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Mutual & Federal grows retail market share as profits improve
Maintains close relationship with Old Mutual, Nedbank following split.
By 22 Mar 2016 00:58
OVERVIEW OF Old Mutual Ltd. - JSE:OMU
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Bain & Co, Nedbank deny facilitating corruption in SA
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JOHANNESBURG – Mutual & Federal, the short-term insurance arm of Old Mutual, has managed to claw back market share following growth in policyholder numbers, says CEO, Raimund Snyders.
"Our market share now sits above 11%, reflecting around a 2% claw back of market share," Snyders said, noting that growth has come mostly from the retail market through broker sales.
In South Africa, M&F grew gross written premiums (GWP) 8% to R11.7 billion for the 12 months to December 2015. Including the rest of Africa business, GWP climbed 17% to R14.3 billion.
Following the announcement that Old Mutual plc plans to split into four standalone businesses over the next two years – with the effect that Old Mutual Emerging Markets (OMEM), which includes M&F, and Nedbank become separate businesses – it will be largely business as usual for the property and casualty insurer, Snyders said.
"We will continue working closely with Old Mutual, that's the mandate," he commented, adding that M&F will be made a "core part of Old Mutual's proposition to customers".
At December 2015, OMEM – which includes Old Mutual's South Africa and rest of Africa businesses – had 10.7 million customers, representing a significant opportunity for M&F to cross-sell into this customer base.
Last year, OMEM hired three Telesure executives to launch a direct short-term insurance business into the rest of Africa and revamp its iWYZE business.
iWYZE, launched in 2010 as a joint venture between Old Mutual and M&F, has underperformed and struggled to compete with the likes of OUTsurance and MiWay, which grew GWP to R1.8 billion in 2015, contributing R219 million in profits to parent Santam's personal lines business.
"That's something we've got to fix and we're putting more money in to grow," Snyders said.
M&F this year bought the remaining shares in Credit Guarantee Insurance Corporation (CGIC), which offers trade credit insurance to clients, covering them against payment default by debtors.
The plan is to grow this business as a specialist line within Old Mutual, using the group's footprint to expand into new markets.
Around 15% of trade credit in South Africa is insured, according to Snyders, presenting a significant opportunity for CGIC as SA multi-nationals expand, and trade and commerce on the continent grows.
Collectively, insurance premiums in sub-Saharan Africa are less than 3% of GDP, according to EY, with obvious potential to increase penetration.
CGIC accounts for roughly 50% of M&F's profits, contributing to the insurer's underwriting result and diversification, Snyders said. It will work closely with Nedbank, which finances a lot of trade, he said.
For the 12 months to December 2015, M&F improved its underwriting ratio to 3.1% (2014: 0.9%).
Following a number of years of poor underwriting results – a function of extreme weather, a poor claims experience and ill-disciplined underwriting – a turnaround by management has brought the insurer closer to its desired underwriting ratio of 4%-7%.
An underwriting ratio, or margin, refers to the profit or losses that an insurance company makes after collecting premiums and paying claims (and claims-related expenses). Anything above 0 reflects an underwriting profit.
"Net underwriting profit of R273 million was significantly up (2014: R79 million) due to an improved claims ratio of 58.1%," Old Mutual said in its results statement.
The biggest threat to short-term insurers is the economic climate and customers' ability to manage risk and uncertainty, Snyders said, with downward pressures on disposable income. Economic growth in the rest of Africa is also a concern, he said.
Old Mutual poaches Telesure execs
14 May 2015 / Hanna Barry
Naspers surges as China fears fade
Rick Briers-Danks
Veritas Wealth


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'Fifty Shades of Grey' becomes best selling Kindle book of all time
Forget Shakespeare. Forget Harry Potter. When it comes to our digital eBook reading habits, we like to tuck in to a bit of blue. Amazon.co.uk today announced that E L James, a former Kindle Direct Publishing author, has become the first author to sell over one million books in the Amazon.co.uk Kindle Store with her kinky, internationally best-selling 'Fifty Shades' trilogy.
Despite the trilogy only going on sale back in March, James has become the best-selling author on Kindle and her debut novel, 'Fifty Shades of Grey', is now the #1 best-selling Kindle book of all time. The Kindle edition of 'Fifty Shades of Grey' is currently outselling the print book at a rate of more than 2 to 1.
"E L James' books have become both the fastest-selling and the best-selling series ever on Kindle. That's an exceptional achievement for a debut novelist and we're excited to see her pass the one million sales milestone," said Gordon Willoughby, Director, EU Kindle.
"Following a stint of self-publishing, first online and then via KDP, E L James found a fan base and her success has rocketed from there. Her books have become a worldwide phenomenon demonstrating what a powerful launch pad KDP can be."
The erotic tales, which initially began as Twilight fan-fiction, follow the relationship between a college graduate, Anastasia Steele, and a young business whizz, Christian Grey. It's proving particularly popular with female audiences, with its success on Kindle often being put down to the fact that no-one can tell you're secretly reading stories about BDSM on the eReader. Except when you blush.
Jun 26, 2012 Gerald Lynch
Tagged amazon Anastasia Steele Christian Grey E L James Ebooks Fifty Shades of Grey kindle twilight
10 Must-Have MacBook Pro with Retina Display Accessories
Microsoft do not plan to make own-branded Windows Phone 8 smartphone

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


Organization of this kind of fell off due to a new idea added to the overall concept and trying to figure it out. Expect something in the near (-ish) future.
Dusdeus, welcome to the forum. Giving you 'sprite artist' member group tag now due to showing whatever off here. We look forward to you opening up any other WIP topics you may have due to you have real talent.
Sorry for posting potential Progress here. Didn't want to make a topic since I am not sure if I would continue this editing.I just felt like fishing ideas to chuchoryu for a bit.
Well, i'm making christie monteiro sprites, so, you can count on me.
while i'm making Gun Jack sprites.


Ever wondered how so many shops popped up on the internet within a matter of years? For the older generations, e-commerce is still a fairly new idea. This is where short tutorials and a course like the Amazing Selling Machine came into action, providing training to suppliers who wish to ply their wares on e-markets like Amazon. While the younger generations have embraced online shopping with fervour, as it meant access to items that may not always be available locally, says the article on www.thebalance.com/advantages-of-ecommerce-1141610. For e-commerce players, the customer base is as wide as it is varied and newer players may find it difficult to balance the demand-supply chain for their online shop.
ASM or the Amazing Selling Machine is a high intensity, extremely thorough training course for sellers who want to use Amazon as their primary marketplace. While it is not mandatory to take the course in order to start selling on Amazon, this training program acts as a survival guide to new sellers, teaching them the basics of creating a sustainable business that will grow fast and use all the services Amazon provides its sellers efficiently. There are, however, several benefits to using the Amazing Selling Machine protocol to kick start your vending career on an online platform.
One of the most significant benefits you reap from enrolling in the program is the unobstructed access to the seller community forums. Not only is this an absolute goldmine filled with tried and tested intel, business analytics and real stories from real people just like you, the community can serve as your safety net during the entire program. This will help you push your e-shop to greater heights faster and with more ease. You can also read reviews and notes on how other people use ASM to sell their products as well as tips and tricks to using the course for your specific niche. The forums are also a great way to interact with your fellow sellers, clear doubts and seek answers.
Another great advantage of ASM is that it is designed to be used specifically for the Amazon marketplace. While there are certain other e-commerce course to be found elsewhere, none of them are as comprehensive or as thoroughly tailored for the Amazon platform as the Amazing Selling Machine. The price of the course is well worth the investment; give it a couple of months and you will earn it back in profit.
As an online course, ASM can be accessed from anywhere, at any time. There are no waiting times between time zones or between different topics of discussion; this means you can learn at your own pace. The final benefit is the access to a variety of high-end e-commerce tools that come with the package. You can access these tools for a full year to jumpstart your business. Instead of actively seeking out ways to establish your business, most of the tools in the package will help you find the best wholesale deals, set up compatible audience parameters and more. If you are serious about joining as a seller on Amazon, consider ASM will be a worthy investment.
The growth of many small business entities depends to a decent extent upon the kind of marketing that is done for those businesses. In the current era, a small business owner should never decrease stress upon the role that can be played by search engine optimization because it is the cheapest possible method to increase visibility. The extent to which high-quality SEO has impacted a number of startups in the past decade has been reported in detail by some of the most well known online sites such as www.forbes.com. It is true that the increase in the visibility of a business is an undeniable result of effective SEO, but there are many less obvious positive impacts of SEO about which you should be aware.
The other obvious impact of SEO is that it will set up a platform where you will have the chance to interact with your buyers on a very regular basis. The design of your website can help you in achieving this with a fairly high degree of ease. But you should not forget that people will reach your site on a frequent basis if and only if the site has been optimized to the search engine that they use.
Unless and until this has been done the quality and smoothness of your website will not matter even a slight bit because there is a minimal reach for your site. There is almost zero doubt about the fact that high-quality SEO will also be one of the swiftest and the most strategic tools to get ahead of the various competitors that any small business has. In order to leave your competitors behind you should try to create a situation where the management of your SEO process is done at the hands of one of the very best firms in the business of SEO.
The reality is that a lot of small business firms think that opting for SEO for their website will leave a deep hole in their pockets. The truth is far from the line of thinking that is adopted by so many small business owners. SEO of high quality and a lot of efficiencies can be done at a pretty decent price. When it comes to digital marketing, SEO is surely one of the most cost-effective methods that can leave a long-lasting impact if it is done properly. Defeating all the competing firms on the digital platform can create the ground for you to defeat them in other areas of your sector that matter a lot in the long run.
In SEO the choice of keywords or anchor words is among the things that matter a lot to the entire process of SEO. It must always be at the back of your mind that the optimization of any site depends upon the strategy that is used by a search engine to rate the various sites. The evolution of the process and method of choosing these words has been phenomenal over the years. A keyword that worked a few years back may even work against the process.
So you're all set to create an electronic presence for your startup? However, you don't understand how or where to start? Simply posting updates on various social networking platforms is not enough. Or simply implementing SEO techniques are not going to yield much return. You should make sure that successful digital marketing tools and strategies are in place and the experts are adept in their specific domain or task.
In this digital age, it's very important to utilize digital media marketing to amp up your business outcomes. You have to create a digital roadmap for your own organisation to boost your business ROI. It's important that you realize the immense potential of social networking marketing, SEO, analytics, content promotion, and much more, to be able to increase your business development.
Your internet presence must extend to each the above points and beyond.
To most of the businesses nowadays, online marketing is the secret to success. Leveraging online advertising platforms to their highest potential can drive leads. But strategic planning and implementation is important before you proceed in doing that. However, the best part is that little enterprises with minimum advertising budget can benefit the most from digital media marketing.
As an instance, if you're the owner of a small enterprise and need to leverage the power of social networking marketing, you must answer to client enquiries instantly, you need to speak with your customers each time they require support, you must promote the services and products of your company through social networking platforms, inform your customers about the hottest deals, and far more. You also need to track important data from social networking and web analytics, to ascertain your internet marketing efforts. Data such as who's visiting your small business site, which social networking stations are driving you new leads, who's converting, what's the conversion rate, which are the conversions which are driving sales the most, which client is purchasing numerous times, and such.
All this info can always help in satisfying your business strategies to fit your objectives. Such particulars and data can provide you with a better grasp on what works and what does not. And you can do this all with minimal budget. To put it simply, the return on investment with electronic media marketing is significantly more than those in conventional advertising.
Overall, if you're the entrepreneur of a small startup and are eager to go ahead with internet marketing, you can be rest assured that the yields will be really great. All you will need to do is appoint skilled domain experts, social networking professionals, SEO analysts, online authors and content marketers, to step up your company revenues.


In the frenzy to halt the approaching medical device tax teed up to hit the House floor—that being Minnesota Republican Erik Paulsen's heavily co-sponsored Protect Medical Innovation Act of 2011—pro-repeal pundits and politicians have been weighing in and pulling few punches.
For his part, Brown has joined with Orrin Hatch of Utah and several other GOP senators in backing an amendment that would repeal the tax. "The new 2.3 percent tax on medical device sales that was imposed in the federal healthcare law will cost our economy thousands of jobs and limit Americans' access to the most groundbreaking, state-of-the-art medical devices," said Brown in a May 22 Senate speech.
By comparison, support for the tax has been relatively muted, with the most vociferous cheers coming from group purchasing organization Premier—and in the form of Democrats' light support of Paulsen's bill in the House and quiet but total non-support of repeal measures in the Senate.


The month with the lowest average high temperature is January (46.7°F).
The month with the highest average low temperature is July (48.6°F).
The coldest month (with the lowest average low temperature) is February (30.6°F).
The average rainfall in February: 4"
The wettest month (with the highest rainfall) is December (6.6").
The driest month (with the lowest rainfall) is July (0.3").
The average snowfall in February: 2.2"
The month with the highest snowfall is January (4.3").


Beautiful spaces, a wonderful home.
Enough light to sun bathe inside.
Park Avenue townhouse in the suburbs.
With floor to ceiling windows, Manet One combines the luxury of a Manhattan townhouse but is actually located in a serene suburb. In this home, simplicity is elegance.
A kitchen that inspires you to cook.
You will find all the latest amenities, and what seems like endless cabinet and counter space in this kitchen. The warm environment and the pools of sunlight that spill in through the windows create the ideal atmosphere for the cook of the family.
A custom home with the Stefco signature.
Imported hardwood floors from Australia, detailed moldings, and rows of windows everywhere, this home exemplifies the harmonious balance between the Stefco aesthetic and a customer's needs.
The perfect space for your family.
The open floor plan brings everybody closer together.


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Will doc-addiction programs promise better patient protection?
by Debra Beaulieu-Volk |
While there's been much emphasis in the news recently on the healthcare industry's battle against patient drug abuse, physicians themselves are not immune to addiction. Substance-addicted physicians pose a severe risk to themselves and their patients, not just by upping the chance of mistakes but even creating circumstances in which doctors are driven to defraud patients and colleagues.
A physician in Corona, Calif., for example, recently lost her medical license and will spend five years in prison in connection with stealing patients' identities and forging colleagues' signatures to obtain more than 30,000 prescription painkillers, the Southwest Riverside News Network reported.
A recent study indicates that nearly one in every two U.S. doctors has experienced symptoms of professional burnout, of which a common consequence is substance abuse. Medical boards and other organizations can serve an important role in helping doctors avoid and overcome addiction.
The trouble is that there's no definite best path to rescuing doctors from the perils of addiction while protecting their careers and patient safety at the same time, as illustrated by a recent story from California Watch.
According to Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, California is one of only five states in the nation that does not have a program to oversee services for doctors with addiction or mental health challenges. A now-defunct program shut down five years ago after audits revealed that it did too much to protect physicians from scrutiny and not enough to protect public safety. Steinberg is carrying a new bill to help "physicians get the help they need to practice medicine safely before something bad happens to a patient."
While details, such as funding and contracting issues, still being ironed out, designers of a new bill hope to avoid its predecessor's pitfalls, particularly by not diverting complaints about physicians away from the medical board.
- read the article from California Watch
- see the story from the Southwest Riverside News Network
Debra Beaulieu-Volk


In the Resident Evil 2 remake, however, Claire finds Sherry hiding behind some boxes. Sherry, clearly frightened by the events she has witnessed, slowly moves into the light.
"Do you need help?" Claire asks.
Sherry, who looks like she has survived some pretty intense stuff, replies: "You need help."
It's a very different scene, and a very different Sherry. The Sherry in the original game is a one-note young girl who acts as little more than a plot device. The Sherry in the Resident Evil 2 remake has more about here. This change, director Kazunori Kadoi told Eurogamer's Aoife Wilson at gamescom, is entirely deliberate and indicative of Capcom's approach to modernising Resident Evil 2.
"Taking Sherry as an example, she's a character who in the original game was basically a little girl and very childish," Kadoi said.
"We wanted to add depth to her. Because you're looking at her in a more photorealistic environment, and the characters look more human and realistic, that naturally means we have to add more depth to them, because they're a lot less cartoonish and two dimensional. Back in the day, the storytelling was revolutionary because horror games didn't have stories. We have to meet fan expectations now with games designed for 2019.
"She definitely someone now who feels a bit more like she has her own personality. She's thinking in her mind and she's got her own motivations. We're trying to take some of that stuff that was slightly unnatural and add depth to it.
"We are - as always - keeping our cards close to our chest about exactly who's changed in what way, but that's a great example of one way the storytelling has been modernised and brought up to date."
Claire's scene with Sherry in the Resident Evil 2 remake rekindles memories of Rebecca "Newt" Jorden from the Aliens movie. In that film, Newt has managed to survive the alien menace by moving in the shadows, under panels and in chutes well before Ripley and the marines find her.
"These people are here to protect you," Ripley says. "They're soldiers.
"It won't make any difference," Newt replies.
It turns out, Newt was indeed an inspiration for the new Shelly.
"Newt from Aliens was something of a reference point," Kadoi revealed, "the first time you meet her and seeing, yeah, she's seen some serious stuff!"
Capcom's philosophy for the Resident Evil 2 remake is certainly to modernise what was a somewhat silly, goofy experience, with some lines of dialogue that were unintentionally funny.
Kadoi said Capcom has "tried to retain the flavour of the original as much as possible", which means certain elements remain fantastical and unrealistic. For example, the giant alligator boss ("we considered removing it - but then we just thought, well, it wouldn't be Resident Evil 2 without the giant alligator") is in the game, but made more realistic.
"We did our best to make it more believable as much as possible," Kadoi continued. "So, whether or not a giant alligator of that size could exist and has a place in this story is put aside. If there was one, how much weight should it have to its movements? Should it be able to jump this far across the room? We're accepting it exists, so maybe it should be a bit more weighty and believable in that sense? When you make things a bit more believable, people can accept the leap of logic a bit more."
And, as you'll know from the gameplay, the dialogue has been rewritten.
"We don't want any scenes where you're not supposed to laugh but you do because of comedy written dialogue," Kadoi explained.
"That's not the intention - that's spoiling the intended atmosphere. It doesn't mean we've gone 100 per cent po-faced, seriousness. The game is still laced with some humour because people have come to expect that from Resident Evil. There are lighter moments, because in horror you always need to relieve the tension once in awhile, just to give yourself a breather, and humour's a part of that."
The remake has involved new looks for all of the main characters in Resident Evil 2. We know Leon's new look, and Claire's. The recent gameplay also gives us a look at the new Chief Irons (expect Irons to play a bigger part in the story this time around).
All we've seen so far of Ada Wong is this silhouette from the Resident Evil 2 E3 2018 trailer.
And, according to Kadoi, fan-favourite Ada Wong will look significantly different, too.
"It goes back to the same thing of, what would look natural to be wandering around in a photo-realistic environment in?" Kadoi said.
"I think wandering around in that dress just getting on with your job as a spy probably doesn't look as realistic and believable as we want in this new game.
"Exactly what we've done with her design is something we're tight-lipped on, but it's safe to say we won't betray your expectations."


Researchers Pete Warden and Alasdair Allan have discovered that iPhones and 3G iPads regularly record your position into a hidden file called consolidated.db. Ever since you upgraded to iOS 4, your device has been storing a long list of latitude-longitude coordinates and timestamps. The coordinates aren't always exact, but there are typically tens of thousands of data points. The location is likely being determined by cell-tower triangulation, either triggered by traveling between cells or activity on the device itself. Furthermore, all this data is being stored across backups, and even device migrations, according to O'Reilly.
The presence of this data on your iPhone, your iPad, and your backups has serious privacy implications. To make matters worse, the file with said data is unencrypted and unprotected, and it's on any machine you've synced with your iOS device. If your device is stolen, the perpetrator can jailbreak it and easily access the file in question, and will be able to see where you've been over the last year, since iOS 4 was released.
Cell phone companies have always had this data, but it takes a court order to access it. Now this information is sitting in plain view, unprotected from the world. If you want to protect your data, you can encrypt your backups through iTunes (click on your device within iTunes and then check "Encrypt iPhone Backup" under the "Options" area). Warden and Allan also built iPhone Tracker, an application that lets you look at your own data. The application and its source can be downloaded from our download section.
The good news is that there is no evidence to suggest this data is leaving your custody. Still, it's not clear why Apple is gathering this data, although the way it is implemented shows that it is intentional. Apple has yet to release a statement in regards to this issue.


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+44 (0)1277 634176 info@salus.global @HCD_2020
Day 1 (30. November 2020)
Day 2 (01. December 2020)
Evaluation committee
Organisation committee
HCD2019
Day 1 (14. October 2019)
HCD 2017 Call for Papers
HCD 2020: The future healthy city
Drawing out some of the big ideas and core themes explored during four days of talks and panel discussions at this year's Healthy City Design Congress, the closing plenary session brought together five leading experts in the field to offer their insights on 'the future healthy city'.
Clare Wildfire, global practice leader for cities at Mott MacDonald, noted that the congress had brought out much discussion around the city as "an interconnected set of hard and soft systems" – examples of the former being how real estate links with flood resilience, or how leadership can improve investment decisions.
She described her big idea from the congress as the concept of a city as a system of systems, and co-benefits on multiple levels.
"We've seen how green infrastructure can benefit health but it can also reduce flood risk and the urban heat island effect, so it's also a climate-resilient solution," explained Wildfire. "And also how designing for active mobility can improve active lifestyles and air quality, and health and wellbeing, but it's also a low-carbon solution because it reduces the reliance on motorised transport."
But she warned, too, that there is a need for a new governance mindset that brings together new combinations of stakeholders around a desire to make change, as well as bringing society along as part of the conversation.
She described her vision as "one where we understand enough about these co-benefits to make them central tenets in how we design cities. But it's also a vision where we value the social and health resilience of our society in order to create this need for change, and one where we understand enough about our role in influencing the future to invest in the one we want. Finally, to bring citizens into the conversation, showing them the bad news as well as the good, and helping them to buy into potentially short-term pain for long-term gain, for them and future generations."
Flexibility, communication and inclusivity
Carolyn Daher, co-ordinator at the Barcelona Institute for Global Health, also highlighted a few words and concepts that had sparked her interest during the congress. One was flexibility – "flexibility to do with change, to be inclusive, and to meet a variety and diversity of needs, is what we really need to be aiming for in the planning and running of our cities".
Communication was another point that seemed to come through strongly during the congress. Daher said better communication and more communication were needed among the various different disciplines of practice. Creating a shared language among these myriad disciplines and using communication as a means of co-production were also key areas, as were issues around open data, data management and exchange of data.
Inclusiveness in respect of inequities was a third idea from the congress that resonated with Daher. "It's so key that we have inclusiveness in the types of conversations and the types of data, and the types of projects that we're including. Cities traditionally have been defined and run by very well-meaning, very technically qualified intelligent groups of people, but they have probably lacked the diversity that they need to be beneficial to all people, the needs that they have, and the way that we must move forward into the future."
Remembering when public health touched all our lives
Giselle Sebag, global cities consultant at Bloomberg Associates, was optimistic given that one of her greatest dreams for healthy and resilient cities had actually started to emerge out of the Covid-19 crisis.
"Cities all over the world are finally starting to recognise the importance that our shared public spaces have on health, on physical, mental and social health," she said. "And many cities have given the public back a tiny slither of the space that they once reserved exclusively for car owners.
"We've also seen safe, dedicated bicycle lanes being added, and one of my personal favourites, outdoor streeteries are taking over parking spaces. Traffic is slowing down as a result and we can safely enjoy our local cafes and restaurants outdoors – one of my greatest dreams."
She highlighted the example of Lima in Peru, which prior to the pandemic, had been recognised by the World Health Organization as having one of the worst levels of air pollution in Latin America.
"Lo and behold, pressed by this terrible threat of Covid-19, Mayor Munoz's administration is now in the process of installing 301km of new permanent dedicated bike lanes," explained Sebag. "My team is also now working with them to transform more than 12 new green and public spaces throughout the downtown area to be installed by the end of the year. Streets are now being pedestrianised at a much faster rate than had been originally planned in the UNESCO Centro Histórico and, as a result, air quality is finally going to start to improve.
She acknowledged, too, that during the crisis, key workers had kept the cities running, the food delivered, and the medicines supplied. Governments, she argued, must focus on maintaining and improving the health of "all citizens equally, if we are to have a functioning society, economy, a tax base sufficient to distribute food or vaccines. I hope we can all remember this moment when public health touched all of our lives, and keep in mind that each design issue impacts our health outcomes, either for better or for worse. It's a choice and we must remember to hold our elected officials accountable to choosing healthier cities by design for all residents, of all backgrounds, in all neighbourhoods."
Regenerative systems are inherently resilient
Sunand Prasad, chair of the UK Green Building Council and founder of architectural firm Penoyre & Prasad, argued that the big idea could be summed up by the word "regenerative", adding: "Just as the body is, just as healthy systems are, and just as nature is, everything we do should be regenerative. Regeneration of our economy, regeneration of the environment, regeneration of our social bonds.
And we should also focus on leaving places better than we find them. "Extractive systems", he explained, "are not only harmful but brittle. Regenerative systems are inherently resilient. And I think there is a big connection between resilience, a regenerative economy, and the circular economy."
Describing Covid-19 as a warning of the kind of impact that climate change may have, he pointed out that it could also act as a catalyst. "The changes in the ways of working and the ease with which we've adapted shows how rapidly we can change," he said, "how we can face the unexpected, let alone the expected, and climate change is entirely expected now. If we can deal with Covid-19, we should be able to deal with climate change because we can plan for it."
And he echoed fellow panellists' views about the need to recruit, listen to and include a whole range of people on this agenda.
Reinvest in cities, don't abandon them
Audrey de Nazelle, from Imperial College London, rounded off the panel by recognising that Covid-19 offered a great opportunity to leave old, wasteful, harmful ways behind us, but she also expressed a note of caution.
"People are recognising much more the issue of inequalities – not only through Covid-19 but Black Lives Matter as well – and we've understood the importance of green space much more in our lives. Walking and cycling have risen up the agenda much more. So there is a lot of hope but there are some things that we need to be wary of for the future post-Covid."
One, of course, is that getting the economy back on track is likely to be the number-one priority for many politicians. According to de Nazelle, that may mean that "anything that's health or sustainability or climate change goes down the drain". But there is a danger, too, that with the huge opportunity from new working patterns, being able to work from home, and reducing the need for travel that the wealthy might decide to leave cities and move to the country.
"That means sprawl, dispersed development, it means people abandoning the city," she said, "and that's a real risk for our future cities. So, yes, we may have that desire to go and live in the country now that we don't have the need to commute every day but we need to try to refrain from doing that and understand that actually by investing in our cities, we can make the city the place where we all want to be, instead of the city as the place we want to escape from as soon as we can.
"We need to reinvest in our cities and let all the diversity come out. Let's explore our neighbourhood, let's explore the diversity of our world, understand the different beauty and aspects of people and design."
Commenting on the views from the five panellists, congress chair Jeremy Myerson, from the Royal College of Art's Helen Hamlyn Centre for Design, concluded: "You've got this tension between the organising principle of the city and the diversity and inequality, and non-linear, erratic, unpredictable aspects of cities. How do you have an organising principle without destroying the things that makes cities so attractive, colourful and diverse? These are all issues that city planners have been dealing with for year but they are more current than ever."
Organised by SALUS Global Knowledge Exchange in collaboration with The Helen Hamlyn Centre for Design, Royal College of Art, the Healthy City Design 2020 International Congress & Exhibition will be held virtually from 30 November - 3 December, 2020.
© 2015 Copyright Sansom & Sansom Associates Ltd All Rights Reserved
Tessie Cowden
Discussion started: 12 hours ago
Sharing Environmental Health Services Across Jurisdictional Boundaries
Category: Planning+Strategies
Liza Corso and Robert Blake discuss the benefits from cross-jurisdictional sharing of essential public health services and offer examples of successful collaboration from around the nation. Liza Corso and Robert Blake discuss the benefits...


This home is a must see! Listed below appraised value. 4+ beds includes master suit with massive walk in closet, over 2,200 sq. ft. of finished space in the remodeled home. So much bigger than curbside impression. Bonus room behind garage could be used countless ways. Newer additions furnace, AC, windows, shingles, paint & more!
Lot Dimensions 8160 Sq. Ft.


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Experts Warn Ramen Noodles Cause Heart Disease, Stroke And Metabolic Syndrome
The dangers of ramen noodles are self-evident to most, however there will always be those who will deny the dangers of consuming them. After all, it's a staple food for college kids so how bad could it be? It can't kill you right? New research from Baylor University and Harvard says it can. The noodles increase people's risk of metabolic changes linked to heart disease and stroke, researchers found.
Ramen noodles contain Tertiary-butyl hydroquinone (TBHQ), which is a byproduct of the petroleum industry and food additive frequently to preserve cheap processed foods. A gastrointestinal specialist conducted an experiment with a time lapse video inside the stomach to what would happen after two hours of digesting ramen noodles and the results were staggering.
In the most recent study in the Journal of Nutrition, women in South Korea who consumed more of the precooked blocks of dried noodles were more likely to have "metabolic syndrome" regardless of what else they ate, or how much they exercised, the researchers found. People with metabolic syndrome may have high blood pressure or high blood sugar levels, and face an increased risk of heart disease, stroke and diabetes.
The dried noodle block was originally created by flash frying cooked noodles, and this is still the main method used in Asian countries, though air-dried noodle blocks are favoured in Western countries. The main ingredients of the dried noodle are wheat flour, palm oil, and salt. Common ingredients of the flavouring powder are salt, monosodium glutamate, seasoning, and sugar. A typical cup-type instant noodles contain 2700 mg of sodium.
"Although instant noodle is a convenient and delicious food, there could be an increased risk for metabolic syndrome given [the food's] high sodium, unhealthy saturated fat and glycemic loads," said study co-author Hyun Shin, a doctoral candidate at the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston.
Shin and his colleagues at Baylor University and Harvard analyzed the health and diet of nearly 11,000 adults in South Korea between ages 19 to 64. The participants reported what they ate, and the researchers categorized each participant's diet as centered on either traditional healthy food or fast food, as well as how many times weekly they ate instant noodles.
The study focused on individuals in South Korea, Shin said, as the country has the highest per-capita number of instant noodle consumers in the world, and because, in recent years, health problems there, including heart disease and obesity, have been on the rise. But the findings appear to be quite relevant to consumers stateside too, as the United States ranked sixth globally in instant noodle sales, according to the World Instant Noodles Association, which found that the United States accounted for 4,300 billion units sold in 2013 (coming in just behind China, Indonesia, Japan, Vietnam, and India — and one spot above South Korea, in fact).
Women who ate instant noodles twice a week or more had a higher risk of metabolic syndrome than those who ate ramen less, or not at all, regardless of whether their diet style fell into the traditional or fast-food category. The researchers found the association even among young women who were leaner and reported doing more physical activity.
As for men, Shin and his colleagues guessed that biological differences between the genders, like the effect of sex hormones and metabolism, might account for the lack of an apparent association among males between eating instant noodles and developing metabolic syndrome.
The study was conducted in South Korea, an area known to have the largest ramen consumption group in the world, where people consumed 3.4 billion packages of instant noodles in 2010.
But the findings could apply to people in North American too, said Lisa Young, a nutritionist and professor at New York University who was not involved in the study. "We [in the States] don't eat it as much, but the ramen noodles are being sold, so this could apply to anywhere they're sold, and they're sold almost everywhere."
What's So Bad About Instant Noodles?
"Instant noodles are high in fat, high in salt, high in calories and they're processed — all those factors could contribute to some of the health problems [the researchers] addressed," Young said. "That doesn't mean that every single person is going to respond the same way, but the piece to keep in mind is that it's not a healthy product, and it is a processed food."
In June 2012, the Korea Food and Drug Administration (KFDA) found Benzopyrene (a cancer causing substance) in six brands of noodles made by Nong Shim Company Ltd. Although the KFDA said the amounts were minuscule and not harmful, Nong Shim did identify particular batches of noodles with a problem, prompting a recall by October 2012.
They also contain TBHQ (Tertiary-butyl hydroquinone) which can have a long term effect on your health such as weakening of organs and contributing to the onset of cancers and tumors. Processed foods generally contain high amounts of sugar and salt, primarily because they are designed to have long shelf lives.
Above all, however, Young said a little bit of preparation could help people avoid processed instant noodles altogether. "You can easily make noodles, homemade pasta, ground-rice pasta and veggies" at home, with a little bit of planning, she said.
Beware: Toxic Chinese Rice Loaded With Plastic Is Flooding Grocery Store Shelves
Once You Watch This, You Will Never Look At Your Food The Same Way Again
Top 10 most Unhealthy, Cancer-Causing Foods – Never eat these again!
Credits: Prevent Disease, Real Farmacy


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HomeCollegesCollegesCollege of BusinessFaculty And StaffFaculty ProfilesGraham Manville
PhD University of Southampton, UK (2014)
MA University of East Anglia, UK (2017)
MBA Nottingham Trent University, UK (1999)
Dr Graham Manville is an Associate Professor in Management in the College of Business, Zayed University based on the Abu Dhabi campus.
He is a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, a Certified Management Consultant, a Member of the Chartered Management Institute and an Incorporated Engineer since 1993. His PhD is in strategic performance management.
His past industry and management consulting experience coupled with a 20-year academic career enables him to deliver teaching in Entrepreneurship, Management Consulting and Strategy that leads to excellent graduate outcomes for his students. He has also published collaboratively with several of his students at UG, MSc and MBA levels in peer reviewed international journals and conferences at every university he has taught at.
Graham is passionate about work integrated learning and authentic assessment whilst maintaining strong academic rigor. Graham's subject matter expertise is focused on entrepreneurship and strategy in SMEs and hybrid organizations to improve business performance. He also has a track record of publishing with business leaders in North America and the United Kingdom. Graham has been an external examiner at six UK universities including: University of Greenwich (2005-2009), Kings College University, London (2008-2012), Glasgow Caledonian University (2010-2014), University of Northampton (2014-2018), University of Surrey (2015-2019) and currently external examiner of the University of Kent.
During the course of his career, Graham has established and maintains a considerable international teaching and research network of collaborative academics in leading universities in the UK, Europe, New Zealand, Australia and the Middle East which has delivered impactful research outputs in the high-ranking CABS and ABDC journals.
His research and practice informed scholarship has won awards in several of the leading business conferences and research bodies including: The British Academy of Management (BAM), The European Academy of Management (EURAM), Emerald Literati outstanding paper award, Innovate UK Best Knowledge Transfer Partnership award, A Centre for Management Consulting Excellence (CMCE) Management Consulting (Finalist) & an Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) Early Career Researcher (finalist). He has externally examined several PhD vivas all successfully defended.
As a former Director of Employability, he has led, developed and executed a strategy that has seen transformative change to make Norwich Business School among the top 20 business schools in the UK for graduate outcomes. As Director of Innovation he has led on developing an annual portfolio of business breakfast and evening receptions that promoted engagement impact and showcased subject matter expertise of faculty within Norwich Business School.
During his academic career he has secured £300K of research, teaching and enterprise income.
Abu Dhabi - Khalifa City, MF-2-2-053
Graham.Manville@zu.ac.ae
Corporate Performance Management, Balanced Scorecards, Performance Coaching.
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/grahammanville/?originalSubdomain=uk
Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=r67AEz0AAAAJ&hl=en
Orchid ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4341-1363
1. Valente, C. & Manville, G. (2021). Rethinking the Top-Line and Realignment of the Bottom-Line in a Post-Covid Landscape. Management Consulting Journal. 14-18.
2. Manville, G and Greatbanks, R. (2020). Performance Management in Hybrid Organizations: A Study in Social Housing. European Management Journal (In Press) (ABDC B)
3. Manville, G., Papadopoulos, T., & Garengo, P. (2019). Twenty-first century supply chain management: a multiple case study analysis within the UK aerospace industry. Total Quality Management & Business Excellence, 1-17 Ahead of Print. (ABDC C)
4. Manville, G., Karakas, F., Polkinghorne, M., & Petford, N. (2019). Supporting open innovation with the use of a balanced scorecard approach: a study on deep smarts and effective knowledge transfer to SMEs. Production Planning & Control, 30 (10-12), 842-853. (ABDC A)
5. Newman, A., Neesham, C., Manville, G., & Tse, H. (2018). Examining the influence of servant and entrepreneurial leadership on the work outcomes of employees in social enterprises. The International Journal of Human Resource Management, 29 (20), 2905-2926. (ABDC A)
6. Wainwright, T., & Manville, G. (2017). Financialization and the third sector: Innovation in social housing bond markets. Environment and Planning A, 49(4), 819-838. (ABDC A*)
7. Manville, G., Greatbanks, R., Wainwright, T., & Broad, M. (2016). Visual performance management in housing associations: a crisis of legitimation or the shape of things to come? Public Money & Management, 36 (2), 105-112. (ABDC A/B)
8. Ojiako, U., Manville, G., Zouk, N., & Chipulu, M. (2016). Social cohesion and interpersonal conflicts in projects. Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers-Management, Procurement and Law, 169 (2), 77-84.
9. Nicolopoulou, K., Lucas, I., Tatli, A., Karatas-Ozkan, M., A. Costanzo, L., Özbilgin, M., & Manville, G. (2015). Questioning the Legitimacy of Social Enterprises through Gramscian and Bourdieusian Perspectives: The Case of British Social Enterprises. Journal of Social Entrepreneurship, 6. pp. 161-185 (ABDC B)
10. Manville, G and Broad, M (2013). Changing times for charities: performance management in a third sector housing association, Public Management Review, 15, (7), 992-1010 (ABDC A)
11. Parker, D., Downie, G. and Manville, G. (2012) Development of a community e-portal constellation: Queensland Smart Region Initiative, Electronic Journal of Ecommerce, 10 (1), 1-15
12. Manville. G, Greatbanks. R, Krishnasamy. R and Parker. D (2012). Critical success factors for Lean Six Sigma programmes: A view from middle management. International Journal of Quality and Reliabiliy Management. 29, (1), 7-20 (ABDC B)
13. Greatbanks. R, Elkin. G and Manville. G (July 2010). The use and efficacy of anecdotal performance reporting in the third sector. International Journal of Productivity and Performance Management. 59, (6), 571-585 (ABDC B)
14. Manville G. (2007) Implementing a balanced scorecard framework in a not for profit SME, International Journal of Productivity & Performance Management, Vol 56, No.2I, pp.162–169 (ABDC B). Emerald Literati Award, Outstanding Paper


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Justika Legal Service Marketplace Releases A Lawyer App
Wijaya & Co is a full service Indonesian legislation firm principally engaged within the provision of extensive-range legal service to worldwide purchasers in Indonesia, for companies, for families and individuals, and for Indonesian-Expatriate Couples. Hon'ble Mr. Justice Ranjan Gogoi is the current Govt Chairman of National Legal Service Authority. UVLA gives free Civil Authorized Services for those who qualify. Authorized Aid Authorized Services has supplied document preparation services to clientele in all 50 states for greater than 13 years.
The mixed model is especially advantageous for providing companies to clients in regional areas and in instances the place a battle of curiosity means the identical lawyer can't characterize both parties. Theme of the second session was, Legal Aid in India, Function of NALSA, Authorized Aid Clinics, NGOs, and Media in Authorized Empowerment".
If that's the case, please be part of GWLS, local volunteer attorneys, Baylor Legislation Students, and other volunteers at our First Monday Legal Advice Clinics. If you would like to make an utility for legal assist for representation at an inquest or to debate anything concerning the Coroner's Court please name the Coronial Inquest Unit on 02 9219 5156 or 02 9219 5000.
Our mission is to offer free legal help to folks across the Central New York area. The Access to Justice Act 1999 has exceptional funding provisions, which permit the Lord Chancellor to authorise authorized aid funding in circumstances which are in any other case out of scope of the legal help scheme.


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About Belgrade
Outspoken, adventurous, proud and audacious, Belgrade's dynamic spirit makes it one of Europe's most happening cities. This is where the Sava and Danube Rivers kiss, and feels like the old-world meets the new!
One of the oldest cities in Europe and the only one built on the confluence of two rivers, Belgrade is known as "The White City"- Beograd as the Slavs, of many tribes and nations lived in this area, have name it. Today, Belgrade is a modern European city with population of about 1.7 million people. It is an administrative, political and cultural center of Serbia.
A lively pedestrian boulevard full of historical buildings all the way to the ancient Belgrade Fortress, the riverside Savamala quarter, Skadarlija, the bohemian Street are all full of energy. Deeper in Belgrade's bowels are museums guarding the historical, cultural and religious heritage of the country as remnants of the Habsburg legacy contrast with Ottoman relics. All the people that have lived here and the armies that passed through Belgrade have left their marks on the city. The magnificent Victor monument, the remains of the Belgrade fortress, the Stambol gate, the Old Palace, National Museum of Serbia, the oldest and most significant museum, and many other sites of Belgrade are inviting you to discover them.
Belgrade is 6 hours ahead of US Eastern Time (EST), and 2 hour ahead of Greenwich Mean Time (GMT).
Belgrade has a moderate continental climate, with four seasons.
It has a hot summer season from June to August. June is the month with the most rainfall in Belgrade. September is Belgrade's autumn season and temparatures range from 20-25 degrees.
In Serbia the power plugs and sockets are of type F. The standard voltage is 230 V and the standard frequency is 50 Hz. In Serbia the power plugs and sockets are of type F. Appliances from North America require an adaptor.
Belgrade city public transport is provided through a network of bus, trolleybus and tram routes run by GSP "Beograd" and bus services operated by private bus companies, on around 130 routes.
Single tickets can be bought:
– in public transport vehicles, from the driver or conductor
– at kiosks marked with a ticket sales sticker
– at GSP points-of-sale
BusPlus Info / public transportation in Belgrade
BusPlus system applies to all public transport vehicles (GSP, private carriers, Lasta and Bg Voz).
Selling places – GSP
The new terminals have been installed at the following locations:
"Skender begova" 47, JKP GSP;
"Deligradska" – Deligradska 10;
"Republic Square" – TC "Republic Square"
Paper cards (most suitable for tourists)
If you are not frequent user you should buy a paper card which costs 89 rsd, and you can drive with that card 90 min. on all lines (for 1st or 2nd public transportation zone).
If you buy a ticket on the bus a card cost – 150 rsd
Paper cards which you can use:
1 day for 1st or 2nd public transportation zone – 250 rsd,
3 days for 1st or 2nd public transportation zone – 700rsd
5 days for 1st or 2nd public transportation zone – 1000 rsd.
Belgrade City Transport Company
www.gsp.co.rs
Serbian museums has priceless historical and cultural richness.The first Serbian museum was founded in 1844 and was named "Muzeum Srbski" by the head of the Ministry of Education at the time. It is the today's National Museum in Belgrade.. Also, Nikola Tesla museum is a unique institution of science and culture in Serbia but also worldwide. Currently, there are around 100 museums in Serbia.
Serbian cuisine is characterized by highly diverse, solid and spicy food, which can be roughly described as a mixture of Greek, Bulgarian, Turkish and Hungarian cuisine. The use of meat, dough, vegetables and dairy products is predominant in it.
Serbian specialties you have to taste are: burek, gibanica, grilled meat, roast, Karađorđeva steak, cabbage rolls, goulash, đuveč (a type of a stew), moussaka, mućkalica (a mixture of different types of meat and vegetables in a form of a stew), čvarci (similar to pork rinds), kajmak (milk cream), pršuta (dry-cured ham, similar to Prosciutto), and sour milk.
Drinking coffee is a centuries-old tradition in Serbia, so you mustn't miss home-made coffee accompanied by baklava, vanilice or Turkish delight
Restaurants and bars in Belgrade which can be on the water, or on a river bank, in the city center or in the Bohemian quarter, will astonish you with their gastronomical pleasures. Whatever setting you choose, you will find delicious local and international specialties, while the experience can become complete with the finest of drinks found in nearly every bar.
Nightlife in Serbia, and especially Belgrade, is well-known for its all night carouse that can't be experienced in any other European capital, which is the reason why Serbian nightlife is often described by many important individuals in the world of tourism as being among the best in Europe.
The official currency of Serbia is Serbian Dinar, abbreviated RSD.
Belgrade, like all big cities, offers several options for shopping. There are large shopping centers across the city. Belgrade Design District is located in the central part of the town in Cumicevo sokace. BDI is a fashionable artistic area that gathers young and established domestic designers and artists.
Opening hours of shopping malls:
All week 10:00 – 22:00
http://www.tob.rs
http://www.serbia.com
http://www.serbia.travel
http://www.tos.rs/
http://www.beograd.rs/en/
Belgrade Nikola Tesla Aiport


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Little Giant introduces next generation 5-series submersible utility pumps
Franklin Electric Co., Inc. (NASDAQ: FELE) announced the launch of the next generation of Little Giant 5-MSP compact submersible utility pump. The new pump offers the same compact size yet features a new motor designed to boost the pump's overall performance and efficiency.
The 5-MSP, originally launched in 1980, is considered a workhorse among those who trust it for general water circulation in ponds, fountains, water displays and hydroponics. Among the most compactly sized and highest pumping capacities of any submersible pump on the market, it delivers proven power along with dependable operation. Now, Little Giant is improving these iconic features with the next generation of the 5-MSP.
"Our goal was to offer the same little stature that Little Giant is known for but create a bigger impact in terms of performance and value," says Jeff Wilder, North American plumbing product manager. "The new 5-MSP is nearly identical in core features and aesthetics to the original, but at the heart of it is much more powerful and built for the future."
This new "heart" is a permanent split capacitor (PSC) motor that operates without oil – creating a more environmentally stable unit that is better suited for outdoor living applications. It also runs more efficiently, delivering the same or better pumping capacity than the original 5-MSP, but at greater depths, and offers continuous-duty rated for reliable 24/7 operation.
Core features such as the stainless-steel motor shaft and an epoxy powder coated aluminum body, mirror those found in the original 5-MSP.


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[ Home Page ] [ NCSU CS Home Page ] [ NCSU Home Page ]
Note: Work described within is a summary of a paper that was published in IEEE Computer Graphics & Applications; a PDF version is available for downloading.
Perception and Painting:
A Search for Effective, Engaging Visualizations
Christopher G. Healey and James T. Enns
Scientific visualization represents information as images that allow us to explore, discover, analyze, and validate large collections of data. Much of the research in this area is dedicated to the design of effective visualizations that support specific analysis needs. Recently, we have become interested in a new idea: Is a visualization beautiful? Can a visualization be considered a work of art?
One might expect answers to these questions to vary widely depending on the individual and their interpretation of what it means to be artistic. We believe that the issues of effectiveness and aesthetics may not be as independent as they might seem at first glance, however. Much can be learned from a study of two related disciplines: human psychophysics, and art theory and history. Perception teaches us how we "see" the world around us. Art history shows us how artistic masters captured our attention by designing works that evoke an emotional response. The common interest in visual attention provides an important bridge between these domains. We are using this bridge to produce visualizations that are both effective and engaging. This article describes our research, and discusses some of the lessons we have learned along the way.
Multidimensional Visualization
Work in our laboratory has studied various issues in scientific visualization for much of the last ten years. A large part of our effort has focused on multidimensional visualization, the need to visualize multiple layers of overlapping information simultaneously in a common display or image. We often divide this problem into two steps: (1) the design of a data-feature mapping M, a function that defines visual features (e.g., color, texture, or motion) to represent the data, and (2) an analysis of a viewer's interpretation of the images M produces. An effective M generates visualizations that allow viewers to rapidly, accurate, and effortlessly explore their data.
One promising technique we have discovered is the use of results from human perception to predict the performance of a particular M. The low-level visual system identifies certain properties of what we see very quickly, often in only a few tenths of a second or less. Perhaps more importantly, this ability is display size insensitive; visual tasks are completed in a fixed length of time that is independent of the amount of information being displayed. Obviously, these findings are very attractive in a multidimensional visualization context. Different visual features can be combined to represent multiple data attributes. Large numbers of these "multidimensional data elements" can be packed into an image. Sequences of images are then rapidly analyzed by a viewer in a movie-like fashion.
Figure 1: Two examples of visualizing weather conditions: (a) traditional visualizations for each attribute composited into a single image; (b) simulated brush strokes that vary their color and texture to visualize the data
Fig. 1 shows two example visualizations of multidimensional weather data. The first image was constructed by taking traditional visualizations of each attribute, then compositing them together. Hue represents temperature (yellow for hot, green for cold), luminance represents pressure (bright for high, dark for low), directed contours represent wind direction, and Doppler radar traces represent precipitation. The second image was built using simulated brush strokes that vary their perceptual color and texture properties to visualize the data. Here, color represents temperature (bright pink for hot, dark green for cold), density represents pressure (denser for lower pressure), stroke orientation represents wind direction, and size represents precipitation (larger strokes for more rainfall). Although viewers often gravitate towards the first image due to its familiarity, any attempt to perform real analysis tasks leads to a rapid appreciation of the careful selection of colors and textures used in the second image. Experiments showed that viewers prefer the second image for the vast majority of the tasks we tested.
The use of perceptual guidelines can dramatically increase the amount of information we can visualize. We cannot take advantage of these strengths with an ad-hoc choice of M, however. Certain combinations of visual features actively mask information by interfering with our ability to see important properties of an image. A key goal, therefore, is to build guidelines on how to design effective visualizations, and to present these findings in a way that makes them accessible to other visualization researchers and practitioners.
During the last year, we have started to consider a second question: "How can we make our visualizations engaging or aesthetic?" Although this issue has only recently received attention in the visualization community, we feel it is an important factor worthy of study. An image that is seen as interesting or beautiful can encourage viewers to study it in detail. Stylistic techniques that capture and focus attention on certain areas of a painting might be used to highlight interesting or unexpected properties in the data. We expect the lessons learned from studying the work of master painters to have a significant impact on the quality of visualizations we produce.
At first glance the areas of perception and painting might appear completely independent of one another. In fact, we have found an important overlap between the brush style properties used in Impressionist painting, and the fundamental visual features detected by the low-level visual system. This correspondence between low-level visual features and painterly styles is critical for our work, since it allows us to design visualizations that are both effective and aesthetic.
One of the most important lessons of the past twenty-five years of research in psychophysics is that human vision does not resemble the relatively faithful and largely passive process of modern photography. The goal of human vision is not to create a replica or image of the seen world in our heads. A much better metaphor for vision is that of a dynamic and ongoing construction project, where the products being built are short-lived models of the external world that are specifically appropriate for the current visually guided tasks of the viewer. There does not appear to be any general purpose vision. What I "see" when confronted with a new scene depends as much on my goals and expectations as it does on the array of light that bombards my two eyes.
Among the research findings responsible for this altered view of "seeing" is a greater appreciation of:
Detailed form and color vision is only possible for a tiny window of several degrees of arc surrounding your current gaze location. "Seeing" beyond the single glance therefore requires a time-consuming series of eye movements.
The eye movements that are required to see a "whole scene," such as the 180&Mac251; view we often assume we have, are discrete. Many of them must be made in order to see the detail in a large scene and almost no visual information is gained during an eye movement itself.
Memory for information in one glance to the next is extremely limited. At most, the details from only three or four objects can be monitored successfully between glances; often perception is limited to only a single object at a time. What we see therefore depends critically on which object(s) in a scene we are looking for and attending to.
Human vision is designed to capitalize on the assumption that the world is generally a quiet place; only differences need to be registered. Objects that are very different from their surroundings, or that change or move, draw attention to themselves because of the difference signals that emanate from these visual field locations.
The basic visual features that can be used to guide attention are not large in number. They include differences in the first order properties of luminance and hue, and the second-order properties of orientation, texture, and motion. Effective third-order properties are limited to some very simple properties of shape such as length, area, and convexity.
Figure 2: An example of change blindness, the inability to quickly identify significant differences across separate views of a common scene; try to identify the difference between the two photographs (the answer is included in the text below; photo courtesy Ron Rensink)
The reality of each of these findings can be illustrated through the so-called change blindness which affects us all [Ren01]. It involves a task similar to a game that has amused children reading the comic strips for many years. Try to find the difference between the two pictures in Fig. 2. Many viewers have a difficult time seeing any difference and often have to be coached to look carefully to find it . Once they have found it, they realize that the difference was not a subtle one. Change blindness is not a failure to see because of limited visual acuity; it is rather a failure based on inappropriate attentional guidance. Some parts of the eye and the brain are clearly responding differently to the two pictures. Yet, this does not become part of our visual experience until attention is focused directly on the objects that differ.
Harnessing human vision effectively for the purposes of data visualization therefore requires that the displays themselves be constructed so as to draw attention to important parts of themselves. Since the displays being viewed are typically novel, we cannot rely on the expectations that might accompany the viewing of a familiar scene. Rather, we must rely on an effective mapping between data values and features, so that differences in the visual features draw the eyes, and more importantly the mind, on their own. Luring the viewer's eyes to a particular object or location in the scene is the first step in having the viewer form a mental representation of that part of the scene that may outlast the next glance or scene that comes into view.
Nonphotorealistic Visualization
Our interest in artistic visualizations naturally led us to explore in two directions: nonphotorealistic rendering in computer graphics, and art history and art theory discussions of known painterly styles.
Nonphtorealistic rendering converts pictures or 3D geometric scenes into nonphotorealistic images. Rather than trying to generate results that are indistinguishable from photographs of an equivalent scene (i.e., photorealistic rendering), nonphotorealistic techniques draw their inspiration from artistic works to produce pen-and-ink sketches, cartoon cels, and paintings that simulate pencil and charcoal, watercolor, and oil-based brush strokes [Goo01]. The proper use of these strokes results in images that "guide the eye" much more effectively than more realistic photographs, in part because large differences in visual properties can be made to coincide with those scene locations that the artist wishes to have the viewer spend the most time examining. Some researchers in visualization have already started to use these ideas as inspiration for painterly visualization techniques [Lai01, Rhe01]. We are focusing on methods that use collections of simulated brush strokes to produce a nonphotorealistic image. We plan to visualize a multidimensional data element with one or more brush strokes, where the visual properties of the stroke are controlled by the attribute values embedded in the element.
Figure 3: A close-up view of an oil painting that demonstrates various stroke styles like color, path, size, and density (painting courtesy Laura Tateosian)
Our study of painterly styles from art history was initially restricted to a particular movement known as Impressionism. This term was attached to a small group of French artists (initially including Monet, Degas, Manet, Renoir, and Pissarro, and later Cezanne, Sisley, and Van Gogh, among others) who broke from the traditional schools of the time to approach painting from a new perspective. Our decision to study the Impressionists was motivated in part by a need to narrow our initial focus to a single type of painting style, in part by the Impressionists careful study of color, light, and object in their paintings, and in part by a personal appreciation of these artists. Properties of hue, luminance, and lighting were explicitly controlled and even studied in a scientific fashion by some of the Impressionists [Sch97]. The painterly styles of these artists can be further refined by studying the paintings themselves. Examples include the path of the brush strokes (e.g., straight or curved), their length and density, their coarseness due to the brush used to paint the stroke, and the weight of paint applied to each stroke.
We observed that many of the painterly styles we discovered seemed to have a close correspondence to visual features from our perceptual visualizations. For example, color and lighting in Impressionism have a direct relationship to the use of hue and luminance in visualization. Other styles like path, density, and length have partners like orientation, contrast, and size in perception. This suggested the following strategy to produce a visualization that is both effective and aesthetic:
Produce a data-feature mapping M that uses the perceptual color and texture patterns that best represent a particular dataset and associated analysis tasks.
Swap each visual feature in M with its corresponding painterly style.
M now defines a mapping from data to painterly styles that control the visual appearance of computer-generated brush strokes; apply this mapping to produce a painted representation of the underlying dataset.
Indeed, this technique can be used to generate painterly visualizations of multidimensional data. In spite of this success, however, we were still left to wonder: "Are these visualizations effective?" and "Are these visualizations aesthetic?"
The guidelines we use to build our perceptual visualizations come from psychophysical experiments that measure the absolute performance of different visual features, and the interactions that occur between them. We conducted a similar set of experiments, but with simulated brush strokes substituted for the original perceptual glyphs. This produced painterly images with strokes that varied in their color, orientation, density, and regularity of placement.
Figure 4. Example displays from the effectiveness experiment: (a) green target in orange strokes, random background orientation, dense packing, irregular placement; (b) 45-degree target in 30-degree strokes, random background colors, very dense packing, irregular placement
Fig. 4 shows examples from the experiments we ran. Half of the displays contained a randomly located group of target strokes defined by a difference in a target style (e.g., color in Fig. 4a and orientation in Fig. 4b). Some displays randomly vary a background style (e.g., orientation during the search for a color target in Fig. 4a, and color during the search for an orientation target in Fig. 4b). This allowed us to test for visual interference, a situation where variations in a background style inhibit a viewer's ability to identify the target. Each display was shown to a viewer for 200 milliseconds, after which the screen was cleared. The viewer was then asked to answer whether a target group of strokes was present or absent in the display.
Our analysis of viewer accuracy mirrored the findings from our original visual perception experiments (see [Hea99] for a complete explanation of these results). Features that were salient in our original perceptual visualizations were salient in the painterly images. Interference patterns were also identical. This suggests we can use our existing rules of perception to build painterly representations to visualize effectively values in an underlying dataset. It also suggests that any new guidelines we discover could be extended to our painterly environment.
Although our initial experiments showed that our painterly visualizations are effective, we still had no evidence of their aesthetic merit. We ran a new set of experiments designed to investigate this property. These experiments studied three important questions:
How artistic do viewers judge our painterly visualizations, relative to paintings by artistic masters?
Can we identify any fundamental emotional factors that predict when viewers will perceive an image as artistic?
Can we categorize individual viewers as preferring different types of art (e.g., realism or abstractionism), and how do these preferences impact the emotional responses that predict artistic rankings?
Figure 5. Example displays from the aesthetic judgement experiment: (a) a painterly visualization of weather conditions; (b) a nonphotorealistic rendering of a photograph of Lake Moraine in Banff, Canada
Our experiments asked viewers to order 28 images on a scale from 1 (lowest) to 7 (highest). We presented seven images from four different categories: master Impressionists (impressionism), master Abstractionists (abstractionism), nonphotorealistic renderings (nonphotorealism), and painterly visualizations (visualization).
An example of the painterly visualizations we tested is shown in Fig. 5a. Although real weather conditions are being visualized (temperature is represented by color, wind speed by coverage, pressure by size, and precipitation by orientation), no explanations were provided to our viewers about what was being depicted. We were careful to zoom in to a point where viewers would not interpret the image as part of a map. These images were classified as abstract in nature, since they had no obvious relationship to a real-world object or scene. They were paired against seven real paintings by master Abstractionists: one painting each by de Kooning, Johns, Malevich, Mondrain, and Pollock, and two by Kline.
Since we derived many of our original painterly styles from the Impressionists, we wanted to include their works in our experiment. We picked seven paintings: one each by Cézanne, Monet, Morisot, Pissarro, Seurat, Sisley, and Van Gogh. We counterbalanced these paintings with seven nonphotorealistic renderings. Fig. 5b shows one of the renderings, a picture of a mountain lake. These images were based on underlying photos, and applied exactly the same brush strokes and painting scheme that we used to generate our painterly visualizations. This was easy to do, since a photo is also a dataset with three dimensions: red, green, and blue.
Viewers were asked to rank the 28 images for five different questions. The first asked about the artistic merit of the images. The other four were designed to probe a viewer's emotional responses. Each ranking was conducted in a similar fashion. For example, during the ranking of artistic merit, viewers were asked:
"As a first step, I would like you to look through this entire set of pictures in order to choose one picture that you like the best. This is a picture that you would like to place as art somewhere in your house or at your place of work. It's the one you think is the best example of 'good art.'
Now look through the remaining pictures and choose the one that you think is the worst example of art.
I would now like you to go through the rest of these pictures in the order in which they come up and assign each one a number from 1 to 7. If the picture is as good as the one you chose to be 'best,' then give it a 7. If it is as bad as the one you chose to be 'worst,' give it a 1. If it somewhere in between, then choose an appropriate number between 1 and 7. Remember, 7 represents the best art. Please use the whole range of numbers to the best of your ability."
The remaining four questions asked viewers to do an identical ranking based on how "emotionally pleasing" the images were (emotionality), how "active" they were (arousal), how much "meaning" they contained (meaning), and how "complex" they were (complexity). The first two questions were selected using the emotional circumplex, a theory that models eight basic human emotions around the two orthogonal dimensions of pleasure and arousal [Bar99]. The second two questions were designed to measure composition around the two dimensions abstract-real and visual complexity.
Although our results are still preliminary, we have already discovered a number of interesting and exciting findings. Twenty of the twenty-five viewers we tested ranked the master Impressionists as most artistic, followed by the nonphotorealistic renderings, then the master Abstractionists and painterly visualizations. These viewers consistently preferred realistic images over abstract ones. In fact, they judged the nonphotorealistic images as more artistic, on average, than the Abstractionist paintings. This was not because the viewers felt that abstract images were completely lacking in artistic merit (the abstract images received an average rank of 2.97). They simply preferred realism over abstractionism. Emotionality and meaning predicted 90% of the variance in viewer responses. If viewers who liked realism found an image pleasing and meaningful, they felt it was highly artistic.
Five of our viewers had a very different set of rankings. They judged the painterly visualizations as most artistic, followed by the master Abstractionists, then the master Impressionists and nonphotorealistic renderings. These viewers clearly preferred abstract images over realistic ones, ranking the visualizations as more artistic than the Impressionist paintings. For these viewers, arousal was the most important predictor of artistic merit: when they found an image active, they tended to feel it was highly artistic.
One final point of interest is that our results show that computer-generated images can be seen as highly artistic. People who preferred realism felt the nonphotorealistic renderings were artistic. People who preferred abstractionism felt the painterly visualizations were artistic. We were initially concerned that viewers might believe a computer-generated image could never be seen as "art." Our results suggest that this is not true.
Real-World Visualizations
In order to tie these ideas together, we present a final painterly visualization from the application testbed we have used throughout much of this paper: a dataset of monthly environmental and weather conditions collected and recorded by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. This dataset contains mean monthly surface climate readings in 1/2-degree latitude and longitude steps for the years 1961 to 1990 (e.g., readings for January averaged over the years 1961-1990, readings for February averaged over the years 1961-1990, and so on).
Figure 6: Painterly visualization of weather conditions over the continental United States: (a) weather conditions for February over the eastern United States; (b) weather conditions for February over the west coast
We visualize temperature, wind speed, pressure, and precipitation with a data-feature mapping M that assigns brush stroke color, coverage, size, and orientation, respectively. Temperature is shown with colors selected uniformly from a perceptually balanced color path that runs from dark blues and greens (for cold temperatures) to bright pinks (for hot temperatures). Wind speed is shown with coverage (i.e., the amount of an element's spatial region covered by its brush strokes). Coverages range exponentially from very small (for little or no wind) to full (for strong winds). Pressure is shown with sizes ranging from small (for low pressure) to large (for high pressure). Finally, precipitation is shown with by orientations ranging from 0-degrees or upright (for no precipitation) to 90-degrees or flat (for heavy precipitation).
Fig. 6a shows a visualization of data for February across the eastern United States. Fig. 6b shows data for the same month along the west coast. Although unlikely to be mistaken for a real Impressionist painting, we feel these images contain important aesthetic qualities that make them stand out from traditional visualizations. Color and texture patterns representing different weather phenomena can be seen within these images. For example, Fig. 6a shows the expected cold to hot temperature gradient (dark blue strokes to bright pink strokes) running north to south, light rain and strong winds (upright strokes that fully cover the background canvas) in the center of the country, and heavy rain and weak winds (tilted strokes with low coverage) in the south and northeast of the Great Lakes. Fig. 6b highlights the warmer temperatures and heavy rainfall (tilted pink and red strokes) typically found in the Pacific Northwest around Seattle and Olympia during the winter months.
The authors thank Mark Rempel for his help with data collection and analysis, and for his insightful comments on our results. The authors also thank Laura Tateosian for the landscape portrait she painted to provide examples of brush stroke properties. Finally, the authors thank Ron Rensink for his images of change blindness, and for his suggestions about the use of perception for scientific visualization. This work is funded in part by the National Science and Engineering Research Council of Canada, and by the National Science Foundation grants IIS-9988507 and ACI-0083421.
Bar99 Barrett, L. F. and Russell, J. A. The structure of current affect: Controversies and emerging consensus. Current Direction in Psychological Science 8, 1 (1999), 10-14.
Goo01 Gooch, B. and Gooch, A. Non-Photorealistic Rendering. A K Peters, Ltd., Natwick, Massachusetts, 2001.
Hea99 Healey, C. G. and Enns, J. T. Large datasets at a glance: Combining colors and textures in scientific visualization. IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics 5, 2 (1999), 145-167.
Lai01 Laidlaw, D. H. Loose, artistic "textures" for visualization. IEEE Computer Graphics & Applications 21, 2 (2001), 6-9.
Ren01 Rensink, R. A. Seeing, sensing, and scrrutinizing. Vision Research 40, 10-12 (2000), 1469-1487.
Rhe01 Rheingans, P. and Ebert, D. Volume illustration: Nonphotorealistic rendering of volume models. IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics 7, 3 (2001), 253-264.
Sch97 Schapiro, M. Impressions, Reflections, and Perceptions. George Brazillier, Inc., New York, New York, 1997.
Last updated, Thu, Mar 7, 2002, mail questions or comments to healey@csc.ncsu.edu.


New Free Chlorine Probe Design | Chemtrac, Inc.
Chemtrac is now delivering its free chlorine analyzers with a new and improved sensor. With the previous design, it was recommended to replace the membrane cap annually, and the electrolyte was typically replaced two to four times per year. For the new probes, the membrane caps are expected to last for two years, and the electrolyte can last for a year before it needs to be changed.
It must be noted that the membrane caps differ and are unique for the respective probe designs, and are not interchangeable. When ordering replacement caps, please be sure to first determine which probe design you have. Then determine the proper part number for the appropriate cap.
The look of the electrodes can be compared in the following photos.
The former Free Chlorine probe design incorporated a small "G-Holder" cap in addition to the primary membrane cap (part #17410).
The latest probe has a slightly different electrode configuration and requires only the one updated membrane cap (part #17411).


The Invicta Car Company has adopted several innovative approaches in both the design and construction phases of manufacturing its first car in modern times. The overall appearance and the engineering layout of the S1 are the collaborative results of a three-way think-tank between Invicta Chairman Michael Bristow, project manager Chris Marsh and consultant designer Leigh Adams.
Invicta has worked in secrecy for 24 months because it wanted to show the public what it had achieved – not what it hoped to achieve. So, the new S1 revealed at the Motor Show is not a concept car, it is a full production model, ready to run and customers can place orders now – confident that the first cars will be delivered early in 2003.
A thoroughly modern car, the new Invicta S1 embodies the standards, quality and spirit behind the 1930's Invicta cars – aiming to provide today's enthusiast motorists with an exceptionally rewarding driving and ownership experience, matching the marque's original promise to deliver "the most wonderful performance in the world".
The Invicta S1 is the world's first car to feature a one-piece carbon-fibre bodyshell. This shell, when bonded to the steel tube spaceframe chassis, creates an immensely strong, but lightweight, structure and results in a car with high flexional and torsional rigidity (for responsive handling) and excellent impact resistance (for high levels of occupant safety).
conventional carbon fibre. It also gives an 'A Class' surface to accept a top-quality paint finish, makes use of composite tooling which can be produced in under 12 weeks, and does not require the use of an autoclave or the high laminator skills typical of previous carbon fibre manufacturing in the motorsport and aerospace industries.
The spaceframe chassis is more conventional and incorporates all the 'best practice' features of this well established construction method. It weighs 160 kilos, but all of that weight is low down, below the car's roll centre. Made from 2mm thick steel formed into 40mm square tubes and cross-braced for maximum strength, the chassis construction uses TIG welding to give a smooth surface in the areas that are bonded to the bodyshell.
Fundamental to Invicta's desire to deliver no-compromise performance in terms of handling balance and sheer speed, was the decision to mount the S1's engine and gearbox well back in the chassis and the 100-litre fuel tank transversely between the rear wheels, to achieve close to the ideal 50/50 front/rear weight distribution.
Fitted with Invicta's own air-intake and exhaust systems, the 4.6-litre engine powering the S1 is supplied by Ford's Special Vehicle Team (SVT) in America. The all-aluminium, 32-valve V8 weighs just 240 kilos and produces 320 bhp and 300 lb ft of torque. Light, smooth-revving and ultra-reliable, this engine promises to deliver stunning acceleration in the 1100 kg S1 – which is more than 300 kg lighter than the Ford Mustang Cobra which uses the same engine in the USA. Each engine is hand-built at Ford's SVT facility and carries a plaque signed by the two technicians responsible for its assembly.
The completely flat floor of the S1 and the rising rear undertray promise to give low-drag and generate downforce. Calculations predict that the S1 will accelerate from 0-to-60 mph in five seconds, to 100 mph in under 11 seconds, and will comfortably exceed 170 mph when road conditions permit. The combination of high power, massive torque and low weight is a recipe for good fuel economy and Invicta calculates that the S1 will return 25 mpg overall, giving a comfortable 500 mile range from the 21.9 gallon (100-litre) fuel tank.


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Event: 7 Chefs for Kids
The Valley's top culinary movers and shakers are joining forces with Phoenix Children's Hospital Foundation on Saturday, October 6 to host "7 Chefs for Kids" at Phoenix's Anchor Centre.
Among the 16 chefs participating are original members of the "Arizona Seven" including Chefs Stephen Jones, who recently opened the doors to downtown's The larder + the delta; Scott Holmes of Little Miss BBQ; Bernie Kantak of The Gladly and Citizen Public House; and Gio Osso of Virtú Honest Craft and Nico's Heirloom Kitchen. Joining the 4th annual event for the first time this year are Chefs Doug Robson of Otro Café and Gallo Blanco; Michael Mahalick of Peoria Artisan Brewery, Bob Tam of Bitter & Twisted; Brent Kille of Low Key Dining; and Juan Zamora of Chula Seafood. Brew master Dustin Hazer of Helio Basin Brewing Co. will provide craft brew samples.
7 Chefs for Kids is an annual collaboration between the Valley's top culinary masters and Emerging Leaders, a select group of professionals dedicated to advancing the mission of Phoenix Children's Hospital through community engagement and philanthropy. Since the start of the partnership, the annual event has raised nearly $100,000 for various programs at Phoenix Children's. This year's sponsors include Taylor Farms, Stifel, Pearl Capital Management, Professional Equity Management, Brighton Jones, MRA Associates, CMOC, Perkins Coie, Olsson Associates, Willie Itule Produce, and Seventh Generation Capital.
"We're doing what we love to do," said Jones. "Being able to partner with a wonderful organization like Phoenix Children's Hospital and cook food for the community while we're at it is what we absolutely love to do."
"The event has grown substantially in the four short years we have partnered together," said Jenna Biancavilla, President of Emerging Leaders. "We are incredibly grateful to all of the participating chefs and our generous sponsors for making this amazing event possible, and for supporting the courageous patients and families at Phoenix Children's."
Tickets to 7 Chefs for Kids are on sale now at www.7chefsforkids.com. Tickets are $75 and include all-you-can-eat small bites, drinks, and live entertainment provided by DJ MR PHX.


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Thailand's Siam Commercial Bank building new app uses RippleNet to pay without needing to convert currencies
By Selena	03/27/20 2:39 PM
In a recent interview, Arthit Sriumporn, the Senior Vice President (SVP) of Commercial Banking at Siam Commercial Bank (SCB), which is Thailand's largest bank by total assets, talked about the benefits SCB has enjoyed by being part of RippleNet, Ripple's global payments network.
The news will undoubtedly spread cheer among the banking sector of Thailand. If a 2019 report is to be believed, Thailand figures at the top position when it comes to mobile banking users. Leading bank Siam Commercial Bank (SCB) played a crucial in making this possible. The bank took a great initiative in leading digital banking in Thailand in the last ten years.
SCB talked about the benefits by being part of RippleNet
The latest development is SCB's collaboration with RippleNet, wherein the bank will permit customers to carry out instant economic cross-border payments from their mobile phones.
"The instant remittance experience creates peace of mind for our customers. Being part of #RippleNet has helped us expand our business and keep SCB moving into the future."- @scb_thailand SVP of Commercial Banking Arthit Sriumporn https://t.co/wMrgaLULrU
— Ripple (@Ripple) March 26, 2020
Siam Commercial Bank has been in existence for more than 100 years now, and it has become Thailand's biggest bank with over 1000 branches all across the country, said SCB's Arthit Sriumporn, who holds the position of SVP for Commercial Banking.
Sriumporn stated:
"Siam Commercial Bank is more than 100 years old and is Thailand's largest bank with more than 1,000 branches across the nation. We support a wide range of customers from retail to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and corporations. Our focus is always on enriching the customer experience and RippleNet has helped us to do this with remittances."
He said he had extended his support for a vast range of customers right from retail to small and medium-sized enterprises and corporations. The bank strives to enhance the experience of the customer, and RippleNet has assisted the bank in doing this with remittances.
There was a time when SCB became the traditional player in Thailand's commercial space. With the fast growth of Thai mobile adoption, the country has witnessed higher mobile subscriptions than people. SCB introduced pioneering digital transformation campaign that would go a long way in altering its image and Thailand's banking scene.
Arthit Sriumporn said that the bank first encouraged its customers to use its latest mobile app by making it free of cost. And, when people became accustomed to the ease of doing banking from their phones, the bank enhanced customer expectations around all of its services.
Customers who send money to family and friends outside of Thailand didn't like that it still involved visiting a branch, filling out lots of forms, and then waiting up to five days for the money to get there.
Soon after estimating the region's remittances market at $68 billion, SCB decided to join RippleNet in a bid to boost its current costly and time-taking cross-border payment procedure.
Sriumporn goes on to say:
"The instant remittances experience creates peace of mind for our customers. We want to expand that experience to more markets, as well as to our small business and enterprise customers. Being part of RippleNet has helped us to completely enhance our customer experience, expand our business and keep SCB moving into the future."
Earlier this month, Ripple announced via a blog post that Thai global remittance firm DeeMoney had become the first non-bank financial institution in Thailand to join RippleNet.
Bangkok-headquartered DeeMoney joined RippleNet in order to offer cheaper and faster money transfers to its customers.
Ripple Partners With DeeMoney To Revolutionize Cross-Border Money Transfers Immediately At Cheaper Price
Marcus Treacher, SVP of Customer Success at Ripple, stated at the time:
"The digital banking revolution is taking Thailand by storm, and DeeMoney is a key player in this. By being the first non-bank institution in Thailand to use RippleNet, it redraws the boundaries and rules of engagement by providing efficient international transfers at low fees and competitive rates. Thailand has stated its intention to be a Smart Nation and we are proud to be an enabler of the process by partnering with DeeMoney."
MoneyGram Reports $11.3 Million In Revenue As A Result Of Its Ripple Partnership
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The leader investor Series C funding round has sued…
XRP whales begin to liquidate part of their holdings…


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New Orleans & Early Jazz
Traditional Jazz/Dixieland
Complete OKeh And Brunswick Recordings of Bix Beiderbecke... (1924-1936), Vol.2 (HD Remastered)
Bix Beiderbecke
Somebody Stole My Gal
Thou Swell (Breakdown)
Thou Swell (2)
Bless You Sister
Dusky Stevedore
Wa-Da-Da (Everybody's Doin' It Now)
Take Your Tomorrow
Love Affairs
Rhythm King
The Love Nest
High up on a Hill Top
Sentimental Baby
Don't Leave Me Daddy
Singin' the Blues (Till My Daddy Comes Home)
Singin' the Blues (Till My Daddy Comes Home) (2)
Futuristic Rhythm
Raisin' the Roof
Wait 'Til You See Ma Cherie
Baby Won't You Please Come Home
I Like That
Alabammy Snow
Nobody But You
Got a Feelin' for You
Shivery Stomp
Reaching for Someone (And Not Finding Anyone There)
Love Ain't Nothin' But the Blues
Love Ain't Nothin' But the Blues (2)
How Am I to Know
Turn on the Heat
Manhattan Rag
Manhattan Rag (2)
My Sweeter Than Sweet
What Wouldn't I Do for That Man?
I Like to Do Things for You
Deep Harlem
Derniers albums de Bix Beiderbecke
Complete OKeh And Brunswick Recordings of Bix...


Tax saving Tips comes from the experience & practice of Income tax.
I am sharing some of basics of tax saving tips gained from my last 10 years of practice with income tax.
You should have basic knowledge of how income tax works in India.
Income Tax is governed by Income tax act, 1962.
Every year this act changes with the outcome of Budget.
Be updated of changes in Income Tax Act, 1961. You may subscribe CAquery.com for latest updates on income tax.
Be familiar with the latest Income tax slab applicable for you and check that if your income exceeds the minimum amount not chargeable to tax.
File you income tax return on time to avoid interest & penalty.
Check in which head, income earned by you falls so that you can claim proper exemption. Suppose if you have sold your house and earned capital gain, you should know that such earning falls in under Capital Gain Head so that you could claim capital gain exemption listed under section 54 to 54G.
If you have received any lump sum amount, report it to your Chartered Accountant so that proper tax planning could be done.
Regularly login to your income tax online account and check for any communication from income tax office.
Be aware of advance tax provisions and pay all your advance tax on time to avoid interest &Penalty.
Choose your investment keeping Income tax deductions in mind like you can save Rs. 1,50,000 under section 80C.
Be aware of various income tax exemptions and claim them on right time.
I will update this article and keep on adding more tax saving tips. You can comments for any query and you tax saving tips.
Dear sir, NY mother (house wife senior citizen) got 80lakhs by selling land. I want to invest in bank fd, on my father(senior citizen 76yrs, no other source of income) name @35 lakhs, on mothers name 20 lakhs, on myself 15 Kaohsiung,10lakhs on my wife name to avoid income tax. Is it okay?? My father essentially need PAN card??