BURLINGTON, Mass. (WHDH) -- Needham native Aly Raisman showed her love for her Burlington-based gymnastics coach Tuesday when she thanked him after she won the gold medal. She even put the medal around his neck.

Raisman tweeted, So thankful for Mihai! Words cant describe how much he means to me and how much I appreciate everything!!

You know, its the dream of your life, said Mihai Brestyan, Alys coach.

Raisman isnt Brestyans first Olympic superstar -- four years ago it was Alicia Sacramone. If you hang around the Burlington gym long enough youll get the sense that there are more star gymnasts to come.

I think hes a big coach. Everybody is looking at him like how to teach the girls really well and theyre all like Wow hes the big girls coach, Alys coach, so I guess for the girls hes a big example, said Sabrina Howell, a parent of a 5-year-old gymnast at Brestyans gym.

Brestyans training schedule for potential Olympic superstars is rigorous -- they train five days a week, sometimes twice a day. But his record for producing superstar gymnasts may be unmatched.

Video: Team USA Coach Mihai talks about golden moment

He believes in the gymnasts and he just pushes them to that level, he pushes the kids to believe that theyre going to make it, said Debbie Naka, a gymnastics coach.

Raisman will compete for another gold medal on Thursday.

(Copyright (c) 2012 Sunbeam Television. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)

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Coaching a Champion: A look at Raisman's coach

Giant Luke Power. Photo: Janie Barrett JEM

It's been over three AFL seasons since Leigh Matthews' last directive from the coach's box, but his influence around the league continues to resonate - as far as the vast surrounds of western Sydney.

Matthews ended a productive stint at Brisbane in 2008, but much like Kevin Sheedy at Essendon, he left the club having planted the coaching seed in some of the AFL's sharpest minds.

The latest sapling to sprout is Luke Power at Greater Western Sydney.

The 32-year-old is the Giants' most experienced co-captain, and one of a handful of old hands to juggle coaching and playing duties.

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While Power did a lot of the same for much of the 282 games he played with the Lions - guiding young players through the rigours of AFL - the official coaching tag has come with a greater understanding of tactics.

"It's pretty similar, but now there's a lot more involvement in how (GWS coach) Kevin (Sheedy) and (assistant coach) Mark (Williams) want our game to be played," Power says.

"We (the playing coaches) are probably a lot more over it, just because we're dealing with it every day. We're running meetings, sitting in on important meetings that decide the way we're going to play. I guess that's the big change. We're living it a little bit more.

"We're all learning all the time. I'm learning, one - about myself. But also learning about the industry and seeing it from a different perspective."

Excerpt from:
Power loving life as GWS's big brother

BARBOURSVILLE -- Before they hit the books, area health care providers want to make sure your students go back to class with a positive attitude about health, nutrition and fitness.

Get Well Wednesdays at the Huntington Mall, sponsored by Cabell-Huntington Hospital, the Hoops Family Children's Hospital and the Cabell-Huntington Health Department, are packed with health screenings, immunizations, lunch packing demonstration and a focus on wellness and nutrition for kindergarten students through high school students.

The first event, conducted Wednesday from 5 to 7 p.m., featured lunch packing demonstrations with free samples; hearing, vision and scoliosis screenings; and immunizations. Get Well Wednesdays take place near the Elder-Beerman dome in the Healthy Kids Play Place.

Other events are scheduled for Aug. 8 and Aug. 15 from 5 to 7 p.m., including an opportunity to chat with a pediatrician, additional health screenings, fitness activities with the Huntington YMCA and immunizations. Back-to-school supplies will also be provided.

Parents/guardians are required to bring a shot record for each child to obtain immunizations, which include Hepatitis A, Hepatitis B, DTap, Rotavirus, Hib, Pneumococcal, Inactivated Poliovirus, MMR, Varicella, Meningococcal, HPV and Tdap. Tdap and Meningococcal are required immunizations for any students entering 7th and 12th grades for the 2012-2013 school year.

For more details, call 304-399-6742.

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Students get wellness, nutrition ideas

HOUSTON, July 31, 2012 /PRNewswire/ --Kraton Performance Polymers, Inc. (KRA), a leading global producer of styrenic block copolymers, announces financial results for the quarter ended June 30, 2012.

2012 SECOND QUARTER HIGHLIGHTS

"Despite record first quarter 2012 sales volume and revenue, our sales volume in the second quarter was impacted by a number of factors including a late start to the North American paving season, wet weather in Europe, which had an adverse effect on roofing activity, continued volatility in raw material prices, which was reflected in purchase and inventory management activity by our customers, and slowing global demand across many regions and markets we serve. Nevertheless, our sales volume for the first half of 2012 was up 2% compared to the first half of 2011," said Kevin M. Fogarty, Kraton's President and Chief Executive Officer. "Of note in the second quarter were very robust sales in our Cariflex end use, serving medical applications, and volume increases in lubricant additive and oil gels applications within our Adhesive, Sealant, and Coatings end use. Innovation results continued to demonstrate we have the right strategy to combat general market headwinds. Specifically, our Vitality Index reflected that innovation-based sales were 13% of revenue for the trailing twelve month period ended June 30, 2012, as compared to 14% for the twelve months ending June 30, 2011. The consistency with which we apply this key operating metric dictates that we roll sales out of the calculation after five years. However, if we were to include the sales that rolled off during the TTM period, which still carry a margin premium, the Vitality Index would have been 17% for the twelve months ending June 2012," Fogarty added. "Lastly, although our second quarter 2012 unit margins benefited from price increases, announced in the first quarter, monomer prices continued to rise significantly through April, declined modestly in May, and then dropped significantly in June, resulting in average pricing for key monomers being higher in the second quarter 2012 than in the first quarter, and this served to limit margin expansion," said Fogarty. "More recently, following another sharp monomer price decline in July 2012, and based upon existing demand fundamentals, we believe that pricing for key monomers such as butadiene will remain relatively stable through the third quarter 2012, which in turn should return confidence to customers who had been focused on minimizing inventory levels in declining monomer environments."

Three Months Ended

June 30,

Six Months Ended

June 30,

(US $ in thousands, except per share amounts)

2012

2011

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Kraton Performance Polymers, Inc. Announces Second Quarter 2012 Results

SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA--(Marketwire -08/01/12)- An elite group of senior marketers from across the Asia-Pacific region are meeting this week to discuss the findings of a new study by the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) Council on how companies can engage with customers in a more personal, relevant, and valued way by being more adept at big data analytics.

The CMO Council, which represents more than 6,000 senior marketers in more than 110 countries, teamed with analytics software leader SAS to assess the state of customer intelligence in the Asia-Pacific region. It conducted in-depth interviews with more than 30 senior marketers at leading banks, insurance carriers, communications service providers, utilities, travel and hospitality companies, as well as media and publishing groups across Southeast Asia, China, Australia, and New Zealand. Also included were regional market questions from its annual "State of Marketing" audit, involving hundreds of online survey respondents worldwide.

The CMO Council's 45-page strategic brief, dubbed "Improve Every Marketing Move," can be sourced from the CMO Council website at (http://cmocouncil.org/improve-every-move).

Not surprisingly, marketers report being overwhelmed by growing volumes of customer data emanating from research, retail, Internet, social media, financial, company help desks/call centers, and internal line of business sources. This veritable treasure trove of customer insight is now offering them new ways to improve the customer experience, increase satisfaction, engender loyalty, and be more responsive to the needs and requirements of their different customer segments. Most, however, are still playing catch-up with new sources of customer intelligence in an Internet-connected, social media-driven and mobile device-dependent Asia-Pacific market.

Asia's population of nearly 4 billion people in 35 countries accounts for 56 percent of the world's population and nearly 45 percent of the world's Internet user base, a total of 1,016,799,076 people (Internet World Stats). Top Internet access countries in Asia include China (513 million), India (100 million), Japan (99 million), Indonesia (39 million), and South Korea (39 million). In terms of penetration, Australia is one of the leaders (just behind South Korea) in the Asia-Pacific region, with more than 17 million users, or 80.1 percent of the population.

An estimated 2.6 billion mobile phones are activated in the Asia-Pacific region (Enotes), representing a penetration of more than 65 percent. Some 400 million Asians have access to the mobile Internet, notes the Asia Digital Marketing Yearbook, and there are well over 200 million Facebook members in Asia representing some 25 percent of the social media leader's 900 million users worldwide.

When it comes to improving the customer experience through better market listening, responsiveness, and leveraging of data and actionable insights, most of the region's senior marketers felt they were not there yet, but working toward it. It is definitely considered a key area of focus and priority, but the ability to execute internally against the end goal is still in question.

Most marketers said they had corporate cultures that were more product-centric and operationally driven. As a result, the use of business intelligence data was being applied in these areas rather than meeting the needs of the customer. However, the desire and intention is growing, and marketers are optimistic that they can make big improvements in shaping and influencing the customer experience through better actionable insights and analytics.

Commonwealth Bank of Australia, which has nearly 11 million customers, is looking to improve marketing and maximize response by delivering loan offers and financial service products to the right customer, at the right place, and at the right time, notes its head of analytics Geoffrey Kerry. Similarly, Kittisak Eh Chuei, Director of Loyalty Marketing at the Pan Pacific Hotels Group in Singapore, is using analytics to identify trends between different sets of customers across diverse regions and countries, so the hospitality leader can understand and anticipate booking behavior, handle any negative feedback in a more timely way, and provide more personal and attentive service.

"The Asia-Pacific region is doing business on a massive scale, and our marketing members see real value in using high-performance data analytics to be more targeted, personal, and timely in their communications so they can not only more efficiently acquire, but also grow, customer relationships," notes Donovan Neale-May, Executive Director of the CMO Council, whose members control more than $300 billion in annual aggregated marketing spend.

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Asia-Pacific Companies Using Advanced Analytics to Be More Customer-Centric

Looking at the data, U.S. consumer spending was unchanged for July, while consumer confidence rose unexpectedly. To add another layer of complexity, personal income ticked higher in July.

So, Americans didnt spend the extra money they earned even as they grew more confident about the state of economy.

But whatever consumers say or do, investors are betting on the consumer sector. It has outperformed broad U.S. equities year-to-date, and flows to ETFs canvassing the sector have exceeded $600 million for 2012.

But picking the right ETF is anything but easy, as well see.

Just look at the year-to-date performance spread of the top four funds by assets.

The top-performing fund shown in dark blue, the iShares Dow Jones U.S. Consumer Services Index Fund (IYC) has outpaced the laggard shown in light blue, the First Trust Consumer Discretionary AlphaDex Fund (FXD) by more than 10 percentage points in just seven months.

Also note the performance of these four funds relative to the S'P 500, shown in red, as represented by the SPDR S'P 500 (SPY). Three of the four have beaten SPY so far this year quite handily, while FXD lagged.

This means that choosing among the top ETFs in the space is just as critical as the decision to overweight or underweight the sector in the first place.

Performance Drivers

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Consumer ETFs: Buyer Beware

In 2007John McAfee explained in Fast Company, Success for me,is can you wake upin the morning and feel like a twelve year old?

However, that was right before he lost 95% of his net worth. He explains in Robert Franks book,The High-Beta Rich, that he was living through a secondchildhood, wasting money on grown-up toys and making poor investments. Only a year after the quote, his definition of success had contributed to thedestructionof his $100 million empire, leaving him with just a few million dollars. The point Im trying to make however, is that we shouldnt view McAfees mistakes withSchadenfreude.

Instead, we need to learn from McAfees experiences and analyze the true definition ofsuccess. While I subscribe to the belief of keeping your inner child alive (after all, its Rule #11 on my personal list), acting andfeeling like aadolescentis not my definition of success.

So if living like a child isnt success, what is?

And who am I to define it?

These were some of my thoughts on a recently as I enjoyed anotherone of our Facebook QnA sessions. I was so inspired that I went so far as to register the domainname,www.SuccessQnA.comand have it redirect to our Facebook page (because its a loteasier than telling people the full URL of our fan page).

Early into the Q and A session, one of our younger readers inquired, How do you define success?

For a moment I was speechless (one of the reasons why I like the Facebook QnA instead of live sessions so no one can see the perplexed expression on my face when Im asked a difficult question).

My first instinct was to reference Dave Kekichs Credos that I re-read every morning. Even though his definition is thought provoking, it wasnt exactly what I wanted to say. Kekich Credo #7 states:

Youre successful when you like who and what you are. Success includes achievementwhile choosing and directing your own activities. It means enjoying intimate relationships and loving what you do in life.

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What John McAfee Learned About Success After Losing 95% Of His Wealth

Bill Ryan/The Gazette Matt Buchholz pitches for the Frederick Flying Dogs against the Carroll Spartans in the Mid-Maryland Semi-Pro Baseball League final Sunday in Frederick.

Six years ago while playing baseball at the University of Maryland-Baltimore County, Mount Airy resident Matt Buchholz set out to find a summer league team to further hone his skills.

And after a brief search, the pitcher-infielder, who played scholastically at baseball-rich Old Mill High School in Millersville, eventually landed with the Frederick Flying Dogs, a semi-pro team that competes in the Mid-Maryland Semi-Pro Baseball League.

He has been an irreplaceable member of the Flying Dogs ever since, including this season, leading Frederick to MMSPBL final with his lively arm and potent bat.

Hes been pitching for us since his sophomore year in college at UMBC, Frederick player-manager Nick Collingham said. Hes got an ability to stay healthy all year round and he knows how to throw strikes. He pounds the strike zone. Hes one of the middle-of-the-lineup hitters [as well].

Its nice to have solid pitcher like him. Hes a guy you can rely on for a complete game every week. He always gives us a chance to win.

That certainly has been the case this season as Buchholz has compiled a perfect 9-0 record with an earned run aveage around 1.00 and 91 strikeouts in 62 innings. He has allowed nine runs on 32 hits with just 12 walks.

Offensively, Buchholz, who mans second base when not on the mound, has produced a .400-plus batting average with six doubles, two home runs, 27 runs batted in, 20 walks and six stolen bases in nearly 100 at-bats.

I work hard at it in the offseason, Buchholz said. I go to the cage with Ryan Morse, who is on the team. We work out during the offseason, trying to refine our swing and throwing a lot and work on a bunch of things. I always try to play very aggressively.

Buchholzs play this season mirrors his lengthy career with the Frederick Flying Dogs. He has produced a career batting average of .384 with 11 home runs, 47 doubles, eight triples, 111 RBI at the plate and a 58-9 mark on the mound with a 1.62 ERA and 664 strikeouts in 455 2/3 innings. He captured 10 wins in 2006 and 2010 and had nine-win seasons in 2008, 2009 and 2011.

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Gazette.Net: Pitcher finds home, success with Flying Dogs

Dear Hope:

My goodness, you are one accomplished athlete. If theres one job I wouldnt want in all of sports, its goalie. Yall are courageous, almost eerily agile, and lets just say it, a little crazy. Who in their right mind signs up for a job where soccer balls are rocketing at them? I bow to your fire.

But even given the element of rogue it takes to stand between the pipes, this little sideshow youve got going smack dab in the middle of the Olympics is disturbing. Dashing off Tweets ripping commentator and former United States soccer player Brandi Chastain for giving critical commentary on the current teams defense? For doing her job? (Its not cheerleader just sayin). Dissing her opinion because the game has changed from a decade ago when she played?

Whoa.

Let me tell you, Hope, if you think Brandi Chastain is so yesterday, now youre going to deal with me. Just call me The Day Before Yesterday. Back in another life, I was a sports journalist writing about the likes of Mia Hamm and Michelle Akers. In the 90s I was watching them blaze a trail for, yes, the likes of you. Did you not catch that Dare to Dream documentary on HBO? Its all spelled out right there.

The fact that the sport has reached a point where were even having this discussion is heartening. The ascension of womens soccer is only going to continue to open doors for more people who can aspire to be players, coaches, referees and, of course, commentators. For Chastain to have any credibility in her position, I can guarantee she has to regularly fight any urge she has to show emotion when the U.S. team scores or stops the opposition.

Its kind of like watching Rebecca Lobo when shes on the sidelines of a University of Connecticut basketball game. You know she wants the Huskies to win on some level, but her job is to get interviews with both teams, to be as objective as possible, to see the game unfolding and use her expertise to enlighten us a bit.

Do you get that?

Im here to life coach you, so I want you to first understand all Ive just said. One, you stand on the shoulders of those before you, including Chastain, and two, her job is to tell a mostly soccer-savvy audience what she sees. You just turned 31. Surely you get that this isnt personal. And that there are high school players and younger who will have you to thank one day.

What they get to see when youre not sending offensive knee-jerk Tweets (I also refer, of course, to your 2010 Twitter rampage) is a vibrant, bright, elite athlete with something valuable to say.

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Life Coaching U.S. Goalie Hope Solo

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif., Aug. 1, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- The elite health and fitness website and store in Beverly Hills, Endless Youth and Life (EYL) has quickly become the "go to" spot for multiple Hollywood celebrities. From personal nutritionists and trainers, to anti-aging specialists, EYL offers everything you need to kick start a healthy lifestyle. Endless Youth and Life is pleased to announce that Executive Director Paul "Chip" Klingaman has earned various medals in the recent Hall of Fame Regional Senior Olympic events. The Hall of Fame Regional Senior Olympics (http://www.hofseniorolympics.org/) is headquartered in Canton, Ohio, home of the Professional Football Hall of Fame.

(Photo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20120801/CL50257)

Paul "Chip" Klingaman, age 51, recently competed in eight Hall of Fame Regional Senior Olympic events at venues across Northeastern Ohio. Klingaman earned gold medals in the 500 meter freestyle swim and in the 5 and 10 kilometer bicycle time trials. Silver medals were earned in the 50, 100, and 200 meter freestyle swimming events, triathlon and the 5 kilometer running race.

Klingaman attributes his success in these senior Olympic events to "living the Endless Youth and Life lifestyle" and the inspiration from his training partners, including his wife, Toni, and adult daughters, Kristin and Ariel.

Chip is proud of his leadership role at Endless Youth and Life, and advocates the EYL lifestyle that includes exercise, diet, supplementation, and sleep (EDSS). The EDSS system was developed by Endless Youth and Life President Benjamin Suarez and is the foundation of the Endless Youth and Life lifestyle for youth and life extension.

For more information on Endless Youth and Life (http://www.endlessyouthandlife.com), please contact Jaime Valdez at 330-494-5504 x4096 or email at jvaldez@suarez.com (LA PR)

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Endless Youth and Life Executive Director Earns Senior Olympic Gold and Silver Medals