Eben Pagan Wake Up Productive Fast Start Session 6 – Personal Morning Success Ritual – Video
Posted: June 19, 2012 at 9:14 pm
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Eben Pagan Wake Up Productive Fast Start Session 6 - Personal Morning Success Ritual - Video
Imagine: Wisie Inspirational Video for Personal Development – Video
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Personal finances key to 2012 election
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Highlights
The media frenzy that accompanies presidential elections brings a sharp focus on practically every detail of a campaign, from the candidates' debate skills on down to their haircuts.
But for all the ink that candidates' campaigns get, Americans' feelings about their own personal finances and the economy likely will influence the outcome of the election more than any press conference gaffe or debate zinger.
As part of the June edition of the Bankrate's Financial Security Index, Bankrate asked Americans how much their personal finances would influence their vote in the presidential election.
The result? Nearly 6 in 10 Americans reported their personal finances will be either the "single most important factor" or "one of several important factors" in their choice of which candidate they'll pull the lever for in November.
Bankrate's survey was conducted by Princeton Research Associates International via landline and cellphone interviews from June 7 to 10, with a nationally representative sample of 1,000 adults in the continental U.S. The margin of error is plus or minus 3.6 percentage points.
In the survey, Americans were deeply divided about which candidate will help households get back on track financially. Of those surveyed, 21 percent said their personal financial situations would be better under former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, 21 percent said they would be better under President Barack Obama and 8 percent were undecided.
Another 50 percent said the eventual winner wouldn't make much difference to their personal finances, suggesting neither candidate has really convinced voters they can fix the U.S. economy, says Matthew Singer, a professor of political science at the University of Connecticut.
That 50 percent number also hints at the deep economic pessimism in the country as the campaigns ramp up, says Michael Walden, the Reynolds distinguished professor of economics at North Carolina State University.
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Personal finances key to 2012 election
Robbie's howling success in Hollywood
Posted: at 9:14 pm
The New York Post's Lou Lumenick says Leonardo DiCaprio is a "tour de force" in depicting the conflicted FBI director in upcoming film "J.Edgar."
In final talks to play lead role ... Former 'Neighbours' starlet Margot Robbie. Source: Getty Images
FORMER "Neighbours" starlet Margot Robbie may have had a bit of bad luck, with her airline TV series Pan Am being axed in the US.
But the up-and-coming actress, currently shooting comedy movie About Time with Rachael McAdams in England, is being tipped for one of the year's biggest film roles.
Pictures: Margor Robbie in Ralph's 150 Hottest Australian Women
The 21-year-old Melbourne local is reportedly in final talks with producers of the much-buzzed-about Martin Scorsese-directed The Wolf Of Wall Street - opposite Leonardo DiCaprio.
Pictures: Margot Robbie at Australians in Film's Breakthrough Awards
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According to industry website Deadline, Robbie is tipped to play the female lead in the film that stars DiCaprio as the real-life (and now reformed) booze-swilling, drug-inhaling Wall Street broker Jordan Belfort.
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Robbie's howling success in Hollywood
Antibacterials in personal-care products linked to allergy risk in children
Posted: at 9:13 pm
ScienceDaily (June 19, 2012) Exposure to common antibacterial chemicals and preservatives found in soap, toothpaste, mouthwash and other personal-care products may make children more prone to a wide range of food and environmental allergies, according to new research from Johns Hopkins Children's Center.
Results of the NIH-funded study are published online ahead of print June 18 in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology.
Using existing data from a national health survey of 860 children ages 6 to 18, Johns Hopkins researchers examined the relationship between a child's urinary levels of antibacterials and preservatives found in many personal-hygiene products and the presence of IgE antibodies in the child's blood. IgE antibodies are immune chemicals that rise in response to an allergen and are markedly elevated in people with allergies.
"We saw a link between level of exposure, measured by the amount of antimicrobial agents in the urine, and allergy risk, indicated by circulating antibodies to specific allergens," said lead investigator Jessica Savage, M.D., M.H.S., an allergy and immunology fellow at Hopkins.
The researchers caution that the findings do not demonstrate that antibacterials and preservatives themselves cause the allergies, but instead suggest that these agents play a role in immune system development.
The investigators say their findings are also consistent with the so-called hygiene hypothesis, which has recently gained traction as one possible explanation behind the growing rates of food and environmental allergies in the developed world. The hypothesis suggests that early childhood exposure to common pathogens is essential in building healthy immune responses. Lack of such exposure, according to the theory, can lead to an overactive immune system that misfires against harmless substances such as food proteins, pollen or pet dander.
"The link between allergy risk and antimicrobial exposure suggests that these agents may disrupt the delicate balance between beneficial and bad bacteria in the body and lead to immune system dysregulation, which in turn raises the risk of allergies," Savage added.
In the study, those with the highest urine levels of triclosan -- an antibacterial agent used in soaps, mouthwash and toothpaste -- had the highest levels of food IgE antibodies, and therefore the highest allergy risk, compared with children with the lowest triclosan levels. Children with the highest urinary levels of parabens -- preservatives with antimicrobial properties used in cosmetics, food and medications -- were more likely to have detectable levels of IgE antibodies to environmental allergens like pollen and pet dander, compared with those with low paraben levels.
The team initially zeroed in on seven ingredients previously shown to disrupt endocrine function in lab and animal studies. These compounds were bisphenol A -- found in plastics -- and triclosan, benzophenone-3 and propyl, methyl, butyl and ethyl parabens, found in personal-hygiene products and some foods and medications. Interestingly, triclosan and propyl and butyl parabens, all of which have antimicrobial properties, were the only ones associated with increased allergy risk in the current study, the researchers noted.
"This finding highlights the antimicrobial properties of these agents as a probable driving force behind their effect on the immune system," said senior investigator Corinne Keet, M.D., M.S., an allergist at Johns Hopkins Children's Center.
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Antibacterials in personal-care products linked to allergy risk in children
New "Bring Your Own Device" (BYOD) Service Bridges Gap Between Employee Privacy and Employer Mobile Device Management
Posted: at 9:13 pm
WATERFORD, Wis., June 19, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Runzheimer International, the global leader in Total Employee Mobility solutions, announces the availability of Mobile Device Services (MDS) for Personal Devices, a "Bring Your Own Device" (BYOD) service that lets employees use their personal smart phones and tablets at work while ensuring device compliance, fair and accurate reimbursement, and preservation of privacy.
Runzheimer MDS for Personal Devices is a fresh approach to BYOD programs that allows employees to use their personal device for work without the need for intrusive device control. It helps organizations to establish and enforce standards for mobile devices and provides accurate reimbursement for business usage during work times pre-determined by the employer. The service gives employees the freedom to choose a mobile device that meets their personal needs and a reimbursement that fairly reflects their business costs in exchange for a commitment to comply with their organization's policy.
"Runzheimer MDS features a win-win for organizations and employees. Employees agree to remain compliant with company standards in exchange for an accurate and fair reimbursement of their business expenses. They are assured that their privacy is respected because Runzheimer is acting as the intermediary," said Matt DeWolf, Director of New Product Development. "In addition, it lets the employer implement a mobile device strategy across BYOD devices, which is nearly impossible with traditional stipend programs, and this allows companies to use their BYOD fleet as a competitive advantage."
About Runzheimer InternationalFounded in 1933, Runzheimer International serves 60 percent of the Fortune 500 and numerous government agencies. Recognized for providing innovative solutions relating to Total Employee Mobility, Runzheimer is the global leader in workforce mobility programs including business vehicles, business travel, corporate aircraft, employee relocation and compensation, and mobile device management. To learn more about Runzheimer Mobile Device Services for Personal Devices, visit http://runzheimer.com/runzheimer-mds-personal.
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New "Bring Your Own Device" (BYOD) Service Bridges Gap Between Employee Privacy and Employer Mobile Device Management
NNG Ensures Quality of Leading In-Vehicle Infotainment Systems with Coverity Development Testing
Posted: at 9:13 pm
SAN FRANCISCO, June 19, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Coverity, Inc., the development testing leader, announced today that NNG LLC, a pioneer of navigation software and the developer of iGO Navigation solutions, has successfully deployed Coverity Static Analysis as its development testing solution to deliver high quality software and accelerate time to market for software delivery to its supply chain.
Since its launch in 2004, NNG has delivered navigation solutions to more than 150 business customers including the world's leading original equipment manufacturers (OEMs). NNG's navigation software is at the heart of millions of products, from in-vehicle Infotainment (IVI) systems and smartphones to personal navigation devices. Because customer satisfaction, cost control and competitive advantage can all be impacted by the quality of software code, Coverity has become fundamental to NNG's quality initiative as part of its brand management with customers and supply chain partners. The company is constantly developing new functionality for its 28 products and equips its engineers with Coverity Static Analysis to enhance its quality assurance program and create higher software standards for the navigation industry.
"We embedded Coverity Static Analysis in our development process so every new line of code is tested before it is released into the market," explains Peter Balogh, interim CEO at NNG LLC. "Coverity development testing has brought greater consistency and control to our development activities, the results of which have been gains in productivity and software quality. By the end of 2012, NNG will use Coverity to validate legacy code for our entire product line as well as new projects."
The development team chose Coverity Static Analysis for its accuracy of results, its advanced extensibility to fit into the development workflow and its ability to track and manage defects between 28 projects and different code branches comprising over 1 million lines of code. In addition, Coverity also identified code patterns and established metrics for measuring NNG's development processes.
As a result of these improvements, NNG has been able to:
"NNG is driving quality in its navigation software products which directly translates to brand reputation of both its own brand and that of its supply chain partners," said Jennifer Johnson, VP of Marketing at Coverity. "Development testing not only helps ensure the quality of software, but also contributes to accelerated time to market and enhanced developer productivity, all of which contribute to competitive advantage."
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About Coverity Coverity, Inc., (www.coverity.com), the development testing leader, is the trusted standard for companies that need to protect their brands and bottom lines from software failures. More than 1,100 Coverity customers use Coverity's development testing suite of products to automatically test source code for software defects that could lead to product crashes, unexpected behavior, security breaches or catastrophic failure. Coverity is a privately held company headquartered in San Francisco. Coverity is funded by Foundation Capital and Benchmark Capital. Follow us on Twitter or check out our blog.
About NNG LLC NNG LLC is one of the leading navigation solution providers for the Automotive, Personal and Wireless navigation industries, and offers fully customizable, on-board, 3D navigation applications to device manufacturers, auto makers and OEM brands that are custom built according to each customer's needs. The core technology is based on the award-winning iGO My way software engine, already installed in millions of navigation devices throughout the world. The company's subsidiary develops its own digital maps. The first international product of NNG was launched in Germany at CeBIT 2006. Since then, NNG has formed partnerships with more than 150 hardware manufacturers worldwide, providing innovative and reliable navigation solutions for 115 countries and in 46 different languages. To find out more about NNG, please visit http://www.nng.com.
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NNG Ensures Quality of Leading In-Vehicle Infotainment Systems with Coverity Development Testing
Financial Education Program for Military Families Launched
Posted: at 9:12 pm
Military service members and their families often face particular financial problems. Citi and CredAbility -- one of the leading nonprofit credit counseling and education agencies in the United States -- have teamed up with several veterans' service organizations to help solve the financial issues that can burden these individuals' lives.
In collaboration with the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, the Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors and the Military Spouse Corporate Career Network, the groups have launched CredAbility ReConnect -- a free, online financial education and counseling program.
Bleak statistics show the need for a program to better equip veterans with tools to combat financial hardships. In 2011, the unemployment rate for veterans who have served on active duty since September 2011 was 12.1%, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. This rate is significantly higher than the national unemployment rate of 8.9% that same year. Data from Debt.org and CredAbility show that more than 25% of military families who have credit card debt carry a balance of more than $10,000 and veterans ages 29 or younger have average monthly expenses that exceed their net income by $880.
"Every member of the armed forces has sacrificed a great deal in service to their country -- and, in addition to the challenges of military service, many face tremendous financial pressures as well," said Suni Harford, Citi's Regional Head of Markets for North America in a statement. "These brave men and women receive extensive military training, but far too few of them receive any kind of formal financial education. CredAbility ReConnect was developed to help these deserving men and women build financial capability and achieve long-term economic security for themselves and their families."
The topics covered by CredAbility ReConnect are:
The financial impact of deployment -- Online courses that help families learn to manage money when a spouse is deployed. Easing the transition -- Online courses designed to help ease the financial transition for those who have recently left the military or experienced the death of a service member. Budget and credit counseling -- Easy-to-follow plans that help users better manage their money and prioritize spending. Debt management plans -- Repayment plans designed to be affordable and tailored to the individual's needs. Foreclosure prevention and home buying guidance -- For those who are behind on their mortgage payments or facing foreclosure, certified counselors provide assistance.
Individuals and families who are served by the collaborating organizations are able to access a free custom version of the online program. Members of the armed forces, veterans and their families not affiliated with these groups can access the program at http://www.CredAbility.org/recon.
This program designed for military families is new, but it is certainly not the first of its kind. Several leading credit card issuers have similar programs and benefits. For example:
Wells Fargo has the Worldwide Military Banking program, which includes benefits such as special mortgage financing plans and Small Business Administration Patriot Express loans that help members of the military community establish or expand their small businesses. Additionally, Wells Fargo offers a free online financial literacy program called Hands on Banking. Bank of America and Chase provide military families with benefits and extensive information about the transitions that can occur in those families' lives.
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Financial Education Program for Military Families Launched
Nerds of the World, Unite! iTunes U Just Got Interactive
Posted: at 9:12 pm
Stanford is adding a social layer to its most popular class on Apple's platform.
If you are a nerd, or just an aspiring one, there are few things more fantastic on the Internet than iTunes U. One of the earlier online education initiatives, the feature -- a little corner of the broader iTunes content environment -- brings together video- and audio-recorded lectures from colleges and universities around the world. Want to learn philosophy from Oxford? Download the 41 lectures from the university's eight-week-long General Philosophy course. Curious about the history of ancient Greece? Turn Yale's lectures on that subject into podcasts that you listen to as you're doing your dishes. iTunes' education initiative is an occasionally overwhelming and often enlightening smorgasbord of digitized, customized learning.
And! The whole thing is free for users. Which means that you -- the nerd, whether current or aspiring -- can replicate the university lecture experience for pretty much any subject, for pretty much nothing save your time.
iTunes U has been great at replicating the sit-and-listen part of the college learning experience. It's been less great, however, about replicating the thing that has traditionally made the university such a great learning environment: class discussion, the lively back-and-forth that can come from the seminar setting. And it's been less great at that, of course, because it hasn't tried to be any good: iTunes U has been a clearinghouse for college lectures, and that, so far, has been more than enough.
Until today, that is. Now available on the iTunes platform is a Stanford class, "App Development for the iPhone and iPad," which allows, for the first time, interactive class discussions. The class -- to date, the most popular among Stanford's many iTunes U offerings -- will employ the course discussion infrastructure of Piazza, which Stanford has already been using as an online supplement to its in-person discussions. Students in the class -- which is still free to take -- will get to interact with each other, asking questions and working through problems.
"We're very excited to see how social intereaction and social learning will come into play," says Brent Izutsu, who oversees Stanford's course outreach efforts on platforms like iTunes U and YouTube. Stanford has been delivering content through iTunes U since 2005, and it's gleaned, over those seven years, some great data on education as it takes place online, divorced from the traditional classroom setting. What courses are people, left to their own devices, most interested in? What times of year are people most inclined to download some lectures?
The interactive elements of the new class will offer a new body of data, allowing Izutsu and other school administrators to understand not just what people choose to learn about, but how they choose to go about the learning. For one thing, "we're very interesting in seeing retention," Izutsu told me -- "seeing if people stay engaged longer because there's a cohort that they can ask questions of and interactive with." And because today's launch will repurpose Stanford's App Development lecture from Fall 2011, Izutsu and his colleagues will be able to measure -- to some degree -- the extent to which interactivity itself is a selling point for online classes. Will the course prove more appealing to people now that it's interactive? Now that you can take a class with friends -- well, "with" friends -- are you more likely to sign up for it?
An interactive App Development course is a pilot, both for Stanford and for iTunes. But the hope, Isutzu says, is eventually to expand interactivity to other courses. So, listen to Oxford's philosophy lecture, then argue about the categorial imperative with fellow course-takers. Or discuss the plays of Aeschylus. Or try to outwit your friends in game theory.
This kind of social integration, says Pooja Sankar, Piazza's founder and CEO, is the next logical step of the digital education revolution. Services like iTunes U -- and TED-ED, and Udacity, and all the many, many other platforms that are slowly transforming how we think about learning -- have already gotten the content thing down. As of January 2012, iTunes U had seen 700 million downloads of its educational content, Sankar told me. The stuff of learning -- the lectures, the course materials, the instructional videos, the explanatory songs, the syllabi -- is already out there. The next challenge, she believes, will be figuring out how to make all that stuff social. "How do you take all that content that's out there -- that's being hosted by multiple parties -- and create engagement around it?"
"It's amazing how much learning can happen when you let students interact with one another -- and learn together, rather than learn in isolation," Sankar says. "It really makes all the difference."
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Nerds of the World, Unite! iTunes U Just Got Interactive
EDUCATION: National Guitar Workshop Announces Online Courses
Posted: at 9:12 pm
National Guitar Workshop Is Proud To Announce: National Guitar Workshop: Online
Beginning July 15th the National Guitar Workshop will offer ten popular courses online.
National Guitar Workshop is announcing its newest innovation in music education, NGW Online. This new online program will feature 10 courses with over 150 hours of class time.
This summer, for the first time, the National Guitar Workshop will be conducting online lessons. Enrollment for online courses begins in June, classes will be available for viewing July 15th through November 1st. Students will be able to take one or all ten classes offered this summer for the same low price. All classes are recorded at the Connecticut location and are posted the day they happen. Students can ask questions just like in a physical classroom. Questions asked during the on campus dates will be answered by the NGW faculty in the next days session.
Students will have access to ALL ten classes for enrollment fee of $149.
Courses being offered online this summer include: Brazilian Guitar Exploration The Big Class of Jazz Improvisation Blues You Can Use Jazz Summit Guitar Beatles Boot Camp Rockn Beyond Classic Rock Icons Unleash the Fury Beyond Acoustic Guitar Gods of the 70s
Since 1984 over 25,000 students have traveled to our campuses to take classes with our incredible faculty. Now we can make our program much more accessible and affordable by bringing it online. - David Smolover, founder.
To find out more about NGW Online call 800-234-6479.
For over 28 years, The National Guitar Workshop strives to create an educational and collaborative atmosphere for students and teachers alike. NGW has delivered the finest in music education to guitarists, bassists, keyboardists and drummers throughout the world, with an acclaimed faculty that includes some of the most soughtafter professional musicians in every style of music. NGW maintains campuses and programs in New Milford and Norwich, Connecticut; Austin, Texas; Los Angeles, California; and Bigfork, Montana. The 2012 roster of Guest Artists includes; Pat Metheny, Chick Corea, Jack DeJohnette, John Abercrombie, Tosin Abasi, Antonio Sanchez, Duke Robillard, John Patitucci, Larry Grenadier, Adrian Legg, Guthrie Govan, Romero Lubambo, and Doug Aldrich.
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EDUCATION: National Guitar Workshop Announces Online Courses