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With a few days of rest and reflection following his team’s disappointing performance in the Southern Conference softball tournament, University of Tennessee at Chattanooga coach Frank Reed was turning his attention toward next season while reflecting on what could have been in 2010.

After winning the regular-season title, the Lady Mocs went O-2 in the tournament and Tiffany Money Clips the first team eliminated Thursday at Jim Frost Stadium.

“You know whether we had won or lost, you start thinking about what you’re going to do and how you’re going to try to be better next year,” Reed said Saturday. “I think one of the things with this team, the expectations were so high. I guess I placed them on them myself. It’s probably my fault for doing that, because I thought we had a really good team.

“Of course you never factor in that you’re going to have a bump in the road somewhere, and then it happens.”

After watching Elon win the tournament title on their home field, the Lady Mocs could have a chance to gain a measure of redemption on the same field next season.

Laura Herron, UTC associate athletic director and senior administrator for women’s athletics, Tiffany CuffLinks Friday that UTC was bidding to host the SoCon softball and tennis tournaments for 2011, 2012 and 2013. The tournament sites will be selected by the member schools.

Herron said the softball facilities and staff at Warner Park are a key asset in their bid to host one or more of the upcoming softball tournaments.

“The city and the ground crew are just exeptional,” she said. “We always get a lot of praise in how they have the fields ready to go no matter what the weather is.

“And the extra fields are definitely a step up for us. A lot of other schools just have one softball field, whereas we can play as many as five games at the same time at Warner Park.”

Among difficulties faced by Reed and UTC this season were losing pitcher and first baseman Michelle Fuzzard to a knee injury and having senior outfielder Laci Upchurch leave the team early in the season. Without those bats in the lineup, more pressure was on the rest of the team to make up for the lost offense.

“That three spot with losing Michelle was huge,” junior leadoff hitter Lyndsey Stiles said. “She is the best No. 3 hitter I’ve ever seen. She’s clutch. I’ve never seen somebody hit so many doubles our sophomore year.

“I think we knew it was going to hurt us, but I don’t think we really knew how much we really did Tiffany Key Rings her until the end.”

There were some bright spots that UTC can build on for next year. After a slow start, junior Nikki Waters pitched well late in her first season after transferring from Southern Illinois. With the return of Fuzzard, Waters and relief pitcher Kandice Irwin, UTC will enter next season with a solid pitching staff despite the loss of Brooke Loudermilk to graduation.

Offensively, third baseman Tiffany Baker will enter her senior season already holding the UTC career and single-season home run records. She’ll need some help around her, having Fuzzard back in then lineup should provide more power next season.

If the tournament returns to Chattanoooga in 2011, Reed already has decided he will try to find ways of keeping his team together. He said he is considering housing his team in a hotel for the tournament or at least having the Lady Mocs travel to and from Warner Park in buses as a way to keep them focused.

“I can tell you this, if they say Chattanooga is going to get it again for next year, Frank Reed’s going to start asking for help early,” Reed said. “We want to see if we can get some commitments to see if we can have a way to keep them together and feed them together and have more control.

“We do it all during the year (on road trips) already. It’s something that we’ve discount tiffany to do.”

Elizabeth Dugan noticed the rash earlier this year but quickly tiffany necklaces sale it.

“It looked like a breast-feeding sore,” said the 34-year-old mother of five.

That was, until early March, when she received a chain e-mail about a rare form of breast cancer. It described all her symptoms perfectly.

Whether it was divine providence or mere coincidence, Dugan said she wasn’t taking any chances.

She went to Munroe Regional Medical Center’s emergency room that day.

A physician’s assistant said the rash looked like Paget disease, a rare tiffany sale cancer that attacks cells in the breast nipple.

Most women with Paget disease have underlying breast cancer, according to the National Cancer Institute.

But Dugan soon discovered that as an unemployed, uninsured person who doesn’t qualify for Medicaid under current law, getting a conclusive diagnosis — not to mention treatment — will require time and money.

She has neither.

Like so many in Marion County, Dugan is a casualty of a bad economy. She lost her job as an assistant manager of a Dollar General in July and, with it, her Blue Cross Blue Shield coverage.

Rick Dugan lost his construction job in September.

“I went from working 60 to 70 hours a week to no overtime to barely 40 hours,” he said. “The Citrus County school bus depot was our last job, and that was it. That was Sept. 12.”

The family income dropped from $60,000 to well under $30,000.

The children are all covered by Medicaid. Her husband, a retired Marine, has medical tiffany rings sale through Veterans Affairs.

Elizabeth Dugan is the only one without insurance — and she’s the one that needs it most.

Dugan naturally turned to Medicaid, a government program for low-income people.

Under the health care bill passed this week by Congress and signed into law by the president, Dugan would easily qualify for Medicaid. But the old rules, which remain in place until 2014, exclude her from coverage for having too many assets.

According to the Florida Medicaid income limits, parents may be eligible for full Medicaid if countable assets are not above $2,000.

Dugan was denied full coverage, because the family owns four cars, she said.

“All those cars are gifts from my parents to help us,” Rick Dugan said.

Even the house they live in is provided by his parents, he said.

The new health law will extend Medicaid to people at or below 133 percent of the poverty line, or $29,327 for a family of four. With their unemployment checks combined, the Dugans bring in $24,000.

About 17.1 million Americans will gain coverage under the Medicaid expansion, or about 35 percent of all the nation’s uninsured, according to The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation.

The change would “end the historic exclusion of individuals from Medicaid coverage based on family status, a lingering vestige of the program’s early ties to welfare that is inconsistent with Medicaid’s role as a health insurance program for low-income people,” according to a February report published by Kaiser.

The new law will also create a “high-risk pool” to cover people with pre-existing conditions, like tiffany bracelets sale, but that provision doesn’t kick in for six months.

“How is that going to help my wife?” Rick Dugan asked. “How is that going to help her right now?”

With traditional Medicaid coverage out of the question, Dugan’s only hope was to qualify for “medically needy” care, a Medicaid program for those that don’t meet traditional Medicaid thresholds. It pays for her care after she incurs $1,400 worth of medical bills a month.

After numerous trips to the emergency room in March, Dugan finally racked up enough medical bills to qualify.

But she had already lost valuable weeks trying to get Medicaid, as well as health care providers who refused to see her without payment or who are so backlogged that they can’t get her in for months.

Munroe referred her to Shands Cancer Center at the University of Florida because Munroe doesn’t have charity cancer care, she said.

Shands doesn’t extend non-emergency charity care outside Alachua County.

And the wait is almost two months at the Marion County Health Department, We Care and Heart of Florida Health Center.

“I don’t have 8 weeks,” she said.

Behind her urgency is a long family history of cancer and her 32-year-old friend’s death from breast cancer two years ago.

A cancer league in Miami said she could get free treatment there — but only with a diagnosis, she said. “Not knowing is killing me.”

The National Cancer Institute referred her to Florida Waterman Hospital in Tavares, tiffany pendants sale Dr. Maen Hussein arranged for a free mammography.

The Dugans made the trip the same day.

The result of the mammography: “Needs additional imaging evaluation.”

Because she has been declared medically needy, Medicaid will pay for further testing.

She will have a consultation Monday for her breast biopsy.

She’ll worry later about how to pay the $1,400 in tiffany earrings sale bills she incurred this month.

A Middle East private equity consortium led by Bahrain-based Investcorp has agreed to acquire a majority stake in a Saudi Arabian gold and jewellery company, betting that the Middle East’s young and affluent demographic composition will see off the worst of the downturn.

The group will take a total 70 per cent stake in L’Azurde, the world’s fourth largest gold and jewellery manufacturer, in a deal that values the company at more than $300m, financiers behind the deal told the Financial Times.

Investcorp – which has owned Tiffany, the jewellery chain, and Gucci, the luxury goods group – will take a 51 per cent stake in L’Azurde. Its partners – Eastgate Capital Group, the private equity arm of NCB, which is Saudi Arabia’s largest lender, and Abu Dhabi-based The National Investor – will take the remainder.

It is a bold move by Investcorp, which reported its first ever loss of $511m in the last six months of 2008. The company, which has specialised in investing Arab private and sovereign wealth in overseas private equity, hedge funds and other alternative assets, was downgraded to junk status by Standard & Poor’s in January, causing Investcorp to terminate its rating contract on what it saw as an “unjustified” downgrade.

While the credit crunch has hit demand for luxury goods, Investcorp executives are confident that the region’s social and demographic dynamics will allow the company to grow.

“Jewellery in general, and gold jewellery in particular, is almost a necessity in this region,” said Azmat Taufique, the co-head of Investcorp’s $1.1bn Gulf-focused private equity fund. “Sales are linked to social events, such as weddings, and with the Gulf’s positive demographics, we think these will increase.”

Half of the Middle East’s population is under 20 years old, and half a decade of oil-fuelled growth has swelled the size and affluence of the upper and middle classes.

L’Azurde produces 26 tonnes of gold jewellery a year and had revenues of $500m last year, selling its products through 4,200 wholesale accounts and 18 retail stores across the region. The Gulf makes up about 12 per cent of the global market for gold.

L’Azurde had implemented a pricing mechanism that would shield it from gold’s volatility, Investcorp’s executives said.

Big, loud, rich jewelry is back. Sales of “high jewelry” — think drop earrings the size of grapes, brooches as big as bar coasters and elaborate chokers dripping with gems — have exploded in recent years, retailers, antique dealers and auction houses say. The robust economy has boosted sales of conspicuous items by “name” jewelers, private-label pieces that might have been considered too ostentatious just a few years ago.

“At private parties in Paris, London or New York,” people are pulling out the “big rocks,” says John M. Davis, a New York interior designer active on the charity fund-raising circuit. The trend is even more pronounced in the South, he notes. “In Nashville, [Tenn.], and Atlanta, the jewels will blind you.”

At Harry Winston Inc. jewelers, “Minimalism has really taken a back seat to opulence since 1994,” says Carol Brodie-Gelles, a spokeswoman for the firm, which reports a 50% growth in U.S. retail sales from 1994 to 1997.

The jewelry market is reacting to the same forces that are driving the fashion business: the booming stock market of recent years, an overall move toward more ostentatious accessorizing, and then there’s the Hollywood factor.

Fred Leighton, a New York-based jeweler who specializes in antique and estate jewelry, says business was “never better” than after “Titanic” star Kate Winslet wore an Edwardian 17-carat, pear-shaped diamond on an emerald and diamond chain to this year’s Academy Awards. “Kate Winslet was on camera every time she turned.”

Says Tom Julian, trend analyst at Fallon McElligott, a New York advertising firm, “Sharon Stone wore a jeweled dragonfly to close her Vera Wang dress. Linda Hamilton wore diamonds in her hair. Then you had Cher, who had diamonds in her tear ducts.” People are saying, “`I’m tired of basics. I want personality, I want individuality.’”

Demographics play a role, too. As women age, they like bigger jewels, says Woodstock, Vt., gem expert and author Antoinette Matlins. “If you really want to make an impression, size is the best way to get attention. And the older the woman, the larger the size.” Over age 30, “a carat seems small.”

On Tuesday, July 28, New York antiques dealer David Killen bought a 6-ounce 18-karat gold and diamond necklace from another dealer as part of a multipiece jewelry consignment. A year ago, he notes, the 1960s moon-and-stars design would have sat in a case at his Upper East Side store for one or two months before selling. But last month, he made a call to one client, who said her friend was interested.

The necklace sold for $6,500 by Thursday and was worn to a lavish charity ball in the Hamptons that weekend. The client, he says, “now wants matching earrings.”

Attempting to cash in on — or at least fuel — demand for flashy pieces, jeweler Bulgari SpA recently brought out a collection of one-of-a-kind pieces that travel from store to store and average about $70,000 each.

The Italian jeweler has introduced other marketing gimmicks too: At its recently renovated Fifth Avenue store in New York, Bulgari opened a cafe and introduced a summer jazz series. Each Wednesday, the store filled up with uptown socialites and downtown artist types wooed with free drinks and surrounded by counters filled with luxury goods.

Cartier jewelers previewed its fall line not at the store but at a party in a chic New York restaurant. Understated elegance? Not this year. The models who preened on a platform under runway-style lights were sporting custom-made, one-of-a-kind pieces. They included a platinum and diamond parrot ring with a 10-carat sapphire and a hefty 54-carat watch, encircled by two diamond-encrusted dolphins each as thick as a finger. Prices? Not available upon request. In other words, if you have to ask…. (After much prodding, Cartier disclosed that the pieces cost $198,000 and $380,000, respectively.)

Jewelers have long created elaborate, unique pieces, but they were often used as gimmicks to interest buyers who would go on to buy less-expensive merchandise. What’s different now is that the fabulous show-stoppers are selling.

“We’ve been selling the craziest things,” says William Fuhrman, executive vice president of the North America division of Chopard & Cie S.A., a Swiss jeweler. The company says its average sale has risen to the $15,000 to $20,000 price range, from a $7,000 to $10,000 range, over the last year. One of Chopard’s bestsellers this year: a $60,000 diamond pave watch.

This is all relative, of course. Most people could never afford so-called high jewelry and the rich have always been able to buy fine gems. Still, jewelers say in recent years, the pieces that people buy are bigger — and more rare — than in the past.

“It’s not just `I want pearls’ anymore. It’s `I want black Tahitian pearls’ or `I want blue-colored diamonds,’” says John Block, head of worldwide jewelry sales for Sotheby’s Holdings Inc. auctioneer, which will sell the $10-million jewelry collection of socialite Betsey Cushing Whitney this fall.

Reflecting the increased interest in colored diamonds, the Gemological Institute of America recently created new, more detailed designations for them. Harry Winston reports a sharp increase in demand.

Auction houses Christie’s International PLC and Sotheby’s have been a big part of the boom in expensive-jewelry sales, muscling into territory formerly occupied solely by upscale retailers. Jewelry is now the second-highest revenue producer at Christie’s after 20th-century art, according to department head Francois Curiel. In the first half of this year, Christie’s says jewelry sales are up 13%, to $136.4 million from the year-earlier period. Some flashy sales: A big pink diamond sold in Hong Kong for $1.2 million and an 11.25-carat blue diamond brought $1.4 million in Geneva.

The blockbuster $50.3-million sale of the Duchess of Windsor’s jewels in 1987 started it all. Auction catalogs now treat jewelry houses such as Tiffany & Co. and Cartier much like artists, granting designers biographies and index listings. Across the board, demand is particularly strong for jewelry identified with a particular design house; it seems to offer a guarantee of a certain quality of stone and classic design.

As demand heats up, so do demands for quality. In 1997, Christie’s began publicly disclosing artificial enhancements made to gems — such as heat treatments used to lend stones more brilliance.

At Noa, a New York jeweler that conducts its appointment-only business from an airy SoHo loft, customers can lounge on a black leather couch and sip cappuccino or champagne while diamonds are magnified on a “Diamond Zoom Imaging System.” Potential clients now get a video of their stone which they can take home and view while mulling over a purchase.

Says Yaron Kaminski, president of Noa. “They are demanding a better well-made stone and they’re willing to spend more money for it.”

Part of the reason Bulgari and other jewelers are marketing so hard is to take advantage of the growing, and possibly short-lived, affluence and disposable income of 30- and 40-somethings. “The growth will last for about five to 10 years,” predicts a Bulgari spokesman. “Then it will start to shrink. It’s now or never.”

Tiffany and Bulgari live up the street and Cartier is just down the block. Now, Van Cleef & Arpels has joined the Michigan Avenue jewelry crowd.

The event is long overdue, according to Van Cleef’s chief executive officer Nathalie Guedj of the Chicago store, which quietly opened its doors on May 12. This is the fifth store in the U.S for Van Cleef, part of the luxury conglomerate Compagnie Financiere de Richemont.

“Chicago is one of the largest and most important cities in the country and we should have been there long ago,” Guedj said.

The calm, salonlike interior is outfitted with salmon carpeting and slubby silk-covered chairs. The long, narrow 1,100-square-foot space features several glass cases that hold signature examples of the watches and floral-inspired jeweled brooches, necklaces, bracelets and rings the Parisian jeweler has been known for since its beginning in 1906.

And one such case holds one-of-a-kind pieces, including a platinum-and-diamond flower brooch for $485,000.

PARIS — Bulgari has a new jewelry box.

Its new 3,000-square-foot unit, on the upscale Avenue Montaigne shopping artery, replaces a smaller shop the Italian luxury jeweler and retailer first opened on the same street in the Plaza Athenee hotel in the early Eighties.

“Now we have more room for accessories and the jewelry can be presented in a larger, more luxurious way,” said Francesco Trapani, Bulgari chief executive officer, in an interview at the shop, which features clean lines and sycamore, glass and bronze fixtures.

Bulgari also operates a shop on the prestigious Place Vendome, as well as a shop-in-shop at the Printemps department store.

“France, and Paris in particular, is a very important growth market for us,” he said, adding that the Left Bank is another potential location for Bulgari. “This shop is part of our effort to concentrate on growth in France.”

To celebrate the new store, Bulgari hosted a dance party at the cavernous Theatre de L’Empire. Boy George manned the turntables to entertain revelers, including Claudia Schiffer and newly appointed Chloe designer Phoebe Philo.

DALLAS — De Boulle is moving up in the world.

The independent fine jewelry and watch retailer moved from its tiny, 1,300-square-foot shop into a grand Mediterranean-style home, tripling its jewelry inventory and adding a new fine art gallery.

Reconstructed from a single-level shell for an undisclosed sum, the new store, with its two-story pale-yellow stucco building, slate mansard roof and residential-style interior, is intended to establish de Boulle as a brand name that can draw clientele not just to its store from other Texas cities, but also to its new Web site at deboulle.com.

Within its 13,500 square feet are 24 luxury watch collections, a new gallery of estate jewelry including 500 pieces from Fred Leighton and the store’s own precious jewelry, specializing in large diamonds and a cluster of designer lines.

The luxurious new digs were made possible by the success of the 18-year-old enterprise in its former location just down Preston Road, where sales reached $13 million last year. Denis Boulle, president and owner, believes he can now easily reach $15 million annually, but is aiming for $20 million. After 10 days in the new location, in the heart of the affluent Park Cities neighborhood, sales doubled compared to the same period a year ago.

Pearls and pins have sold well, including a $45,000 strand of golden South Sea pearls and a $15,000 diamond, ruby and enamel frog pin. Trendy pave diamond hoop earrings are bestsellers, and estate pieces have been warmly received — a dozen were sold in the first 10 days — at $3,000 to $20,000.

“With our partnership with Fred Leighton, Dallas has never seen a collection of estate jewelry like this,” said Boulle.

Concentrated on the second level, the art gallery is mostly 18th-and 19th century French and English oil paintings, which Gilbert Rebillet, de Boulle’s chief operating officer and president of the fine art division, also plans to use to stage sculpture shows and book signings.

Jewelry just took a major step toward being considered an art, rather than a craft. The new Museum of Arts & Design in New York City’s Columbus Circle, scheduled to open in 2008, will include a study center and exhibition gallery for contemporary jewelry. The museum has appointed Ursula Ilse-Neuman as the country’s first museum curator for contemporary jewelry.

The new study center and gallery is supported by a S2 million grant by the Tiffany Foundation, the largest in the foundation’s history. The new Tiffany & Co. Foundation Jewelry Gallery will be the first resource of its kind in the country and will provide a new platform for the presentation and study of contemporary jewelry.

Designed by Massimo and Leila Vignelli, and Kiss & Zwigard Architects, the center will house the museum’s permanent collection and host a schedule of public programs and artist residencies, allowing visitors to become actively engaged in jewelry making processes and techniques.

Not long ago, the plain gold band was the quintessential symbol of marriage. Things are no longer so simple, though they are often clearly cut.

Today, a woman often chooses a diamond band to match her diamond engagement ring – which is likely to sport several smaller diamonds to set off the main stone.

The ruby, sapphire and emerald have their appeal, but can’t come close to the diamond in popularity. As James M. Joslyn, president and co-owner of Sharfmans, the renowned Worcester tiffany jewelry store, puts it, “A diamond is precious. It never goes out of style.”

Indeed, it has never been more true that diamonds – large and small – are a steadfast friend to accompany a woman through marriage. In fact, one of the hottest trends is a band set with micro-pave diamonds that give off a brilliant shimmer.

And the wedding band is only the beginning. About 30 years ago, the jewelry industry introduced the eternity ring, a band set all around with diamonds. That soon evolved into the anniversary band, which typically has diamonds set across the top. Tiffany & Co. now advertises such bands as “celebration” rings “for moments that matter.”

“There are so many anniversaries of one kind or another, says Joslyn, adding that bands make up about 40 percent of sales at Sharfmans.

Men, too, have broken with tradition. A man is still less likely to choose a ring with stones. But nowadays, he might want a distinctive design in gold or platinum that reflects his personal taste.

Charles S. Rosenblum, buyer and general manager of Neal Rosenblum Goldsmiths/Designers on Park Avenue, points out that some men choose unusual materials that truly set them apart, such as meteor, Damascus steel or mokume gane, a metal that looks like layers of wood.

“We’re not traditional in what we sell,” Rosenblum notes. “We sell a lot of handmade jewelry that is not mass produced.”

Sharfmans offers various types of bands, from the traditional channel setting to one in which each stone is held by prongs.

Yet Central Massachusetts jewelers are often visited by couples who have ideas of their own and want to play an active role in designing their rings.

Arpine Shavarsh Azizian was born into a family of jewelers. Three years ago, she assumed control of her father’s store on Main Street, and she now operates Shavarsh Jewelers/Design by Arpine. Azizian, a certified gemologist who has studied jewelry manufacturing in Europe and the United States, specializes in custom design.

“I get a lot of girls with pictures and ideas,” says Azizian, who is in her early 20s. “We meet in consultation. They give me a budget, and the next visit I do a showing. I try to make it as painless as possible.”

Azizian creates her designs on a computer. A mold is made and the ring is cast, set and finished at Arpiar, her manufacturing operation in Boylston.

Patricia Magliaro and her husband, Michael, had bought her engagement ring and their wedding bands from Azizian’s father, Shavarsh Azizian. Not long ago, they wanted matching bands to mark their fifth anniversary. “I told my husband, ‘I’m not getting any younger. I need to make sure it’s big enough so I can see it,’” Mrs. Magliaro says, laughing.

The Magliaros sat down with Azizian and told her what they had in mind: bands of diamonds to be set in a heart shape. Using the Magliaros’ ideas and her own, Azizian came up with a design all three loved.

Rosenblum’s brother, Neal, a jeweler for more than 30 years, often creates one-of-a-kind designs. He may then turn to a computer to create a pattern that can be made into a ring. Such CAD/CAM projects can go on for up to three months, with the customer involved all along the way.

“What makes it interesting and creative is every person is so different,” Charles Rosenblum says, adding that the store draws customers from Maine to New York. “We work in a lot of different styles.”

The offerings of the three stores appeal to a range of tastes, but the jewelers agree that many women currently have a penchant for pave, a style with tiny diamonds set tightly together.

“It’s always been popular in Europe, but it’s catching on here,” Azizian says of the setting. “Brides love it because of the sparkle. It makes the diamond look larger.”

Whether picked from among a glittering array of rings in a display case or custom designed, wedding and anniversary bands – especially those set with diamonds – are costly. Azizian says she works hard to fit any budget. But it’s not unusual for a couple to come to her ready to spend several thousand dollars. The bands sold by the Rosenblums start at about $1,500.

At Sharfmans, bands typically run from $1,000 to $3,000. But Joslyn says that some customers are prepared to spend $10,000 to $15,000 to mark an important date in a dazzling way. The expansion of the anniversary trend, he explains quietly, “was a big step for the business.”

XY Internet, LLC is proud to announce the launch of their first proprietary venture, http://www.ringtutor.com, the internet’s first on-demand diamond evaluation and recommendation service geared towards the wedding industry. RingTutor.com’s graduate gemologists offer impartial personal shopping services that help the soon-to-be-betrothed navigate the online diamond marketplace. Valentine’s Day is a wildly popular time to pop the question and RingTutor.com will guide consumers in one of their most important buying decisions to tiffany jewelry date.

In 2008, The Wedding Report, Inc. reported that 61% of couples researched engagement and wedding rings on the internet, although only 20% of them actually purchased their rings online. RingTutor.com simplifies the process and helps consumers save time and money when making this once in a lifetime purchase. While the internet offers great information, selection and pricing, novice diamond buyers can be overwhelmed and make bad purchasing decisions, even after hours of research. RingTutor.com employs trained, unbiased gemologists who can help consumers find the most appropriate diamond through two principal approaches to online diamond shopping — via their Diamond Advisor and Personal Shopper services.

With the Diamond Advisor, RingTutor.com’s gemologists use grading reports to evaluate up to three valentines money clips diamonds the consumer has already selected online, ranking each according to their priorities. This service is most helpful to shoppers who know the basic parameters of the diamond they desire, but who want the expertise of an independent party before making such a sizable investment. For consumers who have some idea of what they want, but don’t know where to start, the Personal Shopper will search the customer’s chosen online store or shop the internet at-large to provide three original recommendations based on the customers priorities.

RingTutor.com has created a third service — Hint, Hint, Hint, that appeals to women looking to give their sweethearts a subtle nudge in the right direction when it comes to finding their ideal engagement ring, especially with Valentine’s Day looming. By filling out a form that details their “dream” ring, women can send a free “hint” to their significant other with this information and a link to opt into RingTutor.com’s services.

RingTutor.com is the first site to launch within the XY Internet network, created by David Fortunoff. David Fortunoff is valentines bracelets a former Principal of noted retailer Fortunoff Fine Jewelry and Silverware, Inc.

Both Hawaiian Waters Adventure Park in Kapolei, Hawaii, and Wild Waters Adventures in Clovis, Calif., saw 150% increases in per caps when the parks tested a new wristband– based virtual money application this summer.

After a month of offering patrons the VirtualTrak system to guests in the 25-acre Kapolei waterpark, results cufflinks showed an increase in spending by patrons using a system that allows them to use cashless bracelets to make purchases over patrons who did not use the system.

Jason Reardon, director of finance and accounting for Hawaiian Waters, said he thinks the per caps may have increased even more than the 150% estimated by VirtualTrak. “It’s awesome. We’re very happy with it,” he said. “We’re very much locally driven, but with the locals you have to keep cutting ticket prices. So the best way to recoup that is on the in-park spending. There are not a lot of ways to do a per cap increase.”

Reardon plans to add the child locating capability next season.

The beta system was installed in Kapolei in March, and became fully operational in July.

The 52-acre Clovis waterpark mirrored those results.

This is the wave of the future, especially in waterparks, said Kent Lemasters, president and CEO of tiffany AmusementAquatic Management Group, based in Tustin, Calif., which manages Wild Water Adventures. “Long– term I think it’s a valuable asset. Short-term it’s a revenue generator,” Lemasters said.

Lemasters recently helped Wild Water Adventures in Clovis, Calif., out of bankruptcy reorganization using an aggressive revenue-generation strategy.

While the bracelet is the attractive aspect of the system for waterparks, whose patrons often have no pockets, other “bells and whistles” like group locator systems and line timing abilities will be valuable for amusement parks, Lemasters said.

Other companies have been coming out with similar cashless midway systems and child locator systems recently, bracelets but VirtualTrak is the only company that has combined all of these things into one computer chip in a bracelet, said Tom Land, VirtualTrak co-founder.

Wet’n Wild Waterworld in El Paso, Texas, is the third park to test the system this summer, and they also saw per cap increases in users, but there were fewer users overall than the other two parks, Land said. The chips were also installed in employee ID cards and will be installed in season passes in El Paso.

PLYMOUTH, ENGLAND – British researchers have shown in a randomized, controlled trial that magnetic bracelets relieve the pain of hip and knee osteoarthritis-but they couldn’t completely rule out a placebo effect.

The researchers with Peninsula Medical School here randomly assigned 194 men and women ages 45 to 80 years to wear a standard-strength, weak or non-magnetic bracelet on their wrist for 12 weeks, at which point their scores on the Western Ontario and McMaster Universities Osteoarthritis Index (WOMAC) tiffany jewelry were compared with those at baseline.

The patients who wore the standard magnetic bracelet (with a field strength of 170 to 200 mTesla), experienced an average 27% reduction in their WOMAC pain scores, as well as improvements in WOMAC function and visual analogue pain scores.

Statistically, the improvements in the standard magnet group were significantly better than those in the placebo group, but not the weak magnet group.

The results did not change significantly when researchers accounted for patients’ sex or analgesic use. “Whatever the mechanism, the benefit from magnetic bracelets seems clinically useful,” Dr. Tim Harlow and colleagues wrote in a recent issue of the British Medical Journal.

They pointed out the mean reductions in WOMAC pain and function scores in the standard-magnet bracelets group were similar to those achieved with nonsteroidal topical creams, non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (including COX-2 inhibitors) and exercise therapy.

The analysis accounted for the fact some participants identified their assigned bracelet. Although this unblinding did not affect the results, the researchers cautioned they cannot be certain whether their data show a specific effect of magnets, a placebo effect, or both.