Executive Chairman and Founder John Symond today agreed for the Commonwealth Bank (CBA) to increase its shareholding to 80 percent, by acquiring a further 47 per cent. John Symond will continue as Executive Chairman of Aussie and will retain a 20 percent shareholding, while continuing to be involved in the growth and direction of the company. "We welcome this arrangement as CBA's increased interest in Aussie is a great opportunity for the company to further accelerate our growth. We now have the opportunity to grow by investing in our product and service offerings ...

TapSnap is bringing the next big innovation in event entertainment to cities across North America, with a groundbreaking new phototainment franchise. "We created TapSnap because we believe work should be fun," says Scott McInnes, CEO and Founder of TapSnap. "This is a new breed of lifestyle franchise. You get the flexibility of a part-time business with the potential of full-time pay. You get to be part of exciting parties and events with your machine, and best of all, you help people make photo memories that could last a lifetime. We think it's about ...

A new phototainment system like you've never seen before is ready for the holiday party season in Vancouver, starting with a volunteer appearance at the BC Children's Hospital Foundation's 26th Annual Crystal Ball on November 29. TapSnap is the photo booth gone open-concept and highly interactive, seamlessly integrating a giant 42-inch multi-touch screen with social media to give event guests a "phototainment experience." "TapSnap may the best holiday party guest you'll ever have - it knows how to break the ice, get people laughing and having a blast," ...

The client came to Financial Consultant Diane Rosenkrantz with a big vision: he wanted to start a DVDNow Kiosks business with nine or ten automated movie rental machines. The total cost, including inventory, was in excess of $200,000. All he needed to get it off the ground was financing. His finances were in good shape but he didn't want to deplete his cash reserves or take out a loan. Rosenkrantz and her company Tenet Financial Group helped the client gain access to start-up funding he didn't know he had: a 401(k) plan from his previous employer. "You are ...

Major tobacco companies are getting in the game and Big Pharma is fighting it tooth and nail via heavily funded special interest groups and anti-smoking groups that maintain the quit or die mentality. Millions of U.S. smokers have made the switch and the industry has grown to over 300 million a year in revenues. Over 25 current studies, trials, and tests stating that the electronic cigarette is 400 to 1200% more effective than NRTs and much safer than smoking tobacco according to the Tobacco Analysis blog run by Dr. Siegel. Big Pharma is spending millions upon millions ...

South Beach Smoke has been in business in the United States for several years now and reviews are commonplace online, but Smokers Utopia is one of the only websites where consumers can find a balanced, honest review on the products that they offer. "We like knowing that consumers can come to us and get an honest picture of what each company is all about," says Teresa Peach of Smokers Utopia. "The last thing a serious buyer wants is a review that's full of a bunch of sugary fluff about the company just to push their products. By now, consumers know how ...

Jewelry trends come and go, but timeless keepsake jewelry is forever. The Vintage Pearl has seen double digit sales growth each year for the last five years by making sentimental, personalized jewelry that is classic, beautifully crafted and hand-stamped to capture memories of loved ones and special times. The company, founded in 2007 by Erin Edwards, started as a hobby and grew to a home-based business. Edwards, a stay-at-home mom who had been looking for a creative outlet, taught herself to make hand-stamped jewelry. It became such a passion that she soon began selling ...

SafeSchools, LLC, the leader in web-based safety and compliance solutions for schools, today announced that they would provide complimentary access to their 'Managing the Aftermath of Tragedy' courses to every school district in the U.S. and Canada. "As news of the shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School reached our offices on Friday, our hearts were broken once again by another senseless school shooting," said Brian Taylor, President and Chief Executive Officer, SafeSchools. "We know that every school district grieves with the Newtown community and ...

Anesthesia is quite safe these days. But sometimes putting a patient under to fix one problem, such as heart damage, can harm a different organ, such as a kidney. Now a group of researchers led by Holger Eltzschig, MD, PhD, a professor of anesthesiology at the University Colorado School of Medicine, has found a group of molecules that fend off damage during anesthesia. "This is a promising discovery," says Eltzschig, who practices at University of Colorado Hospital. "It suggests a new way to promote healing." In an article published Dec. 12 in the New England Journal ...

This press release is available in Spanish. A detailed letter entitled “Methodological flaws in the estimation of abortion in Latin America: Author’s reply to Singh and Bankole” was published today in Ginecología y Obstetricia de México (Ginecol Obstet Mex), a Mexican peer-reviewed journal specialized in Obstetrics and Gynecology. The letter is a reply by researchers from the Institute of Molecular Epidemiology (MELISA) to researchers from the Alan Guttmacher Institute (AGI) regarding methodological flaws that led to a significant overestimation of induced abortions ...

IRVINE, Calif. (December 18, 2012) – The Hass Avocado Board (HAB) is supporting research to improve understanding of the unique, positive benefits of consuming fresh avocados to human health and nutrition. Clinical studies are currently underway to investigate the relationship between avocado consumption and risk factors for cardiovascular disease, avocados' potential positive role in weight management and diabetes, and avocados' ability to enhance nutrient absorption. In November 2012, the first study supported by the HAB and conducted by researchers at the University ...

Because of the process involved in the formation of sperm cells, there should be an equal chance that a mammalian egg will be fertilized by "male" sperm, carrying a Y chromosome, as by a "female" sperm, carrying an X chromosome. The symmetry of the system ensures that roughly the same number of males and females are born, which is clearly helpful for the species' long-term survival. Surprisingly, though, many mammals do not produce equal numbers of male and female offspring. The discrepancy could theoretically be explained by differential fertilization efficiencies ...

Daejeon, Republic of Korea, December 18th, 2012—Cell phones are becoming ever smarter, savvy enough to tell police officers where to go to find a missing person or recommend a rescue team where they should search for survivors when fire erupts in tall buildings. Although still in its nascent stages, indoor positioning system will soon be an available feature on mobile phones. People widely rely on the Global Positioning System (GPS) for location information, but GPS does not work well in indoor spaces or urban canyons with streets cutting through dense blocks of high-rise ...

Scientists at The University of Manchester have for the first time identified why a patient who appears outwardly healthy may develop Parkinson's disease. Whilst conditions such as a severe stroke have been linked to the disease, for many sufferers the tremors and other symptoms of Parkinson's disease can appear to come out of the blue. Researchers at the university's Faculty of Life Sciences have now discovered that a small stroke, also known as a silent stroke, can cause Parkinson's disease. Their findings have been published in the journal "Brain Behaviour and Immunity". Unlike ...

Scientists at The University of Manchester have used synchrotron-based imaging techniques to identify previously unseen anatomy preserved in fossils. Their work on a 50 million year old lizard skin identified the presence of teeth (invisible to visible light), demonstrating for the first time that this fossil animal was more than just a skin moult. This was only possible using some of the brightest light in the universe, x-rays generated by a synchrotron. Dr Phil Manning, Dr Nick Edwards, Dr Roy Wogelius and colleagues from the Palaeontology Research group used Synchrotron ...

Research carried out at the University of Sheffield has revealed intriguing parallels between modern day and Bronze-Age Syria as the Mesopotamian region underwent urban decline, government collapse, and drought. Dr Ellery Frahm from the University of Sheffield's Department of Archaeology made the discoveries by studying stone tools of obsidian, razor-sharp volcanic glass, crafted in the region about 4,200 years ago. Dr Frahm used artefacts unearthed from the archaeological site of Tell Mozan, known as Urkesh in antiquity, to trace what happened to trade and social networks ...

For several decades antimony electrodes have been used to measure the acidity/basicity – and so to determine the pH value. Unfortunately, they allow for measuring pH changes of solutions only at a certain distance from electrodes or corroding metals. Researchers at the Institute of Physical Chemistry of the Polish Academy of Sciences developed a method for producing antimony microelectrodes that allow for measuring pH changes just over the metal surface, at which chemical reactions take place. Changes in solution acidity/basicity provide important information on the nature ...

ANN ARBOR, Mich. — For some people with diabetes, there may be such a thing as too much care. Traditional treatment to reduce risks of heart disease among patients with diabetes has focused on lowering all patients' blood cholesterol to a specific, standard level. But this practice may prompt the over-use of high-dose medications for patients who don't need them, according to new research from the VA Ann Arbor Healthcare System (VAAAHS) and the University of Michigan Health System. The study encourages a more individualized approach to treatment that adjusts treatment ...

A new process to make a one-time, universal influenza vaccine has been discovered by a researcher at Georgia State University's Center for Inflammation, Immunity and Infection and his partners. Associate Professor Sang-Moo Kang and his collaborators have found a way to make the one-time vaccine by using recombinant genetic engineering technology that does not use a seasonal virus. Instead, the new vaccine uses a virus' small fragment that does not vary among the different strains of flu viruses. By using the fragment and generating particles mimicking a virus in ...

Researchers from the University of Southampton have called in to question a 40 year-old theory explaining the periodic speeding up or 'glitching' of pulsars. A pulsar is a highly magnetised rotating neutron star formed from the remains of a supernova. It emits a rotating beam of electromagnetic radiation, which can be detected by powerful telescopes when it sweeps past the Earth, rather like observing the beam of a lighthouse from a ship at sea. Pulsars rotate at extremely stable speeds, but occasionally they speed up in brief events described as 'glitches' or 'spin-ups'. ...

Women earn less money than men the more the sexes share the same occupations, a large-scale survey of 20 industrialised countries has found. Researchers from the universities of Cambridge, UK, and Lakehead, Canada, found that the more women and men keep to different trades and professions, the more equal is the overall pay average for the two sexes in a country. The researchers attribute the surprising results to the fact that when there are few men in an occupation, women have more chance to get to the top and earn more. But where there are more equal numbers of ...

WASHINGTON, Dec. 18, 2012 — For everyone with holiday visions of snowflakes dancing in their heads, the American Chemical Society, the world's largest scientific society, today issued a video explaining how dust, water, cold and air currents collaborate to form these symbols of the season. It's all there in an episode of Bytesize Science, the award-winning video series produced by the ACS Office of Public Affairs at www.BytesizeScience.com. The video tracks formation of snowflakes from their origins in bits of dust in clouds that become droplets of water falling to Earth. ...

On the surface, obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) and attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) appear very similar, with impaired attention, memory, or behavioral control. But Prof. Reuven Dar of Tel Aviv University's School of Psychological Sciences argues that these two neuropsychological disorders have very different roots — and there are enormous consequences if they are mistaken for each other. Prof. Dar and fellow researcher Dr. Amitai Abramovitch, who completed his PhD under Prof. Dar's supervision, have determined that despite appearances, OCD and ACHD ...

HERSHEY, Pa.--The spread of cancer cells may be slowed by targeting the protein km23-1, according to researchers at Penn State College of Medicine. A motor protein that transports cargo within the cell, km23-1 is also involved in the movement or migration of cells. Migration is necessary for cancer to spread, so understanding this cell movement is important for development of better cancer treatments. Kathleen Mulder, Ph.D., professor, biochemistry and molecular biology, looked for partner proteins that bind to and cooperate with km23-1 during cell movement, which ...

Chapel Hill, NC – CHAPEL HILL – Hepatitis C virus has evolved to invade and hijack the basic machinery of the human liver cell to ensure its survival and spread. Researchers at the University of North have discovered how hepatitis C binds with and repurposes a basic component of cellular metabolism known as a microRNA to help protect and replicate the virus. In a paper published online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Dec. 17, researchers in the laboratory of Stanley M. Lemon, MD, professor of medicine and microbiology and immunology and member of ...