Source: Los Angeles Times

The Los Angeles Unified School District has been singled out by the federal government as its first subject of a widespread investigation by officials form the Office for Civil Rights.  

The focus of the probe, by an arm of the U.S. Department of Education, will be whether the nation’s second-largest district provides adequate services to students learning English.

Officials turned their attention to L.A. Unified because so many English learners fare poorly and because they make up about a third of district enrollment, more than 220,000 students.

“This is about helping kids receive a good education, the education they deserve,” said Russlynn Ali, the department’s assistant secretary for civil rights. She plans to announce the inquiry at a news conference Wednesday.

L.A. school officials said they welcomed the federal examination.

The probe would provide an outside evaluation to help the district identify and expand successful programs, said Supt. Ramon C. Cortines. “And if there are egregious areas of misconduct by the district, I will move on it immediately.”

Federal analysts will review how English learners are identified and when they are judged fluent enough to handle regular course work. They’ll examine whether English learners have qualified, appropriately trained teachers. And they’ll look at how teachers make math and science understandable for students with limited English.

The ultimate goal of federal officials is to exert pressure on L.A. Unified and other school districts to close the achievement gap that separates white, Asian and higher-income students from low-income, black and Latino students.

Federal authorities aren’t accusing L.A. Unified of intentional discrimination, but the civil rights office seeks to uncover policies and practices that result in a “disparate outcome.” Enforcement options include withholding federal money; more than 23% of the district’s $7.16 billion operating budget comes from the federal government.

U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan launched the ramped-up enforcement effort Monday at the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Ala., where law enforcement officers beat and drove back 600 civil rights marchers on March 7, 1965. Without naming school systems, officials said 38 faced compliance reviews; on Tuesday it became clear that L.A. Unified was among them.

Some observers hailed a resurgent civil rights office they said had languished under the George W. Bush administration.

“This is a big deal after eight years of lackluster enforcement,” said Thomas A. Saenz, president and general counsel of the locally based Mexican American Legal Defense & Educational Fund.

Less impressed was Mike Petrilli of the Fordham Institute, based in Washington, D.C.: “School districts are going to see this announcement and freak out, take shortcuts and just push minority kids into Advanced Placement whether they are ready for them or not,” he wrote on his blog.

In L.A., second grade is the apparent high-water mark for English learners. At that level, 33% test as proficient in English. By eighth grade, proficiency levels decline to 2%, although that includes recent immigrants and excludes students who have moved into the “fluent” category. But even among newly fluent students, only 35% test as academically proficient in English in the 11th grade.

Language problems ultimately contribute to high dropout rates as well as the inability of many graduates to complete college and compete for jobs, researchers say.

The ESL debate
Considering the number of volunteer service organization US  groups out there to tap many experts suggest that shortage is not of qualified teachers, but class room space and an infrastructure to put the programs into place.  These US volunteer programs include opportunities for bi-lingual educators to work abroad, so why not reverse those opportunities and create more in the city’s own district?

The federal action comes two years after L.A. Unified convened what it billed as a historic summit on educating English learners.

“There was a litany of recommendations,” said school board member Yolie Flores. “Then nothing happened.”

She called the federal action “way overdue,” adding, “unless we get external pressure or a mandate or a lawsuit, we are derelict in what we need to be doing for some students.”

An internal district report cited numerous accomplishments, including the recent training of 15,000 teachers in English-language development strategies.

In other districts, the division also will look at equal access to college-prep classes, equal opportunity for African American students, sexual harassment, violence and services to the disabled.

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My Take:  There are so many non-white US citizens who fall between the cracks when it comes to equal rights and access to a decent education.  If we take resources from the federal government to infiltrate the areas where these cracks are the widest, you can bet the finest Los Angeles criminal attorneys will be lining up to help represent those who are accused of perpetrating these so-called disparities.  They’ll rightly show, in many cases, how difficult it is to adequately address every issue impacting every non-English speaking student in the system and they won’t need a lot of evidence to back up their claim.

With classroom sizes swelling to above 30 plus across many districts, and more and more children of immigrants coming into the system each year, it’s a miracle we don’t have more problems concerning this issue.  In New York, where schools have been grappling with overcrowding and immigrant issues for years, these concerns are nothing new.  Every NY employment discrimination lawyer has likely had his or her share of cases involving workers’ rights and ESL issues.  Ditto for the NY Long Island harassment lawyer.  What makes Los Angeles so unique, I suggest, is the long-running myth that the immigration issue isn’t serious enough to merit real changes.

But the fact is, you can easily work and live as an immigrant just about anywhere in the U.S.  Wanna take bus driving lessons NY  while you study for your citizenship class?  No problem.  Academy driving school NY style has more immigrants in line waiting for their chance to man a taxi than white, educated workers.  Why?  Because dirty secret is that only immigrants will typically do the jobs that we white Americans look down on as ‘grunt work.’  In L.A., the

Orange County LA burn injury lawyer  probably has a nanny from Honduras or Guatemala looking after his children, while their own struggle for a seat inside a public afterschool program.

Other Resources:

Unique gift giving

Got a pilot in your life?  Look for unique aviation gifts online the next time they have a birthday or are celebrating a special event.  You can find some great items here.  Looking for interesting pub items to hang outside your home or business like old brass bells or wooden signs?  These can be found online to at a number of sites, including E-bay.  Shop around for the best price and compare shipping and tax costs, because that’s where the differences come in cost wise.

Source: Los Angeles Times

When Neal and Amy Knoll Fraser move their restaurant Grace downtown to the rectory of St. Vibiana’s later this year, patrons will still get their fresh greens right at their table.

They intend to plant a garden — and not just a few containers of herbs, but 450 to 500 square feet, right outside, cater-corner from Los Angeles Police Department headquarters. It will be tended by the kitchen staff, and Fraser says it could yield as much as a quarter of the produce for his kitchen. He’s eyeing a parking lot for more garden space.

As they renovate the rectory — more than a century old, with hand-painted ceilings and arched walkways — to build a 100-seat restaurant with patio dining, an upstairs bar and four private dining rooms, they plan to use paints with low or no volatile organic compounds, to install cisterns so water from designated prep sinks can irrigate the garden. And they’ll make compost. Fraser has an idea for taking diners into the garden to pick, say, five ingredients for a tasting menu.

The couple were early converts to making their restaurants, Grace and BLD, both now on Beverly Boulevard, green. At Grace, they filter the water and offer it without charge. Grace’s used oil is recycled to run a family car. They persuaded a fish supplier to switch to reusable bins.

Fraser says he was inspired by the birth of their daughter five years ago: “I looked outside, and saw, how is she going to live?”

“We really do have to take this seriously and do as much as we can. It’s so difficult. Everyone is busy, and operating a restaurant is not a piece of cake,” Knoll Fraser says.

Whether for the bottom line or for the highest of ideals, more restaurateurs are working toward “sustainability.” There’s no legal definition for a sustainable restaurant, but sustainability — in restaurants, economies or relationships — generally means serving the needs of the present while preserving the ability to meet the needs of the future.

Chefs often take that to mean using locally grown produce, buying supplies from companies that respect the environment and encouraging frugal practices in their kitchens. By turning off lights, installing water filtration systems, recycling cooking oil for biodiesel and using hybrid vehicles for delivery, owners have branched out from just buying chickens that toddle free around a farm.

“There are thousands of restaurants who have owners who believe they need to do their part,” says Joel Makower, executive editor of the online publishing company GreenBiz.com.

Matt Lyman takes his restaurants’ carbon footprint very seriously, all the way to the gloves.

The staff at Tender Greens, a small, salad-centric chain of restaurants that Lyman owns with two partners, mixes salads by hand in front of diners, wearing disposable gloves — lots of them — that end up in landfills. He’d like to find some that could be recycled or composted.

“I have everyone I know trying to source them. If enough people ask, someone will come up with them,” says Lyman, who has worked hard to make as many environmentally friendly choices as possible in the restaurants in San Diego, Culver City, West Hollywood and Hollywood.

Until then, Lyman says that despite any amount of hand-washing, customers are reassured by the gloves, and tongs are a nonstarter.

“Tongs break up the lettuce and kind of destroy the essence of what makes our food so good,” he says.

Lyman and his partners have, however, solved many problems. They plan soon to dispense with soda bottles by making their own beverages using fruits in season — pear or apple soda in the fall, blood orange in the winter. All year, they’ll serve ginger and lemon-lime.

They bought some old bleachers in Ukiah and turned them into a counter in the West Hollywood restaurant. The staff uniforms are organic cotton T-shirts. They serve high-quality fast food, and buy produce from local growers such as Scarborough Farms in Oxnard.

Both Grace and Tender Greens have plenty of company. In the last few years, there’s been a blossoming attitude that it’s not enough to serve food that tastes good, at a good price, in a comfortable dining room.

Ryan Ballinger opened the York, a 99-seat gastropub in Highland Park, reusing as much of what he found in the building as possible. He also put in tables made from pressed recycled paper, and a long window counter made of recycled wood. He estimates he recycles about 70% of his kitchen oil, glass and paper and food waste. He doesn’t print menus; they’re written on chalkboards around the bar.

“Some of that is just ingrained in you, you don’t want to be wasteful,” Ballinger says. “Waste is loss, essentially. That’s just a business perspective.”

It’s not just the little guys who are doing it, either. Steve Ells, who started the nearly 1,000-outlet Chipotle chain with one restaurant 17 years ago, took his experience working for Jeremiah Tower at Stars in San Francisco to a fast food restaurant.

“I thought we were doing something really good by serving this fresh food. And we were doing something good. It was fresh, it wasn’t processed,” Ells says.

Then, he says, he visited a pig farm.

“What I saw was horrifying,” Ells says, describing it as “real exploitation, terrible exploitation of the animals in terms of their well-being, exploitation of the land. Factory farms pollute, they smell.”

Ells made a decision: “I did not want my success to be based on this kind of exploitation.”

Chipotle now buys pork from a cooperative of small farmers, and it is beginning to buy dairy products from places where the animals are pasture-raised, he says.

Sustainable Beauty Marks
Restaurants are not the only retailers getting in on green.  In fact, they trail by several years companies like LUSH and Box my Soap, who have been manufacturing chemical free “green” soaps and natural beauty products and natural aromatherapy products made locally and from all organic, animal free products.  Other knock-offs sell funny t-shirts with eco-messaging to get people to think conceptually about their carbon footprints.  

For independent eateries, greening still seems concentrated in hipper, more affluent neighborhoods.

“So many restaurants are just trying to stay in business,” says Colleen Oteri, spokeswoman for the Boston-based Green Restaurant Assn., which issues certifications based on a point system in categories such as food, waste and building materials. “They’re just trying to have customers at the door everyday. ‘If it’s not broken, don’t fix it’ kind of thing.”

The association, founded in 1990, has certified 265 restaurants around the country, with an additional 400 in the process.

Even for entrepreneurs committed to environmentalism, it can be difficult to figure out what to do, and costly to do it. Are compostable takeout containers better than those that can be recycled if the customer doesn’t compost them? Installing a water filtration system does away with bottles — but also with the profit bottled water brings.

Leslie VanKeuren, the former manager of Gingergrass in Silver Lake and now a sustainability consultant, offers some cost-free suggestions. Use cloths from the hamper to wipe up spills rather than reaching for paper towels. And switch to “inquire versus include” for takeout orders. For example, at Gingergrass, takeout diners were asked whether they needed utensils, and if so, how many and what sort. Chopsticks or forks? Need a soup spoon?

Santa Monica has a green certification program, and this summer, restaurants and other businesses should be able to apply for L.A.’s green certification program. Close to 800 restaurants, as varied as Jack in the Box and Campanile, take part in a city recycling program that has diverted 55,000 tons of food waste from landfills to compost, says Zafar Karimi, manager of the program for the Bureau of Sanitation. But with more than 8,000 food service businesses in the city, Karimi says, there’s a long way to go.

Comme Ca on Melrose Avenue turns over used grease to Further, a company that extracts the glycerin to make soap — for the restrooms, the dishes and the kitchen staff, says Dong Choi, the executive chef. They plan to do the same thing at their Costa Mesa restaurant, Pizzeria Ortica.

The recession inspired an extra bit of frugality at Comme Ca: Customers who order the popular roast chicken on Mondays can take home the leftovers, including the carcass. It’s packed with ingredients for stock: onion, carrot and bouquet garni.

“It’s about: I have this. What can I do with it? You don’t ever want to waste anything,” Choi says.

Joseph Gillard, the chef of the Napa Valley Grille in Westwood, also is trying to influence the way his customers think about their food with a new community-supported agriculture project. People can buy shares in the harvest from a farm, Kathy and Michael Feig’s Country Fresh Herbs, and pick up boxes of food for about $35 at the restaurant on Wednesdays. So far, he has six takers.

“I’d like to see people think about getting food straight from a farm before they start thinking of getting it straight from a grocery store,” Gillard says.

Leslie Silverglide, who owns the salad chain Mixt Greens with her husband and brother and has a master’s degree in biodiversity conservation and management from the University of Oxford in England, says greening a restaurant might not bring in customers, but it can inspire their loyalty.

Silverglide wanted to dissect “every aspect of the business and how it can be sustainable,” she says.

The floor is concrete with fly ash, a byproduct of power plants that otherwise would go to a dump, Silverglide says. The counters are made from scrapwood from a frame manufacturer, and the tabletops from plastic detergent bottles. At their new restaurant near the La Brea Tar Pits, an indoor wall garden will supply some of the greens and herbs, says her brother, Andrew Swallow, who also is the executive chef.

“My brother serves them great food,” Silverglide says, “and I happen to give them a side of sustainability.”

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My Take:  I know the “green” movement gets a bad rap from those who still think it’s all about wearing a funky flower hat, Earth shoes and shunning traditional childcare for co-op care.  But you don’t have to be a Woodstock mama or papa to take full advantage of the myriad ways to cut down your carbon footprint.  So many retailers provide products now that are made from recycled products that it’s impossible not to at least have one or two options for finding recycled products including just about everything from infant hair bows and crazy Tshirts  to table linens / banquet tablecloth items.  Going green also means buying local, so don’t forget to try and shop for gifts, products for your home and even your veggies from your local vendors or street markets. Locally grown food and or manufactured products contribute very little to freeway congestion or carbon gas emissions as they are close by and generally not going to be moved via some big semi down the interstate just to get them to your doorstep.

Many of these great products are made out of bamboo and other long-lasting materials that are not considered to have a low-impact on the environment and not mass produced by some carbon emitting factory run on slave youth labor camps in the jungles of some third world country. 

Other Resources:

Growing Pains

The daycare search process has to be one of the most stressful of all “family” oriented requirements.  But the truth is, in today’s economy with two parents working out of the house in 8 out of 10 homes, childcare is an absolute necessity.  Here is a link to the top five questions that arise for every meticulous parent searching for childcare.

Source: San Francisco Gate

Pink slips will reported go out next month to some 900 San Francisco teachers and administrators in a need to brace for a $113 million district-wide shortfall over the next two years.

The school board approved the layoff notices Tuesday night, with district officials saying they hoped to rescind many of themas soon as possible, but given the dire budget situation, the cuts to programs and staff are bound to be massive.

The layoff notices must be sent to teachers by the state’s March 15 deadline notifying them that they might not have a job next year. The notices could be rescinded in the spring or summer when the district has a clearer understanding of it budget situation.

“I do not want to sugar coat this for anyone out there,” said Superintendent Carlos Garcia. “The reality is when everything is said and done there will be some layoffs this year.”

In the meantime,318 teachers, 98 principals and assistant principals, 10 librarians and all other district employees who receive a layoff notice won’t know whether they’ll be back in August. Teachers with the lowest seniority are at greatest risk.

At El Dorado Elementary, 12 of the 15 teachers are within their first three years teaching in the district and likely will get a pink slip, said Principal Tai Schoeman.

“It’s devastating,” he said, adding that not all teachers want to work with at-risk students, but his do. “It’s a great place to work because everyone looks out for one another. It took me a long time to get to that place.”

District officials hope other cost-saving measures - increases in class sizes, furloughs, early retirements and cuts to salaries and benefits - will reduce the number of layoffs. Some of those efforts require union approval.

For now, the district is operating under a worst-case budget scenario, accounting for the huge number of layoff notices being sent out this week. The layoff list includes full- and part-time workers representing 800 full-time jobs. On Tuesday, parents railed against the layoffs and state funding of education.

“It’s like a crime scene,” said Crystal Brown, a parent at Sherman Elementary. “You can’t just sit back anymore.”

Are class rooms are next? With so many teachers preparing for layoffs, the obvious question is will classroom closures be next? Somehow the state of California will have to figure out whether it can afford to keep classrooms and campuses open as a further extension of cost-cutting measures. Perhaps a garage floor mat on a garage floor would suffice?

Brown, with six other PTA moms at Sherman, have organized a town hall meeting for Thursday at Marina Middle School to address school funding issues.

What started as a small gathering has ballooned into a massive meeting with 1,000 people expected, including state and local elected officials.

Also Tuesday, the board approved a name change for the School of the Arts to honor renowned artist Ruth Asawa, a key player in creation of the public arts high school in 1981.

Asawa, whose art hangs in the DeYoung Museum and has been shown in museums around the world, was dedicated to keeping art in schools despite endless cuts to programs across California in recent years.

Asawa for years resisted efforts to rename the school after her because she still considered it a work in progress without a permanent home. With her health declining, she finally consented a couple of months ago, said board member Jill Wynns, who spearheaded the renaming effort.

The school will now be called the Ruth Asawa San Francisco School of the Arts.

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My Take: What’s really a bummer for California is that, just as unemployment rates hit a peak and appeared to possibly be leveling off, the beleaguered state will likely see more folks lining up for unemployment benefits as those teacher pink slips go out. There aren’t enough Scentsy wickless candles in the world needed to hold up at the expected number of ‘save our schools’ vigils that are sure to arise from the pending cuts. Got a teaching certificate in the last few years? It’s worth about as much as Australia boomerangs in a hurricane. Teachers with less than five years of service would be do better to quit now and open their own Australia shop for gifts or perhaps think about a career installing wood exterior doors because they are reportedly going to be among the first to go.

If you’ve got teaching credential in California and are looking for a way through a district’s front entry door you can probably forget about it. What it’s going to take to land a teaching job in California over the next five years is either a long resume or some kind of connection.

By the way, Scentsy products, a line of wickless candles and other products would make nice gifts for those teachers of your kids who do get lay offs. They obviously won’t pay the bills, but they could provide some form of comfort for them and they last a little longer than an apple.

Other Resources:

Fee Increases

If you run a company and have small business credit card machines you can bet the state is going to take a look at how to jack up fees for credit card processing as a way to help pick up the slack for the shortfall. Banks will say they need more money to pay the workers who have to process those transactions, which will in turn trickle down to the consumer at the cashier’s counter. You might want to think about buying your own credit card machine and collecting those fees yourself. There are sites that offer free machines in exchange for a rental fee.

Around the world this week, Ikea fans’ voices rose up in disgust. It’s not because the Grevbäck bookcases looked any less sturdy, or that the Bibbi Snur duvet covers were any less colorful, or even that the names given to each of the company’s 9,500 products were any less whimsical. No, what made a huge part of the globe feel so betrayed was the typeface. “I thought that something had gone terribly wrong, but when I Twittered about it, people at their ad agency told me that this was actually the new Ikea font,” Göteborg resident Mattias Akerberg recalls. “I could hardly believe it was true.”

Over its 60 years, Ikea has built a reputation as a purveyor of inexpensive but stylish home furnishings, selling everything from leather sofas to chrome toilet-bowl cleaners. Branding has been a large part of the Swedish chain’s success — what urban dweller today, whether in Atlanta or Kuala Lumpur, doesn’t recognize that bright blue warehouse, glowing like a beacon of fine living, at the side of the highway? And its signature typeface, a customized version of Futura, has long been an integral part of that brand. But with its 2010 catalogue now arriving in mailboxes, the supplier of headboards and coffee tables to the world’s thrifty and trendy has switched to what it sees as a more functional typeface: Verdana. In the process, it has provoked an instantaneous global backlash, the kind that can only happen on the Internet.

“Ikea, stop the Verdana madness!” pleaded Tokyo’s Oliver Reichenstein on Twitter. “Words can’t describe my disgust,” spat Ben Cristensen of Melbourne. “Horrific,” lamented Christian Hughes in Dublin. The online forum Typophile closed its first post on the subject with the words, “It’s a sad day.” On Aug. 26, Romanian design consultant Marius Ursache started an online petition to get Ikea to change its mind. That night, Verdana was already a trending topic on Twitter, drawing more tweets than even Ted Kennedy.

IKEA's 2010 online catalogue features the Verdana font.

IKEA's 2009 online catalogue uses the old typeface.

All this outrage over a font? For some designers, it’s an issue of propriety — Verdana, which was invented by Microsoft, was intended to be used on a screen, not on paper. “It has open, wide letterforms with lots of space between characters to aid legibility at small sizes on screen,” explains Simon l’Anson, creative director at Made by Many, a London-based digital-consulting company. “It doesn’t exhibit any elegance or visual rhythm when set at large sizes. It’s like taking the family sedan off-road. It will sort of work, but ultimately gets bogged down.”

Carolyn Fraser, a letterpress printer in Melbourne, Australia, adopts a different metaphor to explain the problem. “Verdana was designed for the limitations of the Web — it’s dumbed down and overused. It’s a bit like using Lego to build a skyscraper, when steel is clearly a superior choice.”

Choose to add a touch of class when you need a bag, like with graceful organza bags that are sure to delight the recipient. Also, consider customized packaging to add a luxurious, personal feel to the whole experience.

Others seem mystified by the choice to eliminate one of the chain’s key identifying features. “The former typeface definitely better reflected Ikea’s design philosophy, giving it a very special, unique flavor that actually fit the company’s style,” says Vitaly Friedman, editor in chief of the online Smashing Magazine, which is dedicated to Web design. “With Verdana being used all across the Web, Ikea’s image not only loses originality, but also credibility and the reputation that the company has built since the 1940s.”

The main complaint that online protesters have, though, is that the newly adopted font is plain ugly. Especially when it’s enlarged to, say, the size of a catalogue headline. Or worse yet, a billboard.

So why would Ikea make such a change? The very ubiquity of Verdana seems to be part of the font’s appeal. Freely distributed by Microsoft, the typeface allows Ikea to use the same font in all countries and with many alphabets. “It’s more efficient and cost-effective,” says Ikea spokeswoman Monika Gocic. “Plus, it’s a simple, modern-looking typeface.” 

“They went cheap, in other words,” counters Bucharest designer Iancu Barbarasa, who blogged about the font change on his website. If he sounds somewhat bitter, there’s a reason. With its attention to the curve of even a $9 lampshade, Ikea has become renowned for its understanding of good design. “Designers have always thought of Ikea as one of their own,” Barbarasa notes. “So now, in a way, the design community feels betrayed.”

If you’re splitting with your spouse, you need help to make sure you’re splitting everything down the middle. Get what’s due to you with a hard-working divorce lawyer in NJ, who will make sure the divorce is on your terms. Don’t let this emotional time let you make rash decisions- a New Jersey seperation lawyer will ensure your future after a divorce.

Indeed, the desire to remind people — and corporations — that design matters is what spurred design consultant Ursache to start a petition asking Ikea to do away with the offensive Verdana typeface. “Look, I know this isn’t world hunger,” he says. “But if a company like Ikea can make this mistake, you have to wonder who is going to lead when it comes to design.”

Publicly, Ikea hasn’t responded. “I think it’s safe to say we were surprised by the response,” admits spokeswoman Gocic. Ursache’s petition has gathered over 700 signatures as of the 27th of August. Alright, that doesn’t sound like a lot, but ask yourself: how many protests arose from that horrible product of the 80’s, New Coke? The answer: not 700, not initially. And New Coke only lasted three months. Let’s see how long New Ikea will stay on the shelves.

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My Take: While I would normally be the first person to say, “really, guys? It’s just a font”, but in this case, I agree. It’s like going to a friend’s house who’s a professional chef, and being served Spaghetti-O’s. Sorry, that’s just not cutting it. I’d like something a bit more… a bit more.

IKEA is the largely undisputable king of simple, effective design that you would actually want in your house. For that to be the case, they had to do a lot better than a font I can pull up in Word.

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Reach your market

Hopefully, they won’t be as irate as Ikea’s usually-loyal fans. Not to jinx you. But when you have a new product that you want to tell your public about, there’s aren’t more efficient ways than an auto-dialer. It knows who to call, it dials, and you don’t have to give it a lunch break. Not bad, huh? We offer a huge number of call center solutions to your marketing issue- and friendly, personal service to boot.

Help with your ticket

How are you supposed to get to Ikea if you can’t drive? Losing your license is extremely stressful, and the only way to avoid it is to get yourself a good attorney. If you’re in Massachusetts, a MA DWI lawyer is not out of reach. You need someone who will fight for you to keep you on the streets. If you’ve been caught drinking and driving in Massachusetts DUI attorneys have a history of getting cases thrown out or penalties reduced. Don’t give up hope!

Keep your home pest-free

Just like you don’t need to deal with cheesy home decor, you don’t need to deal with bugs. Simple, effective products like a Catchmaster fly ribbon go a long way to getting rid of insects. And if there is scurrying when you turn on lights, try roach bait and get your home creepy-crawley free.

Fight for your money

If someone else is at fault, you still usually need to litigate to get your money. In NYC, an auto accident attorney doesn’t need to cost an arm and a leg- they should win you money, not lose you money. Similarly, if there’s been a mishap on a site, you need a reliable NYC construction accident lawyer to represent you before you, your career, or your bank account suffer.

Don’t lose your home

Everyone runs into problems paying bills on time. Before you face a Mesa, AZ foreclosure, research your options. Giving up is not a viable choice. In Arizona, refinancing has become easier and more effective in recent years, so consider it instead of moving.

Style in life, elegance in death

It’s something no one likes to think about, but when the inevitable occurs, we are left with unavoidable issues. While grappling with your loss, you must also make arrangements- be they for a pet urn or a large casket. Do your loved one the honor of a proper good bye, such as with a beautiful cremation urn to ease mourners and remember a beautiful person.

Measuring for Tablecloths

Unlike stores that sell standard, pre-made tablecloths, one retailer custom makes your banquet tablecloth so that it fits your table and your event. In order for them to design the perfect tablecloth for your table, they will need to know how you envision it and the “look” you are going for. When ordering, they will ask you for the size of the custom tablecloth you want. In order to determine the size of your tablecloth you will need to determine the length and width of your table in inches and the desired drop or the amount of cloth that drapes over the edge of your table.

Downunder Gifts

One Australian store has items that will definitely show you what is unique in Australia. Owing to its unique evolutionary heritage, the flora and fauna of Australia stands out among the rest. They have animal species that thrive only in Australia. Australia is famous among these are the koala, the kangaroo and the wombat. You definitely need to take one of these to your own home in the form of remembrances and display items. You can even visit their large warehouse in the Heart of Sydney CBD, New South Wales, Australia! And if you are not happy with the product, simply return it in its original condition and packaging within 30 days.

Strategic Partnerships

Finding the right partners for your business is part of one SEO company full-service marketing campaign. They will spend countless hours researching, seeking out and acquiring quality strategic partners for your business. This is a fantastic way to increase traffic, sales and increase the number of links pointing to your website. They will focus on finding relevant partners that will promote your product and generate sales for your business. This SEO service will also look for partners that will promote positive brand awareness. Their strategic alliance service focuses on acquiring “related” product synergies, cross promotional opportunities and new ways to drive sales. This is not link building.

Waste and Pollution

Most people do not know that the glue, dust and other materials in school furniture can emit particles that pollute the air they breathe. Usually, when school furniture and supplies were down, they often go to the landfill instead of the recycling plant where they create more waste and pollution. One company offers a wide selection of premium furniture such as kids desks, tables, folding chairs and workstations that are made with recycled content to minimize waste and pollution. In fact, this company offers products and furniture that are recognized as GREENGUARD™ certified because of their low emissions materials.

]]> http://www.educationfreestyle.com/ikea-design-heroes-no-more/retail/2009/09/ /feed http://www.educationfreestyle.com/around-the-world-before-youre-18/finance/2009/08/ http://www.educationfreestyle.com/around-the-world-before-youre-18/finance/2009/08/ #comments Fri, 28 Aug 2009 22:08:33 +0000 Edu Freestyle http://www.educationfreestyle.com/?p=145 cited: The Guardian

Even as 17-year-old Mike Perham lands in Portsmouth tomorrow as the youngest solo sailor to circumnavigate the globe, 10,000 miles away in Queensland, Australia, another teenager is poised to try to wrest the record from him.

Jessica Watson, 16, is the next in a queue of super-teens eager to pit themselves against the elements. Her boat, Pink Lady, is being kitted out, and she goes next month. Abby Sunderland, 15, plans to follow in November, setting forth from California on the same challenge that her brother, Zac, 17, completed in July.

And, had a court not intervened, a Dutch schoolgirl, Laura Dekker, would have left next week at 13. Her dreams of chasing the record were stalled today by judges in Utrecht placing her under a two-month supervision order.

The court ruling highlights the controversy and concern surrounding the recent phenomenon of teenage long-distance sailors. Born on a boat in New Zealand and spending the first four years of her life at sea, no one doubts Dekker has “salt in her veins”. But social workers fear that a desire to impress her father, Dick, an excellent sailor with whom she has lived since her parents divorced, could have influenced her.

This year she was picked up by social workers in Britain having sailed alone to Lowestoft, where she was sleeping on her boat. She was put into care for a night while her reluctant father, who thought she was old enough to sail back alone, was ordered to come and get her.

Now she must be psychologically assessed to see whether she is capable of coping before the court will agree to her two-year journey. While remaining with her father, she will be under the supervision of the Dutch council for child protection.

As the quest to set new records continues, debate is raging. Just how young is too young? And to what extent are vainglorious parents pressurising children into riskier ventures?

“Million-dollar questions,” said Dee Caffari, 36, the first woman to sail solo non-stop around the world in both directions. The decision by the sport’s governing body, the World Sailing Speed Record Council, to abandon its “youngest” category reflects a desire not to further encourage it, she believes.

“If everyone keeps trying to break it, where does it end: with some 10-year-old having a go?”

Sir Robin Knox-Johnston, first to sail single-handed and non-stop around the world, said: “The problem is, I don’t know legally how you can have a cut-off. But I would say that 13 is very marginal.

“I think parents are going to have to play a very big part in this. We all know that some parents try to relive their lives through their children. They think, ‘Wow, wouldn’t it be great if my son or daughter could do that. I will get all that glory.’ Then it’s: ‘Right. You’re doing it.’ That’s probably the biggest danger.”

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Watson, too, has the proverbial salt in her veins, having been home-schooled on a boat for five years. “I made my mind up when I was 12,” she said from aboard Pink Lady. “It’s not about any records. It’s about fufilling my dreams. And if that brings a record with it, then it’s a bonus”. It’s a statement open to question, given that her website’s address is youngestround.com.

She is prepared, having sailed 10,000 nautical miles. She has “stitched up some chickens and stabbed a few oranges” in first aid training. The ocean, she says, doesn’t care about age: “It respects experience.” As for the run on youth records: “I personally think it is amazing that so many young people are showing the courage and belief to live dreams.”

“If you see someone else do it, then you want to do it. And the more do it, the more want to do it,” said Perham from aboard his yacht heading towards Portsmouth. He has not met Dekker, but “would be fascinated to”. He will not say whether he thinks she should or should not be allowed to sail.

“Anyone, whatever age, has to ask three key things. Are they physically strong enough? Are they mentally strong enough to cope when the going gets tough? And are they technically good enough to fix generators and work as an electrician? The mental side of this trip is huge,” he said.

Knox-Johnston, whose Clipper Ventures allows people to experience round-the-world sailing, said: “You just can’t do this without experience, and maturity to cope with loneliness. If something goes wrong with the boat, and you’ve got a gale coming, and perhaps you’re frightened to deal with it, it’s having the strength to say ‘I’ve got to do this. I can’t sit down below and cry.’”

Caffari, who is currently involved with the Toe in the Water sailing charity for injured service personnel, said her own experiences had taught her just how mentally tough it was. “It’s quite surprising, the effect it has on you. And at a young age, you are not emotionally strong.”

At 14, Perham, from Potters Bar, Hertfordshire, became the youngest to sail the Atlantic single-handedly. Now he has set the new record, for how long can he keep it? “Well, it’s going to take Jessica about eight months to get round. So I’ll hold it for quite a while.

“But it’s not holding it that counts,” he added. “It’s getting it.”

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My Take: Kids are going to take chances. That’s one of the benefits of being 16 and bulletproof. At what point should parents allow children to make their own decisions about their lives and safety? And how much of that decision should be reserved for the public?

Personally, I believe people should be able to take whatever chance they want- but good luck selling that line to a mother who’s seen a toddler toddle up to the edge of something quite high, without understanding the danger they are in. So should these parents be stopping their kids? Nah, but they should let them know just how high up they are.

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]]> http://www.educationfreestyle.com/around-the-world-before-youre-18/finance/2009/08/ /feed http://www.educationfreestyle.com/tiffanys-begins-to-glitter-once-more/business/2009/08/ http://www.educationfreestyle.com/tiffanys-begins-to-glitter-once-more/business/2009/08/ #comments Fri, 28 Aug 2009 20:40:35 +0000 Edu Freestyle http://www.educationfreestyle.com/?p=139 Cited: The Wall Street Journal

Friday, luxury-jewelry retailer, Tiffany & Co. stated that their second-quarter profits fell 30%. Correction, only 30%, which was less than they were expecting. Not only that, but the company saw improved results from Europe and Asia, which helped compensate for U.S. shoppers’ cutbacks.

Outside of Japan, Asian comparable sales were up 5%, with continued strength in Australia and China as the company also saw solid improvements in markets including Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore, spokesman Mark Aaron said on a conference call with analysts. He said Europe “also is looking up” with new stores the company opened last year in countries from the U.K. to Spain generating “excellent initial results.”

Even the company’s top U.S. market showed some positive signs. While it still lagged other markets as the number of transactions and the average transaction amount declined, the company has seen a small improvement in the conversion rate of customers who end up making a purchase after visiting a store “for the first time in quite a while,” Aaron said.

“The tide may be slowing turning in our favor,” Aaron said.

The company Tiffany & Co. also said sales trends in August are meeting its expectations and many of its stores are seeing either a slower rate of sales declines or modest growth compared with the prior two quarters. Luxury retailer Saks Inc., in posting a better-than-expected result, also said earlier this month that it appears that the decline in shopping frequency and spending may be “leveling off.”

“We believe the worst is behind” Tiffany, said analyst Stacey Widlitz of Pali Capital in a note. “There has been a major shakeout in the jewelry business with a significant amount of store closures. (Tiffany) will certainly be a beneficiary and we expect market share gains to translate into strong sales growth in the U.S.”

Tiffany shares jumped 8,8% to $36.72 in early trading. Before Friday, the stock had already surged 43% this year, outpacing the 33% gain of the S&P Retail Index (RLX 370.17, -0.07, -0.02%) .

Tiffany has introduced Tiffany Keys collection, ranging in price from $150 in sterling silver to $15,000 in platinum and diamonds to spur demand after sales of items priced above $50,000 were hurt the most after the financial markets’ meltdown led to job cuts and reduced bonuses in its top markets such as New York, which also was hurt by reduced tourism travel.

Tiffany has lowered management incentive compensation, lowered frequency of catalog mailings and has opened a smaller store to test demand while announcing plans to shut its Iridesse pearl jewelry chain.

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Luxury retailers from Saks  (SKS 6.39, +0.05, +0.79%) and Macy’s Inc.’s  (M 15.82, +0.17, +1.09%) Bloomingdale’s to Nordstrom Inc. (JWN 28.60, +0.15, +0.53%) and privately-held Neiman Marcus have been among the worst hit in the recession. Tiffany’s rival Fortunoff filed for bankruptcy protection in February and has liquidated its stores.

Net income fell to $56.8 million, or 46 cents a share, from $80.8 million, or 63 cents a share, a year earlier. The latest quarter’s results included a 7-cent gain related to a loan recovery and tax-reserve adjustments, Tiffany said. Sales in the quarter ended July 31 dropped 16% to $612.5 million and would have fallen 14% excluding the impact of currency translations.

It raised its profit forecast for the year to $1.65 to $1.75 a share from a previous projection of as much as $1.60 with sales expected to decline about 10%. The company, however, cautioned on the call that its sales projection doesn’t assume “meaningful changes in the economic conditions and said it’s not changed its sales and profit expectations for the second half of the year.

Analysts, on average, estimated Tiffany would earn 33 cents a share in the second quarter and $1.58 for the year, according to FactSet.

Tiffany’s second-quarter sales at stores open at least a year declined 16%, led by a 27% plunge in U.S. same-store sales. The company’s New York flagship sales, about 10% of its total business, tumbled 30%.

European sales have dropped 10%, with Asia-Pacific comparable sales falling 2%, including a 1% drop in Japan. Hit by increased product cost, the quarter’s gross margin slimmed to 55.1% from 57.8%. After the company reduced staffing and marketing costs, its selling, general, and administrative expenses fell 14%.

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My Take: There are some industries that suffer and some that thrive in economic recession; for reason, the less money in people’s pockets will still find their way into the cash drawers of cheap bars, movie theaters, and cosmetic companies. So is this news about Tiffany’s surprising?

More like uplifting. Everyone thought the company should be doing far worse, but it’s limping up to a walking pace. Perhaps there is a light at the end of the tunnel?

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Cash in on valuables

Diamonds are a girl’s best friend, but not one’s only valuable possession, easily transferable into money. You can sell notes for cash. We’re all getting hit by the recession, and this is your chance to exchange any real estate notes you have for money. Because couldn’t those notes be put to a better use- like filling your wallet?

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]]> http://www.educationfreestyle.com/tiffanys-begins-to-glitter-once-more/business/2009/08/ /feed http://www.educationfreestyle.com/giftcards-for-the-greater-good/business/2009/08/ http://www.educationfreestyle.com/giftcards-for-the-greater-good/business/2009/08/ #comments Fri, 28 Aug 2009 17:11:59 +0000 Edu Freestyle http://www.educationfreestyle.com/?p=134 Have you ever been stuck with an odd remainder on the end of a giftcard? What are you supposed to do with $7 to Bloomingdales or $12 at Home Depot? Now, an answer is popping up that makes us feel good about more than just not wasting: donating them.

On average, each household in the United States has around $400 worth of gift cards lying around, according to Plastic Jungle, a start-up that sells, purchases and exchanges unused gift cards.

Owners of idle gift cards typically use Plastic Jungle to exchange cards for cash or a credit with Amazon.com. (Customers lose some of the face value in the transaction.)

But the Mountain View, Calif., company recently added the option of donating the full face value of the cards to needy schools through DonorsChoose.org.

Plastic Jungle is hoping the initiative will strike a chord with strapped consumers who still want to donate to charitable causes, said Kristin Cunningham, director of marketing and business development for the company.

“This is a new way to fund a charity, which is particularly relevant during a time when it might be hard for some people to make the same-sized gifts as usual, although they still want to donate,” said Ms. Cunningham.

Plastic Jungle, which was founded in 2006 and closed a Series A round of funding for $4.8 million in May, makes money by buying retail cards at a discount and reselling them at a slightly higher price.

For example, if someone wanted to trade in a $100 gift card from Macy’s for cash, Plastic Jungle would verify the amount on the card and make an offer to the customer, usually around 80 percent of the original amount.

That Macy’s card would then go up for sale on Plastic Jungle’s Web site at a slightly higher price, but still lower than its original retail value. Ms. Cunningham said the average discount was around 15 percent, although discounts could occasionally reach 40 percent or higher.

The company sees cards for everything from Tiffany to McDonald’s but the ones for Wal-Mart Stores and Target are the most popular and often “fly off the shelves within minutes,” she said.

Plastic Jungle is handling millions of transactions and revenue is growing 50 percent quarter over quarter, Ms. Cunningham said.

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DonorsChoose.org was founded in 2000, when Charles Best, then a social studies teacher in the Bronx, was feeling the brunt of budget cuts in his own bank account. Tired of covering the costs of supplies and field trips for his students, Mr. Best created a Web site where he and his fellow teachers could list their specific requests in the hopes of receiving funding.

Teachers on the site commonly ask for items such as book sets, arts materials and study cards. Donors receive thank-you cards from the classes they help and a line-item report of how donations were spent. More than 100,000 teachers have posted requests, and the site has processed $40 million worth of donations to classroom projects, said Mr. Best.

“We’re like a philanthropic eBay,” said Mr. Best. “We are both a charity and a marketplace.”

The nonprofit, which partnered with Plastic Jungle in May as a way to expand its donor base, will match the difference between the original balance on the gift card and what Plastic Jungle pays the donor “so that donors don’t lose a single penny when donating a gift card,” said Mr. Best.

For example, if a $50 gift card exchanged through PlasticJungle is valued at $40, DonorsChoose.org will match the remaining $10 to be donated to one of the classroom projects on its site.

However, unlike direct donations to DonorsChoose.org, gift-card donations through Plastic Jungle are not tax-deductible. Although the company says that in the next few weeks, users making a gift-card donation through Plastic Jungle will receive a donation confirmation to seek a tax deduction.

Mr. Best said the collaboration with Plastic Jungle was “just one example of the partnerships we are building with a number of companies.” Almost 20 DonorsChoose gift cards have been redeemed thus far- to the tune of close to $700.

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My Take: It’s nice to see a combination of philantrophy and that Ultimate Motivator, profit. It had to happen eventually, but it’s become economically viable to think about our fellow man. Sort of the like the evolutionary value of altruism- now the propogation of our bank accounts is assisted by cunning cyber skills, as much as our species was kept alive by hunting and gathering back in the day (that’s right, the Trogdalyte day).

I’ve got to tip my hat to the resourceful creators of DonorsChoose. Way to go outside the system when it’s not fulfilling your needs. We could all learn a lot from you. And Plastic Jungle can smell a deal when it gets near one (look at how well eco-friendly toilet paper sells- consciousness is marketable), but what I don’t get is: how is the non-profit entity expected to make up the difference? What’s up with that?

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]]> http://www.educationfreestyle.com/giftcards-for-the-greater-good/business/2009/08/ /feed http://www.educationfreestyle.com/are-other-peoples-boyfriends-hotter/services/2009/08/ http://www.educationfreestyle.com/are-other-peoples-boyfriends-hotter/services/2009/08/ #comments Fri, 28 Aug 2009 16:28:06 +0000 Edu Freestyle http://www.educationfreestyle.com/?p=131 cited: New York Times

The debate has waged for years: are men or women likelier to engage in “mate poaching”? Yes, there have been surveys indicating that men go after other people’s partners more often, but are they simply more willing to admit it? Now, data has arisen from an experiment conducted by two social psychologists, Melissa Burkley and Jessica Parker of Oklahoma State University, that women are more likely to after another’s mate, according to a report in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology .

Noting that single women often complain that “all the good men are taken,” the psychologists wondered if “this perception is really based on the fact that taken men are perceived as good.” To investigate, the researchers quizzed male and female undergraduates — some involved in romantic relationships, some unattached — about their ideal romantic partner.

Next, each of the experimental subjects was told that he or she had been matched by a computer with a like-minded partner, and each was shown a photo of an attractive person of the opposite sex. (All the women saw the same photo, as did all the men.) Half of the subjects were told that their match was already romantically involved with someone else, while the other half were told that their match was unattached. Then the subjects were all asked how interested they were in their match.

To the men in the experiment, and to the women who were already in relationships, it didn’t make a significant difference whether their match was single or attached. But single women showed a distinct preference for mate poaching. When the man was described as unattached, 59 percent of the single women were interested in pursuing him. When that same man was described as being in a committed relationship, 90 percent were interested. The researchers write:

According to a recent poll, most women who engage in mate poaching do not think the attached status of the target played a role in their poaching decision, but our study shows this belief to be false. Single women in this study were significantly more interested in the target when he was attached. This may be because an attached man has demonstrated his ability to commit and in some ways his qualities have already been ‘‘pre-screened” by another woman.

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Well, that makes sense. But I asked Dr. Burkley, a professor of social psychology at Oklahoma State, if the correlation could also be due to another factor at work in some women: fear of intimacy. Could their interest in unavailable guys be what was keeping them single in the first place?

Maybe, answered Dr. Burkley replied. “There are many possible explanations for our results,” she told me, “and future research needs to identify exactly why single women prefer taken men. Our lab is currently conducting studies to try and tease apart the different potential explanations for our findings, but your explanation seems quite plausible.” Until we know exactly why the attraction occurs, maybe guys interested in a date should wear a wedding band.

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My Take: Maybe it’s true. I certainly don’t want a dress nearly as much until my friend slips it on and looks stunning. And who hasn’t seen someone else put on those old earrings you never wear anymore, only to be hit with an immediate desire to snatch them off and wear them yourself?

So who knows- if we’re jealous of another’s happiness, if the girlfriend makes the guy look great, or if it’s just the approval of someone as boyfriend material is that little bit extra. All I know it, a girl on his arm gives any guy 2 extra points. While I seeth with envy.

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]]> http://www.educationfreestyle.com/are-other-peoples-boyfriends-hotter/services/2009/08/ /feed http://www.educationfreestyle.com/comet-reveals-potential-extra-planetary-life/tech/2009/08/ http://www.educationfreestyle.com/comet-reveals-potential-extra-planetary-life/tech/2009/08/ #comments Fri, 28 Aug 2009 15:29:11 +0000 Edu Freestyle http://www.educationfreestyle.com/?p=126 cited: New York Times

Scientists at the Goddard Space Flight Center (Greenbelt, MD) revealed that, for the first time, the building blocks of life as we know it were found on a comet. They found animo acid glycine, the forerunners of protein, on pieces of comet brought back from the 2006 probe, Stardust. This discovery goes further to proving the modern theory that many of the original ingredients for life on Earth showered down when asteroids (space rocks orbiting the solar system in a belt) and comets (conglomorate hunks of dirt and ice that form past Neptune) collided with the surface.

“It tells us more about the inventory of organics in the early solar system,” said Jamie Elsila, an astrochemist at Goddard who led the research.

Amino acids are small molecules that, when strung together into chains, form a diversity of proteins. For four decades, scientists have found a multitude of amino acids in some meteorites, the bits of asteroids that land on Earth. More recently, astronomers reported that amino acids might float throughout the cosmos, a belief resulting from their detection of the color signatures of glycine, the simplest of the amino acids, in distant interstellar gas clouds.

Some doubts remain about that claim, but if it is true, it would then not be surprising that when the clouds condense into stars and planets, the building blocks of life might be readily available there.

As for our solar system, meteorite data show that amino acids are present in its inner neighborhood, where asteroids orbit, but until now nothing has been known for certain about what might have formed farther out, where comets gather.

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But on Jan. 2, 2004, the Stardust spacecraft flew through the tail of dust and gas of the comet Wild 2 (pronounced vilt two). Two years later, the probe returned to Earth, sending collected samples to the ground by parachute for scientists to analyze. Comets are thought to preserve material of the early solar system, largely unchanged for the last 4.5 billion years.

Within a few months, the Goddard scientists found glycine embedded in aluminum foil of the collecting apparatus. They had spent the time since then confirming that the glycine indeed came from the comet and not from contamination.

“It’s not necessarily particularly surprising,” Dr. Elsila said of her extraterrestrial glycine in a phone conversation Tuesday. “I would have been surprised if it wasn’t there.”

Dr. Elsila and her colleagues were able to show that the glycine from the comet had heavier quantities of the isotope carbon 13 than what occurs on Earth. They also detected a second amino acid, beta-alanine, but the quantities were too minuscule to confirm.

The findings were presented Sunday at a Washington meeting of the American Chemical Society and will be published in the journal Meteoritics & Planetary Science.

Donald E. Brownlee, a professor of astronomy at the University of Washington and principal investigator of the Stardust mission, said the discovery indicated that the chemical reactions that produce glycine, and presumably other amino acids, occurred throughout the early solar system.

“That means production of amino acids is fairly common,” Dr. Brownlee said, although this is far from a foregone conclusion. Other scientists suggest that the warm and wet conditions that were in early asteroids may have been the breeding ground for the chemical reaction- conditions which were not found in comets.

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My Take: Well, we’ve getting closer and closer to calling up our neighbors on Mars and inviting them over for a potluck. Why is the world not more shocked by this news? The researchers themselves seem positively stoic, as opposed to the champagne-popping, I-was-right celebration that I would have assumed they’d throw.

All I know is,  every day it goes to show that the future really is upon us. I can’t wait for my flying car.

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New research has found that elderly, overweight people have significantly less brain tissue than their counterparts of a normal weight.

“The brains of obese people looked 16 years older than their healthy counterparts while [those of] overweight people looked 8 years older,” said UCLA neuroscientist Paul Thompson, senior author of a study published online in Human Brain Mapping.

Much of the lost tissue was in the frontal and temporal lobe regions of the brain, the seat of decision-making and memory, among other things.

The findings could have serious implications for aging, overweight or obese individuals, including a heightened risk of Alzheimer’s, the researchers said.

“We’re all trying to protect our bodies and our brains from aging and this is just one factor that’s accelerating that on top of all the other factors such as pollution, smoking, alcohol. We all lose some tissue as we get older and they’re saying this is being accelerated,” said Paul Sanberg, distinguished professor of neurosurgery and director of the University of South Florida Center for
Aging and Brain Repair in Tampa.

According to the U.S. National Center for Health Statistics, 30 percent of American adults 20 years and older — more than 60 million people — are now obese, while another 36 percent are  considered overweight. Either condition puts you at a much higher risk for type 2 diabetes, cancer and heart disease, as well as cognitive problems.

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The findings seem to explain why heavier people are more prone to such cognitive conditions. “This is the first study to show physical evidence in the brain that connects overweight and obesity and cognitive decline,” said Thompson, who is professor of neurology at UCLA and a member of the UCLA Laboratory of Neuro Imaging.

The researchers studied brain images of 94 people in their 70s who had participated in an earlier study looking at cardiovascular health and cognition. None of the participants had dementia or other cognitive impairments. They were followed for five years, and any volunteers who developed cognitive symptoms were excluded from the study.

Clinically obese people had 8 percent less brain tissue, while the overweight had 4 percent less brain tissue compared to normal-weight individuals.

Dr. Jonathan Friedman, an associate professor of surgery and neuroscience and experimental therapeutics at the Texas A&M Health Science Center College of Medicine noted that the causal relationship here is not clear. Theoretically, he said, a smaller brain might mean appetite and weight-control centers of the brain are actually propelling the weight-gain process.

Thompson believes it may be a vicious cycle. “Each one is contributing to the other,” he said. A person’s genetics may be contributing to overeating and weight gain, which leads to less activity, which leads to a shortfall in the oxygen and nutrients that the brain needs to thrive and grow.

Dr. Mitchell Roslin, chief of obesity surgery at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City wasn’t completely shocked by the results. “Obesity affects every system in your body. The body can’t be splintered. It’s completely linked. We are what we eat and we eat too much,” he said. “The bottom line is that an obese, sedentary person is going to have a breakdown of every organ system, and that includes a greater chance of impotence and infertility and other things that people don’t generally think are directly related to obesity.”

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My Take: It’s shocking to consider what varied ramifications obesity has on the body. I feel like we’re talking about smoking, here.

I wonder if the day will ever come when eating a Cheeto in a public place will be looked upon like people look upon smoking now. Maybe I’ll tell my grandkids, “No one knew it was bad for us back then! We all thought bacon was healthy food.”

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