PIERRE, S.D. (AP) -- South Dakota could lose at least $10 million in federal funding from automatic spending cuts set to take effect Friday, but Gov. Dennis Daugaard said he is most worried about what will happen in programs that educate struggling students and help low-income people heat their homes and put food on the table.
Daugaard said state officials Wednesday were still trying to understand exactly what would be cut from federal funds handled by the state and how those cuts would be applied. He said he was asking state agencies to provide more details on the cuts.
"I don't know that it'll be a dramatic impact. We're trying to understand that right now. We're trying to evaluate that right now," Daugaard said.
If President Barack Obama and Republican congressional leaders don't reach agreement on another way to reduce the federal debt by Friday, $85 billion in automatic, across-the-board cuts will take effect.
The Republican governor said he's upset that the president has insisted that the federal spending cuts be applied across the board, rather than letting federal agencies focus the cuts in programs that have little impact on people's daily lives.
For example, some of the cuts will hit grant programs that help cities build water lines and other projects. Those cities will not be forced to lay off anyone, but will only have to scale back pipelines, Daugaard said.
"That's an easier area to cut than, say, somebody who's counting on it to pay their heating bills or pay their food bills," Daugaard said.
Daugaard said school districts will lose money for special education and programs that help struggling students, such as one that provides teachers to help students who have trouble reading. Cuts also are slated for a program that helps low-income people pay winter heating bills and the nutrition program for low-income women with small children.
Jason Dilges, the governor's budget director, said the cuts could bring furloughs for state employees paid with federal money. The governor and the Legislature could decide to use state money to replace lost federal funds, he said.
"We'll have to look at the citizens of South Dakota and their well-being because these are going to affect us relatively quickly, Dilges said.
The timing of the federal cuts also complicates the process of approving a state budget for the year that begins July 1. The Legislature plans to pass that budget by the end of next week, the end of the main run of South Dakota's legislative session.
Dilges said he plans to propose only minor changes in the $4.1 billion state budget Daugaard proposed in early December, but the federal spending cuts could affect state revenue and spending. If prolonged spending cuts hurt the economy, state tax collections could suffer, he said.
Wade Pogany, director of the Associated School Boards of South Dakota, said school districts across the state likely will lose between $2 million and $3.5 million in federal funding for special education and programs that help disadvantaged students. As the Legislature prepares to pass a state budget, schools are asking that lawmakers provide extra money to help schools recover from state budget cuts made two years ago, he said.
"It couldn't come at a worse time for schools, given their financial situation right now," Pogany said of the federal cuts.
The South Dakota National Guard also has said the federal budget cuts would likely force it to furlough 548 full-time personnel for 22 days over the next five months. More than half the National Guard's 918 full-time employees would lose one day's work and pay each week for 22 weeks starting in late April. They would lose more than $4.2 million in wages, officials said.
Daugaard said a group that all states use to analyze federal spending has estimated South Dakota will lose $14 million in federal spending from March through September, but the state budget office estimates the loss at only $10 million. The state expects to lose nearly $5.7 million in federal money from March through June 30, the end of the state's budget year, and another $4.3 million from July through September, the end of the federal budget year, he said.
The governor said he expects the cuts to take place Friday, but the president and Congress might be forced to make a budget deal later to replace the automatic cuts. For example, if a budget resolution doesn't pass Congress by April 15, members of Congress won't get paid, he said.
Assuming you have just expertly negotiated the sale of your home, you most likely are making preparations for the buyers to usher in a home inspector to check the wellbeing and condition of your property. Each of these helpful suggestions could prepare you in advance for that timely and organized property inspection.
1. Dispose of whatever clutter or dirt which could slow down a home inspector from performing their task. Trying to keep thingsorganized and clear can provide him accessibility to as much of your home as is possible.
2. Come up with arrangements for your own pets to live at another venue during the entire property inspection. This lets the inspector space to wander unhampered without being upset by domestic pets.
3. A home inspector will need to go in the garage area in addition to other areas along the exterior of your property, so that means you must ensure doors are open and unlocked. Pick up fallen leaves and remove falling dangers such as spread play toys and landscaping gadgets.
4. Advise the home inspector for any residents in the house, especially small kids, and elderly people.
5. Wardrobes and storage locations will have to be properly cleaned out to stop an influx of clutter from plummeting on the home inspector.
6. Routinely keep all appliances and utilities connected for example the clothes washer, clothes dryer, furnace, air conditioning unit, and oven. The inspector has to test them out to ascertain they are in working condition.
7.Switch on lights all over any dark areas just like the hot water heater, furnace, den or stairways. If you have keys for your electrical boxes, keep these things available for convenient use.
8. You can help the home inspector by continuing to keep your own car port and attic room space thoroughly clean and spotless.
9. An ?Atlanta home inspector normally takes between two and 4 hours, based mostly on the size of the property. Give the home inspector ample time to get the job done by looking over every little thing carefully. This should lessen any upcoming problems between buyers and sellers.
?10. Once you are familiar with any trouble spots, inform the buyers and home inspector right away. Have proper maintenance documentation accessible showing the repairs.
11. Queries may possibly arise within a property inspection. Seek to stay serene and friendly during the entire process. If something is required to be repaired, acquire a quote of the costs and handle them appropriately. Getting mad could end up killing the deal and leaving you with an unsold home.
12. Give the home inspector space or room to complete their task. But, be readily available in the event that they have any questions.
We talk a lot about things you can do to be more productive or improve your personal performance. Many times it involves a lot of keeping your head down and focusing on what you have to do, but as author Blake Butler writes, none of us work in a vacuum.
In an old, somewhat bizarre post from his personal blog, Butler stresses to those who want to be a writer the importance of being "an open node:"
BE AN OPEN NODE.
I am amazed sometimes by people who want to be writers and yet seem to know little to nothing about even the more popular journals, who don't read that actively, who don't buy literary magazines hardly ever but send out their own work constantly, who don't buy even their friends work, who etc,etc....Getting involved is being involved, and if you aren't actively promoting others, I don't know why in hell you'd think anyone would ever want to read or support you.
While Butler is directly addressing other writers, his advice holds water for a lot of other industries as well. Keeping up with what your peers and offering any small measure of support serves a few purposes: it's a great way to grow your network, and it also can provide you with an array of case studies for things you'd like to try or improve. And, as Butler states, one good turn on your part can make all the difference when you need a hand down the road.
Where did Lucy purchase her new vagina? | G D C S + S W D P via Hacker News
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Will Ferrell will be honored by MTV at its 2013 movie awards show in April for his work in television and film comedy, the cable television network said on Wednesday.
The actor and comedian, who spent years on the TV show "Saturday Night Live" and appeared in the films "Anchorman" and "Elf," will receive MTV's first Comedic Genius Award.
"Over the course of his extraordinary, 17-plus-year career, he has entertained audiences across the globe with an impressive array of laugh-out-loud performances on air, online and in films," Stephen Friedman, MTV's president, said in a statement.
Ferrell will receive the award at the April 14 show from the Sony Pictures Studios Lot in Culver City, California.
(Reporting by Noreen O'Donnell; Editing by Patricia Reaney and Eric Beech)
There's been a minor brouhaha over the fact that some horse meat recently found its way into iKEA meatballs in Europe.
In America, because people get attached to their horses and dogs, there is a stigma against eating the meat of both. When we think of horses, we think of My Friend Flicka, or Black Beauty, or Seattle Slew. Eating one of those magnificent creatures -- or their brethren -- would seem almost sacrilegious.
Likewise, when we think of dogs, we think of Balto, or Lassie, or Rin Tin Tin, or our personal pets. Repaying the loyalty of man's best friend by consuming him would feel wrong. So we refrain.
India has its sacred cows; we have our sacred dogs and sacred horses. Are we being just as shortsighted as India? We eat cows, which are lovable creatures in their own way (think Elsie). And we eat venison (think Bambi). Once upon a time we slaughtered buffalo just for their tongues.
We eat sheep, which are sorta cute. We eat pigs, which are even cuter, at least when they're young. And we not only eat calves, we raise them in small pens so their meat is more tender.
We don't eat cats, partly because they're pets, but also because they're not supposed to be tasty and they don't provide much meat anyway. But dogs are reportedly delicious. (Just ask Barack.)
Horse meat, according to Wikipedia, is slightly sweet, tender, and low in fat. Sounds yummy.
We tend to shy away from eating animals we consider intelligent, like dolphins and chimpanzees. And those other brainiacs, elephants and whales, are endangered (despite their high IQ's).
(Question: if an mammal is more intelligent, should that exempt it from consumption? Are less intelligent creatures, like cows and sheep, less sensitive to pain than dolphins and chimps? Do they have fewer nerve endings along with their less advanced cognition? And if this is a relevant criterion, why do we eat pigs, which are more intelligent than dogs?)
We eat all sorts of birds, though we don't eat eagles. But eagles, though once endangered, are now plentiful, and the population currently numbers over 100,000 in this country. They were traditionally a game bird, and there was even a bounty on their heads in Alaska from 1917 to 1952. So why not? Because it would be unpatriotic? Turkeys are still plentiful, but a Thanksgiving bald eagle would be a feast to remember.
These taboos have always struck me as a little silly.
For you pet owners who object, think about it: what better way is there for you to honor your departed pet than to eat it? Your horse or dog will actually become part of you. How could you be any closer than that? (In fact, much horse meat is not healthy because of the medications they're given over their lifetimes; but I am talking theoretically, about "organic" horses.)
If you prefer to bury your pet in the backyard, be assured that it will just gradually rot and be eaten by worms.
The Internet didn?t kill TV! According to Mike Proulx, the Internet has become TV?s best friend. Proulx will be the opening keynote speaker at SES New York 2013. The leading event for experienced marketing and advertising professionals will take place March 25-28, 2013, at the New York Marriott Marquis.
Proulx is a Senior Vice President and the Director of Social Media at Hill Holliday, a renowned advertising agency based in Boston, where he leads a team with a focus on cross-channel integration, emerging and social media. He has spent the last 17 years working at various interactive, high-tech, and new media companies on the agency-side, client-side, and as an entrepreneur. He has spoken at dozens of events and has been widely featured in the press including The New York Times, Fast Company, TV Guide, Forbes, BusinessWeek, Mashable, BuzzFeed, and NPR.
Proulx conceived, produced, directed, and co-host the TVnext summit, which took place in early 2011 and 2012. He is the co-author of Social TV, a best-selling book from Wiley publishing that launched in February of 2012. He is also the host of the social TV web series, ?The Pulse on Lost Remote?. He holds a Master?s degree in Computer Information Systems from Bentley University and in 2012 was named the Ad Club?s Media All Star.
His opening keynote is titled, ?Social TV: How Marketers Can Reach and Engage Audiences by Connecting Television to the Web, Social Media, and Mobile.?
Search Engine Watch (SEW) asked Mike Proulx (MP) five questions about his upcoming keynote. Here are his answers:
SEW: How does the convergence of television with the web, social media, and mobile change our behaviors and shake up our long standing beliefs about TV?
MP: There are those who believe that television is a traditional medium with an impending death. The web, social media, and mobile have evolved TV into a multi-screen experience that transcends devices. Not only are we watching more television than ever before, we?re interacting with programming on the ?second screen? in ways that enrich storylines and bring us together to virtually co-view. The modern era of television is a new media that?s more social, more connected, and more portable?and because of this TV is more alive than it?s ever been.
SEW: How has social media created a new and powerful "backchannel" and why does this fuel the renaissance of live broadcasts?
MP: There are a ton of posts happening in social media about any given TV show as it airs. Since Twitter is open and public, it acts as television?s backchannel filled with real-time commentary and conversation ? And it?s not just about TV series but also TV commercials giving producers and marketers instant feedback about their content. Live television events are seeing some of the highest ratings in years and social media brings a level of community and connection to TV watching the likes of which the medium has never before experienced.
SEW: Can you give us some examples of how mobile devices allow us to watch and interact with television whenever and wherever we want?
MP: Tablets, smartphones, and laptops enable television?s portability but it?s apps like HBO Go, ABC Player, Xfinity Remote, and CNN that deliver ?TV? content via those devices. And in the 4G world of mobile, we can watch TV in places once inconceivable. My favorite spot? Laying out on the roof deck on a warm summer night with my iPad in hand streaming HBO?s The Newsroom.
SEW: Why would ?connected TVs? blend web and television content into a unified big screen experience that will bring us back into our living rooms?
MP: Apple TV, Roku, Boxee TV, Google TV, Samsung Smart TVs, etc. stream online video (that was once relegated to our computer screens) onto the ?big screen? of our living rooms. HD YouTube clips suddenly come to life in ways that are far more impactful and dynamic than tiny smartphone screens further blurring the lines of what?s ?TV.? While the notion of TV everywhere lets us watch TV at will regardless of our physical location, the increasingly seamless ability to channel streaming video through the TV set makes the living room that much more compelling.
SEW: With the television landscape changing, why should brands approach the medium once labeled ?traditional? as new media?
MP: TV has become mashed up with the Web, social media, and mobile. Television networks, providers, brands, and agencies must continue to unshackle themselves from dated business and advertising models and rediscover television as a new medium. This means planning television and digital together to tell stories across devices and engage viewers with TV experiences not just TV shows. The speed, scale, and degree of change that has and is happening create enormous opportunity for those brands who have the courage to innovate.
SES New York 2013 offers a variety of conference passes and on-site training. If you register by Thursday, March 7, 2013, you can save up to $600 on Platinum or All Access passes.
For more information, click on Rates and Registration Details. Group discounts for 4 or more pass holders from the same company are also available by contacting [email?protected] and are the best value for the lowest price possible.
I should disclose that SES New York is a client of my agency. But, trust me, TV is not dead yet.
Become an Expert Digital Marketer at SES New York March 25-28, 2013: With dozens of sessions on Search, Social, Local and Mobile, you'll leave SES with everything and everyone you need to know. Hurry, early bird rates expire February 21. Register today!
In its recent report on "Yelp's Rocky Relationship with Small Businesses," PBS Media Shift was the latest mainstream media outlet to cover one of the most controversial topics in all of local search: search engines' filtering of customer reviews.
The topic first came to prominence four years ago in Kathleen Richards' landmark piece on Yelp's aggressive sales pitches -- or extortion, depending on your perspective and whom you believe. While I was never fully convinced of corporate misbehavior on Yelp's part, the company hasn't done itself any favors by continuing to allow its field operatives to use?deceptive sales tactics. Despite?its best efforts to educate?both business owners and everyday users of the site,?the poor reputation of Yelp's salespeople continues to contribute to confusion around review filtering among the small business community. I hope to be able to clear up some of that confusion with this post and offer a few tactical tips to help avoid the frustration these filters can cause.
Why review filters exist
As local search usage among the general public has exploded over the last several years, more and more directories have (rightly) seen reviews as a way to:
Gauge the offline popularity of a business in their algorithms
Provide better insight to searchers into the experience at that business
Increase the "stickiness" of their sites by increasing the sense of community
Get out of Google's Panda/Farmer purgatory by adding unique user content
In many ways, Yelp was ahead of its time on all four of these bullet points, and as a result, it had to tackle the inevitable review spam that accompanied its popularity. ?
Its answer was arguably the first widespread local review filter: an algorithm for detecting and removing spam or suspicious-looking content. ?In Yelp's own words:?
For those of you who couldn't quite keep up with Yelp's version of Micro Machines man, the primary reasons are:
To make sure reviews are left by actual people (not robots)
To make sure reviews are left by customers?and not just hired third parties
To make sure businesses don't leave reviews of themselves
Yelp's CEO, Jeremy Stoppelman, recently gave his own slower version of this rationale in a company-produced video:
How review filters work
While I don't have any detailed knowledge of Yelp's review filter specifically, many comparable filters seem to kick into action if any of the following is present in the content of the review:
Use of extreme adjectives or profanity in the review
Over-use of keywords in the review
Inclusion of links in the review
Another criterion that also tends to trigger filtering is a sudden burst of reviews preceded by or followed by a long lull between them.
Some of the more sophisticated review filters, including Yelp's, take a look at user characteristics, too, including:
Total number of reviews a user has left on the site
Distribution of ratings across all of a user's reviews
Distribution of business types among all of a user's reviews
Frequency of reviews that a user has left on the site
IP address(es) of the user when leaving reviews
The bottom line is that reviews written by active users have an astronomically-higher likelihood of "sticking" on a local search engine than those written by first-time or infrequent reviewers. And even beyond their stickiness, many local search experts (including myself) speculate that reviews left by active users also influence rankings to a much greater extent than those left by first-time or infrequent reviewers.
?
Problems with review filters
?
?I Can See the Future of Your Google Reviews?by Margaret Shulock is licensed under a?Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. Based on a work at?blumenthals.com
The algorithms behind review filters are far from perfect, as many readers probably know, and Yelp is far from the only local search engine with a review filter. In fact, Google+ has probably accrued more ire from business owners?as a result of its filter in 2012 and 2013 than any other site. ?
Unfortunately, these filters frequently:
Lead to?less-informed consumer decisions?about the experience at a business
Remove legitimate reviews, especially from less-sophisticated, less-active customers
Discourage new users from leaving reviews
All of which leads to frustration from the standpoint of a small business owner.
Avoiding review filters
Yelp is probably the most aggressive of its peers at enforcing its business review guidelines, which also happen to be the most onerous guidelines of any local search engine. ?Yelp's filtering is so aggressive that one in five reviews written on Yelp never shows up on the site!
To sum up those guidelines:
Don't ask anyone to review your business on Yelp.
Don't ask anyone to review your business on Yelp.
Don't ask anyone to review your business on Yelp.
O ye business owner who disobeys those guidelines, beware! ?You run the risk of a public shaming. ?
Although Yelp's guidelines are considerably more onerous than its peers', Google+ is?not far behind in stringency. However, many local search engines are far less prickly about soliciting reviews from customers, or even incentivizing them, and some (including Google) have even engaged in this behavior themselves.
For those who have been caught in the Google+ review filter, Mike Blumenthal has covered your travails?par excellence?and has?authored a most reasonable response. Miriam Ellis and Joy Hawkins have also given excellent advice on this front. ?
Review guidelines at major local search engines
Here are direct links to those guidelines at a few of the biggest players:
The review filters of the future
While the search engines may throttle their level of filtering?from time to time, the review filter is a local search institution that is?here to stay. ?
The primary methods of these filters, though, I think will change pretty dramatically. Rather than judging a review by its content or looking at website behavior (e.g. how many reviews a user has left for other businesses), the explosion in smartphone adoption is enabling a couple of far less easily-manipulated criteria to judge the veracity of a review.
Any local search platform operated by a handset maker (Google, Apple, Microsoft, Nokia, ...Amazon?) could register the device ID at the time of review and tie it to a bonafide human being.
Any local search platform that has implemented mobile payment processing (Google, Apple, ...Amazon?, any Square/PayPalHere partner) could disable the ability for a user to leave a review of a retail-category business unless he/she had completed a transaction at the storefront.
And even for those platforms without the handset or payment-processing advantage, requiring location-awareness for users of mobile applications prior to leaving a review seems like a no-brainer (which Yelp has already implemented and Google may be well on its way to doing).
For those sites that are more desktop-dependent, widespread adoption of primary?social logins?(Google+, Facebook, Twitter, etc.) could lead to a baked-in layer of spam-fighting. ?
As Eric Schmidt?recently said:
?Within search results, information tied to verified online profiles will be ranked higher than content without such verification, which will result in most users naturally clicking on the top (verified) results. The true cost of remaining anonymous, then, might be irrelevance.?
In some industries (e.g., DUI law, plastic surgery, psychology), anonymity may be a pre-requisite for any user reviews and these local search platforms may need a Plan B. But for most industries, requiring some sort of verified social profile would solve a lot of problems.
Facebook, of course, has a huge leg up on everyone else based on its knowledge of a user's social connections. Google+, meanwhile, could look at a user's activity across Google's entire range of products (web search, Gmail, YouTube, etc.) to stop spammers in their tracks. ?
While consumer privacy concerns around these mechanisms for review filtering may arise, many business owners would likely rejoice at a truer, less bug-ridden filtering algorithm and a more accurate and complete representation of their customers' experience.
Well, that's enough out of me for this week! How about you? What are some of your strategies for avoiding these dreaded review filters? What other methods of filtering do you see coming to Local Search?
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GENEVA (Reuters) - A former Swissair official said the airport scenes in Oscar-winning film "Argo" were a realistic depiction of the airline's unwitting role in the rescue of American diplomats from Tehran during the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
Heinz Koch, who was in charge of the now defunct air carrier's operations in Tehran at the time, said Swissair was not told about the true identities of the "very important Canadian passengers" until months after it carried the six U.S. diplomats to safety aboard one of its airplanes.
"I was informed by the Canadian embassy that they have on this particular day very important Canadian passengers on board and we should make sure that they were not off-loaded last minute. But this was purely a reservation question, we had no direct impact on immigration," he told World Radio Switzerland.
"It was a few months later when we got the first information that probably these U.S. diplomats were on board this particular Swissair flight. But we made sure that this information didn't pass around the world," Koch said.
"We still wanted to operate to and from Tehran and it would have been a big risk if the authorities would have known that we were involved in this operation," he added.
"Argo" stormed to Best Picture victory at the Oscars in Los Angeles. The honours for the Iran hostage drama marked a triumphant comeback into Hollywood's mainstream for director Ben Affleck.
The thriller, based on a true story, recounts a CIA mission to rescue six American diplomats from Iran under the cover of making a fake Hollywood film. The six escape using falsified Canadian passports and the CIA role only emerged years later.
Iran's culture minister Mohammad Hosseini said on Monday in a news agency report that the film was "anti-Iran" and lacked artistry.
Life in Tehran after the revolution - during which 52 American diplomats were held hostage - was tense, Koch said.
"The situation in town was very critical. Most other foreigners had left the country, especially families with school children because the international schools were closed down after the revolution."
Travelers had to pass through many checkpoints on the roads, manned by Revolutionary Guards, he said.
"But we as Swiss we usually passed without problems. The problem was to prove that you were not a U.S. citizen because they were looking for the Americans," Koch said.
Many Iranians and expatriates were trying to flee Iran, Koch said. Asked if he recalled anything particular on the day of the now historic escape, he said:
"No, for us it was a regular flight as we operated every morning non-stop from Tehran to Zurich. The flights were always overbooked, we were one of the very few airlines still operating to Iran," he said.
"There was always a big hassle at the check-in for last-minute tickets. Of course there were also problems for Iranians and foreign passengers because they were never sure they could leave the country or not. There were several immigration officers checking your documents, of course the Revolutionary Guards were also present."
Koch, who said that he had seen "Argo" with his wife and son in Switzerland, said the Tehran airport security scenes rang true, including Revolutionary Guards questioning passengers.
"That's realistic. When you went to the airport, you had these checkpoints before entering the building, you had checkpoints at the airport, then you had the official immigration, you had the Revolutionary Guards, and even before boarding the aircraft, the passports were checked again.
"And many passengers were stopped from leaving the country."
(Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay, editing by Paul Casciato)
Feb. 26, 2013 ? In an article published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers from Aalto University and the VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland showed experimentally that vacuum has properties not previously observed. According to the laws of quantum mechanics, it is a state with abundant potentials. Vacuum contains momentarily appearing and disappearing virtual pairs, which can be converted into detectable light particles.
The researchers conducted a mirror experiment to show that by changing the position of the mirror in a vacuum, virtual particles can be transformed into real photons that can be experimentally observed. In a vacuum, there is energy and noise, the existence of which follows the uncertainty principle in quantum mechanics.
'If we act fast enough, we can prevent the particles from recombining -- they will then be transformed into real particles that can be detected', says Dr. Sorin Paraoanu from the Aalto University School of Science.
For the experiment, the researchers used an array of superconducting quantum-interference devices (SQUID). These parts resemble devices used in imaging small magnetic fields in the brain. By changing the magnetic field, the speed of light in the device can be changed. From the standpoint of the electromagnetic field of the vacuum, radiation reflecting from this kind of device experiences it as a moving mirror.
'By quickly varying the speed of light in the array, we can extract microwave photons out of the vacuum's quantum noise', explains doctoral student Pasi L?hteenm?ki.
Future research directions for these kinds of devices include the creation of an artificial event horizon and observation or Hawking radiation emanating from it. The present observation will help cosmologists to get closer to the riddle of the birth of the universe and advance the development of extremely powerful quantum computers.
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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Aalto University.
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Journal Reference:
P. Lahteenmaki, G. S. Paraoanu, J. Hassel, P. J. Hakonen. Dynamical Casimir effect in a Josephson metamaterial. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2013; DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1212705110
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Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.
Brandeis University study finds public policy, institutional barriers are pushing racial wealth gapPublic release date: 27-Feb-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Charity Adams cadams1@brandeis.edu 781-736-8685 Brandeis University
Same gain in income produces far greater wealth for white households than black families
New research shows the dramatic gap in household wealth that now exists along racial lines in the United States cannot solely be attributed to personal ambition and behavioral choices, but rather reflects policies and institutional practices that create different opportunities for whites and African-Americans.
So powerful are these government policies and institutional practices that for typical families, a $1 increase in average income over the 25-year study period generates just $0.69 in additional wealth for an African-American household compared with $5.19 for a white household. Part of this equation results from black households having fewer opportunities to grow their savings beyond what's needed for emergencies.
"Public policies play a major role in widening the already massive racial wealth gap, and they must play a role in closing it," said Dr. Thomas Shapiro, director of the IASP and a principal author of the report "We should be investing in prosperity and equity, instead we are advancing toxic inequality. A U-turn is needed."
The study, "The Roots of the Widening Racial Wealth Gap: Explaining the Black-White Economic Divide," was conducted by the Institute on Assets and Social Policy (IASP) at Brandeis University.
"The gap presents an opportunity denied for many African American households and assures racial economic inequality for the next generation," said Tatjana Meschede, a co-author of the policy brief.
The research is unique in that it has followed nearly the same 1,700 working-age households over what is now a 25-year period from 1984 to 2009. Unlike standard statistical comparisons, the authors of the study say this approach offers a unique opportunity to understand what happens to the wealth gap over the course of a generation and the effect of policy and institutional decision-making on how average families accumulate wealth.
In gross terms, there is no question that the difference in median wealth between America's white and African- American households has grown stunningly large. The new study found the wealth gap almost tripled from 1984 to 2009, increasing from $85,000 to $236,500. The median net worth of white households in the study has grown to $265,000 over the 25-year period compared with just $28,500 for black households.
The dramatic increase in the racial wealth gap has accelerated despite the country's movement beyond the Civil Rights era into a period of legal equality and the election of the first African-American president. The resulting toxic inequality now threatens the U.S. economy and indeed, American society, the study concludes.
"All families need a financial cushion to be economically secure and create opportunities for the next generation," said Shapiro. "Wealth what we own minus what we owe allows families to move forward by moving to better and safer neighborhoods, investing in businesses, saving for retirement and supporting their children's college aspirations. Our economy cannot sustain its growth in the face of this type of extreme wealth inequality."
Setting out to determine what was driving the disparity today, researchers were able to statistically validate five fundamental factors that together account for two-thirds of the proportional increase in the racial wealth gap. Those five factors include the number of years of home ownership; average family income; employment stability, particularly through the Great Recession; college education, and family financial support and inheritance. While marriage is another factor, its impact is quite small, the study found.
"In the context of the social sciences, whenever you can isolate the factors that really explain what's happening, that's a huge step forward," said Shapiro. "And what these particular factors provide is compelling evidence that various government and institutional policies that shape where we live, where we learn and where we work propel the large majority of the widening racial wealth gap."
Each of the factors highlights a number of specific reasons that whites and African- Americans accumulate wealth at different rates. When it came to housing, for example, home equity rose dramatically faster for whites due to the following:
White families buy homes and start acquiring equity eight years earlier than black families. Due to historical wealth advantages, white families are far more likely to receive family assistance or an inheritance for down payments.
The ability to make larger up-front payments by white homeowners lowers interest rates.
Residential segregation places an artificial ceiling on home equity in non-white neighborhoods.
Based on these and other historical factors, the home ownership rate for white families is 28 percent higher.
"The report shows in stark terms that it's not just the last recession and implosion of the housing market that contributed to widening racial wealth disparities," said Anne Price, director of the Closing the Racial Wealth Gap Initiative at the Insight Center for Community Economic Development. "Past policies of exclusion, such as discriminatory mortgage lending, which continues today, ensure that certain groups reap a greater share of all America has to offer while others are left out." ?
The report recommends that policymakers take steps such as strengthening and enforcing fair housing, mortgage and lending policies; raising the minimum wage and enforcing equal pay provisions; investing in high- quality childcare and early childhood development, and overhauling preferential tax treatments for dividend and interest income and the home mortgage deduction.
"By disaggregating the factors that lead to the wealth gap, this research is informing leaders and helping them to focus their advocacy efforts toward policy solutions," said Angela Glover Blackwell, founder and CEO of PolicyLink, a national research and action institute advancing economic and social equity.
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The Institute on Assets and Social Policy is a research institute at Brandeis University's Heller School for Social Policy and Management, dedicated to promoting a better understanding of how assets and asset-building opportunities improve the well-being of individuals and families left out of the economic mainstream.
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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.
Brandeis University study finds public policy, institutional barriers are pushing racial wealth gapPublic release date: 27-Feb-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Charity Adams cadams1@brandeis.edu 781-736-8685 Brandeis University
Same gain in income produces far greater wealth for white households than black families
New research shows the dramatic gap in household wealth that now exists along racial lines in the United States cannot solely be attributed to personal ambition and behavioral choices, but rather reflects policies and institutional practices that create different opportunities for whites and African-Americans.
So powerful are these government policies and institutional practices that for typical families, a $1 increase in average income over the 25-year study period generates just $0.69 in additional wealth for an African-American household compared with $5.19 for a white household. Part of this equation results from black households having fewer opportunities to grow their savings beyond what's needed for emergencies.
"Public policies play a major role in widening the already massive racial wealth gap, and they must play a role in closing it," said Dr. Thomas Shapiro, director of the IASP and a principal author of the report "We should be investing in prosperity and equity, instead we are advancing toxic inequality. A U-turn is needed."
The study, "The Roots of the Widening Racial Wealth Gap: Explaining the Black-White Economic Divide," was conducted by the Institute on Assets and Social Policy (IASP) at Brandeis University.
"The gap presents an opportunity denied for many African American households and assures racial economic inequality for the next generation," said Tatjana Meschede, a co-author of the policy brief.
The research is unique in that it has followed nearly the same 1,700 working-age households over what is now a 25-year period from 1984 to 2009. Unlike standard statistical comparisons, the authors of the study say this approach offers a unique opportunity to understand what happens to the wealth gap over the course of a generation and the effect of policy and institutional decision-making on how average families accumulate wealth.
In gross terms, there is no question that the difference in median wealth between America's white and African- American households has grown stunningly large. The new study found the wealth gap almost tripled from 1984 to 2009, increasing from $85,000 to $236,500. The median net worth of white households in the study has grown to $265,000 over the 25-year period compared with just $28,500 for black households.
The dramatic increase in the racial wealth gap has accelerated despite the country's movement beyond the Civil Rights era into a period of legal equality and the election of the first African-American president. The resulting toxic inequality now threatens the U.S. economy and indeed, American society, the study concludes.
"All families need a financial cushion to be economically secure and create opportunities for the next generation," said Shapiro. "Wealth what we own minus what we owe allows families to move forward by moving to better and safer neighborhoods, investing in businesses, saving for retirement and supporting their children's college aspirations. Our economy cannot sustain its growth in the face of this type of extreme wealth inequality."
Setting out to determine what was driving the disparity today, researchers were able to statistically validate five fundamental factors that together account for two-thirds of the proportional increase in the racial wealth gap. Those five factors include the number of years of home ownership; average family income; employment stability, particularly through the Great Recession; college education, and family financial support and inheritance. While marriage is another factor, its impact is quite small, the study found.
"In the context of the social sciences, whenever you can isolate the factors that really explain what's happening, that's a huge step forward," said Shapiro. "And what these particular factors provide is compelling evidence that various government and institutional policies that shape where we live, where we learn and where we work propel the large majority of the widening racial wealth gap."
Each of the factors highlights a number of specific reasons that whites and African- Americans accumulate wealth at different rates. When it came to housing, for example, home equity rose dramatically faster for whites due to the following:
White families buy homes and start acquiring equity eight years earlier than black families. Due to historical wealth advantages, white families are far more likely to receive family assistance or an inheritance for down payments.
The ability to make larger up-front payments by white homeowners lowers interest rates.
Residential segregation places an artificial ceiling on home equity in non-white neighborhoods.
Based on these and other historical factors, the home ownership rate for white families is 28 percent higher.
"The report shows in stark terms that it's not just the last recession and implosion of the housing market that contributed to widening racial wealth disparities," said Anne Price, director of the Closing the Racial Wealth Gap Initiative at the Insight Center for Community Economic Development. "Past policies of exclusion, such as discriminatory mortgage lending, which continues today, ensure that certain groups reap a greater share of all America has to offer while others are left out." ?
The report recommends that policymakers take steps such as strengthening and enforcing fair housing, mortgage and lending policies; raising the minimum wage and enforcing equal pay provisions; investing in high- quality childcare and early childhood development, and overhauling preferential tax treatments for dividend and interest income and the home mortgage deduction.
"By disaggregating the factors that lead to the wealth gap, this research is informing leaders and helping them to focus their advocacy efforts toward policy solutions," said Angela Glover Blackwell, founder and CEO of PolicyLink, a national research and action institute advancing economic and social equity.
###
The Institute on Assets and Social Policy is a research institute at Brandeis University's Heller School for Social Policy and Management, dedicated to promoting a better understanding of how assets and asset-building opportunities improve the well-being of individuals and families left out of the economic mainstream.
[ | 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.
NEW YORK, Feb 26 (Reuters) - JPMorgan Chase & Co plans to cut about 3,000 to 4,000 jobs in its consumer bank in 2013, representing about 1.5 percent of the company's overall workforce, it said in a presentation On Tuesday.
The cuts will come mainly through attrition, spokeswoman Kristin Lemkau said. JPMorgan Chase had 258,965 employees globally at the end of 2012.
The bank said in its presentation that it is aiming to cut overall expenses by $1 billion in 2013.
Leave a comment below telling us what you got out of Mobile Nations Fitness Month and be entered for a chance to win the phone, tablet, or game system of your dreams!
It's February and you know what that means? Mobile Nations Fitness Month! That's when we all get together to get in shape, share tips and tricks and recipes for success, review amazing apps and accessories, give away great prizes, and have a ton of fun! This year we're doing it a little differently, though. We're doing weekly themes, and that means every week you'll have new and exciting challenges, and new chances to win!
Week 4: Balance!
That's right, it's time to bring everything together and work towards a balanced life! It's really hard to eat and sleep well, and exercise regularly, especially with as all the other things we have to do. That's why it's important to not only act healthier for a week or month, but to build healthier habits into your ever day lifestyle.
To round out the month, we'll be reviewing a bunch of great apps and accessories that can help you keep it together, and keep yourself on track with your nutrition, exercise and relaxation goals.
And we are also going to be doing the mother of all contests.
Contest: Win the fitness device of your dreams!
Leave a comment below telling us what you've gotten out of Mobile Nations Fitness Month -- how much you've improved or been inspired, what you plan to do to keep it up throughout the year, or even how much you simply sat on the couch and watched it all transpire around you! -- and you'll be entered to win a $400 gift certificate to put towards whatever phone, tablet, or even gaming system will help you keep up with your fitness goals!
Be it iPhone or Galaxy Note, Lumia or BlackBerry, Surface or Droid, iPad or Android tablet, Xbox or Wii, we want to help you bring it home!
Experts have disabled a unique member of the signalling proteins which are essential for the development of the malaria parasite. They have produced a mutant lacking the ancient bacterial Shewanella-like protein phosphatase known as SHLP1 (pronounced shelph). This mutant is unable to complete its complex life cycle and is arrested in its development in the mosquito. The discovery could help in the design of new drugs to arrest the spread of this killer disease.
SHLP1is critical to the cellular development of the malaria parasite. It can be found at every stage in the lifecycle of the malaria parasite and for the first time experts led by The University of Nottingham have analysed their biological function.
Dr Rita Tewari and her team in the Centre for Genetics and Genomics in the School of Biology have spent three years studying the phosphatase proteins that are important building blocks in the life cycle of the malaria parasite. The findings of their latest study are published today, 21 February 2013, in the academic journalCell Reports.
Dr Tewari said: "SHLP1 is absent in humans and can be explored as an excellent target for malaria transmission control. Prevention of malaria transmission to and from the mosquito is vital in order to stop the devastating spread of malaria. Targeting SHLP1 could be an important step to achieve this goal."
Although great strides have been made in reducing the number of deaths from malaria, half the world's population remains at risk from the disease. In 2010 90 per cent of all malaria deaths occurred in Africa ? mostly among children under the age of five.
Dr Tewari's latest research has focused on the ancient bacterial Shewanella-like protein phosphatase (SHLP1) which is found only in bacteria, fungi, protists (organisms which paved the way for the evolution of early plants, animals and fungi) and plants.
The researchers, funded by the MRC and the Wellcome Trust, have discovered how SHLP1 controls development of the parasite at an essential stage of its life cycle. The parasite must move between human and mosquito in its quest to spread the disease. It does this every time the mosquito bites. Removing this enzyme causes defects in structures vital for invading the mosquito gut ? effectively stopping the mosquito from passing the disease on to another victim.
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University of Nottingham: http://www.nottingham.ac.uk
Thanks to University of Nottingham for this article.
This press release was posted to serve as a topic for discussion. Please comment below. We try our best to only post press releases that are associated with peer reviewed scientific literature. Critical discussions of the research are appreciated. If you need help finding a link to the original article, please contact us on twitter or via e-mail.
King Mohammed VI received, on Tuesday at the Royal Palace in Rabat, the Emir of the state of Kuwait, Cheikh Sabah Al Ahmad Al Jaber Al Sabah.
The meeting attests to the depth of ties between the two heads of state, as well as to the solid relations between the two countries, both at the bilateral level in the political, economic and social fields, and through the strategic partnership with the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), and the ties of brotherhood and solidarity between the Moroccan and Kuwaiti peoples, the Royal cabinet said in a statement.
The talks provided an opportunity to highlight the importance of continued consultations over various issues of common interest, especially at the Arab, regional and international levels. The two sides also reiterated their firm commitment to continue their action for the benefit of the two brotherly peoples.
The audience comes after the visit by King Mohammed VI to Kuwait, which has imparted a strong momentum to the distinguished bilateral relations, particularly in the economic and investment fields.
What does a cruise line owe you when your dream vacation turns into a nightmare? As passengers who were trapped aboard the ill-fated Carnival Triumph for five days earlier this month are going to learn ? it?s not very much.
The cruise line has very limited liability even when things go terribly wrong. This is all spelled out in the ticket contract.
?The Carnival passenger contract is standard,? said Steve Danishek, a travel industry analyst based in Seattle. ?They protect the cruise lines from all sorts of liability and make it incredibly difficult for a passenger to take any legal action against them.?
Carnival?s ticket contract specifically bans class action lawsuits.
?All disputes other than personal injury, illness or death must go through arbitration and they get to choose the arbitration company,? said Professor Martin Davies, director of the Tulane Maritime Law Center. ?That means if your claim is simply, ?you ruined my vacation,? then this has to go to arbitration.?
And that arbitration hearing will be in Miami, where Carnival is headquartered. This may discourage people from going this route, but experts tell NBC News it?s perfectly legal.
A Miami law firm that specializes in maritime cases has filed a class action lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Florida against Carnival Corp. on behalf of all of the passengers on board the Carnival Triumph during its fateful cruise earlier this month.
The suit alleges Carnival was negligent because it allowed hazardous conditions ?to exist on its vessel which it knew or should have known was likely to cause injury, harm and damages to its passengers.?
The class action complaint claims passengers were given ?spoiled or rotting food that was unfit for reasonable safe human consumption, and were generally forced to live in squalid conditions that created a severe risk of injury, illness and/or disease.? The lawsuit alleged that the ?unbearable? conditions ?caused numerous passengers to vomit and/or become nauseous.?
The suit specifically asks the court to rule Carnival?s ban on class action claims to be null and void in this case because of the cruise line?s alleged negligence.
Carnival?s public relations manager, Aly Bello-Cabreriza, said the company cannot comment on pending litigation.
University of Washington Law Professor Anita Ramasastry said it will be an uphill battle for the passengers who file lawsuits.
?There is a chance a court would say that the arbitration clause and the class action waiver are unconscionable, especially for people who got sick because of the conditions on the ship,? she said. ?But that?s unlikely when you look at what?s been done in other cases.?
Compensation for a lousy cruise Carnival says it will give all of the 3,000 Triumph passengers a refund for their trip and transportation expenses. Everyone will also get $500 and a future cruise credit equal to what they paid to be on the ship.
In a statement on its website, the company also promised to reimburse everyone for all shipboard purchases made during the voyage, except gift shop and casino charges or art purchases.
This may not be enough to appease the angry passengers, but it is significantly more than the company was required to do for them based on the contract. According to clause 7(c):
?Carnival has the right without previous notice to cancel this contract at the port of embarkation or any time during the voyage and shall thereupon return to the Guest, if the Contract is completely canceled, his passage money, or, if the Contract is partially canceled, a proportionate part thereof. Under such circumstances, Carnival shall have no further liability for damages or compensation of any kind.
?Carnival could have pulled the ship to the nearest port, gotten everybody off and that would have been it,? Danishek explained. ?They would have owed nothing but a partial refund because they would have performed to the terms of the contract.?
Very few people read the contract they get when buy a ticket on a boat, plane or train or rent a car. These companies all have tightly written contracts that are designed to protect them from you.
Related:
Herb Weisbaum is The ConsumerMan. Follow him on Facebook and Twitter or visit The ConsumerMan website.
We now average 268,000+ visitors and about 370,000+ page-views per month, or about 4,500,000 page views per year. That makes amchamvietnam.com a great place for business networking online. According to alexa.com, the AmCham Vietnam web site is the highest-ranked foreign business association web site in Vietnam.
www.amchamvietnam.com?is the online hub of over 1,000 representatives of nearly 500 AmCham companies (including both expatriate and local national managers in HCM City), and a key resource for non-members not only in Vietnam, but also in the USA, Japan, Australia and Singpore, as well as India, who are looking for trade and investment opportunities. Another reason why?amchamvietnam.com?is a great place for business networking online.
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How it works
We offer 2 types of announcement on right sidebar.
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Maybe the little operating system that couldn?t will gain a new life inside televisions, cars and washing machines.
Hewlett-Packard, which grabbed the WebOS mobile operating system when it bought Palm for $1.2 billion in 2010, has sold to LG Electronics the WebOS source code for an undisclosed price. In addition, what H.P. termed ?many dozens? of employees will transfer to LG, based in Seoul, South Korea. H.P. is retaining the patents and a cloud-based infrastructure for secure management of applications.
WebOS, which was released to much fanfare and technical admiration but never caught on because H.P. never made a device that caught on, will remain an open source product on which other parties can develop software, both companies said. If people do find good uses for it, it?s possible that more companies will want to use WebOS, which could benefit H.P.
Hewlett-Packard doesn?t use it in a new tablet computer it announced over the weekend. The Slate 7 uses Android.
?In the world today, patents are valuable,? said William L. Veghte, H.P.?s chief operating officer. ?We?re retaining the ability to leverage WebOS.? It seems likely, however, that H.P. will play at most a role of servicing devices on behalf of consumer companies like LG.
For LG, the product may be a way to turn televisions and other devices into hubs for a household?s computers, tablets and other connected gear. WebOS was notable for multitasking capabilities, along with a well-regarded user interface.
?We?d like to apply this technology to the next generation of smart TVs and expand it to other devices,? said Skott Ahn, LG Electronics?s president and chief technology officer. He described the operating system as having strong ?cross-platform? capabilities that would make it useful for consumers ?who have a lot more use of a ?second screen,? with things like PCs and Android.?
LG already makes personal computers and smartphones that use Google?s Android operating system. Mr. Ahn said LG had no immediate plans to make a WebOS smartphone. ?Now Android is prevailing,? he said.
Other uses for WebOS, he said, might include signs, smart cars, and home appliances. In other words, places where there are not already dominant operating systems. ?We?d like to secure a software platform across all devices,? Mr. Ahn said.
For H.P., selling these parts of Palm brings it closer to ending a bad memory. Given that H.P. never made a successful product with Palm technology, this sale most likely did not recover the purchase price or investments H.P. later made in a Palm-based smartphone and tablet or in trying to build a developer community for WebOS.
The products had their premiere in February 2011 and were killed six months later, after poor sales. H.P. made WebOS an open source product in January 2012.
H.P. just announced one of the lowest-price Android tablets. If LG is able to make a success of WebOS smart televisions and cars, its patents could become valuable, along with the applications management business.
Meg Whitman, H.P.?s chief executive, has said that smartphones remain a priority, but the company is wary of moving into a business with an entirely different distribution system of phone stores and carriers.
?If you?re not careful, you can lose a lot of money? in smartphones, Ms. Whitman said in an interview after last week?s earnings release. ?We?re still working on it.?
The remains of a small continent have been hiding right under our noses for the past 85 million years or so.
That's according to a new study published Sunday in the journal Nature Geoscience. Scientists looked at lava sands from beaches on Mauritius to determine when and where the material might have originated.
Their conclusion? The lava sands, containing particles called zircon xenocrysts, came from a Precambrian microcontinent dubbed "Mauritia" that was sandwiched between the land masses that today make up Madagascar and India. It was all part of a supercontinent known as Rodinia that existed between 2 billion and 85 million years ago. (Not to be confused with the better known and slightly more contemporary supercontinent Pangaea).
Mauritia was a sliver of land that broke apart and disappeared under the sea as the Rodinia ripped itself apart as part of the process of plate tectonics, scientists believe.
The BBC quotes the study's lead author, Trond Torsvik, as saying the sand his team examined dates to a 9-million-year-old eruption near the modern-day islands of Marion and Reunion that spewed much older material.
"We found zircons that we extracted from the beach sands, and these are something you typically find in a continental crust. They are very old in age," said Torsvik of the University of Oslo in Norway.
Torsvik believes pieces of Mauritia have been interred under 6 miles of surface and spread over a swath of the Indian Ocean, according to the BBC.
"However, a small part could have survived.
" 'At the moment the Seychelles is a piece of granite, or continental crust, which is sitting practically in the middle of the Indian Ocean,' explained Prof Torsvik.
" 'But once upon a time, it was sitting north of Madagascar. And what we are saying is that maybe this was much bigger, and there are many of these continental fragments that are spread around in the ocean.' "
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks rose on Monday, suggesting the equity rally was intact as investors grew more confident that the global economy would continue to grow.
Stocks have been strong performers so far this year, with the S&P 500 jumping 6.2 percent in 2013 to hover around its highest levels since 2007. That has prompted many to call for a pullback, though recently any dip has been used as a buying opportunity.
While the S&P fell last week, the decline was a slight 0.3 percent and was the first weekly drop after a seven-week string of gains.
"The major trend is that indexes will keep moving higher, a reflection that the economy continues to grow at a moderate pace," said Bernard Baumohl, managing director at the Economic Outlook Group in Princeton, New Jersey.
The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> was up 45.78 points, or 0.33 percent, at 14,046.35. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> was up 6.90 points, or 0.46 percent, at 1,522.50. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> was up 16.87 points, or 0.53 percent, at 3,178.69.
Equities will face a test with the looming debate over sequestration, massive U.S. government budget cuts that will take effect on Friday if lawmakers fail to reach an agreement over spending and taxes. The White House issued warnings about the harm the cuts are likely to inflict on the economy if enacted.
Early results from Italy's general election cheered markets there after the pro-reform, center-left Democratic Party was leading Silvio Berlusconi's conservative bloc. [ID:nL6N0BPFBQ] Investors worried if the elections went the wrong way, efforts to handle Italy's debt problems would be undermined.
"Odds are that there will be a coalition government that will let the austerity measures stay in place, allowing yields to come down and avoiding what would have been a headwind for U.S. markets," said Baumohl.
European shares <.fteu3> rose 0.4 percent while Italy's main FTSE MIB <.ftmib> soared 3.5 percent.
The Nasdaq was lifted by a rallies at SanDisk Corp , which jumped 2.7 percent to $50.81, and Amgen Inc , up 3.8 percent to $90.16.
Barnes & Noble Inc climbed 7.8 percent to $14.56 after the Wall Street Journal reported that Chairman Leonard Riggio was considering a bid for the company's bookstore business.
Lowe's Cos Inc reported earnings that beat expectations, helped by rebuilding efforts after Hurricane Sandy in the United States. After climbing in premarket, shares dipped 0.7 percent to $37.42.
With 83 percent of the S&P 500 having reported results, 69 percent of beat profit expectations, compared with a 62 percent average since 1994 and 65 percent over the past four quarters, according to Thomson Reuters data.
Fourth-quarter earnings for S&P 500 companies are estimated to have risen 6 percent, according to the data, above a 1.9 percent forecast at the start of the earnings season.
Dynavax Technologies Inc shares plunged 34 percent to $1.96 after the Food and Drug Administration denied approval for the company's adult hepatitis B vaccine and sought additional data for evaluate its safety.
We talk a lot about things you can do to be more productive or improve your personal performance. Many times it involves a lot of keeping your head down and focusing on what you have to do, but as author Blake Butler writes, none of us work in a vacuum.
The Internet didn?t kill TV! According to Mike Proulx, the Internet has become TV?s best friend. Proulx will be the opening keynote speaker at SES New York 2013. The leading event for experienced marketing and advertising professionals will take place March 25-28, 2013, at the New York Marriott Marquis.
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