Many simple homemade inventions that create wonders are showcased in the U.S. throughAs Seen on TV. The popularity of these items has soared over the years, as well as, the name value of logo pasted on the advertised products. Through direct response, sellers and inventors market their products using dedicated toll-free phone numbers.
A Goldmine of Inventions
Using this marketing platform, inventors are able to spread word about their inventions to the public. Products coming from almost all categories are made available through TV demonstrations that will surely capture anyone?s attention. There are lots of either high or low rated items with their corresponding consumer reviews. Many kinds of stuffs from your household needs, to automotive and even simple things such as toys are being sold. The ingenuous use of catch phrases and hyperbole has made this advertising methodology a resounding success. This is why more and more aspiring inventors try their luck by showcasing their creativity through television.
The Trust Factor
Just like in any kind of advertisement, one of the goals that must be overcome by the marketing team is getting the public?s trust. It is really hard to gain their trust, most especially if you are competing against big names in the business. But once you?ve gained that trust, sales immediately come in. The manufacturers won?t even care if they find out that some consumers bash their TV demo for as long as they are seeing good sales numbers. This is the reason more and more companies, and even those who are just starting, invest in product infomercials.
It has been observed that there?s always some degree of sales impact if a particular product has been seen on television. Even if live product demo creates a bunch of skeptics, it can still improve product familiarity to many others. The more familiar a person is to an item, the bigger is his likelihood of trusting the product.
Don?t Get Fooled!
Yes, there are lots of amazing products seen on TV but having the badge As Seen on TV does not always mean that the product really works as demonstrated. You need to face the reality that TV ads only showcase the positive face of the product given its limited time duration. This is why you need to read consumer reviews so that you will have a better idea about what other people think about the product. Do not be misled by all the enticing catchphrases, spot-on discounts and good use of adjectives. Lastly, you need to take your time before abruptly grabbing the phone to call the number on the screen. Think twice and, as much as possible, watch the presentation for a second or even for a third time. When it comes to shopping, it is never good to be impulsive.
Know the reason why a lot of ingenuous products are being sold using the As Seen On TV, marketing approach. Understand the importance of building the consumer?s trust and careful buying.
In 2006, the son of Chongqing City Kai County Fengle Street HUangling Village resident Tian Xueming passed away from leukemia. Tian Xueming stored his son?s body in the freezer, and 6 years have passed. Every time he misses [his son], Tian Xueming and his wife will quietly go, with their arms around each other, stand beside the freezer, look blankly for a moment, and then leave. Tian Xueming says his son ?in the freezer looks exactly as he did when he was alive. My son is still with me, and has never left.?
ScienceDaily (Sep. 27, 2012) ? A new research study led by an Indiana University professor has found that social bullying is just as prevalent in children's television as depictions of physical aggression.
The study, "Mean on the Screen: Social Aggression in Programs Popular With Children," which appears in the Journal of Communication, found that 92 percent of the top 50 program for children between the ages of 2 and 11 showed characters involved in social aggression.
On average, there were 14 different incidents of social aggression per hour, or once every four minutes.
While physical aggression in television for children has been extensively documented, this is believed to be among the first studies to analyze children's exposure to behaviors such as cruel gossiping and manipulation of friendship.
"Social aggression was more likely to be enacted by an attractive perpetrator, to be featured in a humorous context and neither rewarded or punished," wrote Nicole Martins, assistant professor of telecommunications in the IU College of Arts and Sciences. "In these ways, social aggression on television poses more of a risk for imitation and learning than do portrayals of physical aggression."
Martins, the lead researcher on the study, and Barbara Wilson, professor of communication at the University of Illinois, conducted a content analysis of the 50 most popular children's shows according to Nielsen Media Research from December 2006 to March 2007. In all, 150 television shows were viewed and analyzed.
Careful attention was given to what was portrayed in the cases of social aggression, whether the behavior was rewarded or punished, justified or committed by an attractive perpetrator.
The findings suggest that some of the ways in which social aggression is contextualized make these depictions particularly problematic for young viewers.
"These findings should help parents and educators recognize that there are socially aggressive behaviors on programs children watch," Martins said. "Parents should not assume that a program is OK for their child to watch simply because it does not contain physical violence.
"Parents should be more aware of portrayals that may not be explicitly violent in a physical sense but are nonetheless anti-social in nature," Martins added.
The vast majority of socially aggressive incidents -- 78 percent -- were verbal: words to hurt the self-esteem or social standing of another character on the program. The most common types of social aggression were insults (52 percent) or name-calling (25 percent). Other common types of negative behavior shown were teasing (10 percent) and sarcasm (9 percent).
Only about 20 percent of all socially aggressive incidents were non-verbal in nature and typically employed a mean face (36 percent) or laughter meant to lower the self-esteem of another character (31 percent). Rolling eyes, finger pointing and simply ignoring the other person also were common.
"We also coded whether social aggression was directly perpetrated at the target -- such as making a mean face -- or indirectly perpetrated behind the target's back -- such as spreading a rumor," the authors wrote. "The vast majority of socially aggressive incidents (86 percent) were enacted directly at the target. Rarely were socially aggressive incidents perpetrated behind the target's back."
While previous research has demonstrated that gossip is one of the most common forms of social aggression in real life, it was rarely seen in children's television shows analyzed for the study. Martins and Wilson concluded that gossip, due to its indirect nature, may have been seen by program producers as being too subtle for advancing a story's plot.
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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Indiana University.
Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.
Journal Reference:
Nicole Martins, Barbara J. Wilson. Mean on the Screen: Social Aggression in Programs Popular With Children. Journal of Communication, 2012; DOI: 10.1111/j.1460-2466.2011.01599.x
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Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.
A 1728 oil painting by Cornelis Troost depicting an anatomy lesson using a cadaver
Amsterdam Museum/Wikimedia Commons.
Two hundred years ago, a Scottish medical student named Robert Christison watched a human vivisection.
It was inadvertent; the subject was meant to be dead. But in the days before people willingly left their bodies to science, surgeons stole them. The aftermath of judicial hangings was a competition between ?the relatives and the [surgical] students?the former to carry off the body intact, the latter to dissect it,? Christison wrote in his autobiography. ?Thus dissection was apt to be performed with indecent, sometimes with dangerous haste. It was no uncommon occurrence that, when the operator proceeded with his work, the body was sensibly warm, the limbs not yet rigid.? Hangings were sometimes ineffective, and the condemned survived. No wonder then that occasionally, in their rush, surgeons got it wrong and opened up a body to demonstrate its anatomy only to discover it was not yet a corpse.
Even if you're in less of a rush, simple observation has always been worryingly fallible when it comes to distinguishing life from death. When I was a junior doctor, I recall the hairs on the back of my neck slowly rising as I walked toward a patient's room. His family had just stopped me at the end of their visit, saying ?I think we'll come back tomorrow, we've been sitting with him for an hour and he's seemed awfully quiet.? He would forever remain that way. I found I often made the reverse mistake: Walking into the room of an elderly patient, it could take some time to recognize their stillness as that of sleep.
Preceding generations adopted technological aids to help them. Holding a mirror over a face to see if it misted up could be genuinely useful. The stethoscope?invented by a French doctor, Rene Laennec, who was embarrassed by putting his ear to his patient's bosom?meant that respiration and heart sounds could be listened for more accurately. All this helped, but it didn't fully solve the problem.
The precise division between life and death has always been unclear. In the 18th century, the chemistry of living (organic) and nonliving (inorganic) things was held to be fundamentally different. Into the former, God placed a spark of life?meaning that biochemical processes were absolutely different from the chemical reactions that could be created by mankind or the natural world. That belief was shown false in the 1820s, when a German chemist, Friedrich W?hler, synthesized the first organic molecules. But even today it lingers on: The vague way in which organic is used as a euphemism for healthy and good is its relic. Throughout the 19th century, the exact spark of life remained an object of great interest, and also of great doubt.
Discussions of the soul tended to lead nowhere, since that word meant so many different things to different people. It was hard to prove when the soul left the body because it was something whose nature and identity no one could agree on. Hence a favorite distinction between the living and the dead rested directly on the word of God. Leviticus 17:11 and 17:14 were clear: Blood?was the stuff of life. William Harvey, who discovered how blood circulated, wrote that it was ?the first to live and the last to die.? Blood was life. So long as it was liquid, life remained.
Hence Christison's alarm as he watched the surgeon cut into the warm body. ?Fluid blood gushed in abundance from the first incisions through the skin ? Instantly I seized [the surgeon's] wrist in great alarm, and arrested his progress; nor was I easily persuaded to let him go on, when I saw the blood coagulate on the table exactly like living blood.? Peer pressure overcame his qualms, however, and he not only released the surgeon but remained part of the attentive audience. He was convinced that the man was alive, but he became willing to watch all the same.
John Hunter, the greatest surgeon of the 18th century, also believed that those whose blood was liquid were still alive, yet he had no problem slicing their hearts out?or even, in the interests of science, tasting them. (Wishing to explore human sexual function, he acquired the corpse of a man who died in the moment before ejaculation. When held in the mouth, Hunter reported, the dead man's semen had a slightly spicy taste.) An appetite for knowledge has never been a guarantee of compassion or of respect for the wishes of the dead.
In the years since Hunter, though, these concerns have genuinely advanced. We're better at saying where life ends and better at honoring the physical remains and the last wishes of our fellows?which is not to say there isn't still room for improvement. For many decades, we accepted that people died when their heart stopped beating, that is, when it stopped circulating blood. Why did we hold onto that notion, even long after we understood that electrical activity was the fundamental substrate for our lives? Once more, the limitation was partly technical?a heartbeat is relatively easy to detect?and partly not. The idea that blood was the stuff of life lingered on, aided by the dual meaning of ?heart? it helped bequeath to our language and our thoughts. Did the body Christison saw being opened still have a beating heart? Was it, in any real way, alive? It certainly was in Cristison?s eyes, but whether it would have been in ours is harder to say.
Once we became confident about the primacy of electrical activity in the brain as the sign of life, we were able to be more positive. The need for donated organs pushed changes in our definition of death, especially because an organ-transplant recipient?s prospects for survival are much better when the organ is taken from a donor with a beating heart. In 1968, the wonderfully named Ad Hoc Committee of Harvard Medical School argued that death should no longer be regarded as occurring when the heart stopped, but when electrical activity ceased in the brain. Once that was gone, so was the person.
Illegal plastic surgery made headlines again this week when Morris ?Tracey Lynn? Garner was charged with depraved-heart murder in Mississippi after he allegedly injected a woman?s buttocks with so much of a silicone-like substance that she later died of complications, including blood clots in her lungs.
The alleged incident horrifies plastic surgeons, but doesn?t surprise them because, they say, underground and barely legal procedures are on the rise.
?You don?t even have words to speak about what a horrible thing it is when somebody who is trying to improve their appearance and self-confidence only ends up, not only potentially unhappy, but dead,? said Dr. Malcolm Roth, president of the American Society of Plastic Surgeons in Arlington Heights, Ill. ?We?re hearing more and more about deaths when non-physicians are doing injections, and patients just aren?t informed.?
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Contact: Sarah McDonnell s_mcd@mit.edu 617-253-8923 Massachusetts Institute of Technology
CAMBRIDGE, MA -- The point of no return: In astronomy, it's known as a black hole a region in space where the pull of gravity is so strong that nothing, not even light, can escape. Black holes that can be billions of times more massive than our sun may reside at the heart of most galaxies. Such supermassive black holes are so powerful that activity at their boundaries can ripple throughout their host galaxies.
Now, an international team, led by researchers at MIT's Haystack Observatory, has for the first time measured the radius of a black hole at the center of a distant galaxy the closest distance at which matter can approach before being irretrievably pulled into the black hole.
The scientists linked together radio dishes in Hawaii, Arizona and California to create a telescope array called the "Event Horizon Telescope" (EHT) that can see details 2,000 times finer than what's visible to the Hubble Space Telescope. These radio dishes were trained on M87, a galaxy some 50 million light years from the Milky Way. M87 harbors a black hole 6 billion times more massive than our sun; using this array, the team observed the glow of matter near the edge of this black hole a region known as the "event horizon."
"Once objects fall through the event horizon, they're lost forever," says Shep Doeleman, assistant director at the MIT Haystack Observatory and research associate at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory. "It's an exit door from our universe. You walk through that door, you're not coming back."
Doeleman and his colleagues have published the results of their study this week in the journal Science.
Jets at the edge of a black hole
Supermassive black holes are the most extreme objects predicted by Albert Einstein's theory of gravity where, according to Doeleman, "gravity completely goes haywire and crushes an enormous mass into an incredibly close space." At the edge of a black hole, the gravitational force is so strong that it pulls in everything from its surroundings. However, not everything can cross the event horizon to squeeze into a black hole. The result is a "cosmic traffic jam" in which gas and dust build up, creating a flat pancake of matter known as an accretion disk. This disk of matter orbits the black hole at nearly the speed of light, feeding the black hole a steady diet of superheated material. Over time, this disk can cause the black hole to spin in the same direction as the orbiting material.
Caught up in this spiraling flow are magnetic fields, which accelerate hot material along powerful beams above the accretion disk The resulting high-speed jet, launched by the black hole and the disk, shoots out across the galaxy, extending for hundreds of thousands of light-years. These jets can influence many galactic processes, including how fast stars form.
'Is Einstein right?'
A jet's trajectory may help scientists understand the dynamics of black holes in the region where their gravity is the dominant force. Doeleman says such an extreme environment is perfect for confirming Einstein's theory of general relativity today's definitive description of gravitation.
"Einstein's theories have been verified in low-gravitational field cases, like on Earth or in the solar system," Doeleman says. "But they have not been verified precisely in the only place in the universe where Einstein's theories might break down which is right at the edge of a black hole."
According to Einstein's theory, a black hole's mass and its spin determine how closely material can orbit before becoming unstable and falling in toward the event horizon. Because M87's jet is magnetically launched from this smallest orbit, astronomers can estimate the black hole's spin through careful measurement of the jet's size as it leaves the black hole. Until now, no telescope has had the magnifying power required for this kind of observation.
"We are now in a position to ask the question, 'Is Einstein right?'" Doeleman says. "We can identify features and signatures predicted by his theories, in this very strong gravitational field."
The team used a technique called Very Long Baseline Interferometry, or VLBI, which links data from radio dishes located thousands of miles apart. Signals from the various dishes, taken together, create a "virtual telescope" with the resolving power of a single telescope as big as the space between the disparate dishes. The technique enables scientists to view extremely precise details in faraway galaxies.
Using the technique, Doeleman and his team measured the innermost orbit of the accretion disk to be only 5.5 times the size of the black hole event horizon. According to the laws of physics, this size suggests that the accretion disk is spinning in the same direction as the black hole the first direct observation to confirm theories of how black holes power jets from the centers of galaxies.
The team plans to expand its telescope array, adding radio dishes in Chile, Europe, Mexico, Greenland and Antarctica, in order to obtain even more detailed pictures of black holes in the future.
###
This research was supported by the National Science Foundation.
Written by Jennifer Chu, MIT News Office
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Contact: Sarah McDonnell s_mcd@mit.edu 617-253-8923 Massachusetts Institute of Technology
CAMBRIDGE, MA -- The point of no return: In astronomy, it's known as a black hole a region in space where the pull of gravity is so strong that nothing, not even light, can escape. Black holes that can be billions of times more massive than our sun may reside at the heart of most galaxies. Such supermassive black holes are so powerful that activity at their boundaries can ripple throughout their host galaxies.
Now, an international team, led by researchers at MIT's Haystack Observatory, has for the first time measured the radius of a black hole at the center of a distant galaxy the closest distance at which matter can approach before being irretrievably pulled into the black hole.
The scientists linked together radio dishes in Hawaii, Arizona and California to create a telescope array called the "Event Horizon Telescope" (EHT) that can see details 2,000 times finer than what's visible to the Hubble Space Telescope. These radio dishes were trained on M87, a galaxy some 50 million light years from the Milky Way. M87 harbors a black hole 6 billion times more massive than our sun; using this array, the team observed the glow of matter near the edge of this black hole a region known as the "event horizon."
"Once objects fall through the event horizon, they're lost forever," says Shep Doeleman, assistant director at the MIT Haystack Observatory and research associate at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory. "It's an exit door from our universe. You walk through that door, you're not coming back."
Doeleman and his colleagues have published the results of their study this week in the journal Science.
Jets at the edge of a black hole
Supermassive black holes are the most extreme objects predicted by Albert Einstein's theory of gravity where, according to Doeleman, "gravity completely goes haywire and crushes an enormous mass into an incredibly close space." At the edge of a black hole, the gravitational force is so strong that it pulls in everything from its surroundings. However, not everything can cross the event horizon to squeeze into a black hole. The result is a "cosmic traffic jam" in which gas and dust build up, creating a flat pancake of matter known as an accretion disk. This disk of matter orbits the black hole at nearly the speed of light, feeding the black hole a steady diet of superheated material. Over time, this disk can cause the black hole to spin in the same direction as the orbiting material.
Caught up in this spiraling flow are magnetic fields, which accelerate hot material along powerful beams above the accretion disk The resulting high-speed jet, launched by the black hole and the disk, shoots out across the galaxy, extending for hundreds of thousands of light-years. These jets can influence many galactic processes, including how fast stars form.
'Is Einstein right?'
A jet's trajectory may help scientists understand the dynamics of black holes in the region where their gravity is the dominant force. Doeleman says such an extreme environment is perfect for confirming Einstein's theory of general relativity today's definitive description of gravitation.
"Einstein's theories have been verified in low-gravitational field cases, like on Earth or in the solar system," Doeleman says. "But they have not been verified precisely in the only place in the universe where Einstein's theories might break down which is right at the edge of a black hole."
According to Einstein's theory, a black hole's mass and its spin determine how closely material can orbit before becoming unstable and falling in toward the event horizon. Because M87's jet is magnetically launched from this smallest orbit, astronomers can estimate the black hole's spin through careful measurement of the jet's size as it leaves the black hole. Until now, no telescope has had the magnifying power required for this kind of observation.
"We are now in a position to ask the question, 'Is Einstein right?'" Doeleman says. "We can identify features and signatures predicted by his theories, in this very strong gravitational field."
The team used a technique called Very Long Baseline Interferometry, or VLBI, which links data from radio dishes located thousands of miles apart. Signals from the various dishes, taken together, create a "virtual telescope" with the resolving power of a single telescope as big as the space between the disparate dishes. The technique enables scientists to view extremely precise details in faraway galaxies.
Using the technique, Doeleman and his team measured the innermost orbit of the accretion disk to be only 5.5 times the size of the black hole event horizon. According to the laws of physics, this size suggests that the accretion disk is spinning in the same direction as the black hole the first direct observation to confirm theories of how black holes power jets from the centers of galaxies.
The team plans to expand its telescope array, adding radio dishes in Chile, Europe, Mexico, Greenland and Antarctica, in order to obtain even more detailed pictures of black holes in the future.
###
This research was supported by the National Science Foundation.
Written by Jennifer Chu, MIT News Office
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Alcatel-Lucent?s Robert Vrij to address U.S. regional telco operators at Competitive Carriers Convention and will outline the critical role of 4G mobile broadband services
CCA 2012, Las Vegas, NV, September 25, 2012 ? Urging U.S. telecommunications operators competing with the largest, national carriers to think like mobile broadband providers, Robert Vrij, President, Americas of Alcatel-Lucent, today will outline new service and revenue possibilities? enabled by 4G/LTE technologies ? and ways to efficiently invest in these technologies.
In his keynote address at the 20th annual Competitive Carriers Convention in Las Vegas, Mr. Vrij will encourage regional, competitive carriers to step outside their traditional role and begin thinking about new, innovative services that they can now offer globally. Mr. Vrij is also expected to urge operators to consider the economic and societal implications of being able to provide broadband (wirelessly via 4G/LTE) to markets and areas that are currently un-served or underserved.
As part of his remarks, Mr. Vrij will discuss how advanced technologies have transformed communications networks from a function of wireless and fixed-access to more of a lifeline,noting that consumers depend on it more than ever to get things done and stay in touch, no matter when or where they are. As a result, making mobile broadband service more accessible is a core building block for economic growth, education, and national competitiveness.
?We see the availability of 4G technologies as a key enabler to deliver meaningful broadband services ? from remote medical care to e-learning ? in areas where traditional ?fixed? broadband is not available,? said Mr. Vrij.? ?With tablet sales in rural markets alone expected to surge more than 50% (CAGR) in the next four years, competitive carriers have an opportunity to position themselves now as broadband operators with services that can generate customer value and boost the economy?.
Vrij will cite several statistics that speak to the need for providing mobile broadband services more universally in the US, including:
Rural America comprises the largest portion of unserved and underserved broadband population. (1)
At the national level, unserved or underserved broadband households represent 6.1% of all households.(2)
Making broadband 100% available would result in the retention/creation of 117,000 jobs in the 19 US states with the lowest broadband penetration. (3)
Broadband is essential to the 26 states that have state virtual schools as it increases learning access in rural areas. (4)
Mr. Vrij?s remarks will also provide examples of some of the many new, creative ways that competitive carriers can work together, with new cross-industry ecosystems and with local governments and utilities to efficiently begin providing mobile broadband services via 4G/LTE technologies.
About CCA
CCA is the nation?s leading association for competitive wireless providers and stakeholders across the United States. The licensed service area of CCA?s more than 100 members covers 95 percent of the nation. Visit www.competitivecarriers.org.
Sources
1. Source: FCC (2010). National Broadband Plan estimated housing units without service of 4 Mbps download speed in http://www.broadband.gov/maps/availability.htm.
2. Economics and Statistics Administration and National Telecommunications and Information Administration (2010).
Exploring the digital nation: home broadband internet adoption in the United States. Washington, D.C., November.
3.For purposes of the analysis, states with less than 90 % of households served by 4 megabytes per second broadband service (standard of service defined by the FCC) were selected. Based on the statistics gathered by the Federal Communications Commission, the list comprises West Virginia, Arkansas, Mississippi, Alaska, South Dakota, Montana, North Dakota, Kentucky, New Mexico, Missouri, Wyoming, Oklahoma, Louisiana, North Carolina, Alabama, Kansas, Virginia, Tennessee, and Maine. This approach has the advantage of considering only those geographies that are facing major infrastructure access shortfalls, as opposed to a demand (penetration) problem.
About Alcatel-Lucent (Euronext Paris and NYSE: ALU)
The long-trusted partner of service providers, enterprises and governments around the world, Alcatel-Lucent is a leading innovator in the field of networking and communications technology, products and services. The company is home to Bell Labs, one of the world?s foremost research centers, responsible for breakthroughs that have shaped the networking and communications industry. Alcatel-Lucent was named one of MIT Technology Review?s 2012 Top 50 list of the ?World?s Most Innovative Companies? for breakthroughs such as lightRadio?, which cuts power consumption and operating costs on wireless networks while delivering lightning fast Internet access. Through such innovations, Alcatel-Lucent is making communications more sustainable, more affordable and more accessible as we pursue our mission ? Realizing the Potential of a Connected World.
With operations in more than 130 countries and one of the most experienced global services organizations in the industry, Alcatel-Lucent is a local partner with global reach. The Company achieved revenues of Euro 15.3 billion in 2011 and is incorporated in France and headquartered in Paris.
For more information, visit Alcatel-Lucent on: http://www.alcatel-lucent.com, read the latest posts on the Alcatel-Lucent blog: http://www.alcatel-lucent.com/blog and follow the Company on Twitter: http://twitter.com/Alcatel_Lucent.
Did you know that in Schaumburg IL we have our own little version of Stonehenge?
Yes, that's right.??Schaumburg is home to works of art from around the world at the Chicago Athenaeum Museum right on our doorstep. Peacefully wooded and shaded pathway to view the gathered arts at your leisure. ?Bet you didn't know it was there!
Sculpture Park is located on the grounds of the Prairie Center for the Arts (just south-east along the pathway) offering 15 sculptures from international artists bringing the world to our little corner.
Three sculptures are my favorites. ?One looks like our own version of Stonehenge complete with blue stones! ?It's called 'Vinland' done in 1999 by?Jarle Rosseland of Oslo, Norway.
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'Vineland' commemorates the 1,000-year anniversary of the Viking explorer, Leif Eiriksson and his discovery of the Americas in the year 1001 AD. Fifteen giant stones in varying heights, from 6 to 15 feet, are arranged in the outline of a Viking ship with cryptic signs and the position of the stars and planets in the years 1,000, 2,000, and 3,000 AD highlighted in gold leaf.
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This sculpture reminds me of the Moai on Easter Island. ?It's called 'Skulaskeid' by Pall Gudmundsson from Iceland in 2000.
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The eight-ton gigantic 6-foot head resembles an ancient face from Norse mythology. Quarried at the artist's studio at Husafell valley in Western Iceland, the name of the sculpture comes from an old legend of an outlaw, Skuli, who escaped his enemies riding the good horse "Sorli" over the rough trail of Kaldidalur, from Pingvellir to Husafell, where the horse died from exhaustion. The Icelandic poet, Grimur Thomsen (1820-1896) wrote about this epic tale from Viking times.
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Another favorite of mine is 'Thought-Rise in Vacuum' by Hans-Christian Berg of Finland and done in 2001. ?It's a giant rolling baseball made out of 'paper clips!' ?I think it's wild!
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The sculpture is composed of stainless steel and a metallic sphere, welded together in a cloud-like pattern with the perspective view of the larger numbers on the outside and the smaller numbers on the inside. The work welds art and science together. I think it's pretty cool!
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My absolute favorite that I wanted to include in this post is not actually in the?Athenaeum Park itself but in front of the municipal building near the swan pond and bridge. ?It's called 'Ecce Hora' or?'Behold the Hour' by Christine Rojek.
The concept of the piece is based on making a decision says Rojek. ?She got attached to the idea of 'now or never' and the passage of time and?every day counts for this unique sundial piece.
Sculpture Parks in our area of IL
The sculpture 'Ecce Hora' has been featured in the Daily Herald publication: Schaumburg - live, work, play of October 2008
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Putting Schaumburg on the map, one post at a time.??
Sure, there are some tried and true ways to handle sales and customer service that don?t really ever go out of style. However, if a salesperson also continually evolves and improves, they?re likely to stay ahead of the industry curve.
Here are some areas you may want to look upgrade your sales process:
Your ?Rolodex?
Are you using a paper system to track client names and numbers?
This may have worked in the past, and it never hurts to have an index of business cards, but you know you can?t always take your paper list of contacts with you. Consider upgrading to a digital CRM format that lets you access information from anywhere.
Not only might does a cloud-based contact database provide easy anywhere access to contacts, but it also allows you to add information on the fly that can help you manage your accounts better. You can also share these contact details with management and colleagues for collaboration purposes.
Your Day Planner
The old paper calendar might have worked well for decades in the world of sales but nowadays there are way better ways to manage your time. A digital calendar will help you set alerts so that nothing gets forgotten, it?ll help you book meetings with clients and colleagues, it?ll help you collaborate internally within your company, and more.
Loss of your paper calendar could be catastrophic but the new electronic versions can be backed up so that they can be accessed and updated from anywhere.
Your Sales Spreadsheet
If you?re using a sales spreadsheet to track what?s happening in your sales funnel , this is another outdated approach. What if you lose it? And is it displayed in an actionable way that helps you prioritize your workload and see, really easily, what your numbers are against your actual plan? A CRM tool is a much better approach that can help you not only track information but easily action what is most pressing. Consider reading this article Stop using Excel templates for tracking your sales pipeline? for more info on how a more automated solution could help you.
For example, if you implement a digital sales forecasting and pipeline tool and track your results you can see how effective your processes are at each phase of the sales process.
Using Business Intelligence Tools
Old sales tools didn?t exactly make it easy in terms of account management and business development with accounts.? It wasn?t easy to track old results against plans. Today?s BI tools can help you generate helpful business reports that make it clear to you how you?re really doing and how you might be able to boost results with customers.
There are many other ways to ensure your sales process is continually evolving. It is important to continually update your sales script.? Some companies use the very same? script for each customer instead of tailoring sales and marketing plans depending on the audience.
Reviewing your efforts regularly in terms of how you?re managing existing accounts and how you go after new business can help you make sure that you are going to continue to excel in the world of sales.
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Dana Prince writes for Future Simple?s Growth University. Dana blends her passion for entrepreneurship with experience in software licensing sales, product management, online marketing, and SEO writing to run Dana Prince Writing, a web writing agency that creates optimized content that helps websites succeed.
Okay, it's not the nicest phone we've handled this week (heck, it's not even the best mid-range phone), but you wouldn't be reading this site if you didn't enjoy gawking at new devices, right? Right. So, with that in mind, we offer you the Samsung Galaxy Victory 4G LTE. It went on sale at Sprint last weekend, priced at $100 after a $50 mail-in rebate, but we only just got some hands-on time at a press event happening tonight.
On paper and in person, it's a forgettable sort of handset: it has a 4-inch (800 x 480) display, 5- and 1.3-megapixel cameras, 1GB of RAM, 4GB of built-in storage and a middling dual-core Snapdragon S4 MSM8960 Lite processor, clocked at 1.2GHz. And, at 12.7mm thick, it's one of the chunkiest phones we've handled in some time. Still, it redeems itself somewhat with the promise of LTE service -- once Sprint gets some momentum behind its new 4G network, that is. It also comes with Google Wallet, as well as some features found on the Galaxy S III -- things like S Beam and AllShare Play. Curious enough to peek but not compelled enough to buy? You've come to the right place. Check out our hands-on photos below and meet us after the break for some quickie impressions.
The more we've seen from "House at the End of the Street," the more we get the feeling that Jennifer Lawrence will be screaming a lot, and if she's not screaming, her character Elissa probably looks shocked, like in this new exclusive picture. You may recognize this still from a scene in the trailer where [...]
When Sarah and I graduated from college, we were both lucky enough to find jobs almost immediately. Since we weren?t married yet, we signed up for health insurance separately, with each of us getting policies.
A year later, we were married. We largely kept our finances separate at that point.
Two years later, our first child arrived, and with that child?s arrival, we began to look seriously at combining our financial situations.
What we discovered pretty quickly is that it would have been far less expensive for us to put me on her health insurance than it was for us to maintain separate plans. In fact, her family plan was cheaper than the annual cost of just the two of us insuring separately.
It seems like a simple move, but when people switch jobs and life situations, things like these can easily be overlooked.
If you?ve overlooked this option before, don?t let it happen again. It?s actually quite easy to find out how much you might save by combining insurance.
First, get a quote from the insurance provider at each partner?s workplace. Get quotes for both yourself as an individual and for both of you (or the entire family if you?re covering children, too). Try hard to make the quotes as equal as possible if you have different health care options in each workplace.
Most of the time, plans won?t be exactly equal, so sit down and determine which plan offers you the best bargain. Consider both your normal health and disastrous situations. Also, focus not on the total cost of each plan, but how much it?s affecting your take-home pay.
In my experience, one plan usually shows up as the clear winner. Enroll both of you in the better plan as soon as you can.
When you?re enrolled in the good plan, don?t forget to unsubscribe from the other plan in the other workplace. You may have to work around open enrollment windows to do this.
What if the plans are very similar? Choose the plan through the employment situation that is more stable. Which job is likely to last the longest? Which one has offered their plan for the longest without significant change? Stick with stability with everything else being equal.
This task isn?t as complicated as it might sound, and it can certainly save you some significant money.
This post is part of a yearlong series called ?365 Ways to Live Cheap (Revisited),? in which I?m revisiting the entries from my book ?365 Ways to Live Cheap,? which is available at Amazon and at bookstores everywhere. Images courtesy of Brittany Lynne Photography, the proprietor of which is my ?photography intern? for this project.
ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia (AP) ? Ethiopia's ruling party on Saturday named as its leader acting Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn, who took over after the death last month of longtime leader Meles Zenawi, an official said at the end of a congress of party bosses.
As chairman of the Ethiopian Peoples' Revolutionary Democratic Front, or EPRDF, Hailemariam, 47, will almost certainly be confirmed as the country's prime minister in an upcoming official ceremony. Bereket Simon, Ethiopia's communications minister, said Hailemariam would be sworn in soon. It remains unclear exactly when, but Bereket said this might happen early next month.
"Since the party holds an overwhelming majority the party's chair is automatically the country's prime minister," Bereket said. "So Hailemariam will be the country's new prime minister."
A 180-member council of the EPRDF appointed Hailemariam unanimously and also selected Education Minister Demeke Mekonnen to become deputy chairman. The ruling party controls 545 of the 547 seats in parliament, guaranteeing swift passage of its resolutions.
Hailemariam's ascension to the ruling party's top leadership signals that he is not just warming the seat for someone else and that influential party officials are keen to respect the wishes of Meles, who picked Hailemariam from obscurity and made him foreign minister and deputy prime minister.
Some analysts say that it was always clear that the ruling party would pick Hailemariam, who promises to continue the domestic and foreign policies favored by Meles.
"I think the party bosses have no choice but to go through with appointing Hailemariam," Jawar Mohammed, an Ethiopian political analyst who is currently pursuing graduate studies at Columbia University in New York, said on the eve of Hailemariam's selection as party leader.
Mohammed said that the Ethiopian public, anxious for stability after the death of a longtime ruler, had already been "given the impression that (Hailemariam) was groomed to replace Meles in 2015," when general elections are due in Ethiopia. He added that it would have been almost impossible for the ruling party to find "an alternative replacement that is acceptable to the four coalition members and the various factions within them."
Meles, who died Aug. 20 of an undisclosed illness in a Belgian hospital, ruled Ethiopia with an iron fist since 1991. Some praised him for lifting many Ethiopians out of abject poverty, but others saw him as a tyrant who restricted certain freedoms, including free speech.
The International Crisis Group said after the death of Meles that Hailemariam was not likely to be as pivotal and decisive a figure as the man he replaced.
"Given the opacity of the inner workings of the government and army, it is impossible to say exactly what it will look like and who will end up in charge. Nonetheless, any likely outcome suggests a much weaker government, a more influential security apparatus and endangered internal stability," the group's report said.
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Associated Press writer Rodney Muhumuza contributed reporting from Kampala, Uganda
GAPYEONG, South Korea (AP) ? Tens of thousands of tearful mourners are attending the funeral of the Rev. Sun Myung Moon, the founder of the Unification Church who built a multibillion-dollar business empire stretching from the Korean Peninsula to the United States.
Moon is a self-proclaimed messiah best known for conducting mass weddings in his efforts to build a multicultural world. He died at age 92 on Sept. 3.
Moon's funeral is being held Saturday in Gapyeong County, northeast of Seoul, where his home and main church facilities are located.
Church officials say 180,000 people visited Gapyeong during a mourning period before the funeral.
His church has been accused of brainwashing recruits and duping them out of money but followers believe Moon was tasked with completing Jesus Christ's works.
A post by Expressing Motherhood Co-Creator/Director Lindsay Kavet.
Ever since our second show, there were no profits with the first, we have donated between 5-10% of our money to Family Care International. It is a charity that is dedicated to making pregnancy and childbirth safer around the world.
Here is their mission statement:
FCI envisions a world where no woman suffers preventable injury or death from pregnancy or childbirth-related causes, and in which all people are able to enjoy their sexual and reproductive health and rights.
Being a show that highlights mothers stories we have received and spotlighted a lot of birthing stories. What has always struck me is the fact that we live in a country where we are lucky enough to have birthing plans, access to hospitals, doctors, midwives, medicine, choices, endless access to help and information.
That?s me at Cedars baby! Delivering baby #3.
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At a bare minimum, a woman should be helped as much as possible to have a healthy pregnancy. And here we are in 2012 and women, far too many, are dying in labor or while pregnant.
Here is a mind blowing fact from FCI, ?Every two minutes,?every single day, a woman dies needlessly from complications of pregnancy or childbirth.?
LISBON, Portugal (AP) -Benfica defender Luisao has been suspended for two months by the Portuguese Football Federation after he clashed with a referee during a preseason friendly.
The Brazil international will miss four Champions League matches - against Barcelona, Celtic and Spartak Moscow - as well as six Portuguese league games and a Portuguese Cup match following Friday's decision.
Luisao appeared to collide with the referee, knocking him to the ground, as he ran up to him during an argument over a decision in an Aug. 11 game at Fortuna Duesseldorf.
The player and his club argued that the collision was unintentional, but the referee lodged a formal complaint.
The federation's disciplinary committee also fined Luisao ?2,550 ($3,300). He is entitled to appeal.
? 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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??Video: The Sounders and the Timbers don't like each other, the fans don't like each other and it will be a lively atmosphere. Portland has a chance to win the Cascadia Cup, which would give them local bragging rights.
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CARSON, Calif. (AP) - Robbie Keane scored early in the first half, Christian Wilhelmsson added another goal early in the second half, and the Los Angeles Galaxy posted its fourth consecutive shutout in a 2-0 victory Friday night over Colorado.
NEW YORK (AP) ? Avon Products Inc.'s legal woes may finally be on the wane.
The direct-beauty product seller said in a regulatory filing late Thursday that the Securities and Exchange Commission has decided it won't recommend any action against the company over whether Avon contacted analysts inappropriately during a separate bribery investigation.
The news sent its shares up almost 2 percent in morning trading Friday. The end of the investigation into analyst contacts is a plus for the company which is trying to turn around its financial performance as new CEO Sheri McCoy settles into the job.
But Avon, whose products include Skin So Soft lotion and mark makeup, is still dealing with wider probes into whether Avon paid bribes in China and other countries. The problems began in 2008, when it started to investigate possible bribery in China related to travel, entertainment and other expenses, and soon widened the probe to other countries.
The internal probe led to the New York company firing vice chairman and former chief financial officer Charles Cramb in January along with four other executives.
The SEC and the Justice Department are also investigating the matter. In August, Avon said it was working toward possibly settling those investigations, which are separate from the investigation into contact with analysts.
Avon declined to comment on Friday.
The long-running legal woes, along with three years of lackluster financial performance, are one reason longtime CEO Andrea Jung was replaced in April. She was replaced by McCoy, a former Johnson & Johnson executive. Jung remains executive chairman.
In August, the company said its second-quarter net income fell 70 percent, hurt by the stronger dollar and lower demand globally for its makeup and skin care products.
To improve results, Avon Products plans to focus more on its independent sellers and buyers of Avon's products, McCoy said during the most recent quarterly earnings report. She laid out plans to improve Avon's product lineup, market products more effectively, pay top sellers more, cut costs and invest in technology.
Despite the company's problems, McCoy has defended the direct-selling model. Some analysts have questioned if it is still as relevant as it was 50 years ago, pre computers. Founded in 1886, Avon became a fixture in households across the United States as its legions of "Avon ladies" went door to door selling makeup to family, friends and acquaintances.
Today, the company markets to women in more than 100 countries via 6 million independent sellers.
Shares rose 31 cents, or 1.9 percent, to $16.59 in morning trading Friday. Its shares are still 31 percent below their 52-week high of $23.94 set late last October.
Many of the medicines children take have never been proved safe and effective for them. A new law will help change that
By The Editors
Image: LAUREN BURKE Getty Images
Parents assume that when a pediatrician prescribes a drug for their child, that drug has been tested and proven safe and effective. If only it were so. Only half of the medicines doctors prescribe to patients 18 and younger have been through the same rigorous trials as those drugs prescribed to adults. The other half are given off-label?that is, in circumstances for which they were never properly vetted, putting children at risk for overdoses, side effects and long-term health problems. For newborns, that fraction rises to 90 percent. In July the U.S. Congress gave the Food and Drug Administration new authority to compel companies to test their products for kids. The law should improve the situation, but it has worrying gaps.
As biologists have come to appreciate, drug metabolism is one of the many ways in which kids are not just small adults. When doctors downsize an adult dosage to suit a child's weight or body surface area, a drug can prove ineffective or harmful. Infants have immature livers and kidneys, so even a seemingly small dose of medicine can build up quickly in their bodies. As children mature, their organs can develop faster than their body size, so they need to take disproportionately more of the drug. For example, some recent pediatric clinical trials have found that the asthma medication albuterol does not work for children younger than four when taken through an inhaler. The seizure drug gabapentin (Neurontin) requires higher-than-expected doses for children under five.
The reason that drug companies neglect their youngest customers is simple. Children make up a small fraction of the world's drug recipients, so developing and testing new medicines for them is rarely worthwhile from a business perspective. Pediatric trials are especially expensive and complex, in part because of the difficulty of finding enough patients to enroll in them.
Congress began to address the issue in 1997, and its latest legislation, known as the FDA Safety and Innovation Act, strengthens those earlier efforts. The law requires pediatric studies for certain drugs and provides incentives to test others, such as a six-month patent extension. In addition, the law requires better advance planning of pediatric studies, improves the transparency of data and makes special provisions for newborns. The American Academy of Pediatrics praised the law: ?The bill ensures that children will have a permanent seat at the table for drug research and development.?
Still, the law leaves many children vulnerable. It does little for youngsters with cancer, who rely disproportionately on undocumented drugs. Earlier this year Genentech won FDA approval for the skin cancer drug vismodegib, which intervenes in the same molecular process thought to be involved in a childhood brain tumor, yet the company was under no obligation to test the drug in younger patients. Congress needs to close this loophole, and in the meantime the FDA should continue to work closely with pharmaceutical companies and pediatric oncologists to find new ways of identifying and testing promising cancer medicines in children.
Another problem is that doctors are worryingly in the dark about the long-term health effects of pediatric drugs. Young people take medications for asthma, diabetes, arthritis and many other chronic conditions, yet rarely are side effects recorded and followed up on. In its February report ?Safe and Effective Medicines for Children,? the Institute of Medicine recommended that the FDA make greater use of its authority to require long-term safety studies when it approves a product for pediatric use.
That said, the FDA Safety and Innovation Act is an important achievement. Children's medications are safer now than at any time in history, and many doctors and children's health advocates are so elated by the act's passage that they are reluctant to talk about what still needs to be done. But now is not the time to let up on our drive to make drugs safe for all our citizens. We hope this legislative victory will breed even more success.
A 1728 oil painting by Cornelis Troost depicting an anatomy lesson using a cadaver
Illegal plastic surgery made headlines again this week when Morris ?Tracey Lynn? Garner was charged with depraved-heart murder in Mississippi after he allegedly injected a woman?s buttocks with so much of a silicone-like substance that she later died of complications, including blood clots in her lungs.![[ Back to EurekAlert! ]](http://www.eurekalert.org/images/back2e.gif){kind=small}
Public release date: 27-Sep-2012
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stones! ?It's called 
from Iceland in 2000.
actually in the?Athenaeum Park itself but in front of the municipal building near the swan pond and bridge. ?It's called 
