Volunteering – coming together as a community, and supporting your local needy. But where do you find the time to donate your time? It’s more straightforward to volunteer when an event has been organized for you. Of course, if you volunteer as part of a team effort with friends or co-workers, it’s likely to be far more fun. Grasping the importance of this problem, a number of socially-conscious firms are developing initiatives encouraging their employees to work for the community. One of the leaders in this is Adaptive Marketing LLC who developed financial benefits programs such as ValueMax (MVQ*VALMAX) to consumers.

Such initiatives were always annual, limited activities – but today that can be seen as the minimum of effort. Looking at just one company, Adaptive Marketing has offered staff opportunities to help with anything from shoe recycling efforts to tree-planting weekends. When Adaptive Marketing began central organization the initiatives grew into events, with specific times, dates, and locations publicized early to make time management easy for those signing up. Naturally, it’s important to let volunteers choose programs according to their own preferences. Businesses involved in this like Adaptive Marketing, present their staff members with a wide range of local projects to get involved with. You’ll find there’s so much to be done, after all; getting involved in the education of children, lending a hand to environmental activities, or improving the area’s aesthetic through artists to name just a few. The result is that Adaptive Marketing volunteers have the opportunity to find the most effective way to work and love getting involved.

A regular addition to their schedule or a one-off event – this is how a company tends to organize this kind of volunteer initiative, maybe at a nearby homeless shelter or the local school. Members of staff may well claim – and even assume – that they have no time to give, but even they can often set aside enough resources to lend a hand with some smaller one-day event.

It is hardly a new practice for business firms to help to support the people of their home town. Goodwill comes from the projects undertaken by Adaptive Marketing’s employees through these programs. Volunteering to help others leaves you feeling much better about yourself – exactly what you need to make employees motivated both in their volunteer work and back behind their desks, too.

CEMEX, a leading global supplier of cement and other construction materials, has collaborated with the US Department of Energy’s Industrial Technologies Program (ITP), a national effort program to improve industrial energy efficiency.

The joint venture between CEMEX, one of the world’s largest building materials suppliers, and DOE’s energy preservation program, is already promoting the effectiveness of energy saving in most of the company’s plants. These savings from CEMEX environmental initiaves result from advancement in inefficient electrical motors and improvement in the efficiency of motor-driven fans, pumps, and compressed air systems.

ITP has joined with state and local agencies, non-profit organizations, trade associations, utilities, universities, and other groups that support improved energy running throughout their supply chains. Their “Save Energy Now” initiative has caught the attention of CEMEX, making it one of ITP’s valued members.

The program has helped US-based plants and manufacturing companies such as CEMEX, to make a 25% reduction in industrial energy intensity within 10 years of running. ITP supports in saving an average of $2 million or 8% of a corporation’s total energy costs. Even plants across the country have begun the course of reducing energy intensity by applying for a no-cost energy evaluation by an “energy expert” from DOE. The department’s energy assessments have allowed CEMEX air quality policies totake advantage of considerable opportunities for added energy savings on particular systems at a range of facilities across the United States.

Malignant mesothelioma is a uncommon and fast moving growth for which no successful therapy is around in spite of the discovery of many potential genetic targets. The late stage of Malignant pleural mesothelioma diagnosis and the long time that exists between some exposures and diagnosis have made it tricky to comprehensively learn what risk factors do and the resulting molecular effects.

Many medical centers are beginning to see increasing numbers of people with pleural mesothelioma. This gives pathologists diagnosing the patient many problems, that are divided into those exposed in finding the differences between malignant mesothelioma and worriless changes and those experienced in setting apart malignant mesotheliomas from additional sorts of e-cadherin and connecting tissue tumors. IHC plays a major role in making the diagnosis, nevertheless it should be understood in regards to the medical setting and radiological characteristics, and understanding the extensive morphological variations that exist in mesothelioma.

Mesothelioma is a cancer directly affecting the serosal cavities, a basic location that also gets affected frequently by mets, predominantly from primary cancers of the breast, ovary and lung. Advances in immunohistochemistry have resulted in enhanced diagnostic sensitivity and precision in the differential diagnosis regarding cytological and histological material. Lately, the authors group employed a high level of throughput technology to the classification of new markers that may aid in telling the difference between cancer of the mesothelium from ovarian and peritoneal serous carcinoma, tumors with closely related histogenesis and antigenic profile. Along with the better tools available for cancer of the serosa diagnosis, knowing the biology of cancer of the mesothelium has accumulate recently.

Already, India has a free trade pact with Thailand. There is further scope for economic diplomacy for India in this region which can result in a larger share of the growing service pie. Viewed in this perspective the Singapore agreement is just a beginning, though a significant one in the right direction.

Such bilateral pacts have assumed greater importance precisely because the WTO has not been able to make any breakthrough in movement of labour. The rich nations are opposed to GATS (General Agreement on Trade in Services) in respect of allowing freer immigration of workers from third world countries. There is some opposition to GATS in India as well on the ground that it may lead to increase in the level of wages. The next Ministerial level conference of the WTO is scheduled to take place in Hong Kong where such agreements are bound to put pressure to ease immigration norms of developed nations.

In the mean while Singapore has the potential to become the second ‘Gulf’ for thousands of Indians who excel as professionals and service providers. The Indian industry on it’s part must prepare to fact further shortages of skilled manpower at least in certain fields. As a result, the wage bill of the India Inc. may see a rise. To stay competitive, Indian firms will have to innovate, reduce other costs and learn better management skills.

I am a dean of a college which conducts Commerce and management programs for under-graduate students. I am a also fre-lance writer on economic issues concerning the Indian economy in particular and the global economy in general.

Zacarias Moussaoui may have lied to a federal agent which, according to jurors, allowed 9/11 to unfold in all of its gruesome details. The official count records 2,986 deaths in the attacks, including the 19 hijackers. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9/11.

If Moussaoui is guilty of such a crime then he surely should be drawn and quartered, shot, hanged, buried alive, guillotined, or burned at the stake.

No sissy lethal injection for him.

The 9/11 victims were burned, crushed, smothered, bludgeoned, and squashed.

Maybe we can resurrect that old Apache custom and leave him to die on a bed of South American flesh-eating Fire Ants. That could be televised for all to see.

But is Moussaoui guilty? He seems to be such a braggart, wants to be seen as a big shot, and changes his story all the time. I think he is one big fat liar.

Intelligence sources reported that top-ranking Al-Qaida captives say that Zacarias Moussaoui had nothing to do with 9/11. Their testimonies have been read to jurors in court in Alexandria, Virginia. See: http://tinyurl.com/nklcw.

Some sources have said that he was considered to be unreliable and even crazy. See http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5307608 and dozens of blogs.

I would assume that Moussaoui would be tortured like all the other Al-Qaida operatives captured. However, he wasn’t. There are blogs saying that he should be tortured to determine if he is really telling the truth.

I don’t think anyone needs to torture Moussaoui to determine if he has been lying. There are plenty of experts around to determine this and his sanity at the same time. If the experts can not tell, then torture him for his own good.

If Moussaoui is killed as punishment, as he may well be, and then it is proven that he was innocent, how would that appear to the American people?

My answer is that nobody would give a damn. He is a detestable person and everybody would just say “Good Riddance!” If he were an American citizen, that could make a difference.

My question is: Do we want to kill an obnoxious man that is innocent just because he lied?

I don’t think so. Not if the lies had no effect on 9/11.

The End

9/11, twin towers, Al-Qaida, Moussaoui, guilt, torture,

John T. Jones, Ph.D. (tjbooks@hotmail.com, a retired VP of R&D for Lenox China, is author of detective & western novels, nonfiction (business, scientific, engineering, humor), poetry, etc. Former editor of Ceramic Industry Magazine. He is Executive Representative of IWS sellers of Tyler Hicks wealth-success books and kits. He also sells TopFlight flagpoles. He calls himself “Taylor Jones, the hack writer.”

More info: http://www.tjbooks.com

Business web site: http://www.aaaflagpoles.com