Press Releases

DAVIS, Calif., Feb. 9, 2012 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) in California announced May 18, 2012, as the deadline to submit project proposals for fiscal year 2012 Conservation Innovation Grants (CIG).  Up to $375,000 is available for the California statewide CIG competition. 

CIG is a voluntary program intended to stimulate the development and adoption of innovative conservation approaches and technologies while leveraging federal investment in environmental enhancement and protection, in conjunction with agricultural production.  CIG enables NRCS to work with other public and private entities to accelerate technology transfer and adoption of promising technologies and approaches to address some of the Nation's most pressing natural resource concerns.

NRCS California is requesting CIG project proposals that focus on nutrient management, energy conservation, soil health, wildlife, and CIG projects assessment. NRCS is especially interested in projects that demonstrate:

• Optimal combinations of nutrient source, application rate, placement and timing that improve nutrient recovery by crops.
• Procedures for refining the usefulness of the phosphorous index in reducing phosphorous losses.
• Suites of conservation practices that protect water quality.
• Renewable energy systems that reduce the use of fossil fuels and increase energy efficiency on farms.
• The impacts of cover crops, crop rotations, tillage and other conservation practices on soil health.
• Conservation practices that increase the water-holding capacity of soils.
• Decision tools that help producers assess their operations and conservation needs in order to improve wildlife habitat.
• Assess the technology transfer potential of completed CIG projects.

Grants to eligible entities and individuals may not exceed a maximum of $75,000.  Funds will be awarded through a statewide competitive grants process. Applications are requested from eligible government or nongovernment organizations, eligible private business or individuals for competitive consideration of grant awards for projects between one to a maximum of three years in duration. 

The CIG announcement, with detailed proposal requirements, can be found at www.grants.gov or by contacting Erik Beardsley, CIG program specialist, at erik.beardsley@ca.usda.gov. Completed proposals must be simultaneously posted onto www.grants.gov and sent to Erik Beardsley, Natural Resources Conservation Service, 430 G Street, #4164, Davis, CA 95616-4164.  For questions, please contact Erik Beardsley by email or call (530) 792-5649, or Alan Forkey, program manager, at alan.forkey@ca.usda.gov or call (530) 792-5653. 

NRCS has provided leadership in a partnership effort to help America's private land owners and managers conserve their soil, water and other natural resources since 1935. For more information on NRCS, visit www.nrcs.usda.gov.

SOURCE USDA - Natural Resources Conservation Service

NASHVILLE, Tenn., Feb. 9, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- International Shoe charity Soles4Souls has announced a partnership with multi-platinum selling GRAMMY® nominee Billy Gilman, with the goal of sponsoring 500,000 shoes for children and adults in need worldwide. Gilman, who has sold more than 6 million albums worldwide and garnered awards and nods from the ACMs, CMAs, Billboard, and AMAs, has spent the past couple of years writing material for a new CD, working with some of Nashville's top songwriters. He is currently in the studio recording, with anticipated new music from the artist expected in 2012.

Gilman has always been a voice for those less fortunate than himself.  After seeing a video clip of Soles4Souls' Founder Wayne Elsey talking about the organization, Gilman was "really blown away at what they do for so many" and decided that he wanted to join Soles4Souls in their mission to help kids around the world in need of shoes. 

"I am proud to be partnering with Soles4Souls and am excited about what's to come in the very near future with our partnership," added Gilman.

Formed as a relief effort following the 2004 Southeast Asian tsunami, Soles4Souls has donated more than 16 million pairs of shoes across 129 countries.  The charity's mission includes distributing shoes to the children and adults around the world who live in adverse poverty and have no access to appropriate footwear.  A pair of shoes can protect a child in developing nations from soil-based diseases like hookworm and keeps them in compliance with the uniform code at school.

"Billy is an extraordinary young man who has experienced more success in his teenage years than most artists only hope to experience in a lifetime," said Wayne Elsey, Founder and CEO of Soles4Souls.  "We are beyond thrilled that he continues to use his voice and his platform as a way to help others.  He is a role model for so many and we are honored he has chosen to partner with our cause," he said.

More details about the project and Billy's involvement with the charity will be announced later in February.  Individuals can visit www.giveshoes.org to hear the latest news on the project.

About Soles4Souls®Based in Nashville, Tenn., Soles4Souls collects new shoes to give relief to the victims of abject suffering and collects used shoes to support micro-enterprise efforts to eradicate poverty.  The organization also provides clothing and other necessities under the names Clothes4Souls and Hope4Souls.  Donating parties may be eligible for tax advantages. Visit www.giveshoes.org, www.clothes4souls.org, or www.hope4souls.org for more information.

SOURCE Soles4Souls

TYSONS CORNER, Va., Feb. 9, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- MicroStrategy® Incorporated (Nasdaq: MSTR), a leading worldwide provider of business intelligence (BI) software, today announced that it has been positioned by Gartner, Inc. in the "Leaders" quadrant in the 2012 "Magic Quadrant for Business Intelligence Platforms" report.(1) 

According to Gartner, "Organizations continue to turn to BI as a vital tool for smarter, more agile, and efficient business." Gartner describes Leaders as "vendors that are reasonably strong in the breadth and depth of their BI platform capabilities, and can deliver on enterprise-wide implementations that support a broad BI strategy. Leaders articulate a business proposition that resonates with buyers, supported by the viability and operational capability to deliver on a global basis."

A copy of the Gartner report is available, compliments of MicroStrategy, at http://www.microstrategy.com/Gartner.

In 2011, MicroStrategy continued to provide sophisticated BI platform capabilities and delivered numerous technology innovations.

MicroStrategy Empowers Business Users with Visual Insight MicroStrategy enhanced ease-of-use by introducing a new data discovery feature, Visual Insight, that enables business users to explore data and spot trends, minimizing the need for IT to create reports and dashboards. With Visual Insight, business people have the power to control the process and get answers to questions quickly and easily.

MicroStrategy Mobile Provides Extensive Feature Set for Mobile BIOrganizations continued to adopt MicroStrategy's mobile BI platform to measure performance, monitor significant trends and take business action using their iOS and Android mobile devices. MicroStrategy's mobile customers include such leading brands as GUESS?, Inc., Whole Foods Market, Herbalife, MetLife, Edmunds.com, eHarmony, and Sonic Automotive.

MicroStrategy Transaction Services Accelerates Business Speed and ProductivityMicroStrategy Transaction Services helps companies accelerate the speed and productivity of their businesses by enabling mobile apps that connect to transactional systems and databases. Introduced in July 2011, MicroStrategy Transaction Services allows mobile apps and web-based dashboards to include action-taking features, including submitting orders, one-click approvals and denials, taking notes for tracking and directing business activity, and writing information back to data sources.

MicroStrategy Delivers on Big DataVia continued investments in 'big data' technology, MicroStrategy enables organizations to easily reveal business insights hidden in their large, highly complex data sets.  In 2011, MicroStrategy enhanced its in-memory technology to provide improved scale and performance for large user populations.  Also, in October 2011, the Company partnered with Cloudera to introduce a Hadoop connector so that organizations can quickly and easily perform analytics on structured or unstructured data stored in Hadoop.

MicroStrategy Launches Major Initiative in the CloudIn July 2011, MicroStrategy introduced MicroStrategy Cloud, a cloud-based platform-as-a-service. MicroStrategy Cloud enables rapid, cost-effective development of business intelligence and mobile and social apps. Compared to traditional on-premises BI approaches, MicroStrategy Cloud is faster to deploy, delivers better performance, and offers significant financial advantages. MicroStrategy Cloud is powerful and flexible enough to support the full range of cloud use cases, from fast, tactical BI solutions, to the largest implementations where performance and scalability are imperative. Unlike general-purpose cloud solutions, MicroStrategy Cloud is architected and optimized for large data volumes, high concurrency, and high performance. MicroStrategy Cloud includes the entire MicroStrategy BI platform technology for reporting and analysis, enabling users to tap into enterprise data from their desktop or mobile device, improving insight and business decision-making.

MicroStrategy Extends its BI Expertise and Analytics into Social MediaMicroStrategy entered the market for social software with several products aimed at capitalizing on the growing market of Facebook-compatible applications.  MicroStrategy's social intelligence offerings fall into two categories: Enterprise Social Intelligence and Consumer Social Intelligence.  These products can be used in different combinations by organizations worldwide to harness the power of Facebook data. 

Enterprise Social Intelligence Products

• MicroStrategy Gateway for Facebook.  Released in July 2011, MicroStrategy Gateway for Facebook provides high capacity connectivity between enterprise IT environments and Facebook's social graph using Facebook's open APIs. 
• MicroStrategy Wisdom.  Released in December 2011, MicroStrategy Wisdom is an analytic application built on MicroStrategy's BI platform which owners of Facebook-compatible applications can use to segment and analyze their Facebook application user populations. 
• MicroStrategy Alert.  Released in July 2011, MicroStrategy Alert is a Facebook-compatible application for marketing and e-commerce. It helps companies and brands extend the effectiveness of their Facebook pages.  

Consumer Social Intelligence Products

• Emma. Released in July 2011, Emma is a Facebook-compatible consumer application that provides an electronic marketplace for goods, services, and social activities. 
• Usher. Released in November 2011, Usher is a Facebook-compatible consumer application that allows users to set up and manage Facebook events.
• Wisdom for Facebook. Released in April 2011, Wisdom for Facebook is a consumer application that allows users to view and analyze the demographics and interests (Facebook Likes) of the entire Wisdom network or of just their own personal friend network. 
• Alert for Facebook. Released in July 2011, Alert for Facebook is a Facebook-compatible consumer application that is a convenient mobile Facebook Page reader.

"Our leadership position in the Magic Quadrant is a testament to our commitment to R&D and underscores our pioneering work in developing powerful technologies that capitalize on Big Data, Mobile, Social, and Cloud trends," said Sanju Bansal, MicroStrategy Chief Operating Officer. 

(1) Gartner "Magic Quadrants for Business Intelligence Platforms" by John Hagerty, Rita L. Sallam, James Richardson, February 6, 2012.

About the Magic Quadrant Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product, or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner's research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

About MicroStrategy Founded in 1989, MicroStrategy is a leading provider of enterprise software platforms for business intelligence (BI), mobile intelligence, and social intelligence applications.  MicroStrategy's BI platform enables leading organizations worldwide to analyze the vast amounts of data stored across their enterprises to make better business decisions.  Companies choose MicroStrategy BI for its ease-of-use, sophisticated analytics, and superior data and user scalability.  MicroStrategy's mobile intelligence platform helps companies and organizations build, deploy, and maintain mobile apps across a range of solutions by embedding intelligence, transactions, and multimedia into apps.  MicroStrategy's social intelligence platform includes a number of applications that help enterprises harness the power of social networks for marketing and e-commerce, as well as a suite of free consumer apps that use MicroStrategy's enterprise technologies.  The MicroStrategy Cloud offering combines MicroStrategy and third-party software, hardware, and services to enable rapid, cost-effective development of hosted BI, mobile, and social applications.  To learn more about MicroStrategy (Nasdaq: MSTR), visit www.microstrategy.com and follow us on Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/microstrategy) and Twitter (http://www.twitter.com/microstrategy).

MicroStrategy, MicroStrategy Business Intelligence Platform, MicroStrategy Cloud, MicroStrategy Mobile, Cloud Personal, MicroStrategy Transaction Services,MicroStrategy Gateway for Facebook, MicroStrategy Wisdom, MicroStrategy Alert, Emma, Usher, Wisdom for Facebook, and Alert for Facebook are either trademarks or registered trademarks of MicroStrategy Incorporated in the United States and certain other countries. Other product and company names mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners.

MSTR-G

Contact:Warren GetlerMicroStrategy Incorporated703-744-6258wgetler@microstrategy.com

SOURCE MicroStrategy Incorporated

WASHINGTON, Feb. 9, 2012 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The following is a Statement of Susan M. Liss, Executive Director, Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids:

(Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20080918/CFTFKLOGO)

It is deeply disappointing that Mayor Greg Ballard has broken his campaign promise once again and decided to veto legislation that would protect all Indianapolis residents, workers and visitors from the serious health hazards of secondhand smoke. Mayor Ballard's decision denies everyone in Indianapolis their right to breathe clean air and harms both the city's health and its economic competitiveness. For now, it leaves Indianapolis as the largest city in the country without a smoke-free law that includes all restaurants and bars.

Mayor Ballard's decision disregards the views of the 70 percent of Indianapolis voters who support a law to make all restaurants, bars and other workplaces smoke-free.

We applaud the Indianapolis City-County Council for its leadership in enacting strong smoke-free legislation. If the Council is unable to override this veto, we urge Mayor Ballard to work with the Council to enact the strongest possible smoke-free law that covers all restaurants, bars and other workplaces.

Nationwide, 29 states, Washington, DC, and more than 640 cities have laws requiring smoke-free restaurants and bars. Most cities in the Midwest, including Chicago, Cleveland, Columbus, Minneapolis-St. Paul and Milwaukee, are smoke-free. Indianapolis business leaders have argued this puts the city at a competitive disadvantage in attracting conventions, businesses, workers and tourists looking for a healthy, smoke-free environment.

Background on Secondhand Smoke and Smoke-Free Laws

The need for comprehensive smoke-free laws is clear. In issuing his 2006 groundbreaking report on secondhand smoke, U.S. Surgeon General Richard Carmona stated, "The debate is over. The science is clear: Secondhand smoke is not a mere annoyance, but a serious health hazard that causes premature death and disease in children and nonsmoking adults."

Secondhand smoke contains more than 7,000 chemicals, including hundreds that are toxic and at least 69 that cause cancer. The Surgeon General found that secondhand smoke causes lung cancer, heart disease, respiratory illnesses, low birth weight and sudden infant death syndrome. The Surgeon General also found that secondhand smoke is responsible for tens of thousands of deaths in the United States each year, there is no safe level of exposure, and only smoke-free laws provide effective protection. The evidence is also clear that smoke-free laws protect health without harming business.

SOURCE Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids