text:
Top-seeded Dexter and No. 2 Bell City both advanced to the championship game of the tournament with lopsided victories, setting up the high-profile title game between the two.
Dexter (13-3) used a big second half to defeat Bloomfield for the third time this year, winning 86-59. Bell City had no problem with Advance in the other semifinal game, disposing of the third-seeded Hornets 86-56.
The Bearcats had previously defeated the Wildcats (10-8) twice by scores of 101-53 and 100-60.
But Bloomfield was determined to pull an upset the third time.
For a short while, it looked possible, as the Wildcats trailed just 42-40 early in the third quarter.
"This is the third time we've played Bloomfield and we've beaten them by a pretty good margin both times," said Dexter head coach Eric Sitze. "If you kick a dog three or four times, it's going to get mad and do something about it. Bloomfield wasn't going to go down easy tonight. I thought they played hard."
But not even a fired up Bloomfield team could stop Dexter from turning the game into a blowout.
Nursing a shaky two-point lead, the Bearcats ended the third quarter on a 23-6 run to make it 65-46.
It got so bad for Bloomfield that they even had trouble inbounding the ball.
"The two things that we can't do against a team like this is turn the ball over and give them more than one opportunity," said Bloomfield head coach Travis Brown. "And during that run that's exactly what happened. They just really kicked our tail on the boards right there. In an effort to try to get back in the ballgame, we'd make more mistakes. It just compounded from there."
Dexter turned the tide of the game so fast that not even Sitze could explain it.
"I don't know what happened there," said Sitze. "I don't know if it was a no-call down there or what. Something charged our kids up and we played a little bit harder and did a better job on defense. I thought the kids hung in there tonight and they didn't get rattled."
Dexter led by as much as 83-52 in the fourth quarter before emptying the bench to close out the game.
The Bearcats got a balanced scoring attack led by point guard Chris Hyten's 21 points.
Willie Dooley and Derek Demaree followed up with 16 points each and Preston Clark added 12 points.
Dexter came out hot, taking a 19-11 lead after one quarter. The Bearcats led by as much as 12 in the second quarter before Bloomfield took control. The Wildcats went on an 11-0 run capped by Tim Perry's 3-pointer to cut Dexter's lead to 27-26.
The Wildcats would cut the lead to one again in the quarter but couldn't get any closer.
The Bearcats ended up leading 37-32 at the half.
"We made the decision to go to the zone and maybe that affected them a little bit, I don't think they shot it as well as they sometimes do," said Brown. "I give our kids a lot of credit, they fought hard and they wanted to win. We're an improving team, but it's disappointing. It's just another loss."
Bloomfield was led in scoring by Perry's 17 points. Colby Sandage, a 6-5 senior, chipped in 12 points.
The win marked Dexter's 36th in a row at Bloomfield High School. The Bearcats will be going for their fifth straight conference tournament championship tonight at 8:30.
Bernie holds the record for consecutive championships with five from 1989 to 1994.
The Bearcats have won 14 SCAA Tournament championships since 1963.
"This county's made up of smaller schools and us, so we're expected to get in the finals, and sometimes that puts a little pressure on us," said Sitze. "These county teams are getting better and they're being coached harder. There's no way we're going to come out and blow Bell City out of the water by any means. It's going to be a tight game and they're going to play hard. They're real hungry right now so I hope we can match their intensity tomorrow night."
Bloomfield will play Advance in the third place game at 5:30 today.
The Cubs reached the championship game for the second year in a row with a dominating 86-56 win against Advance.
Bell City (16-2) hit a whopping 15 3-pointers in the game, including five each by all-stater Eric Henry and senior Kenyon Wright.
The Cubs jumped out quickly in the game as Wright buried a 3-pointer right off the opening tip.
There was much more of that to come as Bell City hit five more from beyond the arc in the first period.
Henry scored 12 points in the quarter to lead the Cubs to a 27-13 lead.
It got worse for Advance (11-5) in the second quarter as Bell City opened up a 50-27 lead at the half.
Henry scored 18 of his game-high 31 points in the first half. The Cubs hit 11 3-pointers in the first half, including four by Wright.
Bell City extended the lead to 71-44 heading into the fourth quarter.
Johnson followed up with 20 points while Wright added 17 points.
Advance was led by Jared Ritter's 16 points and Jason Bahr's 15 points.
The Cubs will be shooting for their first SCAA Tournament championship since 1981 when they won the last of three straight.
Dexter's jayvee team will be going for their seventh straight junior varsity championship in the SCAA Tournament tonight at 7:00.
The JV Bearcats advanced to the title game with a 75-23 win against Woodland. Chris Guethle led the way with 22 points for Dexter.
Their opponent will be Advance, who were 74-45 winners over Bell City. Advance was led by Tyler Bowman's 21 points. Bell City got 19 points from Blaine Stewart.
The JV Hornets will be searching for their first championship since 1973.


text:
Jerry Doyle interviews Tom Woods on nullification, mandates, delegated constitutional powers, and more…
"Having exhausted all possible remedies I'm willing to go back and look at all the recommendations that Thomas Jefferson gave us. And if the solution is something that angers both Hillary Clinton and Mitch McConnell then so be it!"
"One great thing that's been going on is that Nullify Now has been sponsoring rallies around the country…and we're having lots of fun saying things that the New York Times doesn't want us to say."
EDITOR'S NOTE: Tom Woods will be a featured speaker at upcoming Nullify Now! tour stops in Cincinnati, New Hampshire, Austin, and Los Angeles.. Get your tickets at http://www.nullifynow.com or by calling 888-71-TICKETS
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
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subset: commoncrawl


text:
How Often Should You Optimize Your Content
No doubt there are many different answers to this question. Some people like myself, tweak content on a daily basis. Others have never optimized a single page on their website. Ultimately, the decision of when to take time to optimize your content is up to you, but there are situations when you should take time to optimize your online presence.
Image Source – Mashable
During a Redesign
Let's be honest, the main purpose of most website redesigns is to optimize their performance. A true redesign is built from the ground up. There is absolutely no better time to ensure that your website is configured to attract maximum interest from readers than when it's being reimagined. You can build SEO and speed optimizations right into your new design. You'll have a better looking, faster and more productive website when you're finished.
When Adding Content for All Pages
Adding fresh content that will appear on all the pages of your website is also a great time to optimize your content. First of all, make sure that the content you are adding is optimized. It's going to be appearing on every page of your site. If it's well optimized, every page will benefit.
This is also a good time to tweak individual pages. You'll be visiting every page on your website to make sure your new content is properly integrated. As you click through your content, keep an eye out for ways to optimize each page.
When Circumstances Change
There are any number of reasons why the circumstances of your situation may change. Sometimes they're personal reasons. Other times their professional. It might be an opportune time to make some adjustments to your website, especially if the circumstances necessitate a change or update to your website.
When it's been a While
If you're reading this and thinking "I haven't optimized my site in months", that would mean now is a good time to get to work. If your website and your business are running smoothly, you may not think you need to optimize your site. After all, it doing well and so are you.
Remember that a website that is doing well is a website that is often updated. Make a point to go back and revisit your optimization strategy on a regular basis. Even if it's just a routine checkup to make sure things are functioning properly. Your website will thank you.
Ways to keep the big G happy and not get slapped!
Getting slapped by Google can be very painful for the webmaster and of course the rankings! A Google "slap" is a term that is used to label a website as Spam. One way to find out whether you have been slapped is by checking your PPC (Pay-Per-Click) campaigns to see if the bids have gone sky high and has become next to impossible to locate your ads.
It is such a horrid feeling to know that a site you have worked hard on for a very long time is labelled as Spam, and been pushed out of the biggest search engine on the face of the planet.
Tips to help after the sting of the slap:
Don't become a Spam site – The worst thing you can ever do is get your site labelled as Spam in the first place, try to avoid this entirely by not stuffing your pages full of keywords in
strange places, try to make the content look as natural as possible! All you need to do is provide good quality content and have 23 keywords in each article if nessacary.
Post fresh content – Google LOVES brand new and origional content, you will always put a smile on the bots face if you feed him fresh food! If you don't update often he won't return at all, think of it as a hungry dog, if you do not feed the dog he will run away in the other direction!
Build your site – If you are creating a brand new site try not to open it fully to the search engines until you have at least 10 pages of content, the reason is there is obiously no point in opening a website with just one page, it's boring, it's plain, you did not start a website to create just one piece of information, did you?
Narrow down your content – Try to narrow your niche down and not create a massive wide variety of topics, if you can narrow it down for example the health niche to "Exercise". You are then telling Google exactly what your site and subject matter is about. If you are wanting to create authority website on health then by all means go ahead, just make sure you are VERY clear in every single piece of content what it is about.
Contact forms – Always make sure your website has that personal touch and has a bit of "you" in it. Put up a contact form for questions or for people to contact you, Google likes it when you make the effort to be a socialite! Just be careful of those darn spammers, if you are using wordpress use a quiz plugin so they cannot spam.
If you stick to these simple little rules nothing can go wrong, well at least on-page anyway.
Post Penguin Link Building
Post Penguin Link Building
In the web landscape, it is no secret that Google is a giant, rolling out updates every other day to its algorithm to establish absolute relevancy of results and an improved user experience. This is acutely focused at making the search engine respond to queries in the desired manner, rendering results with information a user is specifically looking for.
Despite the fact that a Penguin is an adorable creature, when Google Penguin came, it proved to be the worst nightmare for SEO experts and website owners since rankings of countless websites fell like soldiers losing in a battlefield.
The release of Google Penguin was announced on 24th April, 2012 and to the great disappointment of many, caught them by surprise. Sources cited that the underlying reason for releasing this update was the identification of websites who were violating Google's Webmaster Guidelines by incorporating black hat SEO techniques like cloaking, link schemes, keyword stuffing, duplicate content and others.
Mercilessly retaliating against the spammy websites, link building is one aspect that attracted a lot of limelight in the post Penguin era. For website owners who have been working for years on link-building, the algorithm update came as a shock as they saw all their efforts going down the drain. The update implied that link building has gotten more technical than ever before and only the more skilled ones will now be able to survive.
A fallacious believe around which the Search Engine Optimization strategies were structured till now was that links are just a viable means to bring more traffic to the website but do not have the potential to actually hurt your website rankings. Nothing can be farther from the truth as the secret is out. The way links are incorporated in a website can now have an influential role to play in the post Penguin age.
The update has been exceptionally successful in knocking down spam sites, but if you are one of those who have made use of black hat SEO techniques to land among the top search engine results, Google is going to hit you hard. To avoid it, it is time to whiten the hat and rebuild your SEO strategy. After all, it is never too late to repent.
While a lot has been said and done when it comes to post Penguin link building, some fool-proof tips to not only secure improvements in your rankings, but also to survive the Penguin update successfully are outlined below.
1. Get Social to Spell Success
We are living in the social media age and if you are wondering how social media and link building are associated, read on.
Whenever you post fresh content on your blog or website, make sure you share it on all of your social media pages. This should be done like a reflex. A lot of websites failed badly despite regular posts on their blogs. Why? Because they were not sharing them over Facebook, Google + or Twitter. What is the point of boasting about so-so number of fans and followers if you are not showing them your content?
This helps you create a win-win situation where all you have to do is to make social media spread your content virally, well beyond the premises of your fan base and voila! you get likes, +1's and retweets. What is there to lose? Zilch!
2. Inner-Page Linking
A mistake a lot of SEO experts and website owners make is that they always link to their homepage. While it cannot be denied that homepage is the most important page of any website, Google is going to raise an eyebrow if it finds all of the backlinks pointing to your homepage. Internal linking is very important because that is where the real content is believed to be. It does not make any sense to Googlebot that none of the links are pointing to the content on the inner pages of the website where blog posts, videos and guides are available.
Take time to improve your website's internal structure and make sure that the right keywords are directing the users to the right web pages. The following is an example of a website SEOMOZ that uses different mediums to provide links to its internal web pages.
3. Diversify Your Anchor Texts
It is time you get a break from the traditional SEO practices because another element Google Penguin plans to address is on-site and off-site over-optimization. Just imagine how annoying Google can get when it feels that you are forcing it to rank you for a specific keyword such as 'cheap cars for sale.' Google will find it highly suspicious that all of your link partners are using the exact key phrase to link to you, which not only happens to be pasted over your title bar but homepage as well.
If people choose to link to you naturally, they are most likely to be using different anchor texts to do so. This way you will achieve linking organically, which will eventually get the wheels going in the right direction. Don't forget, diversity is the key.
4. Quality over Quantity
Google is going to penalize you if it finds that you have a large number of backlinks from sites that are untrustworthy. It is imperative to understand that one quality link from a blog is better than 30 from unreliable sources. Go for quality because even if it is going to be a small number, it is going to work for you. Of course, you do not want to go to sleep every night wondering if you are next on Penguin's hit list.
5. Charm with Link-Worthy Content
Last but not the least; you have to stay focused at producing content that others find link-worthy. Stuff that fails to engage readers is not going to get you anywhere. This is because bad user experience is synonymous to low Google rankings. Give your readers something that encourages them to stay with you or even come back again. Content is, and will always be, king.
With the tips above, we hope that you will be able to take your website's link building in the post Penguin period a step ahead. With the rules of the game changed, link building is no rocket science, but when done appropriately, it can and will work wonders for you.
An article was prepared by SEM Company Promodo.
How to Customize Google Rich Snippets with Schema.org Microdata?
Do you know what Google Rich Snippets are? Even if you don't know them by name, I am sure you must have seen them several times on the Google SERPs, as you browse through the Web.
What are Google Rich Snippets?
Google Rich Snippets are nothing but the additional lines of information that appear next to the Google search results. They are designed to provide quick information to users regarding what's on the page and why it's relevant to their query. These snippets encompass star ratings for the web page and other detailed information related to the query. Generally, you can find Google Rich Snippets in websites of restaurants, music, people, events, videos, recipes, products and businesses. Having a 5-star rating in your Google Rich Snippet encourages Internet users to click on your listing. This is the reason why Google Rich Snippets are considered to be the perfect addition to your online marketing strategies.
Now that we have seen the advantages of using Google Rich Snippets, let us move to the next step of creating and customizing Google Rich Snippets with Schema.org Microdata.
Defining Metaboxes: A metabox helps you to add content or scripts to any part of the website.First of all, to qualify for Google Rich Snippets, you have to define metaboxes. You don't have to provide all the properties included in the specification, even though each content type has a minimum requirement. There are numerous custom metaboxes available and is indeed a great way to make custom fields friendlier to users.
Marking up your pages with Microdata: The specialty of Google Rich Snippets is its structured, semantic markup that enables Google to understand the content of the web page. So, it's your duty to markup your content properly to describe the particular type of content on your website. When it comes to marking up your content, there are three types of formats – microformats, Microdata and RDFa. Google has always recommended the Microdata format for rich snippets as it allows search engines to understand your content a lot better and delivers more meaningful search listings for the user's query. In fact, Microdata has no effect on your search engine rankings but it provides a richer and more useful browsing experience for users.
Use Schema.org vocabulary: All the major search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo and Yandex have launched Schema.org. Schema.org is a not a language but a Microdata vocabulary, that helps you to create common vocabulary for structured data markup on web pages. As it uses the same vocabulary across all participating search engines, there are fewer chances for confusion over twofold meanings or unsupported jargons. The most vital thing you have to keep in mind is that you can use Schema.org to markup only the visible part of your web pages and not any of the hidden page elements.
Many sites are already experiencing great SEO benefits with rich snippets. With the guidelines provided above, you now know how to customize Google Rich Snippets with Schema.org vocabulary. Using Schema.org and Microdata have positive impacts on your website, as they help improve the user experience and invite more clicks.
The Art of SEO – How Not To Do Things
On a daily basis, the volume of pixels expended on the right way to do SEO could fill a virtual Library of Alexandria. We're so awash with great ideas on how to correctly promote and perfect quality content that we sometimes lose sight of what not to do. Poorly executed SEO is a major hindrance to your goals. Here's a quick summary of the techniques to avoid when optimizing content for the search engines.
Low-Quality Content
The typical web user is searching for relevance and meaning in a sea of generic content online. So many webmasters try to "phone it in" with mass produced web spam, and it's no surprise that they often fail to achieve the desired results. Your SEO success starts with the basics, which is original and unique content that actually delivers value to the end user. Put some serious effort into your content first and foremost.
Keyword Stuffing
A major mistake made by bloggers and marketers every day is the practice of stuffing irrelevant keywords into articles in an attempt to dominate Long Tail queries. Google's wise to this practice, and they have ways of figuring out if your keyword-stuffed content actually delivers the goods. Avoid keyword stuffing at all costs, and only include the major keywords that assist your pages in being indexed properly by the search engines.
Building Spammy Links
While a solid 25% to 30% of SEO revolves around content creation, the rest of the formula is largely inbound links that show Google and Bing how valuable a site is to readers. Link exchanges are dead, and they'll do you more harm than good these days. The same goes for forum spam and mass referrals from sites with low PageRank. Build organic links the right way through viral social media promotion and guest blogging on reputable sites.
Doorway Pages
If you're not familiar with the term, then suffice it to say that Doorway Pages are indeed a major faux paus. Otherwise known as gateway pages, jump pages or portal pages, they're designed to trick search engines into thinking that they have value while delivering very little to an actual user. Many rely on Javascript redirection to get unsuspecting users to click through to a desired landing page. In short, avoid this chicanery.
Content Cloaking
If you're a decent human being, it's likely that you don't know what Content Cloaking even is. Still, it's important to understand how it works. In a nutshell, it's all about using server-side script to identify search engine spiders based on their user agent and IP address. When a potential Googlebot rather than a regular user is detected, a different version of a page is served up. If you're running a website of any note, you'll eventually get caught using this tactic and be consequently punished in the SERPs.
Taking Shortcuts in General
In spite of the best efforts of Google and Bing, it's still possible to temporarily trick the search engine algorithms and slide some weak content through their filters. In all your SEO efforts, stop and think about what you're doing before proceeding. If it's fundamentally disingenuous, don't do it. Trying to cheat won't get you anywhere in the long run, and it's also a huge waste of time. Last but not least, mind the fundamentals like canonical URLs, 301 redirects, sitemaps and basic meta tag implementation.
Running a Tight SEO Ship
When you foolishly choose to deploy the tricks described above, the consequences can be ultimately catastrophic. Each one is a surefire way to incur algorithmic penalties courtesy of Google's Penguin and Panda, and can even lead to manual penalties if not kept in check. Put in the time to produce high-quality, well-optimized content and the search engine gods will reward you. Otherwise, don't be shocked by the inevitably low SERPs rankings that result.
Will the New Google Knowledge Graph Have an Effect on SEO?
Google is on the move yet again, but this time the news is better than the usual surprise Panda update. As of two days ago, Google launched its Knowledge Graph in order to better a user's experience. The new feature will be rolling out in English in the U.S. first, but will soon be available in all languages. Matt Cutts explained that the graph is supposed to help make search results and algorithms "more human."
How the Google Knowledge Graph Works
Because of the sheer amount of information about users and information about different topics that Google has available, this new feature has the potential to really get search right. Google will be using nearly 500 million different things (people, places, objects, ideas, etc.) and will utilize more than 3.5billion facts about all of the connections between these different subjects. Below is a screenshot Google provided to illustrate how the new graph will look when you type in a search:
As you can see, the bulk of a SERP will remain the same, but the right hand side of the screen will change. Although this map will not be a part of every single search at first, basic search queries will soon have this option.
Benefits of the Google Knowledge Graph
This new feature will do three things for users:
1. Help eliminate ambiguous language so that search results are less confusing.
One of the main problems that Google discussed was the ambiguity of language. The new knowledge graph will help make separate different meanings of the same word. For example, the search query "staples" could mean the Staples Center in Los Angeles, the office supply store, or information about actual staples that hold together paper. The graph will work to make sure that these different results are more separated.
2. Create an easy to understand summary of the topic.
The new graph will make it easy for users to get basic information quickly, much like Wikipedia style content. Google will pull information about past search queries for a given subject and base the summary on those past results. For example, if the majority of people have been searching for the novel To Kill a Mockingbird as opposed to the film, the summary will be largely based on the history of the novel.
3. Help illustrate connections between different subjects.
The graph will help show connections between different things across the Internet. Cutts explained that one of the most important aspects of search is being able to learn something you didn't even realize you were looking to learn; the Knowledge Graph will help make this possible.
Will the Knowledge Graph Affect SEO and Rankings?
Google changes always seem to mix up rankings and cause trouble for many small businesses, but this change isn't intended to make things harder on your typical website. It seems as though information resources, such as Wikipedia, could potentially lose traffic, but the majority of websites are specific enough that people will still want to click. The Knowledge Graph will be kept to the side and should not affect rankings. However, it will be a few weeks before we can be absolutely sure.
Do you think the Knowledge Graph will affect a website's SEO in any way? Do you think the Knowledge Graph is something needed or something that you will when you use Google? Let us know in the comments!
SEO Tutorial: How to Optimize a Magento Site
Part of our jobs as marketers of the new age is to understand and learn the popular platforms of the internet. You will be hard pressed to find a professional Search Engine Optimizer that isn't familiar with Drupal, WordPress, Joomla, and simple table HTML websites. We preach about how to edit the background of your Twitter homepage for better branding and to include keywords on your Facebook fan page by renaming your images.
The new platform that I have been seeing more frequently is Magento. My responsibility as a freelancer is to understand the system, and utilize it to maximize its value. Here, you will find, not only where and how to optimize your Magento Client's website, but how you can actually automate portions of it to save some time.
What is Magento?
For those unaware, Magento is the fastest growing e-commerce platform on the internet. Don't be alarmed if you have yet to encounter it, because it is just new in comparison to WordPress or other CMS systems. Magento is Cross-Platform, written in PHP, that calls a series of SQL tables to fill the site. It is completely open-source, and much like WordPress there are a ton of extensions to customize any themes you desire.
Magento has a back end content management system, very similar to WordPress, but it is so much more robust. To truly optimize a Magento site, I recommend a working knowledge of PHP; if you want to be a Magento Pro, some SQL knowledge is necessary.
Based on SEOMoz's Study: 2011 Search Engine Factors; the on-site factors that are estimated to most affect your SERP's are Page-Level and Domain-Level Keyword Usage; adding up to a substantial 25.66%. Let's get into how you can make that 25% work for you.
Let's Get Started: Introducing the Back-End
Here is a look at the Magento Dashboard:
This is completely customizable, so these are the data points the client wanted to see. What important for me was the built-in analytics. Adding Paypal order tracking to Google Analytics is extremely difficult since Paypal transactions redirect you to the Paypal website where the final steps occur. Magento not only has a great system to allow for that sort of tracking, but with the right plugins, credit card data can be stored on Authorize.net's servers. This allows your website to track the Customer ID's, which you can see the last 5 orders on the left side. This data, in combination with GA, gives the SEO more data, which in my opinion makes better optimizing possible.
The "Reports" drop down menu gives you access to all of the data we're seeing snippets of on the Dashboard. If you're familiar with most tracking software, this one tab is worth spending the first couple of hours in, comparing to Google Analytics.
For Optimizing, we have to go to the Catalog menu:
The first place you need to go is "Manage Categories". Unlike some CMS systems, categories are more-or-less required in Magento. This is where we can rewrite title tags, url's, and the increasingly-useless Meta Description and Meta Keywords. I personally subscribe to the theory of completeness, so I fill all of these fields. Here is what you will see:
Quick Breakdown:
URL Key – This is to change the URL string, if you enter just a keyword, it will add it to the end of the URL in category order. (Ex. http://www.site.com/category1/URLKey) If you wish to rewrite the entire URL, just write the exact URL you want the category to have.
Thumbnail Image – I always name images keyword-friendly, and this is where you can upload and change the path of the thumbnail.
Description – Copy on the Page.
Page Title – Title Tag.
Meta Keywords – Meta Keywords.
Meta Description – Meta Description.
**Magento Pro-Tips**
1) I do each category manually, since I optimize for each individual page's best benefit, but if your website is smaller, or can use the same title tags throughout, please save yourself some time and use the "URL Rewrite Manager" tool, which can batch-rewrite categories to the same entry.
2) Save yourself some time and avoid the "Manage Products" category all together. The essential attributes that you will want to access are conveniently held in the "Category Products" tab in category management.
If you trust the SEOMoz data like I have come to; (I read every little case and footnote on that page, every year) the most important aspects of On-Site SEO can be accessed through that Catalog Menu, specifically the Manage Categories menu. For those SEO's that want to dive into the nuts and bolts, Magento will blow you away.
Advanced Magento Optimization:
DISCLAIMER: SQL is needed in some form to really get the most out of these steps. At the very least, you'll need to understand how to read it and how the tables are structured. Ideally, you are comfortable editing the actual tables in the database. For the rest of this tutorial, I will be providing real examples the client site.
Using Attributes:
Attributes are Magento's way of describing a product, and how the system will handle it. For example, this is where the product page knows what information to display, and how to display it. You can organize attributes into sets, that will apply to a full category.
For SEO's, this functionality is best used for inventory management. If you have gone through the Categories and optimized each product, then when that product is no longer in stock, you want to avoid sending customers to a useless page.
In the picture above, you see an attribute under General called "Status". This is the attribute in this particular system that calls the Inventory table. Once you know exactly what table that attribute is calling, you can then set it to remove the product from the site when the inventory value = 0.
Keyword-Specific Rewrites:
Instead of diving into the .htaccess file of the website to do all of your 301's and 302's, you can create redirects right in the back end. These rewrites are for the search function specifically, and you avoid having to do the redirects on the page level.
For example, my client sells wallpaper and wallpaper borders. For their Sports category, the number of wallpaper styles far outnumbers wallpaper borders. For SEO purposes, there are two separate pages; however, we found out through Analytics that most users are finding those borders in the "Related Borders" section on the bottom of the sports wallpaper page.
So, instead of trying to sculpt the traffic the way we wanted it, it was decided to just model it after the users. Go to Catalog -> Search Terms, and you see a page like this:
Here, you can see that we set a redirect when someone searches for the term "sports wallpaper borders." It redirects to the redesigned sports wallpaper page that includes the limited selection of wallpaper borders; this can be done for any search term.
Unique Batch Category Title Tag Rewrites:
For those that know SQL, instead of going to each individual category and product to change the title tags, there is a command you can run to help automate it. In my case, there were 700 wallpaper categories, and these were mirrored in an equal amount of "wall mural" and "wallpaper border" categories. Instead of rewriting 2100 title tags manually, I did the wallpaper category manually, and then used this function to apply it to the corresponding Mural and Border category:
Here, you see that the Wallpaper category was used as a template, and then scanned the attributes of the other categories. Since there were Floral Wallpapers, along with Floral Wall Murals and Floral Wallpaper Borders, there would be a common attribute between them.
When that common attribute was found, it would take the title tags from the Page Title field of Wallpaper and fill that field for murals and borders. (Category ID 1149 and 1151 respectively.) This can be done any number of times as long as there is a common established attribute between the products or categories you wish to edit.
That, Ladies and Gentlemen, is my tutorial to Magento SEO. Depending on your coding skill, Magento can be an relatively effortless optimization project, or it can be a tedious reminder of how SEO can be. Either way Magento is a CMS system that is here to stay, given the amount of sites converting to Magento and the popularity of the Extension Marketplace; http://www.magentocommerce.com/magento-connect/.
So go do what we SEO's are best at; adaptation, and get yourself some Magento Clients!
How Would You Like To Increase Your Traffic by 34.35%?
I recently stumbled upon a search engine ranking report from Chitika, an online advertising network, that focused on answering one question: how valuable prime search ranking positions really are.
Although the report was published a while ago, I believe that little has changed since then, and the following results are definitely something to pay attention to.
Of course we all know that it's great to have #1 Google search engine ranking for your keyword.
But how much is it really worth in terms of traffic generation?
According to the data from the Chitika network, it's worth a great deal – double the search engine traffic of the #2 spot, to be precise.
Let me put it another way:
The #1 Google search engine ranking spot gets as many visitors as positions 2-4 combined!
To come up with these impressive numbers, Chitika analyzed a sample of 8,253,240 impressions across their network.
"In order to find out the value of SEO, we looked at a sample of traffic coming into our advertising network from Google and broke it down by Google results placement.
The top spot drove 34.35% of all traffic in the sample, almost as much as the numbers 2 through 4 slots combined, and more than the numbers 5 through 20 (the end of page 2) put together."
Search engine ranking #10 gets 143% more clicks than #11.
"The biggest jump, percentage-wise, is from the top of page 2 to the bottom of page 1.
Going from the 11th spot to 10th sees a 143% jump in traffic. However, the base number is very low – that 143% jump is from 1.11% of all Google traffic to 2.71%.
As you go up the top page, the raw jumps get bigger and bigger, culminating in that desired top position."
Here are the search engine ranking numbers:
Google Result
Click Percentage
Show Me the Money!
I admit, having a number 1 search engine ranking on Google is very exciting and all, but if you are ranking of the wrong keyword, it won't help your business much.
How do you know when it's worth to improve google ranking?
To determine that, you can do one of the following:
Test your keywords with Google Adwords
- Start a Google AdWords campaign for the keyword, select "exact match" and point the ad to the page on your website that is most relevant to the keyword.
- Track the impressions and the conversion rate of the ad. To get useful data, you should track at least 500 clicks.
- With that data, you can make a guess about the value of a visitor that finds your website through that keyword.
For example, your ad might have had 10,000 impressions during a week and 200 visitors have come to your website. Six of them purchased something of your website and the total profit was $500.
That means that the average single visitor who finds your website through that keyword is worth $2.50 to your business ($500 / 200). The 10,000 ad impressions in a week can create a click-through rate of 34.35% (see table above) if you have the number 1 ranking for that keyword.
That means that you would get about 3,435 visitors per week. Based on the average value of $2.50/visitor you would earn $8,587.50 per week or $446,500 per year just with a single keyword.
Getting Market Value figures in Market Samurai
If you already own a copy of Market Samurai, the task of gathering all this info becomes even more of a breeze.
This data is gathered under you Keyword Analysis Data in Keyword Research tool.
Here are the numbers we are interested in:
• SEO Value (SEOV) – This is the maximum total value of traffic that the #1 ranked web page for this keyword (based on search results) is likely to receive – per month.
• Adwords Value (AWV) – This is the maximum total value of traffic that the #1 ranked advertiser (in Google Adwords) is likely to receive – per month.
In both cases, Market Samurai is taking the Market Value benchmark to the next step…
…by breaking down the Market Value number into how much #1 ranked web site will bring through organic SEO and Google Adwords respectively.
If you don't have Market Samurai, I would recommend you get a copy – it will save you a lot of time (and money) doing market research and give you access to a lot of really powerful keyword research tools.
Image credit: ICanHasCheezburger.com
Top Google Rankings: How I Got Google to Say Yes
I am sure Gerald is sick and tired of hearing about this, but since it's my post (never mind that it's on his blog), he'll have to bear with me one more time.
Allow me to give you some background on the issue.
One of my favorite product releases of the year was CommentLuv Premium by Andy Bailey.
The free version of the plugin has been floating around the blogosphere for years and loved by both blog owners and commentators (aka "link builders") alike.
Don't ask me why, but the minute I heard Andy was working on the premium version of the plugin and all the features he was adding to it, I thought it was the best thing since sliced bread.
Anyway, this post is not about how great this plugin is, but about Google rankings.
Or how I felt like I was beating against the brick wall trying to rank my CommentLuv Premium review post on the first page of Google for "CommentLuv Premium", to be more precise.
I am pretty good with SEO. Not great, but good enough. Plus, I'd like to think of myself as a creative link builder – I have to be since I don't have much time for it.
So I wrote the review post, optimized it to the "T", built a few links to it, and then ran a giveaway for a free copy of the plugin in exchange for an in-content dofollow backlink with exact anchor text back to my review post.
I told you I was creative, right?
So I got about 50 links from other blogs and, considering that my competitors for "CommentLuv Premium" keyword didn't have many backlinks to speak of, I sat back and waited for the SEO traffic to start pouring in.
Only it never happened.
My post showed up on the first page for a brisk day or two and then disappeared into the neverland of page 4.
You can imagine my frustration. Poor Gerald heard all about it…
Assumptions and Observations
1. My post was very well optimized for the keyword.
2. It had a good amount of quality in-content links coming in, as well as some low-quality links like social media, social bookmarking, etc.
3. Thus, as far as Google is concerned, it should've been found extremely relevant to the keyword.
Side note: the way Google determines relevancy is by the keyword usage on the page, including your title, description, etc, and the anchor text of the links pointing to the page. Of course, this is a very simplistic explanation; take a look at how Google works, if you'd like to go more in-depth on this one.
4. The posts ranked on the first page for the keyword at the time had but a handful of low-quality links.
5. On the upside, thanks to Google+ and all the connections I made there, most of my readers saw my post on the first page because of Google personalized search, even though I wasn't technically ranking for it.
6. Then Google Fresh came out. It was about that time that I wrote yet another post, talking about CommentLuv Premium settings this time AND posting a video on YouTube on the topic.
Considering my existing domain authority and a few quick links, they both showed up on the first page that very day (I didn't take a snapshot of the video rankings, but the post was in position 7 in 4 hours).
Both stayed on the first page for a while, but left without much link building, my CommentLuv Premium YouTube video eventually moved to page 2 and the post to page 3.
HOWEVER, guess which post finally showed up (and is staying there so far) on the first page position 5?
Besides being brilliant (I need to keep saying it to believe it – you should try it sometime), I am also very stubborn and never gave up on ranking that very first CommentLuv Premium post of mine.
So How Did I Do It?
I made one big change to the post, which I believe did the trick.
Of course, one could argue that Google simply came to its senses, saw all those links, and decided to give credit where credit was due (huh!)…
However, the ranking came about very shortly after I decided to turn my post into a page.
What's the difference, you might ask?
- Pages are static; posts are dynamic.
- Posts are displayed in chronological order on your home page, archives, category and tag pages, etc.
- Pages are not sorted by date; they are not classified by categories or tags.
Don't remember where I read it at this point, but someone somewhere once said that the way pages and posts are coded in WordPress is different enough to make the pages more SEO-friendly.
Since I don't know much about coding, I can't support or disprove this statement.
The following factor does seem to support it though: most of the higher PR URLs on any given blog are not posts at all – rather, they are pages.
Let's for instance take this blog and check the PR for inner pages using SEOQuake Firefox Addon.
All of those results are pages. And this tends to be true for most blogs.
To learn more about using pages to increase your rankings, take a look at my post on blog structure.
How to Turn a Post into a Page
Here are the step-by-step instructions (I'd recommend you open 2 tabs since you'll have to go back and forth between the post and the page):
1. Create a new page.
Copy and paste the content from the post to the page; save.
2. Change post permalink.
Since you've already built links to the post permalink, you'd want to keep it for your page. Of course, WP won't let you have the same permalink for more than one page, so you'll need to change the permalink on the original post first.
Usually, I simply add something like "original" or "part-1" or "2" to the end of the original post permalink; that's plenty enough for our purpose.
3. Use the original permalink for the page.
Now go back to the page and use the original permalink for the new page. Save.
4. Avoid duplicate content issue.
Now I would edit the original post SEO title, description, and change the post content – usually by simply cutting out most of the post and placing the link to the new page with "To read more, click here" type link.
Using keyword-rich anchor text is even better, of course.
5. Optional: close comments on the page.
This one is arguable; however, I'll use any trick up my sleeve if I can.
The original post will retain all the comments that were made on the post before you "transferred" the content to the page. It's only fair to make sure that your commentators keep their links, right?
I tend to close comments on my pages though.
As I said, this one is entirely optional.
Marketing Takeway
Was it my newly created page that did the trick and pushed me to the first page of Google?
Argumentative, but logical.
This wasn't the first time I did this either. Each time I turned posts into pages, they tended to rank higher and have better "sticking power" – most of them are currently ranked at the top of page one, if not in position one.
Thoughts? Ideas? "I have nothing solid to support my opinion, but I'll say you are wrong just for the heck of it"s? Comment below!
Google Fresh: How Will It Affect Your Site?
When Google comes up with a new algorithm change, all the webmasters hold their breath trying to figure out if this is the one that would send their site into the neverland of the search engine rankings.
I bet it wasn't any different with the last week's update that focused on pushing the freshest results to the top of the search engine pages.
Google tried to make us feel warm and fuzzy, as they announced their new update:
"Search results, like warm cookies right out of the oven or cool refreshing fruit on a hot summer's day, are best when they're fresh. Even if you don't specify it in your search, you probably want search results that are relevant and recent." Source
"Relevant and recent".
Not sure what happened to the "relevancy" part (after all, relevancy is supposed to be the cornerstone of how Google works), but we all noticed the "recency" factor.
So how would this latest update affect you and your site?
Should you start posting every day now? Are you expected to compete with websites that have full-time writers constantly churning out fresh content?
The answer is a definite NO.
Although this update will affect about 35% of all searches, its scope is quite narrow, in my opinion.
It zooms in on the following information streams:
1. Current events or hot topics:
It only makes sense that when you search for "occupy Wall Street protest", you expect to find the latest information on the topic immediately.
2. Topics in need of frequent updates:
A good example of this type of information would be products constantly coming up with new models.
If you are on the market for the latest Volvo XC-90, you are not interested in reviews of 2010 models, right?
3. Regularly occurring events:
Conferences, political elections, sports, etc. – all these events fall under "if I am searching for them, I am looking to find the info on the latest one" category.
Google says:
"Different searches have different freshness needs. This algorithmic improvement is designed to better understand how to differentiate between these kinds of searches and the level of freshness you need, and make sure you get the most up to the minute answers."
Reactions Around the Web
Rand Fishkin of SEOMoz, along with Mike King of @iPullRank, released the following video commenting on the update:
Barry Schwartz of SearchEngineLand.com talks about the potential problems this update might create, referring to them as "freshness spam":
"There are potential downsides. Sometimes you do want to reward fresh content. But what's fresh? If someone simply makes a small change to a page, does that give it a fresh boost? If someone reposts exactly the same content on a new page a day or two after initially posting it, is that fresh? Is when the page was first found define freshness, or is the first modified date used?
Does this open Google up to an even worse situation than can already happen with Google News now, where publishers file and refile stories in an effort to win the freshness race there, since the latest versions of stories often get top billing."
Ben Wills of MarketingPilgrim.com doesn't just talk about it, but offers 7 suggestions to rank higher in Google's new fresh results:
- Cover Your Bases by Getting into Google News
- Use Proper Time-stamps in Your Content
- Blogging
- Add Forums
- Add Question and Answers Section
- Add Your Own Social Network
- Add Your Own Social News section
If you think your site might be affected by Google Fresh changes, I strongly recommend you check out his post. Even if you don't, still take a look at it: Bill mentions a good number of tools to help you implement his suggestions above.
Marketing Takeaway
Well, that's it, folks.
As it's always the case, we'll talk about Google Fresh for another week or two, then the topic won't be fresh any longer and we'll get back to business as usual.
Until then, let's try to milk the news for all it's worth; who knows, maybe your site will show up under "Google Fresh" search tomorrow?


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Francis Edward Su is the Benediktsson-Karwa Professor of Mathematics at Harvey Mudd College. He received his B.S. in Mathematics from the University of Texas at Austin, and his Ph.D. from Harvard University. His research is in geometric and topological combinatorics, motivated by applications in the social sciences. He has held visiting appointments at Cornell University, MSRI, and Caltech. His work has been supported by multiple NSF research grants and he has co-authored numerous papers with undergraduates.
Su also has a passion for teaching and popularizing mathematics. From the Mathematical Association of America, he received the 2001 Hasse Prize for expository writing, and the 2004 Alder Award and the 2013 Haimo Award for distinguished teaching. He has delivered many invited lectures at national and Section meetings, including the 2006 Leitzel Lecture. He authors the popular Math Fun Facts website and iPhone app.
Within the MAA, he has been a Project NExT fellow and a PREP workshop organizer, and he has served on many MAA committees and editorial boards, including the American Mathematical Monthly and Math Horizons. He served as First Vice-President of the Association in 2010-2012.
As President, Su will advance a public vision of mathematics as the backbone of science as beautiful as art, as an endeavor worthy of every human being, as a quest made meaningful by the community that is the MAA: teachers, researchers, expositors and lovers of mathematics.
Su's hobbies include songwriting, gardening, photography, and theology. Just like mathematics, these are all modes of creative expression that blend structure and freedom, truth and beauty, reflection and action.


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The Doomsday Clock is an internationally recognized design that conveys how close we are to destroying our civilization with dangerous technologies of our own making. First and foremost among these are nuclear weapons, but the dangers include climate-changing technologies, emerging... Read More
To refine your results, use the filters in the right column.
During the late 1970s and early 1980s, the high-profile environmental crusade in the vehicle and fuel industries was to establish a ban on lead additives in gasoline--encapsulated by the catchphrase, "get the lead out." After initial uncertainty and some opposition based on the fear that prices would rise and vehicle performance would suffer, the transition to unleaded fuels proved remarkably easy and effective. The average blood-lead level in the U.S.


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LONDON (AP) -- The World Health Organization says the number of measles deaths dropped by about 75 percent over a decade.
The study, in today's journal Lancet, says most of the deaths were in India and Africa, where not enough children are being immunized.
Health officials say from 2000 to 2010 about 9.6 million children were saved from dying of measles thanks to big vaccination campaigns that began more than a decade ago.
Researchers guess that the number of deaths fell during that time period from more than 535,000 to a little more than 139,000.
WHO measles expert Peter Strebel calls the drop a huge success. He says, "You don't reduce measles deaths by three quarters without significantly accelerating efforts."
But scientists only have solid data for 65 countries. For the 128 others, they used modeling to come up with their estimates.
And despite the major dent, the WHO did not meet its goal to reduce measles deaths by 90 percent by 2010.


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Davis Planetarium
Day turns to night on the dome of the star theater as thousands of stars and planets appear overhead.
40 Years Under the Dome
We've been showing stars since 1976 – come see how we did it then and how we do it now.Read More
Black Holes: Journey into the Unknown
Witness what would happen if you got too close to a black hole and see how one is able to warp time and space.Read More
One World One Sky: Big Bird's Adventure
The planetarium show follows Sesame Street's Big Bird and Elmo as they explore the night sky with Hu Hu Zhu, a Muppet from Zhima Jie, the Chinese co-production of Sesame Street.Read More
The Sky Live!
Discover tonight's astronomical attractions.Read More
The Universe Live!
Off the Earth and out through space! The planetarium becomes a "spaceship"on a journey past our nightly canopy of stars.Read More
To Space & Back
To Space & Back takes audiences on an incredible journey from the far reaches of our known universe to our own planet.Read More
We Are Aliens
Explore how our understanding of life on Earth guides the hunt for alien life elsewhere in the Universe. We visit Mars, Europa and distant Exoplanets to help answer the ultimate question… are we alone?Read More


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Stoppage Time / Injury Time
At the center referee's discretion, time can be extended in the half to accommodate time lost due to injury or other occurrences such as time wasting by a player. Unlike other sports, the half ends when the referee so indicates and not by a running clock.
Soccer shoe. It's a British thing!
Own Goal
The rather embarrassing occurrence when a player directs the ball (presumably by accident) into their own goal.
Foot Fault
During a throw-in, when both feet are not on the ground or when both feet are not on or behind the touch line. The foot fault infraction results in a throw-in for the other team from the point of the infraction.
In Touch
When the ball fully crosses a touch line, play is stopped to be re-started by a throw-in. The ball is "in touch" when it literally can be touched by the players' hands for the throw-in.
Soccer (where did this word actually come from?)
In late 19th century Britian there were two kinds of football, Rugby football (played by "ruggers") and AsSOCiation football (played by "soccers"). As the British popularity of soccer grew and exceeded that of rugby, the game became known simply as football, while in this country, the popularity of American football took on the name of football while soccer remained known as such.
Halfway Line
The line separating the soccer field into two halves.
Center Mark
Very center of the field where the ball is located for kick-offs.
Center Circle
Not surprisingly this is the circle in the center of the field. It has a radius of ten yards and serves to indicate the minimum distance the opposing team is to be from the ball at a kick-off.
Touch Lines
Boundary lines at the sides of the field (lines beyond which a player can touch the ball with their hands). Again it's a British thing!
Goal Lines
Boundary lines at either end of the field on which the goals are centered.
Goal Area
Six yard deep lined area immediately in front of the goal. Goal kicks are taken anywhere from inside the goal area. The goal area is fully within the larger penalty area.
Penalty Area
Eighteen yard deep lined area used to designate the area in which the goalkeeper is allowed to use their hands. A direct free kick foul awarded an attacker within their opponents' penalty area results in a penalty kick.
Penalty Mark
Twelve yard from the center of the goals (and goal line). Sights of much drama (see penalty kicks)!
A foul is an infraction of the laws of the game that results in the re-start of a direct free kick, an indirect free kick, or a penalty kick. A foul can only be issued during active play.
A misconduct is a players' infraction of the laws of the game that results in the issuance of a caution (yellow card) or send-off (red card). A misconduct can be issued either with or without a corresponding foul. A misconduct can be issued whether play is active or not.
Illegal Handling
Often misunderstood; the only time a foul has occurred is when the hand or arm makes intentional contact with the ball. Even then, when this contact is in a protective manner, there is no foul. A good rule of thumb is "Hand to ball is a foul; ball to hand is not."
This foul, which results in an indirect free kick, occurs when a player shields an opponent from being able to play the ball. This is only a foul when the ball is out of easy reach of the impeding player.
Perhaps the most complicated ruling in all of sports! Quite simply, offside is the infraction when the offense unfairly plays the ball beyond the defense. "Offside" refers to a player being on the "off" or wrong side of the field (yet another British thing!). Please note this infraction is not "offsides".
Yellow / Red Cards
Cards are shown to players who have committed misconduct, not fouls. Infractions that require a caution result in a yellow card; infractions that require a send-off result in a red card. A player issued a red card is disqualified for the rest of the game and that team cannot replace this player. A player issued a second yellow card in a single game is automatically issued a red card and sent off.
Center Referee (CR)
The center referee is the leader of the referee team and is the only official empowered to call fouls, issue cards, and start and stop play. The CR will look for advice from their AR's and club linesmen but is not required to follow it.
Assistant Referee (AR)
There are two assistant referees (one on each touch line) for every regulation match. Assistant referees are fully trained members of the officiating team and not affiliated with either team. AR's responsibilities include tending the touch lines and goal line, watching for offside violations, advising the center referee of fouls or misconduct, and generally assisting the CR with officiating the game. AR's generally communicate to the center referee with the use of flag signals, never with a whistle.
Club Linesman
When AR's are not available, club linesmen will assist the center referee by tending the touch lines and indicating whether the ball has left the field of play and what team is to maintain possession. Typically provided by one of the teams involved, the potential partiality of the club linesman precludes them from calling fouls or offside calls and do not hold the full authority of a center or assistant referee.
Kick-off (KO)
A KO starts play at the beginning of a half or after a goal. The ball must move forward (even if only slightly). The KO begins with the opponents outside the center circle and commences once the referee gives the signal to proceed.
Indirect Free Kick (IFK)
An IFK is a free kick on which a goal cannot be scored directly off the kick. The ball must first touch a player other than the kicker for a goal to count. The referee will hold one arm straight up to indicate an IFK.
Direct Free Kick (DFK)
A DFK is a free kick on which a goal can be scored directly off the kick.
Penalty Kick (PK)
If a DFK foul is called against a player within their own penalty area, a penalty kick will be awarded to the opposing team. The ball is placed on the penalty mark, the goalkeeper must stay on the goal line until the ball is kicked, all other players except the kicker must stay behind the ball, out of the penalty area, and ten yards from the ball. Once the referee gives the signal and the ball is kicked forward, the other players may immediately re-enter play.
Corner Kick (CK)
A CK is awarded the attacking team when the defense last touches the ball before it fully crosses the goal line. The CK is taken on the side of the field where the ball left play.
Goal Kick (GK)
A GK is awarded the defending team when the opposition last touches the ball before it fully crosses the goal line. The GK is taken from anywhere within the goal area and must fully clear the penalty area to be back in play. The GK not clearing the penalty area will be re-taken.
Drop Ball (DB)
The referee will re-start play with a DB whenever they have stopped play for any reason other than those described above. The ball will be in play once it hits the ground after being dropped by the referee.
The sweeper is a defensive player positioned between the fullbacks and the goalkeeper. Intended to roam freely and "sweep up" the ball across the field, this player usually acts as the on-field coach directing the defense and allows the fullbacks to push forward to aid the offense. Usually a tough and gritty player with speed and a willingness to make contact.
The stopper is a defensive player positioned between the midfield and fullbacks (sometimes the center fullback) to stop attacks up the middle. This player is often designated to mark the opponents' most potent scoring threat.
The striker is an offensive player, usually the center forward, known to have a strong shot. Quite often the player to take the most shots on goal.
The wingers are the left and right forwards whose main job is to center the ball to teammates in scoring position.
Moving across the field of play while in possession and control of the ball. Unlike basketball, the hands are not used in this maneuver. Dribbling is also sometimes called "carrying".
This is when a player kicks the ball cleanly between the legs of an opposing player, who usually feels the embarrassment of being caught flat-footed.
A technique by which a player attempts to keep the ball in the air for as long as possible by kicking or otherwise striking the ball with the head, knees, or chest (but never hands or arms). An excellent technique for developing touch and ball control.
Simply the act of taking possession of the ball away from an opponent. And though the term in American football means dragging someone to the ground, this is not the case in soccer. Tackles can be either clean or illegal (in which a foul is committed).
Slide Tackle
When a tackle is done while the player taking the ball is on the ground, this is known as a slide tackle. This is a fully legal soccer maneuver when executed correctly (see the Region 418 website for our Region's special guidelines on Slide Tackling).
Making contact with an opposing player while possession of the ball is being contested. Charging is not necessarily against the rules. So long as the charge is quick, instantaneous (shoulder to shoulder, never from behind) and without carelessness, recklessness, or excessive force, this contact is acceptable. Illegal charging is one of the ten direct free kick fouls.
When a goalkeeper drops and kicks the ball before it hits the ground. This is done to send the ball as far from the penalty area as possible and is done for distance rather than precision.
Kicking the ball while it is in the air (as opposed to rolling on the ground).
Half Volley
Kicking the ball just after it has touched the ground (quite often done by the goalkeeper while punting). Also known as a "drop kick".
When a player stops to ball to allow greater control in dribbling, passing, or shooting. Traps can be made with the feet, insides of thighs, chest, or head (rarely).
Ouch. This is the most commonly misused word in soccer. While "offside" is used in soccer, "offsides" is from American football.
Penalty Box
Penalty boxes are where unruly hockey players are sent. Soccer goalkeepers are found roaming in penalty areas. Similarly, soccer recognizes the phrase "goal area" in lieu of "goal box".
Handball is a hard court game popular in the 1970's in which you are encouraged to use your hands. In soccer, you are generally discouraged from using your hands. The penalty for improperly using your hands is called "illegal handling".
No side lines in soccer, only touch lines. The phrase comes from the fact that you are allowed to touch the ball with your hands (so as to throw it in) if the ball has fully crossed these lines.
Quarters are familiar to American football players, pro basketball players, and people feeding parking meters. However, soccer players know that soccer is always played in two halves. While sometimes there is a substitution break (or rest break for the younger players) in the middle of AYSO soccer halves, these should not be considered as "quarters". After such breaks, play is restarted at the point where play was last stopped.
Midway Line
A Midway line is a train that may cause you to miss your flight on the southwest side. However, it is not something found on a soccer field. Nor is there a 50 yard line. The line that bisects the field of play is called a "Halfway Line".


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Staff profile
Dr Melinda Craike
|Senior Research Fellow
|Melbourne Burwood Campus
|+61 3 924 45552 +61 3 924 45552
- Doctor of Philosophy, Griffith University, 2005
Professional activities
- International Journal of Behavioural Nutrition and Physical Activity
- Psychooncology
- Supportive Care in Cancer
- Integrative Cancer Therapies
- Journal of Cancer Survivorship
- Journal of Physical Activity & Health
- Leisure/Loisir
- Annals of Leisure Research
- Journal of Leisure Research
- World Leisure Journal
- Member of Deakin University Human Ethics Advisory Group - Faculty of Health (HEAG-H) (2013-present)
- Member of Eastern Health Low Risk Human Research Ethics Committee (2012-2013)
- Member of Victorian Cooperative Oncology Group (VOCOG) Psycho Oncology Committee 2008-present
- Member of Clinical Oncological Society of Australia (COSA) 2008-2011.
- Member of ANZALS (Australia, New Zealand Association of Leisure Studies), 2003-2008.
- Member of LSA (Leisure Studies Association), 2007-2008
- Griffith University Alumni Association, 1998-present
- Academic representative on Coursework Committee, Faculty of Arts, Education and Human Development, Victoria University, 2005-2007
- Organising committee for 2008 ANZALS Conference, 2006-2008.
- Selection Officer, Bachelor of Recreation Management degree, 2006-present
Expertise summary
Dr Melinda Craike is a Research Fellow in the School of Nursing and Midwifery, Faculty of Health and a Senior Research Fellow in the Preventative Health Care Group, Centre for Mental Health and Wellbeing Research. Dr Craike completed her Ph.D on the social psychological determinants of physical activity at Griffith University, Brisbane in 2005. Since then, her work has focused on the examination of factors that influence quality of life and psychological health and designing and evaluating effective interventions that aim to promote positive health and wellbeing. She has expertise in determinants and outcomes of physical activity, behaviour change theory and supportive care interventions that improve psychological health and quality of life for a range of population groups, with a particular focus on people with chronic illness. Throughout her research career, Dr Craike has employed diverse research methods and designs, including randomized controlled trials, prospective designs, quantitative cross-sectional and longitudinal surveys, qualitative interviews and focus groups, retrospective audits, and secondary analysis of datasets. Dr Craike has successfully managed several research projects to completion and has established partnerships with a range of organisations, including public and private health services, the Leukaemia Foundation of Australia and the Prostate Cancer Foundation of Australia. She has published peer reviewed manuscripts, many as lead author, in national and international journals. She has also presented her work at national and international conferences and has received several awards for her work.
Knowledge areas
Improving quality of life and psychosocial outcomes for various population groups
Determinants and outcomes of physical activity;
Behaviour change interventions to increase physical activity;
Student supervision
- 2012- present Sally Buchanan-Hagen Honours, School of Nursing and Midwifery, Deakin University
- 2012 Patrick Owen, School of Exercise and Nutrition Sciences, Deakin University (completed)
- 2009-2010: Claire Spellman, Honours, School of Nursing, Deakin University (completed)
- 2009: Julie van der Klift, Honours, School of Nursing, Deakin University (completed)
- 2008-2009: Vivian Mac, Honours, School of Nursing Deakin University (completed)
- 2008-2009: Stephanie Hunter, Honours, School of Nursing, Deakin University (completed)
- 2008-2009: John Lippman, Masters of Health Sciences, School of Nursing, Deakin University (completed)
Awards and prizes
- Second Prize: Best Psycho-Oncology Award at the 12th Australasian Prostate Cancer Conference, for the study entitled, 'The Role of Cancer Specialists in Advising On Physical Activity: A Pilot Study'.
- Award for Outstanding Presentation. 2009 Growing Research Together. Faculty of Health, Medicine, Nursing and Behavioural Sciences Research Conference, Deakin University.
- Award for Best Poster 2nd. CENA 7th International Conference for Emergency Nursing, 7th—10th October 2009, Gold Coast Queensland.
- Australian Postgraduate Award Scholarship, 2000-2003, $17,000 pa
- Bursary from the Griffith University Postgraduate Student Association, 2002
- Patience Thoms Honours Scholarship, 1999, $4,000
- School of Leisure Studies Honours bursary, 1999
- Griffith Award for Academic Excellence, 1998 and 1999
- University Medal for outstanding Academic excellence in a Bachelors Degree Course and for obtaining First Class Honours, 1999
- Leisure Management Award, 1998
- Invited member of the Golden Key National Honour Society, 1996
Research projects
Associate Professor Patricia Livingston, Professor Jo Salmon, Professor Kerry Courneya, Dr Cadeyrn Gaskin, Professor Mari Botti, Dr Suzanne Broadbent and Professor Bridie Kent. 'The Efficacy of a Referral and Physical Activity Program for Survivors of Prostate Cancer'
Granting Body: ARC Linkage Grant: ARC $312,831, Prostate Cancer Foundation of Australia $70,000
Dr Patricia Livingston, Dr Julie Considine, Professor Beverly O'Connell, Professor Mari Botti, Miss Vivian Mak. 'Presentations to emergency departments due to chemotherapy-induced complications: opportunities for improving service delivery'.
Granting Body: Victorian Cancer Agency, $77,950
Dr Patricia Livingston, Dr Victoria White, Dr Michael Jefford, Dr Amanda Hordern, Professor Mari Botti, Dr Carrie Lethborg, and Dr John Oldroyd.
'A nurse-assisted screening and referral program for depression among survivors of cancer: A pilot study'
Granting bodies: Beyondblue: $96,288 and Victorian Cancer Agency: $41,027
Research interests
Improving quality of life and psychosocial outcomes for various population groups
Determinants and outcomes of physical activity;
Behaviour change interventions to increase physical activity;
Research grants
Craike MJ (AI). 'Improving quality of life outcomes for people with multiple myeloma'. Centre for Quality and Patient Safety Research (QPS) Seeding Grant. Deakin University. $17,459. (Grant No. 2011-07-002)
Craike, M.J. (PI): An In-Depth Analysis of Factors that Influence Physical Activity Participation for Survivors of Prostate Cancer. Deakin University Faculty Development Grant. 2008, $11,000
Craike, M.J. (AI): Role of Emergency Departments in detection and referral of overweight children: a new preventative health strategy. Myrtle Ivy Quicke Scholarship, Royal College of Nursing, Australia, 2008, $8,000.
Craike, M.J. (PI): 'A longitudinal study of the individual, social and environmental determinants of sport and physical activity of young women at transitional life stages'. Women in Sport Grant, Sport and Recreation Victoria. 2007-2009. $60,000 (plus $60,000 matching funding from VU).
Craike, M.J. (CI): 'Physical Activity in Children with Cerebral Palsy: The Experiences of Parents and Teachers Victoria University (VU Discovery Grant). 2006. $8,440
Craike, M.J. (PI):. 'Evaluation of Active Script in Brimbank/Melton'.Brimbank Melton Primary Care Partnership. 2006-2007. $6,000.
Craike, M.J (CI): 'Improving LIWC in the sport and recreation courses'. Victoria University Teaching and Learning Support Grant. 2007-2008. $18,835.
Craike, M.J (PI): 'Scoping Study for ERASS Data'. Sport and Recreation Victoria and VicHealth, 2007-2008. $7,000.


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Sept. 30, 2013 Augusta, GA-- Over at Westminster school, everything is going just as planned. A second straight year, the Wildcats are undefeated heading in to their seventh game of the season. Hopefully, that's where any connection to a previous season ends.
If we look back to last year, the Wildcats didn't win another game after hitting 6-0. That's in large part because of a strong region schedule. Unfortunately, the schedule hasn't changed this year, and it will pose the same challenges.
Though, you won't hear a Westminster excuse. They're handling the cards that have been dealt.
"They're no dummies. They know exactly what happened and they know the situation that we're in. We're excited about what we've done so far and we're excited about the challenge before us," Westminster coach Andrew Bryan said.
"Coach likes to remind us, not too often, but often (about last year). It makes us want to work harder...to get the benefits of winning in region," safety Connor Hearon said.
The Wildcats got a boost of confidence from a win against Augusta Prep Friday night. They'll need it against Tattnall Square this week. The Trojans are coming off a victory against the defending GISA-AAA state champions, Deerfield-Windsor.


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|+61 8 6304 2563
Deborah is an Associate Professor in Speech Pathology in the School of Medical and Health Sciences.
Deborah qualified as a speech pathologist in 1989 and then worked in London for three years with adult and paediatric caseloads across a range of clinical settings. In 1993, after completing her MSc in Human Communication at UCL, she moved to Adelaide and continued her clinical work in adult acute, outpatients, rehabilitation and community settings. This included work at The Queen Elizabeth Hospital, St Margaret's Hospital Rehabilitation Service, Southern Domiciliary Care and Flinders Medical Centre (1993-1998). In 1995, Deborah started the Talkback Group Program for Aphasia and established the Talkback Association for Aphasia in 1999. Between 1999 and 2002, Deborah studied at Flinders University for her PhD research exploring experiences of treatment termination in chronic aphasia. Around this time, she also worked as a lecturer A/Clinical Tutor at the Speech Pathology Department at Flinders University and as a Tutor in Clinical Ethics for medical students in the Department of Public Health at Adelaide University. Between 2003 and 2006, Deborah worked as a locum speech and language therapist in London and on senior part-time and locum positions at the Julia Farr Centre, Hampstead Rehabilitation Centre and Metropolitan Domiciliary Care in Adelaide. Between 2006 and 2008, she was employed as a postdoctoral research fellow for the University of Queensland on an NHMRC-funded project grant looking at person-centred goal setting in aphasia rehabilitation, and in 2009, worked as a senior research fellow for the Discipline of Public Health, Flinders University, on the Smoking and Resilience study. In 2010, Deborah moved to Perth and took up a senior lectureship at Edith Cowan University. Deborah has been actively involved in Speech Pathology Australia at national levels, serving on their Ethics Board, Fellowship Committee, ACQ Editorial Board and two national conference organising committees. She has also served on the committee of the Australian Aphasia Association and acted as their representative on the Australia and New Zealand Expert Working Group for the revision of the National Stroke Foundation Stroke Management Guidelines. Deborah was awarded Fellowship of Speech Pathology Australia in 2003, life membership of the Talkback Association for Aphasia in 2009, and holds a position as Adjunct Senior Lecturer in Public Health at Flinders University.


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Dear Diary: Angst and the Bear Stearns Hedge-Fund Managers
The world of Wall Street often is depicted as a cold, depersonalized world of sharp teeth and sharper elbows that operates under a facade of nice suits and polite conformity.
All of that is true.
However, sometimes the human cost of a big failure becomes clear. Deal Journal was particularly struck by a few quotes in the Bear Stearns indictment* today–at this point, we only have the government's allegations–that display the angst, panic, denial of reality and helplessness in the face of unfavorable markets that Ralph Cioffi and Matthew Tannin felt as their life's work went out the window, and their reputations with it. We preface each with one of the five stages of grief.
March 14, 2007: "Cioffi wrote, 'We are getting loads of margin calls.'
March 15, 2007: "Cioffi wrote, 'I'm fearful of these markets. Matt [Tannin] said it's either a melt down or the greatest buying opportunity ever, I'm leaning toward the former. As we discussed it may not be a meltdown for the general economy but in our world it will be.'"
Late March: "'I'm sick to my stomach over our performance in March,' wrote Cioffi."
March 7, 2007: "Cioffi told a Bear Stearns broker who had 40 clients in the funds, 'We have an awesome opportunity.'"
March 7, 2007: "Tannin told the same broker, 'I think Cioffi and I are in agreement that we are looking at some great possibilities for the coming months. I don't know where you are putting your money now but I would suggest we speak about adding more to the fund.'"
March 15, 2007: "Tannin said, 'We are seeing opportunities now and are excited by what is possible. I am adding capital to the Fund. If you guys are in a position to do the same I think this is a good opportunity.'"
Late March: "'Believe it or not, I've been able to convince people to add more money,' Tannin wrote." (Tannin never added his own money to the funds even though he told investors he would, prosecutors said in the indictment.)
April 25, 2007: "Tannin told investors, 'We're very comfortable with where we are…the fund [has performed exactly the way it was designed to perform…there's no basis for thinking this is one big disaster.'"
March 2, 2007: "Cioffi talked about the extremely difficult month the Funds had experienced in February, stated that the Funds had averted disaster and led a vodka toast to celebrate surviving the month."
Mid-April 2007: "Cioffi withdrew $2 million of his own $6 million from the Enhanced Fund. Big investors start their redemptions, too: $57 million, which wasn't disclosed to other investors."
April 22, 2007: "Tannin recommends that they shut the funds down or 'get very very aggressive' in a new investment strategy. 'The subprime market looks pretty damn ugly…if AAA bonds are systematically downgraded then there is simply no way for us to make money — ever.' He continued, 'Who do we talk to about this? [BSAM's president]? [Bear Stearns' co president]? Outside counsel?' Tannin sent the email from his personal account, not from his Bear Stearns one."
March 3, 2007: "The worry for me is that sub prime losses will be far worse than any thing people have modeled," Cioffi wrote.
June 9, 2007: "When the Funds' collapse was imminent, Cioffi stated that "if I can't [turn the Funds around] I've effectively washed a 30-year career down the drain."
March 3, 2007: "Cioffi told Tannin that at least 'we have our health and families…we are not a 19 year old Marine in Iraq.'"
*Hat tip to our friends over at the WSJ's Law Blog, and check out their post on the legal issues involved.
Deal Journal bonus: Read our previous post in which we interviewed an expert on why people send incriminating emails.


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Managed services companies are a dime a dozen in some parts of the world. There are tons of places where someone has cobbled together some hardware, hired a student to watch it and calls this setup a server farm, but this by no means guarantees any sort of quality level beyond it merely existing. When you are in New York City, you have the right and even the expectation that you need to demand the very best. If you do not demand the best there is, you are settling for mediocrity. Mediocrity will not help you with much of anything.
Fortunately, you always have the ability to find the best in IT consulting and other forms of outsourced IT-related services. When you need to gain the knowledge of how to either set up or run your infrastructure, you can start in a lot of different kinds of places. To start with there are always online directories that you can consult and find such companies. While you may or may not wind up with the best there is in this way, you can at least collect a few solid options.
Also Read: Why IT Consulting in NYC is Essential to Serious Businesses
Once you have great IT services, NYC becomes a far easier place for you to do business. In this day and age, your command of solid infrastructure is the primary difference between being "okay" and being a truly successful company. So it is naturally going to be important that you vet the companies that you collect for the signifiers of a high quality level. The signs of greatness are variable but all great companies have a few things in common.
For starters, for great IT support, NYC companies are going to have solid references. When you are looking for something great you are also looking for a long and solid list of reference individuals who can attest to how well the company works. Donald Trump has declared that any kind of great contractor will be able to produce 10 great references, and this is a solid rule for you to follow in the early stages of vetting the company you outsource anything IT to.
When you are looking for the best managed services company, it also pays to do a little bit of research on the company before you hire them from a legalistic perspective. While having great references that are not simply family members or friends is a great step toward knowing that the company is going to do a good job, finding out if the company is operating legally and on the up and up overall is also of crucial importance.
Before you sign any documents you need to know that you are going to be protected legally if anything bad ever happens involving the company you are outsourcing to. If something does go wrong, you want to know that you are going to be protected from a large amount of undue liability. If you have done your best to understand the company and determined that they are operating on the right side of the law, other people will find it hard to successfully sue you for damages if the company makes a mistake down the line.
On the whole, you need to be sure that you are working with a company that handles all three of the major components of being successful in information technology. First the company has got to understand what it takes to operate the tech infrastructure that you need. Secondly the company has to be able to provide you with social proof that they will actually do right by you instead of trying to pull something shady. Finally, the company has got to prove that it is operating legally in every way in order to limit your ultimate potential legal liability.
Also Read: What Should a Small Business Look for in an IT Provider?
When a company has solidly proven that it is going to continue to walk the walk as well as talking the talk, you can be reasonably sure that you can trust them going forward. If you have any doubts in your gut, do more research. But rest assured that you should never settle for any company in NYC unless they are the best. There are simply too many options available to you to do any settling at all.


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Wow. Our experiment is off to a great start—let's see if we can finish it off sooner than expected.
In The New Republic this week, Jon Cohn has an eye-opening piece, "The Two Year Window," about advances in the science of early childhood development. It opens with a description of the Bucharest Early Intervention Project, a study that removed infants from warehouse-style orphanages in Romania and adopted them out:
It was ten years after the fall of the Communist dictator Nicolae Ceauşescu, whose scheme for increasing the country's population through bans on birth control and abortion had filled state-run institutions with children their parents couldn't support.... The new government remained convinced that the institutions were a good idea—and was still warehousing at least 60,000 kids, some of them born after the old regime's fall, in facilities where many received almost no meaningful human interaction. [Neuroscientist Charles Nelson] prevailed upon the government to allow them to remove some of the children from the orphanages and place them with foster families. Then, the researchers would observe how they fared over time in comparison with the children still in the orphanages.
…Prior to the project, investigators had observed that the orphans had a high frequency of serious developmental problems, from diminished IQs to extreme difficulty forming emotional attachments. Meanwhile, imaging and other tests revealed that some of the orphans had reduced activity in their brains. The Bucharest project confirmed that these findings were more than random observations. It also uncovered a striking pattern: Orphans who went to foster homes before their second birthdays often recovered some of their abilities. Those who went to foster homes after that point rarely did.
This past May, a team led by Stacy Drury of Tulane reported a similar finding—with an intriguing twist. The researchers found that telomeres, which are protective caps that sit on the ends of chromosomes, were shorter in children who had spent more time in the Romanian orphanages....It was the clearest signal yet that neglect of very young children does not merely stunt their emotional development. It changes the architecture of their brains.
…"The concept of disrupting brain circuitry is much more compelling than the concept that poverty is bad for your health," says Jack Shonkoff, a Harvard pediatrician and chair of the National Scientific Council on the Developing Child. "It gives us a basis for developing new ideas, for going into policy areas, given what we know, and saying here are some new strategies worth trying."
What's new here isn't really the idea that experiences in early childhood are important. In fact, in the era following the Second World War, the idea that habits established early in life are permanent was, if anything, belabored too much. "If mothers did not nurture their infants properly," Jerome Kagan wrote in 1999, criticizing this widespread belief, "their children would be vulnerable to a dull mind, a wild spirit, and a downward spiral…This view of development rests on the assumption that every experience produces a permanent physical change somewhere in the central nervous system, and therefore the earliest experiences provide the scaffolding for the child's future thought and behavior."
What Kagan was criticizing, though, was primarily the idea that particular styles of parenting were necessary to produce well-adjusted children. Generally speaking, that turns out not to be true: You don't need to play Mozart to your baby or jump through hoops to make sure she's properly "attached." Most middle-class kids turn out okay even though they're exposed to a wide variety of parenting styles.
But Cohn's piece is about something different: It's about kids whose infancy is, to put it bluntly, fairly appalling. And not just in warehouses in Bucharest. Diana Rauner visited child care facilities in Chicago while she was working on her doctoral dissertation and "described facilities where infants were strapped in car seats, 'watching The Lion King all day,' while the older kids were 'circling the room almost like sharks' and throwing things at the infants, because they had nothing else to do." That kind of environment, it turns out, can cause permanent cognitive damage, sometimes at a biological level, and it's probably a lot more common than you think.
You can see more of the evidence for the importance of early childhood in the chart on the right, which I posted earlier this year. It comes from James Heckman, probably the preeminent researcher in this area, and it shows average achievement test scores for different classes of children. All show the exact same dynamic: Gaps show up as early as age three and persist pretty much forever. Some of this is due to genetic differences, but not all of it. It's also due to differences in children's early environments. The lesson is simple: If you want to have a real impact on how kids do in school, you have to get to them early.
But even this understates the benefit of intensive early interventions. The payoff, in general, doesn't come in higher test scores, anyway. A large and growing body of research suggests that it comes in other behaviors: for example, the ability to delay gratification, the ability to hold a job, the ability to control your temper, and the ability to stay away from drugs and alcohol.
The problem, of course, is that early intervention costs money. Lots of money. According to Cohn, we currently spend about $11,000 per student in K-12 and about $4,000 per child under the age of four. That's crazy. But if we wanted to equalize that spending, how could we do it? One option is just to raise more money. But if we spent $11,000 for every child under the age of four, that would come to over $100 billion per year in new spending. There's no way that's going to happen.
Another option would be to take the pot of money we already spend and equalize it: spend about $9,000 per child all the way from ages 1-18. Unfortunately, this is hardly any more likely: If we tried to reduce the amount we spend on K-12, teachers unions would go ballistic, ed reformers would go ballistic, and suburban parents would go ballistic. If I were a benevolent dictator, I'd do it anyway, because it would almost certainly be a far better use of our existing money. But I'm not, am I?
Still, this is an area that cuts across party lines and deserves far more attention than it gets. The evidence has been mounting for a long time that intensive early interventions produce a huge bang for the buck, far more than what we spend in primary and secondary schools. The problem is that the bucks have to be spent now, and the bang doesn't arrive for another decade or two. Where's Bill Gates when you need him?


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China's New Child Policy Leaves Many Questions
My print column examines China's tempering of its one-child policy and demographers' and analysts' struggle to project what it means for the country.
In the short term, the change can't mean much for the shrinking of the country's labor supply. "It's not going to increase size of the working-age population for 20 to 25 years," said Richard Jackson, director of the Global Aging Initiative at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. "So the economic impact is long-term."
Added John D. Minnich, East Asia Analyst for Stratfor, an Austin, Texas, think tank, "By the time any children born under the relaxed policy reach working age, China's work force will be far smaller –and the proportion of its population over 65 much larger– than currently." And the workforce isn't only shrinking. It's also becoming increasingly mismatched with the demand for workers, particularly in manufacturing. "No adjustment to the one-child policy will correct this problem," Minnich said.
Part of the problem, International Monetary Fund researchers Mitali Das and Papa N'Diaye said in joint responses to questions, is that the aging of China's population is so significant, "it would need a pretty large increase in the birth rate to really counter it."
Minnich doubts the actual increase will be all that great. "The cost of living is simply too high in most cities to make raising more than one child wildly affordable," he said.
Xiaobo Zhang, senior research fellow at the International Food Policy Research Institute, a Washington think tank, said a more sweeping change could help. "I hope the family planning policy can be completely abolished in the near future to fully address the looming aging problem," Zhang said.
Researchers don't have many precedents to turn to when projecting the effect of the new policy, Das and N'Diaye said: "We're in uncharted waters here! "
Yong Cai, a fellow at the Carolina Population Center at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, applauded the move on human-rights grounds. "Many people, myself included, have been waiting for this quite a while," Cai said. "It's certainly a first step of the return of reproductive freedom to the Chinese people."


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a1 Department of Ophthalmology & Visual Sciences, University of Nebraska Medical Center, Omaha, Nebraska
a2 Department of Pharmacology & Experimental Neuroscience, University of Nebraska Medical Center, Omaha, Nebraska
Rod and cone photoreceptors possess ribbon synapses that assist in the transmission of graded light responses to second-order bipolar and horizontal cells of the vertebrate retina. Proper functioning of the synapse requires the juxtaposition of presynaptic release sites immediately adjacent to postsynaptic receptors. In this review, we focus on the synaptic, cytoskeletal, and extracellular matrix proteins that help to organize photoreceptor ribbon synapses in the outer plexiform layer. We examine the proteins that foster the clustering of release proteins, calcium channels, and synaptic vesicles in the presynaptic terminals of photoreceptors adjacent to their postsynaptic contacts. Although many proteins interact with one another in the presynaptic terminal and synaptic cleft, these protein–protein interactions do not create a static and immutable structure. Instead, photoreceptor ribbon synapses are remarkably dynamic, exhibiting structural changes on both rapid and slow time scales.
(Received June 06 2011)
(Accepted September 06 2011)
c1 Address correspondence and reprint requests to: Wallace B. Thoreson, Department of Ophthalmology & Visual Sciences, University of Nebraska Medical Center, 4050 Durham Research Center, Omaha, NE 68198-5840. E-mail: email@example.com


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Please call owner Emil at 239-220-9324. Boat is located in Detroit, Michigan. This 1970 Columbia MK. II sailboat designed by designer - Bill Tripp, and is in good shape. Dry-docked, in Marina, and immediately available. This boat was a race winner and Champion, having competed and won several races in the greater South East Michigan and South West Ontario area. This Columbia is a terrific ...
Aug 20 -
Detroit :
Detroit - Boats
Please contact the owner directly @ 419-239-1853 or [email removed]t family cruising sailboat.
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For more details visit: http://www.BoatsFSBO.com/97457 Please contact the owner directly @ 616-291-1647 or [email removed]...H-31 sailboat in excellent condition inside and out, setup for liveaboard or weekender . New interior, lighting, head, galley, carpet, flat screen, stereo and much more. Portals are Re bedded with new gaskets and screens. Deck is solid . All rigging is inspected and in ...
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Set-up an appointment to see it at it's dock space on Lake Erie by Fairport Harbor, Ohio
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94 square foot mainsail, daggerboard kickup rudder, Harken Ronstan hardware, concept is a 'big' Laser for a 240 lb adult. Sails very well and quick. My
increasing age loss of agility forces sale. Painted plywood construction. Drawing photos by request
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