Vale to prioritize Brazil iron-ore mine over Guinea project: source

RIO DE JANEIRO (Reuters) - Vale , the world's second-largest mining company, is likely to make its $19.5 billion Serra Sul iron ore mine project in Brazil a priority over a similar development in the West African nation of Guinea, a source with knowledge of the firm's strategy said.

The emphasis on the project in the Amazon comes as Guinea, which holds rich deposits of iron ore and is the world's top supplier of the aluminum ore bauxite, struggles to maintain foreign investment amid deepening political turmoil, labor unrest and a government review of mining contracts.

The granting in June of a so-called preliminary environmental license for the Sierra Sul project, which includes railway and port investments, means the development of the Simandou site in Guinea is less urgent, the source said on Tuesday.

"All things considered, projects need to be prioritized," said the source, who asked not be named as his employer does not allow him to speak to the press. "The priority has become Serra Sul."

MAJOR HURDLES

Serra Sul is an extension of Vale's giant Carajas iron, copper and nickel mining complex in Brazil's Para state. It is expected to have a capacity of 90 million metric tons a year, about 9 percent of current world iron-ore exports, helping maintain Vale's position as the No. 1 producer.

Simandou, while holding enormous high-quality reserves, faces major political, commercial and transportation hurdles before it can be developed.

Guinea recently revised its mining code, raising the state's mandatory stake in mining projects to 35 percent from 15 percent and plans to change other clauses in the code after consultation with mining companies.

"I believe it will be difficult for Vale to invest in both projects at the same time because it would require very high capital spending for the company," said Marcelo Aguiar, metals and mining company analyst with Goldman Sachs in Sao Paulo.

"Vale investment in Simandou appears to have lost a bit of its urgency after getting the license for Serra Sul."

Vale gained the rights to develop iron ore in Simandou in 2010 when it agreed to pay $2.5 billion for a 51 percent stake in the Guinea iron-ore mining operation of BSG Resources Ltd, the London-based mining group controlled by Israeli businessman Beny Stenmetz.

A newspaper in Brazil reported on Sunday that BSG was preparing to sue investment bank BTG Pactual , which it accuses of misusing its role as an adviser to Guinea's government to win licenses for a holding company at BSG's expense.

Guinea's mines minister Mohamed Lamine Fofana called BSG Resources threat to sue BTG "insulting" in an e-mailed response to questions from Reuters.

AT THE CENTER

The Serra Sul mine is at the center of plans to boost Vale iron ore output by 40 percent to 460 million metric tons a year in 2017.

Serra Sul and Carajas are two of the largest high-grade iron ore projects under development to meet soaring demand for iron ore from China.

Vale produces more than a quarter of the world's sea borne iron ore exports of more than 1 billion metric tons a year. Work to gain the preliminary Serra Sul license took nearly a decade.

Vale, though, has been re-evaluating its investment plans in the wake of a slowdown in China and sluggish growth in the United States, Europe and Japan. In late 2011, it cut planned 2012 spending 11 percent to $21.4 billion.

As iron-ore prices <.io62-cni> fell to three year lows earlier this month, slashing billions from revenue, further cuts came under consideration.

(Additional reporting by Saliou Samb; Writing by Jeb Blount; Editing by Joseph Radford)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/vale-prioritize-brazil-iron-ore-mine-over-guinea-041354545--finance.html

radar weather weather channel lionel richie mike brown jacoby ellsbury jacoby ellsbury morosini death

Assembling an Avenger?Inside the Brain of Iron Man

When I first started reading comic books there were many superheroes that interested me. Naturally the list included Batman, Iron Man, Daredevil, Captain America, Thor, Nova, the Flash, the Black Panther, the Phantom, and lots more.

What I enjoyed best of all were team ups where you got more heroes per page. Classics like the Fantastic Four, the Justice League, the Justice Society, and the Defenders as well as the Inhumans, the Invaders, and the Legion of Superheroes. The group to top the list for me, though, has always been ?The Avengers?. They are ?Earth?s Mightiest Heroes? after all.

The Avengers are also the Earth?s super group of scientists. Back in the 1963 debut story (penned by Stan-the-man-Lee, of course) ?The Coming of the Avengers!?, the original line-up included Iron Man, Ant-Man, Wasp, Thor, and the Hulk. This was arguably the most well-educated superhero group ever, well, assembled.

The scientists in that group included Dr. Bruce Banner (atomic physicist, the Hulk), Tony Stark (Iron Man, who may or may not have a PhD but has 2 master?s degrees in engineering from MIT), Dr. Hank Pym (sub-atomic physicist, Ant-Man), Janet van Dyne (not sure about her training, but she knew her way around the lab as the first Wasp), and Dr. Donald Blake (physician and surgeon, Thor).

That?s a line-up of heavy hitters of science that even one of my superheroes of science, Sir Francis Bacon, could be proud of. This remains even when it?s admitted that while rampaging around as the Hulk, we don?t usually get many insights about the Higgs-Boson and Thor isn?t typically trying to help treat injuries. Despite that, I am going to go ahead and assign the original Avengers line-up an A+ in scientists, if not always for science itself.

The 2012 Avengers movie re-envisions the origin and uses a plot that?s a lot closer to the excellent Marvel ?Ultimates? story lines. In the spirit of recreating and reinvisioning story lines, in this post I want to concentrate on turning the lens of science on good ole? Shellhead.

Iron Man is one of those few superheroes representing a more ?realistic? take on what might be possible. As I wrote in ?Inventing Iron Man?The Possibility of a Human Machine?, his origin story has some very plausible bits to it. This makes him seem more accessible as a character. But it?s accessing the mind of the Golden Avenger?connecting the Iron Man exoskeleton to Tony Stark?s brain?that is the main focus here.

Malleable Maps in Iron Man?s Mind

Starting in utero, a calibration of the motor and sensory inputs to and from your body parts began. This process has continued in your brain throughout your life. This results in a loose ?mapping? of neurons that goes on in the somatosensory and motor parts of your brain. As a result you have multiple representations of your body in your brain. This gives rise to our sense of self, body ?image?, and body ?schema?.

These representations have been refined and tuned throughout your life along with your changing body size and the experiences you?ve had. Except in the case of tragic accidents where a limb may have been lost or amputated, your body has always been there with you 24/7. Your body is you and it?s there all the time.

It turns out that tool use can alter these representations. But tools that we use aren?t part of our body and aren?t with us all the time. At least not physically. But are they with us in our brains? We use tools only when we need them (we always need our bodies). It turns out that the sensory maps of our bodies in our brains can be reshaped to include parts of the way we use tools.

This kind of melding with the tool is termed ?embodiment?? and reflects the plasticity your nervous system experiences to keep you as a fully functional you. This process is heavily influenced by the sensation of moving the tools and the visual input that you get from seeing yourself using the tools.

The main premise of my Iron Man book is that for Tony Stark?s exoskeleton to work as we see it work in comics, graphic novels and movies it would need to be connected directly to the brain and spinal cord of the user. It would need to be the most fantastic brain machine interface ever created.

My view of Iron Man is very similar to the version that Warren Ellis created in the Marvel Iron Man ?Extremis? story arc. Warren advanced the concept of an embedded interface between the nervous system and a highly modular armor. In broad strokes, this is really the only way it could work. But if such an ultimate brain machine interface existed could such a ?tool? be incorporated into the cortical representation of a real human brain?

Extending your reach beyond your grasp?

French and Italian scientists headed up by Lucilla Cardinali, confirmed brain plasticity from tool use in a really simple but clever study back in 2009. They developed a long hand-held ?grabber? like those used to clean up trash from parks and streets without the user having to bend over.

In this experiment the researchers asked participants to practice using the grabber to pick up and move things around on a table. They measured reaching and grasping movments before and after using the grabber. Surprisingly, practice using the grabber changed later arm movements performed even when the grabber wasn?t used!

There were changes in pointing movements and in how long participants perceived their arms to be. They thought their arms were longer, likely because the tool allowed them to reach further. From a functional perspective within the brain, their arms were longer since they could reach further with the grabber.

This plasticity is related to changing those body maps in the brain as a result of using a tool. Tools give us different abilities, like reaching further in this example, and this change in function pushes the plastic changes in the brain. The strength and length of that plasticity is not completely certain.

Could the changes become durable enough to become real memories for a new representation or map? We know that limb amputation can lead to changes in the maps. It leads to emptying some territory in those maps and taking over of territory by brain cells for other regions. The opposite perspective, that is, what happens when you add something to a map that is already complete, isn?t well understood.

Enter the alien arm?

Primate research using neural prosthetics controlled by the brain show very strong changes that occur after only a few weeks. These ?prosthetic motor memories? are in features of long-term memories. So it seems that the brain can incorporate foreign parts into this schema.

This idea of incorporating foreign parts into the body was shown in 1998 by Matthew Botvinick and Jonathan? Cohen at Carnegie Melon in Pittsburgh. They conducted what is now known as the ?rubber hand illusion?.

Using a life-sized rubber arm as an ?alien limb?, these scientists hid the left arm of each participant behind a blinding screen. Participants then focused their vision on this ?alien limb?. Using small paintbrushes, the experimenters then simultaneously stroked the alien hand (fully in view) and the real hand (hidden out of view behind the screen). After 10 minutes of this conditioning, participants were asked a number of questions about the experience.

Some of the answers were astounding. They suggested an illusion which provided touch sensation on the alien limb and not the real hand. That is, they seemed to feel the touch of the viewed brush as if the rubber hand had actually sensed the touch. One participant said that ?I found myself looking at the dummy hand thinking it was actually my own.? This powerful illusion has now been employed in many other experiments with similarly striking results.

A Swedish scientific team headed by Henrik Ehrsson extended the ?rubber hand illusion? to upper limb amputees. Using procedures similar to the initial experiment above, they created a sensation of embodiment that a rubber hand was actually a real hand attached to the stump where the amputated limb used to be.

Although this illusion works well in able- bodied persons, the researchers weren?t sure if it could still work after amputation. Strong illusions were actually found in one third of the amputees. Interestingly, the illusions were more powerful when the tests were done soonest after amputation.

The illusion was so powerful that in some cases suddenly plunging a syringe into the rubber hand produced physiological responses of anxiety (changes in skin conductance) that would occur if the hand was part of their body! Clearly a process of ?embodiment? was occurring. This group has recently done something that provides a bit of an answer to something I have been puzzling over since I wrote ?Inventing Iron Man?.

Paul?s puzzle?

Here it is: I don?t really understand where the Iron Man suit of armor could be represented in the somatosensory and motor cortices of Tony Stark. Above we discussed how we can reshape our body schema with practice using tools and in response to trauma like limb amputation. But those approaches all make use of neuronal territory that exists and is reshaped or was lost and is reused. What about something completely new like a whole new body? That?s what is meant to be shown in the Figure below.

And it?s an experiment from Ehrsson?s group that helps us get to the answer. Instead of jumping directly to the idea of a whole new body, they asked instead: ?Could it be possible that, in the not-so-distant future, we will be able to reshape the human body so as to have extra limbs? A third arm helping us out with the weekly shopping in the local grocery store, or an extra artificial limb assisting a paralysed person?? These questions are certainly on par with considering the question of embodying the Iron Man exoskeleton.

To see if you can really trick your brain into thinking you have an extra arm they used a variation of the ?rubber hand illusion?. And it includes a very bold placement of a 3^rd limb?the rubber arm?right beside the person?s actual arm. So it?s right out there in full view. They then did the basic procedure of brushing the real fingers and those of the rubber hand. All while participants looked on.

Of course, the rubber hand illusion worked again. This elegant experiment included all kinds of control conditions and even some physiological measures like galvanic skin response that all showed the fake arm could even be ?threatened? by danger (this time by cutting with a knife). The upshot was that those in the study felt like they had a second right hand!

The concluding paragraph of this paper reads as follows: ?Thus, under certain circumstances, healthy humans can experience somatic sensations that seem to violate the human body plan.? This real-life research work is the closest thing I?ve found that possesses the answer to whether there is enough neuroplasticity to adapt to a full Iron Man exoskeleton. The answer is a tentative yes!

On Machine, (Hu)man, and Mind

A prosthetic limb or exoskeleton that is meant to be incorporated into the user?s body schema needs to include sensors and feedback. For example, sensors on the digits of the Iron Man suit could be used to activate brain areas that normally get that sensation from the real fingers! The idea is that over time the sensation from the artificial sensor would become integrated into the perceptions of the person such that they are ?one with the body?. Embodiment.

This means that an Iron Man suit of armor should have sensors on the fingers, hands, toes, etc. that would normally be activated on Tony Stark?s body. Using this approach, Tony would embody Iron Man like he declared by saying ?the suit of Iron Man and I are one? in Iron Man 2.

Since the lines between science and science fiction are pretty labile, it?s likely not a surprise that real experimental work shows this to be very useful. In 2010, Aaron Suminski, Nicholas Hatsopoulos, and colleagues at the University of Chicago used a ?sleeve? placed over a monkey?s arm to help learn how to move a cursor on a computer screen driven by recording activity in motor cortex.

Including sensation from the robotic limb improved the ability to learn the brain-machine interface commands. The scientists at the University of Chicago allowed the monkeys to use visual and somatosensory feedback together and learned how to control the cursor much faster and more accurately than without those sensations.

Back in 2011, my ?Inventing Iron Man? book had only been out for a few months when I was asked to comment on a paper just about to appear in ?Nature?. A research team at the Duke University Center for Neuroengineering headed by Miguel Nicolelis, a pioneer and leader in the area of brain machine interface, trained two monkeys using brain activity to control and move a virtual hand.

The critical piece in this experiment?and a requirement for functional training with the fictional Iron Man exoskeleton?was that electrical activation in the sensory and motor parts of the brains were used. Motor signals were used to drive the controller and then feedback was given directly into the brain by stimulating the sensory cortex when the monkeys made accurate movements. This huge advance actually provides patterns of electrical stimulation to the brain that mimic sensory inputs in movement.

This is really asking what happens when you take tool use?where the Iron Man suit of armor is the tool?to the extreme? What would happen in the brain if the tool is a representation of the body? What would happen to the body maps if we increase the representation of the body in the brain without first taking something away?

Would the neural plasticity associated with this affect the connection between your brain and your real body? How strong would the plasticity?the remapping?be and would you forget how to use your own real body if you used it too much? There remain a lot of questions. And a lot of work needs to be done. To borrow a bit of physics/engineering/mathematics jargon, some ?non-trivial? problems remain.

Some trivia about non-trivial problems?

A major non-trivial problem has to do with the ?form and function? relationships in biology. The cool thing about most of the body is that you can tell a lot about physiology (how it works) from the anatomy (how it looks). Function comes from form.

In your cardiovascular system you?ve got a big muscular pump in the form of the heart that receives and pushes blood all around the body. Taking a good look at the heart along with all the piping coming in and out, allows a reasonable estimate of what it does and how blood flows in the body.

In the case of the human nervous system, you have a big brain containing about 100 billion neurons. Those 100 billion neurons might have on average ~5000 connections from other neurons. That could produce about 100 trillion connections. A pretty big number. Far bigger than the estimated number of galaxies in the universe estimated to be between 200 to 500 billion. Overall this is a huge number of connections to consider.

This is part of what allows the nervous system to present with a much broader scope. Not because the anatomy is impenetrable or that much more complicated within different areas of the brain. It is certainly complex, but the general features of the connections from those 100 billion neurons form into tracts and bands of connections within the brain that can be reasonably identified (mostly).

The real non-trivial problem comes from the fact that the function?the behaviour?of the brain cannot be directly predicted from anatomy. Enter those 100 trillion connections. The key thing is that the network activity in the brain emerges from the activity of whatever synaptic connections are active at any given time. It is a constantly shifting landscape of network activity.

For a simple approximation of this complexity, imagine sitting in a ship that is rising and falling on the swells of the Mediterranean. Boats all around you rise and fall such that at any given moment you see different boats. Those boats all represent active connections between neurons that are expressed when you can see them and silenced when you cannot. To complete the metaphor, multiply by many trillions.

The real answers to these questions lie ahead. While we await those answers and work towards their solutions, let?s close with one of my favourite neuroscience quotes. The South African zoologist Lyall Watson (1939-2008) wrote: ?If the brain were so simple we could easily understand it, we would be so simple we couldn?t.?

Luckily for us and the advance of knowledge there are many scientists who keep trying to illuminate the function of the human brain. In true ?Avengers? fashion, the lack of simplicity is offset by the vigor and rigor of their efforts. I look forward to future developments. Developments, possibly inspired by fiction, but created for a new reality in neurorehabilitation (see Figure below).

?

Source: http://rss.sciam.com/click.phdo?i=bf93eed3c06064e7753bb8eafda794da

king arthur king arthur there will be blood there will be blood nigel barker 420 secret service

eBooks and serendipity machines: an interview with Connor Tomas ...

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

Source: http://blogs.crikey.com.au/liticism/2012/09/27/ebooks-and-serendipity-machines-an-interview-with-connor-tomas-obrien/

how to cook a turkey yorkshire pudding larry the cable guy miracle on 34th street santa tracker monkey bread letter from santa

Secondhand Sprucing: The Entry | Design Happens

Hello hello everyone, it?s Kate back again in Part Three of this continuing series, and this week?s focus is on sprucing up secondhand finds for the entry! The first space you encounter each day as you come through the door is your foyer, and a smart entry has a few key essentials.? When you come through the door, you need a place to set the daily mail, your keys and your phone. It?s also nice to have a place to sit and kick of your shoes!

Consider that the entry is also the last space you leave each day, so a mirror is not only decorative but a place to add lipstick at the last second, fix your hair, or straighten your tie or scarf. Mirrors can be large or small, but how fun is it to transform a tired piece found at the back of a thrift store or in the corner of a garage sale? Study these stylish transformations for inspiration for your foyer.

(Ebay turquoise mirror by Our Lake Life; Convex rope mirror by Meridian Road; Acid etched mirror by Vintage Revivals; Thrift store plate mirrors by CraftyNest)

A small scale bench in the entry is a natural choice for taking off shoes at day?s end. Again, like in the bedroom, paint and fabric are your best friends! Personalize an entry bench with a stylish stripe, a punch floral, or an eclectic textile.

(Flea market bench makeover by Eddie Ross; Floral bench by Wonderfully Domestic; Coffee table to entry bench from Style At Home; Bright entry bench via Design*Sponge)

A place to drop your keys, mail, and phone is a must in an entry. Take the opportunity to bring both style and function into your home with a revamped thrift store console or Craigslist dresser placed in your foyer. Style it up with art, lamps, or a tray to corral the mail and keys.

(Green cabinet from Young House Love; Painted entry console from Design*Sponge; Garage sale score from Decor Chick; 70s dresser turned console from Sweet Pickins Furniture)

Entries need not be merely functional, they can be stylish too, all with pieces scored on a weekend treasure hunt or reinvented with new stain or paint. I hope you all are enjoying these inspirational finds. Next week we?ll take a peek at some very cool ideas for turning secondhand finds into chic dining room accents. Stay tuned!

Source: http://blog.hgtv.com/design/2012/09/25/secondhand-sprucing-the-entry/

abc news denver post dez bryant Kitty Wells Marissa Mayer Jon Lord weather.com

HBT: Yu Darvish scratched with stiff neck

Yu Darvish won?t be on the mound as the Rangers try to put more distance between themselves and the A?s tonight. He?s been scratched due to a stiff neck, the team announced.

Scott Feldman will pitch in his place.

Darvish has been on a terrific roll of late, having gone 4-0 with a 1.46 ERA and a 42/8 K/BB ratio in his last five starts. There hasn?t been any word yet on when he?ll pitch again, but his injury isn?t considered serious.

Feldman lost his rotation spot after giving up six runs in 2 2/3 innings against the Mariners on Sept. 15 and had pitched once in relief since, throwing three scoreless innings versus Seattle on Friday. He?s 1-1 with a 16.20 ERA in two starts against Oakland this year.

Source: http://hardballtalk.nbcsports.com/2012/09/25/yu-darvish-scratched-with-stiff-neck/related/

charlotte bobcats new york rangers nfl mock draft 2012 norfolk island michael brockers lisa marie presley florida panthers

Jennifer Garner Talks Children & Hubby?s Wonder Sperm (VIDEO)

Jennifer Garner Talks Children & Hubby’s Wonder Sperm (VIDEO)

Jennifer Garner is not only gorgeous but has an awesome sense of humor. The actress and mom-of-three appears on “The Ellen DeGeneres Show” on Thursday, [...]

Jennifer Garner Talks Children & Hubby’s Wonder Sperm (VIDEO) Stupid Celebrities Gossip Stupid Celebrities Gossip News

Source: http://stupidcelebrities.net/2012/09/jennifer-garner-talks-children-hubbys-wonder-sperm-video/

alex smith robert deniro mexico news the talented mr ripley weather new orleans orcl the hartford

Northwestern Kellogg gets the McKinsey treatment - Fortune - CNN

By John A. Byrne

(Poets&Quants) -- When Betsy Ziegler applied to Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management in the mid-1990s, she was rejected outright. Ziegler, instead, got her MBA degree from Harvard Business School.

As Kellogg's associate dean of MBA programs and dean of students, Ziegler likes to joke that it took her 15 years to finally get inside the school. Since arriving little more than a year ago, however, the former McKinsey & Co. partner has swooped in like the master consultant she has been and turned over every rock and pebble in the place.

Ziegler, 41, isn't the only McKinsey partner to decamp at a business school. Only this year, former McKinsey partners took over the B-school deanships at Johns Hopkins University and Northeastern University. But Ziegler's role brings her much closer to the nitty-gritty operational details that can make or break a premier MBA program.

In all probability, it is the first time that a business school's core operations have been as meticulously examined and dissected. Ziegler has deployed early "engagement interviews," "touch point maps," "gap analysis," "product portfolio reviews," and even "exit interviews" with recent graduates to get under the hood of the MBA experience. Kellogg Dean Sally Blount calls her "an operations genius."

Ziegler is a frenetic dynamo and a self-described geek. Words tumble out of her like bullets from an automatic weapon. An inordinate whiteboard scribbler, she'll ferociously draw charts and diagrams to illustrate every point. "Give me a whiteboard and a pen and I go," she laughs. Facts and figures back up all assertions, opinions, and hypotheses. "I am a data monkey," she concedes. "I am used to using data to make decisions." That's why her team spent six months building a "business intelligence data architecture" that could spit out the answer to virtually any numbers-based question she posed.

Yet students, many of whom have dubbed her "Dean Z," have also forged close relationships with her. "One of the most defining things about Dean Ziegler is that she has an open door policy and students use it," says Jenna Giordano, a second-year MBA candidate who is president of the Kellogg Student Association. "So a lot of students have formed personal relationships with her."

All of this is in the service of ensuring that Kellogg, long known for having a student-driven culture with an emphasis on collaboration, can deliver the most distinctive MBA experience in the world. "When I say we want to deliver a distinctive student experience, my language is not relative to my six or nine peer schools," says Ziegler. "I want people to feel here how they feel when they fly Singapore Airlines, order room service at a Ritz Carlton, return shoes to Zappos, or walk into an Apple store. You feel embraced and supported and every single detail is thought about."

Ziegler says this in all seriousness and with a passion that confirms she is hell-bent on making it happen. "I know from my previous life that those companies all have a set of things that they all do. None of those things have anything to do with being a for-profit institution. They are things like hiring the right people, giving work meaning ? and improving what you do every day?."

When she started at Kellogg in June 2011, she spent her first four weeks doing what every McKinsey consultant does at the start of an assignment: learning what people in the organization already know. She met one-on-one with 90 Kellogg staffers "to know how they spend their time and their view of what impact they have on the students."

"I gave everyone the opportunity to be king or queen for the day, and I asked each person what three things they would do if they had the power. Those ideas formed the basis of my first-year priorities."

Putting the MBAs to work

It was during a lunch with students the month after Ziegler joined the school that she hit upon the idea to use Kellogg students to create consulting teams to dive deep into the school's operations. Over salads and sandwiches, one of the second-year students who had been a consultant said to Ziegler: "I want to learn how to lead consultants. First-year students want to be consultants, and clearly you need help. Can you come up with a project where you are the partner and we learn from you but I get to lead a team of students?"

Ziegler embraced the idea, creating three projects with three "partners" from the dean's office, three student managers, and 15 students who served as "consultants" -- five per team. Ziegler's group worked on the student experience. "They had two deliverables," she explains. "One, they had to give me a touch point map of all the interactions our students have with us, and two, they had to tell me what matters most to them and how we are doing against what matters. That is the killer chart. It gives me the foundation from which to build upon."

What mattered most? Leadership opportunities afforded by Kellogg's 98 active student clubs, which also got the highest performance grades. The worst scores, not surprisingly, went to food and facilities. So Ziegler has been pressing for renovations to Kellogg's Jacobs Center as the school's new home, now under construction, won't open until 2016. Kellogg has since gutted and completely renovated two major study rooms for students and spiffed up the prominent staircase that leads to the dean's suite. The school also has brought back the coffee cart with food and Starbucks drinks, added a broader selection of healthy snacks outside its deli, and included a salad and soup station in the main atrium where most students eat.

For each issue, Ziegler saw an opportunity for improvement. Kellogg, for example, found that alumni interaction was fairly important to current students. The school is now building a social network to connect alums with students, faculty, and administrators. The network will go beta in late December or early January. The school has also hired a new head of alumni relations who is meeting with students to strengthen interaction between MBA candidates and graduates. When an MBA has a summer internship in Dallas, efforts will be made to make sure the Dallas alumni club knows the student is in town.

The idea to do exit interviews of graduates came out of a town hall meeting at which a Kellogg MBA, who formerly worked for General Electric (GE) and had already landed a product manager job with Apple (AAPL), made the suggestion.

Ziegler took the idea to heart, enlisting the MBA to design the questions. She invited all of Kellogg's nearly 1,000 graduates to participate and ensured that only direct reports to Dean Sally Blount would conduct the interviews.

"It was very important that the senior team did it," she insists, because it signaled that everyone at that level cares. "Not every one on the senior team gets to spend a lot of time with students so we wanted them to hear what they have to say."

The school created 200 interview slots and filled all of them within a day. Ziegler herself did 95 of the 225 exit conversations in the bold red leather chairs in her office.

The interviews largely reaffirmed the value of Kellogg's close-knit culture. But the conversations also offered valuable insights, including the idea to have a fully dedicated staffer in Kellogg's career management center devoted to international students and domestic students who are looking for jobs outside the U.S.

Standing apart from the competition

Why is this stuff important? Ziegler puts it this way: there are about seven B-schools schools that are most often considered the best in the world: Harvard, Stanford, Wharton, Kellogg, Chicago Booth, Columbia, and MIT Sloan.

"If you go to any of the top seven schools, you get three things consistently," she says. "You get a great academic experience, though the pedagogy may be different. You get an amazing alumni experience because you get access to an outstanding alumni networks. These schools have produced great leaders over decades and decades of time. And the third thing is that the likelihood of you getting a really good job is very high because the top recruiters are coming to each of these schools to find the best and brightest. The mix might be different at any one place, but recruiters really want the students who graduate from these schools. Those you get no matter what.

"What makes Kellogg differentiated is those four things plus this culture and community," Ziegler argues. "I characterize it as being one of partnership.... Our students deeply care about one another. A typical story I hear is about the students who say they were up for the same job at Orbitz yet they helped each other prepare for the job interviews. And then, when one got the offer, the other student who didn't sent a card and flowers congratulating the winner.

"That is something we really cherish and celebrate and need to continue to cultivate. Not every person wants that. That's okay. That's why there are lots of choices."

More from Poets&Quants:

Source: http://management.fortune.cnn.com/2012/09/26/northwestern-kellogg-gets-the-mckinsey-treatment/

survivor one world lil kim progeria what will my baby look like gary carter died cmas cmas