Successful Home Improvement Starts With These Tips | OK Heyday ...

TIP! Make sure you compare prices for materials so that you can save some money. A variety of retailers offer lower prices than the competition, so seek them out.

Improvements to your home can add resell value to your home. Some do it yourself jobs are enjoyable and some are necessities to protect your investment. There are a ton of different projects that can be done to make your home look better; some are harder than others. Peruse this piece for several ideas.

TIP! If you are not happy with your contractor, talk to him about it. Begin with the contractor individually, and inform him of the contract clauses that were violated.

Search for inspiration to get better ideas when you are renovating your home. Try looking through different decorating magazines or visiting your local book store or library. Visit paint and carpet stores and pick up color samples and fabric swatches. Spend time getting a feel for what you really want, so you will be ready when the time comes to start the project.

TIP! Cabinets without hardware are an inexpensive choice. However, you can visit a home improvement store for cabinet knobs, handles and drawer pulls.

Putting on a new roof can be something that costs a homeowner quite a bit. Try getting estimates from several companies and check all of their references. Tile, metal and wood shake are some options for roofing materials you can decide on. A knowledgeable roofing contractor can help you make the best decision.

TIP! Has your floor become worn out? You can always put stick-on laminate on top of your old floors. This flooring may have a poor reputation, but it is really quite nice.

Renovate your restrooms cheaply and simply. Just replacing the towels and shower curtain can quickly improve how your bathroom looks. This will add instant appeal. Plants are good in livening up any type of bathroom. Remember to choose the right one that can tolerate high humidity as well as low light requirements.

TIP! If you are choosing a major renovation, look to hire a professional designer or architect to help develop the plans. Plans created on your own or through friends may be pretty, but not functional with your current home.

Never underestimate the amount of work involved in a particular home improvement project. Create a list of all the things you need to do. Ask for confirmation from a friend or family member if you have missed adding anything to the list. With a clear plan for the project, you can save a lot of money, as opposed to winging it.

TIP! You might spend a lot of money when buying new furniture. Garage sales and thrift stores can add a new flare to your room! If you shop carefully, you will be surprised at what you can find.

When you are improving your house, remember to keep things in perspective. Make a list of specific improvements and the reasons you would like to do them. Also write down the benefits for you and your family. Home improvement requires commitment, and you want to be sure that you are investing your time and money into something worthwhile.

Source: http://okheyday.com/successful-home-improvement-starts-with-these-tips/

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Stocks Are Set for a Possible Repeat of 1987 ... - Yahoo! Finance

Stocks are up big to start 2013 but Marc Faber, Editor & Publisher of the Gloom, Boom & Doom Report, says it ends in tears.

"Either the market is going to correct more meaningfully now or we have a shallow correction and a continuously rising market until July or August," Faber told me via phone from Thailand. If stocks don't pullback soon, he says we risk a repeat of 1987 when stocks rallied 40% into summer only to collapse 41% in 2 months.

"In March of 2009 everything looked horrible, now nobody can find a reason why stocks could go down," Faber claims. "We ask that you should buy stocks when everything looks horrible, you shouldn't rush to buy them when everything looks perfect."

The problem is that it's hard to find anyone claiming the environment is perfect. Even the theme running under the reports of "the masses" buying stocks is that it's a cue to sell, not buy.

Analysts are looking for almost no corporate earnings growth in the current quarter and not much better than that for the balance of the year. The idea that Fed money printing is supporting assets may be true, but the FOMC has given clear guidelines on when the printing will stop. When inflation (as measured) rises past 2% or unemployment falls below 6.5% the Fed will raise rates.

Even if you think the Fed is wrong, there's no basis for calling them liars. A surprise end to Quantitative Easing isn't on the table. It's hard to make much of a case for ebullience beyond the fact of stocks much-hyped journey toward all-time highs.

So what's an investor to do? Faber says it's a matter of allocation and perspective. Stocks have gone very far in a relatively short amount of time. If you caught the rally, he says it's time to trim but not bail out entirely. If you're a Johnny-come-lately to stocks, you're too late as he sees it.

"If you have 100% of your money in equities and you just bought them now, maybe you should reassess your position," says Faber.

Source: http://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/breakout/stocks-set-possible-repeat-1987-says-marc-faber-131939023.html

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Canada is getting its own version of the Food Network series Chopped

Chopped,?the purest of all competitive cooking programs, is getting a Canadian edition courtesy of?Food Network Canada and?Paperny Entertainment.?Unlike?Top Chef and MasterChef (and their various spinoffs), every episode of?Chopped features four fresh contestants, who are whittled down to a single winner after three challenges?(appetizer, entr?e and dessert), each featuring a basket of three or four mystery ingredients. There?s no manufactured drama, no tearful shots of the chefs pining for their adorable children and no season-long arcs?the show is an?unadulterated?display of culinary skill and invention. The producers are now casting for professional cooks to appear in Chopped Canada, which is slated to air early next year.

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Read more

by Andrew D?Cruz February 13, 2013 at 2:10 pm

Source: http://www.torontolife.com/daily/daily-dish/tv-diner/2013/02/13/chopped-coming-to-canada/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=chopped-coming-to-canada

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Green Car Congress: New GPS/IMU fusion system improves the ...

New GPS/IMU fusion system improves the precision of GPS in vehicles in cities by up to 90%; implications for connected vehicles, autonomy and ITS

Researchers at Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (UC3M) have developed a new system which improves the ability of a GPS to determine a vehicle?s position as compared to that of conventional GPS devices by up to 90%, and which can be installed in any vehicle at a very low cost. Future applications that will benefit from the technology will include cooperative driving, automatic maneuvers for the safety of pedestrians, autonomous vehicles or cooperative collision warning systems, the scientists noted.

The system is a fusion of a GPS (or GNSS, Global Navigation Satellite System) and an Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) integrating three accelerometers and three gyroscopes, based on a context-aided Unscented Kalman filter for navigation in urban conditions. The GPS/IMU system was jointly developed by the Applied Artificial Intelligence Group (GIAA ? Grupo de Inteligencia Aplicada Artificial) and the Systems Intelligence Laboratory (LSI ? Laboratorio de Sistemas Inteligentes) at UC3M.

We have managed to improve the determination of a vehicle?s position in critical cases by between 50 and 90 percent, depending on the degree of the signals? degradation and the time that is affecting the degradation on the GPS receiver.

?David Mart?n, LSI

The margin of error of a commercial GPS, such as those that are used in cars, is about 15 meters in an open field, where the receiver has wide visibility from the satellites. However, in an urban setting, the determination of a vehicle?s position can be off by more than 50 meters, due to the signals bouncing off of obstacles such as buildings, trees, or narrow streets.

The greatest problem presented by a commercial GPS in an urban setting is the loss of all of the satellite signals. In certain cases, such as in tunnels, communication is lost, which hinders the GPS? applications reaching Intelligent Transport Systems, which require a high level of security.

This occurs continually, but commercial receivers partially solve the problem by making use of the urban maps that attempt to position the vehicle in an approximate point. These devices can indicate to the driver approximately where s/he is, but they cannot be used as a source of information in an Intelligent Transport System like those we have cited.

?David Mart?n

In the case of the new prototype that they have developed they have managed to guarantee the position of the vehicle to within 1 or 2 meters in urban settings.

System architecture. In general, information flows from left (sensors) to right (output of estimation processes). The main exception resides in the module that infers contextual information, the products of which are accessible to every other component in the system. The result of attitude estimation is fed back into the sensor refinement process. The figure shows how data moves around the system. Solid lines represent raw data as captured by the sensors, blue dotted lines refers to refined sensor information (original data that has been processed to compensate known errors, or to produce features that summarize a number of raw values). Dashed lines are reserved for new data that has been obtained by advanced processing techniques such as filters or reasoning algorithms. Mart? et al. Click to enlarge.

This software is based on an architecture that uses context information and a powerful algorithm [Unscented Kalman Filter] that eliminates the instantaneous deviations caused by the degradation of the signals received by the GPS receiver or the total or partial loss of the satellites.

?Enrique Mart?, of UC3M?s GIAA

Currently the researchers have a prototype that they can install in any type of vehicle. In fact, it is already working on board the IVVI (Intelligent Vehicle based on Visual Information), a real car that has become a platform for research and experimentation for professors and students at the University. The objective of the researchers from LSI and UC3M who are working on this ?intelligent car? is to be able to capture and interpret all of the information that is available on the road, and that we use when we are driving. To do this, they are using optical cameras, infrareds and laser to detect whether we are crossing the lines on the road, or whether there are pedestrians in the vehicle?s path, as well as to adapt our speed to the traffic signals and even to analyze the driver?s level of sleepiness in real time.

The next step these researchers intend to take is to analyze the possibility of developing a system that makes use of the sensors that are built into smartphones, since intelligent telephones are equipped with more than ten sensors, such as an accelerometer, a gyroscope, a magnetometer, GPS and cameras, in addition to WiFi, Bluetooth or GSM communications, for example.

We are now starting to work on the integration of this data fusion system into a mobile telephone so that it can integrate all of the measurements that come from its sensors in order to obtain the same result that we have now, but at an even much lower cost, since it is something that almost everyone can carry around in his pocket.

?Enrique Mart?

Resources

• Enrique David Mart?, David Martin, Jes?s Garc?a, Arturo de la Escalera, Jos? Manuel Molina, Jos? Mar?a Armingol (2012) Context-Aided Sensor Fusion for Enhanced Urban Navigation. Sensors Volume: 12 Number: 12 Pages: 16802-16837 doi: 10.3390/s121216802

Source: http://www.greencarcongress.com/2013/02/gpsimu-20120212.html

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Sell Your Used Stuff for Cash on Facebook for Hassle-Free, No-Fee Decluttering

We've shown you the best ways to make the most money from your unwanted crap, but one gold mine that's often overlooked is the one that millions of people use every day: Facebook.

Of course, you can use Facebook to pitch your unwanted stuff to the friends and family members that you're already Facebook friends with, but that limits your audience significantly when compared to a site like Craigslist or Amazon Marketplace. Instead, look for Facebook sale groups in your area (just search for your state or region and the word "sell" or "buy" to find local buy/sell/trade groups. If there are none, you can always start one and get the word out in your community!) and join them. From there you can shop from people in your area, list your own items for sale, and set your own prices. You can even note whether you're willing to ship something, or?in the case of furniture or large electronics or appliances?whether you'd rather the buyer come pick it up.

The big benefit of using Facebook like this is that you set your price and there's no one taking a cut of your sale price or charging you to host your listing. You can set your own preferred method of payment, and you also have the opportunity to become part of a community where people are looking for bargains as much as others are looking to declutter their homes. Many of the groups are closed, so you'll have to ask permission to join, and others only accept certain types of listings, so make sure you read up on the group you want to join and their rules. Many have strict listing requirements and limits on how many items you can try to sell per day in order to stave off spammers and scam artists.

A number of you mentioned local Facebook groups when we talked about other ways to sell your stuff, and if you'd rather have a more personal approach to buying and selling?or you just want a new audience to reach out to beyond the same old Craigslist posts, they're definitely worth a try.

How to Sell Your Old Stuff on Facebook | Wise Bread

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~3/x1vabN6JvgM/sell-your-used-stuff-for-cash-on-facebook-for-hassle+free-no+fee-decluttering

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Japan, Demographics and National Productivity

Noah Smith echoes Paul Krugman?s suggestion that ?when properly accounting for demographics? Japan had an impressive run in the 2000s.

In particular, they both refer to the following chart

?

Noah continues

Japan had one lost decade, not two.

Now, here?s the puzzle. What caused the Japanese growth speedup of 2000-07?

Remember, during that entire period, Japan was stuck in a liquidity trap.

Properly accounting for demographics is always tricky since in theory folks can alter retirement ages, fertility rates, work-school balance, etc.

But here is one important thing of note, labor force participation by women not only differs systematically between countries and over time, it also differs systematically overtime, between countries. Here is what I mean.

Here are the female participation rates for Japan and the US

The US female labor force participation, is rising over time, and for most of recent history higher than in Japan. Importantly, however, the relative increase over time shows a pattern not easily visible in the graph above.

The relative participation of US women peaks around 2002 or so and then begins to decline. If we restrict our time period to the interval that Noah and Paul looked at, and invert our ratio we get this:

which is strikingly similar to the red line here

A natural interpretation is that a relative increase in the fraction of women participating in the workforce contributed to a relative increase in GDP per working age adult.

This is tricky of course because the decision to participate in the workforce is itself driven by economic considerations. However, its plausible that its driven by cultural considerations as well.

For example, if Japanese households held on to the single-male-wage-earner model for longer than US households then the aging of the Japanese workforce would not have affected the female Japanese labor force nearly as much. Simply put, early cohorts contained few working women who could age out of the workforce.

Thus the total demographic effect of aging is attenuated by the absence of female workers in the older cohorts. So, adjusting for age-demographic effects actually induces gender demographic effects.

That having been said, one could argue that the only reason that the US posted the growth gains that it did was because of the huge rise in female labor force participation from 1970 ? 1995. Its been been a lost half-century for everyone. I think I heard that argument somewhere else actually.

Yet, that having been said, one could argue that the increase in female labor force participation hit the US ? and other developed countries ? institutional and capital structure by surprise. The resulting productivity slowdown from 1970 ? 1995 occurred because the capital structure was not prepared to absorb the quantity of workers entering the workforce.

This thesis might be easier absorb if you consider the interrelatedness of household and market production. A shift from one to the other means that unexpectedly: the roads are to narrow for the fraction of commuters, the houses are too far away from the offices, there aren?t enough restaurants, there aren?t enough daycares.

In general home life is now more complex and capital intensive than optimal and work life is simpler and more labor intensive than optimal. Folks don?t get enough done while they are at work and have too much to do when they get home.

That doesn?t sound to far off the common complaints that folks offered up during the late 20th century.

Source: http://www.forbes.com/sites/modeledbehavior/2013/02/11/japan-demographics-and-national-productivity/

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Lung cancer set to overtake breast cancer as the main cause of cancer deaths among European women

Feb. 11, 2013 ? Lung cancer is likely to overtake breast cancer as the main cause of cancer death among European women by the middle of this decade, according to new research published in the cancer journal Annals of Oncology on February 13. In the UK and Poland it has already overtaken breast cancer as the main cause of cancer deaths in women.

The study by researchers in Italy and Switzerland predicts that just over 1.3 million people will die from cancer (737,747 men and 576,489 women) in the 27 countries of the European Union in 2013. Although the actual numbers have increased when compared with 2009 (the year for which there are World Health Organization mortality data for most EU countries), the rate (age-standardised per 100,000 population) of people who die from the disease has declined. Since 2009 there has been 6% fall among men and 4% fall among women.

However, despite the decline in cancer deaths overall, lung cancer death rates continue to rise among women in all countries, while breast cancer rates fall. In 2013 there will be an estimated 88,886 deaths (14.6 per 100,000 women) from breast cancer and 82,640 deaths (14 per 100,000 women) from lung cancer. Lung cancer deaths have risen by 7% among women since 2009.

One of the study's authors, Professor Carlo La Vecchia (MD), head of the Department of Epidemiology at the Mario Negri Institute and professor at the Faculty of Medicine, University of Milan (Italy), said: "If these opposite trends in breast and lung cancer rates continue, then in 2015 lung cancer is going to become the first cause of cancer mortality in Europe. This is already true in the UK and Poland, the two countries with the highest rates: 21.2 and 17.5 per 100,000 women respectively.

"This predicted rise of female lung cancer in the UK may reflect the increased prevalence of young women starting smoking in the late 1960s and 1970s, possibly due to changing socio-cultural attitudes at that time. However, fewer young women nowadays in the UK and elsewhere in Europe are smoking and, therefore, deaths from lung cancer may start to level off after 2020 at around 15 per 100,000 women."

Deaths from breast cancer have been declining steadily, with a 7% fall in rates since 2009 in the EU. "This reflects the important and accumulating advances in the treatment, as well as screening and early diagnosis, of the disease," said Prof La Vecchia.

Although lung cancer is still the main cause of cancer death among men, with nearly 187,000 deaths predicted for 2013, giving a death rate of 37.2 per 100,000 men, this represents a 6% fall since 2009.

The study looked at cancer rates in the whole of the EU (27 member states as at 2007) and also in six individual countries -- France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain and the UK -- for all cancers, and, individually, for stomach, intestine, pancreas, lung, prostate, breast, uterus (including cervix) and leukemias. This is the third consecutive year the researchers have published predicted EU cancer deaths. Last year they predicted deaths for 2012.

The researchers focused on intestinal cancers, particularly colorectal cancers, for their 2013 predictions. They found that, overall, there has been a decline in rates of deaths from colorectal cancers in the EU. They predict there will be 87,818 deaths (16.7 per 100,000) in men and 75,059 (9.5 per 100,000) in women in 2013; this represents a fall when compared with actual death rates of 17.6 for men and 10.5 for women for the period 2005-2009.

Prof La Vecchia said: "The main reasons for the decline are improved screening and diagnosis, and improved management and treatment."

However, there are large variations between European countries. Poland and Spain have the highest rates of colorectal cancer deaths among men, with rates well above the EU average at 21.5 and 18.6 per 100,000 men respectively. Death rates among Polish women are also higher than the EU average, at 10.8; Spanish women have death rates from colorectal cancers that are lower than the EU average at 9 per 100,000 women.

"Smaller improvements in diagnosis and treatment partly or largely explain the less favourable trends in Poland and Spain," said Prof La Vecchia. "Tobacco and diet are other possible reasons, since they have evolved less favourably in these countries than in most other European countries."

Pancreatic cancer is the only cancer for which death rates are not predicted to decline in both sexes and, in fact, may rise in 2013. There will be a predicted 40,069 deaths (8 per 100,000) in men and 40,197 deaths (5.5 per 100,000) in women in 2013. These rates are higher than those recorded for 2009 of 7.9 per 100,000 in men and 5.4 per 100,000 in women. Among women in Germany the death rate will be higher (6.3 per 100,000), while it will be lower among Spanish women (4.1 per 100,000) compared to the EU average. Men in France have the highest predicted rate (8.7 per 100,000), while the other countries in the study had more stable rates among men, with Spain and the UK having lower rates (6.6 per 100,000) than the EU average.

Prof La Vecchia said: "The best ways of preventing pancreatic cancer is to avoid tobacco, and to avoid being overweight and the consequent onset of diabetes that this can bring. This could prevent about a third of pancreatic cancers in the EU. No other major risk factor is known, and there is nothing happening with regard to diagnosis and treatment that could materially influence national death rates."

Co-author Professor Fabio Levi (MD), Head of the Cancer Epidemiology Unit at the Institute of Social and Preventive Medicine, Centre Hospitalier Universitaire Vaudois and University of Lausanne, (Switzerland), said: "The key message for EU national governments from this study is tobacco control, particularly among middle-aged men and women, i.e. the European generations most heavily exposed to smoking. If more people could be helped and encouraged to give up smoking, or not to take it up in the first place, hundreds of thousands of deaths from cancer could be avoided each year in Europe. Other measures that could help to prevent cancer deaths include controlling overweight and alcohol abuse, as well as optimising cancer diagnosis and treatment. Most of these measures are applicable to all EU countries, and, in particular, the delay in improvements in cancer diagnosis and management is difficult to justify in central and eastern Europe, particularly in the light of the recent progress in countries such as Brazil or Argentina, which now have similar GDPs to several central European countries."

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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Oxford University Press (OUP), via AlphaGalileo.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.

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Journal Reference:

1. M. Malvezzi, P. Bertuccio, F. Levi, C. La Vecchia, E. Negri. European cancer mortality predictions for the year 2013. Annals of Oncology, 2013 DOI: 10.1093/annonc/mdt010

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/top_health/~3/YIPANilEdCc/130212210039.htm

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