NEW YORK (AP) ? India.Arie is laughing off talk that she may have lightened her skin.
The R&B songstress is known for singing about being authentic and celebrating one's true self. But some accused India.Arie of lightening her skin when a publicity photo for her song "Cocoa Butter" released this week made it look as though she were several shades lighter than her dark brown complexion.
But India.Arie took to Twitter on Friday to deny the accusations, saying she has no desire to bleach her skin because she loves herself and her brown skin "more than ever." She also said that "magnificent lighting" is the cause for her "glow."
She added that she'd like to keep the conversation going, though, on the issue of racism and colorism in the black community.
Mar. 30, 2013 ? The Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University announced today that it was awarded a $9.25 million contract from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to further advance a blood-cleansing technology developed at the Institute with prior DARPA support, and help accelerate its translation to humans as a new type of sepsis therapy.
The device will be used to treat bloodstream infections that are the leading cause of death in critically ill patients and soldiers injured in combat.
To rapidly cleanse the blood of pathogens, the patient's blood is mixed with magnetic nanobeads coated with a genetically engineered version of a human blood 'opsonin' protein that binds to a wide variety of bacteria, fungi, viruses, parasites, and toxins. It is then flowed through microchannels in the device where magnetic forces pull out the bead-bound pathogens without removing human blood cells, proteins, fluids, or electrolytes -- much like a human spleen does. The cleansed blood then flows back to the patient.
"In just a few years we have been able to develop a suite of new technologies, and to integrate them to create a powerful new device that could potentially transform the way we treat sepsis," said Wyss founding director and project leader, Don Ingber, M.D., Ph.D. "The continued support from DARPA enables us to advance our device manufacturing capabilities and to obtain validation in large animal models, which is precisely what is required to enable this technology to be moved towards testing in humans."
The team will work to develop manufacturing and integration strategies for its core pathogen-binding opsonin and Spleen-on-a-Chip fluidic separation technologies, as well as a novel coating technology called "SLIPS," which is a super-hydrophobic coating inspired from the slippery surface of a pitcher plant that repels nearly any material it contacts. By coating the inner surface of the channels of the device with SLIPS, blood cleansing can be carried out without the need for anticoagulants to prevent blood clotting.
In addition to Ingber, the multidisciplinary team behind this effort includes Wyss core faculty and Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Science faculty member Joanna Aizenberg, Ph.D., who developed the SLIPS technology; Wyss senior staff member Michael Super, Ph.D., who engineered the human opsonin protein; and Mark Puder, M.D., Ph.D., Associate Professor of Pediatric Surgery at Boston Children's Hospital and Harvard Medical School who will be assisting with animal studies.
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Adolescent health care providers frequently care for patients who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgendered (LGBT), or who may be struggling with or questioning their sexual orientation or gender identity. Whereas these youth have the same health concerns as their non-LGBT peers, LGBT teens may face additional challenges because of the complexity of the coming-out process, as well as societal discrimination and bias against sexual and gender minorities. The Society for Adolescent Health and Medicine encourages adolescent providers and researchers to incorporate the impact of these developmental processes (and understand the impacts of concurrent potential discrimination) when caring for LGBT adolescents. The Society for Adolescent Health and Medicine also encourages providers to help positively influence policy related to LGBT adolescents in schools, the foster care system, and the juvenile justice system, and within the family structure. Consistent with other medical organizations, the Society for Adolescent Health and Medicine rejects the mistaken notion that LGBT orientations are mental disorders, and opposes the use of any type of reparative therapy for LGBT adolescents.
ROME (Reuters) - Center-left leader Pier Luigi Bersani has failed in his attempt to find a way out of Italy's political deadlock and President Giorgio Napolitano will now seek another solution, the president's palace said on Thursday.
Bersani reported back to Napolitano on Thursday night after being given a mandate almost a week ago to see if he could muster enough support to form a government after the inconclusive election in February.
Napolitano's office said Bersani, who took the largest share of the vote but failed to win a viable majority, had told him his talks with other parties had ended without resolution and the president would now assess other options "without delay".
Bersani said he had told Napolitano of "significant, positive elements of understanding" in the talks with groups including Silvio Berlusconi's center-right bloc and the populist 5-Star Movement led by ex-comic Beppe Grillo.
"I also explained the difficulties deriving from objections or conditions which I did not consider acceptable."
The failure to reach a conclusion leaves Italy still stuck in political limbo more than a month after the election with the bank crisis in Cyprus fuelling fears of financial market turmoil that could threaten the stability of the euro zone.
Officials said Napolitano would start a new round of consultations with parties on Friday, beginning with Berlusconi's People of Freedom (PDL) party in the morning and ending with Bersani's Democratic Party (PD) in the evening.
A PD spokesman said Bersani had not given up on forming a government but the PDL poured scorn on the center-left leader and said he had wasted a month in a fruitless bid that proved he did not have the numbers to govern.
Napolitano has said he opposes a snap new election to end the impasse but his options are severely limited if he is to avoid a return to the polls within months.
They include naming an outsider to head a technocrat government like that of outgoing Prime Minister Mario Monti or a cross-party political coalition but any government must be able to rely on a majority in parliament.
On Thursday, the main indicator of market confidence - the spread between Italian 10-year bonds and their safer German counterparts - widened to 350 basis points, some 30 points higher than the level seen before the February 24-25 election.
WALL
Bersani had expressed hopes up to the last minute that he could overcome the difficulties but appeared to have run into a wall, particularly in his overtures to Grillo, whose movement says it will not support a vote of confidence in a government led by either the center right or center left.
Bersani has in turn rebuffed demands by Berlusconi that he form a broad left-right coalition, saying the scandal-plagued media magnate was too discredited to deal with.
Mindful of the risk of instability, Napolitano had insisted Bersani obtain firm guarantees of support from the other parties for a vote of confidence in parliament before he would agree to give him a firm mandate to form a government.
Bersani had tried to win support for a list of reforms that included measures on issues like political conflict of interests and corruption that were opposed by Berlusconi and he was never able to win enough guaranteed backing.
The scale of the task now facing Napolitano was underlined by Bersani earlier this week when he said that only someone who was "insane" would want to lead a government given the problems facing Italy.
The center-left leader's struggle to reach an agreement showed how hard it will be even for any new technocrat cabinet to win support in the divided parliament, increasing the chances of a snap election.
An election can only be called after parliament elects a successor to Napolitano, whose term ends in mid-May. Constitutional rules prevent a president from dissolving parliament during the final months of his mandate.
Even this task is politically fraught because Berlusconi wants to pick the new head of state, something Bersani rejects.
Underlining the challenges for the next government, a senior Bank of Italy official and the head of Italy's statistics agency ISTAT both said the government's latest economic forecasts may still be too optimistic, even after being sharply cut last week.
Last week the government said the economy, in its longest recession for 20 years, would contract 1.3 percent this year, compared with a previous forecast of a 0.2 percent shrinkage.
However, ISTAT head Enrico Giovannini told a parliamentary committee hearing on Thursday the result may be worse than that with no recovery until the end of the year or early 2014.
(Additional reporting by Naomi O'Leary and Gavin Jones; editing by Barry Moody and Rosalind Russell)
Mar. 28, 2013 ? An international team of physicists has proposed a revolutionary laser system, inspired by the telecommunications technology, to produce the next generation of particle accelerators, such as the Large Hadron Collider (LHC).
The International Coherent Amplification Network (ICAN) sets out a new laser system composed of massive arrays of thousands of fibre lasers, for both fundamental research at laboratories such as CERN and more applied tasks such as proton therapy and nuclear transmutation.
The results of this study are published today in Nature Photonics.
Lasers can provide, in a very short time measured in femtoseconds, bursts of energy of great power counted in petawatts or a thousand times the power of all the power plants in the world.
Compact accelerators are also of great societal importance for applied tasks in medicine, such as a unique way to democratise proton therapy for cancer treatment, or the environment where it offers the prospect to reduce the lifetime of dangerous nuclear waste by, in some cases, from 100 thousand years to tens of years or even less.
However, there are two major hurdles that prevent the high-intensity laser from becoming a viable and widely used technology in the future. First, a high-intensity laser often only operates at a rate of one laser pulse per second, when for practical applications it would need to operate tens of thousands of times per second. The second is ultra-intense lasers are notorious for being very inefficient, producing output powers that are a fraction of a percent of the input power. As practical applications would require output powers in the range of tens of kilowatts to megawatts, it is economically not feasible to produce this power with such a poor efficiency.
To bridge this technology divide, the ICAN consortium, an EU-funded project initiated and coordinated by the ?cole polytechnique and composed of the University of Southampton's Optoelectronics Research Centre, Jena and CERN, as well as 12 other prestigious laboratories around the world, aims to harness the efficiency, controllability, and high average power capability of fibre lasers to produce high energy, high repetition rate pulse sources.
The aim is to replace the conventional single monolithic rod amplifier that typically equips lasers with a network of fibre amplifiers and telecommunication components.
G?rard Mourou of ?cole polytechnique who leads the consortium says: "One important application demonstrated today has been the possibility to accelerate particles to high energy over very short distances measured in centimetres rather than kilometres as it is the case today with conventional technology. This feature is of paramount importance when we know that today high energy physics is limited by the prohibitive size of accelerators, of the size of tens of kilometres, and cost billions of euros. Reducing the size and cost by a large amount is of critical importance for the future of high energy physics."
Dr Bill Brocklesby from the ORC adds: "A typical CAN laser for high-energy physics may use thousands of fibres, each carrying a small amount of laser energy. It offers the advantage of relying on well tested telecommunication elements, such as fibre lasers and other components. The fibre laser offers an excellent efficiency due to laser diode pumping. It also provides a much larger surface cooling area and therefore makes possible high repetition rate operation.
"The most stringent difficulty is to phase the lasers within a fraction of a wavelength. This difficulty seemed insurmountable but a major roadblock has in fact been solved: preliminary proof of concept suggests that thousands of fibres can be controlled to provide a laser output powerful enough to accelerate electrons to energies of several GeV at 10 kHz repetition rate -- an improvement of at least ten thousand times over today's state of the art lasers."
Such a combined fibre-laser system should provide the necessary power and efficiency that could make economical the production of a large flux of relativistic protons over millimetre lengths as opposed to a few hundred metres..
One important societal application of such a source is to transmute the waste products of nuclear reactors, which at present have half-lives of hundreds of thousands of years, into materials with much shorter lives, on the scale of tens of years, thus transforming dramatically the problem of nuclear waste management. CAN technology could also find important applications in areas of medicine, such as proton therapy, where reliability and robustness of fibre technology could be decisive features.
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Journal Reference:
Gerard Mourou, Bill Brocklesby, Toshiki Tajima, Jens Limpert. The future is fibre accelerators. Nature Photonics, 2013; 7 (4): 258 DOI: 10.1038/nphoton.2013.75
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In 370 million-year-old red sandstone deposits in a highway roadcut, scientists have discovered a new species of armored fish in north central Pennsylvania.
Fossils of armored fishes like this one, a phyllolepid placoderm, are known for the distinctive ornamentation of ridges on their exterior plates. As with many such fossils, scientists often find the remains of these species as impressions in stone, not as three-dimensional versions of their skeletons. Therefore, in the process of studying and describing this fish's anatomy, scientists took advantage of a technique that may look a lot like it was stolen from crime scene investigators.
In the video, Dr. Ted Daeschler shows the fossil and a rubber cast made by pouring latex into its natural impression in the rock. Once the latex hardened, Daeschler peeled it out and dusted its surface with a fine powder to better show the edges of the bony plates and the shapes of fine ridges on the fish's bony armor ? a lot like dusting for fingerprints to show minute ridges left on a surface. With this clearer view, Daeschler and colleagues were better able to prepare a detailed scientific description of the new species.
This placoderm, named Phyllolepis thomsoni, is one of two new Devonian fish species described by Daeschler in the Bicentennial issue of the Proceedings of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, with different co-authors. The other new species is a lobe-finned fish discovered in northern Canada. This discovery is described at http://drexel.edu/now/news-media/releases/archive/2013/March/Fossil-Species-from-Fish-Eat-Fish-World/.
Both the Pennsylvania placoderm and the Canadian lobe-finned fish species are from the late Devonian period, at a time long before dinosaurs walked the Earth ? but, geologically speaking, not long before the very first species began to walk on land. Daeschler studies Devonian species in particular to help describe the evolutionary setting that gave rise to the first vertebrate species with limbs. He has dug for Devonian species in Pennsylvania since 1993, and in northern Canada since 1999.
Honoring A Rich History of Pennsylvania Paleontology
Daeschler, a vice president and associate curator at the Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University, and an associate professor in Drexel's College of Arts and Sciences, and co-author Dr. John A. Long, a leading authority on placoderms from Flinders University in Australia, named the species in honor of Dr. Keith S. Thomson.
Thomson, the Executive Officer of the American Philosophical Society, has been a mentor and colleague to many Devonian fossil researchers, including Daeschler. Thomson has formerly held positions including President and CEO of the Academy of Natural Sciences, Director of the Oxford University Museum, and Dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at Yale University.
Asked for comment on the discovery named in his honor, Thomson noted his long professional connection with the Devonian fossil beds in Pennsylvania that Daeschler studies:
"The Devonian beds around Renovo PA were worked extensively by my old professor at Harvard, Alfred Sherwood Romer and his associates, in the 1950s. They got some very good material of fishes but gave up on the site as a potential source of the very earliest four-legged vertebrates. In 1965 Romer suggested that I have a go but there had been no major erosion on the sites and therefore nothing much new had become exposed. I moved on to other things, but [in 1993] when Ted asked about possible projects in PA I gave him all the old notebooks, including mine, and off he went. In the intervening period there had been some major roadwork, new exposures were made, and on the Sunday evening of his very first weekend trip Ted came to the house and showed me a part of the shoulder of a tetrapod. Once we had looked at every which way and decided there was no other explanation, he causally reached into his bag and said "in that case, I have another one." The rest is history -- a history of very hard, careful, work, a whole team of collectors, some local, and brilliant discoveries of superb material particularly of fishes of every kind. So I am delighted by the success of this work over the past twenty years and flattered to become associated with it by having a species named after me. (There is a certain symmetry to this as long ago I named one of the species that had been collected by Romer after my wife!)"
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Drexel University: http://www.Drexel.edu/
Thanks to Drexel University for this article.
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Mar. 27, 2013 ? A new analysis of data from NASA's Cassini spacecraft suggests that Saturn's moons and rings are gently worn vintage goods from around the time of our solar system's birth.
Though they are tinted on the surface from recent "pollution," these bodies date back more than 4 billion years. They are from around the time that the planetary bodies in our neighborhood began to form out of the protoplanetary nebula, the cloud of material still orbiting the sun after its ignition as a star. The paper, led by Gianrico Filacchione, a Cassini participating scientist at Italy's National Institute for Astrophysics, Rome, has just been published online by The Astrophysical Journal.
"Studying the Saturnian system helps us understand the chemical and physical evolution of our entire solar system," said Filacchione. "We know now that understanding this evolution requires not just studying a single moon or ring, but piecing together the relationships intertwining these bodies."
Data from Cassini's visual and infrared mapping spectrometer (VIMS) have revealed how water ice and also colors -- which are the signs of non-water and organic materials --are distributed throughout the Saturnian system. The spectrometer's data in the visible part of the light spectrum show that coloring on the rings and moons generally is only skin-deep.
Using its infrared range, VIMS also detected abundant water ice -- too much to have been deposited by comets or other recent means. So the authors deduce that the water ices must have formed around the time of the birth of the solar system, because Saturn orbits the sun beyond the so-called "snow line." Out beyond the snow line, in the outer solar system where Saturn resides, the environment is conducive to preserving water ice, like a deep freezer. Inside the solar system's "snow line," the environment is much closer to the sun's warm glow, and ices and other volatiles dissipate more easily.
The colored patina on the ring particles and moons roughly corresponds to their location in the Saturn system. For Saturn's inner ring particles and moons, water-ice spray from the geyser moon Enceladus has a whitewashing effect.
Farther out, the scientists found that the surfaces of Saturn's moons generally were redder the farther they orbited from Saturn. Phoebe, one of Saturn's outer moons and an object thought to originate in the far-off Kuiper Belt, seems to be shedding reddish dust that eventually rouges the surface of nearby moons, such as Hyperion and Iapetus.
A rain of meteoroids from outside the system appears to have turned some parts of the main ring system -- notably the part of the main rings known as the B ring -- a subtle reddish hue. Scientists think the reddish color could be oxidized iron -- rust -- or polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, which could be progenitors of more complex organic molecules.
One of the big surprises from this research was the similar reddish coloring of the potato-shaped moon Prometheus and nearby ring particles. Other moons in the area were more whitish.
"The similar reddish tint suggests that Prometheus is constructed from material in Saturn's rings," said co-author Bonnie Buratti, a VIMS team member based at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. "Scientists had been wondering whether ring particles could have stuck together to form moons -- since the dominant theory was that the rings basically came from satellites being broken up. The coloring gives us some solid proof that it can work the other way around, too."
"Observing the rings and moons with Cassini gives us an amazing bird's-eye view of the intricate processes at work in the Saturn system, and perhaps in the evolution of planetary systems as well," said Linda Spilker, Cassini project scientist, based at JPL. "What an object looks like and how it evolves depends a lot on location, location, location."
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The visual and infrared mapping spectrometer team is based at the University of Arizona, Tucson.
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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by NASA/Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
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Journal Reference:
G. Filacchione, F. Capaccioni, R. N. Clark, P. D. Nicholson, D. P. Cruikshank, J. N. Cuzzi, J. I. Lunine, R. H. Brown, P. Cerroni, F. Tosi, M. Ciarniello, B. J. Buratti, M. M. Hedman, E. Flamini. The radial distribution of water ice and chromophores across Saturn's system. Astrophysical Journal, 2013; (accepted) [link]
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NOvA neutrino detector records first 3-D particle tracksPublic release date: 28-Mar-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Andre Salles media@fnal.gov 630-840-6733 DOE/Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory
What will soon be the most powerful neutrino detector in the United States has recorded its first three-dimensional images of particles.
Using the first completed section of the NOvA neutrino detector, scientists have begun collecting data from cosmic raysparticles produced by a constant rain of atomic nuclei falling on the Earth's atmosphere from space.
"It's taken years of hard work and close collaboration among universities, national laboratories and private companies to get to this point," said Pier Oddone, director of the Department of Energy's Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory. Fermilab manages the project to construct the detector.
The active section of the detector, under construction in Ash River, Minn., is about 12 feet long, 15 feet wide and 20 feet tall. The full detector will measure more than 200 feet long, 50 feet wide and 50 feet tall.
Scientists' goal for the completed detector is to use it to discover properties of mysterious fundamental particles called neutrinos. Neutrinos are as abundant as cosmic rays in the atmosphere, but they have barely any mass and interact much more rarely with other matter. Many of the neutrinos around today are thought to have originated in the big bang.
"The more we know about neutrinos, the more we know about the early universe and about how our world works at its most basic level," said NOvA co-spokesperson Gary Feldman of Harvard University.
Later this year, Fermilab, outside of Chicago, will start sending a beam of neutrinos 500 miles through the earth to the NOvA detector near the Canadian border. When a neutrino interacts in the NOvA detector, the particles it produces leave trails of light in their wake. The detector records these streams of light, enabling physicists to identify the original neutrino and measure the amount of energy it had.
When cosmic rays pass through the NOvA detector, they leave straight tracks and deposit well-known amounts of energy. They are great for calibration, said Mat Muether, a Fermilab post-doctoral researcher who has been working on the detector.
"Everybody loves cosmic rays for this reason," Muether said. "They are simple and abundant and a perfect tool for tuning up a new detector."
The detector at its current size catches more than 1,000 cosmic rays per second. Naturally occurring neutrinos from cosmic rays, supernovae and the sun stream through the detector at the same time. But the flood of more visible cosmic-ray data makes it difficult to pick them out.
Once the upgraded Fermilab neutrino beam starts, the NOvA detector will take data every 1.3 seconds to synchronize with the Fermilab accelerator. Inside this short time window, the burst of neutrinos from Fermilab will be much easier to spot.
The NOvA detector will be operated by the University of Minnesota under a cooperative agreement with the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Science.
The NOvA experiment is a collaboration of 180 scientists, technicians and students from 20 universities and laboratories in the U.S and another 14 institutions around the world. The scientists are funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, the National Science Foundation and funding agencies in the Czech Republic, Greece, India, Russia and the United Kingdom.
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Fermilab is America's premier national laboratory for particle physics research. A U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science laboratory, Fermilab is located near Chicago, Illinois, and operated under contract by the Fermi Research Alliance, LLC. Visit Fermilab's website at http://www.fnal.gov and follow us on Twitter at @FermilabToday.
The DOE Office of Science is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States, and is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, please visit science.energy.gov.
[ | E-mail | Share ]
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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
NOvA neutrino detector records first 3-D particle tracksPublic release date: 28-Mar-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Andre Salles media@fnal.gov 630-840-6733 DOE/Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory
What will soon be the most powerful neutrino detector in the United States has recorded its first three-dimensional images of particles.
Using the first completed section of the NOvA neutrino detector, scientists have begun collecting data from cosmic raysparticles produced by a constant rain of atomic nuclei falling on the Earth's atmosphere from space.
"It's taken years of hard work and close collaboration among universities, national laboratories and private companies to get to this point," said Pier Oddone, director of the Department of Energy's Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory. Fermilab manages the project to construct the detector.
The active section of the detector, under construction in Ash River, Minn., is about 12 feet long, 15 feet wide and 20 feet tall. The full detector will measure more than 200 feet long, 50 feet wide and 50 feet tall.
Scientists' goal for the completed detector is to use it to discover properties of mysterious fundamental particles called neutrinos. Neutrinos are as abundant as cosmic rays in the atmosphere, but they have barely any mass and interact much more rarely with other matter. Many of the neutrinos around today are thought to have originated in the big bang.
"The more we know about neutrinos, the more we know about the early universe and about how our world works at its most basic level," said NOvA co-spokesperson Gary Feldman of Harvard University.
Later this year, Fermilab, outside of Chicago, will start sending a beam of neutrinos 500 miles through the earth to the NOvA detector near the Canadian border. When a neutrino interacts in the NOvA detector, the particles it produces leave trails of light in their wake. The detector records these streams of light, enabling physicists to identify the original neutrino and measure the amount of energy it had.
When cosmic rays pass through the NOvA detector, they leave straight tracks and deposit well-known amounts of energy. They are great for calibration, said Mat Muether, a Fermilab post-doctoral researcher who has been working on the detector.
"Everybody loves cosmic rays for this reason," Muether said. "They are simple and abundant and a perfect tool for tuning up a new detector."
The detector at its current size catches more than 1,000 cosmic rays per second. Naturally occurring neutrinos from cosmic rays, supernovae and the sun stream through the detector at the same time. But the flood of more visible cosmic-ray data makes it difficult to pick them out.
Once the upgraded Fermilab neutrino beam starts, the NOvA detector will take data every 1.3 seconds to synchronize with the Fermilab accelerator. Inside this short time window, the burst of neutrinos from Fermilab will be much easier to spot.
The NOvA detector will be operated by the University of Minnesota under a cooperative agreement with the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Science.
The NOvA experiment is a collaboration of 180 scientists, technicians and students from 20 universities and laboratories in the U.S and another 14 institutions around the world. The scientists are funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, the National Science Foundation and funding agencies in the Czech Republic, Greece, India, Russia and the United Kingdom.
###
Fermilab is America's premier national laboratory for particle physics research. A U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science laboratory, Fermilab is located near Chicago, Illinois, and operated under contract by the Fermi Research Alliance, LLC. Visit Fermilab's website at http://www.fnal.gov and follow us on Twitter at @FermilabToday.
The DOE Office of Science is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States, and is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, please visit science.energy.gov.
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Free agency opened 15 days ago.? This year, the initial surge of cash was more limited than ever, more than a few guys settled for one-year deals, and plenty of other players are still waiting to get paid.
For some, the issue is cap space.? For many, it can?t be.? As of Tuesday, March 26, 13 teams still had more than $10 million in spending room for 2013, and five still had more than $20 million, per a source with knowledge of the NFLPA?s calculation of remaining cap room.
Leading the way are the Bengals, who despite numerous re-signings still have $28.9 million to spend.? The Browns come in a close second, with $28.7 million.
The Bucs get the bronze for saving their gold, with $26.8 million.? Also, the Jaguars have $26.6 million, and the Eagles have $26.3 million.
Others with eight figures include the Packers with $18.3 million, the Bills with $16.8 million, the Dolphins with $15.7 million, the Cardinals with $14.0 million, the supposedly spending-to-the-cap Patriots with $13.4 million, the supposedly cap-strapped Jets with $13.0 million, the Colts with $11.7 million, and the Titans with $10.7 million.
This year, teams are required to spend 89 percent of the unadjusted cap.? But that number is determined at least for now on a four-year rolling average, which essentially allows teams to pocket 44 percent of a single year?s spending limit from 2013 through 2016.? Based on the current cap numbers, some teams are well on their way to that number.
DAKAR, Senegal (AP) ? A rebel leader whose fighters seized the capital of Central African Republic over the weekend has taken to the airwaves to make his first declaration, announcing he has dissolved the country's constitution and will stay in power for three years, according to excerpts from the broadcast carried on French radio.
Michel Djotodia, one of the leaders of the Seleka rebel coalition, said late Monday that he plans to stay in power until 2016, the length of time left in the term of the president he and his soldiers overthrew.
Ousted President Francois Bozize fled the presidential palace over the weekend, resurfacing Monday in the neighboring nation of Cameroon, where the government issued a statement saying he had sought "temporary exile" on their soil.
The Seleka rebel leader justified his coup d'etat, saying Bozize had veered into dictatorship during his 10 years in power.
"Through us, it was the entire population of Central African Republic that rose up as a single man against the president," Djotodia said, according to Radio France Internationale.
"To this effect, we have decided to guide the destiny of the people of the Central African Republic during this transitional period of three years, in keeping with the spirit of the accords signed in Libreville in January 11, 2013 ... As a result, I have decided that it is, therefore, necessary to dissolve the constitution of Dec. 27, 2004, as well as the parliament and the government," he said.
Meanwhile, French forces protecting Bangui's main airport opened fire on three cars that were speeding toward a security checkpoint, said the French Defense Ministry.
The cars, carrying Indian and Chadian citizens, continued despite warning shots. Two Indian citizens were killed, and the wounded Indian and Chadian passengers were taken for medical care, the defense minister said in the statement Monday.
France is investigating into the shooting, the statement said.
Pillaging, meanwhile, continued in the capital, Bangui, days after the Seleka rebels took the city. The rebels' advance started last week when they pushed past Damara, a town 75 kilometers (47 miles) to the northeast, which had marked the line of control drawn by regional forces in January, following an accord signed in Libreville, the capital of neighboring Gabon.
The rebels broke that accord last week, claiming that Bozize's government had failed to make good on a series of promises, including sending back the South African troops guarding the capital. The South African troops came under an onslaught of fire from the Seleka rebels, who shot and killed 13 South African soldiers over the weekend, in their fight to take the capital.
Seleka is a loose coalition of fighters, many of whom fought in previous rebellions. They joined forces last fall, beginning their advance toward the capital in December.
The developments mirrored a similar rebellion in eastern Congo by the M23 rebels, who took the provincial capital of Goma, pressing the government which then agreed to enter into talks with them. Seleka seemed to be taking a page from the Congolese rebels' playbook as they advanced to less than 100 kilometers (60 miles) from the capital.
The Seleka fighters benefited from the growing dissatisfaction with Bozize, who came to power in 2003, at the helm of a column of a different rebel group which also invaded the capital and toppled the former leader.
Bozize is accused of growing cronyism, and in the last election in 2011, around 20 of Bozize's family members and close associates including former mistresses, won posts in the government, according to Louisa Lombard, a postdoctoral fellow in geography at the University of California, Berkeley.
"There was the sense that governing was being carried out by a tighter and tighter circle of people around Bozize," says Lombard, who has been travelling to Central African Republic for the past 10 years for research.
"And although all sorts of technocratic procedures were in place to make the government more inclusive, it was in fact less and less inclusive. The more technocratic people got sidelined. Those who held positions of power did not have much education, much background in their chosen field. There was a disregard for any kind of merit in governing."
Lombard cautions, however, that the Seleka coalition is very loosely held together. Already on Monday, a different rebel leader, 26-year-old Nelson N'Djadder who is based in Paris, said that he does not recognize Djotodia as their new president.
"Seleka is a very heterogeneous group. That is something we noticed since the beginning, when it first emerged," said Lombard. "Holding it together will be a big problem."
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Lori Hinnant contributed to this report from Paris.
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Rukmini Callimachi can be reached at www.twitter.com/rcallimachi
By Nadia Damouni, Poornima Gupta and Greg Roumeliotis
NEW YORK/SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Dave Johnson finds himself once again pitted against a former employer.
In leading Blackstone Group's 11th-hour bid for Dell Inc, the acquisitions expert and famously tough negotiator has seated himself across the table from ex-boss and company founder Michael Dell. Their relationship has now become a crucial element in the battle over the largest private equity-led buyout since the financial crisis.
There may even be echoes of the way Nabisco Brands President John Greeniaus ended up switching sides from RJR Nabisco's CEO Ross Johnson in the struggle for control of the food and tobacco conglomerate in the leveraged buyout boom of the late 1980s.
Blackstone's Johnson, a former IBM executive with a reputation for working through the night rather than early in the day, may be joining the party late. But he could still up-end Michael Dell's original proposal to take the company private for $24.4 billion.
Whether the two former confidants can work together may decide the fate of the world's No. 3 PC maker.
The soft-spoken Red Sox and New England Patriots fan is described by people who have known him for a long time as likeable, smart and loyal. But that loyalty has been questioned twice as he has headed for the exits under controversial circumstances - once after more than 27 years at IBM, and then when he left Dell.
IBM unsuccessfully sued Johnson when he departed in 2009, alleging he violated a non-compete agreement.
Now Michael Dell - who told his executive team that Johnson would remain a close and personal adviser when he left to join Blackstone in January - is fighting to hold onto his company against a bid mounted by Blackstone less than three months later. Blackstone has not mentioned a role for his former boss.
"For all the good he does in an organization, the exit always seems to burn him," said a person close to Johnson.
"There was a lot of goodwill (at IBM) but in the last two minutes, he completely erases 25 years of history. Same thing at Dell."
The stakes are high for both men. Michael Dell could lose control of a company he nursed from a dorm-room operation into a global personal computer maker. He doesn't only have Blackstone breathing down his neck but has to also contend with a competing offer from billionaire investor Carl Icahn. Meanwhile, Johnson's first deal could be one of the most ambitious in technology for Blackstone in years.
Among people who know Michael Dell and Johnson, there is little agreement about how well the two men get along now.
The relationship was still close when Johnson, who led some $10 billion worth of deals during his time at Dell, worked to bolster the company's non-PC-making businesses in areas such as software and enterprise services.
Johnson was said to have weighed the offer from Blackstone for a while before taking the plunge, one of the people said.
Three others said Johnson left Dell alienated, and that some members of top management were unhappy with his track record and had few qualms about letting him leave for the world's largest private equity firm.
"Dave came into Dell as a change agent. Change agents have a tough job, and their job is to break glass," one of these people said. "And sometimes where you are breaking glass, people don't like what you are doing."
A spokesman for Michael Dell declined to comment, while a Blackstone spokesman declined to comment on behalf of Johnson. A Dell Inc spokesman also declined to comment.
WHEELING AND DEALING
During more than three years at the Texas-based computer maker, Johnson oversaw 18 to 20 acquisitions, according to a Dell spokesman. He reported directly to Michael Dell.
People who know him say Johnson is more comfortable wheeling and dealing in smaller settings, less at ease in the spotlight of major presentations such as Dell's analysts' day.
He was also known for keeping late hours.
"You can ask anyone at IBM," one of the people said. If Johnson's assistant scheduled a meeting early in the morning it probably "wasn't going to happen," this person said.
Johnson oversaw the 2009 purchase of Perot Systems Corp, which catapulted Dell into the technology services market alongside IBM and HP. Other deals during his tenure included Quest Software, SecureWorks, SonicWall Inc and Wyse Technology.
At Dell, Johnson was brought in to help beef up the company's enterprise-related portfolio and diversify away from its reliance on PCs. To that end, Johnson went on an acquisition spree for small to mid-size companies. A big believer in the proper integration of acquired companies, Johnson often told team members that "the real success of a transaction is in the integration."
The 61-year old brought discipline and rigor to Dell's M&A machine, instituting a playbook that aimed to standardize the M&A and integration process, one of the people said.
That playbook, for example, had templates for documents and contained a list of internal subject-matter experts.
While Johnson's strategy helped Dell expand its portfolio and reduce its reliance on PCs, the strategy was also criticized for being slow to offset a decline in PC sales and for failing to integrate the acquired companies fully with Dell to take advantage of scale.
But Carr Lanphier, analyst with Morningstar, said it is too early to tell whether Johnson's term at Dell was a success as his effort at diversification is not complete.
When Johnson joined Blackstone, the private equity giant had been looking for ways to bolster its technology team after having suffered a couple of dealmaker losses. These included Chip Schorr, who left Blackstone in 2010 after serving as its global head of technology investing.
Johnson is working on Dell with Chinh Chu, one of Blackstone's most experienced partners, who has been carrying out transactions for the firm since 1990.
Blackstone has reached out to a number of candidates who could run Dell should its bid succeed, replacing Michael Dell.
Sources involved in the fast-evolving discussions said Michael Dell and Johnson have competing visions for the company.
Two people close to Michael Dell have said he was concerned that Blackstone's buyout offer would dismantle the PC maker. Other people familiar with the situation have said Blackstone has considered a potential sale of Dell's financial services business as part of a strategy to turn things around.
Divestitures are not part of the plans by Michael Dell and his buyout partner, the private equity firm Silver Lake, two of the sources said.
(Editing by Edwin Chan, Tim Dobbyn and Martin Howell)
The setting sun is reflected in the windows of the U.S. Capitol, on Capitol Hill, Friday, March 22, 2013 in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
The setting sun is reflected in the windows of the U.S. Capitol, on Capitol Hill, Friday, March 22, 2013 in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
WASHINGTON (AP) ? An exhausted Senate gave pre-dawn approval Saturday to a Democratic $3.7 trillion budget for next year that embraces nearly $1 trillion in tax increases over the coming decade but shelters domestic programs targeted for cuts by House Republicans.
While their victory was by a razor-thin 50-49 vote, it allowed Democrats to tout their priorities. Yet it doesn't resolve the deep differences the two parties have over deficits and the size of government.
Joining all Republicans voting no were four Democrats who face re-election next year in potentially difficult races: Sens. Max Baucus of Montana, Mark Begich of Alaska, Kay Hagan of North Carolina and Mark Pryor of Arkansas. Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., did not vote.
White House spokesman Jay Carney praised the Senate plan, saying in a statement it "will create jobs and cut the deficit in a balanced way."
While calling on both sides to find common ground, Carney did not hold out much hope for compromise with Republicans. The rival budget passed by the GOP-led House cuts social programs too deeply, he said, and fails "to ask for a single dime of deficit reduction from closing tax loopholes for the wealthy and well-connected."
The Senate vote came after lawmakers labored through the night on scores of symbolic amendments, ranging from voicing support for letting states collect taxes on Internet sales to expressing opposition to requiring photo IDs for voters.
Final approval came at around 5 a.m. EDT, capping an extraordinary 20 hours of votes and debate. As the night wore on, virtually all senators remained in the chamber, a rarity during a normal business day. But at that hour, most had nowhere else to go.
The Senate's budget would shrink annual federal shortfalls over the next decade to nearly $400 billion, raise unspecified taxes by $975 billion and cull modest savings from domestic programs.
In contrast, a rival budget approved by the GOP-run House balances the budget within 10 years without boosting taxes.
That blueprint? by House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, R-Wis., his party's vice presidential candidate last year ? claims $4 trillion more in savings over the period than Senate Democrats by digging deeply into Medicaid, food stamps and other safety net programs for the needy. It would also transform the Medicare health care program for seniors into a voucher-like system for future recipients.
"We have presented very different visions for how our country should work and who it should work for," said Senate Budget Committee Chairman Patty Murray, D-Wash.
The long debate got testy at times.
As the clock ticked past 1 a.m., Murray asked senators to show respect for colleagues "who may not be able to stand as long as us, or who are elderly." Sen. David Vitter, R-La., shot back that Republicans were not trying to delay anything, and wondered what flights or other appointments would be missed if senators voted until 7 a.m.
The loudest acclaim came toward the end, when senators rose as one to cheer a handful of Senate pages ? high school students ? for their work in the chamber since the morning's opening gavel. Senators then left town for a two-week spring recess.
Congressional budgets are planning documents that leave actual changes in revenues and spending for later legislation, and this was the first the Democratic-run Senate has approved in four years. That lapse is testament to the political and mathematical contortions needed to write fiscal plans in an era of record-breaking deficits, and to the parties' profoundly conflicting views.
Republicans said the Democratic budget wasn't much of an accomplishment. "The only good news is that the fiscal path the Democrats laid out...won't become law," said Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky.
"I believe we're in denial about the financial condition of our country," Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama, top Republican on the Budget panel, said of Democratic efforts to boost spending on some programs. "Trust me, we've got to have some spending reductions."
Though budget shortfalls have shown signs of easing slightly and temporarily, there is no easy path for the two parties to find compromise ? which the first months of 2013 have amply illustrated.
Already this year, Congress has raised taxes on the rich after narrowly averting tax boosts on virtually everyone else, tolerated $85 billion in automatic spending cuts, temporarily sidestepped a federal default and prevented a potential government shutdown.
By sometime this summer, the government's borrowing limit will have to be extended again ? or a default will be at risk ? and it is unclear what Republicans may demand for providing needed votes. It is also uncertain how the two parties will resolve the differences between their two budgets, something many believe simply won't happen.
Both sides have expressed a desire to reduce federal deficits. But President Barack Obama is demanding a combination of tax increases and spending cuts to do so, while GOP leaders say they won't consider higher revenues but want serious reductions in Medicare and other benefit programs that have rocketed deficits skyward.
Obama plans to release his own 2014 budget next month, an unveiling that will be studied for whether it signals a willingness to engage Republicans in negotiations or play political hardball.
The amendments senators considered during their long day of debate were all nonbinding, but some delivered potent political messages.
They voted in favor of giving states more powers to collect sales taxes on online purchases their citizens make from out-of-state Internet companies, and to endorse the proposed Keystone XL pipeline that is to pump oil from Canada to Texas refineries.
They also voiced support for eliminating the $2,500 annual cap on flexible spending account contributions imposed by Obama's health care overhaul and for charging regular postal rates for mailings by political parties, which currently qualify for the lower prices paid by nonprofits.
In a rebuke to one of the Senate's most conservative members, they overwhelmingly rejected a proposal by Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., to cut even deeper than the House GOP budget and eliminate deficits in just five years.
The Democratic budget's $975 billion in new taxes would be matched by an equal amount of spending reductions coming chiefly from health programs, defense and reduced interest payments as deficits get smaller than previously anticipated.
This year's projected deficit of nearly $900 billion would fall to around $700 billion next year and bottom out near $400 billion in 2016 before trending upward again.
Shoehorned into the package is $100 billion for public works projects and other programs aimed at creating jobs.
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Associated Press writer Andrew Taylor contributed to this report.
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Follow Alan Fram on Twitter: https://twitter.com/asfram
Denver Nuggets guard Ty Lawson (3) shoots in front of Oklahoma City Thunder forward Nick Collison (4) in the second quarter of an NBA basketball game in Oklahoma City, Tuesday, March 19, 2013. (AP Photo/Sue Ogrocki)
Denver Nuggets guard Ty Lawson (3) shoots in front of Oklahoma City Thunder forward Nick Collison (4) in the second quarter of an NBA basketball game in Oklahoma City, Tuesday, March 19, 2013. (AP Photo/Sue Ogrocki)
Denver Nuggets forward Corey Brewer (13) is fouled by Oklahoma City Thunder forward Nick Collison (4) as he shoots in the second quarter of an NBA basketball game in Oklahoma City, Tuesday, March 19, 2013. (AP Photo/Sue Ogrocki)
Oklahoma City Thunder forward Kevin Durant (35) blocks a shot by Denver Nuggets center JaVale McGee (34) in front of Thunder forward Nick Collison (4) and Nuggets forward Kenneth Faried (35) in the first quarter of an NBA basketball game in Oklahoma City, Tuesday, March 19, 2013. (AP Photo/Sue Ogrocki)
OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) ? Ty Lawson scored 25 points, Andre Miller had 20 points and nine assists and the Denver Nuggets beat the Oklahoma City Thunder 114-104 Tuesday night to win a 13th straight game for the first time since joining the NBA.
The Nuggets trailed by one at halftime but took control in the third quarter and never let Oklahoma City reclaim the lead. Denver moved within 3? games of the Thunder in the Northwest Division and became the first team this season to beat Oklahoma City three times.
It's also a big win in the chase for home-court advantage in the playoffs for Denver, which is tied with Miami for the NBA's best home record at 30-3.
Kevin Durant had 34 points and Russell Westbrook chipped in 25 for Oklahoma City, which lost at home for just the fifth time this season.
The Thunder gave up a season-worst 72 points in the paint ? Denver's specialty ? as both teams struggled throughout the game from 3-point range. The Nuggets had 66 and 60 points in the lane in wins against Oklahoma City in Denver earlier this season.
Denver's previous longest winning streak in the NBA was 12 straight games in 1982. The franchise won 15 in a row in the ABA.
The Nuggets trailed 66-65 at halftime, but took the lead on Danilo Gallinari's 3-pointer and then followed Westbrook's tying, two-handed dunk off an inbound alley-oop pass by charging ahead with a 12-2 run. Andre Iguodala's right-handed, fast-break slam ? created by Gallinari's steal ? put Denver up 80-70 midway through the third and prompted Scott Brooks' second timeout to try and end the surge.
After back-to-back Thunder baskets, the Nuggets added to their cushion with seven straight points ? a Lawson 3-pointer, a Corey Brewer jumper and then an 18-footer by Lawson ? to make it 87-74 with 2:59 left in the third.
Oklahoma City got as close as 102-97 when Westbrook hit a 17-foot jumper from the left elbow with 4:08 to play, but Miller had back-to-back jumpers as Denver answered right back with five straight points. Miller closed it out from the foul line after that.
Miller scored 13 points in the fourth quarter, hitting five of six foul shots in the final 69 seconds.
The Nuggets had six players score in double figures, getting 13 apiece from Kenneth Faried and Gallinari, 11 from Corey Brewer and 10 from Iguodala. Faried also grabbed 15 rebounds as Denver overcame a 14-6 first-quarter rebounding deficit to beat Oklahoma City 52-45 on the glass.
Wilson Chandler, who tied his career-high with 35 points in a win at Chicago a night earlier, did not return after separating his left shoulder in the fourth quarter.
Kevin Martin had 14 points off the bench for Oklahoma City and Kendrick Perkins had 11 rebounds, but did not play over the final 18 minutes as Denver build up its big rebounding edge.
The Nuggets were 4 for 21 from 3-pointer range, only slightly better than Oklahoma City's 4 for 25.
The Thunder led 38-28 early in the second after Martin's leaning basket from the right wing as the shot clock was running down. Denver took advantage of Oklahoma City's bench to score the next eight points, all on layups and a dunk, to tighten it up again.
Notes: Nuggets coach George Karl drew a technical foul in the second quarter for complaining to official Marat Kogut after Lawson was called for his third foul against Durant's "rip move," when he swings the ball through a defender's arms. ... Denver's winning streak is the third-longest in the NBA this season, behind Miami's current 23-game run and the Los Angeles Clippers' 17-game streak. Oklahoma City won 12 straight earlier in the season. ... The Heat and San Antonio are the only other teams to beat Oklahoma City twice this season.
We got a peek at Sony's 2013 HDTV lineup during CES in January, and now the company has announced they're starting to roll out and confirmed official pricing. The new sets add features like NFC, MHL and Miracast support to certain models, while the top of the line W900A is its first to use Quantum Dot technology in combination with edge LED lighting. Sony's brought back its old Triluminos brand name for the technology, which it claims provides a wider color gamut while keeping prices quite a bit lower than its last TVs to rock the tag, the now-retired XBR8 series.
There's no word on the XBR series, but in the lower W- and R- lines the KDL-W900A is the only one with Triluminos. It also brings an extra long internal speaker duct for improved sound and standard NFC remote, and the 55-inch model will carry an MSRP of $3,299. The step down W802A version keeps MHL standard, has the NFC remote as an option and comes in 55- and 47-inch versions that start at $1,799. The 32-inch W650A will ship for $799. The R-Series dodges some of the higher end features, but some still include 3D, WiFi, RVU and the Sony Entertainment Network suite of apps including Netflix, Hulu Plus and more. The R550A has all that and is available in 70-, 60- and 50-inch versions that start at $1,399. Hit the source link for info on more models, or just keep an eye out on (digital) store shelves as these leak into retail.
When it comes to attorney marketing, SEO is one of the most effective tools to help your law firm gain new clients. SEO offers your law firm the ability to push your website to the top of the rankings in order to attract the attention of more consumers. But when it comes to obtaining SEO help, there are a lot of myths out there that unfortunately sucker in many law firms. The problem is that if your law firm falls for bad SEO promises, your attorney marketing could be suffering.
What your law firm doesn?t know could actually hurt it. If your law firm doesn?t know these common SEO myths, you could fall for a pitch by a less than reputable SEO company which will ultimately drive your law firm?s rankings down and cause your attorney marketing to land like a lead balloon. Worse, your attorney marketing could incur penalties from search engines because of shady SEO practices. In order to protect yourself, your law firm should be aware of and able to recognize the following SEO myths.
SEO Myths That Could Hurt Your Law Firm
There are hundreds, if not thousands of SEO firms that are constantly vying for the attention of business owners. Just do one Google search for SEO and you?ll find tons of SEO firms. But are you sure they have your best interests at heart? Do they know the strict guidelines attorneys have to operate in to avoid being penalized by the Bar? As attorney marketers, we are aware that your law firm needs to be acutely aware of how it presents itself to consumers. But many SEO companies do not understand nor take into account your unique attorney marketing guidelines. Before you take a call from some persuasive salesperson that tells you Google is holding a front page spot for your law firm (which doesn?t happen- it?s a lie) educate yourself on the SEO myths that could hurt your law firm:
? Only SEO matters. Many SEO practitioners will pitch law firms on the overwhelming need for SEO by telling you that the only thing that will matter in gaining new clients is SEO. While this isn?t true, it is a helpful tool of your attorney marketing. SEO can help your website shoot to the top of search engine rankings to appear to more consumers. But it won?t be present in the many offline areas where consumers read, view, or congregate. And SEO isn?t a knowledge leader that people trust to advocate your law firm over another. While SEO is important, your law firm needs to pursue a variety of attorney marketing tools to be successful. Only with a cohesive attorney marketing strategy can your law firm gain the variety of potential clients it needs to grow your firm. ? Social media doesn?t matter. Some SEO firms will actively tell clients that social media doesn?t work, that it doesn?t matter. The truth is, that if your SEO company is buying likes for your social media page, those aren?t real people that your content is reaching but fake bots. Fake likes don?t convert into paying clients. When your law firm pursues organic social media in conjunction with SEO, your firm is better able to not only attract higher rankings, but also to attract more clients organically. Social media is one of the tools that search engines are increasingly using to inform their algorithm of what consumers find valuable. The popularity of these networks increasingly helps to drive attorney marketing content higher in rankings, exposing law firms to more consumers. ? Page rank is the only thing that matters. SEO practitioners that don?t know anything about marketing in general like to say that page rank is the only thing that matters. At a recent conference, we had an SEO practitioner try to tell us that things like public relations, social media, and advertising all didn?t matter because page rank was the only thing that mattered. Page rank is important, but it isn?t the be all end all. If your law firm turns down press because the page rank isn?t as high as you?d like, you?re missing out on opportunities to expose your business to potential clients. If your law firm is deciding against advertising because the page rank isn?t high enough, you?re missing out on potential exposure to consumers. Page rank shouldn?t be the only measurement your law firm uses to guide your attorney marketing efforts. ? .Edu or .Gov sites are the best to target for SEO. Some SEO practitioners will tell you that you need to target .edu and .gov sites exclusively for coveted links to your law firm. However, the truth is that while some of these sites rank very well, others are obscure and not frequently visited by consumers. So essentially, links from these sites mean little. Instead, you should be targeting a variety of sites for back links, not just one style of domain. ? Links are better than content. Shady SEO companies like to say that back links are the only thing that matters, that they?re better than your attorney marketing content. But the reality is that if your law firm isn?t producing quality attorney marketing content, no amount of back links that you court will convert the traffic to your website into paying clients. With poor quality content, you could attract the traffic your website needs, but if that?s not translating into cases, then your law firm should seriously examine the quality of your attorney marketing content. ? SEO guarantees results. If an SEO practitioner tells you that they can guarantee results, they?re lying. If they try to pitch you on a search engine like Google holding a place for your law firm on the front page, they?re lying. The truth is, it?s hard work to propel your law firm?s website to the top of search engine rankings. If anyone promises this to your law firm, they?re charlatans at best. The truth is, any good SEO firm can promise you increased rankings and they can work hard to get you to the top of the rankings. But it?s not easy and it?s a daily struggle to compete with tons of people in your specific practice area.
There are literally dozens of SEO myths that many reputable law firms fall for on a regular basis. However, if your law firm falls for these obvious myths, you could be in trouble. Your attorney marketing needs a variety of tools to propel your sites to greater heights including SEO. And SEO results are not easily achieved. If you?re confused about SEO or your attorney marketing, call the team at WebShark360. We?ll help your law firm determine a strategy that propels your law firm to the top.
Strong medicine may have rid a newborn of deadly HIV
By Stephen Ornes
Web edition: March 18, 2013
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This photo shows HIV infecting a T-cell, which usually fights off infections in the human body.
Credit: NIH/NIAID
A toddler in Mississippi has just made history. Doctors report that a combination of medicines appears to have cured the child of a deadly virus. The girl was born with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. If her infection doesn?t return, researchers say this would be the first known case where drugs wiped out HIV.
Visit the new?Science News for Kids?website?and read the full story:?The AIDS virus that vanished
![[ Back to EurekAlert! ]](http://www.eurekalert.org/images/back2e.gif){kind=small}
Public release date: 28-Mar-2013
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When it comes to attorney marketing, SEO is one of the most effective tools to help your law firm gain new clients. SEO offers your law firm the ability to push your website to the top of the rankings in order to attract the attention of more consumers. But when it comes to obtaining SEO help, there are a lot of myths out there that unfortunately sucker in many law firms. The problem is that if your law firm falls for bad SEO promises, your attorney marketing could be suffering.