Source: Live Science

Scientists claim to have possibly found what may be the world’s largest dinosaur graveyard.

The dinosaurs may have been part of a mass die-off resulting from a monster storm, comparable to today’s hurricanes, which struck what was then a coastal area.

The findings could help solve a mystery concerning why the badlands of western Canada are so rich in dinosaur fossils.

The roughly 76-million-year-old fossil beds apparently hold thousands of bones over an area of at least 568 acres (2.3 square km), skeletons that belonged to a roughly cow-sized, plant-eating horned dinosaur known as Centrosaurus. This treasure trove provides the first solid evidence that some horned dinosaur herds were much larger than previously thought, with numbers easily in the high hundreds to low thousands, said senior research scientist David Eberth, a paleontologist and geologist at the Royal Tyrrell Museum in Alberta.

The “mega-bonebed,” which consists of 14 smaller bonebeds, lies in northern Alberta near Hilda, Canada, right by the border with Saskatchewan. The graveyard was actually discovered in 1997, but confirmation of the discovery’s size was detailed this month in the book “New Perspectives On Horned Dinosaurs” (Indiana University Press, 2010).

Alberta is extraordinarily rich in fossils, such as those of duck-billed dinosaurs, horned dinosaurs including Triceratops, ankylosaurs, raptors related to Velociraptor, and tyrannosaurids such as Albertosaurus and Tyrannosaurus rex. The area was home to a remarkable diversity of other animals as well, including birds, pterosaurs, alligators, turtles, lizards and mammals - in fact, scientists recently found mammal tooth marks on dinosaur bones in Alberta.

Thousands die in flood

Back when these centrosaurs lived, Alberta was warm and lush, and encompassed lowlands on the western coast of the Western Interior Seaway, a vast inland sea that divided what is now North America in half. The way the fossils are linked together in the same layers of earth within these bonebeds suggests all these centrosaurs were wiped out simultaneously.

The likely culprit in this scenario was a catastrophic storm, which could quickly have routinely made the waters flood up as high as 12 to 15 feet (3.6 to 4.6 meters), if experiences with modern floodplains are any guide.

“The flooding could have reached more than 100 kilometers (60 miles) from the shoreline,” Eberth told LiveScience. “The landscape basically just drowns.”

The flat area would have provided no high ground for escape, leading to thousands of animals drowning in the rising waters.

“It’s unlikely that these animals could tread water for very long, so the scale of the carnage must have been breathtaking,” Eberth said. “The evidence suggests that after the flood, dinosaur scavengers reentered the area, trampling and smashing bones in their attempt to feast on the rotting remains.”

Fossil mystery solved

These storms could also help explain why fossils are so abundant in the badlands of western Canada overall, “and why they are often found preserved so exquisitely,” Eberth said.

Coastal floodplains such as those seen in modern Bangladesh can cover vast areas, with flooding killing hundreds of thousands of livestock, not to mention the human tragedies that occur.

“Because of their size and the scale of the flooding, dinosaurs could not escape the coastal floodwaters and would have been killed in large numbers,” Eberth explained. “In contrast, fish, small reptiles, mammals, and birds may have been able to escape such seasonal catastrophes by retreating to quiet water areas, the safety of trees and burrows, or simply by flying away.”

The researchers now hope to take lessons they have learned in Alberta to compare it to other parts of the world in an effort to pinpoint signs of past catastrophes elsewhere.

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My Take: I’d trade my job as a Los Angeles court reporter any day to go off to Canada to study dinosaurs. Better yet, I’d get all the Los Angeles court reporters I know to quit their jobs and go with me. How much fun would it to be to find such rich, historical details about these ancient creatures? My son has been a huge dinosaur fan for years and at 10 he’s still going strong on them. He’s had, over the years, different custom wall words and dinosaur decals on his bedroom wall. He has always had wall letters on the walls, but he switches out posters of dinosaurs and other things he’s fascinated by, and usually they have something to do with dinosaurs or science.

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Lone Star Legal

Austin divorce attorneys can help you and your spouse settle quickly on an amicable settlement. Before you call one, though, consider the services of a qualified and reputable Austin family law attorney who is experienced with mediation. Studies show that divorces handled through mediators vs. divorce lawyers in court are often less acrimonious for all involved in the post marital world.

SOURCE: AFP

Australia’s first woman prime minister has promised to safeguard her government’s reforms in education, health and industrial law.

Julia Gillard had been deputy to Prime Minister Kevin Rudd since their Labor Party swept to power in a landslide election victory in 2007.

In a sudden move that took many government lawmakers by surprise, she challenged Rudd late Wednesday to hold a leadership ballot only month out from an election expected this year.

Rudd acknowledged that the party’s factional power brokers had lost faith in him and did not contest the leadership at a party meeting on Thursday, leaving Gillard to be elected unopposed.

“I asked my colleagues to make a leadership change … because I believed that a good government was losing its way,” Gillard told reporters.

“And because I believe fundamentally that the basic education and health services that Australians rely on and their decent treatment at work are at risk at the next election,” she said.

“I’m well aware that I am the first woman to serve in this role, but can I say to you, I didn’t set out to crash my head on any glass ceilings,” she added.

Gillard and her new deputy, Wayne Swan, were to be sworn into their offices on Thursday by Australia’s first woman Governor-General, Quentin Bryce, within hours of the ballot.

Other reports of a criminal lawyer might have told a different story, but this is one for the record books.

Swan retains his key financial portfolio as treasurer and will to fly to Canada on Friday for a summit of Group of 20 major economies in Rudd’s place. He was also elected unopposed. Gillard has yet to announce any other ministers in her new cabinet.

An emotional Rudd, flanked by his wife and three children, gave his final speech in the prime minister’s court yard at Parliament House on Thursday, during which he rated keeping Australia out of recession at the top of his list of achievements during his short tenure.

He said he would contest the next election and continue to serve his party.

Rudd had ridden high in opinion polls as one of the most popular Australian prime ministers of modern times until he made major policy backflips, including a decision in April to shelve plans to make Australia’s worst polluters pay for their carbon gas emissions.

Gillard signaled no major policy changes during her first press conference, saying that negotiations with the mining industry would continue over the government’s plan to introduce a new tax on mineral profits after the next election.

But she would end an advertising campaign that is promoting the tax, keeping a Labor promise that Rudd broke to never use taxpayers’ money for political advertising.

John Wanna, an Australian National University political scientist, suspected that Gillard might push for an earlier withdrawal of Australia’s 1,550 troops from Afghanistan in a bid to reverse a swing of left-wing voters away from the government.

She is from a left-wing faction of Labor, while Rudd had been supported by the party’s right faction.

Gillard was likely to be less focused on foreign policy than Rudd, a Mandarin-speaking former diplomat to Beijing who campaigned to create a new forum for Asia-Pacific nations and for an Australian seat on the United Nations Security Council, Wanna said.

“He has been trying to get Australia punching above its weight in terms of international relations when a lot of the world thought of us as another state of the United States,” Wanna said.

Wanna said dumping Rudd for Gillard months out from an election was risky for the government.

“We’ve got rid of a successful prime minister after two and a half years and we’ve never done that before in the past,” Wanna said.

Gillard was born in Barry, Wales, in 1961, the second daughter of a family who migrated to Adelaide when she was 4 years old in search of a warmer climate for her lung complaint.

A former successful lawyer, she has been attacked by some opponents as unsuitable to lead because she is childless and therefore out of touch with most Australians.

Despite Australia’s weathering the global downturn, recent polling puts the center-left government neck-and-neck with the conservative opposition. One poll earlier this month showed Labor trailing the opposition for the first time in more than four years.

Rudd is a Labor hero, having led the party to victory at 2007 elections after 11 years in opposition

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MY TAKE: In America, women can become a high-paid white collar defense lawyer or even the best known collaborative lawyer. But for some reason we just can’t seem to elect a woman president. Perhaps 2012 will be the year that all those female criminal lawyers and the high-paid women who thought they would be a divorce lawayer for life will come out of the woodwork and help get Hillary or Sarah or some other woman into the Oval Office so we can start celebrating the end of an era and the beginning of some real cultural evolution.

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SOURCE: AFP

Erin Jacobs knows dediation, and she has it for MJ bad.

Since then, the singer’s notoriously loyal followers have traded vigils at the hospital and family home for pilgrimages to his tomb and protests at the courthouse where the doctor charged with killing Jackson will be tried.

“It’s absolutely humbling that he has so much support from fans,” Jacobs said in a recent interview.

A travel agent who lives in Yorba Linda, Calif., Jacobs made her first 50-mile trip to the Forest Lawn cemetery in Glendale, Calif., shortly after Jackson was buried there last September. It was a personal trip.

These days, Jacobs has gone on to coordinate monthly pilgrimages to the cemetery by the Official Michael Jackson Fans of Southern California.

Hundreds are expected at Forest Lawn on Friday to commemorate Jackson’s death. The singer’s tomb inside the cemetery’s gothic Great Mausoleum remains closed to the public, and Friday’s memorial won’t change that.

But through the efforts of Jacobs and others, it’s become a place where Jackson’s international fan base comes to grieve. Many who can’t make it in person send letters, poems, artwork and other gifts so that Jacobs and others can deliver them to the cemetery, where they are placed at the singer’s tomb until new items arrive.

“A year later, it feels like it was yesterday,” Jacobs said.

Another focal point for Jackson fans has become the downtown Los Angeles courthouse where Dr. Conrad Murray will be tried on an involuntary manslaughter charge for Jackson’s death.

On hearing days, fans wearing sequined gloves and T-shirts calling for justice wait for hours clutching signs denouncing Murray and shout at him for the brief moments it takes him to walk from the curb to the front door.

Johnell Johnson, 19, an actress from Fontana, Calif., woke up at 4:30 a.m. to get to the courthouse in time for a recent midday hearing in Murray’s case. Wearing a vintage pin from Jackson’s “Bad” era, Johnson said it was important for her to be there to support Jackson’s family.

It’s a sentiment echoed by many others who try to attend the proceedings. Only a handful are allowed into the courtroom, but others are content to shout their support to Jackson’s parents and siblings, who occasionally stop to hug or speak to fans. At the hearing earlier this month, the singer’s mother, Katherine, carried roses that fans handed her.

Fans at the cemetery Friday hope to bring more than 3,000 roses, Jacobs said, although officials don’t want the memorial to include the release of doves or balloons, as was originally planned.

None of this fan passion is really new. Jackson’s supporters have long been among the most devoted and vocal of any entertainer’s in recent memory. More than 1,200 people were outside the Santa Maria, Calif., courthouse in 2005 when the singer was acquitted of all counts in a child-molestation trial. Last year thousands flocked to the hospital where Jackson was pronounced dead, and throngs remained outside the family’s home for weeks.

Friday’s anniversary is ostensibly a fan affair — the singer’s estate, which controls Jackson’s music and likeness — has not sanctioned any events, and while some family members have thrown support behind a paid gala in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Saturday night, there hasn’t been a formal family announcement of tribute.

No word from whether not the medial supply companies or other businesses in the area will participate.

Several of those who protested outside the courthouse June 14 were planning a variety of events, from the staging of a massive “Thriller” tribute to a rally seeking justice planned for downtown Los Angeles on June 26.

Taaj Malik, who is organizing the rally and maintains several fan groups on Facebook, was among the first fans to arrive outside the singer’s rented mansion when news of his hospitalization broke. She recalled recently that she had tears in her eyes as she traveled the 50 miles from neighboring Orange County.

A Jackson fan since her childhood 30 years ago in the United Kingdom, Malik said she prefers to focus on gaining justice for Jackson than on her grief. “I’ve ignored it,” said Malik, who along with Jacobs is a member of the group Justice 4 MJ. “I’ve blocked it. I refuse to let it come in to me.”

Jacobs, 43, who traded a brand-new Beach Cruiser her mother scrimped to buy her for tickets for the Jackson’s Victory Tour in 1984, said she expects fans from around the world to fly in for the Forest Lawn memorial on Friday. Some will board party buses the next day for a trip to Neverland Ranch, which is now shuttered but still owned by the estate.

“The fans who are on the Internet are the fans that are the die-hards,” Jacobs said. “They are the fans who related to Michael on a different level.”

That’s certainly true for Johnson, 19, who summed up the fan family as an extension of Jackson’s eccentric life.

“Michael Jackson has always been misunderstand and I think we as his fans are as well,” she said. “People don’t understand our love for Michael Jackson, so to be around people who are just like us, it humbles us.”

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MY TAKE: Tried to watch the MJ movie the other night and found myself bored so I switched over to play blackjack online. There are some great casinos online by the way where you can play for real money or just for fun. I frankly play for fun. I don’t want to end up like others who have had to put their Phoenix homes for sale on the market because they gambled away their mortgage payments. By the way: if you need a good list of Phoenix Arizona (AZ) realtors, check Realtor.com, the country’s leading association for Realtors.

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OTHER RESOURCES

Creating Items in Minecraft

There are some great options for obtaining different items in Minecraft and if a person decides to play Survival Mode, there are some neat resources that are available such as weapons, armor and food. Much of the space on a Minecraft hosting server will be filled up with the space it takes to store such digital information. One of the neat things about playing a game where items are acquired is that they can eventually be transformed into new items that are better. These better items are things like mining picks that get the job done faster.

Air Moving

Source: Associated Press

Russia’s Dmitry Medvedev landed in California recently hoping to lure talent and money from the high-tech capital to help his oil-dependent country move further toward the establishment of its own high tech corridor.

Two years into his presidency, the 44-year-old, tech-savvy Kremlin chief still lives in the shadow of his predecessor Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, but that hasn’t stopped him from strenuously pursuing pet projects, the most grandiose of which is the creation of Russia’s own Silicon Valley outside Moscow.

But to succeed, Medvedev knows he needs to attract some of the best minds and investors in the United States to a project that many Russian businessmen are already skeptical about.

“The future of our country, and its competitiveness on international markets, to a large degree depends upon the results of cooperating with foreign companies and universities,” the Russian president told an international business forum in St. Petersburg last week.

Tech and Protection
The key tech areas of interest focus on managed security services. Businesses in Russia are in critical need of improving their standards for Internet security and network detection system requirements for government and public offices.

On Tuesday, Medvedev touched down in San Francisco where he was greeted by California first lady Maria Shriver and former U.S. Secretary of State George Shultz. They were scheduled to attend a reception along with Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger Tuesday night at San Francisco’s Fairmont Hotel.

Besides exchanging pleasantries, both Schwarzenegger and Medvedev expressed a mutual desire to improve their respective economies through trade missions and delegations.

“I think this will be very, very beneficial for the State of California and also for Russia,” Schwarzenegger said.

Medvedev, through a translator, added, “The idea that you mentioned about the creation of a special team that would be able to establish and maintain constant contact is also very important.”

While in California, Medvedev will also meet with Twitter’s founders, and give a speech at Stanford University. He will then fly to Washington to meet President Barack Obama, and from there the two will go to Toronto for the G-8 and G-20 summits.

But it is the front leg of the trip that has deep personal significance for Medvedev, who wants to refashion Russia from a raw materials supplier into a high-tech, intellectual oasis where innovation thrives.

Since the Soviet Union dissolved nearly two decades ago, thousands of Russia’s brightest minds emigrated to work in scientific centers in the U.S., Britain and Israel. Now Russia’s leadership wants to entice them back and keep ambitious minds at home.

In four months the Kremlin has lavished an “innograd” — or innovation city — project with budget allocations of hundreds of millions of dollars, attracted entrepreneurs and scientists, and last week in St. Petersburg secured a promise from Silicon Valley’s own Cisco Systems Inc. to participate in the ambitious venture.

However, despite numerous tax breaks — companies are expected to enjoy an unprecedented 10-year grace period — potential investors are likely to share the same concerns as many Russian businessmen: that the project will be nothing more than a huge real estate project.

“I’m sure they will build everything that’s needed, but I doubt there will be any innovations or ideas there because the government glosses over the details,” said Yaroslav Petrichkovsky, director of Elvees, a microchip producer and safety systems designer. “Like in other cases, they decided everything by themselves.”

The promise of immense state investments — $500 million alone has been budgeted next year — and unprecedented tax benefits have prompted many to dub Skolkovo an enormous black hole, considering that special tax zones in Russia often have been a magnet for murky capital while producing little value.

High-tech businesses have long asked for financing for research and tax breaks, but they have tended to encounter risk-adverse bureaucrats wary of venture capital and failure. Analysts warn that without genuine reform of Russia’s tremendous state machine, a mega-project like Skolkovo will be doomed before it ever gets off the ground.

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My Take: I’d like to see the country get more technologically advanced, whether that’s working closely with CD duplication service or manufacturing service carts for the tech sector. It doesn’t matter. The further the country does move away from the oil industry for income the better. If they have to focus on CD duplication or software downloading tools for iPads and iPhones, I don’t care. They can make the next big rolling tool cart for computer manufacturers in China and it would still put them on the path to change.

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Obtaining Space on a Server

There are a lot of options that go along with server hosting these days and every company will usually try to offer something different to distinguish their services from competitors, but it’s not always the easiest thing to figure out if cheap dedicated servers are really worth the low cost or if there is enough room being offered for the price. And conversely, the same could be said for companies that are offering a lot more room on a server alongside a healthier cost to rent the space each month. Companies do tend to grow so negotiating a lot of room is important.

Source: Live Science

New research shows women are more likely to suffer from depression and stress than men and the reasons may be biological.

The new study, done on rats, finds females are more sensitive to low levels of an important stress hormone and less able to adapt to high levels of it than males. Since rats do have some of the same neural systems we do, the rat research could have implications for humans, though stress in humans is more complicated than in rodents, the researchers say.

It has long been recognized that women have a higher incidence of depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, and other anxiety disorders, said study researcher Rita Valentino, a behavioral neuroscientist at The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. But the underlying biological mechanisms for that difference have been unknown.

Valentino’s research focuses on corticotropin-releasing factor (CRF), a hormone released in the brain in responses to stress, in both humans and rats. CRF is a neurotransmitter, meaning it helps communicate signals between brain cells. Some neurons “send out” the CRF signal while others contain receptors to receive it.

Valentino and her colleagues analyzed the brains of rats as they responded to a swim stress test, aimed to trigger the release of the CRF hormone.

Exercise is Key
Medial experts all agree: reductions in stress and exercise, whether it’s Yoga, the Alexander technique, or walking five miles a day. The benefits of a little bit of exercise go a long way.

In female rats, neurons had receptors for CRF that bound more tightly to the hormone than in male rats, and so were more responsive to CRF.

Also, after exposure to stress, male rats had an adaptive response, called internalization, in their brain cells. Their cells reduced the number of CRF receptors, and became less responsive to the hormone. In female rats this adaptation did not occur.

“This is an animal study, and we cannot say that the biological mechanism is the same in people,” Valentino said, adding that other mechanisms play a role in human stress responses, including the actions of other hormones. However, “researchers already know that CRF regulation is disrupted in stress-related psychiatric disorders, so this research may be relevant to the underlying human biology,” she said.

In addition much of the previous research on stress disorders in animal models used only male rodents, so important sex differences may have gone undetected, Valentino said. “Pharmacology researchers investigating CRF antagonists as drug treatments for depression may need to take into account gender differences at the molecular level,” she said.

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My Take: I tried taking classes once on the Alexander technique Brooklyn and frankly, I had more fun visiting my Virginia dentist for a root canal. Chantilly VA dental services aren’t that bad by the way, and, while I’m kidding slightly here, I do think the classes I took could have been more interesting. I guess I’m a speed junky: I need fast-paced exercise like running to keep me hooked in.

By the way, other things stress us out, too, especially men and those who are going bald. But don’t fear: the follicular unit transplantation surgeon can help you. If you are in Arizona, Phoenix hair transplant specialists are equipped to help you restore hair growth naturally.

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Strategies for Elder Care

Not every child is able to provide full care options for their parent and not every parent has the sort of funds available to fund care of their own and this is why some families have started to consider certain types of Massachusetts home care that would allow a family to benefit from some in home visits that would simply offer assistance to a family who had an elderly parent who was not in need of full time care but needed regular visits from a health care professional. Some people have found that this type of care is much cheaper overall.

Debt problems

Harassment attorneys are supposed to help you if you find yourself a victim harassment by debt collectors. For a comprehensive FAQ on FDCPA attorneys should be doing for you, click here.

Building Issues

Contact a Denver contract attorney if you think the home your are having built is not being handled under the guidelines of the law. Denver CO construction law lawyers can assist you with information about building codes, fees, and other issues.

VA Maids and Dependability

While all cleaning and maid services will offer to clean the home, you should search for VA maids who can offer an established set of guarantees alongside their cleaning service. Beyond the standard guarantee of total satisfaction, a maid service should also be an affordable service with rates that are easy to understand. In addition, a cleaning service should be fully licensed, insured, and bonded to protect the employees of the maid service and ensure your home and family is protected as well. All maid services should also offer employees that have undergone background checks and are a valuable part of the working family.

Source: Los Angeles Times

A second investigative agency will be looking into Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa’s practice of accepting thousands of dollars in free tickets.

David Demerjian, head deputy of Los Angeles Dist. Atty. Steve Cooley’s Public Integrity Division, said he had contacted the City Ethics Commission — which is conducting its own investigation of the tickets — after receiving a complaint that mentioned articles about the practice by the Los Angeles Times and by KTTV-TV Channel 11.

As part of the inquiry, Demerjian said, prosecutors will try to determine whether Villaraigosa should have disclosed to the commission that he received the tickets.

“Obviously, the issue is whether the mayor received gifts which he failed to report,” said Demerjian, who added: “At this point, I cannot say whether or not a crime has occurred.”

The issue has dogged the mayor since news reports began to surface four weeks ago.

On Tuesday, as reporters followed him from a news conference devoted to environmental technology to a summit for entertainment industry executives, Villaraigosa faced new questions about his decision to accept tickets to as many as 80 sporting events, awards shows and concerts over the last five years — and why his office has so few records to document his attendance.

State and city laws require politicians to report gifts worth of more than $50 and to say who gave them. State law prohibits them from accepting more than $420 in gifts from any one source in a year.

Villaraigosa has acknowledged receiving free tickets but has staunchly defended his actions by arguing that, under state law, elected officials do not have to declare tickets as “gifts” if the official is conducting public business or has a ceremonial role at the event.

Villaraigosa contends that he was promoting and representing Los Angeles when he attended the events. On at least some of those occasions, he presented decorative city proclamations to athletes, entertainers or organizers.

“We stand by the position that we were acting in our official capacity,” he told reporters as he walked out of City Hall on Tuesday.

The Times reported two weeks ago that the mayor’s lawyer, Brian Currey, had not found records that spelled out who paid for the mayor’s tickets. So far, Villaraigosa’s office has confirmed that he paid for a single event — a U2 concert at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena.

Currey said that because the events are exempt from the state’s reporting requirements, there was no need for Villaraigosa to keep a log showing who the contributors were. “My understanding is that in many instances, the mayor does not know exactly who the donors of the tickets were,” he added.

A spokesman for Anschutz Entertainment Group told The Times last month that Villaraigosa has watched games at the company’s luxury suite at Staples Center on occasions when he performed official city business. On Tuesday, Michael Roth, AEG’s vice president of communications, said the mayor also sat in the company’s suite at the Nokia Theatre, which AEG also owns.

“I am not aware that we have provided tickets in any location other than our suite for the mayor’s use,” said Roth.

The mayor’s practices stand in contrast to his predecessor, former Mayor James Hahn, who publicly reported tickets he received to similar sporting events and award shows, including the Academy Awards, Dodgers and Angels games and a UCLA- USC football game. Billionaire New York Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg pays his own way to entertainment and sporting events, including Yankees games.

Villaraigosa’s official calendar listed more than a dozen concerts since 2005, including performances by Beyoncé, Shakira and Mary J. Blige. Currey said Villaraigosa’s staff informed him that the concert tickets were provided by the concert promoter, the artist or the venue.

In the case of athletic events, Currey said the mayor’s staff told him the tickets were paid for by various sources, including friends, the team or the owner of a stadium, such as Anschutz Entertainment Group. In the dozen instances when he attended Dodgers games, he sat in the box of the team’s owners, Frank and Jamie McCourt.

“None of those [games] qualified as reportable gifts,” Currey added.

That argument drew criticism from Walter Moore, who ran against Villaraigosa unsuccessfully in 2009 and filed a complaint with the Ethics Commission about his practice of accepting free entry to various events. Moore contends that city law sets a higher standard than the state, barring elected officials from receiving gifts of more than $100 from companies with business pending at City Hall.

Both the Los Angeles Dodgers and AEG have had business before the city on issues ranging from shuttle buses to tax breaks. “Complying with the state law is not the same as complying with the local law,” Moore said.

The Ethics Commission opened an investigation into Villaraigosa’s tickets earlier this month, sending the mayor a letter on June 2 asking for a series of records. Officials with that agency would not say whether the city’s law takes precedence over the state’s gift regulations.

“Any time that there is an intersection between state and city law, we would recommend that someone request advice from us,” said Ethics Commission spokeswoman Jennifer Bravo. “No one has requested formal written advice about this topic.”

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My Take: I don’t know what Los Angeles is all about, but I do know that this mayor were in the South, he’d be scrutinized until the truth came out and that would be it. Family attorneys, best trained family lawyer, these guys all understand the nature of kickbacks, and this story smells like there a lot of them tossed to the L.A. mayor. A child support lawyer would have trouble possibly sorting out city kick back schemes, but most attorneys understand that big businesses often pay their top officials for construction contracts and other perks ranging from Louisville KY low rate mortgage financing on condos to box seats at the Rose Bowl. If you want legitimate KY refinancing on a commercial loan you are supposed to go the route of the bank, just like every other borrower. But cities are often treated like they are operating outside the sphere of legal issues.

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Getting Help
Bankruptcy is a financial life issue that today’s economy has made more commonplace. If you feel you have nowhere to turn take the first step and call the offices of a goods bankruptcy lawyer. If you’ve been injured, you can also rely upon the services of a car accidents lawyer, but you have to make the first call to take advantage of their skills and services. If you’re further up in Canada and got a speeding ticket Ottawa style and involved in an accident in the process, you may want to contact a Toronto criminal lawyer. Speeding isn’t a felony, but if you’ve been in an accident and there is drinking involved, that is.

Cited: The Huffington Post

With the dealine for obtaining government home-buying incentives builders are seeing fewer applications for new homes, and it’s hurting.

Home construction and applications for building permits sank in May, overshadowing favorable reports on manufacturing and wholesale inflation.

Fewer homes mean fewer jobs. Construction fuels a broad swath of industries across the economy. Yet double-digit unemployment is among the main reasons people have passed on buying new homes. Even with near-record-low mortgage rates, the industry is struggling.

“The economy is growing and the housing market is still in recession,” said Eugenio Aleman, senior economist with Wells Fargo Securities. “It;s not going to contribute to growth, but it is not going to pull the economy back down.”

Overall, new home and apartment construction fell 10 percent in May to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 593,000, the Commerce Department said Wednesday. April’s figure was revised downward to 659,000.

Applications for new building permits – a sign of future activity – sank 5.9 percent to an annual rate of 574,000. That was the lowest level in a year.

Builders are scaling back now that tax credits of up to $8,000 have expired. The biggest evidence of that trend: the number of new single-family homes tumbled 17 percent, the largest monthly drop since January 1991.

Steve Romeyn, managing partner of Windsong Properties in the Atlanta area, said the tax credits helped buyers sell their homes and move to his company’s retirement communities.

Now that the tax credits are gone, “I think we’re going to slip back and not be able to maintain the pace of the first half of the year,” he said.

But some builders see opportunity in the down market. Andrew Zuckerman, CEO of Zuckerman Homes in Coconut Creek, Fla., said his company is purchasing land and plans to develop it as early as winter.

“We think now is a good time to buy,” Zuckerman said. “We think the market is slowly stabilizing.”

The poor report on housing came despite more promising reports on the economy. Inflation at the wholesale level remains tame and industrial production rose for the third straight month.

Output at the nation’s factories, mines and utilities climbed 1.2 percent in May, the Federal Reserve said Wednesday. Factory production rose 0.9 percent. Utility production jumped 4.8 percent, thanks to warm weather that prompted people to crank up their air conditioners. Mining was the only component that lagged.

Wholesale prices actually fell for a second straight month in May. But the 0.3 percent dip was pulled down by a 7 percent drop in gasoline prices and a 7.4 percent fall in home heating oil prices. Core inflation, which excludes energy and food, rose 0.2 percent in May. It is up just 1.3 percent over the past 12 months.

Falling energy costs are expected to keep inflation low in June. Gasoline costs are down significantly from a month ago. The nationwide average for regular gasoline is $2.70 currently, down from $2.87 a month ago, according to AAA’s Daily Fuel Gauge Report.

Food costs dropped 0.6 percent, the biggest decline since July. The decreases were led by an 18 percent drop in the cost of fresh vegetables. But vegetable prices had been driven higher because of freezes earlier in the year in Florida.

The continued absence of inflationary pressures means that the Federal Reserve, which meets next week, can keep interest rates low to provide support for the economic recovery.

Wall Street appeared to show little concern with the housing figures. The Dow Jones industrial average edged up nearly 19 points in afternoon trading.

The rate of home building is still up about 41 percent from the bottom in April 2009. But it’s down 70 percent from the decade’s peak in January 2006.

In a typical economic recovery, the construction sector provides much of the fuel. But that hasn’t happened this time. Developers are trying to sell a glut of homes built during the boom years. And they must compete against foreclosed homes selling at deep discounts. As a result, new home sales made up about 7 percent of the housing market last year, down from about 15 percent before the bust.

Each new home built creates the equivalent of three jobs for a year and generates about $90,000 in taxes paid to local and federal authorities, according to the National Association of Home Builders. The impact is felt across multiple industries, from makers of faucets and dishwashers to lumber yards, but it has weakened in recent years.

Spending on residential construction and remodeling made up only about 2.4 percent of the nation’s economic activity in the first quarter of the year. That’s down from a peak of more than 6 percent during the housing market’s boom years.

Technology Helps but not enough

Homebuilders have advanced technologies these days, including construction estimating software programs that allow them to communicate online with architects and construction service providers. But that doesn’t change the numbers.

Homebuilders are feeling less confident in the recovery now that government incentives for buyers have expired. The National Association of Home Builders said Tuesday its housing market index fell in June after two straight months of increases.

New homes sales rose nearly 15 percent in April. That followed a nearly 30 percent surge in March, the biggest monthly increase in 47 years.

The tax credits expired on April 30. Buyers who signed contracts before the deadline have until June 30 to complete their sales and qualify for incentives.

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My Take: I can tell by the slowdown in building that new home construction as not picked up. There are a lot of homes half built in sections of my city with no front door or roofs on them. They may be slated to get some fancy decorative glass door once completed, but many of these homes look like they’ve just been halted half way through construction. I’ve heard builders have new technologies, like onscreen takeoff software and other programs that help them build more confidentially and estimate costs more accurately. But the economy can’t be matched when it comes to technology.

By the way, if you already own a home in the DC area and are looking for the best housecleaning DC has to offer, be sure and ask for references. Even the best cleaning services Fairfax should be ready to give you the names and contact information for at least two or three satisfied customers.

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Most Valuable Wood

The Midwest has a number of amazing tree species that are valuable to the lumber industry in that part of the country and one of the most popular is that of black walnut lumber, which as far as the price per board foot is concerned, this type of wood is not only in high demand but has remained in high demand even through the recession. Some of the reasons why this wood has remained so popular are because of the amazing combination of strength and durability that this wood has offered people who utilize it for things like furniture.

Workwear Central
Carhartt is not as well known as Dickies. But did you know that Carhartt clothing company makes some pretty cool shirts and pants that are very similar to the workwear fashion kids are sporting these days? If you’re into the fireman off from a long shift look, you can get it here. You can also get great deals on industrial boots and hats.

Fastener Material

The choice of the material of a fastener is based on factors like the environment, weight, magnetic properties, stresses etc. Some of the common metals and alloys used in the manufacture of fasteners are steel, aluminum, brass, copper, nickel, titanium, and stainless steel. Usually fasteners are classified on the basis of their application. Two very broad categories that everyone knows about are nails and stainless screws or threaded fasteners. There are also stainless steel bolts and rivets. Other methods of joining materials are welding and soldering. Because fasteners are used in a number of applications, their material varies with that application.

Benefits of Pre-Engineered Steel

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Source: Associated Press

U.S. manufacturing regions are reportedly suffering the biggest population losses as people search elsewhere for jobs in the sluggish economy

New census estimates for 2009 highlight the continuing effects of the recession on the nation’s cities.

The figures show Cleveland had the largest numerical decline in residents, dropping 2,658, or nearly 1 percent. It was followed by Detroit, which lost 1,713 people, and Flint, Mich., down 1,382.

Other losers include Baltimore, Buffalo, N.Y., and Pittsburgh, as well as the Florida cities of Cape Coral and St. Petersburg, two retirement destinations on the Gulf Coast. They declined as more older Americans stayed put in California, the Northeast and Texas.

“Many baby boomers and young adults are still in a holding pattern,” said Mark Mather, associate vice president at the nonprofit Population Reference Bureau. “They are staying close to big cities where most jobs are located, waiting for the economy and housing market to bounce back before they make their next move.”

The numbers reflect an overall trend in which jobs have become a predominant factor in U.S. migration as the government winds down its high-stakes 2010 census count. Growth in once-torrid regions in the South and West such as Arizona, Nevada and Florida is slowing due to the housing crunch, while many big cities are gaining as they hold onto more residents.

Job access across the country has been shifting with new technologies, too. For example, there are more jobs security guard services in Roseville CA today thanks to the increased number of high tech firms in that part of the state. You can train in about a week to become a Sacramento CA unarmed security guard, but to find a job in a city like Detroit could take a year or more.

In all, four of the 10 fastest-growing cities in 2009 were in Texas, which saw substantial population gains due to a stronger labor market and immigrant growth. Frisco, a bedroom community outside of Dallas, ranked at the top, growing 6.2 percent to 102,412 people. Other Texas gainers were McKinney, Round Rock and Lewisville, increasing between 3.3 percent and 5.5 percent.

In contrast, growth in Phoenix, Atlanta, Albuquerque, N.M., Las Vegas and Jacksonville, Fla., slowed by as much as 2.4 percentage points since 2006. Those cities were victims of a foreclosure crisis that made it harder for new residents to move in.

“Steady growth will make Texas cities the big winners when the 2010 census comes out next year,” said William H. Frey, a demographer at Brookings Institution.

The Washington, D.C., region continued its rapid growth in 2009, boosted largely by federal government jobs. Alexandria and Arlington, both located in Virginia near the nation’s capital, each added more than 3 percent to rank as the fifth and seventh fastest-growing cities, respectively.

Other findings:

–New Orleans was the fourth fastest-growing city in 2009, rising 5.4 percent from the previous year. Still, its population of 354,850 residents lagged its pre-Hurricane Katrina level of roughly 485,000 in 2000. The city’s population dipped in 2006 to about 210,000.

–Philadelphia added to gains after successfully challenging its 2008 census estimates as too low. Its population in 2009 increased to 1.55 million. Last December, the Census Bureau increased the 2008 estimate by 93,000 people to 1.54 million after the city complained it was being routinely undercounted. Philadelphia remains the sixth largest city, having been surpassed by Phoenix in 2007.

–New York was the nation’s most populous city, with 8.4 million residents. It was followed by Los Angeles, Chicago and Houston. Others in the top 10 included San Antonio; San Diego, Calif.; Dallas; and San Jose, Calif.

The numbers are the last estimates for cities before the 2010 census is completed later this year. Data from that official head count will be used to redraw legislative boundaries and distribute more than $400 billion in federal aid.

The Census Bureau estimated annual population totals as of July 1, 2009, for cities, defined by boundaries of incorporated areas. The agency used local records of births and deaths, Internal Revenue Service records of people moving within the U.S. and census statistics on immigrants.

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My Take: I think if I was to have to move I’d go the east coast and train to work as a computer repair expert. I hear computer service companies are hiring there because of the demand for trained tech pros. I’m also into animals and have considered starting my own company focusing on problem solving dog training. I hear a lot of people in this economy have shifted to self-employment and I could see myself working with dogs, specifically police dog training.

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Strongest Job Gains

For people who have been unemployed, it can be helpful to investigate which industries have otherwise been popular as far as adding jobs and staff is concerned and in looking at 2011, most staffing solutions and hiring companies were quite interested in finding workers for such industries as manufacturing because there has been a nice increase of the amount of purchases overall in many industries which has required more manufacturing take place. There has been a nice drop in the amount of pessimism associated with the health of the economy which has led to an overall positive feeling regarding the economic recovery.

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Source: TIME

With all of the technology at our disposal that aims to make us more connected, research shows we are more disconnected than ever.

In a Duke University study, researchers found that from 1985 to 2004, the percentage of people who said there was no one with whom they discussed important matters tripled, to 25%; the same study found that overall, Americans had one-third fewer friends and confidants than they did two decades ago.

Another recent study, by researchers at the University of Michigan, found that college students today have significantly less empathy - the ability to understand and share the feelings of another - than students of generations past did. The reason, psychologists speculate, may have something to do with our increasing reliance on digital communication and other forms of new media.

It’s possible that instead of fostering real friendships off-line, e-mail and social networking may take the place of them - and the distance inherent in screen-only interactions may breed feelings of isolation or a tendency to care less about other people. After all, if you don’t feel like dealing with a friend’s problem online, all you have to do is log off.

The problem is, as empathy wanes, so does trust. And without trust, you can’t have a cohesive society. Consider the findings of a new study co-authored by Kevin Rockmann of George Mason University and Gregory Northcraft, a professor of executive leadership at the University of Illinois who specializes in workplace collaboration. Northcraft says high-tech communications like e-mail and (to a lesser extent) videoconferencing - which are sometimes known as “lean communication” because they have fewer cues like eye contact and posture for people to rely on - strip away the personal interaction needed to breed trust. In a business setting - as in all other social relationships outside the workplace - trust is a necessary condition for effective cooperation within a group. “Technology has made us much more efficient but much less effective,” said Northcraft in a statement. “Something is being gained, but something is being lost. The something gained is time, and the something lost is the quality of relationships. And quality of relationships matters.”

In Rockmann and Northcraft’s study, 200 students were divided into teams and asked to manage two complicated projects: one having to do with nuclear disarmament; the other, price fixing. Some groups communicated via e-mail, some via videoconference and others face to face. In the end, those who met in person showed the most trust and most effective cooperation; those using e-mail were the least able to work together and get the job done. (Let’s hope they weren’t the ones working on disarmament.)

Northcraft thinks this is because real-life meetings, during which participants can see how engaged their colleagues are, breed more trust. Over e-mail, meanwhile, confirmation of hard work gets lost, which tends to encourage mutual slacking off. “If I don’t think you are taking a task seriously, then I won’t either,” Northcraft says. “And e-mail doesn’t allow us to verify that you are taking it seriously.”

So even if a colleague is working hard, his e-mail correspondent doesn’t know it and is thus less likely to work hard himself. In the study, the groups who met by videoconference did better than the e-mailers, who tended to shirk their responsibilities - suggesting that visual cues are key for trust.

“We all know how inefficient meetings are, and we all know the limitations of e-mail,” says Northcraft. “You have to have both.” So despite the capacity for mobile communicating, he advises businesses to make sure employees get together often enough to “recharge” their relationships and develop enough trust to last during periods of lean communication.

The same is true of relationships with family and friends, Northcraft says. It’s not enough to stay in touch by text or e-mail or Facebook. Now and then, alas, you have to pick up the phone or make a personal visit to Mom and Dad.

These days kids know more about hard drive recovery than they do about interpersonal relationships. In fact, they probably know how to download everything from high-tech file veiwer software to applications for graphics programs, but couldn’t tell you a thing about their best friends’ favorite place to go camping. Camping? What’s that?

For employees, the bad news is that your daily deluge of e-mail isn’t going away, and neither are those endless meetings. But the good news is that hard data on the benefits of face time may be enough to persuade HR to fund your trip to a regional office. Summer might be a good time to build some trust with those colleagues up in Maine.

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My Take: Very sad commentary. I know first-hand what it’s like to lose a child to nebulous world of text messaging. It’s not like the old days of college, when the most important thing on young freshman’s minds was what Greek shirt to wear to the first campus event, or whether they would be able to pass their learn to drive lessons or fail and have to study the driving safety courses all over again. The greek clothes of college days gone by have given way to droopy jeans and the shortest of skirts. Forget the academy driving school in NY rules about texting and driving. Nothing has changed. And don’t get me started on the texting at the dinner table. The family dinner has gone the way of the horse and buggy if you ask me.

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The nuptials were led by “I-Fairy,” a 4-foot-tall seated robot with flashing eyes and plastic pigtails. “Please lift the bride’s veil,” the robot said in a tinny voice, waving its arms in the air as the newlyweds kissed in front of about 50 guests on the roof of a restaurant in central Tokyo. Wires led to a curtain a few feet away, where a man crouched and clicked commands into a computer.

A First

It was the first time a marriage had been led by a robot, according to manufacturer Kokoro Co. Japan has one of the most advanced robotics industries in the world, with the government actively supporting the field for future growth. Industrial models in factories are now standard, but recently Japanese companies are making a push to inject robots into everyday life.

That doesn’t necessarily mean a robot will be able to do all the heavy lifting: someone’s still got to get on the phone with that San Diego wedding centerpieces and flower company. The San Diego CA wedding decorations can’t hang themselves either, and until technology makes bigger strides, the I-Fairy won’t be climbing any ladders.

The I Fairy

It sells for about $68,000 and three are in use in Singapore, the U.S. and Japan, according to Kokoro. It has 18 degrees of motion in its arms, and mainly repeats preprogrammed movements and sounds.

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My Take: Ahh, the joys of having a robot around to do all those things we don’t want to do. But marry us? This is a little odd tome. I can see how having a robot around to clean my house a little bit or perhaps even press a few buttons and get me that yacht charter or book those theatre tickets might come in very handy. But I don’t know if I want the robot on my yacht charter vacations with me and I certainly wouldn’t want the thing to buy my folk tickets and my intermission cocktail for me either. Some events I think I want a real human for.

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Legal Job

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