terrarium chinless

Wednesday, November 28, 2012

Kuwait businesses urged to combine vision with tech innovation ...

During his keynote at the high-profile knowledge and networking conference, Sam Alkharrat, Managing Director, SAP MENA, claimed that the business sector in Kuwait is undergoing an encouraging shift towards innovative, value-added business software solutions.

"Companies don't have unlimited funds?they never have," said Alkharrat.

"Today's technologies allow them to take the cost out of non-value add activities and put it back into the value and innovation layer.

Fundamentally, companies need to change the way they run the business and think globally. Whether it's private or public sector, urban or rural, every organization needs a shared vision, the right people to rally around that vision and the advanced technologies so they can innovate."
"IT is no longer on the side-line. IT is the business," added Alkharrat.

"By combining vision with technology, astute business leaders can outperform the competition, create opportunities, and be truly successful in a global economy."

Strong present, strong future

Now in its 40th year, SAP is the world's leading business software company, and recently concluded a successful Q3 2012 as global software revenue increased 17% to ?1,026m (12% at Constant Currencies).

There was also triple digit growth in the key innovation areas of cloud, SAP's in-memory computing flagship offering HANA and mobility.

Kuwait represents SAP's third largest market in the Gulf, with IT market intelligence firm IDC noting the country's 2011 IT spend stood at US $1bn. The company recently inaugurated a new office in Kuwait City.

The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region is at the heart of SAP's long-term global growth strategy that includes doubling its addressable market, reaching 1 billion people and generating global revenue of ?20bn by 2015.

SAP aims to achieve these goals through a multi-pronged innovation agenda comprising synchronized investments in five interconnected elements: extending a leadership position in Applications, broadening its footprint in Analytics, expanding its reach through Mobile, becoming a profitable leader in the Cloud, and growing the fastest in Technology and Database.

The power of HANA and Customer 360

In particular, excitement is building across MENA, including Kuwait, about the potential of HANA, a ground-breaking platform rooted in-memory computing that transforms business by streamlining applications, analytics, planning, predictive analysis, and sentiment analysis on a single platform to empower businesses in real-time.

SAP HANA customers worldwide include Colgate-Palmolive, Adobe, Bosch and Siemens. Yodobashi, a large Japanese retailer, recently highlighted the technology's transformative potential when it accelerated the calculation of incentives for loyalty customers from three days of data processing, once a month, to two seconds - a performance improvement of over 100,000 times. A further 18 companies have achieved a similar or better performance boost using HANA.

"Ground-breaking innovations like SAP HANA help our customers access and deliver information at unprecedented speeds and empower them with fundamentally new ways to run their businesses better," said Alkharrat.

The SAP 360 Customer solution is the latest innovation to run on HANA. The solution harnesses the power of in-memory computing, cloud, enterprise mobility and collaboration to allow organizations to revolutionize the way they engage with their customers beyond traditional customer relationship management (CRM).

Giving customers comprehensive, 360 degree real-time insight by combining their customer data from transactional systems (CRM/ERP/SCM) with social web data, organizations can personalize each customer engagement through any channel to build loyalty and trust.

Through the real-time execution capabilities of SAP 360 Customer, organizations can execute end-to-end customer processes effectively and efficiently in the cloud, on-premise or on mobile devices

"This is a game-changing solution that will help companies market better, sell better, service better and truly create remarkable experiences for their customers," Alkharrat explained.

"With SAP 360 Customer powered by SAP HANA, companies gain true 360-degree customer insight that is real-time, actionable and available anywhere."

The Power of Small

Alkharrat was also keen to pay tribute to the "power of small" during his keynote, noting that nearly 80% of SAP's customers hail from small and medium enterprise (SME) sector.

"SAP understands the unique needs of small and midsize businesses and entrepreneurs," Alkharrat explained.

"We want to see SMEs in Kuwait that are more agile and able to operate around the clock. We want to see SMEs with enhanced visibility and decision making that can not only lead to better employee productivity, customer engagements and responsiveness, but also help them keep pace with larger companies and gain a competitive edge in their marketplace."

MENA and Kuwait to the fore

SAP is currently in the midst of executing a four-year additional spend plan across MENA.
Highlights include recruiting more than 500 additional employees, opening several new offices and expanding the company's partner ecosystem and the SAP University Alliances program. Additionally, significant increases will be made in the availability of comprehensive, innovative and localized service offerings.

The plans also includes the region's IT-specific Training and Development Center, which will certify more than 2,000 new consultants within the next four years, triple the company's existing consulting capabilities in the region, as well as accelerate and extend the localization and Arabization of SAP solutions.

The first mover initiative is also structured to shape the region's IT future through co-creating and innovating solutions with partners, customers and independent software vendors in fields such as mobility, HANA, cloud, urban management, smart city functionalities, and Islamic banking.

"SAP's investment in Kuwait is hugely welcome, and is set to play a vital part in the country's development and economic diversification," said HE Frank Marcus Mann, German Ambassador to the State of Kuwait, speaking at the recent inauguration of SAP's new office in Kuwait City.

"The German government places the highest importance on the development of IT infrastructure in Germany. IT innovation is worldwide more important than ever before, and I am delighted that a German company shows its commitment to contribute to this development in Kuwait."

Source: http://www.ameinfo.com/kuwait-businesses-urged-combine-vision-tech-320538

wheres my refund photo of whitney houston in casket carrot top george huguely whitney houston casket photo match play championship the national enquirer

The Subliminal Mind ? Self Hypnosis | Positive Affirmations for a ...

Please see www.thesubliminalmind.com for more details. The Subliminal Mind involves positive subliminal affirmations with wonderful music for a healthier lifestyle. You are able to hear whilst you may be awake or rest as well as the affirmations nevertheless reach a subconscious notice assisting we. ? Titles Include ? [ A Healthy We ] Healthy We Lower Blood Pressure Better Eating Habits Great Health Weight Loss Exercise Motivation [ Sleep magic ] Fast Asleep Melt Away Stress Deep Sleep Clear Breathing Wash Away Anxiety Assist With Depression Wide Awake [Self Improvement] Company Success Self Image Controlling Emotions Prosperity plus Wealth Procrastination Gone Time Management Public Speaking Self Improvement Then [Fighting Depression plus Anxiety] Dealing With Depression Stress Relief Self Love plus Acceptance Higher Self Esteem Confidence Booster Stop Negative Thoughts [Sharpen The Mind] Memory Improvement Better Listening Mind Like A steel Trap Understand That Word Patience to know Understand Fast plus Easily Better Spelling plus Reading [Improve The Relationships] Overcoming Shyness Better Self Worth Communications Savvy Perfection inside Interaction Self Esteem Booster Envy plus Jealousy Moving On Breaking The Ice

Source: http://thehypnosismania.com/review/self-help-hypnosis/the-subliminal-mind-self-hypnosis-positive-affirmations-for-a-better-lifestyle?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=the-subliminal-mind-self-hypnosis-positive-affirmations-for-a-better-lifestyle

humber perfect game ufc 145 fight card ufc145 chimpanzee chimpanzee the lucky one pittsburgh pirates

Using biomarkers from prehistoric human feces to track settlement and agriculture

ScienceDaily (Nov. 26, 2012) ? For researchers who study Earth's past environment, disentangling the effects of climate change from those related to human activities is a major challenge, but now University of Massachusetts Amherst geoscientists have used a biomarker from human feces in a completely new way to establish the first human presence, the arrival of grazing animals and human population dynamics in a landscape.

Doctoral student Robert D'Anjou and his advisor Raymond Bradley, director of the Climate System Research Center at UMass Amherst, with UMass colleagues Nick Balascio and David Finkelstein, describe their findings in the current online edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

"We are really excited about how well this method worked," D'Anjou says. "Without even knowing it, early settlers were recording their history for us, and in the most unlikely of ways, in their poop. The prehistoric settlers and their livestock pooped and their feces washed into the lake, which over time left a record of trace amounts of specific molecules that are only produced in the intestines of higher mammals. When you find these molecules at certain concentrations and in specific ratios, it provides an unmistakable indicator that people were living in the area."

Bradley adds, "This approach opens the door to other studies, where the presence of humans is uncertain; we believe it has great potential for much wider applications in archaeology."

D'Anjou carried out the work just north of the Arctic Circle, at Lake Liland in the Lofoten Islands in northern Norway, where humans were thought to have lived in prehistoric settlements from the early Iron Age through the Viking period. They extracted two sediment cores from the lake bottom and used radiocarbon measurements and the presence of volcanic ash from Iceland to establish their chronology. The sediments provided a continuous record extending back roughly 7,000 years.

Paleoclimatologists have long used markers in lakebed sediments, such as charcoal from humans' fires and pollen from cultivated plants, as a natural archive of environmental changes to estimate when humans first began having an impact. But these indirect indicators must be used with care when reconstructing the history of a place because it's not always clear that they indicate human activity in the same area.

By contrast, the presence of a molecular biomarker directly linked to humans, one transmitted through their bowel movements, offers "a strong human signal," as the authors put it, one that can be dated with "excellent chronological control." D'Anjou and colleagues extracted the compound coprostanol, a molecular marker formed from the digestion of cholesterol in the human gut, from the sediment, plus other sterols characteristic of other mammals to estimate the presence of sheep and cattle. From these, they were able to produce a long-term record of the presence and relative population size of humans extending back over thousands of years at the site.

In addition, the geoscientists used two other molecular markers to reconstruct the vegetation history: relative length of carbon molecules found in leaf waxes (different in forest and grassland), and pyrolytic polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH) as evidence of fire in the Lake Liland area. They say that taken together, the sediment cores, vegetation changes and fire records clearly define a pre-settlement period with no detectable human activity in the lake's water catchment area from about 7,300 to 2,250 years ago.

At that point, however, changes in the background state appear in the record, marking an "abrupt shift" to significantly increased levels of pyrolytic PAH first, followed by increased human fecal material. This likely indicates that as people moved in, they first cleared the land by burning before establishing a permanent settlement, the researchers say. "This interpretation is bolstered," they add, by the leaf wax record that shows a "marked transition to a more grassland-dominated landscape beginning at this time."

After the initial influx of people to the region, D'Anjou and colleagues say the record shows a lull in human activity from about 2,040 to 1,900 years ago, reflected in all markers. After this, the human and livestock populations steadily increased to a local maximum around the year 500, based on the fecal record, then fell again to a second minimum around the year 850.

The climate scientists note a further decline in human activity and population to another minimum at about AD 1750 that coincided with the highest relative grassland cover for the entire 7,300-year history. Findings related to human activity over the past 7,300 years in northern Norway correlate well with other climate reconstructions, in particular summer temperature patterns indicating poor vs. fruitful growing seasons. This shows that the early settlers were vulnerable to small changes in summer temperature at this far northern location.

Overall, the authors say, the new fecal markers are likely to prove valuable in many other places, to distinguish natural from human factors that influenced the environment in the past.

Share this story on Facebook, Twitter, and Google:

Other social bookmarking and sharing tools:

Story Source:

The above story is reprinted from materials provided by University of Massachusetts at Amherst, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.

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

Journal Reference:

Robert M. D?Anjou, Raymond S. Bradley, Nicholas L. Balascio, and David B. Finkelstein. Climate impacts on human settlement and agricultural activities in northern Norway revealed through sediment biogeochemistry. PNAS, November 26, 2012 DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1212730109

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

Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/strange_science/~3/a4plpf3KC-c/121126151049.htm

lee evans lee evans 49ers vs giants giants vs 49ers san francisco 49ers san francisco 49ers sf 49ers

Tuesday, November 27, 2012

Tablet Display Deliveries Finally Top Notebook computers in October

Posted on Nov 27, 2012 in Technology

It has been a sluggish build during the last many years, but the very first time ever, NPD is confirming that tablet shows are shipping in greater amounts than individuals destined for notebook computers. This doesn?t mean mobile computing are dead by stretch from the imagination, however it does provide light a fascinating trend that?s only prone to accelerate.

Tablet deliveries the coming year might start to exceed traditional notebook computers, but PC hardware is on the considerably longer upgrade cycle than pills. Most customers think little of casting away a 2 years old tablet, while notebook computers typically hold their value for considerably longer. This might partly explain the phenomenon, but here?s what DisplaySearch thinks.

Inventory buildup in laptops: The notebook PC logistics has some slow-moving inventory?and panel deliveries rejected by almost 4 million models from September to October.

Change to Home windows 8: Notebook PC panel purchasers bought less shows because they ready for new Home windows 8 designs.

Source: http://daily-portal.com/2012/11/tablet-display-deliveries-finally-top-notebook-computers-in-october/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=tablet-display-deliveries-finally-top-notebook-computers-in-october

albert pujols the shining mariano rivera mariano rivera jobs report tiger woods masters 2012 nikki haley

SEC Chairwoman Relinquishes Post

The head of the government's financial sector watchdog is stepping down.

Mary Schapiro, who chairs the Securities and Exchange Commission, announced today that she will leave her post next month after four years of working to retool the agency after a severe financial crisis it failed to prevent.

"Over the past four years, we have brought a record number of enforcement actions, engaged in one of the busiest rule-making periods, and gained greater authority from Congress to better fulfill our mission," Schapiro said in a statement.

Appointed by President Obama in January 2009 and unanimously confirmed, Schapiro was the first woman to lead the SEC.

"When Mary agreed to serve nearly four years ago, she was fully aware of the difficulties facing the SEC and our economy as a whole," Obama said in a statement. "But she accepted the challenge, and today, the SEC is stronger and our financial system is safer and better able to serve the American people - thanks in large part to Mary's hard work."

The administration has praised Schapiro, 57, for mounting more aggressive enforcement operations across the financial industry, initiating a record number of cases, and for helping shape the new set of regulations and consumer protections included in the Dodd-Frank Wall Street overhaul legislation.

But critics point out that Schapiro's SEC failed to nab and punish financial industry wrongdoers in any significant way, although some would likely agree that she has improved the agency from where it was in 2008, when, among the agency's many failures, it missed the Bernie Madoff Ponzi scheme.

Obama has named SEC commissioner Elisse Walter - a George W. Bush appointee - to chair the agency going forward.

ABC News' Zunaira Zaki contributed.

Prescribe morning-after pills in advance, say pediatricians

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Wading into the incendiary subject of birth control for young teenagers, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) on Monday called on the nation's pediatricians to counsel all of their adolescent patients about emergency contraception and make advance prescriptions for it available to girls under 17.

Because current federal policy bans over-the-counter sales of the pills to girls under 17, having a prescription on hand could help younger teens obtain emergency contraception more quickly than if they have to contact a physician only after they need it.

Calling the AAP decision "significant," Susan Wood, former assistant commissioner for women's health at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), said, "it's not often you see physician organizations saying that their patients are better off without the physician involvement."

The announcement was controversial with some religious groups.

"Since when should the physicians take over the responsibility of what parents should be doing?," said Michael O'Dea, founder and executive director of Christus Medicus Foundation.

The non-profit foundation provides consulting services to health plans which wish to avoid payments to physicians and hospitals for providing abortions, sterilization, contraception and other services it considers inconsistent with biblical teachings.

"Parents are the primary educators of children, not physicians or the government," O'Dea said. "This is a violation of parents rights to be the primary educator of their children."

The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, which represents the country's Catholic church leadership, called the recommendation "tragic."

"It is a very sad day when physicians think that "good medicine" is to attack an adolescent girl's healthy fertility with potent drugs just to prevent a possible pregnancy," said Theresa Notare, assistant director for the Conference's Natural Family Planning Program.

"This recommendation becomes tragic when we consider that the recommendation is built upon overriding a parent's rights over their own children," she said.

Whether pediatricians heed the recommendation remains to be seen.

"Some pediatricians are already doing this," said Dr. Melissa Kottke, director of The Jane Fonda Center for Adolescent Reproductive Health at Emory University and medical director for the teen services program at Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta where it is common practice to provide Plan B, "a morning after pill", in an advanced fashion.

"Pediatricians who primarily take care of adolescents may already be comfortable with it but what this recommendation does is provide encouragement and support for pediatricians who take care of the full spectrum of pediatrics."

Dr. Cora Breuner, a pediatrician at Seattle Children's Hospital who led the AAP panel that produced the recommendations said pediatricians in general have preferred not to talk about emergency contraception, let alone offer advance prescriptions.

"We tend not to like bringing up stuff that's controversial," she said.

Emergency contraception for adolescents has been one of the most politically fraught areas in healthcare for almost a decade.

In 2005 the U.S. Food and Drug Administration declined to approve any over-the-counter sales of Plan B, overruling its panel of outside experts as well as its own scientists. Last December the FDA reversed that stance and moved to approve over-the-counter sales with no age limits. But Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Kathleen Sebelius overruled it, ordering that for girls under 17 the pills remain available only by prescription.

The FDA subsequently denied a Citizen's Petition that would have allowed over-the-counter access to emergency contraception for women of all ages.

As a result, teenagers "face a significant barrier if they suddenly need emergency contraception at midnight on a Saturday," said Susan Wood, former assistant commissioner for women's health at the FDA. She resigned from the agency in 2005 over its Plan B decision and is now director of the Jacobs Institute of Women's Health at George Washington University in Washington, D.C.

The Center for Reproductive Rights, a global legal advocacy organization devoted to reproductive rights, has filed a lawsuit seeking to overturn Sebelius' decision and welcomed the AAP recommendation.

"We are very pleased to see this recommendation because it represents progress towards our ultimate goal which is that women of all ages should have unrestricted access to emergency contraception, said Janet Crepps, senior counsel in the U.S. legal program at the Center.

Women's advocates also hailed the recommendation, saying it offers a workaround current health policy which places unnecessary hurdles in the way of young teenagers obtaining emergency contraception.

"This shames the department of Health and Human Services and its nakedly political attempt to override science and medicine," said Terry O'Neill, president of the National Organization for Women, a non-profit advocacy organization. "HHS's policy means doctors have to use this workaround, and good for them, but they shouldn't have to do it," she said.

A spokeswoman for HHS, Erin Shields Britt, declined on behalf of the department to comment.

The most common form of emergency contraception is a high dose of a regular birth-control pill such as Plan B and Plan B One-Step from Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd or Next Choice from Watson Pharmaceuticals Inc. They generally sell for $10 to $80 and, although they can work as long as 120 hours after unprotected sex, are most effective in the first 24 hours.

All work by preventing ovulation, not by stopping the implantation of a fertilized egg. "These are not abortifacients," said Seattle Children's Breuner. Abortifacients are drugs or devices used to cause abortion.

GREATER USE OF EMERGENCY CONTRACEPTION

A 2006-08 survey found that 14 percent of sexually experienced girls had used emergency contraception, up from 8 percent in a 2002 survey. The most common reason was condom failure, but 13 percent of the girls said it was because of rape.

A 2010 analysis of seven randomized studies of emergency contraception found that having a morning-after prescription in hand did not increase teens' sexual activity or decrease use of standard contraceptives but did increase use of the pill and shorten the time before a teenager used it after sex.

"It's just common sense that requiring a prescription is a barrier," said Bill Alpert, chief program officer of the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy. "If an august and respected medical group like AAP is suggesting providing emergency contraception to minors is OK, that is a big deal."

That is especially so when teens face other obstacles to getting emergency contraception. For instance, in a 2012 study that had 17-year-olds telephone pharmacies asking about morning-after pills, only 57 percent of them correctly told the caller that she could get the drugs without a prescription.

Another barrier is that some physicians refuse to provide the prescriptions to teenagers, while others do so only in cases of rape, AAP's research shows, suggesting that the refusal "may be related to the physician's beliefs about whether it is OK for teenagers to have sex."

But pediatricians, said AAP in its policy statement, "have a duty to inform their patients about relevant, legally available treatment options," even those "to which they object."

One factor in the AAP's recommendation, which is being published in the journal "Pediatrics," is that although teen pregnancies in the United States have declined since 1991, the rate is higher than in most other developed countries.

The percent of 15- to 18-year-olds who report ever having intercourse - just over 40 percent, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention - is, however, lower than in many developed countries. In other words, fewer of America's teens are having sex but more are getting pregnant.

"We think this is a big deal," Breuner said of the new recommendation. "The mothership of pediatricians has come out in favor of encouraging routine counseling and advance emergency-contraception prescriptions as one part of a public health strategy to reduce teen pregnancy."

(Additional reporting by Toni Clarke in Boston; editing by Prudence Crowther and Carol Bishopric)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/prescribe-morning-pills-advance-pediatricians-003354770--finance.html

california earthquake california earthquake tyson chandler tyson chandler stephen hill draft tracker the pirates band of misfits

If my toddler doesn't eat, what happens? | BabyCenter Blog

When I picked up my baby, Ieuan, from day care last Monday, he greeted me with a huge smile. ?He?s just such a happy little boy!? his nursery worker said. Then, as she does at every pick-up, she gave me feedback on his day. ?Ieuan had a good day,? she began, ?he played with building blocks, got very messy in the sand pit and ate all his food.?

Wait a minute. What?

?For breakfast, he had cereal and he ate all of that. For snack, he had apple sauce and he ate all of that. For lunch, he had spaghetti and he ate most of that!?

Sorry, what?

That was Monday. On Tuesday, same thing. And, Thursday ? the only other day he attends day care ? the report was exactly the same. 100% happy. 100% food eaten.

?I don?t get it,? my husband said, baffled. ?He never does that with us.?

Sure, Ieaun is a happy boy but, at home, he?barely?eats anything.?On Friday, he drank a few bottles of milk and ate half a bag of potato chips. That was it for the whole day!

He doesn?t look malnourished and he definitely eats ? at least, he eats on the three days he attends day care ? but is it enough? And, what will happen to him if this phase continues?

The BabyCenter Experts know all about?toddlers who refuse to eat:

It?s no coincidence that right around the time children learn to walk? they become much less interested in food. When there?s so much to discover, who has time to eat? Plus, their growth has slowed and, no matter how active they are, their energy needs are smaller?

Rather than get hung up on the fact that your toddler has refused everything you put in front of her today, write down what she eats over the course of one week. Parents are often surprised to find that their child?s food intake balances out.?

Don?t forget to consider fluids in the food equation, too. Milk and juice can offer vital nutrients? But since too much fluid can also dampen an appetite, you may want to serve drinks after and between meals.

This description fits Ieuan (and his mom) perfectly. I give him a bottle while I rush around preparing his meal. I can?t believe it never occurred to me that this might be a mistake. And, I focus on the uneaten meals. Probably, I don?t want to think about the?day care?s successes.

Ieuan is a rambunctious toddler. It?s a phase. Just wait ?til he discovers pizza.

How do you feel when your child won?t eat?

You can read more from Stacie at Mama Lewis and the Amazing Adventures of the Half-Brained Baby. Or, check out what the BabyCenter Experts say about toddler feeding problems such as refusing to eat, picky eaters and refusing to eat favorite foods.

Photo credit: Stacie Lewis (That?s Ieuan on Thanksgiving. He wants out of his highchair RIGHT NOW.)

Source: http://blogs.babycenter.com/mom_stories/112512-if-my-toddler-doesnt-eat-what-happens/

larry brown thomas kinkade pat summit brewers matt cain adastra holocaust remembrance day