A touch iteration of the once SNES-bound Final Fantasy V has now appeared on the iTunes App Store, with a softer graphical lick, some new job classes (Gladiator, Cannoneer, Oracle and Necromancer) and an obligatory extra boss to test your leveling-up skills against. The price of four new costumes for your meteor-riding protagonists? Just shy of $16. Saving the world was never going to be cheap easy.
PARIS (Reuters) - French President Francois Hollande declared on Thursday that companies would have to pay a 75 percent tax on salaries over a million euros after his plan for a "super-tax" on individuals was knocked down by the constitutional court.
Hollande, battling to win back support as his economic goals fall away within a year of his election, said shifting the millionaires' tax onto companies would be a way of getting the wealthiest French to contribute to ending the crisis.
"I am sticking by my pledge," Hollande said, during an hour-long interview on primetime television where he urged a disillusioned nation to trust that he was doing all he could to get the stalled economy back on its feet.
On the defensive, with his approval ratings in tatters, Hollande acknowledged he had failed to anticipate the crisis dragging on for so long, but all the tools were being put in place to restore growth and bring down unemployment.
Anxious to get left-wingers back behind him, the Socialist leader said that despite his effort to reduce the public deficit in a climate of stalled growth, no new taxes or tax hikes would be imposed on households this year or next.
He warned, however, that the French would have to work longer under a pension overhaul being worked on for next year in order to reduce a gaping deficit in the retirement system.
"My first objective is to reverse the unemployment rate," Hollande said, explaining that he was gunning for the relentless rise of past years to come to a stop at the end of the year and for the 10.6 percent jobless rate to start falling from then.
He said measures in place to trim companies' labour costs via tax rebates, a plan to loosen hiring and firing rules and his intention to simplify regulations that strangle small businesses provided all the tools for a recovery.
"This is not a wish, nor is it a forecast. It's a commitment and a battle," he said, adding: "I am the chief of this battle."
The TV interview is part of a new public relations push that has included a two-day, hand-shaking tour in southeast France. The trip backfired when hecklers asked what had become of campaign pledges and one protester was carted off by police.
Hollande's ratings have slid faster than those of any other French president as he has irked left-wingers with pro-market measures to foster growth, angered business leaders with high taxes and failed to stem the rise in unemployment.
His government has backtracked on its growth and deficit targets, and few believe the job market is close to recovering.
Thursday's resurrection of the 75 percent tax saved Hollande some face after the Constitutional Court crushed what had been his most high-profile campaign promise to his left-wing base.
APPROVAL AT 25 PERCENT
The carefully stage-managed interview looked set to be upset by news a few hours earlier that actress Julie Gayet had filed a legal complaint for breach of privacy over rumors on the Internet alleging a romantic liaison with the president.
However no reference was made to a complaint the Paris prosecutor's office said it received from Gayet on March 18 against "persons unknown" over rumors circulating online for some weeks. A lawyer for Gayet, cited in French media as saying the rumors were baseless, did not respond to phone calls and Hollande's office declined to comment.
Hollande, 58, has already suffered media speculation over his relationship with first lady Valerie Trierweiler. The pair are unmarried but have been together for several years.
Negative publicity would hurt Hollande today, with just 22 percent of respondents in a survey by pollster CSA on Thursday rating him a "good" president and 51 percent rating him "bad".
Separately, an LH2 poll for Le Nouvel Observateur weekly gave him a 27 percent approval rating and found 81 percent of people were unhappy with his efforts on jobs.
Data this week showed households' purchasing power fell in late 2012 for the first time since 1984 and that jobless claims rose for a 22nd straight month in February to reach the highest level since June 1997, amid a stream of industrial layoffs.
National statistics institute INSEE sees unemployment rising to 11 percent by mid-year, making Hollande's insistence that he can reverse the trend by year-end sound hollow.
(Additional reporting by Chine Labbe, Elizabeth Pineau and Ingrid Melander, edited by Michael Roddy)
Baby stars can grow to an incredibly large size ? 10 times more massive than the sun, at the least ? if they are cocooned in a group of older stars feeding gas to the youngsters, a new study suggests.
This theory could explain how young stars get so big, rather than pushing away gas as they grow and starving themselves once they get about eight times as massive as the sun.
Researchers spotted evidence of this type of "convergent constructive feedback" with the Herschel Space Observatory. It took pictures of a large dust and gas cloud called Westerhout 3, located about 6,500 light-years from Earth, in wavelengths ranging from infrared to part of the microwave spectrum.
"This observation may lift the veil on the formation of the most massive stars, which remains, so far, poorly understood," said Alana Rivera-Ingraham, lead author of the study. She was at the University of Toronto when the research was performed, and is now a postdoctoral researcher at the Research Institute of Astrophysics and Planetology in France. [Star Quiz: Test Your Stellar Smarts]
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Star corral
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Stars typically form in the midst of huge gas clouds. The force of gravity squeezes the gas until it is compressed enough to start the nuclear fusion process that fuels stars.
Newborn stars are constantly balancing two opposite forcesas they grow. Gravity sucks in gaseous material to feed the protostar, while radiation pressure emanating from the protostar resists the inward pull of gravity and pushes away some of the gas surrounding it.
The bigger a star gets, the greater the radiation pressure, until it reaches a point where the gas should ? by conventional theory ? be blown away.
The densest part of Westerhout 3's gas cloud, researchers noted, is enclosed by a crowd of older, large stars.
That thick environment is no coincidence, scientists said. Providing the older stars are in the right position ? surrounding a gas reservoir ? the gas they push away through radiation could compress and form new stars.
"The process is similar to the way a group of street cleaners armed with leaf blowers can stack leaves in a pile ? by pushing from all sides at the same time," officials at the University of Toronto said in a statement. "This corralling of dense gas can give birth to new, high-mass stars."
The group still needs to test this theory through simulation, and by comparing observations of Westerhout 3 to those of similar stellar gas clouds.
"Only then will [scientists] be able to discern the mechanism ? collective feeding or not ? that gives rise to high-mass stars in these giant clouds," according to the statement.
Another solution proposed
In 2009, another group of researchers proposed a different way that stars can grow massive.
The group ran a three-dimensional simulation of how a large interstellar gas cloud falls into itself and creates a huge star. The computer showed instabilities where the radiation sent part of the cloud out into space, while gas continued to spiral in toward the star through other channels.
"This shows that you don't need any exotic mechanisms; massive stars can form through accretion processes just like low-mass stars," study leader Mark Krumholz of the University of California, Santa Cruz said in a 2009 SPACE.com interview.
Previous to that research, scientists believed radiation pressure would push away the gas surrounding a protostar before it could reach a mass 20 times that of the sun.
The theory, though, was contradicted by multiple observations of supermassive stars, which do exist but are rarer than small stars.
Follow Elizabeth Howell @howellspace, or SPACE.com @Spacedotcom. We're also on Facebook and Google+.
Copyright 2013 SPACE.com, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
This parmesan grater is delicious. It has a single, perforated blade that lets you grate your cheese in any direction. Best of all, there's funnel on the end of this $25 grater with a removable cover so you can direct just the right amount of cheese onto your plate of fettuccine or salad. But we suggest directing that perfectly shredded parm directly into your mouth. [WMF via Appliancist] More »
Sunday will mark the end of the first quarter. It's been a busy three months in MMA, so it's a good time to look back at the past three months and see who rose above the rest.
Biggest upset: Did you expect to see Robbie Lawler walk away with the win over Josh Koscheck at UFC 157? What about Antonio Rogerio Nogueira beating former UFC light heavyweight champ Rashad Evans? But there's no question who scored the biggest upset of the first quarter of 2013. Antonio Silva's TKO of Alistair Overeem at UFC 156 left more than Overeem's jaw on the floor.
Best knockout: Vitor Belfort's knockout of Michael Bisping at the January UFC on FX was memorable, as was Tyron Woodley's 36-second dismantling of Jay Hieron at UFC 156. Wanderlei Silva, Robbie Lawler and a slew of Bellator fighters have posted impressive knockouts. But the one that had everyone talking was on "The Ultimate Fighter." Uriah Hall's knockout of Adam Cella* was perfectly executed, and had the rest of the TUF house worried about Hall's skills. For that, Hall wins knockout of the first quarter.
* The knockout actually occurred last year, but aired in the first quarter of 2013.
Best submission: For the best tapouts of the first three months of 2013, Bellator provided a nominee when Dave Vitkay choked out Jesse Peterson in just 18 seconds. Gabriel Gonzaga's guillotine of Ben Rothwell stands out, as is Ronda Rousey's arm bar of Liz Carmouche at UFC 157. The winner comes from the undercard of UFC 157 as Kenny Robertson managed a weird yet incredibly painful looking kneebar-esque submission of Brock Jardine. It was the kind of submission that left MMA fans wondering what had happened.
Best rising star: There were plenty of candidates for fighters who really made an impressive leap in the MMA world early in 2013. Jordan Mein's UFC debut at UFC 158 included rolling out of an arm bar with Dan Miller, and then knocking him out before the first round ended. Abel Trujillo's TKO win by knees to the body of Marcus Levesseur was pretty fantastic, too. But it's Trujillo's opponent at UFC 160, Khabib Nurmagomedov who is taking home the prize. His TKO of Thiago Tavares in Brazil showed he can fight well under any conditions.
Best fight: Johny Hendricks and Carlos Condit put on a great scrap at UFC 158. Brian Stann and Wanderlei Silva's bout was thrilling before Stann was knocked out. Demetrious Johnson and John Dodson's title fight at UFC on Fox 6 was memorable, as was Frankie Edgar and Jose Aldo's title bout at UFC 156. The one fight that stood out above the rest, though, was Dennis Bermudez and Matt Grice's fight from UFC 156. Throughout the bout, both fighters should have given up. Both fighters should have been knocked out. But neither man gave in. Bermudez won the decision, but both fighters will be remembered for this bout.
Do you agree? Speak up in the comments, on Facebook or on Twitter.
PARIS (Reuters) - Stock futures pointed to a lower open on Wall Street on Wednesday, with futures for the S&P 500 down 0.2 percent, Dow Jones down 0.22 percent and Nasdaq 100 down 0.13 percent at 6:06 a.m. EDT.
* European stocks slid and the euro currency fell to a four-month low against the dollar on Wednesday, as the implications of Cyprus' bailout deal weighed on sentiment. <.eu/>
* Cyprus is finalizing capital control measures to prevent a run on its banks after wealthy depositors were penalized under the rescue package the country agreed with international lenders. Cypriot banks are due to reopen on Thursday.
* On the economic front, investors are awaiting data on pending home sales for February, due at 1400 GMT, while results are expected from Paychex, PVH Corp and Red Hat .
* U.S. prosecutors are examining whether JPMorgan Chase & Co fully alerted authorities to suspicions about fraudster Bernard Madoff, the New York Times reported, citing several people with direct knowledge of the matter.
* Pfizer's new lung cancer pill Xalkori is too expensive to be worth using by Britain's state health service, the country's health cost watchdog said on Wednesday.
* Credit Suisse said on Wednesday it would buy Morgan Stanley's wealth management arm in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, with total assets under management of $13 billion.
* As Boeing works to regain permission for its 787 Dreamliner to resume flights, the company faces what could be a costly new challenge: a temporary ban on some of the long-distance, trans-ocean journeys the jet was intended to fly.
* T-Mobile USA said on Tuesday that it will start selling Apple Inc's iPhone on April 12, making it the last of the big national U.S. operators to sell the popular smartphone. The No. 4 U.S. mobile provider, which is seeking to merge with smaller rival MetroPCS Communications, is hoping the device can help stem customer losses.
* Wal-Mart Stores Inc said in a regulatory filing on Tuesday that is now "probable" it will incur losses related to allegations that company representatives had bribed officials in Mexico to speed up expansion there.
* U.S. stocks rallied on Tuesday, with the Dow climbing more than 100 points to another record close and the S&P 500 coming within striking distance of its all-time closing high, as strong home price and manufacturing data fed optimism about the economy.
* The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> rose 111.90 points, or 0.77 percent, to end at 14,559.65, a record closing high. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> gained 12.08 points, or 0.78 percent, to finish at 1,563.77. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> advanced 17.18 points, or 0.53 percent, to close at 3,252.48.
(Reporting by Blaise Robinson; Editing by John Stonestreet)
Think about bundling your merchandise with products of the same type and offering the bundle as a bargain sale. Just be sure that any terms and conditions are clearly stated in marketing materials.
TIP! A good strategy is to know what your competitors are doing. Make the effort to look at the websites and social networking accounts belonging to your competition.
With the impact if the Internet on our everyday lives, the Internet is the best place for businesses to advertise. The advice and information contained in this article will help you learn, even if you are just a beginner. With these tips, you can start to market your business on the Internet today.
Explore existing research about the psychological and emotional connections that people associate with certain webpages and online marketing communications. Psychological factors can drastically effect the way that someone perceives your brand, based on the color, outlay and theme of your site. This is crucial information you can use to maximize profit.
TIP! Try exploring mobile marketing. When something goes on sale you will be able to tell your customers through a text message.
Talk with other businesses and retailers online to create bundle deals of services and products that you could sell for less in volume. This way you can connect several markets and boost your total sales. For example, we all know of the online travel sites that have pulled together packages that include your airfare, hotel and car rental all into one easy transaction. This technique is especially useful for merchants that offer products that complement each other, but you have to remember to use merchants that aren?t in direct competition.
Oftentimes, marketing consultant services are prohibitively expensive for small business owners. Luckily, the internet has a wealth of information to help you. Consider joining an online business community and other online social groups that will benefit your business.
TIP! For any business site that sells a large amount of products, it?s crucial to have third-party transaction security. There are many ways to ensure your customer?s security.
Make use of word-of-mouth in the form of viral videos. It can takes a lot of creativity to create a viral video that can generate so much attention. If you accomplish this task correctly, you will have a huge impact on your sales compared to using any other campaign strategy.
Build an email list as a pertinent resource. Ask your customers if they would like to join your email list when they make a purchase, and add a form on your website to let them sign up. This address can be then used for either sales letters, promotions or seeking feedback on their recent purchasing experience.
Give your customers what they want. A simple digital billboard featuring your hours of operation, address and toll free number is simply not going to garner you much business. Use the space to add reviews, blog posts, articles and similar content that demonstrates to potential customers that you know what they find helpful and relevant.
TIP! Everyone on your mailing list should receive personal correspondence from you. This helps to create a dialogue that is focused primarily on their interests.
If you want to draw in traffic for your site, you should think about circulating a press release. If you are not a great writer, there are sources online that provide you with your own press release in your niche. This can boost your profile easily.
If you have a knack for writing, try writing about your products and business and then submit your articles to websites and magazines. Always include your contact and business information within any articles you write. You can entice the editors with commissions or freebies that encourage them to publish your content.
TIP! Offer special deals to new clients, such a deals for a dollar or buy one- get one free. This could be a good way to launch your online business or to generate a buzz as you release a new product.
One possible Website marketing tactic is to create a web page that purely serves as public relations for your business. On this page, you can include information that can be used in web magazines and e-journals. It is a simple, yet very effective, strategy to generate more publicity for your business.
Follow up with your clients by cross-selling, advising them of other similar merchandise that you offer that they might be interested in, via an email with links to online catalogs or sales sheets. As an illustrative instance, if your site sells shoes and a customer purchases a pair of boots, provide them with links to the other boots you offer. You will increase the amount of sales you generate when you offer them products similar to past purchases.
TIP! How good is your service or product? You can market on the Internet until the cows come home, but if your product is inferior, it won?t do you any good. A superior product is easier to sell, and will generate more sales.
Use popular websites to advertise your company online. It might cost you a little money and some time, but it?s an investment that will pay off in a huge way. You want to pick a site that has heavy traffic and offers content in your particular niche or area of industry.
If your website looks and works well it will give you a better online experience. Keep track of which banners and links get the most clicks and test your site regularly to make sure everything is working fine. Costumers will leave if your site is not working properly.
Your website should have good format and make links clear and easily spotted. This lets people interested in your website have an easier time finding what they?re looking for.
Always avoid spam. Although it can be cost efficient to spam sites with your information, it always ends up drawing negative feedback towards you site and it never ends well. By not placing a personal touch in your advertising, it can turn people away.
TIP! Create a website that is interesting and designed well. The success of any Internet marketing campaign depends on how well the website is created.
Make use of positive selling tactics when marketing your product. Be certain that people understand why your products and services are relevant to their own lives. Shoppers should know this information once they have briefly visited your website or any other page on the web that is relevant to your operations. If you exude confidence in your customers, they will pick up on that.
Offering a free course can be a great way of channeling customer interest to your website. This is a great strategy, especially when it involves a course because you can package it with another related product. You can even begin an ad campaign and use that to sell additional items.
TIP! Many business owners have discovered that offering a discount is an effective means of attracting customers online. This can be done by offering products at discounted prices if the customer purchases a certain amount of your products.
Any service or product benefits from catch phrases promising that it provides instant gratification. Emphasize speed, whether it is speed of order placement, speed of order shipment or the speed at which results can be expected when your service or product is used. Useful phrases are ?speedy downloads?, ?quick confirmations?, and ?secure checkout?.
Your eCommerce website can be improved by page rank. PageRank can be bought if it?s a good deal because consumer news sites will want to link to you. This is roughly the equivalent of generating profits through the sale of loss leader merchandise.
TIP! Internet marketing is both the same and drastically different than other areas. Maybe search engines won?t focus as much on title tags in the future.
A 500-error page is helpful and user-friendly. This will happen when some database code you wrote decides to just stop working. A generic error page will just say that connection has timed out. There are much more effective means for informing users that you know there is an issue and are trying to fix it.
You should use the word ?limited? in the advertisement. A lot of people do their shopping online because their stores don?t offer the variety that they can find on the Internet. Some people want things no one else has. By marketing limited edition products, consumers will be more likely to quickly purchase it before you don?t carry it anymore.
TIP! When you use email as a regular form of communication with your customers, make sure you change your links on a regular basis. If your links are always the same, your customers will begin to ignore them.
Provide an easy way for others to link back to your website by providing an attractive link-back button. This helps to establish a nice flow on your site, as customers will be more apt to click on advertisements with the assurance that you are offering something legitimate.
You can anticipate more business if you allow more payment options. Avoid the tendency to allow only credit cards as this may limit your customer base.
It can be intimidating at first but the world of online marketing is well worth the efforts that it takes to learn. Apply what you?ve just learned to maximize your business exposure and achieve the success you deserve.
VANDERBIJLPARK, South Africa (AP) ? The brother of double-amputee athlete Oscar Pistorius pleaded not guilty to a charge of culpable homicide or negligent killing in a South African court Wednesday for the death of a woman in a road collision in 2008.
Carl Pistorius also pleaded not guilty to two alternative charges of driving in a reckless and inconsiderate manner. He wore a dark suit and was accompanied by his sister, Aimee. Oscar Pistorius, who was charged with murdering his girlfriend on Feb. 14, was not present. The Olympian hasn't been seen in public since he was granted bail at Pretoria Magistrate's Court on Feb. 22. His lawyers plan to challenge his bail restrictions on Thursday.
Initial proceedings in Carl Pistorius' case at Vanderbijlpark Magistrate's Court south of Johannesburg focused on a request by South Africa's national broadcaster, SABC, to show the trial proceedings live on national television or record them for later use.
Magistrate Buks du Plessis said reporters could attend the trial but turned down the SABC request, saying he wanted to guard against "emotional hype" and that any public interest in the trial stemmed only from the intense interest in the murder case against Oscar Pistorius. News photographers were not allowed to cover the trial while it was in session.
"He's not a celebrity in his own right," du Plessis said of Oscar's brother. Addressing Carl Pistorius, the magistrate then said: "Apologies to you, sir."
Carl Pistorius smiled and nodded.
Defense lawyer Kenneth Oldwadge said the legal team for Oscar Pistorius had been "overwhelmed by the media," and that similar press scrutiny would make it difficult to work in court during the older brother's case. Oldwadge cited a comment by the judge in Oscar Pistorius' bail hearing that the media treated the athlete like some kind of unusual "species" instead of a human being.
Prosecutors say Carl Pistorius was driving an SUV in March 2008 when he collided with a female motorcyclist. The woman, Marietjie Barnard, died in a hospital. Although the culpable homicide charge against Carl was initially dropped, it was reinstated this year because forensic evidence and reports from the accident scene became available, according to prosecutors.
The Pistorius family said last month that Carl deeply regretted the incident but insisted it was a "tragic accident." He was not under the influence of alcohol, the family said.
Oscar's legal team filed an appeal against some of his bail conditions on March 7, objecting to him being not allowed to travel outside of South Africa even though a magistrate said he was not a flight risk when granting him 1 million rand ($108,000) bail. They're also challenging an alcohol ban and a ruling that Pistorius cannot speak with residents at the gated estate where he shot girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp dead in the early hours of Valentine's Day.
The athlete denies murdering Steenkamp and says he shot her by mistake, fearing an intruder was in his home. Prosecutors say he killed her intentionally following an argument.
Oscar Pistorius must appear in court again on June 4.
Today, Google has announced a mobile refresh for Google+?for Android and iOS that includes some of the functionality that has come out for the desktop over the past few months. Both versions will be available later in the day. Some of the changes are things that we’ve expected, thanks to acquisitions like Nik Software and features like Communities that were introduced on the desktop last year. The upcoming I/O conference should also be an interesting time for Google+, as that’s when we got its last major product edition, Events, along with numbers. These feature updates should give you a better idea of how Google wants to weave Google+ into everything it does. Photo editing, the mobile way On the photo front, you can make all of your edits from within the app now, letting you crop, rotate, change contrast, saturation and brightness and add filters, all with simple gestures that might have become familiar within the Snapseed app. The Nik Software team certainly hasn’t disappeared into an abyss in Mountain View, we’re just starting to see how important that acquisition was. The company also released a full set of professional photo tools today that Nik Software has become so popular for. Scroll more, tap less For posts, Google wants you to be able to make your way through as much content in a short amount of time. The company doesn’t want you to spend hours upon hours on Google+. Within this update, you can see more text in the original post, as well as more comments, and a single tap now takes you directly to a photo, a watch page for a video or a lightbox for a website. The really nice addition here is the ability to swipe through an entire photo album inline, without having to head over to a separate album page. Additionally, the +1, share and comment buttons are more prominent. Location in your profile Your profile on Google+ can now be adorned with your current location if you’re into that sort of thing. If you enable it, you can simply choose where you are, or where you’d like to tell everyone that you are. Without having to dig through content, the location is shown at the top of your profile. You have to turn the location settings on for Google+ to play around with this. Much needed Community controls For Communities, you’re now able to
While the growths of the Web, social media and online communities have dramatically changed how companies and customers connect the?4 fundamental drivers?of business?have not. Companies still need to:
a)??? Build
b)??? Market
c)??? Sell
d)??? Support their products & services
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New technologies have helped to simplify processes and reduce the cost of those four drivers. To succeed in today?s competitive market corporations must now meet?five new?business imperatives:
a)??? Do more with less
b)??? Increase profits while dropping cost
c)??? Implement systems for better ROI, and strategically?
d)??? Inform, engage, enlist & reward your customers, making them active copartners in your business
e)??? Become a ?Social Business?
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The conventional definition of ?ROI? as ?Return on Investment? is still valid, but the spread of social media and the adoption of new Social CRM tools, ROI?should be considered as: ?Return on Interaction?.
Analyzing this situation drive us to the following conclusion: by listening, observing, asking, involving, and interacting with customers (partners, and employees too), a truly social business could build better products and services, that are increasingly designed, sold, and?even supported?by customers.
Every day, more and more customers go to internal or external forums and online communities in search of answers from people like them.? Unfortunately, on virtually all of today?s online communities, the process of resolving problems and issues is poorly handled, if not entirely unmanaged.
In order to face this new challenge, companies need to integrate platforms able to listen, involve and interact with their clients in real time. The best way to reach this target at a minimum cost is to crowd source their own customers. If your company is not already crowdsourcing its customer service and support, it?s time to consider doing so. Why? Smart businesses are looking more and more for ways to help their clients.
?
?I. ?What is Crowdsourcing?
Crowdsourcing is using the ?crowd? of users as the ?source? to help other users. It allows the number of customer issues to be handled to grow without needs to incur in relevant additional labor costs. By letting users participate in the customer service and support process, it puts them center stage, engages them with the company, and increases loyalty.
Today, customer loyalty is considered as a key element for the success of a company. It determines whether or not it is a prosperous organization and the growth of the loyalty customer base is becoming a more and more relevant KPI.
Why a client is loyal? The most important element for him to be faithful to a brand is the quality of the product or service provided to him and how the enterprise provides it.
?
II.??????? Main Challenges:
The biggest challenges companies are facing in customer service today are:
a)??? The growing operating cost of customer service
b)??? Providing quick answers to questions from many communication channels if not your customer will start to abandon you
c)??? Monitoring social media where you customers speak about you
d)??? Operating and extending the number of communication methods that your customer wants to use
e)??? Distribution of product/service knowledge internally and externally
f)???? Growing your customer loyalty base
?
III.??????? The Solution:
Developing a business solution that helps the company to improve the customer service and tackle the challenges of today is the only way and should be sustained by the following three pillars:
a)??? Create an expert community to provide peer to peer support customer (crowd-sourcing) deflecting requests from internal customer service
b)??? Settle forums you can control for discussions on your products and services
c)??? Improve and reuse the knowledge gained from requests/answers to make them easy and accessible with the help of a semantic natural language search engine
?
?
IV.??????? Basic Rules:
This platform has to allow the company to listen, monitor and engage with its customers on social communication channels from one single interface.
Customers have to be able to choose to communicate from a portal or through a social channel and the answers have to be provided in the customer preferred channel.
?
V.??????? Secrets for Success:
The company needs to setup and align its peer-to-peer support with the already existing operation model to use or customize the flow that fits the preferred customer experience.
The community has to be animated and/or integrated to other communities. In order to boost peer-to-peer support, a reward engine has to be built in to motivate the experts
?
VI.??????? Key Benefits:
a)??? Cost reduction of operation (Normally between -30 & -40%)
b)??? Increased customer satisfaction and customer loyalty
c)??? Improved knowledge distribution
d)??? Higher customer retention
e)??? Brand protection
f)???? Being seen as an innovative company
?
VII.??????????? Examples:
The following summary table shows examples of Key benefits of online?service?and support communities:
?
VIII.??????????? Conclusion:
Crowdsourcing can reduce drastically the burden on the staff, save money, and engage customers.
South Carolina guard Shelbretta Ball wipes her face after losing to Kansas 75-69 in a second-round game of the women's NCAA college basketball tournament, Monday, March 25, 2013, in Boulder Colo. (AP Photo/Brennan Linsley)
South Carolina guard Shelbretta Ball wipes her face after losing to Kansas 75-69 in a second-round game of the women's NCAA college basketball tournament, Monday, March 25, 2013, in Boulder Colo. (AP Photo/Brennan Linsley)
Kansas players celebrate after defeating South Carolina 75-69 in a second-round game in the women's NCAA college basketball tournament, Monday, March 25, 2013, in Boulder, Colo. (AP Photo/ Brennan Linsley)
Kansas guard Monica Engelman (13) puts up a shot as South Carolina forward Ashley Bruner (21) and South Carolina guard Sancheon White (20) defend during the second half of a second-round game in the women's NCAA college basketball tournament on Monday, March 25, 2013, in Boulder. Colo. (AP Photo/ Ed Andrieski)
South Carolina forward Aleighsa Welch, left, grabs a rebound from Kansas guard CeCe Harper during the second half of a second-round game in the women's NCAA college basketball tournament on Monday, March 25, 2013, in Boulder. Colo. (AP Photo/ Ed Andrieski )
South Carolina guard Shelbretta Ball (2) shoots over Kansas guard Angel Goodrich (3) during the second half of a second-round game in the women's NCAA college basketball tournament on Monday, March 25, 2013, in Boulder. Colo. (AP Photo/ Ed Andrieski )
BOULDER, Colo. (AP) ? The Kansas Jayhawks aren't about to complain about their No. 12 seeding.
After all, they realize they were likely the last at-large team to make the women's NCAA tournament after losing seven of their last 11 games.
They're eager, however, to prove that they're not your average 12th seed.
The Jayhawks (20-13) were the ones chanting "Sweet 16!" for the second straight season Monday night after senior Monica Engelman scored a career-high 27 points in a 75-69 upset of fourth-seeded South Carolina.
Kansas became just the second No. 12 seed to advance to the second weekend of the NCAA tournament, joining San Francisco in 1996 as the only No. 12 seeds to follow up a win in the opening round with another in the second. No. 12 seeds are 2-15 in the second round since the women's field was expanded to 64 teams in 1994.
The Jayhawks moved on to Norfolk, Va., where they will play the winner of Tuesday's game between Notre Dame and Iowa in the regional semifinals Sunday.
Engelman's previous career best was 26 points set last month against TCU.
"For me, Angel made it easy," Engelman said of teammate Angel Goodrich. "I mean, she's a great point guard, she can push the ball so she makes everyone else want to sprint up the floor and get easy buckets in transition."
Goodrich's speed allowed the Jayhawks to push the pace much faster than the Gamecocks found comfortable.
"That's what we wanted to do, we want to control the tempo," Goodrich said. "When we run we have fun. We wanted to catch them off balance, catch them when they're not ready, because when they set up, they're really good."
Goodrich added 20 points to go with her eight assists.
Fourth-seeded South Carolina (25-8) was denied its 26th win, which would have been the program's most since joining the Southeastern Conference in 1991-92.
"It was a hard-fought, physical game," South Carolina forward Aleighsa Welch said. "It was really an up and down tempo."
That's not the Gamecocks' style. They gave up just 49.5 points a game and Kansas nearly had that by halftime.
"I told our team at the half, 'We give up 32 points in entire games,'" South Carolina coach Dawn Staley said. "The pace of the game was not our pace. They made us play a little quicker. I thought we were pretty efficient on the floor offensively, but in order for us to stay in basketball games, we have to control games from a defensive standpoint, and we didn't do that."
Staley said having Sancheon White, her best defender, play just 8 minutes in the first half because of foul trouble was a big part of Engelman's big night.
"It was her defensive assignment. We could have used her speed, but when you're playing two freshmen (Khadijah Sessions and Tiffany Mitchell) in a big game like this, it's pretty difficult to ask them to do things they haven't done," Staley said.
"She was hot. When a player gets going like that, it's hard to stop."
The first meeting between the two schools was an instant classic, a one-possession game in the final 30 seconds even though South Carolina didn't score again after Ashley Bruner's bucket with 2:52 left tied it at 69.
The Gamecocks grabbed 26 offensive boards, a school record for an NCAA game, and they had three players post double-doubles.
Bruner and Welch scored 16 points each and pulled down 12 and 11 rebounds, respectively. Elem Ibiam also had a double-double for South Carolina with 12 points and 10 boards.
Yet it's Kansas, which has won four straight games at the Coors Events Center, that's returning to the round of 16 after getting there last year as an 11th seed.
Kansas got a major scare when center Carolyn Davis limped off the court, favoring her left leg, after picking up her fourth foul with 6:40 left. A trainer took off the brace that protects the knee she injured last year, forcing her to miss the NCAA tournament. Welch sank both free throws to tie it at 65.
"It's always a scare to see someone go down and when I looked at her, she kind of just held her knee and I was just kind of like, 'Dang!' I didn't know what to think, really," Goodrich said. "But for her to get up and stand up, it relieved me a little bit.
"When that happens, you've got to stay composed and think we've still got time on the clock, we've still got a game to finish. But I'm glad she got back up and she got back in the game and she did what she needed to do."
It was 67-all when Davis returned with 3:50 remaining. She quickly denied Bruner's jumper, and her bucket with 2:30 left put Kansas ahead for good at 71-69.
Iseasia Walker missed a 3-pointer for South Carolina that would have tied at 72 it with less than a half-minute remaining and Kansas sealed the win at the free throw line.
___
Follow Arnie Melendrez Stapleton on Twitter: http://twitter.com/arniestapleton
Mar. 25, 2013 ? Hybrid ribbons of vanadium oxide (VO2) and graphene may accelerate the development of high-power lithium-ion batteries suitable for electric cars and other demanding applications.
The Rice University lab of materials scientist Pulickel Ajayan determined that the well-studied material is a superior cathode for batteries that could supply both high energy density and significant power density. The research appears online this month in the American Chemical Society journal Nano Letters.
The ribbons created at Rice are thousands of times thinner than a sheet of paper, yet have potential that far outweighs current materials for their ability to charge and discharge very quickly. Cathodes built into half-cells for testing at Rice fully charged and discharged in 20 seconds and retained more than 90 percent of their initial capacity after more than 1,000 cycles.
"This is the direction battery research is going, not only for something with high energy density but also high power density," Ajayan said. "It's somewhere between a battery and a supercapacitor."
The ribbons also have the advantage of using relatively abundant and cheap materials. "This is done through a very simple hydrothermal process, and I think it would be easily scalable to large quantities," he said.
Ajayan said vanadium oxide has long been considered a material with great potential, and in fact vanadium pentoxide has been used in lithium-ion batteries for its special structure and high capacity. But oxides are slow to charge and discharge, due to their low electrical conductivity. The high-conductivity graphene lattice that is literally baked in solves that problem nicely, he said, by serving as a speedy conduit for electrons and channels for ions.
The atom-thin graphene sheets bound to the crystals take up very little bulk. In the best samples made at Rice, fully 84 percent of the cathode's weight was the lithium-slurping VO2, which held 204 milliamp hours of energy per gram. The researchers, led by Rice graduate student Yongji Gong and lead author Shubin Yang, said they believe that to be among the best overall performance ever seen for lithium-ion battery electrodes.
"One challenge to production was controlling the conditions for the co-synthesis of VO2 ribbons with graphene," Yang said. The process involved suspending graphene oxide nanosheets with powdered vanadium pentoxide (layered vanadium oxide, with two atoms of vanadium and five of oxygen) in water and heating it in an autoclave for hours. The vanadium pentoxide was completely reduced to VO2, which crystallized into ribbons, while the graphene oxide was reduced to graphene, Yang said. The ribbons, with a web-like coating of graphene, were only about 10 nanometers thick, up to 600 nanometers wide and tens of micrometers in length.
"These ribbons were the building blocks of the three-dimensional architecture," Yang said. "This unique structure was favorable for the ultrafast diffusion of both lithium ions and electrons during charge and discharge processes. It was the key to the achievement of excellent electrochemical performance."
In testing the new material, Yang and Gong found its capacity for lithium storage remained stable after 200 cycles even at high temperatures (167 degrees Fahrenheit) at which other cathodes commonly decay, even at low charge-discharge rates.
"We think this is real progress in the development of cathode materials for high-power lithium-ion batteries," Ajayan said, suggesting the ribbons' ability to be dispersed in a solvent might make them suitable as a component in the paintable batteries developed in his lab.
Co-authors of the new paper are Rice graduate students Daniel Hashim and Lulu Ma; research scientist Zheng Liu; former Rice visiting researcher Liang Zhan, now an associate professor at East China University of Science and Technology in Shanghai; and faculty fellow Robert Vajtai. Ajayan is the Benjamin M. and Mary Greenwood Anderson Professor in Engineering and a professor of mechanical engineering and materials science, chemistry, and chemical and biomolecular engineering.
The work was funded by the U.S. Army Research Office and the Office of Naval Research through a Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative grant and a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship grant.
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Journal Reference:
Shubin Yang, Yongji Gong, Zheng Liu, Liang Zhan, Daniel P. Hashim, Lulu Ma, Robert Vajtai, Pulickel M. Ajayan. Bottom-up Approach toward Single-Crystalline VO2-Graphene Ribbons as Cathodes for Ultrafast Lithium Storage. Nano Letters, 2013; : 130314101516006 DOI: 10.1021/nl400001u
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New Premium options now mean that for 3 ? a month, you get almost anything you could want. 9 ??unlimited. Image courtesy SoundCloud.
We hear some pretty clear messages from CDM readers about SoundCloud. One, almost all of you seem to have some criticisms of it.
Two, almost all of you appear to use it, complaints or none. Even as other services remain valuable, SoundCloud is practically its own category. (In fact, the level of detail about those complaints suggests to me that they come from ongoing, intensive usage.)
Ubiquity is an understatement. ?Do you have a SoundCloud?? is a question I hear about as much as I once heard ?do you have a MySpace?? a few years ago. People ask it in bars; people who aren?t musicians. (That MySpace connection should be both encouraging, and ominous. But it shouldn?t only be ominous: Facebook for music discovery has always seemed limiting, too full of distractions and too scattered for artists to provide clear links to their work.)
Furthermore, even artists who do use something like Bandcamp tend to use SoundCloud, too, if my inbox is any indication; Bandcamp is ideal for formal releases, but SoundCloud has unique, embeddable players and the ability to release live performances and podcasts and things that aren?t EPs or LPs. Since Bandcamp is for most of us more about discrete album release, that puts the two in very different niches.
SoundCloud made a number of announcements this month, timed neatly with South by Southwest in Austin, Texas. (While SoundCloud is based in Berlin, I expect, like most Web services, the USA still accounts for a lion?s share of its users.)
Being ?Pro? Got a Lot Cheaper
The big news for creators here: it?s now easy to recommend premium service, as they?re much cheaper and simpler. It?s cheap enough, in fact, that having been comped by the nice folks at SoundCloud, I wound up just pulling out my credit card and buying it for myself. The Unlimited service, which had gone for a whopping 59 ? a month, now costs just 9 ? a month, with extended uploads and stats. If you just want uploads, the 3 ? a month plan is sufficient, with most of what the 9 ? a month plan offered before.
Before: Multiple options, different levels provided different statistics. 12 hours of uploads for 9 ?, though not with all the stats. (See the image, since the old plan info is gone.)
Now: 3 ? a month gets you unlimited downloads, all the extras, 4 hours of uploads. 9 ? a month gets you unlimited uploads.
At 3 ? a month, in fact, I wouldn?t hesitate to recommend SoundCloud to any musician, producer, or podcaster. Is it a perfect service? No. Do I still like using it? Yeah, actually. But let?s get to some of those complaints. To me, they illustrate both the challenges the service faces, and the extent to which artists and labels are using the service.
Vintage SoundCloud plans ? confusing, expensive. Now, even the top tier features seen here cost only 9 ? a month. The full functionality, with 4 hours of uploads instead of unlimited, is 3 ? monthly.
Complaints About Redesign, Anti-Piracy Measures
Even at reduced prices, I do expect gripes about SoundCloud to continue. Two changes in the service appear to have triggered user frustration from the creator community. First, the redesign, while unquestionably more attractive, changed the location of some features and made fine-grained management of feeds and sets more difficult for some users, depending on how they use the service. (It is worth reading SoundCloud?s help article on where features went, but I know that doesn?t address all the complaints.) For the casual user, this may not be apparent, but CDM readers who manage labels and surf a greater stream of audio content have seemed more annoyed. The redesign also attracted complaints about features designed to increase ?discovery,? by placing other users? tracks alongside your own. These should increase plays overall, but don?t appeal to some users who value control.
Secondly, some users have become victims of automatic algorithms designed to ferret out illegal music uploads. SoundCloud, like any company operating on the Web, is liable for infringement in any country in which it operates. Web startups have taken various approaches to that ? and some have flirted more with the law than others. But SoundCloud, now the largest service of its kind, has opted to employ machine listening systems designed to fingerprint audio files and match them with protected works. Some (not all) mixes have therefore been disabled. More surprisingly, I?ve recently started getting angry reports from readers who had music they themselves owned blocked.
SoundCloud isn?t alone ? Google Hangouts, for instance, recently took down a colleague?s space with a similar algorithm. At least in the cases of reader issues I tracked, SoundCloud responded within a few days when the user complained that they couldn?t upload their own music. (Generally speaking, I?d rather deal with SoundCloud than Google ? a nasty stalemate between performing rights organization GEMA and Google has caused most music videos uploaded by their artist and label creators to be voluntarily blocked by YouTube in Germany, thus rendering them invisible to one of the world?s biggest countries.)
The lesson for SoundCloud should be clear: if you can?t stop false positives, you?d better make it very, very easy for users to appeal the process. Seeing your own music blocked from upload is not a happy experience.
Balancing Acts, and Creators
Not revolutionary, by any means, but partners can now show off slide shows with sounds for a visual element. SoundCloud may be taking steps toward pricier sponsors, but this feature might be one other users see in the future, too.
What these tensions illustrate to me, though, is that SoundCloud has to walk some very thin lines. They want to encourage active uploads, but stay within the law. They want to stay in legal compliance, but not anger legitimate users. They want to appeal to a growing user base (becoming a YouTube of sound), but maintain core, advanced users (labels and creators built SoundCloud, and remain a big part of the service?s draw).
Then there?s another problem: they need to make money. Another component of the March announcement is a set of features for a beta ?Pro Partner? program. That program is closed, for now, open to only those SoundCloud chooses ? right now, a somewhat oddball combination that includes a fancy coffee shop, the Grammies, and Red Bull, among others. (The variety, presumably, is intended to show some range for would-be future advertisers.) As with Twitter, that appears to suggest sponsored promotion of specific ?Who to Follow? choices. An animated image slide show also more prominently features brands, though SoundCloud tells CDM that some of those features could be offered to us everyday, non-partner users in the future.
GigaOm, while taking a jab at the mixed success of European startups in general, wrote that the changes could suggest real profit potential.
You Could Still Be the Key to SoundCloud?s Future
For the creator community, I think the main issue is that SoundCloud continue to demonstrate value. If it can attract a passionate user community paying a few euros a month, it could be better for all of us ? that?ll mean that we, the creators, remain its main revenue source. Flickr Pro?s success in the photography community, before a few years of absent management from parent Yahoo, is instructive. When I first wrote about SoundCloud at its release, I suggested it could be a ?Flickr of sound? rather than a ?YouTube of sound.? That, uh, does reveal just how long SoundCloud has been around ? but building a successful Web business around pros still seems viable to me.
Some of the challenge seems to be not that SoundCloud is willfully ignoring pro requests, so much as like many Web services, changes are hard to accomplish. In addition to making the service cheaper, though, SoundCloud continues to make improvements. As The Verge reported last week, an mobile update adds set management features, as well as refreshing the look of the iOS app.
That app looks a lot better to me; it might at last mean I use the mobile app and not only the browser version.
And there are the tools others build atop SoundCloud. Just today, a developer sent a cool Android app that lets you hear new SoundCloud music tracks in place of a ring tone. (Hmmm? finally, a reason to feel good when people aren?t answering your calls?)
I am, of course, heavily biased, as a creator using the service myself on a site called ?Create Digital Music.? But I do think that SoundCloud?s future will depend on its ability to continue to please its core audience of producers and labels. They are more passionate about sound than anyone else. Their needs can therefore inform the needs of those using the service more casually and for spoken word, they can help attract those brand partners, and they?re more likely to generate subscription revenue. My own analysis, having watched the service evolve from the beginning, is that they?re the foundation of the company?s more recent, explosive growth.
For now, I?m sticking with the service, though. Of course, I also keep local copies of those sounds, and share through my own site first, SoundCloud URL second. Even if someone asks me for a SoundCloud in a bar.
Let us know specifically what features you feel are working or need improvement, and whether you?re sticking with SoundCloud or have found other ways of sharing your sounds that you prefer.
Pro-life? That's a lie. You don't care if women die.
Name's Janisse. 21 years old. Puerto Rican. Single. Bisexual. Forensic Pshycology student. Atheist. Gamer. Pro-choice. Liberal. Skeptic. Sex positive.
I reblog funny/random things and fandoms. I also post about social injustices, politics, news about women, abortion rights, racism in America and atheism stuff. I *try* to educate people and raise awareness.
Once buried and left for dead, the electric vehicle (EV) has been gaining ground at a slow, yet steady pace in the automotive market. With a growing middle class globally, and climate change concerns is helping to revitalize EVs in recent years.
Now Ford?s new Chief Operating officer?suggests EVs could make up one-quarter of their sales by the end of this decade.
Image Credit: C-Max Energi via WikiCommons (Public Domain)
In an interview with Green Autoblog last week, Ford Chief Operating officer Mark Fields said Ford?s fleet of electric vehicles (battery, electric, plug-in and hybrids) could make up 10-25% of their sales by 2020.
Fields also said to help reach that goal will involve ?electrifying?platforms? as compared to electrifying single vehicles.
?And our manufacturing strategy will allow us to flex. For example, our Wayne [MI] Plant will produce the regular gas-powered Focus, the electric Focus and the C-Max hybrid,? he said.
With fuel CAFE standards coming into focus, Fields believes the companies base of electric vehicles will help reach CAFE targets. However, he also suggests firm consumer interest is vital in?reaching fuel economy targets.
Currently, Ford has the EV Ford Focus, C-Max hybrid, and C-Max Energi on the green car/EV market. However, they are now behind other well-known electric cars in EV sales, including the Chevy Volt and the Nissan Leaf. In February, there were 1,626 Volts sold, an increase of more than 59% from the previous year, while the Nissan Leaf sold 653 Leafs, a 37% increase from the previous year.
Ford sold 119 Fusion Energi vehicles in February, while 158 Ford Focus Electric units and 175 C-Max Energis left car dealer?s lots.
While Ford?s number may be small for its EV and hybrid sales, it was the first month for the Fusion Energi on sale to the public, so there is lots of time for the Detroit manufacturer to boost its EV sales well ahead of their ambitious 2020 target.
Sanford-Burnham researchers unravel molecular roots of Down syndromePublic release date: 24-Mar-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Heather Buschman, Ph.D. hbuschman@sanfordburnham.org 858-795-5343 Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute
Sanford-Burnham researchers discover that the extra chromosome inherited in Down syndrome impairs learning and memory because it leads to low levels of SNX27 protein in the brain
LA JOLLA, Calif., March 24, 2013 What is it about the extra chromosome inherited in Down syndromechromosome 21that alters brain and body development? Researchers at Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute (Sanford-Burnham) have new evidence that points to a protein called sorting nexin 27, or SNX27. SNX27 production is inhibited by a molecule encoded on chromosome 21. The study, published March 24 in Nature Medicine, shows that SNX27 is reduced in human Down syndrome brains. The extra copy of chromosome 21 means a person with Down syndrome produces less SNX27 protein, which in turn disrupts brain function. What's more, the researchers showed that restoring SNX27 in Down syndrome mice improves cognitive function and behavior.
"In the brain, SNX27 keeps certain receptors on the cell surfacereceptors that are necessary for neurons to fire properly," said Huaxi Xu, Ph.D., professor in Sanford-Burnham's Del E. Webb Neuroscience, Aging and Stem Cell Research Center and senior author of the study. "So, in Down syndrome, we believe lack of SNX27 is at least partly to blame for developmental and cognitive defects."
SNX27's role in brain function
Xu and colleagues started out working with mice that lack one copy of the snx27 gene. They noticed that the mice were mostly normal, but showed some significant defects in learning and memory. So the team dug deeper to determine why SNX27 would have that effect. They found that SNX27 helps keep glutamate receptors on the cell surface in neurons. Neurons need glutamate receptors in order to function correctly. With less SNX27, these mice had fewer active glutamate receptors and thus impaired learning and memory.
SNX27 levels are low in Down syndrome
Then the team got thinking about Down syndrome. The SNX27-deficient mice shared some characteristics with Down syndrome, so they took a look at human brains with the condition. This confirmed the clinical significance of their laboratory findingshumans with Down syndrome have significantly lower levels of SNX27.
Next, Xu and colleagues wondered how Down syndrome and low SNX27 are connectedcould the extra chromosome 21 encode something that affects SNX27 levels? They suspected microRNAs, small pieces of genetic material that don't code for protein, but instead influence the production of other genes. It turns out that chromosome 21 encodes one particular microRNA called miR-155. In human Down syndrome brains, the increase in miR-155 levels correlates almost perfectly with the decrease in SNX27.
Xu and his team concluded that, due to the extra chromosome 21 copy, the brains of people with Down syndrome produce extra miR-155, which by indirect means decreases SNX27 levels, in turn decreasing surface glutamate receptors. Through this mechanism, learning, memory, and behavior are impaired.
Restoring SNX27 function rescues Down syndrome mice
If people with Down syndrome simply have too much miR-155 or not enough SNX27, could that be fixed? The team explored this possibility. They used a noninfectious virus as a delivery vehicle to introduce new human SNX27 in the brains of Down syndrome mice.
"Everything goes back to normal after SNX27 treatment. It's amazingfirst we see the glutamate receptors come back, then memory deficit is repaired in our Down syndrome mice," said Xin Wang, a graduate student in Xu's lab and first author of the study. "Gene therapy of this sort hasn't really panned out in humans, however. So we're now screening small molecules to look for some that might increase SNX27 production or function in the brain."
###
This research was funded by the U.S. National Institutes of Health (National Institute on Aging grants R01AG038710, R01AG021173, R01AG030197, R01AG044420; National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke grants R01NS046673, P30NS076411; Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health & Human Development grant P01HD29587; National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences grant P01ES016738), Alzheimer's Association, American Health Assistance Foundation, National Natural Science Foundation of China, 973 Prophase Project, Natural Science Funds for Distinguished Young Scholar of Fujian Province, Program for New Century Excellent Talents in Universities, Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities, and Fok Ying Tung Education Foundation.
The study was co-authored by Xin Wang, Sanford-Burnham; Yingjun Zhao, Sanford-Burnham and Xiamen University; Xiaofei Zhang, Sanford-Burnham; Hedieh Badie, Sanford-Burnham; Ying Zhou, Sanford-Burnham; Yangling Mu, Salk Institute; Li Shen Loo, Institute of Molecular and Cell Biology, Singapore; Lei Cai, Institute of Molecular and Cell Biology, Singapore; Robert C. Thompson, Sanford-Burnham; Bo Yang, Sanford-Burnham; Yaomin Chen, Sanford-Burnham; Peter F. Johnson, National Cancer Institute-Frederick; Chengbiao Wu, University of California, San Diego; Guojun Bu, Xiamen University; William C. Mobley, University of California, San Diego; Dongxian Zhang, Sanford-Burnham; Fred H. Gage, Salk Institute; Barbara Ranscht, Sanford-Burnham; Yun-wu Zhang, Sanford-Burnham and Xiamen University; Stuart A. Lipton, Sanford-Burnham and University of California, San Diego; Wanjin Hong, Institute of Molecular and Cell Biology, Singapore and Xiamen University; and Huaxi Xu, Sanford-Burnham and Xiamen University.
About Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute
Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute is dedicated to discovering the fundamental molecular causes of disease and devising the innovative therapies of tomorrow. Sanford-Burnham takes a collaborative approach to medical research with major programs in cancer, neurodegeneration, diabetes, and infectious, inflammatory, and childhood diseases. The Institute is recognized for its National Cancer Institute-designated Cancer Center and expertise in drug discovery technologies. Sanford-Burnham is a nonprofit, independent institute that employs 1,200 scientists and staff in San Diego (La Jolla), California and Orlando (Lake Nona), Florida. For more information, visit us at sanfordburnham.org.
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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.
Sanford-Burnham researchers unravel molecular roots of Down syndromePublic release date: 24-Mar-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Heather Buschman, Ph.D. hbuschman@sanfordburnham.org 858-795-5343 Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute
Sanford-Burnham researchers discover that the extra chromosome inherited in Down syndrome impairs learning and memory because it leads to low levels of SNX27 protein in the brain
LA JOLLA, Calif., March 24, 2013 What is it about the extra chromosome inherited in Down syndromechromosome 21that alters brain and body development? Researchers at Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute (Sanford-Burnham) have new evidence that points to a protein called sorting nexin 27, or SNX27. SNX27 production is inhibited by a molecule encoded on chromosome 21. The study, published March 24 in Nature Medicine, shows that SNX27 is reduced in human Down syndrome brains. The extra copy of chromosome 21 means a person with Down syndrome produces less SNX27 protein, which in turn disrupts brain function. What's more, the researchers showed that restoring SNX27 in Down syndrome mice improves cognitive function and behavior.
"In the brain, SNX27 keeps certain receptors on the cell surfacereceptors that are necessary for neurons to fire properly," said Huaxi Xu, Ph.D., professor in Sanford-Burnham's Del E. Webb Neuroscience, Aging and Stem Cell Research Center and senior author of the study. "So, in Down syndrome, we believe lack of SNX27 is at least partly to blame for developmental and cognitive defects."
SNX27's role in brain function
Xu and colleagues started out working with mice that lack one copy of the snx27 gene. They noticed that the mice were mostly normal, but showed some significant defects in learning and memory. So the team dug deeper to determine why SNX27 would have that effect. They found that SNX27 helps keep glutamate receptors on the cell surface in neurons. Neurons need glutamate receptors in order to function correctly. With less SNX27, these mice had fewer active glutamate receptors and thus impaired learning and memory.
SNX27 levels are low in Down syndrome
Then the team got thinking about Down syndrome. The SNX27-deficient mice shared some characteristics with Down syndrome, so they took a look at human brains with the condition. This confirmed the clinical significance of their laboratory findingshumans with Down syndrome have significantly lower levels of SNX27.
Next, Xu and colleagues wondered how Down syndrome and low SNX27 are connectedcould the extra chromosome 21 encode something that affects SNX27 levels? They suspected microRNAs, small pieces of genetic material that don't code for protein, but instead influence the production of other genes. It turns out that chromosome 21 encodes one particular microRNA called miR-155. In human Down syndrome brains, the increase in miR-155 levels correlates almost perfectly with the decrease in SNX27.
Xu and his team concluded that, due to the extra chromosome 21 copy, the brains of people with Down syndrome produce extra miR-155, which by indirect means decreases SNX27 levels, in turn decreasing surface glutamate receptors. Through this mechanism, learning, memory, and behavior are impaired.
Restoring SNX27 function rescues Down syndrome mice
If people with Down syndrome simply have too much miR-155 or not enough SNX27, could that be fixed? The team explored this possibility. They used a noninfectious virus as a delivery vehicle to introduce new human SNX27 in the brains of Down syndrome mice.
"Everything goes back to normal after SNX27 treatment. It's amazingfirst we see the glutamate receptors come back, then memory deficit is repaired in our Down syndrome mice," said Xin Wang, a graduate student in Xu's lab and first author of the study. "Gene therapy of this sort hasn't really panned out in humans, however. So we're now screening small molecules to look for some that might increase SNX27 production or function in the brain."
###
This research was funded by the U.S. National Institutes of Health (National Institute on Aging grants R01AG038710, R01AG021173, R01AG030197, R01AG044420; National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke grants R01NS046673, P30NS076411; Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health & Human Development grant P01HD29587; National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences grant P01ES016738), Alzheimer's Association, American Health Assistance Foundation, National Natural Science Foundation of China, 973 Prophase Project, Natural Science Funds for Distinguished Young Scholar of Fujian Province, Program for New Century Excellent Talents in Universities, Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities, and Fok Ying Tung Education Foundation.
The study was co-authored by Xin Wang, Sanford-Burnham; Yingjun Zhao, Sanford-Burnham and Xiamen University; Xiaofei Zhang, Sanford-Burnham; Hedieh Badie, Sanford-Burnham; Ying Zhou, Sanford-Burnham; Yangling Mu, Salk Institute; Li Shen Loo, Institute of Molecular and Cell Biology, Singapore; Lei Cai, Institute of Molecular and Cell Biology, Singapore; Robert C. Thompson, Sanford-Burnham; Bo Yang, Sanford-Burnham; Yaomin Chen, Sanford-Burnham; Peter F. Johnson, National Cancer Institute-Frederick; Chengbiao Wu, University of California, San Diego; Guojun Bu, Xiamen University; William C. Mobley, University of California, San Diego; Dongxian Zhang, Sanford-Burnham; Fred H. Gage, Salk Institute; Barbara Ranscht, Sanford-Burnham; Yun-wu Zhang, Sanford-Burnham and Xiamen University; Stuart A. Lipton, Sanford-Burnham and University of California, San Diego; Wanjin Hong, Institute of Molecular and Cell Biology, Singapore and Xiamen University; and Huaxi Xu, Sanford-Burnham and Xiamen University.
About Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute
Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute is dedicated to discovering the fundamental molecular causes of disease and devising the innovative therapies of tomorrow. Sanford-Burnham takes a collaborative approach to medical research with major programs in cancer, neurodegeneration, diabetes, and infectious, inflammatory, and childhood diseases. The Institute is recognized for its National Cancer Institute-designated Cancer Center and expertise in drug discovery technologies. Sanford-Burnham is a nonprofit, independent institute that employs 1,200 scientists and staff in San Diego (La Jolla), California and Orlando (Lake Nona), Florida. For more information, visit us at sanfordburnham.org.
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Sunday will mark the end of the first quarter. It's been a busy three months in MMA, so it's a good time to look back at the past three months and see who rose above the rest.
Today, Google has announced a mobile refresh for Google+?for Android and iOS that includes some of the functionality that has come out for the desktop over the past few months. Both versions will be available later in the day. Some of the changes are things that we’ve expected, thanks to acquisitions like Nik Software and features like Communities that were introduced on the desktop last year. The upcoming I/O conference should also be an interesting time for Google+, as that’s when we got its last major product edition, Events, along with numbers. These feature updates should give you a better idea of how Google wants to weave Google+ into everything it does. Photo editing, the mobile way On the photo front, you can make all of your edits from within the app now, letting you crop, rotate, change contrast, saturation and brightness and add filters, all with simple gestures that might have become familiar within the Snapseed app. The Nik Software team certainly hasn’t disappeared into an abyss in Mountain View, we’re just starting to see how important that acquisition was. The company also released a full set of professional photo tools today that Nik Software has become so popular for. Scroll more, tap less For posts, Google wants you to be able to make your way through as much content in a short amount of time. The company doesn’t want you to spend hours upon hours on Google+. Within this update, you can see more text in the original post, as well as more comments, and a single tap now takes you directly to a photo, a watch page for a video or a lightbox for a website. The really nice addition here is the ability to swipe through an entire photo album inline, without having to head over to a separate album page. Additionally, the +1, share and comment buttons are more prominent. Location in your profile Your profile on Google+ can now be adorned with your current location if you’re into that sort of thing. If you enable it, you can simply choose where you are, or where you’d like to tell everyone that you are. Without having to dig through content, the location is shown at the top of your profile. You have to turn the location settings on for Google+ to play around with this. Much needed Community controls For Communities, you’re now able to
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Public release date: 24-Mar-2013
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