Ex-Mexican mayor killed

Defiant former Mexican mayor killed
CNN - 11/28/2012
(CNN) -- The first time an assassin's bullet tried to find her, Maria Santos Gorrostieta escaped, but her husband was killed. That was in 2009, when she was mayor of Tiquicheo, a small town in the Mexican state of Michoacan, which has seen some of the most brutal drug-related violence. The bullets f

Source: http://www.congoo.com/news/addstorycomment.aspx?st=213965633&Channel_ID=66&Category_ID=-1

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5 Easy Ways to Improve Your Landing Page and Boost Conversions

Landing pages are web pages on your website that are used to generate leads for your business. The main purpose of a landing page is to entice visitors to perform a desired action whether it is registering an interest in one of your products, arranging a demo, downloading an eBook, signing up to your newsletter, or another product or service that your business offers. Every business, however small or large, can benefit from optimized landing pages.

Businesses use several methods to promote and build traffic to their website. However, ultimately the success of a business online depends largely on how many visitors are converted into sales or leads for the business, referred to as conversion rate. Optimised landing pages are one of the most effective tools a business can use to boost conversions on the website.

Creating effective landing pages have become a standard marketing practice for any business that wants to increase conversions and generate leads for the business. In this article we take a look at 5 easy but highly effective ways to get better results from your landing page.

1. Focus All Attention on One Conversion Action

Your landing page should be dedicated to one task or one desired user action only e.g. register for your newsletter, sign-up for a webinar, download an eBook or another lead that is relevant to your business. The entire attention should be focused on one conversion event. More than one action will dilute the focus away from your primary lead event and have a negative impact on your conversion rate.? If you are running multiple campaigns or wish to generate additional leads from your website, use dedicated landing pages for each.

Take a look at DeVry University?s landing page below for requesting information about the courses. There is only one conversion action on the page and all attention is devoted toward it.

Landing Page - University

2. Test Variations

A/B split testing is widely acknowledged as an essential element of an effective landing page optimisation strategy. However, it remains under-utilised. Simple changes like the design or colour of your buttons or the placements of your lead capture form can make a huge difference to your conversion rates.

Businesses have been able to double their conversion rate by applying simple tweaks and variations to their landing page elements. Split testing makes this possible. Google?s Website Opitmizer is one of the easiest ways to do this.

Make it easy ? Make sure that?s it is obvious what you want the visitor to do and even more obvious how to do it. (This is where the use of video, audio, arrows and buttons can be effective.) Limit any data collection to name and email or your conversions will drop unless what you are offering is so valuable people will give more information.

3. Use Supporting Media

Studies have shown that use of relevant media e.g. an image or a video on your landing page is a sure-shot way to boost conversions. It also makes your page more appealing and can help to highlight benefits. Displaying an image of the product in use or a video tour are some examples of supporting media that can boost conversions. You can also create a video explaining your product or create a video testimonial of existing customers. Seeing a real person can make your landing page more engaging for visitors, helps to build trust and personalise the user experience.

Landing Page Videos

4. Remove All Unnecessary Elements

A typical web page consists of several elements e.g. menu, newsletter sign-up, general text about your business, footer links, and more. It may be beneficial to remove a lot of these elements from your landing page. Effective landing pages that get the best results are usually those that focus entirely on the product you are offering and do not give user with additional options on the page. As a general rule, try to remove elements that are not related to you primary conversion event.

Take a look at Match.Com?s registration landing page below. There are no links, or any other additional elements on the page, giving the user only option which is to register for the service.

Landing Page - Match.com

Some items you can remove are:

  • General Website menu
  • General header and footer used on the rest of your page
  • All other secondary conversion elements like newsletter sign-ups or other calls to action
  • All extra content or links that are not directly related to your primary conversion event

5. Leverage Your Thank You Page

The thank you page or confirmation screen is the page where users are redirected to upon successful completion of the desired action on your landing page. Although this is a very important part of your conversion process, it is often overlooked.

A good confirmation page offers the ideal opportunity to get more out of your landing page and should be planned carefully. In addition to a relevant confirmation message and fulfilment of your offering, you can take advantage of this space to boost engagement further. E.g. you can offer something extra such as an eBook, report or another download relevant to your main conversion action. Confirmation page can also be used to generate additional leads.

Take a look at the?eBook confirmation page on Hubspot below. It is a perfect example of how you can leverage your thank you page.

Landing Page Confirmation Screen

What About You?

Do you use landing pages to generate leads for your business? Are you taking advantage of any of the methods above? We would like to hear from you. Please share your responses by leaving a comment below.

If you like this article, please share it!

Source: http://www.kronikmedia.co.uk/blog/improve-landing-page/6104/

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Rice meets with Republicans, fails to win them over

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice failed on Wednesday to win over Republicans opposing her possible candidacy for U.S. secretary of state, and more senators - including a one-time supporter - questioned statements she made after the deadly attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi in September.

U.S. Senator Susan Collins met with Rice for over an hour and said afterward she could not back Rice for secretary of state, if she were nominated by President Barack Obama, without more information.

The moderate Maine Republican even brought up a new concern about Rice's record in the State Department 14 years ago in connection with the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Africa.

Other Republicans have threatened to block Rice's nomination if Obama picks her to replace Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, which would require Senate confirmation.

They accuse her of misleading the American people for political reasons in the run-up to the November 6 presidential election by playing down any al Qaeda links to the Benghazi, Libya, attack at a time when Obama was touting his record of successes against the militant movement.

The U.S. ambassador and three other Americans were killed in the September 11 Benghazi attack.

Obama, who has strongly supported his embattled ambassador, gave a show of moral support on Wednesday, prompting applause from his Cabinet - including Clinton - during their first meeting at the White House since Obama's re-election.

"Susan Rice is extraordinary," Obama said, adding he "couldn't be prouder of the job she's done."

Clinton told reporters later on Wednesday that Rice had done a great job at the United Nations, and she hoped a board reviewing the Benghazi attack would complete their review shortly.

"They have been hard at work, we are hoping they will be finished with their work very soon," Clinton said.

Votes from moderates like Collins, who introduced Rice to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee when Obama nominated her to the U.N. post three years ago, would be needed to overcome procedural obstacles and win confirmation.

"I still have many questions that remain unanswered," Collins told reporters after a 75-minute meeting with Rice.

The top Republican on the Homeland Security Committee, Collins said she still wanted more information about the attack on the U.S. mission and a nearby CIA annex in Benghazi, Libya.

The controversy raises the unpleasant specter of Obama starting his second term with a nasty confirmation fight. He also risks looking weak if he seems to give in to criticism from the party he just defeated to win re-election.

Obama should nominate Rice if he feels she is the best choice, said Lawrence Korb, a former assistant secretary of defense, now at the liberal Center for American Progress.

He predicted she would win confirmation, given that the main objection to her was over a political point that Republican Mitt Romney tried to feature in his failed presidential campaign this year.

"The Republicans are desperate for an issue," Korb said. "She's not the issue. The issue is that they want to undermine his (foreign policy) narrative."

PLAYING POLITICS?

Sticking with Rice could also be a potent demonstration of strength for Obama, Korb said, reminiscent of Republican President Ronald Reagan. Reagan, who is revered by his party, won points for winning the confirmation of Al Haig as secretary of state in 1981, despite objections to Haig's ties to the Watergate scandal, he noted.

Some observers have speculated that the Republicans would prefer that Obama nominate Senator John Kerry, leaving the door open for a Republican to win his vacated Massachusetts seat and narrowing the Democratic majority in the Senate.

"I think John Kerry would be an excellent appointment and will be easily confirmed by his colleagues," Collins told reporters.

Collins said the United States seemed not to have learned lessons from the bombings of the embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, when Rice was the State Department's Africa region head.

This year's attack in Benghazi "echoed" those attacks, she said. "In both cases, the ambassador begged for additional security," and State turned down both requests, she said.

"I asked Ambassador Rice what her role was. She said that she would have to refresh her memory but that she was not involved directly in turning down the request. But surely, given her position as assistant secretary for African affairs, she had to have been aware," Collins said.

Republicans have openly criticized Rice for initial comments after the Benghazi attack that suggested it was a spontaneous event arising from protests of an anti-Islam film rather than a planned terrorist strike.

Intelligence officials said later the attack was possibly tied to al Qaeda affiliates.

Rice, accompanied by acting CIA Director Michael Morell, also met with Senator Bob Corker, who is in line to be the top Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

After his meeting, Corker had tough words for the Benghazi attack and the aftermath, which he termed a "tawdry affair" that would add to Americans' distrust of the government.

He declined to discuss whether he would support Rice, but urged Obama to "step back" from the controversy and "take a deep breath" as he decided whom to nominate.

Rice also met for about an hour behind closed doors on Tuesday with Republican Senators John McCain, Lindsey Graham and Kelly Ayotte, who have been among her most vocal critics.

(Additional reporting by Jeff Mason and Andrew Quinn; Editing by David Storey and Peter Cooney)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/rice-meets-republicans-fails-win-them-over-011931020.html

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Promising drug slows down advance of Parkinson's disease and improves symptoms

ScienceDaily (Nov. 29, 2012) ? Treating Parkinson's disease patients with the experimental drug GM1 ganglioside improved symptoms and slowed their progression during a two and a half-year trial, Thomas Jefferson University researchers report in a new study published online November 28 in the Journal of the Neurological Sciences.

Although the precise mechanisms of action of this drug are still unclear, the drug may protect patients' dopamine-producing neurons from dying and at least partially restore their function, thereby increasing levels of dopamine, the key neurochemical missing in the brain of Parkinson's patients.

The research team, led by senior author Jay S. Schneider, Ph.D., Director of the Parkinson's Disease Research Unit and Professor in the Department of Pathology, Anatomy and Cell Biology and the Department of Neurology at Jefferson, found that administration of GM1 ganglioside, a substance naturally enriched in the brain that may be diminished in Parkinson's disease brains, acted as a "neuroprotective" and a "neurorestorative" agent to improve symptoms and over an extended period of time slow the progression of symptoms.

What's more, once the study participants went off the drug, their disease worsened. The study enrolled 77 subjects and followed them over a 120-week period and also followed 17 subjects who received current standard of care treatment for comparison.

"The drugs currently available for Parkinson's disease are designed to treat symptoms and to improve function, but at this time there is no drug that has been shown unequivocally to slow disease progression," said Dr. Schneider. "Our data suggest that GM1 ganglioside has the potential to have symptomatic and disease-modifying effects on Parkinson's disease. If this is substantiated in a larger clinical study, GM1 could provide significant benefit for Parkinson's disease patients."

Symptoms of the Parkinson's disease, which affects over 1 million people in the United States today and is diagnosed in 60,000 adults every year, include tremors, slowness in movement, difficulty initiating movements, difficulty walking, balance problems and decrease in speech volume and facial expression. The motor symptoms of Parkinson's disease result from the death of dopamine-producing neurons in the substantia nigra, the brain region that dies in Parkinson's disease; the cause of this cell death is unknown.

GM1 ganglioside is a chemical that is normally found in the brain and part of the outer covering of nerve cells. It plays important roles in neuron development and survival and modulates a wide variety of cell activities. GM1 has been found to rescue damaged neurons and increase dopamine levels in pre-clinical studies, and has been suggested to have beneficial effects in other neurodegenerative conditions.

Dr. Schneider and his team made a case for the use of GMI for Parkinson's disease beginning in the 1980s. The pathological processes contributing to the development and progression of Parkinson's disease are still unclear, but they appear to be multifactorial. Because GM1 has effects on many different cellular functions, it seemed a logical approach to try using a drug like GM1 ganglioside to modify the pathological processes occurring in Parkinson's disease, rather than focusing on a specific potential disease mechanism, said Dr. Schneider.

"Instead of a magic bullet, we think of it like a magic shotgun," he said. "This study was truly a success of translational research."

The GM1 research started in mice, where Dr. Schneider and his team found that animals with an experimentally induced form of Parkinson's disease and administered GM1 had significantly higher levels of dopamine in their brains and less loss of dopamine neurons than animals that did not receive GM1.

A follow-up study in a non-human primate Parkinson model found similar results: animals that received GM1 had higher levels of dopamine than animals that did not and had a significant improvement in Parkinson symptoms.

In the late 1990s, Dr. Schneider conducted a short-term study (16 weeks) using GM1 in a small number of patients. Improvement in symptoms was observed in patients who received GM1 compared to patients who received a non-active placebo. However, in order to determine if there was potential for GM1 to slow the progression of the disease, they would have to study patients over a longer period of time -- which led them to this current study.

There were three main groups of subjects in this controlled, randomized, delayed start trial funded by the National Institutes of Health. Patients were given a placebo for the first six months and then GM1 for 2 years (known as the delayed start group); patients were given GM1 from the beginning and continued on GM1 for the duration of the study (early-start group); and a comparison group, where patients agreed to be observed over the same time period, but did not take the drug or a placebo -- they only took the drugs prescribed by their doctor.

The delayed start study design has been suggested to be useful for studying a drug that may have effects both on symptoms and disease progression in Parkinson's disease.

The change over time in the Unified Parkinson's Diseasing Rating Scale (UPDRS) motor score was the primary measure used to assess symptoms and disease progression in patients.

At the end of the first six months of the study, the early-start group had significant improvement in UPDRS motor scores versus a significant worsening of scores in the delayed-start group. Over the next two years, early start subjects maintained much of the initial benefit of GM1 treatment, showed relatively minor symptom progression compared to patients using standard anti-Parkinson medications, and at the end of the study, their symptoms were still less severe than at the start of the study over two years earlier.

Delayed start subjects also showed improvement of symptoms after switching to GM1 use and also showed less symptom progression over the next two years compared to the standard-of-care patients. Both groups had significant symptom worsening over the next one to two years after stopping use of GM1.

In short, GM1 appeared to improve symptoms and with extended use, slow symptom progression.

"The data from this small proof-of-concept study suggest that GM1 has the potential to have a very positive effect on the lives of Parkinson's disease patients," said Dr. Schneider. "We've been working on this for a long time and have some good ideas on how to move this forward. I think it's important to continue to develop this therapy."

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Story Source:

The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Thomas Jefferson University, via Newswise.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.


Journal Reference:

  1. Jay S. Schneider, Stephen M. Gollomp, Stephanie Sendek, Amy Colcher, Franca Cambi, Wei Du. A randomized, controlled, delayed start trial of GM1 ganglioside in treated Parkinson's disease patients. Journal of the Neurological Sciences, 2012; DOI: 10.1016/j.jns.2012.10.024

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/top_health/~3/OYYMyQRGMS8/121129173852.htm

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IBM awarded MoD property management contract ...

The MoD's Defence Infrastructure Organisation (DIO) has awarded IBM a contract to help make the running of its ?24 billion property portfolio more energy and operationally efficient.

DIO is responsible for the management of around 4,000 separate sites worldwide, including military barracks, land, air and naval bases, and military training grounds.

Using IBM?s smarter buildings software and services, DIO expects to reduce building operating costs and find ways to better use its existing real estate.

DIO will use IBM technology to replace its "outdated legacy IT environment" and create a new centralised information management system to allow faster analysis, said DIO.

Andrew Manley, DIO chief executive, said, ?IBM analytics technology helps us continue our work in creating a world-class infrastructure to put DIO at the leading edge of the technology transformation process happening right now across the MoD.?

The IBM TRIRIGA system will provide an integrated property management platform comprising of software and consultancy services. This will give DIO central visibility of its property and data on how efficiently they are being used.

A geospatial mapping capability, created by business partner Esri UK, will provide a real-time visualisation map to display the scope of infrastructure and assets.

The new system will be launched in a number of "capability releases" through to April 2014, said the DIO. The potential value of the contract has not been disclosed.

Georgina O'Toole, an analyst at TechMarketView, said, "We understand that IBM will collect and process data from the lower level systems such as those associated with the National Housing Prime (NHP) contract let in 2011.

"We know that Steria already holds a contract to provide a housing management system to DIO for the management of the housing estate. It may well be that an interface will be required between the Steria and IBM systems."

After the selection of Atlas (led by HP) for the current core Defence Information Infrastructure (DII(F)) programme, said O'Toole, other suppliers had to focus on delivering complex software development and integration projects in order to maintain a presence.

"As DII(F) and other core contracts are restructured the infrastructure and applications supplier landscape within UK defence has the potential to be severely disrupted over the next few years," said O'Toole.

The MoD revealed this week that between 2009 and 2011 it spent a whopping ?3.6 billion on IT and telecommunications for use across the department and armed services.

Source: http://www.computerworlduk.com/news/outsourcing/3413827/ibm-awarded-mod-property-management-contract/

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The benefits of water aerobics | Waverley Academy Blog - Steve ...

Water, water, water! How nice is it that water can offer such intense and enjoyable workouts. To me, water aerobics is defined as a?non-weight bearing (easy on the joints)?resistance and aerobic exercise performed in shallow water.?It has since evolved from just walking or jogging?forward and backward in the water to jumping jacks and popular?cross-country skiing movements.

Water equipment?has?also?become more popular.?Water weights,?floating belts, and other useful equipment are used to increase water resistance as well as help with flotation and balance.?Water aerobics?can be performed just about anywhere; from health and fitness clubs to public or private swimming pools to even shallow lakes. All you really need is the?motivation and dedication to splash around a little bit (warm weather wouldn?t hurt either).

Benefits of Water Aerobics:

  1. Non-weight bearing exercise
  2. Improves muscular endurance
  3. Improves core strength and endurance
  4. Great exercise for pregnant women
  5. Improves flexibility
  6. Improves cardiovascular conditioning
  7. Burns enormous amount of calories
  8. Keeps the body cool during exercise
  9. Fun and enjoyable exercise
  10. Great way to modify or spice up normal routine

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This entry was posted in Sports & Fitness and tagged abs, aerobics, best workouts, cardio, exercise, health, muscles, swimming, water, water aerobics, water fitness, workout by Annmarie. Bookmark the permalink.

Source: http://academy.ie/blog/2012/11/26/the-benefits-of-water-aerobics/

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Source: http://vang40.typepad.com/blog/2012/11/the-benefits-of-water-aerobics-waverley-academy-blog.html

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Source: http://montoyarolland.typepad.com/blog/2012/11/the-benefits-of-water-aerobics-waverley-academy-blog-steve.html

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Select Text for Quick Blockquotes in Gmail Replies

Select Text for Quick Blockquotes in Gmail RepliesIf you're an avid Gmail user you know that when you're replying to a long email it's easy for the context to get lost. Blogger John Graham-Cumming points out that, like many other email programs, Gmail has the handy feature where you can select a block of text, hit reply, and only that text is quoted in the response.

Instead of simply hitting reply to an email, select the block of text you're specifically replying to, and then hit reply. Only the block of text you selected is quoted in the reply email, which cuts down on all the junk text you get in long email chains. Most email programs have this built in?and this has been in Gmail for a while?but it's a handy tip nonetheless.

The greatest Google Mail feature you may not be using | jgc via Hacker News

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~3/e6hCqb9x_c4/select-text-for-quick-blockquotes-in-gmail-replies

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