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Become Their Confidante
To a tween or teen, especially, there's nothing like a grandparent. You're there for her when she needs you most, and you are a crucial adviser about everything from homework to making friends. But building that trust can often feel as arduous as the search for the Holy Grail.
Turns out, forging a special connection with your grandchildren really isn't that complicated, says Bernie Siegel, M.D., the grandfather of eight kids ages 5-12, and the
best-selling author of Love, Medicine and Miracles and Love, Magic and Mudpies, a new book that guides readers through the ups and downs of parenting.
1. Keep Confidences
Whatever you do, don't share something your grandchild has told you with anyone else, including the child's parents -- unless that confidence will compromise your grandchild's safety or health --, Siegel says.
2. Show the Love
When you bestow love and attention upon a grandchild, you're basically offering her someone beyond her parents she can turn to. "You'll become her advocate if need be, which is crucial to her development," says Susan Newman, Ph.D., a social psychologist and author of Little Things Mean a Lot: Creating Happy Memories With Your Grandchildren. "In short, a grandparent's love adds an extra dimension of security for a child in a world that is spinning faster and faster."
3. Never Compare
Each one of your grandchildren is an individual. Some are ace tennis players; others excel at calculus. Love each for their stellar skills and do whatever you can to avoid comparing one to the other. By being supportive, you'll boost self-esteem. For example: "Your cousin Nancy is doing so well in Spanish." Bad. "Want me to help you study your Spanish verbs?" Better. "You'll get the hang of Spanish in no time. When you're done studying, let's check out a Spanish-language film together." Best.
4. Emphasize One-on-One Time
Being alone with a grandparent gives the grandchild a chance to shine and, frankly, show off. "In building a bond and rapport that is at turn fun, funny, and loving, you'll create a bond unlike any
other in feeling and closeness," Newman says. "It's one that teenagers and adults recall warmly for a lifetime."
Next page: 5 More ways to earn your grandkids' trust... | <urn:uuid:16675bf9-e0b2-4f51-bcfc-4abc0e794076> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.sheknows.com/parenting/articles/811782/9-secrets-to-earning-your-grandchildren-s-trust | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00022-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.940586 | 512 | 2.03125 | 2 |
Previous abstract Next abstract
Session 74 - The Quiet & Active Sun.
Display session, Friday, January 09
I examine an interface dynamo model composed of two 1D (radially-averaged) pseudo-spherical layers, one in the convection zone and possessing an \alpha effect, and the other in the tachocline and possessing an ømega effect. The two layers communicate by means of an analogue of Newton's law of cooling, and a dynamical back-reaction of the magnetic field on ømega is provided. Extensive bifurcation diagrams are calculated for three separate values of \eta, the ratio of magnetic diffusivities of the two layers. The two-layer model does not produce a stable solar-like (dipole) butterfly diagram within the range of parameters looked at here. It does however succeed in producing distinct convection-zone and tachocline fields in a ratio proportional to \sqrt\eta, as expected for diffusion across a discontinuity in diffusivity, and the tachocline fields are generally of an acceptably large magnitude. This result seems to hold generally, across a wide range of dynamo numbers. These results are compared to the behaviour of a full 2D interface dynamo, wherein the toroidal Lorentz force can be evaluated properly.
Program listing for Friday | <urn:uuid:35f7366f-3a73-4418-a79b-ad39f7156c66> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://aas.org/archives/BAAS/v29n5/aas191/abs/S074005.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.909144 | 278 | 2.234375 | 2 |
The Computerworld Honors Program, now in its 24th year, recognizes organizations that use information technology to promote and advance the public welfare, benefit society and change the world for the better. This year's 200 Laureates are a heartening reminder of the great things that can be accomplished when determined people put their minds to a task and harness the full potential of technology.
All Laureates were selected after a rigorous application and review process. A panel of judges, made up of IT executives and Computerworld editors, chose five finalists in each category, and from those, one 21st Century Achievement Award winner in each group. The finalists and winners will be announced at an awards event on June 4 in Washington. Each Laureate case study is briefly profiled below. More detailed Laureate case studies become part of the Honors Program's Global Archives, available to researchers, students and scholars through the Computerworld Honors website and through records housed in national archives in over 350 universities, museums and research institutions throughout the world.
Also, read how dozens of the 2012 Computerworld Honors laureates are leveraging low-cost, consumer-oriented technologies to create and deploy systems and applications designed to benefit society, especially in the areas of education and healthcare. | <urn:uuid:7d6d31bd-4a7e-4809-b934-6d8faa235582> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/news/enterprise/3361784/computerworld-honors-2012-laureates-using-technology-benefit-society/?olo=rss | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00067-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.935611 | 250 | 1.789063 | 2 |
Forums · General English Grammar & Vocabulary, Listening & Speaking · General English Grammar Questions
"On behalf" and "in behalf" are both correct, and today most of native speakers, particularly Americans, use them interchangeably. The American Heritage Book of English Usage says, however, that there is this traditional rule: use "on behalf of" to mean "as agent of, on the part of," and use "in behalf" to mean "for the benefit of". Examples: "Robert accepted the 'best performer' trophy on behalf of his sister Angela, who was then on a European singing tour." "The musicians held a benefit concert in behalf of the tsunami victims." The two phrases are actually very close in meaning. So one should not worry about the choice at all.
[quoted from The Manila Times]
Anonymous:'In behalf' does not sound well to me as if it were not true English I ever got used to hear.
<e-mail removed by mod>
: interest , benefit ; also : support , defense <argued in his behalf>
— on behalf of or in behalf of
: in the interest of; also : as a representative of
usage A body of opinion favors in with the “interest, benefit” sense of behalf and on with the “support, defense” sense. This distinction has been observed by some writers but overall has never had a sound basis in actual usage. In current British use, on behalf (of) has replaced in behalf (of); both are still used in American English, but the distinction is frequently not observed.
In the end it is just a matter of considering which kind of English one likes to get involved in- British English, Oxford English or any other English.
English, just like any other language, has taken (and is still taking) all kinds of forms.
"In Behalf" sounds weird to me, though... -:)
Anonymous:Funny, I googled up "On/In behalf of" to check if americans used them interchangeably. In British English in behalf of means for the benefit of (like raining money for a cause) and on behalf represent/agent of.
on behalf of: as the representative of somebody or instead of them. On behalf of the department I would like to thank you all.
The phrase also means in order to help somebody: They campaigned on behalf of asylum seekers.
People are waiting to help.
Live chatRegistered users can join here
Related forum topics:
On the behalf of OR on behalf of?Signing on someone's else behalfOn behalf/in behalf?Error on our behalf?Signing on behalf of a superiorOn behalf or In behalf? which is correct?(I'm) sending this email on behalf of John.?in/on one's behalf ?I, the undersigned, hereby authorize Mr. XYZ to...Signing a letter on someone's behalf?In behalf or on behalf?Letter on behalf of a teacher?Signing of behalf of someone else?On behalf of/in behalf of?
Online chat is available | <urn:uuid:605f1398-311b-4d3e-83ce-ab3602d60719> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.englishforums.com/English/OnBehalfOrInBehalf/bnvhr/post.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00065-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.941873 | 645 | 3.09375 | 3 |
The Enlightenment and
the Industrial Revolution
by Richard K. Moore
One can draw a technical distinction between the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution. However my own historical perspective is that the two are intimately linked, both expressions of the same cultural paradigm shift.
The old cultural paradigm was aristocracy, characterized by the principle of stability. Stability of social position, wealth-level, religious beliefs, estate ownership, technology usage, etc. Not that things actually were stable, but stability was the organizing principle, the mainstream model regarding what holds society together and how an economy functions.
The new cultural paradigm was republicanism, and was characterized by progress and change. Adam Smith and David Ricardo challenged the dominant economic models, explaining why change would be beneficial, and arguing that new models really could work. Stability had been the general model since civilization began, and venturing off into unknown economic territory took some serious justification.
Tom Paine challenged the dominant political model, explaining why royalty had no real claim on legitimacy, and arguing that a people really could succeed in governing themselves. The king was like the captain of a ship. And whether you like the captain or not, you don't really want to be on a ship without one. Somebody's got to be at the helm. It took someone with Paine's eloquence, and ability to speak to the ordinary citizen, to reassure people that republicanism could work. Until Common Sense was published, the majority of colonists were against independence; they just wanted better treatment by the Crown. Common Sense came out in early 1776, and the Declaration of Independence was signed only nine months later, public opinion having been shifted by Paine. Common Sense broke all records in terms of number of copies printed, and was read on street corners (as most people couldn't read) not only throughout the colonies, but in Ireland and elsewhere.
1776 is also the year [Adam Smith's] Wealth of Nations was published, and 1794 is when Eli Whitney got his patent for the cotton gin. The Industrial Revolution was the liberation of innovation in the realm of economics and technology. The ideas put forward by Smith and Ricardo served to justify the economic development that was now possible based on emerging innovations. In fact, it was the innovations that came first, and the justifications afterwards. Innovations in production methods, regional specialization, trade patterns, entrepreneurial initiatives, imperialist methods, etc., had been building for some time.
A generation of 18th Century intellectuals understood that a new paradigm of change and innovation was coalescing in the world of economics and practical affairs. They could see great potential in the new paradigm: the paradigm was basically about liberating practical human creativity. They could also see that this liberation, in economic and practical terms, could not be fully realized within the existing social structures. The liberation of creativity in the economic realm required the liberation of creativity in the realm of governance as well.
What this all amounted to was a liberation of creativity in the realm of thinking itself — the formulation from whole cloth of new conceptual models, and their promulgation into a community of creative new thinkers, eager to consolidate a coherent model of the new paradigm. And these folks knew that the new model could not be sold to the existing regime. The model was politically revolutionary, and it had to be sold directly to the people. It was necessary to appeal to the reason of the 'common man'.
Thus the final step in the liberation of creativity was reached: liberating creativity in the realm of popular thinking. The development of a 'thinking, literate public' was needed to enable the emergence of a revolutionary constituency. And such a public was also essential to the sound functioning of a republican form of government, where ideally the actions of the government are the expression of the will of the people. In such a system, one needs the people to be well-informed and thinking soundly.
The economic and practical innovations came first, leading to successive waves of liberation thinking, which we refer to as the Enlightenment. And those original practical innovations were at the same time the direct beginnings of the Industrial Revolution. It was all a single process, with the yang energy being expressed as the Industrial Revolution, and the yin energy being expressed as the Enlightenment. The two are not separate historical threads, but two strands of a single historical thread, a thread that culminated in popular mass revolutions, and the dominance of the republican paradigm.
As for individualism, it came embedded in both strands. The Enlightenment strand invited the 'common man' to think for himself about 'big ideas', and to see himself as an empowered agent in the affairs of society. As a citizen in a republic, his relationship to the state was as an individual, a thinking voter. In the aristocratic paradigm, one's relationship to the state was mediated by the social fabric, within which one had a 'place' as a member of a 'class'. Meanwhile, the industrial / economic strand was about 'each acting in his own self-interest', rather than 'each following the prescriptions of his traditional social niche'. A top-to-bottom infusion of liberation thinking carried with it an inherent tendency toward individualism.
Today we are once again on the cusp of a cultural transformation. And again, the impetus toward transformation emerges from practical / economic conditions. The paradigm of unrestrained economic development that was unleashed c. 1800, and which was supported by an amazing flowering of scientific and engineering creativity, led to a situation where we have spoiled our own nest on a planetary scale. Unrestrained development became a sorcerer's apprentice out of control, producing more and more, while inadvertently destroying its resource base. Resource limits are the change-forcing condition today, whereas the potential-to-exploit-resources was the change-forcing condition c. 1800. Unrestrained development was one big two-century bubble, and it has now burst.
We have our modern equivalent of Enlightenment thinkers: the ecologists, the whole-system theorists, the purveyors of sustainability consciousness. Whereas the Enlightenment revolution was about discarding constraints, the sustainability revolution is about recognizing the necessity of constraints. Our modern whole-systems thinking can be seen as a delayed rebuttal to Enlightenment thinking. Time has passed, and we can now say, "See, you were wrong, and here's why". The Luddites already knew the rebuttals, but they were unsuccessful in their campaign to spread them.
We have our own version of Enlightenment thinkers, but we don't have our own version of a revolutionary process. As in the Enlightenment, these thinkers know the new model cannot be sold to the existing regime — despite the fact that the regime is today sophisticated enough to misappropriate the buzzwords of the model, as in 'sustainable development', 'renewable energy', and 'green technology'. The new paradigm is again politically revolutionary, and once again a generation of intellectuals has consolidated a model of a new paradigm, and has taken it directly to the people, appealing to the reason of the 'common man'.
What we are missing today is an element of the elite establishment whose self-interest is aligned with the new paradigm. In the Enlightenment all the nouveau-riche entrepreneurs, the worldwide traders, the budding industrialists — and the investment-banking community — had much to gain from the new paradigm. The leadership of the American Revolution came from the top, from those who were already the established colonial elite. It was only the tip-top of the established hierarchy that had everything to lose — the monarchs, the titled nobles, and the apex of the religious hierarchies. This non-productive, parasitic class was past its sell-by date, and yet a truly massive project, involving all levels of society, was required to finally dethrone them.
Today all elements of the elite establishment are aligned with the existing political hierarchy. The visible top Western leadership class has been systematically alienated from its popular constituencies by the processes of globalization, privatization, et al. The Bilderberger process has created a class culture in which those leaders identify with their role in relationship to the shadowy globalist elite, and view their popular constituency as a flock to be managed. Visible Western leaders are dependent on this upward relationship for their political survival, just as third-world dictators are dependent on their foreign backers. The investment-banker class has emerged as the new royal class. Again it is a non-productive, parasitic class. But unlike the royalty of old, it knows how to maintain its tentacles of power in the face of changing circumstances.
In order to develop a viable revolutionary process, we need to go back to Tom Paine and consider his ideas anew. Paine was a thinker apart from the Enlightenment mainstream. He drew a clear distinction between society and government. He, like Adam Smith, was an early systems thinker. While Smith developed a coherent model of a liberated economic system, Paine articulated the systems-nature of civil society. He pointed out the obvious: society does not operate by royal commands, but by its own dynamics as a coherent system, evolved over generations.
He was in fact arguing for the non-necessity of government and the practicality of holographic self-governance, to use modern terminology. The revolutionary leadership was happy to see Paine's ideas promulgated, as long as the anti-government consciousness was being directed at royalty. But once the new republican governments came to power, Paine was discarded, barely missed going to the guillotine in post-revolutionary France, and ultimately died in anonymous poverty. In the same way the Declaration of Independence was discarded, with its legitimization of ousting unpopular governments, and replaced by the Constitution, which was crafted so as to preserve the prerogatives of established colonial elites, and to absorb and co-opt popular unrest. In the same way the essence of Smith's economic model — constraints that prevented monopolization — was discarded, and only the bit about 'pursuing self interest' was retained.
Paine's ideas of society-as-system dovetail with modern systems thinking in ecology, and with the visions of the sustainability / relocalization movement. Paine provides the political dimension that is unfortunately lacking in modern systems thinking. The myth that democracy exists has blinded us from re-examining Paine, and noticing that the self-governance model was long-ago hijacked by the elite-led republican movements, and was replaced by a competitive party model that is itself elite dominated.
The only constituency whose self-interest is aligned with the self-governance model is the popular constituency itself — we the people, the 'ordinary person'. We don't have any establishment allies we can count on, although they will always sound their siren call to distract us from our course, and Obama is today's state-of-the-art siren.
The holographically self-regulating economy must emerge from the local level, informed by the insights of the Transition Towns movement. Similarly, the holographic self-governance process must emerge from the local level — where we the people can manifest our collective will by means of inclusive local dialog, and through collaborative participation in the localization of economic affairs. Our revolutionary process is a holographic process, happening autonomously in each community. When the local has been everywhere transformed, the larger society will have been transformed as a whole, but not by a top-down process as in the republican revolutions.
In order to begin the process of inclusive dialog, we need to reach out to one another across the ideological divides that governments have encouraged, and which individualism has fed into. We need to realize that individualism has ultimately turned out to be politically disempowering, and that re-identification with community and with our role in the social fabric is our path to political empowerment. And we still have the liberation ideology of the Enlightenment, meaning that our 'role in the social fabric' will be a creative role, not a return to the fixed niches of the aristocratic paradigm.
Reaching out across the ideological divides is a matter of consciousness and will, but succeeding at inclusive dialog requires skills that have atrophied in the context of hierarchical governance. In order to overcome our lack of dialog skills, we need to employ the appropriate technologies of facilitated dialog, which fortunately have been under development by far-sighted practitioners in the facilitation field. This appropriate technology is available to us when we are ready to make use of it.
© 2009 Richard K. Moore
This article originally appeared on Richard Moore's cyberjournal mailing list on 2010-01-02.
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A very readable introduction to Tom Paine's life and writings is
Christopher Hitchens' Thomas Paine's Rights of Man (Atlantic Books, 2006)
A copy of the Serendipity website is available on CD-ROM. Details here.
Capitalism Snuffs out the Age of Enlightenment's Candle Capitalism and the New World Order Serendipity Home Page | <urn:uuid:cc697048-4dc5-42d1-82ad-ebb112208ad1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.serendipity.li/capitalism/enlightenment_and_industrial_revolution.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00055-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965763 | 2,655 | 3.0625 | 3 |
|Origin:||disc, from Latin discus 'disk, plate'|
dish1 S3 [countable]
a flat container with low sides, for serving food from or cooking food in [↪ bowl]:
a serving dish
an ovenproof dish
a large dish of spaghetti
all the plates, cups, bowls etc that have been used to eat a meal and need to be washed
do/wash the dishes
I'll just do the dishes before we go.
food cooked or prepared in a particular way as a meal:
a wonderful pasta dish
The menu includes a wide selection of vegetarian dishes.
This soup is substantial enough to serve as a main dish (=the biggest part of a meal).
something that is shaped like a dish:
a soap dish
5 informal old-fashioned
someone who is sexually attractive | <urn:uuid:8b80107b-7d4e-4f54-80b2-51cd7e986f96> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ldoceonline.com/Food+Dish-topic/dish_1 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.932439 | 175 | 2.109375 | 2 |
Cordoba is situated in the interior of Andalusia where past and modernity blend in together. This thousand-year-old city, which has the World Heritage designation, is a living legacy of the different cultures that settled here throughout its history.
Not many places in the world can say they have been the capital of Hispania Ulterior (Further Spain) under the Roman Empire, and capital of the Umayyad Caliphate. This splendour can also be seen because of the intellectualism of this city of knowledge, where figures like Seneca, Averroes or Maimonides were born.
If you walk round the old quarter you will discover a beautiful network of alleyways, squares and white-washed courtyards surrounding the Great Mosque-Cathedral, which reflects the importance of the city in the Middle Ages, and is the symbol of the city. Read more
Without disregarding its splendid past, Cordoba is definitely a modern city that has been able to adapt to the present day, offering the most modern infrastructures and services, as well as a large network of hotels.
Very well connected to the other Andalusian capitals, Cordoba also has the high speed train (AVE) and a very extensive railway network linking it to all the big cities, like Madrid and Seville. Once inside the city, a large network of buses and taxis enable visitors to reach any destination in a few minutes.
Cordoba is also synonymous with art, culture and leisure, thanks to a myriad of cultural events that are organised here throughout the year: Flamenco festivals, concerts, ballet and other activities that are complemented by a number of museums and an exciting nightlife.
Meanwhile, the province is home to important buildings of the Andalusian heritage, whose highest expression is the Medina Azahara, located on the outskirts of the city. But there is great spectacle also for nature lovers. The parks of Sierra de Cardeña in Los Pedroches and Montoro, the Hornachuelos Sierra and Sierras Subbéticas offer the possibility of practising all kinds of open-air sports, while at the same time enjoying the natural wealth of this province.
Cordoba for you
And you can also discover...
All rights reserved. Turespaña / Segittur © 2013
Website managed by: Sociedad Estatal para la Gestión de la Innovación y las Tecnologías Turísticas, S.A. (SEGITTUR) | <urn:uuid:c49558e0-18fa-4a57-8256-a8a93c3c43c6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.spain.info/en_CA/ven/grandes-ciudades/cordoba.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00020-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.928002 | 523 | 1.976563 | 2 |
Whether you use the term "sneaker wave" could depend entirely on your point of view.
People intimately familiar with the ocean's movements — like lifeguards, surfers or oceanographers — might simply call them "set waves," or in the words of lifeguard supervisor Eric Abma of California State Parks in Monterey, "waves that are larger than others."
But if you're pummeled by a sudden wave while carelessly strolling along the beach, the term "sneaker wave" might strike a chord.
That's what happened two years ago, when spectators of the Mavericks International big-wave surf competition in Half Moon Bay were caught off-guard as a set of large waves suddenly came ashore, injuring 12 people. This year, viewing of Sunday's competition will be restricted to the safety of jumbo screens displayed down the street from the beach.
The large surf prediction that triggered a green light for this weekend's contest is also an indicator of prime sneaker waves, which occur every year along the Central Coast and north into Oregon and Washington.
The sudden waves can strike with a force strong enough to knock unsuspecting beachgoers, novice fishermen or tide pool seekers unconscious, and then retreat quickly back into the sea, sometimes dragging people along rocks before they have a chance to swim back to shore.
The waves have killed three people in the San Francisco Bay Area within the past month, including a man and his 9-year-old son who were swept off the
Yet while the larger-than-usual waves seem to come out of nowhere, their formation is a regular part of ocean dynamics, said Curt Storlazzi, an oceanographer and expert on coastal ocean dynamics at the U.S. Geological Survey in Santa Cruz. The waves are the result of wave trains from different storms coming together, he said.
"When you have waves of different frequencies, and when both of their crests line up, the waves are bigger than normal," Storlazzi said. These are set waves. On the other hand, he said, when the waves are out of sync with each other, the two will cancel each other out instead, forming a lull.
While surfers live for set waves, beachgoers could find them a threat instead.
"When people get swept off of rocks on the coastlines, it's usually these set waves," Storlazzi said.
In winter, storms from the northern Pacific Ocean — as far away as Siberia — send large swells to California's shores. If the swells happen to meet up with those from a storm in Hawaii, for example, the combination can make for strong surf conditions here, said Storlazzi, with two 5-foot swells combining to generate a powerful 10-foot wave.
In summer, large waves triggered by winter storms in the southern hemisphere can also lead to large waves here.
But knowledge about the source of large waves won't protect people from being struck by one. Rather, conditions on the beach are the most important things to watch out for, said lifeguard Abma.
"My suggestion is that people do their homework before going to the beach," Abma said.
He warned that steep beaches like Monastery Beach or Carmel River State Beach make for particularly dangerous conditions.
"When waves break offshore, they lose a lot of their energy slowly," Abma said. "But when they hit a steep beach they lose all of their energy at once, and they just explode onto shore."
To make matters worse, Abma said, the steep conditions also cause the waves to retreat quickly, which can make getting back out of the water a tricky proposition.
"At Monastery, people have coined the term 'Monastery crawl,' because crawling up the beach is much easier than actually walking," Abma said.
But the easiest option by far, Abma said, is to avoid getting close to the water at steep beaches altogether.
"We don't recommend swimming or even really going near the water at those beaches," Abma said.
"When you get to the beach, take a look at the signage. Monastery beach has some very specific signs recommending not going near the water."
Abma cautioned, however, that a gently sloping beach doesn't guarantee safe water conditions either, pointing out that swimmers still have rip currents to contend with.
"On a typical beach, a person will be in the water, get stuck in a rip current and not realize it," said Abma. "They'll swim against the current and not be able to get back to shore."
Abma stressed that learning how to get out of a rip current — by swimming to the side — is an essential skill for ocean swimmers.
For those who aren't swimming (or don't intend to swim), the best course of action is to avoid standing on steep beaches, rocks that jut out into the water or sea cliffs that push up against the surf.
From a safe distance, sneakers are just large waves, after all.
Jessica Shugart can be reached at 646-1188 or firstname.lastname@example.org. | <urn:uuid:37d030cb-e96a-4ca0-b05c-5b620b99b25a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.santacruzsentinel.com/outside/ci_22394441/mavericks-surf-contest-prime-time-sneaker-waves | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00048-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964158 | 1,063 | 2.171875 | 2 |
The small wind turbine industry is a small component of the much larger wind energy market, but its growth rate means it will be worth around 0.48% of the market by 2020, according to a new report released by Companies and Markets. The report, “Small Wind Turbines (less than 100kW)-Global Market Size, Analysis by Power Range, Regulations and Competitive Landscape to 2020,” provides a strategic analysis of the market.
Over the past 20 years, wind energy has become a viable alternative to fossil fuels, adopted by over 70 countries. 2010 saw cumulative installed capacities reach 197,712 MW, compared with 24,052 MW in 2001-a 26.4% increase. Yearly installations have grown from 6,652 MW in 2001 to 37,698 MW last year2010.
Small wind turbine cumulative capacities have grown from 105.9 MW in 2006 to 275.8 MW in 2010, and are forecast to reach 3,726.5 MW by 2020. Although small wind power represents just 0.14% of the 2010 market, the sector is set to increase to 0.48% by 2020 as government incentives come into play. North America, Canada and the UK represent 68% of the market, with the UK adoption rate increasing by over 65% between 2006 and 2010. This compares with a rate of just 29.8% for China, but this region is rapidly becoming a key manufacturing base for small wind turbine equipment.
For more information, visit www.companiesandmarkets.com | <urn:uuid:01c06e56-94d3-4c1f-bd5d-1b56c2da7e94> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ceramicindustry.com/articles/print/small-wind-turbine-market-expected-to-reach-3-7-gw-by-2020 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951258 | 310 | 2.40625 | 2 |
New law to promote savings
Michael Appel8 June 2007
Finance Minister Trevor Manuel has introduced the new Taxation Laws Amendment Bill, which aims to help South Africans manage their savings in an environment of rising personal debt.
Manuel told Parliament in Cape Town this week that personal income tax relief would be granted to the public across the board as a result of the "steadily growing economy and administrative efficiencies of the South African Revenue Service".
The tax-free threshold for low-income earners is set to be raised from R40 000 to R43 000, the minister said, while the 18% tax bracket would be raised from R100 000 to R112 500, and the 40% tax bracket from 400 000 to 450 000.
Manuel said the raising of thresholds for taxable earnings would effectively put R8.8-billion worth of personal income back into the pockets of taxpayers.
"Long-term savings for pension, provident funds and individual retirement annuities can now grow tax-free so as to maximise the savings 'nest egg' of future retirees," Manuel said, noting that the most notable changes to the Bill have been in the area of savings.
Another related amendment to the Bill is a new tax regime for lump sum payouts on retirement or death. Under the draft law:
- The first R300 000 lump sum amount will be tax-free.
- Amounts between R300 000 to R600 000 will be subject to 18% tax.
- Amounts between R600 000 to R900 000 will be subject to 27% tax.
- All amounts above R900 000 will be subject to 36% tax.
He added that the exemption for capital gains and losses would increase from R12 500 to R15 000. Tax exemption on donations would also increase from R50 000 to R100 000.
In the interest of making sure that individuals "have sufficient funds upon retirement or to pass onto future generations," estate duty exemption would increase from R2.5-million to R3.5-million. | <urn:uuid:bf2a78e7-d2c7-45a7-b8a8-19c93b131154> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.southafrica.info/business/economy/policies/taxationlaws-080607.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00069-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.947694 | 420 | 1.804688 | 2 |
Beaumarchais the Scoundrel (Beaumarchais l'insolent)
Description: This sumptuous French drama offers episodes from the notorious life of 18th century socialite and playwright Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais. The story begins in the 1770s with a rehearsal of his The Barber of Seville. Young friend of Voltaire, Philipp Gudin introduces himself to the great playwright and offers to become his personal secretary. He then becomes the adventurous Beaumarchais' keeper as the author gets involved in a variety of situations including a duel with an angry husband, his battle with the corrupt French government and a serious long-term affair with Marie-Theres de Willer. It all comes to a climax when King Louis XV assigns the playwright a secret mission to London. There he must find and retrieve a damning document from transvestite aristocrat Chevalier D'Eon. Unfortunately, Beaumarchais gets tangled up with supporting American rebels and ends up tossed in jail. Louis XVI sees that he is finally released and then the writer becomes an arms smuggler for American revolutionaries. All of his activities bankrupt him and so Beaumarchais must return to writing plays.~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
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Enter your email address to sign up or manage your account. | <urn:uuid:1ebf67df-4e75-4122-9e43-0f7e760c7c15> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://fun.familyeducation.com/movies/beaumarchais-the-scoundrel-beaumarchais-linsolent/7069 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.940249 | 304 | 1.601563 | 2 |
5 Questions to a soil scientist
Address: University of Aukurova, Departments of Soil Science and Archaeometry,
01330, Balcali, Adana (Turkey)
Position: Professor in the Soil Science Department and Chairman of the Department of Archaeometry
1. When did you decide to study soil science?
As a boy, it was my great lust to play with the mud of the Ankara Clay and wonder why it was that sticky when wet and extra firm when dry as well as being so red-something which still stirs my curiosity. And later it was the second and third 5-year Development Plans of the country, which were mainly concerned with agriculture and primarily with the preparation of the reconnaissance soil maps of Turkey with all foreign aid poring over to soil survey. This was the moment for a life-time decision, it was the mud in the hand and the cash in the pocket.
2. Who has been your most influential teacher?
The star of my ideals in Soil Science has always been my dear teacher Dr. E. A. FitzPatrick (with a capital 'P'). He gave me a tool to lead me in my difficult days that were followed by great satisfaction in the visual world of soils. I later had the opportunity to add to my knowledge from the FitzPatrick School of Thought some highly valuable knowledge from Dr. A. Jongerius (STIBOKA) on soil structure and its significance in soil quality. Dr. Hari Eswaran was the hard teacher who tried in vain to teach me how to make use of what I had learned up to now.
3. What do you find most exciting about soil science?
I have found with time, that with our basic background in soil science and conceptual approach we micromorphologists have obtained in the course of studying all visual properties of soils, we managed to attain a quality in interpreting all microstructural phenomena in a variety of materials from bones to ceramics and from sediments to concrete. This I find highly challenging for the sake of developing the integrated scientific media that would bring together many disciplines in interpreting processes related to changes soils and/or materials encounter. Combating Land Degradation and Desertification is another upcoming topic with a unique impetus in environmental management, which is based on soil security.
4. How would you stimulate teenagers and young graduates to study soil science?
I would encourage the relevant Ministries and the Universities in the country together with TEMA (The Turkish Foundation for Combating Soil Erosion, for Reforestation and the Protection of Natural Habitats) to develop educational programs as field trips as well as periodic camps for the youth to learn more on soil science. TEMA has already devoted numerous programs for youths throughout Turkey together with the relevant bodies, which can be good examples to other countries. Among these the ones concerning the amalgamated education of the farmers and the representatives of the youth are of high merit.
5. How do you see the future of Soil Science?
I am highly optimistic in regard of the lead soil science has taken to promote the determination of the indicators of land degradation and desertification and modes of implementation by numerous bodies through international meetings and training. However the peak of the impact foreseen via soil science would be the widespread integration of the components of soil and crop quality to the agendas of the leading world establishments that are fighting land degradation. | <urn:uuid:cfd49d62-438d-458f-8c08-713ab2fde079> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.iuss.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=150%3Aselim-kapur&catid=20%3Afive-questions&Itemid=8&font_size=smallfonts | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00053-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.966135 | 693 | 1.734375 | 2 |
China’s “Cancer Villages” Bear Witness to Economic Boom
The river’s flow ranges from murky white to a bright shade of orange and the waters are so viscous that they barely ripple in the breeze. In Shangba, the river brings death, not sustenance.
“All the fish died, even chickens and ducks that drank from the river died. If you put your leg in the water, you’ll get rashes and a terrible itch,” said He Shuncai, a 34-year-old rice farmer who has lived in Shangba all his life.
“Last year alone, six people in our village died from cancer and they were in their 30s and 40s.”
Cancer casts a shadow over the villages in this region of China in southern Guangdong province, nestled among farmland contaminated by heavy metals used to make batteries, computer parts and other electronics devices.
Every year, an estimated 460,000 people die prematurely in China due to exposure to air and water pollution, according to a 2007 World Bank study.
Read more about “cancer villages” via CDT. | <urn:uuid:06e2a185-062b-4b81-9fb6-ef4f22529356> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://chinadigitaltimes.net/2009/09/chinas-cancer-villages-bear-witness-to-economic-boom/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964724 | 242 | 2.546875 | 3 |
My mother used to call out to me in the house as a kid. I’d ask where she was and she’d reply “here”.
It drove me nuts.
You see, when you can only hear in one ear it’s hard to tell the direction a sound comes from and it’s frustrating to be asked to locate someone by sound alone. It’s particularly hard if the sound is coming from above or below you.
After too much of this I would whine “where’s here”. Part of me figured she’d cotton on that way…
A few weeks ago, it was Deaf Awareness week. I’m deaf or hard of hearing, depending on where you draw the line. One ear is totally deaf, the other ear has a 50-60dB loss, which about half of normal hearing. With me, deaf awareness week continues all year!
I’m not an expert on the science of deafness. I’ve got my own scientific interests and I’m not inclined to pour over the details of my “disability”. (I’ve two minds about that term, too.) I thought I might use this blog as an excuse to learn a little more about aspects of hearing and deafness, and pass on a little of what I learn. The early articles will not go into depth, but lay out the scene as context for more detailed posts later (assuming there is interest).
Try this game with a friend. Stand outside and plug one ear. Get a friend to go inside and hide a ringing cell phone, cordless phone or alarm. The lower-pitched the alarm tone, the better. Now go inside and try locate the device by sound, with one ear plugged. (Let me know how you get on.)
Locating direction by sound is more indirect than seeing an object. When you look at an object, the location of the object on the retina of your eyes directly relates to where the object is. Sounds have no direct record of “placement” of the object like this. Instead, your brain uses a number of clever to determine the source of the sound by analysing the properties of the sounds coming into your ears.
The simplest way of locating sound uses the screening effect of your head or body. The signals received by the two ears are compared in your brain. Sounds coming from one side of you are very slightly louder and arrive milliseconds earlier to the ear nearest to the sound¹. It’s really impressive that your brain can pull this off. Your neurons (nerve cells) are much, much slower than sound waves, yet they still manage to compare these signals “in real time”. On top of that, there are all sorts of sounds arriving in your ears at once, yet your brain still manages to match the appropriate sounds. Your brain gets around this by comparing a range of delays of different time lengths in at the same time, in parallel.
The difference in intensity between your two ears is particularly strong for higher-pitched sounds (sounds that have shorter wavelengths). The “acoustic shadow” effect of your head that affects how loud a sound depends on the frequency of the sound, low pitched sounds are harder to locate this way².
Picking out the vertical location of sound relies more on the path that the sound takes to reach your ears. Sounds that don’t go directly into your ear canal (ear hole) first reflect off your pinna, the fleshy outer part of your ear the sticks out on the side of your head. When the sound reflects off these surfaces, the sound waves are altered slightly. When the sound waves that have travelled different routes to your inner ear (and the slightly different times of arrival to the inner ear) are superimposed, your brain is able to determine the vertical location of the sound.
Without having hearing in both ears, you don’t have two sources of input to determine the sound location from.
Another benefit of hearing in both ears is that you are better able to pick out and follow a sound you’re interested in in a background of other noise. People who can hear well in both ears can usually continue to follow a conversation in a noisy place fairly well, provided there is not too much similar or louder sound coming from the same direction as the speaker you’re interested in. If the competing conversations and noises are from different directions, people who can hear in both ears can use their binaural hearing to “track” the conversation that they want to hear by selectively concentrating on the sounds coming from a particular source.
Those without hearing in one ear find this hard. Next time you’re in a pub or noisy restaurant, trying plugging one ear for a while and see how hard it is to follow the conversation. You should find that rooms with a lot of echo are particularly bad.
This particular loss can socially isolate people, leaving them only able to sit and nod in group conversations.
Modern hearing aids are very sophisticated–they’re essentially miniaturised digital signal processing computers–and have a number of ways of trying to assist hearing in noisy environments, including the use of directional microphones and “voice tracking” technology. I hope to next briefly look at the technology used to aid those with a hearing loss, before looking at the details of our brains process sounds.
1. Jan W H Schnupp & Catherine E Carr Nature Neuroscience 12(6)692 (2009) On hearing with more than one ear: lessons from evolution DOI:10.1038/nn.2325 (You’ll need a subscription to Nature Neuroscience or access to a university library to read this; it’s readable for most non-specialists.)
2. A short introduction to location of a sound source can be found at Jeroen Breebaart’s website. Jereon is a Principal Scientist at Philips Research, who previously worked on digital signal processing. (For the curious, browsing the Philips Research website makes for some interesting reading of new technologies under development.)
1. The difference in timing of the two sounds is called the interaural time delay (ITD) and the difference in intensity (roughly, loudness) of the sounds are called the interaural intensity difference (IID). The actual problems of locating the timing of two different sounds and inferring direction from this involve a bit of understanding sound waves and other issues. I hope to pick up on these in a later post, for now I want to keep it simple.
2. This effect starts to be noticed at about 500 Hz and is clearest for sounds higher pitched than about 2 kHz. kHz is short for kilohertz. Hertz is a measure of frequency, how often a thing “cycles” per second. You’ll have heard of the speed of a computer being described in gigahertz (billions of cycles per second). 2 kHz means that the waves of the sound cycle 2 thousand (kilo) times second. Human hearing typically covers the range 20 Hz to about 16000 Hz (or 16 kHz).
Note added after release:
The estimate of the range of frequencies that human hearing covers varies a little from source to source. I have always taken it as been from 20 Hz to 20 kHz, in part for the very non-scientific reason that “20-to-20″ is easy to remember! My main source indicated an upper limit of 16 kHz, so I deferred to that estimate. It has been pointed out to me that this may be low because since older people tend to loss hearing in the upper end of the frequency range, a survey of a whole population will have fewer people with good hearing in the upper range. (Thanks Fabiana.)
© Grant Jacobs, all rights reserved. | <urn:uuid:80692eff-5766-43ae-90d9-2b30bff983b4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://sciblogs.co.nz/code-for-life/2009/10/19/wheres-here-hearing-with-one-ear/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00068-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.947679 | 1,628 | 2.6875 | 3 |
How should we take care of our children's teeth? Children especially the babies are very dependent to their parents. Thus, parents must be aware of the proper care that they should provide. In order to promote oral hygiene, here are some tips that parents can do:
Excellent oral care must be done even before the child develops her first tooth. The baby teeth
begin to grow from the gums when the child reaches 6 months old. But most people start a
favorable oral care before the appearance of the first tooth. Having healthy gums can most often than not guarantee healthy teeth.
Upon reaching the age of 3 years old, children has to have completed their "baby teeth". These are commonly called primary teeth or temporary teeth. The "baby teeth" will begin shed off by the age of 6 years old, that time the permanent or adult teeth will begin to appear.
The gap between "Baby teeth" is normal. It provides space for permanent teeth to grow. Most permanent teeth appear before reaching the age of 13 years old.
Here are some tips on how to keep the children’s teeth under 2 years old healthy and strong:
• Wipe the gums with a towel after that feeding. This will prevent the development of plaque which can cause tooth decay.
• Brush twice a day with water and a soft bristle brush.
• The first appointments must be scheduled before the expected appearance of the first tooth. | <urn:uuid:7e526057-70b2-485b-8f9e-ff43461184d0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://expertscolumn.com/content/parenting-tips-how-take-care-babys-teeth | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00057-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.950885 | 293 | 3.546875 | 4 |
A new study estimates that 10 percent of New Yorkers — about 800,000 people — were sickened with bacon flu last spring. Thomas Frieden, head of the Centers for Disease Control, comments:
That’s a lot of people.
Thank you, Captain Obvious.
What’s great is the New York Daily News is having none of this bullshit of referring to the virus as H1N1. Both the headline and the lead of this article refers to the disease as swine flu. (Via Crossfield.) Link. | <urn:uuid:77814ef4-9cff-43ef-812c-3901e1989a9d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://vegan.com/blog/2009/08/31/estimate-bacon-flu-has-struck-800000-new-yorkers/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953377 | 112 | 1.59375 | 2 |
Information for travellers
APIS / API
In an effort to increase security in the area of international air travel, many countries have instituted an Advance Passenger Information System that affects most international flights.
Carriers that do not comply with APIS/API for flights to and from these countries may be subject to heightened, and more time-consuming, inspections of their passengers upon arrival. For details on these initiatives please see the question and answer segment below.
What is APIS/API?
APIS is an automated data collection system capable of performing queries on air passengers prior to their arrival into an applicable country.
The following information will be collected (all flights) :
- Complete name
- Date of Birth
- Travel document number. (ie., passport)
- Travel document expiry date
Please note the above information is what is currently required. Further requirements may be added.
U.S. flights: In addition to the above, passengers travelling to the U.S. are required to provide the full address (including zip code) where they will be staying while in the U.S. If passengers are connecting with a cruise ship, they should be able to provide the name of the cruise ship and the city/state of point of embarkation. Passengers should be prepared to provide this information prior to arriving at the airport.
How is the passenger data collected?
The data is collected by the air carrier during the check-in process and must be submitted electronically to Customs prior to the passengers' arrival at their destination.
When is the passenger information provided to Customs?
Air carriers must submit passenger information within fifteen minutes after the aircraft departs. | <urn:uuid:13aa6e16-599a-4728-8905-8bc184dbdace> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.airtransat.ca/en/Information-for-travellers/Before-you-go/Advance-Passenger-Information?ID=9&type=voyageur&tmpl=GEN | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00062-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.928617 | 339 | 1.96875 | 2 |
Russian credibility in electronics has long been low. Too many government plans have been announced and not fulfilled. When Russia received a windfall through the export of oil, gas and other energy resources, it gained some serious money for technology investment.
Russia seemed prepared to invest its new-found wealth in a couple of Soviet-era chip companies: Mikron JSC and Angstrem JSC, supporting plans to bring in older manufacturing processes from the likes of STMicroelectronics and Advanced Micro Devices. But then in 2009, Sitronics, the owner of Mikron, shelved plans to build a 300-mm wafer fab equipped with 65- and 45-nm manufacturing processes. The project was supposedly intended to launch in 2010 but was delayed by the global recession.
With the creation of Russia Corporation of Nanotechnologies (Rusnano), investment policy appeared to shift. The plan seemed to be using energy export funds to attract capital-starved western companies to put down manufacturing roots in Russia, thereby importing current technology while creating jobs and infrastructure.
The list of announced deals is growing long and expensive:
2008: Russia's Onexim forms LED lighting joint venture (Optogan)
2010: Rusnano invests in Plastic Logic for Russia (thought to be worth $300 million in the short term, $700 million in the long-term)
2011: Russia backs MRAM startup Crocus ($250 million)
2011: Rusnano draws MEMS firm SiTime to Russia ($15 million)
2012: Rusnano helps close $79 million Quantenna deal
2012: NeoPhotonics deals with Rusnano, plans facilities in Russia ($40 million)
2012: Aquantia closes $35 million Series F funding round
2012: Russia backs Mapper e-beam lithography firm (about $50 million) | <urn:uuid:9059ab07-ec75-4007-a586-75399957eaac> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.eetimes.com/electronics-news/4402951/London-Calling-Russia-starts-to-deliver | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.941997 | 375 | 2.125 | 2 |
The Right Way to Pin on Pinterest and Connect
Pinterest is a rapidly growing social media website where users create and share content in much the same way we collect ideas on a kitchen bulletin board. The more people who use Pinterest, the more interesting Pinterest becomes. Since its launch in March 2010, Pinterest has exploded in popularity. It is now the third most popular social networking site, surpassed only by social media giants Facebook and Twitter.
Pinterest images comes from all over the Web. Pinterest users create "boards" to sort ideas into categories. You might have one board to show your style inspiration and other boards for collecting delicious-looking foods with recipe links, favorite cars, art, typographic quotes, or anything visual. Images are called "pins."
3 Ways to Add Pins
As the site gains in popularity, Pinterest users are questioning what they can legally post. In particular, users of Pinterest should make an attempt to protect copyrighted material. It's not difficult to do once you understand the different paths to adding content on Pinterest.
You can add pins to your boards in three main ways: 1) post original content, 2) re-post or repin someone else's pins, and 3) link to content elsewhere on the Web. Other people Repin or Like your pins, which sends the images speeding over the Internet, where your ideas are shared with people all over the world. Each of the three ways of sharing content on Pinterest presents unique copyright and legal questions.
1. Pinning Original Content
The easiest and legally safest way to add pins is uploading content you created. You are completely within your rights to pin your own photo of your own cupcakes, for example, because both belong to you. Pinning them gives people permission to repin them. It's important to understand, even if you delete a pin or your entire Pinterest account, your repinned content could stay on repinners' boards forever. For this reason, many professionals are very careful about what they post. For the average user, it's not much of a concern, unless you pin something that breaks a law or might cause you trouble personally.
The second way to add content, and most common activity on Pinterest, is repinning. Let's say you come across a photo of someone else's cupcakes, with a link to the recipe. To add this content to your own boards, you must first verify that you are pinning material they had a right to pin in the first place.
Before repinning, ask yourself one question: Who created this? If you click on the pin and find that it came from a webpage the pinner owns, or they pinned from an original source, it's probably okay to repin. Sometimes pinners haven't linked to an original source. In that case, look for the original owner and pin from that site. (See tutorial.)
3. Pinning from other sources
The third way to add content to Pinterest is pinning from other sources on the web. Let's say you see a cupcake recipe created by the person who owns the blog or cooking site where you found it. Once you set up your Pinterest account and upload a badge, you can pin the image directly from that site. Original pinning is one of the most exciting ways to use Pinterest, and it's a great way to get loyal followers. It's also the kind of pinning that requires the most attention to copyright protection.
Realistically, you won't verify ownership every time you repin. There are no "pinning police." However, it's important to take copyright laws seriously and check sources regularly. If someone complains, you at least can show you made the effort to do it right. Pinterest offers more helpful advice on their "Pin Etiquette" page at pinterest.com/about/etiquette.
Pinning With Integrity
These guidelines will help you pin responsibly and with respect for content owners and other users:
- Most websites with original material don't specify whether it's okay to pin. The only way to be sure is to ask. Most people will be overjoyed to share and will ask only that you include a link. It's probably not feasible to check every time so just make sure you include the proper original link. They can always ask you to take the pin down.
- Some sites include a "Pin It!" button, which gives you undeniable permission to repin without asking. When you see this button, feel free to pin away!
- Website owners can block pins. If you can't pin from a site, this might be why. To make sure you stay within your rights, do not pin in this situation.
- If someone asks you to take down a pin, it's best to do it. Sometimes content owners go straight to Pinterest with removal requests. Pinterest may delete your pin without asking you. Remember, Pinterest isn't the bad guy; it has to follow rules, too.
- If it's illegal outside Pinterest, it's illegal inside Pinterest. No pornography, violence, slander, or infringement of other people's privacy.
- Even though some things are not illegal, it's a good idea to follow ethics and morals you would follow anywhere.
The Internet is full of exciting new technologies and new ways of looking at the law. In some cases, the law will have to evolve to fit these changes. Online copyright and intellectual property issues are being hotly debated now. Watch for policy changes on sites like Pinterest to make sure you are following the most current rules. As long as you do so to the best of your ability, you probably have nothing to worry about. Use common sense about what's okay to pin, and have fun with Pinterest. | <urn:uuid:30a4caa7-4f7b-48be-a287-ec054361795a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://websitecompass.com/04t-ctcn/index.php?body=magazine/1203sb.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00071-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.945092 | 1,163 | 1.867188 | 2 |
President Obama recently told a crowd at a community college in Maryland: “there is no such thing as a quick fix when it comes to high gas prices. There’s no silver bullet.” He could have been referring to releasing oil from the strategic petroleum reserve or he could have been arguing against a policy of encouraging more domestic drilling or both. Contrary to the President’s statement, there is a silver bullet, which economists call rational expectations, but it does not always work in the direction the President would like.
The President’s comments are a reaction to rising gasoline prices, which have produced two conflicting positions. One is that increased domestic drilling for crude oil, which would increase the supply of oil, would not cause the price of oil and gasoline to go down. The other is that releases from the strategic petroleum reserve (SPR), which would also increase the supply of crude, would lower crude oil prices and gasoline prices. So which was is it? Either supply matters or it does not.
One of the arguments against domestic drilling says that more drilling and oil production will not push oil and gasoline prices down because the process takes too long. In 2008, President Obama’s Campaign for the Future said: “New drilling wouldn’t bring the first drop of oil to market for at least 10 years—and they know it. Normally, it takes years—to set up operations, dig test wells, and build a functioning oil rig—before any oil goes to market. So it would take 10 years before any oil is pumped out of new offshore wells, and about 20 years before those wells would reach peak capacity.”
A recent article in the Huffington Post reemphasized the mantra: “It’s not going to change the price of oil overnight, and it’s probably not going to have a huge impact on the price of oil ever,” said Mike Lynch of Strategic Energy and Economic Research, Inc., referring…to expanding all U.S. drilling.”
This line of reasoning ignores an important economic theory called rational expectations, an economic theory that “the expectations of individuals are rational if they take fully into account the available and relevant information.” Here is how it works. If the President announced tomorrow that he was signing an executive order opening up all federal lands and offshore areas for oil and gas drilling and expediting the permitting process and restraining the EPA from enacting new oil and gas regulations, the price of crude oil and gasoline would drop immediately due to rational expectations. In other words, the operation of rational expectations would provide the “silver bullet” that would immediately lower crude oil and gasoline prices.
As for releases from the strategic petroleum reserves, rational expectations work in the opposite direction. Many have argued that releases from the SPR will reduce crude and gasoline prices. For example, the Center for American Progress recently stated that “There is one proven tool for temporary reductions in oil and gasoline prices, and can lower prices to help middle-class families: selling oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.
The problem is that rational expectations produce perverse results in the case of releases from the SPR, causing the price of crude to go up, not down. This results because the market knows that the United States will have to enter the crude oil market to replace what has been released which increases the demand for crude oil. Until the oil is replaced, the U. S. is also more vulnerable to supply disruptions, adding additional uncertainly to the market.
The importance of rational expectations to oil prices is seen when problems heat up in the Middle East or North Africa, as they have recently, and expectations shift toward a concern about the instability of future crude oil supplies coming out of those regions. Similarly, the mere forecast of a hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico causes crude oil prices to increase due to the expectations that offshore platforms will shut down and reduce the supply of crude oil on the market.
The bottom line is that opening up more federal lands and offshore areas and encouraging increased domestic drilling will lower world oil prices sooner than later. The mere announcement of this policy is all it takes. There is a silver bullet. Will the President use it? | <urn:uuid:b51691fa-dcc0-4f39-bf1b-ba0b9ec1d567> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://edireland.com/there-is-a-silver-bullet-for-high-gasoline-prices/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00053-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967664 | 856 | 2.375 | 2 |
The last decade has seen an evolution of what has become known as sustainability consulting: Corporate demand for expert advice on social responsibility, environmental impact mitigation strategies, environmental or socially-minded re-branding efforts development of new product and marketing strategies to serve environmental markets and internal and supply-chain assessments that have led to improved efficiencies and regulatory risk mitigation.
Initially led by boutique firms (headed by professionals with personal passions for environmental or social causes and career histories to match), larger firms (accounting, legal and traditional corporate consulting) soon entered the market, redirecting existing personnel or acquiring new expertise and applying their traditional business models to market demand for sustainability services.
The question, however, is whether there will be continued demand in the future -- i.e., is sustainability consulting sustainable?
The Drivers of Change
Over the past decade, mega-trends like globalization, e-commerce and information technology have fundamentally impacted businesses and markets. Over the next decade these and an expanding number of powerful drivers of market change will place a higher priority on foresight, innovation and adaptation -- by both companies and the consultants that seek to serve them. Among the key issues:
• Planetary Constraints. Population growth, land and agricultural stresses, growing stresses on water quantities and quality, extreme weather -- and social and regulatory responses to all -- will challenge markets and businesses in the 21st Century. Threats to the economic and political stability of the markets for companies' goods and services.
• Energy Dynamics. Rising populations, expanding middle class populations and increased urbanization will increase demand for modern energy services and the resources upon which they rely. These demands will have consequences for national and world economies, geopolitical relations as well as the environment.
• Information Flows and Expectations for Radical Transparency. The combination of changing stakeholder expectations and the power of social media will have impacts on corporate governance and transparency.
• Social Megatrends. Changing demographics and consumption, urbanization, population aging, deteriorating air and water quality with resulting health impacts, the liberalization of autocratic economies -- and the social and political responses to all -- will change markets and demand new business strategies.
• Market Push: Governmental Response. Governments around the world will respond to these global changes. Environmental regulation, trade policies, incentive structures, performance standards and disclosure rules are already business-impacting; their business relevance will only increase.
• Market Pull: Response of Global 100. Many of the world's largest multinational corporations are putting new demands on the companies in their supply chains far faster than governments are able to craft regulations.
Next page: The nine skills sustainability professionals need | <urn:uuid:e57cd394-fd16-422c-854e-db2966e53ff7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.greenbiz.com/blog/2012/03/09/skills-sustainability-consultants-need-succeed | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.929717 | 534 | 2.25 | 2 |
Ancient Egyptian socks, circa 250-420 AD.
The Romano-Egyptian socks were excavated in the burial grounds of ancient Oxyrhynchus, a Greek colony on the Nile in central Egypt at the end of the 19th century. They were given to the Museum in 1900 by Robert Taylor Esq., ‘Kytes,’ Watford. He was executor of the estate of the late Major Myers and these items were selected among others from a list of textiles as ‘a large number of very useful examples.’
Single-needle knit. Bright red. Amazing. Via The Smithsonian’s Threaded blog.
This is part of a shameful Republican disinformation campaign to systematically deny real science, diabolically combined with their effort to eliminate PBS.
HELP TRUTH PREVAIL!
Help spread the word that, in actuality, these are the ancient remains of Big Bird’s long-extinct ancestors.
Vote Democrat to let SCIENCE and PBS shine!
This is what’s left of the House Finch nest that was safely perched under the awning above my back patio.
I’ve spent all spring watching Mrs. Finch build that nest while Mr. Finch stood guard, and then sometime last week Mrs. Finch sat herself down and laid some eggs, and there she stayed, except she’d freak out and fly away anytime I walked past my kitchen window or went out back. But generally, she was there resting comfortably.
On Saturday I noticed some unidentified birds (slightly larger than the Finches, brown/tan/white, black throat) flying under the awning and disturbing the peace while Mr. Finch sat on his post chirping at them and flying towards them to try to scare them away. They generally didn’t stick around for more than a few minutes.
I can only assume those assholes attacked while I was at work today. They’re the prime suspects, though some research has shown that Crows are also predators of songbird eggs, and there are plenty of crows around. Three eggs were broken. One egg is in tact but with no nest there’s no chance of survival. This makes me sad. | <urn:uuid:4e03e086-67d7-4860-a5de-3372242f6b08> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://smartasshat.tumblr.com/tagged/bird | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00028-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963787 | 465 | 1.9375 | 2 |
"It levels the playing field for our faculty in competing for grants because funding agents know that we have the fastest research network connectivity available."
FSU on track with high speed LambdaRail network
by Jill Elish
This is not your father's Internet.
The Florida LambdaRail Network, a next-generation Internet that is faster than any other education-based network in the Southeast and is among the top in the nation in speed and capacity, is now operating at Florida State University and nine other universities in the state.
FSU was a leader in establishing the network, which can move information at speeds of 10 gigabits per second and has space for a total of 32 10-gigabit networks, or channels. It has 100 times more capacity than what was available to the universities previously—capacity that they will be able to purchase at a fraction of the current cost.
"This gives us a networking speed we could not even dream about just three years ago," said Larry Conrad, chair of the Florida LambdaRail Board and associate vice president and chief information officer at FSU. "Before, it would have taken days to download multiple terabyte files. Now it will take a few hours."
Whether probing elemental particles, cataloging images or sharing climate data, more and more scientists rely on massive data vaults located at universities and institutions around the world.
"The LambdaRail conquers space," said FSU Vice President for Research Kirby Kemper. "Collaboration between people widely separated by distance becomes as easy as working with someone just down the hall. Data files previously too huge to send across the Internet will flow as easily as e-mail from one desktop to another."
Kemper said many FSU researchers are involved in projects that involve sending large volumes of data over the Internet. FSU's participation in the LambdaRail is crucial to the success of the projects. For example:
Florida LambdaRail is part of the National LambdaRail, an initiative to create a national high-speed information infrastructure for research universities and technology companies. Similar regional optical networks are under way or have been completed in other states—but Florida's network is the only one fully created, funded and controlled by a group of universities, according to Conrad, who was one of the founders of FLR.
"This puts us on equal footing with the best research institutions in the nation," he said. "It levels the playing field for our faculty in competing for grants because funding agents know that we have the fastest research network connectivity available."
Besides FSU, the private and public universities in the FLR consortium are the University of Florida, Florida Atlantic University, Florida Institute of Technology, Florida International University, Nova Southeastern University, the University of Central Florida, the University of Miami, the University of West Florida and the University of North Florida.
The network relies on so-called dark fiber, existing buried fiber optic cable, to connect the universities. Strategic partners include Cisco Systems, which provided high-speed optical electronics, routers and other equipment and Level3 Communications and FiberCo, an Internet2 fiber holding company. FiberCo facilitated FLR's purchase of 1,540 route miles from Level3 Communications. | <urn:uuid:ccda314e-e516-4e09-af92-2826d0f1137c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.fsu.edu/news/2005/06/29/lambda.rail/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00064-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.94903 | 654 | 2.125 | 2 |
Judging from Obama's actions at this years National Association of Latino Elected Officials (NALEO) luncheon, Obama's newest fear is Latinos with forks. Obama had the Secret Service confiscate all the dinner forks from the participants at the June 22 event held in Orlando, Florida.
Several participants Tweeted that butter knives were banned outright and forks were confiscated as soon as the diners finished eating and before the President entered the room to speak.
The attendees were elected officials and their staffs, not just the average Jose off the street. Nevertheless, Obama took away their forks as if they were inmates at a prison. Many of these elected officials are probably wondering why the president was concerned for his safety.
Dan Amira of New York Magazine showed photos of the many times Obama has been in a room with "fork wielding strangers." If a republican president had done the same thing, it would have been treated as prima facie evidence of racism.
The obvious mistrust that Obama has for these elected Latino officials will go practically unnoticed by the Old Media as it chugs along aboard the Obama express. | <urn:uuid:5e012cb4-2d9e-488f-aea7-d23e55a268e2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2012/06/22/Confiscated-Obama-Afraid-Latinos-Will-Attack-Him-With-Forks-At-Luncheon | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00070-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.987864 | 224 | 1.507813 | 2 |
Several weeks after Governor George Pataki, in his State of the State address, spoke with pride about how New York had "established and met an aggressive timetable" for the rebuilding of lower Manhattan, Mayor Michael Bloomberg, in his State of the City address last week, spoke of his impatience at the slow pace of rebuilding: "We need this now!"
This is not all they see differently. Pataki has stuck by the idea of shoring up the area's status as an international finance center by replacing all the office space lost on 9/11 at Ground Zero. Bloomberg believes that the market for so much office space no longer exists, and that there should be retail stores, residential buildings, and hotels added to the mix to make Lower Manhattan an around-the-clock neighborhood.
Pataki in his speech credited the success he sees in rebuilding to the spirit of "true New Yorkers" who "dared to transcend the challenges before us"; Bloomberg, however, in his speech seemed to blame what he describes as the failure of the process on a single person: Larry Silverstein.
"We need to push aside individual financial interests and focus on what's best for our city," he said, calling for Larry Silverstein to give up his right to develop the entire site so that it can be built up more quickly.
It is not the first time that egos have clashed over Ground Zero. Indeed, it is possible to view the entire rebuilding process as a shifting parade of personalities. Individuals were symbols from the moment of the terrorist attack on September 11th, 2001, when the public was shown "portraits of grief" of each victim, and the world saw the rescue workers as heroes. The people who are now at center stage are those charged with rebuilding the World Trade Center site, and to many New Yorkers, they, too, have become symbols -- symbols of the stagnation, confusion and conflict in the rebuilding process.
Pataki will leave office by the end of 2006. Bloomberg, who hasn't had a large role in rebuilding, now has declared a commitment to getting more involved. The balance of power downtown seems to be changing, and not just at the top. A slew of new board members have been appointed to the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, and some new architects have been brought aboard. As these newcomers arrive, some of the old hands are either fading away -– or storming off.
Those involved in Ground Zero have conflicting short-term priorities, differing long-term visions, and distinct avenues of power available to them to accomplish their goals. How they interact will make a major difference in what happens over the next year, and what Ground Zero looks like years from now.
GOVERNOR GEORGE PATAKI…
Governor George Pataki has been in charge of development at Ground Zero for four years. He has until the end of 2006 to leave his mark on the site.
For the last four years, Governor George Pataki has held formal control over the rebuilding process, and has chosen to associate himself closely with what is happening at Ground Zero. As a result, many blame the governor for the lack of progress.
But Pataki wrapped up his State of the State speech by celebrating what gains have been made.
For good news, Pataki first looked beyond the site, noting that $10 billion worth of construction is underway nearby. By the governor's account, 75 large companies and thousands of smaller ones are moving downtown, or staying there. Perhaps most significant is Goldman Saks, which has committed to building its headquarters directly across from Ground Zero, after backing away from the idea last fall.
But Pataki's main focus has been on rebuilding the site of the World Trade Center itself.
…And the Architects
Libeskind designed the master plan for Ground Zero, but has had only
mixed success getting it implemented.
Peter Walker and Michael Arad worked together to design the memorial, which still has major fundraising issues to overcome.
David Childs has designed – and redesigned – the Freedom Tower. Because of security concerns, the current design is far removed from what was initially proposed.
Of all the architects involved in rebuilding, Santiago Calatrava has had the easiest time. His transportation hub has provoked little controversy, and is going ahead on schedule.
Since the Twin Towers were destroyed in 2001, world famous architects have flocked to the site. But most of their projects have been bogged down. Almost two years after the ceremonial start of construction, it is hard to find evidence of much actual building. Of all the big plans, only 7 World Trade Center has made progress significant enough to be noticed by the untrained eye.
Daniel Libeskind was selected to become the master planner in a high profile international design competition, but lost his bid to design the Freedom Tower. Since then, his master plan has seemed to become ever less central to the site's actual development. Today, the guidelines that he was supposed to develop for architects building towers on the site have yet to be put in place, threatening to marginalize his concept for the site permanently.
David Childs has the distinction of being the one architect to design a building that has been built at Ground Zero -– 7 World Trade Center. But he too has run into problems. His design for Freedom Tower was declared unsafe by the New York Police Department, and the building was redesigned to sit on top of a windowless, concrete block ten stories high.
The only part of the rebuilding project that has gone smoothly is the transportation hub. Its architect, Santiago Calatrava, has been working with the Port Authority, and his plan is quietly moving ahead on schedule.
The memorial has caused considerable controversy, but so far has avoided a drastic redesign. It is not without problems, however, the most immediate being funding. The World Trade Center Memorial Foundation is in charge of a $500 million fundraising campaign, and is scheduled to take over responsibility for the memorial from the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation once it moves from the planning stages to construction.
That does not mean the memorial is a done deal, though. While it has yet to undergo a major rethinking, experiences with the Freedom Tower and, even more drastically, the planned cultural center, show how quickly things downtown can change.
Norman Foster is the newest addition to a lengthy roster of famous architects working on the site. He has been commissioned to design an office tower for Larry Silverstein.
Frank Gehry is supposedly designing a cultural building for Ground Zero, but it is uncertain that the project will go through. Last fall, he described the project's position as "precarious"
Gretchen Dykstra heads up the World Trade Center Memorial Foundation, which is in charge of constructing and maintaining the Ground Zero memorial.
… And Culture and the 9/11 Families
Debra Burlingame, whose brother died on 9/11, played a major role in striking down plans for a Ground Zero cultural center with an opinion piece she wrote for the Wall Street Journal. The campaign that followed showed the continued clout of organized groups of family members of 9/11 victims.
Tom Bernstein's idea for an International Freedom Center for Ground Zero was shot down last fall. He quickly declared the center out of business.
Bernstein's business partner at Chelsea Piers, Roland Betts (who is most famously a long-time friend of George W. Bush), resigned from the board of the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation over the conflict surrounding culture on the site, saying the board's "ongoing role has been severely marginalized"
The original plan for Ground Zero placed a heavy emphasis on cultural development. Then Debra Burlingame, whose brother was the pilot of the plane that crashed into the Pentagon on 9/11, wrote an opinion piece for the Wall Street Journal last June objecting to what she saw as the inappropriate political message being promoted on the site. The article inspired others who felt the same way to mount a campaign against the International Freedom Center and the Drawing Center, the arts institutions that the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation had invited to move to Ground Zero.
Responding to such pressure, Pataki effectively forced the two institutions from the site last fall. This brought into question whether culture will continue to be a part of the project. The planned cultural center has been redesigned. It is now to take up less than a third of its original size, and is being described as a visitors' orientation center.
This change has earned the governor some harsh criticism.
“The promise of culture at ground zero was in many ways the boldest part of the master plan for the site," wrote Eleanor Randolph and Verlyn Klinkenborg of the New York Times editorial board. "It took courage to propose it, and it would have taken courage to sustain it. Instead we have watched that courage drain away over the past year."
… And the Next Governor
|Many are beginning to wonder what Eliot Spitzer – or whoever the next governor will be – wants from Ground Zero.|
Governor Pataki's is planning to run for president in 2008, and lack of visible progress would be an enormous political liability. There is the widespread expectation that he will put a high priority on getting tangible progress started on both the Freedom Tower and the memorial. But some fear that the governor, feeling the need to get something – anything – built by the time he leaves office, will make damaging sacrifices in the name of speed.
But some are already looking ahead to Ground Zero post-Pataki. The New York Post has already fired the first shot across the bow of the man many see as the frontrunner to become governor next year, state Attorney General Eliot Spitzer. Steve Cuozzo criticizes Spitzer for his public spat with Lower Manhattan Development Corporation chairman John Whitehead. "The harm he's done to replacing the World Trade Center" by picking a fight with Whitehead, writes Cuozzo, "is incalculable."
For his part, Spitzer has said little about his ideas for lower Manhattan. But as the end of Pataki's term nears, it is something more and more people seem interested in.
"Certainly you hear more and more people saying 'what does Eliot want from Ground Zero?'" said David Kallick of the Fiscal Policy Institute.
MAYOR MICHAEL BLOOMBERG …
Mayor Michael Bloomberg wants a bigger role in the rebuilding at Ground Zero, and his ideas differ from those of the governor..
While Pataki has been held accountable for the lackluster development at Ground Zero to date, Mayor Michael Bloomberg has been criticized for not getting more involved. But Bloomberg's approach is changing, and as it does it is becoming clear that the mayor sees Ground Zero differently than the governor. While Pataki has focused his attention on the large-scale and the iconic, Bloomberg seems more interested in what happens at the street level and what the smaller towers planned for the site are used for.
… And the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation
THE MAYOR'S APPOINTEES:
Daniel Doctoroff, deputy mayor for economic development, previously served at the mayor's liaison on the board.
Amanda Burden is the head of the city's planning department, a role that will likely be important in decisions about whether to close streets planned for Ground Zero.
Marc Shaw was Bloomberg's deputy mayor for operations. He has since moved into the private sector but remains on the board.
Martha E. Stark (left) is the mayor's director of finance.
William Rudin (right) is the chairman of the Association for a Better new York.
Lawrence Babbio, Jr. is the vice-chairman and president of Verizon..
In the last year, several members of the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation have left, leaving Mayor Bloomberg and Governor Pataki with open spaces to fill.
Bloomberg did so immediately after his reelection. The mayor appointed four members of his administration and two business leaders, while the governor appointed two high level state officials.
THE GOVERNOR'S APPOINTEES:
James Kallstrom is the governor's senior counterterrorism advisor
Bloomberg's appointments were "a political change of the highest order," said Ric Bell, head of the local chapter of the American Institute of Architects,
At the same time, however, Mayor Bloomberg questioned whether the corporation really makes a difference. This is a view that has been expressed at times from everyone from the governor to the civic groups involved in the redevelopment of lower Manhattan. The board has not been able to gain much independence from Governor Pataki, and has been shot down on the few occasions it has tried. Further, the corporation's power seems likely to decrease as time goes on.
The Lower Manhattan Development Corporation was established soon after 9/11 to preside over the planning process at Ground Zero, and was also given $2.7 billion in federal funding to distribute to encourage post 9/11 economic development. It was intended to be temporary. Most of that money has been given away; there is only $300 million left. Of that, only about $45 million generally dedicated to economic development in lower Manhattan has not been earmarked for specific projects.
The Lower Manhattan Development Corporation also has limited funding left for operating costs, and it is likely nearing the end of its life. It will be a major player until that time, however, believes Petra Todorovich of the Regional Plan Association.
"When an organization has an end date, it has lessened relevance," she said. "But the [corporation] has some important work ahead of it."
… And the Rest of his Administration
Like the mayor, Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly has an important bully pulpit. His concerns about security at the Freedom Tower forced that building to be redesigned.
Mayor Bloomberg does not have the formal power over Ground Zero that the governor does. But there are other ways, both formal and informal, for the city to assert itself in lower Manhattan.
First off is the mayor's ability to draw attention. Presumably, any sustained public effort by Bloomberg could change the course of development at Ground Zero.
Another public office that comes with a powerful bully pulpit is that of police commissioner. Raymond Kelly, who currently holds the position, stopped development of the Freedom Tower in its tracks when he decided last year that the building's design was unsafe. Immediately, plans were redrawn to address his security concerns.
Finally, the city holds formal power over its streets. The planning department also has to sign off on street closings. Currently, the Port Authority wants to change the plan to extend Cordlandt Street through the site, building an enclosed mall in its place. To do so, the authority will have to get commissioner (and LMDC board member) Amanda Burden's approval. City planning has opposed the idea.
LARRY SILVERSTEIN AND THE PORT AUTHORITY
Larry Silverstein says he has a obligation to rebuild office space at Ground Zero, and the money to do it. But he is under increasing pressure to share the space with other developers.
Anthony Coscia and the Port Authority have asked that Silverstein give up control of part of the site in exchange for lower rent.
Larry Silverstein has been a fixture at Ground Zero since he acquired the development rights to the World Trade Center soon before it was destroyed. Because his contract obligates him to rebuild the office space lost in the attack – and because he has billions of dollars from insurance to do so – Silverstein thinks he should be allowed to rebuild the entire site.
Others disagree, including both Mayor Bloomberg and the Port Authority. In December 2005, Bloomberg decided against granting Silverstein the remaining $3.5 billion pot of Liberty Bonds, tax-free bonds allocated for downtown development.
Pataki stepped in and granted Silverstein half of the bonds, but said Silverstein and the Port Authority – which owns the site – would have to work out their problems in 90 days (which would put the deadline in March). The Port Authority and Silverstein differ on how much he will receive in development fees, who will pay for infrastructure at the trade center site, and what will happen on the sites of three planned towers.
Bloomberg says that Silverstein is holding up progress by insisting he can develop the entire site. The developer should cede control over two of the five towers that are included in the official plan for the site. By doing so, Silverstein would be able to focus on building the other three towers quickly –- and the Port Authority would reduce his rent. Other developers could then immediately build a mixture of retail, commercial, residential and hotel use that Silverstein is uninterested in building himself.
The Port Authority has already floated this idea to Silverstein, who rejected it several months ago. He argues that infrastructure is not in place to build up the site today. Some agree, and criticize Bloomberg for placing too much of the blame for the lack of progress on the developer. Some have flinched at the city essentially calling for Silverstein to be stripped of his legal rights because he doesn't agree with the mayor. Others fear that Bloomberg is going to slow down the process by bringing in the last thing the site needs –- more people. | <urn:uuid:095875d6-fd3c-4414-8d38-4fc35453e1e1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.gothamgazette.com/index.php/topics/health/3138-portraits-of-rebuilding | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.971466 | 3,590 | 1.75 | 2 |
In every place where people live, the surrounding environment has a profound effect on the way people act and live. When large amounts of people live in a certain area the environment dictates the development of intricate and unique ways of acting and interacting, and those people can be considered as having their own culture. Everyone has their own culture, and the people of Japan are no different. Ever since the first humans came to the islands now known as Japan, a culture has been developing and the geography of Japan has been shaping that culture. The purpose of this essay is to examine how the oceans surrounding Japan, one of the most prominent geographic features, have affected and molded the Japanese culture in both the past and present.
Since Japan consists entirely of islands, this means that it is completely surrounded by oceans. There are four main oceans: the Sea of Okhotsk to the north, the Pacific Ocean to the east, the East China Sea to the south, and the Sea of Japan to the west. The stretch of sea between Japan’s lower islands and mainland Korea spans roughly 100 miles, and it is roughly 450 miles to reach China (Reischauer and Jansen 1995, 31). In the seas exists two main ocean currents, the warm Kuroshio Current from the south and the cold Oyashio Current from the north. These currents have drastic impacts on weather, causing typhoons in the Sea of Japan, large amounts of precipitation in the north, and spells of warm dry weather in the south (Collcutt et al. 1988, 15).
The surrounding seas have relatively cut off the Japanese from the rest of the world. Towards the east one would encounter the Pacific Ocean, vast and empty; if any contact were to be made with other empires it would have to be made with the West, towards what is now mainland China. While the stretch of water separating Japan from the mainland might seem like an easy passage... [continues]
Cite This Essay
(2008, 03). Continuity and Change: Japans Relations with the Sea. StudyMode.com. Retrieved 03, 2008, from http://www.studymode.com/essays/Continuity-Change-Japans-Relationssea-138450.html
"Continuity and Change: Japans Relations with the Sea" StudyMode.com. 03 2008. 03 2008 <http://www.studymode.com/essays/Continuity-Change-Japans-Relationssea-138450.html>.
"Continuity and Change: Japans Relations with the Sea." StudyMode.com. 03, 2008. Accessed 03, 2008. http://www.studymode.com/essays/Continuity-Change-Japans-Relationssea-138450.html. | <urn:uuid:c978dbd4-a5b5-4f05-9135-9666f256064c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.studymode.com/essays/Continuity-Change-Japans-Relationssea-138450.html | 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 | 0.919054 | 573 | 3.640625 | 4 |
The Jamaica Social Investment Fund (JSIF)
is a limited liability company incorporated under
The Company’s Act of Jamaica. It was established in 1996 as a component of the
Government of Jamaica’s (GoJ's) national poverty alleviation strategy. The Fund was
designed primarily to channel resources to small-scaled community based projects.
This is done with the use of an Operations Manual that acts as a guide to ensure transparency,
accountability and efficiency in project implementation.
The operations of the JSIF were initially funded by a loan
negotiated between the GoJ and the World Bank. Though the Fund was initially
established as a temporary organization with an initial lifespan of four (4) years,
it has been in operation for over 10
years and presently has agreements that will continue until 2013.
JSIF is governed by an eleven-member Board of Directors drawn from
a wide cross-section of the Jamaican society. Directors are appointed for a renewable two-year term.
The Board meets once per month and has overall responsibility for approving annual budgets,
sub-projects and related contracts. The Board is chaired by the Director General of the Planning
Institute of Jamaica (PIOJ) Dr. Wesley Hughes, C.D., and the Managing Director of JSIF, Mrs. Scarlette Gillings,
C.D., is an ex-officio member.
The work of the Board is facilitated by sub-committees that meet regularly to review specific
portfolios and make recommendations to the Board. These sub-committees are: Projects; Finance and Audit; and
Procurement and Contracts. | <urn:uuid:c892db3f-c468-4ac9-be52-feda40e10506> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://jsif.org/about_jsif.asp | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00022-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959274 | 342 | 1.679688 | 2 |
I wanted to share this information with you as I found it to be worthwhile. On my walk today, I listened to a podcast of NPR This American Life (474: Back to School 9/14/12). It focuses on "an emerging theory about what to teach kids, from Paul Tough's new book How Children Succeed." Discussed on the podcast - the importance of non-cognitive skills (e.g. tenacity, resilience, impulse control), how they can be taught in the classroom, and how this might help some students succeed.
I am a teacher in Peoria and am continually searching for ways to motivate my students to want to learn and achieve. After listening to this podcast, I will be purchasing Tough's book and researching the topic more. I have never posted on your blog before, but I was so intrigued and inspired by what I heard that I wanted to share this information.
It's worth listening to the podcast!"
(highlight text above to read it)
Thanks Anonymous for reading, posting and suggesting this book/podcast!
Hearing the stories from the young people really broke my heart, but this podcast IS definitely worth listening to. Paul Tough, the author discusses how “non-cognitive skills” are being viewed as increasingly vital in education. Also discussed are studies that show how poverty-related stress can affect brain development, and inhibit the development of non-cognitive skills. | <urn:uuid:b859c625-e19b-4848-be0d-5f278b294a43> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://emergepeoria.blogspot.com/search/label/NPR | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.948401 | 292 | 2.09375 | 2 |
Item Number: 530-2
Secret of the Rosary
Canon William says of De Montfort's book, The secret of the Rosary-"It goes far beyond mere research. We might say that it contains everything that can be said about the Rosary, its content and form, its real worth, about the instruction necessary for its appreciation and use."
De Montfort calls the Rosary " The mystical rose tree of Jesus and Mary in life, death, and eternity." He says that the roses of you rosary will "never wilt or die, and they will be just as exquisite thousands of years from now as they are today."
by: St. Louis De Montfort | <urn:uuid:c73df10f-bb46-493b-b7a6-648d0612abea> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://familyland.org/FLStore/ProductDetails.aspx?productID=10964 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00058-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.93992 | 142 | 1.5625 | 2 |
While Turkish Prime Minister Recep Erdogan announced on July 24 that Turkey expects regime change in Syria, the Turkish military took steps to upgrade its preparedness for further hostilities. Erdogan has stressed that the country would retaliate to any further hostile actions following the downing of a Turkish F4 on June 22; this preparation and related military build up however will be of equal use for potential action against the power vacuum that will almost certainly follow Assad’s fall, and the Turkish government have several pressing security concerns to consider.The first and most obvious of these is the ongoing and potentially increasing stream of refugees attempting to escape violence by fleeing into Turkey (Turkey today closed its Syrian border to all vehicular traffic, but this does not include refugee flows). Equally important for Turkey though are considerations over how instability in Syria may affect the issue of an independent Kurdish state.
A video posted yesterday (24/07) on a Turkish website appears to show Kurdish soldiers moving through Iraq towards the Syrian border with the intention of securing the town of Qamishli, which borders both Iraq and Turkey. These were Syrian Kurds who have received training from their Iraqi counterparts. The Turkish military has reacted by increasing its buildup of forces along the Turkish/Syrian border and this may escalate the risk of the Syrian Civil War spilling over into a regional conflict. The move comes as concerns over the potential use of Syria’s chemical weapons stock enhances the likelihood of external action in Syria significantly, adding further turmoil to the already acutely unstable security dynamic of a country in the midst of a civil war.
The display of Kurdish force and the interaction between Kurds in Syria and the Kurdistan Regional Government in Iraq will inflame fears in Ankara of more PKK inspired terrorism and increased calls for a Kurdish state. If Kurds in Syria can earn as much legitimacy in a post-Assad Syria as those in Iraq, the two Kurdish elements could prove a significant diplomatic and increased military concern to the Turkish state, which currently seeks to avoid granting autonomy to its primarily Kurdish regions.
Although the Turks have immediate obvious reasons to cheer the fall of Assad, the inevitable uncertainty that will follow is likely to create significant problems for Erdogan and his government. The Turks will clearly be watching the situation for further developments.
Tom Dixon, Research Associate | <urn:uuid:b243199a-5e26-4dc9-84f3-5871f1bbc0c9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://farsighted-online.com/2012/07/25/erdogan-looks-towards-a-syrian-future-without-assad-but-with-increased-uncertainty/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.968583 | 452 | 2.078125 | 2 |
Federal Funding for Treatment of Residents Stalls in Congress
November 16, 2007
The House of Representatives sustained President Bush's veto of a labor and health appropriations bill that included a provision of $52.5 million in federal funding for World Trade Center (WTC)-related health services. This money would, for the first time, have funded medical monitoring and treatment for residents, office workers, students and others who were exposed to the WTC disaster. Both houses of Congress must now rework the bill to reach a compromise with the White House.
To date, the only WTC-specific treatment for people other than rescue, recovery and clean-up workers at Ground Zero has been provided through a combination of private and New York City funding at the WTC Environmental Health Center. The WTC Environmental Health Center has treated more than 1,700 people at Bellevue Hospital and Gouverneur Healthcare Services in Manhattan, and Elmhurst Hospital in Queens, including a growing number of area office workers and New York City employees.
If signed into law, the $52.5 million appropriation would have continued to support the WTC Medical Monitoring and Treatment Program which provides services to nearly 36,000 rescue, recovery and clean-up workers at the Fire Department of New York, Mount Sinai and several other locations in the New York metropolitan area. In September 2007 John Howard, MD, Director of the National Institute on Occupational Safety and Health, which administers the program, testified before the House that 7,603 rescue workers received treatment for aerodigestive conditions, such as asthma, interstitial lung disease, chronic cough, and gastro-esophageal reflux, and 4,868 were treated for mental health conditions. | <urn:uuid:b8ca3083-0529-4984-ae53-27f3e4f6db82> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.nyc.gov/html/doh/wtc/html/news/11162007-1.shtml | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.962395 | 343 | 1.742188 | 2 |
Works for piano performed by Paavali Jumppanen.
A funny thing happened on July 31, 1990 at the Eastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Philadelphia. Deep in a storage space, a controller scouring for historical records found the fourteen-page manuscript to Mozart’s Fantasy and Piano Sonata in C minor, an incredibly important autograph edition that later sold at auction at Sotheby’s for some $1.7 million. It’s a rather extreme example of the case that can be made for the enduring significance of Mozart’s music. We begin this episode with Mozart’s Sonata No. 12 in F Major. Those interested in historical performance practice will be delighted to know that Mozart’s own ornamentation of the second movement has been preserved in an extant first edition, offering a glimpse into the sort of embellishments a consummate player would have been expected to add. We then hear that discovery from the seminary vault: Mozart’s Fantasy and Sonata in C minor. Here, too, we find evidence of Mozart’s performance style: the manuscript found in the safe in 1990 offers an entirely different set of ornaments than the previously published edition. As pianist Paavali Jumppanen proposes, it’s likely that the composer himself played the piece a bit differently each time, and that flexibility is reflected in the changes visible between the different scores.
"I am very happy with the ease and versatility with which I can share my content with my audience, clients and business partners alike." | <urn:uuid:e227f184-faa8-489b-8602-2f58d825c91d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.instantencore.com/buzz/item.aspx?FeedEntryId=183543 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.94721 | 331 | 2.03125 | 2 |
We've been fans of Bethany* since the Enron days. From Vanity Fair:
One of the biggest disconnects on Wall Street today is between the way Goldman Sachs sees itself (they’re the smartest) and the way everyone else sees Goldman (they’re the smartest, greediest, and most dangerous). Questioning C.E.O. Lloyd Blankfein, C.O.O. Gary Cohn, and C.F.O. David Viniar, among others, the author explores how their firm navigated the collapse of September 2008, why it has already set aside $16.7 billion for compensation this year, and which lines it’s accused of crossing.
Lloyd Blankfein—who was born poor in the South Bronx, put himself through Harvard, and became the C.E.O. of Goldman Sachs in 2006, after 24 years at the firm—is a history buff, a lawyer, a wordsmith, and something of an armchair philosopher. On a Thursday in October—the very day when the firm announced it had made $8.4 billion in profits so far this year—he speculates whether Goldman would have survived the financial conflagration in the fall of 2008 entirely on its own, without any kind of help, implicit or explicit, from the government. “I thought we would, but it was a hell of a higher risk than I was happy with,” he says, sitting in his 30th-floor office in Goldman’s old headquarters, at 85 Broad Street, in Lower Manhattan. “As a result of actions taken [by the government], we were better off than we otherwise would have been. Was it dispositive? I don’t know. I don’t think so … but I don’t know.”
He adds, “If you ask, in my heart of hearts, do I think we would have failed … ” He pauses, then pulls out his trump card: at the height of the crisis, Warren Buffett agreed to invest $5 billion in Goldman Sachs.
Buffett, the venerated Nebraska investor, is famously reluctant to put money into Wall Street firms. But he has a long history with Goldman. As a 10-year-old he went to New York with his father, a broker in Omaha, and they stopped by Goldman Sachs to visit Sidney Weinberg. As Goldman’s leader from 1930 to 1969, Weinberg helped build the firm into the powerhouse it became. “For 45 minutes, Weinberg talked to me as if I were a grown-up,” Buffett likes to recall. “And on the way out he asked me, ‘What stock do you like, Warren?’” In later years Buffett liked to cite Byron Trott, who until recently worked in Goldman’s Chicago office, as one of the few investment bankers worth his salt....MORE
HT: MarketBeat who write:
Buffett’s Hardball with Goldman: Hitting Dairy Queen
*Nov. 14, 2007 (a month after the market hit it's all-time high)
We all know how Warren Buffett swooped into Goldman Sachs at the peak of the financial crisis in fall of 2008, sinking $5 billion into the gold-plated investment bank and picking up the rights to buy Goldman shares at $115 apiece.
But in Bethany McLean’s exhaustive look at Goldman in the January 2010 Vanity Fair, we get a bit more detail on how the deal was roughed out by then Goldman investment banker to Buffett, Byron Trott, and finalized in a call with with Goldman big shots:Of course, they accepted....MORE
In a very brief—and very Buffett—call that afternoon with Blankfein, Trott, and then co-president Jon Winkelried, Buffett said he would invest $5 billion in exchange for a hefty 10 percent dividend and rights to buy additional stock over the next five years at a price of $115 a share. “I’m taking my grandkids out to Dairy Queen,” he told the Goldman men. “Call me and let me know what you want to do.”
Wall Street Learned the Lessons of Enron (Unfortunately)
By now, Climateer Investing's loyal and long-suffering readers know of my morbid fascination with stock frauds in general, and Enron in particular. One of the earliest* looks at this perversion of capitalism and markets was:
Is Enron Overpriced?
It's in a bunch of complex businesses.
Its financial statements are nearly impenetrable.
So why is Enron trading at such a huge multiple?
By Bethany McLean
March 5, 2001NEW YORK (FORTUNE) -- In Hollywood parlance, the "It Girl" is someone who commands the spotlight at any given moment -- you know, like Jennifer Lopez or Kate Hudson. Wall Street is a far less glitzy place, but there's still such a thing as an "It Stock." Right now, that title belongs to Enron, the Houston energy giant. While tech stocks were bombing at the box office last year, fans couldn't get enough of Enron, whose shares returned 89%. By almost every measure, the company turned in a virtuoso performance: Earnings increased 25%, and revenues more than doubled, to over $100 billion. Not surprisingly, the critics are gushing. "Enron has built unique and, in our view, extraordinary franchises in several business units in very large markets," says Goldman Sachs analyst David Fleischer....MORENow Bethany is back with
Uh-oh. It's Enron all over again
(Fortune Magazine) -- Start with the headlines about off-balance-sheet entities known as structured investment vehicles, or SIVs (or sieves, as some wags are calling them). As Gertrude Stein never said, an off-balance-sheet vehicle is an off-balance-sheet vehicle is an off-balance-sheet vehicle....
We've been fans of Bethany Maclean since her work on Enron in 2001. We've got a link to that ENE piece and her look at sub-prime in "Wall Street Learned the Lessons of Enron (Unfortunately)".
Now she writes about another of our favorite stories.* From Fortune:
Brian Hunter brought down Amaranth with disastrous trades on gas. He is accused of manipulating the markets. He has been called the 'destroyer of all worlds.' But is he such a bad guy?
There's a certain allure to the archetype of the rogue trader.... | <urn:uuid:33594bf9-1962-4aaf-9b39-e46e3987b941> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://climateerinvest.blogspot.com/2009/12/bethany-mclean-on-goldman-sachs-bank.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.95824 | 1,380 | 1.648438 | 2 |
August 15, 2007
Back To School...
Here we are in the third week of August still suffering from
the heat and lack of rain. I know that it is hot in August but I
must admit as I grow older I am not quite as fond of it as I used
to be. I used to be able to stay
outside for hours, weeding and piddling around. Not anymore. I
have been watering early in the morning, maybe again at night
and that is the extent of my being outside. I took the boys to
the pool the other day and found a comfortable place underneath
an umbrella. Of course comfortable is all relative. It was still
too hot to be out for long so we stayed for a couple of hours
and then came home. We were all bushed. The sun and heat can
really take it out of you. Be wise and make sure that you wear
cool clothing, a hat and have plenty of water nearby if you are
It looks as if we
are going to get a break in the weather this weekend. The seven-day
outlook is calling for temperatures to dip into the high 80's.
doesn't that sound delightful? We have several activities
outside this weekend and I am actually looking forward to them.
tomorrow and the kids and I are really
looking forward to it. The kids will be meeting their new
teachers, making new friends and I
will be in the garden at my leisure getting reacquainted with
plants - old and new. Fall will be
here soon enough which will allow time for planting. I have a
long list and look forward to getting started.
They're Not Locusts...
It's that time of year when the din of the
singing cicadas makes it nearly impossible to hold a conversation
outdoors. It's also that time of year that people invariably
refer to these noisy insects as "locusts". Trust us, they
are not locusts. Locusts are actually a type of
grasshopper and have some significant traits that, fortunately,
we do not experience with cicadas:
Locusts tend to travel in swarms.
Fifteen to thirty million adult locusts inhabit each
square mile of a swarm.
- Each locust
weighs less than one tenth of an
ounce, but eats
its weight in food each day. In a
single day, one ton of locusts, a very small part of a
swarm, consumes enough food for 2,500
by contrast feed only during the underground portion of their
life cycle. They feed on tree roots and do not consume
enough to harm the host plant.
K-State Extension rates tall fescue varieties for color,
green-up, quality and texture. They have 160 different cultivars
of tall fescue in their Tall Fescue Cultivar Trial near Wichita.
Quality ratings are taken once a month from March through
October. (The old standby K-31 consistently rates at the bottom
by the way.)
highest-rated named cultivars from last five year's trials were:
Grande II Masterpiece
Each of these varieties averaged a rating of at least 5.1 on
a scale of 0 to 9, with 9 being optimum quality. There were no
statistically different ratings for any of these cultivars. Keep
in mind that mixes of several varieties may allow you to take
advantage of differing strengths. It is not necessary for mixes
to contain only the varieties mentioned above..
To Divide Iris...
Late summer is ideal for
dividing, moving and planting iris. The
old foliage wilting from the summer’s
heat can be trimmed back at least halfway. Trimming also helps
when dividing iris to prevent moisture loss while the plants get
established. Follow these simple steps
to divide your iris plants:
- Dig Iris with a
potato fork, being careful not to damage the rhizome.
- With a sterile
knife, cut the rhizome vertically. Each division should be
approximately 2 inches long with 2-3 fans.
- Dig a shallow
hole mounded in the middle and spread the roots around the
- Set the plant
with fans facing to the outside of the garden to make room for
- Fill the hole
with soil, being careful to leave rhizomes partially exposed,
and water well.
- Water the newly
planted iris regularly if the weather is hot and dry
being careful to avoid overwatering.
Bagworms, caterpillars that weave a small
silky bag with leaf and stick pieces attached, have been
actively feeding for some time now. By August, the bags can be
over an inch long and can do considerable damage in a short
time. They can strip a shrub or small tree completely of foliage
in what seems like a couple of days. Pick the bags off as soon
as you notice them or treat them with a spray containing
spinosad. Bags will eventually reach 2 inches and if left to
mature, male moths emerge from the bag later in the season,
mating with females who never leave their bag. Each female can
lay up to a thousand eggs, which remain in the bag until they
hatch in the spring. It is a very good idea to remove and
destroy bags any time of the year.
Look Out For Lacebugs...
Continue to monitor azalea, pyracantha and Japanese andromeda
for the presence of lacebugs. Populations of these insects can
explode during the summer months, and left unchecked, may send
susceptible plants into a downward spiral of decline. Plantings
in full sun always fare worse, so check these most often. If you
find more than two or three lacebugs per leaf, prepare an
application of insecticidal soap or horticultural oil. Be sure to
spray the entire plant upper and lower leaf surfaces for best
stressful weather - usually aggravated by excessive
fertilization - the central core of a tomato may become tough
and turn greenish white. The walls also may become pale and
corky. This is usually a temporary condition known as “hard
core.” Fruit that develops later is often free of this
Older varieties of tomatoes normally have five distinct cavities
that are filled with seeds and jelly-like material called
locular jelly. However, many newer tomato varieties possess
genetic traits to make the fruit meatier and firmer with the
seeds being produced all over the inside of the fruit rather
than in the five distinct cavities. These types of tomatoes do
not seem to produce a hard central core nearly as readily as
ones that are not as meaty.
The older variety, Jet Star, which has been widely grown for
many years by Kansas gardeners, has a tendency to produce a hard
core when stressed. Newer varieties such as Mountain Spring,
Mountain Fresh, Daybreak, Sun Leaper, Sunmaster, Celebrity,
Carnival, and other ‘semi-determinate' varieties are less likely
to suffer from this condition.
If you have a vegetable or annual garden that is normally empty
in the fall and through winter you should consider planting a
green manure crop there at the end of this growing season.
The name green manure is given to any crop which is grown only to
be tilled back into the soil. As it rots, the nutrients in the
crop foliage and roots will be taken up by the next crop planted
in the same place. Green manures from the legume family, such as
peas, beans, and clovers, have an added bonus - nitrogen-fixing
bacteria living around their roots can draw nitrogen from the air
and convert it to a form the plant can absorb. This nitrogen
will then be available to subsequent crops.
manures also act as "cover crops" protecting the soil from
compaction and erosion caused by wind and rain, as
well as reducing the extent that weeds take over bare
Oh Say Can You
Yes you can! The best time to start new
cool-season grass seed is late summer/early fall. Once we
get these triple digit temperatures behind us we'll be able to
get started. Seeding this time of year takes
advantage of warm weather for proper seed germination while
allowing the new turf to thrive as the temperatures cool into
"It's difficult to
think anything but pleasant thoughts while eating a homegrown | <urn:uuid:ea19e4b4-c7ad-4aa1-a025-6d2995b1622d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.savvygardener.com/issues/2007/savvy081507.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00063-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.93314 | 1,816 | 1.546875 | 2 |
If you've already taken the SAT, you have a benchmark for where you stand and what areas you may need to improve. Aim for the top 25 percentile range for the schools to which you will be applying. If you haven't taken the SAT yet....
... take a practice test and use that score as your benchmark to see where you fall in the range of students previously accepted to that college or university.
How do you know the range of SAT scores your school typically accepts? Check out this complete listing of college profiles and click on the schools to which you will apply. If you aren't sure what schools you will apply to yet, there's no need to worry. The summer is still a great chance to prepare for the SAT so that you can get a high score and get into your school when you decide where to apply.
Once school ends, take some time to relax and rest. Hopefully you worked hard this year and got the marks you wanted. After a week or two, when you are ready to get back into it, follow these steps to propel yourself into the top 25 percentile of scores for your dream school.
Step 1: Take a practice SAT exam.
Even if you've already taken the SAT, practice exams are beneficial for a few reasons. They allow you to see how you may have already improved from your first test, and some of the questions you practice will likely be on your actual test. Thus when you go in to take a real exam, the more practice tests you've taken, the more answers you will already know.
Step 2: Evaluate your practice exam based upon the following criteria:
- What scores did you get on each individual section? (Critical reading, math, and writing)
- Which section needs most improvement?
- What kind of mistakes did you make? Were they careless mistakes, or did you really not know the right answer?
Step 3: Create a study plan that hones in on the areas you need to improve the most.
If your critical reading score is weak, consider including these components in your study plan:
- Read SAT passages from previous exams and answer practice questions using this link.
- Subscribe to online publications with elevated reading levels like the Wall Street Journal or the New York Times. (This will also help with the writing section.)
- Learn 1,000 words this summer, or about 100 per week. I like this list with short, simple definitions. Study one list per week and then have a friend/parent quiz you. The key to retaining these words is to review them, not just learn them once.
- Read articles about test taking tips, such as the one here: "How I Improved My SAT Critical Reading Score by 150 points."
If your math score is weak, focus on these elements in your study plan:
- Take "Problem Solving" Practice tests, like the practice tests here.
- Take "Grid In" Practice tests, like the practice tests here.
- Read articles about test taking tips, like the Sparknotes article here.
- Consider one-on-one tutoring.
If your writing score is weak, include these in your study plan:
- Keep a journal for the summer. Writing regularly helps prevent "writers block" and enables quick, fluid writing that will help you in your 25 minute essay section.
- Read publications like the Wall Street Journal or New York Times. Doing so frequently will help you on the SAT portions where you have to identify sentence errors, improve sentences, and improve paragraphs.
- Practice writing topics from previous exams. Limit yourself to 25 minutes and create an outline to organize your thoughts. After you complete a few, ask a tutor or your English teacher if he/she can review them and let you know how you can improve. Take his/her suggestions and continue to practice. | <urn:uuid:b154fb19-325d-4d6d-959d-98454bb880b6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blog.thecollegeplanninggroup.com/2012/05/how-to-improve-sat-scores-and-get-into.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00060-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.94102 | 784 | 2.0625 | 2 |
With 1:13 remaining in the inaugural Pinstripe Bowl and trailing 36-28, Kansas State quarterback Carson Coffman found receiver Adrian Hillburn for a 30-yard touchdown. Having cut the deficit to just two points, the Wildcats prepared for the two-point try to tie the seesaw contest. Much to their chagrin, their short-yardage package would not work, as one of the officials had assessed a 15 yard unsportsmanlike conduct penalty to Hillburn and Kansas State for excessive celebration. Shortly after scoring, Hillburn saluted the crowd, an act apparently so reprehensible that the referee deemed it worthy of a game-changing flag. Pushed back to the 18 yard line, Coffman's pass attempt fell incomplete, and Syracuse recovered the ensuing onside kick to secure the win.
The official's ruling could be justified when exclusively evaluating the letter of the law. The NCAA rulebook - specifically rule 9-2-1d - states that "Any delayed, excessive, prolonged or choreographed act by which a player (or players) attempts to focus attention upon himself (or themselves)" is considered unsportsmanlike conduct and merits a 15-yard flag. While Hillburn's action could conceivably fall under this penumbra, a word-by-word analysis reveals that even that assumption is in question.
Upon closer examination, the unsportsmanlike conduct in question does not meet many of the enumerated criteria. The salute was neither delayed nor prolonged, nor was it apparently choreographed. Moreover, its excessiveness is also debatable; the two-second gesture affected nothing on the field of play and also was relatively muted. Hillburn was seemingly just expressing his excitement for scoring such a pivotal touchdown. His acts did not call undue attention to himself or his teammates, nor did they appear predetermined or malicious. It merely seemed to be a young man thrilled to have brought his team back into contention.
However, an objective argument based solely on the text of the NCAA rulebook will fall short. To truly evaluate this call, the time and score of the game must be considered, relative to the severity of the infraction. Hillburn's touchdown narrowed a Syracuse lead from eight to two points and gave Kansas State the opportunity to tie the game. With just over a minute left in a highly competitive game, the officials cannot make a call that so profoundly influences the outcome of the game (short of some glaring or blatant transgression). Had the player exhibited egregious misconduct, such as directly taunting an opponent or executing a choreographed celebration with teammates, a penalty would have been warranted. But in a situation like the one last night, the officials must swallow their whistles, hold their flags, and defer to the competitors on the gridiron.
For comparison - and a study in inconsistency - consider the Music City Bowl, a contest between the North Carolina Tar Heels and the Tennessee Volunteers that immediately followed the Syracuse-Kansas State game. Both games were officiated by Big Ten crews; however, each group's interpretation of unsportsmanlike conduct violations was drastically different. Whereas the Kansas State crew saw fit to flag Hillburn for his salute, the Music City Bowl crew allowed different Volunteer players to, on separate occasions, mimic wearing a championship belt, beat their chest in exultation, and even salute the crowd (in a far more demonstrative manner than did Hillburn), all without throwing a single flag.
By no means is this the only time that a dubious unsportsmanlike penalty flag has played an integral role in the outcome of a game. In a meeting between BYU and Washington in September 2008, quarterback Jake Locker ran for a touchdown with two seconds left to pull Washington within a point of the Cougars. After scoring, Locker jubilantly flipped the ball into the air and jumped around, celebrating with his teammates. The official threw a flag, pushing the extra point try back fifteen yards and leading to a blocked kick. Again, Washington is not blameless in defeat, but this is yet another case of the official following the letter of the law rather than the spirit.
There is one fact that must be clarified: the official did not lose the game for Kansas State - their defense surrendered 498 total yards and 36 points. But it was wrong for a game that was so competitive and entertaining throughout to be called on a mere technicality of no discernible impact or offense. Perhaps the fault, at its core, lies not with the official but the rulebook itself. More explicit descriptions of what does and does not constitute a penalty would foster greater consistency across various games and conferences.
That said, no amount of elucidation in a rulebook will eliminate the need for judgment calls. As arbiters of NCAA code, officials will always be required to use their discretion to do their job on the field. With that in mind, those officials owe it to the players and the fans alike to do everything possible to allow the game to be decided on the field of play by the student-athletes. Spectators attend games to watch players, not officials, and the striped men at the Pinstripe Bowl would have done well to remember that. | <urn:uuid:b6de30e5-9ea5-446b-b52f-3875bdd1acfb> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.realclearsports.com/blognetwork/rcs_sidelines/2010/12/unsportsmanlike-conduct-abominable-officiating.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.97226 | 1,053 | 1.5625 | 2 |
I am a sucker for a good festival. After 11 months in Japan, my interest in seeing them has not lessened at all. I try to see them all. I especially enjoy the ones that have a little original flair that gives them their own unique beauty and meaning.May is a month packed with festivals. The first week of May is called Golden Week because there are three national holidays in the first week. The first is the former emperor's birthday celebrated on April 29th. On May 3rd it is Constitution Day, the day that the modern democratic constitution was accepted after World War II. It is a British Parliamentary system. Also there is National Boys' Day celebrated on the 5th. This is a day when young boys are honored. Don't worry, girls have their day too, on March 3rd. In addition to these, Kyoto City celebrates one of its three largest festivals on May 15th, the Aoi Festival. There are also some other minor festivals. Most people have the entire week off, and since Japan is one of the most densely populated places on earth, when everyone decides to travel at the same time, things can get quite hectic. For a variety of reasons I opted out of the mayhem and stayed in Kyoto that week. The one time that I ventured down to the train station to catch a local bus, I was glad that I hadn't gone anywhere, as it was a madhouse there. Anyway there were plenty of things to do in Kyoto. I really didn't notice too much in the way of public celebration for the former emperor's birthday except that it was a part of the week off. The same was true for Constitution Day. National Boys' Day is celebrated by those families that have boys. They fly giant fish kites on top of their houses, tied to trees, or in doorways. The carp is a Chinese lucky symbol for success in life. In the house, the family displays special samurai dolls. (The girls also have their own special dolls on Girls' Day). In addition there are special sweet treats that are served. I wasn't lucky enough to get invited to see a doll display or get to eat the special foods, but I did see a lot of carps floating around. About the same time as Boys' Day, Kyoto was gearing up for the Aoi Festival with preliminary festivals. The most impressive one occurred at Shimogamo Shrine, just three minutes walk from where I work. It is one of the oldest Shrines in Kyoto and is famous because of its sprawling grounds. There they have a special kind of horse race. There are two teams, red and black, and they take turns galloping down a 500-meter track. As they ride, they have to shoot at three targets. It is an amazing feat. I think it is amazing just to be able to gallop on a horse. But imagine doing it without holding on because your hands are busy with a bow. And with all that going on, imagine hitting the target as you ride. A few riders hit all three, and only one rider fell off. In the end the red team won, which means it will be a good year for the farmers, and a so-so year for the fishermen. The Aoi festival is celebrated on the 15th of May. The Aoi festival is said to be the oldest celebrated festival in the world. I guess it depends on how you define festival and celebrate, but in any event, it is very old. It started in the 6th century with Emperor Kinmei. It is said that there had been terrible storms that year and generally the country was in bad times. The Emperor got together with his most sacred priests and they decided that it was due to the fact the gods were angry because the people were not appreciative of all they had been given. So they had a big festival and made a huge offering to the gods. And guess what? It worked. Things got better. Maybe they would have anyway, but if something works, don't change it. So, 1500 years later they are still doing it. They have been very careful not to change anything (that might ruin their luck) so now it is like a window into the past. You can see what kind of clothes, vehicles, and hats (they wore the funniest hats) were used back then. There is a kind of queen of the parade who rides in one of the main carriages (back when the parade began it was always a princess.) She wears the imperial robes, which is 12 layers of very beautiful and expensive kimonos. Luckily for her it wasn't too hot that day. As if all this isn't enough, there is one faction of Japanese Buddhists that celebrate Buddha's birthday on the full moon day in May. Of course I had to go to that too. I ended up staying all night. The last festival I saw was on May 20. It is called the Mifune Festival. It means three boats. Actually there were more than three boats, there were about 30 of them, each full of people wearing beautiful outfits from ancient times. In a few of the boats, there were "royalty," people dressed like the emperor and his court. Many of the boats have entertainers in them. There were musicians, singers, and dancers. They traveled up and down the river and played for the people who sat on the banks, and for the "royalty" in the boats. The nicest thing about it for me was that the royalty would often lay their fans on the surface of the river and they would float away. It was good luck if one of the fans floated your way and you were able to pick it up. I watched as the princess laid her fan down and then she looked up and smiled. Was she smiling at me? Would the fan come to me? Our lives are like fans floating on a river. Delicate, sometimes turbulent, free to roam but only where the currents will take them. And where does the river end? I wondered as I watched the fan float.
Published on 9/24/01 | <urn:uuid:1aa56e97-baf8-4553-ae57-4ea2e115a61a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://thingsasian.com/stories-photos/1681/50551577/4/con0_oth | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.990248 | 1,240 | 1.554688 | 2 |
A NEURAL circuit has been identified that allows people to predict whether someone is going to lie to them. The finding could help to explain why some people become paranoid.
Humans have "theory of mind" - the ability to imagine what others are thinking and learn from their social habits. "We're trying to find a specific circuit that performs social learning," says Matthew Rushworth at the University of Oxford, who presented his work at a Cell Press LabLinks conference in London on 3 December.
Rushworth's team scanned volunteers' brains while they chose one of two boxes to win points. They were sent advice on which box to choose from a second player who was sometimes dishonest. When the volunteers suspected they were being lied to, activity levels rose in the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (DPFC), an area near the front of the brain. If the volunteer thought the player was telling the truth the activity remained low. If their suspicions were proved wrong, the activity changed "suggesting the volunteers needed to rethink their opinion of the second player", says Rushworth. In effect, the activity was predicting how trustworthy the advice would be, then reacting to the results of that prediction (Nature, vol 456, p 245).
Failures of this system could explain why those with schizophrenia are often paranoid, says Chris Frith of University College London, who was not involved in the study. "People with schizophrenia show false prediction errors: they keep thinking their predictions are wrong," he says. This leads to distrust and paranoia.
Rushworth is now mapping the circuit using diffusion-weighted MRI, which tracks the movement of water through the brain, to find out which areas the DPFC is linked to. This might ultimately allow the design of targeted treatments for paranoia.
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Take a virtual tour of the Carnegie Center, click here!
The Richard Stockton College - Carnegie Center was named one of the top 150 Buildings and Places in New Jersey by the American Institute of Architects of New Jersey. Other buildings and places named include Atlantic City's Boardwalk and Boardwalk Hall, the George Washington Bridge, the State Capital Complex in Trenton, and the Statue of Liberty. The list was compiled from nominations received from members of New Jersey's architectural and historical communities, and coincides with the 150th anniversary of the establishment of the American Institute of Architects.
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The Richard Stockton College of New Jersey, the Casino Reinvestment Development Authority (CRDA), and the City of Atlantic City collaborated in restoring the historic Carnegie Library in Atlantic City. The renovated and expanded Beaux-Arts building, provides the College with modern facilities in the heart of Atlantic City.
Renamed the Carnegie Center, it hosts undergraduate and graduate courses, continuing professional education programming, and special events relevant to the needs of Atlantic City and its surrounding region. A multi-use facility, Carnegie serves the College and the residents of Atlantic City and region as an educational and instructional facility, a meeting place, a conference center, and through community outreach
This architectural treasure, originally completed in 1904, was a gift to the residents of Atlantic City by steel magnate and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie. The building served as the municipality’s Public Library for more than eighty years. Abandoned after the Atlantic City Free Public Library moved to a modern facility in 1985, the Carnegie Library was acquired from the City of Atlantic City by CRDA in the mid-1990’s. Undergoing more than $5 million dollars in renovations and improvements the now over 9,000 square-foot Library Center serves as Stockton’s gateway to Atlantic City.
Located one block from the World Famous Atlantic City Boardwalk, this three-story building, with its turn-of-the-century architecture, including its granite, marble, and terra cotta exterior, terrazzo floors, scagliola finished columns, and marble and iron staircases, continue Carnegie’s vision of learning and commitment to the community. The Center serves as a central means by which Stockton fulfills its continued responsibility of civic engagement. As the only public four-year institution of higher education located along the Jersey Shore, the building provides the College with a physical presence in Atlantic City for the first time in more than 30 years.
In 2006 the Carnegie Center won an Atlantic County Historic Preservation Award for Superior Example of Rehabilitation and Adaptive-Reuse of an Historic Structure. Nominated by the Atlantic Heritage Center, formerly the Atlantic County Historical Society, this award was given by the Atlantic County Office of Cultural & Heritage Affairs.
From Sussex County down to Cape May, New Jersey architecture is more than just the shape of the structures we work and live in. It is an art form representing our hopes, our values and our dreams. In short, it is a reflection of us,” Edward N. Rothe, an American Institute of Architects spokesman, said in a press release. “With this in mind, each of the sites on the AIA of NJ's Top 150 Buildings and Places represents the finest architecture." | <urn:uuid:738d7f7e-23d1-4c89-bcb0-aaac0be407dd> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://intraweb.stockton.edu/eyos/page.cfm?siteID=257&pageID=1 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.944388 | 672 | 1.914063 | 2 |
If your family doctor suspects that you are having heart problems, you are going to need to find a heart doctor as soon as possible. Heart problems can be extremely serious, and your health can be at serious risk even though you might not feel very sick. Dizzy spells, chest pains, and shortness of breath could all be signs of a serious underlying heart condition. Heart doctors are referred to professionally as cardiologists, and they help patients suffering from heart disease to lead full and active lives. If your report these symptoms to your doctor or your test results show an abnormality, then your doctor will refer you to a cardiologist for further examination and treatment.
Your visit to the cardiologist will begin with a review of your medical history. A physical examination will be conducted that includes checkingyour weight, blood pressure, pulse rate, and breathing. If this examination gives the doctor cause for concern about your heart health, then further testing will be conducted. These tests might include blood testing, X-rays, and an ECG.
If there are indications that you are having heart trouble, then your general practitioner will probably find a heart doctor for you. Make sure that the heart doctor is a member of your insurance network. You are not bound to follow the recommendation of your doctor. If you know of a heart doctor in your area that you trust, then you can choose to go to their office instead. Whatever you do, do not wait. Prevention of serious heart problems is much easier than fixing the damage they cause. The earlier a problem is found, the quicker that it can be treated and fixed.
The field of cardiology is complex, and you will find a heart specialist can further specialize within the field. All cardiologists know how to diagnose heart problems, manage them with medication, and prevent the onset of serious cardiovascular diseases. Some specialize in areas like pediatric cardiology, where they focus their practice on treating children with heart problems. Other will specialize in certain procedures such as stent placement and balloon angioplasty.
When testing indicates that there is an artery blockage or a weakening of the heart, you heart doctor will likely recommend surgery. General cardiologists do not usually perform these surgeries. Instead, they are performed by a Cardiovascular Surgeon or, if the lungs are involved, a Cardiothoracic Surgeon. Typical procedures include open heart surgery or bypass surgery, depending on the problem to be fixed. After the surgery, you will have follow up visits to the heart doctor to monitor your recovery and make sure that your heart is working properly.
There are five indicators that most doctors consider to determine if you have a heart problem. Your family history is important, as heart disease has a genetic basis. High blood pressure is an indication that your heart and arteries are undue stress. High bad cholesterol numbers can indicate a build-up of plaque on the walls of the arteries, causing a dangerous blockage. Excessive weight also puts undue strain on the heart. Also, high blood sugar levels can indicate the presence of Type II diabetes, which can double the risk of a fatal heart attack.
Most likely, you will not need to find a heart doctor on your own. Your family doctor will refer you to the best specialist in your area. You can take that referral, or ask to be referred to a different heart doctor that you trust or have visited previously. Once you choose a heart doctor, it is a good idea to stick with your choice so that they can monitor the progression of your heart condition and track improvements to gauge whether treatments are effective. | <urn:uuid:5dd73607-ce27-459b-bd39-623c7d23797a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.smartguy.com/index.asp?id=1028&c=Find-A-Heart-Doctor-And-Save-Your-Life | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00063-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.947774 | 725 | 2.390625 | 2 |
Cortez, or Cortés, Hernando, Hernán, or Fernando (1484–1547), the Spanish conqueror of Mexico. He was among the most famous of the conquistadores, the daring and ruthless adventurers who plundered and conquered the Indian lands of the American continents.
Cortez was born in Medellín in western Spain. He studied law at the University of Salamanca, but left school to seek adventure. In 1506 he went to the island of Hispaniola in the West Indies. In 1511 he took part in the conquest of Cuba under Diego de Velásquez.
In 1518 Cortez was put in charge of an expedition to conquer the Aztec empire in Mexico, but at the last minute Velásquez tried to remove him from command. Cortez slipped away from Cuba and landed in Mexico early in 1519. He had 11 ships, some 550 soldiers, 16 horses, and 14 cannon. He defeated the Indians in what is now the state of Tabasco. Then he sailed to the site of Veracruz, where he built a fort and set up his government. He sent one ship back to Spain with treasures for the king and burned the others to keep his men from deserting.
From Veracruz, the Spaniards began their march to the Aztec capital, Tenochtitlán (now Mexico City). On the way, they fought and defeated the Tlaxcalans, a warlike tribe that Cortez gained as allies. In November, 1519, the Spaniards reached Tenochtitlán, which was built on an island in the middle of a lake and connected to the mainland by causeways.
Cortez's army was small, but the noise of the cannon and the sight of armored soldiers on horseback filled the Indians with awe and fear. The Aztec empire had many enemies among its subject tribes who were eager to revolt and joined the Spaniards. Also, the Indians looked upon the white men as messengers of their god Quetzalcoatl. Some even regarded Cortez as a god, possibly Quetzalcoatl himself.
Montezuma II, the Aztec emperor, greeted Cortez with great courtesy. But soon Cortez heard that the Aztecs had attacked Veracruz. He promptly seized Montezuma as a hostage and forced him to pay a large indemnity in gold and jewels. Cortez put to death the Aztecs who had attacked Veracruz. He next had to face a Spanish army that Velásquez had sent from Cuba to arrest him. Cortez hurried to the coast and defeated the army of about 1,000 men. He then enlisted the defeated soldiers in his army.
The Aztecs revolted against the small force left at Tenochtitlán and Cortez returned to find his men besieged. When Montezuma tried to stop the revolt, the Aztecs showered him with stones and arrows. He either died of his wounds or was killed by the Spanish. On the evening of June 30, 1520, called by the Spanish the "dismal night," the Spaniards and their Indian allies fled from the capital on a causeway, fighting off Aztec attacks. Cortez lost half his forces.
Cortez built a new army composed of hundreds of Spanish reinforcements coming to Mexico to join in the conquest and of thousands of Indians from rebellious tribes, notably the Tlaxcalans and Texcocans. Cortez's assault on Tenochtitlán began in May, 1521. After weeks of fierce fighting, the city surrendered August 13.
Cortez was appointed captain general and governor of New Spain, as Mexico was called. He made expeditions to the north and south to extend his conquests. He drove the Indians to rebellion and put down their revolts with great cruelty. In Spain many people were jealous of his power and wealth, and they denounced his ruthless methods.
In 1526 Charles V deprived Cortez of the governorship. In 1528 Cortez went to Spain to defend himself and to appeal to Charles V to restore his position. The king refused to return to Cortez his administrative authority, but allowed him to retain the title of captain general and granted him a vast estate in southern Mexico. A viceroy was put in charge of the government of New Spain. Cortez led several military expeditions, including the one that discovered the peninsula of Baja California in 1536.
In 1540 Cortez returned to Spain. He took part in the unsuccessful expedition against Algiers in 1541. Neglected and embittered, he died in 1547, near Seville. Later, his body was brought to Mexico City. In 1823, after Mexico gained its independence from Spain, the body was hidden to protect it from possible desecration. It was found in 1946 in the wall of the church of the Hospital Jesus Nazareño, in Mexico City.
Bernal Díaz del Castillo, a companion of Cortez, wrote a contemporary report in his True Account of the Discovery of New Spain (1632). Other books on Cortez include William H. Prescott's classic Conquest of Mexico (1843) and Hugh Thomas's Conquest (1993). | <urn:uuid:bcf62fbc-3397-4a07-99a7-679ad2c596e5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://history.howstuffworks.com/european-history/hernando-cortez.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00038-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.985842 | 1,092 | 3.640625 | 4 |
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Industry and Empire:
An updated edition of the classic study of the Industrial Revolution by "one of the few genuinely great historians of our century" (The New Republic). Premier historian Eric Hobsbawm's brilliant study of the Industrial Revolution, which sold more than a quarter of a million copies in its original edition, is now back in print, updated for a new generation. In Industry and Empire, Hobsbawm explores the origin and dramatic course of the Industrial Revolution over two-hundred-and-fifty years and its influence on social and political institutions. He describes and accounts for Britain's rise as the first industrial power, its decline from domination, its special relation with the rest of the world, and the effects of this trajectory on the lives of its ordinary citizens. This new edition includes a fascinating summary of events of the last twenty years, and an illuminating new conclusion. [via] | <urn:uuid:65471533-c49b-478e-a61f-f32a61963c42> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.bookfinder.com/dir/i/Industry_and_Empire-From_1750_to_the_Present_Day/1565845617/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.926144 | 240 | 1.59375 | 2 |
Q: I've been reading about pheromone singles parties in California in which people sniff stinky clothing to select who they'll get matched with. Have I been going about my dating routine all wrong? -- Frederica G., Chicago
A: Humans have all kinds of animal instincts (and stinks) we prefer to ignore or suppress, and smell is certainly one of them. In North America alone we spend about $2.5 billion on deodorants and antiperspirants every year.
But even in our sweat-suppressed, nose-weakened state, humans produce and respond to pheromones -- aromatic hormones secreted by the body that stimulate certain behaviors. (We both -- as advocates of body chemistry's communication powers -- think it's better to avoid the sweat-suppressing formulas used in deodorants.) Men's sweat smell raises women's cortisol levels, interesting because that's a "fight or flight" hormone. Women who live together seemingly synchronize their menstrual periods through smell cues. And human sexual behavior and fertility seem influenced by particular scents.
But do aromas make for the sweet smell of romantic success? Sticking your nose in a plastic bag containing a T-shirt that a potential date slept in for three nights (that's the gimmick at these get-togethers) may let you know if he or she is a smoker (a total turn off) or wears cologne you hate. But that's a long way from finding a soul mate.
An enduring relationship is one of the building blocks of lifelong better health: Paired-up people live longer and have more frequent sex. They survive serious illnesses better, and they're less stressed, which has cardiovascular and psychological benefits.
So what's the key? Find activities you enjoy (from cycling to reading), and join groups of like-minded people. Physical activity boosts body image and dispels anxiety.
Q: My 10-year-old son has dyslexia and ADHD and takes several medications to help him concentrate and read better. I think he's getting bullied at school. He won't admit it, but he comes home sad a lot. His teachers seem clueless. What can I do? -- Lucinda M., Reston, Va.
A: Great question, and one that parents everywhere, whether their child is bullied or not, should be talking about at PTA meetings and at home. In your situation, the first step is to make your child feel safe enough to talk about what's going on. That comes from his knowing it's not his fault and knowing that you -- and his teachers -- will stick up for him. So talk to your child about what's going on and find ways for him to tell you and his teachers when it happens.
Next, try to get the school involved in an anti-bullying campaign. There's a successful initiative in Alberta, Canada -- the Teasing and Bullying Unacceptable Behaviour (TAB) program that gets results with 4th-6th graders who don't understand about kids with differences. In this case, the difference is stuttering (but any attribute will work). Kids who understood the problem or knew someone, such as a family member, who stuttered were less likely to bully. The kids who didn't know anything about stuttering or anyone who stuttered were the most likely to make fun of "different" kids.
The really great news? After going through TAB, potential bullies showed the biggest attitude change. Once they learned that stuttering was involuntary and how bullying really hurt their schoolmate or friend the bullying became socially unacceptable.
A lot of bullies are what researchers call "dually involved"; they've been bullied too. For those children, it usually starts at home. That's why establishing a school-based program is good for everyone.
(Mehmet Oz, M.D. is host of "The Dr. Oz Show," and Mike Roizen, M.D. is Chief Medical Officer at the Cleveland Clinic Wellness Institute. Submit your health questions at www.doctoroz.com.) | <urn:uuid:f3717978-2e62-4dd0-ad6e-90b73e5d6b6a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.crescent-news.com/columnists/2012/07/17/youdocs-7-17-12-smells-like-romance-in-the-air | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00049-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.973619 | 836 | 1.992188 | 2 |
- Special Sections
- Public Notices
By Charlie Spencer
As the seasons are starting to change, it seems like a good time to consider our feathered friends. Some of our summer visitors will be leaving and new arrivals from the North will be joining us in the next few months. Birds not only make our gardens more beautiful, but they eat lots of pests. Following are 10 tips to help attract and keep birds happy:
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If you are new to the award winning Brunswick Beacon and wish to get a subscription or simply gain access to our online content then please enter your ZIP code below and continue to setup your account. | <urn:uuid:d7174c77-8ec0-4d59-a672-9eadb09561b9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.brunswickbeacon.com/content/help-our-feathered-friends-10-steps-attract-and-keep-birds-happy?mini=calendar-date%2F2012-11 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.925915 | 174 | 1.726563 | 2 |
Starting a Walking Program
It has been found that walking is one of the best forms of exercise because it contributes
so many benefits to the human body without risking injury. Walking is an exercise
which should be done daily and continued until your doctor instructs you to stop.
Walking Can Help You:
- Strengthen your heart and lungs
- Improve circulation
- Prevent heart attacks and strokes
- Reduce obesity and high blood pressure
- Boost your metabolic rate
- Favorably alter your cholesterol
- Improve muscle tone in your legs and abdomen
- Reduce stress and tension
- Reduce arthritis pain; stop bone tissue decay
Interested? Visit the links below for more information! | <urn:uuid:4d82901b-e7a3-4b26-8f8c-c9a030e1459a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.forsyth.cc/PublicHealth/fitness_walking.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00032-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.908041 | 140 | 3.109375 | 3 |
Posted by: HR
For Pets Best Insurance
While the joy of owning a dog is far beyond the value of the dollar, the expenses of doing so certainly are not. Between food, toys, and medical expenses, our pets can be expensive members of the family.
There are some great ways, however, to be a proactive pet owner and cut down some of these expenses. In some cases one may be required to get a little creative and in others make an investment in the future—but however the costs are cut, it will be better for dog owner and dog in the long run.
Prevention and preparation are two very valuable tools when it comes to cutting down the cost of owning a pet. Purchasing quality food may seem expensive now, but will decrease the likelihood of digestive problems and allergies—which means less trips to the vet and less of the bills that come with it. Similarly, checking out pet insurance companies for the best pet insurance plans will help buffer the costs of diagnostic tests, accidents, surgeries, prescriptions, and a host of other procedures.
Getting pets fixed will also trim down costs. According to Spay USA, spaying or neutering pets will reduce their likelihood to roam as well as unwanted puppies or kittens. Wandering goes beyond surprised litters, also increasing the likelihood of dogs being hit by a car or otherwise injured. Many pet health insurance policies cover neutering and spaying within wellness packages, as well as surgeries that could result from an accident.
Obviously our pets can’t tell the difference between a Gucci collar and one purchased at the local dollar store—and cats will likely take more enthusiastically to a bath loofah than the $20 toy purchased from PetSmart. These extra costs can easily be avoided. When it comes to health coverage, however, obtaining pet insurance information could be a lifesaver, or at least a budget saver.Tags: Pet Health Insurance, pet insurance | <urn:uuid:ec0edb40-f382-476a-abe0-840e35669980> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.petsbest.com/blog/pet-insurance-protects-pets-and-budgets/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00061-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960688 | 391 | 1.625 | 2 |
- A biology major.
- From Mercer Island, Wash.
- An animal behaviorist.
- A Willamette Academy mentor.
- Eager to share.
Exploring the Natural World
Kaeli Swift turns bird watching into scientific discovery.
Kaeli Swift has spent much of her time on campus feeding the birds. In fact, it is tough to find her without peanuts in her pocket, ready to provide for the crows, ravens and scrub-jays.
The feeding is in the name of research. Fascinated by animal behavior, Kaeli studies a distinctive characteristic of crows — their ability to distinguish human faces — by seeing whether they are more likely to take peanuts from people they recognize versus strangers.
She developed her project with the help of her mentor, biology Professor David Craig, who also invited Kaeli to work with him on another bird research project on Caspian terns.
The two used the photo-sharing website Flickr to track banded terns, and they presented their findings at a meeting of the American Ornithology Union.
Why I Value Willamette
"Willamette has given me the one-on-one help that I need," Kaeli says. "I have built close relationships with my professors and tried different experiments to help me reach my ultimate goal of studying animal behavior.
"The liberal arts education at Willamette offers you a holistic experience. I am now a strong scientist, but I also am a better decision-maker, a better critical thinker and a better citizen."
Beyond the Classroom
Willamette also helped Kaeli discover an enthusiasm for public outreach.
She has mentored and taught science to younger students through Awesome Academic Adventures, a summer academic enrichment program for grade-schoolers, and Willamette Academy, the university's college access program for underrepresented youths.
In both cases, she has shared her science work while acting as a role model.
"I want to encourage young people to become as excited about the natural world as I am," she says. "At Willamette Academy, the goal is also to help the students get into college. I talk with them about what subjects they enjoy, and if they haven't considered biology, I give them many reasons why they should."
After graduation, Kaeli heads to Australia to gain more research experience by joining a field project observing the behavior of the stain bowerbird.
Then she plans to attend graduate school to continue with the passion her mentor helped her cultivate: investigating the natural world as a researcher.
"Professor Craig is great at catering his classes to each student's objectives," Kaeli says. "He recognized that I had a future in research, and he challenged me to work toward that goal."
Hannah Vietmeier is turning her love for the outdoors into a career in conservation. Read More
A summer internship allowed Kimberly Hursh to explore a career path while helping the community. Read More
Whether playing football or helping form a new club, Walter Robinson hones his leadership skills at Willamette. Read More
Bernie Bernstein’s research and internship projects showed him how to apply his academics to a career. Read More
As a student, Alisa Alexander added curator to her résumé. Read More
Doug Rice dreams of using his leadership skills in the ER. Read More
Hannah Leland shows the next generation that Bartók is relevant. Read More
Alicia Maggard searches historical archives for clues about people’s identities. Read More
Michael Miller examines global challenges through an economic lens. Read More
Biking is more than a pastime for Jan Taborsky — it’s a vocation. Read More
Jeff Weber holds his own among PhDs in the lab. Read More
Chemistry and language classes — and a year in Africa — helped Emily Mitchell find a career in medicine. Read More
Arianna Alibabaie blends her interests in politics and global cultures as she learns both on campus and abroad. Read More
Jonnie Dunne has taken his environmental studies in new directions during his time at Willamette. Read More
Rachael Peterson’s Willamette experiences have prepared her to lead elementary school students. Read More
Mika Lim explores global leadership as an intern in Cambodia and Vietnam. Read More | <urn:uuid:1a99b670-e0b8-4293-945d-523e3d023dcb> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://mailto:thtr-tix@willamette.edu/admission/explore/iam/students/kaeli_swift/index.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00041-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953326 | 897 | 2.46875 | 2 |
Truegreen’s mission is to offer environmentally friendly products to a much wider market by making them available with competitive pricing when compared to traditional and other green products.
We believe in living responsibly and through our efforts making a positive impact on our earth. We are dedicated to creating a future for our children by sustaining our earth’s precious resources.
“What you take from the earth, you must give back. That’s nature’s way.”
― Chris d’Lacey, The Fire Within
“Green2 100% Treeless paper products made from renewable resources.”
Truegreen Creating a Greener World for This Generation and Generations to Come
We believe in the power of ingenuity; the ingenuity to use alternative resources to make better products. We are Truegreen, a producer of treeless paper. Each year over 900 million trees are harvested for paper alone. Green2 Paper is treeless and is made from sugar cane and quick growing bamboo grass. No trees were harmed while making these products!
The Makers of Green2 an Environmentally Sustainable Product
Green2 is a line of treeless paper products made from sugar cane husk and bamboo grass. These are two environmentally sustainable resources. They replenish at a much faster rate than tree pulp. Sugar cane re-grows itself in as little as 12 months. Bamboo grass can grow as much as three inches in a day. These resources, while not found readily on the North American continent, are found abundantly in a few places around the world namely China, Brazil and India.
How Truegreen can Help Eliminate Deforestation
For hundreds of years trees have been harvested for their pulp. Areas that were once densely populated with bark and leaves are now laid bare. Trees can take up to 30 years to grow. Be part of the solution by using products made from renewable resources.
Truegreen carries the Banner Forward
There is a better way. Truegreen is an innovative leader in using renewable resources, helping to shape a brighter future for our children. We are making a commitment to the sustainability of our natural resources. We are doing this by finding the best, and most efficient resources. | <urn:uuid:51dcd750-8c9a-4bcd-a0ff-9e5ba87d6ee0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://truegreen2.com/wp/our-mission/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00060-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96109 | 447 | 1.875 | 2 |
The University of Arkansas at Little Rock (UALR) has completed its self-study report and submitted it to the NCAA. “The core purpose of the NCAA is to govern competition in a fair, safe, equitable and sportsmanlike manner, and to integrate intercollegiate athletics into higher education so that the educational experience of the student-athlete is paramount.”
UALR conducted a thorough assessment of its intercollegiate athletic programs.
Stated Goals for the Process
The University articulates the following goals for its self-study process:
- To confirm UALR’s compliance with the operating principles set forth by the NCAA for Division I athletics.
- To establish a collective vision for continued growth and development of UALR’s athletics program which is guided by the operating principles set forth by the NCAA for Division I athletics.
- To provide the campus community with in-depth understanding of intercollegiate athletics and the integral role that UALR’s athletics program plays in the life our institution. | <urn:uuid:5eefe31c-d1eb-4125-8628-59fa4e8c4f2f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://ualr.edu/accreditation/index.php/home/self-studies/ncaa-self-study/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00028-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951879 | 216 | 1.648438 | 2 |
Albert Coady Wedemeyer
Wedemeyer, Albert Coady (wĕdˈēmĪˌər) [key], 1897–1989, American general, b. Omaha, Nebr., grad. West Point, 1918. After service in China, the Philippines, and Europe, he was graduated (1936) from the general staff school at Fort Leavenworth, Kans., and was sent to the German general staff school. In World War II he was (1941–43) a member of the war plans division of the general staff and in 1944 was named to succeed Joseph Stilwell as commander of the U.S. forces in China. Promoted (1945) to lieutenant general, Wedemeyer made (1947) a survey of China and Korea for President Harry S. Truman and was named (1949) commander of the U.S. 6th Army. He retired from active service in 1951. Wedemeyer became a business executive and was an active anti-Communist.
See his Wedemeyer Reports (1958).
The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed. Copyright © 2012, Columbia University Press. All rights reserved.
See more Encyclopedia articles on: U.S. History: Biographies | <urn:uuid:566a9b24-176e-42c8-832d-9db55eef66b9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.factmonster.com/encyclopedia/people/wedemeyer-albert-coady.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00051-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.947092 | 268 | 2.25 | 2 |
There is some cheerful news for the figure conscious young women who are on the contraceptive pill – it doesn’t actually cause weight gain. Many women want to avoid the pill because of worries about piling on the pounds, or giving it up when they suspect it is behind their weight gain. However, a thesis from the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, has demonstrated that the combined contraceptive pill does not cause weight increase. The pill contains synthetic forms of the female sex hormones oestrogen and progesterone, used by an estimated 80 to 90 million women worldwide, including 400,000 from Sweden alone. In Sweden, it is the most popular contraception among women, according to a Gothenburg statement.
Ingela Lindh reports on a long-term study of 1,749 women born in 1962, 1972 and 1982 who answered questions about contraception, pregnancies, height/weight and smoking habits every five years from the age of 19 to 44. ”The women who were on the pill and were monitored from their teenage years until the age of 34 didn’t put on any more weight than their peers who had never taken the pill at all,” says Lindh, a registered midwife and researcher at the Sahlgrenska Academy. The study also showed that the combined pill is the most widely used contraceptive up to the age of 29, after which condoms are most common. From the age of 32 onwards the coil proved most popular.
“There were lots of reasons why women came off the pill, including a fear of side-effects, weight gain and mood swings, and these gradually increased over time and were more common in the youngest group,” says Lindh. Despite women’s concerns about weight gain, the researchers did not find any link between being on the pill and putting on weight. The only factors that affected weight were ageing and smoking.
Source: IANSFirst Published: Mar 21, 2012 at 11:48 AM | <urn:uuid:d3f3f96c-8ebc-4701-bf6b-d6ac8fb8bd50> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://health.india.com/pregnancy/oral-contraceptive-pill-doesnt-cause-weight-gain/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00064-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.975721 | 400 | 2.078125 | 2 |
At a time when obesity rates are at an all-time high and continuing to grow, doctors are bumping up their recommendations for patients to increase their physical activity. The CDC reports that in 2010, one in three adults that saw a doctor or other health care professional was advised to increase their physical activity to improve their health. This is a vast increase to the recommendations in 2000 when less than one in four consultations resulted in a recommendation of more physical activity. This dramatic change over 10 years shows that members of the medical community are increasing their efforts to recommend lifestyle change to boost health benefits.
This development is important because patients typically listen to advice given by their doctors. According to a study done in 2008, overweight patients were nearly five times more likely to exercise if their doctors counseled them to do so. They were even more likely to keep active if their doctor followed up with them after the initial prescription.
Exercise has been linked to lowering the risk of diseases like type 2 diabetes, heart disease and depression. Exercise is most frequently prescribed to patients that are overweight or obese, the CDC report showed. Despite the rise in the number of patients being advised to get and stay active, the authors of the report acknowledge there is a long way to go before such advice reaches a sufficient number of people.
For those that may be overweight or obese, you don’t have to wait for your doctor to advise you to get some exercise. You can get started today by implementing some simple steps that will sneak more fitness into your day. Taking the stairs instead of the elevator, swapping your chair for a balance ball at work, doing 10 jumping jacks during every commercial break of your favorite show and parking farther away when you go into a building are just a few things you can do to burn more calories.
February 22nd, 2012 | <urn:uuid:ed3bc154-6ae8-49b8-993b-55eeb22ae0db> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.dietsinreview.com/diet_column/02/doctors-increasingly-prescribing-exercise-to-patients/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00020-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.974719 | 368 | 2.796875 | 3 |
Dmitry of Uglich
|Tsarevich of Russia|
|Tsarevich Dmitry (1899), by Mikhail Nesterov.|
|Born||19 October 1582|
|Died||15 May 1591(aged 8)|
|Burial||Uglich later moved to Moscow|
|Dmitry of Uglich|
|the Wonderworker, Slain Crown Prince or Pious Crown Prince|
|Honored in||Eastern Orthodox Church|
|Feast||May 15/ 28|
Tsarevich Dmitry Ivanovich, also known as Tsarevich Demetrius, Tsarevich Dimitri, Dmitry of Uglich, and Dmitry of Moscow, (Russian: Дмитрий Иванович, Дмитрий Угличский, Дмитрий Московский; 19 October 1582 — 15 May 1591) was a Russian tsarevich, youngest son of Ivan the Terrible and the only child born to Ivan the Terrible and Maria Nagaya.
After the death of Ivan IV, Dmitry's older brother, Feodor I, ascended to power. However, the actual ruler of the Russian state was Feodor's brother-in-law, a boyar, Boris Godunov, who had had a claim on the Russian throne. According to a later widespread version, Godunov wanted to get rid of Dmitry, who could have succeeded the throne in light of Feodor's childlessness. In 1584, Godunov sent Dmitry, his mother and her brothers into exile to the Tsarevich's appanage city of Uglich. On 15 May 1591, Dmitry died from a stab wound, under mysterious circumstances.
Accident or murder
Russian chroniclers and later historians offered two possible scenarios of what could have happened to Dmitry. The first theory is that Dmitry was killed by the order of Boris Godunov; the assassins made it look like an accident (this version was supported by the prominent 19th century historians Nikolai Karamzin, Sergei Soloviev, Vasily Klyuchevsky and others). The critics of this version point out that Dmitry was Ivan's son from his fifth (or seventh) marriage, and thus illegitimate by the canon law (a maximum of three marriages are allowed in the Russian Orthodox Church). This would make any claim of Dmitry's for the throne dubious at best.
The second theory is that Dmitry stabbed himself in the throat during an epileptic seizure, while playing with a knife (this version was supported by historians Mikhail Pogodin, Sergei Platonov, V. K. Klein, Ruslan Skrynnikov and others). The detractors of this scenario assert that, since during an epileptic seizure the palms are wide open, the self-infliction of a fatal wound becomes highly unlikely. However, the official investigation, done at that time, asserted that the Tsarevich's seizure came while he was playing a svaika game or with a knife (v tychku) and thus holding the knife by the blade, turned toward himself. With the knife in that position, the version of self-inflicted wound on the neck while falling forward during seizure appears more likely.
There is also a third version of Dmitry's fate, which found support with some earlier historians, such as Konstantin Bestuzhev-Ryumin, Ivan Belyaev and others. They considered it possible that Godunov's people had tried to assassinate Dmitry, but killed somebody else instead and he managed to escape. This scenario explains the appearance of impostors, sponsored by the Polish nobility (see False Dmitry I, False Dmitry II, False Dmitry III). Most modern Russian historians, however, consider the version of Dmitry's survival improbable, since it is hardly possible that the boy's appearance was unknown to his assassins. Also, it is well known that many Polish nobles who supported False Dmitry I did not believe his story themselves.
The death of the Tsarevich roused a violent riot in Uglich, instigated by the loud claims of Dmitry's mother Maria Nagaya and her brother Mikhail that Dmitry was murdered. Hearing this, enraged citizens lynched fifteen of Dmitry's supposed "assassins", including the local representative of the Moscow government (dyak) and one of Dmitry's playmates. The subsequent official investigation, led by Vasily Shuisky, after a thorough examination of witnesses, concluded the Tsarevich had died from a self-inflicted stab wound to the throat. Following the official investigation, Maria Nagaya was forcibly tonsured as a nun and exiled to a remote convent.
However, when the political circumstances changed, Shuisky retracted his earlier claim of accidental death and asserted that Dmitry was murdered on Godunov's orders. On 3 June 1606, Dmitry's remains were transferred from Uglich to Moscow and his cult soon developed. In the calendar of the Russian Orthodox Church, he is venerated as a "Saint Pious Tsarevitch", with feast days of 19 October, 15 May and 3 June. In the 20th century, the majority of Russian and Soviet historians have given more credit to the conclusions of the first official investigation report under Shuisky, which ruled Dmitry's death to be an accident.
|Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Tsarevitch Dmitrij|
Cultural references
|Heir to the Russian Throne
See also
- Sergey Platonov. Очерки по истории смуты в Московском государстве XVI-XVII вв. Moscow, 1937.
- Ruslan Skrynnikov. Лихолетье. Москва в XVI-XVII веках. Moscow, 1988. | <urn:uuid:737bc6af-96cf-40f0-acb6-ca2bd56c630a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dmitry_of_Uglich | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00029-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.952394 | 1,271 | 2.203125 | 2 |
Do you find that you have back pain after spin class?
Do you find that you have back pain after spin class? FitSugar reader livingthin turns to an expert for an answer and posted it in our 10 Pounds DOWN! community group.
According to a recent stat published in Women’s Health Magazine, 58 percent of professional cyclists experience lower back pain and experts think it may be even more common among casual riders who tend to sit too high or too far back in the seat, reports the magazine. "Sitting on a bike can often cause stiffness in the lower back or pain after a prolonged bike ride," says Dr. Yoav Suprun, DPT, and owner of SoBe Spine in Miami.
"The discs in the lumbar spine move backward (posteriorly) when we slouch forward on the bike (either outdoor or in a spin class). This mechanical change in the resting position of the spine can often start the stiffness followed often by slight pain or discomfort," explains Suprun.
One way to help prevent lower back discomfort (in addition to insuring your bike seat is in the proper position by asking your instructor to set you up properly) is to bend backward before and after a bike ride to make sure the back isn't stiff, says Suprun. "If it is difficult or painful to bend backward once, try to do 10-15 repetitions into the stiffness. Often the stiffness will subside with repeated movements into extension of the back (back bends)."
And Suprun recommends this "slouch-over correct exercise" for during your ride: create as large of a hollow in the small of the back as possible by doing an anterior pelvic tilt (as if pushing the belly button forward) and relax. Do this 15-20 times. "You may feel stiffness or slight discomfort in the first 10 repetitions and then it often becomes easier to do with more repetitions. Once you spend 15-30 minutes on the bike, do 15-20 repetitions of this movement, hold for two to three seconds in the anterior tilt and relax. Repeat 20 times."
Do you have a nagging exercise question or have a stellar workout to share? Post it in our 10 Pounds DOWN! group in the FitSugar Community! | <urn:uuid:a0f4ee2c-652d-499a-8335-c14f1f562b69> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.fitsugar.com/latest/lower-back-pain | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00071-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.94511 | 465 | 1.71875 | 2 |
Start: 7:00 pm
Presented with SEATTLE FIRST BAPTIST CHURCH as part of the SEATTLE SPIRITUAL SYNTHESIS series. Scholar and journalist Garry Wills' often incendiary articles for The New York Review of Books and other publications were highlights of the political season and we're pleased to welcome him back to Seattle Spiritual Synthesis tonight to speak about what may be his most controversial book. In his new book, Why Priests? A Failed Tradition (Viking), he examines the rise priesthood in early Christianity, calling this a late development in a religion that initially opposed it, and asks whether Christianity would be stronger without priests. A Professor Emeritus of History at Northwestern, Pulitzer Prize winner and Catholic ex-seminarian, Garry Wills has written many books on a wide variety of topics, including Why I am a Catholic, What Jesus Meant, Lincoln at Gettysburg and Verdi's Shakespeare. Garry Wills' talk will be followed by an onstage conversation with Seattle writer and teacher Rebecca Brown, author most recently of American Romances (City Lights). Seattle First Baptist Church is located at 1111 Harvard Avenue (at Seneca). Free/no tickets necessary. | <urn:uuid:95317ea0-56c7-491b-a98a-2e90eebf15db> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://elliottbaybook.com/event/2013/02/20/day | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00045-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959769 | 245 | 1.539063 | 2 |
July 27, 2012
Kamloops, B.C. - The City of Kamloops has been informed by Emergency Management BC that residents impacted by flood damage may apply for funding through the Disaster Financial Assistance Program. This program is legislated by the Province of BC's Emergency Program Act under the Ministry of Justice.
BC's Disaster Financial Assistance Program (DFA) helps those impacted by a disaster cope with the cost of repairs and recovery from uninsurable disaster-related property damage. Kamloops residents who were impacted by the recent flooding may apply for financial assistance. DFA helps to replace or restore essential items and property that have been destroyed or damaged to pre-disaster condition.
Insurable damages, such as sewer or sump pit back-up or water entry from above ground including roofs and windows, are not eligible for DFA.
Residents wishing to apply for assistance and have their applications reviewed by the Province may do so at: http://pep.bc.ca/dfa_claims/SummaryofDFA.pdf
- 30 -
Len Hrycan, EOC Director
City of Kamloops | <urn:uuid:b4c2d75a-b8c6-4a0c-88ad-19be519893c7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.kamloops.ca/news/2012/07-27-DisasterRelief.shtml | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00047-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951054 | 235 | 1.585938 | 2 |
Everyone would like to know what must be done in order to have a successful and ever expanding business. Well, the key to achieving this is managing by statistics. Many businesses and governments have failed and collapsed for no apparent reason to some. The truth is that they didn’t have a reliable and effective method of managing. They didn’t know when, what or why they should implement certain programs. They just kept on guessing, changing a little bit here, adding a little bit there, because that seemed like a good choice.
These types of groups will keep doing this as long as the organization is still standing, but let me tell you, that there is a whole technology that will tell you how to keep things working without the unpredictable odds that come with guess work.
STATISTICS are a number or amount compared to an earlier number or amount. They’re a tool that present a manager with reliable indicators to use to establish predication and produce a continuous successful pattern. A viable statistic tells of production, that is what it does.
This course gives you all the data you need to correctly scale a graph and how to accurately detect the condition, which is an operating state of the system the statistic is measuring. Will the worker that is in the line of production have the same statistic as the regional manager? Should I keep my statistic on a daily, weekly or monthly basis? What happens if I am doing everything that is possible, but my statistic is still not improving?
I can assure you that all these questions are answered on this incredible course. It resolves all of the possible doubts you can have on how to correctly manage an organization, and how to select the correct statistics to keep an organization information center, which is a visual display of the key statistics of an organization in one place. Last, but not least, this course tells you what is the biggest mistake you can do while managing by statistics, which is to NEVER be reasonable about interpreting a statistic.
What is meant by being “reasonable” is that you should always investigate and find out what are the
exactactions caused your statistic to be trending in the direction it is. I am eager to do the apprenticeship of this course and I know that if I apply this data to any company, and even to my life, I would be absolutely certain that the only way to go here is up, up, up! | <urn:uuid:5c97c6b7-fe53-4187-85aa-a5073fb701bb> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blog.hubbardcollege.org/2010/06/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00048-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.973255 | 487 | 2.25 | 2 |
Frequently Asked Questions
Q. Why did you choose a larger page size for the site?
A. According to the user statistics for the site, 97.23 percent of the campus Web site's audience has a display resolution of 1024 x 768 or higher. The greatest share of our current audience, 67.71 percent, has a display resolution that allows them to see the entire Web page without scrolling.
Those viewing at 1024 x 768 still have access without scrolling to the site's most heavily used links and content: email, maps, a-z index, ph, search, all the links in the main navigation to the right, access to college sites and links for the two biggest user groups, current and prospective students.
In order to create a Web site that had a use life of 3-5 years, the Web Team chose to support the largest user group and follow the proven trend of increasingly larger resolutions; in several years, 1024 x 768 will very likely go the way of the first vector video standard for screen size from the late 1990s: SVGA, or 800 x 400, now down to only 1.81 percent of our audience.
The trend in higher education, especially the top national colleges we compete with, is toward larger minimum width display sizes. The current width of content on our new site is 970 pixels; the design is 1010. The minimum width of some of our competitors: Penn is at 1,000 pixels, Stanford (beta) and Notre Dame are at 960, and MIT is at 933.
Interestingly, the other largest increase in screen sizes is smaller, as more users hit us with cell phones, PDAs, or other hand-held wireless devices. We currently provide those users with their own style sheet. That's less than 1 percent of our audience, but this group is expected to grow exponentially in the next several years.
Q: Is the new site accessible to those who access the site using a modem? What about those using older computers and operating systems, such as visitors from overseas, or those with cell phones and other wireless devices?
A: Yes, the site will be accessible. Modem users should select the text-only link in the upper left-hand corner of the main image section of the site. Only a very few small images will be included after selecting this link, so the pages will load very quickly.
From Aug. 6, 2007, to Aug. 6, 2008, only 1.61 percent of our audience visited via modem, a total of 562,183 visits (not unique visits; this data set could include multiple visits by the same people). Of those, 300,602, or 53.7 percent, were from Champaign. The rest of those visits were mostly in-state (Chicago has the largest share) or from the states of New York and New Jersey. There were 1,234 visits from Riyadh in that year, the only international city in the top 25 (at no. 24).
Q: Did you change the typeface in ph (Find People)? I don't like the way it looks.
The typeface is is the same as the old interface, and we don't care for it much, either. We are displaying it at a larger size as a service to those older than 40 who generally have difficulties reading smaller type. The display size is the only element we can control. The typeface and other features are controlled by a very old cgi program that we inherited from CITES. We do not make changes to this interface so we can't edit the typeface.
When we retire PH and replace it with the Campus Contacts we will have full control over the presentation of the data. The launch of the new Campus Contacts system is also dependent on CITES making some changes to the LDAP server, so we can't give you a scheduled launch date.
The "traditional" orange and blue will appear in a number of places, but most prominently in the large images that fade in and out and in the "Here and Now: Images of Illinois" and the "Campus Highlights" sections. View the large images fading in and out (requires Flash player).
The old site actually didn't use the official University bold palette, either. The "blue" was actually periwinkle, and the orange, while close, was not an exact match.
Q: All of the orange looks more like a yellow or a gold on my monitor and the blue doesn't seem right, either
A: It's orange and blue, honest! There are yellow highlights at the end of the orange gradient.
- Your monitor may need to be color-calibrated and/or otherwise adjusted. This includes colorimetric descriptions of its phosphors and the color temperature of its white point, among other factors, including the color gamut, color model, and color space.
- Your monitor has been in use for some time (the phosphors in a monitor lose brightness as it ages), making the colors less vibrant.
More information and resources regarding color (including a link to the Color Wiki) may be found on this International Color Consortium Web page: http://www.color.org/links2.xalter | <urn:uuid:7a555e37-57fb-4e1e-b598-51f6e7d546ef> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://illinois.edu/info/site/faqs.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00022-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.940394 | 1,067 | 1.53125 | 2 |
National EMSC Data Analysis Resource Center
Below are just a few of the basic and most common terminology related to grants.
If you find something not listed contact us and we'll get it up and going. Thanks to the Oklahoma Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services for providing many of these definitions.
A brief overview of your proposal. The abstract is the first thing that reviewer's read, and it causes them to formulate an opinion of your proposal (good or bad, justified or not).
The actual application for funding. A majority of applications are now being submitted electronically. See HRSA's Electronic Submission Guide for more information. Also see grant guidance.
A group of individuals who have been selected by an organization to provide technical consultation in a variety of areas (e.g., fundraising, outreach, strategic planning). An advisory committee meets periodically to provide advice and feedback to the organization.
Activities specified or described in a grant application, plan, or other document that are approved by the awarding office for funding, or changes that may be proposed by the grantee and subsequently approved by the Grants Management Officer.
The guidance explains exactly what is required to submit the application. It contains additional definitions, explanations, and deadlines. Before submitting any grant. Read the guidance!
A hypothesis is an assumption made in order to test its validity. It should assert a cause-and-effect relationship between a program intervention and its expected result. Both the intervention and result must be measured to confirm the hypothesis.
The IRB is an administrative body established to protect the rights and welfare of human research subjects recruited to participate in research activities conducted under the auspices of the institution with which it is affiliated. The IRB has the authority to approve, require modifications in, or disapprove all research activities that fall within its jurisdiction. More information on IRBs can be obtained from the Office for Human Research Protections at http://ohrp.osophs.dhhs.gov.
Tools (surveys, questionnaires, etc.) used to involve individuals in discussions about their lives and the communities in which they live. Community participants become involved in programming as they provide information about their social, economic, and environmental concerns.
The legally binding document that notifies the grantee institution that a grant or a cooperative agreement has been made. Contains references to the award's terms and conditions.
Benefits or changes for individuals or populations during or after participation in program activities. Outcomes may relate to behavior, skills, knowledge, attitudes, values, conditions or other attributes. Outcomes are what participants know, think, or can do; how they behave, or what their conditions are that is different following program implementation. (Source: United Way of America.)
Faculty or staff member who directs the technical and administrative work of a sponsored project. CoPI is a faculty member who collaborates with the Principal Investigator (PI) in the execution of the research project.
Submitted to a sponsor setting forth a project that includes at a minimum a description of the work and a budget.
Formal announcement by sponsor of a funding initiative to support research projects within a well-defined area. Typically RFA's are published in the Federal Register, agency announcements, or in a foundation announcement. Federal RFP's are published in the Commerce Business Daily.
Critical section of your grant directly related to your success in obtaining funding. Should include, broad, long-term objectives of your research, and then list the specific aims or goals that are being proposed in the particular research proposal.
A Stakeholder is any person, inside or outside the organization that has a real and active interest in the organization and its programs; who has an investment (time, energy, emotional, or money) in the program; and who has a commitment to the program's success. | <urn:uuid:7d9b216c-7e8d-4c7f-8626-3ffeecdbd088> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.nedarc.org/writingGrants/whatIsAGrant/commonGrantTerminology.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00061-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.940816 | 776 | 2.3125 | 2 |
Hanifah, Ummi (2007) PROBLEM PSIKOLOGIS KARYAWAN YANG BERLATARBELAKANG PENDIDIKAN TIDAK SESUAI DENGAN PEKERJAAN. Other thesis, University of Muhammadiyah Malang.
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In the world of work, work problems or issues that arise is as a part of the dynamics of employment, with the problems faced and solved by someone, then someone will be more mature when he was able and capable of handling the problem. Ideally we are working according to interests or educational background, and most people would think so. But the reality is often different, due to existing conditions or demands that we mangharuskan 'swerved' and elaborate area we do not like or the original beyond our expertise. The purpose of this study was to find out what psychological problems faced by employees of educational backgrounds are not in accordance with his work and to learn how to cope with psychological problems experienced by employees with educational backgrounds do not fit with her work. This study used a qualitative descriptive approach, using the four subjects of the employees who have the educational background does not match the job characteristics and degree educated D3. Data analysis is done by using qualitative descriptive data analysis method that is usually in the form of literary studies or empirical studies. Based on the results of the research shows the employees who have the educational background does not match the job to have psychological problems such as nervous, nervous and anxious at the time of interview the employees because they do not master the theory of human behavior, was afraid of when recruiting employees, less confident when they have to convince the customer, to feel less capable in terms of arithmetic. They sometimes find it hard to sleep because of thinking about work. As for how employees cope with psychological problems is by way of complaint asking each subject to a competent person, in this case leadership, looking for customers or clients outside of work, sharing with co-workers, maintaining good relations with the leaders and co-worker.
|Item Type:||Thesis (Other)|
|Subjects:||B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > BF Psychology|
|Divisions:||Faculty of Psychology > Department of Psychology|
|Depositing User:||Zainul Afandi|
|Date Deposited:||08 Jun 2012 03:18|
|Last Modified:||08 Jun 2012 03:18|
Actions (login required) | <urn:uuid:21baeb93-1009-41ab-a7a7-adc5098902b2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://eprints.umm.ac.id/6772/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00042-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.924557 | 510 | 2.28125 | 2 |
The word legacy has had much lip-service of late. Insatiable design explorer and director of the documentary trilogy Helvetica, Objectified and Urbanized, Gary Hustwit and photographer Jon Pack have been travelling the globe documenting the forgotten relics of Olympic cities asking, what happens to a city after the Olympics are gone?
"Some former Olympic sites are retrofitted and used in ways that belie their grand beginnings; turned into prisons, housing, malls, gyms, churches. Others sit unused for decades and become tragic time capsules, examples of misguided planning and broken promises of the benefits that the Games would bring. After the events are over, the medals have been handed out and the torch is extinguished, what's next? What happens to a city after the Olympics are gone?"
Brooklyn-based photographer Jon Pack has teamed up with director Gary Hustwit, whose design documentary trilogy, starting with the font-fanatical Helevtica, followed by industrial design insight Objectified and most recently Urbanized, have each succeeded in illuminating just how "designed" the world around is, everything from the font on your phone, to the chair you're sat on to the pavements you walk.
Hustwait's latest design endeavour, The Olympic City, continues on from the city planning insight of Urbanized with a timely look at the legacy of the Olympic Games in former host cities around the world. Since 2008, Pack and Hustwit have sought out and photographed the successes and failures, the forgotten remnants and ghosts of the Olympic spectacle. Thus far they've documented Athens, Barcelona, Mexico City, Los Angeles, Montreal, Lake Placid, Rome, and Sarajevo, with plans to document Beijing, Moscow, Berlin, London, and other Olympic cities. The final city will be selected by those who help the project through donations on their Kickstarter page. The project will culminate with a book in 2013. | <urn:uuid:259ec4d6-c529-4fe1-99eb-88d34519be2c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.jotta.com/article/v2-published/2379/the-post-olympic-city-gary-hustwit-s-latest-epic-design-story | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00023-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.947632 | 386 | 2.015625 | 2 |
I had some time this week to play around with Geiger Bot, and I have it at least mostly working with my Geiger Counter kit.
The circuit is shown (sorry for the poor quality photo).
I had trouble getting Geiger Bot to consistently register counts, so I went into the settings and selected custom GM tube, then selected I/o Settings -> Auto Adjust OFF. Then I adjusted the Volume Threshold to around 5000. You can also enable "Ultrafast rates", this seems to make Geiger Bot more sensitive to the pulses from the kit. If you do this, you can increase the volume threshold to 10,000 or higher.
The easiest place to get an iPhone headphone connector is probably by buying a cheap pair of headphones ($4 at Fry's) and cutting off the cord just below where it splits to go to the microphone and earbuds. Then carefully separate the wires and tin each one. Use a DMM to determine which wire goes to which position on the connector. | <urn:uuid:f5da20d0-88de-47b4-bc72-385e0234a472> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.mightyohm.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=484&p=2418 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00073-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.94769 | 203 | 1.5625 | 2 |
How China and U.S. use technology in education?
Check out the infographics put together by Brain Track below to see how China and US are meeting students’ technology needs in education. They have put together this data based on various surveys. Apparently there are few things US can learn from China in terms of technology use.
Some of the notable finding are:
China is more likely to integrate technology into all curriculum.
Chinese students spend more time using technology in school.
Chinese teachers are more technology savvy.
Feel free to share this infographics on any social network or on your blog.Braintrack] | <urn:uuid:50a367a9-29d9-4d45-9072-3e23dfccc0d8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.techacker.com/2013/01/how-china-and-us-use-technology-in-education/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00051-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.952337 | 126 | 2.296875 | 2 |
Economics Experts Continue Series on Financial Crisis
Should you invest in stocks? Stay in cash? Save or spend?
Bruce Fisher, director of the Center for Economic and Policy Studies, will moderate a panel discussion, “The Economics and Finance Forecast for 2010–2011” on Thursday, March 18, from 12:15 to 1:30 p.m. in Bulger Communication Center North. The panel of faculty members from Buffalo State’s Economics and Finance Department will discuss local, national, and international economic prospects; whether stock prices will continue to rise through 2010; and where the country’s economy is in this recovery cycle. The event is free and open to the public.
The panelists are Theodore F. Byrley, department chair and associate professor; William T. Ganley, professor; Ted Schmidt, associate professor; and Kevin Qian, assistant professor.
“We will talk about the prospects for economic growth over the next year and a half,” said Byrley. The discussion will include the economies in Europe and in developing countries as well as in the United States, with a look specifically at Western New York’s economy, including inflation, wages, and jobs.
Byrley believes that the United States may experience major structural change as the American middle-class lifestyle adapts to a changing world. However, he considers himself an optimist, and he points to the fact that he accurately predicted the market rebound that has occurred since the Dow Jones industrial average hit 7,553 in November 2008, followed by its low point of 6,547 in March 2009. (As of this writing, it stands at 10,444.)
This is the third panel offered by campus economics experts since Wall Street indices dropped rapidly beginning in September 2008. The first presentation, the Wall Street Meltdown, was held on September 30, 2008; the second, Why We’re Not Out of the Woods Yet, was held on October 16, 2008. | <urn:uuid:756b71ab-84ed-4842-9f7c-995753cc4d69> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.buffalostate.edu/bulletin/acrosscampus.xml?aid=2347&bid=237 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.95369 | 404 | 1.5 | 2 |
Comcast, the second largest Internet service provider in the country, is making the controversial and aggressive case that Internet service providers should be allowed to serve as traffic cops on the Internet.
In an 80-page filing with the Federal Communications Commission yesterday, the company says it has a right to clamp down on the use of peer-to-peer file sharing programs on its network to preserve the smooth flow of bits to and from all its customers. The filing was in response to an F.C.C. complaint from network neutrality groups in November after the Associated Press revealed that Comcast was stopping some customers from using BitTorrent, a file sharing program often used to swap copyrighted copies of songs and movies over the Internet.
The F.C.C., in its 2005 Internet Policy Statement, said that consumers are entitled to run the applications and online services of their choice. But in the last footnote on the last page of that important document, the F.C.C. allowed for some blocking based on “reasonable network management.”
Comcast appears to be pinning its argument on that phrase.
“Network management is best left to the sound, good-faith judgment of the engineers and proprietors who run and own the networks and who are best able to remedy customer service issues promptly, rather than to regulation,” the Comcast filing states.
“If Comcast did not engage in such responsible and limited management in those limited geographic areas and at those limited times when it is required, the user experience for all customers, including the users of the managed protocols, would deteriorate to unacceptable levels.”
Marvin Ammori, general counsel of Free Press, one of the organizations that asked the F.C.C. to clarify whether Comcast’s actions violated government policy, framed the filing as a serious attack on the principles of network neutrality – where all bits are treated equally.
“They are trying to read those three little words to gut the entire policy statement and all the F.C.C. language on Internet freedom and to overrule their own promises to the FCC saying they would never block Internet traffic.”
Mr. Ammori notes that Comcast is blocking a specific kind of online activity – peer to peer applications – which often competes with services that Comcast itself offers, such as its cable and online TV offerings and video on demand service.
“It’s as though Exxon owned the road and was only slowing down hybrid vehicles,” he said. “It’s a very specific kind of a discrimination.”
Executives for AT&T, the country’s largest Internet service provider, have openly discussed the idea of filtering the Internet to preserve network speeds. They also raised more explicitly the goal of using Internet filtering to stop rampant online piracy.
An executive for Verizon, another large ISP, recently told my colleague Saul Hansell that Verizon would not engage in such filtering.
So let’s reignite the debate here on Bits: does Comcast have a point? Where does reasonable network management collide with the principles of a fair and open Internet? | <urn:uuid:934de364-ee74-4d84-996e-7518fe637c48> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/02/13/comcast-we-need-to-play-internet-traffic-cop/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00059-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.955001 | 640 | 1.914063 | 2 |
On Gaza Drivers, Rumours and Egypts Steel Wall
Those pesky taxi drivers of Gaza are always circulating rumors. One story that made the rounds during the first Palestinian uprising in 1987 claimed that an Arab army crossed the Sinai desert to save Palestinians from the daily killings and protracted state of siege which caused untold suffering for civilians.
The army in question would change from time to time, but the focus inevitably returned to Egypt. The rumor of an Egyptian military intervention persevered through the years, and it registered deeply in Palestinian psyche, especially among those living in Gaza.
My father, as many in his generation, fought in the Egyptian army and the Palestinian Liberation Army. Following defeat in the war of 1967, he was hauled along wounded and dead Egyptian soldiers across Sinai, as well as on a floating army bridge over the Suez Canal under intense Israeli aerial bombardment. As a child, I once accompanied him on a journey to an impoverished neighborhood in Cairo to look for an Egyptian war buddy of his. When we found out that he was long dead, my father wept. Confused and scared among the ailing buildings, I too cried. Indeed, the bond between Egyptians and Palestinians is historical, everlasting, cemented in blood, sweat and tears.
Yes, everlasting, despite the responses of the Egyptian government to the more recent suffering of Palestinians in Gaza.
When the Palestinian people democratically elected Hamas to lead the Palestinian legislature in 2006, they were aware of the possible repercussions. They have become accustomed to the collective punishment employed every time actions fail to meet Israeli expectations. They also understand well the influence of the pro-Israel lobby on American foreign policy, and know of Cairos commitment to political moderation and unabashed tiptoeing to the US. But never, in their wildest imagination did Palestinians foresee the measures that Egypt would take to stifle their democratic decision, suppress their resistance and cut off the very lifelines that keep Gaza breathing.
Israel has employed every possible trick in its book to weaken Gazas resolve; yet time after time, it has failed miserably. Even after turning the already starving Gaza Strip into a large and inescapable killing field on December 27, 2008, Gaza is yet to surrender. Three weeks of ceaseless bombardment killed over 1,400 Palestinians and wounded over 5,500 more, but it was no match to Gazas resolve.
Indeed, Gazans have always devised ways to survive against the odds. With difficulty, they dug tunnels to Egypt, and through these tunnels, basic necessities, such as food, medicine, toys, and some livestock were able to trickle into Gaza. On February 4, 2009, shortly after Israel declared an end to its one-sided military operations, military experts from various, mostly Western countries gathered in a two-day conference hosted by Denmark.
The goal was to halt arms smuggling into Gaza, and not, as should have been the case, to investigate Israels illegal use of lethal weapons against an unarmed population. Nor was it to call on various countries to halt their weapon exports to Israel.
The response was a moral travesty, to say the least. However, the news regarding this subject ceased for a while, interrupted by an occasional Israeli strike at alleged tunnels, or an Egyptian measure to ensure the closure of all tunnels at its side of the border. Meanwhile, the siege continued unabated, and Egypt held tight to its commitment to ensure its success.
More recently, news of an enormous metal wall that Egypt erected at its border with Gaza has come to the fore. The Egyptian decision is both politically and financially loaded. Considering that the US spurred on by Israel has strived to develop ways to completely choke Gaza, one can safely conclude that the decision has not come solely from Egypt, though as a sovereign country the latter must still be held fully accountable. According to Press TV, Karen Abu Zaid, United Nations Relief and Works Agency Commissioner-General described the wall as more dangerous than the Bar Lev Line, which was built by Israel along the eastern coast of the Suez Canal following the capturing of the Sinai Peninsula from Egypt in 1967. The Egyptian wall is arguably more dangerous because it will increase the suffering of an already tormented civilian population.
But more than dangerous, it is also disheartening. Palestinians, including some in the Hamas government never cease to refer to Egypt and Egyptians as Sister Egypt and Egyptian brethren. Why then are Sister Egypt and the Egyptian brethren taking part in this injustice and allowing Israeli violence to perpetuate? Money? Political validation? Attempts at regional relevance and fear of dismissal if they dare defy Washingtons will?
None of these reasons are convincing. The ties between Egypt and Palestine are too rooted in history; the rapport is too personal, too familial to allow for material or temporary political interests to stand in the way between two ancient peoples with awe-inspiring histories. Now I fully appreciate why my father wept at the death of his Egyptian friend. And I believe that no steel wall is large or thick enough to undermine that moment; no government policies or self-seeking officials are wicked enough to dent the bond that link the peoples of Palestine and Egypt. I also believe that there should be no amount of money large enough to justify the imprisonment of a whole nation, especially ones own brethren.
I wonder what is the latest rumour circulated these days by Gazas taxi drivers. A million Egyptians storm the border with Gaza, carrying food, medicine and toys? Strangely enough, I would still believe it. Those pesky drivers of Gaza!
Ramzy Baroud (www.ramzybaroud.net) is an internationally-syndicated columnist and the editor of PalestineChronicle.com. His latest book is "My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza's Untold Story" (Pluto Press, London), now available on Amazon.com. | <urn:uuid:ab7c4e99-22bf-4999-90d1-c9fcc41ee9e3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.zcommunications.org/on-gaza-drivers-rumours-and-egypts-steel-wall-by-ramzy-baroud | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00073-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.968433 | 1,187 | 1.757813 | 2 |
I can't recommend a good book but I think you absolutely need one that doesn't only serve as an introduction to OpenGL, but also contains a reference part. Most books are targeted towards C(++) programmers, so having a c cheat sheet might be important too if you don't know the language (the OpenGL documentation uses C syntax and types as well).
Apart from that I think it's crucial to have a lot of source code ready to study and tinker with, like https://github.com/mattdesl/lwjgl-basics
. You'll certainly find a lot of open source games and other frameworks around the forum that you can download, too.
In your situation it is certainly morally justifiable to use a web crawler, so I recommend you get one for your OS and download the OpenGL documentation, the OpenGL wiki (you should set a reasonable delay between page requests that does not overburden the server), tutorials on the LWJGL wiki (http://www.lwjgl.org/wiki/
) as well as "Learning Modern 3D Graphics Programing", an excellent - and free - introduction to OpenGL (http://www.arcsynthesis.org/gltut/
). Last but not least make sure you have the source and javadoc for LWJGL (usually included in the download).
I hope that helps a bit.
Good luck and don't fall of the boat :~) | <urn:uuid:f73d804e-c697-42bb-a4c7-d5a211a61c3a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.java-gaming.org/index.php?topic=28704.msg261992 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00053-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.945395 | 302 | 2.25 | 2 |
The devil is always in the details.
While many opponents of the Affordable Care Act have been busy stressing over the penalty they would be required to pay should they fail to purchase health insurance come 2014, it turns out that the IRS is clearing the way to reduce the number of Americans subject to the penalty—while making it near impossible for millions of people to afford suitable coverage for their families, subverting the very purpose of the law itself.
It begins with a poorly drafted provision in the healthcare reform law stating that individuals who receive their health insurance as a benefit of employment will be permitted to take a pass on their company policy and elect to buy their coverage on the health exchange—allowing them to take advantage of the federal healthcare subsidies available to low and middle income Americans—if their company provided health insurance policy is deemed ‘unaffordable’.
‘Unaffordable’ is defined as requiring the employee to pay more than 9.5% of the employee’s household income towards his or her employer provided healthcare benefit.
As an example, let’s take an employee who earns $35,000 a year. According to the IRS rule, if that employee is paying less than $3,325 a year towards their healthcare benefit, that employee will be required to stick with the company health insurance policy and would be barred from taking advantage of the federal subsidies available in the form of tax credits that the exchanges have to offer.
The Kaiser Family Foundation’s 2012 survey of what employees pay towards their employer provided healthcare benefit reveals that the average, individual employee made an annual contribution of $951 towards their health benefit. Thus, there would not appear to be much of a problem here.
But this is where it gets ugly…
The same Kaiser Family Foundation survey reveals that the average contribution of employees who are paying towards a family policy is $4316 a year—a number well in excess of the 9.5% of earnings for someone making just $35,000 a year.
Thus, we would expect that the employee and his family —or, at the least, the remainder of the employee’s family—would be free to head over to the health exchanges to get their insurance and benefit from the subsidies available to those in their earnings bracket, right?
We would be wrong because the Internal Revenue Service has ruled that only the portion of the contribution attributable to the individual employee is to be considered for purposes of determining what is affordable—not the entire contribution an employee with a family pays for family coverage.
Thus, using the example of our employee who is the sole breadwinner in the family and earns $35,000 a year, so long as the contribution directly attributed to his own health coverage is less than $3,325 a year, nobody in the family qualifies for participation on the healthcare exchanges and nobody can qualify for the intended government subsidies.
Using the Kaiser averages, the family in our example will end up paying over 12 percent of their annual income for health insurance—a crushing amount of money for a family earning just $35,000 a year and well beyond what is affordable for many.
The result will be millions of spouses and children left to go uninsured.
How can this possibly make sense when the very purpose of the healthcare reform law is to get more Americans insured rather than less?
“We can see kids falling through the cracks. They will lack access to affordable employer-based family coverage and still be locked out of tax credits to help them buy coverage for their kids in the marketplaces, or exchanges, being established in every state.”
So absurd is this ruling—given the intent and purpose of the Affordable Care Act—Congress will have no choice but to correct the offending passage and set this straight, yes? | <urn:uuid:e1b415c1-2621-41e1-b327-b43d99f9ac78> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.forbes.com/sites/rickungar/2013/02/04/irs-ruling-to-create-millions-of-uninsured-americans-as-it-undermines-the-very-intent-of-obamacare/?commentId=comment_blogAndPostId/blog/comment/1068-10996-24029 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00025-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.971087 | 769 | 1.929688 | 2 |
Following is the first set of responses from Dr. Harold Koplewicz, a child and adolescent psychiatrist and president of the Child Study Center Foundation. This week he is responding to readers’ questions about the myths and stigma surrounding psychiatric disorders of children and adolescents.
We are no longer accepting questions for this feature.
For the sake of full disclosure, to help your readers know the full context of your work, please enumerate any financial or other conflict-of-interest ties you might have with pharmaceutical companies?
Also, how would you respond to the critiques made by Robert Whitaker in his book “The Anatomy of an Epidemic” (Crown 2010) of the explosion in the prescription of psychotropic medication to children and adolescents on the basis of dubious to nonexistent studies, studies often funded (and at times distorted) by the pharmaceutical industry, and his discussion of the negative impacts of this explosion on America’s youth?
— Posted by aew
Neither I nor The Child Study Center Foundation receive funds from pharmaceutical companies that produce psychiatric medications. In fact, the charter of CSCF stipulates that we will never accept funding from a pharmaceutical company. In the interest of full disclosure, I have been chairman of the board of Delcath Systems Inc., since 2007. Delcath is a publicly held company developing a device that will enable physicians to deliver anti-cancer drugs to the liver without exposing the rest of a given patient’s body.
I haven’t read Mr. Whitaker’s book, so I’m unable to speak to the specifics of his argument. But I can tell you there is no evidence to prove that children and adolescents are overprescribed psychotropic medications in this country. The argument that parents and child psychiatrists are throwing drugs at children’s bad behaviors is just as reductionist and dubious as the claim that there is no conflict of interest in industry-backed research studies. Judith Warner’s “We’ve Got Issues” is a wonderfully written, thoughtful, meticulously researched book on this subject, children and psychotherapeutic medications. When Ms. Warner started her investigation six years ago, she expected to find doctors who indeed prescribed medications too casually. After six years of research, however, she had a very different view: She did not see too many children getting medication; she saw too many children and their families getting no help at all.
Are there plans afoot to increase the number of child and adolescent psychiatrists nationwide? I don’t know the situation in New York City, but in most cities, even with a referral families have to hunt and wait for appointments, costing a lot of critical time, sometimes many months. The alternative is pharm therapy by family doctors, who for all their good intentions, really are not up to the job.
— Posted by shank
Yes, there is a critical shortage of child and adolescent psychiatrists in this country. At least 15 million children are living with psychiatric and learning disorders, and there are only 7,500 practicing child and adolescent psychiatrists to serve them. The math does not work. Part of the problem is that it takes just as long to become a neurosurgeon as it does a child and adolescent psychiatrist — but guess who is better compensated? Child and adolescent psychiatrists are among the most poorly paid specialists in medicine, yet they are needed in some of our nation’s most impoverished places, at-risk schools and juvenile detention centers. We cannot solve this crisis overnight, but what we can do, while faced with such a shortage of trained mental health professionals, is support organizations and programs that systematically train pediatricians and educators to identify the children and adolescents who require parental and medical attention.
At what age would a child need to be evaluated if the child lies on a habitual basis? When do you know if your child with the fabulous imagination may have a deeper problem?
I’ve heard that a child diagnosed with a minor psychiatric problem will sometimes age out of the disorder. Is this true? Will a child diagnosed with anxiety as a child, for example, be predisposed to anxiety as an adult?
— Posted by MD
Children lie for many reasons. Sometimes they do it to avoid consequences. Sometimes they do it when feeling inadequate, insecure or anxious. Sometimes they a’re simply copying a peer or adult’s bad behavior. Lying, however, is a symptom, not a diagnosis. If a child is habitually lying and then experiencing distress or dysfunction, then it is time to seek professional help and a psychiatric evaluation.
Your question about anxiety speaks to some general confusion surrounding anxiety disorders. All of us experience anxiety in our day-to-day lives, and almost 75 percent of teenagers say they feel nervous or stressed at least some of the time, but an anxiety disorder is an ongoing, pathological response to normal stress. Think of a false fire alarm, or the brain tricking itself, telling a person to worry when it is unnecessary. A child with an anxiety disorder is indeed more likely to have mental health problems in adulthood. Children with separation anxiety disorder, for example, have higher rates of panic disorder in adulthood. Children with selective mutism, or social phobia, are more likely than children without these disorders to abuse alcohol and drugs in adulthood. Children with generalized anxiety disorder — those who, say, worry about college in the fourth grade — have higher rates of major depressive disorder in adolescence. All of which is to say that if a child has a true “disorder,” then it is very unlikely that the symptoms will go away. The symptoms may change in their expression and duration but not disappear over the course of development.
How can I tell if my 8-year-old is depressed or simply moody? Since the age of about 5, he has talked about days that he feels sad and just wants to stay in bed all day. He is very hard on himself and a small incident that my younger son just shakes, he can be hung up on for days. Even his teachers in school have commented that he has low days, and days where he can’t even attempt the work because he feels it is too overwhelming for him.
— Posted by Ann
All children come to the table of life with different temperaments. Some are easygoing, some are slow to warm up, and others can be prickly or difficult. As parents, we notice how our children’s temperaments make them more or less resilient to stress. The personality characteristics and traits with which we are born deeply affect how we respond to stress in our environments. If your 8-year-old is experiencing depression, distress and dysfunction that lasts most of the day, every day, for more than two weeks, then a psychiatric evaluation would be very appropriate. Imagine if your child had a bad rash for two weeks; you would take him to the pediatrician, right?
My son is 7 years old and he has A.D.H.D. and O.D.D. He has been evaluated by the New York City Department of Education and the Queens College Preschool Project. He is currently attending a regular ed elementary school and is having severe problems in class. His teacher is always calling me regarding his behavior. She is not able to keep his attention. I also take him to counseling every Friday and he is still not showing any progress. I really do not want to medicate him, however, I feel like this might be the only alternative to him being placed in special ed. He is very bright and I would appreciate your input on some type of solution to my problem.
— Posted by Donna Grace
The treatment of attention deficit disorder and attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder — A.D.D./A.D.H.D. — has been extensively studied over the last 50 years. In 1937, researchers tried to give Benzedrine (a close relative of Dexedrine) to overweight children. What they discovered, however, was that while it was not a good diet drug, it effectively worked against symptoms of A.D.D./A.D.H.D.: inattention, fidgetiness and hyperactivity. When Ritalin (also a psychostimulant) was introduced in the 1970s, researchers conducted hundreds of placebo-controlled double-blind studies to investigate its safety as well as effectiveness. What we know from this landmark research and the studies that followed is that psychostimulants are the safest, most effective class of medications that we have right now for treating A.D.D./A.D.H.D.
But medications are a treatment, not a cure. I imagine that all parents, especially those whose children struggle with symptoms of A.D.D./A.D.H.D., are well aware that there are side effects to taking these medications. You’re taking a serious step when you make medications part of your child’s treatment plan. These medications should not be prescribed to children and teenagers until after they have had a thorough psychiatric evaluation and proper diagnosis. And once a child begins taking a medication, it is crucial that he is carefully monitored; a high percentage of children do not respond adequately to their first course of treatment, so their medications and dosages very often must be adjusted.
Here is the bottom line: If a child has properly received a diagnosis of a psychiatric disorder — meaning the child has experienced severe functional impairment and distress that meets diagnostic criteria in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, DSM-IV — then it is unfair to deny him the opportunity to try a treatment course that includes medication.
If your child had diabetes, would you say no to insulin? If your child had epilepsy, would you say no to anti-seizure medications? | <urn:uuid:d1fc744f-5d89-4d19-9862-af51fd06aefd> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/05/26/answers-about-child-psychiatry/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965731 | 2,011 | 1.773438 | 2 |
DENVER - The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) announced today that the federal agency, three individual plaintiffs, and Englewood auto dealer Lithia Centennial Chrysler Plymouth Jeep, Inc. have resolved a lawsuit for nearly half a million dollars alleging that the car dealership terminated three African-American salespersons due to their race.
In its complaint in U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado (Case # 01-D-01119 PAC), the EEOC asserted that on January 15, 1999, Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday, Centennial's General Manager, Michael Janicelli directed manager Thomas Heasty to fire all the black salesmen, using crude racial epithets. On that same day, Heasty fired all three of the African-American salesmen employed at the time.
Such conduct violates Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, as amended, which prohibits employment discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex (including sexual harassment or pregnancy) or national origin and protects employees who complain about such offenses from retaliation. The EEOC filed suit after exhausting its conciliation efforts to reach a voluntary pre-litigation settlement. At the time of these events, the dealership was part of the Moreland Automotive Group and was in the process of being acquired by Lithia.
The dealership has agreed to pay $450,000 in damages to the three terminated employees. The private attorney for the three employees, Charlotte Sweeney of the law firm of LaFond & Sweeney, PC, indicates that the settlement will be split equally among the three. In addition to the monetary settlement, Lithia has agreed to continue providing training to its Colorado managers to ensure compliance with federal laws prohibiting workplace discrimination. Doug Moreland, the previous owner of the dealership which is now Lithia Centennial Chrysler, has also agreed that dealerships in which he has a controlling interest will be under continued monitoring by the EEOC, and that managers will be provided EEO training.
Joseph H. Mitchell, Regional Attorney for the EEOC's Denver District Office, which handled the litigation, said: "The EEOC is pleased with this settlement. In addition to providing the victims with substantial monetary relief, this agreement will make lasting changes at Lithia Centennial Chrysler through training by the employer and monitoring by the EEOC."
In addition to enforcing Title VII, the EEOC enforces the Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967, which protects workers age 40 and older from discrimination based on age; the Equal Pay Act of 1963, which prohibits gender-based wage discrimination; the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, which prohibits employment discrimination against people with disabilities in the federal sector; Title I of the Americans with Disabilities Act, which prohibits employment discrimination against people with disabilities in the private sector and state and local governments; and sections of the Civil Rights Act of 1991. Further information about the Commission is available on the agency's web site at www.eeoc.gov.
This page was last modified on October 10, 2002.
Return to Home Page | <urn:uuid:5485876e-8e7b-4569-9be0-4e0cb07e8bec> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://eeoc.gov/eeoc/newsroom/release/archive/10-9-02.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.955303 | 621 | 1.742188 | 2 |
Photo: Tom DusenberryIn “Chewing the Scenery,” we round up interesting food-related video from around the Web.
I write a lot about the meat industry’s nearly unbridled power in this country, which it uses to abuse labor, land, farmers, water, animals, and communities in execution of its business model. Sometimes, citizens fight back–and win. Lynn Henning, a family farmer in rural Michigan, is one such person. She and her husband run a 300-acre corn and soy farm–within 10 miles of no fewer than 12 concentrated-animal feedlot operations (CAFOs). Her effort to document the ill effects of living surrounded by these vast fecal/pharmaceutical mires has caused her and her family plenty of trouble. Her car is often followed–and even run off the road; dead animals appear on her lawn. But her work has resulted in hundreds of citations for the CAFOS that surround her house; and in 2008, based on evidence that Henning dug up, the state of Michigan for the first time ever denied a license for a CAFO. Efforts of citizens like Henning expose our pathetic regulatory structure around meat production–and act as the necessary spur for improving things. I congratulate Lynn on winning the 2010 North America Goldman Environmental Prize–and congratulate Goldman for understanding and highlighting the relavance of this issue. | <urn:uuid:1292aae1-3b7b-46ca-a22a-fdfff67d20d0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://grist.org/article/2010-04-20-michigan-woman-faces-down-meat-industry-wins/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.94714 | 288 | 1.523438 | 2 |
UC San Diego’s Shu Chien receives highest honor bestowed by U.S. government on scientists and engineers.
President Barack Obama today (Sept. 27) named University of California, San Diego, bioengineering professor Shu Chien one of the seven eminent researchers to receive the National Medal of Science, the highest honor bestowed by the U.S. government on scientists and engineers. Chien is the only engineer among the seven medalists.
Shu Chien, a professor in the Department of Bioengineering at the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering, is a world leader in the study of how blood flow and pressure affect blood vessels. Chien is a university professor of bioengineering and medicine at UC San Diego and Director of the UC San Diego Institute of Engineering in Medicine.
“Professor Shu Chien is truly remarkable. He is one of only 11 renowned scholars who are members of all three U.S. national institutes – the National Academy of Sciences; National Academy of Engineering; and the Institute of Medicine,” said UC San Diego Chancellor Marye Anne Fox. “For more than 20 years, Shu has collaborated with UC San Diego colleagues across the campus and the health sciences while mentoring a generation of students and postdoctoral researchers. We celebrate this tremendous honor and congratulate him.” Fox won the National Medal of Science last year.
Chien is an expert on how blood flow and pressure affect vessels. His research has led to the development of better diagnostic tests and treatments for atherosclerosis, which refers to the hardening of the arteries, and other diseases.
“Shu Chien played a crucial role in forming the Jacobs School’s Department of Bioengineering and building it into a world class institution that is ranked number one for biomedical engineering by the National Research Council,” said Frieder Seible, dean of the Jacobs School of Engineering. “As director of the UC San Diego Institute of Engineering in Medicine, Shu is now leading efforts to further strengthen research and educational collaborations between all six departments of the Jacobs School of Engineering and the School of Medicine and the Skaggs School of Pharmacy.”
Chien joined UC San Diego in 1988 after he was recruited by Y.C. Fung and Benjamin Zweifach, who co-founded the bioengineering program at UC San Diego with Marcos Intaglietta.
“I regard recruiting Shu as my greatest contribution to UCSD,” said Fung in 2005 when Chien received the Distinguished Lifetime Achievement Award from the Asian American Engineer of the Year Awards Committee. Chien has held the Y.C. Fung Endowed Chair in Bioengineering since 2006.
The Department of Bioengineering at the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering is a leader in systems biology, regenerative medicine and multi-scale bioengineering focused on understanding, diagnosis and treatment of human disease.
The UC San Diego Institute of Engineering in Medicine has research centers focusing on health and disease in cardiac, musculoskeletal, retina, and neurological systems; on medical devices and instrumentation technologies; multiscale imaging in living systems; and nano-medicine and nano-engineering. The institute also focuses on training, industry cooperation and entrepreneurism. | <urn:uuid:dc79eada-4b1d-4d17-ad60-54359d1ffc7f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://health.universityofcalifornia.edu/2011/09/27/bioengineering-professor-wins-national-medal-of-science/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00026-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.93716 | 664 | 1.976563 | 2 |
Olaudah Equiano contributed greatly to anti-slavery campaigns. 7#169; National Museums Liverpool
Until the mid-1990s, it was widely thought that slavery was a thing of the past. This complacent belief has now been challenged by human rights campaigners, who have helped people understand that forms of contemporary slavery still exist. More than 100 governments have recently drafted new anti-slavery laws - especially concerning human trafficking. Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs), especially in the global south, where more victims of contemporary slavery live, have been particularly active in raising these issues. And more longstanding NGOs, such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, have highlighted instances of contemporary slavery within their broader work on human rights issues around the world.
From yesterday's abolitionists...
Young sweatshop workers in America, 1909, wearing slogans in English and Yiddish demanding: "Abolish child slavery!". Courtesy of Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, LC-DIG-ppmsca-06591
Historical opposition to slavery came from two main sources: enslaved Africans and abolitionists (people who were not enslaved but were committed to ending slavery). Despite the dangers involved for the slaves, there were many slave revolts on plantations and estates. Some slaves escaped and established independent communities outside European control. Others took up arms and secured their freedom on the battlefield. Wherever slavery came to an end, both slaves and former slaves were central to the story.
Transatlantic slavery was a system for acquiring and sustaining colonies, strengthening empire, and building industrial strength in the home country. This meant that abolitionists were taking on powerful economic interests. Slave owners claimed that slavery was both morally and religiously justified. But the pressure from the abolitionist campaign eventually succeeded, and lawmakers acted to outlaw slavery.
The movement exposing and opposing slavery used many strategies and tactics.
Ex-slaves gave powerful testimony in speeches and writings, making the case against slavery
Abolitionists wrote articles and pamphlets, and gave sermons and lectures against slavery
People signed petitions calling for an end to slavery
People boycotted goods made by slave labour, such as the 300,000 people who joined a boycott of sugar grown on plantations using slave labour. Pamphlets encouraged the public to buy sugar made by free labour instead
Objects featuring the image of a kneeling, chained, enslaved African were bought by women and used in bracelets and hairpins to publicise their support for the cause
In America, "underground railroad" activists helped spirit escaped slaves to safety and assisted them in rebuilding their lives. Some opponents of slavery allowed their homes to be used as "stations" - places of refuge for escaped slaves where they could get food, shelter and money. Some others operated as "conductors", using covered wagons or carts with false bottoms to carry slaves undetected between stations.
...to today's campaigners
Activist, James Kofi Annan, sold as a child into slavery in Ghana, alongside Desmond Tutu at the Freedom Awards in Los Angeles, 2008. Courtesy of Free the Slaves/Amy Graves
Activists campaigning against contemporary slavery have developed up-to-date versions of these tactics, such as newspaper and web articles, reports, books with modern testimony of enslaved people, films, petitions and protests.
Anti-Slavery International recently launched a campaign on "Cotton Crimes" - attempting to end the use of child slave labour in the Uzbekistan cotton industry. Uzbekistan is the third biggest exporter of cotton in the world but uses forced child labour during the three month cotton harvest. Most Uzbek cotton is sold to the European market. Its campaigning tactics include a Europe-wide petition, organising letter writing to Members of the European Parliament, and letters for shoppers to write to retailers to ascertain whether or not they are selling products using cotton produced by slave labour.
Trafficking survivor in Nepal distributing cartoons in a village to help vulnerable, often illiterate, girls avoid traffickers. Courtesy of madebysurvivors.com
"Another campaign led by Anti-Slavery International is called "Home Alone", which aims to inform the wider public about the situation of domestic workers, many of whom endure contemporary slavery, in order to challenge these practices. The campaign educates people about the issues through fact sheets and posters, and through film clips in which domestic workers share their stories.
The Fairtrade Foundation and GoodWeave are examples of campaigns where consumers are encouraged to use their power to deny profits to those using slave labour. Plantations seeking a fair trade label for their products must guarantee that no forced or child labour is used in making them. Activists in Britain and other countries campaign to win "Fairtrade Town" status for their local area, and use an annual campaigning period called "Fairtrade Fortnight" as a major focus for their work to educate and influence consumers.
GoodWeave provides certification for products of South Asia's handmade rug industry. Millions of such rugs are sold to the European and American markets. The GoodWeave label guarantees that no illegal child labour has been used in the product.
There are also direct action movements and legal campaigners such as the Bonded Labour Liberation Front and Bachpan Bachao Andolan who attempt to liberate contemporary slaves from places where they are held, and support them to rebuild their lives. They combine secret operations - "raids" - to free children from illegal labour, with public campaigning through lobbying and demonstrations.
Just as in previous centuries, the powerful voices of those who are or have themselves been enslaved are inspiring campaigns for justice. Many individuals who have achieved freedom from contemporary slavery have set up or joined support groups and campaigning organisations to help win freedom and dignity for those who continue to be enslaved. | <urn:uuid:031390dd-60a0-4d84-a4a3-35e29b827040> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/ism/learning/slavery-today/about-slavery/combating-slavery.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00027-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.962703 | 1,179 | 4.34375 | 4 |
- I read this post by Beth Moore. "He knows it's scary to be us." Jesus truly does, because He chose to be one of us.
- And then, I read this post from oh amanda. "In a letter to the Philippians, Paul writes that Jesus humbled himself and became OBEDIENT to death on a cross. Jesus LET himself die. He wasn’t forced into it. Many men died on the cross, but Jesus CHOSE to die on the cross." Did you get that? He also chose to die...for us...on the cross.
- Please, Please go read both posts in their entirety. Then click the link at the bottom of amanda's post to hear Andy Stanley's version of the story.
- Or, go here to download it from iTunes.
- Jesus Christ chose to live as one of us. He humbled himself. He chose to die for us. He became obedient unto death, even death on the cross. He chose the wounds, the scars. And By His Wounds We Are Healed:
- But the message of Easter, dear ones, is this: It's [Good] Friday, but [Easter] Sunday is Coming! | <urn:uuid:0f93e5b4-1422-4502-9b5b-6f9ee29d4f94> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://ponderedinmyheart.blogspot.com/2009_04_01_archive.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.970366 | 253 | 1.867188 | 2 |
"The neo-modern embraces complexity as conflicting, lucid ideas held in dynamic tension"
This challenging perspective by Anthony Wing Kosner springs from an unlikely source, Forbes. He begins with an illustration.
[T]he cover of the upcoming issue of Rolling Stone, “The Dark Knight Rises” is mashed up with Justin Bieber and “Global Warming’s Terrifying New Math,” by environmental activist and author, Bill McKibben. To see Bieber’s pouty lips, coiffed hair and unblemished skin next to a warning call about the fate of the earth is disorienting, to say the least.
This disorientation is of a kind perhaps unique to our era. This is what I call a neo-modern problem. There are two, or more, simple and compelling ideas that exist in superposition. Like a Qubit, a quantum bit, in a quantum computer, that “can be 0, 1, or a superposition of both,” the fact of continued growth of energy consumption (the show, the “on state,” the “1″) and its impact on global climate (the final curtain, the “off state,” the “0″) are staring us in the face.
This is where we are in our cultural evolution. The modern embraced speed and simplicity; the post-modern despaired of complexity and meaninglessness; now the neo-modern embraces complexity as conflicting, lucid ideas held in dynamic tension.
I feel this acutely because two of the thinkers I most admire, McKibben and Constructal Law theorist Adrian Bejan, are weighing in on opposite ends of the spectrum and I am left trying to make sense of the superposition of the two. In this way I am a proxy for everyone who is trying to make sense of these seeming contradictions. [emphasis mine]
Anthony Wing Kosner ends with paralysis:
I can’t see how not to be both optimistic and pessimistic at the same time. A Qubit of affect. A quantum emotion. It is an existential feeling best expressed, perhaps, by the exchange between Estragon and Vladimir at the end of Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot: “I can’t go on like this.” “That’s what you think.:… “Well? Shall we go?” “Yes, let’s go.” They do not move.
McKibben and Bejan impress me too. But Adrian Bejan is an engineer whose platform springs from analysis of fluid flow in pipes and ducts. While his equations apply to a wide range of real world systems, I think McKibben's perspective better captures the scale of planetary complex systems. His research background embraces past climate regimes and is more in tune with evolving technological/social/political complexities, in short a wider horizon.
Nonetheless, Anthony Wing Kosner's analogy strikes a chord with me. He captures my multidimensional parallax failure, where contradictory images of what's happening refuse to fuse in my head to make sense.
Upon further reflection, I feel like a fool. As Beth Gardiner says in We’re All Climate-Change Idiots
Sometimes, when forming our opinions, we grasp at whatever information presents itself, no matter how irrelevant. A new study by the psychologist Nicolas Guéguen, published in last month’s Journal of Environmental Psychology, found that participants seated in a room with a ficus tree lacking foliage were considerably more likely to say that global warming was real than were those in a room with a ficus tree that had foliage.
How could I allow a pretty face to compete on any level with science? Forbes, makes sense after all as the source. The goal was paralysis, just like replacing investigative journalism with He Said/She Said journalism. As long as the issue is presented as if it's a debate, delay seems justified, inaction seems justified. As long as we struggle with conflicting emotional narratives, disorientation seems justified.
What a clever damage control tactic to deflect from the terror inherent in McKibbens piece. The fossil fuel industry and their corporate buddies are more subtle that I'd imagined, to fight science with apparent philosophy.
Why should I expect a coherent narrative from a magazine anymore than a coherent narrative from the world? We're constantly surrounded by conflicting messages. That's no reason for disorientation. Injecting an affective element into image composition to elicit a particular emotional response in the audience is one of the oldest tricks. Corrupt leaders are photographed with babies, puppies and flowers. Normally I react with disdain to such composition. This tactic is an interesting derivative.
Forgive my moment of "dumbth", falling for a philosophical gloss that elevates a pretty face as "a lucid idea" capable of dynamic tension with Bill McKibben's piece on the apocalyptic implications of current economic/climate trends. Has too much internet use lobotomized me? Jarring discontinuities of affect are normal in these media. There's nothing confusing there.
Just as some Jewish citizens of Berlin patronized the arts and lived in luxurious homes right up until Kristallnacht, photos of pretty carefree teenagers will adorn magazine covers right up until an abrupt economic, social or political discontinuity occurs from climate destabilization.
My only sources of disorientation are the speed of climate change and fear of the future. | <urn:uuid:1157dda2-290e-4fef-8af8-2799e8f1787c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.atheistnexus.org/group/originsuniverselifehumankindanddarwin/forum/topics/qbits-and-neo-modern-complexity | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.937057 | 1,133 | 1.617188 | 2 |
[Karl-Engelbert Wenzel] developed a UAV capable of taking off and landing on a moving platform autonomously. The platform operates aircraft-carrier-style by driving around the room in circles. The quadcopter tracks a grid of IR LEDs at the front of the landing deck by using the IR camera from a Wii remote. The best part is that the flight controls and processing are all done by the copter’s onboard ATmega644 processor, not requiring a connection to a PC. The landings are quite accurate, achieving a maximum error of less than 40 centimeters. In the video after the break you can see the first landing is slightly off the mark but the next two are dead on target.
So build yourself a mobile platform and pair it up with your newly finished quadcopter to replicate this delightful hack. | <urn:uuid:5f251d15-f314-4e74-80f7-523112796083> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://hackaday.com/2010/05/25/aircraft-carrier-is-moving-target-for-autonomous-quadcopter/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.934249 | 171 | 2.46875 | 2 |
Editor's note: Julian Zelizer is a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University. He is the author of "Jimmy Carter" and of the new book "Governing America."
(CNN) -- When President Obama had his back to the wall after a month of bad economic news, he tried to change the national conversation by shifting attention toward the issue of immigration. Through a directive issued by Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano to stop deporting some young undocumented immigrants, the administration made one of its boldest moves in four years in this area of policy.
In doing so, President Obama is clearly hoping to exploit the deep division that has existed within the GOP for decades on immigration reform.
One faction of the party, with strong support from the business community, has pushed for Congress to liberalize immigration policy on the basis that this will bring great economic benefit as well as positive electoral rewards for the party in states such as Texas.
The other faction, less hospitable to reform, has a strong nativist tilt and seeks much more stringent laws to crack down on illegal immigration and even curb the flow of legal newcomers.
Through his use of executive power to achieve this objective, Obama hopes to place the GOP in an uncomfortable bind, forcing the party to take a stand one way or another, leaving it in a tough position going into November.
President Obama is not the first person to use the power of the presidency to exploit divisions in the opposition party. During the 1930s, Franklin Roosevelt took advantage of the split within the GOP between progressives from the Midwest who favored social legislation and economic regulation and other Republicans who were strongly opposed to any kind of government intervention.
Roosevelt's successor, Harry Truman, turned to national security after World War II for similar political purposes.
As Truman pushed for an aggressive stand by the United States in the Cold War, calling on Congress to fund assistance to anti-communist forces abroad, he knew that Republicans were torn between the growing number of internationalists who supported this position, like Michigan Sen. Arthur Vandenberg, and the old line Midwestern isolationists who did not support the growth of the national security state at any cost.
Both FDR and Truman benefited from exploiting these divisions in 1936 and 1948, making the GOP look like laggards on both issues.
Republican Dwight Eisenhower turned the table on Democrats in 1956 and 1957 when he moved out front on civil rights legislation. In this period, the Democratic Party was deeply divided on what to do about racial inequality as members were split between Southern Democrats, who controlled the major committees of Congress and opposed civil rights legislation, and the growing number of Northern liberals in the House and Senate who wanted the federal government to protect the rights of African-Americans.
Richard Nixon played on the growing tensions among working-class Democrats over race relations, turning some voters in the Democratic Party against their own leadership and luring them into the GOP.
When Jimmy Carter ran for president in 1976, he did the same, attracting some Republicans who were frustrated about the Watergate scandal, though he had little success in 1980 when Republican Ronald Reagan did the same to him by attracting disaffected Democrats with promises of a muscular national security state, tax cuts and deregulation.
During the 1990s, Democrat Bill Clinton championed more military intervention in areas like Bosnia and Kosovo, which aggravated the splits between younger neoconservative Republicans, who wanted the United States to be more aggressive overseas, and others in the party who wanted the United States to pull back from international obligations.
In 1996, this weakened the ability of Republican presidential candidate Sen. Bob Dole to use the national security advantage against the Democrats. George W. Bush used the technique on national security in 2004 by calling for a strong interventionist position at a time Democrats were divided between those who were strongly critical of the Iraq War and others who were more supportive.
Can President Obama enjoy the same kind of success that came from these efforts? Probably not.
Regardless of whether this is good policy, it is unlikely to reap major political benefits even though the polls suggest the public is on President Obama's side. The first reason is that this decision was made through the executive branch's authority, thereby diminishing the payback that comes from winning a battle on the legislative front, which requires building political support and mobilizing the public behind an idea.
The second is that President Obama and the Democrats have been less than effective at immigration reform until now, in the eyes of immigration advocates.
Many organizations have been disappointed with the president's unwillingness to make this a priority issue in previous years. Given this history, combined with the announcement coming in an election year, many Latinos might still be skeptical about how much the president has changed and what he would do with a second term.
Finally, there is the problem of timing. Given the fact that the economy keeps moving in the wrong direction, it is difficult to exploit divisions in the opposition party on issues that are not front and center for many voters, including voters in swing states that will determine the election.
His decision on immigration can easily turn into an issue that Republicans use against the president by saying that it is further evidence that he is not primarily focused on the biggest challenges of the day (as they did with health care).
Presidents do have the ability to exploit party divisions and move closer to election victory as a result. But in this case, it is unclear whether Obama will join the list of presidents who have done this successfully.
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The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Julian Zelizer. | <urn:uuid:2b569cfb-d4ad-4cd8-a17e-5f68ce765d71> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://edition.cnn.com/2012/06/25/opinion/zelizer-gop-split/index.html?hpt=op_mid | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969608 | 1,143 | 2.5625 | 3 |
Energy Frontier Research Centers at Argonne
In 2009, the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Office of Science awarded Argonne two Energy Frontier Research Centers (EFRCs). With these awards comes the possibility for important discoveries in advanced transportation technology. The Centers, each funded at $19 million over five years, work with partnering universities to advance basic science in electrochemical energy storage and in catalysis. DOE established the EFRCs as a means to enlist the talents and skills of the very best American scientists and engineers to address current fundamental scientific roadblocks to U.S. energy security.
Center for Electrical Energy Storage
The Center for Electrical Energy Storage (CEES) explores the challenges that have limited the advancement and use of electrochemical energy storage (EES) technologies, including batteries and supercapacitors, for transportation, residential, and commercial use. Although EES devices have been available for many decades, there are fundamental gaps in understanding the atomic- and molecular-level processes that govern their operation, performance limitations, and failure. With a full understanding of these processes, new concepts can be formulated for addressing present EES technology gaps and meeting future energy storage requirements.
Under the leadership of Argonne’s Michael Thackeray, the CEES brings together 17 scientists from Argonne, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and Northwestern University. "CEES' main goal," Thackeray said, "is to gain a fundamental understanding of the interfacial phenomena that control electrochemical processes in electrical energy storage devices. This understanding is laying the foundation for the synthesis and design of electrode and electrolyte architectures that will lead to the discovery of future generations of energy storage materials and enable the development of batteries with enhanced capacity, power, safety and longevity.”
The Center focuses on lithium batteries since they provide the best opportunity for greater-than-incremental advances.
Institute for Atom-Efficient Chemical Transformations
The Institute for Atom-Efficient Chemical Transformations (IACT) addresses key catalytic conversions that could improve the efficiency of fuel production from coal and biomass, the two main chemical energy resources in the United States.
The U.S. could grow and convert enough biomass to replace nearly a third of the nation’s current gasoline use. However, a technology for economically converting biomass into widely usable fuels does not exist; the fundamental science needed to develop such a technology is still in its infancy. The challenge is to understand the chemistry involved in converting cellulose- and lignin-derived molecules to fuels and to use that knowledge to identify the needed catalysts.
To obtain energy densities similar to those of currently used fuels, the products of biomass conversion must have oxygen contents lower than that of biomass. Oxygen must be removed by using hydrogen to minimize the yield of carbon dioxide as a byproduct. This important chemistry is a unifying theme of IACT’s research.
Catalysts found in nature demonstrate how amazingly efficient and selective catalysts can be," said Argonne chemist Christopher Marshall, principal investigator and IACT director. "The Institute's aim is to achieve the type of control and efficiency of chemical conversions that are found in nature.” New catalytic materials will be needed and a major emphasis of IACT is to synthesize new, complex, multisite, multifunctional catalytic materials that offer new models for catalysis. Using advanced computation and modeling to interpret, understand, and optimize experimental results is also a critical part of advancing catalytic science. Advanced characterization techniques and catalytic experimentation will be employed, as well.
Argonne’s partners in IACT are Northwestern University, Purdue University, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison. IACT Director Marshall will be assisted by Deputy Director Peter Stair, who has a joint appointment with Northwestern University and Argonne.
Scientists for CEES and IACT use the research facilities of each partnering organization, including Argonne's Advanced Photon Source, Center for Nanoscale Materials, and the Argonne Leadership Computing Facility. The CEES also uses the resources of Argonne’s Applied Battery Research and Development Program.
For more information on Argonne’s EFRC awards, please visit http://www.anl.gov/articles/doe-establish-two-energy-frontier-research-centers-argonne. | <urn:uuid:c4add2e8-a39a-4e3b-b145-8d67800bf3d0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://web.anl.gov/energy-storage-science/EFRCs.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00039-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.902159 | 900 | 2.828125 | 3 |
When the recreational saltwater fishing permit went into effect, many anglers held their breath assuming the money would disappear, never to be seen again. Well, the legislation that was written for the permit was put into practice and now, two years later, we have a fishing pier to lean our rods on and start building memories of the big one that got away. Not bad!
When the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act was reauthorized in 2006, it required that a method for counting recreational catch be incorporated into fisheries management, leading to the mandate for a registry of all recreational anglers. This meant that the federal government would have to generate a list by either (1) creating a federal recreational saltwater fishing license or (2) if states already had a license/permit in place, gather data from those states.
In Massachusetts, MarineFisheries decided to examine the possibility of creating a state permit, thereby keeping the generated funds in the state as opposed to sending to it to the federal government. MarineFisheries organized a group of individuals directly involved in recreational fishing including bait and tackle shop owners, for-hire captains, and members of recreational fishing groups, to assist in writing the language for legislation that would create the Massachusetts recreational saltwater fishing permit.
After the legislation passed and the Governor signed it into law, a five-member, non-governmental Marine Recreational Fisheries Development Panel was assembled to provide the Director of MarineFisheries with advice on project development and fund allocation. All funds from the Massachusetts recreational saltwater fishing permit are held in a dedicated account. All these funds, by law, must be appropriated for programs that enhance recreational saltwater fishing in the Commonwealth. Moreover, one third of all revenue collected from the permit funds must be spent specifically on improving public access for recreational anglers.
With these funds available, MarineFisheries began working with the Massachusetts Office of Fishing and Boating Access (FBA), which has historically been building and improving public access points across the state. The Bass River boat launch located in Wilbur Park, Yarmouth has been at the top of FBA’s list of sites in need of improvement. In addition to improvements to the deteriorated boat ramp and parking lot, MarineFisheries contributed money directly from the recreational saltwater fishing permit dedicated fund to construct a new handicap accessible fishing pier.
On August 29, 2012 MarineFisheries Director Paul Diodati, FBA Director Jack Sheppard, Fish and Game Commissioner Mary Griffin, and members of the Marine Recreational Fisheries Development Panel joined Secretary of Energy and Environmental Affairs, Richard Sullivan, at a ribbon cutting ceremony to dedicate the new pier and boat ramp at Wilbur Park. At this fishing pier many children will likely catch their first scup, black sea bass, or striper. Those with physical limitations will also be able to fish in safety and comfort. This pier and boat ramp will provide people of all ages and abilities the chance to catch “the big one”! The next project will be a fishing pier on Martha’s Vineyard at Oak Bluffs. Keep your eyes open for future public access projects coming throughout the state with funding directly from your permit fees!
Regulations in red are new this year.
Purple text indicates an important note. | <urn:uuid:5cc7154e-227d-4e67-8917-f097abf88da3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.eregulations.com/massachusetts/fishing/saltwater/your-permit-dollars-at-work/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00066-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.952593 | 674 | 1.6875 | 2 |
We’ve talked about the importance of strong, active writing, but what about those times when a passive voice is actually a better choice?
No, seriously. King Arthur had the right idea. Might isn’t always right.
Taking the strong, firm, direct approach to writing–using active verbs, avoiding the “extras” that weaken the sentence’s impact–is bruited about in all the best writing guides as ideal writing. But what about the times when you don’t want to be direct? When you don’t want your writing to sound like an Army Sergeant yelling at new recruits?
Like, say, when issuing an invitation. It takes a very special person to get away with an invitation that says, “8:00. Saturday night. My house. Be there.” Most of us stick to something a little softer like, “The pleasure of your company would be appreciated….” This is a classic, round-about kind of sentence that the “active writing” mavens despise, and yet . . . it’s diplomatic.
This goes for other requests, too. Whether it’s in an e-mail, a letter, or a blog post, it’s generally considered poor form to demand things of your readers. “Click Here!” gets the point across, but the context is important. If you’re saying something like, “Your life is in danger right now and you can only be saved if you Click Here!” . . . well, who wouldn’t click? Even, “Want to buy now? Click Here” is acceptible because it’s not so much an order as an opportunity. But if you’re just linking to a picture of your dog, or if you’re trying to convince someone to donate money or buy something . . . it probably wouldn’t hurt to be a little less . . . pushy. Make sure they know the option is there, but leave the decision to click up to them. No pressure.
In fact, if you’ve been paying attention, there were a couple of sentences in that last paragraph that took the scenic route instead of getting directly to the point. “It’s generally considered poor form,” is a lot less direct than “It is poor form.” And, “It probably wouldn’t hurt to be a little less pushy” is much more round-about than, “Don’t be pushy.” But, see? The “direct” alternatives are more . . . presumptuous, more demanding. They are direct commands that lack the finesse of suggestions.
Sometimes, though, that’s exactly what you need. Who wants to be told what to do all the time? Who wants the writer to do all the work for them? I mean, sure, that’s the writer’s job, but you have to leave something for the reader to do, a journey to take–and they have to choose to do it. If you’re trying to persuade, or trying to teach or explain, you can’t just say, “This is the way it is. Period.” You need to let the reader discover that for themselves.
Again, it comes down to diplomacy. Nations don’t usually tell other nations what to do–or when they do, they usually couch it in the form of Very Strong Suggestions. As soon as you start giving orders, people start digging in their heels and resisting. Negotiation is better than outright hostility. There’s a natural give-and-take involved. Well, the same goes between writers and readers. It seems like it’s one-sided because, of course, the writing is complete before it can be read, but still . . . if the readers choose not to read, what good does solid, direct, strong writing do?
Mind you, I am not taking back what I wrote last month about strong, direct writing. I’m just saying that, sometimes, being less direct is a good thing. A little diplomacy. A little tact. A little power-of-suggestion. It’s the Road Not Travelled of the writing world. | <urn:uuid:ce624357-04ed-4b1c-8b67-8b3c4604a462> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://punctualityrules.com/2008/01/24/weakness-is-strength-sometimes/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00060-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.955549 | 914 | 2.46875 | 2 |
JwJ Renews Fight to Hold Walmart Accountable to Our Communities
In neighborhoods around the country, the buzz is at full blast as Walmart, the nation’s largest retailer (and one of the largest employers) aims to expand into urban communities. This is not happening in isolation, but during one of the biggest economic crises in recent history. Walmart’s new attempts at expansion center around one question: Who determines the future of work in America? Corporate CEOs like Walmart’s Mike Duke, or working people.
In partnership with the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) union, Jobs with Justice coalitions in DC, Chicago, New York, San Francisco, Boston, Philadelphia, and elsewhere have launched a new campaign to challenge Walmart’s expansion and demand high quality jobs, the rights of Walmart Associates to organize a union without intimidation or interference from the company, and the sustainable economic recovery of our communities.
Having saturated all of its other markets, Walmart has no where else to go but to the cities—giving urban communities new leverage over the multi-national corporation based in Arkansas. Since Walmart is the largest private employer in the U.S., and the largest retailer in the world, Walmart associates winning the right to organize freely and fairly would have an enormous impact on the whole United States, our economy and potentially the globe.
Recognizing this, DC Jobs with Justice wasted no time on February 9th, holding meetings with local city council members that culminated in a press conference. New York City JwJ mobilized community members to city council hearings about the potential impacts of Walmart on February 3th and 17th. Boston’s mayor, Thomas M. Menino has already publicly questioned whether Walmart with its current practices should be in Boston and called on the company to make a commitment for quality jobs and responsible practices toward small business.
As the largest retailer in the country, victory at Walmart would shake up the entire retail industry—one of the few sectors growing in the current economy—and raise the floor for all workers.
In all of these cities, workers and community leaders were able to speak out against policies that spend taxpayer dollars destroying the communities of working people, and in favor of policies that encourage economically sustainable development and democratic, dignified work for all.
Stay tuned to www.jwj.org for more updates and alerts on the on-going struggle at Walmart. | <urn:uuid:ff9fb68f-6f10-4e8b-a17e-a54239d90ec1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.jwj.org/blog/jwj-renews-fight-hold-walmart-accountable-our-communities | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.943239 | 489 | 1.664063 | 2 |
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What you should look for AND FIND in the licence agreement, is a paragraph saying that your PII (Personally Identifiable Information) WILL NOT be shared with third parties.
Spyware removal is a key component in internet security, and the removal software is referred to as ‘antispyware’.
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How spyware infects your computer
Spyware does not directly spread in the manner of a computer virus or worm: generally, an infected system does not attempt to transmit the infection to other computers.
Instead, spyware gets on a system through deception of the user or through exploitation of software vulnerabilities. Most spyware is installed without user’s knowledge. Since users tend not to install software if they know that it will disrupt their working environment and compromise their privacy, spyware deceives you, either by piggybacking on a piece of desirable software such as LimeWire, or by tricking them into installing it as the distributor of spyware usually presents the program as a useful utility. Some rogue anti-spyware programs masquerade as security software.
Spyware monitors behaviour and collects information
While the term ‘spyware’ suggests software that secretly monitors the user's behaviour; the functions of spyware extend well beyond simple monitoring.
Spyware programs can collect various types of personal information, such as internet surfing habits, sites that have been visited, but can also interfere with user control of the computer in other ways, such as installing additional software, and redirecting web browser activity
Buy BullGuard Internet Security and enjoy a comprehensive protection from spyware | <urn:uuid:ec5aa3c7-c5af-48f4-934c-0111dbca1e67> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.bullguard.com/spyware_download_page.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.912297 | 597 | 1.757813 | 2 |
by ROSALIND RYAN, femail.co.uk
Multiple sclerosis is the most common disabling condition affecting young adults in the Western world.
Around 85,000 people in the UK suffer from Multiple Sclerosis (MS) with 2,500 new cases diagnosed every year. And women are twice as likely to contract the condition than men, with three women to every two men suffering from MS.
The disorder is normally diagnosed between the ages of 20 and 40. 'MS is typically described as a disease that strikes in the prime of life,' says David Harrison, spokesman for the MS Society.
As yet there is no cure for the condition despite the vast amounts of research being carried out. There are drugs available that can help slow the progression of the disease, but the Department of Health has only just made these available on the NHS.
But the good news is that having MS is not a life sentence. Many sufferers lead long, happy and fulfilling lives holding down jobs, raising families and enjoying active social lives. Some even say MS forced them to take a good look at their lifestyle and change it for the better.
So how can you tell if you are suffering from MS? How is the condition diagnosed and how can you treat it? And does MS affect your chances of having a family or a career?
Femail.co.uk has all the facts. Read our guide to spotting and treating the condition, and find out where to go for more help and support.
What is MS?
Multiple sclerosis is a neurological condition, which means it affects your nervous system including the brain and the spinal cord.
All the nerve fibres in your body are surrounded by a protective coating called myelin. It works like an insulating cable, helping messages from the brain get to the spinal cord and other parts of the body quickly.
In MS, the body's immune system turns inward and starts to attack the myelin. When the myelin becomes damaged, the messages from the brain slow down or have trouble getting through. Depending on where the damage to the myelin occurs, this will affect different parts of the body.
For example, damage to the nerves responsible for movement can lead to poor co-ordination and damage to the nerves in the eye can result in blurred vision. This may not mean that the muscles themselves are damaged, just that the right messages are not getting through from the brain.
The patches of myelin that become damaged are like scars on the nerves. This is where the name multiple sclerosis comes from - sclerosis means scar and multiple means many.
What causes MS?
There are various factors that might be involved in triggering MS but medical experts are still unsure what really causes the condition.
The first factor that has an influence is genetics. Research has found that there might be a genetic predisposition to MS, however, the MS Society says there is no evidence of a specific MS gene.
Another factor is geography. 'MS is prevalent in temperate climates rather than tropical climes,' says David Harrison, spokesman for the MS Society. 'It seems to be that the further away you get from the equator, the more likely you are to find MS.'
There may also be a viral influence. Some experts believe that a virus may trigger MS if you already have a genetic disposition towards the condition.
No single virus has been identified as setting off the body's immune system to attack the myelin, but many people with MS have had viral illnesses such as measles, chicken pox or glandular fever.
MS is not contagious so you cannot catch the condition from somebody else. Two or more members of the same family may develop MS but this is more likely to be because of their genes rather than 'catching' it.
The symptoms of MS
The symptoms for MS vary considerably; from person to person, day to day and even hour to hour.
One day your balance may be affected and the next day it might be your sight depending on which part of your nervous system is being attacked.
However there are number of key symptoms associated with MS. It may start with double or blurred vision or pain at the back of the eye. You may then experience tingling like pins and needles or numbness in your arms, legs, feet and hands.
Other symptoms include fatigue or chronic tiredness, problems with mobility, balance or muscle spasms and possibly bladder or bowel control. You may also find it hard to concentrate or become forgetful. Others may suffer from anxiety or depression.
But it is important to remember that these symptoms do not necessarily mean you have MS. 'The symptoms of MS could also be symptoms of something else,' says David Harrison, spokesman for the MS Society. 'They are not unique to MS.'
Few people realise that there are four different types of MS and depending on the type you have, this can affect the severity of your symptoms.
'The most visible people with MS are those in a wheel chair so there is this misconception that it is inevitable you will end up in one,' says David Harrison. 'But the number of people who actually need wheel chairs is only about 15 per cent of sufferers.'
The first type of MS is benign. This is when you may have some small attacks and then make a complete recovery. It will not get worse as you get older and you are not left permanently disabled.
You will only be categorised as having benign MS if you have had no repeat attacks for 10 to 15 years after the first sign of the symptoms.
The second type is relapsing and remitting MS. This is when sufferers have alternate flare-ups of symptoms and then periods of recovery.
Relapses are unpredictable and no one is really sure what causes them. For each relapse you may experience the same symptoms or discover new ones.
'This is one of the most difficult things about MS,' says David Harrison. 'You are not just getting increasingly worse but you could get better and then have another relapse. You are dealing with something hugely unpredictable and it can be very draining, emotionally and physically.'
If the periods of remission between relapses get shorter and the severity of your symptoms gets worse with each attack, this is known as secondary progressive MS. This is the most common type of MS.
Instead of cycles of relapsing and remission, your condition will become steadily worse. This type normally develops 20 years after the first symptoms have begun to appear.
The final type of MS is primary progressive. Some sufferers never have cycles of relapses and remission but they have steadily worsening symptoms leading to disability.
'A typical MS patient may have the coming and going of symptoms in the early stages and then move onto the secondary progressive type,' says David Harrison. 'But typical is not really a word to apply to MS. MS is a very complex condition and it affects different people in different ways. No two people with MS are ever the same.'
Diagnosis and treatment of MS
Multiple sclerosis is a complex condition, making it very hard to diagnose.
Many of the symptoms could belong to another condition.
If you think you may have some of the symptoms of MS, the first thing to do is make an appointment with your GP. They will then refer you to a neurologist to confirm a diagnosis.
There is no particular test that a neurologist will do to check for MS but there are a number of common examinations.
A neurological examination is when the neurologist will look for abnormalities in your eye movements, co-ordination and speech or reflexes. This is to check that the nerve pathways involved in movement and sensation are functioning normally.
They may also carry out an 'evoked potentials' test. This is to check the time it takes for your brain to receive and understand messages.
Small electrodes are placed on your head to monitor your brain waves responding to messages. If the myelin has been damaged, it will take longer for the messages to get through than it would for a healthy person.
The most common way neurologists diagnose MS is by using an MRI scanner. This is when you lie down on a moving 'bed' that passes through a special scanner which takes pictures of your brain. It is very precise and can find the exact location of the scars on your nerves caused by MS.
The MS Society warns that it can take a long time to have your MS diagnosed. This is because neurologists will delay diagnosis until there have been two relapses attacking different parts of your nervous system at least one month apart and lasting for 24 hours. So if your relapses are fairly infrequent, it can take time to have your condition recognised.
How is MS treated?
There is no cure for MS but there are now a number of new drugs available that can help alter the course and progression of the condition. These are called disease modifying drugs.
In 1995 a class of drug called beta interferons were launched. They are not a cure for MS but studies show they can reduce relapses by one third, lengthen the periods of remission and reduce the progression of disability.
Interferons are chemicals that are produced naturally by the body. They work as message carriers and also play a role in the immune system. One type of interferon is involved in the destruction of myelin but beta interferon drugs cut down this destruction and boost the immune system to help fight MS.
Another disease modifying drug is glatiramer acetate. It is a synthetic protein that mimicks the protein which forms myelin. By 'copying' myelin, the drug stops the body's immune system attacking it. This delays the time between relapses.
Until February this year, NICE - the government body that decides which medicines should be available on the NHS - said these disease modifying drugs had limited effectiveness and were too expensive for the NHS.
But the Department of Health has now decided that patients whose neurologists believe they would benefit from the drugs can receive them on the NHS. If you are interested in being treated with beta interferons you need to ask your neurologist whether you will qualify for the drugs.
If you do not qualify for disease modifying drugs, there are a number of other ways to treat MS. There are drugs available which can help alleviate the symptoms of MS.
These drugs can help with muscle spasms, problems with incontinence and the pain that can come with MS. But if none of these drugs are effective, the Multiple Sclerosis Resource Centre suggests a number of alternative therapies.
Treatments including acupuncture, aromatherapy, reflexology and homeopathy can all help relieve the symptoms of MS. They can also help tackle the emotional problems associated with MS as patients come to terms with their condition.
Doctors have also just discovered that MS patients could be treated with their own blood cells. Researchers from the University of Washington Medical Centre found that stem cells - the 'mother cell' from which all other cells in the body are grown - can be grown from the patients' own blood cells.
One year after the cultured stem cells were injected back into the patients, the deterioration of the myelin had stopped in all the patients and the symptoms of MS had even improved for a small number.
But the scientists say the treatment is still in the very early experimental stages and will not be widely available to MS patients for many years.
Living with MS
Many people think having MS means you will become severely disabled and your quality of life will plummet.
But depending on the type of MS you have, your experience of life with MS can be very different.
The most important issue when you have been diagnosed with MS is to try to accept your condition.
The MS Society suggests focusing on the present rather than feeling bitter about the future and spending time to build on close relationships with family and friends will help you come to terms MS.
If you find it hard to cope it may be worth talking to others with the condition or finding a specially trained counsellor to help. Click in the blue box to find a support group.
Your career does not have to finish just because you have been diagnosed with MS, but the kind of job you do might be affected.
'If you have a job with long hours, a lot of travelling or if it requires manual strength, you may have to think about changing or re-training,' says David Harrison, spokesman for the MS Society.
You can still work full time after being diagnosed but some people in very stressful jobs may find it a relief to give it up and pursue a different, less demanding career. The hours you work and how long you want to continue working will be affected by the fatigue you feel, so don't be afraid to ask for help from your employer or family if you are struggling to keep up at work.
Women may also worry that having MS means they cannot have children, but the opposite is true - MS has no effect on fertility in men or women.
Pregnancy, delivery and breastfeeding can all be normal, but any drugs you are taking may have to be adjusted whilst you are pregnant. Studies have also shown that the risk of relapses actually decreases while you are pregnant.
However, the risk of having a relapse after birth is up to three times more likely than usual. Luckily the progression of the disease does not get any worse and one year after giving birth most women have no more relapses than they did before having a baby.
The MS Society does warn that babies and young children can be very tiring, especially for mothers with MS. If you are feeling like you cannot manage, talk to friends and family to see if they can organise some help for you. It may also be worth talking to your doctor to arrange a care worker to help look after you and the baby.
There is no reason to give up your social life just because you have been diagnosed with MS either. The MS Society says it is important to keep up with friends who make you feel positive so you do not fall into the trap of isolating yourself.
Remember that your energy levels will determine how active your social life is so be careful you do not tire yourself out.
More information and advice
For more help and advice on MS contact the MS Society on their helpline 0808 800 8000.
You can also contact the Multiple Sclerosis Trust at
or the Multiple Sclerosis Resource Centre at
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Photographed by Bette Jackson
If you are have difficulty playing the audio click here
Hi, I'm Dr. Jerry Jackson, out with the wild things. Of Florida's 400 different kinds of birds, only the Florida scrub jay is found only in Florida. The Florida scrub of the Lake Wales Ridge is the oldest of Florida's dry land habitats. It was all that existed of Florida during global warming and higher ocean levels more than two million years ago. The desert-like scrub is a harsh environment and the Florida scrub jay has honed skills to perfection as a citizen of this scrub. The Florida scrub jay depends on acorns, burying many in times of plenty for retrieval in times of scarcity. Many acorns buried are never retrieved, but begin growing, continuing the scrub habitat the birds require. Florida scrub jays have a unique social system: they're cooperative breeders. Scrub jay real estate is rare, so offspring continue to live with their parents paying the rent by helping defend the family territory, and helping raise their parents’ next brood. In good times, the family may be able to claim a large territory, and junior may be able to carve out a corner as his own. Or if a parent dies, he may inherit the old home. In bad times, a family group rather than a single pair is better able to defend limited resources.
'With the Wild Things' is produced at the Whitaker Center in the College of Arts and Sciences at Florida Gulf Coast University. For 'The Wild Things', I'm Dr. Jerry Jackson. | <urn:uuid:dea7bff4-e733-404a-b044-26cbe5187592> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://digitalcollections.fiu.edu/wild/transcripts/lakewales4.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.955441 | 319 | 2.6875 | 3 |
Information for Educators
This page provides educators with forms and other documents frequently used by Career And Technical Education teachers and administrators. For all other CTE resources or documents, see the Topics A-Z page.
See Presentations and Reports for content delivered by CTE staff and agency partners.
See Course Approval for CTE Course Re-Approval process steps and documents.
Career and Technical Education is a planned program of courses and learning experiences that begins with exploration of career options, and then supports the learning of basic academic and life skills. It allows students to achieve high academic standards, gain leadership skills, explore options for high-skill, high-wage employment preparation, and encourages advanced and continuing education. (RCW 28C.04.100)
The Career and Technical Education Program Standards are designed to empower students to live, learn and work as productive citizens in a global society. CTE programs must meet standards established by the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI). The CTE standards are designed to ensure high-quality, consistent and relevant CTE programs as essential components of educational and career pathways. These standards provide OSPI with approval guidelines for CTE courses and guide the development and continuous improvement of Career and Technical Education programs in local school districts.
Below is the guiding memorandum on CTE program Standards, sent to school superintendents, principals and Career and Technical Education directors on May 9, 2005. Also below are the program standards themselves, and several publications that summarize content from within the standards. | <urn:uuid:2db0ccb4-2d7f-4d97-82bd-551ab4bad0a4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.k12.wa.us/CareerTechEd/FormsStandards.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00056-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.936998 | 311 | 2.90625 | 3 |
Worst. Olympic. Slogan. Ever.
The 500-day countdown to an Olympic Games is not much of a milestone outside of the host city, so you may not have noticed that the organizing committee for the 2014 Winter Games in Sochi, Russia, took the occasion last week to unveil some pretty big news. Sochi now has an official slogan, which means that the rest of us have 490-plus days to titter over its terribleness.
In English, the organizing committee explains that the slogan means “Hot. Cold. Yours.” Although a more literal translation, which comes to us from the Global Voices blog network, translates the Russian “Жаркие. Зимние. Твои.” as “Hot. Wintry. Yours.”
This sounds like a pretty steamy description for the world’s largest nationalistic gathering of underage ice-skaters and curling heroes. So what was Sochi thinking? As the organizing committee tells it:
The slogan is made up of two parts: one dynamic (changeable) and one constant. It is intended to reflect the national character of Russia and the values of the Sochi 2014 brand, as well as Sochi 2014’s progressive and innovative approach to the organization and staging of the Games.
If this is still not clear to you, consider that the heat is supposed to represent the "intensity of sporting battle and the passion of the spectators," and the wintry cool the fact that this is, obviously, a Winter Olympics held in a country most of us picture in eternal blizzard. "Yours" is a ploy to convince skeptical Russians that these Games belong to them. And then there are those stylish periods, each of which "draws a parallel with high technologies."
The slogan’s big unveil has since set off widespread giggling in the Russian Twitter and blogosphere. Global Voices’ Andrey Tseliko has done some much appreciated work translating the best of it for us. “The Russian version of the slogan is plural,” he writes, “which in combination with ‘жаркие,’ makes people think of the words ‘passionate,’ ‘fervent,’ and ‘sultry,’ rather than simply temperature.”
Говорят, девизомОлимпиады в Сочи сперва выбрали:"Зима с блекджекоми шлюхами!",но впоследний моментсменили на "Жаркие.Зимние.Твои"— Ramzil' Sultanov 18+ (@RamzilSultanov) September 25, 2012
Via Tseliko: "They say that the Sochi Olympic slogan was originally 'Winter with blackjack and whores!', but at the last moment they changed it to 'Hot. Wintry. Yours.'"
From journalist Andrey Kozenko:
Под слоганом Олимпиады "Жаркие. Зимние. Твои" не хватает номера телефона и подписи "Выезд. Апартаменты"— Andrey Kozenko (36+) (@akozenko) September 25, 2012
"The Olympic slogan 'Hot. Wintry. Yours' is missing a phone number and a line that says 'Private residences. Apartments.'"
Or there's this more succinct critique:
"Is it just me, or is this lacking the word 'Boobs?'"
Fair question. Of course, it's quite possible that the Sochi organizers are just looking for buzz (we don't claim to have any idea what Russian bureaucrats are thinking). If that's the case – heck, even if it's not – please answer this Olympic call to append your own NSFW interpretation on the theme of sultry Russian snow-bunnies below. Do it for your country. | <urn:uuid:cb5834cc-e13b-4c4e-b531-ea2dad90341b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.theatlanticcities.com/arts-and-lifestyle/2012/10/worst-olympic-slogan-ever/3471/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00073-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.910652 | 980 | 1.765625 | 2 |
§ Captain Gammans
asked the Minister of War Transport if he will publish a list with tonnages of the ships which were taken over from Germany after the Armistice; and state to which Allied countries they have been allotted.1837W
§ Mr. Barnes
(1) As the hon. Member will be aware, it was decided at Potsdam that the British, American and Russian Governments should appoint experts to work out together detailed plans as regards the use and disposal of the surrendered German merchant ships. (2) A Commission of three Powers is at present at work in Berlin, and is preparing the necessary lists. No information as to the allocation of ships has yet been received. Meanwhile a number of German ships are being used by Allied countries without prejudice to their ultimate disposal. | <urn:uuid:ed76d0fc-c639-4615-abf5-268cf891bde2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/written_answers/1945/oct/22/surrendered-german-merchant-ships | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00055-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.978818 | 162 | 1.75 | 2 |
(covers information from several alternate timelines)
An apple (Malus domestica) was an edible fruit with a sweet taste; red, green, or even yellow in color. Besides the domestic apple native to Earth, different varieties of apples have been known to be cultivated in otherworldly forms. The apple was used as a symbol of education and knowledge.
Sir Isaac Newton made his theory of gravity after the Q known as Quinn accidentally knocked an apple on his head. (VOY: "Death Wish") In later centuries, many intellectuals considered the "apple story" of Newton's discovery to be apocryphal. (TNG: "Descent")
In the late 20th century, an apple was incorporated into the design of the mission insignia for the Space shuttle mission STS-51L. The apple followed the name of the first teacher in space, Christa McAuliffe. (ENT: "First Flight")
In 2364, Groppler Zorn offered William T. Riker some fruit when he visited Zorn in the old Bandi City. Riker wanted an apple, but there were none available. The Farpoint Station entity then created a bowl of apples, as it was instructed to satisfy the desires of the Starfleet crew. This led Riker to suspect the Bandi were not being completely honest about the origins of Farpoint. (TNG: "Encounter at Farpoint")
In 2371, Joe Carey found a fruit that resembled an apple while on an away team scouting a planet for food. However, Neelix informed Carey that it was a poisonous kaylo fruit and suggested they spend their time gathering leola root instead. (VOY: "State of Flux") | <urn:uuid:331b1a70-75a9-4a0f-ae70-531d1791a8a5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Green_apple | 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 | 0.962879 | 348 | 3.078125 | 3 |
|Treaties you might not expect|
No, we're not making this up. In 1949long before anyone had even dreamt of the term "New Media"the UN adopted an agreement on "the international circulation of visual and auditory materials of an educational, scientific and cultural character."
Now you might have a sudden respect for the A-V Squad, thinking it's really the media equivalent of UN peacekeeping troops, but this agreement is basically concerned with customs and importation.
The Convention covers all the standard materials you'd expect to find in the A-V room: films, filmstrips, microfilms, sound recordings, slides, charts, maps and postersbut not to say how the devices are to be used, or what should be shown to whom, and when.
The agreement says that if these materials are educational, scientific or cultural in nature, they are exempted from customs and other taxes when they're imported.
But that doesn't mean you shouldn't respect the stalwart members of the A-V squad. | <urn:uuid:407279b6-ebcb-4c5e-a4ef-2ccf180c17bf> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.un.org/Pubs/CyberSchoolBus/treaties/av.asp | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00048-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.932333 | 213 | 2.265625 | 2 |
A fake of the popular Camera+ photo app was discovered on Apple's App Store, an indication that the iPhone maker's strict approval process has holes.
IPhoneography, an iPhone photography blog, discovered the bogus app over the weekend. Apple, which does not discuss App Store security, took down the fake without explanation.
Apple controls the approval process for all apps submitted by developers. The strict rules for submission are seen by many security experts as protecting consumers better than Google's more open approach for Android apps.
While Apple must approve all apps for the iPhone, Google allows third parties to offer their own applications on web sites, making it easier for cybercriminals to distribute malware for Android. Juniper Networks reported seeing a 472 percent increase in Android malware from July through mid-November of last year.
The latest discovery in the Apple store led at least one security expert to question how the computer maker could have approved a fake of one of the 20 best-selling apps for the smartphone. Camera+, made by the company Tap Tap Tap, boosts the performance and features of the iPhone's internal camera.
"Why didn't they notice that someone was uploading a false version of such a well-known app?" asked Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at security vendor Sophos.
Tap Tap Tap acknowledged that the fake had been removed and complained on Twitter of Apple's "all too often disappointing approval process." Sophos has not been able to get a copy of the app, so it couldn't say whether it contained malware. "It is possible that the popular app's name was being taken in vain, simply in order to try to earn some money from online purchases," Cluley said Monday.
Nevertheless, the discovery means people should be careful with apps they install, whether it is on an iPhone or Android phone, the security expert said. | <urn:uuid:61dbec97-00a8-4ab0-950e-e4f21b342441> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.crn.com/news/security/232500339/bogus-photo-app-found-in-apple-app-store.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00022-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96333 | 375 | 1.523438 | 2 |
Kumi loves to eat, but she's worried that her passion for junk food is affecting her health. Determined to unlock the secrets of dieting, she enlists the help of her brainy friend Nemoto and his beautiful biochemistry professor, Dr. Kurosaka. And so it begins...Follow along in The Manga Guide to Biochemistry as Kumi explores the mysteries of her body's inner workings. With the help of RoboCat, the professor's friendly endoscopic robot, you'll soar through the incredible chemical machinery that keeps us alive and get an up-close look at biopolymers like DNA and proteins, the metabolic processes that turn our food into energy, and the enzymes that fuel our bodies' chemical reactions.As you dive into the depths of plant and animal cells, you'll learn about:The metabolism of substances like carbohydrates, lipids, proteins, and alcohol How the energy powerhouses known as mitochondria produce ATP DNA transcription and the different types of RNA that work together to translate the genetic code into proteins Enzyme kinetics, how they're measured, and how enzyme inhibition works Whether you're a medical student, an amateur scientist, or just curious about how your body turns cupcakes into energy, The Manga Guide to Biochemistry is your key to understanding the science of life.
Buyback (Sell directly to one of these merchants and get cash immediately)
|Currently there are no buyers interested in purchasing this book. While the book has no cash or trade value, you may consider donating it| | <urn:uuid:9dd590b9-7e58-4abb-860f-f6d7ad71937d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.campusbooks.com/books/sell.php?isbn=9781593272760 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00070-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.941754 | 308 | 2.59375 | 3 |
|Scientology Video Channel||
WHAT IS THE OXFORD CAPACITY ANALYSIS,
ALSO KNOWN AS THE PERSONALITY TEST?
The Oxford Capacity Analysis (OCA) is a self-report test utilized in Scientology Churches since the 1950s to measure changes in how people feel about themselves. People may complete an OCA through the mail or in the Test Center of a Church of Scientology.
The OCA is also a measure of how people feel about themselves before, during and after auditing. It is comprised of 200 questions designed to measure 10 traits common to all beings. These traits rise markedly in auditing, reflecting one’s gains.
Because the test measures how people feel about themselves, a person’s answers will change as they come to realizations through auditing. These changes, then, are a useful measure of the subjective spiritual gains a person experiences. OCA tests are used throughout a person’s progress in Scientology. | <urn:uuid:ff861385-b7ee-4d5d-90d0-9b03eb6a57af> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.scientology.org/faq/inside-a-church-of-scientology/what-is-the-oca-test.html?org=1 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00028-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.924332 | 202 | 2.609375 | 3 |
Public Interest Groups
The Public Interest Public Service Executive Board coordinates with several other student groups and university programs that have a public interest mission. Some of these other student groups are described below.
The University of Oregon Law School developed the first law school pro bono program in Oregon in 1996. Law students who perform 40 hours of pro bono before graduation receive a Pro Bono Statement of Completion and recognition in the graduation bulletin. Certificate recipients also receive a letter from the Oregon Supreme Court and Oregon State Bar. Through the Career Services Office, the Pro Bono Program has access to a national database which contains over 10,000 of pro bono and public interest employers. The Committee helps students locate pro bono opportunities, provides current pro bono project listings, contact information, and information about pro bono organizations. The Committee also regularly contacts local organizations such as Lane County Legal Aid Services, District Attorney Victim Services, ACLU and many others, to develop referral sources for students interested in pro bono and invites organizations to send representatives to speak to students about pro bono with their organization.
Oregon Law has won the law school section of the Oregon State Bar Pro Bono Challenge every year since inception in 2001.
The Oregon Law Students Public Interest Fund (OLSPIF) is a non-profit run by and for the Students of the University of Oregon School of Law. Our mission is to enable law student employment in the public interest and to support greater community access to legal representation. Through our fundraising, we are able to award $3,000 stipends to qualified students who accept public interest positions that otherwise would be unpaid. In this way, we ensure that public interest organizations have the staff necessary to accomplish their goals, and that students receive the practical legal education they need to be strong advocates for under-represented communities. All students enrolled at UO Law who dedicate at least ten volunteer hours to OLSPIF are eligible to receive a stipend for their unpaid public interest legal work.
Streetlaw is a subcommittee of the Pro Bono Program and focuses on teaching legal principles to community members in a straight forward, easy-to-understand manner. The goal of the program is to offer legal information to community members who are interested in a broad overview of their rights, as well as to reach out to segments of the community who may have difficulty obtaining this information elsewhere. Law students teach one-hour informational classes to community groups around the Eugene/Springfield area.
The Public Interest Environmental Law Conference is the premier annual gathering for environmentalists worldwide, and is distinguished as the oldest and largest of its kind. Now in its 24th year, the Conference annually brings more than 3,000 activists, attorneys, students, scientists, and concerned citizens from over 30 countries around the globe to share their experience and expertise. The Conference is organized solely by the volunteers of Land Air Water, a student environmental law society, and is sponsored by Friends of Land Air Water, a non-profit 501(c) (3) organization. The four-day Conference includes over 125 panels, workshops, and multi-media presentations addressing the entire spectrum of environmental law and advocacy.
The CLA provides access and services to the various state and federal agencies, private firms, and not-for-profit organizations relating to criminal law. The CLA promotes an interest in community service through numerous internship opportunities and by encouraging volunteering. The CLA provides students with professional field-related contacts and mentors, as well as scheduling various speakers throughout the year. The majority of active CLA members go on to be public defenders or state prosecutors.
The American Constitution Society is devoted to the fundamental principles of respect for human dignity, protection of individual rights and liberties, genuine equality, and access to justice in American law. The Society seeks to strengthen the intellectual underpinnings of — and the public case for — a vision of the law in which such values are paramount. The Society’s goal is that through reason and decency, we can create an America that is better for us all.
Consistent with the law school’s legacy of public service, the LRAP seeks to ease the debt burdens incurred during law school for graduates who choose to work in public interest and public service law. LRAP makes public interest law work a more viable career option for law graduates and will infuse Oregon’s public institutions with new talent, vigor and leadership.
The Child and Family Law Association (“CFLA”) aims to foster student interest in the study and practice of juvenile and family law. CFLA aims to introduce students to the broad array of practical, constitutional, and socio-political concepts related to family law. Toward this end, CFLA discusses such current topics as domestic violence, child abuse, child welfare policies, education law, adoption law, gay marriage, surrogate parentage, custody disputes in divorces, elder guardianships, and right to die legislation. CFLA sponsors speakers, training, and seminars on a variety of issues to increase awareness of the array of legal issues related to family structures and children’s rights. CFLA also provides networking and mentoring opportunities with professionals engaged in the practice of family and juvenile law. In addition, CFLA promotes student involvement in pro bono opportunities related to the practice of family, juvenile, and elder law. In all of these endeavors, CFLA seeks to collaborate with other law student groups, other undergraduate and graduate-level programs at the University, faculty, and the local community.
The Journal of Environmental Law & Litigation (“JELL”) is a student-managed two review that publishes two issues per year. JELL’s purpose is to provide an international, unbiased forum for the discussion of new ideas and theories in the natural resource and environmental law fields. JELL offers an academic experience to supplement the University of Oregon’s nationally recognized environmental law program. JELL selects its staff through a writing competition, held jointly with the Oregon Law Review, shortly after the end of spring semester exams.
The Green Business Initiative Student Association is dedicated to the creation and advancement of resources for law students to study the confluence of modern business and commercial and environmental law. Through these efforts, the group seeks to develop an understanding that better prepares students to practice in the growing number of areas in which the interests of business and the environment align. Alternative energy is a rapidly growing industry, and the State of Oregon — and especially the University of Oregon School of Law — is uniquely situated to stand at the forefront of this emerging market. Through interactive discussion, promoting panels and speakers in Sustainable Business, as well as expanding the School of Law’s available curriculum and certificates, the group seeks to prepare its members for excellence in the field of environmentally conscious business law.
OUTLAWS serves as a support group and provides both on-campus and off-campus social events. OUTLAWS is an active and vital part of the School of Law community, and serves as an educational resource for the School of Law, the University of Oregon, and the City of Eugene. OUTLAWS’ goals are to continue to sponsor speakers on gay issues, to administer its scholarship program and to seek additional funding for it, to increase outreach efforts to gay students, to provide support to gay students, and to serve as an information source on sexual orientation-related legal issues for all students and the community.
National Lawyers Guild
The National Lawyers Guild (“NLG”) is an association dedicated to the need for basic change in the structure of the political and economic system. NLG seeks to unite the lawyers, law students, legal workers, and jailhouse lawyers of America in an organization that shall function as an effective political and social force in the service of the people, to the end that human rights shall be regarded as more sacred than property interests. In addition to working for progressive political and economic change generally, NLG Committees work on more specific issues, including anti-racism, anti-sexism (women’s caucus), disability rights, international issues, labor and employment issues, “queer caucus,” Middle Eastern issues, prison law, United People of Color, and military law.
Student Oregon Trial Lawyers Association
The Student Oregon Trial Lawyers Association (“SOTLA”) is a group that partners with the Oregon Trial Lawyers Association (“OTLA”) to provide educational and networking opportunities to the students at the University of Oregon School of Law. The OTLA advocates for the rights of consumers by promoting safer products, workers’ rights, access to quality health care, and eliminating discrimination in the workplace. SOTLA works to bring top-quality legal speakers to the University of Oregon and provide great networking opportunities to University of Oregon School of Law students, with an emphasis on civil litigation.
The Women’s Law Forum (“WLF”) is a student organization dedicated to increasing the voice of female students at the School of Law. WLF members contribute to the School of Law and the greater community in three main ways: conference and speakers, networking opportunities, and public service.
Part of the course requirements for completion of the PIPS certificate is the completion of a clinic. The clinics provide students the opportunity to receive hands-on experience while providing free legal service for various clients. Oregon Law has a rich set of clinical opportunities including:
Environmental Law Clinic
Criminal Law Defense Clinic
Domestic Violence Clinic
Legislative Issues Workshop | <urn:uuid:1aa087d8-8214-4bce-88f5-a00cef4fdd8a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://law.uoregon.edu/pips/groups/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00051-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.949184 | 1,931 | 1.851563 | 2 |
This report from the U.S. Department of Education’s IES National Center for Education Statistics presents results of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) at grades 4, 8, and 12 for hands-on and interactive computer tasks from the 2009 science assessment. Interactive computer and hands-on tasks were designed to assess how well students can perform scientific investigations, draw valid conclusions, and explain their results. As a part of the 2009 science assessment, a new generation of hands-on tasks was administered during which students worked with lab materials and other equipment to perform experiments. While hands-on tasks have been used in NAEP since the 1990s, these new tasks present students with more open-ended scenarios that require a deeper level of planning, analysis, and synthesis. For the first time, the NAEP science assessment also included interactive computer tasks in science. While performing the interactive computer and hands-on tasks, students manipulate objects and perform actual experiments, offering us richer data on how students respond to scientific challenges. Several key discoveries were observed:
- Students were successful on parts of investigations that involved limited sets of data and making straightforward observations of that data.
- Students were challenged by parts of investigations that contained more variables to manipulate or involved strategic decision making to collect appropriate data.
- The percentage of students who could select correct conclusions from an investigation was higher than for those students who could select correct conclusions and also explain their results. | <urn:uuid:9268cd89-3d26-4509-833d-3b36e7fe51d4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://getideas.org/resource/the-nations-report-card-u-s-science-in-action/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00044-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96477 | 291 | 3.75 | 4 |
Tobacco Program Coordinator
Jackson County Health Department
Schools are responsible for protecting children in their charge from dangerous products. Tobacco is a product that disables and kills.
Schools must prohibit drug use in school buildings, on school grounds and at school-sponsored events. Tobacco is a drug.
Schools must be in the business of promoting health rather than enabling addictions. Tobacco is addictive.
Schools are responsible for providing a safe environment for students. Smoking materials and secondhand smoke are dangerous.
Schools can help “delay the onset” of smoking and significantly reduce the chances that youth will ever use tobacco regularly. Middle and high school years are critical in determining whether or not an individual becomes a smoker for life.
Schools must consider the other “side effects” of tobacco use. Tobacco is a gateway drug.
Schools must send clear consistent non-use messages. Allowing tobacco use at school is in conflict with prevention messages delivered in classrooms.
Schools can reduce children’s observation of tobacco use and take a firm stand against it. Perceived social acceptance of tobacco use, accurate or otherwise, influences adolescent tobacco use behavior.
Schools need to prepare students for the reality of smoke free workplaces and communities. Workplaces and communities are becoming increasingly smoke free.
It is important that schools model respect for state laws and community ordinances. Laws intentionally limit access and possession of tobacco by children.
School districts would be wise to protect themselves from liability risk. Schools may face liability issues by allowing smoking on their premises.
It’s the right thing to do. Period.
Also, Tonya Pogue wanted to add the following information:
The Tobacco-Free service to our schools is all because of the funding that Jackson County receives through the Jackson County Community Health Action Team (JCCHAT) from the Tobacco Settlement Endowment Trust (TSET) to make these tools available for this community and encourage members to become healthier through educating on the dangers of tobacco use. A large part of the efforts of this program is also to educate youth on the dangers so that they are not the replacement tobacco users of tomorrow. The tobacco companies work very hard to recruit new tobacco users each day and the most impressionable group in our society are our youth. The youth of the nation are seen as the replacement smokers of the future. The tobacco industry markets their products to appeal to teenagers and middle school age youth in the hopes that they will try the products and then become addicted and use tobacco through adulthood. The Big Tobacco Industry spends approximately $245.8 mission in Oklahoma each year to advertise their deadly products. For anyone who is currently a tobacco user and would like information on how to quit, please contact the Oklahoma Tobacco Helpline at 1 800 QUIT NOW (1-800-784-8669). The web based service is available at www.OKHelpline.com. The phone call and web service are free to everyone. Most people who call the help line or use the web based service are eligible to receive free patches, gum or lozenges. Thousands of Oklahomans have already called and found that the Help Line works. There are Quit Coaches available as well, because it is difficult to quit and stay quit. Quitting is hard, but you increase your chances of success with help. QUIT NOW; there’s never been a better time. | <urn:uuid:41110e72-4717-4369-90a2-5da3b96d7547> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.altustimes.com/pages/home/push?per_page=5&class=&rel=prev&x_page=50 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954041 | 695 | 3.15625 | 3 |
Stop the Bus description: Get as close to 31 as you can with a single suit - Aces are worth 11 and picture cards are worth 10 or make 3-of-a-kind for 30 points! Stop the bus if you think you're score's good enough, but be warned - whoever comes last loses a token! Lose them all and it's a long walk home!
Game Instructions: Click the deck or waste to take a card then click a card from your hand to discard it. Stop the Bus before you discard a card if you think your score is good enough to beat your opponents!
Play all these Sports games for free. | <urn:uuid:8df6bdeb-3166-4788-9222-e485e033f8f8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.gameslist.com/free/Stop-The-Bus-Game | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00064-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959806 | 131 | 1.867188 | 2 |
Disaster Jumpstarts Network Reevaluation
The ideal network is invisible: bits go in at one access point and come out at another, in zero time with zero error and with zero administrative workload. All those ideals are challenged, though, by the exploding workloads, surging performance requirements and unpredictable usage models arising from acts of man and nature alike.
Anyone whos operating a network today, or building one for tomorrow, needs to investigate these edge conditionsand beyondto avoid costly disappointment and potentially disastrous surprise.
The rate at which data is being produced and the ease with which data can be stored are vastly outpacing the speed with which data can be transferred from source to repository.
High on the list of potential data eruptions is the proliferation of RFID (radio-frequency identification) tags and other wireless sensors, with attractive applications for manufacturing, retail, health care, public safety and business intelligence tasksand likely many others yet to be recognized.
Storage devices, meanwhile, defy doomsayers predictions of imminent collision with physical limits, continually breaking new ground in both absolute performance and cost-effectiveness.
Network throughput, however, has grown at a far more leisurely rate. If the typical client device was a 300-bps dial-up modem in 1980 and is a 600K-bps DSL connection in 2005, then throughput has grown at a compound rate of only 35 percent per year.
Desktop CPU speed, meanwhile, has grown roughly 70 percent per year, and desktop storage has grown 90 percent per year. Its harder to quantify this imbalance in enterprise systems, with their greater diversity of scale and variety of technology, but the overall situation is much the same.
Worse still is the escalation of peak-to-average ratiosor the "burstiness" of network traffic, to use less-formal languageas the mix of network transactions shifts from steady streams of terminal traffic to user- and event-driven spikes of multimedia content.
Network throughput can fall short of demand in contexts as frivolous as the 1999 Victorias Secret online fashion show or as critical as the sudden need for geotechnical data and earthen dam failure simulation results in response to Hurricane Katrina.
Indeed, the volumes of data required by a large-scale disaster responsefor example, after a major California earthquakewould be so great that theyd be moved faster by overnight delivery of physical media than they can currently be transferred over a network, according to Anke Kamrath, user services and development division director at the San Diego Supercomputer Center.
At the end of the road, moreover, is the fundamental light-speed limitactually, a fraction of the ultimate speed of light when signals move through anything denser than a vacuumthat is rapidly becoming a sizable component of overall latency in distributed processing and remote Web services invocations.
Kamrath told eWEEK Labs this month that algorithm developers who focus today on memory bandwidth limits can hope that new technology will alleviate their problems, but "the speed of light, from San Diego to Illinois or the East Coast, is not going to changeits going to become the wart," she warned.
What all this means is that networks will have to emerge from their idealized invisibility to become a much more prominent item on developers and users agendas. Developers will need to know more about network protocols and the implications of tuning transfer parameters to match the needs of a particular application. Developers will have to be more aware of the actual locations where data resides and where services are executed, as well as the paths that data and service invocations follow.
System managers will have to consider all these things as part of their planning to maintain quality of service despite both random fluctuations in workload and disastrous incidents of downtime. In addition, business-process owners will have to consider network factors, balancing the costs and uncertainties of long-distance transfers against the efficiencies of service-oriented architecture as they make their future plans.
Technology Editor Peter Coffee can be reached at firstname.lastname@example.org.
Check out eWEEK.coms for the latest news, views and analysis on servers, switches and networking protocols for the enterprise and small businesses. | <urn:uuid:5707709a-5c9e-44d3-a8f4-cddc6b9ac703> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.eweek.com/print/c/a/IT-Infrastructure/Disaster-Jumpstarts-Network-Reevaluation/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00022-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.942658 | 848 | 1.984375 | 2 |
The Candidate Countries Croatia* and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia*, the Countries of the Stabilisation and Association Process and potential candidates Albania, Montenegro and Serbia, as well as Ukraine, the Republic of Moldova and Armenia align themselves with this declaration.
Dealing with climate change poses one of humanities’ greatest challenges for this century. Human activities have been and are unambiguously changing our Earth’s temperature at a rate which poses severe environmental, economic and security threats to all regions and countries. It is one of the major hindrances to the accomplishment of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Without adequate global action, climate change will increasingly hamper countries, especially the most vulnerable, in meeting national and international development goals and could become a menace to international security.
Climate Change has finally received the political attention it deserves. The UN’ GA focus on this global challenge is much welcomed by the European Union, together with the Secretary-General’s priority to climate change and his initiative for a High Level Event on September 24 to give political impetus to the preparations of the next UN Climate Change Conference in Bali, in December.
The world’s Heads of State and Government and peoples are increasingly realizing that such a global threat requires more effective global solutions.
Indeed, the scale of the challenge and the urgency to address it call for unprecedented international co-operation, involving all countries in a global effort to halt climate change, based on the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities of countries. Negotiations on a global and comprehensive post-2012 agreement to bring about the necessary emission reductions, while supporting sustainable development and poverty reduction, need to be launched at the end of 2007 and completed by 2009 in order to prevent a gap between the first and second commitment periods under the Kyoto Protocol.
Such an international effort will require strong action on reducing greenhouse gas emissions, adapting to the impacts of climate change, fostering the development, deployment, diffusion and transfer of low carbon technologies and addressing emissions from deforestation.
We are thus hopeful this informal thematic debate of the 61st UN’ GA will contribute to raising the awareness of the urgency of dealing with climate change and will express the need for considering further and stronger international action to tackle it, while highlighting the UNFCCC and its Kyoto Protocol as the centerpiece of multilateral response to the global fight against climate change. The European Union is very much looking forward to the UN Climate Change Conference in Bali, in December and to the Vienna Climate Change Talks at the end of this month of August.
The European Union is fully committed to deliver its share of the international effort with ambitious emissions reductions from its part, and by working with international partners towards a low carbon future, inter alia through expanding its strategic partnerships and bilateral activities with third countries, in particular in relation to energy efficiency and renewable energy, as well as to emerging technologies, such as carbon capture and environmentally safe sequestration and to engaging more closely with international financial institutions and the private sector.
The European Union has put in place a set of comprehensive measures to deliver on its Kyoto Protocol targets, notably through the European Union Emissions Trading Scheme (European Union ETS) with links to the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) and Joint Implementation (JI). With the implementation of planned additional policies and measures and the use of the Kyoto Mechanisms, the European Union remains on course to meet its targets by 2012.
The European Union is committed to more ambitious action in tackling climate change in the medium and longer term. Indeed, European leaders agreed ambitious commitments in March which send a strong signal to the international community about their resolve in the fight against climate change by taking on the following commitments with a view to kick-starting the negotiations on a global post-2012 agreement that builds upon and broadens the Kyoto Protocol architecture:
- Until such an agreement is reached the European Union is taking a firm independent commitment to achieve at least a 20% reduction of greenhouse gas emissions by 2020 compared to 1990 levels;
- The European Union is willing to commit to a reduction of as much as 30% if other developed countries make comparable reductions and economically more advanced developing countries contribute adequately; and
- The European Union has also called for a global emission reductions of up to 50% by 2050 compared to 1990 levels.
Such an agreement should be guided by a shared vision to reach the ultimate objective of the UNFCCC. Elements of such an agreement include agreeing on deeper absolute emission reduction commitments by developed countries, facilitating further aid and effective contributions by other countries, extending the carbon market, increasing cooperation on technology research, development, diffusion, deployment and transfer, enhancing efforts to address adaptation, addressing emissions from international aviation and maritime transport, and reducing emissions from deforestation.
By taking on these commitments, the European Union also wanted to send a clear long-term signal on the continuity of the flexible mechanisms, in particular emissions trading and the Clean Development Mechanism, beyond 2012 as important tools to reduce carbon emissions and foster sustainable development.
The European Union is of the view that in order to avoid dangerous climate change impacts – such as an irreversible melting of ice caps, the disruption of key ecosystems, the loss of food security due to reduced agricultural productivity, and the displacement of millions of people due to the loss of secure habitats – overall global mean surface temperature increase should not exceed 2°C above pre-industrial levels. Above such threshold climate change impacts and adaptation costs escalate. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has recently underlined that the window of opportunity for doing so is closing rapidly and that global emissions must peak within less than 15 years and then start decreasing.
There is an increasing body of scientific, technical and socioeconomic evidence that shows that it is technically feasible to meet the 2 ºC objective through ambitious strategies to transform our currently unsustainable economies into low carbon economies on the basis of current and emerging technologies and at moderate overall cost, in the order of a few percent of global GDP, when timely action is taken.
Meeting this objective requires swift global action and unprecedented international co-operation to tackle greenhouse gas emissions.
The European Union believes it is high time to start considering the steps to take after 2012 and how to achieve a global, comprehensive approach to climate change.
In this context, the European Union confirms its view that absolute emission reduction commitments are the backbone of a global carbon market, that developed countries should continue to take the lead by committing to collectively reducing their emissions of greenhouse gases in the order of 30% by 2020 compared to 1990 with a view to collectively reducing their emissions by 60 to 80% by 2050 compared to 1990. The European Union recognises that developing countries are already taking action to tackle climate change.
At the recent G8 Summit in Germany new momentum was injected in the international climate change process with clear commitment to the UN climate change process as the appropriate forum for negotiating future global action. The Heiligendamm Summit reaffirmed that future action needs to be based on the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities. To contribute to a global agreement under the UNFCCC by 2009, the G8 have underlined the need that major economies agree on a detailed contribution for a new global framework by the end of 2008.
The UN Climate Change Conference in Bali later this year is an opportunity for advancing current negotiations with a view to agreeing a new multilateral regime by 2009.
We need to strike the right balance between addressing the different interests and concerns of all Parties – bringing us all closer in this shared endeavour. But we need to do this in a way that reflects the urgency and nature of the climate change challenge.
Development assistance can contribute to tackling the impact of climate change for vulnerable population groups. In this respect, it is essential to identify the primarily affected regions and populations and respond to their most pressing needs by targeting development assistance towards the promotion of sustainable development and capacity building in the vulnerable regions. Raising awareness, both in donor and developing countries, on the impact of climate change, especially as far as vulnerable population groups are concerned, is equally important.
As the World’s largest donor of development assistance, the European Union is strongly committed to supporting developing countries in the fight against poverty, the fulfillment of the UN Millennium Development Goals and the promotion of sustainable development. Combating climate change forms an integral part of this agenda.
The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and its Kyoto Protocol (KP) and institutions linked to them such as the Global Environment Facility (GEF) – and established funds such as the Special Climate Change Fund (SCCF) and Least Developed Countries Fund (LDCF) – are naturally among the main channels through which the European Union provides general support and financial assistance on climate change to developing countries. The European Union also provides significant support through other multilateral and bilateral channels.
The European Union was instrumental in the 2001 Bonn political declaration on Climate Change funding for Developing Countries, and since 2005 European Union Member States are providing the $ 369 million promised annually. The European Union is a major backer of the KP’s Clean Development Mechanism (CDM). The European Union also fully supports the operationalisation of an Adaptation Fund to be financed mainly from a share of CDM revenues.
In 2004 the European Union further underlined its commitment to help developing countries tackle climate change by adopting an Action Plan on Climate Change in the Context of Development Cooperation for the period up to 2008. This Action Plan reaffirms the commitment made in 2001 to deliver $369 million annually (from 2005) for climate change funding for developing countries.
The European Union remains committed to support developing countries in tackling the challenges of climate change, both in adapting to climate change as well as in making the transition to a more resource efficient and low-carbon intensive economic development through ODA, contributions to the established funds, international financing frameworks, and the further development of carbon market based financing mechanisms.
This spring, the European Union provided leadership for our global efforts to deal with climate change. Our Heads of State and Government emphasized that climate change is a major challenge our societies face in this century. Recognizing the urgency of tackling this challenge the European Union stands ready to take more ambitious next steps that to put us on a path towards a sustainable use of energy and natural resources. These next steps will require unprecedented international co-operation in a path that must truly be walked together by the international community.
Again, Madam President, the European Union very much welcomes this thematic debate and the priority the UN has put to fighting climate change.
Thank you very much.
* Croatia and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia continue to be part of the Stabilisation and Association Process. | <urn:uuid:8b05da29-d166-4bdd-9ecf-898268d69c6d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.missionofportugal.org/pmop/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=120:61st&catid=37:Statements&Itemid=123 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00069-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.935852 | 2,172 | 2.421875 | 2 |
10 November 2005
All of us recognize that the ILC will be too expensive to be undertaken by one country or even probably, by one region. For that reason, ground-breaking steps have been taken to internationalize the effort from the very beginning. This means the parameters of the machine, the concepts, the technologies, as well as the organization are being determined through an international framework set-up and guided by the International Committee for Future Accelerators (ICFA). In my last column, I described ICFA and its connection to the International Union of Physics and Applied Physics (IUPAP), which is the primary international organization of physicists.
The ideas and early R&D toward a TeV scale linear collider were developed regionally at DESY, KEK and SLAC. As the concept developed, steps to bring these efforts together and to make it a truly global were undertaking. ICFA, through a subcommittee, obtained a worldwide consensus on the parameters or requirements for the machine and they setup another subcommittee, the International Linear Collider Steering Committee (ILCSC) to coordinate the international program. ILCSC appointed a committee to make the decision between the two competing technologies and more recently, formed the GDE.
Representatives from the FALC meeting that was held on Friday, 4 November at Fermilab.
Even though FALC is just an informal group, the fact is that we have an established mechanism for carrying out a dialogue with the funding agencies and between the funding agencies regarding the ILC. They are engaged in the process of creating a technical design that will be the basis of a funding proposal and this is a crucially important development. At the FALC meeting held at Fermilab this past week, I reported in detail on the progress and plans for the GDE and Shin-ichi Kurokawa participated and reported on ILCSC activities. Issues being discussed by FALC included how to create a 'common fund' for the GDE and when and how a more centrally funded management will be needed for the GDE. | <urn:uuid:5e12dd34-262c-41df-b57f-4624e71d4e6b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.linearcollider.org/ILC/GDE/Director%27s-Corner/2005/10-November-2005---Funding-Agencies-for-the-Linear-Collider | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706890813/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516122130-00067-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959169 | 421 | 1.96875 | 2 |
The Tokyo Summer Festival is a renowned name in world music festivals with a history stretching back to 1985. Imaginative programming, high quality acts, and marketing flair have made this festival a summer institution in the Japanese capital.
A look at themes from past years reveals a history of academically-inspired eclecticism, leaning, if anything, towards nationality. The very first Festival in 1985 was ‘”Music, Exoticism and Orientalism” – The Maturity and Transformation of Occidental Music’, and since then it has covered the music of Russia, the USA, Paris, German Romanticism, the Gypsies, Italy, India, as well as such approaches to music as comedy, ballet, cinema, women, literature, and, last year, the ‘cosmos’.
The organization behind the Festival is the Arion-Edo Foundation headed by Ms. Kyoko Edo and deriving its classical appelation from the 6th century Greek poet Arion, whose singing so enchanted the dophins within earshot that they saved his life after his being cast into the sea by barbaric sailors. The Foundation is devoted to making extraordinary music as widespread, accessible and understandable as possible, and sponsors an annual young musician’s award for that purpose.
The theme for this year's Tokyo Summer Festival, the 22nd, is 'Songs of the Earth/Music in the Streets', focusing on the music of the people as opposed to the music of the privileged. I, however, was privileged to attend one of the Festival’s concerts this afternoon, Vivaldi’s ‘Four Seasons’ “reinvented by Gilles Apap”. Vivaldi’s music made a comeback in the 20th century partly because it was precisely what this year’s Festival is all about: music that rebels against intellectualism, appealing directly to the senses.
Gilles Apap, introduced in the program as ‘the violinist of the 21st century’, is a much-feted violin 43-year old prodigy who studied under the late Yehudi Menuhin. I too the JR Chuo line to the Musashino Civic Cultural Hall in Musashino City, Tokyo, to see him play.
‘The Four Seasons’ was performed by the Zappa-esque-sounding ‘Colors of Invention’, a quartet consisting of a violin (Apap), an accordian (Myriam Lafargue), a contrabass (Philippe Noharet) and a cembalo (Ludovit Kovac). It began with a foot-tapping rhythm beat out on the body of the contrabass, was taken up by the players whistling while they worked, Apap playing his violin like a banjo, getting up and walking around to jam with the other players, and more.
The sound was pure magic, not only in its imaginative eclectism of area, age and style, but in its execution too. There is something of the joker and the demon in Apap. He is the life and soul of his ensemble, and his simply getting up and wandering over to the other players visibly imbued them with an extra dose of verve. He smiles – he almost winks. He transmits himself through his eyes and demeanor every bit as much as through his music.
And what music! Throwing the ettiquette of musicianly form out the window he embodies only the essentials of what form it takes to perform his art. In other words, no coat and tails, semicircle of black chairs, or po-faced 'maestro-ism'. Rather, humor, repartee, and comaraderie allied with a perfect piston of a bow arm and a posture built around evoking beautiful sound from his instrument.
Apap’s range is enormous. There is a ruthless element to his playing, free of vibrato, where he almost seems to sit back from his instrument and watch it. The violin is unerringly swiped and fingered, producing a tone as sharp and glistening as broken glass with the power of something electric. Then there are those passages where he leans right in, listening to the heart of his violin as does a lover or a doctor, and with that unerring right arm and that dancing left hand drawing out of it long licorice sweetness.
I was surprised how perfectly the accordian complemented the sound of the violin. Reeds and strings have more in common than I had imagined. The astonishingly agile Myriam Lafargue on the accordian engaged in a solid-hued partnership with the virtuosity of Apap’s violin. The contrabass did exactly what its name says: it counterpointed, and with an aptness that at times spilt over into the droll, drawing chuckles. The cembalo was almost a world of its own that adorned the rest of the ensemble with an extra dimension of soft, starry sound.
Thank you Vivaldi, ‘Colors of Invention’ and the Tokyo Summer Festival for expanding the world of my musical experience! There is still more. Performances go on until August 5. Go here for more details of the Tokyo Summer Festival.
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