How CRM Outsourcing Can Benefit Your Business

The call center is normally the department that has the most contact with your customers. If your customers rave or rant about your business, it is usually because of their experience with your call center. However, call centers are expensive to create and manage. Add to that the fact that most small business owners have no call center experience, you have a potentially a hazardous situation.

CRM Outsourcing:

CRM outsourcing allows your company to hand off customer relations to experts. This can mean having a third party handle your incoming calls, sales calls, customer service or help desk. If you outsource some or all of these business processes, then you will be able to see benefits almost immediately.

Benefits of CRM Outsourcing:

One of the main benefits of call center outsourcing is that you will be able to increase your market share. CRM outsourcing specialists at call center companies will be able to analyze your market and find new ways of satisfying your customers. By increasing customer satisfaction, you will gain customer loyalty and the ability to convert more leads into lifelong customers.

In addition, the growth your company will experience with call center outsourcing is sustainable. The call center will work with you to observe your current satisfaction metrics, compare them with how you match up to your competitors and how you can improve. The outsourcing company will implement these practices as part of their business process when handling your clients, so the ripple effect will begin with current customers and reach outward to the rest of your market.

Another benefit to CRM outsourcing is a reduction in cost for technology and labor. Call center outsourcing companies are specialists and purchase up to date technology to handle CRM for their clients. It is expensive for small businesses to invest in the same technology you will have access to via an outsource company at a reduced rate. That is because the call center distributes their expenses across multiple clients, an option you don’t have.

Finding the Best Call Center:

In order to find the best call center for CRM outsourcing you will need to consider their employees, their business processes and the technology they use to handle the customer interfacing process. By reviewing these factors, you will be able to determine if a call center outsourcing company is the right one for your company.

You will need to know how the outsourcing company hires and trains their employees. The best way to analyze this factor is to use performance-based analysis. Offer the company a sample script and see how they handle different customer based scenarios.

Performance based analysis will also provide you with insight into their business processes. How they interact with your customers and this will reflect on your company. You will want to make sure that they are handling your customers the same way you take care of your clients to guarantee customer satisfaction.

The technology they use to handle incoming calls, CRM and data entry will be another indicator if the call center is the right one for you. Your organization will need to be able to have access to customer data and the software they use for relationship management needs to be able to integrate with your sales database, accounting, and other main departments.

CRM outsourcing will allow your company to provide excellent customer service at a lower cost than handling the process in-house. When you are searching for a call center outsourcing company you want to understand their processes and the technology they use to handle customer engagement. Call center interactions make or break your business. Outsourcing your CRM can help you create a sustainable company that has a loyal customer base.

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cedric lajoie

Why The 'Will To Win' Isn't Enough...

"It's not the will to win that matters - everyone has that. It's the will to prepare to win that matters." --Paul "Bear" Bryant, football coach

It took a long time for me, as a struggling sales rep, to understand the difference in attitude and action this quote speaks to. But once I did, my sales results (and my life) changed.

I used to be an inside sales rep, a financial broker selling LLC partnerships, in a company with 25 other reps. The company had the top 20% reps doing 80% of the sales. I wasn't in that group, rather, I was bringing up the rear. Sales were hard to get, and as a result, my life as a sales rep was hard as well.

I wanted to do better; I had the will to win, but what I lacked was the will to prepare to win. I was one of the reps who came in right before my shift began, and I went for the coffee and donuts first. I hung around there talking about the latest sports scores with the other bottom producers. I couldn't wait for lunch time, and by Friday, I didn't work too hard.

After a series of events, I finally got sick and tired of being sick and tired, so I made a commitment to give my profession as a broker all I could. I decided to do what was necessary for me to move into the top 20% of the producers at the company. And that's when I learned what the 'will to prepare to win' meant.

To start with, I started showing up an hour before work began, and I headed straight to my desk to begin making calls. This began to pay off as some days I'd have a deal on the board before other reps headed for their coffee and donuts.

I spent my lunch hours listening to my calls and critiquing them. Yes, I was horrible in the beginning, but I was committedto finding ways to make them better. And I did.

At night before I went home, I took an extra half hour to lay out all my leads and call backs for the next day so I could hit the ground running when I got in. And then I'd listen to my calls in the car on the way home and make adjustments to the scripts during the evening.

Before I went to sleep, I focused my subconscious on closing the leads I had laid out, and I dreamt of ways to close them. I visualized how I would feel once I became a top closer, what I'd do with my first bonus check and how good that would feel as well.

After 90 days of doing this, I became the top producer in the company. Suddenly I knew the difference between the will to win and the will to prepare to win. I also found that I wasn't alone. There with me in the mornings and in the evenings were the other top producers.

Today, I find that I can do just about anything if I'm willing to put in the time to prepare to win. You can too - if you're willing to put in the time.

The question is, are you?

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cedric lajoie

Video Translation-Multilingual Subtitling

Language Consultancy Services™ Pvt. Ltd. (LCS®) is ISO 9001:2008 certified for quality management systems. Established in 2005 and incorporated as Private Limited Company in 2008, LCS® is a leading global language solutions provider, enabling companies to enter global markets with high quality multilingual products. LCS® strives to deliver reliable and quality translation services of global standards that exceed client’s expectations.

Video Transcription

With the advent of YouTube and low cost digital cameras has tremendously broadened the quantity and reach of videos on the web. The challenge for many web video producers is to make their content easily accessible to the end users. One way to do that is to use Video Transcription as a way to generate search-able text so that users can find your content using search engines.

At LCS®, we use special tools for uploading and transcribing audio/video, whether it comes from a URL, like YouTube, or the video file directly. We accept a broad range of file formats making it even easier for you to straight upload it to our site including .mp4, .video, .mov, and .avi!

There are often different ways that people attempt video transcription before they get frustrated and come to the experts here at LCS®. The problem with doing transcription in-house is that you are taking valuable time from your employees, who are not trained in professional transcription like we are, and in return you get transcription that cost you much more that it should actually cost.

Audio/Video Translation

After your video or audio files have been transcribed, we can translate it to many different Indian and Foreign languages as per your requirement. Our translation services are seamlessly integrated with our captioning/subtitling services. That means you can request transcription, translations and Subtitling services from under one roof. Our interactive transcript, captions plugin, and other video plugins are also integrated with the translation process which supports multiple languages.

How it Works: The first step is to upload your audio/video for transcription followed by translation, after which subtitling/Closed Captioning is done by our inhouse technical team. It is often helpful to provide us a glossary of terms to be used while doing transcription and translation.

Output Formats for Multilingual Transcripts and Subtitles: After your files have been transcribed and translated, you can instantly download the transcripts and the translated files. Subtitle formats include DFXP (for Adobe Flash), SCC for iOS, SRT, multilingual DFXP, QuickText (for QuickTime), RealText (for Real Media), VTT, iTunes, SBV (for YouTube), Adobe Encore, SMI or SAMI (for Windows Media), STL (for DVD Studio Pro), WMP.TXT (also for Windows Media), and Captionate. Transcript formats include plain text, Word Doc, HTML, JSON, and XML. We can also build custom translation formats as per requirement.

Translation Process and Quality: Translations are always done by professional translators who accurately capture the cultural nuances of your audio/video files. Linguists have area-specific expertise across a wide range of topics, including technology, marketing, finance, healthcare, government and education. Our translations are not literal or word for word translations – they read as if they were written in the target language, and are translated as per context in the actual video. Our priority is to ensure that your message reaches your target audience accurately and effectively in your target market and in any culture.

Subtitling/Closed Captioning

We can produce closed captions with precise timecodes ready for use in any video platform. We offer all updated different caption output formats which may be required. Choose as many formats as you need at no extra charge, and receive your caption files within minutes via download, email, or delivered directly to your video platform.

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Population Bottleneck and How Humans Managed to Squeeze Through It

  Whenever we hear about a bottleneck we imagine our nearest freeway where we pay a $10 toll in order to get stuck in 2 hours worth of traffic. Sometimes we get more than what we paid for and manage to get stuck in a jam for 3 hours. Bottleneck though isn't just limited to traffic or the very narrow opening in the bottle where we managed to get our hand stuck while fishing for candies. It also extends to the human population.

Broadly speaking population bottleneck can mean either the number of people on the earth falls drastically just like our bank balance at the end of the month or the genetic variety of the population falls that is we would be left with the same type of dollar notes. This genetic bottleneck can either be good or bad. It's bad if you are only left with $1 bills or in human terms; idiots who can't count till ten. Or it can be a good thing whereby you have all $100 bills or in human terms Phd scholars from MIT who are also Olympic gold medalists cum Billionaires.

There are various population bottlenecks humanity has been unfortunate enough to come across.

One is a Toba Catastrophy theory:

Presented sometime around the start of the millennium, it proposed that a Toba supervolcano in Indonesia lost its patience and royally erupted sometime 70,000 years ago. The resulting aftermath was so devastating that only about 10,000 to 30,000 people managed to get into anti-volcano bunkers and save their lives. This conclusion was drawn upon on the basis of sudden climate change like the way one feels after they step out of an Ac room in 100F and low level of genetic variation amongst humans in that period. All went well for a decade or so before new evidence came out to suggest that neither the climate change nor the genetic bottleneck was intense enough to cause such a decimation of the human race.

Another population bottleneck seems to have cropped up about 14,000 years ago when humans first inhabited North America. As claimed by a study just 70 people crossed over to the continent via a land bridge. Yes, when the whole world was refrigerator during the ice age there was a land bridge probably made up of ice strong enough for one to drive a corvette and just 70 people crossed over and became the first human inhabitants of a land. So if you just have the genes of 70 people at your disposal you would undoubtedly have the mother of all population bottlenecks but somehow a meteor didn't strike or an elk didn't ground them to dust and they thrived.

One of the most well known population bottlenecks occurred 50,000 years ago when humans finally got bored of staying in Africa and started backpacking to other continents. Further, they went from Africa the more they lost their genetic diversity and their genetics kept becoming linear. It might have been a result of either a single bottleneck or a string of bottlenecks.

Besides these three, humans faced a different kind of a population bottleneck some 7000 odd years ago. Humans were getting tired of being clueless barbarians going out every night to hunt for dinner and had started simpler and less deadly activities like farming. So as this transition took place, for the first time in human history men started finding it difficult to get dates. It was noticed that during this period one male was responsible for reproduction with as many as 17 females that is kids born to 17 mothers had the same father. And you though 21st century was odd. So in simple terms, while most of the men were single desperately looking for someone a fortunate few were able to go about with as many as 17 females. Such a form of sexual capitalism ensured that 1% of the male population had access to an exorbitantly high amount of female resources. Either this happened because an unusually amount of males lacked social skills or that humans first saw a powerful elite class emerging who had access to most of the wealth aka tools of survival. That is as the human race wasn't yet sophisticated enough to ensure either a police force or social security females looked liked gyrating towards these elite males who were the difference between a comfortable life and ending up in a tiger's stomach. Or another explanation can be as homes started coming up most males became busy with Neolithic equivalents of Ps4 or football or basketball or Netflix and had no time for females!

This continued for some time but eventually, there seems to have been some kinda recession wherein the ancestors of Lehman Brothers, Meryl Lynch amongst others went bankrupt and couldn't afford 17 females which have ensured the ancestral ratio has come down to 4 females per 1 male.
Kaspar Schmidt is the man behind haplomaps.com , a website where you can find unique haplogroup maps, that are very useful to visualize and explore human DNA distribution worldwide and also read original articles, related to ancestry DNA, human Genetics and Genealogy.

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cedric lajoie

DNA Testing For Adoptees

information on an adoptee's biological parents. The reasons for finding one's biological parents could vary; some may need help regarding medical issues, some may wish to discover secrets of their ethnicity, and others may simply be curious about their biological families. No matter the reason for the search of one's biological family, one viable and easily accessible solution could is DNA testing.
On receiving DNA information from reputable companies such as 23andMe, FTDNA, and Ancestry, the adoptee can upload his or her information into one or more available databases to see if there are any matches.
If you're looking for the most reliable DNA tests, shop for them online rather than buying one from a drug store. While less expensive, the store bought ones don't measure as many SNP's (single nucleotide polymorphisms) as the ones you can purchase online; this means they can be less accurate than those offered from websites. The online ones tend to offer a broader band of support to their customers as well, and most are affiliated with databases used to compare matches based on your results.
The process is simple. Your kit will come with a test tube and easy to follow directions. Some require a simple and painless swab of the inside of your cheek, while others may ask you to spit directly into the tube itself. Each tube has a unique barcode that requires registration. Once the tube is sealed and registered, simply mail it off and within six to eight weeks, your results will be mailed or emailed to you.
There are several types of DNA tests, and some will be more useful and accurate for adoptees seeking their biological roots than others.
The first type of DNA testing is Y-DNA. This test is for men only, and will trace your lineage back through your paternal lines. This is useful if you are looking for birth fathers and surnames. In order for this test to be the most effective, the company should offer to run a Y-DNA37 at the bare minimum (which checks 37 markers). If you are given a choice, upgrading to a Y-DNA67 will offer a more accurate test.
Mitochondrial DNA testing (mtDNA) gives information on female ancestors. It can be used by both men and women, and is passed from the mother to both genders of children. While this is useful for searching maternal lineage, the data provided is generally too far back to be of much use for those seeking more modern day relatives.
Autosomal DNA (atDNA) is the most accurate and complete test for both sexes. This test examines over 700,000 markers on 22 pairs of chromosomes.
After you take your DNA test, adoptees can join groups on Yahoo and Facebook to search for matches. Many online sites offer large databases to look for matches, as well. One of these sites is GedMatch, which is a free, volunteer run organization that compares results from Ancestry, 23and ME, and FTDNA. Other sites offer large databases as well, such as DNAAdoption and Family Tree DNA. Signing up for these registries will increase the likelihood that you will find your biological family.
Family Tree DNA in particular boasts the Global Adoptee Genealogy Project, and gives discounts for some testing projects. They also allow free information transfers to their site from other ongoing DNA projects. Their autosomal test is known as the Family Finder, and starts at $79.
The process of finding one's biological family doesn't have to be overly complicated or expensive; it may be as simple as a DNA test from a reputable company.
Kaspar Schmidt is the man behind haplomaps.com , a website where you can find unique haplogroup maps, that are very useful to visualize and explore human DNA distribution worldwide and also read original articles, related to ancestry DNA, human Genetics and Genealogy.

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cedric lajoie

From Genghis Khan's Ancestors to Roman Soldiers in China

From Genghis Khan's ancestors to Roman Soldiers in China, here are some surprising Genetic facts.
One wonders from time to time as to where did he come from, how did it all begin. Most of the time this thought occurs when one finds himself passed out drunk near a gutter on Main Street and tries to recollect how he ended up there, where does he live and how on earth did he talk himself into doing something this crazy.
But sometimes one wonders about his ancestry, who his forefathers were, in which part of the world did they originate from. There are also other thoughts like, were they too as lazy as he is or did they too have a have a horrible boss or did they also get hopelessly drunk and pass out near a gutter on Main street.
Knowingly or unknowingly while searching for the above answers some took a DNA test and stumbled upon some extremely crazy facts about their ancestry. Here are a few:
Descendants of Roman Soldiers in China?
Whenever one thinks of China one might associate it with the food or glorious oriental culture or communism or the time he lost his job because his company decided to outsource jobs to China. But never would he associate it with Romans. A DNA test showed that people from a village in Liqian China had some distinct European features and one of the guys even looked like Julius Caesar. Soon a theory broke out that these villagers were actually ancestors of a lost Roman legion whose soldiers had run for their lives in 53 BC from a battle between Marcus Crassus and Parthians from Iran. Their desertion is kinda understandable considering thousands of Romans got slaughtered by a larger army and Crassus himself lost his head(literally). These poor legionaries were then involved in another battle this time between the Huns and the Chinese in 36BC thus ending up getting absorbed in China. So fascinating! But unfortunately not true. 77% of their Y chromosomes were found to be East Asian and completely unrelated to the Central Asian and Western Eurasian populations.
Vikings first discovered America?
As it turns out 80 Icelanders have a generic variation which is similar to that of Native Americans. So as the story goes, Vikings in order to secure a year on year growth in their plundering, settled in Greenland and Newfoundland and after that had interactions with Native Americans, possibly on American Soil. This happened in 1000 AD, about 500 years before Columbus decided to pay a visit. If this is true then we urge the Viking's ancestors to sue the hell out of everyone who credited Columbus with discovering America.
Genghis Khan's descendant in Florida?
Genghis Khan spent all his life being a ruthless ruler conquering large parts of Asia and Europe. After conquering such a substantial part of the Globe, he must have dreamt about his ancestors someday ruling over the whole world. Well, he might be in a bit of surprise to know that one of his direct descendant by the name of Tom Robinson is an accountant in Florida. So the descendant of a man who arguably had most dangerous and adrenaline rushing job does one of the dullest jobs in the world. Though to be fair he could have aided Genghis Khan in creating his Kingdom's annual balance sheet.
Living descendants of a 9000 old man found
Cheddar man(completely unrelated the cheese with the same name) is a person who inhabited the earth sometime in 7000 BC and his whole skeleton was found in Cheddar Gorge, Somerset, England. That's how he got his name. So he is the oldest whole skeleton in England and is famous because nature and animal plunderers spared his body of complete obliteration. Apparently, he maintained a good amount of dental hygiene and some of his teeth were intact which led to Mitochondrial DNA being extracted from his teeth. This was compared with current residents of the Cheddar village and 2 school kids were an exact match! Plus their history teacher was a close one. So these people have been living in the exact same village as their 9000 years old ancestor. Gives a completely new dimension to, 'I really don't wanna move, I love to stay put!'.
Blond Yorkshireman has African genes
John Revis was blond and blue eyed, which led him to believe he had some Viking and Anglo-Saxon genes. So he took a test and rather than finding that his ancestors were notorious raiders, he found that he had A1 haplogroup which is found in West Africa. Apparently, he descended from African clans made up a small part of Roman Britain armies were garrisoned in England around 43-410 AD. Hence on a serious note, a man who looked anything unlike a man from Africa was related to him via mutual ancestors. This thus sheds light on how interconnected humanity is and how meaningless distinctions based on race and cultures are.
Kaspar Schmidt is the man behind haplomaps.com , a website where you can find unique haplogroup maps, that are very useful to visualize and explore human DNA distribution worldwide and also read original articles, related to ancestry DNA, human Genetics and Genealogy.

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cedric lajoie

The Homecoming of the Y-DNA Haplogroup R1b

'Long long ago'. It's a pretty relative term which differs for every individual. Like long long ago for some may be the last time they went out for a date or for others, the time when Dallas Cowboys last won a trophy.
But in our story, long long ago's 7000 thousand years ago. An African Tribe with the haplogroup R1b used to inhabit most parts of Western Europe. But mysteriously sometime around 6000-7000 years ago they shut shop, went back to Africa and are now most prevalent in Cameroon.
Nowadays whenever one sees someone going back to their country of origin, they either believe their holiday come to an end or their Visa is about to expire. But 7000 years ago the immigration policies were pretty lax and the immigration department didn't really care. Also, it appears unlikely that their fellow indigenous inhabitants who might have been Mammoths, sloths, sabers and others voted for a Brexit like referendum which forced R1b tribes to go back.
So what was the real reason? This is what we speculate.
The weather in western Europe back in the day wasn't extremely cold and damp, it was much worse, the ice age even though threatening to retreat wasn't really gone. It was too cold. Whenever kids used to play outside for long, mothers used to yell, "It's too cold". Whenever a teenager was pressurized to take his bi-annual bath he replied, "It's too cold". Whenever someone used to cook a steaming hot meal, by the time it was set on the table people grumbled, "It's too cold". Even if someone set himself up on fire, his last words before dying due to 3rd-degree burns used to be, "It's too cold". Apparently, the R1b ancestors snapped 8000 years ago and resolved to end the, "It's too cold" nonsense.
Plus the national pastime of killing the Mammoths was getting compromised after R1b people and others apparently killed too many and they were almost extinct. And there was hardly any food variety in those days and if one wished to eat either Chinese or Indian it had to be delivered from respective countries which normally took about 5-7 working generations. Considering all the above factors and seeking a change they decided to move when the ice age looked like ebbing and a route was created through the European mainland thanks to glacial melts.
Back in the day, instead of the underwater Euro tunnel, there used to be a much more convenient land bridge so there wasn't much trouble for UK's R1b inhabitants. So the R1b people set-off after walking through the European heartland they reached the Sahara desert, which during that period was a lush green paradise with grass all around. Overjoyed they proceeded to have the time of their lives.
They apparently had too much fun and pissed off the wrong people who soon tilted the axis of the earth making Sahara the desolate desert we see today.
After getting bored of digging into the sand and getting blown away during sandstorms, they again moved and apparently ended up in Cameroon where they have stayed put ever since. But it exactly wasn't a fairytale ending to the story as now whenever kids play outside, their mother yell, "Kids come back it's too hot"!
Kaspar Schmidt is the man behind haplomaps.com , a website where you can find unique haplogroup maps, that are very useful to visualize and explore human DNA distribution worldwide and also read original articles, related to ancestry DNA, human Genetics and Genealogy.

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cedric lajoie

Rewriting the Race Categories

Race is a word that comes with cultural, phenotypic and genotypic connotations. This mix of attributes usually leads to controversy and confusion. Sometimes at the degree that some people claim that the concept of race is meaningless, and therefore should be eradicated from language. But, if this word is so meaningless, why is it still in the center of so many discussions and studies?
Some people would argue that the motivation for keeping alive the concept of race, only comes from the desire to push certain political agendas. And although this sometimes can be true. It also can be understood as the simple human inclination to explain patterns, and give structure to our conceptions of the world. With the concept of race arising from the legitimate question of how populations relate to each other.
People tend to group elements based on shared properties between those elements. It is just how the human mind works. And the most immediate traits our ancestors could perceive about each other were properties such as height, body shape, skull morphology, skin color, facial features, etc. Being natural for them trying to classify people based on physical properties.
Now we know that physical traits are not so reliable as a way to determine biological similarity between two populations, since physical properties can be a result from adaptative changes to similar, but far away environments. For example, skin color is more related to a population's geographic distance to the Equator, as melanin pigmentation protects against sunny weathers with high UV radiation. So, we can find some populations with similar skin color in Sub-Saharan Africa and Melanesia, but without those two populations sharing a relatively recent ancestor.
Furthermore, the advances of molecular biology have provided us with much more precise tools to establish biological similarity between populations or even individuals.
DNA molecules are composed by 4 smaller molecules, arranged one after each other in sequences that can be interpreted as strings of letters, assigning "C" for cytosine, "G" for guanine, "A" for adenine, and "T" for thymine.
The human genome is composed by approximately 3,234 million of this "letters". Every person possess a copy inherited by her/his mother, and another by her/his father, resulting in every individual possessing approximately 6,468 million of this letters ordered in specific patterns in their cells. Encoding a great amount of information about how cells work, and the mating events that produced each one of us.
DNA replication isn't perfect, and some letters will get replaced by other letters in the copies inherited from parents to their children, producing new unique strings of letters, that can be associated to a specific individual. Then, when this individual reproduces, she/he inherits this unique sequences to her/his children, which can be identified as descendants from this individual. Due to this process, we can identify the unique DNA sequences that are shared among a population, and make approximations about how long ago their common ancestors were alive.
The approximately 3,234 letters inherited by each parent to their children are made by randomly taking DNA sequences from the 6,468 total letters in each of the 2 parents, resulting in new unique copies inherited to each children, with each copy as a mosaic made from half the genetic material of each parent. So, we didn't inherit neither of the copies passed from our grandmothers and grandfathers to our parents, but a mix of these copies into new ones. That's why brothers and sisters can be very similar or different. Because those who are similar are likely to have inherited similar mixes from the genetic material of their parents, and those who are different, are likely to have inherited less similar mixes. Plus, the creation of new sequences in the replication errors mentioned before.
All this processes make each one of us a really complex mosaic of DNA sequences, mixed each generation, which result in difficult analysis to reconstruct our past. Fortunately, this can be simplified by focusing in some special DNA sequences, which are not as affected by this mixing process. This special DNA sequences are present in DNA packages that don't follow this mixing process and then the package inherited from the parents would be almost identical to the copies inherited from the grandparents. This two DNA packages are the Y-chromosome which is inherited from every father to his sons, and the Mitochondrial-chromosome, which is inherited from each mother to her daughters and sons. The Y-chromosome contains approximately 58 million letters, while the Mitochondrial-chromosome contains approximately 16,569 letters, making the Y-chromosome much more informative, although with the disadvantage of being present only in men.
Still, those special DNA packets are a good way to infer ancestry, and therefore to take a little look into our pasts and origins, tracing back some of the expeditions our ancestors went through, or even better understand our biology, and how to avoid or cure diseases.
The Y-chromosome and Mitochondrial-chromosome, have some well known and characterized DNA sequences, called the Y-chromosome haplogroups and the Mitochondrial-chromosome haplogroups. Those haplogroups allow us to know the geographic region where an haplogroup originated and how long ago it happened. By sequencing our Y-chromosomes and Mitochondrial-chromosomes we can take a look to our patrilineal and matrilineal histories.
Our respective haplogroups in the Y-chromosome, for example, will tell us that if someone have any of the haplogroups A00, A0-P305, A1a-M31, A1b-M6 or B-M60, it's likely that this person have a recent ancestor from Africa, and even further region specificity can be inferred, like the association of A00 with the Bangwa people in Cameroon or that one of the A1b-M6 with the Khoisan people in Southern Africa. So, haplogroups can be used to infer ancestry and relationship with some populations.
People has been always fascinated about their origins, and we could welcome that curiosity by encouraging people to try to reconstruct their biological past, and knowing that every carrier of haplogroup C-M130 is likely to share a recent indigenous ancestor from Mongolia, Siberia, North America or Australia. Or how the D-M174 haplogroup originated in Asia, and then asian descendants are likely to possess this haplogroup.
It would likely be interesting for people having E-M96 haplogroup to know that their ancestors originated in Africa, but then travel outside the continent towards Asia, only to return to Africa again. And also finding certain DNA sequences correlated with each haplogroup could be useful to develop better prophylactic and treatment methods, or even to decode some biological gems of functionality hiding in there.
Are haplogroups race separators? They could be if we give them that meaning, and we could do the same for other DNA sequences, accepting a broader term of race with the right amount of malleability to adapt to the scope of each study, but with the objective meaning that it indicating a genetic pattern found in certain populations, without doing any a priori assumptions about the phenotype or cultural values of those populations.
Instead of trying to banish the word "race" from language, maybe we could accept its legitimacy in the form of questionslike, which phylogenetic paths our ancestors followed, how close we are to certain populations, and inferences about our biology. Accepting that we have an amazing diversity, which allow us to find differences between even identical twins, and similarities between people in different continents. We want to make sense of all these relationships, just out of curiosity, or even for the development of medicine and biology. And in the end, maybe overwriting the race categories into biologically meaningful patterns, and encouraging people to understand those, could be the only way to clean old prejudices and ignorance.
Kaspar Schmidt is the man behind haplomaps.com , a website where you can find unique haplogroup maps, that are very useful to visualize and explore human DNA distribution worldwide and also read original articles, related to ancestry DNA, human Genetics and Genealogy.

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cedric lajoie

How to Use Instagram to WOW Your Audience – (Infographic)

  If you are planning to take your business online and explore the possibilities, Instagram is an absolute must. Using Instagram for business doesn't mean you have to stick up a bank and get loads of cash to pay for tastefully shot images. There are several ways you can use Instagram for business, make yourself visible and enhance your customers' experience.

Why Instagram?

Instagram is a massively popular and rapidly-growing photo sharing community. It has over 100 million active users today and being on Instagram can not only boost your business's exposure, but also increase brand recognition and build demand for your products and services. That is why many businesses today both big and small are insisting on a presence on Instagram to engage consumers and make their brands visible.

Here are a couple of tips and tricks businesses can do to WOW their followers on Instagram.

1.Show Your Products

One way to use Instagram for business is to promote mobile window-shopping. Use your Instagram profile to show off a visually appealing collection of your products. You could either create a buzz by clicking photos of a new range of product or build engagement by zooming in for a close shot on a product and asking followers to guess what it is. While photos may attract users, it is conversations that engage them. If you have a service-oriented business, show off the equipment and supplies that are integral to the services you provide. For example, if you are a photographer, show off your fancy new lenses or if you are a personal trainer, show off your gym equipment.

2.Bring Employees Into the Limelight

When you introduce your employees to your followers, it humanises your business and adds a more personal touch to it. Put the spotlight on a specific employee every so often and use the caption space to talk about that employee. If you make this an ongoing affair, by featuring staff from different departments within your company regularly, it will help to put a human face to your business.

3.Connect To Social Networks To Expand Your Audience

A great way to use Instagram for business is to connect your profile to your other social networks and use relevant hashtags with your brand name (#brandname) so that people can find your account easily.

4.Show Off The Skills Of Your Products

Show your followers novel or new ways to use your products on Instagram. This helps increase demand for your products. Invite user-generated content to engage your followers. Ask them to post pictures showing creative ways to use your products. Service-oriented businesses can highlight the impact of their work with before and after shots. This theory holds true especially for sectors such as interior design, makeup, landscaping, fitness, or auto-body.

5.Engage with Users Directly

You can engage with your followers directly in many ways like organising local Instagram meetups, asking questions in your photo caption, and responding to comments.

6.Keep Up the Suspense

Keeping a user's interest piqued is a vital part of using Instagram for business. Let you loyal followers know about the launch of a product, a new event or a service before anyone else does. Build anticipation for things like new stores, offices, or new releases with the use of snap teaser photos. You can make your Instagram followers feel extra special with these exclusive previews and they will ensure that they keep them coming back for more.

7.Show Behind-the-Scenes Stuff

People have a natural curiosity about where stuff originates from. You can use your Instagram to show snap photos through the manufacturing process, right from planning to delivery.
Amaya Dixit - I'm social media marketer and content writer at Infinista Concepts. I love to travel and write about different things, boring things like medical blogs too! Amaya Dixit

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ABC Article Directory banner displaying blue butterfly logo. Click to go directly to the main Homepage Custom Search Search 5 Go-to Tips to Master Pinterest For Your Small Business – (Infographic)

     Don't be under the impression that online scrapbooking platform Pinterest is only for amateurs and DIYers. If you are a small business owner who is looking to connect with potential client or drive sales, you shouldn't ignore Pinterest as the valuable marketing tool it is. Here are some Pinterest facts that are going to make you fall off your chair. No, really.

• Pinterest has over 70 million active users.

• Pinterest has 85 million unique visitors each month.

• Pinterest is valued at $3.8 billion as of late October 2013.

• Pinterest is the third most popular social work.

• Shoppers are 10% more likely to make a purchase if referred to a site from Pinterest

More than 1/5 of Facebook users are on Pinterest

Mind = blown?

Good.

Sure, Pinterest has had quite the reputation of being 'girly-girl' with almost 80% of users being female. But the way this platform is skewed towards change in the future, reveals that it has much to offer businesses of all kinds, right from service providers to retailers, and not just female-friendly content providers.

By being active on Pinterest, small businesses can improve their rankings on search engines like Bing or Google. Pinterest can also be used to share white papers, presentations, videos and articles. Anything that tells a story of the business works on Pinterest.

Here are 5 go-to tips on being a sensei master of Pinterest:

1.Ensure that your website is Pin-friendly

Downloadable 'Pin It' widgets allow users to "pin" items to their personal boards. Make sure you have a "Pin It" button on all content on your site to encourage users to engage with your website. These buttons are quite similar to the ones people use to share content on Facebook or tweet on Twitter. The 'Pin It' button can be an intelligent tool as it reveals what content is most popular with viewers online.

2.Organize your content into boards

With Pinterest, users can create themed boards. If you are small business on Pinterest, consider organising your content by theme, so that it is easier for other users to find and browse through your content. If you are a jewellery shop that specialises in diamonds, organise your boards so that you have a princess cut board, marquise board, round board, baguettes board etc.

3.Brand your pins

This may be a more time-consuming process, but branding the photos that you upload to Pinterest is worth the time and effort. If you have logos on your photos, users who find your photo interesting and want to share it, will end up inadvertently sharing your logo as well. There is a delicate balance to be achieved here. No one wants branding shoved in their face. Keep it subtle, like a logo in a corner. A watermark bang in the centre is sure to turn off Pinners faster than you can say 'Danny DeVito in a wet suit'.

4.Include information for shoppers

Pinterest users approach the platform with an intention to shop. To benefit from this finding, small businesses should include as much "shopper-friendly" information as possible. This means describing your product or service in a detailedmanner, without going over the top. This increases the chances of piquing a 'Pinner's interest' (you see what we did there?) and lead them to your website to make purchases.

5.Engage Pinners

As difficult as it might seem to do, small businesses need to spend at least an hour on social media every day, dividing that time between platforms such as Twitter, Pinterest and Facebook. Use that time to become active in the online community in a sincere way. You could consider answering users' questions, repinning relevant content to your boards, or commenting on other users' content.
Amaya Dixit - I'm social media marketer and content writer at Infinista Concepts. I love to travel and write about different things, boring things like medical blogs too! Amaya Dixit

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Eugenics: Dark Past of Selective Breeding

   Sir Francis Galton, Victorian psychologist and scientist, was by all accounts a genius. He was responsible for inventions such as the weather map and classifying fingerprints for use in forensic science. He also began studying short term climate change in his native England. As a half cousin to Charles Darwin, he became fascinated with The Origin of the Species and began to study selective breeding in animals. It wasn't a far stretch for him to weigh the possibilities of selective breeding in humans, and the study of eugenics was born.
Eugenics was first studied as a way to pass on desirable traits, like intelligence, among humans. It began its shadowy and often debated turn in the United States in the late 1800's when it became a study into the possibility of breeding out undesirable traits, rather than breeding in desirable ones. In 1911, the United States founded the Eugenics Records Office in New York. This department was dedicated to studying family histories of those who were deemed "undesirable," and the conclusion was reached that "undesirable" individuals came from poor families with no real social standing, minorities and immigrants. Most shocking was the "conclusion" that being poor was not due to poverty itself, but due to genetics.
Many citizens of the US are unaware that the United States passed resolutions to sterilize people that were deemed unsuitable. In the 1900's, thirty three states had sterilization laws that forced sterilization on mentally ill people as well as alcoholics, poverty, physical handicaps, and even promiscuity. It was during this time that African American women were unknowingly sterilized as they underwent other, unrelated medical procedures. The estimation is that around 65,000 Americans were sterilized before eugenics fell out of favor in the United States just before World War II.
Eugenics, though, had spread across the sea and was being practiced in Germany even before the rise of Adolf Hitler. Much like the United States, people were being sterilized against their will for possessing traits such as handicaps, mental illness, and homosexuality. Between the years of 1939 and 1941, eugenics had been brought to fruition in a movement called Atkion T4, under Adolf Hitler as chancellor, and an estimated 400,000 were sterilized with an additional 70,000 to 100,000 more being killed under the act. Adolf Hitler believed that the Aryan race was superior; anyone wishing to marry and bear children had to receive permission from the government first, and the eugenics movement was ramping up to its horrifying conclusion of The Final Solution, or the Holocaust.
Eugenics has had some more modern resurfacing, with forced sterilizations on prisoners and immigrants happening as recently as the 1970's in the United States. Some argue that abortion in the face of disability or undesired children is a modern branch of eugenics, as well. Ideologists and followers of a more extreme eugenics also believe parents have the right to euthanize new-born babies who do not have desired physical traits, or those who have inherited a mental or physical disease.
Currently, a beneficial form of form of eugenics is being practiced under the realm of genetic research. Scientists are hoping that by allowing parents to pre-screen their own health, they may uncover inherited diseases that would be passed on to offspring. These parents are allowed to make their own choice on carrying on with a pregnancy or not. This testing is particularly useful in races who share common diseases; scientists hope to be able to eradicate these diseases entirely. Since these tests are voluntary, they are a far cry from the forced sterilization practiced under the guise of eugenics in the past.
The controversy that is eugenics, however, is a deep seated moral question that is heavily debated even today.
Kaspar Schmidt is the man behind haplomaps.com , a website where you can find unique haplogroup maps, that are very useful to visualize and explore human DNA distribution worldwide and also read original articles, related to ancestry DNA, human Genetics and Genealogy.

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