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Friday, March 1, 2013
Reinforce Your Wardrobe With a Industrial-Strength Rebar Hanger
Thursday, February 28, 2013
Dog shoots man in Florida - maybe
MIAMI (Reuters) - Police added a dose of scepticism on Wednesday to a report about a man who says he was shot by his dog while driving down a Florida highway.
Commander Steve Carr, a police spokesman in the central town of Sebring, where the shooting occurred on Saturday, said there were "some indications" the shooting victim may have made up his "dog shoots man" story.
Gregory Lane Lanier, 35, told police he thought the 9mm Beretta semi-automatic handgun on the floor of his pickup truck was unloaded when the black and tan English bulldog kicked it and caused it to fire.
Lanier was hit in his left leg and the bullet wound, patched up at a local hospital, was not serious.
"It's what he claims," Carr said of Lanier's account. "We didn't spend a lot of time investigating it. There doesn't appear to be any criminal act involved. You don't have to be licensed in Florida to carry a handgun."
Lanier could not be reached for comment on Wednesday. Calls to a phone number listed for him in a Sebring Police Department report on the highway shooting went unanswered.
(Reporting by Tom Brown; Editing by Daniel Trotta and Dan Grebler)
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/dog-shoots-man-florida-maybe-230045799.html
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Don't like the white stuff in Oreo's? This is for you
A cookie-favoring physicist has created what appears to be the world's first Oreo separator.
David Neevel, an artist and inventor based in Portland, Ore., was commissioned by the popular cookie brand to produce the machine as part of its "Cookies vs. Creme" campaign.
"My Oreo machine is based entirely on my dislike for creme and my preference for cookie," Neevel said in a short video that could easily be mistaken for a "Portlandia" sketch.
The OSM, as Neevel calls it, was constructed of scrap aluminum, wood, a hatchet and floss in a Portland garage.
After the hatchet blade is lowered to split the Oreo, a pair of mechanical arms are dispatched to collect the cookie halves, which are transferred to a router table where the creme is removed.
The electric-powered contraption took about two weeks to build. "It was a big time commitment," Neevel said. "I had to work some long hours?I didn't see my girlfriend or my dog for hours at a time."
"Outstanding. I applaud your efforts," one YouTube commenter wrote. "For your next design, how about an automatic sock pair singlifier?
Three other inventors were commissioned by Oreo to come up with concepts, with the next one slated to be unveiled later this week.
Watch Neevel's Oreo separator in action:
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/sideshow/oreo-separator-video-192305524.html
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Biologists compare new bees to 100-year-old records
Feb. 28, 2013 ? Laura Burkle and her colleagues captured 2,778 bees while retracing the muddy steps of a scientist who studied the interactions between bees and flowering plants more than a century ago.
Occasionally stung, but considering herself lucky to have access to the rich historic records that guided her field work, the Montana State University ecologist and her collaborators have now published their results in the journal Science.
Burkle conducted her bee study in the forests of southern Illinois while she was a postdoctoral researcher at Washington University in St. Louis, Mo. Now at MSU for the past two years and planning a major ecological study between Yellowstone National Park and Glacier National Park, Burkle and her co-authors compared the bees and flowering plants that existed in 2009 and 2010 with those that existed in the late 1800s and early 1900s around Carlinville, Ill.
The researchers discovered that the area has lost many species of bees and flowering plants over the 120 years since professor Charles Robertson first surveyed the area, Burkle said. Also lost were many interactions between the bees and flowers.
Despite the loss, however, the bees and plants have been surprisingly resilient in the face of warmer temperatures and changing land use, Burkle said. The forests that once grew 10 miles outside of Carlinville are fragments of what they were when Robertson drove his horse and buggy to collect specimens. Fields of corn have replaced acres of trees and prairie. Natural areas have been converted to agricultural, commercial or residential uses. Winter and spring temperatures have risen an average of 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit.
"The good news is that these systems and the way they are structured make them really resilient to change," Burkle said. "But there's been so much change that resiliency has been compromised."
Co-author Tiffany Knight, Burkle's faculty adviser for the study, said, "Plants are an important resource for humans, providing food, fiber and the backbone for all other ecosystem services. Most plants rely on animal pollinators for their reproduction. There is concern that human changes to the environment are disrupting plant-pollinator interactions, but our study is the first that has been able to look at this problem using historical data.
"One of our significant findings is that climate change has resulted in mismatches between plants and their historic pollinators, such that insects are active during times when plants are not in bloom," Knight said. "This is likely because plants and insects respond to different environment cues, and thus, we expect that mismatches between plants and their historic pollinators due to climate change is important across the globe."
The scientist who inspired the recent study was a Harvard professor before moving to Illinois to retire. When he discovered the woods around Carlinville, however, he resumed his academic life as a professor at the local Blackburn College. He collected most of his data from 1887 to 1897, but continued into 1917.
"He loved it," Burkle said. "That was his full-time passion."
Burkle learned about Robertson while looking for a research project to pursue as a postdoctoral researcher. Since Carlinville and St. Louis are just 1 ? hours apart, Burkle and Knight decided to follow up Robertson's study with their own.
They spent the springs of 2009 and 2010 doing fieldwork around Carlinville. Generally working in the woods between 9 a.m. and 3 p.m. when bees are most likely to fly, the researchers slogged through the forests looking for the first flowering plants of the season. Then they captured the bees that pollinated those flowers and identified them under the microscopes Burkle set up in their Carlinville apartment.
In 477 hours over two years, the researchers collected 3,620 "floral visitors," Burkle said. Of those, 2,778 were bees and the rest were mostly flies and butterflies. The plant that attracted the largest number of bees -- 923 individuals and 33 species -- was Spring Beauty, a small herbaceous plant. Second most popular plant was the Great Waterleaf.
In addition to their and Robertson's specimens, Burkle and Knight compared their findings to those of co-author John Marlin from the University of Illinois. Marlin, who had gathered data from the Carlinville area in the 1970s, provided intermediate-year information that was "incredibly helpful," Burkle said.
Burkle conducted her research with a $75,000 RAPID grant from the National Science Foundation.
Burkle's next study will begin this summer and look at disturbances -- such as from recent and more historic fires -- to see how plant and pollinator communities re-assemble across Montana between Yellowstone and Glacier national parks.
The suite of species that live in Montana and Illinois are entirely different, but some of the same issues apply, Burkle said.
Knight said, "I would expect that the effects of climate change on plant-pollinator interactions are even greater in some locations, such as high elevation sites in the Rocky Mountains that have experienced more dramatic changes in climate than our Midwestern site."
She added that Burkle's expertise on identifying bees and analyzing plant-pollinator networks were crucial to the success of the bee project.
"I miss working with her at Washington University, but I think she is in an excellent location to make new and significant contributions to the field of pollination biology," Knight said.
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Story Source:
The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Montana State University. The original article was written by Evelyn Boswell.
Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.
Journal Reference:
- Laura A. Burkle, John C. Marlin, and Tiffany M. Knight. Plant-Pollinator Interactions over 120 Years: Loss of Species, Co-Occurrence and Function. Science, 28 February 2013 DOI: 10.1126/science.1232728
Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.
Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.
Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/most_popular/~3/N3dnTQ_GbVY/130228155628.htm
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Family thank neighbours for help during Taunton garden fire (From ...
Family thank neighbours for help during Taunton garden fire
10:23am Wednesday 27th February 2013 in Taunton 
A FAMILY has thanked quick-thinking neighbours who put their lives on the line to help stop a raging fire reaching their house.
Vicki Moore, 28 and her husband Nick, 43, were watching television at their home in Cheddon Road, Taunton, on Friday (February 22) night when they heard two explosions.
Mr Moore investigated outside and when he opened the back door he was greeted with flames heading towards the house.
Mrs Moore said: ?My husband said ?get everybody out? as he tried to put the fire out.
?Three neighbours nearby helped him and it is just a massive thank you to them for ringing the fire service and looking after my husband.
?It was all a bit of a scare.?
Mrs Moore and her three children, Kaden, nine, Leon, eight, and Bethany, five, left through the front of the house to safety.
As Mr Moore tackled the flames at the back of the property he almost collapsed due to smoke inhalation but one of the neighbours arrived just in time to pull him away before taking over the hosepipe to tackle the flames.
Mr Moore was treated by ambulance crews and the family, who have lived at the house since 2008, say they are in the process of clearing up all the rubble the fire has left in their garden.
A Devon and Somerset Fire spokesman said they sent one fire engine and four firefighters to the scene and believe the fire started in a pile of rubbish at the back of the two-storey property.
Is community spirit still alive? Would you help your neighbours out? Let us know.
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Wednesday, February 27, 2013
Political tensions rise in Kenya ahead of election
NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) ? Dozens of shack homes have been burned to the ground in recent weeks in Mathare, Nairobi's most dangerous slum. Families are moving into zones controlled by their own clans, fearful of attacks between the tribes of Kenya's top two presidential candidates.
Kenya on Monday holds its first presidential election since the 2007 vote devolved into months of tribal violence that killed more than 1,000 people and displaced 600,000 from their homes. In a hopeful sign, this year's presidential candidates pledged at a weekend prayer rally to accept the outcome of the election and ensure violence doesn't again break out.
But the government-funded Kenya National Commission on Human Rights on Wednesday released a long list of physical attacks, hate speech and cases of ethnic intimidation Kenya has seen in recent weeks, exposing an undercurrent of tribal tension.
Those strains are on high display in Mathare, where at least seven people have died and 100 shacks burned in the last two months. Officially Mathare suffered 112 deaths during the 2007-08 election violence, though one policeman, who insisted on anonymity because he is not authorized to speak to the press, says Mathare really suffered over 370 killings.
Lewis Kamau is a Kikuyu but wears the bright orange hat of the Luo candidate, Raila Odinga. Kamau is not crossing party lines; he says the hat protects him from Luo attacks. He says he expects Luos to react negatively if Odinga loses.
"Violence will erupt because of results they don't like," he said. "I know these people. They won't accept the results."
Kamau ? who backs the Kikuyu candidate, Uhuru Kenyatta ? is standing 20 feet from a dirt lot scorched by fire, one of the shacks burned in Luo-on-Kikuyu attacks that began in late December and carried over into January.
"Just the other day they burned here and we didn't retaliate," he said, motioning to the charred lot. "We kept quiet. On Monday after the (election results) announcement, we will be ready for it."
Odinga or Kenyatta must win at least 50 percent of the vote in Monday's election, or the two will go to a second-round runoff, where attention will be even more focused on the two, heightening tensions further.
Many in Mathare, and across town in Nairobi's biggest slum, Kibera, say that Kenyans have learned from the 2007-08 violence, and won't repeat it. But many of those pronouncements come from people who assume their candidate will win.
"I think given the 2007 experience we will accept the results, even if, God forbid, we Luos lose. But I don't see us losing," said Daniel Omondo, an information technology specialist in Mathare.
The Kikuyu-Luo rift goes back decades, to when Odinga's father was asked by British colonialist to be Kenya's prime minister. The elder Odinga declined, saying that Jomo Kenyatta ? Uhuru's father ? was the rightful leader. Kenyatta eventually became president, with Odinga as his vice president. But a few years later Kenyatta forced Odinga out of the government, and the tribes' relations began a long slide downward.
In a small tin shack in Kibera where illegal, home-made whisky is served, one Odinga backer who gave his name as Christian Nyambega said the country needs its political leaders to accept the results and for the voters to remain calm. Then one of his drinking colleagues became agitated at the memory of the disputed 2007 election win of current President Mwai Kibaki, a Kikuyu.
"They're going to steal the vote the way they did for Kibaki. The Kikuyus are not the only tribe in Kenya. We have 42 tribes in Kenya," said the man, who gave his name only as Patrick, saying her feared government retribution.
Of the dozens of worrying cases of political tensions described by the human rights commission on Wednesday was one in which Kikuyu landlords in a low-income area of Nairobi ejected Luo tenants from their rental houses. It also said a member of Kenyatta's party has been linked to the use of gangs to threaten opponents. The report also documented cases of residents voluntarily moving to areas controlled by their own tribe.
One Western embassy official watching election developments closely said he expects less violence this election season than in 2007. But he said if 200 people die in violence, it might have to be considered progress compared with the more than 1,000 deaths in 2007-08.
There are other areas of concern in addition to the Luo-Kikuyu rift in Nairobi. A United Nations official who is watching election developments said that Kenya's Rift Valley has seen an influx of imported guns that didn't exist five years ago, and the Tana River area ? a region that has seen serious tribal fighting over the last year ? is likely to see more deaths.
The official said that violence in Mathare will be the worst in Nairobi, and that members of Amnesty International and Kenya's Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commission have been receiving serious threats. The official said he could not be identified because he was not authorized to share election data.
Since Kenya's last election, the country now has a new constitution, a new judicial system that is lauded as less corrupted, and the police force is being overhauled. Many residents hold out hope that those changes will help ensure that government systems ? instead of massive street violence ? will be used to settle election disputes.
"The violence (in 2007-08) came because of the stealing of votes. The Odinga supporters thought it was rigged, so there was an outcry. This time we have a credible judicial commission and we have seen many changes in police," said Bernard Titus, a Kibera resident.
In addition, four prominent Kenyans ? including Kenyatta and his vice presidential candidate ? face charges at the International Criminal Court over allegations that they orchestrated the 2007 election violence. Some Kenyans believe those charges have reduced the chances that power brokers will hire thugs ? mostly young men and boys from the slums hired for $5 to $10 a day ? and send them into the street.
Grace Kalibo runs a small shop selling basic food goods in Kibera. She attended Sunday's massive peace rally where Odinga and Kenyatta shook hands and pledged peace. She believes Kenya will avoid the massive violence of five years ago. So does her neighbor, Lucas Awol, a 39-year-old bar owner where poor Kibera men gather on Sunday afternoons.
"This time they won't react at all. They are tired of war," said Awol. "This time it will be peaceful. People say so."
___
Associated Press reporter Tom Odula contributed to this report.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/political-tensions-rise-kenya-ahead-election-170011584.html
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Law Firm SEO Tactics to Avoid in 2013 ? Slaw
Over the past year, Google has made a number of significant changes to its delivery of search engine rankings. In light of those changes, law firms that employ various aggressive search marketing tactics need to reconsider them. In this column, I want to highlight some of the major web-spam filters that Google has created and offer some important (and ethical) lessons for maintaining a strong search engine presence.
Let?s start by discussing a couple of those changes.
Penguin and Panda
Major alterations to Google?s ranking methods tend to be given nicknames, kind of like hurricanes ? but for some businesses, these ?filters? on search results can (at least virtually) be just as devastating. In 2012, Google used Penguin and Panda to cull from their search results a number of websites that used questionable methods. Occasionally these filters also caught a few high-quality websites; but for the most part, the new search results were an improvement.
The first of these tweaks, Penguin, went after sites whose inbound link profiles were built around artificial or low-quality links ? websites that had few or no real incoming links or signs of engagement. A firm that built its website marketing around links coming from thousands of unattended (spammy) websites, for example, would be at risk for a Penguin-driven removal of their domain from the search results. Even more blatant examples might include a site that constructed its own network of ?empty? linked websites, or purchased links to such a network from a third party.
The Panda filter, to describe it simply, targeted websites that published (in many cases, mass-published over a short period of time) too much low-quality content ? pure web-spam. These are websites that have been overtly replicated: often built in an automated fashion, with repetitive or mildly tweaked messages. Publishing the same copied material on multiple-domains owned by the same business can now push those domains out of the search results.
Few law firms employ the tactics targeted by either of these filters, but there are still some lessons lawyers can learn:
- You still want fresh inbound links to your website, but buying them is never the answer. Don?t do it.
- Avoid re-publishing the same articles on multiple firm-owned domains. Instead, create a customized summary for each particular audience, and link over to the original piece.
- Websites with unique content that generate a variety of engagement styles (links, comments, social media conversations, etc.) always paint a positive picture with Google.
- Find out who exactly is linking into your firm website. If those links look like spam, they probably are. Reconsider how those links came to be, and whether you?re marketing to the right audience.
Dialed-up Anchor Text Filters for Homepages
One of the hallmark signals for search relevance has long been the words or phrases we make into clickable links. For the past ten years, websites in competitive markets have battled to acquire the most links that utilized their target search phrase, building up what?s called ?link text?.
Abuse and spam? You bet. So Google alleviated the problem by filtering out those sites with excessive ?commercial? link text profiles. But for those firms flirting with the edge of ?optimization?, this kind of filtering remained somewhat rare, and it still worked ? at least until the second half of 2012. Google has now turned up the dial significantly.
Firms that chose to swap and build links with marketing-oriented link text (in some cases, with almost nothing but) have watched their search rankings dip in recent months. Probably the worst affected were new websites under a year old and without any other search signals to offer Google (reflecting a lack of ?domain trust?).
The homepages of some law firms, in my view, could be at a similar risk, and should beware of the link text running into their homepage, because it sends mixed signals to Google. Firm homepages are normally branded around the firm?s name, which is reasonable; but if the links coming in all say ?DUI lawyers? in the link text, those two pieces don?t match ? at least, not in Google?s eyes.
Here at Stem, we?ve been advising our clients to steer clear of commercial link text directed at their homepage. Branded links ? linking on the firm?s name, ?Smith LLP?, for example ? are performing much better. And while pointing some commercial link text at the homepage remains an effective (and safe) approach, and is even somewhat required in competitive markets, lowering the percentage of commercial link text aimed at your firm homepage is smart.
More search lessons for 2013:
- You need to understand which terms and phrases are considered ?commercial? by Google. To do this, conduct searches for your firm?s services and observe the number of paid advertisements displayed.
- Sending mass amounts of commercial link text at a new or unmarketed website is a recipe for disaster.
- Domain age counts. New websites are fragile, and they get clipped by over-optimization filters faster than their older counterparts.
- Build search trust around your firm?s name and your lawyer?s names; then let your practice pages and content deliver commercial search term exposure.
Exact Match Domain Names
I wrote a piece here at Slaw a couple years ago that discussed, among other topics, the effectiveness of commercial keywords in domain names. That approach of registering two or three commercial terms in a domain name, and getting instant results with little effort, is drawing to a close. Those domains targeting commercial search phrases have recently become less effective, and when Google deems domains to be ?low quality?, they may even be filtered out of the search results.
These domain names aren?t necessarily ?dead?, but other measurable signs of engagement are also now required. Simply having a great domain name, alone, is no longer enough to jump to the top of the search rankings. At the very least, having social media presence, and a regular flow of original content (and deep links flowing into that content) is going to be a requirement before these types of sites can rank well. Or, put another way, the playing field has been leveled: there are no more shortcuts to top placement.
More lessons?
- Reduce the number of commercial terms in microsite and blog domains. A maximum of two seems sensible. (avoid: toronto-vancouver-drunk-driving-lawyers.com)
- No hyphens in domain names; this has always looked ?spammy?, and still does.
- Keep the quality signals high: good links come from established organizations who publish on the same topics as your firm does. PageRank isn?t always the best measure, but avoid links from sites with a ?PR0? or ?PR1?.
- And an optional personal tip ? I avoid online press releases for new websites. These releases often get scraped and published as ?instant content? for scam websites, sending a high volume of low-quality links into your new web property.
Conclusion
Remember, Google?s role is to index your website and then measure its relevance against the rest of the web. With billions of websites competing against each other, sites that can demonstrate their audience?s engagement are going to be considered stronger.
Some law firms (and some search consultants) will look at those measurable search signals (links, likes, +1s) and ask, ?How do we get those attributes? At all costs, how much, and how fast can we make that happen?? Not only is this the wrong approach, but it?s the type of manipulative behaviour that Google is now trying to eliminate.
The better approach is to treat these signals as the aftermath of your marketing. SEO, based on long-term thinking, can be truly effective when we make good choices: on publishing, building audiences, coding, classification, proper description, and most important, connecting with people. Many of the issues mentioned in this column are simply the result of short-term thinking and poor marketing choices.
Next column, I?ll turn the tables and look at some of the best SEO investments for 2013.
Source: http://www.slaw.ca/2013/02/27/law-firm-seo-tactics-to-avoid-in-2013/
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