Hifi systems are increasingly gaining popularity these days. Apart from audio fanatics and music maniacs, many people also invest on these expensive products as they add up to their style statement. However, not many have the luxury of replacing their old hifi system with a new one every time a latest model arrives in the market. Hifi systems are undeniably an expensive affair. Whether you are taking home your first hifi system or replacing your old one with a latest model with advanced upgraded features, the purchase will obviously demand you to spend a handsome amount of money. However, these hifi systems fairly deserve the price tag they carry as these systems give you the best sound experience. When investing on a separate system for your music needs, you would definitely need to make a wise decision before you swipe your credit card for one. The hifi system should be appealing enough; quality wise and look wise. These days, people usually look for a hifi system that would not only gives them the world's best sound, but will also enhance the aesthetic value of their living space. These exotic products do not exclusively cater to CDs and DVDs. Cinema fanatics can enjoy high definition movies and get immersed in the most intriguing surround sound that these systems produce. Apart from the look and acoustic features, price is also an important deciding factor while shopping for these premium products. Most people are every particular on the price element as they have an intended amount to spent. Some check for the best deals they can afford out of their limited budget while many don't mind compromising on their budget to get a good looking hifi system that will deliver them the most superior quality sound. While audiophiles essentially need a hifi system to satisfy their music cravings, some people need it just to relax and add mood to the environment. However, in all cases, getting a hifi system definitely tampers with your savings to fairly a high level. These products always come with a high price tag, but that does not, in any way mean that your pursuit for good quality sound will remain unfulfilled. You need not also necessarily have to get into high debts. After all music is meant to relax you and not increase your stresses. While dealers cannot afford to reduce the price margin, they do come with amazing deals for their valued customers. There are many electronics stores and e-stores that offer you interest free credit hifi systems. For buying interest free credit hifi systems, you would require to pay just an affordable monthly installment and no interest at all. The interest free credit hifi systems also come with warranty options that are mutually satisfying for both the buyer and the dealer. Companies, these days offer interest free credit facility to ensure that every customer's requirement is met and quality music fills their homes. Before buying an interest free credit hifi system, make sure that you understand all its terms and conditions properly. After all, any amount invested is not small and you need to have a fair knowledge of all terms and conditions that come along with an interest free credit hifi system.
Author: Mike Zupp | Total views: 115 Comments: 0 Word Count: 952 Date:
Are you on a quest to unravel the mystery of how to earn instant online profits? There are all sorts of ways to do this, however the most sure-fire way is most likely by getting involved in Affiliate Marketing.
A normal person can get into Affiliate Marketing using his or her own advertising efforts as an Affiliate to bring people to the Affiliate Vendor's internet site. The Affiliate gets paid a commission when that visitor purchases the Vendor's item. Often, commissions are earned just by the Affiliate entering their name and email address into a Vendors online form!
As soon as you select which item to advertise, you acquire what's called an "affiliate link". This stringy link contains your Affiliate ID so that, when clicked on during the purchase process, the Affiliate Vendor knows to pay you your commission. The most widely known Affiliate Marketing sites are Amazon, Clickbank, Ebay Partner Network and Commission Junction, to name a few. These business have a multitude of products in several niches for your choosing.
Nonetheless, in order to figure out how to earn instant online profits with Affiliate Marketing, you need to know where to take the initial step.
The first move is to choose a niche that you would like to sell in. Ideally, select a specific niche that you are passionate about; a subject that you might be able to discuss all day, since it's easier to advertise things that interest you. Some good examples of prevailing niches are Relationships, E-Business & Marketing and Health & Fitness, to name but a few.
You'll need to google the "Google Keyword Tool" and "Google Trends" to research your niche and product in a strategic, insightful manner. Google Trends will tell you if your niche is still in the mainstream and you can use the Google Keyword Tool to see if your chosen niche keywords are getting a decent amount of search traffic every month.
Next comes your affiliate product selection. Only pick high-grade products whose Vendors can demonstrate their successful sales record. You need that special something that's going to rid your buyer of their pain and solve a huge problem they've been faced with that has kept them up at night worrying!
So now that your niche and product selection process is done, it's time to discover how to earn instant online profits by putting the following handy tips into action:
You can start off by building a product review site. Basically, you summarize the pros and cons of the product in a short article that needs to appear unbiased. Thus, it would be a good idea to actually purchase the item so you can put forward your opinion in a thorough, honest manner. However, in these tough economic times you may have to opt instead for looking around forums and other testimonial sites of your particular product to gather enough information for your review. Always remember to sprinkle your affiliate link throughout your review post, of course!
You can also jump on the social media band wagon by setting up either a Facebook fan page or a tab on your current business page. This should distinctively display your sales item in a monetized fashion or at least bring your fans right to your affiliate sales form.
You've probably heard mention of "squeeze" or "landing" pages before, right? Well, their purpose is to "squeeze" information, like names and email addresses, out of prospects and they can be built right inside Facebook or take the form of a one page website. You then take that assembled information and put it all into an autoresponder system. "AWeber" is an excellent place to open one of these types of accounts. What happens next is that your prospective clients get a series of email messages in their inbox automatically over the course of a week or two. The first emails should be "warm and friendly" since you'll need to build a relationship with your readers to get them to know and like you. After a while, you'll hopefully build up enough trust that your audience will click on your cleverly inserted links in the later emails and end up as paying customers! Of course, the option is always there to put your affiliate product in the limelight by posting a quick review on your personal blog that contains your affiliate link, of course.
You can also harness the power of YouTube by creating personal video reviews of your affiliate product and uploading them to your YouTube channel. Better still, you can embed the videos into your product review site! This could also increase your search engine ranking, as Google owns YouTube and loves it when videos are featured in blogs.
Another effective approach would be to join online forums that are relevant to your chosen niche. Don't just go in there and start selling your product right away: Instead, participate in conversations and answer questions to help people out, at first. Then, after some time, you can start mentioning your product, showing the forum members how it can solve their problems or meet their needs.
The above pointers are simply a few ideas to illustrate how to earn instant online profits. You can mix and match these different approaches to suit your particular product-and throw in any other new techniques you come across as well, of course! I hope you obtained some useful insight into the Realm of Affiliate Marketing by reading this. There's nothing to stop you from immediately launching your affiliate product promotion now!
For more information about making money online check out the Instant Online Profits Review. I'm sure you'll be quite impressed with it!
Related to: Instant Online Profits - nbspInstant Online Profits Review
1: Understanding Online Business Success
Starting a home based business to earn income online takes a significant amount of time and energy upfront to get things going. Not seeing results immediately can be discouraging and cause people to give up too early. In this article, we look at the process of starting a home based business and working through the frustrations to be there when the sales come flowing in.
2: Why You Need To Build Multiple Streams of Income For Yourself
Being an entrepreneur and earning multiple streams of income is a dream that many have, but in reality it does take some initial hard work to achieve this. Earning multiple streams of income is the wave of the future, and here are some tips and advice for you when you are looking for ways in which to do this for yourself.
3: Article Marketing Strategy: Putting Together a "Class Schedule" For Your Article Topics
Businesses go to so much trouble when there is one sure-fire, simple, very inexpensive way to attract new clients to a business: Teach a free class. That is what article marketing is like. Your articles are just like free classes. You teach your target readers something helpful in your article. Your resource box then says, "If you enjoyed this article you can visit my website and apply what you have learned."
4: What is Cyber Marketing And Why It Is So Important For The Success Of Your Website
Cyber marketing has now become an indispensable segment of e-commerce as well as the internet and World Wide Web related topics. Cyber marketing simply refers to a technique of attracting potential customers by advertising your products or services through such means as websites, emails, and banners.
5: The Best Way To Optimise Your Website SEO For Google Panda
If you want your SEO to work you now need to concentrate on appeasing Google Panda, and to do this you need to know what Google Panda's spiders/bots will be looking for. Find out here how to search engine optimise your website for the latest Google Panda algorithm, and achieve the success you deserve.
Michael Jurewitz, former developer tools evangelist at Apple, has been blogging up a storm this week, with two great pieces on two important subjects for developers. First is the idea of minimal viable products, or how much you need to build in order to be able to start selling your current work, and supporting your future work. Jury says:
You need to get your product out the door and into your user's hands. The very act of someone touching and using your product will inherently change what you think you know about it and how you envision people using it. You will change your mind, you will change your plans, and things you used to think were important will melt away and be replaced by other needs and priorities. Having real users is a formative event for a product and one you shouldn't artificially delay.
The second, not unrelated topic is user focus, or understanding how your product will provide a delightful user experience before you type character one on code. Jury again:
Focus on the user. Focus on their life, their problems, and how you are helping them. Put down that database, put down that web server, put down that Core Data model and think. No, this step doesn't involve code. Yes, for many of you this will feel foreign and scary, but focusing on the user is liberating. It frees you from your technical shackles and puts the world in real perspective. Your focus becomes the things that matter, the things that change people's lives. Technology is a hindrance when it doesn't get out of the way. Technology is a hindrance when it becomes the point, as opposed to the human experiences we are trying to improve.
Back in a past life, when I was working in product marketing, I used to think of roadmaps like season arcs of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I'd seen how Joss Whedon would graph out major character moments and beats on a white board, and I wanted that same sense of story, of major plot points, and of epic final releases that he brought to television.
In entertainment, you have to grab the audience. In software, you have to grab the user. Each major point release has to have something interesting in it, and it all has to build to the next major version number.
You can't and shouldn't blow the whole story in the first episode, and you can't and shouldn't blow all your features in a 1.0 release. You should create interest and get the job done, absolutely, but you should also leave people wanting more. And you should know how your next act, your 2.0 is going to premiere, and build towards it. (That's also how you attract and maintain press attention for your products, of course, because we're simply an extension of audience.)
Go read Jury's articles, then go make some more great stuff.
Mar. 28, 2013 ? It?s a nocturnal aquatic predator that will eat anything that fits in its large mouth.
Dark and sleek, it hides beneath the water waiting for prey. A Texas Tech University researcher says the target will never know what hit them because they probably can?t smell the voracious pirate perch.
After careful investigations, William Resetarits Jr., a professor of biology at Texas Tech, and Christopher A. Binckley, an assistant professor in the Department of Biology at Arcadia University, found that animals normally attuned to predators from their smell didn?t seem to detect the pirate perch. It could be the first animal discovered that is capable of generalized chemical camouflage that works against a wide variety of prey.
The team published their findings in the peer-reviewed journal The American Naturalist.
Thankfully, at five-and-a-half inches long, only insects, invertebrates, amphibians and other small fish need worry about the danger hiding near the bottom among the roots and plantlife, Resetarits said.
?We use the term ?camouflage,? because it is readily understandable,? he said. ?What we really are dealing with is some form of ?chemical deception.? The actual mechanism may be camouflage that makes an organism difficult to detect, mimicry that makes an organism difficult to correctly identify, or cloaking where the organism simply does not produce a signal detectable to the receiver.?
Resetarits said pirate perch aren?t really perch at all, but related to the Amblyopsid cave fish family. Fossils from this fish date back about 24 million years ago.
They make their homes in freshwater ponds and streams in the Eastern United States. Once considered for the aquarium market, the fish got its name because of its penchant for eating all tank mates.
?Pirate perch have some unique aspects to their morphology and life history, but they are generalist predators, and so should have been avoided by prey animals like all the other fish tested,? he said. ?For some reason, they weren?t avoided at all.?
To test their theory, Resetarits and Binckley ran a series of experiments in artificial pools housing 11 different species of fish, including pirate perch.
The fish were kept at bay at the bottom of the pools with screens so that they could not prey on the beetles and tree frogs that colonized the water.
When it came to choosing a pool, the beetles and frogs consistently steered clear of the water with other fish species in them, most likely because they could smell the presence of fish in the water. However, they had no qualms about moving into pools containing the pirate perch.
?We were incredibly surprised,? Resetarits said. ?It took a while for us to pull this all together. When we first observed it with tree frogs, we were very surprised and puzzled. But when the same lack of response was shown by aquatic beetles, we were quite literally flabbergasted. We continued to do experiments with other fish and always got the same results. All fish except pirate perch were avoided.?
Exactly what the pirate perch is doing to hide isn?t yet known, he said. Researchers want to determine how the pirate perch are either scrambling chemical signals or masking their odor. Once they have identified chemical compounds that might explain the behavior, they will return to the field to test with the same tree frogs and beetles as well as other organisms known to respond to fish chemical cues, such as mosquitoes and water fleas.
?We will also test whether this chemical deception works against the pirate perch?s own predators,? Resetarits said. ?Of course, other critical questions that we are working on include just how much advantage in terms of prey acquisition do pirate perch gain as a result of chemical deception. Does this phenomenon occur in closely related species, such as cavefish? Are there prey species that have found a way around the chemical deception? There are many questions now, and I think we have just scratched the surface.
?I think the most important aspect is not the bizarre, just-so story, but the fact that there is no reason to believe that chemical camouflage is less common than visual camouflage. Humans? sense of smell is just not very sophisticated, so we can?t simply ?notice? examples of chemical camouflage the way we do visual camouflage. I think chemical camouflage is likely quite common. We are starting pursuit of the larger question, starting with close relatives of pirate perch.?
Find Texas Tech news, experts and story ideas at www.media.ttu.edu and on Twitter @TexasTechMedia.
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Journal Reference:
William J. Resetarits, Christopher A. Binckley. Is the Pirate Really a Ghost? Evidence for Generalized Chemical Camouflage in an Aquatic Predator, Pirate PerchAphredoderus sayanus. The American Naturalist, 2013; : 000 DOI: 10.1086/670016
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Mar. 28, 2013 ? A team of researchers, led by a University of California, Davis, plant scientist, has identified a lettuce gene and related enzyme that put the brakes on germination during hot weather -- a discovery that could lead to lettuces that can sprout year-round, even at high temperatures.
The study also included researchers from Arcadia Biosciences and Acharya N.G. Ranga Agricultural University, India.
The finding is particularly important to the nearly $2 billion lettuce industries of California and Arizona, which together produce more than 90 percent of the nation's lettuce. The study results appear online in the journal The Plant Cell.
"Discovery of the genes will enable plant breeders to develop lettuce varieties that can better germinate and grow to maturity under high temperatures," said the study's lead author Kent Bradford, a professor of plant sciences and director of the UC Davis Seed Biotechnology Center.
"And because this mechanism that inhibits hot-weather germination in lettuce seeds appears to be quite common in many plant species, we suspect that other crops also could be modified to improve their germination," he said. "This could be increasingly important as global temperatures are predicted to rise."
Most lettuce varieties flower in spring or early summer and then drop their seeds -- a trait that is likely linked to their origin in the Mediterranean region, which, like California, characteristically has dry summers. Scientists have observed for years that a built-in dormancy mechanism seems to prevent lettuce seeds from germinating under conditions that would be too hot and dry to sustain growth. While this naturally occurring inhibition works well in the wild, it is an obstacle to commercial lettuce production.
In the California and Arizona lettuce industries, lettuce seeds are planted somewhere every day of the year -- even in September in the Imperial Valley of California and near Yuma, Ariz., where fall temperatures frequently reach 110 degrees.
In order to jump-start seed germination for a winter crop in these hot climates, lettuce growers have turned to cooling the soil with sprinkler irrigation or priming the seeds to germinate by pre-soaking them at cool temperatures and re-drying them before planting -- methods that are expensive and not always successful.
In the new study, researchers turned to lettuce genetics to better understand the temperature-related mechanisms governing seed germination. They identified a region of chromosome six in a wild ancestor of commercial lettuce varieties that enables seeds to germinate in warm temperatures. When that chromosome region was crossed into cultivated lettuce varieties, those varieties gained the ability to germinate in warm temperatures.
Further genetic mapping studies zeroed in on a specific gene that governs production of a plant hormone called abscisic acid -- known to inhibit seed germination. The newly identified gene "turns on" in most lettuce seeds when the seed is exposed to moisture at warm temperatures, increasing production of abscisic acid. In the wild ancestor that the researchers were studying, however, this gene does not turn on at high temperatures. As a result, abscisic acid is not produced and the seeds can still germinate.
The researchers then demonstrated that they could either "silence" or mutate the germination-inhibiting gene in cultivated lettuce varieties, thus enabling those varieties to germinate and grow even in high temperatures.
Other researchers on the study were: Post-doctoral researcher Heqiang Huo and staff researcher Peetambar Dahal, both of the UC Davis Department of Plant Sciences; Keshavulu Kunusoth of Acharya N.G. Ranga Agricultural University, India; and Claire McCallum of Arcadia Biosciences, which provided the lettuce lines with variants of the target gene to help confirm the study's findings.
Funding for the study was provided the U.S. Department of Agriculture -- National Institute of Food and Agriculture and the National Science Foundation.
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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by University of California - Davis.
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Journal Reference:
H. Huo, P. Dahal, K. Kunusoth, C. M. McCallum, K. J. Bradford. Expression of 9-cis-EPOXYCAROTENOID DIOXYGENASE4 Is Essential for Thermoinhibition of Lettuce Seed Germination but Not for Seed Development or Stress Tolerance. The Plant Cell, 2013; DOI: 10.1105/tpc.112.108902
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Mar. 29, 2013 ? Baseball season has arrived, but no matter how eager young players are to get on the diamond they have to keep from overdoing it -- especially if they're pitchers.
Overhand pitching creates great forces, stresses and strains at both the elbow and shoulder. In most children up to age 16, bones, muscles and connective tissues are not fully developed, so it should come as no surprise that the pitching motion can lead to injury if it is performed too frequently.
"Parents may find it difficult to put limits on any activity that a child is good at and enjoys performing," said Michael T. Freehill, M.D., assistant professor of orthopedics at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center. "But when it comes to pitching, the surest way to ruin a young athlete's chances of success is to allow him or her to overdo it."
Fortunately, overuse injuries are preventable. Following some basic guidelines can help young baseball pitchers stay healthy.
? Young pitchers should always warm up properly by stretching and running before throwing. Throwing should begin with easy tosses, with gradual increases in distance, then intensity.
? Youngsters should concentrate on age-appropriate pitching skills. The emphasis should be on control, accuracy and good mechanics, not curveballs and velocity.
? Tracking the number of pitches thrown is important. Staying within age-specific pitch-count limits, such as those established by Little League Baseball, is recommended.
? Proper rest periods between pitching sessions should be observed. Youngsters can still play during these rest periods, but only at positions other than pitcher and catcher.
? Children should not pitch for multiple teams with overlapping schedules or play baseball year-round.
? Children should never pitch when it hurts. They must understand that telling a parent or coach is the right thing to do if they experience discomfort while throwing.
"Following these guidelines may force a young pitcher to sit out a few innings or miss a few pitching opportunities during the season," said Freehill, who pitched in the minor leagues before attending medical school, reaching the AAA level with two different organizations and making it onto the 40-man roster of the Anaheim (now Los Angeles) Angels. "However, that's a small price to pay for keeping our kids healthy and giving them their best shot at success over the long run."
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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.
FILE - In this June 17, 2010 file photo, former South African President Nelson Mandela leaves the chapel after attending the funeral of his great-granddaughter Zenani Mandela in Johannesburg, South Africa. The South African presidency says Nelson Mandela was re-admitted to hospital with a recurrence of a lung infection Thursday March 28, 2013. (AP Photo/Siphiwe Sibeko, Pool, File)
FILE - In this June 17, 2010 file photo, former South African President Nelson Mandela leaves the chapel after attending the funeral of his great-granddaughter Zenani Mandela in Johannesburg, South Africa. The South African presidency says Nelson Mandela was re-admitted to hospital with a recurrence of a lung infection Thursday March 28, 2013. (AP Photo/Siphiwe Sibeko, Pool, File)
FILE - In this Wednesday, July 18, 2012 file photo former South African President Nelson Mandela as he celebrates his birthday with family in Qunu, South Africa, Wednesday, July 18, 2012. The South African presidency says Nelson Mandela was re-admitted to hospital with a recurrence of a lung infection Thursday March 28, 2013. (AP Photo/Schalk van Zuydam)
FILE - In this Wednesday May 30, 2012 file photo South Africa's former president Nelson Mandela, after receiving a torch to celebrate the African National Congress' centenary from ANC chairperson Baleka Mbete in Mandela's home village of Qunu in rural eastern South Africa. The South African presidency says Nelson Mandela was re-admitted to hospital with a recurrence of a lung infection Thursday March 28, 2013. (AP Photo/Lulamile Feni-Daily Dispatch) SOUTH AFRICA OUT
FILE - In this Aug. 29, 2007 file photo, former South African President Nelson Mandela pauses during a statue unveiling ceremony in his honor at Parliament Square in London. The South African presidency says Nelson Mandela was re-admitted to hospital with a recurrence of a lung infection Thursday March 28, 2013. (AP Photo/Daniel Berehulak, Pool, File)
In this photo taken on Thursday, March 14, 2013, a statue of former South African president Nelson Mandela stands at the entrance to the Robben Island ferry departure point at the V&A Waterfront in Cape Town, South Africa, Nelson Mandela, the anti-apartheid leader who became South Africa's first black president, has been admitted to a hospital with a recurring lung infection, South Africa said Thursday, March 28, 2013. Mandela, 94, has become increasingly frail in recent years and has been hospitalized several times since last year, mostly recently earlier this month when he received what a presidential spokesman described as a "successful" medical test. (AP Photo/Schalk van Zuydam)
JOHANNESBURG (AP) ? South Africa's presidency says 94-year-old Nelson Mandela is responding positively to hospital treatment for a recurring lung infection.
The office of President Jacob Zuma also said in a statement Thursday that the former president and anti-apartheid leader remains under observation.
Mandela was admitted late Wednesday to a hospital in Pretoria, the South African capital.
Mandela contracted tuberculosis during his 27-year imprisonment for fighting white racist rule in South Africa. He has repeatedly had lung problems.
When it comes to your retirement plan, many people make the wise choice of maintaining their own control over their investments. After all, who wants to release years and years of hard-earned money to be invested by someone you don?t know in various unknown methods. By choosing a retirement plan such as a self-directed IRA, you can invest your money where you feel it would be most beneficial, including real estate. The self-directed IRA option may still be one of the lesser known options in the retirement planning world, but it offers you the freedom to control what will become of your retirement investments in a very hands-on way.
What?s Different About a Self-Directed IRA?
A self-directed IRA will allow you to invest in all the same avenues as any other IRA, but when you are in control there are added perks. There are investment opportunities available to you that would not be an option if done through investment houses, such as investing in small businesses, storage unites, land, homes, parking lots and even boat slips, according to Fox Business.
The Fox Business report explains that while the housing market still isn?t what it once was, and people may be worried about investing in it for that reason, experts agree that real estate is a smart long-term investment (something you definitely want to look for when it comes to retirement investments) that can result in high returns. A word of caution however, you should not get involved without the advice of professionals as there can be stiff penalties involved if your IRA is managed incorrectly, according to Bloomberg Businessweek.
Things to Keep in Mind
You should not have unrealistic expectations going in, so a few things you may want to keep in mind are that number one, these things take time. Just like any other type of retirement investment, this is not a fast-paced, quick-reward setup. It is meant to give a good return on your investment over time and that is what you should expect. You also need to remember that the money generated from self-directed IRA real estate investments cannot be touched until after you retire. When you do begin to see returns in the account, you may be tempted to try and access the money, but as with all other types of retirement planning there are stiff penalties for early withdrawal.
When it comes to planning for your retirement the sooner you get started the better. Look in to what kind of investments are right for your future today.
Jake Alexander is an avid blogger who likes to discuss business and finance. Follow him @JakeAlexander17.
Featured images:?License: Royalty Free or iStock?source: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/images/results.aspx?qu=house&ex=1#ai:MP900448432|
Editor?s note: There?s a lot of interesting academic research going on in digital media ? but who has time to sift through all those journals and papers?
Our friends at Journalist?s Resource, that?s who. JR is a project of the Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School, and they spend their time examining the new academic literature in media, social science, and other fields, summarizing the high points and giving you a point of entry. Roughly once a month, JR managing editor John Wihbey will sum up for us what?s new and fresh.
This month?s edition of What?s New In Digital Scholarship rounds up the findings of eight studies that touch on many of the major themes scholars are exploring: how an era of social media and citizen media production are affecting journalistic norms and the business fundamentals and operations of journalism; how issues of participation and access are affecting citizens? experiences and roles in the information ecosystem; and, looking abroad, how digital technologies are being used and curtailed in various conflict and authoritarian situations. In addition, the potential uses and abuses of online data continue to be an area of focus for academics.
More academic research is documenting how ?hybrid? norms are evolving within legacy news media grappling with the participatory logic of digital culture, and how non-traditional organizations and NGOs are playing quasi-press roles as producers of watchdog-oriented media and conveners of public discussion. This paper looks at coverage of the 2011 Durban climate change conference and uses it to examine the new interplay between legacy and advocacy media. Because journalists could not produce nearly the sheer volume of media ? videos, pictures, blog posts, tweets, etc. ? that the NGOs could, traditional media had to draw on NGO materials and even point to their creation as significant news events in their own right. By the same token, NGOs sometimes operated as news organizations, soliciting comment from news makers and turning themselves into platforms for public participation and discussion.
?Unlike USA Today and the New York Times,? the author writes, ?NGO coverage was exhaustive and included the actions and comments of high-profile international and national officials, scientists, civil society, and locally focused grassroots groups. In fact the news flows from activist and social media outlets were so much more robust and dynamic than legacy journalism coverage that even the New York Times referred its readers to Twitter for ?the best way to track the finale and afterthoughts.?? Moreover, when NGO communications staff interview officials and delegates ?using questions from the public, or?enlist youth delegates to report on their country negotiator, these organizations are opening up the discourse, going beyond their own specific climate agenda or the agenda of climate justice movement leaders.?
The study examines the degree to which information available online can successfully predict an individual?s personal ? and private ? attributes. The researchers correlated public records of Facebook ?Likes? from more than 58,000 users with results from personality and intelligence tests and information from public profiles. The researchers were able to accurately predict a male user?s sexual orientation 88 percent of the time. While less than 5 percent of users were explicitly linked to gay policy or advocacy groups, ?predictions rely on less informative but more popular Likes, such as ?Britney Spears? or ?Desperate Housewives? (both moderately indicative of being gay).?
The model was able to predict a user?s ethnic origin (95 percent) and gender (93 percent) with a high degree of accuracy. ?Patterns of online behavior as expressed by Likes,? the researchers write, ?significantly differ between those groups, allowing for nearly perfect classification.? The model also predicted a user?s religion (82 percent), political views (85 percent), relationship status (67 percent) and substance use (between 65 percent and 75 percent for drugs, alcohol and cigarettes) with a high degree of accuracy. The researchers caution against the potential negative outcomes that ready access to this type of personal data might have: ?Commercial companies, governmental institutions, or even one?s Facebook friends could use software to infer attributes such as intelligence, sexual orientation or political views [that] could pose a threat to an individual?s well-being, freedom or even life.?
The study evaluates the broad set of practices that now commonly constitute audience engagement and pulls them together toward a new theory of the role of journalism in a digital society. The researcher examines how news audience members are becoming secondary ?gatekeepers,? helping to communicate their tastes to news outlets and decide what is best or most worthy in terms of content. Of course, this is partly accomplished not only through the now-ubiquitous ?most popular? displays (more broadly called ?usage boxes?), which reflect reader data, but also through comment management systems like Disqus and social media platforms that foster engagement and allow crowds to record their approval or disapproval. The researcher analyzed the practices of websites of 138 newspapers during a two-month stretch in 2011.
Her sweeping conclusion is that ?journalists who long have defined themselves largely as society?s gatekeepers now find the role is broadly shared with members of an increasingly active audience. Users are choosing news not only for their own consumption but also for the consumption of others, including those within their personal circle of acquaintances and those who are part of an undifferentiated online public. This shift toward ?user-generated visibility? suggests a new way of looking at one of the oldest conceptualizations of the journalist?s role in our society.? Finally, there?s a great historical nugget in the study to put all this in context: ?Not since 18th century newspapers left their fourth page blank so that people could add their own observations for the benefit of subsequent readers?have news consumers had this sort of power to make editorial judgments not only for themselves but also for others ? and, importantly, to act on those judgments by serving as secondary distributors of the material they deem worthy.?
This study falls somewhere in the ?Is Google Making Us Stupid?? category, though its findings are nuanced. The public has a woeful understanding of many public policy issues ??that much we know. And though much depends on whether local or national topics are at issue, in general people of higher socioeconomic status have tended to acquire knowledge more rapidly in the mass media age. But how do the ways people access information ? particularly, traditional versus online media channels ? affect what they learn about policy topics? Are people learning more because of online access?
The tentative answer is no. This new study analyzes Pew Research Center data on news consumption to assess how modes of access and socioeconomic status aid political learning about issues. The researcher concludes that ?affluent and educated groups are more active in seeking news from various channels and taking advantage of new technology to get the news.? Overall, however, the study?s ?analysis indicates that online news use has not yet contributed substantially to political learning,? contradicting some previous research about the perceived benefits of nearly ubiquitous online news and information. The study speculates that this may be because ?online news is highly individualized and tailored to personal preferences, which limit its ability to inform about a broad range of issues relevant to the larger society.? However, the data used were a little old (2006) and the respondents to the Pew survey skewed older (average age 50.)
Twitter commands all the attention from U.S. media watchers and social media researchers, but the dynamics on China?s Sina Weibo microblogging platform are in many respects more interesting, as it features a 24/7 massive cat-and-mouse game between censors and dissidents. This study set out to establish the precise speed and comprehensiveness of the Chinese social media censorship regime, which is comprised of both software bots and human minders (in 2012, Sina Weibo also began offering ?user credits? for those who report on fellow users). The researchers monitored more than 3,000 users who often get into trouble to see what the censorship response rate was.
The researchers found that ?especially for original posts that are not reposts, most deletions occur within 5-30 minutes, accounting for 25% of the total deletions of such posts. Nearly 90% of the deletions of such posts happen within the first 24 hours of the post.? Other interesting and weird aspects of China?s censorship apparatus include: If you use the word ?Falun,? as in the religious group ?Falun Gong,? you are likely to be told that there is a delay in posting the material due to ?server data synchronization? problems; this gives human censors the time to evaluate the content and zap it if need be. Further, the censors have a way of fooling users by ?camouflaging? the deletion: ?Weibo also sometimes makes it appear to a user that their post was successfully posted, but other users are not able to see the post. The poster receives no warning message in this case.?
Part of the expanding academic literature on the Arab uprising and the role of digital media, the study casts doubt on the view that the Internet ?caused? these events. But the researchers do ?contend that the complex interactions between communication platforms (social media), communication phenomena (narrative and social bonding), and collective identity (civil religion) are a salient feature of the revolutions.? Most importantly, though, the online narratives that formed around Egypt?s Khaled Saeed and Tunisia?s Mohamed Bouazizi fit squarely into pre-existing Islamic frames of martyrdom.
So the ?reason? for viral online campaigns around these two figures and their stories ? state brutality in the case of Saeed, and politically motivated suicide for Bouazizi ? is that the power of the digital networks met up with a well-primed social-cultural pathway, the authors suggest: ?There must be conditions in place that create a context in which certain narratives can resonate and serve as the foundation for an imagined solidarity and imagined politics of hope and change. We contend that greater understandings of the narrative landscapes before and after the Arab Spring can shed light on possible tipping points and that our analysis has elucidated two cases where the combination of a moment of crisis, vertical integration (of a longstanding cultural narrative, contemporary narrativized events and personal investments, however, small), civil religion, and social media, yielded a mediated politics of hope for the citizens of Tunisia and Egypt.?
Based on survey of more than 1,400 Swedish journalists, the study divides up media members into three groups with respect to social media participation: skeptical shunners, pragmatic conformists, and enthusiastic activists. It?s a division that would be familiar to American newsroom professionals. But what?s most interesting is how little the ?enthusiasts? see their core values changing: ?With regard to traditional professional ideals (objectivity, scrutiny, neutrality, independence, and so on) our study, however, shows no significant differences between [social media] users and non-users. This suggests that social media are indeed changing the journalistic profession in terms of how it relates to the audience/public, but not in terms of how it perceives its fundamental societal role as the fourth estate.?
Likely you?ve already heard much about this ? and the Lab has a valuable interview with the report?s lead author. In any case, key findings include: As news outlets have slashed staff and reduced the quantity and quality of coverage, the report suggests, many consumers have responded negatively: ?Nearly one-third ? 31% ? of people say they have deserted a particular news outlet because it no longer provides the news and information they had grown accustomed to, according to [a] survey of more than 2,000 U.S. adults in early 2013.? About half of all people surveyed said news stories are not as thorough as they were previously. Of the consumers who reported abandoning certain news outlets, 61 percent said the decision was based on issues of quality, while 24 percent said there were not enough stories. Newspaper ad revenue is now down 60 percent compared to a decade ago. The number of U.S. news jobs is likely now below 40,000, compared to the historic high of 56,900 in 1989, a 30 percent decrease overall.
Amid the gloom, bright spots include: ?In 2012, total [online] traffic to the top 25 news sites increased 7.2%, according to comScore. And according to Pew Research data, 39% of respondents got news online or from a mobile device ?yesterday,? up from 34% in 2010, when the survey was last conducted.? Further, the emerging mobile market offers another opportunity, as many people appear to be consuming more news because of Internet-enabled devices. This offers opportunities for the news business: ?One piece of [the mobile] market that news can exploit is sponsorship advertising, and in 2012, so-called native advertising (a type of sponsorship ad) made headlines. Though it remains small in dollars, the category?s growth rate is second only to that of video: sponsorship ads rose 38.9%, to $1.56 billion; that followed a jump of 56.1% in 2011. Traditional publications such as The Atlantic and Forbes, as well as digital publications BuzzFeed and Gawker, have relied heavily on native ads to quickly build digital ad revenues, and their use is expected to spread.?
Photo by Anna Creech used under a Creative Commons license.
ROME -- Pope Francis washed the feet of a dozen inmates at a juvenile detention center in a Holy Thursday ritual that he celebrated for years as archbishop and is continuing now that he is pope. Two of the 12 were young women, an unusual choice given that the rite re-enacts Jesus' washing of the feet of his male disciples.
The Mass was held in the Casal del Marmo facility in Rome, where 46 young men and women currently are detained. Many of them are Gypsies or North African migrants, and the Vatican said the 12 selected for the rite weren't necessarily Catholic.
Because the inmates were mostly minors ? the facility houses inmates aged 14-21 ? the Vatican and Italian Justice Ministry limited media access inside. But Vatican Radio carried the Mass live, and Francis told the detainees that Jesus washed the feet of his disciples on the eve of his crucifixion in a gesture of love and service.
"If the Lord has washed his disciples' feet, you should do the same to one another," Francis said in his homily. "I have given you the example so that you may do the same."
As archbishop of Buenos Aires, the former Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio would celebrate the ritual foot-washing in jails, hospitals or hospices ? part of his ministry to the poorest and most marginalized of society. It's a message that he is continuing now that he is pope, saying he wants a church "for the poor."
Previous popes would carry out the foot-washing ritual on Holy Thursday in Rome's grand St. John Lateran basilica and the 12 people chosen for the ritual were priests to represent the 12 disciples.
That Francis would include women in this re-enactment is symbolically noteworthy given the Vatican's prohibition on female priests.
___
Follow Nicole Winfield at www.twitter.com/nwinfield
Contact: Karthika Muthukumaraswamy karthika@siam.org 267-350-6383 Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics
The newest journal from the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics, SIAM/ASA Journal on Uncertainty Quantification (JUQ), launched today with its first seven papers publishing online to Volume 1.
Offered jointly by SIAM and the American Statistical Association, the journal publishes research articles presenting significant mathematical, statistical, algorithmic, and application advances in uncertainty quantification, and is dedicated to nurturing synergistic interactions between these and related areas.
Under the leadership of Senior Editor Max Gunzburger, Editors-in-Chief James Berger and Donald Estep and more than 35 others comprising the editorial board, the journal will feature continuous electronic publication at SIAM Journals Online with complimentary access in 2013.
If the first few research articles are any indicationcovering the analysis and quantification of uncertainty in areas as far-reaching as finance, disaster preparedness and porous media flows the journal promises great depth and breadth of coverage in uncertainty quantification research.
Below is an overview of some of the interesting topics you will read about in JUQ's maiden volume:
In a paper titled "Mean Exit Times and the Multilevel Monte Carlo Method" Desmond Higham, Xuerong Mao, Mikolaj Roj, Qingshuo Song, and George Yin propose a method to reduce the computational complexity of a simple and widely used algorithm, Euler/Monte Carlo simulation for a mean exit time. The multilevel algorithm proposed in the paper improves the expected computational complexity by an order of magnitude, in terms of required accuracy. The analysis is illustrated with numerical results.
In "Variance Components and Generalized Sobol' Indices," author Art Owen describes Sobol' indices, which are used to determine and quantify the importance of variables used in modeling and simulation. Computer simulations are so pervasive in engineering applications that the performance of anything from an airplane to a power dam is usually investigated computationally, in addition to laboratory experiments. Such simulated models depend on several input variables that describe product dimensions and composition, manufacturing processes, and so on and so forth. Sobol' indices have been developed to quantify the importance of such variables. Owen's article introduces readers to generalized Sobol' indices, relates them to well-known ideas in experimental design, and compares methods to estimate them.
In the paper, "Formulating Natural Hazard Policies under Uncertainty," Jerome and Seth Stein present a general stochastic model to minimize expected damage from natural disasters. Uncertainty issues are important in the assessment of risks posed by natural hazards and in developing strategies to alleviate their consequences. Using the 2011 earthquake in Japan as an example, the authors describe a model that estimates the balance between the costs and benefits of mitigation, and can help answer questions regarding the kinds of strategies to employ against such rare events, and whether to rebuild defenses in their aftermath. The model selects an optimum strategy by minimizing the expected present value of damage, the costs of mitigation, and risk premium, which reflects the variance of the hazard. Such a model can help shape natural hazard policy in a variety of situations.
"A Nonstationary Space-Time Gaussian Process Model for Partially Converged Simulations" by Victor Picheny and David Ginsbourger proposes fitting a Gaussian process model to partially converged simulation data for computational efficiency. A solution for alleviating computational costs in numerically-expensive experiments involves using partially converged simulations instead of exact solutions. Computational time is gained at the expense of precision in the response. In this work, Gaussian processes are used to approximate the simulator response in the joint space of design parameters and computational time. When applied to a computational fluid dynamics test case, the method shows significant improvement in prediction compared to a classical kriging model.
In a paper titled "Reduced Basis Methods for Parameterized Partial Differential Equations with Stochastic Influences Using the Karhunen-Love Expansion," authors Bernard Haasdonk, Karsten Urban, and Bernhard Wieland consider parametric partial differential equations (PPDEs) with stochastic influences that are used to model various problems in science and engineering. PPDEs are particularly useful in the case of measurements that are uncertain or unknown, such as, in porous media flows, financial models, and inverse problems. Many of these problems also depend on deterministic parameters in addition to uncertainties; hence the use of parameterized PDEs. This paper explores situations where the PPDE has to be evaluated under different scenarios for various instances of the deterministic parameter as well as the stochastic influences.
In the paper, "A Practical Method to Estimate Information Content in the Context of 4D-Var Data Assimilation," K. Singh, A. Sandu, M. Jardak, K. W. Bowman, and M. Lee use computationally feasible approaches to assess the information content of observations in the context of a data assimilation framework. Data assimilation can help improve estimates of a physical system's state by dynamically combining imperfect model results with sparse and noisy observations of reality. However, since not all observations used in data assimilation are equally valuable, it is important to characterize the usefulness of different data points in order to analyze the effectiveness of the assimilation system. Using a four-dimensional variational (4D-Var) data assimilation framework, the authors use metrics from information theory to assess the information content of observations: specifically, by quantifying the contribution of these observations to decreasing uncertainty in the system state.
In "A Posteriori Estimates for Backward SDEs," Christian Bender and Jessica Steiner propose a method for approximation of backward stochastic differential equations (BSDEs). BSDEs, which have traditionally had applications in stochastic control, have recently been found to be of great value in mathematical finance. Motivated by these applications, many numerical algorithms have been developed for BSDEs in recent years. However, solving BSDEs is a very challenging task. The paper proposes an approximation to the solution of a BSDE, precomputed by some numerical algorithm.
###
Access the full text of the abovementioned research articles at http://epubs.siam.org/journal/SJUQA3.
Authors are encouraged to submit their uncertainty quantification work for consideration for publication at http://juq.siam.org.
Information on the Editorial Policy, review procedures, and members of the board, is available here.
About SIAM
The Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM), headquartered in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, is an international society of over 14,000 individual members, including applied and computational mathematicians and computer scientists, as well as other scientists and engineers. Members from 85 countries are researchers, educators, students, and practitioners in industry, government, laboratories, and academia. The Society, which also includes nearly 500 academic and corporate institutional members, serves and advances the disciplines of applied mathematics and computational science by publishing a variety of books and prestigious peer-reviewed research journals, by conducting conferences, and by hosting activity groups in various areas of mathematics. SIAM provides many opportunities for students including regional sections and student chapters. Further information is available at http://www.siam.org.
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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Contact: Karthika Muthukumaraswamy karthika@siam.org 267-350-6383 Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics
The newest journal from the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics, SIAM/ASA Journal on Uncertainty Quantification (JUQ), launched today with its first seven papers publishing online to Volume 1.
Offered jointly by SIAM and the American Statistical Association, the journal publishes research articles presenting significant mathematical, statistical, algorithmic, and application advances in uncertainty quantification, and is dedicated to nurturing synergistic interactions between these and related areas.
Under the leadership of Senior Editor Max Gunzburger, Editors-in-Chief James Berger and Donald Estep and more than 35 others comprising the editorial board, the journal will feature continuous electronic publication at SIAM Journals Online with complimentary access in 2013.
If the first few research articles are any indicationcovering the analysis and quantification of uncertainty in areas as far-reaching as finance, disaster preparedness and porous media flows the journal promises great depth and breadth of coverage in uncertainty quantification research.
Below is an overview of some of the interesting topics you will read about in JUQ's maiden volume:
In a paper titled "Mean Exit Times and the Multilevel Monte Carlo Method" Desmond Higham, Xuerong Mao, Mikolaj Roj, Qingshuo Song, and George Yin propose a method to reduce the computational complexity of a simple and widely used algorithm, Euler/Monte Carlo simulation for a mean exit time. The multilevel algorithm proposed in the paper improves the expected computational complexity by an order of magnitude, in terms of required accuracy. The analysis is illustrated with numerical results.
In "Variance Components and Generalized Sobol' Indices," author Art Owen describes Sobol' indices, which are used to determine and quantify the importance of variables used in modeling and simulation. Computer simulations are so pervasive in engineering applications that the performance of anything from an airplane to a power dam is usually investigated computationally, in addition to laboratory experiments. Such simulated models depend on several input variables that describe product dimensions and composition, manufacturing processes, and so on and so forth. Sobol' indices have been developed to quantify the importance of such variables. Owen's article introduces readers to generalized Sobol' indices, relates them to well-known ideas in experimental design, and compares methods to estimate them.
In the paper, "Formulating Natural Hazard Policies under Uncertainty," Jerome and Seth Stein present a general stochastic model to minimize expected damage from natural disasters. Uncertainty issues are important in the assessment of risks posed by natural hazards and in developing strategies to alleviate their consequences. Using the 2011 earthquake in Japan as an example, the authors describe a model that estimates the balance between the costs and benefits of mitigation, and can help answer questions regarding the kinds of strategies to employ against such rare events, and whether to rebuild defenses in their aftermath. The model selects an optimum strategy by minimizing the expected present value of damage, the costs of mitigation, and risk premium, which reflects the variance of the hazard. Such a model can help shape natural hazard policy in a variety of situations.
"A Nonstationary Space-Time Gaussian Process Model for Partially Converged Simulations" by Victor Picheny and David Ginsbourger proposes fitting a Gaussian process model to partially converged simulation data for computational efficiency. A solution for alleviating computational costs in numerically-expensive experiments involves using partially converged simulations instead of exact solutions. Computational time is gained at the expense of precision in the response. In this work, Gaussian processes are used to approximate the simulator response in the joint space of design parameters and computational time. When applied to a computational fluid dynamics test case, the method shows significant improvement in prediction compared to a classical kriging model.
In a paper titled "Reduced Basis Methods for Parameterized Partial Differential Equations with Stochastic Influences Using the Karhunen-Love Expansion," authors Bernard Haasdonk, Karsten Urban, and Bernhard Wieland consider parametric partial differential equations (PPDEs) with stochastic influences that are used to model various problems in science and engineering. PPDEs are particularly useful in the case of measurements that are uncertain or unknown, such as, in porous media flows, financial models, and inverse problems. Many of these problems also depend on deterministic parameters in addition to uncertainties; hence the use of parameterized PDEs. This paper explores situations where the PPDE has to be evaluated under different scenarios for various instances of the deterministic parameter as well as the stochastic influences.
In the paper, "A Practical Method to Estimate Information Content in the Context of 4D-Var Data Assimilation," K. Singh, A. Sandu, M. Jardak, K. W. Bowman, and M. Lee use computationally feasible approaches to assess the information content of observations in the context of a data assimilation framework. Data assimilation can help improve estimates of a physical system's state by dynamically combining imperfect model results with sparse and noisy observations of reality. However, since not all observations used in data assimilation are equally valuable, it is important to characterize the usefulness of different data points in order to analyze the effectiveness of the assimilation system. Using a four-dimensional variational (4D-Var) data assimilation framework, the authors use metrics from information theory to assess the information content of observations: specifically, by quantifying the contribution of these observations to decreasing uncertainty in the system state.
In "A Posteriori Estimates for Backward SDEs," Christian Bender and Jessica Steiner propose a method for approximation of backward stochastic differential equations (BSDEs). BSDEs, which have traditionally had applications in stochastic control, have recently been found to be of great value in mathematical finance. Motivated by these applications, many numerical algorithms have been developed for BSDEs in recent years. However, solving BSDEs is a very challenging task. The paper proposes an approximation to the solution of a BSDE, precomputed by some numerical algorithm.
###
Access the full text of the abovementioned research articles at http://epubs.siam.org/journal/SJUQA3.
Authors are encouraged to submit their uncertainty quantification work for consideration for publication at http://juq.siam.org.
Information on the Editorial Policy, review procedures, and members of the board, is available here.
About SIAM
The Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM), headquartered in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, is an international society of over 14,000 individual members, including applied and computational mathematicians and computer scientists, as well as other scientists and engineers. Members from 85 countries are researchers, educators, students, and practitioners in industry, government, laboratories, and academia. The Society, which also includes nearly 500 academic and corporate institutional members, serves and advances the disciplines of applied mathematics and computational science by publishing a variety of books and prestigious peer-reviewed research journals, by conducting conferences, and by hosting activity groups in various areas of mathematics. SIAM provides many opportunities for students including regional sections and student chapters. Further information is available at http://www.siam.org.
[ | E-mail | Share ]
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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
BUFFALO, New York (Reuters) - Jury deliberations could begin as early as Wednesday in the trial of Tonawanda Coke Corp, which has been charged with fouling the air for years and whose environmental manager is accused of hiding plant deficiencies from regulators.
The western New York company faces a 19-count indictment that lists numerous violations of the federal Clean Air Act, the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act and obstruction of justice for an alleged cover up of emissions prior to a 2009 investigation by the Environmental Protection Agency. If found guilty, the company faces fines for each count.
The company, which has operated for 30 years in the Buffalo suburb of Tonawanda, produces a coal-based additive called coke, which is used to make steel.
Prosecutors said the company's air permit application did not mention a pressure relief valve emitting noxious coke oven gas. Other violations of federal law, they said, include the failure to install required emission control devices called baffles.
"Time and again, the defendants chose to deceive, not comply, all in an attempt to put profit above all else," Assistant U.S. Attorney Aaron Mango said in closing arguments, which began on Tuesday and were to continue on Wednesday before the case goes to the jury.
"Money drove this business into deception," he added.
The cost of installing baffles was estimated at $125,000, prosecutors said. However, while defense attorneys said that sum would not have made compliance cost-prohibitive had the plant been aware that baffles were an issue.
"This is not a substantial cost that reasonably and rationally would drive criminal acts," defense attorney Gregory Linson said during his closing argument.
Instead, Linson took aim at the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, which he said had granted the plant an exception to the baffles in one area of the plant. While the agency knew the devices were not installed elsewhere as required, he said, it failed to enforce the issue.
Of the relief valve, Linson said the apparatus was in a "clear and obvious location" and that DEC inspectors were well aware of it for decades.
Linson said DEC officials failed to take action even though they had granted exceptions and knew of other violations.
"The conduct that is the subject of this indictment was known, at least tacitly if not explicitly, to the DEC for years," he said.
Linson accused DEC officials of entrapment - the company's primary defense - saying they led plant managers to believe the facility was in compliance. The state officials, he said, allowed problems to linger for years before EPA investigators conducted their own review in 2009.
Linson said the plant passed inspections for a long time and worked hard to comply with state and federal regulations.
"The only thing that changed, ladies and gentlemen, in 2009, was a new sheriff came to Tonawanda Coke in the form of the EPA," he said.
The surprise weeklong investigation by the state and EPA led to the indictment.
Previously, nearby residents had formed a coalition because they were concerned about high cancer rates in the area.
A state Department of Health study released this year found "statistically significant elevations" of cancer and birth defects among Tonawanda residents. But health officials say the study does not prove local industry caused the health problems.
Mark Kamholz, the environmental manager named in the indictment, could face prison if convicted of the lone obstruction charge against him.
Prosecutors accuse Kamholz of using "his position of control to manipulate and deceive investigators from identifying areas of non-compliance."
Mar 26 (Reuters) - Leading money winners on the 2013 PGATour on Monday (U.S. unless stated): 1. Tiger Woods $3,787,600 2. Brandt Snedeker $2,859,920 3. Matt Kuchar $2,154,500 4. Steve Stricker $1,820,000 5. Phil Mickelson $1,650,260 6. Hunter Mahan $1,553,965 7. John Merrick $1,343,514 8. Dustin Johnson $1,330,507 9. Russell Henley $1,313,280 10. Kevin Streelman $1,310,343 11. Keegan Bradley $1,274,593 12. Charles Howell III $1,256,373 13. Michael Thompson $1,254,669 14. Brian Gay $1,171,721 15. Justin Rose $1,155,550 16. Jason Day $1,115,565 17. Chris Kirk $1,097,053 18. ...
WHITE PLAINS, N.Y., March 25, 2013 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Fifth Street Finance Corp. (Nasdaq:FSC) ("Fifth Street") today announced that Fifth Street Mezzanine Partners V, L.P., its second SBIC subsidiary (the "SBIC Subsidiary"), had the pricing fixed on $32 million of its outstanding debentures at a rate of 2.351% per annum for 10 years. As a result, the total debentures outstanding in connection with both of Fifth Street's SBIC licenses increased to $182 million with a blended coupon of 3.355%. The SBIC Subsidiary has $43 million of available debenture capacity remaining out of the $75 million of debentures permitted.
About Fifth Street Finance Corp.
Fifth Street Finance Corp. is a specialty finance company that lends to and invests in small and mid-sized companies, primarily in connection with investments by private equity sponsors.?Fifth Street Finance Corp.'s investment objective is to maximize its portfolio's total return by generating current income from its debt investments and capital appreciation from its equity investments.
Forward-Looking Statements
This press release may contain certain forward-looking statements, including statements with regard to the future performance of Fifth Street Finance Corp.?Words such as "believes," "expects," "projects," "anticipates," and "future" or similar expressions are intended to identify forward-looking statements.?These forward-looking statements are subject to the inherent uncertainties in predicting future results and conditions.?Certain factors could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected in these forward-looking statements, and these factors are identified from time to time in Fifth Street Finance Corp.'s filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.?Fifth Street Finance Corp. undertakes no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.
Investor Contact: Dean Choksi, Senior VP of Finance & Head of Investor Relations Fifth Street Finance Corp. (914) 286-6855 Media Contact: Steve Bodakowski Prosek Partners (203) 254-1300 ext. 141
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Investor Contact: Dean Choksi, Senior VP of Finance & Head of Investor Relations Fifth Street Finance Corp. (914) 286-6855 Media Contact: Steve Bodakowski Prosek Partners (203) 254-1300 ext. 141
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