ROCKVILLE, MD--(Marketwire -07/18/12)- MarketResearch.com has announced the addition of the new report "Personal Protective Equipment in the U.S." to their collection of Manufacturing & Construction market reports. For more information, visit http://www.marketresearch.com/SBI-v775/Personal-Protective-Equipment-7058851/

SBI estimates the U.S. market for personal protective equipment (PPE) will top $13 billion in 2012. As the economy begins to heat up, U.S. PPE sales should exceed $14.1 billion in 2013, which represents an 8.2 percent increase over the 2012 figure. The strengthening global economy should increase the growth rate in 2015 with PPE sales in the U.S. anticipated to hit $16.7 billion.

The Personal Protective Equipment sector is comprised of a group of products that are designed to protect users from occupational hazards, injuries and illnesses. Categories covered include:

The report provides data on shipments, imports and exports for the personal protective equipment market and the four categories within the market. In most cases, historical data are provided for a 10-year period back to 2002. The report also identifies key economic and market trends affecting the industry and profiles key manufacturers, highlighting their strengths, performance, product portfolios and significant recent events. Also included are marketing, distribution and retail overview, outlining aspects of getting the products to market, and an end-user segment analysis.

Report data were gathered from:

For more information, visit http://www.marketresearch.com/SBI-v775/Personal-Protective-Equipment-7058851/

About MarketResearch.com

MarketResearch.com is the leading provider of global market intelligence products and services. With research reports from more than 720 top consulting and advisory firms, MarketResearch.com offers instant online access to the world's most extensive database of expert insights on global industries, companies, products, and trends. Moreover, MarketResearch.com's Research Specialists have in-depth knowledge of the publishers and the various types of reports in their respective industries and are ready to provide research assistance. For more information, call Veronica Franco at 240-747-3016 or visit http://www.marketresearch.com.

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Market Research Projects Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) Market at $13 Billion

BY JIMMY ALLINDER Correspondent

Middlesex County all-stars huddle together for a group cheer during a practice held at East Brunswick High School as they got ready for the July 19 Snapple Bowl. The Middlesex stars will be facing a team of all-stars representing Union County in the game at East Brunswick. ERIC SUCAR staff I f youre going to set goals for yourself and your team, you might as well shoot for the stars.

Timothy Darrar plays basketball for South River High School and he wants nothing more than to help the Rams win division and state sectional titles. His personal ambition is to average a double-double in points and assists.

The way Darrar sees it, achieving his personal objectives will help bring the Rams closer to realizing their teams goals.

He has been a member of the South River varsity team for three years and, while the Rams have flirted with a .500 record as a member of the Greater Middlesex Conference Blue Division, they havent been able to finish above that mark. Darrar believes his leadership at the point guard position, along with the return of most of the teams starters, will be key. One of those returning players is Darrars cousin, Tyler Harris.

Darrar believes in his team and the town where he grew up.

Playing basketball for South River is an honor, he said. Especially playing for my uncle [Tylers father, Rodney]. This is where I was raised and I love this town. I never would have considered playing anywhere else.

The 6-footer started playing basketball as a 9-year-old for the St. Marys CYO team, which was also coached by his uncle. Darrar developed into one of the most reliable ball handlers for the teams quick transition defense to offense.

Darrar played football for a short time, but he admitted, My heart wasnt in it.

In the spirit of putting the team first, Darrar felt strongly that if he didnt give 100 percent to his teammates, he didnt belong on the field.

See more here:
Rams’ Darrar aims to improve personal, team performance

HOUSTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--

Serving the needs of a diverse population is a challenge for any city government. Add in the fact that the City of San Mateo, California is located in the heart of Silicon Valley, and it has a lot of big expectations to live up to with a tech-savvy population.

The IT department for the City of San Mateo was actually facing a situation in which they were reduced to writing help desk tickets by hand on scraps of paper. The city needed a more sophisticated way of processing incoming requests.

The Challenge

Failure to provide adequate IT service management to city employees resulted in slow response time to citizens and the inability to meet the demands of a growing high-tech hub.

San Mateo needed a new, cost-effective IT service desk solution that could help maintain the citys networks, including the personal computers of more than 600 employees spread across 22 facilities enabling them to improve service quality and speed for the citys more than 90,000 citizens.

According to a senior project manager at the City of San Mateo, they had a help desk software program in place, but it wasnt implemented well. The staff did not use it, and they fell back on writing tickets on paper. Work orders fell through the cracks, and users did not know if their requests were worked on or escalated.

The Solution

The City of San Mateo chose the BMC Track-It! solution after reviewing a number of competitive mid-range help desk solutions, including TechExcel, CATM and HEAT from FrontRange. The BMC solution was rated the highest by officials in other cities, and its superior support capabilities indicated that it would garner the highest levels of customer satisfaction.

The City chose to work with BMC Software because the companys Track-It! solution offered a user-friendly, easy-to-integrate way for San Mateos IT team to improve its service. The team also saved a lot of money, and city employees were able to focus on tending to the needs of the city and its citizens, instead of worrying about IT issues.

Original post:
CUSTOMER SUCCESS: City of San Mateo Upgrades IT Management to Better Serve Citizens

CHICAGO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--

To honor the 2012 Westwood Success Stories from Illinois, Westwood College is donating $10,000 to A Better Chicago, whose mission is to create opportunity through early childhood development, K-12 education and workforce development. A Better Chicago provides funding and management support to high-performing nonprofit organizations that are dramatically advancing opportunities for the regions low-income population.

The 2012 Westwood Success Stories is a group of 100 graduates demonstrating exceptional success in pursuing careers in the face of a tough economic environment and personal challenges after getting a degree from Westwood College. From a variety of degree programs and located across the country, this groups collective determination and dedication are an inspiration to current Westwood College students, faculty and staff showing them through personal accounts how the hands-on training students receive from a career college education pays off.

Of the 100 graduates recognized, 18 are from the Chicago area and include:

River Oaks Campus (Calumet City, IL)

DuPage Campus (Woodridge, IL)

Chicago Loop Campus (Downtown Chicago)

OHare Airport Campus (Chicago)

The Westwood Success testimonials are presented in personal profiles, photos and videos featured online at http://www.WestwoodSuccess.com and are seen across campuses on signs and in books made available to students. The stories represent the diverse student population of Westwood College and provide straightforward, first-person insights into the obstacles and challenges many people face when making a decision about furthering their education.

It is such an honor for all of us in the Westwood College family to share in the success of our Westwood Success graduates, said Bruce McKenzie, Campus President at Westwood College - River Oaks in Calumet City, IL. The power in each individual story speaks to the determination, hard work and personal sacrifice our students and graduates undertake to achieve their goals. This is not an easy economic climate for any job seeker, but our graduates have embraced their education, the support provided here on campus and overcome sometimes overwhelming challenges to launch their careers.

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Westwood College Donates $10,000 to a Better Chicago in Honor of 2012 Westwood Success Program

A Lees Summit man has earned a congressional Gold Medal award for service.

Corey Austin Daughenbaugh, 23, is one of 276 gold medalists recognized nationally in Washington, D.C. for achievements in four areas - physical fitness, voluntary public service, personal development, and expedition or exploration.

Daughenbaugh, who is a Second Lieutenant in the Air Force, graduated from the Air Force Academy in 2011, and was sent directly to St. Johns College in New Mexico to start and complete a Masters Degree. After finishing this August he intends to return to regular duty with plans to teach in the Philosophy Department of the Air Force Academy sometime in the future.

The minimum requirements for completing the Gold Level Medal requirements are the following: a minimum of 200 hours of personal development, 200 hrs of physical fitness activities, 400 hrs of voluntary public service, an expedition consisting of at least four consecutive nights, and a minimum of 24 months work in progress.

Daughenbaugh said he completed 212 hours of personal develop in a variety of leadership or management roles in the Boy Scouts, Air Force Junior ROTC (at Lees Summit North HS), Missouri Boys State, and Civil Air Patrol. For public service volunteer service included ime with the Boy Scouts, Food for the Poor (we worked in Kansas City primarily), AFJROTC, the Mid-Continent Public Library, the Elks Club, Lees Summit Public Works Day, and the Lees Summit Social Services.

He was unable to attend the June ceremony which had CNNs Wolf Blitzer and Thomas P. McDevitt, president of the Washington Times, sharing duties as masters of ceremonies and entertainment by Earth Wind and Fire.

The award is funded by charitable foundations.

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Daughenbaugh receives congressional Gold Medal

Sarah Davidson, 18 July, 2012

Ruddick was chief operating officer at the network from 2006 until June 2010 when he made made director of IFA services.

He had been with PTFS since 1998 as compliance director and as an IFA since 1994.

Walton joined the network in October 2010 to oversee the Personal Touchs team of 10 regional sales managers who were recruited by the company that year as part of a new business structure.

Dev Malle, sales and marketing director at Personal Touch, said: "We wish Andy well in any new challenge he takes on and on behalf of everyone at Personal Touch I would like to thank him for his hard work during his time here."

Walton, who could not be contacted for comment, is rumoured to have taken a position elsewhere in the mortgage market.

He was formerly a national account manager at Aegon and spent 12 years at Legal & General where he was a national account manager and broker consultant.

Ruddick could not be reached for comment either.

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Andy Walton and John Ruddick quit Personal Touch

WOODSTOCK, GA--(Marketwire -07/18/12)- PeopleClues, an industry leader in workplace assessments, today announced the release of "FeaturingU2.0," an eBook designed to help individuals identify their personal strengths and assets, develop a personal brand and navigate changing employment models. Authored by PeopleClues president Julie Moreland -- with contributions from PeopleClues chief strategy officer Bryan Wempen and client relations manager Cathleen Carlos -- the complimentary eBook is now available for download at http://www.featuringu.com.

A major paradigm shift has occurred in today's workforce, as free agency gains popularity and employees become more opportunity driven. To help individuals understand what it means to be a free agent, even for those who are employees, "FeaturingU2.0," explores real stories of several professionals who have embraced the concept and gained personal and business success. Moreland, Wempen and Carlos also provide resources and exercises to help readers identify their personal assets and possible derailers, and to position themselves as would a company in light of this evolving workforce model.

As president of PeopleClues and co-author of the recently released best-seller, "Women Who Mean Business," Moreland draws on decades of experience in employee assessment, employee selection, HR technology, training and development, and business leadership to help readers highlight the skills and behaviors that make them an asset to companies. Contributing authors and HR industry bloggers, Wempen and Carlos, offer their talent acquisition and social media expertise to deconstruct the workforce paradigm and perception shift and suggest new methods for connecting employers with the right talent.

"Free agency empowers the workforce in a way it hasn't before," said Moreland. "But this shift also requires that each individual be responsible and accountable for their development, brand and positioning. 'FeaturingU2.0' is a guide for individuals across industries, backgrounds and professions that provides the resources and real-life inspiration needed to craft a personal brand and recognize that which makes an individual stand out from the crowd to drive success along their career path."

About PeopleCluesPeopleClues is an award winning global provider of employment assessments for measuring job fit, attitude and level of engagement for candidates and employees. These assessments are built for pre-employment screening, career development, team development as well as training and development. Based in Woodstock, Georgia, PeopleClues provides the assessment tools that allow thousands of companies in 8 countries to make better hiring and training decisions. PeopleClues has also recently launched an industry game changer with its "ACE" "Automated Candidate Experience" product providing Clients a huge strategic advantage in allowing their candidates who have taken the assessments to instantly receive personalized feedback on how to improve the way they present themselves in their resume and interview. PeopleClues strategic partners include Insperity (formerly known as Administaff), CareerBuilder, Bond International (formerly known as VCG Software), Success Performance Solutions, Reliant, Prophecy Healthcare and Getting Hired. For additional information, contact info@peopleclues.com or visit http://www.peopleclues.com.

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PeopleClues Executives Share Expert Insight on Identifying and Building a Personal Brand in New eBook

Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-MlSs0gASvU

17-07-2012 01:56 The course "Fundamentals of Online Education: Planning and Application" by Instructional Designer Fatimah Wirth of The Georgia Institute of Technology, will be offered free of charge to everyone on the Coursera platform. Sign up at

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Fundamentals of Online Education: Planning and Application with Fatimah Wirth - Video

Online education platform Coursera wants to drag elite education into the 21st century. Yesterday, the academy jumped on board.

(Reuters)

As of yesterday, a year-old startup may well have become the most important experiment yet aimed at remaking higher education for the Internet age.

At the very least, it became the biggest.

A dozen major universities announcedthat they would begin providing content to Coursera, an innovative platform that makes interactive college classes available to the public free on the web. Next fall, it will offer at least 100 massive open online courses -- otherwise known as MOOCs*-- designed by professors from schools such as Princeton, CalTech, and Duke that will be capable of delivering lessons to more than 100,000 students at a time.

Founded by Stanford computer scientists Daphne Koller and Andrew Ng, Coursera is one of a handful of efforts aimed at using the web's cost savings to bring Ivy League-quality courses to the masses. Its peers include the joint Harvard-MIT project edX and Udacity, a free online university created by Google executive and former Stanford professor Sebstian Thrun.

But the deals Coursera announced Tuesday may well prove to be an inflection point for online education, a sector that has traditionally been dominated by for-profit colleges known mostly for their noxious recruitment practices and poor results. That's because the new partnerships represent an embrace of web-based learning from across the top tier of U.S. universities. And where the elite colleges go, so goes the rest of academia.

Coursera has previously teamed with Stanford, Princeton, University of Pennsylvania, and University of Michigan to offer 43 courses, which according to the New York Times enrolled 680,000 students. It now adds to its roster Duke, Caltech, University of Virginia, Georgia Tech, University of Washington, Rice, Johns Hopkins, University of California San Francisco, University of Illinois Urbana-Champagne, University of Toronto, University of Edinberg, and Switzerland's cole Polytechnique Fdrale de Lausanne.

Only one school, University of Washington, said it will give credit for its Coursera classes. But two others, University of Pennsylvania and Caltech, said they would invest $3.7 million into the enterprise, bringing the company's venture funding to more than $22 million. Literally, colleges are buying in.

And the bigger the buy-in, the better. The fundamental challenge for U.S. universities as they struggle to contain their costs is figuring out how to teach more students using fewer resources. That's what MOOCs were born to do. In theory, these automated classes have the power to create the first truly radical efficiency gains in the history of higher education, a leap that would take us light years beyond our creaky current system that, as Coursera's Koller noted to me in an interview, is still bound up in traditions that date back to the Middle Ages.

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The Single Most Important Experiment in Higher Education

In a large Chinese banquet hall in Boston hung with open-mouthed dragons and bulbous red lanterns, the hot yogis have taken over. Seventy Bikram yoga teachers are sprawled between the tables. At the helm of it all, clad in a black silk suit, a rhinestone tie, and a diamond-encrusted Rolex, is one of the worlds most famous yoga instructors, Bikram Choudhury.

The small, svelte man from Calcutta runs his hands anxiously through thin, wiry hair that falls past his shoulders from a mostly bare crown. Despite his diminutive looks, his presence clearly commands the room. Heads flick in his direction from other tables, eager for proximity toand attention fromthe man they consider to be their personal guru.

Everyone here practices the Bikram method of yoga, a series of 26 postures and two breathing sequences performed for 90 minutes in a climate-controlled environment of 105 degrees. Its the only correct way to practice yoga, Bikram insists. Everything else is shit.

I have been granted the seat of honor beside him. While everyone else is discussing yoga, we are talking about one of the ugliest lawsuits to occur in this otherwise tranquil world.

I am going to go to trial to get him punishment, to make him an example, so no one will ever have the guts to do that same kind of shit, says Bikram, a man so synonymous with yoga that people are often surprised to learn he is still living and not just a mythical icon.

In September, he sued Greg Gumucio, his former student and right hand man, for copyright infringement. Gumucio once occupied the chair where I now sit. But for the past several years, he has distanced himself from his former mentor, starting his own chain of competing studios, Yoga to the People.

Since 2006, Gumucio has been growing a strong business on the coasts. He charges only $8 for a single class, while a standard Bikram class costs between $15 and $25. The result has been a billowing client roster. A total of nearly 1,000 students pass through Gumucios four New York City studios every day.

Bikram originally turned a blind eye to Gumucios hotter hot yoga until last September, when a Bikram studio in Manhattan was forced to close due to competition from two YTTP studios thriving nearby. Thats when Bikram decided to sue Gumucio for copyright and trademark infringement, unfair business practices, and breach of contract.

Although yoga is a centuries-old tradition, Bikram had copyrighted his particular version under the same protections afforded to choreographers. And he had used it to bat down competitors from practicing it without paying franchise fees.

But Gumucio proved the greatest threat to his multimillion-dollar empire.

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The Hot Yoga War