Menlo Innovations Shows A New Kind Of Michigan

ANN ARBOR, Mich. -- When Rich Sheridan lost his job in the dot-com bubble about a decade ago and decided to start his own company, he had some trouble explaining the idea to his wife.

"I came home and told Carol I had lost my job and she went, 'So you're unemployed,'" he said. "And I said, 'No, I'm an entrepreneur now.'"

Even after weeks of working in his basement with friends on the business plan, when it came time to invest some $15,000 of the family's money in the nascent firm, Carol was confused.

"I was just thinking, what business?" she recalled, adding that she thought her husband and his friends had been applying for jobs together in the basement.

What they had been plotting instead was Menlo Innovations, a software-design outfit that now has 42 employees and that Sheridan and his partners expect will bring in about $5 million in revenue this year. And they weren't alone. While Michigan's economy is distressed overall, the emergence of countless small technology start-ups here in recent years gives some hope that there are better days ahead.

But even as a report issued this month showed that, for all the state's challenges, Michigan gained more tech jobs than any other state in 2010, there is still some lingering uncertainty about a brand of business that is much different from automobile manufacturing. Take Carol Sheridan's father, for one. He worked for Chrysler for 10 years and was later a tool and die maker for an auto parts manufacturer. When Rich Sheridan wanted to start Menlo, his father-in-law "looked at him funny," as James Goebel, another of the founders, remembered.

The state as a whole has had to wrap its mind around these new kinds of companies, which are among the fastest growing in Michigan. Even as GDP growth struggles here, the high concentrations of students and engineers have made it an attractive place to start new companies. Many of these have been founded by graduates of the University of Michigan, which recently announced that it would begin investing in companies that begin on its campus.

Still, Goebel said that Michigan investors in general are more risk-averse than venture capitalists in other states.

"People here only want to start the next HP or Apple," he said. "But you have to start 10,000 firms to end up with HP and Apple. It's a new idea here that you would start companies knowing so many would fail."

Menlo certainly hasn't failed, and nobody is looking at its founders with anything except admiration anymore. The company has been named a "Michigan Economic Bright Spot" and one of the fastest-growing private companies in America. Software they developed for a cytometer manufacturer helps count cells in fluid and has been one of the firm's biggest successes.

Now they're ready to branch out into even riskier territory. Nontraditional business arrangements, such as deferring design fees in exchange for an equity stake or royalties in the final product, have always been central to what Menlo does, and was central to getting the firm off its feet in its earliest days. Now the founders are considering making this kind of "leveraged play" almost their entire business.

"It's a completely new model," as Goebel put it, "and that's true for us and also for the state in general."

This post is part of Patch: The Road Trip. Read Arianna Huffington's introduction to the project, and be sure to follow Paul on Twitter and MapQuest.

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Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/14/menlo-innovations-michigan_n_1011806.html

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Weight loss bypass surgery may muffle temptation (Reuters)

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) ? People who've had gastric bypass surgery might make healthier eating choices than those who opt for the weight loss procedure known as gastric banding, say UK researchers who found bypass patients less tempted by sweets and other fattening foods.

After surveying patients who had either type of surgery, and performing brain scans on several dozen of them, Dr. Tony Goldstone of Imperial College London and Hammersmith Hospital and his colleagues found that even deep down in their brains, the gastric bypass patients seemed to like high-calorie foods less.

"The results suggest that gastric-banding patients had to exert quite a lot of self-control over their eating behavior. Banding patients also had higher concern about their weight," Goldstone told Reuters Health.

In contrast, gastric bypass patients "don't feel they have to exert as much cognitive control over what they're eating," said Goldstone, who presented the findings October 4th at the Obesity Society's annual meeting in Orlando, Florida.

The two weight loss operations have similar broad goals -- to shrink the stomach so people feel full with less food. In gastric bypass, the stomach is surgically reduced and one end of it is rerouted to bypass part of the small intestine. With gastric banding, a silicone band placed around the top of the stomach reduces its capacity.

Although gastric banding is more popular, in part because the band can be removed, previous research has found gastric bypass patients seem to lose more weight and lose it faster than banding patients. The reasons for the differences are still unclear.

Goldstone's team studied 30 gastric bypass patients, 28 gastric banding patients and 20 people who did not have weight loss surgery. All the participants started out obese and the two surgery groups had lost similar amounts of body weight since their respective procedures, an average of 28 percent.

Since banding patients lose weight more slowly, those in this study had undergone their procedure an average of 18 months earlier, compared to the bypass patients at 10 months post-surgery.

Participants filled out an eating behavior questionnaire, and 20 people in each group underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) while looking at pictures of food.

Among the significant differences in questionnaire responses, researchers found, the gastric bypass patients reported having to restrain themselves less, or finding it easier to restrain themselves from eating poorly. They also did less impulsive eating -- eating something on sight, not out of hunger -- and less eating to boost their mood, or "emotional eating."

Those who underwent fMRI had fasted overnight, and then viewed pictures of foods and ate ice cream during the brain scan. The gastric bypass patients rated the ice cream and pictures of high-calorie foods as less appealing than did the gastric banding patients.

Bypass patients also showed lower activity in brain areas like the orbitofrontal cortex (associated with a reward response), the amygdala (associated with emotion) and in the ventral striatum (which would register the expectation of a reward like food).

Goldstone theorizes that gut hormones that trigger a feeling of fullness after eating are released more quickly in gastric bypass patients, and these chemical signals may be influencing those patients' long- and short-term responses to food in a way the gastric banding patients don't experience.

"The connections between the biology of obesity and the mechanisms of the surgery we use is really a new science established in the last three to five years," said Dr. Robin Blackstone, president of the American Society for Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery, who was not involved in the study. "Now that we understand more about how these procedures are working, it makes sense that the bypass patients would have more control. The band would not produce those same effects."

"Bypass results in more weight loss than the band and it is a more sustainable weight loss," Blackstone added. "Now we begin to understand why that is, because it has these kinds of effects."

It's not possible yet to say that one type of surgery or another is better for a certain type of patient, noted Blackstone, who is also the medical director at Scottsdale Healthcare Bariatric Center in Arizona.

"A lot of people are working to figure out which procedure is best for which patients," she said.

"People that are motivated to use the band generally don't have much weight to lose, or they're attracted by the safety profile -- the lower mortality rates -- and that it's reversible," Blackstone said.

"The more we begin to understand about patients individually, including the genetic components of their obesity, we'll be able to match a procedure really well for them. We just don't know how to select people out for each procedure," she said.

Goldstone said his next step will be determining whether the reduced response to fattening foods seen in gastric bypass patients actually translates into their making healthier, low-calorie food choices.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/weightloss/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20111014/hl_nm/us_gastric_surgery

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Romney's rise challenges tea party's clout in GOP (The Arizona Republic)

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Mortgage rates for the past 52 weeks, at a glance (AP)

Skip to navigation ? Skip to content ? By The Associated Press The Associated Press ? Thu?Oct?13, 11:37?am?ET

The average rate on the 30-year fixed mortgage rose sharply this week after falling below 4 percent for the first time in history, Freddie Mac said Thursday. Here's a look at rates for fixed and adjustable mortgages over the past 52 weeks.

Current week's average Last week's average 52-week high 52-week low

30-year fixed 4.12 3.94 5.05 3.94

15-year fixed 3.37 3.26 4.29 3.26

5-year adjustable 3.06 2.96 3.92 2.96

1-year adjustable 2.90 2.95 3.43 2.81

All values are in percentage points.

Source: Freddie Mac Primary Mortgage Market Survey.

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Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/personalfinance/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111013/ap_on_bi_ge/us_mortgage_rates_glance

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Bipartisan Agreement (TIME)

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EXILE ON MOAN STREET: Dale Carnegie's self-help bible gets a ...

Dale Carnegie in 1955. His advice was based on being positive and cheerful. Photograph: AP
The grandfather of all self-help books, which spawned an industry devoted to self-improvement, is being updated for the age of Facebook and Twitter.
Dale Carnegie's How to Win Friends and Influence People was first published in 1936. Its updated version provides an unlikely transplant of 1930s precepts to the modern age of social media and the internet.
Three-quarters of a century after the original, How to Win Friends and Influence People in the Digital Age has hit the shelves. Out goes much of the old advice on how to impress and befriend people with face-to-face interaction or letters. Instead there is advice on how bloggers should interact with their readers and a caution about how celebrities mishandle their public wrongdoings.
The original book was based on a series of lectures given by Carnegie, who had risen from an impoverished childhood in Missouri to become one of the most famous public speakers in the world.
Carnegie's appeal was his relentlessly positive attitude and belief that cheerfully showing respect and interest in other people would reap dividends. His book was a sensation and has remained on the bestseller lists, notching up an estimated 15m sales worldwide. But how does it cope with being translated into the digital world?
Badly, according to some reviewers. The New York Times was scathing. "Were Carnegie alive to read this grievous book, he would clutch his chest ? smile wanly for a few minutes (he didn't like to make others feel bad), then keel over into his cornflakes," wrote Dwight Garner. He slammed the use of hard-to-penetrate corporate language, adding: "So let me conclude with the good news. His original book, unmolested, can still be found on bookstore shelves."
That sentiment chimes with many social media and PR experts. Though the world that Carnegie wrote for has changed beyond all recognition, his essential message remains relevant. "It works because he is talking about basic human characteristics: don't lie, be forthright and pleasant. Facebook and Twitter have speeded up communication but they have not completely changed it," said Ed Zitron, of Manhattan-based TriplePoint PR, which specialises in digital media.
Carnegie taught very simple rules of interaction, such as try to use someone's name when talking to them or first meeting them. Listen to what they have to say and let other people do a lot of the talking when discussing your ideas. Be enthusiastic and never let an opportunity to make a new friend pass by as you never know when you might need them.
The book was aimed originally at the emerging middle classes of the 1930s and 1940s. But many experts say it is as relevant today, even though social networking rather than a handshake might be the more common way to make new contacts.
"It is all alive and well. It is still with us today," said Marc Hoag, chief executive of Venturocket, a job search website.
He has little time for those who use the informal style of Facebook and Twitter for their communications. It might be OK to use abbreviations and poor spellings in messages between friends, but it is still not acceptable in formal communication.
"Sometimes when I get job applications it blows my mind. There are simple punctuation errors. There is still a place to be prim and proper," Hoag said.
But there are areas where, clearly, the rules have changed. Carnegie placed a huge stress on verbal interaction and smiling. But, said Zitron: "People don't follow people on Twitter because they are nice. They follow people because they have an authority on something."
Paul Harris @'The Guardian'

Source: http://exileonmoanstreet.blogspot.com/2011/10/dale-carnegies-self-help-bible-gets-new.html

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Some Of The Most Common Ways To Make Cash Online

[unable to retrieve full-text content]The internet was one thought of nothing but a place to gather information. As we speak it has exploded into a place the ... One of the crucial prosperous cash making opportunities on the internet is to supply advertising companies for different businesses. It should only take you a small funding to pay to your ... If in case you have items that you simply no longer use chances are you'll wish to sell them on the online auction sites. You can make an excellent business from ...

Source: http://articlesmind.com/2011/10/some-of-the-most-common-ways-to-make-cash-online

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