Peter D. Hart is one of the leading analysts of public opinion in the United States. Since 1971, he has been Chairman of Peter D. Hart Research Associates. As an established leader in survey research, Mr. Hart, along with the late Robert Teeter, and currently with Bill McInturff of Public Opinion Strategies, have been the pollsters for NBC News and The Wall Street Journal since 1989. In the political realm, Mr. Hart has represented more than 40 U.S. senators and 30 governors, ranging from Hubert Humphrey and Lloyd Bentsen, to Jay Rockefeller and Bob Graham. Additional focuses on public policy and cultural issues have included work for such clients as the Smithsonian Institution, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, and the Kennedy Center. In the international realm, Hart Research has undertaken studies in South America, Europe, Asia, and Africa.
Community Leaders? Perceptions of Gaming
Overview and Methodology
?When commercial casinos first began to expand outside Nevada nearly 30 years ago, gaming opponents predicted that casinos would destroy communities by attracting organized and petty crime, corrupting government officials, cannibalizing local businesses, and preying on poor or addicted gamblers. Yet today, a starkly different picture emerges in communities that have adopted casino gambling. To help explore the impact that casino gaming has had on communities around the country, Peter D. Hart Research Associates conducted a telephone survey among 201 local community leaders in jurisdictions with commercial casino gaming, including racetrack casinos. The sample included 108 elected officials, such as mayors, city and county council members, and state legislators, plus 93 non-elected civic leaders, such as chiefs of police, chamber of commerce leaders, and economic development officials.1 Most of these opinion leaders lived and worked in their communities before the introduction of casinos, giving them a first-hand and well- informed viewpoint on the benefits and costs associated with casino gaming.
In the broadest sense, elected officials and civic leaders are strikingly positive about the impact that casinos have had on their communities. They welcome the additional tax revenue, jobs, secondary economic development, and contributions to community and charitable organizations. At the same time, the negative effects predicted by casino opponents have largely failed to materialize. Taking everything into consideration, these public officials strongly endorse the decision to allow gaming in their communities?with the benefit of hindsight, fully 75 percent say they would vote to allow casinos if they could go back and do it all over again.?
Risk Management used to be merely a wing that purchases insurance for multi-million dollar companies.? Over the years Risk Management has begun to evolve and play a more strategic role within a company.? This evolution is evidenced by companies? adoption of Enterprise Risk Management (ERM) philosophies integrating them throughout organizations.? One example of such integration is the relationship that is developing between Internal Audit and the Risk Management departments.
An article that appeared on the Business Insurance website outlines this blossoming relationship.? The article was written by The Institute of Internal Auditors (IIA) IIA in response to a collaborative report that was composed by Risk and Insurance Management Society (RIMS) and the IIA.? The report was released to coincide with the RIMS annual conference in April and provided case studies for risk aware organizations like Cisco Systems and the Whirlpool Corporation.? Carol Fox, who is the director of strategic and enterprise risk practices at RIMS, is quoted as saying that the role of internal audit and risk management are complimentary and would be ?more effective working together than separately.?
This common understanding is something that The ALS Group whole-heartedly agrees with because to us the internal audit?s function is to determine the financial impact of risk on the companies? operations. This essential tool can be used to improve the effectiveness of risk management within an organization.? Therefore, if a company begins to incorporate Enterprise Risk Management into its? philosophy, Internal Audit department can use this process to evaluate the effectiveness of a company?s risk management systems.? This symbiotic relationship will than allow a company to look at risk from a more strategic view that examines a company?s profitability and will provide a deeper understanding of its significant risks.
To get more information on integrating Enterprise Risk Management into your company?s internal audit function, contact our Managing Principal, Albert Sica at 732.395.4251 or at asica@thelasgroup.com.
To read the Business Insurance article referenced above, click here.
First true love is an initiation into the mysteries and glory of real love. Coming out is the initiation into gay sexual relationships. ? Coming Out and First Love ?
Coming Out and First Love
First true love is an initiation into the mysteries and glory of real love. Coming out is the initiation into gay sexual relationships.
What?s website SEO? Well, this means doing seo for any website. For those who have lately began an online business or you are wanting to start one, you might request this first: why should i perform website SEO? If the real question is presently running in your head, then you?re on the right track! Bear in mind that starting an internet site without applying Search engine optimization could be as being a restaurant that?s invisible to clients.
This really is the internet and countless sites happen to be competing for that items or services you?re offering. So, recognizing success in your web business frequently is dependent on applying Seo approaches for your site. This is actually the best approach to help make your website popular on the internet. Website SEO will help with improving online visibility of the website. In exchange, it provides an enormous flow of specific traffic that frequently leads to enhanced revenue generation. Well, this process could be best presented with an equation that goes such as this: Website + Search engine optimization = More Profits.
Improving the internet presence of the website through Search engine optimization could be completed in a number of ways. Probably the most integral component that?s needed for the prosperity of your Search engine optimization campaign is nice quality content. When the content on your site is below componen, all of your Search engine optimization efforts would use vain. Top quality content that?s highly relevant to your niche and enhanced with key phrases would attract the interest of internet search engine bots and render high page ratings for the website. High page ratings would further result in an increase of website traffic to your web page. The great quality content shown on your website would grip the eye of the visitors making them return for additional. The increase in the regularity of site visitors would quadruple the in flow of website traffic to your web page and considerably bolster its presence online.
Article promotion is yet another effective Search engine optimization technique that may boost the visibility of the site online. Your Search engine optimization provider would publish original articles which are relevant aimed at your website in a number of submitted article sites online. Choose key phrases and phrases within the articles that figure at the top of search engines like google could be designated hyperlinks aimed at your website. Hence, each time a user clicks these key phrases he?d be rerouted to your web page. With respect to the number and frequency of clicks, your site would be a prominent entity online.
Bear in mind that the enhanced online presence is frequently essential for an internet business, which may be only accomplished through website SEO. Proper Seo (Search engine optimization) brings plenty of traffic to your web page free of charge. Search engine optimization likewise helps to construct your brand status as savvy web customers will always be searching for what?s new and exciting. Certainly one of natural techniques to improve a website?s recognition is to buy links in the related sites and also the authority internet sites in niche. Additionally for this, directory submission is a more link-building tactic for brand new websites. Use reliable sites for example Yahoo and DMOZ to obtain traffic aimed at your website.
Writing is my existence and that i like it. I write lots of articles and blogs to relay our encounters about Online Marketing. You should check WebWise Media Search engine optimization to understand much more about Website SEO services and benefits.
Aug. 30 (Bloomberg) -- Japan?s retail sales fell more than economists forecast in July as a winding down of government subsidies for car purchases threatens to further damp consumer spending in coming months.
The 0.8 percent decline from a year earlier was the first drop in eight months and compared with the median estimate of a 0.1 percent fall in a Bloomberg News survey of 13 economists. From a month earlier, sales slid 1.5 percent, according to data released by the trade ministry in Tokyo today.
Weakness in consumer spending and declining exports may make it harder for the government to prevent the economic contraction forecast for this quarter by Bank of America Merrill Lynch and Credit Suisse Group AG. Most of 274.7 billion yen ($3.5 billion) of subsidies for purchases of fuel-efficient cars is spent, with RBS Securities Japan Ltd. saying the program may run out of money next month.
?We can expect a plunge in spending in the fourth quarter because of the end of eco-car subsidies,? Masamichi Adachi, a senior economist at JPMorgan Securities in Tokyo and a former central bank official, said before today?s report.
The yen traded at 78.72 per dollar as of 9:07 a.m. in Tokyo, little changed from before the release.
Smaller summer bonuses for workers this year may have contributed to the sales decline. Payouts by large companies, often equivalent to several months? pay, fell 2.5 percent after rising in the previous two years, according to the Japan Business Federation, also known as Nippon Keidanren.
The Cabinet Office downgraded its assessment of the domestic economy for the first time in 10 months on Aug. 28 after shipments to the European Union fell 25 percent in July from a year earlier. Private consumption accounts for about 60 percent of Japan?s gross domestic product.
The Japanese economy, the world?s third-biggest, will grow 1 percent this quarter on an annualized basis after a 1.4 percent expansion in the previous three months, according to the median estimate of analysts surveyed by Bloomberg News. A minority of analysts forecast a contraction.
Japan passenger vehicle sales will drop as much as one- fifth in the next quarter from a year earlier, after growing about 53 percent in the first seven months, according to analysts at BNP Paribas and IHS Automotive. Only about 10 percent of the money allocated for car subsidies rolled out from April remained unspent as of Aug. 27, according to the trade ministry.
Carmakers such as Nissan Motor Co. are calling for additional stimulus as they lose state aid of as much as 100,000 yen per vehicle.
--Editors: Paul Panckhurst, James Mayger
To contact the reporters on this story: Andy Sharp in Tokyo at asharp5@bloomberg.net; Keiko Ujikane in Tokyo at kujikane@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Paul Panckhurst at ppanckhurst@bloomberg.net
We carry on holiday for many reasons ? typically just to rest, have fun along with recharge each of our batteries. Natural meats travel abroad to have an extended holiday break or just to get a weekend town getaway. It is crucial and beneficial to take a break from your daily grind to see and expertise new sites and nationalities. It is also critical to have travel insurance ? along with to understand what that covers.
Sign up for a cheap standard travel insurance policy because this is better than not implementing one in any respect. Buy more cover for more golf handle, photographic tools or accessories for enterprise equipment as well as winter sports. For anyone who is interested in experience sports and so are planning to take pleasure in some of them, then do affirm whether the vacation cruise insurance plan you propose to purchase includes any of the actions you?re interested in. Some policies handle adventure activities like deep-sea diving and plane skiing and a few don?t.
With respect to the travel agency that gives the insurance, they may also provide citation refunds if your trip may be canceled because of to a number of good reasons such as severe weather conditions, as well as technical as well as mechanical damage to the vehicles. Most insurance companies team up together with travel agencies with providing deal based travel insurance. If you?re planning away in longer excursions or journeying frequently, a good insurance package is perfect to cover your needs, especially in having defense against emergencies that could arise.
Whether or not you live together with well-managed epilepsy or undergo regular convulsions, the very fact that you?ve been identified will be interesting to your travel insurance provider. Declaring epilepsy doesn?t imply you will be charged added but screwing up to mention it might invalidate your insurance plan. The Internet is a great tool to do comparison shopping for all sorts of product, including insurance policies along with plan. In addition, you can go directly to your travel agent to get a more tailored service. water sports west Also you can work on that quickly by opting to obtain travel suppliers as well as tour staff, though you have to take note that the insurance offerings might not be as detailed as compared to other individuals. You will have to take a look at their products very carefully if the coverage will cover all of your needs although traveling.
Precisely what are the risks involving travelers heading to these Under-developed destinations? Besides the factors pointed out earlier, for instance natural disasters, functions brought about by the particular unstable sociopolitical environment and enemy activities, in addition there are risks relating to the traveler?s health because of bad medical facilities, contaminated mineral water and foods supplies along with disease-carrying organisms just like insects. Travel with regard to business as well as leisure has grown many folds up over the last decade. At the same time unforeseen risks that accompany travel has also increased because of to several unforeseen reasons. Small business travelers are typically shielded via uncertainties as their companies take care of travel insurance or they?ve got local details of get in touch with to help them in the event of emergencies. Travelers are generally revealed to the risks that can along with travel many them are unacquainted with the dangers and usually do not hassle to buy travel insurance previous to they put down to travel.
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Related Post Harvard community health plan
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South Korean rescuers Wednesday resumed a search for 10 missing crewmen from two Chinese fishing boats as the confirmed death toll from a strong typhoon rose to 15.
Typhoon Bolaven -- the strongest to hit the South for almost a decade -- left a trail of deaths and damage in southwestern and south-central regions of the country on Tuesday.
It moved on to North Korea, where state media reported damaged crops and power cuts around the western city of Haeju. Some 300 roadside trees along the Pyongyang-Kaesong highway were snapped, halting traffic.
The final estimate of damage was expected to be greater, the official news agency said, after strong winds and heavy rain hit western regions.
Bolaven crossed the Yalu River into China early Wednesday.
In South Korea, the typhoon snapped 235 traffic lights, toppled 7,857 trees, damaged 42 ships or boats, 35 houses and 1,195 greenhouses, the public administration ministry said.
Some 6,418 hectares (15,852 acres) of farmland was damaged.
The storm drove two Chinese fishing ships aground early Tuesday off the southern island of Jeju, sparking a dramatic rescue operation.
Coastguards wearing wetsuits struggled through high waves and used a line launcher to pull a total of 12 people to safety. Six swam ashore, five bodies were recovered and 10 are still missing.
"We've deployed some 130 people including divers to look for the missing crew. A helicopter is also combing the area," an officer at the Seogwipo coastguard in Jeju told AFP.
The coastguard said in a statement it would make "utmost efforts" until it accounts for all missing crew members.
Other deaths were mostly caused by wind gusts that toppled walls or collapsed roofs or blew victims off their feet. The public administration ministry said the confirmed death toll, including the five Chinese, was 15.
Typhoon alerts covering most of the country were lifted as ferries and flights returned to normal and schools reopened. But South Korea is now on watch for another typhoon.
Tembin, located about 280 kilometres northeast of the Taiwanese capital Taipei early Wednesday, is approaching the South at a speed of 20 kilometres (12 miles) an hour.
If the battery life in your iPhone 4S is getting worse and worse, or it just won't hold a charge, you can easily perform a DIY replacement. This can help you get lots more life out of your device and prevent having to buy a new iPhone before you absolutely have to. If you're soon to be out of warranty or otherwise not covered for exchange or replacement, or if you're just a DIY type who wants to learn more about the inner workings of your iPhone, we've got you covered.
Disclaimer: As with any repair, neither iMore nor PXLFIX can be held responsible for any damage you may do to your device. It?s also worth considering that opening up your device to perform any repair or modification can and will void your Apple warranty. If you don?t feel comfortable opening your device, don?t. Use extreme care and caution when performing a repair on any device.
What you'll need to DIY replace an iPhone 4S battery
PXLFIX recommends using only quality and genuine parts from a reputable supplier like eTech Parts. They have quality parts, tools, and much more for all your repair needs. You will find links to the specific parts you'll need for this repair in the list below.
Before performing any repair you should always power off your device before opening it up.
Remove the back plate
Using your security screwdriver, remove the 2 screws on either side of the dock connector port.
Set them aside. They are both the exact same size and length so it does not matter if you mix them up. They are interchangeable.
Gently slide up the back plate by applying a bit of pressure along the bottom with your thumbs and sliding upwards.
Now lift off the back plate and set it aside.
Remove the battery and grounding clip
Using your #00 Phillips screwdriver, remove the two screws holding the battery in place.
These screws are different lengths so make sure you remember which one goes where. The one that is slightly larger is the bottom screw.
There is a tiny grounding clip underneath the battery clip where the first screw is located. Use your spudger tool or finger to remove it before prying the clip up. Many times it can go flying if you don't remove it first and then you'll have difficulty locating it so it's best to remove it first.
Now use your spudger tool and at the bottom of the battery clip, gently pry upwards so the clip pops up.
Move to the edge of the iPhone where the volume buttons are located and use your spudger tool to carefully pry up the battery. It is stuck down with a good amount of adhesive so be careful when prying upwards that you don't bend the battery. This is why I do not use the plastic tab that is provided. It typically rips or bends the battery. If one part is resistant move your pry tool a little further down and gently start prying it up in different places taking care not to come too close to the volume button cables towards the top.
Once you've gotten the battery pulled out of the iPhone 4S we can move on to inserting the replacement battery.
Replace the battery and grounding clip
Pay attention to how the cable is bent on your old battery and if the new one is not crimped in the same fashion put the folds in it before inserting it into the iPhone 4S.
Line up the grounding clip you removed previously over the screw hole before snapping down the battery.
Snap down the battery in place to the logic board and then position the battery and press down firmly to make sure the adhesive sticks.
Replace the two screws you removed in a prior step starting with the top one using your #00 Phillips screwdriver. Make sure the grounding clip stays positioned. Use your other hand to hold it straight while you replace the top screw if you need to.
Now replace the bottom screw.
Replace the back plate
To replace the back plate line up the hinges around the edges. It should fall right into place. There will be a gap at the bottom.
Using slight pressure slide the cover down into place with your thumbs. If there is resistance make sure the hinges are lined up correctly and don't force it down and you can easily snap the hinge if it's caught up on something.
Once the back cover is securely in place and flush with the antenna band, replace the two screws on either side of the dock connector using your security screwdriver.
And ...done!
Now that your iPhone 4S is completely put back together you can turn it back on. If the phone doesn't come on, try plugging it into a wall charger and see if the charging icon comes up. It's quite possible the battery may be dead and needs to be charged before use.
It's a good idea to run the battery completely down before plugging it into a charger if it wasn't run down already. After it dies, charge it completely before pulling it off the charger again. You can do this a few times to condition the battery. While many say this may not be needed with batteries anymore, I have found it to make the battery meter read more accurately over time. You can actually do this at any time if you feel your battery is not displaying a charge accurately.
Want to know how to perform another type of iPhone repair or modification? Send me suggestions to ally@imore.com.
For questions or to inquire about mail-in repairs through PXLFIX, you can follow us on Twitter, like us on Facebook or e-mail us directly!
ANKARA (Reuters) - Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu urged the United Nations on Wednesday to care for displaced Syrians inside their country instead of letting them flood into Turkey, which already hosts more than 80,000 refugees.
Ankara, fearing a mass influx such as the flight of half a million Iraqi Kurds into Turkey after the 1991 Gulf War, has floated the idea of a "safe zone" under foreign protection within Syria for civilians fleeing intensifying violence.
"We expect the United Nations to engage on the topic of protecting refugees inside Syria and if possible sheltering them in camps there," Davutoglu told a news conference in Ankara.
Ankara has discussed the issue with U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres and U.N. aid chief Valerie Amos, he said, adding that both intended to visit Turkey again.
NATO-member Turkey is reluctant to act alone to set up a safe haven inside Syria since protecting it from attack by Syrian forces would effectively mean military intervention in the 17-month-old revolt against President Bashar al-Assad.
Yet there is scant Western appetite for military action in Syria and no prospect of a U.N. Security Council mandate for it, given Russian and Chinese willingness to veto any such proposal.
Davutoglu was speaking shortly before going to New York to attend a U.N. Security Council meeting on Syria on Thursday.
The United Nations said on Tuesday that up to 200,000 Syrians could flee to Turkey alone if the conflict worsens.
"When we talk about figures in the hundreds of thousands, this problem no longer remains a problem of an internal conflict in any one country but becomes an international dangerous problem," said Davutoglu, reflecting Turkey's frustration at the refugee burden and the Security Council's disunity over Syria.
Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan has said the council's failure to act indirectly supported oppression in Syria, criticizing vetoes of U.N. resolutions by China and Russia as a "fiasco".
(Reporting by Jonathon Burch and Tulay Karadeniz; Editing by Alistair Lyon)
Male snails babysit for other dadsPublic release date: 28-Aug-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Andy Fell ahfell@ucdavis.edu 530-752-4533 University of California - Davis
Pity the male of the marine whelk, Solenosteira macrospira. He does all the work of raising the young, from egg-laying to hatching even though few of the baby snails are his own.
The surprising new finding by researchers at the University of California, Davis, puts S. macrospira in a small club of reproductive outliers characterized by male-only child care. Throw in extensive promiscuity and sibling cannibalism, and the species has one of the most extreme life histories in the animal kingdom.
The family secrets of the snail, which lives in tidal mudflats off Baja California, are reported online in a study in the journal Ecology Letters.
In the study, UC Davis researchers report that, on average, only one in four of the hundreds of eggs that a male S. macrospira carries around on his back belong to him. Some carry the offspring of as many as 25 other males.
Such extreme cases provide the raw material on which natural selection can work and shed light on more "mainstream" species, said study author Rick Grosberg, a professor of evolution and ecology at UC Davis.
"It opens our eyes to viewing other kinds of behavior not as weird or harmful but as normal," he said.
The snails were first described in an amateur shell-collectors newsletter, The Festivus, in 1973. Grosberg started studying the animals in 1994, when he brought some back from a collecting trip and realized that only male snails had egg capsules on their shells.
When the snails mate, the female glues capsules containing hundreds of eggs each to the male's shell.
The male's shell likely acts as a substitute rock, since the snails' habitat offers few surfaces on which to glue eggs, said co-author Stephanie Kamel, a postdoctoral researcher in Grosberg's lab.
Moving in and out with the tide on dad's (or stepdad's) back also protects the egg capsules from the extremes of heat and drying they might face if left on a stationary rock.
A male's shell may become covered in dozens of capsules, each containing up to 250 eggs. As the eggs hatch, a process that takes about a month, some of the baby snails devour the rest of their littermates. Typically only a handful of hatchlings survives the fratricide to emerge from a capsule and crawl away.
Kamel carried out DNA analysis of brood capsules to determine the eggs' parentage. On average, she found that the male snails had sired just 24 percent of the offspring on their backs. Many had sired far less.
"The promiscuity in the female snails is extraordinary," Kamel said, noting that some females mate with as many as a dozen different males.
Why do they do it? Typically in the animal kingdom, females invest more resources in an egg than a male does in a sperm, so mothers have a stronger interest in providing parental care. Males may mate with multiple partners to increase their chances of siring offspring, but typically make less investment in caring for those young. When dads do get involved, it's nearly always because they are assured that all or most of the offspring are their own. Male sea horses, for example, carry developing young in a pouch but all are their own genetic offspring.
One explanation could be that caring for the kids just doesn't cost the male snails much. But by tethering individual snails to a post sunk in the sand, Grosberg was able to follow them over time and show that the capsules do impose a significant burden, reflected in weight loss.
It may be that carrying the egg capsules simply represents the best of limited options for the males, Grosberg said, since it's impossible for them to mate without the female attaching an egg capsule to their backs.
Or carrying egg capsules may be a way for a male to show a female that he's good parent material.
"If he wants to get any action, he has to pay the price," Grosberg said.
Grosberg is fascinated by the conflicts that occur between parents, between siblings, and between parents and offspring as they each try to get resources and maximize their success in breeding. You can see these conflicts and rivalries all the way from simple animals to humans, he notes.
"Everything that intrigues me about family life happens in these snails," he said.
At the same time, no animal has gone as far as humans in evolving increasing cooperation between relatives, tribes and larger and larger (and less closely related) groups over time.
"We're good at seeing other forms of reward," Grosberg said.
###
The work was funded by the National Science Foundation.
[ | 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.
Male snails babysit for other dadsPublic release date: 28-Aug-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Andy Fell ahfell@ucdavis.edu 530-752-4533 University of California - Davis
Pity the male of the marine whelk, Solenosteira macrospira. He does all the work of raising the young, from egg-laying to hatching even though few of the baby snails are his own.
The surprising new finding by researchers at the University of California, Davis, puts S. macrospira in a small club of reproductive outliers characterized by male-only child care. Throw in extensive promiscuity and sibling cannibalism, and the species has one of the most extreme life histories in the animal kingdom.
The family secrets of the snail, which lives in tidal mudflats off Baja California, are reported online in a study in the journal Ecology Letters.
In the study, UC Davis researchers report that, on average, only one in four of the hundreds of eggs that a male S. macrospira carries around on his back belong to him. Some carry the offspring of as many as 25 other males.
Such extreme cases provide the raw material on which natural selection can work and shed light on more "mainstream" species, said study author Rick Grosberg, a professor of evolution and ecology at UC Davis.
"It opens our eyes to viewing other kinds of behavior not as weird or harmful but as normal," he said.
The snails were first described in an amateur shell-collectors newsletter, The Festivus, in 1973. Grosberg started studying the animals in 1994, when he brought some back from a collecting trip and realized that only male snails had egg capsules on their shells.
When the snails mate, the female glues capsules containing hundreds of eggs each to the male's shell.
The male's shell likely acts as a substitute rock, since the snails' habitat offers few surfaces on which to glue eggs, said co-author Stephanie Kamel, a postdoctoral researcher in Grosberg's lab.
Moving in and out with the tide on dad's (or stepdad's) back also protects the egg capsules from the extremes of heat and drying they might face if left on a stationary rock.
A male's shell may become covered in dozens of capsules, each containing up to 250 eggs. As the eggs hatch, a process that takes about a month, some of the baby snails devour the rest of their littermates. Typically only a handful of hatchlings survives the fratricide to emerge from a capsule and crawl away.
Kamel carried out DNA analysis of brood capsules to determine the eggs' parentage. On average, she found that the male snails had sired just 24 percent of the offspring on their backs. Many had sired far less.
"The promiscuity in the female snails is extraordinary," Kamel said, noting that some females mate with as many as a dozen different males.
Why do they do it? Typically in the animal kingdom, females invest more resources in an egg than a male does in a sperm, so mothers have a stronger interest in providing parental care. Males may mate with multiple partners to increase their chances of siring offspring, but typically make less investment in caring for those young. When dads do get involved, it's nearly always because they are assured that all or most of the offspring are their own. Male sea horses, for example, carry developing young in a pouch but all are their own genetic offspring.
One explanation could be that caring for the kids just doesn't cost the male snails much. But by tethering individual snails to a post sunk in the sand, Grosberg was able to follow them over time and show that the capsules do impose a significant burden, reflected in weight loss.
It may be that carrying the egg capsules simply represents the best of limited options for the males, Grosberg said, since it's impossible for them to mate without the female attaching an egg capsule to their backs.
Or carrying egg capsules may be a way for a male to show a female that he's good parent material.
"If he wants to get any action, he has to pay the price," Grosberg said.
Grosberg is fascinated by the conflicts that occur between parents, between siblings, and between parents and offspring as they each try to get resources and maximize their success in breeding. You can see these conflicts and rivalries all the way from simple animals to humans, he notes.
"Everything that intrigues me about family life happens in these snails," he said.
At the same time, no animal has gone as far as humans in evolving increasing cooperation between relatives, tribes and larger and larger (and less closely related) groups over time.
"We're good at seeing other forms of reward," Grosberg said.
###
The work was funded by the National Science Foundation.
[ | E-mail | Share ]
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Gregg Masters reports on a recent Kaiser Health News article: Hospitals Look to Become Insurers, As Well as Providers of Care?.
This is the dumbest idea I?ve heard since ?I?m going to invest all my money in Facebook?s IPO and get rich!?
Here are six reasons why:
1) You?re too late. Health insurance was an attractive and profitable business in the 00s, but after passage of the Accountable Care Act it?s been commoditized.
First, the health plan business model of the past decade is dead. That model was ? ?Avoid and shed risk? ? or more simply, avoid insuring people who are already sick (preexisting conditions) and get rid of people who become sick (rescissions). Under the ACA, health insurers must take all comers and they can rescind policies only for fraud or intentional misrepresentation.
Second, the ACA institutes medical loss ratio restrictions on health insurers. Depending the the type of plan, insurers now must spend at least 80-85% of premium dollars on paying medical claims; if they spend less, they must return these ?excess profits? as rebates to customers. As a result, health insurance has become a highly regulated quasi public utility.
This is why you see health plan CEOs like Mark Bertolini of Aetna declaring ?Health insurers face extinction?. The old health insurance model is on a burning platform, and health plans are reformulating themselves as companies involved in health IT, analytics, data mining, etc.
2) You have bigger fish to fry. Focus on developing accountable care capabilities. The AHA estimated that hospitals will need to spend $11-25 million to develop an ACO. Get going.
3) Health insurance is a far more complicated business than you realize. As Gregg points out, hospitals tried to become insurers in the 90s and almost all failed. Since then, the business has only become far more specialized and automated. You need scale and deep expertise to run a health plan, and hospitals don?t have it.
4) Becoming a health insurers will drain you of capital and management resources.
5) It?s beyond your core competencies and not in your DNA. Trust me.
6) Do you really want to risk waking the sleeping giants in your neighborhood, i.e., the existing health insurance companies? Remember that hospitals are a high fixed-cost, low margin business. When health plans realize YOU are the competition and start steering patients elsewhere, on average 95% of every dollar of revenue lost will come straight off your bottom line.
The far better strategy for hospitals: work cooperatively with health insurers, and count your blessings that you don?t have their business challenges.
Vince Kuraitis JD, MBA, is a health care consultant and primary author of the e-CareManagement blog, where this post first appeared.
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Posted on August 28th, 2012 in Current News, Data Privacy, Privacy & Policy by Simply Security | Be the first to comment | Tags: Data Privacy, Privacy & Policy
Decision-makers need to the find correct approach to risk management.
As the consumerization of IT continues to disrupt the enterprise, organizations need to implement robust risk management practices to ensure mission-critical applications and data are not inadvertently exposed through the utilization of new technologies. Unfortunately, not many businesses are taking the right approach to security and are experiencing problems because of poor practices.
A recent survey by Deloitte and Forbes Insight revealed that only 25 percent of decision-makers said they continually monitor risk throughout their infrastructure. As a result, data security is often compromised and sensitive solutions are at risk of being exposed.
Evolving risk landscape induces new challenges
The study found that 41 percent of survey respondents said the volatile global economy is and will be the biggest threat during the next three years. Regulatory compliance changes were also a major issue for decision-makers, as 30 percent of the study's participants said this would be a top concern throughout the coming years.
The rapid proliferation of social media in and out of the workplace is also creating challenges for businesses today, as approximately 27 percent of executives labeled the increasing use of social platforms as a major source of risk.
A separate report by KPMG noted that more than 70 percent of companies around the world now have an active presence on social networks.
"Social media wasn't even on the radar a few years ago and we're now seeing it ranked among the top five sources of risk, on the same level as financial risk," Deloitte government and risk management services co-leader Henry Ristuccia said. "The rise of social media is just another contributor to the volatile risk environment companies are being forced to navigate."
Regardless of whether an organization is worried about an employee's behavior on Facebook, dealing with evolving regulatory compliance or managing vulnerabilities associated with inadequate data protection tools, decision-makers need to implement more creative and robust risk management policies to ensure the safety of sensitive information.
How companies are dealing with diverse risk management landscape
Deloitte reported that more than 90 percent of survey respondents said they plan to revitalize their risk management policies within the next three years, while roughly 55 percent of those said they will do so within the next 12 months.
By using a proper metric system, companies can evaluate the risk landscape and determine which approach would provide the most substantial results, according to a report by the Ponemon Institute.
More than half of decision-makers said they will accomplish these goals by elevating the presence of risk management programs throughout the organization, Deloitte noted. Another 37 percent of executives said they would enhance employee training to increase awareness of risk management and minimize concern associated with insider threats.
The report also revealed that many organizations label risk management as a C-level responsibility, as 26 percent of respondents said it was the CEO's job to take control of threat oversight. While another 23 percent of business executives said risk management accountability remains with the CFO, only 19 percent of supervisors said chief risk officers need to govern risk management.
Decision-makers also plan to leverage manual and automated processes to report risk, as 28 percent of respondents said they are currently doing so, the study noted.
"Based on the findings of this survey, and our interactions with clients, we believe technology has the potential to play a breakout role in the management of risk but many companies are still behind the curve in this area," Deloitte partner Mark Carey said.
Security News from SimplySecurity.com by Trend Micro
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Public release date: 28-Aug-2012
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Gregg Masters reports on a recent Kaiser Health News
article: Hospitals Look to Become Insurers, As Well as Providers of Care?.