National Grid Offers Energy Saving Tips for Safe and Festive Holiday Lighting

Save big and be safe this holiday season by focusing on energy efficiency

With the holiday season officially upon us, it?s important to make time to celebrate with family and friends and holiday lighting is a key part of those festivities.? By following a few simple tips customers can benefit from a more environmentally friendly, safe and cost-effective way to light up the holiday season.

One of the best solutions for holiday decorating needs is the use of LED lighting.? These energy-efficient miniature or light-emitting diode (LED) lights have definite advantages over traditional lighting because they use 90 percent less energy which results in significant savings.

?The cost of LED lights is more than traditional lights, but the benefits truly outweigh that,? said Edward White, vice president, Customer and Business Strategy, National Grid. ?By using more advanced, energy efficient lighting solutions like LEDs for holiday decorating, customers will start saving on electricity immediately, and also save on future lighting purchases because LED lights are much more durable and last years longer than traditional lights.?

Traditional lighting only offers around1,500 hours of light and can fade or flake over time, but LEDs feature epoxy lenses that make them almost indestructible so they last much longer,? providing up to 100,000 hours of light. In addition, LED?s are much safer to use because unlike traditional lights that can get hot and pose a fire hazard, LED light bulbs always stay cool.

Additional tips to save energy and stay safe this holiday season:

• Limit the time that lights are on. Wait until dark to turn on your holiday lights; then, turn them off before you go to bed. Six hours or less of daily use is a good goal.

• Turn off room lights when the tree is lit. The lights on a holiday tree should provide more than enough lighting to navigate around the room.

• Make sure your lights have a safety listing from a nationally recognized testing laboratory, such as the Underwriters Laboratories (UL). A safety approval seal means the lights have been tested and are safe to use. Use lights only as intended. Always unplug your lights before going to bed or leaving home.

• While reading labels, be sure to buy the right set for indoor use, outdoor use, or both.

• Before decorating, check all light sets for frayed wires, damaged sockets, or cracked insulation. If any defects are found, replace the entire set.

• All outdoor cords, plugs and sockets must be weatherproof. Keep electrical connections off the ground, and make sure wiring is kept clear of drainpipes and railings to prevent any risk of shock. It's also a good idea to use a ground fault circuit interrupter on each circuit. If current leaks through frayed or damaged wires, the interrupter will shut off the lights.

• Don't overload electrical circuits. Circuits in older homes carry a maximum of 1800 watts each while many newer homes can handle 2400 watts.

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About National Grid

National Grid (LSE: NG; NYSE:NGG) is an electricity and gas company that connects consumers to energy sources through its networks. The company is at the heart of one of the greatest challenges facing our society - to create new, sustainable energy solutions for the future and developing an energy system that underpins economic prosperity in the 21st century. National Grid holds a vital position at the center of the energy system and it ?joins everything up?.

In the northeast US, we connect more than seven million gas and electric customers to vital energy sources, essential for our modern lifestyles. In Great Britain, we run the gas and electricity systems that our society is built on, delivering gas and electricity across the country.

National Grid delivers electricity to more than 3 million customers in Massachusetts, New York and Rhode Island. It manages the electricity network on Long Island under an agreement with the Long Island Power Authority (LIPA), and owns over 4,000 megawatts of contracted electricity generation, providing power to over one million LIPA customers. It is the largest distributor of natural gas in northeastern U.S., serving more than 3 million customers in New York, Massachusetts and Rhode Island.

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Source: http://amherst.wgrz.com/news/business/71447-national-grid-offers-energy-saving-tips-safe-and-festive-holiday-lighting

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Mother of News Corp Chairman Rupert Murdoch dies at 103

MELBOURNE/NEW YORK (Reuters) - Dame Elisabeth Murdoch, matriarch of the Murdoch media empire and mother of News Corp Chairman Rupert Murdoch, was both an inspiration and outspoken critic of her tumultuous family and balm to some of its excesses.

A philanthropist and tireless charity worker regarded for years in her homeland as a national treasure, Murdoch died on Wednesday night at her sprawling home outside Melbourne, a city she loved for its genteel culture, aged 103.

Murdoch was a uniting force in both the community and within her family, where she would often voice concerns to her publisher son over his brand of journalism, including racy exclusives on celebrities and partisan stance on politics.

"We don't always see eye-to-eye or agree, but we do respect each other's opinions and I think that's important," she told Australian television ahead of her 100th birthday in 2009.

"I think the kind of journalism and the tremendous invasion of people's privacy, I don't approve of that," she said.

Murdoch's death comes at the end of a tumultuous year for News Corp, with the company under attack over phone hacking in Britain and amid tensions among those in line to one day replace Rupert Murdoch at the head of the company.

Harold Mitchell, a major figure in Australia's advertising industry who has done charity work alongside Murdoch, said Dame Elisabeth was deeply respected by her family and the community.

"I always found she was a great force in binding together many parts of the community and all people within her influence, and I'm sure she had that same affect on her family," Mitchell told Reuters.

Equal to the zeal with which the Murdoch publishing empire has defended its news gathering methods, the far-flung Murdoch clan have also worked hard to mask their own differences, including rivalries between Rupert Murdoch's daughter, Elisabeth, and sons James and Lachlan, over the company's leadership and direction.

Elisabeth, 44, a prominent television businesswoman, had been critical of her brother James's stubbornness during the phone hacking scandal, the New Yorker magazine reported this month, while Lachlan always bristled over his father's close supervision and left News Corp in 2005.

"He moved to Australia, and although he remains on the News Corp board, he has busied himself with his own media investments. James, the youngest, became the new heir, but he has always resented that Lachlan was their father's favorite," the magazine said.

FAMILY FOCUS

Dame Elisabeth Murdoch, with her forthright but graceful criticism and focus on family, was always able to draw warring family members back together, including after Rupert Murdoch's much publicized divorce of Anna Murdoch and marriage to Wendi Deng in 1999.

Murdoch, who would have been 104 in January, is survived by 77 direct descendants, including three children Anne Kantor, Janet Calvert-Jones and Rupert. Her fourth and eldest child, Helen Handbury, died in 2004.

"Throughout her life, our mother demonstrated the very best qualities of true public service," Rupert said in a statement issued by News Ltd, the Australian arm of News Corp.

"Her energy and personal commitment made our country a more hopeful place and she will be missed by many."

Murdoch, 82, remained close to his mother despite leading a global media empire that required him to split his time between Australia, Asia, Britain, New York, and Los Angeles, among other places.

A young Melbourne socialite, Murdoch was 19 when she married Rupert's father, Keith, in 1928. When Keith Murdoch died in 1952, Rupert took over his father's newspaper business and set about turning it into a global media empire.

Elisabeth Murdoch was a prominent philanthropist, serving on and forming numerous institutes that promoted medical research, the arts and social welfare, and she was a supporter of more than 100 charities and organizations.

Her work earned her civil honours in both her native Australia and Britain, and she was made a Dame in 1963 for her work with a Melbourne hospital.

She believed that charity work involved being involved with people, and was more than just giving money.

She also decried the world's obsession with materialism and wealth at the expense of personal relationships.

"I think it's become a rather materialistic age, that worries me. Money seems to be so enormously important and I don't think wealth creates happiness," she told a television interviewer.

"I think it's personal relationships which matter. And I think there's just a bit too much materialism and it's not good for the young."

While her son remains a divisive figure, Elisabeth Murdoch was widely admired in Australia and her death attracted tributes from across the political divide.

"Her example of kindness, humility and grace was constant. She was not only generous, she led others to generosity," Prime Minister Julia Gillard said as she offered condolences to the Murdoch family.

(Reporting by Adam Kerlin in New York and James Grubel and Rob Taylor in Canberra; Editing by Alex Richardson)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/mother-news-corp-chairman-rupert-murdoch-dies-103-071412371--finance.html

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Google Updates Maps For 10 Countries and Regions In Europe, Ground Truth Now At Work In 40 Countries

When we sat down with the Google Maps team a few months ago, we got an inside look at how Google makes its Maps product the best, most authoritative and reliable service in the world. Google says over 1 billion people use Maps each month. The tools that are used internally to build the maps that we see are a mix of Google's own data and infrastructure, as well as data from other sources and updates from the community all passed through its internal Ground Truth initiative. At the time, I described the project as using Photoshop, with layers, but for mapping. It's really fun to watch someone work on it. Today, the Maps team announced an update for 10 areas in Europe.

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Advice for bag-in-box wine drinkers: Keep it cool

ScienceDaily (Dec. 5, 2012) ? Bag-in-box wines are more likely than their bottled counterparts to develop unpleasant flavors, aromas and colors when stored at warm temperatures, a new study has found. Published in ACS' Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, it emphasizes the importance of storing these popular, economical vintages at cool temperatures.

Helene Hopfer and colleagues explain that compounds in wine react with oxygen in the air to change the way wine looks, tastes and smells. These reactions speed up with increasing temperature. Many winemakers are moving away from the traditional packaging for wine -- glass bottles sealed with a natural cork stopper -- and trying synthetic corks, screw caps or wine in a plastic bag inside a cardboard box. The scientists wanted to find out how this transition might affect the taste and aroma of wine under different storage conditions.

Using chemical analysis and a panel of trained tasters, the authors studied how storage at various temperatures affected unoaked California Chardonnay stored for three months in different wine packaging types: natural and synthetic corks, screw caps and two kinds of bag-in-box containers. Storage temperature had the biggest impact on all of the wines. Bag wine stored at 68 and 104 degrees Fahrenheit aged significantly faster than the bottled counterparts, becoming darker and developing vinegar notes. All the wines they tested aged better when stored at 50 degrees F.

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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by American Chemical Society.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.

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Journal Reference:

1. Helene Hopfer, Susan E. Ebeler, Hildegarde Heymann. The Combined Effects of Storage Temperature and Packaging Type on the Sensory and Chemical Properties of Chardonnay. Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, 2012; 60 (43): 10743 DOI: 10.1021/jf302910f

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/living_well/~3/w-g6SSw-_PU/121205121151.htm

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