Avis buying Zipcar in $500 million all-cash deal

2 hrs.

Paul A. Eisenstein , The Detroit Bureau

The car-share business has just gotten a big vote of confidence from rent-a-car giant Avis, which is buying Zipcar for $491.2 million.?

The move is the biggest deal yet in the nascent market for alternatives to traditional automotive rental?systems where users might seek a set of wheels for trip of as little as an hour. Founded in 2000, Zipcar is generally seen as the leader in the car-share market and now claims 760,000 members.??

The Detroit Bureau:?Ford Focus Expected to Be #1 Best-Seller for 2012

?By combining with Zipcar, we will significantly increase our growth potential, both in the United States and internationally, and will position our company to better serve a greater variety of consumer and commercial transportation needs,? Avis Chairman and CEO Ronald Nelson said in a statement accompany the Wednesday morning announcement.

The car-sharing concept has begun to revolutionize the rental business, attracting young and often affluent buyers, especially in urban areas and around college campuses. Ford Motor Co. last year announced a partnership that placed hundreds of new Ford Focus models on campuses around the country, an alliance the maker hoped would eventually convince students to buy the car once they graduated.

The challenge for many of the new competitors in the field has been to raise capital to expand, industry experts note.? Zipcar has so far spread into 20 metropolitan markets in the U.S., Canada and Europe.

?It?s a fact of life in those places that people want the convenience of a car but don?t want the hassle of owning one,? noted Dr. David Cole, chairman emeritus of the Center for Automotive Research, or CAR, based in Ann Arbor, ?so, I think the carsharing concept is going to work.??

The Detroit Bureau:?Approval of Toyota Settlement Doesn?t End Unintended Acceleration Nightmare

The most significant difference between a car-sharing service and a traditional rental company like Avis Budget Group Inc. is in providing community-based access to vehicles that can be rented on a short-term basis, rather than by the day or week.

?We?re targeting a generation that only knows how to buy music by the song so paying for a car by the hour is a natural for them,? Scott Griffith, Zipcar?s chairman and CEO, told TheDetroitBureau.com in an earlier interview.

Several key executives, including Zipcar Chairman Griffith and Chief Operating Officer Mark Norman, are expected to remain with the firm, though they will relocate to new headquarters in Boston.

Zipcar went public in 2011 and in November said it anticipated ending its fiscal year with its first annual profit of $4 million. It had ended the third quarter with a 15% jump in revenue, which climbed to $78 million.

Observers were not entirely surprised by the announcement, especially in light of the consolidation in the overall rental industry.? Rival Hertz just last month locked down a takeover of the Dollar Thrifty Automotive Group.?

The Detroit Bureau:?Beyonce to Get New C7 Corvette at Super Bowl

Avis said it expects significant ?synergies? as part of the deal.? It could ease pressure on Zipcar on weekends and other occasions when it struggles to maintain a large enough fleet to meet demand. It could lead the car-sharing company to expand into other metropolitan markets.

Avis itself sees the opportunity to save between $50 million and $70 million through the acquisition ? for which it will pay $12.25 for Zipcar shares, a 49% premium over the December 31, 2012 closing price of $8.24. ?That is still a significant decline from the strike price of $18 a share for Zipcar stock during its April 2011 IPO.

Under Avis, Zipcar will face a number of other car-sharing services, some looking to take even more radical approaches, such as RelayRides.? That services concept not only skips the traditional busy rental counter but allows individual vehicle owners to put their cars, trucks and crossovers on the market for short-term rentals.?

Last summer, RelayRides announced a partnership with General Motors? OnStar service that lets a renter access a vehicle without having to first connect with the owner to get the keys.?

Source: http://www.nbcnews.com/business/avis-buying-zipcar-500-million-all-cash-deal-1C7785094

new hope baptist church associated press foster friess new orleans hornets ghost rider spirit of vengeance hornets prince johan friso

Video: Bill Gross Reacts to Tax Deal

Sorry, Readability was unable to parse this page for content.

Source: http://video.msnbc.msn.com/cnbc/50346406/

IFE Fireworks 2012 4th Of July independence day BET Awards 2012 declaration of independence 4th Of July 2012 Zach Parise

Itchiness explained: Specific set of nerve cells signal itch but not pain, researchers find

Jan. 2, 2013 ? Johns Hopkins researchers have uncovered strong evidence that mice have a specific set of nerve cells that signal itch but not pain, a finding that may settle a decades-long debate about these sensations, and, if confirmed in humans, help in developing treatments for chronic itch, including itch caused by life-saving medications.

At the heart of their discovery is a type of sensory nerve cell whose endings receive information from the skin and relay it to other nerves in the spinal cord, which then coordinates a response to the stimulus. Published online Dec. 23 in Nature Neuroscience, a report on the research suggests that even when the itch-specific nerve cells receive stimuli that are normally pain-inducing, the message they send isn?t ?That hurts!? but rather ?That itches!?

Pain and itch are both important sensations that help organisms survive. And pain is arguably more important because it tells us to withdraw the pained body part in order to prevent tissue damage. But itch also warns us of the presence of irritants, as in an allergic reaction. However, ?when either of these sensations continues for weeks or months, they are no longer helpful. We even see patients stop taking life-saving medications because they cause such horrible itchiness all over,? says Xinzhong Dong, a Howard Hughes early career scientist and associate professor of neuroscience at the Institute of Basic Biomedical Sciences at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. ?And sometimes when we try to suppress chronic pain, with morphine for example, we end up causing chronic itchiness. So the two sensations are somehow related, and this study has begun to untangle them,? he says.

Because nerve cells send their messages as electrical currents that flow through them just as they would through wires, scientists can plug tiny monitors into individual nerve cells to detect the moment of stimulation. The scientific controversy over pain and itch centers around a group of nerve cells known to respond electrically to painful stimuli such as molecules of capsaicin, the fiery ingredient in chili peppers. A small subset of these nerve cells also responds electrically to itchy stimuli because they have on their surfaces receptors for molecules like histamine. One of these itchy receptors, called MrgA3, binds the anti-malaria drug chloroquine, causing serious itchiness in many patients.

Sensory nerve scientists have not known whether the nerves with itchy receptors and pain receptors were actually sending both types of messages to the brain, or just itch messages. What the current study found is that, in nerves with the itchy receptor MrgA3, electrical signals sent in response to both painful and itchy stimuli are interpreted by the brain as itch.

To reach this conclusion, the researchers first used a genetic trick to label the MrgA3 cells in mice with a glowing protein that allowed them to see the cells under the microscope. Aided by the glow, they were able to plug in those tiny electricity monitors and watch nerve cell responses to different stimuli. The cells transmitted electrical signals when the mice were exposed to itch-inducing chloroquine and histamine, as well as pain-inducing capsaicin and heat. Based on this result, the researchers tentatively concluded that the cells could send both pain and itch signals.

In the next experiment, the researchers monitored the behavioral responses of mice to the different stimuli. As expected, when the tails of normal mice were placed in hot water, they quickly pulled them out; when normal mice were given a bit of chloroquine or histamine, they scratched vigorously with their hind legs.

Then, to examine the role of MrgA3 cells in pain and itch, the scientists selectively killed MrgA3 nerve cells in adult mice and retested their responses. Presumably, the researchers noted, because MrgA3 cells are only a small fraction of all pain-sensing nerve cells, the mice had normal withdrawal responses to painful stimuli like hot water. However, when exposed to itchy stimuli, their scratching responses were reduced to varying degrees depending on the stimulus, most significantly in response to chloroquine. The fact that some stimuli still caused scratching suggested to the scientists that MrgA3 cells are not the only ones in the body that respond to itch. ?We were convinced that MrgA3 cells are responsible for much of the sensation of itch, but it wasn?t yet clear whether MrgA3 cells could also relay painful information,? says Dong.

In their final experiments, the scientists used genetic techniques to create mice in which the MrgA3 cells were the only cells in the body capable of responding to capsaicin, that peppery pain-inducing substance. When injected into the cheeks of mice, normal mice massage the area with their forepaws to relieve the hot sensation. When injected into the experimental mice, they vigorously scratched their cheeks with their hind legs, suggesting that this normally painful stimulus had been communicated to the brain?by MrgA3 cells?as itchiness.

"Now that we have disentangled these itchy sensations from painful ones, we should be able to design drugs that target itch-specific nerve cells to combat chronic itchiness," says Dong. "We hope that this will not only provide relief, but also increase people's faithfulness to their drug plans, particularly for deadly diseases like malaria and cancer."

Other authors of the report include Liang Han, Qin Liu, Hao-Jui Weng, Zongxiang Tang, Yushin Kim, Kush Patel, Zhe Li, Benjamin McNeil, Shaoqiu He and Yun Guan of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine; and Chao Ma, Hong Nie, Lintao Qu and Robert LaMotte of the Yale University School of Medicine; and Yiyuan Cui and Bo Xiao of Sichuan University.

This work was supported by grants from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NS054791, NS047399, NS014624, and NS070814), the National Institute of General Medical Sciences (GM087369) and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

The authors have no competing interests to disclose.

On the Web:

Link to article in Nature Neuroscience
Dong Lab
Dong HHMI Profile

Share this story on Facebook, Twitter, and Google:

Other social bookmarking and sharing tools:

---

Story Source:

The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Johns Hopkins Medicine.

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

---

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/top_news/~3/UMAKzygCFVk/130102104548.htm

summer time coolio ricky rubio day light savings time peter paul and mary edgar rice burroughs dallas clark

Judge rejects part of Apple App Store suit vs Amazon

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - A U.S. judge on Wednesday rejected part of Apple Inc's lawsuit against Amazon.com Inc's use of the term App Store, ruling Apple cannot bring a false advertising claim against the online retailer.

U.S. District Judge Phyllis Hamilton in Oakland, California, granted Amazon's motion for partial summary judgment, which only challenged Apple's false advertising allegations. Apple leveled other claims against Amazon, including trademark infringement.

An Apple spokeswoman declined to comment, and an Amazon representative could not be reached immediately.

Amazon has stepped up competition against Apple in recent years, launching its cheaper Kindle tablet computer to go after the dominant iPad and trying to lure mobile application developers to its Kindle platform.

One of the first public clashes in their tussle was Apple's 2011 lawsuit.

Apple accused Amazon of misusing what it calls its APP STORE to solicit developers for a mobile software download service. However, Amazon said its so-called Appstore has become so generic that its use could not constitute false advertising.

In a legal filing last year, Amazon added that even Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook and his predecessor, Steve Jobs, used the term to discuss rivals. Cook commented on "the number of app stores out there" and Jobs referred to the "four app stores on Android."

In her ruling on Wednesday, Hamilton wrote that the mere use of "Appstore" by Amazon cannot be taken as a representation that its service is the same as Apple's.

"Apple has failed to establish that Amazon made any false statement (express or implied) of fact that actually deceived or had the tendency to deceive a substantial segment of its audience," Hamilton wrote.

A trial on Apple's remaining claims is scheduled for August.

The case is Apple Inc v. Amazon.com Inc et al, U.S. District Court, Northern District of California, No. 11-01327.

(Additional reporting by Alistair Barr in San Francisco; Editing by Tim Dobbyn and Jeffrey Benkoe)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/judge-rejects-apple-false-advertising-claims-vs-amazon-171234822--finance.html

barcelona vs real madrid Johnny Depp Dead college football rankings Steel Magnolias Niels Bohr the Rumble 2012 Columbus Day 2012

Your lifestyle distinctive type of society | Pure Opinion | ikemupydefe ...

Energy may be a sort of strength comparable to heat and lightweight. However, effortlessly found energy means take time and to seek out, and lots of exclusively make very little energy. Case in point, the particular disturbance strength that makes your individual flexible fee mortgage head of hair stand it an excellent air-conditioned bedroom. Vigor may be the way of life exceptional distinctive line of society. We all try to eat it as being if you have absolutely no the next day. Even so, many of us have not really viewed carrying out ?homemade electric power.Inches width Exactly how should we produce self-made energy? Working on your personal electrical author is extremely considerably any implausible concept. Is it most likely possible to create this project? Of course it can be. We require some information regarding create your own electricity creating practical electricity.
?
The good news is, one particular simple policies about vigor is that it is generally submitted one variety to a different. As a result, your electric energy is just products involving converting any type of heats up so that you can stimulate. These types of web-sites that may, we can quickly miniaturize energy generation.
Solar power panels are comprised electricity cells, or perhaps in simplest conditions, mild strength to help you energy converters. The most widespread method of crank out do-it-yourself electric power is from using a display screen. Light-weight the sun?s rays about the sun switch on the actual cells which make current. The voltage constructed from every mobile is actually moderate. Because of this, cellular material might be affixed through sequence or maybe concurrent to be able to make the sought after current amount. Surely, solar panels find damaging facets. For all those situations you?re planning to build versions hand made electricity utilizing solar power systems, merely ready your spending budget. Primary is it is quite expensive to receive. Eventually, it provides a very low production status in comparison with a few other electric powered machines.? An more popular means to fix generate self-made electricity is always to switch this blowing wind to be able to electricity. ?
?
The particular wind generator is required for this purpose approach. Generally, a new wind mill just generator (the standard reputable name any motor and even turbine) connected to an electrical generator that may be unique from the wind?s push. This specific generator gathers the breeze vitality, whilst the generator modifications this kind of automatic tension within the the wind to electricity. When the dynamo changes energy so as to components power, it is a electrical power seed. Definitely, because i have previously stated, the particular dynamo will be the standard period of your serp. If the change technical energy to help power, that is a power generator.? Compared to be able to solar power sections, wind turbines give a somewhat better skills. Even so, the wind mill ought to be focused to suit your needs the particular wind flow are going to be stronger related to much better power creation. Creating your own electricity has many benefits.

This entry was posted in Business and tagged create your own electricity. Bookmark the permalink.

Source: http://pureopinion.tk/2012/12/31/your-lifestyle-distinctive-type-of-society/

beverly hilton hotel whitney houston found dead i will always love you whitney houston 2012 grammy awards powerball results pebble beach golf beverly hilton

Like this:

Be the first to like this.

This entry was posted in Uncategorized. Bookmark the permalink.

Source: http://ikemupydefe.wordpress.com/2013/01/01/your-lifestyle-distinctive-type-of-society-pure-opinion/

dwight howard Olympics closing ceremony PGA Championship 2012 John Witherspoon george michael usain bolt Closing Ceremony London 2012

Source: http://leandrosalazar.typepad.com/blog/2013/01/your-lifestyle-distinctive-type-of-society-pure-opinion-ikemupydefe.html

mega millions Cyber Monday Deals 2012 Colin Kaepernick Sasha McHale Boy Meets World elizabeth taylor casey anthony

Take A Tour Of Victor Hugo's Paris | Travel | Smithsonian Magazine

www.smithsonianmag.com:

Legend has it that Victor Hugo, the prolific French scribbler whose body of published work amounts to seven novels, 18 volumes of poetry and 21 plays, also holds the record for the world's shortest correspondence. In 1862, while in exile on the British Isle of Guernsey for speaking out against Napoleon III, Hugo telegrammed his publisher "?" demanding the reaction to the release of his latest novel, Les Mis?rables. The reply: "!"

Read the whole story at www.smithsonianmag.com

"; var coords = [-5, -72]; // display fb-bubble FloatingPrompt.embed(this, html, undefined, 'top', {fp_intersects:1, timeout_remove:2000,ignore_arrow: true, width:236, add_xy:coords, class_name: 'clear-overlay'}); });

Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/31/take-a-tour-of-victor-hug_n_2388677.html

jack white kowloon walled city ronda rousey vs miesha tate lindsay lohan snl lindsay lohan on snl real housewives of disney awakenings

Have A Credit Card? Then Read These Tips! | Chicagoland Daily ...

Choosing amongst all the credit card solicitations one receives can be a daunting task. Some of these have lower interest rates, while others are easy to get. Cards may also promise great reward programs. So what should you do? The tips presented below will teach you just about everything that you need to be aware of when considering a credit card.

Fully pay off your monthly credit card charges when you receive the bill. Unless you have a % interest rate, you will have interest added to your balance every month that you carry a balance. When only paying the minimums, you can increase the time to repay the debt by months, if not years, depending on the limits and compounding finance charges.

TIP! It is a great idea to let your credit card issuer know when you?re using the card in an unusual way. Making exceptionally large purchases and traveling internationally are examples of situations where giving advance notice is smart.

Adhere to a smart budget. Simply because a card issuer has given you a spending limit, you should not feel obligated to use the entire amount of credit available. Be sure of how much you are able to pay every month so you?re able to pay everything off monthly. This will help you stay away from high interest payments.

Credit Card

Ask for lower interest rates or fees if you have missed payments. Credit card companies will raise your interest rate and charge additional fees if your payment is not on time. By calling the financial institution that issued your credit card, you can usually have these additional charges either reduced or removed.

TIP! Individuals under 18 can rarely obtain a credit card by themselves. An adult can probably add you to their account in the form of a joint user.

Don?t make any credit purchases with suspicious vendors. Try calling the listed phone numbers to ensure the company is in business and always avoid purchases from companies that do not have a physical address listed.

Use a checkbook balance-type system to keep track of your monthly credit card spending. This will help keep you from impulse purchases that can really add up quickly. If you aren?t paying attention to how much you already put on your credit card, at the end of the month you may not have enough money to pay off the bill.

Designate one of your credit cards to be the only one you use for online purchases, to protect yourself in the event of fraud. Using a lot of different cards can increase your risk of being defrauded, so having one card eliminates some of that vulnerability.

Credit Card

Carefully peruse your monthly credit card statements. Verify that the charges are right and that there are no unexpected purchases or changes on your card. If you do find a legitimate error, inform your credit card company promptly to dispute a charge or have errors corrected.

Use bank cards only when necessary. Use your debit card at all other times. Save your credit card purchases for big ticket items such as a computer or television. But if you are going out for groceries, using your debit card is best. This can result in significant savings.

TIP! Do everything you can to minimize how many credit card accounts you keep open. Having more than one credit card can be a challenge, as you have to monitor spending for each card.

A good thing to remember is that you should not immediately make a credit card payment after you make a charge. It is best just to pay it off each month when the bill is due. This builds a stronger payment history and has a larger positive impact on your credit score.

People typically receive dozens of credit card promotional letters everyday in their mail. It can be frustrating trying to sort through these offers. Having some knowledge, and doing some research, can help you understand how to choose the right charge cards easier. The above article contained advice to help credit card users make wise choices.

Source: http://chicagolanddailydeals.us/2012/have-a-credit-card-then-read-these-tips/

Black Ops 2 Secede ben roethlisberger Diwali elmo nascar Kevin Clash