2013年12月30日星期一

A Tool Consumers Need

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau recently issued a report on "pre-dispute" arbitration, also known as forced arbitration. That is the ubiquitous corporate practice of requiring consumers to agree in advance to use arbitration for any dispute that arises from a company's products or services, rather than go to court.Banks and businesses love forced arbitration, because it is a process they control for their own benefit. It shields them from accountability by closing the courthouse door to consumers. But no one should have to forfeit consumer protections and legal rights to use products and services.In the Dodd-Frank law,Mention Becomes A Full-Fledged Media Monitoring Tool With Buffer Integration lawmakers banned arbitration clauses in most residential mortgages. However, they did not prohibit them in other consumer financial contracts, and instead authorized the bureau to decide if a ban is warranted after completing a thorough analysis and reporting the findings to Congress.

The bureau's report is the first step in that process. It presents initial findings on the use and complexity of forced arbitration clauses in checking accounts, credit cards, prepaid cards and payday loans. These findings are intended to serve as raw material for further analysis, but even the raw data is compelling.The report found, for example, that most large banks put forced arbitration clauses in basic contracts and that 90 percent of those clauses bar both individual lawsuits and participation in class actions. This results in a systematic denial of justice.In disputes over financial products — involving, say, excessive fees, inflated loan balances, faulty credit reporting, or fraud and discrimination — the damages at stake may be significant for an individual but not enough to warrant the cost of a legal challenge unless grouped in a class action. Forced arbitration also fosters abuse, since there is no check on wrongdoing that takes small amounts of money from potentially millions of customers.

To the extent that consumers are aware of their vulnerability, they have learned the hard way. In the past several years, the Supreme Court has repeatedly upheld arbitration clauses, leaving consumers with virtually no meaningful way to challenge corporate wrongdoing. Ideally, Congress would pass a law to remedy that injustice. For now, it is relying on the consumer bureau. To work its way toward an effective ban on forced arbitration, the agency need only follow where the evidence leads.

2013年12月27日星期五

Mention Becomes A Full-Fledged Media Monitoring Tool With Buffer Integration

French startup Mention just received an important update that should make it more compelling to its user base. Whenever Mention users receive a new alert, they can share it on their social channels using Buffer, lining up status updates to share later. As a reminder, Mention is a media monitoring tool that works a lot like Google Alerts with a web interface to skim through your alerts. It is mostly targeted toward business users.While there was a way to tweet and share individual alerts on Facebook, you had to do it manually throughout the day. With today's update, you can spend a few minutes every now and then to see all your alerts regarding your company or product, and decide what to share. Then, everything will happen automatically — your social feeds will stay active with updates about what you are doing.

Combining Mention with Buffer makes a lot of sense. Mention's strengths were its monitoring tools, not its social features. Instead of making a Buffer copycat to fill this gap in the product offering, it partnered with Buffer. In the meantime, Buffer users will be able to get an alert stream right from the Buffer dashboard.So far, Mention has attracted 150,000 users and 2,500 paying subscribers, including CrunchBase, GitHub or Microsoft. It is tiny compared to Buffer's 1 million users, but media alerts feel more like a niche product — the new partnership will help both user bases grow. The company has received $800,000 in seed funding. Converting more users to its paying plan will probably be the next challenge for the startup.

The discovery of a 1.4-million-year-old hand-bone fossil reveals that the modern human ability to make and use complex tools may have originated far earlier than scientists previously thought, researchers say.A critical trait that distinguishes modern humans from all other species alive today is the ability to make complex tools. It's not just the extraordinarily powerful human brain, but also the human hand, that gives humans this unique ability. In contrast, apes — humans' closest living relatives — lack a powerful and precise enough grip to create and use complex tools effectively.A key anatomical feature of the modern human hand is the third metacarpal, a bone in the palm that connects the middle finger to the wrist.

2013年12月24日星期二

Dyn acquires service status tool ReadyStatus to integrate into its Internet performance offerings

Internet performance solutions company Dyn has acquired ReadyStatus, a tool that provides a status update page for online services. Dyn will integrate ReadyStatus with its products, including its managed DNS feature Traffic Director. This will mean that if a company's site goes down, its homepage can automatically switch to a status update page.The all-cash deal is Dyn's third acquisition this year, following website monitoring service Verelo in January, and mobile analytics dashboard tool Trendslide in May. ReadyStatus will continue to serve existing users.

Duke University researchers are developing a program that will help users start conversations with their loved ones regarding their family health.MeTree is an online tool that will allow users to build a family pedigree by inputting family health information. The tool will then create a risk profile for each family member along with criteria needed to help lower their health risks."Family history is much more likely to be able to tell your doctor about what we should do to lower your risk for certain conditions than any other test available today," said Dr. Lori Orlando,Security concerns raised over visa program for foreign investors an assistant professor of family medicine at Duke University who is helping develop the tool.MeTree is still in the research phase and won't be available for two years, but as families gather for Christmas, there are resources available to help relatives start crucial conversations about family health.

Duke offers a guide to family health history that has information about what questions to ask and how to build a family health pedigree – information that can be shared with the doctor. As a result, they may recommend steps like early and more detailed screening or genetic testing and counseling to help lower health risks.Such discussions can be difficult to start with family members but are needed because they could reveal patterns of inherited risk for heart disease, diabetes, various cancers or other diseases, Orlando said.

2013年12月19日星期四

Security concerns raised over visa program for foreign investors

Grassley, in a Dec. 12 letter to ICE Acting Director John Sandweg, asked what ICE is doing "to help ensure the U.S. does not provide EB-5 visas to individuals and entities that are involved in international terrorism."Some argue major security improvements to the program have been made over the past several years and that Congress has been apprised of them as members continue to reauthorize the program.However, Grassley argues the ICE memo -- which he released -- shows Congress needs to know more."It appears that there are additional concerns about national security that Congress has not previously heard and will need to consider as the program continues," he told FoxNews.com on Monday.

According to the memo, federal agents learned two Iranians were trying to "facilitate terrorism" and were "involved in an illicit procurement network that exports items to Iran for use by 'secret' Iranian government agencies."At least one of them was indicted and arrested in connection with allegations cited in the ICE investigation, according to the heavily redacted, five-page memo. The connection to the EB-5 program is unclear, but the memo appears to indicate that a company involved in the investigation was participating in that program. DHS spokesman Peter Boogaard said Monday the federal government has taken "unprecedented steps" in the past four years to improve security and detect fraud within the EB-5 program. He also said the internal memo focused on just one regional center, which was suspended from participating in the program until an investigation found no evidence of "nefarious" activity.

The EB-5 visa program was created by Congress in 1990 to stimulate the domestic economy through foreign investment. It originally required applicants to invest at least $1 million and grants them and immediate family members a temporary visa with the potential to get a permanent one after roughly two years.The Regional Centers program was added in 1992 and requires only a $500,000 investment into projects that help economically depressed regions.

2013年12月17日星期二

Climate change is likely to make the problem far worse

With the global population expected to reach more than nine billion by 2050, however, the world might soon be hungry for such varieties. Although agricultural productivity has improved dramatically over the past 50 years, economists fear that these improvements have begun to wane at a time when food demand, driven by the larger number of people and the growing appetites of wealthier populations, is expected to rise between 70 and 100 percent by midcentury. In particular, the rapid increases in rice and wheat yields that helped feed the world for decades are showing signs of slowing down, and production of cereals will need to more than double by 2050 to keep up. If the trend continues, production might be insufficient to meet demand unless we start using significantly more land, fertilizer, and water.

Climate change is likely to make the problem far worse, bringing higher temperatures and, in many regions, wetter conditions that spread infestations of disease and insects into new areas. Drought, damaging storms, and very hot days are already taking a toll on crop yields, and the frequency of these events is expected to increase sharply as the climate warms. For farmers, the effects of climate change can be simply put: the weather has become far more unpredictable,Wetmore Tool and Engineering in Chino a leader in cutting tools and extreme weather has become far more common.

The central highlands of Mexico, for example, experienced their driest and wettest years on record back to back in 2011 and 2012, says Matthew Reynolds, a wheat physiologist at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center in El Batán. Such variation is "worrisome and very bad for agriculture," he says. "It's extremely challenging to breed for it. If you have a relatively stable climate, you can breed crops with genetic characteristics that follow a certain profile of temperatures and rainfall. As soon as you get into a state of flux, it's much more difficult to know what traits to target."One advantage of using genetic engineering to help crops adapt to these sudden changes is that new varieties can be created quickly. Creating a potato variety through conventional breeding, for example, takes at least 15 years; producing a genetically modified one takes less than six months. Genetic modification also allows plant breeders to make more precise changes and draw from a far greater variety of genes, gleaned from the plants' wild relatives or from different types of organisms.

2013年12月14日星期六

Wetmore Tool and Engineering in Chino a leader in cutting tools

Wetmore also produces more adapted shank cutting tools for the aircraft industry than any one else in the world, Kurtz said.More recently Kurtz and the company were honored with the title of the Spirit of the Entrepreneur's 2013 "Corporate Entrepreneur"award for its high standards, attention to detail and quality control.Entrepreneurs and top business leaders across the Inland Empire were recognized at the event that celebrated "The Art of Entrepreneurship" at the Ontario Convention Center on Nov. 19.Spirit of the Entrepreneur organizers received 162 nominations this year. The list was narrowed down to 27 finalists in nine categories.Runners-up in the "Corporate Entrepreneur" category were Bruce Himes, president of Western Water Works Supply Co. Inc. in Chino Hills, and Roger Orton, general manager of the Chino-based Globe Plastics Inc.

According to the Spirit Awards program guide, under the direction of Kurtz, Wetmore has transformed from producing a commodity with little concern for quality and dependability into a world-class manufacturer with ISO, or International Standards Organizations, quality.Wetmore was nominated by Bob Velker, who is the Chino Airport business liaison and community outreach manager for the San Bernardino County Department of Airports."I've been in the aerospace industry for a long time and they have become the dominant player in the production of supplying these tools to aerospace companies," Velker said. "In this small town Chino, Wetmore is high on the food chain with a major world-wide corporation like Boeing. That speaks volumes and it's all because of (Kurtz)."

Velker said one of the ingenious ideas Kurtz has had as an entrepreneur is that he treats his employees to a real-world demonstration of Wetmore's tools by hosting the company's holiday party at the Planes of Fame Air Museum in Chino."We're brining to life planes by using the tools that his employees make," said Velker, who volunteers at Planes of Fame.The cutting tool company has about 200 employees and expects double-digit growth and product line expansion beyond its current core markets.

2013年12月13日星期五

A tool to help you in the hunt for value stocks

The Value Line Investment Survey starts with its universe of 1,700 stocks that make up about 90 percent of the market capitalization of all stocks traded in U.S. markets. Value Line ranks those stocks into quintiles based on three propriety measures called Timeliness, Safety and Technical.The quintiles place the stocks into five categories so that you can quickly grasp which equities are at the top, bottom and middle of the pack.For Timeliness and Technical rankings, the very top and very bottom each have 100 stocks. The middle contains 900 stocks, and Ranks 2 and 4 contain 300 stocks apiece. The distribution of Safety Ranks is not arranged in a set parameter.An aggressive investor would look for stocks ranked 1 or 2 for Timeliness,When used in conjunction with the Fed's power based in part on recent earnings momentum and stock-price performance.

These are stocks that Value Line believes will lead the pack for relative price performance during the next six to 12 months. They tend to be more volatile and have smaller capitalizations than the general market.Stocks ranked 3 are expected to be "average performers," but still might be quite appropriate for more conservative investors. Stocks ranked 4 and 5 would probably be weeded out by most investors, since those stocks are viewed as being less likely to perform well during the next six to 12 months than the vast majority of the 1,700 stocks.The Safety ranking is more useful for conservative investors, who will want to search for stocks ranked 1 or 2, while aggressive investors may be happy with 3, 4 or even 5 as long as they keep a watchful eye on the stock.

Safety is based on the company's Financial Strength grade, a measure of the financial condition of the company, as well as the stock's Price Stability, which is based on the stock's volatility standard deviation of weekly percentage price during the past five years.Aggressive investors also will want to focus on the Technical ranking, which predicts short-term three to six months price changes, based on a proprietary model evaluating 10 recent price trends.

2013年12月4日星期三

When used in conjunction with the Fed's power

Mr. Potter said that market participants have told the Fed that the overnight reverse repos "should be an effective tool for increasing the Federal Reserve's control of short-term money market rates through a stronger floor." He added, "money market experts have noted the exercise's importance in the current environment of promoting market functioning; for example, it reduces the likelihood of pervasive, negative short-term rates trading."Mr. Potter said that the reverse repo facility is particularly helpful because it reaches a wide range of market participants, and he said that it doesn't even have to be used heavily to help the Fed gain greater control over short-term rates in some future tightening cycle. But he added that the reverse repos are unlikely to be a silver bullet on their own.

When used in conjunction with the Fed's power to pay interest on reserves–that helps keep cash on the Fed's books and out of the economy–Mr. Potter explained the reverse repos "may strengthen the floor for short-term interest rates and, with it, the Federal Reserve's control of money market rates, by surmounting the competitive and balance sheet frictions seen in money markets and by extending the central bank's payment of interest to a wider universe of relevant counterparties."Simon Potter, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York's markets group chief, said the Fed's new reverse repurchase agreement tool probably will be a key part of how the central bank eventually tightens monetary policy.

Market "participants have indicated that they expect that a facility, if executed in full scale in the future, should be an effective tool for increasing the Federal Reserve's control of short-term money market rates," Potter said yesterday in a speech in New York. He is in charge of the System Open Market Account used in implementing monetary policy.Fed officials have been testing the new tool -- known as a fixed-rate, full allotment overnight reverse repo facility -- aimed at improving their control of near-term borrowing costs when they tighten policy by siphoning off excess cash in the banking system."Operationally, market participants generally characterize the exercise as smooth, with minimal disruptions," Potter said.The program would allow banks, broker-dealers, money-market funds and some government-sponsored enterprises to lend the Fed unlimited amounts of cash overnight at a fixed rate, currently 0.05 percent, in exchange for borrowing Treasuries in so-called reverse repo transactions.

The beauty of 'Minecraft' is it's not language-based

"The beauty of 'Minecraft' is it's not language-based," said Lorraine Yurshansky, executive producer for the new Google Creative Lab. "Over half the traffic is international. It's a global game, which makes it a global reach."Yurshansky tapped Michalakis to develop a fun and engaging way to get kids interested in quantum mechanics as part of the Google Creative Lab's STEM initiative.In the beginning, Michalakis didn't know "Minecraft" from "Minesweeper," he said. He originally pitched that the educational game center around either the Super Mario Bros. or Zelda franchises, but Yurshansky suggested "Minecraft" was more topical, and the game's cubicle world would be more conducive to teach quantum mechanics.

"You need to strike a balance between being fun and inspiring," Yurshansky said. "You want them to go down the rabbit hole. You want them to be excited about physics."Chatwin-Davis and Kubica both were more familiar with "Minecraft," and consulted on "qCraft.""We had some suggestions in how it should behave so that you enjoying playing this mod,Because you would have an economy but at the same time, you can learn a bit of quantum mechanics," Kubica said.Schools across the U.S., including New Los Angeles Charter School, have built lesson plans around "Minecraft." The sandbox game can act as a history lesson, a math lesson or even a science lesson."Since it's a building game, you can build anything you want," said Joel Levin, cofounder and education director of MinecraftEdu, headquartered in Finland. "Teachers can and do use the Minecraft world to teach whatever they want."

"QCraft" was a hit when Michalakis, Kubica and fellow Caltech consultant Aidan Chatwin-Davis presented it at the popular MineCon convention on Nov. 2 and 3 in Orlando, Fla."It was pretty intense," Chatwin-Davis said. "There was a continuous stream of kids and adults. I'd say what was really cool was getting just as many questions from the kids as the adults."Taxation, representation and slavery were up for debate recently at Wauwatosa West High School, where juniors engaged in a multi-day, in-class simulation of the first Constitutional Convention in 1787."I hope that today's debate ends with a decision on how representatives are chosen," Andrew Gleason typed on Twitter.