EchoSpan has noticed a trend in 360-degree feedback: employers are tailoring their employee performance evaluations more than ever before in hope of making the employee development system even more useful. At the same time, ever-lengthening reviews gradually become less palatable for respondents and decrease response rates. Questionnaires are expanding, by one or two questions per year, and though they increasingly include much more targeted information, designed to specifically look at tasks related to the employee's job description, lengthy questionnaires are not ...

4t Networks encourages Texas companies to prepare themselves for hurricane season with a disaster recovery and backup plan. 4t Networks' disaster recovery plan transfers your VMware virtual machines, over a virtual private network, to the cloud. This way, no matter the damage done by a hurricane, replicas will be waiting for you so you can get back to business with as little delay as possible. Though many disaster recovery solutions can seem overwhelmingly complicated, 4t Networks strives for simplification, so that the service you get is as user friendly and comprehendible ...

McCart Insurance understands the benefits of participating in team sports and other sports while in school. Actively participating in sports can lead to healthier exercise habits as adults, learning how to be more cooperative and learning to live up to a commitment you've made. After all, getting to practice every day is a big commitment. But they also know that participating in any sport without a pre-participation physical can be careless or even dangerous. Sports physicals are necessary to make sure your child is healthy enough to compete and as a good check up on ...

The Tampa bankruptcy attorneys at Clark & Washington hate to see people losing their homes, but in June, 8,849 homes in Tampa were subject to foreclosure. The Tampa bankruptcy law firm understands how hard you worked to buy your home in the first place. Whatever the change in circumstances that led to the brink of foreclosure, filing for bankruptcy protection may be a way to keep your house. Tampa bankruptcy law offers a variety of options that can help home owners avoid foreclosure. A Chapter 13 bankruptcy plan may help lower mortgage payments to an affordable ...

Not every Atlanta bankruptcy attorney would be willing to fight its clients case all the way to the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals, but Clark & Washington did. The Atlanta bankruptcy firm fought the case through two decisions against their client, finally winning the circuit court ruling that secures better bankruptcy options for home owners devastated by the collapse of the housing market. The company's client, Ms. Lorraine McNeal had two mortgages on her home, one for $176,413 and a second mortgage for $44,444, when the value of her home plummeted to $141,416. ...

Plumb Xpress Plumbing and Drain understands that when a utility bill is unexpectedly high it can mess up the family budget. Generally, if it's the water bill that is unusually high, calling an Atlanta plumber to check your plumbing system can end up saving you money in the long run. A plumbing inspection and subsequent repair can prevent future big bills and can sometimes result in a rebate from your water company. Atlanta plumbers Plumb Xpress can conduct a leak detection inspection to help you find the leak. Then, they offer guaranteed estimates and usually can repair ...

Neopost Limited announced today that improving productivity in your mailroom is about more than just the right piece of equipment in the right place. Mail processes are repetitive and have considerable scope for human error, so it is important to provide specialist furniture and space planning to ensure staff can operate effectively during peak periods. The positioning and design of tables, benches, sorting units and mailing equipment is critical for process efficiency and staff productivity. Installing the right mailroom furniture is not just a question of optimising workflows; ...

AAMI, the leading national car insurer, has made making an insurance claim even quicker and easier with the launch of the new AAMI Claim Assist app. The AAMI Claim Assist app lets AAMI car insurance customers collect the information needed from the scene of the accident, and then send it directly to AAMI. Reuben Aitchison, AAMI spokesperson, said that the app is designed to ease the stress of one of life's tough moments. "Getting in to a car crash is, hopefully, a rare event for most of us. The Claim Assist app helps people capture what happened at the scene ...

California recently enacted legislation creating guidelines and regulations for self-driving cars. Proponents of automated cars hope those regulations will eventually allow motor vehicles to use wireless signals, cameras, and GPS technology to replace human drivers. Those same proponents are quick to claim that, without human drivers, autonomous automobiles eliminate human error and reduce the overall potential for car accidents. While it is unlikely that Alabama will pass similar regulations in the near future, Birmingham car wreck attorney Whit Drake is concerned about ...

The fact of the matter is that it's quite hard to find a suitable teaching job. It's actually impossible to keep track of all the vacant positions in primary teaching jobs or teaching assistant jobs in each and every school of an area. So, there must be a system that can look for these vacant positions and inform you whenever a suitable vacant teaching position for primary or secondary teaching jobs are available. Excellent recruitment agencies such as academicsltd.co.uk precisely serve that purpose for you. So, no matter if you are looking for primary school teaching jobs ...

Global Data Company (GDC) has joined with Nominodata to offer high-risk watch lists in their Global Gateway service. By adding comprehensive watch list data, GDC is able to offer a more holistic solution to global markets with developed and emerging Anti Money Laundering (AML) and Counter Terrorist Finance (CTF) legislative requirements. Global Gateway launched in 2007 as a single integration for global electronic identity verification (eIDV) to assist clients with their Customer Identification Program (CIP). GDC is now launching Global Gateway 2 with data coverage in ...

Hyatt Hotels Corporation announced today the opening of Park Hyatt Chennai, marking the 30th hotel in the Park Hyatt collection and the first Park Hyatt hotel to be introduced in the city of Chennai, known as the gateway to Southern India. Designed as a serene and tranquil retreat for the astute business traveller, Park Hyatt Chennai is located next to the prestigious Governor's residence and is also adjacent to the thriving green area of the Guindy National Park. A 15-minute drive from the city's domestic and international airport, Park Hyatt Chennai enjoys close proximity ...

With all of the excitement of the Mars Curiosity landing, many are looking to move from robots to humans for exploration beyond Earth's orbit. Keeping in mind the Seven Minutes of Terror, just imagine the nail-biting moments of putting people into the harsh environment of space far from their home planet. Taking the guess work out of long-duration exploration, however, is one of the benefits of the International Space Station. This orbiting laboratory serves as a test bed for technology and helps researchers understand how to prepare for extended trips in space. "The ...

ZeroLag, (http://www.ZeroLag.com), the first name in managed hosting, is pleased to announce it has joined Magneto eCommerce's Hosting Partner Program as a Platinum Partner, the highest of the three-tier levels. The program recognizes the strategic role that managed hosting providers such as ZeroLag play in delivering on the high quality of service Magneto merchants expect from the leading eCommerce platform. Dedicated to support, performance, reliability and security: "ZeroLag is excited to be a Magento Platinum Hosting Partner and together we will provide ...

Los Angeles, CA (October 23, 2012) Ranked as one of America's largest corporations and the largest private employer in the United States, some say that WalMart stores are catalysts for economic growth in U.S. communities, while others claim that they can have damaging effects on local shops. However, a new study finds that it is the larger retailers such as Ames Department Stores, Sears, and Kmart that lose business with the arrival of a new WalMart store, while smaller retailers are not affected to the same extent. This study is published today in a new Focus Issue of ...

ARGONNE, Ill. --- The study of materials at extreme conditions took a giant leap forward with the discovery of a way to generate super high pressures without using shock waves whose accompanying heat turns solids to liquid. This discovery will allow scientists for the first time to reach static pressure levels exceeding 4 million atmospheres, a high-pressure environment where new unique compounds could be formed, materials change their chemical and physical properties, and metals become insulators. An international team of scientists using a new high-pressure anvil design ...

Parents consistently overestimate their children's optimism and downplay their worries, according to new research by psychologists at the University of California, Davis, Center for Mind and Brain. The findings suggest that secondhand evaluations by parents or other adults of children's emotional well-being need to be treated with caution. Many psychologists and researchers have long held that children under the age of seven cannot accurately report how they feel, said Kristin Lagattuta, associate professor of psychology at UC Davis, who led the study. So behavioral ...

Can social media postings by consumers be a source of useful information about vehicle safety and performance defects for automobile manufacturers? Yes, say researchers at Virginia Tech's Pamplin College of Business, who conducted what is believed to be the first large-scale case study confirming the value of social media for vehicle quality management. The researchers developed a computer-based information system that provides auto manufacturers an efficient way to discover and classify vehicle defects. "A lot of useful but hidden data on vehicle quality is embedded ...

Bacteria have a bad rap as agents of disease, but scientists are increasingly discovering their many benefits, such as maintaining a healthy gut. A new study now suggests that bacteria may also have helped kick off one of the key events in evolution: the leap from one-celled organisms to many-celled organisms, a development that eventually led to all animals, including humans. Published this month in the inaugural edition of the new online journal eLife, the study by University of California, Berkeley, and Harvard Medical School scientists involves choanoflagellates ...

The missing "lnc" in human disease LncRNAs (pronounced "link") are long non-coding RNAs that are emerging as important regulators of gene expression in biological processes and diseases. In this issue of the Journal of Clinical Investigation, two papers connect lncRNAs to inherited conditions in humans. Sylvia Bähring and colleagues at the Experimental and Clinical Research Center in Berlin found a chromosomal translocation that disrupts the expression of a lncRNA. This disruption alters the expression of the genes PTHLH and SOX9 and results in brachydactyly, an inherited ...

LncRNAs (pronounced "link") are long non-coding RNAs that are emerging as important regulators of gene expression in biological processes and diseases. In this issue of the Journal of Clinical Investigation, two papers connect lncRNAs to inherited conditions in humans. Sylvia Bähring and colleagues at the Experimental and Clinical Research Center in Berlin found a chromosomal translocation that disrupts the expression of a lncRNA. This disruption alters the expression of the genes PTHLH and SOX9 and results in brachydactyly, an inherited malformation of the fingers and ...

Obesity is a chronic metabolic disorder that affects half a billion people worldwide. Managing obesity is difficult, as many patients rebound to their pre-treatment weight. There is a hypothesis that chronic weight gain causes the body to adopt a state that supports excess weight. In a study published in the Journal of Clinical Investigation, researchers led by Malcolm Low at the University of Michigan challenged this hypothesis by developing a mouse model of obesity where the proopiomelanocortin (Pomc) gene in the hypothalamus can be turned on and off. With Pomc turned ...

Using a whopping nine-gigapixel image from the VISTA infrared survey telescope at ESO's Paranal Observatory, an international team of astronomers has created a catalogue of more than 84 million stars in the central parts of the Milky Way. This gigantic dataset contains more than ten times more stars than previous studies and is a major step forward for the understanding of our home galaxy. The image gives viewers an incredible, zoomable view of the central part of our galaxy. It is so large that, if printed with the resolution of a typical book, it would be 9 metres long ...

Astronomy & Astrophysics published the first analysis of a catalog of 84 million individual stars in the Milky Way bulge as a part of the VVV ESO public survey. This gigantic data set allows building the largest, deepest, and most accurate color-magnitude diagram ever produced, containing more than ten times more stars than any previous study. The bulge of the Milky Way is a large central concentration of ancient stars that is predominantly observed from the southern hemisphere. Understanding the formation and evolution of the bulge is fundamental for deciphering the ...

A number of herbs and dietary supplements (HDS) can cause potentially harmful drug interactions, particularly among people receiving medication for problems with their central nervous or cardiovascular systems. Those are the key findings of an extensive research review published in the November issue of IJCP, the International Journal of Clinical Practice. Researchers examined 54 review articles and 31 original studies. They found that the greatest problems were caused by interactions between prescribed drugs and HDS that included ingredients such as St John's Wort, ...