Quick home improvement tips to make your home safer and more ...

It?s always been said that ?a man?s home is his castle.? The question is, though, ?How safe and secure is YOUR castle?? Is it really as safe and secure as you think it may be? With statistics showing that a burglary happens in the United States every eight seconds, how secure do you really think your home is? Not only that, but there can be safety hazards lurking around your home too. Safety hazards cause an estimated four hundred thousand house fires every year!

Quick home improvement tips to make your home safer and more secure

In light of those facts, here are some valuable, quick home improvement tips that can help make your home safer and more secure for you and your family:

Tip 1

Often, people leave a spare house key under their door mats in case they get locked out, or to let their kids in after school. The problem with this practice is that thieves can easily find and use that same key as well! In order to alleviate this problem, find a different place to leave a spare key at. Be creative and find a place that potential thieves won?t think to look! Here is a quick idea: Dig a small hole in your flower bed. Wrap the spare key in a plastic, airtight bag and bury it. Place a rock or decorative mulch on top of the spot to camouflage it.

Tip 2

Are you moving into a new home? Be sure to get the keys from the previous owners, and don?t forget to install new door locks. You have no idea of knowing who the previous owners gave house keys to, so protect yourself and your family, and make your new home safer and more secure by getting new keys and door locks.

Tip 3

Never leave valuables out in the open where they can be seen and ultimately stolen. Don?t leave large sums of money or expensive jewelry lying around the house. Locked or not, thieves can and do break in to steal items, especially expensive items that are left out in the open. Consider installing a fireproof safe in your home so you can store your valuables in there. They are not difficult to install, and they are usually quite secure.

Tip 4

Here is another statistic that might surprise you: according to the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), an estimated sixteen million homes have smoke detectors that don?t work. If this describes your home, you should check the batteries in your smoke detectors and make sure the detectors work properly. If you don?t have smoke detectors in your home, you should purchase some and install them today. They are not expensive, and installation only takes a few minutes.

Tip 5

Another improvement you can make to your home is to install carbon monoxide monitors. These are especially necessary in the cold weather seasons when furnaces are running and creating carbon monoxide. Carbon monoxide is an odorless, colorless, toxic gas that is normally piped out of your home. But, it can leak into the house, creating a potentially fatal situation for you and your family. A carbon monoxide monitor can alert you if it detects that any of this gas has leaked into your home. They are easy to install and only take a few minutes.

Tip 6

Periodically you should inspect the exterior doors and windows of your home. Make sure that all of the locks and latches work properly. If there are any broken window latches or locks, replace them immediately for the best security. For maximum security protection, good quality deadbolt locks are recommended in addition to regular doorknob locks. You install them in no time by following the manufacturer?s instructions.

Tip 7

If you have small children in your home, it would be a good idea to install childproof latches on your lower cupboard doors. This protects your children from getting into poisons that can make them sick, or worse.

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Carnivores Make Low Estimates of Animal Minds

Head Lines | Mind & Brain See Inside

Meat eaters selectively deny mental abilities in the animals they consume

By Morgen E. Peck ?| April 8, 2012

Image: Ryan Lane/iStockphoto

On the savanna a lioness will fell and shred her prey without empathy. Yet for we humans who can imagine that a cow might feel pain, pleasure and fear, enjoying animal flesh may have moral overtones. New research indicates that we have developed a mental tool to help us cope with the realities of our carnivorous nature: denial.

In a study that excluded vegetarians, psychologist Brock Bastian of the University of Queensland in Australia and his colleagues first asked par?ticipants to commit to eating either meat slices or apple wedges. Before eating, everyone wrote an essay describing the full life cycle of a butchered animal and then rated the mental faculties of a cow or a sheep. Participants who knew that they would have to eat meat later in the study made much more conservative assessments of the animal mind, on average, denying that it could think and feel enough to suffer. The study was published last October in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin.

?People engage in the denial of mind in animals to allow them to engage in the behavior of eating animals with less negative effect,? Bastian says. The re?searchers argue that although humans have the ability to imagine themselves in someone else?s shoes?or hooves?doing so is not always helpful. People living in carnivorous cultures may have developed this strategy of denial to better align their morals with their traditions so they may continue to consume meat without being consumed by guilt.

This article was published in print as "The Carnivore's Dilemma."

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Police dog persuades burglary suspect to give up

GRESHAM, Ore. (AP) ? A burglary suspect holed up in an Oregon deli refused police commands to come out, but changed his mind after hearing from a police dog.

Gresham police say the police dog persuaded 31-year-old James Patrick Brennan III to surrender early Wednesday because the man was worried its bite would be worse than its bark.

Police spokesman Sgt. Claudio Grandjean says the dog was brought there because its "bark is intimidating." He says it's a common tactic to keep police from having to use weapons or risk being hurt while trying to get a suspect to give up.

The Oregonian reports (http://is.gd/c9lYg6 ) that a patrol officer had discovered the burglary when he noticed a suspicious car outside the store that had been burgled in January.

___

Information from: The Oregonian, http://www.oregonlive.com

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Texan teen eyes graduation from Bolshoi

When Joy Womack arrived at Moscow's elite Bolshoi Ballet Academy at 15, she spoke limited Russian and was one of a number of foreigners allowed to train at the school. Now 17, she is poised to become the first American to graduate from the Russian academy.

By Irina Tkachenko
NBC News

MOSCOW -- Like many of her high school peers in the U.S., Joy Womack keeps an Internet blog and chats with her family on Skype. The 17-year-old devours books on Kindle, listens to music and stresses about end-of-year exams. But this is where the similarities end.

By the end of May she will become the first American to graduate from the Bolshoi Ballet Academy, arguably the most enviable and demanding choreography school in the world.

Clad in jeans and a puffer jacket?-- too skinny for this blustery Russian spring -- she looks impossibly delicate and long-limbed, even for a dancer, and speaks with sincerity, focus and poise that would be impressive in an adult. And if she is a tad nervous, small wonder. Having lived by herself for three years in Moscow, Russia, some 6,000 miles away from her home in Austin, Texas, Joy is preparing to take her final exams. ?

?Nothing can compare to the rigor and the mental strength it takes to train at the top of our school,? Joy told NBC News.

Ballet dancers are never late bloomers. By age 15 Joy had already put away years of preparation in prestigious American ballet schools like the Austin School of Classical Ballet and Kirov Academy of Ballet, when she was hand-picked by the Bolshoi Ballet Academy teachers to train in the Russian dancers department for tuition of $18,000 a year. That in itself was a special and unusual honor since the academy has a separate course for foreign students.

Barely believing her luck -- after all, her love of ballet began with YouTube videos of Russian ballerinas -- Joy left her parents and siblings and boarded a plane for Moscow, in awe of the opportunity of a lifetime.??Little could have prepared her for the change she was about to make.

?When I first arrived here, nobody had heard of me. Everybody thought, ?Here is this new American coming into the Russian class,?? she said. ?I was put with the graduation class in repertoire ahead of the other girls in my class ? that had created a lot of jealousy and a lot of questions.?

Joy, who did not speak Russian at the time, said she needed the instructors to repeat themselves again and again.

?It was hard the first six months, because the girls did not want to talk to me, did not want to be my friends,? she said.

A far cry from America

The Bolshoi Ballet Academy, also known in Russia as the Moscow State Academy of Choreography, launched in the late 18th century on the order of Russian empress Catherine the Great. Originally conceived as an orphanage, the school has long since established itself as an institution and feeder school for the Bolshoi Ballet troupe, a premier training ground for classical Russian ballet dancers that emphasizes technique and artistic expression. It is rooted in structure and tradition that have outlasted political regimes and many a revolution.

For Joy, life at the academy quickly proved a far cry from her American routine.??Instruction exclusively in Russian all but assured a language and culture gap too big to tackle quickly. The school's focus on discipline meant dancing up to 10 hours a day, six days a week. It did not matter if you were hurting or sick: you showed up and you danced through the pain.

A?measure of the school's ethos is its strict caps on the students' weight: 96 pounds for those who are 5'6", for instance. Ballerinas tipping the scale at 110 pounds are not allowed to participate in a duet class, but are required to observe it.? In a country that spends most of the year waiting for winter to pass, this schedule meant rarely seeing the light of day. In the middle of December in Moscow, the "day" lasts barely six hours.

Asked when she saw her family last, Joy paused before replying, ?Ten months ago.? That was the only time her dad had been able to come.

Driven to dance

Then, of course,?there were injuries. Joy had surgery on her foot. She broke her wrist. A torqued back once confined her to bed for two weeks, only to make her write in her WordPress blog.

"I feel miserable," she wrote, adding that she could not wait to get back to the studio.

When asked what keeps her going, Joy didn?t wait to consider the answer.

?In order to cope with my rigorous training schedule, my long days I mostly depend on good food and ? really the knowledge that after I get through this, I?ll be able to take on anything,? she said. ?Of course, there are always those hard moments, especially here in Russia, where in winter it?s really hard ? It seems so difficult to keep going. In those moments I rely on God, I rely on Jesus.?

She does not mention passion. But then, you can see it in her dance.

To connect to the outside world and to hold herself "accountable" Joy answers dozens of queries from American fans on her blog. ?What do you do not to lose trust in yourself when you think you're no good...?? asked one in an obvious moment of self-doubt.

And from across the Atlantic came the answer from Joy, meant, it seemed, as much for herself as for the person asking:

"Instead of getting upset or depressed if something does not go as you thought it would, God always opens another door. Even if it takes you awhile to find a light switch.?

Blood, sweat, tears, fatigue: 'it is worth it!'

Last December the Bolshoi Ballet Academy showed "La Fille Mal Gardee," one of its signature productions, on?the venerable stage of the Bolshoi. It was pronounced best student show in the theatre and landed the school an award from the Russian government (Prime Minister Vladimir Putin was on hand to honor the occasion). And Joy? She danced the lead. A month before she had won the?"Youth America Grand Prix" in Paris.?

Today Joy speaks fluent and lively, if a bit accented, Russian. She treasures the bond she formed with her Russian ballet teachers and adores them for their "tough love" and dedication to her. ?She has found her friends, though she once wrote the best one of them may still be the Internet.

Time is a precious commodity, and free time almost nonexistent.?

After she completes her state exams in all subjects: acting, classical ballet, character dance, and duet, Joy will dance in one final performance with the Bolshoi Ballet Academy, the lead in "Paquita." Then, after graduation in May, the nerve-wracking wait: will the Bolshoi come calling to invite her to its regular troupe? Joy will find out the answer having barely turned 18.?

"A dancer is honest with themselves and faces their flaws and imperfections in the mirror and chips away at them,? she wrote online. ?Behind the love is blood, sweat, tears, stress, fatigue! But it is worth it!"?

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Nikon D4 field review

Right around 2.5 years after the introduction of Nikon's most recent game-changer (yeah, we're bragging about the D3S), its proper successor has emerged. Without qualification, the amount of hope and expectation surrounding the Nikon D4 was immense. In a way, most Nikonians were (perhaps foolishly) expecting the D4 to be to the D3S what the D3S was to the D3, and we'll confess that we were cautiously saving up precious pennies in the event that the game was changed yet again.

For better or worse, the actual specifications of the D4 ended up as hardly worth writing home about, with an ISO range mirroring that already seen on the D3S, a megapixel rating lower than that of the cheaper D800 and a battery rated for fewer snaps than the outgoing D3S. All at an MSRP that's starting at $800 above where the D3S started. You'll notice a lot of comparisons throughout this article with the Best Camera of 2009, but that's intentional; yours truly has spent the last 2.5 years using the D3S for business and pleasure, and it's only logical to pit the D4 against a camera that has become molded to many palms here at Engadget HQ. Is the D4 a worthy upgrade? Or even a worthy successor? Let's find out.

Gallery: Nikon D4 hands-on gallery

Continue reading Nikon D4 field review

Nikon D4 field review originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 05 Apr 2012 12:04:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Hp dv7t Review | Computers and Technology

[unable to retrieve full-text content]The 1680-by-1050-pixel resolution could make mainstream software programs lots fast to run in. Be optimistic to preserve headphones handy, though: regardless of the unit's subwoofer, to me it optimistic didn't seem like a ...

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5 charged in China over kidney sold for iPad

Five people in China have been charged with intentional injury after a 17-year-old sold one of his kidneys to pay for an iPad and an iPhone, the government-run Xinhua News Agency reported Friday.

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The five included a surgeon who removed a kidney from a 17-year-old boy in April last year.

The boy, identified only by his surname Wang, now suffers from renal deficiency, Xinhua quoted prosecutors in Chenzhou city, Hunan province as saying.

According to the Xinhua account, one of the defendants received about 220,000 yuan (about $35,000) to arrange the transplant.

He paid Wang 22,000 yuan and the rest was split between the defendants and other medical staff.

The report did not say who received and paid for the kidney, or what that person's legal situation might be.

Teen's health deteriorating
The teen was from Anhui, one of China's poorest provinces, where inhabitants frequently leave to find work and a better life elsewhere.

He bought an iPhone and iPad, and when asked by his mother where he got the money, admitted selling a kidney.

Chinese man wakes up ? minus his kidney

Apple products are hugely popular in China, but are priced beyond the reach of many Chinese. The iPhones start at 3,988 yuan ($633), and iPads begin at 2,988 yuan ($474).

Wang's renal deficiency is deteriorating, Xinhua quoted prosecutors as saying.

Read more about China on Behind the Wall from NBC News

Slideshow: China and the US, a?dance of two giants (on this page)

Xinhua reported that 1.5 million people in China need transplants, according to China's Ministry of Health. It added that only about 10,000 transplants are carried out every year.

China banned the trading of human organs in 2007, Xinhua said. Several other suspects involved in the case are still being investigated.

Reuters contributed to this report.

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