BANGKOK (AP) ? Signs that U.S. political leaders may be closing in on a budget deal to avoid the so-called "fiscal cliff" boosted world stock markets Thursday.
Comments by President Barack Obama and Speaker of the House John Boehner that a deal to avoid a budget crisis could be reached before year's end was enough to boost markets in the face of disappointing U.S. home sales, a critical indicator of whether the economy is improving.
European stock markets opened higher. Britain's FTSE 100 rose 0.4 percent to 5,826.96. Germany's DAX advanced 0.5 percent to 7,382.93. France's CAC-40 added 0.7 percent to 3,538.65.
Wall Street also appeared headed for a session of gains. Dow Jones industrial futures rose 0.6 percent to 13,030. S&P 500 futures were up 0.6 percent at 1,416.10.
Earlier, Japan's Nikkei 225 index rose 1 percent to close at 9,400.88. Hong Kong's Hang Seng jumped 1 percent to 21,922.89 and South Korea's Kospi added 1.2 percent to 1,934.85. Australia's S&P/ASX 200 gained 0.7 percent to 4,477.70. Benchmarks in Singapore, Taiwan and New Zealand also rose.
But mainland Chinese stocks extended their slump to a fourth day. The Shanghai Composite Index lost 0.5 percent to 1,963.49, the lowest closing since Jan. 16, 2009. The smaller Shenzhen Composite Index lost 1 percent 743.43.
"Investors are getting more and more pessimistic towards the market after recent losses," said Peng Yunliang, a Shanghai-based analyst.
Obama and the U.S. Congress have until Jan. 1 to agree on how to trim the country's unwieldy deficit. Otherwise, a series of automatic tax increases and sharp spending cuts will take effect that could drag the world's No. 1 economy into recession. Obama said Wednesday he believes a "framework" for an agreement can be reached before Christmas.
"It's really a headline market at the moment. We'll probably continue to see headlines on the fiscal cliff supersede any economic data until it is resolved," said Stan Shamu of IG Markets in Melbourne. "The longer it stretches out, the more risk there is that it will cause further volatility in the markets. But for now, it seems markets are on the right track."
Among Japanese stocks, Nakayama Steel Works soared 55 percent after a Nikkei business daily reported the company will seek restructuring and loan waivers from banks. Kobe Steel gained 6.9 percent. Export-dependent shares also rose, including Yamaha Motor Co., up 3.6 percent; and Honda Motor Co., up 2 percent.
Hong Kong-listed property shares also posted solid gains, including Evergrande Real Estate Group, which jumped 6.6 percent.
Concern that the U.S. will go over the fiscal "cliff" has weighed on stocks since the Nov. 6 elections returned a divided government to power, with Obama staying in the White House and Republicans retaining control of the House of Representatives.
U.S. sales of new homes fell slightly in October, down 0.3 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 368,000. The government also said Tuesday that September sales were slower than initially reported.
In Europe, sentiment improved this week after Greece's bailout creditors agreed to pay its next installment of loans and outlined a series of measures to lower its debt load over the coming decade. Concerns remain, however, over the country's economy, which is expected to enter a sixth year of recession in 2013.
Benchmark oil for January delivery was up 44 cents to $86.95 per barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The contract fell 69 cents to close at $86.49 per barrel on the Nymex on Wednesday.
In currencies, the euro rose to $1.2976 from $1.2932 late Wednesday in New York. The dollar rose to 82.15 yen from 81.90 yen.
___
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Cuomo?met with top insurance companies about the changes that should cut by more than half the time New Yorkers will have to wait for insurance adjusters.
By Associated Press / November 29, 2012
In this Oct. 31 photo, Joseph Leader, Metropolitan Transportation Authority Vice President and Chief Maintenance Officer, shines a flashlight on standing water inside the South Ferry 1 train station in New York, in the wake of Superstorm Sandy.
Craig Ruttle/AP
Enlarge
Gov. Andrew?Cuomo?is cutting some bureaucracy to speed the payment of insurance claims to victims of Superstorm Sandy, while also creating an online system to grade insurers.
Click Here for your FREE 30 DAYS of The Christian Science Monitor Weekly Digital Edition
Cuomo?met with top insurance companies about the changes that should cut by more than half the time New Yorkers will have to wait for insurance adjusters. The adjusters must inspect homes and businesses before claims can be paid to policyholders.
The governor is allowing some insurance adjusters from outside the state to obtain temporary state licenses to help address New York mountain of claims more quickly.
The state Department of Financial Services will also post online report cards that will rate insurance companies' performance.
LONDON (Reuters) - Scientists from Britain, Germany and the United States have unlocked key components of the genetic code for wheat, helping to create varieties that are more productive and better able to cope with disease, drought and other crop stresses.
The identification of around 96,000 wheat genes, and insights into the links between them, comes just two years after UK researchers published the raw data of the wheat genome.
"Since 1980, the rate of increase in wheat yields has declined," said one of the project leaders, Keith Edwards of the University of Bristol.
"Analysis of the wheat genome sequence data provides a new and very powerful foundation for breeding future generations of wheat more quickly and more precisely, to help address this problem," he added.
The research was published in the journal Nature on Wednesday.
"Bread wheat is a complex hybrid, composed of the complete genomes of three closely related grasses. This makes it very complex and large; in total it is almost five times bigger than the human genome," said another of the project's leaders, Klaus Mayer of Helmholtz-Zentrum Munchen.
"Because of this, we took a novel approach to analyzing the data and we have been successful in turning it into an accessible and useful resource that will accelerate breeding and the discovery of varieties with improved performance - for example better disease resistance and stress tolerance."
Jan Dvorak of the University of California, Davis led the U.S. contribution to the project.
The study was welcomed by other scientists.
"As we struggle to confront the increasing challenges of population increase, land degradation and climate change that are contributing to food insecurity, it will be vital to understand the underlying genetics of staple crops like wheat," said Denis Murphy of the University of Glamorgan.
"The newly published wheat genome will be a vital resource for researchers and crop breeders across the world in their efforts to maintain global food supplies."
(Reporting by Nigel Hunt; Editing by Alison Birrane)
BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The European Commission gave the go ahead for Spain to overhaul its stricken nationalized banks on Wednesday and opened the door for nearly 40 billion euros in euro zone aid to be disbursed, offering hope for an end to Spain's banking crisis.
Lenders Bankia, NCG Banco, Catalunya Banc and Banco de Valencia will need 37 billion euros ($48 billion) to be recapitalized and the banks' bondholders will face losses, EU Competition Commissioner Joaquin Almunia said.
The approval allows the euro zone to disburse the funds from its permanent ESM bailout fund and could mark a turning point in a banking crisis that has dragged Spain into recession after its real estate bubble burst. Spain was given approval to receive up to 100 billion euros from the ESM in June.
Wednesday's announcement sets down one of the most far-reaching restructuring plans of any European banking system ordered by the Commission since the start of a banking crisis in mid-2007 with the near collapse of German lender IKB.
"The approval of the restructuring plans of BFA/Bankia, NCG, Catalunya Banc and Banco de Valencia is a milestone in the implementation of the Memorandum of Understanding between euro area countries and Spain," EU Competition Commissioner Joaquin Almunia said, referring to Spain's euro zone bank bailout.
"What we've approved today means that the funds for the European Stability Mechanism can be disbursed," Almunia told a news conference. "The total amount adopted today is 37 billion euros."
The European Commission said Banco de Valencia would be sold and integrated into Caixabank, and the other three banks would need to cut their balance sheets by more than 60 percent over the next five years.
In what potentially signals thousands of job losses in Spain, Almunia said the nationalized banks would have to close up to half their branches during a five-year overhaul process.
There will be a pay cap and a coupon payment and acquisition bans on the banks during their restructuring period. The cost to hybrid and subordinated bondholders will come to about 10 billion euros, Almunia said.
The Commissioner said he would decide on other Spanish banks on December 20.
(Reporting by Foo Yun Chee and Robin Emmott; editing by Luke Baker)
X-rays expose blueprint for possible sleeping sickness drugPublic release date: 29-Nov-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Thomas Zoufal presse@desy.de 49-408-998-1666 Helmholtz Association of German Research Centres
First new biological structure solved by a free-electron laser
This release is available in German.
Using the world's most powerful X-ray laser, scientists have exposed a possible Achilles' heel of the sleeping sickness parasite that threatens more than 60 million people in sub-Saharan Africa. The sophisticated analysis revealed the blueprint for a molecular plug that can selectively block a vital enzyme of the parasite Trypanosoma brucei. Plugging such a tailor-made molecule into the right place of the enzyme would render it inactive, thereby killing the parasite. The team led by DESY scientist Prof. Henry Chapman from the Center of Free-Electron Laser Science (CFEL), Prof. Christian Betzel from the University of Hamburg and Dr. Lars Redecke from the joint Junior Research Group "Structural Infection Biology using new Radiation Sources (SIAS)" of the Universities of Hamburg and Lbeck report their findings in the journal Science. "This is the first new biological structure solved with a free-electron laser," said Chapman.
The researchers had investigated tiny crystals of the parasite's enzyme cathepsin B with intense X-rays from the free-electron laser Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS) at the US National Accelerator Laboratory SLAC in California. "The enzyme had emerged as a promising drug target in earlier trials", said Redecke, one of the first authors of the scientific paper. "The knockdown of this essential enzyme in the parasite did cure the infection in mice."
But the same enzyme is also part of the human - and in fact of all mammalian - biochemistry, and blocking it has severe consequences. With their analysis the scientists could now pinpoint distinctive structural differences between the human and the parasite's form of the enzyme. "This should in principle allow for designing a molecule that selectively blocks the parasite's enzyme while leaving the patient's intact", explained the other first author of the paper, Karol Nass, PhD student at the Hamburg School for Structure and Dynamics in Infection (SDI), funded by the Excellence Initiative of the German Federal State of Hamburg (LEXI), The researchers stress that while the finding raises hopes, a possible new drug is still a long way to go.
Sleeping sickness, or human African trypanosomiasis (HAT), is transmitted by the bite of the tsetse fly. The Trypanosoma parasites invade the central nervous system, and without treatment the infection is usually fatal. The disease occurs in 36 sub-Saharan countries and affects mostly poor populations living in remote rural areas. Thanks to intensified control measures the number of reported cases fell steeply in recent years, but there are still millions at risk. Current treatments of HAT rely on anti-parasitic drugs developed without knowledge of the biochemical pathways. They are not always as effective and as safe as desired, and the parasites are increasingly becoming resistant to these drugs. New drugs that selectively kill the parasite without affecting the patient's own organism would be of great use.
With cathepsin B the scientists applied a novel approach by investigating tiny crystals of the enzyme that were grown in insect cells in vivo. This way the enzyme was frozen in its natural configuration that includes a native inhibitor. Because cathepsin B works as a sort of molecular scissors cutting away at other proteins, it is produced by the cell in an inhibited form and only activated when needed. In the inhibited form a small peptide molecule is blocking the cutting edge of the molecular scissors. "With the peptide still in place we could peer below a previously impenetrable part of the cathepsin B structure ", explained Betzel. There, the analysis revealed significant differences between the peptide binding sites at the parasite's and the human form of cathepsin B. "This way, nature provided us with a blueprint of what an artificial inhibitor for the parasite's enzyme could look like." The next step would be to synthesise such a tailor-made plug and test it in the lab.
The molecular structure of the enzyme was solved to the atomic level by shooting bright X-ray flashes at the tiny cathepsin B crystals, which were only about a micron (a thousandth of a millimetre) in diameter and about ten microns long on average. Crystals scatter X-rays in a characteristic way that depends on their inner structure. From the resulting diffraction pattern the structure of the crystals can be calculated, in this case revealing the structure of the enzyme. Today, crystallography is a standard technique to analyse biomolecules. Usually, scientists use modified bacteria to produce biomolecules in large amounts and try to crystallise them into the largest possible sizes of high-quality crystals afterwards. The in vivo crystallisation pioneered at the labs of Betzel and Prof. Michael Duszenko at the University of Tbingen, who is also a member of the research team, employs living cells to produce crystals. In contrast to standard crystallisation experiments, only in vivo crystallisation yielded suitable crystals of cathepsin B in a natively inhibited form.
But the in vivo crystals are still so small that only X-ray lasers like LCLS are bright enough to produce sufficiently detailed diffraction images. The LCLS belongs to a novel class of scientific light sources called free-electron lasers that are based on powerful particle accelerators. In these machines, electrons are accelerated to high speeds, or energies, and are then forced on a tight slalom course. In every bend each electron emits a tiny flash, and all the flashes add up to an incredibly strong X-ray pulse with laser properties, that allows to resolve structures like the natively inhibited cathepsin B molecule.
To solve the cathepsin B structure the researchers had to record hundreds of thousands of diffraction images that were painstakingly stitched together afterwards. As each crystal is destroyed when hit by the powerful X-ray flash, the team fed a stream of crystals in a watery solution through a thin nozzle into the laser path. The X-ray laser fired away at 120 shots per second, where on average only every eleventh shot actually hit a crystal. This resulted in a total of 293,195 diffraction images recorded. These could only be processed with massive parallel computing, to first generate a three-dimensional map of the entire diffracting signals of the enzyme from which an image of its structure was calculated. The final result revealed the enzyme's structure with a resolution of 2.1 ngstrm (one ngstrm is a tenth of a nanometre or a ten-millionth of a millimetre). "Interestingly, this discovery comes exactly at the centenary of the publication of the famous X-ray diffraction equation by William Bragg in 1912," Chapman pointed out.
The team included members from DESY, the Universities of Hamburg, Lbeck, Tbingen, Uppsala and Gothenburg, the Arizona State University, SLAC, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, the Max Planck institute for medical research in Heidelberg and the Max Planck advanced study group at CFEL. CFEL is a joint venture of DESY, the Max Planck society and the University of Hamburg. DESY is the leading German accelerator centre and one of the leading worldwide.
###
Reference: "Natively inhibited Trypanosoma brucei cathepsin B structure determined using an x-ray laser"; Lars Redecke, Karol Nass et al.; Science, 2012 (advance online publication); DOI: 10.1126/science.1229663
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
X-rays expose blueprint for possible sleeping sickness drugPublic release date: 29-Nov-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Thomas Zoufal presse@desy.de 49-408-998-1666 Helmholtz Association of German Research Centres
First new biological structure solved by a free-electron laser
This release is available in German.
Using the world's most powerful X-ray laser, scientists have exposed a possible Achilles' heel of the sleeping sickness parasite that threatens more than 60 million people in sub-Saharan Africa. The sophisticated analysis revealed the blueprint for a molecular plug that can selectively block a vital enzyme of the parasite Trypanosoma brucei. Plugging such a tailor-made molecule into the right place of the enzyme would render it inactive, thereby killing the parasite. The team led by DESY scientist Prof. Henry Chapman from the Center of Free-Electron Laser Science (CFEL), Prof. Christian Betzel from the University of Hamburg and Dr. Lars Redecke from the joint Junior Research Group "Structural Infection Biology using new Radiation Sources (SIAS)" of the Universities of Hamburg and Lbeck report their findings in the journal Science. "This is the first new biological structure solved with a free-electron laser," said Chapman.
The researchers had investigated tiny crystals of the parasite's enzyme cathepsin B with intense X-rays from the free-electron laser Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS) at the US National Accelerator Laboratory SLAC in California. "The enzyme had emerged as a promising drug target in earlier trials", said Redecke, one of the first authors of the scientific paper. "The knockdown of this essential enzyme in the parasite did cure the infection in mice."
But the same enzyme is also part of the human - and in fact of all mammalian - biochemistry, and blocking it has severe consequences. With their analysis the scientists could now pinpoint distinctive structural differences between the human and the parasite's form of the enzyme. "This should in principle allow for designing a molecule that selectively blocks the parasite's enzyme while leaving the patient's intact", explained the other first author of the paper, Karol Nass, PhD student at the Hamburg School for Structure and Dynamics in Infection (SDI), funded by the Excellence Initiative of the German Federal State of Hamburg (LEXI), The researchers stress that while the finding raises hopes, a possible new drug is still a long way to go.
Sleeping sickness, or human African trypanosomiasis (HAT), is transmitted by the bite of the tsetse fly. The Trypanosoma parasites invade the central nervous system, and without treatment the infection is usually fatal. The disease occurs in 36 sub-Saharan countries and affects mostly poor populations living in remote rural areas. Thanks to intensified control measures the number of reported cases fell steeply in recent years, but there are still millions at risk. Current treatments of HAT rely on anti-parasitic drugs developed without knowledge of the biochemical pathways. They are not always as effective and as safe as desired, and the parasites are increasingly becoming resistant to these drugs. New drugs that selectively kill the parasite without affecting the patient's own organism would be of great use.
With cathepsin B the scientists applied a novel approach by investigating tiny crystals of the enzyme that were grown in insect cells in vivo. This way the enzyme was frozen in its natural configuration that includes a native inhibitor. Because cathepsin B works as a sort of molecular scissors cutting away at other proteins, it is produced by the cell in an inhibited form and only activated when needed. In the inhibited form a small peptide molecule is blocking the cutting edge of the molecular scissors. "With the peptide still in place we could peer below a previously impenetrable part of the cathepsin B structure ", explained Betzel. There, the analysis revealed significant differences between the peptide binding sites at the parasite's and the human form of cathepsin B. "This way, nature provided us with a blueprint of what an artificial inhibitor for the parasite's enzyme could look like." The next step would be to synthesise such a tailor-made plug and test it in the lab.
The molecular structure of the enzyme was solved to the atomic level by shooting bright X-ray flashes at the tiny cathepsin B crystals, which were only about a micron (a thousandth of a millimetre) in diameter and about ten microns long on average. Crystals scatter X-rays in a characteristic way that depends on their inner structure. From the resulting diffraction pattern the structure of the crystals can be calculated, in this case revealing the structure of the enzyme. Today, crystallography is a standard technique to analyse biomolecules. Usually, scientists use modified bacteria to produce biomolecules in large amounts and try to crystallise them into the largest possible sizes of high-quality crystals afterwards. The in vivo crystallisation pioneered at the labs of Betzel and Prof. Michael Duszenko at the University of Tbingen, who is also a member of the research team, employs living cells to produce crystals. In contrast to standard crystallisation experiments, only in vivo crystallisation yielded suitable crystals of cathepsin B in a natively inhibited form.
But the in vivo crystals are still so small that only X-ray lasers like LCLS are bright enough to produce sufficiently detailed diffraction images. The LCLS belongs to a novel class of scientific light sources called free-electron lasers that are based on powerful particle accelerators. In these machines, electrons are accelerated to high speeds, or energies, and are then forced on a tight slalom course. In every bend each electron emits a tiny flash, and all the flashes add up to an incredibly strong X-ray pulse with laser properties, that allows to resolve structures like the natively inhibited cathepsin B molecule.
To solve the cathepsin B structure the researchers had to record hundreds of thousands of diffraction images that were painstakingly stitched together afterwards. As each crystal is destroyed when hit by the powerful X-ray flash, the team fed a stream of crystals in a watery solution through a thin nozzle into the laser path. The X-ray laser fired away at 120 shots per second, where on average only every eleventh shot actually hit a crystal. This resulted in a total of 293,195 diffraction images recorded. These could only be processed with massive parallel computing, to first generate a three-dimensional map of the entire diffracting signals of the enzyme from which an image of its structure was calculated. The final result revealed the enzyme's structure with a resolution of 2.1 ngstrm (one ngstrm is a tenth of a nanometre or a ten-millionth of a millimetre). "Interestingly, this discovery comes exactly at the centenary of the publication of the famous X-ray diffraction equation by William Bragg in 1912," Chapman pointed out.
The team included members from DESY, the Universities of Hamburg, Lbeck, Tbingen, Uppsala and Gothenburg, the Arizona State University, SLAC, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, the Max Planck institute for medical research in Heidelberg and the Max Planck advanced study group at CFEL. CFEL is a joint venture of DESY, the Max Planck society and the University of Hamburg. DESY is the leading German accelerator centre and one of the leading worldwide.
###
Reference: "Natively inhibited Trypanosoma brucei cathepsin B structure determined using an x-ray laser"; Lars Redecke, Karol Nass et al.; Science, 2012 (advance online publication); DOI: 10.1126/science.1229663
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
NEW YORK (Reuters) - A group of retailers on Tuesday appealed a court order preliminarily approving a $7.2 billion settlement between Visa Inc, Mastercard Inc and merchants over credit card fees, saying it violated their rights by preventing them from opting out of the pact.
U.S. District Judge John Gleeson in Brooklyn federal court gave the settlement his initial stamp of approval earlier this month. If the deal receives final approval, it would be the largest federal antitrust settlement in U.S. history, offering nearly 8 million merchants $7.2 billion in cash and temporary reductions in the interchange, or swipe fees, they pay to process credit and debit transactions.
Ten of the 19 stores and trade groups that brought the proposed class action have come out in opposition to the pact. Those 10 stores and trade groups - which include the National Association of Convenience Stores, the National Restaurant Association and D'Agostino Supermarkets Inc - filed notice Tuesday that they would appeal Gleeson's order to the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
Hundreds of merchants, including the world's largest retailer, Wal-Mart Stores Inc, also have objected to the proposed settlement, claiming it offers meaningless relief for merchants saddled with an estimated $30 billion in annual swipe fees.
In their appeal, the 10 objecting merchant plaintiffs are challenging a portion of the order that would release Visa and Mastercard from new legal claims over related interchange issues. The proposed settlement does not allow stores to opt out of these litigation releases - even while final approval is pending - and therefore it robs stores of their legal rights, said Jeff Shinder, a lawyer who represents the objecting plaintiffs.
"The proposed settlement violates the due process rights of millions of merchants by denying them the ability to opt out of the injunction, and this fundamental issue of law should be addressed now before notice goes out to merchants," Shinder said Tuesday.
Craig Wildfang, a lawyer for the merchants that support the deal, said in an e-mail: "We are confident that the Court of Appeals will sustain Judge Gleeson's decision to grant preliminary approval."
Visa could not be immediately reached for comment. A spokesman for Mastercard said the company remains confident that the deal will receive final approval.
Trish Wexler, a spokeswoman for the Electronic Payments Coalition, an industry group that represents Visa and Mastercard, called the appeal "a badly under-thrown legal ?Hail Mary' that shouldn't give anyone any concern."
A hearing on final approval is expected to be scheduled for sometime next year.
(Reporting by Jessica Dye; Editing by Noeleen Walder, Jessica Wohl and Dan Grebler)
Well it depends on your age and your location and I guess we gould add in your life-style.
If your company as any type of match with your 401K, it would be silly not to fill it up to the point of them matching. SO if they match 25% up to $3,000, at least put in $3,000 because if you don?t, you are leaving $750 on the table.
It also depends on your income and any other factors [IE children, kids college, health issues etc. etc.]
You can?t save enough and when you retire, don?t think you are going to get a nickle from the government if you are in your 20?s. IF somehow Social Security turns itself around [highly unlikely] it will be all gravy and an added bonus. Do not depend on this for a source of income when we are all in our 80?s eating cat food.
When you talk about putting money into the stock market and a 401K, they are in essence, the same thing. I don?t know the exact choices you have with your 401K or what company you are working with so its tough to pinpoint exact funds. Typically if you are 20-something, take some risks inside the 401K. Put 75% or more into the stock market.
I would recommend setting up a brokerage account away from your 401K with a sharebuilder.com or scottrade.com if you have specific stocks or ETF?s you would like to buy into away from your 401K.
And again, depending on the person, I would also recommend setting up a Roth IRA if you meet the requirements. That money goes into the account taxed and will grow tax-free with pretty soft penalties for early withdrawal, NOT that you want to do that.
Also, save to buy a house/condo. Its a decent time to get something with the market being over-saturated with listings.
"A Google User" is now the number one Android game and app reviewer on Google Play, Android's version of Apple's App Store. That's because every single one of the millions of existing reviews, possibly including yours, has had its author replaced with this nameless, faceless person.
Screenshots taken by Jeremiah Rice of the Android Police blog show this prolific (but completely generic) author has taken over the Google Play store. Meanwhile, if you visit the store on your Android smartphone or tablet you won't see a name attached to most reviews at all; just the review's title, and the device that the game or app was run on.
Believe it or not, this is all intentional. It's the start of a new Google policy ... one which may threaten some Android fans' safety or privacy.
?Google+, whether you like it or not
Google now requires you to have a Google+ (pronounced "Google Plus") account in order to leave reviews on Google Play, the Chrome Web Store, and Google Maps. No reason for the switchover is given in the pop-up which explains this; you simply click "Continue" if you want your reviews tied to your Google+ account, and if you don't want them linked you don't write them at all. If you don't have a Google+ account, you have to sign up for one before you can write a review.
?Why Google is Plus-ifying everything
Google's success as a company is determined by how many ads it sells. Google's share of the ad market is being eaten into by Facebook, which has essentially "walled off" a huge part of people's day-to-day lives in a place Google can't index or sell any ads on. For better or for worse, Google's execs feel that what they need to do to compete is copy Facebook, in the form of Google+.
Why? Because if everyone is "Plusing" things instead of "Liking" them, and if everything people do shows up on Google+ instead of Facebook, then now Google (instead of Facebook) knows what you're doing online and where you're doing it -- and that gives it a much better position from which to display and sell ads.
?Why this is a problem for many
Besides the obvious privacy concerns (although Google offers limited tools to manage how much it tracks you), Google+'s "real names" policy is dangerous to anyone whose safety is jeopardized by attaching their given name to their online activities. This includes women who are victims of stalking, minors who are victims of abuse, transgender persons in transition, and dissidents in repressive political or religious regimes. By requiring a Google+ account to use more and more of its services, Google is forcing these people to choose between excluding themselves and running the risk of having ?all? of their Google services terminated for a "real name" policy violation, including their personal Gmail accounts.
Google+ policy allows for pseudonymous accounts, if you're widely known by that pseudonym online. Everyone's Google+ page, however, has a button to report what anyone feels is a suspicious name, which puts marginalized persons like those listed above at the mercy of every "troll" who comes by.
JaredSpurbeckis an open-source software enthusiast, who uses an Android phone and an Ubuntu laptop PC. He has been writing about technology and electronics since 2008.
www.scoobysworkshop.com What is ?good cardio?? Thats of the most frequent questions I get asked. People are always asking if some specific machine or activity is good cardio or not. Before we go into what IS good cardio, lets review WHY cardio is so important ?#1 lose fat! ? want 6-pack abs? Only way is to lose fat thru cardio and nutrition. ?#2 Cardio can improve your mood and significantly reduce depression. Its been prooven by study after study, cardio can make you happier! ?#3 Perform better at school or work! Daily cardio reduces mental fatigue and gives you more energy. A recent study from the U of G showed that daily cardio reduces fatigue by 65%! ?#4 Tons of other health reasons ? oreduce risk of heart disease oreduce blood pressure oreduce risk of diabetes olive longer ? 2hrs longer for every 1hr of exercise You?ve heard me say this before and I will repeat it again ? cardio is much more important than lifting weights and if you only have 20min a day for fitness, you should spend the whole time doing cardio. Its clear that there is a lot of confusion about cardio, its really quite simple. In this video I?m going to tell you how to know what is good cardio and how to tell at a glance if a piece of cardio equipment is good or not. Lets start with the basics. The purpose of cardio is to elevate your heart rate and keep it target zone for at least 20 minutes. How elevated does your heart rate need to be? Depends on your goal, your age, and your health. If you have ?
"The Outlook for the In-House Market is Positive..."
While business at law firms is sagging, everything is coming up roses for in-house lawyers.
A new survey from HBR Consulting shows that pay is on the rise for in-house attorneys.
Also read: 5 Helpful iPhone Apps for Firms and In-House Counsel
?We are seeing healthy increases in in-house compensation at all lawyer levels, despite the challenging economic environment,? says Lauren Chung, senior director and survey editor at HBR. "The outlook for the in-house market is positive as law departments continue to keep more work in-house and increase pay for attorneys in corporate law departments."
Salaries are up across the in-house board, with Chief Legal Officers leading the way.
The average base salary for all attorney levels was $183,800, up 3.4% from 2011.
Chief legal officers had an average base salary of $521,000, up 5% from last year.
If you include bonuses, the average total compensation for in-house lawyers across all levels was $314,700, up 2.6% compared with 2011.
The only hitch: Bonuses. They have leveled off some since last year, when HBR charted an average cash bonus spike of 25%.7 between 2010 and 2011.
Also read: In-House Technology - What's Hot and What's Not
If you are an in-house lawyer, what are your thoughts on these findings? Do you also see your side of the legal field moving in a positive direction? Please comment and share your thoughts.
Source: WSJ Law Blog
Tagged as: chief legal officer, coaching for in-house lawyers, lawyer coach, pay for in-house counsel
Investors often say, ?I don?t care what the company does as
long as it makes me money?. However, there is a growing group of investors that
don?t feel that way. They want to make a social or environmental impact with
their investments. Until now, it has been difficult to find reliable
information on a company?s overall impact on society. Certified B Corporations
are looking to make this information more transparent and reliable.
What is a Certified B Corporation?
Social entrepreneurs have historically chosen between creating
a non-profit and a for-profit entity to run their business. Non-profit
structures limit scalability because they don?t allow direct distribution of
profits to shareholders, while choosing a for-profit structure means focus
solely on financial performance of its shareholders.
B Corporations construct a different framework that allows
free market investment for socially conscious companies and ensures they consider
the impact to financial, social and environmental issues on its business. Critically,
B Corporations must be certified by independent evaluators to meet established
standards. There are no tax benefits as a result of this legal structure, but
the movement is gaining increased visibility. It is now a law in 12 states,
including Illinois, which passed in August 2012.
Why become a B Corporation?
The B Corporation concept was kick started by B Lab, a
non-profit that defines the standards and monitors Certified B Corps, and was
co-founded by Jay Cohen Gilbert, a former CEO of AND 1, Bart
Houlahan, former CFO and COO of AND 1, and Andrew Kessoy, a partner in a
private equity firm. They believe that it is necessary to evolve capitalism to
encompass more than just fiduciary duties to shareholders. While the free
market has done remarkably well focusing solely on profits, businesses of the
future needs to consider more than just the financial impacts of their decisions
to create a sustainable society.
Without legal definitions and standards of conduct with
third party certification, there is not much meat on the bone of any company
claiming to be ?green? or ?sustainable?.?
It can just be good marketing campaigns but little tangible benefit. ?Being a Certified B Corp means that the
company has been measured against a consistent definition and the results are
disclosed online.
Being a C-corp limits the ability to decide business
priorities. For example, Delaware law has ruled in the 2011 case of Ebay v
Craigslist that C Corps only have one focus ? to maximize shareholder value. If
a company wishes to consider other aspects of the decision, either social or
environmental, they could be held liable for not focusing on shareholder
wealth.
How to become a B Corp?
There are two criteria to become a B Corp. First, there is a
language change to its Articles of Incorporation that must be made to create
the triple bottom line in the corporation. The language consists of an expanded
definition of ?best interests of the company? that includes financial, social
and environmental impact and indicates that any director of the corporation
needs to consider and act in the best interest of the company.
?Second, the company
must take an annual assessment that is audited by an independent, non-profit B Lab.
The critical difference here is that the certification to these standards helps
give consumers? piece of mind that this is not just a marketing scheme. To
ensure truthful reporting, approximately 10% of businesses are randomly
selected for auditing each year.
The assessment covers 5 main topics:
Accountability ? measures the corporate mission,
governance and transparency
Employees ?relationship with employees through
measuring comp & benefits, training, and the work environment including
corporate culture and health and safety practices
Consumers ? relationship with consumers through
measuring whether the product is designed to solve a social or environmental
issue, and whether products are available to underserved communities
Community ? relationship with community by
measuring participation with local suppliers, activeness in the community
through donations and/or outreach events
Environment ? relationship with environment
through measuring impact on facilities, materials, emissions, and energy use
Pricing is on a sliding scale based on revenue. From $0-2M
annual revenue, the annual dues are $500. This annual fee increases up to
$25,000 for companies with an annual revenue of $100M+. These prices go to the
non-profit B Lab to create awareness for the brand and momentum in the market
place.
Growing momentum
Illinois just passed the B Corporation legislation in August
2012, and twelve Chicago companies are already registered on B Lab?s directory
including Rockstar CPA and MightyBytes website design company. Fourteen more
states have pending legislation. Ben and Jerry?s, Patagonia, and Etsy are some
high profile entities that have already aligned with this business structure.
Etsy, an online marketplace for handmade crafts, barely
exceeded the required 80 points out of 200 to gain certification. They held an
all employee day for brainstorming how they could improve their score. The day
resulting in a lot of ideas and engaged employees excited to make an impact on
their environment and communities. ?
Ben and Jerry?s was certified as a B Corp in 2012 and was
the first subsidiary of a major corporation to achieve this status. Unilever is
the parent company but because it has a separate board for Ben and Jerry?s it
was able to get certified. The company believes that business can be a positive
force for social and environmental good and this certification helps to
strengthen that vision.
Long term viability
Currently there are no tax benefits for becoming a certified
B Corporation, but the founders of B lab think that by creating standards and a
consistent way to differentiate businesses that it creates the foundation to make
that a possibility in the long term.
What do you think? Would you like to be employed by a
Certified B Corporation or as an entrepreneur would you set up a Certified B
corporation? The solution is voluntary and in the free market, and creates a
differentiator in the market place. Do you think this is a fad or the start of
an evolution?
Funneling the sun's energy Public release date: 26-Nov-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Caroline McCall cmccall5@mit.edu Massachusetts Institute of Technology
MIT engineers propose a new way of harnessing photons for electricity, with the potential for capturing a wider spectrum of solar energy
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. The quest to harness a broader spectrum of sunlight's energy to produce electricity has taken a radically new turn, with the proposal of a "solar energy funnel" that takes advantage of materials under elastic strain.
"We're trying to use elastic strains to produce unprecedented properties," says Ju Li, an MIT professor and corresponding author of a paper describing the new solar-funnel concept that was published this week in the journal Nature Photonics.
In this case, the "funnel" is a metaphor: Electrons and their counterparts, holes which are split off from atoms by the energy of photons are driven to the center of the structure by electronic forces, not by gravity as in a household funnel. And yet, as it happens, the material actually does assume the shape of a funnel: It is a stretched sheet of vanishingly thin material, poked down at its center by a microscopic needle that indents the surface and produces a curved, funnel-like shape.
The pressure exerted by the needle imparts elastic strain, which increases toward the sheet's center. The varying strain changes the atomic structure just enough to "tune" different sections to different wavelengths of light including not just visible light, but also some of the invisible spectrum, which accounts for much of sunlight's energy.
Li, who holds joint appointments as the Battelle Energy Alliance Professor of Nuclear Science and Engineering and as a professor of materials science and engineering, sees the manipulation of strain in materials as opening a whole new field of research.
Strain defined as the pushing or pulling of a material into a different shape can be either elastic or inelastic. Xiaofeng Qian, a postdoc in MIT's Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering who was a co-author of the paper, explains that elastic strain corresponds to stretched atomic bonds, while inelastic, or plastic, strain corresponds to broken or switched atomic bonds. A spring that is stretched and released is an example of elastic strain, whereas a piece of crumpled tinfoil is a case of plastic strain.
The new solar-funnel work uses precisely controlled elastic strain to govern electrons' potential in the material. The MIT team used computer modeling to determine the effects of the strain on a thin layer of molybdenum disulfide (MoS2), a material that can form a film just a single molecule (about six angstroms) thick.
It turns out that the elastic strain, and therefore the change that is induced in electrons' potential energy, changes with their distance from the funnel's center much like the electron in a hydrogen atom, except this "artificial atom" is much larger in size and is two-dimensional. In the future, the researchers hope to carry out laboratory experiments to confirm the effect.
Unlike graphene, another prominent thin-film material, MoS2 is a natural semiconductor: It has a crucial characteristic, known as a bandgap, that allows it to be made into solar cells or integrated circuits. But unlike silicon, now used in most solar cells, placing the film under strain in the "solar energy funnel" configuration causes its bandgap to vary across the surface, so that different parts of it respond to different colors of light.
In an organic solar cell, the electron-hole pair, called an exciton, moves randomly through the material after being generated by photons, limiting the capacity for energy production. "It's a diffusion process," Qian says, "and it's very inefficient."
But in the solar funnel, he adds, the electronic characteristics of the material "leads them to the collection site [at the film's center], which should be more efficient for charge collection."
The convergence of four trends, Li says, "has opened up this elastic strain engineering field recently": the development of nanostructured materials, such as carbon nanotubes and MoS2, that are capable of retaining large amounts of elastic strain indefinitely; the development of the atomic force microscope and next-generation nanomechanical instruments, which impose force in a controlled manner; electron microscopy and synchrotron facilities, needed to directly measure the elastic strain field; and electronic-structure calculation methods for predicting the effects of elastic strain on a material's physical and chemical properties.
"People knew for a long time that by applying high pressure, you can induce huge changes in material properties," Li says. But more recent work has shown that controlling strain in different directions, such as shear and tension, can yield an enormous variety of properties.
One of the first commercial applications of elastic-strain engineering was the achievement, by IBM and Intel, of a 50 percent improvement in velocity of electrons simply by imparting a 1 percent elastic strain on nanoscale silicon channels in transistors.
###
The work was done with Ji Feng of Peking University and Cheng-Wei Huang, and was supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation, the U.S. Air Force Office of Scientific Research, and the National Natural Science Foundation of China.
Written by David L. Chandler, MIT News Office
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Funneling the sun's energy Public release date: 26-Nov-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Caroline McCall cmccall5@mit.edu Massachusetts Institute of Technology
MIT engineers propose a new way of harnessing photons for electricity, with the potential for capturing a wider spectrum of solar energy
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. The quest to harness a broader spectrum of sunlight's energy to produce electricity has taken a radically new turn, with the proposal of a "solar energy funnel" that takes advantage of materials under elastic strain.
"We're trying to use elastic strains to produce unprecedented properties," says Ju Li, an MIT professor and corresponding author of a paper describing the new solar-funnel concept that was published this week in the journal Nature Photonics.
In this case, the "funnel" is a metaphor: Electrons and their counterparts, holes which are split off from atoms by the energy of photons are driven to the center of the structure by electronic forces, not by gravity as in a household funnel. And yet, as it happens, the material actually does assume the shape of a funnel: It is a stretched sheet of vanishingly thin material, poked down at its center by a microscopic needle that indents the surface and produces a curved, funnel-like shape.
The pressure exerted by the needle imparts elastic strain, which increases toward the sheet's center. The varying strain changes the atomic structure just enough to "tune" different sections to different wavelengths of light including not just visible light, but also some of the invisible spectrum, which accounts for much of sunlight's energy.
Li, who holds joint appointments as the Battelle Energy Alliance Professor of Nuclear Science and Engineering and as a professor of materials science and engineering, sees the manipulation of strain in materials as opening a whole new field of research.
Strain defined as the pushing or pulling of a material into a different shape can be either elastic or inelastic. Xiaofeng Qian, a postdoc in MIT's Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering who was a co-author of the paper, explains that elastic strain corresponds to stretched atomic bonds, while inelastic, or plastic, strain corresponds to broken or switched atomic bonds. A spring that is stretched and released is an example of elastic strain, whereas a piece of crumpled tinfoil is a case of plastic strain.
The new solar-funnel work uses precisely controlled elastic strain to govern electrons' potential in the material. The MIT team used computer modeling to determine the effects of the strain on a thin layer of molybdenum disulfide (MoS2), a material that can form a film just a single molecule (about six angstroms) thick.
It turns out that the elastic strain, and therefore the change that is induced in electrons' potential energy, changes with their distance from the funnel's center much like the electron in a hydrogen atom, except this "artificial atom" is much larger in size and is two-dimensional. In the future, the researchers hope to carry out laboratory experiments to confirm the effect.
Unlike graphene, another prominent thin-film material, MoS2 is a natural semiconductor: It has a crucial characteristic, known as a bandgap, that allows it to be made into solar cells or integrated circuits. But unlike silicon, now used in most solar cells, placing the film under strain in the "solar energy funnel" configuration causes its bandgap to vary across the surface, so that different parts of it respond to different colors of light.
In an organic solar cell, the electron-hole pair, called an exciton, moves randomly through the material after being generated by photons, limiting the capacity for energy production. "It's a diffusion process," Qian says, "and it's very inefficient."
But in the solar funnel, he adds, the electronic characteristics of the material "leads them to the collection site [at the film's center], which should be more efficient for charge collection."
The convergence of four trends, Li says, "has opened up this elastic strain engineering field recently": the development of nanostructured materials, such as carbon nanotubes and MoS2, that are capable of retaining large amounts of elastic strain indefinitely; the development of the atomic force microscope and next-generation nanomechanical instruments, which impose force in a controlled manner; electron microscopy and synchrotron facilities, needed to directly measure the elastic strain field; and electronic-structure calculation methods for predicting the effects of elastic strain on a material's physical and chemical properties.
"People knew for a long time that by applying high pressure, you can induce huge changes in material properties," Li says. But more recent work has shown that controlling strain in different directions, such as shear and tension, can yield an enormous variety of properties.
One of the first commercial applications of elastic-strain engineering was the achievement, by IBM and Intel, of a 50 percent improvement in velocity of electrons simply by imparting a 1 percent elastic strain on nanoscale silicon channels in transistors.
###
The work was done with Ji Feng of Peking University and Cheng-Wei Huang, and was supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation, the U.S. Air Force Office of Scientific Research, and the National Natural Science Foundation of China.
Written by David L. Chandler, MIT News Office
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Turkish Airlines Eyes Possible $500 Million Lease Deal: Bankers
ISTANBUL (Reuters) ? Turkey?s national carrier Turkish Airlines is in talks with banks about a leasing arrangement worth around $500 million to help fund its plane orders from 2014, bankers familiar with the negotiations said on Friday.
The airline is considering using Enhanced Equipment Trust Certificates (EETCs) for the first time ? financial securities issued by banks under which the airline gets ownership of the planes when the certificates mature, the bankers said.
Turkish Airlines was also considering issuing sukuk ? Islamic bonds ? or eurobonds next year to finance its aircraft acquisition plans from 2014, they said.
Officials at the airline could not be reached for comment.
?Turkish Airlines is seeking various financing opportunities abroad. Sukuk or eurobond issuances might be also on the agenda, but EETC is outweighing them, which would be used for the first time for financing aircraft orders,? said one banker.
?Turkish Airlines? borrowing would not be small in size, around at least $300-$500 million for each transaction.?
Turkish Airlines said last month it had decided to buy 15 Boeing B777-300ERs by 2017, with an option to buy five more, and 15 Airbus A330-300 planes between 2014-2016.
EETC transactions, effectively a form of secured debt financing like mortgages, are often used by airlines in Europe and the United States, but are rarer elsewhere.
Aircraft leasing firm Doric Nimrod Air Finance Alpha said in June it would use EETCs worth almost $590 million to help finance the sale of four Airbus A380 planes to Emirates airline.
Hobby Lobby, the mega craft store, has lost the first round of their case against the government over the contraception mandate, and will be?fined?$1.3 million per day starting January 1st if they do not pay for contraception, sterilization, and abortifacients through employee provided insurance.
As a ?secular? corporation, they have no rights to use the religious beliefs of their ownership as a justification not to abide by the contraception mandate. This decision is?inconsistent?with the Tyndale House one you may have heard about. So apparently being a Bible publisher does make you religious, but being a Bible seller doesn?t.
The argument the administration advanced successfully in the Hobby Lobby case is a particularlytroublesome?one for believers of all faiths who operate under the assumption that they can use their moral principles to guide the way their place of business spends money. According to the administration?s legal arguments, the family that owns Hobby Lobby is not protected by the First Amendment?s ?free exercise? clause because ?Hobby Lobby is a for-profit, secular employer, and a secular entity by definition does not exercise religion.?
If Hobby Lobby ultimately loses this case, it?s not hard to see which decision they?ll make given the choice between a $1.3 million per day fine and a $2 million per month fine. The latter, of course, is the amount they estimate they?ll pay for simply dropping insurance altogether and shifting all employees onto Medicaid and the subsidized exchange coverage.
Think it?ll be a hard decision? Maybe understanding who these people are would give you some clarity.
The Hobby Lobby folks are a straight-up American success story. A family business, started in Oklahoma in 1970 with a $600 bank loan, they started by making their frames from wood bought from local sellers, building them in their garage. The kids glued them together on the kitchen table in exchange for baseball cards. The family opened their first frame retail shop in Oklahoma City in 1972. They had four employees. Now they have 514 stores in 41 states. They employ 13,240 people full time. In 1981 they added another store to the family, Mardel, a Christian/church supply shop which sells Bibles and study books, curriculum, Christian craft supplies. That?s another 35 stores, in 7 states, with 372 employees. So they went from a garage business started with $600 to two businesses that employ more than 13,600 people full time across basically the entire country.
The company remained all privately owned, with no franchising. Their statement of purposes and various commitments all begin with Bible verses, commitments to honor the Lord. The Hobby Lobby folks pay well above minimum wage and have increased salaries four years in a row despite the recession. They are teetotalers of the old Oral Roberts variety, refusing to stock shot glasses, don?t sell any of their store locations with liquor stores, don?t allow backhauling of beer shipments ? all things that could make them money, but they just bear the costs. Every Christmas and Easter, the Hobby Lobby folks advertise a free Bible and spiritual counseling. They are closed every Sunday. The family also signed the giving pledge, committing to donate the majority of their wealth to philanthropy.
So: I doubt this is the type of company to spend one dime on this contraception mandate. They will just drop coverage, and pay employees the difference, shifting them onto the exchanges or the taxpayer, rather than compromise their beliefs. It?s logical, it?s more predictable as a budgeting choice, and it will save them tens of millions in the long run versus retaining coverage and paying the fine.
The case isn?t over, of course ? there will be an appeal, and I wouldn?t be surprised to see this end up at the Supreme Court. There?s also a?bipartisan?effort to expand the religious exemption, though that?s more targeted at individuals than companies. It may be that the next major court decision regarding Obamacare will deal with how religious freedom rights apply to corporations ? a Hobby Lobby case which follows with, or breaks from, the lessons of Citizens United could have enormous ramifications for religious business owners across the country. Americans will find out soon whether freedom of association matters or doesn?t under the Obama health insurance regime.
The story of 1 house in struggle to keep it going, in their life at school
Owner:
Game Masters:
Topic Tags:
Forum for completely Out of Character (OOC) discussion, based around whatever is happening In Character (IC). Discuss plans, storylines, and events; Recruit for your roleplaying game, or find a GM for your playergroup. ---------All houses here are NPC--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
house of vlotheid (freedom)
house style: dutch brick castle location: east side of the island in a grassy feild wind a light breeze from the east. element: Wind Uniform Colors: Yellow,White Air signs: Libra, Aquarius, Gemini crest: Fairy
Airy people are quick and animated. They apply their energies in very diverse ways. They tend to intellectualize their feelings and expectations. Those with in air tribe use their minds to make sense of their lives. With Air, there's more space between the life lived and the observing mind. This can lead air tribe members to appear detached, aloof, remote, cool. Sometimes they'll try to talk their way through feelings or analyze a situation instead of encountering it's full emotional weight. The gift of Air is flexibility, and their ability to experience life through many prisms. They're often excellent communicators, storytellers, interpreters and journalists. They link people together socially, and often have a curiosity that keeps them out and about.
house of Loli, ho'olilo (change or tranforamtion)
house style: large Hawaiian beach house location: west side of the island on a white sand beach with warm waters element: Water Uniform Colors: Blue, Purple Water signs: Cancer, Scorpio, Pisces crest: sea serpent
People with a strongly emphasized water element are feeling types and are very sensitive. Their imaginative and emotional lives are deep and rich. Water elementals are attuned to waves of emotion, and often seem to have a built-in sonar for reading a mood. This gives them a special sensitivity in relationships, knowing when to show warmth and when to hold back. At their best, they are a healing force that brings people together -- at their worst, they are psychic vampires, able to manipulate and drain the life force of those closest to them. Water element members are tuned into the many shades of meaning in relationships, and at times can absorb "vibes" from others. They have to work harder than other elements to maintain their personal boundaries.
house of loyalty
house style: brittish stone castle location: most northern part of the island surounded by a thick forest Element: Earth uniform Colors: Green, brown Earth signs: Capricorn, Taurus, Virgo
Earthy people react quietly and slowly. They apply themselves with endurance. Emotionally they are deeply rooted and slow to change. It's common to hear someone described as "earthy." Such a person blends in with their natural habitat. They're sensual, meaning they engage with life through the five senses. It takes time to sense the dense physical world, and earth signs can operate at a slower, more thorough pace than the other elements. They're oriented toward what's real, and often this makes them very productive, able to create tangible results. But if there are no balancing elements, earth's extremes could lead to being a work-a-holic, hoarding of possessions, pettiness, getting stuck in the mundane, stubbornness, etc.
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Public release date: 29-Nov-2012
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"The Outlook for the In-House Market is Positive..."
[First published at Real Clear Politics.]
