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Sunday, June 24, 2012

SphinxWeb: 10 Examples of Facebook Ads That Actually Work (And Why): Facebook ads. Facebook ads are what bring us here tod... http://t.co/WlbPNecn

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Energy efficiency earns tax revenue, federal study says

OTTAWA - A new report says provinces that promote energy efficiency may forfeit some tax revenue from lower sales of fuel and electricity, but will make up for the loss - and more - through competitive economies that help fill their treasuries.

Natural Resources ordered the May 2012 study partly to allay concerns in four eastern Canadian provinces that energy efficiency may be good for the environment and consumers but hard on their bottom lines.

"The economic benefits exceed the cost of implementing efficiency measures, and ... efficiency investments quickly pay for themselves through increased economic activity and job creation," says the report.

"The analysis shows that the benefits are greater than commonly recognized even by program administrators and proponents, since expanding the assessment beyond traditional benefit/cost tests introduces the impressive impact to the wider economy."

The findings mean provinces now have "significant incentive to move beyond current investment levels" in energy-efficiency programs, the authors argue.

The $34,000 report was commissioned from Ottawa-based Environment Northeast, a non-profit research and advocacy group that promotes sustainable economies.

The study closely examined the impact energy-efficiency programs would have in Quebec, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island, all of whom financially supported the analysis.

The report focuses on efficiency savings for electricity, natural gas and liquid fossil fuels, such as gasoline. The three Maritime provinces are relatively energy poor, although Quebec has substantial hydroelectric resources.

The authors examined various levels of efficiency investments in each province, and considered the economic effect if all provinces acted in concert.

"In all cases, the all-fuels and simultaneous, multi-province action resulted in greater economic benefits to a province or the region, due to increased regional competitiveness, intra-provincial trade and other synergistic effects."

From now until 2040, for example, the Eastern Canada region would see a 14 per cent increase in GDP, and a 12 per cent increase in employment, if all four provinces acted together in implementing so-called mid-range levels of energy efficiencies, the report says.

The net gain in government revenues over the same period, accounting for sales-tax losses for fuel and electricity, would be $243 million in Quebec, $27 million in Nova Scotia, $9 million in New Brunswick and $2 million in P.E.I. The federal government would reap another $312 million.

A senior adviser at the Pembina Institute, a Calgary-based non-profit think-tank focused on sustainable energy, says the study's tax-revenue findings in Eastern Canada have been replicated for other jurisdictions, such as British Columbia.

"The Maritimes and Eastern Canada are not unique," Jesse Row said in an interview. "We've seen this in a lot of different jurisdictions."

Row said cash-strapped provincial governments can sometimes be reluctant to put money into energy efficiency without realizing such programs can result in net gains in tax revenue, that can then fund other areas such as health care.

A recent energy-efficiency program was ecoEnergy Retrofit-Homes, a federal initiative the Harper government abruptly closed without notice on Jan. 28 this year to avoid exceeding its $400-million budget.

Natural Resources says the 250,000 homeowners who accessed the program in its final year generated some $4 billion of economic activity. The program subsidized home-insulation renovations.

? Copyright (c)

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Saturday, June 23, 2012

BOOKS PLUS: Bugs, summer reading and golf in Tri-City libraries

Books Plus runs in The Tri-City News each Friday to highlight programs and happenings in the Tri-Cities? three libraries: Coquitlam Public Library, Port Moody Public Library and Terry Fox Library in Port Coquitlam.

COQUITLAM

? What?s Eating You? Biological Control of Insect Pests in the Home Garden: When people grow plants for food, some of those plants end up being eaten by pests ? insects that compete with us for our food crops. The good news is that there are predators that feed on these pests. Biological control provides a sustainable, ecologically-based alternative to the use of chemical pesticides for pest management. Rob McGregor from the Institute of Urban Ecology at Douglas College will discuss methods in biological control along with a community-based program where local gardeners collect information on biological control in the home garden. The session runs from 7 to 8:30 p.m. next Thursday, June 28, in the Nancy Bennett Room at the Poirier branch.

Phone 604-937-4155 to register for this free program.

For more information about any of these programs, visit www.library.coquitlam.bc.ca. The City Centre branch is located at 3000 Burlington Dr. and the Poirier branch at 575 Poirier St.

TERRY FOX

? Summer Reading Club 2012 for children: Kids can investigate great reading this summer with some books that are Strange? But True. Sign up and receive a free reading record and bookmark. Kids who complete their reading record will be eligible to receive a special Summer Reading Club medal. The club kicks off Saturday, July 7 at 10:30 a.m. with a performance by Norden the Magician, six-time winner of the children?s magician of the year award. Families will love his wacky antics, amazing tricks and silly jokes ? and his rabbit Q-Tip will join in the fun. Free tickets are available for club members beginning June 23.

For more information, visit www.fvrl.bc.ca or the Fraser Valley Regional Library Facebook page. Terry Fox Library is located 2470 Mary Hill Rd. in PoCo. Phone 604-927-7999.

PORT MOODY

? Night Readers Book Club: New members are welcome to share their insights on selected books with other people and learn about their reactions to the same books. The Night Readers will meet Wednesday, July 25 from 7 to 8:30 p.m. in PMPL?s ParkLane Room to discuss Under this Unbroken Sky by Shandi Mitchell. The story is about Teodor Mykolayenko and his family as the try to survive on the Canadian Prairies during the 1930s.

? Golf for a Cause: Enjoy a day on the greens while making your community a better place. PMPL?s Links to Literacy Golf Tournament funds many library services that support literacy for all ages. Join community members and local businesses for 18 holes of golf, great prizes and contests, and a banquet dinner at Meadow Gardens course in Pitt Meadows. For more information, call the library at 604-469-4686 or email dsolem@portmoody.ca.

For more information, visit library.portmoody.ca or call 604-469-4577. Port Moody Public Library is located at 100 Newport Dr., in the city hall complex.

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Help Desk Support and Outsourcing | Pixel Perfect Media

Outsourcing your help desk support is presently one of the most effective methods of staff development, without escalating your head count. Delegating to guarantee good results is done every day through video conferencing and corporate video (learn more). A respected outsourcing IT company can help you achieve cost savings, increase and improve the manager?s time for marketing and improve staff efficiency, and that?s just the beginning.
?
Simply put, businesses have too much to deal with daily. Business owners often fall into the routine of over working and focus lees on other overlooked aspects of their business. Generally, by outsourcing IT work it provides a business to connect with a larger client base while saving money in the process.
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Research has demonstrated that in-house help desk support usually creates long delays for customers; frequent multiple contacts before the issue is resolved, high turnover rates and a poor comprehension of performance. On the other hand, outsourced IT can reflect in calls and emails answered quickly, measured customer satisfaction, very little rework required, and all processes gaining in efficiency.

Three ways to improve your business:

Improve Your Call Control

Outsourcing can often reflect on how calls received to your business are attended to often reducing the call length without sacrificing service. Agents work diligently to provide good service but it can be difficult to guide the call to a successful completion. Outsource tech providers are well versed in managing the call process and service level objectives. Resulting in speedier call control with a reduced cost. The benefits of outsourcing is often seen in the balance between benefits and costs.
?
Create a Large Call Center

By expanding a business? IT staff and increase in customer satisfaction is often a bi-product. The quickest way to increase your help desk support is by outsourcing the work. Businesses can expect, on average, an initial increase of 20 percent in production in an 8 hour shift.

Map and Improve Call Processes

A well trained outsource team are able to identify the primary reasons why customers call, map it, and determine how best to manage the call. An outsourced IT staff can aid in decreased cost for you business, shorter call lengths and better call objectives.

The Benefits of Cost Analysis

Many companies neglect proper analysis when pertaining to their call center. It is invaluable to determine total costs, not just the direct labor per hour, but all incidental costs, to access the benefits of outsourced solutions.
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Managing time effectively is always a challenge. We work daily, squeezing a million things to do into 24 hours, leaving very little time to get much done. Our hurried lifestyle and mantra to ?do more?, ?become more,? and a host of other distractions keep us on our toes.
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Outsourcing help desk support services can be the most important performance drivers that affect cost control, customer satisfaction, revenue generation and overall productivity for the business.

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China telecom firms may be subsidized: U.S. lawmaker

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You wanted to know: what is this virus that infects the phytoplankton? (Part One)

So far I?ve told you about the phytoplankton we?re studying ? the coccolithophores, how we figure out where they?re going to be, and how we collect them. But there?s a key element that?s missing in this description: the virus that infects them. And a lot of you wanted to know about it.

What kind of viruses are in the ocean? Are they the same as viruses on land? Todd from New York

Viruses are the most abundant biological thing in the ocean, but we know very little about them. For a long time, people thought phytoplankton were very long-lived. They died when they were eaten, or floated down too deep, but otherwise scientists couldn?t figure out what would make the little plants die. Turns out viruses kill lots of phytoplankton.

There are probably hundreds of thousands of marine viruses that we?ve never even seen before. Generally, marine viruses are different from the ones we find on land, simply because they infect different kinds of organisms ? marine ones. The science team onboard the Knorr does know something about the particular virus we?re looking for, though.

What virus are they investigating that is infecting Emiliania huxleyi? Are they going to isolate this and attempt a genome? Gaytana Balestrier from Willingboro

The virus in question is called a coccolithovirus (fitting, since it infects coccolithophores). It?s really big (as far as viruses go) ? about 160-180 nanometers in diameter. That?s about twice the size of the human flu virus. In fact, the coccolithovirus that these scientists are looking for has the largest genome of any marine virus. It has 472 genes that code for proteins. By comparison, the influenza virus only has 8 protein-coding genes.

Two different genomes from viruses that infect Ehux were sequenced in 2005. In total, nine different coccolithovirus genomes have been sequenced so far, each one infecting a different species of coccolithophore. The one that infects Ehux is called Emiliania huxleyi virus 86, or EhV-86 for short.

Two Ehux cells: on the left a healthy one, on the right a cell full of viruses.

How was the relationship between this phytoplankton and its virus first found? Brenda Wright from Salt Lake City

In 1999, a marine biologist named Willie Wilson observed the Ehux virus for the first time. In the years following, he and other biologists ? including some of the ones on this ship ? found this intriguing interaction between the coccolithophores and the virus. (To hear Willie explain the epic battle between phytoplankton and viruses on Radiolab, click here.)

Before we get to what?s cool about this virus in particular, we have to talk about what usually happens during viral infection. Viruses are pretty much bundles of DNA or RNA packaged inside some kind of protein shell. They can come in all shapes, sizes, and configurations.

Unlike the cells that make up plants and animals, viruses don?t replicate through cell division. They don?t have all the parts they need. Remember, they?re just a ball of genetic material. So instead, they hijack their host?s cells. A virus will attach onto a healthy cell, and inject a little packet of genetic material into the host. It then uses the cells machinery to replicate itself over and over again. Eventually, most viruses cause the cell to lyse, or burst.

To be continued. Come back tomorrow to find out how this particular virus infects Ehux.

During this trip, I?ll be answering your questions about the science, this boat, and life onboard. Want to know how we search for plankton, why we?re here, or what the food is like? Just ask me! And if you?re wondering how I got here, check out the groups that made this adventure possible: Mind Open Media and COSEE NOW.

Previously in this series:

All Aboard: how you can be a part of our research blog
You wanted to know: what are these phytoplankton?
You wanted to know: what am I bringing to sea?
Greetings from Ponta Delgada! We set sail tomorrow.
Steaming North: how the scientists are trying to find plankton
The superstar sensor: what is a CTD?
Status Update: Day 3 at the Cyclonic Eddy

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