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Last week, the Academy Award-winning director Kathryn Bigelow defended her controversial Oscar-tipped movie Zero Dark Thirty against criticism over its depiction of torture in the hunt for Osama bin Laden.
Much was made about the authenticity of the film by Bigelow and the screenwriter Mark Boal, who used insider access to tell the sweeping, meticulously detailed story of the decade-long search for bin Laden.
In an op-ed in the Los Angeles Times, Bigelow wrote that critics should focus on those responsible for torture and harsh interrogation techniques in the years after September 11, rather than on the artists portraying them.
"Experts disagree sharply on the facts and particulars of the intelligence hunt, and doubtlessly that debate will continue," wrote Bigelow, whose 2008 film The Hurt Locker won six Oscars including Best Picture and Best Director.
"As for what I personally believe, which has been the subject of inquiries, accusations and speculation, I think Osama bin Laden was found due to ingenious detective work.
"Torture was, however, as we all know, employed in the early years of the hunt. That doesn't mean it was the key to finding bin Laden. It means it is a part of the story we couldn't ignore."
The movie includes graphic depictions of water-boarding and other harsh techniques, and alludes to the changing CIA culture that came about after Barack Obama became president in 2009.
It has drawn criticism notably from the acting CIA director Michael Morell, who issued a statement about it last month. "The film creates the strong impression that the enhanced interrogation techniques that were part of our former detention and interrogation programme were the key to finding bin Laden. That impression is false," he said.
A former CIA official, Jose Rodriguez, wrote in a Washington Post article headlined "Sorry Hollywood. What we did wasn't torture" that bloody interrogations never really happened. "The truth is that no one was bloodied or beaten in the enhanced interrogation programme which I supervised from 2002 to 2007," he wrote.
Bigelow wrote last week that "depiction is not endorsement", adding: "I do wonder if some of the sentiments … expressed about the film might be more appropriately directed at those who instituted and ordered these US policies, as opposed to a motion picture that brings the story to the screen." At least one member of the motion picture academy, David Clennon, has said he will not vote for Zero Dark Thirty in any category because of the way it depicts torture. | <urn:uuid:b71ad069-2c5a-453f-bd3a-8421b4f71fec> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.thenational.ae/arts-culture/film/bigelow-defends-her-depiction-of-torture | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00072-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.979628 | 511 | 1.5625 | 2 |
today i want to talk a little a bit about achieving dream. the reson i am talking a little bit about achieving dream is simple and the reason is because sometimes people think that it is too hard so they dont ever try.
you have to try there is noway around it you havwe to try you have to want it you havwe to need it you HAVE to be willing to pour blood and sweat and tears and blood on the ground the get your dream make it a reality.
let me tell you a little story about my first day as boston patriot. i got drafted which was a big dream and then everything seemed so big and i felt like i was a nobody nuthing. i was a little bit scared by the size of everything i know that you are thiniking this guy is the big katz he has neck mussels like an old tree trunk and his arms are thick as a bao constricter that is old has lived in the jungle for a vary long time and is vary thick. butr the facts are true i was scareda little bit when i got drafted. do you know how i got threw it do you know how i made my dream not just a dream but a reality of life? PASSION. do u think i played football for money or fame or hot pre natal wife? no. do you think i satrted lift jim for money or cash or famousness or how pre natal wife? NO. i started it because i want to help all the young kids and teenages and moms and fitness competitor and athlete and general population achieve dream because that is my dream.
so, you need these three things to achieve dream. first you need passion you need desire you have to want it more than any thing beacuse if you don t want it then what do you want? you want nothing. secondly what you need is work ethic to match passion ethic. i kno that i say this all the time but you have to work really hard to get what you want if you dont want it fine then dont work hard but if you want it you need to work hard harder maybe thwan U think U can work but that is why it is dream it is hard to get hard to achieve but if you work hard and you have muh psssion dream will come tru.
so always remember that nothing is easy and it doesnt matter how big ur arm mussels are everybody has same fewelings of being scared at the begiining but u gotta fight thru it to achieve dream. | <urn:uuid:b838939b-91c2-45d2-a379-d4ec33a2849f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://bigkatzbigdreams.blogspot.com/2009/03/achieve-dream.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00065-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.972408 | 518 | 1.507813 | 2 |
HUNTINGTON, W.Va. -- Citizen groups lawyers on Thursday urged a federal judge to block a Logan County mountaintop removal coal mine, saying unqualified government permit reviewers wrongly ignored scientific findings that clearly show growing damage to water quality from such operations.
Joe Lovett, lawyer for the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition, said the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers did not properly consider water pollution expected from the Highland Reylas mine proposed by Alpha Natural Resources.
"The corps has neglected its duty," Lovett told U.S. District Judge Robert C. Chambers during a 2 1/2-hour hearing in Huntington.
Chambers called the hearing for final arguments from lawyers for citizen groups, the government and Alpha, following a four-day trial over the 635-acre permit near Ethel.
Alpha hopes to employ about 100 people for six years of mining, and then create a 235-acre site with paved roads and utilities that could be used for temporary housing during flooding and other emergencies. The mine, though, would bury about 2 1/2 miles of streams beneath a valley fill and associated runoff-control structures.
During the trial, citizen groups presented as expert witnesses a series of the nation's top scientists who have authored peer-reviewed papers that link increased levels of sulfates in mining runoff with biological impairment of waters downstream from mountaintop removal sites.
Lovett told Chambers that government and industry witnesses did not disprove those studies, and said no peer-reviewed papers have challenged their conclusions.
"The science all points in the same direction," Lovett said. "Their own experts admitted it. It's undisputed." | <urn:uuid:f997bcb1-a64f-42f5-bcfc-bd823018fcb6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wvgazette.com/News/MiningtheMountains/201207120119 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956404 | 338 | 1.703125 | 2 |
Robot Assisted Prostate Cancer Surgery Compares Favorably to Other Surgical Techniques
Apr 25, 2012 - 10:54:04 AM
First Large Meta-Analysis to Examine Differences Between Three Types of Curative Prostate Surgeries
(HealthNewsDigest.com) - NEW YORK (April 25, 2012) -- Outcomes from use of a robot to assist surgeons in removal of a cancerous prostate are at least as good, if not better, than the other two techniques used for a radical prostatectomy -- open or laparoscopic surgery -- according to a large meta analysis led by researchers at NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell.
The study, published February 24 online in European Urology, should help resolve some of the controversy regarding use of the robotic option, known as robot assisted laparoscopic radical prostatectomy (RALP), says the study's lead author, Dr. Ashutosh Tewari, director of the Lefrak Center for Robotic Surgery and director of the Prostate Cancer Institute at New York-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center.
"There is a lot of debate about the best way to remove a cancerous prostate gland," says Dr. Tewari, who is also the Ronald P. Lynch Professor of Urologic Oncology and professor of urology and public health at Weill Cornell Medical College. "Since the robotic technology is expensive, the patient benefits often get intertwined with the societal costs. It is clear, however, that robotic surgery is the most popular surgical modality today. This study represents the largest ever systematic review of patient outcomes comparing robotic-assisted, laparoscopic and open radical prostatectomy.
By analyzing 400 original research articles -- all that have been published to date on the three methods -- Dr. Tewari and his colleagues concluded that RALP is more effective than a pure laparoscopic approach and comparable to an open surgical approach in completely removing cancer from the body. Positive surgical margins, a measure of oncological efficacy, were lower in patients receiving robotic radical prostatectomy as compared to those undergoing laparoscopic prostatectomy.
The researchers also found that robot assisted surgery had fewer intraoperative and perioperative complication rates when compared to both laparoscopic and open approaches. In addition, robotic showed both less intraoperative blood loss and less blood transfusions as compared to open surgery.
The meta analysis included treatment information on 286,876 patients, representing the largest compilation of radical prostatectomy patients to date.
"Understanding the best method to remove the prostate matters," Dr. Tewari says, "because prostate cancer is the most common diagnosed cancer and the second most common cause of cancer death for men in developed countries."
But given the nature of the study, Dr. Tewari says he cannot recommend one surgical approach over another. He emphasizes that surgical approaches need to be adjusted for the technique and experience of the surgeon. Many studies have shown that surgical experience is an independent predictor for outcomes, far beyond the approach alone.
"This paper is innovative in its attempt to unpack the outcomes data, in a systematic way, surrounding the three surgical modalities for prostate cancer treatment, but the data we used were not standardized -- outcome measures differed between studies," he says. "Still I believe the results are meaningful in that it shows RALP has at least as good outcomes as the other methods."
Challenges of Randomized Studies for Prostate Surgery
The three forms of surgery studied are "open radical" in which the prostate is removed via an abdominal incision in the belly button or pubic bone; laparoscopic prostatectomy that requires several small minimally invasive "keyhole" incisions in the abdomen, and robotic surgery, which is a form of laparoscopic surgery. RALP is done through keyholes with the aid of robotic arms that eliminate hand tremor as well as advanced optics that magnify the prostate and surrounding nerves in three-dimensions.
"It is hard to accrue patients for randomized studies. We have an ongoing study open at our institution, investigating the quality of life differences between robotic and open radical prostatectomy. This is designed as a randomized controlled study," he says. "But no one has enrolled because they did not want to be randomized to a treatment they don't prefer. Patients often come, especially to prostate cancer specialists, self-selecting for a particular treatment modality."
So Dr. Tewari and Peter Wiklund, M.D., of Sweden's Karolinska University Hospital, developed a study that examined all of the peer-reviewed studies published on any of the three techniques.
This ambitious effort was aimed at understanding the short-term (30 day) outcomes of the three surgical techniques. Given the short time frame, the meta analysis did not compare outcomes for urinary continence or sexual potency.
The researchers determined that complications and mortality were low for all three methods, suggesting that radical prostatectomy is a safe procedure.
Significant differences found were in the lower positive surgical margin (PSM) rates for RALP compared with laparoscopic surgery and lower intra operative and perioperative complications for RALP in comparison to other modalities. "PSM rates are important because they represent the effectiveness by which cancer is removed," Dr. Tewari says. "The RALP PSM rate was as good as open surgery," he adds.
The researchers also found that both laparoscopic and robotic surgery patients experienced lower rates of blood loss and transfusions and a shorter hospital stay compared with patients who had traditional surgery. Other measures, such as rates of readmission, reoperation, and complications, seemed to favor RALP, the researchers say.
"We would love to be able to directly compare the three prostatectomy surgical techniques, but that may not happen," Dr. Tewari says. "This study is the first to provide an important -- and much needed -- analysis of the short term benefits and risks between curative surgeries that many men rely on."
While the current research was not funded, Dr. Tewari has received research grants from Intuitive Surgical Inc., manufacturers of da Vinci robotic surgery system, in past and is funded from NIH, the Prostate Cancer Foundation and Lefrak Foundation
Co-authors include Dr. Prasanna Sooriakumarana, of Weill Cornell Medical Center and Peter Wiklund, of Karolinska University Hospital, Daniel A. Bloch from Stanford University School of Medicine, Usha Seshadri-Kreadend and April E. Hebert, from Intuitive Surgical Inc. For more information, patients may call (866) NYP-NEWS.
Lefrak Center for Robotic Surgery and Institute of Prostate Cancer
The Lefrak Center for Robotic Surgery is dedicated to the care of patients with prostate cancer using innovative MRI based diagnostic and staging approach and provides comprehensive care involving active surveillance, focal therapy, robotic prostatectomy, radiation and medical therapy. The Center has performed over 3500 robotic procedures and its faculty have published extensively about their outcomes in peer reviewed literature. For more information visit www.cornellurology.com/about/treatment-centers/lefrak/
NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center
NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center, located in New York City, is one of the leading academic medical centers in the world, comprising the teaching hospital NewYork-Presbyterian and Weill Cornell Medical College, the medical school of Cornell University. NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell provides state-of-the-art inpatient, ambulatory and preventive care in all areas of medicine, and is committed to excellence in patient care, education, research and community service. Weill Cornell physician-scientists have been responsible for many medical advances -- including the development of the Pap test for cervical cancer; the synthesis of penicillin; the first successful embryo-biopsy pregnancy and birth in the U.S.; the first clinical trial for gene therapy for Parkinson's disease; the first indication of bone marrow's critical role in tumor growth; and, most recently, the world's first successful use of deep brain stimulation to treat a minimally conscious brain-injured patient. NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital also comprises NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia University Medical Center, NewYork-Presbyterian/Morgan Stanley Children's Hospital, NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Westchester Division and NewYork-Presbyterian/The Allen Hospital. NewYork-Presbyterian is the #1 hospital in the New York metropolitan area and is consistently ranked among the best academic medical institutions in the nation, according to U.S.News & World Report. Weill Cornell Medical College is the first U.S. medical college to offer a medical degree overseas and maintains a strong global presence in Austria, Brazil, Haiti, Tanzania, Turkey and Qatar. For more information, visit www.nyp.org and weill.cornell.edu.
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© Copyright by HealthNewsDigest.com | <urn:uuid:7d9f10fc-628a-4d01-921f-9b74e684040d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.healthnewsdigest.com/news/Surgery_540/Robot_Assisted_Prostate_Cancer_Surgery_Compares_Favorably_to_Other_Surgical_Techniques_printer.shtml | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00029-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.941928 | 1,957 | 1.6875 | 2 |
A TELEVISION show doesn’t fulfil the pious code of clerics, and out come statements expressing sorrow at the death of the Quaid’s Pakistan.
One man claims he can run a car on water and consequently Pakistanis on the whole are condemned as inhabitants of the age of jahiliya. When an honourable judge seeks to reflect on the state of the nation, he chooses to lace his prose with reasons why Pakistanis should pity themselves.
This is where the debate is stuck on the 65th anniversary of Independence. The rest is tit-for-tat.
It is the Rohingyas who occupy the minds of Pakistanis right now. Brutal taunts have flown in the direction of those who are lumped together as liberals over their ‘failure’ to condemn violence against Muslims in Myanmar.
‘Drones cannot be written against. Taliban are the villains. The West is the role model, and your paymasters do not allow you to condemn the killing of persecuted Muslims…’ So goes the refrain of the ‘right-wingers’ or the ‘Islamists’.
These ‘conservatives’, when they are not rallying for the Rohingyas, must typically appear to be defending the petition against televised ‘vulgarity’.
They are the spokesmen who are forever asked to elaborate ‘Taliban Khan’s’ ideology and they could be occasionally forced to justify the battles the Supreme Court declares on the government — a government which has lost all legitimacy in the eyes of its detractors not simply because of its failure to deliver but because of its unpardonable sins.
Those who are happy to own the loose liberal title, have, in turn, retorted against their critics with passion.
‘If Rohingyas are so worthy of sympathy,’ the liberals ask their rival countrymen, ‘what stops you from standing up when Shias are killed in Pakistan? What stops you from condemning the murderous Taliban or from accepting Hindus as equal Pakistani citizens and persuading them to not cross over to India? Why can’t you speak out against the hypocrisy in the country, even when the religion you never tire of flaunting tells you to reject hypocrites of all types? Why isn’t the mullah’s decency pricked by the humiliation of women in the streets of Muzaffargarh?’
It is only after they have completed the ritual of lambasting their rivals that the liberals are able to do what they could have done promptly and without any prior qualifications: condemn the cleansing going on wherever.
With all its tones, undertones and nuances, the discussion about the Rohingyas is a simple example of the strong biases that have come to define the thinking of Pakistanis. The discourse has been held hostage by a long taunt and its long riposte. There is no framework for debate.
Worse, the effort for finding a framework is stalled — if mostly by faith, sometimes also by a passionate indifference to what is seen, more than a socially evolved expression, as an imposed ‘religious explanation’. What takes place here is mutual score-settling, not debate.
For a debate to take shape, the various Pakistans will first have to recognise each other as homegrown realities and shun their escapes in ridiculing the other.
For the moment, the sides remain immersed in the effort to paint the other as foreign to the Pakistani land. Just as liberals are condemned by their vocal rivals as a western implant ill-suited to the local soil, fundamentalism or religious militancy is routinely, and dangerously, dismissed as an outside invasion.
It is as if fundamentalism — or westernisation for that matter — will disappear the moment the foreign connections are cut.
This will never happen since what may have once been foreign we have long adopted as our own. The foreign has taken deep roots locally. There is little use taking refuge in times when religious sects happily coexisted — if ever there were such times.
There can be no going back to the pure indigenous model of life — if such a model was ever possible or it ever existed. The labels must be dropped and evolving Pakistani realities seen in all their ‘good’ and ‘bad’ colours in the interest of a dialogue that rises above mere name-calling.
Now this may sound preposterous to the followers of extreme labels. To some liberal friends, including the truly liberal and the more tolerant, it may be tantamount to bowing to the extremists — in the manner of the repeated surrenders against the Taliban and the deal with Fazlullah in Swat.
Far from it. It is about the interaction among people this side of militants and about the unbridled use of one formula, a typical response for all situations.
The issue is whether Pakistanis in general have the ability to come out of the convenient mode where all they are required to do is to typecast — by belief or by applying the logical formula.
They are free to go to their chosen forum but they must also be free from the compulsions of demonising or ridiculing everyone else and every other lifestyle. Never has a reminder about this basic rule been as needed as it is today.
The divergent schools do have one thing in common, though. When it comes to mourning the country that could have been, each one of us can be equally sweeping in our denouncement of the nation.
The mullah is offended by the naive inquiry because in his book, unlike that of Bulleh Shah, a person is either ‘Musa’ or ‘Firaun’.
The enlightened teacher is too frustrated by the circumstances to let the ‘water car’ pass with a gentle reminder about the existing laws of physics. He feels compelled to offer the final word on science. The anger in judgments passed on the nation has just the opposite effect: it demoralises.
Pity the people who can do no more than ridicule. Pity the nation that pities itself.
The writer is Dawn’s resident editor in Lahore. | <urn:uuid:f664852f-a03c-4dff-a68a-d9316d14ba3d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://dawn.com/2012/08/14/pity-the-nation-that-pities-itself/print/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00062-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957987 | 1,272 | 1.632813 | 2 |
IndexThe Unpacked Kit
Attaching the Back
Attaching the Top
Fitting the Neck
Fitting the Nut
Attaching the Neck
Attaching the Bridge
Saddle and Nut
Binding a guitar is the process of cutting a channel along the edge of the body, and gluing in a (typically) plastic strip. The purpose of this is primarily to hide all the end grain of the top and bottom of the guitar. It also adds a decorative touch. I started with the bottom, figuring that if I screwed up, the bottom isn't as visible as the top. Plus, the top has two strips that are glued into place, instead of just one like the back has. The second, innermost strip on the top is actually called purfling, and is there just to add more decoration to the top of the guitar.
This is where choosing the more expensive Dewalt laminate trimmer really paid off. I needed to cut a groove along the edge of the back that was 1/16" wide, and 3/16" deep. I went to both Home Depot and Woodworkers Warehouse looking for a rabetting router bit that either had a set of multiple sized ball-bearing guides, one of which would let me remove only a 1/16" width of wood, or a bit that would do just a 1/16" wide cut. Well, there doesn't appear to be any such beast! Fortunately, the Dewalt laminate trimmer comes with a variety of bases, one of which accepts a guide that extends down the side of the router, and out underneath the router bit, and has a ball-bearing guide at the end. This allowed me to use a simple (and relatively cheap) 1/2" straight bit, and because the guide on the laminate trimmer is infinitely adjustable, I could get exactly the size cuts that I needed for both the top and back binding. If I had bought one of the cheaper trimmers, I'm not sure what I would have done to accurately cut the groove for the bindings.
This picture shows the groove routed into the back of the guitar to accept the back binding strip. It has already received the first primer coat of adhesive.
The next page shows the binding strip clamped into place.
|Previous Page||Return to Home Page||Next Page| | <urn:uuid:4fa02f32-acb2-4819-8e4d-6d13927b5ca2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.angelfire.com/il3/jkumorek/Page16.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00072-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951435 | 480 | 2.15625 | 2 |
THE SPANISH STRUGGLE.
In 1931, at the proclamation of the Republic, the Government was in the hands of a Socialist, Liberal and Republican Coalition.
For the first time in the history of Spain, the Government programme contained effective social reforms, among them the question of agrarian reform, of the redistribution of the land, of protection for the unemployed, and of the liberty of the individual.
It was an enormous task that had to be accomplished. Three-fifths of the Spanish population is composed of peasants, mainly agricultural labourers. They lived under a regime which recalls the servitude of the Middle Ages. The plan of the landlords was to let out the land for a duration of 20 years, and for this the tenants had to pay a percentage on the average production of the land that was tilled. When the weather was favourable things would pass normally, the cultivator was able to meet his contracts, although this was only as the result of tremendous efforts and economies. When the bad years came, he could not meet his engagements, and had to mortgage the crop for the | <urn:uuid:37ef0fcd-0d1d-45fd-807e-8e0c10eef418> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://contentdm.warwick.ac.uk/cdm/compoundobject/collection/scw/id/556/rec/10 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00034-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.984435 | 224 | 3.75 | 4 |
Arab News editorializes on the recently concluded Copenhagen Climate talks finding that all that was accomplished was to kick the ball down the road. It says that delegates seemed more than willing to simply sign an anodyne agreement and get out of Denmark, though what little that was achieved seems to have annoyed developing countries to no end.
AFTER 12 days of wrangling, the UN Climate Summit in Copenhagen effectively ended with an agreement to agree at some later date. It, therefore, was not simply all the hot air generated in hours of often-furious argument that has damaged the climate change issue. The way in which realpolitik asserted itself to the detriment of the vast majority of the 192 countries that turned up to have their say, left many very unhappy delegates heading for home Saturday night.
In the end it all came down to US President Barack Obama. He flew in aboard Air Force One, lectured the summiteers about the need to reaching an agreement but offered no further concessions on behalf of a wary United States. Then he went into private conclave with Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, which meeting was later extended to include three other key countries, India, Brazil and South Africa and within hours there emerged the Copenhagen Accord. A shell-shocked summit, less a few delegates who had already flown home in disgust, wearily endorsed the deal Saturday night and UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon lauded the breakthrough.
But how real is a deal that has no reference to legally binding targets, plumps for a 2 degree Celsius limit when many countries claimed 1.5 degrees was the maximum that should be allowed, promises $100 billion a year to developing countries without saying who is going to pay these immense sums, fails to agree on any firm monitoring process and gives no firm framework on the much-touted carbon-trading markets?
The editorial points out that the science of global warming was pushed to the background in favor of the politics of global warming. It notes that support for major actions to combat it is plunging among Americans on the heels of the ‘Climategate’ reports. The Rasmussen polling organization finds that American attitudes are shifting significantly, with 50% now believing that global warming is the result of ‘long term planetary trends’. If that is the case, then there’s nothing much a treaty is going to do to stop it; massive restructuring of economies around the world won’t either.
A Wall St. Journal blog reports that the OPEC countries, led by Saudi Arabia, had raised a ruckus before the conference on the issue of being made whole for any losses to income that resulted from political decisions which would harm their economies. As it turned out, OPEC was largely silent because nothing from the conference ended up in the least threatening. | <urn:uuid:e8a7b773-1d47-4aa8-8958-38bf8b5b99cf> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://xrdarabia.org/2009/12/20/not-with-a-bang-but/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00075-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96774 | 565 | 2.09375 | 2 |
Cylindroma of the breast: a case report and review of the literature
1 BreastCheck, National Cancer Screening Service/Mercy University Hospital, Cork, Ireland
2 BreastCheck, National Cancer Screening Service/South Infirmary Victoria University Hospital, Cork, Ireland
Diagnostic Pathology 2009, 4:30 doi:10.1186/1746-1596-4-30Published: 2 September 2009
Cylindroma of the breast is a very rare lesion which is morphological and immunophenotypically identical to benign dermal cylindroma. We report a breast cylindroma in a previously healthy 62 year old female detected through a national breast screening program. The patient had no significant family or past medical history, and specifically no history of breast or skin diseases. The tumor consisted of well circumscribed islands of epithelial cells surrounded by a dense membrane material, and focally containing hyaline globules. At low power the islands of tumour cells formed a "jig-saw" pattern, which is typical of cylindroma, but was present within normal breast parenchyma and no had direct connection with the overlying skin. Two distinct cell populations, smaller peripheral basaloid cells and larger central cells with vesicular chromatin, were highlighted by immunohistochemistry for p63 and cytokeratin-7 respectively. Immunohistochemistry for ER, PR, and Her2/neu was negative in tumour cells. We discuss the nine previously reported cases and the distinction of breast cylindroma from adenoid cystic carcinoma, the main differential diagnosis. | <urn:uuid:8785096e-4ebb-4779-a2b3-dd02d476dfe1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.diagnosticpathology.org/content/4/1/30/abstract | 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 | 0.910309 | 331 | 1.554688 | 2 |
National Day of Service
Four years ago, President Obama began the National Day of Service in
honor of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s life and legacy and to build a
better, stronger future for our country. In communities across the
country, people are already signing up to participate in service
projects on Saturday, January 19, 2013, to benefit their friends and
This year, the Clinton Foundation and Clinton Global Initiative are
proud to continue our legacy of service in our own community by
joining with the National Day of Service and supporting several local
projects focused on on-going Hurricane Sandy relief efforts.
We hope you will join us at one of the projects we will be
supporting to help make a meaningful difference in communities that
are still suffering from Hurricane Sandy aftermath. As we've seen
through our work, when people come together, we can make a greater
impact than any one person or group can do alone.
You are responsible for your own transportation unless your project details indicates otherwise.
Jones Beach, Long Island – This beach
cleaning project with For the Shore will involve debris clean-up
from 10:00 a.m. – 1:00 p.m. Participants should feel comfortable
doing manual labor and should plan to dress warmly.
Brick Township, New Jersey – Projects
in Brick, Seaside, and Barrier Islands, New Jersey with HOPE Worldwide will
consist of home clean up, yard clean up, and debris removal from
9:00 a.m. – 2:30pm. Participants are requested to bring work gloves and eye protection if possible and to dress warmly in case they are working outside.
The Rockaways, Queens (Project 1) – Projects in
The Rockaways will consist of home clean up and debris removal with
Cares from 9:00 a.m.– 4 p.m. Participants should dress warm
and bring their own lunch and water.
The Rockaways, Queens (Project 2) – This project in The Rockaways will consist of home repair and basic construction as well as debris and neighborhood cleanup with Habitat for Humanity from 9:00 a.m. - 3:00 p.m. Participants should dress warmly, wear hard, rubber-soled shoes, wear work gloves, and bring their own lunch and water.
Gerritsen Beach, Brooklyn –
Participants will conduct a neighborhood canvas with Gerritsen Beach Cares for
any part of
9:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m. Participants should dress
Yonkers, New York - This project in Yonkers will consist of home repair and basic construction as well as debris and neighborhood cleanup with Habitat for Humanity from 9:00 a.m. - 3:00 p.m. Participants should dress warmly, wear hard, rubber-soled shoes, wear work gloves, and bring their own lunch and water.
If you have any questions, email us at email@example.com
If you are unable to participate in a volunteer project, you can
still show your support by joining our online community
telling us how you are serving your community on Twitter
by using the | <urn:uuid:7fdad248-42c1-4959-b6ce-2e5f7f342bb9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.clintonfoundation.org/resources/national-day-of-service.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00073-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.928753 | 663 | 1.6875 | 2 |
Considering career change? Take time for research
Starting a new career requires time and thorough research, advises department heads at several area schools.
David Gaston, Career Center director at Kansas University, said adults who were considering a career change needed to take the time to think it through, being careful not to rush into anything.
“You need to have a firm grasp on what you’re doing and why you’re doing it,” Gaston said. “It’s like Franklin Covey said, ‘Begin with the end in mind.’ Are you doing this because you’re out of a job, are you doing it to make more money, or are you doing it because you’re bored? What do you want out of it?”
After one is confident a change is completely in order, it’s time to choose a profession.
Jennifer Patla, director of admissions at Heritage College in Kansas City, Mo., suggested those who were in search of a new career should find out what careers were in demand.
“The Department of Labor has a Web site that lists which fields are growing,” Patla said. “The ideal situation is to start in a career field that is growing, where people are needed, so you will be able to easily find a job.”
If none of the in-demand fields catch the eye, Patla says someone can start with a far more simple approach.
“Just ask yourself, ‘What do I like to do?’” she said. “What are you interested in, what can you see yourself doing?”
The next step is finding a place to acquire the appropriate education and training. Research and careful consideration are again paramount, Gaston said.
“Think about whether you just need more training, or whether you need to actually go back to school,” Gaston said. “Going back to get a full education might not be the best route for everyone, and it might be unnecessary for some. Many professions require training, but not a four-year degree.”
The Internet is an incredibly useful tool when determining how much education is required for a profession and when looking for a school, Patla said.
“Sites like College Surf or EduSearch will be able to narrow schools down for you,” Patla said. “And something handy about them, is the sites will send your contact information to those schools, so you don’t have to bother calling 10 different schools yourself.”
Dan Boyd, a 37-year-old massage therapy student at Heritage College, said he used a similar Web site to find his school.
“It was so much easier than I thought it would be,” Boyd said. “I knew I wanted to do massage, but I had no idea what schools offered such a thing in my area. The site just came right back with schools close to me. A few schools got back to me, and soon I had appointments to see the campuses.”
Both Gaston and Patla agree visiting schools is essential.
“Every campus has its own culture,” Gaston said. “A school that’s perfect for someone else in your field might not be perfect for you.”
Patla advises people not to be afraid to ask tough questions during the visit.
“First and foremost, make sure they’re accredited,” she said. “Ask if they provide assistance with job placement, and if they have internships in their programs. And don’t be scared to ask for statistics. What percent of students are placed successfully in jobs after graduation? What’s the graduation rate?”
Patla said spending some time at schools was an extremely exciting experience, but she warned people to not jump the gun.
“Don’t stop with one school,” she said. “Look at several schools, make comparisons, call and ask more questions if you need to. It’s a huge decision, and you shouldn’t just choose the first school you go to.”
Heritage happened to be the first school Boyd visited, but he said he looked at three or four others.
“I was definitely on a mission,” Boyd said. “I was determined to find the school that fit my needs because scheduling had to be right with my kids, times had to be right with my job, I needed to have time to study. After a few weeks of going and calling and talking, I had made my choice, and I knew I’d be happy with it.”
Though changing careers and going back to school is complex and terrifying at times, Patla said it could be the most beneficial change of someone’s life.
“Taking charge of your future and making decisions that will make you happier, more stable financially or more responsible, that’s exciting stuff,” Patla said. “It won’t be easy. It isn’t always easy for anyone. But arm yourself with the right knowledge, and take the time to choose the school and career that fit you best. Then you’re sure to be successful.” | <urn:uuid:37f21525-69c1-4b8e-b92c-a0ab245a1099> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.eudoranews.com/news/2009/jul/15/considering-career-change-take-time-research/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.976667 | 1,110 | 2.0625 | 2 |
Time and the Amateur Astronomer
For astronomers, however, timekeeping can become quite complex. The reason is that our units of time measurement the day and its subdivisions of hour, minute, and second are based on astronomical phenomena that are themselves more complex than you might think.
Most of these complications have been smoothed out of our everyday civil time system by official edict. The result is a simple, easy-to-use timekeeping arrangement that serves society well as long as nobody looks too closely at the sky. Do so, and all the carefully hidden fudge factors erupt back into view.
- Local Apparent Time
- Local Mean Time
- Standard Time
- Universal Time (UT)
- Greenwich Mean Time
- Ephemeris Time
- Dynamical Time
- Coordinated Universal Time
- Sidereal Time
Local Apparent Time (LAT), also called apparent solar time or sundial time, is what everyone used long ago when they told time by the Sun. Noon was what most people still think is noon: when the Sun crosses the meridian that is, when the Sun is due south (for people at north temperate latitudes), at its highest point of the day, and halfway between sunrise and sunset. The very word "meridian" is from the Latin for "mid-day."
But when reasonably accurate clocks were invented, careful timekeepers noticed that something was wrong with solar time. The Sun sometimes runs up to 16 minutes fast in its daily travels across the sky, and sometimes as much as 14 minutes slow, depending on the season. This effect arises from the tilt of the Earth's axis and the ellipticity of the Earth's orbit around the Sun. To escape the problem, our next time system was invented:
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Local Mean Time (LMT). Astronomers created an imaginary, well-behaved mean Sun that travels along the celestial equator at a uniform rate to make its annual circuit around the constellations. The mean Sun has the average or mean right ascension of the real Sun. Noon became the moment when the fictitious mean Sun crossed the meridian.
The number of minutes the real Sun lags behind or runs ahead of the mean Sun was named the equation of time. Its value for any date can be looked up in an almanac or can be read from the graphic Sky-Gazer's Almanac that comes every year with Sky & Telescope's January issue.
But this adjustment wasn't enough. An even worse problem results from the fact that the Earth is round.
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Standard time. Because the Earth's surface curves, "overhead" at your location is a different direction than "overhead" just a few miles away. Similarly, when the Sun or a star is on your meridian it has not yet reached the meridian of someone to your west, and it has already crossed the meridian of someone to your east.
This didn't matter when travel and communication were slow. The problem grew more acute in the 19th century. The widespread use of telegraphs and railroads finally forced a change. How could you catch a train when every town and every railroad company kept a slightly different time?
In 1883 the United States was divided into standard time zones; the rest of the world soon followed. In each zone, all clocks are set to the Local Mean Time of a standard longitude: 75° west for Eastern Standard Time, 90° for Central, 105° for Mountain, and 120° for Pacific. Each time zone differs from its neighbors by one hour because these longitudes are 15° apart 1/24 of the way around the Earth.
Standard time was a great advance for society. But not for skywatchers. Planispheres (star wheels) still work in Local Mean Time (LMT). So does every all-sky map that shows horizons, such as the evening constellation map in Sky & Telescope every month. So does the Sky-Gazer's Almanac that accompanies our January issues, the "Local Time of Transit" scale on our Sun, Moon, and Planets This Month chart, and every other map, device, or calculation that shows astronomical objects with respect to your horizon, zenith, or meridian without taking your local longitude explicitly into account.
Luckily, correcting for LMT is simple. For every 1° you are west of your time zone's standard longitude, add 4 minutes to LMT to get standard time. For each 1° you are east, subtract 4 minutes.
To make sure you don't do it backward, use this formula: Standard time = LMT + Correction, where the correction is positive west of your time zone meridian, negative east of it. Find and learn your correction; you'll use it forever.
To get daylight saving time, of course, add an hour to standard time. Daylight saving time is currently used in the United States and Canada (except Arizona, Hawaii, and Saskatchewan) from 2:00 a.m. on the second Sunday in March to 2:00 a.m. on the first Sunday in November (the "spring ahead" and "fall back" dates were changed to these in 2007).
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Universal Time (UT). Standard time (and its daylight-saving variant) serves fine within a given time zone. But when a time applies worldwide, such as in an astronomical almanac, which time zone should be favored?
Logically enough, the "universal" time zone that was agreed upon (in 1884) is that of 0° longitude. This longitude was originally defined as that of a line engraved in a brass plate in the floor under a transit-timing telescope at the Old Royal Observatory in Greenwich, England. Hence UT is often called Greenwich Mean Time (GMT).
By tradition UT is stated in the 24-hour system, whereby noon is called 12:00, 1 p.m. is 13:00, 2 p.m. is 14:00, and so on. Midnight is called 0:00.
To convert a Universal Time and date to a standard time and date in North America, subtract the following number of hours:
to get Eastern Standard Time (EST), 5;
to get Central Standard Time (CST), 6;
to get Mountain Standard Time (MST), 7;
to get Pacific Standard Time (PST), 8;
to get Alaska, 9; to get Hawaii, 10.
Of course the date must be given in the same system as the time!! If you get a negative number of hours, add 24; in this case the result is on the date before the UT date given. For example, 6:45 UT January 9th is 1:45 a.m. on the 9th EST, and 10:45 p.m. on the 8th PST. Other time zones worldwide have their relations to UT listed in many places. (Here is one such site.)
To obtain daylight saving time ("summer time"), subtract one hour less than the values above.
Many astronomers find it easier just to remember when 0:00 UT happens in their time zone. 0:00 UT is on the previous date at 7 p.m. EST, 6 p.m. CST, 5 p.m. MST, or 4 p.m. PST. (When daylight saving time is in effect: 8 p.m. EDT, 7 p.m. CDT, 6 p.m. MDT, or 5 p.m. PDT.)
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Ephemeris Time; Dynamical Time; Terrestrial Time. Once the worldwide system of time zones was in place, with UT proudly heading up the list, all should have been well forever after. But such was not to be. Astronomers working with solar-system dynamics noticed something very disturbing. The day itself varies in length.
The Earth's rotation slows down and speeds up by small amounts unpredictably, while undergoing a slight but very long-term slowing trend. The gradual slowing is caused by the friction of tides raised by the Moon and Sun. Slow, irregular changes are thought to involve motions of material in the Earth's fluid interior. Changes in winds, air masses, snow packs, and other factors cause shorter-term variations.
Faced with this problem, astronomers in 1952 instituted Ephemeris Time (ET) which in 1984 was replaced with the very similar Terrestrial Dynamical Time (TDT), which in 1991 was renamed Terrestrial Time (TT). This time system runs perfectly steadily regardless of the Earth's rotation, almost as if the Earth didn't exist. It is used for most celestial calculations and almanac (ephemeris) predictions, especially those having to do with the motions of the Moon, planets, and other solar system bodies in space. TT matched UT around 1902. Since then UT has gradually drifted away from it, so that as of 2009, UT lags behind by about 66 seconds.
If you encounter a time given in TT or "Dynamical Time," and if one-minute accuracy matters, you need to know the difference from UT. Almanacs list this difference, which is known as Delta T. Use the formula UT = TT - Delta T. It is impossible to forecast Delta T precisely because the Earth's fitful rotation rate is too unpredictable.
More subtle problems kept cropping up. To deal with slight time-distorting effects due to Einstein's general theory of relativity, Barycentric Dynamical Time (TDB) was introduced in 1976. In 1991 this was largely replaced by Geocentric Coordinate Time (TCG) and Barycentric Coordinate Time (TCB); the latter is referred to the solar system's center of mass instead of Earth. These are used in spaceflight; amateurs can generally ignore them.
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Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). Civilization at large, not just astronomers, needs a smoothly running time system like Terrestrial Time. But most of humanity is also tied to the natural cycle of the day, variable though it may be. What to do?
Part of the solution has been to redefine the basic time unit, the second. No longer is a second exactly 1/86,400 of a mean solar day. Since 1967 the second has been defined as how long cesium-133 atoms take to emit 9,192,631,770 cycles of a certain microwave radiation in an atomic clock.
With the second no longer defined astronomically, the Earth can spin as it pleases without upsetting the world's clocks. But there is a price to pay. A day no longer has 24 hours. There are now about 24.0000003 hours in an average day.
To keep our clocks in close step with the turning of the Earth, a leap second is inserted into Universal Time when required about once a year on average. A leap second may be added at the end of June 30th or December 31st UT, giving the last minute of the chosen day 61 seconds.
The result is Coordinated Universal Time or UTC, the system by which all the world's clocks are set. UTC is the basis for all time-signal radio broadcasts and other time services. In non-astronomical circles it is sometimes called World time, Z time, Zulu, or informally, Greenwich Mean Time (GMT).
But the occasional leap-second jerks in UTC go unfelt, of course, by the Earth, planets, and stars. Almanac predictions given in "UT" are actually in a system known as UT1, which is always within 0.9 second of UTC. Therefore, when specifying "UT" to better than one-second accuracy, you should state whether you mean UTC or UT1 unless this is obvious from the context such as if the time came from a radio time-station signal.
"Greenwich Mean Time" used to mean UT1, until its popular meaning drifted to mean UTC instead. Adding to the confusion, GMT long ago began the day at noon, not midnight. So astronomers now try to avoid the term Greenwich Mean Time altogether.
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Sidereal time.This is simply the right ascension of stars on your local meridian at any moment. Sidereal time runs about 4 minutes a day faster than all the time systems described above. An old trick is to adjust a clock to run 4 minutes a day fast, set it to local sidereal time, and use it to tell what constellations are on the meridian and what star charts to use. For instance, if the clock reads 5:30 a.m., right ascension 5h 30m is on your meridian, and there you'll find Orion.
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Want to learn more? For the next level of depth about time systems, see Roy Bishop's excellent article that's reprinted each year in the Observer's Handbook of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada. | <urn:uuid:c3365112-4627-4eba-a970-2394dc4d4611> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.skyandtelescope.com/howto/basics/3304611.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00049-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.945603 | 2,679 | 3.671875 | 4 |
We talk about ki a lot in Aikido, but what is it really? It’s called different things in different cultures, but in the Japanese culture it is called ki (pronounced like the word key) and it means energy. It is the energy all things have and it is what we practice to control within ourselves when we train. The energy we have inside us helps us do things and it is this energy that allows us to do extraordinary things when we learn to use it properly and to control it.
I have found it incredibly helpful in my own training to visualize my energy as something I can actually see and feel. I think of my energy as water. Sometimes this water is coming out of a hose (extending energy through my arms) and other times my energy is like an ocean wave building up steam and then crashing down (when the motion is much bigger and uses the entire body). Visualizing your energy as something tangible (something you can touch, see, or feel) can help your mind focus on your energy because you are “seeing” it flowing and allows you to concentrate on the technique not the other person. When you focus on your own motion you have greater success with the technique because you are not “forcing” it, but allowing your energy to flow easily around the attacker.
I’d like you to think of your energy and decide what you want it to “look” like. Giving it a form may help you visualize your energy flowing when you do techniques. Be sure it is something that you can see or feel so you will be able to quickly “see” or “feel” your energy when you need it. There are no limits on what your energy can look like as long as it makes sense to you.
Think about it and if you’d like to share it with me I’d love to hear what form your energy takes.
Teresa Mastison Sensei | <urn:uuid:8bb670a4-968c-4da8-90f0-f20459a8fb15> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://aikidoofphoenix.com/2012/07/ki/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00071-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96693 | 403 | 2.046875 | 2 |
ATHENS, GA.- The Georgia Museum of Art
acquired two important American paintings at the sale of the Florence and William Griffin Collection at Brunk Auctions in Asheville, N.C., Saturday, May 30. Between 1945 and the 1980s, the Griffins amassed an exceptional collection of southern furniture, silver, pottery, books, paintings, prints and decorative arts significant to Georgia history.
The purchase, with winning bids and buyers premiums totaling $133,400, was made possible by an anonymous donation in honor of George-Ann and Boone Knox. The paintings depict Robert Ransome Billups and his wife, Elizabeth Ware Fullwood Billups, circa 1827 and were painted by Edwin B. Smith (active 1815 to 1832).
The portraits have extensive exhibition and publication histories and were displayed in the traveling exhibition Missing Pieces: Georgia Folk Art 1770-1976, organized by the Atlanta Historical Society and shown at a number of venues in 1976 and 1977.
A classic example of early American portraiture, the half-length view of a seated Mr. Billups is set against a backdrop of lush, rolling hills with hunters and dogs chasing a wounded stag. In contrast, the more austere image of Mrs. Billups shows her seated in an interior with drapery wearing a black dress with a silver belt buckle and delicate lace collar.
Married in 1818, Robert Ransome Billups and Elizabeth Ware Fullwood were early residents of Clarke County. Mr. Billups, the nephew of Capt. John Billups, was killed on June 9, 1836, in the Creek Indian battle at Shepherds Plantation in Stewart County. His son, Edward Swepson Billups, married Mary Richardson, daughter of Richard Richardson, owner of the Eagle Tavern in Watkinsville, Ga., where the paintings hung until 1956, when the building was given to the State of Georgia.
The personal biography of Mr. Billups, the rich iconography of the hunters and the stag, and even Mr. Billups elaborate coiffure will likely make this painting among the favorites of our patrons, said William U. Eiland, director of the Georgia Museum of Art.
The acquisition of these two portraits supports and strengthens the museums collection of American paintings, a collection begun by Alfred Heber Holbrook in the 1940s. With works such as Samuel F.B. Morses Portrait of Mrs. Catherine Munro (ca. 1818) and Charles Bird Kings Portrait of William Harris Crawford (1823), these paintings are among the earliest images in the American collection.
The portraits will serve as an excellent means to encourage the discovery of new knowledge about Georgias visual and material culture, especially of the early American republic, said Paul Manoguerra, curator of American art at GMOA.
In addition the portraits of the Billupses will be anchors for the museums collections of Georgias decorative arts and American portraiture in the galleries devoted to the permanent collection within the new wing of the museum that will open to the public in early 2011. | <urn:uuid:349e057f-cc5d-4515-b3b7-694fd0cb8f0d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.artdaily.com/index.asp?int_sec=2&int_new=32243&int_modo=1 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00069-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.939754 | 625 | 2.15625 | 2 |
News tagged ‘internet’
Wednesday, 6 Feb 2013
Popular photo sharing site Pinterest is reportedly in talks for a fresh round of funding that would value the company at about US$2 billion.
Wednesday, 4 Apr 2012
According to sources familiar with Yahoo, up to 2,000 employees could be let off in the coming days. More worryingly, this round of layoffs will only be the first of many to come.
Friday, 27 Jan 2012
Avid YouTube video creationists and viewers should take note of the site's latest updates. Changes include a new design and features made to its Video Manager, Video Editor and Browse applications.
Wednesday, 18 Jan 2012
Tired of incessant email notifications? Now there is an online site which enables you to manage your social media notifications with one clean sweep. Say hello to NotificationControl.com.
Wednesday, 20 Jul 2011
Chinese search Giant, Baidu's new Internet browser shares more than just its looks with Google's Chrome.
Friday, 15 Jul 2011
The widespread use of search engines and online databases has affected the way people remember information, researchers are reporting.
Friday, 10 Jun 2011
The world is running out of unique web addresses, and IPv6 is here to solve that problem. Global testing of the new Internet protocol has been smooth so far.
Friday, 3 Jun 2011
Sony reportedly suffered another hack attack yesterday. This time, a group of hackers claims to have accessed the SonyPictures.com servers and compromised personal data belonging to one million customers, which the group said it then posted in a file on its website.
Thursday, 2 Jun 2011
Facebook users should be aware of a new trojan which infects both Mac and PC users with malware.
Wednesday, 18 May 2011
An "Enable Dislike" button scam is making its rounds on Facebook. Take heed. | <urn:uuid:138023ab-3592-4147-9848-3fe2fda49b9e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.hardwarezone.com/tech-news/tagged/406-internet | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.914245 | 383 | 1.5 | 2 |
Play the English
An Active Opening Repertorie for White
An active opening repertoire for White! The English is a sophisticated opening which is very popular at all levels of chess: from up-and-coming players to World Champions such as Garry Kasparov and Vladimir Kramnik. It has many attractions, including flexibility and diversity: White can play either aggressively or quietly, and positions are rich in both strategy and tactics. | <urn:uuid:23c59033-6c56-4081-8d05-fa69a13b4300> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.uscfsales.com/chess/openings/english-opening-1/where/uscf-sales-proudly-offers../chess-books/year-of-publication/2008.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954603 | 86 | 1.976563 | 2 |
Discuss this article or ask questions at the LDS.net Forums.
Making a Pipe Link means to make a link that shows a word other than the name of the actual link. Confused? Example:
a. The name of the article is [[ Birthday]], but Come to the Party would be a much more exciting link.
b. Inside the opening brackets write the name of the article, like such, [[Birthday
c. Put in a pipe symbol “ | “
d. Then place the name you would like to appear on the link, Come to the Party]] .
Written out the code should look like this, [[Birthday|Come to the Party]] , and would appear as this, Come to the Party
or return to | <urn:uuid:d91722f0-0d81-4205-b5de-f64df1ab4b83> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.mormonwiki.com/Pipe_Links | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00028-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.908961 | 156 | 2.90625 | 3 |
A request for a record should be as specific as possible. A written request can provide documentation for subsequent action if the custodian denies the request. No fees may be charged for inspecting records during regular business hours. A requester may be asked to pay in advance if overtime is required to make a public record available.
The custodian of a record may ask for identification and proof of age. He also is allowed to ask whether a requester is a convicted felon. (A convicted felon who has exhausted all appeals may only request certain records.) A requester also may be required to sign a register. The custodian must provide "all reasonable comfort and facility" for reviewing the record. A copy must be provided, if requested, although a reasonable fee may be charged. The law directs state agencies to charge 25 cents per page for standard size copies. Other public bodies may charge what they deem to be "reasonable." These charges vary significantly among public bodies. An attorney general opinion has recommended that custodians follow the state agency fee schedule.
If not in "active use" when requested, the record must be "immediately presented." The custodian is required to delete the confidential portion of a record and make the remainder available. If it is unreasonably burdensome or expensive for the custodian to separate the public portion of the record from the confidential portion, the custodian must provide a written statement explaining why. If the record is in "active use," the agency must "promptly certify this in writing" and set a day and an hour within three working days from receipt of the request when the record will be available.
If the agency says the record requested is not in its custody, it must "promptly certify this in writing" and "state in detail" the reason for the record's absence, its location and who has custody.
Source: Public Affairs Research Council of Louisiana | <urn:uuid:b13797df-f971-405a-a872-11d3f0f44000> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.shreveporttimes.com/proart/99999999/datacenter01/90430025/exercising-right-see-public-record?pagerestricted=1 | 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 | 0.939804 | 384 | 1.507813 | 2 |
I have to give a talk at the Madison Center on Princeton on Monday as part of a panel on Locke. Here are some quick thoughts, based on Jim’s fine review in THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.
Peter’s point #3 is put more incisively in his great new book Modern and American Dignity: Augustine (and by extension Calvin) taught us that one the main ways Jesus changes politics/political philosophy is by revealing that human beings aren’t “polis fodder.”
The thing is that for all of Wood’s emphasis on the ideas of the founding generation as they themselves understood themselves, he may have missed out on much that they could have known because his historical “methodology” excludes any other thoughts that they could have had or experienced–even as those thoughts and experiences are presented on the pages of their writings private and public.
It is good that Wood takes politics seriously and that he is faithful to the historical record. But in a strange way he ends up imposing a “presentism” on history–a presentism informed by certain linguistic theories regarding what is knowable within what we now know about language games, as well as in terms of the way in which language precludes knowledge of what is. The limits of language are the limits of knowledge, as Wittgenstein said in some shape or fashion.
The description of the founding as “ideological”–even in the most broadminded understanding of the term–misses what is integral to Quentin Skinner, JGA Pocock, Bernard Bailyn, etc. mean by the republican “ideological” interpretation of political history. The liberal, natural rights version is also just as often “ideological”–see Louis Hartz.
In this way Wood’s account is ideological in the pejorative sense, in that it is concerned with the consistency of ideas over against the lived reality. With such an interpretation, you can find homologies of ideology between 1960s community/grass-roots organization and action in the name of local liberty and the American revolution–even if it is an absurd belief (cf. Bailyn). Or the Tea Party simply represents the typical suspicion of “power” of the American colonists (Jill Lepore). Prior to the “ideological” school, Richard Hofstadter simply called it the “paranoid style.”
I think all this type of analysis is called structuralism. The Gordon Woods of the world of the historiography of American political history are the Levi-Strauss’s of the deep structures of American thought. They are not of the the Bancroftian Hegelian/Christian meta-narrative. This is all good, but when they hate the race, class, gender trinitarians, they simply hate the kind of bloodless ideological analysis that bit back what they had established in the first place.
That is to say, for every Levi-Strauss there is a Foucault–let alone a Derrida.
Meanwhile, there are Americans who still live under and within an inherited constitutional, legal, institutional, economic, cultural and political order. Whenever they make their minds up to act–whether in terms of the few elite or the many populists–they must be acting according to a DNA that is encoded and only understandable by the scientific Watsons like Gordon Wood.
One wonders if there is not more to this story.
Mail (will not be published) (required) | <urn:uuid:dd389ab6-7dd0-47be-a2e2-74eacb018c74> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.firstthings.com/blogs/postmodernconservative/2011/05/14/the-big-three-gordon-wood-jim-ceaser-and-me/ | 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 | 0.958258 | 735 | 1.820313 | 2 |
I put my camera on the highest quality setting to squeeze as many pixels as possible out of it to see if I could draw out the colors of the Moon by saturating it in photo shop. The image below was the result. My best attempt to date. The blues/greens such as the Sea Of Tranquility, (the blue color sea top center of the Moon), represent Lunar basalts high in metals such as titanium, thorium and iron; the rust colors are metal poor basalts like the Sea Of Serenity , just to the west of the Sea of Tranquility and one of the eyes of the famous face on the Moon; the white colors represent the continental highlands platform ejecta, consisting of anorthosites containing some aluminum and finally the bright white areas are recent impact ejecta.
Notice Tycho crater, the bright white crater bottom right of the Moon with the extensive ray system, scientists believe that the impactor which hit the Moon and created Tycho was the result of a collision between 2 asteroids in the main asteroid belt between Jupiter and Mars and they also believe that same collision created another impactor which in turn hit the Earth 65 million years ago and caused the mass extinction of the dinosaur. Well right about now you're probably wondering as I am how you got from a guy taking a picture of the Moon in his front yard to the mass extinction of the dinosaurs, don't ask, couldn't tell you, I do this on the fly a lot of times, hope you find it interesting.
I was reading an article the other day about how odd our Moon is, odd in the sense that our Moon was probably created by our Earth colliding with a Mars size planet about 4.5 billion years ago, the rocks and dust that were blasted from the collision formed the Moon. Scientists are saying this only happens 5-10% of the time. Planetary systems are usually formed side by side or planets acquire their moons by gravity. | <urn:uuid:2ffd75ef-87b1-4395-97a8-c27923910df4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blackholesandastrostuff.blogspot.com/2007/11/colors-of-moon.html?showComment=1196038620000 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00035-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961866 | 398 | 2.609375 | 3 |
October 17, 2011
Israeli Supreme Court discusses prisoner exchange appeals
Israelis opposed to a prisoner exchange deal with Hamas sought Supreme Court intervention on Monday to block the release of hundreds of jailed Palestinians in return for captive Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit.
The first phase of the swap, to take place on Tuesday, should bring to a close a saga that has gripped Israelis over the five years of Shalit’s captivity in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip.
But under Israeli law, those against the planned release of 477 Palestinian prisoners, many of whom were convicted of deadly attacks, can appeal before the exchange is carried out.
Four petitions were filed with the Supreme Court by the Almagor Terror Victims Association and relatives of Israelis killed in Palestinian attacks.
Judging from similar appeals in prisoner exchange deals in the past, the court is unlikely to intervene in what it considers a political and security issue.
“I understand the difficulty in accepting that the vile people who committed the heinous crimes against your loved ones will not pay the full price they deserve,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wrote in a letter, released by his office, to bereaved Israeli families.
Hamas prepared a heroes’ welcome in Gaza for 295 of the prisoners due to be sent to the Israeli-blockaded territory. Palestinians regard brethren jailed by Israel as prisoners of war in a struggle for statehood. Israel holds some 6,000 Palestinian prisoners.
An opinion poll in the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth found that 79 percent of the public supported the deal with Hamas, an Islamist group that advocates Israel’s destruction.
Shalit, now 25, was captured in 2006 by militants who tunneled into Israel from the Gaza Strip and surprised his tank crew, killing two of his comrades.
Israel, which withdrew troops and settlers from Gaza in 2005, tightened its blockade of the coastal territory after he was seized and spirited into the Gaza Strip.
The repatriation of captured soldiers, alive or dead, has long been an emotionally charged issue for Israelis, many of whom have served in the military. But they also feel a sting over the high price they feel Israel paid for Shalit.
Yossi Zur, whose son Asaf was among 17 people killed in a suicide bombing on a bus in the Israeli city of Haifa in 2003, asked the Supreme Court to prevent the release of the prisoners, three of whom were linked to the attack.
“From our experience with past deals, and sadly we have a lot of experience, we know how many Israelis will be killed as a result of the release of these terrorists. I am here to protect my children who are still alive,” Zur told Channel 10 television.
In a rare step, the court has allowed Shalit’s parents to appear and argue in favor of the deal for their son.
“Nobody knows what the impact of any delay, or any change, even the smallest, in the terms would be,” they wrote in a letter to the court.
Israel’s Prison Service has bused the 477 Palestinian prisoners under heavy guard to two holding facilities ahead of their release.
On Tuesday, some of the Palestinians will be brought to Egypt’s Sinai desert, where the exchange for Shalit will take place. Some of those prisoners will be taken to the Gaza Strip and 41 will be exiled abroad. Shalit will be flown to an air base in Israel to be reunited with his family.
A smaller group of prisoners on the release roster will be taken from Israel to the West Bank, where they will be welcomed by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, a Hamas rival, and their families.
Hamas sources said the exiled prisoners will be received by Turkey, Qatar and Syria after being brought to Cairo, where the movement’s leader, Khaled Meshaal, will greet them.
In the second stage, expected to take place in about two months, the remaining 550 Palestinian prisoners will be freed, officials said.
Israel’s deal with Hamas seemed unlikely to have an impact on international efforts to revive Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, which collapsed 13 months ago.
Abbas has been pursuing a bid for U.N. recognition of Palestinian statehood in the West Bank and Gaza Strip in the absence of negotiations with Israel.
Writing by Jeffrey Heller and Ari Rabinovich; Editing by Angus MacSwan; Additional reporting by Nidal al-Mughrabi in Gaza | <urn:uuid:208560bc-295b-43ae-be93-3dc28f876971> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.jewishjournal.com/gilad_shalit/article/israeli_supreme_court_discusses_prisoner_exchange_appeals_20111017 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963848 | 915 | 1.546875 | 2 |
industrialist Ravubha Vaghela was a very happy man on Monday after selling his entire 30 acres of land at Khoda and Naranpura villages to Gujarat government. He only hoped Tatas would bring their prestigious Nano project to the chosen site. Vaghela had earmarked this land for expansion of his firm, Raviraj Foils Limited. But the minute he was approached by state government officials, he willingly sold the land for building approach road from Sanand-Viramgam highway to Anand Agriculture University cattle farm that will hopefully be Nanos new home. Vaghela says he sold the land for Rs 15 crore at Rs 1,000 per square metre, despite the going market rate of Rs 2,500 per sq mt. Vaghela says he could have haggled for a better price or even gone to court. "But this would have delayed the process and Nano plant could have gone out of Gujarats hands. I was glad to make the sacrifice. For Tata project I could have given my land for free. I am a proud Rajput today that I will be instrumental in bringing Nano project to Gujarat," said Vaghela, who feels its time for him to repay a debt to Tatas. "During the great famine of 1900 Jamshetji Tata rescued the Kankrej cows being bred at the farm by making a donation of Rs 1,000," he explains, adding that his move symbolises the difference in the outlook of farmers in Gujarat and West Bengal.
Whats more, Vaghela also played a role in convincing other farmers to hand over their land to government. All of them sold their land to government on Monday. Of the nearly 2.05 lakh sq mt private land that Gujarat government has acquired for building the road leading to the site identified for Nano plant, almost two-thirds belong to Vaghela
6 months ago | <urn:uuid:a2c70fc1-2a3d-4e8d-9d73-884cde98fab4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://spoonfeedin.blogspot.com/2008/10/india-for-tatasi-could-give-my-land.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.974416 | 385 | 1.703125 | 2 |
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CHAPTER 11 (continued)
The worship of the senses has often, and with much justice, been decried, men feeling a natural instinct of terror about passions and sensations that seem stronger than themselves, and that they are conscious of sharing with the less highly organized forms of existence. But it appeared to Dorian Gray that the true nature of the senses had never been understood, and that they had remained savage and animal merely because the world had sought to starve them into submission or to kill them by pain, instead of aiming at making them elements of a new spirituality, of which a fine instinct for beauty was to be the dominant characteristic. As he looked back upon man moving through history, he was haunted by a feeling of loss. So much had been surrendered! and to such little purpose! There had been mad wilful rejections, monstrous forms of self-torture and self-denial, whose origin was fear and whose result was a degradation infinitely more terrible than that fancied degradation from which, in their ignorance, they had sought to escape; Nature, in her wonderful irony, driving out the anchorite to feed with the wild animals of the desert and giving to the hermit the beasts of the field as his companions.
Yes: there was to be, as Lord Henry had prophesied, a new Hedonism that was to recreate life and to save it from that harsh uncomely puritanism that is having, in our own day, its curious revival. It was to have its service of the intellect, certainly, yet it was never to accept any theory or system that would involve the sacrifice of any mode of passionate experience. Its aim, indeed, was to be experience itself, and not the fruits of experience, sweet or bitter as they might be. Of the asceticism that deadens the senses, as of the vulgar profligacy that dulls them, it was to know nothing. But it was to teach man to concentrate himself upon the moments of a life that is itself but a moment.
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For information about public domain texts appearing here, read the copyright information and disclaimer. | <urn:uuid:b11f2450-0d87-404b-bea7-0fe347930c31> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.literaturepage.com/read.php?titleid=doriangray&abspage=133&changefont=2 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00052-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.97815 | 504 | 2.078125 | 2 |
The condition of sanitation in most parts of the city are witnessing a deterioration. Heaps of garbage are piled up around garbage bins and along roads. It is common to see garbage in the bins being set on fire. The Municipal Corporation has been unable to come up with concrete proposals to tackle the problem. In fact, even as a proposal is on the anvil for a survey to be conducted for suggesting new measures none of the projects initiated in the past have worked out successfully.
Lower Amount of garbage being lifted
The Garbage Processing Plant set up near Dadumajra was touted to be a solution for the garbage problem. As much as 350 tonnes of garbage was to be processed daily. The plant management has now complained that the amount of garbage being sent by the MC to the plant is witnessing a steady decline.
A plant official said that from 300 tonnes daily, the amount of garbage being received has reduced to 220 to 230 tonnes per day. “We have met the officials of the MC for finding a solution. The garbage being produced in the city is not reducing. Its just due to lack of proper lifting that the amount reaching the plant is less. We are facing losses because of this. Instead heaps of garbage are being burnt,” said the official.
There are around 350 to 400 garbage bins in the city. However, the civic body has just 25 vehicles to lift the garbage. While earlier the number was 30, five vehicles broke down over a period of time. The inadequate lifting has resulted in heaps of garbage piling up in many sectors. In fact the 350 tonnes to be processed did not include horticulture waste and certain other categories for which there is no provision of disposal.
MC Proposals fail to solve problem
The pilot project started by the MC for lifting of garbage in Sector 22 failed soon after its launch. The proposal entailed that MC hire a contractor for lifting of garbage. Rates would be fixed and the contractor would collect garbage door-to-door. After protests by sanitation workers and political interference the project was scrapped.
The three mechanised sweeping machines purchased at a cost of Rs 5 crores failed to yield much result. The recurring cost of the machines is quite high making it unfeasible to use these. A committee has recently given a recommendation that the machines be used only for one shift a day.
The existing dumping ground at Dadumajra is fast filling up. While a need for an alternate site has been raised, due to lack of space in Chandigarh no area has been identified. A proposal was made to the Punjab government for allocation of some land for the purpose. This did not receive a positive response.
Residents rue state of sanitation in city
Federation of Sectors Welfare Association Chandigarh, in a meeting held recently, rued that the standards of sanitation in the city were declining. The general secretary of Chandigarh Social Welfare Council Satish Sharma says, “The condition throughout the city is quite pitiable. It is common to see heaps of garbage along the roads. Chandigarh that was known for its cleanliness is now witnessing a downfall.”
Councillor Pardeep Chhabra says, “There is a lack of supervisory staff to monitor the collection of garbage. Lifting of garbage needs to be done daily. This is not being done. When a decision is taken, issues are politicized that leads to nothing being resolved. There is a need for hiring more staff. | <urn:uuid:5e35abba-a446-461f-95d5-1fa739e0f242> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://expressindia.indianexpress.com/latest-news/garbage-piles-up-mc-fails-to-come-up-with-solution/1034467/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00020-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.979544 | 716 | 2.09375 | 2 |
What are 'Nixie' -
tubes? Nixie tubes are the LED indicators of the past. In the
1950's, 60's, and early 70's, there were no LED or liquid crystal
So, neon gas filled tubes were used to display numerical data. These
Nixie tubes were commonly found on scientific equipment, counters,
voltmeters, control panels, etc.
Nixies feature a characteristic warm orange glow. Having been widely
replaced by newer display technology, Nixie tubes are no longer mass
produced, which explains their price today.
Digital Nixie clock kit
K8099 displays the time in either 12 hour or 24 hour formats on four
Nixie tubes. The pictured kit enclosure is not included but is available
This is an electronic
kit rated skill level 4 (fairly advanced). User assembly of components
and soldering is required. | <urn:uuid:d57fa9af-3b64-4cc7-b6b0-2782d96e2c5d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://eio.com/p-21443-velleman-k8099-nixie-tube-clock-kit.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00075-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.916719 | 184 | 2.84375 | 3 |
LOHAS (acronym for Lifestyles of Health and Sustainability) provided three days of insightful panels and networking opportunities attended by thought leaders across industries, government, non-profit organizations, research organizations and academic institutions including Faith Popcorn, Joel Makower, Dr. Alan Greene, Philippe Cousteau, U.S. EPA’s Stephanie Owens, Coca-Cola’s Tom LaForge, eBay’s Elisabeth Charles, Edelman’s Henk Campher, Alex Bogusky, Dr. Larry Dossey, 1% for the Planet’s Terry Kellogg, Mother Jones’ Madeleine Buckingham, Malika Chopra, Ode Magazine’s Jurriaan Kamp, among others.
Key insights from the LOHAS 2010 Forum include:
“Learning from the Past to Shape the Future”
• “We are in the midst of an evolution of our Cultural mindset from a ‘me’ mentality to a ‘we’ point of view. This transition is a response to a society where economics, ethics and environment are collapsing simultaneously,” said Faith Popcorn, founder of BrainReserve and best-selling author of EVEolution, Clicking, The Popcorn Report, and most recently Dictionary of the Future.
“LOHAS and LOHOE: How Health & Sustainability are Complemented by Hedonics or Economics”
• The mainstream is more often motivated to act upon hedonic reasoning (i.e. seeking pleasure and avoiding pain) and their choices are constrained by economic realities. 42 percent of the population considers buying eco-friendly or ‘green’ versions of big-ticket items if the price is about the same as conventional versions.
• “Frankly, there is a little HOE [hedonics or economics] in everyone. It is natural human instinct to gravitate toward those things that bring us both temporal pleasure and long-term satisfaction. We are all able to act upon our desires within the constraints of our personal economic situations,” said Wendy Cobdra, president of Earthsense.
“The Situation in the Gulf”
• “We spend 1,000 times more money every year in our federal budget for space exploration than we do to understand our oceans,” said Philippe Cousteau, environmentalist and founder of EarthEcho International. “Knowing whether there was ever water on Mars – not critical to surviving on this planet. The oceans are.”
• “There’s a lot of talk about boycotting BP while a lot of [BP] gas stations are owned by small business owners…it hurts those people. What we need to be boycotting is our dependence on oil, single use plastic bags, plastic bottles, coal; shutting off the power; and living in more reasonable houses,” said Philippe Cousteau.
• “The type of dispersant that was chosen, Corexit, was only proved 56 percent effective in a lab. There were 12 other EPA-approved dispersants, and two were 100 percent effective and they were not chosen. That was an inside oil industry thing because Corexit is produced as a by-product from the refining process,” said Charles Hambleton, producer of Oscar-winning documentary The Cove.
“Where are the Green Jobs?”
• The Obama administration has made it a priority to connect low-income communities to green jobs based on the billions of dollars placed into the Stimulus Bill. For example, the U.S. Department of Labor put out $148 million of green job training grants through its Pathways Out of Poverty grants.
• “The economic business case for sustainability is being made every day by companies as diverse as Patagonia and Walmart. Their effort to green their supply chains is driving the economy and creating new business opportunities, innovations and jobs in support of sustainable business practices,” said Andre Pettigrew, executive director of Denver’s Office of Economic Development.
“Phood and Kids”
• The Center for Disease Control (CDC) has stated that children born in the year 2000 in the U.S. will be the first generation in our country’s history to have a lower life expectancy than their parents due to a projected 33 percent of Caucasians and 66 percent of African Americans and Hispanics contracting diabetes in their lifetime as a result of poor diet. “We are actually killing our kids with food and this must stop,” said Ann Cooper, author of Lunch Lessons: Changing the Way We Feed Our Children, chef and educator.
• One in three American children now have autism, allergies, ADHD or asthma. “As we work together, to inform and inspire each other about ways in which we can protect our children from toxins like growth hormones, pesticides, synthetic dyes and genetically altered ingredients in food, we realize that there is so much that we can do together to create the change that we want to see in our food supply,” said Robyn O’Brien -- author of The Unhealthy Truth: How Our Food Is Making Us Sick and What We Can Do About It and founder of Allergy Kids.
“Understanding the Carbon Economy”
• The US represents five percent of the population yet emits 25 percent of the world’s carbon. “We need to reduce our energy use now and promote renewable energy to offset the remaining energy we consume. If we all do our part today, we can create a bountiful, healthy future together,” said Margi Gardner, CEO of Bonneville Environmental Foundation.
“Spirituality and Health: What the Fuss Is All About?”
• In 1993, three of the 125 medical schools in the U.S. taught courses in spirituality and health and now 90 schools have such courses.
• In 1997, the Joint Commission on Accreditation strongly recommended that every healthcare institution have a vehicle in place to assess the spiritual history of incoming patients, which is now a requirement.
• Mobium Group data shows that the Australian consumer market for LOHAS products and services has grown from $12 billion in 2007 to $19 billion in 2009 with 2011 projected at $27 billion. (Source: Mobium Group)
• “LOHAS in Asia is a brand rather than a movement and, as such, offers a great opportunity for LOHAS companies trying to enter the markets. By using LOHAS on their marketing material, they are appealing immediately to their target audiences in Asia,” said Adam Horler, founder of LOHAS Asia.
“Convincing Mainstream Consumers to Go Green: What really motivates them to make sustainable choices?”
• Conversations matter – when kids talk to their parents about green issues, it results in behavior change 68 percent of the time. Those conversations with neighbors and co-workers result in behavior change 56 percent of the time. (Source: Shelton Group)
“New Paradigms in Health & Sustainability: What's Working and What's Not”
• Mainstream consumers comprise the majority of users for many LOHAS products such as compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFLs), organic food, natural personal care and natural household cleaning products. There has been an increase in usage of many LOHAS products despite the recession, such as organic foods. (Source: Natural Marketing Institute)
“The Social Currency of Social Media”
• If Facebook were a nation, it would be the third largest in the world with 50 percent of users logging in daily and over 70 percent of users outside the U.S. “Measuring ROI with social media marketing is tricky, but the consensus is that more engagement correlates to achieving more marketing objectives. So your goal should be to cultivate customer communities,” said Joey Shepp, founder of Earthsite.
“The Storytelling Value of Location-based Services”
• “Location-based social media is rapidly increasing in value, popularity and relevance. LOHAS businesses will benefit from experimenting with tools like Foursquare, Gowalla and Twitter Places to get a feel for how these applications can help engage consumers and grow business,” said Nathan Rice, interactive director for Haberman Group.
Promoting lifestyles of health and sustainability, the annual LOHAS Forum brings together entrepreneurs, government heads, Fortune 1000 executives, investors, research institutions, academics and media for a program designed to inspire innovation and further expand the LOHAS market share. The 2010 Forum was held from June 23rd to 25th at the St. Julien Hotel in Boulder, Colorado. | <urn:uuid:07c6e2f2-61b6-40e0-92fe-dfaa5114a375> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blog.lohas.com/blog/lohas-trends/2010-lohas-forum-insights | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00055-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.939216 | 1,795 | 1.59375 | 2 |
|Please note: Artists not classified as American in our database may have limited biographical data
compared to the extensive information about American artists.|
The following biographical information has been provided by David Kwiat, researcher.
Curt Lahs was born in Dusseldorf in 1893. In 1919 he had his first group show in the Galerie Flechtheim, Dusseldorf. In 1921 he became a member of the influential art collective, "Junge Rhineland", whose members included Johanna Ey and Peter Jurgen. He subsequently exhibited at Mutter Ey.
Beginning in 1930, and up until his teaching credentials were taken away by the Nazis as a result (showing 500 of 1115 characters). | <urn:uuid:13b9e001-7223-440a-8bb3-e2913a592bf5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.askart.com/askart/l/curt_lahs/curt_lahs.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00023-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.978311 | 153 | 2.359375 | 2 |
Honesty is the quality or condition of being honest. To be honest is to be honorable, straightforward and truthful in principles, intentions, and actions. Honest people don't lie. Honesty is the opposite of deceit. Honesty is generally thought to be more than merely avoiding telling any direct lies. | <urn:uuid:9598b58c-074d-400c-a4b4-1255bc3e493d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.conservapedia.com/Honest | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.910125 | 60 | 2.796875 | 3 |
Beaver County Elm Street Initiative
A General Overview
|After several years of planning workshops and countless volunteer hours, nine of
our Beaver County Rivertowns were awarded limited “Elm Street Program”
support by the Pennsylvania Department of Community and Economic Development (DCED).
This was made possible through the determined efforts of the Beaver County
Community Development Program’s Downtown Revitalization Program. The 9
participating Beaver County communities are: Aliquippa, Ambridge, Beaver,
Bridgewater, Freedom, Midland, Monaca, New Brighton and Rochester.
The Elm Street Program, an initiative of the Pennsylvania Department of
Community and Economic Development (DCED) awards funding for planning, technical
assistance, and physical improvements to residential and mixed-use neighborhoods
in close proximity to traditional downtown central business districts.
The current Elm Street grant was awarded by DCED to provide the selected Beaver
County municipalities with professional assistance to make funding applications
for physical improvement projects in their designated “Elm Street”
Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation (PHLF), in cooperation with
Town Center Associates (TCA), will provide professional support for the
initial phase of this initiative.
In August 2007, PHLF and TCA presented an orientation workshop for steering
committee members and borough managers to inform the group on how the grant
funding is to be utilized, and to outline the type of projects that have a
better chance to be funded by the State. PHLF will offer assistance in
submitting applications to the State for grant consideration.
Each of the nine communities has been working closely with Pittsburgh History
and Landmarks Foundation (PHLF) to identify a worthwhile project within the Elm
Street designated area. This spring, PHLF will make application to DCED on
behalf of each community. | <urn:uuid:6b9cdf63-baa7-4b0d-bca4-3ac6457c53d7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.towncenter.info/downtown/beaver_county/elm_street_program_bc.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00073-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.908463 | 386 | 1.710938 | 2 |
Republic of San Marino Attractions Repubblica di San Marino
The territory of San Marino (61 sq. km/24 sq. m) is mostly hilly country with Mount Titano in the center. It was founded, according to tradition in 301 A.D. Legend has it that a master stone-cutter, Marinus, left is native island and came to Mount Titano to establish a small community of Christians anxious to escape the persecutions of the emperor Diocletian.It has its own laws and singular institutions which regulate and superintend over the democratic life of the state.
San Marino - Maranello Rosso Museums
Maranello Rosso has two museums - The Ferrari Museum takes visitors into the history of the automobile and the life of Enzo Ferrari, his achievements as well as the technological and stylistic developments of the House of the Prancing Horse. There are 25 Ferrari cars exhibited include the incomparable Ferrari 250 GTO valued at 10 million dollars, the sensual Ferrari 250 Spyder Pininfarina, (owned by Marilyn Monroe), the F.40 and Gilles Villeneuve's Ferrari F.1.The Abarth Museum features the production and genius of Carlo Abarth, 40 cars from Competition, GT, Sport, Prototype, Formula to Rally. Starting from the 1000 Record Monza Bialbero, holder of the 72 World Hour Record to the winner of the Rally World Championship. The history of competitions, the magical atmosphere of races and the sport successes of the FIAT brand and of course of the historic happenings that characterized the life of the man of Records, Carlo Abarth and his Country, Italy.
San Leo, Italy
San Leo is perched atop a steep winding road that climbs to the summit of the huge limestone rock (639 m/2,096ft). This altitude offers an impressive view of the Marecchia Valley, Montefeltro and San Marino.This setting was made famous by Dante in his Divine Comedy. The fort now houses a museum and picture gallery.The cathedral which is in the Lombard-Romanesque style (1173) and the parish church are noteworthy.
San Marino - Church of the Cappuccini
Church of the Cappuccini was built in the 16th C. and in 1849 it played host to Garibaldi's soldiers after the fall of the Republic of Rome. The facade, portico, cloister and painting of the Deposition by Zuccari are of particular interest. A monument to St Francis stands in the courtyard.
San Marino - Museo Ippocrate (closed)
The Ippocrate in San Marino houses an extensive exhibition of old medical instruments, "magical" amulets, relics, documents and countless objects which accurately charts the long history of ancient medicine, miracle-working, magic, herbal treatments and empiricism.
San Marino - Wax Museum
The Wax Museum in San Marino contains fascinating historical reconstructions of 40 scenes and 100 characters in settings and costumes of the day, charting 1000 years in international history and that of the Republic of San Marino. Special sections feature figures from opera and instruments of torture.
San Marino - Church of San Pietro
San Marino - Coin and Stamp Museum
San Marino - Fortresses
All three of the fortresses (Guaita, Cesta Montale) are crowned with three towers which are linked by a watchpath. From the towers there is a splendid view of the Apennines, the plain, Rimini and the sea as far as the Dalmatian coast.
This fortress played an important role during struggles with the Malatesta family in the 13th C. Access is restricted to the exterior of the fortress which offers a spectacular view.
This fortress dates back to the 13th C. It stands on the highest peak of Mount Titano and houses the Museum of Historical Weapons.
This is the first fortress of San Marino which was built in the 11th C. Some cells were used as prisons.
San Marino - Vintage Car Museum
Imola - Formula One
The Formula One of San Marino is held here annually. Late April is the normal run-time.
San Marino - Government House
San Marino - Museum of Curiosities
San Marino - Reptilarium (Aquarium)
The Reptilarium in San Marino is a research and study center on the mysterious world of reptiles and marine life.
San Marino - St Francis' Museum
St Francis' Museum contains paintings from the 12th to 17th centuries, as well as modern work, Etruscan potteries and funerary objects.
Address: Via Basilicius, Italy
Opening hours: Mar 20 to Sep 20: 8am-8pm
Sep 21 to Mar 19: 8:50am-5pm
Sep 21 to Mar 19: 8:50am-5pm
Always closed on: New Year's Day (Jan 1), Christmas - Christian (Dec 25)
Entrance fee in EUR: Adult €3.00, Group discounts €1.50
Useful tips: Group admission applies to groups of 25 or more. Not open on the afternoon of November 2nd.
San Marino - The Pyramid
San Marino - Traditional Crafts Exhibition
San Marino - Basilica di San Marino
San Marino - Castle Towns
There are many castles throughout the Republic of San Marino.
Domagnano was considered a small village until 1300. In 1463 the fort of Montelupo was constructed which was conquered by the Sammarinesi after the war against the Malatesta of Rimini.It offers a wonderful panoramic view of Mount Titano.
Faetano was once territory of the Malatesta di Rimini, and was acquired by San Marino in 1463. Sites of interest include the antique church in the center of town and the castle.
From Acquaviva's original medieval origins, its name came from a rock that would spring sacred water. Today, it is a beautiful town with greenery abound.
Borgo Maggiore offers historical museums, churches, monuments and characteristic areas of the town.
The fort of Malatestiano in Fiorentino was given to the republic in 1463. This town also has in impressive archeological site.
The origins of Montegiardino date back to the Roman era or before. There is an antique castle which represents rare architectural beauty.
Serravalle was mentioned for the first time from the King of Ottone in 962. It has since become an important urban center in San Marino.
From its origins of medieval castles, today Chiesanuova offers natural beauty.
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General view of the refugee camp named "Container City" on the Turkish-Syrian border in Oncupinar in Kilis province (Reuters)
Turkey has called on the UN Security Council to set up a safe area inside Syria to protect thousands of refugees fleeing the civil war.
"We expect the United Nations to engage on the topic of protecting refugees inside Syria and if possible sheltering them in camps there," foreign minister Ahmet Davutoğlu told a news conference in Ankara.
Turkey has long considered the idea of a no-fly zone to protect displaced Syrians from attacks by President Bashar al-Assad's forces.
The issue has gained momentum among the international community after the number of refugees in Turkey exceeded 80,000. Up to 200,000 more people could eventually flee Syria for sanctuary in Turkey, according to United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).
"When we talk about figures in the hundreds of thousands, this problem no longer remains a problem of an internal conflict in any one country but becomes an international dangerous problem," said Davutoğlu.
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France has backed the proposal, but US and other Western allies have expressed concerns over the need to provide the military and aerial support to Turkey to implement the no-fly area.
"We are studying the issue of buffer zones," said French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius. "It's very complicated, we can't do it without the agreement of the Turks and other countries but we want to make progress."
On Turkey's southern border, Syrian refugee Walid Abedeen told Reuters that Syrians have been asking for a no-fly zone since the uprising against Assad began.
"All Syrian people are with Turkey in this move," he said.
Turkey's 566-mile long border with Syria is dotted with nine refugee camps that are reportedly over-crowded and four more are being established.
The newest is already home to thousands of displaced Syrians within days of it opening.
This article is copyrighted by IBTimes.co.uk, the business news leader | <urn:uuid:3acd2003-3826-4284-b0bd-48943076fc8e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/articles/378583/20120829/turkey-s-foreign-minister-ahmet-davuto-lu.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.95743 | 422 | 2.09375 | 2 |
The Frequently Asked Questions section is devoted to answering common questions about the Climate Change and Carbon Offsetting Programme.
Climate Change and Carbon Offsetting
- How much environmental damage does flying cause?
The Nobel Prize winning, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) indicates that aviation contributes around 2% of man-made carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. However, there is evidence to suggest that non-CO2 aircraft emissions at high altitude may have additional global warming impacts. Research is ongoing to investigate the complex physical and chemical reactions that occur in the upper atmosphere.
- What is carbon offsetting?
Climate change is one of the biggest threats we face. Everyday actions like driving a car and flying consume energy and produce greenhouse gases emissions, particularly carbon dioxide (CO2) - which contributes to climate change. Governments, businesses and individuals are all responsible for reducing the carbon emissions they create. You can compensate for your own emissions by paying someone to make an equivalent greenhouse gas saving. This is known as “carbon offsetting” and includes investment in projects, such as renewable energy from windfarms and hydro-plants. More and more individuals and businesses are volunteering to offset their emissions. Offsetting is not a "cure” for climate change as the most effective way to combat climate change is to reduce our emissions. However, if done in the right way, offsetting can reduce the impact of our actions and help raise awareness of the issue.
- What is carbon offsetting for aviation?
Passengers can offset the emissions caused by their flying. The principle is that emissions for each flight are divided amongst the passengers. Each passenger can therefore pay to offset the emissions caused by their share of the flight’s emissions. Passengers can offset their emissions by investing in carbon reduction projects that generate carbon credits.
Passengers can purchase carbon credits generated by certified renewable energy and energy efficiency projects in developing countries that are verified to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. A carbon credit is a permit that represents one tonne of carbon dioxide (CO2) that has either been removed from the atmosphere or saved from being emitted. These carbon credits are then "cancelled" on an official register to ensure that they cannot be sold or used again. Carbon credits create a market for reducing greenhouse emissions by giving a monetary value to the cost of polluting the air. There are two principal types of carbon credits: certified emission reductions (CERs), which are backed by the UN, and voluntary emission reductions (VERs). VERs are backed by recognised quality standards such as the Voluntary Carbon Standard (VCS) and the Gold Standard. VERs play an important role in emission projects with high sustainable development benefits. Carbon emission reduction projects have a finite life and South African Airways reserves the right to invest in projects with similar environmental and social benefits, if credits in the original project are no longer available.
- What is the role of carbon offsetting?
Carbon offsetting should be considered as one of the many tools an individual or organisation can use to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Other methods include selecting renewable energy options, improving energy efficiency at home and work, cycling to work, recycling and conserving energy by turning off lights, turning down the heating or up for air conditioning. Further information of greenhouse gas reduction initiatives can be found at: www.flysaa.com
- Is offsetting the carbon emissions from my flight compulsory?
No, it is entirely voluntary. As a passenger, you are free to offset any or none of your flights.
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- How do you calculate the volume of emissions from a flight?
The combustion of 1 kilogramme (kg) of jet fuel in an aircraft engine produces 3.15 kg of carbon dioxide (CO2). However, the volume released per flight is based on a number of factors such as aircraft efficiency and maintenance, distance travelled, the load carried (passengers and cargo) and weather conditions. Although there are several ways of calculating the carbon emissions from a flight, South African Airways uses a methodology developed by the UN’s International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO). The International Air Transport Association (IATA) has developed this concept further by creating a tool that allows airlines to use their own verified data on fuel burn, passenger and cargo weights, seat configurations and load factors. This generates the most accurate calculation of CO2 emissions per passenger yet developed.
- Has the IATA carbon calculator been independently endorsed?
Yes, the Quality Assurance Scheme (QAS), an independent not for profit organisation, has reviewed and approved both the methodology and the airline’s data input. Once a year an airline partner in the IATA Offset Programme is subject to independent auditing by the Scheme to ensure valid data entry and compliance with the approved methodology.
- How often is the carbon calculator data updated?
It is updated annually but if a new aircraft enters the fleet or a new route is flown it will be updated more frequently. The Offset Programme Quality Assurance Scheme’s Approval Body indicates that, for a new route, the airline can extrapolate carbon emissions from similar routes (aircraft types and distance) or await the collection of route-specific information over a period of one year. South African Airways has chosen not to offer passenger offsets on new routes until supporting data has been collected and approved.
- How is cargo carried in the hold of an aircraft accounted for when calculating the passengers' share of the emissions on a route?
As part of the calculation method, the IATA tool subtracts the emissions associated with cargo, which may be carried on a passenger flight so only the emissions attributable to the passengers are provided.
- Why are the emissions larger if I travel in a premium class (business or first)?
Premium class seating configurations take up more space and weight on an aircraft than economy class seating. Based on ICAO recommendations, the emissions associated with premium class travel are estimated as double those in economy.
- How is the type of aircraft taken into account in the carbon calculator methodology?
Different aircraft have different characteristics (fuel efficiency, seat configurations, etc.) and, for those routes in which two or more aircraft types are used, the weighted averages are taken into account.
- How are the emissions calculated for travel on multiple flights?
The emissions for each leg of the journey are calculated and added together to give total carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions for the entire trip.
- Does the IATA carbon calculator take into account the impact of non-CO2 gases at altitude?
Research by the Nobel Prize winning, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) indicates that non-carbon dioxide (CO2) gases such as water vapour (condensation trails) and nitrogen oxides (NOx), released at altitude by aircraft have undefined but additional global warming impacts beyond those of the CO2 emissions alone. When the international scientific community agrees on the emission factors for non-CO2 gases released by aircraft and the UN endorses this, the IATA carbon calculator will be updated.
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- Does the airline charge an administration fee or mark-up on the offset price?
Unlike many other offset programmes, South African Airways does not charge an administration fee or mark-up on the offset price paid by the passenger. South African Airways recognises that passengers are making a voluntary donation in order to improve the environment and, hence, the airline should not profit from such contributions. In fact, all administration costs involved in the programme including website re-development, carbon emission data collection and administration are borne by the airline.
- Why do different offset providers give different prices to offset the same emissions?
The price of carbon offsets is related to two main factors: market conditions and quality. Carbon is a commodity so when demand is high, during periods of strong economic growth, offset prices rise and vice-versa. In order to ensure strong passenger participation, the South African Airways offset programme only invests in offsets of the highest quality, that have been delivered and independently verified by the UN.
- Why does the price for offsetting the same journey change over time?
Carbon credits are a tradable commodity and, hence, the price per tonne reflects the cost on the date the credits are purchased. Carbon credit prices change due to market conditions and are also subject to fluctuating currency exchange rates. South African Airways will attempt to ensure that these prices changes are kept to a minimum.
- Can I get a refund if I purchase an offset but subsequently do not take a flight?
No, it is recognised that the purchasing of an offset by a passenger is a charitable donation and, hence, if a passenger pays for an offset but does not travel, this offset should be “carried over” for a subsequent flight and no offset is purchased.
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Offsett Programme Approval
- Has the offset programme been independently approved?
The South African Airways offset programme has been approved by the Quality Assurance Scheme (QAS), an independent organisation certifying voluntary aviation offset programs. The Programme has been shown to meet the requirements of the scheme including environmental integrity, emission calculation methodology, clear and transparent pricing, accurate marketing material and consumer information. In addition, the South African Airways offset programme is permitted to use the approved offset Quality Mark.
- Why does SAA not have any South African projects?
SAA has engaged IATA to buy carbon credits of a certain quality. IATA have not been able to source projects in South Africa that can deliver these carbon credits due to a lack of projects registered in South Africa and a shortage of supply in the few projects that are registered in the South African market.
Back to top | <urn:uuid:6745224c-ffe2-4c60-9a44-84b1bf8f3a8d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.flysaa.com/bh/en/carbonemission/faqs.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.933097 | 1,982 | 3.8125 | 4 |
Strategic Long-Term Planning
The California Teachers Association has embarked upon a strategic planning process, at the direction of its State Council of Education, and under the guidance of the Labor Education and Research Center (LERC) at the University of Oregon. Started last August, the process – called “Your Voice, Our Union, Our Future” – is designed to build a long‐term plan for CTA that will engage all members and staff, look at what we are doing now and where we want to go, embrace new ideas, set priorities and focus organizational resources, and build the CTA we want for our future.
In order to accomplish this goal, CTA will rely on the people that know the organization best—the members and the staff. Initial committees were formed to design the initial research phase of this project.
In this phase CTA reached out to CTA members in several different ways: two member surveys, including an online survey that was open to ALL CTA members, retired members and student members; discussions at CTA conferences, State Council meetings, Service Center Council meetings and local chapter meetings; and one-on-one interviews. CTA’s current practices and structures were also reviewed and conversations were held with parents, education partners, community groups, state labor unions and business groups.
After months of talking to, listening to and getting input from CTA members and staff, eight key areas were identified upon which to focus and build a strategic plan to lead CTA for the next three to five years.
• Read the Frequently Asked Questions about CTA's strategic planning process
• Learn more about CTA’s strategic planning process
• Learn about the eight key areas of focus | <urn:uuid:516e29a0-5250-4719-997f-601c49a1d4bd> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.cta.org/en/About-CTA/Strategic-Long-Term-Planning.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00038-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969246 | 350 | 1.617188 | 2 |
By Aubrey BelfordFebruary 8, 2012
Chongqing is China’s frantic boom city with an inward twist: a perplexing mixture of materialism and Mao.
At first glance, Chongqing is the consummate Chinese megacity. With 10 million people — 33 million if you count its massive, province-sized hinterland — and China’s highest economic growth rate in 2011 (that was 16.6 per cent), the city is a thrusting testament to capitalism’s disruptive force.
For decades a sweltering, crowded town, Chongqing is emerging from relative international obscurity on a boom in investment that is attracting factories and financiers from across the world. Companies such as Ford, which is building a series of massive production plants here, are turning the city into a manufacturing hub for western China.
Chongqing: Red Songs
But it’s also a place where the ghosts of Chairman Mao’s Red China, long left in the dust by the country’s embrace of markets, are making a comeback. The result looks to many like a rewriting — or at least a heavy edit — of China’s social contract.
Take a walk through Shapingba, one of Chongqing’s multiple vertiginous city centres, and you’ll see the contradiction. On the streets, imposing glass malls hold western chain stores, fashion outlets and karaoke megaplexes. In nearby Shaping Park, citizens gather daily to sing 50-year-old paeans to the Communist Party in informal practice sessions for mass “red song” spectaculars. Tucked into one corner, not far from miniature reconstructions of Mount Rushmore and Michelangelo’s David, is a startling sight: Nestled in the park is a rare tomb commemorating (rather than embarrassedly airbrushing over) Red Guards who acted as enforcers for Mao’s chaotic Cultural Revolution.
“As society has gotten richer and more materialistic, our spirit of hardship, revolution, exploration and hard work has faded,” explains Pan Wenzhen, a retired schoolteacher and red songs devotee. “If things continue like they have, we’ll lose that.”
Welcome to the “Chongqing Model,” a set of reforms that has turned heads in China and prompted plenty of acrimonious debate. Under the populist leadership of the local party secretary, Bo Xilai, the city has pushed through a confounding set of changes that mix the cultural policies of old-style left with an aggressive pitch for foreign capital and a vast project of social engineering. In a sense, it’s a doubling-down on the country’s governing paradox: Bring in more market, and more Mao, at the same time.
For its many supporters, the city is a new model of 21st century socialism and a preview of the future of the country as a whole. The United States and Europe are in crisis, and China’s own export-dependent economy is looking shaky. The nation’s export growth slid down to just under 14 per cent over the year before in November, and meanwhile wage demands are rising precipitously in China’s coastal industrial belt. Against all this, the city has become a testing ground for meeting the Chinese Communist Party’s foremost imperative: to stay in power.
“The nature of Chinese reform is to start with local experiments and learn from local experiments,” says Cui Zhiyuan, a professor of public policy at Beijing’s Tsinghua University, who has studied and advised Chongqing’s government and the local leader, Bo.
“Given current international developments, China cannot sustain the former model of export-driven growth, so the Chongqing experiment is of national significance,” Cui says.
For Cui, the Chongqing mission is key for China: boost domestic consumption, rein in dangerous inequality, and bring the Party closer to the people.
TO UNDERSTAND where Chongqing, and perhaps China, is heading, it’s useful to look at the challenges the country faces.
While China has grown richer manufacturing things for the rest of the world, the country has had a hard time turning its own population into consumers. Chinese consumer spending makes up about half as much of gross domestic product (GDP) as it does in the United States. Instead, Chinese have saved their money or reinvested it in areas such as property, where in some places the bubble has recently popped. At the same time, frenetic growth has led to a rising inequality that has enriched urban dwellers, especially on the booming eastern coast, while leaving behind rural dwellers, particularly in the vast interior, and China’s legions of migrant workers.
The result is a country vulnerable, both to the drag from global economic troubles and to rising unrest at home — there were as many as 180,000 riots and protests 2010, according to a study by Sun Liping, a sociologist at Tsinghua University. The Chinese Communist Party, which has based its social contract with the people on bargaining away democracy in return for growth and stability, doesn’t want this.
Chongqing is an attempt to reset the balance.
“It’s designed by the central government to experiment with integrating rural and urban development. That basically means increasing urbanization to reduce the rural-urban gap,” says Cui, the Tsinghua University academic. “City residents consume six times more than rural peasants, so Chongqing is more important in the current state of the world.”
Despite the heaving metropolis at its core — a kind of dirty, ersatz Hong Kong-on-the-Yangtze — Chongqing is two-thirds rural. The city administration is ambitiously building massive tracts of public housing to contain as much of 40 per cent of the urban centre’s population. It is also loosening China’s notorious system of hukou, or residency registration permits, which tie many people to the land and deny them benefits open to city dwellers, such as pensions and urban schooling. Chongqing aims to give a massive 10 million rural citizens urban hukou by 2020.
Funding much of it, explains Cui, is the aggressive participation of the government in business, including through the promotion of joint ventures between state firms and foreign businesses. The state, instead of keeping their share of profits, plows the money back into the city’s coffers. That money is then used to pay for infrastructure, slash corporate tax rates and offer sweetheart deals to big foreign firms to set up shop.
The red cultural revival tops it all off, boosting the charisma of the Party and increasing its relevance to everyday people. “The Chongqing experiment is also a democratic experiment,” Cui says, with a crucial caveat: “If we do not define democracy by mass party, competitive elections.”
COVERAGE OF of Chongqing almost invariably has focused on the charismatic reign of Bo, the local party boss. One of China’s so-called taizidang, or “princelings” — the children of top officials — he’s an unlikely candidate for a revival of the symbols of Mao’s rule, including its worst periods of excess. In his youth, Bo was imprisoned along with his family; his mother was beaten to death during that era. In the following period, his father, Bo Yibo, became one of China’s most senior advocates for market reform and commercial engagement with the West. Also jarring is talk of Bo’s current personal wealth, and the famously flashy habits of his son, Bo Guagua.
Nevertheless Bo is widely considered by China watchers to be a shoo-in to enter China’s topmost leadership body, the nine-member Standing Committee of the Politburo, when the Communist Party — and therefore the country — changes over to a new generation of leaders this year. The reforms in Chongqing, particularly the red revival, are seen as part of Bo’s bid to boost his profile. Articles frequently talk of a rivalry between Bo’s model in Chongqing and more liberal reforms being pursued in the southern, export-powerhouse province of Guangdong, where the party secretary, Wang Yang, also is believed to be an unspoken candidate for the committee.
Talk of a rivalry between the regions is overblown, according to Wang Shaoguang, a professor of government and public administration at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.
“People exaggerate the differences. One of the first things Bo Xilai did when he became the party secretary was to visit Guangdong and visit the officials,” he says. Wang Shaoguang, who has called Chongqing’s reforms part of government efforts to come up with a “Socialism 3.0,” said the city was merely a gradual experiment, not a rewriting of China’s social contract. “It’s still the mainstream,” he said. “It’s not a shift to the extreme.”
Cui, from Tsinghua University, points out that it was Beijing that put Chongqing’s experiments with rural-urban integration into motion in 2007, the same year Bo assumed the city’s highest office. His immediate predecessor as local party secretary was none other than Wang Yang. The city has been receiving heavy funding from Beijing, as part of efforts to develop China’s west, for the past decade.
Whether he deserves the credit or not, Bo is getting plenty of kudos for Chongqing’s successes.
From his plush office with a view of Chongqing’s foggy sprawl, the head of the city’s Red Songs Research Association, a chain-smoking lawyer by the name of Zhang Shusen, praises Bo as “one of the greatest leaders in decades.”
Zhang, who admits to being a failed aspirant for Party membership, has been a key player in attention-grabbing spectacles that have fed Bo’s public rise, such as the red song event in June that included 100,000 participants. Held in the lead-up to celebrations of the Party’s 90th anniversary last July 1, the massive gala, with 108 choirs from across China, managed to raise eyebrows even during a period of nationwide indulgence in retro Communist kitsch. Other promotions of red culture have included the transformation of one television station, Chongqing Satellite Television, into a station devoted to “red” programming — with reportedly disastrous results for ratings.
Known before as a miserable, sweltering city, Chongqing is getting visibly richer, and while it remains perhaps terminally drab, life is getting better. Crime is dropping, thanks to a visible community policing program, and incomes have risen dramatically, including in the countryside.
“I think the Chongqing model will gradually spread across China because Bo’s policies are benefitting people,” Zhang says, referring to the local government’s anti-crime crackdown. “People feel safer.”
As the Party’s leadership transition looms this year, Chongqing is set to gain a higher profile. Huang Jiren, a Party official and the head of the Chongqing Writers’ Association, has been tasked with producing the definitive novelization of another one of Bo’s signal initiatives, an anti-mafia crackdown that put thousands of the city’s once-feared gangsters in jail. A big-budget movie is in the works for later in the year.
Smoking in the lobby of Chongqing’s InterContinental hotel, Huang describes the novel as a dramatic tale of sex slavery, drugs, guns and the fall of the anti-mafia campaign’s highest profile scalp: former deputy police chief Wen Qiang, who was executed for crimes including corruption and rape. But while the story depicts a city mired in corruption, it also emphatically absolves higher leaders of complicity and glorifies the Party.
“We’ve looked into [Wen’s] case and we’ve found it was indeed a personal matter,” Huang says. “We haven’t found any higher officials that directed Wen Qiang to do anything. The deeper we explain what Wen Qiang did, the more people will understand that the Chinese Communist Party has the power to get rid of corrupt officials.”
NOT ONLY Party stalwarts are falling for Chongqing. As is often the case in China, nobody loves a Communist more than a businessman.
“Chongqing has an incredible leadership group at the municipal level, at the mayoral level,” enthuses Marin Burela, the president and chief executive of Changan Ford Mazda, a joint foreign-state company venture that is setting up massive production capacity in Chongqing.
“When I walk into the room and talk with these people, I feel like I’m talking with global business leaders. I mean, they’re so well informed, the questions they ask, the dialogue that we get into, is incredibly exciting.”
Burela has plenty of reasons to be excited. Changan Ford Mazda has set up, or is in the process of building, a vehicle assembly plant, an engine plant and a transmission plant. By 2015, the company aims to employ more than 25,000 people and build 600,000 cars a year to supply an anticipated consumer boom across western China, the very region of which Chongqing was designed to be the economic powerhouse.
The company is just one of many attracted to a sprawling new free trade zone, Liangjiang, being built on the opposite side of the Jialing River. The zone is set to include a four-runway airport, a river port, a brand new financial district, manufacturing and apartments. By 2020, the zone is expected to have a GDP of 600 billion yuan (approximately AUD90 billion). Foreign companies, attracted by government support, new infrastructure and corporate tax rates as low as 10 to 15 per cent, are already moving in. Acer, the Taiwanese computer manufacturer, has set up massive production hub to produce up to 40 per cent of its laptops. Acer also has a joint venture smartphone tablet computer research and development centre with the Chongqing government. Hewlett-Packard and Foxconn, the electronics manufacturer previously lambasted for a string of suicides at its massive Chinese factories, are among other high-tech firms investing billions in shifting major manufacturing hubs to Chongqing.
“Chongqing will be the largest manufacturing operation that Ford has anywhere outside of Detroit globally,” Burela says. “Where in the world can you see anything like what we’re seeing here happening?”
CHONQING’S MARCH — and its supposed mix of frantic growth with a return to socialist values — isn’t making everyone equally happy.
Chen Ze You, a former soldier, is one of the millions of rural dwellers set to be pushed to the city in Chongqing’s modernisation rush. His village, Shu Yuen, has been condemned to make way for part of the Liangjiang special economic zone. Most locals already have been cleared out and their homes levelled, but Chen has stayed on, arguing with the local government that the compensation offered, 88,000 yuan per person, is not enough.
For a supposedly new model, the land seizures appear to be of the old school. A protest by about two dozen locals in late 2010 was broken up by scores of thugs hired by the government, and six villagers wound up in hospital, Chen explains at his home on a small hillock in the village. In the background faraway trucks can be heard reversing and cranes clang. Since the protest, which Chen calls a “total failure,” villagers have mostly either reached compensation agreements or given up. Chen stuck around, he says, because the promise of urban hukou wasn’t an incentive for him — he has the right to it as an ex-soldier — and because he wants more money to start a new life in the city.
For Chen, being pushed off the land is a mixed bag: The government has offered him a brighter future, or else. “We’re benefitting but it’s not so sweet as for people in the remote villages,” he says. “Those people are really willing to get urban hukou. For us, we’re being half-forced into it. But we’re also doing it half-willingly.”
In the middle of town, there are similar signs of coercion. On one chilly morning, Ou De Rong stood at the iconic clocktower in Chongqing’s central Jiefangbei district, his forehead and face caked in blood, alternately holding a broken tile to his neck and unfurling a banner calling for the help of officials including Bo.
As other locals peppered him with suggestions and support, and police circled, Ou spelled out his story. His apartment block, where he lived in a small flat with three relatives, had been cleared away, he claimed, and he had not received any compensation. “If I don’t get justice, I’ll kill myself,” he cried.
In his short window of time, this was all of Ou’s story that could be told. As one policeman approached and demanded photos be deleted, other officers rushed in and wrestled the tile away from Ou.
But focusing on dissent only gives half the picture. Ask most people on the streets of Chongqing and they will tell you they’re proud of their city’s progress and supportive of Bo.
In one of Shapingba’s many malls, Huang An Rong, a retired restaurateur and small businesswoman, says she “loved” Bo for his policies, including promoting red culture.
Asked if there was any contradiction between Maoist nostalgia and the city’s flashy development, Huang is visibly peeved.
“Our living conditions are better, our pay is better, we can eat and shop in this big mall,” she snaps. “There’s no conflict.”
She adds, for good measure, Deng Xiaoping’s famous slogan for launching China’s re-embrace of the world, and the country’s dictum as it has continuously reinvented itself ever since: “This is socialism with Chinese characteristics.” | <urn:uuid:2f0aebdb-761d-4f0f-84c7-cdf08d7dbf78> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.theglobalmail.org/feature/socialism-30/14/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00020-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.958106 | 3,939 | 1.921875 | 2 |
Thought this would interest people here...
========================================================= Scars of child abuse reach down to genetic level, scientists find
Last Updated: Monday, February 23, 2009 | 12:16 PM ET
Child abuse early in life appears to permanently change how people respond to stress, say researchers in Montreal who studied the brains of suicide victims.
The team of scientists found early child abuse changed the expression of a gene that is important for responding to stress.
For the study, Prof. Michael Meaney of McGill University and his colleagues examined the brain tissue of 36 males in Quebec. 'Maybe we can create different interventions, say in adolescents, that will negate these negative impacts that have happened earlier.'— Dr. Stan Kutcher
Among the 36, 12 suffered severe childhood abuse, altering a gene that affects a person's response to trauma, the researchers reported in this week's issue of the journal Nature Neuroscience.
Those 12 were compared with the brains of 12 accident victims who had not been abused and 12 controls. The gene was not altered in either of these groups.In a way, the researchers said, the men were programmed to be more vulnerable to overwhelming feelings of despair.
The study is the latest in the growing field of epigenetics: how our environment, including the social trauma or chemical substances, affects how our genes do their job and ultimately how they affect behaviour."The implications at this stage are you want to identify these people and then probably offer them some sort of intervention," said study co-author Moshe Szyf, an epigeneticist in McGill's department of pharmacology and therapeutics.
The goal, Szyf said, would be to find drugs that could reverse the changes, but researchers don't yet know how to do so.
"Maybe we can create different interventions, say in adolescents, that will negate these negative impacts that have happened earlier," said Dr. Stan Kutcher, a psychiatrist specializing in adolescent mental health at Dalhousie University in Halifax, who was not involved in the research. "We don't know yet."Like thermostat on high
Child abuse experts said the findings reinforce the importance of interventions to prevent abuse. If children are abused early, they are flooded with stress-related hormones such as cortisol and adrenaline, said Louise Newman, a professor of perinatal and infant psychiatry at the University of Newcastle in Australia. "This impacts directly on how the brain develops and the stress regulation mechanism. It becomes highly stressed so it's like setting the thermostat on high, setting up a system which regulates stress less efficiently," Newman said. "Also it impacts on the area which controls feelings, so they're more likely to be highly stressed, have difficulties with anger and emotions, and be prone to self-harm, anxiety, suicide and depression. It's not clear why some people overcome their past while others succumb to it.
Abuse survivor Glori Medrum, 35, of Edmonton, was eight when a relative began to sexually abuse her. By the time she was 12, the abuse was almost too much to bear, and she locked herself in a bathroom with a razor. "Is it worth how this has made me feel, which was that nobody really cared about me?" she recalled. Medrum said she was in "survival mode" then, and now her life is about living with no regrets.A common narrative
At the Distress Centres of Toronto, childhood abuse is a common narrative among callers. "I don't want people to feel that genetics is their destiny, that there is some hope available if we can understand why some people are able to manage," said Karen Letofsky of the centre.
The samples of tissue used in the study came from the Quebec Suicide Brain Bank, which houses the brains — donated by families for the purposes of research — of about 200 people who died from suicide or other causes. The research was funded by the Canadian Institutes for Health Research and the U.S. National Institute of Child Health and Development.http://www.cbc.ca/canada/montreal/story/2009/02/23/child-abuse-brain.html?ref=rss | <urn:uuid:68dab00e-a2e1-433e-b659-b6a17e57fb91> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.malesurvivor.org/board/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=277171 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.97011 | 850 | 2.640625 | 3 |
Coast in Crisis: The coming rise in ocean levels will reshape our shores - and our lives
Published: Sunday, July 15, 2007 at 12:30 a.m.
Last Modified: Sunday, July 15, 2007 at 3:06 a.m.
If you only had one word to describe the North Carolina coast, you probably couldn't do much better than "change."
Populations are increasing, property values are soaring and the sounds of construction are as common as a seagull's shrill squawking.
Brunswick County is now the 14th fastest grwoing county in the country. Though it's cooling now, Carolina Beach issued more building permits in the five years since 2002 than during the previous two decades combined. The average selling price of homes in Wrightsville Beach has nearly tripled since 2001.
But another change is shaping the North Carolina coastline. Unlike more obvious changes like real estate booms, which often follow relatively short up-and-down cycles, this one is evolutionary, with consequences that will make those others seem trifling by comparison.
Seas, fueled by the Earth's warming temperature, are on the rise - although some debate remains within the scientific community as to how much of a part man is playing in speeding up the natural cycle.
And coastal North Carolina, with its relatively flat topography, is considered one of the most vulnerable areas in the world.
This isn't a problem for your children's children's children. It's already happening.
Been to the beach lately? There, you're likely to find one calling card of the change: a giant step in the sand cleaved by storm-driven waves.
While beach erosion isn't new, it's occurring at an increasing rate because of the change in water levels. That requires more frequent and expensive nourishment projects.
Salt water also has begun pushing farther inland, washing away estuarine marshes and carving shorelines deeper into the interior.
Our vulnerability lies not only in our topography and geology. The rising waters also will dramatically affect the coast's economy, now dominated by tourism and construction. After all, less beach means fewer places for tourists to put down towels or retirees to build dream houses with million-dollar views.
Charles Peterson, a biologist with the University of North Carolina's Institute of Marine Sciences, said rising water levels mean new and potentially painful challenges for residents and policy-makers.
"It means we've got some very difficult choices to make in the not-to-distant future because we can't defend everything," he said.
An island of change
Shaped by the winds and waves, Masonboro Island is on the move.
"It's pretty much the bellwether for what's going to happen here to everything if we stop renourishing," said Anthony Snider, manager of the N.C. Division of Coastal Management's southern reserve sites.
The mid-section of the 8 1/2-mile-long nature preserve is migrating toward the mainland at a brisk 12 feet a year.
Neighboring areas of Wrightsville Beach and Carolina Beach, which are managed with periodic beach nourishments, are eroding at a quarter of that rate.
Snider said sea-level rise amplifies Masonboro's natural erosion, although to what degree has yet to be determined. The higher water levels also make high-tide events and wind-driven storm surges more powerful.
Luckily for us, on Masonboro, the waves wash away only sand and dunes.
"These barrier islands all want to go inland, which is OK here," Snider said. "The problem is when we put homes and economic infrastructure down that doesn't move as easily as the islands do."
'This is certain'
The ocean off North Carolina is rising at about 3 millimeters a year, or about a tenth of an inch - although that figure is expected to accelerate this century.
From most people, that fact might elicit a yawn or a shrug.
That's left scientists and others grappling with a challenge: How do you make people and policy-makers see global warming and all of its environmental consequences, including sea-level rise, as a threat?
"There's no silver bullet for solving this problem," said University of Arizona geoscientist Jonathan Overpeck.
Even if we could magically shut off all new greenhouse gas emission today, Overpeck points out, we're still committed to a certain amount of climate change. "But we need to get our country in a psychological mind set that we need to start working together to solve this problem."
So what should we do? None of the answers to that question - from restricting development or retreating in some areas to defending others from encroaching seas - are easy, cheap or popular.
"Right now I don't see the political will there yet from folks who represent that area to make those tough decisions," said Pricey Harrison, D-Guilford, who serves on the state's Legislative Commission on Global Climate Change and is a former member of the N.C. Coastal Resources Commission.
That lack of will springs, at least in part, from the nature of the political cycle, with elected officials focusing on short-term issues.
In addition, economic pressures often dominate the debate, especially with tourism and waterfront construction holding up many coastal economies.
Yet scientists say we have no choice but to change our development patterns if we don't want to saddle our children and grandchildren with an untenable situation.
"This isn't a hypothetical future," said Doug Rader, a senior scientist with Environmental Defense, an environmental watchdog group. "This is certain."
Stan Riggs, a geologist and distinguished research professor at East Carolina University, who has been tracking sea-level rise on the Outer Banks for decades, said he remains optimistic that people and policy-makers will realize that the growth of the past few decades cannot continue as it has.
It can't, he said, because we don't have a choice.
"I see it as a fundamental question of education," Riggs said. "We're not advocating abandoning the coast. But if you're going to live here and be part of the system, then you better understand the dynamics of the system."
Gareth McGrath: 343-2384
Reader comments posted to this article may be published in our print edition. All rights reserved. This copyrighted material may not be re-published without permission. Links are encouraged.
Comments are currently unavailable on this article | <urn:uuid:50206901-d632-4e4a-87ee-e6ca0b95f31e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.starnewsonline.com/article/20070715/NEWS/707150350/1004/news01 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00055-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959286 | 1,343 | 2.5625 | 3 |
In the 1970s, Henry Kissinger famously asked, "who do I call if I want to speak to Europe?" After more than three decades, he may finally get his answer. Last week, the European parliament began debating the powers and responsibilities of a new president of Europe, a position made possible by the recent decision of the Irish people to approve the European Union's Lisbon Treaty. The EU will also soon have a foreign minister. The establishment of a strong executive in Europe means the 27-member EU is poised to play an even more powerful role in world affairs.
The Lisbon Treaty's ratification is not the only new development in Europe to which we should all pay close attention. France's return in April to full participation in NATO's military structure after more than four decades says something important not just about France but about NATO as well: NATO remains vital to promoting and protecting transatlantic values.
These developments present an opening for new avenues of cooperation among the United States, NATO and a more powerful European Union. While maintaining NATO as a critical pillar for transatlantic ties, U.S. and European leaders have an opportunity to forge a new connection across the Atlantic. A formal U.S.-EU relationship, perhaps even through a treaty, would allow Americans and Europeans to assess the challenges they face and then call upon the transatlantic institution best suited to meeting them.
America and Europe could more effectively act together on:
•Iran. The U.S. and the EU are together trying to convince Iran to give up its pursuit of nuclear weapons at the negotiating table. But to change Iran's policies, the negotiating track needs to be backed by the possibility of stronger measures, and so Washington and Brussels should jointly develop a transatlantic strategy to contain Iran if talks fail. Both NATO and the EU have appropriate roles. NATO, which deterred a nuclear threat for more than 50 years, can work with members of the Gulf Cooperation Council and with Israel to organize against Iran's nuclear threat. The EU can adopt, in concert with Washington, financial and other economic and investment measures to help clarify for Tehran that a nuclear weapon will make Iran less rather than more secure. NATO should begin working with Russia and other interested countries to develop a missile defense system that can effectively defend against the threat of ballistic missiles and weapons of mass destruction.
•Afghanistan and Pakistan. Afghanistan is NATO's most important mission, and the alliance must succeed there, but the effort in the Hindu Kush cannot be accomplished by NATO alone. Military efforts must be supported through joint U.S.-EU action to provide humanitarian assistance and promote economic development in Afghanistan and, crucially, also in Pakistan.
•Cyber security. In the past two years, both the U.S. and the EU have come under cyber attack. As such attacks grow in sophistication, they have the potential to cripple economic growth on both sides of the Atlantic. The U.S. and the EU should launch a joint defense cyber initiative - encouraging participation by European and American businesses that own 85 percent of the information infrastructure - to protect vital networks from attack. NATO should keep working on new capabilities to identify the sources of cyber attacks and be ready to protect defense and security infrastructure. The U.S., NATO and the EU can jointly focus on increasing the resilience of our societies to recover from cyber attack.
•Energy and climate change. The U.S. and the EU can work even more closely to tackle the challenge of global climate change, especially in advance of the Copenhagen meetings next month. They can do this by reaching out to others such as India and China, both with great needs and great capacities in this area. It should be a transatlantic goal to enhance energy security by diversifying energy supply, including a joint U.S.-EU endeavor to make the Nabucco pipeline - designed to bring natural gas from Central Asia to Europe - a reality.
The time has come to create a transatlantic relationship for the 21st century. President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton can build on the results of the U.S.-EU summit earlier this month to make clear that America is prepared for new thinking about the transatlantic relationship and to begin the conversation about how best to work with NATO and the EU to solve the world's most pressing problems.
Marc Grossman is a vice chair at the Cohen Group and was under secretary of state for political affairs from 2001 to 2005. His e-mail is firstname.lastname@example.org. | <urn:uuid:9bf45706-abca-486a-a6d5-cd6239bf9462> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2009-11-16/news/bal-op.europe16nov16_1_nato-nuclear-threat-afghanistan | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00052-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.9516 | 907 | 2.359375 | 2 |
Question: At the most recent trip to my doctor’s office, she informed me that I have osteopenia. As a woman in her sixties who exercises regularly and eats healthy, I did not even think I could be at risk! I was wondering if you could provide me with information about exactly what this diagnosis means? Is there anything I can do to help strengthen my bones?
What is Osteopenia?
Osteopenia means that your bone mineral density is somewhat lower than "normal" but not low enough to be osteoporosis. Bone mineral density is a measurement of the level of minerals in the bones, which shows how dense they are. Bone mineral density is found using a bone density test which gives you your results as a t-score (comparing your density level to that of a "normal" woman). A bone density test uses X-rays to measure how many grams of calcium and other bone minerals are packed into a segment of bone. Osteopenia is defined as a bone mineral density T-score between -1.0 and -2.5.
It is important to note that having osteopenia is not the same as having osteoporosis, and that technically, osteopenia is not in and of itself a disease, as osteoporosis is. Instead, osteopenia is an indication that your BMD is below the statistical norm and that you could eventually develop osteoporosis or be at risk of a future fracture. Please keep in mind that most BMD tests base the norm density on a healthy woman in her 20's which does not accurately reflect the same health as an older healthy woman.
What is Osteoporosis?
If your bone density is 2.5 or more standard deviations below the average bone density (T-score of -2.5 or lower) you have osteoporosis (according to the World Health Organization).
Women go through two periods of increased bone loss. The first begins when a woman’s periods begin to become irregular and ends 4 years after her last period. The second occurs in our 70s.
Many women have osteoporosis and never find out or only find out after breaking a bone.
Causes & Risk Factors
Bones naturally become thinner as people grow older because, beginning in middle age, existing bone cells are reabsorbed by the body faster than new bone is made. As this occurs, the bones lose minerals, heaviness (mass), and structure, making them weaker and increasing their risk of breaking. Osteopenia is more common in women than in men and typically occurs in people age 50 and over.
Some people who have osteopenia may not have bone loss. They may just naturally have a lower bone density. Osteopenia may also be the result of a wide variety of other conditions, disease processes, or treatments. Women are far more likely to develop osteopenia and osteoporosis than men. This is because women have a lower peak BMD and because the loss of bone mass speeds up as hormonal changes take place at the time of menopause.
Listed below are several osteoporosis risk factors:
- Getting older, which increases your risk of osteoporosis because bones become weaker as you age
- Ethnicity — for instance, women who are white or of Southeast Asian descent have the greatest risk of osteoporosis, and African-American and Hispanic men and women have a lower, but still significant, risk of the disease
- Low body weight, or under 125 pounds (56.7 kilograms) if you're of average height
- A personal history of fractures after age 40
- A parental history of osteoporosis or hip fractures
- Using certain medications – corticosteroids, aromatase inhibitors (breast cancer treatment), SSRIs (antidepressants), methotrexate (cancer treatment), protein pump inhibitors (acid blockers), some anti-seizure medications, and aluminum-containing antacids.
- Eating disorders or metabolism problems that do not allow the body to take in and use enough vitamins and minerals
- Chemotherapy, or medicines such as steroids used to treat a number of conditions, including asthma
- Exposure to radiation
- Oophorectomy (removal of ovaries)
- using steroids for more than 3 months
- high doses of thyroid medication
In addition, having a family history of osteoporosis, getting limited physical activity, smoking, regularly drinking soda, and drinking excessive amounts of alcohol also increase the risk of osteopenia and, eventually, osteoporosis.
Osteopenia is treated by taking steps to keep it from progressing to osteoporosis and, for a few people, by medication. We encourage you to talk to your doctor about treatment options that are right for you. Lifestyle changes can help reduce the bone loss that leads to osteopenia and osteoporosis. A good exercise routine and the right diet have been proven to help keep bones strong and healthy. Below I have listed several types of exercise and diet ingredients that are particularly good for bone health that you might want to consider in your weekly routine.
Strength training includes the use of free weights, weight machines, resistance bands or water exercises to strengthen the muscles and bones in your arms and upper spine. Strength training can also work directly on your bones to slow mineral loss. Exercises that gently stretch your upper back, strengthen the muscles between your shoulder blades and improve your posture can all help to reduce harmful stress on your bones and maintain bone density.
Weight-bearing aerobic activities
Weight-bearing aerobic activities involve doing aerobic exercise on your feet, with your bones supporting your weight. Examples include walking, dancing, low-impact aerobics, elliptical training machines, stair climbing and gardening. These types of exercise work directly on the bones in your legs, hips and lower spine to slow mineral loss. They can also provide cardiovascular benefits, which boost heart and circulatory system health. Swimming and water aerobics have many benefits, but they don't have the impact your bones need to slow mineral loss.
Being able to move your joints through their full range of motion helps you maintain good balance and prevent muscle injury. Increased flexibility can also help improve your posture. When your joints are stiff, your abdominal and chest muscles become tight, pulling you forward and giving you a stooped posture.
Stretches are best performed after your muscles are warmed up — at the end of your exercise session, for example. They should be done gently and slowly, without bouncing. Avoid stretches that flex your spine or cause you to bend at the waist. These positions may put excessive stress on the bones in your spine (vertebrae), placing you at greater risk of a compression fracture. Ask your doctor which stretching exercises would be best for you.
Stability and Balance exercises
Stability and balance exercises help your muscles work together in a way that helps keep you more stable and less likely to fall. Simple exercises such as standing on one leg or movement-based exercises such as tai chi can improve your stability and balance.
Get enough calcium every day.
This is important throughout your life for healthy bones. If you get enough calcium from the foods you eat, then you shouldn’t need to take a supplement. The total amount of calcium you get includes the calcium in the foods you eat, plus your multivitamin and supplements. Although diet is the best way to get calcium, calcium supplements are an option if your diet falls short. Before you consider calcium supplements, though, be sure you understand how much calcium you need, the pros and cons of calcium supplements, and which type of calcium supplement to choose. You should consult your doctor before starting a calcium supplement regimen.
How much calcium you need depends on your age and sex. Note that the upper limit in the chart represents the safe boundary — it's not how much you should aim to get. If you exceed the upper limit, you increase your risk of health problems related to excessive calcium.
Recommended Dietary Allowance (RDA) for calcium for adults
Women, age in years
RDA eash day, in
Upper limit each day, in
51 and older
Your body doesn't produce calcium on its own, so you must obtain it through other sources. Calcium can be found in a variety of foods, including:
- Dairy products, such as cheese, milk and yogurt
- Dark green leafy vegetables, such as broccoli and kale
- Fish with soft bones that you can eat, such as sardines and canned salmon
- Calcium-fortified foods and beverages, such as soy products, cereal and fruit juices
Be sure to get your vitamin D. Adults age 50 and older need 800-1,000 IU of vitamin D every day. Some people may need more. There are several ways to get vitamin D: from sunlight, foods such as dairy and fish, multivitamins, supplements and medicines. Vitamin D helps your body absorbs calcium.
Be careful with salt, caffeine and cola drinks. Too many of these “treats” is not good for your bones.
Avoid too much alcohol. Heavy drinking weakens bones. Drinking more than two to three alcoholic drinks a day can have a serious detrimental effect on your bones.
Medical Treatment for Osteoporosis
There are a few different methods that are commonly prescribed for osteoporosis, each with their own risks and benefits. Hormones like estrogen and estrogen-progesterone have been shown to reduce the risk of osteoporosis and bone fracture. Learn more about the Networks stance on hormone treatments here.
Bisphosphates sold on the market as Fosamax, Fosamax Plus D, Actonel, Actonel with Calcium, Boniva, Atelvia, and Reclast are also often prescribed. They have been shown to slow bone breakdown, to decrease spine fractures, and some have been shown to also decrease hip fractures. It was hoped that they would be a safe alternative to hormone treatments but have been found to make bones denser but also more brittle. Additionally, bisphosphates have been associated with rare but severe jaw ulcers and deterioration and unusual fractures of the middle of the thigh bone.
Selective Estrogen Receptor Modulators (SERMs) like Evista (raloxifene) are also used to prevent bone loss. They have been shown to reduce the risk of spine fractures without the risk of breast or uterine cancer. However, they may increase hot flashes and have the same risk of blood clots as taking estrogen.
As with all medications you should discuss with a healthcare provider which method could be best for you based on the risks and benefits.
Additional Resources you may wish to consider for more information:
http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/calcium-supplements/MY01540 - Information on Calcium and its benefits in your diet
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/osteoporosis.html - National Institutes of Health Fact Sheet on Osteoporosis
http://www.nof.org/learn - National Osteoporosis Foundation
http://courses.washington.edu/bonephys/ - Osteoporosis and Bone Physiology from the University of Washington
http://center4research.org/medical-care-for-adults/osteoporosis/osteoporosis-how-to-avoid-it-and-how-to-treat-it/ - National Research Center for Women and Families | <urn:uuid:509ec5bc-d73d-4fa5-b192-614aed8b42c9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://nwhn.org/osteoporosis-osteopenia | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00076-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.945168 | 2,413 | 3.328125 | 3 |
The Rescue Coordination Centre New Zealand (RCCNZ) is New Zealand’s national search and rescue organisation.
The RCCNZ was established in July 2004. Initially under the Civil Aviation Authority, the RCCNZ came under Maritime New Zealand’s responsibility in December 2004.
The Rescue Coordination Centre New Zealand (RCCNZ) is responsible for coordinating:
These incidents are termed ‘Category II’ incidents. RCCNZ also assists with other rescues when required.
The RCCNZ provides search and rescue (SAR) services 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year.
The SAR officers working for RCCNZ are trained to international aviation and maritime SAR standards and have a wide range of experience in aviation, marine and land search and rescue.
Covering one of the largest search and rescue areas in the world, the RCCNZ responds to approximately 1,200 search and rescue incidents annually.
Located alongside RCCNZ at Avalon is the Maritime Operations Centre (MOC). The MOC is the radio service that provides VHF and HF radio services for New Zealand’s coastal waters and the South Pacific, including around-the-clock monitoring of radio frequencies for distress messages.
Other secondary roles that RCCNZ provides include:
Rescue Coordination Centre New Zealand leaflet [PDF: 493Kb, 10 pages] | <urn:uuid:be55fe51-09ef-45fd-8bf1-0fbbc95d622b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://maritimenz.govt.nz/About-us/RCCNZ-profile.asp | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00045-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.921751 | 289 | 2.296875 | 2 |
News - Creating Innovation in Real Estate
Robert Vanderwerf, Director of Innovations at Jones Lang LaSalle (JLL), led a small group discussion with MIT/CRE students in March on how to encourage innovations in real estate, focusing specifically on his own firm. In a real estate universe of investors, owners, and tenants, JLL's mission is to provide "strategic client services" to each of these components, he explained. To achieve this objective, the firm has made a strategic decision to use innovation as its primary means to higher margins and a competitive advantage, and to establishing itself as the industry leader.
To promote innovation within the organization, JLL explicitly provides funds to promote and sustain innovative thought. Ideas are encouraged and evaluated. Past innovations are assessed and become the basis for informing future directions, including the need to be realistic about the time it takes to effect change. Mr. Vanderwerf noted that "effectiveness is more important than speed." Jones Lang LaSalle has been an innovator in the areas of telecommunications, financial asset optimization, procurement, and performance management. The success of these innovations is underscored by industry awards and by JLL's ability to attract premium clients and premium assignments.
Mr. Vanderwerf was clear that while innovations could be an element of entrepreneurship, the two were different. Innovation is not e-commerce, venture capital, mergers and acquisitions, research and development, strategic sourcing or a think tank. Innovation develops from teaching, focusing on strategy and long-term value, collaboration, and approaching problems and issues as a team. Innovation at Jones Lang LaSalle is "focused entrepreneurship." | <urn:uuid:aef38922-e890-4281-bd9c-5c86fa08d5a5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://web.mit.edu/cre/news-archive/ncvanderwerf.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00060-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957039 | 333 | 1.898438 | 2 |
Energy: King Coal
Infographic: Hitting the Scales
Interview With Glenn Olson: The Bird Ambassador
Wildlife: Inherit the Wound
Sealife: The Friendliest Catch
Elephant text-messaging; 90-year-old ladies’ man; bicycle valet service; more.
Despite its downsides, this dirty fuel still reigns.
On December 22, 2008, 5.4 million cubic yards of fly ash—the chalky, toxic byproduct of coal combustion—spilled from the Kingston Fossil Fuel Plant 40 miles west of Knoxville, Tennessee, coating nearly 300 acres of waterways and land in up to six feet of sludge. Today the Tennessee Valley Authority, which runs the facility, and the EPA are still working on the estimated $1.2 billion cleanup.
The accident illustrates coal’s dirty side, belying industry’s aggressive campaign to depict it as a benign energy source. The development of “clean coal” technology—which includes carbon capture and storage (CCS), a process that aims to trap CO2 from power plant emissions and bury it—is attracting billions of federal dollars, and may feature in U.S. climate change legislation and the Copenhagen climate talks in December. Meanwhile, U.S. environmental groups, such as Audubon Arkansas, have successfully blocked construction of new coal plants, including a proposed 600-megawatt facility near Texarkana. But coal—which produces nearly a third of our electricity and 35 percent our CO2 emissions—is too cheap and plentiful, and our energy needs too great, to expect that it won’t be a big part of the energy mix. Even if smokestack emissions are slashed, without drastic changes to the industry, coal mining and combustion waste will continue to destroy habitat and harm wildlife.
“So much attention is given to carbon emissions and climate change because they have such global consequences that the other, more local environmental impacts of coal are often overlooked,” says Frank Alix, CEO of Powerspan, a CCS technology developer. “But coal will inevitably be a part of our energy future.”
In Appalachia during the past 15 years, mountaintop removal—scraping or blasting away rock to mine underlying coal—has leveled some 470 summits, buried at least 700 miles of waterways, and destroyed 380,000 acres of forest, estimates the Natural Resources Defense Council. “Mountaintop removal has disassembled beautiful landscapes in my area,” says West Virginian Maria Gunnoe, who won the prestigious Goldman Prize in 2009 for fighting extraction practices. “My water runs gray from pollution and silt. The industry needs to change, and fast.”
There are other ways to limit coal’s poisonous legacy. One is to incorporate fly ash into concrete; it makes concrete stronger, less porous, and usually cheaper. In California road projects must use cement with at least 25 percent fly ash.
Habitat restoration is another approach, but it requires stricter oversight, environmentalists say. For instance, Congress mandated surface-mine reclamation in 1977, but instead of spreading adequate topsoil and planting vegetation, companies often just dump dirt on the surface and then compact it, which can cause runoff and flooding. In June the Obama administration proposed new mountaintop mining rules, but they got a mixed response, and many environmentalists called for tougher regulations and no new permit approvals without thorough environmental review. The plan suffered a blow in August when a federal judge denied a provision to reverse a Bush-era rule that allows dumping surface mine waste near streams.
Regulations and technology have made coal cleaner than it was 50 years ago, and Alix is optimistic about its future. “We have a new generation of environmentalists pushing for stricter regulations and innovative scientists developing new technologies. We’ll get there, but there is still a lot of work to be done.” But others are doubtful. Only a federal ban on mountaintop mining can reduce the devastation, says Gunnoe.
Back to Top | <urn:uuid:3682855c-a567-4d9f-9b14-3219d6007ab6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://archive.audubonmagazine.org/fieldnotes/fieldnotes0911.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00035-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.929772 | 838 | 3.140625 | 3 |
When Falun Gong practitioners from Scotland learned that the Friendship Association of Chinese Students and Scholars would hold a Chinese Lunar New Year Evening Party for all Chinese students in Scotland, everyone considered this a rare opportunity to clarify the truth to the Chinese people. We decided to attend the party and hoped that we would have the opportunity to clarify the truth to people.
There were 200-300 people at the party when we arrived at the auditorium.[...] One practitioner contacted the party host, hoping to add us to the program.
The party started. The first speaker was Consul Wang from the Chinese consulate in Edinburgh. [ ] Consul Wang stammered badly during his speech and did not mention a single word about Falun Gong.
Most of the program consisted of traditional performances. Looking at these Chinese people, our hearts were filled with compassion. We thought in our hearts that we truly wanted everyone to know the truth about Falun Gong as soon as possible.
When the party was close to the end, a practitioner handed a truth-clarification booklet and a CD to Consul Wang while he was watching the performance. Consul Wang took the items, but when he saw that he had accepted Falun Gong truth-clarification materials, he was flustered and exasperated. He asked the students from the Association to look for the practitioner. When the practitioner came forward, Consul Wang roared, "What did you give me?" The practitioner said, "What I gave you was Falun Gong truth-clarification material." Wang raised his voice even more and shouted, "What truth do you know?" The practitioner said, "Every word in the booklet is true. I myself have experienced the persecution." Wang confessed without being pressed, "Are you the husband of Mo Zhengfang? (Their daughter became a refugee with no status because the Chinese Embassy refused to register her.) What have you two done in Great Britain?" The practitioner replied, "What we have been doing is the most righteous thing."
Consul Wang had no reply, so he just returned to his seat. Some staff members used abusive language towards the practitioners, but they continued to clarify the truth to them. Some Chinese students who had been watching the exchange curiously asked us for a copy of the booklet.
Later, as we waited at the door to distribute materials, people from the Association tried to interfere with us and would not allow us to stand there. Practitioners used the opportunity to clarify the truth to the staff. Some members of the Association even tried to snatch the truth-clarification materials from students' hands. Practitioners persuaded them not to do so, [...]. Consequently, the students who had been ordered to snatch the materials returned the materials to the practitioners and said, "I don't want to do this, but I do not want to do an even worse thing either. I'm willing to return these materials to you so you can give them to others."
There was a western practitioner among us. He kept distributing Dafa materials until everything had been handed out. He was not affected no matter what the consulate officials or people from the Association said to him. His righteousness was truly admirable.
On the way home, we all reflected on our behaviour [ ] and tried to identify our problems so we can do better next time. [....]
Chinese version available at:
You are welcome to print and circulate all articles published on Clearharmony and their content, but please quote the source. | <urn:uuid:8c69654b-40d8-45e7-84ed-d7118cdccee0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.clearharmony.net/articles/Truth_Clarification_Party_Held_by_Chinese_Students_and_Scholars_in_Scotland-a3285.html | 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 | 0.977099 | 710 | 1.632813 | 2 |
STRASBOURG, France (AP) - The European Parliament has approved tougher regulation on credit rating agencies by making country ratings more transparent and introducing limited liability.
Parliament voted in favor of the legislation Wednesday in Strasbourg in a bid to improve the stability of financial markets.
Under the new rules, the agencies will have to set up a fixed publication calendar and will then be limited to three assessments per year for unsolicited sovereign ratings. They will also have to disclose more information about their decisions' underlying facts.
The rules also aim at ensuring that an agency can be held liable in case it infringes regulation intentionally or with gross negligence, thereby causing damage to an investor.
The rules are expected to take effect after a rubber-stamp approval by member states in the coming months.
Copyright 2013 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. | <urn:uuid:ebc80988-d709-4de2-8103-c5c60045f1a5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.myfoxspokane.com/news/business/story/europe-toughens-rating-agency-regulation | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.935379 | 185 | 1.5 | 2 |
Last time I wrote about what a great deal TARP had been for taxpayers, I wrote a little bit too broadly. The program gave very broad discretionary authority to the Treasury some of which was deployed for money-losing purposes. But the really hateful and unpopular thing about TARP is that it gave all this money to big banks—the very people responsible for the crisis in the first place! Insane! Unforgivable! But as Yalman Onaran and Alexis Leondis write for businessweek if you look narrowly at the bailing out of financial institutions this looks even better as a strictly fiscal measure:
The U.S. government’s bailout of financial firms through the Troubled Asset Relief Program provided taxpayers with higher returns than yields paid on 30- year Treasury bonds — enough money to fund the Securities and Exchange Commission for the next two decades.
The government has earned $25.2 billion on its investment of $309 billion in banks and insurance companies, an 8.2 percent return over two years, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. That beat U.S. Treasuries, high-yield savings accounts, money- market funds and certificates of deposit. Investing in the stock market or gold would have paid off better.
Dean Baker and others have argued, plausibly, that TARP wasn’t nearly as “necessary” as Bush/Paulson/Bernanke persuaded the congress that it was. There were, the case goes, alternate measures that the government could have undertaken to avoid total collapse. TARP just happens to have been the collapse-evasion method that the powers that be liked best because distress to the princes of Wall Street.
That may all be true. And indeed it would be a minor miracle of a program hastily assembled in the waning days of the Bush administration and implemented largely during a chaotic lame duck and administration transition phase were optimal. The counterpoint, however, is right there in the Businessweek story. Bailing out the banks “cost” a negative sum of money. It was a highly profitable mobilization of the government’s risk-bearing capacity. And when you do a cost-benefit analysis on a program with negative costs you find that even modest and speculative benefits end up looking great. | <urn:uuid:f430ea20-08ef-4384-b64e-f2a9f4bf6a65> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://thinkprogress.org/yglesias/2010/10/21/198861/bank-bailout-profit/?mobile=nc | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961811 | 464 | 1.921875 | 2 |
Ghar Dalam graded special area of conservation
Ghar Dalam in Birzebbuga has been graded as a Special Area of Conservation within the EU's Natura 2000 framework.
Ghar Dalam is known for its palaeontological importance and for the archaeological remains unearthed there. A tiny endemic woodlouse, scientifically called Armadillidium Ghardalamensis, is known only from Ghar Dalam and another cave nearby.
This animal, which has lost its eyes and colouration due to its habitat, was found and described in 1991 by the Sicilian scientist Domenico Caruso and the Maltese entomologist Carmelo Hili.
Ghar Dalam is maintained and managed by Heritage Malta, the national agency for museums, conservation practice and cultural heritage. The cave and museum are open to the public daily from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. | <urn:uuid:ee631e78-5a6d-4b06-9e87-83fce44f958f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20070224/local/ghar-dalam-graded-special-area-of-conservation.25571 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00042-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.949474 | 184 | 2.828125 | 3 |
IN THE SPOTLIGHT
Worlds apart but on common ground
“What does the American dream mean to you?” That’s the question a student asks of three immigrants who cook and clean in the University of Colorado Sewall Residential Academic Program, where the student lives and studies.
The immigrants speak little English, so a translator assists.
“Progress, a better life,” answers Sonia Mejia, a worker who comes from El Salvador, which was wracked by civil war from 1980 to 1992. She hasn’t seen her mother for a decade.
“It’s really hard in our countries,” Mejia continues. “If you have the means, you can keep studying. Otherwise, you can’t. We know that without education, we won’t be able to get a job.”
Juan Contreras, a native of Mexico who has worked in the United States for 24 years and is seeking citizenship, says coming here allowed him to get ahead. “I really love working and making some money.”
Manuela Corchado, also from Mexico, says the American dream is elusive. “People in Mexico think we’re going to make all this money easily, but it’s not like that,” she says. “It’s really hard to achieve the American dream. First of all, I would like to learn English. I learn really slowly.”
Like many immigrants, Corchado works more than one job, which makes it hard to find time to learn English.
A student, one of about 20 in this classroom dialogue, notes her own experience. She came from South Africa to the United States about a year ago. But her family’s motivation was safety, not prosperity. In the past year, South Africa has suffered a wave of violence, much of it directed against immigrants.
Pilar Prostko, who is facilitating the discussion and interpreting between speakers of Spanish and English, summarizes: “The American dream is an idea,” she says. “We all come here for different reasons.”
Prostko knows whereof she speaks. She is an American citizen who emigrated from Peru.
Karen Ramirez, Sewall’s associate director and the instructor for this class on “The American West,” notes that in the course, students had discussed times in which the “American dream” involved the acquisition and development of land.
“It’s a different perspective where the goal is education or financial well-being. It broadens what we’ve studied in this class,” Ramirez adds.
The classroom cultural exchange is part of a series of discussions called Dialogues on Immigrant Integration. Ramirez and fellow Sewall instructor Ellen Aiken, who jointly began this program, emphasize that the primary goal of these classroom discussions is educational.
Bringing students and immigrant workers face to face helps broaden the students’ understanding of other people and cultures. It helps them think critically about social issues, historical events and economic trends.
A byproduct of the dialogues is less academic but no less important: they engender greater respect and understanding among students, faculty and staff.
As Prostko explains, students and immigrant workers inhabit two overlapping but separate worlds. “Some of these employees have been working here for 15 years, and nobody has ever said ‘hi.’”
With the dialogues, though, that is changing.
The dialogues arose because of the efforts of Aiken and Ramirez to teach civic-engagement courses. They were looking for themes that complemented the focus of their classes on the American West.
They found a program sponsored by Boulder County that featured discussions with immigrants about “hot-button issues.”
As Aiken recalls, “They got people with very different points of view to sit down and talk with each other. … The whole idea was this respectful exchange of viewpoints on the issue of immigration.”
“This would be an effective way, I thought, of helping our students learn about immigration,” Aiken says.
They didn’t need to look far to find immigrants to join the dialogues. CU Dining and Housing Services, which serves Sewall and other residence halls, employs immigrants from several nations, many from Latin America, but some from places such as Laos.
In Sewall, the dialogues have taken two forms: There have been Immigrant Integration Dialogue Days and in-class discussions on immigrant perspectives. Together, these events, which Sewall began in 2007, have expanded students’ academic and social horizons.
Workers’ responses have been positive. Before the dialogues, no one had asked—or seemed to care—what they thought, they said.
“There isn’t a position or an agenda” behind the dialogues, Ramirez emphasizes. “It is really designed to open a discussion about immigrant integration.”
Aiken, Ramirez and Prostko note that students have become more aware of the people in their midst who cook and clean for them. Workers say that since the dialogues began, students have created fewer messes and have become friendlier.
“It makes them aware of who’s cleaning up after them,” Aiken says.
Aiken, Ramirez and Prostko are expanding their program. Now, instructors of six courses in Sewall and seven courses in other residential academic programs have incorporated dialogues into their syllabi. Plans are in progress for more dialogues during spring semester.
Back in Ramirez’ class, a student is asking for the workers’ views on U.S. immigration law.
Mejia answers: “In some ways I agree, and in some ways I disagree. I agree that when we come here illegally, we are breaking the law. I understand that, and I understand that there should be a punishment for that.”
But, Mejia says, families shouldn’t be separated as a result of the enforcement of immigration laws. “I don’t know if you know what I mean by ‘separated.’ … They take parents back to home countries, and they leave children in the U.S. … The children have food and they have clothes, but they don’t have love and protection of parents.”
As the U.S. Department of Homeland Security reported this year, the United States deported nearly 2.2 million immigrants between 1997 and 2007, and more than 100,000 of the deportees were parents of U.S. citizens (children born in the United States).
The report did not specify how many U.S.-born children were left behind and how many were deported with their parents, but both scenarios are known to exist.
Also this year, a Pew Hispanic Center study reported that 52 percent of the 16 million Hispanic children in the United States are “second generation,” meaning they are daughters and sons of at least one immigrant.
Contreras falls into this category. With a son who was born in the United States, Contreras has applied for citizenship. Eight years after applying, his application is still pending.
He adds, “For me it’s been really hard to learn English. This is why I haven’t been able to become a citizen, because I can’t speak English. I just study, but I have two jobs, so it’s hard to find the time.”
Aiken, Ramirez and Prostko are passionate and positive about the dialogues.
“It’s actually the most rewarding thing I’ve done at the university,” Aiken says.
“This is something that just came to life,” she adds. “It filled a need and grew of its own accord, so we know we’re doing something valuable.”
Prostko adds: “I like to stress that this is a project for everybody at CU. … It’s not for the workers, the students or the faculty. It’s for all of us.”
Reprinted with permission from Colorado Arts & Sciences Magazine.
A bimonthly publication produced by the Department of University Communications
© The Regents of the University of Colorado | <urn:uuid:87faeed5-342a-405d-ae58-5b4c3db0e918> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.colorado.edu/insidecu/editions/2010/1-12/story4.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00035-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.970287 | 1,765 | 2.3125 | 2 |
On Friday, The New York Times published an excellent report about the FBI's failure to investigate two 2007 hate crimes that was based on FBI documents the ACLU of Northern California, the Asian Law Caucus and the San Francisco Bay Guardian uncovered through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request on the FBI's Racial Mapping program.
The first incident involved seven gunshots fired at a Northern California Islamic community center in January 2007. The FBI report documented a series of escalating acts over the previous years – threatening messages, a brick thrown through a window and a single gunshot fired at the mosque – but the FBI still refused to investigate the 2007 incident as a possible hate crime. The mosque was later destroyed in an unsolved arson attack. The second incident, also in 2007, concerned threatening and racially charged phone calls received by a student activist at UC Berkeley. The FBI memo shows that the investigating agent reviewed FBI files and located some of the student's e-mails, which the agent claimed "expressed conveyed hatred toward the United States and Israel and support for the Palestinian cause." The student rejects this characterization of his views, but the more important issues are why a crime victim's political viewpoints are allowed to influence the FBI's decision whether to open an investigation, and why the FBI retained these e-mails in its files in the first place.
The ACLU uncovered thousands of FBI documents through a nationwide FOIA campaign to uncover information about the FBI's racial and ethnic mapping program, which was authorized in 2008 through amendments to the Attorney General Guidelines. We have detailed some of the most severe abuses in our "Eye on the FBI" alerts regarding the Bureau's Racial Mapping and Mosque and Community Outreach programs as well as it's racially biased and inaccurate counterterrorism training materials, but many other stories from these documents remain untold. Investigative reporters, activists and the interested public can browse through the FBI documents by topic or do keyword searches here. The portal is also a great resource for research by academics and defense attorneys, as it includes many FBI manuals and internal policies, such as this informant policy manual and this counterintelligence policy guide, among many others.
Radical changes to FBI policy over the last decade have opened the door to abuse, and we hope the documents continue to be useful to educating the public and policy makers about the need to rein in the FBI's unchecked authorities. | <urn:uuid:15dc0b91-8fd0-4e7a-a17a-948b92d0daf9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.aclu.org/blog/national-security-racial-justice/nyt-reports-hate-crimes-fbi-refused-investigate-uncovered-aclu | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00049-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961801 | 468 | 1.828125 | 2 |
While admitting it could create some confusion for voters, the City Council nonetheless on Tuesday agreed to place two initiatives on the ballot and gave preliminary approval to a third measure, which is supposed to be a compromise between the first two.
"Neither of these two initiatives are perfect and one would have far too little regulation," Councilman Paul Koretz said. "But we have a third proposal that would bring in tax revenue and maintain access for medical marijuana patients."
The proposal by Koretz was approved on an 8-4 vote, with Councilmen Joe Buscaino, Mitch Englander, Jose Huizar and Bernard Parks voting against the measure. It will return to the council next Tuesday for a final vote.
Under the proposal, the original 135 dispensaries approved under an interim control ordinance will be able to open as long as they abide by city rules on proximity to schools, churches and neighborhoods.
It also establishes a new tax of $60 per $1,000 of marijuana sold -- a $10 increase over the current rate approved by voters.
The other two measures were sponsored by different medical marijuana activists. One allows an unlimited number of clinics if they are certain distances from schools, churches and other facilities, and would increase the tax on sales to $60 per $1,000 of sales.
Councilman Eric Garcetti, a candidate for mayor, said he supports the compromise proposal.
"It does ensure access and gives us some semblance of control in our neighborhood," Garcetti said.
Don Duncan, president of Americans for Safe Access, praised the compromise proposal.
"It represents the best chance to get a majority of voters, whose opinions about medical cannabis vary widely," Duncan said. "I am pleasantly surprised at this compromise measure. It represents a position that patients, providers and community members can all support."
Residents have complained about the number of dispensaries that have opened in the city and the related problems they cause.
Parks, who has been opposed to the dispensaries, questioned the City Attorney's office over the measure and whether it will protect the city if the federal government decides to enforce federal laws against marijuana.
Huizar has been opposed to the dispensaries and authored a ban on their operations in the city. However, the council rescinded the prohibition after the medical marijuana supporters collected enough signatures for a referendum to overturn the ban.
The state Supreme Court is scheduled on Feb. 5 to take up a case on whether cities have the power to ban marijuana dispensaries in their jurisdiction. | <urn:uuid:5645d7ae-02f9-4a05-baca-3d8a955003cc> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.contracostatimes.com/california/ci_22474194/pot-at-polls-3-different-medical-marijuana-measures | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.95997 | 506 | 1.507813 | 2 |
Rising carbon dioxide levels in the ocean may be confusing coral reef fish and sending them swimming toward the smell of predators and, therefore, toward death, the Los Angeles Times reported.
The findings are from a study led by Philip Munday, a marine ecologist at James Cook University in Queensland, Australia, and published Tuesday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
"What we wanted to find out was how it (ocean acidification) affects those (forms of marine life) that don't have a skeleton on their outside," Munday told the Times.
In the experiment carried out with baby clownfishes - the same type of fish that starred in Finding Nemo - and with damselfishes, scientists found fish exposed to the most carbon dioxide seemed attracted to odors that should have set off biological alarms, the paper reported.
The scientists also made temporary one-fish habitats in the sand for the fish exposed to the carbon dioxide. They found that fish exposed to the highest levels were more bold and aggressive as they struck at potential food and that they were five to nine times more likely to die, the paper reported.
Mark Hay, a marine ecologist at the Georgia Institute of Technology not involved in the study, told the Times, "Here's an example of a dramatic alteration in the (biological) machinery... that would be catastrophic for young fish." | <urn:uuid:25cb66ed-7a40-42e3-9356-68a0a9f9ba7a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.oceansportal.org/news/view/148901/?topic=17218 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00038-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.966624 | 280 | 2.84375 | 3 |
The flu is widespread across most of the country, 41 states, including Kentucky and Indiana.
There have also already been deaths in the area caused by the flu.
From a minor headache, to a series of awful, horrible, no good very bad days, when the flu hits, it his hard.
"This is the worst, the worst. And I did get the flu shot," said nurse and flu victim Cheryl Palm.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Kentucky and Indiana have joined an unenviable list of 39 other states feeling the brunt of the virus.
At least one person in northern Kentucky has died due to complications associated with the flu. Seven people have died in Indiana since November.
Dr. Tom Harris is an emergency room physician and the health officer for Floyd County.
"The primary thing is prevention. If you can get the vaccine, it's definitely a good idea. There's still vaccine stocks available," said Harris.
Prevention starts with constant handwashing, cleaning and disinfecting work spaces, and with anywhere between 3,000 and 50,000 flu-related deaths a year, doctors recommend the flu shot for everyone older than six months, especially people in high-risk groups.
"The flu cycles vary from year-to-year in terms of severity and incidents. There are some years in the past where the vaccine has not been highly effecting, that does not appear to be the case this year," said Harris. | <urn:uuid:e496241e-a6f1-4024-9bf3-d448cecaf64b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wlky.com/news/local-news/indiana-news/Flu-widespread-across-U-S-blamed-for-7-deaths-in-Indiana/-/9718538/18063274/-/9r00az/-/index.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00026-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.977818 | 301 | 2.765625 | 3 |
Decennial redistricting adds work and costs for elections administrators
Political fights over redistricting cause delays and increase costs
Across the country, states are embroiled in the decennial process of redistricting that follows the release of the latest data from the U.S. Census Bureau. The process is often fraught with controversy and can drag on for months.
The impacts redistricting has on local elections officials varies from state to state. Redistricting is usually, but not exclusively, more taxing for an urban jurisdiction than a rural jurisdiction. Quite often an entire rural county is included in a legislative district or a Congressional district so the amount of additional work can be minimal.
“There is a huge burden placed on the office during redistricting because it all has to be accomplished in such a short time frame,” said Edgardo Cortés, General Registrar, Fairfax County Office of Elections.
According to Cortés, staff time is required to provide technical support and feedback during the process, including things like working with the GIS Department to produce maps of new district and precinct boundaries. The office is responsible for implementing all the changes in preparation for the next election. This includes working with the County Attorney’s Office to write the legal descriptions for precincts; working with Public Affairs in outreach to voters to inform them of changes; and recruiting election officers and acquiring voting equipment for new precincts.
The costs associated with redistrict vary, with the bulk of the additional money going to staff overtime. In Maricopa County, Ariz., Recorder Helen Purcell says that it costs her office an additional $10,000 to handle all the necessary costs associated with redistricting.
“Apart from the time costs associated with a few permanent staff who are involved in the redistricting process, there is the direct cost of the five temporary GIS technical staff (budgeted at $138,000 per year for two years), and some computer hardware costs,” explained Dean Logan, Los Angeles County registrar-recorder/county clerk. “In order to carry out the boundary line implementation, the GIS Section needed to update its computer hardware in order to utilize newer releases of the GIS software required for the effort, at a cost of $14,000.”
In Fairfax County, Cortes said each new precinct will cost approximately $8,000 to $10,000 to establish and a countywide mailing of new voter registration cards will cost $350,000.
Like costs, the amount of participation local elections officials have in the redistricting process varies, although the amount of participation is usually limited to the redrawing of precinct lines within the newly redistricted areas.
“My office is totally involved,” Purcell said. “We provide the maps electronically and on paper for the general public. We hold the public hearings, take suggestions for change, develop all suggestions into maps for consideration by the Board of Supervisors. Finally, we make the submission to the Department of Justice for pre-clearance. This includes Board of Supervisors, Community College Board, Special Health Care Board, Justice of the Peace, Constables and Voting Precincts.”
It’s been 10 years since counties have had to go through Congressional redistricting — although some of them have done local redistricting in that time. A lot has changed in the last 10 years though, which most officials asked agreed would help speed up the process.
For Boone County, Mo. Clerk Wendy Noren, this will be her fourth redistricting. The first time around all voter records were still on paper and there was no computerized street file.
In Cook County, Ill., more districts will be involved in the redistricting process this year than in 2001. In addition to congressional, state senate and representative districts, the Cook County Board of Review districts, which were originally drawn in 1997, will be redrawn this year for the first time since then.
“In 2001 Illinois did not have early voting. Now that we do, redistricting will also require that we redefine our early voting regions and sites. We have many more GIS maps now than we had in 2001, all of which will be updated. We have a much greater web presence today than we did 10 years ago; our website will need to be updated and synchronized with our voter registration system,” explained David Orr, Cook County, Ill. clerk.
With a presidential election looming in 2012 and many states once again jockeying to move up their presidential primaries, counties are under immense pressure to get all the necessary work associated with redistricting done. The process can take months.
But before the counties can begin their work, the state legislature or redistricting commissions have to complete their work. Many elections officials anticipate the process ending up in the courts which can further exacerbate the time constraints for counties.
“2012 is a presidential election year. If it is anything like the nightmare 2008 was, any delays in the redistricting process will negatively impact with our ability to prepare for that election,” said Larry Lomax, Clark County, Nev. registrar. “Like much of the country, our legislators are currently deadlocked as to how to deal with a huge budget deficit. As a result, although they are responsible for most of the redistricting in the state, they have not yet addressed redistricting in any meaningful manner. Thus, a delay is almost assured. With 25 percent of the positions in this department now vacant due to a rapidly shrinking budget, a significant delay will be a significant problem.” | <urn:uuid:20a6a314-9e58-4eb7-a767-37f0fe1284b4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.electionline.org/index.php/2011/581-electionlineweekly-april-21-2011 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00055-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956977 | 1,141 | 1.835938 | 2 |
STOCKTON, CA – Representatives from local organization met at El Concilio in downtown Stockton, on Wednesday, August 8th to discuss Latino challenges in the community and the possible creation of a Latino statewide agenda.
The first phase of the California Latino Agenda, a project of the San Francisco based organization, the Latino Community Foundation (LCF), kicked off in Stockton and will soon travel throughout the state.
According to the 2011 report of the American Human Development Project, Latinos in California make up more than 38% of the population. 32% of Latinos do not graduate from high school and only 14% have a Bachelors degree. More than 51% of all school children in the state are Latino and one-third are living in poverty. Latinos constitute about 21% of all registered voters – but only 34% are likely to vote. And the statistics continue…
Many local organizations such as Fathers and Families of San Joaquin, El Concilio, Charter House for Families, California Human Development and Visionary Home Builders, work daily to change the statistics and advocate for the needs of the Latino community, but they oftentimes work in isolation.
“We are here to see if there is an opportunity for us to work as a team, to connect all these isolated efforts throughout the state of California,” explained Masha Chernyak, Director of Programs and Policy of the Latino Community Foundation, “the issues are so big and so monumental that a single organization cannot make it on its own.”
“Whether you are working on housing or youth development; is all about building stronger communities,” added Chernyak.
The California Latino Agenda plans to bring key issues and collective solutions to the forefront, coordinate regional partnerships, create a unified voice and so increase funding for community-based Latino organizations.
“We can no longer accept statewide statistics that continuously rank our community as the lowest performing in education, income, and civic participation,” says LCF.
“This [American Human Development Project] report is not the only one that shares the reality of the Latino community in the Central Valley, we have communities where we [Latinos] are majority but we are the minority in terms of leadership,” said Rey León, Vice Chair of Region four of the California Chicano Latino Caucus.
“In our community, here in Stockton, we are looking at three major things: education, housing and jobs,” said Jose Nuño from Visionary Home Builders.
For Raquel Donoso, Executive Director of LCF, the challenges Latinos face in the Central Valley are the same challenges faced throughout the state.
“We are growing as a community, we can really make an impact if we work together,” said Maria Rosado, Regional coordinator for the California Human Development organization.
For Sammy Nuñez, Executive Director of Fathers and Families of San Joaquin in order to materialize long strong partnerships, “we need to connect the grassroots groups with the treetops, there has to be equity within the actual grassroots and the well established organizations.” | <urn:uuid:3da28d7e-d0b7-48ef-8cbf-a8dd69462000> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://bwnews.us/2012/08/21/latino-foundation-meets-with-local-latino-agencies/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.936222 | 642 | 1.617188 | 2 |
An Arab woman was wounded in southern Lebanon on Sunday when a Katyusha rocket aimed at Israel landed short of its mark.
The rocket was fired from the area of Bint Jbeil, a town a mile from Israel and the site of a major battle of the 2006 Second Lebanon War, and landed on an apartment building in the Lebanese border village of Hula. Hizbullah denies connection to the attack.
Two weeks ago, rockets were fired from Lebanon to Israel, the first time since 2009. The rockets, which landed in the western Galilee, caused property damage but no injuries. An Al-Qaida-affiliated terror group called the Abdullah Azzam Brigades initially issued a statement taking responsibility for those attacks on “the settlements of the Zionist enemy in northern Palestine,” but later retracted.
The United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) has been deployed in Lebanon since 1978 to serve as an observing and peacekeeping force. Its almost 14,000 troops are charged with preventing violence and terrorism in the region.
About the Author: Malkah Fleisher is a graduate of Cardozo Law School in New York City. She is an editor/staff writer at JewishPress.com and co-hosts a weekly Israeli FM radio show. Malkah lives with her husband and two children on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem.
You might also be interested in:
You must log in to post a comment. | <urn:uuid:346ac6de-cab4-43b3-afc6-680ad07769b9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.jewishpress.com/news/rocket-shot-at-israel-lands-in-lebanon/2011/12/12/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00030-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.966121 | 295 | 1.632813 | 2 |
Maternal and perinatal health
About 358 000 women died in 2008 of complications during pregnancy or childbirth. Most of these deaths can be avoided as the necessary medical interventions exist and are well known. The key obstacle is pregnant women's lack of access to quality skilled care before, during and after childbirth.
Millennium Development Goal 5 (MDG 5), improve maternal health, set the targets of reducing maternal mortality by 75% and achieving universal access to reproductive health by 2015. But, so far progress in reducing maternal mortality in developing countries and providing family planning services has been too slow to meet the targets.
Causes of maternal mortality
The major direct causes of maternal morbidity and mortality include haemorrhage, infection, high blood pressure, unsafe abortion, and obstructed labour. These complications may arise unexpectedly. Investing in health systems - especially in training midwives and in making emergency obstetric care available round-the-clock - is key to reducing maternal mortality.
Addressing the barriers to use of care and creating a environment within households and community that support women in seeking the needed care is also key.
The perinatal period
The perinatal period commences at 22 completed weeks (154 days) of gestation and ends seven completed days after birth. Perinatal and maternal health are closely linked.
Perinatal mortality refers to the number of stillbirths and deaths in the first week of life (early neonatal mortality).
In 2009 there were 2 642 020 stillbirths globally with more than 8 200 deaths a day. At least half of all stillbirths occurred in the intrapartum period. Among the 133 million babies born alive each year, 2.8 million die in the first week of life. The patterns of these deaths are similar to the patterns for maternal deaths; the majority occurring in developing countries. Quality skilled care during pregnancy and childbirth are key for the health of the baby and the mother.
WHO is supporting countries in delivering integrated, evidence-based and cost-effective care for mothers and babies that begins before conception and goes through pregnancy, childbirth and the postpartum period. | <urn:uuid:e83799b8-b06c-4722-978d-3933e344d2af> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.who.int/maternal_child_adolescent/topics/maternal/maternal_perinatal/en/index.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00038-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.949495 | 437 | 3.640625 | 4 |
Are you a cat whisperer? This is a question I get asked at least a dozen times a day. My answer is always No.
With the increase in popularity of the study of animal behavior and the immense popularity of the TV show The Dog Whisperer, more and more people are calling themselves cat whisperers, cat behavior experts, and cat psychology professionals. The problem is that in this unregulated field anyone can claim to be an expert or whisperer. Anyone can put up a website and make claims about their expertise, but how do you know their expertise is valid? The problem is you don't know unless you do your homework and find out more about them. If you're having a behavior problem with your pet and your family life is in crisis because of it, you may be enticed by claims of "guaranteed" results.
If you're in a position where you feel you need professional help with a cat behavior problem, how do you go about choosing the right expert? First, start with your veterinarian. Many behavior problems can be the result of an underlying medical problem so an examination by your veterinarian should be your first step. You'd be surprised how many times a litter box problem is due to lower urinary tract disease, renal failure or diabetes, just to name a few. I've seen lots of cases of aggression as well where the cause turned out to be medical such as periodontal disease, spinal pain, abscess, arthritis, and so on. So don't skip this step even if you're convinced the problem is behavioral.
When you visit your veterinarian, be specific and honest about the behavior the cat has been displaying. Sometimes when the veterinarian asks how often the litter box is cleaned the client may be embarrassed and not tell the truth. That doesn't help the cat so when the veterinarian asks questions give as honest and complete of an answer as you can.
Behavior modification is a powerful tool and if done correctly, is an effective way to change unwanted behavior. Behavior modification is science-based and there's no magic about it. A certified expert can explain to you how and why the process works and the science behind it. A certified expert will not "guarantee" results because much of the success of behavior modification depends on client compliance and the specifics of the case.
The best way to protect yourself from the multitude of so-called experts and self-proclaimed cat whisperers is to ask your veterinarian for a referral to a certified behavior expert. Certified Applied Animal Behaviorists are certified through the Animal Behavior Society . Veterinary Behaviorists are certified through the American College of Veterinary Behaviorists . Certified Animal Behavior Consultants are certified through the International Association of Animal Behavior Consultants . You can visit their websites for more information and for the location of a certified professional nearest you. If there isn't one in your area, many certified professionals will do telephone consultations.
Am I saying that all cat behavior experts who aren't certified are no good? Certainly not, but since anyone can put up a sign or a website, the best way to protect yourself is to choose someone who has proven that they have met the educational requirements as well as having documented experience in their field.
Remember, the first step is to visit your veterinarian. If you have any questions, visit the websites above to learn more about professional animal behavior consulting.
Pam Johnson-Bennett is a Certified Animal Behavior Consultant and owner of Cat Behavior Associates, LLC.
For more information on feline behavior problems, refer to the book Starting from Scratch
Starting from Scratch | <urn:uuid:3e88fb51-ef24-4fa1-bcf9-a542b42dc5bd> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://shine.yahoo.com/pets/are-there-really-cat-whisperers-951799.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00066-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.95444 | 726 | 1.8125 | 2 |
Bank On Music City — an initiative to help those Nashvillians with modest banking history establish conventional banking relationships — launched Tuesday with Mayor Karl Dean and officials with the Federal Reserve Bank, the United Way of Metropolitan Nashville and area banks gathering at the Sam Levy Homes in East Nashville.
The goal of the program is to help working families gain financial stability by building a credit history and gaining access to low-cost sources of credit. Through Bank On Music City (a partnership of local banks, credit unions, and government and community organizations), individuals who are not currently utilizing a financial institution can connect with mainstream financial services and customized products including affordable checking, savings and credit.
As part of the launching, on Tuesday and through its Volunteer Income Tax Assistance program, the United Way hosted at Sam Levy Homes a free tax preparation for low- to moderate-income households.
“I think it went very well,” Luis Parodi, Fifth Third Bank’s Nashville-based manager of the Community Reinvestment Act, said regarding the first day’s effort.
Parodi (pictured here) said similar programs with which Fifth Third has been involved have worked well in other cities, including Indianapolis and Cincinnati.
“We are not reinventing the wheel,” he said.
The eight other banks that are charter members of Bank On Music City are Citizens Bank, First Tennessee, Old Hickory Credit Union, Pinnacle Financial Partners, Regions, Reliant Bank, SunTrust Bank and the Tennessee Credit Union.
Bank On Music City educates first-time and occasional bank users on how to become financially stable and avoid the pitfalls of predatory financial service alternatives. Participating banks will offer checking and savings accounts with low or no monthly fees and monthly balances, even for individuals who may have mishandled previous accounts. In those cases, completion of financial education courses may first be required by the financial institution.
Mike Hodges, president and CEO of Advance Financial (an alternative financial services company), said that, on whole, Bank on Music City is a “ great initiative.”
“We conduct 200,000 transactions per month in greater Nashville area, so we are already serving lots of people who will use Bank on Music City,” Hodges said. “We are reaching out to see how we can be of help to the program.”
Hodges said he has some reservations regarding the program, as it will have the government involved with individuals choosing their financial institutions.
“But overall, we are in support of helping folks achieve upward mobility with their financial services,” he said.
United Way of Metropolitan Nashville will oversee the program, a recommendation of the Economic Opportunity Workgroup of Dean’s Poverty Reduction Initiative. Helping unbanked and under-banked Nashvillians establish banking relationships is a priority of the group in advance of new federal regulations that will require recipients of Social Security and other government payments to use direct deposit by April 2013.
“The underlying objective of Bank On Music City is to help hard-working Nashvillians keep more of what they earn by making informed financial decisions,” Dean said in a release. “When more families become financially stable, it benefits the entire community.”
The Economic Opportunity Workgroup, which studied the problem extensively over the past three years, concluded that a healthy mainstream banking relationship is the first and most crucial step toward financial stability. This foundational banking relationship opens doors for individuals to pursue higher education and valuable job skills, homeownership and entrepreneurship.
“This is an exciting solution to address one of our community’s most debilitating family problems: financial instability,” Margaret Dolan, vice president of community relations at Ingram Industries Inc., and board chair of the United Way of Metropolitan Nashville, said in a release.
Organizations that will assist in the financial education process include Catholic Charities, Christian Community Services, Inc., Conexión Américas, Metropolitan Nashville Public Schools’ Community Career Center, New Level CDC, Residential Resources, Tennessee Department of Financial Institutions, United Way’s Martha O’Bryan Family Resource Center Center and University of Tennessee Extension.
Other partners include Apprisen Financial Services, Belmont University, Gap Community, Metro Social Services, Nashville Alliance for Financial Independence, Nashville Council on Aging, Nashville Mayor’s Office and Nurses for Newborns.
- ALEX B FRUIN INHERITANCE TRUST; CANDACE F STEFANSIC INHERITANCE TRUST; CANDANCE F STEFANSIC INHERITANCE TRUST; FRUIN, ALEX B TRUSTEE; FRUIN ALEX B INHERITANCE TRUST; STEFANSIC, CANDACE F TRUSTEE; STEFANSIC CANDACE F INHERITANCE TRUST; STEFANSIC CANDANCE F INHERITANCE TRUST
- ROSS, BRIDGETT D
- COOKE, ETHEN LANYARD TRUSTEE; COOKE, ETHEN LEWIS ESTATE
- JACOBS, JESSICA ALEXANDRA; JACOBS, ERIKA BESS | <urn:uuid:c24cab15-e5fc-4516-a261-1f8dc58dd223> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://nashvillepost.com/news/2012/2/8/bank_on_music_city_seeks_to_offer_financial_stability_to_working_poor | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00059-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.914593 | 1,073 | 1.546875 | 2 |
To recap a bit of history, back in the early days of the Bush administration a man named Donald Rumsfeld—deemed one of the worst secretaries of defense in American history by John McCain—was running the Pentagon. He had a guy working for him named Marc Thiessen as a speechwriter. This was all when George W Bush was president, one of the worst in history. In addition to Bush, Rumsfeld, and Thiessen there were other dimwitted and immoral people in charge of running the government. One thing that dimwitted and immoral people do when under pressure is decide that lashing out with a kind of dimwitted and immoral violence is going to help them. Consequently, they got the dimwitted and immoral idea that they ought to torture people with techniques they got out of techniques the US government has developed to train soldiers in torture-resistance.
This was a bad idea, so they were warned that it was a bad idea. Instructor Joseph Witsch told a Pentagon working group on interrogations “The physical and psychological pressures we apply in training violate national and international laws … I hope someone is explaining this to all these folks asking for our techniques and methodology!” They established a Behavioral Science Consultation Team at Gitmo that was told “Bottom line: the likelihood that the use of physical pressures will increase the delivery of accurate information from a detainee is very low.”
But Marc Thiessen and his friends aren’t very smart and they are very immoral. They love inflicting violence. So they went ahead and tortured. One technique they used, waterboarding, bears a great deal of similarity to the so-called “tormenta de toca” from the Spanish Inquisition. Since the Spanish Inquisition is famous for its cruelty, sometimes critics of the kind of dimwitted cruelty beloved by Marc Thiessen and his pals point out the similarity. But Thiessen doesn’t like this comparison so earlier today he called me out for making it, observing:
Apparently, Yglesias has not bothered to read Courting Disaster. If he had, he would know better than to make this ridiculous argument. Even a basic review of the facts makes clear Yglesias is completely uninformed.
Courting Disaster is Thiessen’s book, and if he wants me to read it he’ll have to force water down my throat to induce the sensation of drowning. But having summed that up, we come to Thiessen’s big point. It turns out that during the Spanish inquisition, in addition to the basic “water cure” elements beloved by Thiessen they also used “Sharp cords, called cordeles, which cut into the flesh, attached the arms and legs to the side of the trestle and others, known as garrotes, from sticks thrust in them and twisted around like a tourniquet till the cords cut more or less deeply into the flesh, were twined around the upper and lower arms, the thighs and the calves.” So you see, it’s totally different—when Thiessen and friends were running the show, they did tie people down to boards (like in the Spanish Inquisition!) and they did pour water on them (like in the Spanish Inquisition!) but in the Spanish version they used the cords to cause additional painful torture whereas in the more refined Bush/Rumsfeld/Thiessen era the water torture itself was deemed sufficient!
And that, my friends, is the advance of civilization over time.
I suppose the natural question to ask, though, is why these kind of comparisons to the Spanish Inquisition and the Khmer Rouge and the Korean War-era People’s Liberal Army seem to bother torture advocates so much. The basic point made by torture advocates (when they’re not quibbling about whether or not you should call techniques poached from a torture resistance manual “torture”) is that the problem with liberals is that we’re not sufficiently willing to engage in brutal treatment of prisoners in order to compel their cooperation. But do you know who really didn’t shy away from brutal treatment of prisoners? The Spanish Inquisition! The Khmer Rouge! These are people who knew how to get the job done and it strikes me as deeply hypocritical of torture fans to turn around and get all squeamish and liberal when they hear that the inquisitors added a garrote or two into the torturing fun. The core element of the water torture is the same, even though different iterations of it are conducted in somewhat different ways—that’s the point of the Inquisition comparison.
I’m the kind of weak-kneed liberal who thinks that the government of a free people neither must nor should seek security through torture, so I’ll concede that I’m not nearly as well-versed in the precise ins-and-outs of different ways of torturing as a sicko like Thiessen is. But what’s the point. If torture in the name of a good cause is as awesome as Thiessen says it is, then why is it such a point of pride to try to maintain that what he advocates isn’t quite as brutal as what was done in the Inquisition? Could it be that somewhere lurking beneath the defensiveness, the partisanship, the blinkered worldview, and the immorality is a little nub of a conscience? | <urn:uuid:b4cf377c-684d-4bb4-8c2f-d609e153590e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://thinkprogress.org/yglesias/2010/02/08/196102/no-one-expects-the-spanish-inquisition/?mobile=nc | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00022-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963802 | 1,133 | 1.859375 | 2 |
Familiarity breeds contempt, or so the old saying goes. But in investing, it often breeds something else: a false sense of security that can devastate your returns.
Familiarity bias in action
Familiarity bias is most commonly seen when employees put all of their 401(k) contributions into shares of their employer. After all, what business could investors know better than the one for which they work? Perhaps none. But our comfort level with an employer can blind us to the risks of our having investment dollars and regular income all dependent on that single company's success.
For a spectacular example, look no further than Enron. Many of its employees parked a majority of their retirement savings in its stock before the company collapsed. But this sort of thing happens all the time on a smaller scale. Here are a few names whose familiarity makes shares appear tempting -- despite their dangers.
Big brand names get us every time
I suspect that many investors who purchased UBS (NYSE: UBS ) or MetLife (NYSE: MET ) when they first looked cheap, and BankUnited before it was swallowed by BlackStone (NYSE: BX ) and a group of investors, did so because of their familiarity with the company's brands and historical results.
Because we see their brands advertised all the time, and because their offices dot the landscape, these companies become easily recognizable and familiar in our minds. So it's easy to forget that these are also very complex firms with multiple business units and hundreds of competitors. Meanwhile, small, less recognizable community banks such as Suffolk Bancorp and Kearney Financial (Nasdaq: KRNY ) often don't get a second glance, despite their sturdy capitalization and growing loan books.
The danger of familiar industries
As the economy contracts, we're drawn to falling prices as a sign of value and potentially large future returns. As an investor who's constantly screening for bargains, I readily admit that I fall into this camp. Since most of us are familiar with retail brands, low share prices on Macy’s (NYSE: M ) and Jos. A Bank Clothiers (Nasdaq: JOSB ) look mighty attractive on the surface. But that's true only if the margins and earnings from 2008 even vaguely represent what the businesses will experience in the next three years.
In his annual letter to shareholders, legendary value investor Seth Klarman noted that because of rising unemployment, consumer spending might be experiencing "semi-permanent" changes, rather than a cyclical decline. Data from Bloomberg, showing that the savings rate is rising as consumers cut back on mortgage and credit card debt for the first time since 1952 (at least), supports Klarman's claim about shifting consumer habits.
That doesn't mean all retail should be avoided, but it does mean thinking carefully about a retailer's offerings, pricing strategy, and what gives it an advantage over the competition.
The cost of ignoring unfamiliar places
Many U.S. investors pass over international markets, because they don't want to add the uncertainty of foreign politics and currencies to their portfolios. That's understandable on the surface, but it becomes a bit absurd when you consider that studies show that European and Japanese investors have the same bias toward investing in foreign securities.
In normal times, this bias might mean missing an opportunity in China-based energy giant PetroChina (NYSE: PTR ) when its shares are attractive. But at a time when uncertainty surrounds the dollar and the U.S. economy alike, ignoring international markets makes even less sense. PIMCO's master investor Mohamed El-Erian seems to think so, too. In a recent Kiplinger interview, he noted that international markets are one of the few areas likely to deliver sustainable growth over the next few years, while the U.S. recovers from its debt hangover.
How you can battle familiarity
In his book Your Money and Your Brain, Jason Zweig highlights at least two ways you can help combat familiarity bias. First, diversify -- both within your portfolio and between the portfolio and the income you earn from working. Second, write down your reasons for purchasing an investment immediately after making the purchase. This creates a record of your thought process, forces you to confront your reason for owning a stock, and can help you avoid falling into the trap of familiarity.
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This article was originally published on March 24, 2009. It has been updated. | <urn:uuid:125334c8-6354-45f1-83b6-cd8713a1d099> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.fool.com/investing/international/2009/07/24/dont-get-cozy-with-these-stocks.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00025-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.95376 | 1,032 | 1.570313 | 2 |
British Library Corner: Setting Priorities for Digital Library Research, The Beginnings of a Process?
Further details on the call for proposals mentioned in this article can be found at: http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/papers/bl/callforproposal.html The British Library Research and Innovation Centre has initiated a process of discussion and debate among those working in the field of digital library research. This discussion is intended to help gain some idea of which issues need to be addressed and to establish how the research programmes and funding agencies in the field might set their own priorities. It has provided valuable information in drafting a call for proposals in the digital library research field which the Centre has announced - and in shaping our response to future grant applications in this area. Our current research plan (1996-1997) describes digital library research in the following terms:
"... exploring ways in which technology can be applied to improve the provision of information and library services, and investigating the consequent social, economic, legal and other issues; this programme covers networking (including the use if the Internet), document delivery, electronic publishing (including issues relating to copyright and legal deposit), digitisation of information resources and automation of library processes".
We therefore define digital library-related research very broadly, encompassing not only technical aspects but also the whole impact of networking and digital technologies on the library and information fields and their users.
The Centre already has an impressive record of support for research in the whole digital library field. Perhaps most significantly, the Centre funds (jointly with JISC) the United Kingdom Office of Library and Information Networking ( UKOLN) as a national centre for support in network information management in the library and information communities. An important recent example of a succesfully-completed research project is ELINOR (Electronic Library INformation Online Retrieval) at De Montfort University's International Institute for Electronic Library Research, the first project in any British university to build a full-text library system for students. RUDI (Resource for Urban Design Information) is a project at the University of Hertfordshire which is building a multimedia information resource for research and teaching in the field of urban design. Other current projects include studies of:
- the use of online journals (Loughborough University);
- retrospective catalogues in the non-academic sector (Bath University);
- an automated reference service (Sheffield University); and,
- an online thesis service (Edinburgh University).
In addition, the Centre supports an important programme of initiatives in public library networking. Among recent projects are Project EARL, a pilot/demonstration project to enable public libraries to develop networked information and resource-sharing services, CLIP (the Croydon Libraries Internet Project) and IT Point at Solihull, all of which have had a significant impact, raising awareness of the Internet among library professionals and the wider community.
Research proposals currently under consideration (December 1996) relate to a wide variety of topics including the use of the Internet by sections of the community often "excluded" until now and its impact on specific professions.
A Call for Proposals
Much preliminary work in building models and demonstrators or setting standards has therefore already been undertaken or is currently supported by the RIC and other bodies (especially, of course, the eLib programme in the higher education field). But many key issues remain unresolved providing opportunities for fruitful research.
In the RIC Research bulletin No. 14, the Research and Innovation Centre announced that "it is our intention, ... to identify specific topics or broader programme areas where we and our advisers consider that some concentration of research effort is required. We will then issue calls for proposals in those topics or programmes" (p. 4). We are currently making a call for proposals in the field of digital library research. This is an area where a number of national programmes has emerged and there is the potential danger of a duplication of effort or lack of coordination among them. There is a clear need to target the Centre's modest resources to best effect.
To help me with the formulation of the call for proposals, and to assist in the selection process, I have been working with a small, informal advisory panel (Rosemary Russell, UKOLN; Heather Kirby, Croydon Libraries; Dr Andrew Prescott, British Library Special Collections). The call itself was announced before Christmas and applications must be received by the Centre before 31 January 1997.
Two kinds of proposal will be defined: full-scale, longer-term projects such as involving one full-time research assistant and more modest, shorter-term studies, workshops or other appropriate activities. Ariadne readers are referred to the Centre's Digital Library Research pages on Portico for further information.
While working on the call, the panel decided it would be useful to widen the circle of those involved in informal discussions on the future of digital library-related research in this country. The first step was to arrange a meeting, or rather an informal "brainstorming" session, of interested parties. Key individuals were invited to participate from the British Library itself, the Libraries and Information Commission Research Sub-Committee, UKOLN, the eLib programme and the European Union's DGXIII. Including the members of the panel, some fourteen individuals met at the Centre in London on 21 November. These individuals were not regarded by us in any way as representative of all the agencies with an interest in the topic. (In addition to this meeting I have held quite lengthy discussions with other centres of excellence in the field, for example the International Institute for Electronic Library Research.) Neither was the November meeting intended to have any formal outcome, although it seemed useful to disseminate a résumé of points raised in discussion simply in order to stimulate further debate.
The meeting was asked to address two main questions:
- What topics and issues should be addressed by the next phase of digital library research in this country? And,
- Which priorities should the research programmes and funding agencies set?
I am not sure we found any ready answers to either of these questions in the limited time available, but many helpful points emerged. There was also a sense that the discussion was a useful beginning to a timely initiative. To kick off the proceedings, the panel had drawn up a list a possible topic areas. The list was intended merely to stimulate discussion but may have constrained the debate in that participants felt they needed to address and discuss only the points on the paper before them! Some were also uneasy about the very wide definition of "digital library research" the Centre has used, feeling that a greater emphasis on technical aspects might be expected.
Access for all
The first set of questions was grouped under the heading of "Access for all" which clearly recalls "Information for All", the current application by the Libraries and Information Commission with the Library Association for lottery funds to connect public libraries to the Internet. Where Information for All is concentrating on widening connectivity in the physical sense, we were concerned that wider issues of access to networked information should not be neglected. Among the questions we asked ourselves were:
- How could a 'public-benefit' network be established (covering not only public libraries but also citizens' advice bureaux, museums, charities, NHS trusts, etc.)?
- Could the experience of the eLib programme be applied in other sectors beyond the higher education sector?
- Is a NetSkills programme for the wider library and information community feasible?
- How can access to digital information be provided for those with disabilities or other disadvantaged individuals or groups?
- What initiatives could be developed aimed at children and young people or indeed older people?
- Have possible therapeutic benefits of access to the Net been considered?
- What hardware and software solutions might be developed?
Integration of digital information into services
Here we felt that much more needed to be done to ensure that digital and networked information was integrated into the 'culture' of library services. Questions included:
- How are digital information resources being used to support and enhance services?
- How effective are staff awareness and training programmes?
- Are there strategies to provide unified access to the full range of information resources? How effective are they? What are the challenges in achieving a unified service?
- How far can the development of transparent interfaces (e.g. scholar's workstations) help?
- What can be learnt about the need for cultural change among staff and users (cf. for example IMPEL 2)?
Digital information across sectoral boundaries
Here we were concerned to address issues relating to the cooperation of institutions working in the same subject area but in different 'sectors', funded by different public and private sources: central and local government; higher education; business; voluntary organisations and so on. Networking technology appears to invite the creation of 'virtual communities' of those sharing common interests, but these had in practice been slow to develop.
- How can networked information initiatives break down sectoral barriers?
- What models are there for successful, cross-sectoral cooperation in particular areas?
- How are quality services (e.g. eLib subject gateway projects) being used inside and outside the higher education field? What is their acceptance?
- Should national, non-sectoral information gateways be developed?
- What lessons are there from experience in Europe and the US (e.g. the Federation led by the Library of Congress)?
This appeared to us to be another key issue (or rather group of issues). Structures and services will only develop when 'the price is right'!
- What will be the principal pricing models for networked information?
- What are the factors that will underlie pricing strategies? What are the technological and market restraints?
- What relevant initiatives are there outside the UK?
Electronic and print media
Perhaps because the background of the present writer and some of the panellists is in the humanities, issues relating to the impact of digital and networking technologies on reading and scholarly communication also featured prominently in our initial discussions. A 'new literacy' will be needed so that users are equipped to locate and evaluate networked information.
- How will the spread of electronic media (CD-ROM, the Internet) affect the print industry?
- Will a balance be reached between printed discourse and the dissemination of information in digital formats or over networks?
- How will the presentation of discursive arguments and scholarly communication be changed by the digital format? Will complexity be lost?
- How will the process of reading be affected?
Further Issues and Suggestions
The November meeting suggested a further range of possible issues. Indeed the discussion ranged far beyond research priorities as such, seeking to define a series of desirable outcomes. It was felt, for example, that JANET, the academic networking consortium, might provide a funding model for the non-academic sector. This might have a similar kind of collective 'purchasing power' to JANET in negotiating with providers. Networked 'virtual communities' might link individuals and institutions across sectors (the archives community was mentioned several times as one example; other topic areas mentioned were business and local history). National services (for example, a 'virtual business library') might build on the blocks of local initiatives. How could the experience of local projects be 'scaled up' for wider implementation? New organisational models might emerge, for example 'federating services'. A national body might be needed, however, to 'broker' or mediate between sectors.
There was much discussion of the need for mapping to ensure we were aware of research and relevant initiatives across sectors and indeed throughout the community. Information flows and the value and impact of networked information needed to be better understood. In any case a 'national networked information policy' and a strategy were urgently required! The desirability of a workshop on economic modelling was also agreed.
The meeting also focussed on the prime importance of training: spreading the 'skills infrastructure' in the LIS community to match the physical infrastructure represented by the networks, the hardware and software. Following up the experience of NetSkills and IMPEL in the higher education community similar projects in the non-academic sector were clearly desirable (IMPULSE was even suggested as a possible acronym for a public library project!).
Librarians and information specialists should seize the opportunity to re-establish themselves as 'mediators' (or 'knowledge managers'!) between users and information, redefining (and adding value) to their professional skills. But some felt that education in the LIS field was not equipping students with the basic technical skills they needed. Was the profession in danger of missing a golden opportunity?
It was felt that the British Library should play a role in pulling together the results of individual projects and initiatives and ensuring their wide dissemination.
Conclusions and Next Steps
My personal conclusion from the many discussions I have had with colleagues over the past few months on priorities for the next phase of digital library research is that there is a growing consensus.
Most seem to agree that priority in digital library research ought now to be given to what might be called 'user-centred' issues: access, awareness and training. It is these issues that feature most prominently among the research priorities described under Centre's call where we express the wish to stimulate research leading to innovative solutions of questions such as the following:
- How can access to networked resources be widened to include the whole community?
- How can digital information resources be integrated more effectively into library and information services?
- How can networking technology aid cooperation between different sectors in the library and information community?
- What skills will information professionals and users need? How can they be acquired?
- What will be the principal economic models for the digital library?
- What technical standards or evaluation methods will apply?
We stress, however, that we would be happy to consider any proposal that will address the impact of digital and networking technologies on libraries and information, welcoming particularly proposals in the field of public libraries or community information. The text of the Call itself will be found elsewhere on the UKOLN server.
Clearly the discussions we have held so far have only been a beginning of a longer process. Perhaps they have only begun to indicate how such a discussion should be shaped. We should welcome views on this document that might take the discussion further. Meanwhile we have proposed a widening of the debate in the form of a panel discussion at the next ELVIRA (Electronic Library and Visual Information Research), the annual UK Digital Library conference to be held in Milton Keynes in May next year. | <urn:uuid:d9712e87-f648-4df0-858d-43b637241af8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue6/british-library | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00056-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.942377 | 2,985 | 1.632813 | 2 |
25 August 2011
A model in a simulated martian atmosphere
In Cologne, the researchers have access to a wind tunnel heated by an electric arc system, in which models can be exposed to realistic thermal loads. Optical and electronic metrology systems are used to examine the flow characteristics of the hot gases and the local thermal loads being experienced by individual sections of the model. Space capsules enter the atmosphere with their unstreamlined undersides facing in the direction of travel. This gives rise to a shock wave at high temperatures, while the gases flowing past the sides of the capsule are significantly cooler as they pass the other end of the capsule.
DLR (CC-BY 3.0).
SOFIA over the NASA Dryden Aircraft Operations Facility in Palmdale
SOFIA above its base, a hangar at the NASA Dryden Aircraft Operations Facility (DAOF) in Palmdale, California (front/right).
Made in Germany: the 2.5-metre infrared telescope in the fuselage of the Boeing 747SP
SOFIA during test observations of the night sky in March 2008. The opening in the fuselage of the converted Boeing 747SP provides a glimpse of the 2.5-metre infrared telescope, built in Germany.
3D model of the Rhine Valley
Earth observation satellites provide information on altitude, climate change and much more. Based on the data obtained with the German Earth observation satellites TerraSAR-X and TanDEM-X, DLR researchers have developed a sample 3D elevation model of the Rhine valley, which will be showcased on German Aerospace Day 2011 in Cologne.
Short Arm Human Centrifuge at the DLR Institute of Space Medicine
Short Arm Human Centrifuge at the DLR Institute of Space Medicine in Cologne. It allows to simulate artificial gravity.
DLR / Markus Steur .
The Robomobil, a robotic electric car developed by DLR, will also be present at German Aerospace Day on 18 September 2011.
On 18 September 2011, visitors to the DLR site in Cologne can reach for the stars and admire the Rhine Valley in 3D
'Encounter' a satellite in orbit, view the Moon and the Rhine Valley in 3D, board SOFIA, the airborne observatory, or visit the wind tunnel or astronaut training facility to experience the extreme conditions to which materials and people are exposed in space – these are just a few of the many space-related activities that the German Aerospace Center (Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt; DLR) in Cologne will make available to the general public on 18 September 2011 between 10:00 and 18:00. At this, the 11th German Aerospace Day – held under the patronage of the German Federal Minister of Economics and Technology, Philipp Rösler - DLR, the European Space Agency (ESA) and the European Astronaut Centre (EAC) will be presenting exciting research projects from the aerospace, energy and transport sectors.
Space enthusiasts will be able to visit various DLR institutes and facilities to obtain information about the projects being carried out by the scientists who work there.
SOFIA - the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy – will make its first ever visit to Europe. It is an observatory installed in a Boeing 747 SP with which astronomers can fly at altitudes as high as 14 kilometres, above the water vapour in Earth's atmosphere, where they are able to conduct observations of the night sky not possible using ground-based telescopes. This joint project by the US space agency NASA and DLR is based in California; its science observation flights began in December 2010. Visitors to German Aerospace Day will be able to see and even board the aircraft while it is parked on Zulu Stand, a cordoned off area of Cologne-Bonn Airport.
Agile and healthy
Under the theme 'agile and healthy', the DLR Institute of Aerospace Medicine will be opening the doors to several of its facilities, including the short-arm centrifuge, the physiology laboratory and the 'Biolab' biomedical laboratory. Visitors will also be able to learn about nutrition in space (Space Food), the effect of gravity and weightlessness on the human body, as well as about the applications of telemedicine. Institute staff members will be explaining these topics by conducting various experiments.
Technical staff involved in Simulation and Software Technology at DLR will be showcasing 'Medicine Apps and 3D Worlds' to visitors of all ages. Here, satellites can be 'captured' using joysticks and the Moon can be viewed in 3D. Visitors will be able to take their own blood pressure; the anonymous diagnostic data will then be transmitted via Bluetooth to a remote server – a vivid example of telemedicine.
Behind the scenes of the control rooms
In the Microgravity User Support Center (MUSC), DLR researchers will be showing visitors how the control rooms are used for space missions, with particular emphasis on information about the Rosetta comet mission and its Philae landing module. DLR has played a significant role in the construction of Philae and it also operates the Lander Control Centre, which has the difficult and never attempted task of preparing for, and then actually taking charge of, landing a spacecraft on the surface of a comet.
The Institute of Material Physics in Space will be exhibiting selected topics on the subject of 'Research in Microgravity' in two tents. The first of these tents will be located beside Building 21. The hands-on experiments here deal with the topics of levitation and aerogels. The levitation experiment involves melting metal under microgravity conditions. Aerogels are lightweight air-permeable solids that are used in, among other things, aerogel concrete – a versatile building material. Model rockets will be manufactured using a casting process on a 'core shooting machine' and then handed out to visitors. The second tent will be located close to DLR's parabolic flight aircraft, A300-Zero G, on Zulu Stand. Here, materials physicists will be showcasing an experiment involving granular materials under microgravity conditions, a test carried out on board the parabolic flight aircraft. This experiment seeks to answer why granulates behave differently than, for example, fluids and solids under microgravity conditions.
Eleven times faster than sound
Researchers at the DLR Institute of Aerodynamics and Flow Technology are using hypersonic wind tunnels to investigate how stable and heat-resistant a space capsule for a flight to Mars needs to be. These wind tunnels enable experiments to be conducted at up to 11 times the speed of sound; on German Aerospace Day, regular guided tours and demonstrations will be provided.
In the DLR tent, visitors will be able to view a 3D elevation model of the Rhine Valley with the Lorelei rock, created using data from the German Earth observation satellites TerraSAR-X and TanDEM-X, and which depicts various features including climate change over time. Visitors will also be able to see the Robomobil, a robotic electric car developed by DLR, in action.
Experiments for children and more
DLR's laboratory for schoolchildren, the DLR_School_Lab , will be opening its doors on German Aerospace Day, particularly to children, who will be invited to take part in interesting and surprising hands-on experiments.
Other parties involved in organising German Aerospace Day are Cologne-Bonn Airport, the German Air Force (Luftwaffe) and ESA together with the EAC. The media partners are the TV and radio station WDR, the Cologne-based newspapers Stadt-Anzeiger and Phoenix as well as two trade journals, Flugrevue and Aerokurier.
Media representatives can register for German Aerospace Day using the accreditation form. Admission to all parts of the main programme is free of charge.
Last modified:30/08/2011 16:32:00 | <urn:uuid:79d2a863-3281-404c-9974-abf5e1e6c632> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.dlr.de/dlr/en/desktopdefault.aspx/tabid-10419/704_read-1349/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00031-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.90612 | 1,633 | 2.984375 | 3 |
Q&A With Sen. Bill Perkins: Getting Rid of the Rats on the Rails
Decimating the city’s rat population has been on the agenda of State Sen. Bill Perkins, D-Manhattan, for at least a decade. When former Mayor Rudy Giuliani was in office and Perkins was on the City Council, several properties in Perkins’ Harlem district that had fallen into disrepair became garbage dumps, and thus the stomping ground for rats. Today, Perkins is still fighting rats — but this time he’s taken the fight underground.
Perkins recently introduced a bill that would slap a $250 fine on any person caught eating on a subway train, platform or station. A study from Perkins’ office on rats in the subway system, called Rat Attack!, prompted the legislation, which must be approved by the Transportation Committee before it goes before the full State Senate.
MetroFocus chatted with Perkins about his proposed bill on Monday afternoon.
Q: Are people really to blame for rats in the subway system?
A: I travel all over my district on the subways and I’m a daily witness to what is happening in our public transit system. It is clear to me that there is a rapid growth of rodent infestation and a disturbing increase of people eating on the trains. The rodents don’t grow their own food, nor do they go shopping at the market. Their population is a function of the availability of food. We feed them and therefore we breed them.
Q: What’s your worst subway rat story?
A: They come out of the system and onto the platform scampering, and I wish I was exaggerating. I’ve seen rodents trying to pull a discarded piece of pizza into their little hideaway places. I saw a rat run across the body of someone sleeping on a bench. I was like, “Oh wow!” It wasn’t a bum either. I’ve seen some come out of subway grills. Recently, my Chief of Staff Cordell Cleare and I walked out of the subway at 125th Street and St. Nicholas and saw two rats run into a business!
Q: Why don’t you just prohibit people from tossing their food onto the tracks or the ground, instead of banning eating all together?
A: I don’t think everyone is purposefully dropping chicken wings, but what happens if it falls off your plate? You may not even know it. Sometimes it just happens. Some people do throw their food into the tracks contemptuously, ignorantly. They don’t have table manners. But it’s a losing battle. Clearly, we don’t need to be eating on the public transit system, especially if that has become the main source of food for the rodent population, which has been growing exponentially.
I’ve had the privilege of checking out transportation systems in other cities. In Washington, D.C., it’s as clean as a whistle. In Taiwan, too.
Q: Is banning eating on subways really the best way to get rid of rats?
A: We do need more general maintenance, but if you don’t eat, and you don’t leave food on the train or on the tracks, maintenance can focus on other aspects. And by the time a maintenance guy sees the chicken wing, the rat has already gotten to it! It’s a competition between the man and the rat.
Q: What about people who only have time to eat on the subway, when they’re traveling between jobs or to pick up kids?
A: Obviously there are emergency situations, but do you think someone is going to die from hunger by not eating on the train? We don’t want to be complicit with the rapid growth of the rat population.
Q: How will this be enforced?
A: Enforcement is always the key. We used to tell people to curb their dogs, and they never did until a law was passed by then-Assemblyman Ed Lehner: the “Pooper Scooper” law. It said if you’re caught not picking up after your dog, you’re gonna get fined. If you can pick up after your dog, you can not eat on the subway.
Q: What’s next for the legislation?
A: [MTA Chairman] Joe Lhota recognizes there is a problem. He and I spoke when he was in Albany and he said we’re going to be working together on this. We have a history. We worked together when he was working for Giuliani and I was on the City Council. Hopefully the bill will get support. I know people can learn to live with it. Once you know you can’t do something, you stop doing it.
Q: At this point, do New Yorkers really care that much about seeing rats in the subways?
A: I know cultures where they don’t abhor the rat; there are places where they worship the rat. That’s not New York and that’s not me! New York has seen a lot of tourists. One of their entertainments is watching our rats! I hope they’re not going home and saying you’ve got to go to New York and see the rats!
MetroFocus Multimedia Web Editor Georgia Kral conducted this interview, which has been edited and condensed. | <urn:uuid:35f93367-0c3a-492f-97f8-5affa55f3504> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.thirteen.org/metrofocus/2012/01/qa-with-sen-bill-perkins-getting-rid-of-the-rats-on-the-rails/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00042-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.968422 | 1,128 | 1.625 | 2 |
There may be more beautiful stations or terminals in North America, let alone worldwide, and plenty of people can single out their own legitimate hometown gems, such as Los Angeles Union Station (a movie and TV star), Cincinnati's Union Terminal, Toronto's Union Station, 30th Street Station in Philadelphia, or of course Washington, D.C.'s blessedly restored Union Station, worthy of celebration each time I pass through it. Yes, those stations, or still others, may be more majestic, more elegant, more ethereal stations. Grand Central is still "better."
One reason is simple: It never faltered in or lost its primary role of handling rail passengers, even in the darkest days of passenger rail's decline (or the physical threat of being torn asunder, as Penn Station was across town). That continuity by itself makes it stand out from so many of its worthy U.S. brethren, who slumped precipitously before being rescued (in LA or D.C.) or, in too many cases, became simply "dead history" relics. Every time I visit the Central Railroad of New Jersey Terminal in Jersey City, I mourn. It's a beautiful building, and an empty shell. No Blue Comet, or even a lesser successor. Dead history.
Plenty of visitors I accompany on tour in and around New York may or may not be impressed by the standard city landmarks, so while I enjoy playing amateur tour guide for the Empire State Building, Central Park, or (especially) city subways, I really make it a point to sneak in "just a quick stop" at Grand Central—and wait for the response.
European guests, especially, pause to take in the grandeur, mixed with the urban humanity, with somber silence, as they might not for other locales. And though Europe has plenty of distinguished rail stations and terminals, old and new, Grand Central has not yet failed to impress. "Wow," is often the understated initial response, followed by a variant of, "Now this is a New York experience." Indeed it is. True, no 20th Century Limited graces the property, but the trains never left for good, never stopped coming and going.
That continuity fosters, and in turn is fostered by, a second reason for GCT's success and longevity. The terminal is, and for so long has always been, a sterling example of what we today call Transit Oriented Development. We in the 21st century are reliant on acronyms, but the TOD offered by GCT not only is real, it's ongoing, and in fact it's growing. That's recognized by the city of New York, by Metro-North Railroad, and by folks at the Regional Plan Association, which this week released a report detailing the potential financial benefits Long Island Rail Road's East Side Access construction project has for Long Island homeowners, and the businesses on Manhattan's East Side.
I've already heard pushback on this: Manhattan's East Side developed still further? It's already too crowded. Beyond the flip two-word response any New Yorker can offer negating such limits ("air rights"), the reality is the East Side indeed may be too crowded—for automotive traffic. But more people? That the neighborhood can handle—and so will Grand Central.
Some U.S. demographic trends finally are turning in the favor of urban locations after decades of sprawl-em-out, build-more-roads incentives working counter to such a thing. Approve or not, TOD has become a go-to concept for established city centers, diffuse urban areas seeking a center, and evolving suburbs alike, and that could be a very good thing for local, regional, and intercity passenger trains, let alone for a nation's energy efficiency. No doubt some of the new TOD designs will be creative and innovative.
Grand Central is secure in its century-old role as inspirational, as a place to be, not just pass through—and not just to transportation specialists, either. The spiderweb of pedestrian access points linking Grand Central with neighborhood skyscrapers keeps being refined; The New York Times reported one building owner is revamping its existing lobby to better serve tenants predominantly favoring the "backdoor" entrance, the one used to get to and from Grand Central.
In late summer 2010, Paul Dalida, vice president, infrastructure, for engineering firm Arcadis, guided Railway Age on tour of ongoing East Side Access construction work, adding a new subterranean complex to GCT, designed to inject up to 80,000 daily Long Island Rail Road riders to the existing mix of people going to and from Grand Central by 2019. Part of his job is to help Grand Central grow and adapt. But his respect, his reverence, for the existing terminal needed no assist; it mirrored my own despite (or maybe because of) the fact that he knows the physical plant better than I ever will. "There's no place quite like it," he said simply.
In my view, that's true when it comes to serving as a railroad hub, and as a role model for TOD. Happy 100th, Grand Central, grand terminal. | <urn:uuid:c398af7a-50b7-48b9-b187-a25852bd1789> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.railwayage.com/index.php/blogs/doug-bowen/grand-central-terminal-tod-catalyst-keeps-getting-better.html?channel | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951135 | 1,049 | 1.625 | 2 |
Animal Species:European Wasp
The European Wasp was first found in Australia in 1959 in Tasmania. By 1978 they were also known in Victoria, South Australia, New South Wales and Western Australia, and are now firmly established in the Sydney area.
European Wasps are a stout wasp with a bright yellow and black banded abdomen, and a pair of black spots on each yellow band. They have two pairs of clear wings with the first pair larger. They have black antennae and fly with their legs held close to the body.
1.2 cm - 1.6 cm
The European Wasp is a native of Europe, North Africa and Asia Minor. In Australia, the first European Wasps were found in Tasmania in 1959. By 1978 they had also been found in Victoria, South Australia, New South Wales and Western Australia. They are now firmly established in metropolitan Sydney, and are also found in Bowral/Moss Vale, the Blue Mountains, Narrandera, Deniliquin, Albury, Wagga, Coleambally, Griffith, Dareton, Junee, Forbes, Coonabarabran, Orange, Bathurst and West Wyalong. European Wasps are also present in New Zealand.
European Wasps are found in large communal nests, normally only visible as a small entrance hole. They are normally built either underground or in cavities in walls, ceilings, logs or trees. The nests are made from chewed wood fibre.
Feeding and Diet
Workers of the European Wasp leave the nest in search of food, and are attracted to meats, sweet food and drink.
Other behaviours and adaptations
European Wasps' nests, which are made out of chewed wood fibre, can be found in ceilings, wall cavities, logs, tree trunks and soil.
European Wasp colonies are started in spring by a single fertilised queen, which lays an egg in a number of cells in the nest. These hatch into grub-like larvae and are tended by the queen for a number of weeks. They become the first batch of workers that take over nest construction and rearing of the larvae while the queen concentrates on laying eggs. The nest grows throughout the summer until a batch of males and new queens are hatched in the autumn. These mate and fly off to start new nests. In Europe the nest then disintegrates, but in Australia's warm climate the nest can continue to grow over a number of seasons. This results in giant and potentially dangerous nests of over 100,000 wasps.
Mating and reproduction
Towards the end of summer, several larger cells are constructed, in which a new generation of queens develop. Males also develop, and mate with the queens outside the nest before they die.
In late autumn the original queen dies, and the new queens disperse to find suitable over-wintering sites before forming a new nest in spring. In Europe the old nest then disintegrates and the dispersed queens hibernate in sheltered spots beneath loose tree bark or in roofs. A hibernating queen holds on to the substrate with her jaws, and tucks her legs, wings and antennae beneath her, remaining immobile for up to six months. However it is significant that in the warmer climate of Australia, one of the new queens may stay in the nest and begin laying eggs, without the usual over-wintering period being observed. Over several seasons, this can result in giant nests containing more than 100,000 wasps.
Danger to humans and first aid
European Wasps are more aggressive than bees and will attack when their nests are disturbed. Unlike bees, wasps can sting more than once, and do not die after stinging. The sting causes a burning pain and swelling. If stings are multiple, a more severe systemic reaction may occur.
In some individuals, wasp, bee and ant stings can cause an allergic reaction (anaphylaxis), but this is relatively uncommon. Effective treatment is available, which involves known bee/ant/wasp sting allergy sufferers carrying a special kit when outdoors. Immunotherapy or desensitisation is also available, and can reduce the severity of the allergy. Seven deaths over a twenty-year period attributed to wasp stings have been recorded in Australia, mainly amongst known allergy sufferers who were not carrying their preventative medicine with them.
A cold pack may be used to relieve the pain of the sting. If there is evidence of a more severe reaction or the sting victim is known to be allergic to wasp and bee venom, medical attention should be sought immediately.
- AGFACTS Information Leaflet AE31. 1994. European and Papernest Wasps. NSW Department of Agriculture.
- CSIRO. 1991. The Insects of Australia. CSIRO Publishing.
- Hadlington, P. & Johnston, J. 1998. An Introduction to Australian Insects. UNSW Press: Sydney.
- Zbrowski, P. & Storey, R.1995. A Field Guide to Insects in Australia. Reed Books: Sydney. | <urn:uuid:d8041d3a-45a3-4d8a-a347-bfc740ed410d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.australianmuseum.net.au/European-Wasp | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.937025 | 1,043 | 3.5 | 4 |
Research paper topics, free example research papers
Free research papers and essays on topics related to: deterrence theory
- 6 results found, view research papers on page:
- Against Capital Punishment - 1,191 words
... uggests that rather than deterring homicide, state executions may actually increase the murder rate. This phenomenon has been named the brutalization hypothesis. It suggests that through suggestion, modeling, or by legitimizing killing, homicide numbers increase. In a study taken from 1957 to 1982 by Isaac Ehrlich, the number of executions in 1957 was 65 and the number of murders was 8,060. From 1958 to1960 the execution rate stayed roughly the same, but the murder rate increased (Bender& Leone, 1986, p. 99-100) (Vila & Morris, 1997, p.223). Throughout the remainder of the study the execution rate dropped and the murder rate continued to increase. In 1981 the murder rate was at 22,520 a ...
Related: capital murder, capital punishment, punishment, first year, african american
- An Eye For An Eye - 1,150 words
An Eye For An Eye? The most severe of all sentences is in fact the death penalty. Also known as capital punishment, it's the most severe form of corporal punishment as it requires law enforcement officers to kill the offender. It has been banned in many countries, in the United States, an earlier move to eliminate capital punishment has now been reversed and more and more states are resorting to capital punishment for serious offenses such as murder. Like they say: An Eye for and eye, or a life for a life as it applies in this case. The Bible mentions it, and people have been using it regularly for centuries. One steals from those who have stolen from him, one wrongs those who have wronged h ...
Related: corporal punishment, crime and punishment, deterrence theory, imprisonment
- Capital Punishment Just Or Unjust - 1,871 words
Capital Punishment; Just Or Unjust Kevin Kearney C. M. V. (RELS 1502) March 29, 2001 Research Paper Capital Punishment: Fair or Unfair The most severe form of punishment of all legal sentences is that of death. This is referred to as the death penalty, or "capital punishment"; this is the most severe form of corporal punishment, requiring law enforcement officers to actually kill the offender. It has been banned in numerous countries, in the United States, however an earlier move to eliminate capital punishment has now been reversed and more and more states are resorting to capital punishment for such serious offenses namely murder. "Lex talionis", mentioned by the Bible encourages "An eye f ...
Related: capital punishment, corporal punishment, criminal punishment, punishment, unjust
- Death Penalty - 4,935 words
... Whenever the word death penalty comes up, extremists from both sides start yelling out their arguments. One side says deterrence, the other side says there's a potential of executing an innocent man; one says justice, retribution, and punishment; the other side says execution is murder. However, all the arguments aside, the best way and the only way to truly make a rational. Decision about capital punishment is to examine the purpose of our criminal justice system. Once the purpose of the criminal justice system is established, one must find out the purpose of capital punishment. This paper will show that the purpose of capital punishment is consistent with and embodies the purpose of t ...
Related: death penalty, death row, death sentence, penalty, penal system
- Death Penalty: Just Or Injust - 1,062 words
Death Penalty: Just or Injust Free Swiss Anti-Wrinkle Cream. You Won't Believe Your Eyes! Death Penalty: Just or Injust Death Penalty Introduction: The most severe of all sentences: that of death. Also known as the death penalty, capital punishment this is the most severe form of corporal punishment as it is requires law enforcement officers to kill the offender. It has been banned in many countries, in the United States, an earlier move to eliminate capital punishment has now been reversed and more and more states are resorting to capital punishment for serious offenses such as murder. An Eye for and eye, a life for a life, who has never heard of the famous lex talionis? The Bible mentions ...
Related: death penalty, law enforcement, north american, supreme court, violence
- Its The End Of The Worldand I Feel Fine - 1,589 words
... ve, Kahn concludes that a Doomsday device would not be a rational deterrent because it could not be controllable. Finally, like the infamous Werner Von Braun, Strangelove seems to have significant, high level connections with Nazi Germany (i.e. "mein Fhrer"), and similarly care little about what side of the battle he is on. Dr. Strangelove represents scientific obsession; Strangelove is brilliant and thrives of the application and success of his own genius. However, his role as the Director of Weapons Research is done not out of a feeling of duty to America or even out of a dislike of the USSR, rather he applies his brilliance out of narcissism, an erotic passion for nuclear power, and a ...
Related: rational choice, deterrence theory, balance sheet, strategic, warfare
- 6 results found, view research papers on page: | <urn:uuid:a01a25f5-007c-4713-b36a-eb74c45b601b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://promptpapers.com/research-paper-topics.php?tid=907452&topic=deterrence-theory | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00074-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.947369 | 1,100 | 2.6875 | 3 |
Washington Mitt Romney's tax returns tell the tale: Yes, he's rich — really rich.
His returns, spanning more than 500 pages and released under political pressure Tuesday, represent an extraordinary financial accounting of one of the wealthiest U.S. presidential candidates in generations, with his annual income topping $20 million.
It remains unclear how the details of Romney's fortune will play among American workers, who on average earn less in a lifetime than Romney paid in taxes in 2010 alone. Meanwhile, the typical taxpayer pays a similar share of his income to Uncle Sam as he does, roughly 15 percent.
Romney's returns — which include a 2011 tax estimate — spilled out new details of his scattered holdings, tax strategies and charitable donations. Romney paid about $3 million in federal income taxes in 2010, having earned more than seven times that from his investments.
The documents quickly became fodder for his opponents, with Democrats chiding the former Massachusetts governor for not disclosing more about his financial history. The White House also weighed in about tax fairness as President Barack Obama prepared for his State of the Union Address.
Romney is hardly the only wealthy American seeking the presidency, though he's on a level all his own.
Republican rival Newt Gingrich, who had publicly pressed him to release his tax information, released his own return for 2010 last week. It revealed that Gingrich earned more than $3.1 million, mostly from $2.5 million paid by his companies, partnerships and investments, and paid just under $1 million in federal tax, a rate of about 31 percent.
Obama and his wife, Michelle, reported income of $1.73 million last year, mostly from the books he's written, and paid $453,770 in federal taxes.
Romney's tax returns showed he continues to profit from Bain Capital, the private equity firm he founded but no longer runs; from a Swiss bank account closed just as he launched his campaign and from new listings of investment funds set up overseas.
Romney had long refused to disclose any federal tax returns, then hinted he would offer a single year's return in April. Yet mounting criticism from his rivals and a hard loss in last week's South Carolina primary forced his hand.
"Governor Romney has paid 100 percent of what he owes," said Benjamin Ginsberg, the campaign's legal counsel. Ginsberg and other advisers said Romney did not use any aggressive tax strategies to help reduce or defer his tax income.
For 2011, Romney will pay about $3.2 million with an effective tax rate of about 15.4 percent, the campaign said. Those returns haven't yet been filed yet with the Internal Revenue Service. In total, he would pay more than $6.2 million in taxes on $45 million in income over the past two years, his campaign said.
Romney had been cast by his GOP opponents as a wealthy businessman who earned lucrative payouts from his investments while Bain slashed jobs in the private sector. Romney concedes that some companies Bain invested in were unsuccessful but says others created large numbers of jobs.
As for his own tax payments, he said in Monday night's debate in Tampa, "I pay all the taxes that are legally required and not a dollar more. ... I don't think you want someone as the candidate for president who pays more taxes than he owes."
He added, "You'll see my income, how much taxes I've paid, how much I've paid to charity."
Romney's 2010 return showed about $4.5 million in itemized deductions, including $1.5 million contributed to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Romney's charitable giving is above average, even for someone at his income level, according to IRS data.
Romney's GOP rivals did not immediately comment on his tax disclosures. But House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, defended him, telling reporters that Romney's tax rate is close to the 15 percent rate most Americans pay on long-term capital gains from the sale of investments.
Romney's advisers stressed that he met all his federal tax obligations, provided maximum transparency and did not take advantage of what they described as "aggressive" strategies often used by the ultra-rich. Still, for millions of taxpayers grappling with their own returns as tax season looms, Romney's multimillion dollar wealth provides a window into an unfamiliar world.
His 2010 return shows a number of foreign investments, including funds in Ireland, Switzerland, Germany and Luxembourg. Most of Romney's vast fortune is held in a blind trust that he doesn't control. A portion is held in a retirement account.
Romney's advisers acknowledged Tuesday that Romney and his wife, Ann, had a bank account in Switzerland as part of her trust. The account was worth $3 million and was held in the United Bank of Switzerland, said R. Bradford Malt, a Boston lawyer who makes investments for the Romneys and oversees their blind trust, which was set up to avoid any conflicts of interest in investments during his run for the presidency.
In 2009, UBS admitted assisting U.S. citizens in evading taxes and agreed to pay a $780 million penalty as part of a deferred prosecution agreement with the Justice Department.
The political discussion over releasing Romney's tax information highlighted an argument that Democrats are already starting to use against him — that he is out of touch with normal Americans. And it may well have hurt him in the South Carolina primary, where he lost by 12 percentage points to Gingrich after spending several days resisting calls to release the returns.
Asked during a round of television interviews about Romney's relatively modest tax rate, Obama adviser David Plouffe said: "We need to change our tax system. We need to change our tax code so that everybody is doing their fair share." Obama planned to talk about economic fairness in his State of the Union speech to Congress Tuesday night.
Other Democratic Party voices were less restrained. "He used every loophole in the book available to the wealthy and corporations to avoid paying his fair share," said Democratic National Committee Executive Director Patrick Gaspard.
On the other hand, Romney's wife, Ann, had told supporters at a Florida rally on Sunday: "I want to remind you where we know our riches are. Our riches are with our families."
Associated Press writers Stephen Ohlemacher and Alan Fram in Washington and Kasie Hunt in Tampa, contributed. | <urn:uuid:6caa6848-eda0-4732-8cf7-a49d320b6b56> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www2.ljworld.com/news/2012/jan/24/romneys-mountain-wealth-could-cause-loud-echo/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.983532 | 1,290 | 1.726563 | 2 |
Best Cemetery - 2012
When it comes to digging into the past, there's no better place to explore than a cemetery—but you don't need (and shouldn't bring) a shovel. Surrounded by relatively new tract homes, Anaheim Cemetery has all the charm of a Gothic boneyard—crooked headstones, towering statues of angels and ornate, private mausoleums housing the area's prominent former residents. Also there is the state's first public mausoleum, built in 1916. Stark lessons of history lie in the southeast corner, where immigrants from the city's Chinatown were buried among dawn redwoods from Szechuan province. It was these folks' wish that, when the money could be raised, their bones be disinterred and returned to the homeland. Records of the removals have been lost to time, so it is unknown if any bodies remain. | <urn:uuid:efc57bdb-6f23-4d0e-bc65-d55c80c36657> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ocweekly.com/bestof/2012/award/best-cemetery-1324165/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00030-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.966855 | 180 | 1.679688 | 2 |
Women of the Wall, a group which campaigns for women’s religious rights at the Western Wall, recruited the country’s national memory to campaign for gender equality at the site on Wednesday, by having themselves photographed in the same pose as the paratroopers who conquered the Old City in 1967.
Veteran photographer David Rubinger reenacted his iconic images from 1967, taking pictures of the female activists in liberators’ pose at Robinson’s Arch — at the southern section of Wall, to the southwest of the Temple Mount — wearing tallitot and holding a Torah scroll, rather than wearing army helmets.
Rubinger decided to join the group after they asked for his permission to use his 1967 picture of the paratroopers, Anat Hoffman, a leading activist and CEO of Women of the Wall, told the Hebrew news site Ynet.
She said she told him about a group of women “trying to end the extremist-religious monopoly over the Western Wall,” and he decided to take part in their struggle. “For me, you’re real liberators,” she recalled him saying.
Rubinger — the first photographer to win the Israel Prize — said he was happy to help the group. Back then, “Women and men sat together next to the Wall in pictures I took,” the 86-year-old told Ynet. He said the soldiers wearing their helmets were more holy than any of the extremists at the Wall.
Hoffman expressed her continued disappointment at the management of the holy site. “There are more than 100 Torah scrolls at the Western Wall,” she said. “How is it possible that not one is on the women’s side?” | <urn:uuid:9256e0c3-760c-4317-80d5-a1f5abc9ec00> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.timesofisrael.com/womens-group-liberates-the-western-wall/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00069-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.977567 | 360 | 2.34375 | 2 |
What's the most tech-savvy city government? San Jose? New York City? How about Scottsdale, Arizona? That's where the police department is using Twitter to send updates to the public, like when a road is closed or when police are at a crime scene in your neighborhood.
The Scottsdale police department has its own Twitter account, and even though it only has a paltry 174 followers as of this morning, the department seems to be dilligently updating, with messages like "Hayden Road, from Camelback to Ind. School, is closed for a fatal traffic collision," or like "Watch out for city crews cleaning up debris along Pima and Scottsdale roads in the northern parts of the city."
Kudos to the Scottsdale P.D. for trying out new communications tech. But is Twitter ready to be a real-time, mainstream connection between local government and residents? Probably not exclusively: It's not always reliable; it costs money to receive text messages; there's no security guarantee; and you can't easily target messages to groups of people, either by geography or demographics. But we think short text message updates are a fine complement to other government communications. (Indeed, the FCC is working on a SMS-based alert system, due in 2010.)
In the meantime, other potential Twitter applications: The California Department of Transportation could use Twitter to update us on traffic jams. Or the MTA could use it to send out subway updates in New York. | <urn:uuid:42b28696-5781-4daa-8a3d-dfad057456ec> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.businessinsider.com/2008/9/the-cops-are-on-twitter-but-that-s-it-s-a-good-thing | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00056-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961377 | 307 | 2.234375 | 2 |
Creature Double Feature
|Creature Double Feature|
|Created by||Kaiser Broadcasting (1972-1977)
Field Communications (1977-1983)
Tribune Broadcasting (2006)
Ernie Boch Jr. (2006-)
|Country of origin||USA|
|No. of episodes||unknown|
|Running time||3 hours (1972-1983)
4 hours (2006-)
|Original run||1972-1983 (first run) – 2006- (second run)|
Creature Double Feature was a syndicated horror show, broadcast in the Boston and Philadelphia area during the 1970s and 1980s. It sometimes also aired under names like Sci-Fi Flix and Creature Feature. The movies broadcast were taken from the classic Universal Horror movies of the 1930s to 1950s, the Hammer Studios and American International Pictures films of the 1950s, Roger Corman's horror films of the 1960s, and Toho Studio's "giant monster" (known in Japanese as either kaiju or tokusatsu) movies of the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s.
Air times
Creature Double Feature usually aired on Saturday afternoons. Because it aired after the traditional Saturday morning cartoon time block, it introduced many younger viewers to classic (and not-so-classic) monster movies. In other cities it aired either on Friday night or Saturday night.
Beginning in 1972 a station in the Kaiser Broadcasting (later Field Communications) chain, WKBG (Channel 56; WLVI after the Boston Globe sold their share back to Kaiser in 1975) aired its collection of Godzilla movies - one per week at 4 pm on Saturday under the title, The 4 O'Clock Movie. They cycled through their collection twice, noticing that the broadcasts were especially popular with youngsters. Then, they started showing the films at midnight, calling it Creature Feature. The ratings became so popular that the show was moved to noon to increase its ratings. However, it was in direct competition with WCVB-TV's Candlepin Bowling and was moved to the 2 pm time slot. Its popularity grew and they tweaked the title to Creature Double Feature and changed its start time to 1 pm. The show quickly became a staple of the station's Saturday programming schedule during the '70s and early '80s. Although the exact date of the final show is currently unknown, it seems to have petered out sometime in 1983 and was replaced with WLVI-TV's Martial Arts Theater, showing cheap English dubbed Hong Kong martial arts movies, as a replacement.
To this day WLVI staffers report that they still receive more e-mail and phone calls about Creature Double Feature than anything else. In 2006, Channel 56's Steve Ratner was quoted in The Boston Globe as saying "I'm amazed at the following the show continues to have. It's just insane how many people come up to us and ask after the Creature Double Feature. Every day we get e-mails from people all over the country." However, the station is unlikely to revive the show on their own since that timeslot is usually used now for infomercials, from which the station makes a considerable amount of income. The main announcer on Creature Double feature was a channel 56, long time booth announcer, Neil MacNevin. His radio/TV name was Tom Evans. He and an engineer named Press Campbell would create sound effects, echoes, wind etc. off the cuff during the weekly recording sessions for the movie and promos for CWF during the week. Neil says he still gets comments from some of the listeners from those days and, really enjoys telling them about the sessions. Neil and Pres retired from broadcasting in the early nineties.
In June 2006, The Boston Herald reported that Boston-area car dealership owner Ernie Boch, Jr. would be bringing the show back to WLVI - at its original timeslot - on an occasional basis. The first program of the new series aired on June 24, 2006. The two films shown on this occasion were Godzilla vs. the Smog Monster and The Giant Gila Monster. Boch himself hosted the show in full makeup as The Ghoul, though the original show never had a host - only announcers (other than for a brief time when Rich Koz, the Son of Svengoolie out of Chicago, hosted the CDF in the early '80s). A second episode aired on October 28, 2006, featuring 1973's Horror Express followed by the original 1968 Night of the Living Dead. It was brought back again on October 27, 2007 with the American International Pictures' (A.I.P.) movies Gamera: The Invincible (aka Gamera) and Attack of the Monsters. The broadcast contained no pop-up ads during the films and no interruptions from any on-air talent personnel during commercial breaks. The Boston Globe's Sunday Edition of their TV Guide printed the schedule of the two (2) Gamera movie titles reversed in their time slots.
The show's original announcers were reportedly Ron Dwyer and Tom Evans. During most of its run in its later years, the show's announcer was Dale Dorman aka "Uncle Dale", a Boston radio personality at WRKO and at WXKS-FM who also frequently did voice work for 56's children's programming.
The intro/outro music used for Creature Double Feature throughout its run was Emerson, Lake & Palmer's "Toccata" from Brain Salad Surgery. WLVI has kept the song as the theme of the 2006 and 2007 revival. It is not yet known if current WLVI owners Sunbeam Television will continue to air the revival.
In the Philadelphia area, another Kaiser/Field station, WKBS Channel 48, aired this program between 1976 and 1979 after the success the show had in Boston. Two of the most popular films included Attack of the Mushroom People and Tourist Trap.
- Website dedicated to Creature Double Feature
- Original webmaster Dzilla's video re-creation of the intro to WLVI56 "Creature Double Feature" using the audio from SHADO CONTROL
- Almost complete clip from "Creature Feature" on WLVI56 in the 70's
- Partial clip from "Creature Feature" on WLVI56 in the 70's
- TV Guide ads from the 70's for Creature Double Feature
- Backup discussion board | <urn:uuid:09e71a05-08f9-4235-8612-86c246175ad2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creature_Double_Feature | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00047-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.962105 | 1,306 | 1.5 | 2 |
Oh, What a Piece of Work Is a Man
We Dodge the Tax Collector and Rule-Makers as Lambs Flee the Shearsman
MARCH 01, 2001 by TED ROBERTS
Ted Roberts is a freelance writer in Huntsville, Alabama, who often writes on public-policy issues.
Will, the manager of the new Globe Theater in London, was frustrated. Tickets were priced alluringly cheap, but he made a nice profit on ale at 2 shillings a mug. However, the customers insisted on smuggling in their own ale, a violation of the rules posted plainly on the big front door. and if he patted them down, the wily first nighters hid it in the bunting around their kids. And if he searched the kids, the playgoers were quick to pour a couple quarts down their own gullets, where it escaped both detection and confiscation. That’s when Will, a man for all seasons who also dabbled in scriptwriting, came up with one of his signature lines: “What a piece of work is a man! . . . how infinite in faculty!” Hmmm—not bad, he thought. I’ll use it in my new play, Hamlet.
The Bard got it right, as usual. The ingenuity of the human spirit to finesse any form of economic or political restriction is awe-inspiring. Lawyers and legislators chew their pencils in frustration. We dodge the tax collector and rule-makers as lambs flee the shearsman. William Shakespeare, no slouch at reading the human heart, recognized this talent half a millennium ago.
Prohibition is the classic example. Guys chewing on fat cigars and lugging Thompson submachine guns also read the human heart. And even though they thought the Avon was a cosmetic line and their idea of a midsummer night’s dream was a full speakeasy on a July weekend, they were not dumb. They got rich on slippery evasions of the Volstead Act.
“Warning: do not mix this canister with four quarts of water and the spices in the attached envelope labeled A or it will turn into a 90-proof alcoholic beverage with a remarkable resemblance to gin. If you prefer a remarkable resemblance to bourbon, use the envelope labeled B.” Warning labels five decades before the government got in the business! Another triumph for human ingenuity.
Then there’s the drug war—one Waterloo after another. Billions wasted. And somehow, illegal substances are as ubiquitous as dirt. Craving consumers will buy ‘em, grow ‘em, steal ‘em, or manufacture ‘em.
Whatever Lola wants, Lola gets. Legislation be damned.
And nobody doubts we humans clutch our capital to our bosom like a bear holding a honeycomb.
City income tax? Well, we’ll just live in the ‘burbs.
Massachusetts turns into Taxachusetts? Move to New Hampshire.
Federal income-tax penalties on marrieds? OK, pair up, but skip the preacher and the courthouse paperwork.
Forty percent surcharge on out-of-state tuitions? “Oh, Bobby lives with his grandparents, in state.”
Only one video poker machine to a room? Call a cubicle a room.
It is infinite—the ability of the human mind to churn out evasions to state confiscation of our capital or choices.
Since the Days of Eden
Homo nontaxibus has been at it since Eden. It began in the Garden when the Master Landscaper banned that apple. The first attempt at legislation. One rule! And it was too much for our forebears.
Now consider that our Creator levied a heavy tax on sexual pleasure in the form of a helpless miniature of the species, totally dependent on the pleasure seekers. Result: an irksome restriction on movement, a drain on family resources. He experimented with various reproductive concepts on wolves, spiders, snakes, fruit flies, and amoebas. They flopped. After the first couple of months they all were dwindling species. And He knew why. No incentive for the bored creatures! (Especially the amoebas. They divided sparingly, joylessly, infrequently.)
Why not, thought the Grand Designer, combine the pursuit of pleasure (he’d placed that glowing ember in the heart of every living creature) with the procreation requirement? And so he did. Thereupon, the act of manufacturing a new goat became as enjoyable to the astonished and goatish partners as munching the sweet green grass on the hillside.
It could have been otherwise. He who hung the sun in the sky and set the planets spinning could have simply preprogrammed the replenishment of the species; no problem, considering his authority and considering the arsenal of infinite physiological mechanisms at his disposal. He could have decreed that kids drop out of goats—male or female—as automatically as acorns pop up on oak trees.
But the new pleasure/procreation concept worked great. Wolves went around grinning with joy, and plenty of baby wolves cuddled up to their furry mother in the caves of the new creation. And of course, the cubs sucked lustily at the milky faucets of mother wolf—energized to fuel up by the same pleasure principle that had engendered them.
In that idyllic garden where every breath brought ecstasy, the reproductive scheme worked well. The world’s first newlyweds duly replenished themselves with notorious Cain, gentle Abel, and obscure Seth.
But after their exile to the thorny outback, life was cruel, and our exiled ancestors needed all the rapture they could get. So they deftly learned how to slip-slide this onerous tax on love. Man is the only animal who can make love and not incur the debt of parenthood! A trick the beasts never mastered. The whoopee-but-no-goat concept evades them until this very day.
But we nimble hedonists know how to grab the golden ring-a-ding-ding and not add another bawling, helpless passenger to the merry-go-round. With only mild exercise of their imagination our ancestors found many, many paths to sexual satisfaction with no price in the form of a dependent. An epic evasion of cost! So Regulators, Central Planners, Tax Collectors, Social Engineers, don’t waste your time carving new commandments. The human branch of the animal kingdom outwitted, you might say, the Creator of its own wit. Bureaucrats beware. | <urn:uuid:219e6c95-0f82-4d8e-8065-a8825bfb1ecd> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.fee.org/the_freeman/detail/oh-what-a-piece-of-work-is-a-man | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00041-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.941251 | 1,378 | 1.664063 | 2 |
An Electronic Journal of
Geography and Mathematics.
(Major articles are refereed; full electronic archives available).
Persistent URL: http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/handle/2027.42/58219
Ranges and Almond Orchard Locations: Contemporary Visualization
Sandra L. Arlinghaus
Adjunct Professor of Mathematical Geography and Population-Environment Dynamics
School of Natural Resources and Environment
The University of Michigan
USDA-ARS Carl Hayden Bee Research Center
2000 East Allen Road, Tucson, AZ 85719
Associated Google Earth file for interactive viewing: download.
For more than a decade, Diana Sammataro has been enthusiastically sending information to be mapped concerning the global plight of the honeybee. Mapping the diffusion of the bee's arch enemies, the Varroa Mite and Small Hive Beetles (Sammataro and Avitable; Hood), offers insight into where interventions might be successful. (See the Appendix to learn more about Small Hive Beetles.) Most recently, Arlinghaus mapped, in Google Earth, the set of locations at which the mite had been sighted since its emergence. Much of the information is now summarized, using a "timeline" in Google Earth (Spatial Synthesis, Volume II, Book 4).
As technological capability has expanded, GPS data makes it straightforward to map more detailed data. California almond orchards are one locale that boasts substantial honey bee populations. In the spring, these orchards spring to life with their beautiful pink blossoms covering the landscape. Figure 1 suggests this splendor and shows bee residents.<>
ALMOND COUNTRY OVERVIEW
In 2009, researchers at the Hayden Bee Research Center (Sammataro et al.) studied the diversity of pollen coming into bee colonies from almond orchards in California. Bee colonies are often transported into California from other states just to pollinate almond trees, which need bees in order to produce the nuts (www.almondboard.com/). Almonds (Prunus dulcis) are not true nuts, but are called drupes; the seed is covered with an inedible outer shell. Almonds are a member of the Rose family and their closest relatives are plums and peaches, which have a fleshy (and edible) covering around the center pit, which when cracked open, reveals an almond-like nut.
The bee scientists collected pollen from bee colonies that were placed in 3 different sites to determine the different kinds of pollen that bees were foraging. They could tell if the pollen sources were different by the color of the pollen bee carried back to the colony (Figure 1). Photographic evidence of the orchards showed that there were very few other flowering plants even within the two-mile radius of bee flight. In some locations, there were vast fields of canola, which provided bees with an alternative forage (Figure 1), but in other locations, the orchards were so well groomed and isolated that there was little else for the bees to work except the almonds (Figure 1). Bees collect both nectar (which they turn into honey, their carbohydrate food) and pollen (which they convert, via microbes, into protein rich bee bread). Because bees are in the almonds so early in the spring (February-March), they are using up this food to feed their brood; thus little honey is ever collected from these colonies.
Beekeepers are encouraged to survey the flight area their bees will be visiting in order to determine whether or not bees may come in contact with pesticide-treated crops or other inappropriate forage. Mapping using Google Earth is an excellent way to assess the bees' flight range and potential forage areas.
MAPPING ALMOND COUNTRY
The images in Figures 2, 3, and 4 display in a "photo essay" style of format, the sorts of visualization that might enhance and guide scientific advance. It is a straightforward matter to map the GPS points as balloons ("Placemarks") in Google Earth at the precise points given by the GPS coordinates. Circles, of two-mile radius, surrounding each point indicate bee range and the overlap pattern between orchards (Figure 2).
Naturally, one might wish to take a closer look and in the interactive world of Google Earth that is easy to do. Download the attached file and view it yourself in Google Earth. Consider the animated sequences of static images derived from that file shown in Figures 3 and 4.
Figure 3 shows that one can adjust the opacity of the yellow circles so that it is easy to see, up close, the patterns in the orchards underlying these circles. In the closer views, the orchards with a very linear pattern are peach orchards. The almond trees are larger than the peach trees.
In Figure 4 the "Street View" and "Roads" switches are clicked on. Thus, we see a view of the orchards that is far more detailed than what is shown in the aerials that cover the globe. The camera icons that appear when the "Street Views" switch is filled offer, with a single click, a balloon that suggests detail. When one expands to the full view, or double-clicks on a camera, he/she enters a "sphere" on the inside of which a detailed panoramic photo has been plastered. While inside the sphere, spin around to see what is visible from all compass cardinal points at that location. Or, travel along a sequence of adjacent cameras to move along the road. Leave the sphere ("Exit Photo") to see the array of available photos in relation to the aerial. Zoom in or out; the more one zooms out, the fewer camera icons appear (and conversely when one zooms in). Sammataro notes that it might be helpful to associate soil type with such maps and images (also see Hood). Such a proposal offers a mapping challenge for the future!
The images in this overview offer only a small sample of the visualization available using the full file in Google Earth. We hope that these simple animations will entice the reader to take the trouble to download Google Earth and open the linked file at the top and drive around selected California almond orchards--almost as if the reader were a bee flying from one locale to another!
Citations and References
APPENDIX: SMALL HIVE BEETLE Excerpted from The Beekeepers Handbook, Sammataro and Avitabile.
The small hive beetle (SHB) Aethina tumida (Coleoptera: Nitidulidae), our newest bee pest, was first identified in a Florida apiary in the spring of 1998. Before its discovery in the U.S., the beetle was known to exist only in South Africa. How it found its way to North America is still not understood. It is not considered to be much of a pest in its native home, but it has been a major problem in the U.S., especially in the southeastern states. These beetles are in the Nitidulidae family, which includes picnic beetles, known for their attraction to fermenting fruit. The SHB has been found in traps containing cantaloupe, pineapple and bananas, and may live in fruit when bee colonies are not available.
The beetle is now found in all of the states and parts of Canada, but it is especially a problem in the southeastern states, where the winter weather is moderate. In most northern areas, the SHB populations do not seem to build up to high numbers, as they do in southern states. As of 2002, the beetle was found in Australia.
The adult beetle is about 1/3 the size of a bee (5.5 to 5.9mm long, 3.1 to 3.3mm wide), reddish brown or black in color and covered with very fine hair. The larvae are cream colored and similar in appearance to young wax moth larvae. You can differentiate the beetle larvae from wax moth larvae by examining their legs. Beetle larvae have three sets of legs just behind the head. Wax moth larvae, like all moth and butterfly larvae, have three sets of legs behind the head, and in addition, have a series of paired prolegs which run the length of the body. Prolegs are absent in beetle larvae.
Adult females are strong flyers and invade colonies to lay their egg masses in the cracks and small crevices that bees are not able to reach. Reports of eggs laid under wax cappings of brood and in empty cells have also been made. A single female beetle is capable of laying up to 1000 eggs in her lifetime. The eggs hatch in one to six days, producing a great number of small larvae which consume pollen, honey, bee brood and wax. They complete their larval stage in 10 to 16 days and then drop to the bottom board where they crawl outside in order to pupate in the soil up to 100 ft (30 m) from the hive entrance preferring light, sandy soils. Adult beetles emerge from the soil in approximately 3-4 weeks and fly to the same colony (or find new ones). They mate inside hive and are sexually mature approximately one week after emerging from the soil. They are good flyers and easily disperse to new colonies where they deposit eggs to begin a new generation.
Beetles live 30 to 60 days depending of food resources, temperatures and moisture; they do best in hot, humid climates. During the winter months, adult beetles will be found in the bee cluster next to food and warmth, and will die if they leave the cluster. The beetles completely shut down reproduction during winter.
In the southeastern states of the U.S., SHB thrive and are of significant economic importance. The beetles appear to be able to readily take over even strong colonies with little resistance by the bees. A few female beetles can produce masses of larvae which can soon overwhelm a bee colony. In addition to consuming the resources of the colony, (according to a study by Dr. A. E. Lundie, Union of South Africa, Science Bulletin 220, 1940, 30 pp.), the adult beetles defecate in the honey causing it to ferment and run out of the combs. Larvae also damage new comb and tunnel through comb, killing brood and eating stores of honey and pollen. In addition, beetles can be in harvested honey supers that are taken off the hives. When these supers are stored in the honey house, the beetles will contaminate the honey by their feeding, rendering the honey not only un-saleable, but unpalatable to bees, to the extent that the bees will not even eat it. "Rotten oranges" is how some observers have described the smell of this fermenting mass.
Thus, full honey supers stored in the honey house or on hives above bee escapes, and weak colonies with honey but few bees, are the most vulnerable to attack by SHB (these include nucleus and small queen mating colonies). When SHB infestations are heavy, beetle larvae by the thousands have been seen crawling out of the colony entrance; even in strong colonies, queens will stop laying eggs and the bees may abscond.
All hive inspections should be done with an eye open for this pest. When opening a hive containing beetles, they can be seen running across the combs to find hiding places. Adults may also be detected under top covers or on bottom boards. If an infestation is heavy, both adults and masses of larvae may be seen on the combs and bottom board. These larvae do not produce silken tunnels, webbing or cocoons in the hive (as wax moth larvae do), but wax moth could also be present. It is important to be able to identify the beetle larvae.
If beetles are suspected in a honey super, firmly shake it over an up-turned outer cover; beetles can be dislodged and seen running to find a hiding place. Fermented honey exuding from full supers in storage, waiting to be extracted, or on active colonies, is a sign that hive beetles may be present; the 'decaying orange' odor will be detectable.
Another place to check is pollen patties and even syrup feeders; beetles can be raised on artificial pollen patties. Corrugated cardboard with the paper removed from one side and placed on the bottom board at the rear of the hive, has been successfully used in detecting adult beetles. Plastic corrugated 'cardboard' is preferred because the bees will chew up regular cardboard.
Strong colonies are the best defense against serious infestations. However, if too many beetles enter, they can overwhelm even a strong colony by the masses of eggs they lay in a short time. Workers can be seen trying to sting or pull at the beetles, but the beetle's hard exoskeleton and rounded body make this impossible. Beetles that are harassed will try to hide from the bees and have been found entrapped in corrals made of propolis. This entrapment behavior may be encouraged by selective breeding of queens.
Reducing the hive entrance let the guard bees do their job better, but will not work in apiaries that are heavily infested. In the honey house, fans and a dehumidifier help keep beetles under control, but freezing the supers for 24 hours at 23 F (-12C) is reported to kill all life stages of the beetle.
detected, and you are
in an area where they may thrive (warm winters), the following safety
An Electronic Journal of Geography and Mathematics,
Congratulations to all Solstice contributors. | <urn:uuid:858838d9-ec4d-46c8-b4ec-34f02f7c3595> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www-personal.umich.edu/~copyrght/image/solstice/sum09/BeeRangesAlmonds.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00048-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.946311 | 2,783 | 3.1875 | 3 |
Gandolfo (AsiaNews) - Benedict XVI made another heartfelt appeal in response to
the "tragic and growing episodes of violence in Syria with their sad trail of
deaths and injuries, including civilians, and large number of people displaced internally
and refugees in neighbouring countries." At the end of today's Angelus at the
Apostolic Palace in Castel Gandolfo, the pope said that he was following events
in Syria "with apprehension," urging "God to give the wisdom of the heart,
particularly to those who have the greatest responsibilities, so that no effort
is spared in seeking peace, including the international community, through
dialogue and reconciliation, for a proper political settlement of the
XVI also turned his thoughts to "the dear nation of Iraq, which has been hit by
numerous, serious attacks which have caused many deaths and injuries. May this
great country find once again the path toward stability, reconciliation and
pope also expressed concern for the situation of the ILVA steel mill in Taranto
(Italy), which was closed by court order because of pollution problems going
back decades, a decision opposed by workers who would lose their jobs and the
tens of thousands of families that would lose their main source of income.
would like to express my closeness to the workers and their families, who are
going through this difficult time with apprehension," the pope said. "Whilst I
ensure you my prayers and the Church's support, I call on everyone to show a
sense of responsibility. I encourage national and local governments to make every
effort to find a fair solution to the issue, one that would uphold people's
right to health, as well as the right to work, especially at such a time of
so many sad stories, Benedict XVI noted that "a year from now, at this time,
the 28th World Youth Day shall take place in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. [. . .] It
will be a precious occasion for many young people to experience the joy and
beauty of belonging to the Church and living the faith," the pontiff said. "I
look forward with hope to this event, and I encourage and thank the organisers,
especially the Archdiocese of Rio de Janeiro, for working diligently to welcome
young people from around the world to this important Church meeting."
the Angelus, Benedict XVI talked about this Sunday's Gospel (John, 6:1-15). This is what he said:
brothers and sisters,
Sunday, we have begun reading the sixth chapter of the Gospel of John, which starts
with the multiplication of the loaves. Jesus speaks about it at the synagogue
of Capernaum, describing Himself as the 'bread' that gives life. Jesus' actions
parallel those of the Last Supper, when 'Jesus took the loaves, gave thanks,
and distributed them to those who were reclining' (Jh, 6:11). The insistence on the topic of 'bread', which is shared,
and on giving thanks (v.11, eucharistesas
in Greek), are references to the Eucharist, Christ's Sacrifice to save the
Evangelist notes that Passover was near (cf v 4). The gaze turns to the Cross,
total gift of love, and towards the Eucharist, which perpetuates this gift.
Christ becomes the bread of life for men. As Saint Augustine said, 'Who is the
Bread of heaven, but Christ? But in order that man might eat Angels' Bread, the
Lord of Angels was made Man. For if He had not been made Man, we should not
have His Flesh; if we had not His Flesh, we should not eat the Bread of the
Altar' (Sermon, 130:2). The Eucharist
is the great permanent meeting with God, in which the Lord becomes our nourishment
and gives Himself to transform us in Him.
the scene of the multiplication, the presence of a boy is noticed. Given the
difficulty of feeding so many people, he offered to share the little he
had-five loaves and two fish (cf Jn,
6:8). The miracle did not come from nothing but from an ordinary boy's desire
to share what he had. Jesus does not ask us what we do not have, but shows us
that if each of us offers what little we have, a miracle can always take place
again. God is able to multiply every one of our small deeds of love and make us
share in his gift. The crowd is struck by the wonder. It sees in Jesus a new
Moses, worthy of power, and the new manna, its future assured, but stops at the
material aspect. The Lord 'knew that they were going to come and carry him off
to make him king [. . .] withdrew again to the mountain alone' (Jh, 6:15). Jesus is not an earthly king
who rules, but a king who serves, who bends to man's level to meet not only his
material hunger, but the deeper one, the one for God.
brothers and sisters, we call on the Lord to make us see the importance of
rediscovering the importance of nourishing ourselves with the body of Christ,
participating with faithfulness and great awareness to the Eucharist, to be
ever more intimately united with Him. In fact, 'It is not the Eucharistic food
that is changed into us, but rather we who are mysteriously transformed by it.
Christ nourishes us by uniting us to himself; .he draws us into himself. (Esort. Apost. Sacramentum caritatis, 70)'.
At the same time, we want to pray that no one may lack the necessary bread for
a life of dignity, and that all inequalities be removed, not through the
weapons of violence, but through sharing and love.
Us entrust ourselves to the Virgin Mary as we invoke upon ourselves and our loved
ones her maternal intercession." | <urn:uuid:2965af50-8333-4797-9200-240b8bc2b743> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.asianews.it/index.php?l=en&art=25413&theme=2&size=A | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00048-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963385 | 1,270 | 1.648438 | 2 |
Putting a finger on it the loops and whorls of biometrics
This topic is sponsored by the Australian Government's National Innovation Awareness Strategy.
Automated measurement techniques to verify a person’s identity are attracting widespread attention. In Australia, Woolworths and the banking industry are already using fingerprint identification technology.
James Bond has known about it for years. Charlie’s Angels are also up to speed, as is the team at Mission Impossible. But for the rest of us, the idea of using fingerprint scans or iris scans to gain access to restricted places or information is still a well-kept secret.
But maybe not for long. Biometrics could be coming to a scanner near you!
People have always used individual traits for identification. In ancient times, the presence of scars, birthmarks and other unusual features helped minimise mistaken identify. Even today, we use techniques that have been around for centuries, such as passwords and signatures. But passwords are notoriously insecure, and signatures can be forged or ignored. Shop assistants, for example, often don’t bother to compare the signature on the back of a credit card with the sample provided by the purchaser.
The search is on for better ways of proving identity. As computer power has grown, so too has the idea that the automated capture, measurement and identification of distinctive physiological or behavioural characteristics could safeguard our identities and therefore our property and privacy, and could also be used to fight crime. The technologies now being developed for these purposes have come to be labelled 'biometrics', because they apply statistical methods to biological observations and phenomena. However, the discipline of biometrics is much broader than just identity verification. Biometrics plays a crucial role in agriculture, environmental and life science.
Fingering the issue
The most well-known biometric technology of all is the fingerprint we all know that the biggest mistake a criminal can make is to leave a fingerprint at the scene of the crime. If you look closely at the underside of your fingertips you’ll see dozens of swirling lines. These are made by minute, raised ‘friction ridges’ on the skin; their purpose is to give your fingers better grip in the way that car or bike tyres have ‘tread’ to keep them from skidding on the road. You can see similar friction ridges on the palms of your hands and the soles of your feet. The friction ridges form several macro-patterns, the three most common of which are the arch, loop and whorl.
Individual ridges also have distinctive variations, known as minutiae. These include:
- ‘ridge endings’, where the ridge ends abruptly;
- ‘bifurcations’, where a single ridge divides into two or more ridges;
- ‘enclosures’, where a ridge bifurcates and then rejoins, leaving a little island in the middle;
- dots, which are short fragments of ridges of approximately the same width and length; and
- spurs, which are short offshoots from a main ridge.
The arrangement of the ridges and their minutiae on the finger is random: probability theory suggests that the chance of two fingers having exactly the same arrangement is more than a billion to one. Indeed, in a hundred years of the systematic fingerprinting of criminal suspects and more than 100 million fingerprints later, no two have ever been found to be identical. Fingerprints are fully formed in the womb and remain unchanged throughout life.
In Australia, the use of fingerprinting in fighting crime was recently updated under the CrimTrac system. But it is not only the police who are excited about fingerprint biometric technologies: ideas for applying them commercially (eg, to control access to personal computers) are coming almost as fast as you can push a button.
The difference between identification and verification
The use of biometric technologies against crime mostly involves identification; whereas verification is more common in commercial uses. The difference between the two can be shown in the following examples. Imagine an automatic teller machine (ATM) that uses a fingerprint instead of a number as a password. The machine confirms your identity by comparing your fingerprint with the ‘reference’ fingerprint originally encoded into the card. That’s verification.
If a thief breaks into a house, he might leave behind a fingerprint. The question the police want to answer is: who does this fingerprint belong to? It can be checked against a database of criminal fingerprints; finding a match is identification.
In terms of computing power, the difference between verification and identification is important: comparing the fingerprint entered by the user with the reference fingerprint (verification) is a simple task. Matching a fingerprint with all those contained in a database of thousands or even millions (identification) requires considerable computer grunt. In most commercial applications of biometrics, the aim is to verify the identity of the user.
The potential applications of using fingerprints are being made possible by the development of automated finger scanning. Up until a few years ago, fingerprints were collected in the way we see in police movies: put the finger on an inkpad, then place it carefully on a sheet of paper. In the last decade or so, electronic scanners have been used to digitise the old, paper-based prints to form an electronic database. Now, technologies to scan the finger directly are developing rapidly.
Optical finger-scanners, which work in a similar way to a photo scanner, have been in use for a decade or so and are starting to be replaced by other methods. One of these is called capacitive scanning: it measures the electrical charge produced by the contact of the fingertip with an array of tiny capacitors mounted onto a silicon microchip. Since the ridges will make better contact with the capacitors than the valleys, this technique generates an image of the fingerprint that can be processed in the same way as an image produced by optical scanning. Ultrasound finger-scanners are also being developed.
Once the fingerprint image has been obtained it needs to be measured. In one approach, a computer algorithm a program designed to turn raw data into code that can be used more easily by the identification/verification software identifies minutiae points on the scanned print and ‘locates’ them relative to other points on the print. It then establishes a mathematical ‘template’ to serve as a reference. When the same finger is scanned at a later time perhaps when its owner wants to use an ATM the computer software compares the template, which could conceivably be stored on a microchip in the user’s card, with the newly scanned print.
Applications of finger scanning
Fingerprint verification is already being used on a limited basis so far to control access to personal computers, cell phones and ATMs. A quick search of the internet reveals a host of companies selling finger scanning devices and citing very low ‘false rejection’ rates and even lower ‘false acceptance’ rates.
Techno-visionaries predict applications for finger scanning far wider than merely access to the laptop or ATM. They foresee a time when the right finger in the right place will unlock car doors, open briefcases, verify identity over the internet, facilitate travel across international borders and prevent voter fraud.
But sceptics point to potential shortcomings. For example, fingerprinting has criminal connotations that will turn many law-abiding people away and some consumer resistance seems inevitable. Others worry that it could even provoke a wave of violent ‘finger snatching’, because possessing someone else’s fingerprint could be extremely lucrative.
The eyes have it
Meanwhile, technology companies continue to invest research dollars in other biometric options. Iris and retina scanning seem to have considerable potential: the patterns in both these parts of the eye are unique to the individual.
The retina is the innermost layer of the eyeball ‘wall’ and is criss-crossed by tiny blood vessels. As these vessels develop in the womb, they form a unique pattern that does not change over the individual’s lifetime; retina scanning can map, code and compare these blood vessel patterns. The iris, the coloured part of the eye, contains about 260 unchangeable characteristics compared to less than 40 in fingerprints that can be scanned by video camera, coded by algorithms and, later, compared. The chance of an identical match with a different eye is said to be about 1 in 1078, which is a very small chance indeed.
Of the two eye-scanning technologies, iris-scanning is the more likely to gain in popularity. It can be done at a distance of a metre or so in contrast to retina-scanning, which must be done quite close-up and is therefore likely to be more acceptable to the public.
Other biometric tools
We all have other unique characteristics that can be measured. Examples of these other biometric options include hand geometry, typing patterns and voice recognition (Box 1: Other biometric technologies for identity verification).
Biometrics-based identification and verification systems must deal with a host of privacy issues if they are to gain widespread acceptance. For some, the prospect of submitting body parts for detailed examination is enough to make them break out in a sweat, while amputees or the blind may not find certain biometric systems to be particularly user-friendly.
Meanwhile, some people worry that biometric data given for an innocent purpose, such as opening a bank account, will be used for other, more sinister purposes by governments or corporations. Another concern is the potential ‘hijacking’ of biometric data if transmitted over the internet, for example by criminals who would then use it to defraud individuals and institutions.
Such arguments must be weighed against the fact that the aim of most biometric systems is to increase privacy by requiring a more rigorous proof of identity than has been necessary in the past. If the system is robust enough, criminals will find that beating it is a difficult task. Nevertheless, the technologies present civil libertarians with many issues that must eventually be addressed.
Biometric systems face another crucial question: supposing they do bring an increase in security, will it be worth the financial cost? Advocates say the answer to this question is increasingly ‘yes’ and that the role of biometric technologies in our lives will grow quickly. But if the sceptics are right and such enthusiasm is not yet warranted, James Bond and his peers in the police forces may remain the biggest users of the technologies for some time yet.
Posted October 2001. | <urn:uuid:4ac0a8cc-8549-44c8-88d1-916a4fb6669a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.science.org.au/nova/064/064key.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.939202 | 2,178 | 2.859375 | 3 |
WASHINGTON – Underscoring the Obama Administration’s commitments to restarting the nation’s nuclear industry and promoting education in science, technology, engineering and math, the Energy Department announced today nearly $13 million in new nuclear energy innovation investments.
“Today’s awards will help train and educate our future nuclear energy scientists and engineers, while advancing the technological innovations we need to make sure America’s nuclear industry stays competitive in the 21st century,” said Energy Secretary Steven Chu. “These investments in U.S. universities, national labs and industry advance the Obama Administration’s efforts to restart our nation’s nuclear industry as part of an all-of-the-above energy strategy.”
Reducing Costs, Improving Performance of Nuclear Reactor Technologies
Today, the Energy Department is announcing a $10.9 million investment across 13 projects to help solve common challenges across the nuclear industry and improve reactor safety, performance and cost competitiveness. These projects fall under two categories:
- Advanced Methods for Manufacturing (total $3 million, 4 projects) to improve the production and design efficiency of nuclear plant components including advanced concrete construction methods, near-net shape fabrication methods and joining processes that can be used in small modular reactor manufacturing.
- Reactor Materials (total $7.9 million, 9 projects) to conduct research into advanced reactor materials for piping, wiring cladding and other related structures in nuclear reactors and across the nuclear fuel cycle.
Find additional detail and project descriptions HERE.
Training the Next Generation of Nuclear Leaders
Additionally, the Energy Department announced today a $1.6 million investment in three university-led projects, helping to train and educate the next generation of nuclear energy scientists and engineers. Through the Advanced Test Reactor National Scientific User Facility Program (ATR NSUF) and the Nuclear Energy University Programs (NEUP), these projects will connect university teams with a national network of ATR NSUF partner research reactors and other unique research facilities. Today’s awards, subject to final negotiations, include:
- Pennsylvania State University, along with scientists from the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, will lead an experiment at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology research reactor. The project will assess instruments that allow operators to better monitor changes in nuclear reactor material properties when the reactor is producing power. (DOE Award: $600,000)
- University of Illinois will perform their experiment at the Illinois Institute of Technology’s beamline at Argonne National Laboratory’s Advanced Photon Source accelerator. The project will evaluate the changes that steel experiences under radiation. Ensuring that steel can withstand radiation at high temperatures is critical to moving forward with advanced reactors. (DOE Award: $100,000)
- University of Michigan, along with scientists from Oak Ridge National Laboratory, will conduct research at the university as well as at Idaho National Laboratory. The project will examine whether post-irradiation heating can reduce or eliminate cracks in steel that can occur in light water reactors materials after years of operation. The research will help to understand why these cracks occur and how they might be reduced without costly component replacements. (DOE Award: $907,000)
Since 2007, the ATR NSUF Program has invested over $57 million in more than 40 experiments at the program’s research reactor facilities. Over the past four years, the Department’s Nuclear Energy University Programs have invested $219 million in 220 research projects at 79 U.S. universities and colleges, demonstrating its strong commitment to training and educating the next generation of leaders in America’s nuclear industry. | <urn:uuid:0adf3294-05b3-4848-8b53-7596c614ab7c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://energy.gov/articles/energy-department-announces-new-nuclear-energy-innovation-investments | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00056-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.907469 | 737 | 2.453125 | 2 |
Cristian Dumitrescu is a Software Engineer with the Intel Architecture Group.
Packet-processing systems reside within a network node and handle traffic transitioning through that node. In this two-part article, I examine some of the typical problems engineers face when debugging packet-processing systems. The techniques I describe here represent a collection of built-in mechanisms to be provisioned from as early as the design phase to assist the system debugging at runtime, with the purpose of detecting any system errors from the first stages of development and testing. In Part 1 of this article, we focused on issues related to debugging functional problems. In Part 2, we turn to debugging of stability and performance problems.
Stability problems are the most difficult to debug, as they represent problems that cannot be triggered with basic low-rate functional tests. They need stress tests close to the real traffic conditions the device has to handle during real-life scenarios.
These problems usually require high traffic input rates and a long time before they activate (minutes, hours, or even days), so by that time many millions of packets have already transited through the system with no errors, thus making it impossible to analyze the system operation on a packet-by-packet basis. Sometimes it is not even possible to reproduce them with the equipment in the lab, having to attempt debugging the system while it is live in the field. These problems usually hide a flaw that is not fatal, meaning that the system is able to run correctly for some time before their impact cripples down the system.
The traditional debugging techniques do not work well for these problems. Running one of the cores under debugger control may be defeated by the fact that, while one of the cores is stopped as result of hitting a breakpoint, the rest of the system continues to process packets that keep coming in and modify the state of the system as the system continues to process the packets. This renders the state of the system no longer relevant for inspection because the system cannot keep up the pace with the input stream, which leads the packet queues to overflow and ultimately to a corrupted system state.
As these problems are difficult to reproduce on low data rates, debugging under heavy traffic loads becomes a necessity.
Possible Root Causes
Change in the typical sequence of events. Corner cases that are not triggered for low rates may now be triggered. The sequence of events and actions that take place while processing the packets is different than the typical sequence. Race conditions you were not aware of are now awakened.
Flawed state machines. The implementation of the state machines that are so commonly used for packet processing may be flawed. There are cases that are not robustly handled by the state machines, which now reach different states than expected. In the worst case scenario, the state machines may have to be massively cleaned up or even completely redesigned to remove the complexity that is not required.
Optimize your state machines for simplicity and readability, not for (often questionable) performance gain.
Deadlock. Synchronization between the producers and the consumers of the same queue may be flawed, making the producers think the queue is full or the consumers think that the queue is empty. Other possible root causes may be the incorrect usage of semaphores or other synchronization primitives, or waiting for an event that never takes place.
Resource exhaustion. A critical resource is exhausted and never replenished as result of incorrect usage, leading to incorrect operation. One of the most common scenarios is the permanent exhaustion of the buffer pools as result of buffer leakage. Buffers are allocated from the pool, but not all of them are correctly released back to their pool. These buffers are practically lost, as the software simply "forgot" about them, so it does not longer make use of them.
As result, the buffer pool shrinks over time, as fewer and fewer buffers are available in the pool at any given time which leads to performance degradation over time, as more and more input packets cannot be accommodated by the system and have to be dropped. The buffer pool eventually becomes empty and, as the pool is never replenished with buffers, no more packets will ever get out of the system.
If the code branches that leak buffers are frequently hit, then the problem is triggered relatively quickly. What usually happens is that the leaky code branches are infrequently hit, as they typically handle some infrequent error cases, so it takes a significant amount of time to reach the buffer pool exhaustion.
For example, consider a system which has a leaky Address Resolution Protocol (ARP) table aging process that runs once every 120 seconds leaking one buffer on every run. If the buffer pool initially contains 1K buffers, then the system has to run non-stop for about 34 hours until the buffer pool exhaustion is experienced and the output cut-off takes place.
Because people tend to wait for the later stages of the project before applying stress tests like running the system under heavy traffic non-stop for a few days in a row, this problem is usually discovered late into the project.
Start the stability testing from day 1 of the project!
A related problem is represented by an under-dimensioned buffer pool, which causes periodic packet drops as the pool reaches exhaustion. As opposed to the previous problem, the pool does get replenished correctly with previously allocated buffers and the output traffic does resume eventually, so this is a performance tweaking problem rather than a stability one.
Incorrect assumptions. The software is not considering the case when a message sent to a queue is dropped due to the queue being full, assuming that the delivery of the message is guaranteed. Consequently, if the software is relying on the consumer actions associated with the handling of that message to be performed in order to continue working correctly, then it operates based on false assumptions. Same if the software is relying on receiving back a response to this message, as the response never comes since the request message never made it to the other side.
Memory corruption. Some local variables might be left uninitialized before their value is read and used by the application. The software might not consider the fact that reading from a message queue can fail due to the queue being empty (queue underflow) or writing to a message queue might fail due to the queue being full (queue overflow). The software might incorrectly attempt to read/write more data from/to a buffer than allowed by the buffer size. As result, inconsistent data is read or incorrect memory addresses are written, leading to the data structure corruption problem that is so hard to debug.
Incomplete handling of the returned error codes. The software might not be handling all possible error codes returned by the called functions, either by assuming success or by ignoring some of the error codes.
Make sure that all the possible values for the return codes are handled.
Static Code Analysis. Make sure that all the local variables are initialized and all the return codes are handled.
Run-time Monitor/Logger. Do not let the system errors go unnoticed!
The first step is to instrument the code with statistics counters tracking the resource usage and the various error conditions that can take place and make them available through the CLI. Examples of relevant counters include:
- Number of free buffers for each buffer pool
- Queue occupancy for each queue
- Current position for all the semaphores in the system
- Number of free entries within the various tables maintained by the application (e.g., routing table, ARP table)
- Number of DMA errors and retries
- Bus occupancy (can be calculated as the number of transactions multiplied with the length of each transaction since the last monitor invocation)
The second step is to implement a run-time monitor. This represents a callback function that is periodically invoked on timer events and checks for some of the most common error conditions that can take place in the system and, if any such condition is met, trigger the corresponding alarm. Examples of relevant error conditions that may seriously impact the system operation include:
- One or more buffer pools are consistently empty or almost empty
- Some queues are consistently almost full (occupancy more than 90%)
- Specific queues have been written but not read in the last period of time (consumer deadlock)
- Specific semaphores busy during the last number of monitor invocations
- Some tables maintained by the application are full or almost full
- The buckets of some hash tables became too long (possible indication that the hashing function is not efficient)
- The number of DMA errors or retries are above their acceptable threshold
- Bus occupancy dangerously close to the upper limit
The run-time monitor can also log the full state of the system for further static analysis, as a graphical representation over time can uncover some less obvious problems. The monitor should be disabled or reduced to a bare minimum during normal regime as it eats computing cycles. | <urn:uuid:8cc90dad-61f0-4679-a790-5c62f09636ae> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.drdobbs.com/mobile/looking-for-the-lost-packets-part-2/222700138 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706890813/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516122130-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.942869 | 1,800 | 2.5625 | 3 |
Saturday, May 25, 2013
Bishop McElroyInterview with new auxiliary bishop: Bishop-elect McElroy: ‘Bring true discipleship to the public square’
Sep. 1, 2010
Bishop-elect Robert McElroy, newly named 17th auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of San Francisco, believes lay Catholics in the Archdiocese have an important role to play to revitalize not only the inner life of the Church but also the public life of the Bay Area.
St. Gregory leaders reflect on their work with Bishop-elect McElroy
Sep. 1, 2010, By George Raine
When he assumes his episcopal duties for the Archdiocese of San Francisco, look for Bishop-elect Robert McElroy to bring the skill set and pastoral style that endear him to the St. Gregory Parish community of San Mateo, where he has ministered as pastor since 1996.
Early years: new bishop is described as fun-loving, adventurous, with an interest in the priesthood
Sep. 1, 2010, By Valerie Schmalz
Bishop-elect Robert McElroy’s interest in the priesthood started early – somewhere around second or third grade, with a decision to enter the minor seminary at 14 setting him on his way.
Dignitatis Humanae: Coat of arms features Vatican II document, ‘Of the Dignity of the Human Person’
Sep. 1, 2010
The following description of the Episcopal Coat of Arms of Bishop Robert W. McElroy is written in the vocabulary of heraldry as expressed in the Old English language by way of its French roots.
Strong leaders, colorful personalities among 16 auxiliaries who precede 17th Auxiliary Bishop Robert W. McElroy
Sep. 1, 2010, By Deacon Jeffrey Burns, Ph.D.
When Joseph Sadoc Alemany, a Dominican, became the first U.S. bishop of California in 1850, his diocese included all of Baja and Alta California. In 1853 when the Archdiocese was established, it covered all of northern California from the southern boundary of Santa Clara County ...
Msgr. McElroy named auxiliary bishop
Jul. 6, 2010
Pope Benedict XVI named Msgr. Robert W. McElroy to be an Auxiliary Bishop in the Archdiocese of San Francisco.
MOST POPULAR NEWS STORIES | <urn:uuid:70261a35-e787-4eda-9b27-4d0d498e1dee> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.catholic-sf.org/ns.php?newsid=32 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.946576 | 499 | 1.5 | 2 |
Drinking Green Tea
I saw this article from Womens Health :) So get to it guys! btw Idk why I have so many Jesus shirts, I’m not even close to being religious ahhaha
GREEN TEA’S Super Powers
scientifically proven ways it does a body good
MELTS BELLY FAT- Overweight and obese adult exercisers burned 7 percent more abdominal fat when they drank caffeinated green tea compared with other caffeinated beverages according to the study in The Journal Of Nutrition.
KEEPS TEETH HEALTHY- Drinking two or more cups of green tea a day is associated with a lower risk of tooth loss, reports a new steudy in preventative medicine
LOWERS BMI (my favorite one;) - Those who drank the equivalent of two or three cups reported a lower BMI and body weight, says a University of Connecticut review.
REDUCES THE CHANCE OF SKIN CANER- Green tea can help repair DNA damage causeed by UVB rays and lower risk of melanoma according to an animal study in Cancer Prevention Research.
PREVENTS STROKE - Drinking three cups of green tea a day lowered stroke risk by 21% according to a 2009 study.
DECREASES LUNG CANCER RISK - In a not yet published study, Taiwanese researchers found that drinking more than a cup of green tea a day reduced people’s odds of getting lung cancer, regardess of smoking status. In fact, nonsmokers who drank green tea daily had five times less ricsk compared with nonsipping peers. | <urn:uuid:d72084ac-d88c-44f0-a3ab-12e1bf1c2255> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://yourhealthyhelper.tumblr.com/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.902743 | 333 | 1.757813 | 2 |
Philip Temple – 1980
After receiving a Katherine Mansfield Memorial Fellowship in 1979, Philip Temple accepted the Burns Fellowship for 1980. A strong writer of non-fiction, novels, and books for children, he tackled something very different that year – a saga about a kea (Strongbeak) and the environmental changes of the Southern Alps. Beak of the Moon (1981) was exceedingly successful, and has recently been reprinted. However, every writer has his bête noire. In 1980, Temple spent hours researching and writing 'Tikimana I', which to him was 'New Zealand's answer to Tolkien's Lord of the Rings'. This work remains unfinished, perhaps unfinishable.
Philip Temple, 'Tikimana I: Brave Light of the Stars'. Notebook. 1980. Private Collection. | <urn:uuid:5f629106-6a95-4c48-bb29-c331f66007dc> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.otago.ac.nz/library/exhibitions/burns/philiptemple.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00075-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964791 | 168 | 1.867188 | 2 |
An interesting article on Habermas Heidegger relation is available online Heidegger's Challenge and the Future of Critical Theory
The article seems to be a previous version of what finally appeared in Habermas: A Critical Reader Edited By: PETER DEWS as "Heidegger's Challenge and the Future of Critical Theory / Nikolas Kompridis." I have not checked it though.
There is an interesting discussion of this paper here and here
Earlier I had come across another interesting article on Heidegger's conception of freedom called Primordial freedom: The Authentic Truth of Dasein in Heidegger's 'Being and Time' from here. I have not thoroughly studied it yet but it might be very relevant to Habermas Heidegger debate.
Also see this article which has been very fruitful for my pursuit of Habermas Heidegger connections
Christopher McNicholls (1991) “Ontological Freedom as the essence of Dasein: Heidegger’s overcoming of Objectivism and Subjectivism” Gnosis; 3(4): 1-33. | <urn:uuid:79716233-d6cb-4a8f-94f4-fdc9f370f405> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://habermasians.blogspot.com/2004/12/heidegger-and-habermas.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00069-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.918487 | 224 | 1.632813 | 2 |
Some people develop ear pain when descending to land during a plane journey. It is caused by unequal pressures that develop on either side of the eardrum as the plane descends. Sucking sweets and gently blowing against a closed nose and mouth will usually push air into the middle ear, equalise the pressure and ease the pain. Some people who are prone to this problem take antihistamines or decongestants during the flight.
What is aeroplane ear?
Some people experience ear pain when flying in a plane. Usually this happens as the plane descends to land. The pain is worse the lower the plane gets and can be quite severe on landing.
What causes the pain?
The pain is caused by unequal pressure that develops between the air in the middle ear and the air outside the ear.
The small space in the middle ear behind the eardrum is normally filled with air. This air space is connected to the back of the nose by a tiny channel called the Eustachian tube. The air on either side of the eardrum should be at the same pressure. As a plane descends the air pressure becomes higher nearer the ground. This pushes the eardrum inwards which can be painful. To relieve this, the pressure inside the middle ear has to rise quickly too. Air needs to travel up the Eustachian tube into the middle ear to equalise the pressure.
Why are some people affected more than others?
The Eustachian tube is normally closed but opens from time to time when we swallow, yawn or chew. In most people, just normal swallowing and chewing quickly cause air to travel up the Eustachian tube to equalise the pressure. Some airlines offer sweets to suck and eat when the plane is descending to encourage you to chew and swallow.
However, the Eustachian tube in some people does not open as easily and so the pressure may not be equalised so quickly. For example, some people may have a more narrow Eustachian tube than normal. Also, if you have any condition that causes a blockage to the Eustachian tube, then the air cannot travel up to the middle ear. The common cause of a blocked Eustachian tube is from mucus and inflammation that occur with colds, throat infections, hay fever, etc. In fact, any condition causing extra mucus in the back of the nose can cause this problem.
How can I prevent ear pain when I fly?
Ideally, anyone with a cold, respiratory infection, ear infection, etc, should not fly. However, not many people will cancel their holiday trips for this reason. The following may help people who develop ear pain when flying.
- Suck sweets when the plane begins to descend. Air is more likely to flow up the Eustachian tube if you swallow, yawn or chew. For babies, it is a good idea to feed them or give them a drink at the time of descent to encourage them to swallow.
- Try doing the following: take a breath in. Then, try to breathe out gently with your mouth closed and pinching your nose (the Valsalva manoeuvre). In this way, no air is blown out but you are gently pushing air into the Eustachian tube. If you do this you may feel your ears go 'pop' as air is pushed into the middle ear. This often cures the problem. Repeat this every few minutes until landing - whenever you feel any discomfort in the ear.
- Do not sleep when the plane is descending to land. (Ask the air steward to wake you when the plane starts to descend.) If you are awake you can make sure that you suck and swallow to encourage air to get into the middle ear.
The above usually works for most people. However, if you are particularly prone to develop aeroplane ear, you may wish also to consider the following in addition to the tips above:
- Antihistamine tablets (available at pharmacies). Take the recommended dose the day before and the day of travel. This may help to limit the amount of mucus that you make.
- A decongestant nasal spray can dry up the mucus in the nose. For example, one containing xylometazoline - available at pharmacies. Spray the nose about one hour before the expected time of descent. Spray again five minutes later. Then spray every 20 minutes until landing.
- Air pressure regulating ear plugs. These are cheap, reusable ear plugs that are often sold at airports and in many pharmacies. These ear plugs slow the rate of air pressure change on the eardrum. (It is the rapid rate of pressure change on the eardrum that is the problem and these earplugs slow this down.) Follow the instructions that come with them. Basically, you put them in before the door of the aircraft is shut. Some people then wear them for the entire flight. Some people take them out when the plane reaches cruising height, and then place them in again just before the plane starts to descend to land.
What is the treatment for aeroplane ear?
If the measures above fail to prevent aeroplane ear, although the pain may be severe, it normally goes quickly. Take painkillers such as paracetamol until it does go. Fluid sometimes accumulates in the middle ear for a few days after the flight, which may make hearing rather dull for a while. See a doctor if the pain or dulled hearing does not clear within a few days.
Further reading & references
|Original Author: Dr Tim Kenny||Current Version: Dr Laurence Knott||Peer Reviewer: Dr Tim Kenny|
|Last Checked: 15/03/2012||Document ID: 4241 Version: 40||© EMIS|
Disclaimer: This article is for information only and should not be used for the diagnosis or treatment of medical conditions. EMIS has used all reasonable care in compiling the information but make no warranty as to its accuracy. Consult a doctor or other health care professional for diagnosis and treatment of medical conditions. For details see our conditions. | <urn:uuid:0f772632-1683-4d9b-8893-8fdb78fb6140> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.patient.co.uk/health/Ears-and-Flying.htm | 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 | 0.947691 | 1,259 | 3.328125 | 3 |
Home » Rajasthan
Forts » Jaisalmer
Fort - Jaisalmer|
Jaisalmer Fort - Jaisalmer
: Jaisalmer, Rajasthan.|
Evolution/ Origin: 1156 AD
By: Bhati Rajput
Standing almost 30 m above the city
of Jaisalmer is the Jaisalmer fort. The fort is also known as the Sonar Quila.
This is because standing against the backdrop of the desert with its golden sand,
the fort looks straight out of a fairy tale. Sonar Quila of Jaisalmer is a massive
complex comprising of a palace, various security sources, the havelis of rich
merchants, several temples and the residential complexes of the armies and traders.
the reign of the Bhatti Rajputs, the Merchant community acquired great deal of
power. They constructed huge mansions (havelis) adjacent to each other. The havelis
of merchants have decorations on walls and ceilings and carvings on outdoors and
interiors. The sandstone mansions of the merchants were built by stone craftsmen.
The sculptural filigree, screen windows, delicate pavilions and beautiful balconies
of the mansions are worth paying attention to. Even today, these examples of superb
architecture stand inhabited.
Also enclosed within the fort is an entire
living area within huge ramparts. The walk to the fort, through the narrow lanes,
is an experience in itself. Leading to the fort are its four gates Ganesh Pol,
Suraj Pol, Bhoot Pol and Hawa Pol. The Jaisalmer fort of Rajasthan also encompasses
a group of Jain temples dating back to the 12th century.
The nearest airport is at Jodhpur, 285 Km away from Jaisalmer.
Jaisalmer is connected to rest of India by well-laid railway tracks.
Jaisalmer is connected to other parts of Rajasthan and
neighboring states by a well-developed network of roads.
for right Tour Request, Price Quotation, Itinerary Suggestions, Bookings.| | <urn:uuid:233e3d3e-f996-4e6a-b0ba-d15edf43e547> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.bestrajasthantours.com/rajasthan-forts/jaisalmer-fort.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.910213 | 453 | 2.5625 | 3 |
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Whether you are planning a romantic Italian getaway, packing a knapsack for your junior year abroad, or just want to engage your Italian business associate in everyday conversation, Italian Made Simple is the perfect book for any self-learner. Void of all the non-essentials and refreshingly easy to understand, Italian Made Simple includes:* basics of grammar* vocabulary building exercises* pronunciation aids* common expressions* word puzzles and language games* contemporary reading selections* Italian culture and history* economic information* Italian-English and English-Italian dictionariesComplete with drills, exercises, and answer keys for ample practice opportunities, Italian Made Simple will soon have you speaking Italian like a native.From the Trade Paperback edition.
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Violence is escalating, and spilling on to the streets of Montreal.
A nine-year-old girl is killed in crossfire on her way to ballet class. The body of a teenager killed in North Carolina is found hundreds of miles away.
Forensic anthropologist Dr Temperance Brennan has to pick up the pieces: she knows she shouldn't let emotion get in the way, but when nine-year-old Emily's body is wheeled into the morgue she cannot help but react.
An exhumation uncovers the bones of another innocent in a clandestine grave close to a biker gang headquarters. With her boss in hospital and sparring partner Detective Andrew Ryan mysteriously unavailable, Tempe alone begins a perilous investigation into the lawless underworld of organised crime...
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It's impossible to forget the violent bludgeoning to death of an elderly lady in her home. Even more so when it's your first murder case.
Wexford believed he'd solved Mrs Primero's murder fifteen years ago. It was no real mystery. Everyone knew Painter, her odd-job man, had done it. There had never been any doubt in anyone's mind. Until now...
Henry Archery's son is engaged to Painter's daughter. Only Archery can't let the past remain buried. He wants to prove Wexford wrong, and in probing into the lives of the witnesses questioned all those years ago, he stirs up more than old ghosts.
John Lanchester, author of Whoops! and Capital takes us on a whirlwind tour of the Tube to show its secrets, just how much we take for granted about it, and what we're really talking about, since we so often do talk about it. In short, he shows what a marvel it is - part of a series of twelve books tied to the twelve lines of the London Underground, as Tfl celebrates 150 years of the Tube with Penguin.
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How does the driver of the very first Tube train of the day get to work, if he can't get the Tube? As John Lanchester fulfils a long-held ambition to take a trip with a District Line train driver, he considers the secret life of the city, its changing patterns, how we behave when we commute and how the Underground shapes our lives.
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Few first novels have created as much popular excitement as The Pickwick Papers. Readers were immediately captivated by the adventures of the poet Snodgrass, the lover Tupman, the sportsman Winkle and, above all, by that quintessentially English Quixote, Mr Pickwick, and his cockney Sancho Panza, Sam Weller. From the hallowed turf of Dingley Dell Cricket Club to the unholy fracas of the Eatanswill election, via the Fleet debtor's prison, characters and incidents sprang to life from Dickens's pen, to form an enduringly popular work of ebullient humour and literary invention.
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The beautiful, spoiled and bored Olivia, married to a civil servant, outrages society in the tiny, suffocating town of Satipur by eloping with an Indian prince. Fifty years later, her step-granddaughter goes back to the heat, the dust and the squalor of the bazaars to solve the enigma of Olivia's scandal.
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Someone just called you captious. Should you be flattered? Considering your extreme lactose intolerance, is it a good idea to order veau au béchamel from a French menu? Calumny is to slander as obloquy is to a) flattery, b) sermon, or c) invective? You’ve just heard that your new boss is a real martinet, should you be worried or excited about an attractive new addition to your workplace?
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Dr Aziz is a young Muslim physician in the British Indian town of Chandrapore. One evening he comes across an English woman, Mrs Moore, in the courtyard of a local mosque; she and her younger travelling companion Adela are disappointed by claustrophobic British colonial culture and wish to see something of the 'real' India. But when Aziz kindly offers to take them on a tour of the Marabar caves with his close friend Cyril Fielding, the trip results in a shocking accusation that throws Chandrapore into a fever of racial tension. | <urn:uuid:a02a3f89-3e95-41cb-8bf8-4bac5c44da0a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.e-readers.ch/eBooks-referencesetlangues-c04.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00060-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.935543 | 2,190 | 1.648438 | 2 |
Little Dumbbell Nebula
|Right Ascension||01 : 42.4 (h:m)
|Declination||+51 : 34 (deg:m)
|Visual Brightness||10.1 (mag)
|Apparent Dimension||2.7x1.8 (arc min)
Dicovered by Pierre Méchain in 1780.
Planetary Nebula Messier 76 (M76, NGC 650/651) is one of the faintest Messier Objects, and one of only four planetary nebulae in Messier's catalog, situated in the Eastern part of constellation Perseus.
M76 was discovered by Pierre Méchain on September 5, 1780, who reported it to Charles Messier, who observed it on October 21, 1780, determined its position and added it to his catalog. While Méchain found it to be a nebula without stars, Messier thought it was composed of small stars with some nebulosity, probably being fooled by foreground or background stars. Lord Rosse erroneously suspected to have detected some spiral structure in this nebula. In 1866, William Huggins, the pioneer of spectroscopy, found its spectrum to be gaseous, showing Nebulium lines. Pioneer astrophotographer Isaac Roberts found that this was not a double, but a single nebula, and first suspected it might be a broad ring seen edgewise. In 1918, Heber D. Curtis correctly classified it as a planetary nebula for the first time.
M76 is among the fainter Messier objects. It is known under the names Little Dumbbell Nebula (the most common), Cork Nebula, Butterfly Nebula, and Barbell Nebula, and it was given two NGC numbers as it was suspected to be a double nebula with two components in contact, a hypothesis brought up by William Herschel, who numbered the "second component" H I.193 on November 12, 1787. NGC 651 is the North following (East) part of the nebula.
The appearance of M76 resembles to some degree that of the Dumbbell Nebula M27. Most probably, the main body (the bar, or cork) is a bright and slightly elliptical ring we see edge-on, from only a few degrees off its equatorial plane. This ring seems to expand at about 42 km/sec. Along the axis perpendicular to this plane, the gas expands significantly more rapidly to form the lower surface brightness "wings" of the butterfly.
While the bright part of the nebula is of about 65 arc seconds in diameter (more accurately, the `cork' is about 42x87", the `wings' 157x87"), this nebula is surrounded by a faint halo covering a region of 290 arc seconds in diameter (Millikan, 1974); this material was probably ejected in the form of stellar winds from the central star when it was still in the Red Giant phase of evolution. Today the central star is of mag 16.6 and a high temperature of some 60,000 K, which will probably cool down as a white dwarf over the coming tens of billions of years.
As usual for planetary nebulae, M76's visual magnitude is much brighter (9.6 according to Don Machholz' personal estimate, 10.1 according to Hynes; the present author thinks this is close to his own perception) than photographically (most sources agree on 12.2 mag photographically). This is due to the fact that most visual light is emitted in one spectral line, the green 5007 Angstrom forbidden line of doubly ionized oxygen, [O III] (see our Planetary Nebulae page).
As is not unusual for planetary nebulae, the distance is poorly known, with estimates between 1,700 and 15,000 light years (the latter value is from Kaufmann's Universe; Kenneth Glyn Jones has the value of 8,200). Accordingly, the true dimensions of the cork is between 0.34x0.72 and 3.1x6.4 light years, while the wings extend up to between 1.3 and 11.3 light years, and the faint halo reaches out to between 2.4 and 21 light years. (Our 3400 light years yield 0.68x1.44, 2.6, and 4.8 light years, while with Kenneth Glyn Jones' distance, the cork is 1.7x3.5, the wings 6.2, and the extensions 11.5 light years).
Bill Arnett's M76 photo page, info page.
Last Modification: September 2, 2007 | <urn:uuid:d137c717-6d76-4db1-9d22-47d7f3bf977a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://messier.seds.org/m/m076.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00022-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.928597 | 956 | 2.828125 | 3 |
A component of U.S. Joint Global Ocean Flux Study (JGOFS) is the
Arabian Sea Process Study. Eleven cruises took place aboard the R/V
Thomas G. Thompson for about sixteen months from October 1994 until
January 1996. These cruises provided seasonal coverage of the annual
monsoon and inter-monsoon cycles in the area southeast of Oman - from ... where the cruises were staged. The monsoons of the Arabian Sea drive
a uniquely intense carbon cycling system, and it is the goal of JGOFS
to better understand the role of the oceans in global carbon cycling.
Meteorological observations of the Arabian Sea were collected by a
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution surface mooring deployed at
15.5N, 61.5E from October 1994 to October 1995.
Parameters measured include air temperature, sea surface temperature,
relative humidity, specific humidity, east component of wind velocity,
north component of wind velocity, barometric pressure, incoming
shortwave radiation, incoming longwave radiation, and precipitation
Fluxes calculated include latent heat flux, sensible heat flux, net
heat flux, net shortwave radiation, net longwave radiation, east wind
stress, north wind stress, wind stress magnitude, evaporation rate,
and evaporation minus precipitation.
The data is public domain and can be retrieved on-line at
[This information was obtained from U.S. JGOFS website at WHOI.] | <urn:uuid:3d4c3f62-df70-40bc-8453-aa8ad2309bfc> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://gcmd.nasa.gov/KeywordSearch/Metadata.do?Portal=amd&KeywordPath=%5BParameters%3A+Topic%3D'OCEANS'%2C+Term%3D'OCEAN+WINDS'%2C+Variable_Level_1%3D'SURFACE+WINDS'%5D&OrigMetadataNode=GCMD&EntryId=USJGOFS_ARAB_MET&MetadataView=Full&MetadataType=0&lbnode=mdlb3 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00035-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.912947 | 307 | 2.921875 | 3 |
Uber Star Wars fans from the days of Galactic Federations and light sabers will enjoy this mod – if it’s real. A pair of 3.5″ floppy disk drives have been finally, after over a decade of obsolescence been put to good use.
YouTube user sh4dowww90 shows us his how he took two useless devices, made them into a pair of instruments capable of becoming an analog musical orchestra playing the Imperial March from Star Wars. The modder’s site is down, probably due to the popularity of this video (we cant imagine how much traffic a free polish host can handle). So aside from some custom made circuit board with some atmel chips, a hacked up IDE cable and a serial port, there’s not much more we can tell you at this time about the project. | <urn:uuid:60e7c152-4dde-4d43-8f1d-673db1c8b227> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.mobilemag.com/2011/09/30/hacked-floppy-drives-repurposed-to-play-star-wars-imperial-march/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00042-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957858 | 170 | 1.507813 | 2 |
The Colorado Talking Book Library (CTBL) provides free library services to more than 6,000 patrons who, because of physical, visual, or learning disabilities are unable to read standard print material. In 2012 a survey was given to patrons of CTBL, where they shared their thoughts about the library’s services. Of the 549 patrons who responded to the survey, nearly all (99%) rated their overall experience with CTBL as excellent or good. Respondents also rated a list of eight individual service components highly, especially “courtesy of library staff,” “completeness and condition of books received,” and “speed with which they receive their books” (at least 98% “excellent” or “good” ratings). Across the 5 CTBL patron surveys that have been conducted between 2004 and 2012, patron satisfaction ratings have been consistently high, indicating a sustained level of excellence in library services. For more information, see the Fast Facts and Closer Look Report.
We are excited to present a brand new set of tools for interacting with data from our Public Library Annual Survey. The new tools are packed with features, including:
- Quickly locate data for a single year and statistic group
- Build custom data sets by specifying years, statistics, libraries, etc.
- Visualize data using graphs and maps
- Export data in .csv format
Did you know that Library Research Service now has over 25 years’ worth of public library data available? Our new tools make finding and analyzing this data simple!
Our new Fast Facts uses data from Library Jobline to evaluate Colorado’s library job climate. In 2012, almost 400 library jobs were posted to Library Jobline, thus marking the third year in a row in which there was an increase in the number of jobs posted. Although there appear to be more opportunities for library-related employment, the starting wages for library jobs posted to Library Jobline have changed little since 2008. Fortunately for job seekers, there was also little change regarding the number of postings that specified requirements or preferences for certain types of experience (e.g., library experience, supervisory experience) or skills (e.g., Spanish fluency).
BTOP Outcome Evaluation Presentation at the Schools, Health & Libraries Broadband Coalition Annual Conference
-Streamlining the process of conducting evaluations, using tools such as a data map, a customized website for collecting data, and accessible instructional materials for survey administration, such as the video that we created to help BTOP computer centers understand the survey administration process,
-Results highlights, and
-the resources we’ve provided to our BTOP computer centers to use their results for program planning, marketing, and advocacy purposes.
Here are the slides:
And, the outcome evaluation report can be found here.
Last week, we presented the results of our study “Web Technologies and User Engagement” at Computers in Libraries. Here are the slides:
A report detailing all of the findings will be available soon–stay tuned!
Will you be attending Computers in Libraries this year? If so, we hope you’ll join us on Monday, April 8 at 3:15 pm in the International Ballroom West for our presentation, “Web Technologies and User Engagement.” We will share our latest results from our biennial study of the websites of nearly 600 U.S. public libraries, including:
- which web features, such as sharing interfaces, virtual reference, and blogs, are most common on U.S. public libraries’ websites as of 2012,
- the extent to which public libraries use responsive and/or mobile-friendly web design, and
- public libraries’ integration with various social media networks.
Our discussion will be framed in terms of the implications of these web features for usability and patron engagement.
Learn how to strategically plan and market your library’s computer services based on user profiles at our 4/16 webinar
Are you offering computer assistance in your library – either one-on-one or classes?
Are your open access computers consistently occupied?
Do you wonder what impact these services are having, and how to strategically plan and promote these services?
Join us for:
Knowing Who is Using Your Computer Center: The Key to Savvy Planning & Promotion
Tuesday, April 16
noon – 1 pm
http://connect.enetcolorado.org/btop/ (Please have headset and prepare to participate via chat)
Find out the results of a survey of more than 7,300 public computer center users throughout Colorado, including who is using the computers during open access time, who is taking classes, and how these services are impacting users’ lives.
Discover ways to use these results to better plan and market your services now and in the future.
BTOP libraries that participated in this study by gathering surveys will receive custom reports for your public computer center.
All public library staff are welcome to join and participate.
Presenters: Susan Burkholder, Linda Hofschire, and Sharon Morris of the Colorado State Library
Preliminary data from the 2012 Colorado Public Library Annual Report (PLAR) is now available: : http://lrs.org/documents/plstat12/preliminary-2012-plar-2013-03-22.xls.
A few libraries are still working on getting their data in, however, the vast majority have submitted their reports. The data is considered preliminary until we receive data from all public libraries and all edit checks have been resolved.
About Edit checks
The first round of edit checks are done before respondents complete and submit the survey. The second, third, and even fourth, round of edit checks are done by state library staff (read: me) in cooperation with the U.S. Census Bureau, the federal agency that collects and verifies the public library data for the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS).
Questions? Need more information? Contact me at steffen_n at cde.state.co.us.
Thanks to all the public library directors and their staff for submitting their PLAR data.
Our new infographic presents highlights of all of LRS’s school library impact studies in an accessible and concise format. We hope this will be an effective tool for school library advocates!
Two versions of the infographic are available:
-One is optimized for online viewing
-And, the second is optimized for printing
A printing note: if you view the infographic PDF file in Firefox PDF viewer, it may not render properly. For best viewing and printing, click on the “open in different viewer” button in the top right corner of your browser, and select the option to open the file with Adobe Reader. The PDF file is optimized for printing on legal size paper.
We also maintain a bibliography of US school library impact studies for those who are interested in delving deeper into this topic.
Our new Fast Facts presents the results of a study of the early literacy information available on Colorado public library websites. The findings indicated that most libraries broadly referenced early literacy information on their websites, but fewer referenced early literacy skills, discussed the long-term benefits of early literacy, or provided information on the importance of reading aloud.
The Fast Facts also links to an early literacy resource guide provided by the Colorado State Library that libraries can use on their own websites. With the 2013 One Book 4 Colorado event coming this spring, this resource may be particularly useful to libraries as they develop materials and plan activities for this event. | <urn:uuid:91b6ff71-9630-4a9c-b8c7-660af99f77db> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.lrs.org/news/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00032-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.92454 | 1,559 | 1.914063 | 2 |
Think about the career move you want to make next.
Is your planned next job similar to what you are doing now, or do you want a job that has little to do with your current position? If you want a completely different job, then you want to change careers.
Making a career change takes more planning and resources than a regular job search.
Here are six articles with tips to help you make a successful career change:
1. What’s Your Job Search Preparation Plan?
2. How to Succeed In A Job You Hate
3. 4 Steps to Advance Your Career or Make a Change
4. Tips for Changing Careers
5. Good Job Search Tools Never Go Out of Style
6. Tools to Help With Your Career Change
Posted by Denise Felder on March 5, 2012
Have you ever talked to a job seeker who is so desperate to find a new job he or she says “I’ll take any job.”
When you ask what the top choice is, he either lists a few jobs that are completely unrelated, or can’t name one target job?
This person has little chance of finding a job he will be happy with or meet his goals.
You can’t find something if you don’t know what you’re looking for.
Here’s a different way of looking at it:
Imagine it’s dinner time. You’re hungry and ask your friend to go out to eat with you. Your friend asks which restaurant you want to go to. You say you don’t care where you go, as long as you can eat soon.
Your friend asks if you want pizza or Chinese food. You say you had pizza for lunch and don’t like Chinese. Italian? Not in the mood. Sushi? Too expensive.
Again, your friend asks what restaurant you want to go to. You still don’t know, but you’re getting more and more hungry.
Every time your friend suggests something, you give a reason why you don’t want to eat that type of food. You’ve given no thought to what you do want, only what you don’t want.
You’re friend can’t help you find a good meal because you don’t know what you want. You get frustrated and want to give up the search – but you’re still hungry and you need to eat.
Get the point?
No matter how desperate you are to leave your old job or get a better paycheck, you must think about what you want your next career move to be. Look for jobs that match your salary requirements, will use your skills, and is in an environment you will like.
There are jobs out there. If you don’t think about the type of job you want to move into, you could starve.
Also from DeniseMpls:
Posted by Denise Felder on February 6, 2012
2011 Latino Job Training and Employment Opportunities Outreach
The Minnesota Chicano Latino Affairs Council and Minnesota Department of Transportation invite you to hear about opportunities for training in several trades, such as construction.
Come and listen to valuable ideas for your future. All are welcome to attend. Click here to register.
- Wednesday, May 25, 2011
- 9:30am – 1:00pm
Hennepin Technical College
9000 Brooklyn Blvd
Brooklyn Park, MN 55445
Meet in the Auditorium
Who should come:
Did you graduated from high school several years ago and you are thinking to go back to school?
Do you want to pursue a technical career? Would you like to work in important construction projects? You can become an apprentice or a subcontractor on these projects.
For more information or if you have any questions about the event, contact:
Chicano Latino Affairs Council
Posted by Denise Felder on May 13, 2011 | <urn:uuid:faa7dc33-173a-47fd-b511-819548f9f32d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://denisefelder.com/tag/career-move/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.924514 | 826 | 1.882813 | 2 |
To set up this activity I poured paint into a sectioned food tray, and set out the pine cones and a piece of poster board.
This set up made it easy for Rosie to cover the pine cones in paint. She placed them in the paint, and moved the tray back and forth, easily covering them.
Rosie started out using one of the pine cones like a stamp
Then she just had to put her hands in the paint. Rosie loves sensory play, and always insists on exploring with her hands and feet.
Then Rosie began throwing the pine cones at the paper
She loved this!
This painting method ended up being a form of physical exercise and was great for large body movement.
And the texture of the paint and the pine cones together was quite fun!
So fun that in addition to painting the paper, Rosie enjoyed a little finger painting, and painted the pine cones themselves.
While Rosie enjoyed painting, Jewel enjoyed a little pine cone exploration of her own.
Of course for her, that meant tasting it!
Isn't the pine cone art fabulous? I just love how the painting turned out!
Now that is process art with a pretty ending!
We share fun kids activities several times a week!
Stay connected to the fun by following us on Pinterest!
Other Ways to Connect | <urn:uuid:82922244-674b-4bd4-9a9d-5cfb7b6394a9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.growingajeweledrose.com/2012/02/painting-with-pine-cones.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00054-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.970473 | 274 | 2.28125 | 2 |
Old Devonian Wikipedia
||This proposal has been rejected.
This decision was taken by the language committee in accordance with the Language proposal policy based on the discussion on this page.
The closing committee member provided the following comment:
only living languages are accepted
Old Devonian is an emerging langauge which has begun to be revived after becoming extinct around the same time as Old Welsh and Old Cornish.
Arguments in favour
- 1. Almost nothing is known for sure about this language. Any reconstruction is likely to differ from the real unknowable language more than the sister Old Welsh and Old Cornish languages do.
- 2. It has no extant writings (it may indeed never have been written down, and certainly never had its own orthographical tradition).
- 3. At the time it became extinct it likely differed from Cornish no more than North and South colloquial Welsh differ now.
- 4. Biddulph's reconstructions have little credibility amongst linguists and even he was no more than tentative about them.
- 5. Unlike Cornish or Manx, there is no recent speech community from whom some sense of continuity can be gained.
- 6. In case it's raised, same points in spades refer to Cumbric. -- 19 March 2009 220.127.116.11
This is really a conlang based on one person's idea of what an extinct language might possibly have been like. It should be proposed and evaluated as a conlang. AnonMoos 12:46, 9 September 2009 (UTC) | <urn:uuid:83f6fce5-dc8b-4ab1-863a-c91c3f572872> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages/Wikipedia_Old_Devonian | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967446 | 320 | 2.609375 | 3 |
Punishments for male to male relationships: No law
Female to Female Relationships: Legal
Age of consent: Equal for heterosexuals and homosexuals
Are you LGBTI? We want to hear from you! Help us inform other users of the site with your views on this country. Below is a random question about this country. If it is relevant to you please answer it.
Have you been the victim of violence in NEPAL because you are trans?
Yes, I don’t ever feel safe
Yes, by individuals
Yes, by a group
Yes, by the police
In a landmark decision, the Cabinet has agreed to provide citizenship to a post-operative transsexual who changed sex from male to female. Caitlin Panta, earlier Pratik Panta, is the first Nepali to have changed gender through a sex reassignment therapy (SRT) procedure this January. The decision has opened up doors for those wishing to change their sex and avail of citizenship under the changed sex. >>> | <urn:uuid:9ee0cac3-07cd-4420-b4c4-df847df83066> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://proposals2012@ilga.org/ilga/en/countries/NEPAL/Articles?select=tag:sex%20reassignment%20therapy%20(srt)%20procedure | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00024-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.949177 | 208 | 1.617188 | 2 |
The experience of United Nations troops in the present
war has proved the necessity of every soldier's being
able to find his way over all types of terrain. The
chances of individuals or small groups becoming separated
from their units are much greater than in past
wars because the use of modern weapons forces a wide
dispersal of troops on the battlefield. Small groups
also must be sent out on reconnaissance and security
missions, and the safety or success of our forces depends
on the ability of these groups to find their way
back to their units--without much delay.
If you get lost, the worst thing you could do would
be to lose your head and get into a state of panic.
Sit down and think the situation over calmly. Where
could you have mistaken the way? Were your compass
calculations correct? Where could you get back on
your route? Nine times out of ten you can discover
where you have gone wrong, and find your way back.
This section deals with various ways and means of maintaining
direction. Most of the information is based on a lecture given
at the British Commando School by Maj. Lord Lovat, the British
officer who led the Commando raid against the Norwegian
island of Vaagso.1
2. WAYS AND MEANS
a. For Day or Night
Most of the practical ways and means to help in maintaining
direction may be used at night as well as during
the day, provided some form of light is available (and
no patrol should ever go out without some form of light).
(1) Compass.--The compass is the most valuable aid
in keeping direction, although experience shows that
it is usually impossible to use it when under enemy fire.
It also is unreliable in areas where there are lodestone
deposits, as in northern Norway. The compass needle
may also be deflected by such local objects as cap ornaments,
gas masks held in the ready position, and so on.
An oil compass which is remarkably accurate under
all conditions has been developed recently. It can be
reset on successive bearings at night without the aid of
a light--a great advantage over other compasses.
At night, during bad weather, among mountains, or
when under enemy observation, it is usually impossible
to unfold and examine a map. It is therefore better
to prepare a traverse card giving the distance and
compass bearings from point to point along the route. The
bearings should be taken off the map with a transparent
protractor and then converted. The distances
should be measured off the map in yards. By day and
by night every man should compare his paces against
a measured distance, up and down hill and along the
level. Distance can also be checked by estimation of
time--for instance, a man may know from experience
that he travels at 4 miles per hour on a level road
and 2 1/4 over rough country.
In thick mist, the party, if small, travels in single
file so that each man keeps in sight of the man in front
of him. The last man takes a bearing and sees that the
leader sets off in the right direction (the leader marches
on a definite point, or line of points, if visibility allows).
The man with the compass frequently checks the
distance and, after getting the attention of the leader,
signals him to the right or left by pointing. When the
leader is on line again, the man with the compass holds
his arm above his head. In this manner, a surprising
degree of accuracy can be attained, especially if each
leg of the traverse ends at some easily recognized place,
such as the top of a hill, a small lake or pond, or the
junction of two streams. An error of 50° often throws
one off only 150 yards to a mile.
(2) Maps.--From a map a soldier can memorize a
route by noting the outstanding features, such as ridges
and water courses. Much practice is needed in using
maps. It is very helpful to work out the easiest route
between two places over rough country, and then to
follow it exactly to see if it really is the best way. A good
map reader can actually visualize the country by
examining a map of it. He knows from the direction
of a slope what vegetation to expect, and whether a certain
route will be dry or wet underfoot.
(3) Trees.--The branches of trees grow away from
the direction of prevailing winds in exposed countries
and their roots are much more prominent on the windward
side. Therefore, by knowing the direction from
which these winds come, it is easy to determine the
approximate position of north, south, east, west, and
In many countries moss and lichen grow only on
the north (sunless) side of trees and rocks, and the
bark of trees usually is thicker on the north side.
(4) Wind.--The wind usually is fairly constant
at certain times of the day and year in most localities. One
of the best ways to find the exact direction
of the wind is to toss up a handful of dried grass or
a few loose strands pulled from a woolen garment
and allow them to float down. If clouds are used to
indicate the direction of wind, only those directly
overhead show the true direction. Even then, the
wind may be different higher in the sky. In country
covered with snow or sand, the angle of the drifts
shows the direction of the prevailing and subsidiary
winds. (Always move upwind if possible, because
you can hear the enemy better and he has greater
difficulty in hearing you. You can also detect suspicious
(5) Marks.--Following streams or ridges until you
reach an area in which you know your way is one
method to use if you are lost. If you are searching
for your camp, which you know lies on a river or trail
in a certain direction that you know roughly, do not
try to go directly toward it, but go definitely to one
side, so that when you reach the river or trail you
will know which way to turn for your camp.
A knowledge of tracking is a valuable asset and
provides much pleasure. A good tracker, on suitable
ground, can tell exactly what has occurred out of the
ordinary. He knows the number and formation of
the enemy, the speed of his movement, and many other
details that the average person would not be able to
determine. If you are following enemy tracks, be
careful that they do not lead you into an ambush.
At night there are various points to remember.
When a bearing has been taken, it is helpful to hold
a whitened (chalked) stick at about 45° as a prolongation
of the axis of the compass needle. The stick
will cut the horizon at a spot which can then be used
to march on. The compass reader then sends out an
assistant on the line until he is barely visible. Say,
for instance, he stops 160 yards out. The man with
the compass checks to see whether his assistant actually
is on line, and then proceeds to the new point. From
this spot another point on the horizon is selected,
and the assistant is directed to go 150 yards
in that direction and stop without any signal. The
compass reader repeats the same procedure as before,
and the group keeps on its bearing—advancing 150
yards at a time. To check the hundreds when counting
paces, it is a good idea to carry 10 pebbles or
matches in one pocket and transfer one to another
at the end of each hundred.
(6) Altimeter.--This instrument is useful as a check
as long as it is set at a known height. For example, if
a man is lost and finds himself at the top of a mountain,
at a crossroad, or some other spot which would be
shown on the map, a knowledge of the height of the
mountain or crossroad would help to identify it on the map.
b. For Day Only
(1) The Sun.--The sun, in the Northern Hemisphere, is
due south at midday. Since it moves 360° in 24 hours (15° per
hour), the south point can be found if the time is known.
A more accurate method is as follows: Stand a
pencil upright. (This can be done by sticking its base
onto a penny with sealing wax or wax from a candle.)
Draw a circle around it with a radius about as long as
the pencil. The shadow of the pencil will fall outside
the circle in the morning, will shorten as the sun rises
higher, will fall well within the circle at midday, and
will lengthen during the afternoon until it cuts the
circle a second time and again falls outside it. Mark
the point at which it cuts the circle (this will occur at
about 1000 hours and 1400 hours), bisect the line joining
these two points, and the true north line will run
from the base of the pencil through the center of this
line. This method is accurate within a few degrees.
(2) Sun compass.--The sun compass is essentially a
shadow compass, and must be reset at frequent intervals
as the sun's declination changes. It has immense
advantages over the magnetic compass for land navigation.
Entirely unaffected by its surroundings, it can
be made as accurate and precise as the operator desires.
It gives true bearings, is easy to read, and is more
sturdy. On the other hand, this compass can only be
used when the sun is shining and when so mounted that
the sun can fall on it unobstructed. Hence the compass
is the complement of, and not a substitute for, the magnetic
compass. Both must be available for the navigator,
who uses the sun compass whenever possible,
reserving the magnetic compass for sunless periods.
All types of sun compasses consist essentially of a
vertical needle set at the center of a horizontal plate
upon which the needle's shadow falls. The sun compass
has no deviation, but the direction of the shadow
(which corresponds to the variation in the magnetic
compass) changes widely, though in a definite way,
throughout the day, and at the same time of day from
week to week and from one latitude to another. The
sun compass, being liable to no errors, has long been
used at sea for checking the deviation of the ship's
magnetic compass. The sun's azimuth throughout the
day for all latitudes and declinations are given in azimuth
tables.2 The original setting and the corrections
on the sun compass are obtained from an almanac.
(3) Watch.--If you have a watch, point the hour
hand at the sun and bisect the angle between the hour
hand and 1200 hours. This will give you true south.
(After 1600 hours this angle must be measured in the
direction that the hour hand has already traveled.
(4) Study of Terrain.--Any group to be sent out over
terrain unfamiliar to them should make a careful study
on the map of the areas it may cover, fixing in mind
the general and prominent features and taking notes
on these for study en route. Members of the group
should observe the terrain carefully as they go out, in
order to become familiar with landmarks or any other
c. For Night Only
At night the sense of sound largely takes the place
of sight, and the sense of smell may also prove
valuable--especially with practice--in identifying the
presence of animals, or certain kinds of vegetation, or
the vicinity of water. At night, observe and remember
the shape of skylines.
Stars are an excellent aid in maintaining direction--the
greatest, in fact--and an intimate knowledge of them
relieves the loneliness and strangeness of solitary
work at night. A specialist's knowledge is needed to
find direction by the moon and planets.
The pole star is never more than 20 degrees away from
True North (the error is at its maximum when a line
joining the pole star to a point midway between
the two end stars of the handle of the plough, is vertically
above, or vertically below, the pole star). The
pole star can be seen from the pointers, from Cassiopeia, or--if the
north stars are all hidden--from Orion, although
Orion is out of sight from May 20 to July 20.
If stars are being used in a compass march, take one
at about 30 degrees altitude. If it is low, it may be lost
in mist and will disappear if you descend into a valley; and
if it is higher, you will get a crick in the neck by
constantly observing it. Do not forget that a star is
liable to swing in a counter-clockwise direction as much
as 15 degrees per hour.
d. In the Desert
One of the most striking resemblances of desert warfare
to naval warfare is in the widespread use of navigation.
Landmarks are few, and at night even these
few are practically impossible to see. Desert navigation
consists essentially of setting a course by compass
and following it by dead reckoning--that is, by
traveling a measured distance. Before commencing a
march, the destination is selected on the map, its compass
bearing is measured with a protractor, and its distance
is scaled off. The compass bearing is then set on
a sun compass, which is mounted on each vehicle.
Distance is measured on the odometer (a mileage indicator),
which must be carefully calibrated and kept
in adjustment. The odometer is geared for a tire of
a particular size. The navigator must therefore check
his mileage indicator against a measured distance along
a road with mile or kilometer marks, especially when
using oversize "sand" tires. He then obtains a correction
factor to be applied to all indicated distances. For
ordinary work this factor may be small enough to be
disregarded. In addition to the above constant-distance
error, the mileage indicated by the same vehicle
may vary by as much as 2 percent, according to the
terrain, the speed, and the load. A good navigator
tries to know his vehicle as quickly as possible.
Foot troops measure the distance marched by counting
paces or using a pedometer. If a dismounted
guide is used, several pace counters are employed. For
night travel, a unit can guide on a star, provided the
officers and men are trained to identify the stars and
planets, and know how they change their positions in
the heavens. A pocket chart is useful.
The marking of routes for night marches is accomplished
as follows: The route is reconnoitered, during
daylight hours if possible, and is marked. Each marker
consists of an oil can, set on top of a stake, with a light
inside the can. A small slit in one side of the can serves
as a marker; the dot of light can be seen for miles to
1 For details on how to use compasses and maps, see chapter 12 of
the Soldier's Handbook. Another excellent source for additional
information on how to maintain direction is a small book entitled Field
Navigation, Part I, Dead Reckoning, published by the Army Map
Service, Washington, D.C.
2 Azimuth: an arc of the horizon measured clockwise between a fixed
point (in navigation, usually the north point) and the vertical circle
passing through the center of an object. | <urn:uuid:d8a2e031-153c-4d41-9fe1-6db20c9cff77> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://lonesentry.com/articles/intelligence-report/maintaining-direction.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.936149 | 3,346 | 2.734375 | 3 |
So many tourism spot that you have been visited, but you will not be forgotten this place, Victoria Falls are the most amazing waterfall on the earth. This place is located in southern Africa. They are really spectacular scenery in awe of the beauty and grandeur on the Zambezi River. These waterfalls are known in the world as “the greatest known curtain of falling water”. You will be amazed because these waterfalls neither the highest nor the widest waterfall in the world, it is claimed to be the largest. They have a width 1.708 metres and a height of 108 metres.
There are many sights that you can enjoy in these waterfalls. You can relish the beauty spot of these waterfalls through the Victoria Falls Bridge or you can see it from the air through micro-light and fixed wing flights. You will see the magnificent natural phenomena from the air; the experience is unforgettable for you. You can swim as close as possible to the edge of waterfalls, when the river flow is at a safe level about September to December. Beside that, you can see two national parks Mosi-oa-Tunya National Park and Victoria Falls National Park where you can see the abundant wildlife like of elephant, buffalo, giraffe, zebra, a variety of antelope, Lion, leopard, Verve monkeys, baboons, hippopotamus and crocodile. Those all will make a great experience for you. | <urn:uuid:4f30e328-2742-49ce-b78b-e4f0f0f40483> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.nzmirror.com/2012/06/21/the-victoria-falls-that-will-not-be-forgotten/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00059-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.952095 | 293 | 2.078125 | 2 |
Daily News Archives
Study on Cancer Mortality of Pest-Control Workers
Pest control workers are exposed daily to a variety of chemicals. All of the pest-control workers in this study where similarly exposed to formaldehyde, ethylene oxide, insecticides, and rodenticides. Consult Beyond Pesticides' fact sheets to see the variety of health problems associated with insecticides and rodenticides. The study determined the long term effects in pest-control workers who had died through epidemiological analysis.
The results of the study showed that for pest control workers with more than 20 years of employment there was a significant excess of cancer deaths. Overall, the research concluded a statistically significant excess of cancer deaths in the pest-control worker population, especially those with longer employment.
Long term pesticide exposure has been implicated in a variety of health problems: cancer, birth defects, infertility, brain damage, other health problems. See our daily news archives for the most recent health information. This current study confirms the growing weight of evidence that supports the detrimental health effects of using these chemicals.
TAKE ACTION: Reduce pesticide exposure by educating yourself and your community about the possible health impacts of using pesticides and adopting safe and effective alternatives. To find least toxic pest-control services try our safety source for pest management. | <urn:uuid:9db2dac7-9b0e-4f6e-8bf5-41eb4a3a3555> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.beyondpesticides.org/news/daily_news_archive/2005/04_26_05.php | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00059-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.942576 | 260 | 2.875 | 3 |
One must never deny that which is going wrong. Indeed, to accept and acknowledge it is itself the first step towards finding ways to reverse the wrong. But nor should one forget that which may be going right. So, what do you think are things that are going right in Pakistan? (Please, keep your cynicism to yourself – it is neither funny nor useful).
Let me give you a very preliminary and a very arbitrary list of five. These are not in order of priority, nor indeed are they the most important five. They are just five things that came quickly to mind. Trivial as they may sound to some, what is important is that each is a sign of societal strength, not of the state’s weakness. Each, therefore, is a sign of hope.
#1. Music. No, I am not joking. Pakistani music is going through an age of amazing innovation and a passionate embrace of all that is socially meaningful. But that, in fact, is not why I list it here. To me the richness of Pakistan’s music scene – here, here, here, here, here, here and everywhere – signifies that innovation is alive and kicking, in fact, thriving. The innovative spirit embedded in today’s music is what is going so very right in Pakistan, and so very worth celebrating.
#2. Media. We at ATP have bashed the media when it over-steps, over-does and over-reaches as anyone else. We believe that is deserved because there is much to be rightly bashed. But there is much more that deserves to be celebrated. Overall, and despite all that needs to be improved, media independence in Pakistan has been a force for the good. It has also often been a force of courage. The media has not just found its voice, it has given voice to society – the good as well as the bad, but a voice that neither relents nor can be silenced any more.
#3. Youth. That Pakistan is a youthful country is a legitimate demographic concern but also the most powerful potential for societal change in Pakistan. But that is a game of numbers and speculation. What is going right with the youth in Pakistan is not that there are so many of them. It is that so many of them are so very active and engaged in the redefinition of all sorts of social contracts. This is not an unconcerned and unconnected youth. This is a youth that is alive with passion and activism. That passion and activism may sometimes come in flavors we do not like, but this is not an indifferent youth. This is a youth that will make a difference.
#4. Resilience. It is sad that the resilience of this people has been tested as often and in as many ways as it has. At one level, the people of this country have no option but to be resilient. But beyond the resilience for survival is the resilience from an indigenous entrepreneurship. Earthquakes. IDPs. Floods. Pakistanis have lived through these not only with a spirit of philanthropy, but with a spirit of entrepreneurship. It is resilience as an expression of the entrepreneurship of survival that is going right. If only we could find a way to convert entrepreneurship for survival into entrepreneurship for growth.
#5. Responsibility. This is the one I will probably get flak for. But if I am right on this then this may be the most important. The fact that we now hear and read so much about not taking enough responsibility for our own actions instead of forever seeking ‘outside’ hands and conspiracies is itself a sign that times have changed. When the pathology of denial was at its peak, no one would dare talk about that pathology. We have not yet fully turned the corner and there are too many who are too eager to divert, deflect and deny. But the tenor of the national conversation today is not a conversation of denial, but one of taking responsibility. It is an uncomfortable conversation for exactly that reason. And for the very same reason, it is also a much more relevant and important conversation for all of our futures. It is a conversation that is, indeed, going right.
My list is longer. My faith in this society and this people is stronger. Even as there is so much around us that is cause for despair, there is also that which must be a cause for hope. Now, you tell us, please, what you think is going right in Pakistan? | <urn:uuid:c248b0ce-b65e-49e5-8664-f5c6bc3863a8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://pakistaniat.com/2011/06/10/pakistan-good-news/?cp=all | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00026-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.979105 | 908 | 1.773438 | 2 |
Cabinet 16: Ernie Webbers Scrapbooks
Malaysia in Pamaero Library Scrapbook, [1950-70].
Almost all of Webbers scrapbooks have his Pamaero Library label on the cover. Occasionally it is the shorter Maero, and in this instance ball-point markings top left (B[urma] Malaya Siam I/C [Indo-China]), with a map depicting South East Asia. The contents of this particular volume are disturbing. Webber has compiled items on latter-day bandits blowing up trains in Malaya, and the atrocities surrounding the Burma (now Myanmar)-Siam (now Thailand) railway, including the well-known bridge on the River Kwai. On the conditions and fate faced by many when this line was built, an unknown news correspondent has calculated that there were 304 corpses every mile; a dead man every 17ft 6 inches. The newspaper account pasted in is headed Line of Death | <urn:uuid:eb68eb15-7168-4f78-8415-717eda0d8433> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.otago.ac.nz/library/exhibitions/all_aboard/cabinet16/image2.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957659 | 198 | 2.25 | 2 |
Rethink Waterloo 2012
published: 2012 | Agenda | Event
93% of CEOs see sustainability as important to their company’s future success. Yet, most do not know how to embed sustainability into their company. (Bertels, 2010)
You are invited to attend reThink Waterloo 2012, an engaging full-day environmental conference that will inspire and explore new business opportunities for corporate leaders in the Region of Waterloo and surrounding area.
This conference aims to highlight the knowledge and experience of leading professionals who have embedded sustainability into their organization or have helped other businesses to improve their footprint. Through the experiences of these leaders we will explore the ethical implications of environmental change, the economic opportunities, and the brand value and reputation shift that comes with the authentic integration of sustainability into an organization’s vision.
Conference delegates will have the opportunity to engage in discussion on these topics through two panels:
The implications of climate change on business: This panel focuses on the specific issue of climate change through the perspective of an accountant, a lawyer, and an insurer. Their insight will include how to reduce an organization’s contributions towards climate change and how to mitigate the subsequent effects.
Embedding sustainability into your business: This panel will focus on the “triple bottom line”, the challenge of synergistically integrating profit, planet and people and its increasing involvement in the forefront of modern business practice.
Closing out the day will be keynote speaker Andrew Heintzman. Andrew is president and co-founder of Investeco and the Chair of the Premier's Climate Change Advisory Panel for the Province of Ontario.
Prior to Investeco, Andrew Heintzman was a co-founder and publisher of Shift Magazine, an award-winning consumer magazine about technology. In his recent book, The New Entrepreneurs, Heintzman profiles entrepreneurs who are developing green technology.
Andrew will use his broad experience to discuss the necessity for CEOs to consider implementing a sustainable business now to benefit environment, economy and society as a whole for the future.
For more information go to www.rethinkwaterloo.org
revised Apr 26/12 | <urn:uuid:b71fe30b-9660-4e92-9b63-ec303a325051> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wlu.ca/docsnpubs_detail.php?grp_id=12304&doc_id=50718 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00025-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.930407 | 434 | 1.679688 | 2 |
So what got this whole movement started? Aside from obvious causes like crashing asset prices and mass unemployment, I think we can find additional causes by looking to popular culture, how it shaped the public's perception of wealth, and how wealth and the wealthy took center stage, just before they all disappeared.
I'm Just Gonna Keep On Dancing
When times were good and most people had enough to get along, the public, especially in the U.S., was more than willing to envy the wealthy. This was the case whether the wealthy individual was a derivatives trader, rapper, actor, or heiress. We had gotten to the point where people were famous simply for being wealthy, whether or not they had contributed anything to the world to generate or even justify their wealth. The mere possession of wealth was fetishized, arguably beyond the level of physical beauty. A famous mantra of the era sums up the ethos nicely: "Money, power, respect - it's the key to life."
During this period, which I would define roughly as the last decade, the residents of Manhattan embraced an exaggerated, almost ridiculous adherence to this "bling culture." To live in Manhattan during this time period was to submit to wealth and celebrity being determinative of your daily experiences. And even the wealthy were peasants here. Real estate prices ballooned to unimaginable levels with 1 bedroom apartments renting at costs that exceeded the average income of U.S. citizens. Manhattan had become the epicenter of American capitalism, and Wall Street was without question its Holy See.
Although there were some economic rough patches over the last decade, in retrospect it seems like a straight shot to the top, at least when compared to the current situation. The salaries of young professionals skyrocketed to create a well educated, highly paid, stimulus addicted sub-culture. And there was nowhere else that young professionals would care to call home than a four thousand dollar a month closet in one of the many coveted neighborhoods of Manhattan's downtown area. With ready access to "bling" that the rest of the hoi polloi could experience only on television, Wall Street's traders, bankers, and lawyers were the fuel of Manhattan's economic engine. The feigning of celebrity through wealth was the apparent end. Conspicuous consumption, designer clothes, and late hours were the means. Without being famous, 6 and 7 figure-earning 20-something professionals could "party like rock stars" at the city's restaurants, bars, and clubs and burn out every ember they had left during the 12 hours a week they weren't working.
Wall Street's riches were no secret to the public. Stories of hedge fund managers receiving compensation in excess of a billion dollars a year were already old-hat by the time the housing crisis got underway. But what reports of wealth never focused on was how the money was made. The story of the rise to wealth was secondary to reports of its present expenditure. Reality TV shows featuring the wealthy, their homes, their boats, and their conquests offer little insight into how wealth is generated. And it seems the public's perception of how wealth is generated has suffered as a result. The emphasis on the present status of being wealthy has left gaps in the story, and seems to justify the presumption that the wealthy are undeserving, that the money just appeared. But this should not come as a surprise to anyone. After all, entertainment is a product, subject to competition, and only the most fit products will survive. So ask yourself, what's more entertaining: a piece on a 28 year-old banker strung out on uppers at 4AM grinding through a power point presentation on the cash flows of some pharmaceutical company; or that same 28 year-old banker drunk out of his mind spending thousands of dollars on bottle service and a raw bar at some trendy club with techno music blasting and scantily clad women dancing on tables? I think we'd all agree that the latter would be an easier sale to the networks.
And Then The Music Stopped
And then it all came crashing down on top of us. What began with the collapse of markets in obscure corners of high finance escalated to a global liquidity crisis, and then a global recession. And now, jobless, and angry, the public remembers that piece about the 28 year-old slurring his speech with a piece of crab hanging off his chin. They think to themselves, "This is who did this to me. This brat making more money than I can count and eating food I can't pronounce." What they don't think is, here's the kid who is the pride of his family, who's worked hard his entire life to get into top schools and get a job at a top bank, working 80 hours a week at a cubicle strung out on uppers to push him through to the next day. And yes, on Saturdays at 3 AM he can be found somewhere on the Lower East Side with a piece of crab attached to his face.
The danger we face is not a lack of understanding or sympathy for the wealthy. Wall Street is not running a charity. People who work there know what they're getting into and don't deserve sympathy for choosing demanding careers. And in any case the thanks come via direct deposit. Rather, the danger we face is shaming the accumulation of wealth. Those who forcefully pursue their own selfish goals within the bounds of the law generate wealth for those around them. This is a tried and tested fact. By succumbing to anger and an easy answer for what went wrong, in the short term we run the risk of being distracted from the more pressing issues before us. And in the long term, we run the risk of discouraging the entrepreneurship and progress that has lifted humanity out of poverty.
This article available online at: | <urn:uuid:7e34b55e-7358-4085-aa96-97ca0757ccf8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.theatlantic.com/business/print/2009/03/the-rising-tide-of-class-conflict/1672/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00035-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.978979 | 1,168 | 2.5 | 2 |
The election of Egypt’s president Muhammad Mursi momentarily threw a spotlight on the long-forgotten Palestinians exiled to Gaza after the Israelis’ infamous siege of the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem in the West Bank 10 years ago.
Still kicking their heels in Gaza the exiles called on Mursi to continue efforts to end the squabble between political rivals Hamas in Gaza and Fatah in the West Bank. They were optimistic that the new Egyptian president would work towards easing Israel’s blockade on the Gaza Strip and press for Palestinians rights, including the right of exiles to return home.
It is expected Mursi will at least allow greater freedom to travel across Gaza’s Rafah crossing into Egypt, the besieged enclave’s only door to the outside world.
How did the exiles find themselves in the prison Gaza has become? In 2002 a young girl from a refugee camp triggered events that led to a 40-day siege of the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem. This is probably the oldest Christian church in the world, built by Constantine the Great and dating from AD330. A member of the girl’s family had been killed by Israeli occupation troops. Grief-stricken, she took revenge by turning herself into a suicide bomber.
The Israelis responded by sending 250 tanks and armoured personnel carriers, F-16 fighter jets, Apache gunships and hundreds of soldiers into West Bank towns like Nablus, Jenin and Bethlehem late at night. In Bethlehem they cut the electricity supply and invaded the old township with helicopter gunships and occupied all key points around Manger Square. Many innocent Palestinians were killed by shelling and army snipers, and the market and some shops were set on fire as troops tried to hunt down suspected ‘fighters’. Civilians tried desperately to hide from the troops and a large number of people took refuge or arrived for other reasons at the Church and found themselves trapped, unable to leave.
A few years ago I interviewed one of the survivors, who recalled that “248 took refuge there. They included 1 Islamic Jihad, 28 Hamas, 50 to 60 Al-Aqsa Martyrs. The remainder were ordinary townsfolk and included 100 uniformed Palestinian Authority workers, also 26 children and 8 to10 women and girls. The Israeli soldiers would not allow them to leave, but they escaped in the first week by a back door.”
Priests and nuns – Armenian, Greek and Catholic – from the adjoining monasteries brought the number to over 300 at the beginning. “Some of them went back to the monasteries but some stayed with us every day for the 40 days.”
The Vatican was outraged. The Greek Orthodox Church of Jerusalem called on Christians worldwide to make the upcoming Sunday a “solidarity day” for the people in the Church and the Church itself, and urged immediate intervention to stop what it called the “inhuman measures against the people and the stone of the Church”.
The Israelis set up cranes on which were mounted robotic machine-guns under video control. According to eye-witnesses eight defenders, including the bell-ringer, were murdered, some by the armchair button-pushers playing with their video joysticks and some by regular snipers.
From the start, said my survivor, the Israeli troops used psychological warfare methods – for example, disorienting noise to deprive them of sleep, bright lights and concussion grenades. They paraded the families of the besieged in front of the Church to pressure them to surrender. They also used illegal dum-dum bullets which cause horrendous wounds and trauma. “Most of those who were killed… it was because of the dum-dums… so much bleeding, and it took so long to arrange to send them to a hospital.”
He said the soldiers fired tracer rounds into two of the monasteries and set the ancient fabric of the buildings alight.
15 days into the siege those inside managed to recharge their cellphones using the mains that supplied the Church towers and call for help. The Israelis had overlooked the fact that this was a separate supply coming from the Bethlehem municipality. Friends responded by sending food to the medical centre. From there it went by ambulance, along with authentic casualties, and was delivered to houses near the Church. At night young girls carried the food in plastic bags from house to house until supplies reached the dwellings nextdoor to the Church. The bags were then thrown from roof to roof. This went on for 6 days until one girl dropped a bag, which the soldiers found. The Israelis, now alerted, shot and paralysed another young man. It put an end to the food operation.
“Inside the Church we vowed not to harm the soldiers unless they actually broke in. When soldiers did gain access and killed one of the resisters, 4 of them were shot.”
Those trapped inside the Church were surprised to discover an old lady living within the complex. She had a small horde of olives and wheat, with which they made bread. So they managed to eke out the food for 28 days.
The Governor of Bethlehem and the Director of the Catholic Society were among those holding out in the Church. According to my survivor’s first-hand account, those inside only opened the door if someone died or was injured. He recalled watching through a peephole and seeing people approaching across the forecourt. “They were from the Peace Movement, 28 of them. By now the world media were watching. 17 were arrested but 11 took a big risk, managing to bluff their way in and bringing food in their rucksacks, which lasted another 4 days, and basic medicines.
The worst time, he said, was the final week – no food and only dirty water from the well. They resorted to boiling leaves and old chicken legs into a soup. He ate only lemons and salt for 5 or 6 days. “Many were so ill by this time that they were passing blood.”
Outside some 15 civilians had been indiscriminately shot in the street or in their homes. The Israelis refused to allow the dead in the Church to be removed for decent burial. “In the end, the Governor decided it was better to be in jail than die. So we opened the door and surrendered on the 40th day. 148 had survived. We were promptly arrested and interrogated.
“13 were exiled to the EU, 26 were exiled to Gaza, 26 were wounded, 26 had surrendered because they were under-age. 8 were killed inside the Church, and with Samir (the bellringer) makes 9. They shot Samir in front of the Church as he came out to surrender.”
The rest were allowed home, including my survivor. “The Israelis said to me, ‘Do you know why you are going home? Because America wants it’.” The adverse publicity had prodded the CIA and EU into taking a hand in deciding the fate of the survivors.
The whole disgraceful episode would no doubt have ended in more carnage if the world’s media hadn’t tuned in and ten international activists, including members of the International Solidarity Movement, hadn’t managed to enter the Church.
I hear that the exiles have not been allowed to work since or receive visits from their families. According to some reports they were not even allowed to say goodbye to their loved ones before being packed off.
What exactly were they guilty of? They may have been Palestinian gunmen but the last time I checked it was perfectly OK to put up armed resistance against an illegal military occupation. Israel’s gunmen happen to wear uniform and are equipped with the best weaponry American tax dollars can buy. They are fond of saying, “We have a right to defend ourselves.” So do the Palestinians. Obviously.
So why did America and the EU lend themselves to this shameful act of exiling… a helpful little boost to Israel’s ongoing programme of ethnic cleansing of the West Bank?
And having got their hands dirty isn’t it time, after 10 years, they cleaned up and insisted that these forgotten men be re-united with their families?
A few weeks ago the Israeli press was practising their usual distortions and telling readers that “the terrorists took shelter in the famous church, and used about 40 priests and nuns as a shield, knowing Israel would not take a chance on inadvertently hurting priests and nuns”.
But for Israel’s gunslingers it had been open season on bellringers and other innocents.
(Stuart Littlewood / www.eurasiareview.com / 30.06.2012)
Filed under: Terrorism | Tagged: Palestine, Revolution, Terrorism | Leave a Comment » | <urn:uuid:585b1b17-7e5b-4a37-b7de-4350b8e71764> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://altahrir.wordpress.com/2012/06/30/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.981506 | 1,817 | 2.59375 | 3 |
What to do in the event of ...
- Fire / Fire Alarm
- Bomb Threat
- Tornado / Severe Weather
- Evacuation / Shelter in Place
- Suspicious Letter / Package / Substance
- Civil Disorder / Riot
- Gas Leak / Odor
- Utility (power) Outage
- Threat Level Red
- Medical Emergency
- Chemical Emergency
- Radiation Emergency
How to safeguard yourself and the University ...
- In An Emergency
- Be Aware, Be Alert
- Be Secure
- Plan Ahead, Be Prepared
- Miscellaneous Questions and Answers
Hospital Emergency Codes
- Code RED -- Fire
- Code GRAY -- Tornado or severe weather
- Code BLACK -- Bomb or bomb threat
- Code ORANGE -- Hazardous chemical, biological, or radioactive incident
- Code BLUE -- Medical Emergency
- Code WHITE -- Snow or weather emergency
- Code YELLOW -- Disaster, either internal or external
- Code GREEN -- Building evacuation
- Code BROWN -- Missing adult patient
- Code ADAM -- Missing or abducted child
- Code COPPER -- Communication Involving Utility Failure
- Code VIOLET -- Violent Situation
The University has several plans in place to address the potential of the national terrorist threat level being raised to Red, or Extreme Risk.
During Instructional Times:
Ifthe nation’s threat level is elevated to red during class instructional times (between 8 a.m. and 10 p.m.), the University will set and announce a specific time after which classes and activities will be cancelled for at least the remainder of that calendar day.
The announcement will be made via e-mail and telephone contact to supervisors. With the cancellation of classes students and faculty will be excused. Faculty are not expected to report or remain at work after classes have been officially cancelled; however, certain faculty members may be contacted based upon their expertise to handle specific laboratory or other special needs on campus.
While classes will be cancelled, all other operations (e.g., clerical, technical, maintenance and other support functions) will continue until the University’s Emergency Operations Center (EOC) assesses the situation.
Until such time as announced by the President that the University is closing, normal non-classroom operations will continue during that day. Non-faculty staff will be advised through their supervisors or department chairs if, or when, they are relieved from duty for their regularly scheduled workday. If the University closes, staff deemed essential for University operations will be told by their supervisors if they are required to remain at work.
Outside of Instructional Times:
Ifthe threat level is upgraded to red outside of instructional times (e.g., before 8 a.m. or after 10 p.m.) classes will be cancelled for at least that day (if elevated before 8 a.m.) or for at least the next calendar day.
Students will be excused and faculty will not be expected to report for work (except for faculty contacted to handle specific laboratory or special needs). The University’s non-classroom operations will be closed except for those employees considered essential for operations.
Essential staff will be advised by their supervisors of their status in advance (e.g., police officers, police dispatchers, stationary engineers) or will be contacted by their supervisors and advised if they are required to report for work given the circumstances.
After the Threat Level has been Elevated:
Ifthe University closes, the closing announcement will indicate the date the University plans to re-open. All faculty and staff whose workday begins after 12:01 a.m. on the specified date the University re-opens are expected to report to work at their regularly scheduled times (e.g., custodial shifts beginning at 4 a.m., maintenance/plant operations shifts beginning at 6:30 a.m., office staff beginning at 8:15 a.m.).
Non-essential staff positions whose start up time falls before 12:01 a.m. on the date the University is scheduled to re-open and ends after 12:01 a.m. on the date the University re-opens would not be required to report to work until their regular shift start time on the date the University re-opens (e.g., a non-essential third shift employee scheduled to report to work at 11 p.m. on a day the University is closed would not report to work until the next day at 11 p.m. when the University re-opens).
Essential employees would be required to work as directed by their supervisors.
Inany event, if the University closes faculty and staff should monitor local media, the University website (www.utoledo.edu) or the University’s closing information line (419.530.7669) for details on changes in operations.
What you should do if UT “goes red”
- Please display your University ID at all times using a card holder.
- Keep ready access to your medicines and phone numbers.
- Understand that cancellations, disruptions, and delays in normal University operations will happen. Please plan activities and events accordingly.
- Remain vigilant, follow media reports closely, and be alert for communication from the University. | <urn:uuid:d8c1df9e-4b01-4e0c-935a-9eb2821d0b80> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.utoledo.edu/depts/emergency/WhatToDo/WTD_Threat_Level_Red.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.921897 | 1,085 | 1.59375 | 2 |
Revised Common Lectionary
The Revised Common Lectionary was prepared by the Consultation on Common Texts (CCT), and consists of a table of readings which gives the liturgical day or date and the Scripture references for the texts to be read. Liturgies are set forms of public worship used in the Christian church.
It is arranged in a three-year cycle:
- year A, the year of Matthew;
- year B, the year of Mark; and
- year C, the year of Luke.
John is read each year, especially around Christmas, Lent and Easter, and also in the year of Mark, whose Gospel is shorter than the others. The sequence of Gospel readings is meant to lead God’s people to a deeper knowledge of Christ and a stronger faith in him.
Along with the Gospel, there is a rich provision of Old Testament material, chosen to illuminate the Gospel and to include important narratives of faith. Acts and the Epistles highlight not only apostolic authority, but Christian experience of and reflection on the grace of God in Christ.
Much of the material is offered in semi-continuous form, which allows a larger variety of passages of the Bible to be read. This return to a greater selection of readings of the Bible is not only a means of combating the decline of biblical literacy, among adults as much as among young Christians, but is a recovery of a liturgical way to lead the followers of Christ through his birth, baptism, ministry, death, and resurrection.
The lectionary presented throughout this website is the Revised Common Lectionary with some adjustments. The calendar upon which it is based, and the principles it pursues, are explained in The Revised Common Lectionary (The Canterbury Press, 1992).
Finding the appropriate Sunday
The heading of the lectionary shows the appropriate cycle, A, B, or C for each Advent-to-Advent year.
The lectionary provides readings for more Sundays than there are in any one calendar year, and not every set of readings will be used in any one year. This is because Easter is a moveable feast, and the calendar of the Christian Year is also therefore moveable, with only Christmas (25 December) and Epiphany (6 January) fixed to particular dates.
As the date of Easter varies from year to year, dates which depend on Easter also vary. You can read more about the moveable dates in the Christian calendar.
Wherever possible, particular dates, between which the readings may occur, have been given in the lectionary. The dates are inclusive. When Easter falls as early as March 22, the readings for the Sunday following Trinity Sunday are those given for the eighth Sunday after Epiphany. | <urn:uuid:a649c90a-7935-4ecb-989e-6df9862832fd> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.churchofscotland.org.uk/worship/starters_for_sunday/revised_common_lectionary | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00065-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953558 | 564 | 3.34375 | 3 |