Source: http://yfosu.livejournal.com/26342.html
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Monday, February 6, 2012
blake - Women?s Health, the first barometer of a nation's health
[unable to retrieve full-text content]So, it makes sense to separate a subset of ?women?s health? from the universe of general health and fitness. Women?s Health ... These eating disorders fall under this category of women?s health problems. ? Female Urinary ...
Saturday, February 4, 2012
New super-Earth detected within the habitable zone of a nearby cool star
ScienceDaily (Feb. 2, 2012) ? An international team of scientists led by Carnegie's Guillem Anglada-Escud? and Paul Butler has discovered a potentially habitable super-Earth orbiting a nearby star. The star is a member of a triple star system and has a different makeup than our Sun, being relatively lacking in metallic elements. This discovery demonstrates that habitable planets could form in a greater variety of environments than previously believed.
Their work will be published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.
The team used public data from the European Southern Observatory and analyzed it with a novel data analysis method. They also incorporated new measurements from the Keck Observatory's High Resolution Echelle Spectrograph and the new Carnegie Planet Finder Spectrograph at the Magellan II Telescope.
Their planet-finding technique involved measuring the small wobbles in a star's orbit in response to a planet's gravity. Anglada-Escud? and his team focused on an M-class dwarf star called GJ 667C, which is 22 light years away. It is a member of a triple-star system. The other two stars (GJ 667AB) are a pair of orange K dwarfs, with a concentration of heavy elements only 25% that of our Sun's. Such elements are the building blocks of terrestrial planets so it was thought to be unusual for metal-depleted star systems to have an abundance of low mass planets.
GJ 667C had previously been observed to have a super-Earth (GJ 667Cb) with a period of 7.2 days, although this finding was never published. This orbit is too tight, and thus hot, to support life. The new study started with the aim of obtaining the orbital parameters of this super-Earth.
But in addition to this first candidate, the research team found the clear signal of a new planet (GJ 667Cc) with an orbital period of 28.15 days and a minimum mass of 4.5 times that of Earth. The new planet receives 90% of the light that Earth receives. However, because most of its incoming light is in the infrared, a higher percentage of this incoming energy should be absorbed by the planet. When both these effects are taken into account, the planet is expected to absorb about the same amount of energy from its star that Earth absorbs from the Sun. This would allow surface temperatures similar to Earth and perhaps liquid water, but this extreme cannot be confirmed without further information on the planet's atmosphere.
"This planet is the new best candidate to support liquid water and, perhaps, life as we know it," Anglada-Escud? said.
The team notes that the system might also contain a gas-giant planet and an additional super-Earth with an orbital period of 75 days. However, further observations are needed to confirm these two possibilities. "With the advent of a new generation of instruments, researchers will be able to survey many M dwarf stars for similar planets and eventually look for spectroscopic signatures of life in one of these worlds."
Anglada-Escud? was with Carnegie when he conducted the research, but has since moved on to University of Gottingen. His co-authors are Carnegie's Butler, Jeffrey D. Crane, Stephen A. Shectman, and Ian B. Thompson; Pamela Arriagada and Dante Minniti of Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile; Steve Vogt and Eugenio J. Rivera of University of California's Lick Observatory; Nader Haghighipour of the Institute for Astronomy & NASA Astrobiology Institute at University of Hawaii-Monoa; Brad D. Carter of University of Southern Queensland; C. G. Tinney, Robert A. Wittenmyer, and Jeremy A. Bailey of the University of New South Wales; Simon J. O'Toole of the Australian Astronomical Observatory; Hugh R.A. Jones of the University of Hertfordshire; and James S. Jenkins of the Universidad de Chile, Camino El Observatorio.
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Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/~3/ZtzDZqk_dlA/120202151434.htm
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Friday, February 3, 2012
Amazon makes its debut in India with Junglee.com - Internet ...
While most of us had been expecting Amazon.com to launch its India site, it comes as a slight surprise that it launched Junglee.com instead. With a name that is at once a nod to its parent company and the South American rainforest, Junglee.com also subtly separates itself in form and function from Amazon.com. It officially refers to the Hindi word - ?of the jungle?, and is a site that helps customers ?navigate the jungle of products, brands, sellers, shipping options, and payment methods, and make informed purchase decisions.?
Junglee.com is called an ?online shopping service? where customers can search for products from the online and offline retailers in India, and would have been called an aggregator if it didn?t also sell stuff from Amazon.com. The site currently boasts of a wide product range, spanning 12 million products and 14,000 brands, with a plethora of retailers lined up including such online stores and deal-of-the-day sites as Letsbuy.com, Saholic.com and Snapdeal.com, and others, such as Homeshop18, UniverCell, Hidesign, Gitanjali, The Bombay Store, Fabindia, Bata India Limited, Dabur Uveda, Microsoft India Store, and Reebok.
Rather than buying directly, users of Junglee.com will be directed to the seller?s website, and in cases of physical stores, be given directions and contact details to place an order. Apart from promising a fine selection of buying options for almost anything, Junglee.com will also let customers write reviews, rate products and sellers, and share their finds with friends and family via Facebook, Twitter or email. Customer reviews from Amazon.com will also be available. Seller information, contact details, shipping rates, delivery times, and return policies of all sellers are listed on Junglee.com itself, helping buyers compare more than just prices.
Junglee.com is currently in beta mode, and in the next few months, the company hopes to be ?continuously evolving Junglee by listening to customers and sellers, and innovating to meet their needs.?
Amazon.com Inc. has had a history of proving industry pundits wrong, turning what seem to be self-defeating business models into thriving lines of business. The niche it has cut out for itself in the Indian market already has quite a few contenders, from online retailers, deal-of-the-day sites, to marketplaces and aggregators. For now, one doesn?t know if this is just stage one in India for the company, and if it will actually decide to bring its full retail presence into the country, with or without an Amazon.co.in.
The online retail and web services giant is probably asking itself the same questions, awaiting the Indian government?s final go ahead for FDI in multi-brand retail. Of course, the launch of Junglee.com might just be a sign that Amazon.com has decided not to venture into India - no use muddying the waters with a different brand name before arriving. With Junglee.com, the company could also be pitting India's various online retailers, marketplaces, and deal-of-the-day sites against each other. Some think Junglee.com may start charging per listing as well, if not just referrals, or a portion of the sales. ??
What do you think of Amazon.com?s Junglee.com initiative? Do let us know in the comments section below. Do also stay tuned for our comprehensive look at just how well Junglee.com works, its pros and cons, in our upcoming feature.
Source: http://www.thinkdigit.com/Internet/Amazon-makes-its-debut-in-India-with_8653.html
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Thursday, February 2, 2012
CG Real Estate Episode 2 of CGREtv's ?If the house fits!? featuring ...
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How to Win Even if the Australian Stock Market ... - Investment Logs
Calm.
There?s no other word to describe it.
Since the beginning of January the Australian stock market has gained about 5%. It has done so in a calm and unexciting way. (OK, there are two words to describe it.)
That doesn?t mean it has gone up in a straight line, because it hasn?t. But so far, the stock market has lacked the crazy market volatility we saw for most of last year.
If you?ve forgotten already, perhaps this chart will remind you:
Source: Google Finance
So, does this mean it?s safe to pile back into the market?
After all, there are still a bunch of reasons why you wouldn?t buy into the Australian stock market: European debt problems, U.S. debt and economic growth worries, a slowdown in China, falling Aussie company profits.
But that doesn?t mean you should avoid it altogether?
Have the Pros Given Up?
In fact, we?ll argue the best time to buy risky assets is when the stock market is at its most risky. Mainly because the stock market has priced in much of the doom and gloom.
And while we won?t say the Australian stock market is at its most risky today, it?s pretty darn close to it. What?s more, it seems even the pros are giving up. We?re starting to see more stories such as this in today?s Australian Financial Review:
?The majority of superannuation funds have failed to meet their return targets over the past five, seven and 10 years?
?Some experts argue that super funds, which typically expect to return between 3 per cent and 4 per cent above the rate of inflation annually over the long term, should be lowering their return objectives to reflect the dismal outlook for economic growth.?
And even the Future Fund is making a big deal of having low exposure to the stock market. According to its latest quarterly report, the Future Fund has 31.6% in stocks. The rest is in cash, bonds and other investments.
Future Fund chairman David Murray says, ?Super funds are over-allocated to Australian equities. There is not a lot wrong with having extra cash.?
So while we agree that most investment managers have too much of their clients? funds in shares, we don?t believe investors and investment managers should lower their return objectives.
To our mind it?s admitting defeat. It?s like a train operator changing the timetable to reflect the late running of trains rather than trying to improve the service so the trains run on time.
The biggest mistake an investor can make is to give up.
You Need to Make the Time to Invest
Now, it doesn?t mean you have to hit the investing ball for six every year. What you have to do is actively manage your asset allocation.
That means putting money into safe assets and protecting your capital. But it also means putting part of your money into unsafe assets? investments that can move wildly up and down.
The question is, how much to allocate to these assets?
Here?s what you need to know: the more time you can devote to actively managing your investments, the less you need to put into risky assets. That sounds counterintuitive we know.
It means if you?re an investor who can stay home all day trading the stock market, you may only need to risk 5% of your portfolio on risky trades. Simply because you can quickly cut losses or lock in gains.
If you can spend some time ? but not all day ? on your share portfolio, then small-cap stocks are a good option. You could invest 5-10% of your portfolio to get leverage to a rising market. But you limit your downside if the stock market falls? because you?ve only allocated a small amount of your cash to small-cap stocks.
Whereas if you can?t devote much time to your investments you need to risk more. So you can potentially benefit from longer-term investment cycles. But the trouble with that strategy ? as you?ve seen since 2007 ? is it can take a long time for the cycle to run its course.
It?s nearly five years since the stock market topped out in 2007 and the market is still down about 40% from the peak.
How much longer will you have to wait for the stock market to breakeven with 2007? And then how much longer before you can gain back the returns you?ve missed out on?
Our guess is it could take at least five years to get back to 2007 levels. And 10 years is a long time and a lot of effort to make a 0% annualised return.
Understand the Big Picture Then Pick the Stocks
Bottom line: it?s not too late to try and make up for missed opportunities and negative returns over the past five years.
But the longer you wait the harder it is to make up lost ground.
That said, asset allocation is only part of the story. It?s also important to understand the broader market and economy (no-one said investing was easy!). Because if you understand the big picture it will help with your asset allocation.
Getting this right is the basis for our presentation at the After America investment conference in Sydney next month.
During the presentation we?ll follow up on some of the general themes (including asset allocation and portfolio management) we?ve addressed in Money Morning, plus we?ll provide specific investment advice on where you should put your money.
As we say, it?s not too late to make changes to your investment strategy? but the clock sure is ticking.
Cheers.
Kris.
Publisher?s note: If you enjoy reading Kris?s essays in Money Morning, you?ll love hearing him talking about the challenges facing Aussie investors in person. This March, Kris will be speaking at the first ever Port Phillip Publishing investment symposium in Sydney. Come along. Meet Kris. Ask him tons of questions. Marvel at how tall he is. For more information on our not-to-be-missed March conference, go HERE
Related Articles
The Conference of the Year for Australian Investors
Are ASX Energy Index Stocks Worth The Risk?
Will These Commodities Help You Claim The Best Investment Gains Of 2012?
How to Win Even if the Australian Stock Market Doesn?t Go Up
Source: http://www.investmentlogs.com/2012/02/how-to-win-even-if-the-australian-stock-market-doesnt-go-up/
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Wednesday, February 1, 2012
Sudan, Egypt abductions highlight risks to Chinese
BEIJING (AP) ? A group of Chinese workers was freed Wednesday, a day after being taken hostage in Egypt, while another group of workers remained captive for a fifth day in Sudan, in separate incidents that show the dangers China faces as its worldwide presence grows.
China has developed strong economic ties in volatile nations in Africa and elsewhere, in large part to meet its growing needs for energy and other raw materials. At the same time it is facing growing pressure at home to protect citizens who fall into harm's way abroad.
In Egypt, 25 cement factory workers were grabbed Tuesday on their way to work in the northern Sinai city of Arish but were freed in good condition, China's official Xinhua News Agency reported. Their captors, Xinhua said, were Egyptians who had blocked the road outside Arish for days to demand the release of relatives detained for attacks in the Sinai years ago and to demand an end to natural gas sales to Israel.
In contrast to the quick resolution of the Egypt hostage-taking, the ordeal of 29 Chinese workers from dam and engineering firm Sinohydro Group has dragged on since their kidnapping by rebels in the Sudan's South Kordofan region on Saturday.
Their plight has drawn heavy media attention in China, and Beijing has sent a crisis team to Sudan, where Chinese companies have investments in oil and construction projects.
"As far as we know, the Chinese workers are safe. They are safe. They are not hurt," the head of the security team, Qiu Xuejun, told Chinese state television in Khartoum.
China also is pressuring Sudan, a diplomatic partner. A senior Chinese Foreign Ministry official summoned the Sudanese Embassy's top diplomat on Tuesday to stress Beijing's concern.
"The Chinese government attaches great importance to protecting overseas Chinese nationals," Vice Foreign Minister Xie Hangsheng was quoted as saying in a statement posted on the ministry's website.
China hopes Sudan will "keep in mind the overall situation of bilateral friendship" and ensure their swift release, Xie told Sudanese Charge d'Affaires Omer Eisa Ahmed, according to the statement.
The kidnappings and Beijing's energetic response highlight what tempting targets Chinese have become as they grow richer and travel the world for work and for pleasure. Ensuring the safety of Chinese lives and assets has become a litmus test for the authoritarian government, which wants to prove to the public that China is powerful and respected around the world.
The public has increasingly expected an effective and at times muscular defense of Chinese rights, and social media have given vent to these expectations. In recent months, scuffles between Chinese fishermen and South Korean coastal patrols and the killing of Chinese boat crews along the Mekong River in Southeast Asia have brought calls for retaliation.
"Saved in Sudan, detained in Egypt, beaten in South Korea and murdered on the Mekong. How can this be?" race car driver Wei Daofu said Wednesday on a posting on Sina Corporation's Twitter-like Weibo service.
An estimated 60 million Chinese went abroad in 2010 and a projected 75 million likely did so in 2011, putting a strain on China's diplomatic corps to track them and provide protection, the state-run Guangzhou Daily reported this week on its website. The report quoted a scholar with a Foreign Ministry think tank who listed five potential trouble spots where China has significant investments: Sudan, Iran, Central Asia, Pakistan and Myanmar.
Many commentators say Chinese workers are vulnerable because Chinese companies searching for energy and other natural resources are often forced to operate in volatile parts of the world because safer areas are monopolized by Western firms.
"The issue of Chinese workers being abducted overseas is not a new one, especially in countries in Africa and Asia. The question is that China is widely engaged in a whole range of businesses overseas," said Zhu Feng, an international affairs expert at Peking University. "More often than not, Chinese workers in politically unstable countries would become subject for exploitation by local militant groups and illegal armed forces, who want to make deals with or stage protests against the local governments."
When Libya began splintering in the civil war that eventually overthrew Moammar Gadhafi last year, some 30,000 Chinese were working in the country. The Chinese military orchestrated a large-scale evacuation, sending ships and planes.
Xinhua said the 29 people kidnapped in Sudan were among 47 Chinese workers were caught in an attack in South Kordofan. The other 18 workers fled, and one of them remains missing, the agency said. The attack took place near Abbasiya town, 390 miles (630 kilometers) south of Khartoum.
Sudanese officials have blamed the attack on the Sudan People's Liberation Movement-North, a branch of a guerrilla movement that has fought various regimes in Khartoum for decades. Its members come from a minority ethnic group now in control of much of South Sudan, which became the world's newest country six months ago in a breakaway from Sudan.
Sudan has accused South Sudan of arming pro-South Sudan groups in South Kordofan. The government of South Sudan says the accusations are a smoke screen intended to justify a future invasion of the South.
Beijing has tried to maneuver through the dispute, building ties with South Sudan, where many of the oil fields are located, while maintaining its long-standing relations with Sudan, through which pipelines run for export.
___
Associated Press researcher Zhao Liang contributed to this report.
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Pythons Blamed For Everglade's Disappearing Animals
Joe Raedle/Getty Images Joseph Wasilewski, a wildlife biologist, captures a wild python on the side of the Tamiami Trail road that cuts through the Florida Everglades on Sept. 16, 2009. The number of invasive pythons in the Everglades has exploded since the 1990s.
January 30, 2012
Scientists are reporting that aliens are wiping out the animals in Florida's Everglades.
The aliens are Burmese pythons from Asia. They've been slithering around south Florida for decades. But scientists now say the constrictors are so bad, they're eating their way through the swamps. And the federal government has decided to take action to prevent their spread.
One scientist who has been trying to find out just how bad the invasion has become is Michael Dorcas. He's been catching snakes since he was a child in Texas. But he says a 15-foot Burmese python is a handful ... or two.
"You typically try to grab them behind the head," he says, and "get somebody else to grab the back end of them. But often they still defecate all over you, even if they can't bite you, so it's always an unpleasant thing when you catch a wild python."
Dorcas is now a biologist at Davidson College in North Carolina. For the past eight years, besides catching pythons, he has been driving through the Everglades counting animals ? specifically, midsize mammals.
Dorcas wanted to know how big a bite the pythons are taking out of the mammal population. When he compared the number of mammals now with the 1990s, when pythons were less common, he was shocked. "Once we calculated the percentages, we had no idea they were going to be this dramatic."
How dramatic? "A 99.3 percent decrease in raccoon observations," he reports. "Decreases of 98.9 percent in possums, 94 percent white-tailed deer, 87.5 percent in bobcats."
Pythons Removed From The Everglades
The chart below shows the number of pythons removed from the park and neighboring areas between 1995 and 2010. Researchers say the slight decrease in the number of pythons captured in 2010 might be the result of a severe freeze in January of that year.
Nearly all the raccoons, possums, deer and bobcats gone.
Now, counting animals by sight from a car isn't foolproof, but it is an accepted practice in wildlife research.
Dorcas reports his findings in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. He says it's the first study to actually quantify the effect of the pythons' appetite in the Everglades.
A Python Invasion
He blames pythons because in areas known to be thickest with the snake, the mammals are scarcer. Where there are fewer pythons, there are more mammals. And there's no evidence that a disease is to blame, either. Furthermore, mammals and birds (the latter are also common snacks for pythons, as necropsies have revealed) often gather near water, where pythons like to feed. And Dorcas points out that snakes big enough to eat a good-sized raccoon haven't lived in Florida for millions of years. So "local" animals are "naive."
The onset of the python invasion is often blamed on snake owners who release their pets when they get too big for comfort.
Lawyer Marshall Meyers represents the pet industry and the Pet Industry Joint Advisory Council. He says maybe some pet owners do that, but he also cites a report that a hurricane overwhelmed a snake breeding site in Florida that could have spread the snakes. And while pythons are no doubt eating mammals, it's more complicated than that.
"I think it's habitat loss," Meyers says, and the fact that there's less fresh water in the Everglades now, which could reduce wildlife numbers.
But he acknowledges that the python invaders and other exotic animals that escape or are released by owners give the pet trade a bad name.
"They're species that are not in this country, that we do not want in this country, because if they came in through pet trade or through the zoos, they can cause a lot of environmental harm, and that's just a big black eye," he says.
Enlarge Lori Oberhofer/National Park Service Unlike this alligator, many animals native to the Everglades didn't evolve to take on a giant python. As a result, the snakes have become top predators in the environment, decimating populations of raccoons, opossums and other mammals.
Lori Oberhofer/National Park ServiceUnlike this alligator, many animals native to the Everglades didn't evolve to take on a giant python. As a result, the snakes have become top predators in the environment, decimating populations of raccoons, opossums and other mammals.
A Ban On Importing Pythons
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has been watching the python explosion and is taking action. On Jan. 17, the agency made it illegal to import Burmese pythons or transport them across state lines. That includes three other constrictor species from Africa and South America: the yellow anaconda and the northern and southern African pythons.
Biologist Susan Jewell, with the service, studies injurious species that invade the U.S. ? things like zebra mussels and poisonous lionfish. She says it's possible Florida's pythons could spread if they learn how to survive in colder weather. "I think that it's a good heads-up for everybody," Jewell says. "This can happen anywhere ? and most likely will if these snakes get established."
Jewell says invasive species sometimes thrive in new places where they don't have natural enemies. "It just shows what we don't know about species when they get taken out of their native range and taken to a new area," she says.
Jewell says the import ban won't help the Everglades ? it's too late there. It's meant to keep pythons and other constrictors from spreading. The Fish and Wildlife Service's research suggests that they could live almost anywhere in the Southern U.S.
The ban allows people who now own these snakes to keep them, and you can still buy and sell them within a state or export them overseas. Jewell emphasizes that the new rule doesn't mean anyone has to give up his snake.
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