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How can I programmatically create a CDF which is similar to the CDFs created by File -> CDF Export -> Standalone...? ...
I'm using Mathematica for Students on a Mac. How do I export a CDF document to HTML? According to the Wolfram website I should click on ...
When I prepare a CDF file to be included into a web page, far too much blank vertical space is left over the pane. Is there a command to reduce that? This is illustrated by the files SimpleDemos.nb ...
Often when I construct some cool Manipulate function, I would like to share it with others—non-Mathematica users. Some software, notably Cinderella, ... | <urn:uuid:50780d91-dadd-4141-b1f7-dc30eb55369f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://mathematica.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/cdf-format+export | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00051-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.923653 | 145 | 1.5625 | 2 |
Schedules Accommodate Children’s Needs
Schedules accommodate the needs that young children have for quiet time, individual and group learning and movement and play. Students on K-1 teams go outside to play twice a day, weather permitting, and often play indoors in the multi-purpose room otherwise. Breakfast is available to all Campbell students before the school day begins.
Learning by Doing
Classroom instruction is organized around hands-on experiences using concrete materials rather than worksheets and workbooks. Materials are arranged in learning centers that children can use individually or in small groups. Written activities are planned to help the students record and describe their observations, in addition to providing practice to develop written language skills. Math concepts are introduced through the use of manipulatives such as blocks, geo boards, tangrams, pattern and attribute blocks, dice, and counters and cubes which can be counted, measured and subtracted or compared.
Balanced Literacy Strategies
Balanced literacy strategies that include listening to stories, talking about stories and experiences, guided and independent reading, response writing and phonics skills instruction are the major components of the language arts program. Language and communication skills are incorporated across the curriculum. Big books, little books, books on tape and CD-ROM, writing and publishing materials are available for students to use independently, with peers, or with an adult.
Technology in the Classroom
Technology plays an increasingly important role as the children use various computer programs to practice skills, learn new concepts, develop reading fluency, solve problems and communicate with their friends and neighbors in the next classroom, a nearby school or around the world. We also have new ipads for use in the classrooms! | <urn:uuid:3b1f345f-4283-4ba8-8047-2ad04d4489c7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.arlington.k12.va.us/domain/543 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953999 | 345 | 3.4375 | 3 |
Funding Scottish archaeology
Sources of funding are determined by the reason behind archaeological fieldwork. The 3 main categories of archaeological fieldwork are; development-led, rescue and research.
Categories of funding
Investigating and recording archaeology in advance of its destruction by planned development.
Investigating and recording archaeology in advance of its unavoidable destruction by natural processes or by human agencies not regarded as “developers”.
Investigating and recording archaeology for the primary purpose of adding to our store of knowledge, either about the past itself, or about materials and techniques, or about how sites change over time.
Work following fieldwork, usually called “post-excavation” – such as analysis of results, publication and archiving – is normally funded by whoever funded the fieldwork.
Professional ethics apply whether the archaeologist is self-funded, grant-aided or contracted. Even amateur archaeologists, a long-established and very important community within Scotland and the UK more widely, aim to work to professional standards.
All archaeology should be conducted to gain as much useful information as possible, to challenge, test and enhance our understanding of period, regional or thematic research agendas. The research context matters across the board. It is imperative that all archaeologists communicate the results of their work, both to colleagues within the discipline and to the wider public
Historic Scotland funding
Through our Archaeology Programme, most of our funding goes to rescue and research archaeology. We also invest strongly in publishing and disseminating the results of projects we support. Only in special circumstances do we support developer-led archaeology.
View further information on the Historic Scotland Archaeology Funding Programme
Priorities for Historic Scotland Archaeology funding
We are currently reviewing our priorities and procedures through public consultation
. We will revise this section in due course.
Historic Scotland will continue to fund a wide variety of projects, ranging from site-specific investigations to research into processes of change. The potential of newly proposed projects to contribute to existing and developing agendas will increasingly be a primary consideration for funding decisions. | <urn:uuid:4a17cafd-4820-477a-b1fc-7252b818e8e3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.historic-scotland.gov.uk/largetext/archaeology-funding | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.927818 | 426 | 2.453125 | 2 |
AccuWeather.com reports waves of downpours have greatly eased the drought in portions of northern Florida and southern Georgia in recent weeks, while dry conditions have gotten worse in parts of the corn belt.
According to Agricultural Meteorologist Dale Mohler, "Some of the prime growing areas for peanuts received beneficial rain over the past couple of weeks."
Moisture from Tropical Storm Beryl got the ball rolling in the right direction over the Memorial Day weekend.
The peanut crop in northern Florida and southern Georgia is usually planted in May and harvested in October.
The region had been in a state of an exceptional drought, which had its origins into last year.
Some cotton is also grown in the region.
While much of the area is still being influenced by a long-term rainfall deficit, the short-term situation is in much better shape.
Since May 15, Gainesville, Fla., has received double their normal rainfall with over 8.50 inches. Way Cross, Ga., has received 150 percent of the normal rainfall for the same period. For a change, Dothan, Ala., has received near-normal rainfall since May 15.
The forecast into next week calls for a drying and warming trend with high pressure building over the Eastern states. However, that trend may reverse later in the month as a trough of low pressure develops in the eastern U.S., which is bound to bring a bloom of clouds, showers and thunderstorms.
More rain is needed in the region in general. There are still areas suffering an exceptional drought over central Georgia, for example.
While the weather pattern will favor round after round of showers and thunderstorms for part of the northern Plains and the Upper Midwest into next week, many already dry areas of the corn belt will have little or no rain through the same period, through the end of June and beyond.
Short-term, abnormally dry conditions are turning into drought conditions over an increasing area of Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska and Ohio.
What happens in this situation is the dry ground causes the sun's energy to focus more on heating the ground and the nearby air. The cycle continues with higher temperatures increasing evaporation rates, and so on.
A series of storm systems will bring repeating downpours and also the risk of flash flooding to portions of Minnesota, South Dakota, Wisconsin and even into part of Nebraska and Iowa, but the highway of rain will not lead into areas farther south and east over the Midwest.
Rainfall departures since May 15 range from 10 to 50 percent of normal over a broad area from Grand Island, Neb., and Kansas City, Mo., to Indianapolis, Ind., and Dayton, Ohio.
A zone of high pressure is forecast to build over the region into the weekend, driving temperatures into the 90s in much of the area and increasing evaporation rates.
"While heat or dryness is bad by themselves, the combination of the two could cause some problems during corn pollination, which will soon be getting under way over much of the region," Mohler said.
There is a chance of very spotty thundershower activity with the building heat and humidity into this weekend. However, this is not the type of rainfall that would reverse the building dry and drought conditions in most areas.
A front swinging through later next week has a better chance at bringing general rainfall. However, that is likely to only be a singular event and not enough to erase the current trend.
Alex Sosnowski, Expert Senior Meteorologist for AccuWeather.com | <urn:uuid:d60962ca-5147-442e-8348-f58dcdb86110> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.chattanoogan.com/2012/6/14/228296/Georgia-Florida-Drought-Improves-Corn.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00023-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963949 | 726 | 2.40625 | 2 |
There are two types of fatty infiltration of the liver: simple (or benign) fatty infiltration and nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH).
Simple fatty liver is a benign condition that has become increasingly common in the United States and Western Europe as weight gain and frank obesity have become more common. In fatty liver, the liver functions normally and looks normal under the microscope, except for accumulations of fat in storage organelles in the liver (vacuoles). Liver blood tests are either normal, or there may be slight increases in two of the enzymes made by the liver, the serum ALT (alanine aminotransferase) and/or the serum AST (aspartate aminotransferase). The diagnosis may be confirmed with a right upper quadrant ultrasound examination. Liver biopsy is rarely necessary. Aside from losing weight, there is no other treatment. The only known downside is that patients with fatty livers are excluded as liver donors in both deceased (cadaveric) and live donor liver transplantation.
Nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH) is a condition that causes inflammation and accumulation of fat and fibrous tissue in the liver (figure 1). Although a similar condition can occur in people who abuse alcohol, NASH occurs in those who drink little to no alcohol. The exact cause of NASH is unknown. However, it is seen more frequently in people with certain medical conditions such as diabetes, obesity, and insulin resistance. This combination of disorders if often called the metabolic syndrome.
It is not clear how many people have NASH because it causes no symptoms. However, NASH is diagnosed in about 7 to 9 percent of people in the United States who have a liver biopsy. Most people are between the ages of 40 and 60 years, although the condition can also occur in children over the age of 10 years. NASH is seen more often in women than in men.
The cause of NASH is not clear, although research is ongoing in an attempt to find effective treatments. At the present time, treatment of NASH focuses on controlling some of the medical conditions associated with it (such as diabetes and obesity) and monitoring for progression.
CONDITIONS ASSOCIATED WITH NONALCOHOLIC STEATOHEPATITIS
Although the cause of NASH is unknown, it is most frequently seen in people with one of more of the following conditions.
- Obesity — More than 70 percent of people with NASH are obese. Most obese people with NASH are between 10 and 40 percent heavier than their ideal body weight.
- Diabetes — Up to 75 percent of people with NASH have type 2 diabetes. (See "Patient information: Diabetes mellitus type 2: Overview (Beyond the Basics)".)
- Hyperlipidemia — About 20 to 80 percent of people with NASH have hyperlipidemia (high blood triglyceride levels and/or high blood cholesterol levels). (See "Patient information: High cholesterol and lipids (hyperlipidemia) (Beyond the Basics)".)
- Insulin resistance — Insulin resistance refers to a state in which the body does not respond adequately to insulin. Insulin resistance often occurs in people with hyperlipidemia who are obese; this group of symptoms is known as the metabolic syndrome and is frequently seen in people with NASH. (See "Patient information: Diabetes mellitus type 2: Overview (Beyond the Basics)".)
- Drugs and toxins — Several drugs used to treat medical conditions have been linked to NASH, including amiodarone (Corderone®, Pacerone®), tamoxifen (Nolvadex®, Tamone®), perhexiline maleate (Pexhid®), steroids (eg, prednisone, hydrocortisone), and synthetic estrogens. Pesticides that are toxic to cells have also been linked to NASH.
NONALCOHOLIC STEATOHEPATITIS SYMPTOMS
Most people with NASH have no symptoms. Rarely, NASH is diagnosed in people with fatigue, a general feeling of being unwell, and a vague discomfort in their upper right abdomen, although it is not clear if these symptoms are related to NASH.
NONALCOHOLIC STEATOHEPATITIS DIAGNOSIS
NASH is most often discovered during routine laboratory testing. Additional tests help confirm the presence of NASH and rule out other types of liver disease. Imaging tests (such as ultrasound, CT scan, or magnetic resonance imaging) may reveal fat accumulation in the liver but cannot differentiate NASH from other causes of liver disease that have a similar appearance. A liver biopsy is required to confirm NASH.
Liver function tests — Blood tests to measure the liver function measure levels of substances produced or metabolized by the liver. These levels can help to diagnose NASH and differentiate NASH from alcoholic hepatitis. Levels of two liver enzymes (aspartate aminotransferase [AST] and alanine aminotransferase [ALT]) are elevated in about 90 percent of people with NASH.
Other blood tests — Additional blood tests are useful for ruling out other causes of liver disease. These usually include tests for viral hepatitis (hepatitis A, B, or C), and may include tests for less common causes of liver disease. (See "Patient information: Hepatitis A (Beyond the Basics)" and "Patient information: Hepatitis B (Beyond the Basics)" and "Patient information: Hepatitis C (Beyond the Basics)".)
Liver biopsy — Although other tests may suggest a diagnosis of NASH, liver biopsy is required to confirm it. A liver biopsy is also helpful for determining the severity of NASH and may provide clues about the future course of the condition. The procedure involves collecting a small sample of liver tissue, which is sent to a laboratory for microscopic examination and biochemical testing. More detailed information about liver biopsies is available in a separate topic review. (See "Patient information: Liver biopsy (Beyond the Basics)".)
NONALCOHOLIC STEATOHEPATITIS TREATMENT
There is no cure for NASH. Treatment aims to control the conditions that are associated with NASH, such as obesity, diabetes, and hyperlipidemia. Several experimental treatments are being studied with drugs that treat insulin resistance.
Weight loss — Weight reduction can help to reduce levels of liver enzymes, insulin, and can improve quality of life. Weight loss should be gradual (no more than 3.5 lbs or 1.6 kg per week) since rapid weight loss has been associated with worsening of liver disease. A healthcare provider or nutritionist can provide an individualized weight loss plan. (See "Patient information: Weight loss treatments (Beyond the Basics)".)
Treatment of insulin resistance — Several drugs are available for people with insulin resistance, and they are being studied in patients with NASH. Their role is not yet proven.
More information about treatments for insulin resistance is available in a separate topic review. (See "Patient information: Diabetes mellitus type 2: Treatment (Beyond the Basics)", section on 'Thiazolidinediones'.)
Miscellaneous drugs — Several new drugs are being tested in patients with NASH but none has yet proven to be beneficial in large, long-term studies.
NONALCOHOLIC STEATOHEPATITIS PROGNOSIS
NASH is typically a chronic condition (ie, it persists for many years). It is difficult to predict the course of NASH in an individual. Few factors have been useful in predicting the course of this condition, although features in the liver biopsy can be helpful.
The good news is most people with NASH will not develop serious liver problems. One study showed that most people with NASH live as long as those without it. Furthermore, liver function tests are stable over time in most people with NASH.
However, NASH can progress in some people. One study that tracked liver damage over time showed that the condition improved in about 3 percent of people, remained stable in 54 percent of people, and worsened in 43 percent of people .
The most serious complication of NASH is cirrhosis, which occurs when the liver becomes severely scarred. In one study, between 8 and 26 percent of people with NASH developed cirrhosis . Older diabetic women may be at increased risk. (See "Patient information: Cirrhosis (Beyond the Basics)".)
WHERE TO GET MORE INFORMATION
Your healthcare provider is the best source of information for questions and concerns related to your medical problem.
This article will be updated as needed on our web site (www.uptodate.com/patients). Related topics for patients, as well as selected articles written for healthcare professionals, are also available. Some of the most relevant are listed below.
Patient level information — UpToDate offers two types of patient education materials.
The Basics — The Basics patient education pieces answer the four or five key questions a patient might have about a given condition. These articles are best for patients who want a general overview and who prefer short, easy-to-read materials.
Patient information: Nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH) (The Basics)
Patient information: Cirrhosis (The Basics)
Beyond the Basics — Beyond the Basics patient education pieces are longer, more sophisticated, and more detailed. These articles are best for patients who want in-depth information and are comfortable with some medical jargon.
Patient information: Diabetes mellitus type 2: Overview (Beyond the Basics)
Patient information: High cholesterol and lipids (hyperlipidemia) (Beyond the Basics)
Patient information: Hepatitis A (Beyond the Basics)
Patient information: Hepatitis B (Beyond the Basics)
Patient information: Hepatitis C (Beyond the Basics)
Patient information: Liver biopsy (Beyond the Basics)
Patient information: Weight loss treatments (Beyond the Basics)
Patient information: Diabetes mellitus type 2: Treatment (Beyond the Basics)
Patient information: Cirrhosis (Beyond the Basics)
Professional level information — Professional level articles are designed to keep doctors and other health professionals up-to-date on the latest medical findings. These articles are thorough, long, and complex, and they contain multiple references to the research on which they are based. Professional level articles are best for people who are comfortable with a lot of medical terminology and who want to read the same materials their doctors are reading.
Immunizations for patients with chronic liver disease
Natural history and management of nonalcoholic fatty liver disease in adults
Pathogenesis of nonalcoholic fatty liver disease
Epidemiology, clinical features, and diagnosis of nonalcoholic fatty liver disease in adults
The following organizations also provide reliable health information.
- National Library of Medicine
- National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases
- The American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases
- The American Liver Foundation | <urn:uuid:8a3a8fb7-45e3-4048-9895-e7ee1cb1010e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.uptodate.com/contents/nonalcoholic-steatohepatitis-nash-beyond-the-basics | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00069-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.92475 | 2,316 | 3.171875 | 3 |
Having risen from a backwater fishing village to become a prosperous, modern city in little more than a century, Singapore represents one of the greatest national transformations of all times. While the glossy shopping malls and towering office buildings are impressive, the defining characteristic of Singapore is its strikingly cosmopolitain culture. A true melting pot, Singapore is both financially and culturally rich. The city is home to Chinese, Malays, Indians, and Europeans, along with their languages and religions, with more than 40% of its residents holding passports from other countries. Dining on national specialties like chili crab, Hainanese chicken, and fish-head curry is considered by many to be Singapore’s national pastime, so make sure to bring your appetite as you journey to one of the most captivating countries in the world.
Contact International TEFL Academy today to speak with an advisor to find out about our online course, multiple on-site TEFL classes or request a brochure to learn about TEFL training courses and a comparison of the most popular countries to teach English. | <urn:uuid:f8d059b3-c3d7-4ef1-832e-3663e4c0f705> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.internationalteflacademy.com/singapore-english-teaching-jobs-abroad-asia/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00071-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.946207 | 216 | 2.09375 | 2 |
- About Tech Transfer
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The University of ToledoPhone: 419.530.6225 email@example.com
Academic reputations are established through the publication of research results. However, patent applications can be ruined by the premature publication of a new invention.
One of the conditions for obtaining a patent is that the invention is "new". This means to obtain a US patent that the patent application must be filed within the one-year period following the date of any publication, which then establishes the "Bar" date. Note, however, that all foreign patent rights are lost if the publication precedes the patent application, even by a single day. However, after a US patent application has been filed, international agreement creates a one-year period during which time additional foreign patent application may be filed. In most cases it is strongly advised that the patent application be filed prior to any relevant publication to allow an appropriate determination of whether foreign patent rights will be important. If an invention cannot be patented, it is much less likely to be able to be licensed and earn money. World wide patent rights are critically important for some research areas.
What Constitutes Publication
An invention counts as published if it forms "part of the state of the art". In US patent law, as in most other countries of the world, the state of the art is defined as "everything made available to even one member of the public anywhere in the world by means of a written or, visually displayed oral description, by use, or in any other way".
Examples of Publications
Realistically, for any of the above situations to matter, the "other side" usually an infringer seeking to invalidate your patent or a potential licensee trying to avoid royalty payments will have to prove that the thesis was prematurely released, prove when you made your internet posting, prove that your poster display prematurely revealed your invention, prove what you said at the seminar, or whatever undermines your patent. Nevertheless, if serious money is at stake in a patent dispute, the other side will go to great investigative lengths in the hope of discovering some such flaw in your patent prosecution.
The United States is different from nearly all other countries in that the inventor of the invention may file a patent application within a "grace period" of up to one year after publication. Other "grace period" countries are Japan (only six months and then only if the patent office is notified of the publication at the time of the patent filing), and Canada. A grace period merely removes your own publications from the stock of all literature, which comprises the prior art. It gives you no immunity from the effects of other people's publications or patent applications. Note that for all other countries except for the grace period countries of the USA, Japan and Canada, the patent application must precede any publication of the invention if only by a day or the patent may be ruled invalid. However, once a US patent application has been filed and this filing has preceded any publication of the invention, the inventor has an additional one-year period to file any additional foreign patents.
Undergraduate and Graduate Researchers
The importance of keeping innovation and research results confidential may not be obvious to new researchers, who have had limited exposure to the potential value of a patent. It is important that the principle investigator or the senior faculty member take a moment and explain the need for confidentiality to any new researcher, especially if that research may result in valuable intellectual property.
How to Keep Something Confidential
To insure that the patent application rights are maintained, the person with whom you intend to discuss your invention must know in advance that your disclosure is meant to be kept confidential. Although confidentiality can be inferred from the circumstances of the disclosure, it is usually much safer to record your mutual rights and obligations through a Confidential Disclosure Agreement, also known as Confidentiality Agreement or Non-Disclosure Agreement, signed in advance by the person who is to receive the confidential information. It is important to be selective in determining with whom you choose to make your confidential disclosure. Although there are legal provisions for protecting your rights if your invention is disclosed against your will, those provisions carry time limits counting from the wrongful disclosure and are not a complete safeguard once the information becomes generally available. Also, it is strongly advised that you not make any disclosure, including even a confidential disclosure, to a potential customer or licensee for the invention until the patent application is filed. The Office of Research can assist you with the preparation of the appropriate agreements to protect your patent rights.
Before publishing the results of any research, the author needs to ask whether the document or disclosure contains any innovation or discovery that could be patented. As explained in this memo, all foreign patent rights are lost and a one-year time limit is established for any US patent rights upon publication. If there is any question or doubt as to the patentability of a new innovation, the researcher is encouraged to complete an Invention Disclosure form, contact the Office of Research and ask for a member of the Technology Transfer department.
The purpose of this memo is to help you understand how a premature publication can undermine the validity of a patent. This note does not contain definitive legal advice and should not be used as a substitute for the advice of your lawyer or patent attorney. For additional information or for answers to specific questions, please call the Office of Research and ask for a Technical Transfer person. | <urn:uuid:50ebc0f4-5c1b-4e5d-bc27-7bbf582d605e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.utoledo.edu/research/TechTransfer/Publish_and_Perish.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00031-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.935637 | 1,209 | 1.632813 | 2 |
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Lysosomal Storage Diseases
What is lysosomal storage disease?
The lysosome is a part of each cell in your body. Sometimes, the lysosome is called the cell’s recycling center, because it holds enzymes that process unwanted material into substances that the cell can use. Lysosomal storage diseases are disorders that occur when the lysosome doesn’t work correctly.
Lysosomal storage diseases are inherited. Some examples of lysosomal storage diseases are:
What are the symptoms of lysosomal storage diseases?
The symptoms of lysosomal storage disorders vary depending on which syndrome your child has. Many children with lysosomal storage disease have joint stiffness, recurrent hernias, developmental delays, seizures, problems with hearing and sight, and/or problems with the heart and bones.
How are lysosomal storage diseases treated?
Unfortunately, there is no known cure for lysosomal storage disease, but some syndromes can be treated. Careful evaluation and identification of the correct disorder is important to help provide information regarding your child’s future. Families may undergo genetic testing and evaluation so they can determine whether future children would be at risk for lysosomal storage disease.
About treatment for lysosomal storage diseases at Children’s
Children’s genetics program treats children with lysosomal storage diseases by concentrating on relieving symptoms of the condition. One treatment available at Children’s is enzyme replacement therapy. In enzyme replacement therapy, your child is given an infusion intravenously (in the vein) to replace the deficient enzyme. Enzyme replacement therapy has been found to successfully relieve certain symptoms in some types of lysosomal storage diseases, such as Pompe disease, Fabry disease, Gaucher disease, MPS I (also known as Hurler syndrome, Hurler Scheie syndrome and Scheie syndrome), MPS II (also known as Hunter syndrome), and MPS VI (also known as Maroteaux Lamy syndrome). | <urn:uuid:5bad9b5b-e05d-4d9a-a2b5-e30f1dc98af1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.childrensmn.org/Web/Services/189101.asp | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.921488 | 435 | 3.515625 | 4 |
The New Historicism is intriguing because it involves many different forms of criticism throughout its process. Ross C Murfin explains that New Historicism should not be called “new” because it often “work[s] on the border of another school” (124). Instead, this collaboration, I believe, makes New Historicism interesting because it allows the critic to delve into issues often addressed in a Marxist or feminist reading, just to name a few, in regards to the historic context of the topic. New Historicism breaks away from the New Critics because it approaches literature by taking the text’s historic influences into account. Rather viewing history as constant facts presented in a linear pattern, New Historicists recognize history as a reconstruction, one that is greatly influenced by our own perceptions of it. With this in mind, New Historicism studies texts within history but they stay away from defining texts based on some general “Spirit of the Age” that historians have assigned to different time periods. Looking at literature this way presents a new way of studying works in relation to the time period they come from, for they often reflect aspects of life that do not fit in the “Spirit of the Age” that their time period supposedly possessed. | <urn:uuid:59ba1e56-4b28-4c1a-ae73-9735a70e9301> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blogs.cofc.edu/seamanm-engl299-f11/tag/ross-c-murfin/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00026-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.958662 | 251 | 2.703125 | 3 |
-Adding keywords to Pig Latin (Was: Question about UDFs and tuple ordering)
Brian Stempin 2012-10-09, 20:54
I've taken some time to understand how a Logical Plan progresses to a Physical and MR Plan (thanks for the boost, Alan!)
My next question is centered around Logical Plan generation. If one were to add a new keyword (sticking with the theme in my last message, say, SUPERSPECIALJOIN), that keyword would have to be added into the grammar files. Perhaps this isn't obvious to me because I'm not an ANTLR user (learning), but what is each grammar file responsible for?
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Gianmarco De Francisci Mo... 2012-10-09, 21:40 | <urn:uuid:bdd47cb7-0113-41bc-ba7d-65fec1104e08> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://search-hadoop.com/m/a63Df2KMkw21/v=threaded | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.940123 | 287 | 1.5 | 2 |
Ofcom works out why Wi-Fi doesn't work
Four times faster in Bournemouth than London?
An Ofcom-commissioned report into Wi-Fi performance concludes that it's baby-listeners and TV-senders that are mucking with the signal, not to mention the "Free Public Wi-Fi" virus, without which we'd all be connecting faster.
Ofcom's remit is to ensure efficient use of radio spectrum, including the unlicensed 2.4GHz band used by Wi-Fi. To that end, it commissioned specialist consultancy Mass to examine how effectively the band is being exploited.
What Mass discovered (pdf) is that while Wi-Fi users blame nearby networks for slowing down their connectivity, in reality the problem is people watching retransmitted TV in the bedroom while listening to their offspring sleeping, and there's not a lot the regulator can do about it.
Outside central London that is: in the middle of The Smoke there really are too many networks, with resends, beacons and housekeeping filling 90 per cent of the data frames sent over Wi-Fi. This leaves only 10 per cent for users' data. In fact, the study found that operating overheads for wireless Ethernet were much higher than anticipated, except in Bournemouth for some reason: down on the south coast 44 per cent of frames contain user data.
The following table shows the proportion of frame types around the UK, listed by population and demonstrating that it's not the number of locals that defines the speed of your wireless connection.
The bigger version is more legible
Beacon frames are those sent out by access points, advertising their presence, or by computers that have picked up the "Free Public Wi-Fi" infection - originally considered to be a Windows thing but observed on Meamo too. Users see an access point of that name, and attempt to connect, only to find themselves advertising such a point to everyone else. What's worse is that it seems "Free Public Wi-Fi" points are sending out beacon frames ten times more frequently than they should (every 0.01204 seconds), leading to a significant amount of traffic:
"Walking around central London one can expect to encounter, on average, 26 of these devices per hour. On average they constitute about 7% of the total frame density, but this is very much an average and this peaks at about 28% in some cases"
But even that's nothing compared to the interference generated by analogue baby listeners and other deregulated kit, and the report notes that much of the overhead traffic shown is generated by devices reconnecting when they've lost a connection. Mass also demonstrated, in laboratory conditions, how a baby-listener can generate a swath of interference in such a way that devices could see a nearby access point, and report a strong signal, but couldn't connect because the interference was so great - a situation that could equally result in an slow or unreliable connection that the user would struggle to solve.
Not that bad Wi-Fi is always to blame - Mass found that users are quick to blame the wireless part of their connectivity when the fault actually lies in ADSL, routing or even the servers at the other end of the connection. Mass also found that, contrary to expectation, residential users were good at changing the Wi-Fi channel, though pointed out that once 802.11n devices start to use bonded channels the chances of interference will increase.
Dealing with the interference from perfectly-legal AV transmitters and baby listeners would seem to yield the greatest increase in capacity, not to mention reducing the headache of managing residential wireless, but it's a hard thing to do in unregulated spectrum. Baby listeners are already moving towards digital transmissions, and some even come labelled "Wi-Fi friendly" to indicate they'll slot into a single 802.11 channel (5MHz wide, rather than the 8MHz channel used by analogue listeners which ensures any interference spans two channels).
But while ever-cautious parents will pay a premium for the digitally-rendered sniffles of their beloved, not to mention additional features such as a back channel, thermometers and the like, cheap AV senders have no compelling reason to go digital and show no signs of doing so. Enforcing Wi-Fi friendliness would be unpopular, and difficult, within an unregulated channel, but the alternative is to continue suffering intermittent connections so that Sky customers can watch TV in the bedroom. ® | <urn:uuid:76550e53-6bb3-48fc-aae7-54aae57ff0b2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/05/10/ofcom_mass_wi_fi/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00068-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953833 | 905 | 2.03125 | 2 |
Wednesday's debate focused on the issue considered by voters to be the most crucial of the election -- the economy.
Romney "has to paint a compelling picture of a better economic future and why he can lead us there and President Obama can't," said GOP pollster Whit Ayres. Democratic pollster Peter Hart made a similar point, saying "if Romney loses this issue, then he is toast."
Jim Lehrer of PBS moderated his 12th presidential debate. He previously announced that the 90-minute event would include three segments on the economy and one each on health care, the role of government, and governing leadership and style. Each segment was scheduled for 15 minutes.
The two candidates shook hands and shared a laugh after being introduced by Lehrer as the audience applauded before being asked to remain silent for the remainder of the debate.
Organizers hoped the segmented format, with candidates given two minutes to answer questions, would allow for a more free-wheeling discussion instead of a series of rehearsed sound bites.
The other presidential debates will occur on October 16 in New York and October 22 in Florida. Vice President Joe Biden and Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, Romney's running mate, will debate on October 11 in Kentucky.
CNN's John King and Amy Roberts contributed to this report. | <urn:uuid:127ce1c7-98b0-42b5-bf86-c7f72d9f1b71> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.kxly.com/news/politics/Obama-Romney-clash-over-economy-health-care/-/116124/16838420/-/item/1/-/axdkt0/-/index.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00058-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969168 | 264 | 1.578125 | 2 |
As part of his quest to seek his official Eagle Ranking, Jared held several local book drives, and reached out to many local business owners to donate money for the purchase of books. He estimated the project took him approximately 110 volunteer hours. In all, Jared collected more than 800 books, ranging from picture books to intermediate reading books.
“I thought about my childhood, and when I was a little kid I had quite a few medical issues that required me to visit the hospital a lot,” said Jared. “I remembered being in my room or the waiting room, and having nothing to do but think about how sick I was. So I thought of how entertaining a book can be, and how it takes a long time to read some of them, and just thought that might be a great way to entertain a hospitalized child.”
Phyllis McClanahan, Sutter Delta’s emergency department nurse manager, couldn’t agree more. “Our ER can get very busy, and our staff is focused on treating patients of all ages,” she said. “Having a library of children books can help a child pass the time and serve as a distraction.”
Unlike adults, children can become uncertain about their surroundings in a hospital. Popular and fun reads like “Good Night Moon,” “Ramona’s World” and “The Cat and Hat” can help turn frowns into smiles during difficult times.
“Picking up a book and reading a fun story to a child who’s hospitalized can be a real mood-changer,” said Pediatric Nurse Carol Vinzant. “Since they’re missing school because they in the hospital, giving children a book to read is an opportunity to keep children learning when they can’t attend school.”
While Jared’s project earned him his Eagle Ranking, he knows it will also make a lasting impact on many children. | <urn:uuid:28378659-3f07-4235-bf92-e75259ccb68a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.thepress.net/view/full_story/16235433/article-Eagle-Scout-gives-gift-of-reading | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00065-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.978575 | 410 | 1.65625 | 2 |
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Staff at St. Mary’s Regional Medical Center in Lewiston accepts a recognition plaque from the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention. More than 85 percent of the hospital’s employees received a flu vaccination during the 2011-2012 influenza season.
Health care personnel are the first line of defense in diagnosing, treating, and preventing the spread of influenza. The Maine CDC and St. Mary’s support all efforts to ensure the health care personnel are kept safe and healthy, so they can do their important jobs. Vaccination of all healthcare workers protects vulnerable patients against the flu and is an important component of a patient safety program. | <urn:uuid:ac824b1f-7bad-413d-b803-67fb504b3df0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.stmarysmaineblog.com/tag/disease-control-and-prevention | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00069-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.929062 | 137 | 2.390625 | 2 |
Written by Bruce A. Stephenson, DDS Saturday, 01 March 2008 00:00
An office manager recently asked, “How can some offices get by with only one or 2 people at the front desk? We have 3 people and we can’t keep up with all the work. We’re drowning! How can other offices be that much more efficient?” Good question! Do the people in the other offices work harder, or are they smarter or better organized? Usually that is not the case. We can find the real answer by comparing 2 companies that manufacture toothpicks.
Toothpick company A and toothpick company B both make exactly the same number of toothpicks each month and sell them for exactly the same price. But A has a 40% overhead and B has an overhead of 110%—they lose money every month! Payroll is the largest expense in both places; A has only 2 employees, both very well paid and happy in their jobs, while B has 15 harried, unhappy people working at close to the minimum wage. So, what do the 13 extra employees at B do? Are they just sitting around collecting their checks? Some interviews with people at both companies are revealing.
Photograph by Nathan Zak
“Our jobs are pretty easy,” says the manager of A. “Every day we go to the loading dock and pick up 2-by-4s delivered there, then run them through the toothpick-making machine. The toothpicks are automatically dumped into the pre-made boxes, also delivered to our loading dock. We just close the lips on the boxes, take them back to the loading dock, and call the shipper to take them to our customers. Then we go to lunch. In the afternoon, we call our customers to be sure they are happy with our product, we analyze our reports to see where our new customers are coming from, we review our marketing, and we pay a few bills. Usually we go home early.”
But the manager at B tells a different story: “First thing, we all pile into our 1955 Studebaker truck and drive to the forest to cut down trees with our handsaws—we don’t have chainsaws yet. If the truck does not break down, we get back to the office a little after lunchtime. We usually don’t have much time to eat because we all have to start carving the toothpicks from the wood we brought back. That used to be easier when we had sharp knives to use, but the knives have all gotten dull and we don’t have any time to sharpen them …we’re way too busy for that! Most of our employees are new because we have such a high staff turnover. I don’t really have time to train them so they are not very good at their jobs. Once they have been here long enough to make good toothpicks, they leave because the pay is so low and the work is so hard. After we get the toothpicks made, we have to fold up the boxes from sheets of cardboard and then hand-write our company name on each box. By then it is almost five o’clock so we have to load our truck frantically and try to deliver the toothpicks to our customers. We are usually late, and our customers are mad at us most of the time, but what else can we do?”
It’s obvious that the problems of B are not due to poor employees; they are due to poor management. Company B continues to try to make toothpicks the way it did 50 years ago. It has not kept pace with the changes that have made its competitor so much more profitable. So, how do the toothpick companies relate to the question asked by the dental office manager?
ANTIQUATED EQUIPMENT AND SYSTEMS
Because her dental office has antiquated computer equipment—analogous to the 1955 Studebaker truck, handsaws, and dull knives—it cannot adopt more efficient, modern practice management techniques. Its computer software capabilities are 15 years out of date. I have long maintained that the specific brand of dental management software an office uses is much less important than how the office uses that software; it’s the painter, not the paintbrush that produces fine art. But this office is trying to paint with a handful of weeds instead of a paintbrush! As a result, they are forced to use manually generated paper-based lists to track vital things like recalls, referrals, and incomplete treatment plans. Although they use a “computer scheduler,” it does not show booked production or the production value of each appointment they make. They have only the vaguest idea until the day is over just how much was produced that day. This makes it impossible to assess production goals until it is too late!
They use a manual recall system because their computer system is just too cumbersome. They only send one hand-written recall card. If the patient doesn’t respond, tough luck—that’s all they get! The results are poor patient retention and poor patient care. They have few hygiene days in spite of what they think are “lots of active patients.” Neither the office staff nor the doctor knows where their new patients come from or how much each different referral source generates in production. They do an expensive marketing mailer on a frequent basis. It “seems to work,” but they really don’t know. If they get 20 new patients from each mailing, how many of those referrals actually translate into income and how many just come in for the “free bleaching,” then walk out the back door to another dentist? The antiquated computer system doesn’t track that, and no one has time to manually track it. (“No time to sharpen the knives.”) It may be that the office loses money on each patient that comes in as a result of that expensive mailing. No one knows!
Office staff members try to do the right thing by entering the treatment plans into the computer at the time they are diagnosed, and they do attempt to give patients some idea of their insurance coverage before treatment is started. But if the patient doesn’t schedule an appointment, or later cancels an appointment, he or she is usually not followed up with. The computer system does not automatically generate a report of missed or cancelled appointments or unscheduled treatment plans. Lots more patients walking out that back door! Because the office must manually deal with so many different insurance plans, its estimates of insurance benefits are frequently inaccurate. In spite of its disclaimer that “this is only an estimate,” it leads to unpleasant financial surprises for patients. This anger reduces the office collections and engenders ill will among potential referral sources.
Another major difference between our toothpick companies was the use of “outsourcing.” Company A has found it is much more efficient to let someone else harvest its raw material. So how and to whom do you “outsource” tasks from the front desk? One way is to have back-office staff enter treatment plans. The chairside assistant is with the doctor when he or she calls out the treatment, and can immediately make any corrections or clarifications. “Did you say a porcelain crown or a gold crown, doctor?” “How old is the crown we are going to replace, and what is the reason for the replacement?” “Do those anterior teeth need crowns for cosmetic reasons (no insurance coverage) or are there big, old composites with recurrent caries in those teeth? (And should we take an x-ray or photography today while the patient is here?)” The chairside assistant has much more pertinent information available than the front desk person. Why would you cut down your own trees when someone else can do it better, more easily, and more accurately?
Posting treatment and scheduling appointments from the operatory are other examples of outsourcing tasks often done at the front desk. Just as outlined above for entering treatment plans, the chairside assistant is in a much better position to accurately enter what treatment was completed today and to consult with both the doctor and the patient about what will be done and how long it will take for the next appointment. A real advantage of this kind of outsourcing is that it does not transfer work time from the front to the back. It can usually be done without any added time in the operatory if it is completed when the chairside assistant has “dead time”—while the doctor places retraction cord or while waiting for a material to set. In one office that uses a 2-minute double-bite impression technique for crowns, the chairside assistant routinely does all the clinical charting, schedules the next appointment (the patient just has to nod), creates and prints the lab slip, and produces the insurance submission with the appropriate documentation and images attached, all during the 2 minutes for that impression! She knows her job and is very good at it because she is a well-trained, long-term employee—and she is also well paid because she is worth it and the office can afford it. When properly done, front desk outsourcing saves time and produces superior results.
MOVING FROM B TO A
What kind of toothpick factory are you running? To avoid the high overhead, unhappiness, and inefficiencies plaguing toothpick company B, we should all adopt proven, computer-based, easier, and more profitable management. This decreases office stress, contributes to staff longevity and loyalty, improves our ability to provide better patient care, and increases both our monetary and psychological “take home” at the end of the day. Ultimately, the quality of the toothpicks we produce is very dependent upon the processes we use to produce them!
Dr. Stephenson practices in a paperless and wireless restorative small-group practice in San Leandro, Calif. He has been lecturing, writing, and consulting on dental computing and management since 1985. Copies of his articles and other information are available at his Web site, PaperlessDentistry.com. For information about his computer consulting services and seminars, call (510) 483-2164.
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- Treatment Planning | <urn:uuid:bcf81d9c-2f7a-476e-b023-ab583638aae6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://dentistrytoday.com/technology/computers/857 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00052-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.955663 | 2,229 | 2.5625 | 3 |
Society urged to change perception about people with disabilityBy GNA
6/16/2012 9:00:36 PM -
Asesewa (ER), June 16, GNA - Mr Kofi Adade Debrah, Eastern Regional Program Unit Manager, Plan Ghana, has called on Ghanaians to change their perception about people with disability and to consider them as part of society.
'Let us eliminate social discrimination against them, first in our minds and then take action to enhance their accessibility to social benefits.'
Mr Debrah was speaking at a durbar at Asesewa in the Upper Manya Krobo District, to mark this year's celebration of the African Union Day of the African Child, on Saturday.
The day was declared in solidarity with children of Soweto, South Africa, who were gunned down by the apartheid Government in 1976, when they embarked on a peaceful march advocating for their rights and indicating their displeasure about discrimination and apartheid.
This year's celebration is on the theme: 'The Rights of Children with Disabilities: The Duty to Protect, Respect, Promote and Fulfill.'
Mr Debrah appealed to the Government to institute affirmative action on the welfare of children with disability.
He also advocated the provision of minimum quota in the enrolment of children with disabilities into second cycle schools, and the modification of public structures to enable them to have access to them.
Mr Debrah appealed to parents of disabled children not to hide them in the homes, but to encourage them to be part of society.
Mr Joseph Tetteh Angmor, District Chief Executive for Upper Manya Krobo, noted that the African child does not have an easy and lofty life.
He said it was significant for a day to be dedicated to them so that their plight and development could be evaluated and improved upon.
Mr Angmor said: 'Children with disability have equal rights as all other children, and we must accord them those rights.'
'We need to love, encourage and respect them since they have equal capability of doing anything that any other child can do.'
He said there was the need to protect and offer a hand of friendship to children with disability and accommodate them.
Mr Angmor reminded children with disability that 'disability is not incapability' and asked them to work hard and attain excellence in all their activities.
He said Government was committed to ensuring that people with disability were not discriminated against.
'Government is keen to see to it that monies meant for people with disability, logged in the District Assemblies Common Fund are duly made available to them.'
Mr Angmor cited that in the Upper Manya Krobo District, GH¢ 76,441 . 07 was paid from their share of the Common Fund for four quarters into the bank account of persons with disability to enable them to undertake various income generating activities. | <urn:uuid:1643750d-179d-434b-a292-d4c60819a06e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.modernghana.com/newsthread1/401664/1/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00023-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.972037 | 583 | 2.046875 | 2 |
The average adult produces more than 2 quarts of sweat each day? That is about 1.9 liters!
I found this information on page 5 in the book The Sweaty Book of Sweat by Kelly Regan Barnhill. This is not the kind of book I usually read, but once I picked it up I was so fascinated I had to read it all. There are two kinds of sweat glands: Eccrine glands all over your body and Appocrine in the armpits and groin area.
I also found out that you have 2000 sweat glands in an area the size of a postage stamp on the palm of your hands. Don’t Sweat It!: Every Body’s Answers to Questions You Don’t Want to Ask By Marguerite Crump is a very helpful book for teens and pre-teens that explains all about body odors, sweat and oil glands and all the other changes adolescents are going through.
For as bad a reputation as sweat has, a lot of people go to an extra effort to sweat on purpose. The Athlete’s Way: Sweat and the Biology of Bliss by Christopher Bergland provides a plan to “make exercise a pleasurable habit…. and no longer be something to dread”
If you haven’t started a fitness plan yet, and you need a little more help getting motivated, Mayo Clinic Fitness for Everybody from the Mayo Clinic is a book you should take a look at, especially the list of “excuse busters” on page 192!
When you do get yourself motivated enough to get out there and sweat, what better music to work out to than the CD Child is Father to the Man by Blood, Sweat and Tears? | <urn:uuid:b36f0bd6-05c1-4d02-a068-ea304dccf2b7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://areadinglife.com/2012/10/23/did-you-know-sweat-edition/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.945089 | 357 | 1.882813 | 2 |
Botanical Interests Organic Red Winter Kale
Red Winter is an improved version of Red Russian Kale. This rare strain of kale has VERY tender, sweet leaves compared to other kales. The reddish-purple stems and veins, wavy margins, and foliage that resembles oak leaves makes Red Winter almost dramatic-looking in the garden! Young leaves are very attractive in salads and mesclun mixes. It makes a nice garnish and can be used in any dish that calls for kale.
When to plant outside: Early spring when soil temperatures are at least 60 degrees for a late spring/summer crop, in late summer for a fall crop, or (in USDA zone 7 or warmer) you can sow in fall for a winter or very early spring crop. Seed can also be sown in successive plantings every 3 weeks starting in early spring.
When to start inside: 10 weeks before the average last spring frost and transplant outdoors 6-8 weeks later.
Special Sowing & Germination Instructions: Easy to grow from seed. Thin seedlings by pinching off plant at soil surface, thus decreasing damage to other seedlings. Protect seedlings with caps in early spring if temperatures fall below 30 degrees. Rotate crops, so you don't have any members of the mustard family in the same place more than once every three years. (Mustard family incudes: alyssum, iberis, nasturtium, arugula, broccoli, brussels sprouts, cauliflower, cabbage, kohlrabi, kale, and mustard).
Harvesting: Kale can be harvested two ways: 1) Cut the entire plant off at ground level 6-8 weeks after seeding or 2) strip the lower leaves off the plant periodically. Plants often over winter outside (even in the north). Mulch thickly when the ground freezes, and you can harvest again in early spring.
Contents: Brassica - oleracea
Why Our Product is Different
At Botanical Interests our goal is to inspire AND educate so that you can create beautiful and successful gardens.
A large selection of Certified Organic varieties
Guaranteed - the germination rate of every variety is tested before we package it
No GMOs - recently, we enthusiastically signed the SAFE SEED PLEDGE: We do not knowingly buy or sell genetically engineered seeds or plants
About Botanical Interests
Curtis and Judy met while waiting to interview for the same horticultural job and soon found they shared a boundless enthusiasm for gardening. Botanical Interests began out of their mutual passion and personal desire for better quality seed and more informational tools to help and inpire gardeners.
"We wanted a level of purity and quality that wasn't easy to find," recalls Curtis. So they searched out the highest quality seed available and began their business in 1997, in the spare bedroom of their Colorado home. The business objectives they established then still hold strong for them now: to inspire and educate gardeners; to provide high quality seed to their customers; and to create an enjoyable work place for employees.
Over the years, Judy and Curtis' family has grown along with their line of seeds which now attracts and pleases customers nationwide. | <urn:uuid:dbcb3d5a-969c-4a55-afa0-42b0453f8201> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.shoporganic.com/product/botanical-interests-organic-red-winter-kale/organic-garden-vegetable-fruit-seeds | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.926382 | 662 | 2.078125 | 2 |
From common consumer products such as cell phones and MP3 players to enterprise-level call centres and customer service tools and even to sophisticated projects such as human-machine interfaces and responsive robots, speech technologies are now everywhere. Many think that it is just a matter of time before more applications of the science of speech become an integral part of both our professional and personal lives.
Written for those who need to understand or implement specific algorithms for speech-related products,
The emergence of packet networks for both data and voice traffic has introduced new challenges for speech transmission designs that differ significantly from those encountered and handled in traditional circuit-switched telephone network. Members of the Global IP Solutions' (GIPS) engineering team authored Chapter 15: "Voice over IP: Speech Transmission over Packet Networks". These renowned experts present the many aspects that affect speech quality in a Voice over IP (VoIP) conversation. They also present design techniques for coding systems that aim to overcome the deficiencies of the packet channel. By properly utilising speech codecs tailored for packet networks, VoIP can in fact produce a quality higher than that possible with PSTN.
This chapter was obtained with permission, © 2008 Springer, a division of Springer Science+Business Media. | <urn:uuid:62a5c660-dba8-4a69-b03a-e0511b44dd75> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://searchcio.techtarget.com.au/news/1280099561/Springer-Handbook-of-Speech-Processing | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00033-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.948496 | 249 | 2.890625 | 3 |
First Bladders Grown in Lab Transplanted
Tuesday, April 4, 2006
Researchers said yesterday that they have grown complete urinary bladders in a laboratory and transplanted them into patients, improving their health and achieving a Holy Grail of medicine: the first cultivation of working replacements for failing solid organs in people.
The "neo-bladders," each one grown in a small laboratory container from a pinch of a patient's own cells, have been working in seven young patients for an average of almost four years, according to a report released yesterday by the British journal the Lancet. The organs have remained free of the many complications that bedevil the conventional practice of surgically constructing bladders from other tissues.
If ongoing studies continue apace, the researchers said, they hope someday to offer patients more than a dozen other homegrown organs, including blood-vessel complexes, partial kidneys and perhaps hearts.
"It was really uncharted territory in terms of how you do these things," said Anthony Atala of Wake Forest University School of Medicine in Winston-Salem, N.C., who led the work with Alan Retik at Children's Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Boston. "We're very pleased with how well they're functioning."
Experts applauded the work as a coming of age for the long-struggling field of tissue engineering and as a possible way to bypass some of the controversy over embryonic stem cells.
Those versatile cells stir political trouble because obtaining them requires the destruction of human embryos. Although embryonic cells remain the most versatile biological building blocks, it now appears that at least some tissues, and even whole organs, can be generated without using the cells at all.
Because the replacement bladders were made from patients' own cells, they did not stimulate an immune-system reaction.
"This approach allows us to avoid completely the risks of rejection and the need for immuno-suppression," said Steven Nichtberger, chief executive of Tengion Inc. in King of Prussia, Pa., which was not involved in the work described in the Lancet but was formed in 2003 to market the technology. "This brings the promise of regenerative medicine to life."
The new study involved seven children and young adults, age 4 to 19, with spina bifida, a serious birth defect of the spinal cord. Because of misconnections in the nerves to the bladder, many such patients experience urinary pressure, which causes life-threatening kidney damage.
For decades, surgeons have crafted various bladder stand-ins, often using intestinal tissue. But complications are common, including leakage, infections, stones in the bladder and bone loss -- in part because the transplanted intestinal tissue absorbs rather than excretes various waste compounds.
Colon cancers have also recently begun to emerge in some patients with intestinal-tissue bladders, a worrisome trend that has invigorated the search for alternatives.
"This has been the dream we've all had, to come up with a tissue-engineered bladder," said Tony Khoury, chief of pediatric urology at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto.
The bladder is a living sac made of three tissue layers: muscle on the outside, a specialized "urothelium" lining on the inside and collagen, a connective tissue protein, in between. Atala likened the process of growing a new bladder to "baking a layered cake."
The team started by taking biopsy specimens about half the size of a postage stamp from each patient's malfunctioning bladder. After teasing apart the cells in that bit of tissue and discarding the collagen, the researchers grew the muscle and urothelium cells in separate dishes for about a week.
They then seeded those cells onto spongelike biodegradable "scaffolds" made of synthetic polymer and collagen. Each scaffold was custom-designed to fit inside the patient.
Over about seven weeks in an incubator, the cells colonized the scaffold -- urothelium inside and muscle out. Surgeons then stitched the bladders into place just above the patients' old ones. There the organs continued to grow and reconfigure themselves.
"The body is the terminal incubator," said Atala, who is now a compensated Tengion board member.
The Lancet paper documents the results in each patient, showing that the outcomes improved as techniques evolved. A key advance, which began with the fourth patient, was a decision to wrap the new bladder in omentum, a kind of tissue in the body that is rich in blood vessels and so provides key nutrients and oxygen.
Despite the improvement in their conditions, the patients are not living normal lives. Because of their severe nerve abnormalities, they cannot control the muscles that regulate urine flow and so still must use catheters several times a day to empty their new bladders.
But important measures improved overall, including total urine capacity, elasticity and the bladder's ability to keep internal pressure low. Perhaps most important for quality of life, the patients now leak urine far less frequently, in some cases remaining dry for seven hours at a stretch.
"It's a huge step," Khoury said. "It shows us that it is doable."
The technique's promise for more common conditions has not been proved, several experts said. No one knows whether biopsied bladder cells from older adults -- patients losing the organ to cancer, for example -- would regenerate as nicely on laboratory-made scaffolds. It is also not clear whether doctors would want to implant new bladders made from cancer patients' cells, which might harbor tumor-promoting genetic glitches.
Getting nerves to grow into new organs also remains a challenge, though one that may be coming within reach.
"Reinnervation is certainly something to keep an eye on," said Robert Langer, a tissue engineer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who pioneered some of the techniques that led to the new work. He is developing new polymers that can conduct electricity -- nerve impulses, for example -- spiked with neural hormones to lure nearby nerves to connect to freshly implanted organs. | <urn:uuid:c0f9261a-9980-460c-acf6-6b491ca6d3db> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/03/AR2006040301387.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00075-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.958049 | 1,243 | 2.546875 | 3 |
From CBS News, here are details of how a librarian discovered the 'global gag rule' removing the word abortion from the Popline ("population information online" ) database.
Gloria Won, a librarian at the University of California, San Francisco Medical Center, was one of those who sent e-mails to POPLINE administrators after having trouble with searches.
Won got this response from POPLINE administrator Debra L. Dickson: "Yes, we did make a change to POPLINE. We recently made all abortion words stop words. As a federally funded project, we decided this was best for now."
A "stop word" is a word that a search engine ignores; typically they are common words such as "a," "the" and "is."
Loriene Roy, president of the American Library Association, applauded the actions of Dr. Michael J. Klag, the dean of the Bloomberg school, who ordered the word abortion restored to the db, saying the restriction denied "researchers, students and individuals on all sides of the issue access to accurate scientific information." | <urn:uuid:d5108d2c-472f-486b-8c44-6fba539d68f9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://lisnews.org/node/29703 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00043-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.942683 | 225 | 1.625 | 2 |
After years of visiting the same spot in rural Georgia, a family builds a dream farm among the oaks
Otis Scarborough and his wife, Sandy, bought the little house as a weekend place for themselves and their two sons. “We put in the azaleas and roses, plus all sorts of flowering plants,” Scarborough says. “In the spring, we put in vegetables and eat them all summer. My wife’s and her brother’s art is here…” He pauses. “It’s like a little bit of every part of our life is in this house. I know it sounds corny, but it’s true.”
Yet the house Scarborough is talking about—a functioning horse farm on a hundred acres about thirty miles outside Columbus, Georgia—didn’t start out the way it’s ended up. Purchased about fifteen years ago, it was a modular home on a gorgeous piece of land: pastures, woods, a lake, and towering old oaks. Every weekend, the Scarborough family would drive up from their home in Columbus and settle in.
Then, a few years ago, they decided to take a huge step. “One day, my wife and I thought: We love this place so much, why don’t we live here full-time?”
At first, Scarborough adds, he was nervous about it. Maybe as a daily diet they wouldn’t like the place as much. “But then I thought: I’m always happy here on weekends,” he says. “Why wouldn’t I be happy here full-time?”
Still, before they decided to commit, they began thinking about how to make the place even better. And the Scarboroughs (Otis is in real estate, Sandy is a photographer) knew exactly whom to call. On a different job, they’d worked with Jim Strickland, founder and senior partner at Historical Concepts in Peachtree City, Georgia.
A company as much about planning as architecture, Historical Concepts is a “place-making” enterprise that, among other residential projects, is behind the sport-centric communities Palmetto Bluff and Spring Island in South Carolina and Ford Plantation in Georgia, developments that pay tribute to the charming architecture and traditions of the past. “So the Scarboroughs asked me up to their lake house,” Strickland says, “and we began to talk about its possibilities.” Together the three—plus decorator Melanie Davis, landscape designer Bill Lincicome, and project manager Terry Pylant—began to put together an idea of what the house could become. | <urn:uuid:311995cf-b589-4f51-b9e5-2ae710a720be> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://gardenandgun.com/article/homeward-bound | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00062-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965324 | 567 | 1.65625 | 2 |
Life is a Truck Farm
Ed. Note: This is cross-posted from the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) blog.
DC Truck Farm is a collaborative effort between D.C. Central Kitchen (DCCK) and USDA’s People’s Garden Initiative. Now in its second year, this garden on wheels travels around the Nation’s Capital teaching urban youth about agriculture, soil science and nutrition education. It got moving thanks to the support of many partners in the DC metropolitan area.
We recently caught up with the District’s very own truck farmers at DCCK to capture their first planting of the season, ask about lessons learned last year and talk plans for 2012. Check out the video.
Tell us about DC Truck Farm.
The Truck Farm project is a mini garden planted in the bed of a Dodge Ram pick-up truck that serves as a tool to teach urban youth about healthy eating and to get them interested in where their food comes from. It began in 2010 as an experimental urban garden project of documentary filmmakers from New York. Since then, it has grown into a national project with 25 participating cities. The DC Truck Farm started in 2011.
Where did you travel to last year and who did you meet?
Last year we traveled to 40 sites across D.C. over the course of 16 weeks. Sites included farmer’s markets, summer youth agencies -- including organizations that participate in DCCK’s Healthy Returns Program -- and various other community events. The Truck Farm interacted with over 1,400 people -- 1,100 kids and 300 adults. We held hour-long lessons with over 750 kids.
Tell us about your experiences working with youth.
At an average Truck Farm lesson, our students ranged in ages from 5 to 18. Lessons had to be easily adaptable for all ages. We found that in general, no matter what age kids were, they were interested in learning about how to grow their own food. Younger students tended to prefer digging in the dirt and doing art projects whereas older students spent a lot of time asking questions about what we were growing and tasting the different herbs and veggies.
How do you make learning fun for students?
We made sure that all of our lessons were interactive. We usually only had 1 hour with students, so we tried to keep them moving and get them involved in projects. Generally we would set up three stations and rotate through each in small groups. Stations could be anything from a culinary herb scavenger hunt in the truck to planting your own plants to learning about vermiculture -- worm composting.
What plant did the kids like best?
Kids loved the lime basil and the chives. Some kids also liked the oregano because it reminded them of pizza!
Which lessons worked best?
Our most successful lesson was plant-a-plant. We would start off with students gathered around the truck. We would talk about how we got the plants in there and have the kids make observations about whether or not our garden was healthy. Then we would identify the things that made our garden healthy: sun, water, soil, etc. Kids would then plant their own seeds in small cups so they could grow their own healthy gardens, and shout out the magic ‘recipe’ for a healthy garden.
What was the most surprising question you received when talking to kids about DC Truck Farm?
Maybe it shouldn’t have been surprising, but we were not expecting so many kids to ask us “Why did you put dirt in your truck?” However, this question opened up an opportunity for us to have a deeper conversation about what it means to grow your own food in an urban environment. While the method we chose is a little wacky, it was a good chance for kids to observe their surroundings and realize how little green space they see every day. Then we would challenge them to think of other creative spaces they could grow food.
My favorite statement that we heard over the summer was at a farmers market one afternoon. An older couple visiting DC from the Midwest stopped by to look at our garden. I saw the woman’s eyes light up as she turned to me and said “You know, my husband has an old pick-up truck…” and before she could finish her sentence he said “Don’t even think about it!”
What are your plans for DC Truck Farm this year?
If you want to see DC Truck Farm in person, it will be parked at USDA Farmers Market every Friday starting June 1st and ending October 26th. And we’ll be on the road visiting schools, camps, Healthy Returns agencies throughout the growing season. | <urn:uuid:f2039638-9d8e-4186-9628-da528f570156> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.letsmove.gov/blog/2012/04/20/life-truck-farm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00026-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.976278 | 965 | 2.546875 | 3 |
The Spit of the Soldiers...
The whipping was the first deed of the soldiers.
The crucifixion was the third. (No, I didn’t skip the second. We’ll get to that in a moment.) Though his back was ribboned with wounds, the soldiers loaded the crossbeam on Jesus’ shoulders and marched him to the Place of a Skull and executed him.
We don’t fault the soldiers for these two actions. After all, they were just following orders. But what’s hard to understand is what they did in between. Here is Matthew’s description:
Jesus was beaten with whips and handed over to the soldiers to be crucified. The governor’s soldiers took Jesus into the governor’s palace, and they all gathered around him. They took off his clothes and put a red robe on him. Using thorny branches, they made a crown, put it on his head, and put a stick in his right hand. Then the soldiers bowed before Jesus and made fun of him, saying, “Hail, King of the Jews!” They spat on Jesus. Then they took his stick and began to beat him on the head. After they finished, the soldiers took off the robe and put his own clothes on him again. Then they led him away to be crucified. (Matt. 27:26–31 NCV)
The soldiers’ assignment was simple: Take the Nazarene to the hill and kill him. But they had another idea. They wanted to have some fun first. Strong, rested, armed soldiers encircled an exhausted, nearly dead, Galilean carpenter and beat up on him. The scourging was commanded. The crucifixion was ordered. But who would draw pleasure out of spitting on a half-dead man?
Spitting isn’t intended to hurt the body—it can’t. Spitting is intended to degrade the soul, and it does. What were the soldiers doing? Were they not elevating themselves at the expense of another? They felt big by making Christ look small.
Allow the spit of the soldiers to symbolize the filth in our hearts. And then observe what Jesus does with our filth. He carries it to the cross.
Through the prophet he said, “I did not hide my face from mocking and spitting” (Isa. 50:6 NIV). Mingled with his blood and sweat was the essence of our sin.
God could have deemed otherwise. In God’s plan, Jesus was offered wine for his throat, so why not a towel for his face? Simon carried the cross of Jesus, but he didn’t mop the cheek of Jesus. Angels were a prayer away. Couldn’t they have taken the spittle away?
They could have, but Jesus never commanded them to. For some reason, the One who chose the nails also chose the saliva. Along with the spear and the sponge of man, he bore the spit of man.
The sinless One took on the face of a sinner so that we sinners could take on the face of a saint.
"For God’s mercy reaches unto the heavens, and His truth unto the clouds" (Psalm 57:10, NKJV). | <urn:uuid:a5c4c995-6a40-4982-a9a8-f77cee80630f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://nethugs.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=228323 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.9856 | 687 | 2.578125 | 3 |
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's remarks came as tensions are rising in the region over a possible strike by Israel against Iran's nuclear facilities.
The U.S. and its allies accuse Iran of using its civilian nuclear program as a cover to develop nuclear weapons. Tehran has denied the charges, saying its program is peaceful and geared toward generating electricity and producing radioisotopes to treat cancer patients.
"The readiness of the Iranian armed forces is such ... it will deter the enemy from harboring any thoughts of invasion," state TV quoted Khamenei as saying during a visit to a military base in the country's northeast.
Israel has not ruled out a military option against Iran's suspect program and has recently said that time is running out before Iran obtains a nuclear weapon. Israel considers a nuclear-armed Iran to be a threat to its existence, citing Iranian denials of the Holocaust, calls for Israel's destruction, development of missiles capable of striking the Jewish state and its support for hostile Arab militant groups.
Washington and others favor a mix of sanctions and diplomacy to try to force Tehran to curb its nuclear program.
Khamenei, who has final say on all state matters in the country, said Iran "is not seeking to invade anyone but will not succumb to any attack or act of aggression."
As Khamenei visited the base Friday, his host Gen. Mohmmad Ali Jafari of the powerful Revolutionary Guard said the troops' naval and missile power has now been raised to a "strategic deterrence level."
Iran has long sought a self-sufficient military program and top officials frequently make announcements about the country's strides in military technology.
Tehran has recently said it has upgraded the accuracy of its missiles with a range of 2,000 kilometers (1,250 miles), which covers much of the Middle East, including Israel and U.S. bases in the Gulf.
However, it is virtually impossible to independently determine the actual capabilities or combat worthiness of Iran's arsenal.
Separately, the foreign ministry said a recent U.N. report that condemned Tehran of "deeply troubling" human rights violations was politically motivated and influenced by western adversaries including the United States.
The report, obtained by The Associated Press on Thursday, said many of the government's violations were "systemic in nature." It also called for an extensive, impartial, and independent investigation into the violence in the months that followed the re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in 2009. | <urn:uuid:3ca9b7bc-975c-4859-9050-3b094b72b58e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.denverpost.com/war/ci_21757415/iran-leader-army-ready-deter-any-invasion | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00055-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967114 | 504 | 1.546875 | 2 |
I'm hooked, so completely hooked. The popular 39 Clues series now has another fan after I read book 1: The 39 Clues: The Maze of Bones. Meant for middle school children ages 8-12+, the series reminds me of an interactive The Da Vinci Code for kids, sans religion. The multi-media adventure series combines 10 books, an online game, collectible cards and cash prizes in a way sure to excite even the most reluctant readers. (You must read the books in order to fully participate in the online game. However, the book series can be read and enjoyed without playing the online game.)
Power, riches, codes, exotic destinations, and famous individuals. The members Cahill family don't fully realize the history of their family lineage until the matriarch of their family, Grace, dies. After an unusual reading of her will, they must choose between a million dollars or a dangerous, mysterious race that will send them all across the world to discover the Cahill family secret. The plot centers around orphan siblings, Dan (age 11) and Amy (age 14) as they try to find and decode the 39 clues before their evil, sneaky relatives beat them to it. In The 39 Clues: The Maze of Bones - Book 1 they follow messages involving their ancestor Benjamin Franklin, end up in Paris and try to discover the first of many clues.
The exciting adventure captivated me and left me wishing I could read the entire series immediately. What kind of secret could make one the most powerful person on the planet? I must admit, I'm intrigued. I've heard many kids find the series just as fascinating. One fellow blogger sent this response via twitter, "My youngest, 13 yo boy loves those books and the game!" What an exciting way to encourage children, both boys and girls, to read. I briefly logged into the online game, but did not get much of a chance to play around yet. The winners of the first episode have been selected but readers can still join and try for subsequent episode prizes. My only complaint: the books include sets of cards that have unique ID numbers for use online. The numbers can only be used one time, so if you have multiple family members that want to play, each will need to get their own set of cards.
The Maze of Bones is the first book in the 10-book series. Each book in the series is written by a different author and includes a set of collectible game cards. A prominent figure from history is featured in each book, the first two books involving Benjamin Franklin and Mozart, respectively.
The 39 Clues: The Maze of Bones - Book 1 by Rick Riordan. Scholastic (September 2008); 220 pages; ISBN 9780545060394Related links:
www.the39clues.com Official Game Website
The Maze of Bones Discussion Guide
Video Read-aloud - Rick Riordan Reads The Maze of Bones
The Maze of Bones Text Excerpt [pdf]
Book 3 by Peter Lerangis – The 39 Clues: The Sword Thief – comes out March 3!
HUGE GIVEAWAY!!! To celebrate the release of the 3rd book in the series, Scholastic has kindly offered to giveaway (1) Scholastic 39 Clues Prize Pack to a Brimful Curiosities reader. The Prize Pack includes the first 3 books in the series, a 39 Clues Card Pack, and a 39 Clues t-shirt.
To enter, visit The Scholastic Store Website and leave a comment here telling me one fact you learned about the 39 Clues series.
• For contact purposes, if you are a non-blogger or your email is not accessible in your blog profile, please leave a valid email address within the comment section.Three ways to gain extra entries (Maximum total entries is 4):
• Contest is open to US only
• Contest ends on Monday, March 9th, 2008 at 11:59 PM CST.
• Winner will be chosen at random
1st extra entry: Follow Me! or subscribe by email or RSS reader
2nd extra entry: Blog about this contest then post your link in the comment section.
3rd extra entry: Follow me on twitter (iambrimful) and tweet about the contest.
Welcome to Brimful Curiosities, where every week is a children's book carnival! This review/giveaway is one of my contributions to the Book Giveaway Carnival, (March 2-8, 2009). Head over there for all the great giveaways this week! And don't forget to enter my other giveaways! | <urn:uuid:cd92073c-c904-4843-addf-cd7d9e61f895> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.brimfulcuriosities.com/2009/03/maze-of-bones-39-clues-series-book.html?showComment=1236265500000 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00030-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.919239 | 951 | 1.8125 | 2 |
West Moving East
As Western firms are beset by the high costs of conducting clinical trials at home and rising failure rates for potential
drugs, many are now discovering that China offers significant cost advantages. A new cadre of clinical research organizations
(CROs), led by Wuxi Apptech in Shanghai, is working closely with Western firms to accelerate drug development and lower the
cost of moving new therapies from lab bench to bedside. Until recently, winning approval for drugs in China took far longer
than in Europe or the US—a legacy of China's past, when it focused primarily on screening established generic drugs. But the
State Food and Drug Administration (SFDA) is indicating that it will begin to loosen standards for first-in-human drug trials
and for accelerating the use of Chinese patients in global clinical research trials.
Already, the rapid outsourcing of clinical trials from Western labs to Chinese-based CROs is helping Chinese researchers gain
deeper experience in working with Western models of drug development and raising their credibility. The "cheaper and faster"
differentiator that led to the first boom in CRO investment is also likely to lead to knowledge-based improvements, as clinical
centers rapidly move "upstream" into more basic research and discovery.
BGI hopes to make its mark combining basic research collaborations with innovations in "pure science," while earning funds
through collaborations with more established firms. "This is big science, which requires attacking genome sequencing in an
industrial way," said BGI co-founder Yang Huanming, who earned his PhD from Copenhagen University in 1988 and received his
postdoctoral training in France. "Only with a large scale can we do big jobs at relatively low cost."
But BGI is also investing aggressively in developing the software needed to better analyze the output from raw genetic sequencing.
To that end, it is hiring dozens of young software and computer engineers to help build a sophisticated platform to analyze
the torrent of data its genetic sequencers are uncovering. Many of these are computer "hackers" who lack formal education
but have become highly skilled in understanding and writing sophisticated computer code.
"This field is so new," Dr. Yang explained, referring to the rapid sequencing of genetic code and the need to build the best
software to read it. "It makes sense to hire raw and talented computer experts who are ready to accept risks and try new experiments
to find breakthroughs."
Challenges to China's Rise
While China's rapid acceleration toward life sciences leadership is impressive, a myriad of obstacles remain. The speed at
which China addresses these issues will determine the pace of its global impact on the industry.
If the future lies in biologics, China will need a clear regulatory pathway that drug developers can follow. And it will
require more than the current handful of experts at the SFDA Center for Drug Evaluation in order to evaluate new large molecules.
Clinical trial approvals:
Delays of 12 to 18 months for permission to conduct clinical trials represent a major challenge to the speed of drug approval.
SFDA is working to accelerate the current timeline, but at the same time the agency is debating fundamental changes in its
overall approach. Such changes may allow Phase III trials to act as the first step in a progressive launch that covers an
increasing number of hospitals and patient conditions with rigorous, ongoing post-launch surveillance.
While China has developed a track record for protecting locally registered patents (to the chagrin of some firms who ignored
China in their original global registrations), the innovation free-for-all now under way is frequently characterized by both
a lack of adequate scientific documentation and a lack of IP protection. It will take time to strengthen these disciplines
and to develop stronger protection in such areas as know-how and data exclusivity.
Ruthlessly driving down generic drug prices is a key pillar of the initial phase of healthcare reform, designed to meet the
most basic needs of China's 1.3 billion people. Many firms are beginning to question whether expanding their portfolios to
include an even wider range of branded generics is the right strategy. At the innovative end of the drug spectrum, the government
has begun to consider alternative approaches to balancing public needs with the economic incentives needed to drive innovation.
While most Western drug firms assume innovation can only occur where high prices are allowed, China may well come up with
different models—for funding research and compensating drug makers—that are unique to China's emerging role as the world's
largest single-payer healthcare system.
Whether in manufacturing or execution of clinical trials, China's success as a global player will depend on dramatically
improving standards in virtually every part of the value chain. Fortunately, this shift may begin to materialize faster than
anticipated. China's new Good Manufacturing Practice standards are close enough to global specs that most companies building
new plants are committed to going the extra distance required to obtain US FDA certifications.
George Baeder, a Shanghai-based partner at Monitor Group, leads the firm's Life Sciences practice in Asia. He can be reached at George_Baeder@Monitor.com | <urn:uuid:da5216bd-5c45-4aea-9084-aecbcd076d1c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.pharmexec.com/pharmexec/article/articleDetail.jsp?id=752337&sk=&date=&%0A%09%09%09&pageID=2 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00051-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.94106 | 1,053 | 2.15625 | 2 |
From the article: What is Love?
Different people define love in different ways. For some it's passion, for others love means loyalty, compassion, giving, friendship on fire. What's your definition of love between adults? And how do you know when you are in love? Share your wisdom on the meaning of love here. How Do You Define Love?
- love is happy in biggining but it make us cry in the end
- —Guest hezzel
definition of love
- Love is time and love is the foundation for all human relations.
- —Guest james p. willie
- Love is like a fire that it flames burns high and heavy at first, and turns into ashes later on...
- —Guest Princess seiyefa
- Love is like a wind that you cannot see but you can feel.
- —Guest valnie pabalinas
Love is sacrifice
- Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails.
- —Guest cindy
Love! Love!! Love!!!
- Love is a platform that enables us to express our inadequacies without fear.
- —Guest Emprex
- The definition of love is dependent on what a person experienced. For those who are happy being in love, they might define it as the best feeling they've ever felt. But for someone like me, who always needs to fix my broken heart, Love hurts!
- —Guest -MeJhuzH
- Love is inherently free. It cannot be bought, sold or traded.
- —Guest lo_rence macaranas
- The only love you ever have is with a dog, man's best friend. How many people would give up their life in a heartbeat for you? A loving dog would.
- —Guest MissTrollop
What is Love?
- Love is a subject-to-subject response to someone whom you care for. Love is when you learn how to give your whole self to someone without reservation.
- —Guest EJ_02
- Love is a journey; complete it. Love is a treasure; find it. Love is a game; play it. Love is like music; listen to it. Love is an adventure; challenge it. Love is painful; deal with it.
- —Guest Akash Sharma
- Love is like a drug: If taken to excess, it can cause madness.
- —Guest sushey
love is a beautiful thing,
- Love is a beautiful thing and you can never have control over it. It makes you smile. It makes cry, and it makes you feel alive.
- —Guest naf
WHAT IS LOVE?
- In my humble opinion, LOVE is beauty all around us and is in the eye of the beholder. Love does not hurt and is a matter of valuing all beings unconditionally.
- —Guest Artaymis Ma'at
- Love is a very beautiful garden in which different types of colorful flowers bloom in spring, but only one flower can be picked.
- —Guest Aaqib Ramzan
1-15 of 228Next | <urn:uuid:a21059ef-8338-4b9b-9168-b5e7bc256642> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://honeymoons.about.com/u/ua/lovequotes/definition_of_love.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00043-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.938045 | 720 | 2.375 | 2 |
|The vital thing in online business is opening a online bank account . Basically USA is the ideal place for internet banking . Bank of America giving all kind of facilities to its customers for US base residence only. But on the other hand there is some oneline banking it gives facilities to the account holder internet banking . So you can buy and send your services and products easily.
|Bank of America
Bank of America, the nation\'s top financial organization and home for all of your personal monetary needs.
|Welcome to Citibank
One of the largest full service banks in the world. Start here to bank and pay bills online.
Open a pay pal account and send money to anyone with email. PayPal is free for consumers and works seamlessly with your existing credit card and checking account.
Open a e gold account and be a Master card holder, send money worldwide electronic payments system.
Internet trades in US dollars by using merchant account online credit card or debit wherever you are in the world and payment through an online service. There are many oneline banks in internet where you can open a account. | <urn:uuid:a949180a-f641-4dce-8c88-e4aa0ae9e342> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.yogsutra.com/oneline_banking.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00056-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.918401 | 223 | 1.578125 | 2 |
Hello all NAIS conference participants! Did you hear that the first comic book about superman sold this week for a million bucks... and the original price was 10 cents? Maybe we should all save our conference programs!
Seriously though, and along the lines of the conference theme, who are the superheroes in your school
, and what are their super powers? In every school I've seen, there are heroic acts of teaching. And* sometimes there are villains. So post a reply here about your super-people (or your villains.) Here's mine...
One of my first teaching experiences was in a kindergarten as an assistant to a wonderfully creative teacher named Claire. In her room (which was one of those portable/trailer classrooms) there were six or seven activity centers which the children would choose from each morning. These included a puppet theater, dress-up trunk, workbench (with real tools), sand table, arts table, and book corner. Every child in that room was enthusiastic about his or her chosen activity. The half-day would progress with puppet shows and plays, artwork, reading, and woodshop displays. Claire is my super hero. When I walk around kindergartens in other schools and see rows or clusters of desks with children studiously doing paperwork (and not quite understanding why they have to stay at their desk), it makes me long to be back in Claire's room.
Now that I have a daughter of my own I feel much more personally invested in supporting and advocating for a more student-driven and activity-based curriculum. My respect is growing for "alternative" approaches like Waldorf in which children are much more engaged with the natural world, arts, and music than the abstractions of seat-work. Certainly I want my daughter to be a writer, to love reading and to see the beauty of mathematics, but I don't think this is best achieved by sitting at a desk all day. The furniture in our classrooms says a lot about how children spend their time.
I understand the reality of needing to maintain a disciplined approach to classroom management when you have 16-22 students in a room together for six hours. five days a week for 180 days. We are good at creating classrooms where students feel accepted and occupy their time. But I feel like we are accepting mediocrity as the price we have to pay for acceptable classroom management. My question is how do we go from "good to great" with both our expectations and our results. How do we create classrooms in which students' time is not just "occupied", but is passionate? How do we structure activities, curriculum, pedagogy, and assessment (taking advantage of children's innate curiousity) in a way which yields greater results? Or do you disagree with this assertion? Do you think our classrooms are full of passion-filled learning? Or perhaps passion-filled classrooms are not our purpose? Maybe it is more about igniting passion for learning within our students, but keeping them on task and on track during the school day?
I think we need to start by looking at how we assess our curriculum. It seems true that "we measure that which we value." And while we often say we value a hands-on, activity-based, differentiated, multiple-intelligences style of education, most of our assessments seem geared towards measuring a standardized level of cerebral and abstract learning. The tests which seem to hold the most weight are standardized ones like the ERB
or its older siblings the PSAT and ACT. We are all well-meaning, and never intend for these assessments to drive our curriculum, but I think we have wandered down a path which has removed the passion from too many classrooms. I think we settle. We settle for keeping our kids occupied and our parents happy. Meanwhile, the highlights of the school year that we recount are often project-based: the science fair, the bridge-building, the rainforest unit, the class play, dads' day, butterfly hatching, etc. The problem is that these highlights are often perceived as the "enrichment" or an add-on to a unit of study. Why not build our curriculum around projects like this, rather than treating them as an add-on? What if the assessment was being able to successfully grow a butterfuly rather than being able to spell the word metamorphisis? What if every student were asked to become an expert on a topic of his/her choosing, rather than having all students become mildly familiar with a uniform set of curricular objects. What if students became not just experts, but teachers on their topic? What if part of a student's day was devoted to working on his/her area of expertise? ...perhaps emailing and collaborating with other students and real-world experts from around the country? What would the assessment look like? I suspect it would need to be portfolio-based.
Yes, I want my daughter to know how to multiply and do long division. It's important to me that she can discuss the causes of the civil war and understand the similarities betweent the world's religions. Physics, calculus, modern European history, Shakespeare, and Spanish all figure in her future, but what is most important to me is that she feel truly engaged and happy in her educational pursuits. My fear is that the pendulum of classroom instruction has swung too far towards the abstract. It goes back to that which we measure. If we value passion-filled education, we need to assess for it.
Most of the teachers I know work very very hard to make their classrooms engaging, and to help each and every student learn. My rant here is about the system and the way in which we measure our success. To me, the villain here is accepting "good" because it is so hard to get to "great."
Comments? Questions? Suggestions? Digressions?
*with apologies to all of my English teachers who studiously taught me never to begin a sentence with a conjunction, I am now of the school which thinks conversational writing has its place | <urn:uuid:a968fd1f-40c3-4e82-8db7-fdab1ea48dd4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://isenet.ning.com/profiles/blogs/deep-thoughts-on-a-long-plane | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.980743 | 1,231 | 1.890625 | 2 |
Mitt Romney, Paul Ryan, Jeff Miller, Connie Mack and most Republicans signed Grover Norquist’s pledge on never raising taxes. Now, some may think that’s not such a big deal and others may actually like the idea. I happen to think it’s a very big deal.
Grover Norquist is the millionaire leader of the tea party movement and controls their super PAC. He is from Massachusetts and has little interest in Florida politics. But if a Republican wants tea party support and Norquist’s donations, he or she had better sign his pledge.
I am reminded of the German Reichstag of the 1930s. They were obligated to vote the way Hitler wanted or suffer the consequences.
I’m not comparing Norquist to Hitler. But, to me, the principle is the same. There is no room for signers of the pledge to compromise or change their minds. Their votes are predetermined. We might as well send robots to Washington and Tallahassee.
I guess I’m old-fashioned, but I’ve always believed that our elected officials were supposed to represent us, their constituents, not some rich guy from up North. Frankly, I wouldn’t care if a candidate was a Republican or a Democrat, but if he was coerced into signing a pledge to support anyone but us, I wouldn’t vote for him.
Fortunately, we have a clear choice in November. We can vote for the Democratic candidates who have pledged their support to all of the American people, not just some special-interest group. Or we can vote for the Grover Norquist puppets.
— ROBERT HIRSCH | <urn:uuid:a0568e57-a988-4341-acb2-3b52392c76c3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.nwfdailynews.com/opinion/letters-to-the-editor/letter-norquist-s-puppets-1.34909 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969278 | 350 | 1.773438 | 2 |
Kids gather at a helmet giveaway by Kohl's Cares for Kids at BREC Perkins Road in early January.
Help protect your family by making sure:
Your child wears an approved bike safety helmet. It will have a sticker inside that certifies if the helmet meets the standards of the American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM), the Snell Memorial Foundation and / or the American Standards Institute (ANSI) or is Consumer Product Safety Approved.
The bike helmet fits snugly, over the top of your child's forehead, and does not slide around or move from side to side.
Your child's bike is the proper size, is in good condition, and has reflectors. Make certain the tires are inflated and brakes are in good working order.
Your child knows to keep at least one hand on the handlebars at all times while riding.
Your child does not allow a friend to ride double.
Only young children who can sit well unsupported and whose necks can support wearing bike helmets ride in rear-mounted seat carriers. We recommend at least one year of age.
An infant who cannot hold up his head when wearing a small helmet should not ride on a bike or in a trailer.
Children do not ride bikes in the street until they are able to identify and respond appropriately to traffic dangers.
Your child knows traffic laws. Bicyclists must obey these same laws.
Your child knows to stop and look left-right-left before entering a road, and know to always walk their bike across an intersection.
WTTG FOX 5 & myfoxdc 5151 Wisconsin Ave. NW Washington, DC 20016 Main Number: (202) 244-5151 Newsroom: (202) 895-3000 email@example.com | <urn:uuid:44160224-8a40-4d2d-9e08-5e2e1be0785e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.myfoxdc.com/story/18980247/bike-safety-for-children | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00022-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.932169 | 365 | 2.125 | 2 |
When news anchor Neil Cavuto was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis a decade
ago -- after surviving stage IV Hodgkin's lymphoma in the late '80s -- he
sought second opinions in New York, Atlanta, Minnesota, and London, in his
attempt to refute the undeniable.
Ten years later, Cavuto both accepts his MS and defies it. Doctors marvel at
his MRI scans because they indicate a man unable to walk or talk. Yet while he
sometimes has difficulty doing both, the Fox News anchor is remarkably fit,
exercising on a stationary bike and treadmill to stave off muscle atrophy of
the legs, a common problem in MS patients. Cavuto, 48, has the secondary
progressive form of the disease, meaning it steadily worsens over time.
People with secondary progressive multiple sclerosis (SPMS) start out with another type of MS -- relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis.
If you've been diagnosed with secondary progressive MS you may have had relapsing-remitting MS for a decade or more. That's when you may begin to experience a shift in your disease.
The changes are often difficult to recognize. But you may notice that relapses may not seem to fully go away.
Most people with relapsing-remitting MS -- about 80% -- eventually develop...
He has fatigue, headaches, trouble walking, some vision loss, and --
occasionally -- hoarseness. "Having difficulty talking isn't good in my
profession, but my wife welcomes it," jokes the anchor, who memorizes
scripts for his program, Your World With Neil Cavuto, in case he can't
read the teleprompter during taping.
Cavuto chose to be upfront about his MS with Fox News Chairman and CEO Roger
Ailes. His boss asked for the worst-case scenario, to which Cavuto responded:
"I'll need a wheelchair." Ailes said simply, "Fine, we'll build a
The worst has yet to happen. Cavuto says he's grateful that he seems to
"collect" diseases: "I used to be very self-centered," he says.
"Now I'm more aware of trying to be a decent person and do the right
He volunteers for the National MS Society. And children's issues, such as
scholarships for kids whose parents have been immobilized by MS, are close to
his heart, since he and his wife, Mary, recently adopted two boys, now ages 4
For now, Cavuto is grateful that, thanks to medication, he leads a
relatively normal life. Confident of a cure in his lifetime, he makes the best
of a tough situation and continues with the job he loves so much, even though
doctors initially suggested he take on a contributing role at Fox News. "I
don't know where I'm going with this, or what's going to happen," he says.
"But I just try and take it one day at a time and do the best I | <urn:uuid:e0411877-7043-4537-bf71-91b86d87a5b1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.webmd.com/multiple-sclerosis/features/neil_cavuto_deals_with_ms | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00063-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967788 | 631 | 1.5 | 2 |
feeding paper tigers
Mindfulness is a function that disarms distractions … Weak distractions are disarmed by a single glance. Shine the light of awareness on them and they evaporate instantly, never to return. Deep-seated, habitual thought patterns require constant mindfulness repeatedly applied over whatever time period it takes to break their hold. Distractions are really paper tigers. They have no power of their own. They need to be fed constantly, or else they die. If you refuse to feed them by your own fear, anger, and greed, they fade.
Bhante Henepola Gunaratana, Mindfulness in Plan English | <urn:uuid:ba888edf-a6d2-4ac1-9f97-a9c42169e4e2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://ameditativejourney.wordpress.com/2013/01/15/feeding-paper-tigers/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00044-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.949783 | 127 | 2.109375 | 2 |
Canadians finally have the right to know whether mines are threatening their water with arsenic, mercury & other dangerous pollutants!
All mines - including mines & Alberta's tarsands - must now tell Canadians about the pollution they cause, thanks to a lawsuit by Ecojustice on behalf of MiningWatch & Great Lakes United. The free "reveal-nothing" pass these industries enjoyed is finally over, & citizens will now have a powerful tool to hold mining companies accountable.
"This is an incredible win that empowers people in every corner of the country," says lawyer Marlene Cachin. "Knowing where pollution occurs is absolutely key in planning for possible mining & tailings pond disasters. Without it, decision-makers, along with those who will suffer the consequences of these incidents, are left in the dark."
When information is published later this year, the public can learn exactly which chemicals are being left behind simply by exploring the online National Pollutant Release inventory. With tarsands releasing knkown human carcinogens, and gold mines releasing cyanide, this information deserves public scrutiny.
"Metal mines ae an enormous source of pollution. The amount of mining waste churned out in Canada in just one year is enough to bury the entire Greater Toronto area in 4 ft. of waste," says lawyer Justin Duncan. | <urn:uuid:561caedb-f243-4e1a-b82c-a3f71b5b928c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.pathslesstravelled.com/2009/07/no-more-free-pass-for-mining-industry.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00043-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.947333 | 268 | 2.28125 | 2 |
Where has your lover gone,
O woman of rare beauty?
Which way did he turn
so we can help you find him?
My lover has gone down to his garden,
to his spice beds,
to browse in the gardens
and gather the lilies.
3 I am my lover’s, and my lover is mine.
He browses among the lilies.
You are beautiful, my darling,
like the lovely city of Tirzah.
Yes, as beautiful as Jerusalem,
as majestic as an army with billowing banners.
5 Turn your eyes away,
for they overpower me.
Your hair falls in waves,
like a flock of goats winding down the slopes of Gilead.
6 Your teeth are as white as sheep
that are freshly washed.
Your smile is flawless,
each tooth matched with its twin. 1
7 Your cheeks are like rosy pomegranates
behind your veil.
8 Even among sixty queens
and eighty concubines
and countless young women,
9 I would still choose my dove, my perfect one -
the favorite of her mother,
dearly loved by the one who bore her.
The young women see her and praise her;
even queens and royal concubines sing her praises:
“Who is this, arising like the dawn,
as fair as the moon,
as bright as the sun,
as majestic as an army with billowing banners?”
I went down to the grove of walnut trees
and out to the valley to see the new spring growth,
to see whether the grapevines had budded
or the pomegranates were in bloom.
12 Before I realized it,
my strong desires had taken me to the chariot of a noble man. 2
3 Return, return to us, O maid of Shulam.
Come back, come back, that we may see you again.
Why do you stare at this young woman of Shulam,
as she moves so gracefully between two lines of dancers? 4 | <urn:uuid:280d9582-c871-4de6-8481-dd35b44fe09f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://ebible.com/nlt/songofsolomon/6 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00075-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957625 | 439 | 2.09375 | 2 |
d. 1784 or 1785
John Backhouse, legislator, planter, mariner, and salt maker, first appeared in Carteret County records about 1758. That same year, he became a justice of the peace for Carteret County. In four deeds dated from 1758 to 1774, he is listed as a mariner; four other deeds executed between 1763 and 1775 list him as a planter or farmer. At first, Backhouse appears to have lived on Houston's (Holston's) Creek, a part of Carteret County that is now in Jones County. His last residence was on Pettiver's (Pettiford) Creek in Carteret County near the mouth of the White Oak River, where it is presumed he was buried.
Backhouse represented Carteret County in the North Carolina House of Commons during the third, fourth, and fifth assemblies under Governor Arthur Dobbs, 1761–62. In the fifth assembly, he served on the Committee of Propositions and Grievances and on a special committee to prepare a bill for amending and continuing the act for the inspection of tar, pitch, turpentine, beef, pork, and so on.
In 1772, Backhouse is mentioned as owning a lot in the town later named Swansboro, but no further deed record can be found for his town lot or his disposition of it. In 1776 he represented Carteret County in the fourth provincial congress, after which he appears to have dropped out of public life and perhaps to have entered into a period of steadily declining health. His will was made in 1782. In 1783 he patented two tracts of land adjoining his plantation. His will, as recorded, evidences some copying inaccuracies but seems to indicate that he was the owner of two salt works or of one large operation with two pans or vats at the time of his death. One portion of his river shore land still bears the name Salt Works Point.
Backhouse first married Elizabeth Dudley, widow of the Thomas Dudley who resided on White Oak River and died there in 1753. Elizabeth was the daughter of John (d. 1745) and Katherine Jarratt. Elizabeth Jarratt Dudley Backhouse died on 30 May 1767 in her fifty-ninth year and was buried beside a son, Abraham Dudley, in the Houston Cemetery (north side of Holston's Creek, a tributary of White Oak River, in Jones County). By his first wife, Backhouse had one son, Allen.
Backhouse was married again, to Mary Williams, daughter of Colonel John Pugh Williams of Fort Barnwell in Craven County. The bond for this marriage was dated 31 Dec. 1768. By this union, Backhouse appears to have had four children: John Pugh, who died intestate before 1815, when Allen Backhouse claimed to be his sole surviving heir; Sarah; Mary; and Catherine ("Kitty").
Backhouse evidently died late in 1784 or extemely early in 1785. His will was probated in March 1785; but by that time his widow was already remarried to her neighbor, Guillaume (William) Ferrand, who together with her was granted administration of Backhouse's estate.
Allen Backhouse, John's eldest son, married first Elizabeth Starkey, a daughter of John Starkey, Jr., on 13 July 1796. She appears to have died before January 1797. Allen's second wife was Ruth Wilson, widow of James Wilson of New Bern. Their marriage occurred on 5 Aug. 1809, while Allen was the postmaster of Swansboro and a merchant there. By 1811, however, he was listed as a merchant of New Bern, where in 1838 he was also operating a boarding house. Through Allen, John Backhouse had a grandson, John Allen, who became a well-educated and well-known minister. John Allen Backhouse is also listed in a deed of 1837 as the publisher of the Carolina Sentinel of New Bern. Another grandson, Benjamin Williams Backhouse, was a student at The University of North Carolina from 1830 to 1833 and was on the way to becoming a prominent lawyer when he died in July 1836, at the age of twenty-two.
On 4 Nov. 1804, Kitty Backhouse married Samuel Chapman of New Bern, a clerk of Craven County Court. Their son, Samuel Edward Chapman, became a physician; his uncle, Dr. Stephen Lee Ferrand, bequeathed all his medical books and equipment to him.
By her second husband, William Ferrand, Mary Williams Backhouse Ferrand had two sons, Dr. Stephen Lee and William Pugh, Sr. She died in August 1796 and was buried on the Backhouse-Ferrand Plantation on Pettiver's Creek, not far from the town of Swansboro, where she died.
William L. Saunders, ed., Colonial Records of North Carolina, vols. 5–6 (1887–88).
Journal of the proceedings of the Provincial Congress of North Carolina, held at Halifax on the fourth day of April 1776, North Carolina Digital Collections: http://digital.ncdcr.gov/cdm/compoundobject/collection/p249901coll22/id/627213/rec/1
Colonial and State Records Search, Documenting the American South, UNC Libraries: http://docsouth.unc.edu/csr/index.html/search
1 January 1979 | Littleton, Tucker Reed | <urn:uuid:13755436-8732-4c33-ae62-9fbb8a6d6c2d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ncpedia.org/biography/backhouse-john | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00062-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.979012 | 1,138 | 2.328125 | 2 |
“There is no such thing as ‘soft sell’ or ‘hard sell’. There is only ‘smart sell’ and ‘stupid sell.’” – Charles Brower
In this era of high technology advances, high technology success stories and high technology hype it is very easy to overlook the fact that the basics of marketing haven’t changed except to become more important in the high stakes game of technology.
Customers and investors have to be gained and retained. Customers, employees and investors need to be communicated to, educated and satisfied. Customers, employees and investors need to be motivated and stimulated. Communications need to be clear and easy-to-understand. The need to create and maintain high awareness among customers, employees and investors is key to business success.
“No living being is held by anything so strongly as its own needs.” – Epictetus
Common Sense Marketing Basic #1: Where are we located? Are we user friendly?
If the idea is to get more people to communicate their needs or concerns to you as well as to drive them to interact with your website, blog or Internet “whatever”, then an emphasis has to be taken to ensure communicating with you is easy. You have to be sure that electronic addresses (e-mail,/website/blog, etc) are known to the targeted audience and not easily forgotten. You also have to avoid the trap many businesses fall into who are in love with the Internet; they fail to supply mailing addresses and phone contact information on their site. Millions of business people prefer traditional ways to contact you as a primary form of communication.
Exposure of your various contact addresses should be incorporated into every format of communication that reaches out to your target audience be it your advertising, stationary, website or the promotional products your sales force gives away at trade shows.
“You cannot create experience. You must undergo it.” – Albert Camus
Action Step: Review your website, stationary, business cards with the question, “Am I making it easy for potential customers to contact me?”
Common Sense Marketing Basic #2: “Knowledge Is Power” Marketing
Information that enhances the knowledge base of the recipient is appreciated and key to establishing a valued relationship. Workshops, newsletters, white papers, webcasts, webinars, trade show seminars are tools when created from the perspective of the audience the sender benefits greatly.
“The peculiar value of news is spreading it while it is fresh.” - Mahion Pitney
Action Step: Brainstorm with your team on how you can educate your customers. Also, ask your team if they ever had feedback on your company and evaluate how you can use that to your advantage.
Common Sense Marketing Basic #3: Benefits – The Only Reason for making a purchase.
People buy a product or service because of benefits perceived that they will receive from doing so. I see too many advertisements, as part of the marketing mix, that fails to communicate this basic truth. It doesn’t matter how creative your advertising is if it doesn’t deliver benefits to the customer. Focus on benefits, benefits, benefits and then more benefits. Just be sure they are for real. Promote your competitive edge in the marketplace. Highlight your difference from your competitors, promote your position as being an innovative and a leader.
“Sell Solutions, Not Just Products.” – Klaus M . Lesinger
Action Step: Review ALL of your marketing mix as if you were the customer. Do you know what benefits you will get if you buy your product or service?
Common Sense Marketing Basic #4: Continuity is the Marketing Strategy’s key characteristic.
Whether you are the latest high-tech firm that is the darling of Wall Street, a start-up or one who is been around a long time, you have a need to communicate to three basic audiences on an ongoing basis.
Customers: Successful firms communicate no less than 4 times a year to their customer base and establish ways for that base to be able to communicate with them easily, with the assurance of receiving at least an acknowledgement that their message was received. This can encompass but not be limited to -
* Prospecting/lead generation efforts
* New product/services/pricing/policies introduction information
* Relationship building activities/ Customer feedback
* Gathering input on level of customer satisfaction, i.e. surveys
Employees: Your most valuable asset arrives in the morning and leaves in the evening. Be sure to nurture it in as many ways as possible including -
* Providing adequate training and materials
* Supporting your sales and customer service staff
* Utilize motivational programs to encourage personal commitment and constructive suggestions
* Keep them aware of changes in policy, procedures, pricing, products, services, etc.
Investors: If you rely on the cooperation of lending institutions, stockholders and other financial resources be sure to communicate -
* Awareness of corporate activities
Whatever your company provides the fact never changes you have a need to gain and retain customers, keep employees and investors happy and all of that is marketing … is marketing … is marketing.
“Cutting prices is usually insanity if the competition can go as low as you can.” – Michael Porter
Action Step: Seriously ask yourself if you are communicating with your customers, employees, and investors as well as you can. Have an honest break out session with key employees, or yourself if you’re one person show, to help you with this.
* * *
We hope you have found these thoughts helpful in stimulating your own thinking Remember the following holds true for any company that wishes to build a successful corporate marketing environment.
Know and practice basics | Be open and accepting of change | Think BIG | Think outside the box | Do it, don’t talk it to death
The right programs for the right reasons deliver the right results.
* * *
Leslie R. Wolff’s mission is to reestablish a lost factor in business … commonsense! It is the foundation on which Smart Thinking is built. Les is CEO of The Smart Marketing Group, a proactive marketing Visionary & Strategy Think Tank. He can be reached at 866-334-5004, email@example.com, Skype: Smart Marketing or www.smartmarketingroup.com
Leslie R. Wolff, CEO and Chief Integrated Marketing Strategist, Smart Marketing Group P.O. Box 32017, Philadelphia, PA 19146 | 215-334-3432 | Fax: 215-334-2434 | <urn:uuid:f6946db9-cb7c-4988-ad3b-7086abdbd921> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://smfsb.wordpress.com/2012/08/16/marketing-is-marketing-is-marketing-4-common-sense-basics/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00021-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.941537 | 1,374 | 1.632813 | 2 |
So you want to learn to develop Android mobile apps. The problem is that learning to write programming code is time consuming and quite difficult.
What if I told you that you can build Android Apps without ever learning to write code? Seems too good to be true, but it’s not. Using the Android App Inventor platform you can literally build your first Android app in less than an hour using an easy to use drag and drop interface that allows anyone to create their own Android apps with no prior experience.
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Can you sell your apps on the market?
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Whether you want to start your own business building apps for clients, make money by creating your own apps or just make an app for your business, this comprehensive Android App Development course will get you there in no time at all.
Now anyone can create their own Android Apps with no experience, so what are you waiting for? Sign up for the course today and create your first Android App in 1 hour, guaranteed.
Table Of Contents
- Over 227 lectures and 12.5 hours of content!
- Build Over 25 Different Fully Functional Apps
- Browse Over 40 Skill-Centered Tutorials
- Download Over 40 App Source Codes
- Over 300 Downloadable Android Developer Icons
- PDF Downloads of Most Tutorials for When You Don't Have an Internet Connection
- because they dont get back to you if you email them with ur problems
- Great courseGreat easy to understand course that makes app building a simple great way to express yourself in todays technical environment.
- the course takes longer than an hour, but you can code an app in an hour once you are doneThis course does a very good job walking you through app inventor and app design and what you need to think about to create an app from the ground up. the narrator speaks good english and they provide you with a bunch of cheat sheets early on.
- Thorough course on AppInventor developmentThis course covers every single aspect on Android App development using MIT's AppInventor (former Google's), a quick way to develop basic (and not so basic) Apps.
- Thorough Course on building Android Apps using MIT App InventorA very thorough and extensive course on building Android Apps, yet it does not require coding skills as it shows you how to build apps using the MIT App Inventor software.
- It' great and works.A really helpfull course, and easy to implement. App Inventor is the best tool to apps if you want to develop fast.
- Would definitely recommend this course.The instructors hold your hand every step of the way. There bonus code you could use in your own projects later on.
- All you need to know in one place!This course contains all you need to know to create awesome apps in a short amount of time.... Terrific!
- Good CourseI like the Plug and Play method.
- Great CourseVery easy to follow and clear instructions! Thumbs up!
- well done courseshort, clear to-the-point lectures and ample sample material make this a worthwhile course
- Extremely Good!I'm amazed at the level of quality these videos have. A lot of stuff on Udemy is poorly edited and you can hear the teacher umming and ahhing and fumbling around. Not on this one. Very well done. I was actually able to create the first ten apps with no problem, which surprised me. Now I'm going to dive into all the extra lessons and apps that are available. Excellent course!
- Best Android Course on Udemy!I never thought I would be able to actually make an Android app, but I've made several now and the teacher has made it so easy to learn. The videos are professionally done, and they're straight forward enough to understand even with no prior knowledge of programming or app development. I would highly recommend this course to anyone who wants to build an app.
- amazingthis course is really amazing, it teachs you a lot about app making, I really enjoy learning from it. thank you.
- FINALLY!!!!Finally there is a Android tutoring program. This has already taught me so much and Im only in the third lesson. Thanks A lot for you guys time and help!
- How long do I have access to the course materials?You can view and review the lecture materials indefinitely, like an on-demand channel.
- What is the refund policy on the course?We like to keep our users happy, so we have a 30-day no questions asked refund policy. Send an email to email@example.com for refund requests.
- Can I take my courses with me wherever I go?Definitely! If you have an internet connection, courses on Udemy are available on any device at any time. If you don't have an internet connection, some instructors also let their students download course lectures. That's up to the instructor though, so make sure you get on their good side! | <urn:uuid:7a2683e8-0f15-4f40-ac58-42255be8a9d5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://uxmag.com/seminars/android-apps-in-1-hour-no-coding-required?quicktabs_=reviews | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00053-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.937823 | 1,196 | 1.859375 | 2 |
This week in Lahore, Pakistan, the legal charity Reprieve launched a lawsuit against the Pakistani government for helping the US military to abduct and imprison seven Pakistani nationals without trial or charge.
The men have been incarcerated for up to eight years, with little or no contact with their families. One was just 14 at the time of his disappearance. Several are in an extremely vulnerable mental or physical condition. None has been charged with any offense.
And all are being held in the American military prison on Bagram airbase, near Kabul, Afghanistan -- despite the fact that most of them were not in Afghanistan when abducted and have no connection with the country. They are victims of the continuing process of "rendition": illegal inter-state prisoner transfer, made famous by the CIA in the early years of this century.
Why are they there? Their stories, revealed to Reprieve investigators by their grief-stricken families, are diverse. One was a goat-herder, injured and brought to Bagram after an aerial bombardment in the region where he was tending his flock. One dropped his father off in a Karachi hospital -- over 1000 km (about 621 miles) from Bagram -- and was never seen again. Several simply failed to return from business trips or visits to family members. One, captured by the British in Iraq in 2004, was handed over to the US and rendered to Afghanistan in circumstances which the UK government has since admitted are a matter of "regret".
In Afghanistan, the country to which these prisoners have been forcibly brought, the situation continues to deteriorate. Leaked data indicates an expanding spiral of violence and insecurity. Aid agencies find the country increasingly perilous. And the population of Bagram prison grows swiftly.
In January 2009 Bagram held just over 400 people. By December 2009 it had grown to about 750; it now stands at some 1100. And yet the more it grows, the more its managers say they think it should shrink. In August 2009, the then-US commander in Afghanistan General Stanley McChrystal wrote that in Bagram "hundreds are held without charge or without a defined way ahead. This allows the enemy to radicalize them far beyond their pre-capture orientation." Later the same year, Mark Martins, the deputy commander for US detention operations in Afghanistan, stated that only 10-20% of the prison population could be considered "hard-core" or "irreconcilable" Taliban fighters, and that the rest were "candidates for eventual rehabilitation and release".
But how can one leave Bagram? Following a US appeals court decision in May, the prison remains beyond the reach of an American habeas corpus writ. Several habeas petitions, previously filed, are now on ice until the Supreme Court pronounces on the matter -- if indeed it decides to do so. In the meantime, US courts offer little likely recourse for Bagram prisoners. The prison's location in Afghanistan ensures its status as a site for indefinite detention -- even for those captured elsewhere.
The US is experimenting with solutions which do not require it to admit that it should charge prisoners with anything specific, or keep them for any defined duration. Instead it offers opportunities for prisoners to participate in a "Detainee Review Board", in which they are told some (but not all) of the allegations against them and given an opportunity to rebut them. If successful, they can be released, their status altered to "No Longer Enemy Combatant".
Despite the increasing level of violence in Afghanistan, the US is scheduled to transfer control of most of the prison population to the Afghan government by mid-2011. According to Robert Harward, the commander of Bagram prison, America will maintain control of a "subset of unilateral US detention operations" in a separate unit on the base. Politicians speculate that this unit could in future also act as a renditions location for prisoners captured in operations outside Afghanistan. What has been less widely broadcast is that it already does.
Repeated attempts within the US legal system to reunite such victims with their rights gain little traction. Other countries may take their legal responsibilities more seriously.
The Constitution of Pakistan obliges the government to ensure the security of its people, their right to due process, dignity and protection from torture. This includes a duty to intercede on behalf of their citizens in illegal custody. Reprieve is petitioning the Lahore High Court to demand redress from the Pakistani government, ministries and agencies for so far failing to uphold these rights.
The Pakistani government's response is scheduled for Oct. 19. | <urn:uuid:3990d664-9e5b-4544-b8eb-abb04468e9c0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.huffingtonpost.com/crofton-black/can-pakistan-be-held-acco_b_752585.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00024-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.966978 | 930 | 2.140625 | 2 |
For those who still believe that herbal remedies are always safe and healthy, a Nova Scotia family would like you to think again.
Cole Marchand, a 19-year-old teen from Nova Scotia, died after consuming poppy seed tea he made with the seeds from a poppy pod he ordered online from China, his family tells CTV News. His grieving sister says he texted her a photo of the pod days before he died, reassuring her it was safe and all natural. Yet poppy seeds contain morphine and codeine. Cole, who suffered from depression, died of a morphine overdose.
Tessa Burns, a Calgary-based registered psychologist and owner of the Serenity Now Wellness Centre, cautions people never know how their bodies are going to respond to any drug, be it prescription or natural.
"The reason your doctor prescribes the medication and then has to follow up with you is because you don't know how your body is going to react, even how it's going to react to being off of the medication once you've been using it," she says. "I think anything you take — even a vitamin — needs to be taken with caution and with education."
Also see: 8 Things You Should Never Say To A Mom
This is why the Marchand family is speaking out. They want to remind the public that there is no governing body regulating the amount of narcotic in a poppy pod, which is illegal in Canada.
"He was working out, and he was acting happy, so he definitely didn't mean to do something like this," his sister Carissa Marchand tells CBC.
Watch the CBC video below where Cole's parents speak about the dangers of the tea:
But researching narcotics and their effects on the internet can paint a different story, particularly for someone hoping to believe all natural always equals healthy and safe. A quick search of Google instantly brings up at least one site downplaying the dangers of drinking poppy seed tea.
"A cup of the brew is highly unlikely to kill someone, but poppy seeds do contain both morphine and codeine," says the website PoppySeedTea.net. "These two narcotics can, of course, produce a high."
Burns adds that teens looking for help should seek out peer counselling groups where they can feel safe talking about their problems. Because despite what parents may want to believe, most teens are reluctant to talk to them for fear of suffering the consequences.
"They're so influenced by their peers that it is important for them to talk to other teens and know they're not alone," she says. | <urn:uuid:6d3a6a40-e13e-4059-a740-24137273822f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://ca.shine.yahoo.com/blogs/team-mom/nova-scotia-parents-who-lost-son-speak-out-about-poppy-seed-tea-dangers.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00023-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.981153 | 524 | 1.984375 | 2 |
She renamed herself from Sultana to Shahin, after the Urdu poet Iqbal’s favourite bird. She wrote three outstanding books, mentored hundreds of students, and inspired thousands more. This is Shahin Moidu’s story…
People like Shahin Moidu are rare. She does not have a formal education. Yet she started Hyderabad’s third pre-school Shahiniketan and the city’s first crash-course in teaching and a summer school back in 1974. But, amazingly, she would rather people remember her not as a teacher, but as a person.
Coming from a broken home, Shahin could only study till Class IV. Yet she hoped to become a teacher inspired by her uncle who was a lecturer at Nizam’s College. “Many students would come to my uncle’s home,” she reminisces about the days at her uncle’s house where she grew up. “He made learning fun. I wanted to be a teacher since then. It is because of my uncle I am what I am today.”
“My uncle would tell us, ‘When you educate a man, you educate an individual. But when you educate a woman, you educate a nation’,” she remembers fondly.
So how did Shahiniketan happen? “When my husband, an army man, passed away, I was a penniless widow,” she recounts. “The army pension took a long time to come. So I enrolled for a teacher’s training course in Purani Haveli and after four months, the director, Dr Vakaria, offered me a job there. But travelling from Banjara Hills to Purani Haveli wasn’t practical. That is when and how Shahiniketan took shape.”
Shahin has mentored several successful educationalists including Anjum Babukhan, founder of one of Hyderabad’s top school, Glendale Academy. Yet she says humbly that they are her mentors.
“While training to being a teacher, I was always marked ‘average’, ‘fair’, etc, by Dr Vakaria,” says Shahin. “I failed to understand why, as I was working really hard.”
But when Shahin invited Dr Vakaria to Shahiniketan for an annual day function, she got, maybe, her biggest compliment. “He told me then that he found potential in me and wanted to encourage me further,” says she. “He was my mentor, but that day, he told me that I had become his mentor. It was very touching. Everybody whom I have taught have taught me much more in return. They are my mentors now.”
Shahin recalls an incident where she was invited by Anjum Babukhan to a workshop for parents. “We were taught we mustn’t be harsh with children,” she says. “I learnt a lot from that workshop. That same day, my son called from the US, after three months. Usually, I would taunt him and scold him. But this time, I spoke to him well and he was quite surprised. He asked me, ‘Maa, are you all right?’”
Shahin has never been attracted to money. She sold her preschool for a nominal amount and started Shahin Education Trust to fund higher education for girls. “I have made 27 girls stand on their feet,” she says proudly.
Shahin loves reading and writing and has written three books: Story of my life, Woman of courage and Memorable years at Shahiniketan. What led her to it? “My first book, Story of My Life was based on a belief; The fire that melts the butter should make the steel stronger. Many girls complain that their parents did not give them education. But I managed to complete my graduation,” she said.
Shahin says she is a satisfied woman. “I have done everything I wanted to: I opened a preschool… I wrote books,” she says. “God has given me everything.”
I am a satisfied woman as God has given me everything,” she said. The difficulties that she faced in life haven’t left her bitter, but have made her victorious. Truly inspiring. | <urn:uuid:c94d45f4-0127-46b0-a2a4-196c0b5e77d8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://postnoon.com/2012/03/24/shahin-moidu-an-eternal-teacher/39387 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706890813/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516122130-00030-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.989458 | 944 | 1.742188 | 2 |
An Australian zoo has put humans on display to raise awareness about primate conservation. Audience have the option of voting for their Favorite ape via test messages.
Total 24 humans will be on display in the said Human Zoo during the month of January & each exhibit has a group of six humans on display, under the care of scientist Dr Carla Litchfield. The people on display will be changed from one exhibit to another.
Group 1 exhibit will be from 8 to 14 January 2007 having three men & three women.
Group 2 exhibit will be from 8 to 14 January 2007 again three men & three women.
Group 3 exhibit will be from 15 to 21 January 2007 same again three men & three women.
Group 4 exhibit will be from 22 to 26 January 2007 same combination of men & women.
This project aims to
* Create awareness of the closeness of humans to their primate cousins
* Provides a platform for research on animal behaviour and enrichment
* Raise awareness for the conservation needs of primates in the wild
* Raise funds to build Australia's largest chimpanzee exhibit at Monarto Zoological Park in South Australia
Its said that "Live streaming by Adam Internet will be available on the internet on the Adelaide Now website".
Earlier also one such exercise did happen in London in the month of August, 2005 at London zoo where the exhibit featured three men & five women clad in bathing suits.
Photo courtesy: http://www.msnbc.msn.com | <urn:uuid:1708f6e4-626d-4ecb-84c3-ad43dc198259> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.crookedbrains.net/2007/01/australian-zoo-has-put-humans-on.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00074-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.945457 | 302 | 2.28125 | 2 |
The US Supreme Court, Politics and Same Sex Marriage
Listen to/Watch entire show:
Once again today, America’s highest court failed to announce any plan to take up one or more cases involving the legalization of same-sex marriage. Now it’s expected to do so on Friday. Will the justices be paying attention to last month’s elections in 4 states? We’ll look at the high court’s options—and at the political ramifications, especially for the Republican Party. On Reporters Notebook later on, could deadly violence result from brain damage in professional football? Also in the news, Britain, France, Sweden, Denmark and Spain have summoned Israeli ambassadors to Israel to signal strong objection to Israel’s plans for expanding settlements in East Jerusalem.
Israeli Envoys Summoned in Protest of New Settlement Plans ()
Britain, France, Sweden, Denmark and Spain have summoned Israeli ambassadors to Israel to signal strong objection to Israel’s Plans for expanding settlements in East Jerusalem. Palestinian leaders have said they could mean the end of the so-called “2-state solution.”
The US Supreme Court, Politics and Same Sex Marriage ()
US Supreme Court watchers are playing a waiting game in regard to same-sex marriage. As the justices work out their differences behind closed doors, we’ll look at the options—and the potential consequences for the law and for politics.
Polls show the trend in favor of same-sex marriage is growing fast. For the first time in US history, it was approved by voters in three of last month’s elections, rather than in legislative chambers. It’s now legal in nine states and the District of Columbia. Friday—and again today—it was expected the US Supreme Court would take up the matter. Both sides are waiting anxiously for action on Friday. That provides more time to consider the options, legal, political and moral.
Kansas City Chief’s Jovan Belcher’s murder/suicide and the question of concussions in the NFL ()
This weekend’s case of murder and suicide raises familiar questions about brain damage and professional football. Jovan Belcher was an all-star linebacker for the Kansas City Chiefs, described by teammates, coaches, family and friends as “generous and caring.” This weekend he murdered his girlfriend, mother of his 3-month-old daughter, and then shot himself while talking with coaches at the team stadium. The incident is raising again some troubling questions. Almost 4,000 former players are suing the NFL over what the claim is a link between football and long-term brain damage. At Boston University, researchers are investigating possible connections.
- Steve Fainaru: Reporter for ESPN
Engage & Discuss
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Congress and Insider Trading
Congressmen are investing hundreds of millions of dollars in stock in companies over which they have oversight. And it’s perfectly legal.
WaPo (“Members of Congress trade in companies while making laws that affect those same firms“):
One-hundred-thirty members of Congress or their families have traded stocks collectively worth hundreds of millions of dollars in companies lobbying on bills that came before their committees, a practice that is permitted under current ethics rules, a Washington Post analysis has found.
The lawmakers bought and sold a total of between $85 million and $218 million in 323 companies registered to lobby on legislation that appeared before them, according to an examination of all 45,000 individual congressional stock transactions contained in computerized financial disclosure data from 2007 to 2010.
Almost one in every eight trades — 5,531 — intersected with legislation. The 130 lawmakers traded stocks or bonds in companies as bills passed through their committees or while Congress was still considering the legislation. The party affiliation of the lawmakers was almost evenly split between Democrats and Republicans, 68 to 62.
Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) reported buying $25,000 in bonds in a genetic-technology company around the time that he released a hold on legislation the firm supported. Rep. Ed Whitfield (R-Ky.) sold between $50,000 and $100,000 in General Electric stock shortly before a Republican filibuster killed legislation sought by the company. The family of Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Tex.) bought between $286,000 and $690,000 in a high-tech company interested in a bill under his committee’s jurisdiction.
The trades were uncovered as part of an ongoing examination by The Post of the intersection between the personal finances of lawmakers and their professional duties. Earlier this year, Congress responded to criticism of potential conflicts of interest by passing the Stock Act, which bars lawmakers, their staffs and top executive branch officials from trading on inside information acquired on Capitol Hill.
But the act failed to address the most elemental difference between Congress and the other branches of government: Congress forbids top administration officials, for instance, from trading stocks in industries they oversee and can influence. The lawmakers, by contrast, can still invest in firms even as they create laws that can affect the bottom line of the companies.
“If you have major responsibility for drafting legislation that directly affects particular companies, then you shouldn’t be trading in their stock,” said Dennis Thompson, a professor of public policy at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government and author of “Ethics in Congress: From Individual to Institutional Corruption.” “Committee chairs especially shouldn’t be in the position of potentially benefiting from trades in companies that stand to gain or lose from actions the committee takes.”
The Post analysis does not provide evidence of insider trading, which requires showing that lawmakers knowingly used confidential information to make trades benefiting themselves. Instead, the review shows that lawmakers routinely make trades that raise questions about potential conflicts and illustrate the weaker standard that Congress applies to itself.
Foreign Policy managing editor Blake Hounshell, who pointed me to the story, declares, “Congress is disgusting. Americans should be outraged at this kind of stuff.” While I’m not sure I’d go that far, this is certainly a situation where an obvious conflict of interest exists and yet another case where Congress applies one set of rules to itself and another to the rest of us.
To be sure, an individual member of Congress has less influence over policy than, say, a cabinet secretary. There are, after all, 435 Representatives and 100 Senators and we have a cumbersome legislative process requiring bills to pass through both Houses in identical form and get signed by the president before becoming law. Still, committee chairmen and other Members have enormous influence. Even, even if we were to presume that all of them are of the highest integrity and would never vote against the interests of their constituents for personal profit–work with me here–it’s not right that they should be able to buy and sell stocks on inside knowledge, behavior that is criminal when done by anyone else.
What’s also interesting is that, even if we take the low end figure of $85 million, that’s a lot of investing by 130 Members–and that’s only money directly going in to companies where they have regulatory oversight. That means they’re each investing on average $653,846.15–some four times their average annual salary. Granting that some Members come to Congress as multi-millionaires and the study includes “families” in the mix, that’s at the very least worthy of a raised eyebrow.
It’s often been said that the real crime is what’s legal. This is a classic case. | <urn:uuid:1de9352f-3eaa-48ab-8280-b74353ee8991> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/congress-and-insider-trading/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00040-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964298 | 1,007 | 2.046875 | 2 |
Hair Restoration San Diego
Women’s Hair Loss - The Causes
- Alopecia Areata: Autoimmune disease where the body’s own immune system attacks the hair follicles. “In a clinical setting, I tell patients with autoimmune disease not to eat large amounts of food or supplements that have even mild immunity enhancing properties, such as Echinacea. Stimulating the immune system in these patients only enhances its ability to attack the body.” Tony Longo, R.D. clinical dietitian and nutritional list for the Providence Hospital system, Portland, Oregon. Sadly there are no known medical solutions for this condition.
- Systemic or local disease: Have a hormone panel taken, see a dermatologist, and an endocrinologist. Get as many tests as possible and find out exactly what’s going on.
- Trichotillamania: Self inflicted excessive plucking of the eyebrows eyelashes and hair, stress being the biggest contributing cause. No cure, therapy, Paxil, life coaching, acupuncture, and grafted non–surgical hair systems are common treatments.
- Physical trauma: Chemical, thermal, electrical burns, or an auto accident.
- Medical or surgical treatments: Chemotherapy, radiation, removal of brain tumors.
- Congenital hair loss: Female heredity hair loss-it’s usually permanent, influenced by levels of sex hormones.
Solutions for Women’s Hair Loss
Top-of-Head Human Hair Additions
- Great option to add more layers without committing to a hair cut
- Stock systems available in a variety of colors and thicknesses
- Unbelievably natural base materials
- French Drawn/ Invisible Part
- Great for women who are beginning to notice hair loss, Trichotillamania, or for fine haired clients who want a little more volume
- The perfect blend is created when we incorporate your existing natural growing hair and the piece
- Extremely natural in appearance
- Available in very small sizes for minimal coverage such as crown, top, bangs, or temple areas
- Can create the look of healthy, shiny, longer layers (in many cases the hair is in better condition than your own growing hair.
- You can wear your hair in a ponytail or in an up do and only your hairline will be exposed
- Cool on your head because you are not covering your entire head, and the breathability of the base material.
- Tops can be combined with our non damaging methods of hair extensions to achieve greater lengths and thickness.
- More coverage than a top piece
- Provides a thicker fuller amount of hair, a half head can give the appearance of a full head of hair without having to wear a full wig
- Both the piece and your hair will combine beautifully to create an overall seamless look
- Hair can be styled up or down, also in a stylish up do, and only your natural hairline will be exposed
- For clients suffering from noticeable hair loss in the top, crown and front, but they still have an average amount of hair over the ears and at the nape
- Can restore ample amount of volume to your hair style.
Hair Integration/Pull Through
- Your own hair can be drawn through openings in the cap, (allowing you the benefit of utilizing your existing hair.)
- Great for a client looking for height or volume
- The overall look is a blend of your hair and the piece, there is no way to visually separate the two
- Variety in designs provide different coverage solutions
- Perfect for someone who has plenty of hair to integrate
- Great for a set and style look and a no part style
- Dimensional color can easily be achieved without harmful chemicals, this is done by choosing a pull through that is slightly lighter or darker than your hair
- Drawing your hair through the openings adds to the security when wearing a removable pull through.
Invisible Hair Integration US patent # 6688315
Q: What is it?
The Invisible Hair Integration is a three quarter, all skin, and stretchable cap with elongated openings that are very easy for you to draw hair through. Every design features an “Invisible” lace front hairline that allows you to brush your hair straight back, and utilize the naturalness a lace front will provide. It can be attached smoothly and comfortably by “grafting”, which allows the wearer 5-8 weeks of secure continuous wear. It may also be worn and removed daily by attaching comb clips to the perimeter.
Q: Who is it for?
- Women who do not want to remove their hair to sleep, shower or exercise
- Women experiencing 50%-75% hair loss.
- Perfect for Hair Extension clients that need additional coverage on the top of the head
- Top of the head clients that need more coverage in the temples, sides and back
- Wig wearers who want hair permanently attached
- Chemotherapy patients in the beginning stages of hair re-growth
- Alopecia areata, universalis, or totalis, who need guaranteed security
- Radiation, surgery, burn, or Lupus Patients
- Active Children experiencing hair loss
- Women who suffer with Trichotillamania
- Women Who need corrective color without damage to their own hair
- Women who have very short or blunt cut thick hair who want to add length overall
Q: How long will it Last?
One Invisible Hair Integration can be worn for 4-5 consecutive attachments, lasting approximately 5-8 months. It is highly recommended that you purchases 2 integrations and alternate wearing them throughout a one year period.
Invisible Integration… “Not seeing is believing”
- Individuals can draw their own existing hair through “user friendly“ openings.
- Foundation material is thin and translucent; with a skin toned “Skin Replica.”
- Virtually undetectable attachment site.
- It eliminates the limitations presented by traditional attachment methods.
- Our hair is implanted into our skin replica one hair at a time duplicating growing hair.
- Hair pivots 360° for the most variations and styling options.
- Individuals own hair will continue to grow underneath, undamaged.
- Non-surgical hair graft attachment lasts 5-8 weeks.
- Can be removed and reattached in 2-3 hours.
- Your choice of any of the best hair available on today’s market
- Easy to Alter
- Lace Front Hairline (Temple to temple) – Can brush hair straight back or wear a part without worry of cap material showing.
- Stretchable- eliminating the need for elastic, Velcro or hooks
- Graftable- Airtight/ Watertight seal is created allowing secure attachment
- Smooth against skin- No seems no bumps, no clips, no elastic, no Velcro, no hooks, or stays.
- Beautiful Color Gradient Blends- A blend of 3-6 colors will create the highlight/lowlight pattern that you are looking for! This reduces custom coloring time… saving you money!
Invisible Hair Web
Q: What is it?
The Invisible Hair Web is an ultra lightweight half head hair integration/pull through, offering you breathability, coverage, and the most natural appearance. It is designed to provide you with beautiful volume and lift when you incorporate your own natural hair by drawing it through the openings. The Invisible Hair Web can also be grafted or worn and removed daily.
Q: How long will it last?
One Invisible Hair Web can be worn for 3-4 consecutive attachments, each lasting approximately 5-8 weeks at a time. It is highly recommended that you purchase 2 systems and alternate wearing them throughout a one year period.
Q: Who is it for?
- For women with baby fine hair, or who are beginning to thin on the top of their head
- Ideal for women who prefer a natural amount of hair.
- The Invisible Hair Web can easily be cut or permed to accentuate the natural height and volume
- Works well for short to medium hair lengths.
To see our Woman’s Hair Loss Photo Gallery (click here). | <urn:uuid:0e82826c-8e61-493f-8b5e-335a241db22b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.invisiblehair.com/hair-loss-salon-san-dieg/hair-restoration-san-diego/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.924049 | 1,708 | 1.695313 | 2 |
A Taste of Torah: Weekly Commentary from the JTS Community
September 30, 2004 15 Tishrei 5765
This week's commentary was written by Rabbi Matthew Berkowitz, Senior Rabbinic Fellow.
This coming Wednesday evening we herald in the first festival of the Jewish year, Sukkot. Between Motzei Yom Kippur (the evening concluding Yom Kippur) and Wednesday, sukkot (temporary booths) are built all around the Jewish world. It is an especially memorable event in Israel where cities and villages alike are transformed by the festival greenery. Special markets spring up across the country peddling the four species that are brought together as we celebrate the absolute joy of the holiday. The fragrance of the etrog embraces all as we enter the sukkah, declaring our faith in God's protection. That said, the sukkah is not only at the essence of sukkot; the sukkah, in all its beauty and symbolism provides a powerful bridge between the most sacred day of the year, Yom Kippur, and the harvest festival of sukkot. The sukkah is mentioned explicitly in the Book of Jonah, read on Yom Kippur afternoon. Then, with the conclusion of Yom Kippur, the rabbis encourage us to immediately begin building a sukkah. What do the juxtaposition of these two sukkot teach us? What lesson can be gleaned from this powerful, yet temporary structure?
The sukkah or booth makes its first and only appearance in the Book of Jonah in the fourth and final chapter. Having preached God's admonition to the inhabitants of Nineveh and having witnessed the full repentance of the Ninevites along with God's forgiveness, Jonah is furious - and retreats to the outskirts of Nineveh to wait and see what will ultimately become of these wayward but repentant Assyrians. We are told that Jonah, "found a place east of the city. He made a booth (sukkah) there and sat under it in the shade, until he should see what happened to the city" (Jonah 4:5). Although a sukkah is typically associated with peace, shelter and God's beneficence, Jonah turns the true image of the sukkah on its head. It is as if Jonah is lying in wait. Dissatisfied and even angry with the mercy God has shown to the Ninevites, Jonah waits patiently in an attempt to prove he is right - that his pessimism will prevail and God will destroy the Ninevites. Jonah's behavior is unbefitting an Israelite prophet. One who should be rejoicing in God's mercy becomes embittered.
How fitting it is then that at the conclusion of Yom Kippur we are commanded to build a different kind of sukkah. The sukkah that we build is one that negates Jonah's pessimism in human nature. It is a sukkah that stands for peace, faith, shelter and ultimately in the eternal Jewish optimism of human behavior. The liturgy itself expresses such an image. In the evening service of Shabbat we read, "Spread over us the shelter (sukkah) of Your peace. Praised are You, Lord, who spreads a shelter (sukkah) of peace over us, over all His people Israel and over Jerusalem." The booth that we build on sukkot mirrors the heavenly sukkah that God spreads over us; it is an expression of hope in our future.
The sukkah then is a powerful bridge between the absolute solemnity of Yom Kippur and absolute joy of sukkot. On Yom Kippur, Isaiah's words propel us toward tikkun olam, repairing a broken world. Building the sukkah - our sukkah - becomes Israel's tikkun (apology) for Jonah's acrimonious desire.
With wishes for a Shabbat Shalom and Hag Sameah,
Rabbi Matthew Berkowitz. | <urn:uuid:49c8907f-cc87-4279-9083-f0eafb5cc21c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.jtsa.edu/PreBuilt/ParashahArchives/5765t/sukkot.shtml | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00048-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.935349 | 829 | 2.78125 | 3 |
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Previously, I asked the question Why is it difficult to catch “Anonymous” or “Lulzsec” (groups)? I understood every answer except the VPN thing. Its because I never knew what VPNs were. Any how that ... | <urn:uuid:6c88b9b8-a616-43b6-baa0-46324e6a9d42> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://security.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/anonymity+vpn | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00048-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964462 | 331 | 2.203125 | 2 |
A review of 50 Rules Kids Won'T Learn in School by Koodle0101
A review of 50 Rules Kids Won'T Learn in School
Great Book. As the title said, it's about 50 rules that kids won't learn in school. Most of the rules don't apply to kids but to everyone as a whole. The reason for the title is probably because people have the wrong impression that school will teach you everything you need to know and prepare you for life. This author covers the things that schools left out, which unfortunately are what really matters. | <urn:uuid:21897c02-b49e-4541-93be-0a1398f2f7a4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.my-bookclub.com/a-review-of/113/50-rules-kids-won-t-learn-in-school/by/Koodle0101/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00074-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.983737 | 114 | 1.710938 | 2 |
Filed under: Economy, Environment, Politics, Statism | Tags: California Air Resources Board, California's Central Valley, The Delta Smelt
The Green Lobby convinced federal judge Oliver Wanger in 2007, that the Endangered Species Act gave the federal government the right to cut water to thousands of farmers in California’s Central Valley in order to protect the delta smelt, a 3″ baitfish. Cutting off the water didn’t save the smelt. New studies showed that cutting off 90% of the water had no effect on the smelt. It’s still endangered. Wrong remedy. The video above is from the Reason Foundation. It outlines the problems of the valley.
What the ruling did was to turn the west side of the valley into a wasteland. California’s Central Valley has long been one of the great breadbaskets of the world. The fields and groves went fallow, family farms went under, and food prices went up. The farmers went through two years of supply cuts before science and better information appeared. Many of the farms have been bought up by agribusiness — which the Green Lobby hates. Ironic.
California is in desperate shape. Businesses and people are moving out of the Golden State in droves. The state is a poster child for the left’s big government welfare state. Some 2.3 million Californians are without jobs. The unemployment rate in the state is 12.5, over 16% in the Central Valley. The state has lost 34% of its industrial base. The state’s budget gap for 2009-2010 was $45.5 billion, 53% of state total spending. The unfunded pension liabilities for California’s state and public employees may be as high as $500 billion.
California is rapidly approaching bankruptcy, and may be beyond repair. 80¢ of every government dollar goes to government employees’ pay and benefits. A typical San Francisco resident with one dependent pays $953 for health care, while the city employee pays less than $10.
Victor Davis Hanson, a 5th generation Californian who grew up on a farm near Fresno where he still lives and farms and writes, describes the problems in California’s agricultural heartland:
“[I see] former small farms – the vineyards overgrown with weeds, or torn out with the ground lying fallow. … I don’t think I can remember another time when so many acres in the eastern part of the valley have gone out of production, even though farm prices have recently rebounded. Apparently it is simply not worth the gamble of investing $7,000 to $10,000 an acre in a new orchard or vineyard.On the western side of the Central Valley, the effects of arbitrary cutoffs in federal irrigation water have idled tens of thousands of acres of prime agricultural land, leaving thousands unemployed. … California coastal elites may worry about the oxygen content of water available to a three-inch smelt in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, but they seem to have no interest in the epidemic dumping of trash, furniture, and often toxic substances throughout California’s rural hinterland.”
“[The] government is run by a brothel of environmentalists, lawyers, public sector unions and legislative bums…When you inevitably crash and burn, don’t count on us to bail you out.”
2 Comments so far
Leave a comment | <urn:uuid:fef385b3-6645-4bad-b59b-22302db71100> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://americanelephant.wordpress.com/2011/02/20/californias-big-problems-include-a-tiny-minnow/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00047-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.943369 | 715 | 2.484375 | 2 |
Gardening Articles: Flowers :: Roses
A Better Solution for Powdery Mildew
by Charlie Nardozzi
For a number of years baking soda (sodium bicarbonate) sprays have been recommended for controlling powdery mildew and black spot fungal diseases on roses, phlox, and other garden plants. Baking soda has been shown to not only prevent fungal spores from getting established, but also to kill them once they get started. But baking soda sprays don't readily cover the leaves, and they quickly wash away. The addition of horticultural oil improves the coverage but can damage foliage.
Now a new product provides an alternative to the common baking soda solution. GreenCure is a mixture of potassium bicarbonate and a spreader-sticker, and it's 25 to 35 percent more effective at controlling fungal disease than straight baking soda. Its formulated to completely cover the leaf surface, yet not be harmful to the foliage. GreenCure has also proven to be as effective as chemical fungicides in controlling the disease, making it a safe alternative for both outdoor and indoor use.
For more information on this new fungicide, go to: GreenCure. | <urn:uuid:a1f8c123-9f08-494e-b5bb-0d5b81c5bf05> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.garden.org/subchannels/flowers/roses?q=show&id=2582 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00043-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.937456 | 247 | 2.21875 | 2 |
On April 26th 2007 police raided a house at 1915 Moonlight Road in Surry County, VA, a home belonging to Michael Vick, who was then the starting quarterback for the Atlanta Falcons and one of the highest paid players in the NFL (10 years, $130 million). The officers found evidence of dog fighting and had soon taken 66 dogs off the property. Within four months Vick would plead guilty to charges related to the dog fighting operation known as Bad Newz Kennels. He served 18 months in a federal penitentiary, entered personal bankruptcy and upon his release was reinstated by the NFL, where he has just begun his second season as a back-up for the Philadelphia Eagles.
The dogs faced a bleaker future. The usual outcome for animals recovered from fight busts is euthanasia. But an unprecedented behind-the-scenes effort to spare them--supported by an enormous public outcry--was brewing. A dedicated mix of investigators, prosecutors, ASPCA officials and pit bull rescue groups came together to try to give some of those dogs another chance. They been saved from Bad Newz, but could they be saved from the government? An outpouring of dedication and compassion led to string decisions that set precedents, changed the way dog fighting and pit bulls are viewed and provided at least some of those lost dogs with a path home. | <urn:uuid:595c4321-10dd-4a08-a8e5-7d5538b4810d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jim-gorant/the-lost-dogs-michael-vick_b_716468.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.974636 | 269 | 1.96875 | 2 |
The 15th Session of the Intergovernmental Consultative Committee (ICC) on the Regional Space Applications Programme for Sustainable Development ( RESAP ) was held on 27 October in Colombo, Sri Lanka, back-to-back with the Consultative Meeting on Regional Cooperative Mechanisms on Space Applications towards an Effective Disaster Management and Sustainable Development held at the same venue from 25 to 26 October 2011. The session was organized by ESCAP's Information and Communications Technology and Disaster Risk Reduction Division and hosted by
the Arthur C. Clarke Institute for Modern Technologies, Ministry of Technology, the Government of the Sri Lanka.
The Consultative Meeting reviewed, discussed and made propositions on the regional cooperative mechanisms for an affordable access to and effective use of space-based information products and resources for disaster management and sustainable development in Asia-Pacific region, with special reference to the countries with special needs.
The objective of the Intergovernmental Consultative Committee (ICC) session on the Regional Space Applications Programme for Sustainable Development (RESAP) was to provide guidance to its members and the secretariat in promoting affordable access to and effective use of space-based tools and applications for disaster management and other development concerns, through the networks of RESAP. The outcome of the consultative meeting became an important input to the ICC session for its deliberation. | <urn:uuid:59992ed5-f292-495d-950e-310fc7efd08f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.unescap.org/idd/events/2011-15ICC-Colombo/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.909193 | 263 | 1.796875 | 2 |
In the controversy surrounding President Bush’s decision to postpone $10 billion in loan guarantees for the settlement of Soviet Jews in Israel, one resolution has gotten short shrift: scuttling the loan guarantee program altogether and admitting the Soviet Jews to the United States. That idea has much to recommend it. It would be advantageous for all concerned: the Soviet Jews, the United States, and the people in Israel and the Israeli-occupied territories.
The dispute is over the president’s wish to delay the loan guarantees for four months and then to attach restrictions on using them to build settlements in the occupied territories. President Bush, hoping to convene a Middle East peace conference in October, says he wants to avoid jeopardizing the peace process by a “contentious debate that would raise a host of controversial issues.” He has threatened to veto a bill that goes against his wishes. The president’s position is related to his dissatisfaction with Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir’s intent to continue building Jewish settlements, subsidized by U.S. foreign aid, on Arab-owned land in the occupied territories.
The United States has long held that the settlements are in violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention and United Nations resolutions, and the Bush administration has characterized them as the chief obstacle to peace in the region. Bush is said to be particularly angry that the Shamir government accelerated its settlement program just as Bush was trying to arrange a regional peace conference and that Shamir reneged on his promise not to use previous loan guarantees in the territories. The president undoubtedly fears that the United States cannot be regarded as an honest broker if it is subsidizing the de facto annexation of Palestinian land.
The administration, however, has muddied its position with conflicting statements, reportedly made by Secretary of State James A. Baker III, about requiring a freeze on the settlements. An initial demand for a freeze was softened the following day to say that the administration wanted to attach unspecified conditions, perhaps that the money not be used in the territories. The problem with that “restriction,” as many have pointed out, is that since money is fungible, the loans would free other money for use in the territories. The United States would still be subsidizing the settlement program, albeit indirectly. It is not clear how President Bush could solve that problem without demanding a commitment from Israel that no money be spent on new development in the territories, that is, a freeze. Even reducing American aid by the amount spent in the territories would constitute a de facto freeze. As Israeli political scientist Ehud Sprinzak wrote recently, “American approval of the loan guarantees without linkage to the settlement issue would make it financially possible to settle the occupied territories simultaneously with the absorption of the Soviet Jews.”
It is hard to understand what Baker meant when he said, “We have asked for a delay, because we want to avoid the question of linkage, not promote it.” The question of linkage cannot be avoided. The settlement of Soviet Jews even in Israel proper creates incentives (such as higher rents) for other Israelis to opt for the subsidized accommodations on the West Bank. Moreover, one wonders how the administration could have thought that its decision to delay the guarantees would deemphasize the link to the settlements in the territories when the link is what motivated the decision in the first place. | <urn:uuid:b87cf4ed-2c29-438c-9239-e3d8a301685a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.cato.org/publications/foreign-policy-briefing/let-soviet-jews-come-america | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00035-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.971369 | 684 | 1.890625 | 2 |
The Arts learning area encompasses Music, Drama and Art.
The four main outcomes for the Arts learning area are:
1. Arts Ideas. Students generate art works that communicate ideas.
2. Arts Skills and Processes. Students use the skills, techniques, processes, conventions and technologies of the arts.
3. Arts Responses. Students use their aesthetic understanding to respond to, reflect on and evaluate the arts.
4. Arts in Society. Students understand the role of the arts in society through historical and cultural contexts
The Academic programme is supported by an extensive co-curricular programme which provides excellent performance opportunities for young musicians. All Year 8 and 9 students participate in the Creative Arts programme, which includes a Music component. Students in Years 8 to 12 may choose Music as a specialist subject, leading to the Tertiary Entrance Examination. With the introduction of the Curriculum Framework the School is moving towards an outcomes based program. By its nature, Music has always placed great importance on “outcomes” with its emphasis on performance.
Students who have little background in music can still achieve good outcomes through the Keyboard Laboratory in Year 8 and the Music Computer Laboratory in Year 9 in the General Arts classes through the use of modern technology.
Music Elective students are able to progress at their own level in theory and performance and achieve outcomes commensurate with their ability and potential. For instance, in Year 8 some boys may be studying for the Grade I AMEB Theory Examination whilst others may be studying for Grade V. Similar variations in performance ability are also catered for. Teachers will tailor class activities to the abilities of individual students within the same class.
Parents may need to have a basic understanding of the arts learning area outcomes in order to interpret their son’s school report. Class activities and assessments are based on the appropriate levels of achievement described in the Curriculum Council’s Arts Learning Area Outcomes document.
Drama in Year 8 is delivered over three periods each 10 day cycle for one term and two periods for a second term; in Years 9 and 10 over six periods each 10 day cycle for the year.
The course is based on the Arts Learning Outcomes and offers open ended learning opportunities through which students can progress at their own pace.
Through the arts outcomes, students are offered a variety of valuable experiences that contribute toward the development of their individuality, creativity and self esteem.
The courses are focused on verbal and non-verbal communication and improvisation skills, followed by group-devised and scripted drama for both stage and television. Students are encouraged to take part in at least one public performance each year and are offered the opportunity of both production and acting roles. In Year 10, a performance in a public production is part of the assessment process, & occurs in both 'performance night' and/or on the production seasons.
Assessment is expressed in levels based on explicit criteria developed from the Drama pointers in the Arts Student Outcome Statements.
The outcomes based assessment is ongoing and is generated through: observation of work in progress; student-teacher discussions; folio and journal entries; peer and self-assessment; open ended stepping stone tasks; and final performance tasks.
Art in Year 8 is delivered over five periods each 10 day cycle for two terms - either Terms 1 and 3 or Terms 2 and 4. Art in Year 9 is delivered over 6 periods per cycle throughout the full year.
The courses are based on the four Arts Learning Outcomes and offer open ended learning opportunities in both 2D and 3D for students to move through at their own pace.
Art provides a powerful means of expression and communication of life experiences and imagination contributing toward the development of individuality, creativity, self esteem and enjoyment.
Opportunities are provided throughout the year for extra unstructured time in the art studios in After School Art where students may work on individual extension art activities of their own choice under the guidance of the art teacher. At least two exhibitions are run each year where selected student works are showcased and celebrated with an official opening. For those interested in competitions there are also opportunities to enter work in the Anniversary Art Awards which offers prizes at each Year level, and the John Dowson Memorial Art Awards which are selected from the annual Senior School Art Exhibition in Term Four. | <urn:uuid:e654b447-3538-4d2d-89fc-0f977795f7ae> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ccgs.wa.edu.au/we-offer/senior-school/senior-school-curriculum/academic-learning-areas/the-arts | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00039-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.946159 | 875 | 3.359375 | 3 |
PRAIRIE CHICKEN SPRING DANCE A BIRDERS DELIGHT
April 5, 2012
From March through May, male chickens dance, fight, and call to attract mates
PRATT — Each spring, one of the most extraordinary mating rituals in all of nature occurs right here in Kansas — the courtship of the prairie grouse, more commonly known as the prairie chicken. On specific sites in otherwise indistinguishable tracts of natural prairie landscape, groups of male chickens gather at dusk and dawn in elaborate dances designed to attract females.
These areas — called leks, or booming grounds — are actually formed in fall when the order of dominance is established among the males. At this time, mature males gather in these relatively high, flat areas and attempt to establish their own small territories as close to the center of the lek as possible, where activity will be highest in spring. Although young males visit the lek, they are kept to the edges and seldom given the opportunity to establish their own territories.
While the fall activity is important and interesting, it is the spring lekking, or “booming,” activity that most fascinates naturalists, both professional and amateur. Beginning in March and lasting through the end of May, male chickens display an incredible array of vocalizations and maneuvers to win the right to mate.
Avid bird watchers and novices alike are mesmerized by this site, and it’s not difficult to find a place to witness it. For a list of prairie chicken viewing opportunities, visit the Natural Kansas website www.naturalkansas.org/birding.htm#PCV or phone the Kansas Department of Wildlife, Parks and Tourism’s Emporia Office at 620-342-0658 or the Pratt Operations Office at 620-672-5911.
In the mating ritual, the male chicken's tail is elevated; horn-like feathers (called pinnae) on the neck are raised over the head; and the wings are lowered with the primary feathers spread. The bird stamps its feet while moving forward or in circles, and this is followed by a series of rapid tail snaps and fans. At the same time as the tail is clicked open and shut, a whoom-AH-oom sound is given as the bright orange air sacs on the neck of the greater prairie chicken (orange to plume in the lesser) are inflated for maximum exposure. The lesser prairie chicken exhibits similar behavior, but the sound is higher-pitched, and the air sacs are a reddish color.
A second major display is flutter-jumping with associated cackling calls. The male jumps several feet into the air, flies forward, and lands. In so doing, the bird advertises its presence as well as the location of the lek. Flutter-jumping is typical of the peripheral males when females are near the center of the display ground.
A female will typically fly to the edge of a lek and walk slowly toward the center. When the hen enters a male’s territory, the male's behavior changes greatly. Lekking is performed with high frequency and extreme posturing. The male will display in circles around the female, showing all aspects of its plumage. At the peak of this performance, the dancer often spreads his wings and lays his head flat to the ground, as if bowing to the hen. If suitably impressed, the hen will stoop low to the ground, signaling that she is ready to mate.
Occasionally, fights break out among competing males. This is mostly ritual, as well, involving short jumps; striking with feet, beak, and wings; and face-offs in which the competitors whine and attempt to stare each other down. Injuries do occur but are seldom serious.
With its large, colorful air sacs, horn-like pinnae, and feathers growing all the way to its feet, the prairie chicken is one of the most beautiful birds in Kansas. And its mating ritual makes it one of the most fascinating birds to watch. Kansans are lucky to have the largest population of prairie chickens in the world, so viewing opportunities are good.
Two species of prairie chicken can be found in Kansas. The greater prairie chicken, the most populous, can be found throughout portions of northcentral and eastern Kansas, especially in the Flint Hills region. The lesser prairie chicken, which is slightly smaller and has reddish-orange air-sacs, can be found in pockets of native sandsage and shortgrass prairie in western Kansas. The lesser prairie chicken male produces a higher-pitched, bubbly sound, or "gobble," leading to the term "gobbling grounds" for their leks. On a quiet spring morning, the sounds of both species can carry as far as 2 miles across the open prairie. | <urn:uuid:647176dd-c1cd-43a1-b7e4-9319c67556cf> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.kdwpt.state.ks.us/index.php/news/layout/set/print/KDWPT-Info/News/Weekly-News/4-5-12/PRAIRIE-CHICKEN-SPRING-DANCE-A-BIRDERS-DELIGHT | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.946559 | 1,007 | 3.046875 | 3 |
Ludwig van Beethoven's Symphony No. Ludwig van Beethoven ( English ˈlʊdvɪg væn ˈbeɪtoʊvən, 16 December 1770 &ndash 26 March 1827 was a German Composer and Pianist. 6 in F major (Op. 68), known as the Pastoral Symphony, was completed in 1808. Opus, from the Latin word opus meaning "work" is usually used in the sense of "a Work of art " One of Beethoven's few works of program music, the symphony was labeled at its first performance with the title "Recollections of Country Life". Programme music is a form of Art music intended to evoke extra-musical ideas images in the mind of the listener by musically representing a scene image or mood
Beethoven was a lover of nature who spent a great deal of his time on walks in the country. He frequently left Vienna to work in rural locales. He was, however, not the first composer of his time to depict nature symphonically; for example, Joseph Haydn's oratorio The Seasons, premiered in 1802, likewise portrayed the loveliness of nature, dancing peasants, a thunderstorm, bird calls, and so on. An oratorio is a large Musical composition including an Orchestra, a Choir, and soloists The oratorio was somewhat modeled after the Opera The Seasons (German Die Jahreszeiten) is an Oratorio by Joseph Haydn ( H Beethoven did not write another oratorio, but a symphony, and thus escaped from the overly-literal character that a libretto would have imposed. A libretto is the text used in an extended Musical work such as an Opera, Operetta, Masque, sacred or secular Oratorio and As the composer said, the Sixth Symphony is "a matter more of feeling than of painting in sounds", and the same point is made in the title he attached to the first movement (see below).
The first sketches of this symphony appeared in 1802. The symphony has a plot, storyline, and programmatic titles; Beethoven remarked, "It is left to the listener to find out the situations . . . Anyone that has formed any ideal of rural life does not need titles to imagine the composer’s intentions. "
The Pastoral Symphony was composed simultaneously with Beethoven's more famous—and more fiery—Fifth Symphony. Ludwig van Beethoven 's Symphony No 5 in C minor Op 67 was written in 1804–08 It was premiered along with the Fifth in a long and somewhat underrehearsed concert in the Theater an der Wien in Vienna, on December 22, 1808. The Theater an der Wien (The Theatre on the Wien River is a Theatre in Vienna. Vienna ( in Wien; see also other names) is the Capital of Austria, and is also one of the nine States of Austria. Events 1790 - The Turkish fortress of Izmail is stormed and captured by Suvorov and his Russian armies Year 1808 ( MDCCCVIII) was a Leap year starting on Friday (link will display the full calendar of the Gregorian calendar (or a Leap year It was received rather coldly, mainly due to the excitement caused by its more flamboyant counterpart. Although the Sixth Symphony contains some of Beethoven's most beautiful writing, the crowds had been wanting another bold and adventurous work, and the relatively calm and introspective composition was not wholly to their liking.
Since this inauspicious beginning, however, the work has become one of the central works of the symphonic repertoire. It is a favorite of many listeners and is frequently performed and recorded today.
The symphony is scored for piccolo (fourth movement only), 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets in B flat, 2 bassoons, 2 horns in F and B flat, 2 trumpets in C and E flat (third, fourth, and fifth movements only), 2 trombones (alto and tenor, fourth and fifth movements only), timpani (fourth movement only), and strings. The piccolo is a small Flute. Like the flute the piccolo is normally pitched in the key of C one octave above the concert flute (making it effectively a sopranino The flute is a Musical instrument of the Woodwind family Unlike other woodwind instruments a flute is a Reedless wind instrument that produces its "Hautbois" redirects here for the strawberry variety see Hautbois strawberry. The clarinet is a Musical instrument in the Woodwind family The name derives from adding the suffix -et meaning little to the Italian word The bassoon is a Woodwind instrument in the Double reed family that typically plays music written in the bass and Tenor registers and occasionally The trombone is a Musical instrument in the brass family Like all brass instruments it is a lip-reed Aerophone: sound is produced when the player’s Timpani (also known colloquially as kettledrums or kettle drums) are Musical instruments in the percussion family A string instrument (or stringed instrument) is a Musical instrument that produces Sound by means of Vibrating strings In the Hornbostel-Sachs
The symphony breaks from the standard symphonic form of the time in having five movements, rather than the four typical of the Classical era. The dates of the Classical period in Western music are generally accepted as 1750 to 1810 The movements are marked as follows:
A performance of the work lasts about 40 minutes. 2266-Tetramethylpiperidine-1-oxyl or TEMPO is the Chemical compound with the formula (CH23(CMe22NO The last three movements are performed together without pause.
The symphony begins with a placid and cheerful movement depicting the composer's feelings as he arrives in the country. The work is in sonata form, and makes use of seven distinct motifs, each of which is extensively developed and transformed. Sonata form is a Musical form that has been used widely since the early Classical period.
An unusual aspect of the movement is the use of a microscopic texture, obtained by multiple repetitions of very short motifs. As Yvonne Frindle has said, "the infinite repetition of pattern in nature [is] conveyed through rhythmic cells, its immensity through sustained pure harmonies. "
This movement, entitled by Beethoven "By the brook," is held to be one of Beethoven's most beautiful and serene compositions. It is in a 12/8 meter and the key is B flat major, the subdominant of the main key of the work, and is in sonata form. In Music, the subdominant is the technical name for the fourth tonal degree of the Diatonic scale.
At the opening the strings play a motif that clearly imitates flowing water. The cello section is divided, with just two players playing the flowing-water notes on muted instruments, with the remaining cellos playing mostly pizzicato notes together with the double basses. Pizzicato (ˌpɪtsɪˈkɑːtoʊ is a playing technique that involves plucking the strings of a String instrument.
Toward the end of the movement there is a cadenza for three woodwind instruments that imitates bird calls. In Music, a cadenza (Italian for cadence) is generically an improvised or written-out ornamental passage played or sung by a soloist or soloists usually Types of woodwind instruments See also List of woodwind instruments Single-reed instruments use a reed, which is a thin cut Beethoven helpfully identified the bird species in the score: nightingale (flute), quail (oboe), and cuckoo (clarinet). The Nightingale ( Luscinia megarhynchos) also known as Rufous and Common Nightingale, is a small Passerine Bird that was formerly Quail is a collective name for several genera of mid-sized Birds in the Pheasant family Phasianidae, or in the family Odontophoridae. The cuckoos are a family Cuculidae, of Near passerine Birds The order Cuculiformes, in addition to the cuckoos also includes the
This is the scherzo movement of the symphony, which depicts the country folk dancing and reveling. A scherzo (plural scherzi) is a piece of Music or a movement in a certain style that forms part of a larger piece such as a Symphony. It is in F major, returning to the main key of the symphony.
The form of the movement is an altered version of the usual form for scherzi:
In other words, the trio appears twice rather than just once, and each time it appears it is interrupted by a boisterous passage in 2/4 time (a similar 2/4 eruption is found in Beethoven's Hammerklavier sonata for piano). Ludwig van Beethoven 's Piano Sonata No 29 in B flat major, opus 106, known as the Große Sonate für das Hammerklavier, or more simply as the Perhaps to accommodate this rather spacious arrangement, Beethoven left out the normally observed repeats of the second parts of the scherzo and the trio. Theodor Adorno identifies this particular scherzo as the model for the scherzos by Anton Bruckner. Theodor Ludwig Wiesengrund Adorno ( September 11, 1903 &ndash August 6, 1969) was a German -born international sociologist Anton Bruckner (4 September 1824 &ndash 11 October 1896 was an Austrian composer known primarily for his symphonies, masses, and Motets
The final return of Scherzo conveys a riotous atmosphere with a faster tempo. The movement ends abruptly when the country folk notice that raindrops are starting to fall.
The fourth movement, in F minor, depicts a violent thunderstorm with painstaking realism, starting with just a few drops of rain and building to a great climax. There is, of course, thunder, as well as lightning, high winds, and sheets of rain. From Beethoven's injunction that the symphony is meant to be "a matter more of feeling than of painting in sounds," one might guess that the movement depicts not just the storm itself but the feelings of awe and fear experienced by a witness to the storm.
The storm eventually spends itself, with an occasional peal of thunder still heard in the distance. There is a seamless transition into the final movement, including a theme that could be interpreted as depicting a rainbow.
Since the fourth movement does not resolve in a final cadence, and by the pattern of Classical symphonies would count as the "extra" movement among the five, critics have described it structurally as an extended introduction to the final movement, rather than an independent movement in itself. A precedent for Beethoven's procedure is found in an earlier work (1787), Mozart's String Quintet in G minor K. 516, which likewise prefaces a serene final movement with a long, emotionally stormy introduction. The String Quintet No 4 in G minor, K 516 was written by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.
The finale is in F major and is in 6/8 time. The first eight bars form a continuation of the introduction of which the storm was the main part; the finale proper begins in the ninth bar. The movement is written in sonata rondo form, meaning that the main theme appears in the tonic key at the beginning of the development as well as the exposition and the recapitulation. Sonata rondo form was a form of musical organization often used during the Classical music era. The tonic is the first note of a musical scale in the tonal method of Musical composition. There is a very long coda; the tail that wags the dog.
Like many classical finales, this movement emphasises a symmetrical eight-bar theme, in this case representing the shepherds' song of thanksgiving. The mood throughout is unmistakably joyful.
The coda, which Antony Hopkins has called "arguably the finest music of the whole symphony," starts quietly and gradually builds to an ecstatic culmination for the full orchestra (minus "storm instruments"), with the first violins playing very rapid triplets at the top of their range. Antony Hopkins CBE (born March 21, 1921) is an English Composer, Pianist, conductor, and radio broadcaster There follows a fervent passage suggestive of prayer, marked by Beethoven "pianissimo, sotto voce"; most conductors slow the tempo for this passage. After a brief period of afterglow, the work ends with two emphatic chords. This article describes musical chords in traditional Western styles
This article draws heavily on the following works: | <urn:uuid:c813c09c-5c00-45ad-9a3d-ff1422a7eee6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.citizendia.org/Symphony_No._6_(Beethoven) | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957116 | 2,731 | 3.53125 | 4 |
Bismillah ar-Rahman ar-Rahim (in the Name of God, the Most Merciful, the Most Beneficent)
When we study, even very briefly, the Most Beautiful Names of Allah subhanahu wa ta`ala (exalted is He), we feel our love for Him grow. And when we can recognize His Names during certain moments and experiences in our lives, our sheer awe for Him reaches new heights. It is for this reason that I think it would be beneficial for us to reflect on moments in our life when we appreciated a Most Beautiful Name or Attribute of Allah Ta’ala (Most High).
It was through an unexpected encounter with a cashier that I gained a tiny bit of insight into the Most Beautiful Name of Allah (swt)—al-Shakur, the Appreciative.
Wearing a longer/larger khimar (head and body covering) had been on my mind for a while, and it was something I finally decided to do. Many can identify with the first few days I experienced—I had that “eman (faith) rush” that converted onlookers’ stares into fuel, into enthusiasm. But there came a day, not too long after, when I was sitting in the car and I began to doubt myself. I intended to improve my hijab and stick to it, but I started to doubt if this was something I could commit to, thinking maybe I should just go back to how I was before. Combine my own worries and hesitations with Shaytan’s (the Devil’s) whispers, and I think most of us are familiar with the internal script that follows.
I got out of the car with my dad to get my photo taken for my driver’s license at the post office. I had the photographer telling me I needed to adjust my khimar this way and that for photo requirements, and my dad on the side telling me to just take it off. The photo finally got taken and as my dad was paying at the counter, a clerk told me that my hijab was good and to stay that way, not to change.
Was this actually happening? Yes, it was, by the Mercy of Allah (swt), this was actually happening.
A clerk in a post office is encouraging me to patience, calling me to steadfastness. Sounds random? Not at all, for Al-Hakeem (the Wise), Al-Raheem (the Merciful), Al-Shakur (the Appreciative) had planned this.
I wanted to start crying, I wanted to walk out of the store and just drop into sujood (prostration)—laa ilaaha ill Allah (There is nothing worthy of worship except God)!
Brothers and sisters, Allah (swt) knows what we’re feeling when no one else does:
And We have already created man and know what his soul whispers to him, and We are closer to him than [his] jugular vein. (Qur’an 50:16)
And conceal your speech or publicize it; indeed, He is Knowing of that within the breasts. Does He who created not know, while He is the Subtle, the Acquainted? (Qur’an 67:13-14)
He is the First and the Last, the Ascendant and the Intimate. And He is, of all things, Knowing. (Qur’an 57:3)
He (swt) knows our worries, weaknesses, hesitations; He is Al-Khabeer (the Fully Aware), Al-Lateef (the Subtle), Al-`Aleem (the All-Knowing), Al-Qareeb (the One who is near).
It had been decreed for this clerk to tell me these words I desired to hear—“to not give up, to keep going.”
While we shouldn’t need the approval of people, there are times when we might feel weak and need support, a reminder to keep climbing that path to Jannah (Paradise), to not stop our struggle.
And indeed with hardship comes ease (Qur’an 94:5), because there came a point where I couldn’t imagine being wrapped in anything less than my large khimar—and I reached this point not by myself, but by the Mercy and Help of Allah (swt). It wasn’t about if I could do it, for every day in which we get dressed to please Allah (swt), every salah (prayer) in which we stand before Allah (swt), we could not do it without the Assistance and Help of Allah (swt), by His Mercy and Favour.
Just as that clerk reminded me when I so badly needed a reminder (alhamdulillah, all praise be to God), I want to remind myself and every brother and sister to keep going in whatever goodness they are striving to do to please our Rabb (Lord), Allah (swt). He is Appreciative and rewards the good deeds. Dear brother, and dear sister, if you are trying to do something for the sake of Allah (swt), know that regardless of the support (or lack thereof) which you receive from family, friends, or society… Allah (swt) knows.
I’m sure my experience is not unique—we’ve all had experiences which just made us stand (or prostrate!) in awe of Allah (swt) and His Most Beautiful Names and Attributes. If we pay attention closely enough, we can begin to be overwhelmed by all the blessings Allah (swt), As-Samad (The Satisfier of all needs, who is in no need of us), showers down upon us (like the lungs we have to breathe and eyes we have to read at this very moment!). Or, the very fact that we are Muslim (alhamdulillah!) is a manifestation that Allah (swt) is Al-Haqq (the Truth) and Al-Raheem (the Merciful) to have guided us to the Truth. I’d love to hear your experiences and appreciation for the Most Beautiful Names of Allah (swt)! | <urn:uuid:dc8fb57a-db12-431f-9ddb-59e69e888104> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.suhaibwebb.com/relationships/withthedivine/taking-notice-of-the-most-beautiful-names-of-allah/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00025-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961191 | 1,296 | 1.625 | 2 |
ATLANTA, GEORGIA, USA, July 12, 2010 – Nearly 80% of people with Lewy body dementias (LBD) received a diagnosis for a different cognitive, movement or psychiatric disorder before ultimately learning they had LBD, according to the Lewy Body Dementia Association’s Caregiver Burden in Lewy Body Dementias, released today.
This new report reveals people with LBD and their caregivers face barriers to obtaining an early LBD diagnosis. Caregivers rate specialists and general practitioners as inadequate in discussing disease progression. Additionally, caregivers experience moderate to severe emotional burden, and most experience a sense of isolation because so few people know about LBD.
LBD is the second-most common form of degenerative dementia in the elderly, affecting an estimated 1.3 million people in the United States. Symptoms include dementia, unpredictable variations in cognition, attention or alertness; hallucinations, Parkinson’s-like symptoms, a sleep disorder characterized by physically acting out vivid nightmares and dreams, and a potentially life-threatening sensitivity to certain medications.
“LBD is a family disease, affecting not just the person with LBD but also the caregiver,” said Angela Herron, President of LBDA’s Board of Directors. “This report underscores the challenges presented by a disease that affects cognition, movement, behavior, sleep and mood. Despite the fact that LBD is a common form of dementia many doctors and other medical professionals are unfamiliar with LBD, compounding the burden even further.”
Importance of Early Diagnosis and Physician Awareness of LBD
Half of people seeking a diagnosis saw 3 or more doctors for 10 visits over the course of a year before they were diagnosed with LBD, and diagnosis required more than two years from the onset of symptoms for 31% of cases.
Although prognosis varies among individuals, LBD is often a more rapidly progressive disease than Alzheimer’s disease, and early diagnosis provides families an opportunity to plan for expected decline in cognition, function and behavior. Given the evidence that suggests treatment with cholinesterase inhibitors may benefit patients with LBD more than those with Alzheimer’s disease, barriers to diagnosis have a negative impact on both the patients’ and caregivers’ quality of life. Especially important, early diagnosis of LBD provides physicians with an opportunity to minimize exposure to medications that may aggravate symptoms, such as antipsychotic medications. Nearly 60% of people with LBD may experience severe, potentially irreversible reactions to antipsychotic medications, and in rare cases, a life threatening condition called neuroleptic malignant syndrome may also occur.
LBD Progression Not Adequately Addressed
While neurologists made most LBD diagnoses, caregivers most often relied on primary care physicians for ongoing follow-up care and reported difficulties coordinating treatment of LBD symptoms between primary care physicians and specialists, as medication for one LBD symptom may worsen another being treated by a different physician. Caregivers rated over 40% of both generalists and specialists as inadequate in telling families what to expect in the future, and more than half of physicians as inadequate in suggesting telling the family where to find more information on LBD or community-based resources.
“The lack of information on disease progression is a serious challenge to LBD families,” stated Herron. “It’s essential that families plan in advance for the relentless progression of LBD, and not having answers on what that decline will look like or how fast it may occur, adds significant stress to an already difficult situation.”
Caregiver Burden is Physical and Emotional
Caregivers reported moderate to severe levels of disability in the person with LBD and over 90% had taken over instrumental activities of daily living, like preparing meals, managing medications, transportation, finances and appointments. Over 60% of caregivers indicated the person with LBD could not perform basic activities of daily living, such as dressing or bathing.
People with LBD had high rates of behavioral problems and mood changes and two-thirds of caregivers reported a crisis in the past year that required a hospital emergency room, emergency medical services, psychiatric care, or law enforcement.
LBD caregivers face a number of challenges: social, medical, functional and financial. LBD caregivers feel isolated and often have to respond to crises, but may not be receiving adequate support from family, friends or healthcare providers. These features have the potential to lead to adverse outcomes for the caregiver “burnout” including stress, depression and poor health.
“Poorer caregiver outcomes directly lead to increases in patient institutionalization and declines in quality of life, stated Dr. James E. Galvin, a member of LBDA’s Scientific Advisory Council and Professor of Neurology and Psychiatry at New York University. “This may be particularly important in LBD where patients are at an increased risk of institutionalization and mortality.”
The findings are based on data collected by the Lewy Body Dementia Association (LBDA) in an online survey of 962 LBD caregivers. Designed by Steven H. Zarit, PhD, an expert on caregiver burden in dementia and Professor of Human Development at Penn State University, the survey was conducted over a 6-month period. Dr. Galvin analyzed the survey data, which was published in the July, 2010 issue of Parkinsonism & Related Disorders and the April-June, 2010 issue of Alzheimer Disease & Associated Disorders.
The full text of the Lewy Body Dementia Association’s Caregiver Burden in Lewy Body Dementias can be viewed by visiting http://www.lbda.org.
The Lewy Body Dementia Association
The Lewy Body Dementia Association (LBDA) is the leading voluntary health organization in raising awareness of Lewy body dementias (LBD), supporting patients, their families and caregivers, and promoting scientific advances. LBDA’s Scientific Advisory Council is comprised of leading experts from the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Japan in research and clinical management of Lewy body dementias. To learn more about LBDA, visit www.lbda.org. | <urn:uuid:be9abc75-7188-40f1-ad7f-76bc4b552839> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://lewybodydementia.wordpress.com/2010/08/12/new-report-highlights-delayed-diagnosis-and-caregiver-burden-in-lewy-body-dementias/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00054-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.942282 | 1,278 | 2.453125 | 2 |
CNN founder Ted Turner established the Goodwill Games in response to the United States' boycott of the 1980 Olympics in Moscow, Russia, and the Soviet Union's boycott of the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles, California.
The games showcased nearly 20,000 athletes from 100 countries in its 6 meetings. Although Turner Broadcasting reportedly lost hundreds of millions of dollars by producing and broadcasting the competitions, Turner claimed that the friendships forged between athletes and officials of different countries, as well as the millions of dollars raised for such charitable organizations as UNICEF, made the games successful.
The 1986 Moscow games featured 3,500 athletes competing in 18 sports. Many American athletes declined to participate, citing concerns over the recent Chernobyl nuclear disaster. Competitors from Israel were not invited. Turner's meeting with Soviet premier Mikhail Gorbachev during
U.S. track star Carl Lewis and the U.S. women's basketball team, which won a gold medal, made the 1990 Seattle Goodwill Games memorable with their performances, but the games again failed to attract a large audience and lost $44 million. The 1994 St. Petersburg Games lost about $39 million, again apparently due to lack of fan support.
The 1998 New York City Games scored a 25 percent larger television audience than did the St. Petersburg event. These games featured popular figure skaters Michelle Kwan and Todd Eldredge, as well as track and field athletes Michael Johnson, Jackie Joyner-Kersee, and Dan O'Brien,
After the 2000 winter games in Lake Placid and the 2001 games in Brisbane, officials from Time-Warner, the communications conglomerate that had merged with Turner Broadcasting in 1996, decided to terminate the Goodwill Games.
Other world-class athletes who competed in the Goodwill Games over its sixteen-year run included figure skater Oksana Baiul, track and field athletes Marion Jones and Sergei Bubka, basketball player Tim Duncan, and boxer Oscar De La Hoya.
Robert Goldberg and Gerald Jay Goldberg, Citizen Turner: The Wild Rise of an American Tycoon (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1995).
Chris Starrs, Athens
A project of the Georgia Humanities Council, in partnership with the University of Georgia Press, the University System of Georgia/GALILEO, and the Office of the Governor. | <urn:uuid:2bfdcdbc-e9fc-4e19-a436-cb543bff086d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/nge/Article.jsp?id=h-2957 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00054-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.931599 | 469 | 2.65625 | 3 |
The sensory aspects of the courses would be beneficial to any child; the information that is shared is priceless.
— Jean, WA
Selling on eBay is a good opportunity for someone interested in running a business. This module introduces students to how eBay works. It explains basic procedures such as how to register, set up a seller account, purchase an item off eBay, set up a PayPal account, and manage sales and listings. The goal is to help students identify the basic information they need to set up an eBay seller's account and to recognize the value of eBay as a tool for starting up and running a business.
Note: This module is recommended for people with strong access technology skills. Applications like eBay change frequently. This module provides you with a general overview of the application as it stands at the time of module activation.
Module: FCE-250, Media: OL, Lessons: 1 | <urn:uuid:14c189b2-a6e9-448e-95f2-fa9b276acbc1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://hadley.edu/ShowCourseDetail.asp?courseid=FCE-250 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00038-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.915432 | 181 | 2.828125 | 3 |
"In October of 1973, Bruce Severy — a 26-year-old English teacher at Drake High School, North Dakota — decided to use Kurt Vonnegut's novel, Slaughterhouse-Five, as a teaching aid in his classroom. The next month, on November 7th, the head of the school board, Charles McCarthy, demanded that all 32 copies be burned in the school's furnace as a result of its "obscene language." Other books soon met with the same fate.
On the 16th of November, Kurt Vonnegut sent McCarthy the following letter
. He didn't receive a reply."
posted by the man of twists and turns
on Apr 5, 2012 -
In the spring of 1945, three weeks after VE Day, Private First Class Kurt Vonnegut, Jr wrote a letter home to inform his family that he was alive. His infantry unit had been smashed by Panzer divisions in the Ardennes; his unmarked POW train attacked by the RAF; miraculously, he and a handful of fellow prisoners escaped incineration by American and British bombers. "Their combined labors killed 250,000 people in twenty-four hours and destroyed all of Dresden – possibly the world’s most beautiful city", Vonnegut wrote. "But not me."
: How Kurt Vonnegut created a novel, a cult following and one of the most loyal readerships in American Fiction
by Thomas Meaney in The Times Literary Supplement.
posted by Kattullus
on Mar 11, 2012 -
A Missouri school board has voted
to remove Slaughter House Five and another book from the library for "teaching principles contrary to the Bible." [more inside]
posted by Leezie
on Aug 2, 2011 -
Mr. Vonnegut talked about my dad a lot and put him into a lot of his books. Sometimes he was Dad, and sometimes he was just a character Mr. Vonnegut made up. So what I would say to any of you who are wondering is this: My dad was what people called a real character, which always made us laugh because it was so literally true owing to his association with a famous fiction writer. He could also get pretty obnoxious. But he was a good man. And he definitely wasn’t crazy. At least not until the brain tumor.
Kurt Vonnegut Didn't Know Doodly-Squat About Writing: Finally, Literary Analysis Worth Reading
by Bernard V. O'Hare, with an introduction by Meghan O'Hare.
posted by shakespeherian
on Nov 3, 2010 -
In How to Write a Great Novel
authors such as Edwidge Danticat, Hilary Mantel, Orhan Pamuk, Junot Díaz and Margaret Atwood speak about their writing process. If you want your thoughts on writing in a longer format, you could do a lot worse than The New York Times' Writers on Writing
series, which features short essays by, for example, Kurt Vonnegut
, Saul Bellow
, Louise Erdrich
and Annie Proulx
. Should you thirst for meditations longer yet, Barbara Demarco-Barrett
has on her Writers on Writing
radio show interviewed a boatload of authors
and it is available as a podcast [iTunes link]
posted by Kattullus
on Nov 11, 2009 -
is a short story by the late Kurt Vonnegut (so it goes)
from 1962, brought to you now by Project Gutenberg.
posted by buriednexttoyou
on May 4, 2007 -
Vonnegut's Asshole. To be honest, this wasn't originally intended as a tribute to the late, great Kurt Vonnegut. It started as a goofy experiment, just to find out how many authors I could persuade to send me drawings of their own assholes. But then Kurt went and died on us last week. So now it's become something else.
posted by roll truck roll
on Apr 18, 2007 -
Kurt Vonnegut, Writer of Classics of the American Counterculture, Dies at 84
"His death was reported by Morgan Entrekin, a longtime family friend, who said Mr. Vonnegut suffered brain injuries as a result of a fall several weeks ago.
Mr. Vonnegut wrote plays, essays and short fiction. But it was his novels that became classics of the American counterculture, making him a literary idol, particularly to students in the 1960s and ’70s. Dog-eared paperback copies of his books could be found in the back pockets of blue jeans and in dorm rooms on campuses throughout the United States."
posted by landedjentry
on Apr 11, 2007 -
. Almost everyone knows that the phrase comes from the story of the assassination of Julius Caesar, most familiarly in the Shakespeare version
, although "The Life of Augustus,"
written by Nicolauas of Damascus, contains what is thought to be the earliest narrative of the plot to murder Julius Caesar, based in part on eyewitness accounts. But, not everyone knows that The Ides Of March is also a band [flash intro]
(best known for the song "Vehicle"
, an epistolatory novel by Thornton Wilder
(with forward by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.), an instrumental song by Iron Maiden [YouTube]
, and two paintings, one by Edward Poynter
and one by Andrew Wyeth
posted by amyms
on Mar 15, 2007 -
Vonnegut Weighs in on the State of the Union. As a writer and artist, have you noticed any difference between how the cultural leaders of the past and the cultural leaders of today view their responsibility to society?
Responsibility to which society? To Nazi Germany? To the Stalinist Soviet Union? What about responsibility to humanity in general? And leaders in what particular cultural activity? I guess you mean the fine arts. I hope you mean the fine arts. ... Anybody practicing the fine art of composing music, no matter how cynical or greedy or scared, still can't help serving all humanity. Music makes practically everybody fonder of life than he or she would be without it. Even military bands, although I am a pacifist, always cheer me up.
posted by crasspastor
on Jan 30, 2003 - | <urn:uuid:f65f9b46-9403-4ec5-908d-b5de3e219f64> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.metafilter.com/tags/kurtvonnegut | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00029-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.962633 | 1,313 | 2.21875 | 2 |
There are no current consultations in Scotland.
The Children and Young People (Scotland) Bill has been introduced to the Scottish Parliament on Thursday 18th April 2013.
Read more about the new bill on out Scotland Legislation page
Last week, we posted an update about the U-turn on bedroom tax for foster carers.
However, the government have since announced that the exemption will only apply to a foster carer’s first “spare” bedroom, meaning that those who have two or more bedrooms for fostering will still be affected.
This could deter foster carers from offering homes to sibling groups, leading to brothers and sisters being split up between different foster families.
A £5m discretionary housing fund has been allocated to help remedy the problem but some foster carers are already reporting problems accessing this support.
The effect of the bedroom tax on the stability of sibling placements could be devastating. That’s why we’ll continue to campaign for all foster carers to be exempt from these unfair housing benefit cuts.
Please join our campaign by sharing your views with us, and we will share them with the Minister.
At the beginning of April 2013, new rules will affect the calculation of Housing Benefit for social housing tenants in England, Wales and Scotland (similar rules in Northern Ireland depend on legislation currently under consideration).
Payments will be reduced by 14 per cent where a house is deemed to be “under-occupied” by one room and 24 per cent if under-occupied by two or more rooms. This may affect foster carers particularly, as fostered children are not counted when considering whether a home is fully occupied or not.
Example: A foster carer living in a three-bedroomed house, with no birth children living at home, will see their Housing Benefit cut by 25 per cent, regardless of how many foster children they have.
Local authorities are allocated a budget for Discretionary Housing Payments which they can use to support households which are in difficulties in meeting their rent, but although these budgets have been significantly increased, demand is expected to be extremely high so foster carers need to apply for DHP as soon as their housing benefit is affected.
Pensioners housing benefit claims will not be affected by the new rules.
Children’s Minister Edward Timpson stated in a Parliamentary answer that:
“The discretionary housing payment (DHP) fund, administered by local authorities, will be increased by £5 million a year from April 2013. This will enable authorities to compensate foster carers whose housing benefit is subject to a restriction as a result of the size criteria measure being introduced for working age claimants living in the social rented sector.
The Department for Work and Pension's DHP guidance manual for local authorities is being revised. It will make clear the expectation that this additional funding will be prioritised for foster carers whose housing benefit is reduced as a result of this change because of a bedroom being used by, or kept free for, foster children.
I am meeting the Minister for Welfare Reform early in the new year to discuss what more needs to be done to ensure that local authority chief executives, directors of children's services and local housing authorities are aware that funds are available to assist foster carers, and to encourage them to use this support as effectively as possible to help meet their responsibility as corporate parents to see that vulnerable looked after children have access to loving, stable homes.”
FosterTalk members can seek advice and guidance on this matter by contacting FosterTalk’s member helpline: 0844 800 3880 – option 0
If you are a foster carer and think that this change may adversely affect you then please contact us by the 1st April. FosterTalk will pass all of your responses to the Children’s Minister Edward Timpson who has pledged that he will discuss with the DWP what more can be done to support foster carers on this issue.
FosterTalk Limited, Registered Company in England and Wales
10 The Courtyard, Buntsford Gate, Bromsgrove, Worcestershire, B60 3DJ
Registered Company Number: 06318354 | <urn:uuid:738a5d0f-92da-41cc-8796-110b8753c319> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.fostertalk.org/about-fostertalk/have-your-say/scotland | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00071-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.958166 | 851 | 1.507813 | 2 |
MADISON (WKOW) -- According to a new report, the state fraud hotline took more than 150 reports over the last two years.
The nonpartisan Legislative Audit Bureau released a report Tuesday saying the line received 162 reports in 2011 and 2012. The bureau has operated the hotline since 2008.
Of those reports, 112 fell within the bureau's authority to investigate. They included 34 reports of people receiving benefits they may not be eligible to receive, 34 reports of waste and inefficiency and 27 reports of agency mismanagement.
The bureau resolved 46 of the reports and determined 38 were unfounded. The remaining 28 are still under review.
The hotline number is 1-877-FRAUD-17. Reports can also be made online.
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Persons with disabilities who need assistance with issues relating to the content of this station's public inspection file should contact Program Manager Jessica Miller at 608-661-2794. Questions or concerns relating to the accessibility of the FCC's online public file system should be directed to the FCC at 888-225-5322, at 888-835-5322 (TTY) or at email@example.com. | <urn:uuid:57b8b187-f3be-4011-8930-0c0534b65c9a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wkow.com/story/20592574/2013/01/15/wis-fraud-hotline-got-162-reports-in-2011-2012 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.940329 | 258 | 1.640625 | 2 |
A publication of the Archaeological Institute of America
The massacre last November 17 of 58 foreign tourists and four Egyptians at the Temple of Hatshepsut, one of the great archaeological attractions of Egypt, captured the world's attention because of the number of victims, the horrific accounts of the survivors, and the savagery of the assailants. Eyewitnesses described how most of the victims, trapped on the raised terrace of the temple complex's middle courtyard, were killed by six men armed with knives and automatic weapons. Many of the tourists who tried to hide in the colonnades at the rear of the courtyard were hunted down and slain. The victims included 35 Swiss and a foreign resident of Switzerland; nine Japanese, including four couples on their honeymoons; six Britons, including a young mother and her baby; four Germans, a Bulgarian, a Colombian, and a Frenchman.
A unit of El-Gamaa El-Islamiya (the Islamic Group), a militant fundamentalist organization, immediately claimed responsibility for the attack, but said its men had intended only to detain tourists to force the release of their spiritual leader, Sheik Omar Abdul Rahman, who is serving a life sentence in a federal prison in the United States for masterminding the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center in New York. President Mubarak visited the Temple of Hatshepsut the day after the massacre and announced that stronger measures would be taken to protect foreign tourists. Security was to be increased at sites throughout the country: more police and soldiers armed with more sophisticated weapons would be on hand to guard tourists, and helicopters would begin patrolling the Nile. For the time being, tour buses would not be permitted to travel south of Aswan, and visitors to the famous Temple of Ramses II at Abu Simbel would have to get there by air. At an all-day meeting at the Temple of Hatshepsut, the ambassadors to Egypt from Muslim countries, Egyptian government officials, members of parliament, various celebrities, and the media denounced the murders and those responsible for them. The Egyptians also apologized to the families of the dead.
How do we react to such an act? Is there an appropriate response that goes beyond disgust with the killings and sympathy for the victims and their families? "It is beyond understanding," was the comment of Hans Wiesner to Alan Cowell of the New York Times. Wiesner was a representative of a tour company who accompanied ten of the wounded survivors of the massacre on a chartered plane from Cairo to Zürich. What was in the minds and hearts of the killers? Some might suggest that if we could understand their thinking we could prevent such an atrocity from recurring. Others might conclude the world is too interested in what is in the minds of killers and too little interested in the suffering of their victims, that justice needs to be served. Indeed, the relentless pursuit of terrorists and their capture and trial before competent courts of justice have now become international in scope, though they lack the cooperation of some countries.
These are murky waters, however. International courts may judge participants in war and revolution for "crimes against humanity," but what court is prepared to judge a revolution or civil war? We have observed within the past decade the reluctance of the world to intervene in the wars in Yugoslavia, or Rwanda, or other disintegrating countries. On a personal level, we can openly reaffirm our belief in the principle of social interaction in a multicultural world, the toleration of religious and ethnic differences, and the peaceful mediation of political differences. Rational people can only hope for tolerance, which is precisely what the zealot, or terrorist, cannot abide.
James Wiseman is a contributing editor to ARCHAEOLOGY and a professor of archaeology, art history, and classics at Boston University. | <urn:uuid:d9c1fe17-301b-4f88-b4d0-928d03a9bb05> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://archive.archaeology.org/9803/abstracts/insight.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00052-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963077 | 765 | 2.671875 | 3 |
Hemorrhoids are swollen and inflamed veins around the anus or in the lower rectum. Discuss topics including external vs. internal hemorrhoids, hemorrhoid bleeding, hemorrhoid creams, symptoms and treatments for hemorrhoids.
I was diagnosed with hemorrhoids about 4 years ago. The past few weeks I have had a lot of abdominal cramping pain and pressure. When I have BM's it feels like I am passing razor blades and bright red blood is always present. I went to my family doc 2 weeks ago because of an external protrusion. She said it looked like an external hemorrhoid with a skin tag, but I can't get into to see the general surgeon for almost 4 weeks. The abdominal pain is getting worse, I am having hot flashes (post partial hysterectomy 2003), blood is present on the toilet paper even without a BM and I am getting worried. At 37 this seems abnormal...
Bright red blood and mucus mixed with stool is a symptom of hemorrhoids. There are hemorrhoidal creams available in the market which you can apply. Sit in a tub of warm water for 10 mins at least twice a day. Increase fiber in your diet. Eat lots of fresh fruits, vegetables, oats, porridge etc. Good sources of fiber are fruits, vegetables, and whole grains. In addition you can try bulk stool softener such as psyllium (Metamucil) or methylcellulose (Citrucel). Remember too much of fiber and not proportionate increase in fluid can also cause constipation.
All these methods can help you while you wait for your appointment with surgeon. You can also buy over the counter xylocaine jelly and apply it in your anal area before passing the stool. Ask your local doctor about this as some people are allergic to it. Take care!
The Content on this Site is presented in a summary fashion, and is intended to be used for educational and entertainment purposes only. It is not intended to be and should not be interpreted as medical advice or a diagnosis of any health or fitness problem, condition or disease; or a recommendation for a specific test, doctor, care provider, procedure, treatment plan, product, or course of action. Med Help International, Inc. is not a medical or healthcare provider and your use of this Site does not create a doctor / patient relationship. We disclaim all responsibility for the professional qualifications and licensing of, and services provided by, any physician or other health providers posting on or otherwise referred to on this Site and/or any Third Party Site. Never disregard the medical advice of your physician or health professional, or delay in seeking such advice, because of something you read on this Site. We offer this Site AS IS and without any warranties. By using this Site you agree to the following Terms and Conditions. If you think you may have a medical emergency, call your physician or 911 immediately. | <urn:uuid:6396b1d9-4d2e-42bd-8d57-11d48811a316> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.medhelp.org/posts/Hemorrhoids/Abdominal-pain-and-BM-feel-like-razor-blades/show/1793009 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.947219 | 591 | 1.585938 | 2 |
Posted: Aug 20, 2012 12:58 PM by Greg Boyce
The Colorado Hay Directory has been released by the Colorado Department of Agriculture, underscored by a drought that has driven prices up.
"Demand for hay is especially strong this year with drought conditions nationwide," said Wendy White, marketing specialist for the Colorado Department of Agriculture. "The directory is a great way for producers to market their hay and it is an important resource for buyers across Colorado and the nation."
The 26th edition of the Colorado Hay Directory features producers and brokers of hay as well as companies that provide hay-related products and services. Categorized by region, each listing includes the type and amount of hay available, bale type and size, whether or not laboratory analysis is available, certified weed free status and identifies organic hay.
The directory and other hay resources are available online by clicking here. | <urn:uuid:887ac037-eced-414a-b1b6-5a5d093fbb86> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.koaa.com/news/state-agriculture-department-pushes-hay-sales/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00070-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956296 | 178 | 1.648438 | 2 |
Emory College was named in honor of Bishop John Emory, of Maryland, who was elected to the episcopacy in 1832 on the same ballot with Bishop James O. Andrew, and who presided over the fourth session of the Georgia Conference, at Washington. Wilkes County, in 1834. In December, 1835, he was accidentally thrown from his carriage and killed, near his home in Baltimore. The Conference session of 1836, at Columbus, Ga., appointed trustees to incorporate the College, and directed them to call it Emory, probably at the suggestion of Bishop Andrew, as a tribute to the memory of his lamented colleague. In pursuance of the will of the Conference, the trustees bought 1,400 acres of woodland near Covington, Newton County, in the granite region of Georgia, for $14,000, and, at the suggestion of Dr. Ignatius A. Few, gave it the classic name of Oxford, in honor of the old English university.
In 1838 the College was opened for the reception of students, under the presidency of Dr. I. A. Few, with Dr. Alexander Means and Rev. Charles W. Lane as professors. The first class, of three members. were graduated in 1841. During these years, 1,487 men have received the diplomas of the College, and have since served the country and the church with honor to themselves and their Alma Mater.
During the presidency of Dr. A. G. Haygood the College began to take on new life, when Mr. George I. Seney, of Brooklyn, N. Y., gave about $100,000 to the institution, erecting the building known as Seney Hall and making large additions to the endowment.
Under the presidency of Dr. W. A. Candler $100,000 were added to the endowment, Rev. W. P. Pattillo, of Atlanta, Ga., giving $25,000. The new library building named "Candler Hall" was erected at a cost of $25,000.
During the presidency of Dr. C. E. Dowman a $30,000 Science Hall was projected, the corner-stone was laid, and the funis with which to erect the building were in a large measure secured, Capt. J. P. Williams, of Savannah, donating $15,000.
The original Board of Trustees was composed of men whose names are historic in Georgia Methodism; Ignatius A. Few, Lovick Pierce, Charles Hardy, William J. Parks, Elijah Sinclair, Samuel K. Hodges. Samuel J. Bryan, Alexander Speer, George F. Pierce, Daniel P. Hillhouse, William P. Graham, Seaborn Jones, Joseph A. Eve, Iverson L. Graves, Lucius Wittich, and John Park.
The following have filled the office of President: Ignatius A. Few, D.D.. LL.D.,; Augustus B. Longstreet, LL.D.; George F. Pierce, D.D., LL.D.; Alexander Means, D.D., LL.D.; James R. Thomas, LL.D.; Luther M. Smith, D.D.; Osborne L. Smith. D.D.; Atticus G. Haygood, D,D;. LL.D.; Isaac S. Hopkins, D.D.; Warren A. Candler, D.D., LL.D.; C. E. Dowman, D.D. Three of these, Drs. Pierce, Haygood and Candler, were elected to the episcopacy from the presidency of the College. Dr. Haygood, however, declined the election in 1882 on account of his duty to the College, but was re-elected in 1890, after he had resigned the presidency.
This wiki article is locked. If you have additional information (or a correction) that you would like to share, please send us a note. | <urn:uuid:02a5eb46-9e32-44bf-8836-fca6fc470dc7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://wiki.genealogytoday.com/Emory_College_1907_Historical_Sketch.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.972436 | 821 | 2.25 | 2 |
Timothy Cox and colleagues (April 29, p 1481)1
presented the long-awaited results of the trial of OGT 918 (N
-butyledeoxynojirimicin) for type-1 Gaucher's disease. They are to be congratulated for timely reporting and for providing detailed data. However, the results raise important concerns about the safety of the drug and the interpretation of the data can be questioned. Despite an impressive body of preclinical data2
and the finding that leucocyte GM1
concentrations were reduced, these early results provide little convincing evidence that OGT 918 results in a reduction in the number of storage cells or the amount of storage material within cells. A significant reduction of organomegaly was found, but no significant change in haematological variables. There was a modest reduction of serum chitotriosidase, a marker not specific for Gaucher's disease, but the effect on serum or tissue glucocerebroside concentrations is not reported. There was a striking dissociation between mean reduction of hepatomegaly and splenomegaly at 12 months, lack of haematological response, and only a 16% reduction in chitotriosidase concentration. When comparable organ responses are achieved by reducing the amount of storage material using mannose-terminated glucocerebrosidase infusions, there is an impressive haematological response and reduction in serum chitotriosidase. This dichotomy comes into focus when the data are stratified according to spleen status, because of the impact of splenectomy on Gaucher's disease and its treatment. In the three patients who completed the study who had had a splenectomy there is 20% reduction of hepatomegaly, but no significant change of chitotriosidase at 12 months of treatment. Further, in the 18 patients with intact spleens in whom complete data are available, most hepatic and splenic responses occurred by 6 months and at this timepoint there was only a 5% reduction of chitotriosidase concentration. These discordant effects raise the worrying prospect that the shrinkage of organs is not due to reduction of the number of storage cells or the amount of storage material, but may reflect simply organ atrophy. Massive cell dropout involving the lymphoid system, has been reported in animal studies of OGT 918.3
With respect to lack of haematological response, it is of note that OGT 918 caused marrow toxicity in HIV trials.4
The indirect role of OGT 918 in Gaucher's disease proposed by the investigators as an explanation for lack of haematological response is somewhat tenuous because very significant regression of organomegaly had already occurred in this trial.
79% of patients developed diarrhoea and two withdrew from the study because of this side-effect; another two developed paraesthesiae. Paraesthesiae also occurred in the HIV trial. The protocol does not appear to monitor for any possible effects on cerebral function—brain glycosphinglipids could be altered, especially in the long-term because of their slow turnover.2
One patient withdrew because of pre-existing pulmonary hypertension.
Was there progression of pulmonary hypertension during 4 months of treatment with OGT 918? Because of the number of patients who developed diarrhoea, it is important to know if there was weight loss and how this might have influenced organ volume measurement, as multiples of normal, of patients on OGT 918. There was only a single measurement for baseline parameters, and so assessment of response will be confounded by spontaneous amelioration of signs and symptoms.
Enzyme replacement therapy for type-1 Gaucher's disease is highly effective and it is extremely safe.5
In the 10-year history of the Comprehensive Gaucher's Disease Treatment programme, New York, USA, there have been no infusion-related infections and no patient has required a permanent catheter. The programme has strikingly improved the lives of patients and prevented premature deaths. Development of effective and safe oral therapy will immeasurably lessen the burden of the disease on the patients and their families. However, we are concerned that the press release from the pharmaceutical company announces the results of the trial as clear cut evidence of activity that further trials of combination/maintenance therapy of OGT 918 or Cerezyme are underway (www.ogs.com
accessed July 14, 2000). Such over-enthusiastic announcements have prematurely tantalised the hopes of patients and families affected by Gaucher's disease. I make a plea that Cox and colleagues apply their rigor to the long-term potential and side-effects of this drug, before combination trials are launched, because they will simply add to the confusion. | <urn:uuid:c94d8625-bc55-4ef2-a5bb-772d1ffe7c3e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(00)02618-0/fulltext | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00029-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.948674 | 997 | 1.5 | 2 |
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Example of a narrow feature that needs to be seen in a 3-D image. The first parameter that has to be defined in this 3-D seismic design method is the smallest (narrowest) horizontal dimension of a feature that must be seen in the 3-D data volume. For purposes of illustration, it is assumed the narrowest feature that is to be interpreted is a meander channel. At least three, and ideally four, stacking bins (seismic traces) must lie within the narrowest dimension W of this channel if the channel is to be reliably seen in the seismic image during workstation interpretation. Once this minimum channel width W is defined, the dimensions of the stacking bins are also defined, those bin dimensions being no wider than W/3, and ideally, they should be W/4 or less. | <urn:uuid:6864c700-7a22-4e66-a510-bc13f85de604> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.aapg.org/explorer/2010/09sep/geocorner_fig3.cfm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.937531 | 178 | 3.140625 | 3 |
Since our Prime Minister announced the “1Malaysia” concept back in 2008, it has become almost a part and parcel of our lives – we see this published in the media all the time and businesses have jumped on the bandwagon to leverage on its appeal. The idealogy behind “1Malaysia” emphasizes national unity, ethnic harmony and efficient governance.
The 1Malaysia concept is widely promoted everywhere and it is no wonder that One World Hotel has adopted it to give significance to its Ramadhan Buffet currently available at its award-winning Cinnamon Coffee House. The fact that its diverse menu offers more than 100 dishes covering traditional Ramadhan favourites as well as signature Chinese dishes, delectable Indian temptations and stalls featuring Malaysian delicacies intepretes perfectly the gastronomic harmony in the country.
I can’t believe how fast time flies! Our Muslim friends have already started on their 2nd day of fasting in the holy month of Ramadhan. Did you know that Ramadhan is actually the 9th month of the Islamic calendar? Comparing to the solar calendar, the dates of Ramadhan vary, moving backwards about 10 days each year. The significance of fasting from dawn till sunset is to teach Muslims patience, humility and spirituality, practise self-discipline, sacrifice and empathy.
Upon breaking fast at sundown – this meal is known as “Iftar”, it is customary to start with eating dates, just as Prophet Muhammad was believed to have done.
Over time, Iftar has evolved into banquets. The spread at the Cinnamon Coffee House can easily be called that! The array of dishes laid out all over the restaurant is pretty extensive… (and that’s putting it mildly!)…
Some of the Indian temptations…
I really could not decide where/what to start first… perhaps the Cold Seafood counter is a good idea?
Some sashimi to tickle your palate first?
Or maybe the healthier Salads are a better bet?
Would you believe that this “salad bowl” here was carved out from a block of Italian cheese?? Yes, the whole thing is cheese and when you mix & toss your greens in the bowl, you are supposed to scrape the bowl a bit so that the cheese shavings will be added on to your salad, giving it that extra special taste & aroma!
If “western-styled” salads are not your cup of tea, how about some local-styled ones – Kerabu? Head on to the Kerabu station then…
Take your pick – kerabus, gado-gado, fruit rojak…
There’s a special counter for their Roasted Whole Lamb, served with Briyani Rice and a variety of vegetables (I sooo loved the asparagus!) and sauces – absolutely scrumptious!
Choosing a sambal to go with the main courses was such a difficult task!
See what I mean?!
I was told they have 8 rotation menus prepared by their brigade of chefs… and here are just some samplings of the hot dishes on those menus…
Tempura, Lok-lok, Ikan Bakar… all done to your order by the friendly service crew…
The wok of lovely Nasi Ulam was so enticing…
I had a hard time choosing between the ketupat or lemang to go with the rendangs and serunding… so I took both!
Make sure you keep tummy space for Desserts…
… and more desserts…
Would you have any problem choosing between western desserts… and the local traditional ones?
Actually, there’s no problem, very easy – just try everything!! Even the traditional Hari Raya cookies are available…
If you think the above was mind-boggling, I was told that there would be MORE items added on… must-have’s like bubur lambuk, nasi kandar berlauk, mee bandung, laksa kedah, among others, will be making their appearances!
Price of Ramadhan Buffet Dinner:
RM49++/child aged 4-12 years
(Available from 11 August – 9 September 2010)
Cinnamon Coffee House
One World Hotel
Bandar Utama City Centre
47800 Petaling Jaya
Tel: 03-7681 1111
*Thanks, Crystal Koh, for the kind invitation! | <urn:uuid:23811239-9483-4e2c-9541-49b6c55ea0ca> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://pureglutton.com/citarasa-1malaysia-ramadhan-buffet-one-world-hotel | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00056-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.946819 | 936 | 1.78125 | 2 |
Resources >> Browse Articles >> On the Job
10 Crazy Things Patients Say
4. I am allergic to everything.
Here’s a person who feels like the world is against them. A lot of people have allergies to several different foods, plants and/or medications, but nobody’s allergic to everything. The key in this situation is to ask the patient to list off everything they can remember that they’re allergic to, or if you know what medication they’ll require, ask if they are allergic to that specific medicine or anything similar. | <urn:uuid:280b888b-a4d2-45e6-80ee-dc37415f890b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://nursinglink.monster.com/benefits/articles/21851-10-crazy-things-patients-say?page=5 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00048-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.926433 | 115 | 1.601563 | 2 |
According to the International Bird Rescue Research Center, three of the six distressed Brown Pelicans tested in California tested positive for domoic acid poisoning.
This afternoon we received results from initial domoic acid tests which indicate some levels of domoic acid in the pelicans. While 3 out of the 6 birds tested were positive for domoic acid, we cannot conclude that the neurotoxin is the primary cause of the widespread illness. See more on our website
Samples of phytoplankton collected recently from the waters off of Santa Barbara to Newport Beach were also tested. 5 out of 14 samples indicated very low concentrations.
These are the first of many test results expected. Additional blood and tissue samples are being tested and we anticipate more information within the next two weeks. | <urn:uuid:cf4cc876-e8d0-4131-8774-bfb428a86ae1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://dendroica.blogspot.com/2009/01/domoic-acid-source-of-pelican-distress.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00057-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.958648 | 158 | 2.328125 | 2 |
Who doesn’t enjoy snacks? They’re enjoyable and satisfying—but you need to choose your snacks wisely, watching out for additives, excess sugar and high fructose corn syrup, unhealthy fats and carbs—and even chemicalized butter flavor.
That’s right. It’s called diacetyl, and it’s a synthetic-made chemical used by food companies that gives foods and snacks their buttery flavor and smell. In the past, it’s been cited in microwave popcorn. Interestingly, many of the companies who make microwave popcorn have stopped using diacetyl because it’s been linked to lung damage in workers at their manufacturing facilities.
A University of Minnesota study, however, indicates that diacetyl not only is a risk factor in workers’ lung damage, but that it may also have unhealthy effects on the brain. The researchers found that diacetyl can pass through the blood-brain barrier which, of course, is there to help keep toxins such as diacetyl out of the brain. Likewise, diacetyl can cause brain proteins to “misfold” into what’s known as the Alzheimer’s-linked kind called beta amyloid.
That’s not all, though. Diacetyl also impedes natural defense mechanisms which get rid of the dangerous beta amyloid from your brain. And while it’s not confirmed that eating these diacetyl-packed foods or snacks actually increase a person’s risk for Alzheimer’s, it’s unsettling, to say the least, that diacetyl—at relatively low concentrations— can contribute to brain plaques that are linked to Alzheimer’s.
As mentioned, microwave popcorn is not the only contributor. Certain processed snack foods, baked goods, some fast foods and other food products as well as some pet foods contain diacetyl.
While some microwave popcorn companies and other food companies manufacturing conventional, processed foods have put a hold on diacetyl, don’t think that you’re out of the woods yet. Many of those who’ve stopped using diacetyl in their manufacturing processes have simply replaced it with another chemical ingredient named 2,3-pentanedione (PD), which also gives a buttery flavor and scent.
PD has its share of problems, too, though. It can be toxic to the respiratory system as well. What’s more is that, in tested rats, it altered the gene expression of their brains, leading to neurotoxicity.
Then there are the chemicals used to keep grease and oils from leaking through food wrappers. They’re called perfluoroalkyls, or PFCs, and they can make their way into the food and into your body, where they can mess with your endocrine system and adversely affect your sex hormones. In fact, PFCs have been linked to infertility, thyroid disease, cancer, immune system problems and other unhealthy outcomes.
In short, when it comes to snacks and other foods, avoid all the bad stuff associated with conventional, processed foods—including these chemicals and others that can adversely affect your brain and more
The bottom line? Keep your snacking pure and simple. | <urn:uuid:9db795cd-50be-49d1-8d44-4124cf696670> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://gardenoflife.com/Our-Company/Articles/Daily-Health-Article-Display/ContentPubID/950/settmid/3463.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00027-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.952767 | 668 | 2.984375 | 3 |
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- Categorized in: Czech Beer & Spirits
Czechs amber liquid, called ‘Pivo’
Czech beer is world famous and fully appreciated by the Czechs themselves. For many centuries Czech beer has been the finest available. The distinctive flavour of Czech beer comes from handpicked Bohemian hops. The Czech Republic is the largest consumer of beer in the world (153.6 litres annually per capita), even beating Germany. That means that every adult drinks on average 1L of beer a day. The main type of beer produced in Prague is lager, the best known being Pilsner Urquell and Budvar (Budweis). Don't be misled by the name — the American beer, Budweiser and the Czech brew, Budvar, have nothing in common. Popular Czech brands include Gambrinus, Staropramen, Krusovice, Radegast and Velkopopovicky Kozel. If you want to sample local brands, each with their own specific taste, try some small breweries like NovoMestsky Pivovar producing Flek (dark beer). Another dark ale style beer - Velvet, is produced by Prague breweries in Ostrava. If you like Guinness, try the Czech beer called Kelt. Apart from breweries there are also more than twenty restaurants with their own micro-breweries where you can follow the brewing process for yourselves. The most famous is U Fleku, which has been brewing beer since the year 1499. Beer is normally served in half litre glasses, unless you ask for a small beer (0.3l). Czechs generally prefer light beer but in many pubs you can ask for sweeter dark or mixed beers.
The most popular Czech beers are about as powerful and flavourful as German beers and simply slightly stronger than regular American beers.
It's good to know that the numbers attached to beers in the Czech Republic refer not to alcohol content but to a 'degrees' figure, which represents the amount of malt extract used in the brewing process. A higher degree figure generally means a fuller flavour, and it always results in a stronger brew. The alcohol percentage works out at about a little more than one-third of the stated degree: ten-degree beers are generally at around four per cent alcohol, with 12-degree beers nearer five per cent. Most often you come across draught beer which is popularly called "desítka" (ten) — it contains up to 4 % alcohol and also "lager" type beer called "dvanáctka" (twelve) which contains approximately 5.5 % alcohol. Occasionally, you will find special beers with higher alcohol content.
Tourists must set aside a day to taste the nation's beer because I am sure many people will agree that it is the Czechs who produce the world's best beer. Prague has a large number of beer bars offering a wide range of beers; and no visit to Prague is complete without a few hours spent in beer tasting followed by Czech pub food such as raw beef on deep-fried toast, cold smoked mackerel and meat in aspic. And to really feel at home in Prague, you should learn following phrase ‘one more beer, please': Ještě jedno pivo prosím.
Wine produced in the Czech Republic is unfortunately nothing special; however if you really like wine then try a young wine called ‘burcak’. This can usually be bought in September when the harvest season starts. Some popular Czech wines are Vavřinecké, Frankovka or Rulandské bílé. Wine is produced in the warmer, more sheltered parts of southern Moravia and also in the region of Melnik.
If you prefer spirits, all the well-known ones are available , the most popular amongst Czech people being vodka followed by rum and fernet. Fernet is a dark herbal bitter drink. Fernet can be drunk with tonic and then we call it ‘bavorak’ (Bavarian beer). Becherovka is another herbal spirit, originally from the Bohemian spa town of Karlovy Vary. This liquor has been very popular for medicinal use since the 19th century. Another spirit you may come across is ‘borovicka’ (a juniper-flavoured spirit with the influence of an Italian grappa) and ‘myslivec’. In the Czech Republic, absinthe is still legal and can be bought in shops (be warned this is a very strong and dangerous spirit). ‘Slivovice’ is mostly homemade brandy made from plums, and originally comes from the Moravian hills.
If you don’t drink alcohol, then the mineral water called Mattoni is worth trying.
Czech pubs atmosphere
Drinking is done in smoky pubs with stained tablecloths and surly servers with dodgy maths. Anything less than half a dozen half-litre mug is suspect – if you can drink ten you can walk away with your pride intact.
Brewery excursion tip
You can visit most of the breweries and taste their beer at the very source.
Humpolec, 5. května 1, tel. 565 53 24 07, www.bernard.cz.
Bernard is an award winning, unpasteurised and organic brew and should be tried everywhere you see it. A few places in Prague serve it - or you could go out to Humpolec and wander around this showroom brewery, which tends to look more like a yuppie summerhouse with large brass ornaments than a factory. Pretend to be interested until the ale turns up. How to get there: From Prague Florenc to Humpolec 7:30. From Prague Roztyly to Humpolec 14:40. From Humpolec to Prague 5:45, 16:45. Admission 100 CZK.
Velkopopovický Kozel Brewery
Velké Popovice, Ringhofferova 1, tel. 323 68 31 11, www.beer-kozel.cz.
The experts from the Kozel brewery conduct tours of their premises, situated 14km from Prague. Unfortunately though it is only in Czech. Perhaps it is easier to just find a pub that serves it here in the city. Tour 60 CZK.
One hour tours should be booked in advance. The brewery also has its own restaurant serving delicious traditional Czech cuisine.
Getting there: metro B to Andel station or by tram No. 6 or 12 stop Na Knizeci
Location: Nádražní 84, Prague 5
Czech Beer Festival Prague
taste a selection of the best from Czech breweries, Czech chefs, butchers and bakers for you. read more
A bit of history
Before 1842 beers were dark and cloudy, until visionary brew-master created the world's first golden beer. This evolutional breakthrough took place in the city of Pilsen, in today's Czech Republic; the town and the beer have given its name to the new style of beer - Pilsner. Beer-lovers from all over the world come to Plzen, which has become something of a brewing Mecca. It is also easy to find out why the total consumption of beer in the Czech Republic - 160 litters per capita per year is the highest in the world.
In the Czech Republic there are brewed more than 400 kinds of beer at more than 120 breweries.
Best Prague beer bradnds
The original Pilsner beer, came in an overwhelming first place, echoing a recent poll in which the majority of Czech citizens called Pilsner "the beer with the highest quality." We'll have another.
Czech popular beer. Gambrinus pale lager is distinguished by its rich gold color and ample foam. Its outstanding feature is the full-bodied flavor with fine bitterness. The unmatchable flavor ensues from the use of the highest-quality domestic ingredients, the famous Pilsner water and local brewers` experience developed over generations.
Is another Czech popular beer exported to 36 countries. Pivovary Staropramen a.s. is the second largest beer producer in the Czech Republic, with a 14% share of the domestic market.
The Royal Brewery of Krusovice is one of the oldest breweries in the Czech Republic. The brewery was established in 1517. Brewery is presently placed 5th amongst producers of beer in the Czech Republic. Krusovice beer is available on tap in thousands of pubs and prestigious restaurants alike throughout Bohemia and Moravia.
- Exploring Prague on Foot
- Prague Bus Tours
- The Oscar for Tourism Presented to Český Krumlov
- The two new Michelin Star Restaurants in Prague
- Ruzyne Airport Uses an Automatic Check-in System
- Prague Police Officers have Strengthened Supervision in the Metro
- The Czech Republic Attracts Tourists from the East
- Children Aged up to Ten can Travel in Prague Public Transport for Free
- Zlatá Koruna Abbey near Český Krumlov
- Prague Sex Clubs Have Reduced Their Prices Because of the Crisis
Prague Hotel Deals
- Václav Havel died on Dec. 18, 2011
- New Year's Eve
- Christmas Markets in Prague will Start on 26th November
- Prague's Winter Weather
- Taxi Driver Robs Foreigner who Objected to Unfair Price
- Prague - Police Arrested Youngsters Suspected of Raping a Young British Woman
- Tourists are the Most Interested in the Czech Republic since 2004 | <urn:uuid:944bf991-818c-4403-910f-41a8e1010d1f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.prague-guide.co.uk/articles/czech-beer.html?comments_page=1 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.927585 | 2,269 | 1.59375 | 2 |
I’m still reading away! However, I’ve still got a bit of today’s reading to finish, two kids to get to bed (and nag about homework), a kitchen to finish cleaning and laundry to put away, so let’s keep this short and sweet, shall we?
This week was all about prophets: Isaiah and Jeremiah, to be exact. My favorite part was the foreshadowing of Jesus. I’m still amazed that Jesus performed a mathematical improbability by fulfilling so many prophecies to the letter. In fact, each of the prophecies (regarding Jesus or otherwise) were so incredibly unlikely, the probability that it would actually happen was…well, near impossible. (Take it from people who are much smarter than me–Fulfilled Prophecy: Evidence for the Reliability of the Bible, an article on a site that integrates faith and science).
Blows. My. Mathematically-Challenged. Mind.
Insights/Observations from Week 8:
- Here’s a few of the passages on Jesus: Isaiah 7:14-15, 9:2-7, 11 (?)
- Stop trusting in man! Isaiah 2:22
- Woe to: deceivers (Isa. 5:20), know-it-alls (Isa. 5:21), drunks (5:22), those who practice injustice (Isa. 5:23)–my paraphrase.
- God repeated himself a lot (probably because nothing was getting through the thick skulls of the people He was talking to). He often mentioned that He didn’t really care about their formal sacrifices, but this is what He did want to see: repentance/”making yourselves clean,” stop doing wrong/start doing right, seeking justice for others, encouraging the oppressed, defend the fatherless/widow (Isa. 1:11-17)
- Oooooo…spooky (confusing) stuff! Isaiah 14:9: “The realm of the dead below is all astir to meet you at your coming; it rouses the spirits of the departed to greet you—all those who were leaders in the world; it makes them rise from their thrones—all those who were kings over the nations.” Is this on my “to-study later” list? You betcha. So many questions regarding death. Here’s another death-related verse: Isaiah 26:19
- Listen up, everybody! “These people come near to me with their mouth and honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. Their worship of me is based on merely human rules they have been taught.” (Isa. 29:13) Ouch!
- Another instance where prayer changed God’s mind: God told Hezekiah to get his house in order because he was going to die, BUT…Hezekiah cries/prays/asks God to remember his faithfulness. So, God says he can have 15 more years. (Isa. 39)
- No one can understand the mind of God…so just get over it right now. (Isa. 40:13, 40:28). Oh…and His thoughts/ways are not like ours (Isa. 55:8)
- What does Isaiah 45:25 mean? Is He giving Jews a free pass?
- Like rain nourishes the soil, God’s Word will never return void: Isa. 55:11
- So, maybe this won’t comfort you if you’re grieving for a loved one, but I thought it was interesting inclusion nonetheless: “The righteous perish, and no one takes it to heart; the devout are taken away, and no one understands that the righteous are taken away to be spared from evil.” (Isa. 57:1)
- More Holy Spirit sightings? Isaiah 32:15, 42:1, 59:21
- There’s a group at my church doing the Randy Alcorn “Heaven” Bible Study right now and I wish I had time to be a part of it, especially after reading Isaiah 66 on the New Heaven/New Earth
- More instances of rain being withheld because of sin: Jeremiah 3:3, 5:25
- Here’s a doosey of a verse that will definitely be revisited for further study: “How can you say, “We are wise, for we have the law of the LORD,” when actually the lying pen of the scribes has handled it falsely?” (Jeremiah 8:8). Yeah, I know.
- A new twist on “eating words”–Jeremiah 15:16 talks about being hungry for and satisfied by God’s word.
I could go on but this is already a little less “short and sweet” than I intended. Until next week… | <urn:uuid:58b44454-c706-49b2-992b-cd056a3a191c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://faithlikemustard.wordpress.com/2011/02/28/bible-in-90-days-week-8-recap/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961827 | 1,031 | 1.773438 | 2 |
The key to a fresh Christmas tree is water!
Maintain a fresh Christmas tree throughout the holiday season by giving the tree proper care from the time it is purchased until you recycle it.
Research has shown that keeping tree moisture content high is critical to needle retention of real Christmas trees. Tests have also shown that a well-maintained real tree is less of a fire hazard than an artificial tree. Before you set up your tree, make a fresh, straight cut across the base of the tree and place the tree in a tree stand that holds a gallon of water or more. If the tree has been cut within the last six to eight hours, it will not need to be re-cut. Make a straight cut across the trunk removing an inch or more from the bottom. Be sure the container holds enough water and refill it often making sure the water does not fall below the level of the trunk bottom.
A cut Christmas tree will absorb a surprising amount of water, particularly during the first week. A tree with a 2-inch diameter trunk may initially use two quarts of water per day; one with a 4-inch diameter trunk may use more than one gallon per day. Therefore, it is important to check your tree stand on a daily basis.
One of the most common questions concerning Christmas trees relates to the use of additives in the Christmas tree stand. Some people have seen TV or newspaper advertisements for products that may be added to the water in a tree stand. Others have concocted their own "home remedies" with ingredients such as sugar, aspirin, bleach and 7-UP. Research in the state of Washington and North Carolina, however, has shown that your best bet is plain old tap water. Some of the home remedies such as bleach and aspirin can actually cause heavy needle loss and should be avoided. Remember, clean water and plenty of it is the only essential ingredient to keep your Christmas tree fresh throughout the holiday!
Choose a Christmas
tree stand that has adequate water-holding capacity for the
size of the tree
they will hold. A stand should hold at least one quart of water per
diameter of the tree trunk. Photo credit: Gary Chastagner, WSU.
Dr. Cregg’s research is funded in part by MSU’s AgBioResearch. | <urn:uuid:88139622-5fbb-49c8-b24f-242252dbedbc> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://msue.anr.msu.edu/news/the_key_to_a_fresh_christmas_tree_is_water | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.945977 | 471 | 2.71875 | 3 |
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“My father done it - did it," Fatty concurred and corrected, as old recollections exploded long-sealed brain-cells of connotation and correct usage.”
“Austrian investigative journalist Hubertus Czernin obtained access to long-sealed state archives that had covered up the thefts from wealthy Jewish families, including the Bloch-Bauers and the Rothschilds.”
“TRIPOLI—Local officials in the capital on Monday stopped a Libyan Jew's efforts to reopen a long-sealed synagogue, a day after he broke through the cinder-block walls that had sealed Tripoli's only synagogue for 44 years.”
“TEOTIHUACAN, Mexico (AP) - A long-sealed tunnel has been found under the ruins of Teotihuacan and chambers that seem to branch off it may hold the tombs of some of the ancient city's early rulers, archaeologists said Tuesday.”
“TEOTIHUACAN, Mexico (AP) - A long-sealed tunnel has been found under the ruins of Teotihuacan and chambers that seem to branch off it may hold ...”
“It feels as if a window has been opened in a stuffy, long-sealed room.”
“Negating the sacrifice of a former Sorcerer Supreme, Jericho Drumm has opened the long-sealed gateway to Bondyè to ask the Voodoo Loa’s for aid.”
“It felt like windows were being opened in a musty, hidden, long-sealed attic.”
“He leaned back on this support with his face to the tower of the cathedral, now admirably commanded by their station, the high red-brown mass, square and subordinately spired and crocketed, retouched and restored, but charming to his long-sealed eyes and with the first swallows of the year weaving their flight all round it.”
“I sat in a wing chair at the end of the couch as they moved around the room examining the artifacts of Edith's life, as if we had stumbled upon a long-sealed chamber beneath the great pyramid.”
‘long-sealed’ hasn't been added to any lists yet.
Looking for tweets for long-sealed. | <urn:uuid:266af443-8464-418d-b9c4-c6c3c74072d2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wordnik.com/words/long-sealed | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.972903 | 508 | 2.21875 | 2 |
On February 17, 2011, the Engineering Leadership SIG of the SD Forum met at SAP headquarters in Palo Alto, California. Featured was a presentation, “Keys to Collaborative Leadership”, given by Mark Voorsanger and Liz Agnew. Both are Certified Coaches.
The presentation was organized as a meal in a fine restaurant, with three “courses”, an appetizer, a main dish and dessert. Each “course” came with a challenge and a goal. The first part, an introduction, was designed to whet the audience’s appetite. The overall goal of the presentation was to inspire new thinking.
Mark V acknowledged that “collaborative leadership” might seem to be an oxymoron, and responded with a quote from Albert Einstein: “if an idea is not absurd, it is not worth pursuing.”
Whetting Your Appetite
To demonstrate the need for collaborative leadership, Mark V quoted two sets of statistics from a recent survey of American employees. The first divided employees into three groups:
Not Engaged 54%
Actively disengaged 17%
They then asked the participants in the survey if their current job brings out my most creative ideas. The results were broken down among the three categories:
Not Engaged 17%
Actively disengaged 3%
Not surprisingly, most of those who were not engaged or actively disengaged felt their job did not bring out their most creative ideas.
Now the current paradigm for leadership is Hierarchy. Decisions are made at the top. The currencies are power and authority. Mark V characterized hierarchy as working well when:
· People at the top have all required information.
· People being managed are doing rote tasks.
· People being managed are easily replaced
This of course does not characterized modern engineering organizations. Mark V though did stress that hierarchy has its place, especially when decisions need to be made quickly.
At this point, Mark V asked the audience to participate in an exercise. Gather in small groups and discuss how ineffective collaboration is costing you and your organization. Afterwards, several members of the audience shared their responses. They included:
· If you don’t do it my way, you are not collaborating
· Decisions are made without adequate information.
· Software is not reusable.
· There is no safe environment for unusual ideas.
Appetizer: Defining Key Terms
Challenge: No common language
Goal: Define key terms for a collaborative process
Mark V spent several minutes defining some key terms.
Collaboration: All relevant stakeholders have ownership and alignment around what we are going to do and how we are going to do it.
· People with the power to make a decision.
· People with the power to block a decision.
· People affected by a decision
· People with relevant information and expertise.
Ownership: the extent to which people feel or believe that a process, decision or outcome is theirs.
Alignment: The extent to which people see and understand a problem or decision.
Here is a metaphor for ownership vs. alignment:
Ownership: get everyone on the boat.
Alignment: get everyone rowing in the same direction.
And he provided this insight regarding Content vs Process: Content gets attention; process, not so much. Content is What; process is How.
And finally: a Collaborative Leader is someone who leads according to the principle of ownership and alignment.
Regarding introducing the principles of Collaborative Leadership, Mark V pointed out that one needs to be careful with change. Organizations tend to reject change the way one’s immune system rejects a foreign microbe. A suggestion: think small.
Main Dish: Problem Solving Template
Challenge: No common process
Goal: find a common process
A Problem is any situation that you want to change.
There are three obstacles to solving problems:
1. Groups don’t know how to (or don’t even think to) align around the problem that they want to solve. No agreement on the problem = No agreement on the solution + infinite arguing about solutions
2. Groups use implicit processes to do their work. Collaborative problem solving relies on explicit win/win processes.
3. People solve problems iteratively – so that nothing is transparent.
Mark V presented a structured process with a 5-step problem solving template
1. Context (what effect is the problem having; what happens if it is not addressed?)
2. Problem statement – a one sentence statement
4. Desired outcomes
5. Action plan
Mark V cautioned against “baking a solution” into the statement or intent. And one should build ownership and alignment at each step.
Finally there is the question of time. One of the advantages of hierarchical decision making is it is faster; collaborative problem solving takes longer. So it is necessary to concede that hierarchical decision making sometimes is required. But beware of creating a false sense of crisis. This will only work a limited number of times.
At this point, Mark V opened the floor for questions.
Q: How do you deal with the fact that not all stakeholders are equal?
A: Those who are less important are gently and politely informed of this.
Q: How do you avoid “baking the solution” into the problem statement?
A: By actively blocking these attempts. By reminding everyone of the importance of ownership and alignment.
Dessert: The Number One Missing Ingredient in Meetings
Challenge: Unproductive meetings
Goal: More productive meetings
The number one missing ingredient in meetings is the Process – the How. Make it explicit.
One final question:
Q: How to decide on decisions without a hierarchy
A: Some suggestions:
· Unanimous consent
Be explicit about the process.
Mark Voorsanger is the Founder of Skyward Coaching (www.SkywardCoaching.com), 415-606-2101. His emal address is Mark@SkywardCoaching.com
Liz Agnew is president of Integrative Leadership Strategies (www.Integrative-Leadership.com), 415.401.7822. Her email address is: email@example.com
Robert Lasater maintains this blog for the Engineering Leadership Special Interest Group of the SD Forum. | <urn:uuid:f5e4288b-bb53-457e-b68f-1719ae8d32b2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://sdforumelsig.blogspot.com/2011/02/february-17-meeting-notes-robert.html?showComment=1299050981495 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.936249 | 1,317 | 1.59375 | 2 |
12 Nov 2006
DONIZETTI: Don Sebastiano
Don Sebastiano, Italian translation of Dom Sébastien, roi de Portugal, a grand opera in five acts.
Opera in three acts. Words and music by Richard Wagner.
Parsifal. Bühnenweihfestspiel (“stage dedication play”) in three acts.
“German poet, dramatist and novelist. One of the most important literary and cultural figures of his age, he was recognized during his lifetime for his accomplishments of almost universal breadth. However, it is his literary works that have most consistently sustained his reputation, and that also serve to demonstrate most clearly his many-faceted relationship to music. . . .
This theme relates to operas based on the works of Friedrich von Schiller.
Here are operas based on French literature from Balzac, Hugo and beyond:
Le Cid, Opéra in 4 acts
I puritani, opera seria in three acts
Zaira, Tragedia lirica in two acts.
Athalia: Oratorio (sacred drama) in 3 acts
Lucrezia Borgia: Melodramma in a prologue and two acts.
La Esmeralda: Opéra in four acts.
Ernani: Dramma lirico in four parts.
Oberst Chabert (Colonel Chabert): Tragic opera in 3 acts.
Otello: Dramma lirico in four acts.
Music composed by Giuseppe Verdi. Libretto by Arrigo Boito after The Tragedie of Othello, the Moore of Venice by William Shakespeare.
A Midsummer Night’s Dream, a comedy in five acts with incidental music.
Le Marchand de Venise (“The Merchant of Venice”): Opéra in three acts.
Gli Equivoci (The Comedy of Errors): Opera in two acts.
Der Sturm: Opera in three acts
The Fairy-Queen: Semi-opera in five acts.
Macbeth: Melodramma in quattro parti.
Don Sebastiano, Italian translation of Dom Sébastien, roi de Portugal, a grand opera in five acts.
Music composed by Gaetano Donizetti (1797-1848). Libretto by Eugène Scribe, based on the drama by Paul-Henri Foucher.
First Performance: 13 November 1843, the Opéra, Paris.
|Zaida (Zayda), daughter of Ben-Selim||Mezzo-Soprano|
|Don Sebastiano (Dom Sébastien), King of Portugal||Tenor|
|Don Giovanni di Silva (Don Juam de Sylva), Grand Inquisitor||Bass|
|Abaialdo (Abayaldos), Arab leader||Baritone|
|Don Enrico (Dom Henrique Sandoval), the King's lieutenant||Bass|
|Don Antonio (Dom Antonio), the King's uncle||Tenor|
|Ben-Selim, governor of Fez||Bass|
Setting: Lisbon and the Moroccan desert in 1577.
In Lisbon harbor, an armada is being readied to set sail to carry the army of King Sébastien to Morocco for a crusade against the infidels. The sailors describe their preparations for departure (“Nautoniers, mettez à la voile”). Dom Juam de Silva, the Grand Inquisitor enters with Dom Antonio, the King’s uncle. The latter preens because he will be regent during Sébastien’s absence, but Dom Juam (in an aside) mocks him, for he is determined to turn over all Portugal to King Philip II of Spain. A soldier approaches with a petition, requesting permission to address the King. Dom Antonio has just dismissed him rudely, when Sébastien appears and insists upon hearing the man’s petition (Camoëns: “Soldat, j’ai révé la victoire”). He explains that he is the poet Luis de Camoëns (Luiz de Camões), companion of Vasco da Gama and author of The Lustanians; he pleads for the privilege to accompany the King on his African expedition. The ominous voices of Inquisitors are heard approaching (“Céleste justice”) as they lead a Moslem maiden to the stake. Much to Dom Juam’s displeasure, Sébastien insist that she be released and aided to return to her native land. The girl, Zayda (mezzo-soprano), throws herself at the King’s feet in gratitude (“O mon Dieu, sur la terre”). A trumpet signals the hour of departure, and Sébastien invites Camoëns to predict the expedition’s fate (Camoëns: “Oui, le ciel m’enflamme”). As the sky darkens and thunder threatens, the poet prognosticates disaster for the King’s crusade. Undismayed and his optimism apparently widely shared, Sébastien boards his flagship. The populace bids the armada farewell, while Dom Juam cynically expresses his hope that Camoëns’ prediction will prove true.
Scene 1: A luxuriant African oasis. To one side is the entrance to the house of Zayda’s father, King Ben-Selim, in the distance a view of the city of Fez. Zayda confesses her love for the man who saved her life (“Sol adoré de la patrie”), an emotion that prevents her from being able to accept Abayaldos, the Moorish chieftain her father wants her to marry. Zayda’s companions seek to raise her spirits (“Les délices de nos campagnes”). Abayaldos appears and announces that the Portuguese army is approaching the plain of Alcazar Kebir, thereby rallying his followers to advance against the enemy (“Les chrétiens dans nos deserts”).
Scene 2: The battlefield of Alcazar Kebir is littered with bodies of slain Portuguese and Moorish warriors. King Sébastien has been seriously wounded, but he thinks only of trying to save his loyal companions: Camoëns and Dom Henrique de Sandoval. The King lapses into unconsciousness as Abayaldos and his troops whirl in to massacre any chance survivors (“Victoire, victoire, victoire!”). To draw attention away from Sébastien, Sandoval announces that he is the King as he dies from his wounds. His body is carried away in triumph by the Moors. No sooner are they gone that Zayda, veiled, enters and searches among the slain for Sébastien (Duet: “grand Dieu! as miser est. is grandee”). She recognizes him and soon they confess their irrepressible love. When Abayaldos and his scavengers return once more (“Du sange, c’est la loi du prophète”), Zayda begs him to spare the life of this man, offering to marry Abayaldos at once if he will only let this wounded man live, explains that as a Christian had once saved her life in Lisbon, she has vowed some day to save a life in return. Grudgingly and suspiciously, Abayaldos consents. Zayda leaves with the party of Moors. Alone on the darkening field, Sébastien laments the fate that has deprived him of all he cares for (“Seul sur la terre”).
Scene 1: In a room in the royal palace in Lisbon. Abayaldos confronts Zayda whom he has brought with him on his embassy to the court at Lisbon. Zayda has aroused his ferocious jealousy because, although now his wife, she murmurs someone else’s name in her restless sleep. She protests her innocence, but his suspicions and resentment are not placated.
Scene 2: In the great square of Lisbon in front of the cathedral, Camoëns, now in rags, apostrophizes his native town (“O Lisbonne, ô ma patrie”). Reduced to begging, he asks another soldier for alms, and is both shocked and delighted to recognize the tattered veteran as Sébastien, miraculously survived, in spite of all the rumors to the contrary (Duet: “O jour de joie”). In abrupt contrast to their jubilant reunion, a funeral chant is heard issuing from the cathedral (“Donne au coeur fidèle la paix éternelle”). To the accompaniment of a solemn funeral march, the cathedral doors are flung wide and a huge funeral procession leads on a catafalque so massive that it requires twenty men to carry it. Sébastien is watching what is purported to be his own funeral, for in the catafalque is the body that Abayaldos brought from Alcazar Kebir. Outraged, Camoëns protests the fraud. Dom Juam orders him seized, but Sébastien steps forward and, identifying himself, countermands the order. In the confusion attendant upon this announcement, Camoëns eludes capture and later determines to rouse support for the discredited king. Beside himself with rage, Abayaldos recognizes in Sébastien the man whom Zayda had begged him to spare and his hated rival (Sextet: “D’espoir et de terreur”). Dom Juam orders the pretender seized so that hem ay be tried by the Inquisition (“Scélérat, ah, en vain tu tentes”). Those opposed to Sébastien are determined he must die (Stretta of the finale: “Il faut qu’il périsse!”).
In the subterranean hall where the Inquisitors examine and torture their prisoners, the hooded and masked officials assemble (“O voûtes souterraines”). The implacable Dom Juam urges them to fulfill their sacred obligations. Sébastien is led in and in answer to Dom Juam’s interrogation, he steadfastly insists upon his true identity. A veiled witness is produced, Zayda, who swears a solemn oath of her veracity as she recounts how she spared Sébastien’s life upon the battlefield. Dom Juam accuses her of blasphemy; Abayaldos, of adultery (“Va, perjure, epouse impie”). Although Sébastien and Zayda protest their innocence, Dom Juam charges them both with treason and orders them to prison, while the outraged curses of the Inquisitors pronouncing anathema fall about the ears of the hapless pair.
Scene 1: A room in the Tower of Lisbon. To one side there is a door opening upon a balcony; to the other, double doors that lead to the interior of the prison. Dom Juam has summoned Zayda, offering to spare Sébastien’s life if she can persuade him to sign a document denying that he is the rightful king and abdicating all claims to the throne. Zayda eagerly accepts this offer, thinking of the pleasure of sacrificing herself to spare her beloved (“Mourir pour ce qu’on aime!”). When Sébastien is taken to her so that she may explain the Inquisitor’s proposal, the King scornfully rejects the document, preferring death to dishonor. Yet, as he realizes the sacrifice that Zayda is intending to make (Duet: “Vain espoir, vain effort”), he declares that he would gladly renounce his throne if only they might live and love. Just then Camoëns voice is heard, as he makes his way up a rope ladder to the balcony (Barcarolle: “Pècheur de la rive”). He has come to help them escape and lead them to Sebastien’s loyal supporters (Trio: “De la prudence et du mystère”).
Brief final scene: Outside and beneath the tower, Abayaldos warns Dom Antonio that Camoëns is leading a conspiracy to free the King, a plot that the regent acknowledges he is perfectly aware of, as he awaits his prey. When the figures of Zayda and Sébastien are seen descending the rope ladder from the balcony, gunshots ring out and two corpses plummet into the harbor below. Dom Juam arrives exultantly, dismissing Antonio as he announces the annexation of Portugal by King Philip II of Spain. The distant voice of Camoëns is heard celebrating the memory of King Sébastien I. | <urn:uuid:569c1341-1b58-44b4-a4cd-43f79d426e54> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.operatoday.com/content/2006/11/donizetti_don_s.php | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00030-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.914689 | 2,796 | 2.546875 | 3 |
NEWTOWN, Conn. (RNS) At houses of worship here, people gathered in pews, crying, kneeling and hugging each other through services that focused on remembering the victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, uniting the community, celebrating Christmas and preventing similar disasters.
(RNS) “Oh, God!” That cry has echoed ever since news of the horrific Newtown school shootings. As the names of those who died are made known, that cry is followed by a question: Why? Why does God allow evil? By Cathy Lynn Grossman/ USA Today. | <urn:uuid:bce5deee-4d4e-481b-afd2-c278a51ed921> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.religionnews.com/tag/suffering/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00025-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.968141 | 120 | 1.664063 | 2 |
Daily Business Report — June 19, 2012
San Diego Beating Other California Cities
In Recovering From Recession, Study Says
The worst of the 2008 financial crisis and real estate collapse may be over for San Diego, according to a study released by the San Diego Regional Chamber of Commerce. The report shows gradual and positive economic trends in the areas of unemployment, real estate, tourism and production. “This report represents yet another positive indication that San Diego is recovering at a faster rate than other cities in California and across the nation,” said Ruben Barrales, chamber president and CEO. “While the recovery remains slow, San Diego is well positioned for long term success and viability.” The data reveals that, much like the state and national economies, San Diego is still struggling to fully recover from the 2008 recession but making positive strides. Since 2011, San Diego’s economy has performed more favorably than both California and the national economy. In the regional real estate market in the first quarter of 2012, foreclosures saw an average monthly decrease of 28 percent compared to the previous year. San Diego’s occupancy rates in March 2012 were higher than those of March 2007 — a sign of complete recovery, according to the report. Data and analysis for the report was provided by Export Access Global Consulting, a graduate student-run global market research and consulting group at UC San Diego.
EDC Report: Bridgepoint Education Added
More than $1 Billion to Economy in 2011
Bridgepoint Education Inc. had an estimated economic impact of more than $1 billion in business output on the San Diego region in 2011, according to a study released by the San Diego Regional Economic Development Corp. Bridgepoint Education is the ninth-largest employer in San Diego and the parent company of Ashford University and University of the Rockies, as well as the force behind Waypoint Outcomes and the Thuze and Constellation online etextbook platforms. The study also said that another another $449 million in employee earnings and $579 million in estimated total value was added to the region’s gross domestic product. Bridgepoint Education’s state and local tax impact in 2011 added up to almost $44 million and its federal contribution totaled more than $120 million, according to the study. It said the company contributed nearly $1.5 million to San Diego nonprofit organizations. The report was commissioned by the EDC and prepared by The London Group.
Group Wants San Onofre Nuclear Plant Kept
Closed Until Public Hearing Can Be Held
An environmental group filed a legal petition Monday with the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission in hopes of keeping the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station closed until it undergoes a trial-like public hearing on its problems and and the proposed solutions. The petition from Friends of the Earth comes after the group ran a television ad that contends the plant’s operator, Southern California Edison, has been rushing to get the facility back into service since its two active units were shut down in January. One of the plant’s two active units went offline in early January for planned maintenance, then the second active unit was taken out of service Jan. 31 when a leak was detected in a steam generator tube. The tube problem resulted in a minor venting of radioactive gas, said Edison executives, insisting the leak posed no hazard to plant workers or the public. The plant is likely to be shut down through August, according to SCE, the plant’s majority owner. San Diego Gas & Electric owns 20 percent of the plant and receives one-fifth of the power it generates. — City News Service
Soitec Receives $25 Million Award
for San Diego Solar Manufacturing
The U.S. Department of Energy has awarded $25 million to a Soitec subsidiary in San Diego in support of a new North American solar manufacturing facility here. The French-based company manufactures semiconductor materials for the electronics and energy industries. The DOE award is called SUNPATH, which stands for Scaling Up Nascent PV At Home. Its purpose is to increase America’s manufacturing competitiveness in the global solar market. Last December, Soitec acquired a 176,000-square-foot manufacturing center in San Diego to support over 300 megawatts of projects throughout San Diego and Imperial counties.
Trigild has moved its corporate headquarters to new offices in the Golden Triangle/University Towne Centre area at 9339 Genesee Ave. The real estate services company previously was located in the Del Mar Heights area. It’s new corporate headquarters offer 13,500 square feet of space. The San Diego corporate staff of 60 is led by Chief Operating Officer Judy Hoffman. The offices house Trigild’s administrative staff as well as specialists in finance, receivership and operations management. Besides its San Diego expansion, the firm recently opened regional offices in Northern California, Washington, D.C., Phoenix, Dallas, and will open another soon in Denver.
SmartDrive Secures $47 Million
in Additional Venture Funding
New CEO announced
San Diego-based SmartDrive Systems announced that it has secured $47 million in additional venture funding and named Steve Mitgang chief executive officer of the company. The funding was led by existing investors Oak Investment Partners and New Enterprise Associates as well as new investor Stanford University. The new round will accelerate customer adoption, channel partnerships and the company’s research and development. SmartDrive said it has created a unique driving performance program that enables fleets to increase operating efficiency and safety. Its safety and fuel programs are used by public and private fleets. Mitgang previously was CEO of Veoh, the Internet television company now part of Qlipso. Befor that he was senior vice president of Yahoo!’s advertising products and services.
The Daily Business Report is produced by SD METRO. Contact: Manny Cruz (619) 287-1865. firstname.lastname@example.org. | <urn:uuid:af8d365d-1e99-48cc-b3fa-937e979a563a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.sandiegometro.com/2012/06/daily-business-report-%E2%80%94-june-19-2012/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00038-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954237 | 1,212 | 1.609375 | 2 |
An Arctic Sea ChangeAs climate change melts the permafrost, native villages slip into the sea, taking a way of life with them.
Click here to read this article as it originally appeared.
Get used to it: real estate falling into the sea. And not just beach houses and seaside time-shares. Think towns and cities. These images of Shishmaref village on Alaska's remote west coast reveal the tip of a terrain melting so fast it will carry whole cultures away with it—rich and poor, polluters and nonpolluters, all vulnerable to the great leveler, the ocean. You think South Pacific island nations and remote Arctic outposts will be the only victims? Wrong. Because no matter what we do on the carbon emissions front in the coming decades, the world ocean is forecast to warm and rise for the next millennium or more. Pictures like these will soon be commonplace.
In Shishmaref, calamity has already arrived. The village of 600 Inupiaq lies on the fragile barrier island of Sarichef, where sea ice forms later each year, exposing the land to autumn storms that carve away 50 feet or more of shoreline a season. Two houses have slipped into the sea; 18 others have been moved back from the encroaching ocean; others buckle from the melting permafrost. Ten million dollars has been spent on seawalls, to no avail. Residents have concluded permanent resettlement is their only option. But considering America has yet to seriously tackle New Orleans' sea-level problems, no one on this distant edge of the Chukchi Sea imagines the $180 million needed to relocate Shishmaref will be easy to come by. And Shishmaref is not alone. A 2004 Government Accountability Office report found that of Alaska's 213 Native villages, 184 are battling floods and erosion, while another assessment foresees that in the coming decades, Alaska will require $6.1 billion to repair global warming's domino effect of fallen bridges, burst sewer pipes, and disintegrating roads. Worldwide, the situation is more dire, more expensive: Oxfam suggests the United States owes $22 billion, or 44 percent—our polluting share—of the $50 billion needed each year for poor nations to adapt to climate change. | <urn:uuid:d2330622-31e4-4be0-a3f1-94cf1b3cde18> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.motherjones.com/photoessays/2007/09/sea-change/03 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.917113 | 464 | 2.90625 | 3 |
In the voluminous writings of Hindu sages, there is no word that means creation out of nothing. The word, they use, literally means ‘projection’ and not creation, answering to the modern idea of evolution. They said that good and evil are relative terms, one of which cannot exist without the other. What we call good depends upon the existence of what we call evil, and evil exists only in relation to good. Being interdependent terms they cannot be separated. In trying to separate them and to make each stand by itself as independent of the other, we not only destroy their relative and interdependent nature, but also destroy the terms themselves.
‘Good and evil of this world of duality are unreal,are spoken of by words, and exist only in the mind.’ (Bhagavatam, XI, Chapter XXII.)
Evil cannot exist alone. If we try to make evil stand by itself as entirely separate from good, we can no longer recognize it as evil. Consequently, according to the Vedanta philosophers, the difference between good and evil is not one of kind, but of degree, like the difference between light and darkness.
Again the same thing can appear as good and evil under different circumstances. That which appears as good in one case, may appear as evil if the conditions change and the results be different.
The same fire may be called a giver of life and comfort and a bestower of happiness and a producer of good, when it saves the life of a half-frozen man, or when it gives us warmth in the coldest days of winter, or when it cooks our food and guides our feet. But it will be called the producer of evil and a curse of God when it destroys life, or inflicts injury on man or on his property. Still the nature of fire is to burn, and this nature does not change.
Good and evil exists in our minds. That which fulfils our interests is called good, and that which brings to us misery or anything which we do not want, is called evil. | <urn:uuid:85bf6761-c274-4d6d-980e-882ee2bd654b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.hindu-blog.com/2008/03/swami-abhedananda-on-concept-of-good.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00027-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961174 | 428 | 2.8125 | 3 |
Posted Friday March 15th by Isaac Lev
This February, Exhale, an Oakland-based nonprofit organization craeted by and for women who have had abortions, hit the road to build a Pro-Voice Movement with students around the country on their Sharing Our Stories Tour. The tour visited 13 schools in the San Francisco Bay Area, New York City, Chicaco and Milwaukee, connecting to over 400 students.
Most known for their national, multilingual after-abortion talk line (the #1 referral of Planned Parentood), Exhale has a decade of experience generating conversations about abortion that are based in real, lived experiences. Pro-Voice Movement is essentially about creating space for intentional listening and sharing stories about abortion without a political agenda. Rooted in nonviolence, it aims to ransform the culture around abortion from one of stigma and shame to one of support and respect. As Exhale fellow Ronak Davwrites, "Being Pro-Voice is about storytelling and listening, and it is also about recognizing strengths. Yours and others."
All in all, the tour was a huge success, and a transformative experience for both the audiences and the speakers. As Natalia Koss Vallejo, one of the Exhale fellows on tour writes, “Going on tour has defied all of my expectations. I really didn't expect that sharing my story this much would actually change the way I feel about it. Nine years after my abortion I thought that I had already processed everything there was to process. I was wrong. Between crafting my story, writing draft after draft, rehearsing it, and finally telling it out loud, I have had to rehash this narrative dozens of times over. This has brought new insights and unexpected emotions. I thought that those old feelings had crystallized with time, cemented in my psyche, unchanging and permanent. I'm trying to take this surprising rush of new thoughts and feelings and use it as creative fuel through this amazing process.”
You can learn more about the tour here.
Posted Monday February 11th by Jen AngelWe'll be partnering with The Holdout, an Oakland social center, to promote a series of events exploring local radical history. It probably goes without saying that knowing the history of where you are is important. Our second, but equally as important goal (and the goal of much of our work!) is to move things off of the Internet, and create […] Keep reading
Posted Thursday December 6th by Mike McKeeAfter exposing the FBI's "manufactured war on terrorism" in his award-winning 2011 Mother Jones article, "The Informants", Trevor Aaronson has continued to explore the troubling policy of surveillance and entrapment directed at law-abiding Muslim communities. His new book, The Terror Factory: Inside the FBI's Manufactured War on Terrorism (Ig Publishing, January 2013), investigates how the FBI has, under the guise of engaging in […] Keep reading | <urn:uuid:a2c47e69-62d1-4d89-b763-91f681ace556> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://aidandabet.org/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00053-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969707 | 599 | 1.5625 | 2 |
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- BATHS & SPAS
- HEATED TOWEL RAILS
- SHAVING & STORAGE
- TOILET SUITES
- VANITY CABINETS
Choosing the toilet to suit...
Toilet styles have evolved over the years with manufacturers forever innovating to meet the needs of the contemporary house owner. We are now far removed from the backyard outhouse and as suburbia became sewered most toilets were fitted with a water flushing system called a cistern. To release the water, the cistern once had a long chain which was pulled to allow the lever to activate the water flow. The move then was to the popular link suite with a ceramic pan and a plastic cistern and a single nine litre flushing mechanism. A lot of water wastage! The main advantage of a link suite for an S trap toilet, is the center of the plumbing drainage can be as far out as 290mm from the wall. To explain further, an S trap toilet's waste pipe goes downwards through the floor where a P trap exit pipe goes through the wall to link up with an external pipe.
As bathrooms became just as fashionable as kitchen in households, the demand for more stylish toilets became the challenge for our Aussie and overseas manufacturers. First up, the all vitreous china suite was created, with the close coupled and the wall facing variety in hot pursuit. Following was the 6 /3 litre flushing toilet which was invented using a new style of internal cistern mechanics. A close-coupled suite is one where the ceramic cistern is integrated with the pan while a wall facing toilet's rear goes all the way to the wall. A recent invention has been the concealed in-wall cistern where the only exposed part is the toilet pan and the flushing buttons. The cistern is fixed in the wall cavity which can be a stud or masonry structure and the dual flushing button plate acts as a cistern access for servicing . The heritage or colonial styles fill a need when the decor calls for a traditional theme. These styles may have the option of chrome, brass or gold buttons and fittings coupled with a timber seat making a complimentary setting.
Spare parts and warranties
This polite warning can not be emphasized enough! When purchasing a toilet, make a point of asking what warranty exists on the toilet and if spare parts are readily available. Of course price is a major consideration but if the toilet seems very cheap, it could signal a warning "let the buyer beware". Most toilets will work well for a few years but with constant use, the diaphragms and washers will wear out and have to be replaced. It can be very frustrating in this instance when parts are not readily available at a plumbing goods supplier.
The vitreous china ceramics are durable enough for a lot of manufacturers to give a 10 year warranty on this section of the toilet. However, the internal cistern parts which constitute the flushing mechanism usually have a 12 months warranty.
The need for national water saving has had been on the agenda for a number of years. The federal government took the imitative a few year ago and introduced the W.E.L.S program. This ensures that retailers only sell W.E.L.S. approved water saving products. The penalty for selling non-approved products is a hefty fine. Trades people likewise, are only able to install W.E.L.S. approved toilets, taps etc. Products displayed by retailers, must have a W.E.L.S sticker declaring the rating of the appliance. In respect to toilets, there are a variety of individual compliances depending on the local government's regulations. When selecting a toilet, it is advisable to check with your local authority to ensure that the water rating is compliant otherwise it will not pass the respective inspection.
The purchase of a toilet needs to be given a lot of consideration so the household ends up with a toilet that is not only functional but also has the required aesthetics to blend in with the bathroom's design. A plumber can also be an ideal person for initial discussion and further additional informative advice can be gained from a free phone call to Bathroom Depot on 1300 701 499. | <urn:uuid:af248874-0ef7-48f6-b925-97684cba46d6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.bathroomdepot.com.au/index.php?l=page_view&p=toilet_suites | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00029-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.93901 | 874 | 1.546875 | 2 |
The Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Malaviya National Institute of Technology, Jaipur, India, invites English language teachers, professionals and research scholars to submit proposals for papers, posters and workshops for the International Conference on ‘Empowering the English Language Classroom.’ The Conference will take place at M.N.I.T., Jaipur from January 18th to 19th, 2013.
This Conference aims to provide a forum to the international academic community engaged in teaching English language to share their research on modern pedagogical approaches which can empower the English language classroom and enable the learner to communicate effectively in English.
In the modern technological age, transformation in the teaching methodology with the adoption of online teaching resources and multimedia in the language classroom has led to the need for more careful planning and preparedness on the part of the teacher. The diversity of the students’ socio-cultural background, motivation and interest, multiple intelligences and learning styles, differing personalities and behaviour patterns, makes the language teaching task a particularly intricate one.
The interests of individual learners vary: they may be motivated to learn English to meet their academic, professional or personal needs and may want to focus exclusively on developing a proficiency in writing, or fluency in speech. In order to meet the requirements of individual learners, language teachers need to choose between prescribed language teaching methods and alternative methods keeping in view the wider socio-cultural context in which the instruction takes place. Keeping these aspects of classroom teaching in view, this conference aims to focus on innovative teaching strategies and modern approaches to teaching English which can empower the English language classroom.
Proposals for individual papers, poster presentations, and workshops by preformed panels of two or more experts are invited on the following, or related themes:
Multiple intelligences and learning styles
The use of the internet and multimedia in language teaching
English for fieldwork
English for media
English for special purposes
Using literature for language teaching
English for professional purposes
Developing learning material for the teaching of English
Soft skills and personality development
Developing translation skills
Curriculum and syllabus design
Testing and evaluation
Interdisciplinarity in English language programmes
Challenges in the present-day language classroom
Modern pedagogical approaches and methodologies.
There will be a time limit of 15 minutes per paper/ 90 minutes per workshop. Individual posters will be presented with other thematically relevant posters.
Please submit the Proposal (not more than 350 words) in MS Word format, Times New Roman, Font size 12, as an email attachment by July 31, 2012. All proposals should be sent to: email@example.com
Acceptance of proposals will be conveyed by August 15, 2012.
Dr Preeti Bhatt & Mrs Nanny Tripathi
Department of Humanities and Social Sciences
Malaviya National Institute of Technology Jaipur
Jaipur – 302017
Phone: +91-141-2713407, +91-141-2713363
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announcements appearing in this service. (Administration) | <urn:uuid:4df9cbdd-6fd3-46ae-80b8-f003f9240dbe> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.h-net.org/announce/show.cgi?ID=194913 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00075-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.904926 | 709 | 1.734375 | 2 |
Thousands of scientists, naturalist and volunteers will descend on Rocky Mountain National Park to take stock of all the park offers.
To better understand, appreciate and protect this national treasure, the National Park Service and National Geographic Society are teaming up to host a 24-hour BioBlitz species count and a two-day Biodiversity Festival on Aug. 24-25.
The BioBlitz will bring together 200 leading scientists and naturalists from around the country, thousands of local citizens of all ages and nearly 1,000 students from around the state to comb the park, observing and recording as many plant and animal species as possible in 24 hours. Inventory activities include counting elk, catching insects, spotting birds, exploring and examining aquatic invertebrates.
Members of the public are invited to work with experts to count, map and learn about the park's diverse organisms, ranging from microscopic bacteria to towering pines. To be part of an inventory team, you must register online.
Children age 8 and older may participate in inventory teams with their parents, and there will be age-appropriate activities for younger kids at the Biodiversity Festival to be held at the Estes Park Fairgrounds, 1209 Manford Ave.
The Biodiversity Festival will be 9 a.m.-5 p.m. both days, and will feature music, live animals, science demonstrations, hands-on activities, food and art.
Admission to the festival is free.
No registration is required for the festival. For a schedule of events, go to nationalgeographic.com/bioblitz.
For details, visit http://nature.nps.gov/biology/biodiversity/docs/BiodiversityDiscovery.pdf. | <urn:uuid:5d083bb1-f011-4fd9-be5e-2ad14735acfd> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.reporterherald.com/ci_21157079 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00028-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.919995 | 354 | 2.953125 | 3 |
They argued over the forced spending cuts known as sequestration before those cuts took effect, and on the first full day of the cuts being official, Congress and the White House are still bickering over who is to blame.
"It's happening because Republicans in Congress chose this outcome over closing a single wasteful tax loophole that helps reduce the deficit," President Barack Obama said in his weekly address on Saturday.
Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, a Republican from Washington state, countered, "This week, the president traveled 180 miles to Newport News, Virginia, instead of traveling one and a half miles to Senator Harry Reid's office on Capitol Hill to negotiate a replacement of smarter spending cuts."
Obama signed an order enacting the cuts Friday evening as required by law, triggering $85 million in cuts to federal spending this year as part of a larger $1.2 trillion in cuts over the next decade.
Officials have said that amounts to 9% in cuts to defense programs and 13% cuts to nondefense spending.
The law requires the cuts to hit nearly every account -- meaning, as the Obama administration has argued, that an agency head can't spare the budget for payroll by gutting the budget for uniforms, for example.
Obama described the cuts as "dumb, arbitrary" on Friday, and in his Saturday address he explained some of the ways the effects will be felt as they ripple across the economy.
"Beginning this week, businesses that work with the military will have to lay folks off," Obama said. "Communities near military bases will take a serious blow. Hundreds of thousands of Americans who serve their country -- Border Patrol agents, FBI agents, civilians who work for the Defense Department -- will see their wages cut and their hours reduced."
He acknowledged "not everyone will feel the pain of these cuts right away," and the cuts aren't expected to deal a fatal blow to the economy. But the cuts will be real and felt in paychecks around the country, he said.
Obama met in the White House on Friday with congressional leaders of both parties, though that meeting came too late to reach a deal to avoid the cuts. But lawmakers could take action in the coming weeks to pay down the cuts in other ways. | <urn:uuid:d9d8f938-a7a7-41f5-9868-1699957f6fe2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wlky.com/Debate-ensues-on-day-1-of-forced-spending-cuts/-/9366718/19150648/-/kxl3x5z/-/index.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96937 | 455 | 1.664063 | 2 |
Peace, Development and Cooperation
--Banner for China's Diplomacy in the New Era
Under the banner of peace, development and cooperation, China's diplomacy has made bold headway, serving domestic development and contributing to world peace and common development.
1. Peace, development and cooperation is the irresistible trend of the times.
Since entering the 21st century, the world has continued to undergo profound changes. World multipolarization and economic globalization are developing in greater depth amid twists and turns. Science and technology are making rapid progress as human society advances at accelerated pace. New situations and new contradictions keep cropping up without letup. Maintaining world peace and promoting common development remains the mission of all countries in the world.
Thanks to its exploration and practice, the international community has arrived at a deeper understanding that it must secure peace and promote development through cooperation in the interest of progressing times and human advancement and seek mutual benefit and win-win results by earnestly expanding the convergence of interests of all countries.
--We need cooperation to maintain common security. With non-traditional security threats on the rise and intertwined with the traditional ones, security problems of various kinds have become more transnational, interrelated and sudden in occurrence. The security of one nation is closely related with that of the region and of the world as a whole. Only through international cooperation can we effectively address the common security problems facing all countries. The Cold-War mentality, unilateralism and the worship of military might will lead us nowhere.
--We need cooperation to realize common development. The ongoing economic globalization has increased the level of economic interdependence on the one hand, and aggravated the unevenness of development on the other, reducing some countries to a precarious position of being marginalized. A globalized economy calls for globalized cooperation. It is only through cooperation can we gradually redress the imbalance in global development, effectively ward off economic and financial risks, and enable countries to seize the opportunities brought by globalization to realize common development.
--We need cooperation to promote inter-civilization harmony and coexistence. The spread of information technology has changed the way people live and work and made relations among countries and civilizations more complicated. Only by respecting, tolerating and learning from one another, and by strengthening mutual communications, dialogue and cooperation, can the civilizations in today's world develop themselves properly while making contributions to the progress of entire mankind.
The multi-field, multi-level and multi-channel cooperation within the international community has become the realistic choice of more and more countries in recent years. The vigorous pursuit of peace, development and cooperation by the people of all countries has formed a tide of history.
2. China's adherence to peace, development and cooperation is determined by the socialist nature of the country and its fundamental task of building a moderately prosperous society in an all-round way.
In keeping with the spirit of the UN Charter and the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence, China has all along stood for the development of diplomatic relations and economic and cultural exchanges with all countries and against aggression, hegemony and power politics. The Chinese people need peace and development more than anything else and hold them the dearest. China is a force for world peace and common development. China's period of strategic opportunities as we talk about is nothing but an international environment and evolutionary process where world peace is maintained and common development promoted. It is only under this strategic premise can we achieve the grand goal of building a moderately prosperous society in an all-round way.
Loving peace, honoring promises and living in harmony with all others far and near is an important part of China's cultural heritage. In its foreign relations, the Chinese nation has advocated cordiality, benevolence, good-neighborliness and universal harmony. Believing in harmony without uniformity, China's diplomacy has drawn from its 5000-year-old culture inexhaustible wisdom. Engraved on the walls of the UN Headquarters in New York is the teaching of Confucius over 2000 years ago, often referred to as the Golden Rule guiding state-to-state relations. It reads, "Do not do unto others what you would not want done unto you." China will surely make new contributions to human progress with its development.
China's peaceful development is a path of developing itself while maintaining world peace and promoting world peace with its own development. It is a path of coordinating domestic development with opening-up to the outside world, a path that features both the participation in peaceful international competition and extensive cooperation with other countries. By opting for such a path of development, China has committed itself to equality, friendship, mutual benefit and win-win cooperation with all countries in the world in keeping with the tide of history, and to self-reliance, reform, innovation and scientific approach to development while transcending the traditional models, so as to achieve a comprehensive, coordinated and sustainable development and build a harmonious socialist society.
3. The thesis of peace, development and cooperation is an enrichment and development of China's independent foreign policy of peace.
The Chinese Government unswervingly pursues an independent foreign policy of peace. It maintains that all countries, big or small, rich or poor, strong or weak, should be equals that live together in friendship, and that all countries should strengthen and expand their economic, scientific, technological and cultural exchanges and cooperation on the basis of mutual benefit, so as to promote common development. This stand of China serves the fundamental interests of the Chinese people and the people in the rest of the world, winning wide acclaim and appreciation.
In the 21st century, while sticking to its foreign policy objectives of world peace and common development, China has put forward some new thinking and new propositions in diplomatic practice, thus enriching and developing its independent foreign policy of peace.
Actively advocating the new order that is fair and rational. China stands for stronger multilateralism, greater democracy and rule of law in international relations, and the establishment of a fair and rational international order. The United Nations, as the core of international multilateral framework and the key forum of multilateralism, should undergo reforms as may be necessary and reasonable, giving, in particular, scope to the rational demands and concerns of developing countries to the biggest extent possible.
Earnestly implementing the new approach to development centered on equality and mutual benefit. China believes that all countries should aim to achieve mutual benefit and win-win results in their pursuit of development. They are encouraged to be open rather than closed to each other, to compete fairly rather than undercut the partners, and to complement each other with respective strength rather than shift one's trouble onto others. The international community should step up coordination to move economic globalization in a direction that favors common prosperity. The developing countries should be helped to participate on an equal footing in international economic affairs. Efforts should be made to establish an open and fair trading regime and improve through reforms the international financial system. Economic and trade frictions should be properly settled through dialogue, and resort to unilateral sanctions and retaliations at every turn should be opposed.
Promoting the new security concept featuring mutual trust, mutual benefit, equality and cooperation. China stands for mutual trust among countries on the issue of security and their mutually beneficial cooperation in maintaining regional and international security. Committing itself to settling disputes through negotiation and securing stability through cooperation, China supports security dialogue, regional security cooperation mechanisms and stronger multilateral security cooperation, as a way to address security threats and challenges facing all countries. China is opposed to terrorism in all forms and manifestations, and stands for closer international cooperation to fight terrorism and eliminate its root causes.
Advocating a new concept of civilizations that features respect for diversity. In China's views, the world's diverse civilizations are the shared heritage of humanity and an invaluable source of prosperity. They should be properly protected. The right to independently choose the path of development in light of its national conditions is an inalienable right of every people, which must be fully respected. All countries should draw upon each other's strength in the "inter-civilization dialogue" and build a harmonious world together on the basis of equality.
The above propositions of the Chinese Government show a rich Chinese characteristic and a distinct feature of the current times. They also reflect the widespread trend in world development and human progress. They will surely have a positive impact on the healthy development of international relations.
4. China's diplomacy continues to make fresh progress under the banner of peace, development and cooperation.
Dedicated to promoting peace, stability and prosperity in Asia. Committed to building good neighborly relationships and partnerships and implementing the policy of creating an amicable, secure and prosperous neighborhood, China has played an important role in maintaining regional peace and promoting common development in Asia. China has proved itself to be a good neighbor, good friend and good partner of the surrounding countries.
During the 1997 Asian financial crisis, China kept its currency stable for the common good of Asian countries and provided assistance to the best of its ability to the affected countries, thus playing a vital role in overcoming the crisis.
In the wake of the Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami, the Chinese Government and people responded swiftly in expressing sympathy with the governments and people of the afflicted countries and providing the largest-ever foreign relief program since the founding of New China.
With respect to the Korean nuclear issue, China has acted in the overall interests and worked tirelessly in putting together first the Three-Party Talks and then Six-Party Talks, thus keeping tension in the Peninsula from escalating and contributing constructively to peace and stability in Northeast Asia.
China is an active participant in and staunch supporter for the regional cooperation in Asia. It plays a positive role in such Asia-based mechanisms as ASEAN+China, ASEAN+China, Japan and ROK, Shanghai Cooperation Organization, ASEAN Regional Forum, and Asian Cooperation Dialogue. In the course of regional cooperation, China has worked vigorously to promote common development of Asian countries by sticking to the principles of consensus, equality, mutual benefit and gradual progress, and taking into account the interests and concerns of various parties.
China's development has become a significant part of Asian rejuvenation. Since 1996, China has contributed up to 44% of Asian economic growth. In 2004, China's trade with the rest of Asia stood at US$665.03 billion, accounting for 57.6% of the country's total foreign trade. Making the best of China's development by expanding the cooperation with it has become the unanimous choice of other Asian countries.
In the spirit of mutual understanding, mutual accommodation, and fairness, China has completely settled its boundary issue left over from history with Russia and some other countries through consultations and negotiations, and reached agreement with India on the political guiding principles for the settlement of their boundary issue. China has signed with ASEAN the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea, and made breakthrough progress in the joint development with the Philippines and Viet Nam in the South China Sea area.
Strengthening solidarity and cooperation with developing countries as the basic point of departure of China's diplomacy. Against the new international backdrop, China has worked hard to promote South-South cooperation and North-South dialogue, exploring new areas and new ways of mutually beneficial cooperation with other developing countries. While continuing to provide assistance within its capacity to developing countries with a view to helping them overcome difficulties and build capacity for self-development. China has provided tariff breaks to the least developed countries in Asia and Africa, and cancelled the debt owed by 38 developing countries there in the amount of RMB13.778 billion. To strengthen dialogue and cooperation with the groups of developing countries, China has facilitated the launch of the China-Africa and China-Arab cooperation forums.
Ensuring stability and expansion in the relations with developed countries in the interest of greater strategic stability in the world. China has established partnerships of various forms with the world's major countries, while striving to expand common ground with them, properly handling differences and working together to safeguard and promote world peace and prosperity.
China-US relations have, on the whole, maintained stability and growth. Dialogues and exchanges at the various levels have improved mutual understanding and mutual trust. The two countries have strengthened dialogue and cooperation in the economic, scientific, technological, counter-terrorism, non-proliferation, regional security and other fields, which serves not only the fundamental interests of the two countries but also peace and stability in the world.
The strategic partnership of cooperation between China and Russia continues to deepen, as the leaders of the two countries have kept up close exchanges in mutual trust and mutual respect. Bilateral cooperation in the political, economic, military, energy and other areas has grown steadily. The two countries have worked in close coordination and cooperation on regional and international concerns, promoting in a concerted effort multilateralism and greater democracy in international relations.
The overall strategic partnership between China and Europe has become richer in substance. China maintains close high-level contacts with the EU and its member states. In 2004, China emerged as the EU's largest trading partner and EU China's second largest. Bilateral exchanges and cooperation in culture, science, technology, education and the environment are thriving.
As neighbors separated only by a strip of water, China and Japan have enjoyed close economic cooperation and frequent personnel exchanges. China attaches importance to China-Japan relations. In the face of the complex political relations in recent years, China maintains that the two sides, the leaders of the two countries in particular, should act in the strategic and long-term interests, strictly abide by the principles enshrined in the three bilateral political documents and, following the principle of "taking history as a guide and looking to the future", step up exchanges and cooperation and create conditions for steady and sound development of bilateral relations by removing obstacles.
Vigorously conducting multilateral diplomacy for closer international cooperation. China has taken an active part in the work of the United Nations, upholding the authority and role of the world body and its Security Council, and conducting extensive international cooperation in such fields as counter-terrorism, arms control, peacekeeping, development, human rights, law-enforcement, and the environment. In the past 15 years, China has sent a total of over 3,000 non-combatant troops, police force and civil officers on 15 UN peacekeeping missions. China has acted in a principled manner and played a constructive role on the questions of Iraq and Darfur in Sudan. As a participant of APEC, ASEM and other mechanisms, China has made its own contribution to the related regional and inter-regional cooperation.China's development cannot materialize without the world. And a stable and prosperous world also needs China. So long as we hold high the banner of peace, development and cooperation, and hold on to the path of peaceful development, we will surely make new contributions to world peace and development. | <urn:uuid:6d24a6bf-d4e9-4b08-a5f2-b32ef9bfc530> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.fmprc.gov.cn/eng/wjdt/zyjh/t208032.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00029-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.943595 | 3,018 | 2.140625 | 2 |
[en] Two identical rooms were arranged to house fattening pigs on a fully-slatted floor in one and on a straw-based deep litter in the other one. Each room was ventilated with an exhausted fan and the ventilation rates were adapted to have the same temperatures in the two rooms. Six successive batches of 16 pigs per pen were raised. The slurry pit was emptied and the litter removed after each fattening period. The mean daily weight gains of the pigs raised on slatted floor and on deep litter were of 742 and 729 g/day, the food conversion ratios 3.0 and 3.1 kg/kg, the lean meat percentages 59.8 and 60.0 % and the prices at slaughter 1.06 and 1.04 E/kg live weight, respectively. None of the differences was statistically significant. The amounts of slurry and manure produced were 290 and 187 kg per fattening pig, corresponding to 3.04 and 2.06 kg nitrogen per fattening pig, respectively. These differences were significant. | <urn:uuid:3d9a0557-c274-49a9-83d6-1372ea439336> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://orbi.ulg.ac.be/handle/2268/26496 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00038-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.976222 | 215 | 2.640625 | 3 |
IFC has been supporting business solutions to climate change since 1989, just a decade after the term was coined in a report published by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences. Our first project was a solar energy investment in China, a precursor to dozens of investments subsequently made all over the globe, from Argentina to Uganda.
Since that time, we have become an innovator of clean energy financial products around the world; an active participant in the carbon market, and more recently a source for pioneering analysis of carbon accounting and climate risks.
In each of the last two years, IFC has invested about $1.7 billion in clean energy and climate-friendly projects, with ambitious goals for substantially increasing this amount in coming years.
Today most of our power investments are in renewable energy projects. And all this has been done without the benefit of an international agreement to constrain the growth in greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs) – a situation expected to continue until at least 2015, creating substantial market uncertainty.
But what is clear is that better coordination, more unified and reinforced action, and common strategies are still needed across the public, private and non-profit sectors to move the global sustainable development agenda forward. Given the scale of investment required, partnerships between governments, civil society and multilateral investment institutions are necessary. This is where IFC plays a role by strengthening these ties and building for the future.
IFC's Climate Business Group was created in September 2010 to not only execute climate-related transactions but to coordinate with units across the IFC on identifying better approaches to resource efficiency. Our work now extends across virtually every aspect of our business and complements the full range of our strategic objectives, including:
Clean energy investments that open markets with first-of-a-kind projects demonstrating technical feasibility, attracting private financing, and encouraging supportive government policy reforms;
Support to local financial institutions, leveraging domestic resources that would otherwise be unavailable for clean energy investments;
Working with governments to promote favorable investment climates for climate-friendly investments;
Developing and promoting innovative financial products that attract greater investment in clean energy;
Helping private sector clients to identify and respond to financial risks of climate change; and
Finding opportunitiesto address both climate change and poverty alleviation such as encouraging low cost energy efficient homes and solar lanterns.
Working together with our clients, donors, and partners, we are creating new models for others to follow. But there is still much more to be done. Moving forward, we want to systematically identify and respond to investment opportunities and climate risk across sectors such as clean tech, water, and solid waste. | <urn:uuid:e09528ff-2dd2-496f-80fe-57cf33eedeb0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www1.ifc.org/wps/wcm/connect/Topics_Ext_Content/IFC_External_Corporate_Site/CB_Home/Overview/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.949316 | 532 | 1.828125 | 2 |
Rev. Alban Butler (171173). Volume VI: June. The Lives of the Saints. 1866.
SS. Martyrs of Rome, under Nero
TERTULLIAN observes, that it was the honour of the Christian religion that Nero, the most avowed enemy to all virtue, was the first Roman emperor who declared against it a most bloody war. The sanctity and purity of the manners of the primitive Christians was a sufficient motive to stir up the rage of that monster; and he took the following occasion to draw his sword against them. The city of Rome had been set on fire, and had burned nine days, from the 19th to the 28th of July, in the year 64; in which terrible conflagration, out of the fourteen regions or quarters into which it was then divided, three were entirely laid in ashes, seven of them were miserably defaced and filled with the ruins of half-burnt buildings, and only four entirely escaped this disaster. During this horrible tragedy, Nero came from Antium to Rome, and seated himself on the top of a tower upon a neighbouring hill, in the theatrical dress of a musician, singing a poem which himself had composed on the burning of Troy. The people accused him of being the author of this calamity, and said he caused fire to be set to the city that he might glut his eyes with an image of the burning of Troy. Tillemont, Crevier, and other judicious critics make no doubt but he was the author of this calamity. Suetonius and Dion Cassius positively charge him with it. Tacitus indeed doubts whether the fire was owing to accident or to the wickedness of the prince; but by a circumstance which he mentions, it appears that the flame was at least kept up and spread for several days by the tyrants orders; for several men hindered all that attempted to extinguish the fire, and increased it by throwing lighted torches among the houses, saying they were ordered so to do. In which, had they been private villains, they would not have been supported and backed, but brought to justice. Besides, when the fire had raged seven days, and destroyed every thing from the great circus, at the foot of mount Palatine, to the further end of the Esquiliæ, and had ceased for want of fuel, the buildings being in that place thrown down, it broke out again in Tigellinuss gardens, which place increased suspicion, and continued burning two days more. Besides envying the fate of Priam, who saw his country laid in ashes, Nero had an extravagant passion to make a new Rome, which should be built in a more sumptuous manner, and extended as far as Ostia to the sea; he wanted room in particular to enlarge his own palace; accordingly, he immediately rebuilt his palace of an immense extent, and adorned all over with gold, mother-of-pearl, precious stones, and whatever the world afforded that was rich and curious, so that he called it the Golden Palace. But this was pulled down after his death. The tyrant seeing himself detested by all mankind as the author of this calamity, to turn off the odium and infamy of such an action from himself, and at the same time to gratify his hatred of virtue and thirst after blood, he charged the Christians with having set the city on fire. Tacitus testifies, that nobody believed them guilty; yet the idolaters, out of extreme aversion to their religion, rejoiced in their punishment.
The Christians therefore were seized, treated as victims of the hatred of all mankind, insulted even in their torments and death, and made to serve for spectacles of diversion and scorn to the people. Some were clothed in the skins of wild beasts, and exposed to dogs to be torn to pieces: others were hung on crosses set in rows, and many perished by flames, being burnt in the night-time that their execution might serve for fires and light, says Tacitus.1 This is further illustrated by Seneca,2 Juvenal,3 and his commentator, who say that Nero punished the magicians, (by which impious name they meant the Christians,) causing them to be besmeared over with wax, pitch, and other combustible matter, with a sharp spike put under their chin to make them hold it upright in their torments, and thus to be burnt alive. Tacitus adds, that Nero gave his own gardens to serve for a theatre to this spectacle. The Roman Martyrology makes a general mention of all these martyrs on the 24th of June, styling them the disciples of the apostles, and the first fruits of the innumerable martyrs with which Rome, so fruitful in that divine seed, peopled heaven. These suffered in the year 64, before the apostles SS. Peter and Paul, who had pointed out the way to them by their holy instructions. After this commencement of the persecution, laws were made, and edicts published throughout the Roman empire, which forbade the profession of the faith under the most cruel torments and death, as is mentioned by Sulpicius Severus, Orosius,4 and others. No sooner had the imperial laws commanded that there should be no Christians, but the senate, the magistrates, the people of Rome, all the orders of the empire, and every city rose up against them, says Origen.5 Yet the people of God increased the more in number and strength the more they were oppressed, as the Jews in Egypt had done under Pharoah.
Note 1. The words of Tacitus are: Nero in order to substitute in his own stead victims, to the public indignation on account of the fire, inflicted the most cruel torments on a sect of men already detested for their crimes, vulgarly called Christians. Some of them were arrested, and owned themselves Christians; and on their informations a great number were taken, whom it was less easy to convict of being incendiaries, than of obstinately hating all mankind. Their punishments were made a sport of; some were covered with skins of beasts, to make dogs devour them; others were crucified; and others again, wrapped up in clothes covered with pitch and brimstone, were burnt in the night by way of torches. These punishments were inflicted in the emperors gardens as a sight, whilst he diverted the people with chariot races, mixing with the crowd in a coachmans dress, or seated on a car, and holding the reins. Thence arose pity that was felt for a set of men, really guilty, and deserving the worst of punishments, but who, on that occasion, were sacrificed to the inhuman pleasure of one, and not to the good of the whole. Tacitus attests their innocence even when he loads them with reproaches. And he could only tax them in general with being enemies to mankind, because they separated themselves from the corruption of the world. He was again mistaken when he says, they informed against one another. All ecclesiastical history witnesses they were ever ready to confess openly the name of their heavenly Master, and to suffer with joy the greatest torments, rather than betray their brethren to persecution. [back] | <urn:uuid:b040e9bf-c7ed-4944-9eca-9726b0d813c1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.bartleby.com/210/6/242.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.987208 | 1,471 | 2.625 | 3 |
February 10, 2000
CCBC APPOINTS TECHNOLOGY AND PLANNING CHIEF
Dr. Irving Pressley McPhail, chancellor, The Community College
of Baltimore County (CCBC), has announced the appointment of Ronald C. Heacock,
Ph.D., as vice chancellor for technology and planning. Heacock has held the
position on an interim basis since July 1998.
"Dr. Heacock has done a tremendous job for CCBC. As part
of our management team, he has been instrumental in developing and tracking
our strategic and operational plans. These plans are leading us closer to our
goal of being one of the premier LearningFirst community colleges in the nation.
Most important, Dr. Heacock has made sure that our plans and objectives are
being translated into concrete specific actions to improve student learning,"
said Dr. McPhail.
In addition to being responsible for strategic operational planning,
Heacock oversees the entire information technology services of CCBC for both
administrative and faculty computing.
"I am pleased that in a relatively short time, we have reorganized
CCBC into one multi-campus, student-centered institution. This has been, and
continues to be, a significant challenge that we are meeting successfully,"
As vice chancellor for technology and planning, Heacock will
continue to plan and implement programs that will assist CCBC's faculty and
staff in maximizing resources, integrating technology, and building a sense
of community to advance student learning. He will be responsible for an ongoing
assessment of college systems and processes to make certain that all institutional
structures enhance the effectiveness of college operations. At CCBC, Heacock
developed the first long-range technology plan for the college that resulted
in a new administrative computing system. He has also overseen a new integrated
library computer system and upgraded instructional computing throughout the
college with the installation of more than 1,500 new computers.
"Our plans are not simply put on the shelf to gather dust.
Instead, they become a real plan for action. I look forward to the continuing
challenge of making CCBC a dynamic and vital educational institution that effectively
serves a large and diverse population," added Heacock.
Before coming to CCBC in 1996, Heacock worked at Howard Community | <urn:uuid:7855904c-b641-45fd-900f-f6279d541987> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://ccbcmd.edu/news/media/february/heacock00.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00069-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.943682 | 485 | 1.5 | 2 |
Mental illness is not something we think will ever happen to us and I was no exception but what I do know now which I didn't know then is that RECOVERY is a very real possibility for everyone.
"The Journey Home" is a collection of poetry, artwork & photography creating a new narrative embracing the theme of recovery from severe depression. It has now been printed and is available for purchase from the Buy a Copy page of this site.
The all encompassing theme of my book "The Journey Home" is fittingly therefore one of HOPE without which recovery cannot take place.
| ||Caption : Book Cover
This work, comprising 76 poems, illustrated by all my own artwork and photography, first found its footing as a series of streams of conscious thoughts which surfaced spontaneously and were an attempt to make sense of what I had been through in terms of severe clinical depression and emerging from it.
The book opens with the all encompassing despair that is depression where we rely on others to carry that hope for us and continues via the metaphor of weather to trace the recovery process over time, unfolding the innate ability we all have to heal ourselves once the clinical symptoms have been treated.
As unique individuals we lead this process
However, professionally trained people, friends and family need to know how to enable and empower us to take back the control in our lives so that we can find our own recovery paths which can ultimately lead to experiencing a quality of living we may never have thought possible.
My ultimate premise in sharing this "wholeness" is in the hope that it will help many people on their own journeys home. It is at one and the same time a very personal and
Additional information about the author and her Journey Home can be found on Facebook. There is a video interview with Lorraine on Citizen Leadership on the Learning Exchange site and
a link to a You Tube video is at the foot of this page. | <urn:uuid:8ea8d9ff-33ac-4a09-a0c2-4d5c3367b20c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.hope4recovery.co.uk/index.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00059-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.970981 | 391 | 1.78125 | 2 |
In the simplest of terms, it is a cop’s job to keep us from doing things we might want to do, provided those things are technically illegal or might do harm to others or ourselves. They are in a position of authority over us, and many of us don’t take kindly to being told what to do.
I say “simplest terms” because, to be blunt, many folks define law enforcement officers by those terms alone, and in general, that type of person typically isn’t capable of seeing things any way but their own. It’s narrow-minded.
Those folks, I think, would greatly benefit from an opportunity like the one I was fortunate enough to receive Friday.
Over the last two weeks, the Cadiz Police Department was in possession of a Use of Force Training Simulator. The system, which provides interactive video recreations of scenarios to prepare officers for work in the field, was a real eye-opener for me, someone who already holds a healthy respect for law enforcement.
In the simulations, actors portray individuals who may or may not require the use of force by an officer to subdue them. Each scenario can branch out in a variety of directions depending upon the actions of the person being tested.
Here’s a few things that caught my attention as I went through the simulations:
– The production value. First of all, the videos are constructed well and make the subject feel like they’re in the action. The actors do a great job of testing physical and mental reactions.
– The detail. In one of the scenarios I faced, I potentially could have resolved the situation much sooner had I noticed a brief glimpse of a gun in the possession of one of the would-be criminals. Other scenarios feature bystanders and other distractions that can deter an officer from performing their duty. Attention has to be paid to the entire viewing screen, not just the area covered by the individuals in the foreground.
– The intensity. The system includes a variety of weapons an officer might use in these scenarious, and the gun I used was propped to mimic actual gunfire, complete with sound and recoil.
– The stress. Scenarios unfold in a way that the subject might think nothing is going to happen before they quickly escalate. Reaction time has to be quick.
If these simulations are any indication of what life can be like for law enforcement officers in potentially volatile situations, then the following things are true:
1. Whether conscious or subconscious, my decision to not pursue a career in law enforcement was the right one.
2. Police don’t get nearly the credit or respect they deserve.
There are people – many in our own community – who openly despise the police. Officers deal on a daily basis with a wide range of personalities. Some want to deceive them, others are ready to perform physical violence at a moment’s notice.
And the officers do it – whether you choose to believe it or not – to protect our community and keep their family, friends and neighbors safe.
I’m not asking you to go hug a cop, only to believe me when I say they aren’t out to get you – they’re out to serve you.
Justin McGill is general manager of The Cadiz Record and can be reached by email at email@example.com. | <urn:uuid:42700e08-5023-4416-bc53-296887af1699> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.cadizrecord.com/view/full_story/19562741/article-Training-simulation-gives-first-hand-view-of-life-in-law-enforcement?instance=left_column | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00073-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963134 | 699 | 2.15625 | 2 |
Designer Drug Bites HIV Achilles' Heel
"The notion here is that antibodies against the HIV envelope have not proven very effective, because the virus can rapidly mutate and escape neutralization," Kim explains. "However, there are regions of the envelope that [the virus cannot afford to mutate], but those are normally buried deep inside. But during the [infection] process, these conserved regions become exposed.
"We and others have been interested for some time in coming up with [vaccines] that would elicit antibody responses against these highly conserved regions. 5-Helix might represent one way to do that," he says.
Kim and Hunter both note that 5-Helix is not yet ready for testing. "I personally look at this much more as proof of concept than as a lead molecule for drug discovery," Hunter says.
Kim soon may be in a position to change this. Beginning next month, he will move to a new job: head of worldwide research and development for pharmaceutical giant Merck. | <urn:uuid:826270c0-9682-41cd-acf3-1c4b93094283> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.webmd.com/hiv-aids/news/20010111/designer-drug-bites-hiv-achilles-heel?page=2 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.97642 | 210 | 2.0625 | 2 |
Native vs web debate rumbles on
“HTML5 is ready” say creators of mobile HTML5 Facebook clone
was in September that Mark Zuckerberg infamously stated that the
company “burned two years” by
betting too heavily on HTML5. This came soon after the company
was forced to replace their hybrid iOS app with a
far speedier native one after a deluge of complaints.
Since then, some have hit back at Facebook, insisting that the social network’s app was simply implementing the technology wrong. To prove the point, two developers at Sencha have developed their own HTML5-based Facebook web app which matches and in some cases exceeds the current native apps.
Jamie Avins and Jacky Nguyen’s ‘Fastbook’, which is available as a live demo, is
meant purely as a technical showcase, implementing just the
newsfeed and the user’s homepage using several aspects of the
Sencha Touch framework. Tested on an iPhone 4, we found it faster
at loading but not quite as responsive as the current native
Under the hood, Fastbook’s tricks include utilising Sencha Touch features such as a “Sandbox Container” to detach complex DOM elements and place them in their own iframes, “TaskQueue”, which compiles DOM read or write operations for speed, and “AnimationQueue” which does what it says on the tin. The pair even went as far as utilising a proxy to filter data obtained via the API, compressing it to 10% of its existing size.
As well as a good PR stunt for Sencha, the app is designed to generate publicity for Sencha’s ‘HTML5 is Ready’ competition, which challenges developers to “build an awesome HTML5 app using Sencha frameworks”. | <urn:uuid:e21e293e-a668-44d5-bde0-aa4601928c56> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://jaxenter.com/html5-is-ready-say-creators-of-mobile-html5-facebook-clone-45859.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00043-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.947113 | 391 | 1.75 | 2 |
Teresa Nielsen Hayden is a touch miffed at Ralph Nader. To wit:
If Ralph Nader is run over by a beer truck and killed, if a very large meteorite falls on the offices of Public Citizen and vaporizes the lot of them, I won't feel sorry. Not the least little bit.
It turns out Teresa had been treating her narcolepsy with Cylert (the brand name of pemoline), a stimulant initially developed for ADHD, but also frequently prescribed off-label to narcoleptics and MS patients suffering from fatigue. Because it increases the risk of liver failure, it's typically something doctors resort to only after other medications fail. Now, under pressure from Public Citizen, the FDA has withdrawn it entirely.
The FDA's reason is that it has determined "the overall risk of liver toxicity from Cylert and generic pemoline products outweighs the benefits of this drug." Except, of course, that Teresa Nielsen Hayden obviously thought the benefits outweighed the risk. And, of course, there isn't really such thing as the "benefit" or "risk" of a drug in itself, but only the benefit and risk to a particular patient—not just because of physiological variation between people, but because of how we differently value the same sets of positive and negative effects. A sane FDA would give us the information and let us decide for ourselves which way the balance came out. | <urn:uuid:bbd1c23d-a552-4d2b-a36b-e3cb1f32dbc2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://reason.com/blog/2006/01/04/ive-got-the-pill-to-drive-myse | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00059-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961294 | 293 | 1.867188 | 2 |
IT’S COMMON SENSE: It’s amazing that in this world we live in—with all its high-tech security: PIN numbers, passwords, and retina-scans to offer one’s proof of exactly who one is—there’s no requirement to show any identification when registering to vote at city hall. You need to show ID to cash a check, to drive a car, to buy a plane ticket, and to use your AAA card to get your flat tire fixed. So what’s wrong with asking people for identification when they register to vote—to prove who they say they are in order to cast their ballot?
We all know voting is the most fundamental constitutional right—where one can participate in changing government. It’s important to many people that you prove who you are in order to vote. We all know that voter fraud takes place—in many cases—through absentee ballots; but also often in the voting booth, where voter fraud has been discovered throughout the country. Recently, Florida election officials announced that after cross-referencing voter rolls with driver’s licenses and other materials, they concluded that over 2,000 registered voters were not U.S. citizens—and that I’m sure, is just the tip of the iceberg.
It’s time to ensure the integrity of the election process. We need to hold cities and towns and all political parties accountable, since we all have a great stake in the process. This isn’t about racism or classism or suppression; it’s about common sense. I want to know that my vote counts along with millions of others who have earned their right to vote.
Paying taxes and being a good American citizen is a great example, for starters. If I go to Mexico or Iran, can I vote? No, and I can’t get a job either.
Voter fraud exists and it’s time has come and gone. This country needs laws in place before it’s too late. The world is out of control but that doesn’t mean we as a nation have got to be part of all the insanity. Let’s bring back common sense to the election process—prove who you are—take a ballot—and vote. This issue is just too important to ignore.- JDM | <urn:uuid:9d0a9db3-0b9f-4bab-846c-354812472b77> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://advocatenews.net/sounds/sounds-revere-14/2020/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00048-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964139 | 486 | 2.640625 | 3 |