Source: http://news.feedzilla.com/en_us/stories/politics/top-stories/302640107?client_source=feed&format=rss
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Tuesday, April 30, 2013
Monday, April 29, 2013
Friday, April 5, 2013
What it takes to be a virtual assistant ? Business Management Daily ...
What does it take to be a successful virtual assistant? A good start is to join the International Virtual Assistants Asso??ci??a??tion (IVAA). The IVAA? provides net??working and advice, a shared code of ethics, and is one of the main stamps of approval for VAs. You can also join regional groups or their counterparts in your area, as well as the Administrative Con??sul??tants Asso??ci??a??tion and the International Asso????ci??a??tion of Online Busi??ness Man??agers. Your membership in these will let potential clients know of your abilities and that you?re in touch with new developments in your industry.
Bernadette Raftery, whose website, A Virtual Success, has excellent ad??vice for virtual assistants, says: ?I think two important skills for an aspiring VA is first, to listen, and second, be prepared to respond. Take notes, and learn to mentally highlight the key needs the client is communicating. Then, be prepared to respond with the priority solutions." How? Here are more suggestions from other VAs:
- Design a custom package of services for each client?s direct needs. This list is both a mission statement and an agenda.
- Constantly back up all documentation manually and in the cloud.
- Execute all projects from beginning to end without requiring ?hand-holding? from your client; be a problem solver, never waste time, and always meet your deadlines.
- Practice complete confidentiality and a strict code of business ?ethics.
- Knowledge means everything. For proficiency and competence at your assigned tasks, consistently update your software and prepare contingency plans for interruptions, outages or natural disasters.
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Thursday, April 4, 2013
The NRA Is Making a Gun Deal Vanish
Erosion takes time. With news that the Senate might push a vote on a package of new gun legislation for another week, opponents gain seven more days to wear down support for its elements ??even for some of the more popular elements, like new trafficking regulations.
RELATED: This Is What Teachers Learning to Shoot Guns Look Like
There are four components to the Senate package: increased funding for school safety programs, new gun trafficking penalties, increased background checks, and a ban on assault weapons. They're listed in the order of how likely they are to pass, from most to least. The NRA's goal is to pull the entire package to the right until it crosses the invisible line of 40 votes needed to tank the entire thing ??or until what remains up for approval is sufficiently watered-down. They've done so with the fourth element, the assault weapons ban, already. It's well past the 40-vote line, and as a result will be voted on as an amendment to the main package. That will fail.
RELATED: The NRA's Ideas Are a Recycling Machine
Then the NRA ramped up opposition to the next least likely, background checks, tugging at it steadily. It was already tottering on the boundary, after a bipartisan effort to reach compromise on its provisions failed. The organization stumbled a bit on this issue yesterday, when former Senator Asa Hutchinson, the NRA's point person on its new school safety plan, told CNN that he was open to expanded background checks. The Huffington Post reports:
"You can do it within a way that does not infringe upon an individual, and make it hard for an individual to transfer to a friend or a neighbor or somebody... and have a casual sale," Hutchinson said. "We don't want to infringe upon those rights, either."
While Hutchinson's comments express support for background checks, he stopped far short of endorsing the type of universal background checks for all gun sales that have been proposed in Senate legislation.
The NRA quickly clarified Hutchinson's comments. "He meant expanding it to include more people into the national instant check system," the lobbying group said in a statement to CNN.
RELATED: The Senate Takes on Guns at Its First Post-Newtown Hearing
But it didn't really matter. Even had there been a defector in its ranks, the NRA was likely to win on background checks, too. Senate Majority Leader Reid postponed a vote on the package until after the Senate's recess in the hopes that a compromise could be reached in the interim. There's no sign that a compromise?? which would focus on assuaging Republican concerns that expended checks might lead to a national gun registry ? is within reach.
RELATED: Did the NRA Kill Background Checks?
So the NRA moves down the line. The newest target for the NRA is the generally popular effort to increase penalties for illegally trafficking firearms. Senate Bill 54 would expand regulations on "straw purchases,"?purchases made for resale to someone not eligible to own a weapon. While never a slam dunk (it passed the Senate Judiciary Committee on an 11-7 vote, with Sen. Grassley of Iowa providing the sole Republican vote), it's generally been seen as a common-sense step.
RELATED: We Need Armed Guards in Every Oven
For the NRA, it's still too much. The Hill reports:
The bill as written would penalize anyone who purchases a gun for someone prohibited from owning it or for someone intending to use it in a crime.
The NRA argues this language could penalize people unfairly.
If a person buys a gun and sells it to another person, who in turn sells it to yet another person, the bill?s language could be used to punish the initial buyer of the gun, the NRA says.
The gun lobby also wants to cut a measure that would see someone convicted of straw purchases surrendering any weapons and ammunition in their possession, though in most analagous situations ??like the illegal sale of prescription drugs ??confiscation would be the norm.
Grassley is already wavering.
?I voted for the trafficking bill in the Judiciary Committee, but it was far from a perfect piece of legislation,? Grassley said.?At the time, I explained that there were changes that needed to be made before I would support it on the floor.?
There will now be more time for any such changes. The Times reports that votes on the package likely won't happen until the week of the 15th ??in part because Reid still hopes to reach a compromise on background checks. Maybe he can. The White House seems optimistic that the package will pass, and President Obama will stump for gun control reform today in Colorado.
But that week also gives the NRA more time to keep pulling the package to the right, to see what it can get across that 40-vote line. And to make sure that whatever's left on the other side for approval contains only provisions the group find palatable.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/nra-making-gun-deal-vanish-131901862.html
Wednesday, April 3, 2013
NASA team investigates complex chemistry at Saturn's moon Titan
Apr. 3, 2013 ? A laboratory experiment at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., simulating the atmosphere of Saturn's moon Titan suggests complex organic chemistry that could eventually lead to the building blocks of life extends lower in the atmosphere than previously thought. The results now point out another region on the moon that could brew up prebiotic materials.
The paper was published in Nature Communications this week.
"Scientists previously thought that as we got closer to the surface of Titan, the moon's atmospheric chemistry was basically inert and dull," said Murthy Gudipati, the paper's lead author at JPL. "Our experiment shows that's not true. The same kind of light that drives biological chemistry on Earth's surface could also drive chemistry on Titan, even though Titan receives far less light from the sun and is much colder. Titan is not a sleeping giant in the lower atmosphere, but at least half awake in its chemical activity."
Scientists have known since NASA's Voyager mission flew by the Saturn system in the early 1980s that Titan, Saturn's largest moon, has a thick, hazy atmosphere with hydrocarbons, including methane and ethane. These simple organic molecules can develop into smog-like, airborne molecules with carbon-nitrogen-hydrogen bonds, which astronomer Carl Sagan called "tholins."
"We've known that Titan's upper atmosphere is hospitable to the formation of complex organic molecules," said co-author Mark Allen, principal investigator of the JPL Titan team that is a part of the NASA Astrobiology Institute, headquartered at Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif. "Now we know that sunlight in the Titan lower atmosphere can kick-start more complex organic chemistry in liquids and solids rather than just in gases."
The team examined an ice form of dicyanoacetylene -- a molecule detected on Titan that is related to a compound that turned brown after being exposed to ambient light in Allen's lab 40 years ago.
In this latest experiment, dicyanoacetylene was exposed to laser light at wavelengths as long as 355 nanometers. Light of that wavelength can filter down to Titan's lower atmosphere at a modest intensity, somewhat like the amount of light that comes through protective glasses when Earthlings view a solar eclipse, Gudipati said. The result was the formation of a brownish haze between the two panes of glass containing the experiment, confirming that organic-ice photochemistry at conditions like Titan's lower atmosphere could produce tholins.
The complex organics could coat the "rocks" of water ice at Titan's surface and they could possibly seep through the crust, to a liquid water layer under Titan's surface. In previous laboratory experiments, tholins like these were exposed to liquid water over time and developed into biologically significant molecules, such as amino acids and the nucleotide bases that form RNA.
"These results suggest that the volume of Titan's atmosphere involved in the production of more complex organic chemicals is much larger than previously believed," said Edward Goolish, acting director of NASA's Astrobiology Institute. "This new information makes Titan an even more interesting environment for astrobiological study."
The team included Isabelle Couturier of the University of Provence, Marseille, France; Ronen Jacovi, a NASA postdoctoral fellow from Israel; and Antti Lignell, a Finnish Academy of Science postdoctoral fellow from Helsinki at JPL.
Founded in 1998, the NASA Astrobiology Institute is a partnership between NASA, 15 U.S. teams and 13 international consortia. It is based at NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif. The Institute's goals are to promote, conduct and lead interdisciplinary astrobiology research, train a new generation of astrobiology researchers, and share the excitement of astrobiology with learners of all ages. The NAI is part of NASA's Astrobiology program, which supports research into the origin, evolution, distribution and future of life on Earth and the potential for life elsewhere. For more information, visit http://astrobiology.nasa.gov/.
JPL is a division of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena.
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Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/space_time/astronomy/~3/VqnOibH7Dwg/130403114118.htm
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