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1 Manasseh was twelve years old when he became king, and he reigned in Jerusalem fifty-five years. 2 He did evil in the eyes of the Lord, following the detestable practices of the nations the Lord had driven out before the Israelites. 3 He rebuilt the high places his father Hezekiah had demolished; he also erected altars to the Baals and made Asherah poles. He bowed down to all the starry hosts and worshiped them. 4 He built altars in the temple of the Lord, of which the Lord had said, "My Name will remain in Jerusalem forever." 5 In both courts of the temple of the Lord, he built altars to all the starry hosts. 6 He sacrificed his sons in[a] the fire in the Valley of Ben Hinnom, practiced sorcery, divination and witchcraft, and consulted mediums and spiritists. He did much evil in the eyes of the Lord, provoking him to anger. 7 He took the carved image he had made and put it in God's temple, of which God had said to David and to his son Solomon, "In this temple and in Jerusalem, which I have chosen out of all the tribes of Israel, I will put my Name forever. 8 I will not again make the feet of the Israelites leave the land I assigned to your forefathers, if only they will be careful to do everything I commanded them concerning all the laws, decrees and ordinances given through Moses." 9 But Manasseh led Judah and the people of Jerusalem astray, so that they did more evil than the nations the Lord had destroyed before the Israelites. 10 The Lord spoke to Manasseh and his people, but they paid no attention. 11 So the Lord brought against them the army commanders of the king of Assyria, who took Manasseh prisoner, put a hook in his nose, bound him with bronze shackles and took him to Babylon. 12 In his distress he sought the favor of the Lord his God and humbled himself greatly before the God of his fathers. 13 And when he prayed to him, the Lord was moved by his entreaty and listened to his plea; so he brought him back to Jerusalem and to his kingdom. Then Manasseh knew that the Lord is God. 14 Afterward he rebuilt the outer wall of the City of David, west of the Gihon spring in the valley, as far as the entrance of the Fish Gate and encircling the hill of Ophel; he also made it much higher. He stationed military commanders in all the fortified cities in Judah. 15 He got rid of the foreign gods and removed the image from the temple of the Lord, as well as all the altars he had built on the temple hill and in Jerusalem; and he threw them out of the city. 16 Then he restored the altar of the Lord and sacrificed fellowship offerings[b] and thank offerings on it, and told Judah to serve the Lord, the God of Israel. 17 The people, however, continued to sacrifice at the high places, but only to the Lord their God. 18 The other events of Manasseh's reign, including his prayer to his God and the words the seers spoke to him in the name of the Lord, the God of Israel, are written in the annals of the kings of Israel.[c] 19 His prayer and how God was moved by his entreaty, as well as all his sins and unfaithfulness, and the sites where he built high places and set up Asherah poles and idols before he humbled himself—all are written in the records of the seers.[d] 20 Manasseh rested with his fathers and was buried in his palace. And Amon his son succeeded him as king. 21 Amon was twenty-two years old when he became king, and he reigned in Jerusalem two years. 22 He did evil in the eyes of the Lord, as his father Manasseh had done. Amon worshiped and offered sacrifices to all the idols Manasseh had made. 23 But unlike his father Manasseh, he did not humble himself before the Lord; Amon increased his guilt. 24 Amon's officials conspired against him and assassinated him in his palace. 25 Then the people of the land killed all who had plotted against King Amon, and they made Josiah his son king in his place. Top 10 sermons on 2 Chronicles 33 - A Second Chance God - Manasseh: Wasted Years - Salvation...For Him? For Me? - KING MANASSEH-A MIRACLE OF GRACE	<urn:uuid:12e810e5-dcb1-44c8-b055-e81a6abe1aa2>	CC-MAIN-2013-20	http://www.sermoncentral.com/bible/NIV/2-Chronicles-33.asp?move=next	s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz	en	0.990288	954	2.46875	2
Mobile health technology continues to prove itself. The latest example comes in the form of on-the-go diabetes management. In a recent small trial, 30 patients with type 2 diabetes spent 12 months using a smartphone app that provided real-time feedback on their blood-sugar levels, prompted them when to eat or take other action, and sent digital logbooks of their readings back to their doctors. The surprising result: these patients had 58 percent fewer ER and hospital visits over the year of the study than they'd had the previous year. It's important not to overinterpret that result. Not only … Read more	<urn:uuid:64c06698-c677-45c8-a17d-fb0b9ab3da5b>	CC-MAIN-2013-20	http://www.cnet.com/8300-5_1-0.html?keyword=a1c	s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00035-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz	en	0.942203	126	1.671875	2
LA JOYA — The La Joya Independent School District’s Jimmy Carter College Transition Academy received a provisional approval by the Texas Education Agency (TEA) to be an Early College High School (ECHS). Last year, the district had 105 freshmen begin their dual enrollment classes at Jimmy Carter. This coming school year, Jimmy Carter ECHS will enroll 120 ninth-graders; administrators said over 200 students applied. The program is similar to dual enrollment, where a student can earn high school and college credit at the same time, but it will be a four-year program instead of two. Upon graduation, those attending the ECHS will have earned their high school diploma and an associate’s degree or up to two years of credit toward a bachelor’s degree. Previously, only juniors could enroll in dual enrollment classes. In three years, the school will have its first graduating class from the campus, as long as the campus keeps the distinction as an ECHS. The district will have to reapply every year to keep that distinction. There are currently 95 campuses throughout Texas that have the designation. Prospective students go through an application process. Requirements include being first-time freshmen and the first in their family to attend college. Preferred requirements for applicants include students who demonstrate academic commitment as reflected in classroom participation, grades and exams; students who have good attendance and behavior record; and students who have good work ethics and study habits. To apply, a student also must be a resident of LJISD boundary and attended a LJISD middle school for the entire eighth-grade year, provide proof of residency, provide a copy of up-to-date immunization record, provide a copy of birth certificate and Social Security card, and complete the application and take it their counselor. The school will be partnering with South Texas College (STC). All teachers at the campus must have a master’s degree in the field they are teaching or the district will ask for an instructor from STC to teach the class. In other business at this week’s meeting, LJISD has improved its tax collections by nearly two percent. David Franz gave a delinquent tax collection report to the board during the past nine months. The law firm Purdue, Brandon, Fielder, Collins & Mott LLP has made over 18,000 phone calls, 250 personal visits and mailed over 20,000 notices of delinquency letters to residents and businesses that have delinquent taxes. Through these actions, 162 delinquent taxpayers were located and entered into payment agreements. When all other contact means failed, the firm filed 229 original petitions or interventions totaling more than $1,439,964 in base taxes. The firm was able to increase their base tax collection from the previous year by 2.21 percent. Construction projects were also discussed with Prodigy Construction Management LLC. Board members questioned the company on the reasons why the Nellie Schunior project might take an additional three months. LJISD Board Vice President Arnoldo Ochoa told Alex Palacios with Prodigy to make sure construction projects stay on schedule and are completed to agreement. “If you do a timeline, the board is very aggressive on it,” Ochoa said. Previously, projects were completed too fast or not on time. Either way, there are usually problems that have come up or things were not completed or done right, said Ochoa. “This warehouse is to prove a point that things can get done correctly and on time and plenty of information given to the board,” said Ochoa of the kitchen and facilities warehouse that Prodigy is also handling. A contractor not agreeing to terms and addendums in the contract and rebidding caused the delay. The board was given a preliminary construction schedule showing the project going through July and possibly August 2012. Superintendent Dr. Alda T. Benavides said the company must keep the promise that was made to the board to have the project done by May. “We had originally said it would be 12 months, and it would be from May to May. And we have extended it already three additional months? And we had agreed May to May. So I hope we do not have to go through to August,” said Benavides to Palacios. “We committed to this board that we would be done in 12 months.” Palacios said negotiations were still being made with the contractor and should be completed by the end of the month. Daniel Garza, facilities director, said he was confident the project could be completed by May 2012, explaining the ground has already been broken for the project. The plans for the kitchen and facilities warehouse are on schedule with staff and contractors getting together to make floor plans. \|< Prev\|\|Next >\| The Progress Times is the hometown newspaper for the local communities of Mission, Sharyland, Alton, Palmview, La Joya and surrounding areas in Western Hidalgo County. We have a staff of veteran reporters who work diligently every week to bring our readers the latest news as it affects their hometown area and people.	<urn:uuid:2f4d32c1-765c-4089-881b-6d0f6584d9e9>	CC-MAIN-2013-20	http://www.progresstimes.net/news/local-news/677-ljisd-gets-approval-for-early-college-hs.html	s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00039-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz	en	0.974307	1,070	1.507813	2
The Scottish Government is currently preparing plans for a new law on how over £9bn of public funds in Scotland are spent: the Procurement Reform Bill. Stop Climate Chaos Scotland is concerned that the initial intention behind this Bill, to achieve more sustainable procurement, has been lost. Indeed, this change of focus is reflected in the renaming of the proposed Bill from Sustainable Procurement Bill to Procurement Reform Bill. In summer 2012, the latest figures confirmed that Scottish emissions had increased and, indeed, the first legally-binding target set under the Scottish Climate Change Act had been missed. The proposed Bill could provide an opportunity to deliver significant emissions reductions in Scotland, contributing towards emissions targets. There is positive work being done on sustainable procurement in Scotland, within and outside the public sector, but this lacks strategic drive, or a rigorous, cohesive and ambitious approach from government. The Bill must be used as a framework to help facilitate a shift to Scotland’s public sector carrying out its business in an environmentally and socially sustainable manner. This would then be a Procurement Reform Bill worthy of its name in terms of progress towards sustainability of Scotland’s government and public sector performance. - This is a key opportunity for Scotland to deliver on climate change targets and signal a clear shift towards a low carbon economy. - This Bill must clearly set a strategic intention and purpose of government to procure all its products, materials and services sustainably. - The Bill must provide a legal framework to facilitate and achieve the transition towards sustainable procurement, with clarity on how environmental benefits will be safeguarded. - The Bill must give proper importance to environmental benefits alongside social and economic benefits. - Sustainable procurement requires an integrated approach from the start of the procurement process. Our latest news on this topic: 16th April 2013 25th March 2013 7th March 2013	<urn:uuid:ff814ddb-fcf9-44f1-be69-902ff9671465>	CC-MAIN-2013-20	http://www.stopclimatechaos.org/campaigns/procurement-law-can-help-reduce-emissions	s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz	en	0.93773	379	2.140625	2
The public consultation into what sort of parental controls should be in place by default, with adults then able to opt-out has been running for almost ten weeks now. The process started off with an online form, but after it was discovered you could view other peoples forms and change their response this consultation and others on the Department of Education website were taken offline. After a short while, the consultation re-opened, but has been restricted to people who can download and edit a Microsoft Word document. Given the ease with which commercial companies can make use of survey engines, one has to question the sanity of a consultation into online activity that feels more like an old fashioned letter writing scheme instead. The consultation gave three main options, which all resulted in some form of filtering, the Word based form does allow for people to state whether "systems like this should be in place for all internet connections and households, or just for those with children?". Which raises an interesting point, how would a broadband provider know whether you had children or not, and what happens when they visit relatives who have no children of their own, and Internet access? The Scotsman is reporting that a petition signed by some 110,000 people demanding that providers block access to hardcore pornography will be handed to the Government on Thursday by safetynet.org.uk. The precise wording that people on the petition have agreed support for is "To protect children I call on the Government to force Internet Service Providers to make accessing pornography an adult only opt-in service.". One counter petition is being ran by the Open Rights Group, which does not object to parents being allowed to block or opt into commercial schemes such as that ran by TalkTalk, but is worried that implementations may result in over blocking, for example all the reporting about this consultation, might flag websites as 18+ to automatic systems and result in many sites being labeled adult-only for little reason. A more credible example is the Google Play store, which carries material that ranges from suitable for children to 18+, should network level filtering block the whole store or individual pages? We have all grown up with books requiring no age restrictions, and the idea of censorship of books even upsets the Daily Mail. While 50 Shades of Grey is the headline grabber, erotic literature is not a new genre, just the first series of books to be so publicly visible.	<urn:uuid:22baf8e5-956f-4872-b133-8af3c4796ac7>	CC-MAIN-2013-20	http://www.thinkbroadband.com/news/5418-ten-week-online-parental-controls-consultation-coming-to-an-end.html	s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00030-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz	en	0.963421	480	1.546875	2
The Art of Survival, Taoism and the Warring States This week's theme: Survival +(June 27, 2008) I'm not trying to be difficult, but I can't help cutting against the grain on topics like surviving the coming bad times when my experience runs counter to the standard received wisdom. A common thread within most discussions of surviving bad times--especially really bad times--runs more or less like this: stockpile a bunch of canned/dried food and other valuable accoutrements of civilized life (generators, tools, canned goods, firearms, etc.) in a remote area far from urban centers, and then wait out the bad times, all the while protecting your stash with an array of weaponry and technology (night vision binocs, etc.) Now while I respect and admire the goal, I must respectfully disagree with just about every assumption behind this strategy. Once again, this isn't because I enjoy being ornery (please don't check on that with my wife) but because everything in this strategy runs counter to my own experience in rural, remote settings. You see, when I was a young teen my family lived in the mountains. To the urban sophisticates who came up as tourists, we were "hicks" (or worse), and to us they were "flatlanders" (derisive snort). Now the first thing you have to realize is that we know the flatlanders, but they don't know us. They come up to their cabin, and since we live here year round, we soon recognize their vehicles and know about how often they come up, what they look like, if they own a boat, how many in their family, and just about everything else which can be learned by simple observation. The second thing you have to consider is that after school and chores (remember there are lots of kids who are too young to have a legal job, and many older teens with no jobs, which are scarce), boys and girls have a lot of time on their hands. We're not taking piano lessons and all that urban busywork. And while there are plenty of pudgy kids spending all afternoon or summer in front of the TV or videogame console, not every kid is like that. So we're out riding around. On a scooter or motorcycle if we have one, (and if there's gasoline, of course), but if not then on bicycles, or we're hoofing it. Since we have time, and we're wandering all over this valley or mountain or plain, one way or another, then somebody will spot that trail of dust rising behind your pickup when you go to your remote hideaway. Or we'll run across the new road or driveway you cut, and wander up to see what's going on. Not when you're around, of course, but after you've gone back down to wherever you live. There's plenty of time; since you picked a remote spot, nobody's around. Your hideaway isn't remote to us; this is our valley, mountain, desert, etc., all 20 miles of it, or what have you. We've hiked around all the peaks, because there's no reason not to and we have a lot of energy. Fences and gates are no big deal, (if you triple-padlock your gate, then we'll just climb over it) and any dirt road, no matter how rough, is just an open invitation to see what's up there. Remember, if you can drive to your hideaway, so can we. Even a small pickup truck can easily drive right through most gates (don't ask how, but I can assure you this is true). If nobody's around, we have all the time in the world to lift up or snip your barbed wire and sneak into your haven. Its remoteness makes it easy for us to poke around and explore without fear of being seen. What flatlanders think of as remote, we think of as home. If you packed in everything on your back, and there was no road, then you'd have a very small hideaway--more a tent than a cabin. You'd think it was safely hidden, but we'd eventually find it anyway, because we wander all over this area, maybe hunting rabbits, or climbing rocks, or doing a little fishing if there are any creeks or lakes in the area. Or we'd spot the wisp of smoke rising from your fire one crisp morning, or hear your generator, and wonder who's up there. We don't need much of a reason to walk miles over rough country, or ride miles on our bikes. When we were 13, my buddy J.E. and I tied sleeping bags and a few provisions on our bikes--mine was a crappy old 3-speed, his a Schwinn 10-speed--and rode off into the next valley over bone-jarring dirt roads. We didn't have fancy bikes with shocks, and we certainly didn't have camp chairs, radios, big ice chests and all the other stuff people think is necessary to go camping; we had some matches, cans of beans and apple sauce and some smashed bread. (It didn't start out smashed, but the roads were rough. Note: if you ever suffer from constipation, I recommend beans and apple sauce.) We camped where others had camped before us, not in a campground but just off the road in a pretty little meadow with a ring of fire-blackened rocks and a flat spot among the pine needles. We didn't have a tent, or air mattress, or any of those luxuries; but we had the smashed bread and the beans, and we made a little fire and ate and then went to sleep under the stars glittering in the dark sky. There were a few bears in the area, but we weren't afraid; we didn't need a gun to feel safe. We weren't dumb enough to sleep with our food; if some bear wandered by and wanted the smashed bread, he could take it without bothering us. The only animal which could bother us was the human kind, and since few people walk 10 or more miles over rough ground in the heat and dust, then we'd hear their truck or motorbike approaching long before they ever spotted us. We explored old mines and anything else we spotted, and then we rode home, a long loop over rutted, dusty roads. In summer, we took countless hikes over the mountainous wilderness behind his family cabin. All of which is to say that the locals will know where your hideaway is because they have lots of time to poke around. Any road, no matter how rough, might as well be lit with neon lights which read, "Come on up and check this out!" If a teen doesn't spot your road, then somebody will: a county or utility employee out doing his/her job, a hunter, somebody. As I said, the only slim chance you have of being undetected is if you hump every item in your stash on your pack through trailess, roadless wilderness. But if you ever start a fire, or make much noise, then you're sending a beacon somebody will eventually notice. The Taoists developed their philosophy during an extended era of turmoil known as the Warring States period of Chinese history. One of their main principles runs something like this: if you're tall and stout and strong, then you'll call attention to yourself. And because you're rigid--that is, what looks like strength at first glance--then when the wind rises, it snaps you right in half. If you're thin and ordinary and flexible, like a willow reed, then you'll bend in the wind, and nobody will notice you. You'll survive while the "strong" will be broken, either by unwanted attention or by being brittle. Another thing to ponder is that the human animal is a much better predator than it is an elusive prey. Goats and wild turkeys and other animals have very keen senses of smell and hearing, and it's tough to get close without them smelling you or hearing you. They're well camoulflaged, and since human sight is selected to detect movement and color, if they stay quite still we have a hard time spotting them. In comparison, the human is a clumsy prey. It can't smell or hear very well, and it's large and not well camouflaged. Plus it's usually distracted and unaware of its surroundings. It doesn't take much to kill a human, either; a single-shot rifle and a single round of .22-long is plenty enough. If the chips are down, and push comes to shove, then what we're discussing is a sort of war, isn't it? And if we're talking about war, then we should think about the principles laid down in The Art Of War by Sun Tzu quite some time ago. The flatlander protecting his valuable depot is on the defensive, and anyone seeking to take it away (by negotiation, threat or force) is on the offensive. The defense can select the site for proximity to water, clear fields of fire, or what have you, but one or two defenders have numerous disadvantages. Perhaps most importantly, they need to sleep. Secondly, just about anyone who's plinked cans with a rifle and who's done a little hunting can sneak up and put away an unwary human. Unless you remain in an underground bunker 24/7, at some point you'll be vulnerable. And that's really not much of a life--especially when your food supplies finally run out, which they eventually will. Or you run out of water, or your sewage system overflows, or some other situation requires you to emerge. So let's line it all up. Isn't a flatlander who piles up a high-value stash in a remote area with no neighbors within earshort or line of sight kind of like a big, tall brittle tree? All those chains and locks and barbed-wire fencing and bolted doors just shout out that the flatlander has something valuable inside that cabin/bunker/RV etc. Now if he doesn't know any better, then the flatlander reckons his stash is safe. But what he's not realizing if that we know about his stash and his vehicle and whatever else can be observed. If some locals want that stash, then they'll wait for the flatlander to leave and then they'll tow the RV off or break into the cabin, or if it's small enough, disassemble it and haul it clean off. There's plenty of time, and nobody's around. That's pretty much the ideal setting for leisurely thieving: a high-value stash of goodies in a remote area accessible by road is just about perfect. Let's say things have gotten bad, and the flatlander is burrowed into his cabin. Eventually some locals will come up to visit; in a truck if there's gas, on foot if there isn't. We won't be armed; we're not interested in taking the flatlander's life or goodies. We just want to know what kind of person he is. So maybe we'll ask to borrow his generator for a town dance, or tell him about the church food drive, or maybe ask if he's seen so-and-so around. Now what's the flatlander going to do when several unarmed men approach? Gun them down? Once he's faced with regular unarmed guys, he can't very well conclude they're a threat and warn them off. But if he does, then we'll know he's just another selfish flatlander. He won't get any help later when he needs it; or it will be minimal and grudging. He just counted himself out. Suppose some bad guys hear about the flatlander's hideway and stash. All it takes to stalk any prey is patience and observation; and no matter how heavily armed the flatlander is, he'll become vulnerable at some point to a long-range shot. (Even body armor can't stop a headshot or a hit to the femoral artery in the thigh.) Maybe he stays indoors for 6 days, or even 60. But at some point the windmill breaks or the dog needs walking or what have you, and he emerges--and then he's vulnerable. The more visible and stringent the security, the more he's advertising the high value of his depot. And of course guarding a high-value stash alone is problematic for the simple reason that humans need to sleep. So creating a high-value horde in a remote setting is looking like just about the worst possible strategy in the sense that the flatlander has provided a huge incentive to theft/robbery and also provided a setting advantageous to the thief or hunter. If someone were to ask this "hick" for a less risky survival strategy, I would suggest moving into town and start showing a little generosity rather than a lot of hoarding. If not in town, then on the edge of town, where you can be seen and heard. I'd suggest attending church, if you've a mind to, even if your faith isn't as strong as others. Or join the Lions Club, Kiwanis or Rotary International, if you can get an invitation. I'd volunteer to help with the pancake breakfast fundraiser, and buy a couple tickets to other fundraisers in town. I'd mow the old lady's lawn next door for free, and pony up a dollar if the elderly gentleman in line ahead of me at the grocery store finds himself a dollar light on his purchase. If I had a parcel outside town that was suitable for an orchard or other crop, I'd plant it, and spend plenty of time in the local hardware store and farm supply, asking questions and spreading a little money around the local merchants. I'd invite my neighbors into my little plain house so they could see I don't own diddly-squat except some second-hand furniture and a crappy old TV. And I'd leave my door open so anyone could see for themselves I've got very little worth taking. I'd have my tools, of course; but they're scattered around and old and battered by use; they're not shiny and new and expensive-looking, and they're not stored all nice and clean in a box some thief could lift. They're hung on old nails, or in the closet, and in the shed; a thief would have to spend a lot of time searching the entire place, and with my neighbors looking out for me, the thief is short of the most important advantage he has, which is time. If somebody's desperate enough or dumb enough to steal my old handsaw, I'll buy another old one at a local swap meet. (Since I own three anyway, it's unlikely anyone would steal all three because they're not kept together.) My valuable things, like the water filter, are kept hidden amidst all the low-value junk I keep around to send the message there's nothing worth looking at. The safest things to own are those which are visibly low-value, surrounded by lots of other mostly worthless stuff. I'd claim a spot in the community garden, or hire a neighbor to till up my back yard, and I'd plant chard and beans and whatever else my neighbors suggested grew well locally. I'd give away most of what I grew, or barter it, or maybe sell some at the farmer's market. It wouldn't matter how little I had to sell, or how much I sold; what mattered was meeting other like-minded souls and swapping tips and edibles. If I didn't have a practical skill, I'd devote myself to learning one. If anyone asked me, I'd suggest saw sharpening and beer-making. You're legally entitled to make quite a bit of beer for yourself, and a decent homebrew is always welcome by those who drink beer. It's tricky, and your first batches may blow up or go flat, but when you finally get a good batch you'll be very popular and well-appreciated if you're of the mind to share. Saw-sharpening just takes patience and a simple jig; you don't need to learn a lot, like a craftsman, but you'll have a skill you can swap with craftsmen/women. As a carpenter, I need sharp saws, and while I can do it myself, I find it tedious and would rather rebuild your front porch handrail or a chicken coop in exchange for the saw-sharpening. Pickles are always welcome in winter, or when rations get boring; the Germans and Japanese of old lived on black bread or brown rice and pickled vegetables, with an occasional piece of dried meat or fish. Learning how to pickle is a useful and easy-to-learn craft. There are many others. If you're a techie, then volunteer to keep the network up at the local school; do it for free, and do a good job. Show you care. Because the best protection isn't owning 30 guns; it's having 30 people who care about you. Since those 30 have other people who care about them, you actually have 300 people who are looking out for each other, including you. The second best protection isn't a big stash of stuff others want to steal; it's sharing what you have and owning little of value. That's being flexible, and common, the very opposite of creating a big fat highly visible, high-value target and trying to defend it yourself in a remote setting. I know this runs counter to just about everything that's being recommended by others, but if you're a "hick" like me, then you know it rings true. The flatlanders are scared because they're alone and isolated; we're not scared. We've endured bad times before, and we don't need much to get by. We're not saints, but we will reciprocate to those who extend their good spirit and generosity to the community in which they live and in which they produce something of value. What's For Dinner at Your House has been updated! Four cheap, quick, healthy tasty meals: Crockpot Lentil Soup, Skillet Stuff, Quick Chili, Frijoles Charros (Black Bean Chili). Meals for $ .53 per big healthy serving! The Power of Eight and Three (Reinventing our Native Cuisine) The Principles of Trading Also Apply to Life New Reader commentaries: commentaries week of June 27, 2008 NOTE: contributions are acknowledged in the order received. Your name and email remain confidential and will not be given to any other individual, company or agency. Thank you, Nellie D. ($40), for your outrageously generous donation to this site, and for your written note of encouragement. I am greatly honored by your support and readership. For more on this subject and a wide array of other topics, please visit my weblog. All content, HTML coding, format design, design elements and images copyright © 2008 Charles Hugh Smith, All rights reserved in all media, unless otherwise credited or noted. I would be honored if you linked this wEssay to your site, or printed a copy for your own use. \|consulting\|\|blog fiction/novels articles my hidden history books/films what's for dinner\|\|home email me\|	<urn:uuid:deb915de-d868-4616-8443-634e7ee290e7>	CC-MAIN-2013-20	http://www.oftwominds.com/blogjun08/survival6-08.html	s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00050-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz	en	0.972584	4,006	1.632813	2
By DIANE R. CHODAN The Dunkirk-Fredonia Lions Club was kind enough to ask me along on last spring's trip to Washington D.C., It was an assignment for the OBSERVER, but it was something I wanted to do anyway. My goal had once been to teach high school social studies, and I had concentrated in American history. My preference has always been social history. Logical descriptions of battles that sound like chess games leave me cold. Flanking actions and pincer movements are hard for me to comprehend. Somewhere in all of that there are human bodies and terrible loss. J. Carter Rowland poses with two servicewomen at the World War II Memorial in Washington, D.C. last spring. Still the symbolism of the war monuments, especially the World War II monument that Rolland Kidder explained so thoroughly, was fascinating to me. Historical bas-relief sculptures depicted famous scenes, including those that occurred on the homefront. The bronze sculptured rope connecting the pavilions representing each of the states, territories and the District of Columbia symbolize the unity of the country. A display of 4,000 gold stars represent the over 400,000 casualties. The detail was amazing; the monument was awe-inspiring. Kidder also explained how controversial the effort to build the monument was. It amazed me that the monument to the war which saw so much unity encountered so much controversy. Kidder reported there were 24 hearings about the monument. Once I had time to take in the details of the monuments, the reactions to them by the veterans on the trip, and just reflect, it seemed peculiar that the monuments were built in reverse chronological order - that is the monument to the most recent war, Vietnam, was built first, the Korean War second, and the World War II monument last. When I talked to Kidder about this after his presentation to the Lions Club, he said that the Vietnam memorial was necessary to attempt to heal a wounded country. No doubt; Vietnam deeply divided the country. Kidder, a veteran himself, called it a "war of choice." Something else is peculiar; there is no national monument to the veterans who served in the First World War. Frank Buckles, the last living American veteran of that conflict died on Feb 27, 2011. He was 110. In 2008, he visited Washington, D.C. and asked that the District of Columbia War Memorial on the National Mall be restored and rededicated as a National and District of Columbia World War I Memorial. There is a website for the World War I Memorial Foundation (www.wwimemorial.com) which is looking for private donations to accomplish this task. Its website says that the memorial's restoration was celebrated. There is also a bill in Congress, H.R. 938 titled Frank Buckles Memorial World War I. It was introduced Mar. 8, 2011. Subcommittee hearings were held on Jan. 24, 2012. This bill is more ambitious than the restoration of the monument. It includes a commemorative effort to last from 2014 through 2018, including a rededication of the Liberty Memorial of Kansas City as the National World War Museum and Memorial, programs, projects, and activities to commemorate the centennial of World War I, and a Commission to oversee this. It calls for an appropriation of $1 million from 2012 through 2019. Whether or not this bill passes, it makes interesting reading, especially Section 2 Findings which points out that more than 4 million men and women served in uniform including future presidents Harry S. Truman and Dwight D. Eisenhower. Also interesting is research into the "War to end all wars," which this country entered toward its end and Frank Buckles himself, who after serving in World War 1 was a civilian prisoner of war during World War II. As Rolland Kidder said, "We should remember American history - all of it." Diane Chodan is an OBSERVER Staff Writer. Comments may be sent to email@example.com	<urn:uuid:7dd6f94c-45c7-4d46-80a1-1c58ef347170>	CC-MAIN-2013-20	http://observertoday.com/page/content.detail/id/569682/War-monuments.html?nav=5007	s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00051-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz	en	0.963943	830	2.1875	2
A chemical spill closed Interstate 635 in both directions near Montfort Road east of the Dallas North Tollway on Friday. But the acid leak was not nearly as dangerous as officials had earlier feared. The Texas Department of Transportation had originally said the chemical was hydrofluoric acid. But hazmat crews found that the source of the leak was a container of hydrochloric acid. An undetermined amount of the acid spilled onto the highway, Dallas police said earlier. The Ryder truck was carrying at least four different kinds of chemicals, including 200 gallons of the toxic and highly corrosive hydrofluoric acid. Hazmat crews said none of those containers were leaking. Dallas Fire-Rescue Capt. Ted Padgett, the city's hazmat program manager, said both acids look like water. Hydrochloric acid has a variety of uses, including cleaning products. Hydrofluoric acid can eat skin all the way to the bone. The driver noticed a yellow tint and alerted authorities that he needed to stop because of a chemical leak shortly before 3 p.m. LBJ Freeway reopened shortly before 6 p.m., with all eastbound lanes open and three westbound lanes open. Officials had earlier said the freeway could be shut down until about 8 p.m., officials said. The backup stretched for miles, clogging other major roads in North Dallas. "It's crazy," said Arlington resident Kevin Smith. "It's crazy. It's always bad, it's always crowded. There's always a wreck, there's always traffic. All of the drums needed to be removed carefully from the trailer, which accounted for the delay in reopening the roadway. Hazmat crews were reloading the drums onto another truck. NBCDFW's Randy McIlwain and Omar Villafranca contributed to this report.	<urn:uuid:ed7b78e1-4e31-4071-a85f-55d5fd95d85e>	CC-MAIN-2013-20	http://www.nbcdfw.com/traffic/stories/Hydroflouric-Acid-Spill-Shuts-Down-LBJ-Freeway-83674227.html	s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00038-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz	en	0.975286	380	1.570313	2
A really quick example may help you out. As a baseball fan, I am sure you don’t think it’s a big deal when a player hits .400 in a game, i.e. goes 2 for 5 in a single game. I am sure you’d be impressed if that same player hit .400 for a season, ie he collected 200 hits in 500 AB. That’s because 5 AB is not a big enough sample to tell us anything about a player’s true talent level. 500 AB however is a much bigger sample and thus a better reflection of a player’s true talent level. The bigger the sample, the better reflection of a player’s true ability.	<urn:uuid:f12c8ea6-af8f-4d65-92c8-8f6949d1fd4a>	CC-MAIN-2013-20	http://www.baseballthinkfactory.org/forums/viewthread/1804/	s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00076-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz	en	0.929107	151	1.773438	2
06 May 2010 23:07 [Source: ICIS news] WASHINGTON (ICIS news)--A new White House report issued on Thursday calls for precautionary prohibition of toxic or carcinogenic chemicals in order to protect the public even if there is no clear proof that the substances threaten human health. Senator Fran Lautenberg (Democrat-New Jersey), sponsor of newly introduced legislation to modernise and broaden the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), said the report by the presidential cancer panel lended further support to the need for a major overhaul of federal regulation of chemicals in commerce. Lautenberg, whose My Safe Chemicals Act (S-3209) has been described by industry leaders as exceeding the type of restrictive controls under the EU’s Reach programme, said the White House study demonstrated “the widespread health risks of chemical exposure”. The study, he said, was “further evidence that ?xml:namespace> The White House cancer panel report recommended as a first step that “A precautionary, prevention-oriented approach should replace current reactionary approaches to environmental contaminants in which human harm must be proven before action is taken to reduce or eliminate exposure”. The report, “Reducing Environmental Cancer Risk”, included a section titled “A Call to Action”, that stated: “The burgeoning number and complexity of known or suspected environmental carcinogens compel us to act to protect public health, even though we may lack irrefutable proof of harm”. The study singled out the nation’s chemicals sector, charging that “Industry has exploited regulatory weaknesses, such as government’s reactionary (rather than precautionary) approach to regulation”. “Likewise, industry has exploited government’s use of an outdated methodology for assessing ‘attributable fractions’ of the cancer burden due to specific environmental exposures,” the report said, adding: “This methodology has been used effectively by industry to justify introducing untested chemicals into the environment.” The three-member cancer panel said The report said that many industrial chemicals or processes had “hazardous by-products or metabolites” and that numerous chemicals used in manufacturing “remain in or on the product as residues, while others are integral components of the products themselves”. “Further, in the ongoing quest for more effective and efficient ways of making industrial and consumer products, new chemicals and other substances are being created continually and existing substances are being put to new uses” which suggests that “unanticipated environmental hazards may emerge from the push for progress”. The study noted that while the number and mortality of cancer cases in the The panel members also called for more aggressive government policies to support green chemistry research and development. “But new products must be well studied prior to and following their introduction into the environment and stringently regulated to ensure their short- and long-term safety,” the report said. The study was based on testimony from 45 invited experts from academia, government, industry, the environmental and cancer advocacy communities and the public, the report summary said. To discuss issues facing the chemical industry go to For the latest chemical news, data and analysis that directly impacts your business sign up for a free trial to ICIS news - the breaking online news service for the global chemical industry. Get the facts and analysis behind the headlines from our market leading weekly magazine: sign up to a free trial to ICIS Chemical Business. \|ICIS news FREE TRIAL\| \|Get access to breaking chemical news as it happens.\| \|ICIS Global Petrochemical Index (IPEX)\| \|ICIS Global Petrochemical Index (IPEX). Download the free tabular data and a chart of the historical index\|	<urn:uuid:fcb5bca8-e962-46e4-815d-05b1abb9507c>	CC-MAIN-2013-20	http://www.icis.com/Articles/2010/05/06/9357068/white-house-report-calls-for-precautionary-toxic-chemical-bans.html	s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00045-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz	en	0.938219	787	1.960938	2
© 2005-2012 American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO). All rights reserved worldwide. After treatment for cancer ends, talk with your child’s doctor about developing a follow-up care plan. This plan may include regular physical examinations and/or medical tests to monitor your child’s recovery for the coming months and years. All children treated for cancer should have life-long, follow-up care. Many of the current treatments that are effective in curing childhood cancer are associated with short-term and long-term side effects, including cognitive (thought-process) and developmental side effects. These side effects can appear or change as a child grows older. As most children with cancer are cured, the schedule of follow-up care is based on the dosage and specific drugs used in treatment, as well as the dosage of radiation therapy. Recommendations for follow-up care according to the risk of possible late effects of treatment have been developed by the Children’s Oncology Group and can be found at www.survivorshipguidelines.org. Based on the type of treatment the child received, the doctor will determine what examinations and tests are needed to check for long-term side effects and the possibility of secondary cancers. Your child’s doctor can recommend the necessary screening tests. Follow-up care should also address the child’s quality of life, including any developmental or emotional concerns. Learn more about childhood cancer survivorship. The child’s family is encouraged to organize and keep a record of the child’s medical information. That way, as the child enters adulthood, he or she has a clear, written history of the diagnosis, the treatment given, and the doctor’s recommendations about the schedule for follow-up care. The doctor’s office can help you create this. This information will be valuable to doctors who care for your child during his or her lifetime. ASCO offers cancer treatment summary forms to help keep track of the cancer treatment your child received and develop a survivorship care plan once treatment is completed. Children who have had cancer can also enhance the quality of their future by following established guidelines for good health into and through adulthood, including not smoking, maintaining a healthy weight, eating a balanced diet, and participating in regular physical activity. Talk with the doctor about developing a plan that is best for your child’s needs. Learn more about the next steps to take in survivorship. Find out more about common terms used after cancer treatment is complete.	<urn:uuid:f5012c15-e22e-4e44-a52d-2b651d7d9fed>	CC-MAIN-2013-20	http://www.cancer.net/cancer-types/childhood-cancer/after-treatment	s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz	en	0.962403	517	2.59375	3
What is Acromegaly? Acromegaly is a hormonal disorder that results when the pituitary gland produces excess growth hormone (GH). It most commonly affects middle-aged adults and can result in serious illness and premature death. Once recognised, acromegaly is treatable in most patients, but because of its slow and often insidious onset, it frequently is not diagnosed correctly. The name acromegaly comes from the Greek words for "extremities" and "enlargement" and reflects one of its most common symptoms, the abnormal growth of the hands and feet. Soft tissue swelling of the hands and feet is often an early feature, with patients noticing a change in ring or shoe size. Gradually, bony changes alter the patient's facial features: the brow and lower jaw protrude, the nasal bone enlarges, and spacing of the teeth increases. Overgrowth of bone and cartilage often leads to arthritis. When tissue thickens, it may trap nerves, causing carpal tunnel syndrome, characterised by numbness and weakness of the hands. Other symptoms of acromegaly include thick, coarse, oily skin; skin tags; enlarged lips, nose and tongue; deepening of the voice due to enlarged sinuses and vocal cords; snoring due to upper airway obstruction; excessive sweating and skin odor; fatigue and weakness; headaches; impaired vision; abnormalities of the menstrual cycle and sometimes breast discharge in women; and impotence in men. There may be enlargement of body organs, including the liver, spleen, kidneys and heart. The most serious health consequences of acromegaly are diabetes mellitus, hypertension, and increased risk of cardiovascular disease. Patients with acromegaly are also at increased risk for polyps of the colon that can develop into cancer. When GH-producing tumours occur in childhood, the disease that results is called gigantism rather than acromegaly. Fusion of the growth plates of the long bones occurs after puberty so that development of excessive GH production in adults does not result in increased height. Prolonged exposure to excess GH before fusion of the growth plates causes increased growth of the long bones and increased height. What causes acromegaly? Acromegaly is caused by prolonged overproduction of GH by the pituitary gland. The pituitary is a small gland at the base of the brain that produces several important hormones to control body functions such as growth and development, reproduction, and metabolism. GH is part of a cascade of hormones that, as the name implies, regulates the physical growth of the body. This cascade begins in a part of the brain called the hypothalamus, which makes hormones that regulate the pituitary. One of these, growth hormone-releasing hormone (GHRH), stimulates the pituitary gland to produce GH. Another hypothalamic hormone, somatostatin, inhibits GH production and release. Secretion of GH by the pituitary into the bloodstream causes the production of another hormone, called insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF-1), in the liver. IGF-1 is the factor that actually causes the growth of bones and other tissues of the body. IGF-1, in turn, signals the pituitary to reduce GH production. GHRH, somatostatin, GH, and IGF-1 levels in the body are tightly regulated by each other and by sleep, exercise, stress, food intake and blood sugar levels. If the pituitary continues to make GH independent of the normal regulatory mechanisms, the level of IGF-1 continues to rise, leading to bone growth and organ enlargement. The excess GH also causes changes in sugar and lipid metabolism and can cause diabetes. In over 90 percent of acromegaly patients, the overproduction of GH is caused by a benign tumour of the pituitary gland, called an adenoma. These tumours produce excess GH and, as they expand, compress surrounding brain tissues, such as the optic nerves. This expansion causes the headaches and visual disturbances that are often symptoms of acromegaly. In addition, compression of the surrounding normal pituitary tissue can alter production of other hormones, leading to changes in menstruation and breast discharge in women and impotence in men. There is a marked variation in rates of GH production and the aggressiveness of the tumour. Some adenomas grow slowly and symptoms of GH excess are often not noticed for many years. Other adenomas grow rapidly and invade surrounding brain areas or the sinuses, which are located near the pituitary. In general, younger patients tend to have more aggressive tumours. Most pituitary tumours arise spontaneously and are not genetically inherited. Many pituitary tumours arise from a genetic alteration in a single pituitary cell which leads to increased cell division and tumour formation. This genetic change, or mutation, is not present at birth, but is acquired during life. The mutation occurs in a gene that regulates the transmission of chemical signals within pituitary cells; it permanently switches on the signal that tells the cell to divide and secrete GH. The events within the cell that cause disordered pituitary cell growth and GH oversecretion currently are the subject of intensive research. In a few patients, acromegaly is caused not by pituitary tumours but by tumours of the pancreas, lungs, and adrenal glands. These tumours also lead to an excess of GH, either because they produce GH themselves or, more frequently, because they produce GHRH, the hormone that stimulates the pituitary to make GH. In these patients, the excess GHRH can be measured in the blood and establishes that the cause of the acromegaly is not due to a pituitary defect. When these non-pituitary tumours are surgically removed, GH levels fall and the symptoms of acromegaly improve. In patients with GHRH-producing, non-pituitary tumours, the pituitary still may be enlarged and may be mistaken for a tumour. Therefore, it is important that physicians carefully analyze all "pituitary tumours" removed from patients with acromegaly in order not to overlook the possibility that a tumour elsewhere in the body is causing the disorder How common is acromegaly? Small pituitary adenomas are common. During autopsies, they are found in up to 25 percent of the U.S. population. However, these tumours rarely cause symptoms or produce excessive GH or other pituitary hormones. Scientists estimate that about 3 out of every million people develop acromegaly each year and that 40 to 60 out of every million people suffer from the disease at any time. However, because the clinical diagnosis of acromegaly often is missed, these numbers probably underestimate the frequency of the disease. How is acromegaly diagnosed? If a doctor suspects acromegaly, he or she can measure the GH level in the blood after a patient has fasted overnight to determine if it is elevated. However, a single measurement of an elevated blood GH level is not enough to diagnose acromegaly, because GH is secreted by the pituitary in spurts and its concentration in the blood can vary widely from minute to minute. At a given moment, a patient with acromegaly may have a normal GH level, whereas a GH level in a healthy person may be five times higher. Because of these problems, more accurate information can be obtained when GH is measured under conditions in which GH secretion is normally suppressed. Physicians often use the oral glucose tolerance test to diagnose acromegaly, because ingestion of 75 g of the sugar glucose lowers blood GH levels less than 2 ng/ml in healthy people. In patients with GH overproduction, this reduction does not occur. The glucose tolerance test is the most reliable method of confirming a diagnosis of acromegaly. Physicians also can measure IGF-1 levels in patients with suspected acromegaly. As mentioned earlier, elevated GH levels increase IGF-1 blood levels. Because IGF-1 levels are much more stable over the course of the day, they are often a more practical and reliable measure than GH levels. Elevated IGF-1 levels almost always indicate acromegaly. However, a pregnant woman's IGF-1 levels are two to three times higher than normal. In addition, physicians must be aware that IGF-1 levels decline in aging people and may be abnormally low in patients with poorly controlled diabetes mellitus. After acromegaly has been diagnosed by measuring GH or IGF-1, imaging techniques, such as computed tomography (CT) scans or magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans of the pituitary are used to locate the tumour that causes the GH overproduction. Both techniques are excellent tools to visualize a tumour without surgery. If scans fail to detect a pituitary tumour, the physician should look for non-pituitary tumours in the chest, abdomen, or pelvis as the cause for excess GH. The presence of such tumours usually can be diagnosed by measuring GHRH in the blood and by a CT scan of possible tumour sites. How is acromegaly treated? The goals of treatment are to reduce GH production to normal levels, to relieve the pressure that the growing pituitary tumour exerts on the surrounding brain areas, to preserve normal pituitary function, and to reverse or ameliorate the symptoms of acromegaly. Currently, treatment options include surgical removal of the tumour, drug therapy, and radiation therapy of the pituitary. Surgery is a rapid and effective treatment. The surgeon reaches the pituitary through an incision in the nose and, with special tools, removes the tumour tissue in a procedure called transsphenoidal surgery. This procedure promptly relieves the pressure on the surrounding brain regions and leads to a lowering of GH levels. If the surgery is successful, facial appearance and soft tissue swelling improve within a few days. Surgery is most successful in patients with blood GH levels below 40 ng/ml before the operation and with pituitary tumours no larger than 10 mm in diameter. Success depends on the skill and experience of the surgeon. The success rate also depends on what level of GH is defined as a cure. The best measure of surgical success is normalization of GH and IGF-1 levels. Ideally, GH should be less than 2 ng/ml after an oral glucose load. A review of GH levels in 1,360 patients worldwide immediately after surgery revealed that 60 percent had random GH levels below 5 ng/ml. Complications of surgery may include cerebrospinal fluid leaks, meningitis, or damage to the surrounding normal pituitary tissue, requiring lifelong pituitary hormone replacement. Even when surgery is successful and hormone levels return to normal, patients must be carefully monitored for years for possible recurrence. More commonly, hormone levels may improve, but not return completely to normal. These patients may then require additional treatment, usually with medications. Two medications currently are used to treat acromegaly. These drugs reduce both GH secretion and tumour size. Medical therapy is sometimes used to shrink large tumours before surgery. Bromocriptine (Parlodel®) in divided doses of about 20 mg daily reduces GH secretion from some pituitary tumours. Side effects include gastrointestinal upset, nausea, vomiting, light-headedness when standing, and nasal congestion. These side effects can be reduced or eliminated if medication is started at a very low dose at bedtime, taken with food, and gradually increased to the full therapeutic dose. Because bromocriptine can be taken orally, it is an attractive choice as primary drug or in combination with other treatments. However, bromocriptine lowers GH and IGF-1 levels and reduces tumour size in less than half of patients with acromegaly. Some patients report improvement in their symptoms although their GH and IGF-1 levels still are elevated. The second medication used to treat acromegaly is octreotide (Sandostatin®). Octreotide is a synthetic form of a brain hormone, somatostatin, that stops GH production. This drug must be injected under the skin every 8 hours for effective treatment. Most patients with acromegaly respond to this medication. In many patients, GH levels fall within one hour and headaches improve within minutes after the injection. Several studies have shown that octreotide is effective for long-term treatment. Octreotide also has been used successfully to treat patients with acromegaly caused by non-pituitary tumours. Because octreotide inhibits gastrointestinal and pancreatic function, long-term use causes digestive problems such as loose stools, nausea, and gas in one third of patients. In addition, approximately 25 percent of patients develop gallstones, which are usually asymptomatic. In rare cases, octreotide treatment can cause diabetes. On the other hand, scientists have found that in some acromegaly patients who already have diabetes, octreotide can reduce the need for insulin and improve blood sugar control. Radiation therapy has been used both as a primary treatment and combined with surgery or drugs. It is usually reserved for patients who have tumour remaining after surgery. These patients often also receive medication to lower GH levels. Radiation therapy is given in divided doses over four to six weeks. This treatment lowers GH levels by about 50 percent over 2 to 5 years. Patients monitored for more than 5 years show significant further improvement. Radiation therapy causes a gradual loss of production of other pituitary hormones with time. Loss of vision and brain injury, which have been reported, are very rare complications of radiation treatments. No single treatment is effective for all patients. Treatment should be individualized depending on patient characteristics, such as age and tumour size. If the tumour has not yet invaded surrounding brain tissues, removal of the pituitary adenoma by an experienced neurosurgeon is usually the first choice. After surgery, a patient must be monitored for a long time for increasing GH levels. If surgery does not normalize hormone levels or a relapse occurs, a doctor will usually begin additional drug therapy. The first choice should be bromocriptine because it is easy to administer; octreotide is the second alternative. With both medications, long-term therapy is necessary because their withdrawal can lead to rising GH levels and tumour re-expansion. Radiation therapy is generally used for patients whose tumours are not completely removed by surgery; for patients who are not good candidates for surgery because of other health problems; and for patients who do not respond adequately to surgery and medication.	<urn:uuid:128f3df9-f8e7-42cb-8797-61e74adb8927>	CC-MAIN-2013-20	http://www.wellsphere.com/digestive-health-article/acromegaly/696552	s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz	en	0.94616	3,041	3.328125	3
Children learn by observing those around them. They look to their parents, their siblings, their relatives and their teachers to understand how to act, respond and interact. That’s why it’s important to share with our children who we are and how we experience life. When we were little, many of our parents felt it would undermine their authority to engage with their children on any level other than being the authoritarian parent, which meant acting ‘grown-up’. In their world, grown-ups didn’t laugh or make mistakes or talk about their own life experiences. These are 5 things that I feel are important to share with your child. They aren’t necessarily things to teach your child, but rather things that you do that in the end will give your child invaluable life gifts. Share your experiences; share what these things mean to you, or in some cases actively display these things in your own life. © 2012 Christine Agro	<urn:uuid:ab83ea8b-c198-4d1b-9284-5545778b4940>	CC-MAIN-2013-20	http://www.beliefnet.com/Love-Family/Parenting/Galleries/5-Things-to-Share-With-Your-Child.aspx	s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz	en	0.97762	198	2.40625	2
This is the third in a series of guest posts by Abigail Van Gelder, who with her husband, Josh, have set out across the country on the Library’s “Gateway to Knowledge” traveling exhibition. The rolling exhibit launched Sept. 25 at the National Book Festival. She originally wrote this post yesterday: You don’t have to twist my arm to get me heading for the beauty of the Shenandoah Valley, a perfect place to host our second tour stop. While Josh and I have crossed paths with Winchester, VA on other tours we had yet to been able to make it a stop. Luckily the Gateway to Knowledge made that happen and allowed us to share in the charm of this community. When the staff of the Museum of the Shenandoah Valley opened the gates for us on Sunday evening I did not expect to be greeted by a herd of cows. The stunning gardens within the museum grounds also contain pasture for a group of curious calves, mooing their welcomes and getting our little dog Pippi fired up. The event kicked off Monday morning with Congressman Frank Wolf there to perform a ribbon cutting ceremony and welcome the first guests, the 8th grade class from James Wood Middle School. Some folks are surprised to hear that Josh was a history teacher before we started traveling; needless to say we both truly enjoy having school groups visit. On Tuesday we had 90 kids from John Keen Elementary School who made the walk over to join us. They were all full of questions and seemed to enjoy the section about Spiderman most. We had a blast joking around with them while they all waited for a break in the rain to walk back to school. A very special treat in Winchester was the turnout from home school groups. We were filled both days with some very curious kids and wonderful parents, a few even had work with lesson plans from loc.gov/teachers before coming. It’s a pretty amazing drive between Winchester and Cumberland [Maryland], I have to say the miles are rolling past today.	<urn:uuid:fdea3d06-015e-4b25-96fa-c43aff6c25f1>	CC-MAIN-2013-20	http://blogs.loc.gov/loc/2010/09/gateway-to-knowledge-guest-post-3/	s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00040-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz	en	0.978328	415	1.59375	2
Google's latest piece of search engine artwork commemorates the 54th anniversary of American pop art activist Keith Haring. Haring was born in 1958 in Pennsylvania, with artistic talent running in the family as his father was a cartoonist. His early inspirations were the likes of Dr Seuss and Disney. Haring soon moved to the big city, New York to be precise, at the age of 19 and it was here he developed a fascination with graffiti art. He attended the School of Visual Arts, and took to drawing in the city subways. Haring was soon famous for his distinct style, with the "radiant baby" - a crawling figure - becoming his signature symbol. Various artists inspired him in his earlier career, such as Andy Warhol. Google's doodle shows off his colourful and bold art style, with various humanoid figures and surreal touches, each character making up a letter of the Google logo. It's quite a striking little piece of art, in the way the figures spell out the letters pretty accurately. While the radiant baby doesn't appear in the logo, a flying chap with wings does, and what looks like some sort of lizard/dinosaur character (correct us if we're wrong, readers). Haring achieved international fame in the eighties, and devoted much of his time to public works of art which carried a social message. He produced over 50 of these in many cities across the globe, during the eighties. In 1988, Haring was diagnosed with AIDS, and the following year set up the Keith Haring Foundation to help fund organisations and raise awareness on the subject of the condition. He passed away in 1990.	<urn:uuid:ae4ceb67-7db8-418e-a0ed-8eaf9f8dc745>	CC-MAIN-2013-20	http://www.itproportal.com/2012/05/04/google-doodle-celebrates-keith-harings-54th-birthday/	s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00027-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz	en	0.980706	340	2.25	2
The USC BOYS SCHOOL traces its history from the free primary school opened in 1595 in the Parian by Spanish Jesuit missionaries, Father Antonio Sedeño, Father Pedro Chirino, and Father Antonio Pereira. After sufficient endowment, the school was named the Colegio de San Ildefonso in 1606. The colegio was moved to the wooden buildings in Martires Street in 1725 and it was housed there until 1769 when the Jesuits were expelled from the Philippines. It was re-opened by Bishop Mateo Joaquin de Arevalo with secular priests in charge in 1783. The same building was used but the name was changed to real Seminario de San Carlos. From a primary school to grammar school, the colegio now became a school for those who wanted to join the religious life. The Dominican Fathers took over the school management from the Diocese in 1852. Then the Vincentians came to the Seminario-Colegio de San Carlos in 1867. Externos or students who lived outside and had no intention to become priests were accepted. In 1891 college-level courses were offered and in 1908 authority to confer bachelor’s degree was granted. Then in 1924, the Vincentian fathers segregated students for priesthood from the high school and college students. By virtue of a papal decree the seminary became a separate entity. Both groups continued to use the Martires school site. In 1927, only the high school department remained together with the Seminary. In 1935, the administration of the school was turned over to the Society of the Divine Word (SVD – Societas Verbi Divini). Although college courses were opened in 1934 and women admitted in 1940, the high school department remained exclusively for boys. On December 8, 1941, classes were interrupted by World War II until August 1, 1945 when classes on both levels were reopened. The enrollment of the high school department swelled in 1947-1948. A new high school building was constructed at the corner of P. del Rosario and Pelaez streets for the growing population. At this time, the high school organized evening classes which were co-educational. However, with the expansion of the new University of San Carlos, the Boys High school was moved to its present site at General Maxilom Avenue in 1955. The night school was phased out in 1957. The Elementary Department of the Boys School was established to accommodate male pupils from the Colegio de la Inmaculada Concepcion and St. Theresa’s College which had to phase out their intermediate classes for boys. The elementary department started with Grades V and VI during the school year 1959-1960. In school year 1966-1967, Grade IV pupils were admitted. One grade level after another was added in the following years thereon, until school year 1969-1970 when Grade I pupils were accepted. Complete elementary education was finally offered by the Boys School. In school year 1980-1981, the school opened classes for Kindergarten. Both the Boys High School and the Boys Grade School are accredited school. The Philippine Accrediting Association of Schools, Colleges and Universities granted accredited status to Boys High School in 1985 and to Boys Grade School in 1988. In 2005, the Boys Grade School becomes co-educational. It accepted girls in Kindergarten 1 and 2, and in Grade 1 to Grade 5. The Boys High School accepted the first female students in the first year level. With this new development, the school was renamed the University of San Carlos, Basic Education Department, North Campus. This school year 2009-2010, all grade school and high school levels are completely co-educational.	<urn:uuid:da7771f4-5bae-47e4-8ce1-a5a07f115dcb>	CC-MAIN-2013-20	http://beta.usc.edu.ph/basic-education/index.php/north-campus	s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00053-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz	en	0.98095	752	2.21875	2
Here are the stakes: The US economy is growing so slowly right now that if just about anything goes wrong, anything at all, it could mean another recession — quite possibly pushing unemployment back to the worst levels of the Great Recession. To use President Obama’s once-favored metaphor, the car would be back in the ditch, stuck worse than ever. Welcome back to 2009. Yet the Obamacrats in Washington are flirting with steering right at the ditch, by letting some $400 billion worth of tax hikes engulf the struggling economy on Jan. 1. Under current law, that day will see the the 2001 and 2003 Bush tax cuts expire, even as the new ObamaCare investment tax kicks in. Marginal federal income-tax rates (for the four brackets) would jump from 25/28/33/35 percent to 28/31/36/39.6 percent. The child tax credit would fall to $500 from $1,000. And tax rates on capital gains would jump to 20 percent from 15 percent, while dividends would be taxed as ordinary income (28 percent to 39.6 percent) vs. 15 percent now. Add in the new 3.8 percent ObamaCare tax, and those rates on capital gains and dividends would go to 23.8 percent and (in the top bracket) 43.4 percent. All that, during a weak recovery notable for its lack of private-sector investment and paucity of startup firms going public. But Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), who heads the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, says her colleagues won’t accept any deal to avoid the “fiscal cliff” if it means also extending the upper-income tax cuts, even temporarily: “If we can’t get . . . a balanced deal that calls on the wealthy to pay their fair share, then I will absolutely continue this debate into 2013.” Obama is no better on the issue. Not only does he want those Bush “tax cuts for the rich” to expire right on schedule, he’d only extend the Bush middle-class tax cuts for a year. The mere possibility of this tax-hike tsunami is now weighing on business and consumer confidence, which are at levels more typical of an economy already mired in recession. In a new research note, Action Economics blamed yesterday’s weak June report on consumer spending on “rising public fear over the impending fiscal cliff.” As it is, economists think the economy will be lucky to grow 2 percent for the rest of the year, after growing just under 2 percent in the first half. In the past, economic growth that slow for that long has led to a recession 70 percent of the time. Now add a big, fat tax hike into the mix. Letting just the upper-income tax hikes expire would cost nearly a million jobs, according to consultancy Ernst & Young. And it could push 2013 GDP growth to under 1 percent. That’s far too weak to produce many jobs or make paychecks bigger. Another year of Stagnation Nation. And if the all those tax hikes actually take place? Well, megabank Citigroup is telling its clients that the entire fiscal cliff (which also included $65 billion in scheduled military and Medicare spending cuts) would knock a whopping four percentage points from GDP growth next year. And even the White House is predicting GDP growth of only 2.7 percent next year — so we’re talking about a fairly nasty downturn and possibly a return to double-digit unemployment. That’s moving backward, not forward. The Obama campaign might need a new slogan. Even letting the issue linger into 2013 might be enough on its own to snuff out the anemic recovery. What business would want to buy pricey new equipment or hire lots of new workers on the hope that Congress quickly gets its act together after what’s likely to be an extremely close and divisive election? Even if Mitt Romney wins, the Republicans take full control of Congress and they all agree to kill these tax hikes, it still might take until summer before they get it done over fierce Democratic opposition. In a sane Washington, Congress would immediately pass at least a temporary extension of all the tax cuts, while promising to work on Simpson-Bowles-style tax reform, lowering marginal tax rates while killing loopholes. But that won’t happen when Team Obama is trying to get the president re-elected with an all-out populist campaign against the “1 percent.” Maybe that cynical strategy will indeed let Obama return to the Oval Office in 2013. But it’ll leave him facing a recession rerun — and probably wishing it hadn’t worked.	<urn:uuid:c2176eed-4e61-424a-9926-79d24382158f>	CC-MAIN-2013-20	http://aei.org/article/economics/taxmaggedon-in-2013/	s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00054-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz	en	0.947737	978	1.710938	2
Diagramming the Study Site for Others The purpose of this resource is to develop the best possible representation of the study site as a system. Students visit a study site, where they observe and recall their existing knowledge of air, water, soil, and living things to make a list of interconnections among the four Earth system components. They make predictions about the effects of a change in a system, inferring ways these changes affect the characteristics of other related components. What Can We Learn About Our Seasons? The purpose of this resource is to have students develop a qualitative understanding of the characteristics and patterns of seasons and highlight the relationship of seasons to physical, biological and cultural markers. Students observe and record seasonal changes in their local study site. They establish that these phenomena follow annual cycles and conclude the activity by creating displays that illustrate the repeating pattern associated with the appearance and disappearance of seasonal marke How mentors can serve as role models, helpers, and colleagues. Density of Rocks - Some Applications In this activity students study some applications of knowing the density of rocks. One set of applications involves the stress, strength, and factor of safety for a rock roof resting on one or more columns in an underground room. A second set of applications involves the normal and shear stresses, cohesion force, and inclination angle for a slab of rock resting on an inclined surface. Students recreate spreadsheets shown in a Powerpoint module with formulas that answer various pieces of an overa 1906 San Francisco Earthquake and Fire The documents selected for this exhibit are primary sources that historians and other researchers study when they write about historical events. They are a selection from the files created or received by Federal agencies in or near San Francisco at the time of the disaster. They contain eyewitness testimony of the damage of the earthquake, the ensuing fires, and the desolation that was left in their wake. This hands-on activity covers the basics of rock identification. After a brief discussion of the terms 'rock' and 'mineral', students will study the characteristics and classifications of the three major rock groups (igneous, metamorphic, and sedimentary). F. Scott Fitzgerald: Winter Dreams In this lesson plan, students study the biography and work of F. Scott Fitgerald. They learn how the author used autobiographical elements in writing his stories, and they try a hand at writing a Fitzgerald-style story with autobiographical elements of their own. We'd Like to Thank You, Herbert Hoover Since the advent of book musicals such as "Show Boat" and "Oklahoma!", many Broadway shows have touched upon relevant social and historical issues. In this lesson, students will investigate how Broadway musicals can reflect the times in which they were created. Students will examine video clips and Web sites related to relevant productions, study song lyrics, and compare and contrast actual history with Broadway history. By becoming "historical detectives," they will determine how accurately Bro Data Collection and Organization The Data Collection and Organization (DC&O) text module provides background on useful, general-purpose software tools. The aim is to discuss types of generic software that virtually every well-equipped scientist uses. This includes: spreadsheets, database programs, statistics packages, graphics programs, and word processors. DC&O includes several examples of the use of these tools in biology. These include 'An Embryological Example with Tips and Tricks' and the complete text and dataset of a cl Organ Weight Study in Rats This dataset comes from a study of 90 rats given one of 3 doses of a drug. At sacrifice, data on body weight and the weights of various organs were collected. Questions from this study refer to the relationship between dosage and body and organ weight. A text file version of the data is found in the relation link. Intuitive Biostatistics: Choosing a Statistical Test This page provides a table for selecting an appropriate statistical method based on type of data and what information is desired from the data. It also compares parametric and nonparametric tests, one-sided and two-sided p-values, paired and unpaired tests, Fisher's test and the Chi-square test, and regression and correlation. It comes from Chapter 37 of the textbook, "Intuitive Biostatistics". In this set of exercises, students will study rivers and waterways around them by using the Internet, maps, and their knowledge of local landscapes. The students will use an EPA Web site to investigate what is upstream and downstream of them. They will also look at graphs of flow in familiar river locations on a live U.S. Geological Survey Web site. Using small rocks and a washbasin, students will build a model that leads to extending their understanding of streams in different geographic locati Networks: Theory and Application, Fall 2008 This course covers topics in network analysis, from social networks to applications in information networks such as the internet. It introduces basic concepts in network theory, discuss metrics and models, use software analysis tools to experiment with a wide variety of real-world network data, and study applications to areas such as information retrieval. Relevant material from MIT's introductory courses to support students as they study and educators as they teach the AP Calculus curriculum. The Psychology, Biology and Politics of Food This course encompasses the study of eating as it affects the health and well-being of every human. Topics include taste preferences, food aversions, the regulation of hunger and satiety, food as comfort and friendship, eating as social ritual, and social norms of blame for food problems. The politics of food discusses issues such as sustainable agriculture, organic farming, genetically modified foods, nutrition policy, and the influence of food and agriculture industries. Also examined are prob Imagining the French Revolution: Depictions of the French Revolutionary Crowd Imaging the French Revolution—an experiment in digital scholarship—is organized in three sections. In , seven scholars— selected for their previous work on revolutionary images—analyze forty-two images of crowds and crowd violence in the French Revolution, a shared on-line archive that provided the starting point for the project. Offering the most relevant examples and comments from an on-line forum that took place during the summer of 2003, highlights an effort by those same scholars t Private Universe Project in Mathematics: Workshop 5. Building on Useful Ideas One of the strands of the Rutgers long-term study was to find out how useful ideas spread through a community of learners and evolve over time. Here, the focus is on the teachers role in fostering thoughtful mathematics.,Equations" In Colts Neck, New Jersey, fourth-grade teacher and former Rutgers researcher Amy Martino finds out that what started as a 15-minute warm-up question evolves into an interesting discussion about equations. Peer 2 Peer University The Peer 2 Peer University (P2PU) is an online community of open study groups for short university-level courses. Think of it as online book clubs for open educational resources. The P2PU helps you navigate the wealth of open education materials that are out there, creates small groups of motivated learners, and supports the design and facilitation of courses. Students and tutors get recognition for their work, and we are building pathways to formal credit as well. Currently P2PU is in a pilot A Sense of Place Place and Location are two of the five themes of geography and a natural starting point for a study of the Arctic and Antarctica. Location answers the question, "Where am I?" while the study of place asks, "What kind of a place is it?" and, "How does this place connect to my hometown?" This issue of Beyond Penguins and Polar Bears examines how you can introduce the Arctic and Antarctica and use science, geography, literacy, and technology to help your students compare and contrast these two dram Open Source Chemistry Course Grades 9-12 The following comprehensice collection contains a full course of study for an Open Source Chemistry course for grades 9 ‐ 12. The collection has been prepared from resources contributed by teachers and partner educational organizations on Curriki. The Open Source Chemistry course has been organized to meet the CA Science Standards for Earth Sciences in grades 9 ‐ 12	<urn:uuid:6dddd4de-a7bf-49e9-9915-798bb9253527>	CC-MAIN-2013-20	http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/xpert/scoreresults.php?keywords=Why%20study%20Rudolf%20B&start=6380&end=6400	s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00058-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz	en	0.930284	1,668	3.78125	4
[IronPython] Plans for overloads? niki at vintech.bg Mon Aug 1 16:46:04 CEST 2005 Morgan Martinet wrote: >>Interesting, but this seems to be purely for decorating method definitions, >>not method calls, and I'm not sure how any similar syntax would help. > This is not completely true. The way decorators work is that they wrap the > decorated object (either the function or another decorator if you cascade > them). The decorator is a Python object by itself, that can override > __call__ to implement its own behaviour, allowing you to route the call to > the proper method for instance. The decorator object can also contain its > own attributes that would help it take the right decision... >>The only thing I could think of would be to hint the parser, which may be >>what you had in mind. > This is also a possibility as it would respect the Python syntax but would > allow you to introduce new attributes... ctypes uses decorators for describing calling signatures. More information about the Ironpython-users	<urn:uuid:09677019-3c1f-4151-8c6d-70c4a03b170e>	CC-MAIN-2013-20	http://mail.python.org/pipermail/ironpython-users/2005-August/000883.html	s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00043-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz	en	0.929357	240	1.78125	2
Rationale - what it means and why it is an important measure To measure the degree of actual involvement of the public in urban decision-making processes. Citizen participation in local government is an important part of democracy and self-determination. A strong local support-base for government is better able to monitor citizen needs and represent the wishes of the citizenry. How it is compiled, what data are needed The percentage of decisions taken by authorities with public involvement. A formal participatory process might involve: public announcements with receipt and processing of objections; public meetings and consultations; formation of oversight committees involving non-governmental organisations and public representatives.	<urn:uuid:6e181cfb-1ae1-4ee7-9513-7c6612998ced>	CC-MAIN-2013-20	http://ceroi.net/ind/display.asp?setID=2&indID=31	s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00041-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz	en	0.928264	129	3.078125	3
The Wounding of Gen. Stonewall Jackson. Baltimore Sun, 2nd. To-day is the twentieth anniversary of the date on which Gen. Stonewall Jackson, after routing Hooker’s right flank at Chancellorsville, and while pressing forward to sever the line of retreat of the main body of the Federal army, received from his own men, by accident, the shot which eight days later resulted in his death. To the Confederacy his loss was irreparable. Having been engaged in nearly every important action of the war in Virginia, and having distinguished himself in all, he had become among the Southern soldiery, as among the people, a hero whose presence on the battle-field was regarded as a sure omen of success. The list of the principal actions in which he participated – Bull Run, Kernstown, McDowell, Front Royal, Winchester, Cross Keys, Port Republic, Cold Harbor, Cedar Mountain, second Bull Run, the investment of Harper’s Ferry, Sharpsburg or Antietam, Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville – is, with one two exceptions, a list of successes, reflecting the highest credit upon his military genius. His fame has become the common property of the country, and indeed, of the world at large, having long ago crossed the obliterated limits of the government for which he fought. The comparative obscurity in which he passed all but the last three years of his life finds a parallel in the mystery, or uncertainty, which in the popular mind surrounds the circumstances under which he was shot. The question has been raised whether he was wounded by his own men or by the enemy, and, it being generally conceded that he was fired at by mistake by his own men, it has been a matter of hot discussion as to the regiment that made the fatal blunder. The facts, well substantiated by officers present at the time, are as follows: The front line of advance had been formed by Rhodes’ division, extending across the pike, but the division commanded by Gen. Colston, forming the second line, had, as the action progressed, become mingled with it. After nightfall, in a lull of the firing, it was undertaken to relieve the two divisions by A.P. Hill’s division of fresh troops. Jackson was impatient to have the attack recommenced, and, supposing that there was a skirmish line out in front between Rhodes’ men and the enemy, rode forward along the pike in advance of Hill to ascertain the enemy’s position, and in doing so passed through the line of battle beginning to be formed by Lane’s brigade of Hill’s division. Those of Lane’s men immediately in the road knew that Gen. Jackson had passed, but those further to the right and left did not. Hence some of Lane’s troops on the right of the road, seeing Gen. Jackson accompanied by several signal-men and couriers, in their front, mistook them for the enemy and opened fire on the party, wounding not a few of its members. Those of their number still unhurt, including Gen. Jackson, to escape this fire, plunged into the woods on the left, where they were met with a second volley from the troops on that side of the road. Gen. Lane reports it as the opinion generally accepted at the time that it was the eighteenth regiment of his brigade of North Carolina that did the firing, mistaking Gen. Jackson and his escort for a party of the Federal cavalry. The result of the second volley was that the general was wounded in three places, two ball penetrating his left arm, shattering it and cutting the chief artery, and a third passing through the palm of his right hand. After some delay Gen. Jackson was borne to the rear. His arm was amputated and hopes of his recovery were entertained. But pneumonia soon set in, which was the immediate cause of his death on the 10th of May, 1863. The Landmark (Statesville, North Carolina) May 11, 1883	<urn:uuid:2194cbb1-141f-4480-b69c-a130b173f77c>	CC-MAIN-2013-20	http://yesteryearsnews.wordpress.com/2012/05/10/the-wounding-of-gen-stonewall-jackson/	s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00030-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz	en	0.986248	836	2.640625	3
Volunteering requires commitment, both of energy and time. Our volunteers are unpaid – apart from travel expenses – so why do it? There are many reasons, including: The chance to gain experience and develop new skills Social contact and activity The opportunity to help other people What volunteers say This is what volunteers say about their involvement: “Every day is different – funny, sad, demanding, challenging – but never dull” “Volunteering really spices up my life. I would recommend every one of my friends to join in because it is such a great opportunity.” Next: Where would I work?	<urn:uuid:7efedb4b-8373-4ce9-bfc9-e2267fe26a58>	CC-MAIN-2013-20	http://www.westernsussexhospitals.nhs.uk/get-involved/volunteers/why-volunteer/	s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00043-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz	en	0.958436	133	1.875	2
Figure 1: Cambridge Common: this is where George W. assumed leadership of the continental forces in 1775. Click to zoom in. Steven Pinker has a nicer but older snowy picture of the same area during the sunset. It's nothing like the huge blizzard in 2005 and it is not as early as the snow in October 2005 but one thing is clear: snow is back in Boston. I used to think that it was impossible to take pictures at night but you can see a counterexample above. Everything is sharp except for the huge commuting yet non-commutative car that is stretched across another picture. The picture shows a world in which hbar is equal to 10,000 Joule seconds. The snow is melting quickly at Harvard Square: but remains relatively stable near the Memorial Hall: But as you can see, we have nothing like a Frozen Fountain of South Carolina here. Sorry that most of the photo galleries don't work because the Schwinger web server has been down for almost a week.	<urn:uuid:70e6703d-e352-4cde-9462-f99fd947cacb>	CC-MAIN-2013-20	http://motls.blogspot.ca/2006_12_01_archive.html	s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00037-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz	en	0.961398	209	1.796875	2
View Full Version : Brave little Truman.... 02-18-2007, 09:10 PM This is too cool. The music is what does it for me. I'd give Truman a hug if I could. ;) 02-18-2007, 09:22 PM 02-18-2007, 11:27 PM If the elbows angle down into the water, how the heck do they keep water in the tube? I thought about doing something like this.I was gonna buy 2 cheap acrylic tanks, and cut two three inch circles, both on the sam side, and silicon in 3 inch acryilic tubes. It would be cool. 02-19-2007, 12:15 AM The water will stay in the tube as long as the ends are under water. 02-19-2007, 03:53 AM yea what u have to do is U put both ends under water stick a tube into the pipes and suck the air out the water will go in automatically and stay in as long as u have the two ends under water 02-19-2007, 05:05 AM 02-19-2007, 01:11 PM That's so cool and the fish can really get some variety that way. 02-19-2007, 01:18 PM That's cute, but I wish we could have seen him go all the way into the other aquarium. 02-19-2007, 02:51 PM I tried something similar, but my sparkling gouramis couldn't swim straight up the tube, it wasn't wide enough I guess. Powered by vBulletin® Version 4.2.0 Copyright © 2013 vBulletin Solutions, Inc. All rights reserved.	<urn:uuid:1828fa63-25df-4a44-b115-668e74eff5d6>	CC-MAIN-2013-20	http://www.aquaticcommunity.com/aquariumforum/archive/index.php/t-4018.html	s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz	en	0.905454	362	1.5625	2
NanoSight, leading manufacturers of unique nanoparticle characterization technology, reports on the work of Dr Seow Yiqi at SCEI, Singapore where they apply Nanoparticle Tracking Analysis (NTA) to characterize exosomes for use in delivering therapeutic moieties to specific tissues in vivo. Dr Seow Yiqi using his NanoSight LM10 system at the MEL in Singapore The Molecular Engineering Laboratory was established in 2009 by Nobel Laureate Dr Sydney Brenner as a multi-disciplinary laboratory where diverse expertise from different realms of science could come together to develop novel technologies. Post-doctoral fellows in the laboratory undertake a wide variety of research ranging from organic fluorophore development to characterization of marine biomaterials with unique physical properties to genetic therapies. Dr Seow Yiqi is working to use exosomes (nanoparticles secreted by cells of ~100nm in size) to deliver therapeutic moieties to specific tissues in vivo. This is work that follows on from his DPhil studies at the University of Oxford in Professor Matthew Wood's group. Describing his work, he said "I used targeted exosomes loaded with siRNA to effect knockdown in the brain after intravenous injection of these exosomes. The development of 'self' delivery vehicles, such as patient-derived exosomes, may be a good first step towards gene/drug therapy that requires repeated delivery over a period of years or decades. Towards this aim, using the NanoSight system has proved to be invaluable in providing size and concentration measurement for each exosome purification. This data allows me to check the quality and purity of the preparation as well as to look at the physical effects of my surface modifications and loading protocols on the physical characteristics of exosomes." Other than NTA, he had used dynamic light scattering (DLS) for bulk measurement, and transmission electron microscopy using negative staining with phosphotungstanic acid for sizing. DLS was useful if the purification was pure and the sample being measured was relatively homogenous, but more often than not, the population purified tended to be polydisperse with nanoparticles of varying sizes in the same preparation. That biased the DLS measurements and it was difficult to get reproducible results with the system. In contrast, the TEM was accurate and precise, but the preparation was arduous and time-consuming and the results are a very small representation of the bulk, so it was not useful in working out concentration or size distribution. Concluding, he says, "Using Nanoparticle Tracking Analysis overcame these issues perfectly for my work. Measurements were rapid and by counting particle by particle, the true polydisperse nature of the samples was reported." To find out about the company and to learn more about particle characterization using NanoSight's unique nanoparticle tracking analysis solutions, visit www.nanosight.com and register to receive the next issue of NanoTrail, the company's electronic newsletter.	<urn:uuid:5eafcdf7-0538-4a7d-b9a1-aac6f5101fb3>	CC-MAIN-2013-20	http://www.azonano.com/news.aspx?NewsID=25165	s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00054-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz	en	0.945969	608	2.34375	2
NEW HAVEN, Conn., Aug. 23 (UPI) -- A robot developed by scientists at Yale University in Connecticut could soon pass a landmark test by recognizing itself in a mirror, the researchers say. Such a feat would be considered evidence of self-awareness and represent an advance toward robots that can think for themselves, they said. The robot, dubbed Nico, will take the test in coming months, Justin Hart, the doctoral student leading the research, told BBC News. "It is a spatial reasoning task for the robot to understand that its arm is on it, not on the other side of the mirror," he said. While Nico has been programmed to recognize a reflection of its arm, Hart said, it still has to pass the "full mirror test," developed in 1970 and considered the classic test of self-awareness. The test is more usually performed on an animal that is allowed time to get used to the mirror and is then anesthetized while an odorless dye is applied to its face. The creature's subsequent reaction to its reflection is deemed a measure of its self-awareness, determined by whether the animal inspects the mark on its own body or reacts as if it is only on the "mirror" animal but not on itself. Only a few non-human species -- including some primates, elephants and dolphins -- have managed to pass the mirror "self-awareness" test, the researchers said. \|Additional Science News Stories\| NEW YORK, May 21 (UPI) --Former first daughter Caroline Kennedy served on a New York jury that acquitted a Harlem man of selling drugs to an undercover police officer. NEW YORK, May 21 (UPI) --U.S. hip-hop mogul Jay-Z says his wife Beyonce is not pregnant with their second child, despite persistent rumors claiming she is. WASHINGTON, May 21 (UPI) --Apple Inc.'s stateless subsidiaries beyond any taxing authority's reach are not a tax-avoidance trick, the U.S. company's top executive is to testify Tuesday.	<urn:uuid:7b8d35ca-65b8-4e64-8f5d-4c71f68495ed>	CC-MAIN-2013-20	http://www.upi.com/Science_News/2012/08/23/Robot-to-take-self-awareness-test/UPI-31171345767180/?spt=mps&or=5	s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00057-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz	en	0.965301	424	2.515625	3
Chinese Navy Mission Reveals Secret Drone The drone (pictured above) appears to be small, possibly no more than a dozen feet in length. Since it was spotted far from land in the company of Chinese warships, it’s likely that the flying robot is launched from the helicopter flight deck of a frigate or destroyer — though the exact methods of launch and recovery remain unclear. (U.S. naval drones use catapults or take off vertically.) The UAV’s apparent small size implies a limited range and basic sensors, particularly given China’s problems building robots and advanced military electronics. The circumstances of the pilotless plane’s revelation could offer hints about its role. Early this month, the Chinese navy sailed 11 warships through international waters between two Japanese islands. The two-week deployment — a new, semi-annual tradition for the rapidly-expanding Chinese navy — was probably meant as a display of strength, and included target practice for the ships’ crews. It just so happens, a drone is an excellent way to spot targets for long-range gunfire and missiles — especially for a navy that lacks the ultra-high-tech satellites the U.S. Navy takes for granted. And what could be more impressive for foreign audiences than “accidentally” letting the Japanese photograph the new UAV in action? A recent New York Times article described the current state-of-the-art in American drones, from 200-foot spy balloons to 4-inch “hummingbirds”.	<urn:uuid:e29e78a5-d671-487d-8b85-e9ce0b679f9c>	CC-MAIN-2013-20	http://chinadigitaltimes.net/2011/06/chinese-navy-mission-reveals-secret-drone/	s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00065-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz	en	0.932269	316	2.84375	3
Machine table load and the associated mass moment of inertia can become a critical factor, particularly with high-speed processing and machining centres. By using high-strength aluminium alloys, a reduction of more than 50% in weight can now be achieved, compared with basic elements in cast iron alloys or steel. The high-strength aluminium alloy (AlCu4TiAg) used for our basic clamping elements (clamp-on pallets, brackets and cubes) is comparable with steel for yield strength (460 N/mm²) and tensile resistance (510 N/mm²), as well as giving outstanding protection against corrosion. In addition, our basic elements are hard anodized coated, achieving a surface hardness of 550HV. All basic clamping elements in high-strength aluminium are available in practically all shapes and dimensions, as well as in our standard sizes. Our clamping elements are available with all standard perforation patterns and may be customized to the client’s requirements.	<urn:uuid:9120e45a-e5a9-4bf0-80fc-66ba148067fa>	CC-MAIN-2013-20	http://www.alutec-guss.com/spannelemente.en,65.html	s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00049-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz	en	0.902775	206	1.820313	2
Voters in Iowa will caucus today to select their choice for the 2012 presidential nominees. As the rest of the nation watches, Iowa’s choice could help frame the debate for this election year. And as the voters speak, others are weighing in on what they believe is the best direction for America’s government and policy in 2012 and beyond. Over the weekend, The New York Times editorial page was one of those voices, yet again carrying the torch of the liberal, progressive movement. The Times revealed its dismal view of America and a call for more of the same policies that have left the country in an economic quagmire. “The way to revive sustainable growth is with more government aid to help create jobs, support demand and prevent foreclosures,” the Times writes. “As things stand now, however, Washington will provide less help, not more, in 2012.” What the “Old Gray Lady” is referring to, of course, is push back from conservatives who do not see “more government” as the ultimate solution to America’s problems. Instead, conservatives see the years of liberal big government policies, increased spending, growing deficits, and sprawling regulations as the root of America’s problems–and a contributing cause to continually high unemployment and economic stagnation. And when you ask voters what they think the government should do to solve the nation’s economic problems, they overwhelmingly fall in the “less is more” camp. Last week, Rasmussen reported that “Among all voters, 77% want the government to cut deficits, 71% think the government should cut spending, and 59% want the government to cut taxes.” And as Heritage’s Rob Bluey reports, new polling data shows that voters in Iowa and New Hampshire overwhelmingly believe the federal budget deficit is the most important economic issue facing the United States today. The Times‘ message is worth noting not for the sake of amplification, but for examination. Theirs is the message the left will be carrying in 2012, from the halls of Congress to Main Street America. Thankfully, there is another policy direction America can take. In “Issues 2012: The Candidates Briefing Book,” The Heritage Foundation lays out key issues and policy recommendations for candidates seeking elective office. On the issue of budget and spending — which is one of the many on top of voters’ minds — Heritage recommends cutting spending now and enacting spending caps, rejecting tax hikes and aggressively pursuing tax reform, empowering states and the private sector, and reforming the budget process. And with some 13.3 million Americans out of work, Heritage offers several policy recommendations for creating new jobs and getting the economy back on track, including ending any suggestion of higher tax rates, cutting the budget deficit, advancing free trade, and repealing Obamacare, among others. Today, America faces crushing debt, unsustainable entitlement programs, threats of even higher tax burdens, the ongoing threat of terrorism, and instability around the world. It is in the face of these challenges that voters in Iowa’s caucuses will take the first step toward setting America’s course for 2013. Should America continue enacting more of the same policies that have led to its current economic state, or should it adopt reforms to encourage growth and help guarantee a brighter, more secure future? Let the debate of ideas begin. - The price of crude oil has gone up by more than 2 percent amid concerns over tensions between Iran and the United States. Last week, Iran threatened to block the Strait of Hormuz in retaliation for sanctions from the West. - A gas pipeline in Syrian has exploded, the fifth since uprisings against President Bashar al-Assad’s government began in mid-March. The Syrian government blamed terrorists for the explosion, though opposition groups say the government is using the incident to consolidate support. - Just how far can the Environmental Protection Agency go in dictating what you can do with your property? The Supreme Court is taking up a case that could help answer that question–at least where the Clean Water Act is concerned. - Over the weekend, President Obama signed a $662 billion defense spending plan but offered up reservations about certain provisions, including powers of “detention, interrogation and prosecution of suspected terrorists.” - The violent crime rate in Washington, D.C., is up 13 percent since the Occupy D.C. protest began in the fall. Find out why the chairman of the local police union blames the protests for the spike in crime.	<urn:uuid:9445f74a-02f1-436b-bf9c-4033bbcbddab>	CC-MAIN-2013-20	http://blog.heritage.org/2012/01/03/morning-bell-what-will-america-decide-in-2012/	s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00022-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz	en	0.936972	931	1.625	2
Memorial services for Grass Valley-born Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens, who was killed during a Sept. 11 attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, will take place Oct. 16 in San Francisco. Stevens, 52, was the son of Jan Stevens, who graduated from Grass Valley High School in 1951, and went on to work in the California Attorney General’s Office, said Mary F. Commanday, the ambassador’s mother. Christopher Stevens’ grandfather Elmer Stevens was a teacher at Grass Valley High School, before it consolidated with Nevada City High School and became Nevada Union, Commanday said. Stevens moved to Davis soon after his birth and began his education at Pioneer Elementary School before moving on to the Bay Area. “As a young man, Chris joined the Peace Corps, and taught English in Morocco. And he came to love and respect the people of North Africa and the Middle East. He would carry that commitment throughout his life,” said President Obama in the opening remarks of his speech to the United Nations General Assembly Sept. 25, in which he referenced Grass Valley in the first few sentences of his remarks. “As a diplomat, (Stevens) worked from Egypt to Syria, from Saudi Arabia to Libya. He was known for walking the streets of the cities where he worked — tasting the local food, meeting as many people as he could, speaking Arabic, listening with a broad smile,” Obama said. Stevens went to Benghazi in the early days of the Libyan revolution, arriving on a cargo ship, Obama noted. In May — one year after his arrival — Stevens was appointed U.S. ambassador to Libya, CNN reported. “As America’s representative, he helped the Libyan people as they coped with violent conflict, cared for the wounded and crafted a vision for the future in which the rights of all Libyans would be respected,” Obama said. “And after the revolution (Stevens) supported the birth of a new democracy, as Libyans held elections, and built new institutions, and began to move forward after decades of dictatorship.” Two weeks before the attack on the U.S. compound in Benghazi, Stevens traveled there to review plans to establish a new cultural center and modernize a hospital, Obama noted in his speech. The California native reportedly died of smoke inhalation after a fire was created by a rocket-propelled grenade on the 11th anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in New York, Washington, D.C., and the plane that crashed in Pennsylvania. “Chris Stevens loved his work,” Obama said in his speech. “He took pride in the country he served, and he saw dignity in the people that he met.” Also killed in the consulate attack were a State Department computer expert and two security agents who were former Navy SEALS. An FBI investigation into the attack is narrowing in on one or two people in the Libya-based extremist group Ansar al-Shariah, an Al-Qaida-linked militant organization, U.S. officials told Associated Press Thursday. Immediately after the attack, officials said the consulate was stormed by protesters outraged over an anti-Muslim film produced by a California man that mocked the Muslim Prophet Mohammed. “Chris Stevens embodied the best of America,” Obama said in his remarks to the U.N. Stevens’ memorial service will begin at 4:30 p.m. Oct. 16 in the Rotunda of the San Francisco City Hall, No. 1, Carleton B. Goodlett Place, (Polk Street) at Grove Street. The program, with speakers from his family, Libya and the U.S. Department of State, and musical interludes, is expected to last approximately an hour. To contact Staff Writer Christopher Rosacker, email firstname.lastname@example.org or call (530) 477-4236.	<urn:uuid:2863e1cf-c11e-4322-9eff-5b3b8037262a>	CC-MAIN-2013-20	http://www.theunion.com/news/2773172-113/stevens-obama-ambassador-attack?layout=default	s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00057-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz	en	0.97852	824	1.835938	2
In the British character Italians may perceive elements of brutality. This for example appears when they become angry and yell, both the men and the women. It is a cry sometimes unpleasant and almost repugnant to us, sorry to say that. It is not clear whether it is us who are too soft or them too hard. A young girl very close to my family, Claudia, who had studied one month in Cambridge, England (see image above,) was walking one day on a street of that lovely town – she told us. Being unexpectedly captured by a shop-window and stopping in wonder in front of it, her rapture was suddenly (and rudely) shattered by a cutting rebuke – ‘STUPID GIRL!!!’ – yelled with such hardness by a middle-aged woman whose hasty walking had apparently been blocked by the girl’s sudden halt. Despite Claudia’s outspoken character, she stayed frozen on that same spot for a few seconds, aghast. Now it doesn’t really matter who was right, the English woman (more likely) or the young absent-minded (and possibly unruly) 17-years-old Italian girl. What I’m focusing on here is the nastiness of that cry – Claudia is a splendid imitator – and the lack of humanitas and sympathy we sometimes perceive in some Northern European people, despite their correctness and civic manners (surely greater than ours: see a conversation with Alex, a Briton, and other persons in Alex’s blog.) Manchester United’s Din of War Let me remember an impressive football game between Juventus and Manchester United played a few years ago at the Old Trafford stadium. In that occasion the United fans showed such a wild reaction against the psychological blow delivered to them by a first-minute scorching shot by Alessandro Del Piero – he elegantly dribbled sideways to the right and scored (see below) – that the whole episode how can I ever forget. The stadium was suddenly struck dumb. All, I mean ALL, United fans (50,000? 60,000?) were like annihilated and remained totally silent for several minutes. Such a terrible silence, such an impressive collective affliction we didn’t suspect what it soon would have lead to. After a while in fact here comes a low-pitched grumbling first, like an unnatural deep buzz, followed by a crescendo of shouts and screams and bellows against the Italian team, which kept growing and growing and became so deafening that the Juventus players, made incapable to reason, their morale disrupted, ran into total defeat. I was bewildered and indignant! It seemed all so unfair and brutal! So how could I not think – I’m obsessing-obsessed, I know – about that awful din of war addressed to the Roman legionaries of Caius Marius by the German Teutones and Ambrones (comrades of the Cimbri) whose number – writes Plutarch, probably exaggerating – was limitless and covered a vast plain. Here is how Plutarch describes that dreadful sound: “Here was lamentation among them all night long, not like the wailings and groanings of men, but howlings and bellowings with a strain of the wild beast in them, mingled with threats and cries of grief …. The whole plain was filled with an awful din, and the Romans were filled with fear, and even Marius himself was filled with consternation.” It was 102 BC, the night before the terrible battle of Aquae Sextiae. I couldn’t but think about that famous night while I was watching the total disbandment of one of the best soccer teams in the world. A Human Avalanche Well, the Romans’ peasant’s endurance was surely tougher than Juventus’ (I’m looking for a base consolation.) Being nevertheless petrified by that shocking sound and not able to sleep (the Romans,) the following morning pulling themselves together they wiped out their enemies with a double attack from the front and from behind. The battle and the following one near Vercellae (modern Vercelli, Italy) ended up with the total annihilation of the human avalanche who had terrorised the nations of the Empire (Mommsen). I know all this happened 21 centuries ago, I know I’m digressing and it’s surely unfair to see in today’s English fans the grand-children of those first German hordes. Alex observes: “Being from the UK, I am considered by the Italians to be someone from an Anglo-Saxon culture … you’ll be happy to hear that I rarely wear fur.” And yet, believing as much as I do that even the most far-away past can be alive in our present, that din of the United fans, that bellowing … In the end, since it’s not only British-like to grant the honours of war to courage, we’ll admit the United fans were not totally unfair (they were only a bit,) and most of all, leaving football trivia behind, we feel like paying the humblest of tributes to the brave Cimbri and Teutons and especially to their unbelievably fierce and ferocious women. So here are Plutarch’s words (Life of Marius), not for the faint of heart: “(Acquae Sextiae) the Romans kept slaying them until they came in their flight to their camp and waggons. Here the women met them, swords and axes in their hands, and with hideous shrieks of rage tried to drive back fugitives and pursuers alike, the fugitives as traitors, and the pursuers as foes; they mixed themselves up with the combatants, with bare hands tore away the shields of the Romans or grasped their swords, and endured wounds and mutilations, their fierce spirits unvanquished to the end.” “(Vercellae?) The fugitives, however, were driven back to their entrenchments, where the Romans beheld a most tragic spectacle. The women, in black garments, stood at the waggons and slew the fugitives — their husbands or brothers or fathers, then strangled their little children and cast them beneath the wheels of the waggons or the feet of the cattle, and then cut their own throats. It is said that one woman hung dangling from the tip of a waggon-pole, with her children tied to either ankle.” Us and the Hyperboreans. 1 Us and the Hyperboreans. 3 Isn’t the British Trojan Horse a Short-sighted Animal? (around which an extensive discussion developed about the UK vs Italy and Europe) Ups and Downs From the two Sides of the Roman Limes Roman Limes. Between Two Worlds	<urn:uuid:7568a425-a80c-40c6-8e82-10c405bf8d2a>	CC-MAIN-2013-20	http://manofroma.wordpress.com/tag/juventus/	s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz	en	0.965483	1,442	1.617188	2
Pilot's Bill of Rights Action in U.S. Senate Sen. James Inhofe, EAA member, leading effort to advance bill June 15, 2012 - Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK), a longtime EAA member and GA pilot, is continuing his efforts to bring his "Pilot's Bill of Rights" legislation to a floor vote of the full U.S. Senate. The measure, if passed, would provide pilots with expanded due process rights in case of FAA enforcement actions, as well as clarify NOTAM and medical certification procedures for general aviation. Sen. Inhofe worked in a bipartisan manner with Senate Majority Leader Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) to reintroduce the bill (S.3268) with the support of 66 co-sponsors last week. The move enabled the bill to bypass a single point of opposition on the Commerce committee and be placed on the Senate's calendar for a vote, using the Senate unanimous consent procedure. Although objections from Senators Kay Bailey Hutchinson (R-TX) and Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) blocked the unanimous consent effort, Sen. Inhofe continues to work with Sen. Reid to end debate and bring the bill to the full Senate for a vote. Sixty votes would be required to pass the bill. EAA members are encouraged to thank their Senators who co-sponsored the bill for their support and urge them not to accept any amendments to the bill that could prevent a successful outcome. The bipartisan bill was first introduced last July. Its language includes: - Requires that in an FAA enforcement action, the FAA must grant the pilot all relevant evidence 30 days prior to a decision to proceed with an enforcement action. - Clarifies statutory deference as it relates to National Transportation Safety Board reviews of FAA actions that diminish the appeals process. - Introduces an option for federal district court review of appeals from the FAA. - Requires a NOTAM Improvement Program, requiring simplification and centralized archiving of NOTAMs. - Makes flight service station communications archives available to all pilots. - Reviews the FAA's medical certification process and forms. EAA and AOPA helped compile the legal issues and enforcement procedure background that led to the text in the bill last summer, and also helped seek co-sponsors of this important protection of pilot's rights.	<urn:uuid:e4e0c35c-282f-4159-b7b7-8e0b29c67751>	CC-MAIN-2013-20	http://eaa.org/news/2012/2012-06-15_billofrights.asp	s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00046-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz	en	0.935414	481	1.585938	2
"We believe that manufacturing renaissance is actually a software revolution." -- Helmuth Ludwig, Siemens Industry, North America, CEO For signs of the manufacturing renaissance that is supposed to be taking shape in the U.S., we tend to spend our time pouring over industry and economic reports or else scouring manufacturing facilities for stories of innovation, improvement or advancements. To some, however, the surest sign of real change, of real progress, can't be found in any of these places or anywhere else on Earth for that matter. To them, the best evidence of the renaissance is currently blasting away at rocks on the rim of a massive Martian crater -- the Curiosity Rover. Such was the frame of an executive panel at last month's 2013 ARC Forum, where Siemens Industry, North America, CEO, Helmuth Ludwig joined retired Director of NASA's Mars Exploration Program, Doug McCuistion, and executives from GE Intelligent Platforms, Rockwell Automation, Yokagawa Electric and ExxonMobil to discuss the technologies and innovations critical to "Achieving Breakthrough Performance." 7-Minutes of Terror By now we are all familiar with Curiosity's landing -- the so-called seven-minutes of terror that dropped the mini-cooper sized lab on Mars last August from a speed of 70,000 miles per hour and temperatures over 3,000 degrees, slowed through the complicated arrangement of a supersonic parachute, propulsion thrusters and a unique sky crane deployment technique never attempted anywhere, on Earth or Mars. However, now almost six months after the landing, descriptions of the challenges it faced, the intricate, impossible engineering puzzle surviving those seven minutes required, is still awe-inspiring enough to pull a hearty ovation from a crowd of seasoned manufacturing executives, as it did at ARC. The reason for that, Siemens' Ludwig said, is because, "many though that the mission was impossible... there were too many variables, too much that could go wrong. It was too complicated the whole way round." But of course it did work. And, by touching down a mere 250 meters from the target, it worked far better than anyone had expected. That success -- that flawless, blind landing on a hostile alien world some 350 million miles away -- has been largely credited to one tool in the digital engineer's kit that is transforming our capabilities both in space and here on Earth: simulation.	<urn:uuid:ba79dc62-c84b-471c-b031-35dd90f2cf37>	CC-MAIN-2013-20	http://www.industryweek.com/digital-tools/siemens-ceo-looks-space-manufacturing-renaissance	s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00031-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz	en	0.941445	490	1.890625	2
- Category: News 15 Mar 2013 - Written by Matthew Gannon/CNN The idea of "wearable robots" may seem like something out of a movie, but this technology is already being used in real life. Started as a project for the military, the exoskeleton has transformed from a device designed to allow soldiers to lift heavy loads and walk further to one that enables people with disabilities to step out of wheelchairs and stand upright. The "Ekso" is a bionic exoskeleton developed by Ekso Bionics that gives paraplegics upright mobility. While the commercial version of the Ekso has recently been made available to hospitals and rehabilitation centers, the company hopes to make the technology more accessible so that people can use it at home and in their everyday lives, with a personal version releasing in 2014. CEO Eythor Bender sat down with CNN to talk about Ekso, the bionic exoskeleton he helped develop. CNN: How many years have you been working on exoskeletons? Bender: We have been working on exoskeletons for the last 10 years. It started as a project with the military and it was funded by DARPA, the same people who funded the Internet and GPS systems. So it was groundbreaking technology, and in the year 2005 we had a breakthrough in terms of making sure that the weight of the exoskeleton transfers all the way down to the ground. So the user who is wearing it – it usually weighs up to 50 pounds – doesn't feel the weight at all. And that's so important because obviously you are trying to make their lives easier, not more difficult. CNN: What powers the exoskeleton? Bender: What we are using here is electric motors, and there are four of them, which is actually quite unique especially when you compare it to (technology used by) amputees. Prosthetics so far have usually had one moving component, and in this case you have in one system four moving components. You have four motors – two sitting at the hips and two at the knees – and that's what you hear. And it's driven by a battery pack sitting on the back. In the middle, between the two batteries, is a computer and so that is pretty much it. It's an outer frame that pretty much mimics the bone structure. There are 15 sensors in it that almost re-create your nerve system. And then there is the computer, which is really the brain of the whole thing. CNN: What is your long-term hope or vision for this product in terms of helping people on the medical side? Bender: Our hope is simply to help people in wheelchairs to live a fuller life. They already live a pretty full life. They can do pretty much anything except they can't walk, and that is such a basic need if you think about it. We all learn to walk even before we learn to talk, and suddenly in the prime of your life you are deprived of that basic need. We are determined to provide at least a tool that people can have, whether it is about walking for part of the day or it is in the recovery phase or rehabilitation or simply in daily living where people want to go about and do things during the day just like an amputee would use a prosthetic leg during the whole day. CNN: Will the Ekso exoskeleton eventually be available in homes for people to use whenever they want? Bender: Yes. We see it as a companion during the whole day. It's not going to happen overnight for us to get there. We have been on this journey, working with the best rehab centers around the world improving the Ekso and making it better. But at the same time, through working with users in rehab centers, it is helping us take the first step into homes so that we can develop a product – and it's probably going to be products – that help people not only to gain their health back or get back on their feet, but simply to become a mobility tool similar to the wheelchair. The wheelchair by the way has been around for 1,500 years and it is pretty much the single mobility tool for people that can do pretty much anything else. (Edythe McNamee and Madison Park contributed to this report.)	<urn:uuid:d37ceab0-18dc-438c-9b99-b54467344001>	CC-MAIN-2013-20	http://www.tsdmemphis.com/index.php/news/10849-exoskeleton-allows-paraplegics-to-walk	s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706890813/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516122130-00028-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz	en	0.975877	889	2.859375	3
Ukraine took its first major step away from dependency on Russian gas imports on Thursday when it signed a $10-billion (U.S.) shale gas deal with Royal Dutch Shell. The 50-year production sharing agreement, signed on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, marks the biggest contract yet to tap shale gas in Europe and the largest foreign investment in the former Soviet republic. Disputes between Kiev and Moscow seriously disrupted Russian gas flows via Ukraine in 2006 and 2009, with European Union members Bulgaria and Slovakia left without energy in the depths of winter. Rusia and Ukraine remain at odds over the terms of a 2009 Russian supply deal brokered by former prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko, for which she is serving a jail sentence. Ukraine President Viktor Yanukovich presided over the signing between Shell’s chief executive officer Peter Voser and new Fuel Minister Eduard Stavitsky. “We have witnessed a great event today. I believe we have become almost relatives,” Mr. Yanukovich told Mr. Voser. Ukraine chose Shell last May as a partner to develop the Yuzivska field in the east of the country and regional councils there approved the production-sharing deal last week, removing the last hurdle to signature. Ukraine is said to have Europe’s third-largest shale gas reserves at 42 trillion cubic feet (1.2 trillion cubic metres), according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Poland too is looking to tap shale to reduce its Russian gas imports, though a massive downward revision in its estimated reserves and a decision by U.S. major Exxon Mobil to halt exploration have dashed initial hopes for Europe’s most ambitious shale exponent. Production in Ukraine is several years off and will depend on results from 15 test wells. The Yuzivska field could be producing 20 billion cubic metres of gas in 2018, Mr. Stavitsky said on Thursday. “According to Shell’s optimistic scenario about 20 billion cubic metres could be extracted annually; according to the pessimistic one, at the very least 7 to 8 billion,” Mr. Stavitsky, quoted by Interfax, said in Davos. If the top forecast were fulfilled, “this will completely solve the problem of the (gas) shortfall in Ukraine”, he said, referring to the huge amounts of gas Ukraine has to import from Russia to meet its domestic needs. Ukraine, he said, “might even go into surplus.” Ukrainian officials said earlier this month that Shell saw investment under the deal of at least $10-billion “under the most likely scenario” and possibly as much as $50-billion. Shell, which has projects worth many billions of dollars in Russia, did not comment on the figures and was less outspoken about Ukraine’s dependence on Russian gas. “We are very pleased with this big step,” Mr. Voser said at the signing ceremony. Shell will operate the projects and hold a 50-per-cent stake in them. Rights and responsibilities of investors will be specified in a different agreement at a later stage. The Yuzivska deal could revive efforts to develop unconventional shale gas reserves in Europe which lag far behind the United States where shale gas and shale oil development is transforming the energy sector. Much could depend on the outcome of a second shale gas project in Ukraine at Olesska, where the government has signalled it expects a tougher fight to secure local approval because of environmental concerns. The government chose Chevron to develop the Olesska field in the western Lviv and Ivano-Frankivsk regions bordering the EU. Ukraine has also chosen an Exxon Mobil-led consortium to explore for offshore gas in the Black Sea and is seeking foreign partners to help it build a liquefied natural gas terminal. Under the 10-year deal signed in 2009 by the preceding government, Ukraine currently pays about $430 per 1,000 cubic metres for Russian gas. The present Kiev government says the price is exorbitant but has so far failed to persuade Russia to bring it down. At the same time, Moscow has increasingly used the issue to step up pressure on Ukraine to join a post-Soviet Customs Union and step back from moves toward the European mainstream. “Before Russia did not take the Ukrainian position seriously when it spoke of finding alternative gas supplies. This agreement on shale gas will strengthen Kiev’s position at negotiations with Russia over a (new) gas contract,” said independent energy analyst Valentyn Zemlyansky.	<urn:uuid:414e651e-0af2-4301-8580-e0e1ee4155f6>	CC-MAIN-2013-20	http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/international-business/european-business/ukraine-signs-landmark-shale-gas-deal-with-shell/article7789835/	s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz	en	0.952315	949	1.742188	2
With Halloween quickly approaching, one Harlem church is offering a choice of pumpkins and a festive and educational trip for area children. For the second year, Harlem United Methodist Church volunteers will spread several thousand pumpkins around the church grounds during its Pumpkin Patch event held during the month of October. The Rev. Roger Vest, the pastor of the church, said the sale will include pumpkins of all shapes and sizes, gourds, corn tassels, wheat bundles and other items. The sale benefits the church's area outreach projects including the Harlem Transition House and the Summer Feeding Program based at Harlem Middle School. "(Profits) go right back into the community," Vest said, adding that 2004's inaugural Pumpkin Patch raised $3,000 for the outreach projects. In addition to pumpkin shoppers, more than 600 area pre-kindergarten through second-grade pupils toured the Pumpkin Patch as a field trip. Vest said about 850 pupils already have signed up to tour this year's Pumpkin Patch. "It was a great time for them," said Pete Llewellyn, the chairman of the Pumpkin Patch and the church's Outreach Committee, adding that many children who toured last year's Pumpkin Patch created posters for the church to show how much they enjoyed the trip. Tours include about an hour of craft time, a pumpkin, story time, pumpkin facts and a guided tour of the patch. "It's a nice little inexpensive field trip," Vest said. Story and craft time for children will be held on Saturday and Sunday. "There'll be a variety of folks. You might see some folks dressed in pumpkin outfits or granny and her old outfit reading stories," Vest said. The Pumpkin Patch will be open at the church at 115 Milledgeville Road in Harlem from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Mondays through Saturdays; and from noon to 7 p.m. Sundays. The first day of the Pumpkin Patch is the same day as the Oliver Hardy Festival, so a volunteer in a pumpkin outfit will be in the festival parade passing out fliers, Llewellyn said. "And we'll have a booth downtown where we'll be selling pumpkins," he said. For more information or to schedule a field trip, call the church at 556-6885. The Columbia County News-Times ©2013. All Rights Reserved.	<urn:uuid:0e3ea89c-c0f9-41ea-a301-bd7387ec8305>	CC-MAIN-2013-20	http://newstimes.augusta.com/stories/2005/09/25/new_5251781.shtml	s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00040-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz	en	0.962155	495	1.523438	2
There is a reason for that. Vodka is colorless, flavorless and can be mass produced from scratch in a matter of days. For that matter, you can make it in your bathtub over a long weekend with basic ingredients from your kitchen. Making an enjoyable scotch, on the other hand, takes years. In fact, whisky cannot technically be called “scotch” at all unless it has been aged in an oak cask for a minimum of three years. Of course, if you offer a gentleman a scotch that has only been aged three years, he might take it as an insult. A decent scotch—be it blended or single malt—will generally be aged anywhere from 12 to 25 years or more. Anyone can start an exclusive new vodka brand given a sufficient pool of capital. Consider the example of Grey Goose. The American billionaire Sidney Frank created the brand in 1997 and sold it to Bacardi just seven years later for a quick $2 billion. Had he opted instead to create a new scotch brand, he would not have lived long enough to enjoy its success. When the late Mr. Frank passed away in 2006, his first batch of scotch would have still needed another 5 years or more of aging to be taken seriously. This is a significant barrier to entry for would-be newcomers. Imagine an enterprising scotch enthusiast attempting to start his own distillery today. What bank or venture capital firm would put up the money to get a distillery of any size in production given that the company wouldn’t have a sellable product for at least a decade? Perhaps you could get the enterprise off the ground faster by buying existing aged inventory from a small independent distillery, but this is not something that would be feasible on an industrial scale. At best you would have a small craft business. This brings me to a recent headline on Diageo (DEO) the British-based international spirits conglomerate and owner of the ubiquitous Jonnie Walker brand. In addition to Johnnie Walker, Diageo owns the J&B scotch, Crown Royale Canadian whiskey, Ketel One and Smirnoff vodka, Jose Cuervo tequila, and Bailey’s Irish Cream brands (among many others) and acts as distributor for the assorted cognacs of Moet Hennessy. Diageo is investing $1.5 billion to expand its scotch production over the next five years. The news sent shares of Diageo’s stock price higher as investors interpreted the announcement as a bullish call on the company’s future. Think about it. Diageo’s management must feel pretty confident about the future to expand its scotch operations on a grand scale. While some of the production used for the lower end Red Label line might be available in as little as 3-5 years, it will be at least 12 years before any whisky made in the new distilleries will be eligible to be used in a bottle of Black Label—and nearly three decades before it could be used in a bottle of the ultra-high-end Blue Label. I have every reason to believe that this optimism is warranted. Over the past 5 years, the company has grown its top-line sales by over 50 percent—and the past five years have been rather challenging for most consumer-related businesses. Much of this growth has been due to high demand from emerging markets—which already constitute 40 percent of Diageo’s sales and continue to take a bigger slice every year. Call it the legacy of the British Empire. The United Kingdom controlled 25 percent of the world’s land mass at its apogee, and its influence spread far wider. And everywhere those ambitious British colonials went, they brought with them a thirst for scotch whisky. Outside of the United States—where Kentucky bourbon whiskey and Tennessee whiskey are popular—scotch is generally the only game in town. As incomes continue to rise in China, India, Latin America and other brand-conscious emerging markets, so do standards of taste. Ordering a premium spirit or offering a bottle as a gift is a sign that you have “made it” in life. This is a long-term macro theme with decades left to run—which is perfect for Diageo’s premium scotch production timeline. I should also add that Diageo is an International Dividend Achiever, meaning that the company has raised its dividend for a minimum of five consecutive years. I expect Diageo to continue raising its dividend at a nice clip in the years ahead. The stock currently yields 3.0 percent. I won’t say this about too many companies, but Diageo is a stock that you can buy and forget. I recommend the stock for your core, long-term portfolio—and I also recommend you take the time to enjoy a bottle of Black Label, preferable with full-bodied cigar. And if Diageo performs as I expect, use your dividend proceeds to upgrade to a bottle of Blue Label. About the author:Charles Lewis Sizemore is the Editor of the Sizemore Investment Letter premium newsletter and Chief Investment Officer of Sizemore Capital Management. Mr. Sizemore has been a repeat guest on Fox Business News, has been quoted in Barron’s Magazine and the Wall Street Journal, and has been published in many respected financial websites, including MarketWatch, TheStreet.com, InvestorPlace, MSN Money, Seeking Alpha, Stocks, Futures, and Options Magazine and The Daily Reckoning.	<urn:uuid:d41fe4a3-c9ad-4d63-bff6-8a6933da85db>	CC-MAIN-2013-20	http://www.gurufocus.com/news/179259/diageo-the-ultimate-12-to-18year-play	s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00046-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz	en	0.95222	1,167	1.578125	2
Speech by the General Secretary of the World Federation of Trade Unions, George Mavrikos 22 March 2012 Dear brother Ibrahim Haidar, Dear brothers and sisters, Palestinians, “Palestine” is a long lasting crime of Imperialism. Since 1916 when the English and the French “in the Sykes-Picot Agreement” defined their spheres of influence using a ruler and today the plots for the New Middle East, with the imperialist attacks and interventions in Afganistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Iran, the collar around Palestine narrows even more dangerously. The Palestinians suffer under the barbarity of the Israeli occupation, the occupation of the territories after the six-day war, the separation wall built by Israel, the organized attacks against the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Half of the Palestinians live under the poverty line. Unemployment is dramatic and it gets more difficult for the Palestinians to work having to pass through the check-points which humiliate them daily. More than 5.5 million Palestinians are refugees while more than 10.000 Palestinians are imprisoned in more than 30 detention locations. Torturing and degradation are a daily routine for the Israeli army. More than 120 settlements have been built illegally in the occupied territories. The access to clean water and supplies is extremely limited. New numbers, more Palestinian deaths are announced daily. Those numbers may be showing the reality but they are not enough to describe the brutality experienced by the Palestinian people. Nor are they enough to describe the heroism and the self-sacrifice of the Palestinians who do not compromise, who continue to struggle against the imperialist barbarity against the murderous policy of Israel and the USA, for decades. “Palestine” has also brought to light the dynamics and the power of the internationalist solidarity. The workers the ordinary people around the world are on the side of the Palestinians. They have chosen sides. The World Federation of Trade Unions with a consistent and stable activity is standing on the side of the Palestinian people in struggle. It supports morally and practically this struggle. It organized campaigns to inform and to mobilize the working class worldwide to express the international solidarity. We organized a three-day strike on the ports of the world in June 2010. We organized complaints in the ILO. We organized a solidarity campaign for the recognition of the Palestinian State in September 2011 where dozens of messages reached the international organizations. We state once more that we will not cease to support the struggle of our brothers in Palestine until the goal for an independent, viable and democratic Palestine in the borders of 1967 with East Jerusalem as its capital is achieved. We will continue with action and initiatives to demand: • The end of the settlements and the withdrawal of all settlers who have settled across the borders of 1967. • The demolition of the separation wall in Jerusalem. • All the Palestinian refugees to be granted the right to return to their homes, based on the relevant decisions of the UN • The elimination of any exclusion against the Palestinians in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. • The immediate release of imprisoned Palestinians and other political prisoners kept in the Israeli prisons. • The withdrawal of the Israeli army from all the occupied territories of the 1967, including the Golan Heights and the Sheba area of Southern Lebanon. Because history and its lessons teach us, brothers, that the force of overthrow are the class-oriented, internationalist struggles. No positive development for the people has come out of the imperialist mechanisms. They cannot and the will not implement the vindication of the Palestinian people, they cannot and they will not impose peace in the Middle East. The imperialist interventions and the intra-imperialist rivalries in the countries of the North Africa, Middle East, in Afganistan, in Iraq etc. prove that the UN today is utilized to legitimize the attacks and the occupation and to equate the perpetrator and the victim. While the decisions of the UN against Libya, Iraq, Afganistan are implemented rapidly, the dozens of decisions for a just solution for Palestine are still in papers, un-applied. The real solution will come only through the continued heroic struggle of the Palestinian people with the support of the progressive popular and workers movement. We have a duty, comrades, to do more. We have a duty to teach the working class of our countries that the struggle for the wages, for the labour and social rights is inseparately connected with the struggle, against imperialism, the struggle against the bourgeois-class which is squeezing the working class and our people, the struggle against the monopolies, the struggle for a society without exploitation. The Palestinian people must be vindicated. This is our duty we are to be held accountable for, every day. The World Federation of Trade Unions, with members and friends who struggle in 120 countries on all the continents, will continue to stand actively on the side of the Palestinian People. This is a commitment we undertake here, in your presence. Until the final victory. Viva the Palestinian people! Viva the Palestinian struggle!	<urn:uuid:e60ee1fa-e339-4dbe-bfef-fb1efa6afb10>	CC-MAIN-2013-20	http://mltoday.com/subject-areas/labor-movement/international-conference-in-solidarity-with-palestine.-1357.html	s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00053-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz	en	0.929906	1,035	1.75	2
We offer FREE access to a selection of our latest research in the fields of business and management, library and information science, social sciences, engineering, linguistics and audiology. In this article, the authors discuss and then analyse the interdependency between bank and sovereign risk before, during and after the financial crisis. The paper provides a new examination of the interdependencies between individual bank risk and the sovereign risk of the countries in which they are headquartered, with special emphasis on the recent global financial and eurozone crises. Taken from: Journal of Financial Economic Policy Volume 4 issue 1 Here, the author describes how the special built-in features of modern smart phones can be used to open up the potential of these devices for use as assistive technologies in supporting the independence and quality of life of vulnerable people. The paper demonstrates how smart phone applications are capable of transforming a high-performance mobile phone into a number of different assistive devices that can improve the lives of millions of people with and without disability. Taken from: Journal of Assistive Technologies Volume 5 issue 2 Here, the authors attempt to understand how cities at different stages of development – each subject to its own challenges in adapting to climate change – can manage greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Case studies are undertaken for three cities: Amman, Jakarta and Dar es Salaam, including determination of GHG emissions and analysis of climate change data (where available) for each. Taken from: International Journal of Climate Change Strategies and Management Volume 5 issue 1 Video feature: Emerald's most downloaded article of 2010, with over 37,000 downloads, was "How leaders influence employees' innovative behaviour" ePUB is a standard that renders ebook content into a format that can be easily read on a mobile device. Access media releases, sustainability reports, history, leadership and many more features in our dedicated media section.	<urn:uuid:a742c452-3bc6-4e87-b1a8-cb54f9150650>	CC-MAIN-2013-20	http://emeraldinsight.com/rin/index.htm?view=text	s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00056-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz	en	0.907165	390	1.65625	2
What is Negligence? By legal definition, negligence is a failure to use reasonable care. Throughout your life, you probably encounter negligence on a daily basis. People who act recklessly usually act negligently. However, when negligence causes other people to suffer injury or death, the responsible parties must be held accountable. Personal injury law centers on proving negligence. In order for a personal injury case to succeed, the plaintiff must be able to prove that the defendant acted negligently. An experienced attorney can help you with your case if you recently suffered a personal injury. How do you prove that someone else is responsible when it comes to car accidents, medical malpractice, and slip and fall accidents? In order to have a successful injury claim, you must prove the following about the defendant: - He or she had a duty. First, you must show the court that the defendant owed you a legal duty of care. - He or she breached that duty. Next, with the assistance of your lawyer, you must show that the defendant breached his or her duty of care. - He or she caused the accident. Thirdly, you must show that the accident occurred because the defendant breached his or her duty of care. - He or she caused you to suffer physical harm. Lastly, because of the actions of the defendant, you must suffer an actual physical injury. An experienced and aggressive attorney knows how to prove negligence and help you seek fair compensation for your damages.	<urn:uuid:3096abc5-45b4-4aef-b617-c6d37f8f5dde>	CC-MAIN-2013-20	http://www.easttexasinjurylawfirm.com/2012/06/21/what-is-negligence/	s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00024-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz	en	0.965381	300	2.5	2
In the quest for novel, renewable energy sources and green industrial processes, a new player has emerged: enzymes. A Northeastern University Ph.D. student found that enzyme active sites are actually multilayer assemblies on the nanometer scale. Heather Brodkin’s findings discussed in her thesis served as the basis for a proposal submitted to the National Science Foundation that resulted in a $410,000 grant to study how nature designs enzymes and protein molecules that serve as highly specific catalysts for chemical reactions in living systems. “Enzymes may be the ideal catalysts for green industrial processes as they are energy efficient, highly selective, clean, and tend not to produce unwanted byproducts,” said Brodkin. Working with professor Mary Jo Ondrechen at Northeastern, Brodkin first gathered computational and bioinformatics evidence for the larger enzyme active sites. She performed experiments on nitrile hydratase, an enzyme used in the “green” industrial productions of amides, and was able to show that amino acids in the second and third layers contribute to the catalyzed reaction rate. Under the tutelage of Ondrechen and Penny J. Beuning, assistant professor of chemistry and chemical biology, Northeastern students will use Brodkin’s data and explore the roles played by amino acids that are nanometers away from the site of reaction in order to understand how they contribute to the catalytic rate and the specificity of the enzyme. “Understanding how nature engineers enzymes is an important problem and will provide guidance to new efforts in protein engineering,” said Ondrechen, professor of chemistry and chemical biology. “Heather’s work is the perfect example of the groundbreaking scientific research taking place at the University.”	<urn:uuid:5fcc326a-9985-44d8-b4a0-ee3b7465746f>	CC-MAIN-2013-20	http://www.northeastern.edu/news/2009/02/enzymes-2/	s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00052-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz	en	0.943025	369	2.984375	3
Spies Like Us: Physicians and Undercover Patients AMA delegates this week pondered an ethics council recommendation to endorse the practice of secret or mystery shoppers—undercover patients hired by a hospital or physician group to pretend they are patients and report back on their experience. Physicians who oppose the measure fret that the "fake" patients will interfere with the treatment of real patients. They worry that they might be disciplined if they happen to make one small misstep. They say mystery shoppers aren't a good way to measure quality. But I don't think these or any other arguments hold water. For starters, the ethics council proposal as written already addresses many of opponents' concerns: - Mystery shoppers should never go through with an inspection if it would interfere with the treatment of emergency patients. (In fact, many mystery shopping firms use people who need tests or procedures anyway.) - Healthcare organizations should inform doctors that they will be using mystery shoppers, though not announce the exact time of the visit. - Physicians and others who come into contact with mystery shoppers should not be disciplined for any issues that arise, but rather be counseled on how to improve based on the feedback. But more importantly, think about the message physicians who oppose mystery shopping are sending to your patients: that they'll only behave if they know they're being watched. It might not be true, but do you really want your patients to think that physicians will only be on time or explain delays, wash their hands, be thorough in their examinations, explain treatments, tests, and procedures, and make sure to answer patients' questions if they think the patient might be a mystery shopper? The American Medical Association ethics council's mystery shopper report points out what should now be obvious to every healthcare marketer and leader. "As healthcare becomes a more competitive marketplace in which ‘healthcare consumers' (patients) comparison shop for healthcare services, individual physicians and hospitals are realizing that patient perception is key to maintaining and growing practices," the report states. In consumers' minds, perception is reality. Take for example a doctor who washes her hands before entering the exam room. She doesn't see a problem—until the mystery shopper reports back that she didn't wash her hands. A simple adjustment to her usual routine—washing her hands in front of her patients—can change patients' perception of her. In its report, the ethics council cites the many potential benefits of mystery shopping. For example, information from secret shoppers has led to improved patient flow and wait times and warnings about potential breaches of patient privacy. Business improvements might include more effective hours of operation, better customer service, a more pleasant waiting room, larger type on signs, and even nicer telephone exchanges between staff and patients. "In addition to using secret shoppers to identify opportunities for improvement, information can be used to reinforce desired practices. Some healthcare facilities, for example, reward employees who receive positive feedback from secret shoppers with a range of incentives from cash, to better parking spaces, to engraving their name on a wall plaque." I have another idea: Let's start treating every patient as if he or she is a mystery shopper. Gienna Shaw is an editor with HealthLeaders magazine. She can be reached at email@example.com. Note: You can sign up to receive HealthLeaders Media Marketing, a free weekly e-newsletter that will guide you through the complex and constantly-changing field of healthcare marketing. - Patient Harm Data to Remain on Medicare's Hospital Compare Site - Quiet ORs Better for Patient Safety - Tavenner Confirmed as CMS Administrator - CMS Seeks to 'Rapidly Reduce' Medicare Spending with $1B in Grants - Leapfrog Hospital Safety Scores 'Depressing' - Building a Better Healthcare Board - Hard-Nosed About Physician Teamwork - Case Study: Advance Care Conversations - Healthcare Leaders Sound Off on Organized Labor - Esther Dyson's Population Health Dream	<urn:uuid:84ff530e-0e19-4f93-9768-0a6bbf603c84>	CC-MAIN-2013-20	http://www.healthleadersmedia.com/content/213664/topic/WS_HLM2_MAR/Spies-Like-Us-Physicians-and-Undercover-Patients.html	s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz	en	0.948427	820	1.757813	2
In China, furor over censorship is spreading BEIJING — Hundreds of supporters of the reform-minded Guangdong newspaper Southern Weekly staged a rare public protest against state censorship outside the paper’s offices Monday, while prominent business tycoons, opinion makers and film stars used their microblogging accounts to demand greater press freedom in China. Meanwhile, several of the newspaper’s editors and reporters said they were going on strike, which would be the first such action by journalists against official press restrictions in more than two decades. “This is actually something pretty amazing,” said Hung Huang, a publisher, writer and blogger. “It’s the first time the media is protesting against censorship. This is the first time they took action and said, ‘We’re not going to take this anymore.’ . . . Somehow, this was the straw that broke the camel’s back.” Cheng Yizhong, a television executive who is a founder and former chief editor of the Southern Metropolis Daily newspaper, called the protests “an explosion that was a long time coming, and with good timing.” He added, “This could be an opportunity to push forward freedom of speech.” The highly unusual protests sprang from what is being called “the New Year’s Day incident,” in which Southern Weekly’s journalists say their front-page New Year’s message to readers — expressing a “dream” for a constitutional government in China — was substantially rewritten and watered down, without the knowledge or consent of the editors, by Guangdong province’s top Communist Party propaganda official, Tuo Zhen. Tuo has not spoken about his role in rewriting the piece and could not be reached for comment. Several journalists and media executives said that even under China’s tight, long-standing control of the print media, it would be far out of the ordinary for a propaganda official to so blatantly interfere in the editorial process without telling top editors. The incident grew more confusing Sunday when a statement appeared at 9:20 p.m. on the Southern Weekly’s Sina Weibo account, the Chinese version of Twitter. The post said the New Year’s message published Jan. 2 was written by the paper’s management team, and it denied the online reports that the message had been rewritten. About an hour later, angry Southern Weekly editors and staff members used a separate microblogging account, for the paper’s economic news sections, to charge that Southern Weekly’s official Sina Weibo account had been forcibly confiscated by the government and that the statement posted on it was untrue. Dozens of Southern Weekly editors and staff members later signed an online statement saying the paper had been forced to give up the password to the official account. An estimated 400 people heeded an online call for protests Monday, according to witnesses and online reports . People showed up holding roses and white and yellow chrysanthemums — the traditional flower of mourning in China — and some wore masks covering their mouths. Others held handwritten signs calling for freedom of speech. “We laid flowers at the gate to Southern Weekly,” said Song Bingyi, a protester. “But once we put down the flowers, plainclothes police came to confiscate them all.” “I wore a mask to express my anger at being ‘shut up,’ not because I was afraid,” said Ran Xiang, a protester who said she used her weibo account to persuade others to show up at the protest with flowers. She said she brought chrysanthemums because “I hope to pay tribute to Southern Weekly, which is dying.” The protests spread online, too, with an increasing number of journalists, students, bloggers and public personalities taking to their microblogging accounts to express support for Southern Weekly and call for an end to censorship. The microblogging sites have become an alternative, independent source of information that the Communist Party is trying desperately to rein in. Among those advocates were the Shanghai race car driver and popular blogger Han Han; well-known actresses Chen Shu, Li Bingbing and Yao Chen, who has more than 31 million followers; actor Chen Kun, with more than 26 million followers; real estate tycoon Ren Zhiqiang; and Zhang Xin, chief executive of Soho China, Beijing’s largest commercial real estate developer, and her husband, Pan Shiyi, the Soho chairman. Those speaking out on weibo have said that “the New Year’s Day incident” is getting widespread publicity, despite increasingly frantic-sounding edicts from the central government’s propaganda authorities prohibiting the official media from publishing any information about the event. Censors have banned several terms on weibo, including Southern Weekly’s Chinese name and even the word “lump,” which in Chinese is Tuo, similar to the name of the Guangdong propaganda chief at the center of the storm. Wang Juan and Liu Liu in Beijing contributed to this report.	<urn:uuid:8ee3794a-48b9-4777-9e69-c4bd1c18681b>	CC-MAIN-2013-20	http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/furor-over-censorship-spreading-in-china/2013/01/07/7ed8f9d8-58d5-11e2-b8b2-0d18a64c8dfa_print.html	s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00035-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz	en	0.957403	1,066	1.609375	2
The Marin County Board of Supervisors governs the County of Marin, including the Parks and Open Space Department. Its same five members are also the Marin County Open Space District Board of Directors. The Open Space District requires its own governing board because of its status as a special district operating pursuant to the California Public Resources Code. A seven-member Parks and Open Space Commission serves in an advisory capacity to the Board of Supervisors on policy matters related to acquisition, development, funding, management, and operation of county parks, open space and trail systems.	<urn:uuid:de5e9205-4465-4994-a9c6-d9de4d175692>	CC-MAIN-2013-20	http://www.marincountyparks.org/Depts/PK/About-Us	s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz	en	0.935665	112	1.679688	2
Click Here to return to the Vets Advice search page. A:Yorkie x Jack Russell who is eating a lot of grass PetPlanet Vets PPAdmin email@example.com I don't think you should be unduly concerned. There is a general belief that dogs eat grass in order to make themselves sick, however the usual case is that some dogs actually enjoy the taste of fresh, sweet grass, and take every opportunity to eat it. As the stomach of the dog is not designed to cope with long fibre this often (but not always) results in their being sick. As your dog is healthy in every other respect, you don't need to worry. Hope this is helpful, Sarah Mark BA VetMB MRCVS (Vet for PetPlanet)	<urn:uuid:df290e14-e7a5-45b5-8ddd-995a84de718a>	CC-MAIN-2013-20	http://www.petplanet.co.uk/vet_answers.asp?thread_id=676	s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00038-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz	en	0.964938	163	1.976563	2
Lost in the commotion over President Obama's reelection: Colorado Amendment 64 legalized marijuana in the Rocky Mountain State on Election Day. Yes ... the term "Rocky Mountain High" just took on a new meaning. Amendment 64, a measure seeking the legalization of marijuana for recreational use by adults, was passed by Colorado voters in a statewide reefer-endum (sorry). This makes Colorado the first U.S. state to end marijuana prohibition. Democratic Gov. John Hickenlooper, a vocal opponent to the bill to legalize pot, reacted to the passage of A64 in a statement late Tuesday night: "The voters have spoken and we have to respect their will." "This will be a complicated process, but we intend to follow through. That said, federal law still says marijuana is an illegal drug so don’t break out the Cheetos or Goldfish too quickly." Indeed, the passage of the state measure is without historical precedent and the consequences and implementation will likely be closely-watched around the world. Although Colorado "legalized it," it will be several months, perhaps as long as a year, before Colorado adults over the age of 21 can enjoy the legal sale of marijuana. It is unclear how the amendment's passage will be reconciled with existing federal law, or how the drug will be legally sold and regulated in the state. What do you think? Is legalization of marijuana a good idea?	<urn:uuid:e4d21ce5-ac76-44c4-9108-b7f4aaf4f991>	CC-MAIN-2013-20	http://www.thehollywoodgossip.com/2012/11/colorado-legalizes-marijuana-right-or-wrong/	s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706890813/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516122130-00029-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz	en	0.944992	297	1.757813	2
Stanford India Biodesign - About Biodesign Initiated in 2001, the Biodesign Program at Stanford is dedicated to training tomorrow’s leaders in medical technology using an experiential approach to technology innovation. Program elements include: (1) interdisciplinary, team-based learning combining engineering, clinical and business trainees; (2) intensive exposure to medical needs-finding and characterization; (3) “hands-on” process of invention, prototyping and early stage testing; (4) practical instruction in regulatory, reimbursement, patenting and technology transfer; and (5) mentoring by highly experienced technology innovators, including Stanford faculty as well as a wide range of “real world” industry experts.The focus of the Biodesign Program has been to train the next generation of medical technology innovators, taking advantage of the wealth of experience of Biodesign faculty and affiliated industry advisors. Biodesign has bridged the gap between academia and industry by partnering with the local and national medical technology industry. The program has established teaching methods that provide innovation tools to engineers, physicians and business people, allowing them to create and develop innovative healthcare solutions. The core of the Biodesign Program is a multidisciplinary, team-based fellowship. The current fellowship is one year long, with an optional second year to further develop a technology invented during the first year. Fellows are selected from an international pool of applicants who come from engineering, medical or business backgrounds. The engineering fellows have typically completed PhD or MS degrees; the clinical fellows typically have received their MD degrees and are completing their residencies or fellowships; the business fellows have typically had several years of relevant work experience in addition to having received their MBAs. Fellows are selected based on a track record of innovation (patents, inventive research projects, and occasionally a licensed product or a start-up company). Fellows initially spend three months immersed in the hospital and clinics setting, the time spent observing within a specialty area. Their goal is to identify at least 200 clinical needs – that is, clinical problems potentially addressable by a technology solution. During the next two months, the team filters the list down to the top 15-20 needs, with heavy advising from faculty and “real-world” mentors. Over the next several months, the fellows select and further explore their top 3-5 needs through a process of inventing, prototyping and product development. In addition to the fellowship, roughly a dozen medical technology course offerings are taught at Stanford, with Biodesign serving as the inspiration and “anchor” for these offerings. Over one hundred Stanford students per year enroll in these courses, many of who enter the medical device industry after graduation. Biodesign also sponsors seminars and lectures that are open to industry, further promoting medical technology innovation and facilitating networking between academia and industry.	<urn:uuid:82d2f8f1-0b7b-44a5-8c19-ad887ec44339>	CC-MAIN-2013-20	http://biodesign.stanford.edu/bdn/india/aboutbiodesign.jsp	s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz	en	0.964651	600	1.945313	2
Type of Document Dissertation Author Parikh, Priti P. Author's Email Address firstname.lastname@example.org URN etd-11162007-154550 Title Efficacy of Ultraviolet Light and Antimicrobials to Reduce Listeria monocytogenes in Chill Brines Degree PhD Department Food Science and Technology Advisory Committee Advisor Name Title Williams, Robert C. Committee Chair Eifert, Joseph D. Committee Member Mallikarjunan, Parameswarakumar Committee Member Marcy, Joseph E. Committee Member Keywords - Listeria monocytogenes - ultraviolet light - citric acid - dimethyl dicarbonate - hydrogen peroxide Date of Defense 2007-11-01 Availability unrestricted AbstractChill brines used in ready-to-eat meat processing may be an important source of post-processing contamination by Listeria monocytogenes. The purpose of this study was to determine the efficacy of ultraviolet light (UV) in combination with antimicrobials to reduce L. monocytogenes in fresh and used chill brines. Three different antimicrobials were used in combination with UV; citric acid (CA, 0.2 and 0.5%), dimethyl dicarbonate (DMDC, 250 and 500 ppm), and hydrogen peroxide (HP, 2000 and 4000 ppm). For fresh brine studies, brine (8.0% w/v NaCl) was prepared and inoculated with a cocktail of three L. monocytogenes strains (approximately 6 log CFU/mL). Brine was treated with UV alone, antimicrobials alone, and combination of UV and antimicrobials. Moreover, to observe the effect of treatment temperature and brine circulation through the UV system on survival of listeriae cells, inoculated brine was circulated through the system without any treatment that served as control for all the treatments. For UV treatment, inoculated brine solution was exposed to UV in an Ultraviolet Water Treatment Unit (Model: AMD 150B/1/2T D; Aquionics Inc., Peak output: 254 nm) fitted with an inline chiller to maintain brine temperature of -1°C. Samples were withdrawn at regular intervals for 120 minutes. When L. monocytogenes population was no longer detectable via direct plating on MOX, enrichment was performed and suspect colonies were confirmed using API-Listeria. For antimicrobial-only (i.e., no UV) treatments, a specific concentration of antimicrobial was added in inoculated brine and samples were taken for 120 minutes. For the brine that received combination of UV and antimicrobial treatments, UV was turned on once a specific concentration of antimicrobial was added in inoculated brine and samples were withdrawn at regular intervals for 120 minutes. When treated with UV alone, L. monocytogenes population decreased from approximately 6 log CFU/mL to below the detection limit (i.e., 1 log CFU/mL) in 15 minutes with the reduction rate of 0.87 log CFU/mL per minute. However, cells were detectable by enrichment through 120 minutes. The highest rate of decline (0.90 log CFU/mL per minute) was achieved by the combination of UV and 500 ppm DMDC (UV+500 ppm DMDC), which was not significantly different from the reduction rates of UV and UV+0.5% CA. UV+500 ppm DMDC reduced L. monocytogenes to the detection limit in 15 minutes and the organism was not detected by enrichment after 60 minutes. Though the reduction rate of UV+0.5% CA was not significantly lower than the rate of UV+500 ppm DMDC (P>0.05), the former treatment resulted in non-detectable levels more quickly (45 minutes) than the latter (60 minutes). Thus, based on enrichment studies UV+0.5% CA was the most effective treatment in reducing the population of L. monocytogenes in fresh brine. Moreover, when brine was treated with 0.5% CA alone the population decreased to below detection limit in 15 minutes with the rate significantly lower than UV+500 ppm DMDC and UV+0.5% CA (P<0.05). However, L. monocytogenes was not detectable by enrichment from 60 minutes. To summarize, through enrichment studies we observed that UV+0.5% CA, UV+500 DMDC, and 0.5% CA Control were more effective than other treatments in reducing the listeriae population to a non-detectable level. Spent brine is recycled brine that was obtained from a frankfurter processor after its maximum usage. Results of spent brine studies showed that when brine was treated with UV+4000 ppm HP and UV+2000 ppm HP, L. monocytogenes population decreased to the detection limit in 45 minutes and was not detected by enrichment from 120 minutes. These treatments were observed to be the most effective treatments with a reduction rate of 0.12 log CFU/mL per minute. The reduction rate of some other treatments such as, UV+250 and 500 ppm DMDC, UV+0.2% and 0.5% CA, and UV alone was not significantly different from UV+4000 and 2000 ppm HP. However, the population was detected through enrichment up to 120 minutes in all other treatments. The results of these studies indicate that combinations of UV and antimicrobial may be more effective than either treatment alone (except 0.5% CA treatment) to process fresh chill brines. However, the antimicrobials and UV were less effective for controlling L. monocytgoenes in spent brine; presumably due to the presence of organic matter. Filename Size Approximate Download Time (Hours:Minutes:Seconds) 28.8 Modem 56K Modem ISDN (64 Kb) ISDN (128 Kb) Higher-speed Access Parikh-Priti-Dissertation-Final.pdf 704.00 Kb 00:03:15 00:01:40 00:01:27 00:00:43 00:00:03 If you have questions or technical problems, please Contact DLA.	<urn:uuid:e9b05d1b-de93-47cb-a972-287fc28e81fb>	CC-MAIN-2013-20	http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/theses/available/etd-11162007-154550/	s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00054-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz	en	0.946241	1,308	1.695313	2
Skip to main content More Search Options A member of our team will call you back within one business day. You’ll need to help care for your child’s incision after surgery and certain medical procedures. To close an incision, your child’s health care provider used sutures (stitches), Steri-Strips, or staples. Follow the tips on this sheet to help heal and prevent infection of your child’s incision. Surgical sutures(stitches) are placed by sewing the edges of an incision together with surgical thread. Sutures are either absorbable or non-absorbable. Absorbable sutures break down in the body over time. Non-absorbable sutures need to be removed. Steri-Strips are made of adhesive (sticky) material to help hold the edges of an incision together. Steri-Strips usually fall off by themselves within 7 to 10 days. Surgical staples are made of steel or titanium. They are often used to close shallow incisions. They are not used on certain body areas, such as the face and hands. This is because these areas have nerves that are close to the surface. Staples are usually removed within a week. Keep the incision clean and dry. Your child should bathe only as directed by your child’s health care provider. It’s okay to wash around the incision. But don’t spray water directly on it. Check the incision site daily for pain, redness, drainage, swelling, or separation of the incision edges. Call your child’s health care provider if you notice any of the signs listed in the box below. If your child has a dressing over the incision, change the dressing as directed by your child’s health care provider. Make sure any clothing that touches the incision is loose-fitting. This will prevent rubbing. If the incision is on the head, keep your child from wearing caps or other head coverings. These may rub against the incision. Keep your child from rough play, contact sports, or physical activities. This can put your child at risk of opening an incision. As your child’s incision heals, the skin may appear pink or red. It may also feel slightly bumpy or raised. This is called a healing ridge. Over time, the color should fade and the raised skin will become less noticeable. Increased pain, redness, drainage, swelling, or bleeding at the incision site Numbness, coldness, or tingling around the incision site Fever of 100.4°F (38°C) or higher	<urn:uuid:c76f17aa-40f0-4018-8fc2-49a0e98dd6db>	CC-MAIN-2013-20	http://www.einstein.edu/einsteinhealthtopic/?articleId=89313&articleTypeId=3&healthTopicid=-1&healthTopicName=HealthSheets	s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00027-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz	en	0.927488	573	2.484375	2
Workshop on traditional knowledge associated with genetic resources and the international regime on access and benefit sharing 12 January 2009 \| News story In December, Jane Bulmer attended a workshop on traditional knowledge and the International ABS regime. The workshop was hosted by the Austrian Federal Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry, Environment and Water Management in Vienna and brought together 25 participants, acting in their personal capacity to encourage an open exchange of views. The workshop focussed on 3 fictional ABS scenarios involving traditional knowledge associated with genetic resources which resulted in an in-depth discussion of the practical challenges of addressing traditional knowledge and how such challenges could be dealt with in the international regime. It is hoped that the outcomes will contribute to the on-going negotiations on the international regime on ABS under the Convention on Biological Diversity.	<urn:uuid:8e3866e4-378e-4a19-99fa-e606324abf36>	CC-MAIN-2013-20	http://www.iucn.org/es/noticias/noticias_por_fecha/2009_news_sp/?2538/Workshop-on-traditional-knowledge-associated-with-genetic-resources-and-the-international-regime-on-access-and-benefit-sharing	s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00072-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz	en	0.943366	156	2.328125	2
TEA News Releases Online Aug. 25, 2009 SAT scores show mixed results AUSTIN – SAT results released today show increased scores on the mathematics exam for public and private school students in Texas, while the mean math score nationally remained unchanged. Tracking a national trend, the critical reading and writing scores declined for Texas public and private students. The 2009 mean math score for all Texas students was 506, an increase of one point. The mean score on the critical reading test was 486, a decline of two points. The mean writing score was 475, a decline of five points. The national scores for all students were 501 for critical reading, a one-point drop; 515 for math, which represented no change; and 493 for writing, a one-point decline. Among public school students nationally, the scores were 496 and 487 for reading and writing, respectively, which represented a one-point decline on both tests. The mean math score held steady at 510. Among Texas public school students, scores increased for Asian-American students this year, while other student groups had mixed results. For the state overall, the number of 2009 graduating seniors who took the SAT rose to 141,733, up from 137,024 the previous year. The number of Texas public school seniors tested was 112,485, a decline from 116,875 tested the previous year. “Today’s SAT results are mixed, which is surprising given last week’s news that ACT scores for Texans students were at a record high. We know an increasing number of students took the ACT this year and higher education enrollments are expected to increase this fall, so more students are seeing college as a viable option,” Commissioner of Education Robert Scott said. Officials with the College Board, which administers the SAT, said a smaller number of students in Texas are taking the exam more than once, which could be contributing to the decline in scores. Students who take standardized exams multiple times often earn higher scores the subsequent times they take the exams. Because the state’s Top 10 percent rule guarantees admission to a public university to any student who ranks in the top 10 percent of their graduating class, students may feel less compelled to take the exam multiple times in an effort to raise their score. College Board officials also noted that the major spring testing period occurred during the H1N1 flu outbreak when thousands of Texas students were ill. About 40 SAT testing sites in Texas were shut down because of the outbreak. More students are also electing to take the ACT test, which is likely a factor in the declining number of public school students who take the SAT. Some students take both exams. ACT, Inc. reported last week that there was an increase of 3,590 test takers among the 2009 graduating class and a 14,879 student increase among all Texas high school students who took the exam last year. Many juniors and some sophomores take the ACT and SAT. While the decline on the writing score is significant, it’s worth noting that the writing score has declined both nationally and in Texas since the test’s introduction in 2006. Some testing experts question whether the writing prompts, the topic about which students are asked to write, may be impacting the scores. Scott said he believed the implementation of college readiness standards, updated curriculum standards and the requirement that all students earn four credits in math, science, social studies and English language arts will better prepare students, which should result in higher test scores.	<urn:uuid:047fd772-a03e-4db6-a303-039cb7b957f6>	CC-MAIN-2013-20	http://www.tea.state.tx.us/index4.aspx?id=5801	s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00043-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz	en	0.968434	724	1.640625	2
Chattahoochee Tech, the state's largest technical college, continues to see enrollment growth, largely a result of high unemployment and the school's merger with two other technical colleges in July 2009, officials say. Since the merger, CTC has experienced double-digit increases in enrollment every quarter. Though the winter quarter enrollment is just shy of the record enrollment of 13,470 students who registered in the fall 2010, the college expects to register more students when a full schedule of classes open for students in April at its newest campus in Canton. About 96 students are enrolled in four biology classes this quarter in Canton. "The slow economy continues to push the surge in enrollment as new students seek to improve their job outlook," President Dr. Sanford Chandler said in a statement. Felicia Rawles, 39, of Marietta was unemployed for six months before she decided to return to school to study nursing. She said she was nervous about doing so at first. "I had been out of school for a while, so coming back to school was nerve-wracking," she said. CTC has eight campuses, including two in Marietta, one in south Cobb and one in Acworth. For the first time, the number of students enrolling in online courses has surpassed enrollment of nearly all of CTC's physical campuses, with only the Marietta campus having more students. Just over 4,000 students take courses online, CTC reported. However, some of them also attend class on campus. "A lot of our students are balancing job, home and family," said Nancy Beaver, assistance vice president of student affairs. "They have a lot of responsibility on them, and online is an easier way for them to take a course. We've also had a number of military students that have been deployed to Afghanistan or Iraq, that are taking courses while they are overseas." Nearly 2,000 of the 13,200 students enrolled are new to CTC this quarter, according to the college. Beaver said administrators have been busy preparing students for the college's transition from a quarter system to semester system. Beginning in August, CTC students, as well as students at other state technical colleges, will convert to semesters. Under a semester system, the academic year is divided into two, 15-week fall and spring sessions, followed by a 10-week summer session. "It's a complete transition of some programs," Beaver said. "You may have had three classes in accounting under one program, but that is now two classes under a semester. We don't want to get students starting something that they can't finish before they transition. A lot of it has been advisement for those students." CTC offers more than 100 certificate, diploma and associate degree programs. Among the most popular areas of study are heating and air technology, automotive, television production technology, cosmetology and allied heath care programs. One course that may soon become a hit among students is American literature. Students in two such classes in Marietta and Acworth are provided with iPads to take home and use for the quarter, free of charge. Officials hope the new technology will save students money on books. The iPads must be returned at the end of the course for students to get their grades. "It's something exciting, right off the bat," said Yuri Melnichuk, 32, of Marietta, a former construction company owner who is studying health-care sciences.	<urn:uuid:f163d7be-a47d-4ea8-b76f-f4f5aaa4d0fe>	CC-MAIN-2013-20	http://cobbfootballfriday.com/view/full_story/10913966/article-Chatt-Tech-s-enrollment-surges	s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00020-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz	en	0.977683	714	1.515625	2
While I have cited instances where the #OccupyWallStreet movement is valuable, permit me to cite instances where the current economic status quo is non-valuable and explicitly detrimental. While the focus of the movement is protesting banking institutions, the ramifications of corporate greed go far beyond inequality and unemployment into a myriad of injustices. I can go far beyond five, but for the sake of time and readability, I’ll stop there. #5: Nike, Outsourcing Slavery Nike’s use of Chinese sweatshops to manufacture shoes is not exactly an obscure topic. Indeed, this has resulted in one of the most widely-covered boycotts in recent memory. Nonetheless, it represents perhaps one of the best examples of how cost-cutting costs lives. The meager labor laws of developing countries like China, coupled with the disparity between different types of currency, allows companies to outsource work at rates far below living wage in despicable conditions often exceeding 14 hours. Here, the maximization of profits supersedes the business’s responsibility to conduct its work in an ethical and fair manner. Thus, stockholders and boardmembers get rich at the expense of foreign laborers that they will never know. Thankfully, Nike has since created a board to investigate conditions within their own factories. Nonetheless, Chinese sweatshop labor isn’t isolated to Nike, even the perpetually hip Apple admitted to exploitive practices for iPod manufacturing. #4: Monsanto, Patenting Genetics Anyone who has watched Food Inc. is familiar with the cutthroat brutality of the food industry, and Monsanto has been cited as the worst offender, consistently valuing profit over human life, freedom and prosperity. The company acquired a strain of soybean possessing a strand called the “Terminator Gene”, which causes the seeds to produce sterile plants, thus negating the chance of a second harvest. This essentially cuts away any chance of farmer-independence by forcing growers to repurchase seeds annually. The patenting of the GMO has caused major problems for farmers at all levels. As the world’s largest supplier of seeds, farmers have little choice but to purchase the relatively inexpensive Monsanto seed. As a result, factory farm conditions explode and independent farmers are driven out of business. These exploitive practices led to a mass-exodus of small farmers in Argentina as they failed to make profit as well as an explosion of the farmer-suicide rate in India as independent farmers were plunged into debt. #3: McDonalds, Causing the Disease of Affluence By a large margin, McDonalds is far more panned by anticorporate groups as a symbol of the problems of globalization than any other American company. This criticism is not unfair though, and the company has a contentious history that existed before the release of Spurlock’s Super Size Me. For one, in his book Fast Food Nation, Eric Schlosser alleged that the company’s targeting of children in its marketing was responsible for the childhood obesity epidemic. This was the cause of a 2010 San Francisco law banning the inclusion of toys in Happy Meals. In the bigger picture, what is more problematic is the price disparity between environmentally-sustainable, locally-grown food and processed fast-foods. Anyone with the slightest familiarity with Michael Pollan understands the destructive effects of the mammoth amounts of salt, sugar and saturated fat included in these foods, and the relatively high price of healthy foods relegates the poor to diets comprised of packaged and processed foods. This causes the so-called diseases of “affluence”, namely, diabetes, obesity and certain types of cancers. #2: Sony, Restricting Intellectual Freedom The next instance deals with the crux of the open-source movement and its advocacy of property rights when applied to software. When it was released, the Playstation 3 was touted for its ability to run Linux among other operating systems. Free-software advocates praised Sony for allowing users this freedom and the system was lauded by many. In March of 2010, Sony cut the feature in its 3.2.1 update, thus provoking modders to attempt to restore the feature. Renowned iPhone hacker George Hotz successfully hacked the system and found a way to restore the Linux functionality and released a guide both on his blog and on YouTube. Sony sued Hotz and demanded social media sites to surrender IP addresses of people who viewed Hotz’s guides. After a complicated tangle of legal threats, a Spanish splinter group of Anonymous released a DDOS attack on Sony, thereby bringing down the Playstation Network for a record-setting month. Sony’s infraction here constitutes an abridgement of personal autonomy and ownership rights. If an individual owns a piece of property, s/he should be able to do whatever he pleases to said property. By essentially cracking down on people possessing knowledge of how to modify the Playstation, Sony directly infringed on both the intellectual and property freedom of property owners. The company stated that the removal of the Linux feature was to prevent piracy, thereby maximizing profits. By suing GeoHotz for teaching people how to hack, Sony essentially abridges the all-important freedom of knowledge, thereby obstructing democracy. #1: Outsourcing, Subverting Trickle-Down Economics to the Cost of All The final instance that I will talk about does not deal with a single corporation, but rather an economically unsustainable trend resulting in recession. In order to maximize profits, corporations outsource work to developing countries where products can be manufactured or work can be done for a comparatively low price. While I do support stimulating the economies of developing countries, infant labor laws allow for corporations to pay paltry wages in unethical conditions. Furthermore, while our modern economy is a global one, outsourcing work causes people to lose jobs on the national level. As jobs are shipped overseas, our own economy is neglected and the “trickle-down” effect is subverted. Thus, Americans lose jobs and movements like Occupy Wall Street happen as the percentage unemployed skyrockets.	<urn:uuid:0d68a487-dd3a-4b67-bf81-71539eecbbfb>	CC-MAIN-2013-20	http://wikipedianmarlith.blogspot.com/2011/10/five-instances-of-destructive-corporate.html	s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00047-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz	en	0.94503	1,234	2.484375	2
Books & Music Food & Wine Health & Fitness Hobbies & Crafts Home & Garden News & Politics Religion & Spirituality Travel & Culture TV & Movies Geordie English - Book Review Geordie English starts with an excellent preface which puts Geordie – an English dialect spoken in Northumberland in north-east England – in context. It mentions TV series and celebrities that have helped make Geordie famous including When The Boat Comes In, the children’s series Byker Grove , the footballer Alan Shearer and presenters Ant and Dec. It explains the background to the survival of Geordie as a dialect, when so many English dialects became lost with standardisation of the language. The book provides an A-Z listing of Geordie words with explanations of their meanings. Opening the book at random the first word I came to was Geordie, which means both a person who lives in Tyneside and the Geordie dialect. Some of the words in the listing are words which I see as part of standard English – I had not realised they had Geordie origins; examples include cadge (beg, borrow), crabby (bad tempered) and shift (shirt, move, working hours). There are also words which have found their way in to American usage such as duds (working clothes) and guess (understand). Some of the words in the book are akin to words used in Scotland, for instance bairn (young child) is a term Scottish people often use for child, and the Norwegian for child is barn. Northumberland is so high up country that parts of Scotland lie further south, which may help explain the retention of similar words in both cultures. The back of the book has short sections on other issues that relate to the Geordie dialect. They include information on pronunciation – a packed couple of pages with plenty of examples of characteristics such as the use of extra vowels and other letters in words. There are also a couple of pages about grammar, covering issues such as the use of negatives and words with roots in older versions of English. The book ends with a page somewhat misleadingly called Public Speaking - I associate this term with giving speeches. In fact is provides examples of some Geordie phrases you might want to listen out for such as Nowbutcanny (very well, thank you); the written examples all run words together, mimicking the spoken word. Bottles of Newcastle Brown ale march across the cover of Geordie English, Newcastle being part of the Geordie heartland. This is a compact book (thirty-five small pages) with a wealth of information, well worth the pocket sized price. I was sent a copy of the book Geordie English by the publisher, Abson Books, for review purposes. Content copyright © 2013 by Asha Sahni. All rights reserved. This content was written by Asha Sahni. If you wish to use this content in any manner, you need written permission. Contact Asha Sahni for details. Website copyright © 2013 Minerva WebWorks LLC. All rights reserved.	<urn:uuid:3c806523-943e-41a0-9efb-112c527d62ae>	CC-MAIN-2013-20	http://www.bellaonline.com/articles/art17980.asp	s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00023-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz	en	0.942726	651	2.828125	3
Iran denies it plans to build ballistic missiles capable of reaching U.S. territory 4 11, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei (right) in Tehran on Iran’s military senior officers made a speech. Xinhua News Agency/Agence France Iranian Defense Minister Ahmad Deva Hidi 21, denied that Iran intends to manufacture a range ballistic missiles can reach U.S. territory. U.S. Department of Defense Deputy Under Secretary for Policy James Miller 20 in the U.S. Senate hearing that, no later than 2015, the assistance Iran could in other countries against the United States can create missiles. Vahidi responded by saying, “We did this plan,” such claims are “part of the enemy psychological warfare.” to him, Iran is developing air defense missile system, the system is equipped with air radar and a range of 40 km-made missiles. Agence France-Presse reported that the Air Force National Air and Space Intelligence Center said in a report last year, Iran’s access to foreign aid, 2015-2018 may be able to produce intercontinental ballistic missile attack on U.S. soil. 22, Iran is scheduled to hold military exercises in Gulf waters for three days, then will test China-made missiles. Iranian government said that the development of Iran’s military power is not intended to attack other countries. (Xinhua News Agency 电)	<urn:uuid:d74c6b91-adfa-42ce-95cd-a53fd79a7584>	CC-MAIN-2013-20	http://www.9abc.net/index.php/archives/20461	s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00049-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz	en	0.910702	303	1.625	2
By John Shinal SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) — The U.S. economy is much more productive than it used to be, thanks in large part to innovative products and services pioneered by the technology industry. Yet there is a downside to that for older technology workers, as well as for younger ones that lack the most in-demand skills. Two things reminded me of that recently: the news of more layoffs at Hewlett-Packard Co. /quotes/zigman/229301/quotes/nls/hpq HPQ -0.42% , and the persistently high unemployment rate for Americans ages 25 to 34. While young tech firms such as Google Inc. /quotes/zigman/93888/quotes/nls/goog GOOG +0.59% and Facebook Inc. /quotes/zigman/9962609/quotes/nls/fb FB +0.46% are hiring lots of skilled staffers, they’re not doing so in the same numbers that older workers are being canned by companies whose growth has flagged. College debt hits well-off families Rising college costs and a sagging economy are taking the biggest toll on a surprising group: upper middle-income families. (Photo: Getty Images) For recent college grads in all occupations, it turns out the U.S. economy doesn’t need any of the skills a large percentage of them acquired at American colleges and universities. The evidence is clear in numbers that are historically weak. The unemployment rate for those 25 to 34 years old was 8.3% as of July. That’s higher than it’s been in 25 years, except for the height of the recession from which our economy is still struggling to recover. Even that figure, though, is overly rosy. Federal unemployment numbers miss a lot of folks who’ve either given up looking for work, or don’t file for unemployment benefits or both. It also doesn’t capture the additional weakness to the economy caused by people who are grossly underemployed. College grads who flip burgers and live in their old bedrooms with their parents can’t afford to buy their own homes or do much of anything else for the U.S. economy. Since the recession officially ended in 2009, about the only thing for equity investors to get excited about has been the promise of lots of cash going into the U.S. economy, courtesy of the Federal Reserve. But a bull market needs robust and sustainable growth, not just cheap money, and the current recovery has been weak. That’s why the stock rallies sparked by the Fed’s largess over the past 18 months have so far been unable to sustain anything that might signal a new secular bull market. Meanwhile, the debate over fiscal policy’s role in juicing the economy has been centered mostly on tax cuts — specifically on which income groups should get them and how big they should be. It can be argued that this or that tax bracket does the most to stimulate the economy. But no one can argue that the best tax cuts are the ones that stimulate economic growth. Right now, one demographic group faces an onerous burden that amounts to a stealth tax on the economy. An entire generation of U.S. college students is finally figuring out that it’s been suckered into a lifetime of penury after taking out student loans that can never be repaid in a highly productive economy that needs fewer workers. As college costs soared in the 1990s and 2000s, millions of college kids were given easy access to loans and told that they were investing in a bright future. But instead of opportunities to use their abilities, they’ve been presented with an economy filled to a supersize degree with “McJobs,” as novelist Douglas Coupland called them in his seminal book “Generation X.” These students’ loans are so large that the payments are burying their personal balance sheets. What’s more, because of changes made to consumer-bankruptcy laws, the terms they face are more onerous than ever, on par with some of the most predatory terms faced by credit-card customers. It’s worth pointing out that students who are working but can’t pay their loan bills are no more at fault for their predicament than all the investment managers at commercial banks that bought toxic derivatives from Wall Street. If banks deserved a bailout by the U.S. taxpayer, surely the young people of America who’ve earned a college degree deserve the same consideration. If those banks deserved a bailout by the U.S. taxpayer, surely the young people of America who’ve earned a college degree deserve the same consideration. With aggregate U.S. student debt now at $1 trillion and steadily rising, forgiving just half of that figure would have a huge and lasting impact on economic growth. Such a program wouldn’t have to be a handout, but an incentive. For example, students who were fewer than 30 days behind on their payments and stayed so would have half of their balance forgiven over time. The U.S. government could negotiate terms with Sallie Mae /quotes/zigman/7652328/quotes/nls/slm SLM +1.61% and other lenders enjoying fat loan margins, thanks to guarantees on those balances made by U.S. taxpayers. The lenders can be given a choice: Shoulder half the cost of such forgiveness, or be cut out of the student-loan market. The program would have a multiplier effect throughout the economy, which relies above all else on consumer spending. It would be good for America and good for stocks. Rather than sending checks to banks that will simply use the money to hire more low-skilled collection agents, those who had to borrow to earn their shot at the American dream will have a legitimate shot to achieve it.	<urn:uuid:752e790d-2ac0-42f7-9aab-a5839b7f944a>	CC-MAIN-2013-20	http://www.marketwatch.com/story/forgive-student-loans-its-good-for-stocks-2012-08-10	s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00021-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz	en	0.966219	1,250	1.664063	2
submitted in partial fulfillment (Requirements) of Master of Business Administration Programme Under the Supervision University School of Management Studies Guru Gobind Singh Indraprastha University Kashmere Gate, Delhi-110006 The report is prepared in the head of the topic “impact of global financial crisis on Real Estate”. It mainly concentrate on the general facts which are directly affecting the Indian economy that is what all the financial crisis is about and what are the poising factors affecting the Indian economy like the affect of the inflation, banks, capital market, GDP, balance of payment, industrial growth, oil prices, employment and the companies which are dependent on the down fall of the US Banks. There was a time when India was discussed as the land of snake charmers, black magic and epidemics but the revolutionary Indian growth story changed everything. Indian economy at its height compelled the world to change its viewpoint towards India. Out of the several factors which changed the face of modern India, we are going to discuss the most roaring of them i.e. our share market. The earlier reform procedures adopted by India gave India the two most sought after world-class brands i.e. SENSEX and NIFTY. The magical figures displayed by our market turned all the heads on India. And India became one of the most favoured places for investment. Now we are going to deal with the ups and downs in the share market since last two years i.e. since year 2006.our share market has went through many phases in there 2 years. We saw the investors getting overjoyed at 21K and we saw them crying... [continues] Cite This Essay (2011, 04). Global Economic Crisis. StudyMode.com. Retrieved 04, 2011, from http://www.studymode.com/essays/Global-Economic-Crisis-663614.html "Global Economic Crisis" StudyMode.com. 04 2011. 04 2011 <http://www.studymode.com/essays/Global-Economic-Crisis-663614.html>. "Global Economic Crisis." StudyMode.com. 04, 2011. Accessed 04, 2011. http://www.studymode.com/essays/Global-Economic-Crisis-663614.html.	<urn:uuid:91df3c7c-b2ad-446e-97df-db9c0aaceb1e>	CC-MAIN-2013-20	http://www.studymode.com/essays/Global-Economic-Crisis-663614.html	s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00044-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz	en	0.903504	488	2.3125	2
John J. Boll (ed.) / Reader services in libraries : a day in honor of Margaret E. Monroe Monroe, Margaret E. Adult services: prediction and control, pp. 26-39 ff. PDF (5.2 MB) varying publics, and provides the necessary feedback to the profes- sional librarian in adjusting the proposed service policy to the desired outcome. Let me comment on two important sources from which public librar- ians have drawn to anticipate or predict the outcome of service poli- cies: first adult learning principles, and second, the life task con- cept evolved in human development psychology. I shall illustrate first the librarian's use of adult learning principles. The early detailed descriptions of fine advisory and community group services provided in the 1920s and 1930s by Flexner, Tompkins, and Chancellor show them to have been guided by superb instincts and intuitions. As the adult education movement matured into the field of adult learning theory, concepts of learning emerged by which public librarians began to predict outcomes of service policies. Let me illustrate with three brief accounts from the experience of the Detroit Public Library. From the mid-1930s to the mid-1950s the Detroit Public Library's annual community co-sponsored Program Planning Institutes were based on several important learning principles. Two central principles were: (1) that the involvement of learners in planning their own learning led to more productive learning (hence the library invited collaborative planning with the very community organizations that wanted help in planning programs); (2) that new learning resources require new program methods, and program planners must be knowledge- able in the new methods as well as the new materials (hence, Detroit's Program Planning Institutes that introduced films as program materials also involved introduction of skills in film discussion). These were new concepts in the 1930s. Detroit's program planners' needs were truly well met by these one or two day institutes which were conducted annually over twenty This material may be protected by copyright law (e.g., Title 17, US Code).\| For information on re-use see: http://digital.library.wisc.edu/1711.dl/Copyright	<urn:uuid:8fc3be11-3227-41b5-beae-0c553c6633d7>	CC-MAIN-2013-20	http://digicoll.library.wisc.edu/cgi-bin/History/History-idx?type=turn&entity=History.BollReader.p0057&id=History.BollReader&isize=text	s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz	en	0.95571	450	2.109375	2
Apple's popular iPod player marked its fifth anniversary as a cultural phenomenon that helped bring music into the digital age and reap billions of dollars in sales for the US company. The California-based company launched its mini music player five years ago on October 23, 2001 and has never looked back as sales of the trendy gadget have continued to skyrocket. Apple shipped over eight million iPods during its fiscal fourth quarter, marking a 35 percent increase in such shipments over the year-ago quarter, according to the company's latest earnings statement released last Wednesday. "This strong quarter caps an extraordinary year for Apple," the company's chief executive Steve Jobs said last week, noting that the group had sold over 39 million iPods during the past year. And the sleek little music player has already become the "first cultural icon of the 21st Century," according to Michael Bull, a media lecturer at Britain's University of Sussex, who is researching the social influence of the iPod. Apple has shored up the diminutive music player's popularity and ease of use by making it compatible with Windows PCs, and in 2003 the company launched its iTunes online music store enabling iPod devotees to download their favourite hits. Current visitors to the iTunes store can also download films and popular television programs. However, industry competition is mounting, and software giant Microsoft announced in September that its Zune MP3 music player will hit US stores on November 14 as it seeks to challenge iPod's grip on the lucrative market. South Korean electronics giant Samsung has also started marketing its own MP3 player called the YP-Z5 in a bid to challenge Apple's dominance over the music-player market. Part of the iPod's success can be attributed to its small size, the smallest model easily fits in a shirt pocket, and its hefty memory which allows owners of the larger models to store up to 20,000 songs. Its international appeal was also helped by the fact that Apple designed the iPod's menu in multiple languages, including Japanese. An 80GB model, which sells from 249 dollars, holds up to 20,000 songs, up to 25,000 photos and will also store up to 100 hours of video. The pocket-size iPod shuffle by comparison costs 79 dollars and can hold up to 240 songs. Indeed, the iPod has become so ubiquitous that Mazda, General Motors and Ford recently teamed up with Apple to provide iPod-compatible equipment in their cars. Popular with students and young hipsters, iPods have, however, been snapped up by Britain's Queen Elizabeth II and US President George W. Bush, according to media reports. Last week, Apple said its most recent quarterly profit jumped 24 percent from a year ago to 546 million dollars as sales of iPod music players and Macintosh computers gathered momentum.	<urn:uuid:2d43da00-43a1-4923-adc3-6aeea8376906>	CC-MAIN-2013-20	http://www.cdrinfo.com/Sections/News/Details.aspx?NewsId=18712	s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz	en	0.968481	566	1.625	2
From time immemorial, the sun has been part of numerous legends and myths. Beyond these myths, ancient cultures have recognized the sun as crucial to life on Earth. Many ancient astronomers have observed it, trying to understand and record its unique features. As early as 28 B.C., astronomers in ancient China, recorded systematic observations of small, changing dark patches on the surface of the sun. And there are some early references to such dark patches in the writings of Greek philosophers from the fourth century BC. Scientists today call these patches sunspots. What are sunspots ? Sunspots are places on the Sun that are cooler than the rest of the Sun's surface. The sunspot is relatively cool because convective motion of the gas, i.e.the movement of gas, which brings new, hot, gas to the surface, is reduced in these areas of the Sun. .Because they are cooler, they appear darker. They are only dark in a relative sense; a sunspot removed from the bright background of the Sun would glow quite brightly . Sunspots can be much larger in diameter than Earth. They often come in groups. They form in a few days and usually disappear within weeks. Some large spots, though, may last for months. Sunspots are roughly circular. They have a dark center called the umbra and a less dark outer region called the penumbra. Sunspots are linked to magnetic activity on the Sun. Sunspots are magnetic regions on the Sun with magnetic field strengths thousands of times stronger than the Earth's magnetic field. This strong magnetic field inhibits convection of heat to the surface- leading to the "dark" spots. The average number of visible sunspots varies over time, increasing and decreasing on a regular cycle of between 9.5 to 11 years, on average about 10.8 years. . This is called a solar cycle. During the cycle, the period when the spots are maximum is called solar maximum and when the spots are minimum it is called solar minimum. The number of sunspots is an indication of how active the Sun is. The Sun is said to be "quiet" at solar minimum.	<urn:uuid:830e3a72-e972-4841-84ea-826c7238ecbb>	CC-MAIN-2013-20	http://www.dimdima.com/science/science_common/show_science.asp?q_aid=150&q_title=Sunspots	s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00059-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz	en	0.960582	445	4.25	4
Corn was stressed almost everywhere by to much heat. Where there was ample rain, the stress was less. Many fields, perhaps more than is yet known, if you believe anecdotal reports of crop scouts, have portions within the field whipped around by winds in an unusually high number of storms in parts of the country, particularly the northern and western parts of the Corn Belt, earlier this summer. What all this boils down to is stress, and stress going into fall leads to stalk rots, ear rots in the worst-hit areas, and won stalks. All that can add up to the need for an earlier harvest to prevent harvest losses. It may or may not point to major problems with moldy corn. That one is yet to be determined. Chuck Woloshuk, a Purdue University entomologist and specialist on corn diseases, says the real test will be fall weather. Aflatoxin could be a problem in some areas, and then again it may not be a big problem, largely depending upon what happens from now through the rest of the season, he says. One way to know if this is a likely problem in your fields or not is to do the pinch test or push test or both, notes Bob Nielsen, Purdue University Extension corn specialist. If stalks are disintegrating and fall apart if pinched hard, or if stalks drop over if pushed hard, stalk rots may already be a problem. Various stalk rots are secondary invaders that prey on corn that has been stressed, with lower than usual defenses against diseases. They also are likely culprits to take up residence after insects have chewed into stalks or ears, leaving holes that makes it enter for disease organisms to find their way into the plants. That's one reason why western bean cutworm, a pest showing up more prevalently in certain parts of the Corn Belt these days, is so destructive. With four or five worm holes per ear, water and moisture enter the ear, and disease organisms quickly follow. The result can be a mess of sprouting corn complete with various molds, and insect damage to boot. The best thing you can do now is be on guard for fields that appear as if they won't stand up long. You may want to reconsider your harvest plans or the point at which you wanted to start harvesting so you can get those fields before they deteriorate to the point that yield losses mount to unacceptable levels.	<urn:uuid:8dd2de63-a6a8-45cb-bbb3-d93019a11f9f>	CC-MAIN-2013-20	http://farmprogress.com/story-stalk-rot-and-ear-rot-season-ahead-0-52830	s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00020-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz	en	0.96237	490	2.640625	3
This is another in the series of experiments with dynamic global presentations with WebGL. It is SST anomaly data (AVHRR) from 21 December 2012. In fact, NOAA High Resolution SST data provided by the NOAA/OAR/ESRL PSD, Boulder, Colorado, USA, from their Web site at http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/. This experiment is more about data handling than science; the million points of a 1/4 deg grid (about 25kmn resolution) are challenging. So is the task of actually getting it on your screen; Firefox works for me, but not IE and it's patchy in Chrome. Sometimes restarting the browser makes the difference. It takes a few seconds to show, so I've put it below the jump. The plot is of anomalies. NOAA also gives the actual temperatures, but their plot is less informative. Most of the range of colors is used in just expressing the equator to pole variation, so you learn little about what is different currently. As elsewhere, you can rotate the globe as a trackball, or zoom by dragging the right button vertically. I'll discuss some of the data issues below the plot. The pictureThe scale on the right shows the anomaly units in °C. They can be quite large. There appears to be a La Nina jet in mid-Pacific. The North Atlantic variations are considerable, as is the N Pacific cold spot. Note the persistence of warmth north of Norway, where the ice is low for winter. Download minimisingThere are about a million data points. The grid is regular, so no need to send latitude or longitude, and with 256 colors, the base load is a Mb - significant for a web page download. I generally compact data in strings, using 7 bit ascii. So some coding is needed. I first differenced the data. Colors tend to vary smoothly, so most differences are within a range of 64. These can be sent within a byte, leaving some characters over to signal exceptions. One is land, so a few bytes can be used to describe an often long stretch. The data is being listed in latitude bands. Differences that don't fit within the range are expressed as base 64 numbers. That gets the data down to about 700 Kb. WebGL minimisingGL has always been extravagant with memory to gain performance. People who advise on WebGL follow this custom. I used for a while the R package RGL. For this task they would use triangles with node coords as 3 floats (32 bit) and colors as 4. Since each point is in six triangles, it entails 42 floats. That's where I started, but all sorts of things broke down. Firebug (which I rely on) groaned, and overflows happened within WebGL itself. The best remedy of course would be indexing. The GPU system is parallel, so this is probably bad for performance, but for this kind of thing, we can give up some. WebGL allows it, but the index variables must be one or two byte integers. This seems very odd to me, since the point of indexing is to economise with large objects. People work around it with subdivided objects, and that's an option here, but I would have needed at least sixteen such objects. So I tried other WebGL facilities. The first was using bytes instead of floats for the rgb in color, and dropping the transparency alpha. That gained a factor of two. Then I used the GL option of triangle strips, which cuts the repetition of nodes. But still each has to be done stated twice.	<urn:uuid:bc37c8ed-d159-40f2-b9a3-b6432a20b80c>	CC-MAIN-2013-20	http://moyhu.blogspot.com/2013/01/high-resolution-noaa-sst-with-webgl.html	s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00068-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz	en	0.942535	749	2.25	2
Arena dust rusted by four bulls' blood to a dull redness, The afternoon at a bad end under the crowd's truculence, The ritual death each time botched among dropped capes, ill-judged The strongest will seemed a will towards ceremony. Obese, dark- Faced in his rich yellows, tassels, pompons, braid, the picador Rode out against the fifth bull to brace his pike and slowly bear Down deep into the bent bull-neck. Cumbrous routine, not artwork. Instinct for art began with the bull's horn lofting in the mob's Hush a lumped man-shape. The whole act formal, fluent as a dance. Blood faultlessly broached redeemed the sullied air, the earth's grossness.	<urn:uuid:f1add1fd-179e-4f03-bd84-2503b9fb5393>	CC-MAIN-2013-20	http://www.angelfire.com/tn/plath/goring.html	s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00059-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz	en	0.928525	174	1.71875	2
According to the Reading (Pa.) Eagle, Penn State football coach Bill O'Brien told his players' parents last week that the scandalized program is considering a uniform change that would include displaying players' names on the reverse. Penn State officials pulled down the statue of the late Joe Paterno a week ago after an independent investigation concluded that the legendary coach looked the other way as his assistant Jerry Sandusky raped young boys. Adding names to Penn State's nondescript blue and white uniforms would be almost as radical a development as the removal of that statue. For as much as the program was about its departed coach's legend, it was also about his players' anonymity. Individually, you are nobody. Collectively, we are Penn State. Penn State's scandal belongs to Sandusky, Paterno and other school officials, not to the football players who took the field. Even so, it's not surprising that on a campus where individuality was so famously discouraged that no individual found child rape disturbing enough to embarrass the institution. Our men and women in blue wear name tags. Still, the New Orleans police officers who learned of their colleagues' Katrina-era atrocities put the image of the institution above any concern they may have had for the victims. The Friday after the hurricane, Henry Glover was wrongfully shot to death by one police officer, his remains incinerated by another. Two days later, New Orleans police killed two unarmed pedestrians on the Danziger Bridge and seriously wounded four others. That carnage and the conspiracy to frame another innocent pedestrian with the attempted killing of police officers didn't disturb any officer so much that he stepped forward with what he knew. The New Orleans Police Department entered a consent decree last week with the U.S. Department of Justice. The federal agency is demanding major reforms from a police force that it says has routinely flouted the Constitution and used excessive force. The agreement comes more than a year after the Justice Department released a March 2011 report detailing the offenses and deficiencies it had observed the previous two years. As soon as that report was released, the head of the Fraternal Order of Police attacked it. John Gallagher, who eventually calmed down and sounded a little more sensible, first sent an email describing the federal government's report as "rife with innuendo, exaggeration and generation." He told a reporter, "And quote me on this, with that report, the Justice Department squandered the opportunity to get any support from the men and women of the department." Gallagher later said the FOP agreed with many of the Justice Department's findings, but his initial defiance remains worrisome. Does it not reflect a distrust of outside investigation and a loyalty to the institution that allow scandals to metastasize? In order for true reform to take hold, individual officers have to be more committed to justice and more committed to the public welfare more than they are to the Police Department. Respect from their colleagues will have to come second to respect for the law. The Justice Department has mostly been successful in its prosecution of those Katrina-era crimes, but it wasn't easy. No police officer, not a single one, talked to the feds voluntarily. In fact, an FBI official described the officers he interviewed as "entrenched and galvanized." It was a year ago that Marlon Defillo, the department's No. 2 man, resigned. He was about to be fired for not properly investigating Glover's death. Eddie Compass, the man who was police superintendent when Glover was murdered, sat next to Defillo during his press conference, wearing a T-shirt printed with the word LOYALTY. Loyalty is a noble concept, but it's been perverted by so-called team players who swallow back the impulse to advocate for the powerless when doing would expose the group. The desire to belong to something larger than oneself can be strong and influential, but it's dangerous when it's so strong that it throws off an individual's moral compass and puts him in lockstep with evil.	<urn:uuid:485dfa89-b7cd-4c57-9064-948a33262425>	CC-MAIN-2013-20	http://www.nola.com/opinions/index.ssf/2012/07/new_orleans_police_officers_fi.html	s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00028-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz	en	0.980229	819	1.617188	2
Imaging of infantile hemangiomas is used to assess the extent of disease during lesion proliferation and planning of palliative interventions intended to limit complications. The lesions typically demonstrate T2-weighted signal hyperintensity relative to muscle and avidly enhance following contrast administration; T1-weighted signal hyperintensity and T2*-weighted MR signal loss likely represents hemorrhage within the lesion, a common feature of hemangiomas. During involution, whether spontaneous or therapeutically induced, dramatic reductions in the extent and enhancement of the lesion are typical. The aggressive osseous reaction of the petrous bone in the early imaging studies in this case is atypical for hemangiomas, which usually produce smoothly marginated erosions. The findings on subsequent imaging studies was more typical for involution. Computed tomography scans 19 months after presentation demonstrated replacement of the osseous reaction with mature, dense bone, as is expected with hemangioma involution. Complete resolution is common, but it may take years for the imaging appearance to fully normalize. Understanding angiogenesis and its role in cellular proliferation has lead to the development of mechanism-specific therapies. Thalidomide, first approved as a sedative, became best known for its teratogenicity.16,17 Limb malformations resulting from in utero exposure to thalidomide are due to inhibition of new blood vessel formation through the VEGF/bFGF pathway.3 Thalidomide has been rediscovered as an antiangiogenic agent. Common therapeutic indications include multiple myeloma and pediatric brain tumors.13 The number of medications acting directly on the VEGF/bFGF pathway, whether by downregulation of production or by receptor blockade, is rapidly expanding, with thalidomide becoming the prototype. Animal experiments demonstrate the ability of thalidomide to inhibit VEGF-stimulated neovascularization of the cornea in both the mouse and the rabbit.3,12 The use of thalidomide, alone or in combination with other agents, has become routine in the treatment of hematological malignancies and solid tumors in children and adults. Multiple Phase I and II studies have been published regarding the efficacy of thalidomide in cancer and more are currently ongoing. The greatest safety concern is the risk of dysmelia or limb malformations due to in utero exposure. The VEGF/bFGF pathway has been implicated in the pathogenesis of hemangiomas.6,10 Cutaneous hemangiomas consistently overexpress VEGF and HIF-2α.9 Proliferating hemangiomas are associated with serum VEGF levels that are significantly higher than those found in association with involuting hemangiomas and other vascular malformations.7,22 Levels of VEGF and bFGF have not been studied in association with intracranial hemangioma, but no evidence suggests that they would be different from the levels found in patients with other hemangiomas. This case report is the first to correlate intracranial hemangioma growth with measurements of VEGF and bFGF. More recently other antiangiogenic agents, such as interferon α-2a and -2b, have been investigated in the treatment of hemangiomas.8 Because interferon α has significant toxicities, the search for an effective and safe agent for use in children continues. The evaluation of therapeutic effectiveness in patients with hemangiomas is difficult because it is well understood that these lesions will undergo regression on their own. Unlike the anticipated response to the administration of traditional cytotoxic chemotherapy, the response to thalidomide should not be expected to entail rapid regression. Treatment with antiangiogenesis agents is characterized by a delay in the onset of action as the tumor must outgrow its existing blood supply before diminishing in size. In the case presented in this paper, the tumor initially grew with significant velocity, slowing after 4 months of therapy with evidence of decreased growth before the patient reached 8 months of age. Regression does not usually begin until after a plateau phase, which was not seen in this patient. Once regression began, it was rapid and nearly complete before the child reached 2 years of age. The percentage increase in volume, a measure of growth velocity, of periorbital hemangiomas has been reported to range from 4 to 931% between imaging studies during the growth phase.21 A systematic evaluation of average growth velocities based on age for hemangiomas has not been described. This is probably due to the mostly benign nature of the lesions as well as the expense and inconvenience of serial MR imaging to assess tumor volume and continued variability in nomenclature. The lack of a plateau phase in growth and the early onset of tumor regression in our patient strongly suggest that thalidomide treatment had a positive effect on the course of her disease. We have presented the case of a child diagnosed with a life-threatening intracranial hemangioma managed by VEGF/bFGF–targeted therapy using thalidomide. There was minimal toxicity with thalidomide therapy and the neurological outcome has been better than expected. The excellent clinical outcome and toxicity profile using the mechanism-specific therapy described in this case warrants further clinical investigation and offers a new therapeutic option in the management of other life-threatening hemangiomas.	<urn:uuid:2ebaa19a-a06d-444b-b3d6-ea3d96e558fb>	CC-MAIN-2013-20	http://pubmedcentralcanada.ca/pmcc/articles/PMC2737696/?lang=en-ca	s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz	en	0.946022	1,139	2.453125	2
The Awkward Season: Prayers for Lent offers Christian pilgrims a "prayer path" to follow through Lent. For each day of the week, prayers of invocation, confessions, intercession, and thanksgiving are shaped around a theme prompted by the psalm for the day. A daily Scripture reading is provided, but Hawkins welcomes readers to use a different passage if it comes to mind; this book, she reminds the reader, is designed to support rather than dictate a Lenten journey. A finger labyrinth at the back of the book serves as an optional prayer tool for those who wish to try it and an order for Lenten praise and prayer provides a simpe, beautiful way for groups who meet weekly to share this Lenten experience. Whether used individually or in a gathering, The Awkward Season will be a road map for the journey as you spend time with "the One who longs to be your companion in this season and always."	<urn:uuid:85321acb-e267-4185-a3a6-e20cda3e45da>	CC-MAIN-2013-20	http://reviews.christianbook.com/2016/899971/upper-room-the-awkward-season-prayers-for-lent-reviews/reviews.htm	s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00030-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz	en	0.930875	190	1.5	2
The chemical multiverse Preparing for quantum changes in the global chemical industry Watch, learn & listen Webcast: Two Deloitte chemical leaders discuss the key findings and opportunities revealed in “The chemical multiverse” on 16 December 2010 at 10:30am ET. Click here to listen to the playback. About the report An in-depth examination of the state of the global chemical industry reveals anything but a cohesive picture of an industry on a linear path. It remains the case that chemical products will play vital roles in solving many of the world’s problems over the next 10 years and well into the future. What is less clear is how those problems will be solved. More than ever, individual companies are redefining and refining the roles they currently play and the roles they expect to play in the future. They are shifting their strategies. They are seeking to understand their own capabilities and channel them into solutions for the specific, fast-changing needs of their customers. Ultimately, they are looking to make the right choices to ensure their success. While some companies have grasped this uncertain reality and put themselves in a position to succeed over the past 12 years, many others are struggling. The report by Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Limited’s Global Manufacturing Industry Group entitled The chemical multiverse: Preparing for quantum changes in the global chemical industry can help companies find a profitable place in the industry by bringing their thinking in line with the successful minority. Drawing on research and analysis of corporate performance over the past 12 years, this report also includes valuable insights from working sessions with more than 150 chemical industry executives. It begins with a review of the current industry landscape and offers a new approach for companies to better analyze and understand their place in it, providing a solid starting point for further strategizing. Use this form to sign up to receive alerts on future chemical perspectives from Deloitte.	<urn:uuid:0489ef8f-0cf3-4b31-8e23-21e14495d4a6>	CC-MAIN-2013-20	http://www.deloitte.com/view/en_GX/global/industries/manufacturing/3434944c5f13c210VgnVCM3000001c56f00aRCRD.htm	s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00059-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz	en	0.944369	386	1.757813	2
The Situational Effects of Food Advertising Posted by The Situationist Staff on February 9, 2012 Pierre Chandonm and Brian Wansink recently posted their paper “Is Food Marketing Making Us Fat? A Multi-Disciplinary Review” on SSRN. Here’s the abstract. Whereas everyone recognizes that increasing obesity rates worldwide are driven by a complex set of interrelated factors, the marketing actions of the food industry are often singled out as one of the main culprits. But how exactly is food marketing making us fat? To answer this question, we review evidence provided by studies in marketing, nutrition, psychology, economics, food science, and related disciplines that have examined the links between food marketing and energy intake but have remained largely disconnected. Starting with the most obtrusive and most studied marketing actions, we explain the multiple ways in which food prices (including temporary price promotions) and marketing communication (including branding and nutrition and health claims) influence consumption volume. We then study the effects of less conspicuous marketing actions which can have powerful effects on eating behavior without being noticed by consumers. We examine the effects on consumption of changes in the food’s quality (including its composition, nutritional and sensory properties) and quantity (including the range, size and shape of the packages and portions in which it is available). Finally, we review the effects of the eating environment, including the availability, salience and convenience of food, the type, size and shape of serving containers, and the atmospherics of the purchase and consumption environment. We conclude with research and policy implications. Download the paper for free here. Related Situationist posts: - The Marketing Situation of Doritos (FTC Complaint) - The Benefit of Knowing Your Eating Sins - Big Calories Come in Small Packages For more on the situation of eating, see Situationist contributors Adam Benforado, Jon Hanson, and David Yosfion’s law review article Broken Scales: Obesity and Justice in America. For a listing of numerousSituaitonist posts on the situational sources of obesity, click here.	<urn:uuid:f6149901-fc4c-40c6-9a2b-15b4aa8efc03>	CC-MAIN-2013-20	http://thesituationist.wordpress.com/2012/02/09/the-situational-effects-of-food-advertising/?like=1&_wpnonce=9501e873bf	s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00055-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz	en	0.933236	431	1.976563	2
Fuel-ish Questions Fuel-ish Answers Mark S. Orr Reprinted with permission from FAA Aviation News Just a glance at the EAA AirVenture® grounds in Oshkosh remind us that airplanes come in an amazing range of shapes and sizes. However they may differ in appearance, all powered aircraft share a need for fuel. Given the growing buzz about availability of fuels for reciprocating aircraft engines, here are a few answers to some “fuel-ish” questions. Is My Fuel Certified? FAA does not certify aviation fuel, but the agency has a role: FAA certifies use of the fuel in engines and aircraft. Specifically, FAA’s Aircraft Certification Service administers safety regulations for type certification of engines and aircraft. As part of the type certification, standard specifications control the fuel(s) used to show compliance to the regulations. For certificated engines and aircraft, FAA considers the fuel specification an operational limitation. Steve Thompson’s Airworthiness 101 article in the May/June issue of the FAA Aviation News explained the type certification process and described the type certificate data sheet (TCDS). The TCDS, engine installation manual, aircraft flight manual, and aircraft placards all list approved fuels. It is the responsibility of aircraft operators to use only those fuels. Like many other countries, the United States uses ASTM International (www.astm.org) specifications for aviation fuel. ASTM International is a consensus standards organization comprised of producers, users, and general interest groups that develop, issue, and maintain these fuel specifications and test methods. Why Are Aviation Fuels Different? The first aircraft used spark ignition piston engines burning the automotive gasoline that was available at the time. Over the years, as aircraft engine designs evolved to produce more power with less weight, fuels evolved with them. Operational and research experience in the early part of the 20th century identified fuel parameters that affect engine and aircraft performance, such as density, energy content, vapor pressure, and knock performance. The first fuel specifications captured this experience and ensured more consistent performance. The industry developed the octane scale that indicates how resistant the fuel is to premature detonation, or knock, in the engine. Octane is the factor most associated with engine power and it became the fuel grade. What Drives Availability of Fuels? Demand. In the 1930s and 1940s, the military was a primary user of aviation gasoline. The large radial engines used in military aircraft at the time drove the introduction of fuel grades with higher octane. With the introduction of turbine engines in the 1950s, the military and commercial airline focus shifted to jet fuel. Consequently, the need for many of the grades of aviation gasoline decreased. Today, there are only four grades (80, 91, 100LL, and 100) listed in ASTM International Standard Specification D910. Market forces determine the grades produced. The predominant U.S. commercial aviation fuel for reciprocating engines is 100LL avgas. Cost. Aviation fuel use and production is a fraction of the use and production of diesel, home heating, and automotive fuels, which affects the availability and cost of aviation fuels. For example, 100LL avgas represents less than 0.5 percent of the total gasoline produced in the United States and, because of its lead content, 100LL is produced, delivered, and stored separately from its unleaded automotive gasoline counterpart. This contributes to the higher cost of avgas compared with automotive gasoline. Environmental Concerns. The primary environmental concern for avgas is lead emissions. Though tetraethyl lead (TEL) has not been in automotive gasoline since the late 1970s, it remains an additive in aviation gasoline to boost octane for safety reasons. Introducing grade 100LL did reduce the added TEL amount, but FAA and industry have searched for an unleaded replacement for many years. So far, no one has found a “drop-in replacement fuel” that will cover all applications in the existing fleet. For example, though ethanol has been proposed, it is not a “drop-in.” Among other issues, engine and aircraft performance tests have shown significantly reduced aircraft range that may not be acceptable for all operations. Introducing New Fuels In the United States, the path to introducing a new fuel goes through ASTM International, the engine and aircraft type design holders, and FAA. Introducing a new fuel requires testing of fuel properties, components, engines, and aircraft and a thorough technical and safety review of any issues. Approaches to introduce new fuels include: - Existing standard specification. An example of this approach is adding different grades of avgas to ASTM International Standard Specification D910. The grades in D910 differ only in the tetraethyl lead quantity added to produce the needed octane and the dye used to differentiate among the grades. Historically, higher octane grades allowed for higher-power engines. Once fuels are included in the specification, those seeking design approvals for engines and aircraft can use those fuels to show compliance with certification regulations. - New fuel specification to replace an existing fuel. This approach introduced Grade 82UL aviation gasoline. The 82UL standard specification provides an aviation quality gasoline using available gasoline stocks that can be used in engines and aircraft with an auto gas Supplemental Type Certificate (STC). FAA issued Special Airworthiness Information Bulletin (SAIB) CE-00-19 (http://rgl.faa.gov/) to communicate approval of 82UL as an alternative fuel for certain automotive gasoline STCs. - New fuel specification for a new fuel. In the early 20th century, this approach produced the first specifications for aviation gasoline and then later for jet fuel. Currently, ASTM is working to introduce new unleaded avgas specifications keeping D910 as the leaded avgas specification. Once the new specification is approved and released, those seeking design approval for engines and aircraft can use fuel that meets this specification to show compliance with certification regulations. - Hybrid approach. This approach is currently the path used for alternate jet fuels, allowing the introduction of new synthetic turbine fuels. A new specification will list the performance properties of new fuels as blended with Jet A/A-1 and allow designation of the blend as a D1655 fuel. Each new fuel would be a blend component with detailed requirements listed in individual annexes to the main specification. This approach will allow control of parameters unique to the new fuel and separate from Jet A/A-1. What’s the Future for Aviation Fuels? While we cannot predict the future for aviation fuels, FAA is an active participant with the industry as this future unfolds. Here’s how. Research. The Aviation Fuel and Engine Test Facility (AFETF) at the FAA Technical Center in Atlantic City, New Jersey, have conducted research on aviation gasoline for many years. The Center has performed full-scale engine testing and laboratory analyses to evaluate: - The interaction of advanced fuel chemical components and additives with existing fuels and with each other - The performance and properties of alternative and experimental fuels, such as ethanol and biofuels - The octane performance of unleaded avgas Standard Specifications. As the primary aviation fuel standards organization in the U.S., ASTM International has been active in the aviation fuel arena. Currently, task forces are working on: - Developing new standard specifications for unleaded avgas - Introducing 87 and 91 grades into the 82UL • standard specification (D6227) - Developing an aviation grade ethanol standard specification - Introducing synthetic turbine fuels into D1655 - Preparing for the future introduction of bio derived jet fuels Avgas Lead Emissions. FAA’s Office of Environment and Energy is working closely with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to evaluate the impact of lead emissions from aircraft engines on the environment. EPA recently issued a new standard for lead emissions in the National Ambient Air Quality Standard (NAAQS). This new standard will require a coordinated response from the aviation industry. FAA is already working with groups, such as the General Aviation Manufacturers Association (GAMA), Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association (AOPA), Experimental Aircraft Association (EAA), the Coordinating Research Council (CRC), and ASTM International to address future fuels for the reciprocating engine fleet. While we cannot predict the future for aviation fuels, we can be certain that market forces, environmental concerns, and availability issues will drive changes. We can also be certain that FAA will be an active participant in meeting the challenges ahead. Mark S. Orr is an aviation safety engineer in the FAA Small Airplane Directorate’s Programs and Procedures Branch. Dave Atwood from the Aviation Fuel and Engine Test Facility (AFETF) at the FAA Technical Center in Atlantic City, New Jersey, and Mark Rumizen from the FAA Engine and Propeller Directorate contributed to this article.	<urn:uuid:49c8ae6b-a1e3-4bd5-ba91-61c9ec666317>	CC-MAIN-2013-20	http://iflyamerica.org/safety_fuel.asp	s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz	en	0.920899	1,820	2.953125	3
Environmental Impact Assessment Our Environmental Impact Assessment service offers clients an investigation into issues that may be raised by the Local Planning Authority regarding the impact a proposal may have upon the wider environment, exploring solutions to satisfy these concerns. The scope of works can vary from site to site, our professional consultants will provide you with expert advice to meet your individual requirements. Guidance in the form of an Environmental Impact Assessment during the early stages of development often prevents future costly alterations or amendments to a proposal, in terms of time and investment, making it a valuable tool in the development process. At AAH Planning Consultants, our Environmental Impact Assessment services include: - A site visit, to assess the surrounding environment, where necessary - Initial liaison with the Statutory Consultees and Local Planning Authority - Initial desk research of the site and surroundings - Compilation of all required elements of the Environmental Impact Assessment - Professional guidance to mitigate against potential objections For more information or to speak to one of our consultants without obligation, please contact us.	<urn:uuid:4b4e2da6-179f-4828-baba-8b29d1ee46ef>	CC-MAIN-2013-20	http://www.aahplanning.com/environmental-impact-assessment.html	s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00070-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz	en	0.917548	209	1.578125	2
Wolcott Real Estate Neighborhoods/Developments in Wolcott, VT There are currently no neighborhoods/developments defined for this area. Wolcott is a town in Lamoille County, Vermont, United States. The town was named for General Oliver Wolcott, a signer of the Declaration of Independence. According to the US census, the town has a total area of 39.2 square miles, of which 39.0 square miles is land and 0.2 square mile (0.38%) is water. As of the 2000 census, there were 1,456 people, 552 households, and 401 families residing in the town. The population density was 37.3 people per square mile. There were 646 housing units at an average density of 16.6 per square mile. Please contact Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate The Masiello Group for homes for sale in Wolcott Vermont, homes for sale in Lamoille County Vermont and for all your real estate needs.	<urn:uuid:e95c164c-df6f-4e79-a2fb-ce122952d8cb>	CC-MAIN-2013-20	http://www.masiello.com/real-estate/vt/wolcott.cfm	s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00047-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz	en	0.955308	208	1.601563	2
Red Cross sets up shelter after winds knock out power To view our videos, you need to install Adobe Flash 9 or above. Install now. Then come back here and refresh the page. AVERILL PARK, N.Y. -- High winds knock out power to more than 10,000 people in Averill Park and surrounding areas. The Town of Sand Lake actually declared a state of emergency, as crews work to repair downed lines. More than a dozen town roads were closed. With the declining temperatures, the American Red Cross set up a shelter at the Averill Park Volunteer Fire Department on Union Turnpike for anyone who needs to stay warm. "We are currently working with our emergency mangers, the fire departments, to see what the damage assessment will be, however at this time our major concern is providing a safe place for people to go, and some hot food for them to eat," said Mike Tripodi, Red Cross volunteer. People in that area are asked to use caution when traveling and treat all downed power lines as if they are dangerous.	<urn:uuid:f06c7f71-aa0d-4056-b07b-f739a71141f8>	CC-MAIN-2013-20	http://hudsonvalley.ynn.com/content/top_stories/623977/red-cross-sets-up-shelter-after-winds-knock-out-power/?ap=1&Flash	s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00033-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz	en	0.954715	222	1.640625	2
edge.org \| A deep dig into evolution, social learning and creativity. Including THE MAGIC OF REALITY by Richard Dawkins, THE BEST OF EDGE: CULTURE edited by John Brockman, FUTURE SCIENCE edited by Max Brockman. [more] .... According to Pinker, new studies that quantify the increase and decrease in violence over the course of history lead to the conclusion that it is in constant decline. As evidence of this, he notes that many forms of violence have disappeared from the world, or have at least become rare and are condemned in the West... - as he wrote in an article titled A History of Violence (on www.edge.org ). [more] ....Haidt began reading political psychology. Karen Stenner’s The Authoritarian Dynamic, “conveyed some key insights about protecting the group that were particularly insightful,” he said. The work of the French sociologist Emile Durkheim was also vital. In contrast to John Stuart Mill, a Durkheimian society, as Haidt explains in an essay for edge.org, “would value self-control over self-expression, duty over rights, and loyalty to one’s groups over concerns for out-groups."[more] "A bold scientific humanist vision combined with the microcosm of life sciences." In 2006 Dr. Pinker was invited to write an essay on the theme “What Are You Optimistic About?” His answer: “The decline of violence.” [ED note: you can see his answer to the Edge question here]. The reaction to the essay was swift and surprising. “I started hearing from scholars from fields that I was barely aware of, saying, ‘There’s much more evidence on this trend than you were aware of,’ ” he said. [more] .....A winning combination of good writers, good science and serious broader concerns. (Starred Review, November 15, 2011).	<urn:uuid:8b9e8a05-e8be-46e8-9a2a-22eecb94e765>	CC-MAIN-2013-20	http://www.edge.org/edgenews/2011	s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz	en	0.960043	419	1.953125	2
Things are pretty good. Economic growth rebounded to 3.5% in the fourth quarter of 2006. The unemployment rate is a relatively low 4.6% and the economy created 111,000 new jobs in January -- not great, but decent. Core inflation is subdued at 2.6%, and inflationary pressures in the pipeline (as measured by the Producer Price Index) have dropped to just 2.2% from 2.8% in July 2005, a high for the decade. And, of course, stocks are in the midst of a historic bull market run. Stocks have now racked up 47 straight months without a 10% correction, according to Jim Stack of Investech. So why don't we feel better about the economy? In my e-mails, walking the halls of the recently concluded World Money Show in Orlando, listening to radio and TV call-in shows, and reading blogs and message boards, I find a high level of anxiety and concern. Many of us feel that somehow we're off course. That things aren't working out as we'd believed they would. That the future is more uncertain than we'd hoped. It's hard to appreciate the 'net'We do we feel so bad when things are so good? I've got a theory I'd like to try out on my readers. It's not original by any means. It was suggested by Robert McTeer, former president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, in a speech at the World Money Show. I got to follow up the idea with McTeer in an interview after his speech. (You can watch the entire video here.) And I'm going to try to take the idea further in this column.In essence, the idea boils down to this: Whether it's the job or stock markets, the official numbers report a "net" figure -- the final plus or minus after all the messy adding and subtracting is done. But we live our lives in that messy world of the gross numbers before the final calculations. The reality that we experience is in the gross and not in the net numbers. That's a little abstract, so let me give you the example that McTeer, currently a distinguished fellow at the National Center for Policy Analysis, used in his speech. We live in the churnThe Bureau of Labor Statistics, McTeer noted, reports job gains or losses once a month. For January, for instance, they reported that the U.S. economy had gained 111,000 jobs. That's a net number, and as such, it's very neat and clean. But it represents a much messier set of gross numbers. In January, about 2.5 million people lost their jobs in the national economy, McTeer said. At the same time, 2.6 million people found jobs. That churn of as many as 5 million people -- probably less, since some who lost jobs also found jobs in January -- is the world in which we all live. And it's a lot messier and more anxiety-producing than the net result: Economy adds 110,000 jobs.I'd extend McTeer's point to other realms of economic experience. We feel inflation not in the net world -- core inflation measured by the Consumer Price Index is running at an annual rate of 2.5% -- but in the gross world. The way we feel about inflation isn't a result of a mental netting out that says, "Oh, my bill from visiting the doctor is up 6%, but the cost of a computer is down 3.5%, so inflation is just 2.5%." No, we feel the gross pain of paying that 6% increase in the doctor's bill. And the drop in the price of a computer doesn't make us feel better when we're writing the larger check to our doctor. I think this applies to the stock market as well. In the net world, the widely reported Dow Jones Industrial Average ($INDU) is up 16% for the 12 months that ended on Feb. 13, 2007. But we don't invest in the net world. As investors, we experience the gross world. And in that world, we're aware of all the stocks we didn't buy that soared. Did you catch , up 72% in this period, or , up 40% over the last 12 months? I didn't. And we know the ones that we did buy that went nowhere, such as , up 1%, or worse, , down 25%.	<urn:uuid:442b02c9-f99c-44e6-882d-1f1ca71c13c1>	CC-MAIN-2013-20	http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/Investing/JubaksJournal/WhyTheseGoodTimesFeelSoBad.aspx	s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00066-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz	en	0.964123	917	1.609375	2
Although Franco-Portuguese relations are evolving, especially in a European context (in particular due to their presidencies of the European Union Council that are close together), it seems essential to improve our bilateral exchanges. • France is one of Portugal’s preferred partners In 2003, Portugal decided to expand its “preferred partner” network (Spain, Brazil, Morocco) to include France, thereby marking a genuine political desire to deepen its relations with this latter. Since then, our relations are punctuated by a high-level meeting devoted to a specific topic. Four meetings have been held to date: on 31 October 2003 in Lisbon on the topic of the “Franco-Portuguese partnership in view of enlargement”, on 10 April 2006 in Paris on the topic of competitiveness, on 22 February 2008 in Lisbon on the topic of the sea, on 7 May 2010 in Paris on the topic of innovation and research. • A large Portuguese community in France Finally, the quality of the relationship between France and Portugal is also judged with the position of the Portuguese community in French society (492,000 people in 2005). Accordingly, Portugal provided the largest contingent of European voters during the municipal elections in France in March 2008 (63,385 people). Updated on 12.04.11 - Diplomatic Photo Gallery - France / Portugal (in French)	<urn:uuid:97bc83ce-e14e-4b56-8f83-d056f61705e1>	CC-MAIN-2013-20	http://www.diplomatie.gouv.fr/en/country-files/portugal/france-and-portugal/political-relations-6215/	s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00038-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz	en	0.957604	285	2.453125	2
Charles Okana, 35 years, Volunteer Water Pump Technician Kitgum Water Project Orom IDP camp, Kitgum District, Northern Uganda Charles is a pump mechanic, trained by AMREF, working to provide clean water in internally displaced people's camps in northern Uganda Charles is a pump mechanic, trained by AMREF, working to provide clean water in internally displaced people's camps in northern Uganda “If it wasn’t for the war, I would probably have become a successful farmer,” Charles Okana says, wiping sweat from his brow. Charles supervises seven men and women 2 km from the Orom IDP (Internally Displaced People) camp, They have come here to repair a water pump. After carefully taking apart the equipment, they replace broken parts and reassemble the unit. At first, the pump produces murky spurts of liquid, but soon a steady stream of clear water begins to flow. Charles talks about life in the IDP camp… I left Kitenyi in 2004 with my wife and four children, following attacks by the Karamajong and the LRA (Lord’s Resistance Army). They invade villages, pillaging food and property, kidnapping people and torching houses. We fled for our lives and came here. But life in the camp is not easy. The camp is overcrowded. 16,500 people live in hundreds of small mud huts built too close together. There is only one toilet for every 25 people. Poor hygiene and sanitation are major health threats and cause cholera, malaria and HIV/AIDS. We don’t eat well, so we can’t fight illness. In fact, we rely on the World Food Programme – for a few kilos of maize and beans, cooking oil and porridge each month. I now have six children; the youngest are twins and are always ill. Although Orom health centre is close by, there are few drugs. Health care is a big challenge. Charles talks about his work as a pump mechanic… I was chosen by the camp to represent them in the water management committee. I received a week’s training on basic water pump installation and maintenance, and AMREF provided us with training manuals. I learned about operating tools, and water and environmental policy, health and safety, and book keeping so I can maintain records at the sub-county office. I monitor the 35 boreholes in Orom and make monthly reports to budget for repairs. I am now a qualified trainer, so I pass my knowledge and skills to other community members. I am important in the community, because water is so essential for us. Thanks to these boreholes, women and girls avoid long treks to fetch water at the risk of being raped or abducted. Women used to spend their days looking for water instead of tending fields and looking for food. Rivers and ponds were not safe sources of drinking water because they were tainted by animals. Now, fewer children are getting diarrhoea because the water here is safer.	<urn:uuid:72e1ca2f-5996-4ae3-adce-85dfa95169c8>	CC-MAIN-2013-20	http://www.amref.org/personal-stories/charles-story/	s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00058-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz	en	0.966228	623	1.890625	2
Because climate change is largely due to energy use, improving energy efficiency is an urgent need. Efficient lightbulbs, cars, and other consumer products are important ways to meet that need. But there is another vast source of wasted energy in industrial countries that could be tapped. When industrial and power plants burn coal or natural gas, much of the energy in the fuel is lost as waste heat. That heat can be used directly or captured to make electricity. This “energy recycling” is already producing 10,000 megawatts of electricity annually in the U.S. Denmark gets half its electricity from “energy recycling” and Finland gets 40 percent. On its current course, global energy consumption would be 40 percent higher in 2030 than it is today. Following this path for even another decade would doom efforts to keep future warming below 2°C. Government policy holds the key to steering a different course. The International Energy Agency has called for “strong action now” by all the world’s top 20 emitters. The biggest single policy change that is needed is to put a price on carbon, making it no longer free to dump heat- trapping gases into the atmosphere. Whether established by placing a tax on the carbon content of fossil fuels, or placing a cap on emissions and creating a market-based system for trading emissions permits, pricing carbon will end the era of free pollution and enable the world to save the cheapest tons first. To be most effective, carbon prices should cover the entire economy and all greenhouse gases, not only carbon dioxide from fossil fuels. In addition to pricing carbon, aggressive policies are needed in three key areas: energy efficiency, low carbon energy, and land- use, which includes forest conservation and agriculture. Energy efficiency – wringing more useful work out of coal, oil, and natural gas – is the fastest and cheapest way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The efficiency resource is vast, and most efficiency investments in homes, offices, and factories are profitable, saving money and carbon. The key policy targets are: - Stronger building codes to eliminate wasteful energy use, while improving comfort. - Appliance efficiency standards to enhance the energy productivity of everything from lighting to refrigerators to office equipment. - Vehicle fuel economy standards to ensure that cars of the future go much farther on every tank. - Incentives to accelerate the adoption of more efficient technologies, such as tax breaks for hybrid cars and lower mortgage rates for energy efficient homes.	<urn:uuid:69b31001-8a5d-4c0d-b688-38ef59fa57d6>	CC-MAIN-2013-20	http://www.climatecommunication.org/change/urgent-need/	s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00056-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz	en	0.926453	503	3.78125	4
Have you ever been in an area of your city and was unable to communicate with its residents due to a language barrier? You remember the frustration you felt? It is an age old discussion. Should more Americans be bilingual in order to be able to communicate more effectively with the Spanish speaking individuals who emigrate here from other countries? Thinking rationally it would make communication and relationships between Spanish and English speakers in the USA much more relatable. When you look at the statistics in some regions there are more Spanish speaking residents than English speaking. Having said that it makes sense that our children should be taught Spanish in school at an early age. They should at least know the basics. The main argument against this policy is that some English speakers feel that if someone moves to an English speaking region then they should be the ones to have to adapt to their environment and learn English. Not the other way around. I agree that they should also have to learn the language of their region but there is one big flaw in that argument and that is the fact that as the numbers grow, there are more Spanish speakers than English speakers. So sure it sounds good to try to maintain a sense of ownership over your region but when the numbers are laid out, the truth is that Spanish speakers do outnumber English speakers. So in reality, we have to adjust to them as much as they have to adjust to us. English still is a widely used language in the USA. However raising a child to be bilingual does have its advantages. One being that in their job search they will have a competitive edge by being bilingual as many positions now require that you know Spanish to serve their diverse consumers. Two being that it is widely noted that it is easier for a young child to learn new languages as opposed to waiting till they are an adult when it is much more difficult to pick up a new language as quickly. The last reason is that with a second language under their belt, the opportunities for them are endless. Is it a good idea to teach your kids a second language? Or should the responsibility of learning another language lie on the non English speakers only? For More LJ Knight Visit YeahSheSaidIt	<urn:uuid:49940332-4994-4449-ba7d-82687e49fbf4>	CC-MAIN-2013-20	http://hellobeautiful.com/1156535/should-more-families-raise-their-kids-to-be-bilingual/	s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00076-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz	en	0.98188	437	2.546875	3
A Study to Assess the Safety of Live Intranasal Sendai Virus Vaccine in Children and Toddlers Croup is an illness of young children that is caused by a virus. With this illness, the child has fever, cough, and hoarseness. Although the illness usually gets better in 2 to 4 days, some children may be admitted to the hospital and a few infants may require an intervention to help their breathing. This illness is most often caused by a virus called parainfluenza virus type 1, but it can be caused by other viruses. The experimental vaccine that is being investigated in this study is intended to try to prevent croup caused by parainfluenza virus type 1. Currently, there are no vaccines to prevent this virus, or medications available to treat the illness once infection has occurred. This research study is testing a new experimental live-virus vaccine that is given by placing liquid drops in the nose. The Sendai virus is very similar to the virus that causes croup, but it has never been found to cause illness in people. Previous studies in animals have shown that the vaccine provided protection against the croup virus, and did not cause illness. Many people have been exposed to the Sendai virus, but no one has been known to develop illness. Several healthy adults have been given the Sendai virus vaccine being studied, and they did not experience any serious side effects or illness. Respiratory Viral Infections Biological: Sendai virus vaccine \|Study Design:\|\|Endpoint Classification: Safety Study Intervention Model: Single Group Assignment Masking: Open Label Primary Purpose: Prevention \|Official Title:\|\|A Phase I Study of Unmodified Live Intranasal Sendai Virus Vaccine in Children and Toddlers: Assessment of Safety and Immunogenicity\| - To determine if giving live Sendai virus (in the form of a vaccine) to children through their nose is safe (causes no serious illness) [ Time Frame: 6 months after enrollment complete; enrollment is projected to extend into 2012 ] [ Designated as safety issue: Yes ] - To determine if a child's body responds to the presence of the Sendai virus by making proteins in the blood called antibodies that can find and kill the croup virus [ Time Frame: 6 months after enrollment complete; enrollment is projected to extend into 2012 ] [ Designated as safety issue: Yes ] \|Study Start Date:\|\|March 2005\| \|Estimated Study Completion Date:\|\|June 2014\| \|Estimated Primary Completion Date:\|\|June 2014 (Final data collection date for primary outcome measure)\| Participants will be studied in three cohorts: Each cohort will receive Sendai virus vaccine. Biological: Sendai virus vaccine Enders strain; a live, unmodified intranasally administered Sendai virus vaccine; given once in a dose escalation study, 5 x 10^5 to 5 x 10^7 EID(50) units. The main aim of the study is to assess the tolerance and safety of escalating doses of intranasal Sendai virus in children and toddlers. The secondary objective of the study is to assess the magnitude and duration of the immune response elicited by intranasal Sendai virus. Responses between seropositive and seronegative children will be compared. This study also tests the safety and immunogenicity of a booster vaccination at the highest dose tolerated during primary immunization dose-escalation. \|Contact: Elisabeth Adderson, MDemail@example.com\| \|United States, Tennessee\| \|St. Jude Children's Research Hospital\|\|Recruiting\| \|Memphis, Tennessee, United States, 38105\| \|Contact: Elisabeth Adderson, MD 866-278-5833 firstname.lastname@example.org\| \|Principal Investigator: Elisabeth Adderson, MD\| \|Le Bonheur Children's Medical Center\|\|Recruiting\| \|Memphis, Tennessee, United States, 38103\| \|Contact: Bindya Bagga, MD 901-287-5387 email@example.com\| \|Principal Investigator: Bindya Bagga, MD\| \|Principal Investigator:\|\|Elisabeth Adderson, MD\|\|St. Jude Children's Research Hospital\|	<urn:uuid:acd9be03-bfc0-4ec5-b72b-d21ae2032f3b>	CC-MAIN-2013-20	http://clinicaltrials.gov/show/NCT00186927	s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00046-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz	en	0.906318	910	3.5625	4
A Passion for Australian Aboriginal Art While doing academic research in Australia in 1984, Margaret Levi saw a painting by an Australian Aboriginal artist in a colleague’s home. It made an impression. “I’d never seen anything like it,” recalls Levi, professor of political science and Jere L. Bacharach Professor of International Studies. Levi made her first purchase of Australian Aboriginal art soon after. , Mitjili Napanangka Gibson, 2007. Synthetic polymer paint on canvas, Australian Aboriginal, Warlpiri people, Western Desert, Northern Territory, born ca. 1940, 78 3/4 x 120 1/16in. (200 x 305cm), Promised gift of Margaret Levi and Robert Kaplan. Click here to see larger image. Levi and her husband, UW alumnus Robert Kaplan (BA, Political Science, 1966; JD, 1969), have since amassed a large collection of works by Australian Aboriginal artists. More than 100 are featured in the current Seattle Art Museum (SAM) exhibit, “Ancestral Modern: Australian Aboriginal Art from the Kaplan & Levi Collection.” The works include paintings on canvas and bark, sculptures, and earthworks. Growing up in a community of collectors, Levi had always envisioned building an art collection, but her modest salary as an academic made collecting a challenge. She was excited to learn that Australian Aboriginal art, just beginning to gain attention, was still affordable. An accident in 1985 gave Levi’s collecting efforts a jump start. While crossing a street in Sydney, she was hit by a car. Her knee was shattered and needed rebuilding, leading to a settlement of “a goodly sum” in damages. When the settlement was finalized, she and Kaplan, by then married, decided to use most of the money to purchase Australian Aboriginal art. "The minute they said I was getting the money, I literally jumped into a cab, went to a gallery, and committed to a piece that I'd been coveting." “The minute they said I was getting the money, I literally jumped into a cab, went to a gallery, and committed to buying a piece that I’d been coveting,” recalls Levi. “It cost $5,000, which was a lot of money for Australian Aboriginal art in those days. That piece is worth more than ten times that now.“ Levi explains that while Australian Aboriginal people had been doing art for more than forty thousand years—on their bodies, on bark, on rock walls—they had been nomadic and had not painted on canvas and large barks. Their contemporary art, while based on traditional work, was new to the art world. Little had been written about it, beyond anthropological monographs that provided some clues to the iconography and materials used. When it came to assessing the quality of various works, Levi and Kaplan were on their own. Robert Kaplan and Margaret Levi hold up a painting by Judy Watson in this 2002 photo from Yuendemu, Australia. The painting now hangs in their Seattle home. “We had to look at the art, and a lot of it, to develop an understanding of the art form,” says Levi. Adds Kaplan, “We worked hard to develop our eyes. We went to Australia annually, went to see every show we could see.” Levi now spends a substantial part of the year in Australia through a half-time appointment at the U.S. Studies Centre at the University of Sydney. When collecting, Levi and Kaplan often travel to Australian Aboriginal communities, many in remote locations that require days and multiple forms of transportation to reach. For a visit to the site of a recent commission, the couple traveled from Sydney to Perth to Kalgoorlie, a mining community, and then drove eight hours to the remote town of Tjuntjunjarra. From there it was another two to three hours on difficult roads to reach their final destination. Despite the site visits, Levi and Kaplan rarely have in-depth conversations with artists. “There’s a language problem and there’s a cultural problem—a lot of shyness,” says Kaplan, who explains that more than 150 extant languages are spoken in Aboriginal Australia. But through conversations with the art center staff of various communities and by observing the artists creating the work, the couple has learned a great deal about Australian Aboriginal art. Mountain Devil Lizard Dreaming , Kathleen Petyarr, 1996. Synthetic polymer paint on canvas, Australian Aboriginal, Anmatyerr people, Utopia, Central Desert, Northern Territory, born ca. 1940, 48 1/16 x 48 1/16in. (122 x 122cm). gift of Margaret Levi and Robert Kaplan. Click here to see larger image. Paintings that may appear to the uninitiated as random dots and squiggles are in fact rich with symbolism and complexity. Each work has “a public story, a community story, and a sacred story,” explains Kaplan. As an example, a painting with two wavy lines snaking through it tells the origin myth, in which snake-like men walked through the country to create it, but the lines also represent tire tracks, recalling a tragic time in modern history when outsiders relocated Australian Aboriginal communities after atomic bomb tests were conducted near their land. Other artworks serve as custodial claims to land and water. Done collaboratively by large groups of men and women, with each person painting a section pertaining to his or her custodial ownership, these works involve singing to the canvas and sometimes passing the paintbrush. “The artists can document unbelievable knowledge [of the land] through their paintings,” says Levi. “And they are the only group in the world that does this kind of collaborative painting. It comes out of their tradition of doing earthworks.“ The Seattle Art Museum exhibition has both individual and collaborative works —including an earthwork—on display, co-curated by SAM’s Pam McClusky and Wally Caruana, a noted Australian Aboriginal Art specialist. Some works will be familiar to SAM visitors, since they are part of the museum’s permanent aboriginal art display. Levi and Kaplan have pledged all the artworks from the current exhibition to SAM. “We hope that people enjoy the exhibit,” says Kaplan, “but we also hope that it garners critical attention for this art form. The art world really doesn’t know Australian Aboriginal art. We’d like to see it recognized as a major contemporary art form, deserving of attention.” The Seattle Art Museum’s Ancestral Modern exhibition is on display through September 2. Click here for more information. There is an accompanying catalog co-published by Yale University Press. Return to Table of Contents, June 2012 issue	<urn:uuid:277fcdb3-3376-45a2-a2c6-24e5bf2f085d>	CC-MAIN-2013-20	http://www.artsci.washington.edu/newsletter/June12/AboriginalArt.asp	s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00032-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz	en	0.968121	1,433	2.59375	3
Ann does her job, Caroline does hers, Dan is busy doing his. Everyone is working independently. So what’s the problem? It’s known as the “silo effect,” and it occurs in the workplace when individuals are focused almost exclusively on their own areas. Think of the farm silos, they stand next to each other, each performing its individual functions, but there is no link between them. That’s not a problem out on the farm, in the workplace; however, it’s a different story. This silo effect can occur in the dental practice when there is a lack of communication and/or a lack of common goals among the different areas. The business employee unknowingly schedules the emergency patient at a time that puts significant strain on the doctor and the assistant. The doctor recommends an extensive treatment plan, not realizing that the patient already carries a significant balance on his account. The collections coordinator is to increase collections, but can’t control accounts receivables when the doctor is recommending costly treatment to patients with outstanding balances. The doctor, meanwhile, wants to increase treatment acceptance and is now offering more elective procedures. But there’s no effective communication between the silos. Clearly, the collective interests of the practice as a whole are suffering. If there are common goals or a common purpose, they don’t have a chance in this environment until the silos are torn down and individuals focus on how they fit into the shared success of the entire office.	<urn:uuid:dae350eb-d0e1-464c-864a-9d4d36f3be27>	CC-MAIN-2013-20	http://www.mckenziemgmt.com/mBlog/index.php/tag/production/	s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00035-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz	en	0.956188	312	2.21875	2
The damaged Deepwater Horizon oil well in the Gulf of Mexico is a huge environmental disaster that's said to be gushing anywhere from 5,000 to 100,000 barrels of crude oil into the ocean per day. BP has deployed a reported 2.5 million feet of oil booms in an effort to contain the slick, as well as bringing in over 1,100 vessels to skim it and even burning some of it off the water’s surface. One need only watch the news, however, to realize that some other ideas are needed. BP has received over 10,000 suggestions for dealing with the disaster and is looking into approximately 700. What follows is a look at some - but by no means all - of those products being touted as a solution, and what they would supposedly do to the oil.	<urn:uuid:ce56f4fb-e279-44c3-8de3-ea629338ffc7>	CC-MAIN-2013-20	http://www.gizmag.com/gizmag-overview-gulf-oil-spill-clean-up-options/15212/picture/115041/	s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00041-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz	en	0.98973	163	2.484375	2
Hello fellow Inventor users I am working with an assembly that has a mixture of Solids and Surfaces. The surfaces are a problem because when I generate a drawing, the surfaces hides details that I want shown. I want to uncheck their visibility however if I take my curser and hover over the surface or edge of the surface on my assembly, I get no response. I have to go to the parts tree, expand each part, look for surfaces to see if its the one I am looking for to turn off. I know there must be an easier way that I don't know about. Does anyone have any suggestions? Any tip is greatly appreciated. Thanks Inventor 2013, Windows 7 Solved! Go to Solution. Thanks. I tried the filter for surfaces and faces and it worked. I was trying several of the filters and I don't know what I did but when I went back and tried finding the surface in the browser, I got an error message "Selected Object could not be found in the Browser. It may be filtered off." How do I clear the filter selector? Sorry for being a pain.	<urn:uuid:feda0dc9-2452-4597-9ba2-dce576f12358>	CC-MAIN-2013-20	http://forums.autodesk.com/t5/Autodesk-Inventor/Finding-Surfaces-in-my-assembly/m-p/3694412	s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00041-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz	en	0.959001	241	1.765625	2
Homemade Birthday Cake Submitted by stelladias77 on January 19, 2011. Sift the flour and baking powder three times. Melt the butter in a small pan. Let cool. Separate the egg whites and yolks. Beat egg whites until they become white and frothy. Add sugar little by little and continue beating until sugar dissolves. Next add the egg yolks and beat about 5 minutes. After that, combine dry ingredients, melted butter, and vanilla. Mixi well using a rubber spatula. Pour the sponge cake batter in a 9×9-inch baking pan that has been greased with butter and floured. Preheat oven to 180 C degrees and bake the cake for 25 minutes. The cake is ready when you can lightly press on it with your finger and it bounces back. Remove the cake from the oven and let cool before decorating it. When the cake is cool, spread butter icing on the top of the cake. Decorate with flowers. I made them using gum paste. This is the cake I made for my daughter’s 26th birthday.	<urn:uuid:b10121f8-81f0-41d4-9f3e-de7752956791>	CC-MAIN-2013-20	http://www.cookadvice.com/video-recipe/homemade-birthday-cake.html	s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00063-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz	en	0.93047	238	2.109375	2
Hillary Rodham Clinton During the 1992 presidential campaign, Hillary Rodham Clinton observed, "Our lives are a mixture of different roles. Most of us are doing the best we can to find whatever the right balance is . . . For me, that balance is family, work, and service." Hillary Diane Rodham, Dorothy and Hugh Rodham's first child, was born on October 26, 1947. Two brothers, Hugh and Tony, soon followed. Hillary's childhood in Park Ridge, Illinois, was happy and disciplined. She loved sports and her church, and was a member of the National Honor Society, and a student leader. Her parents encouraged her to study hard and to pursue any career that interested her. As an undergraduate at Wellesley College, Hillary mixed academic excellence with school government. Speaking at graduation, she said, "The challenge now is to practice politics as the art of making what appears to be impossible, possible." In 1969, Hillary entered Yale Law School, where she served on the Board of Editors of Yale Law Review and Social Action, interned with children's advocate Marian Wright Edelman, and met Bill Clinton. The President often recalls how they met in the library when she strode up to him and said, "If you're going to keep staring at me, I might as well introduce myself." The two were soon inseparable--partners in moot court, political campaigns, and matters of the heart. After graduation, Hillary advised the Children's Defense Fund in Cambridge and joined the impeachment inquiry staff advising the Judiciary Committee of the House of Representatives. After completing those responsibilities, she "followed her heart to Arkansas," where Bill had begun his political career. They married in 1975. She joined the faculty of the University of Arkansas Law School in 1975 and the Rose Law Firm in 1976. In 1978, President Jimmy Carter appointed her to the board of the Legal Services Corporation, and Bill Clinton became governor of Arkansas. Their daughter, Chelsea, was born in 1980. Hillary served as Arkansas's First Lady for 12 years, balancing family, law, and public service. She chaired the Arkansas Educational Standards Committee, co-founded the Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families, and served on the boards of the Arkansas Children's Hospital, Legal Services, and the Children's Defense Fund. As the nation's First Lady, Hillary continued to balance public service with private life. Her active role began in 1993 when the President asked her to chair the Task Force on National Health Care Reform. She continued to be a leading advocate for expanding health insurance coverage, ensuring children are properly immunized, and raising public awareness of health issues. She wrote a weekly newspaper column entitled "Talking It Over," which focused on her experiences as First Lady and her observations of women, children, and families she has met around the world. Her 1996 book It Takes a Village and Other Lessons Children Teach Us was a best seller, and she received a Grammy Award for her recording of it. As First Lady, her public involvement with many activities sometimes led to controversy. Undeterred by critics, Hillary won many admirers for her staunch support for women around the world and her commitment to children's issues. Hillary Clinton was elected United States Senator from New York on November 7, 2000. She is the first First Lady elected to the United States Senate and the first woman elected statewide in New York. Hillary Clinton currently serves as U.S. Secretary of State. The biographies of the First Ladies on WhiteHouse.gov are from “The First Ladies of the United States of America,” by Allida Black. Copyright 2009 by the White House Historical Association. Learn more about Secretary Clinton at the William J. Clinton Presidential Library. Learn more about Hillary Rodham Clinton's spouse, William J. Clinton.	<urn:uuid:2c8808dd-178d-43c9-9fe1-34870e021a13>	CC-MAIN-2013-20	http://www.whitehouse.gov/about/first-ladies/hillaryclinton	s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00026-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz	en	0.976585	768	1.914063	2
An anonymous reader writes "When in early 2010 Google shared with the public that they had been breached in what became known as the Aurora attacks, they said that the attackers got their hands on some source code and were looking to access Gmail accounts of Tibetan activists. What they didn't make public is that the hackers have also accessed a database containing information about court-issued surveillance orders that enabled law enforcement agencies to monitor email accounts belonging to diplomats, suspected spies and terrorists. Whether this was the primary goal of the attacks as well as how much information was exfiltrated is unknown. current and former U.S. government officials interviewed by the Washington Post say that the database in question was possibly accessed in order to discover which Chinese intelligence operatives located in the U.S. were under surveillance." Become a fan of Slashdot on Facebook An anonymous reader writes "ARM licensee Allwinner sold more application processors for tablet computers in 2012 than Intel and Qualcomm put together, according to this EE Times article that references market researcher Strategy Analytics. Overall one in five tablet processors was provided by a Chinese vendor in 2012, according to the article, partly because they sell chips at half the price of similarly specified chips from better known vendors." wiredmikey writes "A new report from the Pentagon marked the most explicit statement yet from the United States that it believes China's cyber espionage is focused on the U.S. government, as well as American corporations. China kept up a steady campaign of hacking in 2012 that included attempts to target U.S. government computer networks, which could provide Beijing a better insight into America's policy deliberations and military capabilities, according to the Pentagon's annual assessment of China's military. 'China is using its computer network exploitation capability to support intelligence collection against the U.S. diplomatic, economic, and defense industrial base sectors that support U.S. national defense programs,' said the report to Congress (PDF). The digital espionage was part of a broader industrial espionage effort that seeks to secure military-related U.S. and Western technology, allowing Beijing to scale back its reliance on foreign arms manufacturers, the report said. One day later, Beijing dismissed the Pentagon's report that accused it of widespread cyberspying on the U.S. government, rejecting it as an 'irresponsible' attempt to drum up fear of China as a military threat." sciencehabit writes "The Boston marathon bombers Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev reportedly purchased several pounds of black powder explosive before the bombing. Used in fireworks and bullets, the explosive substance is both deadly and widely available. It's also very hard to detect. Now, researchers have modified one bomb-sniffing device to accurately spot very small amounts of black powder, an advance that could make us safer from future attacks. What has prevented detection of black powder by IMS in the past, however, is that sulfur and oxygen -- which composes 20% of air—hit the detector at almost the same time. A strong oxygen signal can thus mask a small amount of sulfur, like what a bombmaker's dirty fingers might leave on a luggage strap. A group led by chemist Haiyang Li at the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics in China modified an IMS to eliminate the oxygen signal. 'We have tested the sensitivity of TR-IMS, and its limit of detection of black powder can reach as low as 0.05 nanograms,' Li says." coolnumbr12 writes "Chinese hackers have infiltrated a sensitive U.S. Army database that contains information about the vulnerabilities of thousands of dams located throughout the United States. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' National Inventory of Dams (NID) has raised concerns that information gathered in the hack could help China carry out a cyber-attack on the national electrical power grid." hackingbear writes "The Beijing No. 2 Intermediate People's Court ruled in favor of a group of Chinese authors, and Apple will have to pay them in excess of 730,000 yuan (US$118,000) for infringement. Apple had not gotten permission before selling their books on the Apple App Store, it noted. These cases were the second batch of lawsuits filed against Apple by the Writers' Right Protection Union, which includes prominent members like prolific blogger and novelist Han Han who have become a pop culture star through his creative and cynical writings criticizing the (Chinese) government." ananyo writes "With Taiwan announcing the first case of H7N9 avian flu outside mainland China, researchers have revealed how the virus may spread in China — and beyond. The projections use risk maps developed for human infection by another, well-established avian flu — H5N1. Indeed, when human cases of H7N9 are overlaid on a risk map, they appear to fall within the highest risk areas for H5N1. The map suggests that high-risk areas for H7N9 might include Shandong province (where the first case was reported 23 April) and a belt extending around the Bohai sea to Liaoning province in the north. Though there has been no evidence of sustained human-to-human spread of H7N9 so far, researchers have analyzed airline passenger data for China. Eastern China — the epicenter of the current the H7N9 outbreak — is one of the world's busiest hubs for airline traffic. From the Nature story: 'A quarter of the global population outside of China lives within two hours of an airport with a direct flight from the outbreak regions, and 70% if a single connecting flight is included.'" An anonymous reader writes "Hui Zhang and Shangui Zhao describe China's decision to move ahead with nuclear power. Following the Fukushima Daiichi accident, China slowed its rapid expansion of nuclear power and undertook a major reevaluation of safety practices. The government has now resumed approval of new nuclear power projects, and is cautiously moving forward. Good description of safety issues that remain." They are suspending in-land construction, and are aiming at 58GWe instead of 80GWe of generation capacity by 2020. It's still more than the 40GWe they planned to build under their 2007 plans. colinneagle writes "Verizon's 2013 Data Breach Investigation Report is out and includes data gathered by its own forensics team and data breach info from 19 partner organizations worldwide. China was involved in 96% of all espionage data-breach incidents, most often targeting manufacturing, professional and transportation industries, the report claims. The assets China targeted within those industries included laptop/desktop, file server, mail server and directory server, in order to steal credentials, internal organization data, trade secrets and system info. A whopping 95% of the attacks started with phishing to get a toehold into their victim's systems. The report states, 'Phishing techniques have become much more sophisticated, often targeting specific individuals (spear phishing) and using tactics that are harder for IT to control. For example, now that people are suspicious of email, phishers are using phone calls and social networking.' It is unknown who the nation-state actors were in the other 4% of breaches, which the report says 'may mean that other threat groups perform their activities with greater stealth and subterfuge. But it could also mean that China is, in fact, the most active source of national and industrial espionage in the world today.'" The report also notes that financially-motivated incidents primarily came from the U.S. and various Eastern European countries. kkleiner writes "Recently developed noodle-making robots have now been put into operation in over 3,000 restaurants in China. Invented by a noodle restaurant owner, each unibrow-sporting robot currently costs 10,000 yuan ($1,600), which is only three months wages for an equivalent human noodle cook. As the cost of the robot continues to drop, more noodle shops are bound to displace human workers for the tirelessly working cheaper robots." derekmead writes "According to a new study (PDF) from Pew Charitable Trusts, China was the world leader in clean energy investment in 2012. The U.S., meanwhile, saw its grip loosen on many of the clean energy technologies it developed. According to the research, total clean energy investment totaled $269 billion worldwide last year, a decline from 2011's record high of $302 billion. However, clean energy investment in the Asia and Oceania markets grew by 16 percent to $101 billion. In terms of investment — which is an indicator that a country or region has offered compelling projects, struck a good regulatory balance, and has a strong economy — that makes Asia the epicenter of the global clean energy market. The Pew researchers thus labeled the U.S. clean energy sector as 'underperforming,' largely for a trio of reasons. First, China's boom and manufacturing prowess has taken investment away from the U.S.. Second, the U.S. regulatory environment for clean energy is horrifically unstable (as is the regulatory environment as a whole) as politicians battle over budget rhetoric. Finally, the U.S. has failed to capitalize on its innovation prowess and develop its clean energy manufacturing sector to its full potential." They do not count nuclear as clean, but including nuclear would only widen China's lead over everyone else (they almost have their first new AP1000 ready and are building lots more). FrankPoole writes "According to CRN, IBM is in serious negotiations to sell its low-end x86 server business to Lenovo, which is looking to grow its server revenue. If the deal goes though, it will be the second time in eight years that Big Blue has exited a major hardware business and sold the operation to Lenovo. IBM sold its PC business to Chinese computer maker in 2005." An anonymous reader writes with news that Yahoo will be ending their email service in China on August 13th. A support post on the Yahoo China site tells users how to migrate their account to a different email service called Aliyun. If they do so, their data can be migrated and they will continue to receive emails to their Yahoo address until the end of 2014. From the article: "The US Internet giant Yahoo! has come under criticism in the past over its business in China, with executives apologising in 2007 for providing evidence that Chinese authorities used to convict government critics. The company said it was legally obliged to divulge information about its users to the Chinese government but that it was unaware it would be used to convict dissidents. The end of the service will affect millions of users, the paper quoted Alibaba public relations official Zhang Jianhua as saying, though he did not have a total figure." Yahoo also announced the closure of six other products today: Upcoming, Deals, SMS Alerts, Kids, Mail and Messenger feature phone apps, and older versions of Mail. cylonlover writes "Lockheed Martin has been getting its feet wet in the renewable energy game for some time. In the 1970s it helped build the world's first successful floating Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion (OTEC) system that generated net power, and in 2009 it was awarded a contract to develop an OTEC pilot plant in Hawaii. That project has apparently been canceled but the company has now shifted its OTEC sights westward by teaming up with Hong Kong-based Reignwood Group to co-develop a 10 MW pilot plant that will be built off the coast of southern China." An anonymous reader links to an article at Ars explaining the dropping inventory of bridges available to users of the Tor project's encrypted messaging system. They're looking for more bridges, but that doesn't necessarily mean buying new hardware per se. From the article: "After campaigning successfully last year to get more volunteers to run obfuscated Tor bridges to support users in Iran trying to evade state monitoring, the network has lost most of those bridges, according to a message to the Tor relays mailing list by Tor volunteer George Kadiankakis. 'Most of those bridges are down, and fresh ones are needed more than ever,' [Tor volunteer George] Kadiankakis wrote in an e-mail, 'since obfuscated bridges are the only way for people to access Tor in some areas of the world (like China, Iran, and Syria).' For those who want to donate bridges to the Tor network, the easiest route is to use Tor Cloud, an Amazon Web Service Elastic Compute Cloud image created by the Tor Project that allows people to leverage Amazon's free usage tier to deploy a bridge." adeelarshad82 writes "Marvel's Iron Man 3 will debut in select Japanese theaters later this month employing the 4DX system for the first time. Developed by South Korea's largest movie chain operator, the CJ Group, 4DX-equipped theaters deliver smells, seat motions, and additional effects such as strobe lights and fog, all in sync with events as they appear on the screen. Beyond South Korea, this full immersion approach to cinema is already in operation in countries such as Israel, Mexico, Brazil, and China." hypnosec writes "The majority of $35 Raspberry Pi production was shifted to a factory in Wales from China and the Raspberry Pi Foundation has announced this week that the factory in Wales has produced its half millionth unit in just over six months. The weekly production has shot up to 40,000 units in the UK factory and that number is 'set to climb further.' The Foundation is optimistic about the Welsh factory and said there will be 'more Made in the U.K. Pis in the world than their Made in China cousins.' The Foundation didn't reveal anything else apart from this, but we already know it sold the millionth Pi back in January." sciencehabit writes "Lufengosaurus, a long-necked, plant-eating dinosaur that lived in China during the Jurassic period, were the biggest animals of their age, measuring 30 feet long. Now, fossilized embryos reveal that they were also the fastest growing animals on record — 'faster than anything we have ever seen,' according to one researcher. What's more, researchers have found traces of organic matter in their bones, which may belong to the oldest fossil proteins ever found." msm1267 writes "Tibetans inside China or in exile, along with Syrians, Iranians and other groups oppressed by autocratic regimes, rely on technology to communicate and organize protests. Yet state-sponsored attackers have infiltrated the devices and platforms used by the oppressed to put their freedom or lives in danger. Groups such as Tibet in Action or Citizen Lab Munk School of Global Affairs have put together resources to help educate and enhance the security of oppressed people." coondoggie writes "New federal restrictions now preclude four U.S. agencies from buying information-technology (IT) systems from manufacturers 'owned, directed or subsidized by the People's Republic of China' due to national-security concerns. But is this a smart tactic? It's clear that some in the U.S. government, including the House Intelligence Committee — which issued a scathing report last fall that called Huawei and ZTE a threat to national security — and the Treasury Department's Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. are also working in other ways behind the scenes to keep technology made by China-based manufacturers out of U.S. commercial networks as well."	<urn:uuid:76ff5f26-4d6b-4c30-82d3-5326d130df2b>	CC-MAIN-2013-20	http://ask.slashdot.org/index2.pl?fhfilter=china	s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00044-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz	en	0.965145	3,125	1.757813	2
Groundbreaking research by Oklahoma State University has shown that a new mattress could hold a key to unlocking some of the pain and discomfort endured by back pain sufferers. Nutrition and exercise are obvious issues to address but new research indicates that lack of sleep is linked to childhood obesity. A Columbia University Study found a surprisingly strong link between the amount of sleep people get and their risk of becoming obese. Department of Health and Chiropractic is currently conducting studies to determine the ideal mattress for individuals taking into consideration their weight, height and body shape. Want to improve your love life? Try a new mattress.	<urn:uuid:c96055b7-30e7-4f9d-9452-711adb59d824>	CC-MAIN-2013-20	http://www.bedsonline.com.au/pages/Ground-Breaking-Research.html	s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00074-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz	en	0.958545	124	2.234375	2
In the mid-1800s, the newly alluring field of natural history found itself with a captivated audience, and an enduring dilemma. Victorian society clamored to see the exotic species of far-flung botanic expeditions, while natural history museums had not yet come up with a satisfactory way to exhibit them. Professor George L. Goodale, the first director of Harvard's Botanical Museum, explained the problem: “Flowers are perishable. When dried they are distorted, when placed in alcohol they are robbed of their color." Wax flowers were "exaggerated and grotesque" and "spirited and truthful" drawings seemed rather flat. A solution was found in a German studio in Dresden, where two glassmakers were recreating the natural world with glass. By the time Harvard's inquiries reached the glassmakers' workshop, Leopold Blaschka and his son Rudolf were disseminating legions of replica exotics to curious audiences across the world. They populated museums with fantastical sea creatures, and taxidermists with glass eyes. They would also come to create more than 4,400 botanic specimens for the cherry wood cabinets of Harvard's Botanical Museum. Since 1890, the cases of Glass Flowers have been adored by academics and the general public alike. Blaschka and son's full-size specimens are meticulously detailed, while their magnified details are invaluably comprehensive. For most of their flowers, the suite of glass models include an inflorescence of blossoms, a magnified stigma and pistil, and a marvelously geometric cross-section of the ovary (magnified even more). The Blaschka kingdom is also a realistic mise-en-scène of pollinators, disease, and decay. This accuracy was achieved by working with specimens in their Dresden greenhouse, or, with Harvard as a benefactor, directly in the field in any number of subtropical locations. Harvard Museum of Natural History Address: 26 Oxford Street, Cambridge, MA 02138 Hours: Open daily, 9 am to 5 pm Admission: $9 for adults, discount rates for students, seniors, and members Anna Laurent is a writer and producer of educational botanical media. Photographs from her forthcoming field guide to Los Angeles are available for exhibition and purchase at the author's shop.	<urn:uuid:3703b072-9554-406d-8c2c-3c8622998b52>	CC-MAIN-2013-20	http://www.gardendesign.com/ideas/art-botany-glass-flowers	s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00061-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz	en	0.953745	479	2.8125	3
The government and the Hindu community were unable to break their deadlock on Tuesday over the divorce clause in the Hindu Marriage Act. The clause has proved contentious since the bill was drafted in 2008,with the government defying Hindu leaders who believe divorce is not part of their religion’s culture. Originally Published as: Divorce remains sticking point in Hindu Marriage Act Hindus are the largest minority in Pakistan but have struggled to register marriages due to chronic delays to the passage of the act by Parliament. In Pakistan there is currently no system for the registration of marriages for certain minorities,including Hindus,Sikhs and Baha’is. “We will never allow the government to have a divorce clause in the Hindu Marriage Act,” said Chief Patron Pakistan Hindu Council Ramesh Kumar. “We have no concept of divorce in our religion,” said Kumar,a member in the National Assembly on a reserved seat for non-Muslims. Kumar has been campaigning for the issue for many years. In 2007 he filed a petition in the Supreme Court asking for help to solve the problem without further delay. Minister for National Harmony Akram Masih Gill said his department was in the final stages of drafting the revised bill. “The divorce clause is an integral part of the Hindu Marriage Act,” he told The Express Tribune. Adding weight to his argument,Gill pointed to India’s Hindu Marriage Act of 1956,which contains a divorce clause,and said that his ministry would consult Indian experts on the issue if a consensus is not reached. Clause 13,the controversial passage of the proposed 16-page bill,states that any Hindu can divorce his wife or her husband at any time and in any court. Various conditions have been proposed for divorce proceedings. The new draft empowers any court to entertain any petition for the legal dissolution of a marriage. Various other rules have also been mentioned in the bill,such as when divorcees may marry again,the legal rights of children,void and voidable marriages,the punishment of bigamy and punishments for other contraventions of Hindu marriage laws. The proposed bill seems unlikely to be a one-size-fits-all for minorities. Indeed,Sikh community leaders have dispelled the impression that the proposed bill can also be applied to marriage registrations of Sikhs based on the Indian model. Meanwhile,a new member’s bill was introduced in Parliament on Tuesday,though the details are yet to emerge. Pakistan Muslim League MNA Kishan Chand Parwani introduced The Hindu Marriage Bill 2011 – which perhaps might offer a compromise which finally bridges the gap between Hindu leaders and the government. Powered by Facebook Comments	<urn:uuid:f2f070e5-613f-47ac-8f7c-4820dd020632>	CC-MAIN-2013-20	http://area148.com/cms/divorce-clause-in-hindu-marriage-act-challenged/	s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00059-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz	en	0.962272	550	2.53125	3
As for your large question concerning health care costs, here's an overview: At least 15% of the population is completely uninsured, and a substantial additional portion of the population (21%) is "underinsured", or not able to cover the costs of their medical needs. More money per person is spent on health care in the United States than in any other nation in the world, and a greater percentage of total income in the nation is spent on health care in the U.S. than in any United Nations member state except for East Timor. Despite the fact that not all citizens are covered, the United States has the third highest public healthcare expenditure per capita. A 2001 study in five states found that medical debt contributed to 62% of all personal bankruptcies. Since then, health costs and the numbers of uninsured and underinsured have increased. According to the Institute of Medicine of the United States National Academies, the United States is the "only wealthy, industrialized nation that does not ensure that all citizens have coverage" (i.e. some kind of insurance). The same Institute of Medicine report notes that "Lack of health insurance causes roughly 18,000 unnecessary deaths every year in the United States." while a 2009 Harvard study published in the American Journal of Public Health found a much higher figure of more than 44,800 excess deaths annually in the United States due to Americans lacking health insurance. More broadly, the total number of people in the United States, whether insured or uninsured, who die because of lack of medical care was estimated in a 1997 analysis to be nearly 100,000 per year. On March 1, 2010, billionaire Warren Buffett (who is considered one of the world’s most savvy investors) said that the high costs paid by U.S. companies for their employees’ health care put them at a competitive disadvantage. He compared the roughly 17% of GDP spent by the U.S. on health care with the 9% of GDP spent by much of the rest of the world, noted that the U.S. has fewer doctors and nurses per person, and said, “[t]hat kind of a cost, compared with the rest of the world, is like a tapeworm eating at our economic body.”[54 [ame=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_care_in_the_United_States]Health care in the United States - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia[/ame]	<urn:uuid:f97b6a54-0355-4b15-8b35-1df83580aef7>	CC-MAIN-2013-20	http://www.debatepolitics.com/bias-media/64022-glenn-beck-boycott-gaining-traction-fox-news-losing-money-73.html	s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00072-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz	en	0.957344	503	2.828125	3
Napa New Tech High School played host to more than 50 education stakeholders -- including teachers, parents, business leaders and superintendents -- during a more than three-hour public hearing on education and technology. Attendees were eager to learn more about the success of New Tech approach. Napa, CA (Vocus/PRWEB ) January 16, 2010 -- Napa New Technology High School played host to more than 40 education stakeholders -- including teachers, parents, business leaders and superintendents -- during a more than three-hour public hearing on education and technology. Attendees were eager to learn more about the success of the New Tech approach. The hearing was chaired by California Assemblymember Tom Torlakson, who has sponsored and authored legislation to provide students with the digital technology skills needed to succeed in the global economy. “We must continue to capture the imagination of our students and cultivate their scientific and technical talents by embracing technology and bringing the development of these skills into our classroom,” said Torlakson, a long-time science and math teacher. “Napa New Technology High School serves as a model for teaching critical- thinking and digital-literacy skills necessary for students to be competitive in college and in the job market.” Napa New Tech High School is one of 40 schools that are part of the New Tech Network, which supports the start-up and implementation of innovative high schools marked by project-based learning in a technology-rich environment. http://www.kwfdn.org [KnowledgeWorks, which develops and implements effective approaches to high school education in the United States, integrated New Tech into its organization in 2009. Former America Online Chairman and CEO Barry Schuler, a KnowledgeWorks board member who was an early supporter of Napa New Tech High School, said the Napa community inspired a national model when it founded the school in 1996. “Little did they (the community) know they were lighting a spark. The little spark that started in the community of Napa is spreading like wildfire across the country,” he said. New Tech High schools are currently in nine states, and plans call for the rapid expansion of the approach over the next five years. Napa New Tech High Principal Howard Mahoney testified about the importance of the culture of trust, respect and responsibility, but noted that his students were the best representatives of the school. Several of his students at the event confirmed Mahoney’s sentiment, including Aitana Rothfeld, a senior, who transferred to Napa New Tech from a larger, traditional high school . “I was surprised by the trust teachers gave me, it was a big shock,” she said. “The teacher is a resource, but I have to learn. I feel like I learn more here. My old school was ‘do the homework, take the test.’ Here, you have to learn.” Torlakson, who has announced his candidacy for state superintendent of public instruction, said he wants to make education technology a priority in California’s schools by establishing standards to utilize state-of-the-art learning materials, teaching computer literacy, providing professional development to teachers and connecting our classrooms to the world. About New Tech Network: New Tech Network (www.newtechnetwork.org) is a school development organization that supports the start-up and implementation of innovative high schools. There are currently 40 schools across the country, including schools in Indiana, Illinois, North Carolina, New York, Oregon, Colorado, Texas, California and Louisiana. It is a subsidiary of KnowledgeWorks Foundation. About KnowledgeWorks: KnowledgeWorks Foundation (www.kwfdn.org) strives to be the leader in developing and implementing innovative and effective approaches to high school education in the United States. The organization primarily focuses on redesigning urban high schools, developing STEM and Early College high schools, and supporting student-centered approaches to delivering real learning and results in our schools. Thanks for visiting Newtech Network! I'm sorry, we do not support the browser you are using on our website. Please update your browser to a current browser. We support many browsers, including: and other current browsers. If you are still having trouble after upgrading, contact us by emailing email@example.com	<urn:uuid:59188757-17bd-4c24-9911-acd1cb4cbaad>	CC-MAIN-2013-20	http://www.newtechnetwork.org/pressroom/napanewtech	s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz	en	0.967806	893	1.882813	2
All queries are welcome, but do be formal about it, yes? What is the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow? @O5-7; This would depend on the mass that is burdening the bird in question. Your average Hirundinidae is capable of flights at speeds up to 60 km/h. It is entirely possible for the bird to be held down by its cargo altogether, wherefore its airspeed velocity would be nil. We also must factor in how it shall be carrying its cargo, as well as the cargo itself. It is entirely possible that such a bird would be unable to safely hold naught but the lightest of objects, not enough to affect its flight by any means. In a vein most similar, the aerodynamics of that object may affect the bird's own ability to soar. This may be only an estimate, but I postulate that the most one would be able to slow a Hirundinidae via giving it freight would by 40 km/h. Therefore, its maximum velocity would be 20 km/h. Doth thou wish to make way to any place on the Earth? If so, where? I'm sick. What do? @Karamazov; - There are many places in the world that I wish to set my eyes upon. England in particular would be a most enjoyable place to visit, both having the charm of Europe, and is debatable as the least maddening of them all due to my native tongue being spoke there. Germany, despite its harsh government, may be of interest due to my sister-in-law - wife to my older brother - being from the country. Japan may be a given. But assuming no boundaries with this trip and preparations being granted, I may think outside the box and travel to a polar extremity. There may be nothing quite identical to their snow-covered landscapes, aurora-lit skies, and cold climate. And of course, penguins. @Ino-Chan; - They say that laughter is the finest medicine of all. It requires little effort on part of the ill, and can brighten their mood enough to the point where the virus' effect will be minimalized. Regardless of method used to aid in recovery, what you do in the meantime depends on the intensity of the infection. The bedridden or tired may only want to relax, focusing on the likes of reading and observing. If you need a suggestion of the latter, might I recommend the following? If you are unabated, however, you should be fine to do more taxing things such as light exercise and gaming. You do plan to start that Nuzlocke Run soon of the video game "Pokemon SoulSilver" for the Nintendo DualScreen portable entertainment system, yes? Perhaps beginning that would be a way to pass the time? That is not the proper way to say hello to a queen XDD @Destiny Queen; - Do forgive me for my etiquette, your highness. I was unaware of your presence here. @System Error; - And forgive I shall. I had not expected an audience with such a gentleman today. Would you kindly present me your opinion on how I should rule the threads? @Destiny Queen; - It is my belief that the finest way for one to rule the threads would be to be steadfast, yet understanding. If you rule with far too much oppression, the masses could threaten to rise up and rebel against you. On the other hand, if you rule with too little resolve, anything from no development to total discord may occur. The balance between both is for her highness to decide.	<urn:uuid:ff7c20fe-b502-464d-ac8f-ea8854411142>	CC-MAIN-2013-20	http://bmgf.bulbagarden.net/blogs/12918/good-day-you-sirs-madams-50139/	s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00038-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz	en	0.96638	742	1.703125	2
ACCOUNTING TERMS - ACCOUNTING DICTIONARY - ACCOUNTING GLOSSARY From the web's #1 provider of financial analysis / ratio analysis PROSPECTIVE REIMBURSEMENT Definition PROSPECTIVE REIMBURSEMENT, in healthcare, is a reimbursement method where the third party payer set the amount of money for a particular service to be delivered to clients in agreement with the organization before the service is delivered. Learn new Accounting Terms JOINT STOCK COMPANY is a company that has some features of a corporation and some features of a partnership. This type of company has access to the liquidity and financial reserves of stock markets as a corporation, however, as in a partnership; the stockholders are liable for company debts and have additional restrictions of a partnership. SPECIAL PURPOSE VEHICLE (SPV) is an organization constructed with a limited purpose or life. Frequently, these Special Purpose Vehicles serve as conduits or pass through organizations or corporations. In relation to securitisation, it means the entity which would hold the legal rights over the assets transferred by the originator.	<urn:uuid:79824dc8-5812-48f9-85b6-558382a3a86a>	CC-MAIN-2013-20	http://www.ventureline.com/accounting-glossary/P/prospective-reimbursement-definition/	s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz	en	0.947306	233	2.046875	2
Gladiator: The Roman Fighter's [Unofficial] Manual, by Philip Matyszak London & New York: Thames & Hudson, 2011. Pp. 208. Illus., map, notes, biblio., index. $24.95. ISBN: 0500051674. is an amusing, accurate look at the lives and deaths of Rome’s famous blood sport combatants. A superb classical scholar, and author of such “serious” works as The Enemies of Rome: From Hannibal to Attila the Hun (2004), Dr. Matyszak (Cambridge) also has a wry sense of humor, which he has displayed on several occasions, such as inLegionary: The Roman Soldier's Unofficial Hand-book (2009), The Classical Compendium (2009), and Ancient Athens on Five Drachmas a Day (2008). In Gladiator, he gives us a detailed, yet very readable, and quite amusing account of the lives and deaths, of the gladiators, in the form of a mock handbook for prospective recruits. Each of the nine chapters deals with some aspect of gladiatorial life; why one would chose to become a gladiator, the origins of the “games”, the arena, living conditions and training, the various types of gladiatorial fighters, “groupies,” rituals of combat, and more, such as the differences and similarities between soldiers and gladiators. The work ends, as was the case with most gladiators, with “Death and Other Alternatives to Retirement”. Full of anecdotes and citations from classical literature, Gladiator will make profitable and amusing reading for anyone, but particularly for those interested in Roman life and history. Reviewer: A. A. Nofi, Review Editor Buy It At Amazon.com	<urn:uuid:773c50da-890e-4a89-a641-2a7af9d4107a>	CC-MAIN-2013-20	http://www.strategypage.com/bookreviews/775.asp	s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00050-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz	en	0.915161	379	2.203125	2
Why study classics? For Wolf and Von Humboldt, the men who organized the study of Antiquity, the answer was obvious: by learning Greek, we learned to think like a Greek, and became as original, creative, and brilliant. However, this assumed the existence of a link between language and thought, which was already challenged by Schleiermacher, and rightly so. Later historians argued that there are long continuities: western civilization started in Greece, where ideas came into being that still influence our culture. The rise of the social sciences has made this theory problematic, although it is often repeated in popular culture (e.g., in the comics 300). Others try to see the relevance of Antiquity by comparing it to the present, but this too is problematic (example). Still others have used the past to create a national identity, but invariably, those national identities turn out to be identical to the identity of the modern student, and ignore the complexities of identity formation, both ancient and modern. The truth is that Antiquity is not terribly important. Theories like the ones above are only repeated to make political claims (e.g., Anthony Pagden, who connects Marathon to the War on Terror) or to make sure that the department of classics continues to receive money. This means that the past itself suffers, because it is supposed to serve modern needs. History then becomes a procrustean bed. By concentrating on Greece, ancient historians abandoned the Near East, cutting off a part; by comparing the ancients to us, we are overstretching the evidence; by looking at the past as a national past, we ignore its complexities, cutting it short again. Does this mean that the study of Antiquity is unimportant too? On the contrary! Ancient historians have often been in the advance guard of scholarship. - The way Politian dealt with texts, inspired Erasmus of Rotterdam, and caused the Reformation. - When Scaliger started to study ancient chronology, he discovered that the Bible is not to be taken literally, and caused the secularisation of our world view. Without Scaliger, no Enlightenment. - The discovery of the relations between languages has shaped the way we define nationality. - The Lachmann method was the model of Darwin’s theory of evolution. - Frazer’s hypotheses about human sacrifice influenced decision-making in the years prior to the First World War. - The simplistic exegesis of Tacitus’ Germania gave rise to the Aryan myth. - Archaeologists have given us a Prehistory, and offered evidence for the hypothesis that human history is defined by progress. Antiquity itself may not be terribly important, but the study of the past certainly is. Unfortunately, that what makes scholars real specialists – the epistemological foundation of their discipline, in other words – is hardly ever discussed. If the study of Antiquity is to survive, we need better books, in which our specialism is better explained. We also need to explain ourselves to a larger audience.	<urn:uuid:9004eac0-f695-4145-ab37-9a22cd4c4888>	CC-MAIN-2013-20	http://rambambashi.wordpress.com/2012/02/27/why-the-humanities-matter/	s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz	en	0.953357	631	2.8125	3
Already a Bloomberg.com user? Sign in with the same account. Robert Webber thinks his nearly 30-year-old Las Vegas research company may be close to its biggest breakthrough ever. Its new test to diagnose severe blood infection could transform six-employee Research & Diagnostic Antibodies from primarily a supplier of antibodies for research labs in the U.S. to a go-to source of tests for the much larger international clinical market. Webber, who says annual revenue is just under $1 million, worries about getting the $500,000 he expects he’ll need to fund global expansion: “Loans and guarantees are very difficult to find, and I’m pretty good at searching for stuff.” With his push to double exports by 2105, President Obama has been counting on businesses such as Webber’s to expand overseas. To improve Obama’s odds, a relatively unknown federal agency, the Export-Import Bank of the United States, has been scrambling to get more of its export-credit insurance, working capital, and direct loans to small businesses, says its chairman and president, Fred P. Hochberg. This is crucial financing that typically cannot be found through commercial banks, which have reduced direct underwriting of export transactions in recent years, he says. The money ensures that exporters get paid by overseas customers and can fund production, among other steps necessary to break into foreign markets. The bank was heavily criticized by some House Republicans and anti-tax groups, including the Club for Growth, when its charter came up for renewal last year. Those who argued against the bank’s reauthorization charged that its programs amounted to “corporate welfare” for big businesses, including Boeing (BA) and Caterpillar (CAT), that should be able to secure commercial funding on their own. Traditional business groups, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, supported the bank’s reauthorization, which was approved for three years in May. Both U.S. exports and the bank’s authorizations have been increasing steadily. U.S. exports reached a record $2.2 trillion in 2012, 39 percent above the 2009 level. In the 12 months ending in Septrmber 2012, Ex-Im Bank authorized a record total of nearly $35.8 billion to support those exports, a 9 percent increase over the authorizations during the same time period the previous year and the highest number in the bank’s 78-year history. It’s worth noting that while the bank’s authorizations for 3,313 small exporters constituted almost 88 percent of its total transactions, they amounted to only about 17 percent of the total dollar amount it authorized because its small business transactions don’t tend to involve large dollar amounts. Another big reason for the relative paucity of Ex-Im dollars devoted to small companies: Fewer than 1 percent of them export, according to the International Trade Administration. Some 58 percent of those that do export sell to only one foreign country, typically an immigrant’s homeland or someplace that an entrepreneur vacationed, a statistic that particularly troubles Hochberg: “They are export-ready, but they’re not doing as much business as they easily could, with a little extra help.” Data such as these motivate Hochberg, who has no plans to move on. (Many in the Obama administration are departing, including Small Business Administration chief Karen Mills.) Hochberg’s continued tenure will depend on the president’s review of all second-term appointments, he says diplomatically, but he hopes to get a chance to finish what he started. For instance, Hochberg set a goal of motivating 5,000 new small businesses to use the bank for export financing by 2015. He’s now at about 2,300 new customers, he says, and looking to pick up the pace. The improving outlook for exports and a streamlined bank approval process—he says 90 percent of all the bank’s transactions are now processed within 30 days—may help. At a seminar he led last week in Los Angeles, three-quarters of the 50 or so attendees said they expect their export sales to rise or stay steady for 2013. At workshops held across the country to build awareness of Ex-Im’s services among entrepreneurs, Hochberg runs through a data-heavy slide show that he punctuates with jokes and stories about small business owners who are successfully exporting. It comes across less like a government presentation and more like a sales pitch, which reflects Hochberg’s business background: Before serving in the SBA under President Bill Clinton, he spent 20 years running his mother’s catalog company, Lillian Vernon. Attending last week’s event was an eye-opener for Laurie Arroyo, a sales rep for Samadhi Tank, a flotation tank manufacturer based in Northern California. The company, founded in 1972 by Arroyo’s mother, Lee Leibner, sees potential for an expanding market in Mexico but its sales there have been restricted because it cannot offer customer financing. “Generally, our terms are 50 percent payment on order and 50 percent on delivery. If we could extend 90-day financing options, that would really fit our needs,” Arroyo says. She plans on sending information about the bank’s export-credit insurance to the company’s Mexican sales representative, she says. “I didn’t realize how helpful they want to be to small businesses and how small an amount of money they’re willing to lend. They seem to be oriented toward small enterprises and that pretty much defines us.”	<urn:uuid:1cda507d-a4c0-4236-b9f0-8167c6db9e6b>	CC-MAIN-2013-20	http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-03-01/the-u-dot-s-dot-ex-im-bank-seeks-to-back-more-small-exporters	s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00063-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz	en	0.957352	1,190	1.632813	2
Today Antonio Maria Costa, executive director of the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime, gave a talk at the International Drug Policy Reform Conference in New Orleans. No drug warrior of Costa's stature has ever before agreed to speak at this gathering (which is held every other year by the Drug Policy Alliance), so he scored points for courage just by showing up. His tone was good-natured, even jocular, and he displayed admirable patience with the scattered hecklers who apparently could not bear to hear him out without loudly expressing their displeasure. Costa, an economist, was much more intellectually honest than the average U.S. drug warrior, which was scary as well as refreshing. Although his office devotes much of its attention to source control, Costa conceded that eradication and interdiction will never have a lasting impact on drug consumption, since new sources inevitably will appear as long as there's a demand for psychoactive substances. Even while citing the violence and disorder associated with the drug trade as a reason to discourage use, he admitted that shootouts between dealers in Baltimore and chaos in Latin America are products of the black market created by prohibition. He tried to find common ground with his audience by emphasizing "prevention" and "treatment" over law enforcement, and this tack drew a few rounds of applause. He conceded that the "drug-free world" of U.N. propaganda posters will never be realized. At the same time, Costa took it for granted that a drug-free world is desirable, and here is where he lost most of the audience. Likening drug use to hunger, poverty, AIDS, and sexual slavery, he said none of these problems is likely to disappear anytime soon, but that doesn't mean we should stop fighting them. He seemed genuinely puzzled by the idea that drug use is not inherently bad, let alone that it can enhance people's lives. Notably, he included alcohol and tobacco on the list of substances whose use ideally should be eliminated. So for all his apparent reasonableness, Costa struck me as more of a fanatic on the subject of drugs than most government officials in the U.S., who typically concede that alcohol can be (and usually is) consumed responsibly, while falsely insisting that's not true of the currently illegal drugs.	<urn:uuid:95818e0b-2570-4345-b6cf-45c069eedf65>	CC-MAIN-2013-20	http://reason.com/blog/2007/12/06/a-prohibitionist-in-the-legali/print	s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00053-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz	en	0.978821	462	1.84375	2
Late Sunday, Fox News contributor, Johnnie Moore, reported that the infamous atheist, Richard Dawkins, was recently defeated, in convincing fashion, during a debate regarding the future role of religion in the 21st Century. Moore's article, Atheism is a Religion, too, garnered a lot of attention, with nearly 8k Facebook "Likes" and just under 400 "Tweets" as of Tuesday evening. According to The Cambridge Student Online, the debate was centered on the motion set forth by the Cambridge Union, titled "This House Believes Religion has no place in the 21st Century". Debating Dawkins, was former Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams - who is currently Master of Magdalene College. As The Cambridge Student Online reported: "Richard Dawkins faced defeat in yesterday's Cambridge Union debate against Rowan Williams, the former Archbishop of Canterbury and current new Master of Magdalene College, as Cambridge students voted 324 versus 138 against the motion of 'This House Believes Religion has no place in the 21st Century' in the most high-profile debate staged at the Union so far this term." Among his comments, according to The Cambridge Student, Dawkins referred to religion as a "cop-out" and a "betrayal of the intellect and everything human that is good." Fox News contributor, Johnnie Moore, however, pointed out, "Atheists are, in fact, some of the most religious people." He explains why. Likening it to the belief system of theists, Moore explains the belief system of atheists: "First, they have a functioning God under whom they are subservient (normally it’s science or rationality, but mainly themselves), and that idea of God informs the way they live and interpret their lives. It informs their biases and determines their values, and governs any sense of morality or ethics they adhere too, or ignore. Once that’s all settled all that’s left is the preaching. And they preach all the time." In other words, atheists are religious in that they worship or adhere to the morals or ethics of a different god. It may not be the God of the bible, but it is "science", or "rationality" or, in most cases, the "self". It is the "self" that has become the god. Atheism is a system of belief that assumes there is no god; it is also a doctrine commonly preached, denying the existence of a god, or a creator. As Moore points out in his piece, claiming to be on the side of science, many atheists mock or ridicule theists, while ignoring the reality that they, themselves, have zero empirical evidence which proves that there is no god. "Instead of just ignoring God, or the idea of God, atheist preachers feel somehow compelled to rid the Earth of him; so they argue endlessly that theists can’t prove God exists without confessing that they can’t prove he doesn’t either." The following video, Ben Stein vs Richard Dawkins - reveals that, in reality, Dawkins appears to be nothing more than a creationist, or intelligent-design proponent in denial. When asked to explain the origin of life, Dawkins answers as follows: "It could be that...uhhh....at some earlier time, somewhere in the universe, a civilization evolved by, probably some kind of Darwinian means, to a very, very high level of technology and designed a form of life that they seeded perhaps onto this planet . Uhmm....that is a possibility and an intriguing possibility and I suppose it's possible you might find evidence for that if you look at the detail...the details of biochemistry, molecular biology, you might find a signature of some sort of designer." In other words, there is a "designer". Dawkins and others like him simply deny that it is the God of the bible. It is a "god" of their choice, which is the foundation for the religion of atheism. The students at Cambridge Union voted overwhelmingly against Dawkins and his insistence that, "As the century goes by, religion has less and less place to exist. It's high time to send it packing." Alberto, San Diego State University alumni, has published nearly 300 articles, covering a broad range of compelling, social/cultural and news-relevant topics for Examiner.com. You can follow Alberto on Twitter @MrVargas53.	<urn:uuid:deb1d73d-787f-48b3-a089-24c8c0f415c5>	CC-MAIN-2013-20	http://www.examiner.com/article/atheist-richard-dawkins-soundly-defeated-debate-over-religion?cid=rss	s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz	en	0.959667	916	2.03125	2
If you're around old cars very long, you'll notice that most projects shift gears at some point in the buildup. The owners might say it started out to be a driver, but it just got out of hand. The same can be said for this '72 Nova, owned by Indiana's Brian Adams. He bought the car partially complete and intended on building a weekend cruiser with A/C. But things changed. Obviously. The result is a wicked street car, producing 950 hp, thanks to an all-aluminum 632ci big-block. Brian runs in the NMCA True Street class, where cars are required to make a 30-mile drive, and most cars run in the 9-second range in the quarter-mile. Brian works at BES Racing Engines in Guilford, Indiana, and came across the Nova through a long-time customer and New York native, Jaimie Stanton. The car was purchased without the drivetrain, but most of the chassis work was complete. The paint was finished, so Brian's efforts were concentrated on the engine, transmission and interior, along with all the final detail work. Brian completed the car in 2008 and began testing the combination at local tracks. So far, he's run a best of 9.11 at 147 mph in the quarter, and the fact that it's an all-motor car makes it much more consistent than his forced induction and nitrous-fed competitors. Underneath, Brian's Nova is equipped with a nice selection of components to strengthen and lighten it, while also increasing traction. The modifications started up front, with a set of chrome-moly upper and lower control arms from PA Racing. Then, a pair of QA1 coilovers replaced the original springs, and the front sway bar went to the swap meet pile. Another weight saving measure came in the form of Strange brakes on all four corners, which consist of aluminum four-piston calipers and lightweight rotors. The Nova rolls on a set of American Racing TrakStar wheels, 15x3.5 up front and 15x12 out back, all wrapped in M/T rubber. The True Street class requires DOT-approved street tires, so Brian runs M/T 295/65R15 drag radials, which get the job done and look awesome tucked deeply into the quarter-panels. Novas have never been known to accept a very wide rear tire, so the frame rails were moved inward and deeper tubs were installed to accommodate the big radials. The original leaf springs are long gone, and Jaimie Stanton is responsible for setting up the ladder bar rear suspension. A pair of Strange coilovers help in the traction department, while the Competition Engineering subframe connectors keep chassis flex to a minimum. The Nova also has a rear anti-roll bar, which keeps the car level off the line. When Brian changed the direction of this car's build, he had intentions of competing in the Hot Rod Magazine Pump Gas Drags. The engine in his Nova is built to run on 93-octane gas, so the compression ratio isn't insanely high, making it perfect for NMCA True Street action. Tony Bischoff started with a World Products aluminum block, and opened the cylinders up to 4.600 inches. When the machine work reached completion, he installed a Callies crankshaft that features a 4.750-inch stroke, bringing total displacement to 632. A set of Eagle 6.200-inch connecting rods sling Ross pistons, while a Milodon oil pump heads up the lubrication department. Atop the block is a pair of Edelbrock CNC Victor cylinder heads, packed with enormous Manley valves motivated by a Crane camshaft with 282/302 duration and 0.800-inch lift. Fabricated aluminum valve covers hide the Jesel rocker arms and look great inside the super clean and simple engine bay. The mill is fed by an ACCEL Gen 7 DFI system using an Edelbrock intake manifold, while an MSD lights the fire in the combustion chambers.	<urn:uuid:8c338318-75a4-41e0-91e8-6999bd2eb6fd>	CC-MAIN-2013-20	http://www.superchevy.com/features/nova/sucp_1005_nmca_true_street_class_1972_chevy_nova/	s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00071-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz	en	0.946364	837	1.515625	2
Stay informed of strikes in Athens. — enet.gr Ten questions about strikes and riots in Greece based on readers’ inquiries are answered below, plus travel tips and common sense. Article last updated January 10, 2013 1. Is Greece safe? Greece is not crime-free, as no country is, and economic factors have exacerbated crime and racism. The good news is trouble spots are primarily in cities and in specific areas of those cities, with villages and islands mostly untouched. Most crime affecting tourists is pickpocketing. There is a heavy police presence in Athens and other areas frequented by tourists, with officers on motorbikes, on foot, in buses and on call. Whether you are traveling or living in Greece, personal security depends on: a) How you define safe; b) how informed you are; c) how you conduct yourself; d) your comfort level with risk and the unknown. i.e., Traveling and being in a different country using a different language. Strikes are everyday events in Greece, and residents understand how to navigate around them, continuing lives and work unimpeded with slight inconvenience. To illustrate, the NY Times says: “Just blocks from the scuffles, people sat calmly in cafes and tourists made their way up to the Acropolis.” Claiming that strikes ‘paralyze’ Greece is an exaggeration, unless absolutely everything is on strike for 24 hours and this is rarely the case. A majority 75-80 percent of us go to work, and family members rearrange schedules to care for children who may be home because teachers are on strike. The majority of racism impacts residents of Asian, African, Hispanic and Middle Eastern descent, regardless of nationality, citizenship or social status. A few tourists and visiting businessmen have been mistaken for illegal immigrants by police, as reported in “Tourists held as illegal immigrants, then harassed or beaten by Greek police” (BBC). This is not something new. Unprovoked harassment and discrimination have always been present in Greece and was not brought on by the crisis, nor is it cause for more alarm as suggested by the November 16 security warning issued by the U.S. Embassy in Athens. Over 15 years, Greek friends who don’t look Greek tell me they are subject to verbal abuse from fellow citizens, and readers have complained that they were mistreated at Greek embassies/consulates in the United States, UK and other countries worldwide. The only reason it now makes news is because Greeks elected neo-Nazis to Parliament, after which it became commonplace to be overtly violent and abusive toward non-Greek, non-white foreigners. Most victims stay quiet because police do nothing, so it “doesn’t exist.” And if foreigners do complain, they are told to leave and go home. 2. If I avoid Athens, will I still be affected by strikes? Depends. Many strikes are nationwide, and protests often occur in Thessaloniki and other cities across mainland Greece and the Greek islands. Skipping Athens does not necessarily guarantee a trouble-free life or vacation. 3. Why are people striking? Strikes are a quintessential part of life in Greece and other Mediterranean countries, such as Spain and Italy. Some strikes are in protest, some in support. They can last a few hours, a few days or a few weeks. The frequency of strikes increased when (now ex) PM George Papandreou ordered stricter implementation of laws and drastic reforms that impact jobs, salaries and quality and cost of living. But the phenomenon of strikes is not new and will continue beyond austerity and bailouts. See, “Strikes: An ugly Greek tradition.” The world only hears about them more often because Greece makes headlines alongside the debt crisis, IMF/ECB/EU and eurozone. 4. Don’t strikes hurt Greece? What’s the point? On one hand, people say that all news is free publicity, and people who want to see Greece will still come. On the other hand, there is evidence that strikes have cost Greece and local businesses millions in much-needed revenue — cruise lines altered their itineraries to skip Athens, hotels see increased cancellations after ‘riots’ are shown on TV, more tourists fly direct to islands or go to Turkey, and negative reviews spread in forums and amongst friends. No matter how sympathetic someone may be to our troubles, no one likes losing time and money or being denied entry to the Acropolis after waiting a lifetime to see it. Greece is the “land of me.” Strikes are not necessarily decided by referendum, so they often represent a minority of people and impact a majority. People use the word ‘solidarity’ a lot, but Greek life still centers on family and not far beyond that. Many strikes are symbolic at best — even ritualistic — in that you are perceived as weak, dissenting or in support of an issue simply because you won’t scream or rally against it. Don’t believe me? Four days after publishing this post, AP writer Christopher Torchia used similar language in “Greek riots: Ritual outlet for frustrated nation,” as did BBC’s Justin Rowlatt in “Rituals of Greek riots.” Another popular phrase is, ‘We’re fighting for our rights,’ yet 100 people will have 100 different versions of what that means and no plan of action to counter the policies they oppose. Riot police/MAT stand guard at state buildings. — tanea.gr/Reuters 5. Will there be riots? The word ‘riots’ conjures images of reckless destruction and buildings on fire. This has happened twice in four years: Once in December 2008, a three-week event sparked by the shooting of a 15-year-old boy; and again on February 12, 2012, a several-hours riot that took place while Parliament debated ‘Memorandum 2.’ On May 5, 2010, three Marfin Bank employees were killed in an isolated but equally tragic incident while Parliament passed ‘Memorandum 1‘; and two men died of heart attacks while participating in protests on October 20, 2011 and October 18, 2012, not from tear gas or being hit with rocks. In “With Greece, don’t believe the fights,” I was the first in international media to explain that riots are caused by small groups of hooded persons hanging on the fringe of an otherwise peaceful protest (after which the New York Times and Economist “repurposed” my commentary a few days later without credit). They come armed with sledgehammers, gas masks, Molotov cocktails and intent; and riot police lay in wait. These disturbances typically last only minutes, just long enough for international media to get the footage and photos they secretly wish for. The word ‘riot’ is defined as: A violent disturbance of the peace by a crowd, or an outburst of uncontrolled feelings. By definition, the media are correct to use it. It’s also a four-letter word that fits neatly into a space-restricted headline and entices you to click and read on. By representation, those minutes do not accurately portray an hours-long or day-long demonstration by peaceful protesters who several times stopped infighting and outbreaks of violence. However, as a friend rightly pointed out, perception is reality. People trust me because I tell it like it is, but there’s nothing I can say or do to calm you if your mind is made up. What do want your reality to be? 6. What about the photos and footage I see on the news? Photos, videos and live footage of conflict and things on fire are real, no doubt. But remember that these are snapshots of a moment, and media agencies are in business to make money. Protests and strikes in Greece have a predictable rhythm and progression, and local media and long-time correspondents who live and work in Greece understand that. Greeks abroad who parachute into Athens for a one-off report can sometimes be clouded by nostalgia, and information from foreign correspondents who live elsewhere is less reliable because they fly into Athens with the specific purpose of gathering “exciting” footage and do not understand the language and culture. As a result, they don’t ask the right questions, wrongly interpret what’s happening and end up portraying Greece and Greeks inaccurately. Protesters are hostile toward foreign correspondents for this reason, and residents laugh at their ignorance and then try to undo or live with the damage. Photographers get published because they produce something amazing to look at, so it’s in their interest to file photos the public wants to see. Want to see what a Greek protest looks like 99.5 percent of the time? See photos 1-4 of The Guardian’s Slideshow from June 28, 2011. Everything after slide 4 depicts the other 0.5 percent. Editors must decide if stories are newsworthy, and what happens at the majority of protests would not make the cut. This is why you only see those few minutes. It would be easy to fault journalists, but they’d have nothing to capture and police would have no one to suppress if nothing happened, so fault falls squarely on the troublemakers. The media and audience also feed off each other — if the general public didn’t want to see the photos and footage, the media would not provide and replay them. Reporters are not perfect, but the public will blindly trust them — especially if backed by a brand name — and want their views validated, however wrong. *Examples: A BBC correspondent called the mountza “finger pointing/waving,” which was one of a dozen errors he made. He eventually corrected himself and hired a local Greek fixer, but not before spreading misinformation. Hilariously, he now has a book on protests. The Daily Mail reported that 5 million Greeks are fare dodgers because the writer observed that no one had an Athens metro ticket or validated it in the machine. The truth is, most residents have prepaid monthly cards and are not obliged to buy or validate a ticket. No correction has been issued. 7. Will there be tear gas? Depends. Riot police use tear gas and flash grenades to disperse crowds that appear to be getting temperamental. If the crowd is peaceful, there’s no need. In live broadcasts and live blogging/tweeting, foreign correspondents and so-called citizen journalists intentionally wait in sensitive areas with gas masks or head into an area of conflict, then complain of being tear-gassed. Do not follow their example, and do not be a riot tourist. Use common sense or accept the consequences of your actions. If you are caught off guard, go immediately inside a hotel/store to recover or to a hospital if it’s more serious. Hot spots are well known, and your hotel concierge or a local person can advise you on how to avoid them with alternative routes. 8. Are Greeks resentful toward tourists? Residents and business owners of all nationalities are grateful you chose Greece for your vacation/holiday. The majority of businesses, companies, cafes and restaurants stay open during strikes because we are fighting for survival and need your patronage. Above all, we want you to have a good time. If you experience resentment or racism, these are qualities specific to the individual. It’s not an excuse, but we’re all human with our own problems and fair share of bad days. 9. When will the next strike be? Will ___ be on strike when I come to Greece on ___? Where can I find information on strikes? You can find a list of strikes, and information on strikers, unions and where/when to find announcements at: livingingreece.gr/strikes - What are my rights if my flight is canceled due to an air traffic controllers strike? — Telegraph Travel 10. What can I do? - Stay informed of strikes. - Be alert, not paranoid. - Be honest about who you are and what you’re willing to accept: If you want things your way or like the security/comfort of known factors, there’s nothing wrong with booking a package tour or all-inclusive resort where risk is minimized (if sanitized) and problems solved by someone else. - Consider travel insurance: Some policies pay out if your flight is canceled/delayed or you’re otherwise inconvenienced. - Read the fine print: Does your credit protect you if the ____ company or hotel goes bankrupt? Is your plane ticket refundable, non-refundable, changeable for a fee? Will you be charged a night’s stay at the hotel if you arrive late? Is your booking agent available 24/7 if something goes wrong? Do you have a backup plan, if stranded? - Select a different country: If you expect schedules to run on time, transparent information, clear solutions and everything in English, Greece may not be the country for you. - Be open and try embracing the beautiful chaos. Greece is not always white sand, white pillars and whitewashed houses. Things can go wrong, but realize that we are here to help and the most memorable moments in life are those you didn’t plan. Kat is a well-traveled American journalist and author who lives and works full time in Athens. To learn more, see “About Me.” - Livingingreece.gr was created in 2007 to present meticulously researched original articles that fill a gap left by traditional media, government portals and commercial websites run by people without credentials. - @LivinginGreece is a Twitter feed curated from recognized Greek and international news agencies to provide breaking news about Greece, plus real-time updates and insider tips mined from 14 years experience. Note: Please note my copyright policy and be aware that violations will be pursued.	<urn:uuid:21cde695-42d7-4560-9aac-21784647473a>	CC-MAIN-2013-20	http://livingingreece.gr/2011/06/26/strikes-in-greece/	s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00023-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz	en	0.949043	2,932	1.773438	2