Martian dust storm dissipating

ScienceDaily (Nov. 28, 2012) ? A regional dust storm on Mars, tracked from orbit since Nov. 10, appears to be abating rather than going global.

"During the past week, the regional storm weakened and contracted significantly," said Bruce Cantor of Malin Space Science Systems, San Diego. Cantor uses the Mars Color Imager camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter to monitor storms on the Red Planet.

Effects of the storm on global air-pressure patterns have been detected at ground level by the Rover Environmental Monitoring Station (REMS) on NASA's Mars rover Curiosity.

"We are getting lots of good data about this storm," said Mark Richardson of Ashima Research, Pasadena, Calif. He is a co-investigator both on REMS and on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter's Mars Climate Sounder instrument, which has been detecting widespread effects of the current storm on atmospheric temperatures.

Researchers anticipate that the unprecedented combination of a near-equatorial weather station at ground level, and daily orbital observations during Mars' dust-storm season, may provide information about why some dust storms grow larger than others.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, manages the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Project and the Mars Science Laboratory Project for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. Spain provided the REMS weather station for the Mars Science Laboratory mission's rover, Curiosity.

For more information about the missions of NASA's Mars Exploration Program, visit http://marsprogram.jpl.nasa.gov/ .

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Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/space_time/nasa/~3/kJjeD91d8tc/121128070512.htm

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The biggest struggle yet for Citi's repairman

(Reuters) - When Citigroup Inc's board of directors was looking for a chief executive in 2007, it called Michael O'Neill, who had turned around Bank of Hawaii Corp a few years before.

O'Neill spoke to a Citigroup board member on the telephone, but the board was reluctant to consider O'Neill seriously because he had never run a bank of Citigroup's size or complexity, according to a person familiar with the situation.

Five years later, O'Neill, 66, is effectively running Citigroup, which is more than 130 times bigger than Bank of Hawaii was last decade, as measured by assets. He joined the Citigroup board in 2009, became chairman this year and has played an increasingly powerful role, as most vividly shown by his ousting of Vikram Pandit as chief executive in October, after months of tension.

O'Neill, who hand-picked new CEO Michael Corbat, has an uphill task ahead of him. Citigroup is groaning under $171 billion of assets it wants to shed, has high expenses, and its profitability lags behind that of such competitors as JPMorgan Chase & Co.

And O'Neill faces the same question that kept him from being a contender for the Citigroup CEO spot: while he can fix a smaller bank, can he revamp a behemoth as complicated as Citigroup?

"It is an awfully complex situation," said current Bank of Hawaii CEO Peter Ho, who worked for O'Neill. "He relishes simplicity."

O'Neill, who declined to comment for this story through a spokesman, has provided some clues about his plan to turn the bank around. On a conference call with investors the day that Pandit stepped down, he said that he will follow his typical playbook.

A dozen people who have worked with O'Neill over the years say that plan usually involves the ruthless pruning of underperforming operations and deciding which ones are worth additional investment.

As he evaluates a bank, he delves deeply into details to look for value or risk that others may have missed. His decisions may differ from those of competitors, but he has a strong track record of being right, these people said. For example, when he was at BankAmerica in 1998, he exited a type of mortgage lending that brought heartburn to competitors a few years later.

Given Corbat spent three years after the financial crisis helping to dispose of Citigroup's bad assets, he may be a perfect chief executive - and ally - for O'Neill.

Still, it remains far from certain that O'Neill can use the methods he has previously used to turn Citi around. It not only dwarfs Bank of Hawaii but is also seven times as large as BankAmerica was in 1997, when O'Neill was that bank's chief financial officer.

Citigroup is also vastly more complicated and has been exiting businesses for years.

At this stage, O'Neill could still decide to shed a big business, like investment banking. But Citigroup executives who have considered such steps in the past decided that the damage to other businesses, like corporate lending, would be too great.

"Take the process at Bank of Hawaii, and multiply it by 10,000, and you've got what Citigroup will be like," said one former senior Citi executive. It may take years for O'Neill's effort to bear fruit, barring a major global economic turnaround, he added.

ALOHA SHIRTS AND BAR GRAPHS

In 2000, when O'Neill took the CEO's job at Bank of Hawaii, he had to fix a regional bank that was struggling after over-expanding around the Pacific Rim.

Employees, already bruised by deep cost-cutting, were wary of an outsider from the U.S. mainland, said Lori McCarney, the bank's former chief marketing officer.

But O'Neill listened to employees, laid out a strategy and put his own money behind it, investing $10 million in the bank's stock. The former U.S. Marine even starred in a series of commercials, dressed in a flowered aloha shirt.

At investor meetings in New York, O'Neill would show a chart with about 30 bars - about three-fourths represented businesses that were profitable, while the remainder were losing money or breaking even.

"It was a pretty clear graphic picture of what to expect," said Al Landon, a risk manager hired shortly before O'Neill's arrival and who later became his successor.

Within six months of being named CEO, O'Neill announced that the company would shed its holdings in California, Asia and most of the South Pacific.

O'Neill dug into various businesses to understand what was happening. He would suddenly show up in employees' offices or summon them for short discussions, recalls Ho, who was then a senior vice president fairly low down in the chain of command.

"He clearly understood the issues in my sphere, wanted to get my opinion on them, and wanted to make sure that I understood that he understood what was going on several layers down," said Ho, who became CEO of the bank in 2010.

It was in such no-nonsense meetings that O'Neill convinced Bank of Hawaii employees that the company would rationally sort out which of its businesses.

When O'Neill departed in 2004, he left the bank "with a very strong credit culture and they got through the credit crisis better than most banks," said Fred Cannon, who was director of investor relations at BankAmerica and is now director of U.S. research and chief equity strategist at Keefe, Bruyette & Woods.

Former colleagues say O'Neill also has a knack for seeing risks that other executives may miss.

In 1997, when he was chief financial officer at BankAmerica, he pushed the lender to auction off its manufactured housing finance business, which was then booking strong profits as the second-biggest lender in a booming market.

"It was a smart analysis of the numbers using good judgment," Cannon said. "Mike sold that business for a very good price." That deal happened in 1998, and two years later, most players in the manufactured housing finance industry suffered big losses.

BankAmerica, led by then CEO David Coulter, agreed to merge in 1998 with Charlotte, North Carolina-based NationsBank to form today's Bank of America Corp.

A CRAZY QUILT

At Citigroup, O'Neill will have to take these skills to an entirely new level.

Sandy Weill built the bank higgledy-piggledy over the course of decades, starting with a small consumer lender in the 1980s and ending with the largest bank in the United States.

But the bank was slow to integrate its many businesses into a single company, resulting in a crazy quilt of computer systems, overlapping operations and confusing organizational charts, making it hard to figure out whether any business was earning a meaningful return.

The bank has made progress but is still working on these issues, which would complicate a Bank of Hawaii-type analysis on profitability of various units.

Moreover, unlike Bank of Hawaii and BankAmerica, shedding assets will be much harder at Citigroup.

The bank has been disposing of extraneous and risky assets housed in its Citi Holdings unit for nearly four years. It had cut down assets to $171 billion by the end of September from $649 billion in mid-2009, but executives expect the pace of disposals to slow as few obvious buyers remain. What's left is likely to be a source of more losses in the future.

Despite these challenges, veteran bank analyst Mike Mayo said he can think of no better person than O'Neill to be chairman of Citigroup.

"He almost wrote the book on how to decide which businesses should be sold or kept," said Mayo, whose 2012 book "Exile on Wall Street" details his numerous arguments with senior bank executives, including former Citigroup leaders Chuck Prince, Robert Rubin and Pandit.

(Reporting By Rick Rothacker in Charlotte, North Carolina and David Henry and Dan Wilchins in New York; Editing by Paritosh Bansal, Martin Howell)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/biggest-struggle-yet-citis-repairman-060731038--sector.html

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Content Management Systems And The Art Of Web Designing ...

In web designing, how a website looks is not all that matters. It is also important to make sure that the content of the website, such as images, posts, and links are carefully managed in order to keep the website working properly. This is especially important for businesses who make use of various online advertising and marketing strategies. Companies that rely on internet marketing and commerce often find success if their website becomes popular and receives a large number of visits from potential clients on a daily basis. Apart from regularly featuring interesting, innovative and informative content, an effective business website should also have the support of a content management system, or CMS, in order to work efficiently.

Content management in relation to web designing is essentially defined as the set of processes and technologies that support the collection, managing, storing and publication of information on a given website. For many website design companies, content management systems are an integral part of their business processes. In a number of countries, business are starting to become more aware of the benefits of having CMS services sourced from independent providers. Many CMS companies offer a full range of online marketing and advertising solutions that cater to a whole host of industries. Whether the business is about selling used cars or providing services such as online education or web hosting services, CMS website design companies can help boost sales numbers exponentially.

Many CMS companies provide companies several advantages. For instance, using CMS to manage their websites saves time and effort. Instead of having to upload files using an FTP server, clients can simply log in to their CMS user interface and post their content there. The same holds true if they simply want to make certain changes on their website. Another benefit using the services of CMS companies is the support that is available from the community. There are so many CMS enthusiasts out there that open source plug ins are being developed everyday. Almost all of the CMS companies make it easy to store important details because all the content and the data are stored in a database. All the client needs to do in order to secure and backup their data is to export them. It is even possible to track what content is published, schedule the publishing dates, and automatically remove outdated content. CMS web design companies also make it easier to change the design elements of a website without having to use any HTML codes, because they can use templates to change the different parts of the website such as the header, the sidebars, and the footer, very quickly with minimal effort.

Many companies who engage in online marketing and ecommerce call on the services of CMS Saudi Arabia in order to improve their website's performance. With the influx of web services that are becoming available to more people across the world, more companies are turning to CMS services in order to maximize their website's marketing and advertising potential.

Source: http://www.articlesnatch.com/Article/Content-Management-Systems-And-The-Art-Of-Web-Designing/4284294

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Source: http://nysebome.posterous.com/content-management-systems-and-the-art-of-web

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Source: http://horacebartholomew.typepad.com/blog/2012/11/content-management-systems-and-the-art-of-web-designing.html

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Source: http://kyrutane.posterous.com/content-management-systems-and-the-art-of-web

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PFT: Harbaugh nearly faced mutiny in October

John HarbaughAP

The Ravens are 9-2, but it hasn?t been an easy season.? Apart from key injuries and periodic ineffectiveness and a defense that ain?t what it used to be, coach John Harbaugh had to deal with an unexpected uprising last month.

The moment came, according to Mike Silver of Yahoo! Sports, on Halloween morning.? Back from a bye-week break after a backbreaking loss to the Texans, Harbaugh told the team that they?d be practicing in full pads.? Several veteran players openly challenged their head coach.

?It was practically a mutiny,? a Ravens player told Silver.? ?It came very close to getting out of control. But the way Coach Harbaugh handled it was amazing.? He let people have their say, and he listened, and he explained himself, and pretty soon it was like a big group-therapy session.? In the end, a lot of positive things were said.? We didn?t practice in pads, but we came out of there stronger as a group.?

Coincidentally (or not), the Ravens haven?t lost since then.

?I?ve never seen a head coach handle anything like that as well as he did,? a Ravens assistant who attended the meeting told Silver.? ?There were some things said where we were like, Damn.

?A lot of coaches would have acted like dictators and been very sensitive about the way their authority was being questioned.? John said, ?Hey, let?s talk about this.?? He showed great leadership.? Instead of worrying that it would make him seem weak, he turned it into a strength.?

Harbaugh realizes the value of encouraging players to speak their mind.

?I wasn?t threatened by it,? Harbaugh said.? ?That?s the main thing.? And, you know, they had some good points, and I had some good points.? Other guys stood up and said some great things.? To me, it embodied everything that you should have on a team.

?The point was that, we have what I call ?Open Mic,? and we can all say anything that we need to say and have to say. You know then that you?re responsible ? when you say it, everybody?s gonna hear it, so you?d better make it your best stuff.

?That brings out the best.? Otherwise, it?s ?Why are they sneaking around talking behind corners??? You know what I mean?? If you?ve got something, you put it right out here in front of me.? I?m man enough to handle it.? If you?re right, then you?re right!? It?s OK to be right.? But more important it?s OK to be wrong.? And it?s OK for me to be wrong, too.?

By being willing to admit that he?s wrong and make changes, Harbaugh could be poised to take his team right to the Super Bowl.

In fact, the only thing Harbaugh may have done wrong in this episode is to let it be known what happened.? Now, other coaches facing similar challenges may opt not to be hardheaded, which could help their own teams play better, possibly when playing the Ravens.

Source: http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2012/11/28/john-harbaugh-nearly-faced-a-mutiny-n-october/related

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It's not just taxes: Benefit cuts divide Democrats

WASHINGTON (AP) ? It's not just about taxes. There's another big obstacle to overcome as Congress and President Barack Obama work to skirt the fiscal cliff: deep divisions among Senate Democrats over whether to consider cuts to popular benefit programs like Medicare and Medicaid.

Much of the focus during negotiations seeking an alternative to $671 billion in automatic tax increases and spending cuts beginning in January has centered on whether Republicans would agree to raising taxes on the wealthy. Obama insists that tax increases on the wealthy must be part of any deal, even as White House officials concede that government benefit programs will have to be in the package too.

But even if GOP lawmakers agree to raise taxes, there is no guarantee Democrats can come up with enough votes in the Senate to cut benefit programs ? as Republicans are demanding.

"We cannot come up with the solution for Medicare in the next two or three weeks," said Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, the No. 2 Democrat in the Senate. "It's too important, it's too serious, when it comes to this fiscal cliff debate."

Durbin has long said Democrats must be willing to discuss cuts to benefit programs in exchange for tax increases on the wealthy. But, he said Wednesday, the issue is too complicated to address in a short postelection session of Congress.

Republicans complain that Democrats are taking issues off the table, even as more GOP lawmakers are reluctantly considering tax increases.

"Democrats like to pretend as though they're the great protectors of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid," said Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky. "They make solemn pledges all the time about how they won't even entertain a discussion about reform. What they don't say is that ignoring these programs is the surest way to guarantee their collapse."

There's a growing consensus among Senate Democrats and the White House that Social Security should be exempt from any deficit-reduction package. But some centrist Democrats in the Senate argue that fellow Democrats must be willing to consider cuts to Medicare and Medicaid in order to get concessions from Republicans on taxes.

"It has to be both ? a significant revenue increase as well as spending cuts," said Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., chairman of the Senate Finance Committee.

Sen. Kent Conrad, D-N.D., who is retiring as chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, said rising health care costs in Medicare and Medicaid are helping to drive future spending, making them an essential part of a long-term deficit-reduction package.

"I've been part of every bipartisan group here. We've always put everything on the table," Conrad said. "If you're going to solve this problem, you're going to have to deal with where the spending is and the revenue can be raised."

But senators like Baucus and Conrad increasingly are being drowned out by other Democrats emboldened by the recent election results to fight against benefit cuts.

"I think the election spoke very strongly about the fact that the vast majority of American people don't want to cut these programs," said Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa.

Further complicating the issue, some Democrats say they are willing to look for savings in programs like Medicare and Medicaid, as long as cuts don't lead to higher costs for beneficiaries. Obama's new health care law, for example, assumes more than $700 billion in Medicare savings over the next decade.

"I'm willing to look at ways of making the programs work better," Harkin said.

Congress and the White House are devoting the next three weeks to finding at least a bridge over the fiscal cliff by reducing the sudden jolt of higher taxes and spending cuts in January while laying a framework for addressing the nation's long-term financial problems next year.

Obama wants to let tax rates rise for wealthy families while sparing middle- and low-income taxpayers. Some Republican leaders, including House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio, have said they were willing to consider making the wealthy pay more by reducing their tax breaks. But most Republicans in Congress adamantly oppose raising anyone's tax rates.

Negotiations are going slowly as each side waits for the other to make concessions.

Democrats already have tried to take Social Security off the table. White House press secretary Jay Carney said this week that changes to the massive retirement and disability program should be done separately from any plan to reduce the deficit. That's the same position taken by 28 Democratic senators and independent Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont in a letter to fellow senators in September.

"We will oppose including Social Security cuts for future or current beneficiaries in any deficit-reduction package," said the letter, which was signed by many top Democrats, including Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada. In the House, Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi has taken the same position, not only on Social Security, but also on Medicare and Medicaid.

"There hasn't been the slightest suggestion about what they're going to do about the real problems, and that's entitlements," said Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah, the top Republican on the Senate Finance Committee. "There's a certain cockiness that I've seen that is really astounding to me since we're basically in the same position we were before" the election.

___

Follow Stephen Ohlemacher on Twitter: http://twitter.com/stephenatap

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/not-just-taxes-benefit-cuts-divide-democrats-190529091--finance.html

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Remember QR Codes? The Leading Reader, Scan, Has Been Downloaded 25 Million Times, Scans 27 Million Codes A Month

Screen Shot 2012-11-27 at 11.48.13 AMNo one out there seems to love a QR code, but that hasn't stopped leading QR code scanner makers Scan from serving up 25 million copies of their software. The company, which currently processes 27 million codes per month, is offering version 2.0 of their product.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/xZJj32kqN5I/

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Here's Why Chris Brown's Twitter Account No Longer Exists ...

Chris Brown sentenced See more photos in the gallery-->

(CNN) ? Chris Brown has deleted his Twitter account after getting into a vulgar war of words with comedian and writer Jenny Johnson on Sunday.

The stomach-churning exchange of messages all began with Brown tweeting, ?I look old as f***! I?m only 23,? and Johnson responding, ?I know! Being a worthless piece of s*** can really age a person.?

The back-and-forth between Brown and Johnson, some of which can be seen on Johnson?s still-public feed, continued for at least half-an-hour. Brown bit back at Johnson?s initial reply with: ?take them teeth out when u Sucking my d*** HOE.? Johnson lobbed back: ?It?s ?HO? not ?HOE? you ignorant f***.?

From there, Brown made a lewd comment about farting, to which Johnson replied, ?Your mom must be so proud of you.? She also posted a link to a 2009 MTV News story containing details of Brown?s assault on his then-girlfriend Rihanna, along with the hashtag, ?#SuckIt.?

After another round of scatological chatter, both Johnson and Brown seemed to give in.

?Okay. I?m done. All I got from that exchange with Chris Brown is that he wants to s*** and fart on me,? Johnson wrote, later adding, ?I have zero respect for a person who seems unapologetic for the terrible crime he committed and shows no signs of changing.?

Before shutting down his Twitter account, Brown told his fans, ?To teambreezy? Know that I?m not upset. Just felt like entertaining the ignorance. These b*****s crazy.. Further proved my point of how immature society is. #CarpeDiem. Catch me in traffic??

Since the Twitter spat, Johnson has reported receiving threatening messages.

?It?s alarming how many death threats I?m receiving via replies,? she tweeted Monday. ?I encourage everyone, including Twitter to look through them. Not cool.?

Brown, meanwhile, had encouraged Johnson to ?Just ask Rihanna if she mad??????,? which wouldn?t appear to be the case. The pair, who announced their renewed friendship in October and have collaborated together on a song for Rihanna?s new album, ?Unapologetic,? were reportedly spotted in Berlin over the Thanksgiving holiday.
? ?

By Breeanna Hare

CNN
?? & ? 2012 Cable News Network, Inc., a Time Warner Company. All rights reserved.
?

Source: http://fox2now.com/2012/11/26/heres-why-chris-browns-twitter-account-no-longer-exists/

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New Money-Destroying Virus Attacks Iran

After the US and Israel cooked up Stuxnet—a potent cyber weapon aimed at Iran's nuclear facilities—whenever a virus targets Iran, it could be something major. This time around, the web threat wants to erase Iranian banks. More »

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/_1dbtR7GBso/new-money+destroying-virus-attacks-iran

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