Business

Senior housing was making headlines in 2014 for all the right reasons. With the retiring Baby Boomer generation flocking en masse to these senior communities, the year saw a market climate that was highly favorable to both buyers and sellers. According to a January 3 Senior Housing News article, interest rates for both assisted and independent senior living communities fell to all-time lows in 2014, which was good news for the owners of these communities. Lower interest rates allowed them to diversify their assets, offering a wider variety of unique living solutions for their residents. On the buyers’ end of the market, rising housing prices gave many seniors a good reason to finally sell their homes and make the transition into a retirement community, according to the Wall Street Journa...

If 2014 was the year that the commercial real estate market woke up from a long period of dormancy, then 2015 will be the year it rubbed its eyes, had its morning cup of coffee and started the day off with a buzz. That's at least how experts described the outlook for 2015 at a recent commercial brokerage forecasting event, according to a January 6 Las Vegas Review-Journal article. Across all sectors, from retail to industrial, commercial real estate will continue to make gains on the advances it made in 2014. This is especially true in the investment sector, which will see steady gains in land prices and rising confidence among property buyers. According to UrbanLand, a continued increase in the amount of investment capital entering the commercial real estate market can be expected throu...

The Affordable Care Act has long been a divisive topic among politicians, with many feeling that the reform attempt best exemplifies a system of government that has become extremely partisan over the years. However, one element of the ACA's legislation has ironically become one of the few issues to unite both Democrats and Republicans: a medical device tax, enacted in January 2013, has drawn the ire of politicians and lobbyists on either side of aisle for over two years. Somehow, the controversy over the bill, which places a 2.3% levy on everything from IV bags to artificial hip joints, has continued unabated, with a number of proponents and opponents publishing their arguments in the first few days of 2015. This raises an important question: is the medical device tax hurting or helping t...

2015 is expected to be the year of solar power, with lower costs and technology improvements bringing solar energy to new areas all over the country. As of 2014, 10 states have residential solar power available that costs the same or less than local electricity. Hawaii was not included in this count, as solar energy has been cost-competitive there for a long time. By 2017, that number is expected to jump to 28 states -- over half the nation! One of the keys to expanding the solar energy market is competitive pricing, and companies are striving to fulfill that goal. Solar energy makes up just 1% of electricity generation worldwide, so the market is wide open for new firms to enter. To compete with newcomers, existing firms are improving technology, and adding storage options and expanding...

After poor performance in the first half of the fiscal year, General Mills has shifted its focus to three areas of the business in hopes of improving sales. The company's focus over the next six months will be on cereal, yogurt and healthy snacks. Altogether, the first half of the fiscal year brought a 3.5% decrease in sales for General Mills due to poor demand for its products, according to Food Business News. The company is hoping that through a combination of new products, improvements to its current products and strong marketing and advertising efforts they will be able to improve performance. Although General Mills's cereal brands have grown in the market over the last six years, the first half of the fiscal year did not reflect this trend and resulted in a decrease in retail sa...

With the holidays still in full swing, the last thing on most people's minds is shopping for a new home, much less selling one. Many people are deterred by cold weather and poor driving conditions, or distracted by holiday vacation plans. But according to data released this week by online realty brokerage firm Redfin, winter is when the housing market really comes alive. Redfin compiled home listing data, sales prices and time-on-the-market data from Oct. 2010 to Oct. 2014 and came up with some surprising results. Not only is winter the best time to sell a home for more than the asking price, it's also the best time to list a home and sell it fast. Redfin determined that homes listed in December, January, February and March have a higher chance at selling above the asking price than home...

As new areas of information technology continue to emerge and demand more attention from skilled workers, colleges and universities across the country are soon to find themselves in greater competition with the corporate world for IT professionals. While small schools will have the most trouble recruiting IT grads, colleges and universities across the board will have to ramp up their recruitment efforts if they want to attract skilled workers to meet their IT needs. “We have found that many IT departments are buying "off the shelf" modules rather than recreate the wheel,” says Rick Friedman, President, ScholarlyHires.com. “Many opportunities are implementation or support personnel, as opposed to programmers, in order to combat the lack of available talent. The one exception to this seems...

It seems that every day brings another story of exciting applications of 3D printing technology. As recently as Dec. 17, a Princeton University team announced it had printed a contact lens with an embedded LED capable of projecting light. But despite this constant stream of innovation, some printers are turning to older techniques in order to satisfy a growing demand for handmade or artisanal products. “It is a safe bet that at least one Christmas card you receive this year will be printed in the old-fashioned manner, by letterpress,” reads an Economist article from Dec. 18. “You'll recognise it by the way the letters are pounded deep into the paper, like some kind of reverse braille. The point, for a new wave of hobbyists around the globe, is the ostentatious tactility.” Why this desir...

For many advertisers, mobile games may still seem like a passing fad. But according to experts, mobile game advertising may be set to outpace traditional advertising much sooner than expected. In fact, it may even be taking money away from traditional advertising methods. In a discussion at the Global Mobile Internet Conference early this month, Dave Madden, senior vice president of global media solutions at the mobile games division of Electronic Arts, said that mobile games are sucking so much money out of other forms of media advertising that he believes it will soon be the largest advertising platform in the world. In the past, mobile games have been used primarily to appeal to a gaming crowd that subsists on Doritos and Mountain Dew, but that image is no longer representative of the...

A team of researchers in Australia has broken the efficiency record for a commercially available photovoltaic system, creating one that converts more than 40% of collected sunlight into power. “A new world record is making the future of solar energy look pretty bright,” Elizabeth Palermo wrote for Fox News Dec. 16. The team was led by Martin Green, a professor at the University of New South Wales. In order to reach 40% efficiency, the team combined commercial solar cells with optical filters. This allowed them to capture wavelengths of light that average photovoltaic cells can’t. The approach is known as concentrator photovoltaics, or CPV, and is associated with advanced applications in the solar industry. CPV systems are also typically very expensive to produce. But the team’s use of c...