Wednesday, 29 August 2012

Samsung unveils new Series 7 and Series 5 AIOs: Windows 8 and gesture recognition for $749 and up

Samsung unveils new Series 7 and Series 5 AIOs Windows 8 and gesture recognition for $749 and up

Samsung teased a Series 7 all-in-one running Windows 8 -- on a 10-point touch display -- at Computex in June, and today the machine gets official with pricing and specs. The Series 7 will be available in 23- and 27-inch flavors, both of which run Microsoft's latest OS on a 1080p touchscreen. The setup includes a redesigned keyboard, which is small enough to tuck under the display's metal stand, and the AIOs will support gesture recognition. The 23-inch Series 7 costs $1,099 and runs a Core i5 CPU with 6GB of RAM, 1TB of storage and Intel Graphics 4000. The 27-inch model offers a Core i7 processor, 8GB of RAM, 1TB of storage and discrete AMD Radeon HD 7850M graphics, all for $1,699.

In addition to refreshing its Series 7 machines, Samsung is introducing the 21.5-inch Series 5 all-in-one, which it describes as a "kitchen-style PC." Its legs are on either end of the display, leaving room to stow the keyboard under the screen and freeing up your desk (or counter) space. The Series 5 will go for $749, and it includes a Core i3 processor, 4GB of RAM and 500GB of storage. All three AIOs have two USB 3.0 ports, three USB 2.0 connections, HDMI and a media card reader, and all will go on sale October 26th. You know the drill -- head past the break for our hands-on photos.

Continue reading Samsung unveils new Series 7 and Series 5 AIOs: Windows 8 and gesture recognition for $749 and up

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Source: http://www.engadget.com/2012/08/28/samsung-unveils-new-series-7-and-series-5-aios/

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Screen Room Builders West Palm Beach - Bennett's Impact Windows

Welcome to the website for Bennett?s Aluminum Products ? Palm beach county?s go to regional source for Screen Room Builders West Palm Beach FLquestions regarding Screen Room Builders West Palm Beach.

Bennett?s has been a trusted resource for the the greater Palm Beach County marketplace for more than 45 years.

Along with providing information on Screen Room Builders West Palm Beach Bennett?s in addition offers and installs Palm Beach hurricane impact windows, impact doors, standard glass windows, storm & hurricane shutters, sunrooms, Florida rooms and screen rooms.

Call Us For the Information You Need

Bennett?s has become a marketplace leader in the local South Florida construction industry by emphasizing a great degree of attention to detail and providing a white glove level service on every installation.

Bennett?s offers experience & understanding garnered in over fourty years in the window & door marketplace.? As part of our commitment to helping the South Florida community we are happy to offer recommendations and info on Screen Room Builders West Palm Beach and to answer any other questions you might have with regard to windows, doors or home improvement construction.

Resources to Help You With All Your Questions concerning Screen Room Builders West Palm Beach & Reasons to Shield Your Property From our Regions Damaging Weather Systems

At Bennett?s we view ourselves as trusted advocates to arm you with solid info to help evaluate the advantages and potential drawbacks of various hurricane resistance and protection products for your home or commercial property.? Answering your questions concerning how various products measure up in cost vs. protection is our specialty.

As residents of Palm Beach County & Southern Florida we must ensure we take precautionary measures to defend our property from hurricanes, tropical weather patterns and violent storms.

Building regulations call for the installment of, at the least, hurricane shutters for new houses that do not already feature impact windows and doors.

Amid hurricanes the windows and doors of your home are quite crucial in defending the integrity of your property?s construction.? Extremely high winds put an enormous amount of force on the windows and doors of your property.

Throughout a tropical storm or hurricane the breach or penetration of a window or door may have a devastating impact.

When extreme strength winds are allowed to breach your home or office the result is a substantial difference between the inner air pressure of the structure as compared to the atmosphere outside.

Pressure trapped in this way looks for ways find its way out of the structure which results in the integrity of your property being put at risk.? Sooner or later the roof and walls start to give way and comprehensive and utter damage can result.

As windows and doors are blown out the inside of your property is also susceptible to the outside flying debris generally encountered with hurricane force winds.? This flying debris propelled by storm strength gusts of wind can be exceedingly dangerous and even deadly.

How Bennett?s Can Help Protect Your Property and Loved Ones

Bennett?s takes helping protect your property from Palm Beach County?s tropical weather patterns very seriously.

We also feel that offering information and guidance to local citizens leads to positive relationships and makes good business sense as well.? Should you have the need for hurricane safeguard products such as impact windows, impact doors, hurricane shutters and entry doors we want you to think of Bennett?s.

If you would like to learn more about hurricane our protection or screenroom, sunroom or Florida room products please explore our website product pages for more thorough information.?

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We work with

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Bennett?s serves the greater Palm Beach County/Martin County area including: Palm Beach, West Palm Beach, Boca Raton, Boynton Beach, Lake Worth, Delray Beach, Lantana, Palm Beach Gardens, Juno Beach, Jupiter, Royal Palm Beach, Singer Island, Wellington, Stuart, Port St. Lucie & Beyond.

Please phone us today about Screen Room Builders West Palm Beach or any other hurricane protection or home improvement questions you.

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Accepted Payment Methods
Cash, Check, Major Credit Cards


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Source: http://hurricaneimpactwindowspalmbeach.com/screen-room-builders-west-palm-beach-palm-beach-county/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=screen-room-builders-west-palm-beach-palm-beach-county

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Tuesday, 28 August 2012

Tips in Finding the Right Locksmiths | Computers and Technology

So you have figured out that your home is not safe enough for you to be string your priced possessions in. The fact that you can?t often be around does not help either. Hence, you are left with no other choice, but to have your locks, your doors, and your windows properly reinforced. To get this job done, you will need the expert help from Houston, TX locksmiths.

In the local scene alone, there are numerous providers who are capable of extending their professional help to you in the service. However, people should know that they can never really expect all these providers to extend to them the kind of help that they need. After all, they have to ensure that at the end of the day, the people whom they will be getting help from are really competent.

Hence, it is only right that one should take note of the various considerations which they should learn to lay on the table before even making a choice. They have to remind themselves that as much as there are reliable providers there are, so do people who cannot do a decent job when assisting them. Hence, they need to pick well.

A good start in checking out the best providers around would be to check with the Better Business Bureau. You would want to know if there were unresolved complaints against these providers before. Besides, a complaint or two against these professionals is natural. However, if there are an abnormally considerable amount of them, you might as well move on to your next choice.

Remember that these Houston TX locksmiths will be given access to your home. Hence, before you would even think about letting them in and letting them come inside your abode, you would prefer if you take the time to determine who the most reliable providers are. Also, ensure that at the end of the day, you get to opt for the people whom you know you can significantly trust.

In this light, it is only necessary that you should consider checking whether this professional is a legitimate provider or not. In most states today, these providers are required by the authorities to get their license and get themselves certified as well. Hence, take a look at these particular credentials. Through them, you can determine whether the person you have opted for is going to be good enough when extending his assistance to you.

Don?t just be satisfied by seeing his license. You would want to take note of the numbers and run a search to determine if it is indeed a valid one and is properly updated. Check if he has insurance coverage too. He will be working within your premises and liabilities for accidents may be yours if you hired somebody who was not insured.

Consider the costs which the Houston, TX locksmiths will charge you with. You would prefer if you are dealing with providers who are not just reliable, but are also charging their services at the best rates possible. Take the time to shop around and to watch out for current service fees so you may make the right choices.

Source: http://www.meetcoco.com/tips-in-finding-the-right-locksmiths/

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Wednesday, 22 August 2012

Powerful Methods To Drive Cheap Internet Traffic To Your Site - PDF

Powerful Methods To Drive Cheap Internet Traffic To Your Site

Today there are millions of websites on the Internet and millions of people running businesses
through them. There is no doubt this is one of the major factors that is making Internet marketing
harder every day. If you are a beginner entering the arena of Internet business and marketing, then
all you may be able to afford at the onset is a good website. You may not be able to afford any kind of
advertising or campaigns to drive traffic to your web site to enable your business to take off.
For beginner or low budget Internet marketers, it is a good idea to use certain techniques that can
generate cheap Internet traffic. Some easy methods of roping in cheap Internet traffic to your website
are; marketing on various forums in your niche or social networking and building links to other sites
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Pay-Per-Click advertising can be an excellent method of bringing in targeted cheap Internet traffic to
your website, but Pay-Per-Click can also become very expensive if you don't understand what you
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Your campaign costs can also "break the bank" in a matter of days, or even while you are sleeping if
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Another way to generate cheap Internet traffic to your site is by opting to buy targeted website traffic.
This method does not irritate your potential customers nor is it aggressive in any way. It does not
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When marketing on the Internet, pay attention to the effectiveness of your keywords. Keywords are
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words. If you don't know how to choose keywords, it's always a good idea to find an experienced
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There are various other potent methods which can help your business to drive cheap Internet traffic to
your website so you can establish a good foundation in the highly competitive field of Internet
business and marketing.

Buying Cheapest Online Traffic


Source: http://pdfcast.org/pdf/powerful-methods-to-drive-cheap-internet-traffic-to-your-site-142

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Tuesday, 21 August 2012

Jason Alexander stars in new Nickelback video

By Rolling Stone

Nickelback managed to enlist two television veterans for this surreal and disarming video for the song "Trying Not to Love You," off their 2011 album "Here and Now."

Nickelback Respond to Haters on Twitter

"Seinfeld" star Jason Alexander plays an ace barista who apparently loses all fine motor skills after becoming besotted with a coffee house customer, played by "Baywatch's" Brooke Burns. Cups and saucers whirl in space and Burns writhes around in coffee beans until a goateed rival (also played by Alexander) enters the scene on a motorbike, setting off a high-stakes latte competition.

Nickelback Will Perform at 2012 NHL Awards

Is the story a nod to bassist Mike Kroeger's past employment behind a Starbucks counter?

Related content:

Source: http://entertainment.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/08/20/13376178-new-nickelback-video-stars-seinfelds-jason-alexander-baywatchs-brooke-burns?lite

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Diana Nyad chases longtime Cuba-Florida dream swim

HAVANA ? Less than a week shy of her 63rd birthday, American endurance athlete Diana Nyad is trying for the third time in a year to become the first person to swim across the waters separating the U.S. from Cuba without using a shark cage.

Nyad was stroking steadily through the Straits of Florida early Sunday in a quest to set a record 103-mile (166-kilometer), unassisted crossing without a wetsuit or protective shark cage.

Australian Susie Maroney used a cage when she swam across the Straits of Florida in 1997.

Just before jumping into the water off a Havana jetty Saturday afternoon, Nyad spoke of how the monotony and sensory deprivation of marathon swimming is most intense at night, leading the mind down contemplative paths.

"I do enjoy, when I stop in the middle of the night and I see the stars, you start thinking out there," she said. "It becomes very metaphysical. ... You're tired and you've been having this metronomic stroke taking you into a different world, all of a sudden you're out there and you're thinking about the meaning of life and the grandeur of the universe and the mystery of it all."

There will be less time for introspective breaks this trip, however, as shifting forecasts showed Nyad's window of flat, calm seas threatening to slam shut a day earlier than expected.

That forced the go-time to be moved up nearly 15 hours to Saturday afternoon instead of around dawn Sunday, a time that had been chosen to minimize Nyad's exposure to jellyfish that tend to surface more at night.

A member of Nyad's team posted a message on her Twitter account late Saturday saying the swimmer had been stung by a Flower Hat jellyfish ? not the more dangerous box jellyfish that ended one of her attempts last year. One of her shark divers also was stung. Both were said to be OK.

Friend and trainer Bonnie Stoll said the narrowing window was not insurmountable, and they still hoped to arrive in the Florida Keys sometime Tuesday.

They'll try to win a minute here, a minute there, by shaving time off Nyad's scheduled stops for rest and nutrition.

"I don't care about the time. I just want to make it there," Nyad said.

This is her third try at taming the Florida Straits since last summer, when first an asthma attack and then jellyfish stings forced her to call off separate attempts.

This time Nyad had hoped a custom-made swimsuit would protect her from stings. It covers her head-to-toe with a pantyhose face and holes only for the eyes, nose and mouth.

A kayak-borne apparatus shadowing her in the water creates a faint electric field designed to repel most sharks, and a team of handlers was on alert to dive in and gently nudge away any that make it through.

Deeply tanned with freckles and goggle-eyes from long hours training in the sun, Nyad admitted to a minor case of nerves but said she was confident despite the last-minute change in plans.

"I feel really excited," she said. "I respect this. I know how difficult it is. There's a reason no-one's ever done it, but I'm prepared. ... I may suffer some, but I'm prepared for that, too."

Nyad has been training for this for three years, and Stoll said she had a good 24-hour practice swim last week.

"We are in peak shape," Stoll said.

Nyad's team expected it would take at least 60 hours to complete the swim to the Keys.

In June, Australian endurance swimmer Penny Palfrey made it 79 miles toward Florida before throwing in the towel in the face of strong currents.

A fiercely driven competitor, Nyad acknowledged it was hard to watch Palfrey come close to snatching away her long-held goal.

"If she had succeeded I would have congratulated her, because I know how difficult it is, more than anybody. And after all, this is not my ocean," Nyad said. "But it is my dream. ... Frankly ? how can I lie? ? I'm glad that I still have the chance to be first."

Nyad also tried to swim the straits as a 28-year-old in 1978 with the aid of a shark cage, but fell short.

Speaking with reporters Saturday, Nyad would not rule out another attempt should this one fail, but she seemed to acknowledge that even she has a limit.

"This Cuba swim obsession of mine, dating back to 1978 ... is at the last horizon," she wrote in an essay published on the Huffington Post.

___

Online:

Diana Nyad's progress: www.diananyad.com/swim

___

Peter Orsi on Twitter: www.twitter.com/Peter_Orsi

Source: http://feeds.cbsnews.com/~r/CBSNewsWebMD/~3/URcSHRXZx4o/

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Monday, 20 August 2012

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Growing violence could leave Syria ungovernable

BEIRUT (Reuters) - Escalating violence and a vicious cycle of retaliation could leave Syria ungovernable even if a winner finally emerges from President Bashar al-Assad's battle with rebels.

Nearly a year and a half since the uprising erupted, initially as peaceful protests for reform, Assad's forces and their insurgent foes are fighting a messy conflict with no frontline and scant regard for the rules of war.

Assad has deployed air strikes and artillery to pound restive towns into submission, hitting civilian homes and hospitals. Rights groups say his forces have committed massacres. Rebels have shot or slit the throats of captured Assad supporters and hurled corpses off high buildings.

The increasing brutality of the conflict makes any prospect of reconciliation remote and exacerbates sectarian divisions between the mainly Sunni Muslim rebels, Assad's Alawite community, and Christian, Druze and Kurdish minorities.

Assad may already be planning to exploit those divisions to ensure that, if he cannot win outright, no successor could monopolize power in the way that he and his father, Hafez al-Assad, have done for four decades.

"In order to survive, Assad and his Alawite generals will struggle to turn Syria into Lebanon - a fractured nation, where no one community can rule," said University of Oklahoma's Joshua Landis on his blog "Syria Comment".

Landis said Assad's "Lebanon option" would be to "turn Syria into a swamp and create chaos out of (its) sects and factions... Already the Syrian army has largely been transformed into an Alawite militia."

Opposition figures say a descent into violence and chaos will be inevitable if the outside world does nothing to stop it.

"My message to the international community is that the longer you ignore us the faster you are creating extremists in Syria," said Sheikh Tawfiq, commander of the Nuraldin Zinky brigade from Qobtan al-Jebel near Aleppo.

"The violence and oppression we are witnessing because of this war is making young Syrians angry and depressed, and is pushing them to extremism even terrorism. The world needs to come to our aid now before it is totally too late," he said.

The mainly Arab and Sunni Muslim nature of the uprising means the conflict is centered on a north-south backbone of primarily Sunni populations, from Deraa in the south to Aleppo in the north.

Rather than massing their forces for a showdown with Assad's troops, the multitude of rebel brigades, mostly Syrian but including foreign jihadi fighters, have fought localised battles with security forces which have ebbed and flowed over months.

Areas where Assad's Alawite community are strong, including the western mountains near the Mediterranean, have been quieter, though not violence-free, while Assad appears to have acquiesced in a Kurdish grab for autonomy in the north-east.

WAR CRIMES

U.N. investigators said this week they found reasonable grounds to declare that Assad's forces and their shabbiha militia allies had committed war crimes and crimes against humanity, including murder and torture of civilians.

These included "unlawful killing, torture, arbitrary arrest and detention, sexual violence, indiscriminate attack, pillaging and destruction of property".

Government forces and shabbiha militia had raped men, women and children in acts that could be prosecuted as crimes against humanity, the investigators said. Government troops had targeted staff of the Syrian Arab Red Crescent, a war crime, they said.

Rebels were also guilty of war crimes, including executing captured soldiers, though their violations were on a lesser scale, the investigators said.

Both government forces and armed insurgents displayed "more brutal tactics and new military capabilities" in recent months.

That greater brutality means that, barely noticed against a backdrop of battles for the capital Damascus and the commercial hub of Aleppo, around 200 people a day are now killed in towns, cities and rural districts across Syria, activists say.

All that contributes to a mood of despair among many Syrians, who see their country left to its own sorry devices as the international community fails to unite behind a solution to the crisis.

"We have become overcome with a feeling of depression or despair. We feel abandoned by the world," said Abu Osama, a community leader in the town of Azaz, near the Turkish border.

"How many more videos do we need to put out and journalists do we need to speak to before someone does something?"

One group which monitors Syria's violence, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, says more than 23,000 people have been killed since the uprising erupted in March last year, including nearly 6,000 soldiers and 1,000 defectors.

Another group puts the total at around 20,000 dead.

Neither side can assert full control of the territory it holds nor deliver a knockout blow, raising the prospect of protracted fighting which could get still bloodier.

"The regime is no longer able to secure complete quiet in any area that it has retaken," said Yezid Sayigh, senior associate at the Carnegie Middle East Centre in Beirut.

"But for now the regime still possesses very considerable means to raise the threshold of violence, while denying the opposition the means to build a similar capacity".

The army used automatic weapons, artillery and tanks to subdue its outgunned but increasingly well-armed insurgents.

More recently, as the geographical extent of the conflict spread too wide for ground troops to contain, Assad has used helicopter gunships and fighter jets to hit targets, though he has deployed only a fraction of his air power.

Ayham Kamel of Eurasia Group consultancy said that, barring surprises such as the president's assassination, the conflict could be stuck in a long term stalemate in which Assad holds on but is unable to defeat the opposition forces.

But an Assad collapse would be unlikely to bring stability. Fractures between local rebel commanders, the destabilizing presence of foreign fighters and a likely re-emergence of rivalry between the rebels' main Gulf Arab sponsors Saudi Arabia and Qatar would lead to a power vacuum, Kamel said.

Faced with the loss of control of much of the country, Kamel predicted Assad would arm the "different religious sects, tribes, and entities to decrease the likelihood that any viable alternative emerges", plunging the country into a three-way conflict between Sunnis, Alawites and Kurds.

(Additional reporting by Hadeel Al-Shalchi in Aleppo; Editing by Giles Elgood)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/growing-violence-could-leave-syria-ungovernable-130523724.html

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Source: http://twitter.com/harryph/statuses/237084643302715392

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Psychologists link emotion to vividness of perception and creation of vivid memories

ScienceDaily (Aug. 20, 2012) ? Have you ever wondered why you can remember things from long ago as if they happened yesterday, yet sometimes can't recall what you ate for dinner last night? According to a new study led by psychologists at the University of Toronto, it's because how much something means to you actually influences how you see it as well as how vividly you can recall it later.

"We've discovered that we see things that are emotionally arousing with greater clarity than those that are more mundane," says Rebecca Todd, a postdoctoral fellow in U of T's Department of Psychology and lead author of the study published recently in the Journal of Neuroscience. "Whether they're positive -- for example, a first kiss, the birth of a child, winning an award -- or negative, such as traumatic events, breakups, or a painful and humiliating childhood moment that we all carry with us, the effect is the same."

"What's more, we found that how vividly we perceive something in the first place predicts how vividly we will remember it later on," says Todd. "We call this 'emotionally enhanced vividness' and it is like the flash of a flashbub that illuminates an event as it's captured for memory."

By studying brain activity, Todd, psychology professor Adam Anderson and other colleagues at U of T, along with researchers at the University of Manchester and the University of California, San Diego found that the part of the brain responsible for tagging the emotional or motivational importance of things according to one's own past experience -- the amygdala -- is more active when looking at images that are rated as vivid. This increased activation in turn influences activity in both the visual cortex, enhancing activity linked to seeing objects, and in the posterior insula, a region that integrates sensations from the body.

"The experience of more vivid perception of emotionally important images seems to come from a combination of enhanced seeing and gut feeling driven by amygdala calculations of how emotionally arousing an event is," says Todd.

The researchers began by measuring the subjective experience of the vividness of perception. Taking pictures of scenes that were emotionally arousing and negative (scenes of violence or mutilation, or sharks and snakes baring their teeth), emotionally arousing and positive (mostly mild erotica), and neutral scenes (such as people on an escalator), they overlaid the images with varying amounts of "visual noise," which looked like the snow one would see on an old television screen. The pictures were then shown to study participants who were asked to say whether each image had the same, more, or less noise than a standard image with a fixed amount of noise.

"We found that while people were good at rating how much noise was on the picture relative to a standard, they consistently rated pictures that were emotionally arousing as less noisy than neutral pictures regardless of the actual level of noise," says Todd. "When a picture was rated as less noisy, then they actually saw the picture underneath more clearly, as if there is more signal relative to noise in the emotionally arousing picture. The subjective meaning of a picture actually influenced how clearly the participants saw it."

The researchers used additional tests to rule out other explanations of their findings, such as how 'noisy' a picture seems due to less vibrant colours or a more complex scene. They also used eye-tracking measures to eliminate the possibility that people look at emotionally arousing images differently, causing them to rate some as more vivid.

"We next wanted to see if this finding of emotionally enhanced vividness influenced memory vividness," says Todd. "So, in two different studies, we measured memory for the images, both right after seeing them in the first place and one week later."

In the first study, 45 minutes after they did the noise task, participants were asked to write down all the details they could about pictures they remembered seeing. How much detail they remembered was a measure of vividness. In the second study, participants were shown the pictures again one week later and asked if they remembered them and, if so, how vividly they remembered them from very vague to very detailed.

"Both studies found that pictures that were rated higher in emotionally enhanced vividness were remembered more vividly," says Todd.

Finally, the researchers used brain imaging measures to look at when the brain responded to emotionally enhanced vividness and what regions of the brain responded. Using electrophysiology (EEG) to measure the timing of activity in the cortex to see when the brain is sensitive to vividness, gave them a sense of whether this subjective vividness was more about seeing vividly, or thinking that it was more vivid when you're considering it after the fact.

"We found that the brain indexes vividness pretty quickly -- about a 5th of a second after seeing a picture, which suggests it's about seeing and not just thinking," says Todd. "Emotion alters activity in the visual cortex, which in turn influences how we see."

The investigators also used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to look at what brain regions were more active when people look at things that they perceive as more vivid because they're emotionally important. Again, they found amygdala, visual cortex, and interoceptive cortex activity went up with increased vividness.

"We know now why people perceive emotional events so vividly -- and thus how vividly they will remember them -- and what regions of the brain are involved," says Todd. "Knowing that there are going to be differences among people as to how strongly they show this emotionally enhanced vividness and the strength of the brain activation patterns underlying them, could be useful in predicting an individual's vulnerability to trauma, including intrusive memories experienced by people with post-traumatic stress disorder."

Funding for the research was provided by the U.S. National Institute for Mental Health and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research.

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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by University of Toronto, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.

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


Journal Reference:

  1. Rebecca M. Todd, Deborah Talmi, Taylor W. Schmitz, Josh Susskind, and Adam K. Anderson. Psychophysical and Neural Evidence for Emotion-Enhanced Perceptual Vividness. Journal of Neuroscience, 2012 DOI: 10.1523/%u200BJNEUROSCI.0155-12.2012

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/living_well/~3/ED_lkyM-FOE/120820132340.htm

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REO Inventories Drop even as Banks holdon to them Longer - Blog

Foreclosure starts drop in Arizona, Nevada, Oregon

By Inman News Inman News?, August 19th, 2012

Inventories of bank-owned properties fell year over year across four Western states in July even as lenders took longer to get those properties off their books, according to the latest report from real estate data company ForeclosureRadar.

The report covers foreclosure trends in California, Arizona, Nevada, Washington and Oregon. Of the five states, only Oregon did not see its bank-owned inventory drop last month.

In California, the number of homes repossessed by lenders but not yet resold, known as bank-owned or real estate owned (REO) inventory, was down 36.4 percent to 66,000 properties last month. Banks sold REOs in 283 days on average, up from 232 days in July 2011. By contrast, homes bought by third parties at auction, usually investors, were resold in an average 138 days, up from 128 days a year ago.

Nonetheless, there are some signs the pipeline of foreclosures in the Golden State is speeding up a bit. Foreclosure starts rose 12.3 percent year over year in July to 21,175. The average number of days between the initial notice of default and the end of the foreclosure process (with the property either sold to a third party or repossessed by the bank) was 276 days last month (equivalent to about nine months), down from 310 days (about 10 months) a year ago.

Among the California homes in the foreclosure process whose fates were decided in July, most (10,398) experienced a cancellation of the process due to a successful loan modification or short sale, among other possible reasons. The number of properties that went back to the bank as REOs declined 54.2 percent on an annual basis to 4,512. Foreclosure sales to third parties fell 6.6 percent to 3,269.

In Arizona, foreclosure starts fell 28.2 percent year over year in July, to 4,433. Foreclosure cancellations were down 4.4 percent annually, to 3,575. The number of properties that went back to the bank as REOs decreased 33.8 percent year over year, to 2,191. Those sold to third parties rose 3 percent on an annual basis, to 1,630.

Arizona?s REO inventory fell 38.1 percent last month, to 14,784. While the time to foreclose declined to an average 136 days from 175 days in July 2011, the time between when the bank took back the property and the property was resold rose a whopping 64.9 percent, to an average 244 days in July. Third parties resold properties in less than half that time, 107 days, up from 94 days a year ago.

Foreclosure activity in Nevada has slowed to a trickle, likely as a result of a Nevada state law that went into effect in October designed to crack down on documentation irregularities by foreclosing lenders.

In July, Nevada foreclosure starts were down 61.8 percent, to 1,618, compared with 4,235 a year ago. Foreclosure cancellations were down to 800, a nearly 60 percent drop from July 2011, but the number of properties becoming REOs dropped even more precipitously, 77.8 percent, to only 394 properties. The number of properties sold to third parties on the courthouse steps fell 34.4 percent, to 429.

The state?s REO inventory was down 63.8 percent to 5,541 in July with the number of homes in the foreclosure pipeline dropping by more than half year over year. It took nearly 46 percent longer to foreclose on a property last month than it did in July 2011: an average of 471 days ? the equivalent of nearly 16 months. Banks also took considerably longer to sell homes once they?d repossessed them ? an average 221 days, up from 154 days a year ago. Third parties resold in an average 133 days, up from 98 days.

In Washington state, time to foreclose was virtually unchanged from a year ago in July: 102 days on average. Foreclosure starts were up 13.1 percent to 2,527. Cancellations fell 59.5 percent to 601. The number of properties that went back to the bank as REOs fell 67.1 percent to 595. Foreclosure sales to third parties fell 36 percent to 151.

As in the aforementioned states, REO inventory in Washington fell substantially last month: down 42.2 percent to 6,554. Banks took an average of 249 days to resell an REO property, up 25.9 percent. By contrast, third parties took an average 107 days to resell, down 24.1 percent.

In Oregon, foreclosure starts were down 58.6 percent year over year in July, to 426.

?This is most likely related to both the new Oregon law, SB 1552, that gives homeowners at risk of default, or in default, the right to request mediation to avoid foreclosure, as well as the Oregon Court of Appeals ruling that may force some lenders to proceed judicially with foreclosures,? the report said.

?It is still not clear whether this is a temporary decline or part of a move toward judicial foreclosure in Oregon.?

Nonetheless, time to foreclose fell to an average of 143 days from 162 days a year ago. Foreclosure cancellations in Oregon fell 11.9 percent on an annual basis last month, to 761 properties. At the same time, the number of properties reverting to REOs rose 93.6 percent year over year, to 395. Sales to third parties rose 73.7 percent, to 66 properties.

In contrast to the other four states in the ForeclosureRadar report, REO inventory in Oregon rose in July, up 39.7 percent to 3,153 properties. Banks also resold REOs at a quicker pace ? an average of 203 days, down from 219 a year ago. Third parties resold in an average of 79 days, up from 66 in July 2011
Follow Len and Leslie Marma of Success! Real Estate on their facebook business page, ?Marshfield Matters? ?? click LIKE to receive real estate info and what?s happening in Marshfield.?

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Source: http://marshfieldrealestate.wordpress.com/2012/08/19/reo-inventories-drop-even-as-banks-holdon-to-them-longer/

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Humble Bundle Returns for Android, Mac, Windows and Linux

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Monday, 13 August 2012

What Happened to the Lunch Break?

When's the last time you left your desk and took a real lunch break?

For many workers, the answer is "not recently," a trend driven by a bad economy and high workplace expectations, researchers say. A recent McDonald's ad campaign even took advantage of lunch break dissatisfaction with a series of commercials telling workers, "It's your lunch. Take it."

Although there are no national statistics on lunch breaks, small-scale surveys find that up to two-thirds of workers skip lunch or eat lunch at their desks.

Kristen Pierce, a former employee of a large tech company in the Washington, D.C., area, was one of those deskbound lunchers.

"We generally worked through lunch or ate during a conference meeting," Pierce, now a university marketing assistant in Michigan, told LiveScience. "It was definitely an atmosphere where if somebody needed you and you were at lunch, that would be taken as a very negative thing ? even if it was a completely normal lunch break and you were two rooms away."

Lost lunch breaks

Skipped lunch breaks are a growing trend, said Danielle Hartmann, the director for corporate partnerships at Boston College's Center for Work & Family.

"I think the expectation is that more people are expected to work more with less," Hartmann told LiveScience. "Workloads have been exceptionally high and people don't feel like they can take the time to eat." [7 Perfect Survival Foods]

A survey by CareerBuilder released in 2010 found that 18 percent of workers report always eating at their desks and 16 percent said they skipped lunch in favor of work. A third of employees surveyed said that they did take lunch, but spent less than 30 minutes eating. Likewise, a 2011 online survey by workplace consulting group Right Management found that 34 percent of North American workers said they ate at their desks, and 31 percent said they occasionally, rarely or never took lunch.

"Many of the organizations have been downsized, and as a result, folks have significantly more responsibility," said Ron Sims, a vice president at Right Management. "They don't want to be seen as somebody who is not fully contributing."

That's an urge that might seem productive but actually burns you in the long run, said Nancy Rothbard, a professor of management at the Wharton School of business at the University of Pennsylvania.

"There is support for this idea that taking these breaks can actually help you do better and focus better on your work and have new ideas," Rothbard told LiveScience.

Benefits of breaks

Research on call-center workers and software developers, two very different job types, has found benefits to taking breaks throughout the day, Rothbard said. What you do on these breaks mattered, she added. Anything replenishing, such as relaxing or socializing (if enjoyable), tends to lend people renewed vigor for the post-break stretch. Running around trying to cram in extra errands or chores, on the other hand, does little for afternoon productivity. [7 Things That Will Make You Happy]

In one 2010 study published in the Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, researchers found that assigning call-center workers to 20-minute "progressive relaxation" breaks, in which they participated in meditation-like activities, removed feelings of strain in the afternoon, compared with 20-minute breaks where people engaged in small talk with co-workers. ?

The benefits of breaks range from ergonomic (getting out of your chair occasionally is good for the body) to professional (chatting with co-workers at lunch can spark new camaraderie and collaborations), Boston College's Hartmann said.

Taking back lunch

There are no federal requirements for lunch breaks, though many states have laws that require meal breaks for hourly workers. Many salaried employees are not covered by these laws.

Nevertheless, some companies are seeing the benefit of encouraging lunch breaks, Hartmann said. She works with several companies that have started encouraging employees to hit the dining hall or the fitness center during lunch hour as a way to promote health and creativity.

These initiatives are sorely needed, according to Sims. Employees in North America are less engaged in their work than they have been in years, according to Right Management surveys, he said. While an engaged employee is willing to go the extra mile, Sims said, disengaged employees are just trying to get through the day.

"You may have their activity, you may have their feet, but you don't have their hearts and minds," Sims said. [Slacker Staffers: Workplace Disengagement (Infographic)]

Flexibility may be key for employers hoping to cultivate satisfied and productive workers. Former tech employee Pierce now works at an office with a mandatory hour lunch break. She'd prefer to work through lunch and use that hour to go home early.

"I'm a big fan of flex hours and adapting to people's individual work styles," Pierce said. At one of her old companies, she said, the bosses and co-workers took a live-and-let-live approach to the lunch hour.?

"If you wanted to work through it nobody interfered," she said. "On the other hand, if you wanted to go out and spend your lunch hour in the sun folding paper planes, nobody thought less of you for it, and that was great."

Follow Stephanie Pappas on Twitter @sipappas?or LiveScience @livescience. We're also on Facebook?& Google+.?

Copyright 2012 LiveScience, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/happened-lunch-break-142218829.html

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Friday, 3 August 2012

New Egypt Cabinet sworn in, faces heavy tasks

CAIRO (AP) ? Egypt's new prime minister and his Cabinet were sworn in on Thursday, the first government since the election of a Muslim Brotherhood leader as the country's first freely elected president.

Prime Minister Hesham Kandil asked Egyptians to rally behind his new government, promising it would represent all the people and trying to deflect the belief that the Cabinet will be solely under the Brotherhood's sway.

The Cabinet seemed designed to avoid any appearance of Brotherhood domination, including several members of the out-going, military-picked government and mainly technocratic figures. Still, Brotherhood members took four ministries, including the key information minister post, which oversees state media.

It also retains in his post Hosni Mubarak's defense minister of 20 years, Field Marshall Hussein Tantawi, a reflection of how the military, which Tantawi heads, still holds overwhelming powers in the country. The military had said weeks ago that it would decide who serves as defense minister.

The new government is the first since the June 30 inauguration of President Mohammed Morsi, a longtime Muslim Brotherhood leader. It comes at a time when tensions are mounting over the country's tenuous security, recent sectarian violence and growing popular discontent over issues such as widespread power and water outages as well as shortages.

In a sign of the chaos, one person was shot to death by police Thursday when a crowd of hundreds went on a rampage against a luxury hotel on the Nile River in central Cairo. The crowd threw firebombs at the hotel, smashed its lobby and set fire to 10 cars, a security official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk the press.

Security forces fired tear gas on the crowd and opened fire, killng one person, the official said.

The crowd came from a slum located just behind the hotel, which is a twin-tower skyscraper complex that includes a glitzy shopping center and offices. Earlier in the day, several residents of the slum who had been hired by the hotel for protection had tried to get into the hotel to collect payments owed to them. Police stopped them, an altercation ensued, and a policeman shot and wounded one of the men. The larger crowd of nearly 500 returned later and attacked the hotel, the security official said.

Earlier this week, sectarian violence in the village of Dahshour south of Cairo saw a Muslim mob torching Christian homes and damaging the local church, which forced many Christian families to flee the village Wednesday. The attack was sparked when an earlier personal dispute swelled into violence and a Muslim man died.

At a press conference before the swearing in, Kandil noted the country's "grave challenges."

"We are all Egyptians in the Arab Republic of Egypt. The coming period is not easy, to say the least, and we are all in the same boat," he said. "This is the people's government, it does not belong to this or that trend."

The line-up of the 35-member Cabinet falls far short of the unity government that Morsi had initially said he would put together, bringing together political factions. Instead, the members were largely technocrats. And many will be looking to see how many of the new ministers, while not Brotherhood members, are Islamists or sympathetic to the movement to gain a real picture of the government's diversity.

Morsi's choice of Kandil, a devout Muslim reported by some Egyptian media to be sympathetic to the Brotherhood, has angered the liberals and leftists who launched the uprising against Mubarak. In his 40s, he maintains that he has no formal links to any of the country's Islamist political parties.

The finance and foreign ministers from the outgoing, military-picked government were retained, an apparent attempt to show there will not be destabilizing changes in those fields.

Outgoing prime minister Kamal el-Ganzouri became the first member of Morsi's own presidential team when the president named him on Thursday as an adviser, according to state TV. El-Ganzouri, in his late 70s, also served as prime minister under Mubarak.

The Cabinet lineup includes only two women ? one of them also a Christian ? and signaled Morsi's failure to give women and minority Christians more than the token representation they had under Mubarak's 29-year authoritarian rule.

It also does not include any of the iconic youth figures of the 18-day, anti-Mubarak uprising. Still, Kandil sought to gain the goodwill of the secular, pro-reform groups behind the revolt, saying his government wanted to realize its slogan: "Bread, freedom and social justice." He acknowledged that he was abroad when the uprising began Jan. 25, 2011.

The radical Islamist Al-Nour party, which supported Morsi in his presidential bid, decided to boycott the government after it was only offered the environment portfolio. It had wanted the communication, local development and business sector ministries, according to a party spokesman.

Brotherhood members were given the key ministry posts of information, higher education and housing. A fourth Brotherhood member was named minister of state for youth. The information portfolio gives the Brotherhood control over state television, long criticized by Islamists to be lax in safeguarding against Western cultural influence.

The higher education portfolio gives the Brotherhood control over the country's universities, a traditional recruitment ground for the fundamentalist group. The Youth portfolio could give it an even wider area for recruitment and religious indoctrination.

The military generals who took over from Mubarak in February 2011 handed over power to Morsi but not before they stripped the new president of significant powers and declared themselves as the country's legislative authority after dissolving the Brotherhood-dominated parliament. The military also has control over the process of drafting Egypt's new constitution.

The new government comes to office during one of the worst bouts of unrest since the days and weeks that immediately followed Mubarak's Feb. 11, 2011 ouster.

Lengthy power and water outages in Cairo and across the nation of some 82 million people have been sending thousands to the streets to protest daily. In many cases, protesters cut off roads or attacked government offices.

The outages have deepened the suffering of Egypt's mainly Muslim population, coinciding with the dawn-to-dusk fasting during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which this year falls during the scorching July and August heat. During Ramadan, devout Muslims refrain from eating, drinking, smoking and other worldly pleasures.

The popular discontent has spread to the gates of Morsi's presidential palace in Cairo's leafy suburb of Heliopolis where hundreds gather every day to express a wide range of grievances or to demand jobs, better medical care or housing. Morsi opened two offices to receive citizens' complaints.

The offices attracted thousands who hoped the new president will redress perceived injustices or meet their demands. Butt hope was soon replaced by despair when nothing was done and some applicants returned to protest.

Egypt's economy is also sliding fast, with more than half of foreign currency reserves wiped out in the last 18 months, and tourism, a mainstay of the economy, wildly fluctuating to reflect unrest in the country.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/egypt-cabinet-sworn-faces-heavy-tasks-161121148.html

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New bat virus could hold key to Hendra virus

ScienceDaily (Aug. 2, 2012) ? Australian scientists have discovered a new virus in bats that could help shed light on how Hendra and Nipah viruses cause disease and death in animals and humans.

The new virus -- named 'Cedar' after the Queensland location where it was discovered -- is a close relative of the deadly Hendra and Nipah viruses.

However, CSIRO's initial studies have discovered one surprising key difference -- the Cedar virus does not cause illness in several animal species normally susceptible to Hendra and Nipah.

The new discovery had significant potential implications for protecting animals and humans from the Hendra and Nipah viruses.

This tantalising difference may help scientists understand how to better manage and control its deadly cousins. The findings have been announced August 3 in the journal, PLoS Pathogens, published by the Public Library of Science.

Mr Gary Crameri, research scientist with the bat virus team at CSIRO's Australian Animal Health Laboratory (AAHL) in Geelong, Victoria, said the new discovery had significant potential implications for protecting animals and humans from the Hendra and Nipah viruses.

"The significance of discovering a new henipavirus that doesn't cause disease is that it may help us narrow down what it is about the genetic makeup of viruses like Hendra and Nipah that does cause disease and death," Mr Crameri said.

"The more that we can learn about bat-borne viruses, the better chance we have of developing anti-virals and vaccines to help protect human health, Australia's livestock industry and our export trade from the threat of current and emerging animal diseases.

"Over 70 per cent of people and animals infected with Hendra and Nipah viruses die. This ranks henipaviruses amongst the deadliest viruses in existence, yet little is known about just how such viruses actually cause disease or death."

It is still too early to rule out the possibility that Cedar virus may cause illness and death in horses or other animals.

The discovery was a result of a close partnership with Biosecurity Queensland which played an important role by collecting and screening samples from bat colonies across Queensland.

"Field work with bats is an essential part of research into identifying new viruses," Dr Hume Field of Biosecurity Queensland said. "Bats are being implicated as the natural host of a growing number of viruses in Australia and overseas, yet they appear to tolerate infection themselves making bat research increasingly important."

Bats have been identified as playing a role in the spread of viruses including Ebola, Marburg, SARS and Melaka yet they are an essential part of our diverse ecosystem through their role as pollinators, seed dispersers and insect regulators.

The discovery is part of ongoing research by CSIRO to target diseases that threaten our animals, people and the environment and is part of CSIRO's wider biosecurity effort. It follows CSIRO's development towards a horse vaccine against Hendra virus.

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Journal Reference:

  1. Glenn A. Marsh, Carol de Jong, Jennifer A. Barr, Mary Tachedjian, Craig Smith, Deborah Middleton, Meng Yu, Shawn Todd, Adam J. Foord, Volker Haring, Jean Payne, Rachel Robinson, Ivano Broz, Gary Crameri, Hume E. Field, Lin-Fa Wang. Cedar Virus: A Novel Henipavirus Isolated from Australian Bats. PLoS Pathogens, 2012; 8 (8): e1002836 DOI: 10.1371/journal.ppat.1002836

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/top_environment/~3/tyvsZyl2Z68/120802183950.htm

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Thursday, 2 August 2012

US nuns consider response to Vatican censure

The largest group for American nuns will meet next week in St. Louis to decide whether they should resist or accept a Vatican-ordered overhaul.

The Leadership Conference of Women Religious is set to hold its first national assembly since the Vatican orthodoxy watchdog accused the group of straying far from Roman Catholic doctrine.

The organization represents 80 percent of the 57,000 U.S. nuns. The head of the conference, Sister Pat Farrell, said Thursday that questioning church teaching should not be seen as defiance. Several past presidents of the nuns' group will attend next week's assembly to offer their guidance.

The Vatican critique inspired an outpouring of support for the nuns nationwide. Vigils are planned for several cities in support of the Leadership Conference during its meeting.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/us-nuns-consider-response-vatican-censure-180653487.html

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