There have been and will continue to be major changes in technological development this decade. From biotechnological research being conducted by Huntingdon Life Sciences Inc to the efforts being made to overhaul the energy grid, the 2010′s will see a wide range of achievements in the science, space, and technology industries. Three advancements in particular promise to promote a renewed interest in space research and the continued evolution of quicker Internet speeds:

The new James Webb Space Telescope—NASA’s new telescope will be more advanced and powerful than any tool the agency has ever used in order to peer into the depths of space. In fact, the James Webb Telescope will be able to see further into the past of our own universe, capturing glimpses of some of the early stages of galactic formation. The telescope will give us a view of the very first galaxies that were created after the Big Bang and should promote a wide variety of upgrades and overhauls to fields related to astronomy, cosmology, and other space-related industries.

Building a space ark—The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, whose previous credits include the creation of the Internet, now has its sights on the creation of a 100 year starship that would take humans further into space than ever before. While this lofty concept may seem relegated to the realm of science fiction, multiple sources confirm that plans are underway to create an exploratory committee for the viability of the project. Perhaps the most exciting part of this development is how much independent and auxiliary research will result from such an ambitious undertaking.

The new 4G LTE network—This Internet network isn’t as cosmic as the James Webb Telescope or a 100 year space ark but the effects could actually be more universal for the people of Earth. With quicker Internet speeds and an ever-accelerated network, smartphone technology should advance as well as the demand for more complex tools, like Augmented Reality, the Semantic Web, The Internet of Things, and even holographic smartphone apps. All of this is dependent on the public buying into the need for more complex cell phone operations which the 4G LTE network, already being adopted by several major mobile providers, should allow for.

We’ll have to wait and see how quickly these advancements take shape. We can certainly expect increased Internet speed sooner than the space ark. It will interesting to see how Internet evolution on Earth affects our ability to study outer space.

Changes in Science, Space and Technology is a post from: Orion Blog

Prior to the rise of the internet, apartment hunting was dominated by print. Potential residents armed themselves with classified ads from newspapers, fliers found on bulletin boards, and, in larger communities, with apartment magazines filled with listings from residential buildings in their city. It was then a matter of footwork. Visiting all the listings that looked promising only to discover that the neighborhood wasn’t right or the property was in disrepair, etc. Apartment hunters of the past could spend weeks trying to pinpoint the perfect residence.

Today, all they need is a computer or smart phone with a solid internet connection and the weeks of research and time spent trekking from property to property can be accomplished in a few hours. This is thanks to leading real estate visionaries like Daniel Drimmer who evolved a number of technologies that make finding and renting an apartment a whole lot easier.

One of the most obvious advances of the real estate industry online was the birth of the virtual tour. The first examples of this tool appeared in the form of still photos that provided a 360 degree view of a given room or apartment complex. Once streaming video became an option, Drimmer and other leaders began creating true video tours of properties and specific units. This meant that instead of having to drive to every potential apartment, searchers could quickly watch short video clips and eliminate those that weren’t worth the time, or gas mileage, to visit. Thanks to Drimmer, today’s residential rental companies post their virtual tours on video sharing sites as well as their company websites in order to give potential residents all the information they need.

Another important tool that was pioneered by Drimmer is the interactive map. Renters can search for available units by geography. The best maps allow for filtering by specific features and amenities. Since location is the most important aspect of any real estate transaction, it only makes sense that being able to see properties on a map would be a key part of the apartment hunting process.

In addition to these two features, more and more apartment sites have started offering the online lease application. Prospective residents can easily complete the application from home, work, or, using a smart phone or other handheld device, from anywhere they like. Efficient companies will be able to offer quicker decisions, since all the information is provided digitally, rather than having to be gleaned from a paper application. The overall savings in time and energy is invaluable.

Tools like these are what set apart companies like Drimmer’s Starlight Apartments from rental companies that rely on the now old-fashioned process of printed listings and time-consuming site visits.

Image courtesy Joelk75 via Flickr. Creative Commons License.

Real Estate Technology Pioneer: Daniel Drimmer is a post from: Orion Blog

The Love Motel for Insects project will only be funded if at least $8,000 is pledged by Sunday Dec 11, 11:59pm EST.

Artist Rendering of Proposed Love Motel for Insects in NYC

Urban Art Projects is fundraising on Kickstarter to bring artist/scientist Brandon Ballengée‘s Love Motel for Insects to New York City. The Love Motel for Insects is an innovative interactive outdoor artwork that is both an art piece and a life science project.

Combined with ancillary educational programming referred to as Bug Love, this programming informs the general NYC public about important environmental issues, inspires NYC youth so that their interest in science continues into the classroom and provides inspirational experiences, termed Eco-actions, involving both art and science.

Ballengée’s Love Motel for Insects has been exhibited worldwide since 2001; its various iterations have been extensively covered by the media as well as referenced by academia. Ballengée has been reviewed by art critics including Roberta Smith, Edward Lucie Smith and Lucy Lippard; he has also been mentioned by art historian Steven Wilson in his book Art + Science. Media coverage includes features on PBS, ABC News, BBC, and NPR.

Venice Biennale, Waterways, Italy, 2008, Photographed by Brandon Ballengée

Ballengée is also referenced in Art Practice as Research, by Professor Graeme Sullivan of Columbia University. Additionally, Ballengée recently participated in a symposium at the National Science Foundation and has received numerous honors such as the Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship and was recently named an Aububon TogetherGreen Fellow; a fellowship which receives funding from Toyota. Ballengée’s work has also been exhibited widely and is in numerous public collections including The American Museum of Natural History in New York, NASA in Washington, D.C., Yorkshire Sculpture Park in England, and the Yale Peabody Museum.

Love Motel for Insects is an ongoing series of outdoor installations intended to construct situations between humans and arthropods. The works use ultra-violet lights on enormous blank canvases to attract insects and create an opportunity for public interactions with rarely seen nocturnal arthropods. At each location, the Love Motels for Insects become the backdrop for community events such as picnics, biodiversity festivals, graffiti jams, scientific investigations, musical events and even local film screenings relating to local insect species.

EcoConnect and Love Motel for Insects in collaboration with Ecohaven Project

As described by Ballengée himself: “The Love Motel for Insects sculptures began in 2001 in Central America. At this time my initial structures were made from black (ultra-violet) lights and bed-sheets placed in the Costa Rican forest floor. Within hours numerous species of flying moths, Hemipteras, beetles, caddisflies, ants, lacewings and other arthropods descended on the installation. Female moths released chemical pheromones to attract mates and consequently “painted” the impromptu piece. Fascinated and inspired by this initial experience, I fabricated further Love Motel for Insects sculptures and developed ancillary public nocturnal field trips. To date versions of the project have debuted in diverse environments including tropical rain forests (rain, dry and cloud), inner city bus-stops, London roof-tops, industrial ‘brown-field’ sites, public schools, Scottish Highlands, German town centers, Venetian boats, and other sites within temperate climate systems. Each Love Motel for Insects variation is site-specific to each unique community and eco-system.”

The Love Motel for Insects is a post from: Orion Blog

The importance of taking vitamin supplements before, during and after pregnancy is just one thing you can do for your child that has lasting effects. Many experts contend that taking supplements during pregnancy are indeed necessary. So which vitamins should you be taking?

Many of the nutrients your body needs before, during and after pregnancy are not received – even when your diet is perfect. In addition, women with certain diets or conditions are less likely to be consuming the vitamins they need to be at optimum health. Vegetarians or vegans, women with food intolerances, smokers, women with blood disorders, and women who are having twins or multiple births are at risk.

The vitamins most important for maintaining a healthy pregnancy include: folic acid, vitamin B and iron. Taking folic acid for pregnancy and vitamin B often help reduce the chance of birth defects such as spina bifida, cleft lip, cleft palate, and certain heart defects.

Iron is important for pregnant women, as the need for this mineral is increased during pregnancy. Decreased levels of iron during pregnancy may cause preterm delivery, low birth weight, and infant mortality.

Many experts suggest a full dietary assessment to be done prior to taking vitamins during pregnancy. This assessment will allow you to figure out which vitamins are indeed needed. Over consumption of certain vitamins can actually be a detriment to your baby’s health. For instance, “Retinoid embryopathy”, a syndrome affecting your baby’s face, ear, heart or central nervous system and thymus can be caused by excessive consumption of vitamin A. While rare, it’s still a concern for some pregnant women.

Taking vitamins during pregnancy, before, and after as well is extremely important for your health as well as your babies. Evaluate your needs with your doctor and choose vitamins that are manufactured from the best natural ingredients available.

Are you taking prenatal vitamins or folic acid during pregnancy? Tell us, in the comments below!

Are Vitamin Supplements During Pregnancy Recomended? is a post from: Orion Blog

When you are new to the car buying market it pays to use a beginner’s guide in order to get the most car or truck for your budget. Whether you are out of school with your first job or just leaving home to embark into the world on your own, no doubt about it, the financial world is a little scary.

Of course, your primary objective is to provide yourself with reliable transportation. While it sounds simple, achieving this is not as easy at you may think.

1. Do Your Research
Take a look at car books and search online to get a feel for prices and styles of vehicles. There are a lot of cars out there and twice as many dealerships; small and large. If you have your eyes on a gas drinker ask yourself if you can afford to supply gas for a gas drinking monster. Look at your budget realistically before leaping into debt.

2. Think About Your Financial State Ahead of Time
Most people want to talk about the car. First, decide where you are going to get the money to make this purchase. How much are you willing to pay for the privilege of borrowing it? A cash payment would be fantastic, and there would be no reason to worry about a credit score or finding a lender. Check to make sure your credit score is over 600. Keep in mind the more lenders you visit, the lower your score will go. If you have no credit wait a while, purchase an item you want to buy, on credit; pay for it on time, then return to the car buying market.

3. Be Leery of All Deals at First
Buying a car is moving around in shark infested water. There are good deals and reputable dealers with top interest rates. But, there are the sharks who will sell you a lemon and have you in years of terrible debt with ridiculous interest rates. Search for money from a source you choose. The payments will be better and interest rates will be lower. This will help you work with a budget while you are car shopping. Consider how much money you want to spend. While you are thinking of buying a car you will still need to eat, buy food, buy gas, and pay another bunch of living expenses. There is little point in having a new car when you find yourself sleeping in it. Think about what kind of car you want and if the price and payment options are good for you. At least $1600 in earnings is required and a six month working history. Time and financial diligence will get you what you want.

Emily is the proud owner of a used Honda Civic and she also is a contributing writer for CashForTrucks, a company that helps people learn how to receive cash for cars and also how to sell you car so that you can buy a new (or at least new to you) vehicle!

A Beginner’s Guide to Buying a New Car is a post from: Orion Blog

When you envision your baby’s birth, you may imagine your doctor holding the baby up and announcing, “it’s a beautiful healthy baby (add gender here)!”  The next image is probably that of the baby’s umbilical cord being cut. In that remarkable instant, mother and baby go from being one connected entity to two autonomous beings.  What you may not have thought about is how the choice you make about the subsequent moments can be critical. They present the opportunity for your baby’s cord blood to be collected and banked for decades into the future. And the decision to bank your child’s cord blood now may result in saving his or her life later on. Cord blood banks may even save the lives of your other children.

Cord blood flows through your placenta and into the umbilical vein to nourish and oxygenate your baby.  It also contains stem cells – more specifically, blood-forming stem cells. These stem cells are a miracle of nature because they can generate all three types of blood cells our bodies need (red blood cells, white blood cells, and platelets). This ability to regenerate blood cells is especially necessary when a child is healing from a potentially fatal cancer like leukemia, a blood disorder such as sickle cell anemia, or certain immune system disorders.  If your child is ever diagnosed with one of these fatal diseases, the cord blood you have banked will be used to help save your child’s life. A stem cell transplant will boost the immune system and can help him or her recover from subsequent treatments like radiation or chemotherapy. If you do not bank your baby’s cord blood, you can end up playing a stressful and worrisome waiting game.

When a child needs a stem cell transplant, it can mean waiting for a matching cord blood, or bone marrow, donor and this can take a long time. Sometimes families wait months for a correct match and time is critical when a child is fighting for his or her life. It’s important to note that if you are an ethnic minority, or if your baby was conceived via in vitro fertilization, you might have to wait even longer than normal for an ideal match.  Parents who have banked their child’s cord blood have no wait at all. It is one of the best investments you can make for your family.

The Advancements in Stem Cell Research is a post from: Orion Blog

“It’s never been a better time to buy a home.” Potential home buyers have heard this before but in this current market, the saying is actually true. Several factors have come together to truly make today’s market a buyer’s market. Real estate classes can clue home buyers in to the many advantages of purchasing a home in 2011 including:

• Record low interest rates;
• Dropping home prices;
• And an increased selection of homes.

Low Rates
In response to the sluggish economy, the Federal Reserve Board has kept interest rates at record lows to encourage borrowing to stimulate the marketplace. The feds have signaled their intent to keep these rates low into the year 2013. Right now, first time home buyers with good credit getting into a 30-year fixed mortgage can expect interest rates between 4 and 4.5 percent — historic lows for the housing market. Lower interest rates mean lower payments and less interest expense over the life of the loan.

To get the best interest rates, real estate classes advise making sure home buyers stay on top of their credit report, checking all three reports regularly for fraud and mistakes. Home buyers should also take steps to ensure their credit remains good while they look for a home. The better the credit score, the better the interest rate.

Price Drop
The drop in home values is not such great news for current home owners, but it is great news for potential home buyers. The falling home prices means buyers can get more house for their money. Real estate classes suggest looking at three factors to know if a home is a great deal.

1. Check the comparable sales data for other homes in the area. A Realtor can help a home buyer do this or most major real estate websites.
2. Determine how much buyers were able to negotiate off the list price to get to the final sale price. Again, a Realtor can assist with this.
3. Buyers must make sure the house is affordable and fits into their budget. If they buy too much house and then struggle to make payments, they haven’t received a good deal.

Choose Your Home
Another half glass empty, half glass full statistic is the amount of homes on the market right now. For home buyers, the amount of homes on the market right now translates to more choice because more people want to sell their homes than there are buyers. Buyers can shop around for the home that best suits their needs both for now and in the future. Gone are the days of having to compete with hordes of buyers for the same house.

Home buyers will find a lot to cheer about the 2011 housing market. Homes are plentiful, prices are low and interest rates can only get lower. For buyers who may have waited to buy a home, now is the time to jump into the market.

Buying Real Estate in 2012 – What You Should Know is a post from: Orion Blog

The domain names find their significance when it comes to identifying more than one IP addresses and are used in the URLs for the identification of web pages. For example, if you have a career placement site, then you would likely want to choose from the many  jobs domains, so that yours will be unique to your product or service so that clients can find you. The creation of the domain name system and the domain name servers (DNS) can be traced back to 1984.

Domain Names – A Look Back to History and Their Evolution is a post from: Orion Blog

Before we get into details, we should ask ourselves what keyword search really entails. Why would you need to conduct keyword research? Remember that you can only get the best results if you know what you are doing.

By definition, keyword research is one of the most vital things you can do if you are a beginner in the Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for your business site. This is done with help from tools such as Google AdWords. This way, you can get an avenue to the market and also a clue of what people are searching for when it comes to your products or services. These keywords will be of great benefit to you but you have to understand your customer base first and the market in general.

Suppose keyword research is new to you, the following 5 tips will help you catch the concept and have a better understanding of what keyword research really entails:

• First, you should use the best tools for keyword research.
There are several sites that offer keyword research tools. Out of experience, the Google AdWords has been found to be the best tool for keyword research. It is accurate and reliable compared to all other known keyword research tools. The Google AdWords tool will allow you to search by both topic and then by keyword. This tool allows researchers to get multiple results and is actually the best.

• Regroup the keywords into three groups.
Create three sets of keyword searches. This is important because you will be able to get the optimal amount of results. Make sure that the first group contains the most competitive terms, followed by the second group and put the least competitive terms in the third group. Regrouping will help you determine which words to allocate more time to while researching. The best way to do this is by creating a researched keyword list to help you determine the most competitive and also the least competitive keywords.

• Utilize the long-tail keywords.
These are the keywords which visitors target the most. These keywords display exact results for those customers searching for specific products from your site. This will make your site to have more visitors.

• Pay attention to competition.
Conducting keyword research by use of the Google keyword tool will actually give you a clue of competition under your field. This way, you will be able to determine the level of keyword competition. High competition will make you find the best keyword.

• Do not neglect less competitive keywords.
Focus also on these keywords since they will give you more progress during your search.

If you try implementing these key factors into your keyword research process and also focus on your site’s conversion optimization, you will begin to see a positive change in your revenue.

5 Tips To Keep In Mind When Doing Keyword Research is a post from: Orion Blog

Everyone has financial troubles at some point in their lives. Well, okay, almost everyone, though it’s difficult to imagine anyone who hasn’t experienced some sort of economic difficulty, the extent of and lifestyle impact faced might, and does, vary greatly. One of the dividing factors is not how impacted by economic difficulties one might find themselves, but exactly how they deal with them. Individuals tend to have a moral relationship with money. On an individual level we tend to equate our self worth with our credit score, financial status and career success. These can be dangerous elements when circumstances well beyond our control render us at the brink of financial ruin. Professionals like Montel Williams money mutual are well aware of the impact financial crisis can have on individuals as well as businesses and are also aware of the lifestyle and possible emotional effects they produce.

Going, going, gone - Star leaves the Milky Way by NASA Goddard Photo and Video

While most individuals tend to equate their financial and career success with their own feelings of self worth, corporations tend to take a different approach. Small, private businesses are generally an extension of the individual, and their success or failure might be a factor in the personal effects of financial problems. Corporations, however, are not owned by a single individual, generally, and typically have a sole purpose of making money for their investors. When a corporation is dissolved there is rarely a personal response of shame or guilt placed on any one of the share holders. Of course there are different philosophies and factors attached to CEO and other leaders, and when legal or ethical issues enter the picture, it’s an entirely different story. That’s still a bit different than the main issue here.

So how does the scientific community fit into a financial crisis? Generally speaking, many people who enter the sciences do so for personal interest and life passion factors. And while having a new asteroid or star, better yet, named after you for finding it can be a motivating factor, the fame and glory associated with such an achievement is not generally the inspiration behind this career choice. In addition, much of the sciences are dependent on governmental and public support. So, a while a financial crisis can have a major impact on science and various projects, the professionals in the field are not considered responsible for reductions in governmental support. However, and this is strongly emphasized, they can have enormous personal responses to the lack of financial support for their projects. And with that being said, professionals in the science community tend to feel a higher purpose to their work and financial set backs might effect their projects, but not the professionals’ attachment of worth to it. So, what would money mutual professionals recommend the individual mirrors in their approach to their own financial troubles? Well, definitely it’s not the small business, personal worth option. On an individual level it might be better to emulate the scientist or corporation in their relationship to financial crisis.

Financial Crisis Effects on Individuals, Companies and the Sciences is a post from: Orion Blog