Focus on the Future of Financial Planning at FPA Retreat

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Futurist Thomas Frey, a keynote speaker, suggests planners take advantage of the ‘untethered marketplace’.

Since its inception in 2000, the FPA Retreat has always been sui generis: It is as much a gathering of like-minded financial planners who draw strength from communing with each other as it is an educational conference.

 

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Uranium Could Be The Future of Hard Drives

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The trick is to keep the uranium cold.

If you’d been putting your money on a bet that SSDs will edge out traditional hard drive technology entirely, you might want to rethink your gamble. Traditional high-capacity moving hard drives will be around for a long time, most likely, and researchers at Nottingham University think they have a way to make them even denser: use depleted Uranium.

Depleted uranium, the same material that the military uses for tank shells and gun turret rounds, may one day be used for super-high density storage in hard drives. The trick is to keep the uranium cold…

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Eating More Salt Could Lower Chances of Heart Disease: Study

salt-shaker

In the eight-year study, people with the lowest salt intake had the highest rate of death from heart disease.

Eating a diet high in salt may not be as bad for you as first thought and could even reduce chances of heart disease.  The controversial findings question the push by authorities to get people to cut consumption.

 

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Fewer American Households Own TVs

television

114.7 million households will own a television in 2012, down from 115.9 million this year.

These days fewer Americans own TV sets, research firm Nielsen has found. For the first time in 20 years Nielsen says it expects a drop in the number of U.S. households with a television set. According to Nielsen the decrease likely has to do with two factors: poverty and the rise of high-tech alternatives.

 

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First Practical Artificial Leaf Developed

leaf

The first practical artificial leaf shows promise as an inexpensive source of electricity for homes in developing countries.

Scientists debut development of the first practical artificial leaf, one of the milestones in the drive for sustainable energy.  The scientists described an advanced solar cell the size of a poker card at the 241st National Meeting of the American Chemical Society. The solar cell mimics the process, called photosynthesis, that green plants use to convert sunlight and water into energy.

 

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World Record: 109 Terabits Per Second Over Single Optical Fibre

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BLAZING speed over one optical fibre.

Imagine being able to download three-months-worth of HD video in one second. If it sounds implausible, it’s not. Two different research groups have been working on a way to speed up fiber optic technology to record-setting broadband speeds.

When the first commercial fiber-optic communications system was developed in 1975, it operated at a bit rate of 45 Mbps. Today, we have speeds of 109Tb per second which is drastically improved. New Scientist said that the route between New York and Washington D.C., which is one of the highest trafficked routes in the world, outputs “a few terabits per second.” So, relatively speaking, having a way to deliver 100 terabits per second is quite desirable for the future of data communications…

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People Blaming Facebook for Divorces

facebook_divorce

Facebook is a source of evidence in divorce cases.

Divorces can get really ugly and social media can paly a large part in that.  More and more of divorce cases include incriminating evidence captured on social media sites, at least for one Florida lawyer who says she sees “some type of Facebook involvement” in 90 percent of her divorce cases.

 

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Amazon’s Tablet to Compete with iPad Will Ship This Fall

amazon tablet

Amazon tablet 

Taiwan-based notebook maker Quanta Computer has recently received OEM orders from Amazon for its reported tablet PC and the device will also receive full support from Taiwan-based electrophoretic display (EPD) maker E Ink Holdings (EIH) for supplying touch panel as well as providing its Fringe Field Switching (FFS) technology, according to sources from upstream component makers.

 

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China Bans Smoking in Public Places but with No Penalties for Breaking the Rules

China's smoking ban

China introduces a smoking ban.

More than a million Chinese die each year from smoking related diseases, according to the China Centre for Disease Control.  China has the world’s most serious smoking problem so China has banned smoking in public places in an attempt to placate the World Health Organization, however, there are no penalties for those who flout the rules.