New map pinpoints Lyme disease risk areas

This map released by the Yale School of Public Health on Friday, Feb. 3, 2012 shows a map which indicates areas of the eastern United States where people have the highest risk of contracting Lyme disease based on data from 2004-2007. Researchers dragged sheets of fabric through the woods to snag ticks for the survey. The map shows a clear risk across much of the Northeast, from Maine to northern Virginia. Researchers at Yale University also identified a high-risk region across most of Wisconsin, northern Minnesota and a sliver of northern Illinois. Areas highlighted as "emerging risk" regions include the Illinois-Indiana border, the New York-Vermont border, southwestern Michigan and eastern North Dakota. (AP Graphic/Yale School of Public Health, Maria Diuk-Wasser)

This map released by the Yale School of Public Health on Friday, Feb. 3, 2012 shows a map which indicates areas of the eastern United States where people have the highest risk of contracting Lyme disease based on data from 2004-2007. Researchers dragged sheets of fabric through the woods to snag ticks for the survey. The map shows a clear risk across much of the Northeast, from Maine to northern Virginia. Researchers at Yale University also identified a high-risk region across most of Wisconsin, northern Minnesota and a sliver of northern Illinois. Areas highlighted as "emerging risk" regions include the Illinois-Indiana border, the New York-Vermont border, southwestern Michigan and eastern North Dakota. (AP Graphic/Yale School of Public Health, Maria Diuk-Wasser)

CONCORD, N.H. (AP) ? Researchers who spent three years dragging sheets of fabric through the woods to snag ticks have created a detailed map they claim could improve prevention, diagnosis and treatment of Lyme disease.

The map, which pinpoints areas of the eastern United States where people have the highest risk of contracting Lyme disease, is part of a study published in the February issue of the American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene. Though the areas highlighted as high-risk likely won't surprise anyone familiar with the disease, the research also showed where the disease likely is spreading, and it turned up some surprising information about the rate at which ticks are infected with the bacteria that causes it, researchers said.

The map shows a clear risk of Lyme disease across much of the Northeast, from Maine to northern Virginia. Researchers also identified a distinct high-risk region in the upper Midwest, including most of Wisconsin, northern Minnesota and a sliver of northern Illinois. Areas highlighted as "emerging risk" regions include the Illinois-Indiana border, the New York-Vermont border, southwestern Michigan and eastern North Dakota.

"The key value is identifying areas where the risk for Lyme disease is the highest, so that should alert the public and the clinicians and the public health agencies in terms of taking more precautions and potential interventions," said the study's lead author, Dr. Maria Diuk-Wasser of the Yale School of Public Health. "In areas that are low risk, a case of Lyme disease is not impossible but it's highly unlikely, so the clinician should be considering other diagnoses."

Named after a small Connecticut town, Lyme disease is transmitted by the bite of tiny deer ticks. Antibiotics easily cure most people of Lyme, but other than the disease's hallmark round, red rash, early symptoms are vague and flu-like. People who aren't treated can develop arthritis, meningitis and some other serious illnesses.

Previous risk maps were heavily reliant on reports of human infections, but those can be misleading because the disease is both over- and under-diagnosed, according to the study. Where someone is diagnosed is not necessarily where the disease was contracted, and ticks may live in a region long before they actually infect someone, meaning there could be a significant risk even without confirmed cases.

The study was published this week based on data collected between 2004 and 2007. Diuk-Wasser said the high risk areas likely haven't changed, but there might be some changes in the transitional areas. The map is still useful, however, because it highlights areas where tick surveillance should be increased and because it can serve as a baseline for future research, she said. And it provides new information about the infection rate among ticks, she said.

About 1 in 5 ticks collected were infected ? more than researchers expected ? and that percentage was fairly constant across geographic areas, she said. Researchers had expected the infection rate to vary.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention counted more than 30,000 confirmed or probable cases of Lyme in 2010, the latest data available. More than 90 percent of those cases were in 12 states: Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Hampshire, New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Wisconsin.

Dr. Jodie Dionne-Odom, New Hampshire's state epidemiologist, said the map may be a useful tool for states where Lyme disease is just emerging. But for New Hampshire, it doesn't provide any new information because the state does its own detailed tick monitoring.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/386c25518f464186bf7a2ac026580ce7/Article_2012-02-03-US-Lyme-Disease-Map/id-881692caaf7e490d9fd904484603157e

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Interesting Ideas And Insights For Home Based Business

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By: Legget Mcquerry

Supplies for your business can procured at remarkable discounts online. Online shopping will reveal a mass amount of product with competitive pricing for the purchase of this kind of product. You can buy supplies this way using your business license.

Select a moniker that has a meaning. Your name should be representative of what you sell, which is why it is important to have a name that customers can appreicate. The name you choose could have a memorable or interesting connotation. That way, you will develop a focused branding strategy that will engender goodwill among buyers.

Promote your business online. Either by yourself or through a professional designer, have an easily navigable website constructed for your customers. Your website should have content that is relevant to those who visit your site while also making it easy for users to interact with the services you want them to use, such as your web store. Continue to fine tune and investigate new ways to make your website a successful marketing tool for your company.

Daycare home business require sufficient help. Without the extra help, normal tasks, such as feeding the kids, getting them to nap and keeping them out of trouble will be much more difficult.

As you have just learned, there are many people trying to sell you on scams. However, as you've learned throughout this article, there are also many common-sense tips and tactics that you can use in order to grow your home business. If you're willing to put in the work, you can certainly be successful.

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Summary Box: AstraZeneca to cut 7,300 jobs (AP)

JOB CUTS: Drugmaker AstraZeneca PLC said it will cut another 7,300 jobs as it warned Thursday of a tough year ahead, due to government spending cuts on health care and stiff competition.

RISING PROFIT: The Anglo-Swedish company said its full-year profit was $10 billion, up from $8.1 billion a year earlier. The profit advance was helped heavily by a $1.5 billion gain from the sale of a dental subsidiary.

TOUGH OUTLOOK: The company said revenue this year will be hit by government interventions on prices, generic competition and the loss of exclusivity for the drugs Seroquel IR and Atacand.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/business/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20120202/ap_on_bi_ge/eu_britain_earns_astrazeneca_summary_box

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Taliban "poised to retake Afghanistan" after NATO pullout (Reuters)

KABUL (Reuters) ? The U.S. military said in a secret report that the Taliban, backed by Pakistan, are set to retake control of Afghanistan after NATO-led forces withdraw, raising the prospect of a major failure of Western policy after a costly war.

Lieutenant Colonel Jimmie Cummings, a spokesman for the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force, confirmed the existence of the document, reported on Wednesday by Britain's Times newspaper and the BBC.

But he said it was not a strategic study.

"The classified document in question is a compilation of Taliban detainee opinions," he said. "It's not an analysis, nor is it meant to be considered an analysis."

Nevertheless, it could be interpreted as a damning assessment of the war, dragging into its 11th year and aimed at blocking a Taliban return to power.

It could also be seen as an admission of defeat and could reinforce the view of Taliban hardliners that they should not negotiate with the United States and President Hamid Karzai's unpopular government while in a position of strength.

The U.S. military report could boost the Taliban's confidence and make its leaders less willing to make concessions on demands for a ceasefire, and for the insurgency to renounce violence and break ties to al Qaeda.

But Britain's Kabul Ambassador William Patey wrote on his Twitter feed that "if elements of the Taliban think that in 2015 they can take control of Afghanistan they will be in for a shock." He did not say if he was referring to the document.

Hours after the Times report, the Afghan Taliban said that no peace negotiation process had been agreed with the international community, "particularly the Americans."

Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said in a statement that prior to any negotiations, confidence building measures must be completed, putting pressure on Washington to meet demands for the release of five Taliban in U.S. custody.

The hardline Islamist movement also said it had no plans to hold preliminary peace talks with Afghanistan's government in Saudi Arabia, dismissing media reports of talks in the kingdom.

The U.S. military said in the document that Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) security agency was assisting the Taliban in directing attacks against foreign forces.

Reasserting control over the country would be more difficult a second time for the Taliban, however, with Afghan police and soldiers expected to number about 350,000 beyond 2014 and some foreign troops likely to remain, including elite forces.

Close U.S. ally Australia said on Wednesday that its special forces could be in the country for years beyond the handover, with other allies likely to take a similar stance.

The report overshadowed a visit to Kabul by Pakistani Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar designed to repair ties and raise the issue of peace talks with the Taliban with Karzai.

"I can disregard this as a potentially strategic leak ... This is old wine in an even older bottle," she told reporters, reiterating Pakistan's denials it backs militant groups.

Khar, whose visit was the first high-level meeting in months between officials from both countries, added that the neighbors should stop blaming each other for strained cross-border ties.

The Times said the "highly classified" report was put together by the U.S. military at Bagram air base, near Kabul, for top NATO officers last month. It was based on interrogations of more than 4,000 Taliban and al Qaeda detainees, it said.

Large swathes of Afghanistan have been handed back to Afghan security forces, with the last foreign combat troops due to leave by the end of 2014. But many Afghans doubt their security forces will take firm control once the foreign troops leave.

The document may leave some U.S. policymakers wondering whether the war was worth the cost in human lives and funding.

But NATO spokeswoman Oana Lungescu, speaking in Brussels, played down the implications and said a surge offensive had seen the Taliban suffer "tremendous setbacks."

"We know that they have lost a lot of ground and a lot of leaders, and we also know that support for the Taliban is at an all time low," she said.

As of January, 1,889 U.S. soldiers had been killed in a conflict that was launched after the September 11, 2001 attacks and has drained almost half a trillion dollars from U.S. coffers.

"WRONG POLICIES"

New accusations of Pakistani collusion with the Taliban will likely further strain ties between Western powers and Islamabad.

Critics say Pakistan uses militants as proxies to counter the growing influence of India in Afghanistan. The belief that Pakistan supports the insurgents is widely held in Afghanistan.

"It would be a mistake now for the international community to leave Afghanistan, and drop us in a dark ocean," said Afghan telecommunications worker Farid Ahmad Totakhil.

Pakistan is reviewing ties with the United States which have suffered a series of setbacks since a U.S. raid that killed Osama bin Laden on Pakistani soil in May last year humiliated Pakistan's powerful generals.

A November 26 cross-border NATO air attack that killed 24 Pakistani soldiers deepened the crisis, prompting Pakistan to close supply routes to NATO forces in Afghanistan.

Pakistan is seen as critical to U.S. efforts to stabilize Afghanistan, a feat one foreign power after another has failed to accomplish over the country's turbulent history.

Islamabad has resisted U.S. pressure to go after insurgent groups like the Taliban, and argues Washington's approach overlooks complex realities on the ground.

Pakistan says the United States should attempt to bring all militant groups into a peace process and fears a 2014 combat troop exit could be hasty, plunging the region into the kind of chaos seen after the Soviet exit in 1989.

"They don't need any backing," Tariq Azim, of the Pakistani Senate's Defence Committee, told Reuters, referring to the Taliban. "Everybody knows that after 10 years, they (NATO) have not been able to control a single province in Afghanistan because of the wrong policies they have been following."

Despite the presence of 130,000 foreign troops, violence is at its worst since the Taliban were ousted by U.S.-backed Afghan forces in late 2001, according to the United Nations.

The Taliban announced this month they would open a political office in the Qatari capital, Doha, to support possible talks with the United States. There has also been talk of efforts to hold separate negotiations in Saudi Arabia.

(Additional reporting by Dan Magnowski, Rob Taylor and Amie Ferris-Rotman in KABUL, David Brunnstrom in BRUSSELS and Qasim Nauman in ISLAMABAD; Writing by Michael Georgy and Rob Taylor; Editing by Robert Birsel)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/world/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20120201/wl_nm/us_afghanistan

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Enhancing Your Garden With Some More Outdoor Decor - RPGSP

Does your garden appear the way that you wish it to be? Perhaps you want to add something more stylish, lasting and based on nature. There are various methods to make your outdoor space more inviting and more livable without adding a lot more maintenance work. This short article will give you several suggestions for giving your garden some more decor.

It is most likely best to add things that aren?t modified. Take advantage of items that are the most natural, when choosing outdoor products, such as furniture or statuary. Using this approach, your products should match with your current garden layout. You need to have your garden come to feel that it really is flowing. This movement is really important to have especially if your garden or landscape is particularly large. One example would be preparing a winding pathway that goes through your garden. With a walkway, people that walk through your garden will see points of beauty more clearly.

Even though it is not always a good idea to have your garden sparse, it is usually not a good idea to pack it with too many things. It might get overbearing if you have too many plants and a plethora of decor. Make certain that your garden or landscape is respectful to authentic natural beauty. Rather than looking luxurious, an excess of decor gives a cluttered look, and overcrowding plants can cause them to take over the garden or eventually die. Using lines will help keep your garden looking more organized. is often developed by using lines from your home or edging. If you keep to the lines from your roof top, it can be used to have something excellent at the end. With this particular approach, it will create a nice flow to your garden.

You needn?t have parts of your garden to be exactly the same but you want to have a relevant theme for each. You might put a table in a restful spot under some trees, and it is white, so you should also use white chairs. Any time you add a fence or other decor, they must be also white. Another important thing you should continually be doing is upkeep. Make sure that all things are clean and clear away anything that has been damaged. In order to reduce damage to your decor, you may want to have them in storage during the stormy winter months. You should likewise consider matching your patio furniture with the decor that you prefer to add. Actually, we went back and forth about what would be best to discuss on the topic of http://www.hpotter.com/store/products/category/garden-decor/ outdoor decorations.

We are not sure if our other material will be out when this reaches you, so be sure to check our site for more information.

We recommend that you perform research at applicable authority sites that are known for being reputable and credible.

Everything you can find out will be of service to you in some way, and maybe that will be in the far off future; but that is all right. You really do need to discover more about these tips so you can make the best decisions and choices. Teakwood is great to use if you want for a more organic look.

These ways of adding decor are pretty basic, and inexpensive to do. Any efforts to make such improvements on your home will certainly make it look nice. Hopefully this article has given you some practical ideas.

Published on February 1, 2012 ? Filed under: Uncategorized;

Source: http://rpgsp.com/?p=5038

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What Recession? Razer?s $2800 Blade Gaming Laptop Sells Out In 30 Minutes

For months we've been waiting on Razer's Blade notebook, a $2800, 17-inch beast that we weren't sure whether to laud or mock. It's just that it's kind of a strange thing to see making a big debut when people are more cautious than usual with their money, and PC gaming (as ever) is being declared dead. But after our hands-on at CES, we were convinced that it was at the very least impressive and well-built, and apparently enough other people thought so that Razer sold out almost immediately.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/ATJJ8HBREuc/

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Will Facebook deliver an IPO surprise? (AP)

NEW YORK ? Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg turns up at business conventions in a hoodie. "Cocky" is the word used to describe him most often, after "billionaire." He was Time's person of the year at 26.

So when he takes Facebook public, why would he follow the Wall Street rules?

The company is expected to file as early as Wednesday to sell stock on the open market in what will be the most talked-about initial public offering since Google in 2004, maybe since the go-go 1990s.

Around the nation, regular investors and IPO watchers are anticipating some kind of twist ? perhaps a provision for the 800 million users of Facebook, a company that promotes itself as all about personal connections, to get in on the action.

"Pandemonium is what I expect in terms of demand for this stock," says Scott Sweet, senior managing partner at IPO Boutique, an advisory firm. "I don't think Wall Street would want to anger Facebook users."

The most successful young technology companies have a history of doing things differently. Google's IPO prospectus contained a letter from its founders to investors that said the company believed in the motto "Don't be evil."

Facebook declined to comment, but Reena Aggarwal, a finance professor who has studied IPOs at Georgetown University's McDonough School of Business, believes Zuckerberg will emulate Google's philosophy, at least in principle.

Founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin wanted an IPO accessible to all investors, and said so in their first regulatory filing. Facebook may say something similar when it files to declare its intention to sell stock publicly.

Facebook is expected to raise as much as $10 billion, which will value the company at $75 billion to $100 billion, making it one of the largest IPOs. A stock usually starts trading three to four months after the filing.

The highly anticipated filing will reveal how much Facebook intends to raise from the stock market, what it plans to do with the money and details on its own financial performance and future growth prospects.

Along with Wall Street investment banks, Google used a Dutch auction, named for a means of selling flowers in Holland, to sell its shares. It took private bids and allowed investors to say how many shares they wanted and what they were willing to pay.

The process wasn't smooth, though, and Google had to slash its expected offer price at the last minute. If you bought at the IPO, for roughly $85 a share, you still did well: Google closed Tuesday at $580.

More recently, when it filed for an IPO last June, Groupon, which emails daily deals on products and services to its members, added a letter from its 30-year-old founder, Andrew Mason.

"We are unusual and we like it that way," the letter said. "We want the time people spend with Groupon to be memorable. Life is too short to be a boring company."

It's almost become conventional for tech companies to include an unconventional letter when they make their stock market debut. It's widely expected that Zuckerberg, in the very least measure of showmanship, will write one.

But IPO watchers wonder whether there might be a provision specifically designed to give the little-guy investor, even the casual Facebook user who doesn't invest, a piece of the debut.

"There is a feeling that there will be something unique in store for Facebook users," Aggarwal says.

When most companies go public, they let Wall Street investment banks handle everything, with the sweet ground-floor stock price reserved for big institutional investors.

But that probably won't do for Facebook, created in a Harvard University dorm room eight years ago. Or Zuckerberg, whose antiestablishment credentials include spurning a $15 billion takeover offer from Microsoft.

Few expect Zuckerberg to offer a Dutch auction because of the Google experience. But he is at least as unorthodox as Google's founders. People expect him to be in the driver's seat on Wall Street, rather than hand over the controls to bankers.

Facebook is a vital part of people's Internet lives and the most successful company in the history of social media. Its closest competitor, Google+, has less than a tenth the active membership ? 60 million people.

"While there is no such thing as untouchable, Facebook is getting near there, with even Google imitating it," says Sweet, of IPO Boutique.

In "really hot IPOs," 90 percent of the shares go to institutional investors and 10 percent to everyday investors, Sweet says. It's a perk for the banks' biggest clients, like Fidelity Investments or T. Rowe Price or hedge funds.

The funds pay big commissions to the banks for regularly trading large blocks of stocks or bonds. Those relationships are deep and long-lasting ? and lucrative for the banks. The funds expect to be rewarded.

But Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs, the banks expected to guide the Facebook IPO, are in an awkward place: They don't want to tick off 800 million Facebook users ? but they don't want to tick off Fidelity, either.

Most IPOs are underpriced, and the stock usually shoots up the first day. Lucky large investors get the basement price and usually a big payday if they sell on the first day. Smaller investors buy on the open market, after the price has spiked, and pay more.

And most early investors do sell. One university research paper found that about 70 percent of the new stock changes hands in the first two days. Groupon introduced 35 million shares, but on the first day its shares were traded almost 50 million times.

Ann Sherman, associate professor and IPO expert at DePaul University, raised the possibility that Facebook could set aside a portion of its shares for the small investor and use a lottery system if there is a lot of demand.

She says the U.S. is the only country without IPO rules that put traditional investors on an equal footing.

"Given that this is such a huge and popular IPO, I've been hoping that Facebook would use this opportunity to try a new method to bring in retail investors ? a public offer where shares are set aside for only individual investors," Sherman says.

But Zuckerberg will also probably be careful how he plays his cards. He doesn't want to anger Facebook users, but his primary goal is to raise money.

The recent experience of Groupon's faltering IPO holds tough lessons for young entrepreneurs. After analysts started questioning its accounting, Groupon had to amend its regulatory filing several times.

Trying to salvage the IPO, founder Mason shed his trademark jeans and T-shirt and donned a suit. He dropped the irreverent talk and spoke about the company's growth prospects at the IPO "roadshow" to impress investors.

Other companies have encountered problems when they went public and tried to reward customers. Upstart Internet phone company Vonage wanted to give customers a chance to buy up to 15 percent of its 31 million shares at its IPO at $17 apiece.

But when the shares fell 13 percent on the first day of trading, many of its small investors that had put in orders to buy didn't want to pay the offer price. It gained the dubious title of one of the worst IPOs that year, something Facebook wants to avoid.

It's also more expensive to sell shares to many people. When thousands of small investors want to buy in, it becomes a logistical nightmare to make sure each investor gets a prospectus with all the important information.

Banks like large investors because it costs about the same to process an order of 50 shares as 50,000. But William Hambrecht, founder and CEO of WR Hambrecht & Co., a firm that runs IPO auctions, says companies that value their customers benefit in the long run.

He gives the example of Boston Beer, maker of Samuel Adams, which went public in 1995. Its founder, James Koch, wanted to reward the people who made his company successful: the buyers of Sam Adams.

Koch set aside a quarter of his shares for the small investor. The deal was a big success and attracted more interest from his beer drinkers than there were shares available. Some people left out were dissatisfied.

Hambrecht says about two-thirds of the investors who bought those shares still owned the stock two years after the IPO. Even today, about a third still own it. Hambrecht says that's because these investors appreciate the company's product.

"Our argument has always been that true buyers of your stock ought to be your own customer base," says Hambrecht. "As the great investor Peter Lynch said: Invest in what you know."

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/tech/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20120201/ap_on_bi_ge/us_facebook_ipo_twist

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