Will Mesothelioma risk in shipbreaking decline?

We recently reported that international meetings were going on to discuss how to decrease the health and environmental risks associated with shipbreaking. Because of the large quantities of asbestos that were used on many older ships, malignant mesothelioma is a serious risk.

Sixty-three countries have now adopted a U.N. convention, drafted by the International Maritime Organization, that sets higher standards for shipbreaking yards, primarily located in the developing countries of South Asia, where older ships often are dismantled and recycled.

Critics of the current agreement say that making shipbreaking safer for workers and the environment will require that owners remove asbestos and other dangerous materials from the ships before they are sent to the shipbreaking yards. They also say a ban is needed on breaking down ships along beaches. They say the current convention won’t make things safer or cleaner and actually legitimizes the shipbreaking yards.

In some places, like India and Bangladesh, court intervention is working to clean up the shipbreaking yards or close them down.

Life experience college degrees are a tremendous means to accelerating an education. Hundreds of schools nationwide recognize the importance and value of the expertise working adults have gained during a career, and are rewarding those people with credits, and in some cases, a 100% life experience college degree. Obtaining an education in this manner can help many adults get on the fast track to a better career!

A higher education degree is often just the ticket one needs to move up in the business world. Going back to school to earn a degree, while employing the knowledge and skill already acquired in the working world, validates years of work and makes it easier to move up the corporate ladder. It only seems fair to reward working adults for their years of learning on the job. Because of the practical knowledge most working adults have accrued, it seems ridiculous to start them at ground zero with a student who has just completed high school. Life experience college degrees reward previous accomplishments and speed up the path to a better career.

Because of the competitiveness of the business world, one's accomplishments need confirmation. This is why life experience college degrees are gaining in popularity. These credits can be earned in a variety of ways such as relevant work experience, military service, professional authorship, community service, or attendance at professional conferences or workshops. Taking and passing examination tests such as the CLEP (College Level Examination Program) enables a person to test out of classes and earn the credit for a course without having to sit though what would otherwise be redundant learning.

Even if someone does not have enough credits for an entire life experience college degree, most institutions will reward the student with at least some credits to put toward a degree, lessening the time it takes to complete a program. Different schools will vary on how they interpret and reward on-the-job training, so it pays to look at several institutions. To get the most out of one's expertise, a person should choose a program goal that fits along the same lines as past work training.

Most schools use a similar process to equate prior on-the-job training to college credits. Students are asked to submit any previous educational transcripts, as well as any evidence of military service, community service, and past employment. Potential program applicants also may be asked to create a portfolio, showcasing their accomplishments. In addition, students will probably take placement exams to prove what knowledge they have already gained. A guidance counselor then will evaluate the submissions and will convert previous training into credits that can be used to earn a life experience college degree.

In the business world, many people have acquired a wealth of skills and expertise. Now individuals can validate further their experience by converting years of hard work into a valuable degree. The Bible says to "Give instruction to a wise man, and he will be yet wiser: teach a just man, and he will increase in learning" (Proverbs 9:9). Life experience college degrees merely authenticates the skills and knowledge someone has worked for years to gain as well as providing them with the educational verification needed to promote a career to the next level.

Greeting card business opportunities allow individuals to invest time and money into an organization based solely on producing and selling invitations, business cards, and other specialized greetings. The first greeting card business opportunity a person might consider is a mailing service for local businesses. Many businesses like to send out birthday, anniversary and other types of cards to their clients. Someone beginning an operation in this field should contact local companies such as real estate offices, insurance agents, attorneys, financial offices, beauty salons, and medical or dental offices and contract with them to send these cards out as a service. The individual can order or print custom cards for the companies that fit their personality and needs. They can also offer this service as a personal service to busy executives, family members or elderly people. The possibilities are endless with this type of greeting card business opportunity. "But if we hope for that we see not, then do we with patience wait for it." (Romans 8:25)

Another potential market to explore is a web-based service. There are several web-based services that will allow an individual to set up a website and market this site to friends and associates. Many of these services provide things like calendars and even handwriting services that allow the customer to adapt the site to fit their needs. The person signs on to a greeting card business opportunity site and picks a card. After entering the addressing information, they click send. The order is then sent to the individual where they would either print the card or pull it from inventory. Finally, the envelope would be labeled, stamped, and mailed to the recipient. With greeting card business opportunities of this nature, the individual can make a profit and people save time and money by not having to run to the store, pick the appropriate greeting, and then go to the post office to mail it. They can use the calendar on the website to set up reminders and even order cards in advance. The convenience of not having to leave the home or office makes this service very appealing.

There are many other ideas that may appeal to certain people. For a creative person, there are opportunities to seek greeting card business opportunities that involve creating and selling original cards on a home computer. There are many different types of computer software programs available today that allow someone to create color cards in a matter of minutes. The entrepreneur can market their greeting card business opportunity to local businesses or sell them on the Internet. With this option, notes can be customized and original photos or artwork can be included. A local craft shop or office supply store should stock many card materials that a person can utilize for this operation.

by: Jane Hendry

Have you ever noticed how some businesses seem to do extremely well, and go from strength to strength, whilst the majority just seem to muddle along?

Since starting my own business I've met many small business owners and what I've noticed is that the vast majority of them seem to just about get by, but few reach the level of success that they're actually capable of. Some of them end up failing altogether, some lurch from project to project, and some do OK, but never really achieve the success or lifestyle they envisioned when they started their business.

On the other hand, I know a handful of extremely successful service business owners, who are making high 6 and 7 figure incomes every year (and rising) - and yet they don't work longer hours, their products and services are not magnitudes better than their competitors and they aren't geniuses!

So what is the difference between the successful businesses and the struggling businesses?

In a word: Marketing

Whilst there can be other factors that affect the ability of a business or practice to be successful, such as the economy, trends, cashflow and product/service quality or innovation, the number one difference between successful high-flying businesses and their struggling counterparts is good marketing.

Here is the lament of one survey respondent which is typical of the angst felt by service business owners who know they do a good job, but who don't understand why they don't have a queue of clients at their door:

"We know our products and services are good - we get great feedback from those clients we've worked with - but we still have trouble getting potential customers to buy in. Our services offer real benefits to clients but we are not as successful as we should be when we see what other companies offer (not as much) and yet are still very successful."

If you offer a quality service or product that produces great results for your customers or clients, and yet you're still struggling to get all the clients that you want or need, or to charge the fees you deserve, you probably have a marketing problem.

What do highly successful business owners do that others do not?

The first thing that they do is to realise that their primary objective is to build their practice or client base. In the words of Michael Gerber (who wrote The E-myth) they "work ON their businesses, not IN their businesses". What this involves is making the time to work on the business - in particular on marketing and product or service development, rather than spending all of their time handling clients, delivering services and dealing with administration.

They also look for areas where they can gain "leverage". Simply put, this means gaining maximum return for every hour they work. Instead of trading hours for pounds or dollars, they find ways to do the work once and get paid for it many times. They find ways to market their services one to many, instead of one to one (thus reducing marketing and sales effort and time). They delegate those activities which take up a lot of time (but which don't add much value in terms of moving the business forward) or which they are not skilled in such as admin, accounting, website maintenance and copywriting.

They also develop a success mindset, understand their strengths and weaknesses, take risks, innovate, hang out with other successful people and build a support network around themselves.

But above all, they learn how to market their businesses and create a marketing system that keeps a steady stream of prospects knocking at the door, without taking up all of their time!

Environmental science education was created by people concerned that every human being is responsible to care for and protect the world. The environment has been threatened and damaged by human intervention in the process of nature by technical and industrial advances that have improved the way of life for all mankind. However, the instigators of the Industrial Revolution of the 19th century never dreamed that their innovations would one day challenge mankind's very existence. It is such concerns that today's curriculum proposes to bring to everyone's attention.

School programs, community efforts and industrial regulations have been created to address these situations that threaten to eliminate fresh water sources, clean air and destroy the natural habitat of wildlife. All of these contribute to the ecosystem functioning in cooperation with each other. Therefore, what happens to these environmental factors directly affects every human on the planet. The benefit of an environmental science education provides an understanding of the world encompassing mankind, but it also establishes the necessity of cooperation between all humans of every nationality, race and gender. The benefits or the detriments will affect all, no matter what other differences they may hold against each other. Of course, if there isn't a world fit to live in due to environmental sub-standard conditions, the other petty issues of race and power have no bearing whatsoever.

Environmental science education holds the purpose to educate from an early age the importance of preserving and protecting the natural resources upon which everyone depends for food, for life. No one is exempt from the responsibility, yet too many are so dependant on what is readily available and don't take time to know from where it originated. Electricity, gasoline, drinking water, all these are part of the daily routine of humans, yet too many haven't considered how these conveniences are provided and in what limited quantities they exist. The earth cannot reproduce the natural resources taken for granted at the pace in which they are being consumed and someday will be drastically depleted. Genesis 1:26 says "And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth."

It is up to those who are intimately aware of the pending danger to send out a wake-up call to not only the residents of the world, but also, to the governing bodies who can set regulations on consumption and protection of the earth's natural resources. A dangerous setback to such regulations is the power of those legislators who prefer to benefit within their own personal economic opportunities instead of broadening their concerns to the good of mankind. Such actions for personal gain destroy the positive proposals of those efforts to promote environmental science education and subsequently the preservation of the earth and mankind.

Making the AdSense Ads suit your website – Part 3 (Positioning of Ads)

The four important properties that help in making the AdSense Ads look good on your website are – shape, size, color of the Ads and their positioning. While the first three can be customized using the customization options provided by Google, ‘positioning of Ads’ is something that Google can only give you advice on. You are the best judge of what position would be best suitable for your AdSense Ads.

The positioning of your Ads relative to the rest of the content is important in order to adequately emphasize the Ads. However, positioning of the Ads is also dependent on the size and shape of the AdSense Ads. Though shape and size are customizable too, large size Ads are generally preferred because they help increase the number of Ad impressions you can get. However, sometimes the structure of your webpage might not allow a big size Ad. In such a case you would need to strike a balance between the size of your ad and the best positioning for it. A number of website owners use other properties in order to make the big size Ads appear smaller e.g. they might use the background color of the webpage for the background and border of the AdSense ad thereby making it look smaller than it actually is (besides achieving the blending effect, of course).

Position your AdSense Ads in such a way that they look in-place with the general flow of content on your website. You can even position a block in the middle of the content in such a way that it adds value to the content (while it also serves your purpose of increasing the AdSense revenue through clicks) e.g. you could add an AdSense Ad block just after a statement that points to resources for a particular task – and your AdSense Ads could possibly form some such resources. Placing the Ads just above the heading of an article or just after the end of the article is another good way of positioning your AdSense Ads.

So, position your AdSense Ads intelligently and you would be in for a party much earlier than you would have expected.

Making the AdSense Ads suit your website – Part 2 (Color of Ads)

Making the AdSense Ads suit your website is an easy job that can really enhance the effectiveness of your AdSense Ads (and hence increase the AdSense revenue for you). The four properties that contribute towards making the AdSense Ads look in-place on your website are – size, shape, color and positioning of the Ads. Though none of these properties can be regarded as more important than the others, the color of Ads is surely one thing that can help a lot in making the Ads blend with your website or making them stand out. Let’s take a closer look at this Ad customization option that Google provides to all the webmasters who use the Google AdSense program for earning revenue.

Color of your Ads:

This is one property of Ads that is fully customizable. You can easily customize the color of your Ads using the color palettes provided by Google; and there are more than 200 colors available. You can choose from several different colors that are available on the color palette (and 200 colors are enough for any website). You can choose colors for Border, Title, Text and URL. You can also set a background color for your Ads. As you select various options, you can see how the ad looks in the preview tool that is shown on the same page as the options; and you can accordingly make adjustments. The color combinations for the various parts of the Ad and for the background should match the color combinations used in the other parts of the website. To make the Ad blend with the website, you can use the background color of your webpage as the background color and the border color for your AdSense Ad. If you want to make the Ads stand-out, you can use contrasting colors for your Ads; however, this is generally not preferred unless you have other elements on the website that use similar colors too e.g. you can have the same background color and text color as the menu options. Once you have the right color combinations, you can save them as custom color palette which you can use later.
Similar color customization options are available for Google AdSense search results page too (as in, Google AdSense for search).

Advanced degrees in nursing are becoming a popular choice for RN's who want to improve their clinical skills, qualify for any number of management positions and receive a higher paycheck. With the growing nurses shortage in the United States, RN's are capitalizing on the opportunity to receive promotional training offered by many colleges and universities. These are considered to be any nursing degree above an RN. This includes a BSN or Bachelor of Nursing Degree, an MSN or Masters of Science in Nursing, and an NP or Nurse Practitioner. Advanced nursing degrees allow a nurse to eliminate their floor time, which can be a very rigorous job duty.

The BSN can be obtained at an accelerated pace once an RN designation is met. There are many schools that offer these advanced degrees in nursing online. Many employers of RN's will offer tuition reimbursement for obtaining this degree if a contract to work for a set number of years is signed by the RN. A BSN will enable a nurse to qualify for a variety of management positions within a hospital or organization. Along with these particular diplomas come higher pay rates. Since there is such a shortage of nurses, many Bachelors degree graduates in other subject areas are going back to school and taking the required courses, passing the NCLEX, and receiving a second Bachelor's degree in nursing. These who discover nursing as an answer to an unfulfilling career can discover new life in a career that takes their first degree even farther. "Thou art wearied in the greatness of thy way; yet saidest thou not, There is no hope: thou hast found the life of thine hand; therefore thou wast not grieved" (Isaiah 57:10).

The MSN is for those who have already received a BSN and are looking to gain a much higher level position. These particular advanced degrees in nursing allow the nurse to specialize in one or more particular areas. MSN graduates can perform a variety of duties including but not limited to research, education, instruction, and directing. Obtaining an MSN can be done online as well. Many hospitals, employers or state governments will sponsor and reimburse a nurse for continuing their education. These reimbursements also come with an employment contract

The NP is one of the most advanced degrees that one can hold. It requires a highly advanced level of clinical experience. Nurses attain this level of academic achievement in order to diagnose and manage common and chronic illnesses independently or under the supervision of a doctor. In most states the NP's have the ability to prescribe medication. This is a much higher level of the field, and currently pays the highest salary next to tenure in an organization. Whether or not a nurse wants to advance to a BSN, MSN or NP is dependent upon specific personal career goals. Advanced degrees in nursing are offered through many flexible methods and obtaining these degrees today is a much needed and supported choice.

A computer science degree online allows the flexibility of earning a technology degree at home, and could open many doors of opportunity in the computer world. As technology advances, the need for experts expands as well. Finding the right school is important in the search for the right degree.

When looking for a school to attend through traditional or online courses, it is important for the student to keep in mind their goals for education and life experience. Obviously, they will not be attending parties or football games when they choose the route of a computer science degree online, but there are still some extra curricular activities that may be of interest. Some online colleges offer chat rooms for students to get to know each other and chat about life. Others, depending on the type of university, may even offer physical events. Some local universities offer Internet courses so the student would be able to participate in events with that school.

Cost is always an issue when looking for a school. The student will want to find a school that offers the best computer science degree online that they can afford. It is important not to become overwhelmed each semester when thinking about how much is being spent on schooling. An individual must be comfortable with the amount they are paying for this lifelong investment. If the program a person wants to join is out of their price range, there are scholarships, loans, and other funding programs available. This is also a great time to pray to God for help. "For the eyes of the Lord are over the righteous, and his ears are open unto their prayers." (1 Peter 3:12)

While studying for an online degree, a student may find that the format of independent study and Internet learning is not appropriate for them. There are options if this is the case. Local universities or community colleges may offer some of the classes needed to finish a degree. This may mean the student will need to attend physical classes, but this is a much better option than failing online classes. When choosing a school, it is important for the student to realize that this situation may arise so they must find out how flexible the schools program is with local colleges.

As with any online degree, it is crucial to set up a schedule and appropriate study area in order to succeed. There will be no physical class to attend at a predetermined time and the individual won't have other students to study with. This may sound gloomy or overwhelming, but there are online message boards and most often the professors will give contact information in the event that a student needs additional assistance. Another option is to find students studying computer science at the local university to become friends with. They may not be in the same program, but they will have the same career goals in mind. Seeking a computer science degree online is a wonderful opportunity for a student wanting to develop a career in this field.

Once you are done with setting up your Google AdSense account and once Google has approved your application, you are ready to use Google AdSense for earning revenue from your website. Just login into your account using your email address and password, click ‘AdSense Setup’ in the top menu and select the product type (i.e. ‘AdSense for Content’ or ‘AdSense for Search’). You will be presented with various options for customization of your AdSense Ads. Here we will take a look at setting up ‘AdSense for Content’ only (however, the setup for ‘AdSense for Search’ is quite similar and equally easy).

The first thing that you need to choose is the Ad type (Ad unit or link unit). Based on the Ad type you choose, you will need to specify the type of ad (text, image, etc for Ad unit) or number of links per link unit too. Google AdSense program allows you to use a maximum of three ad units and 1 link unit per web page (and you must use both, in order to maximize your AdSense revenue).

The next thing is to choose the Ad layout. There are various layouts available but large rectangle (336×280) and wide skyscraper (160×600) are preferred over others (since they help get more impressions for you and hence help you make more money).

Customizing the colors of various parts of your AdSense ad is the next thing you need to do. Even though customizing colors is optional (as far as the Google AdSense program is concerned), it’s strongly recommended for making your Ads attractive and more effective. Your choice of colors must be governed by the look and feel of your website so that the Ad doesn’t look out of place.

These are the essential customizations that you surely need to do before you can start using Google AdSense Ads on your website.