* Postsecondary teachers – Median salary: $56,120 Education: bachelor’s degree
and often a master’s or doctorate
* Teacher assistants – Median salary: $21,580 Education: some post-secondary
education or vocational training
* Educational, vocational, and school counselors – Median salary: $49,450
Education: secondary education, associate’s, bachelor’s, or master’s

2. Energy
Some of the jobs in this field are the result of projects started a year or more ago. But the real boost will come from the new administration’s commitment to a more efficient national energy system. "Growth of energy consumption around the world will keep this sector strong," says Laurence Shatkin, coauthor of 150 Best Recession-Proof Jobs.

* Power plant operators – Median salary: $56,640 Education: vocational training
and several years of on-the-job training
* Insulation workers – Median salary: $31,280 Education: secondary education and
vocational training
* Electrical power-line installers and repairers – Median salary: $52,570
Education: vocational training and several years of on-the-job training

3. Environment
Green is getting the green light in a nationwide push to make homes and office buildings more energy-efficient and to develop alternative energy sources (solar, wind, nuclear) as well as fuel cell technology. "Anything involved with wind power, either the design or related products, will be big," says Laurence Stybel.

* Environmental scientists – Median salary: $58,380 Education: master’s
* Environmental engineers – Median salary: $72,350 Education: bachelor’s
* Hydrologists – Median salary: $68,140 Education: master’s

4. Financial Services
Rising from the ashes of a very bad year, financial services have a bright future. Corporate America’s wretched excesses mean more government regulation. Workers who are retiring will need advice on how to make their money last. Small businesses may outsource accounting services. As we get to the middle of the recession, there will be a wave of mergers and acquisitions, Stybel predicts. "People with experience in managing the process-corporate attorneys, investment bankers, and accountants-will be in demand."

* Financial advisers – Median salary: $67,660 Education: bachelor’s
* Accountants and auditors – Median salary: $57,060 Education: bachelor’s
* Sales agents (securities and commodities) – Median salary: $68,430
Education: bachelor’s

5. Government
More than half a million federal employees will retire by 2016, leaving open positions at agencies from the CIA to AmeriCorps to NASA. There will also be opportunities at the state and local levels. "In addition to police work and homeland security, government inspects and regulates many industries," says Shatkin. "Workers can sometimes capitalize on their experience in an industry by moving into a regulatory job."

* Government property inspectors – Median salary: $48,400 Education: vocational
training, associate’s or bachelor’s
* Immigration and customs inspectors – Median salary: $59,930 Education:
bachelor’s
* Urban and regional planners – Median salary: $57,970Education: master’s

6. Health Care
Health care pops up at the top of just about every list of hot careers. All of us are getting older and living longer, sometimes with chronic health conditions. What’s more, health insurance practices may undergo a radical revision during the Obama administration, which has announced plans to address three central issues: coverage, cost, and quality of care. "Health care is a growing industry," says Bettina Seidman, "and not just for health care professionals. There will also be jobs for secretaries, accountants, and administrators."

* Registered nurses – Median salary: $60,010Education: associate’s or bachelor’s
* Dental assistants – Median salary: $31,550Education: secondary education, plus
a few months to one year of on-the-job training
* Medical records and health information technicians – Median salary: $29,290
Education: associate’s

7. International Business
Corporations, consulting firms, nonprofits, and even governments are going after global markets. People with international expertise, foreign-language skills, or a willingness to move abroad will be in demand. "The global economy is only going to grow," says John Challenger. "U.S. involvement will expand, short and long term."

* Interpreters and translators – Median salary: $37,490 Education: bachelor’s
* International management analysts – Median salary: $71,150 Education:
bachelor’s or master’s
* Market research analysts – Median salary: $60,300 Education: bachelor’s or
master’s

8. Law Enforcment
International terrorism makes daily headlines, and fear of financial insecurity is matched only by concern for our physical safety. "Crime doesn’t go down in a recession," says Shatkin. "It may even increase."

* Probation officers – Median salary: $44,510 Education: bachelor’s
* Court reporters – Median salary: $45,330 Education: postsecondary vocational
training
* Paralegals – Median salary: $44,990Education: associate’s degree in paralegal
studies

9. Technology
New uses of technology in services and products like electronic health records mean that this sector will continue to be strong. "We have just begun to use the Internet as an entertainment medium in publishing, music, and film," says Peter Weddle.

* Computer systems analysts – Median salary: $73,090 Education: bachelor’s
* Network systems and data communications analysts – Median salary: $64,600
Education: bachelor’s
* Computer, ATM, and office machine repairers – Median salary: $37,100
Education: high school or vocational training

And We’ll Always Be Looking For…
"Think of basic human needs, the things we can’t do without," says Shatkin. They provide what he calls "little islands" of employment in this economy. For example, he says, we will always need sewage and water treatment. Challenger says the food industry is a core area: "People have to eat, and the global population is increasing."

In a down economy, people don’t buy new cars—they repair their old ones. People turn to their clergy for comfort. Funeral directors will always have jobs. And since pets are very much a part of the family, veterinarians and veterinary technicians will continue to be in demand.

Source : Reader Digest
By Cathie Gandel and Hilary Sterne
Additional reporting by Neena Samuel and Kathryn M. Tyranski

The answer will shock you… What number did you guess? An hour a week? A half hour? Try seven minutes. Check out these exercise trends for 2009!

According to British researchers, just seven minutes of exercise weekly may prevent diabetes by controlling your blood sugar.

Type 2 diabetes affects an estimated 246 million adults worldwide and accounts for 6 percent of all global deaths. People with this condition gradually lose the ability to use insulin to convert food to energy.

Here’s the catch:

The exercise has to be vigorous. (We’re talking on the level of an all-out sprint.) But at seven minutes a pop, I can deal with that!

And you don’t even have to do those seven minutes all at once, either. In the study, volunteers rode exercise bikes four times a day in 30-second spurts twice a week.

After two weeks, subjects had a 23 percent improvement in how effectively their body cleared blood sugar from their bodies.

Source:Sarah Jio,, Glamour Magazine

Sent from BlackBerry® on Airtel

LINK To Article

Around 15 million users update their statuses on Facebook daily.

Mark Zuckerberg was 19 when he launched Facebook from a Harvard dorm in 2004. Within 24 hours, more than 1,000 of his Harvard classmates had signed up for the social-networking site and one month later half of those on campus had a profile.

Five years on, the Web site claims more than 150 million users worldwide while Zuckerberg, now 24, was named the youngest billionaire on the planet — with an estimated fortune of $1.5 billion — last year by Forbes magazine.

Writing in Time on Zuckerberg’s inclusion in the magazine’s 2008 list of the most influential 100 people in the world, Craig Newmark, founder of Craigslist, said Zuckerberg had created “a social network that not only reflects your life but maybe expands it.”

Along with sites such as MySpace and Bebo, Facebook has also been credited with bringing social networking into the mainstream, with politicians, businesses and celebrities jumping on the bandwagon.

According to Facebook figures, around 15 million users update their statuses daily. More than 850 million photos are added to the site each month while the average user has 120 friends.

Meanwhile, Web sites such as Facebook were widely credited with helping Barack Obama secure victory in last year’s U.S. presidential election by helping him connect via the Internet with younger, previously disengaged voters.

In a blog published Wednesday to mark Facebook’s birthday, Zuckerberg said the site offered a way of making the world more open and giving people a voice to “express ideas and initiate change.”

“The culture of the Internet has also changed pretty dramatically over the past five years. Before, most people wouldn’t consider sharing their real identities online,” Zuckerberg said. “But Facebook has offered a safe and trusted environment for people to interact online, which has made millions of people comfortable expressing more about themselves.”

In a new Facebook first, the Web site featured at last week’s World Economic Forum in Davos with users contributing to live discussions and polls that were flashed onto big screens during sessions with world leaders.

Speaking to CNN, Randi Zuckerberg, Mark Zuckerberg’s sister, said politicians and businesses were looking to Facebook as “a place for insight and to get a real time pulse.”

Yet questions still remain about the finances behind Facebook’s remarkable expansion. The company has attracted more than $200 million in investment from venture capitalists while in 2006 it rejected a reputed $1 billion bid from Yahoo!

In 2007 Microsoft paid $250 million for a 1.6 percent share, a figure that gave Facebook a total projected value of some $15 billion.

But with the global financial crisis hitting Web advertising — Facebook’s core revenue stream — those sort of figures now appear to belong to a bygone age.

“What Facebook isn’t yet is a slam-dunk success,” said Adam Lashinsky of Fortune magazine last month. “It is selling advertising, it is bringing in revenue but it’s not wildly profitable even if it is profitable at all.

“There is no question that it has entered the zeitgeist but that doesn’t mean that it has progressed beyond the stage of being cool or viral or exciting to being a mega-business success the way that Google, Microsoft or even its arch-competitor MySpace is.”

Yet in an industry prone to short term fads and rapid evolution, Mark Zuckerberg said Wednesday he remained committed to making sure that Facebook remained as relevant in the future.

“Building and moving quickly for five years hasn’t been easy, and we aren’t finished,” he said. “The challenge motivates us to keep innovating and pushing technical boundaries to produce better ways to share information.”

Source ; cnn.com

An artist’s impression of what Titanboa cerrejonensis would have looked like.

Named Titanoboa cerrejonensis, the snake would have weighed 1,140 kilograms (2,500 pounds) and measured 13 meters (42.7 feet) nose to tail tip — dwarfing the largest modern pythons and anacondas which can grow to 6 meters (19.5 feet).

Scientists believe it slithered around the planet between 58 and 60 million years ago.

Geologist David Polly, who identified the position of the fossil vertebrae which made a size estimate possible, said in a statement Wednesday: “At its greatest width, the snake would have come up to about your hips. The size is pretty amazing.

“But our team went a step further and asked, how warm would the Earth have to be to support a body of this size?”

Titanoboa’s fossilized remains were discovered at a coal mine in the tropical Cerrejon region of northern Colombia by an international team of scientists.

“Truly enormous snakes really spark people’s imagination, but reality has exceeded the fantasies of Hollywood,” paleontologist Jonathan Bloch, who co-led the expedition, told reporters.

“The snake that tried to eat Jennifer Lopez in the movie ‘Anaconda’ was not as big as the one we found.”

Based on the snake’s size, the team was able to calculate that the mean annual temperature in equatorial South America 60 million years ago would have been about 91 degrees Fahrenheit, about 10 degrees warmer than today, Bloch said.

“Tropical ecosystems of South America were surprisingly different 60 million years ago,” said Bloch. “It was a rainforest, like today, but it was even hotter and the cold-blooded reptiles were all substantially larger.

“The result was, among other things, the largest snakes the world has ever seen…and hopefully ever will.”

According to Nature.com, snakes are poikilotherms (cold-blooded) that, unlike humans, need heat from their environment to power their metabolism. Therefore research suggests that at the time the region would have had to be no less than 86 to 93 degrees Fahrenheit for the snake to have survived.

Most large snakes today live in the tropical regions of South America and south-east Asia, where the high temperatures allow them to grow to impressive sizes.

Meanwhile, Carlos Jaramillo — who was also part of the expedition — said the tropical rainforest at Cerrejon appeared to have thrived at these temperatures.

“This data challenges the view that tropical vegetation lives near its climatic optimum, and it has profound implications in understanding the effect of current global warming on tropical plants,” he said.

Source ; cnn.com

stimulus measures take effect, Standard & Poor’s said on Thursday.

That growth momentum will be consolidated in 2010, when U.S. economic growth_crucial to the region’s exporters_returns to positive territory, said Subir Gokarn, the credit rating agency’s Asia-Pacific chief economist.

The combination of fiscal and monetary policy suggests stabilization and perhaps the beginning of a recovery toward the end of 2009,” he said. “The revival of export demand by the U.S. and to some extent in Europe will help to reinforce the positive impact of monetary and fiscal policy in the region.”

Asian economies made a miserable showing in the last three months of 2008, thanks to the lagging effects of tight monetary policy and a broad slowdown in exports and capital flows, Gokarn said.

By any yardstick it has been a significantly negative quarter,” he said. Virtually every macroeconomic indicator has moved sharply down.”

Strong domestic demand in China and India and its positive spillover effects are likely to help pull the region out of its rut before demand rebounds in the U.S. and Europe, Gokarn said. But he cautioned that a sustainable recovery in Asia won’t happen until the world’s largest consumer markets rebound.

We do not expect those growth rates to return anywhere near the boom years of 2006 and 2007,” he said.

S&P predicts that China’s growth will slip to around 6.7 percent in 2009, down from 9 percent in 2008, while India will clock about 6 percent growth this year, down from 7.5 percent last year.

S&P predicts Singapore will contract by about 3 percent this year, while Japan and Hong Kong will shrink some 2 percent. Gross domestic product in South Korea and Taiwan is expected to fall by roughly 0.7 percent.

Central banks in the region spent most of 2008 battling record-high prices of food, fuel, and other commodities by raising interest rates just as global growth was beginning to slow, Gokarn said. The threat of inflation began to wane in August, but the quick liberalization of monetary policy that followed probably won’t be felt until the middle of the year, Gokarn said.

Finding new ways to finance growth as foreign capital flows wither also remains a challenge.

To the extent that global financial markets are going to be relatively sluggish for the next year I would not expect too much activity in terms of emerging market investment activity in 2009,” Gokarn said.

That is bad news for countries like India, whose economic boom was fueled in part by a rush of foreign investment. The Indian government was counting on the private sector to help fund infrastructure projects; now much of that money probably won’t materialize, Gokarn said.

The dependence on private sector foreign investment we were banking on for the infrastructure sector is now something we have to compensate for,” he said.

That could lead to a revival of lending institutions like the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank and a fresh wave of privatization, as the government scrambles to find replacement funds, he said.

We will have to find some way of substituting for the reduction in foreign savings,” Gokarn said.

Source : economictimes.com

“We have figures from August till middle of January. We estimate something like between 7-10 lakh job losses till now,” Pillai told a news channel in an interview.

He said if the slowdown, especially in the US, Europe and Japan continues, another five lakh people would be unemployed by March.

Earlier in the day, Pillai told reporters that the prospects for the country’s outward trade look bleak for the next fiscal as well.

“It would be an achievement if we reach $160 billion-mark in 2009-2010,” he said.

After an impressive expansion of over 30 per cent in the first six months of 2008-09, export growth has turned negative with the result that the total shipments in the current fiscal would fall much short of the $200 billion target.

Though exports account for less than 20 per cent of the country’s GDP, the sector is highly employment oriented with the total estimated 6.5 crore workforce.

“Exports are going to come down and we have to live with it,” Pillai said.

Source : http://economictimes.indiatimes.com

In the book, The Game-Changer, Procter & Gamble chairman and CEO A G Lafley and business consultant Ram Charan explain why it is important to make innovation central to every driver of your business, and how it can help change the game, creating new markets and customers. An extract from the book.

To understand innovation, you first have to see the differences between an invention and an innovation. An invention is a new idea that is often turned into a tangible outcome, such as a product or a system. An innovation is the conversion of a new idea into revenues and profits. An idea that looks great in the lab and fails in the market is not an innovation; it is, at best, a curiosity. As Jeff Immelt once put it, “Innovation without a customer is nonsense; it’s not even innovation.”

Invention is needed for innovation to take place. But invention is not innovation. In many companies, inventions that result in patents are considered innovations. These companies are often touted as “innovative.” In fact there is no correlation between the number of corporate patents earned and financial success. Until people are willing to buy your product, pay for it, and then buy it again, there is no innovation. A gee-whiz product that does not deliver value to the customer and provide financial benefit to the company is not an innovation. Innovation is not complete until it shows up in the financial results.

Real innovation can change the context — the market space, the customer space, the competitive space, the societal space — in which a business operates. Changing the game, then, means not being hamstrung by the deep-rooted conventional wisdom of your business and industry, but rather seizing the initiative to imagine a new game or a new space and, thus, shaping and controlling your destiny. Game-changing leaders search for and execute ideas that put the company on a long-term path to prosperity.

For example, P&G created a new market space by introducing the disposable diaper; with the iPod, Apple likewise created an entirely new market space and changed the game for those who were not its usual competitors, such as music, media, and consumer electronics companies. Both P&G and Apple refused to be hemmed in by current conditions; instead, they redefined them. In the process, they forced the competition to play their game. It did not end there. The iPod, with its sleek design, built new capabilities within Apple and was a harbinger of the iPhone, which is changing the game for the cell phone companies.

There is an increasing advantage to being a game-changer — and higher risk for trying to survive on the defensive. Innovation enables you to be on the offensive. The speed of change is such that compared even to two decades ago, “innovate or die” is truly the name of the game. P&G’s core products are increasingly challenged by private labels and without continuous innovation would be threatened by commoditization. Commoditization drives down prices; the differentiation that comes from innovation carries an economic premium.

Moreover, the competition is tougher than ever — and only getting more so. Thanks to the Internet, there is more transparency than ever on prices, which reduces margins. A more-open trading system and more-efficient shipping have shrunk the economic globe; better communications and the Internet have tolled the death of distance. The development of venture capital and the rise of bold capitalists in places like China and Brazil have led to a host of new competitors. The only way to stay ahead is to keep innovating.

Why innovation matters
Innovation is the key idea that is shaping corporate life, helping leaders conceive previously unimagined strategic options. Take acquisitions, as an example. Most are justified on the basis of cost and capital reduction: for example, the merger of two pharmaceutical companies and the global rationalization of overhead and operations and the savings from combining two sales forces and R&D labs. You can, however, buy earnings through acquisitions for only so long; cost-control, however necessary, is a defensive strategy.

Innovation enables you to see potential acquisitions through a different lens, looking at them not just from a cost perspective, but also as a means of accelerating profitable top-line revenue growth and enhancing capabilities. For example, the innovation capabilities of P&G were enhanced by its acquisition of Gillette. Its market-leading brands (such as Gillette, Venus, Oral B, and Duracell) are platforms for future innovations; and core technologies in blades and razors, electronics, electromechanics, and power storage strengthen the technology portfolio from which P&G can innovate in the future.

Innovation also provides an edge in being able to enter new markets faster and deeper. In large part, it is P&G’s revived innovation capacity that is allowing it to make inroads into developing markets, where growth is double that in rich countries.

Innovation puts companies on the offensive. Consider how Colgate and P&G, effective serial innovators, have innovated Unilever out of the US oral-care market. The company that builds a culture of innovation is on the path to growth. The company that fails to innovate is on the road to obsolescence. The US domestic automakers and major companies such as Firestone, Sony, and Kodak all used to be industry leaders, even dominators. But they all fell behind as their challengers innovated them into second place (or worse).

Peter Drucker once said that the purpose of a business enterprise is “to create a customer.” Nokia became number one in India by using innovation to create 200 million customers. Through observing the unique needs of Indian customers, particularly in rural villages where most of the population resides, it segmented them in new ways and put new features on handsets relevant to their unique needs. In the process, it created an entirely new value chain at price points that give the company its desired gross margin.

Innovation, thus, creates customers by attracting new users and building stronger loyalty among current ones. That’s a lot in itself, but the value of innovation goes well beyond that. By putting innovation at the center of the business, from top to bottom, you can improve the numbers; at the same time, you will discover a much-better way of doing things — more productive, more responsive, more inclusive, even more fun. People want to be part of growth, not endless cost cutting.

A culture of innovation is fundamentally different from one that emphasizes mergers and acquisitions or cost cutting, both in theory and practice. For one thing, innovation leaders have an entirely different set of skills, temperament, and psychology. The M&A leader is a deal maker and transactionally oriented. Once one deal is done, he moves to the next. The innovation leader, while perhaps not a creative genius, is effective at evoking the skills of others needed to build an innovation culture. Collaboration is essential; failure is a regular visitor.

Innovation leaders are comfortable with uncertainty and have an open mind; they are receptive to ideas from very different disciplines. They have organized innovation into a disciplined process that is replicable. And, they have the tools and skills to pinpoint and manage the risks inherent in innovation. Not everyone has these attributes. But companies cannot build a culture of innovation without cultivating people who do.

Myths of innovation
The idea of innovation has become encrusted by myth. One myth is that it is all about new products. That is not necessarily so. New products are, of course, important but not the entire picture. When innovation is at the center of a company’s way of doing things, it finds ways to innovate not just in products, but also in functions, logistics, business models, and processes.

A process like Dell’s supply chain management, a tool like the monetization of eyeballs at Google, a method like Toyota’s Global Production System, a practice like Wal-Mart’s inventory management, the use of mathematics by Google to change the game of the media and communications industries, or even a concept like Starbucks’s reimagining of the coffee shop — these are all game-changing innovations. So was Alfred Sloan’s corporate structure that made GM the world’s leading car company for decades, as was P&G’s brand management model.

Another myth is that innovation is for geniuses like Chester Floyd Carlson (the inventor of photocopying) or Leonardo da Vinci: Throw some money at the oddballs in the R&D labs and hope something comes out. This is wrong. The notion that innovation occurs only when a lone genius or small team beaver away in the metaphorical (or actual) garage leads to a destructive sense of resignation; it is fatal to the creation of an innovative enterprise.

Of course, geniuses exist and, of course, they can contribute bottom-line-bending inventions. But companies that wait for “Eureka!” moments may well die waiting. And remember, while da Vinci designed a flying machine, it could not be built with the technology available at the time. True innovation matters for the present, not for centuries hence.

Another genius, Thomas Edison, had the right idea: “Anything that won’t sell, I don’t want to invent. Its sale is proof of utility and utility is success,” he told his associates in perhaps his most important invention — the commercial laboratory. “We can’t be like those German professors who spend their whole lives studying the fuzz on a bee,” he said. Generating ideas is important, but it’s pointless unless there is a repeatable process in place to turn inspiration into financial performance.

Source: Strategist Team / New Delhi , http://business-standard.com
THE GAME-CHANGER: HOW EVERY LEADER CAN DRIVE EVERYDAY INNOVATION. Excerpted with permission Authors: A G Lafley and Ram Charan.Publisher: Penguin Portfolio