Sabre speaks the future of Americas' travel at WTTC Summit in Peru

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LIMA, Peru, Sept. 18, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- Last week at the World Travel & Tourism Council (WTTC) Americas Summit, Sabre Corporation took the stage on a theme-setting panel covering how the industry can further cement its acknowledgment as one of the major economic activities contributing to countries' GDP and job creation, setting consumerization as strategy, and leading the adoption of latest multi-device technology. Joining Sabre were other global and regional business contributors, including leaders from Marriott International, Carlson Wagonlit Travel, LAN Peru, and American International Group.

As a meaningful context for Sabre's panel appearance, and public opportunity to bring its thought leadership. The Americas represent a wide, diverse and often volatile market spanning from the U.S. and Canada to the Caribbean, and from Central America to southern tips in Argentina and Chile. According to WTTC reports, the region is expected to witness enormous change as populations grow, consumer trends evolve, and economic dynamics are redefined.

Sabre's voice in the session followed the official opening of the Americas Summit, an address by David Scowsill, President & CEO for WTTC, and a keynote by world-renowned Peruvian economist Hernando de Soto. The one hour discussion was moderated by BBC World's news anchor Adnan Nawaz, who introduced "Travelling Towards 2024" as the inaugural panel for WTTC Summit, as a broad view of issues that were expanded upon and explored in more detail in this two-days industry reunion.

Along with Sabre's Jay Jones, influential CEO and presidents on stage were CWT's Doug Anderson, LAN Peru's Felix Antelo, Marriott's Craig Smith, and AIG's Jeff Rutledge. The conversation was centered on how the industry might be in the next decade, facing challenges and finding opportunities. These business leaders shared perspectives on growing demand, travel driving economies as the "Pacific Alliance" trade bloc (Peru, Colombia, Mexico, Chile), job creation and how to better service travelers by relying on cutting-edge technologies.

In the talks, there was unanimous agreement that technology will influence travel & tourism in the region. From personalization of service to predict consumers' choices, to collect instant feedback from travelers that enable industry players to meet a waving series of changes in the travel experience. Jay Jones remarked that technology will certainly drive decisions in travelling in the decade ahead.

Other topical aspects included partnership between Governments and the private sector, aimed to collaborate on progress. The point here has been a call on pan regional legislation for Open Skies. Also which are the greatest areas of investments, and those that need immediate action as infrastructure for airport efficiency, as a way to finance the future. While onboard passengers continue to raise in most of their emerging markets, hiking travel expenditure on corporate and leisure means increased business and job growth over the next decade.

According to WTTC, total GDP contribution from Travel & Tourism for the region is expected to rise from over US$2 trillion in 2014 to over US$3trillion in 2024.

CONTACT

Daniel Duarte

Sabre, Corporate Public Relations

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Sabre speaks the future of Americas' travel at WTTC Summit in Peru

Luxury Travel Exchange to Feature Top Luxury Travel Companies

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Luxury Travel Exchange International

NEW YORK -- Questex Hospitality + Travel today previewed some of the world's foremost luxury travel suppliers and sponsors that are scheduled to participate in its 2014 Luxury Travel Exchange International (LTX), to be held Dec. 9-11 at The Palazzo in Las Vegas.

Suppliers will include Abercrombie & Kent, International Expeditions, Baha Mar, Dubai Tourism, Emirates Vacations, The Inn at Little Washington, Playa Hotels & Resorts, Mediterra, Port & Channel, Buffalo Tours, Cruise Copenhagen Network, Tourism Australia and Sunset Key Guest Cottages, A Westin Resort.

Sponsors include AMResorts, Japan National Tourism Organization, India Tourism, Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority, The Puerto Rico Tourism Company, Down Under Answers and Sud de France Languedoc-Roussillon.

LTX brings prequalified, top-producing advisors who specialize in luxury and premium niche travel together with leading suppliers for three days of interactive networking, accredited educational programming and intimate appointment options. The successful 2013 program hosted more than 5,000 one-to-one meetings among 1,000 professional travel advisors and luxury travel suppliers.

"Our goal is to provide travel advisors direct access and quality time with some of the world's top suppliers," said Jill Birkett, LTX event director for Questex Hospitality + Travel. "We have an exceptional program planned this year featuring learning and earning opportunities and a host of new luxury suppliers, including, at this point, almost 100 suppliers who did not participate last year. Bringing new global suppliers to our audience of luxury travel advisors helps those advisors be more efficient with their time so they can explore the details of so many different destinations, hotels and services."

The event offers a traditional trade show and intimate meetings on its signature Exchange floor. The 2014 format will include eight-minute, mutually requested, one-to-one appointments to allow participants time to conduct business and discover how they can best fit each other's needs. Additionally, open trade show floor hours will provide meeting opportunities for advisors and suppliers who were not scheduled to meet one another.

For more information, visit LTXInternational.com.

Questex Hospitality + Travel, the largest multimedia organization in the world dedicated to travel and lodging, drives revenue, productivity and value-creation for these related industries through strategic investment and deal-making forums, powerful lead-generation tools, interactive online business solutions, world-class events and industry-leading publications.

Questex Travel Group, a division of Questex Hospitality + Travel, serves travel marketers globally through its TravelAgentCentral.com, LuxuryTravelAdvisor.com, TravelAgentUniversity and International Meetings Review online portals. It operates the leading luxury travel booking site, FiveStarAlliance.com, publishes Travel Agent and Luxury Travel Advisor magazines and produces leisure events: Luxury Travel Exchange International, ULTRA Luxury Summit, Young Travel Leaders Conference and Hawaii Travel Exchange and MICE events: Global Meeting & Incentive Travel Exchanges and MEET and CONFEC conferences.

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Luxury Travel Exchange to Feature Top Luxury Travel Companies

SiteMinder secures partnership with travel experience experts Jetsetter

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SiteMinder has today announced its latest integration partnership with one of the world's leading luxury travel sites, Jetsetter a part of the TripAdvisor family of travel sites since April 2013.

Jetsetter is an online travel community that provides insider access and expert knowledge for exclusive deals on the world's finest vacation destinations to its over 20 million members. The luxury site has connected to SiteMinder's RDX platform, which offers a robust two-way, real-time XML connection between leading hotel booking channels, property management systems and central reservation systems worldwide.

"Jetsetter is excited to partner with SiteMinder. With the RDX platform's best-in-class connectivity, we now have access to live rates and inventory at more of the world's best hotels. This partnership reinforces Jetsetter's commitment to our members by helping us provide the most competitive rates for our curated list of properties," says Mario Bauduin, VP of Sales at Jetsetter.

Through the partnership, SiteMinder's high-end hotel clients can now distribute directly with Jetsetter, an otherwise-closed user group site which features only properties hand-selected by a team of 200 top travel journalists and meet an 85 percent approval rating from members. Hotels are assessed on their 'personality, great style and a sense of place'.

David Chestler, Executive Vice President Enterprise Sales and Business Development at SiteMinder, says: "With the rise of online booking channels and review sites, today's travelers are more sophisticated than ever before. It was identified this year that hotels are no longer just an escape for travelers; they now provide very home-like experiences with luxury hotels, in particular, offering increasingly personalized options.[1]

"As with the recent announcement of our integration with Asia Pacific-based TheLuxeNomad.com, SiteMinder is excited about this partnership as it provides a unique opportunity for our luxury property clients to gain exposure to the growing channels for luxury travelers. We are particularly thrilled Jetsetter has selected RDX, which spearheaded over 18 million reservations for hotels over the 12 months ending 30 June 2014. We are confident we will now see even greater results for our luxury brands over the coming year and beyond."

[1]10 Luxury Hotel Trends to Watch in 2014, Luxury Travel Magazine, 27 January 2014

About SiteMinder SiteMinder is one of the global hotel industry's leading providers of online distribution and direct booking technology. Founded in 2006, SiteMinder offers award-winning, cloud-based distribution products including the world's largest channel manager, a booking engine, PMS/CRS integration and GDS connection tools to help hotels increase online revenue, streamline business processes and lower operational costs. Driven by a no-contract, commission-free business model, SiteMinder's robust product suite and exceptional client support has made the business one of the most recognizable in the industry. In addition to its global head office in Sydney, SiteMinder has operations in Bangkok, Cape Town, Dallas and London, and more than 14,000 customers in over 140 countries. For more information about SiteMinder and its market-leading products, visit http://www.siteminder.com or the team at World Travel Market 2014 (Booth TT320).

About Jetsetter Jetsetter is a travel community providing its more than 20 million members with hand-selected luxury experiences, verified by experts. From hotels to tours to trip planning, Jetsetter offers exclusive deals and insider advice designed to match members with their ideal travel experience. Each vacation featured on the site is hand-selected by a team of curators and personally verified by Jetsetter's global network of correspondents. Jetsetters can browse offerings on limited-time sales of up to 40 percent off or peruse Jetsetter 24/7, a collection of more than 2,500 hotels and resorts available 365 days a year. Members can tap into the regional expertise of Jetsetters correspondents with private consultations through the Personal Travel Planning Service or personalize deluxe tours with the new Jetsetter Journeys program. All Jetsetter partners featured in retail and flash, as well as the same-day booking app Jetsetter Now, must meet an 85 percent approval rating in post-stay member surveys. Jetsetter apps for iPhone and iPad were named best travel apps in the Apple App Store Rewind 2011. For more information, visit http://www.jetsetter.com.

About TripAdvisor TripAdvisor is the world's largest travel site*, enabling travelers to plan and have the perfect trip. TripAdvisor offers trusted advice from real travelers and a wide variety of travel choices and planning features with seamless links to booking tools. TripAdvisor branded sites make up the largest travel community in the world, reaching nearly 280 million unique monthly visitors**, and more than 170 million reviews and opinions covering more than 4 million accommodations, restaurants and attractions. The sites operate in 43 countries worldwide, including China under daodao.com. TripAdvisor also includes TripAdvisor for Business, a dedicated division that provides the tourism industry access to millions of monthly TripAdvisor visitors.

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SiteMinder secures partnership with travel experience experts Jetsetter

Fodor's Travel reveals the world's best 100 hotels

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List compiled by experts from Fordor's Travel, with properties from 43 countries broken up into eight categories Europe dominates as the region with the most winners, followed by US with 20 - while London scores three

By Emily Payne for MailOnline

Published: 02:07 EST, 19 September 2014 | Updated: 02:07 EST, 19 September 2014

They're a far cry from your average Holiday Inn.

For the fourth year running, travel guide specialists Fodor's Travel has announced its top 100 hotels in the world, celebratingproperties that 'provide travelers with remarkable experiences'.

Over the course of a year, experts stayed at more than 5,000 properties all over the globe, from Anguilla to Vietnam.

The 100 hotels, which span 43 countries, were placed into eight different categories: All-Inclusive Vacations, Beach Getaways, Boutique Chic, Modern City, Enduring Classics, Country Retreats, Small Hotels and Trip of a Lifetime.

Blissfully secluded: Beautiful Song Spa Private Island Cambodia is featured on the Trip of a Lifetime list

Country living: English stately home, Hartwell House, features on the list of best Country Retreats

Europe, which saw a post-recession boost in visitors in the last year, dominates as the region with 29 winners.

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Fodor's Travel reveals the world's best 100 hotels

Beyond FLOPS: The co-evolving world of computer benchmarking

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Benchmarks have been evolving along with the hardware they measure, and both are getting more complex.

It used to be simple: Multiply the microprocessor's clock rate by four, and you could measure a computer's computational power in megaFLOPS (millions of floating point operations per second) or gigaFLOPS (billions of FLOPS.)

No more. Today they're talking about teraFLOPS (trillions) and petaFLOPS (quadrillions) -- which brings up an important question: How do you benchmark these much-more-powerful systems?

"The majority of modern processors are systems on a chip and that has completely muddied the water," says Gabe Gravning, director of product marketing at AMD. An x86 microprocessor may actually include multiple processor cores, multiple graphics co-processors, a video encoder and decoder, an audio co-processor and an ARM-based security co-processor, he explains.

"For a longest time we built single-core processors and pushed the frequency as hard as possible, as frequency was the clearest correlation to performance," agrees Rory McInerney, vice president of Intel's Platform Engineering Group and director of its Server Development Group. "Then came dual cores, and multiple cores, and suddenly 18 cores, and power consumption became more of a problem, and benchmarks had to catch up."

But at the same time, benchmarks are integral to the systems-design processes, McInerney explains. When a new chip is considered, a buyer will "provide snippets of applications that best model performance in their environment -- they may have a certain transaction or algorithm they want optimized," he says.

"From there we need a predictive way to say that if we take option A we will improve B by X percent," McInerney says. "For that we develop synthetic or internal benchmarks, 30 to 50 of them. These benchmarks tend to stay with the same CPU over the life of the product. Then we see how the [internal] benchmarks correlate to standard [third-party] benchmarks that we can quote."

Gravning adds, "There is no perfect benchmark that will measure everything, so we rely on a suite of benchmarks," including both internal and third-party benchmarks; this part of the process hasn't really changed over the years.

As for the nature of those benchmarks, "The internal ones are proprietary, and we don't let them out," McInerney notes. "But for marketing we also need ones that can be replicated by a third party. If you look bad on an external benchmark all the internal ones in the world won't make you look good. Third-party benchmarks are vital to the industry, and are vital to us."

As a third-party benchmark for desktop and consumer devices, sources regularly mention the PCMark and 3DMark benchmarks, both from Futuremark Corp. in Finland. The first is touted for assessing Windows-based desktops, and the second for benchmarking game performance on Windows, Android, iOS and Windows RT devices.

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Beyond FLOPS: The co-evolving world of computer benchmarking

Kickstarter Promo Update Sept 15 2014 – Stem Cell Treatment for Hope, Love and Freedom – Video

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Kickstarter Promo Update Sept 15 2014 - Stem Cell Treatment for Hope, Love and Freedom
Hello my name is Sonny, I was born with a nerve disease, a genetic mutation that causes the muscles in my arms, hands, legs and feet to atrophy and to become weak. I now have perfect legs....for...

By: Sonny Davis

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Kickstarter Promo Update Sept 15 2014 - Stem Cell Treatment for Hope, Love and Freedom - Video

Stem cells use 'first aid kits' to repair damage

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PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:

18-Sep-2014

Contact: Louise Walsh louise.walsh@admin.cam.ac.uk 44-012-237-65443 University of Cambridge @Cambridge_Uni

Stem cells hold great promise as a means of repairing cells in conditions such as multiple sclerosis, stroke or injuries of the spinal cord because they have the ability to develop into almost any cell type. Now, new research shows that stem cell therapy can also work through a mechanism other than cell replacement.

In a study published today in Molecular Cell, a team of researchers led by the University of Cambridge has shown that stem cells "communicate" with cells by transferring molecules via fluid filled bags called vesicles, helping other cells to modify the damaging immune response around them.

Although scientists have speculated that stem cells might act rather like drugs in sensing signals, moving to specific areas of the body and executing complex reactions this is the first time that a molecular mechanism for this process has been demonstrated. By understanding this process better, researchers can identify ways of maximising the efficiency of stem-cell-based therapies.

Dr Stefano Pluchino from the Wellcome Trust-Medical Research Council Cambridge Stem Cell Institute, who led the study, said: "These tiny vesicles in stem cells contain molecules like proteins and nucleic acids that stimulate the target cells and help them to survive they act like mini "first aid kits".

"Essentially, they mirror how the stem cells respond to an inflammatory environment like that seen during complex neural injuries and diseases, and they pass this ability on to the target cells. We think this helps injured brain cells to repair themselves."

Mice with damage to brain cells such as the damage seen in multiple sclerosis show a remarkable level of recovery when neural stem/precursor cells (NPCs) are injected into their circulatory system. It has been suggested that this happens because the NPCs discharge molecules that regulate the immune system and that ultimately reduce tissue damage or enhance tissue repair.

The team of researchers from the UK, Australia, Italy, China and Spain has now shown that NPCs make vesicles when they are in the vicinity of an immune response, and especially in response to a small protein, or cytokine, called Interferon-gamma which is released by immune cells. This protein has the ability to regulate both the immune responses and intrinsic brain repair programmes and can alter the function of cells by regulating the activity of scores of genes.

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Stem cells use 'first aid kits' to repair damage