Best Buy hopes to survive by shrinking

Best Buy is planning to remodel some of its big-box stores to focus on 'connections,' and the company is investing more in selling mobile phones and tablets.

By Roland Jones

Best Buy's announcement that it plans to shutter 50 of its big-box electronics stores after losing $1.7 billion in its latest quarter has some wondering whether the retailer will go the way of onetime rival Circuit City.

Circuit City filed for bankruptcy in November 2008 and eventually liquidated in a move that appeared to leave Best Buy in a strong competitive position. But the retail landscape has a way of shifting rapidly, especially when it is being trampled on by an 800-pound gorilla named Apple, which is "taking all the oxygen out of the consumer electronics complex," according to UBS retail analyst Michael Lasser.

?The environment for consumer electronics has changed dramatically in the last few years,? Lasser told CNBC.

For years, discount retailers like Wal-Mart and web-based retailers like Amazon.com have become major players in the retail electronics businesses. And Apple?s presence as a provider and retailer of its own wildly popular products has also put pressure on brick-and-mortar retailers such as Best Buy.

?It?s just now a question of whether big-box retailers can fight back and win back some of that share,? he said.

Best Buy said Thursday it would close 50 big box stores over the next year and lay off an additional 400 corporate employees in an effort to cut $800 million in annual costs.? At the same time the company is opening 100 more smaller-format stores focusing on mobile phones and tablets.

"How do we position the company so we're where our customers need us to be?" asked CEO Brian Dunn in a call with analysts Thursday. "We're clearly going to have more doors and less square footage."

The company, which has not disclosed which stores will close, has a total of 1,099 retail locations nationally, including 305 of the smaller Best Buy Mobile stores.

Analysts are not convinced that Best Buy is out of the woods. Best Buy stock fell 7 percent Thursday after the announcement.

Brian Nagel, a research analyst at Oppenheimer, said Best Buy?s restructuring plans are ?long overdue,? but also fraught with danger, given that they are taking place when the retail electronics environment is ?quite challenging.?

?Attempting to undertake this kind of a restructuring in a weak environment can be very problematic,? he told CNBC, adding that he is concerned the company is attempting a major upheaval in its operations when ?competition is getting ever more fierce.?

Scot Ciccarelli, an analyst at RBS Capital Markets, said the company?s planned store closings and cost cuts will help it return to financial health, but its core business continues to decline, and that's not a good sign.

?It?s hard to imagine investors being too excited? when earnings are declining, Ciccarelli said in a research note.

The Associated Press contributed to this story.

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Four Myths In Regard To A Marital Affair

No one really wants to discover that the person they pledged to love through good times and tough ones is carrying on an extramarital relationship. The news itself is demoralizing enough but in addition there's a process which has to be confronted in order to untangle this whole trauma and begin the recovery process. That recovery might or might not embrace the marriage alone however it definitely means carrying out everything possible to restore the individual that has been victimized by a two timing mate.

However as you go through the recovery stage you will come across a lot of information. Some of it is amazingly valuable. Some not as much and still other information will lead you to make dreadful decisions regarding your future. For Example:

Myth 1. A Marital Affair Automatically Leads To Divorce

Although in many cases husbands and wives do break up many marriages have made it through one mate's cheating.

It will take strong consistent effort and the determination to cheat proof the relationship and make sure things work for the better this time around.

Myth 2. The Unfaithful Mate Does Not Really Love Their Spouse Anymore

It's not hard to see where many people are coming form when it comes to this. If he or she really loved their spouse the last thing they would do is cheat on them. This makes a whole lot of sense but surprisingly quite a few two timing mates still love their spouse. There are a myriad of alibis for fooling around. None are acceptable but it doesn't necessarily mean they don't love their spouse or want out of the marriage.

Myth 3. First-Class Counseling Can Easily Repair The Relationship

Effective counseling may help tremendously with regards to repairing the marital relationship.

However that's just a part of it. To restore the trust which has been erased both sides need to agree to put into place some kind of process that allows the the spouse that has been wronged to keep close track of their husband or wife.

Counseling will go a very long way to uncovering some of those invisible issues which have remained buried for too long. However fixing the broken trust is simply a matter of the two timing wife or husband checking in with their significant other on a regular basis until they feel much better about the marital relationship.

Myth 4. The Spousal Relationship Can At Some Point In Time Return To What It Once Was

The relationship will never be what it was previously. And in all honesty that's the very last thing you want. Restoring the relationship to what it once was means putting the marriage in the same position that caused your mate to have an affair. There needs to be significant lifestyle improvements so getting back to the way things used to be isn't in the equation.
?

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Measuring the cosmic dust swept up by Earth

ScienceDaily (Mar. 29, 2012) ? Although we think of space as being empty, there is more out there than meets the eye -- dust, for example, is everywhere. If all the material between the Sun and Jupiter were compressed together it would form a moon 25 km across. Now a new research programme will try to see how much of this dust enters Earth's atmosphere. Metals from the cosmic dust play a part in various phenomena that affect our climate. An accurate estimate of dust would also help us understand how particles are transported through different layers of Earth's atmosphere.

Professor John Plane of the University of Leeds will present the Cosmic Dust in the Terrestrial Atmosphere (CODITA) project on March 30 at the National Astronomy Meeting in Manchester.

The main sources of dust in the Solar system are collisions between asteroids, and material evaporating off comets as they approach the Sun. When dust particles approach Earth they enter the atmosphere at very high speeds, anything from 38 000 to 248 000 kilometres an hour, depending on whether they are orbiting in the same direction or the opposite to Earth's motion around the Sun.

The particles undergo very rapid heating through collisions with air molecules, reaching temperatures well in excess of 1600 degrees Celsius. At this point they melt and evaporate. Particles with diameters greater than about 2 millimetres give off enough material to produce visible meteors, or 'shooting stars'. But most of the mass of dust particles entering the atmosphere are much smaller than this, so can be detected only using specialised meteor radars.

"We have a conundrum -- estimates of how much dust comes in vary by a factor of a hundred," said Plane. "The aim of CODITA is to resolve this huge discrepancy."

Satellite observations suggest that 100-300 tonnes of cosmic dust enter the atmosphere each day. This figure tallies with the rate of accumulation in polar ice cores and deep-sea sediments of rare elements linked to cosmic dust, such as iridium and osmium. However, measurements in Earth's atmosphere indicate that the input could be as low as 5 tonnes per day. These measurements include meteor radar observations, laser observations of the sodium and iron atoms from evaporating dust in the upper atmosphere, and measurements by high altitude aircraft of meteoritic iron in the lower stratosphere.

"If the dust input is around 200 tons per day, then the particles are being transported down through the middle atmosphere considerably faster than generally believed; if the 5-tonne figure is correct, we will need to revise substantially our understanding of how dust evolves in the Solar System and is transported from the middle atmosphere to the surface," said Plane.

The metals injected into the atmosphere from evaporating dust particles are involved in a diverse range of phenomena linked to climate change.

"Cosmic dust is associated with the formation of 'noctilucent' clouds -- the highest clouds in Earth's atmosphere. The dust particles provide a surface for the cloud's ice crystals to form. These clouds develop during summer in the polar regions and they appear to be an indicator of climate change,' said Plane. "The metals from the dust also affect ozone chemistry in the stratosphere. The amount of dust present will be important for any geo-engineering initiatives to increase sulphate aerosol to offset global warming. Cosmic dust also fertilises the ocean with iron, which has potential climate feedbacks because marine phytoplankton emit climate-related gases."

CODITA has received a ?2.5 million grant from the European Research Council to investigate the dust input over the next 5 years. The international team, led by Professor Plane, is made up of 11 scientists in Leeds and a further 10 research groups in the US and Germany.

The CODITA team will also use laboratory facilities to tackle some of the least well-understood aspects of the problem.

Plane explained, "In the lab, we'll be looking at the nature of cosmic dust evaporation, as well as the formation of meteoric smoke particles, which play a role in ice nucleation and the freezing of polar stratospheric clouds. The results will be incorporated into a chemistry-climate model of the whole atmosphere. This will make it possible, for the first time, to model the effects of cosmic dust consistently from the outer Solar System to the Earth's surface."

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Senate confirms top bank regulators

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Whether grasping Easter eggs or glass bottles, this robotic hand uses tact

ScienceDaily (Mar. 30, 2012) ? It may be difficult to imagine, but pouring juice into a plastic cup can be a great challenge to a robot. While one hand holds the glass bottle firmly, the other one must gently grasp the cup. Researchers at Saarland University together with associates in Bologna and Naples have developed a robotic hand that can accomplish both tasks with ease and yet including the actuators is scarcely larger than a human arm. This was made possible by a novel string actuator, making use of small electric motors to twist strings. The robotic hand is thus powerful yet delicate and could one day be deployed as a helper around the house or in catastrophic scenarios.

"We wanted to impart our robotic hand with a broad spectrum of human traits. Its artificial muscles should be able to deliver enormous forces by simple and compact means," explains Chris May, scientist at Saarland University's Laboratory of Actuation Technology. The robotic hand was recently presented during a meeting at the Forschungszentrum Informatik in Karlsruhe. It is an example of some of the new steps taken in robotic research within the scope of the European project DEXMART. Over the past four years international scientists developed various concepts, especially focussed on increasing the versatility with which two-arm robots can be implemented. The European Union sponsored the research consortium to the sum of 6.3 million Euros.

"When robots help around the house or should save people from a burning building, they need to have hands which can grasp with strength but at the same time gently," explains Hartmut Janocha, Professor of Process Automation at Saarland University. The challenge lies in trying to make the necessary technology fit within the robotic arm such that it does not differ significantly from a human arm in terms of size and form. ?We came up with a simple, yet extremely effective idea: using strings that are twisted by small, high-speed motors, we are able to exert high tensile forces within a compact space," explains mechatronic researcher May. The sensorised and controlled robotic hand is able to touch diverse objects, to grasp and lift them and place them gently in a new position. Chris May demonstrated this in Karlsruhe with a delicate Easter egg and a heavy glass bottle.

Extremely strong polymer strings enable the Saarbr?cken researchers to lift a five kilogram load by 30 mm within a split second, making use of a small electric motor and a 20 cm long string. ?Each robotic finger, which like a human finger is composed of three segments, can be controlled precisely by means of the individual tendons ," describes Chris May the novel miniature actuator. The mini electric motors run at high speed and a small torque on the order of five Newton-millimetres. ?The capability of the robotic hand is so near to that of humans that the vision of robots as personal assistants in the household, in the operating room as well as in industrial settings is becoming ever more realistic. We presume that the combination of small electric motors with twisted string is interesting for other applications as well," the researcher reckons.

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French 'Big Bang' scientist in terror plot trial

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Source: http://news.yahoo.com/french-big-bang-scientist-terror-plot-trial-112504874.html

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One Percent Blog ? Blog Archive ? Get With the Times ? Support ...

Posted on March 28th, 2012 by pauline

Five years ago, Andrew and Elske Daigle made their first test batches of soda in their kitchen. Even back then, they knew that they would later join 1% for the Planet.

There are so many reasons to join 1%?marketing value, connection to Yvon (one of Andrew?s heroes), and amazing business/non-profit community?but that?s not what motivated Pop Culture. Instead, Andrew and Elske wanted their business to amplify their already strong connection with the natural world.? While working with 1% for the Planet, they plan on focusing their energies on a few key environmental issues to start and allow it to grow organically:? wolf reintroduction & protection, dam removal, and watershed restoration & conservation.

Andrew and Elske look forward to hearing about non-profits focused in these areas and are excited about being part of the 1% team!

Pop Culture?s founders lived on an organic farm in the Santa Ynez Valley of Santa Barbara County, California, when those first test batches were made.? They hauled bushels of fruit back to the house and experimented with every rudimentary assortment of home brew equipment on the market. They wanted the sodas to taste like fresh fruit and didn?t want to cook the fruit in kettles.? Fresh fruit is refreshing and cooked fruit is, well? cooked! And jam belongs on toast!

With that in mind, they developed their first beverage: a fresh pressed Strawberry soda unlike anything on the market and it unknowingly changed their lives. Since almost every other fruit juice based soda on the market is made with concentrates, they wanted to offer an alternative.? Soda from concentrate does not have the same fresh flavor they were looking for, so ultimately they decided to make a commitment to use only fresh, certified organic and/or certified Non-GMO ingredients and packaged in glass bottles.

Their model has been very successful and their business is growing rapidly. Pop Culture has just launched a Kickstarter.com campaign to raise the capital it needs to meet the growing demand for its sodas.

Kickstarter is a crowdsourcing platform where individuals & businesses ?Pledge? in exchange ?Rewards? from Pop Culture. ??Check out their t-shirts, custom logo glasses, limited edition Pop Culture rock posters, and bulk discounts at below wholesale costs for your store or business; Pop Culture needs your support to ensure its campaign will be an enormous success!

Visit Pop Culture?s Kickstarter campaign today and help their business expand! How can you say no to ginger pear soda? Yum!

Source: http://onepercentfortheplanet.org/blog/2012/03/get-with-the-times-support-pop-culture/

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Los Angeles Electrician ? Electrical Generators

Electrical generators are positioned in homes in order to produce an complete house with electricity in case their main power shuts off. Shortages typically happen after a heavy thunderstorm or during whenever of inclement weather. This will also happen if a electrical power line near your house comes down or loses relationship. There is no sense when you accomplish lose power in your home to shed HVAC, have no lights for you to navigate throughout the house, and to allow things spoil in your family fridge when you can have a generator system installed at an affordable price.

How is this type of system is setup? The electrical generator will be placed near your main breaker box inside your home. It will be born in to where once your breakers get rid of power, the generator will certainly automatically kick on along with restore your home to the point where it?s going to run just as if you had your family electricity. These generators normally run off of gas and they are very efficient while running. It?s not like you will have to constantly fill up your generator while your power is out, and it will convey more than enough fuel for you to last through a night of getting without power.

When your house loses power, you fundamentally lose all of your daily benefits that you have grown used to. This consists of lighting, the use of hot water, the usage of many cooking appliances, along with includes anything that is hooked up to electricity. Having a backup electrical generator in place for emergency make use of will allow you and your family to take a baby shower, use the showers and sinks, cook full meals, and also run your HVAC devices to keep the temperature in your home exactly where you want it. Not necessarily keeping your home temperature at a moderate level can make your house musty in the summer, or very cold in the winter.

The main allure behind Los Angeles Electrician backup generators is convenience. If you have ever skilled a power outage, you know how bothersome they really are. Feel free to contact your electrical contractor to talk about pricing and choices for installing a generator system in your home. If you are a builder, a good way to produce a home more attractive is to build it with a generator system currently in place. This will make a potential homeowner aware of your attention to depth during the building process of a home. Overall, losing power isn?t any fun, and it does not have to happen to you.

Source: http://www.brokerate.com/los-angeles-electrician-electrical-generators/

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Debt Settlement Attorneys

by Melvin on Wednesday, March 28th, 2012 | Comments Off

If you are in debt problem, you are perhaps considering debt settlement as a type of debt relief, and likely wondering if you should start looking for debt settlement lawyers. This may lead you to question: Is it required to hire a debt settlement lawyer, or do I have any other options?

Right now, I am perhaps a slight biased, but if you will, please allow me to share with you a few of my clients? experiences once they wanted out attorneys to assist them with their debt. I?d also like to provide you with helpful info regarding the payment structure used by these attorneys.

We?ve had a lot of clients who have previously hired debt settlement lawyers due to the fact that they were misled into (falsely) believing that they will be represented in a court case if one or more of their lenders determined to sue them. Unfortunately, this was simply not true. You see, these attorneys that were hired by my clients (who later on turned to me for assistance) was not even accredited to practice law in these individuals? states; therefore, there was definitely no option that these attorneys might appear in court on behalf of my clients.

Also, given that debt negotiation attorneys is exempt from the consumer protection laws applied by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), they can be ? and, as a matter of fact, do ? charge large up front fees to their clients. I?ve heard of several cases where these firms charged as much as 30%-35% of people?s overall debt. These large fees are absolutely ridiculous, and I am not even sure how these debt settlement lawyers sleep at night; if you are claiming to have a desire to help people with their debt, I don?t believe you?d be attempting to break them.

So, the bottom line is that I clearly do not agree that it is required to hire a debt settlement lawyer if you are going to enter a debt settlement program. It?s much better if your money is put to good use by going toward your lenders first, and to an honest, professional and ethical debt settlement company ? after they have successfully achieved satisfactory results for your lenders and you.

Luckily, you have a lot of choices available to you, and I certainly caution you to make wise decisions for your debt relief. As you might feel protected hiring a lawyer to settle your debt, it is crucial that you realize that their payment structure could not conducive to making you and your lenders a number one priority. In order to successfully complete a debt negotiation program, it?s important that both you and your lenders must be top priority to any lawyer or debt settlement company you decide to hire.

This means that you should not be required to pay up front fees, nor should you be required to pay a monthly service payment. Also, lots of of these attorneys and debt negotiation companies require their clients to open an escrow account to hold their settlement funds. While there is a few benefit to this practice, it?s not something that is totally required.

Please keep in mind that searching for debt relief can be difficult and intimidating. The final thing you need is to be railroaded and fall for a sales pitch. Keep in mind the pointers I suggested above, and conduct ample research to ensure that whatever route you choose is the best debt relief option for you. Also, when seeking the assistance of a professional, please make sure that they are BBB accredited, and that their BBB record is satisfactory. We wish you the best of luck in your efforts to resolve your debt.

If you need more information about debt negotiation attorneys head over to our site at http://www.debtnegotiationservices101.com. Also you can find tips and useful guide about how to find debt negotiation services.

Source: http://financeadded.com/debt-settlement-attorneys.html

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WATCH: Exclusive Anti-Bullying PSA with Martha Stewart

Over the past few years, the issue of bullying has become an epidemic in our country -- and celebrities (from Demi Lovato to Johnny Depp and Lady Gaga, who launched her own anti-bullying Born This Way Foundation) have come out in full force to lend their support in the fight against bullying.

Source: http://www.ivillage.com/martha-stewart-does-psa-bully-documentary/1-a-438886?dst=iv%3AiVillage%3Amartha-stewart-does-psa-bully-documentary-438886

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Sarah Tressler on Oral Sex from Jeremy Piven: Mediocre!

As Ari Gold on Entourage, Jeremy Piven was all about closing the deal. Unfortunately for the actor, though, he's allegedly less skilled at completing naked transactions with the opposite sex... if you know what we mean!

Or what Sarah Tressler means, really.

This stripper/journalist has updated her blog ("Diary of an Angry Stripper") with a post about the time she met Piven a couple years ago. As an intern with Us Weekly, Tressler interviewed Piven, one thing led to another and, well...

"As his head maneuvered somewhere below my waist… I alternated between being nervous that I was not as hot as his last hookup, being amazed that I was looking at Entourage's Ari Gold eat my pussy, and being bored with how mundane it was. It was all somewhat disappointing, frankly," Tressler writes.

That's too bad for Piven. Instead of spending so much time worrying about E on Entourage, he clearly should have been focusing on how to help others achieve the big O.

Source: http://www.thehollywoodgossip.com/2012/03/sarah-tressler-on-oral-sex-from-jeremy-piven-mediocre/

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The Problem With Friendship

Marta, is a working mom of 5 year old Ben and 18 month old Bella. In between juggling parenting, working with an evil boss, she also has two very poorly behaved dogs making her just one farm animal shy of a circus. She blogs about life, love, and everything in the middle at Lost and Forgotten. She may also have an unhealthy addiction to her iphone.

.

?Nobody said it was easy. Nobody ever said it would be this hard.?

I have a love/hate relationship with friendship. I need it, the way life needs light and oxygen. The way we need our hearts to beat. Never having been a person who could solely rely upon me, being a person who hates to be alone like a form of water torture, I am shaped by relationships. They hone me, the endless crashing waves smoothing my idiosyncrasies.

Family failed me. Relationships bound by blood and circumstance don?t have the same value to me as those found and cultivated through time, love and genuine interest. Yet when those stutter. When there is a moment of divergence the pain is all the more real.

?But I promise you this, I?ll always look out for you, That?s what I?ll do.?

I am mystified at what it is ingrained in female nature that causes us to be so awful to one another. In a way I have never observed in male relationships or within those I have with men. When I look at my daughter and imagine the woman she?ll grow to be, I wonder if she will gossip behind a friend?s back. Connive and steal attention. Will friends lay in her wake, tear stained pillowcases and hurt feelings.

What can a parent do to prevent the phenomenon of the mean girl? Why do women break each other down to crawl to the top? Why do we never say what we mean and hurt because no one understands? Why does our jealously allow us to wish for the worst in the one we admire?

Perhaps I am simply too sensitive. Too caring. Too compassionate. Too everything that I want my daughter to have, but in excess. I know I will have to brush tears off her cheeks, smooth her hair back, and tell her it isn?t fair. It isn?t fair that someone who says they are your friend treats you poorly. And I hope that no mother sits upon her daughter?s bed consoling a child hurt by mine.

?Lights will guide you home. And ignite your bones. And I will try to fix you.?

How can I teach my daughter to be secure but not cocky? To love deeply without the consequence of loving more than you are loved. To be kind and considerate, but not a pushover. To never wish you felt less, simply because you hurt more. For in her I see all the potential to be the person I never was.

How do I give her the best of me without the worst?

{Lyrics from Coldplay: The Scientist, Sparks and Fix You.}

Source: http://www.scarymommy.com/the-problem-with-friendship/

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All Inclusive Wedding Elopement Destination ? Southern Grace Bed ...

March 26, 2012 by southerngracebb1

We are so excited to announce that Southern Grace Bed and Breakfast is going to be featured in Florida Travel and Leisure Magazine in an article titled Some B&B?s You Just Can?t Resist! ?We are also are being featured on the Taste of New York TV show as one of the South?s most romantic inns! Look for these happenings in May of 2012.

?

David and I decided that this gorgeous and romantic Southern Bed and Breakfast is the perfect wedding venue. Since we began hosting weddings we have had couples come in from Ohio, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana , Kentucky and Michigan! Why would wedding couples come from so far? The same reason we have garnered so much national attention in the travel industry! Southern Grace Bed and Breakfast is the definition of quaint romance!

?

Southern Grace Bed and Breakfast is the perfect and affordable elopement destination for many reasons. First, we earned more five star reviews on TripAdvisor.com in our first year, than any hotel, motel or Bed and Breakfast in Kentucky during the same period. We have four private, luxurious rooms and our honeymoon suite has over 800 sq. feet of lavish luxury.? Goose down feather beds, goose down comforters, Ralph Lauren duvets, 600-thread count sheets, Jacuzzi tub for two, glass and marble shower for two and total privacy makes for a perfect wedding night! We even spice up the honeymoon suite with rose petals around the tub, candles and red satin sheets!

?

Southern Grace Bed and Breakfast is a luxurious getaway that happens to be home to a small farm as well. Come enjoy a cool swim or just relax poolside among the wildflowers, blooming roses and dozens of fanciful other wildlife. Fish in our fully stocked pond and par take in the best romantic star gazing anywhere! Sit poolside next to the fire pit at night and enjoy the frog songs and all the other unmistakable night songs of the South! This will be sure to relax and mesmerize even the toughest city slicker out there!

?

When it comes to weddings we take care of every detail so you don?t have to! We have many affordable wedding packages to choose from. You can have an outdoor wedding under your favorite blooming tree, or at our gorgeous pool house! Or, you may choose to have an intimate wedding in our Grand Parlor. Make your dream a stress free reality! A minister or magistrate, a professional photographer, your-choice wedding music, wedding cake, homemade punch, champagne toast and a bridal bouquet with fresh flowers with your choice of colors make the package complete.

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We are a Five Star getaway and will spoil you with our lavish luxury! Choose one of our all-inclusive elopement packages or all-inclusive intimate wedding packages. Don?t wait any longer! This is the place of which you?ve been dreaming! We can?t wait to meet you and share in your special day! Please visit our website at www.southerngracebb.com and call us toll free at 855LUXSTAY!

?

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Posted in Affordable Wedding Venue, Elopement Packages | Tagged All inclusinve wedding packages, Elopement packages | Leave a Comment

Source: http://southerngracebb.wordpress.com/2012/03/26/all-inclusive-wedding-elopement-destination/

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Arab summit to back Annan's Syria plan: Iraq minister

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Source: http://news.yahoo.com/arab-summit-back-annans-syria-plan-iraq-minister-185432489.html

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The Harry Lorayne Memory Effectiveness Program Evaluation

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Source: http://www.articlesurge.com/Art/476502/95/The-Harry-Lorayne-Memory-Effectiveness-Program-Evaluation.html

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Finding life on Mars: Been there, done that?

NASA file

The Viking 1 lander sent back America's first pictures from the Martian surface in 1976. This picture shows off the lander's U.S. flag and Bicentennial logo as well as the planet's landscape.

By Alan Boyle

Thirty-six years after an experiment conducted by NASA's Mars Viking lander sparked controversial claims about the presence of life on the Red Planet, NASA's next Mars mission could conceivably hint that those claims were correct after all.

At least that's the hope held by the experiment's principal investigator, Gil Levin, who is keeping the Mars Viking flame alive even in retirement. He still thinks Viking was "the most remarkable unmanned mission ever," but he worries that its legacy will be lost amid the scientific shuffle.

"Twenty or thirty years from now, when the economy permits NASA to rise again, there will be missions to Mars, and they will find life, and they will take credit for it and not mention Viking at all," he told me.

---

It might not take 20 or 30 years to bring Viking back into the spotlight, however. NASA's $2.5 billion Mars Science Laboratory mission is due to deliver the car-sized Curiosity rover to the Red Planet in August?? and although the space agency insists that Curiosity doesn't have the capability to detect life, Levin believes it could show that his experiment was on the right track when it detected the chemical traces of organic activity.

GilLevin.com

Gil Levin was principal investigator for the Mars Viking probe's Labeled Release experiment.

Hopes of confirming the presence of life on Mars were riding high when the twin Viking landers touched down on Mars in 1976. The scientific payload included the Labeled Release apparatus, designed by Levin and his colleagues, as well as three other life-detection experiments. The Labeled Release experiment, or LR, was set up to take a bit of Martian soil and add a drop of water containing nutrients tagged with radioactive markers. The air above the mix was then monitored to see if it gave off radioactive carbon dioxide ? which could be read as an indication that organisms in the soil were metabolizing the nutrients.

The good news for Levin and the other life-hunters was that the LR experiment came out positive. The bad news was that the other three experiments came out uniformly negative. If there really was an organic process going on, scientists thought an experiment conducted by Viking's Gas Chromatograph - Mass Spectrometer device, or GCMS, should have detected organic molecules in the soil as well. The failure to do so led most scientists to assume that the LR findings were a fluke.

But not Levin.

"If these results are precisely the same as the results from biological entities on Earth, that's hard to get around," he told me. Several suggested explanations have been put forward for the LR results ? for example, that the Martian environment is so chemically reactive, due to ultraviolet radiation, that the nutrients were broken down without life playing a part. Levin, however, says those explanations don't match up with the results produced during the LR experiments and the control experiments.

Hoping for new evidence
This might have ended up as one of those cold cases where nobody totally convinces everybody. But Levin says Curiosity's impressive array of scientific equipment could provide some hot new evidence. It has a suite of instruments known as Sample Analysis at Mars, or SAM, which is capable of detecting organic molecules in Martian soil or atmosphere. Another instrument suite, called ChemCam, can fire a laser blast at a soil or rock sample up to 23 feet (7 meters) away and use a spectroscopic imager to analyze the chemical composition of the vaporized material.

"I predict that one or more of these instruments, possibly all of them, will indeed find organic matter that the Viking GCMS missed," Levin said.

Finding organic molecules is not the same as finding life. After all, organic compounds have been detected within the interstellar stuff of distant galaxies, and it wouldn't be earth-shattering to detect them on Mars as well. But it would answer one of the objections raised about the LR results.

Even more telling evidence could come from Curiosity's high-resolution cameras. Some of the pictures taken during the Viking mission showed colored patches on Martian rocks that were a fair spectrographic match for the color of lichen on earthly rocks. "The spectra were identical, but of course the images were not sharp enough to be able to make a conclusion, and everybody pooh-poohed it," Levin said.

Curiosity's color cameras will have much better resolution, and Levin said they "could detect sufficient detail to establish whether these might be lichenlike organisms." It might even be possible to take multiple looks at the same rocks, and track whether their appearance goes through the kinds of changes one would expect from lichen.

Levin said lichen, which is one of the hardiest types of organisms on Earth's surface, could conceivably have hitchhiked from Earth to Mars on meteorites. "Preserved, frozen, they could survive the entry to Mars and grow under Martian conditions," he told me.

Live Poll

Do you think there's life on Mars?

• 179850

  Yes, but it's well-hidden.

  40%

• 179851

  Yes, and Viking found it.

  21%

• 179852

  Once there was, but not today.

  34%

• 179853

  Mars always has been dead.

  6%

VoteTotal Votes: 247

The long search for life
The scientists who are in charge of Curiosity and the Mars Science Laboratory say that they're aiming for the same goal that Levin has in mind, but they argue that the search for life on Mars has to follow a step-by-step process.

"What the world needs to understand is that this is really the very beginning of a very systematic and deliberate form of exploration," Caltech's John Grotzinger, principal investigator for Mars Science Laboratory, told me. "The era of 'Star Trek' exploration is not over, but ... one must be more deliberate about it, because that's the way we do it on Earth, and we know that works."

Levin, however, thinks the evidence to come will show that Viking was working correctly 36 years ago. "To suggest that we should go back and start at a lower level ... means we throw away a billion dollars, in 1976 dollars. That's about $5 billion or $6 billion today that we don't have," he said.

He'd like to see a future Mars mission duplicate the LR experiment with a few added technological twists, including a molecular analysis to check whether the molecules given off by the chemical processes on Mars have a different orientation, or chirality, than the molecules that would be given off by Earth's chemistry. He also thinks the findings from Viking should be given another good, hard look.

"Let's convene a panel of astrobiologists," Levin said. "Let's have Levin present his data. Let's have the antagonists present their data. Let's examine this trove of data which we've never examined fairly."

Will that happen in Levin's lifetime? The researcher is now 88 years old, and nobody lives forever. But he's hoping that when the next episode in the saga of the search for life on Mars plays out ... maybe in the next few months ... the Viking missions will get their share of the spotlight.

"The stories increasingly omit any mention of Viking," Levin said. "I think Viking should be lauded rather than ignored."

More about Viking and the Mars saga:

---

Alan Boyle is msnbc.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter or adding Cosmic Log's Google+ page to your circle. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for other worlds.

Source: http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/03/26/10762034-mars-life-been-there-done-that

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Jessica Simpson Elle Cover: Too Hot For Safeway!

Apparently Jessica Simpson's naked, pregnant body on the cover of April's Elle magazine has not been well received by those at Safeway supermarkets.

The attention-grabbing photo of Jessica Simpson nude has been covered up with pieces of cardboard and/or turned around, the Arizona Daily Star reports.

A spokeswoman for the grocery chain said it made the move to censor the cover following "multiple complaints" about the Fashion Star mentor's photo.

Simpson said in an interview that that Demi Moore and Britney Spears-like fully nude, pregnant cover pic was all her idea. Well, and their idea. But in this case:

"They didn't even ask me to do that," she said on Ryan Seacrest's KIIS-FM radio show. "It was my idea. It kind of just seemed a natural thing for me to do."

"I'm like 170 pounds and I wanted to pose nude," she explained.

"I try to be like 110. It's funny to be at your heaviest and feel the most confident. I just take such pride in being a mom! I just love my body more than ever now."

What do you think of the cover photo above?

Source: http://www.thehollywoodgossip.com/2012/03/jessica-simpson-elle-cover-too-hot-for-safeway/

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Intel Core i7-3820

When you?re building your own computer, the first thing to decide is: How much of an enthusiast do you want to be? If you have the desire and the money, you can go for an all-out bleeding-edge system; if not, there are usually more reasonable options. Well, the Intel Core i7-3820 CPU is certainly reasonable by the standards of the company?s Sandy Bridge?Extreme line: Priced at $294 list, it?s noticeably less expensive than either the top-tier Core i7-3960X Extreme Edition ($999 list) or the nipping-at-its-heels Core i7-3930K ($583 list). With the Core i7-3820 you?ll still get a fine chip for your money, but you?ll have to sacrifice the eye-popping performance and features of the pricier chips to get it. If you?re okay with that, you?ll be okay with this CPU.

The Core i7-3820?s differences are apparent just from its specs. In several ways it is much the same as its bigger brothers: It?s based on the same 32nm production process, it has the same 130-watt TDP, and it will require you to also have an X79 Express motherboard (with the LGA2011 socket), a discrete video card (there?s no integrated graphics system on the chip), and a separate CPU cooler (Intel doesn?t bundle one with any CPU in this line). But there the similarities end. The Core i7-3820 has only four processing cores rather than six and thus can handle only eight threads rather than 12. (Though, of course, you?ll most readily notice that deficit if you work regularly with highly threaded applications.) The Core i7-3820 has less cache, too (10MB, versus 12MB for the Core i7-3930K and 15MB for the Core i7-3960X), but it compensates with a clock speed of 3.6GHz that puts it at the front of the Sandy Bridge?Extreme line by that particular metric (the Core i7-3930K?s is 3.2GHz, the Core i7-3960X?s is 3.3GHz). The Core i7-3820?s clocks can rise up to 3.9GHz when Turbo Boost is active; that?s the same rate as the Core i7-3960X (and higher than the Core i7-3930K?s 3.8GHz).

Another variation from the other designs is what hurts the Core i7-3820?s street cred more. Whereas the other two chips have fully unlocked Turbo mode multipliers, this chip?s is only partially unlocked, which means it can be increased by a maximum of four speed bins over the stock clock rate?thus topping out at 4.3GHz. Because Sandy Bridge?Extreme chips provide additional flexibility in terms of adjusting the base clock (with 125MHz, 166MHz, and 250MHz straps), you can push the chip?s overall clock speed further than that. But still, if overclocking is your thing, expect that roadblock to be a bit frustrating.

All this is not to say, however, that you don?t get good performance with the Core i7-3820?you do. For example, when installed in a test system loaded with an Asus P9X79 Deluxe motherboard, it completed our Adobe Photoshop CS5 test in 2 minutes 55 seconds, just 2 seconds behind the Core i7-3930K and 7 seconds behind the Core i7-3960X. But you get (expectedly) bigger gaps elsewhere: In CineBench R11.5, the Core i7-3820 scored 7.07 with multiple cores activated, compared with 10.17 for the Core i7-3930K and 10.48 for the Core i7-3960X. On the Futuremark 3DMark 11 physics test, the Core i7-3820 dropped just below our threshold for smooth pliability, with a score of 8,679 and 27.6 frames per second (or fps) compared with 10,958 and 34.78fps for the Core i7-3930K and 11,509 and 36.54fps for the Core i7-3960X.

There are a couple of additional characteristics worth mentioning about the Core i7-3820?s performance. First, it easily beats out not only other high-end chips from AMD like the FX-8150 and the Phenom II X6 1100T, but in many cases the most powerful model from Intel?s previous generations, the Core i7-990X?a nice accomplishment that shows how quickly ?fast? filters downward. The Core i7-3820?s gains are considerably less significant against the regular Sandy Bridge?based Core i7-2600K, and its follow-up the Core i7-2700K, both of which are only slightly more expensive. But compared with the Core i7-3830K, you won?t see much of a difference in single-threaded applications: Both chips scored the same (1.53) in the CineBench R11.5 single-core test, showing where you can save money if you don?t heavily depend on highly threaded programs.

A nice dip also occurs in power usage: As measured with an Extech Datalogger, the Core i7-3820 pulled 121 watts while idle and 197.3 watts under full load, whereas the Core i7-3930K had a draw of 122.5 watts at idle and 233.7 watts at full load. This may not make a huge difference, but depending on your usage pattern could add up over the life of the chip.

We still think that if you?re going to go all out on a Sandy Bridge?Extreme CPU, the best choice is the Editors? Choice Intel Core i7-3930K: It may cost nearly $600, but it?s a terrific performer that only slightly lags behind the Core i7-3960X. But if you can?t afford that, and if you don?t already have a Core i7-2600K? or Core i7-2700K?based system that will for all intents and purposes be just as good, the Intel Core i7-3820 is still a compelling compromise. You?ll just need to be sure you can live without the bells and whistles the more expensive chips offer.

More Chipset and Processor Reviews:
??? Intel Core i7-3820
??? Intel Core i7-3930K
??? AMD A8-3870K
??? Intel Desktop Board DX79SI
??? ECS X79R-AX Black Extreme
?? more

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ziffdavis/pcmag/~3/kiBRs8mJ2s4/0,2817,2401981,00.asp

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Pope defends right to religious freedom in Mexico

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Source: http://news.yahoo.com/pope-defends-religious-freedom-mexico-205017942.html

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Rangers hope for new owners by end of season

Associated Press Sports

updated 10:49 a.m. ET March 25, 2012

GLASGOW, Scotland (AP) -Administrators controlling Rangers are looking to secure new owners by the end of the season after receiving five bids for the financially stricken Scottish club.

Offers have been made by the "Blue Knights" consortium run by former director Paul Murray, the owner of English rugby union side Sale Sharks and three other bidders, two of whom are reported to be Chicago-based Club 9 Sports and a Singapore-based consortium.

Paul Clark, Rangers' joint administrator, says a shortlist of "two or three bidders" could be drawn next week.

Clark says Sunday he wants "somebody else to be in control of the football club other than us by the end of the season."

Rangers was forced to seek bankruptcy protection after a long-running dispute with tax authorities.

? 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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Revs get much-needed win

PST: Saer Sene scored his first MLS goal on his first shot in the first minute of play, and the New England Revolution beat the Portland Timbers 1-0 on Saturday.

MLS roundup: Crew too strong for Impact

FOXBOROUGH, Mass. (AP) - Saer Sene scored his first MLS goal on his first shot in the first minute of play, and the New England Revolution beat the Portland Timbers 1-0 on Saturday.

Source: http://nbcsports.msnbc.com/id/44978876/ns/sports-soccer/

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'Hunger Games' Fans 'Blown Away' At Midnight Showing

Early reports predict midnight box-office totals of more than $18 million.
By Kevin P. Sullivan, with reporting by Stacey Sommer

Josh Hutcherson in "The Hunger Games"
Photo: Lionsgate

With midnight showings of "The Hunger Games" sold out for weeks in advance, expectations for the highly anticipated film were even higher for those brave enough to journey to theaters in the middle of the night. Thankfully, Katniss Everdeen and the rest of the tributes did not disappoint.

Early reports for the midnight box-office totals predict returns north of $18 million, according to Variety. Those figures put "The Hunger Games" in contention with "The Dark Knight" and "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince," which earned $18.5 million and $22.2 million at midnight, respectively. Early predictions for the weekend total estimate "The Hunger Games" earning $125 million.

MTV News caught some rabid fans on their way out of the first showings of "The Hunger Games" in New York City, and most of them couldn't have been more pleased.

Joanna Cruz said she was left "speechless" and was "on the edge of my seat the whole time." Some took their praise ever further. Judith Cruz called it the "the best movie ever." "I can't wait to see it again," she said. "It was awesome. I cried at certain parts."

Though most of the people we interviewed expressed their love of the movie as a whole, a few couldn't help but point out that they missed some scenes that ended up on the cutting-room floor. "I loved it. I thought it was awesome," Elena Lerner said. "It wasn't completely true to the book — they left out a few scenes — but overall, we were both freaking out in our seats. It was so good."

Josh Solomon felt similarly. "I thought the film was very good, well done," he said. "It missed a couple scenes from the book. It missed spots, but I thought it was done pretty well."

But for one fan in particular, the movie could never live up to the book. "I don't know how I feel about it. When I read a book, I get very in-depth, and I felt like they missed a lot of what was in the book," Samantha Cohen said.

On the other hand, Esther Portyansky said that the movie was a reminder of why she liked the book so much in the first place. "It was incredible. I was absolutely blown away by it," she said. "I read the books last summer, and I think I'd almost forgotten how amazing they were, frankly. The movie more than did it justice."

Check out everything we've got on "The Hunger Games."

For young Hollywood news, fashion and "Twilight" updates around the clock, visit HollywoodCrush.MTV.com.

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Source: http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1681668/hunger-games-midnight-fan-reactions.jhtml

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