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Consumers can protect themselves from this type of crime by protecting information such as credit card and social security numbers and by shredding mailed offers to obtain credit. They also can check their credit reports for unknown accounts. In the event of identify theft, an alert can be placed on a credit bureau that notifies consumers of potential fraudulent activity. Consumers who are victims can also write a statement that will appear on their credit reports explaining the criminal activity. Most banks and major credit card companies have fraud departments with staff who are trained to address these situations, but often the consumer feels that the onus is on him or her to prove lack of wrongdoing, and many victims report frustration at having their credit and lives destroyed by identity theft. A number of states have taken action to make identity theft a state crime.
the crime of setting up and using bank accounts and credit facilities fraudulently in another person's name without his or her knowledge.
Experts estimate identity theft costs businesses and consumers more than $50 billion a year nationwide as thieves fraudulently use others' personal information -- such as Social Security and driver's license numbers -- to obtain everything from credit cards to goods and services.
The institutions to blame for identity theft aren't currently the ones who pay the bulk of the price.
Being denied credit or employment is another common method of discovery for identity theft victims.
Stolen lives: identity theft is the country's fastest growing crime. Here's how to protect your most valuable asset--you!
In one case, up to $25,000 in identity theft coverage has been added to a homeowners policy without additional cost.
Details for the Advanced Two-Day Identity Theft Summit in Las Vegas, Nev.
Governor Gibbons Declares Dec. 6 -10 "Identity Theft Awareness Week"
Department of Education has a printable brochure on identity theft that it encourages schools to circulate.
The FTC's Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act (FACTA) is one of several laws intended to combat consumer fraud, identity theft and protect privacy.
The survey defined identity theft as a situation where someone assumes the identity of another and makes telephone calls or obtains merchandise, credit, or other valuable things in their name.
Contact your state attorney general's office to find out whether your state has laws related to identity theft or visit www.
Identity theft is the criminal act of assuming someone else's identity for some type of gain, normally financial, and it can happen in different ways.
Identity theft involves "stealing" another person's personal identifying information--such as Social Security Number (SSN), date of birth, and mother's maiden name, and using it to fraudulently establish credit, run up debt, or take over existing financial accounts.


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With an Apple event later this week, analyst Ming-Chi Kuo has released a set of predictions for the Mac lineup. Kuo’s latest report claims Apple will be releasing an updated MacBook Pro in both 13 and 15-inch sizes, with the OLED touch bar, Touch ID, Thunderbolt 3, USB-C, and the same keyboard tech found in the MacBook. Kuo also thinks Apple will release a 13-inch MacBook, which is either expected to be an updated version of the MacBook Air or a slightly larger version of the current MacBook.
With a big question mark over the inclusion of USB-C in Apple’s next MacBook Pro, Kuo speculates Apple may debut a “MagSafe-like” USB-C adapter. THe adapter would be used for charging and the connection of peripherals, much like it is on the 12-inch MacBook. The next-generation MacBooks will also have Skylake processors and the option of 2TB SSD storage.
Stephen Hackett’s notebook rumour roundup has the best of the rest of the rumours. He thinks the 11-inch MacBook Air will be killed off, but as for whether the new MacBook Pro will have more than one port, we might have to wait until Friday for that answer.
Macworld’s Dan Moren writes that it’s logical for Apple to want to adopt what works on iPhones and iPads and apply them to Macs. I guess it’s equally as important that Apple provide enough ways to connect peripherals, even if that means an extra dongle here or there. But just like Apple removed the headphone jack so we could have a bigger battery and better haptics in the iPhone, there’s got to be some kind of tradeoff for every port removed.
Data from app analytics company App Annie says China has become the largest market for Apple software. China made over $1.7 billion in App Store revenue in Q3 2016, giving it a noticeable lead over the US.
Apple’s store-within-a-store in Paris, originally designed to sell Apple Watch units, is rumoured to be closing after poor sales. Despite Apple’s best efforts to market the Apple Watch as a high-fashion accessory along the likes of Chanel and Hermes, it just hasn’t worked out.
John Gruber is telling us to not hold our breath for an iPhone Edition. If there is a major redesign next year, it will be purely coincidental with the iPhone’s tenth anniversary. Apple releases the best iPhone that it can at any given time, and one of the best things about the iPhone is that you can’t buy an iPhone that’s better than any other iPhone. Just like Coke.
Data from the Jamf user conference says IBM spends less on Mac support costs in the enterprise. Our topic on Macs flat-out costing less than PCs has struck a nerve with some, who claim that Apple arbitrarily drops support for Macs and are therefore more expensive to own.
Sonos speakers are now available in both Apple’s online and physical stores. Those looking to pick up a Sonos speaker can also get an 3-month Apple Music gift card for a limited time, along with every other advantage that shopping with Apple has — including their generous return policy.
Six Colours tells us about Mini Metro, a new game that’s kind of like designing the transportation system for a city. You lose when a station gets too crowded, and there’s no endless mode like there is on the desktop version of the game, but other than it seems to be pretty fun.
I certainly hope that those rumours seriously understate what Apple release - “Hello Again” as an announcement tag deserves a much more important product announcement than just speed bumps, minor features, and/or additional version within the MacBook product line.
If that is all that eventuates, then its more likely to be “Good-bye” rather than “Hello”. . . .
I’m starting to think there’s about a 50-50 chance of there being ARM-based Macs announced. I reckon that would qualify.
Apple producing all its own silicon and not being beholden to Intel’s roadmap sounds pretty amazing to me.

industry_corpus2: Computing & Telecommunications


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You’re thinking of starting your own perfume oil business!
We’ve spent countless hours gathering valuable insights to guide your journey to starting your own perfume oil business. Simply put, our team of expert researchers gathered information used by the best perfume oil businesss and put together a valuable perfume oil business tutorial.
– PLUS learn 3 easy ways to grow your perfume oil business business that your competitors are too lazy to do.
At Start Your Own we work hard to help you achieve your business and life goals. We know that in today’s world starting your own perfume oil business can seem daunting. But the alternative is even scarier. Do you really want to work for someone else? Stop dreaming about starting your own perfume oil business and start doing it!
My true sincere goal is to help everyone who wants to start their own perfume oil business. This easy to follow tutorial to starting your perfume oil business is the first step. Start Your Own wants you to succeed so much we are betting on your success by giving you free benefits worth hundreds of dollars*.
The Start Your Own perfume oil business tutorial is free. You just need to pay a refundable deposit of only $19. You will get a 100% money back refund with any approved merchant account after you process your first transaction.

industry_corpus2: Biopharmaceuticals


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Clarke Jackson is a Kentwood Realtor who councils her clients about how to get the best home loan mortgage. Credit Scores are part of the secret.
When considering buying a home and getting a home loan mortgage, consider some questions first.
How much do you know about your Credit Score? Did you check it online recently? Do you know if that action affected your credit? Was it what you expected? Would it have been the same last week? Credit is something we all know about, and know is important. But there are a lot of misconceptions and mysterious surrounding your credit score.
Let’s start with the basics. What is your credit score? A credit score a number between 300 and 850 that shows the likelihood for you to pay back loans and credit. It only shows a credit score at the moment that credit report is generated and can change based on things you do and don’t do from day to day. It is roughly comprised considering your new loans and credit, the length of your credit history, types of credit you have (revolving accounts, installment loans etc.), your payment history, and the amount you owe overall. Not surprisingly, your payment history is the most important of these!
Good to Excellent credit scores result in lower home loan interest rates. This graph shows how Experian factors credit scores according to My Bank Tracker.
So why is credit important when you’re purchasing a home? Well, of course most of us don’t buy houses in cash (if you can,that’s great, but you’re one of the lucky few) therefore, we need to take out a mortgage. When you get a mortgage, the interest rate you pay is partially based on the risk the lender is taking on. A higher credit score, means you have a lower risk of not paying the loan back and paying on time. A lower risk means the lender doesn’t need to raise the interest rate as much to protect themselves from not getting paid back, so your interest rate gets lower.
Your rate can make a huge impact on your monthly payment and, in reality, the home price you can afford. So, if you’re thinking about buying a home, you should be thinking about your credit too! Keep in mind, right now, most lenders use the FICO 4 credit score, also known as the mortgage lender score, so that score you see online might not be the one lenders are using!
So here’s what you came for, things you can do that make a big difference in your credit.
This can actually takes a negative toll on your credit! Any late payment made on that loan you co-sign is added to your credit history. Co-signing a loan is basically lending out your credit history and can make you very vulnerable to infractions that will lower your score.
I know it must seem crazy to keep that old credit card you got when you were in your 20s just to get that one perk that is now completely irrelevant. But, closing any line of credit is generally a bad idea. Keep in mind, it might be closed automatically through lack of use so use.
Counterintuitive as it may seem, if you’re about to get a credit report, opening a new account is actually a bad idea. These accounts will negatively affect your score until they are “established” which won’t be until about 4-6 months after you’ve opened them.
Best Company provided this graphic explanation of hard and soft credit score inquiries.
When you are shopping for a home loan mortgage, you need to get your credit score reviewed. And, there are two ways to do this a “soft” inquiry which does not affect your credit and a “hard inquiry” which can. The bureaus allow you one “freebie” hard inquiry credit check per year, but when you are shopping for a mortgage, chances are each lender you go to will want to do one of these “hard inquiries” to get an idea of your financial standing and score.
Wait, wouldn’t that mean if I went to 3 lenders I would get 3 dings to my credit? Well, yes, unless you go to all of those lenders within a 15 day period. The bureaus know when shopping for a lender you will want to try a few, but you need to keep it within that time period so when you do get your loan, there’s no backlash. Even so, don’t panic, after about three months, any negative effect from a hard inquiry will be erased from your score.
Okay, this one is pretty obvious, but it’s extremely important. One tiny late payment (the amount does not matter at all) of 30 days or more will stay on your credit for seven years! Keep up with your bills and double check your auto-payment accounts to make sure they are going through as planned.
I know we talked about hard inquiries and how they can bring your score down. But again, you get one per year with no effect on your score whatsoever. In the years you’re not buying a house, check it yourself and make sure everything looks how you expect it to look. A great resource for this is www.annualcreditreport.com.
A lot of this is common sense. Your personal information (any of it!) can be used to compromise your identity. So, keep things like your medical insurance ID number, social security number, receipts, and signatures as private as possible. Make sure to review payment statements to make sure the charges are all ones you made. And never give any information out over the phone or internet unless you are sure who you are talking to is trustworthy. You also have the option to freeze your credit at any time so no one can use it, but if you do this, be sure to keep track of the pin they give you! Unfreezing is easy, unless you lose that pin number!
If, despite your caution, your identity is compromised, don’t wait to report it! Report it right away. There are three credit bureaus Experian, Equifax, and Trans Union. They get their information from various creditors reporting to them. If you are a victim of fraud contact your credit card, banks, and thes bureaus immediately! This isn’t exhaustive and because each person’s financial situation is different there are a ton of “what-ifs” and “how about whens” that everyone has. The solution? Talking to a lender is a great way to get started. Most lenders have a lot of knowledge about specific credit situations (as they’ve seen a lot!).
Your Real Estate Professional is a great way to get in contact with a reputable lender. That lender can get you help with your credit without the negative credit affects of formal credit counseling. (Yes, this is bad for your credit too!) Getting a handle on this might seem like a lot to do. But, if you protect your identity and pay your bills on time, overtime, you’ll have a healthy robust score. Here’s to your happy home and to giving yourself some credit!
It is also a good idea for potential home buyers to monitor their credit. I am not a proponent of paying for it because you can get a free report from the credit bureaus or just have a mortgage profession pull it. But I can’t tell you how many times I have had clients that were unaware of certain items or had inaccurate information on their report. Often these things can be dealt with without too much issue unless you wait until your interested in home which is what many seem to unfortunately do.

industry_corpus2: Real Estate & Construction


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Baoding shenchen Pump Co., Ltd. is specialized in the production of peristaltic pump, injection pump and other precision fluid transmission equipment of high-tech enterprises, R & D, production and sales in a body, has more than and 10 patents and software copyrights, and maintain an annual development speed a number of new products. Baoding shenchen pump for the further development of the market, enhance the corporate image, has participated in the national pharmaceutical machinery exhibition, this time again in the forty-eighth national pharmaceutical machinery and Chinese international pharmaceutical machinery expo. Booth number N2-34, booth area of 18 square meters. The exhibition, Shen Chen pump made exhibitors good results, accumulated a number of high-quality potential customers for the company.
Baoding shenchen Pump Co., Ltd. is specialized in the production of peristaltic pump, injection pump and other precision fluid transmission equipment of high-tech enterprises, R & D, production and sales in a body, has more than and 10 patents and software copyrights, and maintain an annual development speed a number of new products.


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Hablar En Arte issues a call for a residency at Centro Huarte and as part of the activities of the Collaborative Arts Partnership Programme (CAPP). We are seeking artists and other cultural and social agents who are working in the field of collaborative arts to initiate a research process through which to redefine from the scratch the structure of the cultural centre Centro Huarte.
The recently appointed Directors—a team of four women with a transversal, feminist perspective – aims to convert Centro Huarte into a place for artistic production in order to foster a cultural ecosystem in which artists, researchers, collectives, teachers and cultural agents can be co-managers. This, in turn, calls for a transformation of working approaches, as well as a modification of Centro Huarte’s physical structure.
The residency is thus conceived as a collaborative process for a variety of disciplines, from art to architecture, sociology, etc. The proposals should not be limited to spatial interventions on the building, as the process equally contemplates the search for previously unidentified opportunities and obstacles of more social nature that might arise in the course of the Center’s actual transformation.
Applicants should currently live in one of the countries of the CAPP-network: England, Finland, Germany, Hungary or Ireland.

industry_corpus2: Subject Education


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Had good time everything was good. Room a little tired especially bathroom. Bath fittings old and lime scaled, floor stained. Skirting board stained with split tea or coffee. Bed very comfortable and linen very white.
Having stayed at this hotel for our 30th wedding anniversary I was very disappointed that they did nothing to make it extra special for myself and my husband whose birthday we were celebrating. Last time we stayed we were upgraded to a superior room which had gowns and slippers included, chocolates in a small box not on a saucer with a napkin and covered over by cling film - very classy !! We were treated quite shabbily in the restaurant - yes it was busy but some guests were receiving great attention and others none our table included- this did not happen last time. I think standards are slipping which is a real shame as the setting is wonderful but I will think twice before booking again.
The room desperately needs decorating/modernising. We had no proper sleep due to an extractor fan running constantly very near to our room. Proper sleep is part of our relaxing process. The beds were very comfortable. Broken window sash cords are not acceptable in 2019!! Neither is flaking paint on interior/exterior woodwork. The restaurant staff and food were both excellent. Make finance available to update the interiors, cut the grass and tidy up all around the premises outside, and you could have a first class destination. Until then as far as we are concerned it will remain on the back burner.

industry_corpus2: Hospitality & Catering


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Hi, I am an UX Designer & Front-end Developer in HackerEarth at Bangalore.
I have more than 4 years of professional experience after my B.E.. I started my designing career as a web designer from ABInfosoft at that time I was not very much into Photoshop and Illustrator though my hobbies are designing, sketching and painting. As the time passes, I realized that earlier I used to play with colours on paper and canvas but now I use the same to draw wireframe and mock-ups . It feels awesome when your hobbies become your profession.


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US Capital Partners Inc. has advised on a $6.5 million intellectual property term loan for CAO Group, Inc. (“CAO”), based in West Jordan, UT. US Capital Partners is a private investment bank that makes direct debt investments, participates in debt facilities, and has robust distribution for debt and equity private placements for small and medium-sized businesses in the United States and abroad.
CAO is an innovative leader in the design, development, and manufacturing of high-quality dental, medical, veterinary, forensic, and LED lighting products. Founded by Densen Cao, PhD in 2000, CAO currently has 68 issued patents and 100 pending patents, which it actively licenses to companies around the world.
Since 1998, US Capital Partners has been providing well-structured, custom financing solutions to private and public companies with $5 million to $100 million in sales. Headquartered in San Francisco, US Capital Partners is a full-service private investment bank that makes direct debt investments between $500,000 and $50 million, participates in debt facilities, and has robust distribution for debt and equity private placements. The firm also offers financial advisory services for buy-side and sell-side engagements and for capital formation, including early-stage financings requiring equity or debt.

industry_corpus2: Finance & Economics


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Kate’s life was in turmoil after the death of her parents. She’d always been protected and sheltered by them. Suddenly she finds herself with a conniving fiancé living under her roof, a powerful businessman with terrorist ties from across the ocean trying to kill her and more family secrets than most American politicians. She was also unaware that a half brother she knew nothing of was about to enter her life. Her situation was getting precarious right at the moment she was least able to cope with it.
Carolyn M. Bowen: Southern and sassy author who loves to travel. She enjoys weaving the scenes and cultural experiences from around the world into her writing. Follow on social media and her website for the latest news and coming book releases.

industry_corpus2: Literature & Emotions


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While there is no shortage of bagel stores across Long Island, New York City and New Jersey, many of them do not have adequate security measures in place to protect their business and employees. Bagel stores typically see high volumes of customers and have quick product turnover making it easy for employees to not ring sales, give away free product and even steal from the register. Being unable to identify these instances puts your business at risk. Bagel stores also tend to have high volumes of cash on hand as they are primarily a cash business, making them prime targets for a robbery. The challenge for bagel store owners is to protect both their business and their employees from theft.
Another differentiator that makes security for bagel stores a priority is their unique hours. Bagel store employees often have to report to work pre-dawn hours to prepare for the day which make them ideal targets for would-be burglars. You can help to both deter and identify any suspicious activity by installing an integrated security system in your store.
Installing a video surveillance system will enable you as a business owner to monitor your store from all angles. You will be able to simultaneously monitor the store entrance, cash registers, back work areas and back entrances. A video camera allows you to monitor your employees’ actions and identify any suspicious as it is unfolding. You can even monitor your store remotely through your smartphone, if you are unable to physically be in your store or if you own multiple stores. A video surveillance system is also extremely helpful should you need to identify suspects in the event of a theft.
You may also want to consider installing an alarm system and biometric locks. An alarm system can be triggered to alert authorities immediately in the event of suspicious activity or robbery and can be silent or loud. Biometric locks can be installed and set to enable only authorized individuals to access offices or rooms with safes and can prevent customers from entering unauthorized areas.
Protect your bagel store business today by ensuring your store is fully protected. Total Security has over 15 years of experience in installing food service security cameras and access control systems and provides security services and products to bagel stores on Long Island, NYC. Contact us today to learn more about our bagel store security services. Call our support staff at (516) 775-2304 (New York location) or (201) 594-7233 (New Jersey location).


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Electricity stock exchange brings HEP’s electricity on the market.The key preconditions for RWE Energy to enter Croatian gas market is real market liberalization in line with the Third energy package, said the director of that company Zoran Milisa.
The company obtained permits for entering the market and is actively preparing for that move. Answering the question about structure potentials of electricity stock exchange, Milisa said that nothing will change substantially for the final buyers, but that move is going to have significant implication on the supply side, because electricity produced by HEP will become available to all suppliers. ‘’The stock exchange will change the rules because with trading for a day in advance, that electricity will be available to all market players’’, said Milisa highlighting that stock exchange will bring price transparency.
RWE energy holds 5% of the market, supplying 2.500 entrepreneurs and 75.000 households.

industry_corpus2: Power & Energy


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A lot of really good sites are doing live-blogging of the election returns, including The Reaction (where I also contribute), TPM, Political Animal, and of course all the news channels, so if you’re looking for coverage and don’t want to listen to pundits on flag-draped sets, go check them out.
So far, it looks like the House will go to the GOP, which is not a surprise, but the Senate is looking like it will stay with the Democrats, but they’ll lose some seats. Here in Florida Marco Rubio has won — again, not a surprise — and Alan Grayson, the liberal who wasn’t afraid of being called that and raised a lot of eyebrows, lost as well. The race to watch now is the governor’s race between Democrat Alex Sink and Republican Rick Scott.
If there’s one thing that kind of sums up the evening, it’s watching Christine O’Donnell give her concession speech in Delaware and she’s talking like she won. Putting up a brave front and smiling through defeat is one thing; delusional is something else entirely.
Update at 10:13 p.m. — MSNBC just brought in Michele Bachmann to lend her insight to the election returns. And that does it for me.

industry_corpus2: Politics & Administration


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Drum Dream Girl: How One Girl's Courage Changed Music is yet another free verse story of an amazing, inspirational life from Engle, the Young People's Poet Laureate for 2017 - 2019. Engle's poetic narrative of the story of a girl who lived on an island of music and longed to drum is lyrically syncopated and dreamy. The story of Millo Castro Zaldarriaga, "dreaming / quiet / secret / drumbeat / dreams," is almost fairy tale like in the telling, matched by López's vibrant, magical illustrations.
On an island of music where everyone believes only boys should play drums, a girl finds rhythm everywhere, from the "outdoor cafés that looked like gardens" to the carnivals in the streets and the beat of her own heart. When her older sisters invite her to join their new all-girl dance band, her father refuses. He relents, however, and offers to find her a teacher who will, "decide if her drums deserved to be heard." Amazed by her talent and knowledge, the girl's teacher "taught her more / and more / and more / and she practiced / and she practiced / and she practiced" until the day she got to play in an outdoor cafés that looked like garden.
Engle's historical note tells readers that Millo Castro Zaldarriaga "broke Cuba's traditional taboo against female drummers in 1932, at the age of ten, when she performed with her older sisters as Anacaona, Cuba's first "all-girl dance band." In 1937, the band traveled to New York City where, among other performances, they played for FDR's birthday and were cheered, enthusiastically, by First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt.


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The imminent prospect of trial by exams can sometimes seem overwhelming, a reduction of life’s diverse experience to the brutal calculations of standardized success or failure. The mind of the student can become an echo-chamber of memorisations and expectations, yearning for a source of consolation. In the modern world, salvation can be found in recognising the global nature of this communal challenge and taking a transnational journey of exam commiseration. A notable point of departure on this journey is the Seunung, or the University entrance exam in the Republic of Korea.
As an expatriate language and literature teacher in Korea I have witnessed first hand the atmosphere generated by this national event, a mammoth nine-hour multiple-choice exam, which spans the whole gamut of school subjects and represents the intense and attritional culmination of a student’s formal education. It is a milestone deemed so important that international flight paths are rerouted so as not to disturb the concentration of the candidates and police motorcycles are dragooned into service ferrying late-comers to their academic reckoning. During the test, superstitious parents tenderly attach messages of encouragement and invocations to benevolent ancestors to the school fences and national news cameras compete with each other to obtain close ups of the most moving appeals.
The empathetic journey through worldwide education does not stop at commiseration with the blameless Korean students. If possible, perhaps sympathy can be extended to the teachers responsible for devising this macabre assignment. Rumour has it that a carefully selected band of educators are ferried off every year to a secure location, known only to a handful of officials, and kept in seclusion as a gospel of multiple-choice is painstakingly created and finally delivered to the government.
Set against this absurd drama, the wonderful bite-size chunks of GCSE and A-Level assessment can seem almost appetizing.


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Can I Take an At-Home Drug Test for Marijuana while I'm Pregnant?
Many hospitals now test mothers after giving birth. Even if you refuse to be tested, they will often test your baby instead. Unfortunately, many urine drug screenings seem to be completely thrown off by a pregnant woman's changing body chemistry, so you may want to take an at-home drug for marijuana and other drugs, even though you're pregnant.
Failing a screening at a hospital can result in Child Protective Services opening a case, even if the result isn't accurate, but testing yourself can indicate what the result will be and whether you need to take precautions.
Sure, you can test yourself for marijuana at home, but please be aware that the result might not be accurate. If you have a specific reason for testing yourself for marijuana, you may want to get a multi-panel marijuana testing kit instead. These kits test for marijuana at different cutoffs, so you can get a feeling for how clean you are. Stay away from cheap testing kits, because these can be even more inaccurate.
If you're worried about false positives, you're probably more likely to fail for opiates or methamphetamine. These are serious drugs, so any false positive for these is going to ring a lot of alarm bells. In this case, you probably want to get a good quality 5-panel home testing kit. These kits allow you to test for all the common street drugs at once.
What if I fail my at-home drug test for marijuana?
If you fail your home drug test, it's best to check the law in your state and your hospital's policy on testing mothers (or their children) after childbirth. For example, Colorado law defines child abuse as cases where "a child tests positive at birth for either a schedule I controlled substance : or a schedule II controlled substance." Now, even though marijuana is legal in Colorado, it's still a schedule I controlled substance. This means testing positive for marijuana will lead to child abuse allegations. In contrast, mothers-to-be can smoke tobacco and abuse alcohol with legal impunity.
While EMIT urine drug tests are common and cheap, hospitals might choose to test your blood instead. Blood tests are much easier for marijuana users to pass, with light users passing after a couple of days of abstinence and heavier users passing after two weeks. These tests are usually much more accurate than urine screening tests, but it's unfortunately impossible to test your own blood without going into testing center and having a professional test it.
If you fail a drug screening at the hospital, ask for proof. If it's based on the result from an EMIT device, demand a second more thorough test. This could involve testing your urine, blood, or saliva with gas chromatography-mass spectrometry, for example.
You can also buy detox drinks that help you pass urine drug tests, but make sure you get one that's suitable for use during pregnancy.

industry_corpus2: Health & Medicine


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Global economic growth slowed down in 2012. One of the reasons for this was that the euro zone – still going through a sovereign debt crisis – slid into recession, taking major trading partners with it. The markets were also weighed down by uncertainty regarding fiscal problems in the United States and China's economic prospects. According to a projection by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), global economic output only increased by 3.2 per cent, compared to 3.9 per cent in 2011, whilst advanced industrial nations achieved growth of just 1.3 per cent (2011: 1.6 per cent).
The pace of growth also tailed off in the emerging markets. All four BRIC countries registered lower rates of growth than in 2011 owing to declining demand from Europe and, in particular, dwindling domestic demand and economic policy aimed at stemming inflation in Asia and Latin America.
Demand for machinery and equipment weakened globally, but especially in the euro zone. A declining willingness to invest was accompanied by a slowdown in the growth of global trade, which more than halved according to the IMF’s projection. This brought it down to just 2.8 per cent in 2012 (2011: 5.8 per cent). Imports and exports decreased in equal measure. Unlike in the previous year, demand for industrial trucks therefore received little stimulus from the markets in 2012.


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When you are in pain and ibuprofen doesn’t do the trick, where are you supposed to turn? Believe it or not, natural remedies are becoming more popular and more researched in the field of pain medicine. Having the ability to try different treatments can be the perfect way to determine what helps you. There are many natural remedies that are available. Some can supplement traditional pain therapies, or maybe even replace those that don’t provide enough relief.
Acupuncture has been a featured part of my blogs and radio show. Practiced in China for more than 2500 years, acupuncture uses electromagnetic signals produced by thin needles that are placed into specific points in the skin. It improves circulation and has an anti-inflammatory effect, activates the body’s endorphins in the spinal cord, and quiets down fear and painful emotions in the brain. There is evidence that’s is helpful for headache, tennis elbow, fibromyalgia, osteoarthritis, and myofascial pain. Clinicians report that patients with low back pain, upper back pain, and temporomandibular disorder can respond well. Make sure you don’t give up right away if you don’t experience positive effects. It may require 9-10 sessions before you get the maximum benefit. Give it a try!
Glucosamine is a nutritional supplement. Its use is somewhat controversial in the U.S. because the results of studies have varied. But, other studies do show that if taken in prescription doses of 1500 mg per day, patients experience benefit in osteoarthritis symptoms. Remember to avoid glucosamine if you are allergic to shellfish. It’s easy to find in any local drug store.. Often made from shark and cow cartilage, this supplement can help your achy joints limit breakdown due to arthritis.
Omega-3 fatty acid supplements like fish oil may relieve joint pain from arthritis or autoimmune disorders. Studies on fish oil supplements show that it prevents the production of inflammatory molecules called cytokines, but high doses of fish oil are often needed. Interestingly, other studies suggest that metabolites of fish oil may also be crucial in controlling inflammation. Before consuming this supplement regularly, ask your doctor for guidance.
If you are looking to reduce pain from arthritis, after shingles pain (postherpetic neuralgia), or other types of joint pain, consider capsaicin cream. Capsaicin is an active component in chili peppers. It causes the release of a molecule called substance P from certain nerve fibers. Because so much substance P is released, the nerve cell depletes its supply which then prevents pain signals from traveling to the spinal cord and brain. Studies have shown relief in hand and knee osteoarthritis. A thin layer is applied to the area up to four times daily. Many patients stop using it because it can burn or sting, but this often gets better. You many need to trial it for a month before discontinuing the therapy.Ointments such as InflaThera or Zyflamend may help ease arthritis through ingredients such as ginger, turmeric, and holy basil. Foods containing these substances can have anti- inflammatory properties as well.
Keep in mind, diet and exercise are important when treating pain. Dedication to a regimen like consuming more anti-inflammatory foods and making sure you exercise consistently are more likely to produce results. Some options may not work instantly, but don’t give up. Talk to your doctor about options, and consider shifting your diet to more anti-inflammatory foods like fish, plant based foods, and dark berries and cherries.
Natural remedies can supplement your current therapies and maybe even replace some of them. Make sure you alert your doctor, though because natural remedies can interact with traditional treatments. Good luck!
Posted in Alternative Medicine, Blog, CAM, Holistic.


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Admin 2012! Nick vs Narwhalic!!!!
View Poll Results: Nick Vs Narwhalic ADMIN 2012!
Thread: Admin 2012! Nick vs Narwhalic!!!!
Is this thread seriously happening.
You forgot to add in the option for me! Silly yian.

industry_corpus2: Others


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We help you save money while shopping online at SalesForce.com. We offer the best coupons, deals, discount sales and promotional codes for thousands of online stores, including SalesForce and more. SalesForce coupon codes are a great way to save money and to get the discount price for the products you want to buy at SalesForce online store. After you are finished shopping, enter the SalesForce promotional code into the coupon or deal box during the checkout process at SalesForce website.
Search: SalesForce, SalesForce.com online shopping, discount, online store and leading outlet store chain, offering valuable products for women, men and gifts. www.SalesForce.com online store offers variety of high quality products and goods with SalesForce.com online coupon code.


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The ollar stone is an ancient cooking system, revisited here with a modern design. An ancient way of cooking combined with the experience of modernity. The fiery stone can be used directly on the table, so that it preserves the quality of food that has just been removed from the fire.
Part of the line are also: chromed frames with wooden handles perfect for modern styled houses and supports made of wood dyed with flame to meet different needs. Ollar stones, as well as their supports have different sizes and shapes: small rectangular (16x 20 cm), big (25×40 cm), squared (25×25 cm), round (30 cm in diameter).
This type of stone allows to experience a kind of cooking without oil, butter or other fats that are normally used. For a better aesthetic experience and comfort, Bisetti has developed different supports to transport these stones and use them in the best way.
Wood is one of the most difficult materials to clean, but it is also the one that least changes the taste of food.

industry_corpus2: Manufacturing


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How Much Income Do You Need To Buy A House? – While the mortgage loan is secured against the house, it is really made against your income. That’s what mortgage lenders look for – income to offset liabilities. Simply put, the amount of income you need to purchase a house will vary by your payment comfort level, including any other monthly debt obligations you might have.
You Don't Actually Need to Buy a House – Half Banked – You don’t actually need to buy a house to do anything on that list. And if buying a house gets in the way of any of those things? You can’t afford it, and you’re doing the right thing by holding off until you can – if it’s even something you want.
Trump’s Mar-a-Lago to host Palm Beach County Republicans. Reporters aren’t invited. – “But we also want to respect. s what we have to do.” Barnett said the decision to make the event closed to the press was made by Mar-a-Lago. “They didn’t give us a reason; they just let us know,”.
Do you think the hold up with auto loan” situation is based on nothing more than a class issue?” – Do you think the hold. #repost I want a free credit report without any credit card or any information about my credit card? Can you use Best Buy reward zone points to pay towards Best.
How to Make an Offer on a House | Trulia – You’ve found a house that you love, and now you’re ready to buy. Where do you begin? Follow these 5 steps to know how to make an offer on a house.
Donald Trump Says You Need A Picture ID To Buy Groceries. – · Tap here to turn on desktop notifications to get the news sent straight to you.
loans without income verification What Is a No-Income-Verification Loan? – Budgeting Money – Definition. No-income-verification mortgage loans are also known as no-doc or stated income loans. A borrower states his income on the mortgage application and does not have to provide pay stubs, W-2s or 1099s to back it up.


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Strawberry Blonde's Market Summary: Obama Gets "No Respect"
Time's "2012 Person of the Year" award winner, President Obama, gets "no respect," as Boehner aide says that Obama's planned veto of their "Fiscal Cliff" 'Plan B' is "bizarre and irrational."
Since markets rallied after that remark, I can only assume that they see "going over the cliff" as a positive.
He really should just pack up and go on vacation.
***UPDATE: By the end of the day, equity markets declined and closed at/near their low of the day...the see-saw continues.
***UPDATE December 21, 2012 ~ Boehner's (Merry?) Christmas gift to Americans: After John Boehner's 'Plan B' failed to garner support among his own Republican party members and the House vote was cancelled, the S&P 500 Futures Index dropped 50 points last night in a matter of minutes and global indices around the world are deeply in the red this morning. Gee, I wonder whose thinking is "bizarre and irrational" in the "Fiscal Cliff" negotiations? In his prepared 10:00 am press conference speech today, Boehner turned the resolution of the "Fiscal Cliff" issue over to the President and said "Merry Christmas"...I guess he has no more ideas. It does not sound like he and his Republicans are willing to compromise on a deal. Merry Christmas, indeed!


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A Central Texas man has plenty of time to think about what he did while he sits in the Roberston County Jail today after a deadly weekend shooting.
Robertson County Sheriff's Office records say that William Rabe was arrested around 4:45 AM on Sunday in Franklin, Texas. According to Sheriff Yezak, Rabe was the man who pulled the trigger after a fight broke out at a party on Saturday night.
The shooting happened on private property owned by the owner of Franklin Safari Park. Police say Rabe and the victim were both from Fraklin and knew each other.
The shooting victim's identity has not been released.

industry_corpus2: Law & Justice


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Marketing automation isn't just for marketing anymore but is there to assist entire organisations make smarter business decisions and effectively engage with all audiences.
While a powerful platform on its own, Microsoft Dynamics 365 can become an even more indispensible business tool for more people within an organisation when combined with one or more of the many add-on solutions available today. ClickDimensions is a powerful marketing automation solution natively built inside Microsoft Dynamics 365. This means there are no integration costs and no hassles synchronizing data between systems - just a complete picture of leads and customers for greater marketing, sales and customer experience success.


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Gas prices are up. Will they ever come down?
The price at the pump is up again, equaling the peak prices of 1980 reached in the wake of two Arab oil embargoes.
But back then prices subsided over the next 20 years and in 1999 they actually fell below pre-embargo levels. So will oil prices come back down? The answer is: maybe not. The forces that drove prices down between 1980 and 2000 have changed and may not again work in our favor.
Perhaps the main reason prices returned to normal following the 1980 spike was that the law of supply and demand stepped in. New supply outside the reach of the OPEC oil cartel came to market, notably in the North Sea and Alaska. And users of oil found ways to do more with less. One measure of this is oil intensity – the amount of energy required to produce a dollar of economic output. In the United States, our intensity of oil use has dropped by nearly half since 1973, and other developed countries have performed as well or better. Inevitably, the combination of more supply and less demand resulted in lower prices.
Greed was the second major force contributing to the drop in oil prices. Oil producing countries in the Middle East rely heavily on their oil income. Whether that income is used to enrich tyrants or benefit citizens, national leaders of petroleum-rich countries have every incentive to keep the oil flowing. And the oil has continued to flow, even though the Middle East is a cauldron of political turmoil. OPEC tried to keep prices up by limiting production, but between 1980 and 2000 many OPEC members produced more oil than the targets set by the cartel. Why? They needed the money. As a result, the cartel didn’t work very well and prices dropped.
Finally, and importantly, crude oil markets functioned during this period as good commodity markets should. They responded to changes in supply and demand with exquisite flexibility. Even if there was a supply hiccup somewhere in the system, the market adjusted almost instantly to cover the shortfall. That flexibility, incidentally, is why it has been impossible to embargo oil shipments to any one country.
Rapidly developing countries like China are creating an enormous demand for oil. In the short term, this demand will certainly drive prices higher. Longer term, it’s not clear that demand in these countries will be as sensitive to price as it was among industrialized nations a couple of decades ago. Energy is essential to economic growth, and the desire to grow may simply swamp any inclination to reduce demand in a serious way among developing countries.
New supply is harder to come by. There are new oil fields being discovered, but they tend to be in difficult-to-reach and sensitive locations – miles deep in the ocean or high above the Arctic Circle. That makes them expensive and environmentally challenging to develop.
While greed surely remains strong among governing elites in oil-producing countries – tyrannical or democratic – new players who may not mind shutting down production have entered the picture. Most important are terrorists who would cheerfully blow up an oil field if it serves their purposes. Because of these and other non-state actors, the chances of a supply disruption are higher now than they’ve been for a long time. A recent study by the Energy Modeling Forum concluded that there is a 50-50 chance of a significant supply disruption in the next 10 years.
Markets are showing signs of increasing rigidity. China and other countries are signing up oil supplies for direct delivery from producing countries. At some point, this welter of bilateral deals may get in the way of the oil market’s historic nimbleness. And national oil companies – ones owned by the oil producing nations – have displaced the private sector as the dominant institutions running the world’s oil fields. The result is that oil markets are increasingly responsive to political forces rather than the laws of supply and demand.
Market forces are powerful and could again moderate oil prices, but my guess is that the higher price at the pump is here to stay. If so, energy policymakers should start figuring out how to use a lot less oil. For that reason alone, the Obama administration is right to advocate stricter fuel economy standards and more electric vehicles.
It is none of the Obama administration’s concern, in fact, less oil and gas production, less jobs.
NOT TRUE MOGADAD. For instance, the Germans just created 500k + jobs using renuable energy to make solar panels. You are just puking up a right wing mantra that you have no proof of.
The oil market will respond to demand changes. Long-term, this will change is people “vote with their feet” – let your employers and city leaders know you want more transportation options, in many cities, employers are more effective at lobbying city governments. If they or your city are unresponsive, work to either change your employer or the city/state you live in until you find what you are looking for.
As as example, my employer reimburses the cost of a transit pass, but not for parking.
What wasn’t on that list was the oil price bubble.
The CTFC has reason to step in, and rightfully so.
If the US currency doesn’t collapse, it will definitely go down. Maybe even to $1-2 per gallon is the Fed restricts credit, interests, money printing and the government cracks down on speculating and encourage nuclear and green technology.
This said, I don’t expect any of this to happen and neither does any who has read the economic history of the carter era.

industry_corpus2: Petrochemicals


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Herbert William Mullin early 1970's Santa Cruz, CA serial killer.
Original 9" x 12" painting signed on both sides. Mullin has included a handwritten description of the painting on the back. The front is signed, Mullin.
The back is signed, Herbert Wm. Mullin 3/12/2004 Friday.


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A startup founded by four former Microsoft employees has released a beta of a real-time malware-blocking tool that also bars malicious content from reaching PCs.
Seattle-based Haute Secure's eponymous malware/site blocker enters a market crowded with the likes of McAfee's SiteAdvisor, Symantec's AntiBot, Exploit Prevention Labs' LinkScanner and even offerings from Google. Haute Secure, however, is counting on a multilayer strategy to see it past rivals.
The first layer, said Steve Anderson, who heads the company's product strategy, is a kernel-level driver that looks for and stops executables coming out of the browser. By monitoring multiple Windows processes and services - nearly six dozen in total - the tool watches for malicious behaviour, then blocks execution when it sniffs something dangerous. "We're hooking API [application programming interface] calls to the kernel and watching for malicious behavior coming from the browser," said Anderson.
A second layer blocks the links from which malware is delivered, he added. That tactic is probably more familiar to end users, since it's the technique used by Google's blacklisting efforts, which will be the foundation of a new feature in the upcoming Firefox 3.0. "We're blocking at the site and the page level," said Anderson, noting that many domains have multiple malicious URLs.
Haute Secure, which is currently ready only for Internet Explorer users - a Firefox version will roll into beta next month, and one for Apple's Safari is due out sometime after that - stores the malicious site/page blacklist locally to avoid performance problems, and it updates blacklists several times daily.
The software also can accept multiple blacklist feeds, a characteristic Haute Secure is counting on to deliver revenue down the road. "The way the system is designed, we can take numerous feeds from multiple sources," said Anderson. "In August, we'll [integrate] Google's antiphishing antimalware API, for example. The bigger idea is that we want to be the trusted platform between the Internet and users or enterprises."
A bank, for instance, that already collects the addresses of sites spoofing its legitimate online service, could add its feed to Haute Secure to guarantee that customers who use the tool would be protected.
Haute Secure will remain free to download and use while it is in beta testing, a process that will run into September. After that, Anderson said, plans are less clear. "We may charge for using the malware-blocking feature, since we think link scanning will be more and more commoditised." Under that plan, the blacklist-based layer would be provided free. Another revenue possibility, said Anderson, is to sell a malware-scanning service to companies that fear that their legitimate sites may be hacked at some point and start spewing malicious code. "That's an interesting model, too," said Anderson.
Haute Secure's other principals include Iain Mulholland, a former manager of the Microsoft security response centre; Frank Swiderski, a security researcher and developer who once worked at Microsoft, @Stake and the US Department of Defense; and Rob Vucic, a former Microsoft security researcher who was cited by the FBI for his help investigating the long-running and wide-ranging Zotob/Mytob worm attacks of 2005.
The Internet Explorer add-on, which runs on Windows XP and Vista - including the 64-bit version of the latter - can be downloaded from the Haute Secure site.


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It doesn’t take more than a few notes for most people to recognize one of the most memorable tango songs ever written. It’s called La Cumparsita, and all around the world, celebrations have been taking place to commemorate its 100th year.
The tune’s composer, Gerardo Matos Rodriguez of Uruguay, wrote it as a teenager, sold it, and then spent much of his life trying to win back the rights to the song, after it became world-renowned.
Correspondent Joel Richards explored the complicated history, but also the magic, of the song that has mesmerized tango fans across the world.
"La Cumparsita" turns 100 and all around the world, celebrations take place to commemorate the beautiful tango with a complicated history.

industry_corpus2: Film & Entertainment


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Quantity of needles: 2788; Length: 465 mm (18.31 in); Width: 250 mm (9.843 in); Step: 6,8 mm (0.2677 in).
Lyapko Applicators are elastic plates and rollers, needles of which consist of the metals that are necessary for the body: zinc, copper, iron, nickel, silver.
"Rug" has large area of effect and the longest distance between the needles, owing to which its efficiency increases. It should to be applied to the back. It can be used as a rug under the feet (in standing, sitting or reclining position). It is convenient for lying on with the abdomen in order to prevent and treat digestive organs illnesses and for obesity.


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We are professional & dedicated MLM Software Development Company in Mewat. Over the years we are into MLM software development field and have strong knowledge of various MLM Plans and providing MLM Solutions in Mewat. Being a professional and experts in MLM development, we have provided customized mlm software and mlm solutions to many mlm companies and mlm leaders in Mewat at affordable cost.
For mlm software development in Mewat , we have strong team of MLM professionals and MLM Developers, which work in synchronized manner to customize and develop perfect & effective mlm software as per your requirement and MLM Plan.
Over 5+ years we are well known and reputed MLM Software Development Company in Mewat and our mlm developers and mlm professional are providing perfect and effective mlm solutions in Mewat at affordable cost.
We believe, every business is different and has unique plan and strategy. Our team of mlm software developers and mlm professionals in Mewat take time to listen and understand your mlm plan & mlm strategy, do the market research, calculate the efficiency and profit ratio of the plan and other factors.
After a detailed study of your MLM plan & Market conditions in Mewat , our mlm experts design and develop a perfect, effective and functional customized MLM Software & unique set of MLM solutions, which will fulfill you every requirement and make sure your MLM Business in Mewat will be successfully run for a long time.


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In addition to astrophysics, I play the carillon, which is a musical instrument composed of bells that one plays via a keyboard using both hands and feet. Carillons are typically in towers, such as the two that I have played regularly: Sather Tower at UC Berkeley and Harkness Tower at Yale University. You can find out more about carillons via The Guild of Carillonneurs in North America.
In 2010 I passed my exam to become a Carillonneur (full professional) member of The Guild of Carillonneurs in North America.


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Four years ago, almost to the day, in the same city of London, Ravindra Jadeja was a hare caught in the headlights. He could neither get out nor hit out, and his 25 off 35 in that Twenty20 match against England – India were knocked out of that World T20 – earned him what seemed like a lifetime of ridicule.
He wasn’t supposed to succeed at international cricket. He did. He wasn’t supposed to succeed outside Asia at least. He has, for now.
When Jadeja was introduced in this Champions Trophy match, West Indies had marched to 92 for 1 in 17 overs, and Johnson Charles, an awkward batsman to deal with, was timing everything he hit.
He had carted Bhuvneshwar Kumar, deflected Umesh Yadav and lofted Virat Kohli and even R Ashwin. India were staring at a big total, but Jadeja twirled that ball like he does his new ‘tache. Some turned and some didn’t; most of them were headed for the stumps, but at different speeds; five of them got wickets, two lbws and one bowled; West Indies went from 102 for 1 to 182 for 9, and India into the semi-final of the Champions Trophy.
West Indies now need to beat South Africa to progress; Pakistan were knocked out. The target of 234 – thanks to Jadeja and despite Darren Sammy’s 56 off 35 towards the end, proved no inconvenience for India – whose openers were almost in a contest to outdo each other’s attractive shots.
Their 101-run stand was the first time since 2007 that India had put up back-to-back hundred openings outside Asia. Rohit Sharma might have fallen for 52 off 56, but Shikhar Dhawan went on to score his third century in his last three international innings, all reached at a strike rate of 100 or more. India won with 10.5 overs to spare.
It didn’t start off that easy after they put West Indies in. Johnson Charles, who scored 60 off 55, was an irritant for India, who had managed to get past Chris Gayle before he could do any real damage.
Charles is not a pretty batsman. Nor is he a rhythm player. Form and run of play don’t matter much to him. Once he starts hitting them sweetly, though, he can find unusual spaces on a field of play.
He is a man you want out early, and as his stats suggest it hasn’t been difficult to get him out early. However, until today whenever he had reached 50, he had crossed 100.
Charles was already 50 when Jadeja came on to bowl. That included a burst from 6 off 17 to 30 off 26 in six boundaries in the ninth, 10th and 11th over. After that, he didn’t let Ashwin and Kohli – the latter bowled before Jadeja – settle at all.
On came Jadeja, and bowled a maiden to Darren Bravo. On the face of it, there was nothing special about that over: just accurate and quick spin bowling. In Jadeja’s next, Charles tried to sweep him hard. He connected, but Jadeja had square leg positioned at the right spot.
The next ball was quick, went with the arm, and Charles played all across it. Gone. Trademark Jadeja dismissal. Charles should have known better. Now Jadeja began to employ the vice grip, bowling quick, at the stumps, not knowing himself which will turn and which won’t.
Ishant Sharma – match figures of 10-1-43-1 was an able ally at the other end. He bowled short of a length on a dry pitch, and slipped in a maiden with the unsure Marlon Samuels. In the next over, Jadeja got another dart on target, but the umpire saw an inside edge. Jadeja insisted on a review, convinced MS Dhoni, and found out that the ball had hit the pad first, and plumb in front.
Dhoni returned the favour in Jadeja’s next over when he went down the leg side to superbly catch a deflection from Ramnaresh Sarwan. It wasn’t the best delivery Jadeja had bowled, but West Indies had nonetheless gone from 102 for 1 to 109 for 4.
Darren Bravo now got stuck even as Dwayne Bravo batted industriously leading up to the Powerplay. Darren Bravo finally threw it away just before the Powerplay as he danced down to Ashwin and was stumped for 35 off 83.
After India got lucky with Dwayne Barvo’s wicket, others lost their heads and their wickets. Not Sammy. He lifted that bat high, and began to swing. He had to do a fair bit of farming of the strike because Kemar Roach had joined him with 4.3 overs still to go.
He rearranged some analyses, hit four sixes and five fours, and without any tangible contribution from Roach, added 51 for the last wicket. This total was supposed to give West Indies hope. Dhawan and Rohit were to dash that hope soon. From the moment Rohit cut Roach for four in the first over and Dhawan drive Ravi Rampaul through cover for another in the fourth, the match was going only one way.
West Indies were either too short or too full, the openers matched each other stroke for stroke, and the only matter of uncertainty towards the end was whether Dhawan and Dinesh Karthik would get to their personal milestones.
Dhawan was 96, Karthik was 47, and India needed six when Bravo bowled short. Dhawan upper-cut it over third man, took off the helmet, stood with his arms aloft, and then played out five dots to let Karthik get to fifty in the next over. Karthik did so with a drive over extra cover.

industry_corpus2: Sports


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The fourth most common cause of vertigo is Perilymphatic Fistula (PLF). In this disorder, a leakage of perilymph can occur through the round or oval window resulting in hearing loss and vertigo. There can also be tinnitus and ear pressure. Unlike MD, many patients with PLF will have exacerbation of their symptoms with straining or exercise. Most cases of PLF begin after trauma or after ear surgery, with stapedectomy being most common. Spontaneous improvement can occur, but many cases are managed by repairing and patching the round or oval windows with surgery. Some cases of PLF can go on to develop MD.
Other causes of vertigo and imbalance are acute and chronic otitis media, cholesteatoma, acoustic neuroma, migraine, intracranial pathology and others. Correctly diagnosing the various causes of vertigo is important, because serious, potentially life – threatening diseases such as acoustic neuroma, and cerebral vascular disease can exist. In many cases of vertigo and imbalance, further testing and magnetic resonance imaging are necessary to reach the correct diagnosis.
Intratympanic gentamicin therapy (ITGM) is an accepted treatment for medically refractory MD. The author has used this therapy with excellent vertigo control rates for patients with new-onset MD, previously treated MD, or MD that has recurred despite prior surgical therapy (3). The author has also used intratympanic therapy to successfully treat vertigo after perilymphatic fistula repair. Between July 1997 and February 2002, 44 patients with medically refractory vertigo were treated with ITGM, with a success rate of 95%, and an increased rate of sensorineural hearing loss of less than 5% (unpublished data).
The author’s needle puncture technique for delivering ITGM is as follows: A history, physical examination, appropriate imaging studies, baseline audiogram and electronystagmography are obtained. The patient must have refractory vertigo in one ear despite medical treatment.
The patient is placed in a recumbent position with the treated ear upwards. The tympanic membrane is anesthetized with topical lidocaine/prilocaine cream (EMLA cream) for 10 to 15 minutes. This cream is suctioned and the middle ear is filled with 1 cc of buffered gentamicin solution, introduced through the tympanic membrane via a 25 gauge spinal needle on a 1-cc syringe. The patient is asked to avoid swallowing and kept supine for 30 minutes. At the end of this time, any remaining solution is suctioned from the ear canal and the patient is sent home.
A follow-up appointment is scheduled in one month. If there is persistent vertigo at that time, another treatment is administered. The endpoint for treatment is control of vertigo. At times it might be necessary to delay injections due to hearing loss or ataxia.
ITGM provides a selective chemical ablation of the ipsilateral vestibular end organ. Gentamicin is believed to work via decreasing production of endolymph, or via a direct toxic effect on type I vestibular hair cells (4). In general, gentamicin exerts its effect in a delayed fashion, beginning in three to five days. It is not clearly evident the duration of time over which the medication works, but the author believes the final result of an injection might be evidenced in three to four weeks. Most patients require 1-2 injections. All methods of ITGM have an excellent success rate, with vertigo control approaching approximately 85% (2).
In summary, ITGM therapy for vertigo has an excellent vertigo control rate, can be administered in a clinic setting, and has few side effects.
Sensorineural hearing loss (SNHL) has many causes. It is important to determine if the hearing loss is congenital, hereditary, sudden, chronic, or progressive. Presbycusis and noise exposure usually cause slow, progressive SNHL. Viral or bacterial infections, blunt and surgical trauma may precipitate sudden SNHL. Ototoxic medications may also cause sudden SNHL, but a slowly progressive hearing loss, secondary to ototoxic medications is possible too. Acoustic neuroma usually causes a slow progressive hearing loss with tinnitus and sometimes imbalance. When the etiology of SNHL cannot be determined, the term "idiopathic" has been used.
There is evidence that idiopathic SNHL is secondary to inflammation within the cochlear system, possibly secondary to viral infection. Steroids have known anti-inflammatory properties and have been advocated for treatment of sudden SNHL.
Moskowitz et al (5) treated 36 patients with idiopathic sudden sensorineural hearing loss with dexamethasone (an anti-inflammatory synthetic gluco-corticoid, within the family of steroids) and found that using this medication resulted in hearing improvement.
Other studies have also found steroids to be beneficial (6). Most studies advocate doses of steroid equivalent to 1 mg/kg/day of prednisone (an anti-inflammatory, synthetic gluco-corticoid) tapering over 10 to 14 days. However, in some cases there is no recovery (7).
This author has used intratympanic dexamethasone delivered via a needle puncture technique and has found patients tire of coming back every 3-4 days for injections. Additionally, the success rate has been poor.
In conclusion, intratympanic therapy potentially has vast and varied application in the treatment of patients with inner ear disorders. Clearly this therapy is in its infancy, but preliminary results have been very encouraging.
All hearing health care professionals should be aware that this therapy could have application for their patients with hearing loss, vertigo, and possibly tinnitus.


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Display event - Council and Committee Meetings Washington D.C.
Council and Committee Meetings Washington D.C.
Delegate: an individual serving on Council (includes alternate delegate), a committee, a subcommittee, a task force, a working group or a Section Board. Chairpersons of Committees may permit other individuals to attend and participate as observers at Committee meetings, including staff members of Full Members and other non-actuaries. The Secretariat will communicate with non-delegates only if their attendance has been disallowed. In the absence of any notification to the contrary, please assume that your attendance is permitted.
Non-Delegates: may attend the meetings at a cost of $180 CAD per day, which includes two coffee breaks and lunch. The Secretariat will communicate with non-delegates if their attendance has been disallowed.
In the event of space limitations, priority for attendance at the IAA Meetings and Dinner will be given to Delegates.
Coffee breaks and lunches are open to meeting attendees only. For logistical and financial reasons, attendance is not permitted to accompanying persons.
The dress code for the meetings is business casual.
Photographs will be taken of attending delegates during various sessions, events, breaks and lunches. All photographs remain the sole propriety of the IAA and may be used for Newsletters, Annual Reports and Social Media feeds (Example: Twitter, Facebook etc.), at the IAA's sole discretion. By registering for the Council and Committee meetings, registrants hereby give permission to the IAA for use of any photograph taken during this event.


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IT Computer Support of New York has joined the MSPAlliance, a global organization of cloud, managed service providers and dedicated vendors. MSPAlliance Members are eligible for MSP and Cloud Certifications including, SSAE16 Audits and ultimately achieve certification through the MSPAlliance MSP/Cloud Verify System™. The MSPAlliance works to further the advancement of Cloud Computing around the world and promotes integrity and professionalism within the industry.
The MSPAlliance is the oldest Managed Services group and the only Accrediting and Standards based body created specifically for the Managed Services Industry. With over 25,000 corporate members world-wide, the MSPAlliance is a very powerful and influential global network of IT professionals. The MSPAlliance works in a collaborative effort with service providers, technology enabling vendors, governmental bodies as well as other industry associations, to further the acceptance of the managed services and cloud industry to the business consumer.
IT Computer Support of New York is pleased to be accepted as a member of the MSPAlliance and looks forward to the opportunities that this relationship will bring in the future. For more information, visit www.mspalliance.com or contact us directly at 212-242-2949.


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Successfully funded last year on Kickstarter the "moral choice strategy adventure game" This Is the Police gets a new story trailer and the studio announced the title will hit PC this Summer with console versions soon after. You take on the role of Jack Boyd, honest chief of Police for decades, who will be compulsorily retired in 6 months. Your goal is to get $500.000 in your bank account whether you use bribery, cooperation with the Mafia, selling seized weapons, it's up to you.
Great to see such an original idea!

industry_corpus2: Gaming


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Following on from the popular False Friends post, Catriona brings us twenty more false friends to be aware of in our writing.
French ‘magasin’ sounds like magazine... but means shop.
German ‘bekommen’ sounds like become... but means get.
See the previous Proofreading Tips article on False Friends.
The verbs can be the cause of confusion, rarely the nouns.
Great mind-boggling stuff, Catriona! I'll have to watch out for the hoards of grizzly humus-eaters...they're all over Winchester.
Ha! Is this on a biannual or biennial basis?


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ELLINGTON, Conn. (AP) - State Police are now conducting what has become a homicide investigation at an Ellington home where troopers were initially called for a burglary.
On Thursday, they identified the victim as 39-year-old Connie Dabate, who lived at the residence on Birchview Drive.
Troopers had received a call for a residential burglary alarm on Wednesday morning at the home. When they arrived, they found one injured victim, 39-year-old Richard Dabate, who was taken to Hartford Hospital for treatment.
They also found smoke inside the house.
As detectives continued to investigate how Richard Dabate was injured and what set off the alarm, they determined there were actually two victims and the second, Connie Dabate, was deceased.
The Office of the Chief Medical Examiner is determining the cause and manner of her death.


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interface is a pain but it works!
> another site? I think it would be fun to see who was where.
>> I felt like I have known this a few years ago... Was I seeing things ?


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Whether on the beach or on a court. Volleyball trophies recognize your team members and celebrates that victorious win.
An Elegant Diamond Volleyball Sport Award that can be a Desk Accessory, Mounted on a Plaque or on a Wall.


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With a new book, ‘No Happy Cows,’ and the forthcoming Virtual Food Revolution Summit, author John Robbins stirs up a food uprising unlike any other. Why the push for more natural foods and less processed, industrial foods has never been greater.
Julia Child and John Robbins walk into a veal barn. (This sounds like the start of a great joke, but it is actually the beginning of a true story.) It was the late ’90s, and the pair were speakers at a conference in Philadelphia, Penn. Child, the iconic American cook and gastronomic Francophile, was well into her eighties; Robbins, who is a Santa Cruz County resident, was a decade into his reign as the leading advocate of a plant-based diet.
“We disagreed about most things,” says Robbins. This fact aside—or perhaps in light of it—he invited Child to accompany him to a nearby veal barn, where young calves awaited their fate as a culinary ingredient.
What they saw in that barn was, as Robbins already knew, the norm for veal operations of the day. In order to produce the velvety texture desired of veal meat, the baby cows were chained up as newborns and not allowed to move or walk until their slaughter a few months later, lest connective tissue form and the muscle consistency be less palatable to consumers.
Standing among the calves and the noxious stink (the animals were standing in piles of their own waste), Robbins says Child was horrified.
Robbins has made a career out of giving others a peek behind the veil of the industrialized food system, although not always in as literal a sense as this. But, like with Child, he has been responsible for informing and changing the hearts and minds of many people, namely those who have read any of his eight books, which explore the intersections of diet, health and the environment.
Although largely alone in the effort when he began in the ’80s, Robbins shouted the benefits of a whole-foods, plant-based diet from the hilltops until others started listening—which they have, and in growing numbers. In addition to increased awareness of the grim reality of factory farming, it’s now more widely understood that reducing meat and dairy consumption is better for our health (diets high in animal proteins are linked to heart disease, certain cancers, obesity and high cholesterol, according to numerous sources, including the World Health Organization) and the health of our planet (for starters, industrial livestock is a larger contributor to global warming than the entire transportation sector, according to a 2006 United Nations report).
This year marks the 25th anniversary of Robbins’ flagship work, the bestseller and Pulitzer Prize-nominated “Diet for a New America.” Robbins is celebrating with the release of another book, “No Happy Cows: Dispatches From the Frontlines of the Food Revolution,” which hit bookstores on April 1.
Twenty-five years into the business of being a food industry watchdog and dissident, Robbins—an indisputably gentle, kind man—is getting angry. Penning “No Happy Cows” is his way of smearing on the proverbial war paint, and encouraging readers to do the same.
The vast amounts of money, power and political influence that industry giants like Monsanto have mean that every step forward is met with a large push back, he says. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t hope.
“There is a battle going on over dinner, and I’ve written ‘No Happy Cows’ because I want people to win,” he says.
He is taking other steps, as an admiral in the food war, to galvanize the movement. He has gathered the troops, so to speak, in form of a free Virtual Food Revolution Summit that he will host from April 28 to May 6. The 20-speaker lineup is a roster of other soldiers in the revolution who represent “all sides of the food equation,” says Robbins. He will interview three speakers per day over the course of the summit, traversing topics like health and nutrition, genetically modified foods, animal welfare and sustainable livestock movements, while speaking with such prominent luminaries as Dean Ornish, M.D., founder of the nonprofit Preventive Medicine Research Institute, Super Size Me director Morgan Spurlock, and “The Age of Miracles” author Marianne Williamson.
The event’s producer (and Robbins’ son), Ocean Robbins, helped conceive of the summit. “My dad is known as a popular spokesperson on issues of health and sustainability, but I know he’s been inspired by a lot of people,” Ocean says. “He didn’t come up with all of this on his own. He’s part of a whole community of visionaries and leaders. They hang out and talk together but there aren’t a lot of ways they get to collaborate. I thought, what would happen if we connected the dots?
We need this revolution just to undo the one that was thrust upon us in the first place, says journalist and “Value of Nothing” author Raj Patel, who is a speaker in the summit. “It’s revolutionary for us to think it’s normal to find water in bottles,” he says. “It’s revolutionary for our kids to grow up thinking tomatoes come from supermarkets.
And while personal responsibility surely has a part to play in the fight, he says a true revolution will require a collective effort.
If “Diet for a New America” catapulted the troubles with factory farming and industrial agriculture into the public eye, “No Happy Cows” catches up with everything that has happened as a result. Free-range, grass-fed, humanely-raised—these topics weren’t discussed in “Diet for a New America” because they “didn’t exist at the time as a commercial entity,” says Robbins.
“No Happy Cows” is his response to the skyrocketing demand for local, organic, humanely raised and more sustainable foods—and the good and bad that comes along with it. “It’s great,” he says. “I just don’t want to see it exploited or lied about.” The book examines junk food marketing aimed at children, the dark reality behind chocolate, the deceptive branding of products like “Vitaminwater,” and more.
“There are no happy cows in industrial agriculture,” asserts Robbins. “In feedlot beef production, in feed-lot dairy production, there are no happy cows. I really mean that. There aren’t any.” He says the Happy Cow commercials—which depict robust, healthy cows frolicking on spacious green pastures—are an insult to the genuine concerns and cares of the consumer. “They don’t want to treat the cows better, they just want to put an ad campaign out there saying they do,” he says of the industry.
Patel often writes about similar industry maneuvers to capitalize on health-driven trends, such as Pepsi’s introduction of “healthier options” to their product line. But, Patel says, so long as a corporation’s bottom line is, well, the bottom line—and not the consumer—they will never be true orchestrators of change.
Robbins’ beef isn’t just with misleading advertising, but also with the sheer amount of it aimed at promoting unhealthy foods.
Add to that the 79 percent increase in U.S. almond milk sales in 2011, according to Packaged Facts, and the dairy industry may be right to be worried.
The growing market for non-dairy beverages correlates with increasing awareness about the prevalence of hormones in conventional milk—a topic explored in one of “No Happy Cows”’ more gripping chapters, titled “Infants Growing Breasts: The Trouble with Hormones in our Milk.” Although the use of Bovine Growth Hormones (BGHs) are banned in other developed countries, including Canada and most of Europe, non-organic American dairy cows are pumped with the stuff regularly.
Milk is to Food Revolution Summit speaker T. Colin Campbell’s career as ice cream is to Robbins’.
“If anything, growing up on a dairy farm biased me in favor of eating meat, milk and eggs as the best of nutrition,” says Campbell, who spoke to Good Times on his 78th birthday. He went into his career as a biochemist and nutrition scientist promoting the consumption of animal proteins for optimal health, but everything changed when he saw a curious finding in an Indian medical study that found a link between cancer and diets high in animal products.
These findings set Campbell on a path he hadn’t expected—one that caused him, like Robbins, to “break with my background.” But his dairy-doubting studies did more than to distance him from his roots; they also ostracized him from his colleagues and the accepted beliefs of Western medicine.
However, over the course of his ensuing scientific endeavors, he found quite the opposite to be true. “When we consume protein in excess amount than we need—and almost everyone does, and they get it from animal foods—we are increasing the risk of cancer and a number of other problems like heart disease,” Campbell says.
In 2005, Campbell co-authored the four-time best-selling book “The China Study: Startling Implications for Diet, Weight Loss and Long-Term Health,” which the New York Times called the “grand prix of epidemiology.” His work is now some of the most famous and reputed evidence for the health benefits of a plant-based diet. Campbell was featured in the documentaries Forks Over Knives and Planeat, both of which also spotlight physician Caldwell Esselstyn, who is also a Food Revolution Summit speaker.
The personal frustrations that come along with being a food and health revolutionary are one of the topics Robbins plans to address with his interviewees.
“What is it like to see as clearly and strongly as many of these people do when you’re speaking to a culture—and trying to awaken a culture—where denial and deflection and distraction prevail?” says Robbins. “When you’re carrying a torch and doing so over the long haul in a culture where the forces that are aligned that are very powerful?
Speaker Kathy Freston is the New York Times bestselling author of books including “The Veganist: Lose Weight, Get Healthy, Change the World” and “Quantum Wellness: A Practical and Spiritual Guide to Health and Happiness.” Her latest work, “The Lean: A Revolutionary (and Simple!) 30-Day Plan for Healthy, Lasting Weight Loss” came out on April 1. As for Robbins’ question, Freston says it is her hope, but also her dissatisfaction, which fuels her fire.
Like Campbell and Robbins before her, Freston had to unlearn a lifetime of conventional eating habits and beliefs before she became a leader in the movement for a healthier diet.
“I grew up in Atlanta, raised on barbecue ribs, cheesy grits and chicken fried steak,” she says. “[Vegetarianism] was something that was completely foreign to me.” Throughout her twenties, a copy of “Diet for a New America” sat, unread, on her bedside table—the book called to her, but it was a long time before she felt ready to give it a go. “I’d open it up and close it back up again,” she says. “I’d read something and feel that just to read it would be to have to change.” Needless to say, she eventually read it—and the rest is history.
But, while Freston is a self-proclaimed “veganist” (defined as “someone who is very interested in learning more and turning it into action”), she advocates for taking baby steps toward a healthier diet and not beating oneself up along the way. This is encapsulated in her concept of “the lean,” a double entendre hinting at both the weight loss potential of a vegan diet and the strategy of gently leaning into the changes.
This message is shared by many of the summit’s speakers, including Robbins. Although he’s known for advocating a plant-based diet, “No Happy Cows” is a departure in that, instead, it details ways to eat milk and dairy responsibly and is—he hopes—good reading material for non-vegetarians looking to get more informed about their choices.
The food uprising will be accomplished when everyone, collectively, takes a step in the right direction, not by a handful of full-fledged militants, he says. He hopes that his new book and the summit will inspire the general public to get angry enough with the modus operandi to make some small changes. “If we could get everyone in the world to take one step, the impact of that on the greater reality would be much greater than any people way out there, because there are just so many more people,” says Robbins.
The Virtual Food Revolution Summit will take place April 28–May 6 via a web broadcast and a dial-in phone teleconference. To register for free, find the full list of speakers, or to learn more, visit foodrevolution.org. Participants can dialogue with one another through a chat room during the summit. An upgrade package will be available for $97 in the three days following the event (after which it will be $197), and will include mp3s of the collection of interviews, e-books, webinars, recipe books, interview transcripts and other offerings from the various speakers involved.
GMO-Free Santa Cruz would not divulge the exact numbers of signatures they had gathered as of press time, but they did say that they had met their halfway goal and were optimistic. For Smith, it’s not a matter of if, but when, labeling will occur, and whether consumers will stop buying GMO products before July 2014, when the law would take effect. “I think there’s a race between labeling and a consumer tipping point—I don’t know which will hit first,” he says.
3. Buy organic—they are not allowed to intentionally use GMOs, although sometimes contamination can occur.
4. Avoid the at-risk ingredients, which include milk and meat from animals fed GMOs, milk from animals injected with Bovine Growth Hormone, and eight crops: soybeans, corn, cottonseed, canola, sugar beets, Hawaiian papaya (most), zucchini and yellow squash (some).

industry_corpus2: Agriculture & Fisheries


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SEO strategies have evolved a lot in the past few years. SEO is now more a “smart work” rather than a “hard work”. If you want to get the first page rankings then you need to adopt the best strategies for SEO.
Here are the some of the important SEO strategies which will help you to hit higher position in SERPs.
With the increasing number of mobile users. If your site is not optimized for mobile. Then you are surely losing the potential customers. With the mobile-first indexing update, it is necessary to have the mobile version of your site to rank higher. It is worth creating the Accelerated Mobile Pages or AMPs if you are having a lot of content. Due to AMPs, the content will load faster providing good user experience and help in reducing the bounce rates. Thus increase the organic rankings in search engine result pages.
There are millions of active users on the social media channels including Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Google+. Adopt social media promotions in your SEO strategy. This will help in increasing the authority of your site plus help in building links. Social Media not only increase the traffic but also helps in driving quick conversions for the site. Add social button and utilize the power of social sharing for your posts or pages.
In order to get success in SEO, content should be of high quality adhering to white hat SEO techniques. Google prefers long form of content of around 1000 -2000 words which is unique. So if you write 300-400 words ordinary and copied or spun content. Then, there is no chance to rank higher in search engine result pages. Your content should add value without having any black hat techniques, providing unique value and should be relevant. Having a quality content will only help you to rank higher in SERPs.
If you want to rank on the first page of Google, you have to utilize the long tail keywords in your content and SEO activities. Long tail keywords are more specific and there is less competition and if optimized properly, it is easy to rank higher. Over the years, long tail search terms have increased. Thus there are more chances to get high click through rates or CTR for your web pages in search engine result pages.
Customer experience should be the top most priority of SEO specialist. So optimize the site for quick loading time, use less pop-up and ads. Also, rectify errors, broken links and provide a customized 404 page. Write the compelling headline and meta descriptions without stuffing keywords. Don’t forget to use social sharing buttons and proper navigation. These all helps in improving the site usability and create a better user experience.
These Search Engine Optimization strategies and techniques are already performing better. Thus it will improve the performance of your site in 2017 and in the years to come by.
Prev PostWant To Improve Your Local SEO? Simple Tips!

industry_corpus2: Computing & Telecommunications


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For foreign businesses operating in Mexico, stitching together varying insurance policies to get complete coverage for their business exposures can be an enormous time sink. The frustrations of this task are only exaggerated due to the fact that many traditional Mexican insurance policies are structured differently from similar American and global policies. As such, companies requiring commercial insurance coverage may have to settle for inferior policies and grudgingly accept the coverage gaps of patchwork policies.
Our Mexican commercial insurance packages are suitable for all types of businesses in Mexico. From construction companies to hotels and resorts to every conceivable enterprise in between.
Our Mexican commercial insurance packages can provide coverage for buildings and contents, equipment failures, general liability, catastrophic coverage, and more! We are sure we will be able to craft a package that covers your specific risks.
To learn more about available coverage to select from, please view our MexiPack Commercial Package product.
Without MexiPass and our Mexican commercial insurance packages, you could waste countless hours searching for different plans to patch together and still suffer from inadequate coverage.
At MexiPass we make it simple to fulfill all your Mexican insurance needs simultaneously with our Mexican commercial insurance packages. Don’t waste your time elsewhere when everything you need to place your insurance order is available right here.
Please browse our Mexican commercial insurance package products below.
Looking to buy a Commercial Package in Mexico? Please click here to find a MexiPass agent near you.


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BLOG Is Golang the New Java for Developing Enterprise Applications?
Is Golang the New Java for Developing Enterprise Applications?
Golang - or simply “Go” - is an open source programming language created by Google in 2007. Its purpose was to do away with the “extraneous garbage” of previous languages such as C and C++.
While it is obvious that Golang is the new “cool” kid on the block when it comes programming languages, the question is, will it ever completely replace Java development? The verdict is still out. But here’s a look at why developers are so gung-ho for Go.
Both Golang and Java are easy to use for developers who are accustomed to C and C++ languages. However, Go doesn’t contain a very large feature set, which makes it a bit simpler and more similar to C.
Another advantage of Golang vs. Java is that it’s a newer language and developers who are dealing with several different versions of Java are constantly having to make updates to the outdated code.
Golang provides automatic memory management or “garbage collection” which is considered to be one of the key features of Go. Garbage collection helps save application development time while simplifying file structure.
Go applications can maintain thousands of goroutines concurrently. A goroutine is similar to a thread in Java, but it requires a lot less memory.
Golang was designed to be easy for programmers to learn in a short period of time. It focuses on efficiency instead of elaborate coding mechanisms and features.
These are just a few of the reasons developers are turning to Golang instead of Java for their current enterprise projects.
If you’d like to learn more about Golang and whether or not it might be the best language for your current project, contact us. We’d be happy to help!

industry_corpus2: Programming


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Overview: Confero was created in 1986 and has since grown, and covers assignments in the 50 U.S., Canada, Mexico, China, Europe, Puerto Rico, Guam and Japan. They have over 130,000 shoppers.
Currently Elaine Buxton serves as President. The total leadership combined offers 55 years of combined experience. Confero also works with Nevada for conducting mystery shops legally in that state.
Project Variations: Currently Confero Shops: Banking-Teller Shops, Finance Shops-Stocks/Trades, Auto Dealership Shops, Quick Oil-Change Shops, Airport Post-Security Shops, Mystery Telephone Shops, Fortune 500 Companies, Home Services (home repair), Regional Large Retailers Shops, Food Service Corp. Shops, Automotive Repair Shops, Grocery Store Shops, International Airport Shops, Regional Bank Shops, Automotive Parts Shops, Car Wash/Detail Shops, Auto Dealerships, Coupon Redemption Check Shops, Audits/Announced-Covert, Customer Surveys, On-the-Spot Rewards Shops, Convenience Store Shops, Computer Shops, Military Base Shops/Base Exchange Shops, Stock Trade/Investing Shops, Fuel Shops, Youth Activity Shops, Brewery Shops, Movie Theaters, On-Line Movie Ticket Shops, Educational Shops, Telephone Mystery Shops, Customer Service Surveys (IVR and Web), Customer Exit Interviews, Performance Consulting Shops, Recognition Incentive Programs, Hospital Shops, Medical Practice Shops, Consumer Products Shops, Theme Parks, Real Estate Shops, Shopping Centers Shops, Insurance Services Shops, Institutional Food Service Shops, Retail Centers, Shopping Mall Shops, Truck Stops, Theme Parks, College Campus Food Services, Airport Food & Beverage Shops.
Facts: Confero utilizes a Quality Assurance Team (QAT) to carefully review the reports submitted by shoppers. Each QAT is responsible for a certain client demographic. Confero uses a 1-10 rating scale and gives explanations and ratings for that rating. Confero requires a screening process for shoppers, to get an idea of their background and if they meet certain criteria. Confero uses Sassie based COMPASS reporting systems, for reporting online shops. They also use Geo-Verify for their shoppers.
Extra Facts: Confero conducts Benchmark Studies. This is a Mystery Shop where none of the employees know that they are being mystery shopped. Confero strives to get a baseline comparison to compare for future results. It is then that the employees are told there will be a mystery shopping program. Confero advises clients to keep the shops going on a regular bases so that associates won’t know when the shopper is coming. They advise posting the results on the employee community board, black out the employees name, so that typically, it could have been any employee committing the infraction/good act. Confero believes the mystery shopping results should be shared with everyone in the store, because mystery shopping will ultimately reveal the business weakness levels.
Linked-In Scam Alert: There are hackers breaking into Linked-In accounts and pretending to be friends with the victim. They post “supposed” great mystery shopping jobs working with Confero and the earning potential of $300 per shop. Confero has posted warnings on their web site and on their BBB page, warning potential would-be shoppers, that they are NOT posting jobs on Linked-In. Shoppers are warned to never accept checks for large amounts and the average fee for a shop is $10-$15, not $300.
Confero is a Charter Member of the MSPA.
BBB: Confero is BBB Accredited with an A+ rating.
PayDay: Confero pays on the 20th of the month, for shops completed the previous month. Confero pays by paypal.
Pay Rates: Fast Food Shops pay an average of $6-$9 plus reimbursement. Grocery Shops pay $10 shop fee with $3-$5 reimbursement. Better restaurants can pay up to $30 reimbursement and fees that range from $10+ depending on the complexity of the shop.
What others have to say: I have not heard any hard complaints but I have seen shoppers ask about their pay for shops. Whether this has improved or been rectified, I am not sure, but other than slow pay, I have not heard any concrete complaints about working with this company.