Archive for the 'General Category' Category
There have been a large number of medical advances over the past decade which provide valuable advancements in treatment for a wide ranging number of illnesses or injuries. Here are five advances in medicine that are now widely used and prevent, prolong or offer the opportunity to improve the quality of our lives.
Robotic Surgery
Robotic surgery is much less invasive than traditional methods of incision into one’s body by medical instruments. Wounds associated with entry to the area to be treated, excised or repaired are diminished. Healing time is much quicker, bleeding is minimized and the trauma to one’s body associated with traditional surgical processes is lessened and hence the time spent in the hospital recovering is also reduced. Robotic surgery is fast becoming the norm for a number of surgical procedures. Cardiopulmonary surgery, gastrointestinal surgery, neurosurgery and a number of other procedures are available. The surgeon normally is seated in front of a monitor that provides a view of the surgical site and operates robotic arms that can sense his movements and precisely and microscopically duplicate them as the actual operating instruments are making the necessary movements and repairs.
Smart Bombs
Chemotherapy associated with the treatment of a number of cancers has been vastly improved. In the past chemotherapy often resulted in the destruction of healthy cells while trying to destroy the cancerous ones. New antibodies which are used to attack cancerous cells now spare the healthy ones resulting in much better outcomes for the patient and often preventing the sickness associated with chemotherapy. The quality of life of cancer patients has been vastly improved as a result of this advancement. Formally patients believed the chemotherapy was worse than the disease.
Artificial Limbs
Largely as a result of wounded military members in Iraq and Afghanistan there have been remarkable strides in the development of prosthetic devices. Devices currently used to replace arms or legs lost to traumatic amputation are significantly more efficient and more comfortable that those of the past. Lightweight devices using carbon fiber are providing the opportunity for those that suffer amputations to lead more productive and fulfilling lives. In many cases service members that have lost limbs can continue in the military service where the physical demands are certainly greater than they would be in the civilian world.
Mapping the Human Genome
Scientists have almost completely identified the more that 20,000 genes that make up the human body. The outgrowth of this remarkable advancement is being realized now and promises additional remarkable advances in the future. Currently genes have been identified that are responsible for the predisposition of a individual to breast cancer, liver disease and several other disorders that can alert doctors to potential problems. Prophylactic measures can now be taken to treat and mitigate a potential disease or disorder.
Medications that treat erectile dysfunction (ED) were first introduced less than 10 years ago and have revolutionized the quality of life of many men that have been affected by this disorder. These medications have been widely promoted through television and are often the subject of humorous anecdotes, but the truth is that the premature demise to a satisfactory sex life is devastating. Viagra was the first medication on the market, but there are now several alternatives.
Source: ArticleCube.
Each of us knows at least 250 people that we don’t even know that we know. Each of us has constant and continuous meetings with people: spontaneously in the elevator, on the bus or on the train to work, at the grocery store—everywhere.
The Law of Attraction
Decide that you are a master of the Law of Attraction. If you haven’t seen the video called The Secret, by Rhonda Burns (it has been viewed by more than 100 million people), get it, watch it multiple times, and use its easy, result-getting principles. Also be sure to read The Master Secret and The 9 Laws of the Power of Thought in this series. These books are phenomenal and will change your life instantly and forever.
Every one of us is forever attracting. As we become conscious of this principle, we can use it more wisely and effortlessly to achieve all the good that we desire.
Use the Law of Attraction to think about bringing into your experience the ideal people who need, want, and can easily afford your product and who have a network of their own that they would like to share it with immediately.
Like you, they have 250 people they would invite to their wedding or who would be invited to their funeral.
All they need is a request stimulus to do-the-do.
For Example…
When I was with the above-mentioned herbal and vitamin company, I was forever ready to talk to anyone and everyone about it.
A client and friend of mine in the mortgage industry had me come down to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, to speak to her group. The night before, at dinner, she mentioned that her six-year-old son was having constipation problems and was only going to the bathroom once every ten days. She said that her doctor had said if that was normal for her child, it was OK.
She intuitively knew, and now heard from me, “Three meals in should equal three meals out—each and every day.”
I explained the product. She loved the story and wanted to see the product. When she looked at the 29 herbs in a can, she exclaimed, “But . . . it’s dust! Surely you don’t think my child will drink dust?”
When her son arrived, I mixed some of the powder in purified water; and we each drank a glass. The next morning before dawn, the son pounded on my door ecstatically, shouting, “Hey, you won’t believe it; it was this long!” He demonstrated with his widely spread hands that he’d had a two-foot-long poop. All this happened because he had ingested the right nutrition and it went through his ascending, transverse, and descending colon. His mom became a true believer, compelling storyteller, master recruiter, car- and trip winner, top earner, speaker, and presenter in the network marketing industry and a big-time money maker.
Inside of you, as Dr. Russell Conwell wrote in his must-read, classic book Acres of Diamonds, you have unlimited potential just waiting for the requisite stimulus.
Let this be the requisite stimulus to help you help yourself, your family, your team, and your future enrollees to have a bigger, better, greater, and grander future.
Even if you don’t know enough people to make you wealthy, the people you know know enough people!
Source: ArticleCube.
Facing the fact that someone you love is not only suffering from drug addiction, but now must receive help to overcome the addiction, is difficult for anyone. Where should you start? Who do you turn to? What questions do you need to ask about drug treatment programs? Perhaps, you may have been at this point before, and you now feel a sense of hopelessness in finding a residential treatment center that will work this time around. Maybe, though, this is the first time you’ve had to take these steps to help someone you love. The process can feel overwhelming.
Ultimately, you want your loved one back. You want that person you love free from drugs. You want that person to live a healthy and productive life. By asking the right question on each of the following areas when choosing a residential drug treatment center, your chances of making this happen for your loved one will increase.
1. Success Rate –
What is the success rate of the residential drug treatment center? Obviously, the higher the success rate, the more likely your loved one will succeed. Ask to speak with graduates of the drug rehab facility or their families. Get real opinions from real people.
2. Methods –
What method does the drug treatment center use? Ask yourself if they are addressing all aspects of your loved one’s addiction, including what led them to drugs in the first place. Methods that only deal with one aspect of addiction are more likely to fail. Remember addiction results from a combination of many factors, including a lessening of morality and integrity and an increasing burden of guilt and shame. The life of an addict includes bad habits, poor health and difficulty facing problems. After speaking with the facility, ask yourself if they are handling not just the psychological aspects, but also the physical and mental aspects of addiction as well. Are they providing practical skills that will help your loved one succeed once the drug rehabilitation program is completed?
3. Services –
What services does the residential drug treatment center offer? This is not only for your loved one, but for you as well. Will they help with legal issues? Will they assist in an intervention? In other words, to what length will they go to make certain your loved one gets the drug treatment they need?
4. Staff –
Who are the staff members at the residential drug treatment center? The best trained staff will have had experience with drug addiction. They will not have learned about it in a book. Are they qualified for their positions? What real-life knowledge do they have with drug addiction? What is their reason for working in this field?
5. Follow-up Program –
What type of follow-up program does the residential drug treatment center offer? This is important. Sending a newly rehabilitated drug addict back into the world without any follow-up can be disastrous. Make sure that there is a program of this type in place. Good programs keep in touch over the phone regularly after one leaves the program.
6. Location –
Where is the residential drug treatment center located? A residential drug treatment center should be protected. Ask how easy it would be for your loved one to leave. Many addicts when first coming off drugs want to leave. Ensuring that this is difficult, while not seeming like a prison, increases the chances that the person will stay to finish.
7. Length –
How long does the residential drug treatment center take? Although the standard program is 28 days, if the residential drug treatment center offers a longer program, it is more likely your loved one will succeed. However, if the residential drug treatment center allows your loved one to work at his or her own pace, without imposing time constraints, your loved one has an even greater chance of overcoming drug addiction. An example of a program that is not based on time but on completion can be seen at http://www.drugrehab.net
8. Price –
How much does the residential drug treatment center cost? Before eliminating any program because of its price, ask yourself this: What are they offering? Look back at the points above and determine what the drug rehab is truly giving to the one you love. Yes, the more it offers, the more likely the price will be higher. However, your loved one will have a greater chance at becoming a healthy productive member of society. How much is that person worth to you?
Choosing a residential drug treatment center can be difficult. Dealing with a loved one suffering from drug addiction is devastating. By breaking the process down into what is important and finding out the answers to the questions above, you will be able to make an informed choice as to which residential drug treatment program can best help you and your loved one. Drug addiction can be dealt with and overcome.
Source: ArticleCube.
If you’re in search for a bird hunting dog, there are things you should take into consideration. In general, there are many breeds of dog that are good for bird hunting, but they are different in the practice. First of all, there are certain traits that all bird hunting dogs should have. These are the factors you should consider when choosing your dog. These things should be looked at when you first meet with a breeder. Although it may be cheaper to get a dog from someone who isn’t qualified, a breeder is usually more reliable. Don’t think that all breeders are good, though.
When you come across two (or more) different dogs that you like, you need to compare bird hunting dogs before making a choice. Make sure that the dog you choose is great at all the points. You may take into consideration two kinds of traits: so-called official and private.
Under official traits I mean the dog’s heritage and the circumstances of breeding. Visiting a stock-breeder, look for a dog originating from bird hunting dogs. But it is only a good starting point. But there are other things too. Beyond characteristics like obedience and demeanor, you should make sure that the dogs were raised well by their owner or breeder.
When you compare bird hunting dogs make sure they have all of the necessary documentation. The owner or breeder should provide you with a veterinarian’s sheet stating and listing all of the shots and immunizations the dog has received. Don’t buy a dog that doesn’t have this documentation. If you have a possibility, look into the parents of the dogs when you compare them. The way the parents were often reflects on how the dog will be.
Beyond official documentation and comparison of dogs, there are also things you need to check out for yourself. Check the perspective dog’s temperament as well. You should also check how the dog reacts to children. The bird hunting dog should be very friendly with kids.
Anyway, test the obedience of the dog. The temperament of a bird hunting dog is very important at home and during a hunting trip too. If you should choose between two dogs spend time with each dog. Test the dog you want to choose. You need a dog that find and retrieve the bird you felled with your gun. It’s easier for dogs to maneuver through marshes and in a confusing area. The result of an obedience test and your feeling you have more affinity for is the dog you should choose.
All these things will help you to find the greatest helper when you are out hunting.
Source: ArticleCube.
Hunting and fishing have been many people’s favorite pastime for centuries. However, they have always been considered lonely activities. A fisherman is normally alone, or with a few friends – which is indeed great, for is that not one of the main things we love about our hobbies – doing them with the exact people (or better still, without them). When it comes to telling someone about the big piece we have caught or shot, the solitarily of the hobby can sometimes be very annoying – families remain indifferent, and even friends listen with an empty, if not irritated look.
This no longer needs to be the case. There is now Myoutdoorspace website, a special social network particularly intended for the fans of outdoor activities, which provides the opportunity for making new friends, sharing unforgettable experience and learning helpful information. Myoutdoorspace is not only for fishermen and hunters; all people with a passion for outdoor activities are welcome to it – this includes trekking, hiking, mountaineering, as well as outdoor sports such as skiing, surfing, rafting, snowboarding, etc.
There is nothing easier than becoming a member of this vast and constantly expanding network – all one has to do is sign up for a free profile. In their profile, people can fill in their details, add information about their outdoor hobbies and interest, and can upload pictures they wish to share with fellow outdoor fans.
Myoutdoorspace has a vast potential in terms of what it offers to its members. Users can share pictures and videos, upload stories and write in blogs. They can search for new friends or invite old ones to join. The website’s development team is willing to use users’ feedback in order to improve it and ass new features, like for instance adding useful fishing guides written by and for fishing fans.
For users who want to keep updated on what is going on in their main area of outdoor interest, there is a forum where any question may be asked and any experience shared. The forum is very popular among registered users, the most widely discussed recent topics being Texas fishing and hunting, and deer hunting. Users can also use the website as a venue to make announcements or sell or buy something – there is a special section for this.
Myoutdoorspace website is a social network which tries to give outdoor fans the accomplices they have always sought, trouble free and in a fun way.
Source: ArticleCube.
An already relentless melting of the Arctic greatly accelerated this summer, a warning sign that some scientists worry could mean global warming has passed an ominous tipping point. One even speculated that summer sea ice would be gone in five years.Greenland’s ice sheet melted nearly 19 billion tons more than the previous high mark, and the volume of Arctic sea ice at summer’s end was half what it was just four years earlier, according to new NASA satellite data obtained by The Associated Press.
“The Arctic is screaming,” said Mark Serreze, senior scientist at the government’s snow and ice data center in Boulder, Colo.
Just last year, two top scientists surprised their colleagues by projecting that the Arctic sea ice was melting so rapidly that it could disappear entirely by the summer of 2040.
This week, after reviewing his own new data, NASA climate scientist Jay Zwally said: “At this rate, the Arctic Ocean could be nearly ice-free at the end of summer by 2012, much faster than previous predictions.”
So scientists in recent days have been asking themselves these questions: Was the record melt seen all over the Arctic in 2007 a blip amid relentless and steady warming? Or has everything sped up to a new climate cycle that goes beyond the worst case scenarios presented by computer models?
“The Arctic is often cited as the canary in the coal mine for climate warming,” said Zwally, who as a teenager hauled coal. “Now as a sign of climate warming, the canary has died. It is time to start getting out of the coal mines.”
It is the burning of coal, oil and other fossil fuels that produces carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, responsible for man-made global warming. For the past several days, government diplomats have been debating in Bali, Indonesia, the outlines of a new climate treaty calling for tougher limits on these gases.
What happens in the Arctic has implications for the rest of the world. Faster melting there means eventual sea level rise and more immediate changes in winter weather because of less sea ice.
In the United States, a weakened Arctic blast moving south to collide with moist air from the Gulf of Mexico can mean less rain and snow in some areas, including the drought-stricken Southeast, said Michael MacCracken, a former federal climate scientist who now heads the nonprofit Climate Institute. Some regions, like Colorado, would likely get extra rain or snow.
More than 18 scientists told The AP that they were surprised by the level of ice melt this year.
“I don’t pay much attention to one year … but this year the change is so big, particularly in the Arctic sea ice, that you’ve got to stop and say, ‘What is going on here?’ You can’t look away from what’s happening here,” said Waleed Abdalati, NASA’s chief of cyrospheric sciences. “This is going to be a watershed year.”
2007 shattered records for Arctic melt in the following ways:
- 552 billion tons of ice melted this summer from the Greenland ice sheet, according to preliminary satellite data to be released by NASA Wednesday. That’s 15 percent more than the annual average summer melt, beating 2005’s record.
- A record amount of surface ice was lost over Greenland this year, 12 percent more than the previous worst year, 2005, according to data the University of Colorado released Monday. That’s nearly quadruple the amount that melted just 15 years ago. It’s an amount of water that could cover Washington, D.C., a half-mile deep, researchers calculated.
- The surface area of summer sea ice floating in the Arctic Ocean this summer was nearly 23 percent below the previous record. The dwindling sea ice already has affected wildlife, with 6,000 walruses coming ashore in northwest Alaska in October for the first time in recorded history. Another first: the Northwest Passage was open to navigation.
- Still to be released is NASA data showing the remaining Arctic sea ice to be unusually thin, another record. That makes it more likely to melt in future summers. Combining the shrinking area covered by sea ice with the new thinness of the remaining ice, scientists calculate that the overall volume of ice is half of 2004’s total.
- Alaska’s frozen permafrost is warming, not quite thawing yet. But temperature measurements 66 feet deep in the frozen soil rose nearly four-tenths of a degree from 2006 to 2007, according to measurements from the University of Alaska. While that may not sound like much, “it’s very significant,” said University of Alaska professor Vladimir Romanovsky.
Greenland, in particular, is a significant bellwether. Most of its surface is covered by ice. If it completely melted - something key scientists think would likely take centuries, not decades - it could add more than 22 feet to the world’s sea level.
However, for nearly the past 30 years, the data pattern of its ice sheet melt has zigzagged. A bad year, like 2005, would be followed by a couple of lesser years.
According to that pattern, 2007 shouldn’t have been a major melt year, but it was, said Konrad Steffen, of the University of Colorado, which gathered the latest data.
“I’m quite concerned,” he said. “Now I look at 2008. Will it be even warmer than the past year?”
Other new data, from a NASA satellite, measures ice volume. NASA geophysicist Scott Luthcke, reviewing it and other Greenland numbers, concluded: “We are quite likely entering a new regime.”
Melting of sea ice and Greenland’s ice sheets also alarms scientists because they become part of a troubling spiral.
White sea ice reflects about 80 percent of the sun’s heat off Earth, NASA’s Zwally said. When there is no sea ice, about 90 percent of the heat goes into the ocean which then warms everything else up. Warmer oceans then lead to more melting.
“That feedback is the key to why the models predict that the Arctic warming is going to be faster,” Zwally said. “It’s getting even worse than the models predicted.”
NASA scientist James Hansen, the lone-wolf researcher often called the godfather of global warming, on Thursday will tell scientists and others at a meeting of researchers in San Francisco that in some ways Earth has hit one of his so-called tipping points, based on Greenland melt data.
“We have passed that and some other tipping points in the way that I will define them,” Hansen said in an e-mail. “We have not passed a point of no return. We can still roll things back in time - but it is going to require a quick turn in direction.”
Last year, Cecilia Bitz at the University of Washington and Marika Holland at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado startled their colleagues when they predicted an Arctic free of sea ice in just a few decades. Both say they are surprised by the dramatic melt of 2007.
Bitz, unlike others at NASA, believes that “next year we’ll be back to normal, but we’ll be seeing big anomalies again, occurring more frequently in the future.” And that normal, she said, is still a “relentless decline” in ice.
—
On the Net:
National Snow and Ice Data Center on 2007 Arctic sea ice:
http://nsidc.org/news/press/2007-seaiceminimum/20070810-index.html
NASA’s “Tipping Points” panel and slide show materials:
Best Buy Co. Inc., Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and six other retailers will sell equipment enabling owners of analog television sets to continue to view programming after the 2009 nationwide switch to digital broadcasting, the federal government said Tuesday.Starting Jan. 1, an estimated 13 million to 21 million households that rely on an antenna to watch TV can contact the government to receive two coupons worth $40 each to buy converter boxes.
The $1.5 billion program — which is enough to fund 33.5 million coupons — ends March 31, 2009.
Retailers will begin selling the devices, which translate the digital signal for such TV sets, in mid February.
The other major retailers include Circuit City Stores Inc., Target Corp., Sears Holdings Corp. and its Kmart outlets and RadioShack Corp. Wal-Mart’s Sam’s Club stores will also sell the devices.
“Over 100 retailers have been certified including a variety of small stores retail chains and these very large retailers,” said Meredith Baker, who is the acting administrator of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, which is overseeing the coupon program.
“We have nationwide coverage with over 14,000 brick and mortar stores involved as well as with online participation,” she added during a telephone conference with journalists.
The nation’s broadcasters on Feb. 17, 2009 will be turning off their analog over-the-air broadcasts. Cable and satellite TV providers said they will ensure their subscribers continue to view programming after the switch.
©2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Citigroup Inc. named Vikram Pandit, the head of its investment banking business, as its chief executive officer Tuesday, charging him with restoring the bank’s profitability and reputation after missteps in lending and investing left Citi with billions of dollars in losses this year.
The banking company named Sir Win Bischoff, who has been Citi’s acting CEO, as its chairman, replacing Robert E. Rubin, who had stepped into the role when former CEO and chairman Charles Prince was ousted last month.
Pandit, who ran a hedge fund bought by Citi earlier this year, is seen as a careful, decisive investment banker—qualities Citi needs following the revelation that Citi’s writedowns of soured mortgages could amount to as much as $17.5 billion by the end of the year.
The appointments came after a two-day meeting of Citi’s board.
Pandit is well known on Wall Street, having worked at Morgan
Stanley for two decades until 2005, when he and a few other disgruntled colleagues left the brokerage and founded the hedge fund Old Lane Partners.
Earlier this year, Citigroup bought Old Lane for $800 million and put Pandit in charge of Citi’s alternative investments. A few months later, Pandit took over the bank’s markets and banking unit as well, and then reconfigured the business to mirror the Morgan Stanley structure he was familiar with.
His performance as Citi’s leader will undoubtedly be scrutinized by investors until they see positive results—including his willingness to challenge the Citi strategy of the past several years. One question on Wall Street is whether Pandit will be beholden to the Citi board, which has remained steadfastly loyal to the Sanford Weill regime. Weill, a board member, built Citigroup through a series of mergers and acquisitions over the past few decades, and many have attributed the bank’s failings this year to the Weill culture: Prince was his hand-picked successor.
Bischoff was the chairman of the British investment bank Schroders PLC, then joined Salomon Smith Barney Inc., a subsidiary of Citi, when it acquired Schroders. He began his current position in May 2000.
Unlike Merrill Lynch & Co., which took just two weeks to find a replacement for Stan O’Neal, its embattled CEO and another casualty of the mortgage crisis, Citi’s search dragged on. Merrill’s nab of John Thain, a Goldman Sachs alum who turned around the once-troubled New York Stock Exchange, eliminated him as a possibility for Citi.
Citi, with all its bad debt—not to mention the hemorrhaging funds known as structured investment vehicles that it manages—appeared to be a beast no one wanted to tame. According to various media reports, Citi’s overtures to big names in the banking industry such as Deutsche Bank CEO Josef Ackermann and Royal Bank of Scotland CEO Frederick Goodwin were spurned.
Pandit faces multiple challenges. He must not only attract more cash to offset Citi’s debt and bulk up the bank’s risk management, but he also needs to strengthen Citi’s lackluster consumer-oriented businesses and clean up its reputation.
Citi has shed about $120 billion in market capitalization this year, putting its market cap below that of Bank of America Corp. Citi is still the largest U.S. bank by assets, though, so while most major financial companies have seen problems navigating a surge in foreclosures and a freeze-up in credit, Citi’s losses have been seen on Wall Street as particularly egregious.
Citi’s cash levels will get a boost by the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, which in late November bought a 4.9 percent stake in Citi for $7.5 billion. But the investment, while helpful in offsetting some of Citi’s bad debt, is not a panacea. Many analysts and shareholders believe Pandit needs to sell more assets to bring in cash and make the huge conglomerate leaner. Citigroup has said non-essential assets selloffs are in the works, but many shareholders are hoping for more ruthless spinoffs—such as Citi’s brokerage arm, Smith Barney.
The board has been adamant, though, about not breaking up the bank.
Rubin, who led the search committee, said after Prince’s resignation that they were looking for someone to focus on Citigroup’s “multiplicity of businesses.”
“It is very important that whoever we have has a strong international focus—not necessarily enormous international experience, but can relate to the globalization of this institution and Chuck’s (Prince’s) strategy of having to ever increase that involvement,” Rubin said at the time.
A few analysts have even tossed around the idea of another big bank like JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Bank of America Corp. buying or merging with Citi. But given regulatory obstacles and the credit market problems facing even the best-positioned banks, other analysts say such a deal is unlikely at this time.
It has been a rough year for celebrity wrestler Hulk Hogan and family.
His wife, Linda, has filed for divorce after 24 years of marriage, and the couple’s 17-year-old son, Nick Bollea, is facing charges of reckless driving after an Aug. 26 crash in Florida that left a friend critically injured.
«I’m leaning into the wind,» Hogan, whose real name is Terry Bollea, told syndicated TV entertainment show «Access Hollywood» on Monday. «I’m trying to stay very, very positive. You know, I just pray that things get better for my family.
«As far as my son goes, we’re going to be very happy when the truth really comes out of what really (happened), instead of all the speculation and all the mentality that’s going on,» Hogan, 54, said. «As far as my divorce goes, I love my family and I love my wife to death and I just don’t know what tomorrow’s going to bring.
When asked about a possible reconciliation with his wife, Hogan said: «There’s always a chance. You can never say never.
Hogan and Laila Ali co-host NBC’s «American Gladiators,» a revival of the ’90s competition series. The new edition debuts Jan. 6.
«Things are bigger and faster,» Hogan said of the show. «Now we’ve got water _ and I wish it was shark-infested.
NBC is a unit of General Electric Co.
On the Net
NBC
www.nbc.com/American_Gladiators
«Access Hollywood
www.accesshollywood.com
Hulk Hogan
www.wwe.com/superstars/halloffame/hulkhogan
IBM Helps Media & Entertainment Businesses “Go Green” and Reduce Impact of Technology Use on Environment.
HOLLYWOOD, CA–(Marketwire - December 11, 2007) - “HOLLYWOOD GOES GREEN” — At the Hollywood Goes Green conference today, IBM (
“Consumers can have a significant impact on the environment if they do simple things like use energy efficient light bulbs or drive hybrid vehicles. But just think, if businesses are as savvy about how they operate their data centers, they could have massive impact,” said Tom Burns, director of post-production infrastructure, Technicolor. “At Technicolor, we are always looking for opportunities to reduce our power footprint. It makes good business sense, and we look forward to hearing from IBM on how we can improve efficiency in our data centers worldwide — both to reduce our environmental impact and to support our global service offerings to the media and entertainment industry.”
Fact: Today information and communications technology accounts for approximately 2 percent of global carbon dioxide emissions.(1)
IBM also declared a vision at Hollywood Goes Green today to design new technologies as part of Project Big Green that will use 50 percent less power by the end of the decade and increase compute capacity by a factor of 10 — dramatically increasing performance without the need to build new datacenters, conserving resources from trees to gasoline. IBM will also introduce new server designs and extend the use of its patented liquid cooling technologies to eliminate the need for air conditioning in data centers altogether, greatly impacting bottom line energy costs.
Fact: The six million servers in America’s data centers today consume more energy than the 300+ million televisions in the United States.(2)
For media and entertainment businesses ‘going green’ means more than just turning off the lights or recycling soda cans. Blockbuster films that attract millions of moviegoers around the world and generate billions of dollars in revenue, as well as the rapidly emerging online game market, are two examples of key industries that rely on high performance technologies to power “virtual backlot studios,” transforming the way next generation digital entertainment is created and delivered. Rich 3D-game experiences and digital imagery that sweep film-goers into imagined worlds have become more vivid and life-like than ever before and rely on data centers with vast pools of computers that devour energy resources to operate 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
IBM’s Project Big Green includes technologies and services to sharply reduce data center energy consumption, helping to transform the world’s business and public technology infrastructures into “green” data centers. Some of the significant technologies Project Big Green delivers today include servers, software, specialty microprocessors, and breakthrough IBM research innovations, such as:
-- IBM Blue Gene Supercomputer: the world's most powerful computer that
delivers the most performance per kilowatt of power consumed and was
recently ranked on the Green500 list (www.green500.org) of the world’s most
energy-efficient supercomputers. The new Green500 list shows IBM Blue Gene
supercomputers capturing 26 of the top 27 spots.
– IBM Cell Broadband Engine: a microprocessor that can deliver extreme
performance compared with conventional processors.
– IBM Rear Door Heat eXchanger: patented liquid “cooling doors” that can
reduce server heat output in data centers by up to 60 percent by utilizing
chilled water to dissipate heat generated by computer systems.
– IBM Mobile Measurement Technology: a technology from IBM Research that
measures 3D temperature distributions within data centers. The mobile
measurement machine includes a position monitoring system with a network of
up to 100 sensors used to gather thermal data at a granular level, with
unprecedented speed and accuracy as it travels through the data center.
– IBM Active Energy Manager: an energy management software tool that can
provide clients with a view of the actual power used, as opposed to
benchmarked power consumption, and can effectively allocate, match and cap
power and thermal limits in the data center at the system, chassis or rack
level.
– IBM Global Asset Recovery Services (GARS): can help data center owners
simply and efficiently deal with the proper environmental disposal of all
of their old IT equipment consistent with local, state and federal
regulations worldwide. In addition, IBM GARS can help enterprises protect
and keep confidential the data stored on hard drives slated for disposal.
“IBM clients around the world are increasingly expressing concern over their growing need for energy and the associated costs, but the issue is becoming particularly acute for media and entertainment companies because they rely so heavily on high performance technologies to deliver their content,” said Jim Gargan, Vice President, Brand Management, IBM BladeCenter and System x. “IBM as a company has made strides in addressing this need, but Project Big Green will allow IBM to further help the media and entertainment industry support sustained business growth with zero increase in consumption and environmental impact.”
About Project Big Green
Announced in May 2007, Project Big Green is a $1 billion investment to increase the efficiency of IBM products. New IBM products and services, announced as part of Project Big Green, include a five step approach to energy efficiency in the data center that, if followed, could sharply reduce data center energy consumption and provide energy savings of up to 42 percent for an average data center. The initiative includes a new global “green team” of more than 850 energy efficiency architects from across IBM. To learn more about IBM Project Big Green, go to www.ibm.com/press/greendatacenter.
Note to Editors: Learn more about IBM at Hollywood Goes Green at www.ibm.com/press/hollywoodgoesgreen. Images and broadcast-quality b-roll are available for download by registered journalists at www.thenewsmarket.com/ibm
Bloggers: Images and video are available for download by registered bloggers at www.thenewsmarket.com/videocafe
(1) Green IT: A New Industry Shock Wave, Gartner Symposium/ITxpo, October 2007.
(2) IDC: Power and Cooling Multi-Client-Study, 2007.
