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Welcome to the website of the Department of Surgery at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine. We hope you will find this site useful to gain more information about our residency program, our physician faculty, our research efforts, our education programs and our specialized programs in clinical, basic science, and health outcomes research programs. The website is organized to feature our vision for the Department of Surgery for the provision of the highest quality and most compassionate clinical care to our patients, the best training program for our residents and students, and for the generation of the future leaders in general surgery in this country. The website contains information featuring the various training opportunities of our residents, including training in the art and science of surgery, as well as the development of technical and cognitive skills, and education in clinical and basic principles of surgery, and in the overall care of the patient. It also features the varied opportunities in research, whether in basic sciences, translational research programs, and in various aspects of health related outcomes.
The Department of Surgery comprises 116 Primary Faculty in various surgical disciplines organized in 7 Divisions including: General Surgery, Trauma and Surgical Critical Care, Burn Surgery, Surgical Oncology and Endocrine Surgery, Vascular Surgery, Hepatobiliary and Liver Transplantation, and Kidney and Pancreas Transplantation. We also have 22 Research-Track Faculty; 86 Residents and Fellows combined, and more than 400 staff members. Our residents cover services in four distinct but geographically close hospitals, including the Vanderbilt University Medical Center, the Nashville Veterans Administration Medical Center, St. Thomas Hospital, and the Nashville General Hospital affiliated with Meharry Medical College.
The Department of Surgery has experienced significant growth in research funding over the past five years. Most of the funding has been derived from the NIH and exceeded 9 million USD in 2011 alone. In addition, we have also experienced significant increase in funding from industry, foundations, and from philanthropic donors. Taken together, this places our Department in the top ten programs in the nation in research funding.
Our residents are provided opportunities to engage in various aspects of the research programs within the Department of Surgery. Many of these programs are carried out in a collaborative atmosphere with researchers in other clinical and basic science departments within the institutions. The residents are provided opportunities to engage in research activities for 2-3 years. Many of the residents also engage in course work leading to additional degrees such as Masters of Public Health, Masters of Science and Clinical Investigation, and PhD.
I would be remiss not mentioning that we live in a very beautiful city that is considered one of the safest and most livable in the USA. The city has a diversified populace and a very stable diversified economic base, a wealth of cultural and musical activities, and major sporting events. The medical community at Vanderbilt, including that in our program, is very reflective of this diversity.
Naji Abumrad, MD
John L. Sawyers Professor of Surgery
Chairman, Department of Surgery | <urn:uuid:c415a070-f975-4c72-b416-3cfd771b9c61> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.mc.vanderbilt.edu/root/vumc.php?site=GSR&doc=11006 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00072-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951835 | 602 | 1.523438 | 2 |
Healthy Hospital Food Initiative
A Survey and Analysis of Food Served at Hospitals by the
Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine and ADinfinitum
Intro: Methods and Findings | Background
Survey Details and Results | Discussion | Recommendations
References | Tables | Questionnaire
The majority of hospitals surveyed were giving some attention to offering healthier food choices to customers. One or more low-fat products or menu items were available at all hospitals surveyed—all offered at least one reduced-fat product, and 88 percent provided a low-fat entrée or side dish option daily. Most also offered fresh fruit and one fresh or cooked vegetable side dish daily to customers. Eighty percent of hospitals surveyed also reported offering sugar-free snacks, and 88 percent offered whole-grain products.
While these are important steps—and some hospitals around the country are doing an admirable job of offering healthy choices to their customers—ample opportunity exists for improving the health-promotion value of food served in hospital cafeterias. In particular, survey results showed that a majority of hospital foodservice establishments are not yet providing a daily salad bar, low-fat vegetarian options, non-dairy milks and other alternatives to dairy products, sufficient legumes to help meet daily fiber requirements, point-of-purchase nutrition information, or organically raised foods.
Healthy Vegetarian Offerings
Fewer than one-third of hospitals surveyed had either a daily salad bar or a daily vegetarian entrée. Diets based primarily on whole grains, legumes, fruits, and vegetables provide sound nutrition while reducing the risk of weight gain, diabetes, heart disease, hypertension, and several types of cancer. Research shows that people who consume vegetarian diets are slimmer than people who consume an omnivorous diet.8 A healthy and easy way to reduce overall calorie intake is to serve vegetarian foods. Low-fat and very low-fat diets are effective for weight loss because they lead to a reduction in calorie intake and an increase in fiber, which can help people feel fuller longer.9 On the other hand, high-protein, high-fat dietary patterns, when followed over the long term, are associated with increased risk of colorectal cancer,10 cardiovascular disease,11 impaired renal function,12 osteoporosis,13 and complications of diabetes.14
With heart disease remaining the number-one killer in America, an emphasis on vegetarian meals in hospitals could have beneficial effects on the average cholesterol level in hospital staffers and other customers. For example, one study showed that people who adopted a vegetarian diet reduced their saturated fat intake by 26 percent and achieved a significant drop in cholesterol levels in just six weeks.15 Very low-fat vegetarian diets, both as part of a comprehensive lifestyle change and without other lifestyle modifications, have been shown to be instrumental in reversing heart disease.16 Replacing animal protein with vegetable protein also helps decrease the risk for heart disease.17,18 In addition, a diet built from plant foods that limits or avoids animal products has been associated with a reduction in ovarian,20 prostate,21 colon,10 and breast cancer risk.22
The Importance of Beans
Beans and other legumes were offered infrequently in most of the hospitals surveyed. Menu analysis revealed that only two hospitals surveyed offered a daily dish containing beans. Studies have shown that consumption of beans, particularly soybeans, is associated with both cardiovascular and renal benefits.23 A reduction in the risk of coronary heart disease is also seen with legume consumption, as reported in the NHANES I Epidemiologic Follow-up Study.24
In addition, diets high in legumes typically are adequate in fiber, unlike other common food offerings. The current survey identified only two entrée recipes containing more than 4 grams of fiber per serving. Bean dishes typically contain about 7 to 8 grams of fiber in a modest-sized serving. The new U.S. Dietary Guidelines recommend 14 grams of fiber per 1,000 calories. For most people, this works out to about 25 to 42 grams per day. Fiber facilitates the movement of waste, including carcinogens, out of the digestive tract and promotes an environment within the colon that appears to be protective against cancer.10
Fewer than one-third of hospitals surveyed offered soymilk or other non-dairy options. Providing alternatives to cow’s milk and other dairy products promotes health for several reasons. First, approximately 90 percent of Asian Americans, 90 percent of Native Americans, 50 to 80 percent of Latinos, 60 to 80 percent of African Americans, and 6 to 22 percent of Caucasians are lactose-intolerant. Symptoms, which include diarrhea and other gastrointestinal problems, result from an absence of the lactase enzymes that break down the milk sugar lactose. In addition, several cancers, such as prostate and ovarian cancer, have been linked to the consumption of dairy products.20,21 Calcium is available in fortified soy and other non-dairy milks, green leafy vegetables, fortified juices, and other foods with health advantages milk lacks. Offering these non-dairy foods in hospital cafeterias will demonstrate to doctors and other customers the wide variety of calcium-rich foods available in a healthy diet.
Consumer Education and Nutrition Information
Two-thirds of hospitals surveyed did not mark the healthier items on the menus submitted. Yet research shows that even very simple nutrition information offered at point-of-selection (i.e., on the menu or on information cards in the cafeteria line) influences a significant number of consumers to make healthier choices.25 In addition, foodservice professionals and customers alike benefit from point-of-selection nutrition information. For example, most of the best-selling entrées in these hospital cafeterias were high-fat, high-cholesterol, fiber-less dishes—with fried chicken being the top seller in one in four hospitals. Worse yet, many of the recipes submitted as “healthiest” menu items topped the nutritional scales for fat, saturated fat, sodium, and cholesterol. Most were extremely low in fiber.
Many people believe that by substituting chicken, turkey, and fish for red meat, they are following a diet that will keep their arteries clear and reduce their risk for chronic diseases such as heart disease, cancer, and stroke. In fact, poultry and fish pose many of the same health risks as red meat. A 4-ounce serving of either chicken or beef contains about 100 milligrams of cholesterol. So, ounce for ounce, chicken holds about as much cholesterol as beef. Overall, the leanest chicken with the skin removed contains only slightly less fat than the leanest beef—deriving 23 percent of its calories from fat as opposed to the 29 percent of calories from fat in lean beef, much of which is saturated fat. Instead of replacing the hamburger with chicken cacciatore, patrons should be encouraged to opt for the veggie burger to keep fat and cholesterol levels low enough, and fiber intake high enough, to foster good health. | <urn:uuid:c78da86e-4581-4e03-9ced-e2a077d09a52> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://pcrm.org/health/reports/healthy-hospital-food-initiative-discussion | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00064-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.944541 | 1,428 | 2.640625 | 3 |
The world's two largest plane makers laid out forecasts for Latin America, where they see a market for 100 new commercial planes or more yearly for the next two decades as consumer spending expands with economic growth above the global average.
Airbus sees a total market in the region for some 2,000 commercial aircraft, worth USD$197 billion, over the next 20 years, said Rafael Alonso, the senior executive for Latin America at Chile's FIDAE regional air show.
Boeing has a more ambitious projection. It sees 2,500 new commercial planes in the region by 2032, requiring an investment of USD$250 billion, said Van Rex Gallard, the head of sales for the region.
The trans-Atlantic rivals delivered a combined total of more than 1,000 jets in 2011 for the first time, with about 6 percent destined for Latin America.
Boeing was in Santiago showcasing its 787 Dreamliner before it starts delivering the aircraft by year end to Chile's flagship carrier LAN Airlines, which will integrate 32 of the model within the next 10 years.
LAN is expected to complete its takeover of Brazil's TAM in early May to create one of the world's largest carriers, with flights to 115 destinations.
LAN said it would begin flying the 787 on its routes to Santiago, Buenos Aires, Lima, Los Angeles, Madrid and Frankfurt. | <urn:uuid:59a2717d-1006-4a4a-b650-7c9ab60f19b0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://news.airwise.com/story/view/1332937731.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00028-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.923641 | 277 | 1.6875 | 2 |
Died 15 December, 1861, the American Civil War was raging. That statue has no head, but holds only a mask.
"A dying man needs to die, as a sleepy man needs to sleep, and there comes a time when it is wrong, as well as useless, to resist." -Stewart Alsop
"I am against religion because it teaches us to be satisfied with not understanding the world." -Richard Dawkins
The dark clouds lumbered upon us, shaking out drops of light rain.
"Cursed is the man who dies, but the evil done by him survives." -Abu Bakr
"Millions long for immortality who don't know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon." -Susan Ertz
The necropolis reaches out like a strangling vine, waiting ever so slowly to latch on and slowly smother...
"Some people are so afraid do die that they never begin to live." -Henry Van Dyke
"An empty book is like an infant's soul, in which anything may be written. It is capable of all things, but containeth nothing. I have a mind to fill this with profitable wonders." -Thomas Traherne
"Suicide is man's way of telling God, "You can't fire me - I quit."" -Bill Maher
"While I thought that I was learning how to live, I have been learning how to die." -Leonardo da Vinci
"A citizen of America will cross the ocean to fight for democracy, but won't cross the street to vote in a national election." -Bill Vaughan
Posted May 1st, 2012 by We all will die some day. Make it count. | <urn:uuid:961b9bb4-2237-4f7d-9d3f-63faaa0f0543> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.toymachine.com/newspost/8933/glasgow+part+3++necropolis/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956832 | 347 | 1.9375 | 2 |
Story : http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2012/04/intels-tick-plus-third-generation-c
The first few models of Intel's third generation Core processor, codenamed Ivy Bridge, were launched today, combining faster performance with lower power consumption thanks to Intel's cutting-edge 22 nm manufacturing process.
Since 2007, the microprocessor giant has been using a model it describes as "tick-tock." Each "tick" is a die shrink and introduction of a new manufacturing process, each "tock" is the introduction of a new processor architecture. Ivy Bridge is a "tick," taking the 32 nm "Sandy Bridge" architecture and scaling it down to 22 nm. But Ivy Bridge goes further than past ticks - it includes an extensively improved GPU architecture, leading Intel graphics architect Tom Piazza to describe it as a "tick plus."
The new manufacturing process is no small change. Intel announced last year that its 22 nm process would use "3D" tri-gate transistors. The 3D transistors increase the contact area between parts of the transistor by using a silicon "fin" instead of a flat contact area, allowing much more current to flow when the transistor is turned on. This in turn allows Intel to either increase the clock speed, decrease the voltage (and hence power consumption) or both. Intel is the only company in the world to be producing processors using this technology, with silicon wafer-maker Soitech estimating that the rest of the industry won't catch up until 2014.
Intel has introduced 10 desktop processors and seven mobile processors using the new architecture. All of the new processors are quad core. i7-branded processors (four of the desktop parts and all of the mobile parts) also have Hyper Threading to allow eight threads to run concurrently. i5-branded chips (the remainder of the desktop parts) do not. | <urn:uuid:3115e852-132d-4d88-9b5d-75473ef6bde0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.slyck.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=36&p=586882 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00052-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.932534 | 390 | 2.0625 | 2 |
April 30, 2008 By News Report
Despite the huge growth in new applications such as Internet video and social networking, most consumers indicate the main reason for accessing the Internet is to use e-mail and gather information, according to a survey by Gartner.
The survey of 4,770 consumer Internet users in the fourth quarter of 2007 -- which encompassed 18 countries, three regions, three educational levels and three income levels -- found that the third Internet interest worldwide was online banking, with emerging markets being the only major exception.
Sharing photos, videos and files came in fourth, with all respondents worldwide ranking geographic navigation services -- for example Google Earth -- and shopping online as 5th and 6th in importance, respectively.
However, Gartner found that there is one demographic group that is bucking the trend, with 13- to 18-year-olds enjoying the most divergent Internet interests, ranging from downloading music and playing games online to blogging and social networks.
"Rather than being considered as contrarians, this group should be regarded as the precursors of what is to come," said Elroy Jopling, research director at Gartner. "The Internet has become a utility for most consumers, who use it for communicating, gathering information and performing financial transactions. However, a new 'trickle down' phenomenon, where teenagers lead the evolution of consumer Internet applications, heralds a new era where Internet applications will mimic life -- communicating, entertaining, socializing, informing, transactional, either in a fixed location or on the move."
Jopling said that the next Internet frontier will be mobile devices and that to succeed here, technology and service providers will need to incorporate the utilitarian applications of e-mail, search and geographical navigation services on all their fixed-line applications, as well as nimbly porting them to their mobile services. "Successful business plans will be those that are able to maximize utility on each of the mediums. The applications that teenagers spawn will require a similar fixed and mobile component," he said.
However, Gartner predicts that few technology and service providers will be able to address every element of Internet applications and the need to partner with other providers will increase. Equally, the need to viably assess what market a provider can address with its brand and the agility of its infrastructure will become paramount.
You may use or reference this story with attribution and a link to | <urn:uuid:f7ca5b58-f5f7-46b4-8bfc-f6aad4a2ae5d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.govtech.com/pcio/Gartner-Survey-Shows-Internet-Used-Predominately.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.941554 | 493 | 2.0625 | 2 |
JKhedrup wrote:Another reason for the popularity of Tibetan Buddhism is I think the high-quality translations available of many of the essential materials.
JKhedrup wrote:That is interesting to note! Perhaps HHDL's books are the exception.
Most of the people I know in Buddhism are voracious readers of dharma stuff but I suppose that Sanghas vary widely and many might emphasize a formal sitting practice more than study.
I still think if you look at the Buddhist section of your average bookstore, though, more than half is usually coming from the Tibetan tradition or inspired by it.
But if you are talking about the more scholarly things I think you are probably 100% right. To me it is amazing that there is enough funding to get things like the Tsadra series and Lam Rim Chenmo published. I am very grateful for the work of the translators as well as the generosity of the benefactors.
kirtu wrote:Masters Sheng-yen and Hsuan Hua devoted their lives to this transmission. It did work but after their parinirvanas not much has been done.
Humanistic Buddhism is needed in a place like the US where the poor are relegated to the trash heap and public education has totally failed.
Kaji wrote:For some reason, a lot of Chinese Buddhists I've met do not have a strong intention to break away from samsara... forget about achieving buddhahood. Buddhism to them is a religion that gives them blessings, a way of life, spiritual guidance, ritualised practice, etc., and not so much what Buddhism is ultimately for... sad but true...
anjali wrote:Although, I have to say, DDRC is a very nice retreat facility and will feel more like Asian Buddhism has adapted to the West, rather than Asian Buddhism has be transplanted in the West.
JKhedrup wrote:The Chinese temples on the other hand often function as cultural centres for the Chinese diaspora. The cultural aspects can be overwhelming for people with no knowledge of Chinese language and customs. Many Westerners who I met at a Chinese temple where I stayed in Canada for a time specifically mentioned the dharma functions (fa hue??? forgetting...) as particularly alienating. Bowing in unison, trying to put the sash on the haiqing perfectly, and a very stern formal atmosphere are difficult for many to take. People feel uneasy and afraid to make a mistake (afraid to fart, as one man said).
Another thing to mention is that many Westerners like to study in a linear, progressive fashion- similar to how they studies in school. In many of the Gelug centres (perhaps this is the case in other centres too), this is quite possible. One can begin foundational studies on progressive text like the Lam Rim or Bodhisattvacaryavatara to get a firm basis, and then seek teachings on tougher topics like Madhyamika, and take classes on tantric practices.
With the exception of the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas, none of the Chinese temples I have visited offer a complete, in-depth study program with qualified teachers in English, other than very brief introductory courses. Even for the Western born Chinese kids, many of them told my they found the sutra lectures interesting but felt they were very piecemeal, and it was hard to develop a firm knowledge.
Tibetan lamas are in general more casual and approachable than Chinese masters. While a Chinese bhikshu or bhikshuni might consider it inappropriate to appear in photos holding babies with an arm around the student, for most Tibetan lamas this would not be a problem. The emphasis on being "chuangyen" or dignified is what allows the Sangha to be respected in the Chinese community, but ironically to many Westerners it seems stiff and unwelcoming.
passel wrote:Probably Chinese Buddhists will be importing Western teachers pretty soon; it's already happening from time to time.
Generally the quality of the translations is quite high. Many of the translators of the classical texts (rather than books based on oral teachings) are university educated scholars, with English as their first language. There are also many scholar-practitioners, which means that the works are often quite fresh and readable rather than try university-level analysis.
In the Chinese tradition often not enough care has been put into producing publications (sorry, I am not trying to offend).
The quality of the grammar is as poor as that of my posts on Dharma Wheel, and there are many spelling mistakes. That labeled as "practical" or "humanistic" is often very relevant to those coming from Chinese cultures but very foreign and confusing to Westerners.In short, they are for the most part not books or translations that people would read or buy.
The 84,000 Project to translate the Kangyur is amazing and though I have heard those in the Chinese Buddhist community express a wish to do this with the Chinese canon, I do not see anything as concrete.
Huseng wrote:passel wrote:Probably Chinese Buddhists will be importing Western teachers pretty soon; it's already happening from time to time.
Instructors of various scholarly subjects, yes, but not on any institutional level. In other words they don't have any power to make decisions or reform things.
Astus wrote:Another thing is that here if you mention Buddhism, people think it exists in India - Buddha was Indian, right? - and then the Dalai Lama and Tibet. That Buddhism is a major religion in China, that's not common knowledge at all.
Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 11 guests | <urn:uuid:54910f1a-8e99-4d1c-96a8-9324c8a655fd> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.dharmawheel.net/viewtopic.php?p=129622 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00032-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969013 | 1,170 | 1.53125 | 2 |
Every year at Easter Mom’s fret about having enough hard boiled eggs to color for all the kids (including the big one)
You know the drill you try to limit it to six for each person and then 4 of your dozen crack while boiling, 1 leaks out and makes a mess all over all the other eggs, you send your hubby to the store on Easter Saturday, possibly THE BIGGEST nightmare day ever… (other than when the weatherman here in Colorado says we are expecting a blizzard).
He comes how a little beat up with another dozen eggs, and you start the process all over again. What are you doing wrong??
How to make perfect hard boiled eggs…
“Place the eggs in a pan just big enough to hold them in a single layer. Cover them with cold water and bring them to a rolling boil. Cook for one minute, then remove them from the heat. When the water has cooled enough that you can put your hand in (about 20 minutes), the eggs will be perfectly cooked.”
This method avoids not only the cracking in the pan because of the single layer, you also avoid overcooking which is what leads to the nasty sulphur smell and the not so attractive green ring around the yellow yolk.
Try this method of preparing hard boiled eggs this Easter and see if it works for you.
|Perfect Hard Boiled Eggs for Easter||
- 1 dozen eggs
- 2 quarts of water
- Place the eggs in a pan just big enough to hold them in a single layer. Cover them with cold water and bring them to a rolling boil.
- Cook for 1 minute after the water has boiled.
- Remove them from the heat.
- Let water cool. about 20 minutes | <urn:uuid:037f70ce-cc0b-4da0-91e4-3d0da38d381c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.clumsygourmet.com/how-to-perfect-hard-boiled-eggs-for-easter/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.944457 | 362 | 1.71875 | 2 |
Personal Growth - Tomorrow's mystics
What do Charlie Chaplin, Winston Churchill, Bill Gates, Stephen Hawking, Charles Darwin and Sean Penn have in common, apart from their fame? The answer is agnosticism. When it comes to matters of faith or divinity, the agnostic has no stand. Unlike an atheist who is convinced that God does not exist, an agnostic considers that it is not possible to know whether God exists or not.
So why would a magazine focusing on spirituality write about agnostics and atheists?
The point is that the agnostic and the atheist are also on a path, whether they know it or not. They are, in fact, on a higher plane than the blind worshipper, who goes to a temple or a church because he has been brought up to do so but has no direct relationship with God. In contrast, the agnostic and the atheist have begun the process of crafting a conscious understanding of God, by first of all freeing themselves of the burden of inherited creeds and belief systems.
In the West, particularly, churches have emptied out as more and more have begun to question the faith that was handed down to them.
Nisha George, born into a Syrian Christian family, shares that she lost faith in God when she was about 14, after coming in touch with Charles Darwin’s Theory of Evolution. “It simply did not gell with the Biblical tale of God making the world in seven days,” she says. Her agnostic period lasted until she was 33, when an authentic spiritual experience put her directly in touch with Divinity and enabled her to resume her relationship with God. “I now have a wonderful relationship with God who I perceive as the nameless and formless entity behind all of creation.” She adds, “Today, I do not believe in God, I know God.”
I too did not believe in a ‘Hindu’ God, as I did not believe in the caste system. Visiting temples or attending pujas, were a chore I performed unwillingly. It was only later I learnt that I was an agnostic.
Doubt has always existed in mankind as questioning is a part of human nature.
In fact, in Greece, much before the advent of Christianity, Pythogoras said, “Concerning the Gods, I have no means of knowing whether they exist or not or of what sort they may be, because of the obscurity of the subject, and the brevity of human life.”
Committed to humanity
At the same time, non belief in God in no way topples the ethical foundation of the lives of this breed. Being, in general, better educated and with more independence of mind, most of the atheists or agnostics one has encountered have been remarkably committed to the service of humanity.
Long ago, when I visited well-known lyricist Javed Akhtar, in Mumbai, for his help in publishing a book on religions of India, he thought it was a wonderful idea and did extend his help but did not write a testimonial as he did not believe in God, and it would be inappropriate for him to write the testimonial. He did, however, write one on my other book that highlighted the human values we should all have.
Sandeeep Pandey from Lucknow, who I had interviewed earlier, had photographs of Jesus, Buddha, and Mahatma Gandhi in his ashram, but said clearly that he admired them as social reformers and not as gods. An ex-IITian, he now devotes all his time to strengthening the development in his own city in the area of health and education.
Ashok Mahadevan, the ex-editor of Reader's Digest from Mumbai, also an atheist, has covered many humanistic people in the magazine. Three generations of Mahadevans have been involved with Mumbai Mobile Crèches (MMC), the non-profit organisation that looks after the children of construction labourers at worksites. He gets his support and strength from family, friends, and aims at making this world a better place to live in.
Andrew Carnegie [1835-1919] was a noted American industrialist, businessman, and philanthropist. He identified himself as a positivist, and kept away from organised religion, due to his distaste for sectarianism. Carnegie preferred naturalism and science, saying in his autobiography, “Not only had I got rid of the theology and the supernatural, but I had found the truth of evolution.”
Avram Noam Chomsky is one of the most notable American philosophers of any age. Professor Emeritus of Linguistics at MIT, he is considered a father of modern linguistics. On his views of religion, Chomsky said in an interview in 2002, “If you ask me whether or not I am an atheist, I wouldn’t even answer. I would first want an explanation of what it is that I’m supposed not to believe in, and I’ve never seen an explanation.”
Warren Edward Buffett, an American businessman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, was rated by Forbes as the richest person in the world (in the first half of 2008, before the Wall Street meltdown). He is noted for adherence to the philosophy of ‘value investing,’ and for accepting an annual salary for himself of less than $200,000. He describes himself as religiously agnostic. He says he adopted his father’s ethical underpinnings, but not his belief in an unseen divinity.
If we need proof that man does not need to fear hell or covet heaven in order to lead a useful and productive life in the service of humanity, we need to look no further than at the atheist and his comrade in arms, the agnostic.
Khushwant Singh, author and well-known journalist from Delhi, follows a regular diet, exercises to the best of his ability, and remains creatively engaged even today, at the age of 90 plus. His credo, “Never lose your temper, it takes a heavy toll and jangles one’s nerves. Never tell a lie. Always keep your national motto in mind, Satyamev Jayate, only truth triumphs. Give generously.
|Funnily enough, people often feel insecure about the stage three people, the sceptics, though they are quite harmless, just because they do not conform to norms.|
He can also speak about the Sikh scriptures with complete authority and promotes its core values, yet is a self-confessed agnostic.
He has even adopted a meditation practice: “A practice which I have found very effective is to fix my gaze on the flame of a candle, empty my mind of everything, but in my mind repeat Aum Shanti, Aum Shanti, Aum Shanti. It does work. I am at peace with the world.” Mrigendra Pandey, a mathematics tutor from Delhi, who teaches people in India and overseas, became an agnostic after the Babri Masjid demolition, when he saw members of both the communities dying because of communal strife. He says he believes in himself and does his best, never harms anyone and continues doing his best. Subscribing to the law of attraction, he practises positive thoughts and affirmations, which will inevitably lead him to the zone of spirituality.
Shishir Kumar Verma, a retired government official from Gorakhpur is an agnostic who says he has the courage to overcome any difficulty which life may throw at him. He stoically faced a recent heart surgery, telling himself that irrespective of the outcome, one must have courage, as that is the only factor that helps in the face of adversity.
The agnostic and the atheist are therefore self-made and self-sustained, clearly on a higher level than the millions who go to temples and bargain with God for material and other fulfillments.
Scott L Peck, the author of the book, The Road Less Travelled, ranks the agnostic accurately when he explains the processes of spiritual development in four stages. In the first stage, people are chaotic, antisocial, and sometimes pretend to be loving and pious, while actually covering up their lack of principles. In stage two, we have formal, institutional, fundamental believers. Usually, they do not yet understand the spirit of the law and consequently become legalistic, parochial, and dogmatic. In stage three, we find the sceptics that include atheists, agnostics and those scientifically minded who demand a measurable, well-researched, and logical explanation. Although frequently ‘nonbelievers,’ people in stage three are generally more spiritually developed than many content to remain in stage two. Although individualistic, they are not the least bit antisocial. To the contrary, they are often deeply involved in and committed to social causes. Of course, in stage four, we find the mystics, who out of love and commitment to the whole, using their ability to transcend their backgrounds, culture and limitations with all others, reach toward the notion of world community, and the possibility of either transcending culture or creating a planetary culture.
He explains further that perhaps, predictably, there exists a sense of threat among people in the different stages of religious development. Funnily enough, people often feel insecure about the stage three people, the sceptics, though they are quite harmless, just because they do not conform to norms.
If one analyses all pathbreakers even in faith, all change has come from stage three people. Buddha questioned some practices of the then prevalent Hinduism, Jesus challenged the priests in the Jewish synagogues, and even Mahatma Gandhi, questioned himself all the time, studying and applying only the principles he connected with, be it of any faith.
The step towards faith
In my case, I soon realised that the answers were all there in my own faith, through the answers of many gurus who speak on the essence of Oneness in all beings. I read about the time Adi Sankara, the Hindu seer, and his disciples had gone down the ghats of the Ganges for ablutions. Returning, they were faced with a chandala, a low-caste pariah, leading a pack of four dogs. The seer asked the lowly man to step aside from their path. Instead of obeying, the chandala is said to have responded with the wise words, “Like your own, my body too is made up of the material food that is consumed and performs the same biological functions as any Brahmin’s. My atman or consciousness too is identical to the Supreme Brahman which is omnipresent and forms the composition of your soul as well and is totally unaffected by the bodily aspects. So which part of me do you ask to step aside, the body or the consciousness (Chaitanya)? And why do you do so, learned Brahmin?” The seer was dumbstruck and awed with the enlightenment of a lower-caste man. Adi Shankara prostrated to the chandala and conceded that he had erred. He composed the ethereal shlokas, Manishapanchaka, the purport of which is to concede that the only man who may claim to be illuminated is one who has learnt to see the world and all its beings as part of the Self, and not in the form of individuals belonging to various castes. Reading this, I realised that it would help if we were to understand the core concepts in the faiths, for only then can we move towards true enlightenment.
Neeta Sharma Kumar, founder of a wholistic wellness centre, Delhi, says during one of her visits to her native village in Bihar, she came across untouchables who were not allowed to go to schools and temples, and hence became an atheist. Later, she attended a reiki and yoga class. Initiation into reiki made her visualise, as well as experience, light entering her body. She is now clear that it is compassion, love and forgiveness, that is true spirituality and not faith in a particular religion or adherence to its customs.
Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev, the founder of Isha Yoga in Coimbatore, was the youngest of four children. He never really felt God’s presence in temples and shunned visiting them, as he felt people never became joyous after visiting any place of worship. To him, enlightenment came in a flash. At the age of 25, he suddenly felt the entire surroundings around him, become a part of him, until there was no him and no other. Today he guides many people in recognising their inner potential, as he firmly believes that we all have the power to create the world we wish to manifest.
For all of us who believe in evolution, non-belief, it is clear, is one more step in the evolutionary process. The next step is agnosticism where we have the courage to accept openly that we do not have all the answers. Finally, the sceptic has a direct spiritual experience and becomes an authentic lover of God.
Today’s nonbeliever is tomorrow’s mystic.
See more articles on Personal Growth : http://www.lifepositive.com/Articles/PersonalGrowth
|HOME | SUBSCRIBE | WALLPAPERS | ADVERTISING | POLICY | PRACTITIONERS | WRITERS | PEOPLE | ABOUT | CONTACT| | <urn:uuid:6edce816-0d82-4e08-9b41-b316af7ea774> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.lifepositive.com/Mind/Personal_Growth/Tomorrows_mystics62012.asp | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.974104 | 2,804 | 1.984375 | 2 |
First-time Home Buyers and Residential Investment Volatility
Like other macroeconomic variables, residential investment has become much less volatile since the mid-1980s (recent experience notwithstanding.) This paper explores the role of structural change in this decline. Since the the early 1980s there have been many changes in the underlying structure of the economy, including those in the mortgage market which have made it easier to acquire a home. We examine how these changes affect residential investment volatility in a life-cycle model consistent with micro evidence on housing choices. We find that a decline in the rate of household formation, increased delay in marriage, and an increase in the cross-sectional variance of earnings drive the decline in volatility. Our findings provide support for the view that the “Great Moderation” in aggregate fluctuations is not just due to smaller aggregate shocks, but is driven at least in part by structural change. | <urn:uuid:4393e2f5-86aa-40ad-9e53-14f6569029fe> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://chicagofed.org/webpages/publications/working_papers/2007/wp_15.cfm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00048-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963122 | 179 | 1.554688 | 2 |
A news release issued by the San Antonio Metropolitan Health District is re-posted here as a community service. For more information, call (210) 207-8790, visit the Metro Health District website, or contact your family physician.
Nasty influenza season in full swing, residents can still get vaccine for protection
SAN ANTONIO (Jan. 10, 2013) – The influenza season is in full swing, earlier than usual. Compared to the same period last year, flu numbers doubled this season. Although flu seasons are unpredictable, it is likely a second wave of flu activity will peak in February. The San Antonio Metropolitan Health District recommends a three-step approach to protect yourself and others from the flu.
- Get a flu vaccine
- Wash hands often and maintain good hygiene to prevent the spread of germs
- If you get the flu, complete all medication doses prescribed by your doctor and stay home from school or work to avoid infecting others
Local flu surveillance reports also show an increase of other respiratory viruses, such as Rhinovirus and RSV, but flu continues to be the most prevalent respiratory virus. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also reports an elevated proportion of visits to doctors for influenza-like illness in its latest national surveillance report.
Locally, there were no flu-related deaths reported in the past year. In Texas, however, there were three pediatric deaths reported this season. While flu activity typically peaks in February or March, this season the number of cases rose early and the cases tend to be more severe.
The flu vaccine takes up to two weeks after vaccination for the body’s immune response to fully protect the person, so it’s important to immunize now. Everyone over 6 months of age is recommended to get a flu vaccine each year. More than 127 million doses of flu vaccine were shipped to providers nationwide. There is currently no shortage of vaccine in the San Antonio and Bexar County area.
Nationwide, flu leads to an estimated 36,000 deaths and 200,000 hospitalizations each year. Some people are at greater risk of serious flu-related complications: children younger than 5 but especially children younger than 2 years old; persons 65 and older; pregnant women; and persons with chronic diseases.
Many doctors, clinics and retail pharmacies offer flu vaccine. To find the provider nearest you, visit http://flushot.healthmap.org/. Flu vaccination is also available at these Metro Health clinics:
- Main Immunization Clinic, 345 W. Commerce, (210) 207-8894
- Goodwill Clinic, 727 NW Loop 410 at Blanco, (210) 525-0059
For more information, call 207-8790 or visit http://www.sanantonio.gov/health/. | <urn:uuid:7bc1d0e2-5e2f-4919-871c-f027a73d50ef> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://nisd.net/news/articles/27331 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00063-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.943279 | 566 | 2.4375 | 2 |
Posted February 21, 2012 by Shefali Sharma
Dehli, India – On February 12, India and the European Union (EU) held their 12th joint summit here. Outside the summit, Indian HIV and access-to- medicine activists, farmers, dairy producers, small retailers, trade unionists and development, agriculture and health NGOs took part in a massive rally in the capital to protest against the EU-India Free Trade Agreement (FTA) that is being negotiated behind closed doors. At stake are several “life and death” matters including access to cheap medicines for Africa and other poor countries, livelihoods of Indian farmers and fisherpeople and impacts such a deal would have on the people living on land rich with the natural resources that the EU wishes to import from India.
Last Friday, the Delhi Network of Positive People (DNP+), many of whom are HIV positive themselves, raised slogans and carried inflatable pills across Delhi to raise awareness that India could lose its status as the “pharmacy of the developing world” if it agrees to many of the EU’s demands on intellectual property protection and enforcement in the FTA. Thanks to the Indian generic drugs industry, the price of first-line anti-retroviral drugs in developing countries battling with AIDS has dropped down to $150 per person per year compared to $10,000 per person per year in 2000. Eighty percent of the HIV medicines used to treat 6.6 million people in developing countries comes from Indian generic drugs producers. And 90 percent of children’s HIV medicine that Medicines Sans Frontieres (MSF) uses comes from India. Cheap and good quality Indian drugs are used to treat other major diseases in developing countries as well, such as cancer and tuberculosis.
The EU’s demand for a term called “data exclusivity” in the EU-India FTA would literally force hundreds of Indian drug manufacturers out of business because it prohibits the use of test data by generic producers for drugs that have already proven to be effective. This can increase the amount of time a drug is under a patent by five to ten years. In addition, the EU’s IP “enforcement” provisions would allow European patent holders to prevent Indian drugs from reaching third party countries if they felt that the Indian generic company violated their own patents. This would be the case even if the European patent was not recognized in the third party country where the drugs were headed. In fact, this happened in 2008 when the European Union seized Indian generics headed through European ports to Latin America and Africa even though those developing countries did not recognize the patents.
The FTA would not only impact the right to health, but also the right to food of many millions of Indians who depend on fisheries for their livelihood and often their only source of protein. According to a study by Barria and Mathews for Focus on the Global South, the marine fisherfolk population of India is around 3.5 million people. If inland fisheries and acquaculture is included, the sector is said to include 36 million people. Through the FTA’s investment provision, the EU is seeking access for its large mechanized fishing fleets and trawlers and on-board processing units to India’s fishing grounds. Given that nearly half of India’s fishing fleet is non-motorized and over 70% of the marketing and traditional processing of fish is done by women fishworkers, the FTA is a real threat to their livelihoods, particularly since Indian fisheries are already experiencing declines in catch without major trawlers.
Yet not only coastal populations, but other food producers such as those involved in dairying stand to lose from “free trade” with the EU in agriculture. Women form the backbone of the dairy sector in India, with a total of 14 million dairy producers out of which 75% are small and marginal farmers. India once paid compensation to the WTO in exchange for “binding its tariff” (maximum duty level) up to 60%on skim milk powder after major losses to its dairy sector when it joined the WTO at zero percent duty on the product. Now, the EU wants India to cut over 90% of its agriculture and non-agriculture tariffs to zero or close to zero and a major area of export interest for the EU is of course, dairy. This spells trouble for small producers who will have to compete with cheaper dairy products made from imported skim milk powder from the EU. But small producers alone will not suffer.
If the EU has its way, Indian cheese producers will not be able to produce gouda, emmental or mozzarella because the EU wants special rights over the names of these cheeses through an IP right called “geographical indications,” meaning specific regions have exclusive rights to call certain products by a specific name. If the same cheese is produced elsewhere, it cannot be called by the same “geographical” name as an “original” European cheese.
IATP took part in the Right to Food Impact Assessment of the EU-India FTA in April last year—the final report was presented by the authors in Brussels and Geneva in November. In the run up to the rally, I participated in a two day conference held in Delhi, 8-9 February, to highlight the impact the FTA provisions on investment will have on the land rights of some of the most marginalized populations in India. The EU seeks to import mineral resources such as bauxite from India with greater ease with much more investor rights and protection through an investor-to-state mechanism for arbitration in case conflict arises. Meanwhile, India is in the process of revising its land acquisition law that originates in the 1800s during British Rule. The FTA could have a “chilling” effect on the reform process and could add to land-related conflicts if local communities are further marginalized and displaced off their lands either due to increased foreign investment that requires natural resources and land; or even through government pressure to make land more readily available and hence India more attractive to those investors regardless of the costs to peoples’ rights and livelihoods..
Prior to the EU-India Summit, there were rumors that the two parties may make a major announcement regarding parts of the FTA that had been successfully concluded. However, neither government made such remarks following the summit. The next projected deadline of the controversial FTA has been set for the end of 2012. | <urn:uuid:fa8bd78e-755f-44f3-8331-5d07e1d3f897> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://iatp.org/blog/201202/eu-india-free-trade-agreement-don%E2%80%99t-trade-away-our-lives-say-activists | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00028-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.962092 | 1,311 | 2.140625 | 2 |
Attention fans of coal, singing or otherwise: here's an important announcement by the city of Los Angeles:
...commissioners at the Department of Water and Power moved forward with plans to dump the utility's interest in a coal-burning plant in Arizona and convert another one in Utah to natural gas. The plants provide nearly 40% of the city's energy.
The changes, coupled with new commitments to renewable power, would make the city coal-free by 2025, utility officials said.
While clearly a victory for the environment, L.A's decision seriously undermines the message of the Clean Coal Carolers, those jolly carbon crooners from the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity who were so gleefully dismantled on this show four years ago. Obviously, if the C.C.C. chooses to respond musically to these developments, you'll see it here first. | <urn:uuid:e48ff5ae-ddc4-4c29-a23b-1ab50d92fcfb> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2013/03/21/17402303-what-will-the-clean-coal-carolers-sing-about-now | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00051-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.942803 | 179 | 1.59375 | 2 |
Nobody really knows when or where golf began.
Romans played games with a ball and a stick several hundred years ago. The Dutch used an implement to roll an object into a hole long, long ago. The Chinese used wooden objects to hit balls. When to celebrate Golf’s birthday is uncertain and the game may go back thousands of years.
What we do know is that golf was given an identity and a set of rules by the Scots in March of 1744. Fourteen in all, the rules were documented and the standard was set for competitions. Granted, a few of these rules are humorous when viewed against the evolved game of today. But, they certainly provide grounding when seen as the game’s adolescence. Please consider these morsels:
Rule No. 4 - “You are not to remove stones, bones or any break club for the sake of playing your ball, except upon the fair green, and that only within a club’s length of the ball.”
Got that? Don’t move the stones or bones.
Rule No. 10 - “If a ball be stopp’d by any person, horse, dog, or any thing else, the ball so stopp’d must be played where it lyes.”
If you bring your dog, make sure it knows when to stop your ball, preferably by the hole. It might sound like this, “Fetch. Stop. Drop. Good dog.”
Today, the game has 34 rules (not bad when you index for inflation) and there is companion book known as “The Decisions” book (to handle most of the “what if’s?” in golf). These contain information about everything from what type of ball is cool to different forms of play.
In many ways the game has changed a lot, become more sophisticated.
However, in just as many ways, the game is the same, players with sticks trying to correctly advance a small orb. Addicted, ambitious players trying to achieve perfection in an imperfect game.
This age of the game, the roots of the past, lends itself to a lineage of seasoned players; ‘Ballers’ who have enjoyed the game for decades. Of course, there is a splendid balance of golfers from the toddler to the retired.
Many have seen the images of a three year old Tiger Woods on the Merv Griffin television show striking a golf ball dead straight and we have a number of players at our club that can “shoot their age” (match their score) on any given day.
We don’t precisely know when this great game began and it doesn’t really matter when you begin or how long you have played.
The important thing is that you play.
Some would say we don’t play, because we get old.
But could it be that we get old, because we don’t play?
It reminds me of a phrase attributed to Satchel Paige, “How old would you be if you didn’t know how old you were?” At any age, we can not only enjoy this great game, relish the time with our friends and family and we can improve.
Consult your local PGA or LPGA professional, get some instruction on technique, then make an investment in practice.
You will reap what you sow. I guarantee it.
Granted, it may take you a while to shoot your age. But, hey, every year it gets easier, right?
John Renslow is general manager and director of golf at Alta Sierra Country Club. Please contact John with your questions or comments at email@example.com. | <urn:uuid:9feb57e0-ce23-4163-b210-3f39c36a36c3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.theunion.com/entertainment/activitiesandevents/5650356-113/game-golf-ball-age | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00043-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959407 | 776 | 2.3125 | 2 |
How to Create Memorable, Meaningful Family Traditions
We asked Dr. Harley Rotbart, Professor and Vice Chair of Pediatrics at Children's Hospital Colorado, and the author of No Regrets Parenting - Turning Long Days and Short Years into Cherished Moments for Your Kids, for advice on creating memorable traditions with your family.
What should parents know about creating family traditions?
There are two keys to establishing family traditions: repetition and anticipation. When you find something that brings excitement and smiles to your kids, keep doing it - not so often that it becomes mundane, but on a regular and predictable enough basis that it becomes part of the family repertoire.
How can we get the kids excited?
Start talking about the traditional event days ahead of time so by the time it finally happens, your kids are beside themselves with excitement. Anticipation can be as much fun as the tradition itself.
8 ideas for special family traditions
There are the big traditions (Thanksgiving, December holidays, birthdays) and the small traditions - and both are important in the legacy of a family. Even with the big traditional events, personalize them for your own family. Here are fun examples, big and small:
1.) Make Thanksgiving your own. Volunteer at the food bank on Thanksgiving morning. Play backyard football before dinner to work up an appetite or after dinner to work off the turkey.
2.) Turn birthdays into unique celebrations. Hang balloons in the kitchen the night before a birthday so the family arrives at a party room in the morning. Eat pancakes in mom and dad's bed on birthday mornings. Sing "Happy Birthday" in the most silly, off-key way possible.
3.) Double the number of birthdays in a year (or quadruple them!). Serve half a cake on half-birthdays and a cupcake on quarter-birthdays. You don't need gifts on these birthdays…just laughter, singing and fun. Celebrate your pets' birthdays, too!
4.) Do quirky things that only your family shares. Make a funny noise in the elevator when it's just your family taking the ride, or give a whoop every day when the clock strikes your exact address (if you live at 720 Elm, give a cheer at 7:20 every morning and night).
5.) Have a special dinner on special occasions. Designate your favorite foods for different events, like Chinese food for every anniversary, Indian food for good report cards, hot dogs on opening day of the baseball season, etc.
6.) Celebrate the seasons. Have a family leaf fight every fall, go sledding the day after the first snowfall, and eat fruit salad in the garden to celebrate summertime.
7.) Candlelight dinner. Once a month, for no special reason, everyone dresses up and eats a fancy meal at home, by candlelight. Soft music, the good china, and restaurant table manners.
8.) Activities just for your family. Have a family comedy night or a talent show; make holiday cards from scratch; write personalized lyrics to an old song and karaoke your new composition together; do "family university" trivia contests on the patio after dinner on warm summer nights.
Only you know the chemistry of your own family and which traditions will resonate. Try a lot of different ideas. There's no such thing as "failure" - if an idea doesn't work, you've still spent wonderful moments with your kids and given them something to tease you about for years to come ("Remember when mom thought it would be cool to have all of us wear costumes to surprise dad at dinner?").
Get more parenting resources. | <urn:uuid:69270b9e-ccbd-4c29-b9fc-78d7f87849d3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.childrenscolorado.org/wellness/resources/creating-traditions.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00057-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.938446 | 745 | 2.46875 | 2 |
The Census Bureau seems perhaps a few decades late on this, but it has finally decided to stop using the word "Negro" in its surveys. Census forms will replace the current option of "black, African Am., or Negro" with simply "black" or "African-American" beginning next year. It apparently took months of research and feedback gathering to come to the conclusion that many black Americans find the term "Negro" to be, in the words of the chief of the bureau's racial statistics branch, "offensive and outdated," reports the AP.
"Negro" was first used on census forms in 1900, replacing "colored." The government decided not to drop the term for the 2010 census after determining that some older Southern blacks still identified with it. But after it mailed out those forms, some groups protested, spurring an apology from the director of the Census Bureau. | <urn:uuid:8938aefe-2137-4201-9759-1e93e8975525> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.newser.com/story/163476/negro-wiped-from-us-census.html | 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 | 0.967973 | 179 | 2.90625 | 3 |
14th November 2012
In a major step forward in promoting and perpetuating the Native Hawaiian language, Microsoft’s recent launch of Windows 8 includes support for the Hawaiian language, thanks to a collaborative effort with University of Hawaii faculty.
The Windows 8 operating software includes a Hawaiian keyboard layout in the operating system, many fonts containing the diacritical marks used in the Hawaiian language, and other localized resources such as the ability to show days of the week and months in Hawaiian.
This development was made possible by the joint efforts of staff of Ka Haka Ula O Keelikolani College of Hawaiian Language at the University of Hawaii at Hilo and Microsoft.
Keola Donaghy, formerly of Ka Haka Ula O Keelikolani and now a faculty member in the music department of University of Hawaii Maui College, collaborated with programmers in Microsoft’s Local Languages Program for several years to develop these resources and see that they were included in Windows 8.
“We’re getting very close to the day that Hawaiian speakers will be able to take for granted the fact that they can simply type in Hawaiian when they buy a new computer, tablet, or smart phone without installing special software,” Donaghy said.
“Providing technology support in a native language is critical to helping people access the tools they need to create better economic opportunities,” said Anthony Salcito, Vice President of Worldwide Education for Microsoft. “Language preservation and support also helps preserve cultural identities for the next generation of learners.”
Keiki Kawaeaea, a faculty member of Ka Haka Ula O Keelikolani added, “We are thrilled that Microsoft has recognized the significance of the Hawaiian language to its people, and how important it is for us to be able to use it on our computers. Given the high percentage of personal computers that ship with and run the Windows operating system, this is one of the most significant developments that we’ve made.” | <urn:uuid:b6f2cba1-408d-40c3-b57f-13ffe213f8b6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://maui.hawaii.edu/news/2012/11/uhmc-faculty-member-microsoft-team-up-on-language/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00064-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951306 | 413 | 1.976563 | 2 |
Zombies and ghouls are all the rage this Halloween, and adding some macabre makeup to just about any getup will immediately zombie-fy it. I have a friend who is a forest ranger, and he’s going as the zombie ranger, by just donning his work uniform and adding some gory makeup and some dismembered limbs coming out of his backpack. Maybe I’ll just have to be the zombie backcountry snowboarder. This week’s flashback is another excerpt from Make: Halloween Special Edition, a 2006 collaboration between the editors of CRAFT and MAKE, our sister publication. Courtney Mault and Max Sparber, experts in horror makeup, wrote an entire Macabre Makeup DIY section for the issue, incorporating simple, kitchen-inspired techniques from master makeup pioneer Dick Smith. I say kitchen-inspired because Smith used Karo corn syrup, unflavored gelatin, and bread crumbs to create many a gruesome look. For this DIY, get out the bread crumbs and get gory!
Macabre Makeup: The Ghoul
By Courtney Mault and Max Sparber
The corpse-eating ghoul is where your kitchen supplies come in handy, because this is a piece of makeup that requires bread crumbs. And if you do a full-face coat of liquid latex, when you’re done, you’ll have a particularly weird-looking mask that you can reuse.
Black and gray greasepaint
Red acrylic paint
Step 1: Add dark greasepaint around the eyes, forehead, and cheeks to get a sunken, hollow look.
Then continue to paint the rest of the face and neck with a skeletal outline. This will give the effect of translucent skin decaying off the bone.
Step 2: Paint the face with a coat of liquid latex, and sprinkle bread crumbs onto the latex. They will stick. Allow layer to dry.
Caution: Be very careful not to cover hair with liquid latex, such as your eyebrows, hairline, or mustache (should you have one), as it will be almost impossible to remove the liquid latex without tearing your hair out. Repeat. Add layers to bulk up areas of your face that you want to stand out, such as your brow, your lips, your chin, or your cheekbones.
Note: If you use more or heavier bread crumbs, the face will look bubbled and filled with pustules (in which case, adding reddish acrylic paint to the latex will give the ghoul a horribly diseased look). Finer or fewer breadcrumbs will make the ghoul look leathery and pockmarked.
Step 3: Apply makeup. When the whole thing has dried, apply greasepaint as you would to any other monster. The ghouls look especially good if you use a stipple sponge to give them a weird, rough texture.
Now go dig up some graves and eat the dead!
About the Authors:
Courtney Mault is a Minnesotan who’s been a horror makeup hobbyist for years, and has provided makeup for several indie and student films. Max Sparber is a blogger, playwright, and journalist from Minneapolis. | <urn:uuid:dedb2ecd-16c9-4bb3-9e2e-98a4b380b8c7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blog.makezine.com/craft/flashback_gory_ghoul_makeup/?like=1&source=post_flair&_wpnonce=4b5b0dc21b | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00022-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.924925 | 663 | 1.539063 | 2 |
Pictures: Sandy Hook Students Return To School
Sandy Hook Elementary School students resumed classes Thursday morning at the former Chalk Hill School in Monroe.
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Monroe welcomes Sandy Hook
Students and faculty of Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, went back to school Thursday, for the first time after the mass killings on December 14. Monroe has allowed Newtown to use Chalk Hill Middle School and rename it Sandy Hook Elementary School. Faculty and volunteers redecorated it to look as much like their old school as possible. Neighbors to the school and towns people put signs out to welcome the children back to school. | <urn:uuid:e4d36615-357c-4ad4-827d-0126912ef346> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.kwch.com/news/hc-pictures-sandy-hook-students-return-to-school-20130103,0,7199802.photogallery | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00024-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.962312 | 128 | 1.523438 | 2 |
Dan Beaded Handicraft, based in Dumasi-Krobo, Ghana, specializes in metal and bead work. Most of the artisans are from the local community.
Dan Beaded Handicraft was established in 1989 by Dan Tey Doku and his wife, Janet Teye, as a carpentry, joinery, bead-making and metalwork shop. Now, specializing in bead and metal work, the group produces metal and recycled glass bead home decor products such as candleholders, plate stands, towel racks, recycled glass bead fashion accessories and jewelry.
Dan Beaded Handicraft has received training and support through the West Africa Trade Hub (WATH), a program of USAID that works with a range of small to mid-size businesses in West Africa. WATH's goal is to help facilitate trade in the international market for businesses in this region. One of the programs sponsored by WATH is SIAO, which brings buyers and handicraft artisans together each year in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso. It was through this event that Ten Thousand Villages connected with Dan Beaded Handicraft.
Ten Thousand Villages began purchasing from Dan Beaded Handicraft in 2008. Ten Thousand Villages purchases metal and recycled glass bead home decor items.
- Artisan Products | <urn:uuid:191ae636-82cf-4f84-8b19-df4013cbf8c0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.tenthousandvillages.com/catalog/product/view/id/6193/s/1103/category/509/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00054-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959006 | 274 | 1.625 | 2 |
Three weeks after undergoing a crash test, a Chevy Volt caught fire. The car's battery was determined as the cause of the fire, though GM said its protocols for deactivating the battery following a crash would have prevented it. Either way, the National Highway Traffic Safety Association is now on the case. They're planning additional testing of the batteries, though they were quick to say, "Based on the available data, N.H.T.S.A. does not believe the Volt or other electric vehicles are at a greater risk of fire than gasoline-powered vehicles. In fact, all vehicles — both electric and gasoline-powered — have some risk of fire in the event of a serious crash." According to the president of an engineering firm, "If a lithium battery is pierced by steel, a chemical reaction will take place that starts raising the temperature and can result in a fire... If the piercing is small, that reaction can take days or weeks to occur." | <urn:uuid:32e47046-bb52-4dc1-86bc-c9c872032961> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://tech.slashdot.org/story/11/11/12/1324253/chevy-volt-fire-prompts-safety-investigation-for-ev-batteries/funny-comments | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.973759 | 195 | 2.609375 | 3 |
Children sing and dance to the beat at Schools’ Singing Programme workshop at Bath Abbey
More than 500 pupils from primary and secondary schools in and around Bath have been singing, dancing and beat boxing at Bath Abbey.
The children took part in a series of activities designed to help them enjoy singing as a group, experience different musical genres and to develop good performance techniques.
For the third year running the Schools’ Singing Programme’s annual workshop has ended with concerts as the children come together to showcase their new skills.
Youngsters from Freshford C of E Primary; King Edward’s Secondary; St Julian’s Primary, Wellow; Weston All Saints Primary; King Edward’s Pre-Prep; St Andrew’s C of E Primary; Widcombe Junior; St John’s C of E Primary, Keynsham; St Philip’s C of E Junior; St Stephen’s CEVA Primary and High Littleton C of E Primary have been joined the abbey chorus this week.
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Since it was first set up three years ago, the Abbey’s Schools’ Singing Programme has reached over 3,000 school children across Bath and North East Somerset to help promote choral singing which in turn has a positive impact on the children’s behaviour, helping to build their confidence, concentration, and teamwork skills.
Shean Bowers, Bath Abbey’s Assistant Director of Music and Choral Director for Schools: “While our main focus is on choral singing, the Schools’ Singing Programme is really to get children and schools’ staff engaging with music in a way they’ve never done before.
"For many of the children, today will be the first time they’ll get to experience different styles of music, from beat boxing to African drumming. Our hope is that these sessions will inspire them to a lifelong love of music, and to explore all the possibilities music brings.”
Pete Mountstephen, headteacher, St Stephen's CEVA Primary School, said: “The Bath Abbey Schools’ Singing Programme has been a wonderfully positive force for our school. The children who have directly benefited have had their lives changed for the better forever, with some really transformational developments in personal confidence amongst one or two of the children.” | <urn:uuid:69262b22-de87-49b8-8254-1b05519c5377> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.thisisbath.co.uk/Children-sing-dance-beat-Schools-8217-Singing/story-18257093-detail/story.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.945714 | 620 | 1.851563 | 2 |
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Cameras set for tax increase - Import duty could soon to be added to digital cameras following a recent decision made by the EU.
A decision was made by the EU recently that cameras with advanced video functions should be classed as camcorders, therefore carrying an import duty, meaning some models could become more expensive.
Cameras are currently imported tariff-free but video cameras often attract duties of around 4.9 percent, meaning camera prices could increase substantially. PIC (the Photo Imaging Council), said that the reason digital still cameras are currently exempt from tax is because they are classed as information technology products. No digital cameras are manufactured within the EU at present, meaning most cameras will increase in price should the changes take place.
Models which will become classed as a camcorder are those capable of recording more than 30 minutes of single sequence video or 800 x 600px or more and the changes could take place in as little as two or three months.
John Dickins, Marketing Manager at Pentax said "Pentax are assessing the situation. In the interests of value for money for our customers, we are working closely with the Photo Imaging Council to fight the government's plans to raise import duty on digital cameras." | <urn:uuid:1a24addb-47f1-4293-b45a-5a7a7dbb1ed7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ephotozine.com/article/eu-add-import-duty-to-digital-cameras-5905 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00045-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.970346 | 282 | 1.539063 | 2 |
This lecture deals primarily with Cantos XIX and XXVI of Inferno. Simony, the sin punished in Inferno XIX, is situated historically to point out the contiguity of the sacred and the profane and its relevance to the prophetic voice Dante established in this canto. The fine line between prophecy and profanation is shown to resurface in Inferno XXIV and XXV, where the poet falls prey, as did the pilgrim in Inferno IV, to poetic hubris. Once again, the dangers of Dante's poetic vocation are dramatized in the canto that immediately follows. In Inferno XXVI, Dante's tragic revision of the journey of Ulysses is shown to offset his own poetic enterprise, while acknowledging its risks.
As one of the world's great universities, Yale traces its roots back to the early 1640s when colonial clergyman sought to establish a school in order to continue the tradition of European education within the Americas. Yale has now grown to educate over 11,000 students from over 100 countries on a 310-acre campus in New Haven, Connecticut. Within the school's 260 buildings are over 2,000 undergraduate programs in 65 departments taught by a distinguished faculty. As Academic Earth's first partner school, Yale has been a leader within the space of OpenCourseWare by consistently delivering on its esteemed mission to expand access to educational materials for all who wish to learn. | <urn:uuid:b1dfeec0-d988-4ba2-95cb-fd34421ae4c6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.academicearth.org/lectures/inferno-4/page:3 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.943898 | 284 | 2.5625 | 3 |
Academic libraries are funded to support the research and learning activities of their home institutions. As research and learning behaviors change so must they. A major issue for academic libraries in coming years is the increasing discrepancy between the needs of their faculty in science, technology and medicine and their ability to address such needs. This discrepancy will become more visible as the proportion of university budgets consumed by STM grows. Many librarians have a disposition towards, and training in, the humanities and social sciences, disciplinary areas which consume a progressively smaller part of many universities' budget and, inevitably, attention. Perhaps, underneath the institutional repository discussion is some recognition of this?
Was thinking about this while reading the following discussion of trends in UK higher education. Collini is a clear-eyed 'humanist'.
During the same period, universities have been transformed to the point where they are now principally centres of scientific and technological research and, increasingly, of vocational and professional training. In the 1930s, half the students at British universities were in the arts faculties; more strikingly still, at Oxford and Cambridge the proportion studying in arts faculties was 80 and 70 per cent respectively. Now, those studying pure 'humanities' subjects (classification problems again) account only for some 18 per cent of undergraduates and 12 per cent of postgraduates in British universities. But the really significant change concerns expenditure, especially expenditure on research rather than teaching: the huge growth in the costs of 'big science' and the extraordinary expansion of the scope of the biological sciences mean that the science budget has soared into the billions, dwarfing the amounts spent on the humanities and social sciences. Inevitably, funding systems will be designed to fit the activities involving the most money. Public funding of higher education is hugely concentrated on supporting science, medicine and technology, and these departments account for an overwhelmingly large proportion of any individual university's operating budget. It is hardly surprising that so many of the characteristics of the funding system under which universities operate, from the reliance on winning large grants from commercial and charitable sponsors to the categories of the Research Assessment Exercises, should reflect the economic clout of the sciences. [LRB | Stefan Collini : HiEdBiz] | <urn:uuid:c8b9209b-9b71-47bd-84ec-20ef9661fe73> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://orweblog.oclc.org/archives/000150.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00039-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.955805 | 444 | 2.125 | 2 |
bitter end in a sentence
Example sentences for bitter end
The pennant shall be spliced on a thimble and shackled into the bitter end of the top chain.
Miners have no alternative but to wage the con test to the bitter end.
To the bitter end, they failed to meet their father's expectations of them.
Still, there is no need to actually go through tenure denial to the bitter end, if you are afforded the opportunity to withdraw.
Belt has hook and loop along the entire length for servicing the bitter end down.
Two members stuck to the apple blossom to the bitter end.
Lewis knew coal operators would resist to the bitter end, but that didn't matter.
It was an incredibly entertaining game, and both sides fought it out to the bitter end.
And of course, at the bottom, there's always a group of people who will fight you to the bitter end.
For the students, it was a bitter end to a day that had already started going wrong.
So instead they'll choose to litigate cases until the bitter end.
They were there, several of them to the bitter end helping us put this report together. | <urn:uuid:c3eabd8b-d2b4-4664-a12d-fdca47fed686> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.reference.com/example-sentences/bitter%20end | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00051-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.972098 | 245 | 2.640625 | 3 |
I’ve visited musuems that are brilliantly constructed and curated, but none whose artworks are as perfectly choreographed — that is, perfectly laid out for display — as the Glyptoteket in Copenhagen. This museum, which specializes in ancient and modern sculpture, is housed in a stately nineteenth-century building organized around a high, planted atrium. (The museum’s collection of modern paintings is housed in a contemporary addition whose entrance is slipped so discretely inside that it’s difficult to find and navigate, all especially frustrating since that collection is so impressive.)
In the main building, each long, high gallery is painted a different strong, sober color, and lit from unobtrusive clerestories. The smaller sculptures are gathered together on tables, and the larger sculptures are grouped together in vignettes, and all seem absolutely correct in their disposition. Each sculpture is placed in just the right spot, facing just the right way, with just the right amount of free space around it. This makes the museum virtually hypnotic to move through. Most memorable is the installation of Rodin’s The Burghers of Calais at the end of one ground floor gallery. Raised a few steps and set off with steely blue walls, the piece is exquisitely framed. The figures, like most of Rodin’s, are scaled just a bit larger than life, so that they’re imposing without being monstrous. The museum serves them magnificently; their power shines through. | <urn:uuid:f5e673be-65eb-4805-a548-e83476f2d2c2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://nalinamoses.tumblr.com/tagged/Glyptotek | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00049-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960421 | 310 | 1.578125 | 2 |
Learn something new every day More Info... by email
Near-end crosstalk is a phenomenon that can take place when there is some form or electromagnetic interference taking place with relatively close to the point of measurement. The effect of near-end crosstalk is that the signals being carried by two different cables or wires may begin to interfere with one another in a manner that degrades the signal of at least one of the two transmissions. The problem can take place due to something as simple as a temporary twisted pair cabling or worn spots in the insulation of the cabling proper that allow the wiring of the two cables to come into close proximity.
Along with near-end crosstalk or NEXT, there is also the occurrence of what is known as far-end crosstalk or FEXT. FEXT is essentially the same set of circumstances that occur with near-end crosstalk. The only difference is that far end crosstalk is the detection of a signal crossing or disruption that is located at a distance from the point of measurement.
As can be imagined, the occurrence of any type of crosstalk can lead to communication issues. In general, modern communication equipment must be designed to meet with standards set by the Telecommunications Industry Association and the Electronic Industries Association in order to receive the endorsement of these two organizations. The standards set by the TIA and EIA also form the basis for standards established by many countries with nationalized phone and communication networks. These standards require that the type of cabling used in the equipment be designed to minimize the chances for both far end and near-end crosstalk to take place on a recurring basis.
Many persons who have participated in an audio conference call have experienced the end result of far end or near-end crosstalk during the meeting. When the conference call is being conducted through the bridging equipment operated by an audio conference call service, it is usually possible for a conference operator to track the crosstalk to a particular line or trunk in the meeting. The operator can then instruct the attendee to disconnect and either redial the party or have the party use a toll free number to dial back into the conference.
The chances of the second connection using the same combination of cables, trunks, and wire connections a second time is astronomical, so generally this eliminates the problem for the end user. The conference call provider normally will note the trunk number that the original connected used for bridge connectivity and run diagnostics to ensure the origin of the crosstalk was not located in the conference bridge. | <urn:uuid:47eae16d-6806-4a5a-8d9a-cfd7dd2c7845> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-near-end-crosstalk.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00050-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960058 | 527 | 2.859375 | 3 |
Malala Yousafzai came to public attention in 2009 as the Pakistani Taliban swept through Swat, a picturesque valley once famed for its music, its tolerance and as a destination for honeymooning couples.
Her father ran one of the last schools to defy Taliban orders to end female education. As an 11-year-old, Malala – named after a mythic female figure in Pashtun culture – wrote an anonymous blog documenting her experiences for the British Broadcasting Corp.
“I had a terrible dream yesterday with military helicopters and the Taliban,” she wrote in one post titled “I Am Afraid.”
The school was eventually forced to close, and Yousafzai fled to Abbottabad, where Osama bin Laden was killed last year. Months later, in summer 2009, the army launched a sweeping operation against the Taliban that uprooted some 1.2 million Swat residents.
The Taliban were chased away, or so it seemed. An uneasy peace, enforced by a large military presence, settled over the valley.
Yousafzai became a prominent voice for the rights of children. In 2011, she was nominated for the International Children's Peace Prize. Later, Pakistan's premier awarded her a Youth Peace Prize.
She recently changed her career aspiration from medicine to politics, friends said. In recent months, she led a delegation of children's rights activists who met with provincial politicians in Peshawar.
“We found her to be very bold, and it inspired every one of us,” said a student in the group, Fatima Aziz, 15. | <urn:uuid:5649aa16-29af-4595-8650-57545cc3463c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ocregister.com/news/taliban-191311-ocprint-one-yousafzai.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00059-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.977319 | 328 | 2.515625 | 3 |
Help Eliminate Probation (HELP)
Students placed on academic probation because of a cumulative grade point deficiency must be re-advised. Advisors may send them to the mentoring section of the SAM Center for help in recovering their grade point average and avoiding suspension.
In addition to attending a 6-week group study skills series, individual assistance is provided to each mentored student. In general, mentors will review study skills strategies and encourage students to seek out tutoring as well as talk to their professors. Twice a semester, students are also encouraged to submit a grade check form, which serves as an official grade report from each professor. This allows mentors to monitor each students performance and implement any new strategies as necessary.
CURRENT HELP STUDENTS:
If you need any information we've previously handed out to you during an individual or group session, check the Student Tool Box located in the menu to the right.
-Summer 2012 GCF-
Summer I Due: June 20th
Summer II Due: July 25th
-Fall 2012 GCF-
Due: October 19th
Due: November 30th
If you have any questions about this program, please call or email one the mentors below:
Dr. Bernice Strauss | <urn:uuid:c09e3902-4aa2-489c-b943-6f00233f50fb> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://shsu.edu/~sam_www/mentoring/help.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00051-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.908664 | 254 | 1.609375 | 2 |
News and notes on health, medicine and fitness
$3 billion drug settlement against GlaxoSmithKline announced
GlaxoSmithKline Monday agreed to the largest health care fraud settlement in U.S. history, a move that will result in the company paying $3 billion to settle civil and criminal allegations of unlawful promotion and other activity involving several of its drugs.
The global health care firm, which has offices in London and Philadelphia, agreed to a $1 billion criminal fine and $2 billion in civil payments.
But does the punishment fit the alleged crime?
In 2007, independent researchers showed that one of the drugs, the popular diabetes medicine Avandia, was associated with a 43% increased risk of heart attack and a 64% increased risk of death from cardiovascular causes.
Steven Nissen, who co-authored that New England Journal of Medicine paper, noted that the year before his study came out, Avandia had sales of $3.3 billion.
"The settlement was less than one year's sales," Nissen, a Cleveland Clinic researcher, said in an interview Monday.
Nissen said that it has been estimated that 50,000 to 100,000 Americans suffered a heart attack or died of cardiovascular causes as the result of being on Avandia.
"The real cost of doing business is not money," he said. "It's lives."
Various states will share in the settlement. Wisconsin will receive $9.6 million, according to Wisconsin Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen.
“Today’s historic settlement is a major milestone in our efforts to stamp out health care fraud,” Bill Corr, deputy secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, said in a statement. “For a long time, our health care system had been a target for cheaters who thought they could make an easy profit at the expense of public safety, taxpayers and the millions of Americans who depend on programs like Medicare and Medicaid."
Much of the penalty money involves the GlaxoSmithKline drugs Paxil, Wellbutrin and Avandia. Other GlaxoSmithKline drugs, including the popular asthma medication Advair, also were a part of the settlement.
In a statement, company CEO Andrew Witty said: "Whilst these originate in a different era for the company, they cannot and will not be ignored. On behalf of GSK, I want to express our regret and reiterate that we have learnt from the mistakes that were made."
In the United States, he said, corrective action has been taken at all levels in the company. "We have fundamentally changed our procedures for compliance, marketing and selling. When necessary, we have removed employees who have engaged in misconduct."
---Paxil: From 1998 to 2003, GlaxoSmithKline unlawfully promoted Paxil for treating depression in patients under 18, though it had not been approved it for pediatric use. The company allegedly "participated in preparing, publishing and distributing a misleading medical journal article that misreported that a clinical trial of Paxil demonstrated efficacy in the treatment of depression in patients under age 18, when the study failed to demonstrate efficacy."
At the same time, the company did not make available data from two other studies showing Paxil's lack of effectiveness in treating depression in patients under 18.
GlaxoSmithKline sponsored dinner and lunch programs, spa programs and similar activities to promote the use of Paxil in those under 18. It paid a speaker to talk to doctors and paid for the meal or spa treatment for the doctors who attended.
-- Wellbutrin: From 1999 through 2003, GlaxoSmithKline promoted Wellbutrin, approved at that time only for major depression, for weight loss, sexual dysfunction, substance addictions and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, among other off-label uses. The company paid millions of dollars to doctors to speak at and attend meetings, sometimes at lavish resorts, at which the off-label uses of Wellbutrin were routinely promoted, and also used sales representatives, sham advisory boards and supposedly independent continuing medical education programs to promote Wellbutrin for these unapproved uses.
-- Avandia: From 2001 through 2007, the company failed to include certain safety data about the diabetes drug in reports to the FDA that are used to determine whether a drug is safe for its approved uses and to spot drug safety trends.
-- Advair: GlaxoSmithKline also promoted its asthma drug, Advair, for first-line therapy for mild asthma patients, though it was not approved or medically appropriate for such uses.
The settlement also involves the drugs Lamictal, Zofran, Imitrex, Lotronex, Flovent and Valtrex.
According to a 2010 report in Public Citizen, GlaxoSmithKline had $4.5 billion in fines and settlement payouts to the federal and state governments, more than any other pharmaceutical company, from 1991 through Nov. 1, 2010.
In a statement Monday, Public Citizen said that until more meaningful penalties, including jail time for company executives, become commonplace, companies will continue defrauding the government and putting patients’ lives in danger. | <urn:uuid:f88f496d-933b-4d9e-a259-aebf363441b3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.jsonline.com/blogs/news/161118815.html?page=1&_escaped_fragment_=page=1%26pageSize=10%26sort=oldestfirst%26comment=95312465 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959693 | 1,075 | 1.5 | 2 |
- PaCATB, a secreted catalase protecting Podospora anserina against exogenous oxidative stress (2011)
- A differential mass spectrometry analysis of secreted proteins from juvenile and senescentPodospora anserina cultures revealed age-related differences in protein profiles. Among other proteins with decreased abundance in the secretome of senescent cultures a catalase, termed PaCATB, was identified. Genetic modulation of the abundance of PaCATB identified differential effects on the phenotype of the corresponding strains. Deletion of PaCatB resulted in decreased resistance, over-expression in increased resistance against hydrogen peroxide. While the lifespan of the genetically modified strains was found to be unaffected under standard growth conditions, increased exogenous hydrogen peroxide stress in the growth medium markedly reduced the lifespan of the PaCatB deletion strain but extended the lifespan of PaCatB over-expressors. Overall our data identify a component of the secretome of P. anserina as a new effective factor to cope with environmental stress, stress that under natural conditions is constantly applied on organisms and influences aging processes. | <urn:uuid:eedf48f7-dc42-4ff2-a289-396e589f4e31> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://publikationen.ub.uni-frankfurt.de/solrsearch/index/search/searchtype/authorsearch/author/%22Sandra+Zintel%22/start/0/rows/10/author_facetfq/Adelina+Rogowska-Wrzesinska | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00071-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.912763 | 228 | 2.234375 | 2 |
Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) scientists are leading a multi-agency study which reveals that a very high-resolution Doppler radar has the unique capacity to detect individual cloud hydrometeors in the free atmosphere.
This study will improve scientists’ understanding of the dynamics and structure of cloud systems.
This Doppler radar was previously used to track small debris shed from the NASA space shuttle missions during launch. Similar to the traces left behind on film by sub-atomic particles, researchers observed larger cloud particles leaving well-defined, nearly linear, radar reflectivity “streaks” which could be analyzed to infer their underlying properties.
Scientists could detect the individual particles because of a combination of the radar’s 3MW power, narrow 0.22 degree beamwidth, and an unprecedented range resolution as fine as 0.5m. This combination of radar attributes allows researchers to sample a volume of cloud about the size of a small bus (roughly 14 m3) when operating at a range of 2 km.
With such small pulse volumes, it becomes possible to measure the properties of individual raindrops greater than 0.5mm in diameter due to the low concentration of such drops in naturally occurring cloud systems and the overwhelming dominance such drops have on the measured radar reflectivity when present in a field comprised of smaller particles. | <urn:uuid:ba8aaa30-6031-4b7e-9769-03f00ee0f4d8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://science.dodlive.mil/tag/naval-surface-warfare-center-dahlgren-division/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00024-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.929099 | 272 | 3.96875 | 4 |
Feeling down? Mehmet Oz, MD, explains why antidepressants aren't always the best answer.
For years now, we've been led to believe that if we're falling behind in the joy department, we need only take a pill to feel calm and content. Yet, as many people are aware, antidepressants have been linked to significant side effects, including decreased sexual desire, weight gain, even an increased risk of suicide. Adding insult to injury, the drugs may not work as well as advertised; a 2008 study found that some can be no more effective than sugar pills. And according to a report in The New England Journal of Medicine , many negative antidepressant study results have never been published. All in all, the prescription route to happiness may be less safe or effective than even doctors realize. To help cut through the confusion, I've identified four common misconceptions about happiness and depression. The truth just might surprise you.
Myth #1: You Should Feel Happy All the Time
Sadness is not necessarily a sign of illness—it's a normal part of being human and can even be beneficial. For example, grief is a natural and healthy response that helps us adapt to major losses (of a loved one, a marriage, a job). In the face of stressful challenges, unhappiness can also serve as a beacon to spur positive change. In fact, depression likely evolved to help us cope with environments that are unsatisfying or even harmful. Low moods can signal that it's time to reevaluate what's happening in our lives.
Myth #2: It's All About Serotonin
The most popular antidepressants are drugs called selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs). These work by increasing levels of a brain chemical called serotonin, which regulates mood. But newer research suggests that two areas of the brain called the hippocampus and Brodmann's area 25 can also influence how we experience despair. In addition, we know that depression is often closely linked to anxiety, against which stress-reducing practices like yoga or meditation can be powerful weapons.
Myth #3: Pills Offer the Easiest Fix
About 15 percent of adults will experience major depression at some point in their lives, but many others suffer from mild to moderate forms of the disease. In those cases, research has shown that lifestyle interventions, such as therapy and exercise, can be as effective as medication. And they're free of one of the most common antidepressant side effects: weight gain.
Myth #4: Depression Looks the Same on Everyone
Everyone experiences depression differently. Some patients eat too much and sleep too long, others find that they wake too early and have no appetite. The bottom line is that depression tends to magnify each sufferer's unique vulnerabilities, and as such, physicians often have trouble making a clear-cut diagnosis. If your doctor says that you're depressed and recommends antidepressants, consider seeing a mental health specialist for a second opinion. While untreated depression can be dangerous, taking medication when you don't need it can expose you to potentially harmful side effects.
Printed from Oprah.com on Wednesday, June 19, 2013
© 2012 Harpo Productions, Inc. All Rights Reserved. | <urn:uuid:31979dfd-3b71-438a-8b72-8e0889391be6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.oprah.com/health/Dr-Oz-Medical-Advice-on-the-Side-Effects-of-Antidepressants/print/1 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953676 | 641 | 2.640625 | 3 |
I have had an eating disorder for two years and have been in and out of treatment since. On your show, the character Marley has an eating disorder for two days and then magically recovers. If someone has an eating disorder the disease does not just go away.
The point of my letter is to let you know that eating disorders aren’t a joke. I’ve been in treatment for two years and have missed out on so much of my life. I have fainted and been hospitalized many times. On your show Marley faints and then goes back to everyday life. I understand that it is very hard for anyone without an eating disorder to understand, but as a show, you have an obligation to thoroughly research any type of medical condition you write into your script.
- A. (female, age 14)
I am writing to you to address your episode on eating disorders. I speak from experience. I am 11 years old going on 12 and I am currently battling Anorexia. I have had an eating disorder for almost a year now and I personally am very mad about the way you portrayed the disease. I love Glee, and watch it all the time, but not I am having doubts. First off, if you really develop an eating disorder it would most certainly take more than two days to recover. Second, if Marley really did faint in music class, the teachers would send her to the hospital. After reading this, I hope you make dire changes to your show from now on. How appropriate that I am writing in February which is the National Eating Disorder Awareness Month.
- M.S. (Male, age 11) | <urn:uuid:752c7904-0779-4270-b221-5d8477ea2da0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.waldenbehavioralcare.com/adolescents-send-clear-message-to-glee-ed-is-no-joke/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.980794 | 338 | 1.5 | 2 |
Science Fair Project Encyclopedia
Ampthill is a small town in Bedfordshire, England, between Bedford and Luton, with a population of about 6,000. It is administered by Mid Bedfordshire District Council. A regular market has taken place on Thursdays for centuries.
John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress was written loosely based on his journey between Bedford and Luton jails. Ampthill was the model for Vanity Fair and (now ruined) Houghton House for house beautiful.
Notable 20th century architect Sir Albert Richardson lived in Ampthill from 1919 until his death in 1964 at Avenue House, 20 Church Street. Among his last projects was the building housing Mid Bedfordshire District Council (formerly the Ampthill Rural District Council offices), at 12 Dunstable Street (1963-1965).
Ampthill is located at (52.0333, -0.5000)1, and at .
The contents of this article is licensed from www.wikipedia.org under the GNU Free Documentation License. Click here to see the transparent copy and copyright details | <urn:uuid:d6c22b59-54df-4e8f-a37d-23d93b7dfdea> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.all-science-fair-projects.com/science_fair_projects_encyclopedia/Ampthill | 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 | 0.970196 | 218 | 2.46875 | 2 |
The first thing the soldiers were taught to do, was to march. The historian Vegetius tells us that it was seen as of greatest importance to the Roman army that its soldiers could march at speed.
Any army which would be split up by stragglers at the back or soldiers trundling along at differing speeds would be vulnerable to attack.
Hence right from the beginning the Roman soldier was trained to march in line and to keep the army a compact fighting unit on the move.
For this, we are told by Vegetius, during the summer months the soldiers were to be marched twenty Roman miles (18.4 miles/29.6 km), which had to be completed in five hours.
A further part of basic military training was also physical exercise. Vegetius mentions running, long and high jump and carrying heavy packs.
During the summer swimming was also a part of training. If their camp was near the sea, a lake or river, every recruit was made to swim.
Legionary in Practice
Next in line, after the training for marching and fitness, came the training of handling weapons.
For this they primarily used wickerwork shields and wooden swords. Both the shields and the swords were made to standards which made them twice as heavy as the original weapons. Evidently it was thought, that if a soldier could fight with these heavy dummy weapons, he would be twice as effective with the proper ones.
The dummy weapons were at first employed against heavy wooden stakes, about six foot high, rather than against fellow soldiers. Against these wooden stakes the soldier trained the various moves, strikes and counter-strikes with the sword.
Only once the recruits was deemed able enough in fighting against the stakes, were they assigned in pairs to train in individual combat.
This more advanced stage of combat training was called armatura, an expression which first was used in the gladiatorial schools, which proves that some of the methods used in training soldiers was indeed borrowed from the training techniques of gladiators.
The weapons used in the armatura were, though still of wood, of the same, or similar weight as the original service weapons.
Weapons training was deemed of such importance that weapons instructors generally received double rations, whereas soldiers who didn't achieve adequate standards received inferior rations until they had proven in the presence of a high-ranking officer that they had attained the demanded standard. (inferior rations: Vegetius states that their wheat rations were substituted with barley)
After completing the initial training with the sword, the recruit was to master the use of the spear, the pilum. For this the wooden stakes were put to use again as targets. The pilum used for practice was, once again, twice the weight of the regular weapon.
Vegetius notes that weapons training was given such importance that in some places roofed riding schools and drill halls were built to allow for training to continue throughout the winter. | <urn:uuid:4c9e5738-3bd7-4164-bcc1-9d6dee1ef1ae> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.roman-empire.net/army/training.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.990815 | 604 | 3.625 | 4 |
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
134 Union Boulevard
Lakewood, Colorado 80228
April 14, 2009
Contact: Kevin Sloan, 303-236-4404
David McGillivary, 303-236-4411
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Seeks Public Comments for a proposed Land Exchange on the
Parowan Front Wildlife Management Area, Utah
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (Service) is seeking public comment on a draft environmental assessment (DEA) for the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources (UDWR) and Utah School and Institutional Trust Lands Administration (TLA) on the proposed exchange of up to 720 acres of UDWR-owned “substantial value” mule deer winter range for approximately 657 acres of TLA-owned land, approximately 400 acres of which are considered “crucial-value” winter habitat for mule deer. The Parowan Front Wildlife Management Area (WMA) is managed by the UDWR and was acquired in part with Pittman-Robertson Wildlife Restoration Act (PR) program funds for big game winter range. The public will have 30 days until May 13, 2009 to submit their comments.
UDWR currently owns and manages over 6,000 acres in the Parowan Front WMA situated in the foothills east of I-15 near the town of Summit, located in Iron County, Utah. The holdings in this particular WMA were acquired during the period 1952-1985, from a mix of private, U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM), and Utah School & Institutional Trust Lands Administration (TLA) sources. A primary wildlife value provided by the Parowan Front WMA is crucial winter habitat for mule deer, although it supplies winter habitat values for other wildlife species, including elk, wild turkeys, and bald eagles.
In January 2000, UDWR granted a right-of-way (ROW) for a pre-existing, unpaved road which crossed UDWR property on the Parowan Front WMA. This ROW was granted to the owners of a parcel of private land located on the mountain immediately above the WMA. Implicit in the grant of this ROW was recognition by UDWR that the pre-existing road had a long history of continuous public use by the previous owners and their predecessors.
A Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) (Attachment A in the Draft Environmental Assessment) was developed which defines the appropriate balance among the major competing interests, wildlife conservation and access to private lands occurring above the crucial winter ranges.
The MOU was signed by involved private landowners, UDWR, BLM, and the Iron County, Utah Commission. These parties also were able to agree that conserving the winter range values which help sustain mule deer and other wildlife contributes to the quality of life for people inhabiting the area and was important, therefore, to the interests of all the involved parties.
Through provision of limited access corridors passing through the winter range, and through implementation of the land exchange detailed in the Proposed Action, the parties to the MOU agreed specifically on what was deemed to constitute adequate public and private access, so that no new corridors would be needed in the foreseeable future. This agreement should provide a balancing influence over time to any new demands which could arise from private landowners seeking additional access pathways across the winter range. The proposed land exchange is a pivotal element of completing this conservation strategy.
UDWR has concluded that a land exchange would provide the best option for wildlife given the circumstances surrounding the Parowan Front WMA. Realty actions of this nature cannot be undertaken by UDWR on lands acquired with PR grant funds without additional federal authorization, since the original purchases of Parowan Front lands were provided in-part through a Federal Aid in Wildlife Restoration Act grant (W-66-L) issued by the Service. Because funds were provided by the Service, the original purchases and subsequent exchange lands were bound under contracts between UDWR and the Service. These agreements help ensure that wildlife lands and waters continue to be managed for the purposes which led to their original acquisition.
The proposed land exchange constitutes a federal action subject to the provisions of the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969, as amended (NEPA). The Service is therefore required to prepare a Draft Environmental Assessment (DEA) to analyze the effects on the human environment and document the findings. The Service will use this DEA to determine if the proposed action is likely to result in significant impacts to the human environment. If it is determined that there are no significant adverse impacts, the Service will issue a final environmental assessment and a Finding of No Significant Impact (FONSI). If it is determined, conversely, that significant impacts might occur, the Service will be required to prepare an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS).
Detailed information on the proposed project is contained in the DEA and Appendices. Public comment on the proposed exchange and the DEA will assist the Service in deciding whether to approve the project. The Service must determine whether the proposed project is eligible pursuant to the Wildlife Restoration Act grant program. The project will be assessed for character, design, and compliance with federal rules and regulations.
Copies of the DEA are available online by clicking on the title of the document at http://mountain-prairie.fws.gov/federalassistance. Those without internet access may request copies by calling the Service’s Division of Wildlife and Sport Fish Restoration Program at 303-236-4404. Comments should be sent to: Chief, Division of Wildlife and Sport Fish Restoration, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, P.O. Box 25486, Denver, CO 80225.
The mission of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is working with others to conserve, protect and enhance fish, wildlife, plants and their habitats for the continuing benefit of the American people. We are both a leader and trusted partner in fish and wildlife conservation, known for our scientific excellence, stewardship of lands and natural resources, dedicated professionals and commitment to public service. For more information on our work and the people who make it happen, visit www.fws.gov. | <urn:uuid:19069aa8-632d-4249-8751-d77c9d20588a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.fws.gov/mountain-prairie/pressrel/09-27.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00047-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.940484 | 1,259 | 2.0625 | 2 |
Quotes and reviews
"Written to communicate sound and modern science in an accessible way for professionals and students with various levels of scientific background, this thoroughly revised edition of The Human Genome contributes to creating a genetically literate research and clinical population."--ANTICANCER RESEARCH 33: 745-746 (2013), February 2013
"Every year, Choice subject editors single out for recognition the most significant print and electronic works reviewed in Choice during the previous calendar year. The Human Genome, 3e, appearing annually in Choice’s January issue, this prestigious list of publications reflects the best in scholarly titles and attracts extraordinary attention from the academic library community. The 2011 feature includes 629 titles in 54 disciplines and subsections."--CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title, 2011
"Well written, up-to-date, and engaging, this new edition of The Human Genome (2nd ed., 2005; 1st ed., CH, May'99, 36-5066) by Richards (Univ. of Michigan) and Hawley (Stowers Institute for Medical Research) accurately reflects its subtitle. Densely packed with information, it is both easy to read and easy to understand. It includes full-color illustrations, charts, drawings, and tables. Case studies and sidebar interest boxes tell fascinating stories that capture the reader's interest and help make the material accessible to all. End-of-chapter study questions include brief essays and ideas for resource projects. A companion Web site provides additional questions, and indicates that an image bank and streaming video resources will soon be available. This work could easily be used for a freshman biology class or for individual reading for people interested in this subject. Yet, it has enough technical information and detail to be useful for an upper-level majors class in human genetics as well. It addresses all of the topics traditionally covered in a human genetics textbook without reading like a textbook. It strikes a perfect balance between being rigorous and engaging, and deserves to be included among the most popular current human genetics works."
Summing Up: Highly recommended. Academic, general, and professional audiences, all levels.
C. A. Klevickis, James Madison University Reviewed in 2011 June CHOICE
"Better education and communication are two things that are emphasized over and over when it comes to determining the best way to make genomics a bigger part of the public's general health routine, or more mainstream. The User's Guide, as a text or reference, could be part of that conversation with the public. Because of how simply it begins, the book could be put to good use in high schools as students start to learn about the more complex fields of research and start to develop an interest in higher education in the sciences. It could also serve very well as a guide in higher education, to those pursuing more specialized fields like cancer research or personalized medicine, or even as a thought-provoking conversation-starter in ethics classes or discussions about the implications of advanced genomics research."
Christie Rizk, February 2011 issue of Genome Technology, http://www.genomeweb.com
"The third edition of this comprehensive survey of the human genome provides a detailed examination of the science, both specifically biological and in a broader context, of human genetics. Intended for students and entry level researchers, the volume begins with simple gene mechanics and covers gene functions, chromosomes, complex traits, gene discovery, and genetics in testing and treatment. Chapters include numerous color illustrations, tables, sidebars and a large glossary as well as study questions with answers keys."
SciTech Book News | <urn:uuid:717d8a36-8f12-4686-9b30-f8046308ad24> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://store.elsevier.com/product.jsp?isbn=9780123334459 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.921481 | 732 | 2.125 | 2 |
Fences and Retaining Walls
Encroachment Permit Required:
An encroachment permit must to be obtained from the Daly City Public Works Engineering Division if a fence or retaining wall is to be constructed over a City easement or in the street right-of-way. The City street right-of- way normally includes a strip of lawn behind the sidewalk four-and-one-half feet (4 1/2') wide, but may be between zero and twelve feet (12') from the back of the sidewalk. This area typically contains utilities such as water and sewer lines.
Fences or retaining walls constructed in easements or street right of way may be removed and replaced at the owner's expense in order to gain access to these utilities. This removal and replacement applies to construction by the property owner in easements located on the front, side and/or rear of the property without the required permits.
Fences in all zoning districts shall not exceed six feet (6') in height in side and rear yards and shall not exceed three feet (3') in height in any required front yard or within thirty-five feet (35') of the street corner on any corner lot.
The fence height is determined by measuring from the highest ground level adjoining the fence on either side (DCMC 17.40.020).
The construction and installation of fences less than six feet (6') high do not require a building permit.
The difference between a fence and a retaining wall is that a retaining wall supports the load of adjoining soil and/or adjoining structures or hillsides. A fence supports only itself.
Retaining walls less than forty-two inches (42") in height may be constructed of wood, provided:
- They sustain no loads other than adjoining earth.
- They are constructed of pressure treated lumber or species naturally resistant to decay.
Retaining walls greater than forty-two inches (42") in height must be designed by a licensed architect or engineer, and three (3) sets of plans are required to be submitted for construction permit (DCMC 15.08.160). The height of a retaining wall is measured from the bottom of the footing to the top of the wall.
For retaining wall requirements contact the Building Division at (650) 991-8061
For additional information on fences contact the Planning Division at (650) 991-8033.
For information on clearances, encroachment permits, easement or right-of-way issues, contact the Engineering Division at (650) 991-8064.
For enforcement concerning fences that violate any of these provisions, contact the Building Division at (650) 991-8061. | <urn:uuid:b5048481-e246-4f98-b0c8-20036f2463b0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.dalycity.org/City_Hall/Departments/ECD/building/brochures/b06.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706890813/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516122130-00033-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.91468 | 547 | 1.5625 | 2 |
Biosafety conference menu - catchup (fwd)
- To: "unlikely.suspects":;
- Subject: Biosafety conference menu - catchup (fwd)
- From: MichaelP <papadop@PEAK.ORG>
- Date: Mon, 15 Feb 1999 09:11:20 -0800 (PST)
- Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
- Resent-From: email@example.com
- Resent-Message-ID: <"AXIRvB.A.cLD.SWFy2"@bakunix.free.de>
- Resent-Sender: firstname.lastname@example.org
If I already posted this piece to the list, please excuse.
Conference gets going this very day. Please excuse earlier catchup info.
Spread this far-and-wide,
Saturday February 6 2:35 PM ET
Biosafety Pact Could Hit US Trade
By JANELLE CARTER AP Farm Writer
WASHINGTON (AP) - An international agreement over genetically engineered
products being negotiated in Colombia this week could have far-reaching
implications for U.S. trade.
Exports could be hit in a range of products including blue jeans, soda
pop, disease-fighting vaccines, potato chips and many more.
Negotiating teams are heading to Cartagena, Colombia, to draft the
Biosafety Protocol, a United Nations-initiated agreement that aims to
reduce risks from shipment and international movement of living modified
organisms, or genetically engineered plants.
The deal has been in the making since 1992 but has run into trouble
because of a push by some countries for broad regulations that bring under
its umbrella not just plants but commodities and products derived from
genetically engineered plants.
The United States is the largest producer of bioengineered crops and
Crops often genetically altered and used in products that include corn for
chips and cereals; tomatoes for spaghetti sauce; cotton for jeans; timber
for napkins and paper plates; corn syrup for sodas. Even soaps and
detergents often are made with enzymes derived from the manipulation of
The United States has used biotechnology for years to develop better
strains of crops like soybeans, corn, squash and potatoes. By breeding
genes in crops, scientists say they have managed to improve taste and make
plants more resistant to disease and insects. Advocates argue that
insect-resistant crops reduce the need for heavy doses of pesticides and
In the coming negotiations, things are complicated even more for the
Americans because the Senate has not acted on the treaty that includes the
Biosafety Protocol, which leaves the United States without a vote on the
deal. So far, 174 countries have joined the treaty.
"We have tried to be constructive partners in this negotiation, but our
ability to influence the outcome is limited by that," said Rafe Pomerance,
deputy assistant secretary of state for environment. "We don't have any
voting rights at the end."
Among proposals being discussed: labeling products that contain
genetically modified organisms, and requiring exporters to get permits for
each exportation of a genetically modified product.
The United States wants permits only for products suspected to have a
possible adverse affect on the environment.
"There is a lot of concern out there about genetically modified organisms
because it's new technology," Pomerance said. "We don't believe those
kinds of concerns rise to the level that there should be a permit prior to
import. However, we think there ought to be lot of information-sharing."
Val Giddings, vice president of the Biotechnology Industry Organization,
said if countries pushing for stricter regulation succeed, it would
"massively disrupt all international trade in biological materials."
Giddings said the use of biotechnology in the United States is so vast,
food and medical aid to other countries could be cut back by restraints.
Food industry leaders also have weighed in.
"The protocol was intended to ensure the safe transport and use of modern
biotechnology, ... a goal our organizations support," a group of food
industry leaders wrote to President Clinton. But, their letter said,
"negotiators have lost sight of this laudible goal."
The United States exports $60 billion a year in agricultural products.
"The proposed protocol would impose significant burdens on the trade of
products that present no proven threat to biological diversity," said
Manly Molpus, president of the Grocery Manufacturers of America, a trade
group representing the food and consumer product industry.
Environmental groups accuse agricultural-related industries of trying to
"water down" the protocol.
Company Press Release
The Biosafety Protocol Reaches into the Future of the Trading System
NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Feb. 9, 1999--The U.N. Biosafety Protocol (BSP)
to the Biodiversity Convention will be completed in Cartagena, Colombia in
the next two weeks from February 14-23rd.
The current negotiating text contains provisions that could restrict trade
and investment, impose new documentation burdens, and create dangerous
precedents for regulation and scientific assessment. The U.S. is not a
Party to the BSP and therefore cannot vote on the final document.
To address these threats to the international trading system, the United
States Council for International Business (USCIB) has sought to raise the
profile of these issues. It has alerted the U.S. and foreign governments
to the significant trade impacts of the BSP, which affects numbers of
The outcome of the BSP negotiations will bear directly on the 1999 WTO
Ministerial agenda and on any forthcoming WTO negotiations. The issues it
addresses are also central to the growing conflict between the U.S. and
E.U. on agricultural trade.
When completed, the BSP has the potential to affect not only genetically
modified products (pharmaceuticals, commodities, timber, etc.) but also
products that contain genetically modified materials (such as tires,
paper, and mayonnaise, etc.) The BSP could:
1) BURDEN GLOBAL TRADE WITH IMPORT AND EXPORT CONTROLS: Including onerous
documentation, information and labeling requirements, as well as shipping
delays on genetically modified organisms (GMOs) and products containing
2) UNDERMINE SOUND SCIENCE BASIS FOR RISK ASSESSMENT: Including
undercutting the WTO's basis of sound scientific assessment as currently
set out in the WTO, in favor of the precautionary principle as the
foundation of the BSP, resulting in trade restrictions justified even in
the absence of scientific evidence.
The USCIB-led letter to Ambassadors Eizenstat, Barshefsky and Loy dated
12/2/98 is available upon request. The USCIB will send a delegation to the
negotiations. For more information, please contact Suzanne Foti at (212)
U.S. 'Observers' Lobby Against Trade Curbs on Biotechnology
Accord Would Be First to Target Genetically Engineered Products
By Rick Weiss and Justin Gillis
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, February 13, 1999; Page A04
The U.S. government and scores of corporations are scrambling to prevent a
proposed international accord from sharply restricting the global flow of
hundreds of billions of dollars worth of genetically engineered products,
ranging from cotton seeds to soft drinks.
The intense lobbying effort will climax next week as negotiators from more
than 170 countries convene in Colombia to draw up final language on the
pact, which would be the world's first accord to regulate the spread of
genetically manipulated organisms. Depending on how the agreement is
worded, it could promote or restrict the burgeoning biotechnology industry
Despite years of preparatory negotiations, however, philosophical rifts
loom between the handful of countries ready and eager to ship genetically
engineered products around the world and the many other countries that
remain wary of the biotechnology revolution.
Environmental groups see the proposed agreement as their first opportunity
to set ecological standards for trade in gene-altered crops, livestock and
other products. Yet many American companies -- along with the governments
of the United States, Canada, Australia and others -- are alarmed about
draft language they say could undermine the global economy and severely
disrupt world trade.
Former president Jimmy Carter and others have warned that if a badly
worded agreement goes through, grain could rot on docks, regulators could
freeze shipments of vaccines and other vital drugs, and trade in products
as mundane as corn oil and paper could slow to a snail's pace.
"If applied broadly, this could affect an enormous amount of trade," said
Rafe Pomerance, a deputy assistant secretary of state and one of several
U.S. observers attending the talks in the coastal city of Cartegena.
But diplomats from several other countries contend the greater risk is
that unregulated trade in gene-altered seeds, microbes, plants or animals
will seriously harm the environment and human health. They say scenarios
of stymied world trade amount to scaremongering by governments and
commercial interests that are opposed to tighter control over the growing
global marketplace in genes.
"Genetic pollution is considerably more dangerous than oil spills. You
can't just go out there and put a boom around it and put it back in," said
Kristin Dawkins of the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy in
American hopes that the accord will ultimately favor less stringent trade
rules were weakened Thursday as the European Parliament passed new
restrictions on the importation and use of genetically engineered seeds
and organisms. Several of the new provisions, including a demand that
exporters take on legal liability for environment-damaging genetic
accidents, run directly counter to U.S. positions. And although the
legislation must be passed by the European Council of Ministers before it
becomes law, passage by the parliament was seen by some as a strong signal
of support for countries pushing for more regulation at Cartegena.
No country has more to lose from overly strict regulation than the United
States. It is the world leader in biotechnology, making and exporting a
wide variety of products whose manufacture depends in some way on
organisms that have been genetically altered, including the glue in many
cardboards, the corn sweetener in soft drinks, much of the insulin that
keeps diabetics healthy, many of the vaccines that protect children from
deadly ailments and thousands of other products.
Lately, however, concerns have grown about the potential ecological,
social and economic effects of world commerce in engineered seeds,
organisms and biotech products. Although there has been little public
controversy in the United States, genetic engineering has become highly
controversial in many European and developing countries.
Some fear that engineered microbes or plants will disrupt local ecologies
and undermine traditional farming practices. Others have focused on
perceived, albeit unproven, health threats from eating genetically
engineered grains or cereals. A third concern is that important economic
sectors in some developing countries could be undermined by scientists'
ability to grow rare food ingredients or flavorings in the laboratory.
The "biosafety protocol" being negotiated in Cartegena is an outgrowth of
a treaty called the Convention on Biological Diversity, which emerged from
the June 1992 Earth Summit held in Rio de Janeiro. The diversity
agreement, now ratified by 174 nations, calls for protecting the variety
of plants and animals found in the wild. Ecologists have recognized that
diversity, which is under grave threat from development and other human
pressures, is one of Earth's most valuable treasures.
The 1992 pact called for "the conservation of biological diversity, the
sustainable use of its components and the fair and equitable sharing of
the benefits arising out of the utilization of genetic resources."
At the time the treaty was approved, nations agreed to hold further
discussion on the potential threat that genetic manipulation might pose to
biological diversity. They agreed to work toward a biosafety protocol that
would set out procedures for the safe transfer, handling and international
trade of biotechnology products that might have an impact on biodiversity.
This week's meeting is the sixth and last scheduled negotiating session
held during the past four years. And with high-ranking officials from
scores of countries due to arrive in Cartegena a week from now to sign a
finished agreement, there is tremendous pressure to achieve consensus.
That will take a lot of work. Several veteran negotiators of international
treaties said they could not recall an instance when so many widely
divergent views were still under discussion so close to deadline.
At the core of the various disagreements is the lack of a simple
definition of "biodiversity." The term clearly refers to the ecological
balance of microbes, plants and animals in nature. But are human beings
and their health part of a country's biological diversity? What about a
country's economy and culture?
A broader definition, promoted in particular by a bloc of African
countries and some Asian and European nations, could lead to a protocol
that regulates not only trade in living, engineered organisms but also
food and other commodities for human or animal consumption -- such as corn
meal made from gene-altered corn -- or even genetically engineered cotton
fibers destined to be made into clothing.
By contrast, the United States and some other nations want the protocol to
apply narrowly to living, genetically engineered seeds and organisms that
could multiply and spread in the environment.
"This agreement is supposed to be about the protection of biodiversity,"
observer Pomerance said. "If you start to expand the mandates of the
protocol, you can end up with something that is completely out of hand."
Pharmaceutical companies and public health officials express concern, for
instance, that an overly broad accord could interfere with the
international transport of medicines and vaccines, many of which are now
made from genetically engineered organisms. Such products are designed to
kill disease-causing microbes, which, strictly speaking, amounts to an
alteration of a nation's biodiversity.
"I don't think most people think of polio virus as an endangered species,"
said Gillian Woollett, associate vice president for biologics and
biotechnology at the Pharmaceutical Researchers and Manufacturers of
America, an industry trade group. Yet the protocol could actually promote
polio worldwide, she said, unless medicines and vaccines are explicitly
excluded from the accord.
Unfortunately for the United States, the many U.S. government and industry
representatives traveling to Cartegena have no official standing in the
weeklong talks because the U.S. Senate never ratified the Convention on
Biological Diversity. President Clinton signed the treaty in 1993. But
lingering U.S. concerns have held up Senate approval.
That means that although the United States would have to follow any trade
rules that participating countries impose, U.S. representatives can only
"observe" the negotiations and try to influence them informally. Recently,
for example, several companies including Monsanto Corp., a major U.S.
agricultural biotechnology company, enlisted former United Nations
ambassador Andrew Young to help soften the views of negotiators from
African countries who have been seeking restrictive rules.
Environmental groups in developed countries, meanwhile, have allied
themselves with diplomats from developing nations suspicious of
"The U.S. has in the past been able to throw its weight around on
biotechnology issues, but they seem to realize now they can't stop this
completely," said Michael Hansen, a research associate at the Consumer
Policy Institute in Yonkers, N.Y. "So a lot will turn on how strong the
African nations decide to stay on these issues."
Among the most contentious outstanding issues:
Paperwork requirements. The United States says it's willing to have
companies secure permission in advance from recipient countries before
releasing any living, genetically engineered seeds or organisms into those
countries' environments. But it says such paperwork should not be required
for subsequent shipments, as many countries have demanded. And it opposes
notification requirements for nonliving biotechnology products, such as
gene-altered cotton fibers or corn sweetener, many of which are already
pervasive in the global marketplace. "You'd have to have a huge
bureaucracy to sign off on these shipments," Pomerance said.
Liability. Many developing countries support a provision to compensate a
country if its biodiversity were harmed by another country's reckless
exportation of genetically engineered organisms. The United States says
existing liability laws are adequate.
Socioeconomic considerations. In question is whether a country may
restrict importation of engineered products not on strict scientific
grounds, but because of potential harm to that country's culture or
economy. U.S. delegates say no. Others, including the European Parliament,
Trade with nonparties. Some countries have proposed that signers of the
final accord should agree not to trade with countries that don't sign.
That would deal a devastating blow to the U.S. economy, but it would be
such an unprecedented hurdle to international trade that few people expect
it to pass.
As pre-conference deliberations got underway Thursday in Colombia,
representatives from the United States and several biotechnology companies
began a final push to convince opposing forces that trade restrictions
would ultimately harm everyone.
"Biotechnology offers many of these countries the best possible technical
solutions to many of their problems," said Val Giddings, vice president
for food and agriculture at the Biotechnology Industry Organization in
Washington. "A lot of these countries don't realize that they're playing a
game that doesn't work to their benefit."
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The news is that Windows 7 will skip from Beta 1 to RC very soon. The beta testers have been sending in reports to the MS Beta team as the rate of one every fifteen seconds. So, is Windows 7 working well? It certainly should be by the time that the RC is released.
However, ‘working well’ does not always translate into ‘working for you’. The Windows 7 feature set was already cast in stone before the public beta was released. Calls by testers to bring back tried and tested features of older Windows versions have been met with ‘Sorry, no can do.. by design’
The first impression of Windows 7 is very good. It installs as fast as Vista and boots as fast as XP, and it will do it on a lesser machine than Vista required.
After logging on, the default scene is much like XP and Vista. With respect, how else could it look. If you don’t like it, the scope for changing the look is limited to being able to move stuff around.
Windows XP will still be the OS by which all others are judged. It was the first Microsoft operating system that was all things to all people, especially after the SP2 service pack. It had speed, grace, style and could be whatever you wanted from it.
Vista had grace and style, but speed was always a problem and small usability features of XP had been removed.
Windows 7 brings back the speed, but I think that too many old features have been removed, and I am not alone in thinking this way. ‘Jump lists’ and ‘libraries’ are going to leave many long time Windows users stone cold. Users are going to love it or hate it. I do not believe that there will be any middle ground because the basis for it has been removed.
The sad part is that there will be little recourse for those who do not get along with it. The options are not good.
- Vista is slow to boot and computer users are fearful of it. There will be no effort to boost Vista slowness because MS developers have a new toy now.
- XP stocks are finite and will eventually dry up completely. It will become ever more difficult to upgrade hardware while still running XP because drivers will not be available.
Even though the only viable operating system for the PC has been Windows, I never felt that I was being forced into a situation where I had no alternative.
Windows in the early days was a joy to use, albeit a little buggy and unstable at times. One could forgive it because, despite the problems, it was intuitive and so easy to use. XP retained all of the ease of use, delivering it on a much more stable base. It was the first OS where one did not wait for it to blue screen directly after installation. It was the first OS where you could boot it up, walk away from it, and not have a blue screen waiting for you when you gotten back.
I really do hope that Windows 7 does well for Microsoft because the company badly needs a success. However, regardless of how well it does, if the people who make the final decisions had listened to more users than they did, XP would have finally lost its crown and could be laid to rest in peace..
Sat, Jan 31 2009 11:00 | <urn:uuid:2beb5ea9-70d2-4b88-9518-8c7f7f328bbb> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://msmvps.com/blogs/mikehall/archive/2009/01/31/windows-7-is-it-king-material-in-my-opinion.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00075-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.98266 | 683 | 1.546875 | 2 |
Annual Report 2010
Hope Medical Centre:-
Due to insufficient medical facilities in the area. People do not prefer to go to the hospitals, so they
go to the doctors who are not well qualified. Sometimes instead of getting cure they get more
complications. For this HDO has medical centre in the area where people get good medicine at
very low cost. The medical centre is also providing training of Traditional Birth Attendant (TBA) to
the poor and marginalized girls.
People have an opportunity to get good basic medical treatment in HOPE medical centre.
HOPE provided medical treatment to women at the time of pregnancy, of which they were unaware
and could not purchase due to the high prices.
People with eye problems were satisfied with the treatment.
TBA’s Training was giving to 110 girls during the year 2010
HDO Working Children Educational Center:-
The ratio of education is very low in the Pakistan, but extremely low in the target areas. People do
not send their children to school because of the lack of resources. They prefer their children to
work instead of getting education. Many of these children are interested to go to school but due to
poor conditions they do not get chance for it.
Therefore HDO focuses on education of those children who work in the factories and in other
units. In the “Hope Working Children Educational Center” they are given basic education to like
reading and writing. Children are taught through playful activities. So they learn to work as a team.
A change in behavior has been observed in children.
• Created awareness among families. Now they know the value of education and are
interested in the education of their children.
• Provided basic education to students. They learnt the basic skill of reading and writing.
• Created confidence in students. They are able to speak and mingle with other children of
their age. They learn from the playful exercises, songs, poems and stories. The main objective of
the program is to create interest in the children and love for education and prepare them for further
Skill Development Program:-
Skill is a better way to eradicate poverty. The education ratio among women is very. There are
women who are neither uneducated but skill-less also. They remain at home doing nothing except
cooking and cleaning the house.
For this HDO is running a Beauty Parlor Training for those women who feel that they need to learn
a skill to support their families. HDO staff made them aware of the skillfulness, so they were ready.
Now these women are coming regularly to get training. Initially its duration was three months, but
now seeing interest the duration has been extended to sex months.
Being females, they feel attraction in this field. They are getting training of massage, party and
bridle make up, hair cutting & body massage etc. After getting training from HDO, several girls are
earning respectfully and playing active role in the society.
8th March International Women's Day :-
This year on International Women's Day, HDO conducted a program to celebrate the efforts of
women not only on international but on national & domestic level.. The topic of the program was
“Empowering Women is the empowerment of New Generation” at Community Centre, Chaman
Zar Colony, Faisalabad, 80 females (mostly working women) & 30 males participated to express
their collaboration with women on this special day. People from different walks of life participated
in the program.
Dr. Afia, Gynecologist & Women Rights Activist, Bro. Farhad Shahzad, Chairman, Jesus Ministries
were the special guests of the program.
All the speakers said that “women of today is not an ignorant women but now she is well aware of
her rights & duties. She knows her destination. Today a women is working shoulder to shoulder
with men in all fields of life”. Therefore we need to give her all the rights and have to consider her a
full being. They said these days are very important to remember, because these occasions remind
us to speak of the equal rights.
At the end, Mrs. Nighat Babar Sahotra (Women Rights Activist) gave the answers of the questions
asked by the audiences in respect of women's rights.
After the session all the participants joined in the walk to solidarity with women globally.
Celebration of Children day:-
Children of today are the future of tomorrow. This year HDO celebrated world children day on 19th
October. The children members of HDO in schools participate in the programs. Children were
holding banners and play cards with messages on them. Three other schools as Young scholars
high school, New Horizon primary school and Sheraz Public school warmly participate in the walk.
Some 300 students were in the programs. There were speeches at the subject “Children as the
messenger of peace”. Children from class 5th delivered speeches. It was encouragement for the
students. Children were given refreshment at the end of the program.
Interfaith Harmony and Peace building Initiative:-
HDO believes that the peace and social harmony are the primary requirement for the promotion of
tolerance, non-violence and reconciliation in the society. A role of a common person is
emphasized for the promotion of peace.
These activities are brought in reality with the children, youth and women in the target areas.
Promotion of interfaith harmony and peace building depends more upon the participation of the
people in daily life at grassroots level.
The people who are deeply influenced to create tension and disharmony are those belonging to
the middle class.
So to eradicate disharmony HDO focused on the boys and girls school going and non-school
going children. They are given activities like making peace slogans and peace act plays.
HDO includes educated and non-educated women to start peace making program in the society.
This is because women Plays a vital for the personality development of the child at home. They are
the one to influence children positively.
‘/Women were taught the deeper meaning of the peace, inter-faith harmony and tolerance. When
women herself experiences the above-mentioned objective then she is in a position to teach her
In this way child not only at home but displays peace attitude in the school and in his/her social life
also. In the same way youth is also taught about the peace concepts through sports.
HIV/AIDS awareness community seminar:-
A One day Seminar on Aids Awareness was organized by HDO on December 01, 2010 in the HDO
– Faisalabad Office to create awareness and celebration of World AIDS Day 2009. 54 participants
(48 females & 6 males) of Faisalabad participated in this seminar.
Mr. Rashad Javed described the introduction of the seminar. He also shared about the World AIDS
Day, AIDS causes, its effects and methods of prevention. The following were the main contents of
Definition of AIDS, What is HIV? Who is a carrier? How does the virus spread? How does the virus
not spread? How to prevent the spread of AIDS? How the information can be conveyed to
everybody? AIDS and pregnancy, AIDS and immunization, What the HIV carrier should know? How
to care and treat a person with AIDS? What the relatives should know? Role of community in
educating the people,
The chairman presented the importance of awareness about AIDS among the family and in the
community. The participants were very active and participated actively in the discussion. The
participants were also asking questions and were satisfied from the answers of the chairman
The participants of the training liked it very much. They told that such kind of awareness seminars
must be conducted to create and educate the marginalized community. They also suggested that
other types of awareness seminars like formal/non-formal education, child health etc, must be
conducted in the future. The participants were very happy and were very much committed to convey
this very informatic and awareness among the other groups, family members and in the
The year 2010 was with great challenges in respect of human rights. To protect the Basic Human
Rights is one of the basic sectors of HDO. Celebration of world’s human rights day was
celebrated. The struggle to protect the rights of women and children continued throughout the year.
HDO participated in the rallies organized by different organization. Awareness seminars were
conducted on minorities and labour rights.
HDO also believes that without the involvement of women in each sector of life development
process cannot be completed. For this HDO has great focused to create awareness among the
women for getting their rights and also creating awareness among the male members for the
realizing of women as equal to male.
Child rights initiatives were also the main issues during the year 2010. To stop the child labour
HDO is creating awareness among the community and the parents. For this, different seminars
were conducted for the promotion of child rights in respect of their health, education, safe
environment and personality development.
In the summer of 2010, Pakistan endured the worst flooding in its history. Many towns and
villages are still being evacuated as the floodwaters move downstream through Sindh and
eventually into the Arabian Sea. As of August 23, over twenty million people have been affected,
more than four million are homeless, and eight million are in urgent need of humanitarian aid;
they lack vital supplies such as potable water and food. Outbreaks of water-borne diseases are
imminent. The emergency is still evolving, with continued rainfall, more areas are at high risk of
flooding. Urgent needs include shelter, food and medicine. Recovery will take many years.
The death toll has so far been relatively low compared to other major natural disasters, but the
numbers affected are extraordinarily high," said John Holmes, the Emergency Relief Coordinator.
He warned, “If we don’t act fast enough, many more people could die of diseases and food
Parts of the country, such as the Swat valley, recently recovering from military operations in 2009
aimed at ending Taliban domination of the area, have been utterly destroyed in the flooding. Much
of the army’s counterinsurgency effort in the area has been undone, and the local population,
which had only recently resettled after fleeing the fighting, has been displaced a second time.
Hope Development Organization, an NGO in Faisalabad, Punjab Pakistan, appeal to the world for
forty million rupees (about $470,000 US) to provide assistance to survivors of the flooding in
Pakistan. HDO has set up a collection station in front of our main office in Faisalabad. As soon as
we have sufficient goods and cash, we will send it to the flood victims.
HDO has experience in disaster relief. In October of 2005, we provided aid to the earthquake
victims, and we want to use our expertise and contacts to provide similar relief for the current flood
victims. Please view our 2005 earthquake activity.
Geography of the Flooded Areas
Provided relief Items
Clothing of various sizes
Utensils, crockery, buckets
Jerricans (large plastic cans that hold 20 liters of water or other liquids)
Toiletries, tissues, soaps, dettol (antibacterial cleaners), towels
Rice, sugar, flour (atta), onions, potatoes, cooking oil, tea, milk (tetra packs or powder)
safe drinking water, cooked food
Water purification tablets
Vaccines for malaria, cholera, typhoid, influenza
Pain killers including strong ones like morphine derivatives, tremadol, pethadine, kinz
Antibiotics, tetnus, amoxil, gentamycin
Cannulas, drip sets, normal saline, ringerlactate
Local anesthetics (injections)
Cotton bandages and other first-aid supplies
Surgical instruments, needle holders, forceps, tweezers
Suturing materials, Skin staples.
HDO has set up a goods collecting camp in front of our main office in Chamnan Zar Colony,
Faisalabad. From donations received, we have distributed emergency supplies to 700 families of
flood victims in the areas of Khyber Pakhtoon Khan Province. HDO is performing relief services in
collaboration with the Church of Pakistan, Peshawar.
HDO administration with Bishop Emeritus Sarfaraz of Peters Church of Pakistan, Peshawar.
HDO staff and volunteers distributing emergency supplies in the Peshawar region—next six
We provided food bags, tents, water and first aid to of flood victims.
Christmas celebrations with Youth peace Club:
HDO form Youth peace club with on Punjab province level and organize Christmas get together
with Youth, community leaders Please visit the You tube link for further information.
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An early field found in Japan was set up for a ball-kicking game. Another early known ball-kicking exercise was utilized by the Han Dynasty in the second and third centuries BC. Soccer has been played for over 2000 years. In the 1960s, soccer evolved into its current form.
The Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) was founded on the twenty-first of May in Paris. Since 2000, FIFA has 204 members. | <urn:uuid:6434542d-d93f-4bed-8bf3-09ce255e5aab> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://library.thinkquest.org/06aug/01434/SoccerHistory.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00048-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.934713 | 96 | 2.390625 | 2 |
updated 10:19 am EDT, Wed October 24, 2012
Google Trekker cameras are now Street Viewing the Grand Canyon
Google has taken its Street View effort to the depths and edges of the Grand Canyon, letting users view close up and personal photos of the natural wonder. But cars, trikes, not snowmobiles could be used for this undertaking, so Google outfitted its Street View team members with Trekker backpacks that include 360-degree view cameras. The cameras are largely autonomous, but the wearers can control them thanks to a connected Android smartphone, Google wrote.
Currently, Google is capturing images of sections of the South Rim, including the ridge, Bright Angel Trail, South Kaibab Trail, and more. How many were deployed isn't known, but it's at least three. Google promises the photos will be available for users to view soon, but isn't committing to any dates. The process is no doubt much slower than the other methods Google uses to gather images.
While Apple introduced its own maps with iOS 6, users of iPads and iPhones will still be able to access Street View images from within their device's browser. | <urn:uuid:0bb7cab6-4093-4de0-99ea-c8eb8ab39f4e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.electronista.com/articles/12/10/24/google.trekker.cameras.are.now.street.viewing.the.grand.canyon/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00045-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959741 | 234 | 2.1875 | 2 |
When a sun-gazing NASA satellite designed and built by the University of Colorado Boulder launched into space on Jan. 25, 2003, solar storms were raging.
A decade later, the four instruments onboard the Solar Radiation and Climate Experiment, or SORCE, have given scientists an unprecedented look at some of the most intense solar eruptions ever witnessed — including the notorious Halloween storms in October and November 2003 — as well as the anomalously quiet solar minimum that hushed the sun’s surface beginning in 2008 and, now, a new solar maximum that appears to be the least active in a century.
“We were there to see it transform from a fairly normal solar cycle to a very low-activity solar cycle,” said Tom Woods, associate director of CU-Boulder’s Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, known as LASP, and principal investigator for SORCE. “Of course we couldn’t predict or know that, but it’s very exciting.”
The data generated by SORCE’s instruments, which were originally designed to operate for just five years, are downloaded twice a day with the help of CU-Boulder undergraduates working at LASP mission control. Scientists are now using that data to better understand how energy from the sun affects Earth’s climate. While human-produced greenhouse gases have been the dominant driver of climate change over the last several decades, the activity of the sun can either enhance or offset the resulting global warming.
“About 10 to 15 percent of the climate warming since 1970 is due to the sun,” Woods said. “That’s going to change now. Now that solar activity is low, the global warming trend could slow down some, but not nearly enough to offset the anthropogenic effects on global warming.”
The SORCE mission is also a critical contributor to the long-term record of total solar irradiance — the magnitude of the sun’s energy when it reaches the top of the Earth’s atmosphere — which stretches back to 1978, when the Nimbus-7 satellite was launched. The Total Irradiance Monitor, or TIM, instrument onboard SORCE is taking the most accurate and most precise measurements of total solar irradiance ever collected.
“The total solar irradiance provides nearly all the energy powering the Earth’s climate system, exceeding all other energy sources combined by 2,500 times,” said Greg Kopp, LASP senior research scientist and co-investigator responsible for the TIM instrument. “Any change in total irradiance can thus have large effects on our climate.”
The instruments onboard SORCE have doubled their original life expectancy, but they won’t last forever. The limiting factor will likely be the satellite’s battery. Still, Woods and his colleagues expect that SORCE will continue to function through this year, allowing the satellite to hit another important milestone for celebration: the 11-year mark, the average length of a complete solar cycle.
“Eleven years is special to us,” Woods said. “Instead of having a big science conference this year, we’re planning it for next January.”
For more information on SORCE's 10th birthday, read the full press release here. | <urn:uuid:69e6d7c9-d2fc-4396-8c6a-6b8da15848c7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.colorado.edu/news/multimedia/cu-boulders-sun-gazing-satellite-designed-last-5-years-turns-10 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.940902 | 690 | 3.546875 | 4 |
LONDON/SINGAPORE: The global economy is set to expand by a modest 3.3 per cent this year as a still-smouldering Euro Zone debt crisis and a relatively slow US recovery continue to leave Asia as the main driver of growth, Reuters polls showed on Thursday. Asian economies, as well as Latin America, are expected to pick up the pace later this year, driven by monetary stimulus after a soft patch — a boost Western policymakers are increasingly unable to provide.
The US economy has not taken off in the way many had hoped and the outlook there remains relatively subdued, although still much better than most of its Western peers. “We think it’s increasingly clear that the US is on a fairly self-sustaining recovery and is reasonably, but not completely, immune to what is happening in the Euro Zone,” said Andrew Kenningham, senior global economist at Capital Economics. “In Europe, it’s really a very different story. We expect recession this year, but we find it difficult to see why the Euro Zone would recover next year.”
The polls of more than 700 economists across the world, taken in the past few days in the run up to this week’s meeting of G-20 finance
ministers, predicted 3.3 per cent global growth this year. That would mark a slow-down from the International Monetary Fund’s 3.9 per cent estimate for 2011 and is slightly less optimistic than their forecast for 3.5 per cent growth this year.
But 2013 is expected to be slightly better, based on expectations that the Euro Zone crisis fades, the US picks up steam and Asia finds its stride again. Owing to improving US job market and reasonably solid expansion at the start of the year, the biggest economy is set to grow 2.3 per cent this year and 2.4 per cent next year.
US recovery will help its southern neighbours and Brazil, gaining strength from near full employment, expanding by 3.2 per cent in 2012 and by 4.3 per cent in 2013. In contrast, the Euro Zone is expected to shrink 0.4 per cent this year and linger in a mild recession until the third quarter .
However, those figures mask a huge disparity between the region’s stronger economies, such as Germany and France, and weaker ones like Italy, Spain and Greece.
Asia’s economic growth probably roughed in the first quarter, the poll found.
Respondents refrained from slashing forecasts for the first time in a year, a positive sign although it may be too early to celebrate. “Confidence is slowly crawling back in,” said Frederic Neumann, co-head of Asian economics research at HSBC. “We have seen in China much more aggressive action has been taken to support growth, China clearly remains the regional engine, plus the financial risks we saw emanating from Europe last year have also started to dissipate.”
While powerhouses China and India will not have the double-digit growth seen before the global financial crisis, both economies will rebound in 2013, supported by policy easing, robust domestic demand, reviving exports and stabilisation in the long-drawn out European debt crisis. “The first quarter has seen the bottom in growth, things are stabilising, and will possibly re-accelerate over the next few quarters with the region likely to hit its full stride in the second half of the year,” added Neumann. China’s economy is expected to grow by 8.4 per cent this year and 8.6 per cent in 2013 and analysts expect growth in India to touch 7.1 per cent this fiscal year, slightly lower than the 7.3 per cent in the January poll.
Japan should see moderate economic growth of two per cent this year, as rebuilding efforts on its quake-battered northeast coast and signs of recovery in overseas demand for Japanese goods contribute to a brighter outlook. Analysts trimmed their growth expectations for Australia, New Zealand, Philippines, South Korea, Taiwan and Vietnam but the outlook for Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand had brightened, as compared to the last survey.
“The past two and a half years have taught us that Asia does not need strong growth in the G3 to grow fast itself. All Asia needs is the
absence of negative growth and it will do just fine,” said David Carbon at DBS in Singapore. | <urn:uuid:83532ee8-2fa8-4562-bea8-07c6a0a6f30b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.thehimalayantimes.com/perspectives/fullnews.php?headline=Global+growth++seen+subdued%E2%80%9A+till+heavily+reliant+on+Asia&newsid=MTEyMA== | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00040-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.958028 | 912 | 1.570313 | 2 |
We will provide free-standing display boards that are 4 feet tall by 8 feet wide. Two posters will be displayed on each side of these display boards. Therefore, your poster should not be wider than 40 inches*. If your poster is larger than 40 inches wide, please indicate this in the “special needs” comment box in the “Submit a Learning Story” form.
(*Please note: We cannot print posters on campus that are 40 inches wide. Please see below for printing guidelines.)
We will provide a tabletop. We cannot provide multimedia equipment such as laptops, projectors, speakers, etc. If you need access to an electrical outlet, please indicate this in the special needs comment box. Wireless internet is available in the room.
We recommend that you create a full-sized poster in MS PowerPoint or other presentation software and allow the university to print it for you on one of the campus full-size plotters. Posters created this way look more professional than posters created by printing many individual pages and piecing them together. See the printing guidelines below.
The most important thing to keep in mind while designing your poster is that posters are visual. Don’t just write a paper and print it out as a poster — create a poster. There are many internet-based resources to help you create a good-looking, effective poster. Start with these:
Or, just use one of the poster templates we have provided:
The templates above have been created to meet accessibility standards if objects are not moved around within the templates. All posters must be created so that they may be displayed online in accessible pdf format.
To submit your poster for free printing, please follow these steps:
The deadline is a firm deadline for free printing. The size restriction of no more than 24 x 36 inches is a firm limit. If you do not submit your poster for printing by the deadline or you submit a poster larger than 24 x 36 inches, you will need to print your poster at your own expense at Graphics Communications Services at a special reduced rate that we have negotiated for Stories participants. Graphics Communications Services can print a max of 24” wide by any number of inches long. Other sized dimensions would need to be printed off campus. | <urn:uuid:e0c2f368-0926-481e-b892-c62006226034> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.csupomona.edu/~learningstories/guidelines.shtml | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00037-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.914155 | 455 | 1.585938 | 2 |
Christine - from North Bethesda, MD
Baking cocoa and unsweetened cocoa are 2 names for the same ingredient. There are two types of cocoa powder: natural and Dutch-processed. Dutch-processed unsweetened cocoa powder is treated with an alkali to neutralize its acids. It has a reddish-brown color, mild flavor and is easy to dissolve in liquids. Natural unsweetened cocoa powder has a slightly more bitter taste and gives a deep chocolate flavor to baked goods. The two cocoas can be used interchangeably in recipes calling for cocoa. | <urn:uuid:149ef9e8-eeca-468c-bce8-c24bd1cb88a8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.bakedecoratecelebrate.com/askus/question.cfm?id=FE92F348-423B-522D-F916C689277AC706&cid= | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00042-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.940143 | 118 | 1.710938 | 2 |
[ Monday, 23 April 2007, riklaunim ]
CentOS is an enterprise class GNU/Linux distribution based on the publicly available source packages of Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Just like RHEL or Debian stable, CentOS focuses on stability and security, sacrificing the “latest and greatest” packages. Is CentOS 5 really that stable? And does it fit on the average Joe’s desktop? This is what I’m gonna find out.
CentOS just like RHEL and Fedora uses Anaconda as system installer, so the installation process is an easy and intuitive one. The only problem can be the amount of RAM that we possess, since the graphical installer needs at least 512 MB (text mode is less resource hungry and 128 MB RAM will be enough for it). CentOS is delivered as one DVD or six CDs (all of which are required for installation to be successful). An installation guide is available if you encounter any problems during the procedure.
The first system boot-up takes a while, since there are multiple services turned on by default, sometimes not really relevant ones. I would expect a first-run wizard to appear where I could set up the regular user account and localization details. In my case however, I just saw a blank screen with a login prompt. Not that I am terrified by the terminal screen, it was just a little surprise . I logged in as root and (do not ever do that at home!) typed
startx in order to trigger the X Window System. GNOME 2.16 appeared without questions in a short while.
The whole system used 52MB RAM in the text mode. After starting GNOME, the usage increased to 110MB RAM. I started tweaking here and there. I turned off unnecessary services like cups, cron, cpufreq or bluetooth devices and the memory usage dropped to relatively 40 and 97MB. After killing the upgrade daemon and the energy-saving GNOME applet, the memory consumption decreased by another 4MB. In a nutshell — CentOS can be as fast and efficient as any other distribution. You just need to know what you’re doing when disabling and switching on unwanted functionality. Just as a comparison: Gentoo installation that I used to create this review uses 21MB RAM in text-mode and 57MB RAM with crippled KDE running. Regardless of the memory consumption, the applications used to start up fast enough, with a usual exception for OpenOffice.org which needed some 15 seconds to show up.
For testing purposes I used the default GNOME desktop. Except for the environment itself, CentOS comes with (already mentioned) OpenOffice.org package (with national translation and dictionary) Gimp, Mozilla Firefox, Evolution and a few more applications, nothing extraordinary or worth mentioning. During my testing I have not encountered any problems with the default applications. All worked as it should. However, I stepped upon a few glitches — Firefox is installed without any plugins (neither Flash nor Java or multimedia) and the whole system, just like Fedora, comes with no restricted or non-free drivers and codecs. This makes it a bit problematic to be used by a newcomer (compared to distributions like Ubuntu Feisty Fawn or SimplyMEPIS) since the user has to install all the missing functionality on his/her own.
Ten days after the official release, there was some 220MB of software updates and patches for the default installation. They mainly concerned the OpenOffice package and the kernel. This is not friendly for a user with poor Internet access. Another issue is the installation CDs layout. The default installation requires all 6 CDs, even though only a few packages (connected with the localization) are fetched from the last 3 CDs. The packages could be laid out in a bit more reasonable fashion.
CentOS as a desktop OS
Compared to CentOS 4, the new version is significantly better for a desktop OS. More up-to-date versions of applications and desktop environments and way more polished default desktop cause that playing with CentOS 5 was a pleasant experience. Things just work so the feeling that I was working with not-so-bleeding-edge software wasn’t very disturbing (and I say that as a Gentoo/Arch user with creeping-edge software installed on my usual desktop). As far as the non-free codecs support is concerned, as well as Java or Flash, there are unofficial repositories for RHEL/CentOS (although not all packages are available for version 5, yet). There is even a Polish project called Jazz-Linux aimed at creating a CentOS-based desktop ready distribution. Currently they only have a few packages prepared, but they are planing to support latest KDE and unrestricted multimedia in the near future.
Why not Fedora?
RHEL is based on Fedora. It uses stable packages based on old Fedora releases and tests the new solutions on the current versions of Fedora. The just-released packages and latest ideas and solutions cause that Fedora is not always a stable OS. RHEL/CentOS are based on well-tested packages, thus the distribution is much more stable and the packages do not change so often. A nice point is also that, contrary to Debian stable, in RHEL/CentOS, new features and packages are a sometimes added to the stable release (think of this as of service-packs). This policy makes the distro get older a little bit slower, leaving the support period very long.
CentOS 5 is a stable system which can be user either as a server OS or as a desktop system for a normal user. The latter requires a few modifications in the default installation (like the performance fixes mentioned in the article), but after the tweaking is done, it works great and is worth recommending.
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Subscribe to RSS feed for this article! | <urn:uuid:6add64a7-2093-4816-bf4a-101813d5240c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://polishlinux.org/redhat/centos-5-free-redhat/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.927771 | 1,344 | 1.78125 | 2 |
Your #1 source for all things Entertainment, Fashion, Business... and Finance!
Let's face it: "big brother" is always watching. Whether you're a job seeker or future business owner, it's important that you always maintain great social media etiquette because you just never know.
This is a snapshot of why it is important to manage your online presence. In an effort to help steer you in the right direction, here are 7 Tips of Social Media Etiquette:
1. Status Updates: Posting content that relates to your area of study can position you as a candidate that stays current in his/her area of expertise. Including links to content solidifies that you’re actively identifying valuable content to share with your community.
2. Checking-In: Location-based check-ins such as Foursquare or Facebook Places can be a great way to connect with people in the real world. Your check-ins communicates a lot about you as a person, your lifestyle, the places you frequent and the time you visit those locations. Make sure what you’re sharing reflects what you want to communicate to the outside world.
3. Profanity on Facebook Wall: A recent study by Reppler, which studied 30K Facebook users, identified that47% of Facebook walls contain profanity. Be sure to monitor and manage your Facebook wall because what’s there communicates a lot about your personal brand to potential employers—even if it’s your friends who are posting the profanity on your wall.
Continue reading at BlackEnterprise.com | <urn:uuid:1e60ab04-b29c-4b8c-9bdf-1b45fb942d44> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://bosschicks.com/profiles/blogs/business-tips-7-social-media-etiquette-tips-for-job-seekers?xg_source=activity | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00065-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.920736 | 321 | 1.625 | 2 |
Marla W. Deibler, Psy.D., is a clinical psychologist and nationally-recognized expert in anxiety disorders and the obsessive-compulsive spectrum, including trichotillomania and other body-focused repetitive behaviors, obsessive-compulsive disorder, hoarding, and tic disorders. She is the Founder and Executive Director of The Center for Emotional Health of Greater Philadelphia in New Jersey, an outpatient facility specialized in providing evaluation and evidence-based, cognitive-behavioral therapies for these and other difficulties. She currently serves on the Board of Directors of OCD-NJ, the New Jersey affiliate of the International OCD Foundation (IOCDF).
Dr. Deibler gained her formative clinical experiences at the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Children’s National Medical Center, and the Kennedy Krieger Institute at Johns Hopkins University Medical Center. She gained specialized behavior therapy experience in the treatment of obsessive-compulsive spectrum disorders at the nationally-recognized Behavior Therapy Center of Greater Washington. Dr. Deibler served as a clinician at the National Center for Phobias, Anxiety, and Depression. She also served as Director of Behavioral Sciences at the Temple University School of Dentistry and served on the clinical faculty at Temple University Schools of Medicine and Allied Health as well as Temple University Children’s Medical Center.
Dr. Deibler has published scientific research in peer-reviewed journals and has presented clinical training seminars and research findings at national and international meetings. She has appeared on A&E’s “Hoarders”, TLC’s “Hoarding: Buried Alive”, CBS News, ABC News, FOX News, It’s Your Call with Lynn Doyle (CN8, Retirement TV), and CBS’s “Swift Justice with Nancy Grace”. She has been quoted by media outlets, including the Wall Street Journal, CNN, Philadelphia Inquirer, Philadelphia Daily News, and the Connecticut Post, among others.
Dr. Deibler holds licenses to practice psychology in New Jersey (Lic. No. 35S100438000) and Pennsylvania (Lic. No. PS0157790). She is an active member of the American Psychological Association, Trichotillomania Learning Center, International OCD Foundation, OCD-New Jersey, Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies, and Anxiety Disorders Association of America.
Dr. Deibler resides in suburban Philadelphia with her husband (who is also a psychologist) and three children. | <urn:uuid:709ac167-cf61-4bdc-8917-223c91920c68> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blogs.psychcentral.com/therapy-that-works/about/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00025-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.92397 | 530 | 1.5625 | 2 |
This article was first published in August 2001.
You could be forgiven for thinking that it's an odd pairing: why aero test both the constant four-wheel drive WRX turbo hotshot and a big luxury V8 LS400 in the same story? The answer lies in the fact that both cars are three-box sedans - and it's this shape which often has a lot of aerodynamic problems.
Last week we covered in a quick overview the idea that a small wake behind the car (ie leaving only a small amount of disturbed air) will usually reduce drag. Cars with sloping tails can achieve airflow that remains attached right to the trailing edge, but that's often not the case for booted sedans. Instead, on these cars, the flow often separates on the rear window, which is bad news for drag reduction. If the flow re-attaches on the boot lid, mostly fine - the wake remains small. But if the flow never gets back onto the car's upper surface, the disturbed air of the wake being dragged along behind the car will be large. And, from a performance application, if turbulence exists on the boot lid, the placing of a wing is also made more difficult. Why? Because a true wing won't work in air that is turbulent!
Confused? Well, that's why we've got lots of pics of wool-tufts and some unique drawings - it all makes a lot more sense when you can see what's actually going on....
1999 Impreza WRX
This particular 1999 Impreza WRX has been fitted with a front spoiler extension and an STi-spec rear ring, which is taller than the standard item. (Thanks to Steve for making his car available.) And what did the wool tufts tell about the airflow?
It's easy when you see the wool tufts in action to assume that the pattern that they're making is the same that they made when the car was still. However, as you can see here, that's definitely not the case.
The tufts after they have been applied....
...and with the car moving at 70-80 km/h. As can be seen, there is good attached flow across the bonnet of the car - something common on most cars. (If the flow were turbulent here, the amount of air passing into the intercooler scoop would be vastly less!) On the upper part of the guard, the flow is also good (the single tuft able to be seen crinkled has caught up on itself by a thread of wool). However, if you look closely, you can see something strange going on behind the intercooler scoop.
And this closer look clearly shows that turbulence behind the scoop. Note also the attached flow across the (closed) bonnet exit vents - because of the presence of this type of flow, these vents would flow well when opened. However, they might then create areas of turbulence on the bonnet behind them, possibly decreasing the cabin ventilation intake pressure.
Certain types of wool fray very well when the tufts are exposed to turbulence. As can be seen here, even when the car is stopped, this tuft tells the story of the behind-scoop turbulence...
...as do the tufts around the rear vision mirror. Despite lots of publicity about aero-shaped mirrors, the flat shape required on their trailing face means that they create noticeable turbulence.
The front corner of the WRX shows good aero stories. There is no obvious turbulence (remember that tuft on the guard is stuck in that position) and the lip extension is nicely directing flow around the corner, even from airstreams quite low down. (The less air that goes under the car, generally the better.) Note also the three tufts showing flow through the radiator grilles.
But what about at the back of the car? Here's where the action really starts! At a glance it can be seen that all the tufts on the vertical rear surface of the car are in turbulence - eg between the taillights, on the lower valance near the numberplate, and below the third brakelight. No surprises there: that's all gotta be in the wake. But even on the bumper behind the rear wheel things get uglier a bit quicker than expected - than curved-in-plan-view bumper has flow separation (clearer in some other pics) that starts almost immediately below the leading edge of the taillight. Hmm, and that rear window flow pattern looks a bit suspect, doesn't it?
This closer view shows that, while the flow is attached across the roof, it separates only a short distance down the rear glass - further downwards on each side, closer to the roof along the car's centreline. In fact, if you look really closely, you can see a tuft heading the wrong way
in the middle of the rear window! Basically, the rear window is a mass of turbulence...
So does the airflow rejoin the car on the boot lid? If it does, the resulting drag penalty would be minimised and, further, a low wing would still work. It's a little hard to see, but it looks as if the air stays unattached right across the boot lid - some tufts can be seen whirling around in about the middle of the panel. However, what can also be seen is that there is attached airflow both sides of the tall wing - it's working fine. (Or, if it isn't, it's only because its shape is wrong, not its position.) So our guess is that a smoke stream along the car's centreline would leave the rear glass a little way down from the top and then pass beneath the wing, perhaps just re-attaching itself at the very trailing edge of the boot.
This rear three-quarters artist's view best shows what's going on. This drawing was made based on all of the wool-tuft photos taken, including many not included in this story.
Note the attached flows across most of the leading panels, with turbulence confined to three distinct areas: the (aftermarket) wheels, behind the rear vision mirror, and just behind the front wheel. The flow across the C-pillars and trailing edge of the roof is attached, but it separates only a very short way down the rear window, creating a major area of turbulence across the rear window and boot lid. However, the tall wing is sufficiently out of this turbulence to be in clean air, as can be seen by the attached flow across the aerofoil. The wake behind the WRX can therefore be estimated as being the full width of the car, with its height a little greater than the upper edge of the boot lid.
An independent Japanese wind tunnel measurement of the MY99 WRX gave a quite poor drag co-efficient (Cd) of 0.36, which isn't all that surprising when the rear flow is examined....
1991 Lexus LS400
The Lexus is also a three-box sedan, but it's one that's much bigger than the WRX. That makes the achieving of a low drag coefficient a much easier task - huh? Easier? Wouldn't the Cd be higher if the car is bigger? Nope - Cd refers just to the slipperiness of the shape, while it's the combined figure of Drag Coefficient multiplied by Frontal Area that determines the total drag. So while the CdA figure of the Lexus will be higher than a smaller car with the same Cd, there's no reason why the Cd itself should be higher. In fact, there's a good reason why it can be lower - a bigger car has more room to smooth the transitions in shape which can often cause flow separation.
In fact, the LS400 has a quoted Cd of 0.28 - although that should be taken with a grain of salt, as should most manufacturer-derived drag coefficients. But in a car with its large frontal area, a top speed of around 245 km/h from only 190kW shows that the Cd must indeed be quite low. So, can we see by wool tufting what makes the Lexus slippery? Sure we can!
Let's start off at the back of the car, since that's the area critical to low drag.
Looking at the flow on the roof, it is clear that it is attached - the roof tufts are lining up nicely. However, part-way down the rear glass things aren't so good - there is turbulence, and the tuft in the centre at the base of the glass is obviously in unattached flow. Note also the tuft near to the bottom that is actually facing the wrong way - it's heading straight into what would be normally considered the airflow direction!
In fact this shot shows the turbulence perfectly. But it also shows something else. Unlike the Subaru, on the Lexus the flow clearly reattaches on the boot lid - here it can be seen that the second and third tufts to the rear are back in attached flow. So the wake is being brought right down in size, despite that initial flow separation.
Here the complete process can be seen occurring. Attached flow across the roof, separating part-way down the rear glass (it says attached around the C-pillar onto the rear window - I am referring here to the car's centreline). Re-attachment on the boot lid, then a fairly clean separation off that sharp edge formed in the trailing line of the boot lid. The wake size is therefore only the height of the boot lid multiplied by the rear width of the car.
Finally, a clearer idea of the attachment down each side of the rear glass can be seen here - the separation bubble is confined to the middle of the rear window. This separation does increase drag though - the pressure recovery that would be gained by the airflow pressing on the glass is lost.
This Dave Heinrich view makes it very clear. Along the centreline of the car the airflow detaches itself at the end of the roof but rejoins the car's body on the last half of the boot lid. The flow around the C pillar onto the rear window reduces the size of the separation bubble, helping to reduce the greater drag that would be created if the whole rear window were turbulent. The size of the wake is therefore relatively small.
At the front of the Lexus it is also largely good - though again not perfect. Here attached flow can be seen everywhere and the stagnation point (zone of highest pressure on the front of the car) can be picked clearly by the tufts that go sideways rather than up-and-over or down-and-under. Hmm, but what's that happening just behind the front wheel? Doesn't look good!
Here the turbulence behind the front wheel flared guard can be seen clearly. Note also the airflow across the wheel itself - distinctly better than in the WRX with its aftermarket open-spoke wheel design. We don't think that too many people will pick their wheels on the basis of the behaviour of the air passing across them, but it's interesting none the less.
Of course this whole assessment ignores a vital area of airflow - under the car. And in the case of the Lexus quite a lot of under-car aerodynamic aids exist.
In three-box cars (ie booted sedans) it is always the case that most of the action is around the back of the car - especially in the transition from roof to boot. Gently sloping rear windows will allow attached flow to be retained onto the boot lid, while C-pillars that are curved in plan-view will aid the flow of air from the side of the car onto the rear glass (and then down onto the boot lid). A clean exit from the top of the boot lid will reduce drag further, while boat-tailing (the car narrows at the rear in plan view) will also reduce the size of the wake if the sideflow remains attached.
From a lift perspective, flows that wrap over those upper curves tend to create lift (the vast majority of sedans have a positive rear lift co-efficient, with advertised "downforce" improvements more often meaning "reduced lift"!). However, if the attached airflow can be retained on at least the trailing end of the boot lid, wings can be effectively used. Otherwise, a spoiler that disrupts the attached flow around those upper curves is a better bet.
But either way, a very simple exercise of wool tufting can be used to open your eyes to at least some of what is going on.
Next: the Porsche 993 turbo 4WD and New Beetle! | <urn:uuid:ce86e46c-fff3-4457-af36-7858b2725562> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.autospeed.com/cms/A_108674/article.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00060-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961883 | 2,598 | 2.21875 | 2 |
Guestblogger: Azadeh ShahshahaniDirector, National Security/Immigrants’ Rights Project, ACLU of Georgia
In late June, the ACLU delivered a statement to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva in response to the United Nations Special Rapporteur’s report on detention of migrants. The report sets out the international and regional human rights legal framework applicable to the detention of migrants, including in regards to vulnerable groups with special protection needs, and discusses alternatives to detention. While the report does not discuss country-specific immigration detention policies and practices, it offers useful recommendations and urges governments to adopt a human rights-based approach.
The ACLU stated in its remarks before the Human Rights Council that,
The U.S. immigration detention system locks up tens of thousands of immigrants unnecessarily every year, exposing detainees — including vulnerable populations such as persons with mental disabilities, asylum-seekers, women, children and lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender individuals — to brutal and inhumane conditions of confinement at massive costs to American taxpayers… This system of mass detention persists despite the fact that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) acknowledges that most immigration detainees ‘have a low propensity for violence.’
The ACLU statement also highlighted the May 2012 ACLU of Georgia report titled “Prisoners of Profit: Immigrants and Detention in Georgia.” The report covers the four immigration detention centers in Georgia including the largest immigration detention facility in the United States, the Stewart Detention Center. Three of the four facilities are operated by corporations, including Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), the largest owner and operator of privatized correctional and detention facilities in the U.S.
Findings raise serious concerns about violations of detainees’ due process rights, inadequate living conditions, inadequate medical and mental health care, and abuse of power by those in charge.
Among due process concerns documented are that ICE officers have coerced detainees to sign voluntary orders of removal, non-citizens are detained in excess of a presumptively reasonable time, and there is inadequate information about available pro bono legal services at the facilities. Conditions for attorney visits also raise attorney/client confidentiality issues.
Numerous concerns about cell conditions exist, including overcrowding and temperature extremes. When facilities run out of hygienic items, detainees have to go without. At Irwin, detainees are given used underwear. In at least one case, a female detainee was given soiled underwear, leading to a serious infection.
Food concerns include insufficient quantity and poor quality of food. Additionally, Stewart and NGDC both have “voluntary” work programs where detainees have been coerced to work at wages far below minimum wage and threatened with retaliation if they stop working.
Medical and mental health units are understaffed and initial intake examinations are insufficient. Detainees with mental health disabilities are put in segregation units as a punishment and in lieu of receiving treatment.
Detainees reported that guards yelled threats and racist slurs at them. This verbal abuse was also sometimes accompanied by physical violence. Detainees also relayed personal accounts of guards threatening to or actually placing detainees in segregation as a means of retaliation.
ICE should discontinue detaining immigrants at the corporate-run Stewart and Irwin County Detention Centers given the extent of the documented violations as well as the distance to family and communities of support. Detention center officials should improve food quality and living conditions and supply on-site, full-time medical and mental health care staff. The federal government should also make greater use of cost-effective alternatives to detention instead of continuing to rely on the for-profit prison industry to keep more and more people imprisoned in substandard conditions.
As the ACLU statement to the Human Rights Council concluded,
U.S. immigration authorities should use detention only as a last resort, in those circumstances where no alternative conditions of release would be sufficient to address the government’s concerns about danger or flight risk… The U.S. government should heed the Special Rapporteur’s recommendation to establish a presumption in favor of liberty, first consider alternative non-custodial measures, proceed to an individual assessment and choose the least intrusive or restrictive measure.
Jamil Dakwar, Director of the ACLU Human Rights Program drafted the ACLU statement to the Human Rights Council and contributed to this blog.
Cross posted from Huffington Post
Picture Courtesy of http://www.stewartcountyga.gov/ | <urn:uuid:54a597e3-e95c-485b-bc5f-eaed2ee89d3d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://restorefairness.org/blog/enforcement-blog/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.934195 | 901 | 2.015625 | 2 |
A collection of 19th century portraits painted by William Abraham Greaves, "Good Company: Works of 19th Century Warren Artist William A. Greaves," is on display in the Wetmore Gallery of the Warren Public Library. It's a fine selection of historic figures in regional history, and the portraits are framed in ornate gilded work worthy of their own exhibit.
"We feel that having the Wetmore Gallery available enriches the library experience of the Warren community," said library director Patty Sherbondy. "It's invaluable to give exposure to art and ideas to people of all ages, and especially young people, and it's also important to be able to provide a venue to artists and organizations."
Greaves, an American artist, was descended from family that lived in Bradfield, Yorkshire and Chesterfield, Derbyshire, England. He was born in 1847 in Watertown, N.Y., and died in 1900 in Kansas City, Missouri. He married Sarah Gertrude Dale in 1871 in Tionesta.
Barb Tubbs with the portrait of “Rock” Wilcox, Mountain Man of Yankee Bush
Greaves was educated in and a graduate of the public schools of Watertown, N.Y., and became an instructor at age 14. He was instructed in art by the well-known artist Thomas LeClair, and he was a student at the Cooper Institute in New York City. He lived for several years at Utica, N.Y., and moved to Warren in 1873, where he lived until his death.
According to his biography, Greaves was a notable portrait artist, and the show attests to that. Among the most notable of his works are the portraits of Hon. Samuel J. Randall, Hon. Galusha A. Grow, Hon. Matthew Stanley Quay, Gov. Fenton of New York, and Gov. James A. Beaver of Pennsylvania. He also painted many other portraits of men well known in public life. In 1892, two of his paintings of past speakers of the U.S. House of Representatives, Samuel Randall and Galusha Grow, were added to the display of past speakers in the Speaker's Lobby, House Wing, U.S. Capitol Building, in Washington, D.C.
Although Greaves was best known for his portraiture, he did paint landscapes and still lifes and was accomplished in art photography, according to Penny Wolboldt, reference/documents librarian.
"We have learned from newspaper articles from his era that, while best known for oil portraits, he also worked with pastels/crayon and charcoal and of course the camera," Wolboldt explained. "It seemed any surface might also be used, canvas, china, glass. etc... He advertised that he could paint your portrait on a button so a loved one could always have your portrait with them."
"As a result of the library's first Greaves exhibit in 2006, three paintings of special interest have been brought to our attention and are included in the current exhibit," Wolboldt said. "One is the painting of Tommy Struthers Wetmore as a child, a second is a portrait of Mary Brown, daughter of Hon. W. D. and Lucy Rogers Brown. Both of their daughters died within weeks of each other during an epidemic in Warren. Finally, the landscape, Freemonts Peak, painted in the Hudson River School style," was added.
"We also have on exhibit a life-size portrait of Dr. Curwen who was the first superintendent of the Warren State Hospital, which has not been available for public viewing for a very long time," Wolboldt added, "and a life size rendition of the portrait of Rock Wilcox, Mountain Man of Yankee Bush. Some newly discovered photographs taken in the Greaves Studio next to the Episcopal Church are on display along with numerous portraits of notable figures from Jamestown's early history. It has been learned that (Greaves) painted huge political banners depicting four-foot by five-foot portraits of candidates of both parties. These banners were suspended high above and spanned the streets and were displayed throughout the county."
Also included in the show is a portrait of Robert B.Brigg, a local Civil War veteran and a charter member of the Conewango Men's Club, a map indicating the extent of the artist's popularity nationally and photos of an exhibition he prepared for the 1895 Warren Centennial Celebration. Also, there is a slide show included in the exhibit of all of the Greaves works the library has been able to locate so far, about 100 of the 1,000 he is known to have painted, and a listing of approximately 200 of his paintings they know were done because the newspapers noted them by name.
The show continues through Nov. 15 during regular library hours. If you know of any other Greaves work, please contact the library. | <urn:uuid:c9649dd8-a2fd-4da8-8e30-e5ca6031142c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.timesobserver.com/page/content.detail/id/541815/-Portrait-Show-.html?nav=5011 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00032-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.984302 | 1,007 | 2.28125 | 2 |
Curate? Create? Debate!
When: Thursday 18th October from 6pm first talk at 6.30pm
Where: The Cork, 11-12 Westgate Buildings, Bath BA1 1EB
Curation is changing the way we use the internet and as a result it’s starting to change learning. We’re rather fond of it ourselves, but it throws up the obvious question, when should you create new content and when (and how) should you use curation tools and techniques to meet learners needs?
We’re lucky enough to have Martin Couzins joining us this month. Martin is a journalist and communications consultant, he recently launched a new website which curates learning related stories. It’s called Learnpatch.com. He’ll be talking about why he curates, what it looks like from a task/process point of view and the tools he uses.
Sam Burrough is an Online Learning Consultant for a Financial Services firm. He’ll look at how you can use curation tools to help people become more independent learners. He’ll be talking about a project he’s been running this year using an online curation tool called Scoop.it.
Then it’s over to you. What’s your view on curation? What examples have you seen or tried? When do you have to create something from scratch and when can you just re-position some existing content?
If you aren’t familiar with any of this watch this video to find out more about curation. | <urn:uuid:f4a297e5-8dc9-41f8-86a2-a18723297096> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://weelearning.co.uk/events/event-write-ups/wee-6-5-bath/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00070-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.931966 | 326 | 1.882813 | 2 |
June 23, 2011 Evolution is usually thought to be a very slow process, something that happens over many generations, thanks to adaptive mutations. But environmental change due to things like climate change, habitat destruction, pollution, etc. is happening very fast. There are just two options for species of all kinds: either adapt to environmental change or become extinct.
So, according to McGill biology professor, Andrew Gonzalez, the question arises, "Can evolution happen quickly enough to help a species survive?" The answer, according to his most recent study, published in Science, is a resounding yes.
By using a long-armed robot working 24/7 over a period of several of months, McGill Professors Graham Bell and Gonzalez were able to track the fate of over 2000 populations of baker's yeast for many generations. Yeast was chosen for the experiment because a lot is known about the genetic makeup of this model organism and because it can reproduce in a matter of hours. Bell and Gonzalez used the robot to submit different yeast populations to varying degrees of environmental stress in the form of salt and so study evolutionary rescue, which is the ability of a population to adapt rapidly through evolution, in real time.
What they observed was that the likelihood of evolutionary rescue depended on the severity and rate of change of the environment and the degree of prior exposure of populations to the environmental stressor (salt). The degree of isolation from neighboring populations also affected the capacity of the yeast populations to adapt through the accumulation of beneficial mutations.
Gonzalez and his team were in effect watching evolution at work. And what they discovered is that it can happen surprisingly fast, within 50 to 100 generations.
"The same general processes are occurring whether it's yeast or mammals," said Gonzalez. "At the end of the day we can't do the experiment with a panda or a moose, for example, because the time it would take to study their evolution is far longer than the time we have given the current rate of environmental change. At some point we have to work at the level of a model and satisfy ourselves that the basic reality we capture is sufficient to extrapolate from." While there has been theoretical work on the subject done in the past, this is the first time anyone has done a practical experiment of this kind, and shown evolutionary rescue at work.
Bell and Gonzalez discovered that a population was more likely to adapt quickly through evolutionary rescue if:
- There was slow environmental deterioration, i.e. a slow increase in the concentration of salt, along with modest levels of contact with other populations. These populations were then able to adapt to environmental stress that would have been sufficient to eradicate their ancestors.
- It was connected by dispersal, i.e. had previous contact, with another population that had already experienced environmental change. This population then had a much greater probability of avoiding extinction after a rapid and severe perturbation.
The research was funded by Canadian Foundation for Innovation, the Canada Research Chair Program and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada.
Other social bookmarking and sharing tools:
- G. Bell, A. Gonzalez. Adaptation and Evolutionary Rescue in Metapopulations Experiencing Environmental Deterioration. Science, 2011; 332 (6035): 1327 DOI: 10.1126/science.1203105
Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead. | <urn:uuid:152666b1-13a6-46fb-8caf-4d4feb06e79c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/06/110622115311.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00043-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961281 | 688 | 3.953125 | 4 |
July 24, 2001
NAMI Supports Rural Mental Health Accessibility Act of 2001 (S 859)
Accessing mental illness treatment and services is a particular challenge for individuals living in isolated rural communities. The challenges related to geographic isolation are too often further compounded by the stigma associated with severe mental illnesses such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, major depression and severe anxiety disorders. Advances in scientific research and medical treatment for these serious brain disorders have been tremendous in recent years. Unfortunately, these advances in science and treatment have not always reached individuals with severe and persistent mental illnesses living in isolated rural communities.
A bipartisan coalition of senators - led by Senator Craig Thomas (R-WY) - have introduced legislation (S 859) to bring these advances in research and treatment to under-served rural areas.
Among the key provisions in the Rural Mental Health Accessibility Act (S 859) are:
A new $50 million competitive grant program for public education campaign targeted to rural communities to address the stigma associated with mental illness,
A new $100 million training grant program to address the severe shortage of mental illness treatment professionals in rural areas (one-fifth of rural counties have no qualified mental health professionals). Grants to universities under this program would allow mental illness treatment professionals to train along side primary care providers,
A new NIMH-Office of Rural Health study on the efficacy and effectiveness of telehealth technologies for mental illness treatment, and
A $30 million targeted demonstration program for children and the elderly in long-term care facilities located in mental health shortage areas.
NAMI strongly supports S 859 and urges advocates to contact their senators to urge them to support this important legislation by adding their names as cosponsors. All Senate offices can be reached through the Capitol switchboard at 202-224-3121. Fax numbers, email and mail addresses can be obtained by clicking on "Write to Congress" on the Public Policy home page of the NAMI Web site. | <urn:uuid:a5a6febd-4501-44c3-a8bd-1b4e91667309> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.nami.org/TextTemplate.cfm?Section=eNews_Archive&template=/contentmanagement/contentdisplay.cfm&ContentID=6240&title=NAMI%20Supports%20Rural%20Mental%20Health%20Accessibility%20Act%20of%202001%20(S%20859) | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.945791 | 398 | 2.578125 | 3 |
Gaza’s ‘Critical Emergency’
Posted on Jan 2, 2009
The United Nations marked Israel’s seventh day of aerial attacks by warning of a “critical emergency” in the Gaza Strip, as Palestinians endure food and medical supply shortages and distribution problems even as estimates of dead and wounded Palestinians continue to rise.
The UN has warned that Palestinians in Gaza are facing a serious health and food crisis, as Israeli air strikes continued for a seventh day.
The “critical emergency” comes despite an increase in humanitarian shipments, said Maxwell Gaylard, the UN’s chief aid co-ordinator for the territory.
The UN believes that at least 100 of some 400 Palestinians killed by Israeli action so far were civilians.
Israel said Gazans were continuing to receive sufficient food and medicines.
The UN’s Maxwell Gaylard said: “It is true supplies have been going into the Strip, in fact possibly more than in previous weeks, but at the same time there are critical gaps.”
Palestinians in the West Bank town of Tulkarem protest Israel’s bombing of the Gaza Strip with a candlelight vigil. | <urn:uuid:7326bdfe-a460-4916-ac41-6bf3f97a4058> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.truthdig.com/eartotheground/print/20090102_gazas_critical_emergency/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00033-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.948594 | 245 | 2.109375 | 2 |
Lowry's moving portrait of rural life
Set in a small Pennsylvania town in the early 1900s, Lois Lowry's <B>The Silent Boy</B> tells the story of Katy Thatcher, a precocious doctor's daughter, and the unusual boy she meets on a nearby farm. Full of authentic historical details, elements of mystery and the wonder of a young girl awakening to the world around her, <B>The Silent Boy</B> is a satisfying, suspenseful novel young readers will love. Katy, who will one day become a doctor herself, encounters Jacob Stoltz through visits with her father to the Stoltz farm, and through Peggy, the family's hired girl, who is also Jacob's sister. Peggy, like many teens of her time, works for a well-to-do family in this case the Thatchers. Her older sister Nell works for their neighbors, and the plot revolves around these two young women.
Katy's life seems idyllic in many ways. She goes sledding in winter, watches fireworks on the fourth of July and enjoys visits with Grandma. Within this rural world, Jacob's behavior his stubborn silence and odd way of moving, his remarkable ability with animals is considered strange. To readers, it's obvious that he is autistic, but the community, including Katy and her family, believes he is touched in the head. Jacob's autism, Katy's curiosity and the dreams of the two sisters all come together in a wonderful conclusion.
<B>The Silent Boy</B> is unusually visual, not only in the wonderful verbal pictures Lois Lowry creates, but in the old family photographs she uses as chapter headings. It's almost as if the book is a biography rather than fiction. Lowry's mother grew up in small-town Pennsylvania, and her father was both a doctor and a photographer. Lowry herself studied photography and has said that the family photos used in the book provided the structure for the narrative.
<B>The Silent Boy</B> is a simple story, and therein lies its power. A two-time Newbery Award winner, Lowry succeeds in evoking a time long past, but without steeping readers in nostalgia. Could it be that a third Newbery Medal is in the offing? | <urn:uuid:f92e0f94-afcb-451d-8a9d-1251a3366d2a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://bookpage.com/review/the-silent-boy/lowry's-moving-portrait-of-rural-life | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964445 | 462 | 1.898438 | 2 |
By Mira Korber, guest blogger.
Just last week, a desperate pit-stop at the iconic southern restaurant chain, Waffle House, proved the very worst of my life’s infrequent fast-food exploits. Mid 1,300 mile road-trip, the black letters on yellow signage hailed the only game in town open after 10pm, so — being a northerner myself — I decided to see what this waffle thing was all about. At any rate, my “T-bone steak with eggs” was more steak tartar with yellow and white goop, but I promise not to disintegrate any further into my anti-Waffle House tirade, because the company’s economic relevance is far more interesting.
Apparently, the Wall Street Journal’s “Waffle-House Index” is a term referring to (non-gastronomic) natural disasters. With over 1,600 locations in the South, people have come to rely on the status of their nearby Waffle House to measure the severity of weather crises. The company’s trademark is its 24-hour operation, so when locals see a closed restaurant, they know things are pretty bad. The official Waffle-House Index is conveniently color-coded to signify just how problematic a disaster may be.
The shining beacon of 24 hour goodness since 1955, Waffle House ranks among the best disaster recipes and disaster indicators. Why, it’s even a great venue for disaster to strike. Read this excellent NY Times article about a recent string of shootings at Georgia Waffle Houses. A loyal customer even says she’ll keep returning to Waffle House even though there might be the minor risk of gunpoint robbery.
And, perhaps needless to say, this article is not mentioned on the “In the News” page on the Waffle House site.
The Economic Lesson
A true port-in-the-storm, Waffle House competes through its dependable image. To differentiate itself from other fast-food and low-end restaurant competitors, Waffle House allows you, the ravenous customer, to chow down anytime hunger strikes. Regardless of its food quality or crime rates, it’s open, reliable, and will feed your grumbling stomach. 24/7, stop in to Waffle House for a bite, which is more than you can say for a neighboring Olive Garden or Arby’s. | <urn:uuid:d7385ebb-a0fb-4e01-9fe6-1a01f4a50f7f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.econlife.com/tag/waffle-house-robbery/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00047-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.932625 | 505 | 1.5 | 2 |
The birth rate for US teenagers, aged 15 to 19 years, fell 9% from 2009 to 2010, the lowest level reported in the past 70 years of comparable data, according to research released by the CDC.
The significant declines in teen childbearing since 1991 have strengthened in recent years, according to the news release. In 2010, the teen birth rate was 34.3 births per 1,000 women aged 15 to 19 years.
Teen birth rates vary significantly among states, the CDC reported, but US teenagers had fewer babies in 2010 than in any year since 1946. And all but three states recorded lower teen birth rates from 2007 to 2010 as rates fell across all teen age groups, and racial and ethnic groups.
Despite the downward trend, the US teen birth rate remains one of the highest among other industrialized nations, with annual public costs estimated at $10.9 billion, according to the CDC.
Recent data from the National Survey of Family Growth, conducted by the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics, showed “increased use of contraception at first initiation of sex and use of dual methods of contraception [condoms and hormonal] among sexually active female and male teenagers.”
The report suggested “these trends may have contributed to the recent birth rate declines.”
For more information: See full report compiled by U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Health Statistics. | <urn:uuid:5bc669b9-a79e-4d4e-8c11-a9370176db8d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.healio.com/adolescent-medicine/teen-pregnancy/news/online/%7B63D2EEDA-0597-4094-A2F3-A52F2B246A94%7D/US-teen-birth-rates-hit-new-lows-for-all-age-ethnic-groups | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.946749 | 296 | 3.0625 | 3 |
describes a group of eye disorders that causes damage to the optic nerve. This degenerative eye disease is one of the leading causes of chronic blindness in the US.
Open-angle glaucoma is the most common form of glaucoma in the United States. Within the eye, fluid is made and then drained from the eye. If either the fluid is made too quickly (not common) or drains too slowly, then the pressure of the eye can increase, leading to damage to the optic nerve.
This damage to the optic nerve can lead to a decrease in peripheral vision and may eventually cause blindness.
Open-angle glaucoma can often be controlled well with proper treatment, and most patients who receive treatment will maintain their vision.
Copyright © Nucleus Medical Media, Inc.
Open-angle glaucoma cannot be prevented, but treatment can reduce the risk of vision loss. To help reduce your chance of vision loss caused by open-angle glaucoma, proper treatment of the condition is necessary. Since most people don’t have any symptoms of having glaucoma, regular eye examinations are extremely important, as early diagnosis and treatment can help prevent vision loss. | <urn:uuid:2f29c67b-7a76-4fbb-842e-2b428588eb19> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.bidmc.org/YourHealth/MedicalProcedures/Splenectomy.aspx?ChunkID=237319 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00058-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.929279 | 247 | 3.46875 | 3 |
Long Lake health testing begins
June 12, 2008 · Updated 12:47 PM
The sun came out for just one day this week, and luckily for a small group of scientists and volunteers, it just happened to be the day they planned to spend hours on a little boat collecting water and dirt from Long Lake.
Everyone said it was because I finally got out of my office and into the field, said Harry Gibbons, a scientist with Tetra Tech, the environmental engineering company hired to bring the bacteria-choked lake back to health.
Gibbons, along with members of Citizens for Improving Long Lake (CILL), were out on the lake much of Wednesday in what he described as just the beginning of a long stretch of monthly monitoring.
This will provide us with a long-term record of how the lake is doing, Gibbons said, explaining that the first set of samples the group took this week were to measure the levels of phosphorus in the water, an element he said much of his companys work will be centered on.
Phosphorus is what over-enriches the lake and leads to overproduction of the toxic Cyanobacteria blooms, Gibbons explained.
The group also collected samples from the bottom of the lake to be tested for the element.
We collected sediment in 50-centimeter tubes, which we will then (examine) centimeter by centimeter (to) give us a history of the phosphorus (build-up) in the lake, he said.
The third part of the monitoring will be keeping track of the plant life in the lake, which Gibbons said will begin in the summer, since this is the plants dormant season.
This weeks work was the first of what CILL hopes will be several years worth of monthly sample collections on the lake. The effort is funded for at least two years, thanks to a devoted grassroots effort by the group.
Working closely with State Sen. Bob Oke, (R-Port Orchard), the members of CILL, which is comprised mostly of concerned homeowners and led by its president, Ken Spohn, spent three years researching and discussing options before formulating a cleanup plan for the lake.
What the group came up with was a 10-year management plan costing a little over $1 million; that amount was subsequently adjusted to fit the current funding a $750,000 grant being distributed through the state Department of Ecology and the Centennial Clean Water Fund.
Tetra Tech came up with a two-year plan costing $780,000, Spohn said, explaining that once the cleanup has been started and most of the invasive plants removed the group will go back and ask for the remaining money to complete the management part of the plan.
Since CILL is a nonprofit, the group is working closely with Kitsap Countys Noxious Weed Board and its program coordinator Dana Coggon, who files much of the paperwork for grant applications and was on hand for the sample collecting this week.
However, to make sure as much of the money as possible goes to the lake, Spohn said CILL members are donating as much time and as many resources resources to the effort as they can. That includes his boat, which was used for Wednesdays collecting and will be used for future efforts.
The overall objectives of the cleanup are to reduce the phosphorus concentrations in the lake, reduce the occurrence and frequency of Cyanobacteria blooms, and to manage the aquatic plant population to promote beneficial uses of the lake.
Gibbons said this will by no means be a quick fix, and he compared the process to the ongoing maintenance homeowners do for their lawns.
Lets say you pull out all the dandelions. No matter how good a job you do, youre going to have to repeat the process, Gibbons said. This lake is a very productive system and it will have to be monitored and coached into maximizing (its environment). | <urn:uuid:1664ee1f-5331-49a3-ba69-7ad441e4ce64> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.portorchardindependent.com/news/19841894.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00075-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.971557 | 808 | 1.523438 | 2 |
In the early 1960s, the Greenwich Village folk scene took a left turn away from the clean-cut sounds of, say, The Kingston Trio. Bob Dylan was singing "Masters of War"; Phil Ochs had "Power and the Glory." That didn't sit well with Peter Stampfel.
"I really hated the seriousness of the people on the folk music scene," Stampfel says. "I thought it was stupid. I mean, it was beautiful stuff, but it was goofy, too. At least some of it was, and I thought the goofiness was one of the great things about it."
Stampfel admits that his own band, the Holy Modal Rounders, was silly. But it wasn't doing parodies of old folk songs. Its members knew the music inside and out.
"I got the idea in 1963: What if Charlie Poole, and Charley Patton, and Uncle Dave Macon and all those guys were magically transported from the late 1920s to 1963?" Stampfel says. "And then they were exposed to contemporary rock 'n' roll. What did they do? And that sounded way, way, way more interesting than trying to be Mr. Note Perfect 1929."
The Holy Modal Rounders filled out an odd profile in the thick of the 1960s folk movement: It was challenging tradition by taking it into weird and psychedelic realms. The Rounders had a small but intensely devoted following, and one of the group's songs was even included in a major motion picture.
The duo's influence has grown steadily over the intervening decades, inspiring a younger generation of innovative folk musicians — and filmmakers. The Rounders are now the subject of the new documentary Bound to Lose.
Seriously Free Spirits
Peter Stampfel grew up in Wisconsin during the 1940s, and discovered folk music and the five-string banjo at the University of Wisconsin. His partner in musical crime was Steve Weber, a country-blues guitar player who grew up in Philadelphia. Weber dropped out of high school and lived on the streets of New York City for a number of years before teaming up with Stampfel. Even today, Weber is a free spirit.
"Even if you ain't got one yourself, you can break into a party and make it your own," he says in Bound to Lose. "And that's what I've been doing all my life. Ain't that right?"
The film's co-director, Paul Lovelace, was less than prepared for Weber's antics.
"I've never met anyone that just completely lives by his own rules," Lovelace says. "You can ask him, 'Where are you playing tomorrow night?' And he would have no idea, and no interest. But at the same time, he does take the music part of it seriously. His abilities as a musician, his abilities as a singer and a guitar player — he really has a lot of pride in that."
Weber's seriousness was evident from The Holy Modal Rounders' very first gig together, Stampfel says.
"We were on stage at some little club on Bleecker Street, and all of a sudden I hit a bad note," Stampfel says. "And Weber winced as if he had been kicked in the gut and played an excruciatingly dissonant chord on the beat following my bad note, followed by four more chords — each one more dissonant than the one prior to that — and then he screamed and leaped off the stage. 'And I thought, 'Wow! This is great!' "
The Punishment Brothers
Both on- and offstage, Weber and Stampfel were like oil and water: Much of their relationship was built on bickering. Paul Lovelace saw a lot of this during the making of the documentary.
"Peter and Steve would bicker very, very often," he says. "They really are like an old married couple. They love each other to death at times, but they also just can't stand being around each other at times."
Bassist Dave Reisch noticed the tension the minute he joined the band in 1971.
"Peter and Steve had a strange relationship," Reisch says. "They bounce off each other. They also had a little shtick — they were 'The Punishment Brothers.' They said, 'I'm cruel and he's unusual.' "
Their odd behavior may have been fueled by drug use, which Stampfel does not deny.
"Our first album was recorded on speed and pot," he says. "All our early albums were recorded on... well, I was on amphetamine and marijuana and beer. How [the substances] affected it was what you hear when you hear the records."
Wins And Losses
Despite the Rounders' self-destructive behavior, their song "If You Want to Be a Bird" wound up in the movie Easy Rider. But the musicians couldn't capitalize, and the group split up in 1971. Weber and the rest of the band moved to Portland, Ore., where the guitarist succumbed to heroin addiction. Stampfel stayed in New York.
Years later, the two would reunite for the occasional album and gig. But Weber was a no-show for the band's 40th-anniversary tour in 2004. He refuses to talk to Stampfel and has disappeared somewhere in West Virginia.
"Yeah, he won't speak to me," Stampfel says. "His girlfriend convinced him that I have stolen the Rounder millions. I mean, there's occasional Rounders hundreds, but as far as Rounders millions goes, that would be nice, but no."
While The Holy Modal Rounders never reached a mass level of popularity, the band's cult status continues to grow. It's influenced a new generation of musicians, including bands like Yo La Tengo and Espers. But Stampfel says he wanted that influence to be broader.
"I felt that something big and amazing was going to happen to popular music that would change everything," he says. "And of course I was right about that, and it was The Beatles. The delusional part was that I thought it was going to be The Holy Modal Rounders."
Even though the title of the documentary says the Rounders were Bound to Lose, in the end, they won in a way, showing purists a thing or two about letting go. | <urn:uuid:764672f4-cfba-42e5-ac88-90e788e19a3b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=101105671 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00058-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.987972 | 1,326 | 1.695313 | 2 |
US and EU free trade alliance closer to reality
The United States and the European Union have agreed to push for the launch by the end of June of talks to create the world’s biggest free trade alliance, which could be a benchmark for global competitors to follow.
Such a deal would be most ambitious attempted since the founding of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) in 1995, encompassing half the world’s economic output and a third of global trade flows.
“These negotiations will set a standard, not only for our future bilateral trade and investment, including regulatory issues, but also for the development of global trade rules,” European Commission president Jose Manuel Barroso said yesterday. “Both of us need growth, and both of us have budgetary problems.”
Speaking after the release of a joint US/EU report recommending the start of talks, Mr Barroso said the two were expected to launch negotiations in the first half of the year.
The report sees a deal boosting the EU’s economy by around 0.5 per cent and the US economy by around 0.4 per cent by 2027, with €86 billion (£74bn) of added annual income for the EU and €65bn (£56bn) for the US.
The report’s release comes after US president Barack Obama threw his weight behind a potential deal on Tuesday night in his state of the union address, saying that it would support millions of good-paying American jobs.
Jobs and growth provide the rationale for an alliance, given both economies are struggling to break free from almost five years of downturns and stunted recovery, as well as rising competition from China and other emerging economies.
EU trade commissioner Karel De Gucht has warned the talks will be tough, with no “low-hanging fruit”. Import tariffs between the two are already low, at an average of 4 per cent.
Negotiations will focus on harmonising standards, from car seat belts to household cleaning products, and regulations governing services.
Mr De Gucht said that, ideally, the negotiations should be wrapped up in two years.
Trade between the US and the EU is already huge, reaching €2bn a day, Mr De Gucht added.
Before talks can start, the US Congress must be notified and the European Commission needs approval from EU member states. It will present draft negotiating directives in March – no doubt prompting debate. EU trade ministers took four months to overcome resistance from the car industry to start negotiations to create a free trade pact with Japan.
One of the key sticking points is likely to be agriculture. When a transatlantic trade deal was suggested in 1998, it was shot down by France, which feared the EU could be forced into concessions on farm trade.
The US has long been frustrated with EU restrictions on American farm products such as genetically modified (GMO) crops, poultry treated with chlorine washes and meat from animals given ractopamine, a growth stimulant banned in the EU, China and Russia.
In an early sign of EU reticence, Mr Barroso said the negotiations would not compromise consumer health. He said: “We will not negotiate changes that we do not want of the basic rules on either side, be it on hormones or GMOs.”
The US does not want a repeat of the Doha round of world trade talks, which began in 2001 and have never come to a conclusion, a point made by US vice-president Joe Biden in a speech earlier this month.
“We should try to do it on one tank of gas and avoid protracted rounds of negotiations,” he said.
British Prime Minister David Cameron said in a statement he would use Britain’s chairmanship of the G8 this year to help break down trade barriers and secure a comprehensive deal.
Reaction to the announcement was favourable, with the French and German governments and business organisations welcoming the chance to boost economic growth.
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Weather for Edinburgh
Wednesday 19 June 2013
Temperature: 8 C to 19 C
Wind Speed: 20 mph
Wind direction: West
Temperature: 11 C to 19 C
Wind Speed: 7 mph
Wind direction: North | <urn:uuid:60c076e6-13fd-4a1f-8fca-40f5009c73e5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.scotsman.com/news/international/us-and-eu-free-trade-alliance-closer-to-reality-1-2790635 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00047-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.95467 | 881 | 1.796875 | 2 |
Intercultural Relations Program
View & Voice: A Film and Discussion Series on Race and Difference.
This series is made up of a host of provocative documentary and/or feature films that address issues of race, culture and social difference. The films are used as a catalyst for discussion in an effort to heighten awareness and promote understanding among members of the Wesleyan and surrounding community.
Intercultural Relations Programs Planning Committee.
This committee is made up of Wesleyan students and faculty/staff. It helps in the planning and coordination of Wesleyan's diversity programs for the academic year. It is co-chaired by the Intercultural Relations Program Coordinator Intern.
African-American Alumni Weekend Celebration.
The African-American Alumni Weekend Celebration is a Biennial event occurring once every two years. During this weekend, African-American Alumni return to Wesleyan's campus to meet and fellowship with Wesleyan's current African-American students. Many alumni have formed mentoring relationships with current students and assist Wesleyan in its effort to recruit more African-American students to Wesleyan's campus.
B.A.M. (Black Awareness Month)
While West Virginia Wesleyan is committed to raising the consciousness of its entire community throughout the academic year, there are specific times of the year when we highlight the history and contributions of various groups in the tradition of celebration and appreciation through programs and events. Black Awareness Month is one such highlighted time. The Office of Intercultural Relations in collaboration with the Office of Campus Activities coordinates programs and activities during the month of February designed to heighten awareness and increase understanding.
Intercultural Relations Awards Program
The Office of Intercultural Relations includes in mission the development of leadership skills and standing students of color award certificates and plaques in recognition of their leadership skills, academic accomplishments and community service contributions. During the program, seniors are presented with ethnic printed graduation stoles among Wesleyan's students of color. Near the close of each academic year, the Office of Intercultural Relations hosts an awards program, where it bestows upon out. | <urn:uuid:ccb8d5ba-7fc3-404b-90ec-b75e9eac250e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wvwc.edu/services/InterculturalRelations/program.php | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00057-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.94601 | 415 | 2.171875 | 2 |
What is Proposition 65?
California Proposition 65 is an approved initiative that addresses concerns about exposure to chemicals known to cause cancer, birth defects, or other reproductive harm. To comply with Proposition 65, businesses are required to display a warning for listed chemicals unless exposure is low enough to pose “no significant risk” of cancer or is significantly below levels observed to cause birth defects or other reproductive harm. By providing this warning, Proposition 65 enables Californians to make informed decisions about the products they purchase and use.
What does a warning mean?
If a warning is placed on a product label, the business issuing the warning is aware or believes that one or more listed chemicals is present.
For chemicals that are listed as causing cancer, the "no significant risk level” is defined as the level of exposure that would result in not more than one excess case of cancer in 100,000 individuals exposed to the chemical over a 70-year lifetime. In other words, a person exposed to the chemical at the “no significant risk level” for 70 years would not have more than a “one in 100,000” chance of developing cancer as a result of that exposure.
For chemicals that are listed as causing birth defects or reproductive harm, the “no observable effect level” is divided by 1,000 in order to provide an ample margin of safety. Warnings are issued if the exposure to listed chemicals which cause birth defects or reproductive harm exceed 1/1000th of the “no observable effect level.”
What types of chemicals are on the Proposition 65 list?
The list contains a wide range of naturally occurring and synthetic chemicals that are known to cause cancer, birth defects, or other reproductive harm. These chemicals include additives or ingredients in common household products, food, drugs, tobacco, pesticides, dyes, solvents, construction products, manufacturing products, and byproducts of chemical processes. The list of chemicals is available at http://www.oehha.ca.gov/prop65/prop65_list/Newlist.html.
I recently bought a product that came with a Proposition 65 warning. How can I trust that the product is safe?
According to the OEHHA, the organization that administers Proposition 65, “the fact that a product bears a Proposition 65 warning does not mean by itself that the product is unsafe.” Proposition 65 can be considered to be more a “right to know” law than a pure product safety law. It is intended to inform and empower Californian consumers so they can better decide whether or not they would like to purchase and use the product.
Why has Peelplus® placed a Proposition 65 warning on its products?
Peelplus® has chosen to display the Proposition 65 warning based on the possible presence of one or more listed chemicals, without evaluating the level of exposure. The level of exposure in our products may be negligible or well within the “no significant risk level.” However, to uphold Californian consumers’ rights to make informed decisions, we have opted to place the Proposition 65 warnings on all our products.
Where can I get more information on Proposition 65?
For general information about Proposition 65, please visit http://oehha.ca.gov/prop65/background/p65plain.html. | <urn:uuid:9e9fcbe3-9b78-4a16-8ace-1216a9e23c99> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://stores.ebay.com/PeelPlus/California-Proposition-65.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00071-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.94052 | 681 | 3.171875 | 3 |
The little stick turned blue. Your hopes are confirmed. You are pregnant!
This is one of the biggest, most life changing events you will ever experience. So, once you get past the initial excitement about the impending baby, the frenzy of baby booties and the mountains of unsolicited advice from friends and loved ones, it is important to consider the practical matters of bringing a new life into the world. Matters like legal preparation.
Having a baby starts with a pregnancy. Most women are perfectly healthy and able to work or go to school normally. Some, on the other hand, face complications. Several women perform work that may be considered hazardous to the growing baby; other times women are ill and unable to complete their normal tasks.
Employers are required, under federal law, to treat pregnancy the same way they would any other temporary disability. If the pregnant woman is still able to work, employers can assign different, more accessible tasks or modify duties if there are other job functions she can perform. The pregnancy may require short term disability leave. In this case, pay or payments will be made based on corporate and state policies pertaining to disability. If you have sick time or vacation time accumulated, your employer needs to let you use it during your absence. So, it is wise to investigate your disability insurance coverage and paid time off you may have before you get pregnant.
As the full term of your pregnancy draws near, you are probably thinking about maternity leave. Some women work up to the day - or hour - they give birth. Others prefer to take off a little time before the baby comes.
Like disability insurance, maternity leave policies vary depending on your company and the state in which you live. However, no matter where you reside in the U.S., you are covered by the Family and Medical Leave Act. In most instances, if your office has at least 50 employees at your location and you have worked for a minimum of 12 consecutive months (with a total of 1250 hours), you are guaranteed at least 12 weeks off from work. This leave is not limited to mothers; the father of the baby can take paternity leave and take off 12 weeks of his own. What if mom and dad are not married? As long as the dad can prove he is the biological father (in most cases having his name on the birth certificate is adequate), he is entitled to the leave under federal law. Many couples use this to make sure that their newborn is taken care of by a parent for the first several months.
The bad news? You are not guaranteed any sort of pay for this time off; although, you will be assured of getting your job back. But, you may be able to get paid under your disability policy, if you have one. For example, in California, a woman may take off up to four weeks before the birth of her baby and up to six weeks after a normal delivery and receive some compensation under the state disability program.
Baby Is Here... What Now?
Baby has arrived and you're all settling into your new life. More than just getting used to late nights and early mornings, you still have to ensure your rights and protect the health, safety and well-being of your baby. Use this checklist to make sure you have everything covered.
Health insurance: If you are covered under your employer's health benefits program, you should find out what is involved in adding your baby to your policy. Some plans require the employee to pay additional premiums, while other plans are all-inclusive. If you do not have health insurance, look into private policies you can purchase or state coverage for low-income families. Ensure your new baby's health needs are covered.
Breast Feeding: Breast milk is healthy for babies, less expensive than formula and very portable. It may be the most natural thing in the world, but breastfeeding in public is not legally protected everywhere. While a majority of states in the U.S. have legislation entitling women to breastfeed their babies in any public or private location, others do not protect this right and women who expose their breasts even to feed their babies may be subject to public indecency laws. In addition, several states require employers to provide space and time for breastfeeding mothers to express breast milk during their workdays. It is important for mothers to check their individual state's laws to see what protections are offered.
Estate Planning: While you probably do not want to consider your own passing, it is important that you think about it long enough to do some estate planning. The most important thing to do is to choose a guardian to take care of your baby, in the event that something happens to you. If you have not indicated your wishes in this matter, the courts will make a guardianship determination that may be contrary to what you would have wanted.
Also, to ensure your baby's financial future, you will want to name a trustee to look after your baby's finances. Make sure that you have ample life insurance to see to your baby's needs if you are no longer around.
Babies = Responsibility
As you can see, the responsibility of having a baby is not limited to making sure your little bundle is diapered and fed. However, with a good understanding of your insurance, legal rights and the assistance available to you, you will be well prepared. | <urn:uuid:f5329699-dc00-48cb-b133-fceb251b8073> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.legalzoom.com/everyday-law/home-leisure/having-baby-your-legal | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00037-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967672 | 1,082 | 1.921875 | 2 |
Frequently Asked Questions - Running an organisation
The management committee of a voluntary or community organisation is the group of people who come together to organise the wider group and decide how it will be run. The committee is responsible for the management and administration of the organisation.
The management committee needs to ensure that the organisation meets its objectives, and follows the procedures laid out in the constitution or rules.
The committee needs to:
- Ensure that any actions taken and decisions made are in the interests of the organisation and beneficiaries (not for the personal benefit of committee members)
- Ensure that accounts and reports are completed, and the organisation manages its assets and resources correctly
- Set overall policy and objectives for the organisation, and decide on new work
- Set up systems for monitoring and evaluation
- Promote the organisation
- Meet regularly
- Make sure that the organisation operates within the law
It is important that the committee has the skills to oversee the work of the organisation, and the time to be committed to developing it. The committee is ultimately responsible for everything the organisation does.
The committee usually elects a Chair, Secretary and Treasurer (and sometimes a Vice Chair), who fulfil particular roles within the group.
Almost anyone! The constitution or rules will say who is entitled to be a member of the group's committee, but there may be certain people who cannot be by law (e.g. under 18 year olds, people with an unspent criminal conviction or people who are bankrupt).
The Chair's responsibilities involve planning and running meetings. This includes:
- Ensuring meetings are held (in accordance with the rules set by the constitution)
- Helping plan the agenda and papers, and checking actioned items have been carried out as agreed
- Ensuring the meeting is quorate (it has enough people present to make decisions – this will be set out in the rules)
- Signing previous minutes and ensuring the agenda is adhered to
- Making sure everyone has a chance to participate in the meeting
- Ensuring voting procedures are complied with, key decisions are made and minutes taken
Depending on the size and nature of the organisation, there may be tasks around supporting or supervising staff, taking part in staff recruitment, acting as a spokesperson for the group, and making some decisions (depending on the constitution). She/he might also be a signatory on the group's bank account.
A good Chair should:
- Be able to clarify, explain and summarise
- Consider everyone's suggestions, and make sure everyone gets the chance to speak
- Follow the agenda and stick to the times set for items
- Try to be objective and unbiased
- Be patient
- Stimulate group discussions
- Make sure people understand the decisions being made
The Vice Chair's main role is to chair meetings if the Chair is absent. He or she may take on additional responsibilities (i.e. some of the Chair's tasks) if the group decide to split the role.
The role of the Treasurer revolves around management of finances, (but the committee as a whole are all jointly and individually responsible for the management of money). The Treasurer’s duties include:
- Financial management and keeping records
- Managing income, including collecting fees and ensuring funding due is received
- Financial planning and budgeting (with the rest of the committee)
- Book keeping and record keeping
- Being involved in fundraising applications and reports
- Dealing with banking arrangements (the treasurer is usually one of the signatories)
- Preparing annual accounts and /or liaising with accountant
- Reporting regularly to the committee about the group’s finances
A good treasurer should:
- Be able to manage money effectively
- Keep track of income and expenditure
- Be able to produce clear reports regularly
- Have an understanding of what can and can’t be spent by the organisation (and on what)
In an unincorporated group (a group that is not registered as a company) the Secretary’s role includes:
- Ensuring meetings are called and papers circulated (in line with the rules laid out in the constitution)
- Taking minutes of meetings
- Keeping records of members’ details
- Ensuring reports are written and accounts submitted
- Booking meeting venues/ refreshments
- Dealing with any other correspondence
A good Secretary should:
- Be organised
- Be able to take clear, concise minutes
- Work with the Chair
- Keep clear records
- Be able to write letters on behalf of the group
To be a charity, an organisation must demonstrate that it has purposes that are exclusively charitable. It must also show that it provides a public benefit.
A charity’s purposes are its aims or objects, which are usually set out in its governing document. The “charitable purposes” set out in the Charities Act 2006 are:
- The prevention and relief of poverty
- The advancement of education
- The advancement of religion
- The advancement of health
- The advancement of citizenship or community development
- The advancement of arts, heritage or science
- The advancement of amateur sport
- The advancement of human rights, conflict resolution or reconciliation
- The advancement of environmental protection and improvement
- The relief of those in need, by reason of youth, age, ill-health, disability, financial disadvantage or other disadvantage
- The advancement of animal welfare
- The promotion of the efficiency of the armed forces of the Crown
- Other purposes recognised under existing charity law or considered "analogous" to any of the above
- can enjoy relief from some taxes;
- pay no more than 20% of normal business rates on the buildings which they use and occupy to further their charitable purposes;
- can be eligible for special VAT treatment in certain circumstances;
- are often able to raise funds more easily than non-charitable bodies;
- can formally represent, and help to meet the needs of, the community.
There are restrictions on what charities can do, both in terms of the types of work they do, and the ways in which they can operate:
- a charity must have exclusively charitable purposes
- there are limits to the amount of political or campaigning activities that a charity can be involved in
- strict rules apply to trading by charities
- trustees are not allowed to receive financial benefits from the charity that they manage unless this is specifically authorised by the charity’s governing document or by the Charity Commission
- trustees must avoid any situation where charitable and personal interests conflict
- charity law imposes certain financial reporting obligations (these vary depending on the size of the charity)
If an organisation has exclusively charitable purposes and one or more of the following minimum requirements for registration, then it must register with the Charity Commission:
- an income of more than £5,000 a year; or
- the use or occupation of any land or buildings; or
- assets which constitute permanent endowment (ie where there is a restriction on the expenditure of the capital and (normally) only the income can be spent on the charity’s purposes)
The Charity Commission says that, in exceptional circumstances, it will consider registering a charity that does not meet these minimum requirements.
You should only register your organisation if you believe that its purposes are exclusively charitable and it meets the minimum requirements for registering.
Online registration (or an application pack) is available from the Charity Commission website: www.charitycommission.gov.uk or telephone 0845 300 0218 (Contact Centre)
Remember that the Charity Commission receives lots of registration applications and does not know your organisation. You should therefore provide as much supporting literature with your application as you can. This could be promotional literature, grant applications if applicable, newspaper articles, business plans and so on. You should also provide a full description of your proposed activities.
We can work with you to make sure your governing document is suitable for charity registration. Once you have amended your governing document, or adopted a new one, we can help you to complete the charity registration process. Remember to keep a copy of everything that you send to the Charity Commission.
Hopefully, your application will be straightforward, but if you have any problems during the registration process we can liaise with the Charity Commission on your behalf.
We can also help you identify suitable organisations to approach for funding (although we can’t help you actually fill in funding applications). And we can give you ongoing support as your voluntary organisation grows.
All this help is completely free. To access it, contact York CVS’s Development team.
Registration leads to a number of ongoing duties and responsibilities, such as:
- keeping your charity’s accounts
- telling the Charity Commission of any changes to your governing document
- telling the Charity Commission of any changes to the details of your charity that appear on the Register of Charities (such as the name and address of the charity correspondent)
- sending back the Annual Return issued by the Charity Commission (if your annual income or expenditure is over £10,000). This should be accompanied by the Charity’s Accounts, Examiner’s or Auditor’s Report and Trustees’ Annual Report. | <urn:uuid:a2da605a-010d-4e76-aeda-bdab7e9eff94> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.yorkcvs.org.uk/faq/running-organisation | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.941607 | 1,892 | 2.25 | 2 |
Brazilian Blowout has released a misleading statement declaring that, when tested, “exposure levels to cosmetologists and clients considered safe.” We’ll post the statement below, then I’ll take you through my analysis:
Independent salon air monitoring performed by one of California’s leading environmental safety companies, Health Science Associates (HSA), has concluded that Cosmetologists exposure levels are more than SIX times lower than OSHA’s most stringent and conservative standard for air quality safety.
On October 9, 2010, HSA performed a comprehensive Air Monitoring Study over an eight-hour period in a typical salon environment, while Cosmetologists performed multiple Brazilian Blowout professional smoothing treatments throughout the day. The table below details the results of their scientific testing.
Test Summary: The breathing air (breathing zone) of two licensed Cosmetologists was monitored while each performed two Brazilian Blowout Professional Smoothing Treatments in the same test salon, over the same eight-hour period. Their separate exposures to Formaldehyde gas in the air was determined to be 0.064 ppm and 0.073 ppm, which is well below OSHA’s most stringent requirements for an eight-hour period, called the eight-hour time weighted average (TWA).
What does this mean? The safest and most stringent level of exposure set by Federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) is called the OSHA Action Limit and is even more conservative than their “Permissible Exposure Limit” (PEL).
The OSHA Action limit is 0.5 ppm, therefore, these two Cosmetologist’s exposures were more than six times below OSHA’s most conservative measure for safety where the potential for formaldehyde gas exposure is concerned.
Conclusion: These levels indicate that OSHA safe levels of exposure are NOT exceeded.
I have no problem with the testing itself. From what I can gather, HSA is a reputable company and I’m sure their testing methods were absolutely above board.
However, everything in this test hinges upon one singular thing: the bottle of Brazilian Blowout solution itself.
Let’s review: bottles of Brazilian Blowout solution have been found in both the US and Canada that were labelled formaldehyde-free and yet which contained 8%, 10%, 12%, etc. formaldehyde. This is an undisputed fact . Whether all bottles of Brazilian Blowout contain formaldehyde at those varying levels of significance is to be determined.
Brazilian Blowout is spinning all manner of paranoid conspiracy theories: there’s a witch hunt, other companies are jealous, bottles were tampered with, Oregon-OSHA should have obtained the bottles directly from them, etc.
But let’s put ourselves on Brazilian Blowout’s side for one second while considering this test. You’re about to perform a test with a reputable agency to determine whether stylists are being exposed to carcinogenic levels of formaldehyde…and you also know that there absolutely exist out there in random salons bottles containing formaldehyde up to 12%. Even if every single bottle found to contain formaldehyde at those levels was a sheer fluke–maybe a faulty batch once went out, maybe some bottles were erroneously labeled formaldehyde-free and then sent to salons–and every other bottle of Brazilian Blowout on the market is indeed formaldehyde-free (eye roll), would you risk HSA testing bottles that, oops!, were part of that anomaly? No. You know there are formaldehyde-containing bottles out there and you’re not going to chance it.
I’d wager these were brand-new bottles tested, provided directly by Brazilian Blowout to HSA–under the guise of “professionalism” to “prove” that the bottles hadn’t been tampered with by evil salons, money-grubbing CEOs of other companies, ax-grinding journalists, Al Qaeda, etc.
As multiple samples have been taken from multiple salons in two countries, it is a fact that Brazilian Blowout does, indeed, have many bottles out there which contain formaldehyde and yet are labeled formaldehyde-free. (Can I hammer this point home enough?)
This test does not prove that salon operators around the country and Canada are safe. What it does prove is that the bottles used in this testing–and this testing alone–either didn’t contain formaldehyde or contained very low levels.
One problem, though: those fresh bottles aren’t what’s on the market at your corner salon to be performed on nursing women, those with “hyde” allergies, and health-savvy consumers who understand the risks of formaldehyde exposure at this level. You know what is on the market? Bottles marked formaldehyde-free containing formaldehyde levels at 8%, 10%, 12% etc.
No. What pisses me off about this story is if Brazilian Blowout contains formaldehyde and they’re lying about it.
I’d like to have some accountability from this company explaining how bottles have flooded the market labelled formaldehyde-free yet which contain 10% formaldehyde. What about the stylists who have been performing Brazilian Blowouts using the bottles that did contain 10% formaldehyde? How are their exposure levels?
That’s the story: a company deciding they’d corner the market by passing themselves off as formaldehyde-free–not a theoretical breakdown of the safety levels of pristine, no doubt formaldehyde-free bottles. | <urn:uuid:bb138f18-83ec-48b6-8b3f-64246530c577> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wellsphere.com/skin-beauty-article/brazilian-blowout-8217-s-latest-statement-regarding-formaldehyde-levels/1252857 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00045-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.949443 | 1,153 | 1.921875 | 2 |
An oft-repeated phrase when one enters an old house is “if these walls could speak, the stories they’d tell.” In Germany, it is possible for the walls to speak about the families that lived there for centuries in the form of a book called a häuserchronik.
What would you say if I told you there might be a book that is like a City Directory, only it is listed by street addresses and also records deed transactions of the houses? And, the book also contains some personal information about the residents, including occupations, marriage information, and more? Well, if your ancestors came from Germany, there really may be such a book!
When I first visited the town my Bavarian ancestors came from, I was given a “häuserchronik” as a gift. The full title of the book, published in 1982, is Häuserchronik der Stadt Pfaffenhofen a.d. Ilm by Heinrich Streidel. It provided tons of genealogical information that was later verified by researching decades of church records. I couldn’t believe that such things existed…and that you don’t hear more about them!
Here is an example of one entry found in the book. The house is currently known in the town as Löwenstraße 14, formerly Judengasse 11. Before that, the house had a number assigned to it. Beginning in 1676, it was 67 II District. From 1810-1861, it was house #55. And from 1862-1927, it was house #79. In old towns such as Pfaffenhofen, houses were numbered as they were built. So, house #10 was not necessarily in between houses #9 and #11 – it could be on the other side of town! Occasionally, the houses were renumbered, probably because by then it became too difficult to find an address! At this particular house, the record begins back in 1614! My ancestors appear in the house’s record in 1746 as follows [translated to English, with my comments in brackets]:
1746, 4 Jan
Eger, Bernhard, shoemaker – purchased (Kaufsumme or “sum”) for “280 fl”
[According to the book’s preface, in 1982 the “fl” or gulden was equal to about 1.71 Marks. Today, that’s roughly 236 Euros! He was about 25 years old at the time.]
1746, 21 Jun
The above marries Arnold, Maria Anna, from Jägern/Edlmünster
[She’s not my ancestor…she dies in April, 1761 at age 35 during childbirth.]
1761, 30 Oct
Eggerer (Eger), Bernhard, widower, shoemaker, marries Stainer, Maria Margarete, from Freising
[Note the changing spelling of the surname, which will change one more time in a later entry before "stabilizing" – it was common for names to change over time as spelling became more formal and/or more people became literate. Unfortunately, he dies 17 years later in June, 1778 after they’ve had many children, including my ancestor Ignaz.]
1778, 18 Jul Eggerer, Maria Margarete, shoemaker’s widow
[This entry shows that changes were made to the records for events such as the husband’s death.]
1797, 10 Jan
Echerer (Eggerer), Ignaz, son, and Maria Anna, born Kaillinger, glassmaker’s daughter
[He was 32 years old; they married on 22 Jan 1797]
1844, 13 Feb
Echerer, Ignaz, son, marries Nigg, Magdalena
[He was 41 years old; they married on 19 Feb 1844]
1847, 12 Jun
He sells to a new family for 1400 fl, or 1200 Euros in 1982 money. Interestingly enough, the new owner sells it three years later for 2400 fl, proving that “house flipping” isn’t such a modern concept.
So, where did the family go? The house had been in the family for 100 years. The answer was also in the book. They moved to a different house, the current address of which is Schulstrasse 5. This house is even older than the previous one, as the records begin back in 1511! What is interesting is the immediate history prior to the purchase by Ignaz. Before I had done research with the church records, I would have only looked for his surname and ignored the rest. But, after complete research, I know the full story of the family relationships, so I will back up a bit in the house’s history.
1784, bought for 420 fl by Höck, Johann, master carpenter
1794, 12 Apr, daughter Therese marries
1794, 26 Apr, Nick, Karl, Town Master Carpenter
1844, 02 May, Nick, Rosalie, daughter, marries Aicher, Christian, master carpenter
It is from this couple that Ignaz and Magdalena buy the house for 3,980 fl. We saw from the previous entry that Nigg is Magdalena’s maiden name. Rosalie is her sister, Karl is her father (so she was born in this house), and the owner back in 1784 was her grandfather! After the couple purchases the house, it remains in the family until 1899. My great-grandmother, Maria Echerer, was born there in 1875 to Karl Echerer, son of Ignaz and Magdalena, and Margarethe Fischer. It appears that the house was owned by my great-grandmother’s brother, Karl, from 1896 to 1899 when he sold it for 10,800 Marks.
As you can see from the above example, there is an extraordinary amount of genealogical data to be found in such books. Other entries were less detailed, but nearly every house’s history had some information on marriages, including where the spouse may have come from if the town was not the same, and occupations. It appears based on the above that a new entry was made after the death of a spouse, a marriage, or the passing of the house to a son or daughter, which is why this sort of history has more in common with deed records than what Americans would call “city directories”.
But, where do you find such a treasure if it exists for your town? Well, it’s not easy. What makes the search even more complicated are the different names that Germans use. For my town of Pfaffenhofen, the book is called a häuserchronik. But similar information might be found in a heimatbuch, or town history. Some towns even have something called a ortssippenbuch or ortsfamilienbücher, which are books containing the genealogical data of an entire town or village. None of these useful resources are maintained in one place, so they are difficult to find.
First, I would try a search at www.familysearch.org for your family’s town – there are some of the above resources that would be listed if they are microfilmed.
Next, simply search on www.google.com for your town name, plus one of the above words.
You can also find success at German bookstores. One useful site that seems to have many “historical” books – and also has an English search page – is www.zvab.de. Put the town name in the subject search and see what you find!
Did you know that there are foreign versions of E-bay? You’re more likely to find a German book on Germany’s E-bay at www.ebay.de. Search for the town name, or even a surname. I found many heimatbucher waiting to be found by genealogists. It does help if you speak the language, though. While ordering via E-bay isn’t that difficult in any language, once you get the book it helps to be able to decipher the contents! I have several German books, but I don’t read German. If I did, or if I tried a little harder with a dictionary, I might know a lot more about my ancestors’ towns by now.
Finally, there is a database available at www.ortsfamilienbuecher.de that has listings of some “town heritage books”. I have not found an online resource that lists “häuserchronik” books specifically, but a local heritage book may also have genealogical information. You may have better luck contacting town or local archives to determine if any exist for your town.
Good luck, and I hope you all find similar genealogical treasures from your ancestors’ towns. | <urn:uuid:f8fc6ad7-f40a-4f49-90e0-c40745200fb4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://pastprologue.wordpress.com/2008/02/12/if-these-walls-could-speak-a-german-hauserchronik/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00062-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.970524 | 1,901 | 1.929688 | 2 |
As China is transformed, relations between society, the state, and the city have become central. The Great Urban Transformation investigates what is happening in cities, the urban edges, and the rural fringe in order to explain these relations. Hyun Bang Shin highly recommends this book to students of China’s urbanisation, and those who would like to gain an insight into the underlying mechanisms of Chinese cities’ territorial expansion and the emerging struggles around land and housing.
The Great Urban Transformation: Politics of Land and Property in China. You-tien Hsing. Oxford University Press. March 2012. Paperback Edition. 272 pages.
Even frequent visitors to China are amazed at the growth speed of Chinese cities. One of the first things a visitor to cities like Beijing or Guangzhou has to do upon arrival is to grab the latest version of the city map, as old streets and neighbourhoods disappear under the hammer and new ones emerge every few months, if not weeks. Cities also expand their administrative territory, merging rural countries and converting villages into urban neighbourhoods.
China’s latest census in 2010 shows that 49.7 per cent of the national population lives in urban areas. By the end of 2011, for the first time in its modern history, China has become an urban state with the urban population share exceeding 50 per cent. Not only have cities become the main loci of everyday life for the Chinese population, but they have also become the sites of wealth accumulation, experiencing profound changes that are sometimes referred to as ‘the concrete revolution’. What is the major driving momentum of China’s urbanisation? According to You-tien Hsing, it is the land politics and the rising importance of land as assets for urban governments.
In order to help readers understand You-tien Hsing’s arguments, it is perhaps useful to briefly explain China’s land tenure system. In a nutshell, land in China is divided into state ownership of urban land and the rural collectives’ ownership of rural farm land. One of the major milestones in China’s reform initiatives was the land reform, which allowed the market transaction of ‘granted land use rights’ for urban land, detached from the state land ownership. In return for using the land for a fixed period of time (70 years for residential use and less for other uses), users pay land-use premium. Essentially this is a dualism of freehold and leasehold, except for the fact that the state is the only entity that can possess freehold. Urban governments are delegated by the central state with the power to administer this transaction, and the revenues collected such as land use premium go into urban government’s extra-budgetary account. In the case of rural farm land, it is required by law to convert the rural land into urban construction land before the transfer of use right, the process of which is effectively to bring it under the urban government control.
You-tien Hsing argues that the state-land tenure and the dualism of land ownership and land use rights is at the centre of what she calls ‘urban-centred accumulation’, which becomes the key to understand why urban governments strive to expand its territory and pay attention to urban redevelopment in existing built-up areas. As urban governments become increasingly dependent on land-generated extra-budgetary revenues to pay for urban construction, local politics increasingly revolve around land politics as urban governments seek various means to bring more land under their control.
To explain how land politics play out, You-tien Hsing produces a tripartite functional division of urban territories: (i) inner-city areas or the traditional urban centres; (ii) villages at the urban fringe where the urban intersects with the rural; (iii) rural fringe of metropolitan areas. In inner-city areas, she argues that urban land battles are fought between municipal governments and what she calls socialist land masters. The latter refers to those powerful enterprises or institutions, who believe they have de facto control of land they have occupied for decades during the planned economy period and who wish to benefit from the new land lease system. In urban fringe areas that become increasingly attractive for real estate projects, municipal governments strive to convert those parcels legally owned by rural collectives into urban construction land in order to bring them under the control of the municipality. Village collectives on the other hand strive to maintain a certain degree of territorial autonomy, while negotiating with much more powerful municipalities to maximise their gains for economic survival. In rural fringe areas that lie further away from the power of metropolitan governments, lower-tier township governments tend to exercise their informal power over rural land to promote various projects for township development, often involving illegal land use right transfer that leaves farmers landless.
In addition to the land politics at various geographical scales, what becomes even more enlightening in You-tien Hsing’s analysis is how these politics lead to struggles and resistance launched by those people affected by the government land-grabbing. Following the tripartite division of urban territories, she pays particular attention to home-owners and (public sector) tenants in inner-city areas, who resist forced eviction and demand fair compensation and relocation in return for house demolition. In urban fringe areas, her attention moves to the struggle between land-owning village collectives and urban governments, which emerge out of the village collectives’ aspiration to secure economic rights and out of their fight against urban governments’ land expropriation. In rural fringe areas of metropolitan region, the township governments’ illicit land expropriation strips farmers of their land for cultivation as well as their economic and social basis, occasionally resulting in “fragmented and localised” mobilisation.
You-tien Hsing’s perspective on land-centred urban accumulation thus provides readers with a tool to clearly understand why urban governments in China strive to expand and why land has become so important for local governments. Her work also sheds light on the possible reasons behind the emergence of various protests launched individually by families who face eviction due to urban redevelopment projects. These projects often produce commercial flats that displaced residents can no longer afford. Her work also provides a convincing explanatory tool for analysing why township governments commit to illegal land seizures in spite of farmers’ violent protests, as was the case in Wukan, Guangzhou at the end of 2011.
What is missing in her book perhaps is the story of migrant workers and their families who make up a substantial share of urban population. You-tien Hsing’s emphasis on property ownership and the rising battles between legitimate property right holders leave migrants somewhere in the grey area, as they hardly have real properties to claim. Another dimension that puzzles readers would be the future of Chinese cities. How sustainable is this model in the long-term? Major cities that experience booming may be able to increase their affluence and continue to depend on urban land, but as land is finite, readers are left to wonder about how Chinese cities will coup in the coming years when cities (for various reasons) no longer find land to sell.
Nevertheless, The Great Urban Transformation is a highly recommended book to serious students of China’s urbanisation who would like to gain an insight into the underlying mechanisms of Chinese cities’ territorial expansion and the emerging struggles around land and housing.
Hyun Bang Shin is Lecturer in Urban Geography in the Department of Geography and Environment at the London School of Economics. His main research interests lie in critically analysing political economic dynamics of contemporary urban (re-)development and its socio-spatial implications, with special emphasis on Asian cities. Research topics include urban entrepreneurialism, mega-events, urban conservation, politics of redevelopment, displacement and the right to the city. He has recently completed research on socio-spatial impacts of mega-events with a case study of the 2010 Guangzhou Asian Games, funded by the STICERD/LSE Annual Fund New Researcher Award (2009-2011). He is currently involved in URBACHINA, a four-year (2011-2015) international research collaboration funded by the EU Seventh Framework Programme (FP7), and is one of the key organisers of the Urban Studies Seminar Series (2011-2012), Towards an Emerging Geography of Gentrification in the Global South, funded by the Urban Studies Foundation and the Urban Studies journal. Read more reviews by Hyun. | <urn:uuid:d687c435-ff2f-4eb8-b8c2-36083698a05d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/lsereviewofbooks/2012/06/25/book-review-the-great-urban-transformation-politics-of-land-and-property-in-china-by-you-tien-hsing/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.937507 | 1,715 | 2.671875 | 3 |
fast little loans
Cape Town - There’s nothing up in the air about “cloud computing”, a technological innovation taking the business world by storm – and which experts in information and communications technology (ICT) believe offers many potential benefits.
The system allows devices such as computers, tablets and smartphones access to virtual services and next-generation technology, with minimal costs.
For the technophobic, an easy explanation of how cloud computing works likens it to the way in which South Africans currently enjoy utilities such as water and electricity from a shared central base, with costs shared among users.
The advance will also allow businesses to establish infrastructure with little or no hassle, still gaining maximum benefits.
Aldo van Tonder, chief executive of enterprise project management specialists FOXit, believes the infrastructure benefit is the main drawcard of cloud computing.
“The major costs behind setting up your infrastructure, like hardware and licences, are no longer a stumbling block and, because of this, I see the adoption rate of newer technology definitely increasing,” he said.
Some concerns about the practice have, however, been raised, including by
Steve Ballmer, chief executive of Microsoft, who said at the London School of Economics that the drive to cloud could lead to job losses of between 10 and 15 percent in the worldwide job market.
“Because of this fear factor, I highly doubt that a lot of CIOs (chief information officers) will be able to be impartial about the move.”
His second point was the legal and security issues.
“Here, once again, the CIO will look to their teams in this regard to help advise. Once again, you sit with the same problem that they will struggle to be unbiased because it is literally their jobs at stake.”
Damian Nelson, national sales manager of FOXit, said moving on to the cloud could not be about cost-saving exclusively.
“It needs to be about driving the value in the business which, unlike cost, has no limit if done properly.
“If your company has large data centres, or even small data centres, you have already invested in infrastructure, licences, manpower to manage all of it.”
Another local ICT expert believes there is a need for better understanding of cloud computing before businesses can decide whether or not to implement the system.
Robert Sussman, joint chief executive of internet solutions company Intergr8, says there are two kinds of cloud computing – private and public clouds.
“Public clouds can be linked to popular online business systems such as Google Apps, Office 365 and Rackspace, allowing users access to vast storage facilities. Private clouds use the same infrastructure, yet allocate specific hardware to specific functions.”
Sussman believes private cloud computing is the best option for businesses, with five distinct advantages – focusing information technology on business, greater economies of scale, smarter support resources, guaranteed uptime and hassle-free upgrades.
“These factors are what see many companies even considering cloud computing in the first place. It allows agility at a reasonable cost, allowing us to launch new products, new features, and the ability to meet a growing demand,” he said. - Weekend Argus | <urn:uuid:385b3bad-0645-427c-8c91-818e534861ff> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.iol.co.za/scitech/technology/software/cloud-computing-raising-a-storm-1.1361105 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00048-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.938727 | 667 | 2.15625 | 2 |
WILLIAM N. JONES
Managing Editor of The AFRO-AMERICAN
William N. Jones, one of the most
active figures in Negro journalism today, i?
a native of South Carolina. Before gradu-
ating from the graded school of Spartan-
burg, he attended the Clennmons Episcopal
Mission School, and after a year in the
printing department of Tuskegee Institute,
he entered Benedict College, where he
graduated from the College Preparatory
and the College Departments, receiving the
degree of A. B.
Like most southern youths, Mr. Jones
has supported himself since he was 18 years
of age and worked his way through school.
During the last two years of his college
course he was a student teacher of printing
and directed the South Carolina Standard.
Although unassuming, he early demon-
strated capacity for potential leadership.
In school he was president of the Douglass
Debating Club, student manager of ath-
letics, for a while conducted the College
Band and "Mayor" of the school govern-
ment, a system of student government
which he helped to inaugurate at Benedict College and which had judicial and
legislative departments which completely controlled student life and taught self
After leaving Benedict he taught physics at Haines Institute, Augusta, Ga.,
and for two years was head of the science department of Bishop College, Marshall,
Texas, where he taught biology and conducted the work in chemistry and physics.
While teaching at Haines he became a protege of the late C. H. Turner and
helped him in his research work in biology, making studies upon which the
biologist wrote some of his pamphlets on ant life.
While doing summer work at the University of Chicago, Mr. Jones became
interested in social investigation and upon the suggestion of workers at Hull
House decided to enter this field. He gave up his place as head of the science
department at Bishop and took a job as chauffeur in Memphis as a beginning in
social service work.
Very soon he attracted the attention of Dr. George E. Haynes, then a
secretary of the National Urban League, who included his work in the Urban
In Memphis Mr. Jones developed the first municipal playground ever started
in the South and created the first position of Municipal Director of Social Survey
of Memphis. As Director oi Municipal Social Survey of Memphis, he had
charge of municipal recreation, band concerts, public dance halls, the City School
Department and branches of the city library, helped to develop the juvenile court
and the Woman's Protective Department, with a policewoman connected with
the police department.
He guided the recreation department to its purchase of the $85,000 central
auditorium and recreation park, formerly owned by Robert R. Church.
Down on the register of Benedict College in 1899, Jones wrote his life ob-
jective as that of journalist, and six years ago he left the social service field and
joined the staff of the Afro-American. Starting as court reporter, he was
promoted to City Editor and then to his present place as Managing Editor of
what has been adjudged America's best Negro journal.
Incidentally, since his connection with the Afro-American, Mr. Jones has
organized the first evening class in journalism ever conducted in a colored high
school. He is at present President of the Baltimore Century Club, affiliated with
the Baltimore Association of Commerce; Vice-President of the Baltimore Urban
League, a member of the Executive Committee of the N. A. A. C. P., a member
of the State Central Committee of the Progressive Party, a member of the Boy
Scout Council, and a member of the Association for the Handicapped. | <urn:uuid:79e96957-4b16-4abe-9761-c2fef56624da> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://aomol.net/000001/000505/html/am505--3.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00068-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.971035 | 802 | 1.671875 | 2 |
The Register famously put to the test last September, pitting network storage hardware from EMC and NetApp against a software-based storage management system from Nexenta - using commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) hardware - costing an order of magnitude less. Its conclusion was that the performance difference wasn't all that much, which drew furious criticism from EMC. But EMC's defense drew further suspicion, admitting that it too used COTS hardware for its own storage, and arguing that the differences lay in the processors EMC uses to drive high availability.What, exactly, is the difference between a storage network appliance and storage management software for networks, in terms of performance and reliability? It's a question
Cloud architectures are driving the issue of how everyday, even expendable, storage hardware can be utilized by more efficient, often open source, management software running on very-high-end processors. Now Nexenta, which blew this whole issue wide open, is training its sights on a separate, though slightly related, market: virtual desktops.
Why can't virtualization be faster?
Next Q1, Nexenta will be generally releasing a unified dashboard for VMware-based virtual desktops, called simply enough, NexentaVDI. Its purpose, as Nexenta CEO Evan Powell explained to RWW, is to automate the deployment of new virtual desktops to the extent that they can be deployed in minutes rather than hours - or, in the case of some enterprises, days.
takeaways from the VMware / Intel virtualization chat," remarked Powell (whom I'm happy to have as a regular reader), "and one of the things you mentioned was, isn't there some way that virtualization could accelerate certain workloads? And somebody said, 'Yea, if you could keep the workload local as opposed to sending it out to shared storage.' NexentaVDI is exactly that use case.""I was reading one of the articles you wrote recently where you're talking about
NexentaVDI utilizes the same engine as the NexentaStor system that matched EMC and NetApp in The Register's tests, but then adds a simplified UI with tie-ins to VMware View. That UI adds tools for deploying VMs, and then verifying and optimizing their performance levels. "It optimizes dozens, maybe north of a hundred, potential testing and optimization steps that you would take, and then it spits out a report that says, 'I've deployed 150 desktops, or 1,500, and they're now getting 103 IOPS on the read side,' whatever the performance is," the CEO explains.
Addressing the VDI bottleneck issue
"The number one problem in VDI, according to both the Citrix and VMware folks I've chatted with, is essentially price/performance of storage," says Powell. "You end up taking an inexpensive disk in your laptop, putting it in an EMC array, and now you're running it over a network so it's generally slower. So you end up with something that is more expensive... The fundamentals I've heard are that the ROI models often don't work. If you're financials or healthcare, or you're a hosting company that wants to sell desktops... the economics are in the way."
VMware has yet to implement a dedicated streaming codec like Citrix' HDX, so as Powell points out, price/performance can still be an issue with VMware VDI when hundreds or thousands of desktops come into play simultaneously. NexentaVDI addresses this issue directly by creating a local storage array using the ZFS file system made for Solaris, but exclusively for hosting desktops. The software then adds performance monitoring and optimization tools implementable from directly within VMware View. "We felt that it wouldn't address the pain point if we just hadn't also had the visibility into performance," remarks Powell.
For example, how much memory should you give to the main I/O of the VM representing your storage versus the VMs for the desktops? This is one of the trade-offs the tool will enable admins to adjust.
ZFS is already at the heart of Nexenta's product line. "Dear old Sun put $150 million into developing the ZFS file system, which is now proliferating in the cloud," he adds. "And we take that file system and wrap around it a bunch of our own software, and turn it into something feature-comparable to an enterprise storage or NAS system from, say, NetApp in terms of ease of use, replication, high availability, all the things that you need to make a system foolproof."
As we learned earlier this month from our live discussion with virtualization engineers at both Intel and VMware, we're approaching the time when the performance hit from moving from physical to virtual desktops is near zero. But as VMware's Steven Shultz told us, it won't go below zero, to the point where there would be a performance gain. Nexenta's Powell isn't so sure about that. By keeping storage local and off the network, he contends, I/O performance for virtual desktops has demonstrated among his customers by as much as 4x. He admits the costs do not decline to 1/4 in turn, but cost savings remain significant.
NexentaVDI itself is deployed as a VM, which makes installation "pretty darn trivial," as Powell describes it. As the product nears final release in the next quarter, the company is making plans to provide sales and technical training through VMware's teams. Although NexentaStor has also supported Citrix XenDesktop, for the time being, NexentaVDI will be geared for VMware. | <urn:uuid:7c3e5a1d-e0f7-4a1b-8ee9-7646f84cf622> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://readwrite.com/2011/11/21/nexentas-bid-to-simplify-speed | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00050-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.955657 | 1,160 | 1.78125 | 2 |
Ten leading human rights organisations, along with victims of torture and their lawyers, have today withdrawn from the British Government's Detainee Inquiry on the grounds that it cannot get to the truth about torture.
In a letter to the Inquiry, the groups – including Reprieve, a legal action charity which has represented all British nationals and residents held in Guantanamo Bay – state that that “the process currently proposed does not have the credibility or transparency” to establish “the truth about allegations that UK authorities were involved in the mistreatment of detainees”.
Key shortcomings are the reliance on the Government to determine what material is made public and the failure to ensure meaningful participation by detainees.
In addition, Reprieve has criticised the ‘toothlessness’ of the inquiry, citing its inability to compel witnesses to attend or evidence to be provided.
Reprieve Investigator Tim Cooke-Hurle said:
“Since the torture inquiry was announced a year ago, we have tried repeatedly to make it work. It is frustrating that the Government has instead chosen to proceed with a secretive and toothless review. By ignoring the concerns of torture victims and major human rights organisations, the government risks a whitewash.”
The full text of the letter – signed by The AIRE Centre; Amnesty International; British Irish Rights Watch; Cageprisoners; Freedom from Torture; Human Rights Watch; Justice; Liberty; Redress; Reprieve – is as follows:
04 August 2011
Dear Ms Carnegie
We refer to your letter of 6 July 2011 sent to nine of the ten organisations listed below and letter to Human Rights Watch dated 15 July 2011.
We have carefully considered the contents of the letters as well as the Terms of Reference and Protocol published on 6 July 2011. Plainly an Inquiry conducted in the way that you describe and in accordance with the Protocol would not comply with Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights. We are particularly disappointed that the issue of what material may be disclosed to the public will not be determined independently of Government and, further, that there will be no meaningful participation of the former and current detainees and other interested third parties.
As you know, we were keen to assist the Inquiry in the vital work of establishing the truth about allegations that UK authorities were involved in the mistreatment of detainees held abroad. Our strong view, however, is that the process currently proposed does not have the credibility or transparency to achieve this. If the Inquiry proceeds on this basis, therefore, and in light of indications from the lawyers acting for former detainees that they will not be participating, we do not intend to submit any evidence or attend further meetings with the Inquiry team.
Notes to editors
1. For further information please contact Katherine O'Shea or Donald Campbell in Reprieve's press office on firstname.lastname@example.org / email@example.com / +44 (0) 20 7427 1082 / (0) 7931592674 or go to: http://www.reprieve.org.uk/investigations/ukcomplicity/
2. The (Gibson) Detainee Inquiry published its terms of reference and protocol on the 6th July. These failed to provide for a full and open evaluation of the way in which Britain was complicit in torture and rendition.
Reprieve -- together with other NGOs and lawyers for the victims -- had made a number of suggestions on how the inquiry could work, both before these protocols were made public and after, but these have been largely ignored. Instead, the government has consistently maintained that this inquiry need not comply with UK and international legal requirements for the effective investigation of serious human rights abuse. The Inquiry will suffer from several key shortcomings:
First, the definition of evidence that will remain classified forever is
hopelessly overbroad. Set out in Annex A, this effectively includes anything
that would in any way breach an "understanding" between the UK and its
allies – in other words, anything the Americans would find embarrassing will
not be made public. If – when -- a British agent watched Americans abusing
a prisoner in a secret site (such as Bagram), the Inquiry will determine
that the agreement was that they were only present on the "understanding"
that nothing should be made public. Given that the essence of British
complicity involves working with the US on torture and rendition, the
exception to publicity swallows the rule.
Second, there is no meaningful, independent (preferably judicial) review of
what should be kept secret. The Inquiry may only refer its own complaints
(based on a definition that would justify classifying anything) to the very
body that has previously insisted on secrecy. Unlike other inquiries where
victims have made serious allegations of torture, the victims will not have
meaningful legal representation. Their advisers will be denied access to any
documents or hearings deemed secret by the inquiry.
Third, the Inquiry is left toothless due to a lack of powers to compel the
attendance of witnesses or the provision of evidence or information from any
party or organisation. Notably, the inquiry has refused to consider evidence
against UK based corporations with alleged links to the US rendition
There are a number of other issues that are not resolved, and have not been
addressed by the protocol. In summary, the vast majority of what is secret
will remain secret and the public will receive no assurance that Britain has
learned from its mistake. | <urn:uuid:a184f054-593c-43d9-ac59-44c7b43081ad> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.reprieve.org.uk/press/2011_08_04_withdrawal_from_inquiry/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00067-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960626 | 1,135 | 1.757813 | 2 |
NSF instituted the LTER program with a call for proposals in 1980 that resulted in the selection of six sites. The network has matured steadily, adding individual sites and shifting focus from individual site research to a broader synthetic view aimed at searching out general ecological principles that apply to many ecosystems at many different scales. In 2006, LTER formalized its governance structure with the establishment of a Science Council of all site principal investigators to plan and develop Network level science.
At each of the Network’s 26 sites there is an extraordinary amount of knowledge about the organisms and processes important at the site, about the way the site’s ecosystems respond to disturbance, and about long-term environmental change. A growing number of cross-site observations and experiments also have revealed much about the way that key processes, organisms, and ecological attributes are organized and behave across major environmental gradients.
As the LTER program approached its fourth decade, the Network challenged itself to develop additional advancements in Network science and a new kind of transdisciplinary science – one that ranges from local to global in scope, and that blends ecological and social science theories, methods, and interpretations in order to better understand and forecast environmental change. A set of research themes will be pursued over the next decade and beyond: future scenarios of change, inland climate change, the disappearing cryosphere, and coastal vulnerability. These research themes will be addressed with new long-term datasets, cross-site experiments, and modeling activities. | <urn:uuid:8fc894d8-80ae-4a45-8682-a1c7e7b6b601> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://lternet.edu/Researchers | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.922618 | 295 | 2.765625 | 3 |
The recent Phoronix benchmark which compared a release candidate of FreeBSD 9 with Oracle Linux Server 6.1 created a huge discussion in the FreeBSD mailinglists. The reason was that some people think the numbers presented there give a wrong picture of FreeBSD. Partly because not all benchmark numbers are presented in the most prominent page (as linked above), but only at a different place. This gives the impression that FreeBSD is inferior in this benchmark while it just puts the focus (for a reason, according to some people) on a different part of the benchmark (to be more specific, blogbench is doing disk reads and writes in parallel, FreeBSD gives higher priority to writes than to reads, FreeBSD 9 outperforms OLS 6.1 in the writes while OLS 6.1 shines with the reads, and only the reads are presented on the first page). Other complaints are that it is told that the default install was used (in this case UFS as the FS), when it was not (ZFS as the FS).
The author of the Phoronix article participated in parts of the discussion and asked for specific improvement suggestions. A FreeBSD committer seems to be already working to get some issues resolved. What I do not like personally, is that the article is not updated with a remark that some things presented do not reflect the reality and a retest is necessary.
As there was much talk in the thread but not much obvious activity from our side to resolve some issues, I started to improve the FreeBSD wiki page about benchmarking so that we are able to point to it in case someone wants to benchmark FreeBSD. Others already chimed in and improved some things too. It is far from perfect, some more eyes — and more importantly some more fingers which add content — are needed. Please go to the wiki page and try to help out (if you are afraid to write something in the wiki, please at least tell your suggestions on a FreeBSD mailinglist so that others can improve the wiki page).
What we need too, is a wiki page about FreeBSD tuning (a first step would be to take the man-page and convert it into a wiki page, then to improve it, and then to feed back the changes to the man-page while keeping the wiki page to be able to cross reference parts from the benchmarking page).
I already told about this in the thread about the Phoronix benchmark: everyone is welcome to improve the situation. Do not talk, write something. No matter if it is an improvement to the benchmarking page, tuning advise, or a tool which inspects the system and suggests some tuning. If you want to help in the wiki, create a FirstnameLastname account and ask a FreeBSD comitter for write access.
A while ago (IIRC we have to think in months or even years) there was some framework for automatic FreeBSD benchmarking. Unfortunately the author run out of time. The framework was able to install a FreeBSD system on a machine, run some specified benchmark (not much benchmarks where integrated), and then install another FreeBSD version to run the same benchmark, or to reinstall the same version to run another benchmark. IIRC there was also some DB behind which collected the results and maybe there was even some way to compare them. It would be nice if someone could get some time to talk with the author to get the framework and set it up somewhere, so that we have a controlled environment where we can do our own benchmarks in an automatic and repeatable fashion with several FreeBSD versions. | <urn:uuid:81a21d1c-0c83-46f6-8bbf-b74373889a95> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blogs.freebsdish.org/category/ufs/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954707 | 746 | 1.609375 | 2 |
By Robert W. Wood, Esq.
Wood LLP, San Francisco, CA
In 2009, UBS paid $780 million to the IRS and upended Swiss banking forever by handing over Americans. Many other banks have followed suit, some quietly, some not. IRS amnesty programs in 2009, 2011 and today have offered a limited form of relief. But generally, Americans caught in this pickle have had no choice.
Disclosure and penalties are vastly better than the alternative. And discovery by the IRS is looking more and more likely. Merely closing a foreign bank account does not solve disclosure problems. See Wood, "Is Closing Foreign Bank Accounts An Alternative To Disclosure?" Forbes.com (4/7/12). For those who don't step forward, the IRS and Department of Justice (DOJ) are making clear that they have even more resources at their disposal.
In fact, Kathryn Keneally, Assistant Attorney General for the Tax Division of the DOJ recently told a group of tax advisers at an NYU program that the way UBS was handled is no model. Famously, UBS at least alerted account holders ahead of time that their names would be disclosed to the IRS. Now, said Ms. Keneally, account information is flooding in from many sources, often with no advance warning.
She made ominous statements noting that prosecutions would be forthcoming where there was no indication that the federal government was pursuing a particular institution or account holders. She delivered a stern warning that failing to come into the offshore disclosure programs is dangerous. Although she declined to identify particular programs, she noted her expectation that FATCA would ramp up worldwide transparency.
Here's a refresher on what's most important:
For more information, in the Tax Management Portfolios, see Blum, Canale, Hester, and O'Connor, 947 T.M., Reporting Requirements Under the Code for International Transactions, and in Tax Practice Series, see ¶7170, U.S. International Withholding and Reporting Requirements and FATCA.
© Robert W. Wood 2012
Originally published by Forbes.com. | <urn:uuid:49375f87-8fe5-4eb0-8072-a88222a26cfe> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.bna.com/undisclosed-foreign-bank-n17179871726/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00050-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.95821 | 427 | 1.546875 | 2 |
Aloe (Aloe vera)
Natural Standard® Patient Monograph, Copyright © 2013 (www.naturalstandard.com). All Rights Reserved. Commercial distribution prohibited. This monograph is intended for informational purposes only, and should not be interpreted as specific medical advice. You should consult with a qualified healthcare provider before making decisions about therapies and/or health conditions.
Transparent gel from the pulp of the meaty leaves of Aloe vera has been used topically for thousands of years to treat wounds, skin infections, burns, and numerous other dermatologic conditions. Dried latex from the inner lining of the leaf has traditionally been used as an oral laxative.
There is strong scientific evidence in support of the laxative properties of aloe latex, based on the well-established cathartic properties of anthraquinone glycosides (found in aloe latex). However, aloe's therapeutic value compared with other approaches to constipation remains unclear.
There is promising preliminary support from laboratory, animal, and human studies that topical aloe gel has immunomodulatory properties that may improve wound healing and skin inflammation. | <urn:uuid:075f4364-6898-4b73-b5b0-fd6fd9b99ced> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/aloe-vera/NS_patient-aloe | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00041-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.911464 | 230 | 1.59375 | 2 |
We love each other, but we fight all the time...
Originally Published: October 20, 2006 - Last Updated / Reviewed On: July 11, 2008
I've never done this before so here it goes.
I've been dating my current boyfriend for about 8 months, and we do love each other very much. However, I believe we both want very different things from our relationship, and we fight on a regular basis. We fight about everything from spending time with friends to how we feel we are being treated and so forth.
We have a lot of trouble identifying with each other and being considerate of each other’s needs. Should I move on and accept that we are incompatible, or should we try a new approach?
You're not the only one struggling to sort through whether it makes sense to stay in a relationship. It's often a big step to acknowledge to others that you're having relationship troubles, so it's brave of you to write in. Hopefully, some reflection and conversation with your partner can help you decide what to do.
Have you talked with your boyfriend about the situation? It'd be helpful to know whether you're on the same page about whether you want to keep the relationship going, whether you see that there are problems, and whether you're both willing to try to make changes in your behavior to work things out.
If you're both dedicated to making changes, you might start by practicing your listening skills. Take turns listening to each other describe what's important to you in a relationship and a partner and what you value about the relationship you have. Rather than focusing on your own feelings, take time to probe and understand what the other person thinks and feels. If you practice this skill when the topic's upbeat, it may help you be more empathetic and considerate when the going gets tough.
If you can figure out what you both want from your relationship, it may be time to move on to talking about how you want your relationship to change. Conflict isn't always negative, but it's important to find healthy ways to address it. Here are some ideas:
- Express your feelings, and take time to listen to the other person's. If you let frustration fester for a long time, things usually get ugly.
- Be specific about what you want, and be willing to compromise.
- Stick to one topic at a time — it's not fair or realistic to bombard your partner with a whole laundry list of complaints.
- Avoid accusations. Instead, focus on certain actions and how they made you feel.
Including an outside person (like a counselor or mediator) might help you reconcile some of your differences or offer a neutral perspective. It's really hard to change behavior patterns in general, and probably impossible for you to change your boyfriend's behavior if he's not motivated to change himself. If you aren't both invested, it may be time to move on.
March 13, 2012508511
July 1, 200821436
My girlfriend and I fight too, so many times. But I think the best thing that works for us is that we keep them short. Why hold a grudge overnight? Our philosophy has been...
My girlfriend and I fight too, so many times. But I think the best thing that works for us is that we keep them short. Why hold a grudge overnight? Our philosophy has been to drag out our arguments on over the night, so that, eventually, maybe at 3 in the morning, everything is resolved. Someone has to give in and be the first to apologize each time, but once this happens, it's as if a wall has crumpled. There is so much to lose if you hold a grudge for a few days or even longer — what's more important, loving each other or fighting? We fight all the time, but we always make up. And make up sex is pretty awesome.
October 4, 200721356
I can really relate to what you are or were going through. I have the exact same problem with my current boyfriend and I don't know what to do anymore. I tried the "sit-down...
I can really relate to what you are or were going through. I have the exact same problem with my current boyfriend and I don't know what to do anymore. I tried the "sit-down and talk" thing, ignore the problem and see if it works its self out, I have talked to a lot of people about my boyfriend issues and nobody seems to have the answer. Me and my boyfriend have been going out for a year and four months and everyone that knows us and our relationship issues say that we need to go to marriage counseling even though we are not married.
January 5, 200721172
I read this and said to myself "I totally 100% relate to this." Everything you said is exactly how I'm feeling right now. My boyfriend and I have been together for about a...
I read this and said to myself "I totally 100% relate to this." Everything you said is exactly how I'm feeling right now. My boyfriend and I have been together for about a year and a half, and it seems as though we continually fight more and more.
I've tried the "I listen, you listen" thing. He listens to me but never gives me the chance to listen to him; he doesn't talk to me about his problems, he just keeps it all shut in. It usually ends in us both getting frustrated and angry, and we never solve anything. | <urn:uuid:6fb0d15b-0841-4f96-abe6-9c6a4c6db74b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://goaskalice.columbia.edu/we-love-each-other-we-fight-all-time | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00027-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.973715 | 1,134 | 1.78125 | 2 |
New Larose bridge brings change
Published: Friday, March 8, 2013 at 9:13 p.m.
Last Modified: Friday, March 8, 2013 at 9:13 p.m.
Drivers were finally able to cross the Larose Lift Bridge on Friday.
A host of state and local officials joined with local business people to christen the long-awaited span before the first drivers crossed Bayou Lafourche.
“We need to have a great ceremony. But we need to make it brief, so people can start using this bridge to make for a better Lafourche and improve our economy,” said Lafourche Parish President Charlotte Randolph.
Work began on the $31 million project in July 2010. It was paid for through federal stimulus money.
The bridge's opening had been delayed multiple times because of required technical adjustments to ensure its lifting mechanisms functioned properly.
The span will serve as a direct link between La. 308 and La. 3235, which is especially vital for some 800 to 1,000 trucks that move goods to and from Port Fourchon daily, said Greater Lafourche Port Commission Executive Director Chett Chiasson.
“Today is about progress for our community, our state and our nation,” Chiasson said, referring to 18 percent of the nation's oil supply that is made possible through Port Fourchon.
Lafourche Parish Sheriff Craig Webre said the bridge is also important for public safety.
“Having to rely on a 55-year-old pontoon bridge that might open or might not open or might not open fast enough could take away those precious seconds or minutes that can be the difference between life and death,” Webre said.
The bridge, built by Baton Rouge-based James Construction, stands about 100 feet high. Four motors help lift the six-lane span, which weighs more than 1 million pounds, in less than a minute, said Chris Rogers, project engineer for the Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development.
Crossing Bayou Lafourche from the La. 308 side has previously required heavy trucks to go down the bayou to cross the pontoon bridge that was often out of service, Rogers said.
“It's like moving into Beverly Hills,” said bridge operator Dion Worley, who overlooks the bridge from a near 360-degree vantage point in the operating tower.
The pontoon bridge opened for the last time Friday. Workers will begin disassembling it Monday.
“I won't miss it,” said Worley, who has been a bridge operator for about 18 years.
While the new bridge has a modern control deck, the pontoon bridge's operations room had an old winch, porous wooden floors, cracked windows and a decaying restroom.
“It was like going to camp,” Worley said. “It's full of mosquitoes, and rats would get in. Nah, I don't think we are going to miss it.”
Sarah Adams is hoping the bridge also brings change to her life. Adam's children can see the bridge from their backyard on Seventh Street. That residential street has been a convenient path from La. 308 to the pontoon bridge.
The new bridge will make the cut through useless as motorists can simply cross the bayou without leaving La. 308's path.
“It gets so annoying with people flying through the stop sign,” Adams said as she watched her two young children play in the yard. “So we are so excited and hope we will see less people driving on our street.”
Staff Writer Xerxes A. Wilson can be reached at 448-7639 or firstname.lastname@example.org. | <urn:uuid:eaffb6d7-b9be-42c0-8aae-88d49e215ae5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.houmatoday.com/article/20130308/ARTICLES/130309660/0/WIRE | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00033-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965297 | 779 | 1.710938 | 2 |
participation in an event being sponsored by a descendent organization.
All too often, parades are confused with reenactments.......the recent debacle in Baltimore being a prime example. Confederates and US Colored troops were prohibited from participating ostensibly on the basis of "historical accuracy" yet the Committee saw fit to invite bands and fife and drum corps when there was clear and compelling evidence that no marching bands or fife and drum corps participated in the event being portrayed. One has to question how such arbitrary decisions can be made within the pretext of maintaining historical accuracy.
Terry from Occupied Baltimore
"As I stood upon the very scene of that conflict, I could not but contrast my position with his, forty-seven years before. The flag which he had then so proudly hailed, I saw waving at the same place over the victims of as vulgar and brutal a despotism as modern times have witnessed."
Francis Key Howard, Ft. McHenry 1861
How did this turn into a bagpipe frustration thread. The 79th community specifically has improved a great deal. 99% of bagpipes at events these days are being played by confederates.
Lets talk historical accuracy of Bagpipes while we are at it. The 79th New York had a bagpiper from June to October of 1863. There are accounts from the 79th, Texas regiments and other 9th Corp regiments like the 45th PA specifically that talk of bagpipes. The Texas accounts and the PA accounts talk of the "weird music of scotch pipes" marching the Highlanders to Blue Springs.
"We also have a new ' institution' attached to the regimentónothing less than a Scotch 'piper' from Michigan, who joined us on our way down here. He has a full suit of the kilts and often so entertains us with his alleged tunes on the pipes, that we have several times threatened to 'fire him out,' and not allow him to perform again till he learns how. A good deal of excitement was caused by the news of the rebel invasion of Pennsylvania; the absence of reliable information of recent date rendered the situation more uncertain; we did not know but that our own homes might be invaded. "
Page 302 - 303
The Seventy-ninth Highlanders, New York Volunteers in the War of Rebellion, 1861-1865 - William ToddIf anyone is interested in the other references, I will transcribe the letters."On the morning of October 10th we marched out of this camp with the weird music of Scotch bagpipes as an accompaniment, the Seventy-ninth New York (Highlanders) being in the lead. We marched leisurely, vacating the road several times for squadrons of cavalry to pass to the rear, and once a battery of artillery passed to the front. It was nearing noon when the sound of artillery firing in front told us the engagement at Blue Springs was on."
Page 88-89 History of the Forty-fifth regiment Pennsylvania veteran volunteer infantry, 1861-1865 - Written by Committee
Im not trying to defend anything. This is what it is. A single bagpiper payed his own way, had his own bagpipes and was not in uniform while fallowing the 79th around through Vicksburg, up through KY, and into East Tennessee. That being said, this is not justification for random pipers. | <urn:uuid:e4e95123-c656-411e-aa72-0cc2e39bbc6b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.cwreenactors.com/forum/showthread.php?22499-Music-where-there-was-none-historically&p=177499 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.973418 | 699 | 2.03125 | 2 |
One of our most popular posts, even nine months after it was published, is Hot Men in History, which links to a blog that publishes pictures of attractive men from history and a quirky, interesting descriptions of their accomplishments.
In honor of the continued popularity of this particular post, I’ve decided to do a short series of hot men and women from Mormon history. I’m not sure how long the series will be or how frequent the posts will be, but if you want to see someone covered, put their name in the comments and I’ll look them up and see if they fit the bill. As a warning, I’m not going to do one on Joseph Smith – it’s a bit too sacrilegious to me.
First up, Ina Coolbrith, cousin of Joseph F. Smith, librarian, and poet laureate of California.
Facts about Ina:
- Born to Don Carlos Smith and her mother Josephine in 1841
- After her father died, her mother married the prophet Joseph Smith, Jr. She felt neglected in the marriage, however, and went to live in Saint Louis, Missouri, after his death.
- Ina’s mother tried to conceal her Mormon past and used her maiden name throughout her life.
- During her long literary career, Ina corresponded with Mark Twain, John Muir, Alfred Lord Tennyson, and Charles Warren Stoddard. Twain and Tennyson praised her work and called her “divinely tall, and most divinely fair.”
- During her work as a librarian, she mentored Isadora Duncan and Jack London.
A Sample from her poems:
A Last Word (To My Mother)
Not more removed with the long years ’increase,
Through hours when storms upon thy roof of clay
Have beat, or when the blossom of the May
Has to the fettered winter smiled release, -
Not from my heart one thought of thee could cease,
O loved and mourned to-day as on that day
When from my sight thy presence passed away,
Thou spirit of all gentleness and peace.
Nay, in the long, long ways I walk alone,
Still with me! On my brow thy touch is laid
Softly, – when all to great my burden grown . . .
And I shall go, serenly, unafraid,
Into the dark-well knowing what dear tone-
Whose hand to mine- O thou beloved shade! | <urn:uuid:6fae2cea-5e1b-4620-b2c2-a41292c37fc8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://scholaristas.wordpress.com/2011/08/31/hot-men-and-lovely-ladies-in-mormon-history/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00033-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.945719 | 533 | 1.976563 | 2 |
|There are many myths and misconceptions floating around about reptiles. These myths are detrimental to herps, as they promote negative stereotypes as well as contribute to improper care of pet reptiles. In this article, we will debunk some of these myths and clear up the misconceptions you may have about herps and herp care.
MYTH: Reptiles are easy to care for.
FACT: Reptiles are very care-intensive pets, and improper care can significantly shorten their life spans.
This may be one of the most widespread myths. Many people think that getting a reptile is as simple as buying it, sticking it in a glass cage, and feeding it occasionally. This couldn't be further from the truth.
Even before bringing a reptile home, you will have to spend a good deal of time setting up a proper habitat and monitoring temperature and humidity to make sure it is safe for the reptile you've chosen. You will have to do significant research to determine which reptile is best for you and what kind of care it needs.
Once you have purchased your reptile, you will have to continue monitoring the habitat, and you should clean it regularly. You may need to adjust heating and lighting to more accurately simulate its natural environment or to deal with seasonal changes. You will have to keep a close eye on it for any signs of illness and schedule a veterinary appointment if you see any problems.
Your herp will have a very specific diet that you must follow, including, in most cases, the use of vitamin and mineral supplements.
Feeding a reptile is generally much more involved than just setting a bowl of commercially made food in front of it. Many will require live feeder insects or pre-killed prey that you will have to breed or acquire.
It is estimated that approximately 90% of reptiles die in their first year of captivity because their owners have no idea what proper reptile care entails. Some reptiles are easier to care for than others, but all still require a significant level of care that cannot be classified as "easy".
MYTH: Reptiles make great pets for kids.
FACT: Reptiles require a level of responsibility that most children cannot handle.
As mentioned above, reptiles are very care-intensive pets, and most children are just not able to provide the required level of care. Many reptiles require complicated setups that children will not know how to monitor, and an improper environment can lead to serious health issues. If you want your children to experience having a reptile as a pet, you must purchase the reptile as a family pet with the knowledge that a parent must be the primary caregiver.
It should be you that makes sure the reptile is fed, the habitat is properly maintained and cleaned, and the reptile is taken to the veterinarian for annual checkups.
MYTH: Only turtles carry Salmonella.
FACT: All reptiles carry Salmonella.
Salmonella is present in at least 90% of all exotic reptiles, and they carry it and shed it in their feces. To prevent the spread of salmonella, it is important to wash your hands thoroughly after touching your herp or anything in its habitat, regardless of what kind of herp you own.
MYTH: All snakes are venomous.
FACT: Only some snakes are venomous.
Though snakes have a reputation for being deadly, only about 10% of the snakes worldwide are actually venomous. Of the 110 snake species native to the United States, only 20 are venomous. More people die from bee stings than from snake bites each year.
MYTH: Snakes are very fast.
FACT: Most snakes move no faster than 6 mph.
The average speed for a snake is two to six mph. The fastest snake in the world, the Black Mamba, only goes twelve to fourteen mph. Many snakes appear to be going much faster than they actually are because of "lateral undulation," or the way in which they move.
MYTH: Snakes don't have to eat.
FACT: Some snakes don't eat often, but all living animals still need food.
Larger snakes will not eat as often as smaller ones, but that doesn't mean that they don't need food. Some snakes, such as Ball Pythons, are known to be reluctant eaters, but you still must try different things to get them to eat. You should never simply stop feeding a snake because it refuses food. Refusal of food may mean that the snake is not hungry, but if it happens all the time, it means that you haven't found the right feeding method yet.
MYTH: Some snakes are vegetarians.
FACT: All snakes are carnivores.
A snake's food source is important. Some snakes live primarily on invertebrates, while others eat fish. Some will eat amphibians, other reptiles, or even other snakes of the same species. Many will need a diet that consists mainly of whole prey mammals, such as mice, rats, and chicks. But you cannot try to turn a snake into an herbivore.
MYTH: Snakes attack or chase humans.
FACT: Most snakes will attempt to escape rather than confront you.
Though some snakes will defend themselves if they feel threatened, most will try to get away, especially from a human "predator" that is significantly larger than they are. If they cannot escape, they may strike at a human in an attempt to drive him or her away, but this is not due to aggression.
MYTH: Toads give humans warts.
FACT: Toads have nothing to do with humans' warts.
Though toads have a warty appearance, the texture of their skin is not something that is contagious. Human warts are caused by a virus, not by contact with toads.
MYTH: Toads produce and secrete toxins that can kill humans.
FACT: Only a few toads produce harmful toxins in response to a threat.
All toads have parotid glands that produce a chemical substance, but only a small number of toad species actually produce a highly toxic substance. Some species also have toxin-producing cells in their skin.
MYTH: Turtles and tortoises can live on a diet consisting only of lettuce.
FACT: Turtles and tortoises have widely varied diets that include a number of different foods.
Chelonians, or turtles and tortoises, may be herbivores, omnivores, or carnivores. Omnivorous chelonians require both plant matter and meat in their diets, and carnivores need meat. Even those chelonians that are herbivores require more than just lettuce. A complete diet for an herbivorous chelonian can include vegetables, fruits, leafy greens, grasses, and hays. Feeding only lettuce will result in severe malnutrition and eventually death. It is important that you take the time to learn what constitutes a complete, balanced diet for your chelonian and feed it accordingly.
MYTH: All lizards are insectivores.
FACT: What type of diet a lizard needs varies by species.
Some lizards are primarily insectivores, but other lizards can be herbivores, omnivores, or carnivores. You will need to research the species of lizard that you are keeping to determine what kind of diet will best fit its needs. | <urn:uuid:fb505b80-d143-4257-aef8-f73eb6fbf359> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.drsfostersmith.com/pic/article_print.cfm?aid=2595 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00045-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960676 | 1,532 | 2.75 | 3 |
Report an inappropriate comment
Need To Explain Ice Ages?
Thu Jan 17 23:45:25 GMT 2008 by Tom Rose
The author implies that a theory must be discarded if it is unable to "fully explain many past changes such as Earth's ice ages". However, we don't base belief in C02 global warming on it's ability to explain glacial periods either. Proponents of neither theory are even making such a claim. It seems to be univerally accepted that we go through glacial cycle because of orbital cycles, and that other variations are caused by various feedback systems and contributing effects. Let's at least hold competing theories to the same standards. | <urn:uuid:ec81d0bf-1576-4d94-8b63-a1b7d177066d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.newscientist.com/commenting/report?id=dn11651-2 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960742 | 134 | 2.28125 | 2 |
Julian @ gender, rants, and sodomy: broken hearted
As an artist I know what it is like to nurture an idea in your heart, in your mind, in your soul. But sometimes I can let my love of a project blind me to the nature of it— it is easy to let our love of our work (because our work is self at times) blind us to privileged and oppression. But we must not let this happen. If we fight against oppression (and AFP fights oppression, all the time) we must not choose and pick which oppressions to fight for. It is hypocritical and wrong to place one fight above another. We must fight ALL institutional privileged, because ALL institutional privilege affects every one of us. There is no "one" cause, or "one" fight that is more important because they are all so intricately connected and entwined.
Annaham @ FWD: Who Killed Civil Discourse? Evelyn Evelyn, Marginalization, and Internet Discussion
I'd like to take a moment to talk about some basic principles of anti-oppression activism and social justice work that intersect with the work we do here at FWD, as some very specific structural issues and contexts are absolutely relevant in this discussion. Often, marginalized people are encouraged and expected to be sensitive and accommodating to the attitudes and prejudices of the dominant culture and to those of less-marginalized (ie: more privileged) people. However, this sensitivity and accommodation usually does not run both ways. Marginalized people, if they criticize something that (for example) leaves them out or makes them feel awful, are often told that they are being overly sensitive or overemotional, that they just misunderstand intent, that they are exaggerating, or that their tone is not polite enough. They are then expected to modify their behavior — and their self-expression – to fit with the norms and values of those who are more privileged.fizzyblogic
: on the responses to the evelyn evelyn controversy
Curiously, I feel better because they "apologised". I never expected them to actually apologise — if they could acknowledge the real and lived pain of abuse survivors and people with disabilities, and the inherent offensiveness, oppressiveness and entirely-made-of-clichés nature of their project, they wouldn't be making it like this in the first place. I do actually feel a little better about the whole thing because I know that they heard us. They didn't listen, but they still heard us. Maybe something will worm its way through to their unconscious and they'll fail better next time.
Cynthia von Buhler @ The Shadowbox forums: Cynthia's Post About Evelyn Evelyn
[OP is artist responsible for the album artwork and graphic novel of the Evelyn Evelyn project]
When I read the graphic novel I had a completely opposite view on all of the hot topics: porn, animal abuse, etc. It made me reflect on all of these issues. I never felt that anyone was being made fun of. We have been discussing all of this and we want you to know that the very last thing any of us want to do is hurt anyones feelings. These discussions are important. Please read the book when it comes out and I believe that you will see what I mean.
Vince Mascoli @ My Blog: My Response to the Evelyn Evelyn Controversy
[OP created a music video for the Evelyn Evelyn project] [Warning: Problematic, and Tangential to subject]
I have read a little bit, and I'm frankly disappointed that no one is judging the album based on the album, since it hasn't even dropped yet. I agree with Amanda that it's about context. You have to hear the album to decide how you feel about it yourself. The ardent music fan in me is mad about the controversy, the animator/artist/business person in me is excited.
All blockquotes are pullquotes from the original post. Any text in square brackets [ TEXT ] is entered by a linkspam mod.
As requested by readers of the community, linkspam posts of six or more links with blockquotes will be cut for length.
Comments are screened by default, but will be unscreened as long as they are not derailing, abusive or off-topic. If you have thoughts on the content of one of our links, please comment there and not here. Please let us know if you would prefer your comment to remain screened.
You can post further links in the comments to this post or send them to our Delicious account
Additionally, comments/suggestions/feedback can be left at our feedback post | <urn:uuid:19449aa7-da6e-4af4-83f2-56b35471a923> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://linkspam.dreamwidth.org/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00060-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967917 | 968 | 1.515625 | 2 |
Junior Fellow Initiative Toolkit Contest (J-FIT)
The Junior Fellow Congress Advisory Council (JFCAC) has developed a contest entitled “Junior Fellow Initiative Toolkit“ (J-FIT), previously known as “Projects in a Box.”
A Junior Fellow Initiative is any project or program that you developed to make a difference for women and their health care providers including service projects such as supply drives, educational sessions, medical student recruitment, and lobby days.
A J-FIT is a detailed toolkit used to facilitate planning and carrying-out a specific Junior Fellow Initiative.
The goal of Project J-FIT is to compile these ideas, projects and programs and post them on the ACOG Junior Fellow webpage which will serve as an online resource accessible to all Junior Fellows for planning future Initiatives.
One winner will be selected to receive a $2,500 prize to present their toolkit at the Junior Fellow Breakfast Business Meeting during the 2013 Annual Clinical Meeting in New Orleans, LA May 4 - 8, 2013.
ONLINE SUBMISSIONS ONLY
Click here for a submission pdf template. Note, you must save the pdf to your computer, complete and email submission and accompaning materials to Christine Himes at firstname.lastname@example.org.
The deadline for submitting a toolkit on-line is November 30, 2012. | <urn:uuid:56a28665-38be-49ba-815f-f5315f48a0c6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.acog.org/About_ACOG/ACOG_Departments/Junior_Fellows/Junior_Fellow_Initiative_Toolkit_Contest__J_FIT | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.94333 | 284 | 1.710938 | 2 |
“Curiouser and curiouser, I opened an email last week which contained a graph showing not only the measured public confidence statistics, but the PREDICTED statistics for next month!”
“It is all — to quote another poet — curiouser and curiouser.”
““Curiouser and curiouser,” I retorted, curling my upper lip at it.”
“Even though God should have known that nothing would make two morons curiouser than a big flashing sign that says No.”
“Christine followed the Hattter out to the garden, under a tree, where the scene became curiouser and curiouser.”
“Curiouser and curiouser. posted by Dr. Dawg at 11: 50 PM”
“The deeper you drop down the rabbit hole of Romney's fortune, the "curiouser and curiouser" things become, as Alice in Wonderland famously said.”
“Then again, it was a Wonderland idea in the first place, so perhaps things will keep getting curiouser and curiouser.”
“Those who have grown curiouser and curiouser about what the offbeat reinventor of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory might conjure up in his version of Alice in Wonderland can feast their eyes on this array of concept art and publicity images, due to hang in movie theaters this week to promote the March 5, 2010, release.”
“Or alternatively, things are getting "curiouser and curiouser.”
These user-created lists contain the word ‘curiouser’.
Childhood reading nostalgia, beginning with some choice examples from Ruth Park's classic The Muddleheaded Wombat.
amber words is the term I use for words that are all but fossilized, in the sense that their use is always in the context of a single expression. Examples include caboodle, dudgeon, umbrage
These are a few of the words I like best.
Looking for tweets for curiouser. | <urn:uuid:147a6be5-e48f-433d-803d-5c696de73e5c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wordnik.com/words/curiouser | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.950069 | 432 | 1.78125 | 2 |
U.S. law enforcement agencies have arrested 61 people and rescued 11 children as part of the larger takedown of a far-reaching global child pornography ring, Attorney General Michael Mukasey announced Friday.
Mukasey said the international law enforcement effort started after a "horrible" discovery in 2006: Australian authorities discovered a child abuse video depicting a father who had been "sexually abusing his young daughters and producing images of that abuse."
The video had been widely distributed online in closed Internet forums and servers that authorities discovered.
Authorities arrested the father, identified only as a Belgian national, about a month after the discovery of the video.
The man allegedly had large amounts of child pornography in his possession, and had allegedly enlisted the services of an Italian photographer whom officials said documented the sexual abuse and added the documentation to as many as seven Web sites.
The Italian suspect, who largely operated out of Ukraine, sold those images and those of many other child victims through the sites, the Justice Department said.
Customers in 30 countries, including the United States, patronized the site, officials said.
Authorities charged American John Price in the case last year, but he committed suicide before the case went to trial.
Price allegedly exchanged more than 800 e-mails with the Italian. FBI and US Postal Service Investigators also said they found thousands of images of child pornography and more than 40 computers and disk drives in his home.
Worldwide, more than 170 individuals have been arrested as the result of the investigation.
"That one case led to one of the largest ever transnational enforcement efforts against the Web of Internet-based child pornography trading rings," Mukasey said.
Mukasey said the 11 children identified by law enforcement as being victims in the United States have now "been given the chance to start their lives over in an environment that's free from that kind of abuse." The children ranged in age from three to 13.
"Our international counterparts have identified many more, and have taken the same kind of action in their own countries," he added.
"The members of this network of predators shared photos, stories of abuse of innocent children, and exchanged tips on how to evade detection," the attorney general said. "They tried to hide in what they hoped was the anonymity of the Internet."
Flanked by other U.S. officials and others from France, the Czech Republic and the European Union, the attorney general said the investigation, dubbed Operation Koala internationally and Operation Joint Hammer in the United States, branched out across Europe and the United States.
The foreign officials were in Washington for a ministerial meeting that covered visa waiver agreements, airline passenger data privacy issues, counterterrorism other cross-border matters.
Mukasey noted that the investigation is the "first of its kind," involving every major U.S. agency that pursues child exploitation cases, as well as EU law enforcement organization Europol, the EU international organized crime agency Eurojust and the European Union.
He said he expects more arrests to come in this country as authorities continue to track down leads.
Mukasey said that through programs such as the Justice Department's Project Safe Childhood, prosecutions of crimes related to child exploitation have jumped more than 30 percent in the past two years. | <urn:uuid:c413ab51-23da-4c7e-8103-505ce125d2e5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://abcnews.go.com/TheLaw/story?id=6452112&page=1 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00022-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.973482 | 667 | 1.546875 | 2 |
A Niagara-wide network for collaboration, planning and community action
Niagara Connects (formerly Niagara Research and Planning Council) is a Niagara-wide network for collaboration, planning, learning, innovation and community action toward a stronger future for Niagara.
Niagara Connects has four core products that fast-track Niagara citizens’ search for relevant, reliable, Niagara-focused information to support evidence-informed decision-making. They are:
1.Living in Niagara – reports and documents – such as the Living in Niagara report (2008, 2011), a regular measure of quality of life in Niagara’s communities, across 12 sectors that align with the social determinants of health.
2.Niagara Knowledge Exchange – a tool that leverages the Niagara Connects network of citizens, and is enabled by:
- Knowledge Broker service to connect people to people and people to resources
- Real-time opportunities to exchange information
- An online platform that offers a social space in which Niagara citizens can connect to share data, information, knowledge and resources
The Niagara Knowledge Exchange:
- Supports the learning needs of people seeking relevant, reliable Niagara-focused evidence and data to enable planning that drives community action
- Stimulates, supports, and shares innovations in Niagara
- Builds and strengthens collaboration between diverse community partners and citizens of Niagara
3.Niagara Community Calendar – an online tool that is part of the Niagara Knowledge Exchange, for Niagara-wide sharing of events, community activities, and learning opportunities.
4.Linking Niagara: facilitating community projects – a service that enables focused planning and decision-making that strengthens well-being and opportunities for Niagara’s citizens. Our research team offers:
- Effective facilitation and recording of processes and events
- Data gathering, recording, review and analysis
- Event planning to gather and leverage diverse community members’ ideas about community assets, and gaps requiring further research
- Assistance with work planning for innovative community action and effective outcomes
- Environmental scans
- Network mapping and tracking, to build bridges and weave ties among diverse community partners
- Leadership in evidence-informed decision-making, based on relevant, reliable Niagara-focused knowledge | <urn:uuid:b4d23fd0-ad98-4970-8a78-3863a4bb3619> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.nrapc.com/synergistic-collaborative/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00057-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.909207 | 444 | 1.796875 | 2 |
The reasons for the Holocaust have always proven a fascinating subject. Anti-Semitism, while prominent throughout time, had never before reached the point of outright mass extermination. Discovery of notes from the Wannsea Conference gave further evidence of the existence of the extermination camps, but what did the German people actually see? How did the Nazis keep such anti-Semitic fervor going even as the war turned against Germany? Jeffrey Herf has written a book detailing the propaganda techniques the Nazis used. Titled The Jewish Enemy: Nazi Propaganda during World War II and the Holocaust, Herf’s study does a marvelous job showing the variety of methods used by people such as Joseph Goebbels and others to convince the populace of the rightness of their actions.
Herf is meticulous in his scholarship, and the book’s vivid detail can certainly hold up to historians' scrutiny. At times, it seems that Herf has included every one of Goebbels', Hitler's, and other prominent Nazis' speeches declaring how the Jew is the enemy of the people, the cause of the war, and the reason for the suffering of the German population. The book is heavily end-noted, indicating how extensively it was researched. It is also complete in other ways.
One of the prominent ways is the inclusion of the Nazi press chief, Otto Dietrich. Dietrich was in charge of making sure the German media said the right things and broadcast the right message. He was an intimate of Hitler, having his ear even more than Goebbels did, but he is largely ignored in many of the Holocaust books I've read (which, granted, haven't been many). With Hitler and Goebbels dead, Dietrich was able to try and soften his image at the Nuremberg trials, though his notes and press directives spoke for themselves, and he largely wasn't able to get away with it. Herf details the directives Dietrich sent out to the German newspapers on what to say about the horrors of "International Jewry" who were pulling the strings of the Allied powers and keeping the war going.
Nazi propaganda was much more than just anti-Semitic speeches, though. Herf covers the lot from posters (a number of which are reprinted in full color, so that the reader receives the full impact) to the "Weekly Word" news sheets that were displayed all over Germany. As Herf points out, people could refuse to read the newspaper or listen to speeches on the radio, but these news sheets were posted all over the country, and Germany was largely a nation of public transportation. You could try and avoid them, but it was likely you would see them somewhere, and even more likely that you'd stop and read one.
As Herf's narrative progresses from the rise of the Nazis to the beginning of World War II and then to the fall of Germany, he shows just how fanatical the Nazis were about all of this. They seriously believed (as notes from Goebbels' diary attest) that the Jew was responsible not only for Germany's loss in World War I but also for the start of World War II. The Germans were provoked by the sinister plans of the international Jewish conspiracy that wanted to exterminate the Germans. And, as much as Nazi propaganda pointed out that the Jews wanted to exterminate the Germans, much the reverse was happening.
Which gets to the heart of Herf's point. As The Jewish Enemy indicates, the Nazis often referred to the Jews being exterminated in their propaganda, but they never came out and said that the Jews were actually being murdered. Many people not in the know (including many important people overseas) could not imagine the systematic killing of the Jews and believed that the Nazis were being euphemistic. By citing speech after speech and news sheet after news sheet, Herf demonstrates how it was right there in front of everybody's faces, had they but delved a little deeper or realized the fanatical delusions that the Nazis were working under. To the Nazis, "The Jews are guilty of everything" and must be destroyed. It was either Germany or the Jews, and they weren't about to let the Jews get away with destroying the German nation. The Nazis actually used the phrase "Victory or extermination" in their speeches at one point.
The Jewish Enemy is often heavy-going, but it's never boring and it is so important to get inside the heads of these monsters. Herf has done such exhaustive research, and he showcases it all to repeatedly make his point, that the reader is often overwhelmed with the extent of the anti-Semitic imagery and statements rolling off the page. I found I could only read the book in relatively short snippets, feeling dirty at times. Despite this, the book is definitely worth reading because these kinds of statements and justifications are still going on today. How did the German people fall for all of this? Herf shows us in devastating detail.
Hitler thought that if he railed against the Jewish "string-pullers" of Roosevelt and Churchill, he could stir up anti-Semitic feelings in Britain and the U.S. that would bring a halt to the war before Germany lost it. This had no hope of working once rumors about the extermination camps worked their way out of the Nazi empire, but they were determined to try. To their minds, it was either them or the Jews. To truly understand the Nazi mindset, it will take books like The Jewish Enemy to bring it to light. This is a must-read. | <urn:uuid:7197ae0c-f710-4b14-b265-5df181f55384> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.curledup.com/jewishen.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00072-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.981651 | 1,124 | 3.28125 | 3 |
How do you think the new GigE standards will influence the machine vision industry?
Respond or ask your question now!
For patients who have to get multiple IVs or frequently get blood drawn, a simple needle stick can become complicated and painful from missed veins or multiple sticks due to hard to find veins. Developers have taken the simple technology used in television remote controls and created a device that makes accessing the vascular network a simple task.
The IRIS Vascular Viewer™ from InfraRed Imaging Systems (Columbus, Ohio), was developed to visualize vascular structures. The IRIS Vascular Viewer is capable of visualizing both superficial veins and more deeply located arteries. The device allows for vascular access improvements in hospital settings relative to time, the number of attempts and cost to insert cannulae (needles) and IVs.
The IRIS Vascular Viewer uses infrared light to illuminated veins and arteries that are displayed thought the viewing scope. It provides the practitioner with a precise and direct image of the blood vessels. The catheter or needle and resulting flashback can be readily viewed as the vessel is punctured. Anatomical abnormalities and complications associated with vascular access, such as infiltration and damaged veins, can also be observed. Components of the device include the light source, the detector and the display. The device is portable and has rechargeable batteries.
The light behind the system is a high-powered infrared LED developed by OSRAM Opto Semiconductors (San Jose, Calif.). "ThinFilm technology has been applied to the world of red and infrared LED resulting in high end improvements of brightness," said Karl Leahy, OSRAM's general marketing manager, infrared and high power laser products, NAFTA region. The ThinFilm Golden DRAGON package offers an 850nm IR light emitter.
Previously, one would need over 100 LEDs to generate the same amount of light as the ThinFilm DRAGON. "Thermal imaging has moved into active imaging, and one of the applications using the DRAGON light source is the IRIS device," said Leahy. | <urn:uuid:726b5bbb-a421-4a28-b5aa-3776dcbe0024> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.advancedimagingpro.com/print/Advanced-Imaging-Magazine/Thinfilm-IR-Technology-Benefits-Medicine-and-Other-Applications/1$3425 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00035-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.940747 | 417 | 2.171875 | 2 |
Displaying 1-20 of 36 links
Launched in 2003, AGORA provides free or subsidised journal access to not-for-profit institutions in eligible countries. Once details are finalised, all institutions in countries with a GNP per capita under US$1,000 will be given access to participating literature. The journal collection focuses on agriculture and related sciences, and includes titles from major publishing houses. AGORA is an FAO initiative. Click here for more details about registering.
The Africa Portal, part of the larger Africa Initiative project, is an online resource for policy-related issues in Africa, covering climate change, food security, energy and health, among other areas. It is published by the Centre for International Governance Innovation; Makerere University, Uganda; and the South African Institute of International Affairs. The website offers an open access publications library with more than 3,000 books, journals, and digital documents available online or to download. It also publishes opinion and analysis on current issues, a directory of experts on African policy, and announcements including events and grants.
AJFAND is an academic journal — published quarterly — by the Rural Outreach Programme, a non-profit company based in Kenya. The journal's free-access website features peer-reviewed articles about poverty, food security, disease and agriculture in Africa. It also provides commentaries, short communications, book reviews, and relevant news and events. Students can submit work to the student section.
A project of the Thomson Reuters Foundation, AlertNet is a news aggregator that aims to raise awareness of humanitarian crises around the globe, particularly 'forgotten' emergencies that rarely make headlines. It publishes news from over 400 aid agencies and other media outlets across a range of topics, from natural disasters to climate change to health. AlertNet also provides tools for journalists, including facts and figures, crisis briefings and training modules.
The Beyond Rio Resource Centre, run by the Sussex Climate Change Network at the University of Sussex, UK, offers information about new ideas and practical solutions for sustainability. It is aimed at practitioners, policymakers, academics and students interested in sustainable development. The website publishes information on two overarching themes — the green economy and institutional frameworks — and seven critical issues, including food, water and energy. It includes open access publications supporting these themes, and a wide range of briefings, project reports, website links and films.
The Gates Foundation's nutrition programme aims to include essential vitamins and minerals in the diets of people in the developing world, and to guarantee proper nutrition under the age of two, including in the womb.
Progress sheets and a strategy overview on the organisation's nutrition program are available to download as well as press releases and information on grants given. The website also includes job listings, downloadable fact sheets, financial statements and annual reviews.
The foundation funds population-wide food fortification programmes and invests in research and development of diagnostic tools and biomarkers for identifying and measuring micronutrient deficiencies. It also funds research to examine how different nutritional interventions affect infection.
This programme aims to encourage better management of water for food production by increasing the resilience of social and ecological systems.
It does this by focusing on the interconnections between water, food and poverty in developing countries. The programme helps develop water-related innovations by bringing together scientists, development specialists, policymakers and communities.
The website publishes information on its research programmes and projects as well as blogs and related news, job vacancies and events.
FEWS NET, funded by the US Agency for International Development, provides early warning and vulnerability information on food security issues to 25 countries, many of which are in the developing world.
FEWS NET uses a combination of satellite data and socio-economic analyses to publish regular bulletins, updates and briefings as well as drought and food shortage alerts.
The Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET) — funded by the United States Agency for International Development — collaborates with international, regional and national partners to provide timely early warning and vulnerability information on emerging and evolving food security issues.
FEWS NET monitors and analyses relevant data and information, and uses a suite of communications and decision support products to help decision-makers act to mitigate food insecurity. These products include monthly food security updates for 25 countries, regular food security outlooks, and alerts, as well as briefings and support to contingency and response planning efforts.
More in-depth studies in areas such as livelihoods and markets provide additional information to support analysis as well as program and policy development.
FEWS NET focuses its efforts on strengthening early warning and food security networks, by developing capacity, building and strengthening networks, developing policy-useful information, and building consensus around food security problems and solutions.
The website acts as a platform for announcing food security conditions all over the world, and contains many analytical reports and policy briefs.
The Food and Agriculture Organisation is a United Nations body with a mandate to raise levels of nutrition and standards of living, to improve agricultural productivity, and to better the condition of rural populations.
This website publishes news and information on the joint European Committee and Food and Agriculture Organization programme 'Linking information and decision making to improve food security'. It includes 30 country-level food security briefs, a food security analysis 'toolkit' and a range of publications including policy briefs and reports.
The site also promotes training and workshops, and hosts e-learning courses, on topics such as crop forecasting, market analysis and vulnerability assessment.
The Food Security Network is an independent, non-profit coalition of people throughout the world dedicated to participating in an open, informed and impactful dialogue addressing solutions to global food security concerns through sustainable agricultural practices. The website includes regular updates and news stories, which are often pro-biotechnology.
FoodFirst opposes the use of genetic engineering in agriculture and food. It publishes briefings, position papers and opinion articles on genetically modified crop technology in relation to sustainable agriculture, hunger and poverty. Its website includes audio and video interviews with FoodFirst staff as well as photo galleries illustrating, among other topics, agriculture in developing countries.
This consortium of African and UK institutions aims to encourage dialogue and good practice among policymakers involved in African agriculture. Its website publishes research, working papers, policy briefs, news and online debates on issues such as climate change and pastoralism among others.
This foundation's mission is to reduce malnutrition through food fortification. It focuses on providing supplements — such as iodised salt — and healthy food to malnourished populations. The website includes downloadable fact sheets of GAIN's programmes around the world and overviews of vitamins and nutrient deficiencies.
The organisation targets vulnerable groups such as young children, pregnant women, people with infectious diseases, remote rural populations, or refugees. GAIN takes a business-minded approach to funding better nutrition, pooling its money with financial institutions, not-for-profit global venture funds and venture capitalists to encourage local businesses to develop new products, distribution channels and marketing approaches.
This website publishes video news coverage of under-reported global health stories, focusing on HIV/AIDS; polio; tuberculosis; malaria; neglected tropical diseases; maternal and child health; and food security. Each topic includes an overview of the subject, a photo gallery, and the latest news and videos highlighting current issues. The website includes a blog, a 'newsroom' page that highlights developments within the organisation, details of current and future film projects, and links to related organisations. | <urn:uuid:2eb3c035-2518-4d6c-8fb7-b70509de8240> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.scidev.net/en/science-and-innovation-policy/food-security/links/all/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00070-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.926668 | 1,518 | 2.359375 | 2 |
|Product #: SSLJ114_TQ|
Let's Visit Saskatchewan Gr. 2-4 (Resource Book Only) eBookGrade 2|Grade 3|Grade 4
Please Note: This ebook is a digital download, NOT a physical product. After purchase, you will be provided a one time link to download ebooks to your computer. Orders paid by PayPal require up to 8 business hours to verify payment and release electronic media. For immediate downloads, payment with credit card is required.
Saskatchewan is in the middle of the three Prairie provinces. Study this land of the Canadian Shield, the grain belt and the barren badlands. Help students become more aware of the greatness of this magnificent province. This book highlights the history, land, industry, animals, symbols and interesting places found in Saskatchewan. Additional activities in language, creative writing, mapping and research are also included, with a reproducible student booklet and answer key.
Submit a review | <urn:uuid:943ee557-2c2f-4c9c-bf3d-4c62e1538cdd> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.schoodoodle.com/page_103196/lets-visit-saskatchewan-gr.-2-4 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.905305 | 192 | 2.765625 | 3 |
Bibliographic record and links to related information available from the Library of Congress catalog
Information from electronic data provided by the publisher. May be incomplete or contain other coding.
Identifying and attracting the right kind of investor can be a difficult process. Venture Capital Funding gives a step-by-step guide for small and medium-sized businesses to obtain venture capital – from building a management team through the maze of due diligence procedures.
Though the book is firmly rooted in UK and EU practice, US entrepreneurs will nonetheless find the discussion of the nuts and bolts of venture capital of interest. The practicalities of competing for, and winning, additional capital are broken down into key areas, such as: the significance of the business plan, types of investor, targeting and attracting a funder, negotiation and initial valuations, the due diligence process, and the available investment vehicles. It also explores the many reasons why companies seek out additional funding, and discusses the points in the business life cycle when such injections are appropriate. | <urn:uuid:dee6d7ac-96c1-4961-a33e-b562ae5178d4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://catdir.loc.gov/catdir/enhancements/fy0838/2008011176-d.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00050-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.913468 | 202 | 1.96875 | 2 |
Nanodentistry and cosmetic dentistry: Shaping the future of dentistry
Every specialty in healthcare needs to make progress technologically to improve upon earlier available treatments and provide patients with better options. We discuss a few of such technological advancements that are setting the future trends in dentistry.
Titash Roy Choudhury
Dentistry as a specialty has undergone massive changes and technological advancements in the recent years, which are bringing in newer treatment options and yielding better results. Various technological advancements are seen worldwide and many of these trends are also entering the Indian dental market. Innovative procedures and treatments are being developed as people are getting more conscious about their appearance along with the having the willingness to spend on cosmetic procedures. Hence, we see concepts such as cosmetic dentistry gaining popularity among the urban population, and nanodentistry making progress in developing better techniques for dental care.
Though the concept of cosmetic dentistry is not new – gold filling has been in existence since a long time – it is now that the trend is catching up and newer techniques are being introduced. “Cosmetic dentistry is generally used to refer to any dental work that improves the appearance (though not necessarily the function) of an individuals’ teeth, gums and/or bite,” says Dr Priyanka Kataria, Senior Dental Consultant, Fortis Hospital. Cosmetic dentistry primarily deals with improving the aesthetics of patient’s smile, which may include orthodontic treatment, smile dentistry and even surgical methods, depending upon the severity and oddity in the facial features. Today, we have various kinds of advanced treatments available that has made this concept of cosmetic dentistry more attractive. “We use a single word ‘cosmetic’ to encompass the whole concept of providing a beautiful, dazzling, shining individualised smile, conceptualised, designed and executed to perfection through treatments and techniques including orthodontics, implants, veneers, metal-free ceramics, composites, tooth whitening, etc” avers Dr Lavkesh Bansal, Director and Chief Dental Surgeon, Durga Dental Care & Research Centre.
There are two broad dental specialties that predominantly focus on dental aesthetics/cosmetics, prosthodontics and orthodontics. “Cosmetic dentistry may involve addition of a dental material to teeth or gums; for example, bonding, porcelain veneers (laminates), crowns (caps), gum grafts, straightening of teeth accompanied by improvement in appearance of face orthodontics. Whitening or ‘tooth bleaching‘, is the most common cosmetic dental procedure,” informs Dr Kataria. Gum lift is a cosmetic dental procedure that raises and sculpts the gum line. The procedure involves reshaping the tissue and/or underlying bones to create the appearance of longer or more symmetrical teeth.
While tooth reshaping removes part of the enamel to improve the appearance of the tooth, it may be used to correct a small chip, or to alter the length, shape or position of teeth or to correct crooked or excessively long teeth. This procedure offers fast results and can even be a substitute for braces under certain circumstances. “There are various treatment options such as veneering, orthobraces, surgical corrections like rhinoplasty (nosejob), genioplasty (chin correction), labioplasty (lip correction) and botox application,” Dr Bansal avers.
Nanotechnology: Shaping dentistry
Nanodentistry is a branch of dentistry that employs nanotechnology for precise and better results along with maintenance of oral health by use of nanomaterials, nanorobotics and nanomedicine. “Development of nanodentistry will enable the maintenance of near-perfect oral health through the use of nanomaterials, biotechnology including tissue engineering, and nanorobotics,” believes Dr Kataria. When the first micron-size dental nanorobots will be developed, perhaps 10-20 years from today, how they might be applied to dentistry is a question that everyone is waiting to discover. Some of the areas in dental care where nanotechnology has evolved better techniques are tooth repair, reducing dental hypersentivity, introducing newer materials with better qualities, among others. Nanodental techniques for major tooth repair may evolve through several stages of technological development, first using genetic engineering, tissue engineering and tissue regeneration, and later growing whole new teeth invitro and installing them. “Ultimately, the nanorobotic manufacturing and installation of a biologically autologous whole replacement tooth including both mineral and cellular components, eg, complete dentition replacement therapy, should become feasible to undertake within the time and economic constraints of an ordinary office visit, using an affordable desktop manufacturing facility in the dentist’s office,” informs Dr Kataria. Dentin hypersensitivity is another pathologic phenomenon that may be amenable to a nanodental cure. It may be caused by changes in pressure transmitted hydrodynamically to the pulp. “There are many therapeutic agents for this common painful condition that provide temporary relief, but reconstructive dental nanorobots could selectively and precisely occlude selected tubules in minutes, using native biological materials, offering patients a quick and permanent cure,” says Dr Kataria. Apart from advanced treatments and techniques nanotechnology has also developed advanced materials that have improved dental care, impression materials like nanofillers that give the material better flow and improved hydrophilic properties, hence, fewer voids at margin and better model pouring, thus enhancing precision. Dentition renaturalisation procedures may become a popular addition to the typical dental practice, providing perfect methods for aesthetic dentistry. “This trend may begin with patients who desire to have their old dental amalgams excavated and their teeth remanufactured with native biological materials. But demand will grow for full coronal renaturalisations wherein all fillings, crowns, and other necessary 20th century modifications to the visible dentition are removed, with the affected teeth re-manufactured so as to be indistinguishable from the natural originals,” says Dr Kataria.
Scope and future
“In India, people are becoming more aware of the options available and they start looking for better treatment that goes well with their teeth, face and personality. More than the technology, it is the perception of beauty provided by the dentist, diagnosing of the missing parts in teeth, lips, face and personality of patient, charting a neat step-wise treatment plan, collaborating with the best technicians who can sync with the dentist’s thinking, executing the procedure to maximum efficiency is what matters,” informs
Dr Bansal. Within the scope of cosmetic dentistry in India, the major focus of dentists is on the overall good look of your teeth. In order to attain this objective, they need something specific such as ceramic and composite technology. “There is a strong need of special training for this technology.
In the past few years, cosmetic dentistry has become very popular and considered as the safest way to beautify the look along with good dental health. The best cosmetic dentistry procedure India employs is use of veneers to advance the look of teeth, primarily the front ones. This treatment used in cosmetic dentistry is extremely simple, safe and causes no side effect,” says Dr Kataria. Cosmetic dentistry is extensively practiced in India and nanodentistry is catching up fast with corporate hospitals, though cost is a factor that may pose a barrier for advancement of technologies. But along with advancements in cosmetic dentistry, nanodentistry is the future of dentistry and the next few years will provide a clear picture of how well the technology aids the field of dentistry. | <urn:uuid:e5d046c5-3b09-46b5-9682-af2edaafd123> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://modernmedicare.co.in/articles/nanodentistry-and-cosmetic-dentistry-shaping-the-future-of-dentistry/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.928703 | 1,606 | 2.3125 | 2 |
Wilbur Smith (1933 - ) was born on the 9th January in Northern Rhodesia, now called Zambia. He was educated at Michaelhouse in KwaZulu-Natal and at Rhodes University in the Eastern Cape. As a child he shared his mother’s interest in novels, especially adventure stories, where he immersed himself in the lives of the characters and the places. His love of adventure stories made him intensely aware of the environment and wildlife. His concern for the environment and the people of his native home are strongly reflected in his novels.
Due to the rapidly changing political situation in Southern Africa, Smith had his heart set on becoming a journalist so that he could chronicle the changes which were taking place. But his stern Victorian father, who had never read a book in his life, discouraged him, believing that writing was not a real job. So, instead of studying journalism, he became a tax accountant.
He married at the age of twenty four but this marriage ended in divorce. He then started writing as a diversion. He immersed himself in the characters and the setting of his novels. He became a full-time writer after the successful publication of When the Lion Feeds (1964). He has since written thirty novels and his books are now translated into twenty six languages. He is South Africa’s biggest selling author by far, and indeed a world best seller.
Africa is the inspiration and the setting for many of Smith’s novels. In order to carry out research for his novels, Smith spends a lot of his time travelling in Africa. He also travels extensively when he is not writing. Among some of his travels are safaris in Botswana and Zimbabwe, diving and fishing in the Seychelles and shooting and fishing in South America, skiing in Switzerland and visits to Australia and New Zealand for sea fishing.
Wilbur Smith currently lives in London. Smith was strongly influenced by the two modern writers, Hemingway and Steinbeck. As a child he read books by Forester, Rider Haggard, Rudyard Kipling as well as Victorian travel writers. His writing is strongly influenced by this literary genre.
Extract from When the Lion Feeds (1964)
Up here on the plateau it was grassland that rose and fell beneath them as they climbed the low round hills and dropped into the valleys. The grass around them moved with the wind: waist-high grass, soft dry grass the colour of ripe wheat. Behind them and on each side of the grassland rolled away to the full range of the eye, but suddenly in front of them was the escarpment. The land cascaded down into it, steeply at first then gradually levelling out to become the Tugela flats. The Tugela river was twenty miles away across the flats, but today there was a haze in the air so they could not see that far. Beyond the river, stretched far to the north and a hundred miles east to the sea, was Zululand. The river was the border. The steep side of the escarpment was cut by vertical gulleys and in the gulleys grew dense, olive-green bush.
Below them, two miles out on the flats, was the homestead of Theunis Kraal. The house was a big one, Dutch-gabled smoothly thatched with combed grass. There were horses in the small paddock: many horses, for the twins’ father was a wealthy man. Smoke from the cooking fires blued the air over the servants’ quarters and the sound of someone chopping wood carried faintly up to them.
Sean stopped on the rim of the escarpment and sat down in the grass. He took hold of one of his grimy bare feet and twisted it up into his lap. There was a hole in the ball of his heel from which he had pulled a thorn earlier in the day and now it was plugged with dirt. Garrick sat down next to him.
“Man, is that going to hurt when Ma puts iodine on it!’ gloated Garrick. “She’ll have to use a needle to get the dirt out. I bet you yell – I bet you yell your head off!’
Sean ignored him. He picked a stalk of grass and started probing it into the wound. Garrick watched with interest. Twins could scarcely have been less alike. Sean was already taking on the shape of a man: his shoulders were thickening, and there was a hard muscle forming in his puppy fat. His colouring was vivid: black hair, skin brown from the sun, lips and cheeks that glowed with the fresh young blood beneath their surface, and blue eyes, the dark indigo-blue of cloud shadow on mountain lake.
Garrick was slim, with the wrists and ankles of a girl. His hair was an undecided brown that grew wispy down the back of his neck, his skin was freckled, his nose and the rims of his pale blue eyes were pink with persistent hay fever. He was fast losing interest in Sean’s surgery. He reached across and fiddled with one of Tinker’s pendulous ears, and this broke the rhythm of the dog’s panting; he gulped twice and the saliva dripped from the end of his tongue. Garrick lifted his head and looked down the slope. A little below where they were sitting was the head of one of the bushy gullies. Garrick caught his breath.
‘Sean, look there – next to the bush!’ His whisper trembled with excitement.
‘What’s it?’ Sean looked up startled. Then he saw it.
‘Hold Tinker.’ Garrick grabbed the dog’s collar and pulled his head around to prevent him seeing and giving chase. ‘He’s the biggest old inkonka in the world,’ breathed Garrick. Sean was too absorbed to answer.
The bushbuck was picking its way warily out of the thick cover. A big ram, black with age; the spots on his haunches were faded like old chalk marks. His ears pricked up and his spiral horns held high, big as a pony, but stepping daintily, he came out into the open. He stopped and swung his head from side to side, searching for danger, then he trotted diagonally down the hill and disappeared into another of the gullies.
1964. When the Lion Feeds. London: Heinemann.
1965. The Dark of the Sun. London: Heinemann.
1966. The Sound of Thunder. London: Pan Books.
1968. Shout at the Devil. London: Heinemann.
1970. Gold Mine. Johannesburg: Pan Macmillan.
1971. The Diamond Hunters. Johannesburg: Pan Macmillan.
1972. The Sunbird. Johnannesburg: Pan Macmillan.
1974. Eagle in the Sky. Johannesburg: Pan Macmillan.
1975. The Eye of the Tiger. Johannesburg: Pan Macmillan.
1976. Cry Wolf. Johannesburg: Pan Macmillan.
1977. A Sparrow Falls. London: Heinemann.
1978. Hungry as the Sea. London: Pan Books.
1979. Wild Justice. Johannesburg: Pan Macmillan.
1980. A Falcon Flies. Johannesburg: Pan Macmillan.
1981. Men of Men. Johannesburg: Pan Macmillan.
1982. The Angels Weep. Johannesburg: Pan Macmillan.
1984. The Leopard Hunts in Darkness. London: Heinemann.
1985. Burning Shore. London: Heinemann.
1986. Power of the Sword. Johannesburg: Pan Macmillan.
1987. Rage. Johannesburg: Pan Macmillan.
1989. A Time to Die. Johannesburg: Pan Macmillan.
1990. Golden Fox. Johannesburg: Pan Macmillan.
1991. Elephant Song. Johannesburg: Pan Macmillan.
1993. River God. Johannesburg: Pan Macmillan.
1996. The Seventh Scroll. Johannesburg: Pan Macmillan.
1997. Birds of Prey. Johannesburg: Pan Macmillan.
1999. Monsoon. Johannesburg: Pan Macmillan.
2001. Warlock. Johannesburg: Pan Macmillan.
2003. Blue Horizon. Johannesburg: Pan Macmillan.
2005. The Triumph of the Sun. New York: St. Martin's Press.
2007. The Quest. Johannesburg: Pan Macmillan.
2009. Assegai. Johannesburg: Pan Macmillan.
2011. Those in Peril. Johannesburg: Pan Macmillan. | <urn:uuid:86a6a56e-e22c-4301-9a4c-95bdcd6444f1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.literarytourism.co.za/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=396:wilbur-smith&catid=13:authors&Itemid=28 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00067-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.971781 | 1,824 | 1.953125 | 2 |
Our focus in class will be on creating a number of CSS rules that allow you to float HTML5 asides and graphics left and right. The float, as many of you have learned already, is an essential design concept in CSS. Using your exercise six cleanly scrubbed, HTML5-ized, Semantic Web-proofed, well-formed and valid text, Open Communication Climate, you will plant two asides and two graphics, both left and right, making necessary adjustments to the graphics and text to improve design for readability and overall aesthetics. You will want to pay special attention to the relationship of the graphics, asides, paragraph size, and headings: a full-bore design experience is about to be yours.
The graphics above left and right are the ones you will use for this exercise. I will provide written instructions and will work through the design and rule-writing with you in class. I think you will find working with the float to be a lot of fun.
While you will be receiveing printouts of the exercise in class, you may want to have electronic access to them in pdf form:
- Ex 6b: HTML5 Asides and CSS Multiple Classes (work on this in class)
- Ex 6c: Contents with Style (work on this at home)
Microsoft Office Clip Art Photographs: j0406569.jpg (Shaking hands) and j0289517.jpg (2 women in office). (n.d.). Microsoft Office 2003. Redmond, WA: Microsoft Corporation.If you have questions, just e-mail me at firstname.lastname@example.org. Feel free to comment on this announcement, or if you want to e-mail it, click on the little mail icon directly below. Note also that each announcement has a permanent link, available through the announcement title and posting date.
posted by WJB at Monday, November 14, 2011 | <urn:uuid:b077b6f6-6e74-4af9-9bc5-daa072d7f970> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wjbuchholz.com/2011/11/html5-asides-and-css-multiple-classes.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00027-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.930498 | 395 | 2.296875 | 2 |