Periyar Tiger Reserve

Established in 1985, Periyar National Park is a famous elephant and a tiger reserve in Kerala wherein a variety of animal species inhabit. Nestled amidst the Cardamom Hills and Pandalam Hills in the Western Ghats, the wildlife sanctuary boasts of 62 mammal species, 320 bird species, 45 reptiles and 165 butterflies. One of the most enchanting aspects of this wildlife sanctuary is Periyar Lake where tourists can enjoy bird watching via boat ride.

Bandipur National Park

Once the private hunting ground of the erstwhile maharaja of Mysore, Bandipur national park was converted into a tiger reserve way back in 1973. Spanned across an area of 874 square feet, Bandipur along with Nagarhole National Park, Mudumalai National Park and Wynad Wildlife Sanctuary forms Nilgiri Biosphere Reserve, the largest protected area in South India. Apart from being an animal sanctuary, Bandipur is also famous for its timber tree variety such as teak, rosewood, sandalwood and clumping bamboo.

Eravikulam National Park

Located in proximity to the hill station of Munnar, in the Idukki district of Kerala, Eravikulam National Park is an ultimate destination for the wildlife enthusiasts. The park shelters the endangered Nilgiri Tahr and boasts of the largest population of this animal with an estimated number of 750. Besides Nilgiri Tahr, the park is home to 132 bird species, 19 amphibian species and 26 mammal species. Anamudi, the largest peak in the southern Himalayas is located within the park.

Nagarhole Wildlife Sanctuary

Also known as Rajiv Gandhi National Park, Nagarhole Wildlife Sanctuary, located in proximity to Bandipur National Park, is a part of Nilgiri Biosphere. The park is under contemplation of UNESCO World Heritage Site Committee and is mainly visited for its large population of elephants. The area is shrouded with rich forest cover, small river streams, waterfalls, valleys and hills. Some commonly found animals in this sanctuary are tigers, leopard, Chital, striped hyena, mouse deer, sloth bear, sambhar and smooth-coated otters.

You are in need of a securitization audit. But you may be thinking what is the requirement of this? This audit is needed as this is the first line of defense in keeping your home. This audit helps you in the following ways :-

` Getting your notice of default invalidated
` Assists you in applying for a loan modification
` Getting a principal reduction
` Having the interest lowered on your existing mortgage
` Possible punitive damages from your lender

Let me introduce you to First Mortgage Audit. If you are looking for a foreclosure defense or principle reduction or loan modification and fraud investigation, their experienced auditors will help you in every possible manner. Their team is well experienced in accounting, underwriting, private banking, quiet title and real estate spanning over 25 years.

First Mortgage Audit will help you get out of this situation and help stop foreclosure. They have been helping the clients to build a strong case with securitization and also forensic analysis reports.

There is no denying the fact that you can find almost every magazine on the local news stands but you can’t get discounts there. You can also subscribe directly from the magazine company using the subscription form available in the copy of the magazine which you want to subscribe, but again the discounts given there are almost zero or extremely small. So what do you do in such a case? Yes! You search and look online for the same. But where to find these subscriptions? Where to find all magazines you might be interested in and just not only the magazines you know about? Where to find magazines about various topics like mens health, childcare, housekeeping, body building, food, gardening, nursing, cosmetic & makeup, fashion and latest trends and many more such topics?

Let me introduce you to one such online destination which is loved by hundreds and thousands of people… Subscription Addiction. It offers cheap magazine subscriptions on a large variety of titles with deep and exclusive discounts up to 90% off the cover price. Now that’s a steal!

When you think about magazines you think about Subscription Addiction.

Wherever you are in this online video utilization process, you should give some thought to how your video content is managed and viewed. Simply uploading content to a video sharing website is not enough to harness the power of online video as a potent marketing tool.

Marketing using online video as your primary vehicle requires a hosting strategy, one that leverages the power of your video content and gives you a return on your investment. In this post I will discuss the use of a ‘hybrid’ hosting strategy which exploits the strengths of both self hosting and third party hosting services.

Choosing a Hosting Platform

When it comes to online video, you have two options:

1. Self hosting

2. Use a third party hosting platform

Your choice of hosting will very much depend on what you want to achieve with your online video content. Let’s look at some of the advantages of both options.

Advantages of Self Hosting:

1. You retain control over content

2. No third party watermarking of your video

3. Easier to monetize content – place ads within your video

4. Excellent back linking bait

The disadvantages of Self Hosting:

1. Knowledge of FLV technology is required

2. Soaks up bandwidth

3. Time consuming

At first glance, the third party option may appear a better route to follow for the small to medium sized business. But, as with everything in this life, there are advantages and disadvantages to using a third party hosting service that need to be fully considered before you take the plunge. Here are some of those advantages and disadvantages.

Advantages of Third Party Hosting

1. Easy to upload your video

2. No bandwidth charges

3. Lots of traffic for greater exposure

4. Easy to embed and share your video

Disadvantage of Third Party Hosting

1. No control over what happens to your video – your hosting service can pull your video at anytime and for any reason

2. No control over monetization – your third party hosting service will watermark your video with advertising

3. No link juice

4. Poorer quality

5. Video length limitations

Defining Your Strategy Online Video Strategy

The questions you need to ask yourself when it comes to choosing the best hosting option for your video content are: what do I want to achieve with my video? Do I want greater exposure for my business or do I want to generate more sales? And do I post, host or both?

If you are looking to generate more sales, then I would suggest that you do both. But I wouldn’t recommend posting duplicate content to your site and your third party hosting service. First, because search engines use filters to filter out duplicate content. Second, you want visitors to link to your website, not to YouTube, MetaCafe or Daily Motion. And third, the purpose of your online video content is to make your website visible to search engines.

Third party platforms are great for getting exposure and expanding your reach. For this reason I would recommend that you post mini videos to a third party hosting service while hosting the bulk of your video content on your website.
Your website is the place where you convert visitors into paying customers, so it is only logical that the bulk of your video content is hosted where you can manage the conversion process. The mini videos simply act as a teaser driving visitors to your website. Once there, visitors will be able to view the extended version of your video content and, hopefully, buy into its message.

The hybrid mix of posting and hosting is a powerful strategy because:

1. It gives you control over how your video content is used

2. Expands your reach through third party hosting

3. Creates a funnel for driving visitors to your website

4. Enhances your websites search engine visibility

5. Increases your website’s page rank

However, if all you are looking for is to garner greater exposure for your business, and you don’t mind what happens to your video content, then the option of a third party hosting service is the best route to follow.

courtesy : Contrast Design

And if you fond of creating your own natural soap bar selection then you will find one pound soap blocks. What you can do with these blocks? These blocks are ready for you to add essential oils, various colors, fragrances and many more. You can also create the perfect exfoliating soap by adding the best and the right ingredients to them as well.

You can also choose from 17 different bases which includes clear soap, white, aloe vera, cocoa butter, honey, hemp seeds and many more varieties. This makes it really unique and exactly as per your liking and requirements. If you are a fresher, i.e. if you are going to create soaps for the first time then you can choose a sample pack as that you can explore the vast varieties before you make a larger purchase.

What is SFIC?

SFIC creates quality soaps which you can customize for yourself since the year 1967. They incorporate the finest ingredients using melt and pour bases. You can order customized soaps which can be molded with over 1000 different shapes including rounds, rectangles, ovals and more.

For many people, the ending of a relationship is a sad time, though it can be the signal of a new beginning. I don’t want to get too into the idea of needing to have a positive attitude to get past this, but it certainly does help. When you are constantly thinking about things in a negative light, you can’t help but to feel worse. So, there is some incentive to try and stay as positive as you can.

Here are 3 things that I think you should do right now if you are trying to cope with the ending of a relationship:

1) You should try to stop thinking about what you could have done differently in the relationship.

Thinking about this a little bit can be constructive, so it’s not a bad idea to give some pause to reflect on the things that you could have done differently. That way, you are able to learn from your mistakes and hopefully, you won’t make them again. Still, if you think about them too much, not only can it make you feel down about the situation – it will also keep you from being able to really move on from this experience.

2) You should allow yourself the freedom to go out and have fun even though you may be hurting.

It’s not a good idea to isolate yourself when you may be hurting from a break up. And it is also not a good idea to punish yourself and feel like you can’t have any fun at all. It’s healthy to go out and do things that will make you happy and even possibly forget about the break up as much as you can.

3) You should approach new people, so that you can rebuild your social circle.

One of the things that usually gets people down when they have broken up with someone is the fact that a huge part of their social circle is now gone. Even if you really only lost one person, I bet it was the person that you spent the bulk of your time with. You need to rebuild that social circle, so that the loss that you are feeling does not feel so great. You don’t just have to think about replacing the ex, sometimes just getting a new group of friends will do the trick.

Courtesy : Chris Tyler

When most individuals consider anything that is free on the net, there is an automatic conclusion that the games are pirated. Generally, this is not the case. You may come across a questionable site or two but for the most part these games are designed to be played with absolutely no out of pocket expense. The only thing that you may to contend with is the occasional banner ads but these advertisements are how the website designers pay for the hosting so that they can continue to offer these games for free. Many games that have turned into downloadable console releases and even paid apps on Smartphones and tablets, offer a free version online.

Some of the more popular free games are offered by major online presences like Yahoo! and Google. These games are targeted to the not-so-serious gamer. The person who has some leisure time and wants to play a simple, recognizable game. Poppit and Bejeweled are examples of games that can be found through these providers and again, are perfect for the average person who wants to kill a few minutes of free time online.

The more popular games, targeted toward the serious gamer can be found on aggregate online sites. These sites include Armor Games or Kongregate and offer hundreds of games that can be played at any time of the day. Many would be surprised to find that some are actually designed and produced by gaming professionals. In order to keep these sites running, member donations are accepted along with banner advertisements.

There are an abundance of very popular games such as Fancy Pants Adventure, Alien Hominid and Doodle God that got their start on such sites before being converted to handhelds and consoles. These sites are perfect for gamers that are looking for the next great game or want something that will occupy them until a favorited or eagerly anticipated console makes it debut.

Again, you can find several free games online and they are available on many websites. It may take you a bit of searching in order to find the best games online. You may have to wade through massive libraries at some of these sites but the investment of time will be well worth it. You may be able to find older arcade games and games that will soon make it to the console market. Free does not always mean pirated or low quality. There are plenty of games that will be among the best that you have ever played.

Courtesy : Saso Kendra

There are two types of skin cancer: melanomas and keratinocyte cancers. Melanomas are less common yet more serious than other types of skin cancer. It is important that you locate and receive treatment for all types of this cancer to prevent the spread into surrounding tissues.

A major risk factor for skin cancer is exposure to ultraviolet (UV) rays from sunlight or tanning beds. UV rays can penetrate the skin even when it is cloudy, cool or hazy outside. There are some things you can do to limit your sun exposure. Many physicians recommend daily use of sunscreen. You should seek shade when spending time outdoors and try to avoid activities outside when the sun’s rays are strongest, usually between 10am and 4 pm. Hats, sunglasses and protective clothing protect your skin from UV exposure. Stay away from indoor tanning beds as they have been linked to melanoma and squamous cell skin cancers.

Individuals with fair skin that freckles and burns easily are at a higher risk for this type of cancer than those individuals with darker skin. This is because pigment or melanin in your skin provides protection from UV radiation. If you have light-colored eyes and blond or red hair, you may be at a higher risk as well. According to the Mayo Clinic, some other risk factors include:

Personal or family history of skin cancer
Excessive sun exposure
History of sunburns
Moles
Weakened immune system
Increasing age

No matter what your risk factors, it is important that you examine your skin each month. Many skin cancers are highly treatable with early diagnosis. Look for any changes in moles or unusual areas on your skin. Schedule an appointment with a dermatologist for a thorough skin exam each year. These check-ups are the best way to make sure that your skin remains healthy.

If you or the dermatologist finds a spot on your skin that causes concern, he may take a biopsy of the area. If the lab finds cancerous or pre-cancerous cells, more tests may be needed to determine the stage, type and extent of the cancer. Once the cancer is staged, the physician will determine which treatment options will be most effective. Most skin cancers are highly treatable if found early. Follow up exams and tests will be needed to ensure that the cancer does not reoccur.

While there is no way to avoid UV exposure completely, taking a few precautions can make a big difference in the overall health of your skin. Be vigilant about your skin checks and contact your physician with any concerns. With a little bit of prevention and routine checks, you may be able to lower your risk for developing any form of skin cancer.

Courtesy : Laura Mims

When she was born, Beyoncé weighed just one ounce and was so tiny she could fit in a spoon. Now two weeks old, she’s still about the size of a credit card.

And – like the title of a song penned by her namesake – she’s a survivor. After she was picked up and put in the dog pound, pregnant Casey, who is less than a year old herself, was set to be put down because the shelter couldn’t accommodate a canine mother with a brand-new brood.

But a last-chance dog rescue group stepped in to save the day after hearing about Casey’s plight. The Grace Foundation, based in Northern California, gave the heavily pregnant mother a place to stay.

But Beyoncé still faced a battle for survival.

An ultrasound revealed that Casey was expecting five puppies – and one of them was unusually small and wasn’t expected to survive.

Beyoncé was the last puppy to be delivered and at first the vet thought she was still born. She didn’t have a heartbeat and wasn’t breathing.

Dr Michael Russell, the Grace Foundation’s vet, tried giving the pup heart compressions, but she still wasn’t breathing.

That’s when Beth DeCaprio jumped in and began performing mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to breath life into the tiny dog.

‘It was actually a little funny, and gross, trying to get my mouth around hers, but after a couple of really small breaths she took a deep breath and started to really move around. We cleaned out her little nasal passages, and I gave her a couple more breaths and then she started breathing on her own,’ she said.

‘You don’t expect dogs to survive with that many chances of death. She is just a remarkable little survivor,’ she added.

Now Beyoncé is still smaller than the rest of her siblings, but she’s grown to 4.3oz and is said to be thriving.

The rescue centre says she will be available for adoption in just a few weeks. ‘Our hope is that Beyoncé and her miraculous story of survival helps spread awareness about the plight of rescue dogs,’ said Miss DeCaprio.

‘Most people are not aware of how many dogs and pups are euthanised each year because shelters do not have the capability of holding onto them until they are weaned and able to be spayed and neutered.’

Although Beyoncé isn’t officially the world’s tiniest dog yet, the foundation has submitted an application to the Guinness World Records.

She is expected to weigh about 1½lb when she’s fully grown.

The current small dog record holder is Boo Boo the chihuahua from Kentucky who is six years old, 4in tall and weighs 1½lb

1. I remember them as a child and it’s much easier! -Joy Thompson
2. I remind myself that I forgive not for them but for me and that it’s easier to forgive than to hang on to so much anger, hurt and betrayal. -Sarah Clark
3. I just acknowledge that we are humans, so we are allowed to make mistakes. -Haydee Lizbeth Lopez Cruz
4. Remind yourself that they are not separate from you; they only appear that way. Then you will realize you are one, and it is yourself you are forgiving. -Justin Hayden
5. Do not keep thinking of the past or the bad thing that happened; when you let go of it, you get over the anger/bitterness that you felt and it clears the path of forgiveness! The best thing is time! -Ashna Singh
6. Remember that we are all doing the best we can at the time. -Diane Paul
7. Remind yourself of how much forgiveness would mean to you if it was your turn for a mistake! – Carol Mcbride-Safford
8. Wayne Dwyer describes how hate is love which has been turned around. Seeing the expression of what can’t be forgiven as love makes it easier to forgive. Were also all doing the best we can, according to our own evolutionary state, including those we find hard to forgive. – Lise Heeley
9. Because it takes less energy to love and forgive than it does to stay angry and hold a grudge. It brings peace to your life. -Linda Adams
10. I know that I need to forgive someone, not for their benefit, but for my own peace of mind. Don’t do it for them, do it for you! -Cathryn Kent
11. You remember why you love them. Love is about forgiveness.- Holly Chapman
12. Forgiveness comes easier with the passing of time. I tend to find that, if I am wronged, I forgive the person before they forgive themselves, and when I am in need of forgiveness, it is I who feels the guilt for longer. -Mandy Richardson
13. Stop thinking and just do it. Open your heart and forgive. -Lindsey Windrow
14. Don’t force it. If I don’t feel forgiving, I can at least not act on my anger. Eventually forgiveness will come if you welcome it. -Julie Trottier
15. Just learn to smile and let things go. -Sudharma Lama
16. Give up on all hope of a better past. -Matt Child
17. Every time you think of them send them love. After a while it gets easy. -Crystal Chang
18. Meditate, meditate and meditate some more until it’s gone! -Margot Knight-Guijt
19. The harder it is to forgive someone else, the more I am responsible. When I understand and forgive myself, forgiving others is easy. -Pamela Picard
20. Two different approaches. One involves restoring your boundaries and sense of protection first. The other involves focusing on what your body is feeling and stop dwelling on the offense. Both involve being present. -Chris Campa
21. Forgiveness comes easy when you know that what people say or do is about them, it’s not about you. -Kim Kings
22. Shift the focus, feel the pain and think of the thousands of others in the world who are also feeling the same pain, then send a loving-kindness message to everyone to be relieved of this suffering. -Nick Ong
23. When it happens I often ask myself “What strengths must I develop further from this?” Often the feeling of resentment just goes away, slowly but surely, because I wasn’t focusing on the person that wronged me, but the lesson that the event was trying to tell me. -Natassia Callista Alicia
24. I allow myself to feel again whatever I didn’t express “in the moment” when I was with them. Forgiveness always seem to follow those (usually) difficult emotions. -Cynthia Ruprecht Hunt
25. Write a brutally honest, emotionally raw letter telling them how much they have hurt and angered you, then tear it up and burn it. As you watch the smoke rise, think about the fact that you are not that hurt and that anger. It is fleeting, just like everything else. As the smoke carrying your hurt and disappointment disappears into the air, you can let it go. -Renate Wuersig
26. For some wrongs, I just have to remember that they are responsible for their actions and then it is easier for me to just let it be. -Karen Garland
27. By remembering that it will free me from the burden of the stress I feel, also, if I can’t forgive then how can I expect to ever be forgiven? -Leslie Brown
28. Just look to the future instead of focusing on what’s past…think of creating new good memories to wipe away old bad ones. -Elizabeth Lindsay
29. It becomes easy when you remember a time when you were forgiven, centering on how it made you feel. -Louisya Graves
30. Understand this: whether you like it or not, over time, you will stop feeling the pain, so why hold on to something that’s going to away anyway? -Nirav KAKU

Wish you all the very best. Take care

However, we need not travel so far to encounter a part of the world that is even more perplexing than these others, although it remains little known to most people: Mexico’s mysterious, magical zona del silencio–the Zone of Silence, just four hundred miles away from El Paso, Texas. Deserts are often considered to be mysterious enough without the added weirdness that this patch of earth some four hundred miles from El Paso has to offer. It is a place which gobbles up radio and TV signals, and which has of late been associated with the UFO phenomenon.

There is much about our world that we still do not understand. Scientists tell us that natural mysteries abound in every corner of the Earth, from the lifeless desert of Chile to the bottomless depths of the Pacific, there are things we simply do not comprehend.

Perhaps this is the best way to describe a place in northern Mexico in the middle of the hot, searing, punishing Chihuahuan desert, a place commonly called the “Zone of Silence” (Zona-del-Silencio) by the few locals, scientists, students and visitors that wander there from time to time in search of answers. It is a strange place to experience, one of those mysterious natural wonders that beg our attention and muddle our senses. It is sometimes difficult to tell what is truth and what is not; to recognize what you see as real or not.

Drive 400 hundred miles west of El Paso and you enter into an unforgiving section of foreboding semiarid desert landscape that begs for mercy but offers none. The nearest settlement is Ceballos, a ragtag community that holds on precariously to its existence some 25 miles across the barren plain from the heart of “The Zone”. Here life is challenging, and there is a constant, delicate balance between death and survival.

The region has remained all but undiscovered by the outside world. There are no fancy hotels in the Zone, no beaches or pools, no life except for the most hardy of insects, reptiles and small mammals that suffer its tormenting weather.

But in 1970 a faulty American Athena missile fired from the White Sands Missile Base in nearby New Mexico went off course inexplicably and crashed into the mysterious desert region and made the world aware of the unique and apparently unusual properties of the area. Subsequently a team of U.S. Air Force investigators, with Mexican government approval, journeyed to the crash site and made an unexpected discovery. Within an unspecified and sometimes shifting area within the Zone, radio signals fail to travel through the air, creating a type of dark zone. No television, radio, short wave, microwave, or satellite signals seem to penetrate this zone. The name, Zone of Silence, was quickly adopted, and researchers began flocking to the remote location shortly thereafter.

The Mexican government has since constructed a research complex in “the Zone”, a place the scientists assigned there call the biosphere. The primary purpose of the research facility is to study the plant and animal life of the unusual region. But rumors have it that a lot more research is going on there than meets the eye – if there were any eyes in this remote part of the world to see it.

It turns out there may be some natural anomaly associated with the region. High levels of magnetite have been discovered there, and scientist have also found that the area is a hot bed for meteorite activity, raising speculation that there may be some unusual magnetic properties associated with the minerals in the chalky soil. Researchers have been trying to determine whether magnetic ore is naturally occurring or is the product of contamination from thousands or millions of years of meteorite bombardment. And if the high-magnetic properties are a result of natural causes, could this be the reason that so many iron-rich objects from space find their way to this remote spot on Earth?

Theorists are quick to point out that the Zone is geographically located just north of the Tropic of Cancer and shares the same latitude south of the 30th parallel as the Bermuda Triangle, a fact scientist point out is probably a simple coincidence. In fact, scientists at the Mexican research center have dubbed the region, the Mar de Tetys, or The Sea of Thetys, because at one time, millions of years ago, the area lay at the bottom of an ocean.

In defense of the theorists, there have been a number of unusual tales that have come out of the Zone. Strange lights, floating orbs, burning bushes, flying saucers, and alien encounters have all been reported with a degree of abundance considering the sparse population of the region. Ranchers of the area report the night sky is often filled with mysterious lights, and they have reported “floating aircraft” that allegedly landed vertically in the desert, often causing brush to ignite and catch fire.

And there have been reports of encounters with strange humanoid creatures. One ranch family claims they are regularly visited by a trio of blonde, long haired humanoids, two males and a female, that speak perfect Spanish. As the story goes, the visitors only ask for water, never for food or other provision. And when asked once by the rancher where they came from, they reportedly answered “from above”.

Then there’s the story of the visiting researcher at the “Biosphere” who became lost in the desert. He reports he was directed back to the research center by a similar trio of blonde “strange looking people.” Another story has it that a TV news investigation crew was aided by strange beings in the desert after being stuck in the road after an unusual cloud burst. These “beings” reportedly wore long raincoats and ball caps, something, admittedly, you don’t often see in the desert wilderness.

How much about the unusual region in northern Mexico is true and how much is the product of human imagination, how much fact and how much fiction, no one can say for sure. But there is little question that there does exist some natural phenomena that appears to evade logical explanation. What the cause and effect may be (science, miracle or magic) remains to be seen. But isolationists and serious researchers of the unusual will find the region of great interest if you’re in the mood for a dirty day in the desert.

Just don’t plan on watching any TV in Ceballos. There isn’t any.

Researcher Gerry Hunt reports that the largest meteorite ever recorded exploded over the Zone of Silence in 1969. The blasts were so loud that the few people who live in that region thought the world was coming to an end. The Allende Meteorite is still being studied by scientists all over the world; many of whom travel there to recover pieces of the meteorite. While some were there in 1976 they reported seeing a huge rectangle with lights on its side pass over them. Yes, they saw a UFO. Even stranger… all the residents of one of the small villages saw it, too. Woken up by the noise and vibration, they came out into the street and watched as it passed. There have been dozens of well attested sightings of UFOs here, but that’s not the strangest bit: strange people have shown up in villages in the Zone. Villagers describe them as not quite human. Their Spanish was strangely accented and they were oddly dressed. Since none of these poor folk own cameras, we have no evidence for their existence other than the amazingly consistent stories told all over the Zone.

In the Zone of Silence are a few crumbling pyramidal structures that were obviously man made a long time ago. The only artifacts found so far are a few carvings of pumas and one of a man… wearing a turban. The pyramids are laid out similar to other ancient astronomical observatories but it is older than Stonehenge. One book on this area says that there is a six mile long platform in the Zone but most researchers believe it is a naturally occurring ledge (me, too). Regardless, some serious civilization lived here once upon a time and we have absolutely no idea who they were or what happened to them.

Ripley of “Ripley’s Believe it or Not” came here many times and reported some of the strange incidents and animals found there. What kind of animals? Gerry Hunt has recorded tortoises and insects that are three times normal size. The tortoises have strange markings on their shells. It is the only known place on earth where cacti grow in shades of red and purple. Pilots of small planes report that their instruments frequently fail or give odd readings when they fly over this area (larger jets fly much higher and don’t report problems).

Art Bronze casts bronze statues using the lost wax method.  They are experts in casting western statues, cowboy and Indian sculpture by Frederic Remington, Charles Russell, James Earle Fraser, Cyrus Dallin and others. Art Bronze casts bronze sculptures of famous people from history including Shakespeare, Lord Byron, Dante, Balzac, Ludwig van Beethoven, Napoleon Bonaparte, David , Joan of Arc, Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, Robert E. Lee, Ronald Reagan and Theodore Roosevelt. The bronze Statue of Liberty by Bartholdi is unsurpassed.  Art Bronze casts bronze sculpture of many figures from mythology including Cupid, Eros, Psyche,  Diana, Diana the Huntress, Venus, Apollo, Mercury, Hermes, Icarus, Hercules, Herakles, Isis and Narcissus by artists including Louis Auguste Moreau, Barye, Picault, Mene, Mercie, Coustou, Rodin and Godet.

You want more? They actually have more. They also cast custom bronze furniture such as dining tables and console tables. I can’t resist myself and I myself is going ahead to buy some quality sculptures for my home too.

And yes, one last thing I want to tell you and that is…. They actually have over 330 bronze and stainless steel statues which are crafted to the highest standards and are made in their own foundry in California. WOW!

One opportunity is to select a car that is comparatively inexpensive to insure. Insurance premiums are generally lower for automobiles which might be at low risk of being stolen, and cars that are not costly to fix.

Another option which could reduce car insurance costs is focusing on safety. Cars with safety devices like air bags, safety harnesses and anti-lock brakes tend to be cheaper to insure. People who drive safely and file fewer claims are considered to be good insurance clients, and can be offered discounted car insurance premiums.

You may also want to take into consideration whether collision coverage is required. This coverage is a major contributor to car insurance premiums, and owners of older inexpensive vehicles who might not benefit much from collision coverage may decide this coverage isn’t economically worthwhile.

There are also all kinds of incentives offered by insurers, including discounted premiums for motorists with lower than average mileage, or drivers who buy auto and homeowners’ insurance with the same insurer. Since the auto insurance market is complicated, understanding car insurance quotes is difficult for a driver who is not experienced in this specialized field. We’re knowledgeable and experienced in auto insurance in this state and we will be happy to help motorists find good value CA auto insurance for their circumstances.

live drive review
Live Drive is one such utility. We have done extensive research on them and found that it has many cons as compared to other services. All backup services have their similarities but usually they all have something which makes them stand out amongst the crowd.

Live Drive is almost the same as any basic plan which are being offered by their top competitors who have the added advantage of unlimited storage even with their basic user accounts.

As you already know that every service today on the market have positive and negative aspects associated with them and Live Drive is no exception. Listed below are few Pro’s and Con’s of them :-

PRO’s:

- Ease of use to the customer.

- Ability to store unlimited files online.

- Share your files with other users.

CON’s:

- No Free Trial

- Unable to schedule backups

- Does not seem compatible with with a Mac

- Unable to backup locked files

- Unable to backup system files

- Slow uploads

- Duplicate backup files

- No phone support

So if you are looking for a good online backup product then you know what to do now. Choose wisely.

We know that life insurance may be a sensitive topic, and many of us avoid thinking about our own mortality. Here are a few facts concerning term life insurance which could interest you.

•    Term life insurance coverage is purchased for a specific period like ten years or 30 years. Coverage ceases when the term expires unless you have renewed the policy.
•    Benefits are paid only if you die during the term of a term life insurance policy.
•    Those who need a large amount of life coverage but have minimal funds often choose term life insurance instead of alternative kinds of life cover because the premiums are comparatively low.

Permanent life insurance is the other common kind of life insurance product. Premiums are normally higher than premiums for term life coverage but permanent life insurance features a cash component that can be borrowed. Permanent life insurance is usually used like a financial planning tool by policyholders who use the equity that builds up to fund expenditures like school fees.

If you choose Illinois life insurance be it a term or a permanent life insurance policy, you will have taken steps to make sure that your family are provided for in the event that you die prematurely. Life insurance is generally complex, so if you’re uncertain what sort of life insurance product is best for your circumstances, call us.

First, one has to determine how they are going to sell the jewelry. Basically, there are two ways of doing this: you can either buy wholesale jewelry and sell them as retail or sell them again at wholesale. Buying jewelry in bulk and then selling it to other people as wholesale ensures that you get relatively large sums of money from each transaction, but the problem with it is that you might have to wait a while before getting the money. This is because a retailer will only buy the goods from you after they have exhausted their stock. Selling at retail involves selling the jewelry to individual people. This method of trade usually means smaller volume sometimes, but the fact that you sell the jewels at retail prices instead of wholesale prices means you are likely to get more of a profit when compared to someone who buys them in bulk from the same source and sells them in bulk.

Once you have decided what sort of business you want to run, the next important thing is to find a good wholesaler to sell you the jewels. The best kind of wholesalers are usually found online, and you might have to keep buying from them using a credit card so it’s good if you have one. The advantage of online jewelry wholesalers is that they are usually a bit cheaper compared to wholesalers who have physical shops. This is due in part to the fact that they don’t have to pay for a lot of overheads such as rental and workers. The important thing here is to get a jewelry wholesaler who has good credentials so that you don’t end up being the victim of a scam. Once this is done, you also have to identify the demographics of your clients that you will be selling to, if you intend to sell at retail prices. For example, if you live near a university then you might have to consider the fact that you will be selling the jewelry to mainly young people, so you should stock up on jewelry that young people might find attractive. When selling in wholesale, it might be a good idea to find out what kinds of jewelry are fast moving, i.e. are sold faster. This will ensure that you only buy jewelry that will earn you an income relatively quickly.

At the end of the day, the trick to being a jewelry reseller is to do your homework well before you embark on it. This involves a lot of research and it may seem tiring. However, at the end of the day, it’s really worth it as it will ensure that your jewelry business flourishes and blossoms.

Contact some fashion jewelry wholesalers before you start a business, you must know the wholesale fashion jewelry prices before you can put together a business plan.

Bad enough that this rare beast, found only on the Australian mainland, New Guinea and Tasmania is gone but that its demise was mainly caused by the incursions and depredation of European settlers.

The Tasmanian Tiger was neither a feline nor a canine although it looked very much dog-like in body style and size. It shared a small classification of the genus, Thylacinus, with its cousin the Tasmanian Devil. In length the Tasmanian Tiger averaged between three and a half and four and a half feet long with a tale about two foot long. Matching the size of mid-sized dogs, the Tiger weighted in at between forty and seventy pounds.

While the Tiger’s short fur was brown, from fawn to dark, the name was derived from the one to two dozen dark stripes that crossed its hindquarters and back. Both genders had the marsupial pouch; the female’s having four teats to carry the average three joeys per litter until they were old enough to emerge and survive on their own. The male’s pouch was used as protection for the scrotal sac as it hunted in heavy brush.

As a hunter, the Tasmanian Tiger depended more on sight and sound that smell as it did not have a well-developed olfactory sense. It had great stamina and was relentless in following its chosen prey until exhaustion brought it into reach of the large strong jaws of the Tiger. Reports vary as to whether the Tiger hunted alone or in small packs. Its usual prey included kangaroos, wallabies, small birds, and possums. It is thought they also hunted the Australian emu until its own extinction on the continent.

The demise of the Tasmanian Tiger began in earnest with the introduction of the dingo and wild dogs to Australia. The coming of Europeans sealed its fate. The preferred hunting ground of the Tasmanian Tiger included eucalyptus forests, coastal wetlands and open grasslands; mostly the same terrain prized by settlers for their farmlands. Considering the Tiger to be a potential livestock predator, a bounty was soon placed on the Tasmanian Tiger. Thousands perished under the guns of the farmers and bounty hunters. By the 1920′s, sightings of the Tasmanian Tiger were rare. The last known Tiger to be killed in the wild was gunned down in 1930. A few remained in zoos and the last known Tiger died in captivity in 1936.

According to International standards fifty years passed without a Tasmanian Tiger being discovered so it was listed as officially extinct in 1986. Despite the classification, there are still reports of sightings, tracks and scat of the occasional Tiger in a few remote parts of Tasmania. Several agencies have offered substantial rewards for proof the Tiger is still with us although they have as yet gone unclaimed. That the last old growth forest of Tasmania are where these sighting occur, the continued logging of these areas will soon guarantee the last hope of finding a live Tasmanian Tiger will perish along with this creature.

The wave-riding bovid is said to have stunned beach-goers in California after successfully jumping on the surfboard of her owner Dayna McGregor and catching a series of waves.

Dayna says he initially bought Goat-ee to eat weeds in his garden, but after she started following him around everywhere, she soon became his pet.

Because one of those places she followed him to was Grover Beach, Dayna decided he wanted to celebrate his birthday surfing with the goat. As you do.

And while some will say this video shows Goat-ee enjoyed her time at sea, we’d be surprised if others didn’t call animal cruelty and point to the way the goat runs back onto the beach as soon as possible.

Either way Dayna considers the surfing trip a success and told the Telegraph: “She did pretty well. She got up on a couple waves. Got up? We put her on a couple waves and she was pretty successful.”

If you want to see more Kelly Slaters of the animal kingdom, how about these surfing mice, dogs and this alpaca?

According to Seattle Sperm Bank’s managing director Gary Olsem, donor sperm is transported by medical technicians aboard the bike, which is the second of its kind, in liquid nitrogen cooled vacuum containers. The first Sperm Bike was adopted by Seattle Sperm Bank’s sibling company, the European Sperm Bank, in Cophenhagen.

There are still people wondering whether their business really needs a website. Or they say: we do not have a business, but a not-for-profit organization: should we have a website? Definitely! We could easily come up with 55 reasons why you need a website:

1. Promote Your Products
A website allows you to showcase your products for everyone to see. You can explain the benefits, compare it with other products, or show testimonials of happy customers that already bought the product.

2. Promote Your Services
It is hard to showcase services in a store, or office. The web allows you to introduce the service, the professionals providing the service, and how several services can complement each other.

3. Promote Your Organization
People buy from people. People support organizations and causes that they believe in. A website is a fantastic tool to promote an organization and build trust – that is, if you do it right… A well-developed website can convey trust and credibility, making people to buy from you, or support you.

4. Promote Yourself
Whether you are a professional looking for a job, or an expert in your industry: you can show that to the whole world by having a comprehensive website. The use of an associated email address also increases perceived professionalism: a letter from someone at me-the-expert.com will certainly open more doors than an email from a hotmail account.

5. Promote Your Ideas
Political campaigns are now all over the web. A website can be a powerful way to promote your ideas, and build a following of like-minded people. Or you can just write online journals (“blogs”) to ventilate some of your thoughts and concerns.

6. Promote Your Events
Have a fundraising event? Want to promote your business with seminars, workshops or a tradeshow? You will increase awareness when you create a website for the event. Show dates, programs, prices and riving directions – to name but a few features that will be greatly appreciated by your target audience.

7. Sell Your Events
Want to take it a step further? You may even want to consider selling (or pre-ordering) tickets for your events on a website. Shorter line-ups, less expenses: it sounds like a good idea to me…

8. Sell Your Organization
Whether “selling your organization” is a figure of speech (to convince people) or a true selling effort, a website can be considered a very valuable asset to your organization.

9. Sell Your Services
A website can be a great tool to not only promote, but also actually sell your services. You can automate many repetitive tasks, such as registration, billing, collecting and much more. Whether you are selling phone services or speaking engagements: you can effectively do it with a website.

10. Sell Your Products
A few years ago, after all the dot-boms, people lost faith in e-commerce. Now e-commerce is booming. Gift moments like Christmas and Valentine’s Day show record sales numbers, and money-guzzling giants like Amazon are starting to make money. Offering a great user-experience and minding usability is the key to success.

11. Save Costs
By integrating systems and automating certain tasks you may be able to actually save costs. For instance, by integrating your e-commerce website into your inventory and accounting systems. Build extranets to connect with suppliers and clients alike. You can provide downloadable documents on a website rather than mailing them out. The opportunities are endless.

12. Build A Community
Want to be perceived as a leader? Want people talking about you, or provide a platform for people to share ideas and ideologies? A website, especially with a forum or bulletinboard, can be a great help in building an online community. It may even be the cement that keeps an offline community together, because of its empowering character and 24/7 availability.

13. Share Pictures, Sound And Other Files
I just watched wedding photos, I enjoy watching funny commercials from all over the world, I like listening to music – on a website. You can use it to share Media Kits, sound bites, or PowerPoint presentations. A website is a great tool to exchange multi-media.

14. Offer Service 365/24/7
This may not be of great value to you (it may even be a burden…), but to your customers it is very empowering and important. The Internet puts the web browser in control – and if you are not there, you will be more and more passed over in favour of an online competitor.

15. Answer Frequently Asked Questions
Answering the same questions over and over again can be a great waste of money and employee morale. A carefully crafted list of Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs), posted on a website, can reduce the stream of repetitive questions so your Customer Support department can actually start supporting customers, and your Sales Department can really devote their time to selling!

16. Improve Branding
Branding is a way to differentiate your product, service or company from its competition, and create loyalty. The content of a website, its style and tools such as newsletters allow for many ways to differentiate yourself, make the visitor feel good about you, and build loyalty. More worrisome: if you do not do this, a competitor may snatch not only your prospects sales, but also their loyalty away from you with their website! Eat, or be eaten!

17. Reach A Local Market
More and more people use locally defined keywords in the search engines, which indicates that they use the Internet do find local information. “Used cars Toronto” or “Guelph real estate” are obvious, but mentioning a website in a local ad may do wonders in terms of converting a reader into a customer.

18. Reach A Regional Market
A website is one of the easiest tools to expand your exposure into a wider geographical area. Want to move your business from just Fergus into the whole of Ontario? A website allows you to do that.

19. Reach A National Market
Political campaigns are just one example where websites are being used to service a National audience. Offering a National specific version of your product, such as Tylenol.ca, is another one. This allows you to offer information about specific national tax and delivery charges, or appeal to National pride.

20. Reach A Global Market
If your target audience is “the world” then you really need a website. But you knew that already, didn’t you ;o)

21. Reach An International Market
If you target specific International markets it may be highly effective to design dedicated websites for them. By targeting your US customers on a “,com” site while servicing your Canadian clients with a “.ca” site you are able to cater to the specific needs and expectations. It allows you to avoid confusion by separating different currencies, taxes, fees and prices onto different websites. You may even want to consider offering websites in different languages, such as a specialized “.nl” website, in Dutch, for your loyal customers in The Netherlands.

22. Reach A Specialized Market
Do you sell cat and dog helmets? Are you into custom peptide synthesis (link opens in a new window), or other biotech products? Whatever niche market you may service, a website will expand your possibilities of promoting or selling your product or service – wherever in the world your prospects may be.

23. Test New Products And Services
With a little bit of help from search engines and directories, or by linking from high-traffic websites, you can create a new website to test new products or services. You may even keep quiet about the fact that you are behind this new product or service site. A dedicated website can prove to be a very valuable test case before fully launching your new success – or quietly taking it off the market again if the market is not quite ready yet ;o)

24. Solicit Feedback From Customers
A contact form on a website can provide you with a lot of valuable information from customers, prospects and other interested people. You may even get them to take an online poll – especially if you say they can win a prize as a reward. And if the stakes are high enough, the free word-of-mouth promotion will start automatically…

25. Start A Movement
Want to support Anna Hazare in his anti corruption movement in India? Want the US Army out of Iraq? Want to preserve a local trail? A website is a most effective way to promote your viewpoint, recruit volunteers, build a community (by adding an online forum), make press releases available, and much, much more.

26. Spread Ideas
Even if you do not want to start a movement, a website allows you to share your views and ideas with like-minded people all over the globe. It also allows you to easily explain things by means of adding audio, video or animation to your website. It can be like having your own radio or TV station…

27. Educate
Online education can be very effective; more and more people are taking courses over the Internet. If you provide workshops, or complete courses, you may consider offering them online too.

28. Update Information Quickly
Catalogs have been around for a long time, and they still prove to be successful. Newspapers are still a popular way to find out what is going on in the world. They have one major disadvantage, though: you cannot update them very quickly. A website, however, allows you to make changes almost instantly.

29. A Sales Tool Outside The Office
Employees away from the office can be kept informed with a website. A new press release? A new price list? Newsworthy things happening in your industry? You can quickly post information like that on an Intranet, which is a website only available for your employees, so they can see it wherever and whenever they want. If you add features like a forum you are also able to facilitate 1-to-many communication between employees.

30. Integrate Supply Chains
By offering your clients online ordering you are able to integrate whole supply processes. You can offer them password-protected areas with their information, such as prices, year-to-date ordering information, and more. This can be considered additional customer service, but may also be forced upon you by powerful clients or suppliers.

31. Reward Clients
By offering clients access to a website just for them, you can reward them for their loyalty. This website can for instance be used to offer specials, unique tips or other benefits. You can create an online club for Loyal Customers.

32. Run Contests
If you want to run a contest, a website may be a very viable solution. With a carefully chosen domain name it can foster word-of-mouth promotion (“tell a friend!”), you are able to track all the entries in an online database (without having to enter them manually), and you are able to promote it with links from other websites, or search engines.

33. Communicate With Your Target Audiences In Their Own Language
Addressing your target audience in their native tongue will certainly improve your chances of success.

34. Inquiry Marketing: Be Found – Period!
A major advertising conference mentioned recently “advertising is dead”. Interruption marketing does not work as it used to, due to video on demand, TiVo, the Internet… The consumers are more and more difficult to reach. Instead, they are in control; they are searching – on the Internet. It is inquiry marketing. Search and be found, or fail to be found and lose the customer.

35. Improve Communication
Brochures and flyers only allow for a few lines of communication. A carefully crafted website can guide your clients, suppliers or employees through page after page of information. Another advantage is that you can add audio and video to these pages – something that paper communication tools cannot offer.

36. Change Communication From One-To-One Into One-To-Many
Conventional marketing tools allow you to promote or sell 1-on-1. A website can cater to many prospects at the same time. An effective website will also help you build a buzz: word-of-mouth promotion.

37. Share Basic Business Information
People use the Internet often trying to find quick answers to basic questions. What are your opening hours? Do you offer payment plans? What is your phone number or email address? These are the days of “Inquiry Marketing”; so get a website if you do not already have one, and make sure that people can actually find it in the search engines and directories.

38. PR Tool
A website can be a great PR tool. You can post Press Releases on it, or articles, or a complete Press Kit – with pictures, sound files, bios, and more! You can also start a forum or blog (an interactive type of online diary), which can be a great PR tool.

39. Expand Your Product OR Service Offerings – Exclusively Online
A website allows you to differentiate your product or service offerings. You may want to consider offering slightly different services online than you do offline, for instance to foster repeat visits, using it as a test market, or target different geographical areas than you do with your store or office.

40. Communicate With Audiences Worldwide
The world is your oyster – especially with a website, which allows you to communicate with audiences worldwide (as long as you both understand the same language). Geographical locations or time zones are no longer a problem with the 24/7 availability of a website.

41. Cross-Sell
When it is busy in your store, not all visitors will be able to speak to one of your sales people. Opportunities to cross sell (“did you see that we also sell …”) are lost. But on a carefully constructed website you can make sure that people are exposed to other offers that may interest you. A classic example is Amazon.com, which is very successful with an automated suggestion feature (“Customers who bought this title also bought:…”).

42. Increase Customer Loyalty By Giving Them More Control
These are the times of inquiry marketing, and anything-on-demand. The customer wants to be in control, and websites are a perfect example of that. The customer decides what they want to see, and when, and if you do that right, you will have acquired a loyal customer.

43. F U N
Websites allow you to present your target audience with something fun. Flash animations as a quirky way to make a point or explain something, can build a lot of goodwill. Skilful copywriting can be used to solicit a wink and a smile from time to time. Sales is all about emotion, and websites allow you many ways to evoke these in a favourable way. But make sure that the FUN is appropriate, or else you will be evoking powerful negative emotions.

44. Family Sites
Many families are no longer in the same geographical area; they may even be spread over several countries… A website can be a great way to keep in contact. Share pictures, movies, stories on a website for all family members to see. Added benefit: you will have an email address @ yourname.com or .ca, so you will never have to change addresses again! (Not even in case you decide to witch Internet providers – for instance from sympatico to cogeco)

45. Make Life Easier
Websites can make you customer’s lives easier – and yours! Look at online banking, or ticket ordering. Whole new industries have emerged because people want to be able to do things themselves, from their home or office – because it is easier. So: what will make your customers’ lives easier?

46. Find Employees
A highly effective way to use a website is to use it as a recruitment tool. You can obviously use it to post vacancies, but you may also consider placing a more general invitation to send resumes. This way you may already know the right person for the job before a vacancy even occurs.

47. Pre-Ordering
A well-promoted product launch on a website allows you to take fully automated pre-orders. This is a great tool to supplement your sales force. You can have an online presentation, and shop, so that enthusiastic clients and prospects can pre-order immediately.

48. Build An Appetite
Pre-launch campaigns can be highly effective. Websites can be used to build the buzz, have a few teasers, a countdown clock, press releases and news about the ongoing campaign. You may even show a picture of just a tiny part of the new product: “can you guess what it is?”

49. Email Address Forever
Let’s say that your domain name is agoodname.com. Using email address you@agoodname.com is a good way to promote your website, because people will guess your website based on the email address. And if you keep your domain name indefinitely, you will have that email address indefinitely. No more sending of emails to your friends and business, stating that “you moved to another email service provider; can you please update your address book?”

50. Play With The Big Guys
Many small companies successfully take on the big Guys. Websites can be relatively inexpensive (compared to running a brick-and-mortar store), and with proper usability and search engine optimization your website can be as good as your larger competitors, or even better!

51. Check You Out Anonymously
One of the things many people like about the Internet is that they can research anonymously. No pressure. This is why it is so important that you have a website that is easily found on the Internet – you cater to the preferences of your target audience.

52. Facilitate Knowledge Building
You can use a website to sell seminars or e-books, for people to learn from. You can create password-protected modules so people can learn online. You can build forums where people can exchange questions and answers. A website is an ideal tool to facilitate the exchange of knowledge.

53. Enhance Marketing Effectiveness
Success does not come from doing one thing right. What you need is a marketing mix, and a website can be a powerful ingredient. Mentioning a website in a radio, TV or print ad may just be the thing that wins people over – especially if the online experience feels similar to the offline communication.

54. People Expect It
By having a website you show the world that you are a viable business. Not having one makes you suspicious in the eyes of many prospects. It is silly but true: a website will enhance perceived professionalism.

55. Competition Forces You To(o)
Your competition will force you to get a website, if you do not already have one. Customers (especially the newer generations) will demand you have a website, and will pass you over if you do not have one. It is a matter of adjusting to shifting market conditions. And things will continue to shift, at an amazing speed – just look at how fast the Internet has become an integral part of our lives…

Article courtesy : Nardo Kuitert
Some amendments by : Deepak Bhakoo

Get a website today, visit www.stayonline.org

Emilie du Chatelet (1706 – 1749)

Gabrielle-Emilie Le Tonnelier de Breteuil, the daughter of the French court’s chief of protocol, married the marquis du Chatelet in 1725. She lived the life of a courtier and bore three children. But at age 27, she began studying mathematics seriously and then branched into physics. This interest intensified as she began an affair with the philosopher Voltaire, who also had a love of science. Their scientific collaborations—they outfitted a laboratory at du Chatelet’s home, Chateau de Cirey, and, in a bit of a competition, each entered an essay into a contest on the nature of fire (neither won)—outlasted their romance. Du Chatelet’s most lasting contribution to science was her French translation of Isaac Newton’s Principia, which is still in use today. At age 43, she fell in love with a young military officer and became pregnant; she died following complications during the birth of their child.

Caroline Herschel (1750 – 1848)

Herschel was little more than the household drudge for her parents in Hanover, Germany (she would later describe herself as the “Cinderella of the family”), when her older brother, William, brought her to England in 1772 to run his household in Bath. After she mastered the art of singing—to accompany William, who was the organist for the Octagon Chapel—her brother switched careers and went into astronomy. Caroline followed. In addition to assisting her brother in his observations and in the building of telescopes, Caroline became a brilliant astronomer in her own right, discovering new nebulae and star clusters. She was the first woman to discover a comet (she discovered eight in total) and the first to have her work published by the Royal Society. She was also the first British woman to get paid for her scientific work, when William, who had been named the king’s personal astronomer after his discovery of Uranus in 1781, persuaded his patron to reward his assistant with an annual salary. After William’s death in 1822, Caroline retired to Hanover. There she continued her astronomical work, compiling a catalogue of nebulae—the Herschels’ work had increased the number of known star clusters from 100 to 2,500. She died in 1848 at age 97 after receiving many honors in her field, including a gold medal from the Royal Astronomical Society.

Mary Anning (1799 – 1847)

In 1811, Mary Anning’s brother spotted what he thought was a crocodile skeleton in a seaside cliff near the family’s Lyme Regis, England, home. He charged his 11-year-old sister with its recovery, and she eventually dug out a skull and 60 vertebrae, selling them to a private collector for £23. This find was no croc, though, and was eventually named Ichthyosaurus, the “fish-lizard.” Thus began Anning’s long career as a fossil hunter. In addition to ichthyosaurs, she found long-necked plesiosaurs, a pterodactyl and hundreds, possibly thousands, of other fossils that helped scientists to draw a picture of the marine world 200 million to 140 million years ago during the Jurassic. She had little formal education and so taught herself anatomy, geology, paleontology and scientific illustration. Scientists of the time traveled from as far away as New York City to Lyme Regis to consult and hunt for fossils with Anning.

Mary Somerville (1780 – 1872)

Intrigued by the x’s and y’s in the answer to a math question in a ladies’ fashion magazine, 14-year-old Mary Fairfax of Scotland delved into the study of algebra and mathematics, defying her father’s injunction against such pursuits. Her studies were sidetracked by a marriage, in 1804, to a Russian Navy captain, but after his death she returned to Edinburgh and became involved in intellectual circles, associating with people such as the writer Sir Walter Scott and the scientist John Playfair, and resumed her studies in math and science. Her next husband, William Somerville, whom she wed in 1812, supported these efforts, and after they moved to London, Mary became host to her own intellectual circle, which included the astronomer John Herschel and the inventor Charles Babbage. She began experimenting on magnetism and produced a series of writings on astronomy, chemistry, physics and mathematics. She translated astronomer Pierre-Simon Laplace’s The Mechanism of the Heavens into English, and although she was unsatisfied with the result, it was used as a textbook for much of the next century. Somerville was one of the first two women, along with Caroline Herschel, to be named honorary members of the Royal Astronomical Society.

Maria Mitchell (1818 – 1889)

Young Maria Mitchell learned to observe the stars from her father, who used stellar observations to check the accuracy of chronometers for Nantucket, Massachusetts, whalers and taught his children to use a sextant and reflecting telescope. When Mitchell was 12, she helped her father record the time of an eclipse. And at 17, she had already begun her own school for girls, teaching them science and math. But Mitchell rocketed to the forefront of American astronomy in 1847 when she spotted a blurry streak—a comet—through her telescope. She was honored around the world, earning a medal from the king of Denmark, and became the first woman to be elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 1857 Mitchell traveled to Europe, where she visited observatories and met with intellectuals, including Mary Somerville. Mitchell would write: “I could not help but admire [her] as a woman. The ascent of the steep and rugged path of science has not unfitted her for the drawing room circle; the hours of devotion to close study have not been incompatible with the duties of wife and mother.” Mitchell became the first female astronomy professor in the United States, when she was hired by Vassar College in 1865. There she continued her observations, particularly those of the Sun, traveling up to 2,000 miles to witness an eclipse.

Lise Meitner (1878 – 1968)

When Lise Meitner finished school at age 14, she was barred from higher education, as were all girls in Austria. But, inspired by the discoveries of William Röntgen and Henri Becquerel, she was determined to study radioactivity. When she turned 21, women were finally allowed into Austrian universities. Two years of tutoring preceded her enrollment at the University of Vienna; there she excelled in math and physics and earned her doctorate in 1906. She wrote to Marie Curie, but there was no room for her in the Paris lab and so Meitner made her way to Berlin. There she collaborated with Otto Hahn on the study of radioactive elements, but as an Austrian Jewish woman (all three qualities were strikes against her), she was excluded from the main labs and lectures and allowed to work only in the basement. In 1912, the pair moved to a new university and Meitner had better lab facilities. Though their partnership was split up physically when she was forced to flee Nazi Germany in 1938, they continued to collaborate. Meitner continued her work in Sweden and after Hahn discovered that uranium atoms were split when bombarded with neutrons, she calculated the energy released in the reaction and named the phenomenon “nuclear fission.” The discovery—which eventually led to the atomic bomb (“You must not blame scientists for the use to which war technicians have put our discoveries,” Meitner would say in 1945)—won Hahn the Nobel Prize in 1944. Meitner, overlooked by the Nobel committee, refused to return to Germany after the war and continued her atomic research in Stockholm into her 80s.

Irène Curie-Joliot (1897 – 1956)

The elder daughter of Pierre and Marie Curie, Irène followed her parents’ footsteps into the lab. The thesis for her 1925 doctor of science was on the alpha rays of polonium, one of the two elements her mother discovered. The next year, she married Frédéric Joliot, one of her mother’s assistants at the Radium Institute in Paris. Irène and Frédéric continued their collaboration inside the laboratory, pursuing research on the structure of the atom. In 1934, they discovered artificial radioactivity by bombarding aluminum, boron and magnesium with alpha particles to produce isotopes of nitrogen, phosphorus, silicon and aluminum. They received the Nobel Prize in chemistry the next year, making Marie and Irène the first parent-child couple to have independently won Nobels. All those years working with radioactivity took a toll, however, and Irène died of leukemia in 1956.

Barbara McClintock (1902 – 1992)

While studying botany at Cornell University in the 1920s, Barbara McClintock got her first taste of genetics and was hooked. As she earned her undergraduate and graduate degrees and moved into postdoctoral work, she pioneered the study of genetics of maize (corn) cells. She pursued her research at universities in California, Missouri and Germany before finding a permanent home at Cold Spring Harbor in New York. It was there that, after observing the patterns of coloration of maize kernels over generations of plants, she determined that genes could move within and between chromosomes. The finding didn’t fit in with conventional thinking on genetics, however, and was largely ignored; McClintock began studying the origins of maize in South America. But after improved molecular techniques that became available in the 1970s and early 1980s confirmed her theory and these “jumping genes” were found in microorganisms, insects and even humans, McClintock was awarded a Lasker Prize in 1981 and Nobel Prize in 1983.

Dorothy Hodgkin (1910 – 1994)

Dorothy Crowfoot (Hodgkin, after her 1937 marriage) was born in Cairo, Egypt, to a pair of British archaeologists. She was sent home to England for school, where she was one of only two girls who were allowed to study chemistry with the boys. At 18, she enrolled in one of Oxford’s women’s colleges and studied chemistry and then moved to Cambridge to study X-ray crystallography, a type of imaging that uses X-rays to determine a molecule’s three-dimensional structure. She returned to Oxford in 1934, where she would spend most of her working life, teaching chemistry and using X-ray crystallography to study interesting biological molecules. She spent years perfecting the technique, for which she was awarded a Nobel Prize in 1964, and determined the structures of penicillin, vitamin B12 and insulin. In 2010, 16 years after her death, the British Royal Mail celebrated the 350th anniversary of the Royal Society by issuing stamps with the likenesses of 10 of the society’s most illustrious members, including Isaac Newton and Benjamin Franklin; Hodgkin was the only woman in the group.

Rosalind Franklin (1920 – 1958)

James Watson and Francis Crick get credit for determining the structure of DNA, but their discovery relied on the work of Rosalind Franklin. As a teenager in the 1930s, Franklin attended one of the few girls’ schools in London that taught physics and chemistry, but when she told her father that she wanted to be a scientist, he rejected the idea. He eventually relented and she enrolled at Cambridge University, receiving a doctorate in physical chemistry. She learned techniques for X-ray crystallography while in Paris, returning to England in 1951 to work in the laboratory of John Randall at King’s College, London. There she made X-ray images of DNA. She had nearly figured out the molecule’s structure when Maurice Wilkins, another researcher in Randall’s lab who was also studying DNA, showed one of Franklin’s X-ray images to James Watson. Watson quickly figured out the structure was a double helix and, with Francis Crick, published the finding in the journal Nature. Watson, Crick and Wilkins won a Nobel Prize in 1962 for their discovery. Franklin, however, had died of ovarian cancer in 1958.

1. I don’t have the time.
2. I can’t get the funding.
3. My boss will never go for it.
4. Were not in the kind of business likely to innovate.
5. I’ve got too much on my plate.

6. We won’t be able to get it past legal.
7. I’ll be punished if I fail.
8. I’m just not not the creative type.
9. I’m juggling way too many projects.
10. I’m too new around here.

11. I’m not good at presenting my ideas.
12. No one, besides me, really cares about innovation.
13. There’s too much bureaucracy here to get anything done.
14. Our customers aren’t asking for it.
15. We’re a risk averse culture. Always will be.

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16. We don’t have an innovation process.
17. We don’t have a culture of innovation.
18. They don’t pay me enough to take on this kind of project.
19. My boss will get all the credit.
20. My career path will be jeopardized if this doesn’t fly.

21. I’ve already got enough headaches.
22. I’m no good at office politics.
23. My home life will suffer.
24. I’m not disciplined enough.
25. It’s an idea too far ahead of its time.

26. I won’t be able to get enough resources.
27. I don’t have enough information.
28. Someone will steal my idea.
29. It will take too long to get results.
30. We’re in a down economy.

31. It will die in committee.
32. I’ll be laughed out of town.
33. I won’t be able to get the ear of senior leadership.
34. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
35. The concept is too disruptive.

36. I won’t be able to get enough support.
37. I don’t tolerate ambiguity all that well.
38. I’m not in a creative profession.
39. Now is not a good time to start a new project.
40. I don’t have the right personality to build a team.

41. Our company is going through too many changes right now.
42. They won’t give me any more time to work on the project.
43. If I succeed, too much will be expected of me.
44. Nothing ever changes around here.
45. Things are changing so fast, my head is spinning.

46. Whatever success I achieve will be undone by somebody else.
47. I don’t have enough clout to get things done.
48. It’s just not worth the effort.
49. I’m getting close to retirement.
50. My other projects will suffer.

51. Been there, done that.
52. I don’t want another thing to think about.
53. I won’t have any time left for my family.
54. A more nimble competitor will beat us to the punch.
55. Teamwork is a joke around here.

56. I’ve never done anything like this before.
57. I won’t be rewarded if the project succeeds.
58. We’re not measured for innovation.
59. I don’t have the right credentials.
60. We need more data.

61. It’s not my job.
62. It will hard sustaining the motivation required.
63. I’ve tried before and failed.
64. I’m not smart enough to pull this off.
65. I don’t want to go to any more meetings.

66. It will take way too long to get up to speed.
67. Our Stage Gate process will sabotage any hope of success.
68. I’m not skillful at building business cases.
69. Summer’s coming.
70. The marketplace is too volatile.

71. This is a luxury we can’t afford at this time.
72. I think we’re about to be acquired.
73. I’m trying to simplify my life, not complicate it.
74. The dog ate my homework.
75. Help! I’m a prisoner in a Chinese fortune cookie factory.

76. My company just wants to squeeze more blood from the stone.
77. My company isn’t committed to innovation.
78. I don’t have the patience.
79. I’m not sure how to begin.
80. I’m too left-brained for this sort of thing.

81. I won’t be able to get the funding required.
82. I’m getting too old for this.
83. We’re too competitive, in-house. Collaboration is a rarity.
84. Spring is coming.
85. I’m hypoglycemic.

86. That’s Senior Leadership’s job
87. I’m thinking of quitting.
88. Market conditions just aren’t right.
89. We need to focus on the short term for a while.
90. Innovation, schminnovation.

91. What we really need are some cost cutting initiatives.
92. Six Sigma will take care of everything.
93. Mercury is in retrograde.
94. IT won’t go for it.
95. Maybe next year.

96. That’s my boss’s job.
97. That’s R&D’s job.
98. I would if I could, but I can’t, so I won’t.
99. First, we need to benchmark the competition.
100.It’s against my religion.

HOW TO GO BEYOND THESE LAME EXCUSES

1. Make a list of your three most bothersome ones.

2. Turn each excuse into a question, beginning with the words “How can I?” or “How can we?” (For example, if your excuse is “That’s R&D’s job,” you might ask “How can I make innovation my job?” or “How can I help my team take more responsibility for innovating?”

3. Brainstorm each question — alone and with your team.

4. DO something about it within the next 48 hours.

Via : Idea Champions

Yolande Barnes, director of residential research at Savills spoke about the ten “world class” cities featured in the Savills report. She said that the ten cities have “more in common with each other than the mainstream markets of the countries in which they operate”. She also added that the real estate markets of these cities are attracting investment from domestic and international billionaires. According to the Savills report, the price of international billionaire properties rose by 10 percent in the first half of 2011. It is a big spurt when compared to the 6 percent increase experienced by non-luxury real estate over the same period.

Predictably, Hong Kong has emerged as the frontrunner in this study. The world’s most expensive city for billionaire homes boasts of average figures of £6,700 per square foot. Tokyo comes in second with rates of £5,190 per square foot. Paris is a distant third with a going rate of £3,290. Compare the other cities and it becomes clear that the rates at Hong Kong are double those in London and ten times those in Sydney.

However, despite the high price points, luxury homes in Hong Kong are smaller than cheaper properties around the world. On an average, the billionaire property buyer in Hong Kong will get an apartment of 5,000 square feet. It still is larger than the Moscow average of 4,600. In terms of size, the Hong Kong homes pale in comparison to the likes of Sydney and Tokyo where the average size of a luxury home is 20,000 square feet and 16,000 square feet respectively. Sydney is the cheapest destination for billionaires looking to buy luxury homes in the big business cities of the world.

Emerging economies have also pushed up the annual growth rate of property prices. Singapore and Mumbai clocked the highest growth at 144 percent and 138 percent respectively. Moscow and Hong Kong followed at the third and fourth slots with respective increases of 110 percent and 83 percent. Given these figures, it is surprising that Shanghai managed to grow by only 32 percent. But China’s closed economy and unwillingness to allow in international billionaires is primarily responsible for the low price growth.

Traditional markets like New York, Paris and London continue to figure in the top 5 of this list of most expensive cities. However, their lower price growth is an indication that they could soon be ousted by the new emerging cities of Hong Kong, Mumbai, Moscow and others. That ouster will take time however. In 2010, London experienced inward investment of £3.3 billion while Paris has registered a sharp rise in prices in recent times.

Stan takes anything from one day to six months to make each building.

This small town (pueblo) is located 157 kilometres (98 mi) northeast of Cadiz. It has a distinctive setting along a narrow river gorge. The town extends along the course of the Rio Trejo with some houses being built into the rock walls of the gorge itself, created by enlarging natural caves or overhangs and adding an external wall.

According to the 2005 census, the city has a population of 3,016 inhabitants.

The Elbe-Havel and Mittelland canals had previously met near Magdeburg but on opposite sides of the Elbe . Ships moving between the two had to make a 12-kilometer detour, descending from the Mittelland Canal through the Rothensee boat lift into the Elbe, then sailing downstream on the river, before entering the Elbe-Havel Canal through Niegripp lock. Low water levels in the Elbe often prevented fully laden canal barges from making this crossing, requiring time-consuming off-loading of cargo.

Construction of the water link was started as early as in the 1930s but due to the World War 2 and subsequent division of Germany the work remained suspended till 1997. The aqueduct was finally completed and opened to the public in 2003.was finally completed and opened to the public in 2003.

Let’s say you want to start writing a novel. Think of a phrase that’s the perfect title for a book. That could be your starting point. And so now you are on a new threshold.

We can learn a lot from our ancestors. For instance, if you visit the Museum of London’s prehistoric galleries, you’ll find that Bronze Age people would build their roundhouses with the entrance facing the midwinter solstice. They would then consult their ancestors before making an offering to the new threshold. Now, perhaps modern builders have a comparable ritual – I don’t know. But if they don’t – perhaps they should. And so should those embarking on a long-term building project like a novel. I love the idea of “making an offering to a new threshold.” And what I have to say here is like an offering to the new threshold.

First, where do your ideas come from? From life itself, all around you, wherever you are. Ideas fly past, and you catch them. Listen to conversations in every situation. Observe people. Eavesdrop whilst sitting on the top deck of a bus. Have notebooks with you at all times – and keep notes. And if you have a notebook system, you have to build in time to review your notebooks and retrieve your ideas.

Then you have to apply the first secret of writing:

1. Avoid Not Writing – take your craft seriously; believe that what you’re doing is of sufficient value that you are going to carve out time for it. Book time for it if necessary – put it in your diary. Get in there and do it. Don’t be afraid of the blank screen or blank page.

2. Pay attention to structure – break down the book in your head into an Outline. You could do it on a piece of software like Scrivener, or you could do it through a wall of Post It Notes, or you could plot it on a storyboard; or you could write your novel as a short story first. But realise that you are unique and may have your own special way of working that is right for you. With a novel, sometimes writers find they can’t plot too far ahead (though be aware you may have to go back and impose structure later). If that is the case for you -

3. Go on the journey and see what happens. If a character develops a life of his or her own it’s a good sign. Some say the characters create the plot. Keep asking why, what, where, how, when.

4. Set yourself a goal of a thousand words per working day, if you respond well to deadlines and schedules. If not write anyway.

5. Don’t talk your novel out of existence. Write that first draft. I believe it’s not a good idea to discuss the details of your novel with anyone until you’ve written it. Then you can seek feedback, and redraft, and revise and revise and revise.

Finally, when your book is finished to the very best of your ability and beyond, send it off to literary agents. And be prepared for rejection. Remember – you write because you are compelled to, because you cannot “not write”. Take note of these wise words from popular author Adrian Plass: “If things fall apart, pick up the pieces and carry on. Don’t despair. There are strange things going on behind the scenes.”

Courtesy : S.C. Skillman

These photos were taken by a sailor who was on the USS QUAPAW ATF-11O on December 7, 1941. Isn’t it amazing how a film could last so long in a camera without disintegrating?

White
Brides wear white to symbolize innocence and purity. White reflects light and is considered a summer color. White is popular in decorating and in fashion because it is light, neutral, and goes with everything. However, white shows dirt and is therefore more difficult to keep clean than other colors. Doctors and nurses wear white to imply sterility.

Black
Black is the color of authority and power. It is popular in fashion because it makes people appear thinner. It is also stylish and timeless. Black also implies submission. Priests wear black to signify submission to God. Some fashion experts say a woman wearing black implies submission to men. Black outfits can also be overpowering, or make the wearer seem aloof or evil. Villains, such as Dracula, often wear black.

Red
The most emotionally intense color, red stimulates a faster heartbeat and breathing. It is also the color of love. Red clothing gets noticed and makes the wearer appear heavier. Since it is an extreme color, red clothing might not help people in negotiations or confrontations. Red cars are popular targets for thieves. In decorating, red is usually used as an accent. Decorators say that red furniture should be perfect since it will attract attention.

Pink
The most romantic color, pink, is more tranquilizing. It has a calming or sedative effect on others. Sports teams sometimes paint the locker rooms used by opposing teams bright pink so their opponents will lose energy.

Blue
The color of the sky and the ocean, blue is one of the most popular colors. It causes the opposite reaction as red. Peaceful, tranquil blue causes the body to produce calming chemicals, so it is often used in bedrooms. Blue can also be cold and depressing. Fashion consultants recommend wearing blue to job interviews because it symbolizes loyalty. People are more productive in blue rooms. Studies show weightlifters are able to handle heavier weights in blue gyms.

Green
Currently the most popular decorating color, green symbolizes nature. It is the easiest color on the eye and can improve vision. It is a calming, refreshing color. People waiting to appear on TV sit in green-rooms to relax. Hospitals often use green because it relaxes patients. Brides in the Middle Ages wore green to symbolize fertility. Dark green is masculine, conservative, and implies wealth. However, seamstresses often refuse to use green thread on the eve of a fashion show for fear it will bring bad luck.

Yellow
Cheerful sunny yellow is an attention getter. While it is considered an optimistic color, people lose their tempers more often in yellow rooms, and babies will cry more. It is the most difficult color for the eye to take in, so it can be overpowering if overused. Yellow enhances concentration, hence its use for legal pads. It also speeds metabolism.

Brown
Solid, reliable brown is the color of earth and is abundant in nature. Light brown implies genuineness while dark brown is similar to wood or leather. Brown can also be sad and wistful. Men are more apt to say brown is one of their favorite colors.

Purple
The color of royalty, purple connotes luxury, wealth, and sophistication. It is also feminine and romantic. However, because it is rare in nature, purple can appear artificial.

‘Pencil Sets’ are a series of over 40 intricately drawn illustrations on the carved out bodies of pencils.

But what does he use to draw on these pencils, when he’s drawn on his pencils?