NEW YORK (AP) — Investment bank Morgan Stanley says that its third-quarter earnings almost doubled as the firm's equity sales and trading revenue rose.
The bank earned $1.01 billion from July to September after stripping out an accounting charge. That compares with earnings of $560 million year earlier.
That profit works out to 50 cents a share before the charge, compared with 28 cents a share in the same period a year earlier. Financial analysts polled by data provider FactSet predicted earnings of 40 cents. Analysts generally strip out one-time items.
Equity sales and trading revenues climbed to $1.7 billion from $1.3 billion in the period.
Total revenue amounted to $8.1 billion, up 6.5 percent from $7.6 billion a year earlier.
The bank's stock rose 77 cents, or 2.7 percent, to $29.70 in pre-market trading
Thousands of students apply to college each year using the online Common Application. But a flawed overhaul of the system has left many students and parents frustrated.
iStockphoto.com
Thousands of students apply to college each year using the online Common Application. But a flawed overhaul of the system has left many students and parents frustrated.
iStockphoto.com
For many high school students this year, the already stressful process of applying to college has been made far worse by major technical malfunctions with the Common Application, an online application portal used by hundreds of colleges and universities.
"It's been stressful, to be honest," says Freya James, a senior in Atlanta applying to five schools — all early admissions. The Common App has been a nightmare, the 17-year-old says.
"No one likes applying to college anyway, and this is supposed to help and it's made it worse," she says. "I have spent a good number of hours just sitting there refreshing the page, doing nothing terribly productive except for trying to get this thing to work. ... It's not useful; it's not doing what it's meant to do."
The Common Application has been around for more than 30 years and has long made the application process easier for students and schools. With one common form, students are able to apply to dozens of schools at once.
But the number of schools using the form has more than doubled over the past decade. What was once used mainly by small liberal arts schools is now accepted by more than 500 institutions.
The nonprofit that runs the form, also called Common Application, had touted a major upgrade of software and applications as a way to streamline the process even more. Instead, the digital makeover has been a bust and a big mess for many students and higher education officials.
"Application Armageddon"
"There have been issues with being able to import the application itself, with receiving the supplemental materials like the transcripts or letters of recommendations, those kinds of things," says Lisa Meyer, dean for enrollment at Lewis and Clark College in Portland, Ore.
“ We did test the system. But what we couldn't test was tens of thousands of people hitting the system at the same time using multiple kinds of browsers.
- Scott Anderson, senior director for policy, Common Application
"Those are very big things. It's very hard to read an application when you don't have a transcript to look at. ... So I think the colleges have been scrambling a bit," she says.
Other serious technical problems include payments that take days to register or registering duplicate payments. Other students complain they simply couldn't log in, while others were repeatedly logged off for inactivity after waiting hours to submit their applications.
Then there's the personal essay, a key part of the admissions process. A formatting glitch left many students' essays looking like a giant stream-of-consciousness blur with no spaces, paragraphs or indentations.
Many high-schoolers are ranting against the Common App on Twitter. Some of the kinder comments: "I'm freaking out, the common app isn't working"; "The common app is kind of the worst thing ever"; "The common app is broken ... so we're all just not gonna go to college, ok."
Irena Smith, a college admissions consultant based in the San Francisco area, says the problems are adding more stress for her student clients. "It's starting to look like application Armageddon," she says. And an official with the National Association for College Admission Counseling says, "There is a bit of panic in the community."
Schools Look For Backup Plans
A growing number of colleges and universities are now rolling back early admissions deadlines or trying to reassure students that they won't be penalized for technical failures of the Common App. As Columbia University, which has extended its early admission deadline, put it on its website, "We hope this announcement helps to relieve some of the stress and anxiety you might be feeling as the application deadline approaches."
In a statement, Common Application says it's "committed to resolving these issues promptly." Scott Anderson, the company's senior director for policy, says some of the problems have been resolved, but he concedes that others persist.
"We did test the system. But what we couldn't test was tens of thousands of people hitting the system at the same time using multiple kinds of browsers," Anderson says.
Many parents and school administrators, however, are frustrated and angry. "I think this has been a debacle, and the Common App board and leadership should be ashamed," says Valerie Weber, chairwoman of the Department of Clinical Sciences at the Commonwealth Medical College in Pennsylvania — and mother of a high school senior currently applying to college.
"How they have handled the mess will be a case study in business schools for years to come about how not to handle a PR catastrophe — hunker down, ignore and refuse to answer questions," Weber says.
A Lesson For Procrastinators?
Some in higher education are cautiously hopeful that the technical problems will be resolved by Nov. 1, the early admissions deadline for many schools, but others are getting nervous. Some schools are starting to make backup plans that include email, snail mail — even dusting off the fax machine. "That is certainly one of the things we are considering doing," says Meyer of Lewis and Clark College.
Mary Beth Fry, director of college counseling at Savannah Country Day School in Georgia, cautions students and parents to take a deep breath. "Everyone at the Common App and the colleges is doing his best, and — as some colleges' extensions of early action or early decision deadlines will attest — colleges are going to do what's best for everyone."
Admissions consultant Smith sees a "teaching moment" in all this: Some teenagers prone to procrastination may now be prodded into getting their applications done — early.
"In some ways it's nice to learn, as we do as adults, that you can't always anticipate that everything will go smoothly," she says. "It's nice to plan for contingencies and to get things done a little bit ahead of time."
But when that lesson comes with potentially crippling anxiety, she adds, maybe it's not such a great way to teach it.
Manila (AFP) - A major 7.2 magnitude earthquake struck near one of the Philippines key tourist hubs on Tuesday, the United States Geological Survey reported.
The quake struck at 08:12 local time (0012 GMT) some five kilometres (three miles) east of Balilihan, in the Bohol region of the archipelago, at a depth of 56 kilometres, the agency said.
The town lies across the Cebu Strait from the popular tourist destination of Cebu City, the country's fifth most populous city, about 60 kilometres (37 miles) away.
USGS issued a yellow warning, after the quake saying "some casualties and damage are possible and the impact should be relatively localised. Past yellow alerts have required a local or regional level response."
The temblor was followed by two aftershocks, each measuring more than 5.0 in magnitude.
The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center did not issue a Pacific-wide tsunami threat and there were no immediate reports of casualties or damage.
The epicentre was 629 kilometres from the capital Manila.
Balilihan has a population of around 18,500, according to the town's official website.
The Philippines lies on the so-called Pacific ring of fire, a chain of islands that are prone to quakes and volcanic eruptions.
Powered by Clover Trail+ processors, these are very interesting budget tablets
Traditional PC maker Dell has released two new Android tablets, and starting today at their web shopping portal you can pick up the Dell Venue 7 for $150, or the Dell Venue 8 for $180.
Other than the screen size, the tablets are identical. Under the hood you have an Intel ATOM Z2580 processor, which is the high-end Clover Trail+ version that features Hyperthreading and VTx technology. This is paired with 2GB of RAM, and Intel HD graphics adapter, support for 802.11 b/g/n wireless and Bluetooth 4.0. The screen resolution is a mild 1200 x 800 on both the 7-inch Venue 7 and 8-inch Venue 8, and both tablets will ship with Android 4.2.2.
On paper, they appear to be solid consumer-grade offerings, which should have excellent battery life thanks to the Intel CPU. We've ordered one, and we'll have a look ourselves. At $150, it's certainly worth a good long look as the holiday shopping season approaches.
For more details and ordering information, see the source links.
American Geosciences Institute Center for Geoscience Education and Public Understanding
PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:
16-Oct-2013
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Contact: Ann Benbow aeb@agiweb.org 703-379-2480 x245 American Geosciences Institute
Comprehensive clearinghouse for earth and space science education launches with thousands of resources
Alexandria, VA -- Today, a national center focused on the geosciences launches the world's most comprehensive and up-to-date online clearinghouse for Earth and space science information and educational resources, ranging from high school curricula and classroom activities to video collections, career resources, and national research reports.
The first such clearinghouse of its scope and type, the Center for Geoscience Education and Public Understanding's searchable web site http://www.geocntr.org provides the geoscience community, schools, and the general public with an extensive collection of resources and research from reliable science and education organizations.
"Teachers, media, families, and policy-makers should bookmark this site as the starting point for research about Earth and space science education," said Ann Benbow, director of the Center. "We have collected and organized resources that provide a variety of perspectives on important issues, and the site expands daily."
The Center's new site currently provides access to resources from nearly 700 organizations. These include universities, museums, federal and state agencies, media groups, AGI, and its member organizations and publishers. Approximately 2,000 annotated and searchable resource entries are available on the site, and this number includes many collections and galleries, each with hundreds of individual items such as photographs, videos, and presentations.
A sample of materials on the site: Earth science curricula; Earth science classroom activities; Teacher professional development programs; Science-topic presentations; Animation, video collections/still galleries; Virtual field trips; State science/Earth science organizations; Funding sources for teachers; Teaching award information; Earth science outreach programs.
###
The American Geosciences Institute (AGI), the Center's parent organization, is a nonprofit federation of geoscientific professional associations representing more than 250,000 Earth scientists. The Center web site is being launched as part of Earth Science Week, the international celebration of the Earth sciences that is organized by AGI and reaches over 50 million people with geoscience resources and information each year.
AGI's Center for Geoscience Education and Public Understanding is a unique clearinghouse for Earth Science educational materials, information on "hot topics," geoscience career information, and geoscience educational research. The Center produces and releases national reports on the state of geoscience education, as well as examines implementation of new science education standards.
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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
American Geosciences Institute Center for Geoscience Education and Public Understanding
PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:
16-Oct-2013
[
| E-mail
| Share
]
Contact: Ann Benbow aeb@agiweb.org 703-379-2480 x245 American Geosciences Institute
Comprehensive clearinghouse for earth and space science education launches with thousands of resources
Alexandria, VA -- Today, a national center focused on the geosciences launches the world's most comprehensive and up-to-date online clearinghouse for Earth and space science information and educational resources, ranging from high school curricula and classroom activities to video collections, career resources, and national research reports.
The first such clearinghouse of its scope and type, the Center for Geoscience Education and Public Understanding's searchable web site http://www.geocntr.org provides the geoscience community, schools, and the general public with an extensive collection of resources and research from reliable science and education organizations.
"Teachers, media, families, and policy-makers should bookmark this site as the starting point for research about Earth and space science education," said Ann Benbow, director of the Center. "We have collected and organized resources that provide a variety of perspectives on important issues, and the site expands daily."
The Center's new site currently provides access to resources from nearly 700 organizations. These include universities, museums, federal and state agencies, media groups, AGI, and its member organizations and publishers. Approximately 2,000 annotated and searchable resource entries are available on the site, and this number includes many collections and galleries, each with hundreds of individual items such as photographs, videos, and presentations.
A sample of materials on the site: Earth science curricula; Earth science classroom activities; Teacher professional development programs; Science-topic presentations; Animation, video collections/still galleries; Virtual field trips; State science/Earth science organizations; Funding sources for teachers; Teaching award information; Earth science outreach programs.
###
The American Geosciences Institute (AGI), the Center's parent organization, is a nonprofit federation of geoscientific professional associations representing more than 250,000 Earth scientists. The Center web site is being launched as part of Earth Science Week, the international celebration of the Earth sciences that is organized by AGI and reaches over 50 million people with geoscience resources and information each year.
AGI's Center for Geoscience Education and Public Understanding is a unique clearinghouse for Earth Science educational materials, information on "hot topics," geoscience career information, and geoscience educational research. The Center produces and releases national reports on the state of geoscience education, as well as examines implementation of new science education standards.
[
| E-mail
| Share
]
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Powered by Clover Trail+ processors, these are very interesting budget tablets
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