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A map recently released has shown more than 3,500 weather records were set nationwide last year, 128 of them set in Indiana.
Ten states, including Indiana and Illinois set record highs in 2012 making it the hottest year recorded to date.
Indiana witnessed two large wildfires in 2012 and experienced one of the most extreme droughts in the state in 50 years. A total of 36 counties set record highs.
Illinois had 1 large wildfire, 45 counties with a record setting high and 113 heat records broken.
Take a look at the record setting weather map right here… | <urn:uuid:232855f8-cf56-4819-b09b-b62768e4b3f1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://mymixfm.com/news/articles/2013/jan/16/3500-weather-records-set-in-2012/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961372 | 116 | 1.875 | 2 |
According to a recently published study by Cornell University (Journal of Health Economics, January 2012), obesity now accounts for more than 20 percent of U.S. health care costs -- more than double previous estimates.
The study reports that an obese person consumes almost $2,800 more in medical care costs than if he or she were not obese. This increase equates to $190.2 billion per year nationwide, and in our state, which has the 5th-highest rate of obesity in the country, we likely bear a disproportionate amount of this cost.
Our state government has been slow to embrace obesity prevention initiatives for far too long. Many legislators and policymakers have considered the disease simply a private, personal issue. This study and others like it prove that it is anything but.
The rise in medical costs for Medicaid and other public health programs that are already straining the state budget will continue to swell as the complications from obesity, such as diabetes and heart disease, continue to grow. According to the American Heart Association, heart disease is the No. 1 killer in America, killing more than the next four causes combined, including cancer.
When it comes to taking action to prevent and treat obesity in Louisiana, we can't afford to wait.
Salman A. Arain, M.D. | <urn:uuid:8b97ac74-3c68-4514-966c-48d25313de81> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.nola.com/opinions/index.ssf/2012/04/take_action_to_prevent_treat_o.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00045-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96132 | 263 | 2.328125 | 2 |
The southwest of Zeeland is a beautiful area that is famous for its beautiful beaches that attract thousands of people every summer. But there is more than sun, sea and sand. Southwest Zeeland can be divided into three National Landscapes: Walcheren, Zeeuws-Vlaanderen and Zuid-Beveland. Each of these national landscapes represent a unique part of Zealand where you can enjoy nature, culture and the local cuisine.
Zeeuws-Vlaanderen is an area that attracts thousands of tourists and day-trippers from both the Netherlands and Belgium. The area enjoys a good reputation thanks to its beautiful beaches, culinary delights and shops that are open on Sundays. But the area is also known for its unique nature. It is not without reason that the landscape of Zeeuws-Vlaanderen has been declared a National Landscape.
The nature of Zeeuws-Vlaanderen
Zeeland has a special landscape of creeks, pastures and dikes. On the latter, long rows of pollarded trees are often present, both willows as well as poplars. The dikes have a such a special vegetation that they are also called flower dikes.
The Drowned Land of Saeftinghe is the largest contiguous wetland in Western Europe and is located in the east of Zeeuws-Vlaanderen. Saeftinghe is a tidal marsh area in which the salt seawater and the fresh river water shape the delta landscape. The nature reserve can only be visited in the company of a guide. Excursions (that are also open to children) can be reserved at the visitor center of Saeftinghe.
Other areas that are well-known for their nature are Zwin, a landscape of dikes and channels, and the Margarethapolder, an area in which pasture, wetland and coastal birds live in an open pasture landscape with creeks. In short, even if only for the nature of Zeeuws-Vlaanderen, you should definitely plan to visit.
Sunday shopping and exuberant life
The municipalities of Zeeuws-Vlaanderen are divided into Sluis, Terneuzen and Hulst. If you want to enjoy your vacation by the beach, then you should go to the municipality of Sluis. Cadzand, which belongs to this municipality, is one of the most beautiful places by the beach in the Netherlands. Sluis is an ancient fortified town where shops are open on Sundays and one of the best restaurants of the Netherlands can be found: Restaurant Oud Sluis.
Are you a fan of mussels? Then come and visit the mussel village of Philippine in the municipality of Terneuzen. Hulst is known as the 'most Flemish town' of Holland and has a good reputation when it comes to the enjoyment of life. Enjoyment gets a new meaning in Hulst.
More information about Zeeland. | <urn:uuid:7d94611c-c963-44f5-bc07-f9f388a0eb4c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.holland.com/global/tourism/regions/de-hoge-veluwe-1/zeeuws-vlaanderen-1.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00026-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.948506 | 629 | 2.09375 | 2 |
Theft / robbery of cash in transit is a possibility in any place. Money insurance policy brought to you by Karur Vysya Bank in association with Bajaj Allianz General Insurance helps you to manage the risks involved in cash management.
It gives you coverage against
- Loss of money in transit caused by robbery, theft, or any fortuitous event.
- Loss of money from the insured's premises during business hours caused by theft or robbery
- Loss of money from the insured's safe or strong room caused by theft or robbery.
*The term money includes cash, bank drafts, currency notes, treasury notes, postal orders, money orders and postage stamps. The loss of money in transit must occur whilst being carried by the insured or his authorized employee, that is, the employees named in the schedule
- Any consequential losses of any kind
- Loss arising out of the infidelity of the insured or employees
- Loss of money from the insured premises where the money is not kept in a safe or strong room after business hours money carried under a contract of affreightment
- Loss of money from an unattended vehicle
- Loss in any way contributed to by the insured
- Loss caused by AOG perils | <urn:uuid:5af05a8a-b810-4610-b7bd-30fd4df4edfe> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.kvb.co.in/corporate/money_insurance.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00043-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956117 | 252 | 1.5 | 2 |
Contributing Monkie Brendan Brazier
Published on January 18, 2008
Want to segue to a plant-based diet but concerned about getting adequate protein? Worry no more: properly balanced plant protein can offer several advantages over more traditional animal-based options.
It was once thought that only animal protein was complete and therefore a superior source to plant-based options. Complete protein is comprised of all ten essential amino acids. By definition, essential amino acids cannot be made by the body; they must be obtained through dietary sources. And, in fact, there are actually several complete plant protein sources. However, to obtain all amino acids in high quantities, it’s advantageous to consume several complementary sources of protein on a regular basis. For example, hemp, yellow pea and brown rice protein make up a superior amino acid profile that rivals any created in the animal kingdom.
Additionally, one of the big advantages of properly balanced whole food (plant-based protein over animal protein) is its slightly neutral pH. In contrast, highly processed foods are acid forming, as are animal based foods. Whey protein isolate, for example, is highly acid forming. Whey straight from the cow would be neutral and even slightly alkaline, but once the protein is isolated (no longer rendering it a whole food), it is then pasteurized. These two steps of processing lower its pH, making it more acid-forming. Meat — pork in particular — is also highly acid forming.
It’s advantageous to maintain a neutral pH. Eating too many acid-forming foods will promote inflammation, reduce immune function and cause calcium to be pulled from the bones in order to keep the blood in its neutral state of 7.35. This, of course, leads to lower bone density and, in many cases, osteoporosis.
The most alkaline forming foods are those with chlorophyll, the green pigment in many plants. Leafy greens for example. Hemp is an excellent example in that is contains complete protein, yet the fact that it is not isolated and that it contains chlorophyll helps maintain a more alkaline pH.
So, there you are: you can have your plant-based protein and eat it, too. | <urn:uuid:bab7821b-a201-4464-9e7f-8919c0ad5a07> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://gliving.com/getting-sufficient-protein-from-plant-based-diets/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00028-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959712 | 452 | 2.625 | 3 |
Irish minister of Proprietory chapel, Bloomsbury, 1876-95. A celebrated preacher, in 1867 he became chaplain to Queen Victoria, but he seceded from the Anglican church in 1880. He often preached at Rosslyn Hill chapel. Most successful among his books was his Primer of English Literature, 1876.
Father of Arthur and sometime vicar in St Marylebone and in Kirkby Lonsdale. In his 90 years he was also chaplain to King George V, an early member of the Alpine Club, and a champion of unpopular causes, such as higher education for women. In this he was supported by his famous feminist daughter, Margaret,…
Trained at Cuddesdon (1894),. Canon Chancellor in Grahamstown, Cape of Good Hope (1910s),, Assistant Secretary of the Society for the Propogation of the Gospel (1920s),, and Canon of Salisbury Cathedral (from 1934),. From 1929 he was Principal of St Boniface College, Warminster, where he died.
Archdeacon of London (1930-47),. Vicar of Emmanuel Church, West Hampstead (1894 – 1908),. Son of Revd Henry Sharpe (CH 076),.
Vicar of Silverdale, Staffs for 39 years; died aged 90. His much younger wife, Martha, died 28 years later, aged 93.
Vicar of St Saviour’s, Hampstead (1872 – 1912),; he was previously assistant curate at the parish church.
First Bishop of Bunbury, Western Australia (1904 – 1917),; he pressed for nationalisation of the Anglican Church and was awarded the VD (Volunteer Decoration),. Vicar of Hampstead (1917-1926), and Rural Dean of Hampstead (1917-21),.
Scots Congregational Minister, Trinity Church, Glasgow. Published many sermons and hymns. Died at 8 Prince Arthur Road.
A city missionary at Hampstead for 34 years. ‘A good soldier of Christ’.
Verger of the parish church for the last 30 years of his life. His funeral atrracted 200 mourners.
Vicar of St Lawrence Jewry in the City; so unpopular that his parishioners petitioned Queen Victoria to have him removed – in vain. Lived at Burgh House from 1822 until his death. Burgh was a more successful protestor in 1829 when he joined Hampstead copyholders fighting the Lord of the Manor over the Heath. [His…
Curate of Hampstead; the second son of Joshua King LLD, President of Queen’s College, Cambridge.
Bishop of British Columbia (1893-1911),, Bishop of Willseden (1911-1935),, Assistant Bishop of London from 1929
Assistant curate of Parish Church and wrote a brief history of it . Later vicar of St Saviour’s; died at 70 Haverstock Hill | <urn:uuid:a475e038-a8f4-4304-9f88-9a4124cc94a1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://tombwithaview.org.uk/person_category/church/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.974096 | 635 | 1.890625 | 2 |
US President Barack Obama’s proposals to curb gun violence face a difficult path through a sharply divided US Congress, where the biggest gun control fight in decades looms on an issue that has long been one of the most divisive in US politics.
Obama’s plan sets up a showdown between a gun control movement re-energized by the massacre of 20 children and six adults last month at a Connecticut school, and a powerful gun rights lobby led by the National Rifle Association (NRA), which has blocked new action on gun control for almost two decades.
Members of both parties said Obama’s call for expanded background checks for all gun buyers had the best chance of surviving the partisan fight in Congress. Just as clear is that Obama’s pitch for Congress to reinstate the ban on military-style assault weapons that expired nearly a decade ago is unlikely to go anywhere.
The odds for a third Obama proposal, to limit ammunition clips to 10 rounds, seem to fall somewhere in between, lawmakers and analysts said on Wednesday.
“If you look at the combination of likelihood of passage and effectiveness of curbing gun crime, universal background checks is at the sweet spot,” said Democratic Senator Charles Schumer of New York, a heavily Democratic state where newly enacted gun laws for background checks and ammunition limits mirror several of Obama’s federal proposals.
For the Democratic president, the obstacles in Congress are large. In the Republican-led US House of Representatives, Speaker John Boehner faces pressure from conservatives to resist even bringing a gun control bill to the floor.
UP TO THE SENATE?
That is why the gun legislation is almost certain to rise from the Democratic-led Senate. Even there, overcoming procedural hurdles will require supporters of Obama’s plan to win over several Republicans while gaining backing from a few Democrats who have supported gun rights and face re-election next year in conservative states.
Democratic senators Tim Johnson in South Dakota, Max Baucus in Montana, Mary Landrieu in Louisiana, Mark Begich in Alaska and Mark Pryor in Arkansas are from conservative states with high levels of gun ownership, and all face re-election next year.
Begich, for one, has expressed reservations about a new ban on assault weapons.
The political calculus is such that Obama’s plan “is not just dead in the House, it is on life support in the Senate before it even arrives,” former Capitol Hill aide and Republican strategist Ron Bonjean said.
However, Democratic strategist Phil Singer, also a former Hill aide, said there was a chance that public pressure stemming from outrage over the Newtown, Connecticut, shootings could force Republican leaders to reconsider their opposition to at least some of the measures — or risk being painted as unreasonable and beholden to the gun lobby.
“It will be very difficult and it will require a tremendous amount of work, but I think that there is a decent chance that it could happen,” Singer said. “At this point, it is irresponsible to rule out getting it done. The process has only just begun. I think there is a path forward.”
LEAHY PROMISES ACTION
Some analysts were skeptical that anything could be accomplished in Congress, which faces a crush of other legislative priorities, including a looming battle over the budget and raising the US borrowing limit. | <urn:uuid:cf54eeda-4bf6-4282-a6b6-9a9b89cb3210> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/editorials/archives/2013/01/19/2003552872/1 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00071-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959341 | 684 | 1.796875 | 2 |
Merge Columns In Excel
The Excel merge columns process is as easy as merging cells.
Follow these quick and easy steps to learn how to merge columns in Excel.
Why Would You Want To Merge Columns In Excel?
All you have to do is have a quick look in the Microsoft Office related forums on the internet to know that many people don't know how to merge columns in Excel. Often people receive advice that just doesn't work. Worry no longer; here is the definitive guide to the excel merge columns mystery. But first, why would you want to merge columns?
Imagine that you had a column of first names and then another column containing second names of people who had taken a test. You are now required to format a column that contains the full name of each candidate. You know how to merge two cells so that the result contains the full name for just one person, but you need to apply that formula to the names in all rows. This is where merging columns in Excel comes in.
How Do You Want To Merge Columns?
The first question you have to ask yourself is what kind of column merge you want to perform? The example given above is called concatenation: if cell A1 contains "Joe" and cell B1 contains "Bloggs", then the concatenation of the two is "JoeBloggs". Note that you would have to take care to insert a space between the two names yourself, but this is easy to do.
However, when some people say "merge", they mean "add". It may be that you are required simply required to add the contents of two columns together. Confirm the requirements first!
Merging Columns In Excel
Now that we've clarified what merging columns actually means, we can explore how to do it. The first step is to perform the merge for the first cells. Let's go back to our first example and suppose that we are merging column A that contains first names with column B that contains second names. We'll put the merged columns into column C. To merge cell A1 with cell B1 we woul type the following into cell C1:
Remember to insert the space as shown. When you press enter, cell C1 will contain the full name for that first row. Believe it or not, that was the hardest bit. We now need to apply that formula to the remaining cells in those columns. To do this, select the first merged cell and then hover the mouse over the bottom right corner of the cell until you see the plus sign. Drag the cursor downwards until the selection includes all the remaining cells in the merged column. When you release the mouse, the merged column should contain the dat in the first and second columns merged.
Using The Concatenate Function
You can also use the CONCATENATE function in Excel to merge two piece of data together. The syntax is as follows:
=CONCATENATE(A1," ",B1)This formula would be useful for merging first and last names as it also inserts a space between the two. With these two methods of cancatenating covered, let's move on to merging multiple columns.
Merging Multiple Columns In Excel
Merging mutiple columns in Excel is a simple extension of merging two columns. Suppose you need to merge columns A, B, C, D and E and put the result in column F. First of all you would need to type one of the following in cell F1:
Pressing enter merges the data into cell F1. As we did before, make cell F1 active, hover over the bottom right corner and then drag the cursor downwards.
Excel 2007 Topics
- Excel Spreadsheets
- Navigating Excel 2007
- Excel Tables
- Excel Pivot Tables
- Formulas In Excel
- Document Themes
- Conditional Formatting
- Naming Cells
- Protecting Workbooks
- VBA Excel
- Excel Download
- Microsoft Office 2010
- Excel Password
- Excel Merge Columns
- Excel Macro
- Excel Shortcut
- Freeze Panes
- Excel Pie Chart | <urn:uuid:65debaf7-cd92-4f12-9d1a-ce5cdbffc7f7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.msexcel07.com/excel-merge-columns.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00025-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.925178 | 852 | 3.25 | 3 |
Tim Gunn, art lover? Indeed.
Fashion's head master is donating art, and lending his name and fame, to the Hirschhorn Museum next month. On Oct. 7, the D.C. institution opens a retrospective of the works of 1960s minimalist Anne Truitt, Gunn's former art teacher and friend, and the "Project Runway" host says he'll be honored to co-host the opening dinner and chair a panel on her work. He has gifted his own Truitt to the institution.
Turns out Gunn was an art student at the nearby Corcoran College of Art & Design (class of 1976, degree in sculpture) when Truitt had an exhibition there, and both the art and the artist blew him away. He says he had "The Rothko reaction" to her work. "I ascended this staircase and I saw her work for the first time. I felt immediately the way I felt when I first saw a Rothko. I felt like I was floating on air, I felt good, and I kept returning and returning, I haunted the place." His own campaigning with the head of Corcoran's program led her to be asked to lecture there, he says.
Two years later, Gunn bought a Truitt drawing at D.C.'s Pyramid Gallery, which he is now giving to the museum, along with its original receipt: $260. "Which in 1976, for me, as a kid, was a lot of money," he says. (He's not much of a collector, Gunn adds, "I wish I could" buy art, but his budget won't allow it.)
Truitt, a leader of the influential "new wave" 40 years ago with her dense, richly colored wooden sculptures, has been enjoying something a renaissance since the Museum of Modern Art re-opened in 2004. Truitt had been all but buried in MoMA's basement, but in the re-installation was shown in the permanent collection alongside Carl Andre and other ground-breaking minimalists. (The artist, who learned of her inclusion in the new MoMA galleries shortly before her death in 2004, said at the time she was "awfully pleased about that. There's a tendency in the art world to discount women artists, the way a bear might discount a squirrel.")
Gunn says Truitt hasn't gotten the credit she deserved in art history. In 1968, market-making critic Clement Greenberg dubbed Truitt "The Changer," and said she was "less well known than she should be as a radical innovator." Gunn says her temperament may have limited her fame: "Anne wouldn't play the game, and there's definitely an art world game. She would say, and I think I'm quoting her exactly, ‘If the work doesn't attract an audience until itself, I'm not going to do anything about it.' "
Now, Gunn's involvement is likely to bring some mainstream attention to the show and, he hopes, fundraising dollars. The show, which runs through Jan. 3, brings 49 of the artist's wooden sculptures and many drawings to the Smithsonian institution. Meanwhile, Mr. Gunn's panel discussion on Oct. 8 will include some of her former students, colleagues and fans like Martin Puryear, Jem Cohen, John Gossage, and Kristen Hileman. Says Gunn: "I hope there are a whole new generation of individuals that are as captivated as I was."
Full at Half
New York's year-old Half Gallery, which is tiny, celebrity-owned, and often packed, isn't like other galleries. And its program this September, a trio of short shows in rapid-fire succession, isn't like other galleries', either. While about 70 art shows are opening in New York in the days following Labor Day, at only one of them can you have your portrait done in balloons.
Half Gallery opens its fall season Sept. 8 with $100 works by Buster Balloon, then features artist Elliot Arkin's "Mister ArtSee" exhibition two days later. The end of month will see a show of new work by ethereal fashion photographer Mark Bothwick. "We're not interested in repping artists in the previous way," all that worrying about museum and collector placement, says gallery director Matt Bangser. "Our model is different from that of a formal gallery."
To say the least. The slice of a space on Forsyth Street has three well-connected owners, James Frey (the infamous writer), Andy Spade (husband of Kate, Brother of David, helmsman of the Jack Spade brand) and Bill Powers (husband of Cynthia Rowley, former "BlackBook" editor and board member of prominent art world charity RxArt, which takes the other half of the space). "They play the role of enthusiasts" and each one has "a different kind of interest," says artist Arkin. "They're a good mix." The owners' names and connections have brought some Page Six mentions and some stars to their openings —Chloe Sevigny bought some of Mark Gonzales' work from a July show.
Arkin's work, meanwhile, received attention last fall when Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg gave his limited-edition sculptures to top donors to the Obama campaign at a fundraiser. His Half show opening Sept. 10 comprises the conceptual drawings, model and background work for a project called "Mr. Artsee", which would retro-fit a Mr. Softee truck into a rolling winged non-profit gallery, performance and educational space. Then, on Sept. 19, the photography show opens. "Mark Bothwick came to us through Bill Powers. He has a strong window on the fashion world," says Bangser.
Early With their Art
While the art season traditionally doesn't start until after Labor Day, a couple of important galleries are throwing open the doors on shows the week earlier. On Sept. 1, Cooper shows paintings by David Novros. He's not a household name now but Novros and Cooper go way back (In a circa-1969 a letter in the Archives of American Art, he thanks her for representing him), and the show is perhaps partly a salute to her past by the ground-breaking dealer who is rumored to be considering retiring after nearly 50 years in the art world.
Rounding out this week's big openings in New York, Team Gallery has the city's solo debut of Davis Rhodes, and Taxter & Spengemann is building extra wooden supports for an opening of the work of mixed media artist Adam Putnam. Jeffrey Deitch opens keenly awaited shows by Tauba Auerbach and Kehinde Wiley at his Wooster and Grand Street spaces, respectively. | <urn:uuid:8770b818-c474-49be-92a8-0508ce452a70> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.artinamericamagazine.com/news-opinion/news/2009-08-28/weekly-bulletin-august-28/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.979525 | 1,373 | 1.53125 | 2 |
ELON, N.C. -- Erin O'Connell took the tour this week at Elon University, a handsome, up-and-coming college with a $31,000-a-year price tag. That's hefty -- but $20,000 less than some "uppity" schools she may have to cross off her list.
"I'm going to be pulling out my hair to make ends meet," said the high school senior from suburban Boston. "I'll apply for anything and everything I possibly can." As for more expensive schools, she said: "While the title would be nice, I might not get out with both arms and both legs."
It's prime college-visiting season for the high school class of 2009, which next fall will send the greatest number of graduates on to college in American history. But the souring economy and the crisis on Wall Street are shrinking families' college savings, and some parents wonder whether they will be able to afford tuition at the schools their youngsters are looking at.
Around the country, students deciding where to apply may have to scale back their dreams. Some private schools worry they could lose business to public universities. Already, federal loan applications are up, and some schools are seeing more aid inquiries.
Most students won't decide on their college plans for six months. But a recent survey of 2,500 users of the Web site meritaid.com found 57 percent of students were considering a less prestigious school for money reasons. In a similar study by Applywise.com and Next Step Magazine this week, 50 percent of families reported limiting their children's college choices to less expensive options.
Because of plummeting housing prices, many families can no longer count on the equity in their homes to help them pay for tuition. Meanwhile, 529 college savings plans have been hit hard in the stock market. A year ago, they held a combined $110 billion. Preliminary figures from Financial Research Corp. show the value of 529s declined 9 percent last quarter even with new money coming in -- and that was before last week's slump on Wall Street.
"We're revisiting their overall financial plans," said Ivan Nalibotsky of Capital Solutions Group, a college financial planning service in Bethesda, Md. "In many cases folks are going to have to be dipping into some of their own personal resources, and reevaluating their personal retirement goals in order to get the kids the four or five years of education they planned."
One of his clients now plans to start at a community college and transfer to the University of Maryland rather than going straight to a four-year private college.
Some parents are hoping to secure financial aid, something they previously assumed they didn't need or couldn't get.
"We haven't qualified before. We might now," said Betty Morris of West Chester, Pa., who was touring Elon this week with her son Jack.
The good news for such families is that the college financial aid system is in many ways tilted toward higher-income families, thanks to tuition tax breaks and financial aid that is based on merit, not need. At Elon, for instance, about 40 percent of the 5,000 students get merit aid.
When it comes to need-based aid, many middle-income families underestimate their chances and focus too much on the "list price." A large number of schools have substantially expanded aid in the past few years. At many highly competitive colleges, families earning $80,000 typically pay no more than half price.
A few prestigious schools that cost $50,000 or more a year have made more aid available to families earning well into six figures. At Princeton, for instance, virtually all families earning as much as $200,000 qualify for grants covering half of tuition or more.
O'Connell's mother, Rosemary O'Connell, an executive assistant at a financial firm, said: "We'll do what we can for her. We don't want her to graduate $200,000 in debt."
Parents' college savings funds are taking a hit at the same time many schools' endowments are being eroded by the downturn in the stock market. Colleges rely on their endowments for financial aid.
"It won't be an impossible problem for Harvard, Pomona, Princeton, but a lot of other colleges will find it hard to provide the same level of aid as in the past," said Robert Shireman of the California-based Institute for College Access and Success.
Ultimately, many parents will simply stretch and borrow. Higher education is so important to many families, it often doesn't obey the laws of supply and demand.
"They always said, 'You pick the school, we'll figure out the money,"' Emily Schroeder of Baltimore, who is applying to Elon this year, said of her parents. Her mother, Judy, said price is a consideration but not the biggest one.
"It's her future and I want her to be happy and I want the fit to be right," she said. "If it cots a little more money, that's OK."
The other option: be very smart, or very lucky. Only one parent on the Elon tour looked fully at ease -- Pat O'Hara of Richmond, Va., who was visiting with daughter Lindsey. Cost really isn't a factor, he said: "I moved all into cash about six months ago."
On the Net: | <urn:uuid:f077194a-dc27-4a19-9433-d5d764ce468d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blog.mlive.com/kalamazoo_gazette_extra/2008/10/as_economy_swoons_parents_fret.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00033-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.977381 | 1,107 | 1.625 | 2 |
Witchcraft attracts attention, especially at this time of year; everyone "knows" something about it. As a historian, I'm interested to see my subject, the past, being put to all kinds of uses in the present. Here are some ideas about witch-hunting that are distinctly dodgy.
It's sometimes suggested that witch-hunting was a more or less conscious male device for repressing women. In fact, although there is a relationship between women and witch-hunting, it's a complex one. Witch-hunters didn't target women as such, they targeted witches – and about 25% of witches were men. Witch-hunting certainly functioned as an encouragement to conform to patriarchal values, but witch-hunting wasn't a cynical male conspiracy.
So what about the "wise women", the midwives and healers? In fact, midwives were hardly ever accused of witchcraft. Traditional, magical healers (men as often as women) were sometimes prosecuted, but only if they were seen to have misused their powers, harming instead of helping. Healers sometimes even encouraged witch-hunting, helping clients to identify the person who had bewitched them.
It's also often said that witches were accused for profit. Usually the authorities themselves are said to have profited, but sometimes it's neighbours who coveted the alleged witch's property. In truth, while some courts did confiscate the accused's goods, many did not, and most witches were too poor to have possessions worth coveting anyway. This idea fails to take witchcraft itself seriously. People tend to think that witchcraft is not (and was not) real, so they conclude that witchcraft accusations were "really" about something other than witchcraft. The idea of accusations for money is readily grasped because we, today, take money seriously.
Another idea worth debunking is the "swimming test". The theory goes that witches were detected by dropping them in water: the guilty floated and were executed, while the innocent sank (and drowned). In fact, ropes were tied to suspects to pull them out – and the swimming test itself was rare.
I'm sometimes told that witches practised a pagan religion that had gone underground with the coming of Christianity. This idea was popularised in the 1920s and had some scholarly credibility until about 1975, but has been recognised as a myth ever since. Most witches were executed in the 16th and 17th centuries (about 50,000 of them – not nine million, by the way). There were still survivals from paganism (a few traditional charms had pre-Christian origins), but witches and witch-hunters alike were Christians.
Many of these myths are attractive because they enable people to sympathise with the victims of witch-hunting. However, we historians wish to extend the same understanding to all the people we study – witch-hunters as well as witches. There's little evidence that witch-hunters were considered wicked; many were considered pious. And although "wickedness" may be a plausible description of an activity, it cannot explain causation. When someone asks why someone did what they did, historians don't reply: "Because they were wicked"; instead we look for the real causes of their deeds. The moral certainties that lead people to break off ties of human kinship with their enemies for the greater good can be seen in action now, as much as then. Thus we learn that witches were people much like us – and so were witch-hunters. | <urn:uuid:2714328c-0314-4179-b1c4-db580b3ae7cf> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2010/oct/30/halloween-witches-history | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00059-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.991291 | 715 | 2.765625 | 3 |
Who is a Video Game Designer?
Video Game Designer is a person who is responsible for creating computer games with his creative work under pressure for long time. Designing a game requires lots of hard work and it is also a team work. He must develop basic requirements of the game and finally ensure fun to play for the users. The main goal of video game designer is to develop a new game with his creativity.
How to become a Video Game Designer?
First make sure that you are interested in this field or not. Lots of hard work is required for becoming a Video Game Designer. It is the right choice for the person who is interested to love playing video games. Before apply for video game design degree it is necessary to sharpen problem solving skills. While creating a video game you must find all the bugs. Apply for the right college which is offering video game program. Send your application to the desired college before deadline. After successful completion of graduation, get into the internship program in video game development companies. Having internship will increase the career opportunities in this field.
Video Game Designer Job description
Video Game Designer Job description: Video Game Designer is a profession who creates computer games. This field is very much competitive and can get employed only with appropriate qualification and experience. This job does not mean playing video games but creating these videos with their creative work. Video games are very much popular among the kids and also teenagers. People at all the age groups enjoy playing these games. There is a huge demand for the video game designers because the craze for new games is increasing rapidly. This job involves working long hours in front of the computer. All the design elements of the game are designed by the video game designer with his team. Finally the output of the design must meet all the needs which are specified initially. Apply to different high paid jobs by building a Video Game Designer Resume: and must specify all your experience and skills in it.
How much does a Video Game Designer make?
Video Game Designer Salary: The salaries paid to these designers depend on the job role of the designer and also the type of project he is handling. The median annual salary paid to video game designer is about $69000. Salary may also vary with experience and expertise. It is observed that there is 3 percent increase in the job opportunities for these video game designers. | <urn:uuid:ff6da8ae-c04a-4bf2-8720-36aec3d100a5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.kenhallgraphics.com/video-game-designer | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00044-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.966593 | 473 | 2.40625 | 2 |
Martin Fay, a classically trained violinist who helped revive traditional Irish music as a founding member of the Chieftains, died on Wednesday in Dublin. He was 76.
His son, Fergal, confirmed the death.
The Chieftains formed in 1962 as pacesetters of a new movement to reclaim the pure musical traditions of Ireland from the relatively slick commercial-sounding groups that had come to dominate the folk stage. Mr. Fay played haunting fiddle lines and contributed popping rhythms by knocking together a pair of bones, a time-honored Celtic instrument. His fiddle is the first sound heard in the Chieftains’ music for Stanley Kubrick’s 1975 film, “Barry Lyndon,” a performance that helped propel the group to world recognition.
In 1989 the Chieftains were appointed official musical ambassadors for the Republic of Ireland, a role they fulfilled by performing with the Rolling Stones, the Boston Pops, Willie Nelson and Luciano Pavarotti. They entertained Queen Elizabeth II when she visited Ireland in 2011. They played before the pope and on the Great Wall of China. They have made more than 40 albums and won six Grammys.
Mr. Fay was born in Dublin on Sept. 19, 1936. Inspired to take up music after seeing a film about the violinist Niccolò Paganini, he studied the violin and won a scholarship to the Municipal School of Music in Dublin. He played in the orchestra of the Abbey Theater, Ireland’s national theater.
Increasingly fascinated by Ireland’s indigenous music, Mr. Fay was recruited by Sean O Riada, the leading figure in reviving the old music, to play in the ensemble he led, Ceoltoiri Cualann. Paddy Moloney, who played the traditional Uilleann pipes (the Irish bagpipes), and was also a member of Ceoltoiri Cualann, started the Chieftains. The other original members, besides Mr. Fay, were Michael Tubridy on wooden flute, Sean Potts on tin whistle and David Fallon on the bodhran, a kind of drum.
Mr. Fay stopped touring in 2001 and retired the next year. Mr. Moloney is the only original Chieftain still playing with the group. (Mr. Tubridy and Mr. Potts left in 1979, Mr. Fallon in 1965.) The other current members, now a quartet, are the fiddle player Sean Keane, the vocalist and bodhran player Kevin Conneff and the flutist Matt Molloy.
In addition to his son, Mr. Fay is survived by his wife, Grainne, known as Gertie; his daughter, Dearbhla Fay; a sister; and a grandson. | <urn:uuid:0d82d247-f3c6-4a42-ab98-0f81848701c0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://louisproyect.org/2012/11/16/martin-fay-fiddler-with-the-chieftains-dies-at-76/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00063-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.972951 | 571 | 2.125 | 2 |
GAMBIER — Kenyon College women’s sports programs are joining together in observance of National Girls and Women in Sports Day on Sunday, Feb. 12. Girls in kindergarten through eighth grade are invited to sharpen their skills or learn a new sport through the variety of free clinics offered at the annual event.
The activities begin at 12:30 p.m. with a welcome at the multi-activity court in the state-of-the-art Kenyon Athletic Center. Members of Kenyon’s women’s sports teams will then lead workshops for basketball, field hockey, lacrosse, soccer, softball, tennis and volleyball until 3 p.m. At the conclusion of the clinics, a reception featuring pizza and snacks will be held for all participants. All events at Kenyon’s celebration of National Girls and Women in Sports Day are free of charge.
Congress first proclaimed a National Girls and Women in Sports Day in 1987 as a way to honor the achievements and encourage the participation of girls and women in sports. For more information on Kenyon’s event or to RSVP by Feb. 10, contact volleyball head coach Katie Charles at 427-5164 or email@example.com.
Published on February 4, 2012 | <urn:uuid:04b9ba7c-b286-49f4-adcc-b66c2b25e979> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.mountvernonnews.com/local/cal/show_event.php?id=7534&o=1&c=1&m=02&a=01&y=2012&w=1 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.923307 | 261 | 1.875 | 2 |
The FOCUSSM program develops the fundamental concept that transcends performance – movement.
Developing and improving movement strategies compliments and enhances current programs specializing in Physical Therapy, fitness(strength/conditioning) and skill development.
Strength and conditioning programs are mainly designed to improve an athlete’s hardware – strength, power, fitness, conditioning, etc. What about the software? Athletes need to upgrade the software AND hardware in order to maximize both their performance and durability. Consider this: would you buy a state of the art gaming system…just to play an old 4-bit game?
Without FOCUSSM, athletes participating in strength and conditioning programs may be superimposing fitness on a dysfunctional system and skill coaching | <urn:uuid:371d4aba-6f8d-480a-9aa4-12f2518aaf37> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://focusonmovement.com/about/philosophy | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.902923 | 147 | 1.773438 | 2 |
The Freeland Center
808 N. Ash St.
Bristow, OK 74010
6:00 p.m. Friday, March 1, 2013
Sponsored by:Kellyville Public Schools  You'll learn:Dyslexia's inheritance patterns and the genetic linkThe symptoms of mild dyslexia in adultsThe classic warning signs in childrenWhy most dyslexic children don't qualify for special edResearch-based "best practices" to improve spelling, reading, and writing Why tutoring alone is not enough -- and much more!!!   Certificate of attendance provided by request. Who should attend?Parents who are trying to determine if dyslexia is their child's issue, or who know it is and need to understand all the areas that it will impact, including math and memorization Teachers who don't understand why children who can't master spelling and struggle with reading don't qualify for special education services Reading Specialists who need to know how to informally identify which of their struggling readers may have dyslexia -- and what to do to help them Principals who want to start early intervention programs to achieve the goal of No Child Left Behind -- that every student is reading at grade level by the end of third grade Resource Specialists who need to know how to close the gap for students who have a learning disability School Psychologists who want to learn to distinguish dyslexia from other learning disabilities Speech Language Therapists who are often the first specialists to work with dyslexic children because of their difficulty articulating R's and L's, M's and N's, and S, SH and CH Pediatricians who are often asked by parents to test their children for dyslexia Counselors and Psychologists who often deal with the lifelong emotional damage that undetected dyslexia and academic failure causes Click here for a list of upcoming presentations.  Susan Barton is trained in seven different Orton-Gillingham-based programs and teaches graduate-level courses on dyslexia through the University of San Diego.Susan was recently inducted into the International Dyslexia Associationâs Hall of Honor. Click here to learn more about Susan.
Free Ticket 0.00 | <urn:uuid:9059d94e-70d7-4a98-90c4-22d26855b55a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.k955fm.com/events/detail/3048123/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954118 | 460 | 2.453125 | 2 |
Liza's Lunatone was Liza's only known Pokémon.
Lunatone was first seen battling Tate's Solrock. Lunatone proved to be significantly stronger than Solrock, blasting through Solrock's SolarBeam with its powerful Ice Beam and freezing it at the same time, winning the battle. Lunatone and Solrock were also used to defeat Team Rocket.
During their first battle with Ash, Tate and Liza were unable to work together properly and would probably have lost if Team Rocket hadn't returned to interrupt the match. Lunatone and Solrock were captured but were later freed and helped defeat Team Rocket again by using their Psychic attacks.
During their rematch with Ash, Tate and Liza commanded Lunatone and Solrock so effectively that Ash was unable to find an opening until he finally ordered his Pikachu to aim Thunder straight into the clouds. Pikachu and its partner Swellow were then hit by the Thunder but stored the electricity in their bodies causing them to become covered in an electrical "armor". Using their armor to increase the power of their attacks, and to weaken the power of Lunatone and Solrocks attacks, Swellow and Pikachu overwhelmed and defeated both Pokémon at the same time.
|Ice Beam||It's Still Rocket Roll to Me|
|Psychic||It's Still Rocket Roll to Me|
|Tackle||It's Still Rocket Roll to Me|
|Light Screen||It's Still Rocket Roll to Me|
|+ indicates this Pokémon used this move recently.*|
- indicates this Pokémon normally can't use this move. | <urn:uuid:c984486e-b334-47ba-b4ae-8b8f71373420> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://pokemon.wikia.com/wiki/Liza's_Lunatone?diff=next&oldid=284113 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00021-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.974419 | 325 | 1.578125 | 2 |
There are many aspects of creating a website design. Web designers often have to play multiple roles and be very knowledgeable about building effective and usable site layouts.
Most of the lessons you’ll learn in web design comes from work experience; learning is an iterative process and there is no better way to gain knowledge than to make mistakes (and then and learning from them).
In this article, we discuss 10 essential and general tips that every novice web designer should know.
1. Optimize Web Graphics for Better Page Load Times
Learn how to optimize your web graphics by selecting the proper format and making sure that it’s as small as it can possibly be. Even though people are advancing to broadband connections, there are still quite a few who use dial-up internet connections. Additionally, with the emergence of mobile device technologies that don’t necessarily have broadband-like speeds, having slow page load times due to image file sizes can turn users off.
Here a general rule of thumbs for picking the right file format: images that have solid colors are best saved as PNGs and GIFs, while images with continuous colors (such as photographs) are best saved as JPGs.
There are plenty of tools available at your disposal that will help you further optimize your images and lower their file sizes, check out this list of tools for optimizing your images.
By limiting the number of images you use to the bare minimum, being smart about using images, and reducing file sizes as best as you can, you will significantly cut down page response times of a web page and improve your web page performance.
2. Keep it Clean and Simple
A good web design is not just one that looks visually appealing, but also one that is user-friendly. A clean and simple web design typically ends up being a high-usability web design that is not confusing to interact with.
By having too many site features and components on a page, you risk the chance of distracting website viewers from the purpose of the website. Make sure each page element has a purpose and ask yourself the following questions:
- Does the design really need this?
- What does this element do and how does it help the user?
- If I remove this element all of a sudden, will most people want it back?
- How does this element tie into the goal, message, and purpose of the site?
Additionally, though it may be super awesome to come up with a new concept or interface design pattern for your website, make sure that the design is still accessible and intuitive to your users. People are accustomed to common interaction patterns, site features, and web interfaces - and if your design is truly unique, make sure it’s not too obscure and puzzling. Be creative, but also keep it simple.
3. Navigation is the Most Important Thing You Will Design
The most essential site feature is the website’s navigation — without it, users are stuck whatever page they happen to land on. With that obvious fact out of the way, we’ll talk about some important points to consider when constructing a navigation scheme.
First, it’s very important to put enough time and a lot of planning on a site’s navigation structure. This is common sense, but it’s still surprising how many web designs take site navigation for granted.
Your navigation design should work without CSS because of text-based browsers. Poke fun of text browsers all you want, but they are still prevalent in many mobile devices. Perhaps more importantly, navigation that works with CSS disabled is accessible (99.99% of the time) via screen readers.
It is imperative that you have a good navigation system in place that is located at a highly-visible location. A good navigation is detectable as soon as the web page loads without having to scroll down the web page. This is where keeping it clean and simple plays a major role: a complex and unconventional design can lead to user confusion.
Users must never wonder, even for a split second, "Where is the site navigation?"
For sites organized in a hierarchical, multi-level manner, make sure that it is easy to navigate from between parent and child web pages. In addition, it should be easy to reach top-level pages (such as the site’s front page) from any webpage.
The main goal of your site navigation is to allow users to get to their desired content with as few actions and with as little effort on their behalf as possible.
4. Use Fonts Wisely and Methodically
Though there are thousands of fonts out there, you can really only use a handful (at least until CSS3 is fully supported by major browsers). Make it a point to stick to web-safe fonts. If you don’t like web-safe fonts, consider a progressively-enhanced web design that leverages sIFR or Cufon.
Keep font usage consistent. Make sure that headings are visually-different from paragraph text. Use white space, tweak line-height, font-size, and letter-spacing properties to make content pleasant to read and effortlessly scannable.
Perhaps one of the things that web designers often get wrong is font-sizes. Because we want to fit as much text as we can in a web page, we sometimes set font sizes to uncomfortably small sizes. Try to keep font sizes at and above 12px if possible, especially for paragraph text. While many people face no difficulty reading small text sizes, think about older users and persons with low-vision and other types of vision impairment.
5. Understand Color Accessibility
After talking about fonts, we also need to point out the importance of using the right colors.
You need to consider color contrast of background and foreground colors for readability and for users with low-vision. For instance, black text on white background has a high-contrast, while orange text on red background will make you strain your eyes.
Also, use colors that are accessible to users with particular forms of color-blindness (check out a tool called Vischeck that will help you test for certain types of color-blindness).
Some color combinations work well only when the color is used as a foreground color instead of a background color. Take for example, dark blue text on a pink background versus but pink text on blue background, same colors but different levels of readability and reading comfort. It is important not only to get a good color combination but also to apply it to the right elements on the page.
6. You Need to Know How to Write Code Yourself
With various WYSIWYG editors flooding the market, it has become as simple as 1-2-3 to design a site. However, most of these editors insert unnecessarily code junk, making your HTML structure poorly designed, harder to maintain and update, and causing your file sizes to bloat.
By writing the code yourself, you come out with clean, crisp, and terse code that’s a pleasure to read and maintain; code that you can be proud to call your own.
Knowing how to use a WYSIWYG or an IDE with a visual preview does not excuse you from learning HTML and CSS. You have to know what’s going on in order to create effective, semantic, and highly-optimized web designs.
7. Don’t Forget Search Engine Optimization
A good designer should always remember to keep the basics of SEO in mind when designing a site. For example, structuring web content so that important text are represented as headings (i.e. page title and logo). This is where learning how to code properly comes in handy. Knowing correct, semantic, and standards-based HTML/CSS - you will quickly realize that divs are better than tables for web layouts not only for accurate representation of site content, but also for search engine rankings; you will also know that CSS background text image replacement is a good idea.
8. Understand that People are Impatient
People on an average spend only a few seconds before deciding whether they want to read more or navigate away to another site. Therefore, you as a web designer have to device a way for encouraging users to choose the former option within those precious seconds.
Know that not many visitors will scroll down to view the entire contents of the page if what they see at the top does not interest them. Remember to keep your important elements on the top where they are easily visible, but also do not overcrowd the top half of the page which can intimidate users and turn them off from reading further down the page. Consider the top half of a web design a selling point: be a salesman, make people buy into the notion that they want to see what else is on your site.
9. Learn About (and Be Aware of) Browser Quirks
One of the things you must know as a web designer is that your work operates in a finicky and unpredictable environment: web browsers. It’s not enough that your designs work on a few web browsers, they need to work in as many browsing situations as you can possibly afford. Before production - test your prototypes using tools like Browsershots.
10. Make Designs that are Flexible and Maintainable
A good web designer makes sure that the site can easily be updated or modified in the future. Designing websites that are malleable and easy to maintain is a sign of a great web designer. Make your work as modular as possible by separating style from structure.
Know that our industry is dynamic and still young - things change in a very short amount of time. Keeping this thought in mind will promote the creation of flexible web designs.
What are your web design tips?
If you have more tips to share to beginning web designers - kindly share them in the comments.
- Why Designers Should Learn How to Code
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- Related categories: Web Design and Web Development
About the Author
John Urban is a sophmore at UCLA and currently majoring in computer science. He is a writer for an online magazine StyleCeo which deals with fashion. In his spare time, he enjoys sports, being with his girl, or just doing some freelance work. If you like his work on here and you’d like for him to work as a freelancer for you, you can contact him on Twitter. | <urn:uuid:7ca2eaed-79ec-4c50-a048-0b087c186d54> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://ooyes.net/blog/10-things-every-web-designer-just-starting-out-should-know | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00068-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.940149 | 2,156 | 2.3125 | 2 |
posted on October 10, 2006 |
Born: October 10, 1731, Nice, France
Died: March 10, 1810
Henry Cavendish, eldest son of Lord Cavendish, attended Cambridge University for three years, but but never gradualted. He inherited a fortune and went off to lead the life of a solidary bachelor. He spent the whole of his long life on scientific investigations.
He went on to become a chemist and physicist. One of his major accomplishments was recognizing "inflammable air" as a distinct substance ? later to be named hydrogen gas by Antoine Lavoisier.
Before hydrogen was named, it was referred to as "inflammable air." However, we know that hydrogen is very flammable, as we observe in the stars of our universe. Scientists called carbon dioxide "fixed air."
Cavendish was skilled in quantitative measurements. He was able to measure the different densities of common air, hydrogen and other gases. He investigated the composition of the atmosphere and determined that water was composed of two gases (which was the most unusual determination for the time). He determined that water is composed of oxygen and hydrogen by showing that burning hydrogen produced dew. In one of his experiments, he determined the density of the earth. He also devised astronomical instruments. The very famous Cavendish Laboratory at Cambridge was named after him.
Another accomplishment to note was that Cavendish determined that the density of the Earth was 5.45. The experiment was not improved upon for nearly 100 years, and the current calculated density is 5.5268.
Cavendish published a few papers in his time, notably Factitious Airs in 1766. He died on March 10, 1810. | <urn:uuid:31c468bd-973e-49e2-a074-7ba9b962a104> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.engineering.com/Library/ArticlesPage/tabid/85/ArticleID/30/categoryId/5/Henry-Cavendish.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.988216 | 349 | 3.109375 | 3 |
Tim Harford's first book, The Undercover Economist, has sold 1 million copies worldwide in almost 30 languages.
Fran Monks/Farrar, Straus and Giroux
In a complex world, the process of trial and error is essential. That's what Tim Harford — columnist for The Financial Times — writes in his new book Adapt. And while that idea might seem like common sense, it's one that is often remarkably hard for humans to accept because errors are associated with failure.
The subtitle of Harford's book is "Why Success Always Starts with Failure." For anyone familiar with Internet startups, that concept probably sounds pretty accurate; it seems every successful Internet CEO has a list of past missteps under his or her belt.
Harford tells NPR's Renee Montagne that businesses outside the Web world stand to benefit from Silicon Valley's fearlessnessbecause,ultimately, it's through mistakes that great ideas come about.
"Failure is inevitable; it happens all the time in a complex economy," he says. "How did the economy produce all these amazing things that we have around us — computers and cellphones and so on? There were a bunch of ideas, and the good ones grew and prospered. And the bad ones were pretty ruthlessly weeded out."
But if failure can bring such great things, it seems counterintuitive that most people find it so difficult to learn from mistakes. The way Harford explains that paradox is through a poker analogy.
"If you talk to a professional poker player, he or she will tell you that the most vulnerable time in a poker game is just after you've made a mistake," he says. "You do something called 'going on tilt.'" That's when, following an error, a player starts making reckless moves in a last-ditch effort to chase his money — to erase the mistake altogether.
That's not just something that happens in poker. Harford says that stock-market investors, for example, will engage in the same type of activity — chasing losses, doubling down — in hopes of being able to exit the game without having to admit to any errors. That, says Harford, is not good for business.
"If the whole process of learning from failure means discarding stuff that's not working, but in fact, our natural reaction is to keep going, to throw more money behind it, to throw more emotional energy behind it ... that's a real problem," he says.
Adapt: Why Success Always Starts with Failure By Tim Harford Hardcover, 320 pages Farrar, Straus and Giroux List Price: $27
But it's a problem that some companies are surpassing by embracing the concept of trial and error, he says. And their businesses are improving as a result.
One company that's paving the way when it comes to such experimentation is Whole Foods. The supermarket chain recently implemented an unconventional employee-empowerment program that lets employees choose co-workers to be on their team.
"If they think, 'This person's a slacker, or doesn't have good ideas,' they can vote and say, 'No, we don't want this person to be working with us on the vegetable aisle,'" Harford says. "That decentralization is a fascinating process, and I think it's getting more and more widespread."
by Tim Harford
Adapt: Why Success Always Starts with Failure By Tim Harford Hardcover, 320 pages Farrar, Straus and Girous List Price: $27
'You could easily spend your life making a toaster'
The electric toaster seems a humble thing. It was invented in 1893, roughly halfway between the appearance of the light bulb and that of the aeroplane. This century-old technology is now a household staple. Reliable, efficient toasters are available for less than an hour's wage.
Nevertheless, Thomas Thwaites, a postgraduate design student at the Royal College of Art in London, discovered just what an astonishing achievement the toaster is when he embarked on what he called the 'Toaster Project'. Quite simply, Thwaites wanted to build a toaster from scratch. He started by taking apart a cheap toaster, to discover that it had over four hundred components and sub-components. Even the most primitive model called for:
Copper, to make the pins of the electric plug, the cord, and internal wires. Iron to make the steel grilling apparatus, and the spring to pop up the toast. Nickel to make the heating element. Mica (a mineral a bit like slate) around which the heating element is wound, and of course plastic for the plug and cord insulation, and for the all important sleek looking casing.
The scale of the task soon became clear. To get iron ore, Thwaites had to travel to an old mine in Wales that now serves as a museum. He tried to smelt the iron using fifteenth-century technology, and failed dismally. He fared no better when he replaced bellows with hairdryers and a leaf-blower. His next attempt was even more of a cheat: he used a recently patented smelting method and two microwave ovens, one of which perished in the attempt, to produce a coin-sized lump of iron.
Plastic was no easier. Thwaites tried but failed to persuade BP to fly him out to an offshore rig to collect some crude oil. His attempts to make plastic from potato starch were foiled by mould and hungry snails. Finally, he settled for scavenging some plastic from a local dump, melting it down and moulding it into a toaster's casing. Other short cuts followed. Thwaites used electrolysis to obtain copper from the polluted water of an old mine in Anglesey, and simply melted down some commemorative coins to produce nickel, which he drew into wire using a specialised machine from the RCA's jewellery department.
Such compromises were inevitable. 'I realised that if you started absolutely from scratch, you could easily spend your life making a toaster,' he admitted. Despite his Herculean efforts to duplicate the technology, Thomas Thwaites's toaster looks more like a toaster-shaped birthday cake than a real toaster, its coating dripping and oozing like an icing job gone wrong. 'It warms bread when I plug it into a battery,' he told me, brightly. 'But I'm not sure what will happen if I plug it into the mains.' Eventually, he summoned up the courage to do so. Two seconds later, the toaster was toast.
Excerpted from Adapt: Why Success Always Starts with Failure by Tim Harford Copyright 2011 by Tim Harford. Excerpted by permission of Farrar, Straus and Giroux | <urn:uuid:6621d5bd-6bba-447e-981e-b662be8d4df1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.npr.org/2011/05/23/136503420/adapt-failure-as-an-option-on-the-way-to-success | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00045-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.966742 | 1,395 | 2.03125 | 2 |
INCREASING RAIN IN THE DESERT:
three continents come new ways of solving an old problem
Scientists believe it may be possible
to increase rainfall in arid areas. (Photo by Digital Vision/Getty
Because of a population boom in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), government
leaders are facing a fundamental challenge: keeping up with demand
for water. The mostly desert country, which has grown from about 50,000
residents in 1975 to more than 3 million today, relies on desalination
plants and underground aquifers. But desalination is very costly, and
the aquifers are quickly becoming depleted.
In the past few years, the UAE has begun to explore an innovative solution.
What if modern technology could produce more rain?
Scientists at NCAR, the UAE Department of Water Resource Studies, University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa, and elsewhere are analyzing
the potential for cloud seeding. They hope to find storm clouds that
can be induced to release rain over regions where the water would most
benefit society by falling on crops or replenishing aquifers.
“This is a multidisciplinary analysis that considers hydrology,
cloud science, atmospheric chemistry, and other disciplines,” explains
NCAR scientist Roelof Bruintjes, who oversees the project. “Increasing
the rainfall is just one aspect. We also have to consider what the
impact would be. It might not help to seed clouds over a desert. If
90% of the rainfall evaporates, it may not be worth it.”
Making droplets bigger
NCAR is building on weather modification projects it has led or participated
in over the last few years in Mexico and South Africa. The center has
refined a technique to increase the size of particles in clouds and
promote the coalescence of water droplets. Called hygroscopic
this technique uses flares mounted on aircraft to seed clouds with
small salt particles. Water droplets can bond to the particles and
grow large enough to fall out of the cloud
Initially, researchers used airplanes and a network of radars to examine
clouds that form along the UAE’s coast during the winter. But
only about 10 frontal systems form during a typical winter, and fewer
than half contain the convective motions needed to produce rain.
Researchers next turned to the Oman Mountains, which form the boundary
between Oman and the UAE. Although the mountains had received little
attention from climate scientists in the past, the team discovered
that clouds there typically form and release rain during about 40 days
in the months of June, July, and August.
NCAR’s Roelof Bruintjes (left) with
Al Mangoosh, director of UAE’s Department
of Water Resources Studies. (Photo by Brant Foote, NCAR.)
The research team has launched a randomized experiment to seed clouds
over the mountains, measure the resulting rainfall, and trace the
movement of the water once it reaches the ground.
If cloud seeding produces significantly more rain in the area, the
UAE can compare the costs and benefits with desalination and decide
whether to launch a multiyear cloud seeding program.
In the near future, NCAR is likely to expand its research on weather
modification to other regions as well. Oman is considering working
with the center to build on the UAE program, and officials as far
away as Thailand may explore the technology.
The African nation of Burkina Faso, where many rely on subsistence
farming, may also benefit from weather modification. With technical
assistance from NCAR, Burkina Faso has implemented a pair of state-of-the-art
software systems to support cloud seeding efforts. The software is
used to display and analyze radar data about cloud systems and precipitation,
thereby guiding cloud seeding operations and helping scientists evaluate
Bruintjes cautions that weather modification is still a developing
field. In Mexico and South Africa, hygroscopic seeding trials produced
more rain 30 to 60 minutes after seeding. But researchers need to
conduct more experiments to evaluate the extent to which overall
precipitation was increased.
Even if hygroscopic seeding proves effective in the UAE, that does
not assure its success somewhere else. Only certain types of clouds
produce rain. And air pollution may complicate the situation by changing
the dynamics of clouds and precipitation.
Bruintjes stresses that nations interested in weather modification
need to conduct thorough research before launching a full-scale program.
“If cloud seeding works in one area, it may not work in another,” Bruintjes
says. “We shouldn’t just go out there and seed clouds
blindly and hope for the best.”
More information about the UAE
rainfall enhancement project
Accurate weather forecasts are much needed in Africa,
especially where tropical cyclones and floods pose an ongoing
threat. But the continent has relatively few observing
stations for monitoring the skies, and forecasters are
limited by lack of access to data and models appropriate
for the weather conditions in their regions.
Emmanuel Kploguede of the African School of Meteorology
and Civil Aviation. (Photo ©Daily
To improve the situation, UCAR is working with collaborators
in Europe and Africa on an initiative known as the African
Satellite Meteorology and Training Project (ASMET). The
goal is to train African meteorologists to interpret data
from European satellites that gather atmospheric information
UCAR’s Marianne Weingroff and the rest of the ASMET
team, including instructors at regional meteorological training
centers in Kenya, Niger, and South Africa, produce educational
modules on topics such as forecasting tropical cyclones and
integrating satellite imagery with model data. The modules
are used at the training centers to teach hundreds of African
meteorologists each year. They are also disseminated to forecast
offices to permit self-paced training. EUMETSAT, the European
Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites,
funds the project and distributes the modules on compact
discs and the Web.
Better forecasts, including daily and seasonal rainfall predictions,
are critical to Africa, where millions of lives depend on
the current year’s crops from farms of all sizes. “ASMET
modules are making a real contribution to the improvement
of forecasts in Africa,” says Emmanuel Kploguede, a
member of the ASMET team and instructor at the African School
of Meteorology and Civil Aviation in Niamey, Niger. “This
is particularly important because most African countries
are in the tropics where the weather can change quickly—either
helping farmers by distributing rain widely or hurting society
with strong storms that can flood croplands, livestock areas,
More Middle Eastern and African Collaborations:
Restoring Lake Victoria
of Africa’s Climate
Overview | Asia | Middle
East/Africa | Oceania/Antarctica | Europe | The
Americas | Global Research | Worldwide
| NCAR | UCAR | UOP| | <urn:uuid:fc320ed6-5ed7-4b8f-829b-48a137a9e0c8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ucar.edu/communications/international/africa.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.906987 | 1,528 | 3.515625 | 4 |
Get IOL's cool new iPad app...
Beijing - China web-users were furious on Thursday over plans to tackle pollution with a ban on barbecues, wryly asking if Beijing would stamp out fried food and normal bodily functions in its war on smog.
While many residents have grown tired of donning face-masks or having to stay indoors during prolonged bouts of heavy smog, China's food-loving public say forcing fire-grilled food off the streets is a step too far.
“This is hilarious. What are they going to consider next? Banning fried food?” said one user on Weibo, China's version of Twitter.
“What proportion of pollution comes from barbeques?” said another. “I wonder when the government will start banning breaking wind.”
The controversial measure is being explored as Beijing aims to confront the heavy pollution which has choked large swathes of the country in recent weeks.
State media said Wednesday that the country's environmental watchdog had issued draft guidelines advising major cities to adopt legislation banning “barbecue-related activities”.
Much of China's pollution has been blamed on emissions from coal-burning and exhaust fumes from vehicles.
Barbequed food is a favourite dish in China, particularly lamb skewers, a speciality of the north-western region of Xinjiang. - AFP | <urn:uuid:6cc9ebfa-ed0a-4e53-b18c-941e7d76359c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.iol.co.za/news/world/china-bbq-ban-plans-stoke-up-anger-1.1474768 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951022 | 287 | 1.984375 | 2 |
This resource provides facts and statistics which relate to the stigma and discrimination surrounding mental health problems and looks at the effect this can have on employees and employers.
This bulletin presents statistics on criminal proceedings concluded in Scottish courts during 2007/08 as well as information on motor vehicle offences and statistics on bail orders and offences.
The bulletin starts by summarising the key points from the statistics, before providing more detailed commentary in the subsequent sections.
Document giving a statistical breakdown of the population in custody in England and Wales.
Report presenting statistics on childcare centres in Scotland registered with the Care Commission and childcare centre staff.
Section of the General Register Office for Scotland's website which holds statistical information on the numbers of deaths which were known to be, or thought likely to be, caused by intentional self-harm.
Report containing information on women's experiences in the criminal justice system as victims, suspects, defendants and practitioners in criminal justice agencies.
It compares their representation and experiences with those of men and identifies if, and where, any disproportionality exists in the treatment they receive.
Focus on Gender paints a picture of the relative lives of men and women in contemporary UK society. It includes information on their characteristics, experiences and lifestyles, placing particular emphasis on gender differences. Each overview in the Focus on series combines data from the 2001 Census and other sources to illustrate its topic, and provide links to further information.
Paper summarising data collated from the MAPPA annual reports published in each of the 42 areas of England and Wales.
Publication providing annual estimates of the proportion and number of children, working age adults and pensioners living in low income households in Scotland and the distribution of household income across Scotland.
This news release provides statistical data on children involved in referral; the child protection register; inquiries and case conferences in Scotland for the year ending 31 March 2001. Statistical tables are also included. | <urn:uuid:66d699e8-65e5-4cd6-9bfd-df14c7f543a0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://lx.iriss.org.uk/category/learning-exchange-type-resource/statistics?page=6 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00022-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.939659 | 379 | 2.34375 | 2 |
RailwaysA celebration of railway nostalgia, focusing on the great main line routes and the glamorous trains that plied them. Lavishly illustrated throughout, it's organised into routes, covering all the main London termini and their principal routes as well as major intercity routes in other parts of ...
Keywords: termini, railwayana, atterbury, antique, paul, atterbury
AviationA brilliant new addition to the highly successful 'Secret Projects' series, which looks in detail at post- World War 2 bomber development in the USA.
Keywords: anti-submarine, bomber, buttler, post-war, usaf, usad, supersonics, supersonics, nuclear, post-war, navy, navy, maritime, anti-submarine
RailwaysIn their previous book, The St Andrews Railway the authors set out the history, from inception to closure, of the pioneering branch line that connected the ancient university and golfing town of St Andrews to the outside world. This book continues the story of the East Fife Railways and deals with ... From the series Oakwood Library Of Railway History
Keywords: anstruther, andrews, andrews, andrews, fife, loop, anstruther, andrews, mile-long, terminus, fife, anstruther, genteel, burgh, crail, village, swung, stravithie, melville, fearsome, descent, andrews, spruce, astute, anstruther, andrews, scotland, rose, fife, crail, andrews, wartime, crail, dunino, stravithie, post-war, crail, trundle, farmland, asleep, neuk, anstruther, andrews, fife, await, flag, whistle, hajducki, jodeluk, simpson, bust, neuk, fare, corn, chain
Aviation, MilitaryThe story of army aviation in Ulster dates back to September 1913 when Captain George Dawes of the Royal Flying Corps landed on the beach at Newcastle, co Down. This book begins with an account of that historic occasion and continues with a brief history of army aviation dating back to 1878. It ...
Keywords: army, ulster, army, ulster, captain, newcastle, army, ireland, post-world, army, army, highness, prince, colonel-in-chief, army, warner, prince, memoriam, army, ulster, heavier-than-air, craft, army, army, post-war, army, ireland, army, squadron, squadron, workshop, squadron, squadron, squadron
Buses, Road VehiclesAs 2006 marks the centenary of the commencement of operation of motorbuses by Manchester Corporation Transport Department, and also reflects the fact that it is forty years since the last trolleybus ran in Manchester, Bob Rowe, with assistance from John Senior, has put together this latest volume ... From the series Super Prestige
Keywords: ashton, manchester, trolleybus, manchester, rowe, manchester, ashton-under-lyne, manchester, manchester, council, rowe
Modelling, RailwaysToday's model railways layouts often replicate not just the railway itself, but the broader environment in which it was based. This involves recreating the whole townscape or countryside through which the railway operated. An essential ingredient in this is the correct range of road vehicles, ... From the series Aspects of Modelling
Keywords: townscape, ingredient, urban, farm, beginner, practitioner, morton, clubs
BusesThis highly unusual book portrays aspects of life in Northern Ireland in the immediate post-war years. The themes are transport related and include street scenes in Belfast, the UTA stand at the Balmoral Show, passengers travelling by train and bus, air services from Nutts Corner, heavy haulage by ...
Keywords: ulster, ireland, post-war, belfast, balmoral, haulage, ireland
RailwaysThe idea of a national all-time rail atlas for Australia was first mooted in 1990 by the Australian Railway Historical Society in Canberra. Draft maps were prepared and a team of experts set about making extensive research, which is still ongoing, to enable a comprehensive and accurate geographical ...
Keywords: tasmania, all-time, australia, canberra, draft, australia, tram, trolleybus, australia, tasmania, australasia
Road VehiclesThe Ayrshire Road Run originated in 1993 as part of a local vintage rally and became a long distance run in 2001. The one day run was so successful that the following year it became a two day run with an overnight stop in Portpatrick. Once again there were over 100 vintage and classic commercial ...
Keywords: ayrshire, ayrshire, overnight, portpatrick, bedford, johnstone, leyland, beaver, fuel, tanker, cooper, shelvoke, padkin, farm, lorry
OtherBath Stone Quarries is a comprehensive photographic record of the Bath stone industry from the mid-Victorian period to the present day. Its scope includes not just the surviving underground relics of the industry but also the surface tramways, loading wharfs and cutting yards associated with it. ...
Keywords: bath, stone, subterranean, bath, stone, bath, stone, mid-victorian, wharfs, wartime, post-war, peacetime, westwood, limpley, stoke
Trams, Road VehiclesClassic tramcars once graced the streets of historic Bath and provided speedy transport for residents of such areas as Bathford, Combe Down, Newton St. Lee, Weston, Twerton and Oldfield Park. From the series Tramway Classics
Keywords: bath, bath, bathford, combe, newton, weston, twerton, oldfield, davey, paul, welland, bathford, guildhall, combe, guildhall, newton, oldfield, guildhall, twerton, guildhall, weston, bath
RailwaysThe North of England Open Air Museum at Beamish, County Durham, operates in two time zones, 1825 and 1913, to relive the achievements of the North East in an enjoyable but historically accurate way. The museum is now 40 years old and the continued development of the rail transport collections is ... From the series Great Railway Eras
Keywords: beamish, waggon, beamish, durham, darsley, paul, jarman, beamish, tramway, pockerley, waggon, hint
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Most recent Sermons on Sermon Cloud All Time
Sermons about Gladness
Preacher: Pastor Tony Simpson. Passage: Philippians 2 vv7-8. Christians are to be examples of Christlikness to one another and therefore encourage one another to grow more like Christ. This fellowhip in the gospel should produce mutual gladness and joy as they hold out the gospel even through the difficulties and the suffering of following the Saviour in a hostile world.
Discussion around the role and purpose of Christians. Expounding on the "Anointing of Gladness" and the responsibility of Christians to shine a light on those they encounter by being positive, loving, and supportive.
God wants a testimony to his goodness, grace and mercy. Peter preaches Jesus Christ to the people who are now open to hear the sermon, he charges the people with murder, attributes the healing of the man to Jesus Christ of Nazareth, encourages the people, softens the situation by calling them brethren, remembers that once he had also denied Jesus Christ , and he exalted the people to become Christians.
God Always Has A Witness. When God wants a witness for soul saving, he knows how to get one. There will never be a time there will not be a witness for the Lord on this Earth. Spiritually we are pitiful without Him. How did Jesus show up in your life? If you are looking for a blessing, go to Jesus.
Pastor Russ unpacks the importance of receiving God's gifts that empower and train us to serve with Gladness.
The joy of the Lord is the joy that Jesus has secured for us, and therefore, we always have reasons to rejoice, no matter the circumstances around us.
The Cross and the empty tomb of Jesus have secured for us access to God, and thus, to the source of all genuine joy.
The "joy of the Lord" flows from God's word and results in a joyful living by faith.
The Apostle Paul experienced what he referred to as a "thorn in the flesh". We don't know what it was, but we do know it was not what he wanted. He besought the Lord three times and received an amazing answer to his prayer: an answer that involved three key words (1) grace (2) glory and (3) gladness. This message describes the relationship each has to the other and what they all have with regard to God's miraculous intervention in our lives.
This sermon makes the case that worship is not something to be observed but instead something in which we should be all out participants. Worship is our response - both personally and collectively - to God for Who He is! and What He has done! expressed in and by the things we say and the way we live. | <urn:uuid:739f1b3f-24d4-4867-84d8-6da7b2f8017b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.sermoncloud.com/sermons-about-gladness/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00051-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957323 | 564 | 1.734375 | 2 |
In August, 1999, Pasadena City College became the first community college in southern California to offer an approved program for Speech-Language Pathology Assistants!
View the Speech-Language Pathology Assistant Program video to get an overview of this exciting career and the training and field work provided at PCC.
Speech-Language Pathology Asistants (SLPAs) are trained paraprofessionals who work under the supervision of licensed and certified Speech-Language Pathologists, helping both children and adults with communication disorders to improve their speech and language skills. Under the supervision and direction of the Speech-Language Pathologist, SLPAs may conduct speech-language screenings, implement ongoing treatment and therapy plans, document client progress and assist the SLP during assessment and treatment. They may also assist in research projects and in maintenance of materials and equipment used during therapy.
A SLPA student in a "practice" therapy session while visiting Speech-Language Pathologist Joanna Cazden from Cedars-Sinai Medical Center looks on.
One in six Americans has a speech, hearing or language disorder. These disorders affect infants, children, adults and the elderly. A communication disorder may affect a persons ability to pronounce sound intelligibly, to understand what is being said, to process and remember spoken information, to use appropriate vocabulary and grammar, to speak fluently without stuttering, or to use his voice appropriately. Accidents, illnesses, birth defects and substance abuse can all contribute to communication disorders. These disorders isolate people from their friends, family, and the community, and limit job and educational opportunities. Speech-Language Pathologists and their Assistants help these individuals to recover their ability to speak, understand and interact with others.
Speech-Language Pathology Assistants will be able to work wherever Speech-Language Pathologists work: in public schools (K-14) and day care centers, hospitals, nursing homes and rehabilitation facilities and private practices. Opportunities for Speech Pathologists and their Assistants will expand in Los Angeles, as the population continues to grow and to age (Los Angeles Times, January 13, 2002). US News and World Report on February 18, 2002 reported that " many schools already face a pressing shortage of bilingual SL Ps.."
The Bureau of Labor Statistics (ASHA Leader, April 30, 2002) rated speech pathology among the "hottest" professions in the next decade " with a 50% or more increase in jobs " especially in California. Our PCC SLPA graduates are currently employed in hospitals, public schools and private practices.
The SLPA program at Pasadena City College is a 60 unit, 2-year Associate Degree program approved by the Speech Pathology Licensing Board. Upon completion of the required curriculum, which includes supervised clinical fieldwork experience in both a public school and hospital/clinical setting, students will receive both a Certificate of Achievement as a Speech-Language Pathology Assistant and an Associates degree. Students who already have a degree or have received General Education college credits may have some program requirements waived. Contact the coordinator, Rosemary, or a PCC counselor for more information. | <urn:uuid:2caacf9c-befb-4064-96af-9faed1c8f74f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.pasadena.edu/divisions/performing-comm/SLPA/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00065-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.947792 | 631 | 2.15625 | 2 |
App Name: Britannica Kids - Volcanoes
What does it promise? The App Store says, “Volcanoes are an awesome display of the Earth’s power. Explore them interactively with this new app and learn about the world’s major volcanoes and their eruptions, lava, plate tectonics and much more.”
Does it deliver? Learning about Volcanoes has never been more fun with this quick, interactive and educational app. Developed for students aged 8 to 12, the app offers a selection of games that are both fun to play and educational.
The Jigsaw Puzzles, created from amazing graphics of volcanoes, prompt users to break apart the puzzle and have some fun by shaking the device and then sliding the pieces back into place.
Kids can scramble images of volcanoes in The Magic Square game by shaking their device. The challenge is re-arranging the squares to unscramble the image.
Users also will enjoy brushing off lava, soot and dust from the eruption of Vesuvius to reveal an object in the city of Pompeii, and then try to guess what it is.
Can I use it in my classroom? Certainly. The app covers nearly every educational aspect of volcanoes including lava and magma, types of volcanoes, birth of an island, plate tectonics and eruptions.
All apps can be found in the iPad apps store under education. | <urn:uuid:d7ef8752-5588-4aa1-a86a-fb5d1f4f9f67> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.educationworld.com/a_tech/app-reviews/encyclopedia-kids-volacnoes.shtml | 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 | 0.943808 | 294 | 3.28125 | 3 |
Cardinal Stafford: Torture of Terrorism Suspects ‘Absolutely Forbidden’
BY David Curtin
December 9-15, 2001 Issue | Posted 12/9/01 at 2:00 PM
TORONTO — A high-ranking Vatican official has denounced recent speculation in the American media on whether it might be morally permissible for authorities to use torture to extract information from terrorism suspects.
In a lecture given Nov. 16 at the University of Toronto, Cardinal J. Francis Stafford, president of the Pontifical Council for the Laity, said such speculation is motivated by an unholy kind of “fear.” The former archbishop of Denver stated that the Second Vatican Council “solemnly declared” that “physical and psychological torture” is “intrinsically evil,” and therefore “absolutely forbidden.”
The media debate began with an article in The Washington Post Oct. 21, in which FBI sources claimed interrogators of four Sept. 11 suspects in New York might seek authority to use “pressure tactics” — such things as forced injections of sodium pentothal “truth serum,” or extradition to countries in which torture is legal.
The measures are reportedly being considered because suspects believed to have the fullest knowledge of the activities of the AlQaeda terror network are refusing to disclose any information to interrogators.
Newsweek columnist Jonathan Alter wrote Nov. 5 that while “we can't legalize physical torture … we need to keep an open mind about certain measures to fight terrorism, like court-sanctioned psychological interrogation. And we'll have to think about transferring some suspects to our less squeamish allies, even if that's hypocritical.”
In Gaudium et Spes, the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, the fathers of Vatican II included “physical and mental torture and attempts to coerce the spirit” along with abortion, slavery, and genocide in a list of “disgraceful” acts which “infect civilization” and are “a negation of the honor due to the Creator.”
Quoting this passage in his 1993 encyclical letter Veritatis Splendor (The Splendor of Truth), Pope John Paul II explained that such things are “intrinsically evil”; that is, they are wrong always and everywhere, regardless of the circumstances or the gravity of the situation.
Father Richard John Neuhaus, editor in chief of First Things, said that the use of torture would be wrong even if it were aimed at getting information to stop a nuclear explosion.
“To use a very dramatic example, what if a 12-year-old girl knows the location of a nuclear bomb about to go off in Manhattan, which will kill millions — is it right to torture her to extract the information? No, in spite of the good which could be done with the information. There are some things which we ought never to do … if we wish to preserve civilization and our own moral dignity.”
Father Neuhaus explained that moral goods are higher even than the good of life itself in some cases.
“It is unacceptable to treat another human being as an object,” he continued. “Anything which violates the dignity of the human being as an acting subject, which takes away his freedom or power to consent, is wrong.”
The United States has signed and ratified the United Nations' Convention Against Torture and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which forbid physical and psychological torture. The Convention Against Torture states that “no exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture.”
Extraditing suspects to countries that use torture is also forbidden.
In its 1999 report to the UN committee monitoring implementation of the Convention Against Torture, the U.S. State Department stated that the laws of the United States also forbid the use of torture: “Torture is prohibited by law throughout the United States. It is categorically denounced as a matter of policy and as a tool of state authority. Every act constituting torture under the Convention constitutes a criminal offence under the law of the United States. No official of the government, federal, state, or local, civilian or military, is authorized to commit or to instruct anyone else to commit torture.”
The State Department added, “No exceptional circumstances may be invoked as a justification of torture [including] a ‘state of public emergency.’”
The Washington Post article noted, however, that lying to suspects is not illegal in the United States. Also, not all forms of psychological pressure in an interrogation would be classed as torture.
What Is Torture?
Father Neuhaus said that while any form of torture is wrong, it is necessary to clarify “what we mean by psychological torture. There are certain [common] practices of police interrogation designed to elicit information, which may be used when authorities are morally certain of someone's guilt [or knowledge of some criminal plan].”
Authority over such matters is exercised by the Department of Justice. The department's Public Affairs Office did not respond to the Register's request for an interview by press time.
Opponents of torture say that apart from the moral issues involved, torture is not an especially reliable investigative tool. National Review Online columnist John Derbyshire argued Nov. 16 that “as a means of discovering facts … torture doesn't work very well. Under physical torture, some people will lie, some will say anything to make the pain stop, even just for a while; and a surprising number will refuse to yield.”
Derbyshire cited a source indicating that while only one in a hundred people tortured by Stalin's secret police refused to confess, most of them were in fact innocent and therefore were “confessing” to false events.
David Curtin writes
Copyright © 2013 EWTN News, Inc. All rights reserved. | <urn:uuid:9819fc3f-08fc-4b85-9b10-e5fd4e6d51ef> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ncregister.com/site/print_article/10955/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00052-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.943604 | 1,255 | 1.671875 | 2 |
Division of Behavioral Health Services
The DBHS Efficiency Committee (EC) was created to promote a culture of paperwork reduction and efficiency within ADHS/DBHS. Immediate priorities included developing a work plan to establish priorities based on the recommendations made by the original committee and to become a filter to improve efficiency and reduce paper creep at all levels of the behavioral health system.
- Claudia Sloan, Special Projects Administrator
- Dara Stewart, Clinical Auditor, QM
Who is the DBHS Efficiency Committee?
The DBHS Efficiency Committee consists of representatives from each of the functional areas including DBHS leadership at the Division of Behavioral Health in order to incorporate all ideals into a solution-based forum.
The Committee has worked to create a work plan that leads the Division towards a common goal:
Reduce the paperwork burden and redundancies within the public behavioral health system to:
- foster increased workforce satisfaction and retention
- increase time available for clinical supervision
- increase time available for face-to-face interaction with consumers
DBHS EC Meeting Minutes
Ad Hoc Committees
The EC Work Plan incorporates the use of Ad Hoc Committees for a more focused approach in addressing recommendations made by the Paperwork Reduction Committee directly to DBHS. Additionally, it allows for more efficient use of Committee member time during meetings. The Ad Hoc Committees are:
Note: Information provided in PDF files, unless otherwise indicated. | <urn:uuid:fa7e18b7-3de8-4a33-b8d0-acbd504d5b0a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://azdhs.com/bhs/advisory/efficiency/index.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00048-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.9262 | 285 | 1.523438 | 2 |
Consciousness to Consciousness: Telepathy
Telepathy is the parapsychological phenomenon of transference of thoughts, information, and ideas from one individual to another without the use of the five senses. The word telepathy comes from the Greek tele and patheia, meaning “distant” and “feeling,” respectively. F. W. H. Myers, a classical scholar, coined the term in 1882. He was also the founder of the Society for Psychical Research in the United Kingdom, which is a nonprofit organization dedicated to the study and research of paranormal or psychic phenomena in an unbiased way.
The transference or communication of thoughts in telepathy is said to happen through psi, or the “mind soul,” which facilitates paranormal cognition. Deductions from bodily gestures, body language, or physical observation do not count as telepathy. Telepathy is pure mind communication, unaided by our senses.
Types of Telepathy
Telepathy can be broadly classified under two categories: intentional and spontaneous communication. Intentional communication involves transference of thoughts by the sender through mind concentration in an effort to pass on the thoughts to the receiver, who may or may not be aware of this intent of the sender. Such communication can be more successfully carried out on hypnotized subjects. Spontaneous communication, on the other hand, refers to unintentional transfer of thoughts or ideas from one person's mind to another's. This includes intimation of illness, danger, or distress, despite physical distance and no sensory communication between the subjects.
Another common classification is precognitive, intuitive, and retrocognitive telepathy. Precognitive telepathy refers to instances where you, as a receiver, get information about the future of the subject. Similarly, intuitive and retrocognitive telepathy is the transfer of information to the receiver from the present and past of the subject.
Telepathy Versus Clairvoyance
There have been several debates surrounding how the parapsychological phenomena of telepathy and clairvoyance are different. Clairvoyance refers to the ability to see into the future or past and know what will happen to an object, individual, or at a particular place.
Though there is no consensus on how the two are different, the key distinction often cited is based on the source of the information. In the case of telepathy, the source of information is the mind of another person, while in clairvoyance it is a direct external intangible source. It is believed that a clairvoyant taps information from a spiritual realm or a larger consciousness.
Scientific Studies, Discussions, and Evidence
Like other forms of parapsychological phenomena, telepathy too has been the topic of many studies. Several experiments and research studies have been conducted to prove or disprove the existence of telepathy. Interestingly, supporters of telepathy not only come from believers in the paranormal, but also from the scientific community, which has researched the subject extensively.
One of the earliest studies conducted in the area was by John E. Coover, a psychologist from Stanford University, in 1912. He did a number of telepathic tests involving guessing playing cards, with results pointing toward the existence of telepathy. Starting in 1927, J. B. Rhine from Duke University conducted several ESP (extrasensory perception) tests, which included telepathic experiments following stricter protocols. Results of these experiments were published in his book, Extra-Sensory Perception.
Since then many other experiments and studies have been conducted in this field. The Ganzfeld experiment, devised by Wolfgang Metzger in the 1930s, is one of the most notable experiments that have established the existence of the phenomenon. This experiment has offered some of the strongest quantifiable results to date about telepathy.
As telepathy is an extrasensory phenomenon that transcends time and space, its explanation within our current understanding of physics and science may not be possible. However, researchers and physicists are trying to understand telepathy within the realm of science. Some recent efforts have also tried to link telepathy to quantum physics.
The proponents claim that our mind provides a platform for electrical and quantum impulses, which can be received by other minds. Recently, a group of Chinese researchers developed a primary model of how quantum telepathy would work. Their argument is based on the fact that if you bring consciousness into the picture, the premise of nonlocality in quantum theory can be challenged, and quantum superluminal communication will be possible.
Telepathy, Technology, and the Future
In the future, the concept of telepathy may see a convergence with technology. Scientists claim that cybernetics will enable a connection of two human minds using computers, and the future may see increased use of such technology for communication. This may not be telepathy in the purely psychic sense of the concept, but it would certainly see more and more application in the future. | <urn:uuid:bbd27e82-b976-4514-9d35-d697a25d626c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.netplaces.com/evidence-of-the-afterlife/consciousness/consciousness-to-consciousness-telepathy.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00035-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.938818 | 1,008 | 3.296875 | 3 |
"There are opportunities for us to accelerate our execution in this area," said CEO Steve Ballmer. "We've done a lot of work to make sure we have a team that will be able to accelerate it."
Microsoft, which recently said that a Windows Mobile software update will come later this year, has been criticised for failing to improve its platform to better compete with the iPhone and other new touch screen phones.
Companies have seen a rise in the number of consumer devices like the Android G1 and the iPhone, being brought into the work place. These devices don't meet the security requirements that some organisations have, and while Windows Mobile devices do, users don't appear to want Windows Mobile phones as much as consumer-based devices.
One of the challenges Microsoft faces is that Windows Mobile supports various kinds of form factors, Ballmer said. "In general, I'll make the argument that having diversity of form factor serves the broadest set of the population," he said.
"The question is how simple can we make it to write an application that runs in multiple modalities."
Microsoft is working with the mobile industry to define classes of form factors that might make it easier for Windows Mobile to run with the highest level of capabilities across a variety of form factors, he said.
Ballmer also said the company is working harder on simplifying its software licensing terms across the board, which Ballmer said is hard.
"Here's the catch 22. A lot of what it would mean to simplify things always looks to us like removing options. For every option we remove, I know we'd upset some customers for whom that was the perfect option," he said.
Ballmer also reiterated comments he's made recently that despite economic pressure, Microsoft plans to continue its same level of research and development investment. The rest of the IT industry probably will as well, he said. And while venture capital might shrink overall, that only means that perhaps fewer competitors creating a certain type of technology will get funding, but the technology will still make it to market, he predicted.
He also offered high hopes for Windows 7, the next version of the operating system. The software has already passed one critical milestone: Ballmer's 14 year old son downloaded it to a home computer that his mother doesn't like to be fussed with "and she hasn't complained", Ballmer said.
His son also loaded it onto his school computer, even though his school - which happens to be the same one Microsoft founder Bill Gates attended - isn't supporting it yet.
"14 year olds are pretty crucial so we've gotten past that test," Ballmer said.
See also: Windows Vista SP2 available for download | <urn:uuid:6d7faf77-8108-468c-b1d1-fe13519e1748> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/news/mobile-phone/112175/microsoft-ups-efforts-to-take-on-iphone/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.975177 | 545 | 1.554688 | 2 |
Wednesday, November 15, 2006
Statistics Primer. Part 6: Wrapping it All Up In A Nice Package
My series on a primer for statistics is pretty much done. I could go on a little bit longer about how confidence intervals can be improved when a poll uses cluster sampling, for example, but you can google "bootstrap confidence intervals" yourself. And it's worth reminding all you erudite and nice readers that no poll is better than the basic plan for collecting the data. If the researchers did not use random sampling and/or if the sampling frame was selected poorly, the results mean nothing outside the actual group that is being questioned. The crucial question to answer is whether the findings can be generalized to the population that we are interested in, for example, to all Americans, and a poor polling plan makes the answer always negative.
Even a random sample can always be erroneous because of the effect of pure luck, but the sampling error can be quantified as discussed in the last installment to this series. But when a sample is non-randomly drawn, it can also be biased, and we cannot quantify the bias. For instance, a study which tries to find out the health habits of Americans by only asking people at the emergency clinics of hospitals is going to be biased. That is a bad way of trying to get a random sample, because it will oversample people who are sick right now and it is also likely to oversample poor people who have no regular general practitioner to go to. A similar problem may be created in polls which use land-line telephones, if the individuals who only have a cell phone are different from those who have a land-line phone. It's possible that the group these polls reach is older, on average, and more likely to be at home. If being older and spending more time at home answering the phone makes ones opinions different from those of people who flit about with a cell phone in their belt, then the polls could be biased.
A further selection bias in polls may come from non-response bias. Lots of people refuse to answer polls altogether. If the people who refuse have different opinions, on average, than those who eagerly chat with pollsters, then the results are likely to be biased, i.e., not generalizable to the population we want to learn about, say, likely voters.
Then there is the way questions are framed in polls. It is well known that a certain answer can be elicited by just changing the question. Introducing clear judgemental components is one nifty trick to achieve this. Or one could use versions of the old "Have you started brushing your teeth yet?" One reason why polls on what to do about abortions get such different results is in the way the questions are framed.
Statistics is a very large field, and what I've touched in this short series of posts is just a very small square inch of the field. I linked to some internet courses on statistics earlier on and I encourage you to pursue more study on your own. Or you can ask me questions either by e-mail or in the comments threads, and if I know the answer I will let you know what it is. Statistics can be fun! Honest!
To finish off these meanderings, I want to talk about something that pisses me off: the way the term "statistically significant" is misused all over the place. First, this term is a technical one, and the "significant" part does NOT have its everyday meaning. If a finding is statistically significant it could be totally unimportant in everyday utility, not earth-shaking at all, even trivial and frivolous. And a statistically nonsignificant finding does NOT mean that the study found nothing of importance. Let me clarify all this a little.
We have talked about confidence intervals in this series. If you have taken a statistics intro course you may remember that the topic of confidence intervals is usually followed by the topic of hypothesis testing, and that is the application where statistical significance is commonly introduced. "Hypothesis" is just a guess or a theory you have about the likely magnitude of some number or relationship between numbers, and "testing" means that we use data we have collected to see how your guess fares.
The way this testing goes is by setting the theory you DON'T support as the one you try to disprove. The theory you don't support is usually the conventional knowledge you try to prove wrong or the idea that some new policy or treatment has no effect and so on, and it's called "the null hypothesis". The theory you secretly want to prove is then called the "alternative hypothesis". And yes, statisticians are terrible wordsmiths.
So your hypothesis testing tries to prove the null hypothesis wrong. If you can prove it wrong then the alternative hypothesis must be right. Of course for this to work you must frame the two hypotheses so that nothing falls outside them. An example might be useful here:
Suppose that you have a new treatment for the symptoms of some chronic disease. You run a study where you give the new treatment to some patients randomly and the old treatment to a similar group of patients, also randomly selected. You then measure the reduction in unpleasant symptoms in the two groups, and you use these data to determine if the new treatment is worth while. Now, the null hypothesis here could be that the new treatment is the same as the old treatment. The alternative hypothesis would then be that the new treatment is different; it could be either better or worse than the old treatment. If you decide to test this pair of hypotheses, you are said to do a two-sided test of hypotheses, because both large and small values in your experimental group might be evidence that the new treatment is different from the old one. It could be better or it could be worse.
It is more likely that you are interested in finding if the new treatment is better than the old one. This would be a one-sided test of hypotheses, and you would write the null hypothesis differently. It would be that the new treatment is either the same as the old treatment or worse. Then the alternative hypothesis would be that the new treatment is better than the old treatment. If fewer bad symptoms is what the test measures then only low values in the experimental group would support the idea that the new treatment works better.
Given that you are using sample data to do all this, you add something like the staple of the confidence intervals to your testing procedure, and you report the results in a form which tells the informed reader how likely the disproving of the null hypothesis is to work in the population rather than in the sample. The staple we use in the two-sided test of hypotheses is exactly the same as we used for confidence interval construction, except that we construct the interval for the way the world looks if the null hypothesis is true! Remember the 95% confidence interval? In a two-sided test of hypothesis, using this level of confidence translates into a 5% significance level of the results, meaning that the interval we have created around the possible mean under the null hypothesis is so long that it only omits the utmost 2.5% of the possible distribution of sample means at each end of the distribution.
Now suppose that the made-up study I have described here finds that the sample mean of bad symptoms in the experimental group is so low that the probability of such a value drawn from a population actually centering on the average symptoms from the old treatment is at most 2.5%. Then statisticians using the 5% level of significance would argue that the study disproves the null hypothesis that the old treatment is no different from the old one.
If the study had used a one-sided test of hypothesis, the story changes slightly. It's as if we are only going to look at the staple arrows missing the bull's eye when they do it on one side of the dartboard (read the earlier posts for this metaphor), and we are going to hone down the staple width appropriately to do that. Thus, a 90% confidence interval based on the null hypothesis would leave 5% in each end of the distribution uncovered, and in my example we'd only look at the lower end of the distribution to see if the experimental results fall into that area or not. If they do, we reject the null hypothesis at the same 5% level of significance (or at 0.05 level if you go all decimal on me). If the results fall elsewhere on the distribution, we keep the null hypothesis and find the results not statistically significant.
But of course finding that the new treatment is no better than the old one IS significant! And finding that something is "statistically significant" just means that the null hypothesis was rejected at the 0.05 or 5% level, that the researchers used either a 95% or a 90% confidence interval for the null hypothesis data, depending on whether the test was two-sided or one-sided.
Likewise, I could make up a silly study about something quite silly and find the results statistically significant without saying anything at all about their real-world relevance. Note also that we could find something to be statistically significant and that something could be such a minor effect in reality that it would hardly matter at all.
The convention is to call the results "statistically significant" if the null hypothesis is rejected at the 0.05 or 5% level. If the researchers used 0.01 or 1% level in their calculations, then any rejecting of the null hypothesis that takes place is "statistically very significant". That's all these terms mean.
Many studies now dispense with the terms altogether and instead report something called the p-values. These are the actual probabilities of getting the experimental sample result or one more extreme if the null hypothesis in fact was the correct one. The smaller the p-value is the less likely the null hypothesis looks. You can always compare the p-values in your head to the 0.05 and 0.01 conventional values if you so wish.
The end of this particular road. I hope that you have enjoyed the series and that you will now go out and learn the zillions of additional things in statistics.
The earlier posts in this series are here: | <urn:uuid:91e09f08-be5e-4baa-b32e-e2aaddb4119f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://echidneofthesnakes.blogspot.com/2006/11/statistics-primer-part-6-wrapping-it.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00050-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951345 | 2,082 | 2.28125 | 2 |
Pablo Picasso. La Soupe
Spanish, 1881 - 1973
La Soupe c 1902
oil on canvas
38.5 x 46.0 cm
Gift of Margaret Dunlap Crang, 1983
(C) Sucession Pablo PICASSO/ PICASSO adminstration/ SODRAC (Montreal) 2003
Michael and Sarah Stein, Paris; Gertrude Stein, Paris. Karl/Klaus Sternheim, Paris by 1932. Von Ripper, Paris. (M. Knoedler & Co., New York). (Caroll Carstairs Gallery, New York); purchased April 1949 by Mr Moffat Dunlap Esq., Toronto; by inheritance to his wife Mrs Margaret Dunlap; Mrs Dunlap remarries with Mr J. Harold Crang, Toronto by 1957; gift 1983 to AGO.
Note Provenance gap: After Sternheim (1932), it is not clear when the picture was acquired by Von Ripper, Knoedler, and eventually Carstairs before it was sold in 1949. New York/San Francisco 1970-1971, p. 164 Moravia & Lecaldano 1968, no. 34, p. 89. It is unclear which of the Steins acquired the painting and which of the Steins disposed of it. Michael Steins greater activity in the art market leads one to believe he acquired it and that he would have been the one to dispose of it, however Daix and Boudaille 1966 (no. VII.11, p. 209) claim Gertrude Stein owned the painting. Apparently, this painting was a favorite with the entire Stein family. It has long been known as having belonged to Gertrude Stein; it appears in old photographs of the apartment of her brother and sister-in-law, Michael and Sarah Stein. Margaret Potter (Associate Curator, Museum of Modern Art, New York) to Mrs Harold Crang, 11 March 1970, Accession 83/316. However, there has been disagreement regarding Gertrude Steins ownership of the painting. Although your painting, Soup [sic], was not in Gertrudes collection, I wonder whether you would still be willing to lend it to us . Jean Sutherland Boggs (National Gallery of Canada) to Mrs J.H. Crang, 2 March 1971, Accession 83/316. Subsequent correspondence on the matter of the Gertrude Stein provenance further muddies the water. The Stein family was very close at that time, and it is well-known that the Steins traded works back and forth and that Michael Stein, the elder brother, acted as a financial agent for all of the Stein family. Given the circumstance, I cannot be absolutely sure that the painting was once owned by Gertrude, but the circumstantial evidence is strong. Margaret Potter (Associate Curator, Museum of Modern Art, New York) to J.H. Crang, 1 April 1971, Accession 83/316. Records are incomplete regarding the given name of the owner. The credit line under the reproduction of AGO 83/316 in Cahiers dArt, VII (June 1932), p. 162 gives Klaus Sternheim as the owner. A letter from Christopher Burge (Vice President, Christies Appraisals, New York) to Mrs J. Harold Crang (Toronto), 4 January 1984, Accession 83/316 also indicates Klaus Sternheim as the owner, although Burges letter does not provide a location. The credit line in Zervos 1932 (I), no. 131, pl. 64 indicates Karl Sternheim is the owner. Moravia & Lecaldano 1968, no. 34, p. 89. Daix and Boudaille 1966 no. VII.11, p. 209 Z. Sharkey (Carstairs Gallery, New York) to Mr Moffat Dunlap (Toronto), 11 April 1949, Accession 83/316 acknowledges receipt of payment through the Art Gallery of Toronto for La Soupe.
Please use the guide to read Gallery provenance texts:
- Provenance is listed in chronological order, beginning with the earliest known owner.
- Dealers, auction houses or agents appear in parentheses.
- Relationships between owners and methods of transactions are indicated by punctuation: a semicolon is used to indicate that the work passed directly between two owners (including dealers, auction houses, or agents), and a period is used to separate two owners (including dealers auction houses or agents) if a direct transfer did not occur or is not known to have occurred.
- Footnotes are used to document or clarify where critical gaps in provenance exist. | <urn:uuid:d8801255-4c90-43c9-9e20-26ab4702f040> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ago.net/pablo-picasso | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00024-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.935185 | 973 | 1.570313 | 2 |
Clarocision Research and Marketing helps businesses both large and small to gather primary marketing research data to help in key decision making processes.
RE-POSTED ARTICLE :Source: http://www.allbusiness.com/marketing/market-research/2587-1.html#ixzz1voKUJUuw
When you are starting your business — and when your business is growing and expanding into new markets, products, or services — understanding the basics of market research is key to success.
Market research helps you understand three things: your industry, your competition, and your target market.
There are two kinds of market research: Primary research is research in which you go directly to the source to gather data or ask questions.
Primary research methods can include:
Clarocision Research & Marketing specialize in bilingual recruiting: English and Spanish. Our recruiting field includes the tri-county area of Palm Beach, Broward (Fort Lauderdale) & Miami Dade in South Florida.Clarocision Research & Marketing has accumulated an impressive database of respondents of various demographics who participate, as appropriate, in our projects:
- Holding in-person focus groups with members of your target market
- Interviewing members of your target market in person or by phone
- Visiting your competitors’ stores or locations
- Conducting surveys of your target market either online, in writing, or through social media tools such as Facebook or Twitter
- Observing your target market (such as at a mall or community event) and noting how they behave Secondary research is data that’s been gathered and published by other researchers or sources
You can get secondary research by:
Reading articles in trade journals
- Diverse ethnic background
- Diverse language; English , Spanish and Creole
- Wide cross section of professions including medical doctors
- Online/in-person /phone panels
- Varying demographics of all ages; from kids to seniors
- Industry publications
- Doing Internet searches
- Visiting a reference library
- Contacting industry associations or trade organizations
- Visiting public agency or government websites, or reading their reports
- Whether you are doing primary or secondary research, here are some of the key questions to ask: Industry:
- What stage is this industry in (inception, mature, or declining)?
- Is the industry outlook favorable, or is it shrinking?
- What challenges is this industry facing?
- What trends are creating opportunity for this industry?
- What is the average profit margin in this industry?
- Competitors: Who are your key competitors? How big are they?
- Are they small businesses or global corporations?
- Where are they located? W
- hat is their business model?
- How do they make their money, and what sales channels do they use?
- How much do they charge, and how profitable are they?
- Target market:
- What are their demographics (age, sex, race, marital status)?
- What is their income?
- How much do they spend on products or services like yours?
- What purchasing channels do they use (retail stores, online, consultative sales)?
The answers to these questions will help you determine the feasibility of your business model, plan your marketing strategy, and pinpoint your target customers.
Clarocision Research is located in South Florida close to both Fort Lauderdale & Miami. Call 954-741-2234 for details | <urn:uuid:641c35e5-3cf8-4e66-9fbb-056afc954f8a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.crmfirm.com/clarocision-research-helps-businesses-with-marketing-research/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.926664 | 713 | 2 | 2 |
Why is Nirvana Day celebrated on different days and why does it have different names?
Buddhists use the lunar calendar to define when dates of festivals should take place. Dates when there are a full moon are used often. The different names for Nirvana Day arose due to a split in Buddhist teaching in 100 AD which resulted in the two separate schools of thought, Hinayana and Mahayana. There are now even more, including, for example, Zen Buddhism.
Nirvana Day is followed by Mahayana, or Theravada Buddhists, who tend to be people from China, Korea, Japan and Vietnam.
How do you reach Nirvana?
Nirvana is attained by meditating and following the guiding principles of Buddhism, in particular the Four Noble Truths which Buddha experienced whilst he meditated under the Bodhi tree:
- Life is suffering
- Suffering is due to having desires
- Suffering can be ended when overcoming desires
- The way to end suffering is through the Eightfold Path.
The four noble truths have multiple references as well and can be named differently, but they refer to the same thing.
The Eightfold Path is:
- Right view
- Right thought
- Right speech
- Right action
- Right livelihood
- Right effort
- Right mindfulness
- Right contemplation
What is meditation?
Buddhists believe that meditation is crucial to well being. It is a way to clear the mind and encourage positive thinking. It also concentrates on ridding the mind of bad thoughts and negative energy.
To meditate you need to find a quiet area where you can concentrate. There are lots of different ways of meditating. Some people sit on a cushion, with their legs crossed, focussing on deep breathing. Others attend classes and learn different techniques and how to meditate for longer sessions. | <urn:uuid:d40853fa-ba1d-4b26-88a0-bb8d98a9dc20> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/religion/buddhism/nirvana_questions.shtml | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00042-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.932275 | 382 | 3.359375 | 3 |
The act of writing, unlike speech, is not an innate human ability; it is learned, or discovered, over time. So, who discovered it first? Archaeological evidence suggests the earliest organised system of writing was in India. For Western civilisation, arguably the oldest surviving records were in Sumerian, the language of peoples who lived about 5,000 years ago in southern Mesopotamia (where Iraq is today).
Some people have suggested that the Egyptians farther west can justifiably claim historicity for the earliest writing with their pictographic hieroglyphics. But that discussion will have to wait until another Entry.
The Sumerian language had a system of picture writing consisting of over 1,500 symbols, representing objects, numbers and ideas. These were inscribed by a pointed stylus on pieces of clay tablets which were then baked to preserve them. Objects were depicted as picture representations, numbers by repeated shapes (lines or circles) while proper nouns used the 'rebus'. A rebus is something of a literary device in which the name of the object depicted stands for the sound of word/syllable. Many of us have, sadly, had to use a rebus - IOU!
All well and good, but where did this writing system come from? Did the Sumerians invent it or was it developed from something even older? The French-American archaeologist, Denise Schmandt-Besserat, has proposed that it developed from a form of accounting.
Schmandt-Besserat's theory goes something like this: in many parts of the world, people - Romans, for example - used small objects (stones, bits of wood and the like) as tokens to keep records of accounts and transactions (the Latin word for small pebble - calculus - gives our word 'calculate'). Such small objects made of clay, such as spheres, cones, discs and cylinders, have been found over the whole of the Middle East. The earliest have been dated from about 8000 BC, just about the time when the hunter-gatherer was becoming a farmer. Different-shaped objects are, naturally, thought to have represented different things.
From around 3500 BC, with the growth of cities, these objects came to be used in a new way. If a farmer or cloth-maker sent goods to the city, he also sent a record to show how much merchandise there was.
So, if he sent 50 sheep, he would send 50 tokens inside a baked clay sphere closed up with his personal seal - his signature, as it were. The receiver of the goods would break open the sphere to check the contents matched the goods received. Later, the idea grew of marking the outside of the sphere with pictures of what was inside to avoid breaking it open. These pictures resemble the cuneiform markings dated some 500 years later.
Later on still, people felt they could do away with the spheres altogether and put the pictures on flat pieces of clay. More and more transactions and messages were put onto flat pieces of clay (and sometimes wood) and modern writing was born. Eventually, a blunt stylus took the place of a pointed one. Why this should have happened is a mystery but it meant that the symbols generally didn't look very much like pictures any more.
The wedge-shaped figures that are seen on tablets from about the middle of the 4th millennium BC were named cuneiform, from the Latin for wedge (cuneus).
The next step in the process was a move from a pictographic style - where the symbol represented an accepted meaning - to a phonographic one - where it stood for a recognised sound. The Sumerians made this shift but only as a last resort. If they could 'translate' things into pictures, they did so; only ambiguous or impossible-to-draw items were 'phonographed'.
Note: 'Pidgin' in the title of this Entry is used here in its original sense, defined by the Oxford dictionary as being from the late 19th century: Chinese alteration of English 'business'. | <urn:uuid:2cf08f0e-3244-4ac4-a6a6-8c89ccfaf6ec> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://h2g2.com/dna/h2g2/classic/A30652788 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.974 | 833 | 3.8125 | 4 |
Cutting across party lines, all 60 MLAs of Nagaland called on Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Tuesday and sought an early settlement of the vexed Naga issue. Chief Minister Neiphiu Rio even offered to resign to pave the way for a “partyless interim” government and return of peace in the State.
“We told the Prime Minister that the Nagas want an early solution to the six-decades-old problem. After 15 years of ceasefire and political dialogue, the Naga people feel that it is long enough for the government of India to understand the issue. Underground groups also feel the same way. We have come here to convey that the Nagas are now desirous of an early settlement, honourable to them,” Mr. Rio told journalists.
Two MPs from the State — one from the Lok Sabha and the other from the Rajya Sabha — were also part of the delegation that met Dr. Singh and Home Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde.
‘A historic step’
Mr. Rio said the coming together of all MLAs was a historic step that represented the desire and aspirations of the people.
Refusing to set any deadline for the Centre, he said: “We are hoping that good sense will prevail and lead to early settlement. If the government of India fails to reach a settlement, it will be a lost opportunity. All political parties have surrendered their position, which is very rare. They have pledged to make any kind of sacrifice to have a permanent settlement.”
Going into the background of the Joint Legislators’ Forum of MLAs formed in November 2009, Mr. Rio said all MLAs had been working hard to facilitate talks between the rebel groups and the government. The Assembly passed a unanimous resolution in July this year to pave the way for an “alternative arrangement” for the sake of permanent peace in Nagaland, and the entire region.
Senior Congress MLA and Leader of the Opposition Tokheho Yepthomi said: “We have informed the Prime Minister and the Home Minister that unless advantage is taken of the conducive atmosphere prevailing in the State, it will be a lost opportunity, which could lead to violence as underground groups are getting restless.”
Elections were due in March next, but instead of conducting them, Mr. Yepthomi said, the Centre should form a partyless government, wherein underground groups would also have an important role to play.
Notably, the ruling Nagaland People’s Front (NPF) and the Congress differ on territorial issues, but they have agreed to cooperate with the Centre in clinching a solution. On the other hand, the National Socialist Council of Nagalim (Isak-Muivah) wants integration of the Naga areas outside the State to form a Greater Nagaland that would affect at least three States in the region. But this demand has been rejected by the Centre. | <urn:uuid:6bb011b6-c695-4e99-8b8d-5288d1f90d0d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/other-states/all-mlas-ready-to-sacrifice-positions-for-naga-peace/article3739081.ece | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00052-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.966986 | 610 | 1.546875 | 2 |
Guamina, which means "united home for working, mutual aid, solidarity and sharing", was founded in 1988, and joined FoEI in the same year. The organization aims to support rural and urban populations in their daily fight to conquer poverty and become self-reliant. A newsletter is produced with grassroots support in two local languages, as well as French. Guamina’s core national campaign issues are mining and desertification. The organisation participates in the following FoEI campaigns: desertification, mining, sustainable agriculture, food security, and ecological debt. Guamina also works to promote the status of women, and provides training and literacy courses in the local language for women and other target groups. | <urn:uuid:6ed17064-b6ef-4933-9f2a-6896c29e348a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.foei.org/en/who-we-are/member-directory/groups-by-region/africa/mali.html?set_language=en | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965885 | 142 | 1.953125 | 2 |
Nestlé Health Science, a fully owned subsidiary of Nestlé, and the pharmaceutical and healthcare group Chi-Med have agreed to form a 50/50 joint venture to be named Nutrition Science Partners Limited (NSP). NSP will research, develop, manufacture and market innovative nutritional and medicinal products derived from botanical plants, and will focus on gastrointestinal health and may in the future expand into the metabolic disease and brain health areas.
The partnership gives Nestlé Health Science access to Chi-Med’s traditional Chinese medicine library of more than 50,000 extracts from over 1,200 different herbal plants and includes the access to use the botanical research and development platform in gastrointestinal areas, which includes discovery research, non-clinical and pharmaceutical science functions and an understanding of the botanical guidelines and regulations.
“This joint venture provides Nestlé Health Science with an opportunity to develop and commercialize truly innovative and scientifically validated botanical-based nutrition for personalized healthcare in gastrointestinal health,” said Luis Cantarell, president and chief executive officer for Nestlé Health Science. “Nestlé Health Science will bring unique competencies in nutritional sciences, diagnostics and commercial capabilities, and Chi-Med will provide its best-in-class traditional Chinese medicine library and discovery platform, which will be the basis of Nutrition Science Partners’ future gastrointestinal pipeline.”
Hutchison MediPharma Limited, a subsidiary of Chi-Med, is already advanced in the research and development into a first-of-its-kind botanical product, to be taken orally, to manage mild to moderate inflammatory bowel disease. Its main ingredient is extracted from ‘andrographis paniculata’, an herb used in Traditional Chinese Medicine. The new partnership will further support the product development during its next stage of clinical trials, which is scheduled to start in early 2013.
Nestlé Health Science Partnership Brings Access to Traditional Chinese Medicine
Published November 30, 2012 | <urn:uuid:9f57c6c3-9949-4945-8098-6a0042c79e50> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.nutraceuticalsworld.com/contents/view_breaking-news/2012-11-30/nestle-health-science-partnership-brings-access-to-traditional-chinese-medicine/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00042-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.908285 | 399 | 1.546875 | 2 |
In the news today is an archaeological discovery of animal shaped mounds in coastal Peru, approximately 4,000 years old, twice as old as the animal figures in Nazca. These are shaped like orcas, condors, a duck, and a puma-cayman animal. The largest mound is 400 m long. The discoverer believes these mounds represent constellations seen in the Milky Way and at least one of them is said to be aligned to the June solstice (the winter solstice on this side of the Earth). The mention of plastic structures indicates to me that they are still being used.
Considering the sizes of these structures, that they can only be viewed from the air, their “similarity” to the Nazca lines, their age, potential association with astronomical objects and phenomena (such as the Milky Way and the winter solstice), and the news release/publication in 2012 will only trigger a flood of nonsense in the pseudoscientific/New Age communities. I am sure some 2012ers will see the existence of plastic structures as evidence of ancient advanced technology.
Remember the old TV-comedy Mork and Mindy with Robin Williams? Mork was an alien from the planet Ork. In Peru we have orcas which for sure will be incorporated into a similar extraterrestrial context. I mean, the similarity in names cannot be a coincidence can it? Nano Nano. | <urn:uuid:4478970b-ec7c-4a46-9f99-379e88ca01f6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://haecceities.wordpress.com/2012/03/30/galactic-orcas/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00029-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.949945 | 290 | 2.96875 | 3 |
|CD4 Count of 113
Feb 28, 2009
Hello, I have a relative that was recently diagnosed with AIDS. Her CD4 count is 113. She is fighting a cold, has abdominal pain, yeast infections and thrush. It seems she keeps coming down with different illnesses. My question is, what are the chances of her being able to lead a normal life, or is she too far below normal CD4 levels to recover? My family is encouraging her to quit her job. From what I have read, people with levels this low, have been able to boost them and go back to feeling normal. She should quit her job and go out on disability, or will all this illness and sickness subside when she starts treatment and allow her to continue on with a normal life?
| Response from Dr. Young
Hello and thank you for your post.
Your relative does indeed have AIDS with her CD4 count below 200; she should be getting ready to start on HIV medications as well as comprehensive medical evaluations.
I believe strongly that patients like her should be eventually able to lead normal lives, though this does require medications and very good adherence.
It follows that I don't believe that she need to file for permanent disability as this point, rather short-term disability could be appropriate, depending on her current symptoms and short-term medical issues.
I hope this helps and wish you and your family member well,
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Experts appearing on this page are independent and are solely responsible for editing and fact-checking their material. Neither TheBody.com nor any advertiser is the publisher or speaker of posted visitors' questions or the experts' material. | <urn:uuid:b3e2cadc-ae48-4220-a011-f65c4ce632db> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.thebody.com/Forums/AIDS/Meds/Q199695.html | 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 | 0.967028 | 410 | 1.679688 | 2 |
Study links celiac disease to an increased risk for cancer of the thyroid gland
BACKGROUND: Celiac disease (CD) has been established as being associated with several thyroid diseases. However, occurrence of thyroid epithelial cancer in celiac patients has been rarely described.
GOAL: We describe the prevalence of thyroid carcinoma detected in a cohort of Italian celiac patients, with the aim to carry out a prospective analysis of the risk of celiac patients to develop thyroid carcinoma.
METHODS: The study population included all CD patients diagnosed at the Collaborating Centers of the Italian Registry of CD between January 1, 1982 and December 31, 2006. Upon diagnosis of CD and at every subsequent clinical control, the Collaborating Centers filled in a validated form for each CD patient reporting information about demographic data, possible occurrence of a thyroid disease, and adherence to a gluten-free diet.
RESULTS: Of the 1757 celiac patients enrolled, 6 developed a papillary thyroid carcinoma during the follow-up period (mean: 18.1 y). The Standardized Incidence Ratio resulted 2.55 (95% confidence interval=0.93-5.55; P<0.01). The mean age of diagnosis of CD in patients who developed thyroid carcinoma was rather low (40 y) and not statistically different from that of those who did not develop thyroid carcinoma. The number of gluten-containing diet per month did not correlate with the development of a thyroid carcinoma.
CONCLUSIONS: There is a 2.5-fold increased risk of papillary cancer of thyroid for celiac patients. A prompt diagnosis of CD and a strict adherence to gluten-free diet do not seem to protect from the development of this malignancy.
Comments are closed. | <urn:uuid:9621aad8-631b-4fde-b9a5-1e02b2894f7a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://celiacfacts.wordpress.com/2010/11/18/study-links-celiac-disease-to-an-increased-risk-for-cancer-of-the-thyroid-gland/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00073-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.935941 | 357 | 2.25 | 2 |
At a press conference on 18 June during The United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20) in Rio de Janeiro, Michelle Bachelet, Under-Secretary-General and Executive Director, UN Women calls for women’s central role in achieving sustainability. Gro Harlem Brundtland, Former Prime Minister of Norway and Special Envoy of the UN Secretary-General on Climate Change, joins the press conference.
Watch the press conference via webcast
The webcast begins 9:00 a.m. EST (10:00 am Rio de Janeiro time), Monday 18 June
Venue: Main Press briefing room, Media Centre, Pavilion 3, Riocentro
Moderator: Deborah Seward, Director, Strategic Partnerships Division, DPI
[Check against delivery.]
Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. It is my pleasure to be here today with Gro Harlem Brundtland in Rio for this very important Conference on Sustainable Development.
Today the world is speeding along a dangerous course of economic and social disparities, and environmental destruction. We are here to make our voices heard and tell the world about the Future Women Want.
Women’s advocates are a strong presence here. With the support of the Government of Brazil and President Dilma Rousseff, UN Women is hosting a Leaders’ Forum tomorrow and a Women Leaders’ Summit on 21 June.
At the Women Leaders’ Summit on the Future Women Want, women Heads of State and Government will issue a strong call to action pledging their support and urging governments, civil society and the private sector to prioritize gender equality and women’s empowerment and accelerate action to achieve sustainable development.
Two days earlier at the Leaders’ Forum, hundreds of representatives from government, civil society, and the private sector, will come together to discuss The Future Women Want. Their voices and views will pave the way for the Women Leaders’ Summit.
UN Women supported an online survey of women around the world that will be shared here widely this week. These women told us directly about the Future they Want. They made strong recommendations for the urgent need to focus on economic development, on access to financial and technical resources for women, and on increasing women’s participation and leadership in decision making across all levels.
Throughout this week in a number of events, UN Women will bring the voices of these women forward.
I will personally start later today at the Corporate Sustainability Forum, where I will call on companies to join more than 400 other CEOs in signing onto the Women’s Empowerment Principles. By making equality their business, companies can not only improve women’s position in the workplace, but also improve sustainability and their corporate performance.
Sustainable development requires women’s rights, equal opportunities and women’s full participation. The current model—of environmental decline, rising inequality and an up-and-down economy is not sustainable. A world in balance requires gender equality.
Twenty years ago, the Rio Declaration emphasized that women’s full participation is essential to achieving sustainable development. 20 years later, women continue to face inequality in rights, opportunities and participation.
Today one woman dies every 2 minutes from complications of pregnancy and childbirth. Violence against women remains a global epidemic. Women earn less than men for the same work, and remain under-represented in decision-making. Less than one in ten Heads of State and Government, less than one in five members of parliament, and less than 4 percent of CEOs of Fortune 500 companies are women.
This is not sustainable. This social exclusion of women is not only hurting women, it is hurting all of us.
For the sake of current and future generations, we must nurture and develop all of humankind’s collective intelligence and capacity.
The full and equal participation and leadership of women is no longer an option. It is an urgent necessity if we are to achieve the transformational change needed at all levels and spheres of society for sustainable development.
Since 1992, global economic growth has soared 75 percent. However, at what cost? More than one in four people still lives in extreme poverty. Two-thirds of natural resources vital to humankind are declining. By 2030, the world will need 50 percent more food, 45 percent more energy and 30 percent more water. And rising sea levels and climate change pose an unprecedented threat to humanity.
We cannot afford to continue on the present path, and we especially cannot afford to leave women marginalized in leadership and decision-making, and subject to violence and discrimination.
When women enjoy equal rights, opportunities and participation, they can make a greater contribution to sustainable development. The full and equal participation of women makes societies, economies and the environment healthier.
Today women in developing countries make up 43 percent of agricultural workers, but can’t get equal access to land, credit or new technologies. This is not sustainable. The Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that giving women the same access as men to fertilizers, seeds, tools and other types of agriculture support would raise agricultural output and result in 100 to 150 million fewer hungry people.
Today millions of mostly rural women still cook over smoky, polluting stoves. As a result, two million people die each year from respiratory ailments; 85 percent are women and children. This is not sustainable. Women need clean energy.
Today in urban areas, a quarter of people lack piped water in their homes. This places a disproportionate burden on women and girls who spend long hours each day fetching water for basic household needs, instead of getting an education or earning an income.
The Sustainable Development Conference this week needs to encourage specific actions to reduce women’s poverty and cut harmful health and environmental impacts. Leaders need to recognize the value of women’s contributions to environmental management, and development.
To uphold and deepen this commitment at Rio+20, UN Women is championing four measures.
First, we call on Member States to reaffirm women’s empowerment and gender equality as vital for sustainable development and in any international development frameworks that are adopted. This principle needs to be the foundation for all continued action.
Second, governments should agree on—and then take—measures so that women can access opportunities as leaders and fully participate in decision-making, whether related to policies, social or economic issues, or the environment.
Third, women should be fully included in economies, so they can both contribute to and benefit from the choices that sustainable development provides. This demands a series of measures, such as ending violence and discrimination, and removing barriers women face to owning land and accessing credit.
Finally, sustainable development will come when every person has access to essential public services, including for education, health care, water, sanitation, energy and social protection.
Through its country programmes around the world, UN Women regularly sees firsthand the difference made when women are empowered as drivers of sustainable development.
The organization has helped women gain greater land ownership rights in Morocco, become leaders in agricultural cooperatives in Rwanda, and work as key partners in disaster management in Thailand and Viet Nam.
The future women want is free from poverty and discrimination, with equal access to opportunities and leadership, with wise stewardship of natural resources. In short, where development is sustainable everywhere and for everyone.
At Rio+20, we have a chance to claim this future. This is why women are here to make our voices heard. So that the future women want is the future we all share. | <urn:uuid:eed9b75b-c3ea-42c9-9786-26f18fba4afa> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.unwomen.org/2012/06/at-rio20-un-women-executive-director-calls-for-central-role-for-women-in-achieving-sustainability/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00046-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.927778 | 1,524 | 1.695313 | 2 |
US-born panda Hua Mei gives birth to her 8th cub in ChinaSeptember 20th, 2010 - 12:06 am ICT by Aishwarya Bhatt
Sep 19 (THAINDIAN NEWS) The US-born panda Hua Mei has created a record of sorts by giving birth to her 8th cub in China. It sure is an accomplishment of a sort, because the pandas are known to be very poor breeders. The newborn cub is a male and he was born at 3 am on Friday and was said to weigh about 162 grams at birth, according to officials from the Wolong China Giant Panda Protection and Research Center.
Hua Mei is also mother to 3 sets of twin pandas. The newborn cub is yet to be named by the officials of the Wolong China Giant Panda Protection and Research Center. With the latest addition, the center already had 16 panda births in this year till now. In 2009 also, the center saw 16 panda cubs being born.
The mother of eight – Hua Mei was born in US and thus she was named Hua-Mei, which literally means “China-America”. She was born in the San Diego Zoo in August 1999. When she was 5 years old, then she came to China and since then has stayed in the Wolong China Giant Panda Protection and Research Center.
- 'Olympics panda' born in China - Jul 29, 2012
- Panda twins born in China - Jul 11, 2012
- Giant panda gives birth at Washington zoo - Sep 18, 2012
- Panda gives birth to sixth cub at San Diego zoo - Jul 30, 2012
- China's 'spoilt' pandas - Jun 18, 2011
- Panda still endangered despite baby boom - Sep 03, 2010
- Panda Quan Quan's death blamed on gas poisoning - Jul 28, 2010
- China releases pregnant pandas into the wild - Jul 26, 2010
- Dog plays mom to three tiger cubs - Jun 11, 2012
- Three lion cubs die at Chhattisgarh zoo - Aug 03, 2012
- Another tiger cub dies in Bihar - Sep 03, 2012
- Artificial insemination planned for mainland's giant panda in Taiwan - Feb 11, 2011
- No romance for Delhi zoo's bears, deer this winter - Nov 20, 2011
- Tiger cub dies, two others critical - Aug 29, 2012
- Third tiger cub at Patna zoo also dead - Sep 04, 2012 | <urn:uuid:d56e972e-311c-43a1-aab4-a3f539cd3f8e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.thaindian.com/newsportal/world/us-born-panda-hua-mei-gives-birth-to-her-8th-cub-in-china_100431229.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00040-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.952988 | 515 | 2.03125 | 2 |
April 06, 2007
Consumer Health Advocacy in Second Life
Have you heard of Second Life? Just in case you haven't, Second Life is an online 3D role playing 'game'. You see, it is not so much of a game with rules and a goal to win as it is an immersive imaginary environment, a place to go and be that allows people to reimagine themselves and their environments.
In Second Life you will find homes, jobs, gardens, shopping malls, nighclubs, libraries, and many other accoutrements of real life. The University of Michigan Medical School is getting involved with Second Life for education, as are many other organizations. There is a consumer health library group in Second Life known as HealthInfo Island.
In the link below, you will find that a major force in Second Life for the consumer health outreach of HealthInfo Island is a young woman who was transformed by a facial injury into a consumer health advocate.
InfoIsland: Second Life healthcare advocate interviewed for ‘Who’s On Second?’: http://infoisland.org/2007/04/03/second-life-healthcare-advocate-interviewed-for-whos-on-second/
Posted by pfa at April 6, 2007 08:37 PM | <urn:uuid:e94ac092-9805-4df9-ba58-eca0589ec6cf> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://mblog.lib.umich.edu/faceit/archives/2007/04/consumer_health.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.958935 | 269 | 1.828125 | 2 |
Sunshine Coast Regional Council, an area of 3126 sq km, was formed in 2008 by the amalgamation of Caloundra City, Maroochy Shire, and the Noosa Shire. Its most southerly point is near Glass House Mountains, 65 km north of Brisbane. Its most northerly point, beyond Teewah in the Cooloola National Park, is 85 km north of Glass House Mountains. The Sunshine Coast railway passes through the Regional Council area via Glass House Mountains, Nambour and Cooran. Inland, the Regional Council area includes Kenilworth and Conondale.
In March 2013 more than 80% of voters in Noosa opted to leave the Sunshine Coast Regional Council in a de-amalgamation vote. From April 2013 transition committees and interim CEOs would be in place in the Noosa Shire leading to elections in late 2013 and a separate Noosa Shire council from 1 January 2014.
With the exception of Bribie Island, Sunshine Coast Regional Council had all the northern beaches between Brisbane and the Fraser Coast. It also has the cool 'hill station' Blackall Range (Maleny, etc) and, west of there, most of the Conondale Range. The entry on Sunshine Coast outlines the region's history.
In the debate about formation of the Regional Council, Caloundra City and Maroochy Shire expressed a preference for staying alone although, if amalgamation were to be forced on them, the new unit should include Noosa Shire. On the other hand, Noosa Shire opposed amalgamation. It cited its record for conserving public spaces and regulating urban and tourist-resort building. The record was plain to see from a walk down Hastings Street, Noosa Heads, compared with the high-rise vista from Maroochydore. Some residents of Coolum, Peregian Springs, Eumundi etc in Maroochy Shire also wanted to be put in a stand-alone Noosa Shire.
The populations of the three areas in 2006 were approximately:
This suggested a likelihood of Noosa Shire being overwhelmed in a Regional Council. The Council has 12 members and a mayor, originally to be elected by an unsubdivided municipality, but that aspect of the Local Government Commission's report was changed to allow for single-member divisions. The Noosa area elected one member, and its former mayor was elected to the Sunshine Coast mayoralty.
The census population (2006) of the Sunshine Coast Regional Council was 276,265 persons. Their median age was 41 years compared with 37 for Australia. The proportion of the workforce in fulltime work was 54.5%, compared with 60.7% for Australia; correspondingly more were in part-time work.
Sunshine Coast's urban area takes in the entire coast from Noosa Heads to Caloundra and bulges inland from Maroochydore to the Buderim plateau and Nambour. The populations (2006) of the major urban areas were:
|Noosa, Noosaville, Tewantin, Sunshine Beach||29,979|
|Marcus Beach to Twin Waters||25,996|
|Nambour, Bli Bli||26,070|
|Buderim, Sippy Downs||34,454|
|Maroochydore, Mooloolaba, Alexandra Headland||32,645|
|Minyama to Wurtulla||19,735|
|Caloundra to Pelican Waters||41,668|
Sunshine Coast, Caloundra, Maroochy Shire and Noosa Shire entries | <urn:uuid:7bbc58b0-ba4d-423c-90ce-3c07e1802c4e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://queenslandplaces.com.au/sunshine-coast-regional-council | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00047-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.940766 | 750 | 1.835938 | 2 |
In today's competitive business environment, companies require faster and more sophisticated technology solutions. To respond to a growing market demand for program management software, Thumbprint Software LLC has combined the power and flexibility of Lisp and Allegro CL to introduce Thumbprint CPM.
Thumbprint CPM is the first collaborative program management software with the power of a learning knowledgebase. Thumbprint CPM is designed to optimize performance across building, manufacturing, and energy programs by leverraging repeatable project elements and customized company processes.
Thumbprint Software uses their innovative interviewing technique, called Process Deliverables Methodology (PDM), to seed an initial library of processes unique to their client's company. The PDM focuses on the end deliverable, unlike common flowchart methods, to capture a client's fundamental operations. These processes then become a starting point for the knowledgebase. That knowledgebase serves as a library that fuels Thumbprint CPM's project generation engine as it automatically assembles project plans from reusable tasks according to user criteria. As the engine encounters various rules and process conditions during automated project assembly, it "interviews" the project manager for any input necessary to navigate decision points. The result is a fully scheduled and resourced project plan unique to the situation yet aligned with overall company program criteria.
Project team members then use the web application to collaboratively coordinate and execute the project plan. As users interact with Thumbprint CPM's learning knowledgebase, the software continues to capture, retain and fine-tune process information. "Thanks to the inherent capability of Lisp to reconfigure on the fly, Thumbprint CPM can reflect real world changing conditions in seconds. This kind of process flexibility is one of many things our clients appreciate about our software," remarks Bill Davis, President of Thumbprint Software.
An important reason why Thumbprint Software chose Allegro CL to create Thumbprint CPM was because they wanted to use real-time configuration. "Lisp enabled us to change class for process objects depending on their context of use," says Davis. "We use dynamic class hierarchies and inheritance to evolve the structure. If we had tried to build the system in C++ or Java, we would have had to duplicate all the things that Lisp does automatically - such as compute our own runtime inheritance of class slots, dispatch our own 'effective methods' according to that evolving hierarchy, and create additional overhead for a lot of type-checking. And that's not even considering all the memory management we'd have to do manually," Davis emphasizes.
Thumbprint CPM used AllegroServe (a dynamic Lisp-based web server) to create live page-generation based on real-time data. The system is "smart" enough to realize when a process change affects other tasks throughout all projects, and instantly updates/revises those tasks, timelines, budgets, documents, etc. accordingly. Thumbprint CPM also notifies end-users of changes via email, cell phone and paging.
Thumbprint Software believes Thumbprint CPM is the next generation of collaborative program management. "Our customers have a view of both the tactical project elements and the operational big picture by using Thumbprint CPM. This is helping them manage their business more effectively and efficiently," emphasizes Davis.
|Copyright © 2013 Franz Inc., All Rights Reserved | Privacy Statement|| | <urn:uuid:62606be2-6689-45d4-a01c-5de514294411> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://franz.com/success/customer_apps/knowledge_mgmt/thumbprint.lhtml | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00065-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.928051 | 688 | 1.820313 | 2 |
Not just the public, but many clinicians, believe that Parkinson’s disease is exclusively a neurological disorder—that is, that it only entails tremors, stiffness, and difficulty with balance.
Yet there are many psychiatric aspects to the illness as well, psychiatrists who specialize in Parkinson’s disease stressed during recent interviews with Psychiatric News.
Parkinson’s patients can experience a raft of psychiatric symptoms, Daniel Weintraub, M.D., an associate professor of psychiatry and neurology at the University of Pennsylvania and a psychiatrist with the Parkinson’s Disease Research, Education, and Clinical Center at the Philadelphia Veterans Affairs Medical Center, reported. These symptoms include anxiety, depression, personality changes, memory problems, sleep problems, impulse control difficulties, psychosis, and dementia.
And these symptoms can occur at different stages of the disease and have different causes, Parkinson’s researcher Laura Marsh, M.D., pointed out. She is a professor of psychiatry and neurology at Baylor College of Medicine and director of the Mental Health Care Line at the Michael E. DeBakey Veterans Affairs Medical Center.
Among individuals with Parkinson’s, anxiety disorders develop at a higher rate than in the general population, Marsh indicated, and can have their onset up to 20 years or so before tremors and other motor aspects of the disease are apparent. Also, several studies show a high rate of a family history of anxiety conditions in such individuals. Thus it looks as if there could be genetic links between anxiety and Parkinson’s in some individuals.
As for depressive symptoms, they can also occur before the motor symptoms of Parkinson’s surface, Marsh noted, but closer than anxiety symptoms to the time that the motor symptoms appear. “I have seen a number of patients who had never had a mood disorder earlier in their life, but who developed a depressive disorder around age 55, followed by the motor symptoms of Parkinson’s three years later,” she said. And here too, it looks as if the depression may be an early sign of the parkinsonian disease process, not a reaction to the motor symptoms of the disease.
Indeed, “patients with depression will often say, ‘Why wouldn’t I be depressed? I have Parkinson’s,’ when in fact disability due to Parkinson’s motor symptoms is not correlated with depressive symptoms,” William McDonald, M.D., a professor of psychiatry at Emory University and a Parkinson’s researcher, told Psychiatric News. “Clinically we have found that some of the most disabled Parkinson’s patients are not depressed, and some of the most depressed Parkinson’s patients have only minor motor disabilities.”
The reason that anxiety and depression may be precursors of the appearance of Parkinson’s motor symptoms, Marsh suggested, may be due to the discovery, a few years ago, that the parkinsonian disease process starts in the brainstem and then advances to the midbrain. The brainstem contains serotonin and adrenergic neurons that could contribute to anxiety and depression, whereas the midbrain contains dopaminergic neurons that contribute to the motor symptoms of Parkinson’s, she explained.
The pathological gambling or hypersexuality that some Parkinson’s patients experience appears to be due, however, largely to the dopaminergic medications that patients are prescribed for their motor symptoms—not to the disease process itself, Marsh noted.
And the same is true for the hallucinations or delusions that some Parkinson’s patients experience, Weintraub added. However, as Marsh noted, “the evidence suggests that they are due not just to dopaminergic medications, but also to the disease process.”
Since psychiatric problems can be a significant part of Parkinson’s disease, what can psychiatrists do to help Parkinson’s patients? “Until relatively recently I couldn’t have answered this question very definitively,” Matthew Menza, M.D., chair of psychiatry at the Robert Wood Johnson Medical School and a Parkinson’s expert, said during an interview. “But I think that over the past decade, there have been a number of reasonably good studies that have begun to address the question.”
Regarding anxiety, for example, “One of the more interesting things that has been demonstrated recently is that exercise, which is a well-validated treatment for anxiety disorders in general, also appears to benefit Parkinson’s patients who are anxious,” Menza said.
Several randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trials have shown that antidepressants can help Parkinson’s patients who are depressed, Menza also pointed out. One of these was conducted by McDonald and his colleagues and is in press with Neurology. The trial has demonstrated that “Parkinson’s depression is very treatable using standard antidepressants and [these medications] can be remarkably effective in improving quality of life and even motor symptoms, with few adverse effects,” McDonald said.
Cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) can also benefit depressed Parkinson’s patients, Roseanne Dobkin, Ph.D., along with Menza and other colleagues at the Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, reported in the October 2011 American Journal of Psychiatry. Eighty depressed Parkinson’s subjects participated in a randomized controlled trial in which CBT was compared with clinical monitoring. CBT was modified to meet unique needs of the Parkinson’s population and was provided for 10 weeks. Assessments were completed by blind raters at baseline, midway through treatment, at the end of treatment, and finally four weeks later. The CBT group experienced significantly less depression by the end of treatment than the control group did, and these gains were maintained four weeks later.
Most people with Parkinson’s have some sleep problems. “It looks as if many of the drugs that we psychiatrists use for sleep disorders probably have some [positive] effect in people with Parkinson’s disease,” Menza observed.
Regarding the memory problems that are common later in Parkinson’s disease, the drugs available to treat Alzheimer’s disease “can help a bit,” he said.
“So psychiatrists, I think, have available to them a variety of medications and nonmedication therapies that may be useful for people with Parkinson’s,” he noted.
And still more psychiatric tools to help Parkinson’s patients may be emerging in the near future, Marsh indicated. For example, when most antipsychotic medications are given to Parkinson’s patients for hallucinations or delusions, the antipsychotics may eliminate the symptoms, but they may also block the action of the dopaminergic drugs given to control motor symptoms. As a result, the patients’ motor symptoms can get worse. New antipsychotics in the development pipeline might be able to treat psychotic symptoms successfully without increasing the patients’ motor symptoms.
“One of the great things about taking care of individuals with Parkinson’s disease, of all the neurodegenerative disorders, is that it has very effective treatments,” Marsh declared. “So even though it is a chronic, progressive, neurodegenerative disease, and even though it has no cure, people can live with it and do well despite its challenges, especially if the psychiatric problems are treated.”
Not that many, Laura Marsh, M.D., a professor of psychiatry and neurology at Baylor College of Medicine and a Parkinson’s researcher, told Psychiatric News. “And when they do, it is often because the problems have gotten out of hand—say, someone is really depressed or suicidal.”
And do neurologists ever seek out psychiatrists to help them with Parkinson’s patients’ psychiatric problems? “It really depends,” said Daniel Weintraub, M.D., an associate professor of psychiatry and neurology at the University of Pennsylvania. “If you are in a place such as I am, which is a large academic medical center, I do work closely with neurologists…. At other places where there may not be the same access to psychiatrists, where Parkinson’s care may not even be provided by movement-disorders neurologists but by a general neurologist, then I think that the collaboration is less likely to exist.”
Thus “in Parkinson’s disease, the psychiatric complications remain underrecognized or undertreated,” Marsh asserted.
So how might psychiatrists reach out to help Parkinson’s patients?
One way is to become involved in interdisciplinary care teams and learn about the motor and other somatic and cognitive features of the disease, Marsh suggested. “It is a rewarding condition to treat psychiatrically because treatment works.”
Also, psychiatrists should stay alert for Parkinson’s in older adults who are depressed, George Grossberg, M.D., a professor of psychiatry and neurology at St. Louis University and a geriatric psychiatrist with an interest in Parkinson’s, advised during an interview. “Often we psychiatrists may be the first ones to suspect Parkinson’s in such patients,” he said.
Moreover, psychiatrists who consult to assisted-living facilities or nursing homes should be especially vigilant for Parkinson’s disease in patients, Grossberg said, since neurologists who specialize in Parkinson’s rarely provide such consultation.
“There is an energetic effort right now to find treatments that slow the progression of Parkinson’s,” Matthew Menza, M.D., chair of psychiatry at the Robert Wood Johnson Medical School and a Parkinson’s expert, said during an interview. The effort is focused on neuroprotective treatments such as nonsteroidal inflammatory drugs, since there is substantial evidence that inflammation is involved in the Parkinson’s disease process.
“Many of the disorders that we deal with in psychiatry start early in life—in childhood or adolescence—and some of them appear to get worse over the years,” he said. “So if we had a treatment that was neuroprotective, it might have application in psychiatric disorders. True, nothing is ready for prime time right now. But it is certainly something that people are thinking about.”
“Parkinson’s disease is in many ways the prototypical neuropsychiatric disorder in that it causes clear damage to the brain, but also has many psychiatric aspects to it,” Menza observed. “The hope of those of us who work in this interface between psychiatry and neurology is that if we understand more about Parkinson’s, it’s going to lead to a better understanding of many other diseases that we believe are based in the brain, such as attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, bipolar depression, and schizophrenia….[And] if we understood Parkinson’s better, we might have better insights into how to treat these other purely psychiatric disorders. | <urn:uuid:17b25060-1cef-439f-959c-6acc76382bfd> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://psychnews.psychiatryonline.org/newsarticle.aspx?articleid=334892&RelatedNewsArticles=true | 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 | 0.957505 | 2,265 | 2.796875 | 3 |
US 4142940 A
To provide a disposable container which can be prefabricated under sterile conditions, a pair of concentric plastic rings are formed with interfitting, interlocking projection and recess means permitting the rings to be snapped together, the rings being additionally formed with matching fitting surfaces to interpose the edge portion of a gas permeable membrane therebetween so that, when the membrane is placed on the outer ring and the two rings are snapped together, the membrane is irremovably held. Preferably, the outer ring is made of a softer, yielding plastic, the inner ring of a more rigid plastic, with a projection snapping into a groove formed on the inner, more rigid ring, and the matching clamping surfaces for the membrane forming a sinuous, tortuous path with a flexible projecting lip on the outer ring fitting into a recess to clamp the membrane and seal the membrane in the structure.
1. A cultivation container for cultures, microorganisms, cells, tissue, having a stretched, gas permeable, but impermeable to liquid membrane (3) forming the bottom thereof, and holding means to hold the membrane in position and in stretched and liquid tight condition comprising
two concentric plastic rings (1,2) fitted in each other and having matching fitting surfaces (9,10) and interengaging and interlocking recess-projection locking means (4,5), the edge portion of the plastic membrane (3) being clamped between the adjacent matching fitting surfaces (9,10) in self-holding relation to lock and pinch the membrane in position between said matching, fitting surfaces when the rings are locked to each other and interlocking by engagement of the recess-projection locking means (4,5).
2. A container according to claim 1, wherein at least one of the plastic rings (1) is formed with a projecting sealing projection (3) and the other ring (2) is formed with a sealing surface (2a) facing said sealing projection (8), the membrane (3) being clamped between said sealing projection (8) and said sealing surface (2a).
3. A container according to claim 2, wherein the sealing projection (8) terminates in a knife edge.
4. A container according to claim 1, wherein the interengaging and interlocking recesses and projection means comprises a first bead (4) formed on one of the rings (1) at the surface facing the other ring, a second bead (5) defining a groove (5a) therebehind formed in the other ring (2) in the surface forming said first ring (1) to permit snapping the rings (12) together.
5. A container according to claim 1, wherein the interengaging and interlocking recess and projection means comprises a bead (4) formed at the surface of the inner ring (1) facing the outer ring (2), a projection (5) formed on the surface of the outer ring (2) facing the inner ring (1) and defining a groove (5a) therebehind;
and wherein the matching fitting surfaces comprise an inner locating projection (9) formed on the inner ring (1) and defining a groove therebehind, and an outer locating projection (10) formed on the outer ring (2) and engaging in the groove behind the inner locating projection.
6. A container according to claim 5, wherein the outer ring (2) is made of yielding, soft plastic, and the projecting lip (10) fitting behind the locating projection (9) of the inner ring is shaped and dimensioned to yieldingly deflect and clamp the membrane between the locating projection (9) and said lip.
7. A container according to claim 6, wherein the inner ring (1) is formed with a sealing projection (8), and the outer ring (2) has a surface (2a) facing a said sealing projection (8) to clamp the membrane between the sealing projection (8) and said surface (2a), said surface additionally, forming a locating stop for the inner ring to hold the bead (4) and the projection (5) in snapped-together, locked engagement, and the membrane (3) stretched between the inner locating projection (9) of the inner ring.
8. A container according to claim 1, wherein said rings (1,2) are made of different plastic materials, one of the rings being made of hard essentially rigid plastic and the other ring being made of plastic which is softer, and yielding with respect to the plastic of the first ring.
9. A container according to claim 1, wherein the inner ring (1) is made of essentially rigid, hard plastic and the outer ring is made of yielding and soft plastic.
10. A container according to claim 1, wherein the matching fitting surfaces comprise an inner locating projection (9) formed on the inner ring (1) and defining a groove therebehind, and an outer locating projection (10) formed on the outer ring (2) and engaging in the groove behind the inner locating projection, the membrane being stretched between the inner and outer locating projection (9) of the inner ring and being clamped in self locking relation between said inner and outer projection forming the matching, fitting surfaces.
The present invention relates to a cultivation container or vessel, and more particularly to a cultivation container for cultures, microorganisms, cells, tissue and the like, and which uses a stretched gas permeable plastic membrane or foil as the bottom thereof, the membrane being clamped at the edge portion in a clamping holder.
Cultivation vessels of this type have previously been proposed. Generally, they include a ring shaped base plate which is formed with a groove in which a ring shaped cover plate with a comb-like projection fits; the gas permeable plastic foil is engaged between the cover plate and the ring shaped base plate. An additional plastic ring is provided to form the wall of the container or vessel. The gas permeable but impermeable to liquid plastic foil or membrane forms the bottom of the vessel and it is clamped by interlocking of the projection of the cover plate in the groove of the base plate. The clamping and stretching of the plastic foil is effected by pressure screws, threads, or the like.
It has also been proposed to provide cultivation vessels in the form of bags made of gas permeable plastic to cultivate tissue and the like. The inner surface of the plastic bag is roughened in order to favor growth of cells thereon. The kind of plastic useful in accordance with the invention to cultivate tissue and the like is described in U.S. Pat. No. 3,941,662.
The cultivation devices previously proposed to cultivate microorganisms previously were made or assembled just before the microorganisms were ready to be cultivated. This required substantial time, particularly of research personnel, which, however, was considered necessary in view of the importance of the use of the grown microorganisms.
It is an object of the present invention to provide a cultivating vessel which can be manufactured as a ready product, which is inexpensive, and in which the cost and the equipment necessary for reuse, sterilization, and reassembly can be avoided.
Briefly, a clamping arrangement is made of two concentrically arranged rings made of plastic, the rings being formed with corresponding projections and recesses to lock them together. The rings, further, are formed with clamping surfaces to clamp the plastic membrane therebetween. Preferably, the plastic membrane is roughened at least on one side thereof.
The invention will be described by way of example with reference to the accompanying drawing, wherein:
The single FIGURE is a schematic cross-sectional view through the vessel or container of the present invention.
An inner plastic ring 1 is surrounded by an outer plastic ring 2. The bottom of the vessel is formed by a gas permeable plastic foil membrane 3. The inner plastic ring 1 is formed with a projecting ridge or bead 4 at its outer circumference, which fits beneath a projection 5 at the inner surface of the outer ring 2. The projection 5 forms the limiting part of a groove 5a in the outer ring 5. The projection 5 merges actually outwardly in a conical surface 7 which merges into a more shallow conical surface 6, forming a centering cone for assembly of the inner ring 1 into outer ring 2. The bottom of the inner ring 1 is formed with a sealing lip 8 which is shaped to terminate in a knife edge. The inner ring 1 is, additionally, formed with an abutment projection 9 to guide the edge portion of the plastic foil. The projection 9 defines in its outer side a groove in which a projecting lip 10 from the outer ring 2 can engage. The foil membrane 3 is clamped between the lip 10 and the abutment projection 9 in self-holding relation. The additional sealing lip 8 bearing against sealing surface 2a on outer ring 2 provides for further sealing of the parts and also defines the limiting engagement position of rings 1 and 2.
The rings 1, 2, are made of different plastic, as indicated by the different shadings in the FIGURE. The inner ring 1 is formed of a hard, essentially rigid plastic; the outer ring 2 is formed of a softer, and more flexible plastic. This arrangement is preferred, although the relationship of rigid and flexible plastic with respect to the rings can be reversed, just as the projections 4, 5 locking against each other can be reversed. The more flexible, softer plastic is, preferably, polyvinyl chloride, polypropylene, or high density, or high pressure polyethylene; the hard plastic is preferably polystyrol, or a polycarbonate. The vessel, preferably, is cup shaped and can be furnished with a removable cover, preferably made of transparent plastic.
The sealing lip 8 is not strictly necessary, although desirable. The projection 4 fits into the groove defined by the projection 5 of the outer ring 2 and, once assembled, is held irremovably therein. The inner sealing lip 10 fitting against a groove defined by the abutment projection 9 of the inner ring is preferably flexible, which is inherently given by making the projection 10 of smaller cross sectional diameter and, in accordance with the preferred embodiment, forming the outer ring 2 of the yielding more softer plastic, so that the membrane 3 will be securely held by the abutment projection 9 and the lip 10, the lip 10 being slightly deflected upon assembly of the parts together.
The arrangement permits assembling the membrane 3 to be free of wrinkles, folds, or undulations and to be tightly stretched, providing a liquid tight clamping thereof and holding liquid reliably for long periods of time. The simple form of the plastic rings permits inexpensive manufacture, and additionally automated assembly together with the gas permeable plastic foil under sterile conditions. The plastic foil, preferably, is roughened at least at the upper surface 3a (with reference to the FIGURE). Mistakes or misassembly upon assembling the cultivation vessels in the field are thus excluded. The structure lends itself to inexpensive and automated manufacture and assembly and thus permits production of the vessel as a disposable article. This is particularly important when used under clinical conditions. The selection of the plastic materials so that one of the rings is made of a harder plastic than the other provides an excellent seal between the parts and further facilitates assembly of the rings into each other.
Various change and modifications may be made, and, particularly, the relative relationships of the interlock projections and grooves can be reversed. Forming the inner ring 1 as the rigid, hard plastic has the advantage that the foil 3 is always reliably stretched.
Stretching the membrane between the inner projection 9 of the inner ring and the projection 10 of the outer ring forming the interengaging fitting surfaces can be carried out under sterile conditions, resulting in a container which is inexpensive and lends itself to reassembly, or for disposable use. The arrangement permits assembling the membrane to be tightly stretched, providing a liquid tight clamping thereof and holding liquids reliably for long periods of time. | <urn:uuid:879d6edb-de3a-4785-af4b-200541707b6f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.google.de/patents/US4142940 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00023-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.927297 | 2,467 | 1.921875 | 2 |
We are learning as we go on this project. No one has tried to do this before and so we discover what works and what doesn't work in real time while in the field.
We have known for years that the three satellite signals per day are unpredictable in their arrival. Don can receive them at virtually any time after they have been uploaded to the satellite, in the worst case 24 hours later, sometimes almost immediately. There is apparently no way of calling this.
So today is an example of that process. It is now 9 PM here in the coastal town of La Serena and we still do not have any signals from today. As a result, we have no idea where Felipe is or exactly where we should be. So we elected to stay here in this beautiful city and wait for the satellite data to become available.
We don't know if we have gone too far north or not far enough. We should find out pretty soon.
We had strong south winds blowing all morning as we came north. That should help him gain some good distance.
They changed to westerlies as we neared La Serena. We also moved from the inland bright sun to a heavy gray and cool overcast on the coast.
I have often noticed that some of the radio-tagged birds like to migrate north using an inland route. Could this have something to do with the coastal weather conditions?
We traveled through cactus country today. In places, there were so many that it looked like a forest of cacti. Early settlers here actually planted them in rows tpo create fences for livestock. You can see them heading way out into the desert in a dark line. | <urn:uuid:ebec0565-f074-4b42-a791-5dc67c95acd7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://frgroup.frg.org/2012/04/on-hold.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00073-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.976366 | 342 | 2.5625 | 3 |
Yesterday Peter King (R-NY), Chair of the House Homeland Security Committee, brought congressional navel gazing to a new level by holding a hearing on his past hearings that have singled out and perpetuated dangerous stereotypes about the American Muslim community. As advertised, the hearing—which may have been the first ever of its kind—focused not on how Congress could make the homeland more secure or on the nature and scope of real security threats, but on whether King’s own past hearings were justified.
In pondering the meta nature of this unusual exercise Mother Jones’ Adam Sewer rightly wondered “What's next? A hearing on the Muslim community's response to the hearing on the earlier hearings?”
Many members of the committee were equally puzzled and publically questioned whether having a hearing about past hearings was a good use of the committee’s resources—Rep. Hansen Clarke (D-MI) noted that he would rather spend time discussing how to protect the water sources of his constituents. Many taxpayers likely share Clarke’s view that self-referential pondering is pretty low on their list of what their elected officials in Washington need to tackle.
Indeed, King’s series of hearings was never intended to seriously examine real threats to our national security or the empirical evidence about law enforcement approaches that make us safer. The hearings have, instead, served as a megaphone to propagate counterproductive anti-Muslim rhetoric based on stereotypes. Hence, King’s irritation when minority witness Faiza Patel of New York University’s Brennan Center for Justice kept coming back to the facts: all empirical studies demonstrate that the propensity to commit violence cannot be predicted by how religious someone is or the ideology he or she holds..
King may have been able to dig up three people to testify in support of his crusade, but he also provoked broad-based opposition to the hearing’s frame. Fifty-five Muslim, Arab, Middle Eastern and South Asian organizations from across the country sent a letter to the committee calling the hearing an “irresponsible attack on American Muslims.” Forty religious, secular, and interfaith groups also weighed in, urging King to discontinue the hearings series that “undermines fundamental American values, erodes trust, and fuels divisiveness by casting suspicion over an entire community.”
The premise of yesterday’s hearing was absurd and outlandish. And the answer to the question, “Does a hearing about hearings make those hearings any more legitimate?”, is, predictably, “No.” Let’s hope King doesn’t try again and suggest a hearing on the hearing on the hearings. | <urn:uuid:efd58402-3dc9-4826-87ad-f56f4b6796d6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.aclu.org/blog/national-security-religion-belief/hearing-hearing-rep-peter-king-prioritizes-navel-gazing | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951862 | 545 | 1.851563 | 2 |
A Facade of Impartiality
CREW claims to be a non-partisan organization that targets both Democrats and Republicans for corruption. According to its website, CREW is "dedicated to promoting ethics and accountability in government and public life by targeting government officials—regardless of party—who sacrifice the common good to special interests."
CREW's claim of non-partisanship is often cited by journalists.
"Melanie Sloan, executive director of the non-partisan Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, said that early money often is considered more valuable because it can keep potential opponents from entering a race." - "Dems Leverage Wins With..." USA Today, November 21, 2008
"'Why would you continue to use Blackwater when the Iraqi government has banned the highly controversial company and there are other choices?' asked Melanie Sloan, executive director of the non-partisan Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington." - "Blackwater Still Works for U.S." UPI, March 17, 2009
"Nothing has changed despite calls for reform, said Melanie Sloan, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a non-partisan watchdog group." - "Members of Congress Seeking Re-election Troll Lobbyist Ranks" The Lexington Herald Leader, October 3, 2006
But CREW's alleged impartiality is a facade. The group’s partisan agenda is clear. CREW has routinely applied different standards to Republican candidates and conservative groups than it uses for Democratic candidates and progressive groups.
Despite CREW’s claim that the level of Washington corruption is closely tied to the party in power, a historical analysis of CREW’s formal complaints against politicians shows that the organization continued to file an excessive number of complaints against Republicans even when the Democrats took control of Congress in 2007 (and the White House in 2009).
Attacks on Tom DeLay
CREW got its start attacking Rep. Tom DeLay, a conservative House Republican leader.
Since Democratic activists are so integral to CREW’s structure and funding, it is hardly a surprise that the group broke into politics by almost exclusively going after Republican politicians. The group's first high-profile target was Rep. Tom DeLay, who became the Republicans' House Majority Leader in 2003.
In June 2004, Rep. Chris Bell, former Democratic congressman of Texas, filed a complaint against DeLay with the House Ethics Committee; CREW helped draft the complaint and called Bell "a hero." In October 2004, the committee rebuked DeLay for two ethics violations. The following year, CREW targeted DeLay’s Americans for a Republican Majority PAC with a Federal Election Commission complaint. Under pressure, DeLay resigned from Congress in June 2006.
CREW's legal actions against DeLay were a key victory for the organization. Melanie Sloan said in a C-SPAN interview, "There is nothing we've done at CREW, to my mind, that is as important as helping get rid of Congressman Tom DeLay and having him out of the halls of Congress." When Sloan was asked why she took the CREW position, she told Ms. Magazine that it was to go after DeLay. "I knew that getting rid of DeLay would improve the entire culture of the city, and I thought, 'That's what I want to be known for,'" she said.
Until 2008, CREW produced an annual report titled "Beyond DeLay" that identified other allegedly corrupt members of Congress, mostly Republicans. The name of the report was later changed to "CREW's Most Corrupt."
It's a problem to be publicly critical of other people's conduct if you're engaging in that conduct yourself.
- Melanie Sloan on MSNBC | <urn:uuid:8d3363be-6849-4c3b-8b88-f7c566f91fd1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://activistcash.com/citizens_for_responsibility_and_ethics_in_washington_CREW/impartial.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00034-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.968073 | 756 | 1.789063 | 2 |
[Gorakhpur, Utter Pradesh, India. Workers at Ankur Udyog textile manufacturing company had been in dispute for wages and conditions.]
May 20, 2011, Australia Asia Worker Links -- Hundreds of workers from Ankur Udyog travelled to Delhi to participate in a May Day march and present their charter of demands to the government. Because they went to the march, 18 workers were sacked in an attempt to break the union campaign. When they returned to their factory on 3 May, they were shot by company security guards: 20 workers were injured, one very seriously.
Since the attack on the workers mobilisations have continued in Gorakhpur, and the factory owners have reinstated the sacked workers. However workers at two more factories owned by the same company are locked out, and there has been no action against the guards or factory owners who perpetrated the crime of shooting the workers. Some of the workers have been on hunger strike, and workers from many factories in Gorakhpur are providing solidarity and support to the Ankur Udyog workers.
More information on the dispute in Gorakhpur here
More information on the workers' charter here | <urn:uuid:092df76f-a13b-4f5a-831f-16c76d914570> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.asia-pacific-action.org/node/602 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.983934 | 233 | 1.898438 | 2 |
Short Answer Questions
Directions: Answer each question with the appropriate short response.
Short Answer Questions - Chapter One and Chapter Two
1. On what day does Alex's life change forever?
2. Where does Alex work?
3. In what apartment is there a problem with the plumbing?
4. In what branch of the military does Carlos serve?
5. Where is Carlos stationed?
6. What is the name of the customer Alex is helping at the beginning of Chapter 1?
7. Where does Alex want to go to college?
8. How much does the customer pay that Alex is helping at the beginning of Chapter 1?
9. How old is Julie?
10. How old is Briana?
11. What time does Uncle Jimmy wake Alex?
12. What do Alex and his sister...
This section contains 2,169 words|
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Welfare reforms: Freezing benefits punishes the have-nots
Having strategically reshuffled the Cabinet to include more Conservatives to the right of the party, plans to cut public spending in the second half of parliament seem to have stepped up. At the same time a group of young Conservative MPs to the right of the party made up of five of the 2010 intake, Kwasi Kwarteng, Priti Patel, Dominic Raab, Chris Skidmore and Elizabeth Truss, are publishing a new book called Britannia Unchained. It claims that, "Once they enter the workplace, the British are among the worst idlers in the world" and argues for new work reforms and a better work ethic.
Kwarteng argues that part of the problem is that,
We have created a culture in which people can, as a lifestyle, opt not to work.
With high inflation and slow wage growth, the cost of living for those in work is getting tougher. On the other hand benefits have seen a small increase because they are linked to inflation. The coalition has revealed that it will freeze benefits and then prevent them from increasing ahead of wages. The Institute of Public Policy Research thinks that over the last year had benefits been uprated in line with earnings the government may have saved £5bn. This is part of their commitment to cut public spending and reduce the benefits bill. The change should also make it more rewarding to work than to live off benefits.
This idea of the need for welfare reform can be seen in this year’s British Social Attitudes survey which shows that around 60% of people believe benefits are too high and discourage work with fewer than 20% believing benefits are too low and cause hardship. Public attitudes towards benefits show that Britons are more disgruntled with the benefits system, thus justifying the coalition’s cuts.
However the perception and reality are very different. Chris Goulden from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation argues that the generosity of benefits is overstated. He argues that,
benefits for children and pensioners have increased but benefits for working-age adults (e.g. Job Seekers Allowance) have slipped behind…The bitter irony is that childless, unemployed adults now – likely to be at the forefront of public ire about 'scroungers' – are the one group who have become persistently worse off over the last 30 years.”
The target of the freezes is most likely to be those of working age, but Goulden says that with the current changes to the benefits system, poverty is predicted to increase so any further cuts will lead to a bigger rise in poverty. Among the benefits affected are Job Seekers Allowance and housing benefits. Whilst this cut would reduce the welfare budget and ease cuts in other departments, it will not punish supposed idleness and incentivize work. This is because in order to claim JSA an individual must be actively looking for work, and over 50% of all housing benefits claimants are currently in work, so there is no added incentive here. In fact they are caught in a poverty trap.
Other arguments state that cutting benefits is counterproductive to stimulating the economy because the poor are more likely to spend their money than save it. This argument was made by none other than Iain Duncan Smith MP. The Liberal Democrats resisted a similar change last year protesting about the affects it had on low-income groups.
The 'haves' vs the 'have-nots' dichotomy in which many feel that the have-nots are just lazy, lifelong dole scroungers is far too simplistic, crude and often at times ideologically driven. The British Social Attitudes survey, comments by Kwasi Kwarteng and the current UK government policy exaggerate and embellish the extent to which worklessness is a problem.
The government has framed the discussion as a problem of people not wanting to work, but in reality one of the main problems is that there are no job opportunities because of the government's own short comings in improving the economy. If we are not careful, policies which aim to tackle the issue will attack the most vulnerable, those in work but on low wages, and fail to solve the root of the issue. | <urn:uuid:8530f266-15ba-4535-b906-cc4a737eceac> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.obv.org.uk/news-blogs/welfare-reforms-freezing-benefits-punishes-have-nots | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96301 | 859 | 1.859375 | 2 |
The United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR) in partnership with the German Technical Cooperation (GIZ) will run a new session of online courses on sustainable urban mobility in developing countries. The course will run from November 14, 2011 to March 2, 2012 and is intended primarily for decision makers and organizations working on sustainable transport systems.
“The rapid and often unplanned and uncoordinated growth of cities has seriously compromised existing transportation systems and significantly increased the challenge of creating future transportation systems especially in developing countries,” explains UNITAR. “It is indeed in developing countries that the greatest growth in motor vehicles has been seen in the past few years and is expected in the future, primarily in urban areas.” This increase in private motor vehicles, UNITAR adds, will have significant environmental and social impacts, which will directly affect the quality of life. Among the consequences of increased motor vehicles, congestion, energy consumption, air pollution and traffic crashes are only a fraction of the concerns. “Thus,” UNITAR continues, “urban transportation issues are of foremost importance to support the mobility requirements in these growing cities and require new approaches.”
The mission of the course is to enhance the capacity of local decision makers, as well as urban and transportation planners, to formulate and implement policies that contribute to the sustainability of urban transport in developing nations. The course will become a platform on which to analyze the issues of demand management, improved public and non-motorized transport, environmental protection, road safety and gender in the broad field of transportation. Furthermore, the course will provide decision makers with answers, solutions and alternative approaches in urban transport planning that achieve sustainable transport systems.
The course will follow six modules, each one designed to explore a smaller element under sustainable transport:
- Module 1 – Urban growth and strategies for sustainable development
- Module 2 – Municipal mobility management
- Module 3 – Public transport services
- Module 4 – Management, financing and institutions
- Module 5 – Energy and environment
- Module 6 – Safety and social issues
To learn more or register for the e-learning course, “Sustainable Urban Mobility In Developing Countries,” click here. | <urn:uuid:98a0c9b3-2db5-48d6-9345-4aed4c0058f9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://thecityfix.com/blog/register-now-for-e-learning-course-on-sustainable-urban-mobility/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.922104 | 451 | 2.546875 | 3 |
Tuskegee receives over $900,000 to improve educational facilities
TUSKEGEE, Ala. (February 2, 2011) — The U.S. Department of Education recently announced the award of $84.775 million to 96 Historically Black Colleges and Universities to strengthen their facilities and academic programs to improve education for their students. Tuskegee University received $964,802. The funds are a supplement grant for the university’s Title III program.
Grants awarded under the Strengthening Historically Black Colleges and Universities Program support a variety of activities that improve and expand course offerings, student services, campus facilities, and faculty and staff development. Funds may also be used to establish teacher education programs designed to qualify students to teach in public schools, financial and economic literacy programs for students and families, and community outreach programs that encourage elementary and secondary school students to develop high-level academic skills and interest in postsecondary education.
"HBCUs play an essential role in helping our nation boost college completion rates and achieve the president's (Barack Obama) goal for America to again have the highest percentage of college graduates in the world by 2020," said Arne Duncan, U.S. Secretary of Education. "These grants provide HBCUs with needed resources to enhance their programs and services that will enable their students to graduate and succeed in the workplace."
The awards are formula grants based on data provided by eligible institutions. To be eligible for funding, institutions must have been established prior to 1964 and have as a principal mission the education of African-Americans. | <urn:uuid:c10c4561-35de-4cb0-b1af-8c5fda59f517> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.tuskegee.edu/Articles/tuskegee_receives_over_900000_to_improve_educational_facilities.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00030-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960423 | 318 | 1.648438 | 2 |
Full library record
Information and views on socio-economic information. Submissions from Parties.
The Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice (SBSTA), at its twenty-fifth session, invited Parties to submit to the secretariat, by 21 September 2007 information and views on matters relating to the availability of information on the socio-economic aspects of climate change and improving the integration of socio-economic information into impact and vulnerability assessments, including information on the development of socio-economic scenarios and for understanding adaptive capacity, including:
(a) Existing approaches and available data;
(b) Needs, gaps, barriers and constraints;
(c) Ways and means to improve availability and access to relevant information, including information on costs and benefits, as well as its better integration into impact and vulnerability assessments (FCCC/SBSTA/2006/11, para. 51).
The SBSTA requested the secretariat to compile these submissions into a miscellaneous document to be made available to the SBSTA by its twenty-seventh session (FCCC/SBSTA/2006/11, para. 52). The secretariat has received six such submissions. In accordance with the procedure for miscellaneous documents, these submissions are attached and reproduced* in the language in which they were received and without formal editing.
Item 3 of the provisional agenda
Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice (SBSTA), Twenty-seventh session, 3-11 December 2007, Bali, Indonesia
United Nations Office at Geneva | Geneva (Switzerland) | 24/10/2007 | <urn:uuid:9e687fd4-fe22-4b6b-a2c0-5041da932dd8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://unfccc.int/documentation/documents/advanced_search/items/6911.php?priref=600004432 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00042-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.90261 | 327 | 1.5625 | 2 |
MIRED IN MISHAPS
JULY 17, 1997
The Russian space station, MIR, has had a series of problems in past weeks. Most recently, an important cable was accidentally disconnected, leaving the craft in free drift and complete darkness overnight. Jim Lehrer talks to former astronauts about the troubled past and uncertain future of the manned space station.
LAWRENCE McDONNELL, ITN: It was in the early hours of this morning while two of the crew slept that one of the cosmonauts on board--ground control aren't saying which one--accidentally pulled a cable, sending the station into a spin, causing it to lose power and forcing them to close down almost all systems.
A RealAudio version of this NewsHour segment is available.
June 25, 1997:
A re-supply ship hits the Mir space station
Browse the NewsHour's coverage of space and science.
Browse the official NASA Mir Web site.
View NASA's Web site.
The three-man crew were already in difficulty. They lost much of their power after collision last month. The accident happened while Mir was out of contact with ground control in Moscow. Technicians worked frantically to compensate for the loss in power suggesting moves to enable the station to keep operating. NASA officials in the United States described how the cosmonauts worked to adjust the orbit manually.
SPOKESMAN: The Mir went into a free drift, and then the power, which, as you know, has limited margins right now, was reduced to the point where they had to shut down the gyrodynes, go into jet control, and then eventually had to go back to controlling with the Soyuz module, as they did about three weeks ago when a similar event happened.
LAWRENCE McDONNELL: In Moscow, Mission Controller Vladimir Solovyov dismissed the suggestion that the situation warranted abandoning the space station. But the accident couldn't have come at a worse time. When the cargo ship collided with Mir last month, the crew had to scramble to cut power cables to the space station's solar panels, but they sealed off the punctured Specter module. In the next few days they were due to enter the module and repair the damage with spare parts sent out to them last week. But that plan was put off when the Russian commander fell ill with a heart complaint. Experts here say what should have been a routine operation to restore power lost last night was complicated by what is now a catalogue of errors.
SPOKESMAN: Many, many different factors have coincided. All the crews are very tense. It happens deep at night, early in the morning, 5:30. You know, they lost orientation immediately. All the red flashes, emergency ones, flashing all around, they woke up. Beside this, they were out of range of communication with Russian Mission Control.
LAWRENCE McDONNELL: Tonight, the crew have successfully stabilized the situation. Mir is no longer spinning in space, but the station is in such bad shape that crews are spending more and more time repairing it, rather than carrying out the experiment they were sent up for, which international agencies pay for, keeping the Russian space program in orbit.
JIM LEHRER: With us now, NASA astronaut Jerry Ross, who has completed five shuttle missions, walked in space four times, and retired astronaut Norman Thagard, who spent almost four months aboard Mir in 1995. He now teaches in the college of engineering at Florida State University. Mr. Ross, the crisis is over for now?
JERRY ROSS, NASA Astronaut: (Houston) I believe so, Jim. It sounds like they got things under control again. They're starting to recharge the power in the batteries, and over the next couple of days. They should be back to where they started before they inadvertently disconnected the cable.
JIM LEHRER: Inadvertently disconnected. I mean, somebody just pulled out a cable they shouldn't have done. Is that what happened?
JERRY ROSS: That's my understanding of it. It was a cable that was providing data to the computer on board the station that then provided the attitude pointing information to the station to properly adjust the solar rays to properly power the batteries and the systems on the station.
JIM LEHRER: And then it took a while to figure out what had happened. Is that why they couldn't just plug it right back in?
JERRY ROSS: Well, it's my understanding that this is an off nominal signature to the computer.
JIM LEHRER: What is--I'm sorry--
JERRY ROSS: And it automatically popped off--
JIM LEHRER: What's an off nominal?
JERRY ROSS: --because it didn't recognize a system.
JIM LEHRER: An off nominal signature. I'm sorry. What does that mean exactly?
JERRY ROSS: Well, I'm not really sure. My understanding is that this was not a failure mode that had been anticipated, and the loss of this data to the computer caused it to go into a default state, which caused it to shut itself off and to kind of safe a system in a way.
JIM LEHRER: Is there--do you agree with some of the commentaries that have come out in the last 24 hours that maybe this--these three men are under so much stress that that's what caused one of them to jerk that cord out?
JERRY ROSS: Certainly that's a possibility. They've been up there for a long time, especially the two Russians. And they've had a series of incidents that has put a lot of stress on them. I think the indication that the commander is having some irregular heartbeats is probably another indication that they are under a series of incidents that's causing stress to them.
JIM LEHRER: Mr. Thagard, tell us what it means when we--when we hear that this thing was spinning in space. That sounds scary. Is it? Mr. Thagard?
NORMAN THAGARD, Former Mir Astronaut: (Tallahassee) I don't think that the spacecraft losing attitude control and going into free drift is particularly scary. And by the way, this is not the first time that Mir has had a power failure. That happened in October or November of 1994 too.
JIM LEHRER: But what's it like if something--what does it means--when they say free drift, explain that to us.
NORMAN THAGARD: Free drift means it adapts whatever attitude it wants to by virtue of any rates that it had when it quit controlling the attitude by virtue of a small amount of atmosphere that's up there. It will start then changing its attitude in some unpredictable fashion.
JIM LEHRER: So, I mean, it's just like if you threw anything into space. I mean, there's no control. Nobody was controlling the space station while it was in free drift. That's what that means, right?
NORMAN THAGARD: That's what that means. It was just adapting whatever attitude the environment was sending it into.
JIM LEHRER: Now, why isn't that scary, Mr. Thagard? It would be to the rest of us.
NORMAN THAGARD: Well, it wouldn't be. You might not even notice it, depending on the rates.
JIM LEHRER: Why not?
NORMAN THAGARD: The only way you would notice it is if you looked outside and noticed that, for instance, in the daylight the solar batteries weren't pointed at the sun anymore.
JIM LEHRER: What do you make of the stress idea that maybe these three men have had it?
NORMAN THAGARD: Well, I think that's somewhat overplayed, especially in the case of the flight engineer and Mike Foale. I really doubt that they're under that much psychological stress. The commander, who was piloting the Progress when it hit the array, and I'm sure that weighs heavily on his mind, and I'm sure now too he's disappointed that he can't perform the space walk, so he's probably under some stress. But I don't even think the arrhythmia that he's having is related to that necessarily.
JIM LEHRER: All right. Mr. Ross, the space walk, you've made five of them, right?
JERRY ROSS: Four so far, Jim.
JIM LEHRER: Four so far. Mr. Culbertson, your colleague at NASA said today--we ran the tape in our News Summary a while ago--that that's the most exciting thing in the world. That's what all astronauts want to do. Do you agree with that?
JERRY ROSS: Yes, sir, I do. Beyond flying in space, being able to go outside in your own little spaceship--your spacesuit and to conduct a space walk is a very memorable and thrilling experience.
JIM LEHRER: So if Michael Foale says he wants to do it, that's understandable, from your point of view, right?
JERRY ROSS: Absolutely. Michael's a team player, and he wants to do what he can to keep the Mir station afloat and also to experience as many different things as he can while he's there.
JIM LEHRER: Now, this has been labeled a "risky," a potentially risky space walk if Foale does this. Why--what are the risks?
JERRY ROSS: Well, I guess the biggest risk would be going into the Specter module and finding something that was not anticipated. So far, everybody who has looked at that thinks that there are no significant hazards waiting for people once they open the hatch and go inside. They've done this type of space walk before. Every time they add another module to the station, they have to do something that's very similar to what they'll be doing this time. Mike--it is my understanding--will be staying inside the node and be in a supporting role for the board engineer, and, therefore, he ought to be in a minimal risk in that manner.
JIM LEHRER: Mr. Thagard, you would agree, minimal risk if Foale does this space walk?
NORMAN THAGARD: I absolutely agree with that, and two of those space walks were performed while I was up there inside that node, so I think, in fact, that's probably less hazardous, in general, than doing one in which you go outside the spacecraft.
JIM LEHRER: Explain what he will actually do then. It's not an outside--he's not going to be out there outside in space. He's going to be in--he's going to be inside the whole time, right?
NORMAN THAGARD: Absolutely. And Mike Foale will probably not leave that node, which, by the way, was the airlock for the Mir station when it was first launched in 1986.
JIM LEHRER: Yes. So that you don't see any risks at all for him?
NORMAN THAGARD: Oh, there's always a risk, and Jerry can comment on that, when you get in your space suit and do an EVA, you go down to vacuum, because there's only you and that cloth suit between--between you and the vacuum of space--but it's not a particularly hazardous space walk.
JIM LEHRER: Would you agree with Mr. Ross, that this is an exciting thing to do; this is what astronauts were born to do?
NORMAN THAGARD: You can believe that. If I had an opportunity to do a space walk, I would have leapt at it.
JIM LEHRER: Why?
NORMAN THAGARD: Just because it's a different experience. You're in--as Jerry said--your own little spaceship, and you have a great view. It's just--you want to do something that's unique and different.
JIM LEHRER: Now, Mr. Ross, on the spacesuit, there have been some reports here that Foale doesn't have his own spacesuit up there, the space walk suit, because he didn't go up there to do a space walk. He's going to borrow one from one of the Russians, and it may not fit right. Is that a problem, and, if so, what is it?
JERRY ROSS: I don't think it will be a problem, Jim. Their suits are designed to be resizable on orbit. Mike has done considerable training in the suit. He's been in a vacuum chamber. He's experienced what the suit looks like and feels like when it's in an actual vacuum, of what it would be like in space. And I think he'll have a chance to do a couple of rehearsals, one in a shirt-sleeve environment, and then a second one where he'll actually be in the spacesuit, and he'll go through all the procedures, except taking the node down to a vacuum and actually opening up the hatch that that leads into the Specter compartment.
JIM LEHRER: Mr. Thagard, you're one of the few real eyewitnesses there are to what it's like to be on Mir. What's causing all these problems? What's wrong with that thing up there?
NORMAN THAGARD: It doesn't look like the past couple of problems are related certainly to the age of the Mir station. It looks like--
JIM LEHRER: It's 11 years old, right? Hasn't it been up there--
NORMAN THAGARD: Well, parts of it, but parts of it are brand new. The Free Rotor module, for instance, didn't go up there till last year, and I was there when the Specter module came up two years ago.
JIM LEHRER: Yes. As you--I know you're not up there now, but you know what that instrument, that craft is like. When you read these reports and hear all these reports, what do you think is going on? What's causing that? Is there one cause, or what?
NORMAN THAGARD: The last couple of problems appear to be at least, in part, human error, and I think that there is a potential problem with long duration space flight in that one. When you've had a spacecraft up there for years and crews up there for months, you just don't pay the same attention to things that you would say on a shuttle flight of a week or two. That's just human nature. And what it means is people have to go back to the basics. They have to remember that you've always got to be vigilant. You've got to be meticulous in your adherence to procedures. And I think if they'll just do that, then they will cease to have a lot of these problems.
JIM LEHRER: And that's what could have caused an astronaut or cosmonaut to accidentally pull out that cable, you mean, just not paying enough attention to the details?
NORMAN THAGARD: Well, either that, or the cosmonaut had a wrong instruction. It's hard to know, but it does appear that human error played a role.
JIM LEHRER: What do you think of these reports, Mr. Thagard, about, hey, maybe it's just time to close the door on that thing and let it go away, bring everybody home and wait for another space station to be built?
NORMAN THAGARD: I guess I would say this. Those folks are a lot safer up there on the Mir station than they would be riding the rocket to take them up there, and I haven't heard anyone argue that we ought to quit firing rockets off.
JIM LEHRER: Mr. Ross, what's your view of closing down shop?
JERRY ROSS: Well, I'd have to agree with Norm. I think that right now the Mir is crippled. We're not getting as much science out of it as we would like to, but we are learning a lot. A major portion of the first phase of cooperation with the Russians and the international space station is to understand how they do business and how their systems work and going through this series of problems that we've had, we've certainly learned a lot more than if everything had gone normally.
JIM LEHRER: Is this cooperation thing really working, Mr. Ross?
JERRY ROSS: I believe it is. It's certainly a growing process. We're separated by large distance. We used to be enemies. We have language difficulties, trying to understand each other's way of doing business in a technical sense. But I think for the future of mankind and exploring space, we need to do that in a larger group. Certainly, no one country has all the resources that are required, nor all the smarts that are necessary to press beyond low Earth orbit. And I think in the future we're laying the framework here that will be useful for the future of exploration of space.
JIM LEHRER: Norm Thagard, how would you rate the cooperation level between the Russians and the Americans?
NORMAN THAGARD: I'd rate it very good. And what I noticed during my flight as the flight went along, the Russians seemed to trust me more and more and give me more responsibility. And you can't get that unless you actually have interaction with one another.
JIM LEHRER: All right. Gentlemen, thank you both very much for being with us tonight.
|Support the kind of journalism done by the NewsHour...Become a member of your local PBS station.| | <urn:uuid:6bcd3cb0-81b3-46fa-aefe-4bdb5079e34e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/science/july-dec97/mir_7-17.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.97646 | 3,733 | 2.265625 | 2 |
Is This A Comic: Intent of the Creator
In this month’s column, we’re going to explore the first, and perhaps most mercurial of the four criteria, the Intent of the Creator. What does this criteria mean? How is it defined? Why do we need it?
Intent of the Creator means, quite simply, does the creator intend for this work to be a “comic.†When Creator X made Work Y, did Creator X intend to produce a work that would conform to the rest of the four criteria? Did Creator X desire that? Was that the goal?
This criteria is hard to nail down simply because it is paradoxical in nature. How can someone intend to make something if part of said creation’s definition is the intent to create a thing which we can’t define until it exists? Ugg. See what I mean? Just because this is difficult, however, doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try to do it or that it isn’t important!
Before we can go any further about the hows and whys concerning the Intent of the Creator criteria, we need to come to terms with the paradox. It is, I believe, human nature when confronted with a paradox to say either “neither is correct†or “only one can be correct.†There is a time, however, when humans are willing to forgo that initial reaction. We call that “the willing suspension of disbelief.â€
“The Willing Suspension of Disbelief†is (according to Internet info-maven, Wikipedia) “the alleged willingness of a reader or viewer to accept as true the premises of a work of fiction, even if they are fantastic, impossible, or otherwise contradictory to "reality".†To simplify, which we all like to do, this means you know that something isn’t true or wouldn’t work in reality, but you’re willing to go along with it for the sake of the story. Common examples would be almost any superhero’s abilities, basic science fiction premises of “faster than light†starship engines, or even things like zombies and vampires. For the moment, we allow the story to lie to us. We believe what we are presented even if it is not true. We treat the untrue as the truth. That is a paradox if I ever heard one.
What I am asking here is that we suspend our disbelief of the paradox I have presented (at least for now). I have a good reason to ask your patience and if you follow me, I’m sure you’ll see that using the Intent of the Creator as one of the four criteria is not as paradoxical as it seems.
Any contemporary creator is lucky because they don’t need to invent comics. We already have comics. We can see them, read them, experience them. We may have trouble defining (for the moment) all the nuances of what a comic is, but generally speaking, we know it when we see it.
Comics are not an invention or a discovery. There wasn't an inventor or a team of scientists working to discover comics. Comics are less like a light bulb and more like a living organism. Comics have evolved from other creatures over a matter of time. Just as homo erectus would be a step towards our modern homo sapien, the modern comic evolved from numerous past works, like hieroglyphics and Trajan’s Column. Evolution is the key to comics.
It’s probably impossible to say with any confidence when the first true “comic†appeared. Most scholars usually agree upon R.F. Outcault’s Hogan’s Alley, more specifically, The Yellow Kid, in 1895 as a modern starting point. Honestly, it’s a pretty good one because once it hit, comics began to crawl out of the primordial ooze and breathe on land for the first time. Comic strips would soon begin to pop up in magazines and newspapers. By the late 1920s, strips would encompass all sorts of genres and be read by people from all walks of life. No one person or entity had set out to invent comics, but they were here, and they were called “comicsâ€.
The easiest way to know the intent of a creator is, of course, to ask them. If we have access to the creator, we can simply say, “Hey, is this thing you made supposed to be a comic?†Of course, we don’t have access to all creators. Darn you, death! That means it is up to us, the audience, to make an informed judgement.
The easiest way for us to ask if the intent was to make a comic is to take a work we know is a comic and compare it to the work in question. Are they similar? If the answer is “yesâ€, then it is probably safe to say we’re on the right track. The next question we ask is “how are these things similar?†This shouldn’t really be surprising. Humans and animals instinctively do this all the time. “Is this food? It appears similar to the other thing that was food because of x, y, and z. It probably is food.â€
Of course, if it was just a matter of instinct, there really would be no point to this column. Instinct is the starting point. The next thing we can do to determine the creator’s intent is to study what was happening in the creator’s environment. What influenced the creator? Even if we don’t know exactly what the creator was doing, we usually know about where and when they lived. What was going on in the culture then? What was happening? Who else was creating in that time? All these little clues can help us gain insight we need to make a judgement.
Typically, that is what this first criteria is all about; making a judgement. You, the audience, must make the call. Can I discern the creator’s intent? You must make the call, either “yes, they wanted to make a comic†or “no.†Don’t think that just because you answered “no†that there was failure. Even if something is not a comic, it can still be related to comics and can still influence and add to the culture of comics.
Simply put, intent is a bigger piece of a puzzle. Comics were not created by invention, that is, no one person “discovered†or set out to “invent†comics. Instead, comics came to us by way of evolution. Once comics arrived on scene, we had them. We now have something in our collective consciousness that is “comicâ€. What a “comic†is defined on academically is certainly up for debate (hence this column), but we know they exist.
Because we know comics exist and are not something that need to be discovered or invented, it is safe to say they are no longer created by accident. People make comics on purpose. That is what the Intent of the Creator criteria is all about; that the creator intended for their work to be a comic when completed. The creator intends for the audience to experience the work as a comic (which will be discussed more when we look at the next criteria: Audience Experience). The creator intends for their work to be a comic when experienced as a whole. All of it, together, is a comic. Any separate piece of it, such as a single panel, page, or even the script, is intended to be part of a comic. Not to say the individual pieces do not have value or merit on their own. They are not what the creator intended to be a singular comic.
Intent of the Creator is also a safeguard for other creators who never wanted their work to be considered a comic. The obvious example of Roy Lichtenstein comes immediately to mind. Lichtenstein was obviously, and admittedly, influenced by comics and cartooning. However, he did not consider his works to be comics or himself a cartoonist. He described himself as a cubist painter, and later a classicist painter. He described his paintings (to which I’m referring) as parodies of cartoons. As much as we’d love to say Roy Lichtenstein was making amazing comics, the truth is that isn’t what he would say. That was not his intent.
Now, the reason there are Four Criteria that must be met is because anyone of these alone isn’t going to cut it. Just because someone intends something they’ve done to be a comic does not automatically make it a comic. Let’s face it, failure is an option. I would like to think, however, that the first step on an individual’s journey to making comics is to simply intend to make a comic. If a finished comic was a cake, the first step the baker would take, even if only instinctively or internally, would be to say “I’m going to make a cake.†Whether or not the baker succeeds is another matter, but at least we know what the baker was going for.
Granted, Intent of the Creator is probably going to be more useful in determining what is not a comic than what is. That’s okay. I think this criteria will help us identify a lot of work that helped contribute to the evolution of comics. It will also enable us to (potentially) predict what other art forms comics may give birth to (or already have in the case of animation). Just because something is not a comic does not mean it is not in comics’ extended family.
I would propose labeling as "proto-comics" anything that is similar to comics, but is not comics and was created before the appearance of The Yellow Kid in 1895. This would include things like Trajan’s Column and Hieroglyphics, but would exclude things such as the work of Roy Lichtenstein. Similarly I would propose labeling as "para-comics" any work that is similar to comics, but is not comics and appeared after The Yellow Kid in 1895. A para-comic would be work influenced by comic, but is not a comic, such as the Lichtenstein paintings, or even some animation and film. Both para-comics and proto-comics would very likely appear to be comics on the surface, but would fail at least one of the four criteria.
Intent of the Creator is a quick and easy way to help sort works in question. If the work was before 1895, chances are the creator had no intent to make a comic. Such a work could be related to or influence comics but not likely be comics. For work post-1895, if it is easy to establish the Intent of the Creator to make a comic, then move on to the other four criteria and continue. If there is no intent, then you have a para-comic.
The Intent of the Creator is only the first of the four criteria. It is important because it helps establish the motive, if you will. However, it can only be an educated guess at times as to what the creator intended. For that reason, it alone cannot define what a comic is or isn’t.
Next time, we’ll examine closely the next of the four criteria, Audience Experience. How does the audience experience comics? What is unique about that experience to comics that makes it important to the definition? | <urn:uuid:ddaee158-2076-4ac4-a448-7c3fc539b66c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://comixtalk.com/is_this_a_comic_intent_of_the_creator_0 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.968804 | 2,531 | 1.890625 | 2 |
A German composer of romantic music in many forms, including piano pieces, orchestral music, and lieder. Among his notable works are the Davidsbündlertänze (1837), Dichterliebe (1840), and the Quintet in E-flat for Piano & Strings. From his early years, Schumann
spoke of the piano as a diary for his thoughts and feelings. Later, while establishing the fundamentals for the journalistic criticism of music in his Neue Zeitschrift für Musik ("New Journal for Music"), he seems to have continued that relationship with all the forms in which he composed. Many of his songs, song cycles, and piano works are collections of musical characterizations, which, like the Kinderszenen ("Scenes from Childhood") and Waldszenen ("Scenes from the Woods"), are often humorous. In his more dramatic works the meaning is often personal and elusive, with a hidden "program," although often passionately beautiful. Schumann
's symphonies, neglected for a long time, are now appreciated for the many innovative qualities of their melody and form. | <urn:uuid:e5a75305-b322-47a5-a057-0724355d61c1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.k93.ca/Music/Artist.aspx?id=1394 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00039-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.979284 | 233 | 3.328125 | 3 |
Feminist Conversations is a weekly series at Feminists For Choice. We spotlight activists from across the interwebs to find out what feminism means to them. Willie J. Parker, MD, MPH, MSc, is the Medical Director of Planned Parenthood Metro Washington, and a board member of Physicians for Reproductive Choice and Health (PRCH). We met earlier this year at a reception for Carole Joffe, and he has graciously agreed to be interviewed by me twice: first for my book Generation Roe, and now for Feminists for Choice.
1. When did you first call yourself a feminist, and what influenced that decision?
That’s an interesting question. Long before I knew what to call myself, I realized that I had a compulsion around working on fundamental issues of fairness across gender lines. As I pursued my consciousness-raising, I came across a simple book by bell hooks called Feminism is for Everybody. In it, she simplifies the fact that feminism is less about biology than it is about how one perceives and operates in the world regarding issues of gender fairness. As I look back, I conclude that while I have been working for gender-neutral equality for a while, I have self-described as a feminist since reading that book about six years ago.
2. What does feminism mean to you?
Feminism for me is the worldview and effort toward equality based on neutralizing differences in life chances based on gender. I look at feminism as a specific context in which to pursue human rights. I like the definition that I once saw on a bumper sticker: “Feminism is the radical notion that women are human beings.”
3. What led you to become an abortion provider? [Read more...] | <urn:uuid:73cdf88a-d343-434d-97fa-582648c06c62> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://feministsforchoice.com/tag/physicians-for-reproductive-choice-and-health | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00075-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.973733 | 360 | 1.523438 | 2 |
September 9th, 2008
Don Haskins was 78
The real-life coach who was portrayed in the 2006 film Glory Road, starring Derek Luke, has died. Portrayed in the film by Josh Lucas, Donald Lee Haskins coached the first basketball team ever to start five Black players. The 1966 Texas Western College squad went on to win the national championship against the University of Kentucky . Haskins later was assistant coach of the 1972 Olympic team. He died this week at age 78.
August 26th, 2008
Plane crash in Guatemala kills 10. A Guatemalan plane carrying 14 people crashed Sunday, killing 10 people, reports CNN. Eight Americans are among the dead. About 45 minutes after the Cessna Caravan 208 took off, the pilot started making calls about engine failure, according to the country’s director of civil aeronautics. But the air-traffic tower lost contact with the plane at 9:45 a.m. and it crashed in Zacapa, killing the pilot, co-pilot and the Americans on board. The other four passengers were taken to a hospital after the crash. “It seems like the pilot tried her best to make a safe landing in an open field but was not successful. On impact, the aircraft was split into pieces,” a Zacapa firefighter told reporters at the scene.
Civilians killed by Sudan’s government forces, witnesses say. Sudanese forces attacked a refugee camp in Darfur, killing at least 32 civilians early Monday, witnesses say. The witness accounts of the attack are chilling. More than 50 vehicles “packed with armed men wearing police and security forces’ uniforms … hit us with rocket-propelled grenades and machine guns,” resident of the refugee camp, Mandela Abdullah Mohammed, told The Associated Press. He also said the victims included many women and children. One rebel group spokesman from the Sudan Liberation Army claimed an even higher death toll – 45 people dead and 135 people wounded – due to the Sudanese soldiers “storming” the camp and attacking. “The government sent a strong military force and attacked the camp with the intentions of killing civilians,” another spokesman for the group told AP. A Sudanese military spokesman, though, insists they had good reason to fire on the camp. “They were surprised by heavy gunfire from within the camp. There was an exchange of fire and a number of victims,” the spokesman, Sawarmy Khaled, said. But the United Nations say they received reports about Sudanese police surrounding and attacking the camp in southern Darfur, which resulted in “injuries and deaths of civilians.” The United Nations would not give an estimate on the death toll, but a coordinator for nearby clinic run by Doctors Without Borders says that at least 65 people were admitted for treatment for gunshot wounds. Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir is facing genocide charges brought on by the International Criminal Court for allegedly supporting attacks against the nation’s ethnic Africans. Since fighting started in Darfur in 2003, about 300,000 people have died and more than 2.5 million have been made homeless. | <urn:uuid:ca1cff78-0d7a-4abf-acda-9dca815cefc8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blogs.bet.com/news/news-you-should-know/tag/five/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00065-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.978646 | 647 | 1.726563 | 2 |
Lubbock County Commissioners decided Monday to remove a victims' rights monument from the courthouse lawn in response to a controversy over whether it interfered with a defendant's right to a fair trial.
Commissioners called their action a compromise in the ongoing dispute between local victims' advocates and defense attorneys, an assertion that was later questioned by at least one victims' advocate.
By early afternoon, county work crews had dismantled the black granite slab, leaving behind an accompanying raised flower bed and stone benches.
Jim Watkins / Staff
Lubbock County Commissioners approved a resolution Monday where the granite marker will be removed from the victims' rights memorial, but the benches and flower garden will remain.
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At issue was a quote inscribed on the monument. Attributed to Benjamin Franklin, the quote read: "Justice will not be served until those who are unaffected are as outraged as those who are."
Defense attorneys claimed the inscription could sway jurors entering the courthouse. They also raised questions about the quote's authenticity, saying the quote could not be reliably linked to Franklin.
Commissioners chose to leave the remainder of the garden in place as a memorial to all victims of injustice, said Commissioner Patti Jones.
"We felt like it was a compromise that should be amenable to both groups," she said.
The county asked the company that erected the monument if it wanted the monument salvaged, Jones said. The county was told to save only the ornamental butterfly on the face of the slab.
Shannon Ramos, victim assistance coordinator for the Lubbock/South Plains chapter of Mothers Against Drunk Driving, said earlier in the day that the members of the victims' rights coalition who worked on the monument project didn't want the granite marker anymore.
"We're kind of done with the whole memorial," she said. "We'll just stick to helping our victims. Even though it's not the resolution we hoped for, we look forward to being able to get back to doing our jobs."
The memorial garden, located on the courthouse's west lawn, was dedicated April 11 during observances of National Crime Victims' Rights Week.
After the vote was taken Monday, the groups at the center of the debate differed sharply on whether commissioners had indeed crafted a compromise.
Pat Metze, president of the Lubbock Criminal Defense Lawyers Association, said he was satisfied with the commissioners' decision. His group had threatened to sue if the monument wasn't taken off the courthouse lawn.
"We have nothing against flowers; we have nothing against benches. We certainly have nothing against victims," he said.
However, Metze and his colleagues felt the monument "was an inappropriate expression of county policy."
Ramos questioned whether the final outcome was truly a compromise.
"The defense attorneys got their way," she said. "The defense attorneys wanted the granite down and that's what they got."
Ramos and Pam Alexander, executive director of Lubbock Victim Assistance Services, collaborated on the monument project. They also drew the backing of the Lubbock County Criminal District Attorney's Office and the Department of Public Safety.
Commissioners in March allowed the use of the courthouse lawn for the monument, which was funded through a grant from the federal Office for Victims of Crime.
Jones said commissioners originally stipulated that tax dollars not be spent on the monument.
With the threat of a lawsuit against the county, commissioners decided that they "didn't want to use tax dollars to defend something that has turned out to be as controversial as it has," she said.
The county won't sanction any more memorials until commissioners have had time to create a formal policy on the issue, she said.
James Dunn was at the April dedication of the victims' rights monument. His son, Scott, was a Lubbock resident when he died in 1991.
Although Dunn's body was never found, investigators concluded he was probably murdered.
Although James Dunn now lives in Georgia, he said the Lubbock monument "meant a whole lot to me."
He said Monday that he was most disappointed that the county appeared to give in to the pressure exerted by the defense attorneys.
"I just think it's a real discredit to crime victims," he said.
Ramos and Alexander attended Monday's commissioners court meeting but left before the vote was taken to remove the monument.
Ramos expressed disappointment with commissioners Monday, saying the vote was "a setback for victims."
"When the county let us put it up, we bragged around the state about how progressive our county was," she said. "When you have a county go back on its word, that's embarrassing."
To comment on this story:
Lubbock Avalanche-Journal ©2013. All Rights Reserved. | <urn:uuid:c854039e-a61b-4b05-8ea1-2964213e1ec5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://lubbockonline.com/stories/072605/loc_072605027.shtml | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.974771 | 968 | 1.640625 | 2 |
A few weeks ago there was a discussion over at Tony Karrer’s great eLearning Technology blog regarding a new “debate” surrounding “Rapid eLearning Tools”. A panel discussion on the topic, at the recently held eLearning Guild conference, seemed to spark some question as to whom these tools were intended for - subject matter experts, instructional designers, or other.
Additionally, much of the discussion seemed to focus on the definition of what a “rapid eLearning tool” was, let alone whom the intended user should be. My take was that ultimately, the content author needs to determine the best way to convey their message to their audience. It may require a a sophisticated simulation or simply a PPT w/ audio. It all comes down to using the right tool for the job. There are a variety of ways to create and distribute training and presentation materials over the web, but understanding your audience’s needs should help to decide on the right tool.
The term “Rapid eLearning” seems to have crystallized into a “category” that the likes of Forrester deems worthy of coverage. That’s good news for tools like iPresent Presio. However, I don’t think Presio would fit into this “category”. Presio is certainly about “rapid”, but it is much more of a “rapid communications” tool as opposed to an eLearning tool.
It’s nice to interact with others on these types of issues. Doing so helps to better your understanding of your own product and where it fits (or doesn’t fit) into a given market. | <urn:uuid:6b6558e1-bbf9-457f-aedb-0af43921ee5c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ipresent.net/blog/2007/05/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00059-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960551 | 352 | 1.859375 | 2 |
Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer has always been right at the forefront of the drug re-importation debate. In previous runs for Governor he highlighted the issue by actually busing senior citizens into Canada to purchase cheaper pills. A few weeks ago, Schweitzer sent a letter to the HHS Secretary, Kathleen Sebelius, calling for a waiver to allow Montanans on Medicaid and CHIP to get imported prescription drugs from Canada.
During this time of economic recession, states have made very tough choices to balance their human services budgets. There is one area where costs could be controlled without adversely impacting people who need health care. I am asking you to join me in my fight against unfair drug pricing by granting a Medicaid waiver allowing us to import prescription drugs from Canada for Montanans covered by Medicaid, Healthy Montana Kids (Montana’s CHIP program), our state employee health plan and our correctional systems. By allowing Montana to import medications from Canada we estimate we could save up to $40 million.
The Missoulian follows up on the issue today.
Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer is still moving forward with his plan to import cheaper medicine from Canada, despite promises made in the health care reform recently passed by fellow Democrats in Washington D.C.
Schweitzer says the health care reform does far less than critics allege and supporters claim. He says prescription drugs will still be too expensive.
It’s impossible to counter Schweitzer’s argument. Indeed, it wasn’t so long ago that the Montana Governor was delivering the official Democratic radio address on this subject. The PhRMA deal in the Affordable Care Act has been universally recognized as ugly; just yesterday the AP credibly alleged that the drug lobby basically won out more than any other stakeholder. And even though Montana’s own Max Baucus can be credited with engineering the deal, Schweitzer continues to press for fair treatment for his constituents and a fair price for their medical care.
Good for him. No response yet from HHS. | <urn:uuid:516c2b3a-b977-4eaa-b012-94f408272fa4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://news.firedoglake.com/2010/03/31/brian-schweitzer-seeks-waiver-to-import-drugs-to-montana-from-canada/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00060-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.950075 | 413 | 1.507813 | 2 |
Understanding the Political Economy of Low Carbon and Climate Resilient Development
Climate change has been analysed and (mis)analysed through many angles but surprisingly there has been little on the policy process of climate change, especially on the links between international initiatives and national programs. However, in the light of significant financial flows to climate change and development activities, the international and national political economy of climate change needs to be analysed and better understood.
Despite the impasse at Copenhagen conference of the UN Framework Convention for Climate Change (UNFCCC), significant sums of money will be made available under a post-Kyoto framework for climate change adaptation and mitigation in developing countries. This project focuses on two global program initiatives, namely the Pilot Programme for Climate Resilience (PPCR), administered by the World Bank through the Climate Investment Funds, and the Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD).
- To provide empirical analysis of how ideas, power and resources are conceptualised, negotiated and implemented at different scales in international climate change initiatives.
- To develop a new conceptual and methodological framework for understanding the political economy of climate change initiatives.
- To inform policy and programming on climate change and development through greater understanding and awareness of the political economy dimensions of climate change interventions.
Work on the political economy of international climate change processes was carried out by the IDS core team. This was complemented by 4 country case studies focusing on one particular climate change initiative (Bangladesh, Brazil, Mozambique, Nepal).
Responses to climate change need to be understood through a political economy framework that takes into account ideas and ideology. Previous governance analyses have essentially focused largely on institutions, power, and capacity building, ignoring the political ideological processes embedded in the governance of the sector.
Research and practice needs to go beyond and critique the dominant political process which represents climate change as a global problem requiring global solutions.
Greater attention is required to the translation of global governance processes to national processes. This requires examination of how climate change programmes are conceptualised, negotiated and implemented at the global level. The research project will then see how these programmes are reconceptualised, renegotiated and implemented at the national level. | <urn:uuid:a97cd050-b4f1-4ff4-bdfd-1139bd552d55> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ids.ac.uk/idsproject/understanding-the-political-economy-of-low-carbon-and-climate-resilient-development | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00073-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.917256 | 447 | 2 | 2 |
Dec 11, 2008
Some cause for hope and excitement on another rainy day in Poznan.
This morning was brightened up with a colourful, fantastic action by Young Friends of the Earth Europe.
They've spent months collecting almost 2000 messages on little squares of fabric from people in 30 countries. After many arduous hours stitching them together into banners and ribbons the outcome was incredible.
"Act now! Wrap it up! Act now!" was the message of the day, with a 2 meter globe being wrapped in a ribbon containing messages of hope and action, to inspire delegates and urge them to 'wrap up' the negotiations.
The individual messages were fantastic, covering everything from more wind power to demands for climate justice and more. Quite a number in languages I didn't recognise either, which is always good to see (the dominance of the english language in the climate negotiations is appalling).
The great atmosphere and colours of the action meant that not only the ministers who had agreed to come showed up, but also someone from the Secretariat of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, a Commissioner from.. well, not really sure where along with crowds of people peering through the windows at us.
The Ministers that came - from Norway, Netherlands, United Kingdom and Germany - were presented with a framed fabric message, and, there even appeared to be genuine excitement from some.
A good job at any rate. The Young FoE Europe crew are fantastic and a force to be reckoned with. I'm looking forward to seeing what they're involved in next - although there may not be much more opportunity for action before this climate meeting ends, there are rumours of interesting plans for 2009. If you want to keep an eye on them, or get involved, check out their blog here - http://countdowntopoznhagen..wordpress.com/
On a more serious note though, the negotiations are supposed to end today, and so far there isn't much to be hopeful about. The statements from Ministers started today, which really highlights what is important to different countries and gives an idea of what will come out of this. I spent so much of the day frowning I think I've given myself permanent creases between my eyebrows - and we still have a day of statements to go!
Nevertheless, I'll keep you posted (and try to keep a degree of hope - a necessity if you're going to be involved in this process). | <urn:uuid:d424dcf9-2ffe-45fa-8ec2-df1257c7b0ab> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.foei.org/en/blog/2008/12/11?set_language=en | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96528 | 497 | 1.632813 | 2 |
By Osama Diab
What the speculation over political succession in Egypt overlooks is that Gamal Mubarak has effectively taken over the reins of power from his father already.
4 July 2009
The daily newspaper al-Shorouk recently reported that important figures in Egypt’s ruling National Democratic Party (NDP) are meeting to decide the name of the party’s 2011 presidential candidate. The article didn’t cite any sources, and the NDP issued a flood of statements denying the occurrence of such a meeting. However, the rumour has caused the issue of succession in Egypt to resurface. It doesn’t matter how hard the NDP denies the speculation and conjecture, it is going to have to name a candidate in the near future.
Although President Hosni Mubarak’s son, Gamal, managed to make a quiet, backroom entry into the political scene, his emergence as the NDP’s next candidate is clear. He gives major speeches, tours poor villages and has a say in all the economic, social and political issues. As Egypt has always been run as a one-man show, the elite usually reflect the ruler’s ideology, identity and beliefs. Egypt’s economic, political and social trends indicate that Gamal Mubarak already has a wide breadth of influence.
The rise of Gamal Mubarak started in 2002 when he was appointed head of the policy committee in the ruling NDP. Two years later, a new cabinet was appointed, headed by the Western-educated technocrat Dr Ahmed Nazif. Vital ministries were given to unfamiliar young neo-liberalist faces who spoke perfect English, were roughly Gamal Mubarak’s age and received some, if not all, of their education in the West. This cabal is currently known in Egypt as the ‘businessmen’s cabinet’.
Gamal Mubarak did both his undergraduate and graduate studies in business at the American University in Cairo. After graduation, he had a successful career as a banker in the Bank of America branches in Cairo and London, becoming one of its top executives. Upon his return to Egypt, he established the Future Generation Foundation, an NGO aiming to teach modern skills to college students and young graduates.
His joining of the NDP was accompanied by a huge makeover and re-branding of the ruling party with a “new thought” slogan. Egypt has also been aggressively moving towards a free market approach where the government’s performance is measured by how much foreign direct investment enters the country and how well the stock exchange is performing.
Looking back over Egypt’s timeline, one can trace how social and economic trends bent in this new direction, and how Gamal Mubarak found a place in the middle of the curve.
In the era of social division in pre-revolutionary royal Egypt, it was the aristocratic class that ruled the nation, and pashas were the cream of the crop. All the important ministers, political figures and even businessmen held the prestigious title of pasha.
In 1952, Egypt experienced a revolution, or better said, a military coup. Since it was carried out by the military, generals and colonels replaced pashas as the new power. This remained the case until the rise of Islamic extremists and the assassination of Egypt’s former president Anwar Sadat. After the death of Sadat, Egypt declared a state of emergency, and emergency law has been applied ever since. This gave power to a new elite: the police. For almost three decades, leading up to the mid-1990′s, emergency law turned Egypt into a police state, with the police holding tight to the enormous power they gained during their fight against Islamic extremism.
Now, a transitional period is in place and the trend is changing again. The youth who used to aspire to become military and then police officers are now fighting for a place in the many multinational corporations, banks and IT companies opening their doors every day in Egypt.
Studying economics or business administration in one of the new Western educational institutes has become the latest method of securing at least an upper-middle-class social position. Over the past six years, Canadian, German and British universities have opened their doors to students keen on making it into the corporate world. Forty-story, Shanghai-style office towers are now being built everywhere along the Nile. The dream for a growing number of young Egyptians is getting a job in a multinational bank headquartered in one of these towers. All of this is the influence of Gamal Mubarak’s neo-liberal and Westernised personality.
Whether Gamal Mubarak will be the next president of Egypt is being hotly debated in Egypt. But a quick look at the timeline of Egypt’s new trends, when viewed alongside Gamal Mubarak’s CV, indicates that Gamal Mubarak is already the current ruler of Egypt, despite not holding the official title of president just yet.
Facebook comments (Chronikler comments below)
Tags: egypt, gamal mubaram, hosni mubarak, politics, power transition, succession | <urn:uuid:05c6b44c-54af-476c-83eb-06b811f02970> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://chronikler.com/middle-east/egypt/gamal-mubarak/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.968882 | 1,037 | 1.734375 | 2 |
Gwen Blakley Kinsler, better known as The Crochet Queen (or Cro-Kween), is a crochet designer, author and teacher who also creates what I definitely consider to be works of crochet art.
More about crochet artist Gwen Blakley Kinsler
You may know Kinsler’s name just from your interest in crochet because of the fact that she is the founder of the Crochet Guild of America. Or you may know her name because of the fact that she’s been published in numerous crochet / craft magazines and books. Kinsler is also a member of the National Needlework Association, a crochet retreat leader and an entrepreneur who founded her own business called Fiber Impressions in the early 1990′s.
More about Kinsler’s crochet art
Most of the artisti crochet that I feature here on the blog on Mondays are artists first and happen to use crochet as a medium. Kinsler is a little bit different because I would guess that she is a crochet lover first and expresses her love of crochet through many different channels including art. She does more “traditional” wearable crochet, she does true crochet art and then she does something in-between, freeform wearable pieces, which I happen to think are some of the best pieces that she’s produced.
Examples of Kinsler’s crochet art
Let’s take a look at a few of Kinsler’s freeform pieces since they’re my favorites. You can see much more of them on her site under the Free Form Crochet tab.Freedom Sweater Free-Form Red Purse Original Free Form Beaded Brooches
You can also see some of Kinsler’s crochet art on her page under the tab “Crochet as Art”. A couple of my favorite pieces:“Heartrock Hotel” – I am busy covering my world in crochet Famous Faces Series: FridaIV Hyperbolic Bead Crochet Brooch
And I also have to mention her award-winning self-portrait done in crochet because it’s so awesome!Queen of Crochet: Self-Portrait
Kinsler’s Support of Crochet Art
I think one of the most important contributions that Kinsler has made to crochet art is her long-standing support of crochet as an art form. Her website explains that she insisted from the beginning that the CGOA support crochet art at each of its Chain Link conferences. She herself helped to curate two large crochet art exhibitions in the past decade.
Kinsler’s Products for Sale
There is an “items for sale” tab on Kinsler’s website that allows you to purchase many of her great patterns as well as some of her crochet art pieces and her free form crochet kits. If you like her stuff then it would be great to support her with a purchase but either way her site is worth checking out further!
Kinsler Around the Web
You can find the Crochet Queen around the web at:
- Her Blog
- The New Crochet Cowl Scarves, contributing designer
- FreeformCrochet.com, artist
Question for You: Do you know Kinsler? Do you have any personal stories to share about meeting her or being inspired by her books? I’d love to hear them!! | <urn:uuid:a41db72e-0ca6-4ea2-ac9d-9582d25d19ff> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.crochetconcupiscence.com/it/2011/07/freeform-crochet-artist-gwen-blakley-kinsler/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.955663 | 709 | 1.5625 | 2 |
While most of us are craving more sunshine and blue skies, summertime can be one of despair for the estimated 600,000 people affected by summer or reverse SAD in the UK.
Seasonal affective disorder is more commonly known as a wintertime condition, where the shortened days and decreased sun exposure cause symptoms of depression. Summer SAD is simply the reverse of this.
Symptoms include: increased sense of heat at night, agitation, restlessness, insomnia, reduced appetite and a general feeling of being miserable, often for no reason. You may also experience a sense of not enjoying what are usually pleasurable activities.
I've recently written a piece on summer SAD for the current issue of the Depression Alliance's membership magazine Single Step. As part of the piece, I spoke to Ricky and Julia, two people who fantastically illustrated just how difficult life in the summer months can be for those affected.
Some tips that can help to minimise the effects of summer SAD include: using black-out curtains, opening windows at night, avoiding bright light, having frequent cooling showers, taking an ice-cold water bottle or cooling blanket to bed and exercising regularly.
For more information on the causes, expert insight, further tips and Ricky and Julia's stories - take a look at my piece.
If you would like to commission me to write a piece for you, do get in touch! | <urn:uuid:8a1b2018-d21c-414d-ad31-ef530a712a99> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://en.paperblog.com/talking-summer-sad-272920/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.943201 | 284 | 2.78125 | 3 |
WTF is... IEEE 1905.1?
Hybrid, multi-media home networking made easy
Feature It sounds like a solution looking for a problem. A technology that allows networked devices in the home connected by different network media to operate as if they were connected across a single medium. Surely TCP/IP already allows you to do that, routing packets from, say, network attached storage linked to a router over an Ethernet cord across to a TV that might be linked to the router wirelessly or over a powerline bridge?
IEEE 1905.1 may well be searching for a problem to solve, and it may, some observers argue, amount to little more than a standard designed to encourage consumers to buy more kit, but it has some big-name brands behind it and it’s coming to domestic networking hardware soon.
IEEE 1905.1: unifying multiple networking technologies
At its most basic, 1905.1 specifies the capabilities of firmware that sits just above a network device’s MAC layer. It’s able to seek out other, compatible devices on the network to learn what connections they have available to them and what hosts they’re attached to. Data throughput sampling facilities allow 1905.1 devices to report on the quality of their active links.
The notion is that, say, a TV connected via a router to an online content source will receive that content over whichever network medium it has that is most appropriate. “Packets can arrive and be transmitted over any interface, regardless of the upper protocol layers or underlying network technology,” is how the IEEE puts it. An example: the 1905.1 software in the router might choose to deliver the content - a streamed film, says - to the TV over a Wi-Fi link because that provides the best throughput. Should other wirelessly connected devices join the network and start drawing capacity away from the wireless link to TV, the router can seamlessly switch the television stream to an Ethernet connection instead. Likewise, if one link suddenly drops out, 1905.1 can switch the packets onto an alternative medium.
Purva Rajkotia, chair of the IEEE 1905.1 Working Group, claims this will happen in the order of “a few milliseconds” - not enough time for the viewer to notice the change, he says. Indeed, once the user has set up the TV to connect to the router by both Wi-Fi and Ethernet - whether directly over Cat 5 cable, or by way of a pair of powerline adaptors - he or she shouldn’t need to do anything more to maintain the system - the 1905.1 “convergence layer” does all the work.
Multiple media, aggregated bandwidth
If the TV is only connected by Wi-Fi, 1905.1 can move other devices with access to other media off the WLAN. Even if all the networked devices operate only over wireless links, the IEEE standard’s end‐to‐end quality of service (QoS) provision can give bandwidth priority to the streaming packets bound for the television. Devices with multiple connections can aggregate those connections to boost data transfer speeds.
According to Rajkotia, 1905.1 operates entirely independently from the application layer, so it makes no difference what software and protocols two devices are using to stream a video, play a song or transfer a file, 1905.1 works to route the data over the most appropriate network medium. It doesn’t affect the underlying transport mechanisms. “The P1905.1 layer does not require modification to the underlying home networking technologies and hence does not change the behavior or implementation of existing home networking technologies,” is how the IEEE describes it.
Wired'n'unwired: the hybrid network
Source: Qualcomm Atheros
In its first version, 1905.1 supports four media: Ethernet; Wi-Fi; powerline based on the IEEE 1901 standard - HomePlug AV, essentially; and co-ax cabling using the Multimedia over Co-Ax (MoCA) specification. A “legacy mode” ensures 1905.1 capable boxes can operate harmoniously with existing network kit, something the service provider backers of the technology were particularly keen on, says Rajkotia, so they don’t need to implement it in one go. That’s also handy for punters putting their own network kit in place.
And 1905.1 doesn’t even mandate the use of all four media in a given device - one is enough, though there’s clearly much less benefit to be gained from the specification’s dynamic media selection abilities if a host gadget doesn’t have at least two types of networking on board.
Rajkotia suggests that future versions of the specification may well add other network media: 60GHz WiGig, soon to gain the Wi-Fi brand, is an obvious contender. Not so the alternative powerline technology to 1901, G.hn. Since the ITU-backed next-gen networking-over-mains-wiring standard is designed to interoperate with 1901, there’s no particular reason why it shouldn’t be supported. It’s un-interoperable specifications that are unlikely to make the grade, says Rajkotia. But with 1901 at the core of 1905.1 and strong support coming from the HomePlug Alliance, it doesn’t seem likely to be granted the chance. Indeed, the HPA is no mere supporter of 1905.1 - it’s the organisation that has been selected to oversee 1905.1 interoperability certification.
Next page: Networks at the push of a button
Reminds me of the failure that is DNLA
I wasted money and a lot of time trying to get a DNLA solution working to display videos from my computer on my living room TV. It failed because DNLA is a spec not an end-to-end solution. Multiple devices supporting the standard don't actually mean that something useful is going to happen. That device A will be able to successfully display output on device B is in no way guaranteed or likely.
This sounds exactly the same. There is a standard for a network, but only a suggestion that something useful could happen with it. There is so much more to define on top of a network before something useful can happen. For instance the fact that there is a WiFi connection on my TV, games console and phone doesn't mean that I can play videos from my phone on my TV. There has to be something on the phone that knows how to work with a different something connected to the TV. The network doesn't matter that much.
Who actually connects their TV/Media Server/PC to their network with Ethernet and Wifi? And even if you did why would system ever choose Wifi connection over the nice fast gigabit ethernet link?
This seems to offer potential for use to enable much easier channel bonding, for example, for ISP <> CPE situations where aggregating several slower DSL links is required - especially where VDSL is not available or can't achieve high speeds (anyone 1km from the cabinet, for example!). Currently, getting an ISP to channel bond is a challenge in futility and cost.
ISP equipment supporting 1905.1 would make the process easy and transparent and not require any IP-level configuration with round-robin or other techniques in the CPE.
Bring up multiple PPPoE connections on the same account, and provided the ISP account enables it, you've got multi-DSL channel bonding sorted. | <urn:uuid:abfd7722-2d57-45a1-bd35-29d574752c96> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/02/15/feature_wtf_is_ieee_1905_dot_1/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.924014 | 1,560 | 2.875 | 3 |
Sophisticated replication techniques have made counterfeiting and fraud a serious threat to the pharmaceutical industry. The World Health Organization estimates that annual earnings from the global sales of counterfeit and substandard medicines exceed $32 billion.
Drugs and packaging are both counterfeited, putting lives at risk. Diversion of legitimate product outside authorized distribution channels is another problem. In response to this problem, many of the world's leading pharmaceutical companies have directed their efforts at authenticating their packaging as part of the process of protecting their products.
As a result, diffractive optically variable devices--referred to generically as holograms--have become one a widely used overt authentication feature on pharmaceutical products around the world.
Since Glaxo first used a tamper-evident hologram to seal packs of Zantac in 1989, holograms have been employed by the industry. Many major drug companies use holograms on at least some of their medicines in selected markets, using them in the form of labels, seals, hot-stamped patches, and blister foils, designed to be easily recognized yet difficult to copy accurately.
The evolving role of the hologram has also been accompanied by the increased use of the security device in combination with other authentication technologies.
Holographic foils can be used to differentiate product at the point-of-sale--something Colgate Palmolive recognized when it launched its new 'Total and Whitening' branded toothpaste, aimed at the premium end of the market.
Colgate Palmolive needed its high-quality brand to stand out from the market, opting to use holographic foil to reinforce the values of the 'Total and Whitening' brand while simultaneously ensuring the packaging was visually attractive enough on shelf to catch the eye of consumers. Shown in the photo here, the distinguishing visual effects holography brings were identified as a powerful tool in building a strong and powerful message and instant recognition of premium value. API Holographic Ltd.'s HoloFOIL™ was specified to offer a flexible design solution that could also withstand fast production speeds.
Holograms often provide overt first-line authentication while covert features such as scrambled images, micro text, UV-sensitive or other specialist inks provide second-line authentication for trained examiners equipped with appropriate decoding equipment.
Authentication plus traceability
Another trend has seen the serialization of holograms as part of systems that combine authentication with traceability. Track-and-trace systems link on-pack security devices with database management and field-tracking services. In this way, the ability to know where a pharmaceuticals consignment has been, where it is now, and where it is heading has become a fundamental part of many drugs companies' production and logistical operations.
That knowledge is particularly important where the ability to identify the source and provenance of products is becoming a mandatory requirement, as it is in the U.S. with Food and Drug Administration. Although the U.S. is now considering making the use of security marking on some pharmaceutical products mandatory using “overt optically variable counterfeit-resistant technologies” to protect consumers from fakes, the hologram is already specified as the authentication feature on the world's only statutory pharmaceutical marking scheme--the Meditag program in Malaysia.
This initiative requires all registered medicines, OTC pharmaceuticals, and traditional medicines to carry a uniquely numbered label built around a hologram. The system is supervised by a central authority that controls the issue of tags, and trains inspectors to examine holograms through the distribution chain.
Since its introduction, this system has led to a significant increase in the identification and confiscation of illegal items from the market and prevented their entry into distribution channels. As a result, consumer confidence in the integrity of pharmaceuticals has increased and public health has been safeguarded.
More recently, the NAFDAC (National Agency for Food & Drug Administration and Control in Nigeria), has announced that it is planning to introduce uniquely numbered holographic labels to be used on all licensed medicines distributed in the country.
Holograms aim to be difficult to copy. While the product and packaging they protect may have been counterfeited, the lower quality copy of the hologram has more often than not been the feature that has demonstrated that it is a counterfeit. In this way the hologram serves as a detection feature. When sophisticated criminals have the resources to reproduce packaging that is barely distinguishable from the genuine, the same cannot be said of the fake holograms.
As an example, the situation involving Artesunate, an anti-malarial treatment, is often quoted. It is reported that more than half of the sales of this drug in Southeast Asia are fake, despite the blister pack incorporating a hologram. Despite the fact that the hologram used is relatively simple and has been used unchanged for several years, the fake holograms are identifiable as such.
The problem is that in a region of low rural literacy, high poverty, and poor drug regulation, where medicines are sold in street markets and non-specialist shops, most buyers and users of Artesunate see a hologram and think this means the medicine is genuine.
The overall conclusion should be that the Artesunate case is a classic example of how not to manage a hologram authentication program on a brand of medicine. The hologram has not been redesigned since it was first introduced and insufficient attention was paid to the distribution, examination, and purchasing patterns in the region.
In contrast, there are many examples of how holograms continue to provide a successful and vital detection function in pharmaceutical anti-counterfeiting strategies. In all these cases it is widely understood by those involved that formal inspection of the hologram provides the quickest way to identify a fake product, even if this then needs to be supported by forensic examination.
Supply chain responsibilities
Pharmaceutical companies and organizations involved in successful anti-counterfeiting efforts also recognize that it should not be the sole responsibility of the consumer to examine a hologram to check that the product is genuine. Rather than rely on untrained members of the public to identify counterfeits, it must be the primary responsibility of manufacturers and the enforcement agencies to ensure that fake pharmaceuticals should not be able to enter the legitimate supply chain in the first place. This is why successful brand protection programs now involve formal examination and inspection systems at different stages in the distribution network.
The holographic industry is working to destroy the myth that sophisticated holograms cannot be counterfeited. Anything can be counterfeited. The question is how well and this is where the real value of holograms should be appreciated.
--Article supplied by the International Hologram Manufacturers Assn. (IHMA), made up of 90 global producers and converters of holograms for banknote security, anti-counterfeiting, brand protection, packaging, graphics, and other commercial applications. | <urn:uuid:398a985d-f47f-4cf4-9a50-3716da960526> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.healthcarepackaging.com/trends-and-issues/traceability-and-authentication/employing-holograms-front-line-anti-counterfeiting | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.944046 | 1,401 | 2.0625 | 2 |
Region's one laptop per child plan has a future
By Andres Oppenheimer aoppenheimer@MiamiHerald.com
An evaluation of the nearly 1 million computers given through the One Laptop Per Child program in Peru, conducted by the Inter-American Development Bank (IADB) and the largest of its kind, gave ample ammunition to both supporters and detractors of the program, a charity led by M.I.T.'s technology guru Nicholas Negroponte that has its operational headquarters in Miami.
In addition to Peru, several other Latin American countries -- Argentina, Uruguay, Colombia, Mexico and El Salvador among them -- have launched massive national or local government plans to give a laptop to every child in public school. Uruguay became the world's first country to give all of its elementary school children a laptop two years ago.
The IADB study of more than 300 schools in rural Peru shows that the three-year-old program in that country has narrowed the technological gap between rich and poor, and has helped improve the elementary-school students' learning abilities.
But it also showed that the more than 900,000 children that received free laptops from the government showed no improvement in their math and reading skills.
In an article about the report, The Economist magazine opted to see the glass half-empty. In an April 7 story entitled "A disappointing return from an investment in computing," it said that far from revolutionizing education, it "does not accomplish anything in particular."
Last week, I asked IADB education expert Eugenio Severin, one of the lead authors of the report, whether he would recommend Peru and other countries to go ahead with the one-laptop-per-child program.
"These programs are a work in progress. Our recommendation is to continue them, and to improve them," Severin said.
The good news is that the program allowed both children and teachers in rural areas who had never seen a computer get access to technology, inserting them overnight into the digital age. Also, the laptop-equipped children in Peru showed some improvement in their learning abilities, including their vocabulary and capacity to solve logical sequences, he said.
The bad news was that, in addition to now showing any concrete results in math and reading tests, there was no evidence that the laptops motivated children to study more, or to attend school more regularly, he said. The machines by themselves are not improving educations standards, he said.
"Negroponte's idea that throwing laptops from a helicopter into a village would dramatically improve education standards didn't pan out," Severin told me. "At least in Peru, it's not happening."
To make these programs work better, Peru and other countries will have to provide school children with more educational software, especially to teach math and language skills, Severin said.
In addition, countries need more teacher training before they start giving out school computers. In many Peruvian schools, teachers got only 40 hours of training before facing their newly digitalized classes, which barely helped them to learn how to use the machines, he said.
Rodrigo Arboleda, chairman of the Miami-based One Laptop Per Child Foundation, says that the IADB study shouldn't be judged primarily on whether laptops improve test scores because the Peruvian government's main goal was improving social inclusion.
"Many of the Peruvian rural schools that were looked at in the study did not have electricity nor Internet access," Arboleda said. "If you did that same study in Lima, you would have seen an increase in school attendance, and a decline in drop-out rates, like the ones other studies have found in Uruguay, Paraguay and Nicaragua."
My opinion: Education is a long-term project, which takes years to translate into better test results. And the IADB's conclusion that the school laptops in Peru's rural areas help bridge the social gap and improve some learning abilities are nothing to be sneezed at.
The massive laptop distribution plans have been a social success, in that they are giving poverty-stricken children self-esteem and a sense of opportunity. And they are helping shake many of Latin America's outdated education systems, if anything else because they force teachers to update their skills in order not to lose face in front of their computer-savvy students.
Now, it's time to take the next step and turn these programs into an educational success, complementing them with educational software, teacher training programs and higher academic targets. If that's done, they will become a Latin American success story. | <urn:uuid:4985c5cc-4a83-4502-afb1-59800a749dfa> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.amigosdeboliviayperu.org/NewsStories2012/P417RegionOneLaptop.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00056-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.971679 | 934 | 2.296875 | 2 |
Authors / Editors:
Jeffrey B. Lennox
IWA Members Price: £78.00 / US$156.00 / €117.00
Non Members Price: £120.00 / US$240.00 / €180.00
Pages: 262 · Paperback
Application of Well Condition Assessment and Rehabilitation Techniques +CD-ROM
The emphasis of this project was the renovation of wells with regard to water yield. Techniques that were potentially suitable for renovation of wells with respect to contamination and clogging of the well screens were also to be identified and addressed. Similarly, well-maintenance procedures to prevent reduced water yield or decreased water quality were to be investigated. The decline in production efficiency of water-supply wells has been a long-term concern of water utilities. Typical responses to this problem include redevelopment of wells, aquifer fracturing, drilling of new wells, or employing various rehabilitation techniques. Unfortunately, redevelopment of wells is often a temporary remedy because aquifer fracturing can destroy the well installation, installation of new wells is expensive, and rehabilitation techniques are not always successful in restoring wells to their former yields. There have been recent advances in water treatment techniques, as well as in subsurface well-rehabilitation techniques, that should be studied in detail to determine their strengths, weaknesses, and potential applications. The quality of water in wells is often compromised by deterioration of the well head or well-casing materials. The deterioration of these portions of a well installation may allow a direct hydraulic connection of two separate water-bearing layers, or it can allow surface water and surface-water runoff to channel down along the well casing and directly impact the aquifer water quality. A number of recent outbreaks of enteric disease in the United States and the United Kingdom have been traced to compromised well heads and well casings. | <urn:uuid:f89489ee-16dd-4f54-8599-2899c1f507aa> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.environmental-expert.com/books/application-of-well-condition-assessment-and-rehabilitation-techniques-cd-rom-4583 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00022-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.955938 | 371 | 2.15625 | 2 |
- Admissions & Aid
- Student Life
Moravian College to Celebrate as Haupert Union Building Turns 50
The HUB has served as center of campus activity for 5 decades
Bethlehem, Pa., March 6, 2012--After 50 years of serving as the center of the college community, the Haupert Union Building (HUB) is flashing back to the decade it was built: the 1960s. The beginning of an anniversary celebration that will span into November, the HUB will be swinging with more activities than usual.
The HUB has brought together faculty, staff, and students for half a century, and its anniversary celebration will be no different. The Paty Eiffe Gallery will exhibit student life in the 60's, a project put together by art students and Jan Ciganik, administrative assistant and adjunct professor of art history. The staff at Reeves Library will present a display of the most popular books of the 1960s. Artist Gene Mater will be doing caricatures, and everyone will have a shot at the prize for best 60s costume contest.
Faculty and staff will participate in "Do You Remember the 1960s?" an open discussion where the experiences of the 60s can be remembered and shared on Tuesday, March 13. In the spirit of the theme, students will dine galla style and the sounds of jazz will fill the building on Wednesday, March 14 from 4:30-7 p.m.
After March, the HUB will welcome back the 70s, and next fall, the adventure through the decades will continue, ending with creating a time capsule to be saved for the HUB's 100th year anniversary.
The HUB named the College Union Building (CUB), was renamed with the retirement of Raymond S. Haupert, who devoted 43 years of his life to Moravian College and Theological Seminary. An ordained minister of the Moravian church, Haupert taught Biblical languages and religion at Moravian during his graduate work.
A handful of years after receiving his doctorate from the University of Pennsylvania, he moved in Bethlehem with his newly wedded wife, Estelle Hege McCanless. His home became a site for many social functions, including receptions for students. Haupert became president in 1944 and guided students through World War II and the merging of the women's college with Moravian College in 1954. When Haupert retired, students requested their College Union Building (CUB) be renamed as the HUB in honor of their friendly and hospitable president.
The HUB anniversary activities were planned by Ann Claussen '74, director of the Haupert Union Building and event management; Paty Eiffe, honorary chair; and other members of the planning committee include Dawn K. Benner, Jan Ciganik, Emmy Usera, Arielle Brent, Holly Nonnemacher, Bill Bauman '74, Bertie Knisely '69, and James Lavoy '10.
Moravian College encourages persons with disabilities to participate in its programs and activities. Anyone who anticipates needing any type of accommodation or who has questions about the physical access provided should contact Kathi Roman at Katro@moravian.edu or 610 625-7880. Moravian College is a private, coeducational, selective liberal arts college located in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. Tracing its founding to 1742, it is recognized as America's sixth-oldest college. Moravian partners with students to build a strong foundation for their future. Visit the College's Web site at www.moravian.edu. | <urn:uuid:c7376ef2-5ca7-4ec7-97b3-351c38c46a3f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.moravian.edu/default.aspx?pageid=5063 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.955968 | 734 | 1.5625 | 2 |
Syracuse, ny -- New voting machines mostly worked fine in Central New York, but there were problems with Tuesday’s primary election, voters and officials said.
Ballots ran short at several polling places when turnout was surprisingly high, said Onondaga Democratic Election Commission Edward Ryan.
The county printed 30 percent more ballots than would have been used for the primary in 2007 — “a good-sized primary” — but polling places were still running short said Republican Election Commissioner Helen Kiggins. In addition to a good turnout, more voters than expected spoiled their first ballot and asked for a replacement, she said.
The planned solution to a ballot shortage was to run off more copies from the printer at election headquarters. But the machine broke, Ryan said. “It was out of commission for three hours,” he said, and when it restarted, it ran slowly.
Ryan said, officials went ended up going with a backup plan — giving voters “emergency ballots,” absentee ballots that will be counted later by hand.
“If the race is close, we can sit down and count them out,” Ryan said.
Voters at Central Park Rehabilitation and Nursing Center were upset Tuesday night when they were given emergency ballots. “I don’t think they are going to be counted,” said Melvin Hills, of Syracuse. He said he had walked two blocks and wanted to make sure his vote for Sam Roberts for state Assembly was counted.
Poll workers gave voters incorrect ballots in seven or eight cases, Ryan said. This happened at polling places where more than one district voted. In those cases, he said, voters cast separate ballots on the race they missed.
The new voting process, which involves filling in circles, like on standardized tests, and passing the ballot through a scanning machine, drew some praise and some complaints.
There were also some electrical problems with a couple of voting machines, but Ryan said that problem was quickly handled.
Katye Askew, of Syracuse, wished she had brought her glasses with her to the polling place at Pioneer Homes. She had some trouble reading the fine print on the ballot and seeing the lightly printed circle in which voters are supposed to make their mark.
The machine caught her error. “It spat it right back,” she said. She “colored that little dot,” she said and her vote went through on the second try.
Cayuga, Madison and Oswego counties switched to the scanning machines last year. Elections officials in those counties reported no problems.
John Stith contributed to this report.
Contact Charles McChesney at firstname.lastname@example.org. | <urn:uuid:e1f891c7-cc9f-4dc2-a2d9-473351c5b83b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.syracuse.com/news/index.ssf/2010/09/ballots_ran_short_but_voting_m.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00073-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.984513 | 560 | 1.546875 | 2 |
Tired of nuking your brain with cell phone radiation? ME NEITHER. I can't get enough of that stuff. I think it's because I used to rest my head on the microwave when I was cooking Hot Pockets growing up. But for those of you who care, Pong is selling a line of cases for popular phone models that allegedly redirect up to 95% of radiation AWAY from your dome and at the same time boost signal strength. I'm skeptical. Skeptical, and handsome as a show horse.
Each Pong case is custom built for the phone it fits, and complements the structure and antenna placement of that model. Unlike antenna shields that purport to contain EMR (and which can diminish or block altogether a phone's signal), Pong redirects EMR away from the user's head and body. This has been confirmed in laboratories certified by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), the US government body which regulates the telecommunications industry.
Mobile phone antennas emit microwave radiation (low frequency EMR similar to that radiated by a microwave oven) when they send data to, and receive date from, mobile phone towers. Mobile phone antennas transmit in a 360 degree circular pattern of energy that radiates around the phone itself. Though not widely acknowledged, peer reviewed studies demonstrate that when the user places a phone next to the head, between 48% and 68% of the phone's radiated power is absorbed directly into the user's head and body and, therefore, is lost for transmission.
I'm gonna be honest, I don't use phone cases. Sure my screen is perpetually shattered, but you know what? I LIVE DANGEROUSLY. Live hard, die young, leave a mangled f***ing cell phone -- that's what I say. The last time I broke my phone was when the pizza guy called to tell me he was outside and I got so excited MY PHONE HIT THE CEILING. Actual pic of the damage HERE. I...am a wreck.
Hit the jump for a video from Pong explaining the thing.
Thanks to V, who agrees there's no point in investing in an anti-radiation cell phone case if you're still gonna text and drive. | <urn:uuid:e714ac84-11aa-41d7-b54b-bfe2aa04b2ab> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.geekologie.com/2012/08/finally-a-questionable-anti-radiation-ce.php | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00042-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.946847 | 457 | 2.140625 | 2 |
Cycle Computing Spins Up 10,600 Instances in Amazon's Cloud
High performance cloud computing company Cycle Computing is no stranger to spinning up massive clusters of servers in Amazon's public cloud, but this week the company says it recently ran one of its largest jobs ever, one that used 10,598 multi-core instances.
Thu, February 07, 2013
Network World — High performance cloud computing company Cycle Computing is no stranger to spinning up massive clusters of servers in Amazon's public cloud, but this week the company says it recently ran one of its largest jobs ever, one that used 10,598 multi-core instances.
Cycle Computing provisioned Amazon Web Services Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) servers for a pharmaceutical client to simulate a drug test. It took two hours to configure and ran for nine hours, for a total cost of $4,362. If the infrastructure had been built by the company, Cycle estimates it would have taken a 12,000-square-foot data center and cost $44 million. Cycle says it's the biggest job the company has performed in terms of the number of virtual machine instances that have been used for a single run.
[ THIS IS COOL: Hypervisor startup is virtualizing virtualization
NEWS: What's going on with VMware? ]
Cycle Computing's software provisions large amounts of cloud-based compute resources for HPC jobs. This particular run -- for a pharmaceutical company that Cycle would not name -- involved testing how millions of different compounds would interact with a protein that's commonly associated with a certain type of cancer.
Normally, running such a scientific experiment would be a hefty and costly job. Cycle estimates the task would take 341,700 hours to run on a single machine. Using Amazon's cloud and the combined power of roughly 10,600 virtual machine instances, Cycle finished the job in 11 hours total, the company explains in a blog post.
Cycle used Amazon's spot market to provision the resources, which are unreserved virtual machines in AWS's cloud. Unreserved instances are more expensive than on-demand instances, but provide more flexibility to the user. The Cycle software scheduled the virtual machines, scaled them to capacity and ran them at 99% CPU capacity. Cycle used open source tool Chef to configure the cluster.
Four types of instances in Amazon's cloud were used, with eight-core c1.xlarges and four-core m1.xlarges being the most common. The four-core instances come with 1690GB of storage, 15GB of memory and are optimized for high input/output processing.
It was a big job for Cycle, but not the company's biggest. Last year, Cycle ran a 50,000-core job that used 6,732 instances for computational chemistry company Schrodinger. That job had fewer instances but more compute cores.
Cycle Computing CEO Jason Stowe said the company used to alert Amazon as to when it would be running these massive cluster compute cycles, but now HPC jobs are becoming "pedestrian." Amazon even builds HPC clusters itself.
"We just handled 10,600 servers, and our software built the environment, secured it, scheduled data across, scaled it, and tracked everything for audit/reporting purposes," a blog post on Cycle's website reads. "Chef 11 handled configuration for all of them. But now we're ready to add zeros here, and so is our software."
Network World staff writer Brandon Butler covers cloud computing and social collaboration. He can be reached at BButler@nww.com and found on Twitter at @BButlerNWW.
Read more about data center in Network World's Data Center section. | <urn:uuid:ff9b1f21-3b0b-4fce-ba7c-85dff3e65122> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.cio.com/article/728490/Cycle_Computing_Spins_Up_10_600_Instances_in_Amazon_s_Cloud?taxonomyId=3024 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00040-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.937301 | 756 | 1.765625 | 2 |
From the Eurasian Steppe, the Botai are an ancient Chalcolithic people, who are known as one of the earliest people to raise domesticated horses. Remains from about 5500 years ago show the Botai milked their horses. Bits, bridles, and skull and dental markings show the horses were also harnessed. The horses were, presumably, ridden. The Botai still drink mare's milk, frequently in the fermented form called koumiss.
The predecessors of the Botai were hunters, but they settled into villages in the northern area of modern Kazakhstan when they changed their economy to a horse-based one. There are 4 known ancient Botai settlements: Botai, Roshchinskoe, Krasnyi Yar, and Vasilkovka IV.
- [ URL = www.adoptabone.org/anthro/olsen_botai.html ]Carnegie Museum of Natural History Archaeology - Botai
- "Archaeologists find earliest known domestic horses"
- Science: Botai Culture Was Probably First to Domesticate Horses
- Anthropology and Archaeology. (2009). In Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved April 3, 2009, from Encyclopædia Britannica Online: http://www.search.eb.com/eb/article-231924 | <urn:uuid:c4506b75-eaf8-4e52-8cad-7776e1903733> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://ancienthistory.about.com/od/southasia/g/040309Botai.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00060-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.932609 | 276 | 3.359375 | 3 |
Chronicles Of Narnia The Original 7 Novels - Prince Caspian Cover
This paper back edition of The Chronicles of Narnia features the Prince Caspian Motion Picture book cover. This epic book includes the 7 unabridged books with black-and-white chapter opener artwork by Pauline Baynes. This 700 plus page book also includes a colorful fold-out Narnia Timeline. Book size is approximately 9"x 6.25" x 2".
This set includes all seven volumes of the classic, allegorical, and greatly beloved children’s fantasy series, the Chronicles of Narnia:
- THE MAGICIAN'S NEPHEW
- THE LION, THE WITCH AND THE WARDROBE
- THE HORSE AND HIS BOY
- PRINCE CASPIAN
- THE VOYAGE OF THE DAWN TREADER
- THE SILVER CHAIR
- THE LAST BATTLE
Back Cover Synopsis:
The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian is now a major motion picture from Walt Disney Pictures and Walden Media.
Journeys to the end of the world, fantastic creatures and epic battles between good and evil—the book that has it all is The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe, written in 1949 by C. S. Lewis. But Lewis did not stop there. Six more books followed, and together they became known as The Chronicles of Narnia.
For over fifty years, The Chronicles of Narnia have transcended the fantasy genre to become part of the canon of classic literature. Each of the seven books is a masterpiece, drawing the reader into a land where magic meets reality, and the result is a fictional world whose scope has fascinated generations.
This edition presents all seven books—unabridged—in one impressive volume.
C. S. Lewis was famous both as a fiction writer and as a Christian thinker, and scholars sometimes divide his personality in two. Yet a large part of Lewis's appeal, for both his audiences, lay in his ability to fuse imagination with instruction. "Let the pictures tell you their own moral," he once advised writers of children's stories. "But if they don't show you any moral, don't put one in."
NA Code - NAB115
ISBN Code - 9780061231056 | <urn:uuid:b2bde209-07df-499b-a51f-efcc5b841867> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://narnia.awestores.com/ttp/Chronicles-Of-Narnia-The-Original-7-Novels-Prince-Caspian/cPath/19/products_id/114620.html | 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 | 0.932714 | 489 | 1.859375 | 2 |
Perhaps it is the land itself, isolated from the rest of Europe, bound by the sea, wet by the passing rains, green fields, blue mountains, so sparsely populated in places that the sheep outnumber the people. Or perhaps the Irish stories are born out of the history of the place — the neglected stepchild of Britain, poverty, famine, resilience and abiding faith. Or perhaps it is the fact that the native Irish language largely gave way to English, but an English bent to the Irish rhythm, the Irish sound.
You hear the Irish sound in the writing of Claire Keegan, whose two collections of short stories have been widely praised and have drawn comparisons to William Trevor and Anton Chekhov. Her dazzling long short story, "Foster," which appeared first in The New Yorker, was so admired that Faber & Faber brought it out in paperback — a treasure at 96 pages.
She has given us two-dozen or so gems altogether: Stories so magical and well-crafted that each feels as lasting and familiar as a favorite fairy tale or a wound to the heart. If I had to choose, I would press upon you Walk the Blue Fields, her latest collection.
There are seven stories to savor. I once heard Keegan read the title story, Walk the Blue Fields, which is about a priest in a small Irish town who is presiding over a wedding. We learn early on that the priest had recently ended a clandestine affair with the bride. During the ceremony and at the reception, he struggles not only with the loss of love but also with the meaning behind his faith and his vows.
For 20 minutes, as Keegan read, she took us with the priest through the sacred and profane rites of a small town, and out into the countryside to walk the blue fields alone and encounter there an unexpected healer. Mesmerized, we fastened on every word.
Keith Donohue is the author of Angels of Destruction and Centuries of June.
At the wedding dance, the bride's necklace breaks, scattering the pearls across the polished floor. Here in a moment of intimacy, the priest scoops one up and returns it to her:
When he places the pearl in her hand, she looks into his eyes. There are tears there but she is too proud to blink and let one fall. If she blinked, he would take her hand and take her away from this place. This, at least, is what he tells himself. It's what she once wanted but two people hardly ever want the same thing at any given point in life. It is sometimes the hardest part of being human.
Layer by layer, Keegan crafts these stories out of small details and insight that, like poetry, tell us what we suspect we already knew. We only needed a story to tell us so.
Claire Keegan is the real deal.
You Must Read This is produced and edited by Ellen Silva with production assistance from Rose Friedman and Lacey Mason. | <urn:uuid:7adfc906-1885-4685-8a08-bbd8d8837480> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.npr.org/2011/09/06/136999955/tiny-gems-irish-stories-that-sparkle-and-charm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.971154 | 608 | 1.742188 | 2 |
lessons learned on the journey toward independence
Hot water for free--from the wood cook stove!
One of the most multi-purpose tools on the homestead is a wood cook stove. Ours not only cooks the food and keeps the house toasty warm; it also heats our hot water!
The two main components, aside from the wood cook stove, are a water coil (#6 & #7 on the pictures below) which is a pipe that runs through the fire box to heat the water, and a range boiler (picture on left) which is a large tank that holds the hot water before and after it circulates through the wood cook stove.
Active vs Passive
There are a couple of variations on the "hot water from your wood stove" scene. One involves the use of an inline electric circulating pump to force water through the water coil; the other uses the simple principle of heat rising to accomplish the same thing. It is called a thermosiphon system. "Active" systems (using an electric pump) have some advantages, but in the opinion of this writer, not enough to offset their negatives for most people. An active system can produce as much as 50% more hot water than a passive (thermosiphon) system, and since more water movement takes place, there is less chance of water overheating and creating dangerous pressure levels. But anytime you unnecessarily involve a mechanical or electric device in essential systems, you are asking for trouble. For instance, if electricity is lost during winter, you would have to potentially shut the wood stove down or dismantle the hot water system to prevent dangerously high temperatures and pressures. And some inline pumps have a poor reputation for reliability. Even if you are on a renewable energy system with a very efficient DC inline pump, it still uses electricity throughout the day while the stove is running, and that can add up. Bottom line? Whenever possible, keep it simple and go with a thermosiphon system! And that is what we are going to focus on in this post.
How Thermosiphon Works
The range boiler is placed higher than the water coil in order to take advantage of an important principle. Just as hot air naturally rises, so does water. When connected properly, the water that heats up in the water coil will begin rising toward the elevated ranger boiler. As this hot water begins moving, it naturally pulls cold water in behind to replace it, and before you know it, a "thermosiphon" has begun--circulating water from the range boiler through the water coil without the aid of any pump! Our range boiler holds 40 gallons and only needs 1 to 1.5 hours of stove run time before it is nice and hot. When the tank is insulated, this hot water can last all day. This makes summer time wood cook stove use inside the house a possibility in some drier northern climates (where a flash fire in the morning is bearable). We open all the windows that have screens, open the front door (which is next to the stove), and place a strong fan in the doorway that blows hot air out the door and pulls cooler air in the windows. In warmer climates, it might be advisable to hook up a solar water heater for use during warmer times of the year.
1-Hot water in from water coil;
2-pressure release valve; 3-Hot water out to house;
4-Cold water in; 5-Cold water out to water coil.
Choosing the Right Components
First, the stove. While many different types of stoves could be used for this system, the easiest and best choice is an Amish made wood cook stove. Not only is it so versatile, it comes all set up for the job with knockouts in the back to fit a water coil. Often you can order the stove with water coil already installed. Most other stoves must be manually retrofitted to work with a water coil or water jacket, which involves drilling holes in the back--not exactly something I fancy doing on an expensive stove. The other nice feature is that the Amish made wood cook stoves are generally quite air tight, which means a longer burn time and more efficient use of wood. My stove can be cranked down so far that is almost puts a strong fire out! The same cannot be said of many older and more ornate wood cook stoves.
Second, the water coil. This should be made out of stainless steel. Your only options are single coil or double coil. Double coil, as the name implies, makes an extra loop around the firebox and heats up more water more quickly. That sounds great, but think it through first. While you want your water to get hot, you don't want it so hot that the pressures rises to dangerous levels and blows your system's pressure release valve frequently. So you are doing a balancing act. Hot water usage and the size of your storage tank (range boiler) are factors that will affect your decision here. If you have a large family and are using a larger range boiler (50-80+ gal.), you might consider a double coil. If, on the other hand, you will not be using a lot of hot water and your range boiler is smaller (30-40 gal.), you would be better off with a single coil. Water jackets are also available for regular wood stoves and come in a variety of sizes for low, medium and high output. Choose accordingly.
Third would be the storage tank or range boiler. It certainly is possible to use a standard water heater as it is insulated and already has an appropriate number of ports for some systems; but I chose to go with a range boiler that is made for the job. It is a super heavy duty tank that is lined with a masonry type lining inside to prevent rust-out. It also has plenty of ports for fittings in just the right places. Mine is made by Vaughn Corp. but I purchased it through Stoves and More (who also sells excellent Amish made wood cook stoves). I really like mine, but have a friend who had to re-tap the thread on some of the ports because there was welding splatter present. Hopefully that was a fluke.
Fourth would be the pipes used to connect the water coil to the range boiler. Ideally it would be 1" diameter and made out of stainless steel. While 1" is best, it is possible to use 3/4" for systems with a large tank and plenty of rise from the water coil to the range boiler. But we are after the least amount of restriction so the water can circulate freely and not overheat. The ideal material would be stainless steel threaded pipe, but that can be quite costly if your range boiler sits more than a few feet from the stove. In situations with longer runs, one could use stainless steel for the first several feet away from the water coil (both inlet and outlet) and then switch to copper or even galvanized steel. Copper is NOT recommended for use close to the stove as solder could melt from the joints if water flow stops or pipes are dry while the stove is running hot. Galvanized steel pipe may be used for the entire loop between water coil and range boiler, but it will not last as long as stainless steel or copper. Try to avoid 90° elbows as much as possible--they create restrictions that reduces circulation. It is better to use 45° elbows if possible. But if sufficient rise is present and the range boiler is close to the stove, one or two 90° elbows probably won't hurt anything. I have some on my system, but I used 1" pipe and placed the range boiler very close to the stove and a sufficient distance above it. The type of pipe that leaves the outlet of the range boiler is not as critical, but I decided to stay with galvanized steel for several feet before switching to pex, due to the high water temperatures present in the range boiler. One important point...if you plan on connecting copper to steel, be sure to use a brass (preferred) or dielectric fitting in between to prevent electrolysis. The reason brass is preferred is that a dielectric fitting could possible melt from the very high temperatures present. Also, be aware that stainless steel is a different animal than regular steel; it can connect to copper directly without any problems.
The engine that drives a thermosiphon system is vertical rise from the water coil to the range boiler. Within reasonable limits, the more rise present, the stronger your circulation will be (all other things being equal). While placing the range boiler on the second floor is certainly a good option, here is a rule of thumb for vertical placement:
- For every 2 horizontal feet of run away from the stove, there should be at least 1 foot of vertical fall from the cold water outlet on ranger boiler (#5) to the cold water inlet on the water coil (#7). Example: Range boiler is 10 feet away from stove. Cold water outlet on range boiler (#5) should be at least 5 vertical feet above cold water inlet on water coil (#7).
My range boiler is less than 4 feet from the wood cook stove and has around 2 feet of vertical fall from the cold water outlet of the range boiler to the cold water inlet of the water coil. I have found it to work quite well.
While some may choose to do as we currently are and use the wood cook stove all summer, your climate or other reasons may make that an unthinkable option. And there is no need to sweat it out with all the potentials we have for hybrid systems. One option is to use the wood cook stove during winter and hook up a good quality solar water heater for use during spring, summer and fall. Often this may be accomplished using the same range boiler for both systems to lower overall costs. That is our ultimate plan for next summer. Another option is to run the main outlet from the range boiler (#3) through an on-demand (tankless) propane water heater before sending the hot water to any fixtures. If the water is sufficiently hot, the water heater will not fire up. If the water is too cool, it gets heated up as its being delivered to your faucet. This, of course, is not a completely independent option as it uses propane, but it is very convenient. There are many other possibilities--the sky is the limit!
Water not hot enough? Here are some possibilities:
- Fire not hot enough?
- Water coil or jacket placed too far from heat?
- Try a double coil water coil or larger output water jacket
- Range boiler too large? Try a smaller tank
- Pipes connecting range boiler to water coil not large enough (creating a restriction)? Try larger diameter pipes
- Try insulating pipes and range boiler
- Try moving the range boiler closer to stove and/or higher to improve circulation
- Last resort, install an electric circulation pump
Water overheating and blowing pressure release valve regularly?
- Try a slower fire, especially when initially starting a fire? It can take a little while for some systems to start circulating after a fire is started. During that time, water in the water coil can potentially overheat.
- Try a larger range boiler
- Try larger diameter pipe between range boiler and water coil/jacket
- If using a double coil water coil or high output water jacket, try installing a single coil or lower output model
- If pipes or range boiler are insulated, try removing insulation
- Last resort, install an electric circulation pump
As you can see, improving circulation can help when dealing with either extreme. Much like the human body, proper circulation is vital!
In addition to personal experience and second-hand testimony from friends, I am much indebted to Lehmans for their helpful booklet Hot Water From Your Woodstove. | <urn:uuid:d682b331-a4cc-42a6-9a1f-3a7906463aca> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://sustainablepreparedness.com/index.php/blog/hot-water-for-free-from-the-wood-cook-stove | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00054-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.95152 | 2,421 | 2.609375 | 3 |
|If Ice Sheets All Melt|
That post provided a video filmed at the Pentagon featuring an Admiral who was in command of the Navy's global warming response.
He pointed out that they understand global warming to be man made, and a serious consideration, especially the aspect of ocean level rise.
In today's post we look at a couple of court cases that: 1) mandated that the Environmental Protection Agency ("EPA") regulate greenhouse gases, and 2) that the regulations that the EPA thereafter enacted are valid, well done, and should be upheld.
The foundational case came from the Supreme Court:
A well-documented rise in global temperatures has coincided with a significant increase in the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Respected scientists believe the two trends are related. For when carbon dioxide is released into the atmosphere, it acts like the ceiling of a greenhouse, trapping solar energy and retarding the escape of reflected heat. It is therefore a species—the most important species—of a “greenhouse gas.”(Massachusetts v. EPA, 549 U.S. 497, 2007). The court held that the EPA must regulate greenhouse gases.
Calling global warming “the most pressing environmental challenge of our time,” a group of States, local governments, and private organizations, alleged in a petition for certiorari that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has abdicated its responsibility under the Clean Air Act to regulate the emissions of four greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide.
The EPA complied and drafted regulations pertaining to greenhouse gases, and was then sued for having done so.
The suit was filed in the federal district court in the District of Columbia, which upheld the EPA's regulations.
That decision was affirmed on appeal to the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia:
Following the Supreme Court’s decision in Massachusetts v. EPA, 549 U.S. 497 (2007)—which clarified that greenhouse gases are an “air pollutant” subject to regulation under the Clean Air Act (CAA)—the Environmental Protection Agency promulgated a series of greenhouse gas-related rules.(Coalition For Responsible Regulation v. EPA, #09-1322, decided June 26, 2012). The court unanimously upheld the regulations and rules that the EPA set forth.
For the foregoing reasons, we dismiss all petitions for review of the Timing and Tailoring Rules, and deny the remainder of the petitions.
Thus, as a matter of law the climate change deniers are advocating disobedience to natural law as well as the law of the United States. | <urn:uuid:381a7c86-4229-4005-8847-6cd62d3aac3e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blogdredd.blogspot.com/2012/06/have-courts-fallen-for-greatest-hoax.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00065-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.935768 | 533 | 2.5 | 2 |
I see at least two main approaches to building a pit house with earthbags:
1. Mimic Mike Oehler’s greenhouse design using earthbags instead of poles and shoring.
2. Mimic conventional walipini pit greenhouses. That’s what I’ve chosen to do in the following drawing. It’s very similar to typical walipini’s, so follow the directions in the link. Which one is best? It would be good to build both designs and measure their performance to see how they compare.
Earthbag Pit Greenhouses
Note: high quality greenhouse plastic film is recommended, not ordinary plastic sheeting.
←More from Building Styles | <urn:uuid:93b8a973-80af-4e38-8f3b-7ca58cf2dec0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.naturalbuildingblog.com/earthbag-pit-greenhouse-plans/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00057-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.924307 | 146 | 1.898438 | 2 |
Tuesday, January 5, 2010
Pope Pius XII
A great deal has been written in the Jewish press about the march to canonizing Pope Pius XII as a saint. In Jewish eyes the man who served as pope during the Holocaust remains a controversial figure. Did he do enough to save Jews from the Nazi onslaught? Did he do enough to save Europe from the evils of the Nazi regime? It seems clear to me that he did not. To be honest there were few in power who did enough. The United States failed to bomb the tracks leading to Auschwitz arguing that it would divert valuable resources from the war effort. We turned away the SS St Louis from our American shores, sending hundreds back to Germany and most to death. Some historians have argued that this act emboldened Hitler (y"s) in his march to the final solution. Through the lens of historical hindsight few did enough. There were of course a few extraordinary individuals. These righteous gentiles were almost always simple, pious folk and not those who occupied positions of leadership or power. Read Yad VaShem's account of the righteous gentiles here. I wish the Pope did more. I also wish the Catholic Church would open its archives so we can learn more of the history. The question about Pope Pius becoming a saint is different. I believe every human being is fallible. This is part of what makes me a Jew. This is what I learn from reading the Bible. Moses is a great leader but given to anger. David is an extraordinary warrior and poet but given to, shall we say, sexual indiscretions and even murder. I would not call these leaders saints. I would not call anyone a saint. I believe that people are given to errors. I believe in the infallibility of no one. I have no saints. I have only one God. Whether Catholics call Pope Pius a saint is in their hands. The issue is more a matter of Catholic belief than Jewish history. Jewish belief is clear on this point. History has yet to rule on the matter. For more information about Pope Pius's wartime record read this article. | <urn:uuid:da180bc8-31c3-4549-971d-ba2264702e8f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.rabbimoskowitz.com/2010/01/pope-pius-xii.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.980386 | 428 | 2.5625 | 3 |
June 17, 2008
Experimental HIV Drug Hits Snag
Development of Koronis Pharmaceuticals’ KP-1461, an experimental antiretroviral (ARV), has been suspended after an analysis of existing data failed to show anti-HIV activity, according to a report by Project Inform. These results came as a surprise to Koronis and stand in contrast to the drug’s earlier lab studies that showed promise.
Though KP-1461 is technically a nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitor (NRTI), its mechanism of action is quite different from other drugs in this class of ARVs. Whereas current NRTIs are incorporated into developing DNA to stop the chains of genetic material from becoming fully formed and infectious, the integration of KP-1461 into developing chains of viral DNA causes the virus to produce defective, harmless versions of itself.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) had asked Koronis to do some additional lab studies to determine if HIV becomes resistant to KP-1461. During these lab studies, Koronis found that the drug had no measurable effect on HIV, a stark contrast to earlier studies that supported the drug’s clinical development. With the new results in hand, Koronis then analyzed blood samples from people enrolled in its ongoing clinical trial and, to their surprise, again found no anti-HIV activity.
Stephen Becker, MD, the lead investigator for Koronis, told Project Inform that the company is, “committed to understanding these discordant results and will attempt to validate the original 2002 research,” on KP-1461. Becker estimated that it will take at least two months to fully investigate this setback, and determine what comes next.
Search: Koronis, KP-1461, Stephen Becker, NTRI
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[Go to top] | <urn:uuid:009603ac-f722-426c-bff6-bcccce11a916> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.poz.com/articles/hiv_aids_kp1461_761_14760.shtml | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.933057 | 392 | 1.59375 | 2 |
Myth: PSA Tests Are Bad for You
Fact: Though some experts recommend against regular PSA tests, it’s not necessarily because of the test itself, which is just a simple blood test. PSA screening certainly isn’t perfect, but it’s also not inherently hazardous to your health. The real problem with it is in how we’re able (or unable) to interpret the results and make decisions about follow-up tests and treatment. Since high PSAs can be caused by anything from cycling to ejaculation, many men are unnecessarily having invasive biopsies or, if they do have cancer, being treated for slow-growing tumors that might never have caused any issues.
Which is not to say that PSA tests aren’t valuable or that they can’t save lives. In the years since they’ve been widely used, says Wei, prostate cancer diagnoses have gone up — but “the death rate is going down.” This is at least in part because PSA tests lead to biopsies, which can find cancer early, when it’s more receptive to treatment. Talk with your doctor about whether or when you should be screened. | <urn:uuid:c048584d-114a-497a-a416-37df92016f37> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.everydayhealth.com/prostate-cancer-pictures/myths-about-prostate-cancer.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00052-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960096 | 248 | 2.5 | 2 |
Michigan credit unions continued to weather the storm in 2005 — an economic tempest of lost jobs and stagnant income growth, of embattled industries and tight budgets. As 2004 drew to a close, the hope was that Michigan’s economy had bottomed out and that a light was clearly visible at the end of the proverbial tunnel. Unfortunately, however, the Great Lakes State did not turn the corner in 2005.
The year saw Michigan’s dominant industry for nearly a century — auto manufacturing — rocked by sharply rising energy costs, formidable foreign competition and declining market shares. The industry bled both jobs and money at an alarming rate, and bankruptcy rumors swirled around General Motors and Ford, two long-standing pillars of Michigan’s economy and icons of American capitalism. State and local governments struggled with budget crises as tax revenues declined or remained stagnant.
Ironically, all this turmoil took place amidst growing prosperity in most other parts of the country and in the non-manufacturing sectors of the economy. Michiganians who witnessed national media reports about strong economic growth could be excused for feeling like they were living on another planet.
Michigan ended 2005 with a jobless rate of 6.7 percent — better than the year-end 2004 figure and certainly not a catastrophic number compared with the recessions of the early 1980s and 1990s — but distressing when compared with the job picture in the rest of the country. The average U.S. unemployment rate at year-end 2005 stood at 4.9 percent, with 30 states posting jobless rates under 5 percent and 13 states actually under 4 percent. Only three states — Alaska, Mississippi and South Carolina — were faring poorer than Michigan.
Given the condition of the local economy, Michiganians may well have found it puzzling that Federal Reserve policymakers were more concerned about inflation than joblessness. Addressing concerns that the economy may be in danger of overheating, the Fed continued its policy of slowly ratcheting up interest rates by increments of 25 basis points. By year-end 2005, the Federal Funds Rate had climbed to 4 percent, its highest level in four years.
Despite spiking energy costs caused by strong global demand and continued political uncertainty in many oil-exporting areas of the globe, the U.S. inflation rate did remain reasonably tame in 2005. The Consumer Price Index was up 3.4 percent for the year — the highest rate since 2000 but manageable compared to the torrid 13.3 percent and 12.5 percent of 1979 and ’80, respectively.
Michigan’s uninspiring economy did have a sobering effect on credit union bottom lines. Some credit unions experienced compressed margins and saw their return on assets slump. Loan, asset and savings growth did not match the national pace and membership growth was flat — unsurprising, given the state’s unemployment problem.
Nevertheless, Michigan credit unions remained as safe and sound as any in the country. Subject to the ebb and flow of the volatile motor vehicle market, Michigan’s economy has always been susceptible to extreme peaks and valleys. The state’s financial institution managers and executives have learned this lesson well and typically practice caution and prudence in their decisions — an example of fiscal wisdom that could well benefit some executives in other parts of the country.
The Year in Review MCUL 2005
MCUL/CUcorp Consolidated Statements of Financial Position
MCUL/CUcorp 2005: Financial Report and Statistics
Consolidated Statements of Activities and Changes in Members' Net Assets
The Operating Environment
The Year in Review CUcorp 2005 | <urn:uuid:7b9ecac4-fefb-407f-8df4-6bc7c04f5e62> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.mcul.org/The_Operating_Environment_1272.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00061-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.95366 | 728 | 2.1875 | 2 |
The dreamer : Hideyo Noguchi
Hideyo Noguchi was famous throughout the world as a bacteriologist and physician. His life, however, was not without pain. This year is the 120th anniversary of Dr. Noguchi's birth. On this occasion, we look back upon his enthusiastic and courageous efforts to improve medicine.
Hideyo Noguchi was born in 1876, the first son of a farming family, in a town in present-day Inawashiro Town, Fukushima Prefecture.
The burn on young Hideyo's his left hand, also wounded him psychologically. But in 1892, his fingers, which had been fused together as a result of the burn, were surgically separated. Dr. Kanae Watanabe successfully performed the operation at Kaiyo Hospital in present day Aizuwakamatsu City. The operation inspired Noguchi to become a doctor.
After the operation, Noguchi became an assistant in the Kaiyo Hospital dispensary. He was self-taught, studying extraordinarily hard, late into the night. He eventually passed the exam to enter medical school.
Although he was busy, Noguchi met a student at Aizu Girls' High School named Yone Yamauchi, who greatly affected his future. This love did not bear fruit in the end, but even after going to America to study and meeting his future wife Mary, Noguchi never forgot his first love.
Many people supported Hideyo in his efforts to learn. One such person was Morinosuke Chiwaki, a dentist who was six years older than Hideyo. Dr. Chiwaki's financial assistance and moral support was crucial in helping Hideyo to obtain a license to practice medicine.
After completing his studies, Noguchi began his practice at Juntendo Hospital. Later, he became an assistant at the Epidemiological Research Institute, beginning his career as a bacteriologist. Noguchi then went to the U.S. to study. He achieved great success at the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research, creating a pure culture of syphilitic spirochetes before he died of yellow fever in Accra, west Africa. People revere Dr. Noguchi as a medical saint. His achievements and zeal continue to inspire, even today.
(Hideyo's favorite microscope and camera) | <urn:uuid:8aa1ca2c-1e60-4a70-bc07-3c9cf77cb334> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.pref.fukushima.jp/list_e/ym961_le.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.98387 | 481 | 2.5625 | 3 |
And another answer came..
From:* "Europe Direct"
*Date:* Mon, 10 Jul 2006 16:30:36 +0100
I am afraid we cannot give you any more help on these questions beyond the information already provided.
The purpose of the levy is to combat unfair trade practices. Like any measure, it is bound to benefit some people more than others. As to whether it means you should support the EU, this is really a matter for individual judgement based on the information available, personal circumstances and attitude to trade and competition regulation. As we are unable to help you any further with these questions, I will forward your email to the European Commission representation in London who will be able to give you further information.
You might also like to raise your concerns about the levy and its effects with your MEP who will be able to raise the isssue in the appropriate forum.
Gloucester Reference Library
To: Europe Direct
Cc: tim (a) buggerthe.eu
Subject: RE: Welcome
Thanks for the reply and the background. I wonder if it would be
possible for my original questions to be answered.
> Bearing in mind I'm not a cobbler, and there are no shoe
> manufacturers in my area, how exactly does the proposed levy on
> imported shoes help me?
> Why does making it more expensive to keep my children shod mean I
> should support the EU?
(I would point out that two of my children are teenagers and wear adult
sizes 11 and 13).
Thank you very much. | <urn:uuid:225f2f44-eff6-40e9-8ecb-4870bb70a847> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.anenglishmanscastle.com/archives/002939.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00030-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.939727 | 329 | 1.507813 | 2 |
Cuban President Raul Castro begins his sixth year in office Monday with a session with parliament to discuss implementation of his reforms to allow small private businesses to operate in the communist country.
More than 600 deputies have been convened for the twice-yearly session with the 80-year-old president, who took over the top job from his ailing brother Fidel five years ago Sunday.
View of the urn containing the ashes of US Rev. Lucius Walker, leader of the movement of solidarity with Cuba known as Pastors for Peace, next to his picture during a posthumous tribute at the Jose Marti Memorial in Havana, Cuba, on July 30, 2011.
Members of parliament have been meeting behind closed doors since Thursday to review the state of the nation.
Poor economic results, poor planning, and bureaucratic disarray have dominated the discussions, according to Cuban press reports.
Although there was no official announcement, Castro was expected to address the session on the progress made on his plans to eliminate a million public sector jobs and create new jobs by allowing small private business to operate legally.
In recent months, the number of privately employed workers has grown from 148,000 to 326,000, while another 146,000 people have been given the use of state-owned land for farming to offset food shortages.
But Cuba will still import 80 percent of the food it consumes this year at a cost of $1.5 billion.
Small business operators, meanwhile, complain that supplies are difficult to obtain because wholesale markets do not exist in Cuba.
In response, the government has allocated $300 million for imports of equipment and other material to meet demand for them by the private businesses.
It also lifted a ban on the sale of consumer appliances in effect since 2003, to satisfy demand from business for items like ovens, air conditioners, deep fryers, toasters, coffee makers and other equipment.
Central Bank President Ernesto Medina, in a report to parliament, has promised to improve access to credit for small businesses and farmers and to finance home improvement and construction projects. | <urn:uuid:960ffb1e-44a2-4c2b-9079-d9bbee263a69> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://en.baomoi.com/Info/Cuban-leader-to-review-state-of-economic-reforms/2/168502.epi | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00057-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.972089 | 421 | 1.773438 | 2 |
It's All for Sale
Our burgeoning tendency to regard the worlds diverse treasures less as aspects of the commonweal and more as goods to be bought and sold for corporate gain is at the core of James Ridgeways new book, Its All for Sale. Fresh water, human body parts, even the sky itself are now becoming commodities in world trade.
Ridgeway grapples here with an old idea -- that everything has a price. But he has documented new extremes in the commercial mindset that brought us plantation slavery, clearcutting old growth forests, and the hoovering up of every last edible fish in the ocean. His method of demonstrating just how far that mindset has gone is bluntly straightforward: He summarizes historical and present-day world trade in an exhaustive catalog of stuff that can be -- and is -- exploited for a profit, from cobalt and cocaine to genes and human excrement. And he often points to the jarring effects that a specific trade can have on citizens, consumers, and nations, such as the body-organ brokers in China who are literally profiteering on the bodies of death-row convicts. | <urn:uuid:304ae9ec-aba1-4c78-8a3e-d81d3a247e6e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.motherjones.com/media/2004/11/its-all-sale | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00065-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953666 | 230 | 1.789063 | 2 |
Noting that progressive Christians have some trouble with God-talk, Tony Jones has challenged progressive bloggers to write something substantive about God. Here is my response.
A few weeks ago, during week 5 of the Montreat Youth Conference, Margaret Aymer preached on Paul’s statement in Romans 8:38-39—”For I have been convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” She memorably challenged us to consider what it is that we have been convinced of. Here’s what I took this to mean: what is it that I am most sure of in the midst of all my doubts and fears?
The next day the conference focused on Jeremiah 18 and pottery imagery. Thinking about broken pottery and the one statement of faith that I am absolutely sure about made me think of an archaeological dig I participated in many years ago in Israel. On these digs, you unearth buckets upon buckets of broken pottery, most of which is thrown out. Every now and then, you are lucky enough to find a pottery sherd that still has an intact handle. I have a piece like this in my office.
This intact handle of a broken jar suggests a powerful image: in a broken world, when everything else around you is falling apart, what is the one thing you can hold on to?
For me, it is this: God is love. (1 John 4:16)
All of the language we use to speak about God is by necessity metaphorical. I don’t take much (if any) of it in a literal or ontological way. Even some foundational statements like “God is creator” seem primarily metaphorical to me. The framework of salvation through which we often talk about God also seems essentially symbolic—I’m influenced, no doubt, by the theology of Paul Tillich. Like Tillich, I would prefer to think of God as beyond being as we know it: God is being itself or the ground of being. The symbols we typically use to talk about God only point us to the ground of being, and should not be confused with the God that is beyond being.
I am less and less convinced that God intercedes in human history in an interventionist way. Unless God is radically capricious or God’s ways are completely beyond human understanding, I cannot reconcile human suffering with the notion of a loving God that could prevent suffering but chooses not to do so. Whatever prayer means—and I certainly believe that prayer plays an important role in our spiritual lives—I do not think of prayer as a way to change the outcome of events in human history. I don’t think that prayer changes God’s mind or influences God’s actions. God and humanity intersect in some other way than this.
Through the years, during times of profound loneliness and sadness, the one conviction about God that has brought me comfort—the one thing about which I am absolutely certain—is that God is love. God is the love that binds us together. God is the love we share for each other. God is the love that inspires us to care for others. God is the love that gives our lives meaning. God is the love that comforts us when everything else is breaking to pieces.
When we talk about humanity as the image of God (Genesis 1:27), this says as much about God as it does about humanity. Somehow, humanity (as a whole) is a reflection of God. Like love, this conception of God is radically relational. To me, this indicates that one way to think about God is to think about the collective human community and the intangible things that bind us together. (I’m trying really hard not to reference the Force.)
“God is love” is a metaphor, like all others, and is therefore an imperfect, relative, and provisional way to talk about God. But this is the most substantive statement about God I can make without referencing a metanarrative I consider an essentially symbolic description of existential reality.
“God is love” is the one thing I can always hold on to. | <urn:uuid:d6000bf3-8e15-41f8-bb56-94a9feaaa93a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://johnvest.com/2012/08/17/what-i-hold-on-to/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00049-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959809 | 894 | 1.703125 | 2 |
Strategies to Help Children with Autism Cope with Social Situations and Increase their Independence in the Classroom
Social stories and picture activity schedules are two relatively new and promising interventions for students with autism.
A major challenge for many individuals with autism is learning to tolerate change and how and when to use communication and social interaction skills within the typical rules and conventions that govern social situations (Wetherby & Rydell, 2000). Social stories explain social situations and concepts, including expected behaviors of the persons involved, in a format understandable to an individual with ASD. Social stories can answer a child’s questions about concepts and provide information about social behavior that she is not likely to ask for or obtain in other ways (Gray, 1994, 2000). According to Gray and Garand (1993), social stories can be used to describe a situation and expected behaviors, explain simple steps for achieving certain goals or outcomes, and teach new routines and anticipated actions. Although the purpose of social stories is to describe the situation, not direct the child’s behavior (Gray, 1994), a number of studies have reported improvements in children’s behavior after systematic exposure to social stories (e.g., Hagiwara & Myles, 1999).
Providing social stories before an event or activity can decrease a child’s anxiety, improve his behavior, and help him understand the event from the perspective of others (Gray & Garand, 1993; Hagiwara & Myles, 1999; Ivey, Heflin, & Alberto, 2004; Kuoch & Mirenda, 2003).
Ivey and colleagues (2004) found that three 5- to 7-year-old boys with autism increased their independent and appropriate participation in novel activities when parents introduced stories to the children and read them once a day for 5 days before the events. In addition to story text, photographs and line drawings depicting key information and important aspects of the events were attached to each page.
Picture Activity Schedules.
Some level of independent performance is needed for success in inclusive classroom settings (Massey & Wheeler, 2000). For preschoolers with autism, a lack of play skills “might prevent opportunities for learning and successful participation in inclusive classrooms. The impending isolation might serve to perpetuate the children’s deficits in socialization and communication” (Morrison, Sainato, BenChaaban, & Endo, 2002, p. 58). Several studies have found that children with autism can be taught to use picture activity schedules to increase their independence in selecting and carrying out a sequence of activities in the classroom (e.g., Bevill, Gast, MaGuire, & Vail, 2001; Bryan & Gast, 2000; Massey & Wheeler, 2001; McClannahan & Krantz, 1999; Morrison et al., 2002). For examples of activity schedules and information on creating and using them in the classroom.
© ______ 2006, Merrill, an imprint of Pearson Education Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved. The reproduction, duplication, or distribution of this material by any means including but not limited to email and blogs is strictly prohibited without the explicit permission of the publisher.
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- Steps in the IEP Process | <urn:uuid:8ae242a6-cc3c-4dab-9211-72a342be89f7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.education.com/reference/article/strategies-help-children-autism-cope/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00041-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.906305 | 748 | 4.25 | 4 |
San Francisco Business Tips
(San Francisco, California - CA, USA)
In the mid-19th century, the gold rush brought enormous prosperity to this area and transformed San Francisco into a cosmopolitan city, almost overnight. San Francisco's Financial District is situated east of Union Square and is bordered by the Embarcadero, Market, Third, Kearny and Washington Street.
This is San Francisco's main business region and is home many of the city's major corporations. Highlights include the TransAmerica pyramid at Montgomery, which is one of the Financial District's most distinctive architectural features. An impressive mix of old and new businesses are currently flourishing in this popular business district.
Business Hours and General Etiquette
In both dress and manners, Americans can be less formal than Europeans, although normal business courtesies should still be observed. The degree of formality necessary depends upon the actual nature of the business, with financial and legal professions being more formal than computer and media organizations. Although both men and women may still wear suits, short sleeve shirts are acceptable in the summer.
Business hours in the San Francisco bay area are usually from Monday to Friday, between 09:00 to 17:00, although some city offices may close slightly later. Many shops are open longer and often throughout the weekends, and some supermarkets are open 24 hours. Banks in San Francisco generally open from 08:00 to 16:00 and on one day of the week until late in the evening. On Saturdays, banks in the city are often open until midday.
Working lunches are a popular way to do business in San Francisco and Americans are quick to use first-name terms. Some exclusive restaurants have a strict dress code, although a more informal, yet presentable dress code is acceptable. Drinks or dinner is a popular way to end the hard working week.
A brief and friendly handshake is usually the customary greeting in this business community. New acquaintances are often addressed on first name terms.
Many restaurants now have a strict 'no smoking' policy, although some tend to cater for smokers in different areas. Most offices are now nonsmoking and as this is currently a sensitive subjective in America, it is best to only smoke when in the company of like-minded people. | <urn:uuid:b63ea4d7-0f4a-4867-82f3-3138274ce87a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.san-francisco.world-guides.com/business_tips.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.94781 | 457 | 1.742188 | 2 |
ITT Research Shows Ozone Oxidation Treats Endocrine Disrupting Compounds
Greater than 90% removal rates are achieved for most of the investigated compounds
ITT Corp. has released the results of a comprehensive study showing that ozone oxidation is highly effective for treating micropollutants like endocrine disrupting compounds (EDCs). These potentially threatening substances, such as discarded pharmaceuticals, can be found in municipal wastewater effluents.
The results were outlined in a presentation at the North American Regional joint conference of the International Ozone Association (IOA) and International Ultraviolet Association (IUVA) in Boston by Dr. Achim Ried, director of research and development at ITT’s Water and Wastewater business in Germany.
“EDCs in the water stream are a serious issue in water treatment, potentially threatening people and wildlife,” Ried said. “Ozone oxidation offers proven advantages over traditional chlorination and other oxidation processes that can’t effectively deal with organic micropollutants like pharmaceuticals. ITT studied ozone treatment of EDCs at nine wastewater treatment facilities across Europe over a period of ten years. We found that ozone treatment usually offers proven advantages for comprehensive disinfection as well as for color and chemical oxygen demand (COD) reductions.”
High (more than 90%) removal rates are achieved for most of the investigated compounds by using ozone oxidation, Ried said. The studies also showed that ozone treatment ensures selective oxidation of contaminants, and is more energy efficient and cost effective than other advanced oxidation processes.
“The regulatory principle is preventive action,” said Ried. “Even very subtle effects on the endocrine system can result in changes in growth, development, reproduction or behavior that can affect the organism itself.”
ITT has delivered its WEDECO ozone technology for the world’s first full-scale demonstration at a municipal plant in Switzerland. After successful trial operations that concluded late last year, ITT received an order to deliver its technology for a second full-scale demonstration at another plant, also in Switzerland.
Ried joined ITT Corp.’s Water and Wastewater business in 1993, and has served in a variety of technical positions at its WEDECO unit in Hereford, Germany, over the last 16 years. Ried is a member of the German Association of Chemists, the International Ozone Association, FIGAWA (the German Association of Water Treatment and Gas Production), and the International Water Association. He studied at the University of Gottingen and the University of Marburg, and holds a degree in chemistry as well as a doctorate in Environmental Chemistry. | <urn:uuid:b297f744-515c-4419-8f70-3c90318c27c0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wqpmag.com/itt-research-shows-ozone-oxidation-treats-endocrine-disrupting-compounds | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00040-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.95459 | 548 | 2.40625 | 2 |
|Date Created:||30 June, 2008|
|Editing:||Spelling and Grammar only please.|
Exotic One-Handed Melee
1. See Damage Increases by Size to calculate the damage for a weapon larger than Medium or smaller than Small.
2. Weight figures are for Medium weapons. A Small weapon weighs half as much, and a Large weapon weighs twice as much.
3. When two types are given, the weapon is both types if the entry specifies "and", either type (player's choice at time of attack) if the entry specifies "or", or each end of the double weapon is a different type if the entry specifies "/".
4. The hp value given is for Medium armor, weapons, and shields. Divide by 2 for each size category of the item smaller than Medium, or multiply it by 2 for each size category larger than Medium.
Warwhips are made to kill; they are usually chain covered in metal thorns or other similarly horrible weapons.
The warwhip does lethal damage, and its use does not provoke an attack of opportunity. However, it does not threaten any squares within its range.
You can make trip attacks with a warwhip. If you are tripped during your own trip attempt, you can drop the whip to avoid being tripped. The warwhip is treated as a melee weapon with 15-foot reach. | <urn:uuid:981019f4-04a1-43fc-bf98-74f96a736312> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://dungeons.wikia.com/wiki/Warwhip_(3.5e_Equipment) | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00070-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.908966 | 289 | 2.140625 | 2 |
There is always a misunderstanding between a proforma invoice and a normal sales invoice. In foreign trade, a pro forma invoice is a document that states commitment from the seller to provide specified goods to the buyer at specific prices. It is often used to declare value for customs. It is not a true invoice, because the seller does not record a pro forma invoice as an accounts receivable and the buyer does not record a pro forma invoice as an accounts payable. A pro forma invoice is not issued by the seller until the seller and buyer have agreed to the terms of the order. Based on that definition, a proforma invoice is more closer with commercial invoice instead of a sales invoice. But, it is very often that a proforma invoice is issued for obtaining advance payments from buyer, either for start of production or for security of the goods produced. As long as both parties agreed on their term of sales, a proforma could be just an administrative document to justify the transaction between both parties.
This invoice template below is created based on commercial invoice template that has eliminated several shipping and export terms to make it more simple if this proforma is used for obtaining payment. You can download a commercial invoice template if you want to make a proforma invoice which is not intended to ask for payment.
Proforma Invoice (56.0 KiB, 1,390 hits) | <urn:uuid:181e0967-c595-423b-8682-312310753636> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://freewordtemplates.net/invoice/proforma-invoice.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961341 | 286 | 2.140625 | 2 |
Duke Energy, partnering with General Motors and power technology company ABB, will test whether used electric-vehicle batteries can find new purpose on the electric grid.
Lithium-ion batteries often have 70 percent or more of their useful life when they’re no longer usable in electric vehicles, GM says. GM and ABB began work two years ago on ways to reuse their energy storage.
A demonstration Wednesday in San Francisco gave a hint. Five used Chevrolet Volt battery packs were repackaged into a unit that could power three to five average-sized homes for two hours.
Duke envisions battery systems smoothing out the sudden swings in output from solar photovoltaic systems, said senior project manager Dan Sowder, helping the grid work more efficiently.
Duke will install a five-battery system on its grid somewhere in its six-state territory, Sowder said, ideally at a business or home with a rooftop solar system. The location hasn’t been identified.
While prototypes have been tested, Sowder said, “the leap here is that we’re going out to the real live electrical grid.” Duke is also testing other energy-storage technologies across its territory.
The companies see other potential benefits from EV batteries.
As the San Francisco demonstration showed, batteries could supply emergency power during power outages. They could also be charged at night, when electric rates are lowest, and their energy released to the grid during peak demand times.
New uses would also give old batteries new value, reducing the effective cost of owning electric vehicles. GM expects to have 500,000 vehicles with some form of electrification on the road by 2017, implying a healthy market for recyclable batteries.
ABB’s research center in Raleigh has conducted research and development, while its Lake Mary, Fla., unit is doing further testing, market research and product development.
ABB’s North American headquarters is in Cary. The company employs more than 1,600 people in North Carolina, including 100 at a cable-making plant it opened this year in Huntersville.
Henderson: 704-358-5051 Twitter: @bhender | <urn:uuid:d695895d-1709-452f-bd24-55e1172fc6a7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.newsobserver.com/2012/11/15/2487143/duke-to-test-new-uses-for-old.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00064-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951123 | 451 | 2.625 | 3 |