'pivot' moment at which the expansion of the universe stopped slowing down due to gravity and started to accelerate instead, due to a mysterious force dubbed "dark energy." The nature of this "dark energy" is one of the big mysteries in cosmology today, and scientists need precise measurements of the expansion history of the universe to unravel this mystery -- BOSS provides this kind of data. In a set of six joint papers presented March 30, the BOSS team, an international group of scientists with the participation of the Max Planck Institute of Extraterrestrial Physics in Garching, Germany, used these data together with previous measurements to place tight constraints on various cosmological models.
The BOSS survey, which is a part of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS-III), was started in 2009 to probe the universe at a time when dark energy started to dominate. The survey will continue until 2014, collecting data for 1.35 million galaxies with a custom-designed new spectrograph on the 2.5-metre Sloan Telescope at the Apache Point Observatory in New Mexico, USA. In the first year-and-a-half, it has already mapped the three-dimensional positions of more than a quarter of a million galaxies spread across about one tenth of the sky, yielding the most accurate and complete map of the galaxy distribution up to a distance of about 6 billion light years.
Galaxies form a "cosmic web" with a variety of structures which encode valuable information about our universe. One particular feature, the so-called "Baryonic Acoustic Oscillations" (BAO), has been subject of much interest from scientists as it provides them with a "standard rod." BAO are a relic of the early phases of the universe, when it was a hot and dense "soup" of particles. Small variations of density travelled through this "soup" as pressure-driven (sound) waves. As the universe expanded and cooled, the pressure dropped, causing these waves to stall after they had traveled about 500 million light years. These frozen waves imprinted a particular signature on the matter distribution and are visible in the galaxy map today: it is in fact slightly more probable to find pairs of galaxies separated by this scale than at smaller or larger distances.
Measurements of the apparent size of the BAO scale in the galaxy distribution then provide information about cosmic distances. Combined with the measurement of the galaxies' redshift -- a measure for how fast they move away as a result of the cosmic expansion -- scientists can then reconstruct the expansion history of the universe.
The new BOSS data, combined with previous analyses, can now constrain the parameters of the standard cosmological model to an accuracy of better than five per cent. "All the different lines of evidence point to the same explanation," says Dr. Ariel Sanchez, scientist at the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics and lead author of one of the six new papers. "The dark energy is consistent with Einstein's cosmological constant: a small but irreducible energy continually stretching space itself, driving the accelerated expansion of the universe."
Besides dark energy, the information encoded in the large-scale distribution of galaxies can be used to obtain robust constraints on other important physical parameters such as the curvature of the universe, the neutrino mass, or the phase of inflation in the very early universe. "Current observations show that the universe has to be flat, to an accuracy better than 0.5 per cent," says Ariel Sanchez. "And at the same time as we measure such a global parameter on a cosmic scale, we can also get information about neutrinos on the smallest scales in the cosmos."
Neutrinos are tiny, subatomic particles. Even though a number of experiments have shown that they must have mass, scientists do not know how much they actually weigh, as it is difficult to measure this in a laboratory. However, as an additional component in the hot, early phase of the universe the neutrinos affect the growth of structures. The galaxy distribution probed by BOSS provides information about the maximum mass that these neutrinos are allowed to have. "This is really the connection of two extreme worlds, the very large and the very small," adds Ariel Sanchez.
The quality of the new data even provided the BOSS team with new clues about cosmic inflation, a period of time shortly after the Big Bang during which the universe expanded at an incredible rate. During cosmic inflation, small regions of space were blown out to form our entire observable universe. At the same time, tiny quantum fluctuations also expanded and became the seeds of the structures that the BOSS data show us today. "There is a real zoo of alternative models of inflation. With BOSS we get important new clues about the inflationary phase of the universe, which allows us to pare down the market of available models," remarks Ariel Sanchez.
So far, all measurements are highly consistent with the standard cosmological model, which is made up of a few per cent ordinary matter, about a quarter of dark matter, and the rest dark energy. But Ariel Sanchez is cautious: "This is just the beginning. We can expect much tighter constraints once we have the full five years of BOSS data. There are also a number of future projects, such as EUCLID, that will provide even better measurements, bringing us one step closer to finding answers to the big open questions in cosmology."
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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Max-Planck-Institut f?r extraterrestrische Physik (MPE), via AlphaGalileo.
Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.
Journal References:
Lauren Anderson et al. The clustering of galaxies in the SDSS-III Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey: Baryon Acoustic Oscillations in the Data Release 9 Spectroscopic Galaxy Sample. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 2012 [link]
Ariel G. Sanchez et al. The clustering of galaxies in the SDSS-III Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey: cosmological implications of the large-scale two-point correlation function. Submitted to http://arxiv.org, 2012 [link]
Beth A. Reid et al. The clustering of galaxies in the SDSS-III Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey: measurements of the growth of structure and expansion rate at z=0.57 from anisotropic clustering. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 2012 [link]
Rita Tojeiro et al. The clustering of galaxies in the SDSS-III Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey: measuring structure growth using passive galaxies. Submitted to http://arxiv.org, 2012 [link]
Marc Manera et al. The clustering of galaxies in the SDSS-III Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey: a large sample of mock galaxy catalogues. Submitted to http://arxiv.org, 2012 [link]
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.
Spring has arrived in Barcelona and the streets of the city show that we are close to the summer. More people in the streets, accommodation with much more occupation and time for planning holidays.
Firstly, the location of the apartments in Barcelona is very important. It is not the same have accommodation on the outskirts of the city to an apartment in the Centre of Barcelona. The Centre of Barcelona can be considered the Ciutat Vella district. The Eixample and Barceloneta neighborhoods are few minutes walking and public transport from the Centre. The rest of neighborhoods are well communicated with public transport but walk tend to be more than twenty minutes for what if do not like the metro or the bus is best not being hosted in these neighborhoods.
During the spring and summer, Barcelona is a city quite warm and being by the sea makes that humidity noticeable in the environment.
Our advice is to avoid apartments in very humid or ground floors since they tend to have more problems of this kind. We also recommend choosing apartments on the top floor of the building that are too warm in summer.
Another very important issue to choose apartments in the Centre of Barcelona is the type of people who visit the city. Come with the family and children or come a group of friends is not the same. Travel with the couple that just is not the same. Zones of Barcelona more quiet and better to travel with partner and children are Born and Eixample neighborhoods. While if you travel with a group of friends wanting to go out partying, best thing is staying at any of the noisy streets near to the Ramblas or in the neighbourhood of Barceloneta.
In addition to the situation of the apartments in the city, it is also important to check the status of the apartments.
For this topic, it is very useful to use any opinion of accommodation portals on the internet. Much more useful to have the opinion of people who has visited the apartments be based only in little current pictures of the accommodation.
Very likely, you will have a good apartment in Barcelona, if it is in the Centre much better! And in addition you will enjoy to all the shows, monuments, museums and places to visit in a city so special as Barcelona. I hope to see you soon here. ?
WASHINGTON (AP) ? Global warming is leading to such severe storms, droughts and heat waves that nations should prepare for an unprecedented onslaught of deadly and costly weather disasters, an international panel of climate scientists says in a report issued Wednesday.
The greatest danger from extreme weather is in highly populated, poor regions of the world, the report warns, but no corner of the globe ? from Mumbai to Miami ? is immune. The document by a Nobel Prize-winning panel of climate scientists forecasts stronger tropical cyclones and more frequent heat waves, deluges and droughts.
The 594-page report blames the scale of recent and future disasters on a combination of man-made climate change, population shifts and poverty.
In the past, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, founded in 1988 by the United Nations, has focused on the slow inexorable rise of temperatures and oceans as part of global warming. This report by the panel is the first to look at the less common but far more noticeable extreme weather changes, which recently have been costing on average about $80 billion a year in damage.
"We mostly experience weather and climate through the extreme," said Stanford University climate scientist Chris Field, who is one of the report's top editors. "That's where we have the losses. That's where we have the insurance payments. That's where things have the potential to fall apart.
"There are lots of places that are already marginal for one reason or another," Field said. But it's not just poor areas: "There is disaster risk almost everywhere."
The scientists say that some places, particularly parts of Mumbai in India, could become uninhabitable from floods, storms and rising seas. In 2005, over 24 hours nearly 3 feet of rain fell on the city, killing more than 1,000 people and causing massive damage. Roughly 2.7 million people live in areas at risk of flooding.
Other cities at lesser risk include Miami, Shanghai, Bangkok, China's Guangzhou, Vietnam's Ho Chi Minh City, Myanmar's Yangon (formerly known as Rangoon) and India's Kolkata (formerly known as Calcutta). The people of small island nations, such as the Maldives, may also need to abandon their homes because of rising seas and fierce storms.
"The decision about whether or not to move is achingly difficult and I think it's one that the world community will have to face with increasing frequency in the future," Field said in a telephone news conference Wednesday.
This report ? the summary of which was issued in November ? is unique because it emphasizes managing risks and how taking precautions can work, Field said. In fact, the panel's report uses the word "risk" 4,387 times.
Field pointed to storm-and-flood-prone Bangladesh, an impoverished country that has learned from its past disasters. In 1970, a Category 3 tropical cyclone named Bhola killed more than 300,000 people. In 2007, a stronger cyclone killed only 4,200 people. Despite the loss of life, the country is considered a success story because it was better prepared and invested in warning and disaster prevention, Field said.
A country that was not as prepared, Myanmar, was hit with a similar sized storm in 2008, which killed 138,000 people.
The study says forecasts that some tropical cyclones ? which includes hurricanes in the United States ? will be stronger because of global warming, but the number of storms should not increase and may drop slightly.
Some other specific changes in severe weather that the scientists said they had the most confidence in predicting include more heat waves and record hot temperatures worldwide, increased downpours in Alaska, Canada, northern and central Europe, East Africa and north Asia,
IPCC Chairman Rajendra Pachauri told The Associated Press that while all countries are getting hurt by increased climate extremes, the overwhelming majority of deaths are happening in poorer less developed places. That, combined with the fact that richer countries are generating more greenhouse gases from the burning of fossil fuels, makes the issue of weather extremes one of fairness.
However, extremes aren't always deadly. Sometimes, they are just strange.
Study co-author David Easterling of the National Climatic Data Center says this month's heat wave, while not deadly, fits the pattern of worsening extremes. The U.S. has set nearly 6,800 high temperature records in March. Last year, the United States set a record for billion-dollar weather disasters, though many were tornadoes, which can't be linked to global warming.
"When you start putting all these events together, the insurance claims, it's just amazing," Easterling said. "It's pretty hard to deny the fact that there's got to be some climate signal."
Northeastern University engineering and environment professor Auroop Ganguly, who didn't take part in writing the IPCC report, praised it and said the extreme weather it highlights "is one of the major and important types of what we would call 'global weirding.'" It's a phrase that some experts have been starting to use more to describe climate extremes.
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Online:
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change: http://www.ipcc.ch
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Follow Seth Borenstein at http://twitter.com/borenbears
One of the most popular features of Nursing Reference Center with Patient Education Reference Center?(NRC with PERC)?are the free Continuing Education modules.? The sign in process is a little bit different now, and we wanted to take a minute to share that information with everyone.?
The links on the Electronic Research Resources pages for the CINAHL?Continuing Education page now open directly to the Continuing Education tab of Nursing Reference Center.? Instead of going directly to the CINAHL?CE page, you now need to go through NRC with PERC to authenticate first.
EBSCOhost?(the vendor from whom the Library purchases NRC with PERC) has put together an excellent Help Sheet about using the free CE modules in NRC with PERC: Nursing Reference Center CEU Help Sheet
The only point to add to the help sheet is that you might see a security pop-up when trying to download the PDF version of your CE transcripts.? This is identical to the security pop-ups you might see when opening a PDF article and it?s?safe to click ?Download File? to view, print, or save your CE transcripts.
The Help Sheet is also available within Citrix?on the Library?s Tutorials & Help page for 24/7 access.? If you have any additional?questions about using the CE module in NRC with PERC, don?t hesitate to contact the Library staff.
This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 27th, 2012 at 10:50 am and is filed under E-Resources, Tutorials. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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The New York Jets acquired always-controversial quarterback Tim Tebow last week in a move that has some NFL fans perplexed. "The only reason Woody decided to bring the circus to town is to make money and distract the Jets fans from their misery," wrote one fan. One thing's for sure: Tebow is bringing the Jets some attention, and he's probably good to rely on for merchandise sales, too. "It may have been a move born of desperation, but Ryan and the front office have created another act for a city that loves a circus," said Associated Press writer Tim Dahlberg. What should we make of all of this? Sportswriters chime in:
Will Leitch, New York magazine:
Sportswriters and sports fans love narratives ... It turns sports into a morality play, set in the same ceaselessly contentious key as politics. It makes sports not fun. I thought I was safe, with him all the way across the country in Denver. But now he has found me. Now he is a Jet. And he's all my mother is going to want to talk about.
Dan Shanoff, New York Times:
It is an unusual kind of fandom, rooting for the player and not the team -- or, more accurately, the player, then the team. In a way, it is a deviant lifestyle choice for the typical sports fan, who roots for the jersey no matter whose name is on the back. But in another way, it is precisely the same kind of relationship at the core of every person's fandom, in our case adapted for a player, not a team.
Russ Douthat, New York Times:
New Yorkers are a sophisticated lot, and the Tebow hype will afford them plenty of opportunities for eye-rolling. The sophisticated football fan will tell you that Tebow is a bad-to-mediocre quarterback with a few unusual skills who rode a lucky streak to undeserved fame; the rest is just the standard media fantasy about "intangibles" and "grit" dressed up with spirituality.
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Follow Danny Groner on Twitter: www.twitter.com/DannyGroner
Part of the Elite Series, CommandOne(TM) the new MotoSpeak application reads texts into your headset, and you can dicatate a reply with your voice. Listen to streaming music, video, games and navigation through your headset. CrystalTalk dual mic noise cancellation allows you to hear and be heard. Keep your hands free and your calls clear with the CommandOne Bluetooth headset from Motorola?s Elite Series. With an enhanced version of MotoSpeak, CommandOne provides the ultimate hands-free experience to answer your calls and text messages directly from the headset, keeping your hands available for the rest of your busy life. See larger image. The Motorola CommandOne with integrated speech-to-text technology (see larger image). ? See larger image. Key Features CrystalTalk Dual Microphone Technology dramatically reduces everyday background noise and provides amazing audio on both sides of the call. Hear texts and dictate replies with MotoSpeak 2.0 (requires a smartphone with Android
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Arnold Schwarzenegger is still working hard to charm back Maria Shriver and get back into the good graces of her powerful family. The former California governor made a speech at Audemars Piguet?s Royal Oak 40 Years exhibition gala in New York, repeatedly praising ?my wife?s family? and especially the work done by his ?amazing mother-in-law? [...]
"The Deep Blue Sea" opens with Sam?uel Barber's beautiful Vio?lin Concerto, the sound of a ticking clock, and the on-screen legend "London, Around 1950." It's night, and the camera tracks very slowly along a shabby street before tilting up to a third-floor window where we see Hester Collyer (Rachel Weisz). We enter the apartment and watch her calmly prepare to kill herself, by both taking pills and turning on the gas. It's the suicide equivalent of wearing a belt and suspenders.
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Once we get to know her better and learn the circumstances leading to her current actions, this apparent surfeit of caution seems out of character: In matters of love, romance, and sex, she has thrown caution to the wind. As the camera smoothly follows her around the room and her mind wanders to some brief flashbacks, the film is more concerned with setting a tragic/romantic mood than giving us a lot of detail. The 10-minute opening sequence is shot almost like a silent movie, with no more than a line or two spoken.
This might seem odd, since "The Deep Blue Sea" is adapted from a 1952 stage drama by Terence Rattigan, and stage dramas tend to lean heavily on dialogue. Rattigan was one of the leading British playwrights of the 1940s and '50s, until the London stage was rattled, first by John Osborne and the so-called Angry Young Men, then by Harold Pinter. Suddenly Rattigan's work ? "The Browning Version," "Separate Tables," and "The Winslow Boy" are the best known on the American side of the pond ? looked hopelessly bourgeois in comparison.
One good Terence deserves another, and, in this case, that would be director Terence Davies, one of the great stylists in contemporary British cinema. Davies made his reputation with a series of autobiographical films ? the two distributed in the States were "Distant Voices, Still Lives" and "The Long Day Closes" ? that were as brutally depressing as they were aesthetically striking. Davies's storytelling techniques in these films may have been slow as molasses, but were so fresh and different as to make the ordeal of reliving his life somewhere in the vicinity of "worthwhile."
After he ran out of autobiographical material, Davies directed adaptations of novels by John Kennedy Toole ("The Neon Bible") and Edith Wharton ("The House of Mirth"), neither of which made use of his greatest talent ? the ability to create a sense of being there, of experiencing a kind of hyper-reality. (The best comparison would be Terrence Malick ? yes, another Terry ? in "The Tree of Life.") "The Deep Blue Sea" is much more in sync with Davies's style.
What we learn about Hester is that she has thrown away her marriage to a judge (Simon Russell Beale) ? together they were Sir and Lady ? because of her all-consuming passion for Freddie Page (Tom Hiddleston), a shallow, maladjusted former RAF pilot with a drinking problem. Freddie may love her in his way, but it's not a very committed way; he is beyond unreliable. It's the hopelessness of her relationship to Freddie that has driven her to the opening suicide attempt.
In addition to Davies's visual style, the film benefits from precision acting from players who get the most out of Rattigan's dialogue. The only problem with the casting is that Weisz looks too young. A crucial part of the plot's dynamic is that Hester is 10 years older than Freddie and more than 10 years younger than her husband. Weisz looks perfectly age-appropriate with Hiddleston. If you can get past that, "The Deep Blue Sea" is a fine example of a director bringing just enough of his style to revitalize possibly dated material. Grade: A- (Rated R for a scene of sexuality and nudity.)
You know, it?s right about the time that the kids turn 8 years old that birthday parties become a bit tricky. An over-themed party involving lots of structured activities and crafts may seem too young for your budding tween. Yet, for some kids, a full-blown sleepover party complete with staying up super-late and watching tons of movies may be more than a tender heart (used to being close to home) is ready for. So navigating the 8-year old birthday party can be a challenge.
Enter the half-sleepover party. All the benefits of fun hanging with your girlfriends in your jammies, eating lots of birthday cake, popcorn, and other goodies, with none of the commitment of a full night away from Mom & Dad. If you decide to go this route, your next step is picking a theme? and I say- why not focus on the things that your daughter loves the best? Which in our case, is ponies (Charlotte just started taking horseback riding lessons) and puppies (she has our dog Bentley that she adores!)!
The Invitation:
After spending some time cruising the internet searching for some cute puppies and ponies artwork, I couldn?t find exactly what I was looking for, although I did find a beautiful picture of a little girl and a horse for an equestrian-themed birthday party. I emailed the creator, Nathalia, from Firefly Creative Design, and asked if she could create something for me that I could use for the invites and party ?goods that also included a puppy in the print?preferably a golden doodle, like our dog Bentley. And when she emailed me back and offered to create the artwork for only $16, I was thrilled!
I uploaded her .jpg file to Picnik,?added all of the party details and sent off the invitations. I also used the same artwork to create the thank-you notes for the party.
The Thank You Notes:
The Party Decorations:
We decided that the girls would eat dinner in our dining room, so to make it festive we decorated with tissue paper pom-poms and these little cards with the pony and puppy art. We placed a few beanie baby ponies and puppies in hurricane glass holders and polka-dotted the table with jellybeans.
The Goodie Bags, Cake, Party Punch, and Popcorn Bags:
Our final prep for the party included baking this multi-layered cake, preparing our family-favorite ?party punch?, assembling popcorn bags to be passed out during the movie, and putting together goodie bags for the guests to take home.
The Order of Events:
I always say that the decor is nice, but the heart of the party is how you entertain the guests and make the birthday child feel special. So here is how our pony and puppy party unfolded:
6pm- Guests arrived (we invited 9 girls). As we waited for everyone to show up, the girls enjoyed playing Just Dance 3 on the Wii. And let me tell you- this could have been the event to carry the entire party! The girls loved playing this as a group- no one cares who gets to hold the Wii remote, they just want to DANCE!
6:15pm- Dinnertime! Instead of typical pizza fare, we decided to offer a make-your-own salad and pasta bar. This was a HUGE hit- and certainly much less expensive than ordering in pizza! We served two different kinds of pasta (linguine and penne) butter, sauce, or sauce with meatballs. We toasted garlic bread, served up a big bowl of romaine, and the girls could top their salad with carrots, cucumbers, grape tomatoes, croutons, and three kinds of dressing.
7:00pm- Shrinky-Dink Necklace Craft
Everyone loves to make shrinky-dinks! I purchased sheets of the ruff ?n ready plastic, and used my heart punch to cut out hearts, and then used a regular hole punch to make a hole in each heart. The girl colored their hearts and then watched as we shrunk them into tiny charms in the toaster oven. We also took a group picture of all of the girls, which I printed on special printer-friendly shrinky-dink plastic and then shrunk them into tiny charms to wear on their ribbon necklaces behind the heart. (But I will admit that printer shrinky-dink plastic is very hard to work with, and the results weren?t as great as I hoped- the ink still bled a bit even after trying to dry it thoroughly with a hairdryer set on a cool setting).
7:30pm- birthday cake
The cool thing about our multi-layered white cake was that it was actually a rainbow cake! (After all, Charlotte?s birthday is shared with St. Patrick?s Day!)
7:50pm- the girls gathered onto sleeping bags that were spread out in the family room to watch ?Moondance Alexander?, a great movie about a girl and a horse. Most of the party guests (as well as the birthday girl) had never seen the film, so they were enthralled. After about 45 minutes into the movie, we served popcorn.
8:30pm- The movie wrapped up, the girls put on their necklaces and headed back for a little more Just Dance 3 before the party ended up at 9pm.
The Goodie Bags
Inside each of the goodie bags was a beanie baby puppy and homemade sugar cookies cut into pony shapes and individually decorated by my ever-so-patient and talented husband!
This was truly one of the easiest and least expensive parties we have ever hosted, and Charlotte loved every minute of it. And that was the very best part.
If you enjoyed this post, please consider tweeting about it or posting a link to it on facebook! I?d sincerely appreciate it!
Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke testifies on Capitol Hill; Goldman gets bullish, saying equities are a good buy; and Baker Hughes warns on its Q1 citing the shift away from natural gas drilling, with the Squawk on the Street news team.
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Business & financial news headlines from msnbc.com
Franchising is now preferred for each type of business services. A cleaning business franchising may be regarded as one particular with the leading considerations by lots of potential entrepreneurs. This kind of business venture can rake in income once it really is handled with precision. For anyone who is one in the people that need to have a look at this sort of business franchise, you might know about it very first.
Ordinarily a cleaning business franchise will engage geographical boundaries. These are also restrictive ? is there sufficient chance to expand? Operating a cleaning business franchising is often time and labor intensive, and physically difficult. If the cleaning market, is for houses or offices, is very competitive. There are many providers supplying these services.
The cleaning industry has been on a rise for the final ten years, and has expanded in direct proportion with all the expansion of its business.
At present, there are actually millions of business places all over the world that call for services to preserve them as professionally as they deal with their business. The laborers that are unskilled aren?t fit for the job any longer. The businesses make their workplace neat and glowing they want a trained expert cleaner to meet the expectations of their international clientele.
The starting investment vital to get a cleaning business franchise opportunities is much much less than most other franchises would demand. To begin and run a profitable cleaning business a capital investment of around $30 thousand dollars is enough. You will find a number of corporations which are supplying franchises for sale. There is tiny need of establishing a reputation inside the industry ahead of you may begin generating income and it is actually the benefit in shopping for a franchise from such companies.
The profits involved in franchising a business cleaning service are big. A lot of the business cleaning business franchises charges their customers from $55 to $175 for per hour. It is straightforward for a business cleaning franchise to earn thousands a day.
All of cleaning business franchise will present floor mopping, routine cleaning, toilet upkeep and dusting to its clients. In spite of those services it could include other services such as window cleaning, power washing, difficult surface floor cleaning, carpet cleaning, trash collection and secure document removal, floor polishing, elevator cleaning, outdoor upkeep and even move-out cleaning services.
It can be fantastic news for the corporations that?s these services demand pretty low-priced raw materials and equipments. The labor charges involved do not transform a lot with diverse services, but the cost of distinctive services towards the client is adjustable.
A most important problem figuring out the achievement of this business is effectively the advertising. All of the way by way of franchising the job of formulating a business plan, marketing method as well as the majority of the marketing expense you?d layout initial at startup, are currently completed as component from the franchising package. Franchising could be the top secret of the 21st Century!
Want to find out more about cleaning business franchising, then visit Mike Raciti?s site on how to choose the best franchise opportunities for your needs.
Robert De Niro may be a great actor, but his stand-up routine needs a little work. While hosting a re-election fundraiser for Barack Obama on Monday night, De Niro, 68, made a questionable crack about Michelle Obama -- who, by the way, was the guest of honor.
Company Information GE Aviation, an operating unit of General Electric Company (NYSE: GE), is a world- leading provider of commercial and military jet engines and components as well as integrated digital, electric power, and mechanical systems for aircraft. GE Aviation also has a global service network to support these offerings.
The Global Communications Organization (GCO) leads both internal and external messaging for GE Aviation. Its key functions include: Marketing Communications, Media Relations, Organizational Communications and Community& Government Relations. GCO has the responsibility of creating and distributing key messages to all GE Aviation stakeholders, across the globe. Specifically, Organizational Communications is responsible for business-wide communication initiatives and employee communications that reach 37,000 employees in more than 80 locations across the globe.
Responsibilities Students will assist the global communications organization with writing, editing and project management needs. Responsibilities include functional tasks to meet daily operational needs supporting the four key functions, with a primary focus on organizational (employee) communications. GE looks for candidates willing to extend themselves in this learning environment through personal drive and initiative. Seeking Marketing students with proven writing skills, high level of proficiency in Microsoft Office Suite, social media tools and web-based newsletters and one who is detail oriented with skills in editing and proofreading.
Job Description
Community & Government Relations ? Coordinate communication elements of and business wide projects/programs. ? Support business-wide fundraising efforts and drives for non-profit organizations. ? Support business-wide government engagement efforts, as needed. ? Represent the organization on various internal committees/teams. ? Provide writing, planning and program management assistance in support of GE global employee community and volunteerism programs.
Organizational Communications ? Assist organizational communications manager and other communication team members in developing, implementing and measuring effective business-wide and Cincinnati-specific strategic communication planning. Serve as writer and/or editor for communications i.e. publications, newsletters, speeches, articles for homepage, etc. for internal use in support of an overall business strategy.
Marketing Communication ? Support development of comprehensive communication programs in support of business goals and initiatives as required on specific projects and strategies including: - Tradeshow support - Sales collateral - Marketing brochures, etc.
Media Relations ? Develop original content for GE Aviation branded social media and digital channels, supporting GE Aviation?s official YouTube Channel, Facebook page and Twitter account.
Development Plan This will be discussed between the student and their supervisor based on the student?s performance and future areas of interest. Mentoring and coaching throughout the co-op will be focused on improving the student?s communication skills and business acumen. Training opportunities include: company related field trips, informational ?lunch & learns? with executives and team seminars.
GE Aviation offers many leadership programs for students interested in pursuing a career in communications or marketing after graduation. The Communications Leadership Development Program involves three challenging eight-month rotations within one of GE?s businesses. Rotational assignments could include (but are not limited to) work in public relations, marketing communications, employee communications, executive communications, corporate citizenship communications, and/or meeting GE?s other communications needs. http://www.ge.com/careers/students/cldp/index.html
?
If interested, send your resume to to Shannon Thompson at?Shannon.c.thompson@ge.com
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FILE - In this March 7, 2012 file photo, a new Apple iPad is on display during an Apple event in San Francisco. A report issued Monday, March 19, 2012 found that mobile technology is increasing the public appetite for news. Tablets are growing in popularity and there's evidence that people spend more time with news on tablets than they do on smartphones or desktops. (AP Photo/Paul Sakuma, File)
FILE - In this March 7, 2012 file photo, a new Apple iPad is on display during an Apple event in San Francisco. A report issued Monday, March 19, 2012 found that mobile technology is increasing the public appetite for news. Tablets are growing in popularity and there's evidence that people spend more time with news on tablets than they do on smartphones or desktops. (AP Photo/Paul Sakuma, File)
NEW YORK (AP) ? Mobile technology appears to be increasing the public appetite for news but it's far from clear whether the news industry will profit from that, a study issued Monday concluded.
The Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism, in its annual state of the news media report, found encouraging signs within the 27 percent of Americans who say they get news on their smartphones or tablets.
These consumers are likely to seek out traditional news sites or applications, strengthening their bond with old newspaper or television news organizations. People with tablets tend to read longer articles and spend more time with news sites than they do on phones or desktop computers, said Tom Rosenstiel, Project for Excellence in Journalism director.
Many people already make it a habit to check their tablets before going to bed to see what is going to be in a newspaper the next day, he said.
Unique visits to online news sites jumped 17 percent from 2010 to 2011, similar to the increase from the year before, the report said.
"The demand for conventional journalism endures and in some ways is even growing," Rosenstiel said. "There were many people that didn't predict that. The content is still coming from traditional news companies."
Yet technology companies, rather than news companies, are better set up to take advantage of online revenue opportunities. The report found that five companies ? Microsoft, Google, Facebook, AOL and Yahoo! ? generated 68 percent of digital ad revenue in 2011.
News companies are generally not as able to provide the specific consumer information that digital advertisers seek, and they certainly have not been as aggressive in this area as the technology companies, said media critic Jeff Jarvis, who writes the Buzzmachine.com blog.
Jarvis also criticizes news organizations for not being more creative with their websites and applications, and not encouraging users to link information.
"I fear the iPad is a siren call to news organizations, seducing them into thinking they can maintain their old models and old controls, not just maintain but regain them," he said.
For news organizations, "there's a lot of work that needs to be done," said Roger Fidler, program director at the Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute at the University of Missouri. "But it needs to be done very quickly."
Rosenstiel noted the trend of technology companies working with news organizations on new ventures announced within the past year: Yahoo! reaching a deal to stream ABC News reports; YouTube launching original programming channels, including one operated by the news service Thomson Reuters; The Washington Post developing a news aggregator, Trove.com, available through Facebook.
The Associated Press has begun providing some of its election coverage to the popular tablet app Flipboard, entered into a partnership with WhoSay.com over use of celebrity photos and also worked with Twitter on release of Nevada Republican caucus results.
The PEJ report noted how social media is increasingly driving news, through people who pass along recommendations to read articles to their friends through Facebook and Twitter. Still, only 9 percent of adults say they follow such recommendations regularly, compared to 36 percent who say they go directly to a news organization's app.
Most media sectors saw audience growth in 2011, with the exception of newspapers, the report said. The television network news audience grew for the first time in a decade and local stations also saw news growth in the late evening and early morning, the PEJ said.
ATHLETES trying to cheat by loading their bodies with genes that make muscles bigger and more efficient could be caught if forced to supply muscle biopsies, but not through the analysis of urine or blood samples.
So says Mauro Giacca of the International Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology in Trieste, Italy, who was asked by the World Anti-Doping Agency to look into how to screen for gene doping.
To do so, Giacca's team created mice loaded with extra copies of the muscle-boosting gene IGF-1, which codes for the protein insulin-like growth factor 1, by injecting its limbs with a virus that implants IGF-1 into muscle cells. They then tested the animals' endurance by recording how long they could swim before exhaustion. The doped mice swam for three times as long as mice that received the virus but not IGF-1.
Autopsies showed that the extra IGF-1 triggered the production of 10 times more protein than normal in the muscles. Giacca also saw activity soar in genes controlling energy production, contraction of muscles and respiration. Also detectable in the muscle were traces of the virus used to deliver the genes. However, the gene, protein and virus were undetectable in blood or urine from the mice (Human Gene Therapy, DOI: 10.1089/hum.2011.157).
Giacca doubts it is possible to achieve such results through exercise alone. So "from a muscle biopsy, it would be possible to distinguish a well-trained athlete from one who'd been gene-doping for a month", he says.
"It may be possible to look for unusual changes in gene profiles, but if this relies on muscle biopsies it won't happen," says Lee Sweeney, of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, who created the world's first IGF-1 "supermice" in 2004.
Giacca doubts whether athletes will attempt gene doping in the run-up to this year's Olympic games, because it is technically challenging, but he says they may in the future - most likely through an illegal government programme.
He is now working on a study to identify, in blood and urine, raised levels of micro RNA related to gene doping.
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What's the correct baby shower etiquette? Would you like to more about planning and hosting the perfect baby shower? If you do, these are some things you definitely have to know!
Baby showers can be a heap of fun for the soon-to-be mom, her family and her chums. And while custom dictates that only the mom-to-be and her female guests should participate in the event, the father-to-be and his friends can also join in the good times. In fact , the more there are the merrier, right?
In Hosting the Party
Baby showers have traditionally been hosted by one of the mom-to-be?s closest buddies but it is now wonderfully sufficient for the mom?s relatives to do the same. But if you actually want to have an entertaining and amazingly successful baby shower, consider having multiple hosts for the event. This'll help defray the expenses and raise the chances of having a baby shower to recollect!
When to Have the Party
You can have the party before or after the baby is born. Either way will do fine. Nonetheless the easiest way to determine the date is to ask the expectant mom herself. After all , this party is for her and her newly born!
Participation of the Parents-to-Be
If you're certain that the mom-to-be would like a surprise party, it might be great to ask somebody close to her (her hubby, her mom or her sister) to help you with the planning. However , if you are throwing a normal baby shower, you can ask your honored guest about the theme she prefers, the colours she want to use, who to incorporate in the final guest list, and other such things. Give her the final say in these things to make certain she will be as cushty and as delighted as she will be able to be in the event.
Hosting the perfect baby shower could be a lot of fun for everybody concerned, particularly if the right baby shower etiquettes are observed. Now you know the fundamentals, why don't you get on with your planning? The new mom-to-be will certainly appreciate it!
Kitty Baker provides further handy tips when you register here on pregnancy and at this link you'll learn to try a healthy pregnancy diet.
TAMPA, Fla. (AP) - Andy Pettitte went with his heart and headed back to the hill.
A year after the star left-hander said he didn't have the desire to keep pitching, Pettitte ended his brief retirement and announced Friday he was returning to the New York Yankees.
Three months shy of his 40th birthday, Pettitte signed a minor league deal with an invitation to spring training. If his comeback is successful and he's added to the major league roster, he would get a $2.5 million, one-year contract.
"My desire to work is back," Pettitte said on a conference call. "The commitment level wasn't there last year. I don't know if it was because I had a year off, just my desire to work was back. This is where I'm at right now."
Yankees general manager Brian Cashman said there are no incentives in the deal and that Pettitte - who is expected in camp Tuesday - will only be a starter. Pettitte has pitched in the majors for 16 seasons, 13 with the Yankees.
Cashman believes Pettitte will not be ready to break camp with the team when spring training ends early next month. Pettitte says it's possible he could be ready for game action in two or three weeks in Florida.
"We'll go this route and see where it takes us," Cashman said. "Does it make us better and give us deeper and stronger choices? Yes."
Pettitte said his move back to the mound had the full support of his family.
"They weren't crazy about me retiring," Pettitte said. "I never would have done this if, especially my wife didn't feel good about it. My family is behind this 100 percent."
At his retirement announcement in February 2011, Pettitte said he felt like is heart was not fully, completely sold out on pitching and that he didn't have the hunger or the drive needed.
"I think I told you all that, when people asked me if I would ever come back, I said I'd probably be too embarrassed to come back because I'm retired," Pettitte said. "That's really where I've been over the last three or four days, I am embarrassed I'm coming back. But then I'm like, what can I do? Things have changed. I sure don't want to look back 10 years from now and say man, I wish I would have done that."
Pettitte last played in 2010, when he went 11-3 and was an All-Star. He is 240-138 lifetime with the Yankees and Houston, and has long been a postseason ace.
Pettitte sat out last season, but was with the Yankees in camp this spring as an instructor. He threw batting practice several times, and also had a private bullpen session for team officials, including Cashman, manager Joe Girardi and pitching coach Larry Rothschild last Tuesday.
"I don't think that I could do this unless I thought for sure mentally I could get back to where I was," Pettitte said. "I believe, if I feel mentally right, that I'm going to win."
Pettitte first expressed interest in pitching again last December. After New York added pitchers Michael Pineda and Hiroki Kuroda in January, Pettitte shut down his throwing program briefly, only to resume it a few days later.
"Here we are," Girardi said. "He truly loves the game, and he loves the Yankees."
Cashman said he offered Pettitte a deal in the $10-12 million range in December.
"The reason I couldn't commit to the Yankees earlier was because I needed to go through (the workout) process," Pettitte said. "During my bullpen work right now, I feel it all coming back. I'm ready for that challenge."
For many years, Pettitte was among the Yankees' most dependable pitchers. He is 19-10 with a 3.83 ERA in 42 career postseason starts.
"It's exciting to have him back," Yankees opening day starter CC Sabathia said. "He's a great teammate. When you can pitch the way he can, it's hard to stay away."
New York catcher Russell Martin was enthused about Pettitte's return.
"I think it's awesome," he said.
The rival Boston Red Sox were interested in seeing him, too - and wary of his motion.
"He's pretty good. Is he going to be a starter? Or is he just going to come in and pick people off?" Red Sox manager Bobby Valentine said.
"I don't think he's coming back the way he was. But he's a borderline Hall of Famer. When you add somebody like that to your staff, you're doing good," he said.
Boston designated hitter David Ortiz has faced Pettitte a lot over the years.
"The Yankees gave him a chance to come back and perform because they think he can come back and perform, but he's not 25 anymore. Know what I'm saying? So the Yankees also know they're running the risk of him coming back and not performing well. So they know we are up to all those challenges," Ortiz said.
"If he comes back and doesn't perform well, you guys are just going to say, `Well, he's not 25 anymore. He took a year off.' He's what, 39? All that goes against him. If he comes back and performs well, `The guy is a natural,"' he said.
New York currently has four starters, besides Pettitte, looking to fill three rotation spots behind Sabathia and Kuroda.
"It's one of those things, I feel there's nothing but upside here," Cashman said.
? 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Surprising pine beetle breeding habits help explain increasing tree damage, says CU studyPublic release date: 15-Mar-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Jeffry Mitton mitton@colorado.edu 303-492-8956 University of Colorado at Boulder
Warming temperatures appear to allow pine beetles to now breed twice a year
Long thought to produce only one generation of tree-killing offspring annually, some populations of mountain pine beetles now produce two generations per year, dramatically increasing the potential for the bugs to kill lodgepole and ponderosa pine trees, University of Colorado Boulder researchers have found.
Because of the extra annual generation of beetles, there could be up to 60 times as many beetles attacking trees in any given year, their study found. And in response to warmer temperatures at high elevations, pine beetles also are better able to survive and attack trees that haven't previously developed defenses.
These are among the key findings of Jeffry Mitton, a CU-Boulder professor of ecology and evolutionary biology, and Scott Ferrenberg, a graduate student in that department. The study is being published this month in The American Naturalist.
This exponential increase in the beetle population might help to explain the scope of the current beetle epidemic, which is the largest in history and extends from the Sangre de Cristo Mountains in New Mexico to the Yukon Territory near Alaska.
"This thing is immense," Mitton said. The duo's research, conducted in 2009 and 2010 at CU's Mountain Research Station, located about 25 miles west of Boulder, helps explain why.
"We followed them through the summer, and we saw something that had never been seen before," Mitton said. "Adults that were newly laid eggs two months before were going out and attacking trees" -- in the same year. Normally, mountain pine beetles spend a winter as larvae in trees before emerging as adults the following summer.
These effects may be particularly pronounced at higher elevations, where warmer temperatures have facilitated beetle attacks. In the last two decades at the Mountain Research Station, mean annual temperatures were 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than they were in the previous two decades.
Warmer temperatures gave the beetle larvae more spring days to grow to adulthood. The number of spring days above freezing temperatures increased by 15.1 in the last two decades, Mitton and Ferrenberg report. Also, the number of days that were warm enough for the beetles to grow increased by 44 percent since 1970.
The Mountain Research Station site is about 10,000 feet in elevation, 1,000 feet higher than the beetles have historically thrived. In their study, Mitton and Ferrenberg emphasize this anomaly.
"While our study is limited in area, it was completed in a site that was characterized as climatically unsuitable for (mountain pine beetle) development by the U.S. Forest Service only three decades ago," they write.
But in 25 years, the beetles have expanded their range 2,000 feet higher in elevation and 240 miles north in latitude in Canada, Mitton said.
Ferrenberg had the idea to monitor the beetles at higher elevations partly because trees at lower elevations have been attacked by beetles for centuries and have developed some defenses.
Lodgepole pines at higher elevations tended to have a lower density of resin ducts, which transport resin, the sole defense against beetles. The number of resin ducts in a tree can be a "marker" for whether a tree has a higher or lower resistance to a beetle attack, Ferrenberg said.
The trees at higher elevations had not faced the same intensity of beetle attacks as those at lower elevations until temperatures warmed, and they have not faced pressures of natural selection exerted by attacking beetles. "The trees in that area are somewhat nave in their response," Ferrenberg said.
These data help explain why westbound motorists emerging from the Eisenhower Tunnel on I-70 can look up, from 11,000 feet in elevation, and see beetle-killed trees. "We think we see some of the reason for the fact that this epidemic is so widespread," Mitton said.
###
The research was funded by the U.S. Department of Energy.
More on this story will appear in the next edition of Colorado Arts and Sciences Magazine at http://artsandsciences.colorado.edu/magazine/
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.
Surprising pine beetle breeding habits help explain increasing tree damage, says CU studyPublic release date: 15-Mar-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Jeffry Mitton mitton@colorado.edu 303-492-8956 University of Colorado at Boulder
Warming temperatures appear to allow pine beetles to now breed twice a year
Long thought to produce only one generation of tree-killing offspring annually, some populations of mountain pine beetles now produce two generations per year, dramatically increasing the potential for the bugs to kill lodgepole and ponderosa pine trees, University of Colorado Boulder researchers have found.
Because of the extra annual generation of beetles, there could be up to 60 times as many beetles attacking trees in any given year, their study found. And in response to warmer temperatures at high elevations, pine beetles also are better able to survive and attack trees that haven't previously developed defenses.
These are among the key findings of Jeffry Mitton, a CU-Boulder professor of ecology and evolutionary biology, and Scott Ferrenberg, a graduate student in that department. The study is being published this month in The American Naturalist.
This exponential increase in the beetle population might help to explain the scope of the current beetle epidemic, which is the largest in history and extends from the Sangre de Cristo Mountains in New Mexico to the Yukon Territory near Alaska.
"This thing is immense," Mitton said. The duo's research, conducted in 2009 and 2010 at CU's Mountain Research Station, located about 25 miles west of Boulder, helps explain why.
"We followed them through the summer, and we saw something that had never been seen before," Mitton said. "Adults that were newly laid eggs two months before were going out and attacking trees" -- in the same year. Normally, mountain pine beetles spend a winter as larvae in trees before emerging as adults the following summer.
These effects may be particularly pronounced at higher elevations, where warmer temperatures have facilitated beetle attacks. In the last two decades at the Mountain Research Station, mean annual temperatures were 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than they were in the previous two decades.
Warmer temperatures gave the beetle larvae more spring days to grow to adulthood. The number of spring days above freezing temperatures increased by 15.1 in the last two decades, Mitton and Ferrenberg report. Also, the number of days that were warm enough for the beetles to grow increased by 44 percent since 1970.
The Mountain Research Station site is about 10,000 feet in elevation, 1,000 feet higher than the beetles have historically thrived. In their study, Mitton and Ferrenberg emphasize this anomaly.
"While our study is limited in area, it was completed in a site that was characterized as climatically unsuitable for (mountain pine beetle) development by the U.S. Forest Service only three decades ago," they write.
But in 25 years, the beetles have expanded their range 2,000 feet higher in elevation and 240 miles north in latitude in Canada, Mitton said.
Ferrenberg had the idea to monitor the beetles at higher elevations partly because trees at lower elevations have been attacked by beetles for centuries and have developed some defenses.
Lodgepole pines at higher elevations tended to have a lower density of resin ducts, which transport resin, the sole defense against beetles. The number of resin ducts in a tree can be a "marker" for whether a tree has a higher or lower resistance to a beetle attack, Ferrenberg said.
The trees at higher elevations had not faced the same intensity of beetle attacks as those at lower elevations until temperatures warmed, and they have not faced pressures of natural selection exerted by attacking beetles. "The trees in that area are somewhat nave in their response," Ferrenberg said.
These data help explain why westbound motorists emerging from the Eisenhower Tunnel on I-70 can look up, from 11,000 feet in elevation, and see beetle-killed trees. "We think we see some of the reason for the fact that this epidemic is so widespread," Mitton said.
###
The research was funded by the U.S. Department of Energy.
More on this story will appear in the next edition of Colorado Arts and Sciences Magazine at http://artsandsciences.colorado.edu/magazine/
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.
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Public release date: 15-Mar-2012
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