Automatic Irrigation Systems Are The Better Way To Water

When you have a large yard with a lot of flower beds watering can be a chore. Lugging around hoses can make your back sore and the job uninviting. Because you love your flower beds you hate to stop watering them. Isn't there a better way to water?

Many landscapers and lawn services recommend automatic irrigation systems for large yards with lots of flower beds. Having such a system will mean no more dragging heavy hoses around. You may wonder if one of these is right for you. They are best installed by landscaping companies experienced with plants and watering. Proper layout is essential for optimal performance and low maintenance.

Not all sprinkler systems are alike. Some sprinklers sit above the ground perpetually. They can have a better watering radius, but because they stick out of the ground, these types of sprinklers are prone to being tripped over and to being destroyed by lawn mowers.

Other sprinkler systems use pop up sprinklers. These sprinklers, a friend to lawn services because they aren't easily hit, sit flush or below ground level when not in use and pop up above the ground when the irrigation system comes on. When a pop up sprinkler breaks, it can cause localized flooding and can be difficult to fix.

Drip systems are designed more for flower beds than lawns and put water directly at the base of the plants. The problem is, except for the main water pipe, these irrigation lines must stay above ground to keep from clogging with dirt. The tips are replaceable, but if the irrigation line gets a crack or a leak, fixing it requires a little knowledge.

All of these systems can be laid out, hooked up to a water faucet, and turned on manually. Doing so requires you to remember to turn it on and off. If you forget to shut off the irrigation system, your water bill could take a hard hit. If you go away for a few days, your flower beds could suffer miserably.

Using an automatic irrigation system eliminates the problems with manual operation. Computerized control of the flow, the amount of water, and the length of time the water is on, saves on maintenance because it eliminates excess pressure which can burst the lines. They can be set on multiple timers to water one section at a time, and can be set to run during the cool parts of the day when less water evaporates.

This type of system saves water, which can lower your water bill. It's a great choice when you have a lot of flower beds or a large yard. Many quality landscapers and lawn services are able to install and maintain an automatic irrigation system to meet the needs of your landscape. With such a system, you can stop lugging hoses and start enjoying your flower beds.

Why a Logo Design is Mandatory?

When a business has its work circle distinguished from others and its parameters defined well above the other than what is the point that urges to have a logo designed for an organization or a product? Why to spend an extra amount of money on the designing procedure and why to transform the words into an image or graphically illustrated alphabets to mark your recognition in the market? The answers lie in understanding the various perspectives of our business industry and criteria built up by our customers to rate ones corporate caliber.

Business Perspective: Logo design has become a necessity for businesses to build firm pillars of their recognition on the market grounds. Any thing that gains importance has certain reasons attached to it that help it reach such a status.

Picture delivers more than words: The effect a picture or graphically illustrated words can create on an individual’s mind set is enormously great than words can deliver by million folds. It is easy to imprint the image on ones memory than to memorize hundreds of words in order to remember an organization’s verdict.

Marks identity: It is a logo design that makes your organization or products to stand out from those having the similar products as yours in the industry therefore a logo design helps you mark your identity in the business circle.

Gives a trendy and stable look: A well defined logo design of your organization or your product gives your corporate image a trendy look and sends your customers and competitors a message of stability in your business.

Good marketing tool: Your customers are able to relate to you via your logo design. Placing your logo on to the marketing collaterals or forums that are not much spacious will be enough for your representation among your competitors.

Builds relationship with your clients: Your target customers are able to relate all your products easily with your organization by memorizing your logo design. The more your logo gets across their eye, the more sense of stability it marks on their minds, the more they trust you and a result the more it all strengthens your relationships.

Customers Psychology: Customers are the judges who rate your products or services and thus, help in flourishing your business or turning it a way down the hill. Our society has certain norms and standards that no one can get away with. People are so busy in their lives that they don’t have time to read the whole set of description in order to get familiar with your organization and its products. In such circumstances, a logo design can catch you the attention of your target customer. It is the human psychology that the thing that tempts our eye is demanded by our brain. Similarly a logo design that represents your corporate vision in front of your customer must encompass all those features that can replace thousands of words compulsory to be read at users end to get acquainted with your business stature.

Both the customer’s and business perspectives have made it mandatory for the organizations to have their logo designed in order to enhance their corporate image.

The Simple Way To Start Exercising

It's not a surprise to find out that most people today are overweight. Much more than recent years, up to sixty percent of adults today have a problem with weight. And that problem isn't likely to go away by itself. While it may feel good to put the blame on the growing fast food industry, which seems to appear every place you turn, pointing the finger doesn't really do us much good. Unless you take responsibility for your problems, they aren't likely to go away.

It's easy to not feel motivated simply because everybody else is fat, or blame your genes, but that doesn't really address the problem. Unless we take matters into our own hands, we will continue to become fatter and fatter. So what's the answer? The latest diet fad, the latest health food craze, or the latest late night infomercial selling us the latest and greatest exercise contraption?

Naturally, those can have a positive influence, but since they require a herculean effort, they will likely only be short lived. The reason they will only be a short term fix is because they promise quick results. And in order to lose a lot of weight in a short amount of time, as those program seem to always promise, it takes an enormous amount of willpower, and an immediate lifestyle change. Changes that in actuality don't last very long.

So what do we do? Since it took a while to gain all this weight, it is going to take a while to lose it. Natural and easy is the most popular way. A slow, gradual change to our diets, and a slow, gradual increase in our daily activity. While there are plenty of ways to change your diet, depending on your body type, and your various dispositions, changing your exercise program can be a little bit easier.

The best way to add in a little bit of exercise is through the old fashioned practice of walking. Walking just a little bit every day can add a host of benefits over the long term. Only twenty or twenty five minutes a day can have wonderfully profound and life changing effects. Most people are pleasantly surprised when they find what a simple walk every day will do.

The best thing about walking is that you don't need any new equipment, or any special shoes. Special classes or instruction, as well as intricate equipment isn't needed at all. You can even bring along an MP3 player to keep you company along the way. If you'd like to start a powerful program to quickly start losing weight, then you can't go wrong with a simple, everyday walk.

Filming the invisible in 4-D

Picture this: a movie revealing the inner workings of a cell or showing a nanomachine in action.

A new microscopy is making such imaging possible

                          

                                  by ahmed h. zewail

The human eye is limited in its vision. We cannot see objects much thinner than a human hair (a fraction of a millimeter) or resolve motions quicker than a blink (a tenth of a second).

Advances in optics and microscopy over the past millennium have, of course, let us peer far beyond the limits of the naked eye, to view exquisite images such as a micrograph of a virus or a stroboscopic photograph of a bullet at the millisecond it punched through a light bulb. But if we were shown a movie depicting atoms jiggling around, until recently we could be reasonably sure we were looking at a cartoon, an artist’s impression or a simulation of some sort. In the past 10 years my research group at the California Institute of Technology has developed a new form of imaging, unveiling motions that occur at the size scale of atoms and over time intervals as short as a femtosecond (a million billionth of a second). Because the technique enables imaging in both space and time and is based on the venerable electron microscope, I dubbed it four-dimensional (4-D) electron microscopy.

We have used it to visualize phenomena such as the vibration of cantilevers a few billionths of a meter wide, the motion of sheets of carbon atoms in graphite vibrating like a drum after being “struck” by a laser pulse, and the transformation of matter from one state to another. We have also imaged individual proteins and cells.

Four-dimensional electron microscopy promises to answer questions in fields ranging from materials science to biology: how to understand the behavior of materials from the bottom up, from the atomic to macroscopic scale; how nanoscale or microscale machines (NEMS and MEMS) function; and how proteins or assemblies of biological molecules fold and become organized into larger structures, a vital process in the functioning of all living cells. Four-dimensional microscopy can also reveal the atomic arrangements of nanoscale structures (which determine the properties of new nanomaterials), and, potentially, track electrons moving around in atoms and molecules on the timescale of attoseconds (a billion billionth of a second). Along with the advances in basic science, the potential applications are wide-ranging, including the design of nanomachines and new kinds of medicines.

Cats and Atoms in Motion

Although 4-d microscopy is a cutting-edge technique that relies on advanced lasers and concepts from quantum physics, many of its principles can be understood by considering how scientists developed stop-motion photography more than a century ago. In particular, in the 1890s, etienne-Jules Marey, a professor at the

Collège de France, studied fast motions by placing a rotating disk with slits in it between the moving object and a photographic plate or strip, producing a series of exposures similar to modern motion picture filming.

Among other studies, Marey investigated how a falling cat rights itself so that it lands on its feet. With nothing but air to push on, how did cats instinctively perform this acrobatic feat without violating Newton’s laws of motion? The fall and the flurry of legs took less than a second— too fast for the unaided eye to see precisely what happened. Marey’s stop-motion snapshots provided the answer, which involves twisting the hindquarters and forequarters in opposite directions with legs extended and retracted. High divers, dancers and astronauts learn similar motions to turn themselves. Another approach, stroboscopic photography, relied on short light flashes to capture events occurring on much shorter timescales than is possible with mechanical shutters. The flashes make an object moving in the dark momentarily visible to a detector such as an observer’s eye or a photographic plate. In the mid-20th century Harold Edgerton of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology greatly advanced stroboscopic photography by developing electronics that could produce reliable, repetitive, microsecond flashes of light.

The falling-cat experiment requires shutter times or stroboscopic flashes short enough for the photographs to show the animal clearly despite its motion. Suppose the cat has righted itself half a second after being released. At that instant the cat will be falling at five meters per second, so by using one-millisecond flashes we will ensure that the cat falls no more than five millimeters during each exposure so that the image of the cat will be only slightly blurred by its motion. To slice the acrobatics into 10 snapshots, the photographs must be taken every 50 milliseconds.

If we wish to observe the behavior of a molecule instead of a feline, how fast must our stroboscopic flashes be? Many changes in molecular or material structure involve atoms moving a few angstroms (one angstrom equals 10–10 meter). To map out such motion requires a spatial resolution of less than one angstrom. Atoms often move at speeds of about one kilometer per second in these transformations, requiring stroboscopic flashes no longer than 10 femtoseconds to observe them with better than 0.1-angstrom definition. As long ago as the 1980s researchers used femtosecond laser pulses to time chemical processes involving moving atoms, but without imaging the positions of the atoms in space—the wavelength of the light is hundreds of times longer than the spspacing between atoms in molecules or materials.

Accelerated electrons have long produced images at atomic scales—as in electron microscopes— but only with targets fixed in place and imaged over time intervals of milliseconds or longer, being limited by the speed of the camera.

The atom-scale movies we sought thus required the spatial resolution of an electron microscope but with femtosecond electron pulses to “illuminate” the targets. The illuminating packets of electrons are called probe pulses. Another issue is clocking of the motion—having a well-defined instant in time when the motion begins. We will not get useful images if all the probe pulses take snapshots before the motion starts or after it finishes. In photographing the cat, the recording begins when the cat is released.

For ultrafast recording, a femtosecond initiation pulse called the clocking pulse launches the material or the process to be studied.

Even with probing and clocking under control, the issue of synchronization remains. Here the typical ultrafast experiment drastically departs from the cat analogy. Marey could complete his experiment by dropping one cat once, if everything went according to plan. And it did not matter much if the series of exposures began, say, five, 10 or 17 milliseconds after the cat’s release.

Ultrafast microscopy, however, may probe millions of atoms or molecules for each clocking pulse or may build up images by repeating an experiment thousands of times. Imagine if Marey had been restricted to capturing only a narrow vertical strip of the field of view with each cat drop. To build up the series of full snapshots of the falling cat, he would have had to repeat the experiment many times, recording along a slightly different vertical strip each time. For the various strips to combine sensibly and form a meaningful whole image, he would need to prepare the cat in the same starting configuration for each drop and carefully synchronize the release with the shutter openings in the same way each time. (The technique would also rely on the cat moving in thesame fashion every time. I suspect molecules are more reliable than cats in that respect.)

The starting configurations must be accurate to a small fraction of the cat’s size, and the time synchronization must be accurate to less than the shutter durations. Similarly, in ultrafast imaging of atoms or molecules, the launch configuration must be defined to subangstrom resolution, and the relative timing of clocking and probe pulses must be of femtosecond precision. The timing of probe pulses relative to the clocking is accomplished by sending either of these pulses along a path with an adjustable length.

For a pulse traveling at the speed of light, setting the path length to an accuracy of one micron corresponds to setting the relative timing with 3.3-femtosecond accuracy.

A further major and fundamental problem remained to be overcome before we could make movies with electrons. Unlike photons, electrons are charged and repel one another. Crowding a lot of them into a pulse spoils both the temporal and spatial resolutions because the electrons’ mutual repulsion blows the pulse apart. In the 1980s Oleg Bostanjoglo of the Technical University of Berlin did achieve imaging using pulses having as few as 100 million electrons, but the resolutions were no better than nanoseconds and microns (later significantly improved to the submicron level by researchers at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory).

My group attacked this challenge by developing single-electron imaging, which built on our earlier work with ultrafast electron diffraction. Each probe pulse contains a single electron and thus provides only a single “speck of light” in the final movie. Yet thanks to each pulse’s careful timing and another property known as the coherence of the pulse, the many specks add up to form a useful image of the object. A similar feat is sometimes exhibited as one of the characteristic oddities of quantum mechanics: electrons pass through two slits one at a time, each one contributing a single speck at some random location on a detection screen. Yet all the specks add up to form predictable patterns of light and darkness characteristic of interfering waves. Single-electron imaging was the key to 4-D ultrafast electron microscopy (UEM). We could now make movies of molecules and materials as they responded to various situations, like so many startled cats twisting in the air.

The Four-Dimensional Electron Microscope

A standard electron microscope records still images of a nanoscopic sample by sending a beam of electrons through the sample and focusing it onto a detector. By employing single-electron pulses, a four-dimensional electron microscope produces movie frames representing time steps as short as femtoseconds (10–15 second).

Each frame of the nanomovie is built up by repeating this process thousands of times with the same delay and combining all the pixels from the individual shots. Researchers may also use the microscope in other modes, such as with one many-electron pulse per frame, depending on the kind of movie to be obtained. The single-electron mode produces the finest spatial resolution and captures the shortest time spans in each frame.

DECIPHERING NANOMATTER

One of our first targets was graphite, the “lead” material in pencils. We chose graphite in part because it is an unusual material, with applications in environments as extreme as those in nuclear reactor cores, and because it has close relatives that are just as remarkable. Graphite consists of carbon atoms arranged in a hexagonal pattern to form sheets reminiscent of chicken wire. Relatively weak bonds hold the sheets together in a stack. Writing with an ordinary pencil relies on pieces of the graphite sloughing off and adhering to the paper. The pencil marks include tiny quantities of the strongest material known to science—graphene, which consists of isolated single sheets of carbon atoms. Researchers are studying graphene vigorously for a variety of electronics applications. Furthermore, when soft graphite is subjected to extreme pressure, its atoms rearrange to form diamond, one of the hardest known substances.

To study graphite’s response to mechanical shocks, we took nanoscale crystals of the substance— some only nanometers thick, or a few sheets of atoms—and struck them with intense femtosecond laser pulses, which served as the clocking pulses for our microscope. Each laser pulse pushed the graphite’s layers of atoms momentarily closer together, setting them oscillating up and down.

Our electron microscope sent its electrons through these oscillating graphite layers to produce two kinds of picture: a real-space image (much like a photograph of the graphite surface) or a diffraction pattern, which is a regular array of spots whose precise configuration provides information about the arrangement and separations of atoms in the graphite lattice. In particular, we could track the layers oscillating up and down by the movements of the spots in the diffraction pattern. The oscillations had frequencies of about 10 to 100 gigahertz (1010 to 1011cycles per second). No imaging experiment had previously observed such high-frequency resonances unfolding over time. From our measurements we determined the elasticity of graphite perpendicular to the planes of atoms—how the material responds to compressing or stretching forces acting in that direction.

Imagine that the graphite crystal is a stack of rigid metal plates connected by springs and that the laser pulse is a large sledgehammer striking the top plate. We measured the properties of the springs. The metal-plate analogy is reasonable as long as our “camera” is zoomed in very close. If the camera figuratively “pulls back,” however, more of the tiny graphite crystal comes into view. Now the hammer is striking one region of the top metal sheet, and it becomes apparent that the sheets are flexing, with the compression and expansion propagating out from the impact point in waves.

When we pull back the camera even farther and take images more slowly, yet another kind of dynamics comes into view. Now we see how the laser pulse sets the entire nanoscopically thin crystal oscillating, like a drumhead hit by a drumstick. We saw that in the first few microseconds after the laser pulse hit, the crystal’s motion appeared chaotic, but as time went on the entire crystal settled down into a well-defined resonant oscillation—it drummed!

For these oscillations, the material property that sets the resonance frequency is the elasticity of the graphite planes—their response to being stretched or compressed in the plane. We found that the graphite is much more resistant to being deformed in the planes of carbon atoms than it is to having those planes pulled apart or pushed together. The results can be explained by considering that the chemical bonds joining the carbon atoms in each hexagonal layer are much stronger than the bonds linking adjacent planes to one another.

Although studies of bulk samples of graphite produce similar data about graphite’s elasticity, the information we obtained tells us much more.

It addresses questions of two types that are fundamental to our understanding of how materials behave at the nanoscale: first, at what length scale does the description of a substance in terms of a continuum material with properties such as elasticity break down? Second, can we extrapolate from the behavior at atomic scales of length and time to reproduce the known macroscopic properties of a material? With graphite, we found that even quite nanoscopic samples (only a few dozen atomic layers thick) behave surprisingly like the bulk material. Would this description still be valid near the graphene limit?

 The movies of graphite I have described thus far all relied on collisions of our probe electrons with the sample in which they lose no energy— like rubber balls bouncing off something hard.

Sometimes, however, a probe electron may lose energy, by exciting an electron in a carbon atom.

The amount of energy lost depends on the kind of bond in which the atom’s electron was involved.

A very old technique called electron energy loss spectroscopy can measure such losses; the energy spectra obtained provide information about the bonding in a material and the chemical elements that compose it. Using this method with our ultrafast electron microscope, we showed that during the compression phase, the bonding inside the graphite shifted toward the kind of bond that is characteristic of diamond. In the expansion phase, the bonding of the surface atoms shifted toward that of graphene. Conventional electron energy loss spectroscopy is far

too slow to observe these changes.

From Cantilever s to Cells

My group has now carried out four-dimensional microscopy on a number of materials in addition to graphite. In iron, we made diffraction images to follow the crystal structure changing from what is called body-centered cubic to face-centered cubic, a process that occurs in many industrial applications at high temperatures, including production of steel. We saw two dynamic processes unfold when we heated the iron from room temperature to nearly 1,500 kelvins in about a nanosecond. First, specks of the face-centered phase developed, or nucleated, at locations in the crystal relatively slowly—on a nanosecond timescale—out of the incoherent motions of iron atoms. Second, these regions of the new phase grew at the speed of sound, meaning that the process took only picoseconds (10–12 second) to encompass the hot iron. This rapidly spreading transformation involves numerous atoms being displaced in a coordinated fashion, a curious kind of “emergence” of a large-scale change in the crystal from the innumerable underlying nanoscopic motions. Understanding of this phenomenon might lead to better ways to handle iron and steel (and many other materials) in industrial processes.

One of the most powerful applications of 4-D ultrafast electron microscopy is seeing nanosystems and microsystems as they function in real time. For instance, we imaged the resonant oscillations of nanoscopic cantilevers, which had not been accomplished before for such high-frequency motions. From our results we determined a range of quantities that describe the cantilevers’ material properties and their motion, and we saw that they functioned coherently for nearly 1011 oscillations. Researchers can use such data to test the theoretical models that guide design of microelectromechanical and nanoelectromechanical systems, which in turn may lead to new kinds of such devices or new uses for them.

Four-dimensional imaging with ultrafast electron microscopy also has potential biological applications. To fully understand how the body functions, investigators need to know not only the structures of the various proteins and other molecular and cellular structures involved but also their dynamics—how a protein folds, how it selectively recognizes other molecules, what role the water around it plays, and so on. Some biological functions involve ultrafast steps. For instance, our vision and photosynthesis in plants both rely on photons of light triggering femtosecond- scale processes. Although many proteins function, and malfunction, on timescales much longer than femtoseconds, the atomic and molecular motions in the initial femtoseconds can determine whether these macromolecules ultimately fold properly into a useful structure or into one that, say, causes Alzheimer’s disease.

One study on protein folding illustrates the kind of techniques needed and the results that are possible. My colleagues and I investigated how quickly a short length of protein would fold into one turn of a helix by heating the water in which the protein was immersed—a so-called ultrafast temperature jump. (Helices occur in innumerable proteins.) We found that short helices formed more than 1,000 times faster than researchers have thought—arising in hundreds of picoseconds to a few nanoseconds rather than the microseconds commonly believed. Knowing that such rapid folding occurs may lead to new understanding of biochemical processes, including those involved in diseases.

Biological imaging with our 4-D ultrafast technology often relies on a well-established technique called cryoelectron microscopy, in which a sample in water is plunged quickly into liquid ethane (which boils at –89 degrees Celsius). The water freezes into a glassy solid that does not diffract electrons and spoil imaging (and the sample itself!) as ordinary ice crystals do. We have obtained images of bacterial cells and protein crystals in this way. In the future we hope to watch proteins embedded in such vitreous water fold and unfold: a clocking pulse will boost the temperature enough to melt a tiny droplet of the water around the protein,which will unfold and then promptly refold. When the water cools and refreezes, it renders the molecule ready for another clocking pulse. The same approach could allow us to visualize the dynamics of bacterial flagella and of the fatty acid bilayers that make up cell membranes. As with our graphite studies, ultrafast electron energy loss spectroscopy should let us map changes in bonding. Capturing the image before the biosystem moves or disintegrates should provide sharper images than currently possible in cryomicroscopy.

Variants of ultrafast electron microscopy might well push below the nanoscale in structural dynamics studies and below a femtosecond in the imaging of the electron distribution in matter.

Very recently, my Caltech group demonstrated two new techniques. In one, convergent-beam UEM, the electron pulse is focused and probes only a single nanoscopic site in a specimen. The other, near-field UEM, enables imaging of the evanescent electromagnetic waves (“plasmons”) created in nanoscopic structures by an intense laser pulse—a phenomenon that underlies an exciting new technology known as plasmonics.

This technique has produced images of bacterial cell membranes and protein vesicles with femtosecond- and nanometer-scale resolution. In recent years Ferenc Krausz of Ludwig Maximilian

University of Munich, Paul Corkum of the University of Ottawa and others have opened up the attosecond regime to optical (light-based) studies using extremely short laser pulses. At Caltech, we have proposed several ultrafast electron microscopy schemes for attosecond-scale electron-based imaging, and we are now pursuing the experimental realization in collaboration with Herman Batelaan of the University of Nebraska–Lincoln.

The electron microscope is extraordinarily powerful and versatile. It can operate in three distinct domains: real-space images, diffraction patterns and energy spectra. It is used in applications ranging from materials and mineralogy to nanotechnology and biology, elucidating static structures in tremendous detail. By integrating the fourth dimension, we are turning still pictures into the movies needed to watch matter’s behavior—from atoms to cells—unfolding in time.

  

What Are the Benefits of Sales Software?

With any purchase in life, you want to buy only those things that are beneficial to you or those things that bring you some other type of satisfaction. As far as cash registers are concerned, there are not many people who get excited about them due to the fun factor. And you might also be surprised to hear that a traditional cash register is not the most effective choice for a retail chain. The best choice by far and away is a hosted point of sale software system. A point of sale software system can do several important tasks for you and help to stimulate sales through those tasks.

A major benefit of hosted point of sale software is the sales reports that the software can produce. Extremely detailed and specific reports can be made in real time situations at the touch of the button from anywhere in the world. If you are facing the decision of cutting back the number of hours that your store is in operation, you can create a report for that. Simply ask for a report that features the sales figures between seven and nine o'clock at night for the last three months. The point of sale software system will instantly provide a concise report showing only those numbers. If the sales revenues are not covering the costs of operations for those two hours, you will know that it is time to close the store at seven pm. This feature is particularly important for the owner of several different retail locations. It is impossible to be in all of your locations by yourself each evening, but with hosted point of sale software, you will know how each store performed every night.

The system can also notify you of your number one selling product. You will know which products are truly attracting customers. While you may think that it is your line of fancy high-heeled shoes, it is quite possible that cheaper shoes are your number one sellers. With such information, you will be able to make educated decisions about what product to promote. On a related note, hosted software can also signal your number one supplier so that you know from whom to order and from whom not to. Contracts with producers can be quite expensive and if a particular supplier is under performing, you need to know so you can break the business relationship off.

One last benefit of hosted point of sale software is the inventory management function that helps improve customer service, cut down on hours of labor, and allows for a true representation of your stock room. A hosted point of sale software system can track your entire inventory in real time. The moment that a product leaves your store, the system instantly and automatically takes it out of your inventory numbers. With this feature, you can know without a doubt the number of items you currently have on hand. Plus, point of sale software notifies you when it is time to place a new order to replenish your stock. Your inventory management will be interconnected between all of your locations and allow you to make better business decisions.

French People Are Drinking "Sea Water" For Their Well Being

Have you ever tried drinking sea water? Suppose you haven’t, since it is too salty, even though marine algae and electrolytes at the right quantities would be beneficial for your well being. That’s why the multinational French company ALTA CARE Laboratoires has created the first thalasso drink in the world. ALTADRINE THALASSO DRINK contains algae in a fibre base complimented with marine electrolytes that help the body in its cleaning and draining functions. With this mode of action, ALTADRINE THALASSO DRINK cleans your inside while stimulating metabolism, burning body fats and producing new energy.

ALTADRINE THALASSO DRINK are monodose sachets with a unique funnel shape; in fact, the difference is we are used to square shaped sachets, which make us lose part of the product while pouring it into a bottle. Instead, ALTA CARE Laboratoires chose to have sachets with a funnel form in order to reduce dispersion when inserting the sachet in a bottleneck. So, wherever you are, you can pour the content of the sachet in a litre bottle of water, consuming it during the day for internal cleaning.

The French so are drinking this “sea water” more than ever for their well being. The salty thalasso taste of ALTADRINE THALSSO DRINK is masked by an excellent flavour of passion fruit with a touch of grapefruit.

ALTADRINE THALASSO DRINK is available in all pharmacies.

Brazilian Healthcare Industry Set for Stupendous Growth

The healthcare industry in Brazil posted an unprecedented growth during the past few years on the back of government’s active support and enhanced private investments. According to our new research report “Brazil Healthcare Market Analysis”, the Brazilian healthcare industry is expected to sustain its growth pace in near future due to the increasing burden of diseases and favoring demographic conditions, which will create a strong demand for better healthcare facilities. The healthcare industry is expected to grow at a CAGR of around 14.5% during 2010-2013.

Brazil is recognized as a pharma-emerging nation, which is expected to witness further expansion in its pharmaceutical industry as many blockbuster drugs are going off-patent in the coming 2-3 years. The pharmaceutical industry is also undergoing consolidation and is set for growth in segments like, generics and OTC drugs. We have done an extensive research and analysis of various segments of the Brazil healthcare market with special focus on factors driving growth in these segments. The segments covered in the report include: Hospital Services Industry, Pharmaceutical Industry, and Medical Devices Industry.

We have found that the medical tourism industry is one of the emerging markets of the healthcare industry in the nation. Apart from this, clinical trials constitute one such area in which, companies can really make a difference in Brazil, owing to its unique combination of developing country conditions along with an increasing burden of diseases, which makes it an ideal destination for research. Our report thoroughly discusses emerging markets that can provide future opportunities to our clients.

The report has examined current market trends, industrial developments, and competitive landscape to enable clients understand the market structure and its progress in coming years. It provides an insight into the regulatory environment and industry restraints that facilitate clients in devising strategic plans before taking investment decisions to get optimal returns. The report also contains forecast for all segments of the healthcare industry to provide a rogue direction in which, these segments are likely to move in coming years.