FOX Translator
No data currently available.
No data currently available.
These gains don't cause pain. A capital gain is the amount of money you pocket by selling one of your investments for more than you paid for it. Technically, capital gains only count for what's called a capital asset, but that's really just anything you own for investment purposes. Stocks and bonds obviously qualify, but your house and household furnishings can also count.
For tax purposes, capital gains are classified as either long-term (held for more than one year) or short-term (held for less than one year) and there are different tax implications for how long you hold onto a capital asset. For most long-term capital gains, you're taxed no more than 15% of the value of the asset. Short-term gains get taxed as regular income, so you pay the rate for the tax bracket you're in.
Capital gains can also be realized or unrealized. When you physically sell an asset like a stock, you've realized the capital gain. When you're holding the stock, and it has a value over its purchase price, but you're not selling it, you've got an unrealized gain, and you won't realize it until you sell.
In a perfect world, we'd all have capital gains. But no one¿s that smart or lucky. When the value of an asset at sale is below what you've paid for it, it's called a capital loss. The good news is that the government lets you count that loss against any gains you've had, lowering the taxes you pay. In fact, many people who sell a stock that has risen far over their purchase price tend to sell some stinkers, too, at the same time for the tax benefit. This is known as a capital-loss offset.
Home
Friday, May 30, 2008
Technological Interventions Merge Into Health and Fitness
Comtex
INDIANAPOLIS, May 30, 2008 /PRNewswire-USNewswire via COMTEX/ ----New Methods Utilize Cell Phones, E-Mails, and Phone Calls
Although tracking blood glucose and steps taken per day through a cell phone sounds like something futuristic, researchers at the American College of Sports Medicine's 55th Annual Meeting say the technology could be on the market in the near future.
A research team led by Suyi Li, M.S., and Weimo Zhu, Ph.D., FACSM believe this is the first time the two devices -- step and glucose meters -- have been combined together in a mobile phone.
Glucose is measured by a micro-meter that uses normal blood testing procedures and can be plugged into the phone's serial port. The blood sugar level is then displayed on the screen, and is sent to a diabetes monitoring center through text messaging.
"The monitoring center automatically analyzes data sent by the cell phone user," Li said. "Tailored suggestions and feedback are then sent back to the user. It's certainly not a substitute for regular physician visits, but can potentially catch complications and provide some motivation for the user to work at getting their glucose levels on track."
Li says that although their team's innovation is currently just a prototype, she hopes the program will be available to the public within the next three to five years.
Another study took a different technological approach -- e-mail -- in an attempt to encourage sedentary young adults to become more physically active. Matthew Parrott, Ph.D., sent persuasive e-mail messages encouraging physical activity to 220 inactive adults 18-20 years old every other day for two weeks.
E-mails either contained only positive wording, or a combination of positive wording and positive images. Those shown positive-image messages reported an increase in time spent exercising, and a more receptive attitude to exercise.
"Many young adults spend a significant amount of time per day on the computer, checking e-mail," Parrott said. "If they can consistently be reminded of the importance of getting up and getting active, it can have a profound effect."
Participants were also favorably responsive to exercise intervention in a third study, conducted on pregnant and post-partum women. Beth Lewis, Ph.D., of the University of Minnesota, recruited 19 pregnant and 18 post-partum women and used a three-month telephone counseling program to motivate them to exercise.
At the end of three months, both groups of women more than doubled their minutes of exercise per week: pregnant women went from 60 to 132 minutes, and post-partum women went from 69 minutes to 124 minutes.
"In addition to the personal exercise motivation we tried to provide to participants, it's also important for healthcare providers to get involved in disseminating information about physical activity to their patients," Lewis said. "This is the one time of a women's life in which they will go see their healthcare provider several times over a relatively short period of time and these professionals are in a unique position to encourage participants to take part in an exercise program."
ACSM's Exercise is Medicine(TM) (www.exerciseismedicine.org) program encourages all physicians and healthcare professionals to examine patients' physical activity programs at every visit. In addition, a 2006 ACSM Roundtable Consensus Statement advocated for exercise during pregnancy, citing significant lowering of complication risks due to pregnancy-induced chronic conditions.
The American College of Sports Medicine (www.ascm.org) is the largest sports medicine and exercise science organization in the world. More than 20,000 international, national, and regional members are dedicated to advancing and integrating scientific research to provide educational and practical applications of exercise science and sports medicine.
The conclusions outlined in this news release are those of the researchers only, and should not be construed as an official statement of the American College of Sports Medicine.
SOURCE American College of Sports Medicine
http://www.acsm.org
Copyright (C) 2008 PR Newswire. All rights reserved
Market Snapshot
| Symbol | Last Price | Netchange | Volume |
|---|---|---|---|
| -- | -- | -- | -- |
| -- | -- | -- | -- |
| -- | -- | -- | -- |
| -- | -- | -- | -- |
| -- | -- | -- | -- |
