“Poverty is the world’s worst human rights crisis.” With that belief Irene Khan writes passionately and authoritatively, a heartrending book, advocating for a human rights approach for the approximately three billion human beings living in poverty on less than $2.50 a day. That statistic translates into almost half of the world’s population. Approximately twenty thousand children around the world die each day because of poverty.

Although most people are aware of poverty, to read this book is to become more acutely aware of the economic and social injustices affecting the lives of billions of people living in poverty. The author makes the strong case that defining poverty only through income levels has led people to the conclusion that raising income levels will solve the poverty problem. She cites examples of national income rising in countries, but still the inequalities and poverty persist. Economic growth in many countries has not ended the marginalization, discrimination and exclusion of various groups of people such as poor people, ethnic groups, religious groups and women.

The author describes the plight of the poor as more than an economic issue. To live in poverty is to experience “deprivation, insecurity, exclusion and voicelessness.” The author’s stance is that all of these issues connect, forming a “vicious circle;” it is those factors working in concert that keep people in poverty.

Throughout her book, Irene Khan cites many examples of voicelessness, insecurity, exclusion, discrimination and deprivation. Some of the numerous examples she cites are:

• the millions of workers in China laid off because of the global economic crisis who were sent back to their villages with no safety net.

• the high profile example in Zimbabwe where millions have been impoverished.

• the tens of thousands of homeless people in the U.S. who are excluded and discriminated against because they are not eligible to vote.

• the over 2,000 trade unionists in Columbia who have been killed during the past 20 years.

• the statistic from 2008 which documents more than 37 countries holding Prisoners of Conscience.

• the statistic of over 81 countries with “severe restriction on freedom of expression….”

• the Dalit communities in India which make up 16 percent of the population (160 million people) who are economically excluded and discriminated against.

• the 1500 families in Cambodia who were forced into trucks and deposited in a flood plain in 2006. Their homes were then destroyed.

• a U.S. 2002 report that documented homeless people in the U.S. being either forced to move, fined and/or imprisoned because they slept in a car, in a park or on the street. In San Francisco alone, some 43,000 people were cited for “quality of life” violations in a single year.

To live in poverty is to be trapped by political and philosophical belief obstacles. Living in poverty is also to be trapped in the “economic growth” belief that economic growth alone will trickle down and solve poverty issues. Living in poverty is to be trapped in “the sequencing trap.” It is the idea that poverty can be solved in “a piecemeal fashion,” a prioritizing of steps to be taken. The sequencing trap is to resist a holistic approach to solving the complex problems of the billions of human beings living in poverty.

The author defines what she considers to be concrete, holistic approaches that must be taken in order to solve the multiple problems facing the billions of human beings living in poverty.

This book is an analytical look at worldwide poverty written from a compassionate human rights perspective drawn from over 20 years of personal experience. It is a must-read book for people concerned about the social and economic injustices so prevalent in today’s world.

The Unheard Truth, Poverty and Human Rights, 2009, W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 500 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York, 10110 written by Irene Khan, Secretary General of Amnesty International, 2001-2009. She is a graduate of Harvard Law School and worked at the United Nations for twenty years. She has received prestigious awards for leadership in human rights.

Finite element analysis, which is short for FEA, is now a very popular method of solving the problems in engineering. So have you ever heard of it? Do you know what FEA is? Why should we sometimes need to use FEA to solve problems? What are some other details about FEA? In this article I will give you the answers to all these questions.

A brief introduction to FEA

Finite Element Analysis is a popular method now which is usually used to help better understand some very complex problems by creating a computational model of reality in a form of mathematic. We know that in the world everything is made up of enormous atoms. There are billions and billions and billions of them. The infinite number of atoms can’t be all processed by a computer and so we model finite elements to simulate. With a computer we can process the finite groups of atoms in order to do researches on the interactions between them.

The uses of FEA

Why do we need to use FEA? Now it’s widely considered that general simulation is really a good idea because by simulating you can test your designs and ideas without really spending money or effort. Simulation in general will also help you find the fault points contained in your designs which may be too expensive to carry out. Sometimes it is easy to create a model to simulate your ideas while sometimes it won’t be so easy. Then you will need the FEA method. This method is fit for the situations when you meet with very complex problems or you want to deal with the non-symmetric problems. So it is very useful.

Tips for using FEA

The Finite Element Analysis is typically made up of a group of points which are drawn together to make a grid, also known as a mesh. You will also need some especially designed software to solve the equations and produce CAS models which are related to your simulation. Importantly, to know the method of FEA is not enough. You should also be very clear about the problems you are facing and you should know how to deal with the simulation properly. You should also know well if you have simulated your ideas correctly. All of this requires you to have a good understanding of your problems. Then you should turn to some introduction materials which will help to keep a clear mind.

Long ago, soon after the Universe was born, there was an ancient era before the first generation of stars caught fire. In this black swath of featureless space, that was the primordial Universe, opaque clouds of mostly hydrogen gas collected along enormous, heavy, and invisible filaments composed of a mysterious non-atomic substance that astronomers call the dark matter. It is generally believed that the first galaxies were dark, amorphous clouds of gas that pooled at the hearts of dark matter halos, and the relentless gravitational pull of this invisible substance served as the “seeds” from which the billions upon billions of galaxies were born in the primordial Cosmos. In March 2018, a team of astronomers announced their new discovery of a bizarre, unique galaxy–the first of its kind–that seems to contain no dark matter at all. This mysterious and exceptional beast inhabiting the galactic zoo is unique because galaxies are commonly thought to contain more invisible dark matter than the so-called “ordinary” atomic matter that composes a galaxy’s stars, gas, and dust.

The first galaxies were born from concentrations of the invisible dark matter, and this exotic material gravitationally snared “ordinary” (baryonic) matter. Clouds composed mostly of hydrogen gas ultimately floated down into the secretive, invisible ghostly halo of the mysterious dark substance.

In the modern Universe, there are some galaxies that keep themselves well-hidden from the prying eyes of curious astronomers. They are big–like our own enormous starlit spiral Milky Way–but, unlike our own dazzling pin-wheel whirling in space, they host so few stars for their size that they are dim and diffuse. Indeed, they are so diffuse that some scientists have compared them to “giant cotton balls”.

However, new observations derived from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope (HST) of the strange galaxy whose dark matter apparently has gone missing, have revealed this oddity that sets it apart from any other known galaxy in the Universe–even the diffuse “giant cotton balls”. This invisible form of non-atomic matter serves as the underlying scaffolding from which galaxies form–and this galaxy doesn’t seem to have any. Dark matter composes the bulk of the Universe’s matter content, and it is the invisible glue that binds visible, “ordinary” matter together. Dark matter interacts with atomic matter only through the force of gravity, and its gravitational effects on objects that can be seen reveals its ghostly presence.

Dubbed NGC 1052-DF2, this phantom-like galaxy contains at most 1/400th the amount of dark matter that astronomers expect to see. How it formed is, therefore, a complete mystery. This non-conformist galaxy apparently travels to the beat of a different drum than do others of its kind. NGC 1052-DF2 is by no means small–it is as big as our Milky Way. However, this galaxy has managed to elude discovery because it hosts only 1/200th the number of stellar constituents as our Galaxy.

Based on the colors of its attendant globular clusters, NGC 1052-DF2 is approximately 10 billion years old. It is situated about 65 million light years from Earth. A globular cluster is a compact spherical cluster composed primarily of old stars. Globulars are located in the outer region of a galaxy.

“We thought that every galaxy had dark matter and that dark matter is how a galaxy begins. This invisible, mysterious substance is the most dominant aspect of any galaxy. So finding a galaxy without it is unexpected. It challenges the standard idea of how we think galaxies work, and it shows that dark matter is real: it has its own separate existence apart from other components of galaxies. This result also suggests that there may be more than one way to form a galaxy,” explained Dr. Pieter van Dokkum in a March 28, 2018 Hubblesite Press Release. Dr. van Dokkum is of Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, and lead researcher of the HST observations.

Given NGC 1052-DF2’s large size and faint appearance, astronomers classify it as an ultra-diffuse galaxy. A 2015 survey of the Coma galaxy cluster revealed that these faint, large galaxies are surprisingly abundant. Nevertheless, no other ultra-diffuse galaxy known has been found to be as depleted of dark matter as NGC 1052-DF2.

A Dark And Ancient Mystery

Dark matter is thought to be an exotic form of matter that cannot dance with light or any other form of electromagnetic radiation and, as such, is invisible–or transparent. According to the Standard Model of Cosmology, the Universe is composed of about 4.9% “ordinary” atomic (baryonic) matter, 26.8% dark matter, and 68.3% dark energy. The dark energy, which accounts for most of the Universe, is even more of a puzzle than the dark matter. The most widely accepted theory explaining dark energy is that it is a property of space itself, and it is causing the Universe to accelerate in its expansion in the direction of its own doom. As the Universe speeds up in its expansion it grows ever larger and larger; colder and colder–destined to become an enormous, frigid expanse, as its fires go out like the light of a candle, leaving literally everything in a nightmare of emptiness.

The badly misnamed “ordinary” atomic matter is extraordinary. This runt of the cosmic litter of three accounts for literally all of the elements listed in the familiar Periodic Table, and these atomic elements create the familiar world that we can experience with our senses. It is this relatively small percentage of atomic matter that created life in the Cosmos. The calcium in your bones, the oxygen that you breathe, the iron in your blood, the water that you drink, the sand that you walk upon are all composed of so-called “ordinary” matter. Most of these atomic elements were manufactured in the incredibly hot nuclear-fusing furnaces of the Universe’s stars. The Big Bang birth of the Universe, thought to have occurred about 13.8 billion years ago, only produced the lightest of atomic elements–hydrogen, helium, and small quantities of lithium. The stars cooked up the rest–all the way up to iron. But, the heaviest atomic elements of all–such as gold and uranium–formed when a massive star perished in the fireworks of supernova blast. These brilliant stellar explosions hurled into interstellar space the dead progenitor star’s freshly forged batch of heavy atomic elements.

According to the Standard Model of the formation of large-scale cosmic structure, particles of the mysterious and exotic dark matter at first danced together gravitationally to construct a crowded region of space–the dark matter halo. Eventually, the dark primordial halos gravitationally snared floating clouds of pristine hydrogen gas. Hydrogen is both the lightest and most abundant atomic element in the visible Universe. As a result of this, galaxies and their constituent stars emerged out of the primordial darkness.

Billowing, amorphous, dark and opaque, the pristine clouds of ancient gases gathered together, and then tumbled down into the secret hearts of the bizarre dark matter halos. As time passed, the first generation of baby stars were born, and their newly-lit raging fires sparkled within the first galaxies that served as primordial stellar cradles.

Even though dark matter is transparent and, as such, invisible, it is generally believed to exist because of the extremely important differences astronomers have observed between the mass of enormous celestial objects–calculated from their gravitational interactions–and the mass determined from the visible atomic matter that they host–such as stars, dust, and gas.

The existence of the dark matter was first suggested by the Dutch astronomer Jan Oort (1900-1932), in his effort to make sense of the orbital velocities of stars dwelling within our own Milky Way. In 1933, the Swiss-American astronomer Fritz Zwicky (1898-1974), also proposed the real existence in nature of a weird form of abundant and invisible matter. Zwicky had come to the conclusion that some form of invisible “missing mass” floated phantom-like in the Universe–and that this invisible matter influenced the orbital velocities of galaxies inhabiting distant galactic clusters. Convincing evidence for the existence of the dark stuff was derived from galactic rotation curves by the Caltech astrophysicist Horace W. Babcock (1912-2003) in 1939. Babcock, however, did not attribute his highly suggestive observations to dark matter.

At last, in the 1960s, the great astronomer Vera Rubin (1928-2016) became the first to offer convincing evidence that dark matter really exists in nature. Rubin, who was familiar with Zwicky’s work, based her theory on galactic rotation curves. Soon after Rubin’s study was released, a number of important observations were conducted by other scientists that suggested the existence of the ghostly and invisible dark stuff. The new discoveries were based on observations that took into account the gravitational lensing of background objects by foreground galaxy clusters such as the Bullet Cluster, the temperature and distribution of searing-hot gas lurking within galaxies and galactic clusters, and–more recently–the pattern of anisotropies observed in the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) radiation that formed in the newborn Universe at the time of the Big Bang. Gravitational lensing is a phenomenon suggested by Albert Einstein in his Theory of General Relativity (1915), when he came to the realization that gravity could warp Spacetime–and, as a result, have lens-like effects.

The galaxies of the visible Universe switched on less than a billion years after the Big Bang. In the primordial Cosmos, the invisible and bizarre dark matter snatched at clouds of primarily hydrogen gas, and hoisted them in. These pristine clouds of gas were destined to evolve into the ancient nurseries of the first generation of newborn stars.

Eventually, the whirling, somersaulting, floating gas clouds, along with the ghostly, non-atomic dark matter, danced together throughout the ancient Cosmos. Gradually, they combined to create the structures seen in the modern Universe.

The theoretical existence of the dark stuff is an important component of recent models explaining cosmic structure formation and galaxy birth and evolution–as well as offering an explanation for the anisotropies seen in the CMB–the relic radiation left over from the Big Bang itself. All of the lines of evidence, collected so far, suggest that galaxies, galactic clusters, and the entire Universe contain much more matter than what can be observed with electromagnetic radiation.

Giant Cotton Ball

Dr. van Dokkum and his team discovered NGC 1052-DF2 using the Dragonfly Telephoto Array, which is a custom-built telescope located in New Mexico, that they had designed to detect these giant ghostly galactic “cotton balls”. They then made use of the W.M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii to measure the movement of 10 giant stellar groupings called globular clusters inhabiting the galaxy. Keck revealed to the prying eyes of the astronomers that the globulars were traveling at relatively slow speeds–less than 23,000 miles-per-hour. Stars and clusters dwelling in the outskirts of galaxies hosting dark matter travel at least three times faster. From those measurements, the astronomers were able to calculate the galaxy’s mass. “If there is any dark matter at all, it’s very little. The stars in the galaxy can account for all the mass, and there doesn’t seem to be any room for dark matter,” Dr. van Dokkum explained in the March 28, 2018 Hubblesite Press Release.

The astronomers then used NASA’s HST and the Gemini Observatory in Hawaii to discover new details about this strange one-of-a-kind galaxy. Gemini revealed that the galaxy does not show signs of an interaction with another galaxy. HST also helped to further identify the globulars and measure a precise distance to the galaxy.

In addition, the HST images unveiled the galaxy’s rather unusual appearance. “I spent an hour just staring at the Hubble image. It’s so rare, particularly these days after so many years of Hubble, that you get an image of something and you say, ‘I’ve never seen that before.’ This thing is astonishing, a gigantic blob that you can look through. It’s so sparse that you see all the galaxies behind it. It is literally a see-through galaxy,” Dr. van Dokkum continued to explain in the Hubblesite Press Release. This extreme giant cotton ball galaxy doesn’t seem have a central region, or even spiral arms and a disk, that are typical features of a large galaxy, such as our own. However, NGC 1052-DF2 doesn’t look like an elliptical galaxy, either. The giant cotton ball also shows no evidence of a central black hole haunting its heart. Most–and probably all–large galaxies, including our Milky Way, are thought to house a central black hole. These very heavy supermassive black holes can weigh-in at millions to billions of times solar mass. Indeed, even NGC 1052-DF2’s globular clusters are unusual. This is because they are twice as large as typical stellar groupings observed in other galaxies.

“It’s like you take a galaxy and you only have the stellar halo and globular clusters, and it somehow forgot to make everything else. There is no theory that predicted these types of galaxies. The galaxy is a complete mystery, as everything about it is strange. How you actually go about forming one of these things is completely unknown,” Dr. van Dokkum continued to explain in the March 28, 2018 Hubblesite Press Release.

Nevertheless, the astronomers have come up with some possible explanations. NGC 1052-DF2 is located in a group of galaxies dominated by an enormous elliptical dubbed NGC 1052. Galaxy formation is both a violent and turbulent event. Because of this commotion, Dr. van Dokkum proposes that the growth of the young NGC 1052 billions of years ago possibly played a major role in the mystery of NGC 1052-DF2’s missing dark matter.

Another possibility is that gas traveling toward the giant elliptical NGC 1052 may have fallen apart, and in this way created the weird NGC 1052-DF2. The formation of NGC 1052-DF2 may have been aided by strong winds flowing out from the young supermassive black hole lurking in the heart of NGC 1052. These possible scenarios are still speculative, however, and they fail to explain all of the characteristics of the dark matter-depleted galaxy, the astronomers told the press.

The team is already searching for more dark-matter-depleted galaxies, and they are currently analyzing HST images of 23 other cotton ball galaxies. A trio of these diffuse galaxies appear to be similar to NGC 1052-DF2.

“Every galaxy we knew about before has dark matter, and they all fall in familiar categories like spiral or elliptical galaxies. But what would you get if there were no dark matter at all? Maybe this is what you would get,” Dr. van Dokkum commented to the press.

The team’s results appear in the March 29, 2018 issue of the journal Nature.

Anyone with billions of dollars is likely to be admired by a certain segment of society that measures the worth of a person by the amount of money they possess. At last count, Warren Buffett was estimated to be worth in excess of $40 billion dollars. That’s 40 billion reasons to admire the man. The moment Warren Buffett’s net worth vanishes, this group of admirers will quickly lose interest in him and re-focus their attention on whoever happens to be wealthy at the moment.

Another group of admirers place more of an emphasis on the spectacular returns Warren Buffett has generated through his stock market investments. The billions of dollars he has accumulated are merely a reflection of his success as an investor. In other words, the focus of the admiration isn’t so much on the amount of money Warren Buffett has made, but rather, in his miraculous ability to nearly always make winning investments. Warren Buffett’s reputation as a genius stock picker is so deeply cemented in the minds of most investors that a string of bad investments is unlikely to shake the mythic level of admiration in which he is regarded by this group of people. And really, the admiration is deserved, because Warren Buffett has distinguished himself as a “one of a kind” investor throughout his entire career.

Warren Buffett is renowned for being accessible, friendly, down to earth, charming, intelligent, and thrifty. In fact, his car bares a vanity license plate that has the word “thrifty” on it. Having tremendous wealth yet possessing the aforementioned traits is profoundly admirable. There is undoubtedly a group of admirers who choose to focus on the fact that Warren Buffett could easily be someone waiting in line next to you at a Dairy Queen, even though he owns Dairy Queen!

Finally, there is what might be described as a hybrid group of admirers – a group of people who defy simple categorization. For example, there are likely those who admire Warren Buffett because he is a billionaire, because he is an amazing stock picker, and because he is friendly, down to earth, and thrifty. It’s the whole package.

So… why do you admire Warren Buffett?

-The Salary is less than important than the bonuses:

Hedge funds are all about making money on the market place. To motivate their employees to do that, they paid them according to their performances and the quality of their decisions. That’s the reason why bonuses represent a larger part of the entire compensation than just the salary.

– The salary depends on the firm

Some company, like Renaissance Technologies, use collective bonuses. Employees get paid based on the profits of the entire firm. The idea is to promote horizontal organization and ideas sharing.

-Not all managers earn millions

We’ve all heard about fortunes made in the hedge fund industry. For example, George Soros net worth is 14.2 billions dollars, John Paulson earned 5 billions in 2010. However, don’t think every job is paid the same. Soros and Paulson are also the founders of their funds that’s why they get the lion’s share. To give you an idea of what a beginner in the industry can make the average salary of a junior analyst is 300k.

-Patience is rewarded

Like in every business, the more experienced the fund’s employee is the more he gets paid. However, because of the compensation structure you can start with 300k a year and 5-10 years later earning millions. Also accomplished managers can start their own hedge funds and earn a lot more. Usually, the seed capital they need to raise is a few millions. To convince investors they usually have a large personal stake in the fund. After that, they can start making millions or billions for the most successful.

There's a new world order in web marketing these days. With billions upon billions of videos being downloaded and viewed in a single month, and the increasing popularity of image-driven social networks, mere articles about your products and services no longer engage your consumers. It's time to step up your content with formats and strategies that persuade buyers to click a link to your website. Here now are top three kickass tactics to guarantee your website gets the qualified traffic it needs.

Use videos to promote your products and services, and develop your overall business brand. No matter what sort of business you're in, engagement plays a huge part in increasing your sales and profits. Nothing engages better than videos. Videos allow you to introduce your products or services better than any written content. Videos allow you to approach your consumers on a more personal level. When done right, your videos have the potential to drive traffic to your website. Viral videos have a powerful way of enticing consumers to either buy a product or sign up to an email list. With Internet users in the US alone watching 37 billion content videos and seeing 11 billion ad videos in a single month, your business video therefore is a critical component in your web marketing arsenal.

Use different content formats to improve your business's web visibility. This means that apart from producing engaging videos, you should also consider looking into producing podcasts and creating image-driven web campaigns. A report from eMarketer finds that 25 million podcast audiences tune in every single day. Meanwhile, image-driven sites like Pinterest and Instagram are increasing in popularity. Pinterest users were at 1 million in 2011, and this year Forbes magazine reports that number has swelled to 20 million. Instagram has reportedly passed the 80-million user mark this year. Use these highly popular platforms to build your market and to engage your consumers with interesting and relevant audio and visual content.

Choose an expert search engine marketing agency to distribute your multimedia content and implement your web marketing strategies. The current trends in web marketing can be a bit much to handle at times so you might find yourself being overwhelmed by which platforms and which strategies would work best for your kind of market. For example, Lightspeed Research finds that there are more women than men on Facebook or that Booz & Co. projects that $ 14 billion will be spent on physical goods sold through social networks by 2015. A creative and expert SEM agency will know where your consumers are and how best to engage them.

Running a business in the Internet age isn't as simple as creating your website. Your consumers need to know first that it exists. By using multimedia content and relying on an expert SEM agency to improve your website's traffic today, you'll have a much better chance of being seen in the World Wide Web for years to come.

An entire set of generations grew up admiring Sachin and his style. When Sachin batted, the entire nation wanted to be glued to the television.

People relate to Sachin in more ways than one. He is a hero in multiple dimensions, a feat which athletes may not always achieve.

Sachin's fan following does not span in India alone. All across the world, Sachin is seen as larger than life. He is the name which can give jitters to the opposition, even while they take time to admire the game.

While Sachin retired, he was a part of life for every cricket fan. One could not imagine a cricket game without him. Many of Sachin's fans were born while Sachin was in the team. His career lasted for staggering 23 years. That's a reasonably long time for playing at the top level, while being a top batsman.

Let's run through some exciting facts about Sachin's cricketing career.

• It is hard to believe that Sachin Tendulkar made his career debut way back in 1989. It was also the year when Anil Kumble made his debut. The two went on to become the hottest players in the squad and win many games for India.
• Sachin was just 16 years of age when he made his test debut. Only three players in the world have made a debut at a younger age.
• Sachin took reasonably long to make his first ODI century. It took him 78 matches to get started. He got 110 vs Australia in the Singer World Series. This was in R.Premadasa stadium in Colombo, on 9th September, 1994.

However this was just the beginning, and set the wheels in motion for many more to come. Sachin's career stats would take anyone by surprise. These are beyond comprehension and very hard for a batsman to achieve.

Sachin has gone on to score 49 centuries in the ODI format of the game. This includes a lightning fast double century, which is a rare feat to achieve.

Sachin has nearly 18.5K runs in the ODI format, and has played 463 matches to achieve the same.

Another interesting stat in Sachin's career graph is that he has scored 96 half centuries. With his 51 test centuries, he is the only player in the world to have scored 100 centuries in ODI and test cricket combined.

In Sachin's own words

Before you lay a foundation on the cricket field, there should be a solid foundation in your heart and you start building on that. After that as you start playing more and more matches, you learn how to score runs and how to take wickets.

The crowning glory for Sachin's career was winning the World Cup for India. He was a part of the World Cup winning squad in 2011, and this is a dream come true for any player!

Over $50 billion in student loan funds were paid out in 2006 under the Federal Family Education Loan program. States in 1966 this program is the basis for student loan programs such as the Perkins loan, the Stafford loan and PLUS. This program was started by an Act of Congress and has distributed billions upon billions of dollars to students for their education over the last 40 years.

The government in a sense serves as a guarantor for loans that fall under this program giving lending institutions more security in extending credit to students and parents for college funds. Because of this a large number and various types of lenders are willing to have a share in this loan program.

There are a small percentage of situations where these loans are defaulted on. In these cases a third party will step up and make a request to the federal government to recoup some of the money lost. Though they may not be able to recoup every penny they are usually able to recover a portion of their loss.

Subsidized and unsubsidized loans are the two options that fall under this loan program. The difference between the two is that with an unsubsidized loan the borrower is responsible for all interest accrued on the loan. If they do not begin making payments until six months after graduation all interest that has accrued to that point is added to the original loan amount. In the case of a subsidized loan the government pays all interest on the loan until the borrower begins to make payments 6 months after graduating.

Billions of dollars each year are loaned through the PLUS loan program which enables parents and graduate students to finance the high cost of higher learning. This is an invaluable tool for parents paying for their child’s education. Since July of 2006 it is been an invaluable tool for graduate students as well.

You can find a complete application for these loans online at fafsa.ed.gov/. The application you find here (Free Application for Student Aid – or FAFSA) is the application that must be completed for all the different types of student loans available under FFELP.

A total financial aid package will likely include different loan programs. Once it is determined what a student or his family can contribute toward his education a formula of loans can be created to make up the deficit.

The funds from the financial aid package are normally sent directly to the college at the start of each semester as payment of tuition. Any funds left in excess after tuition and fees are paid are disbursed to the student or his parents.

The fees associated with student loans vary. They can be as low 3% or as high as 8%. Around 4 or 5 percent is common. Since there is a variation it is important to do some searching so that you get the least expensive loan available to you.

Doesn’t it seem like the only impressive numbers we’ve seen this summer are the digits on the thermostat and the unaffordable prices of homes? Real estate has been excruciatingly hot for the past few years, but getting in the market now puts you in the high-risk category for a heat stroke if the market decides to cool off this year.

So if a real estate induced stroke doesn’t appeal to you and the stock market’s roller coaster ride gives you motion sickness, it’s very likely that you as a health-conscious investor are sitting on a stash of cash collecting an anemic rate of interest.

Don’t worry, you are in good company. Even investment legend Warren Buffet is having problems finding fruitful investments. Buffet admitted in Berkshire Hathaway’s annual letter to shareholders to having ended 2004 with $43 billion in cash equivalents and couldn’t promise much success in utilizing the money in 2005.

If Buffet doesn’t know what to do with his billions, you are probably thinking that you have no chance of finding a great place to put your billions either. Ok, your trillions. I didn’t mean to belittle your nest egg.

Where can you stick your cash while you wait for better investment times?

How about online? Yes, I know Internet stocks stole your money in 2000, but Internet banks are giving it back in 2005.

Unlike the Internet gold rush of the 1990’s where web businesses were run by high school students, many of today’s Internet banks are simply online divisions of safe and time tested brick-and-mortar banking institutions.

Take ING Direct for example. ING Direct is the online division of ING Group, a Dutch based financial institution which is among the top 15 largest in the world. ING Direct opened its Internet doors five years ago and currently has approximately $29 billion in deposits. That would make it the “YAHOO!” of online banks.

But another online bank may actually make you yodel, “yahooo” after you glance at their annual percentage yield. Internet bank Emigrant Direct offers 3.50% APY on its savings accounts. What does your big commercial bank give you? 0.50%? At that rate, you’re not earning enough to beat inflation. Maybe it’s time you joined the Internet age?

Emigrant Direct is the online division for New York’s Emigrant Savings Bank. Although a relative newcomer to the online banking scene, when it seems like interest rates are leaden with lead, Emigrant Direct is usually the first to raise them. At this point, brick-and-mortar banks would need to raise their rates quite a bit just to catch up with Emigrant.

So if you find yourself not enjoying the lazy interest rates of summer, you may want to log on to the net and see how an Internet bank account may boost your return this year. The interest rate you get may just burn as hot as the heat wave hitting most of America.

#10 – Soft Dollar Expenses

The reason a mutual fund exists is so small investors can pool their money, hire professional management, and attain diversity that would be nearly impossible for the small investor by himself or herself. It would stand to reason then that funds with hundreds of millions, or even billions, would have economies of scale to demand from the street the most competitive rates for trading their shares. Yet, as you will see, not only are fund firms NOT getting the most competitive rates, they are paying well more than any individual can get through their discount broker.

What are Soft Dollar Expenses?

Hard dollars are expenses that come out of a fund manager’s management fee. These expenses include salaries for the fund managers, analysts, and customer service people (yep, you get dinged when you call that 800 line), the costs of printing all those statements and other required literature, and all other office expenses associated with running a fund. Oddly, very real expenses such as spreads and trading commissions are not included in the hard dollar tally, and show up only as a slightly decreased, barely perceptible decrease in annual performance. High friction in these areas can amount to substantial costs over the course of a year when you consider that a multi-billion dollar mutual fund trades billions and billions of shares.

Recognizing that decreasing a dollar of hard expenses for a fund manager increases profit to their bottom line by a dollar, sell side firms make arrangents with the fund managers to provide everyday items in exchange for order flow at above-market costs. For example, a sell side brokerage firm provides investment research (the value of which is itself in doubt), Bloomberg terminals, office space, even a junior analyst or two, in exchange for the fund’s order flow at, say, 5 cents a share versus the normal 2 cents a share. The sell-side brokers get fat commissions, the fund manager gets “stuff” that would otherwise be paid out of his management fee. Everybody is happy…except for the shareholders who are footing the bill, and for the most part, have no idea, that this is going on unless they read deep into the prospectus’ fine print.

Why You Should Care

The Wall Street Journal investigated this practice and determined that, in 2002, $12 billion dollars were spent in soft dollar arrangements, where $6.7 billion of this was an unnecessary mark-up from the sell side. Further, WSJ spotlighted several firms that were paying 5 cents per share traded. That’s $50 per 1,000 shares. Now, consider that any individual can open an account with a discount broker and pay less than $10 for a comparable execution. The wholesale rate for clearing these trades is probably $1 for diligently-shopped execution services performed on an agency basis for a multi-billion dollar fund.

The Investment Company Institute (the apologist association of Mutual Fund Management Firms) brushes off this practice by stating that all of the items received have value that the shareholders would have to pay anyway. Maybe. But, these expenses should be coming out of the management fee. This practice masks hidden expenses that can be used by individuals and their advisers when comparing one fund versus another. The only reason to mask the true expenses is to hide the fact that the managers are siphoning off more money from investors than their fiduciary duty allows. In less savory professions, this arrangement is called a kickback.