Tuesday, April 3, 2012

Fitch Affirms NorthStar Education Finance, Inc. 2006-A Private ...

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Israel Releases Palestinian Hunger Striker

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Source: www.nytimes.com --- Sunday, April 01, 2012
Hana Shalabi, 30, went more than 40 days without eating to protest her administrative detention, a practice of being held without charge or trial. ...

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Monday, April 2, 2012

Microgrids Implemented In India and South Africa

Echelon Corp. has announced two microgrid deployments in India and South Africa that integrate distributed generation to compensate for disruptions in utility-supplied power. The deployments are built on Echelon's open-standard, multi-application energy control networking platform powered by its Control Operating System (COS) and incorporate application software and services from its local partners Grene Robotics and Power Meter Technics (PMT). The first-of-its-kind in the two countries, the micro grid deployments involve dynamically managing demand and energy supply mix for a residential community and a retail mall to deliver reliable service cost-effectively.

The model micro grid deployments are at Palm Meadows in Hyderabad, India, and Clearwater Mall in Johannesburg, South Africa. Palm Meadows is an 86-acre integrated gated community with 335 homes and residential services. Clearwater Mall in Johannesburg is a retail building with more than 240 stores. Such microgrids are likely to be a best practice in emerging countries grappling with intermittent power supply, and are also applicable in environmentally conscious countries that are aggressively incorporating renewable and intermittent energy sources into the distribution network. ?

Palm Meadows
The Palm Meadows community ties into the grid at a dedicated substation and sources energy in bulk from the utility. The community also runs diesel generators and will incorporate solar generation in the future. Residences within the community are equipped with Echelon smart meters that connect into data concentrators at distribution transformers and feed near real-time usage information to the Networked Energy Systems (NES) system software. Echelon partner Grene Robotics' Skynet management application automatically turns on local generation if utility-delivered power is inadequate. The Skynet software interfaces with the NES system software and creates a bill for the customer that reflects the customers' actual use of lower cost grid power and more expensive locally generated power. Customers have the option of reducing usage at times when the more expensive energy is being supplied. The Palm Meadows microgrid is providing reliable service even during frequent utility grid outages and enabling the customer to make intelligent trade-offs between comfort and cost.

Clearwater Mall
The frequency and length of blackouts in South Africa can have devastating effects on its commercial sector. For example, the local South African public utility had to institute a system of rolling blackouts over a period of four months to balance electricity demand, in which supply was interrupted at least once or twice a day on an average of four hours at a time. The Clearwater Mall tenants, which consist of nine anchor stores, and more than two hundred other local and international fashion and quick serve food outlets, restaurants, banks, electronic goods and other specialty stores, require reliable electricity so they can continue to run their business. The mall's new retail micro grid solution, based on Echelon partner PMT's Meteringonline energy management application, employs Echelon smart meters, data concentrators, and NES system software to submeter individual tenant usage, so they can pay only for their actual energy usage rather than the industry norm of paying for energy on a square footage basis. Furthermore, tenants can opt-in to power supplied by local back-up generation when blackouts occur. PMT's Meteringonline application interfaces to Echelon's system software and reconciles usage with energy source, allocating tariffs based on actual use. The on-demand energy services allow the store owners to manage their energy usage and associated costs and maximize revenues.

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Home Equity Loans ? 3 Common Scams to ... - Personal Financial Tips

Home equity loans remain one of the most popular financing tools among homeowners. It can give you quick access to cash by leveraging the equity (or ownership) you have in your home. It can be an effective way to finance a home renovation, education costs, or even a second home.

But these loans also get a lot of homeowners into trouble each year, and in the worst-case scenarios they can even result in foreclosure and loss of the home. On top of that, there are some common scams associated with equity loans and lines of credit. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is constantly tracking the latest scams and warning homeowners about them. Here?s a summary of some of the more common scenarios you should watch out for?

1. Equity Stripping

In this scenario, the lender will actually help you ?pad? your stated income on the loan application form in order to qualify you for the loan. ?Why would they do such a thing?? you might ask. Predatory lenders use this tactic because they don?t care about your actual ability to make the payments ? they will simply foreclose on your house and benefit from the equity you?ve built up over the years.

If your income is outside of certain parameters, but the lender says ?we can make that work,? you should already be on your guard. That?s red flag #1. If they try to persuade you that you can make payments that seem out of reach, you have another warning sign. You?re the only person who should be making decisions about your ability to pay back a loan!

2. The Helpful Contractor Scam

This scenario usually starts with a home improvement contractor (such as a roofer) who knocks on the door of homeowners to offer their services. Many of the homeowners will say, ?Sorry, but that kind of project is not in our budget right now.? The contractor will counter this by saying he works with a lender who can help offset the cost. Long story short ? the homeowner signs some papers that turn out to be a home equity loan.

This scam is not as common as it once was. But it still happens on a regular basis all across America, so it?s worth mentioning in our list. Unfortunately, as with many scams, the elderly are often the target with this approach.

The first thing you need to realize is that a reputable contractor will rarely practice door-to-door marketing. That?s the first red flag. Additionally, a contractor should never refer you to a third-party lender ? it?s a conflict of interest. That?s the second red flag.

3. Loan ?Stacking? or Flipping

I refer to this scam as ?loan stacking,? because that?s what takes place. The more common term for it is ?loan flipping.? Regardless of what you call it, the scenario goes like this. The lender will offer the homeowner a second equity loan after the homeowner has already received a first one (and made a few payments on it). Basically, the lender refinances the initial loan to grant the homeowner additional money.

In some cases, this will happen more than once. And with each new round of financing, the rates typically get higher and the fees larger. The borrower now has even more money to use for whatever prompted the first equity loan ? but they also have a lot more debt spread out over a longer period of time. Homeowners who fall prey to this scam often get in over their heads with all the fees that stack up on them. It?s a good way to lose your home.

There Are Some Trustworthy Lenders

I don?t mean to scare you away from the equity loan as a source of financing. On the contrary, it can be a useful tool for a responsible borrower, and there are plenty of reputable lenders that will offer you fair terms and treatment. I?m simply trying to warn you about the common scams that go along with these types of loans.

My advice is to use a lender you?ve heard of before, a company who has been around for a long time and has a reputation at stake. Be a smart consumer when pursuing such a program. Do plenty of research and let common sense guide you.

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Chevy Chase In Bitter Feud With Community Creator?

Is there a new feud in Hollywood that could rival the Charlie Sheen and Chuck Lorre feud of a year ago? It sure looks that way only this time it involves Chevy Chase and Community creator Don Harmon. ? Turns out that life on the set of Community is not all that rosy right now and it all stems from an alleged feud between Chase and Harmon that resulted in the actor walking off the set on the last day of shooting season three. RadarOnline is saying that the two men have had a bitter falling out and it could cost Chevy his job on the show. As I mentioned above Chevy allegedly walked off set on the final day of shooting last month without filming some crucial scenes. Deadline.com is reporting that later at the wrap party Don gave a f&%$k you speech to Chase all while encouraging the crew of the show to do the same. The actor who was there with his wife and daughter left the party and then preceded to leave a profanity filled voicemail on the Community creator?s voicemail. You may or may not be aware of this but Chevy has made no secret [...]

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User:Po1rock - StatusNet

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If anyone only train your pecs then having simply a bench press nevertheless would not be enough - just because you'd need to keep mixing up the ways anyone trained your pecs as well as that might mean making use of some other such things as pec flies etc. We cannot perform a full workout at all then except you have many devices for every physique piece. Any kind of time you think about which we have: pecs, deltoids, lats, tiger traps, neck muscle tissue, forearm flexors, abdominals, obliques, serratus muscles, quads, lower legs, hamstrings, butt which is simply scratching the area you understand which we then require a lot of different machines to are able to a full workout in your house or perhaps so you can give the capability to do a full exercise in your health and fitness center. 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Wageningen-China PhD studentship

We are looking for

We are looking for a PhD Student
Rice uses about 30% of the freshwater used for agricultural crops worldwide; exploring ways to reduce water use for rice production is therefore of great strategic value for sustainable crop production for the world facing water scarcity. However, there is a lack of knowledge about the plant characteristics that are required for good performance under water saving conditions. We recently received a research grant, with which this knowledge will be generated using a suite of physiological tools for both rice and wheat. Wheat will be used for comparison since this crop has a better water use efficiency than rice.

Two complementary approaches will be used to achieve this aim. In Approach 1, wheat, various types of cultivated rice (lowland, aerobic and upland rice), and wild rice species are directly compared for morphological and physiological characteristics. In Approach 2, molecular genetic analysis will be conducted to find mechanisms of drought tolerance within rice.

Using these two approaches, the whole project will comprise five tasks, to be carried out by five PhD researchers that will intensively interact to exchange insights, materials and data. It is expected that the physiological mechanisms that lead to the different behaviour of wheat and the various rice types and the underlying regulation will be unravelled. The physiological mechanisms, markers and genes and their functions revealed in this project will be of substantial value for breeders to select for new rice cultivars that have reduced water use at a level similar to wheat without yield penalty.

Of the five PhD candidates to be appointed, three will, with approximate 50% of their time, be based in rice-producing countries the Philippines, India and China.
We are looking for a motivated Chinese candidate to be placed in our partner institute ? Yangzhou University. This particular project will use Approach 1 to investigate whether there are different morphological, anatomical and physiological characteristics (for example, cuticle, stomata size and density, etc) between rice and wheat, and between different types of rice, and if so, whether these differences are responsible for drought tolerance of the crops

We ask

Suitable candidates should have, or are expected to obtain soon, an MSc degree in Plant Sciences or Crop Sciences with a multidisciplinary profile. Research experience in plant/crop physiology is an advantage. You should have a good command of the oral and written English language and a Certificate of English Proficiency is required (further info at: http://www.wageningenuniversity.nl/UK/informationfor/PhD+programmes/Application/). The successful candidate is expected to defend his(her) thesis in Wageningen University in four years.

Interested candidates should send a motivation letter, CV, BSc and MSc transcripts, names and email contacts of two references, and abstract of the MSc thesis (if available), to Dr. Xinyou Yin (Xinyou.yin@wur.nl).

We offer

The fellowship will cover your stay and research in both China and Wageningen and ? 1190,- per month

Wageningen UR (University & Research centre)

Delivering a substantial contribution to the quality of life. That's our focus?each and every day. Within our domain, healthy food and living environment, we search for answers to issues affecting society?such as sustainable food production, climate change and alternative energy. Of course, we don?t do this alone. Every day, 6,500 people work on ?the quality of life?, turning ideas into reality, on a global scale.?

Could you be one of these people? We give you the space you need.

For further information about working at Wageningen UR, take a look at www.jobsat.wur.nl.

Acquisition regarding this vacancy is not appreciated.

Don't forget to mention Naturejobs when applying.

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