LV=, the mutual insurance, retirement and investment group, has announced a strong performance in the first half of 2010, with sales and trading profits significantly up on the same period of 2009. Life cover sales are up 40% to GBP63.5m on an APE (Annual Premium Equivalent) basis, compared to GBP45.2m in the first half of 2009. This includes retirement business seeing a 36% increase with an APE of GBP48.3 (H1 2009: GBP35.4m) while protection and savings businesses saw a 55% increase with an APE of GBP15.2m (H1 2009: GBP9.8m). General insurance GWP (Gross Written ...

MyGardenRouteInfo.com has recently identified serious accessibility issues at restaurants, accommodation and tourist attractions along the Garden Route and throughout the Eastern Cape and has endeavoured to offer a comprehensive resource for tourists with mobility and accessibility issues. According to Steve Chester, managing director of MyGardenRouteInfo.com, improving accessibility to establishments along the Garden Route requires a small investment, and is a business decision that can open a new and loyal market which he believe is currently under-catered for in ...

LV= has revealed new research conducted amongst motorists that shows many drivers are still getting behind the wheel, despite having poor eye sight. The research conducted by LV= car insurance reveals that 4.2 million drivers who don't currently wear glasses admitted their vision was 'not perfect' although they still drive and 1.1 million drivers who are prescribed glasses or lenses for driving said they don't always wear them whilst behind the wheel. Among the 53% of motorists that don't currently wear prescribed glasses or lenses, the statistics reveal that nearly ...

NH Hotels, in line with its spirit of innovation, has become the first Spanish hotel chain to develop a new information and booking application for the iPhone. The new app is now being made available to downloaded free of charge through the Apple Store. The simple and intuitive application which has been created by the multinational hotel firm has been developed to enable iPhone users to be able to search for hotels across the 25 countries where NH Hotels are located as well as providing information and the ability to book rooms via the app. This means travellers can ...

MyCapeTownInfo.com will now offer a range of new multimedia features to its visitors and clients. These have been designed to create an interactive and enjoyable browsing experience, while showcasing companies and tourism establishments in a manner largely unheard of in the region. At the core of the new multimedia offerings are advanced virtual tours, which are compiled using high-resolution digital cameras and a purpose-built 360 degree lens, imported from Spain. Photographs taken in and around various establishments are linked together into one interactive Flash file, ...

Statistics show that special promotions are the number one reason an online poker player chooses to sign up an account with a new poker site. Understanding this fact, PokerBonusesCodes.com (PBC) is pleased to expose the new UB bonus code "MORECASHUB", guaranteeing its users the highest possible welcome bonus. Users can start using the code now at Ultimate Bet. PBC is a leader in divulging the online poker industry's best kept secrets, and the poker portal has been keeping its eye trained on UB, formerly UltimateBet, for quite some time now. PBC collects data from the ...

Pokersignupcodes.net, a leading online poker portal today announced donation for Save The Children as a part of its philanthropic activities. When asked about this, the official spokesperson of Pokersignupcodes.net, Mr. Jerry Roberts, said "Pokersignupcodes.net is going to donate 30% of the revenue generated during the month of September to Savethechildren.org. This is just to appreciate the great work Savethechildren.org is doing worldwide." Pokersignupcodes.net is an online poker information portal helping casual as well as professional poker players to get the poker ...

Sabre Communications Corporation announced today that they have been awarded a subcontract for performance under the U.S. Army's Rapid Response, 3rd Generation (R2-3G) program. This is a 5-year, Indefinite Delivery/Indefinite Quantity (ID/IQ) contract by the Army. The U.S. Army's Communication Electronic Command (CECOM) at Ft. Monmouth, New Jersey, is the prime contract procurement agency. The prime R2-3G contract will provide support to the Department of Defense (DOD) and other Federal, state and local government agencies in the areas of technology insertion, system ...

In its constant attempt to simplify online shopping, making it more enjoyable and safe for every customer, Rx Corp launched a new online pharmacy, where prices are lower and delivery is faster. The decision was made to make most popular prescription medications available online at bulk prices, as it is commonly understood drugs can be overpriced and therefore impossible to afford for many. The new pharmacy is bound to solve any of those problems by offering an easy approach to the concept of online shopping and international delivery. The new pharmacy RxBuys.com can ...

The international security conference DeepSec (https://deepsec.net/) brings together the world's elite in network security and hacking in Vienna from 23 to 26 November 2010. This year, the conference focuses on the security of mobile systems and their users, as well as on the next-generation infrastructure. IT and security companies, users, officials, researchers and the hacker community have the opportunity to take part in the conference with 33 talks and 8 workshops scheduled this year. "We are happy to offer for the fourth time so many experts the chance to exchange ...

Ever since the e cigarette came onto the market in the United States around 2006 its popularity has continued to skyrocket exponentially, but only recently have governmental organizations and special interest groups begun to take notice. Initially they were seen only as novelty items, but have since developed a fan following that counts its membership in the millions. Few Americans are aware, however, that special interest groups that receive government aid such as the American Cancer Society are writing legislation and hand delivering it to state congresses for consideration ...

The deVere Group, the world's largest independent financial consultancy group, is pleased to announce that it has entered into a formal agreement with leading currency broker TorFX Ltd to offer foreign exchange advice to its clients. Established in 2004, TorFX is a foreign exchange company with a strong focus on customer service. The FSA regulated company was awarded "Best European Currency Broker" by Overseas Living Magazine in 2010. The deVere Group selected TorFX as its favoured foreign exchange provider because of its ability to offer outstanding value to its clients. ...

Ultrasonix Medical Corporation, a leading developer and manufacturer of high quality diagnostic ultrasound imaging systems, is pleased to announce today that it is improving its standard warranty program to 3 years on its entire product line. "In celebration of 10-years of providing our customers with innovative solutions and great service, as well as a growing demand in the global marketplace from customers for additional manufacturers protection, we are proud to announce that our product warranty will be extended by a full 24-months, to a total of 36-months, effective ...

SPOKANE, Wash.— Washington State University researchers have discovered the mechanism by which the brain switches from a wakeful to a sleeping state. The finding clears the way for a suite of discoveries, from sleeping aids to treatments for stroke and other brain injuries. "We know that brain activity is linked to sleep, but we've never known how," said James Krueger, WSU neuroscientist and lead author of a paper in the latest Journal of Applied Physiology. "This gives us a mechanism to link brain activity to sleep. This has not been done before." The mechanism—a cascade ...

It's tough being a teen. Are you in or are you out? Are you hanging with the right crowd? Are you dressing and talking and acting the right way? For adolescents who are ethnic minorities, on top of this quest to "fit in" is the added layer — and the burden — of dealing with discrimination, say UCLA researchers. In a new study, the researchers found that adolescents from Latin American and Asian backgrounds experienced more discrimination than their peers from European backgrounds and that the discrimination came not only from other adolescents but from adults as well. ...

Families from rural Mexico who receive health care from centralized clinics run by the federal government pay up to 30 percent less in out-of-pocket expenses and utilize preventive services more often than those families who access decentralized clinics run by states, according to a study by researchers at the UCLA School of Public Health. The findings are published in the September issue of the Journal of Social Science and Medicine and are currently available online. The data were drawn from a comprehensive survey of 8,889 rural families from seven states in ...

PORTLAND, Ore. — Using MRI technology and mathematical analysis, researchers at Oregon Health & Science University and Washington University in St. Louis are now able to accurately predict a young person's age simply by studying their brain scans. The research, which will likely have several clinical applications, including assessment and diagnosis, is published in the current edition of the journal Science. For several years, OHSU researcher Damien Fair, Ph.D., and his colleagues at Washington University, Nico Dosenbach, M.D., Ph.D., and Bradley Schlaggar, M.D., Ph.D., ...

Washington, D.C. (September 14, 2010) -- Driven by rapid global industrialization, finite fossil fuel reserves, and the high cost of many alternative energy options, meeting the world's energy challenge may demand novel solutions. One potential solution has its roots in the ubiquitous industrial invention: the factory. Investigators at SUNY Binghamton's Center for Advanced Microelectronics Manufacturing (CAMM) -- the only center of its kind in the United States -- are giving factory production of solar energy cells a modern makeover. Their approach includes the use of ...

Washington, D.C. (September 14, 2010) -- Piezoelectric materials have fantastic properties: squeeze them and they generate an electrical field. And vice-versa, they contract or expand when jolted with an electrical pulse. With a name derived from the Greek word meaning to squeeze or press, the piezoelectric effect was just a curiosity after it was discovered in several crystals in 1880. But in 1917, a quartz piezoelectric crystal was at the heart of the world's first submarine-detecting sonar. Piezoelectric materials really took off after the 1950s, with the development ...

Washington, D.C. (September 14, 2010) -- A new "on-chip" method for sorting and identifying bacteria has been created by biomedical engineers at Taiwan's National Cheng Kung University. The technique, developed by Hsien-Chang Chang, a professor at the Institute of Biomedical Engineering and the Institute of Nanotechnology and Microsystems Engineering, along with former graduate student I-Fang Cheng and their colleagues, is described in the AIP journal Biomicrofluidics. Using roughened glass slides patterned with gold electrodes, the researchers created microchannels to ...

Washington, D.C. (September 14, 2010) -- Some disasters and crises are related to each other by more than just the common negative social value we assign to them. For example, earthquakes, homicide surges, magnetic storms, and the U.S. economic recession are all kindred of a sort, according to a theoretical framework presented in the journal CHAOS, which is published by the American Institute of Physics. The researchers who developed this framework contend that these four types of events share a precursory development pattern -- a specific change of scale in indicators ...

Washington, D.C. (September 14, 2010) -- Because one of the main bottlenecks in determining the structure of protein molecules is producing good isolated single crystals, improved crystallization techniques would be useful in a wide range of genomics and pharmaceutical research. Research reported in The Journal of Chemical Physics uses fluorescence correlation spectroscopy (FCS) to investigate the processes at the surface of a growing crystal. By focusing a laser on the crystal surface and measuring the resulting fluorescence, FCS can resolve dimensions as small as a ...

Leading international marine scientists are proposing radical changes in the governance of the world's oceans to rescue them from overfishing, pollution and other human impacts. Based on a successful experiment in Chile, the researchers say a new approach to marine tenure could help to reverse the maritime 'tragedy of the commons' which has led to the depletion of fish stocks worldwide. "Marine ecosystems are in decline around the world. New transformational changes in governance are urgently required to cope with overfishing, pollution, global changes, and other drivers ...

Tranquil living environments can positively affect the human brain function, according to researchers at the University of Sheffield. The research, which was published in the journal NeuroImage, uses functional brain imaging to assess how the environment impacts upon our brain functions. The findings demonstrated that tranquil environmental scenes containing natural features, such as the sea, cause distinct brain areas to become 'connected' with one another whilst man-made environments, such as motorways, disrupt the brain connections. The research involved academics ...

INDIANAPOLIS – A new study led by Elizabeth Poposki, Ph.D., assistant professor of psychology in the School of Science at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, may help employers identify employees who enjoy multitasking and are less inclined to quit jobs involving multitasking. The study presents a new tool developed to measure preference for multitasking, information which may be of interest to bosses who tire of repeatedly hiring and training new employees. A growing number of individuals must multitask at work and positions requiring a significant amount ...