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How can canned tomatoes and water be certified organic when the lining of the can contains BPA? by Jerry Hart
Let’s cover packaging of water first before we get into those scandalous tomatoes.
Myth: Since bottled water is regulated by the FDA, it is safer to drink than tap water.
Fact: A study by the National Resources Defense Council found that 25% of bottled water is actually just packaged tap water, sometimes without any additional treatment. Municipal water is subject to EPA standards and is as safe as or safer than the bottled variety.
Myth: Bottled water that’s been sitting in that warm cab of your car for days is safe to drink.
Fact: Longer answer below.
How many times have you swallowed a delicious swig of water from a water bottle that’s been in hanging around for a couple days? You know, the water bottle that sits in the car for a few days and you sip on it occasionally like a hamster milking a water spigot.
The only time I picked up the bottle and paused was when the temperatures soared to death valley levels. Now that I met some new friends at Village Green who I met at GREEN FAIR at the Cow Palace, I’m really concerned about my un-eco-conscious behavior.
A recent Associated Press report delivered by Katie Couric on CBS National News, says that our water is not safe to drink. In the 42 major metropolitan areas where drinking water has been tested, all tested positive for drugs. Philadelphia has 63 drugs in their water supply of which, only 7 removed after being processed through their water treatment facilities. That leaves 56 drugs in the drinking, cooking, and bath water of every household in Philadelphia. Male fish in the rivers are now feminizing and developing eggs from their exposure to hormones and plastics, which mimic hormones. Beluga whales are developing breast cancer from the plastics in the ocean, and last month, a 10-year-old girl was diagnosed with breast cancer.
People have rushed to bottled water as a source for fresh pure drinking water. Exposed by John Stossel on 20/20, a very high percentage of bottled water is tap water. Coca Cola’s Dasani and Pepsi’s Aquafina are tap water. They both acknowledged this publicly and Pepsi is placing a disclaimer to that affect on thier bottles. The main issue with bottled water though, is not that it is just tap water with drug residue, but that the plastic from the bottles leaches into the water. These plastics are known carcinogens. Research shows BPA (Bispheno A) is causing breast and prostate cancer. A Harvard study released this month reported BPA in the bloodstream of a newborn within one week after being fed from a baby bottle with BPA. A recent John Hopkins press release state “polyethylene terephthalate (PET), in plastic bottle, when exposed to on its trip across country, or in the warehouse where it has been stored.
Dry Cleaners, auto repair shops, any business that uses toxic chemicals and a floor drain, can contaminate a city’s entire water supply. Communities are closing their wells because of contamination from shallow disposal systems flowing into the underground aquifers. Have you had your well water tested?
You can visit www.villagegreenmkt.com for more information, and to view 10 videos from credible news broadcasts concerning what is in your tap and bottled water. I can’t wait for you to hear the interview I’ve scheduled with the folks from Village Green to hear about an astounding new water cooler that makes water from humidity.
Why do producers and consumers of organic products, who are concerned about pesticides, herbicides, hormones, and antibiotics in our food, ignore the packaging encasing the food after it’s produced? How can Muir Glen canned tomatoes, for example, be certified organic when the lining of the can contains BPA?
And avoiding packaging that contains BPA is not enough! That’s just one ingredient we happen to know about. How about what we don’t? We demand full disclosure of ingredients from food companies. How about possible ingredients leaching from the containers? Plastic is not just plastic. It often contains additives that affect its strength, flexibility, color, and even resistance to bacteria. And there’s no labeling law requiring disclosure of any of that.
When our current Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) was passed in 1976, 62,000 industrial chemicals were grandfathered in, meaning they were never required to be tested for safety. Since then, another 20,000-30,000 chemicals have gone on the market. And in 30 years, only 5 have been banned. The law is so weak, that the EPA has not even been able to ban asbestos.
How do we know that the chemicals added to plastics are safe if they are not required to be proven safe before entering the market? How can we make decisions if we don’t even know what these chemicals are??!!
And how can manufacturers of organic products tell us they want to protect the environment and “save the earth” when they are relying on plastic wraps, plastic containers, plastic bottles, and plastic bags without question?
I want to see safe product packaging added to the criteria for organic certification. I want producers to ask what “food grade” really means and for manufacturers of plastic products to be required to reveal all of their additives. I want all manufacturers to follow the principal of Extended Producer Responsibility and plan for a practical cradle to cradle life cycle for their products and packaging BEFORE putting them on the market.
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||This article needs additional citations for verification. (December 2009)
François Seydoux Fornier de Clausonne (15 February 1905 in Berlin - 30 August 1981) was a French diplomat.
Seydoux de Clausonne was born the son of a French diplomat. After studying philosophy and law in Paris in 1928, he joined the diplomatic service.
From 1933 he served as secretary of the French Embassy in Berlin. From here he joined in 1936 in the French Foreign Ministry to take over the leadership of the Germany department. In 1942, after the occupation of France by German troops during World War II, Seydoux joined the French Resistance.
After the war, he headed the French Foreign Ministry's European Department from 1949 to 1955. He then served as a French ambassador, first in Vienna, from 1958 to 1962, and then in Bonn, from 1965 to 1970.
Seydoux de Clausonne was instrumental in bringing about the Élysée Treaty. For his contributions to European integration, he was honored in 1970 with the Charlemagne Prize by the city of Aachen.
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View Entire Collection
By Clinical Topic
Diabetes – Summer 2012
Future of Nursing Initiative
Heart Failure - Fall 2011
Influenza - Winter 2011
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Trauma - Fall 2010
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Fluids & Electrolytes
A 1-day point-prevalence study was conducted in our 141-bed tertiary cardiac care hospital in order to determine our patients' and their significant others' level of understanding of cardiac risk factors in general and of the patients' personal cardiac risk factors. There were 3 parts to the study: patient interviews, significant other (SO) interviews, and an audit of the participating patients' charts. Of the 87 patients who were able to participate, 71 completed the interviews as did 53 significant others. From recall, only 14 patients and 11 significant others were able to define what a cardiac risk factor was ("Habits or factors that contribute to heart disease") and they were unable to identify many general risk factors. However, when given a recognition task where cardiac risk factors were interspersed with sham factors, the overall mean general knowledge score was 13.6 for patients and 13.9 for significant others out of 16. The correlation between the patients' understanding of their cardiac risk factors and the significant others' understanding of them was reasonably good (r = 0.58, P < .0001), as was the correlation between the SOs' understanding and the charts (r = 0.58, P < .0001). There was less agreement between the patients' understanding and the chart documentation of cardiac risk factors (r = 0.36, P < .01). The findings of this study have implications for patient teaching as well as for documentation of cardiac risk factors.
Coronary artery disease (CAD) remains the leading cause of morbidity and mortality in Canada, 1 the United States, 2 and Europe. 3 The Canada Heart Health surveys (1985-1990) revealed that 41% of men and 33% of women aged 18 to 74 years had 2 or more of the major cardiac risk factors (smoking, high blood pressure, elevated cholesterol, physical inactivity, or obesity). 4 These surveys focused on modifiable risk factors-risk determinants that may be modified by intervention believed to reduce the probability of specific outcomes, 5 such as mortality and morbidity. Some studies have shown that changes in lifestyle to modify these risk factors can produce a reduction in patient mortality, a reduced rate of disease progression, and occasionally even regression of atherosclerotic lesions. 6,7 Mortality from ischemic heart disease in North America has been in decline since the 1960s. Hunink et al 8 estimate that 25% of the decline in this mortality in the United States between 1980 and 1990 was due to primary prevention, 29% due to secondary prevention, and 43% due to improvements in treatment. Other nonmodifiable cardiac risk factors include age, gender, and family history of heart disease. 1,2,3
There is some evidence that the awareness of cardiac risk factors in the general population has improved over the last 2 decades. Zerwic et al 9 cite the difference in risk factor knowledge between the study by Shekelle and Liu 10 reported in 1978 where more than half of the 617 subjects could not name any of the risk factors for heart attacks and the study by Folsom et al 11 reported in 1988 where 70% of the adults correctly identified at least 1 of the 3 main modifiable risk factors (smoking, high blood pressure, and high cholesterol or fat in the diet). Zerwic et al asked 105 patients, hospitalized for myocardial infarction or for coronary angiography with the diagnosis of coronary artery disease, open-ended questions regarding cardiac risk factors. They found that 79% of the patients named at least 1 of 3 modifiable risk factors (smoking, hypertension, elevated cholesterol) but only 7% identified all 3.
The Clinical Practice Group at the University of Ottawa Heart Institute, a 141-bed regional cardiac care hospital, identified the understanding of cardiac risk factors in the hospital patient population as a research priority. As a result, a 1-day point-prevalence study was conducted during a 12-hour period midweek. All willing and able in-hospital patients and their significant others were interviewed. Audits of the participating patients' charts were done in the 2-month period following the day of interviews.
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WASHINGTON, April 30 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- More than 6.1 million Americans are covered by Health Savings Account (HSA)-eligible insurance plans, a 35 percent increase since last year, a new census released today by America's Health Insurance Plans (AHIP) found. HSAs were authorized starting in January 2004. Since then, AHIP has conducted a periodic census of its members participating in the HSA plan market.
"Employers and individuals across the country and across the age spectrum are choosing HSA plans, which are now an important part of the portfolio of coverage options offered by health plans," said Karen Ignagni, President and CEO of AHIP.
Key findings from the census include:
-- There was an increase of approximately 1.6 million Americans enrolled in
an HSA plan since January 2007. Previous censuses found that 4.5
million were enrolled in January 2007, 3.2 million were enrolled in
January 2006, and 1.0 million were enrolled in March 2005.
-- 30 percent of individuals covered by an HSA plan were in the small-group
market, 45 percent of individuals covered by an HSA plan were in the
large-group market, and the remaining 25 percent were in the individual
-- HSA products accounted for 31 percent of new coverage issued in the
small-group market. Individual market consumers selected HSA products
for 27 percent of their new purchases of health insurance.
-- HSA plan enrollment as a percentage of individuals with private coverage
is estimated to be the highest in Minnesota (9.2 percent), Louisiana
(9.0 percent), Washington, D.C. (8.7 percent), Vermont (7.5 percent) and
Colorado (7.1 percent).
|SOURCE America's Health Insurance Plans|
Copyright©2008 PR Newswire.
All rights reserved
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Caught in the Literacy Web (site)
Although the current interest in boys and reading is most probably fuelled by falling test scores, I want to consider the literacy world that my son finds himself in as an adult male, and the world his son and daughter will face in the near future.
When I began researching material in this field, I was amazed at the quantity of available resources for parents, teachers and librarians, especially from the Internet. People are certainly concerned about males and literacy. Dozens of books have emerged in the last few years documenting issues in male culture and in raising and schooling boys. Some emphasize biological differences in males and females; others take a socio-constructivist approach; still others struggle for a culturally elitist model promoting literary wonders. Personally, I need to look at them all, to find directions for supporting parents and youngsters themselves to begin taking control of their literacy lives, aware of their needs and interests as developing readers and writers.
If we believe that all children should have access to the literacy world, how will we ensure that boys, in particular, see themselves as readers who can handle the requirements of a variety of texts? Non-readers tell us stories of punishment and pain, of no care and no touch, where books never metamorphosed into friendly objects, where worksheets and controlled readers dictated their eye movements and caused their reading hearts to beat irregularly. They were drowning in printer's ink.
Changing times do not favour anyone whose reading and writing skills are lacking. Males who leave school early or who have poor literacy skills used to have an edge in the labour market because employers favoured them for heavy manual jobs. However, jobs requiring muscle are disappearing and are unlikely to return. New jobs require an ability to communicate well, and communication includes reading and writing as well as speaking.
In one study, a researcher found that while both boys and girls had read the same adventure novels, they had taken different things from them. The girls responded to the feelings of the characters, how their personalities had been shaped by their pasts; the boys enjoyed the action and found that the reflective potions detracted from the story. Having spent almost every Friday night with my son at the movies when he was growing up, I know that his choices usually involved action "teen" flicks with superheroes and action men. What is normal? However, some boys and girls read and enjoy the same novels. In classrooms and libraries that create a literacy subculture, boys are freed from many of the social expectations that deny them access; they can then respond to more reflective selections, and we can then support all kinds of new literary experiences.
As literacy mentors, could we keep a notice board (on line or on a wall) of news articles that connect literacy and males: from interviews with authors, to book reviews, to features that highlight the content or issues that are relevant to the books boys are reading? Could we list the Web sites of authors who talk about boys and reading and who offer suggestions for book choices? Can we organize an author visit to our school library or classroom? Do we have "new book" and "new e-book" shelves, where boys can readily see and borrow books? Do we take the time for book talks, exposing boys to new titles and excerpts to promote interest?
How do boys and girls feel about computers and information technology in their school and academic lives? What types of activities benefit our children? How many have access to home computers, tablets, or e-readers? How can the school and library redress an unfair situation with respect to technological availability? And finally, can we accept audio books, books on line, blogs, texting, Facebook and other interactive modes as significant literacy texts in the lives of boys?
David Booth is Professor Emeritus and serves as Coordinator of the Pre-Service Elementary program at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE), University of Toronto. His research interests include literacy education, interdisciplinary arts education and teacher education. He has written a number of books, including Even Hockey Players Read, a book about boys, literacy and learning.
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The Limits of American Capitalism
by Robert L. Heilbroner
Harper & Row, 150 pp., $4.95
Robert Heilbroner has a well-deserved reputation for being the most readable economist writing. This might be interpreted as rather faint praise in view of the character of most writing in the field, but I would be prepared to go even further and nominate Heilbroner for the position of most readable writer on any serious technical subject, if such a position existed. The present short volume does nothing to destroy this reputation. The style is limpid, the ideas flow easily and one receives a strong impression at the end that something substantial has been said. The only slightly gnawing hesitation one feels is that after the first reading one is not quite sure what has been said and it is almost necessary to go back and read the book again. The very limpidity of style may almost hide the fact that Heilbroner is struggling, not always successfully, with very difficult and important problems.
The subject of the book is nothing less than the interpretation of history and the question of what stable dynamic patterns can be perceived in it, especially as applied to American society now and with a view to the next few decades. The book consists essentially of two rather separate essays, the first of which looks at American capitalism, if that is the right name for it, as it exists today, and where it has been tending and the second asks what is likely to happen to it in the next generation or so. The first essay argues that American capitalism has achieved a certain stability in the sense that the structure of society is not undergoing any rapid changes, and that the society itself is successful enough so that it has virtually no serious internal challenges, and that even the external challenges are either apocalyptic or unreal. It is a society dominated by large corporations, yet there are no signs that they are going to take over the whole economy. The proportion of the gross national product indeed produced by them is either stable or slowly shrinking, as the fields in which they are mainly found—manufacturing, communication, and utilities—shrink in relation to the tertiary and service industries, which are not so well adapted to large scale organization. What is good for General Motors may or may not be good for the country, but at the moment, at any rate, it doesn’t look as if General Motors is going to take over the country. There may be only eleven other countries with a gross national product larger than the total sales of General Motors (this cheerful fact I dug out myself and Mr. Heilbroner is not to be blamed for it), but even General Motors produced only 2 1/2 per cent of the US gross national product.
THE MOOD of the second essay is surprisingly different from that of the first. The first suggests stability and indeed almost complacency, whereas the second drags up a fearsome dialectic out of the intellectual undergrowth and brandishes …
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- Without a clear path to stay in the US, highly-skilled workers will take their innovation and economic growth elsewhere
- Adding 100 H-1B workers means an additional 183 jobs for American workers
- Analysis shows there is no evidence that foreign-born workers hurt US employment
Download PDF The US labor market has been slow to recover from the deep recession of 2007–2009. As of September 2011, there were almost seven million fewer jobs than before the downturn. Policymakers have debated numerous ways to increase employment, from government spending to tax policy to training and education initiatives. But relatively little consideration has been given to immigration reform as a way to boost the economy, even though immigration policy affects innovation and job growth. Instead, the immigration debate has become painfully deadlocked, with widespread agreement that the current system is broken but little consensus on how it should be fixed. In these challenging times, more should be done to identify incremental changes to immigration policy that could be made immediately to boost employment for US workers and accelerate the country’s economic recovery.
To better understand the potential for immigration policy to help rejuvenate the US economy, policymakers need answers to basic questions such as whether the foreign born take jobs from the native born or instead create more jobs, on balance, and what types of immigrants generate the most jobs for native-born workers. Although numerous studies have explored how immigration affects natives’ wages, there is relatively little research on how immigration affects employment among US natives. This study seeks to fill this gap and answer the question of what specific changes to immigration policy could speed up American job growth.
There are two basic theories of how immigration affects natives’ labor market outcomes. One is that immigrants have the same skills as US natives and the two groups “compete” for jobs. In this view, immigration reduces natives’ employment. The other theory is that foreign-born workers “complement” US-born workers. That is, immigrants and natives have different skills, and immigration diversifies the workforce. Immigration results in more productive companies, stronger economic growth, and higher employment among US natives.
This study focuses on two groups most frequently identified by policymakers and employers as vital to America’s economy: foreign-born adults with advanced degrees and temporary work visa holders. (For simplicity, all foreign born are referred to here as immigrants, regardless of their visa type.) In trying to establish whether these groups help or hurt job prospects among US natives, the study uses hard numbers—annual data from the US Census Bureau and applications for temporary workers—to perform a state-level comparison that answers the question, “In states with more immigrants, are US natives more or less likely to have a job?” This study also looks at the fiscal effect of the foreign born by comparing the benefits they receive to the taxes they pay.
The analysis yields four main findings:
1. Immigrants with advanced degrees boost employment for US natives. This effect is most dramatic for immigrants with advanced degrees from US universities working in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields. The data comparing employment among the fifty states and the District of Columbia show that from 2000 to 2007, an additional 100 foreign-born workers in STEM fields with advanced degrees from US universities is associated with an additional 262 jobs among US natives. While the effect is biggest for US-educated immigrants working in STEM, immigrants with advanced degrees in general raised employment among US natives during 2000–2007:
• An additional 100 immigrants with advanced degrees in STEM fields from either US or foreign universities is associated with an additional eighty-six jobs among US natives.
• An additional 100 immigrants with advanced degrees—regardless of field or where they obtained their degrees—is associated with an additional 44 jobs among US natives.
2. Temporary foreign workers—both skilled and less skilled—boost US employment. The data show that states with greater numbers of temporary workers in the H-1B program for skilled workers and H-2B program for less-skilled nonagricultural workers had higher employment among US natives. Specifically:
• Adding 100 H-1B workers results in an additional 183 jobs among US natives.
• Adding 100 H-2B workers results in an additional 464 jobs for US natives.
• For H-2A visas for less-skilled agricultural workers, the study found results that were positive, but data were available for such a short period that the results were not statistically significant.
3. The analysis yields no evidence that foreignborn workers, taken in the aggregate, hurt US employment. Even under the current immigration pattern—which is not designed to maximize job creation, has at least eight million unauthorized workers, and prioritizes family reunification—there is no statistically significant effect, either positive or negative, on the employment rate among US natives. The results thus do not indicate that immigration leads to fewer jobs for US natives.
4. Highly educated immigrants pay far more in taxes than they receive in benefits. In 2009, the average foreign-born adult with an advanced degree paid over $22,500 in federal, state, and Federal Insurance Contributions Act (FICA, or Social Security and Medicare) taxes, while their families received benefits one-tenth that size through government transfer programs like cash welfare, unemployment benefits, and Medicaid.
The results here point directly to several policy proposals that would boost US employment. These policies would require neither new taxes nor new spending cuts. Specifically, policymakers could create jobs by doing the following:
• Giving priority to workers who earn advanced degrees from US universities, especially those who work in STEM fields. The results show that the most dramatic gains in US employment come from immigrants who earned advanced degrees at US universities and are employed in STEM fields. Changing permanent and temporary immigration policies to favor holders of advanced degrees from US universities in STEM fields is an obvious step given the demand for highly skilled workers and the extensive investment the country already makes in such students. Without a clear path to stay in the United States, these foreign students will fuel innovation and economic growth in countries that compete with the American economy.
• Increasing the number of green cards (permanent visas) for highly educated workers. This study shows that foreign-born workers with advanced degrees create more jobs for US workers than immigrants overall. Yet only 7 percent of green cards are currently awarded to workers based on their employment. The United States can increase the number of immigrants with advanced degrees in the US workforce by increasing the number of green cards distributed through employment-based categories.
• Making available more temporary visas for both skilled and less-skilled workers. The findings here suggest that expanding the H-1B program for skilled temporary foreign workers would increase employment for US natives. Similarly, this study suggests that the H-2B program for seasonal, less-skilled workers in fields other than agriculture leads to significant employment gains for US natives. But both these programs are severely limited under current law. Only 85,000 H-1B visas and 66,000 H-2B visas are available each fiscal year, and the process for obtaining H- 2B visas is often prohibitively difficult and costly. This study found a positive but not statistically significant relationship between H-2A temporary agricultural visas and employment among US natives. Further study is warranted to explore whether H-2A visas should be increased as well.
America is currently mired in a period of the slowest economic growth seen in several generations, with persistently high unemployment, anemic job growth, and little bipartisan agreement on how to address these pressing problems. Action is required if America is to get back to work. Immigration policy can, and should, be a significant component of America’s economic recovery. Targeted changes to immigration policy geared toward admitting more highly educated immigrants and more temporary workers for specific sectors of the economy would help generate the growth, economic opportunity, and new jobs that America needs.
Madeline Zavodny is a professor of economics at Agnes Scott College
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Practically everyone, from experts with PhDs to your annoying coworker who only wears gym clothes and always has a Luna Bar attached to her hand, raves about how exercise releases endorphins. (The "exercise feels amazing!" argument even popped up in last Sunday's episode of Girls, which is how we can be certain it's for real.) For decades, researchers have tried to prove that exercise can make even clinically depressed people happier. But a new study shows it's not that simple.
According to the Telegraph, most of the evidence that exercise reduces symptoms of depression is based on small, non-clinical samples. (Although this 2010 Time piece kind of says otherwise.) Now, a new large-scale, randomized study published in the British Medical Journal has found that clinically depressed people who received a "physical activity intervention" for a year did not report feeling any better about their lives.
Study participants, all of whom were diagnosed with depression, were split into two groups: one received "physical activity intervention" (which sounds like a scary new reality TV show) along with normal care for a year, while the other people weren't forced to exert themselves. The people in the group that worked out for twelve months said the exercise didn't alleviate their depression in the slightest.
"Many patients suffering from depression would prefer not to have to take traditional anti-depressant medication, preferring instead to consider alternative non-drug based forms of therapy," said John Campbell, professor of general practice and primary care at Peninsula College of Medicine and Dentistry. "Exercise and activity appeared to offer promise as one such treatment, but this carefully designed research study has shown that exercise does not appear to be effective in treating depression."
Before you tell your friends to fuck off when they suggest you should cheer up by going for a run instead of eating an entire baguette and watching Romantic Comedies with Strong Female Leads on Netflix, consider that this study isn't that groundbreaking: it's never been proven that exercise is an effective treatment for diagnosed clinical depression. It's of course disappointing that we can't help people suffering with depression by sending them to spin class. But these results don't mean that people with less serious bouts of sadness don't benefit from exercise.
When I asked a few friends why working out makes them feel better, they said:
"I guess it makes me feel accomplished? Like it's a physical thing i can point to and say that I've done."
"I feel better about myself in general, and my mood is better when i exercise."
"I think that a lot of my happiness is derived from me physically feeling the feelings that I'm doing something to improve my body."
"When you work out you become stronger, and it feels good to go through your day feeling powerful and capable. I mean, it's little things like that. Running up the stairs and not being winded. Enjoying how you look in your clothes."
Exactly. Exercise can't solve all of our problems, but fortunately (or unfortunately, if you were excited to have a scientific reason not to go to the gym) it seems to help with the "little things," at least, for most. And, obviously, it makes you less likely to get scary diseases. So there's that!
Image via HBO.
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You might use low-bandwidth sidechannels. For example, one could set up a site offering pictures, and the site could sport a "thumbnail wall". HTTP protocol allows for requesting those thumbnails in any order, which means that using twenty pictures you can encode up to 20! (i.e., around 60 bits) in the request scheme. There is no way of detecting or blocking such a scheme short of computationally unfeasible statistical analyses, proxying with request order randomization, or HUMINT of course.
A more easily detectable scheme, with more bandwidth, allows encoding information in ETag and Proxy headers.
Then, one could try more cloak-and-dagger schemes: for example one could bounce ICMP packets with faked source address against a trusted (by the government) host. This kind of malicious activity is apparently not (yet) deemed dangerous, and several firewalled hosts will blissfully bounce back the ICMP packet towards the apparent source, thereby penetrating the firewall.
Then again, incredibly, the Great Firewall of China doesn't seem to care about spam. You'd be surprised at the quantity of unsolicited commercial emails, often containing bulky images, reaching the rest of the world from China. Probably, any sufficiently asymmetric traffic towards port 25/tcp is considered symptomatic of the presence of a Chinese criminal, and the firewall has other priorities. Thanks to some helpful spammers in Guangdong, I can confirm that sending back up to 1 Kb encrypted, compressed and base64-encoded error messages has no effect whatsoever, and the incoming connection keeps requesting relay for more and more spam, which is accepted (and discarded). This channel appears to be capable of about 64 kbit bidirectional.
All this requires encapsulating VPN traffic into different protocols, similar to what Haystack did. Other solutions exist - e.g. FreeGate -, but of course the more widely known they are, the faster Golden Shield is going to (try to) bust them. Simpler strategies aimed at defeating a firewall could just entail obfuscating an existing protocol using one-time pad and supplying rapidly changing external endpoints (that's what the ultrasurf utility did), and betting that you can come up with more obfuscations, and quicker, than the GFC people can come up with fixes.
The risk there, though, is that the GFC switch from "blacklist" to "whitelist" operation: first mowing down the traffic to manageable sizes, then actively rewriting rather than rerouting all known protocols, enforcing strong grammar checks and anomaly detection. For example, refusing HTTPS and TLS unless you accept a nonmatching, GFC-generated certificate to allow man-in-the-middle SSL decryption (claiming that this "does not limit responsible citizens", unless "they have something to hide"), and otherwise refusing all packets that it does not fully understand. This is more or less an answer to Ai Weiwei's statement, that the only way to control the Internet is to shut it down. And the answer would be "Well then, how about we do just that".
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Our own Theodore Gray (the man behind Gray Matter's mad science) is currently in China, and he's taken the opportunity to put his new Casio EX-F1 high-speed camera to excellent use at the Beijing Zoo. And when we say excellent we mean the majestic hawk at the Beijing zoo defecating and flapping its wings at 300 frames per second kind of excellent. And if that's not enough, he's got a dolphin leaping from beneath the water and a sparrow taking flight to boot.
Since its release earlier this year, the game-changing EX-F1 has given amateur photogs the ability to record everyday life in stunning super-slomo at speeds up to an incredible 1200fps. That means a real-time second gets stretched to 40 seconds in the resulting video; and while resolution drops at the highest speed settings, the results are still worth the $1,000 Casio is charging, if you ask me.
If the hawk above wasn't enough, check out these dolphins leaping from their tank, also filmed at 300fps.
And this cinematic shot of a girl chasing a sparrow, filmed at the highest-speed 1200fps setting. Note: this entire video represents just over one second of actual time.
For more on the Casio EX-F1, find our past coverage here.
Five amazing, clean technologies that will set us free, in this month's energy-focused issue. Also: how to build a better bomb detector, the robotic toys that are raising your children, a human catapult, the world's smallest arcade, and much more.
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Howard Wial is a fellow for the Brookings Institution Metropolitan Policy Program.
At first glance, manufacturing jobs would appear to be a dying breed.
The United States lost 6 million manufacturing jobs between early 2001 and late 2009. And despite small gains during the last two years, the trend in manufacturing employment for the last 30 years has been downward.
That has led some to argue that long-term job loss in the industry is inevitable. But our research shows otherwise.
There are two common versions of the "inevitability" argument. One holds that U.S. manufacturing wages are too high to be internationally competitive. The other maintains that manufacturing job losses are the result of productivity growth. Both arguments are wrong.
High wages can't be the culprit, because wages in U.S. manufacturing are not especially high by international standards. As of 2009, 12 European countries plus Australia had higher average manufacturing wages than the United States. Norway topped the list with an average manufacturing wage of $53.89 per hour, 60 percent above the U.S. average of $33.53.
Moreover, the United States lost manufacturing jobs at a faster rate since 2000 than several countries that paid manufacturing workers even more. Among the 10 countries for which the Bureau of Labor Statistics tracks manufacturing employment, Australia, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Sweden both had higher manufacturing wages and lost smaller shares of their manufacturing employment than the United States between 2000 and 2010.
Nor is technology to blame. Factories have become more mechanized, so fewer workers are needed to produce the same amount of goods. If that were the end of the story, then technology-driven productivity growth would indeed reduce manufacturing employment.
But it's not the whole story. Technology increases productivity. And when productivity grows, manufactured goods become less expensive and the market for them expands. That creates a demand for more workers, and that extra demand usually outweighs the labor-saving impact of mechanization. The result is more manufacturing jobs, not fewer.
And there is evidence that productivity wasn't killing jobs. Between 2000 and 2007, manufacturing productivity grew at an average annual rate of 3.9 percent, nearly the same as the 4.1 percent average annual rate during the 1990s.
If productivity growth were the cause, then job losses should've been equally bad in the 1990s. But that wasn't the case. The nation lost an average of only 0.2 percent of its manufacturing jobs per year during the 1990s, compared to 3.0 percent per year between 2000 and 2007.
If neither productivity growth nor high wages cost us manufacturing jobs, what did?
One likely reason is there was insufficient productivity growth in U.S. manufacturing. If productivity had grown more rapidly, American manufactured goods would have been more competitive with those of other countries.
Another likely cause was incentives for manufacturers to offshore work to low-wage countries, which accelerated after China joined the World Trade Organization in 2001. After China's accession to the WTO, the U.S. trade deficit with China grew at an accelerating rate - due mainly to offshoring of manufacturing.
Manipulated currencies and artificially low wages of China and some other low-wage countries made them attractive locations for manufacturers looking to save on labor costs.
But there is hope for the future.
Both offshoring and insufficient productivity were the result of public policy choices. The United States could have reduced the incentives for manufacturers to offshore jobs by taking a harder line against China's currency manipulation and wage suppression. It could have improved productivity growth at home by increasing rather than cutting funding the Manufacturing Extension Partnership program, which helps small and medium-sized manufacturers improve performance.
Chinese wages are now growing faster than productivity and manufacturers are beginning to reconsider whether the costs of offshoring outweigh the benefits.
Funding for the Manufacturing Extension Partnership program has increased, and other federal and state efforts to strengthen manufacturers' performance are taking shape.
|Insanely durable smartphone ... from Caterpillar?|
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|Overnight Avg Rate||Latest||Change||Last Week|
|30 yr fixed||3.65%||3.65%|
|15 yr fixed||2.80%||2.78%|
|30 yr refi||3.64%||3.63%|
|15 yr refi||2.79%||2.78%|
Today's featured rates:
|Latest Report||Next Update|
|Home prices||Aug 28|
|Consumer confidence||Aug 28|
|Manufacturing (ISM)||Sept 4|
|Inflation (CPI)||Sept 14|
|Retail sales||Sept 14|
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The future of libraries is caught up in our ability to change and continually respond to the rapid changes around us. But in order to have meaningful change that will make our libraries thrive, rather than continually exhausting our resources, we have to find a way to discriminate among the changes we could make, implement the ones that make sense, and then keep them going while we continually evaluate them. But how can we ever keep up? And how can we become the libraries of the future when we are relied upon to be pillars of our communities, not revolutionaries? Well, lean in. I’m going to share with you the secrets I’ve learned from five years of applying social technologies in an academic library.
First—find yourself a geek with good tech radar and listen to her. Second, bring new ideas into the library any way you can. Third, set up a system to evaluate the resulting innovations that emerge from your library staff so you can sustain them. That’s it.
Find and support committed, passionate geeks to clear a path in the social media wilderness for you. Create an ongoing culture of exploration and open-mindedness by continually bringing new ideas into your library, deepening your expertise to make the innovations sustainable. Incubate ideas, sort through them, and then develop and sustain the applications that your newly empowered, knowledgeable staff will inevitably produce.
This model works, but while it is simple, it is not necessarily an easy path. In fact, I’m here to tell you that you can expect fits and starts, conflicts and obstacles, panic and suspicion. The ongoing process of creating a future for your library must be nurtured and yes, even “institutionalized” so that you can respond to and occasionally embrace rapid innovation while keeping the library stable.
I firmly believe that if you are determined to take your work in a certain direction, you can eventually get there. Regardless of where you begin, let your patrons’ needs be your North Star. Without the goal of connecting with and serving your patrons, all the tech planning and inventive applications in the world will be useless. Adopting new technologies because they are new or cool or because some other library has them is fruitless “keeping up with the Joneses.” That sort of tech adoption will never be deeply rooted or lasting, because there’s no real reason to sustain it. If nothing else, projects that aren’t patron-focused will lack the metrics demanded when the Assessment Police come around. (And they will come.) Academic libraries by design do not make overnight shifts in culture, practices, or policies. That’s to your benefit, because once those shifts occur, they’ll be as stable as they were difficult to achieve.
Why You Need Your Own Geek
There’s no way I know of for emerging tech to be tracked, identified, and adopted in a library through a top-down structure. For the library to stay aware of what is happening in that social media wilderness means that some individual has to be passionate about it. New social technologies are not released systematically on a development plan from a major vendor; they evolve quickly and require more than a 9 to 5 workday to investigate.
The ideal social media tracker is someone who actually wants to spend irrational amounts of time experimenting with bleeding edge tech and signing up for each new beta (or alpha!) service as it comes across the radar. You need someone who has that radar and is willing to participate in shaping new technologies with the library in mind. This compulsive creature must be willing to watch technologies fail, even after having invested time in them—in fact, they should be committed to wasting time, knowing that it will pay off in the long run.
If you don’t already have such a person, you can create a position and search for one. If you go this route, keep in mind that such individuals don’t always fit comfortably with the rest of the culture of the library. You may be lucky enough to find someone who can get along with anyone, manage change, plan projects, envision the future, and translate geek-tech into administrative-speak. If that happens, hang on tight. If not, consider searching for people already in your library who are secretly experimenting with new tech and social media. They are there. They have blogs about their favorite characters from True Blood that you know nothing about. They’re doing social couponing using Twitter and Facebook and pulling their penny-saver RSS feeds into Google Scholar. They have entire worlds of information you could leverage. All you have to do is listen—even if you don’t understand a word at first.
Once you find this treasure, your role is not over. It is vital to understand that they are waiting for someone to direct their explorations. Planning a library’s tech future is not easy to do while being bombarded by the newest, hottest, most distracting technology. Just as soon as things begin to feel solid and stable, the paradigm will shift and some game-changing newcomer rocks the library.
Nurturing is crucial too. Give your star explorer permission to experiment—call it play if you want, but I think it makes sense to acknowledge it as work. They will find your future for you by happily hacking through dizzying options that would flatten the rest of us. Listen when they come up with crazy ideas, empower them to try new things, and for goodness sake, implement something every once in a while. In the opposite world of the future, failure is success because it’s the only way to learn.
Geeking Your Library
It may be counterintuitive to say that institutionalizing change in libraries relies on the individual at its heart, but that’s the case. It cannot rest on the shoulders of one individual, however. Change has to become part of a library’s culture—not something that one person—no matter how brilliant—champions. The early adopter might not be the person to cheerfully commit to the daily ins and outs of updating statuses, checking broken links, and connecting the entire library to the mission of new innovations. Anyway, no library can afford to shape a program around one person; the work of the new technology has to be integrated into the bones of the library itself: part of job descriptions, accountable to a supervisory structure, and with mechanisms for renewal and revolution. More than anything, it must become routine and even, yes, boring. Coming up with Facebook updates day in and day out, year in and year out, is not thrilling work, but if you have committed to Facebook for outreach or marketing or reference, it is vital to maintaining your program.
It’s okay, and maybe inevitable, that your bleeding-edge tech geeks with their highly refined radar don’t sustain the projects that become part of your institution. But how do you develop deep enough expertise in your staff so that your brilliant techies can hand off viable projects?
Assembling Your Geek Squad
Commit to getting information in from outside. You can only talk to each other for so long, and there is a vibrant community in the library world of doers, debaters, naysayers, and champions of all sorts. Library staff must be encouraged to get into the mix and to listen to the arguments. Sometimes they may seem like pointless pontificating or even navel-gazing, but these communities offer ideas and nurturing for fledgling geeks. The Mississippi State University (MSU) Libraries, for example, started the MS Library 2.0 Summit in 2007 after being inspired by hearing Michael Stephens speak at the NASIG Mid-South eResources Symposium in 2006. Bringing innovators to your library will place all of your staff in the role of learner and demonstrate the value the library places on learning new things. In this age of the webinar, it’s not necessary to fly innovators in and put them up at the Hampton Inn. However, some of the most valuable learning at conferences happens between sessions, where developing relationships with like-minded souls and brainstorming with colleagues gets at the real stuff—not just the presentation but what is and isn’t working.
Leverage your geeks to find the topics that will be most relevant and the people that can speak to them. If you don’t have time to start your own conference, consider a lecture series that brings people in from nearby libraries or even from your own campus or local community. Your geeks will know them. In 2011, one of the speakers at the MSU Summit was Shane Reed, the owner of a local coffee shop that had built an enormous engaged and loyal Twitter following of MSU students and faculty. He spoke about the challenges of creating community on campus using social media—exactly what every university is trying to do, and so far failing at for the most part. In planning for the future, we have to listen to perspectives outside the library AND outside the library world. We don’t have all the answers, and the successful library of the future will have people in place who are listening to the business world, and to journalists, technologists, and even pop stars. Thinking outside the box has never been more important.
Teaching the Tech
An extension of this external engagement is a culture of continuous learning within the organization. It’s not enough for the chosen few to know the important innovations as they approach. You must elevate the skill level of the entire organization through an active and vital curriculum provided by instructors from across the library. Once your staff is engaged in these new tools, they will need to understand how the tools are changing, learning about new privacy settings or interface changes, for example, as they come up. New employees will have to be brought up to the proficiency level of the current staff.
In addition to general training in new technologies and social media, it’s a good idea to show staff how other libraries are leading the way with the options you’re considering. Here come the geeks again. They will have an ear to the ground, be networking with other librarians, and understand the context of new tools as they roll out. Your training program should also give your people what they need to imagine how they might apply new technologies in their own jobs. If you have established service to patrons as your library’s top priority, it will be natural that applications that help patrons will bubble to the top. Your staff knows your community better than anyone else. Student workers, alumna-turned-employees, long-term reference librarians—they all have intimate relationships with your users and are using your tools.
You’ll find varying degrees of willingness and interest to embrace new technologies. Some will be too unwilling, exhausted, or busy to be bothered, which is fine. You don’t need everyone. But there will also be people who want to know new things and will think up ways that new tools will work in their department. These are the foot soldiers of an emerging tech program, and before you know it, you’ll notice a depth of knowledge and capability within the organization that you never expected.
One of the benefits of this kind of ongoing technology training is consensus building. The more people know about something, the less they fear it. Getting past fear of the unknown is essential in introducing new technologies and in establishing a sustainable structure. However, while training usually creates consensus among the ranks, it doesn’t always have the same effect on the institution’s upper echelons. For that you need proposals, preferably ones that include proof-of-concept. Very rarely does something sustainable get done without first being written down and labored over.
Geek the Administration
Geeking the administration takes time and patience. It also requires structures in place that allow for the necessary evaluation and institutionalization of the tech projects that have risen to the top. Some administrators lack the skills to evaluate proposals, not to mention time to devote to technology training workshops. I propose two structures that will work together to make change sustainable. Some (most?) of you will roll your eyes at even more committees—but why fight them? This is who we are as libraries—we want consensus. And to get it, we have to talk it out.
Step One: Create Your Geek Filter Committee
The first group is a small, commando-like operation. You need passionate, die-hard geeks, of course, but you also need translators: a sympathetic reference librarian who sees patrons with their iPads, an IT guru who is willing to listen to crazy ideas, an instruction-type person who wants to know more, someone who’s been around and knows where the bodies are buried, and maybe even an administrator whose real goal is to monitor your subversive activities. This group should be small so that real work can get done.
It will direct the technology training, bring speakers in to provide vision and excitement, and lead training sessions that provide everyone the tools they need to innovate. The group is the filter that makes the entire system work, where ideas from the geeks and the geek squad can be evaluated, fleshed out, tested, and where the best of the best can move forward. Without this group, ideas will not move into the political reality of an actual library. Without translation, even the most amazing, logical ideas will wither on the vine.
Tips for this group: Not every idea should go forward. It’s critical to filter and incubate new ideas first. Look for proof-of-concept. This is the place to anticipate all the inevitable questions, problems, and obstacles and then write it up. If the momentum slows on a project, table it. It may not be time for it, or maybe it wasn’t a good fit. Some ideas will be duds; this is the kicking-the-tires phase, after all.
Once an idea has been put through its paces, and you have a solid project with a well-thought out proposal—what’s next?
Step 2: Build a Broad Consensus
Yes, another committee. Consensus, buy-in, approval, participation, and willing bodies will make your new ventures work in ways you cannot imagine today. A group with members from across the library system must review and approve (or disapprove) your proposals. The purpose of this group will be to garner buy-in from every corner of the library. Implementation of social media tools, in particular, takes a village. If you plan ahead and give people a voice, input, approval—suddenly the new program is coming from the entire library and not just from the geek in the corner (whom they’ve never been sure about to begin with).
Our Facebook page, for example, got traction when one intrepid librarian started posting call numbers and titles of poetry books during national poetry month. I was sure that we would lose followers. Nope. They loved it. People commented and “liked” the posts. They wanted to talk about books and identify with those that they liked on their library’s Facebook Page. Then our digital projects administrator got involved. Turns out he was sitting on a pile of odd MSU-related pictures: Elvis at the library, our Mascot getting arrested, crazy signs on campus from the ’60s. As much as I cared about Facebook and had a vision for it, I would never have done either of those things, but it turns out they’re what people wanted.
Once your proposal moves up the line, you’ll have to communicate with people outside your Geek Squad. Tips for this hurdle: Make your proposal understandable. For anyone. Do not use tech-speak or jargon. Include whatever evidence you can gather from Pew research, ComScore stats, the library literature, whatever is out there—even anecdotal information from blogs or listservs. Librarians love data, especially if they don’t understand the technology. Make a one-page executive summary. Many people on the committee and in the administration won’t get past that.
Above all, do not get annoyed if they have many questions that you think have obvious answers. It’s helpful to hear all the ways in which your clear prose can be misunderstood. Create reasonable plans that library administrators will be able to approve. Provide plans for maintenance. Include methods of assessment and a trajectory for growth. Your proposal will be part of what makes your project sustainable, not just what persuades the powers that be to approve it.
What we learned about committees that include a cross-section of library employees is that there is a widely varying comfort level with technology. Therefore, your tech projects need to be translated so that they are comprehensible to everyone. Listen to the debate about your project and work to build trust. Everyone will have a different set of priorities and taking those into account makes your proposal and your project stronger and more sustainable, moving them beyond being a pet project or a blip on your Geek’s radar, and into the institution’s life.
Next Stop—Your Future?
Over the last five years implementing these steps, I’ve seen countless dead projects and tabled even more. I’ve seen wonderful projects flag and nearly fail from exhausted and overworked personnel. In order to serve our patrons and have meaningful change that will create a future for libraries that makes us relevant, nimble, porous, and vibrant, we have to start with our Geeks.
|Data-Driven Libraries: Navigating Options & Measuring Outcomes: Librarians today are facing the inescapable reality that data is slowly beginning to govern much of what they do, and they need to determine the most constructive way to deal with this ocean of information that a growing number of software companies and applications are making available. Sign up for this free webcast series to learn innovative data-driven solutions that will help you navigate through the data to create viable plans for your library's future.|
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Originally published in The Jakarta Post, Opinion,
Fitrian Ardiansyah, Canberra ACT | Mon, 13 June 2011. 6:44 PM
This year’s World Environment Day, which sports the theme “Forests: Nature at your service” is likely to be celebrated in a more “colorful” way in Indonesia.
This may be due to the fact that in the last two weeks prior to June 5, three influential policies were issued by the government. These were two presidential decrees concerning forests and the most recent economic development master plan.
If not properly guided, managed and implemented, these three policies have the potential to be contradictory and hence could ruin a significant chance for Indonesia to sustainably manage its remaining valuable forests. Read more »
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Most Active Stories
Thu December 8, 2011
Russia's President: Alleged Vote Fraud Will Be Investigated
Reacting to widespread protests, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said alleged vote fraud of parliamentary elections will be investigated.
Medvedev told reporters Thursday — after meeting Czech counterpart Vaclav Klaus — that the law may have been violated during Sunday's vote, because "our electoral law is not ideal."
He called for Russians to remain calm during any inquiry, adding that "experts, not ordinary people" would investigate.
Medvedev said he can understand some people are disappointed with the result, but "the outcome fully corresponds with estimates from analysts and public polls."
According to Russia Today, Medvedev also said the protests were "a manifestation of democracy," and while protesters should obey the orders of police, "at the same time, I believe that people should have an opportunity to express their opinion. If they want to have their say on elections – it is fine."
Medvedev is expected to trade places with Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, who is vying to return to the presidency. Elections are scheduled for March, but in the past few weeks, Putin has faced what analysts call the biggest challenge to his rule.
As we reported yesterday, a big protest is scheduled for the weekend.
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Weeds growing in cracks or expansion joints in pavement or stone patios can be a pain. But dealing with them is as easy as making a cup of tea. In fact, it’s even easier than that.
Grab a tea kettle. Fill it with water. Boil the water. Pour the water on the weeds.
The boiling water will immediately destroy the cells of the weeds, which will be gone by morning. For really persistent weeds (dandelions, grassy weeds, etc.), add a tablespoon or two of salt to the water before boiling, or an equivalent amount of vinegar.
Don’t use this stuff on weeds in the lawn or in flower beds. The boiling water will also kill beneficial critters in the soil, vinegar will destroy any surrounding plants it comes in contact with (vinegar is a natural herbicide), and salt is toxic to plants.
THIS WEEK’S TIP
May 1st 2009
CONTROL WEEDS WITH WATER
I go crazy whenever I see the commercial for a hugely popular herbicide that features two guys standing in their driveway staring first at a single, solitary weed growing in a crack, then at each other, as if to issue a challenge that says “My synthetic chemical works better than yours!”
I mean hey, why not just pull the weed? How hard is that?
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New K-Pod Orca Calf Identified
Published 6/11/2010 at 7:23 a.m. 0 comments
A new orca calf has been born in K pod, one of the three groups of killer whales that frequent the Salish Sea and Puget Sound, experts say.
Puget Sound orcas prefer Canadian salmon
Published 4/15/2010 at 9:01 a.m. 0 comments
SEATTLE (AP) — While here at home in their summer range, Puget Sound's endangered orca whales dine almost exclusively on salmon from Canada, scientists have learned, underscoring the connected nature...
New Calf Spotted With L Pod
Published 2/23/2010 at 10:49 a.m. 8 comments
The whale was spotted Sunday east of Vancouver Island. The newborn has been designated L-114 and is the offspring of Matia.
'Salish Sea' Deemed the 'Name of the Year'
Published 1/12/2010 at 7:12 p.m. 9 comments
The new name has a lot going for it: ecology, ethnicity and international relations.
Another Newborn Orca Seen in J Pod
Published 1/4/2010 at 3:32 p.m. 4 comments
There are now 28 orcas in J pod and 88 in the three Salish Sea pods.
- BARBARA McMICHAEL | bookmonger Different Views of Puget Sound Published 12/6/2009 at 12:01 a.m. 0 comments
- Newer Stories
- Older Stories
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presented by Lauren Halsted, firstname.lastname@example.org
Workshop Number: CC-S-105
Ever wondered how students define success, how they achieve success, and what obstacles they face along the way? This workshop paints a picture of success through students' perspectives. This data was obtained through Lauren's dissertation research, which was an action research project that included students at every step of the process--from data collection to analysis. This workshop will end with a brainstorming session about how we can learn from students and use their voices to better inform our decisions here at Cuyamaca.
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This year’s theme is 'Grow'. It celebrates more than 80 years of FFA traditions while eagerly anticipating the organization’s future.
More than 550,000 members nationwide will participate in National FFA Week activities at local, state and national levels. These members come from rural, suburban and urban environments and are interested in the diversity of careers within agriculture.
FFA members are the innovators and leaders of tomorrow. Through agricultural education and hands‐on learning, they are preparing for the more than 300 career opportunities in the food, fiber and natural resources industry, organization officials said.
National FFA Week is sponsored by Tractor Supply Company as a special project of the National FFA Foundation and annually encompasses Feb. 22, George Washington’s birthday.
Kenedy FFA will celebrate this week by daily visits to each classroom of the jr. high and high school. Officers and members will be spreading information about FFA and how students can become more involved. If you would like to know more about Kenedy FFA and what our members are up to please visit our website at kenedy.ffanow.org.
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NEW YORK — A mood of jubilation tempered by reflection filled the streets around the World Trade Center site in Lower Manhattan Monday as New Yorkers and tourists came together to process the news that Osama bin Laden had been killed.
"We Americans never celebrate death," said Germano Riviera, 59, of Brooklyn, who stood proudly by the Ground Zero fence with a flag bearing the names of every person killed on September 11. "But we're celebrating the death of one bad man."
Construction on the new Freedom Tower continued undisturbed behind fencing dotted with flowers and memorials. Across the street in St. Paul's churchyard, a little girl ran around waving an American flag while a man with a guitar started an impromptu singalong to John Lennon's "Imagine."
The rousing celebration of the night before had given way to smiles and reflection on the death of a single man who caused such devastation on this spot nine years ago.
Steven Rivera, 41, who was part of the search and rescue efforts after the towers fell, now works at the site as part of the crew building the new tower.
"What is there to celebrate?" said Rivera, who lost a firefighter friend and two other friends in the attack. "You can't bring back the people who are lost. It's a tricky question. I'm not celebrating, I'm just glad that it brought closure to some of the families."
His work at the World Trade Center site is more than just another construction job, he said. It's personal.
"Now I'm here after the fact rebuilding," he said. "It feels good. I'm glad I'm a part of history."
An NYPD officer on duty said that things had been fairly calm all day. "We had one crazy spewing hate, but that's about it," he said. "It's just another day, for the most part."
Several young people came out to protest the decision to kill Bin Laden rather than capture and try him in court. Brittany Allen, 19, has an older sister in the military and said she feared that his death wouldn't solve anything.
"Whether he's dead or not, what happened happened," said Allen, who was 10 when the attack happened. She held up a poster bearing the words: "An eye for an eye has left this entire nation blind."
"Why would you celebrate someone's death?" she asked.
For Lee Hadziyianis, however, it was hard to keep a grin off his face.
On Sept. 8, 2001, Hadziyianis was celebrating his 30th birthday. Three days later, he was mourning two friends who had come into the city for a visit and were killed when the towers fell. He decided to enlist and served a year and a half in Iraq as a military police officer and weapons specialist.
It felt strange to be at Ground Zero on a happy occasion, he said, holding up a yellowed copy of the New York Times from Sept. 12, 2001.
Alongside it, he held the current edition with the news of bin Laden's death splashed across the front page.
"To me, to be honest, it's a glorious, beautiful day, it really is," he said, grinning broadly. "Normally when I come down to Ground Zero here, it's on the anniversary, and it's a little more touching and emotional. But today, it's one of just joy."
A friend texted Hadziyianis the news Sunday night, and since then he's been trying to process it.
"It's a nice slap in the back for all the armed forces, our coalition troops, everyone, and all the men and women that serve," he said. "It's good to know that we accomplished the mission we set out to do."
To celebrate, he said, he and a friend were going to do something about as New York as it gets.
"Were going to go eat a big old steak," he said.
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As you might already know, our man in the field Vincent was at PEPCOM last night checkin out all the fun electronics – but what was also there? Some sweet, undefeatable Gorilla Glass! This is the sort of glass the toughest devices with screens are apt to use – definitely not a low-grade situation. Gorilla Glass is made to last. Not to scratch, and definitely not to break. Over to the Gorilla Glass table last night and we were treated to a lovely demo by a nice man who let Vincent demo the glass by doing no less than attempting his hardest to break it. Fun!
First, we get to see a prototype hand-sized piece of Gorilla Glass where a there’s a bend in the glass.
Next, another piece with more of a dish shape (meaning there’s a dip in the middle) sizing in at around 4-inches.
Finally, another dish shaped piece with a hole cut in it I’d assume for a speaker.
Then the fun began. Vince gets to use sort of a metal stylus (looks like the handle of an Exacto Knife to me) to press down on several pieces of lower-grade glass, of course breaking them each in turn.
Finally, they reach the Gorilla Glass, a 1.1-mm thickness just like each of the pieces of glass before it. The man presenting the Glass does admit that some people at PEPCOM had been able to break the glass upon HEAVY pushing, so Vince does attempt to do so as well “for our readers” – like a boss. But alas, the glass does not give way. But I guess that’s also good news!
The representative for Gorilla Glass then goes into the technology behind the glass in a bit of detail. What Gorilla Glass is is an
Alkalide Lumina Silicone glass – which essentially means it has sodium in it. The way the glass is made strong is that they put in a hot salt bath, which leaches out the sodium, which they then replace with Potassium. Potassium, being a bigger molecule than sodium, sets up a compressive layer on the surface when the glass cools. That compressive layer is what makes the glass damage resistant.*
*SCHOOLED: Take a look at this extended explanation of how Gorilla Glass works, courtesy of intrepid commenter Santosh:
“Alkalide lumina silicone” glass??? Please change that to Alkaline Alumino-Silicate glass. Just a brief note on alkali (or alkaline) ions – they consist of Lithium (Li), Sodium (Na), potassium (K), rubidium (Rb) and cesium (Cs), first group in periodic table. Alumino-silicate represent aluminum oxide (Al2O3) plus silicon dioxide or silica (SiO2) AND NOT “silicone”. Silicone is a separate class of materials which are silicon (Si) containing polymers. So, the short version is that the glass is (alkali alumino-silicate) Na2O-Al2O3-SiO2. The sodium (Na+) ion from the surface of the glass is “ion exchanged” with larger potassium ion (NOT potassium molecule – as suggested by Corning Glass expert – in fact, there is no such thing as “potassium molecule”). I hope this will help clarify the real chemistry (typically taught at any entry level materials science class). When you stuff the larger ion, the outer layer tries to expand, but the bulk of the glass does not, which exerts compressive stress on the surface. So when you try to put the tensile or biaxial stress on the surface, the compressive stress compensates/neutralizes the tensile or biaxial stress thus preventing crack formation. I hope this will make it a complete explanation.
All that make sense to you? Thank you Santosh for taking the time to go in-depth on this subject, we appreciate it to no end! It’s commenters like you that make this community great!
The Gorilla Glass rep then displays a very thin layer of Gorilla Glass employed on a giant television, noting how awesome it looks and how it’ll differentiate it from any other television with how thin and strong it is.
Finally, he shows off a panel of Gorilla Glass with a design behind it which he notes would be optimal for a laptop cover (either custom or straight out of the box) that could, again, differentiate whichever brand plans on using it.
Take a look at the video below and see the awesome strength of the gorilla.
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The ability to fly has been mankind’s dream for thousands of years, a goal toward which thousands of scientists and researchers have expended labor, time and money. Apart from a few very primitive experiments, it became possible to make self-propelled flying vehicles only in the 20th century. This feat, which mankind managed to achieve with the accumulated technology of centuries, is something that birds—known to have existed on Earth for the last 150 million years—have always performed to perfection. Even a new-born chick will soon acquire this special ability in a matter of weeks, which humans can manage only through advanced technology. How, then, did these astonishing creatures come into being?
Everyone who examines birds realizes that like other living things, they possess perfect anatomical systems. This leads to the inevitable conclusion that they are the products of flawless creation.
No rational, logical person can believe that an airplane assembled itself of its own accord. These components did not combine by chance to produce a vehicle capable of flight. On the contrary, the design of a plane reveals very detailed calculations at every stage of its manufacture. Many scientists and engineers have used their knowledge and experience and expended a great deal of time and effort. Birds, however, have been equipped with far superior aerodynamic characteristics. To examine birds, created with the ability to fly, and then claim that they came into being by chance, defies all reason and logic. The position of those who make such claims is revealed in the verse:
“And they repudiated them wrongly and haughtily, in spite of their own certainty about them...” (Surat al-Naml, 14).
Yet proponents of the theory of evolution are reluctant to admit this.
According to Darwin’s theory of evolution, every living species evolved from a single common ancestor. This scenario means that the 100 million 1 or so known species must all be descended from earlier versions of one another. To account for the origin and astounding variety of plants and animals, evolutionists propose two mechanisms: natural selection and mutations. (For detailed information, see Harun Yahya, The Evolution Deceit, United Kingdom: Ta-Ha Publishers Ltd. and Darwinism Refuted, New Delhi: Goodword Books Pvt. Ltd. November 2002.)
Yet neither mechanism has the ability to give rise to any new living thing. Mutations are random, typically harmful effects caused by anomalies in the DNA and are directed towards no particular purpose. Naturally, aimless and randomly occurring coincidences cannot give rise to living things that possess planned, orderly structures designed for specific objectives. Blind chance cannot endow living things with complex organs and systems.
The more those with common sense examine life forms, the more they will realize the nonsensical nature of the theory of evolution, which bases the origins of life on chance. Perceiving design but calling it purposeless, seeing order but calling it accidental, is nothing more than a deliberate denial of the facts. At the root of this denial lie evolutionists' devotion to materialist philosophy and their bigoted reactions against the fact of creation. Rather than admit their Creator’s existence, evolutionists prefer to believe that blind chance is a mighty creative force and that this concept—an expression of purposeless, unconscious happenstance—can perform miracles.
But the distorted nature of this belief is easy to see: If you strew the components of an airplane on the ground, random forces such as wind, lightning, rain and earthquakes can never make them combine into a complete, functional aircraft. In addition, all the components in this example have already been created to be mutually compatible. Nonetheless, no matter how long one waits it is impossible for the parts to assemble themselves into a complete model. This finished product can come into being only if a conscious entity assembles all the components. Yet according to evolutionists, chance is able to produce systems incomparably more perfect than this example, as well as the most delicate balances. The logical contradiction here is obvious for anyone to see.
Every living thing is a unique marvel of creation. The proposed evolutionary mechanisms, on the other hand, lend no support to evolutionist claims. The first of these mechanisms—natural selection—assumes that those living things will survive that are best adapted to the challenges of the environment in which they live; while those unable to adapt will die out and disappear. According to evolutionists, this unconscious, automatic mode of elimination endows surviving individuals with ever-more complex organs and systems, but this claim has no valid proof or scientific basis. Observation has shown that natural selection serves only to weed out unfit individuals, but that there is no question of it endowing survivors with new organs and systems.
The well-known biologist D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson summarizes this point:
. . . We see in natural selection is not to create but to destroy—to weed, to prune, to cut down and to cast into the fire.2
In short, natural selection has nothing to do with the emergence of any new species. Moreover, the natural selection process, being unconscious, is unable to contribute new genetic information to living things. In other words, even if natural selection does cause change in a living thing, that change cannot transmit itself on to subsequent generations. The only mechanism that can have impacts on genes is mutation—random damage to a living thing's genetic structure, which has never been observed to add beneficial trait of any kind.3
Claims that evolution occurs by means of natural selection are invalid, because:
1) Natural selection cannot plan or envisage an organism’s future needs, and
2) Mutations can never endow a beneficial gain that leads to progress.
Professor John W. Oller of the University of New Mexico refers to the illogical nature of this claim of development through mutation:
Accidental design adjustments, as necessary for general evolution, are logical disasters. Random mutations from radiation, replication errors, or other proposed sources, rarely result in viable design adjustments, never in perfect more advanced designs. 4
The results of mutation are typically handicaps, sickness, and death. Mutations provide no support for the theory of evolution, because:
- Mutations are always harmful
The net effect of mutations is harmful, as in the case of the turtle in the picture .
Suppose you have determined that your life would be much more efficient if you had heat receptors in your body, or have felt the need for some other organ or ability that you think will confer an important advantage. Can you bring this about in your own body, by yourself? Could you bring into being a new organ or system that functions in a coordinated manner with immaculate timing, with all the other organs in your body, never making an error, that protects you by taking all the precautions you need and constantly strives to be beneficial to you? Could you then encode the proper genetic codes in your DNA so as to transmit this change to later generations?
That would be quite impossible, no matter how much you desired it or how much effort you expended. How, therefore, could unconscious molecules manage something that a rational and conscious entity like yourself cannot? There is thus no scientific basis to support the claim that unconscious molecules assembled the cell and then, by chance, carried out flawless adjustments in its genetic structure.
As a result, it is impossible for one living species to develop into a bird, with its own unique features including that of flight, by any so-called evolutionary mechanism, or for birds to evolve into still other living species. The infinite variety among living things is just one indication of the infinite knowledge and creative artistry of Allah. In order to deny this, evolutionists hide behind unrealistic explanations.
Over the last 20 years, when the complexity of life has become ever more clearly understood, an increasing number of scientists have reacted against the “chance dogma” supported by the theory of evolution. When asked about the dilemmas facing the theory of evolution, for example, Michael Denton, a molecular biologist at the University of Otago in New Zealand, criticizes the claims made for random mutations:
All features of animals are so so finely calculated that even before they are hatched, they are provided with special organs for their individual species’ needs. Living things cannot have come into being by chance, in complete harmony with an environment which they have never seen. It is our Almighty Lord, Allah, Who creates living things together with their perfect systems.
The most serious objection I have is with the nature of mutation. Darwinism is based on the idea that all the mutations which have been selected during the course of evolution were, when they initially occurred, entirely random. Mutations are random. . . . This is the essential bedrock of Darwinism. The mutational input into living things is, as it were, at random.
Darwinism is claiming that all the adaptive structures in nature, all the organisms which have existed throughout history, were generated by the accumulation of entirely undirected mutations. That is an entirely unsubstantiated belief for which there is not the slightest evidence whatsoever.
second problem is that there are a vast number of complex systems in nature, and no matter how unglamorous this problem is, no matter how people try to look the other way, the fact is that a huge number of highly complex systems in nature cannot be plausibly accounted for in terms of a gradual build-up of small random mutations.
Indeed, in many cases, there does not exist in the biological literature even an attempt to explain how these things have come about. A classic example would be the lung of the bird, and I could mention some other ones, but everybody knows the lung of the bird is unique in being a circulatory lung rather than a bellows lung. I think it doesn't require a great deal of profound knowledge of biology to see that an organ, which is so central to the physiology of any higher organism, its drastic modification in that way by a series of small events is almost inconceivable. This is something we can’t throw under the carpet again because, basically, as Darwin said, if any organ can be shown to be incapable of being achieved gradually in little steps, his theory would be totally overthrown.
The fact is that, in common-sense terms. . . …here are a vast number of such cases in nature. 5
That is Allah, your Lord. There is no god but Him, the Greator of everything. So worship Him. He is responsible for everything. (Surat al-An'am, 102)
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· In Portland, Oregon, the wives of several prominent businessmen have disappeared without a trace, leaving behind only a black rose and a note with a simple message: “Gone, But Not Forgotten.”
· An identical series of disappearances occurred in Hunter’s Point, New York, ten years ago—but the killer was caught, the case was closed and the special “rose killer” task force was disbanded.
· Betsy Tannenbaum, a Portland wife and mother who has gained national recognition as a feminist defense attorney, is retained by multimillionaire Portland developer Martin Darius—for no apparent reason.
· Nancy Gordon, a homicide detective for the Hunter’s Point Police Department and an original member of the “rose killer” task force, hasn’t slept a full night in ten years, haunted by nightmares of a sadistic killer who, she swears, is still out there. . .
· Alan Page, the Portland district attorney, trying to make sense of the sudden series of disappearances, opens his front door one evening to find Nancy Gordon on his doorstep—determined to tell him a story he won’t soon forget.
· Across the country, in Washington, D.C., the President of the United States has just selected United States Senator Raymond Colby to be the next Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. In a private meeting, Colby assures the President there are no skeletons in his closet.
Complex, utterly compelling, and brilliantly executed, GONE, BUT NOT FORGOTTEN is a book that truly lives up to its extraordinary advance praise: Once begun it simply cannot be put down.
About Phillip Margolin
Phillip Margolin was a practicing criminal defense attorney for twenty-five years, has tried many high-profile cases and has argued before the U.S. Supreme Court. His previous novels are Heartstone, The Last Innocent Man, Gone, but Not Forgotten, After Dark, and The Burning Man. He lives in Portland, Oregon, with his wife and two children.
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Some weeks are better than others. Last Sunday we preachers were tossed a softball—the compelling and rich account of Jesus calling four disciples from their fishing boats at the Sea of Galilee. It’s a fun story to preach, with lots of beautiful imagery as well as some easy cultural entry points (Kim Kardashian, anyone?! No? Maybe that was just me…). This week, we’re not so lucky. In the fourth Sunday after the Epiphany, we find Jesus in the Temple, doing something distinctly non-Mainline Protestant: casting out “unclean spirits.” Yikes.
Jesus and his disciples went to Capernaum; and when the sabbath came, he entered the synagogue and taught. They were astounded at his teaching, for he taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes. Just then there was in their synagogue a man with an unclean spirit, and he cried out, “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are, the Holy One of God.” But Jesus rebuked him, saying, “Be silent, and come out of him!” And the unclean spirit, convulsing him and crying with a loud voice, came out of him. They were all amazed, and they kept on asking one another, “What is this? A new teaching– with authority! He commands even the unclean spirits, and they obey him.” At once his fame began to spread throughout the surrounding region of Galilee. (Mark 1:21-28 NRSV)
When I encounter texts like these, my mind immediately starts doing some gymnastics. Here are a few examples of the questions that can preoccupy me:
- What was/is an unclean spirit?
- Do I believe in unclean spirits??
- Does my congregation believe in unclean spirits???
- If I try to “explain away” the unclean spirit, what am I left with????
Here, we arrive at the problem of “explaining away” a biblical text and/or part of a text. Today’s Christians read the Bible through the lens of a post-Enlightenment worldview (let’s not even mention a post-modern worldview). We can’t help it. We know all about the scientific method, about physiology, and—most of all—about empirical reason. An “unclean spirit” can be a real problem for us because we don’t know exactly what it means in the context of the gospel, but we feel compelled to find a scientific explanation for what Jesus was dealing with in the Temple that day. Is an unclean spirit kind of like a mental illness? Is it a physical malady, like epilepsy? We want to know because we want the story to fit into our worldview.
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|Great American Museums|
Some artists leave remarkable things which, a 100 years later, don’t work at all. I have left my mark; my work is hung in museums, but maybe one day the Tate Gallery or the other museums will banish me to the cellar… you never know.
Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York)
1000 Fifth Avenue at 82nd Street - metmuseum.org
The “Met” is a universal museum: every category of art in every known medium from every part of the world during every epoch of recorded time is represented here and thusperciò available for contemplation or study, not in isolation but in comparison with other times, other cultures, and other media. It was founded in 1870 by a group of American citizenscittadini, included businessmen and financiers, as well as leadingmaggiori artists and thinkers of the day, who wanted to open a museum to bring art and art education to the American people. It opened on February 20, 1872, and was originally located at 681 Fifth Avenue.Represented in the permanent collection are works of art from classical antiquity and Ancient Egypt, paintings and sculptures from nearly all the European masters, and an extensive collection of American and modern art. The Met also maintains extensive holdings of African, Asian, Oceanic, Byzantine and Islamic art.
MoMA, Museum of Modern Art (New York)
11 West 53rd Street btw(abbreviation of “between”) - fra. 5th and 6th Avenue - moma.org
The Museum of Modern Art's collection has grownè cresciuta to include more than 100,000 artworks. It has been singularly important in developing and collecting modernist art, and is often identified as the most influential museum of modern art in the world. The museum's collection offers an unparalleled overview of modern and contemporary art, including works of architecture and design, drawings, painting, sculpture, photography, prints, illustrated books and artist's books, film, and electronic media.
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (New York)
1071 Fifth Avenue at 89th Street - guggenheim.org/new-york
Designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, it is one of the 20th century's most important architectural landmarkspunti di riferimento, capisaldi. The permanent exhibition houses a collection of Impressionist, Post-Impressionist, early Modern, and Contemporary art and also features special exhibitions throughout the year. Walking the spiral walkway toward the domecupola above, it’s possible to view works from artists of the 19th and 20th century including: Brancusi, Braque, Calder, Chagall, Robert Delaunay, Giacometti, Kandinsky, Klee, Leger, Miró, Picasso, and Van Gogh.
Museum of Fine Arts (Boston)
465 Huntington Avenue - mfa.org
With a collection of 450,000 objects, the MFA ownspossiede some of the rarest and most important artistic treasures in the world. At every turn, there are breathtakingmozzafiato works of art, from masters of American painting to the icons of Impressionism; from exquisite Asian scrolls to Egyptian mummies. You can explore the collection in person or online - you never know what you might find!
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (San Francisco)
151 Third Street - sfmoma.org
It opened in 1935 as the San Francisco Museum of Art, the first museum on the West Coast devoted solely to 20th-century art. The museum has in its collection important works by Andy Warhol, Jackson Pollock, Richard Diebenkorn, Paul Klee, Marcel Duchamp and Ansel Adams, among others. The cinema series Art in Cinema was started at SFMOMA in 1946 by filmmaker Frank Stauffacher. Annually, the museum hostsospita more than twenty exhibitions and over three hundred educational programs.
J. Paul Getty Museum (Los Angeles)
1200 Getty Center Drive and 17985 Pacific Coast Highway, Pacific Palisades - getty.edu/museum
The newest Getty Museum, which opened in 1997 on a hilltopin cima a una collina in the Santa Monica mountains, draws as much attention for its architecture as the art within. Its sleeklucente off-white buildings, designed by Richard Meier, house European paintings, drawings, sculpture, illuminated manuscripts, decorative arts, and European and American photographs. The enameledsmaltato metal and travertine structures cost about a billion dollars to construct.
The museum is divided into Getty Center and Getty Villa sites. The Getty Villa in Malibu is dedicated to the study of the arts and cultures of ancient Greece, Rome, and Etruria, and serves a varied audience through exhibitions, conservation, scholarshipsborse di studio, research, and public programs.
It was created for the people of the United States of America by a jointcomune resolution of Congress accepting the gift of financier, public servant, and art collector Andrew W. Mellon in 1937.
European and American paintings, sculpture, works on paper, photographs, and decorative arts
The strongest collection is the Italian Renaissance collection, which includes two panels from Duccio's Maestà, the great tondo of the Adoration of the Magi by Fra Angelico and Filippo Lippi, a Botticelli on the same subject, Giorgione's Allendale Nativity, Bellini's The Feast of the Gods, the only Leonardo painting in the Americas, and significant groups of works by Titian and Raphael. However, the other European collections include examples of the work of many of the great masters of western painting, including Grünewald, Cranach the Elder, Van der Weyden, Durer, Hals, Rembrandt, Vermeer, Goya, Ingres, and Delacroix, among otherstra gli altri. The collection of sculpture and decorative arts is not quite as rich as this, but includes such works as the Chalice of Abbot Suger of St-Denis and a superb collection of work by Rodin and Degas.
A fixturepunto fisso (fig.) in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park since 1895, the De Young replaced its original building two years ago-with a modern, copper-cladrivestita di rame structure designed by the Swiss architecture firm Herzog & de Meuron and Fong & Chan Architects in San Francisco. The angular façade still houses the same formidable collection: American art from the 17th through the 20th centuries, and art of the native Americas, Africa, and the Pacific.
Il viaggio: un esercizio di inglese!
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In evaluating your condition, your doctor will perform the following:
- Medical history and physical exam
- Urinalysis (testing of a urine sample) to confirm that blood is present in the urine. If red blood cells are present, further testing of the urine (including a urine culture) may help pinpoint where the blood is coming from and why. White blood cells in the urine signals a possible urinary tract infection (UTI); red blood cells that clump together to form little tubes (called casts) may indicate kidney disease; and large amounts of protein in the urine may also indicate kidney disease. Cancer cells can also be detected.
- Urine cytology may be needed to look for cancer cells in the urine.
- Blood test. A blood test can help assess kidney function. High levels of creatinine (a waste product of normal muscle breakdown) in the blood may indicate kidney disease.
- Cystoscopy is a procedure that allows your doctor to use a small tube fitted with a camera to look inside the urethra and bladder. Cystoscopy can assist in detecting cancer in the bladder, especially if cancer cells are found in the urine.
- CT scan, MRI or ultrasound – these different imaging studies may reveal a tumor, a kidney or bladder stone; an enlarged prostate; or other cause for hematuria.
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Reintegrating sex offenders into the community: Queensland's proposed reforms
Date of this Version
In June 2003 the Queensland Parliament enacted the Dangerous Prisoners (Sexual Offenders) Act (DPSOA). The DPSOA authorises the Supreme Court of Queensland to order the continuing imprisonment of sex offenders beyond the conclusion of their prison term if they are judged to be an unacceptable risk to the community if released.
This document is currently not available here.
This document has been peer reviewed.
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Israeli Prime Minister issued his most rousing call for peace on Tuesday as he called on Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas “not to pass up this opportunity” to return to peace negotiations.
As the Israeli Premier sought to seize the initiative gained from an exchange of letters between the two leaders earlier this month, following Netanyahu’s unprecedented national unity coalition, he assured Abbas that Israel “does not wish to govern the Palestinians”.
Reiterating his advocacy for a two state solution, he stressed that the Palestinians must first recognise Israel unequivocally as a Jewish State and called on the international community not to expect an agreement between the long-time adversaries to bring peace to the entire region, as he warned Israel’s enemies would always try to destroy any possibility for peace.
Defence Minister Ehud Barak took up the reins of the Premier’s address on Wednesday, when he called on the coalition government to use their majority to kickstart peace talks: “We are a coalition of 94 MKs, this is the time to lead a diplomatic process,” he urged.
However, he warned Israel not to be lured into a rut if negotiations fail to take off, saying “we are on borrowed time. We will reach a wall, and we’ll pay the price.” Referring to “people who are now in a coma”, he inferred the reluctance of the international community to take decisive action in Iran could have catastrophic repercussions which must not be replicated in Israel.
Returning to the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, he courted controversy by stating that “if it isn’t possible to reach a permanent agreement with the Palestinians, we must consider an interim arrangement or even a unilateral move”.
Barak’s comments came after he received a position paper from his former chief of staff Gilad Sher, who now chairs an organisation called Blue White future which advocates coordinated unaliteral Israeli action with the Palestinians. The paper suggests the Israeli government’s interests would be best served by passing a law which would offer compensation to West Bank settlers should they move within Israel’s 1948 borders within 2-3 years.
His comments were immediately rounded on by coalition colleagues and Palestinian counterparts alike. Education Minister and fellow Likud party member Gideon Sa’ar described Barak’s views as a “minority opinion” and insisted it “does not represent the government’s stand”. He continued to slam his address, saying: “One wonders how there are people willing to toy with such a dangerous idea after the utter failure of the unilateral disengagement from Gaza.
President Abbas’ spokesman Nabil Abu Rudeineh similarly rejected the idea of creating a Palestinian state within temporary borders, claiming “such a policy would only deepen the conflict rather than solving it, and put an end to the two-state solution”. “We are committed to a just solution: the establishment of a state within the ’67 borders with Jerusalem as its capital,” he continued.
A spokesman for Netanyahu made no comment in response to Barak’s speech, referring instead to the Premier’s address of Tuesday in which he “declared that I support and promote peace between two nation sides”.
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton meanwhile declared that talks are the “only route” to peace. Speaking on Thursday from Denmark, Clinton hailed Israel’s national unity government as providing a “new opening” for Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.
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WASHINGTON — When Charley Burwick first heard the snowy owl rumor, he decided it wasn't worth his time. It was risky business to drive a few hours to Kansas City, Mo., to catch a glimpse of a bird that could fly away at a moment's notice.
But as talk of the snowy owls' atypical prevalence in the United States continued to swirl among the birder community, Burwick, a Springfield, Mo., resident, started his car and joined those around the nation going to lengths to spot this white diurnal bird.
The snowy owls' descent from Canada has cropped up on listservs for the Audubon Society's 112th annual Christmas Bird Count. The bird has come hunting for sustenance further south in the United States, and participants in the 112th annual count have taken notice, said the National Audubon Society's chief scientist, Gary Langham.
Since Dec. 14, avid bird watchers, scientists and families have bundled up and spent time tallying and identifying birds with one of the environmental organization's more than 2,200 "count circles" in the United States, Canada, Mexico, South America, Central America, Antarctica and the Pacific Islands. The two-week count ends Thursday.
Although official full reports will not be available until late spring or early summer, this year's mild weather has most likely left participants with fewer birds to count, according to Christmas Bird Count director Geoff LeBaron.
"The birds don't need to be concentrated, so they are much more dispersed," he said.
Each year, with a veteran counter as a guide, bird watchers take a segment of their designated area and craft a list of which birds participants have spotted. The same locations are used each year to ensure the data is uniform, and the National Audubon Society compiles all the counting circles' information.
"I don't think I've missed a year since 1986," said Burwick, who organizes the count circle in Missouri's Taney County, south of Springfield.
What started in 1900 as a way to stop a Christmas bird-hunting tradition has turned into the longest running wildlife survey in the world, according to Audubon.
It's the "granddaddy of citizen science," used by hundreds of scientific publications to identify endangered birds and track migration patterns that can indicate a global climate change, said David Bonter, an ornithologist who's worked at Cornell University for 10 years.
"Birds exist over large areas, and the only way we have to track populations is to enlist the public," he said. "It's widely accepted as a very viable and relevant way of gathering information."
During the past 40 years, data from the Christmas Bird Count is showing more birds are found farther north, Bonter said. The federal Environmental Protection Agency used this shift in a 2010 report, titled "Climate Change Indicators in the United States," as evidence of a global change in weather patterns.
Thus, the annual count is about much more than simply counting birds, said Audubon Society's senior communications manager, Delta Willis. It ensures scientists are monitoring the environment, she said.
"Birds are often thought of as an excellent indicator of the health of an ecosystem," said Langham, Audubon's chief scientist. "Where birds thrive, people prosper."
Although many bird species have been spotted farther north over the years, the snowy owl flew south this year to Oklahoma, Missouri and Kansas in search of grub. There was a shortage in Canada — its typical home this time of year — of lemmings, the birds' main food source, Langham said.
The owls had a "bumper crop" over the past year, meaning they had lots of babies and not enough lemmings to feed on, he said.
"Hungry owls start moving further and further south looking for food," he said.
For Janice Greene, a biology professor at Missouri State University in Springfield, the Christmas Bird Count is an excuse to instill a love of nature in her two teenage daughters.
"I think it's really important to get my kids involved because they need to be exposed to the outdoors to develop that appreciation and awareness of not only the birds but everything else that's out there," said Greene, whose classes include an introductory course on ornithology.
And although — to her dismay — she missed spotting this year's snowy owl invasion, she said it was still "a good family time. I really enjoy it."
ON THE WEB
MORE FROM MCCLATCHY
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Ecclesiastical writer. He was the son of a priest of Cyzicus, and wrote in Bithynia, about 475, to prove against the Eutychians, that the Nicene Fathers did not teach Monophysitism
Gelasius of Cyzicus, ecclesiastical writer. He was the son of a priest of Cyzicus, and wrote in Bithynia, about 475, to prove against the Eutychians, that the Nicene Fathers did not teach Monophysitism. These details he gives us in his preface (Labbe, II, 117). Beyond that nothing is known about his personality. His "Syntagma" or collection of Acts of the Nicene Council, has hitherto been looked upon as the work of a sorry compiler; recent investigations, however, point to its being of some importance. It is divided into three books (Labbe, II, 117-296): bk. I treats of the Life of Constantine down to 323; bk. II of History of the Council in thirty-six chapters; of bk. III only fragments have been published. The whole of book III was discovered by Cardinal Mai in the Ambrosian Library, and its contents are fully described by Oehler. The serious study of the sources of Gelasius may be said to have begun with Turner's identification of the long passages taken from Rufinus (X, 1-5) in bk. II. A complete analysis of the sources [the Hist. Eccl. of Eusebius, Rufinus (in the Greek version of Gelasius of Caesarea d. 395), Socrates, Theodoret, "John", and Dalmatius], will be found in Loschcke, whose efforts it would appear, have restored to Gelasius a place among serious Church historians, of which he has been wrongly deprived, and have also lent weight to the hitherto generally rejected idea that there was an official record of the Acts of the Council of Nicaea; and further that it was from this record that Dalmatius derived the opening discourse of Constantine, the confession of Hosius, the dialogue with Phaedo, and the nine dogmatic constitutions, which Hefele had pronounced "most certainly spurious". The "John" to whom Gelasius refers as a forerunner of Theodoret, is still unidentified; from him were derived the published portions of bk. III, the letters of Constantine to Arius, to the Church of Nicomedia, and to Theodotus, all of which Loschcke contends are authentic. He also proves that a comparison of Constantine's letter to the Synod of Tyre (335), as given by Gelasius and Athanasius (Apolog., n. 86), shows Gelasius to give the original, Athanasius an abbreviated version.
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Who does the Writers Guild represent?
WGAE represents a range of professional writers. Our members are the creators of much of what is seen on television and in film, as well as a growing number of web series.
Our members are covered by one of two primary types of Guild contracts based on their field of work:
1. Freelance contracts and Minimum Basic Agreements (MBA)
67% of Guild East members work under freelance contracts in the following areas:
• Children’s television
• Daytime drama
• Digital media
• Documentaries—film and television
• Television comedy/variety
• Television episodic comedy and drama
2. Staff news contracts or collective bargaining agreements
(tend to be workplaces where members all work in one location or "shop")
33% of Guild East members work under Staff News contracts.
Staff news positions include but are not limited to:
• Assignment Editors
• Assistant Producers
• Associate Producers
• Graphic Artists
• News Desk Assistants
• News Desk Associates
• News Editors
• On-air Promotion Writers
• Production Assistants
• Service Aides
Some of our members are also “hyphenates,” who take on a number of different roles. These include writer-directors, writer-producers, and writer-director-producers. A few of our members, mostly in the digital realm, own their own independent production companies, which are signatory to the MBA. Once their production company becomes a signatory, the digital media writer joins the Guild as a member.
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Discussions concerning the rights of gays and lesbians frequently lead to comments by those defending the current “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy that to allow those with weird ideas about sexuality into the armed forces would result in a dramatic drop in morale as well as discourage those who want to enlist. Of course, I suspect millions of people at this moment who are working in hundreds of work locations have absolutely no idea if the person next to them is gay or lesbian. Congressman Patrick Murphy is the first veteran of the Iraq war who has been elected to Congress and he is among the leading advocates of ending current policy which discriminates against gays and lesbians. He regards as insulting to those who serve the notion they would refuse to accept gays and lesbians as comrades in arms.
It would be interesting if the Joint Chiefs of Staff actually asked men and women in the field of combat how they feel regarding the issue of gays and lesbians as fellow soldiers. Of course, in hundreds of cases gays and lesbians are fighting alongside their friends and no one gives a damn. Ah, for the righteous folk in America who want to maintain sexual purity. You know, someone like Sarah Palin who is furious that teenagers have children.
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LOWVILLE Officials from a Florida-based biogas company on Wednesday reiterated their desire to site a $15 million manure and food-waste digester just south of the village.
This is a sustainability project for farmers and Kraft, Paul Toretta, CEO of CH4 Biogas, told Lowville town councilman and about 20 other local leaders, farmers and residents Wednesday.
The company has secured a purchase option on land between Route 12 and Markowski Road and is proposing to convert manure trucked from a dozen or so area farms and food waste most of it piped from the Kraft Foods cream cheese plant on Utica Boulevard into methane gas. The gas would then be piped back to Kraft and burned on-site for heat and lower-cost electricity at the plant, which employs about 300 people, while the processed waste would be returned to the farms.
The pasteurization and digestion process removes nearly all the stench from the manure, leaving farmers with a more palatable product to spread on their fields, company officials said. They cited positive results at Synergy Biomass, a similar facility CH4 Biogas completed last year on a large farm in Wyoming County.
If you ask the farm, the odors went way down, Mr. Toretta said.
Mr. Toretta said his company doesnt plan to sign any agreements with Kraft and local farmers or seek easements from landowners until ensuring there is adequate community support for the project.
It will need to get started by early next spring, since a federal tax credit is due to expire at the end of 2013, he said.
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Kansas receives grant to support new school meal requirements
Kansas will receive $349,715 in grant funds from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to assist in promoting healthy eating habits and nutrition education in Kansas schools. Additionally, the grant will provide training to food service professionals to help them prepare and serve nutritious meals that will appeal to students.
The 2012 Team Nutrition Training grant is in support of the Healthy, Hunger-free Kids Act of 2010, which set new school meal standards for the National School Lunch Program focused on ensuring students receive more fresh fruits and vegetables, whole grains and low-fat dairy products. Kansas is among 18 states and one territory to receive funds through the competitive grant process.
The Child Nutrition and Wellness team at the Kansas State Department of Education plans to use the funds to address three behavior-focused strategies. Those strategies include nutrition education for children, teachers, parents and other caregivers; building support for healthy school environments that promote healthy eating and physical activity; and providing training to school food service professionals to help them create and prepare healthy meals that taste good.
"We believe that the changes made in the National School Lunch Program as part of the Healthy, Hunger-free Kids Act are very positive for our students, but we also understand that the changes are significant and may take some time for both students and school food service professionals to embrace," said Cheryl Johnson, director of Child Nutrition and Wellness at KSDE. "Last summer we hosted a number of chef-taught culinary classes for school food service staff to help them gain strategies for improving both the health benefits and the taste of their school meals. Those were very popular, and with the funds from this grant we'll be able to provide more training like that to assist schools in making the transition to the new meal guidelines."
In addition to the grant funds from the USDA, the Kansas Health Foundation is providing $50,000 to bring a Fresh Fruits and Vegetables Program to 25,000 secondary school students. The federally funded Fresh Fruits and Vegetables Program assists states in providing free fresh fruits and vegetables to school children from selected low-income public and nonprofit private elementary schools. The grant from the Kansas Health Foundation will make a similar program available to Kansas students at the secondary level.
"We know from extensive research that fresh fruits and vegetables play a pivotal role in healthy and nutritious food intake for children," said Steve Coen, president and CEO of the Kansas Health Foundation. "Through this grant, we are pleased to partner with KSDE to make those items available to so many additional students at the secondary level."
Funding through the Kansas Health Foundation and the USDA grant will be available from Sept. 30, 2012, through Sept. 20, 2014. Kansas has received an award through the Team Nutrition Training grant program for the past five years, and has received nine Team Nutrition Training grants since 2002.
"We're extremely pleased to have these funds available to help schools implement the practices within the Healthy, Hunger-free Kids Act," Johnson said. "We're especially grateful to the Kansas Health Foundation for helping us extend the Fresh Fruits and Vegetables Program to our secondary students. The program has been highly successful in helping our elementary students become familiar with new fruits and vegetables, and in creating a preference for those foods. We're hopeful that with the help of the Kansas Health Foundation, we can accomplish the same thing among middle school and high school students."
For more information about Kansas Team Nutrition projects and grant opportunities contact Jill Ladd, Team Nutrition project director, at email@example.com.
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Roger Nash Baldwin
Baldwin, Roger Nash, 1884–1981, American civil libertarian, b. Wellesley, Mass. He helped to found (1920) the American Civil Liberties Union and was its director until 1950 and its adviser on international affairs thereafter. He also taught at the New School for Social Research (1938–42) and the Univ. of Puerto Rico (1966–74).
The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed. Copyright © 2012, Columbia University Press. All rights reserved.
See more Encyclopedia articles on: Social Reformers
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News & Events
First Nations in Ontario to be Impacted by Social Assistance cuts
Proposed changes to social assistance funding in the 2012 Ontario budget will cause First Nation communities to slide further into cycles of poverty and dependency, and First Nation Leadership in Ontario are demanding action before it's too late.
The change in funding will result in Ontario Works Health Related Discretionary Benefits and Non-Health Related Discretionary Benefits being combined into one with a cap of $10.00 per caseload as opposed to covering actual costs. Health related discretionary benefits cover such items as dental work, eye glasses, a proportionate cost of prosthetic appliances, and funeral and burial costs.
Due to the high costs and with discretionary items being capped, First Nations will be impacted by the cuts, and many First Nation communities will suffer as a result of these changes. For example, funding for funerals and burials will now be capped for costs exceeding $2,250 with only $10 per case load. In remote communities where basic funerals can cost between $12,000 and $17,000, there may be families who will not be able to bury their deceased loved ones.
"Once again, rather than consulting with individual First Nations to develop a viable solution, the province has decided to take a 'one-size-fits-all' approach that will negatively impact First Nations and their citizens," said Ontario Regional Chief Angus Toulouse. "While non-First Nation communities might be able to adjust due to the presence of other social service programs, many remote First Nation communities will not be able to meet the demands of their most vulnerable members."
Was this helpful?
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Washington Opportunity Pathways Account (WOPA)
In 2010 WOPA became our largest beneficiary, supporting programs including the State Need Grant, the State Work Study Program, and the Early Childhood Education and Assistance Program (ECEAP). Although the names are long, the purpose of each program is simple — provide a better educational environment for our children. The ECEAP serves three and four-year-olds from low-income families, or those with development or environmental risk factors that could interfere with future school success. In addition to building early student skills, the program also provides families with access to medical, dental, and social services. To find out more, visit Washington State Department of Early Learning.
Professional Sports Stadiums
Since 1996 the Lottery has provided over $175 million to help fund our professional sports stadiums, including Safeco Field, and the CenturyLink Field and Event Center. Every year, the stadiums welcome millions of people who enjoy Mariners, Seahawks, Sounders, and other entertainment events, creating a constant revenue stream for the local economy. Washington’s Lottery paid off its debt to Safeco with a final payment made in 2012.
We continue to support the State General Fund, economic development programs, and gambling prevention awareness.
And don’t forget the winners
To learn more about Washington winners, and how they’ve used their winnings to improve their lives, visit http://www.walottery.com/anniversary/players.aspx.
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Lindsay Murdoch is a two-time winner of the Walkley Award, Australia's top award for journalistic excellence. Lindsay is a former correspondent based in Singapore, Jakarta and Darwin. In 1999 he covered the tumultuous events in East Timor, and in 2003 he covered the Iraq war while embedded with US Marines.
Lindsay Murdoch They scavenge for grass and plants to eat and live in makeshift camps and town slums surrounded by barbed-wire checkpoints, refugee prisoners in their own country.
Lindsay Murdoch PHNOM PENH: President Barack Obama told Burma's impoverished people he had come to ''extend the hand of friendship'' during a six-hour visit to the former pariah state that marked a historic...
Lindsay Murdoch President Barack Obama tells Burma's impoverished people he had come to 'extend the hand of friendship' during a six hour visit to the former pariah state.
Lindsay Murdoch, Bangkok United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Burmese pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi have pledged to work together to bring democracy to impoverished Burma, sending a strong message to...
Lindsay Murdoch, Bangkok US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton makes Burma's purchase of missile technology from North Korea a high priority in her visit.
Lindsay Murdoch Nations are divided on how they should deal with China amid heightened tensions.
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WebMD Medical News
Louise Chang, MD
Oct. 30, 2012 -- Sandy is being called a "once in a generation" storm that’s unfortunately living up to its title.
Millions are without power and may be for some time. Others have evacuated, or will, escaping the torrential rains and winds that have gusted up to 90 miles per hour.
For those in the storm areas, and those watching and waiting from afar, here are some important safety tips.
Q: How do I contact someone in the affected area?
A: You can of course try calling. Many landlines will be down, but some are operating. If you use your mobile phone, you may get a busy signal because mobile bandwidth may be overloaded in the storm areas, or some cell towers may be damaged. If you can’t reach someone by phone, try texting. All of the wireless carriers are recommending people text because it has a greater chance of getting through and will use less battery power of the person you’re trying to reach.
If that doesn’t work and you’re trying to contact someone in the area who may be housebound or evacuated, contact FEMA (800-621-FEMA) or the American Red Cross (800-RED-CROSS). Both have Internet locators where people in the storm areas can register their names to let their loved one(s) know where they are, and if they are safe. FEMA’s site is called the National Emergency Family Registry and Locator System (https://egateway.fema.gov/inter/nefrls/home.htm). The Red Cross has a site called “Safe and Well” that offers the same service. (https://safeandwell.communityos.org/cms/index.php).
Q: Once the power is out, how long will refrigerated foods last?
Refrigerated foods, once the power is off, will stay cold for about four to six hours. To increase the time, keep the refrigerator and freezer doors closed.
If a freezer is full, the temperature will be maintained for about 48 hours. If it's half full of food, figure 24 hours.
Q: What foods should be eaten first, after power is off?
Start by eating leftovers, meat, poultry, and any foods with milk, cream, soft cheese, or sour cream.
If frozen foods still contain ice crystals, they may still be safely cooked and eaten (or re-frozen, if power is restored).
Fruits that were frozen can be eaten if they still taste and smell good.
Vegetables that are completely thawed shouldn't be eaten, since bacteria multiply quickly.
If meat or poultry has thawed and has been warmer than 40 degrees F for two hours, discard it.
Discard melted ice cream.
Some foods typically refrigerated keep at room temperature for a few days. Among them: butter, margarine, hard cheese, fresh fruit, and vegetables (except sprouts or fresh, sliced fruit), fruit juice, dried fruits, or coconut. Opened jars of vinegar-based salad dressing, jelly, relishes, taco sauce, and barbecue sauce are typically also OK to eat. Mustard, ketchup, and olives generally keep at room temperature for a few days, too.
Q: What about water? If we run out, what supplies can we tap?
Use ice, soft drinks, and fruit juices as water substitutes. Remember that older adults, nursing mothers, and children need more water than others.
Check hidden sources of water: the hot water tank, water in the plumbing, the reservoir toilet tank (not the bowl). These water supplies need to be disinfected, however.
To disinfect by boiling, bring water to a rolling boil for one or two minutes, then cool. If you have no power, disinfect with bleach. Bleach will kill some but not all organisms that could be in the water. Add eight drops to a gallon. Stir, then let stand for 30 minutes. If the water is cloudy, filter it through clean cloths or allow it to settle, and draw off the clear water for disinfection.
If you have iodine tablets, follow package directions. Be sure their expiration date has not passed.
Q: What precautions do I need to take for medications that need refrigeration, such as insulin or reconstituted drugs?
If power has been out for a lengthy period, thrown them out. However, if you have no way to obtain new supplies and the medicine is crucial, such as insulin, continue to take it until you can get fresh supplies.
Pills that have gotten wet from flood waters should be discarded, as they could be contaminated.
Q: What about the risk of hypothermia, a dangerous drop in body temperature?
If you are without heat and the temperature drops, first close off rooms you don't need.
If you have a fireplace, or wood stove, be sure it is adequately vented to the outdoors. Don't use propane in the house to stay warm.
Dress in layers. Use blankets. Wear a hat to keep body heat up. Be especially sure elderly family members and infants follow these measures. They are more vulnerable to hypothermia.
Q: If water gets into my house, how do I avoid electrocution?
If flooding is likely, turn off natural gas and electricity. If you don't have a chance to do that and the basement floods, do not enter the basement. If any electrical wires are in contact with the water, electric shock can occur.
Call the electric company immediately.
Q: Is it OK to use a portable generator?
Generators should only be operated outdoors, as carbon monoxide can build up and cause lethal poisoning if used indoors. Only use the generator in a dry outdoor location, which may be impossible in the hurricane's aftermath.
Q: What about reducing the risk of mold?
As soon as possible, get standing water out of your house. Remove standing water by using a mop, pail, or a wet/dry shop vac, if you have power. Open the windows. If you have a fan and power, use it to help reduce remaining moisture.
Discard materials that don't dry out -- mold can cause severe allergic reactions.
If water is in the walls, call a professional water damage service.
Q: When evacuating, how can I stay safe in a car?
Be on the lookout for live wires in the roads and do not drive over them.
Bypass streets submerged in water. Your car could be carried away, even in what looks like low water levels.
Be aware of the threat of the road collapsing. Drive as slowly and steadily as you can.
If your car becomes trapped in the water, abandon it if possible.
SOURCES:FDA: "What Consumers Need to Know About Food and Water Safety During Hurricanes, Power Outages, and Floods."USDA: "Emergency Preparedness."FDA: "Safe Drug Use After a Natural Disaster."Progressive: "Hurricane Safety."Ready.gov: "Hurricanes."
The Health News section does not provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. See additional information.
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Assessing the impact of floods and flood legislation on residential property prices
Eves, Chris, Blake, Andrea, & Bryant, Lyndall (2010) Assessing the impact of floods and flood legislation on residential property prices. In International Real Estate Research Symposium (IRES), 27 - 29 April 2010 , Putra World Trade Centre, Kuala Lumpur. (Unpublished)
The changing development and population sprawl in major cities, especially those located in high rainfall areas, has resulted in the need to review and re-assess potential flood impacts in these cities.
In many cases these new flood lines and flood maps have placed residential property that was previously considered to be flood free to now be considered to be potentially flood liable.
Previous research based in Sydney and the UK has identified the fact that residential property that has been subject to flooding has a decreased price and higher investment risk than flood free property in the same location. These studies have also shown that the greatest impact on residential property subject to flooding is just following a flood event.
In June 2009, Brisbane City Council released revised flood maps for the Greater Brisbane region and these maps have identified areas that have not previously been considered flood liable.
This paper will analyse the sale performance of flood liable streets in the main flood areas of Brisbane over the period January 1990 through to June 2009, to determine the variation in price for these flood liable areas to the residential property immediately adjoining them. The average sale price will be tracked on both a geographic location and socio-economic basis.
Citation countsare sourced monthly fromand citation databases.
These databases contain citations from different subsets of available publications and different time periods and thus the citation count from each is usually different. Some works are not in either database and no count is displayed. Scopus includes citations from articles published in 1996 onwards, and Web of Science generally from 1980 onwards.
Citations counts from theindexing service can be viewed at the linked Google Scholar™ search.
Full-text downloadsdisplays the total number of times this work’s files (e.g., a PDF) have been downloaded from QUT ePrints as well as the number of downloads in the previous 365 days. The count includes downloads for all files if a work has more than one.
|Item Type:||Conference Paper|
|Keywords:||Flooding, flood liable property, residential property, disaster impact, property returns|
|Subjects:||Australian and New Zealand Standard Research Classification > BUILT ENVIRONMENT AND DESIGN (120000) > URBAN AND REGIONAL PLANNING (120500)|
Australian and New Zealand Standard Research Classification > STUDIES IN HUMAN SOCIETY (160000) > HUMAN GEOGRAPHY (160400)
|Divisions:||Past > QUT Faculties & Divisions > Faculty of Built Environment and Engineering|
Past > Schools > School of Urban Development
|Copyright Owner:||Copyright 2010 [please consult the authors]|
|Deposited On:||17 Jun 2010 08:59|
|Last Modified:||17 Jun 2010 08:59|
Repository Staff Only: item control page
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Metamorphosoes: A Collaboration with Ovid by Wally Reinhardt
This exhibition focuses on Reinhardt’s long devotion to interpreting Ovid’s Metamorphoses.
Since the 1980s, Reinhardt has vividly and playfully depicted many of the favorite characters of classical mythology. His gouache paintings have been included in many important exhibitions including “Classical Myth & Imagery in Contemporary Art,” The Queens Museum, Flushing, NY (Catalog ); “Perspective from Pennsylbania,” Carnegie Mellon Art Gallery, Pittsburgh; “Philadelphia Art Now Artists Choose Artists”, ICA, Philadelphia. (Catalog); “Contemporary Classical Mythology,” Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland; “1994 Bucks County Biennial,” James A. Michener Art Museum, Doylestown, Pennsylvania; “Ballinglen Arts Foundation Fellowship Artists,” Philadelphia Art Alliance, Philadelphia. (Catalog); “Flights of Fancy: Six Centuries of Ornament & Pattern on Paper,” Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia.
Reinhardt visits Bates to discuss his work in a free public lecture on October 13 at 6 p.m. in Olin 104.
Reinhardt’s exhibition and visit to campus are offered in co-sponsorship with Classical & Medieval Studies, Interdisciplinary Studies, and the Division of Humanities.
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WKU takes a major step toward reducing energy consumption on its campus and gains the support of Kentucky's governor while doing it.
It's all in an effort to make WKU more sustainable and members of one "green" group are behind it.
"Dr. Ransdell and WKU are showing great leadership here today, by adopting an energy policy focused on conservation and efficiency," explained Gov. Steve Beshear.
Personal responsibility and common sense.
Those are words Governor Beshear used today to describe the actions students and faculty would need to take to make WKU's new energy policy successful.
"A few bullet points stood out," Beshear said. "Be proactive. Never assume that someone will take these steps for you."
"When the students hear about ways they could help reduce energy or what reducing energy helps do to the campus, a lot of them are very interested in helping," explained Seth Cude, a member of "Greentoppers."
Cude and his group spend their time spreading the word of how to make Western a more sustainable campus, and he says WKU's new policy is just another step toward that.
"If the governor and top officials of Kentucky are interested in being more sustainable and reducing energy, then it's a lot easier for the administration to jump on board and for faculty staff and students to see the importance of it," Cude said.
Cude says recycling and bike-to-campus programs efforted by the Greentoppers are already gaining popularity, and Western's energy policy will continue to make a positive impact across campus.
"The students already show their support with their actions and this is only going to bolster the support for that," Cude said.
The full policy can be
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Overview: The problem and remodeling plan
During a remodeling project nearly 10 years ago, this Twin
Cities couple created a wide open Craftsman-style living
room that had a wide open view of the lake outside their
door. This year, the couple was ready for phase two—the kitchen. It felt
dark, cramped and isolated from the rest of the house. Storage space was
at a premium and the appliances were outdated. And they wanted a space
close to the action (but not in it) for a computer and work area.
They were so satisfied with the attention to detail Tim Quigley of
Quigley Architects had shown with the previous remodel that they used
him again for phase two. Two things in their favor were the underused
entryway and the large but poorly designed half bathroom adjacent
to the kitchen. Quigley took advantage of the underused space and,
employing some ingenious space-saving ideas, created the open,
welcoming kitchen shown here.
The Craftsman-Inspired kitchen
This Craftsman-inspired kitchen took over
space from an underused mudroom and a bathroom
and put it to good use. An efficient floor plan and clever
storage allow this 200-sq.-ft. kitchen to live large.
Carving out new space
After a temporary kitchen was set up in the basement using the old
appliances, the next step involved downsizing the mudroom and the
bathroom to create more space for the kitchen. It meant sacrificing an
exterior door and a shower stall, but the result was an extra 60 sq. ft.
of kitchen space, along with a hallway/commons area wide enough to
accommodate the family computer center. The family took space they
rarely used and put it to daily use in their kitchen.
Crown molding and hardwood flooring were extended into the new
kitchen from the existing living room to help pull the old and new
Kitchen before remodeling
The Old and New Floor Plans
Compare the old and new floor plans to see how spaces were altered to create more room for the kitchen and how it was better utilized.
Architect Tim Quigley was able to provide plenty of storage room
by utilizing every square inch of space. The large platform above the
double ovens, the shelf integrated into the range hood, and the glass-front
door panels in the upper reaches of the upper cabinets provide
display space without adding clutter. Other unique twists include:
- A reach-in pantry occupies a corner that might otherwise be wasted
space. A pocket door provides excellent access, and the frosted glass
panel fools the eye into seeing the space as larger than it really is.
- The recycling center is concealed in the centrally located island
cabinet, making it easily accessible to all parts of the kitchen.
- An open railing system, replacing part of a solid wall by the stairs,
helps visually open the space and adds to the “great room” feel.
- Drawers with full-extension glides provide complete access to the
contents within—even things hiding in the very back.
The mini office
The family needed a computer/desk area but didn’t want to dedicate
an entire room to it. They also wanted to keep this work space in the
flow of everyday life, both for easy access and to better monitor the
computer activities of their 12-year-old son. The solution involved
creating a wide open “commons area” large enough to accommodate
both the built-in desk and the traffic flow. The desk, in the same style
cabinetry as the rest of the kitchen, includes puck lights below the
arched overhead cabinet, a “cubby” for each family member, a file
drawer and a cork “backsplash” for posting the important events of
Back to Top
Lighting and brightening
Loads of light and bright finishes make spaces feel bigger, even though they’re small.
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Last week saw the largest anti-British protest in Argentina's capital Buenos Aires since the Falklands War in 1982. The event drew thousands of people onto the streets amid controversy over the UK's decision to drill for oil in the areas surrounding the islands.
Despite the British having liberated the islands in 1982 after a brief Argentinean occupation, Buenos Aires has always maintained that the Falklands, or Malvinas as they call them, are part of Argentinean territory and under illegal British occupation.
But Argentina's claim over the islands is weak, and Britain's is strong. The islands were settled before Argentina existed, and its inhabitants want the islands to stay British. The basic principle of self-determination cannot just be brushed aside.
Some policy analysts in the UK have claimed that it is now time for the UK to consider surrendering the islands to Argentina. They use a number of arguments. After all, as the British naval task force were sailing to the South Atlantic some thirty years ago, the British were in the advanced stages of handing back Hong Kong to China based on the same principles of 'breaking with the colonial past'. Furthermore, is it really practical to maintain a hugely expensive presence thousands of miles from the UK for the sake of 2500 islanders, who create tension in our trading relations with the thirty two Latin American countries which back Argentina's claim. And to make matters worse, we have our staunchest ally the US suggesting we negotiate.
However, there are four reasons why I believe such thinking is wrong and there is no room for negotiation on giving up the island's British status.
Firstly, the islands have always been recognized as British by the UN. They were claimed by Britain in 1765 - before Argentina existed - and they have never been part of Argentina or fully occupied by Argentineans.
The comparison with Hong Kong is also misleading. British rule over Hong Kong was based on a 99 year lease agreement signed by both the British and Chinese governments in 1898, known as the Second Convention of Peking. When the lease expired, Britain was under a legal obligation to hand back the 'New Territories' to China. No such agreement is owed to the Argentineans; they have no legal claim to the islands.
Secondly, the people are not colonialist. They have been there for over 200 years. How long does one have to live in a place before being recognized as an inhabitant? Are the Americans still referred to as colonialist in the 'New World'? Besides, there have never been indigenous inhabitants on those islands except the British.
Thirdly. The fact that they are geographically closer to Argentina is of no consequence. Will the United States hand over Alaska to Russia which is famously visible from Sarah Palin's house as opposed to over 500 miles from the US mainland? Is the US going to give Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands to the Dominican Republic? Are they going to give Hawaii to Japan? Texas and Florida to Mexico? Guam to the Philippines? American Samoa to New Zealand? What about Taiwan, should that be annexed by China?
Thirdly. The cost is indeed substantial. But British citizens born far away can not and must not ever be measured by their economic worth. As long as they wish to remain British they should enjoy the full protection of Her Majesty's Forces.
But most importantly, the people on the islands do not want to be part of Argentina with whom they share neither culture nor language. Surely, their opinion and right to choose their own destiny is the most important consideration in this whole debate.
If there are to be any negotiations it should be about reparations from Argentina for starting an unprovoked war by invading sovereign British territory resulting in the deaths of 255 UK citizens.
Azeem Ibrahim is a Research Scholar at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, Member of the Board of Directors at the Institute of Social Policy Understanding and Chairman and CEO of Ibrahim Associates.
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What is MAPS? The Math Achievement Pathway to Success (MAPS) offers students an approach to success, particularly for those who have had difficulty in previous math courses.
Instructors, counselors and tutors/mentors collaborate to help students complete their mathematics requirements. One of the advantages of the MAPS program is that students have about 8 hours of class per week (compared to 5 hours in other algebra classes). They sign up for Math 903M and Math 903MX in the Fall and in the Spring students sign up for Math CM and Math CMX. One section each semester of MAPS class is offered.
Students in the MAPS Program attend class for two hours of instruction Monday through Thursday. This instructional time provides class activities and collaborative group work. Tutors are available during the part of the class time and after class to assist students who have questions about the material (more in About MAPS...).
Fall 2012 Course Offering
Math 903M and Math 903MX (Elementary Algebra) will meet from 9:20am -11:30 am Monday through Thursday. The instructor will be Karl Ting.
Spring 2013 Course Offering
Math CM and Math CMX (Intermediate Algebra) will meet from 9:20am -11:30 am Monday through Thursday. The instructor will be Karl Ting.
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Posted 08 April 2005 - 10:39 PM
The element-colour system was quite complex, because each new dynasty had to take the colour that would succeed the previous dynasty's one in the cycle. In the Western Han, the Conquest Cycle (Xiangke) was used, in which earth (yellow) overcomes wood (blue), which overcomes metal (white), followed by fire (red) and water (black) and then earth again. Hence the sequence was:
Huangdi (Earth, yellow)
Xia (Wood, blue)
Shang (Metal, white)
Zhou (Fire, red)
Qin (Water, black)
Western Han (Earth, yellow) - however, Liu Bang is said to have personally preferred red, and had to be dissuaded from using red by his advisors.
However, Wang Mang reformulated this cycle into the Generation Cycle (Xiangsheng), in which Earth creates Metal, Metal creates Water, Water creates Wood, and Wood creates Earth. This was done so that he could identify himself with Yellow (earth), since he claimed to be a descendant of Huangdi. The sequence then became:
Huangdi (Earth, yellow)
Xia (Metal, white)
Shang (Water, black)
Zhou (Wood, blue)
[Qin not counted because Wang Mang considered it to be evil]
Western Han (Fire, red)
Xin (Earth, Yellow)
Liu Xiu, after founding the Eastern Han, adopted Wang Mang's system and also had prophecies produced identifying himself with fire, showing that he was the legitimate Han emperor. The sequence from then on was:
Eastern Han (Fire, red)
Cao-Wei (Earth, yellow)
Jin (Metal, white) - but for some reason its ruling house preferred red
Later Zhao, Liu-Song and Northern Wei after 492 (Water, black)
Southern Qi and Northern Qi (Wood, blue)
Liang and Sui (Fire, red)
Tang (Earth, Yellow)
By the Age of Fragmentation, the system was breaking down because of the proliferation of states and short-lived dynasties. For example, the Northern Zhou are said to have used black even though they should have succeeded Northern Wei as Wood (blue). The Chen dynasty is also said to have used blue despite succeeding Liang (red) - they should have used yellow. [This information comes from Liu Yonghua's Ancient Chinese Armour book] Furthermore, armies were no longer sticking to the colours of their dynasty, and were basing the colours of their armour and clothing more on fashion. Red and white were popular colours for soldiers throughout the Age of Fragmentation, regardless of the colour of the dynasty. We are also not clear about what colours the various northern Fragmentation states (other than Later Zhao) actually used.
The Northern Wei is an interesting case. They originally took yellow as their colour in 398 because they claimed to be descended from Huangdi. But in 491-492 there was a debate between two Wei ministers, Gao Lu and Li Biao, whether yellow or black should be the right colour.
Gao Lu said that the sequence from the Western Jin onwards should be:
Western Jin (Metal, white)
Later Zhao (Water, black)
Former Yan (Wood, blue)
Former Qin (Fire, red)
Northern Wei (Earth, yellow)
But Li Biao argued that all the states after Western Jin were not legitimate, and therefore Northern Wei should succceed Western Jin as Water (black). 12 other senior ministers supported Li Biao's argument, and the colour of the Northern Wei was changed from yellow to black in 492.
After the Tang dynasty, the element-colour system seems to have been abandoned. Officials were then classified or ranked according to the colour of their robes, rather than all wearing the colour of the dynasty.
The dead have passed beyond our power to honour or dishonour them, but not beyond our ability to try and understand.
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By Jim Schutze
By Rachel Watts
By Lauren Drewes Daniels
By Anna Merlan
By Lee Escobedo
By Eric Nicholson
Those who stay live an altered reality. "I am scared most of the time," Alfonso says just above a whisper. Pablo's murder was not the first time death came to the neighborhood; two years earlier, there was a drive-by shooting right across the street. "That didn't really matter," Alfonso says, shrugging off the incident. But ever since Pablo's April killing, Alfonso doesn't leave the house unless he has to.
"Of course, everyone stays inside," says Clara Jusidman, president of Incide Social, a Mexico City-based social research and advocacy organization, who for years has been studying violence in Juárez. "The city is in the middle of a civil war. If you're inside, you believe you're less likely to be collateral damage."
Some kids stop going to school, although Alfonso says he never left. The day after Pablo's death, his homeroom teacher saw the boy crying alone in a corner of the schoolyard. He felt a mix of rage and despair, the sixth-grader remembers. Alfonso confided in the teacher, and she took him to the school's psychologist, one of a fleet of professionals stationed on campuses across the city who deal frequently with trauma, though they often have no specialized training. Alfonso began regularly visiting the shrink. "That helped," he says, nodding his head in apparent sincerity, but he no longer goes to his appointments.
More than anything else, he finds solace in his family—a close-knit group, most of whom live within a few-block radius. Alfonso says he has nine cousins, though it's not clear whether Pablo is still included in that count. They all recently came together for a Father's Day celebration. "That was a hard day," Laura says. Such gatherings are likely to be harsh reminders of their loss for a long time to come.
Laura says keeping Alfonso inside is her only choice, though she admits it's no way to raise kids. "We have to put up with that for now," says the 40-something hairstylist. "It's got to change at some point, but the solution is not going to come from the politicians. All they do is send more Federales, and look where that's gotten us."
It's a post-lunch sugar rush. A dozen wired 4-year-olds climb on top of each other in the front classroom of the Independent Popular Organization (OPI), a day-care center in Juárez's poor Poniente neighborhood. Face paint smears as the youngsters jostle for position, and by the time they settle into a circle, Spider-Man looks more like a ripe strawberry than a superhero.
The question put to the group is universal: What do you want to be when you grow up? The answers are stingingly Juárez: "A soldier!" The boy barely finishes his thought before another chimes in. "Me too!" the second boy yelps, throwing his hand into the air as if offering to enlist right then. A third takes a different slant. "I want to be a policeman in El Paso," he states, lips pursed with seriousness. The rest take their time to think about their responses but eventually fall into line. By the time the circle is done, it's clear that every male kid—if childhood dreams were fulfilled—would be packing heat daily.
Juárez's Federales and soldiers are ubiquitous. The former are dressed in dark blue, the latter in green. They respond at crime scenes and man checkpoints. But mainly, they circle the city, stuffed into the back of pickup trucks, masked and standing erect with rifles pointing outward. On an average day, residents cross paths with more than a dozen patrols. For adults, they inspire rage and fear. But in the eyes of a child, these men are life-size G.I. Joes; Juárez is a video game turned reality.
Mikaela Castillo, who's been the director of the day-care center for years and has heard this chorus a thousand times, shrugs: "At least they didn't say assassins."
But few of the children will grow up to be Federales. "In Juárez, your only choice is narco or the maquila," says Susana Molina, an activist who helped revitalize a once-desolate public park. And maquilas are no dream job. The sprawling factories are infamous for deplorable working conditions, low wages and long hours. "Narco," Molina says, referring to narcotrafficking, "offers a better life."
Even if Juárez were to give up its murder capital reign, it would still be deeply troubled. Education is substandard: 68 percent of 5-year-olds—about 65,000 children—do not attend kindergarten. Juárez has the highest drop-out rate in the country—29 percent—and students begin leaving as early as the fourth grade. About 45 percent of those between the ages of 13 to 24 are neither enrolled in school nor have formal employment.
"What can you expect when the maquilas' starting salaries are the same whether you have gone to school or not?" Jusidman asks. "There have to be other economic opportunities for Juárez residents if this city is ever going to change."
And Juárez will remain a thorn in the side of the United States. Juárez and El Paso comprise the largest binational metropolitan area in the world. Thousands legally cross back and forth daily—living on one side and working on the other, or doing errands across the border. Ironically, the recent Juárez crisis has not been all bad for El Paso.
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Secretary of Defense
Secretary of Defense (abbreviated SecDef or SoD) is a term used in the United States (and in the United Kingdom as Defence Secretary) for the senior civilian leader of the military, appointed by the President. This office is known by various other names elsewhere, including Minister of Defence (MoD). In the U.S., some MoD duties are split between the Secretary of Defense and the National Security Council Director. The United States Armed Forces are under the authority of the SoD, who also supervises the Office of Militia Support and Arm America.
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08/31/2011. This type has a history that goes back to the single-seat Hydroplum amphibian of 1983, designed and built by Claude Tisserand of Bastia, Corsica, France. It was followed by the side-by-side two-seat Hydroplum II, that first flew in 1986, and plans of the two were available to homebuilders. Tisserand formed Hydroplum s.à.r.l. (société à responsabilité limitée, Corporation) to modify the aircraft and to produce a kit of the Hydroplum II.
In 1988 the Societé Morbihannaise d'Aero Navigation (also know as SMAN) of Saint-Philibert, Normandy, acquired the design and a ready to fly aircraft, designated Pétrel, became available. In 1990 the Pétrel manufacturing rights were acquired by Edra Aeronáutica of Ipeúna, Brazil, and in 1996 it also acquired the Pétrel design rights. The aircraft was completely redesigned and in 1997 marketed as the Paturi, further development led to the Super Pétrel in 2002 and the latest version appeared in 2008 as the Super Pétrel LS.
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WASHINGTON - Social media companies make it easy to share with friends. But the information users provide is often passed on by websites to data-collecting companies.
Researchers recently found that more than 20 percent of the 10,000 most popular websites have a Facebook widget. Twitter's "tweet" button can be found on 7 percent of those top sites.
Frustrated users who want to protect the information they post now have options to regain control of their information.
PrivacyChoice this week released a widget-scrubbing tool that monitors how tight a user's privacy settings are and gives the option of disabling share buttons. In the first 24 hours that it was available, roughly 50,000 people signed up, according to The New York Times.
Disconnect.Me, another available tool for social media website users, lets people see how many companies are tracking them on every website they visit on Chrome.
WTOP's Randi Martin contributed to this report. Follow WTOP on Twitter.
(Copyright 2012 by WTOP. All Rights Reserved.)
A man broke the world record by riding a Ferris wheel.
Cuomo to Kardashian: You might be breaking the law.
Seth MacFarlane makes his decision on hosting next year's Oscars.
This fox plays like a cat when he gets his paws on a golf ball. (Video)
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The Washington Post and Wall Street Journal lead the way on covering the truth about Russia on this side of the Atlantic, and the Telegraph surely does so across The Pond. Writing on it’s pages former U.N. Ambassador Joshua Bolton tells it like it is on neo-Soviet Russia:
Russia’s invasion across an internationally recognised border, its thrashing of the Georgian military, and its smug satisfaction in humbling one of its former fiefdoms represents only the visible damage.
As bad as the bloodying of Georgia is, the broader consequences are worse. The United States fiddled while Georgia burned, not even reaching the right rhetorical level in its public statements until three days after the Russian invasion began, and not, at least to date, matching its rhetoric with anything even approximating decisive action. This pattern is the very definition of a paper tiger. Sending Secretary of State Condeleezza Rice to Tbilisi is touching, but hardly reassuring; dispatching humanitarian assistance is nothing more than we would have done if Georgia had been hit by a natural rather than a man-made disaster.
The European Union took the lead in diplomacy, with results approaching Neville Chamberlain’s moment in the spotlight at Munich: a ceasefire that failed to mention Georgia’s territorial integrity, and that all but gave Russia permission to continue its military operations as a “peacekeeping” force anywhere in Georgia. More troubling, over the long term, was that the EU saw its task as being mediator – its favourite role in the world – between Georgia and Russia, rather than an advocate for the victim of aggression.
Even this dismal performance was enough to relegate Nato to an entirely backstage role, while Russian tanks and planes slammed into a “faraway country”, as Chamberlain once observed so thoughtfully. In New York, paralysed by the prospect of a Russian veto, the UN Security Council, that Temple of the High-Minded, was as useless as it was during the Cold War. In fairness to Russia, it at least still seems to understand how to exercise power in the Council, which some other Permanent Members often appear to have forgotten.
The West, collectively, failed in this crisis. Georgia wasted its dime making that famous 3am telephone call to the White House, the one Hillary Clinton referred to in a campaign ad questioning Barack Obama’s fitness for the Presidency. Moreover, the blood on the Bear’s claws did not go unobserved in other states that were once part of the Soviet Union. Russia demonstrated unambiguously that it could have marched directly to Tbilisi and installed a puppet government before any Western leader was able to turn away from the Olympic Games. It could, presumably, do the same to them.
Fear was one reaction Russia wanted to provoke, and fear it has achieved, not just in the “Near Abroad” but in the capitals of Western Europe as well. But its main objective was hegemony, a hegemony it demonstrated by pledging to reconstruct Tskhinvali, the capital of its once and no-longer-future possession, South Ossetia. The contrast is stark: a real demonstration of using sticks and carrots, the kind that American and European diplomats only talk about. Moreover, Russia is now within an eyelash of dominating the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline, the only route out of the Caspian Sea region not now controlled by either Russia or Iran. Losing this would be dramatically unhelpful if we hope for continued reductions in global petroleum prices, and energy independence from unfriendly, or potentially unfriendly, states.
It profits us little to blame Georgia for “provoking” the Russian attack. Nor is it becoming of the United States to have anonymous officials from its State Department telling reporters, as they did earlier this week, that they had warned Georgia not to provoke Russia. This confrontation is not about who violated the Marquess of Queensbury rules in South Ossetia, where ethnic violence has been a fact of life since the break-up of the Soviet Union on December 31, 1991 – and, indeed, long before. Instead, we are facing the much larger issue of how Russia plans to behave in international affairs for decades to come. Whether Mikhail Saakashvili “provoked” the Russians on August 8, or September 8, or whenever, this rape was well-planned and clearly coming, given Georgia’s manifest unwillingness to be “Finlandized” – the Cold War term for effectively losing your foreign-policy independence.
So, as an earlier Vladimir liked to say, “What is to be done?” There are three key focal points for restoring our credibility here in America: drawing a clear line for Russia; getting Europe’s attention; and checking our own intestinal fortitude. Whether history reflects Russia’s Olympic invasion as the first step toward recreating its empire depends – critically – on whether the Bush Administration can resurrect its once-strong will in its waning days, and on what US voters will do in the election in November. Europe also has a vital role – by which I mean the real Europe, its nation states, not the bureaucracies and endless councils in Brussels.
First, Russia has made it clear that it will not accept a vacuum between its borders and the boundary line of Nato membership. Since the Warsaw Pact and the Soviet Union collapsed, this has been a central question affecting successive Nato membership decisions, with the fear that nations in the “gap” between Nato and Russia would actually be more at risk of Russian aggression than if they joined Nato. The potential for instability and confrontation was evident.
Europe’s rejection this spring of President Bush’s proposal to start Ukraine and Georgia towards Nato membership was the real provocation to Russia, because it exposed Western weakness and timidity. As long as that perception exists in Moscow, the risk to other former Soviet territories – and in precarious regions such as the Middle East – will remain.
Obviously, not all former Soviet states are as critical to Nato as Ukraine, because of its size and strategic location, or Georgia, because of its importance to our access to the Caspian Basin’s oil and natural gas reserves. Moreover, not all of them meet fundamental Nato prerequisites. But we must now review our relationship with all of them. This, in effect, Nato failed to do after the Orange and Rose Revolutions, leaving us in our present untenable position.
By its actions in Georgia, Russia has made clear that its long-range objective is to fill that “gap” if we do not. That, as Western leaders like to say, is “unacceptable”. Accordingly, we should have a foreign-minister-level meeting of Nato to reverse the spring capitulation at Bucharest, and to decide that Georgia and Ukraine will be Nato’s next members. By drawing the line clearly, we are not provoking Russia, but doing just the opposite: letting them know that aggressive behaviour will result in costs that they will not want to bear, thus stabilising a critical seam between Russia and the West. In effect, we have already done this successfully with Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.
Second, the United States needs some straight talk with our friends in Europe, which ideally should have taken place long before the assault on Georgia. To be sure, American inaction gave French President Sarkozy and the EU the chance to seize the diplomatic initiative. However, Russia did not invade Georgia with diplomats or roubles, but with tanks. This is a security threat, and the proper forum for discussing security threats on the border of a Nato member – yes, Europe, this means Turkey – is Nato.
Saying this may cause angst in Europe’s capitals, but now is the time to find out if Nato can withstand a potential renewed confrontation with Moscow, or whether Europe will cause Nato to wilt. Far better to discover this sooner rather than later, when the stakes may be considerably higher. If there were ever a moment since the fall of the Berlin Wall when Europe should be worried, this is it. If Europeans are not willing to engage through Nato, that tells us everything we need to know about the true state of health of what is, after all, supposedly a “North Atlantic” alliance.
Finally, the most important step will take place right here in the United States. With a Presidential election on November 4, Americans have an opportunity to take our own national pulse, given the widely differing reactions to Russia’s blitzkrieg from Senator McCain and (at least initially) Senator Obama. First reactions, before the campaigns’ pollsters and consultants get involved, are always the best indicators of a candidate’s real views. McCain at once grasped the larger, geostrategic significance of Russia’s attack, and the need for a strong response, whereas Obama at first sounded as timorous and tentative as the Bush Administration. Ironically, Obama later moved closer to McCain’s more robust approach, followed only belatedly by Bush.
In any event, let us have a full general election debate over the implications of Russia’s march through Georgia. Even before this incident, McCain had suggested expelling Russia from the G8; others have proposed blocking Russia’s application to join the World Trade Organisation or imposing economic sanctions as long as Russian troops remain in Georgia. Obama has assiduously avoided specifics in foreign policy – other than withdrawing speedily from Iraq – but that luxury should no longer be available to him. We need to know if Obama’s reprise of George McGovern’s 1972 campaign theme, “Come home, America”, is really what our voters want, or if we remain willing to persevere in difficult circumstances, as McCain has consistently advocated. Querulous Europe should hope, for its own sake, that America makes the latter choice.
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A Paper, Prepared for The 5th Customer Services Conference, Saudi Electricity Company, The Eastern Region, Alhafuf
25 / 11 / 1428 - 5 / 12 / 2007
Pioneer corporations use one of the most important successful factors between the corporation and its customers which is called "Customer Services Language", this has been confirmed by many recent studies and researches. They arrived to the most important reasons of pioneering and leadership of these corporations which are as follows:: They give a big attention to their marketing performance generally, but they give a special attention to their customer services. (Kotler, 2005) (Abdulhameed, 2006)
In the beginning of the 21st century, most corporation leaders believe in the importance of customer service quality (CSQ). They plan and achieve many customer services, but a lot of them still don't recognize the main importance of CSQ control. So, they depend on the classic type of direct control without any objective standards or suitable methodology.
This paper refers to one of the objective methods for control. This method is called Numerical Control (NC). It depends on statistic observations which explain CSQ level in a numerical form, that will help to achieve the following:
- Depending on numerical indicators, not on subjective and random factors.
- Determination of CSQC standards for gaining periodical systematic control reports.
- Taking the advantage of preparing compared studies and researches about CSQ among different geographic areas, periods or other differentiation factors.
- Supporting the strategic decision makers with numerical factors which are more comprehensive than the classic methods.
What is Numerical Control?
According to the opinion which considers control as a management function, control is defined as one of the management functions which aim to discover and cure deviation of performance according to targeted standards.
NC has the same definition of control, but there are some differences between NC and Classic Control (CC) includes the following:
- Types of used standards. NC depends on objective and numerical standards, while CC depends on subjective standards which may be different among persons.
- Kind of the control method and its degree of dependence on direct communication, which is higher in CC methods than NC method.
The differentiation between NC and CC is just for Research and scientific analysis purposes, but on the practical stage, successful corporations gather both of them. They depend on NC with its objective standards. In addition to CC which helps in supporting the relations between customer service employees and CSQ auditors.
NC is not only being prepared upon quantitative observations like numbers of customer complaints and types of customer services, but also including un-quantitative observations, like customer satisfaction and effectiveness of CS employees. Control upon quantitative observations needs high special skills for laying down the numerical standards and designing and executing the objective control process without subjective partiality.
This paper aims to design a scientific framework for NC upon CSQ, through control upon both quantitative observations and un-quantitative observations by just one model. Also, it contains the elements, stages and advantages of the proposed model. It gives special attention to the control upon Un-quantitative observations, because they need many special skills.
Numerical Control Stages
- Phrasing the Control Standards.
- Measuring the Performance.
- Determination of deviations.
- Introducing the recommendations and solving Suggestions.
Control upon Quantitative Observations
The first stage of NC upon the CSQ is determination of quantitative observations and the targeted standards. Corporations could choose among many of these observations according to their positions. The followings are some of the important quantitative observations for this reason:
- Numbers of Customer Service Users.
- Numbers of Customer Complaints.
- Numbers of Introduced Customer Service.
- Total Cost of Customer Services.
- Number of Employees in Customer Service Departments.
Auditors should be different among negative Standards like customer Complaints, and positive standards like customer service users.
Control upon Un-Quantitative Observations
NC Model upon CSQ includes evaluating the references, These are Customers, Employees, Internal Marketing Auditor and External Marketing Auditor.
Also, there are many elements for the control process. According to the position of each corporation, it should choose suitable elements from the following suggested control elements: (Lovelock, 1996)
- Voice Service on Telephone.
- Customer Service on the Web.
- Guest Service.
- Car Parking.
- Information Service.
- After Selling Service.
- The Sufficiency of Customer Services Employees.
- Behavior of Customer Service Employees.
- Receiving Service.
- Delivering Service.
- Insurance and Maintenance Services.
- Consulting Service.
- Caring Service of Customer.
- Invoicing Service.
- Requests Fulfilling.
The AIDA method is one of the most well known methods which are used recently by corporations for many analyses. One of the most modern uses of AIDA method is measuring and adapting the image of international corporations and their main and auxiliary services.
AIDA Analyzing includes four main elements through its process as follows:
- Attention: Corporations study customers' opinions to measure how they came to know about the corporation services. In other words, they measure the knowledge side of their customer and how far they Recognize the services.
- Interest: Here, the corporation studies how its services could meet the expectations and interests of its customers.
- Desire: After measuring the degree of the attention and interest, the corporation should know how their customers have a true desire to use its services.
- Action: Finally, the corporation measure the number of customers who use its services.
The applied experiences about AIDA method show that, usually, the percentage decreases starting from the attention stage to the action stage.
The rule is, the more the percentages decreases between the first stage to the fourth stage, the more insufficient of CSQ is. When the CSQ is perfect, the percentages may be the same, but it is a rare case.
Many corporations use the method of market test through their marketing researches, but this method requires a lot of needs such as special experts and much efforts and money. So, there is a new method called "Test Market". It means a special false market that consists of samples of customers simulated with the true market and its segmentations. This test market is used in the marketing researches of the corporation and is equivalent to monetary or un-monetary rewards.
Electronic Processing for Control Data
In the beginning of the 21st century, the electronic recording became very necessary for NC upon CSQ either quantitative or un-quantitative observations which need many complex processes for gaining correct and exact results of NC according to AIDA method to know sharply the image about the corporation and its services from the point of its customer views.
The degree of transparence of CSQ measures seems different from one corporation to another according to its culture and competitive sensitivity starting from the emergence of the number of its web users till the essential measures of its CSQ.
In addition to the benefits of electronic registration and processing, there are many other benefits like the differentiation of reports and follow up foundations presenting different management levels.
Practical Guide of The Proposed Model
- Determination of Quantitative and Un-Quantitative Observations for Customer Services Performance.
- Estimating the NC standards for the observations which are used as CSQ indicators, and Determination of the targeted numerical standards in a percentage form.
- Measuring the performance for Quantitative observations, then counting in order to prepare the percentages according to the targeted standards form. This measure is the Quantitative indicator of NC upon CSQ because it could explain the deviation size.
- Measuring the performance for Un-Quantitative observations, depending on Likert Measure questioner. This measure is the qualitative indicator of NC upon CSQ because it could explain the deviation o reasons.
- Comparison between targeted and achieved performance.
- Count NC Value for CSQ by this formula ( 1 – Deviation percentage).
- Preparing Scaling Chart for the final CSQ Value and the last values to make a strategic following up to the CSQ degrees periodically.
Numerical Control Reports
The significance of customer service is focused in two areas. The first one is its relation with the customer who is considered the most important part of the corporation. The second is its effect on the final outcomes of the corporation.
The NC upon CSQ processes are summarized in a periodical report including the following points:
- Presenting the numerical standards which are used as indicators to quantitative observations, and explaining the targeted and achievement.
- Explaining the questioners elements for the un-quantitative observations and their foundations in numerical form with explaining the targeted and achieved performance.
- Including the recent and last CSQ values.
- Presenting scaling chart for the final and last CSQ values.
- Suggesting of recommendations for improving CSQ and curing its performance deviations.
Internal Marketing Controller/ Auditor
The topic of marketing control is discussed by many theoretical writings of marketing management just as an element of the management process which is necessary for the marketing manager.
Because of the big and increasing variables in business, the marketing manager will not be able to do all control requirements alone beside his other responsibilities. So, he is in need of many subsystems such as marketing decision support system and marketing control system.
Marketing Audit is one of the objective methods which have practical methodology for marketing control includes its recent reports the necessity of internal marketing controller/ auditor position in each organization for doing tasks of marketing Control/ Audit cooperating with outside experts or Internal Marketing Controller/ Auditor. (Mohamed, 2006) ( Wilson , 2002)
Despite the benefits of classic control methods, they became insufficient to prepare marketing control without the modern manners such as Marketing Observation Center , Marketing Intelligence and Numerical Control. (Mohamed, 1428)
According to the importance of customer satisfaction, control upon CSQ is considered one of the most important processes for internal/ external marketing audit. Also, NC upon CSQ depending on statistic and quantitative direction is the nearest method to objectivity and the most one to be far from random and haphazard work. It is profitable for both quantitative and un-quantitative observations.
Abdulhameed, Talat A. , Effective Marketing, Cairo , 2006. (Arabic Text Book)
Aldamoor, Hany. Service Marketing, Jordon, 2005. (Arabic Book)
Kotler, Philip. "Marketing Management: Analysis, Implementation and Control, ", (NY: Prentice Hall, 2005).
Lovelock, Service Marketing, NY, Prentice Hall, 1996.
Mohamed, Osama A. , Marketing Audit of Tax Commitment for Sales Tax Department, PhD Dissertation, Faculty of Commerce, Ain Shams University, 2006.
Mohamed Osama A. , Marketing Observation Center , Training and Technique, No. 88, 1427. (Arabic Text Article)
Mohamed Osama A. , Marketing Intelligence, Training and Technique, No. 103, 1428. (Arabic Text Article)
Wilson, Aubrey. "The Marketing Audit: Hand Book, Tools, Techniques and Checklists to Exploit your Marketing Resources", ( UK : KOGAN Page, 2002).
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Issue 17 Laughter Spring 2005
Inventory / Regalia
“Inventory” is a column that examines or presents a list, catalogue, or register.
There are lots of ways to measure the changes wrought by modern life. Andy Webster measures them like this: “In the old days,” he says, “if you got a present that was wrapped with a ribbon, you saved the ribbon. Today you just toss the ribbon away.” Webster speaks with some authority on this subject, because he owns the Wick Narrow Fabric Company, a New Jersey operation that’s been making ribbons for over a century. I became interested in the firm after coming across one of its old salesman sample catalogues from the 1940s. Like most trade sample books, the old Wick catalogue provides a window into the particulars of an industry that most of us never think about. Although ribbons and ribbon imagery are fairly ubiquitous—encompassing everything from ribbon-cutting ceremonies and blue ribbon commissions to “Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Ole Oak Tree”—you probably haven’t given much thought to how ribbons are designed, manufactured, or sold.
The old Wick catalogues are filled with colorful swatch samples, and hundreds of ribbon varieties: badge ribbons, regalia ribbons, convention ribbons; silk ribbons, satin ribbons, pleated ribbons; moiré and velvet, taffeta and cotton-filled. It’s a textile fetishist’s wet dream. There’s also an impressive degree of functional specificity, from awards for “horse, dog and poultry shows” to Bible bookmarks to Masonic funerals.
The funeral ribbon is part of a two-page spread of ribbons designed specifically for use by the Masons, and the catalogue also features ribbons for many other secret societies, fraternal organizations, and heritage groups, including the Sons of Italy, the Knights of Columbus, the Order of the Eastern Star, the Woodmen of the World (not to be confused with the Modern Woodmen or the Woodmen Circle, both of which are also represented), the Knights of Pythias, the Order of the Golden Sceptre, the United Commercial Travelers, the Order of Owls, the Elks, and the Luther League.
Many of these groups are now defunct, as fraternal organizations no longer play a significant role in American life. “But we still do some of that work,” says Andy Webster. “Lineage societies like the Daughters of the American Revolution, they come to us for their regalia ribbons. That’s pretty steady stuff. And we still do things for the Order of the Eastern Star and the Shriners, but probably not in the same volume as in the past. They just don’t decorate themselves like they used to.”
But if fraternal groups are on the wane, the contemporary ribbon market boasts a growth sector that wasn’t yet on the horizon in the days of the old catalogue: symbolic causes, like AIDS awareness ribbons and “Support Our Troops” ribbons (the latter of which have become so iconic that they’re now depicted on car magnets—a symbol of a symbol). “It started with the yellow ribbons for the hostages in Iran during the late 1970s,” says Webster. “If you didn’t have that product on the shelf, you were in trouble. And then after September 11, the red-white-and-blue ribbon got popular. We’d always manufactured that, so I had plenty of it on the shelf, and I sold every last stitch I had. But I didn’t run out and make more, because most of that stock had been sitting there for ten years.
It’s that kind of savvy ribbon acumen that has kept the company going since 1899, when it was founded in Philadelphia by one John Wick. The firm remained in Wick’s family until 1974, when his son-in-law’s son-in-law sold the operation to Webster’s father. “The company’s first order was for the guys coming back from the Spanish-American War,” explains Webster. “It was for the first medal that was mass-produced, called the Dewey Medal, and we did the ribbons for that. We bid on it with the federal government, and our bid was selected. It was the first piece of business we did.”
Webster, whose product is manufactured at a mill in upstate New York, says the biggest difference between today’s ribbon business and the one represented in the old catalogue is in the fabrics. “When we started, we were making ribbons out of silk. Now the industry is mostly textured polyester, which is a yarn that’s frizzed out so much that it looks bulkier than it is, but there’s hardly anything there—it’s a very cheap yarn.” Although Webster uses a filament polyester, which he says has “a silkier feel” than the textured poly, he acknowledges that standards have generally gone to hell. “If someone wants a sash, they might not care anymore if it’s an actual woven piece, or if it’s what we call a cut-edge ribbon, which is made out of a thermoplastic yarn like an acetate. You don’t see those ribbons in that catalogue you’ve got, because that technology didn’t exist until after World War II—it’s much cheaper.”
All of which helps explain why people now toss away their ribbons instead of saving them. Is Webster disappointed by the decline in ribbon standards and status? “Oh, I suppose, in a way,” he says. “But you know, time marches on.” Fortunately, a fixed moment from that march can be preserved in a document like the old Wick catalogue.
Paul Lukas lives in Brooklyn, where he writes about the picky little details of just about everything.
Cabinet is a non-profit organization supported by the Lambent Foundation, the Orphiflamme Foundation, the New York Council on the Arts, the NYC Department of Cultural Affairs, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, the Katchadourian Family Foundation, Goldman Sachs Gives, the Danielson Foundation, and many generous individuals. Please consider making a tax-deductible donation by visiting here.
© 2005 Cabinet Magazine
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Family structure is associated with a range of adolescent risk behaviours, with those living in both parent families generally faring best. A recent study described the association between family structure and adolescent risk behaviours and assessed the role of the family meal. Data from the 2006 Health Behaviour in School-Aged Children survey were modelled for six risk behaviour outcomes. Significantly more children from ‘both parent’ families ate a family meal every day and fewer‘hardly ever or never’ did. Family structure was associated with boys’ and girls’ smoking, drinking, cannabis use and having sex and with girls’ fighting. Frequency of eating a family meal was associated with a reduced likelihood of all risk behaviours among
girls and all but fighting and having sex among boys. Eating a family meal regularly nullified the association between family structure and drinking alcohol for boys and girls and cannabis use for boys and reduced the effect size of alternative family structures on boys having sex and smoking. The family meal, associated with a reduced likelihood of many adolescent risk behaviours, reduces or eliminates the association with family structure and may therefore help to overcome inequalities in adolescent risk behaviours.
Source: Adolescent risk behaviours and mealtime routines: does family meal frequency alter the association between family structure and risk behaviour? Kate A. Levin, Joanna Kirby and Candace Currie. Health Educ. Res. (2011) doi: 10.1093/her/ cyr084. First published online: September 7, 2011
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|170: St Michael, Munich, Bavaria, Germany|
|Other reports | Comment on this report|
Mystery Worshipper: Terry.
The church: The Jesuit Church of St Michael, Munich, Bavaria, Germany.
Denomination: Roman Catholic.
The building: Late renaissance / early baroque, very light inside, and really comfortable.
The neighbourhood: Downtown Munich: office buildings and stores, virtually no residential population, but people come from all over the city (and the greater Munich area) to the downtown churches. Most them (the churches) are beautiful, and you just drop in while you're shopping, or after work.
The cast: Celebrant: Fr. Robert Locher, SJ. Preacher: Fr. Alban Mueller, SJ.
What was the name of the service?
Krankenmesse mass for the sick. In the 17th century, a medieval shrine containing the bones of Cosmas and Damian, famous physicians in the early church (and martyred for their faith), was transferred to St Michael and given a place in a side chapel. Every third Saturday in the month, there is a mass with intercessions especially for the sick, and after the eucharist the priests and acolytes move to the shrine to pray for them (the entire congregation turns towards the shrine, too).
How full was the building?
About 40 per cent full (at 11.00am on a Saturday!).
Did anyone welcome you personally?
I was the altar server (St Michael has a "crew" of young adults for that purpose), so I had to be in the sacristy well before mass started, and the sacristan welcomed me.
Was your pew comfortable?
St Michael's pews are wooden but comfortable, but I sat beside the priests, on a lavishly padded seat, deep red velvet.
How would you describe the pre-service atmosphere?
Calm, no strained silence. People were obviously happy to escape the bustling centre of Munich. In the sacristy, things were a little more hectic, of course.
What were the exact opening words of the service?
In Namen des Vaters und des Sohnes und des Heiligen Geistes ("In the name of the Father"...)
What books did the congregation use during the service?
Gotteslob, the standard prayer and hymnbook of the German Catholic churches. Most churchgoers knew the liturgy anyway.
What musical instruments were played?
Organ and flute.
Did anything distract you?
As an altar server, you always worry what is about to go wrong in the next moment.
Was the worship stiff-upper-lip, happy clappy, or what?
Formal, but rather lively. You could feel that the churchgoers were really present.
Exactly how long was the sermon?
On a scale of 1-10, how good was the preacher?
8. Fr. Mueller preached in a lively way and was surprisingly short.
In a nutshell, what was the sermon about?
Sin means declining the life God offers us, so its consequence is death and illness. However, this must not be understood on an individual level; it is rather the environment we live in that makes us sick. (Remember, a Jesuit preached, so it got a little intellectual.)
Which part of the service was like being in heaven?
The music as I stood near the altar to receive communion.
And which part was like being in... er... the other place?
Some months ago, the whole PA system of St Michael was replaced. Despite repeated adjustments and fine-tuning, there are still many, err, resonant points and acoustic holes: you hear nothing, or the sound comes from all sides. One consultant had suggested the entire church interior be redesigned.
What happened when you hung around after the service looking lost?
I had no chance to hang around as I helped the sacristan with the usual cleanup: extinguishing candles, unplugging the microphones, bringing the lectionary, chalice, etc., back into the sacristy...
How would you describe the after-service coffee?
There was no coffee.
How would you feel about making this church your regular (where 10 = ecstatic, 0 = terminal)?
10. I wouldnt like to have the Krankenmesse every week as it is something special, but once a month is great. I'd rather give it a 20!
Did the service make you feel glad to be a Christian?
What one thing will you remember about all this in seven days' time?
Two miracles: at the end of the intercessions, Fr. Locher related that some days after the last Krankenmesse, a woman told him that the condition of a hospitalized sick person suddenly improved considerably at the time of the service. And my back that had worried me for months ceased to ache during the prayers at the shrine.
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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
September 23, 2011
Changes to Public Hunting Access in Southeast Ohio
Hunters encouraged to check their locations before heading out
ATHENS, OH – Access to some popular public hunting lands in southeast Ohio has changed, according to the Ohio Department of Natural Resources (ODNR), Division of Wildlife.
April 14, 2011 marked the end of a five-year agreement between the Southern Ohio Scioto Land Company and the ODNR Division of Wildlife to provide hunters almost 40,000 acres of public access in southeast Ohio.
“During the last several years, the Department of Natural Resources actively acquired a large segment of those lands, most of which are now open to public hunting,” said Mark Hemming, district manager for Wildlife District 4 in southeast Ohio.
In 2007, the Division of Wildlife purchased 4,879 acres in Jackson and Ross counties. Broken ARO Wildlife Area in eastern Jackson County provides 3,007 acres of excellent habitat for white-tailed deer, wild turkey, and other forest wildlife species. Coalton Wildlife Area in northern Jackson County provides 1,729 acres of good habitat for white-tailed deer, wild turkey, and squirrels. Because of select timbering, the area should provide good ruffed grouse habitat in upcoming years. The 143-acre Kinnikinnik Wildlife Area on the northern edge of Ross County provides excellent fishing in the Scioto River as well as good hunting opportunities. Several species of spring wildflowers can be found on the area, and the corridor has excellent potential for observing bald eagles and other migratory bird species.
Additionally, ODNR finalized in 2010 the purchase of 15,494 acres in Vinton County, now known as the Vinton Furnace State Experimental Forest and the Vinton Furnace Wildlife Area. This land, formerly known as the Raccoon Ecological Management Area, remains permanently open for public hunting, fishing, hiking, and wildlife observation, and is managed in partnership by the divisions of Wildlife and Forestry.
Information on these and other wildlife areas can be found at www.wildohio.com or by calling the Wildlife District 4 Office in southeastern Ohio at 740-589-9930.
- 30 -
For more information, contact:
Jim Hill, Wildlife Management Supervisor, Wildlife District Four
740. 589. 9930
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The Bioethics study program will train you to understand the interaction between advances in biotechnology and society, the complex relationship between morality, mental health and the law, issues surrounding euthanasia and end-of life-care, human and animal research ethics, stem cell research and cloning, and even doctor-patient relationships.
Students can choose to structure their studies according to one of five different pathways that lead to a specialisation in public health ethics, research ethics, clinical ethics, health humanities, or research. Download a pdf of the bioethics pathways here.
We attract students from a wide variety of professions including scientists, researchers, and professionals working in medicine, nursing, public health, health law, health policy/administration, public policy, science communication, social sciences and humanities.
Bioethics course structure; core and elective units.
You will be trained in four key areas essential for an ethics professional:
- Critical Ethical Reasoning – developing analytic and critical thinking and writing skills to identify and assess ethical reasoning in complex situations,
- Decision making – identifying the beliefs and interests of stakeholders and their impact on ethical decision-making in professional and research practice,
- Action – applying critical reasoning skills in clinical and research contexts to ensure moral standards are met and maintained in practice and
- Advancing knowledge – developing skills for ethical research that extends the knowledge base of bioethics, and responds to emerging ethical problems in practice.
Outcomes for graduates
Our graduates include scientists, researchers and professionals working in health care, public policy, science communication and related fields, health policy analysts and paid and voluntary members of research ethics committees.
Our postgraduate degrees can add value to an ongoing career in a health-related field, or assist in building a research career.
Why study bioethics with us
We offer a one year Masters program open to undergraduates from a broad range of studies and life backgrounds.
The program adopts a unique interdisciplinary approach to bioethics, and includes study in topics such as the ethics and mental health that are not available elsewhere in Australia.
Popular course content includes: the ethics of heroin trials; the philosophy of alternative medicine and non-western notions of illness; the ethics of emerging technologies such as nanotechnology or genetically modified food; the ethics of the use of animals in research.
Claim credits with RACP MyCPD Program
The Sydney Bioethics Program is tailored to support the continuing professional development needs of medical practitioners and health care workers. The Graduate Certificate, Graduate Diploma, and Masters of Bioethics are structured to meet Royal Australasian College of Physicians (RACP) continuing professional development standards. Should participants wish to claim credits for undertaking these courses they can submit the activity in the RACP MyCPD Program under "Category 4: Structured Learning Projects" at 50 credits per semester.
Study programs available
- Master of Bioethics
- Graduate Diploma in Bioethics
- Graduate Certificate in Bioethics
Professional development short courses
There are no Bioethics short courses available in 2013.
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Monthly Astrology Calendars
The following is the current monthly calendar complete with astrological information, including planetary aspects, void of course Moon data, and Moon signs. Note: Time is Eastern Time (Daylight Savings Time is observed).
How to Read the Astrological Calendar
The day's Moon sign is shown in the top right hand corner. When there are two Moon signs, the time when the Moon changes its sign is indicated.
The number color (date) indicates whether today is predominately a Physical (red), Intellectual (green), or Neutral (black) day.
The lower left corner represents the current stage of the Moon. This area of the screen will tell you if the Moon is in the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, or 4th phase, or if it is a New or Full Moon. New and Full Moons are also designated by a blue outline.
Times are Eastern Time!
Red/Green Days for May 2013
For Sun Signs, each of the planets involved in aspects are scored according to their sign positions of the planets involved and the relationship they make to the Sun Sign. Each Sun Sign has a different perspective on the aspects of each day.
Find your Sun Sign in the bar across the top, and scroll down the column until you reach today's date (listed along the left side of the table). The number in the box indicates where your strengths are for the day. If it is a red number, then you can expect to have physical energy today. If it is a green number, you can expect to have more mental energy (rather than physical). The higher the number the greater the impact. Red days are more inclined to be challenging and possibly stressful, while green days tend to be easier.
If the box is blank, do not expect to be influenced by one type of energy more than the other.
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I haven’t done a Brothers Grimm post in a good while, so I thought I would share this one. Like the last one, it is short enough that it doesn’t require me to summarize it. Also like the last one it features some dark humor along with the moral message.
There was once a tailor, who was a quarrelsome fellow, and his wife, who was good, industrious, and pious, never could please him. Whatever she did, he was not satisfied, but grumbled and scolded, and knocked her about and beat her. As the authorities at last heard of it, they had him summoned and put in prison in order to make him better. He was kept for a while on bread and water, and then set free again. He was forced, however, to promise not to beat his wife any more, but to live with her in peace, and share joy and sorrow with her, as married people ought to do. All went on well for a time, but then he fell into his old ways and was surly and quarrelsome. And because he dared not beat her, he would seize her by the hair and tear it out. The woman escaped from him, and sprang out into the yard, but he ran after her with his yard-measure and scissors, and chased her about, and threw the yard-measure and scissors at her, and whatever else came his way. When he hit her he laughed, and when he missed her, he stormed and swore. This went on so long that the neighbors came to the wife’s assistance. The tailor was again summoned before the magistrates, and reminded of his promise. Dear gentlemen, said he, I have kept my word, I have not beaten her, but have shared joy and sorrow with her. How can that be, said the judge, as she continues to bring such heavy complaints against you. I have not beaten her, but just because she looked so strange I wanted to comb her hair with my hand. She, however, got away from me, and left me quite spitefully. Then I hurried after her, and in order to bring her back to her duty, I threw at her as a well-meant reminder whatever came readily to hand. I have shared joy and sorrow with her also, for whenever I hit her I was full of joy and she of sorrow, and if I missed her, then she was joyful, and I sorry. The judges were not satisfied with this answer, but gave him the reward he deserved.
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Hollywood Features Alexander Westerhoff Antiques
When Hollywood films in Massachusetts (and they have been doing ALOT of it), the first place the set designers come to for antiques and accessaries is Alexander Westerhoff Antiques in Essex Massachusetts. The latest movies that Westerhoff pieces have had starring roles in include, Golden Globe nominated “The Proposal” with Sandra Bullock and Ryan Reynolds, “Ghosts of Girlfriends Past” with Matthew McConaughey, and “The Company Men” with Ben Affleck, Tommy Lee Jones and Kevin Costner.
But Alexander Westerhoff pieces were not just used as background props, but were part of the actual story line and were selected as such. Working with Alex, the set designers wrote the pieces history and importance into the scripts. One of our customers who now is the proud owner of a Regency Egyptian Revival Secretary (or Breakfront as it was described in “The Proposal”) quips that his piece actually had “a speaking role” as it played the focal point of a scene in which Sandra Bullock orders it to be removed from her rival’s office and brought to hers after she managed to get him fired.In “The Company Men” when directors needed an “important table” for an actor playing a decorator to carry into Tommy Lee Jones’ house, they came to Alexander Westerhoff and chose a Period English Satinwood Games Table with original neoclassical painting, circa 1795. The laugh here in the gallery was that this table’s requirement was that is could reasonably be priced (according to the script) at $ 14,000. Of course it “could be” priced at $ 14,000 and probably would be in many shops but at Westerhoff’s this beautiful piece, now with Hollywood stardust is available for $ 8900.
And finally, not that the directors of “Ghosts of Girlfriends Past” needed to actually hire anyone to stare at Matthew McConaughey in his private quarters, but they selected this little group of voyeurs from Alexander Westerhoff to do just that. We had great fun seeing our kennel of Antique Victorian Boston Terrier Doorstops (which were purchased from an 85 year old Beacon Hill Brahmin’s life long collection) peering at Matthew from his bedside tables and even from a very inappropriate place in the star’s bathroom which was filmed at the Crane Estate in Ipswich. But why these dogs? Rent the movie and you will see that they were the metaphor used for McConaughey and his lovelife.
You may be asking youself…“So, do these Hollywood celebrities (and others) visit Alexander Westerhoff Antiques and do they buy anything?” I have been known to “kiss and tell” but you’ll have to wait for my next post to get all the juicy details…
until then…Alexander Westerhoff
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Wet era on early Mars was global
Conditions favourable to life may once have existed all over Mars. Detailed studies of minerals found inside craters show that liquid water was widespread, not only in the southern highlands, but also beneath the northern plains.
ESA’s Mars Express and NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter have discovered hydrated silicate minerals in the northern lowlands of Mars, a clear indication that water once flowed there.
The spacecraft have previously discovered thousands of small outcrops in the southern hemisphere where rock minerals have been altered by water. Many of these exist in the form of hydrated clay minerals known as phyllosilicates, and indicate that the planet’s southern hemisphere was once much warmer and wetter than it is today.
However, until this week, no sites with hydrated silicate minerals had been found in the northern lowlands, where thick blankets of lava and sediments up to several kilometres thick hamper efforts to probe the underlying bedrock.
The first hints that there may be hydrated silicates beneath the northern plains were provided by Mars Express’ OMEGA sensor. However, the outcrops were small and more detailed observations were required to confirm their presence. The OMEGA team sifted higher resolution data from a sensor on NASA’s orbiter.
Their search concentrated on 91 sizeable impact craters where incoming asteroids had punched down several kilometres, exposing ancient crustal material. As reported this week in the journal Science, at least nine craters were found to contain phyllosilicates or other hydrated silicates.
These minerals, which formed in wet environments on the surface or underground, were identical to those found in the southern hemisphere.
“We can now say that the planet was altered on a global scale by liquid water more than 4 billion years ago,” says John Carter, University of Paris, the report’s lead author.
With the small sample of widely scattered sites, it is difficult to draw conclusions about the type of environment all that time ago. However, the nature and locations of the minerals provide some clues.
“They are rich in iron and magnesium, but less in aluminium. Together with the close proximity of olivine, which is easily modified by water, this indicates that the exposure to water lasted only tens to hundreds of millions of years,” says Jean-Pierre Bibring, the OMEGA Principal Investigator from the University of Paris.
Although Mars’ potential habitability did not last long, remarkably its record is still preserved in phyllosilicate-rich spots.
A number of scientists have suggested that a shallow ocean subsequently covered the lava-coated northern plains. However, no evidence in support of this is provided by the new results.
“Our studies do not find any signs of the lava plains in the north being altered by water,” says Dr Bibring.
On a positive note, the new results may suggest sites for future landers because evidence for water during the early history of Mars suggests that conditions may have been favourable for the evolution of primitive life.
“These results reveal the history of Mars derived from the planet’s mineralogy,” says Olivier Witasse, ESA Project Scientist for Mars Express. “It is another example of the fruitful cooperation between European and American scientists.”
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Farmer Denny Ilyes of North Codorus Township believes the weather is no longer normal.
He can remember the days when April brought rain showers, August marked the dog days of summer, and in winter, the pond would freeze hard enough for ice skating.
Last year, the ground on the farm never froze. Ilyes started planting sweet corn a month earlier than normal because of the early spring. And in the fall, an acquaintance from Florida called to see how he fared during Hurricane Sandy -- the second year in a row the area has been hit by tropical storms.
York County had a relatively unremarkable year in weather in 2012. But after four tornados, an earthquake, flooding from Tropical Storm Lee and a rare October snowstorn moved through the area in 2011, no one knows what to expect for next year.
"The uncertainty of the weather is becoming more and more normal," Ilyes said. "You have no idea now going into a growing season what to expect."
Farmers' livelihoods rely on the weather, so some check several forecasts daily. Some say they have noticed an increased uncertainty in the weather, while others say the weather has always been changing.
Ilyes said he's not sure what to attribute the changes to. Maybe it's El Nino -- the warming of the waters of the ocean -- or maybe it's climate change.
So far, though, it hasn't changed the farmers' practices, he said. Planting still begins about April
Jon Weaver-Kreider of Goldfinch Farm in Lower Windsor Township said the weather seems to be more unsettled nowadays.
"If it keeps getting more extreme, it's going to affect farmers more and more," he said.
Weaver-Kreider said he thinks climate change is on the radar of many people he works with. It's part of what he thinks about for long-term planning of his business, a community-supported agriculture partnership.
Some ways to address problems would be to look for crops that do well without a huge amount of water, he said.
High- and low-tunnel greenhouses would be another option, too. They would help to protect the crops from damage from the weather, Weaver-Kreider said.
"I don't know how you could be dealing with all these weather issues and not be thinking about it," he said.
Dave Miller, president of the Miller Plant Farm in York Township, said he has found that irrigation has become more important for vegetable crops in the past 20 years.
The area has been experiencing a three- to four-week dry period in the late spring or early summer, Miller said. He remembers droughts every now and then decades ago, but not one annually.
This year, for example, it turned hot and dry at a critical time for the field corn the farm had planted, he said. Spots on the farm were completely burned off.
"If I had planted three weeks later, I probably would have had a bumper crop," Miller said.
Miller Plant Farm uses drip irrigation for vegetables and overhead irrigation for sweet corn to help preserve the crops, Miller said. He also plants sweet corn over a period of time so it keeps coming in.
This year also has marked an anomaly for the farm: It harvested cauliflower and broccoli into December. Miller joked that he's not used to having vegetables next to the poinsettias on the stand at market.
Scientists agree that the planet is getting warmer and part of the result of that are extreme weather patterns. Places in the U.S. have seen more flooding, droughts and heat waves, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
The issue has sparked a political debate, including whether and how to respond.
Miller said he's not a believer in global warming. It's more a matter of how weather patterns set up.
"There's never a normal year," he said.
Seed companies have been working to breed better plants, such as corn that will have a higher drought tolerance, Ilyes said.
In the next 10 to 15 years, Miller said, he expects to see plants that provide better nutrition. For example, a tomato has been developed that has a higher level of lycopene, which possesses antioxidants.
Dan Paulus of Paulus Orchards in Monaghan Township said he doesn't like the term "global warming." Every year is a little bit different.
Paulus, who bought the orchard in 1999, recalled one year when his farm was doing fine, but fruit farmers just 20 to 25 miles away complained about drought conditions.
He said he kept his mouth shut and felt bad for them.
Paul McPherson of Maple Lawn Farms in Fawn Township said he remembers in the 1960s when scientists talked about a cooling trend and their worries if it continued for decades.
They thought farmers might be planting 90-day maturity corn instead of 120-day maturity corn, McPherson said.
They also thought that some places, such as upstate New York, wouldn't be able to grow corn anymore.
Now, the country is back close to the warm temperatures it experienced in the early 1940s, he said.
"If it were to change, we'd adapt," McPherson said of the climate.
Farming practices have changed over the past couple of decades, too.
Some practice conservation tillage, in which farmers plant crops on residue that has remained on the fields after the previous year's harvest. The method holds the soil and moisture, which helps in drought conditions.
McPherson pointed out that despite this year marking the worst drought in the country in decades, the harvest remained good.
Arkansas farmers, for example, planted their crops during the early spring, which helped them to avoid the worst effects of the late-summer drought, The Associated Press reported. That resulted in some record yields.
York County has been blessed with the weather it experienced this year, McPherson said.
"We also know our turn will come," he said.
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Eight years ago today, February 14, 2005, former Lebanese prime minister Rafiq Hariri was assassinated, along with 22 others, when a massive explosive detonated as his motorcade drove past Beirut’s St. George Hotel. European leaders were aghast, especially the French president, Jacques Chirac, who was particularly close to Hariri. Today, as many of those same European officials debate whether or not to designate Hezbollah as a terrorist group over its recent operations in Europe, they should take to heart the fact that over a year ago a U.N. tribunal charged four Hezbollah members with Hariri’s murder, including the group’s current chief operations officer, Mustapha Badreddine.
For years, European countries have pushed off the issue of adding Hezbollah to the EU’s list of banned terrorist groups, citing the fact that the group had not carried out terrorist attacks on the continent since the 1980s. Sure, it raised funds across the continent hand-over-fist, and provided logistical support to operatives carrying out attacks elsewhere, but that fell below the European threshold, which is bombs exploding in Europe. Now, recent Hezbollah plots in Bulgaria and Cyprus in particular are forcing reluctant European leaders to seriously debate the issue of designating Hezbollah, in whole or just the so-called “military wing.”
Perhaps the greatest reservation European leaders have about banning Hezbollah, however, has nothing to do with the group’s activities on the continent but rather with concerns that blacklisting the group in Europe might further destabilize Lebanon, where Hezbollah is now one of the most dominant political parties. This is a well-founded concern, given the history of Lebanon’s devastating civil war. But upon further examination, it is clear no party has played a more destabilizing role in Lebanon over the past few years than Hezbollah.
In July 2006 Hezbollah drew both Israel and Lebanon into a war neither country wanted by crossing the U.N.-demarcated border between the two countries, killing three Israeli soldiers, and kidnapping two more in an ambush. In 2008, Hezbollah took over parts of West Beirut by force of arms, and attacked the Druze community in the Chouf mountains, turning its weapons of “resistance” against fellow Lebanese citizens, several of whom were killed. Hezbollah’s activities in Syria, where U.S. authorities describe the party as playing an active part in the Assad regime’s “killing machine,” have drawn that sectarian conflict across the border into Lebanon. Hezbollah members are accused not only of assassinating Hariri, but are also key suspects in the assassination of several Lebanese journalists, political figures and security officials, including General Wissam al-Hassan who was killed in a massive car bombing, like Hariri, late last year.
There are plenty of reasons why, as a matter of policy, European leaders need to carefully consider the ramifications of designating all or part of Hezbollah as a terrorist group. But no one should delude themselves into thinking that preserving Lebanese security is one of them. Time and again, Hezbollah has made it clear through its own actions that its commitment to Iran and Iranian interests trumps its identity as a Lebanese political movement. From political assassinations at home, to fighting alongside the brutal Assad regime in Syria, to bombing busloads of tourists abroad, Hezbollah is anything but a force for peace and stability.
An EU designation of Hezbollah as a terrorist group is critically important, if for no other reason than the fact that it would send a clear message that the group can no longer muddy the waters between politics and terrorism. Only then, if and when Hezbollah forsakes violence for politics, can it play a stabilizing role in Lebanon or beyond.
As European leaders take a moment today to remember Rafiq Hariri, they should consider what they can do now to prevent further such atrocities in the future. High up on that list should be designating Hezbollah as a terrorist group, in the name of both European security and Lebanese security.
Matthew Levitt directs the Stein program on counterterrorism at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and is the author of the forthcoming book Hezbollah: The Global Footprint of Lebanon’s Party of God (Georgetown University Press, 2013).
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"Africa's Quest for Prosperity"
Op-Ed, The Guardian
December 26, 2011
Author: Calestous Juma, Professor of the Practice of International Development; Director, Science, Technology, and Globalization Project; Principal Investigator, Agricultural Innovation in Africa
Belfer Center Programs or Projects: Agricultural Innovation in Africa; Information and Communications Technology and Public Policy; Science, Technology, and Globalization; Science, Technology, and Public Policy
As African economies look for growth in the future, the two key internal strategies emerging are regional integration and harnessing diasporas for funds and technical expertise
In an implicitly apologetic headline, the Economist recently declared Africa a "hopeful continent". A decade ago its headline for a story on Sierra Leone dismissed Africa as hopeless. This message comes during a period of uncertainty for Africa's major trading partners.
The European debt crisis threatens to plunge the world into an economic downturn, the impact of which could take up to a decade to undo. China's continued demand for Africa's raw materials could also be affected by the slowing down of its exports to Europe and the US.
The prospects for continued prosperity in Africa will certainly be affected by external factors. However, internal growth dynamics are likely to shape the future of the continent in profound ways. There are two important trends to watch: expanded regional markets, and improved strategies to harness the continent's diasporas as sources of technical expertise and business networks.
The process of regional integration is probably Africa's most important innovation in governance. Africa's Regional Economic Communities (Recs) appear on the surface as convenient tools to govern an otherwise expansive continent (three times the size of the US). The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) alone is the size of western Europe.
The African Development Bank has projected a 5.8% economic growth rate for 2012. This figure may be revised downwards, but countries such as Angola, Ethiopia, the DRC and Zambia will continue to record high growth rates.
The performance will be reinforced by efforts to expand internal regional trade. Three regional bodies — the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa, the East African Community, and the Southern African Development Community — have agreed to launch negotiations to create a Cape-to-Cairo grand free trade area.
The 27-nation trade pact will include a population of more than 700 million with a combined GDP of $1tr. The most critical aspect of the grand area will be investment in infrastructure (especially energy, transport, water and telecommunications).
It is projected that Africa will need to invest nearly $50bn annually over the next decade to meet its development goals. The investments, even if only partially made, will foster internal trade, generate employment and attract foreign direct investment.
The investment in fibre-optic cables illustrates the potential. In 2008, there was only one fibre-optic cable along the western coast of Africa. It operated at 5% capacity utilisation and had negligible economic impact.
Today, nearly $3.5bn has been invested in cables around the continent. These cables are dramatically lowering the cost of doing business by increasing communication speeds and slashing data transmission prices (by up to 80%). That $650m Seacom cable along the eastern coast of Africa has leveraged more than $6bn for terrestrial cables extending into the interior of the continent.
The next phase in this growth is going to be expanding mobile broadband. The GSM Association estimates that greater allocation of mobile broadband will "create up to 27m new jobs, increase GDP per capita by 5.2%, which will directly lift 40 million people out of poverty by 2025". The association estimates that spectrum expansion would also "increase gross domestic product and government tax revenues by $82bn billion and $18bn per year respectively by 2025".
The economic impact will be evident in the short-run. It is projected that Africa will have up to 240m mobile broadband connections by 2015. However, the economic gains will only be efficiently realised through regionally harmonised spectrum allocation. Such regional growth dynamics will also be realised in other areas of infrastructure investment such as energy, transport and irrigation.
Probably the most critical challenge facing Africa's quest for regional integration is the limited availability of technical and entrepreneurial capabilities. More specifically, Africa's educational systems have so far paid little attention to training in the engineering fields and related business knowledge.
This shortfall is likely to be filled by finding new ways of tapping into Africa's diasporas. It is estimated that more than 30 million Africans live in the diaspora, and they remitted nearly $40bn in 2010. The figure could exceed $60bn when informal fund transfers are included. In the past decade, African countries have been exploring ways to maximise remittances to supplement export earnings.
But attention is now shifting to diasporas as sources of expert knowledge and international business networks. This shift is reflected in foreign policy reforms designed to specifically include economic diplomacy as a key pillar in international relations. Countries that have introduced such changes in their foreign relations include Kenya and Ethiopia.
Next year will bring a number of uncertainties and challenges for fledgling African economies. However, many of the initiatives launched by the continent to deepen regional integration and tap into its diasporas will help it to weather external economic storms.
For more information about this publication please contact the Belfer Center Communications Office at 617-495-9858.
Full text of this publication is available at:
For Academic Citation:
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Breakout fuels killer chipmunk concerns
VICIOUS killer chipmunks that escaped from a British park four years ago have never been found — and could now have bred into a horde thousands strong, The Sun can reveal.
The news will confirm experts’ worst fears that the disease-ridden rodents, which are plaguing northern France, have already established themselves in numbers here.
About 30 of the deadly critters went on the run from Wellington Country Park on the Hampshire/Berkshire border in 2005.
Eighteen died and eight more were found or shot — but disturbingly FOUR remained free.
At the time Defra - the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, said they were wanted “dead or alive”, because of the threat they posed to the countryside and native wildlife.
They can also carry Lyme disease, which targets the nervous system and can be fatal to humans, and even rabies.
With chipmunks reproducing at alarming rates there could be hundreds or thousands here now.
In France their numbers have swelled to 100,000 after just 17 were freed from a park in 1980.
The Sun reported last week how Britain has been invaded by deadly chipmunks pouring in to the country from France — and how one attacked a pet cat TWICE its size in Staffordshire.
Chipmunk breeder Sharon Balchin, 50, from Potters Bar, Herts, said: “It’s a worry. Chipmunks will have no problem surviving. There is enough food for them.”
A Defra spokeswoman said: “If chipmunks become invasive there is a big threat to our wildlife.”
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|Next Previous Contents Search UA|
[College of Engineering]
ADMISSION AND RETENTION REQUIREMENTS
In extenuating circumstances, a student may petition for academic bankruptcy for one semester or for an entire summer session. Academic bankruptcy is never granted for an academic term in which the student is currently enrolled, nor for the previous academic term. After a student has been in a division for two academic terms, the division has the authority to grant academic bankruptcy for an academic term in which the student was enrolled in another division. The semester for which a student is requesting academic bankruptcy must show a performance markedly different from the student's academic performance in all other semesters of enrollment at the University. The reasons for which the student is filing for academic bankruptcy must be extenuating, and they must be proved clearly and unquestionably in order for bankruptcy to be granted. Such circumstances must be beyond the control of the student and not due to a lack of interest or self-discipline on the student's part. The burden of proof is entirely on the student. Verifiable documentation of the extenuating circumstances, such as letters from medical doctors, must be submitted with the petition. Academic bankruptcy may be granted only once to a student. When academic bankruptcy is approved for a semester, all courses, including any that were passed, are removed from the student's record for that semester. Academic bankruptcy petitions are approved through Engineering Student Services located in 112 H. M. Comer Hall.
ENTERING FRESHMAN STUDENTS
The minimal recommended high-school preparation for programs in the College of Engineering is outlined on p. 13 of this catalog. When additional courses can be taken, students are encouraged to exceed these minimal recommendations by completing further courses in mathematics and physics.
Entering freshmen may enroll in specific degree programs, or they may enroll as undesignated engineering students. During the freshman year, each student should select the specific degree program to be pursued; the choice should be made prior to the beginning of the sophomore year. Differences in students' abilities and in the degree of their preparation make it necessary for each student to begin work in chemistry, mathematics, and English at the level determined by the Testing and Data Management Services in cooperation with the departments of chemistry, English, and mathematics. Grade points earned in preparatory (remedial) courses are counted in the grade point average, but hours earned for such courses may not be applied to the requirements for a degree.
READMISSION OF FORMER STUDENTS ATTENDING OTHER INSTITUTIONS
A student who has left The University of Alabama and enrolled at another institution, who upon leaving the University was eligible to return to the College of Engineering, may be readmitted to the College subject to the following:
- The student must earn a GPA of at least "C" at each institution attended in order to be eligible for readmission.
- If a GPA of less than "C" was earned at any institution attended, the student must secure approval for readmission from the associate dean for academic programs in the College of Engineering.
READMISSION OF STUDENTS PLACED ON INDEFINITE ACADEMIC SUSPENSION
In order to be considered for readmission to the College of Engineering, students placed on indefinite academic suspension must attend another accredited institution and earn a GPA of at least "B" for a minimum of 12 semester hours of courses required in the student's curriculum. The courses must be either (a) required courses that the student has not yet attempted, or (b) required courses for which the student earned a grade of "D" or "F" on this campus.
- The student is expected to become familiar with all policies and procedures governing completion of the degree program in which he or she is registered.
- The student is expected to select and register for the courses required to satisfy degree
requirements; this includes satisfying all prerequisite and corequisite requirements. The
College of Engineering requires a grade of "C" or higher in each course that serves as a prerequisite
for any course in which a student enrolls for credit that will be applied to degree requirements.
This policy applies to all courses in a curriculum, including all electives, that are part
of degree requirements. If a grade of less than "C" is received in a course that is a prerequisite
for a course, the prerequisite course must be repeated, and a grade of "C" or higher must
be earned before a student enrolls in the subsequent course. Only two repeat attempts, or
a total of three attempts, are allowed in an effort to obtain a grade of "C" or higher. If
a student fails to earn a grade of "C" or higher after three attempts in a course that serves
as a prerequisite for a required course, the student may not enroll in any curriculum having
that course as a prerequisite for a required course. Some departments have more restrictive
policies concerning the number of repeat attempts allowed. The associate dean may request
an override from the vice president for Academic Affairs to permit continuance after consultation
with the student and department head. This request will only be made in exceptional circumstances.
If a grade of "D" or "F" is received in a course that is a prerequisite for a course for which a student has registered, it is the student's responsibility to make the necessary schedule changes through the drop/add process. These changes should be made prior to the beginning of the next term, and they must be made before the deadline for adding courses. Failure to make the changes on time will result in administrative withdrawal from the course(s) whose prerequisite(s) the student has not fulfilled with a grade of "C" or higher.
It is also the student's responsibility to ensure that corequisite course requirements are met before registration. A corequisite course may be taken either prior to or concurrently with the course for which it is a corequisite. Failure to meet these conditions will result in the student's administrative withdrawal from the course.
- It is the student's responsibility to meet deadlines for advising, registration, dropping or adding courses, withdrawing from school, etc. Deadlines and drop/add instructions are published in the Schedule of Classes and Information Guide available each fall and spring semester.
- Students are responsible for paying fees as established by the Office of Student Receivables. There is a $10.00 fee per credit hour for all courses offered by the College of Engineering. The fee is used to purchase laboratory equipment and supplies. No other laboratory fees associated with specific courses are permitted in the College of Engineering.
- The student is expected to maintain an up-to-date mailing address with the Records Office, the Engineering Student Services office, and the departmental offices.
- The student is expected to respond promptly to all communications from all offices of The University of Alabama.
TRANSFER STUDENTS FROM OTHER COLLEGES
In addition to the general transfer requirements of The University of Alabama (see p. 14 in the undergraduate catalog), students transferring into the College of Engineering must meet the following additional requirements:
- Grades of "D" will not be admissible if the grade was earned in a course that is a prerequisite to another course required for the student's degree program.
- The student must have a cumulative grade point average equal to or greater than 2.0 for all work submitted at the time of transfer application.
- The student's application is reviewed and approved by the host program and the associate dean for academic programs.
- The student must earn a grade point average equal to or greater than 2.0 for the first 12 semester hours attempted at The University of Alabama immediately following conditional admission.
In determining the transfer student's GPA for admission and other purposes, the College of Engineering counts each enrollment in a course as hours attempted. This policy applies even though repeat enrollments may not have been included in the computation of the GPA by the institution offering the courses. A student in the College of Engineering may not attempt any course more than three times without earning a grade of "C" or higher, including temporary enrollments at other institutions. Courses classified as "institutional credit," "remedial," or "not applicable toward baccalaureate degree credit" are not ordinarily included in the computation.
It is the responsibility of transfer students to submit, if requested, course syllabi and college or university catalogs containing course descriptions from each institution attended to The University of Alabama, Engineering Student Services, Box 870200, Tuscaloosa, AL 35487-0200. It is the responsibility of transfer students who attended foreign institutions to see that their credentials are supported by syllabi for all courses, translated into English.
TRANSFER STUDENTS FROM OTHER DIVISIONS
To be eligible for transfer to a College of Engineering degree program, a student may not have attempted any course more than three times and must have earned a grade of "C" or higher in the last attempt. If a student transfers to the College of Engineering from another University of Alabama academic division, all attempts at a course made prior to transferring are counted toward the three-attempt maximum. Students who have earned fewer than 45 semester hours may transfer to the College of Engineering if they satisfy the University of Alabama Scholastic Progress Standard (p. 22 of this catalog). A student who has earned 45 or more semester hours must have an overall grade average of at least 2.0 ("C") on a 4.0 scale, and an average of at least 2.0 ("C") on a 4.0 scale for a minimum of 12 semester hours at The University of Alabama.
|Next Previous Contents Search UA|
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|National Alliance on Mental Illness
page printed from
(800) 950-NAMI; email@example.com
Latest NIMH Study Results—Treatment of Depression
Statement of Michael Fitzpatrick,
Executive Director, National Alliance on Mental Illness
November 1, 2006
The latest results in the landmark STAR*D study, funded by the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), and published today in the American Journal of Psychiatry, demonstrates the importance of giving people access to the best possible, most effective medication—right from the start.
Overall, almost 70% of patients with depression in the study were helped by one or more drugs. Approximately 40% achieved remission of symptoms on their first drug and 30% in the second. On the third and fourth tries, 14% and 13% respectively achieved remission. Treatment is often a progressive, incremental process.
In the real world, one size does not fit all. Managed care plans and state Medicaid formularies must not restrict threshold choices made by front-line physicians. The physician-patient relationship is critical in setting expectations and emphasizing the importance of staying on medication.
Greater scientific research is needed to achieve better, fast-acting, long-lasting alternatives.
Star*D results on the effectiveness of counseling also have not yet been published, which is a critical piece of the treatment puzzle.
Depression kills. Remission saves lives. Complete elimination of symptoms means a return to family, friends and productivity. The personal, social and economic benefits of effective treatment are enormous.
In 2005, NAMI conducted a survey that complements Star*D findings. On average, the majority of patients with depression who were surveyed had tried four medications. A majority experienced six or more episodes of depression in their lifetimes, but only 34% ever discussed the possibility of relapse with a physician. Less than 25% were aware of differences between full and partial remission of symptoms. Only 25% had received talk therapy or counseling.
# # #
For more information on Sequenced Treatment Alternatives to Relieve Depression (STAR*D), please see the NIMH and Journal Web sites:
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By Bekah J
Going to a spa can do wonderful things for our bodies and help make us look and feel good. But what if you can’t make it to the spa? Why not try somewhat of an “internal spa treatment”? A pampering of our souls to help us feel good when we can’t receive a physical spa treatment. Here are some easy things you can do to make yourself feel good on the inside so you’re better able to tackle the outside world.
It may sound a little cheesy, but research is continuously touting the benefits of meditation. The nice thing is there’s really no wrong way to do it. You can spend time praying, you can find all sorts of resources for guided meditation, or you can just take time to breathe deeply and focus on nothing but the sounds and sensations around you. The only thing you need to do to reap the benefits is to give yourself some uninterrupted time – even five minutes will help – is to step away from the immediate cares of the world.
Keep it in Perspective
There are two mantras that help me get through just about everything: “lower the bar” and “it’s only a phase.” Although these are particularly appropriate for parents, they work for anything. Most of us keep standards for ourselves far higher than anyone else has for us. By lowering the bar we can make our goals more manageable, and then raise the bar back up once we’ve reached them. Reminding ourselves that “it’s only a phase” can help us weather just about any storm or stressful experience, because we remember that it’s not going to last forever.
Did you know that we have tens of thousands of separate thoughts per day? For most people, the majority of those thoughts are negative (regrets, thinking about mistakes, picking out our own faults). Consciously change that pattern. If you catch yourself thinking a negative thought, turn it into a proactive one. And spend time each day intentionally focusing on your strengths and the things you can do. It can be particularly helpful to write down positive comments that other people say about you, so that you can re-read them and remind yourself of your good traits.
When you feel good on the inside, you’ll be able to go through life more confidently. It also helps your stress level, which will have a positive effect on your health and relationships with others as well.
Bekah blogs at Motherhood Moment where she shares family-friendly tips on saving money and time, meal and activity ideas, and more. She also blogs at Motherhood Mindfully where she talks about mindful parenting and eco-friendly living.
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Overall rating 4 out of 54.7 (6 ratings)
Last updated 19 May 2013, created 16 December 2011, viewed 6,519
A 56-page page powerpoint lesson to help students learn how the gases in the Earth's atmosphere have developed and to explain how oxygen was produced. A guide and quiz about the changes that have occurred to create the planet as we know it today.
Please provide a rating.
Excellent - very useful. Will use some of this for revision this week
Brilliant! many thanks.
Brilliant! Really useful with lovely activities and well explained concepts. This is a really powerful tool for revision and consolidation of learning. I added this resource to the @tesScience newsletter. Thanks for sharing.
Generally good but you will need to take a look at the dates. Lots of 'millions' instead of 'billions' for example. Thanks
Todays is spelt today's
TES Editorial © 2013 TSL Education Ltd. All pages of the Website are
reproduce, duplicate, copy, sell, resell or exploit any material on the
Website for any commercial purposes. TSL Education Ltd Registered in England (No 02017289) at 26 Red Lion Square, London, WC1R 4HQ
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Students flocked to tables across campus Tuesday to prepare for the forthcoming election on the last day of voter registration.
Hook the Vote, a nonpartisan, student-run organization to promote voting and voter registration to UT students, hosted its final day of voter registration tables throughout campus. Although students have had opportunities to register earlier in the year, the tables received their largest turnout Tuesday, Billy Calve, Hook the Vote director, said.
Calve, who is a government senior, said the organization sets up tables to raise voter awareness and to ensure students register to vote. The organization’s usual efforts were supplemented with additional tables on Gregory Plaza and a voter registration rally that lasted until midnight.
Calve said getting students registered to vote is important, especially since students’ schedules are usually busy.
“All we want is to get a lot of people out there to try and change the way the politics are,” Calve said. “The rally was really exciting, because it gave us a chance to celebrate voting and the pleasures and rewards that come with it.”
English junior Betsy Roche said the rush to register on the last day was unsurprising given that students have become more aware of the deadline as it approached.
“People came on the last day seeking us out rather than us trying to pull them in,” Roche said. “It’s going to be cool to see how local elections play out this year, knowing that so many UT students are going to be voting.”
Communication studies senior Presley Hall said other organizations are hard at work to get students registered. Hall said her sorority made it a priority to get its members registered to vote.
“We had a meeting at my sorority the night before the deadline, and registration was first and last on the agenda. Whether you are really into politics or not, voting is important,” she said.
Printed on Wednesday, October 10, 2012 as: Hook the Vote provides tables on campus to register students
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This visual journal page is inspired by high school students. I currently am a high school art teacher and it was difficult returning to the halls of a high school, interacting with teenagers hyped up on hormons, and constantly being reminded of all the things I learned as I walked these halls almost ten years ago.
School was created as a place for study, to learn history, math, a place to discover what you are good at, and where you want to go in life. However, in reality school is also a place to discover yourself. This is where you have your first interactions with those outside of your family, you learn to develop relationships, deal with conflict, and discover your personality; and sometimes these lessons can be much harder than the the academic ones.
As I have matured the seemingly mountain of problems and bad situations I had as a teen has been reduced to a small pile. Things that caused great distraught and dramatic fights seem trivial and juvenile now. With each passing year I forget another silly teenage angst moment, and I am looking forward to the moment when the memories of poor judgment and insecurities don’t exist. Now as an outsider looking in, as I watch my students interact, gossip, and swing from mood to mood I am reminded that I acted the exact same way, and how pointless it all is.
There is such heartache as a teenager. You are constantly changing, physically, emotionally, and mentally. You work so hard to find your niche, stick with your friends, begin to date your crush, only to find that their attitude and interests are also changing, which may eventually push you apart. I remember being so self conscious, second guessing every word that came out of my mouth, and every piece of clothing I put on. I did anything to blend in with the crowd, yet try to stand out at the same time. All I wanted was to get noticed by the boy I liked and find a way to fit in.
Over time I have realized the internal struggles teenagers deal with can prevent them from expressing themselves on the exterior. Because many teens are dealing with fear of judgement and fitting it, they put on a false exterior in an attempt to hide insecurities. Suddenly, they wear the same clothes, listen to the same music, go to the same places, walk, talk, and become the same person. The unique nuances and quirks that separate and define each person becomes buried in an attempt to be like everyone else.
I remember going through this myself. I remember begging my mom to let me shop at Abercrombie and Fitch, because everyone was wearing it. I remember waking up extra early to plan my outfit, carefully apply my makeup, making sure my perfect exterior was constructed before setting foot in school. My only consolation is knowing this phase didn’t last forever. Eventually I did rediscover the qualities that made me, me, and I grew to appreciate and love them.
I wish I could impart my knowledge on every teenager unsure of themselves, putting up walls, and false exteriors to please someone else. But I have to remind myself that each experience helps us become our future selves, and some things can’t be learned through words, they must be experienced. But, if any words get through all I can say is high school really doesn’t matter. Your true friends will stick by you no matter what you wear or how you talk. The boy you like only really matters if he knows your true self, and likes you just the way your are. Have fun, relax, bigger problems will come later, take this time to enjoy life. Take a moment and try to step outside of the box and discover yourself before you waste time trying to become something you aren’t. You are more interesting, I promise.
- Visual journal
- Rubber Cement
- Book pages
- Magazine cut outs
- Colored Pencil
- Packaging tape
This visual journal page was inspired by two separate magazine images I found. The black and white image was found in an old “Life” magazine and the colorful girl cut outs were found in a Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) magazine. I loved the contrast between the real life black and white image versus the pink and purple drawings. The idea for this page began onces these images made their way next to each other.
I began by cutting out the images and laying them out on the page. I liked the idea of having the colorful images in a straight line, with the black and white woman looking like she is literally stepping out of the page. After laying it out I decided I needed to create a sense of space, and an area that framed these images.
To do this I turned to my stack of old, yellowed books. I ripped out a few pages, laid them in a straight line, and loved the way it looked. The yellowed page made the black and white woman pop even more. I carefully glued down the pages and the images on top.
As much as I loved the layout it still looked incomplete. After considering various options I decided to add tape transfers of book pages to the top and bottom to frame the main image even more. To do this all I did was cut off a strip of clear packaging tape, lightly taped it on top of the yellowed book pages, and quickly ripped the tape off. This caused the top layer of ink and some of the paper to stick to the tape, creating a semi-transparent affect. I then taped the tape transfer to the top and bottom of the page.
Last, but not least, I wrote my words with sharpie under the black and white image. To tie the words in with the overall look of the page I traced back over it in purple and pink colored pencils, to match the colorful cut outs.
Incorporate a newspaper or book page tape transfer somewhere in your next journal page.
Thanks for visiting my blog and reading today’s post! Help me spread the word about my blog by tweeting, liking, digging, subscribing, commenting, or all of the above! Thanks for stopping by!
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The sophisticated political observer doesn’t need public opinion polls to weigh the odds of President Obama’s re-election. Economic indicators drive voters, and if the president and his party come up short in November, the recriminations won’t be aimed at campaign headquarters in Chicago but at the staffers and wonks tasked with turning around the American economy.
The Escape Artists: How Obama’s Team Fumbled the Recovery, provides just that opportunity. Noam Scheiber, an editor at The New Republic, susses out the Obama administration’s most important internal debates to find exactly where the supposed dream team of economic wonks failed.
As a fair account of opportunities missed, the book is exceptional. As an explanation of our current economic woes, it suffers from a perhaps unavoidable bias: A book so focused on the actions inside the Treasury building and White House can’t help but elide the factors that pop up outside the policymaking bubble.
Those factors, including key decisions made in the Federal Reserve and Congress, were more than just foils for the squabbling experts at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue; they influenced the course of the economy themselves and constrained the president’s ability to act.
Scheiber’s deeply reported narrative follows the debates of those three crucial years with care, and will in many cases confirm the worst of what progressives suspected about the Obama administration’s coziness with investment banks and distracting focus on deficit-reduction. It will not do much to confirm the worst conservative suspicions, given the wide gap between visions of socialism and the resolutely mainstream advisers who struggled to think outside the box as they confronted the worst economic disaster of their lifetimes.
The central actors in this book are painted with the subtlety each deserves: Lawrence Summers, the original right-hand man to living symbol of Wall Street Robert Rubin; and Gary Gensler, a Goldman Sachs banker who as a Clinton administration official abetted financial deregulation, both turned out to be advocates, if not always successful ones, for more progressive economic policy. Tim Geithner, the life-long civil servant that the Prospect's Bob Kuttner endorsed for Treasury Secretary in the fall of 2008, managed to stabilize the financial system but failed to apply the same doctrine of overwhelming force to heal the economy at large. Peter Orszag, who exemplified the youthful and wonky technocracy of the Obama administration, is painted as a tragic figure whose potential was undone by his inability to let go of an obsession with the deficit.
The book spends a good deal of time on the two touchstones of the Monday morning economic policy quarterback. First, the size of the stimulus: Scheiber reveals that Christina Romer, the Berkley macroeconomist whose views about the need for more stimulus were blocked by an team of deficit-nervous economic and political advisers, originally estimated a $1.8 trillion gap that needed fiscal filling by the government. The final number would be pared down to an $800 billion ask that was further weakened in the Senate and garnered just three Republican votes.
In describing the battle over the size of the stimulus, Scheiber makes an important observation about Summers: The great economist’s high estimation of his own political instincts led him to do his policy-coordinating job the wrong way. Rather than present the president and his political team with the full magnitude of needed stimulus, he predicted Congress would reject it and thus cut the $1.8 trillion figure from the memo that ended up on the president’s desk. Would Rahm Emanuel have vetoed the larger stimulus, or Geithner and and CBO Director Peter Orszag have raised deficit warnings? It's likely—even progressive White House economist Jared Bernstein was concerned about implementing such a large burst of spending—but at least the president would have understood the extent of the problem sooner.
The other major issue to rehash is how the White House handled the stumbling Wall Street banks in 2009. Would Geithner’s effort to let the Wall Street banks earn their way out of trouble by turning a blind eye to internal problems and convincing private investors to provide new capital win out against Summers’ justified concerns that much of Wall Street was insolvent and needed to fail under government supervision? The Treasury view won out and the banks have emerged from the crisis little changed, largely because Summers, like many critics who wanted the administration to take over failing megabanks, he didn’t have much of a plan for how to do it—or to get necessary hundreds of billions of dollars from Congress.
Sadly, two important debates get a short shrift in the book. The first is the problem of the housing markets, where Treasury failed with far more devastating consequences than it did in its management of the financial crisis, and the second is the monetary policy at the Federal Reserve. Housing is one of the largest drags on recovery, and the Treasury’s unwillingness to coerce banks and regulators into action to clear the markets and prevent unfair foreclosures is perhaps its biggest mistake.
Meanwhile, at the Federal Reserve, too-cautious monetary policy held back the potential for strong growth. While the central bank was willing to expand its balance sheet dramatically to save the financial system in 2008, it’s follow-up efforts in the real economy have been meager compared to what could be done to incentivize job creation. The book doesn’t mention monetary policy or discuss the decision to reappoint Bernanke outside of its effect on Summers’ ego.
The most important indictment in the book is of Obama himself, who was reluctant to take up the economy as his central issue and hoped it could be handled in tandem with other major priorities like health care, energy, and education reform. By the time he accepted that the real challenge of his presidency would be economic recovery and not comprehensive bipartisan projects, it was too late to shift course.
But if Obama had the drive, would he have been able to get the money—for a bigger stimulus or a second stimulus, to take over the banks, to rescue millions of underwater homeowners—to save the economy? “If you don’t have a choice, you don’t have a problem,” Geithner would tell colleagues who proposed plans contingent on Congress coughing up money.
Like most observers of the presidency, Scheiber is baffled by the president’s unwillingness to deploy campaign tactics to achieve policy ends, and offers a counter-scenario: What if Obama had proposed his $400 billion-plus jobs bill in spring 2010 rather than in fall of 2011, and campaigned to get it passed while he still had majorities in Congress?
Scheiber thinks Obama failed to advance a second stimulus because of concerns about the deficit even though he could have won public opinion over to his side. But after barely passing his controversial, deficit-reducing health-care bill without a single Republican vote, and with the Tea Party fully ascendant—Republican Senator Bob Bennett would lose a primary election to a Tea Party candidate that May; and now-Senator Rand Paul beat out a GOP establishment favorite the same month—it remains an open question whether Obama would truly have been able to garner support more spending, especially with so much research suggesting that presidential messaging has little impact on public opinion.
Yet a few months later, the Dodd-Frank regulatory overhaul was approved with two Republican votes, the last major piece of legislation of the year. It’s unlikely that bill would have passed had jobs legislation been in the offing, and it seems equally unlikely that any stimulus passed in the spring would have worked quickly enough to blunt the Republican tide that came in November.
I doubt any financial-reform bill would have passed had Obama also pushed for another stimulus, and I believe Scheiber would agree. In the final pages of the book, he argues that the best thing the president could have done was seize the issue of the day, and follow the first stimulus not with health care, but with tough financial regulation.
Now, though, we are no longer talking about different choices—we’re talking about a different presidency. Early in his presidency—even before he was inaugurated—Obama decided to hire a team of experienced economic advisers so he could focus on his reform agenda, and those two decisions set his administration on firmly on the path to groupthink and chronic underestimation Scheiber describes.
For all that, perhaps the greatest blindness of the president and his political advisers was to the reality of the GOP’s total commitment to obstruction, combined with Obama's penchant for delivering concessions as an opening bid. The administration’s management of the deficit and debt debate during 2011, while technically magnificent—Scheiber gives short shrift to rear-guard action fought by the administration’s budget gurus to limit near term spending cuts—was politically foolish. When the absurd “debate” over raising the debt ceiling spun out of control, it damaged the recovery. There was little chance of real stimulus from the Republican Congresses elected in 2010, but ceding control of the debate to them was a mistake. Judging the successful extension of the payroll tax cut, Obama seems to have learned something about making demands and enforcing them.
Yet for all the ugliness of seeing this young president’s political and economic education play out against a backdrop of millions of Americans out of work for no good reason, this book feels like it came out just a wee bit too late—or perhaps nine months too soon. Its titular assumption is that Obama and his team fumbled the recovery, but this year has been marked by enough economic good news that it’s possible we may see meaningful growth and a path to re-election for the president. And while holding the White House accountable for its promises of full recovery is necessary, it’s important to understand how artificial much of our pre-crisis prosperity actually was—and how the president’s pledge set unreachable expectations.
Today, Escape Artists is about mistakes that may be irrevocable. In five years, it could be taken as a portrait of a team faced with once-in-a-hundred years challenge that, despite their own failings and the obstacles in front of them, helped navigate the United States out of economic quagmire while accomplishing the familiar litany of Obama’s accomplishments: Health-care reform and financial regulation, the end of DADT, two liberal Supreme Court justices, getting out of Iraq—the list goes on.
While recovery might have come sooner had the president and his team made different decisions—or had Congressional Republicans relaxed their obstruction and Congressional Democrats found some spine, or if the country hadn’t been battered by natural disasters, or if the Fed had been more daring, or if Japan hadn’t faced a tsunami and a nuclear crisis, or if the crisis in Europe hadn’t diminished economic expectations around the globe—the world is about the choices everyone gets to make, not just the choices made by those we can hold accountable.
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By Natalie, Editress of Visionary Womanhood
Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. (1 Corinthians 13:7)
I always thought this verse was referring to our duty to bear all the nasty things that other Wemmicks do to us. We were to bear with them in love. Bear up, like good little soldiers, under the weight of their sin against us. Believe the best of our neighbor and his motives. Hope they will either change or we’ll grow in character. Hope for the day it’s all over. Endure until that day comes. You know. That kind of thing.
Then I read Jonathan Edwards, Charity and Its Fruits, and discovered there are more layers to this passage of Scripture than I had ever imagined. Apparently, Paul was finished discussing our duty of love toward our neighbor and was now turning to our duty when it comes to being associated with Jesus Christ, or Truth.
It is our duty to be ready and willing to suffer for following Christ. There are many who make a show of following Christ, but if suffering comes along as a result, they fall away. “No fun and not fair. Christ was supposed to gimme happiness, not suffering.”
A truly gracious and charitable spirit will move into that suffering with a meek attitude of surrender.
And this is love.
Love rejoices in the truth – and love bears up under the resultant suffering that comes of it.
Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. (Romans 5:3-5)
What Are You Made Of?
Our little journey on earth is for one purpose only, and it isn’t so we can be healthy and happy little Wemmicks. It’s so we can glorify our Creator. The Bible says that He disciplines those He LOVES. That’s right. If you are being disciplined – guess what? God’s got His eyes on YOU! God has affection for YOU! He’s targeting YOU not because He wants to see you squirm, but because He wants to make you REAL.
Have you ever met a REAL person? Aren’t they the most comfortable, kind, gracious, wise beings that walk on the face of this earth? They are few and far between. And when you meet one, you never forget. They ooze love. They don’t even seem to be aware of themselves. I guarantee they didn’t get that way on their own. And they didn’t get that way because life was peachy. Just ask.
Ask them what God has brought them through. They have been tried in the furnace over and over, and because they’ve surrendered to that furnace as the clay surrenders to the potter’s hand, they have come out as gold.
Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ (Philippians 3:8)
Christ is everything to them. He is the beautiful treasure. Wemmick opinions don’t matter. They love Wemmicks, but God is paramount in their hearts.
…and you will be hated by all for my name’s sake. But the one who endures to the end will be saved. (Matthew 10:22)
Those who hate Christ – will hate those who love Christ. Expect that. But don’t fear Wemmicks. Fear God.
Do not call conspiracy all that this people calls conspiracy, and do not fear what they fear, nor be in dread. But the LORD of hosts, him you shall honor as holy. Let him be your fear, and let him be your dread. (Isaiah 8:12-13)
When God allows us to go through the furnace of affliction, He is testing us to see what we are made of. He is burning off the lesser metals. The gold will remain when the fires die down.
Are you willing to suffer for Him? Are you able to recognize the furnace for what it is? Lovingly prepared for you by His merciful Hands? Can you trust Him to know what He is doing?
We do not have many role models of noble character in our culture today. We do not see many Wemmicks demonstrating how to suffer well. One of the ways I’ve been able to “watch” a person suffer well is through books. Although there are many books I could recommend on this subject, the ones that come to mind first are books that have been written by Elizabeth Prentiss who lived in the 1800′s.
Elizabeth suffered greatly in her life – and loved the Lord with a zeal unmatched by most. When it came time for her to die, she was in raptures at the thought of going to be with Christ at long last. She recovered slightly and felt keen disappointment. Fortunately for her, her recovery was brief, and she finally went to be with the Lover of her soul.
I have learned more from the characters in her books than I have from almost anything else. Every book I have of hers is underlined and dog-eared. I have quotes written in journals from years past. I have tried to get my hands on everything she has written – they are treasures. Here are my favorites:
You can get The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss free HERE. It is a thick book, but full of inspiration and hope in your walk with Christ. Her life is fascinating, and her letters are rich in wisdom even as she goes through deep sorrows.
If you want to read a summary of her life, Wikipedia has an article HERE.
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School and special education leaders wishing to develop and support a special education program quickly discover that the process is filled with many challenges. The NYC Special Education Collaborative provides schools with the training, professional development, resources, support and expert guidance needed to create a successful and compliant program.
In 2011 a consortium of borough-based special education cooperatives were merged into a city-wide membership organization committed to supporting quality education programs for students with disabilities. This organization, the NYC Special Education Collaborative, focuses on assisting schools with starting and operating successful special education programs. The Collaborative currently includes over 125 charter schools in the New York City area with active membership of school leaders, special education directors and coordinators, counselors/social workers and general education staff.
BENEFITS OF MEMBERSHIP
Specific benefit details for all four types of membership are available for download here.
- Program Support
Dedicated hours of support, technical assistance, NYC DOE advocacy and more!
Annual conference admission and seats at mini-conference series with national speakers and more!
- Staff Training
Verbal de-escalation and restraint training, monthly instructional training, counseling staff support, discounts to fee-based training and more!
- Teacher Recruitment
Career fair table and job postings
Common Core IEP goal bank access, access to resource library and more!
If you have questions or wish to discuss the Collaborative’s programming and services, please contact Dixon Deutsch, Executive Director, at 212-437-8300 or dixon@NYCsped.org.
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Apparently the number of drink-driving offenses has increased by 50% over the past five years. Although the police cite increased enforcement for the horrifying increase in numbers, I don’t believe this is entirely true. In 2003, 262 people were killed in road accidents. 191 (73%) were tested for alcohol and 59 (31% of those tested, 23% overall) were over the limit. in 2007, 242 drivers were killed, 196 tested (81%), 56 (29% of those tested, 23% overall) were over the limit. In other words, the proportion of road fatalities in which alcohol may have been a factor has not changed in the five years between 2003 and 2007. The implication being that police action is not reducing the number of drunk drivers.
It may still be that the increase in convictions is due to better police work, but that increase in convictions has not translated into fewer fatalities. It is therefore extremely likely that the extra policing is merely catching more recidivist offenders who then go out and reoffend, despite being fined.
Against this utter disregard for the law exhibited by the reoffenders, the government is considering reducing the blood alcohol limit to 50 mg% (down from the current 80). I have already blogged on the lack of scientific rational for this. Today I merely note that, of the 196 fatalities tested in 2007, only two had blood alcohols between 50 and 80 mg% (and a further two had blood alcohol levels between 30 and 50 mg%). This means that lowering the limit to 50 mg% may reduce the death toll by two. I say may because there is no real way to prove that alcohol was a significant factor in these two deaths.
Interestingly, the comparable figure for 2003 were 5 between 30 and 50 and 5 between 50 and 80 (with 9 between 80 and 100 – down to 3 in 2007). These figures would suggest that there are fewer people driving after drinking, meaning that the adverts and police drink-drinking blitzes are working on “normal” people but having no effect at all on alcoholics. Further reduction of the limit will merely extend this effect rather than stop the recidivists.
So, as far as I can see, the advertising campaigns, large amounts of police time and money and the campaign to reduce the limit are achieving mostly nothing. I reiterate again my call for far more draconian penalties for drink driving and quote my previous post:
“I know I will be called reactionary for this, but it seems plain to me that the answer to drunk driving is not to fiddle with blood alcohol limits. The answer is to get draconian with drunk drivers. I have heard of a person being fined and their license suspended for two years for their sixth offense – an offense that included driving without a license. What was the point of that? Why is drunk driving such a joke to us Kiwis? There is no point in the law being a merepunishment, it needs to be a very scary deterrent.
“First offense: mandatory 6 months in jail, license suspended for five years (laugh that one off!), Alcohol rehab while in jail.
“Second offense: 2 years, license revoked for good. Endorsement on credit rating to make you unable to buy a car on credit.
“Third and subsequent offense: 5 years, Car you were driving confiscated and sold (including the car of anyone foolish enough to lend you one) – any residual moneys goes to victims of drunk drivers fund.
“No home detention, no fines, no PD – just straight jail time. Injuries to other people gets you bumped up a tier (First becomes second offense, second becomes third). Killing someone gets you time for manslaughter (additional 2-5 years) as well as drunk driving charge as per injury.
“Until being a drunk driver is regarded as a crime rather than simply a prattish thing to do, I can’t see we will ever rid ourselves of this scourge to our country. It is obvious that all the expensive TV advertising has been ineffective in changing our thought patterns. Perhaps the heavy hand of the law may do better. ”
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Google+ doesn’t want to become Facebook.
Instead, Google is betting it can become the platform that powers the entire web itself.
The future Internet will not just be driven by social; all things “social” will be what users experience as the web. The release of Google+ is a tactical move in a larger war for this future web – one that Facebook is arguably currently winning. Google, however, is readying its battalions.
Google’s behemoth of a footprint includes the world’s most widely used search engine, a ubiquitous paid search and display platform, the largest video-sharing site in the U.S. and a store of robust, free tools that millions access daily. Google+ is the social glue that will pull the Google forces together to race to become the next Internet – one with social permeating from every action taken by users online. Those forces individually are impressive, but when fully integrated, give Google visibility, integration, and convenience that will be unrivaled. The potential integration of Google+ into Gmail, Google Docs, YouTube, Google Reader, and other user tools is ridiculously impressive. It’s a gathering storm that could take control of the future web.
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Former Alaska legislator Cheryll Heinze died Tuesday night when a float-equipped Cessna 206 that she and four other people were traveling in from Anchorage flipped upon landing in Beluga Lake about 10:30 p.m.
The Homer Fire Department dispatched a boat to the scene, where the plane was underwater. Four of the five passengers were able to safely evacuate with what National Transportation Safety Board investigator Clint Johnson described as minor injuries.
The 65-year-old Heinze, however, was trapped in the submerged aircraft before being extricated by rescue personnel, the Alaska State Troopers said. She didn’t survive.
“From what it sounded like, the plane was under water, and she was trapped inside,” troopers spokeswoman Megan Peters said. “They initiated CPR, and from what I’m told, they were able to get a pulse.”
Heinze died before arriving at an Anchorage hospital for treatment.
According to Homer Fire Chief Robert Painter, multiple EMS and fire crews responded to the crash, with an inflatable Zodiac boat to assist in the rescue. Painter confirmed that four of the five passengers on the plane were able to self-rescue, with two clinging to the floats of the overturned plane in the cold water of Beluga Lake.
Painter said that another plane that saw the accident taxied over to the inverted aircraft, and two other passengers were able to climb onto the floats into the chilly air. The other aircraft then taxied over to shore to drop off the rescued passengers, while two more passengers were picked up by the Zodiac.
That just left Heinze, trapped in the upside-down plane. Painter said that some of the rescuers had ice-rescue suits on, which are buoyant.
"The one victim that was trapped in the plane, they were trying to get her freed up, and one of them had to take off (his) exposure suit to swim below the surface," Painter said. "She was seatbelted in the overturned plane, and they got her out onto the float and began CPR," he said.
They were able to revive Heinze and transport her to South Peninsula Hospital, but she went into cardiac arrest during the medevac flight to Anchorage, Painter said.
Heinze was born in Oklahoma in 1946, before moving to Anchorage from 1951-1954, according to her legislative biography. She returned to Alaska in the mid-1980s, eventually settling in Anchorage, where she had lived since 1989.
Heinze was elected in 2002 as a Republican Representative of State House District 24 in Anchorage. She dropped out of her race for re-election in 2004, citing health issues.
A 2008 Anchorage Daily News article said that Heinze had been under investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation for allegedly soliciting utility jobs while still a legislator, but the investigation didn't lead to anything. Heinze said then that she had never spoken with the FBI in relation to the investigation and denied soliciting any positions from Railbelt utility companyies.
Democratic Rep. Berta Gardner has occupied Heinze's seat since that 2004 election. On Wednesday, Gardner said that she was "deeply saddened" by Heinze's death.
"She was strongly committed to helping people and making Anchorage and our state a better place," Gardner said in a statement. "Cheryll was a very sweet person who worked across party lines to get things done. She was my friend and I will miss her."
Her husband, Harold Heinze, is a former CEO of the Alaska Natural Gas Development Authority who now works for Matanuska Electric Association. Cheryll was director of public affairs for MEA, as well as an artist.
The plane was owned and piloted by 71-year-old Evan "Joe" Griffith, and registered in Eagle River. Joe Griffith is general manager at MEA.
According to Kevin Brown, communications manager at MEA, all five people aboard were employees of the company. They were flying down Tuesday night to go fishing Wednesday, he said. Cheryll's husband was not aboard the plane, Brown said.
MEA released a brief statement Wednesday morning, and Brown called Heinze "an extraordinary human being."
"She was joy in human form," he said. " She loved everybody, she loved what she did."
Johnson said that the NTSB had investigators on the way to the scene Wednesday morning.
Contact Ben Anderson at ben(at)alaskadispatch.com
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Comprehensive DescriptionRead full entry
DescriptionThis native plant is an annual vine up to 25' long that develops multiple lanky stems. This vine can climb over adjacent vegetation and fences using its branched tendrils, otherwise it sprawls across the ground. The stems are light green, round or furrowed, and quite hairy. The alternate leaves are up to 8' long and across (excluding the petioles). They are orbicular-angular with 3-5 shallow lobes and their margins are slightly serrated. The upper surface of each leaf is relatively hairless, while the lower surface is finely pubescent, especially along the lower veins. The petiole of each leaf is up to 5' long; it is light green, rather stout, and quite hairy. The leaf blade is strongly indented at the base where it is connected to the petiole. Occasionally, branched tendrils and racemes of flowers occur oppositely from the alternate leaves along the vine. Bur Cucumber is usually monoecious and produces both staminate (male) and pistillate (female) flowers on the same plant. Each staminate flower has a green calyx with 5 teeth, a greenish white corolla with 5 spreading lobes, and a central column of stamens that is knobby at its apex. The teeth of the calyx are short and broad with recurved tips. The lobes of the corolla have a network of green lines on a white background. The staminate flowers are individually about 1/3' across and they tend to bloom in small clusters toward the apex of the raceme. Each pistillate flower has a large ovary that is enclosed within an ovoid fruit about ½' long. The surface of this fruit is covered with sharp spines and long white hairs; it is initially green, but later turns brown. A single style is exerted from the terminal end of this fruit. The pistillate flowers are bunched together in a short raceme; a typical raceme has 3-10 pistillate flowers. The peduncles and pedicels of both staminate and pistillate racemes are green and pubescent. The blooming period occurs from late summer to early fall and lasts about 3 weeks. There is no noticeable floral scent. Each bur-like fruit contains a single large seed that is brown and flattened; this seed is tapered at one end more than the other and it has a rough surface. The root system consists of a shallow branched taproot. This plant spreads by reseeding itself.
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In what will surely go down as one of the most profoundly satisfying academic studies of the year, sociology professor Laura Hamilton has found that the more money parents pay for their kids' college educations, the worse their kids' grades are. Naturally.
This finding backs the idea that parental financial support can act as a "moral hazard" in that students make decisions about how seriously to take their studies without having personally made the investment of cash in their educations.
The impact of parental contributions on grades was lower (but still present) at highly competitive institutions. Generally the grades were lowest for students with high levels of support from their parents at private, out-of-state and more expensive colleges.
Of course, the kids with rich parents will do better in life regardless.
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Brooklyn Typology is an investigation of the New York borough's population and urban form. The project consists of 2,100 photographs taken in a sample of blockgroups in Brooklyn, plus detailed census, historical, and typological data about the residential and housing in the area. Together, the interlinked photographs and data form a portrait of the urban fabric of Brooklyn.
The project, by Neil Freeman, is both a planning and an art project. Here's what he has to say about the project,
"I gathered census demographics for each block group, historical information on Brooklyn’s development, and made maps to guide me. Overall, this looked very much like the early analysis phases of a planning project.
Soon, I was riding my bike around the borough, visiting each site and photographing it in turn. I wanted to explore the city, visit every neighborhood, and see it from ground level. Once the photography was completed, the photographs and data were edited, collated, and organized onto the website."
It is possible to browse a representative selection of the photographs directly from a Google Map of Brooklyn. Each map marker on the map opens to reveal a photograph of the type of building in that block, information about the population density and details about that neighbourhood.
Via: Digital Urban & Urban Omnibus
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Home Go to Organic Living
Talking with the owners of VASTRA
Vichitraweer Singh and Sofía Salas
Interviewed by Susan Lutz, ATH Editor of Organic Living
Editor's Note from Susan Lutz: The basic theme of "organic" starts with how a something is produced and not just the ingredients that go in it. Hand-made products, such as those crafted by artisans in India and discovered by Vichitrweer Singh and Sofía Salas, are beautiful and support artisans and craft workers to sustain their livelihood. Opening up a world market means connecting with a community of committed retailers. Vichitrweer and Sofía, who own the store VASTRA in Costa Rica, started working for human rights, which lead them on a path of bringing special, hand-made items to a new market. The shirts, tablecloths, and baby slings they've selected are lovely and emit a feeling of serenity, something that can only come from the attention of an artisan's hands. In additiion, they bring to the market several hand-woven pieces that support the environment by not destroying life as it comes to fruition, adding to the quality of not only the product, but also leaving less of a toxic impact behind. Several of the silk lines in the VASTRA store are made by a special silk worm that is left to live in peace rather than boiled (as is the fate of most silk worms). This practice gives a true, organic setting to respecting the cycle of life that gives us so much.
Blue Pottery artisan painting a bowl before it is fired in a traditional kiln.
Originally, blue pottery involved only blue and greenish-blue colors on a white base. Lately, however, it has experimented with other colors such as yellow, dark blue and brown. Location - Jaipur, Capital of Rajasthan, India.
1. Choosing such beautiful clothing as you have in your store, where do you get them from?
Most of the products from our store come from India. VASTRA buys directly from independent artisans and cooperatives from different regions in the country, especially Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Kashmir, Gujarat and Tamil Nadu. We also source from like minded (hand-made) businesses in India that are members of All India Artisans and Craftworkers Welfare Association (AIACA). [AIACA is a "membership-based apex body for the handloom and handicraft sectors. It seeks to represent a range of organizations in these sectors and to engage in policy advocacy activities aimed at increasing the domestic market for handloom and handicraft products along with improving the standard of living of craft workers"]
VASTRA has also been afforded the Craftmark certificate for its hand-embroidery items. Craftmark is an initiative of AIACA to recognize authentic handmade products and procedures. We import directly from India and have traveled extensively to meet artisans and identify new products, and continue to do so.
2. How does choosing handmade products support the makers and artisans?
India has a millinery and vast tradition of handicrafts. We believe that in a world full of mass produced and factory made products, the art of handmaking brings unique and personalized products of the highest quality. By purchasing a handmade product one contributes to supporting the livelihood of artisans and their families and brings recognition to their traditional art. Although many of the artisans throughout India - as occurs in many regions of the world - still use simple, indigenous tools to make their products and live without getting competitive wages for their work, we have encountered well organized and empowered groups of artisans that have gotten rid of intermediaries and are directly managing, selling and promoting their products. In addition, these organizations have a well structured system of assistance for their members in terms of education, medicine and housing. These are the groups VASTRA seeks to buy from. Some of these groups are: Sadhna, UMBVS Urmul, and KASAB, a collective of rural women that brings together over 12,000 members from hundreds of villages.
Undeniably, the retail price of products normally varies significantly from the price set by artisans. We seek to have sustainable margins for our store but keep prices as accessible as we can for others to buy.
Group of women doing chikankari embroidery.
Chikankari is a traditional embroidery that dates back to the 17 century and originated in the court of empress Noor Jahan ( Mughal Dynasty). Chikankari embroidery is mainly done on white fine cotton fabric using white thread. Today colors are also used, as are also different types of fabric. Location - Lucknow, capital of Uttar Pradesh, India.
3. Crops add an undeniable stress to the planet, balancing that stress whenever we can with organic methods such as your silk clothing made from worms that like to live on special trees. Can you explain the process?
VASTRA buys only natural fiber materials which include cotton, linen, silk, wool, viscose and jute. Many of our silk products are made out of tussar silk. This is coarse silk generated by the silkworm (Antheraea mylitta) which are not bred on mulberry trees but whose cocoons are collected from local trees like Sal, Arjun and Saja. It is less expensive than cultivated silk. Some of the Tussar silk that is made today is called "non-violent silk, or Ahimsa Silk", since it is extracted from the cocoon after the silkworm larvae has left it. In those processes where the cocoon with the larvae is boiled, the dead worm inside the cocoon is often sold as fertilizer and food for birds.
India produces the bulk of the world’s production of Tussar silk. Most of Indian tussar comes from the poor states of Bihar and Jharkhand. For the locals there (mostly tribal people), sericulture is one of the most viable income generation options available. Tussar is valued for its texture and natural gold colour. Both spun and reeled thread is used for weaving. In tussar weave, both warp and weft are silk threads. The spun thread is spun by hand only.
4. What is the difference between this silk and the usual silk found in most manufacturing?
Tussar silk is a wild silk. This differentiates it from other types of silks, in which the silkworms are fed mulberry leaves in conventional silk farms. Also, in conventional sericulture, the cocoons are normally boiled with the larvae still inside. In Ahimsa silk manufacture (a common type of tussar silk), the cocoons are boiled after the larvae have left them.
Artisan printing cloth with elaborately carved wooden blocks.
A different block is needed for each color in the design. Good printing skill and practice is necessary to get uniform and clear block printing. Location: Kutch, region in Gujarat, India .
Hand Block Printing - One of the oldest known techniques for printing fabric. Hand block printing involves laying the cloth/fabric, which is to be printed, on flat tables and impressions are made using elaborately carved blocks. Traditionally natural and vegetable sources were used for dyes. Nowadays, however, the ease of usage and the availability of synthetic dyes have replaced the vegetable dye in many cases.
5. Besides clothing, you have some other products such as rugs and blankets. How are these made?
VASTRA carries natural fiber rugs made out of jute and sea grass. We also carry wool rugs made in Kashmir, north part of India. All of our rugs are hand-woven. As part of our home furnishing items, we also have hand-woven cotton towels, tablecloths and bedcovers. Some of our tablecloths and bedcovers are also hand painted by the usage of wooden blocks. Our clothes are either made of 100% cotton, linen or silk, or a combination of them. They are either hand-woven, hand block painted or hand embroidered. In cotton, we also carry "khadi", which is a hand-spun and hand-woven cotton widely used in India and which supports the livelihood of thousands of village people.
VASTRA also has hand-woven products made from recycled materials such as newspapers. They come in different colors and designs and include coasters, tablemats, earrings, and pencil holders.
6. What is the consciousness that you would like your products to project?
We would like our products to project the unique and intrinsic value of a handmade product. To create a handmade product of high quality is a skill that requires years of experience and dedication. It's a tradition and it's art. We would like our customers to understand that by buying a handmade product, they contribute to support the livelihood of artisans and their families and bring recognition to their traditional art.
Skilled artisan crafting a design on a wooden block.
Wood Block Carving - The design is first drawn on wood using a sharp needle before it is carved with a chisel, hammer, file and nails. Carving the blocks by hand is a different skill from printing the fabric with the wooden blocks. Location: Jaipur, capital of Rajasthan, India.
7. How do you see that by supporting small artisans we can not only shift the focus from using toxic plastics and products, but we can support a more sustainable lifestyle for others and how is the issue of human rights tied to the issue of organic living?
Human rights and organic living are both very broad concepts, often hard to define. Yet, both of them are intrinsic to any human being. Regarding their link:
The right to life and a healthy standard of living, as well as the right to work, to education and food are just some of the basic human rights that play a very important role when talking about fair trade and artisans. Why? Firstly, it is essential to understand that the handicraft tradition has and continues to sustain generations of people across the globe. India is a clear example of this. By preserving and supporting such sectors (i.e. having artisans themselves establish their fair wages and prices, giving craftworkers the opportunity to connect to mainstream markets, recognizing genuine handicrafts, raising consumer awareness of handicraft procedures and traditions and its uniqueness, etc), one contributes to having people whose lives depend on craftwork meet their basic human rights.
Human rights are linked to integral/organic living since without the first, the second would not be possible.
Many of the small artisans we work with use natural fibers and dyes instead of synthetic ones. This contributes to a conscious use of resources that are not only 100% natural but aesthetically beautiful and benign.
8. Why did you choose Costa Rica as a destination?
While working in eastern Nepal during 2007-2009, we met different artisan communities and groups and immediately got interested in their work and stories. This triggered our idea to quit our jobs in order to open a handmade store. We chose Costa Rica as destination as it is the home country of Sofia, one of the owners. We thought it would be great if people from "the West" could have access - at fair prices and not at boutique unaffordable ones - to high quality products from India and Nepal, countries that are still unknown to large extent by many in Latin America. It was also a way of bringing our two homes (India and Costa Rica) together. Our wish is that beyond buying, our customers may learn about traditional craft processes in other parts of the world and to trigger their interest in the art of handmade.
9. What are your hopes for not only your vision but that of our future?
In today's world of consumerism, where anything and everything sells, we believe that bringing in quality handmade products at a competitive price as opposed to mass produced products can contribute to better living conditions of talented artisans and craftworkers.
In relation to our future, we would like to fund projects in the artisan communities that we work with related to marketing strategies and product design and innovation. This will help the artisan communities to economically prosper and, at the same time, it will bring recognition to their tradition and craft. If VASTRA grows, we plan to bring in products from artisan communities around the world including Latin America.
Note: These photos come from our travel in India and the artisan groups from whom we purchase. We carry hand block printed products (garments and home furnishing), blue pottery, and Chikankari embroidered garments and tablecloth.
Please "Add a Comment" at the bottom of this page or blog in our Forum here.
Please do not use apostrophes in your comments.
About Vichitraweer and Sofía
Vichitraweer Singh - commercial pilot and historian with postgraduate degree in human rights, Indian, residing in Costa Rica since Nov 2009, email: firstname.lastname@example.org Former jobs: NGO sector in/outside India, work related to HIV/TB awareness, microcredit, IT and education and refugees.
Sofía Salas - lawyer with postgraduate degree in human rights, Costa Rican, email: email@example.com. Former jobs: International Organization for Migration. Work related to resettlement of refugees from different nationalities and international migration law.
We both worked with Bhutanese refugees in Damak, Nepal from 2007-2009 before returning to Costa Rica to start our handmade store project.
Guachipelin de Escazu
600m N del Bac San Jose
A look inside VASTRA (right)
What does VASTRA have to offer.....Look Below!
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The Big Lab Experiment
Was our universe created by design?
Was our universe created? That is, was it brought into being by an entity with a mind? This is a question I began pondering after my recent inquiry into the end of the universe. (For some reason, cosmic mysteries are best contemplated in pairs.) It is the fundamental issue that separates religious believers, ranging from Deists to Gnostics to Southern Baptists, from nonbelievers. To many atheists, the very idea that our world could have been created by a conscious being seems downright nutty. How could anyone, even a god, "make" a universe?
To get a better understanding of this matter, I thought it might be wise to consult the man who has done more than anyone else to explain how our universe got going. His name is Andrei Linde, and he is a physicist at Stanford University. (He's also an artist and an acrobat, but never mind.) In the early 1980s, the then-thirtysomething Linde came up with a novel theory of the Big Bang that answered three vexing questions: What banged? Why did it bang? And what was going on before it banged? Linde's theory, called "chaotic inflation," explained the shape of space and how galaxies were formed. It also predicted the exact pattern of background radiation from the Big Bang that was observed by the COBE satellite in the 1990s. Linde has been amply honored for his achievement, most recently by being awarded the 2004 Cosmology Prize of the Peter Gruber Foundation (along with Alan Guth, another pioneer of the theory of cosmic inflation).
Among the many curious implications of Linde's theory, one stands out for our present purposes: It doesn't take all that much to create a universe. Resources on a cosmic scale are not required. It might even be possible for someone in a not terribly advanced civilization to cook up a new universe in a laboratory. Which leads to an arresting thought: Could that be how our universe came into being?
"When I invented chaotic inflation theory, I found that the only thing you needed to get a universe like ours started is a hundred-thousandth of a gram of matter," Linde told me in his Russian-accented English when I reached him by phone at Stanford. "That's enough to create a small chunk of vacuum that blows up into the billions and billions of galaxies we see around us. It looks like cheating, but that's how the inflation theory works—all the matter in the universe gets created from the negative energy of the gravitational field. So, what's to stop us from creating a universe in a lab? We would be like gods!"
Linde, it should be said, is famous for his mock-gloomy manner, and these words were laced with irony. But he insisted that this genesis-in-a-lab scenario was feasible, at least in principle. "What my theoretical argument shows—and Alan Guth and others who have looked at this matter have come to the same conclusion—is that we can't rule out the possibility that our own universe was created in a lab by someone in another universe who just felt like doing it."
It struck me that there was a hitch in this scheme. If you started off a Big Bang in a lab, wouldn't the baby universe you created expand into your own universe, killing people and crushing buildings and so forth? Linde assured me that there was no such danger. "The new universe would expand into itself," he said. "Its space would be so curved that it would look as tiny as an elementary particle. In fact, it might end up disappearing altogether from the world of its creator."
But why bother making a universe if it's going to run away from you? Wouldn't you want to have some power over how your creation unfolded, some way of making sure the beings that evolved in it turned out well? Linde's picture was as unsatisfying as Voltaire's idea of a creator who established our universe but then took no further interest in it or its creatures.
"You've got a point," Linde said. "At first I imagined that the creator might be able to send information into the new universe—to teach its creatures how to behave, to help them discover what the laws of nature are, and so forth. Then I started thinking. The inflation theory says that a baby universe blows up very quickly, like a balloon, in the tiniest fraction of a second. Suppose the creator tried to write something on it surface, like 'Please remember I created you.' The inflationary expansion would make this message exponentially huge. The creatures in the new universe, living in a little corner of one letter, would never be able to read the whole thing."
But then Linde thought of another channel of communication between creator and creation—the only one possible, as far as he could tell. The creator, by manipulating the cosmic seed in the right way, has the power to ordain certain physical parameters of the universe he ushers into being. So says the theory. He can determine, for example, what the numerical ratio of the electron's mass to the proton's will be. Such ratios, called constants of nature, look like arbitrary numbers to us: There is no obvious reason they should take one value rather than another. (Why, for instance, is the strength of gravity in our universe determined by a number with the digits 6673?) But the creator, by fixing certain values for these dozens of constants, could write a subtle message into the very structure of the universe. And, as Linde hastened to point out, such a message would be legible only to physicists.
"You might take this all as a joke," he said, "but perhaps it is not entirely absurd. It may be the explanation for why the world we live in is so weird. On the evidence, our universe was created not by a divine being, but by a physicist hacker."
Linde's theory gives scientific muscle to the notion of a universe created by an intelligent being. It might be congenial to Gnostics, who believe that the material world was fashioned not by a benevolent supreme being but by an evil demiurge. More orthodox believers, on the other hand, will seek refuge in the question, "But who created the physicist hacker?" Let's hope it's not hackers all the way up.
Jim Holt is a longtime contributor to The New Yorker—where he has written on string theory, time, infinity, numbers, truth, and bullshit, among other subjects—and the author of Stop Me If You’ve Heard This. He is also a frequent contributor to the New York Times. He lives in Greenwich Village, New York City.
Illustration by Mark Alan Stamaty.Photograph of the ring galaxy on Slate's home page by Reuters.
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3/14 is Pie it Forward Day!
What is Pie it Forward Day, you ask?
- It’s March 14th. 3.14 = pi
- It is a day that encourages people to bake a pie for someone who needs a smile and in turn, they would also Pie it Forward.
- It is also an introduction to a new and gorgeous cookbook that’s just been released by Gesine Bullock-Prado, Pie It Forward: Pies, Tarts, Tortes, Galettes, and Other Pastries Reinvented.
Although it’s Pie day, I thought I’d do something a little different and instead try this French inspired pastry AND reiterate and emphasize that this book includes pies, tarts, tortes, galettes and other pastries that have been reinvented. So in honor of Pie it Forward, I’m dedicating this post and the Apple Tarte Tatins I made from Gesine’s new book to three very special women in my life:
- Jaz – Who retired 3 months ago and instead of being able to enjoy retirement has been battling a serious eye infection all these months.
- IZ – Who is sometimes left paralyzed by recurring nerve damages to both her back and wrist.
- Nessa – Because she’s always stressing about something and just needs to taste this awesome Apple Tarte Tatin!
Pie it Forward
The author includes plenty of tips and insight to make pie life easier and an invaluable section on crusts. Because let’s face it, the crust can make or break the goodness that is a homemade pie, right? From an All-Butter Pie Dough to Puff Pastry and even Pizza Dough, this is a section not to skim over lightly.
It’s a colorful, hard-cover book that’s laid out well and easy to follow as you embark into the world of pie making with the basics, sweet pies, and savory pies. The book includes the gorgeous photography of one of my favorite food photographers, Tina Rupp. There are Sweetie Pie Notes throughout the book and color-coded sections and text for friendly reading. There is a section on Master Recipes that I’m looking forward to experiment with as Gesine has shared tasty options for pastry creams (flavors like Green Tea Pastry Cream and Salted Caramel!).
One thing I would’ve liked, that I appreciate in my cookbooks, is a Contents page so that at a glance at the beginning of the book OR at the start of each section I can run down the list of which recipes are included.
I loved this open-faced pie! It’s called a tarte tatin and the apples have been cooked in butter, vanilla and sugar. The apple juices form a lovely caramel/sugary syrup and you bake this with a blanket of puff pastry over the top. Not only does it smell heavenly when baking, it’s a beautiful spectacle as you pull it from the oven and behold the transformation of puff pastry. After allowing it to slightly cool then inverting the tarte tatin to expose the cooked underside of apples, you’ll be anxious to quickly cut a slice or two to sample it’s perfectly textured, buttery crust and sweetness that are the cooked apples. C’est magnifique!
- Didn’t have a 10-inch ovenproof skillet so used an 8-inch ovenproof skillet + 2 5-inch skillets to make a couple of smaller tarte tatins. Started cooking the apples and caramel in the larger skillet and transferred some of the syrup to each of the smaller skillets and lined with smaller cut apples. Bake time was 20 minutes at 375 degrees.
- While you’re preparing the apples (peeling, coring and cutting), fill a large pot with cold water and squeeze lemon into the water. As you’ve prepared each apple, place the slices in the water to delay browning of the cut fruit. Be sure to drain the water and lightly pat the fruit dry before adding to brown sugar/syrup.
- Place the ovenproof skillet on a foil-lined, rimmed baking sheet when transferring to the oven. This will make it easier to rotate and remove from the oven, PLUS it will avoid the juices that can overflow from the tarte tatin from bubbling and dripping in your oven.
- Rotate the tart/tarts halfway-through baking time for even browning.
- For presentation and texture purposes: After you’ve inverted the baked pastry, you can return the tarte tatin back to the oven and set to broil to slightly brown the top of the apples. Do not leave unattended – take care to watch it as it’s on broil and remove immediately when it starts to bubble and caramelize in color.
- Added a couple teaspoons of vanilla extract to the whipped cream before whipping into submission!
Makes a 10-inch tart
Kitchen Tools: A 10-inch ovenproof skillet
8 ounces Puff Pastry
10 tart apples, such as Granny Smith, cored, peeled and cut into quarters
juice of 1 lemon
1/2 cup unsalted butter
1 teaspoon vanilla bean paste or vanilla extract
1 cup brown sugar, firmly packed
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 cups heavy cream, whipped for serving
- Roll puff pastry into a rough 11-inch round, dock it and refrigerate for at least 20 minutes.
- Place prepared apples in a large pot or bowl that’s filled with water. Squeeze lemon juice in the water and set aside.
- In a 10-inch ovenproof skillet (I used my cast-iron skillet for this), melt the butter with the vanilla over low heat. Sprinkle in the brown sugar and salt and continue stirring until the sugar has melted.
- Arrange the apples symmetrically in the skillet, spacing them as closely as possible so there are few gaps. You won’t be able to fit all the apples in, but as the apples cook they will shrink as they release their juices. Whenever you see a gap between the apples, add more slices of apple so that you are left with a packed layer of apples with little or no space between the pieces.
- Cook until the sugar turns golden brown OR the apples are turning tender. This should take about 30-45 minutes. Set the skillet aside to cool for 15 minutes.
- Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Place the round of puff pastry over the apples. Tuck the excess dough around the edges, between the skillet and the apples.
- Place the skillet on a foil-lined rimmed baking sheet and bake tart for 30 minutes (rotate the pan half-way during baking time), or until the pastry has browned and is fully cooked through.
- While the tart is baking, place the whipped cream in a stand mixer and beat on high until the whipped cream thicken into desired consistency. Transfer to a serving bowl and refrigerate until ready to serve with the Apple Tarte Tatin.
- Let the tart cool for about 15 minutes. The caramel syrup on the bottom of the pan needs time to thicken and set…but you don’t want it to cool so much that the apples stick (if this happens, gently warm the pan over low heat on your stove top to loosen them).
- CAREFULLY, invert onto a large serving plate (take care here and caution as the juices are hot and may splatter when flipping over).
Serve tart with a dollop or two of your homemade whipped cream!
Store leftovers in the refrigerator to help prevent the crust from becoming soggy from the juices.
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-- File -- A deer looks up from grazing in a sun-drenched field. (AP Photo/Toby Talbot)
Updated: Wednesday, 02 Jan 2013, 6:50 AM EST
Published : Wednesday, 02 Jan 2013, 6:50 AM EST
NEW HAVEN, Conn. (AP) — Federal agriculture officials are going to extraordinary lengths, including the use of shotguns, to get deer off runways at Tweed New Haven Regional Airport.
The New Haven Register reports that the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which has worked with Tweed to reduce threats from birds, has boosted its work since deer was killed by a plane in September.
The agency is using firework-like explosives to scare animals from the airport and using sharpshooters to selectively remove deer. By mid-December, the Agriculture Department says it took 23 deer off airport property in 2012.
Coyotes and wild turkeys also have been seen on Tweed property.
Dennis Schain, a spokesman for the state Department of Energy and Environmental Policy, said plans are in the works for a fence to keep dear from reaching the runway.
Information from: New Haven Register
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Monday, May 29, 2006
Bamboo grew overnight in the Luxembourg gardens
It's fascinating to see how Bamboos - and Palm trees - have become so popular recently in Paris although the climate is not really adapted to that kind of plants (it's not humid and it can get pretty cold in winter). The latest evidence of this sudden climate change is this bamboo forest that they planted (in pots) almost overnight about a week ago. They also spread little blue rocks on the ground and the overall effect is really worth the look.
PS: I am just back from a week-end in Provence and I did not pay too much attention to the news there. I found out yesterday about the earthquake in Indonesia. All the City Daily Photo bloggers immediately thought of Santy from Jakarta Daily Photo.
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We often refer to ourselves as professionals. The intermediate level assessment for Scrum Masters asks, “Do you view software development as a profession?” Resoundingly, the answer is “yes.” Many reasons are given, mostly focusing around our techniques, the titles of the various skill sets, and the criticality of the applications that we build. Our customers count on us.
But, I was less than convinced. If we were a profession, how could I tell if one person was acting professionally, and another was not? What was an unprofessional act? Something that was not transparent? Cutting quality? Not refactoring design when enhancements were added? I struggled with the question.
I link to some discussion of professions from Wikipedia below. If these criteria were applied to people selling their services as software developers, then I would have a minimum expectation. I could expect that they were educated in a certain curricula, had apprenticed with an accepted professional somehow, and had passed an initial set of tests. I also would know that there was a formal licensing body that established and maintained these criteria. Finally, I would have confidence that the person had to periodically reassert his or her qualifications to continue his or her participation in the profession. I would know this because the professional would have a license from a professional body.
I again raise the question: Are we professionals? If yes, how do we fit the below descriptions, or are they wrong? If not, what are we?
Formation of a profession
A profession arises when any trade or occupation transforms itself through “the development of formal qualifications based upon education, apprenticeship, and examinations, the emergence of regulatory bodies with powers to admit and discipline members, and some degree of monopoly rights.”
Main article: Professional body
Professions are typically regulated by statute, with the responsibilities of enforcement delegated to respective professional bodies, whose function is to define, promote, oversee, support and regulate the affairs of its members. These bodies are responsible for the licensure of professionals, and may additionally set examinations of competence and enforce adherence to an ethical code of practice. However, they all require that the individual hold at least a first professional degree before licensure. There may be several such bodies for one profession in a single country, an example being the accountancy bodies (ACCA, ICAEW, ICAI, ICAS, CIPFA, AAPA, CIMA, IFA, CPA) of the United Kingdom, all of which have been given a Royal Charter although not necessarily considered to hold equivalent-level qualifications.
Typically, individuals are required by law to be qualified by a local professional body before they are permitted to practice in that profession. However, in some countries, individuals may not be required by law to be qualified by such a professional body in order to practice, as is the case for accountancy in the United Kingdom (except for auditing and insolvency work which legally require qualification by a professional body). In such cases, qualification by the professional bodies is effectively still considered a prerequisite to practice as most employers and clients stipulate that the individual hold such qualifications before hiring their services.
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Legal capacity and proxy decision making
Issues surrounding the loss of legal capacity
Article 189 of the Civil Code states that:
- A major who is in a state of imbecility or other mental infirmity or is prodigal, may be interdicted or incapacitated from doing certain acts, as provided in articles 520 to 527 inclusive, of the Code of Organization and Civil Procedure”
According to article 524 of the Code of Organization and Civil Procedure:
- If no sufficient cause for the interdiction is made to appear, it shall be lawful for the court by a decree to order, if the circumstances of the case so require, that the person whose interdiction is demanded be incapacitated from suing or being sued, from effecting any compromise, borrowing any money, receiving any capital, giving a discharge, transferring or hypothecating his property, or performing any act other than an act of mere administration, without the aid of a curator to be appointed in the same decree.
- It shall also be lawful for the court, if it deems it necessary, to incapacitate any person from performing all or any of the acts of mere administration, entrusting the performance thereof to a curator in such manner as the court may deem fit to direct.
This means that interdiction is a higher degree of deprivation of legal competence that comprehensively covers both personal and property issues. Incapacitation, on the other hand, is applicable for certain acts or categories of acts.
Consequently, interdiction and incapacitation could be described as two different degrees of deprivation of legal competence, the former being more comprehensive and far reaching than the latter.
Proxy decision making
During the process of interdiction or incapacitation, the court may decide to appoint a tutor or a curator. The provisions relating to the tutorship of minors apply to the curatorship of people who have been interdicted (insofar as they are applicable). The tutorship of minors is covered by articles in 159 to 192 of the Civil Code.
Conditions for appointment of a guardian
A tutor is appointed by the court on the demand of any person (159 (1) of the Civil Code).
Who can be a guardian
According to article 160 of the Civil Code, the tutor must be a competent person chosen firstly from amongst relatives, with priority given to the closest blood relative. The person’s best interests must always be borne in mind.
Article 161 of the Civil Code may also be applicable to adults with incapacity. It states:
- It shall be lawful for the court to appoint more than one tutor.
- Where more than one tutor have been appointed the court may at any time, either of its own motion or upon the demand of any of the tutors, specify their respective duties; and, until such time as particular duties shall have been assigned to each of them, each of the tutors shall have all the powers and duties of a tutor, and they shall all be jointly and severally liable for the acts of each of them.
- Where any of the tutors dies or otherwise ceases to be tutor, the tutorship shall be exercised by the other tutor or tutors unless the court, of its own motion or upon the demand of any person shall have appointed another tutor in his stead.
According to article 163 of the Civil Code, the following cannot be appointed tutors:
- (a) persons who have not attained majority;
- (b) persons who are not vested with the free administration of their property or who are notoriously incompetent to administer property;
- (c) persons who are or are about to be, or whose spouse or relatives by consanguinity or affinity up to the degree of uncle and nephew, are, or are about to be involved in a lawsuit with the minor, in which the status of such minor, or a considerable part of his property is at stake;
- (d) undischarged bankrupts;
- (e) persons who have been sentenced to the punishment of imprisonment for a term exceeding one year, or to any punishment for an offence affecting the good order of families, or for fraud;
- (f) persons who are of a notoriously bad character, or manifestly untrustworthy or negligent;
- (g) persons who are trustees of property for the benefit of the minor (person with incapacity).”
The duties and responsibilities of guardians
The tutor is responsible for the care of the person with incapacity and for representing him/her in all civil matters, and administering his/her property as a bonus paterfamilias (i.e. a good head of the family) (article 172).
How the financial affairs of the ward are handled
The court may decide that any precious articles, money or securities be deposited in a place specially designated for such articles or alternatively in another safe place, but may at any time decide on alternative arrangements for the money and securities (article 178).
Article 180 further stipulates that it shall not be lawful for the tutor, without the authority of the court, to:
- collect or transfer any capital belonging to the adult with incapacity,
- take money on loan except in case of urgency,
- accept or renounce any inheritance,
- accept any donation or legacy subject to any burden,
- refer any matter to arbitration or effect any compromise, or alienate, hypothecate, or make any emphyteutical grant of immovable property, or let out property for a time exceeding eight years, in the case of rural property, or four years, in the case of urban property, or the ordinary time according to usage, in the case of movables.
When a tutor requests authorization to accept an inheritance on behalf of the ward, the court may decide to allow the tutor to make a description of the property contained in the inheritance instead of making an inventory (as required under article 848), provided that the tutor makes a sworn oath as to its authenticity (article 180.2).
Where a lease has been granted for a longer period of time than that stated in article 180.1, the term shall be reduced to the duration stipulated in article 180.1 with effect from the date of the contract (article 180.3).
At the time of appointment of the tutor (or later, in a subsequent decree), the court may grant the tutor a general authority in respect to all or any of the above-mentioned acts (article 180.4).
According to article 181(1), the tutor shall, after deducting necessary expenses for the ward, profitably invest any income or other money, amounting to more than EUR 116.47, which s/he collects.
Measures to protect the ward from misuse of power
Before appointing a person as tutor, the court orders the future tutor to make an inventory of the future ward’s property or, depending on the circumstances, a description of the property (sworn on oath to be authentic) and to mortgage his/her own property up to a certain amount. The future tutor is also ordered to manage the property of the person with incapacity properly and on termination of his/her office to render a true and faithful account of his/her administration (article 167.1). Alternatively, the court may decide that someone else carries out the afore-mentioned inventory or description (article 167.2).
Tutors must keep a book of receipts and administrative costs. Their accounts should include receipts for any expenses of a considerable amount. The accounts book, if sworn on oath by the tutor to be authentic, shall serve as sufficient proof of small expenses (article 182.1-3).
Suspension or removal of the tutor
The court may suspend or remove from office any tutor or curator for various reasons outlined in article 163.b-f, for failure to submit accounts, for false accounts or for any other valid reason (article 169.1).
Complaint to a competent court in case of neglect or abuse
If a tutor abuses his/her authority or neglects to fulfill his/her duties, anybody may lodge a complaint on behalf of the person with incapacity and the court shall give a warning to the tutor or take any other appropriate measures (article 175.2).
Compensation and liability of guardians
According to article 523 (3) of the Code of Organization and Civil Procedure, the curator may at the time of appointment or later ask the court for remuneration. When making a decision, the court takes into account the nature of the services to be provided and the property of the person who is interdicted.
Tutors may only be credited with such expenses as are considered useful or, with respect to the position and the means of the person with incapacity, customary” (article 182.4).
A tutor who does not profitably invest the ward’s income shall be liable to pay interest unless s/he can prove that s/he took all due care but did not succeed in securing a profitable and safe investment (article 181.2). Similarly, a tutor is liable for any loss occasioned by his/her failure to take the necessary precautions that a good head of family (bonus paterfamilias) would be expected to take when making the investment (articles 181.2 and 181.3).
Duration of guardianship
According to article 183 (1), when the tutor ends his/her term of office, for any reason, s/he shall render his/her accounts to his/her successor in the office of tutor. If the person with incapacity dies during the tutorship, the accounts shall be rendered to his/her heirs (article 183.2).
If the tutorship terminates for any of the reasons mentioned in article 158, the accounts shall be rendered to the person who was under such tutorship (article 184).
Any balance which may be due by the tutor shall bear interest ipso jure (i.e. by the law itself) from the day of termination of the tutorship (article 185.1).
Article 183 (2) also states that the interest on any sum that the ward may owe the tutor shall only start to be calculated from the day on which a request for payment is made by the tutor after the termination of his/her office and by means of a judicial act.
Continuing powers of attorney
Continuing powers of attorney are not used in Malta and would not be considered as legally valid documents.
Capacity in specific domains
Marriage and divorce
According to the Marriage Act of 1975, a person who is subject to tutorship may not validly contract a marriage without the consent of the tutor (article 3). If either of the partners contracting the marriage is incapable of contracting “by reason of infirmity of mind”, whether interdicted or not, the marriage will be considered void (article 4).
Either of the partners may take action to have the marriage annulled even if that person is not considered capable by law to sue or be sued. Such action, once initiated, may be continued by any of the heirs (article 19.2).
Divorce is not possible in Malta (Scerri, 2008). Annulment is different to divorce as it implies that the marriage was void from the beginning.
Article 54 of the Malta Constitution stipulates that a person cannot be qualified to be elected as a member of the House of Representatives if s/he is “interdicted or incapacitated for any mental infirmity .../… or is otherwise determined in Malta to be of unsound mind.” Similarly, a person who is interdicted or incapacitated for any mental infirmity by a court in Malta or is otherwise determined in Malta to be of unsound mind, is not qualified to register as a voter for the election of members of the House of Representatives (article 58).
Capacity to work
If a person employs someone for a job or service who is not competent or if s/he does not have sufficient grounds to consider that person competent, s/he shall be liable for any damage that that person causes to others through incompetence in carrying out the job or service (article 1037 of the Civil Code).
A person who is interdicted or incapacitated is not capable of contracting, and any contract entered into by a person who does not have the use of reason is considered null (articles 967 and 968 of the Civil Code). However, a person who is capable of contracting cannot claim nullity of a contract on the grounds that the other contracting party did not have such capacity (article 973).
Any person not subject to incapacity under the provisions of the Civil Code may dispose of or receive property by will (article 596 of the Civil Code). However, those who are interdicted on the grounds of insanity, and those who are not of sound mind at the time of the will, are considered incapable of making wills (article 597).
A will made by a person subject to incapacity is considered null, even if the incapacity ceased before that person’s death (article 599).
A person who is officially responsible for someone of unsound mind may be considered liable for any damage caused by the latter, if s/he fails to exercise due care and attention in order to prevent the act (article 1034 of the Civil Code). It is explained in article 1035 that people of unsound mind are not obliged to make good any damage caused to third parties unless they acted mischievously. Nevertheless, if injured parties cannot recover damages from those responsible for the person who caused the damage, the court may order damages to be paid either partly or in full from the property of the person of unsound mind (article 1036).
According to article 33 of the Criminal Law a person is exempt from criminal responsibility if at the time of the act or omission of which s/he is accused, such person was in a state of insanity.
Insofar as interdiction is concerned (i.e. where a person has been deprived of any legal capacity), there is no doubt that s/he is exempt from criminal responsibility. However, in cases where a person has only been declared incapable, criminal responsibility is assessed on a case by case basis.
Last Updated: mercredi 28 mars 2012
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In the five years since the General Assembly approved Rhode Island's medical marijuana law, licensed smokers have operated in a sort of smoke-filled netherworld.
Without a legal place to buy pot, they've been forced to purchase it on the street, grow it themselves, or find friends or strangers willing to grow for them — "caregivers" under state statute.
This underground economy has been occasionally scary (think cancer patients skulking around darkened street corners for weed), sometimes less than law-abiding (more than a few sanctioned patients and caregivers have ventured into the, um, unsanctioned), and often unreliable.
But it has also spawned a culture of committed, DIY growers who have taught patients the arts of cultivation and provided ounce upon ounce of free or low-cost bud to those in need.
The medical Mary Jane movement has been a messy, grassroots, colorful affair. And for better or for worse, it's about to change. In a big way.
The Rhode Island Department of Health is weighing 18 applications for non-profit medical marijuana dispensaries — sizable salaries allowed, but corporate profits barred. And it is expected to approve up to three of the "compassion centers" early next month.
If the applications for the new facilities are any guide, the medical marijuana movement will soon enter a whole new phase: think cooking lessons (mmm . . . brownies), yoga classes, and state-of-the-art security systems.
Medical pot, long a furtive exercise, is going mainstream.
Patients and advocates welcome the shift, by and large. But there is a touch of ambivalence:
Will compassion-center weed be too expensive? Amid talk of tens of millions in revenue, will the movement go corporate? And whither the mom-and-pop growers — and the culture they have cultivated?
The medical marijuana movement is in flux. And the transition story is, perhaps, best told through the tales of those on the front line.
Here are a few:
MARIJUANA MINISTRY Pastor Erik outside his church.
Just after 6 am on September 14, the West Warwick police burst into an old church on Providence Street and rousted Erik Johansson and his girlfriend Lydia Brindamour from bed.
Found on the premises: 183 marijuana plants, several bags of soil and fertilizer, a metal tub with a motorized system for trimming leaves, an extensive overhead lighting network, a Remington 12-gauge shotgun, and $565 in cash.
For the cops — and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, which later filed federal charges against the couple for conspiring to manufacture over 100 marijuana plants and manufacturing over 100 marijuana plants — this was evidence of a criminal enterprise.
For Johansson, Rhode Island's self-styled marijuana minister, it was the raw material of a "true community" — something "beautiful" and "awesome." And for the rest of us, Pastor Erik's demise is a lesson in the promise and perils of medical marijuana's underground period.
Johansson's story is a little difficult to piece together. The preacher is tight-lipped about some of the inner workings of his ministry. And the authorities, with the case pending, are similarly reticent.
But Johansson, 47, says it all started about four years ago when he got a call from a Good Samaritan type in Florida saying that his father was sick, talking suicide, and — generally speaking — a mess.
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Treatment To Prevent HIV Spread
Up until now, many studies have been made in order to find ways of preventing the HIV from spreading.
According to a new research, it seems that this is possible now, thanks to a combination of drugs. “This is an extremely exciting finding for the field of HIV prevention,” said Dr. Jared Baeten, co-chair of one study and a University of Washington. From what it seems, giving antiretroviral to heterosexuals who find themselves at high risks of HIV infection can significantly decrease their chances of developing AIDS.
The study was based on two trials which were made in Africa. In one of the trials, a daily dose of Truvada significantly reduced the risk of contracting HIV from an infected partner by 63 percent. The other trail showed that both Viread and Truvada, two different treatments, worked as well in matters of preventing the spreading of the virus. Previous research showed that the treatment with antiretroviral was very effective in the prevention of HIV among gay and bisexual men, but up until now there was no proof that these treatments may work among heterosexuals as well.
According to the researchers involved in the study, it seems that if heterosexuals started the treatment with antiretrovirals as soon as they are diagnosed with HIV and their immune system is still somewhat healthy, they could prevent their partners from contracting the virus almost by 90 percent, which is fairly good news.
This new study was conducted by the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) and the Botswana Ministry of Health. What the researchers involved in the study did was to recruit 1,219 HIV-negative people and start them on treatments with antiretrovirals or dummy pills. Plus, the people involved were also given other measures of prevention, such as condoms and they were also engaged into counseling and testing. What the researchers observed was that by the end of the study, those people who had taken the antiretroviral pills (Truvada mostly) had risks reduced by 62.6 percent in what concerns the spreading of the virus to their partners. Furthermore, it seems that for those who continued taking the pills, the risks lower even further, being reduced by 77.9 percent. Although some people taking Truvada reported nausea, dizziness and vomiting, the pill does not pose great health risks and that is very promising. Given that the pill has been reported very soon to be so effective, the CDC released the information sooner than was planned.
Another trial was made in Kenya and Uganda, where 4,758 couples were recruited and they were assigned to start treatment with Viread, Truvada or a placebo. Given that all the couples involved in the study had a partner who had tested positive for HIV, the pills seemed to work very well, as only 78 HIV infection occurred while people were following the Viread treatment, only 18 for people who were following the Truvada treatment, while 47 occurred for people who were on placebo pills. The risk of developing HIV for people who were following the treatment with Viread was lowered by 62 percent, while for those on Truvada; it was lowered by 72 percent.
According to the researchers involved in the studies, it seems that the main concern today in matters of HIV problems is to deliver successful prevention measures for people who are most in need. Based on this new research, the CDC is working on new strategies to help people better prevent the spread of the virus. The most important thing now is to identify all the people with HIV and start them on either of these two treatments and hope that this would be the start of a new era in what concerns HIV prevention.
HIV is the virus which causes AIDS, the Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome. The virus makes the immune system work improperly and leaves people who have the virus with great risks of contracting other very serious illnesses with which a poor immune system cannot deal, thus leading to their death. In 2009, 33.3 million people around the world were estimated to be living with HIV or AIDS and since the 1980s, when a great HIV pandemic started, researchers have been trying to find a way from the virus to cause AIDS.11
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Pre School General Information
Please ask our administrator for a copy of the Pre School Starter Pack for comprehensive information about us.
Although you have an allocated key person, you are able to talk to any of our staff confidentially at any time you wish. Parents and staff are asked to sign an agreement in which the confidentiality of families and staff is maintained at all times.
Key Person, Key Groups and the Buddy System
To ensure parents are kept up to date with everything going on and informed about how the children are progressing and developing we allocate you a key person as your first point of contact at pre school to help you keep on top of things! A buddy is also assigned to each child should the key person not be in. We ask parents to let the key person/buddy know how your child is each day, and they will observe and work alongside your child during the day to make sure they are happy and stimulated. We also meet regularly to talk about your child's needs and will input the information during our planning sessions to ensure their needs are met.
The key person will arrange to meet you as often as possible for a formal consultation but please feel free to chat to them at any time.
Your child will be in a 'key group' where their key person will work with the group on a daily basis. They do short activites together and sit together during snack time. Please be assured the children as still able to play with their natural friendship groups but this gives children added opportunity to form relationships with other children. In our experience children are happier and more stimulated when they are familiar with everyone in the group.
Links with Home
- Noticeboard - in the main entrance it's updated each day
- Sharing Diary - For the key person, parent and other childminder/provider to complete daily or weekly
- Parent Consultations - Appointments with your key worker during session hours
- Viewing your child's profile documents and observations - You have access to therse at all times
- Coming in to help - We run a voluntary rota systemin which we ask parents to supply snack 1 day each term and come in
- Topic information - At the end of each term we will send home information about our next topic, and give you ideas of what we will be doing to help your child at home
- End of term feedback sheets - Your key person will send home an informal progress report of little achievements or comments about your child, and then you can return it with anything your child has done at home
- Pre School Library - To encourage children's enjoyment of books we offer a lending library where children can choose a book to take home and read with you
EVERYTHING your child brings into pre school needs to have their name on it. Children sometimes struggle to recognise their own things, especially if they have a new pair of shoes!
Things you need to bring in
Due to exceptionally limited storage facilities we need to you to bring a few things along to us:
- A drawstring bag
- In the bag, a complete set of clothing
- A comforter if needed (i.e. blanket or teddy)
- Indoor shoes - i.e. plimsolls or slippers as the children can manage these really well
- Weather appropriate outdoor clothing. i.e. coat, hat and gloves in cold weather; wellies, raincoats and umbrellas in the rain; sun hat, clothing covering shoulders and a high factor sun screen which we ask you to apply before you come. Boots now sell a 6 hour cream which is ideal. We will ask you to sign a form each day to state that you have applied it so please remember to do it!!
- Any special creams or wipes
- A named water bottle to be kept in your child’s tray so that they have access to water whenever they want.
Please refer to our Personal Care Policy for details regarding changing
- Nappies or pull ups if you are potty training.
- Any special creams or wipes (labelled!). Creams need to have the written instructions that are visible. If you are using a prescribed cream we will need you to complete a medication record. Please refer to our Medication policy for details. If you need any help please talk to your Key Person or Supervisor during your next session
- We do have nappy sacks and a changing mat if needed.
- We carry out regular ‘toilet checks’ for our newer members to avoid those little accidents
Please ensure your child's clothing is easy for them to manage - elasticated waists, zips and velcro! Please don't send your child in their best clothes and try to get them familiar with their own clothing. Label everything!
Angi (member of staff) oversees uniform which is a white polo shirt and jade sweatshirt with the pre school logo on.
The government fund children for 5 sessions each week from the term after their 3rd birthday. We claim your eligible funding from the governement for you. We just need you to complete a form each form. You are able to split your 5 funded sessions between child care providers, so please speak to our administrator about this. Lunch sessions are not part of the funding and will need to be paid for.
Please pay your invoice (termly) promptly to our administrator, or speak to her confidentially if you are having difficulty paying.
It is very rare that we have to deal with behavioural issues. Each term we ask the children to 'make the rules' and tell us why they like pre school. We don't expect angels and wouldn't want them to be! All our staff use 'cause and consequence' technique to handle behaviour and the children quickly understand how their behaviour may be affecting others. Please refer to our policy on behaviour, and if anything does become a problem we will talk to you confidentially.
Holiday and Illness
We try to discourage holidays during term time, however our view is that families spend as much time together as possible and therefore do not refuse holidays during term time. We ask you to fill out a holiday form. Fees are still payable.
Please ring (before 9.15am on a full day and 9.45am on a half day) if your child is poorly and won't be able to attend. It is useful to know what is wrong with your child so we can identify links with other children. If your child falls ill at pre school will be contact you to collect them, or your given contact.
Collecting your children
If your child is going home with someone else that we are familiar with, we need you to let us know, and fill out the 'daily collection book'. If this is a regular collection you will need to fill out 'Permission for another person to collect my child' form. We will not allow your child to leave pre school with anyone not named on your registration form without contacting you.
Please contact our adminstrator for full details on all the Pre School policies. These are reviewed and updated if necessary on a regular basis by the parent group meeting.
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A zoo official says a rare Sumatran tiger has given birth to three cubs in western Indonesia.
Arif Makhfud, an official at Taman Rimbo Zoo in Sumatran province of Jambi, says the 9-year-old mother, Uni, delivered the first cub Sunday morning, followed by the others in the afternoon.
Zoo keepers have not been able to check the sex of the cubs, Makhfud said Tuesday.
Uni was brought to Jambi three years ago along with Peter, a 7-year-old male from Jakarta. She gave birth to a pair of females two years ago.
The number of Sumatran tigers, the world’s most critically endangered tiger subspecies, dwindled to about 400 from around 1,000 in the 1970s due to forest destruction and poaching. Few Sumatran tigers have been bred in captivity.
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Book Description: If you’re cutting or hurting yourself you’re not alone. Thousands of teens across the country think that hurting themselves is the only way they can feel better, even though they continue to feel alone and out of control.There are a lot of reasons why teens hurt themselves. None of them are your fault. You can’t change your past, but there is a lot you can do, right now, to make your future a place you’d like to spend some time, a place free from the pain, loneliness and isolation of cutting. This workbook offers a great way for you to make it happen.The exercises in Stopping the Pain will help you explore why you self-injure and give you lots of ideas how you can stop. The book will help you learn new skills for dealing with issues in your life, reduce your stress, and reach out to others when you need to. Work through the book, or just check out the sections that speak to you the most. This is your own personal and private road map to regaining control of your life.
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Redefining Technology in Africa
Africa is the hottest date in town.
Not a day goes by without me receiving an email about technology in Africa. NGOs, venture capitalists, wannabe investors, donors or technology providers from the US, UK, and Asia are all looking to explore the African Continent.
Organisations want to tap into the African market because they have read somewhere in the Wall Street Journal, The Economist, or the New York Times that Africa is booming and that the continent is rising.
That last description is just silly rhetoric as far as I am concerned. But we know that, just like many places around the world, technology is having a transformative impact on people’s lives. In rural Togo a farmer can get real-time information on market prices in the capital through a cellular phone. In Accra, Ghana, entrepreneurs who in the past were not able to get a dial tone on their landline telephones can now connect immediately using Internet telephony. In Kenya, farmers are able to use their mobile phones to get information about their cows and seeds. And in Niger, the Bankilare Community Information Centre downloads audio programmes from the African Learning Channel and rebroadcasts them on local radio.
These are just some of the countless projects helping to put Africa on the map. But what has really made the continent the darling of the tech sector recently is the extraordinary growth of tech hubs – places where coders, hackers, entrepreneurs and just plain geeks can come together to create new digital products and set up businesses. Their importance is represented in a piece written by Nairobi-based tech Entrepreneur Erik Hersman for the BBC. Since the first one – the iHub in Nairobi – was opened in 2010, tech hubs and labs have been mushrooming across Africa. It is in places like these that innovation is happening, leading to an explosion of mobile applications developed by coders on the continent.
When Africa is written about in these breathless terms it is easy to get caught up in the excitement and begin to think optimistically about the future. Could the next Silicon Valley be on the continent? Will the next Google emerge from Lagos? Is the next Mark Zuckerberg already waiting in Nairobi or Accra?
These are all positive, vibrant-ways to think about technology in Africa – and a welcome change to the usual negative narratives we hear about the continent. But, I believe, our optimism needs to be tempered. If we are to meet any of these challenges, we need to make some serious changes.
First, is something I have come to call “passive colonisation”. Most African countries have now celebrated 50 years of independence, but the colonialist mentality remains. Africans still lack the confidence in doing things for themselves. As much as we have creative people in Africa, there is an intellectual weakness amongst Africans and a lack of talent and a deficit of trust.
This is compounded by decades of reliance on NGOs and Aid. In the tech sector this manifest itself as duplicated projects, quick-trial pilots with no back up funding, well-meaning competitions run by big institutions without any sustainable marketing plan for the technologies they produce and investors still reluctant to fund small projects because of fear or knowledge of the African market. Finding reliable relationships can be also a challenge.
In addition, there is a new generation of well meaning western techies invading Africa. They are creating businesses for Africans. They claim to have the solutions for Africans and talk on the behalf of Africans. But, this can’t continue. Africans must learn – and show – they can do it for themselves. We are in danger of repeating the mistakes of the past and wasting an opportunity that now presents itself.
In order to do this, we need deep reform by policy makers, who can do much more to promote business activities in science, technology and innovation. They can foster the creation of an environment where entrepreneurs can grow their small and medium–size sized companies, improve access to capital and help firms establish international partnerships.
The global rules for foreign direct involvement in how Africans should run their businesses must now also change. Countries with “robust” infrastructures – like South Africa, Rwanda, Zambia, Gabon and Angola – with highly trained workforces and large domestic markets are positioning themselves in this highly competitive game and are succeeding. Other countries must follow their lead.
There is also a need for the education system in Africa to incorporate and promote science and technology if they want to match the rest of the world in the decades to come. Connecting African countries with the internet only cannot always be the mean of successful development programs.
Progress like this that involves government will take time and cannot be relied upon alone. So we must seize on home grown initiatives, like the tech hubs, and nurture them. We must give them – and the people who work in them – every chance of succeeding on their own terms. Africans are entrepreneurial by nature.
At the moment, access to seed capital, Internet connections and operational cost are extremely high; local and international visibility, credible references to allow private and government’s contracts, and the lack of business development or overall marketing strategy knowledge.
The idea of these tech hubs is to provide a space to Africans to unlock their talented potential, to share, create, innovate and transform. They should be “for Africans by Africans”. Already, I see umbrella groups and bureaucracy beginning to invade these spaces. We must strongly reject this and create an environment where the founders and leaders of these hubs are empowered to dictate their own futures. It should come from the bottom up.
We must also find them new sources of money. Currently, they must rely on significant funding from outside sources to succeed. African governments and the private sector needs to be more supportive as neither donor nor investor money will last forever. We are already seeing investors, getting hot under the collar about their return on investment. Whilst technology giants, such as Google, are coming to the party but there is a missing piece in the puzzle.
Africa is known to have resources and some wealthy African individuals – including people within the diaspora – with a solid connection to their country of origin. They can surely invest more into the private sectors in Africa, transfer their skills or even be their mentors. These tech hubs need all the help they can get from these individuals, but we know there is a deficit of trust amongst Africans and rarely see these people invest into sectors they are not familiar with.
But, I say, all of this must change. We as Africans have an opportunity to shape our own destiny, work together and collaborate more. We must seize the opportunity and enable the communities around us. Our great communal force is needed to make this work. All of us need to get involved.
Featured and written for BBC Future
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BS in Electrical Engineering
Electrical Engineering Department
A wind tunnel with a 0.5 HP motor was purchased by Cal Poly Electrical Engineering Department from Hampden for $16,000. It can only simulate winds of up to 10 MPH. The tunnel has a manual dial that controls the wind speed. It also measures the voltage and current output with an analog measure display. This wind tunnel was expensive and unfortunately cannot achieve very high wind speeds. For this reason, a similar wind tunnel with more potential and with a smaller budget was proposed to be built for use in the Sustainable Energy Lab. The new wind tunnel that was built is able to simulate winds of up to 45 MPH and has an LCD display for the measurements of wind speed, voltage and current. This whole project was done with a budget of less than $6,000 and used mostly salvaged and recycled materials.
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Imagine several colored stars appear in front of you for 1 second, how many stars can you remember and tell its color based on that one glance? Do you know if you can perform better than a 6-month-old infant in this test? We may get an answer from this study in which psychologists for the first time measured infants’ iconic memory.
Iconic memory is the initial 0.2 to 0.5 seconds after you visually perceive an item. Have you ever tried to look at the list of side effects displayed so quickly in some pharmaceutical commercials? Without the ability to recall much, you only got a feeling that you have seen more than you could remember. That is a close example of the feelings of iconic memory.
Iconic memory is the first stage of our memory, followed by short-term memory and long-term memory. If you imagine the long-term memory to be a library that can hold extremely large amount of information for almost a life-long time, then the short-term memory is like a librarian working at the front-desk holding a limited number of items and selects which item to be stored. The iconic memory is comparable to a pair of wide-angle video-capturing glasses in front of the librarian’s eyes, storing images for 0.2 to 0.5 seconds. The glasses have a similarly limited capacity just like the librarian, but usually capture something that the librarian cannot see nor process.
The measurement of adults’ iconic memory is based on the partial report method. For example, after an alphanumeric array of nine items was presented and removed, participants were cued to report a random subset of their memory (e.g. a low-pitched tone as the cue for a report of the lower of the three rows of letters). Accurate partial report indicates that all items presented has been stored, even though the participants could only report three to four items if asked to give a whole report of what they saw. Being invented in the 1960s, the partial report method revealed a high-capacity (9 items) and fast-decaying (0.2s to 0.5s) iconic memory in adults.
Fifty years later, Blaser and Kaldy became the first to ask infants for a partial report. Six-months-old infants were tested with presentations of colored stars and eye-tracking devices. In each trial of presentation, infants first watched an 8.5 second animation followed by a 1 second fixation cross to capture their attention to the center of the screen. A set of 2, 4, 6, 8, or 10 colored stars then appeared (each infant always saw a given set of stars). After displaying for 1 second, two neighboring stars disappeared for 0.5 second, which served as the cue in the partial report. The two stars reappear and one was changed in color. Infants’ iconic memory was then tested by preferential looking: correct memory is indicated by infants’ longer gaze at the star with a changed color.
How many colored stars did infants remember then? The answer is 5.
How about adults’ performance using the same method? The answer is 5.75.
The nearly matched capacities of infants and adults strike the researchers as signs of a rapid maturity of iconic memory. So, if you ever find yourself in an iconic memory competition against a 6-months-old, better stop laughing and hope you are on a good day.
Blaser E, & Kaldy Z (2010). Infants get five stars on iconic memory tests: a partial-report test of 6-month-old infants’ iconic memory capacity. Psychological science : a journal of the American Psychological Society / APS, 21 (11), 1643-5 PMID: 20923928
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Lakeland operates sleep labs in Niles, St. JosephPublished 9:35am Monday, October 12, 2009
By JOHN EBY
Dowagiac Daily News
ST. JOSEPH – Snoring isn’t funny anymore.
Nor is a saying such as “you snooze, you lose” relevant thanks to refinements in sleep treatment.
Today, you lose if you don’t snooze.
Sleep apnea has been linked to such health maladies as hypertension, Type II diabetes, stroke, heart attacks, depression, memory concentration problems, sexual dysfunction and chronic pain, so it’s no wonder why so many hospitals have incorporated sleep treatment.
“If you have sleep apnea, compared to patients without sleep apnea, your risks of dying from any cause is increased by 46 percent,” Dr. Inga Sriubiene said in an interview Friday. “The increased risk of medical problems significantly increases health care costs. Patients with apnea have significantly decreased quality of life compared to patients without apnea. Untreated, they have increased risks of having motor vehicle accidents and killing other people on the street. There are new rules being implemented for pilots because of an incident where both pilots fell asleep. In general, (apnea) gets worse as you get older.”
“You spend a third of your life sleeping,” she said. “It’s a relatively new field that’s developing rapidly.”
Commercial health insurance tends to cover sleep treatment because so many ailments are secondary to apnea and are perpetuated unless a study corrects them, which cuts claims.
They try to admit potential patients within two weeks.
Dr. Sriubiene, a sleep medicine specialist, recently joined the team at the Lakeland Sleep Disorder and Treatment Centers in Niles and St. Joseph.
Dr. Sriubiene, of Portage, completed a fellowship in sleep medicine at the Cleveland Clinic and a residency in internal medicine at Michigan State University/Kalamazoo Center for Medical Studies. She came to Michigan from suburban Chicago.
In her native Lithuania, “I was doing pulmonary medicine. In my country at that time, we didn’t have sleep labs,” she recalled. “The boss of my department was very proactive. He thought we should establish the first sleep lab in our country, so he sent me to Belgium for a month at Ghent University, then two months at Loyola University in Chicago, learning about sleep. When I came back home we established a small two-bed lab.”
She is board-certified by the American Board of Internal Medicine and board-eligible through the American Board of Sleep Medicine.
In her new role at Lakeland, Dr. Sriubiene oversees the diagnosis and treatment of patients at the sleep labs in both Niles and St. Joseph.
Obstructive sleep apnea, the most common type of sleep apnea, is estimated to affect 20 percent of adults in the United States, while 85 percent of cases remain undiagnosed.
Symptoms of sleep apnea include loud snoring, daytime fatigue or sleepiness and gasping or choking during the night.
In a full sleep study, specially trained technologists monitor patients’ oxygen levels, brain activity and breathing patterns as they sleep.
Dr. Sriubiene evaluates all data, audio and video from the study.
Depending on results of the sleep study, patients may return to the sleep center for continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) to treat sleep apnea.
Studies have shown that for patients with sleep apnea, proper treatment can improve the quality of sleep, reduce daytime sleepiness, enhance mood and functional status and improve heart health.
Treatment options are tailored to each patient.
For some patients, it’s as simple as making them sleep in a different position than on their backs by sewing something into their pajamas or using pillows or inflatable devices.
Dental devices are another treatment option for moderate sleep apnea.
“If you have certain facial features,” Dr. Sriubiene said, “your small lower jaw pulled backwards leaves less space in the back of your throat, so they pull the jaw forward to keep that airway open.”
In extreme cases there are surgical treatment options on either soft tissue or a major bone procedure.
“They break your jaw, upper and lower, and reconstruct it to make a lot of space in the back of your throat,” she explained. “The main treatment option is CPAP, a machine like a compressor. We go up in pressure – it’s called titration – until we find out which helps to keep your airway open. We don’t know what pressure a patient needs until we bring them back to the sleep lab.
“Patients should comply because research shows that if you use CPAP for four hours, you can decrease your risk of all these negative outcomes apnea is associated with – stroke, heart attack, heart failure progression, blood pressure control, diabetes control.”
Manager James Hightower, with his background in respiratory therapy, said sleep apnea used to be “grossly underdiagnosed. They found out over time that a lot of things are secondary to sleep problems. The more we educate people about it, the more we find. If you have a neck size of 17 for a man, 16 for a woman, more than likely you may have a problem with sleep. If you snore – and people sometimes don’t know that they snore, but their bed partner knows they do – more than likely you may have sleep apnea. If you’re tired during the day and you can sit down in a chair, turn the TV on” and nod off two minutes later, “more than likely you have a sleep problem,” he said. “We bring those patients in to clearly diagnose what their issues are. The wonderful thing about it is in the majority of cases it’s fixable right away. Patients see a huge difference in their day-to-day living. I’ve had individuals tell me, ‘God, if I’d have known this five years ago. My wife is just completely different since she was treated.’ ”
“People even die in their sleep,” Hightower said, such as Reggie White of the Green Bay Packers.
Unlike autism, sleep apnea isn’t increasing, “It’s something we’ve had for years and years, but nobody honed in on it.”
Dr. Sriubiene said sleep apnea exists in four percent of women and eight percent of men.
“Prevalence increases with age,” she said. “In the elderly, it could be up to 48 percent – almost half. In cardiac patients, 40 to 60 percent might have it. Patients with heart failure might have sleep apnea, but it’s asymptomatic – they don’t have symptoms. Sleep apnea untreated usually perpetuates progression of heart failure in these patients.”
Infrared cameras monitor patients as they doze. There are three rooms in the St. Joseph sleep lab which opened in December 2008, with Hightower working on a fourth. The two-bed Niles sleep lab in South Berrien County came first, in 2003.
Instruments are usually concealed in the quiet, comfortable bedrooms with queen-size beds and bookshelves, cable television and DVD player “so you don’t get the hospital feel,” Hightower said. “There’s a nice view of the river” and the golf course from the fifth floor.
“They get referred by their family physician or they heard by word of mouth and think they need a sleep study, we could refer them,” said Hightower. “They write an order and we put them on the schedule.”
“The problem is, when you stop breathing,” Dr. Sriubiene related, “the body feels there is not enough oxygen, so it usually releases a lot of stress hormones which wake your brain for a short period of time longer than three seconds. When your brain wakes up, muscle tone is restored and air can go into your lungs again. Most of the patients are not aware of that short reawakening. Fragmented sleep keeps you from feeling good in the day. There is no age limit. Premature babies might have sleep apnea. With teenagers, it’s a different problem, delayed sleep. They push bedtime, but still need to wake up at 6 or 7 to get to school. The biological clock, and it’s very often seen in teenagers, is pushed. If you allow them, they would go to bed at 1 or 2 a.m. and wake up at 11 a.m. or noon. But because of social restraints, they still need to wake up” much earlier. “They deprive themselves of sleep. Insomnia is also linked to many problems – depression, substance abuse, pain issues.”
With children, it used to be routine to have tonsils and adenoids removed.
“Most of the cases of children with apnea is due to enlarged tonsils or adenoids,” Dr. Sriubiene said. “They implemented strict criteria for tonsillectomy because these are lymphatic tissues related to our immune systems. We don’t want to remove them unless it’s necessary. A lot of children with sleep apnea have behavior problems because they cannot breathe. They are often diagnosed with ADHD because they act out trying to stay awake.”
She said 80 to 90 percent of patients are able to fall asleep at the clinic – even if they think they won’t be able to because they’re being “watched.”
At the other end of the spectrum are people who are too sleepy or narcoleptics who drift off in the middle of a conversation or even crumple to the floor.
Most sleep studies are done in one night.
Data acquired include brain waves, respiration, oxygen levels in the blood, how your heart is working, attempts to breathe, leg movements, snoring, all in a huge file she “scores.”
On her computer screen all the levels of squiggly lines in different colors look like she’s giving many lie detector tests simultaneously.
With “restless legs,” which inspired a “Seinfeld” episode, patients have a “creepy crawly” or painful sensation.
Toward evening, when they are sitting or lying in bed, every few minutes they have to move their legs to quiet the sensation, but it returns.
“Some patients will march outside all night because they can’t fall asleep because of the sensation in their legs,” Dr. Sriubiene said.
Sleep problems are not environmental, but hereditary in the sense people inherit facial features which affect breathing.
“It’s more prevalent in Asians and in African-Americans because of cranial structure,” she said. “As you get older, your muscle tone decreases, you gain more weight, you deposit more fat in your throat, so your airway narrows. It’s a lot of things,” including obesity, aging and genetic structure.
Sleepwalking is not just something common to children who grow out of it.
“Your brain is still asleep,” she said. “We see sleepwalkers driving cars, having sexual intercourse, night cooking and eating. It can go into complex behavior,” including committing crimes. Most of the time you grow out of it, but not necessarily.”
“I’ve seen people in nightclothes out in their yard waving like they were at a parade,” Hightower said, “but she was sound asleep.”
“Children have been known to open outside doors, leave the house in the middle of winter and died because of the cold weather. Some patients jump out of windows,” the doctor said, recounting a patient in her clinic who shaved her husband’s eyebrows.
Another woman fretted about going to church on Sunday with a black eye her husband gave her while asleep.
In California, truck drivers are required to complete a sleep study.
If you have apnea and don’t realize it, taking a sleep aid can exacerbate it.
“You have to be very careful prescribing sleeping pills,” Dr. Sriubiene said. “You can hurt a patient trying to help them.”
“If there’s a disconnection between brains and muscle tone, patients act out dreams,” she explained. “When you dream, your muscle tone should be very low as protection so you don’t hurt yourself or others because your brain is active. They act out violent, disturbing dreams, very often endangering themselves and bed partners. They can fly a plane, they can choke a person. There are known cases of people committing homicides that actually happened while they were asleep.”
Lakeland Sleep Disorder and Treatment Centers are located on the second floor at Lakeland Community Hospital, Niles, and at Lakeland Regional Medical Center, St. Joseph.
For more information, call (866) 408-1311.
They are one corporate department operating in two sites with the same training and policies.
Staff, who are all registered technologists with the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, can work at either facility.
Hightower’s son, who works in Grand Rapids, is a registered technologist.
“He got into it working in a physician’s office as a physician’s aide. He got hired in a lab and went through the training program. A lot of respiratory therapists are becoming sleep specialists. I plan to take my boards in December,” the Benton Harbor city commissioner said.
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Julian Voss-Andreae is a German-born sculptor based in Portland, Oregon. Starting out as a painter he later changed course and studied physics at the universities of Berlin, Edinburgh and Vienna. Voss-Andreae pursued his graduate research in quantum physics, participating in a seminal experiment demonstrating quantum behavior for the largest objects thus far. He moved to the U.S. in 2000 with his passion for art rekindled and graduated from Art College in 2004.
Voss-Andreae’s work has quickly gained critical attention. His sculpture is heavily influenced by his background in science, capturing the attention of multiple institutions and collectors in the U.S and abroad, including recent commissions for a large-scale outdoor piece for the Scripps Research Institute in Jupiter (Fla.) and a sculpture for Nobel laureate Roderick MacKinnon at Rockefeller University in New York City. Voss-Andreae’s work has been featured in several publications, including Nature and Science, the two world’s leading science journals.
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I mindlessly browse in the garden. I scan the scenery, indifferent, until I stop, and I realize something is growing.
People use objects to demarcate territories. By referencing the form of construction cones, this plant trellis will visually bring awareness to the beauty of vegetation as it grows, and simultaneously demarcate space. The trellis cones come flat-packed for easy transportation and are constructed from milled aluminum and bent extruded aluminum.
Master of Design in Designed Objects, 2012
Chi Sun is interested in the contradictory relationship between objects and humans, so he avidly pursues the meaning of objects to users. He was born in Taiwan where he received his BFA degree in commercial design. Specializing in the fields of visual communication design for 3 years, he has worked on a wide variety of projects from packaging to advertising design.
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The US and Chinese navies held joint search-and-rescue exercises yesterday, the latest step aimed at enhancing cooperation between the mistrustful military powers.
Missile-equipped destroyers from both countries held the exercise in the South China Sea after jointly planning the maneuvers last week, a system the US Pacific Fleet commander said improved understanding and communication.
The Chinese guided-missile destroyer Zhanjian worked with the USS Juneau in the exercises designed to locate a ship in danger and salvage it, the Xinhua news agency reported.
"In the exercises, the two navies demonstrated very good military skills and strong cooperative spirit," Gu Wengen, commander of China's South China Sea fleet, said.
"Before ships go to sea and conduct the exercise, the people come together and plan the exercise," Admiral Gary Roughead told reporters last week.
"And that, in and of itself, is a very, very important dimension of the type of relationship that navies have. Because it's when people come together and begin to plan, they begin to learn how each other does certain tasks and functions [and] they develop relationships," he said.
Military ties between the US and China broke off in 2001 after a Chinese fighter jet and a US surveillance plane collided, killing the Chinese pilot and forcing the US crew to land in China, where they were held for 11 days.
In the past year, the two have been seeking to improve ties, but the potential for friction was highlighted again by an uncomfortably close encounter between a US warship and a Chinese submarine in the Pacific last month.
Roughead has said the incident between the submarine and the USS Kitty Hawk near Okinawa showed the need for increased transparency and communication between the two countries' forces.
In yesterday's exercise, the navies conducted communications, fleet formation changes and search-and-rescue exercises, the Xinhua news agency reported.
It followed joint exercises off Hawaii in September, during which members of the Chinese navy also visited US naval bases and held barbecues with the US Navy.
The exercises were the second phase of the joint Sino-US search-and-rescue maneuvers that began in September in the waters off Hawaii.
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Humility and Helpfulness
Posted by The Situationist Staff on April 22, 2012
From the University of Maine Press Office:
Helping one another in times of need is a cornerstone of quality human relationships, according to a University of Maine psychology researcher who has determined that humility trumps arrogance when it comes to offering assistance.
In a three-part research project involving 310 students at Baylor University in Texas, UMaine psychology lecturer Jordan LaBouff and colleagues found that people determined to be humble were more willing to donate time and resources to a hypothetical student in need. The results held true even when researchers controlled the study for potential influencers like empathy, agreeableness and other personality traits.
“The finding is particularly surprising since nearly 30 years of research on helping have demonstrated that the situation, not the person, tends to predict whether someone in need will receive help,” says LaBouff, who also is a UMaine Honors College preceptor.
“This research builds upon a growing body of evidence that humility is an important trait that results in a variety of pro-social and positive outcomes,” says LaBouff, the lead author of an article on the study with Baylor researchers Wade Rowatt, Megan Johnson and Jo-Ann Tsang in Texas. “It also suggests that if we can encourage humility in our communities, people may be more helpful to those in need.”
The researchers believe the study is one of the first laboratory studies to document a correlation between a personality dimension like humility or narcissism with willingness to help others. Humility could be a personality trait that is linked with altruistically motivated acts of helping, according to LaBouff.
Researchers reached their conclusions by measuring participant humility through self-reporting, or answering questions about their perceived sense of humility, in addition to gauging reaction time on tasks designed to measure implicit humility, LaBouff says. Participants were then introduced to a fictitious classmate who had suffered a personal tragedy and was requesting help to overcome the tragedy with time and resources from each participant.
“Participants who were more humble were most likely to help their peers, even when social pressure to do so was lowest,” says LaBouff. “That is, humble people were most likely to help even when they had the fewest external pressures to do so.”
The study results are reported in the January 2012 issue of The Journal of Positive Psychology.
Related Situationist post:
- Holier Than Thou
- Students’ Situations Leave Them Less Empathetic (Situationist)
- Racial bias clouds ability to feel others’ pain
- The Neuro-Situation of Violence and Empathy
- The Situation of Morality and Empathy
- The Situation of Caring
- New Study Looks at the Roots of Empathy
This entry was posted on April 22, 2012 at 12:01 am and is filed under Altruism, Life, Social Psychology. Tagged: altruism, empathy, helpfulness, humility, mind sciences, Social Psychology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
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This is Dan from Primal4Life bringing you ”NOW Foods – Bromelain.” There’s a lot to be said about NOW Foods – Bromelain which I picked up recently from Julian Bakery. In just two weeks...
Healthy Carbohydrates: Helping You Lose Weight
We have been receiving a large number of emails asking about our ingredients, and how we keep our breads so low-carb. As you can tell by looking at any one of our bread labels, each ingredient is there for a purpose. All ingredients are organic in nature, nutrient packed, and contain no worthless fillers. Even the complex carbohydrates included in our recipes contain great value in helping you maintain a healthy lifestyle. Today’s post is dedicated to the complex carbohydrates that we include in our breads, resistant starch and fiber.
Resistant starch is a key nutrient to promoting weight loss. Resistant starch is included in the class of dietary fibers, as it provides similar benefits as both insoluble and soluble fiber. Study after study proves resistant starch aides in:
• Eating Less
• Burning More Calories
• Energy Production and Stress Reduction
• Maintaining Steady Blood Sugar Levels
According to the World Health Organization, dietary fiber is the only dietary component that has convincing evidence proving to fight against obesity and weight gain. Similar to fiber, resilient starch suppresses appetite, as well as aides in digestive and colon health. Resilient starch is also thought to help burn fat through the metabolic effect of fat oxidation.
• Brown Rice
These resistant starch, and fiber rich foods will help you curb your appetite, take in fewer calories, and burn more calories throughout the day. Keep checking back to the Julian Bakery Blog for more information regarding the excellent ingredients used in Julian Bakery low-carb breads.
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