With the increase in foreign currency money transfer companies and brokers in the market, it has become very easy to transfer money internationally. These systems work in almost the similar way as the online banking system. It cuts out the middle men, keeps track of your foreign currency transactions and much more.
The foreign exchange brokers give you personalized services and will help you through the entire process of money transfer to India. Most of the foreign exchange brokers have highly experienced foreign exchange experts that will offer the best services for your needs.
Not only this, you can minimize the market risk by using the experts advise of these foreign exchange professionals. These experts make sure that you can do quick and safe transactions.
This is a big advantage over making transactions with a bank where you will have to wait for the bank?s own timing that might not be suitable to you.
How does an online international payment process work?
When you choose a provider and register with it, you will receive a user name and password. You will have to log into an automated system and purchase currency at live rates as little or as much as you want. All transactions are confirmed right away and the customer service assistants are always on hand to tackle any problems that you might have.
The major advantages of using online money transfer process:
1.The entire process is transparent and there is real-time tracking
2.There are no transfer charges
3.There are no commission charges
4.This process helps you to be in full control of the money transfer so that you can be sure of what you are doing
5.This process provides wholesale dealing rates
6.This process passes savings directly to the client
7.It is s relatively simple money transfer process
8.It is cost effective and fast
9.It saves time as it is an automated system
10.It is a secure system as every online transfer provider has is regulated by his relevant government in the country he operates either money transfer to France or money transfer to Spain
For More Information about money transfer to India please visit our website at http://www.comparemoneytransfer.co.uk
Phase-change materials that freeze at around room temperature could revolutionise energy storage, cooling things that are too hot and warming them later on
THE sun has risen, and a brand new building on the University of Washington's campus in Seattle is about to melt.
It is no design flaw: encapsulated within the walls and ceiling panels is a gel that solidifies at night and melts with the warmth of the day. Known as a phase change material (PCM), the gel will help reduce the amount of energy needed to cool office space in the building - scheduled to house the molecular engineering department when completed this month - by a whopping 98 per cent.
PCMs don't have to be as high-tech as this, of course. We have been using ice, a phase change material that melts at 0 ?C, to keep things cool for thousands of years. But advances in materials science and rising energy costs are now driving the development of PCMs that work at different temperatures to help people and goods stay cool or warm, or to store energy.
PCMs are attractive energy-savers because of their ability to absorb or release massive amounts of energy while maintaining a near-constant temperature. "To melt ice takes the same amount of energy as would be required to warm an equal volume of water by 82 ?C," says Jan Kosny of the Fraunhofer Center for Sustainable Energy Systems in Cambridge, Massachusetts, who began to explore the potential of PCMs three decades ago by looking at beeswax as a way to store heat from the sun. The reason PCMs are so useful is because energy is needed to break the molecular bonds between atoms when a substance melts, and is released when bonds are formed as it solidifies.
The "bioPCM" gel in the university building, derived from vegetable oils, will be "charged" each night when windows automatically open to flush the building with cold outdoor air. The solid gel then absorbs heat as it melts the next day. The idea is the same as using thick concrete or adobe walls, which reduce indoor temperature fluctuations, but only a fraction of the material is required. "Our bioPCM is 1.25 centimetres thick yet it acts like the thermal mass of 25 centimetres of concrete," says Peter Horwath, founder of Phase Change Energy Solutions, based in Asheboro, North Carolina.
A recent report by technology research firm Lux Research predicts the use of phase change materials in buildings will grow from near zero today to $130 million in annual sales by 2020.
Meanwhile, a number of other applications are emerging. UK-based Star Refrigeration is using carbon dioxide, which changes phase from liquid to gas at a very low temperature, to keep data centres cool. Heat emitted by today's high-performance server farms can overwhelm even the most advanced water cooling systems. By piping CO2 through heat exchangers, the company recently demonstrated an ability to pull nearly twice as much heat from the computers as the systems used at present.
In western China, PCMs derived from yak butter and local plant oils are helping yak herders keep warm. The material is encased in plastic and then woven into traditional clothing. It melts as herders work up a sweat walking to mountain pastures then, when they stop moving, the pent-up heat is slowly released, keeping them warm as they watch their herds. More than 100 families are now using the materials as part of an ongoing pilot project that also includes bed rolls warmed by cooking stoves in the day to keep people warm at night. "Families that use them are starting to see a significant difference in the amount of fuel they need," says Scot Frank of One Earth Designs, also based in Cambridge, which developed the compounds.
Another promising application for PCMs is vaccine delivery in developing countries. Vaccines need to be kept cold during transport, which is a challenge in countries with limited refrigeration. They are typically packaged in ice, but their effectiveness can be severely compromised if they freeze. Using materials that change phase between 4 and 8 ?C, US packaging manufacturer Sonoco says it has developed a solution that can keep vaccines cool for up to six days. Sonoco is now testing the Greenbox with a non-profit biotechnology developer called PATH, to meet World Health Organization standards.
Harnessing PCMs for energy storage could also give solar power a boost. Today systems that concentrate solar thermal energy rely on liquid salts to store heat. This allows power plants to produce energy when the sun is not shining, but requires massive amounts of liquid and large, well-insulated storage facilities. By using chemicals that change phase instead, German manufacturer SGL Carbon says it can reduce the volume of storage material required by roughly two-thirds. The company is currently testing a prototype.
For Kosny, all of the recent interest in PCMs is something of a vindication. "Ten years ago, when I argued for the development of phase-change materials, no one was interested," he says. "Now we can't seem to develop these materials fast enough."
If you would like to reuse any content from New Scientist, either in print or online, please contact the syndication department first for permission. New Scientist does not own rights to photos, but there are a variety of licensing options available for use of articles and graphics we own the copyright to.
Have your say
Only subscribers may leave comments on this article. Please log in.
Only personal subscribers may leave comments on this article
Subscribe now to comment.
All comments should respect the New Scientist House Rules. If you think a particular comment breaks these rules then please use the "Report" link in that comment to report it to us.
If you are having a technical problem posting a comment, please contact technical support.
PILAR, Argentina (Reuters) ? Argentina's popular president, Cristina Fernandez, is recovering well after undergoing surgery for thyroid cancer on Wednesday, setting the stage for her return to work later this month.
Fernandez's papillary carcinoma was detected during a routine medical checkup just before Christmas and there was no sign the disease had spread, government officials said.
The cancer diagnosis came just months after the center-left leader easily won a second four-year term in office. Doctors have said the 58-year-old president has a better than 90 percent chance of recovery.
"The surgery on President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner was carried out without any complication," presidential spokesman Alfredo Scoccimarro told reporters, adding that she will remain hospitalized for about 72 hours.
A few hundred supporters cheered upon hearing the news, some of them holding signs reading "Strength Cristina." They were gathered outside the Austral Hospital in the city of Pilar, some 28 miles north of the capital Buenos Aires.
Fernandez's already high approval ratings could get an extra lift from public sympathy over her illness as they did following the death late in 2010 of her husband and predecessor as president, Nestor Kirchner.
The news of her ailment shook a country where Eva Peron, the wife of legendary leader Juan Peron, has been revered for decades after dying of cancer at the age of 33. Like "Evita," Fernandez is loved by some for her efforts to help the poor.
"We were all worried about how she was doing. She's a great help to all of us ... and luckily everything went well. Now we have to wait for her to recover and forge ahead," said Irma Acosta, a 60-year-old worker.
Doctors removed the president's thyroid gland during an operation that lasted some 3-1/2 hours.
"That is the appropriate procedure," said Oscar Levalle, chief of endocrinology at Hospital Durand in Buenos Aires. "This is a relatively common pathology and has a very good prognosis ... she should recover well."
Vice President Amado Boudou, the former economy minister and a loyal Fernandez aide, assumed the presidency during Fernandez's scheduled 20-day leave of absence.
Widely popular among Argentines who benefit from her generous welfare spending, the president often gets bad marks from business leaders and Wall Street who say her interventions in the economy frighten off investment.
She is the latest of several left-leaning Latin American leaders to have cancer. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, who underwent chemotherapy last year, speculated after the Fernandez diagnosis that the U.S. "empire" may have developed a way to give the illness to its political rivals.
Paraguayan President Fernando Lugo's lymphatic cancer is in remission and former Brazilian leader Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva is being successfully treated for a tumor on his larynx.
Fernandez is a talented orator fond of glamorous clothes, high heels and make-up. She still wears black to mourn Kirchner.
Many thought his death spelled the end of the couple's idiosyncratic blend of state intervention, nationalist rhetoric and championing of human rights. But Fernandez won re-election in a landslide in October, helped by brisk economic growth fueled in part by hefty grain export revenues.
(Additional reporting by Alejandro Lifschitz and Hilary Burke; Writing by Hugh Bronstein and Luis Andres Henao; Editing by Vicki Allen)
Impaired quality of life: A warning signal after oesophageal cancer surgeryPublic release date: 4-Jan-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: KI Press Office pressinfo@ki.se 46-852-486-077 Karolinska Institutet
A new study published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology shows that most patients who survive for at least five years after oesophageal cancer surgery recover an average quality of life. However, quality of life deteriorates significantly for one in six patients to a level that remains much lower than the average population in the five years after surgery. This suggests, say the researchers, that hospitals must be better at identifying this patient group.
Globally, oesophageal cancer is the eighth most common form of cancer. The prognosis is a poor one, and only 10 per cent of patients survive five years after diagnosis. The disease is often discovered in a late stage after symptoms such as swallowing difficulties and weight loss appear. The only established curative treatment includes extensive surgery, often of the abdomen, chest and throat. Some 30 per cent of patients survive the operation at least five years. The purpose of the current study was to establish if the quality of life among five-year survivors of surgery for oesophageal cancer is on a par with that of the average population.
The study included 117 patients who had undergone surgery for oesophageal cancer in Sweden between 2001 and 2005, and survived at least five years. The patients were asked to answer a quality of life questionnaire that measured a range of functions (e.g. physical, social and emotional) and symptoms (e.g. pain, fatigue and eating difficulties). To obtain an idea of what their quality of life was like before the operation, the researchers had a group of 4,910 randomly selected individuals answer the same questions. The replies were then re-calculated as points on a 0-100 scale, where high scores for functions and low ones for symptoms were good. The analyses were adjusted for age, sex and medical state of health.
What they found was that most patients had an unchanged or even improved quality of life, and one that was comparable with that of the normal population. However, one in six patients experienced a considerable deterioration in quality of life, which was persistently much lower than that of the normal population at five years post-surgery. Physical function, for example, had remained unchanged or improved in 86 per cent of the patients, whose score on this factor was 87 five years after surgery, compared to 88 for the normal population; the corresponding score for the 14 per cent of patients who had deteriorated over the five years was 56.
"The patients who show early signs of impaired quality of life should be identified and helped through a more intensive follow-up to avoid a persistently low quality of life," says principal investigator Pernilla Lagergren, professor of surgical care sciences at the Department of Molecular Medicine and Surgery at Karolinska Institutet. Depending on the problems identified by the patients, targeted intervention is often possible. For example, a patient with particular nutritional problems can be referred to a dietician with specialist knowledge of this patient group.
###
Publication: "Health-related quality of life among 5-year survivors of esophageal cancer surgery a prospective population-based study", Maryam Derogar and Pernilla Lagergren.
Published online before print January 3, 2012, doi: 10.1200/JCO.2011.38.9791
For further information, contact:
Professor Pernilla Lagergren
Tel: 46-8-517-759-84 or 46-70-376-5479
Email: pernilla.lagergren@ki.se
Contact the press office and download photo: http://ki.se/pressroom
More about Karolinska Institutet a medical university: http://ki.se/English
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Impaired quality of life: A warning signal after oesophageal cancer surgeryPublic release date: 4-Jan-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: KI Press Office pressinfo@ki.se 46-852-486-077 Karolinska Institutet
A new study published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology shows that most patients who survive for at least five years after oesophageal cancer surgery recover an average quality of life. However, quality of life deteriorates significantly for one in six patients to a level that remains much lower than the average population in the five years after surgery. This suggests, say the researchers, that hospitals must be better at identifying this patient group.
Globally, oesophageal cancer is the eighth most common form of cancer. The prognosis is a poor one, and only 10 per cent of patients survive five years after diagnosis. The disease is often discovered in a late stage after symptoms such as swallowing difficulties and weight loss appear. The only established curative treatment includes extensive surgery, often of the abdomen, chest and throat. Some 30 per cent of patients survive the operation at least five years. The purpose of the current study was to establish if the quality of life among five-year survivors of surgery for oesophageal cancer is on a par with that of the average population.
The study included 117 patients who had undergone surgery for oesophageal cancer in Sweden between 2001 and 2005, and survived at least five years. The patients were asked to answer a quality of life questionnaire that measured a range of functions (e.g. physical, social and emotional) and symptoms (e.g. pain, fatigue and eating difficulties). To obtain an idea of what their quality of life was like before the operation, the researchers had a group of 4,910 randomly selected individuals answer the same questions. The replies were then re-calculated as points on a 0-100 scale, where high scores for functions and low ones for symptoms were good. The analyses were adjusted for age, sex and medical state of health.
What they found was that most patients had an unchanged or even improved quality of life, and one that was comparable with that of the normal population. However, one in six patients experienced a considerable deterioration in quality of life, which was persistently much lower than that of the normal population at five years post-surgery. Physical function, for example, had remained unchanged or improved in 86 per cent of the patients, whose score on this factor was 87 five years after surgery, compared to 88 for the normal population; the corresponding score for the 14 per cent of patients who had deteriorated over the five years was 56.
"The patients who show early signs of impaired quality of life should be identified and helped through a more intensive follow-up to avoid a persistently low quality of life," says principal investigator Pernilla Lagergren, professor of surgical care sciences at the Department of Molecular Medicine and Surgery at Karolinska Institutet. Depending on the problems identified by the patients, targeted intervention is often possible. For example, a patient with particular nutritional problems can be referred to a dietician with specialist knowledge of this patient group.
###
Publication: "Health-related quality of life among 5-year survivors of esophageal cancer surgery a prospective population-based study", Maryam Derogar and Pernilla Lagergren.
Published online before print January 3, 2012, doi: 10.1200/JCO.2011.38.9791
For further information, contact:
Professor Pernilla Lagergren
Tel: 46-8-517-759-84 or 46-70-376-5479
Email: pernilla.lagergren@ki.se
Contact the press office and download photo: http://ki.se/pressroom
More about Karolinska Institutet a medical university: http://ki.se/English
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Members of the Music Men and Sometime Singers say they often see miraculous moments when they perform. The River Hills Community Church groups see their audience, even wheelchair-bound, tapping their toes to the music.
?The care givers told us the only time they show any signs of activity is when we?re there or they hear music,? said Kevin Gray, music director for the Lake Wylie church. ?Just a smile or nod of acknowledgement from these people speaks volumes to the magic and healing power of music, and it?s why we do what we do.?
Both the Music Men and Sometime Singers were founded more than 25 years ago by Mack Jones and Joanne Brown, respectively, as community outreach programs. Equipped with a collection of songs from Broadway hits and secular music to The Beatles, the groups travel to retirement communities, hospice centers and adult day care centers throughout York County and Charlotte with a singular purpose: to entertain, make jokes and to shake up the daily routine.
?I think we all have a selfish motive for joining, which is that we love to sing and are grateful to have an audience to listen to us,? said Sometime Singers member Ellen Hendrickson. ?But to be able to reach people who don?t have variety or this type of thing in their lives anymore is truly a blessing.?
Singer Ethel Webb agrees she gets as much out of it as the audience.
?When someone you performed for who you considered unaware suddenly looks up at you with their eyes full of life, it?s humbling,? she said. ?We really benefit so much ourselves from sharing in their joy, and we make sure to let them know how happy we are to share our day with them.?
For others, like Music Men member Bill MacIndoe, it?s a chance to continue a passion and family tradition forged during his childhood.
?I started singing at 12 years old in a Presbyterian church quartet in Philadelphia, and have sang un every church I?ve been a member of ever since,? he said. ?Choir is a big part of my life, and I get to keep doing it while also helping give back to those perhaps less fortunate.?
Many of the 30-plus combined members also see it as a second chance to perform. Several of the performers were members of Lake Wylie Community Theater, which closed in 2001. But those ?tight bonds,? they say, are carried on.
?There were a lot of us here who acted, danced, sang, made costumes and designed sets for the Lake Wylie Theater productions,? said Sometime Singers member Marg Barnes. ?We feel like family here, and since we perform many of the pieces we did back then, it?s a great way to relive those great memories.?
With an average age older than 70, the Music Men and Sometime Singers also find their camaraderie helps them through difficult times.
?For the loved ones we lost that once sang with us, we sing at their funerals as a meaningful way to honor both the family and the person,? Gray said. ?It just continues to show how music can help one elevate and endure.?
Like their church, everyone is welcome to join.
?We have both members and non-members of the church who sing with us, and even those who don?t attend church,? Gray said. ?For both the church and the singing groups, we try to define ourselves by what we embrace in each other, not by the little things that divide us. It doesn?t make any difference where you are on your faith journey.?
Rehearsals will resume Jan. 24. Anyone interested in joining the Music Men and Sometimes Singers should email kevin@rhcconline.org.
Although official?results from the Iowa caucuses won?t be finalized until late Tuesday night, President Barack Obama scored an early victory Monday by winning the most coffee beans.
At the famed Hamburg Inn No. 2 restaurant in Iowa City, customers filled jars with coffee beans at the cash register in what locals have dubbed the Iowa Coffee Bean Caucus, the Press-Citizen reported.
President Obama was the big winner, with 6,442 beans. He also won the unofficial bean-poll in 2008.
Even though Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann will likely come in last Tuesday, she won the greatest support among bean-dropping diners who voted for a GOP candidate, with 1,147. Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney rounded out the top three with 847 coffee beans.
The Hamburg Inn invited all of the GOP candidates to meet some of its customers, but only Bachmann, Texas Gov. Rick Perry and former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum paid the restaurant a visit.
Follow Taylor on Twitter
Read more stories from The Daily Caller
Candidate Buddy Roemer learns how the Iowa caucuses work on election night
Obama scores repeat victory in Iowa Coffee Bean Caucus
Ed Rollins to Michele Bachmann: Get out and endorse, or go into debt
Tea party icon whiles away time, alone, at Bachmann HQ
VanitaCyril ![[ Back to EurekAlert! ]](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_vTblVzpD8We8fSUnuMETYgQOHrijI5wW0pE3tn4i7OgiI3AB7R7Uk7rHp5aCWneRusW7XvtACYxo8WyJmxDEb1xWbp8QL-jMPFWT0gQsY=s0-d){kind=small}
Public release date: 4-Jan-2012
Share ]