When it’s freezing cold outside, do you ever stop to think about wild animals are coping in the low temperatures? Yes, they have things we don’t, to help them when the weather turns grim but how does this work? Here, we take a look at nature’s wonderful methods for protecting against the elements – insulation and blubber.

If you want to know a little more about how insulation works then try this quick experiment. Fill a container with ice and water and choose a range of different available materials to wrap a finger with. Choose a wide range of different materials and see which one are best at keeping your finger warm for the longest time.

Basically, insulators are not very good at conducting heat. Heat will always travel to cold spots in order to even out the temperature so a material that doesn’t conduct heat well will be better for keeping you warm for longer. Animals use a variety of ways to keep warm in harsh conditions such as blubber, fur and downy feathers. Thankfully, us humans can just pull on an extra jumper and turn the central heating on. Before the cold weather descends, check your boiler is in good condition. For Boiler Repair Gloucester, visit http://www.hprservicesltd.com

Blubber works by offering a layer of fat underneath the skin. Eating lots provides animals with a build-up of blubber that develops to help them survive in extremely cold deep ocean conditions. Water in some parts of the world can plummet as low as 54 degrees Fahrenheit and blubber is essential for stopping the animals’ internal organs from freezing. Small marine animals like seals and small whales might have up to a few inches of blubber but a huge whale could have blubber up to a foot thick!

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Fur is another of nature’s impressive insulators and when you think of the environment that the polar bear lives in, you get an idea of how important this fur is. That fur is working hard to keep the bear’s body at a pleasant 37 degrees Celsius while temperatures fall to a deadly -40. It was thought that the fur trapped a layer of warm air next to the skin but this doesn’t account for the huge variation in temperature between the bear and the surrounding air. Further studies have shown that the polar bear’s white coloured fur is essential as it traps their radiated body heat, reabsorbing radiation and camouflages them in the snow. Clever stuff!

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Birds fare quite well in cold conditions due to their much higher metabolism rates which pushes their body temperature up too. This isn’t enough though, especially for tiny birds, to cope when a big freeze occurs. This is where feathers come into play. Birds produce a special oil that coats the feathers and this acts as an additional insulator and waterproofing mechanism. Even small birds can also build-up fatty reserves like blubber to provide them with extra energy for maintaining a high metabolism. Birds can also cleverly control the temperature of their legs and feet independently from their body, constricting blood flow and preventing heat loss.

Crafting is a rewarding hobby, enabling you to relax, socialise, be creative and gain real self satisfaction from the things you create. But crafting needn’t just be rewarding for you, it could be something that benefits others if you want it to.

Many people who do crafts (usually who don’t sell them regularly as a business but not always) don’t make money from the craft or don’t really tend to share what they make unless it is amongst friends and family. Perhaps you’re thinking about being more giving in 2016 and would like to use your craft to spread goodwill, but you’re not really sure how. Here are some ideas to help inspire you:

Spreading The Message

Why not use your hobby to help spread the message of the charity you want to support. Perhaps you could add a little label onto the back of something you have made asking people to read about a certain charity. For example; you could use card making supplies to create some Christmas cards that project the message of the charity somewhere on them, all whilst also showcasing your talents. Exposing the good work of a charity can be really great as it helps the charity raise awareness and forms a talking point if the receiver of your gift then asks you about the charity.

Raising Money

It may seem daunting selling your craft items for money as a business if that isn’t the reason you’re crafting, but selling them for charity isn’t nearly as scary because people are supporting the charity as a primary reason for buying. However, it is still worth creating something that would appeal to a lot of people if you are selling it for charity, because of course you want to make the most money. Sell online, at a local charity auction or table top sale.

Making Items For A Charity To Sell

Perhaps a charity is asking for raffle items or items to auction for its own sale, in which case you can make something incredible for them to make money with. Ask them what type of things they are interested in selling and put everything you can into making it amazing – they are doing all the selling and organising, you just need to put your best creative foot forward now and make something they can get lots of money for!

Making Items Directly For A Charity

There are lots of charities you can craft items for, and it can be extremely rewarding. If you love animals, there are charities needing jumpers for bald ex-battery chickens while they grow their feathers back, cat shelters needing knitted cushions and blankets for the cats. There are premature baby and children’s charities that need items of clothing made. A smaller charity may need an amazing banner made for their charity auction and you just happen to be in the mood for a large sewing project. Have a look around to see what people need, taking care to look at smaller forums where smaller charities may be listing details.

Donate Items To Organisations Making Items For Charity

There are lots of people making items for charity, and some of those people might be really skilled, but haven’t got the funds themselves to buy supplies for their charitable crafting projects. Perhaps you have an old hobby you had supplies for that you no longer need, or you have excess crafting supplies, or you would simply like to help others craft for charity. Whatever your reason for being able to provide others with supplies, it is a really great thing and your donations will spread your charity even further, helping even more people.

Let Other People Know

If you find a really excellent charity to craft for and belong to a local crafting group, tell them about it! The more people that know, the more people that can help. Also, don’t forget to mention it on social media so the word can spread even further.

Take A Look Around!

If you would love to help charities with your amazing crafting experience, always make sure the charity is registered and legitimate before giving them anything.

Take the time to look around and look at lots of different ways you can help different charities to find an approach to suit you. Remember, by giving your time, effort and craft creations you’re helping others, which is a really great thing and something we should all try to do more of!

Have you ever realized that when you talk to your agent, the discussion revolves between the total money involved and how much premium the person has to pay? The discussion is about how easy one insurance company and how the benefit multiplies after paying premium for a certain number of years.

But what the insurance agent don’t tell you is;

The commission the insurance agent gets from selling a policy. Commission is the earning of an agent. More the policy sold, more is the commission.

So what is wrong with commission?

In most cases, commission from selling one particular insurance product is more than another insurance product. Now what happens when the better insurance product is paying less commission to the insurance agent? Majority barring some ethical agents will be pushing you to sell the insurance product which gives him or her, more commission. Therefore, the chance of you buying a product which doesn’t suit you is more. In this kind of situation, always ask the agent to show the entire insurance product offering coverage as per your need and then select one you deem fit.

The clauses read between the lines.

Insurance contract are the most boring set of documents which are binding on the insurer and the person insured.

How does it feel when the very purpose of insurance, doesn’t serve the purpose? For example, a health insurance, that doesn’t cover high blood pressure because it is not in the included disease list.

So, when you are taking an health insurance policy, make sure to read the document in full and raise the entire list of questions, no matter how insignificant they are, to the agent and get full clarification.

Have you asked your insurance agent, how is the claim settlement ratio of the insurer? One the biggest hindrance of taking a policy is the claim settlement ratio, and how long it takes to settle the same.

It has been seen that insurer tried to find out ways on how not to settle claims by finding loop-holes in the contract. For example, the hospital bill will pay for twin sharing room and not suite or single bedded room for patients. Or, the fire destroyed the house long time ago, but the insurer is taking a lot of time to settle the claim.

None of the above situation is desirable. Reputed insurers strive to maintain the claim settlement ratio very high and also make sure that the payout is very quick. Don’t forget to check with the insurance agent on how the claim settlement ratio is and how quick the despatches of claims are.

Know when it is trap!

Terms like double benefit or entire claims settlement or Long term customer bonus are all simple clauses glorified to market a product.

One should be swayed by these clauses as majority of the health insurance companies will be glad to dole out benefits to their customer at a very minimal cost. Don’t opt for choices which you will not require and thus save on bulk documentation and also premium.

If you are thinking of pursuing a career in law, you’ll probably already be aware that going to law school is an absolute must. Applying to colleges and law schools can be pretty stressful, as it’s a given that you’ll want to go to an institution that’s not only got a good reputation in general, but has a good reputation for teaching law and has produced some great lawyers. Attending a good law school will also open up more opportunities for your career as graduates of better colleges do tend to be offered the better jobs in general, although this isn’t always the case. If you are poring over your college application and wondering which colleges to send it off to, we’ve put together a list of some of the best law schools in the US for you to consider.

Harvard

It goes without saying that Harvard is one of the best colleges in the US, and if you’re looking to go to the best law school then this is the place to be. Although don’t stress too much if you can’t meet the requirements to get in – it’s only important that you attend a top-tier school if you’d like to practice law at a big city law firm.

Yale

Attended by former US presidents Bill Clinton and Gerald Ford, Yale University is another top-tier school that should definitely be considered if you’re planning to get into one of the best law schools in the US. Although Yale Law School has no specific areas of concentration with their law degree program, there are a number of fields that current students are interested in including Human Rights Law, International Law, and even Law Teaching – meaning that you get a good all-round education in law but are encouraged to pursue the areas of concentration that interest you as well.

Virginia

Founded by Thomas Jefferson in 1819, the Virginia School of Law may not be as prominent as Harvard and Yale, but it still stands out as being a great choice of school for those wishing to study law. Along with Harvard, Stanford and Yale, the Virginia School of Law has contributed the most clerks to the US Supreme Court in the last decade, and was attended by lawyers such as Barry Hawk.

Columbia

Columbia is a great law school for those interested in studying international law, as they offer a range of degree programs centered around the law studies of other countries such as Korea, Japan, and Israel. The Columbia Experimentalist Mentorship Program was also designed in order to allow students of law to choose projects, seminars and events that interest them and collaborate with the Columbia Experimentalist Group on that work, making it great for gaining field-relevant experience.

Did you study at a law school in the US that isn’t mentioned above? If you’d like to add your school to this list and tell us why you think it is a top law school in the US, we’d love to hear from you in the comments.

According to furniture manufacturers and textile producers, it is essential that upholstery cleaning is performed once every 12 to 18 months as a routine maintenance condition. It is also important for every home owner to know that it is always best to perform any couch cleaning gold coast procedures before you see any dirt on the surface of your upholstered furniture. However, if you have children and pets or you entertain guests frequently, your upholstered furniture will definitely require more frequent cleanings so you can always keep stains away. You need to hire a professional pressure cleaning technician when that routine cleaning is required; this is especially important if all that routine cleaning is no longer able to do away with pet odors or stains. There are several good reasons why you need to hire a professional:

Upholstery fabric is not easy to clean: manufacturers of upholstery fabrics use different manmade and natural fibers some of which have very specific cleaning requirements. A good example is silk that is an extremely touchy material; if you tried using an alkaline cleaning agent the material will get damaged while bleach will dissolve the fibers and water will definitely stretch the material and cause splitting and discoloration. Professional upholstery cleaning agents have classified upholstered fabrics into eight categories that are known as cleaning codes which must be adhered to very strictly. Failure to follow the laid down codes will likely lead to shrinking, fading, browning, stretching, yellowing and texture distortion. On the other hand over wetting could also cause problems such as mold and mildew growth, rust to zippers and buttons etc.

Stain removal is tricky: You only need to use a wrong couch cleaning gold coast procedure once and that seemingly innocent stain or spot could easily become permanent if not very difficult to remove. Professional cleaners have the skill and experience to help them avoid such problems and they can even remove some of those very stubborn stains that you could have created.

Upholstered furniture is expensive: There is no doubt that your upholstered furniture is one of your most expensive investments that is meant to last for at least a decade or more. Professional upholstery cleaning Gold Coast is the only way you can make such an investment stay longer even as you remove any stubborn stains and dirt that has become deeply embedded all of which could otherwise shorten the life of your furniture.

Manufacturers recommend it: Most upholstered furniture warranties will almost always feature a clause that covers the manufacturer against defects that are caused by unprofessional cleaning of their furniture; this is the reason you are better off avoiding DIY experiments when dealing with couch cleaning.

We all were sent into this world with a story to tell. We might not have been able to discover what that story is up till now, but all it takes is a little journey into your own heart to discover what the concealed anecdote your soul holds for you. Telling your story to the whole world is known as an autobiography. A special story where the writer doesn’t tell any fairytales or doesn’t talk about science and metaphysics, rather they just talk about how they spent their life and how others can benefit from reading the proceedings. It takes a really skillful writer to be able to write the perfect story of one’s own life and most of the people hire ghost writers to do the trick. Though in schools and colleges, these types of stories are given as assignments and students are then liable to write them all on their own. If you don’t have time to complete your assignment so don’t worry AssignmentCompany.com offering cheap assignment writing service online, They have finest team to do your job on time. What makes an autobiography special and different than the rest? There are some aspects of a good story that are needed to be kept in mind in order to stand apart. Read on as we list down some of those very golden aspects:

Diversity:

The first fundamental requirement of an autobiography is for it to be diverse. You can’t just go on talking about one small incident in your life and be done with it.

Honesty:

You need to be completely honest with the readers and never make anything up. This kills the whole purpose of the story because if you are not writing about yourself then there is no point.

Divulgence:

 

You also need to be very open and divulging.

Be grammatically correct:

Last but certainly not the least, you also need to be grammatically correct at all times so that people read your work with respect.

It’s true that big data is changing the world like never before, and business are not leaving any stone unturned to get their hands on the best technology to collect data, gather information from it, and  transform it into revenues. However, in this competitive world, the insight generation has to be a robust process, otherwise, there’s always someone who will be doing their homework better than you and snatching your market right before your eyes.

If you are wondering what else could be done, here are the six features of a robust, advantageous insight seeking process that you need to know about.

1. Asking the right questions: It has been repeated so oft in the field of financial success that it is now a cliché, nonetheless, a cliché that cannot be dismissed by any means. To strike the most profit in the long term, businesses need to know what matters most to their stakeholders, their customers, and their employees. The know-how is good, but the know-who, know-why, know-where, know-when, and know-what have long been under-appreciated, but without which, a business can never be truly successful.

2. Investment in technology is not enough: If you think that having the latest technology and the best data scientists for your business is more than enough, you’re wrong. Capacity development – which includes organizational design, processes, metrics, culture, and competencies – is the core of a successful business. In short, a holistic approach is required.

3. Data is beautiful: A major part of failure in utilizing data is that it does not get the attention due to it. Operational data and its IT level functionaries have rarely been given the acknowledgement rightly due to them at the Board level, which leads to valuable information being side-stepped. The right insight will come from all data, regardless of where it is coming from. However, filtering practices can be adopted once all data has been checked.

4. One-sided vision: Your customers are human, and so should be your data – or at least, with a human-like quality, which is to say that the engineering of data has to be aided with the skill of science and the craft of arts, i.e., a comprehensive and holistic view is again necessary. Though science has been gradually obtaining significance in board rooms of business organizations primarily through predictive modeling, the role of arts – which cannot be taken too lightly – is undermined. While an example of the role of arts at the basic level would be creating data visualizations to depict relationships and variation, at a higher level it could be generating ideas and identifying potential relationships.

As Einstein had once said, ‘Imagination is greater than knowledge,’ those in the business of using big data for their business must understand that creating a phenomenal success is not just data, technology, or even insight, but beyond all that – an imagination that can look ahead of the present, to create what is possible. All other things are just a means to reach that vision.

What do you think? What according to you is the value of insight and analytics in big data?

To be the one behind the wheel is one of life’s luxuries. You are free to tweak your schedule, to do and see more within a day. It’s boosting your overall productivity. To buy a car these days, most people need to apply for a loan.

You don’t have to be overwhelmed by having to finance your car purchase. It can all be made smooth. You are at loss if you don’t know how to use financing. Start by knowing the different forms of finance.

Firstly, you need to know that banks are rather restrictive when it comes to car financing loans. These tend to be favorable to those who can prove a good credit history. Still, the interest rates here cannot be ignored. With credit unions, you pay less for the operations and this also translates into more advantageous interest rates. A finance company will simply lend you money. Its interest rates are usually higher. You may get financing from a dealership, too. These have an intermediate role, as they stand between you and the actual lender. Because of this role, they have their fees and that ads up to your expense.

Once you made your selection, you may go on to the following. Get a copy of your credit score and credit report, before you apply for any financing. They will ask you for this later, so you have to be prepared.

Once the financing means are selected, you need to analyze the annual interest rate. It is also mentioned as APR. The higher this value is, the more expensive is the loan. You may juggle a bit with the numbers, it’s in your power. Therefore, try to pay more upfront. There will be less of the total cost to finance. The interest rate goes lower and you’ll also pay the loan much quicker.

Get to know all the lender’s requirements. Make sure you do as expected upon application. Also, provide the lender with whatever details are asked of you, including a proof of income and information on any assets there may be. Car loans are more successful and also much cheaper if you are able to present a collateral.

You are totally free to negotiate the details as you get cars on finance. It’s no fixed agreement that you have to simply agree with or let go of. If you plan on negotiating, keep in mind that timing is important. You better let this part wait until you get an approval. Once your application is approved by the lender, you may start the negotiations.

Don’t approve on a loan unless you’ve obtained quotes from several lenders. Also, don’t be shy to ask for the best rate offer. You may obtain a pre-qualification letter you can use for reference and show to the dealer once you’re stepping in to buy a vehicle.

Don’t approve on a loan unless you’ve obtained quotes from several lenders. Also, don’t be shy to ask for the best rate offer. You may obtain a pre-qualification letter you can use for reference and show to the dealer once you’re stepping in to buy a vehicle.

Controlling costs can only come with a good understanding of what generates the expenses. Small business owners need to pay attention to every little earning and expense to determine the best direction for the future of the company.

Stop staying focused only on how to make the business grow; this new approach can get you to start saving immediately. Using benchmarking systems can help you track the expenses over time and allow you to compare the data with that of other similar businesses.

You need more than performance indicators. These will only show how the expenditure and the budget compare. You need to start determining the real cost of certain operations. Include everything from the raw materials to the salaries paid. Review each aspect periodically until you can view the trends with more accuracy. Keeping detailed records will help in the process. Failing to do so might get you to hire more people and to face tax liability.

It’s also possible to cut the operating costs by involving everyone in the company. This isn’t solely your responsibility. Each employee must get educated on the matter and become aware of the necessity of cutting costs. This needs to become a common responsibility. Employees are often prone to wasting the resources of a company because they don’t give this a proper thought and they’re not the ones to make the calculations.

You should start monitoring the cost of the goods that are sold. The variable costs are essential. These are the expenses of producing and delivering each item to customers. The more you sell, the bigger these costs become. You may calculate these in two ways. You either take it as a percentage of the sales or you simply calculate the cost per item. If royalties are involved, then include that too. Royalties represent the fees paid when using someone else’s intellectual content, for example.

There is more besides production costs. Many stop at this but you must have a look at the entire process a good goes through. Once it’s produced and reached your business place, you may have to wrap it, ship it and deliver it. The expenditures don’t end with the production.

Proceed to checking the contracts you have with suppliers, lenders etc. At times, they may have better deals and it would be good to revise the terms. See if you can change the current deal for a better one. You have to remember to do this periodically.

Let’s have a word about the in-house systems and the materials and energy you use, too. For example the business water – you could be wasting loads of it and it may take special custom solution implementation to fix that. Furthermore, you may want to consider acquiring energy efficient equipment and lighting, using less space for business operations (and therefore spending less on heating, cooling and electricity), purchasing fuel-efficient vehicles and so on.