Flat boron by the numbers

Public release date: 31-Jan-2013
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Contact: David Ruth
david@rice.edu
713-348-6327
Rice University

Rice University researchers calculate what it would take to make new 2-dimensional material

It would be a terrible thing if laboratories striving to grow graphene from carbon atoms kept winding up with big pesky diamonds.

"That would be trouble, cleaning out the diamonds so you could do some real work," said Rice University theoretical physicist Boris Yakobson, chuckling at the absurd image.

Yet something like that keeps happening to experimentalists working to grow two-dimensional boron. Boron atoms have a strong preference to clump into three-dimensional shapes rather than assemble into pristine single-atom sheets, like carbon does when it becomes graphene. And boron clumps aren't nearly as sparkly.

Yakobson and his Rice colleagues have made progress toward 2-D boron through theoretical work that suggests the most practical ways to make the material and put it to work. Earlier calculations by the group indicated 2-D born would conduct electricity better than graphene.

Through first-principle calculations of the interaction of boron atoms with various substrates, the team came up with several possible paths experimentalists may take toward 2-D boron. Yakobson feels the work may point the way toward other useful two-dimensional materials.

The Rice team's results appear this week in the journal Angewandte Chemie International Edition. Rice graduate student Yuanyue Liu and research scientist Evgeni Penev are co-authors of the paper.

Yakobson's lab first reported in a Nano Letters paper last year that unlike graphene, 2-D boron rolled into a nanotube would always be metallic. Also unlike graphene, the atomic arrangement can change without changing the nature of the material. Instead of the steady rank-and-file of hexagons in a perfect graphene sheet, 2-D boron consists of triangles. But boron could have vacancies missing atoms without affecting its properties.

That's the theory. The problem that remains is how to make the stuff.

"We are, perhaps, so close," Penev said. "Here we have conceived a material that resembles graphene, but is always conductive no matter what form it takes. What we're doing now is exploring different possibilities to connect our theories with reality."

The best method, they calculated, might be to feed boron into a furnace with silver or gold substrates in a process called chemical vapor deposition, commonly used to make graphene. The substrate is important, Penev said, because the atoms have to spill onto the surface and stick, but not too strongly.

"You have to have a substrate that doesn't want to dissolve boron," he said. "On the other hand, you want a substrate that doesn't bind too strongly. You should be able to detach the boron layer."

Then, like graphene, these atom-thick boron sheets could be applied to other surfaces for testing and, ultimately, for use in applications.

The study also calculated methods for creating sheets via saturation of boron atoms on the surface of boride substrates, and the evaporation of metal atoms from metal borides that leaves just the target atoms in a sheet.

"There are a lot of reasons boron could be interesting," said Liu, the paper's first author. "Boron is carbon's neighbor on the periodic table, with one less electron, which might bring in lots of new physics and chemistry, especially on the nanoscale. For example, 2-D boron is more conductive than graphene because of its unique electronic structure and atomic arrangement.

"In fact, comparing (boron) with graphene is very helpful," he said. "The state-of-art synthesis methods for graphene provide us good templates to explore 2-D boron synthesis."

Yakobson is thinking a step beyond the current work. "There are many groups, at Rice and elsewhere, working on 2-D boron," he said. "To appreciate this work, you have to stand back and contrast it with graphene; in some sense, the synthesis of graphene is trivial.

"Why? Because graphene is a God-given material," he said. "It forms at the global minimum (energy) for carbon atoms they go there willingly. But boron is a different story. It does not have a planar form as a global minimum, which makes it a really subtle problem. The novelty in this work is that we're trying to trick it into building a two-dimensional motif instead of three."

The search for 2-D materials with varying qualities is hot right now; another new paper from Rice on a hybrid graphene-hexagonal boron nitride shows the need for a 2-D semiconductor to complement the material's conducting and insulating elements.

Yakobson hopes his study serves as a guideline for practical routes to other novel materials. "Now that there is a growing interest in a variety of 2-D materials, this may be a template," he said.

Yakobson is Rice's Karl F. Hasselmann Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science and professor of chemistry.

###

The Department of Energy (DOE) supported the research. Computations were performed on the National Science Foundation-funded Data Analysis and Visualization Cyberinfrastructure at Rice, along with resources at the National Institute for Computational Sciences and the DOE's National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center.

-30-

Read the abstract at http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/anie.v52.5/issuetoc

Follow Rice News and Media Relations via Twitter @RiceUNews

Related Materials:

Yakobson Research Group: http://biygroup.blogs.rice.edu/archives/category/group-news

Images for download:

http://news.rice.edu/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/2Dboron_angew_chem.jpg

Two-dimensional sheets of boron that can be lifted off a substrate are possible to make via several theoretical methods suggested in a new paper by Rice University scientists. The material could be a useful complement to graphene and other 2-D materials for electronics, they said. (Credit: Evgeni Penev/Rice University)

http://news.rice.edu/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/0204_BORON-2-web.jpg

Rice University theoretical physicist Boris Yakobson, right, and lab members Yuanyue Liu, left, and research scientist Evgeni Penev have calculated the energies that would be involved in creating two-dimensional sheets of boron, which would be similar to but have better electrical qualities than carbon-based graphene. (Credit: Jeff Fitlow/Rice University)

Located on a 300-acre forested campus in Houston, Rice University is consistently ranked among the nation's top 20 universities by U.S. News & World Report. Rice has highly respected schools of Architecture, Business, Continuing Studies, Engineering, Humanities, Music, Natural Sciences and Social Sciences and is home to the Baker Institute for Public Policy. With 3,708 undergraduates and 2,374 graduate students, Rice's undergraduate student-to-faculty ratio is 6-to-1. Its residential college system builds close-knit communities and lifelong friendships, just one reason why Rice has been ranked No. 1 for best quality of life multiple times by the Princeton Review and No. 2 for "best value" among private universities by Kiplinger's Personal Finance. To read "What they're saying about Rice," go to http://tinyurl.com/AboutRiceU.

---

[ | E-mail | Share ]

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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.

Public release date: 31-Jan-2013
[ | E-mail | Share ]

Contact: David Ruth
david@rice.edu
713-348-6327
Rice University

Rice University researchers calculate what it would take to make new 2-dimensional material

It would be a terrible thing if laboratories striving to grow graphene from carbon atoms kept winding up with big pesky diamonds.

"That would be trouble, cleaning out the diamonds so you could do some real work," said Rice University theoretical physicist Boris Yakobson, chuckling at the absurd image.

Yet something like that keeps happening to experimentalists working to grow two-dimensional boron. Boron atoms have a strong preference to clump into three-dimensional shapes rather than assemble into pristine single-atom sheets, like carbon does when it becomes graphene. And boron clumps aren't nearly as sparkly.

Yakobson and his Rice colleagues have made progress toward 2-D boron through theoretical work that suggests the most practical ways to make the material and put it to work. Earlier calculations by the group indicated 2-D born would conduct electricity better than graphene.

Through first-principle calculations of the interaction of boron atoms with various substrates, the team came up with several possible paths experimentalists may take toward 2-D boron. Yakobson feels the work may point the way toward other useful two-dimensional materials.

The Rice team's results appear this week in the journal Angewandte Chemie International Edition. Rice graduate student Yuanyue Liu and research scientist Evgeni Penev are co-authors of the paper.

Yakobson's lab first reported in a Nano Letters paper last year that unlike graphene, 2-D boron rolled into a nanotube would always be metallic. Also unlike graphene, the atomic arrangement can change without changing the nature of the material. Instead of the steady rank-and-file of hexagons in a perfect graphene sheet, 2-D boron consists of triangles. But boron could have vacancies missing atoms without affecting its properties.

That's the theory. The problem that remains is how to make the stuff.

"We are, perhaps, so close," Penev said. "Here we have conceived a material that resembles graphene, but is always conductive no matter what form it takes. What we're doing now is exploring different possibilities to connect our theories with reality."

The best method, they calculated, might be to feed boron into a furnace with silver or gold substrates in a process called chemical vapor deposition, commonly used to make graphene. The substrate is important, Penev said, because the atoms have to spill onto the surface and stick, but not too strongly.

"You have to have a substrate that doesn't want to dissolve boron," he said. "On the other hand, you want a substrate that doesn't bind too strongly. You should be able to detach the boron layer."

Then, like graphene, these atom-thick boron sheets could be applied to other surfaces for testing and, ultimately, for use in applications.

The study also calculated methods for creating sheets via saturation of boron atoms on the surface of boride substrates, and the evaporation of metal atoms from metal borides that leaves just the target atoms in a sheet.

"There are a lot of reasons boron could be interesting," said Liu, the paper's first author. "Boron is carbon's neighbor on the periodic table, with one less electron, which might bring in lots of new physics and chemistry, especially on the nanoscale. For example, 2-D boron is more conductive than graphene because of its unique electronic structure and atomic arrangement.

"In fact, comparing (boron) with graphene is very helpful," he said. "The state-of-art synthesis methods for graphene provide us good templates to explore 2-D boron synthesis."

Yakobson is thinking a step beyond the current work. "There are many groups, at Rice and elsewhere, working on 2-D boron," he said. "To appreciate this work, you have to stand back and contrast it with graphene; in some sense, the synthesis of graphene is trivial.

"Why? Because graphene is a God-given material," he said. "It forms at the global minimum (energy) for carbon atoms they go there willingly. But boron is a different story. It does not have a planar form as a global minimum, which makes it a really subtle problem. The novelty in this work is that we're trying to trick it into building a two-dimensional motif instead of three."

The search for 2-D materials with varying qualities is hot right now; another new paper from Rice on a hybrid graphene-hexagonal boron nitride shows the need for a 2-D semiconductor to complement the material's conducting and insulating elements.

Yakobson hopes his study serves as a guideline for practical routes to other novel materials. "Now that there is a growing interest in a variety of 2-D materials, this may be a template," he said.

Yakobson is Rice's Karl F. Hasselmann Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science and professor of chemistry.

###

The Department of Energy (DOE) supported the research. Computations were performed on the National Science Foundation-funded Data Analysis and Visualization Cyberinfrastructure at Rice, along with resources at the National Institute for Computational Sciences and the DOE's National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center.

-30-

Read the abstract at http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/anie.v52.5/issuetoc

Follow Rice News and Media Relations via Twitter @RiceUNews

Related Materials:

Yakobson Research Group: http://biygroup.blogs.rice.edu/archives/category/group-news

Images for download:

http://news.rice.edu/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/2Dboron_angew_chem.jpg

Two-dimensional sheets of boron that can be lifted off a substrate are possible to make via several theoretical methods suggested in a new paper by Rice University scientists. The material could be a useful complement to graphene and other 2-D materials for electronics, they said. (Credit: Evgeni Penev/Rice University)

http://news.rice.edu/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/0204_BORON-2-web.jpg

Rice University theoretical physicist Boris Yakobson, right, and lab members Yuanyue Liu, left, and research scientist Evgeni Penev have calculated the energies that would be involved in creating two-dimensional sheets of boron, which would be similar to but have better electrical qualities than carbon-based graphene. (Credit: Jeff Fitlow/Rice University)

Located on a 300-acre forested campus in Houston, Rice University is consistently ranked among the nation's top 20 universities by U.S. News & World Report. Rice has highly respected schools of Architecture, Business, Continuing Studies, Engineering, Humanities, Music, Natural Sciences and Social Sciences and is home to the Baker Institute for Public Policy. With 3,708 undergraduates and 2,374 graduate students, Rice's undergraduate student-to-faculty ratio is 6-to-1. Its residential college system builds close-knit communities and lifelong friendships, just one reason why Rice has been ranked No. 1 for best quality of life multiple times by the Princeton Review and No. 2 for "best value" among private universities by Kiplinger's Personal Finance. To read "What they're saying about Rice," go to http://tinyurl.com/AboutRiceU.

---

[ | 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.

Source: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2013-01/ru-fbb013113.php

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Hotel for pets, and people too - Travel - Macleans.ca

Here at Maclean's, we appreciate the written word. And we appreciate you, the reader. We are always looking for ways to create a better user experience for you and wanted to try out a new functionality that provides you with a reading experience in which the words and fonts take centre stage. We believe you'll appreciate the clean, white layout as you read our feature articles. But we don't want to force it on you and it's completely optional. Click "View in Clean Reading Mode" on any article if you want to try it out. Once there, you can click "Go back to regular view" at the top or bottom of the article to return to the regular layout.

Photo Illustration by Taylor Shute

Finding a pet-friendly hotel isn?t the hassle it once was. A lot of hotels do accept pets. The gamble is, what will the room be like? Sometimes, it feels like pet owners are the new smokers. You can check in, but you?ll be sleeping in the smelly room across from the ice machine on the ground floor. In Sault Ste. Marie, Ont., for instance, our pet-friendly hotel room had tufts of fur on the pillowcase when I turned down the bedspread. I called the front desk to complain, and we got moved to a new room where our cat disappeared into a hole in the drywall behind the toilet.

So it was nice last week to check into a dog-friendly hotel that had none of these problems. Retired veterinarian Dr. Paula Terifaj owns and operates the DogSpa Resort and Wellness Center in Desert Hot Springs, Calif. The DogSpa isn?t a spa for dogs, as the name suggests, but rather a hotel where dogs of all sizes and breeds may stay unattended in the room, run in the private off-leash dog park or roam the main lounge while their humans eat breakfast. But what had enticed me there were the website photos. In one shot, a cute dog is paddling in the hotel pool. In another, a woman luxuriates with a glass of wine while a large hunting dog nuzzles her in the hot tub.

Two days later, we arrived with our golden retriever. ?You have the place to yourself,? said innkeeper Bob, who offered us our choice of rooms. We picked a corner suite with a comfy king-size bed, a cozy kitchenette and a door leading out to the swimming pool.

The pool was a big draw because Desert Hot Springs is legendary for its soothing mineral waters. The city sits on a branch of the San Andreas Fault, and is one of few places known to have both hot and cold subterranean water basins. Its cold spring water wins international tasting contests for best tap water. The mineral-rich hot water and allure of a desert hideaway attracted Al Capone to the area in the 1920s, and continues to be a magnet for celebrities from Los Angeles, an hour and 45 minutes away. The naturally heated water in the hotel?s hot tub is pumped from a backyard well, and maintains a year-round temperature of 40? C.

In our room, we watched the TV news: orange farmers were worried that the cold snap would ruin crops. In spite of the freezing wind, I stepped outside in bare feet and bathing suit with the dog behind me. ?Jump in,? I told her. At home on Vancouver Island, our dog?s favourite pastime is fetching balls from the ocean. Now, though, she looked at me nervously, tucked her tail between her legs and cowered at the water?s edge, staring at the steam, the bubbles, the flashing lights.

The next morning, I expressed my disappointment to Terifaj that our waterdog wouldn?t go in the water. ?Oh, that?s a myth that dogs want to go in the swimming pool,? she said. After breakfast, she joined me in the lounge, where I met her rescued pit bull mix named Brad Pitt. Like any other dog at DogSpa, the mild-mannered Brad Pitt was off-leash, hopping about freely on three legs due to a bad knee.

Terifaj said that her frustration with other hotels led her to open DogSpa: ?Here, pet-friendly means you don?t pay anything extra for your dog, and you?re not relegated to certain rooms.? She didn?t like being judged by other guests. ?Have you ever been there when people are giving you the eye because your dog is peeing and pooing? I thought we needed a place where we could just go relax with our dogs, and not feel like an outsider.?

She?s certainly in the right spot. In nearby Palm Springs, hotel guidebooks provide lists of dog-friendly restaurants. And when a waitress at Davey?s Hideaway Restaurant saw me stop to read the menu outside, she invited me to bring my dog in for dinner. When we showed up later without the dog, she scolded me, ?Why didn?t you bring your dog? I told you to bring the dog!?

Back at the hotel, I thought dog lovers should know about this place. The owner might consider changing the name, though. It?s not a spa for dogs. She should find something that says ?People spa, dogs welcome, vet on site.?

Source: http://www2.macleans.ca/2013/01/30/hotel-for-pets-and-people-too/

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Kurdish rebels to withdraw from Turkey in March: paper

ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Kurdish militants will withdraw from Turkish territory by the Kurdish new year on March 21 under a peace process to end a conflict in which 40,000 people have been killed, a newspaper close to the government said on Thursday.

The withdrawal of the militants to northern Iraq, where most of the PKK's several thousand fighters are based, is planned to begin at the start of March as the weather in southeast Turkey starts to become milder, the Sabah daily reported.

Turkish officials have been in talks with jailed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) leader Abdullah Ocalan since late 2012 and he was expected to issue a call within 10 days for the militants to declare a ceasefire, the paper said.

Ocalan, imprisoned on Imrali island south of Istanbul, is widely expected to make the call via a delegation of Kurdish politicians who are set to visit him in early February.

The rebels took up arms in 1984 with the aim of creating a Kurdish state in southeastern Turkey. The PKK, declared a terrorist group by Ankara, the United States and the European Union, has since moderated its goal to one of autonomy.

Sabah did not disclose its source but has close links to the government. Only a few officials are involved in the talks and have not disclosed details publicly, fearing a nationalist backlash ahead of local and presidential elections next year.

(Writing by Daren Butler; Editing by Nick Tattersall and Jon Boyle)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/kurdish-rebels-withdraw-turkey-march-paper-083257185.html

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Some families to be priced out of health overhaul

WASHINGTON (AP) ? Some families could get priced out of health insurance due to what's being called a glitch in President Barack Obama's overhaul law. IRS regulations issued Wednesday failed to fix the problem as liberal backers of the president's plan had hoped.

As a result, some families that can't afford the employer coverage that they are offered on the job will not be able to get financial assistance from the government to buy private health insurance on their own. How many people will be affected is unclear.

The Obama administration says its hands were tied by the way Congress wrote the law. Officials said the administration tried to mitigate the impact. Families that can't get coverage because of the glitch will not face a tax penalty for remaining uninsured, the IRS rules said.

"This is a very significant problem, and we have urged that it be fixed," said Ron Pollack, executive director of Families USA, an advocacy group that supported the overhaul from its early days. "It is clear that the only way this can be fixed is through legislation and not the regulatory process."

But there's not much hope for an immediate fix from Congress, since the House is controlled by Republicans who would still like to see the whole law repealed.

The affordability glitch is one of a series of problems coming into sharper focus as the law moves to full implementation.

Starting Oct. 1, many middle-class uninsured will be able to sign up for government-subsidized private coverage through new health care marketplaces known as exchanges. Coverage will be effective Jan. 1. Low-income people will be steered to expanded safety-net programs. At the same time, virtually all Americans will be required to carry health insurance, either through an employer, a government program, or by buying their own plan.

Bruce Lesley, president of First Focus, an advocacy group for children, cited estimates that close to 500,000 children could remain uninsured because of the glitch. "The children's community is disappointed by the administration's decision to deny access to coverage for children based on a bogus definition of affordability," Lesley said in a statement.

The problem seems to be the way the law defined affordable.

Congress said affordable coverage can't cost more than 9.5 percent of family income. People with coverage the law considers affordable cannot get subsidies to go into the new insurance markets. The purpose of that restriction was to prevent a stampede away from employer coverage.

Congress went on to say that what counts as affordable is keyed to the cost of self-only coverage offered to an individual worker, not his or her family. A typical workplace plan costs about $5,600 for an individual worker. But the cost of family coverage is nearly three times higher, about $15,700, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.

So if the employer isn't willing to chip in for family premiums ? as most big companies already do ? some families will be out of luck. They may not be able to afford the full premium on their own, and they'd be locked out of the subsidies in the health care overhaul law.

Employers are relieved that the Obama administration didn't try to put the cost of providing family coverage on them.

"They are bound by the law and cannot extend further than what the law provides," said Neil Trautwein, a vice president of the National Retail Federation.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/3d281c11a96b4ad082fe88aa0db04305/Article_2013-01-30-US-Health-Overhaul-Affordability-Glitch/id-a485736f797c4115a655fce0cec7f3ec

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Minnesota mirrors national trend of declining union membership

Sorry, Readability was unable to parse this page for content.

Source: http://www.facebook.com/MinnPost/posts/114819772030748

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ARGUS drone spots you from 20,000 feet ? with camera-phone sensors

5 hrs.

Devin Coldewey , NBC News

Paranoid delusions about black helicopters hovering over an area will soon be out of date: The latest scary spy apparatus lives 20,000 feet up, turning 30 or more square miles into live video sharp?enough to spot individual people walking around.

The system is called ARGUS, after the 100-eyed god of Greek myth, and fittingly, it works by hooking together hundreds of inexpensive image sensors like those found in mobile phones.?The non-classified parts were featured last week in an episode of the PBS show "Nova"?all about drones and surveillance (the ARGUS segment starts at the half-hour mark).

ARGUS has appeared in earlier reports, but in a much less detailed fashion. The "Nova"?program shows how it might actually appear in action.

Yiannis Antoniades of BAE Systems, the British company that makes the ARGUS system (with help and funding from DARPA), told PBS that although BAE?would have liked to design a whole new sensor, it was cheaper and more practical to use an array of smaller, off-the-shelf ones.

The current version uses 368 five-megapixel sensors, for a total of 1.8 gigapixels. But unlike other gigapixel camera systems, this one doesn't record still images ? it produces video. That means that from four miles up, it can watch a?roughly circular area up to six miles wide, tracking every car and person in real time.

The amount of data produced by the system is, naturally, immense, around 6?petabytes per day according to earlier reports.

ARGUS has yet to be deployed, although there were plans to send three to Afghanistan onboard a helicopter-like hovering unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)?called the Hummingbird, now defunct. The future of the system?is, for now, classified.

Devin Coldewey is a contributing writer for NBCNews Digital. His personal website is?coldewey.cc.

Source: http://www.nbcnews.com/technology/futureoftech/argus-drone-spots-you-20-000-feet-camera-phone-sensors-1C8149730

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Plume for Twitter (for Android)

By Max Eddy

Just because Twitter is working to curtail non-canonical clients doesn't mean that developers have stopped trying to deliver its 140-character utterances in better and better ways. Plume for Twitter brings a highly customizable Twitter client to Android devices (free, $4.99 to remove ads) with a powerful muting feature to help you manage the chaos of Twitter.

Starting up Plume for the first time, users are greeted by a colorful screen and Plume's cute, friendly duck/penguin masot. Once inside the app, Tweets are displayed in a series of scrolling columns, showing @ replies, the latest updates, direct messages, and so on. Users can scroll up and down to move chronologically through the feeds, and left and right between feeds. Swiping left to right from off the screen will open a hidden tray of other features, such as search and trending topics.

The Sound of Silence
By far, Plume's strongest and most useful feature is "muting" certain users, words, and services from appearing in your feed. One of the drawbacks of Twitter, and it is surely like this by design, is that ?the only way to remove a user from your feed is to un-follow them?a public and noticeable act. Twitter's Lists feature helps, but it lacks fine-grain controls. If you mute a user in Plume, you'll still appear as their follower and you can unmute them at any time. For a sticky social situation, or a power user who has accounts he or she is obliged to follow, "muting" is a powerful tool.

Plume also has the ability to mute Tweets that contain certain words or phrases, as defined by the user. For everyday folks, this is a great way to avoid the weekly cavalcade of #FF tweets, Apple product announcements, or particularly tiresome memes from invading your Twittersphere. For people with PTSD or emotional triggers, being able to hide certain terms from view could make participating in Twitter a far less stressful experience.

Users can manage all their mutes from the settings menu, including muted updates from other apps that publish on Twitter.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ziffdavis/pcmag/~3/N_Kfc4j1Cvs/0,2817,2414773,00.asp

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Conference suggests ways Broadway can be better

FILE - This Jan. 19, 2012 file photo shows billboards advertising Broadway shows in Times Square, in New York. The TEDxBroadway conference will be held Monday, Jan. 28, 2013, at the off-Broadway complex New World Stages. The one-day event is bringing together more than a dozen producers, marketers, entrepreneurs, academics, economists and artists. All will try to answer the question: "What is the best Broadway can be?" (AP Photo/Charles Sykes, file)

FILE - This Jan. 19, 2012 file photo shows billboards advertising Broadway shows in Times Square, in New York. The TEDxBroadway conference will be held Monday, Jan. 28, 2013, at the off-Broadway complex New World Stages. The one-day event is bringing together more than a dozen producers, marketers, entrepreneurs, academics, economists and artists. All will try to answer the question: "What is the best Broadway can be?" (AP Photo/Charles Sykes, file)

NEW YORK (AP) ? A conference on how to make the Broadway experience better for theatergoers has come up with some prescriptions: Be brave in the stories that are told onstage and embrace youth and technology.

"Broadway, I don't think, has boldly gone where it needs to," said "Star Trek" actor George Takei, riffing off his old show's motto. "I have a sense that Broadway hasn't entered into the 21st century."

The second TEDxBroadway conference on Monday brought together 16 speakers ? producers, marketers, entrepreneurs, academics and artists ? to try to answer the question: "What is the best Broadway can be?"

"We use the word 'best' because the goal of today is to go right past better all the way to the extent of what is possible, even if it seems a little bit outlandish," said co-organizer Jim McCarthy, the CEO of Goldstar, a ticket retailer.

TEDx events are independently organized but inspired by the nonprofit group TED ? standing for Technology, Entertainment, Design ? that started in 1984 as a conference dedicated to "ideas worth spreading." Video of the Broadway event will be made available to the public.

While the health of Broadway is good, with shows yielding a record $1.14 billion in grosses last season, some speakers noted that total attendance ? 12.3 million last season ? hasn't kept pace, meaning Broadway isn't always attracting new customers.

Three speakers ? one the sister of Facebook's founder Mark Zuckerberg ? argued that new technology means the stage experience doesn't need to be confined to the four walls of the theater and so can grow new audiences.

David Sabel, who has helped drive the National Theatre of Great Britain into the digital age, pointed out that broadcasts of his stage shows on movie screens across the world haven't dampened demand at the box office and have actually have themselves become profitable.

"I think in our business, digital is uniquely not a threat but an opportunity," he said. "What if we could open it up and invite a much greater audience in to speak with us?"

Randi Zuckerberg said the Broadway community could increase visibility by having auditions for minor parts via YouTube, have live tweeters backstage, offer crowd funding to knit people to productions, give walk-on parts for influential figures or even make the Playbills electronic.

"Why should Broadway be limited by physical space? By ticket prices? By the same shows, over and over?" she asked. "Instead of having just a small sliver of the world come to Broadway, why not bring a small piece of Broadway to the entire world?"

And Internet guru Josh Harris said producers need to open the entire process to the outside world, including video cameras backstage to capture actors getting ready and even having the orchestra pit filled with people interacting with the audience via their electronic devices.

The annual gathering centered on Broadway is the brainchild of three men: McCarthy; Ken Davenport, a writer and producer; and Damian Bazadona, the founder of Situation Interactive. It drew 400 people to the off-Broadway complex New World Stages and into the theater where "Avenue Q" usually plays.

Takei in the past few years has grown 3.3 million Facebook friends and leveraged them into audience members to "Allegiance," his new musical about Japanese-Americans during World War II,

"If I can do it, Broadway certainly can," the 65-year-old said. "Broadway is at its best when it embraces all of the technological advancements of the time and starts making a lot of friends on social media. Then, as we say on 'Star Trek,' Broadway will live long and prosper."

Thomas Schumacher, the president of the Disney Theatrical Group, slammed the pretentious way some in the theatrical community look at more mainstream shows and scoffed at their disdain for making the audience experience more fun.

"Populism has its own manifest destiny and we need to embrace that," said Schumacher, who called for a big tent of theatrical options on Broadway and especially shows for children who will return as adults. "What I ask you to do is embrace this audience and maybe even embrace the sippy cup."

Terry Teachout, drama critic at The Wall Street Journal, soberly pointed out that 75 percent of all Broadway shows fail and then asked that more producers roll the dice on quality.

"If you can't count on getting rich, then forget playing it safe. Why not take a shot at being great?" he asked. "If there's ever a time for you to shoot high, this is it. Don't start out settling for safe. Gamble on great."

Kristoffer Diaz, the playwright of the Pulitzer Prize finalist "The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity," urged producers to embrace different voices, as they did with "In the Heights" and "Rent."

"Women, writers of color, transgender, lesbian, gay and bisexual ? we need to keep hearing these stories. We need to hear them on Broadway," he said. "It becomes a lot harder to dismiss somebody out of hand if you've spent a couple of hours investing in their story."

Two speakers with specialty knowledge outside Broadway urged the community to not just focus on putting on a great show.

Susan Reilly Salgado, who has worked with famed restaurant owner Danny Meyer, said his success is not only about creating tasty dishes. Meyer, she said, makes the whole evening fun.

"To say that, in a restaurant, it's all about the food discounts everyone else who touches the customer experience," she said. "The best way to get people to come back to you over and over is to create an all-encompassing experience."

Erin Hoover, the vice president of design for Westin and Sheraton Hotels & Resorts, said Broadway theaters could take a page out of the innovations brought to hotel lobbies, which are now comfortable, inviting and offer new sources of revenue. "The experience for the show really starts at the door."

Customer service was also a theme touched on by Zachary A. Schmahl, an actor-turned-baker who created Schmackary's Cookies in his apartment and has watched it grow into a thriving business.

"Customer service is something that people are missing in New York," he said. "It's so important in our single-serving culture to be that business that has a heart and a soul alongside a quality product."

One returning speaker was Vincent Gassetto, the principal of a high-performing public middle school in a tough area of the Bronx, who urged those in attendance to make sure Broadway was on the radar of his best and brightest students.

"It's in everybody in this room's best interest that they have an awareness of this industry or we're never going to win that talent war," he said. "We're all going to be competing for them."

Though the speakers came from different backgrounds and emphasized different prescriptions, they did seem to agree with Daryl Roth, the Pulitzer Prize-winning producer of seven plays, including "Clybourne Park." She challenged the crowd to think of Broadway in more than just dollars and cents.

"If we share the deep belief that theater matters, that theater can change us and ultimately change the world, then isn't that the best Broadway can be?" Roth asked.

___

Online:

http://www.goldstar.com/tedxbroadway

___

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Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/4e67281c3f754d0696fbfdee0f3f1469/Article_2013-01-28-Theater-TEDxBroadway/id-47df4f1bfd8346a2875d88f3d6f3b2b0

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Berries may be healthful, but some health benefits of berries may not make it past your mouth

Jan. 28, 2013 ? Research has suggested that compounds that give colorful fruits their rich hues, especially berries, promote health and might even prevent cancer. But for the first time, scientists have exposed extracts from numerous berries high in those pigments to human saliva to see just what kinds of health-promoting substances are likely to survive and be produced in the mouth.

It's too early to name the best berry for health promotion based on this initial work. But the researchers have discovered that two families of pigments that provide berries with their colors, called anthocyanins, are more susceptible to degradation in the mouth than are the other four classes of these pigments.

The Ohio State University study also showed that bacteria living in the mouth are responsible for most of the breakdown of these compounds that occurs in saliva. Researchers are investigating whether it's the berry pigments themselves, or instead the products of their degradation, that actually promote health.

Scientists say that these early findings will contribute to the further development of confectionaries, gums and other delivery devices for the prevention and possibly the treatment of conditions such as periodontal disease and oral cancers.

The researchers exposed extracts of anthocyanin pigments from blueberries, chokeberries, black raspberries, red grapes and strawberries to the saliva collected from 14 people. Black raspberries, in particular, have been shown in numerous previous studies to have chemopreventive effects on tumors in the mouth, esophagus and colon, mostly in animal studies. Their high anthocyanin content has been linked to those benefits.

"All fruits are unique because their chemical composition, or fingerprint, varies," said Mark Failla, professor of human nutrition at Ohio State and interim chair of the Department of Human Sciences. "There are many different edible berries. Some might be better for providing health-promoting effects within the oral cavity, whereas others may be more beneficial for colonic health. We simply do not know at this time.

"Increased intake of fruits and vegetables is associated with decreased risk of some chronic diseases. An understanding of the metabolism of these compounds, and the relative activities of the compounds in the consumed fruit and their metabolic products, is needed to make scientifically sound dietary recommendations and to develop effective delivery vehicles for the mouth," Failla said.

The research is published in a recent issue of the journal Food Chemistry.

Failla and colleagues asked 14 healthy individuals between the ages of 21 and 55 years to collect saliva in the morning before they had eaten breakfast or brushed their teeth. Research participants later collected additional saliva samples before and after they had rinsed their mouths with an antibacterial liquid.

The five fruits selected for study allowed the scientists to test the six distinct families of the anthocyanin pigments. Researchers purified the anthocyanins from each berry type and added the extracts to saliva.

The extent of the pigment degradation in saliva was primarily a function of the chemical structure of a given anthocyanin, said Failla, also an investigator in Ohio State's Comprehensive Cancer Center and Food Innovation Center.

Two families of anthocyanins consistently degraded when exposed to saliva: delphinidin and petunidin. Four other families were more stable: cyanidin, pelargonidin, peonidin and malvidin.

"Our observations suggest that the bacteria within one's oral cavity are a primary mediator of pigment metabolism. The bacteria are converting compounds that are present in the foods into metabolites," Failla said. "One area of great interest is whether the health-promoting benefits associated with eating anthocyanin-rich fruits like berries are provided by the pigment itself, the natural combinations of the pigments in the fruit, or the metabolites produced by bacteria in the mouth and other regions of the gastrointestinal tract."

There is context for this study that further complicates the understanding of anthocyanins' benefits. Multiple studies have led to the conclusion that anthocyanins themselves are very poorly absorbed by the body.

"If anthocyanins are the actual health-promoting compound, you would want to design food products, confectionaries and gels containing mixtures of anthocyanins that are stable in the mouth. If, on the other hand, the metabolites produced by the metabolism of anthocyanins are the actual health-promoting compounds, there will be greater interest in fruits that contain anthocyanins that are less stable in the oral cavity," Failla said. "We lack such insights at this time."

The extent to which the anthocyanins were degraded varied among the 14 people whose saliva was used in the study. However, two families of anthocyanins consistently degraded the most in all volunteers. Failla said the observed variation among individuals is likely related to differences in the microbial community that resides in each person's mouth.

This research group is continuing the work, examining which bacteria are most involved in the metabolism of anthocyanins and testing the stability of the pigments in berry juices in the mouths of human volunteers rather than in test tubes containing their saliva.

This work was supported in part by the Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center.

Co-authors include Kom Kamonpatana of the Interdisciplinary Ph.D. Program in Nutrition; Monica Giusti and Ken Riedl of the Department of Food Science and Technology; Chureeporn Chitchumroonchokchai of the Department of Human Nutrition; and Maria MorenoCruz and Purnima Kumar of the Department of Periodontology, all at Ohio State. All but MorenoCruz are also investigators in the Food Innovation Center.

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Story Source:

The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Ohio State University. The original article was written by Emily Caldwell.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.

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Journal Reference:

1. Kom Kamonpatana, M. M?nica Giusti, Chureeporn Chitchumroonchokchai, Maria MorenoCruz, Ken M. Riedl, Purnima Kumar, Mark L. Failla. Susceptibility of anthocyanins to ex vivo degradation in human saliva. Food Chemistry, 2012; 135 (2): 738 DOI: 10.1016/j.foodchem.2012.04.110

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

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.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/top_health/~3/veYPg32Q77U/130128113819.htm

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Real Estate Investment Property Management ? Kenyans United

For owners of residential, commercial, or industrial real estate, working with a property management company can be a great resource. Property management works the same as management in any other business by overseeing the care and financial needs for any property. We will work to locate long-term residents who respect and care for the property and always pay on time. A property manager acts as a liaison between you and the tenant alleviating the burden of busy owners. Hiring a responsible property manager can make the real estate process easy. Our company have the skills and knowledge to make your ownership experience simple and painless. You can take comfort in knowing that we will always treat your property as if it were our own. Residential Property Management Alpine

Source: http://kenyansunited.com/real-estate-investment-property-management/

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Best Free Pay Per Click Advertising Program for Business Promotion ...

There is innumerable free pay per click search engines ranging from the most reputed like Google to many unheard of sites. These sites allow the advertisers to place free pay per clickadvertisement and are also offering cash benefits for those advertisers who are trying out their various programs. Advertising click pay per program, like Admanage, offers the web advertisers all facilities that they would be interested in such as pay per click searches as well as text banner advertisements. Setting up an account is easily accomplished and this ensures that the web advertisers? ad appears speedily once they use the specific search engine campaign management methodology. Their ads could also be flashed on cpc overlay text banners.

In the event of the on-line web advertiser?s business being listed in the Local Pages, the Internet service providers identify these ads and publish it with their search partners so that the ad appears on popular search engines like Google, Yahoo, MSN and more at no extra charges. This guarantees that the business advertising click per promotion is seen along with free local listings across every major search engine.

Yahoo search marketing maintains an extremely professional site. It initially operated as GoTo.com and then changed to Overture and finally rebranded itself as Yahoo Search Marketing. They pioneered the pay per click search engine model in the year 1997 after assessing that a more focused search engine was the need of the day. Sponsored search is Yahoo?s primary product and offers sponsored names in their search results listed on top of the web portals and search engines. This sponsored listing reaches over 80% of active Internet users. Yahoo is, at present, offering USD $25 free credit for those interested in signing up with their site.

Findology Interactive Media Inc., founded in May-2000, currently serves over 3 billion searchers monthly. It is presently offering each web visitor a USD $50 bonus in free click when they sign up in their web portal. Similarly, ABC Search is believed to be the world?s largest private mega search engine handling over 3 billion searches per month. Its network of specialized smaller search engines offers on-line advertisers an affordable way to diversify their paid per click traffic.? Nowadays this search engine is also offering USD $100 in free search traffic.

Pay per click is a free resource dedicated to provide unbiased information to the small and medium sized business owners interested in exploring the world of free pay per clickadvertising. Businessmen can invest in this module as it is rapidly offering extremely effective and highly competitive market strategy that requires little financial involvement. The free pay per click advertising and web promotion sites has the expertise and cutting edge state-of-the-art software which delivers results. They are run by qualified professionals and marketing ambassadors.

Advertising click pay per promotion goes well beyond just putting up ads and basic tracking. They offer many more types of services designed to give optimum results to the on-line advertisers and at a fraction of the cost of other advertising alternatives. The comprehensive solution offered is customized and designed for the advertisers who are dedicated to their industry?s betterment. They offer customized marketing plan that works for the organization / businessmen. The promotion services basically include a three-fold approach based on finding the right customers, setting up a pay per click account and continuously maintaining a successful marketing campaign. The first step revolves around knowing one?s competitors that involves in-depth competition analysis and research. The best pay per click search engine offer advice on how to stack one?s web site against the competition with products and services that compare more favorably. It also provides compelling reasons to web visitors why they should patronize such on-line sites.

The second step for increasing traffic is finding interested customers through pay per click advertising. Google, Yahoo and MSN search engines does all the research in their on-line ads for people who are inclined to sign up with them. This is possible through positive key word utilization for targeting the best potential customers as well as the vast number of indirect customers.

For best results:

? Select a keyword phrase that is related to the product which is earmarked for advertisement.

? Do not select meaningless keyword phrases.

? ?Cheap dedicated web hosting? is acceptable while the phrase ?hosting web dedicated cheap? is not acceptable.

? Client?s featured listing appears in Exact Seek?s search results when searchers perform an exact search of client?s keyword or phrase. Plurals and case sensitivity of keywords need to be ascertained, especially words like ?web master? and web masters? are treated as different keywords.

? Avoid using any non-alphanumeric characters in keywords selection. Letters and numbers are fine buy hyphen, period, apostrophes, quotation marks, extra spaces and other such special characters should not be used as they ?kill? client?s listing to appear in search engines. Example ? ?Online card games? is acceptable and not ?Online *card* games?.

? The recommended selected keyword phrase length should be restricted to a well considered two or maximum three-word phrase. Recent studies have revealed that surfers use multiple word phrases when performing searches on the Net. To determine which keywords are most likely to be searched use the available tools or Word Tracker Tool.

Additionally, developing ads and testing multiple ad results increases conversion and might augment the number of clicks. Finally, making the web site more user-friendly encourages enhanced traffic. This factor indicates that the site should not be hard to navigate that may frustrate web visitors.

Customer response also depends on attractive sites, hence, it is recommended to develop a colorful and meaningful home page. Free pay per click advertising promotion becomes all the more illustrative when web visitors easily find all the requisite information that they are looking for like the profile of the advertiser along with the length of business operation and other appealing information that they would be interested in. It always pays when in free pay per click campaigns the site offers all the relevant information highlighting their advantages over their competitors in terms of products and services. An effective landing page delivers a message more intensely indicating that web advertisers should attempt to convey approximately 3 to 5 messages within 8 seconds in a landing page. This is another important aspect of creating best pay per click campaign.

When client is advertising click pay per program, it implies that the advertiser is paying to attract web browsers? attention in order to apprise them of the client?s products and services. This involves making a list highlighting the most important aspects of the products and services and how these services would assure optimum benefits to the web visitors. When designing the landing page, a strong headline along with informative content should be incorporated to entice the web visitor to continue viewing the site. Bold statement accompanied by colorful graphics often captures the web visitors? attention and conveys the message effectively. Improving the web page visibility on the Internet ensures that this campaign would stand out in the crowd making on-line marketing strategy highly promising. Thus free pay per click not only saves money and improves search results but it also builds the advertiser?s brand credibility.

Republished by Blog Post Promoter

Source: http://www.trafficsoar.com/2013/01/best-free-pay-per-click-advertising-promotion-program/

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Frontiers publishes systematic review on the effects of ... - Health.am

Yoga has positive effects on mild depression and sleep complaints, even in the absence of drug treatments, and improves symptoms associated with schizophrenia and ADHD in patients on medication, according to a systematic review of the exercise on major clinical psychiatric disorders.

Published in the open-access journal, Frontiers in Psychiatry, on January 25th, 2013, the review of more than one hundred studies focusing on 16 high-quality controlled studies looked at the effects of yoga on depression, schizophrenia, ADHD, sleep complaints, eating disorders and cognition problems.

Yoga in popular culture
Yoga is a popular exercise and is practiced by 15.8 million adults in the United States alone, according to a survey by the Harris Interactive Service Bureau, and its holistic goal of promoting psychical and mental health is widely held in popular belief.

?However, yoga has become such a cultural phenomenon that it has become difficult for physicians and patients to differentiate legitimate claims from hype,? wrote the authors in their study. ?Our goal was to examine whether the evidence matched the promise.?

Benefits of the exercise were found for all mental health illnesses included in the review, except for eating disorders and cognition problems as the evidence for these was conflicting or lacking.

Dr. P. Murali Doraiswamy, a professor of psychiatry and medicine at Duke University Medical Center, US, and author of the study, explained that the emerging scientific evidence in support of the 5,000 year old Indian practice on psychiatric disorders is ?highly promising? and showed that yoga may not only help to improve symptoms, but also may have an ancillary role in the prevention of stress-related mental illnesses.

According to Stephen Cope, a psychotherapist and author of Yoga and the Quest for the True Self, hatha yoga?s postures improve mood by moving energy through places in the body where feelings of grief or anger are stored. ?Hatha yoga is an accessible form of learning self-soothing,? he says. ?These blocked feelings can be released very quickly, [creating a] regular, systemic experience of well-being.? Yoga students may also benefit from their relationship with the yoga instructor, Cope said, which can provide a ?container? or a safe place for investigating, expressing and resolving emotional issues. The instructor?s encouraging and accepting words may also help students defeat self-limiting notions.

Not all mental health practitioners are convinced of yoga?s healing powers, but many agree it can be helpful when combined with more traditional treatments. Zindel Segal, Ph.D., a University of Toronto psychiatry professor, recently studied SRRP when used in conjunction with cognitive therapy. He asked 145 people who were at risk for depression to undergo cognitive therapy either alone or with the SRRP. Segal found that after eight weeks of treatment, those participants who received both types of therapy were much less likely to relapse into depression. ?This means that people can learn about their emotions not just by writing down their thoughts, which is what cognitive therapy is all about, but also by paying attention to the way their emotions are expressed in their bodies,? he says. ?Both approaches allow people to observe their experience without judgment, an important first step in stepping out of depression.?

While yoga?s therapeutic capabilities are still under scientific scrutiny, Smith isn?t waiting for more proof. Having lost her grandmother to depression- she was one of many bipolar sufferers who take their own life due to the disease- Smith is determined not to let the disorder get the best of her. Since 1994, she has practiced and taught hatha yoga to depression sufferers- passing on what she believes has literally saved her life.

The review found evidence from biomarker studies showing that yoga influences key elements of the human body thought to play a role in mental health in similar ways to that of antidepressants and psychotherapy. One study found that the exercise affects neurotransmitters, inflammation, oxidative stress, lipids, growth factors and second messengers.

Yoga is no longer a traditional fitness workout. The National Institute of Mental Health and Neuro-Sciences (Nimhans) not only has a 45-minute yoga package to treat psychiatric disorders like depression and schizophrenia, but has started comparing its curative effects with general medicine.

Doctors at Nimhans say their studies reveal evidence of biological changes in the body brought about by yoga. They prescribe yoga therapy along with medication in major ailments, while using yoga therapy alone for less serious disorders.

Unmet need among mental health patients

Depression alone affects more than 350 million people globally and is the leading cause of disability worldwide, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). On World Mental Health Day last year, the WHO called for improved access to treatments.

While there has been an increase in the number of medications available for mental health disorders, many of which can be life saving for patients, there remains ?a considerable unmet need,? according to Dr. Meera Balasubramaniam, lead author of the study, who is also based at Duke University, US.

When you hear the word ?depression?, probably the first thing that will come to your mind is sadness. And yes, you thought right. Depression is a state of sadness. However, it is not to be confused with major depression, which is a mental condition characterized by a severe state of sadness or melancholy that has reached the point of hindering a person from functioning well socially.

While simple depression (or a depressed mood) may only last for a short time and can be treated easily, major depression can last for a longer time and treatment can vary from person to person. Major depression is also more dangerous because not only does it disrupt your social functions, but it has more serious symptoms such as:

Being fatigued physically and mentally

Change in appetite

Feeling of intense fear or melancholy

Irritability

Loss of interest in usual activities

Changes in sleeping patterns (e.g. insomnia, excessive sleep, or loss of REM sleep)

Trouble in decision-making or in concentrating

Feelings of guilt, hopelessness, or helplessness

Delusions or hallucinations

Recurring thoughts of suicide or death

Poor compliance and relapse as well as treatment resistance are growing problems, and medications are expensive and can leave patients with significant side effects.

Provided by ArmMed Media

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Source: http://www.health.am/psy/more/effects-of-yoga-on-major-psychiatric-disorders/

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10 Reasons Why You Need Social Media in Your Marketing Mix in ...

Those who predicted that the leading social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn would fade away or gradually start to lose members in 2012 couldn?t have been more wrong. Those social media websites continued to grow, becoming an even stronger foundation of our online lives. Furthermore, new social media sites like Pinterest were able to become incredibly popular just over the course of the past year.

Social media is here to stay. This means that in order for your business to be successful, you?re going to need to make those sites part of your marketing efforts. Here are the top ten reasons why social media absolutely must be part of your marketing strategy in 2013.

1.???????? Time Spent on Social Media is Increasing

Perhaps you?ve noticed it happening to your teenage children, or even to yourself. People are spending more time on social media sites. In fact, according to a 2012 Report by comScore (http://www.comscore.com/Insights/Presentations_and_Whitepapers/2012/The_State_of_Social_Media), social media usage now accounts for 18% of all time spent online. If you want your business to be successful then you can?t neglect marketing through social media ? your potential customers spend too much time there.

2.???????? Connect with Potential Customers

New customer acquisition is often the biggest hurdle for many new businesses. Not only can it be expensive to reach potential customers, it can be difficult to know exactly where might be the best place to reach them. With so many people logging in to Facebook and the other social media sites every week, those sites can be the best first place to start your marketing efforts.

3.???????? Build Relationships with Current Customers

As you seek to connect with new customers, don?t forget one of the best sources of business ? your existing customer base. Through social media websites you can easily connect with people you?ve already done business, and forge relationships that can help you improve your existing products and services, as well as come up with ideas for new lines of business.

?

4.???????? Social Media Influences Search Engine Rankings

While the process and methods aren?t entirely opaque, it?s generally agreed that the scope of your social media presence has an influence over your businesses. In addition to improving rankings to your website, people also share various links and content through social media sites ? and this sharing can further boost your standing with the search engines. This influence can be seen directly if you happen to use Google as your primary search engine (as most of us do), and have enabled personal search results.

Wikipedia also has information about social search at (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_search)

?

5.???????? Conduct Customer Service Operations

One of the best ways to address any service issues with your customers is to first consider how you and your friends deal with any problems you have when you are the customers.

Chances are you don?t always call the company you bought something from in order to lodge a complaint. In fact, there?s a good likelihood that rather than contact the vendor, you take to Twitter or Facebook and let your friends and contacts know about your negative experience. If you proactively monitor these social media sites for mentions of your company then you can immediately address any negative customer experiences, and demonstrate to others that you?re responsive to your customers? needs and feedback.

You should also consider setting up Google Alerts (log in at www.google.com/alerts) to monitor individual blogs and bulletin boards for the same reason.

?

6.???????? ?Social Media is the New Search?

You might hear some market observers refer to social media as being the ?new search.? This means that for a larger number of individuals, when they need to look for an answer to a problem or need they have, are more likely to look to their online social networks for possible solutions rather than use a search engine such as Google or Bing.

?

7.???????? Highly Targeted Marketing Opportunities

Because people share so much about themselves on social media sites, you already know a lot about your potential customer base. Just a decade ago, if you wanted to target potential customers you might be forced to purchase or rent a mailing list, and you?d never really knew how good that list was. These days you can target demographic groups with pinpoint accuracy through social networking websites.

8.???????? Social Media Can Be Cost Effective

You can set up your own social media profiles for your business for free on all the major websites. This gives you a no-cost method to start implementing some of your social media marketing efforts almost immediately. In addition, if you choose to utilize the targeted advertising and promotional opportunities that are offered by Facebook and LinkedIn, you may find that the cost to reach targeted prospects is surprisingly competitive to other online advertising options you may have used in the past.

?

9.???????? Commerce Will Be Conducted Through Social Media

In the long term, social media sites need to become profitable in order to survive. Trying to charge their members a fee to use will almost certainly be a non-starter, so it?s anticipated that their revenue will come from taking a commission of any real-money transactions or ecommerce that?s conducted on the site. While many of these ecommerce channels are not yet up and running, you can be sure that they?re likely to become a big part of doing business online. By becoming established on social media sites and learning the best ways to reach new customers, you?ll be in a strong position to take advantage of these ecommerce channels when they become active.

?

10.?????? Social Media is Replacing Traditional Media

As the time we spend on social media websites increases, the time we spend reading newspapers, listening to the radio and watching television decreases. This means that you might want to reconsider any marketing efforts you may have been planning for traditional local media.

As you participate in social media sites, always strive to be professional, helpful and honest. Putting forth the best possible image will do wonders for your business.

Tags: Google Alert, social media, social media marketing, social media profiles, Social network, social networking

Source: http://adpublishing.org/10-reasons-why-you-need-social-media-in-your-marketing-mix-in-2013/

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The Silicon Valley Housing Market Is Only Going To Get Crazier

Editor's note: Glenn Kelman is the CEO of Redfin, a technology-powered real estate broker backed by Madrona Venture Group and Greylock Partners. Silicon Valley home buyers, I wish we had better news. Prices keep rising, with no end in sight. Across the 20 markets Redfin serves, only Phoenix saw more rapid price increases than the Bay Area. Over the last 12 months, San Francisco prices rose 20 percent; San Jose prices jumped 23 percent. When the market moves this fast, the appraisals required by a lender reflect last year?s prices, and sellers just take all-cash deals instead -- even when another bidder with a mortgage offers more money.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/lugIJuHXgfk/

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LaCie Blade Runner drive now available, offers stand-out storage for $300

LaCie teased us at CES with the prospect of a rare high-concept hard drive design in the Blade Runner, but it left out the rather important matter of when we could buy the Philippe Starck-designed storage. As we've discovered, we didn't have to wait long -- the Blade Runner has just become available. Plunk down $300 and you'll get a 4TB, USB 3.0-based external drive that melds a blob-like disk shell with aluminum blades that both cool the main body and create a (minor) conversation piece. Just be sure to hurry if you're looking for a dash of art with your extra drive space, as it's doubtful that the Blade Runner's 9,999-unit production run will last.

Filed under: Storage

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Source: LaCie

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/01/25/lacie-blade-runner-drive-now-available/

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