CGI to Partner with Aerospace Clusters in France, Quebec – Analyst Blog

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In an concerted effort to research and develop aerospace solutions, information technology company CGI Group, Inc. ( GIB ) formed collaborative partnerships with two aerospace clusters, Aerospace Valley in France and Aro Montral in Quebec.

CGI Group is the fifth largest global independent information technology and business process services firm , and has an active presence at the locations of two clusters, in the cities of Toulouse, France and Montreal, Quebec.

Aro Montral, Quebec's aerospace cluster, is a strategic think tank that brings together the major authorities in Quebec's aerospace sector, intending to optimize the competitiveness of the cluster.

Aerospace Valley is ranked among the top three clusters in the world for its impressive performance and cooperative research and development (R&D) projects. It is dedicated to developing synergies and cooperation among companies, training establishments and research laboratories.

The collaborations will leverage CGI Group's extensive aerospace and manufacturing expertise, as its professionals collaborate with the experienced staff of Aerospace Valley and Aro Montral. The partnership will explore employment of innovative technologies in order to improve the speed and quality of aerospace production and preventive maintenance.

The partnerships will work towards significantly enhancing the competitiveness of aerospace companies and driving innovation in the industry. Through the sharing of know-how and best practices, these initiatives will aid the members of the clusters develop and advance their strategic technology initiatives.

A collaboration forum will be held alternately in France and Quebec. Amongst numerous other projects planned per the agreement, the forum will focus on digitizing the production chain from upstream to downstream.

CGI Group has extensive experience within the aerospace and manufacturing sectors, and can offer deep insight into the challenges faced by the members of the Aro Montral and Aerospace Valley clusters.

CGI Group currently carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). Some better-ranked stocks in the computer services industry include CACI International Inc. ( CACI ), Carbonite, Inc. ( CARB ) and NCI, Inc. ( NCIT ), each holding a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy).

NCI INC-CL A (NCIT): Free Stock Analysis Report

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CGI to Partner with Aerospace Clusters in France, Quebec - Analyst Blog

Atheism, Agnosticism, Pantheism…Etc….What’s what? And What’s it Matter? – Video

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Atheism, Agnosticism, Pantheism...Etc....What #39;s what? And What #39;s it Matter?
Besides titles and labels.... In this video I try to address the difference in #39;labels #39; we give each other, and ourselves. Not all atheists believe there is ...

By: carpo719

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Atheism, Agnosticism, Pantheism...Etc....What's what? And What's it Matter? - Video

Study found state proficiency threshold too low

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Proficient in Georgia doesnt really mean proficient in the rest of the world. Thats one of the findings from a study released this week by the American Institutes for Research, a nonprofit behavioral and social science research group.

Georgia considered 87 percent of eighth-graders to be proficient in math in 2011, according to the study. But, using international measures, only 24 percent of the states eighth-graders were proficient in math, the study found. No state had a larger gap.

AIR used data the state reported to the federal government under the No Child Left Behind education law.

The study found that Georgia, like other states, gave a falsely positive impression of student achievement. It seemed to be arguing in favor of the new set of national academic standards known as Common Core. Fifty states going in 50 different directions is not a strategy for national success in a globally competitive world, AIR vice president Gary Phillips said in a summary of the study. It may look good for federal reporting purposes, but it denies students the best opportunity to learn college-ready and career-ready skills.

Georgia has moved to Common Core and to a new standardized test called Georgia Milestones. The state is raising the threshold students must clear to meet the state standard on the new test.

State education officials argue the Common Core standards and the new test will be more rigorous and will do a better job of getting students ready for college and careers.

Common Core has been controversial in Georgia, as it has been in other states. Opponents argue the standards are lower than the ones they are replacing and that the state did not have enough input in creating them.

Officials in business, higher education and the military say the standards improve education by increasing the rigor of academic material and by harmonizing when students across the country are introduced to that material.

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Study found state proficiency threshold too low

Smartphone app reveals users' mental health, performance, behavior

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Dartmouth researchers and their colleagues have built the first smartphone app that automatically reveals students' mental health, academic performance and behavioral trends. In other words, your smartphone knows your state of mind -- even if you don't -- and how that affects you.

The StudentLife app, which compares students' happiness, stress, depression and loneliness to their academic performance, also may be used in the general population -- for example, to monitor mental health, trigger intervention and improve productivity in workplace employees.

"The StudentLife app is able to continuously make mental health assessment 24/7, opening the way for a new form of assessment," says computer science Professor Andrew Campbell, the study's senior author. "This is a very important and exciting breakthrough."

The researchers presented their findings on Wednesday at the ACM International Joint Conference on Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing. The paper has been nominated for best paper at UbiComp, the top conference mobile computing. They also released an anonymized version of the dataset in the hope that other social and behavioral scientists will use it in further studies.

The researchers built an Android app that monitored readings from smartphone sensors carried by 48 Dartmouth students during a 10-week term to assess their mental health (depression, loneliness, stress), academic performance (grades across all their classes, term GPA and cumulative GPA) and behavioral trends (how stress, sleep, visits to the gym, etc., change in response to college workload -- assignments, midterms, finals -- as the term progresses).

They used computational method and machine learning algorithms on the phone to assess sensor data and make higher level inferences (i.e., sleep, sociability, activity, etc.) The app that ran on students phones automatically measured the following behaviors 24/7 without any user interaction: sleep duration, the number and duration of conversations per day, physical activity (walking, sitting, running, standing), where they were located and how long they stayed there (i.e., dorm, class, party, gym), stress level, how good they felt about themselves, eating habits and more. The researchers used a number of well known pre- and post-mental health surveys and spring and cumulative GPAs for evaluation of mental health and academic performance, respectively.

The results show that passive and automatic sensor data from the Android phones significantly correlated with the students' mental health and their academic performance over the term.

Some specific findings: Students who sleep more or have more conversations are less likely to be depressed; students who are more physically active are less likely to feel lonely; students who are around other students are less likely to be depressed. Also, surprisingly, there was no correlation between students' academic performance and their class attendance; students who are more social (had more conversations) have a better GPA; students who have higher GPAs tend to be less physically active, have lower indoor mobility at night and are around more people.

The results open the door to the following breakthroughs for the first time:

"Under similar conditions, why do some individuals excel while others fail?" Campbell says. "What is the impact of stress, mood, workload, sociability, sleep and mental health on academic performance? Much of the stress and strain of student life remains hidden. In reality faculty, student deans, clinicians know little about their students in and outside of the classroom. Students might know about their own circumstances and patterns but know little about classmates. To shine a light on student life, we developed the first of a kind smartphone app and sensing system to automatically infer human behavior."

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Smartphone app reveals users' mental health, performance, behavior

How To Get Children To Behave Without Hitting Them

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Psychologists say spanking and other forms of corporal punishment don't get children to change their behavior for the better. Science Photo Library/Corbis hide caption

Psychologists say spanking and other forms of corporal punishment don't get children to change their behavior for the better.

There's plenty of evidence that spanking, paddling or hitting children doesn't improve their behavior in the long run and actually makes it worse.

But the science never trumps emotion, according to Alan Kazdin, head of the Yale Parenting Center and author of The Everyday Parenting Toolkit.

After NFL star Adrian Peterson was indicted for child abuse after disciplining his 4-year-old son by hitting him with a switch, there's been a lot of conversation about how race and culture affect parents' approach to discipline. OK, what about the science? Behavioral psychologists say that people respond very predictably to others' words and actions, and parents can use that predictability to improve children's behavior without shouting or hitting.

We talked with Kazdin by phone about why parents use corporal punishment and what options they have for teaching good behavior. Here are highlights of that conversation.

Why do parents use physical discipline?

There are three reasons, Kazdin says. "The brain is hard-wired to pick up negative things in the environment; this is just how humans and mammals are." So parents naturally pay more attention to a child's bad behavior, rather than to all the good things they may be doing the rest of the day.

Second, there is increasing evidence that watching or engaging in aggressive behavior excites the reward centers in the brain, giving an incentive for aggression.

"And the third context is the Bible," Kazdin says. "Some religions view hitting the child, use of the rod, not just as all right but obligatory. You're not living up to your responsibility if you're not hitting your child.

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How To Get Children To Behave Without Hitting Them

Celebrity Nutritionist Oz Garcia Together with World Renowned Chef David Bouley to Power THE RETREAT – A Customized …

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New York, NY (PRWEB) September 19, 2014

Leading New York team launches its first European integrative anti-aging retreat. World-renowned nutritionist Oz Garcia together with culinary innovator David Bouley to power THE RETREAT - a customized weight-loss and anti-aging 7-day retreat in Europe.

Following a long-standing practice of high-end private retreats, THE RETREAT launches for the first time an open format at 5-Star resort LAndana in the heart of Tuscany, bringing together an exclusive group of up to 20 individuals. THE RETREAT is tailored to the specific needs of each of the participants with four core approaches:

I believe that its very important to nurture the whole body, inside and out, said Oz Garcia, who is frequently featured on national news as one of Americas leading lifestyle nutritionists. In creating THE RETREAT, we focused on developing a total system to restore and rejuvenate the mind, body and spirit.

LAndana Hotel (http://www.andana.it/en/l-andana), the five star resort in the heart of Tuscan Maremma in the 500-hectare La Baldiola Estate, developed by Italian industrialist Vittorio Moretti and home to Alain Ducasses landmark restaurant, will be THE RETREATs first location. Other locations are in the planning across Europe and other parts of the world.

World renowned New York chef David Bouley will inspire Oz Garcias weigh loss diet with gourmet tasting and food innovation to create dishes mainly consisting of raw, local and seasonal produce with emphasis on liquid meals throughout the day. As a result of this dietary nutritional menu, individuals will detoxify, lose weight and de-bloat through enjoyment of a culinary experience.

As part of the THE RETREATs program, Oz will introduce his cutting-edge IV Therapy, a vitamin-drip therapy designed to deliver vital nutrients into the body faster and more effectively, as well as cutting edge nutritional supplements.

About Mila Khezri Mila Khezri, Founder and President of M3Product Inc., who conceived THE RETREAT together with Oz Garcia, commented: We have carefully analyzed the global market for weight-loss and anti-aging retreats. In general, they all fall short on the following: (1) they fail to make an integral connection between body and brain function; (2) food is rarely a culinary experience; (3) there is no lasting impact beyond the program itself. THE RETREAT addresses all three areas while laying the foundation for sustainable life-enhancement beyond THE RETREAT.

About Oz Garcia Author of the best-selling books Look and Feel Fabulous Forever, The Food Cure for Kids, The Balance, and Redesigning 50, Oz Garcia has designed a distinctive nutritional regimen that promotes a total approach to wellness by integrating healthy lifestyle choices through one-on-one counseling sessions, lectures, daily supplement suggestions, nutritious menu items and comprehensive detox/weight loss programs. Oz is the go-to nutritionist for A-List celebrities and Fortune 100 CEO's. His unique and customized approach to nutrition and anti-aging coupled with more than 30-years of experience has made Oz one of the most recognizable names in the industry. He has lectured all over the world and has been a pioneer in the study of nutrition and anti-aging.

Oz was twice voted best nutritionist by New York Magazine and is frequently called upon by some of the most respected names in medicine and news media for his up-to-the-minute views on nutrition and its role in aging and longevity. Oz has been featured in prestigious publications like Vogue, Elle, Travel and Leisure, W Magazine, and The New York Times. He has also made numerous network and cable television appearances including NBCs The Today Show, CBS Morning Show, Good Morning America on ABC, 20/20, 48 Hours, The View, The Doctors, Access Hollywood and Fox News.

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Dr Don Colbert's Divine Health Supplements Come to Health Food Emporium

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(PRWEB) September 19, 2014

Don Colbert, M.D. has been board certified in Family Practice for over 25 years and practices Anti aging and Integrative medicine. He is a New York Times Bestselling author of books such as The Bible Cure Series, What Would Jesus Eat, Deadly Emotions, What You Don't Know May be Killing You, and many more with over 10 million books sold. He is the Medical Director of the Divine Health Wellness Center in Orlando, Florida where he has treated over 50,000 patients. He is also a internationally known expert and prolific speaker on Integrative Medicine.

Dr Colbert's line of health supplements is called Divine Health. When speaking about his Divine Health products, Dr Colbert said, "Living foods were created for our consumption. They exist in a raw or close-to-raw state. Living foods include fruits, vegetables, grains, seeds, and nuts. They are beautifully packaged in divinely created wrappers called skins and peels. Living food looks robust, healthy, and alive. No chemicals have been added. It has not been bleached or chemically altered. Living foods are plucked, harvested, and squeezed, not processed, packaged, and put on a shelf. Living foods are recognizable as food.

"To help us to consume living foods, I have written several books, and created a line of supplements specifically intended to help you to reach your nutritional potential. An integral part of abundant health is proper nutrition. Divine Health Nutritional Products are formulated to meet the public's demand for high quality vitamin, mineral, and herbal supplements. I have taken extraordinary steps to research and provide supplements that are among the most effective in the world."

Now, Dr Colbert's Divine Health products are available at Health Food Emporium. Gail Bowman, owner of Health Food Emporium said, "We are thrilled to have Dr Colbert's products in our store! We believe that Divine Health Supplements are among the top health products available, and I think our customers will be thrilled with the quality and integrity behind these supplements."

Health Food Emporium is an on line health food store that has specialized in whole food supplements since 2003.

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Dr Don Colbert's Divine Health Supplements Come to Health Food Emporium

Hubble Telescope Time Preferentially Goes to Men

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An internal study finds that female-led proposals to use the in-demand device are less likely to be selected

The Hubble Space Telescope, launched in 1990, is still in high demand among scientists. Less than a quarter of proposals for observation time are approved. NASA

For an astronomer, winning precious observation time on the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) for your study is a big dealmore than three quarters of proposals are rejected. It turns out, however, that this honor is a bit easier for men to achieve than women. An internal Hubble study found that in each of the past 11 observation proposal cycles, applications led by male principal investigators had a higher success rate than those led by women. Its fascinating and disturbing, says Yale University astronomer Meg Urry, who formerly led the Hubble proposal review committee for several years and admitted to frustration that some of the results occurred during her tenure. I made a lot of efforts to have women on the review committees, and during the review I spent time listening to the deliberations of each panel. I never heard anything that struck me as discriminationand my antennae are definitely tuned for such thingsso its clear the bias is very subtle, and that both men and women are biased. The Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore runs the HST program and began the study about two years ago. After manually reviewing all proposals and categorizing them by gender the researchers found that mens applications fared better than womens in every cycle they examined. The results will be published in an upcoming issue of Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific. The effect is smallit translates to about four or five fewer proposals from women being selected each cycle than one might expect based on how many were submitted. You can kind of explain it away as just sampling statistics in any given cycle, but it happens every year, says Neill Reid, an STScI astronomer who oversees time allocation for Hubble. It is a systematic effect. The effect is stronger for older principal investigators (PIs); among recent graduates, the success rates for men and women are closer to equal. I could speculate whether the proposals are being written in a different way or whether the younger astronomers are more visible because theyre giving more talks. Maybe it has something to do with the institutions theyre at, Reid offers. Because the Hubble scientists have no information about the cause of the gender imbalance, they plan to analyze their data for contributing factors and consult social scientists who research bias about the best strategies to combat the trend. Already STScI has implemented some changes to try to level the playing field for men and women. The scientists who oversee proposal evaluation now tell reviewers before each cycle that this systematic effect exists, and that they believe unconscious bias might contribute to it. Sometimes people talk about the proposer rather than the proposal, Reid says. We ask them to focus on the science. The proposal format has also changed. Whereas the PIs name used to be in large type on the first page, they are now included among the rest of the team on page 2, and only first initials are used. Thus far, these steps have not reversed the trend, however: Women fared no better in the latest proposal-review cycle than they had before. I know STScI has tried very hard to minimize the effects of unconscious bias, Urry remarks. The only thing left is to do blind reviews, removing the names of the proposers altogether. But this is very difficult because the panels are supposed to evaluate the ability of the team to deliver what they propose. I am not sure what the answer is. A further complication is that the astronomy field is small, and reviewers may be able to guess the identities of proposers even if names are minimized or removed. Nevertheless, taking steps to make review processes as anonymous as possible has been shown to reduce bias in other scientific settings. Susan Benecchi, an astronomer at the Planetary Science Institute in Tucson, Ariz., won observing time on Hubble during the latest round of applications and previously served on a review panel. She said shes never been aware of any bias in the process. Except for the fact that PI names are on the proposal, it's really not about the PI or team or anything other than: Do we think they can get the result they are after and is that science interesting, timely and uniquely requiring of HST? Ultimately, allocating time on Hubble is a subjective and human process, and therefore open to biases. It may be unsurprising, then, that signs of gender discrimination show up, as they do in many sectors of society. Indeed, preliminary studies at several other U.S. observatories, such as Kitt Peak National Observatory and Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory, appear to show the same gender disparity in proposal success. This is a community issue not an HST issue, Reid observes. One positive development, the STScI team found, is that more and more women are applying for Hubble time. In the most recent cycles women have contributed close to 25 percent of all proposals, with the latest round featuring a greater ratio of female-led petitions than ever before. The scientists hope that this trend, at least, is one that continues.

2014 Scientific American, a Division of Nature America, Inc.

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Hubble Telescope Time Preferentially Goes to Men

NASA finds tiniest galaxy has 'supermassive' black hole

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The agency's Hubble Space Telescope spots one of the smallest galaxies ever discovered -- with a giant black hole at its core.

An artist's rendering of the massive black hole at the center of the tiny 'dwarf' galaxy revealed by NASA on September 17. NASA

They say big things come in little packages. That may never be more true than with what astronomers have just discovered: A "monster" black hole hiding inside one of the smallest galaxies ever known.

NASA said Wednesday that astronomers using its Hubble Space Telescope have found a new dwarf galaxy -- known as M60-UCD1 -- that "crams 140 million stars within a diameter of about 300 light-years, which is only 1/500th" the diameter of the Milky Way galaxy.

At the core of this tiny galaxy is what NASA is calling a "supermassive," or "monster" black hole, one that has five times the mass of the black hole at the center of our own Milky Way galaxy. A dwarf galaxy is one that has a small fraction of the hundreds of billion of stars in the Milky Way.

However, when comparing the density of the Milky Way and the newly-discovered galaxy, NASA said looking at the nighttime sky from Earth reveals about 4,000 stars. Someone looking up into the sky from inside M60-UCD1 would see a million stars.

According to NASA, this finding indicates there could be many other dense galaxies throughout the universe that also have giant black holes. At the same time, the space agency said, the discovery may mean that dwarf galaxies like M60-UCD1 could be the ripped remnants of larger galaxies that broke apart during violent events such as collisions with other galaxies.

"We don't know of any other way you could make a black hole so big in an object this small," Anil Seth, the University of Utah astronomer who led a study about the newly-found galaxy, said in a NASA statement.

Seth's team used both the Hubble telescope and Hawaii's Gemini North-8 meter optical and infrared telescope to identify the new galaxy and measure the black hole's mass.

NASA explained that black holes are "gravitationally collapsed, ultra-compact objects that have a gravitational pull so strong that even light cannot escape."

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NASA finds tiniest galaxy has 'supermassive' black hole

"Europe, forget U.S. interests! NATO expansion poor policy," blasts MEP Permuy – Video

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"Europe, forget U.S. interests! NATO expansion poor policy," blasts MEP Permuy
Video ID: 20140916-017 SOT, Javier Couso Permuy, Member of European Parliament (in Spanish): "I #39;ve been rather struck by the belligerent tone of some comment...

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"Europe, forget U.S. interests! NATO expansion poor policy," blasts MEP Permuy - Video

Three NATO soldiers killed in Kabul suicide car bomb The Independent Video – Video

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Three NATO soldiers killed in Kabul suicide car bomb The Independent Video
car bomb , nato , suicide , kabul , politics , nuclear , destruction , atomic , weapons , two , AFPTV A Taliban suicide bomber rams an explosives-laden car into a NATO convoy close to the...

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Three NATO soldiers killed in Kabul suicide car bomb The Independent Video - Video