NEW YORK, June 29, 2012 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- SKIM, an international market research agency, will sponsor and present at the InnoCos USA Conference on July 11-12 in New York City. Paul Janssen, SKIM's director of communication research, and Sourabh Sharma, project manager on SKIM's consumer research team, will present "Bring Your Innovation to Market: Leveraging consumer insights from new product development to marketing." This presentation follows a well-received and highly rated SKIM session at InnoCos Europe 2012 in June.

Janssen and Sharma will present a case study about on-pack packaging communication for a personal care product. The case study will illustrate how innovations require a deep understanding of the consumer throughout many phases of a product's life cycle, from product development to launch. Understanding how to communicate a product's benefits, how to exemplify the reasons to believe, and how to best position an innovative offering is key to determining what triggers consumers. Through an interactive case exercise, attendees will evaluate claims and participate in a workshop to learn best practices derived from SKIM's meta-analysis of claims across multiple consumer product industries. These strategies can be applied to on-pack communications as well as communications testing across every phase of the product life cycle.

Janssen is considered an expert in the field of claims and communication. He advises clients including Unilever, PepsiCo and Philips regarding the optimization of claim and communication strategies for specific marketing initiatives. Sharma has multiple years of experience in brand management and product development in the cosmetics industry and at L'Oreal. He works with SKIM clients to extract value from the rapidly evolving brand-to-consumer social media interface. Sharma will serve as a chairperson for InnoCos USA on Thursday, July 12th.

InnoCos brings together senior executives from the cosmetics and personal care industry to discuss key issues related to front-end innovation, new product development and high-growth markets. For more on InnoCos USA 2012, visit http://www.skimgroup.com/innocos-usa-newyork.

About SKIM

Founded in 1979, SKIM is a dynamic and rapidly growing market research agency with offices in New York, Rotterdam, Geneva and London. A San Francisco office will open in the summer of 2012. Combining market-specific expertise and knowledge of advanced research methodologies, SKIM is a valued partner for multinational companies in consumer packaged goods, healthcare, consumer health, telecommunications, technology and financial services. Leading companies around the globe rely on SKIM researchers for strategic guidance on pricing, communication and new product development. Visit http://www.skimgroup.com for more information.

The SKIM logo is available at http://www.globenewswire.com/newsroom/prs/?pkgid=12864

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SKIM to Present "Bring Your Innovation to Market: Leveraging consumer insights from new product development to ...

VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA--(Marketwire -06/29/12)- LNG Energy Ltd. ("LNG" or the "Company") (LNG.V) announces that effective July 2, 2012, Dave Afseth, has elected, for personal reasons, to resign as President and Chief Executive Officer. Mr. Afseth has been instrumental in the development of the Company over the last 5 years and will remain on the Company's board. The board extends its sincere appreciation to him for his effort and time in that role.

The Company is also pleased to announce that David Nelson, the current General Manager, Europe of the Company, has been appointed as President and Chief Executive Officer of the Company as of July 2, 2012.

Mr. Nelson is a Geological Engineer with over 32 years of geological, engineering, and commercial experience in the energy industry, focusing the last 20 years on European and Central Asian oil and gas provinces. Prior to joining LNG, Mr. Nelson served as President and Chief Operating Officer for Direct Petroleum Exploration and as Business Development Engineering Manager for TransAtlantic Petroleum Ltd.

The Company also announces that Dr. Robert Gayton has resigned as Director effective July 2, 2012 for personal reasons. The board extends its gratitude for his efforts and guidance as Director.

Further to its news release of April 10, 2012 relating to the farm-out of the PPL 319 license in Papua New Guinea, the farm-out process is still progressing with interested parties currently conducting technical reviews of data provided to them.

"Dave has been with LNG since we entered PNG in 2008 and has made a significant contribution to the position that we are now in," said David Cohen, Chairman of LNG. "Today LNG has substantial prospects in three major areas: PNG, Poland and Bulgaria and we wish Dave much success as he steps down from an operating role in the company. Bob Gayton has been fully involved at board level and we are very appreciative of his time and input to the Company."

LNG is a Canadian exploration and development company focused on developing oil and gas reserves in Papua New Guinea, Poland and Bulgaria. LNG holds a 100% interest in approximately 5.5 million acres of prospective oil and gas properties in Papua New Guinea. LNG is operator and has a 50% net interest in approximately 360,000 gross acres of prospective shales in Poland together with San Leon Energy. LNG also has a 20% net interest in approximately 734,000 gross acres of prospective shales in Poland together with BNK Petroleum Inc., Sorgenia E&P S.p.A., and Rohol-Aufsuchungs Aktiengesellschaft. LNG has also entered into a farm in agreement relating to 405,080 acres of prospective argillite formation in Bulgaria with Direct Petroleum Bulgaria EOOD, a subsidiary of TransAtlantic Petroleum Ltd. LNG shares trade on the TSX Venture Exchange under the symbol "LNG".

LNG ENERGY LTD.

David Afseth, President & CEO

Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements

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LNG Energy Ltd.: Appointment of New Chief Executive Officer, Board Update and PPL 319 License Farm-Out Update

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Posted on June 29, 2012 at 10:06 AM

NEW ORLEANS A 2012 graduate at Mt. Carmel Academy was awarded the Congressional Award Gold Medal, a physical fitness and personal development award.

Amanda Nicole Kruse, the daughter of Dr. Mark and Debbie Kruse, of Metairie, was the only Louisianan to win the award this year.

This singular charity of the United States Congress challenges young people to meet fitness goals, to volunteer their time, to work on personal development, and to take part in an expedition or exploration. The program is for young people ages 13 to under 24 years of age, so a student could take 10 years to meet all of the goals. Amanda, however, earned her Bronze, Silver, and Gold Certificates and her Bronze, Silver, and Gold Medals all in just two and a half years, said a statement from Mt. Carmel.

Kruse is the eighth Louisianan to win the medal since the program began in 1979.

"It makes me feel good to help people. God granted me with so much, so it is my responsibility to help those less fortunate," said Kruse.

According to Mt. Carmel, Kruse has dedicated about 1,800 service hours through 17 different charities since ninth grade at the school.

Kruse plans to attend Louisiana State University in the fall, and, in June, she went to Washington, D.C. in June with her parents to receive her award.

"The Congressional Award gave me a lifetime of memories that I will cherish," she said. "Without the program, I would have never thought half of the things I did were possible."

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Mt. Carmel grad wins prestigious congressional gold medal

The last time we observed an evolutionary shift in humans was roughly 40,000 years ago. That was the point when our ancestors started to do more than just fight for survival. They started to create art and search for a higher purpose. Items like musical instruments and cave painting started to appear. They began making jewelry and idols. For the first time they recognized the spiritual nature of the world and of themselves. It's as if something spread throughout all of humanity and transformed Homo sapiens into what we now call modern humans.

It was a wonderful change in our evolutionary biology. But we haven't really evolved since then. Yes, humans have grown taller and certain organs are no longer as necessary as they once may have been, but we still have the same wiring we had 40,000 years ago, and that is a problem. Because our old wiring simply doesn't work that well in the 21st Century world we now live in.

Don't get me wrong. Our old wiring worked great for survival. It kept us alive and brought us to the top of the food chain. It enabled us to create the world we now live in. But the world we created is vastly different from the world our brain was designed for.

Its No. 1 job was, and still is, to keep us alive. So it keeps looking for things that are out of place. It rapidly jumps our attention from one potential threat to another. It throws us into a fight or flight mode whenever it senses the slightest risk. It was a wonderful response when we lived on the pre-historic plains, but in today's world we just don't face the same kinds of risks we did back then. In fact, it ends up hurting us more than helping us in most instances. Its ability to jump from one point of attention to the next can create stress and anxiety. Its fight or flight response can cause us to panic when we should remain calm. The fact that we are living in a Neolithic body in a 21st century world is, I think, why so many of us have problems guiding our lives in the direction we want it to go.

Think about it. When you're out on a date, instead of being your best your stomach tightens itself into a knot, your heart starts beating faster, and your brain gets a little muddled. When your boss calls you into their office, instead of being cool and collected, more often than not you start to scramble for answers. When you have to give a presentation in class or at the office, just when you should be at the top of your game, your body starts to betray you. It's nobody's fault. It's just your 40,000 year old wiring doing what it was programmed to do -- keep you alive. It senses stress and it pumps you full of adrenaline and endorphins that undermine your ability to be at the top of your game. What the brain doesn't realize is that today survival is a whole different ball game.

Survival means staying calm and collected instead of spiraling into a fight or flight response. Survival means thinking and acting for the long-term, rather than for the moment. Survival means thinking bigger picture and managing your 401k, rather than fighting or flighting at the drop of a hat. Even the much-admired Navy SEALs learn to overcome the natural tendencies so that they can wait until the best shot appears, and then they take it, and you can't do that if your brain keeps running your actions or your life.

So start thinking of your brain as a 40,000-year-old organ that you need to start managing, and start thinking of your mind as a 21st century collection of thoughts that you need to cultivate. If you can overcome your natural tendency to respond, if you can overcome the habits that have been ruling and often ruining your life, then you can empower your 21st century mind to take you in whatever direction you want to go.

The reason you're able to do this is due to the brain's ability to change. It's called neuroplasticity and is something that researchers are just now bringing to the forefront. You see, your brain constantly rewires itself based on your life and your needs. That means that your actions can steer your life in whatever direction you want it to move in through the little choices you make every day without even thinking about them. You can take control of your life and live the life you want to live.

Doing this is easier than you may think. All it takes is training your brain to quiet down. When you quiet your brain you stop that voice in the back of your head from popping up at the worst of times, you allow your 21st century mind to open up and take the lead. When you stop your 40,000-year-old auto-responses from running your life, you enable your mind to make the decisions that are right for you in today's world, not some antiquated logic you were programmed to follow.

This is what modern meditation is all about. It's not just about helping you to rest and relax, but enabling you to turn off that voice that has ruled your life for way too long. It's the key to minimizing the distractions that your brain naturally creates and that keep steering your life off-track. It's also the key to managing your life in the direction you actually want it to go.

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Jeff Cannon: Meditation and Your 40,000-Year-Old Brain

Newswise Arizona State University, in coordination with Leuphana University in Germany, has launched an educational pilot project which will lay the groundwork for an intensive institutional collaboration in undergraduate education.

Funded by a $900,000 award from the Mercator Foundation, the ASU-Leuphana program will focus on the topic Sustainable Cities: Contradiction of Terms? The program will utilize virtual conferencing using the technology of Vidyo, a revolutionary video conferencing platform, intensive writing assignments and student writing workshops, online exhibits, peer-to-peer mentoring, and in-person international exchange. This global classroom model tests traditional teacher-student roles, advances new, blended approaches to curriculum and teaching, and redefines the rules tying interdisciplinary liberal arts and sciences education to place.

"Any good idea or revolution has started in a bar or coffee house, not a lecture hall, said Manfred Laubichler, co-author of the Mercator grant and a Presidents Professor in ASUs School of Life Sciences. This project is basically a way to recreate this in a virtual environment."

Vidyo technology was adopted by ASU for use in classrooms in 2010. These virtual conferencing connections have catalyzed research and science education exchange between ASU, the Smithsonian Institution and local K-12 classrooms, and set the online stage for the project with Leuphana.

A workshop in Germany at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin drew ASU professors Laubichler, Robert Page, Jane Maienschein, James Collins, Richard Creath and Daniel Sarewitz to meet with their German counterparts. These included Yehuda Elkana, President and Rector Emeritus of the Central European University, Sascha Spoun, the president of Leuphana University, and representatives from Stiftung Mercator, who invest in educational projects. Together this collective considered how to transform our traditional approach to education into a new model using virtual technology, and an international and interdisciplinary pedagogy suited for the 21st century.

One of the things that we discussed was how knowledge is socially, geographically, and temporally contextual. That is: that all knowledge has context, said Robert Page, ASU vice provost and dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.

So we asked, what if as we teach about sustainability, conservation biology, science, humanities and culture, we have students from Europe, South America, China, and the U.S. all talking together? said Page. There would be differing views and the sharing of those views might allow students to develop solutions to challenges that none could have conceived of individually. And so was born the concept of a global classroom.

Starting in January of 2013, undergraduate students from Leuphana University considered the ASU of the EU, ASUs Barrett Honors College, and the Schools of Life Sciences and Sustainability will define and work together on group projects that extend over three semesters. To support the collective effort, students will also pursue individual research activities at their home institutions. The result will be individual edited short papers by each student, and a set of collective exhibits to be published through a digital educational repository that the group is developing. Ben Minteer, an associate professor in environmental ethics and policy, Arnim Wiek, an assistant professor in sustainability, and Charles Kazilek, an assistant dean in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences who develops award-winning internet science education materials, will also contribute to the Mercator program.

In addition, as the next cohort of students enters during the programs second year, the first years cohort will serve as peer mentors to the incoming group. This reinforcing investment from one cohort to the next allows the instructors to teach more and the students to have a more interactive learner-oriented experience.

Graduate students in Germany and with ASUs Center for Biology and Society and with ASUs Global Institute of Sustainability will serve as co-instructors for the Mercator project. At ASU, these will include Sean Cohmer, Guido Caniglia, Katherine MacCord and Julia Damerow, who studies digital history and philosophy of sciences and also works with the Max Planck Institute.

Continued here:
Online Technology Spurs Education Reform, Expansion of Arizona State's 'Global Classroom' to Europe

LONDON, June 29, 2012 /PRNewswire/ --

CMC Markets, one of the leading providers of spread betting and CFD trading, has been named the best online spread betting service and best online education provider at the 2012 MoneyAM Awards.

The aim of the MoneyAM Awards, now in its fourth year, is to recognise the high quality service and innovative products from companies in the online world of finance. The votes consist entirely of reader's votes, making the awards the people's choice. This year, over 7,000 votes were cast from MoneyAM readers.

Brenda Kelly, Senior Market Strategist who leads the education programme at CMC Markets UK said: "This accolade from MoneyAM reflects our continual efforts to provide the best possible technology and education to our clients. We have been awarded 'Best Online Education' from Money AM for the last three years, which is an impressive track record."

She added: "We also encourage traders to learn from each other through our community initiatives such as our monthly Traders' Club. It is not only our aim to offer the very best trading technology but to create a unique trading community for our customers."

Notes to Editors

CMC Markets is a leading global provider of financial spreadbetting, CFD and foreign exchange (FX). Since Peter Cruddas founded CMC Markets in 1989, the company now services more than 80,000 clients worldwide, who placed approximately 30 million trades last year.

With offices in London, Paris, Milan, Madrid, Vienna, Sydney, Tokyo, Toronto, Beijing, Auckland, Oslo, Stockholm and Singapore, CMC Markets represents clients in over 70 countries.

CMC Markets UK Plc and CMC Spreadbet Plc (collectively known as CMC Markets) are authorised and regulated in the UK by the Financial Services Authority.

For further information on CMC Markets please visit http://www.cmcmarkets.co.uk

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CMC Markets Announced 'Best Online Spread Betting Service' and 'Best Online Education' provider at MoneyAM Awards

Tiffany Molinar thought she had a full plate in life, until she was offered something shed enjoyed before but never tasted at the highest level coaching high school volleyball.

When Justin-Siena athletic director Michael Fisher offered her the position of varsity head coach, Molinar had to not only think about it for a few days, but make a list of the pros and cons.

The cons included the time it would take away from raising her 3-year-old daughter Raine, and doing homework for a full-time class load at Sonoma State, where shes pursuing a bachelors degree in liberal studies. It would also mean she would have to leave a great job as hostess at The French Laundry, one of the top restaurants in the world, in her hometown of Yountville.

But the pros won out for the 2007 Justin-Siena graduate and former Napa County Volleyball Player of the Year.

Fisher announced her hiring last Friday, June 22, in an email.

We are very excited to have Coach Molinar join the Justin-Siena community, he wrote. We are always so proud to have an alumnus return to join our coaching family!

Molinars experience made her Justin-Sienas top choice: two unbeaten Bay Valley Conference campaigns as a setter for Napa Valley College, one season of co-coaching the under-16 Evolve club team with NVC head coach Kelly Van Winden, another season of coaching the Evolve U-14 team, and coaching Justin-Sienas freshmen two years ago and its junior varsity last year.

I already know the girls because Ive coached them for two years, she said. It will be a young team, with no seniors, mostly juniors and sophomores and probably some freshmen, and I felt bad stepping away. I didnt want to leave them hanging. I also enjoy coaching, and this is a great group of girls. I know what its like being their age and playing volleyball, and I know how much I love the game. Its a passion of mine, and I hope to see that through them when I coach.

She also figured she belonged at Justin-Siena as a coach instead of a spectator, watching her boyfriend and daughters father, Blaize Boles, when he returns to assist JV boys basketball head coach Guiles Particelli.

Molinar enjoyed being the first face seen by diners at The French Laundry, where reservations must be made many months in advance. It was a job she said kind of fell into my lap because Boles is a manager at another Yountville restaurant, but one that fit well her high-energy personality and ability to work under high stress.

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Braves tab former star to coach spikers

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27-06-2012 18:14

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Doing the reps business specialist for new health and fitness business workshop testimonial - Video

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28-06-2012 02:39 I met with Kasey Arena at the 2012 Fitness & Health Bloggers Conference in Denver, Colorado. She loves to share stories of fitness, clean eating, and healthy recipes on her blog. I got a chance to interview her on the last day of the conference at The Anschutz Health and Wellness Center. Her enthusiasm, motivation and inspiration is shown in her dedication to health and fitness. Here is her information below: Blog - Twitter - http Facebook - Email - Here is my information: Website - Twitter - http Facebook - YouTube -

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Interview with Kasey Arena (Powercakes) - 2012 Fitness

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

28-06-2012 14:23 The weight loss authority is where you will find the latest tips and advice related to diet and weight loss. You will find usefull articles and video tutorials. There are many health, fitness and weight loss topics covered.

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Lose Weight Fast| Weight Loss Authority| Health And Fitness - Video