Be Afraid: 33 Scary Online Marketing Tales of SEO, Social Media ...

Posted on 31. Oct, 2012 by Ashley Zeckman in Blog, content marketing, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing, Social Media

Happy Halloween to all the online marketing ghosts, ghouls, and goblins out there.

Have you ever heard or received a really bad piece of online marketing advice? ?Maybe the recommendation was founded on total?hearsay, completely out of date or you discovered that the suggestions actually hurt, rather than helped? Scary! At one time or another we?ve all received the trick and not the treat in our internet marketing candy basket.

In this post you?ll find 20 scary SEO, social media and content marketing tales from the team at TopRank Online Marketing and from our friends on Twitter @TopRank, fans on Lee?s Facebook page and the TopRank Facebook page.

BOO! Scary Stories From the Crypt

1 ? Classic scary: ?Build great content and it will attract visitors all on?it?s own. SEO isn?t necessary for good content to stand out.?

As Lee likes to say, ?Great content isn?t great until it gets discovered, consumed and shared.? Competition for attention online is tough and unless efforts are made to promote great content or build social promotion into the content creation itself, there?s a chance it won?t be able to attract the audience it deserves. Great content + smart and relevant promotion = WIN!

2 ? Marketing Bandwagon: As people in the SEO community jump on the content marketing bandwagon, many seek advice on how to incorporate content in their search engine centric online marketing mix. ?One of the scarier pieces of SEO / Content Marketing advice is: ?Content Marketing?s Goal Is Not To Convert Customers Directly, To Acquire Leads Directly, or To Make Sales Directly.?

Sure, you don?t execute a financial transaction for a product within the text of an article, but the ?buy this? button is only one click a way. The ?contact us? for a lead form is just one click away. Content Marketing is designed specifically create the information customers need to become aware, interested and to consider products and services. Further, content marketing is also designed to specifically influence customer leads, sales and conversion actions. That?s called optimizing across the sales cycle and it?s been around for a very long time.

3 ? Keyword Density:??To increase the ranking of web pages in Google,?optimize the keyword density of meta description tags.? from a SEO professional.

While meta descriptions are often used in the search snippet displayed in search results, they content of meta descriptions are not a ranking factor according to Google. ?Meta descriptions could influence clicks on search results which could lead to other signals affecting ranking, but as a driver of ranking on it?s own? The not so scary advice from Google: ??Even though we sometimes use the description meta tag for the snippets we show,?we still don?t use the description meta tag in our ranking.? Matt Cutts,?Distinguished Engineer at Google.

SEO Horror Stories From The TopRank Team

4 ? Lee Odden?- The competition is doing (tactic XYZ) so we need to do that too.

5 ? Brian Larson -?Brand is not important ? I?ve heard from several SEO ?experts? that there?s no need use your brand name in your onpage copy and meta fields, since people will always be able to find your site if they know your name.

6 ? Rob Bayne ? The SEO process is complete! It?s finished! There?s no more work necessary.

7 ? Shawna Kenyon?-?Stuff your content full of keywords. This is not only a bad user experience but Google doesn?t really fancy it either.

8 ? Sara Duane-Gladden?-?Why would you need to write keyword optimized webpage content when you can hide keywords in HTML? Just make text the same color as the background or set it to such a tiny size no one can see it. Search engines will love it and people won?t notice it at all.

9 ? Thom Craver -?Reciprocal?linking is where it?s at. I link to you, you link back to me and we?ll both succeed! More links is always better, right?

Terrifying Online Marketing Stories From Fans of @TopRank & our Facebook Fans:

10 ? Lisa Barone ? Good content doesn?t need to be promoted.

11 ? Brian Crouch ? Be needlessly controversial! Say things you don?t mean just to get a rise out of people. ?Curse-filled comments on a post gets links!

12 ? Tammy Emineth ? Hey! ?You can get 3,000 backlinks for just $9.99.

13 ? Josh Peters ? There is not such thing as black hat. ?Google can?t tell the difference.

14 ? Krista Neher ? You don?t have to track ROI trust me, engagement just ?works?.

15 ? Jordan Kasteler ? Play hide and seek with keywords for search engines.

16 ? Steve Farnsworth ? You should tie your content marketing into hot memes to drive tons of (unqualified) traffic to your website.

17 ? Amanda Maksymiw ? We should just do whatever we did last year.

18 -?Phil Gomes -?Social media is just another channel.

19 ? Carolyn Shelby - We dont? need a website. ?We have a Facebook Page.

20 ? Dave Roher - So we had the designer put all of the content in the image. ?Doesn?t that page look great?

21 ? Wendy Bauer Piersall ? Don?t worry about (Not Provided) because it will only be 5% or so of your search engine traffic.

22 -?Patricia Skinner ? Ah, that would be the advice to use link building software. Hands down the scariest SEO advice ever.

23 -?Lydia Fabry Mazorol ? ?We think it would be well advised for us to get the link building [spammers] we?ve been paying to add us to directories and random sites for years and now pay them to clean up that mess!? #pay?!!!

24 -?Andrea Sodergren Vahl ? ?Just add a whole bunch of keywords in white lettering?

25 -?Robyn Green Tippins ? Just keep tweeting the sale link. People like that.

26 -?Becky Ryan ? ?Oh we tried to do that Social Media, and we were doing great until Matt Cutts said Google hates. My boss stopped all of us and after that my phone crashed, so I have been on twitter for months?

27 -?Carri Bugbee ? You can get 10k Twitter followers for just $5! [BTW, you actually can. They just happen to be fake.]

28 -?Brian Crouch ? ?Be needlessly controversial! Say things you don?t mean just to get a rise out of people! Curse-filled comments on a post gets links! ?

29 -?Tammy Emineth ? ?Hey! I can get 3000 backlinks for just $9.99!?

30 -?Ross Dunn ? Most recently it was an affiliate ?Guru? posting to all of his followers delight that it is a good idea to buy comment link building services through Fiverr. I nearly lost my lunch.

31 -?Josh Peters ? ?There is no such thing as black hat. Google can?t tell the difference.?

32 -?Patrick Garmoe ? Our yellow pages company said they could handle all our online marketing for far less than you charge.

33 -?Jayme Westervelt ? ?It?s too risky to optimize your site by adding Title Tags and descriptions. Google will penalize you, so instead we concentrate on inbound links via a network of sites my friend owns.?

A lot of people that are learning about SEO, Social Media and Content Marketing may find it difficult to tell the difference between scary and smart when it comes to online marketing advice. Our advice is to connect with a trusted and experienced resource or better a network of resources that you can bounce ideas off of. Test things for yourself and be involved with the industry and you?ll soon be able to see how many zombie marketers there really are.

Those are some pretty dark online marketing tales. ?What are yours?

Image credits via Shutterstock:?Scary Story,?Pumpkin,?Trick or Treat.

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Tags: Bad Online Marketing Advice, online marketing, search engine optimization, SEO, Small Business Internet Marketing

Source: http://www.frontlinemarketingsystems.com/blog/small-business-marketing/be-afraid-33-scary-online-marketing-tales-of-seo-social-media-content-marketing/

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Finally, Google Doodles Bob Ross, America's Favorite Doodler

It's about time Google Doodles doodled the doodle king. Bob Ross, whose palette and afro invaded our living rooms for decades of insta-nature art adventures, graces the search giant's home page today. More »

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/qFqgyHp3jJQ/finally-google-doodles-bob-ross-americas-favorite-doodler

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Fait Accompli ? A Practical Wedding: Ideas for Unique, DIY, and ...

It's never an easy thing when relationships break. But it can be that much harder to make sense of the experience when your marriage was never acknowledged by your government, your faith, or your community. So today Autumn is here, giving words to her experience, and hopefully, in doing so, reclaiming a little bit of power too.

Language is a funny thing. We all want to name both our joy and our pain. Words can bring us together or tear us apart. Ever since my elopement,?I struggled with the word marriage, and what that meant to the union that my home church refused to bless and my government refused to acknowledge. Needless to say, when my partner walked out on our bold little family, I was even more confused about which words I could use, should use, or even wanted to use (although a few expletives definitely made the last list). I wasn't feeling the c?est la vie philosophy that had so epitomized the last years of my life and my relationship. All I could hear were my Cajun grandmother?s favorite words... Fait accompli. Still French but a little different twist on life. The phrase fait accompli literally translates to an accomplished fact, but in my world, the meaning was more fatalistic. Growing up, things were fait accompli before they even started. My baby sister?s first attempt at gumbo... fait accompli, learning to ice skate in California... fait accompli, my same-sex outlawed union... fait accompli according to my loving well-meaning grandmother. My mama on the other hand called it a divorce. She also now refers to my former partner as ?She-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named?.

Even now, I still don?t know what to call what I lost or what I have now. Can you get divorced if you were never allowed to be legally married? Can I mourn being a wife if I never was one? Was I dumped like a teenager? Did I have a break up? I searched for words to define my situation; I searched for ways to find others who felt like me, but I couldn't find any. Every word I tried on was like a bad wedding dress?everyone had an opinion. I began to realize that the narrow conservative definition of marriage steals power from all of us who don?t, can?t, or simply won?t fit its narrow definition. It robs us of more than rights and protections; it robs us of the power to claim both our joy and our pain without judgment from anyone. By its very nature, the end of a relationship can be a lonely thing, but quite literally?and because some people don?t believe in my love?I don?t even have the words to talk about the end of mine. If I must fight to claim ?wife? and ?marriage? when things are going well, how can I possibly find the strength to claim ?ex-wife? and ?divorce?? How can I fight the attitude that since I didn't get married in a church, didn't sign a legal document, didn't file joint taxes, my relationship, and therefore its end, is somehow less significant?

The commitment my former partner and I made was not legally recognized by our country nor allowed religious recognition by my church, (a very liberal denomination at that). The former means there are no papers to sign, no lawyers to consult. It also means there are fewer required steps in order to leave the partnership, and no time to reconsider. The latter means I have one fewer place to mourn the end of my relationship, one fewer well from which to draw strength during this difficult time. When we as a society, or as individuals, deny people access to whichever parts of marriage they feel are important (legal, religious, financial, emotional, etc.), we deny people the power to make marriage their own while still feeling like a part of a larger institution. Marriage is tough enough without the added burden of isolation.

I have been blessed during this process with a beautiful community that reminds me that each day holds possibility, and that my value is not diminished by the larger world?s dismissal of my relationship. Regardless of how this journey between c?est la vie and fait accompli pans out for me, what I really want to say is that equal rights should be fait accompli in the most literal way?equal rights should be an accomplished fact for everyone. The happy, the sad, and those of us trudging on the hard path between, we deserve the power to claim any word that helps us. So bit-by-bit, instead of reclaiming ?wife,? I take this opportunity to reclaim ?ex-wife? and all the power and healing that allows me to receive.

Photo from Autumn's personal collection

Source: http://apracticalwedding.com/2012/10/gay-divorce/

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Louisville picked No. 1 in Big East

NEW YORK (AP) ? Louisville, which has three starters back from last season's Final Four, is the unanimous choice for first place in the Big East coaches' poll.

The Cardinals, who won the Big East tournament last season, received 14 first-place votes and Notre Dame got the other, obviously from Louisville coach Rick Pitino.

Syracuse, coming off a school-record 34-3 mark, was second and Notre Dame, which returns all five starters, was third.

Cincinnati was fourth followed by Georgetown, Pittsburgh, Marquette, USF, Connecticut, St. John's, Rutgers, Villanova, DePaul, Seton Hall and Providence.

Peyton Siva was selected preseason player of the year, the first time a Louisville player received that honor.

Joining Siva on the first team were Jack Cooley of Notre Dame, Vincent Council of Providence, Sean Kilpatrick of Cincinnati, Gorgui Dieng of Louisville and Otto Porter of Georgetown.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/347875155d53465d95cec892aeb06419/Article_2012-10-17-Big%20East%20Media%20Day/id-0647b00af82041eb8319ff2f7b37ae46

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There has been an error of some kind. Ack!

Sorry, Readability was unable to parse this page for content.

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AT&T and IBM create global cloud service for businesses | Networks ...

AT&T and IBM have announced a business agreement to deliver a highly secure, first-of-its-kind ?network-enabled? cloud service that uses private networks rather than the public Internet.

The companies are combining AT&T virtual private networking and IBM SmartCloud Enterprise+ cloud capabilities with technology from AT&T Labs to create a new, fast and highly-secure shared cloud service.

Targeted to Fortune 1000 companies globally, the service will be offered in early 2013 as a powerful new option for clients who are deploying cloud solutions that demand high levels of security and availability. Many businesses often cite security as a key inhibitor to cloud computing adoption.

When customers of the new service connect to IBM cloud computing resources across AT&T?s virtual private network, the innovative technology tightly integrates the security protections of both, allowing customers to quickly and reliably shift information or applications between their own data centers (private clouds) and this new cloud service. This is critical for businesses that want the flexibility of the cloud but also need to protect applications and data as they move between data centers and wired or wireless computing devices such as tablets, smartphones, personal computers, retail kiosks or other machine-to-machine devices.

For example, a financial services company using the new service could move and manage critical customer data between its and IBM's cloud data centers without the data ever leaving the security protections of the virtual private network.

AT&T?s technology dynamically allocates networking resources to computing resources, automating functions that are often performed manually. This allows the network and compute resources to rapidly scale or contract in tandem to support the fluctuating demand on systems that an online retailer might experience before, during and after the holiday buying season; or that a large employer might experience before, during, and after their annual employee health benefits enrollment period.

?AT&T and IBM are delivering a new, network-enabled cloud service that marries the security and speed of AT&T?s global network with the control and management capabilities of IBM?s enterprise cloud,? said Andy Geisse, CEO of AT&T Business Solutions. ?This new service gives companies yet another way to innovate, create new value, and transform their businesses and industries.??

A key element of the cloud service is IBM SmartCloud Enterprise+, an IBM Infrastructure-as-a-Service optimized for mission-critical, enterprise workloads. As a managed and hosted cloud environment, it offers many advantages of a private cloud ? such as choice of dedicated physical servers and storage ? but also adds the scalable flexibility of a public cloud.

Customers using the new service will have access to IBM SmartCloud Enterprise+? s broad spectrum of secure managed services and be able to run processes in both public and private cloud models.

?As more organizations realize that cloud can be secure, easily managed, and a key part of their business strategy, cloud will quickly evolve as a tool for innovation rather than just for infrastructure,? said Erich Clementi, senior vice president, IBM Global Technology Services. ?We believe this new service from two recognized leaders in cloud computing provides a compelling way for large organizations to exploit cloud?s transformational power.?

The new cloud service also includes a variety of customization options to meet specific customer needs; and committed service-level agreements (SLAs) aligned to business and usage requirements to increase accountability for response time and availability.

Other features include more than 70 automated built-in security functions; and high levels of security extended to wired and wireless devices authenticated to the customer?s virtual private network.

Source: http://www.networksasia.net/content/att-and-ibm-create-global-cloud-service-businesses

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Teenage Brains Are Malleable And Vulnerable, Researchers Say

Brain scans are showing researchers why it's important to treat problems like depression in teens.

iStockphoto.com i

Brain scans are showing researchers why it's important to treat problems like depression in teens.

iStockphoto.com

Adolescent brains have gotten a bad rap, according to neuroscientists.

It's true that teenage brains can be impulsive, scientists reported at the Society for Neuroscience meeting in New Orleans. But adolescent brains are also vulnerable, dynamic and highly responsive to positive feedback, they say.

"The teen brain isn't broken," says Jay Giedd, a child psychiatry researcher at the National Institute of Mental Health. He says the rapid changes occurring in the brains of teenagers make these years "a time of enormous opportunity."

Part of the bad rap has come from studies suggesting that adolescent brains are "wired" to engage in risky behavior such as drug use or unsafe sex, says BJ Casey of Weill Cornell Medical College.

?

These studies have concluded that teens are prone to this sort of behavior because the so-called reward systems in their brains are very sensitive while circuits involved in self-control are still not fully developed, Casey says. The result has been a perception that "adolescents are driving around with no steering wheel and no brake," she says.

Casey says a new study from her lab makes it clear that this isn't the case.

The study had teens and adults play a game where they got points for correctly answering questions about the motions of dots on a screen. Meanwhile researchers measured activity in brain regions involved in decisions and rewards.

When a lot of points were at stake, teens actually spent more time studying the dots than adults and brain scans showed more activity in brain regions involved in making decisions.

"Instead of acting impulsively, the teens are making sure they get it right," Casey says. She says this shows how teens' sensitivity to rewards can sometimes lead to better decisions.

Two other studies presented at the Society for Neuroscience meeting showed that the adolescent brain is literally shaped by experiences early in life.

One of the studies involved 113 men who were monitored for depression from age 10 and then had brain scans at age 20. The scans showed that men who'd had an episode of depression had brains that were less responsive to rewards.

"They can't respond naturally when something good happens," says Erika Forbes at the University of Pittburgh. She says this shows why it's important to treat problems like depression in teens.

The other study looked at how the brain's outer layer of cortex, which plays a critical role in thinking and memory, was affected by childhood experiences in 64 people. It found that this layer was thicker in children who got a lot of cognitive stimulation and had nurturing parents, says Martha Farrah of the University of Pennsylvania.

Finally, a study by researchers in the U.S. and U.K. showed how much the brain changes during adolescence in regions involved in social interactions.

The study involved 288 people whose brains were scanned repeatedly starting at age 7. And the scans revealed dramatic structural changes during adolescence in four regions that help us understand the intentions, beliefs and desires of others, says Kathryn Mills of the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience in London.

The results show that the tremendous social changes teenagers go through are reflected in their brains, Mills says. They also show that these changes continue beyond the teen years she says.

Source: http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2012/10/16/162997951/teenage-brains-are-malleable-and-vulnerable-researchers-say?ft=1&f=1007

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Boxee TV delivers dual-tuners and cloud-based DVR for $99 November 1st

The Boxee Box -- that sucker had a ton of hype behind it, but things don't always work out. After two years of fighting Roku, Apple TV and, to a lesser extent, Google TV for market share, Boxee has drastically rethought its approach. The $99 Boxee TV marks a new chapter for the company with a focus on live TV and a streamlined consumer experience. Baked right inside the matte plastic case is a dual tuner capable of pulling in unencrypted basic cable channels and over-the-air HD broadcasts. There's a slick guide to help you navigate but, most importantly, the slimmed down software sports DVR functionality. The Boxee TV has no internal storage, however, instead all your recordings are stored online in a "No Limits" DVR. For $15 a month you'll be able to save as many shows as you want and watch it on your TV or on your computer, tablet or phone through an HTML5 webapp. The DVR service will be rolled out to New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Atlanta, Philadelphia and Washington DC to start, with other markets set to come online in 2013.

Gallery: Boxee TV hands-on

Gallery: Boxee TV press shots

The selection of apps is not quite as robust as it is on the legacy Boxee Box, but CEO Avner Ronen has settled on a quality over quantity approach. Netflix, VUDU, Pandora, YouTube and Vimeo will come preinstalled on the Boxee TV and other apps will follow. But we wouldn't expect to see Know Your Meme or PornHub on there anytime soon. Some of the other losses are a little harder to swallow for fans of the original hardware. The move from Intel to a Broadcom SOC means the streaming options for locally stored media are much less robust. There's DLNA support, but many other networking protocols have fallen by the wayside. The beloved QWERTY remote has also bitten the dust, replaced with a much simpler device that sports dedicated Netflix and Vudu buttons. Even the distinctive "sinking cube" design has been replaced with a basic rectangle that's barely distinguishable from other settop boxes. You can sign up for more info at the Boxee site where you'll also be able to preorder the Boxee TV ahead of its November 1st launch.

Filed under: Home Entertainment, HD

Boxee TV delivers dual-tuners and cloud-based DVR for $99 November 1st originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 16 Oct 2012 10:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Sickle cell disease: Physics explains how sickling cells make people sick

ScienceDaily (Oct. 16, 2012) ? Researchers at Drexel University have identified the physical forces in red blood cells and blood vessels underlying the painful symptoms of sickle cell disease. Their experiment, the first to answer a scientific question about sickle cell disease using microfluidics engineering methods, may help future researchers better determine who is at greatest risk of harm from the disease.

They report their findings in Cell Press's Biophysical Journal today.

Capillary Blockage Conundrum

Like many scientific questions, this discovery began with a mystery. Normal, healthy red blood cells are extremely flexible, squeezing and slipping through blood vessels with ease, even passing through the smallest capillaries that are narrower than the red blood cells themselves. But in sickle cell disease, red blood cells are prone to deforming and turning rigid while flowing through the body. A seemingly logical explanation for sickle cell disease was that its symptoms -- painful episodes and organ damage caused by oxygen deprivation -- resulted from the rigid sickle cells forming inside narrow capillaries and then getting stuck there.

In fact, sickle cells do not get stuck inside capillaries. The symptoms of sickle cell disease come from partial obstructions in slightly wider blood vessels farther downstream -- vessels wide enough that sickle cells should be wide enough to flow through. The mystery, then, was why? How do wide, rigid cells regularly pass through the narrowest channels without getting stuck?

To find out, the Drexel researchers developed an experimental setup to test flow through a model blood vessel.

"We created a channel, using microfluidic methods, that would be comparable in size to a human capillary," explained Dr. Frank Ferrone, a professor of physics in Drexel's College of Arts and Sciences and senior associate vice provost for Research, who was the study's senior author.

Ferrone and colleagues took advantage of the fact that, for as long as they are carrying oxygen, red blood cells in sickle disease patients remain as squishy as healthy red blood cells. "They are the functional equivalent of a beanbag," Ferrone said.

It is only after delivering their cargo to the body that hemoglobin molecules become prone to an internal reaction that turns the squishy "beanbag" cells rigid.

To test why the rigid cells do not get stuck in narrow capillaries, the researchers parked a red blood cell from a sickle patient at the center of their artificial narrow channel while the cell was still in its flexible state. Then, using a laser method, they induced the cell's hemoglobin to begin the polymerization reaction that leads to sickling. Then they gradually raised the pressure at one end of the channel. They repeated this experiment multiple times with multiple different red blood cells. The amount of pressure required to dislodge the cells reached its maximum near 100 pascal.

"On the scale of pressures between arteries and veins, that's not a whole lot," Ferrone said. The pressure required to dislodge a rigid cell from inside a capillary is within the range of typical pressures in these blood vessels.

Uncooked Spaghetti in the Beanbag

Based on this experiment, Ferrone said, "we understand these processes in fundamental physical terms -- we know how the stiffness of sickle cell arises, in other words -- and so we have a more complete picture."

That picture, Ferrone explained, describes what happens inside sickling cells as they turn from beanbag-like flexibility while carrying oxygen to rigid inflexibility. Once the hemoglobin releases its oxygen, in sickle disease there is an ensuing molecular chain reaction between hemoglobin molecules to form long polymer chains that are rigid -- a bit like uncooked spaghetti, according to Ferrone. As the spaghetti chains begin to grow inside the beanbag, the cell becomes less and less flexible.

However, if the cell is restrained inside a narrow channel when this reaction begins, its shape is physically restrained from growing outward. The rigid-spaghetti polymer chains inside the cell are blocked from growing beyond a certain length across its radial axis. They exert pressure outward on the cell membrane, thereby causing resistance. As observed in the experiment, that slight resistance requires a small amount of external pressure to dislodge cells from the capillary.

The researchers also found a relationship in their experiment that bolsters this explanation: the higher the concentration of hemoglobin in the cell, the greater the pressure required to dislodge the cell. This makes sense, Ferrone explained, because more hemoglobin would create more polymer chains pushing outward on the cell membrane.

Danger at Intermediate Speeds

Ferrone said these findings also indicate that the timing of polymerization inside sickle cells may be important to understanding patients' susceptibility to symptoms. The researchers described three potential scenarios for red blood cells turning rigid as they circulate in the bodies of sickle disease patients.

In the best-case scenario, the polymerization reaction is so slow that red blood cells remain flexible until they return to the lungs to pick up more oxygen.

The next-best scenario, which Ferrone said was somewhat surprising, is for hemoglobin to polymerize relatively quickly. If the cells begin to grow rigid while in a narrow capillary -- the real-life equivalent of their experimental setup -- then they will be forced into a skinny sausage shape. After passing through the capillary, rigid cells in that relatively thin shape can continue slipping through narrower spaces in wider vessels where partial obstructions have begun to form.

But intermediate-speed sickling is potentially most dangerous, according to the research team. If red blood cells flow past capillaries while still flexible, but later begin to grow rigid in a wider space, they are more likely to become both rigid when larger in size -- making them susceptible to getting trapped in a vessel where previous sickle cells have already caused partial obstructions.

Ferrone suggested that this intermediate-speed danger may be a pitfall that investigators should avoid when developing therapies aimed at slowing the cell-sickling process.

Other authors of the paper with Ferrone were Dr. Alexey Aprelev, an assistant teaching professor of physics in Drexel's College of Arts and Sciences, William Stephenson, a recent Drexel graduate who conducted work on this project for his undergraduate senior project in physics, Hongseok (Moses) Noh, an associate professor in the College of Engineering and Maureen Meier, a nurse at St. Christopher's Hospital for Children.

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Story Source:

The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Drexel University, via Newswise.

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. Alexey Aprelev, William Stephenson, Hongseok?(Moses) Noh, Maureen Meier, Frank?A. Ferrone. The Physical Foundation of Vasoocclusion in Sickle Cell Disease. Biophysical Journal, 2012; 103 (8): L38 DOI: 10.1016/j.bpj.2012.09.003

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/~3/51aaJne6ZLk/121016131508.htm

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Marijuana backers courting conservatives

DENVER (AP) ? It's not all hippies backing November's marijuana legalization votes in Colorado, Oregon and Washington.

Appealing to Western individualism and a mistrust of federal government, activists have lined up some prominent conservatives, from one-time presidential hopefuls Tom Tancredo and Ron Paul to Republican-turned-Libertarian presidential candidate and former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson.

"This is truly a nonpartisan issue," said Mark Slaugh, a volunteer for the Colorado initiative who is based in Colorado Springs, which has more Republicans than anywhere else in the state.

"States' rights! States' rights!" Slaugh cried as he handed out flyers about the state's pot measure outside a rally last month by Republican vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan. Quite a few passing Republicans took the flyer.

"It's fiscally prudent. It would be taxed, regulated, monitored. It makes a lot of sense to Republicans," he said.

Most Republicans still oppose legalization. Presidential candidate Mitt Romney vows to enforce federal law. When Ryan told a Colorado Springs TV station in September that medical marijuana was "up to Coloradans to decide," his campaign quickly backtracked and said he agreed with Romney.

When activists make their appeal, it goes like this: States should dictate drug law. Decades of federal prohibition have failed where personal responsibility and old-fashioned parenting will succeed. Politicians back East have no business dictating what the states do.

"What is the law against marijuana if it isn't the Nanny State telling you what you can do and what you can't do to your body and with your body?" asked Tancredo, a former Republican congressman from suburban Denver who briefly ran for president in 2008 and endorsed the measure on the steps of the state capitol. He compared federal law to New York City's ban on sugary sodas.

Tancredo launched a radio ad this week in which he compares marijuana prohibition to alcohol prohibition as a "failed government program" that, in this case, "steers Colorado money to criminals in Mexico."

"Proponents of big government have duped us into supporting a similar prohibition of marijuana ? even though it can be used safely and responsibly by adults," Tancredo said.

Pot supporters have lined up other surprising allies this year, even as many Democrats oppose the measures. Conservative stalwart Pat Robertson, for example, said marijuana should be legal.

In Washington state, Republican U.S. Senate hopeful Michael Baumgartner is running a longshot bid to unseat Democratic U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell, who opposes it.

"It's taking a different approach to a very expensive drug war, and potentially a better approach," he said.

In Oregon, at least one Republican state Senate candidate backs legalization. Cliff Hutchison reasoned that legalizing pot would "cut wasteful government spending on corrections and reduce drug gang violence."

Johnson, the Libertarian candidate, is fiscally conservative but supports such liberal causes as legalizing marijuana, immigration reform and abortion rights. He's said that if elected he would pardon all non-violent prisoners convicted of marijuana-related offenses in federal court.

Pro-pot conservatives have counterparts on the other side ? Democrats who say pot shouldn't be legal without a doctor's recommendation. Democratic governors in Colorado and Washington oppose legalization. Oregon's Democratic governor has not taken a stand.

President Barack Obama's administration has shut down medical marijuana dispensaries in California and Colorado.

Republican Colorado state Sen. Steve King is a frequent critic of Colorado's medical marijuana law. Conservatives abhor government, but they also fear legalization would increase children's drug use, he said. "It's pretty easy to come in and say, 'Let's decrease government.' And I'm all for that. This just isn't the place to start," King said.

"We have a next generation to protect," he said.

___

Associated Press writer Gene Johnson in Seattle contributed to this report.

___

Find Kristen Wyatt at http://www.twitter.com/APkristenwyatt

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/marijuana-backers-courting-conservatives-085619299.html

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Video: Colbert: Romney keeps comedians alive

Recycled heart devices offer new life to poor

Recycled ICDs -- the devices that jolt a failing heart back into rhythm -- can be collected safely from U.S. patients and funeral homes, transported, sterilized and re-implanted in people who otherwise would not be able to afford them, says a Pittsburgh heart specialist.

Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3036697/vp/49423004#49423004

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Age should not close the door to surgery, warns royal college

Decisions on whether older people are put forward for surgery must not be based on out-dated assumptions of age and fitness, a report warns.

The report by?the Royal College of Surgeons and Age UK says a person?s overall health - or ?biological age? - must be the main consideration. It shows that whilst a? patient?s health needs - including conditions that could be treated by surgery - increases with age, elective surgery rates decline steadily for people as they grow older. Thus the gap between the increasing health need and access to surgery means many older people are missing out on potentially life-saving treatment.

The study, Access all Ages: Assessing the impact of age on access to surgical treatment, examines the patterns of surgical treatment in relation to age across eight areas of surgery. It?looks at? the potential causes of these trends and makes recommendations as to how the NHS can ensure that all patients can access the best possible surgical treatment, irrespective of their age.

It highlights that communication with patients to discuss risks and benefits, and the effective working of multi-disciplinary teams to bring together several specialists, including geriatricians, is essential in a joint decision-making process.

The study also warns that the ?20bn NHS efficiency drive heightens the danger of older people being disproportionately impacted, as restrictions may be imposed because of the perceived reduction in the cost effectiveness of providing treatment when relative life expectancy is shorter. It highlights that? a new ban on age discrimination in the NHS came into effect at the beginning of this month, providing? a legal framework to go alongside moral and professional imperatives to ensure that older patients receive the most appropriate treatment for their individual needs whatever their date of birth.

The way the NHS has approached the care of older people has failed to keep up with the major advances in medical and social care which have resulted in people living longer healthier lives, it says.

Other key findings include:

- The incidence of breast cancer peaks in the 85+ age group, while the surgery rate peaks for patients in their mid-60s and then declines sharply from the age of 70.

- People over the age of 65 make up the majority of recipients of joint replacement surgery. However, the rate of elective knee replacement and hip replacement surgery for patients in their late 70s and over has dropped sharply and consistently over the three years examined.

- Ten thousand men a year die from prostate cancer and the incidence of the disease increases with age. Overall, half of men who develop the disease will die as a direct result of it. Again, surgical treatment rates for the disease do not match the number of new cases being diagnosed amongst the older population.

- Emergency surgical procedures are increasing for hernias in older people, while the planned surgery rates plummet once a patient passes the 75-79 bracket.

The study is an important step towards understanding the variations in surgical care that exist according to age, as well as the explanations for them.

Professor Norman Williams, president of the Royal College of Surgeons, said: ?This isn?t about surgeons slamming the theatre door on older people. In fact it is alarming to think that the treatment a patient receives may be influenced by their age. There are multiple factors that affect treatment decisions and often valid explanations as to why older people either opt out of surgery - or are recommended non-surgical treatment alternatives. The key is that it is a decision based on the patient rather than how old they are that matters.?

The report outlines that not everyone will benefit from surgery and there are legitimate reasons why older people may decide with their clinician not to go ahead with a procedure.

However, there can be barriers to seeing a surgeon. For example, some symptoms can be dismissed as an inevitable part of ageing rather than a potential sign of ill health. This can mean that a disease is at a more advanced stage by the time they are diagnosed; ruling out surgical treatment.

Michelle Mitchell of Age UK said ?When it comes to peoples? health, their date of birth actually tells you very little. A healthy living 80-year-old could literally run rings round someone many years younger who does not share the same good health. Yet in the past, too many medical decisions we believe have been made on age alone with informal cut-offs imposed so that people over a certain age were denied treatment.

?This report shows the large gap between the number of people living with a condition or health need and the surgery rates to treat older people. We would like surgeons and other health professionals to read this report carefully and examine what they can do to ensure that age discrimination is eradicated from the NHS, as legislation now demands.?

The report recommends that all those with an interest in improving health outcomes must work together to safely optimise surgery rates for older people. It urges clinicians to inform patients if surgery has been ruled out for a condition where it would normally be considered and provide reasons.

Tags: older people, Surgery

Source: http://www.hospitaldr.co.uk/blogs/our-news/age-should-not-close-the-door-to-surgery-warns-royal-college

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Pro gamers gone wild: Here we go again | Lazygamer .:: Console ...

Another week, another eSports scandal. The international spotlight has been heavy on professional gamers lately, from developers focusing their new games on eSports to cheating in world championships, all eyes are on professional gamers. StarCraft II pro gamer Ilyes ?Stephano? Satouri, a member of well-known pro gaming clan Evil Geniuses has been suspended for the rest of October for saying he had ?abused? a 14 year old during a livestreamed game.

Naturally every one went all sensationalistic and hailed headlines like: ?Pro Gamer Suspended For Saying He Had Sex With a 14-Year-Old? and ?Professional Video Gamer Suspended for Saying He Had Sex With a 14-Year-Old?. Now while we might say that we would like for gamers to take being ?professional? serious and actually act professional, we know for a fact that this is pretty much a foolish expectation. The fact that it happened is as surprising as Gavin, Garth and Geoff drinking beer. The most stupid part to me is not that he made the inappropriate comment but that he managed to do it in a livestream and now, as a result of that, even though his team mates probably laughed their butts off have no choice but to take disciplinary actions.

Most of us have probably seen similar comments while playing an online game, but come on? no need to shame gamers this publicly. Evil Geniuses have issued a statement about Stephano?s suspension as well as a formal apology from the player.

Evil Geniuses? Ilyes ?Stephano? Satouri has been suspended without pay for the remainder of October following his recent inappropriate comments. Please read the full press release for more information.

To EG Fans, eSports Enthusiasts, and Concerned Members of the Gaming Community,

Today, Evil Geniuses announces that French Zerg player Ilyes ?Stephano? Satouri has been suspended without pay for the remainder of October, following his recent inappropriate comments. He will be ineligible to participate in all online and offline competitions during the month of October, including the upcoming GD Invitational and DreamHack Bucharest tournaments for which he was previously signed up. We sincerely apologize to the respective organizers of these tournaments for any inconvenience the last-minute cancellations may cause.

That apology, however, obviously comes as secondary to a much more significant and direly-needed apology for Stephano?s inexcusable comments themselves. An apology in his own words can be found at the bottom of this post, but additionally, everyone at Evil Geniuses ? including management, players, and staff ? would like to sincerely apologize for these comments. They do not reflect our company?s sense of morality, behavior and propriety, and they will not be tolerated.

The full extent of the ramifications for Stephano?s comments is yet to be determined. The decision to suspend him, without pay, for the rest of October is final, but the situation is still being reviewed internally at EG, and we do not consider the matter closed as of yet.

We?d like to thank everyone in the gaming community for your patience, and we once again apologize for this incident. For those interested in reading it, Ilyes? personal apology follows immediately below this note.

Sincerely,

Evil Geniuses

Ilyes ?Stephano? Satouri?s Apology: ?I want to very sincerely apologize to all of my fans, my teammates and management at EG, all of EG?s sponsors, and the rest of the community for my comments last week. They were insensitive, inappropriate, way over the line, and are deserving of the serious ramifications I have received from my team. I accept responsibility for my mistake, and I will be more careful in the?future.?

?

Source: http://www.lazygamer.net/pc-gaming/pro-gamers-gone-wild-here-we-go-again/

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Suspect in Wyo. kidnapping won't fight extradition

BOZEMAN, Mont. (AP) ? A Montana man faces charges of kidnapping and assaulting an 11-year-old girl in Wyoming after police said he lured her to his car by saying he needed help finding a missing puppy, court records obtained Monday state.

Jesse Paul Speer, 39, was taken into custody Saturday in Belgrade, Mont., and held for Wyoming authorities. He faces extradition on charges of kidnapping, aggravated assault and felony use of a weapon, the records state.

Speer was being held without bond and waived his right to an extradition hearing during a brief court appearance Monday in Bozeman. He has not entered a plea.

Speer was dressed in an orange prison jump suit and only spoke to give Judge Holly Brown his name and to answer yes and no questions.

Public defender Eric Brewer told Brown that law enforcement officials had confiscated Speer's eyeglasses and questioned him without an attorney present.

Brewer requested that officers not interrogate Speer any further without a lawyer. Brewer didn't know when Speer would be sent to Wyoming.

Authorities have looked into a possible connection between the case and the disappearance of Jessica Ridgeway, a 10-year-old girl in Colorado, but now say they don't think the cases are related. Jessica's body was found Wednesday in a park about 7 miles from her suburban Denver home. No arrests have been made.

Speer approached children in Cody on Oct. 8 and asked for help finding his lost dog, police Detective Jonathan Beck wrote in a statement. The girl initially was receptive but then changed her mind, prompting Speer to pull a pistol and motion for her to get into his SUV, Beck wrote.

The statement said Speer drove the girl to a church parking lot and tied her hands behind her back. He told her to keep down as he drove through town, hitting her once on the head with the gun when she tried to raise it, the officer said.

"The victim told the suspect that she knew that he was going to rape her, and the suspect responded that she wasn't going to get hurt," Cody Police Chief Perry Rockvam told reporters.

He then drove the girl to a mountainous area outside of Cody, where he assaulted her, Beck said in the statement filed in state court in Cody.

Rockvam said the man then put a cloth bag over her head and released her, telling her to count to 50 before she turned around. Passing elk hunters found the girl, dressed lightly in the mountainous area, and took her to safety.

Many businesses in Cody provided surveillance video to investigators that showed a white, Toyota 4-Runner with a luggage box on top in various areas of the city shortly before the girl was abducted. In addition, the girl was able to describe the route taken when she was driven out of town.

On Saturday, an FBI agent reviewing surveillance video of a Yellowstone National Park entrance recorded on Oct. 7 ? the day before the girl's abduction ? noticed a white Toyota with a cargo box. Other video at the park showed the vehicle leaving later.

Investigators matched the license plate number to Speer, whose driver's license photograph resembled an artist's rendering of the suspect the girl described, authorities said.

In another surveillance video, Speer's glasses had a blue line on the side of the frame, matching a description the girl gave to police, Beck wrote. The victim also told investigators she saw stacked photographs of naked young girls in the vehicle.

Speer most recently lived in Manhattan, a small community about 20 miles west of Bozeman, said Gallatin County Sheriff Brian Gootkin. He declined to release any personal information about Speer.

Speer was arrested without incident in Belgrade, near Manhattan. Authorities declined to provide any further details of the arrest.

___

Ben Neary reported from Cheyenne, Wyo. Dan Elliott contributed to this report from Denver.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/suspect-wyo-kidnapping-wont-fight-extradition-202621303.html

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Swedish House Mafia pip Adele to top of UK pop chart

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Improve Your Residence With One Of These Sound Ide | Travel

When one owns a house, makeovers may be distressing. You?ll want the pursuing guidance if you wish to get started with some redesigning tasks. Read through the following advice and use them in your next home improvement undertaking the outcomes will probably be really worth the work for certain.

Thinking of the installation of an attractive hardwood flooring? Have a skilled explore the present floors at your residence first. There might be organic hard wood below your carpet or linoleum, and it might be superbly refinished. You are going to appear at the top using a nicer floor, and save money!

Don?t begin your home development undertakings without having a great, written estimate in the total price. It?s common to ignore the very last costs of your house development undertaking. Be sure you get a couple of quotes and prepare for an emergency fund.
http://www.sbwire.com/press-releases/pittsburgh-precision-brush-painting-announces-new-landscaping-and-labor-services-to-improve-your-home-168171.htm
Whenever feasible, it?s a smart idea to choose normal components to enhance the inside of your home. Hardwood, porcelain ceramic, gemstone as well as other true supplies are generally preferable over man-made alternatives. They may be far more tough and in addition appear greater. The initial cost up-top for such materials may possibly pay off over time simply because they will last for a longer time.

Need a redesigning project which costs almost no, but raises the entrance charm of your dwelling? Improve your landscape with decorative rock and roll walls. You may get stones for practically nothing. Numerous online sites offers you the recommendations for putting backyard garden trails and stunning flowers making use of the rocks.

Creating a coordinated palette in a room?s decor calls for the 60/30/10 principle. The dominant color needs to be 60Percent in the place, with the supplementary and highlight hues simply being 30Per cent and ten percent correspondingly. This correlates towards the primary shade being utilized around the walls, supplementary color to the upholstery and 10% needs to be the highlight.

Continue to be risk-free when you are performing home remodeling jobs! Shut down the gas whenever you will work all around any petrol lighting fixtures nearby the cooktop, dryer or fireplace. It could be hazardous in case you are performing any remodeling in which you will find a petrol range. Usually find and mark the shutoff device. You have to know the location of your own fuel collections, as well.

Despite the fact that home redesigning can be rewarding, it may be operate-intense also. Either way, realizing what you need to attain and the ways to complete it securely can help you make your aspiration house. Use what you?ve learned and change your home close to.

Source: http://nicoleevaemery.com/accounting/improve-your-residence-with-one-of-these-sound-ide/

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Nigerian Community Celebrates 52nd Independence Anniversary

BruDirect Sunday 14th October, 2012

View Comments Kuala Belait - The Nigerian community in the country celebrated Nigeria's 52nd Independence Anniversary at Plaza Sutera Biru in the Belait District with the theme 'Our Culture, Values and People' last Saturday night. The event was organised by the Nigerian Community in Brunei, Panaga Section and attendedby representatives from the High Commission of Nigeria in Kuala Lumpur led by Janet Olisa, as well as captains of industries, fell...

Read the full story at BruDirect

Source: http://www.bruneinews.net/index.php/sid/210045911/scat/1948b3b9eadbd541

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Hilary Duff: Why I?m Happy to Be a Young Mom

"I don't have a lot of people my age who have babies. So I'm at a totally different spot than a lot of my friends," Duff, 25, explains.

Source: http://feeds.celebritybabies.com/~r/celebrity-babies/~3/ZLk1iTG1JBU/

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Felix Baumgartner successfully lands after highest freefall from edge of space

ScienceDaily (Oct. 14, 2012) ? Austria's Felix Baumgartner earned his place in the history books on Sunday (Oct. 14, 2012) after overcoming concerns with the power for his visor heater that impaired his vision and nearly jeopardized the mission. Baumgartner reached an estimated speed of 1,342.8 km/h (Mach 1.24) jumping from the stratosphere, which when certified will make him the first man to break the speed of sound in freefall and set several other records* while delivering valuable data for future space exploration.

After flying to an altitude of 39,045 meters (128,100 feet) in a helium-filled balloon, Felix Baumgartner completed Sunday morning a record breaking jump for the ages from the edge of space, exactly 65 years after Chuck Yeager first broke the sound barrier flying in an experimental rocket-powered airplane. The 43-year-old Austrian skydiving expert also broke two other world records (highest freefall, highest manned balloon flight), leaving the one for the longest freefall to project mentor Col. Joe Kittinger.

Baumgartner landed safely with his parachute in the desert of New Mexico after jumping out of his space capsule at 39,045 meters and plunging back towards earth, hitting a maximum of speed of 1,342.8 km/h through the near vacuum of the stratosphere before being slowed by the atmosphere later during his 4:20 minute long freefall. Countless millions of people around the world watched his ascent and jump live on television broadcasts and live stream on the Internet. At one point during his freefall Baumgartner appeared to spin rapidly, but he quickly re-gained control and moments later opened his parachute as members of the ground crew cheered and viewers around the world heaved a sigh of relief.

"It was an incredible up and down today, just like it's been with the whole project," a relieved Baumgartner said. "First we got off with a beautiful launch and then we had a bit of drama with a power supply issue to my visor. The exit was perfect but then I started spinning slowly. I thought I'd just spin a few times and that would be that, but then I started to speed up. It was really brutal at times. I thought for a few seconds that I'd lose consciousness. I didn't feel a sonic boom because I was so busy just trying to stabilize myself. We'll have to wait and see if we really broke the sound barrier. It was really a lot harder than I thought it was going to be."

Baumgartner and his team spent five years training and preparing for the mission that is designed to improve our scientific understanding of how the body copes with the extreme conditions at the edge of space.

Baumgartner had endured several weather-related delays before finally lifting off under bright blue skies and calm winds on Sunday morning. The Red Bull Stratos crew watching from Mission Control broke out into spontaneous applause when the balloon lifted off.

* The data on the records set by the jump are preliminary pending confirmation from the authorized governing bodies.

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Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/~3/dga1TpftIoI/121014170655.htm

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What Is ?Elder Law?? Do I Need an Elder Law Attorney? | Elder Law ...

OCTOBER 15, 2012 VOLUME 19 NUMBER 38
At Fleming & Curti, PLC, we practice ?elder law.? But what does that mean? Are all our attorneys elderly? (No) Are they all senior members of a religious group? (No) Are all our clients above a certain age? (No) Then what is the significance of the term ?elder law??

Sometimes we rebel against the term. When asked what kind of law we practice, we might say something like: ?We limit our practice to guardianship, conservatorship, estate planning, probate, long-term care planning, trust administration and special needs planning.? The problem with that formulation is obvious: it seems oxymoronic to ?limit? your practice to seven items ? and to be complete we probably should thrown in two or three others.

No one practicing ?elder law? likes the term. It is not descriptive of our clients: a significant number of the cases we handle involve children ? often even toddlers ? and many of our clients are middle-aged children of aging parents. It is not easy for clients to relate to: when asked what constitutes an elder or senior citizen, most of our clients immediately think of someone just a few years older than themselves.

All elder law attorneys think from time to time about better descriptions they might use. The problem with that effort, though, is that no one has come up with a better label, or even one that comes closer to describing what we do.

What do we (elder law attorneys) do? For that matter, what do we (Fleming & Curti, PLC) do? Here?s a sampling:

Guardianship and Conservatorship. In Arizona, a guardian is a court-appointed person who makes medical and placement decisions for an incapacitated adult or a minor child whose parents are not available to handle those duties. A conservator fills a similar role, but handles money; a conservator can be appointed for an adult who is unable to manage his or her finances because of a disability, or for a child. Note that there is no requirement of a finding that the child can not handle money, or that the child?s parents can not do so; a child is legally incapacitated no matter how capable he or she might be, and the child?s parents do not have any automatic right to make financial decisions for him or her (as they do for medical and placement decisions). So that means guardianship and conservatorship may be necessary for the very young, and for adults who are incapacitated ? whether by dementia or by other illness or condition.

Getting a guardian and/or conservator appointed is only part of the battle. Once appointed, a guardian or conservator is answerable to the courts, and must file annual reports and accounts. It is an intensive exposure to the legal system, and very difficult to navigate without the help of counsel. Like us.

Estate Planning. We write wills, trusts, powers of attorney and other estate planning documents. Most of our clients in this area are older than, say, their mid-50s ? but not because that?s who needs estate planning. Younger people (including the parents of minor children, anyone who drives a vehicle, anyone who has ever seen a doctor) also need to complete estate planning. They just tend not to until they reach an age where they see the value. As one of our clients wisely said: ?the two kinds of people you hate to deal with are doctors and lawyers ? and when you get older you spend a lot of time with both.?

Older people may have more complicated estate plans. They may have larger tax concerns (because they have had time to acquire more assets). They may have others (children with disabilities, spouses with failing abilities, long-time friends they have helped over the years) who rely on them and need their consideration. They also may feel somewhat more mortal. And so they tend to be the ones who get to the lawyer?s office ? and hence the estate planning business seems to be (but should not be) an issue for elders.

Long-term Care Planning. Nursing home costs will likely bankrupt most families if someone has to spend more than a few months in a care facility. Planning for how to deal with that should start early, and include (among other things) long-term care insurance. But most people don?t plan for possible institutionalization. Instead, they bravely insist that ?I am never going into the nursing home.? Many of them turn out to be wrong, but most of those won?t know how wrong they were until they are, well, elderly. Most (but certainly not all) of the residents of nursing homes and assisted living facilities are elderly. So the practice of preparing people for that eventuality, and of helping spouses and children get ready to place a loved one in such a facility, has come to be thought of as ?elder? law.

Trust Administration. While creating and funding a living trust may avoid the probate process, that is not the same as saying that your (successor) trustee will not need any contact with lawyers or accountants. In fact, your trustee will probably need both. But even your trustee will probably be elderly by the time you die. Odds are that you will be, too. So this tends to look like a legal problem involving the elderly, though plenty of trustees are younger and a lot of people sign trusts when they are younger, too.

Probate. Some people don?t plan for probate avoidance, either because they didn?t get around to it or because they consciously engaged in a cost/benefit analysis and decided it wasn?t worth the expense (to them, at the time). Whatever. Probate administration, like trust administration, is an area of practice that often ? but not always ? involves people who are elderly.

Special Needs Trusts and Planning. This one has the most tenuous link to the elderly. The beneficiaries of most special needs trusts are young ? often infants or toddlers. Even the parents of special needs trust beneficiaries may be young ? perhaps even in their 20s. So how does this become an ?elder law? issue? It?s simple: the government programs and rules that are involved in special needs trust planning, establishment and administration are the same programs and rules involved in long-term care for the elderly. But saying ?I?m an elder and special needs lawyer? just doesn?t trip lightly off the tongue, and it begins to sound like we are trying to describe our own circumstances, not those of the people we strive to help.

So that?s what we do as ?elder law? attorneys. Is that all we do? No, we also have a few other areas we might work in ? like guardianship of minors, advance directive preparation and interpretation, or recovering from abuse, neglect or exploitation. But that?s the bulk of our work.

Feel free to come up with a better, shorter, more user-friendly term. We?ve been working on it for years, but we are confident that there is a good answer out there. Somewhere.

Source: http://issues.flemingandcurti.com/2012/10/14/what-is-elder-law-do-i-need-an-elder-law-attorney/

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Staff Picks: The Newlyweds

Nell Freudenberger's new book, The Newlyweds, is yet another mark of her literary achievements. Freudenberger is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Whiting Award, and the Pen/Malamud Award.? She first came on the scene at the age of 26, when one of her short stories was published in The New Yorker. She has since been named one of Granta's Best Young American Novelists and one of The New Yorker's "20 Under 40."

Like Lucky Girls, her 2003 collection of short stories, The Newlyweds deals with the immigrant experience, complete with the expectations and realities of living in the U.S.? The narrative centers on the marriage of a 20-something young Bangladeshi woman, Amina, and her somewhat older American husband, George.? Amina and George first meet on an online dating site. Both are looking for a foreign match--Amina, in order to bring her near-destitute parents to America and George because he has not met an American woman to his liking.? The couple engages in a year-long correspondence, culminating in George's visit to Bangladesh and subsequent proposal.

As the story unfolds, we are introduced to Amina's extended family and former love-interest, Nasir--a man she gave up to marry George.? Similarly, we learn more about George, a decent but rather lack-luster engineer whose previous romances have ended in failure. In marrying, they both embark on a difficult cross-cultural relationship. Amina's closeness and feelings of responsibility to her parents baffle George.? He wants to start a family but strongly disagrees with Amina concerning the issue of her parents living with them. Ultimately, Amina wants George to sponsor her parents' immigration to the United States.

Freudenberger takes us through four years of their marriage, culminating in Amina's citizenship.? At that point, Amina and George are living in separate bedrooms because George has been deceitful about his past.? This seems to be a turning point for them both:? George realizes he loves and needs Amina and Amina has now become independent-minded, more educated and more mature.? Her various jobs have given her a sense of some financial independence.? Her current job--at Starbucks--provides her with benefits now needed when George loses his own job. This event puts their relationship on a different footing.

When Amina returns to Bangladesh to bring her parents back to Rochester, New York, the author paints a picture of that country that is quite harrowing.? The disparities between rich and poor, village and city life, and the complexities of family relationships are starkly drawn.? Equally shocking is a close look at a justice system that allows men to disfigure women with acid.? It is not surprising that Amina has wanted to leave her homeland and everything connected with it since she was a girl.

In an interview for the New York Times Book Review Podcast (April 29, 2012), Freudenberger discusses the real-life story that was an inspiration for the novel.? On a trip to Rochester, New York to visit to her grandmother, the author meets a young, Bangladeshi woman and an American man.?? They are her seat-mates. Thus begins a friendship and collaboration between the author and the woman that spans five years and culminates in this novel. The Newlyweds is based on stories accrued during those years of their correspondence and Freudenberger's subsequent visit to Bangladesh.

The Newlyweds has an engaging plot and offers a realistic depiction of life as a new immigrant. Whether you like books about relationships or tales of foreign lands, you are sure to enjoy this new work by a promising young writer.

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Source: http://glencoelibrarypicks.blogspot.com/2012/10/the-newlyweds.html

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