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The Wood Badge or Woodbadge , literally badge of wood , generally indicated under the name of sticks in French, is a recognition which the persons in charge scouts having finished receive a training program given by their respective association scoute. The object is appeared as two wood sticks attached to a leather cord. The people having received the Wood Badges are called the Wood Badgers or Gilwellians , and enter the very restricted circle of the 1st Gilwell Scout Group , group which is found each year at the time of the first weekend from September to Gilwell Park for the Gilwell Reunion . In France, the badge of wood is decreed with the graduate chiefs of the camp-school.
Wood Badge basic comprises two sticks , but there are some with more: the formative assistants carry three sticks, and the trainers carry four from there. The Deputy Camp Chief of Gilwell (responsible for the formation), carried to him five sticks, but this practice was quickly abandoned. BP itself carried six sticks.
The persons in charge scouts raising the Wood Badge are recognized and high-placed in the regard of their brothers scouts throughout the world.
Origins of Wood Badge
The Wood Badge finds its origin in a traditional collar ( iziqu ) carried by the chief Zoulou Dinizulu, consisted of more than 1000 sticks of Acacia and length of almost 4 meters. Baden-Powell, when it was in station in South Africa, was charged to capture it, but it never reached that point; it been able to report only this collar, found in the abandoned village of Dinizulu.
Many years later, BP sought a mark to distinguish the participants in the first camp from formation of Gilwell, held in September 1919. It built first Wood Badge then while passing two of the sticks of the iziqu of Dinizulu on a portion of a large leather lace which had been given to him to Mafeking.
The scarf of Gilwell, him, car its origin of a will to honor the police chief scout who had given Gilwell Park to scouting: as it descended from the Scottish Clan of the McLaren, the scarf was entirely made Tartan of MacLaren. However very quickly, in front of the cost that induced, the scarves became gray-orange, with only one piece of tartan to the point. Certain continuous motions to only raise the scarf in complete tartan.
|Random links:||Brother Andre | Saïx | Loch Ard Gorges | Metamorphoses (X-Files) | Petroica macrocephala | Dutty_Boukman|
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Corporate identity is your first impression that people get while listening, watching or reading anything about you. Development of strong and positive identity is one of the most vital and equally complex jobs. Therefore, companies are investing heavily in the development and management of online presence. In the following, we are not only sharing few important elements of your online presence but also sharing some of the most useful professional suggestions.
#1: Official Websites:
In this digital era, we cannot live without a website, as majority of the customers tend to use internet for finding answer to their needs. However, every website is not as effective as it should be. For example, we are habitual of spending lavishly on making the page fancy and attractive for users, totally forgetting what a search engine requires. Only a search engine friendly website can attract traffic and bring business to you.
To make a successful an effective website, you need to consult some reliable provider of web development services, which could design a search engine friendly website. Adding Java plug in, flash or images may sound fantastic from perspective of outlook but these can increase a website’s load time and resultantly kill its traffic. A company website should provide dynamic and comprehensive information about the firm, its services, work process and customer services. If the content is outdated or the website is poorly maintained, your online reputation can be tarnished and competitors can exploit this weakness. Build a creative, good looking and search engine friendly website for a positive word of mouth about you.
#2: Corporate Logos
Commercial logos are an important part of online as well as offline identity. For example, they are on your letter-pad, order delivery boxes and other published material. Logos are vital for your unique and different identity over the web as well. They help your clients differentiate your from rest of service providers. Few companies do not pay attention to creation of logos for their presence. It is strongly advised that you design a logo for the better and web presence. Logo designing companies, professional consultants or some individual graphic designer can be hired to get a better company logo. Bear in mind, your online and offline logo should be same otherwise it will create confusion.
#3: Fan Pages:
We are living in the age of social networking and social media marketing. People are using social media for personal as well as commercial purposes.
Particularly Facebook is quite a popular site with over 92% adults in America having an account on it. Additionally, Google Plus, LinkedIn and Twitter are also few important social sites. Fanpages on social networks are an important reputation management tool, where individuals/companies share their official insight on various issues, advertise and also make business announcements. In order to gain better results from social networks, make sure to customize them properly. Your creative department or social media consultant can help you in effective customization of Fan--pages. If you do not possess any, consulting some design studio can be fruitful as it can give you properly designed backgrounds, timelines and other contents of the Fanpages.
Advertisements are a tool for attracting job seekers, bidders and contractors for various organizational purposes. Your advertisements also make your impression and therefore it is desired that you get them prepared by some experienced designer or marketing expert. Words, logo placement, and content creation are very important elements that need to be carefully crafted in line with objectives. Training of your marketing and PR manager on good lines is indeed right step.
Official blogs are being very popular mean of reaching out customers and other stakeholders in the market. Carefully crafted web contents, blog posts and their fine tune-up can establish positive word of mouth about you. Hiring some expert blogger as your company’s official representative is a practical suggestion. As a business manager, it is your responsibility to properly edit your posts before you publishing on the web. Effectively communicated messages are an effective way of creating strong positive impression on the web.
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Each year brings important updates to how women in the
United States should be screened with HPV testing. The importance of
testing for high risk HPV types in specific clinical
scenarios have been well established and recent data
have demonstrated the importance of identification of specific HPV
types. The FDA has approved a HPV 16 and 18
genotyping test, and in order to assist clinicians with
national utilization of this new test, the ASCCP has put forth a guideline with an algorithm, as well as additional educational information on how
to appropriately use this test in women 30 years of age or older.
EDUCATE THE EDUCATORS: HPV AND THE HPV VACCINES PROGRAM (Non-CME)
The ASCCP has expanded our Educate the Educators program by initiating a series of periodic updates. This has included PDFs of the articles, as well as a commentary prepared by the Educate the Educators editorial committee. The commentary not only provides a synopsis of the key findings, but also attempts to put them into context. We are also making available for download PowerPoint slides documenting what we believe to be the key message from these articles. From time to time, there will also be news items of general interest to our readership and we will cover these in a "What's New?" section of the Literature Update. The 2009-2011 Educators Editorial Committee is composed of Mark H. Einstein, MD, Michael A. Gold, MD, Kenneth L. Noller, MD, Katherine E. Sharpless, MD, Kate M. Stampler, DO, Colleeen Stockdale, MD, Jeffrey Waldman, MD, and Thomas C. Wright, MD.
What is the Educate the Educators' program? In 2005,
ASCCP realized that the implementation and rational use of the then new
prophylactic HPV vaccines would require the diffusion
of expertise in HPV biology throughout the U.S. medical
community-with the greatest challenge being in the smaller and mid-sized
communities that lack clinicians who have expertise
in this area. To help meet that need, ASCCP developed
the Educate the Educators' Program, a two armed program featuring a
series of non-CME training courses and CME home study assessment
programs designed to train ASCCP members and other
providers to become local community experts and 'second generation
trainers' for Local Education Programs (LEP). The initial non-CME
formal training and webinairs are no longer offered.
Note: The non-CME 2009-2010 Educate the
Educators' Updates were produced specifically through grants received in
2008-09 from Merck & Company, Hologic, Qiagen, mtm laboratories,
and Roche. Lectures in this Series were developed and produced
free of commercial support.
2012 CONSENSUS CONFERENCE ON THE MANAGEMENT OF ABNORMAL
CERVICAL CANCER SCREENING TESTS AND THE MANAGEMENT OF CIN/AIS
On September 14 and 15, 2012, the ASCCP worked with 23 other national organizations on a revision of the 2006 guidelines for management of abnormal screening tests and CIN/AIS. Most of the 2006 guidelines will remain unchanged, but areas of review include management of discordant HPV/Pap co-tests, definition of routine screening after initial assessment, and expansion of the adolescent management guidelines to include women up to age 25. We also are reviewing ASCCP's guidelines on managing women with unsatisfactory Paps or Paps with absent/insufficient endocervical cells or transformation zone component.
The draft recommendations to the Update to the 2006 ASCCP Consensus Conference on the Management of Cytological Abnormalities and Cervical Cancer Precursors was open for public comment during the month of August and the Work Groups finalized the draft recommendations. These recommendations were presented, discussed, and voted upon at the September 2012 conference. The Steering Committee is now preparing the updated guidelines based on the recommendations from the conference. The final guidelines will be published in the Journal of Lower Genital Tract Disease.
The 2006 Consensus Guidelines and Algorithms -- as well as the 2009 Clinical Update and Algorithm on HPV Genotyping -- are available on the Consensus Guidelines webpage.
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— The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) endorses the Assault Weapons Regulatory Act of 2013, and commends Senator Diane Feinstein (D-Calif.) for her tireless leadership on this important issue.
“Children deserve to be safe in their homes, schools and communities. For that reason, the American Academy of Pediatrics has been a long-time supporter of gun-safety policies, and fully supports the Assault Weapons Regulatory Act of 2013,” said AAP President Thomas K. McInerny, MD, FAAP.
Gun injuries cause twice as many deaths as cancer, five times as many as heart disease, and 15 times as many as infections. The Academy’s 2012 policy statement, “Preventing Firearm-Related Injuries in the Pediatric Population,” indicates that the presence of guns increases children’s and adolescents’ risk of injury and death. The policy recommends specific measures to reduce the destructive effects of guns in the lives of children and adolescents, including a strong, effective assault weapons ban, mandatory background checks and a ban on high-capacity magazines. In addition, the AAP supports common sense practices, such as child safety awareness and the use of safety devices, for the millions of Americans who own firearms.
“Firearm-related deaths are one of the top three causes of death in American youth. Reducing this threat to children requires a complex and persistent national response,” Dr. McInerny said. “Senator Feinstein’s bill takes an important, vital step toward making children safer. Pediatricians call on Congress to pass this critical piece of legislation.”
The American Academy of Pediatrics is an organization of 60,000 primary care pediatricians, pediatric medical subspecialists and pediatric surgical specialists dedicated to the health, safety and well-being of infants, children, adolescents and young adults. (www.aap.org)
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Fighting illicit drugs in Myanmar by giving law enforcement better equipment
Yangon (Myanmar), 16 November 2012 - Frontline officers combating the illicit drugs threat in Myanmar are now being equipped to quickly identify illicit drugs and their precursor chemicals - and trained in how to properly use field drug-testing kits - thanks to UNODC.
The production and trafficking of methamphetamine and heroin continue to be a major human security threat in Myanmar. Overwhelmingly manufactured in remote regions of Shan State, illicit drugs from Myanmar continue to be seized in China and Thailand and, to a lesser extent, Lao PDR. Meanwhile, the precursor chemicals necessary to make the illicit drugs are trafficked into Myanmar from neighbouring countries such as China, India, Lao PDR and Thailand.
Officers in the field, however, have thus far not had the resources to be able to swiftly and systematically identify seized substances. This has hampered their ability to detect and interdict the flows of drugs and precursors into and out from Myanmar.
Recognizing this need, the UNODC Global Synthetic Monitoring: Analyses, Reporting and Trends (SMART) Programme donated 30 field drug testing kits to the Myanmar Central Committee for Drug Abuse Control (CCDAC). UNODC also provided a one-and-a-half days training on how to use these kits to 25 forensic officials and frontline officers from the Anti-Narcotics Task Forces, National Police Academy and Chemical Examiners' Office. The training was conducted in Yangon at the Myanmar Drug Elimination Museum on 13-14 November 2012.
During the donation ceremony, a UNODC official emphasized the importance of being able to identify all suspected substances in the field.
"Traffickers continue to change their manufacturing and trafficking methods," said Mr. Tun Nay Soe, Programme Coordinator for Global SMART East Asia. "These user-friendly test kits will help frontline officers to identify substances within just a few minutes."
The test kits were received on behalf of the CCDAC by Police Lt. Col. Zaw Lin Tun, Deputy Director of its International Relations Department. "These test kits and training will undoubtedly boost the skills and knowledge of our frontline officers, " he said.
Ms. Yen Ling Wong, Scientific Affairs Officers from UNODC Laboratory and Scientific Section (LSS), led the training sessions.
Police Lieutenant Myint Lwin from Tachileik Anti-Narcotics Task Forces said, "This hands-on training with the testing of real drugs gives us good exposure."
Police Lieutenant Thein Lwin from the Myawaddy Border Liaison Office (BLO) said "These test kits are simple to use. I am sure it will help our work in identifying the suspected substances."
It is expected that the training will enhance the knowledge and skills of frontline officers in identifying illicit drugs, and ultimately in making more successful interdictions in the field.
UNODC drug testing kits provide law enforcement personnel with the means to conduct on-site testing for illicit drugs, including narcotics such as opium and heroin as well as psychotropic substances like amphetamines. UNODC also produces precursor testing kits that help identify precursor chemicals used to manufacture drugs, such as acetic anhydride, which is used to make heroin.
The Global SMART Programme has been implementing activities in Myanmar since 2009. To date, the Programme has held two national workshops to identify priority needs in countering ATS problems, particularly methamphetamine. Global SMART is currently conducting an ATS user survey in collaboration with CCDAC, Ministry of Health, NGOs, Myanmar Anti-Narcotics Association and UNODC Country office in Myanmar.
UNODC launched the Global SMART Programme in September 2008 to enhance the capacity of member states and authorities in East and Southeast Asia to generate, manage, analyse and report synthetic drug information, and to apply this evidence-based knowledge to policy and programme design.
The UNODC Global SMART Programme receives financial support from the Governments of Australia, Canada, Japan, New Zealand, the Republic of Korea, Thailand and, most recently, the United States.
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Carbon capture has a lot to offer provided it is retro-fitted first to existing coal-fired power stations (Report, 10 May). Last week Help Rescue the Planet organised an international conference on climate change at the Royal Institute of British Architects next to the BBC on Portland Place. Among the 50 or so presentations was a revolutionary method of carbon capture from a company in Finland that requires no storage as the products are all usable. The raw ingredients for their process are feldspar (abundant in the earth’s mantle), water (even seawater) and CO2. The reaction produces useful heat, plus rare valuable minerals, aluminium, quartz sand and water with dissolved bicarbonate. The latter can be used for irrigation (bicarbonate also has a fertilising effect), processed to produce solid calcium carbonate (for use in construction), or filtered to produce drinkable water, so the process can also work as a desalination plant. Pity that none of the 50 or so journalists that were invited bothered to turn up.
Dr Robin Russell-Jones
Conference organiser, HRTP
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I agree with the FSA!
The FSA is worried another mis-selling scandal may be brewing.
The FSA has said this week that it’s becoming concerned about an increasingly popular type of investment vehicle – the structured product. It’s worried that there’s potential for mis-selling. I agree.
So what are structured products?
At first glance, structured products look great. In theory, they enable you to get a decent return on your savings if the stock market performs well whilst not exposing you to too much risk.
The Legal & General Growth Plan 3 is a typical example. You lock your money away for five years and if the FTSE 100 index rises or stays level over that period, you get your initial investment plus 55% back.
After five years, if the FTSE 100 has fallen by any amount up to 50%, you get your initial investment back with nothing more.
And if the stock market falls by more than 50%, you’ll get your initial investment back minus the fall in the stock market. So if the FTSE 100 falls by 60%, you’ll get 40% of your initial investment back.
There are four main problems with this product:
- You lose flexibility. Your money is locked away for five years
- If we have a really massive stock market crash, you won’t be protected. Such a big crash is very unlikely but you can’t completely rule it out
- If the stock market does really well, you’ll only get a 55% return or an annual return of roughly 9%. That’s not to be sniffed at, but it doesn’t match the long-term historic return from shares which is closer to 11% a year. So there’s a decent chance you might do better if you invested directly in the stock market via an index tracker fund
- This product is hard to understand. As a general rule of thumb, complex products are best avoided
The reputation of structured products was also tarnished in the aftermath of the financial crisis. Investors in several products that were linked to Lehman Brothers had a very scary year as they feared they might lose all their investment.
Thankfully, the FSA rose to the occasion and the investors got full compensation, but, in my view, the episode just highlighted the risk that comes with these products.
And it’s now clear that the FSA also has some concerns about these products. Between November 2010 and May 2011 the regulator reviewed seven major providers of structured products that amount to about half of the market.
As a result of that review, the FSA has highlighted some problems and says it’s worried that the increasing complexity of these products may be storing up problems for the future. It’s also worried that the growing popularity of structured products may put a strain on firms’ systems and controls.
The regulator says that the industry should improve in several areas, I’ll highlight two. Firms should:
- identify the target audience and then design products that meet the target audience’s needs rather than merely contributing towards the firm’s bottom line
- stress-test new products to ensure they are capable of delivering fair outcomes for the target audience
That’s pretty trenchant criticism from a regulator. To be clear, I’m not suggesting that all providers of structured products are solely focused on their bottom line, but I suspect that many of them are. And anyway, even if the provider isn’t solely focused on profit, these products are still best avoided.
I also fear that some financial advisers may push these products to clients for whom the product really isn’t appropriate. The FSA plans to investigate how these plans are being sold next year. Let’s hope they don’t find too much dodginess.
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Real Estate Banking Jobs
There are many reasons a bank will create and staff a real estate department. Larger banks that hire managers and executives from out of the area may have real estate professionals on staff to assist with management and executive relocations.
Another primary function of real estate departments in banks is managing the bank's real estate holdings in terms of its branches and other locations. Real estate managers at banks must manage the facilities and their maintenance. Employees in the real estate department will hire construction crews or other contractors to make improvements or repairs to bank facilities. They also oversee these crews, making sure they perform quality work according to schedule and budget.
At some banks, real estate employees may also need to work with city officials to apply for and obtain needed certificates and permits, and keep all building permits up to date at each bank location. When needed, real estate employees may also schedule and supervise large construction or capital improvement projects.
If a location closes, it is up to the real estate department to close down the building, handling the removal of equipment and furniture and securing the lot. It may also be up to the real estate department to sell the property if the decision is made to do so.
As you will read in the upcoming section on trust department jobs, some trust departments offer real estate management services to trust clients. If a trust client owns properties as part of its holdings, the bank may offer to manage them by taking care of all the details from obtaining tenants, to hiring maintenance crews, and handling annual property tax and insurance payments. A more detailed description of what trust department real estate managers do appears in the following section.
Employees of a bank's real estate department bring unique knowledge, skills, and expertise to the bank. Department workers must represent the bank and its interests in all real estate deals they handle. They must have extensive knowledge of real estate and real estate transactions. They must also have knowledge of federal laws and regulations related to real estate transactions. Working in the real estate department of a bank is a unique position, combining two industries.
Real estate professionals who wish to trade in the uncertainty of volatile real estate markets and long work days for a guaranteed yearly salary and regular business hours may wish to pursue this banking career option.
There is a position at every level, from entry-level to executives. Real estate employees may be required to make site visits to homes. Some travel may also be required. If real estate banking sounds interesting to you, you have a real estate background, and enjoy working with real estate and others in the industry, this may be an option for you to pursue.
Here is some basic information about the most common jobs in a bank's real estate department.
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If you have read The Exceptional Memory Lie People Like To Believe, then you know that having an incredible memory is not necessary in order to really succeed in reading music.
Some folks have better memories than others. It’s not because they were born that way, it is something they have developed over time.
A good memory is not something we are born with naturally. We have to develop it through persistent practice over time.
There are many ways we can go about doing this, but music just happens to be a great way to extend your memory capacities in the brain.
Your Short-Term Memory
On average, everyone can hold only about seven items in our short-term memory. This is the part of your memory that holds information only briefly, and if distracted, is subject to forgetting what we were trying to remember very easily.
Have you ever started searching for your keys, then someone asks you a question, you answer it, and finally you’re left wondering what you were looking for in the first place? Yep, this has happened to me too.
Our short-term memories are pretty fragile, so we have to find a way to get that information to our long-term memories as quickly as possible.
Professional Musicians are Special…Okay, Not Really
What allows top performers to remember things more effortlessly is not the size of their memory bank (their short-term memory can only hold seven items also), but on what they do with those items to move them quickly into their long-term memory.
In other words, they have learned the art of “chunking.” This explains why they seem to remember things a lot easier than most people.
Just Chunk It
Information is organized into groups in order to bring meaning and send it to the long-term memory bank of knowledge.
An example of how we do this every day is with phone numbers. We could read a phone number like this and try to remember it: 7645378231
Or, we could group the numbers together and be able to remember it a lot easier: 764-537-8231
How the Professionals Chunk It
The difference between professional and mediocre musicians is that they are able to create larger “chunks” of specific information for faster recall.
In other words, they can see the big picture (a complete measure, line, or the full page of music at once), rather than individual notes.
Instead of looking at 16 different notes, they may see just 2-4 groups of notes. These note “chunks” represent units of knowledge that have meaning to the musician.
Wouldn’t those groups be a lot easier to remember creating a faster reaction time during reading?
Top performing musicians also have a deep understanding of music which gives them a structure for remembering and retrieving this information when needed while reading.
A retrieval structure is a way of connecting the notes and symbols on the page to concepts you are already know and understand.
Create Some Short-Cuts
Focused practice will ultimately help you develop a special skill for getting information into your long-term memory and allowing for quick use when you are reading music.
I like to call this taking music reading short-cuts.
Ultimately, they are not really short-cuts since a lot of knowledge is needed in the first place. However, once knowledge is acquired and remembered, recalling it can help you see things differently.
This provides many different ways of reading and playing that are much faster. Think of this as speed-reading for musicians.
How To Build Your Own Incredible Memory
1. Learn music theory. Understanding what the music means on the page will help you build your knowledge base for quick retrieval when reading music.
2. Work on your problem areas. Decide what is holding you back from reading music well.
- If it is note-reading, get yourself some flashcards.
- For rhythm, work through examples writing the counting in underneath.
3. Practice seeing more than one note at a time when reading. Open up your vision to see 2-3 notes, a full measure, a line, and eventually the whole page. Know what the outline and scope of the music is before playing.
4. Look for chunks. Find groups of notes that have meaning to you. An eighth note – quarter note – eighth note = syncopation. This is one great example of chunking.
Are there measures that repeat exactly several times in your music? Take advantage of that knowledge and only practice them once.
Once you start seeing things different through groups or “chunks,” you will be able to remember more. With enough practice, everything in your short-term memory will move to your long-term memory.
When you are finally able to store enough musical knowledge in your long-term memory, you will notice how quickly you are able to recall the information when needed and be able to play music much faster and easier.
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NY Times: Dental Pain Presents ER Doctors with Difficult Choices
Posted on April 30, 2012
Today, the New York Times reported that emergency room physicians are concerned about prescribing for patients who request opioids for dental pain. Without the training or equipment to diagnosis dental pain or provide alternate treatments such as dental blocks, physicians are often under pressure to provide relief. To read the full report, visit http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/01/health/emergency-room-doctors-dental-patients-and-drugs.html.
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A house where any manufacture is carried on; a workshop.
A house in which idle and vicious persons are confined to labor.
A house where the town poor are maintained at public expense, and provided with labor; a poorhouse.
a poorhouse where able-bodied poor are compelled to labor
An establishment offering relief for the destitute poor in an area, funded from the local poor rate, which — under the supervision of a Master and/or Matron — provided some combination of communal accommodation and a requirement for inmates, particularly the able-bodied, to perform work which was often deterrent in nature, e.g. stone-breaking or oakum-picking. Workhouses usually also had a prescribed dietary. (See also Poorhouse, Almshouse.)
Building where the poor who were unable to support themselves were housed and made to work if able. The 1723 Workhouse Act stopped relief being given to the able-bodied who refused to enter the workhouse.
In British history, a workhouse was a place where people who were unable to support themselves could go to live and work. The earliest recorded example of a workhouse dates to 1652 in Exeter although there is some written evidence that workhouses existed before this date. Records mention a workhouse in 1631 in Abingdonhttp://users.ox.ac.uk/~peter/workhouse/intro/intro.shtml.
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Let's say I have a site that sells Cialis, and I have to use spam to promote it. Wouldn't be nice to use a trusted site like google.com to make a redirect to my site? For a very long time, if you used a URL like http://www.google.com/url?q=http://www.mysiteaboutcialis.com , Google sent you to mysiteaboutcialis.com without a notice. Many people were tempted to think that this must have been a Google site (it starts with google.com).
Google's redirection URL was also used for phishing to fool people or phishing filters. But it also had a valid reason for being there: tracking user clicks. If you go to a search results pages and copy the address of a result, you'll notice a long URL that starts with http://www.google.com/url?q=. Google uses that information to improve search results and to aggregate information about users.
Well, Google thought about that and decided to show a warning (similar to the malware warnings for pages that install malicious software) if you use the redirect directly. The redirects from search results pages use some complicated hashes, so it's difficult to bypass the warning, unless you know to build those hashes. The redirect notice says:
"The previous page is sending you to [new address].
If you do not want to visit that page, you can return to the previous page."
This is a clear sign that Google decided to do more to protect its users.
New rumors surface on Nexus Experience HTC One
7 minutes ago
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Summer is here and for many people it is time for a much needed vacation. Whether you are taking a 'staycation' or a 'gocation', as someone recently called it on Twitter, we all need some time to recharge, connect with family and let stress melt away.
Vacations are supposed to be enjoyable. We save and eagerly wait all year for our vacation and the last thing that we want to do is stress about the money spent while on our trip.
A little pre-vacation planning will help you save money while on your trip, so that you can have the relaxed vacation that you hoped for.
1. Make a list of expenditures.
Of course, your planning starts with where you are going. How long is your travel time to your destination and how are you getting there? Are you staying in a hotel, a rental or with family? Does your rental have a kitchen? Will you have laundry facilities? How much can you pack in your vehicle? Are there reliable grocery stores at your destination? Brainstorm all of the expenditures that you will have and make a list.
2. Create A Budget For Your Trip.
Everyone’s vacation destination and expectations will be different. Maybe you don’t want to cook at all during your vacation or maybe eating out for every meal is beyond what your budget can handle. What activities will be available where you are going? How much gas do you think you will need to get to your destination?
3. Use Cash
I like to use cash while on vacation, because I am less tempted to buy useless souvenirs and over spend with a credit card, but it takes a little planning to come up with the cash that we need. Some of our ideas:
- We have a yard sale every spring and use that cash for our vacation.
- We also keep a change jar in the kitchen that accumulates quickly through out the year.
- My parents don't spend any $1 bills that pass through their hands through out the year. They save them up for their vacation.
4. Create a Meal Plan.
Every summer, we travel with my parents to the beach. Our rental has a kitchen, so my mom and I sit down before the trip and talk about a meal plan.
We calculate the number of meals we are going to have and decide how many will be at home and how often we will dine out. We include breakfasts, lunches, dinners and snacks in our planning. My mom and I are each responsible for 2 dinners. We usually plan for one night to be ‘clean out the fridge’ night and we allow for 3 dinners out. Most of our breakfasts and lunches are eaten in and we keep it simple with cereal and eggs for breakfast and sandwiches for lunch.
I plan our menu weeks before we leave, so I'm able to take advantage of store sales and I do much of the food shopping ahead of time. Our rental has a grill so I usually grill chicken and turkey burgers for my two nights. My mom usually brings a meatloaf and soup/salad for her two nights. We both freeze our dinners at home and they hold up well in the coolers on our trip.
If you are traveling with other families, splitting the menu planning will save you money and also give you a night off when it is someone else's turn in the kitchen. Yeah, for nights off!
Be sure to discuss each family’s food challenges.
5.What Are Your Non-Food Needs?
Being prepared ahead of time will save you money and time. Many of these items will be cheaper if bought at home than on your vacation.
- Will you need to supply your own: toilet paper, bath towels, bed linens.
- Will there be laundry facilities? Detergent is much cheaper when bought at home on sale.
- Drinking water. At our vacation spot, it is recommended to not drink the water out of the faucet, so we take a lot of water. It is the one time of year that I buy individual water bottles, but we also bring gallons jugs. (Thank goodness our rental had recycling containers)
- What will you need in the kitchen? dishwasher detergent, dish soap, paper towels, napkins
- Will you need sunscreen, bug spray?
- Don't forget batteries for the cameras.
6. Plan for your travel.
To save money and to avoid fast food, we pack our lunch, snacks and drinks for our trip. We have a 7 hour drive to our usual summer destination, so I pack a lot of snacks and drinks and I try to keep them healthy.
Also plan for gas, tolls and parking.
7. Tourism Centers
Once you are at your destination and are settled in, find the local tourism center to scout out any coupon books. Many local businesses have these books as well. The books usually include coupons for local restaurants, stores and activities.
8. Choose Your Indulgences Wisely.
It is your vacation, so I believe a little indulgence is needed. I am a foodie and our family's chief cook. My preferred indulgence is food, so when I am on vacation, I want to eat some really good food, but have someone else prepare it for me. I don’t mind cooking and eating in a few nights so that we have some extra cash for a really good, quality meal.
My family loves crab legs and a few years ago, we discovered that it was a lot cheaper to buy the crab legs in bulk at a little road side seafood shack than a restaurant. They were cooked to perfection and we ate them on the deck of our rental. Ask the locals for their favorite restaurants. You might find little known gems that offer great food and great prices.
One year we were finding that nightly trips to get ice cream cones were eating up a lot of our cash. We bought some ice cream and cones at a grocery store near our rental and my kids were just as happy. They just wanted ice cream, they didn't care where it came from and we ended up saving some money.
How do you save money while on your vacation? What do you like to indulge in? Let us know in the comments.
Thanks for reading. If you would like to receive FREE updates of FBS, there are four ways to do so:
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DETROIT, Mich. (My TV20 News at 10) - Japanese visitors and people here on business are worried over their friends and relatives at home in wake of the biggest earthquake there in 110 years.
The 8.9 quake shook eastern Japan early afternoon Japanese time. It was centered 230 miles off the coast, and unleashed a tsunami tidal wave that swept over towns two miles inland.
A nuclear power plant is shut down, but an emergency exists with one of the reactors not cooling down properly. An oil refinery is on fire.
Hundreds of people have been killed, and the death toll is expected to rise dramatically. Communications have been disrupted.
Watch the amazing video.
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|Scientology Video Channel||
CHURCH OF SCIENTOLOGY OF MOSCOW – A BEACON FOR RELIGIOUS FREEDOM AND HUMAN RIGHTS
February 26, 2011
Thousands gathered in Moscow to open the first major Church to open in the Russian Federation. The building stands in the city’s central Garden Ring, just a mile from Red Square.
Commemorating this new Scientology Church, Mr. David Miscavige, Chairman of the Board Religious Technology Center and ecclesiastical leader of the religion, declared: “It has been said that Russia cannot be understood with the intellect, that it cannot be measured by any common standard and that it can only be believed in. Well, let Russia now believe this: The Church that now stands in Moscow possesses a technology that is all but synonymous with the human spirit. It is a technology to bring forth the goodness in people and the greatness they are destined to achieve. It is a technology that is both kind and strong. It is a technology for freedom and wisdom.”
The new Moscow Church not only meets the needs of its growing congregation of Scientologists, but also serves as the center for all faiths to unite in the name of religious freedom.
The Church of Scientology of Moscow already stands at the forefront of Russia’s greater human rights movement. It works in coordination with the internationally renowned Moscow Helsinki Group, founded by Ms. Lyudmila Alexeyeva. Ms. Alexeyeva is one of the original Soviet era dissidents to decry communist oppression. She is also the recipient of the European Parliament’s prestigious Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought. On the occasion of the Moscow Church opening, Ms. Alexeyeva stated: “For me, as a human rights advocate, all religions are equal in their rights. Your Church is particularly devoted to defending the freedom of belief not only for its own parishioners but for all religious people of any denomination.”
Scientology’s Drug Free World initiative is but one of the Church programs now adopted by citizens of the Russian Federation. Among its foremost advocates is Dr. Victor Ivanovich Cherepkov, two-term State Duma Deputy, who said: “The drug industry has taken its toll on Russians for years. Until recently we had no solution that could prevent the problem. Your drug education is well recognized in Russia. We are already using your literature and your methods in the fight against drugs. In fact, these are widely disseminated throughout Russia. And it’s spreading for one reason only: it simply is working everywhere and anywhere.”
With the new Church of Scientology of Moscow, so begins the next historic chapter for Scientology. It is a chapter that not only signifies a renaissance for the religion itself, but a new era for religious and human rights in Russia.
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State Department Begins Switch to RFID Passports
Only 1 percent of the public responding earlier this year to the governments proposed rule to equip U.S. passports with required RFID chips supported the idea, but the Department of State finalized the rule this week nonetheless.
"In order to protect the security of U.S. borders, it is essential that the Department implement the electronic passport program as soon as possible," the agency wrote in the final rules published Tuesday in the Federal Register. "In addition, a prompt launch of the program will increase our credibility and good will with other countries, which are implementing similar biometric passport programs."
In December, the State Department plans to begin implementing the electronic passport program with a pilot test of government employees who use official passports for work. Early next year, it will begin issuing the electronic ID to citizens generally, and by October 2006, all U.S. passports, except emergency documents issued by U.S. embassies, will be outfitted with RFID.
The electronic passport will follow standards set by the International Civil Aviation Organization, which prescribes the use of chips and Public Key Infrastructure to protect the data, the department said. The chip will contain the name, nationality, sex, date of birth, place of birth, and digitized photograph of the holder, as well as the passport number, issue date, expiration date, and type.
Only electronic readers within inches of the chip will be able to read the data, according to the published rules. An anti-skimming material will be included in the cover and spine to diminish the threat of skimming the data from a distance farther than 10 centimeters.
To leave open the possibility of adding other biometric data, such as fingerprints or iris scans, in the future, passports will contain a 64KB chip with plenty of storage capacity. However, the department issued an assurance that before requiring any such additional data, it will give the public an opportunity to comment.
Check out eWEEK.coms for the latest news, views and analysis of technologys impact on government and politics.
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Written November 6, 2010
In view of the forthcoming European tsunami, I have attempted to estimate the tsunami's impact on the southern part of Sweden to the east of Copenhagen in Denmark whose area is about 10000 km2 and is surrounded by water on three sides. Do not believe that this whole area, which is home to approximately 1 million people, will be directly affected, but certainly more than the western part. Is it reasonable to assume that the wave when it reaches the country is 10-15 meters high? How far inland will the wave reach? Will the wave welling up across the board or only in the ravines and the like?
The approximate 100 foot high tsunami wave that will rush against and over and around Denmark will find little to stop it in Denmark. What will stop this wave as it
rushes against Sweden will be the coastline of western Sweden. That portion of the tsunami that finds its way into the Baltic Sea will dissipate. Sweden's lowlands
rapidly climb into highlands, so the tsunami will funnel up ravines, reaching as high and as far inland as Lake Vanern.
All rights reserved: ZetaTalk@ZetaTalk.com
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It’s tree-planting season and the Friends of Trees Crew Leader Training begins, here in this warm church basement that is abuzz with caffeinated chatter. I’m surrounded by people in rubber boots and every variety of raincoat, all of us drinking coffee out of small church cups, eating donated baked goods. On tarps set out around the room are two displays. One has a leafy tree in a black plastic pot, its boughs bound by twine, a pair of two-by- two stakes, a shovel, rake, and a post pounder, a hard-hat. The other display holds all the same goods, except the tree is barren. It’s cold and drizzly outside. Fall is turning to winter soon. These are shiny people, all here in good cheer and with a simple purpose—to plant trees.
Friends of Trees, here in Portland, Oregon, is an urban forestry program designed to increase tree canopy cover over the city. With these shovel-in-hand efforts weekend after weekend, the city becomes more lush and leafy. In fact, Portland has the only increasing urban canopy in the nation, a statistic that is colloquially known as the “Friends of Trees effect.” As awareness of Portland’s model grows, city dwellers elsewhere are beginning to realize the importance of the interface between developed areas and natural spaces. According to the US Forest Service, “in an effort to maintain and improve the public benefits of trees, more and more cities—Atlanta, Chicago, Baltimore, Boston, New York, Los Angeles, Sacramento, Washington DC—are setting tree canopy goals.” Trees are no longer simply aesthetic adornment to homes, but are considered part of the sustainable, green infrastructure of urban development.
A couple of hours are spent sitting inside, learning the procedures to teach our volunteers. Then the volunteer planters arrive, and everyone shares a potluck lunch of warm soups, macaroni and cheese, cookies, and lemonade. Friends of Trees works build community while planting trees—by bringing neighbors together.
As the meal ends, people are divided into small work groups and tromp outside. Each crew has a set of houses in the neighborhood to visit. At each site, trees have been delivered and the holes for them have been dug. On my crew, I have someone from Environmental Services, a guy who just moved from Las Vegas and is studying horticulture, two young college students, four Hispanic teenagers from a high-school service club, and the homeowner of one of our planting sites. Three hours later, eight new trees are in the ground. Now dirt-covered and exuberant, we laugh and chat our way back to the church, wash the tools and call it a day.
Urban forestry is a blend of social and scientific necessity. With 80 per cent of the US population living in cities, use of city trees as natural resources takes on a much broader context. It includes safe-guarding against tree loss during development; treating trees as part of the infrastructure of the city; putting in place codes and policies to maximize tree preservation; expansion of private and public urban forestry programs; removal of regulatory obstacles; reduction of the heat island effect caused by development. This, for sure, is a new way of thinking. It’s a fresh approach, and aligned with the science of climate change as well as the ideas behind livable cities.
Portland’s Grey to Green Initiative works in partnership with Friends of Trees. Its concern is the use of the city’s trees in the control of storm-water run-off. The canopy of leaves of the 50-foot-tall buckeye in my yard catches rain as it falls; a mature tree can capture up to 700 gallons a year. The paperbark maple planted on Saturday, not yet as leafy and large as the buckeye, holds onto water that falls to the ground and uses it for root growth. A tree’s root system holds soil in place. In turn, some of the captured water is stored in the soil to replenish the ground water supply. As well, much of run-off water in cities contains chemicals like car oil and other debris—that gunk you see in the street drains during a downpour. When that water moves through the soil, some of the debris is filtered out. With water held in tree fiber and the soil, and with the soil stabilized and working to filter out toxins, significantly less run-off makes it into the city sewage system, to the nearby Willamette River, and out to the sea. A healthy urban forest, one composed of the newest to the oldest trees, slows run-off by about 35 per cent; in Portland, this amounts to 500 million gallons of storm water a year. Trees also allow the city to spend less building and maintaining sewage systems. Portland saves $58 million dollars—or 40 per cent of traditional sewage repair costs—per year because of its street trees. Deciduous, or leafy, trees aren’t doing all the work; evergreens actually help even more with storm water run-off, because they have needles year-round. By providing ecosystem services such as storm-water control, urban trees can be used as a cost-saving component of a city’s infrastructure.
Trees breathe carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gases, most of which—in the city—comes from vehicles. Other sources of the carbon that is emitted into the air by industry, fires, fuel burning, agriculture, and all kinds of human activity. As trees take up CO2 and other pollutants they filter the air—at the rate of 25 million pounds a year here. It takes about 20 trees to offset driving one car for 60 miles each day. The larger and healthier the tree, the more filtration. Think of the old neighborhoods full of maples, cherries, and tulip trees, working hard to help us breathe. And interestingly, researchers have discovered that urban trees begin to store carbon at an earlier age than do rural or wilderness trees.
The economic aspect of air filtration, mainly that of carbon storage, comes in the form of carbon trading. More and more, industries that send the pollutants into the air pay tree growers for the air-cleaning capacity of their trees. Cities are now able to compete in this market. In fact, buyers often pay more for credits that are attached to sustainable projects with local, social benefits, such as urban tree-planting programs.
A full tree canopy provides shade and lowers the overall temperature of a place. In the city, this is important socially—ever step into the shade of a tree on a hot day? Such cooling also works to against global warming. Cooling is particularly important in cities where heat islands occur. The lack of trees and other vegetation combined with pavement, buildings, and other human-made, sealed structures disallow the flow of energy and air. Think of walking on a sidewalk at sundown on a hot day, and passing by a brick or cement building. You can feel the heat wave bounce of its walls. That’s the heat island effect working. A 2006 study of Portland’s July temperatures reported a 20-degree difference between the well-treed Northwest quadrant and an area designated as an urban heat island.
Wildlife fare better in the city when trees provide food and shelter for them. Salmon swim our creeks on the way to the big rivers—Willamette and Columbia and coyotes roam through town. If you live here you are no stranger to the crows, squirrels, and raccoons. The tree canopy keeps river water clean for the fish and helps to moderate water temperature so they can flourish. Fruit and nuts feed many of the 200 species of birds call this city home. Squirrels live in the leafy high-rises. Travel corridors provide safety for larger creatures hoping to sneak from tree patch to tree patch for cover. These habitat resources lower incidents of wildlife encroaching on human habitat; in turn, the city is safer for all species—humans and those with scales, fur and feathers.
All of these ecosystems services add up to a boon for the city. Homeowners also cash in on street tree value. When you drive down a street under its lush canopy with boughs that reach across to make an arc overhead, know that the shade these trees provide lowers energy use, and increase property value by $14,500 per street tree. Storm-water Management credit and Clean River Rewards credit are available on your sewer bill for efforts made on the home front. Crime is lower where there are trees. People walk more in tree-dense areas. Overall livability increases when a city’s canopy is dense.
Forests in the United States are being converted for non-forest uses such as urban development and agriculture at the rate of 1 million acres a year, yet humans need trees to live. City trees provide opportunities. They provide another way for trees to work for us by shaping new economies and new types of forestry jobs. City trees significantly lower the costs of running a city. A tree-planting program costs about $5 per capita. What enthuses me about urban forestry and tree-planting programs is the opportunity for individual empowerment. In all the talk about climate change and environmental degradation it is easy to feel helpless. I have been studying conservation biology for the last two years, during which I’ve come to believe that trees can assuage many of the world’s problems. I volunteer for Friends of Trees and I am hooked.
Saturday morning, and it’s 7 AM. It’s early, but I can’t get my rubber boots on fast enough and get out the door—rain, sun, or freezing cold. I can’t stop global warming, but I can plant a tree.
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This online course of free lectures focuses on teachings and scriptures related to the many beautiful symbols of divinity presented in the ancient traditions of India and Southeast Asia.
"Hinduism is the religion of the Hindus, a name given to the Universal Religion which hailed supreme in India. It is the oldest of all living religions. This is not founded by any prophet. Buddhism, Christianity and Mohammedanism owe their origin to the prophets. Their dates are fixed. But no such date can be fixed for Hinduism. Hinduism is not born of the teachings of particular prophets. It is not based on a set of dogmas preached by a particular set of teachers. It is free from religious fanaticism. Hinduism is also known by the names Sanatana-Dharma and Vaidika-Dharma. Sanatana-Dharma means eternal religion. Hinduism is as old as the world itself. Hinduism is the mother of all religions. Hindu scriptures are the oldest in the world, Sanatana-Dharma is so called, not only because it is eternal, but also because it is protected by God and because it can make us eternal. Vaidika-Dharma means the religion of the Vedas. The Vedas are the foundational scriptures of Hinduism. The ancient Rishis and sages of India have expressed their intuitive spiritual experiences (Aparoksha-Anubhuti) in the Upanishads. These experiences are direct and infallible. Hinduism regards the spiritual experiences of the Rishis of yore as its authority. The priceless truths that have been discovered by the Hindu Rishis and sages through millennia constitute the glory of Hinduism. Therefore, Hinduism is a revealed religion." - Swami Sivananda
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Jiuzhaigou (九寨沟) or Jiuzhai Valley is a national park situated in the north of Sichuan province. It is bordered by Huanglong National Park. It is thought by many to be China's most beautiful spot inspiring numerous poets over the years. It has not inspired many painters, however.
Jiuzhai Valley National Park, at Last
Jiuzhaigou, December 26th 2011 During my morning walk , I had tried to look for this park, because descriptions of my hostel, Jiuzhaigou Self Tour Youth Hostel, said that the location was close ...
Posted in Beauty and the Freeze by automidori
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Shadowy cells may be betraying the body by protecting cancerous tumours from the wrath of the conventional immune system. If we could block these cells, treatments for stopping tumour growth could follow.
Cancerous tumours are always found surrounded by a mixture of immune cells that, for some unknown reason, seem to stand back and allow the tumour to grow without interfering.
"We knew the tumour's microenvironment is immunosuppressive, but we didn't know how," says Douglas Fearon at the University of Cambridge. To find out, his team investigated these surrounding cells.
They decided to single out one type of cell that is present around tumours, as well as in areas of chronic inflammation, such as the joints of people with rheumatoid arthritis. Little is known about the cell, which the researchers call the FAP-expressing cell after the fibroblast activation protein found on its surface.
Although the cell was discovered lurking around tumours 20 years ago, there has been little research into its function, and it has mainly been used as a tumour marker, Fearon says. "We're still trying to work out if it's been studied under a different name," he adds.
Taking them down
To work out the role of this cell, the group first injected mice with a lung or pancreas tumour below the skin and then selectively killed off FAP-expressing cells. To do this, they inserted a human receptor for diphtheria toxin – which doesn't normally affect mice – in FAP-expressing cells only. When the researchers then infected the mice with the toxin, the FAP-expressing cells died – and all the lung and pancreas tumours stopped growing.
"The tumours normally double in size over two days," Fearon says. But when his group dissected the tumours two days after killing the FAP-expressing cells, the tumours were either the same size or slightly smaller than when they were first injected. "We were surprised at how fast it worked," says Fearon.
What's more, around half of the tumour cells in the treated mice were dead from oxygen starvation, suggesting their blood supply had been cut off.
The FAP-expressing cells might work by blocking the action of two proteins which normally work to kill cells. "When we blocked the activity of these two proteins[in a separate experiment], we prevented tumour necrosis," says Fearon.
Akira Orimo at the Paterson Institute for Cancer Research at the University of Manchester, UK, points out that the mouse model of cancer "does not resemble the nature of human carcinomas that we often observe in the clinic".
Before the team can develop a therapy to try in humans, Fearon says they need to figure out where else the cells might reside in the body, and what they're doing.
Journal reference: Science, DOI: 10.1126/science.1195300
If you would like to reuse any content from New Scientist, either in print or online, please contact the syndication department first for permission. New Scientist does not own rights to photos, but there are a variety of licensing options available for use of articles and graphics we own the copyright to.
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Perhaps former Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs (NEA) Ned Walker said it best when he told the Washington Post, “Let’s face it, we got a lot of money out of Saudi Arabia.” Walker meant “we” as in the U.S. government, but he easily could have used it to refer to former State Department officials who benefit financially after retirement. Some do it directly—and in public view, because of stringent reporting requirements—while most, including Walker, choose a less noticeable trough.
In researching my new book, Dangerous Diplomacy, I discovered that Saudi cash has created a circle of sympathizers and both direct and indirect lobbyists—which is precisely the intended effect. Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the Saudi ambassador the United States, was quoted in the Washington Post as having said, “If the reputation then builds that the Saudis take care of friends when they leave office, you’d be surprised how much better friends you have who are just coming into office.”
Among the first former Foggy Bottom officials to work directly for the House of Saud was former assistant secretary for Congressional Affairs Frederick Dutton, starting in 1975. According to a 1995 public filing (mandated for all paid foreign agents), Dutton earns some $200,000 per year. Providing mostly legal services, Dutton also flacks for the House of Saud and even lobbies on the royal family’s behalf from time to time. One of his successors as head of Congressional Affairs, Linwood Holton, also went to work for the Saudis, starting in 1977. Rounding out the current team of retired State officials now directly employed by the Saudis is Peter Thomas Madigan, deputy assistant secretary for Legislative Affairs in the first Bush administration.
Most of the Saudi money, though, goes indirectly to former State officials, most commonly by means of think tanks. This approach pays dividends in many ways: Foggy Bottom retirees get to have their cake—without the public realizing they’re eating it—and the Saudis get to have “indirect” lobbyists, who promote the Saudi agenda under the cover of the think tank label. Three organizations in particular are the primary beneficiaries of Saudi petrodollars, and all are populated with former State officials: the Meridian International Center, the Middle East Policy Council, and the Middle East Institute.
After a long and “distinguished” career in the Foreign Service, Walter Cutler took the reins at the Meridian International Center. He had served as ambassador to Zaire and Tunisia, and twice in Saudi Arabia, and he stayed close to the Saudis after leaving State. Cutler told the Washington Post that the Saudis had been “very supportive of the center.”
The Middle East Policy Council, which also receives significant Saudi funding, counts among its ranks former ambassadors—career Foreign Service members all—Charles Freeman, Frank Carlucci, and Hermann Eilts.
The Middle East Institute, officially on the Saudi payroll, receives some $200,000 of its annual $1.5 million budget from the Saudi government, and an unknown amount from Saudi individuals—often a meaningless distinction since most of the “individuals” with money to donate are members of the royal family, which constitutes the government. MEI’s chairman is Wyche Fowler, who was ambassador to Saudi Arabia from 1996–2001, and its president is Ned Walker, who has served as both deputy chief of Mission in Riyadh and ambassador to Saudi Arabia. Also at MEI: David Mack, former ambassador to the United Arab Emirates and deputy assistant secretary for NEA; Richard Parker, former ambassador to Algeria, Lebanon, and Morocco; William Eagleton, former ambassador to Syria; Joseph C. Wilson, career FSO and former deputy chief of Mission in Baghdad; David Ransom, former ambassador to Bahrain and former deputy chief of Mission in Yemen, UAE, and Syria; and Michael Sterner, former ambassador to UAE and deputy assistant secretary of NEA.
The money, the favors, and State’s affinity for Saudi elites over the decades have all helped contribute to the “special relationship” between State and the House of Saud. Notes Hudson Institute senior fellow Laurent Murawiec, “This is a relationship that has been cemented by forty years of money, power, and political favors that goes much deeper than most people realize.”
This column is adapted from the book “Dangerous Diplomacy: How the State Department Threatens America’s Security.”
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What does it do?Provides an opportunity for people to socialise in a relaxed and informal setting. The service can provide transport, facilities to bathe with fully trained staff to help, opportunities to have a homemade lunch and tea and the chance to join in with activities that are being held on certain days.
Who it is for: Provides day care for older and vulnerable people. Families and friends who normally have responsibilities for the care of loved ones will be able to take a well earned break or just pop out for a few hours to do some shopping or visit some friends.
Where it is available:Local service covering: Isle of Wight (Isle of Wight).
What it costs:The charge for Day Care is variable depending on which of the services you require. A typical full day to include pick-up, bath, lunch and return home would cost £35.00 per day
How to access or apply for it:
Additional information:This service is available from Monday to Friday, providing there is spaces. The service is currently registered for 7-day spaces each day.
Care, Day care (registered)
Info last updated:07/06/2011.
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Waihou Forest Restoration Project at Pu’u Wa’awa’a
Name of Project: Waihou Forest Restoration Project at Pu’u Wa’awa’a
Location: Maui, Hawaii
Number of Trees Planted: 6,000
The native flora of the Hawaiian Islands consists of approximately 956 flowering plant species and 198 species of fern, the vast majority of which are endemic to Hawaii, meaning they grow nowhere else on Earth. This level of endemism is the highest in the world, surpassing even that of the renowned Galapagos Islands. Of Hawaii’s plant species, however, 273 are threatened or endangered — more than in any other state.
In 1909, during his extensive survey of the region’s vegetation, Hawaiian botanist Joseph Rock proclaimed Pu‘u Wa‘awa‘a “the richest floral section of any in the whole Territory.” Indeed, several of the area’s species occur nowhere else in the Hawaiian Islands. Decades of land abuse, however, have led to a dramatic shift in the vegetation composition of Hawaii’s Waihou Forest, in which non-native and invasive plant species now thrive.
A staggering 51-75 percent of forest cover was lost between 1954 and 1994 — a time during which domestic and feral livestock grazed the land, trees were cleared for pasture improvement and koa and other valuable trees were illegally harvested. Frequent droughts and a susceptibility to wildfires have further degraded the forest, and a thick mat of non-native grasses impedes native plant recruitment. Hawaii’s Waihou Forest, however, has great potential for recovery.
American Forests is partnering with the Hawaiian Silversword Foundation, the state government and other partners to plant 6,000 trees in the Pu‘u Wa‘awa‘a area of Waihou Forest by December 2013. The three tree types to be planted are koa, mmane and a’ali’i — all of which are native species. By helping to restore the forest’s original vegetation, this project will aid in the recovery of threatened and endangered plants, restore the habitats of native wildlife species and serve as a demonstration project for education and community groups.
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Mathematics is made of arguments (reasoned discourse that is, not crockery-throwing). This section is a reference to the most used techniques. A reader having trouble with, say, proof by contradiction, can turn here for an outline of that method.
But this section gives only a sketch. For more, these are classics: Methods of Logic by Quine, Induction and Analogy in Mathematics by Pólya, and Naive Set Theory by Halmos.
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Frito-Lay has announced it will add a fleet of 67 trucks that will run on compressed natural gas (CNP). Eventually, the a majority of the company’s fleet will run on CNP. The fleet will be deployed in July. The company says it will save more than 900,000 gallons of diesel fuel.
The good news is that it’s a win-win for us, both in terms of our sustainability strategy and reducing our costs, Michael O’Connell, senior director of fleet capability at Frito-Lay, said in an interview. The payback for the extra cost of the natural gas trucks is a year and a half, so it’s a little bit of a no-brainer. We retire approximately 125 tractors a year, and we plan to replace as many of them as we can with natural gas.
O’Connell said it could take six to seven years to convert all of the company’s tractor-trailers.
According to the New York Times, the CNP-powered trucks would save $2.50 a gallon and reduce emissions by 23%. The company currently has 18 trucks that are powered by natural gas.
In 2010, Frito-Lay pledged to add a fleet of 176 electric box trucks. Keeping good on its promise, the company says their electric box trucks are now in service and have traveled more than 1,000,000 miles.
On certain drive cycles the electrics work extremely well, Mr. O’Connell said. We’re currently finalizing the purchase of 100 additional 24-foot electric box trucks from Smith Electric. And we’re testing trucks from Electric Vehicles International.
Frito-Lay, a division of Pepsi Co., operates the 7th largest fleet of trucks in the U.S.
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WASHINGTON — In his first troop deployment to a war zone as commander in chief, President Barack Obama on Tuesday authorized sending as many as 17,500 additional troops to Afghanistan beginning this spring, a move that appears to mark the formal U.S. troop shift from Iraq to Afghanistan.
"There is no more solemn duty as president than the decision to deploy our armed forces into harm's way," Obama said in a statement. "I do it today mindful that the situation in Afghanistan and Pakistan demands urgent attention and swift action. The Taliban is resurgent in Afghanistan, and al Qaida supports the insurgency and threatens America from its safe-haven along the Pakistani border."
Defense Secretary Robert Gates ordered the deployment of 8,000 Marines from Camp Lejeune, N.C., and 4,000 Army soldiers from Fort Lewis, Wash., defense department officials said. Approximately another 5,000 support troops are expected to receive deployment orders "at a later date," a Defense Department statement said.
The first Marines could arrive in Afghanistan by May. The Army brigade is expected to arrive by mid-summer.
There are 38,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan and 146,000 in Iraq.
The magnitude of the deployments will force the military to pull troops from Iraq or give soldiers longer deployments or shorter breaks. In his statement, Obama said that he understood the deployments will place an "extraordinary strain" on the troops, but it will be possible because "we are going to responsibly drawdown our forces in Iraq."
The decision comes amid a broad review of U.S. policy in Afghanistan that isn't due for completion until just before a NATO summit in early April. Obama said the troop decision "does not pre-determine the outcome of that strategic review."
He had to make a decision before then, said a senior administration official — who spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to speak on the record — because of the looming onset of the fighting season in Afghanistan with warmer weather, and preparations for national elections there later this year.
If the president had not acted now, "the options start to slip away," the official said.
Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., a former prisoner of war and Obama's Republican opponent last year, said that sending more troops was long overdue but that "I believe the president must spell out for the American people what he believes victory in Afghanistan will look like and articulate a coherent strategy for achieving it."
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said he supported Obama's decision.
Roughly 8,000 troops will be from the II Marine Expeditionary Brigade, nearly all based out of Camp Lejeune.
Because of Afghanistan's rugged terrain, the Marines will come with their own air support. In addition, the 5th brigade of the 2nd Infantry Division, a Stryker brigade of about 4,000 soldiers out of Fort Lewis also are being deployed.
The Marines and soldiers will be deployed to southern Afghanistan, where U.S. forces are expanding to take on the poppy trade there, which the Taliban use to fund it forces and obtain its weapons. Since the Taliban fell in 2001, British and Canadian forces have been in charge of that area, but recently violence there has increased, as has poppy production.
Afghanistan produces two-thirds of the world's heroin from poppies. More than 90 percent of it comes out of Helmand province where the Marines are headed. Currently, the 3rd battalion 8th Marine brigade, also from Camp Lejeune, is in that area.
Several months ago, Army Gen. David McKiernan, the top U.S. military commander in Afghanistan, requested up to 30,000 additional troops — three combat brigades more and an aviation brigade and support troops. What many in the Pentagon had expected to be a routine deployment became a part of the administration's effort to shift the approach taken under President George W. Bush.
Some critics felt it was inappropriate for the military to deploy troops without a clear strategy. Others said that Obama wasn't giving troops, many who'd been preparing for Iraq, the time to train for a different mission.
The Defense Department defended the timing, however.
"This is the first time that this president has been asked to deploy large numbers of troops overseas, and it seems to me a thoughtful and deliberative approach to that decision is entirely appropriate," Gates said last week.
On the ground, troops said the shifting strategy often forced them to make decisions within their own communities on how to balance training the Afghan army and police, which Gates called the U.S. "exit ticket out of there," and securing the population.
Tom Andrews, a former Maine congressman who directs the organization Win Without War, said in a statement Tuesday that "the first principle for someone who finds himself in a hole is to stop digging.
"The U.S. policy 'hole' in Afghanistan is not of the new administration's making. But it is important for the president to consider if adding new U.S. combat forces in Afghanistan, without a new and comprehensive plan for U.S. policy there, might be digging an even bigger hole."
ON THE WEB
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This infographic, created by Herbert Pocket, is a step-by-step guide for building a nerd's dream: grab some PVC, spray paint, LEDs, and a few other DIY trinkets, then make a lightsaber.
There are a few tools in here not everyone is going to have access to (a soldering iron, for example), but if you've got them, it's a relatively simple 22 steps to your sword of the future. Make the handle out of PVC, put on some spray paint for flair, and add LEDs for the glow. If you're proficient with the tools, there's also enough wiggle room in the instructions to personalize, letting you toy with the handle width and, of course, the color. (If Samuel L. Jackson can get an exception made for a purple saber, so can you.)
This would've been great for Halloween. But then again, maybe we want to wait until next year and plan a Darth Mickey costume around the Lucasfilm/Disney merger.
Five amazing, clean technologies that will set us free, in this month's energy-focused issue. Also: how to build a better bomb detector, the robotic toys that are raising your children, a human catapult, the world's smallest arcade, and much more.
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| 1.867188
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Many consumers applaud the action by the government and see it as a positive step, while others don't think it goes far enough. foakleys
Harvey Anderson with Wild Earth Foods said "The cashiers always ask, 'do you want a bag, do you need a bag?' And a lot of people do end up changing their minds when they have one or two items. It's just trying to make people more aware." So next time you're at the grocery store, don't be surprised to find yourself with a choice. Some consumers are already preparing in advance by stocking up on reusable shopping bags. Plastic is not the answer. foakley sunglasses
Whether we use it to bag our groceries or to hold our coffee, plastic has long been known to clog landfills and pollute our environment. It's time for cities across the nation to work toward developing alternatives to plastic that won't damage the earth and its future. More and more cities are waking up to the fact that plastic is an option that hurts the environment more than its convenience is worth. Some have banned plastic bags and now others are banning plastic foam. We just need to make sure that viable alternatives exist, such as kelly bag and other packaging so that these new ordinances do not negatively impact businesses and the economy. You've been here before. foakley store
You are standing in the checkout line with a cart loaded with groceries, absentmindedly eyeing the magazines on display and wondering who actually believes that a half man half alligator lives in Florida, when suddenly you glance down at the reusable bags for sale at the end of the aisle. Your frustration flairs as you realize your 15-plus eco friendly bags are folded nicely and sitting in the utility room at home. Once again, protecting the environment goes on hold as you say yes to those convenient plastic bags because you and your reusable bags can never seem to be in the same place at the same time. It's time for a change. There are several things that may help you remember to include reusable bags along with your shopping list the next time you hit the grocery store. First, you can leave them in your car at all times. oakleys radar
Right after you bring home and stack your canned goods in the pantry, turn around and put your eco friendly bags back in your trunk. Then you'll always have them with you when you go out. Second, get a bunch of them.
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Online Member portfoliosSee Member Portfolios
Visit to Chatham Historic Dockyard
Date: 13th April 13
Location: Dock Road, Chatham, Kent
Contact: Martin Fletcher LRPS
Phone: 01908 582423
Group: Archaeology and Heritage
Chatham Historic Dockyard is truly a unique place, offering a variety of photographic opportunities. Ships were prepared for battle in the Spanish Armada here, the Dutch launched a celebrated attack up the river Medway to try and destroy it in the 17th century, and in the 20th century, submarines were built here. Closed by the Royal Navy in 1984, the site is a rare survival of a dockyard from the age of sail.
Naval vessels include destroyer HMS Cavalier and submarine HMS Ocelot, berthed in two huge dry docks, and both can be toured. A range of distinctive and historic buildings includes warehouses, a ropeworks (where rope is still made today), and several impressive covered slipways with impressive roofs. where ships were once constructed. Exhibits contained within include the RNLI Historic Lifeboat Collection.
There are also impressive museums and displays devoted to the dockyard's role and the age of sail.
Please meet by the car park outside the main visitor entrance at 1030.
Although there is no formal programme, we usually arrange to meet up for refreshments during the day, and there is a range of catering on site. There is sufficient of interest to occupy a full day if desired.
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| 2
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A new laboratory study from the University of South Florida suggests an unknown component of coffee interacts with caffeine to protect against Alzheimer’s disease (AD).
Using a mouse model, researchers found that this interaction boosts blood levels of a critical growth factor that seems to fight off the Alzheimer’s disease process.
The research presents the first evidence that caffeinated coffee offers protection against the memory-robbing disease not found in other caffeine-containing drinks or decaffeinated coffee.
Moreover, the findings support real-life observational research that has found daily coffee/caffeine intake during mid-life and in older age decreases the risk of Alzheimer’s disease.
The USF researchers’ earlier studies in Alzheimer’s mice indicated that caffeine was likely the ingredient in coffee that provides this protection because it decreases brain production of the abnormal protein beta-amyloid, which is thought to cause the disease.
The new study shows that caffeinated coffee induces an increase in blood levels of a growth factor called GCSF (granulocyte colony stimulating factor). GCSF is a substance greatly decreased in patients with Alzheimer’s disease and demonstrated to improve memory in Alzheimer’s mice.
“Caffeinated coffee provides a natural increase in blood GCSF levels,” said USF neuroscientist Dr. Chuanhai Cao, lead author of the study.
“The exact way that this occurs is not understood. There is a synergistic interaction between caffeine and some mystery component of coffee that provides this beneficial increase in blood GCSF levels.”
Identifying this yet unknown component could lead to enroiching coffee and other beverages with it to provide long-term protection against Alzheimer’s.
In their study, the researchers compared the effects of caffeinated and decaffeinated coffee to those of caffeine alone. In both Alzheimer’s mice and normal mice, treatment with caffeinated coffee greatly increased blood levels of GCSF; neither caffeine alone or decaffeinated coffee provided this effect.
The boost in GCSF levels is important, because the researchers also reported that long-term treatment with coffee (but not decaffeinated coffee) enhances memory in Alzheimer’s mice. Higher blood GCSF levels due to coffee intake were associated with better memory.
Although the present study was performed in Alzheimer’s mice, the researchers indicated that they’ve gathered clinical evidence of caffeine/coffee’s ability to protect humans against Alzheimer’s and will soon publish those findings.
Coffee is safe for most Americans to consume in the moderate amounts (4 to 5 cups a day) that appear necessary to protect against Alzheimer’s disease.
“No synthetic drugs have yet been developed to treat the underlying Alzheimer’s disease process” said Dr. Gary Arendash, the study’s other lead author.
“We see no reason why an inherently natural product such as coffee cannot be more beneficial and safer than medications, especially to protect against a disease that takes decades to become apparent after it starts in the brain.”
Researchers suggests moderate daily coffee intake starting at least by middle age (30s – 50s) is optimal for providing protection against Alzheimer’s disease, although starting even in older age appears protective from their studies.
“We are not saying that daily moderate coffee consumption will completely protect people from getting Alzheimer’s disease,” Cao said. “However, we do believe that moderate coffee consumption can appreciably reduce your risk of this dreaded disease or delay its onset.”
Coffee also contains many ingredients other than caffeine that potentially offer cognitive benefits against Alzheimer’s disease. “The average American gets most of their daily antioxidants intake through coffee,” Cao said. “Coffee is high in anti-inflammatory compounds that also may provide protective benefits against Alzheimer’s disease.”
“Now is the time to aggressively pursue the protective benefits of coffee against Alzheimer’s disease,” Arendash said. “Hopefully, the coffee industry will soon become an active partner with Alzheimer’s researchers to find the protective ingredient in coffee and concentrate it in dietary sources.”
“Because Alzheimer’s starts in the brain several decades before it is diagnosed, any protective therapy would obviously need to be taken for decades,” Cao said. “We believe moderate daily consumption of caffeinated coffee is the best current option for long-term protection against Alzheimer’s memory loss. Coffee is inexpensive, readily available, easily gets into the brain, appears to directly attack the disease process, and has few side effects for most of us.”
While the researchers believe coffee consumption is important for Alzheimer’s protection, two other lifestyle choices — physical and cognitive activity – also appear to reduce the risk of dementia.
“Combining regular physical and mental exercise with moderate coffee consumption would seem to be an excellent multi-faceted approach to reducing risk or delaying Alzheimer’s,” Arendash said.
“With pharmaceutical companies spending millions of dollars trying to develop drugs against Alzheimer’s disease, there may very well be an effective preventive right under our noses every morning – caffeinated coffee.”
The findings appear in the early online version of the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease.
Source: University of South Florida
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Perfect Scrapbook Layouts
Tricks to designing an eye-catching layout.
Before you dive into scrapbooking, it’s important to outline the purpose of your book and stick to an overall theme or feel. Deciding this will help you buy materials, organize photos, and ultimately create awesome layouts.
- Plan first- Before you start your scrapbook, ask yourself: Who am I making this album for? What do I want to record or document? What time-period does this cover? How many pictures do I want to scrapbook? These answers will help you determine the type of project and the type of album you need to achieve your goal.
- Determine your page elements- Each page should generally have: Photo/photos of the event or person, A title that describes your layout, Journaling to tell the story, Background papers to use on your page, Embellishments and page accents. These are extras that run the gamut from stickers to ribbons to charms.
- Create a focal point- Every strong layout has a focal point. This is the image or place where you find your eye naturally drawn. It's usually the main or strongest photo and is usually larger than others on the layout. You can add small embellishments to make your focal photo and focal point stand out. When your page has too many elements or photos the same size, your eye doesn't know where to go. Capture your audience with one standout photo.
- Use color as a design tool- How do you know which colors to use? Simply look at your photographs! They should be the focus of your layout, so it follows that they should determine which colors you use. When you pull colors from your photos to design your layout, your photographs will leap off the page.
- Find your Scrapbooking Style- Once you've created a few pages, study them. What is the common thread? Are they clean and sparse, funky and full, montages, artistic and full of media such as paints, markers, textured papers or are they linear? Once you recognize your scrapbook style, you can really explore what it is and follow your own heart to make more defined and expressive pages.
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Uses of crude oil as traditional medicine: a survey of mothers in a rural clinic in South-south Nigeria Full Text
Rural and Remote Health, 05/30/2012
Dienye PO et al. – A high proportion of mothers attending Bethesda Clinic Ngo use crude oil on their children as a traditional medicine, and this is because of their belief in its effectiveness, and its availability and affordability. The use of this product is encouraged the country’s costly and inefficient health system. Neighbours play a large role in the administration of crude oil and this is consistent with the local culture.
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One of the new things I have brought to my class this year is Student Blogging. Now, if you are a regular reader of this blog, you are thinking that blogging is nothin new to my classroom. Well, I'm having students do something a little bit different this year.
Last year, I had students respond to curriculum related questions on their blog and use it as an e-portfolio for their essays. While it worked well, I felt like there were better alternatives. I now use Evernote for e-portfolios and have decided to use the blogs as a personal space for my students.
My students have plenty of practice with writing formal essays and ACT prep, that I really felt they needed a place to express their creativity. Too often, kids are told they are not good writers and that ruins their drive to write anything. My hope is to foster their writing by giving them a space to respond to visual prompts however they want. So far, the kids have been awesome.
Their first task was to write an email to 1 million people. Thy could write about anything they wanted. For some of my honors students, they had trouble because they are not used to having an open ended assignment, but they were able to pull through. There next post will be on "hacking" any part of school. I always give at least two weeks to complete a blog post and I make sure the topic has nothing to do with the content being covered in class. I'm finding my visual prompts here.
The last part of my new student blogging adventure is very important when it comes to student buy in. I needed my kids to view blogging as an important task. To do that, I promised my students I would write every single blog post I asked them to write on my own teacher blog. I told them I would never give them "busy work" because I'm too busy to do it myself. The kids were shocked at this promise and were ready to get to work. My blog post, always completed before I assign it to the students, also provides solid modeling for my students who are not sure where to start.
Long term, I look to connect my students with others to share writing and ideas. I hope students will become more comfortable and post video and personal art. Some are interested, but it will take some time to get there. I'm excited at the work I've seen so far on their Blogger blogs and can't wait to read some more.
Every student created a Blogger blog using their school Google Accounts.
I add every student blog to my Google Reader and place them in class marked folders.
I read and comment on every blog post a student writes.
Students have two weeks to comets each new post.
Students are allowed to respond in any way they want. That could be through video, pictures, song or any other way they want.
Students are encouraged to "own" their blogging space by personalizing their site.
Parents were told about the blog at Back to School Night .
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CALGARY - Officials with the City of Calgary are trying to figure out whether a badly decomposed rat in a found in a southeast neighbourhood Friday was a pet or came into the city on a truck.
Alberta prides itself on being rat-free, and has only seen isolated cases of the rodents since the 1950s. Pet rats are forbidden under provincial law and rat sightings are treated with the utmost urgency.
The discovery comes only days after Alberta's agriculture minister announced that more than a dozen Norway rats were discovered and killed at the dump in Medicine Hat, Alta., which is a few hours drive east of Calgary. Following his announcement, dozens more have been found and killed at the Medicine Hat region's landfill.
"We take this as a high priority for us, so if people have any thoughts that they've seen a rat, call us right away," said Greg Steinraths, acting director of City of Calgary Animal and Bylaw Services.
The city says the rodent was collected by a bylaw officer after a resident found the rat near his property.
No other evidence of rat activity has been found in the area.
The neighbourhood will be monitored on an ongoing basis until bylaw officers are satisfied there are no more rats.
"Because it is located right by a major thoroughfare, our initial thought is that it is possibly off of a truck," said Steinraths.
It's possible to tell the difference between a pet rat and a feral rat based on the animal's colouring, tail length and skull size, he said.
Calgary gets about 200 rat reports a year, only about four to six of which end up actually being the real thing.
"The majority of those that we go and investigate are muskrats, squirrels, chipmunks — you name it," said Steinraths.
In Medicine Hat, bylaw officers who usually relocate bull snakes will now take the reptiles to the landfill in the hopes that they will eat the rats. That's in addition to baited traps and high-definition trail cameras to track the scurrying scavengers.
Ed Jollymore, Medicine Hat's waste manager, has said it's all hands on deck to tackle the infestation and believes the media attention the rat problem is getting will help.
Alberta estimates its rat control measures have prevented what would have been $1 billion in rodent-caused damage over the last 50 years.
Agricultural fieldmen, known by Albertans as the "Rat Patrol," eliminate invading rats within a control zone 600 kilometres long and 30 kilometres wide along the province's eastern boundary.
The province says one pair of rats can thrive and begin a chain of breeding that can produce as many as 15,000 offspring a year, as long as they are close to food and sheltered from the weather and predators.
Public education campaigns in Alberta routinely stress the importance of keeping the province rat-free. Members of the public are encouraged to learn to identify Norway rats and are urged to alert provincial officials if they spot one.
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Antibody engineering holds the potential for creating antibodies with multiple specificities, greater affinity for their targets, and fewer side effects. Among these approaches, more-or-less traditional protein engineering remains a topic of intense interest.
Zymeworks whose trademarked tagline is “Building Better Biologics™,” describes its technology as “structure-guided design.” Those who remember classic medicinal chemistry will recognize the synonymous “structure-activity relationship.”
That proteins could be designed in this manner makes sense, but the idea went into hibernation after the initial hype because the tools for correlating structure to activity were primitive. “Our understanding of protein dynamics was not very advanced, not like today’s,” says Ali Tehrani, Ph.D., Zymeworks’ president and CEO.
Techniques like NMR, crystallography, and protein modeling were simply not up to the task. Now that these analytics have caught up, investigators can exploit molecular biology to its fullest.
A typical protein-engineering exercise might begin with a wild-type antibody and identification of the critical regions and amino acids responsible for binding. These regions are analogous to “functional groups” in small molecule drugs.
“We then ask which amino acids can be replaced such that desirable properties are improved, while retaining the molecule’s other critical properties,” Dr. Tehrani explains. This resembles site-directed mutagenesis, but instead of a single amino acid, Zymeworks looks for groups of building blocks that need not necessarily be contiguous. The molecular modeling engine behind this work is ZymeCAD™, which performs in silico mutagenesis to create candidate antibodies.
Zymeworks employs two molecular scaffolds: Azymetric™, an IgG1-based platform consisting of two heavy chains assembled onto one molecule, and AlbuCORE™, a multivalent antibody alternative. Being antibody-like, Azymetric can recruit T cells and bind to two antigens at the same or different sites. Azymetric is appropriate for treating cancers due to its bispecificity and effector activity.
“Rather than applying pressure to one point, you apply it to two points and create a much stronger signal for tumor destruction,” Dr. Tehrani explains.
AlbuCORE is more suited to treating cardiovascular, inflammatory, or auto-immune diseases because it does not recruit immune system cells.
In late September, Zymeworks revealed a new round of financing worth $8.1 million. Less than a month earlier, MSD/Merck signed a nonexclusive agreement with Zymeworks for developing bispecific antibodies.
Immunogenicity is known to limit dosing of certain mAbs, so eliminating it is of great interest. Antitope provides antibody humanization and protein-engineering services that focus, through in vitro and in silico tools, on screening out potential immunogenicity during preclinical development. The company also maintains a pipeline of its own molecules.
“If we start with an early-stage molecule, we can rationally design it to avoid T-cell epitopes, which are key drivers of immunogenicity,” explains chief scientist Matthew Baker, Ph.D.
Antitope concentrates on helper T-cell epitopes, not post-translational modifications. Accumulating evidence supports this approach for therapeutic proteins, including antibodies, and for drug candidates derived from plants and bacteria. The latter are more challenging than conventional proteins from an immunogenicity perspective, largely because the human body more readily recognizes these molecules as nonself.
“Depending on the bacteria, patients may have already been primed against these proteins through previous exposure,” Dr. Baker says.
Antitope’s “de-immunization” technologies amount to mapping T-cell epitopes in the sequence and removing them by point mutation, which disrupts binding to MHC. This approach, applied predominantly to antibody variable region sequences, combines elements of standard humanization with de-immunization and generates sequences that appear human in origin.
The challenge with conventional immunization technologies was incorporation of single-point mutations that disrupt a protein’s affinity for MHC without affecting stability, target binding, and efficacy. “This requires screening large numbers of sequences,” says Dr. Baker.
Tandem humanization/de-immunization combines sequence data from a large database of human variable region sequences with in silico structural analysis. Thus, Antitope can select sequence segments from unrelated, fully human antibodies and stitch them together to generate composite molecules possessing the specificity on par with nonhuman reference antibodies.
Antitope’s internal pipeline consists of seven early-stage molecules, with two that show “good efficacy” in animal models. “And obviously, we’ve addressed any immunogenicity issues as well,” Dr. Baker adds. Antitope plans to out-license its advanced drug candidates after demonstrating proof of concept.
Animals expressing genetically engineered, fully human antibodies hold tremendous promise, but access to these systems has not been straightforward. Abgenix made its name on the Xenomouse™, and Medarex with its KM Mouse™.
But Abgenix was acquired by Amgen, and Medarex by Bristol-Myers Squibb. That leaves only Regeneron’s Velocimmune mouse as a readily available—but costly—platform for generating humanized antibodies. For example, Regeneron’s two licensing deals, with Astellas and AstraZeneca, could net more than $350 million.
“It became extremely difficult and expensive to access this technology. That’s why I founded OMT [Open Monoclonal Technology; www.openmonoclonaltechnology.com],” says CEO Roland Buelow, Ph.D. His previous venture, Therapeutic Human Polyclones, which used genetically engineered rabbits to express a human antibody repertoire was acquired by Roche in 2007.
According to Dr. Buelow, OMT’s rat platform expresses fully humanized antibody as easily as rats make rat antibodies.
Rats are an ideal expression model because they exhibit very little, if any, of the strong selection pressure. By contrast, rabbits, mice, and cows endowed with human IgG loci produce very little fully humanized antibody—around 1%.
Expressing fully humanized antibodies in animals is a two-step process: first create a knockout animal by inactivating their natural antibody genes, then introduce recombinant immunoglobulin loci that encode for antibodies with fully human idiotypes. This had never been done before in rats. “It was technically difficult, but no new technology was required,” Dr. Buelow says.
At the time he founded OMT in 2008, no applicable nuclear transfer cloning protocol existed for rats. Dr. Buelow instead used zinc finger nucleases—DNA-binding proteins that generate mutations in precise locations in the genomes of higher animals.
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Carpet Selection Guide
Choose your carpet carefully
The following information will help you get familiar with carpet terms and definitions so you can make an educated decision on selecting your next carpet.
There are several terms relating to the manufacturing process which need to be understood
before we actually discuss carpet pile designs.
The distance between the needles on a tufting machine. The gauge is expressed in fractions of an inch, and refers to the number of needles which are positioned across the width of the tufting machine.
The distance between the stitches made by the needles (the distance which the backing material travels before the needle inserts the next tuft). Pitch is expressed in terms of the number of tufts per inch.
The closeness of the pile yarns. Density refers to the closeness of the pile yarns, and is an indication of both gauge and pitch. It is measured by the number of ounces per yard. Generally, the higher the density, the better the quality of the carpet.
- Face Weight
The weight, expressed in the number of ounces per yard of fiber extending above the primary backing.
These factors (gauge, pitch, density and face weight) all have direct effects upon each of the others. For instance, if the density increases with the pile height remaining the same, the face weight will increase. Or if the pile height increases with the density remaining the same, the face weight will increase.
The rest of this information will be based on Cut-Pile designs (59% of the current market), Loop-Pile designs (28% of the market), and Cut and Loop-Pile combination designs (13% of the market).
- Saxony Pile
A saxony configuration will generally have a pile height of about three quarters of an inch. The main distinction of a saxony will be in the fact that the pile is made up of twisted, heat-set yarns with sufficient density to cause them to stand upright to foot traffic. Ninety percent of the expensive carpets made today are of the saxony pile.
- Plush or Velvet
The plush design is dense enough to remain upright to normal traffic. The major distinguishing trait of a plush is that there is little or no twist set in the face yarns which comprise the pile. This introduces a smooth, uniform texture on the face of the plush or velvet carpet. This "velvet-plush" carpet can be sensitive to high temperatures in the cleaning solution, causing fiber distortion. Temperature settings should be turned down from the maximum settings.
- Shag Pile
This design has almost disappeared from the current market, though since a number of shag carpets remain from the early seventies, it warrants some discussion. Generally, a shag carpet contains a pile height greater than one inch, but that pile height must be coupled with so little density as to create a casual, random-lay effect so that the sides of the yarns are exposed to the foot traffic rather than the tips which are exposed on most other carpet configurations.
- Splush (short-shag or mini-shag)
This carpet is halfway between the shag and the plush. The pile height is usually about three quarters of an inch, with a density which is insufficient to cause the yarn ends to stand upright to foot traffic. Although the density is greater than that of a shag, the same "random lay" effect is still apparent.
This design is composed of very tightly twisted yarns that give a rough, nubby appearance.
Grass-pile carpets are usually made of slit-film olefin which actually simulates grass. It comes in a variety of colors.
CUT AND LOOP PILE DESIGNS
- Level Loop-Pile
This design consists of uniformly level tufts in an uncut or loop-pile configuration. Commercial quality carpet is often of the level-loop configuration with high density but low pile height.
- Multi-Level Loop-Pile
This configuration is also known as "high-low" pile carpet. It is formed by increasing tension on the yarn during tufting, which forms patterns with high and low loops.
FIBER TYPES Pros & Cons
- Sculptured Saxony
Sculptured saxony consists of higher, cut-pile yarns in the saxony tradition which are contrasted in texture by lower, loop-pile yarns which remain uncut.
- Sculptured Shag
This design is similar to the sculptured Saxony though is composed of higher, less dense cut-pile yarns in a shag configuration, contrasted by lower loops which remain uncut.
- Level Cut-loop
This technique is used to create a wide range of patterns using cut and loop piles of the same height.
There are many different types of fiber used to make carpet. In this section we are going to give you the PROS & CONS of the four most popular fibers, Nylon, Polyester, Olefin, and Wool.
Good Elasticity – Nylon will stretch up to 33% of its length and still regain its original shape. This is very important in heavy traffic areas where furniture may be dragged across the carpet.
Very Abrasion Resistant – It even surpasses wool. Many manufacturers offer wear guaranties.
Static Resistant – Not its ancestry, but today’s fibers do very well.
Heat Sets Well – When properly heat set, nylon retains its crimp, twist, and dye extremely well.
Good resiliency – Nylon can be crushed for long periods and still regain its original shape.
Non-Absorbent – Nylon dries quickly since it will absorb less than 8% of its weight in H20.
Mildew Resistant – Nylon provides no food source, but mildew can grow on it if another food source is available. Notice the damage that can be done under an over watered potted plant.
Nylon responds very well to most professional cleaning methods and treatments.
Nylon is almost always acid dyed. It is rarely solution dyed, so it can have problems with bleaching, fading, urine reactions, etc.
Polyester’s popularity seems to go up and down like a roller coaster. Because it’s relatively inexpensive to produce, manufacturers are regularly reintroducing this fiber to the carpet industry. Although it has some excellent qualities, and is a great fiber for clothing, it does have some limiting factors when used in carpet.
Since polyester does not have dye sites, it is usually dyed with a disperse dye or solution dye method which makes it very resistant to bleaching, fading and soil dye reactions.
Stain Resistant – This applies only to water based stains.
Low Absorbency – Quick drying
Polyester is difficult to dye and usually must be solution dyed which limits the variety.
It is not resistant to oily stains, and in fact an oily spill or spot left without proper cleanup can oxidize and even chemically bond with and become part of the fiber. You need to know that some of these spots just won’t come out.
Crimp Loss – Early polyester was a mess. A new polyester carpet was fuller, fluffier and more luxurious than anything on the market. Six-month-old polyester was an owner’s nightmare. Due to loss of twist and crimp, long strait fibers were left in the traffic areas, which caused matting and tangling and destroyed the original look of the carpet. Definite improvements have been made by heat setting and using finer yarns, but crimp loss can still be a problem. This is a characteristic of polyester, not a defect.
Olefin is a very versatile carpet fiber. It is used in carpet backings (called polypropylene), face yarns and even astroturf. Olefin has become almost synonymous with one of its trade names “Herculon” a trademark owned by Hercules Corporation, a major manufacturer of olefin.
Olefin is very moisture resistant. It will absorb only one tenth of 1% of its weight in water. This leads to some pros and some cons.
Very difficult to stain.
Great for outdoor applications (stadium or pool)
Chemical Resistant – Most chemicals and bleaches won’t damage it at all
Solution dyeing makes it resistant to fading.
Lightweight – It is the only common carpet fiber that will float on water. ( Except celluloid)
Strong – It wears well except for resiliency factor (see cons).
It has good cleanability and stain release. (Except oil/petroleum-based stains – see cons)
Olefin is not a resilient fiber. When crushed it does not regain its original shape easily. Traffic areas tend to lie down, showing “apparent soiling”. Furniture marks can be permanent reminders to the owner of where his furniture used to be.
It is a very heat sensitive fiber. Its melting point is around 300 degrees but damage can occur at lower temperatures.
Olefin can be damaged by Friction – Even dragging a heavy piece of furniture across an olefin carpet can cause permanent marks from the heat generated by friction.
Like polyester, extended exposure to oil-based soils may become permanent.
Olefin is very difficult to dye due to its low absorbency rate. It is almost always solution dyed.
Quite often, Olefin is in a glue-down situation, which creates a potential to brown from soil wicking from the base of the yarns due to incomplete soil removal. Over wetting and/or slow drying increases the likelihood.
Wool comes from the fleece of sheep or lambs. This is one of the oldest fibers used by man, dating back over two thousand years. It is still one of the finest face yarns available for carpet. Wool is chemically made up of standard organic elements including sulfur, which accounts for the wool smell when it is damp.
Wool has excellent soil hiding capabilities. Wool will not exhibit or show soil as much as other fibers. The reason for this is that wool is an opaque fiber (as opposed to synthetics which are transparent) and wool doesn’t refract and reflect light like synthetics. The naturally dull appearance provided by the scales of the epidermis makes soil much less apparent to the human eye.
Wool is very strong, elastic and resilient. Wool face yarn in a well-constructed carpet will stand up to the heaviest traffic and still look beautiful. (Notice the carpet in most casinos and finer hotel lobbies and hallways).
Natural crimp makes wool and excellent insulator.
Good Absorbency – This means that wool reacts well to a number of dye types and techniques. Keep in mind, this means easy staining also.
Soil Release – Wool responds very well to cleaning as moisture makes the fiber swell and release dirt.
Wool is naturally flame retardant.
Wool is a very expensive material. This arises mainly from the processing cost, the cleaning, and the preparation, etc., rather than the actual cost of the raw material.
Fiber Distortion – Wool is very prone to distortion by excess agitations such as jet streaks and wand marks. This is particularly pronounced when it happens under heated conditions.
Stains Easily – Due to its absorbency and ease of dyeing, wool is also easily stained by wine, Kool-Aid and other acid dyestuffs. Remember that absorbency is the same quality that makes wool so desirable as far as dye acceptance and obtaining the beautiful rich colors that you often find in wool carpets and oriental rugs.
Chemical Sensitivity – Wool is sensitive to alkaline chemicals above a pH of 9.5 after prolonged exposure. This exposure will tend to make wool brittle and discolor somewhat. This problem is sometimes referred to as “felting”. Wool is also very sensitive to chlorine bleach, such as Clorox, which is normally found in homes and grocery stores. Chlorine bleach will completely dissolve wool within a matter of minutes. The New Zealand Wool Bureau recommends water-based cleaning solutions with a pH not lower than 5.5 and not higher than 8 pH.
Staple Yarn – Fuzzing can be a source of problems because wool only comes as a staple yarn and excess agitation can cause that fuzzing effect.
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Storm called a 'low-end blizzard'
Posted at: 12/27/2012 3:28 AM
By: Associated Press | WHEC.com
A powerful winter storm that pounded the nation's midsection before heading to the Northeast is being blamed in at least six deaths.
A meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Indianapolis is describing the storm as a "low-end blizzard."
Forecasts have called for up to 18 inches of snow inland from western New York to Maine on Thursday.
Parts of the Southeast from Virginia to Florida could get severe thunderstorms.
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The tax package, available only if Boeing assembles the new 7E7 here, would be worth an estimated $2.4 billion over 20 years. It includes a 40 percent cut in business taxes, research and development tax credits and lower property taxes.
Locke said the state will more than recoup the tax breaks if Washington lands the new assembly line for Everett or Moses Lake, and perpetuates the state's aerospace industry, which anchors the manufacturing sector.
The governor also pleaded with lawmakers to slice unemployment taxes and to make the state's workers' compensation program cheaper.
"This is what we must do, to make the state of Washington competitive" for the new 7E7 plant, Locke said after a huddle with legislative leaders.
The special legislative session must adjourn by Tuesday night, and Locke wants to squeeze the Boeing package under the wire. Legislative leaders generally reacted favorably to the tax incentives, but said the unemployment bill is still on the bubble.
The state is making an all-out bid to win Boeing's newest assembly line, and rivals are saying the cost of doing business is cheaper in their states.
Washington state has been home to Boeing airplane factories since the company's inception in 1916. Corporate headquarters were moved to Chicago two years ago, and the company has thrown the 7E7 bidding open to all states.
Locke said the stakes are high, with an estimated 17,300 direct and indirect 7E7 jobs and at least 56,000 other jobs in aerospace potentially on the line if Boeing phases out its Washington presence.
The net revenue impact to the state if the 7E7 is built here is at least $265 million a year.
Locke's tax package would save Boeing and others in the aerospace industry about $120 million a year once assembly begins in full in 2007. The impact would be minimal in the next four years, Locke said.
The plan includes:
Locke said the "tax incentive and reform package" can give Washington an edge as Boeing decides where to locate.
Asked if the state can afford the tax giveaway, Locke said the state can't afford a slow decline and extinction of the industry.
Washington could lose 150,000 jobs over 20 years and $540 million in annual revenue if Boeing picks another state for 7E7 and eventually phases out the older generation airplanes here, he told a news conference.
"It is in part about the future of manufacturing in the state," said state Trade Director Martha Choe.
The tax breaks and business legislation would help Boeing be more competitive with the government-subsidized Airbus in Europe, she said.
"This is about the future of the aerospace industry in Washington, our state's most dominant industry," the governor said. "Our efforts will make our state even more competitive and, in turn, help Boeing and its supplier network reduce their costs and compete even more effectively with Airbus."
The state plans to turn in its bid document next Monday.
Boeing had no immediate comment on Locke's plan. The company has previously praised the Legislature's approval of a $4 billion, 10-year plan to improve the state's transportation system, and has urged action on the unemployment compensation and workmen's comp measures.
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Chartered Physiotherapy | Treatment Clinics
Expert Advice & Treatments with Chartered Physiotherapists
The Independent Physiotherapy Service - Arthritis and Tendonitis
Arthritis and Tendonitis | Physiotherapy | Physiotherapists | Treatments | Cardiff | Newport | Bridgend | Scotland
There are many different forms of Arthritis affecting both adults and children. The two most common forms of Arthritis are Osteoarthritis and Rheumatoid Arthritis. Osteoarthritis is a condition which causes pain and compromises the function of the affected joints as a result of aging and general wear and tear. The smooth cartilage that takes the strain in a normal joint becomes rough, brittle and weak. To compensate, the bone beneath thickens and spreads out, forming knobbly outgrowths (Osteophytes). As Osteoarthritis gets worse, bits of cartilage may break away from the bone, causing the bone ends to rub together and the ligaments to become strained.
Rheumatoid Arthritis is a common disease affecting about one in 100 people; although three times as many women are affected as men. Most people get fluctuating pain and stiffness that gets worse during flare-ups. Many people find that the condition gives them flu-like symptoms and makes them tired, irritable or depressed. Controlled rehabilitation exercises are proven to increase muscle strength and decrease patient disability without increasing pain. Acupuncture has been shown to help ease the pain of arthritic joints especially hands and knees. Our physiotherapists are experienced in using a combination of exercise (sometimes in hydrotherapy pools) and acupuncture to relieve the pain associated with both Osteoarthritis and Rheumatoid Arthritis.
Tennis elbow, Golfer’s elbow, Jumper’s knee, shoulder ‘impingement’, Achilles tendonitis are all examples of tendonitis. They can be caused by overuse or can be a natural consequence of ageing and general tendon wear. Physiotherapy is extremely successful in easing the pain and dysfunction caused by the irritation/degeneration of the respective tendons. Our physiotherapists may use passive treatments (electrotherapy, acupuncture, specific types of massage), give practical advice regarding alteration of sporting technique and training pattern, advice on equipment and supports and also appropriate exercises.
Call us on 03456 252 252 to find out more or to arrange an appointment today.
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Editorial: We wish you a happy, healthier new year
Welcome to 2013, a new year and new possibilities.
While most of us will carry over a lot of baggage from last year, the fresh slate of January does offer an opportunity to make changes in our lives. For many, that may mean new career or financial goals, but the most common resolutions involve our health -- eat healthier, lose weight, get fit, stop smoking or drink less alcohol -- and there is a good reason for that.
Americans, particularly those in our region, really do need to move to a healthier lifestyle.
The statistics for the recent past are dismal.
In 1980, 15 percent of the U.S. population qualified as obese. Today, it is about 30 percent nationally and higher still in West Virginia and Kentucky. That has contributed to a rapid rise in diabetes and other chronic diseases.
One forecast released last year projects that by 2030 about 60 percent of West Virginians will be obese. Those trends have fueled dramatic increases in health care costs, with the worst yet to come.
As baseball great Yogi Berra once said, "The future ain't what it used to be."
The good news is that groups across our region are working to change those numbers with a variety of programs and initiatives. Some are aimed at "environmental" changes such as providing more access to walking trails or healthier meals at school.
But many are aimed at educating all of us about what we need to do and helping us get started.
For example, next week the Huntington Health Revolution will launch its annual 90-Day Challenge, a three-month program of small changes in diet, exercise and habits that have helped hundreds of Tri-State residents shape up.
A grid to the week-by-week changes will be published in The Herald-Dispatch this week, and tips will appear each week as well.
Also starting this week is a new Healthy Habits 2013 column, produced by a partnership of Cabell Huntington Hospital, St. Mary's Medical Center and the Marshall University Joan C. Edwards School of Medicine. Those helpful tips will appear every Friday in The Herald-Dispatch.
Area health departments, YMCAs, fitness centers and exercise groups have literally dozens of other options, but be sure to consult your personal physician for his or her advice on how to get started.
The most important thing is to take that first step and provide support for your friends and family.
Here's wishing you a happy, healthier 2013.
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“Vast" was one of the words on the vocabulary list, and second- and third- graders from Woodland Elementary School put it to good use as they walked the grounds of Saint Leo University during a recent field trip.
"These kids think that a 3,000-student campus is vast," second-grade teacher Nancy Martin said with a chuckle. "They have no idea."
By university standards, Saint Leo might be described as intimate, but for elementary students it is a vast piece of real estate compared to their own campus.
"I like the pool and the church and especially the gym," said Christopher Hendrix, 8, as he lined up with classmates to head to the next stop: the cafeteria. "We don't have a gym at our school."
With Saint Leo students serving as tour guides, the youngsters from Woodland got a glimpse of what college life might look like for them.
Sure, you can talk to kids about going to college in the classroom, said Saint Leo junior Sara Vogel, 21. "But they really can't understand the concept. I think for them to come here and see what it's like is a real eye-opener."
"Now they have a picture when we say 'college,' " Martin said. "They see the library, the abbey, the business building, the gymnasium. They are learning about scholarships; taking in the architecture and the culture. Now we have a few kids who are saying, 'I'm going to go here.' "
That's the idea.
When they grow up
It's all part of a schoolwide motivational theme that has about 850 students at Woodland thinking about what they want to be when they grow up and how to get there.
"Woodland Wranglers, Planning Ahead, Aiming High, College Bound," is the mission statement plastered on bright blue and yellow T-shirts and on signs hung throughout the elementary campus.
That theme is highlighted regularly — during the college spotlight on the school's morning news, through vocabulary lessons with words such as "scholarship," "tuition," "degree" and "campus," and in the black-and-white composition notebook in the school principal's office listing the dreams of every Woodland student to one day be a police officer, teacher, football player, neurosurgeon and even a few princesses. Student council members also push the message to their peers, working hard to raise funds to establish a college scholarship for a graduating Zephyrhills High student who once attended Woodland.
"It's never too early to start thinking about college," said Woodland principal Kimberly Poe, who contacted each of her teachers' alma maters last summer to ask for college swag to post on the hallway bulletin boards.
The idea is to provide hope for students at the Title 1 school who might not be thinking that far ahead. The reality is that students will need some sort of education after high school in order to be successful, said Poe, a true Gator fan who was raised in a single-parent home and earned degrees at the University of South Florida and Saint Leo. "There was never any question that I would go to college. We want to reinforce that message to our students now."
Some motivation today
It's a message not lost on students like Aubrey Hicks, 9, who recently appeared on the morning news to give a shout-out to the day's featured college, the University of South Florida. While Aubrey once thought about being a ballerina or a "horseback rider," these days she has her heart set on being a marine animal trainer — after getting a degree at USF.
"I'd like to work with dolphins, seals and possibly whales," she said. "I'm really interested in a lot of those animals and I think it would be a pleasure to work with them."
Fourth-grader Elijah Garcia, 10, is also thinking about attending USF and perhaps enlisting in the military. "Then maybe I'll be a running back for the Buccaneers."
And there's buy-in from parents such as Elenya Hulbert, a member of the school advisory council whose sons, Kyle, 11, and Austin, 9, attend Woodland.
Both boys got excited about researching different colleges as well as the military academies, Hulbert said. "I think it's motivated them both to do well all year. I see it as being a really great thing for all the kids, that people really believe in them and they can do something with their lives no matter what their parents do or whether they went to college themselves. They're getting the message that they can do anything they set their minds to."
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Back to Quack Off
Energy - Part 1 of 3
BP’s Quest for
The Well from
Hell... And What They're Not Saying
DeHaemer, Editor Energy & Capital
(Friday, June 18th, 2010)
The Dwarves dug too greedily and too deep. You know what, they awoke in the
darkness of Khazad-dum... shadow and flame.
Saruman, The Lord of the Rings
Washington, DC -- There is
something primordial about BP's quest for oil in the Gulf of Mexico. It's an Icarus-like story of super-ambition; of reaching too far, delving too deep.
know if you've stopped to contemplate what BP was trying to do...
itself started 5,000 feet below the surface. That's the depth of the Grand
Canyon from the rim. And then the company attempted to drill more than
30,000 feet below that -- Mt. Everest would give 972 feet to spare.
Furthermore, the company sought oil in a dangerous area of the seabed.
unstable and many think BP sought it out because seismic data showed huge
pools of methane gas -- the very gas that blew the top off Deepwater Horizon
and killed 11 people.
More than a
year ago, geologists criticized Transocean for putting their exploratory rig
directly over a massive underground reservoir of methane. According to the
New York Times, BP's internal "documents show that in March, after
several weeks of problems on the rig, BP was struggling with a loss of 'well
control.' And as far back as 11 months ago, it was concerned about the well
casing and the blowout preventer.”
is that this methane, located deep in the bowels of the earth, is under
tremendous pressure. Some speculate as much as 100,000 psi -- far too much
for current technology to contain. The shutoff valves and safety measures
were built for only 1,000 psi. It was an accident waiting to happen. And
there are many that say it could get worse -- much worse.
are pointing to other fissures and cracks that are appearing on the ocean
floor around the damaged wellhead.
The University of South Florida recently discovered a
second oil plume in the northeastern Gulf. The first plume was found by
Mississippi universities in early May.
And there have been
other plumes discovered by submersibles. Some geologists say that BP's
arrogance has set off a series of events that may be irreversible. There are
some that think that BP has drilled into a deep-core oil volcano that cannot
be stopped, regardless of the horizontal drills the company claims will stop
the oil plume in August.
Need the Mudlogs
Chris Landau, for instance, has called for a showing of the mudlogs. A
mudlog is a schematic cross sectional drawing of the lithology (rock type)
of the well that has been bored. So far, no one has seen them. BP keeps
It is a dangerous game drilling into high pressure oil
and gas zones because you risk having a blowout if your mud weight is not
heavy enough. If you weight up your mud with barium sulfate to a very high
level, you risk BLOWING OUT THE FORMATION.
What does that mean? It means
you crack the rock deep
underground; as the mud weight is now denser than the rock, it escapes into
the rock in the pore spaces and the fractures. The well empties of mud. If
you have not hit high pressure oil or gas at this stage, you are lucky.
But if you
have, the oil and gas come flying up the well and you have a blowout,
because you have no mud in the well to suppress the oil and gas. You shut
down the well with the blowout preventer. If you do not have a blowout
preventer, you are in trouble as we have all seen and you can only hope that
the oil and gas pressure will naturally fall off with time, otherwise you
have to try and put a new blowout preventer in place with oil and gas coming
out as you work.
Obviously, the oil and
gas pressure hasn't fallen off
is that BP may not only have hit the mother of high-pressure wells, but
there is also a vast amount of methane down there that could come exploding
out like an underwater volcano.
heard a recording of Richard Hoagland who was interviewed on Coast to Coast
Hoagland has suggested that there are cracks in the ocean floor, and that
pressure at the base of the wellhead is approximately 100,000 psi.
Furthermore, geologists believe there are another 4-5 cracks or fissions in
the well. Upon using a GPS and Depth finder system, experts have discovered
a large gas bubble, 15-20 miles across and tens of feet high, under the
ocean floor. These bubbles are common. Many believe they have caused the
sinking of ships and planes in the Bermuda Triangle. That said, a bubble
this large -- if able to escape from under the ocean floor through a crack
-- would cause a gas explosion that Mr. Hoagland likens to Mt. St. Helens...
only under water.
The BP well
is 50 miles from Louisiana. Its release would send a toxic cloud over
populated areas. The explosion would also sink any ships and oil structures
in the vicinity and create a tsunami which would head toward Florida at 600
mph. Now, many people have called Hoagland a fringe thinker and a
conspiracy theorist. And they may be right. But that doesn't mean he isn't
on to something.
EPA finds high
concentrations of gases in the area
escape of other poisonous gases associated with an underground methane
bubble (such as hydrogen sulfide, benzene, and methylene chloride) have been
found. Last Thursday, the EPA measured hydrogen sulfide at 1,000 parts per
billion -- well above the normal 5 to 10 ppb. Some benzene levels were
measured near the Gulf of Mexico in the range of 3,000 - 4,000 ppb -- up
from the normal 0-4 ppb.
More speculation of doom
The Oil Drum,
an industry sheet, recently ran an article about the sequence of events
that tried to stop the oil spill. The upshot of industry insiders was that
after trying a number of ways to close off the leak, the well was
compromised, creating other leaks due to the high pressure. BP then cut the
well open and tried to capture the oil. In other words: BP shifted from
stopping the gusher to opening it up and catching what oil it could.
reason sane oil men would do this is if they wanted to relieve pressure at
the leak hidden down below the seabed. And that sort of leak -- known as a
“down hole” leak -- is one of the most dangerous kind.
No stopping it
that BP can't stop it from above; it can only relieve the pressure. So,
more oil is leaking out while BP hopes it can drill new wells before the
current one completely erodes.
BP is in a
race against time. It just won't admit this fact.
to the Oil Drum:
There are abrasives still present, a swirling flow
will create hot spots of wear and this erosion is relentless and will always
be present until eventually it wears away enough material to break its way
out. It will slowly eat the bop away especially at the now pinched off riser
head and it will flow more and more. Perhaps BP can outrun or keep up with
that outflow with various suckage methods for a period of time, but
eventually the well will win that race, just how long that race will be? No
one really knows...
Which leads us back to Mr. Landau's point about the mudlogs and why BP won't
know. Maybe I'm wearing my tinfoil hat too tight this morning. But this
stuff seems possible -- if it's only a worst case scenario.
What strikes me as odd is the way the leadership of BP
and the Obama administration is acting.
running around apologizing to everyone they can find. Obama says give us $20
billion in escrow and $100 million for the people Obama put out of work on
the oil rigs due to his six month ban -- and BP says, "Sure thing mate, no
And all of
this in a 20-minute meeting?
dealing with oil companies for a long time and it just doesn't add up.
Contrast it, for instance, with the Exxon situation in Alaska or the Union
Carbide disaster in India. Exxon fought tooth and nail for its
shareholders; it appealed court rulings for 19 years. Union Carbide wasn't
settled for 25 years. BP is rolling over like a simpering dog. Why?
reason I can think of is that the company knows -- better if not as well as
the Obama administration does -- that it will get worse.
All I know
is that this spill isn't even half over. Oil in the Gulf will lead the
news-cycle for the foreseeable future. And the companies that make products
that stop, absorb, or disperse oil have an endless supply of work. – FM Duck
back to top...
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Changing the Process
It’s that time of the year again for New Year’s resolutions. And while many of us make them, statistics show that only about 8 percent of us actually keep them, with 45 percent falling by the wayside by the end of January. Among the most popular New Year’s resolutions are vows to lose weight and become healthier. So what to do?
This year, think small. By that I mean that sometimes we are able to achieve the greatest changes in our lives by getting there in very small steps. No need to set unrealistic goals of losing so many pounds by a certain date, or entirely cutting out your favorite foods.
Instead, come up with a list of small changes you can make over time in your daily life that will make a difference. Things like walking a few more steps each day, adding less salt at the table, and taking stretching breaks at work.
Speaking of work, another small change you can make to help you eat better is to brown bag. Eating out every day can add up to lots of unnecessary calories, and can also be expensive. Instead, take a few minutes before you go to bed at night to make lunch for you, and if you’re a parent, for your kids as well. Sandwiches are a brown bag staple but you can take them to a new level by using a variety of breads and rolls as the base, then layering on vegetables like carrots, squash or cucumbers for color, flavor, and nutrients. Top with low-fat meat or cheese and a drizzle of olive oil or mustard. Add a piece of fruit and you’re good to go.
For other weight loss tips and information, be sure to visit the Resources section, as well as the Weight Management Channel of the Wheat Foods Council Network website (www.wheatfoods.org). Remember, little things do count!ShareThis
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Although he was born in Dallas, attended Tahoka’s schools, and graduated from Texas A&M, Jim Robinson really wanted most of all to be a cowboy.
He can remember going on his first roundup at age 5 about a mile from Tahoka.
“We did then like they do now — you drop the younger ones off with the older ones so they can kind of keep an eye on you — and you might learn something in the process,” he said of his early experiences on a cattle drive.
True, the cattle drive wasn’t cross-country. It was just herding cows to the windmill, but it taught him how to work hard.
“This guy dropped me off and said, ‘You just follow this feed road down to the windmill — throw your cattle up in front of you — and that’s where we will get together.’
“So, the first thing right off the bat, I ran onto five or six cows lying down. But it was kind of like Rodney Dangerfield: I didn’t get no respect. I hollered and screamed for about 30 minutes, and finally I got one cow to get up. She walked about 10 feet and laid back down again,” he remembers.
“They knew a little kid on a horse wasn’t going to bother them. Then, the guy I was with finally heard me hollering, came over and slapped his reins on his leg, and boy they jumped up and kept going to the windmill.”
At that point, Robinson’s eyes were opened and he was a rancher in the making.
His horse, called a kid horse because of its gentleness and safety with children, was a bay with a reddish-brown body, black mane and black tail.
“My cousin came out to go riding, and he was sitting behind me,” Robinson recalls of an incident that could have been disastrous with an edgy horse. “The saddle wasn’t cinched on very tight, and it started sliding over to the side. I jumped off, but my cousin was behind me holding onto the back of the saddle. He rode that all the way beneath the horse. And the horse didn’t bat an eye, didn’t move.”
There also were tears along the way. Any cowboy knows that, even if he hides them beneath a hat pulled low over his eyes.
“We had a Hereford bull, and my old kid horse was standing under a mesquite tree. The bull came lumbering in to water, my horse was standing there, and he hooked him right between the front legs. I didn’t think much about it, but my dad walked up ... the bull had hit my horse in the heart.”
Even now, he talks quietly about the incident in the language heard in conversation between cowboys:
“He was a damn good kid horse. You don’t see them like that much anymore.”
Robinson knew through college that he wanted to wind up on a ranch, and after graduation, started with a small herd. “I just had 15 or 20 cows, and finally that went up to 250,” he remembers.
His father had leased 40 sections in the Clarendon area, and Robinson bought half of the lease in a kind of partnership.
“It was all riding horses in those days. You couldn’t get anywhere without them. Calves would be out there lying down somewhere, and there were places where you couldn’t go otherwise.”
The ranchers spent summers attempting to rid their cattle of screwworms, and were active all fall with shipping.
“Fall was a pretty busy time. Since we couldn’t get help all the time, we neighbored — which means different ranchers would come help us, and we would go help them. We knew everybody’s country and where cattle got away. Everybody kind of got dropped off in the same place every time, so we knew the country. You had to know where there was a big canyon, you had to know where the trails were to get across. So we knew the country.”
He recalls, “We would always leave in the dark to get where we needed to go by daylight. Sometimes the horses didn’t want to go, and a time or two a few people got bucked off. You never got any sympathy — they just laughed at you. Unless you were hurt, you just got laughed at.”
He said, “I didn’t mind getting up early and all that. I liked helping neighbors. You would catch up on what had been happening, and get around where you could talk to them. That was a lot of fun.
“In the winter, you would feed the cows, fix the windmill and whatever else was needed. And in the spring of the year we would brand.”
The land where Robinson was ranching was broken country. “It’s the southern end of Palo Duro Canyon, a whole lot different than the flat plains. There are a lot of canyons and brush thickets. You had to be on your toes to keep ahead of the cows.”
Robinson has found evidence that Comanches had camped in that area in the past. “You could find their campgrounds,” he said.
“There are a set of pens on top of a hill, and you can see flint chips all around it. I knew they had camped there. Down a little further there was a kind of long finger of sand going down to the creek.”
In that area, Robinson had seen bones sticking out of the ground and reckoned they were from a calf that had been dragged into that area by an animal. Later, he and a friend looked closer at the site, and some digging unearthed small grinding stones — and more bones.
The site contained the skeleton of a human. Carbon dating done by the Lubbock Lake Landmark staff indicated an age of from 2,500 to 3,500 years, according to Robinson.
They surmised that the skeleton belonged to a woman who had been killed. “The skull was well preserved — she had a big dent in it — somebody had hit her in the head with something.”
The remains were taken to the museum at Clarendon, but not placed on display because of tribal sensitivities.
Arrowheads also were found in the camping area.
In recent years, Robinson’s career has become constrained by a diagnosis of multiple sclerosis, and by a return of the ranch land lease to the owners. It slowed his physical activity, but left his spirit untouched. In the wake of change, Robinson turned his attention to writing memories for his grandchildren in a self-published book titled “Memoirs of a Texas Cowboy.”
“I wrote the book so the grandkids would know what I did and why I did it. It’s not near like it used to be,” he said of ranching.
He isn’t at all unfeeling about the past, though, and would likely return to it if he could.
“I miss the riding. Oh, man! The country out there was 22 miles from town — you didn’t hear anything, no traffic, nothing. You can’t believe how quiet it was out there at night, except for the coyotes — every once in a while one would howl.”
He remembers, “We have a big hill that goes up on top of the divide going to town, and from the creek there’s about a 200-foot drop from top to bottom. I was climbing the hill and this big old bird flew in front of me — a golden eagle with about a seven-foot wingspan. Flew right in front of me.
“Off on the other side of the divide was a small creek that just dropped off going to the main creek, about 200 feet. I looked and saw him diving. I pulled up, looked down and there’s another eagle coming toward me. And a bunch of turkeys under a shade tree down there. They weren’t moving, and the eagle was after one of the turkeys, but they never did leave the tree.
“I went on, don’t know whether they caught one or not.”
Robinson said of the loss of the ranching way of life, “When it played out, I said all I had left is memories. So many memories ... that’s all I ever wanted to do.”
From age 5 until today he has looked, talked, and thought like a cowboy. The conclusion is inescapable:
Jim Robinson is a cowboy. Always was, always will be.
To comment on this story:
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This excerpt taken from the EYE 8-K filed Apr 3, 2007.
6.08 Property; Liens.
(a) Each of the Borrower and each of its Subsidiaries have good title to, or valid leasehold interests in, all its property material to its business free and clear of all Liens except for Liens permitted by Section 8.01 and minor irregularities or deficiencies in title that, individually or in the aggregate, do not interfere with the ability to conduct business as currently conducted.
(b) No Mortgage encumbers improved Real Estate that is located in an area that has been identified by the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development as an area having special flood hazards within the meaning of the National Flood Insurance Act of 1968 unless flood insurance available under such Act has been obtained in accordance with Section 7.07.
(c) Each of the Borrower and each of its Subsidiaries owns or has rights to use all of the Collateral necessary for or material to such Persons business as currently conducted. The use by the Borrower or such Subsidiary of such Collateral and all such rights with respect to the foregoing do not infringe on the rights of any person other than such infringement which could not, individually or in the aggregate, reasonably be expected to result in a Material Adverse Effect. No claim has been made and remains outstanding that the Borrowers or any Subsidiarys use of any Collateral does or may violate the rights of any third party that could, individually or in the aggregate, reasonably be expected to result in a Material Adverse Effect.
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Undercliff Sanatorium, Meriden
The Damned Story: What is it with the state of Connecticut and creepy old mental hospitals? At the base of South Mountain, near Hubbard Park in Meriden sits the abandoned Undercliff Sanatorium, a former state health facility that was closed decades ago but that some claim is still in use—by the ghosts of former patients.
According to the Connecticut State Library, Undercliff was originally opened in 1910 as the Meriden Sanatorium and in 1918, became the first facility in the nation dedicated exclusively to treating children afflicted with tuberculosis. The name was changed to Undercliff Sanatorium in the early 1920s, and about two decades later, it began to accept adult patients. In 1954, the tuberculosis patients were transferred to other state facilities, with many children going to Seaside Sanatorium in Waterford. Two years later, the property became part of the state Department of Mental Health and was rechristened Undercliff Hospital; more buildings were added to the main hospital, including residences for staff, and soon thereafter, it started accepting patients with mental diseases from around the region. Undercliff served in this capacity until 1976, when on May 28, the last patient was discharged and the staff was transferred to other facilities across Connecticut. It has essentially remained empty since, although a few buildings on the property are used by various state agencies, including the Department of Developmental Services.
Like many mental health facilities, even though many people were treated well and cured here, there are still dark stories attached to the property, including tales of abuse and horror, although no actual evidence of any such activity has ever been uncovered. Considering that Undercliff served for decades as a refuge for those afflicted with turberculosis and other serious diseases, no doubt that more than a few people have died on the property.
Consequently, there have been numerous reports of hauntings here. Some allege to have heard the voices of children, both laughing and crying, while others have claimed to have seen the shadows and spirit of children in the windows of the now-empty buildings. Those who have ventured inside the buildings have supposedly heard the footsteps of patients running from orderlies as well as the screams of the mentally ill undergoing treatment.
A few purported sightings involve the ghost of one patient who was supposedly attacked and murdered by fellow residents (again, unsubstantiated); the story goes that you can see the phantom of the lost soul wandering the grounds at night. EVPs and other otherworldly manifestations have also been reported to have been captured by those investigating the facility.
As it is state property, it is off limits to the general public, although that doesn’t prevent adventurers from trying to investigate the place on their own. Numerous pictures and videos of Undercliff taken by amateur explorers and the curious can be found across the internet. In July 2010, three local teenagers (and aspiring ghosthunters) made headlines when one of them was injured after jumping from a cliff near the property while being chased by police for trespassing.
Further adding to the creepy mystique of Undercliff is that it’s rumored to be tied to notorious serial killer Hadden Clark. In April 2000, Clark, who evidently had lived in Meriden with his grandfather back in the late 1970s and early 80s, was taken from his prison in Maryland and brought by authorities to Connecticut to show them where he had possibly buried one of his victims, but no body was ever found. Although never stated officially exactly where the search was made, it’s been speculated to have been on the grounds of Undercliff.
Which totally makes sense. Where else would a cross-dressing cannibal psychopath bury the remains of his victims then in the shadow of an abandoned and supposedly haunted insane asylum?
Our Damned Experience: We have never been to Undercliff, and unless we get some sort of immunity or the state opens the grounds to visitors, we’re not going any time soon.
If You Go: You can’t.
Undercliff Sanatorium is located on Undercliff Road in Meriden. Again, like many abandoned former state facilities, it is closed to the public. No trespassing signs are posted all over the property, tall fences surround many of the buildings and the grounds are patrolled by security and police regularly. Those caught trespassing will be arrested and fined.
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Footwear that rises to the ankle or higher; can be casual or dressy, practical or fashionable. Boots that are designed for protection from the elements may be made of a single, closely-stitched piece of leather, rubber, or other material to prevent the entry of water, mud or dirt. Other types of boots are sturdy in nature, intended for protection in wilderness or industrial settings. Fashionable boots for men and women may have all the variations seen in other shoe styles, including high heels, platforms, and lacings.
About Cut Out:
Cut out describes a design of women?s footwear that features uppers with cuts and perforations that create elaborate design patterns and geometrical shapes. Cut out shoes come in a variety of styles and are the perfect choice to wear with jeans or a summerdress.
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Agricultural Research Service
The Agricultural Research Service (ARS)
is the U.S. Department of Agriculture's chief in-house research agency. It is one of the four component agencies of the Research, Education, and Economics (REE) mission area. Congress first authorized Federally-supported agricultural research in the Organic Act of 1862, which established what is now USDA. That statute directed the Commissioner of Agriculture "... To acquire and preserve in his Department all information he can obtain by means of books and correspondence, and by practical and scientific experiments,..." The scope of USDA's agricultural research programs has been expanded and extended many times since the Department was first created. Today ARS has a workforce of approximately 6,200 employees including 2,200 scientists and post docs representing a wide range of disciplines. ARS has 800 research projects working at 90+ locations, including overseas labs. The National Agricultural Library and the National Arboretum are also part of ARS.
Office of National Programs
The Office of National Programs (ONP) consists of approximately 22 National Program Leaders drawn from different scientific disciplines who are responsible for managing the overall ARS research program to accomplish the agency's mission:
ARS conducts research to develop and transfer solutions to agricultural problems of high national priority and provides information access and dissemination to
- Ensure high-quality, safe food and other agricultural products,
- Assess the nutritional needs of Americans,
- Sustain a competitive agricultural economy,
- Enhance the natural resource base and the environment, and
- Provide economic opportunities for rural citizens, communities, and society as a whole.
To achieve these objectives, ONP identifies critical problems affecting American agriculture, plans and executes the strategies needed to address these problems by: mobilizing resources (both human and financial); fostering multi-disciplinary research; linking research to program and policy objectives; and communicating and interacting with customers, stakeholders, partners, and beneficiaries to insure program relevancy. Currently, ONP has organized ARS research into 18 National Programs which are described in detail on this website. ONP also works to ensure the timely transfer of new knowledge and technologies to potential users. NPS seeks to broaden public understanding of the value of agriculture and agricultural research to ensure the continued primacy of the U.S. agriculture in the 21st century.
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Organically-grown food not necessarily better for you
By John K. Carlisle
The United States Department of Agriculture's (USDA) proposed rule to allow producers of organic food to place a USDA organic seal on their products should be rejected because it misleads consumers into believing that organic food is safer and better for the environment than conventionally-produced food.
In announcing the proposed rules, USDA Secretary Dan Glickman stated that the USDA certification is not meant to convey to consumers that organic food is "superior, safer or more healthy than conventional food." 1 Likewise, Katherine DiMatteo, director of the Organic Trade Association, says that organic products are not safer or more nutritious than other foods. 2
Yet, a poll comissioned by The National Center For Public Policy Research found that two-thirds of the public would be misled by the proposed USDA seal. The poll, conducted by International Communications Research, showed that 68 per cent of respondents would interpret a product labeled "USDA Certified Organic" to be safer to eat than non-organic foods. Similarly, 69 per cent said that organically-labeled foods would mean that they are better for the environment than conventionally-produced foods. 3
Clearly, the proposed USDA seal would only spread misinformation and confusion among consumers. Most disturbing, it would use government auspices to give an unfair market advantage to organic producers over conventional growers by making consumers believe that all non-organic foods are somehow inferior. In particular, consumers who seek to buy environmentally- friendly products would be misled into believing that by buying organic they are aiding the environment.
This is simply not true.
Advocates argue that organic farming is better for the environment because it doesn't use the pesticides and herbicides required by conventional farming. But, while organic farming yields certain environmental benefits compared to conventional farming, organic farming also presents some striking environmental disadvantages.
Because organic farmers eschew pesticides and herbicides used by conventional farmers, they cannot use modern conservation tillage techniques that have been extraordinarily successful in reducing soil erosion. As a result, compared to conventional farming, organic farming is woefully inadequate in controlling soil erosion. A study by UCLA sedimentologist Stanley Trimble examining the effects of modern conservation tillage techniques in Wisconsin's Coon River Watershed illustrates just how beneficial modern farming is for soil preservation.
Dr. Trimble found that modern techniques had reduced soil erosion to a mere six percent of the soil erosion rate of the Dust Bowl-era 1930s. There is no way organic farming could have produced such impressive gains in soil preservation. 4
But the most glaring environmental disadvantage of organic farming is its exorbitant need for land.
Organic farming is only about half as productive as conventional farming, which means organic farming requires far more land to feed the world than modern methods. In his book, Saving the Planet With Pesticides, Dennis Avery of the Hudson Institute's Center for Global Food Issues estimates that modern high-yield farming has saved 15 million square-miles of wildlife habitat. Avery calculates that if the world switched to organic farming, 10 million square- miles of wildlife habitat would have to be converted for green manure crops such as clover and rye. That is an area larger than the total land area of the United States and Europe. 5
The prestigious Scottish Crop Research Institute (SCRI) also has concluded that organic farming has mixed environmental results. For example, the SCRI criticized organic farming's use of a copper-based fungicide, "Bordeaux Mixture," as unhealthy and damaging to the environment. Although it is considered by many organic farming advocates as a hallowed and time-tested application, the SCRI concludes that "Bordeaux Mixture" is "not at all environmentally-friendly." It concludes that the copper levels required for the "Bordeaux Mixture" to be effective in repelling slugs and snails are environmentally toxic: so much so that the European Union will ban it by 2002. 6
Concludes Roger Bate, director of the European Science and Environment Forum: "Not only is organic farming not better for the environment, but if you scale it up I believe you can even damage the countryside." 7
There are also increased safety risks to consuming organically-raised foods. A recent study conducted by scientists at the University of Georgia revealed that organic foods have alarmingly high levels of potentially deadly E-coli bacteria cells. Comparing organically grown lettuce to conventionally-produced vegetables, researchers found that the non-organic lettuce had 1,000 E-coli cells per gram while the organic alternative had 100,000 cells per gram. Says Professor Michael Doyle, who headed the study: "Our research raises questions about the safety of organic produce." 8
Far from educating the public, the proposed USDA organic seal misleads consumers into believing that organic food is safer and environmentally better than conventionally-raised food. Since scientific research shows that, in many respects, the opposite is true, the USDA should set aside its labeling proposal.
1 Karen Masterson, "Department of Agriculture Releases 650-page
Standard for Organic Food," The Philadelphia Inquirer, March 8, 2000.
© 1996-2013, Enter Stage Right and/or its creators. All rights reserved.
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Lauren Hunter, a fifth grade reading specialist at William Paca/Old Post Elementary School in Abingdon, is the latest Harford County educator to receive a prestigious National Milken Award.
Hunter did not know she had won the $25,000 cash award from the Milken Family Foundation until she attended a surprise assembly at the school early Wednesday morning. Before students, fellow faculty members, staff and elected officials, she accepted the award from Dr. Lillian M. Lowery, Maryland State Superintendent of Schools.
Hunter, a reading specialist for eight years, whose students continually show high levels of growth and advancement each year, is free to use the cash prize in any manner she chooses, according to the Maryland Department of Education news release announcing the award.
"It is wonderful that this accomplished reading specialist is one out of a select few across the nation to receive a 2012 Milken Educator Award for her outstanding dedication and commitment to education," Lowery said during the event. "Her ability to focus her instructional practices to meet the individual needs of each of her students proves she is a model of excellence for the profession."
Lowery commented on Hunter's accomplishments, including developing a reward system to recognize students' positive behaviors.
"Her fervent enthusiasm for teaching Maryland's students — from the development and implementation of initiatives that address overall student achievement to her willingness to mentor new teachers — are essential to the undeniable success of William Paca/Old Post Road Elementary School students," she said.
HCPS Superintendent Robert Tomback also congratulated Hunter on her achievement.
"Mrs. Hunter represents the exceptional teachers delivering high-quality instruction at William Paca/Old Post Road Elementary School, and in Harford County as a whole, each and every day," Tomback said. "Our teachers are passionate and dedicated and are raising the expectations and academic achievements for all of our students. Mrs. Hunter is very deserving of this extraordinary honor, and I am extremely proud of her accomplishments."
The Milken Educator Awards recognize the importance of outstanding educators and encourage talented young people to explore teaching. The award provides public recognition and an unrestricted financial award of $25,000 to selected educators who are advancing public education. The program began in Maryland in 1993, marking the 19th year. With this year's award winner, Maryland has a total of 57 Milken National Educators, who have been awarded a total of $1,425,000.
"It was definitely a surprise," Hunter, 30, said about the award Wednesday afternoon. "I had no idea."
The Abingdon resident was told that the state superintendent would be visiting William Paca/Old Post Road to celebrate the school's teachers and students accomplishments in raising Maryland State Assessment scores.
Little did she know that when the topic quickly changed to a Milken Award recipient at the school that she would be the one named.
"My mouth was just hanging open," Hunter said.
Hunter was nominated earlier this year for Harford County's Teacher of the Year award and made it to the top five.
In addition to the state and county superintendent, State Sen. Nancy Jacobs, County Councilwoman Mary Ann Lisanti and County Executive David Craig were in attendance for Wednesday's special assembly.
After she composed herself, Hunter said she had met previous Milken Award winners, including Harford County's most recent winner and former Harford County Teacher of the Year Christian Slattery.
Slattery, a vocal music teacher at Hall's Cross Roads Elementary School in Aberdeen, was Harford's last Milken Award winner in 2008.
"I thanked them and said it was an honor to be part of such an elite group of educators," Hunter said.
She also thanked the kids and said, "You guys are the reason why I come in and do what I do."
A teacher down to the core, Hunter said her first thought after the shock wore off was that somebody had to let the teachers know she wouldn't be in class that morning.
"I do what I do just because I love the kids and I love teaching," she said. "I love being good at what I do."
Hunter said she wasn't even aware she was being considered for the award, too focused on her own work to realize her performance in the classroom was receiving recognition.
With the national award under her belt, Hunter said she "strives to go higher in Harford County" and hopes to one day be a mentor teacher or instructional facilitator.
As for the Milken money, Hunter plans to pay off the rest of her wedding from August, take a nice vacation and, because all teachers need a good night's sleep, a new mattress.
Check back with http://www.exploreharford.com for updates.
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We are proud to announce the 11th international conference "Sustainable Development. Culture. Education" of JTEFS/BBCC (Journal of Teacher Education for Sustainability /Baltic and Black Sea Circle Consortium in Educational Research) and UNESCO Network on Reorienting Teacher Education to Address Sustainability.
The conference is devoted to higher and professional education, the problems of focusing professional education in the context of sustainable development issues, the problems of design and optimization of educational environment in accordance with the needs of modern society.
We invite university professors, young researchers, graduate students, teachers and methodologists from colleges and secondary schools, teachers of additional education institutions. Also we invite experts in the field of interior design and architecture of children educational institutions.
Businesses are under increasing pressure from an on-going economic crisis that is reducing growth opportunities and available resources. Societal concerns increase the need to develop sustainable processes and products, and political leaders must try to balance short with long-term interests. Globalisation offers attractive new markets and also intensifies competitive pressures. The net result of these, and related developments, is an environment where new technologies, products, services and competitors can rapidly have disruptive effects. Business models can no longer be static, moreover they call for on-going innovation, and customers require solutions based on integrated products and services. As companies strive for continuity, the stakes for innovation are rising. Effective innovation strategies are required in order to meet the challenges of ensuring growth in this increasingly open, dynamic and uncertain environment. How to innovate? Where to innovate? Who to innovate for? Who to innovate with?
The types of energy we use and how we use them are central factors in determining to what extent we are moving towards a more sustainable society. Our dependence on nonrenewable fuel causes pollution and environmental degradation. Sustainable development depends on research and development into appropriate, cost effective and cost recoverable technologies and how these new technologies and new energy systems interact with existing economic and social frameworks.
The construction materials industry is a major user of the natural resources. While enormous progress has been made towards sustainability, the scope and opportunities for further improvements are significant. The focus of this conference series is to highlight researches and developments mainly on durability and longevity of construction materials by new and innovative ways.
The 8th International Conference on Geomorphology of the International Association of Geomorphologists (IAG) will take place in Paris at the Cité des Sciences de La Villette from August 27 to 31, 2013. The main topic of this 8th Conference is “Geomorphology and Sustainability”.
Organized by the Groupe Français de Géomorphologie (GFG) and open to all scientists and practitioners, this Conference will include 26 scientific sessions, 5 keynote lectures and one Workshop devoted to Young Geomorphologists.
The conference "UrbanAgiNation" urbanisation | agitation | imagination will examine the Liveability, Productivity, Affordability and Efficiency of our Cities.
The conference takes its theme from the Australian Governments 2011/12 Budget Papers where it stated;
"Three-quarters of Australians live in our 18 major cities (that have populations over 100, 000). While Australians are fortunate to enjoy some of the most liveable cities in the world, our cities face a number of long term challenges: the need to improve productivity growth; provide affordable and accessible housing; create safe community spaces; meet the needs of a growing and ageing population; ensure an inclusive and cohesive society; and address the implications of climate change. The way our cities develop to accommodate future growth and change will be critical to maintaining their status as some of the best cities in the world".
The International Urban Design Conference was established in 2007. Since then over 500 presenters have shared their knowledge in developing a range of themes including, Opportunistic Urban Design 2012, Resilience in Urban Design 2011, Designing the Future 2010, Waves of Change - Cities at Crossroads 2009 and Survival: implementing tomorrow's city 2007.
Whilst retaining the historical coverage on shoreline structures, coastal processes, and design and construction of breakwaters and related structures, the conference will extend the marine energy theme initiated with the 2009 conference; with emphasis on aspects at the civil and coastal engineering interface, such as fluid loadings, resource modelling, interactions with the environment, construction, installation, cabling, servicing and maintenance.
The SB13 Graz conference is part of a major international series of conferences that focus on sustainable building and construction. The series, now on a three-year cycle, has become recognized as the world’s preeminent conference series in this important field.
We invite the submission of academic and practitioner articles of interest to:
a) policymakers in crafting a sustainable domestic and international energy policy;
b) investors in their attempts to value energy as a commodity, as well as energy companies and energy sectors internationally;
c) energy company executives at all levels of energy production and consumption, including the alternative energy;
d) venture capitalists in evaluation the feasibility the energy related projects and startups; and
e) research centers and organizations promoting energy related issues, sustainable development and environment. The scope of the conference is specifically related to the broader trends and themes related to energy policy, energy economics, energy production and consumption, alternative energy, energy technology and innovation, sustainable development, and environment.
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DEFENSE MINISTRY EXPLAINS RECRUITMENT AND CONSCRIPTION POLICY
Taipei, Feb. 24 (CNA) A spokesman for the Ministry of National Defense explained Tuesday the factors involved in charting the nation's military service system in response to presidential candidate Lien Chan's call to make significant changes.
Maj. Gen. Huang Suey-sheng said that while he was a spokesman for the defense ministry, he could not make comments on behalf of the ministry on the particular stances of the candidates running for president; however, he did say that he could respond as an individual.
Kuomintang candidate Lien Chan said in a debate last weekend with President Chen Shui-bian that he advocated a system of recruitment or draft for the armed forces to encourage more career soldiers and said that compulsory military service should be shortened to three months instead of the current 22 months.
Huang said that the ROC military uses four considerations when making its policy on calling and maintaining a standing army.
These are: the size of the enemy threat, the defense budget, the replacement of soldiers at peacetime and reservists that can be mobilized at wartime, and the commitment of the nation's youth to serve.
Huang said the defense ministry has recently studied the conscription and recruitment systems, and that the ministry is already planning to shift the bulk of its forces to recruits, while reservists will mainly be composed of conscripts.
(By Lilian Wu)
|Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list|
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I love that.
I love how comforting that sounds because I really do prefer comfort over discomfort.
I prefer safety over danger.
I prefer the easy life over hardship.
So Christianese sayings like this goes perfect with a faith system that affirms my comfort, my safety, and my well-being.
The only problem with such Christianese saying is that...gosh darn it!...It's not true!!!
Listen to what the Apostle Paul says, "Five times I received from the Jews the forty lashes minus one. Three times I was beaten with rods, once I was stoned (the old fashioned way of getting stoned with stones not the modern way of getting stoned...), three times I was shipwrecked, I spent a night and a day in the open sea, I have been constantly on the move. I have been in danger from rivers, in danger from bandits, in danger from my own countrymen, in danger from Gentiles; in danger in the city, in danger in the country, in danger at the sea; and in danger from false brothers" (2 Corinthians 11:25-26).
Do you think the Apostle Paul would say, "The safest place on earth is to be in the center of the will of God?"
Listen to what Jesus says, "All men will hate you because of me, but he who stands firm to the end will be saved" (Matthew 10:22).
Again, Jesus says, "If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first...If they persecuted me, they will persecute you also" (John 15:18, 20).
1 Peter 4:12 says, "Dear friends, do not be surprised at the painful trial you are suffering, as though something strange were happening to you."
Almost every one of the first disciples were put to death for their faith.
Do you think any one of the first Christians who were put to brutal deaths for their faith would say, "The safest place in the world is the center of the will of God?"
Following Christ is not about our personal safety, comfort, and well-being. It's all about Christ.
Having said all that, the craziest thing is that there is truth to the statement "The safest place in the world is to be in the center of the will of God."
The truth of this statement is that for the one who understands that discipleship is not about personal safety, comfort, and well-being, and that following Christ is all about the glory of Christ, for that individual death is nothing to be scared of.
Death is merely a thing.
Death is merely a thing that allows followers of Jesus Christ to enjoy the glory of eternity with Christ.
And as long as we are here on earth, disciples understand that in all things we are to point to the glory of Christ in both the hard times and the good. Suffering and persecution is just a thing. The main thing is the glory of God.
Death totally loses its sting.
Death loses its power.
And in that sense, the center of the will of God is truly a wonderful place to be.
May we disciples of Jesus Christ be found in the center of the will of God.
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Gee, how many words can the kids make from the word SEAHORSE?
Print this fun Easter activity page for some preschool Easter fun!
A simple Fire Engine maze for preschoolers and developing hand coordination.
Print this sheet for your preschoolers to practice their counting and write their numbers.
How fun! Get ready for the beginning of school by letting the kids make this cute School Bus.
Printable Screentime tracking disks to print and cut out for use with Screentime Chart .
Free printable School Bus coloring page for back to School fun.
New Spanish-English matching word game for learning early vocabulary.
If you've never played Octopus Tag, now is the time to try this fun outdoor game you can play in the backyard.
New - more vocabulary words for beginning Spanish or English learners.
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TOKYO –It’s not clear if South Korean President Lee Myung-bak intended to infuriate Japan, worsen a couple of territorial disputes and complicate U.S. security plans in Asia by picking on a kindly, 78-year-old emperor. But he managed to do it anyway. And that’s not good for anyone.
Japan and South Korea were in a renewed dispute over ownership of a small group of islands in the Sea of Japan last week when Lee declared that if Emperor Akihito wanted to visit South Korea, he would have to agree to apologize “from the bottom of his heart” for excesses during Japan’s colonial rule, which ended in 1945.
The thing is, Akihito had no plans to visit South Korea, and Lee’s remarks were widely perceived in Japan as insulting to the emperor. Akihito is a well-liked and deeply respected figure whose unprecedented television address helped calm the nation in the days following the March 11, 2011, disaster.
Lee’s comments triggered an uncharacteristically strong response from the Japanese.
Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda declared that since the emperor had nothing to do with the islands dispute, Lee’s demand “flies in the face of common sense.” He demanded that Lee retract the statement and apologize to Japan. (By the way, that might have been a diplomatic first: a demand for an apology, for a demand for an apology).
Noda upped the rhetoric by calling on South Korea to end its “illegal occupation” of the tiny islets and hinted at economic reprisals. The islands are called Takeshima in Japan and Dokdo in South Korea.
The issue spilled over to another territorial dispute. Lee’s remarks came on the same day (August 15, the anniversary of Japan’s surrender in World War II) that a group of Chinese protesters landed on the Senkaku islands, known as Diaoyu in China. Those protesters were quickly arrested and sent home, but Noda promised to increase patrols and surveillance around the islands, and issued stern new warnings against Chinese encroachment. It was a stronger reaction than he might otherwise have made if not for the ongoing controversy over the emperor and Takeshima/Dokdo ownership, and brought its own strong rebuke from China.
The Japanese Diet, meanwhile, passed a resolution condemning South Korea’s actions, and another resolution condemning China for encouraging the Senkaku/Diaoyu protesters. Japan controls the Senkaku islands but both Japan and China claim them as sovereign territory.
Sean King, an Asian security analyst with Park Strategies, said it’s unlikely that Lee understood the reaction that his remarks would generate in Japan. More likely, he said, they were directed at voters who will elect a new president this fall. Lee is limited to just one term and his party’s candidate is behind in the polls; anti-Japanese rhetoric is not an uncommon theme in South Korean elections.
“I just think Lee thought it was a throwaway remark, an easy two points at home. South Korea doesn’t have anything like the emperor, so I don’t think he could really relate to how Japanese would take it,” said King, who splits his time between New York and Asia and is a frequent visitor to South Korea.
While a strong diplomatic reaction might have been expected, Japan’s usually reserved public seemed to weigh in strongly, as well.
More than 1,000 protesters assembled outside Noda’s office on Friday, including many who appeared to be unattached to right-wing groups that typically protest anything related to China or Korea. The protesters seemed at least as unhappy with Lee’s remarks about the emperor as his visit to Takeshima/Dokdo a few days earlier. Lee was the first South Korean president to visit the islands while in office; South Korea has maintained a police garrison there since the 1950s.
Elsewhere, more than a few foreign journalists found themselves buttonholed in supermarkets and street corners by Japanese housewives and businessmen eager to express their unhappiness with the South Korean leader.
The controversy comes at a delicate time for U.S. security policy in Asia. The U.S. is shifting 60 percent of its Navy warships and other military forces to the Asia-Pacific region in response to China’s growing military power and aggressive territorial claims. Washington has separate defense treaties with Japan and South Korea, but wants the two countries to increase their security cooperation, particularly in surveillance and missile defense. But in May, a plan to sign two mid-level defense agreements was abruptly called off after opposition leaders accused Lee of being too close to Japan. Lee was born in Osaka and is particularly vulnerable to such accusations.
While Japanese leaders, including emperors Hirohito and Akihito, have made more than 30 statements of apology or expressions of regret for issues related to the war and colonialization over the years, many Asians have doubts about Japan’s sincerity or willingness to honestly face up to past transgressions.
The role and standing of the emperor has changed vastly since the war.
Hirohito was viewed as a direct descendent of the gods and was rarely seen or heard by the public. The first time that ordinary Japanese heard his voice was when he announced Japan’s surrender in 1945, via radio (most couldn’t understand his ornate court language, but they got the message).
Under the post-war constitution, the emperor has little role in governing, but serves as the “the symbol of the state and the unity of the people.”
It’s a pretty strong symbol. Akihito is the 125th emperor in a line that dates back 2,600 years. His birthday, December 23, is a national holiday.
Akihito was 11 when the war ended, and he acceded to the throne in January 1989 after the death of his father, Emperor Hirohito. While he rarely speaks to the press and his public appearances are meticulously stage-managed, he and Empress Michiko – the first commoner to marry into the royal family — are closely followed by much of the Japanese public. Akihito’s television address on March 15, 2011, the first by a Japanese monarch, and the subsequent visit of the royal couple to the disaster zone in northeast Japan, did much to calm public reaction to the triple disaster and raised their standing further.
Lee made his remarks about the emperor to a group of South Korean schoolteachers a few days after visiting Dokdo/Takeshima on August 10. Lee said the emperor would have to go beyond a previous expression of “deepest regrets” for Japan’s 35-year occupation of Korea.
That’s not going to happen. But perhaps a look at an earlier statement by Akihito might ease tensions all around. During a birthday meeting with Japanese reporters in December 2001, Akihito said he felt “a certain kinship with Korea.” Why? Because, Akihito said, the mother of an 8th Century Japanese emperor was herself of Korean ancestry.
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26 June 2012
Crowdsourcing the Development Goals: at TEDGlobal2012
Photo: Ryan Lash
Remember Y2K? Jamie Drummond starts by taking us back to the most anticipated year in human history: 2000. “Remember that? Y2k, the dotcom bubble… the deep-down inchoate yearning that our millennium moment should mean more than a two and some zeros.”
Incredibly, he says, our leaders agreed, and as a result produced the Millenium Development Goals. For the few people who don’t have them memorized (i.e., most people) the goals are basically these: Developing countries pledged to halve death from disease, poverty and hunger by 2015, while the developed countries promised to help them by dropping debt. We’re now approaching the deadline, and we should start to ask the questions, “How did we do? Do we like these big global goals? What should the new goals be? What does the world want?” A lot of progress has been made by the private sector, political leaders, activists and grassroots organizations across the world. There have been incredible results: Life-saving anti-retrovirals have been delivered to 6 million people, up from 50,000. Deaths from malaria have halved. 5 million lives have been saved by innoculations. 5,000 fewer children are dying every day. This, says Drummond, is “living proof of progress worth saving.” Still, there is a lot more to do.
Photos: James Duncan Davidson The overall goals are likely not going to be met. Every year, 7.6 million children die from preventable diseases, and 1.7 are malnourished to point of stunting. But more than that, there are many things not in goals: Sustainable development goals, natural resource goals, equity, transparency, and more. Currently, says Drummond, “Technocrats appointed by the UN and governments are busying themselves redesigning goals, and they’re doing that with the same 20th-century elite topdown closed process.” He is proposing a way to open that up. Unlike in 2000, the web and reality TV connect people from every corner.
He wants to connect people around the world in a giant global poll. This would be a historic first: “A poll and consultation where everyone, everywhere has an equal voice for the very first time.” The first step is to collect core data: commission a scientific poll. Ask 1,001 peopple in every nation what they want the new goals to be; make real efforts to reach the poorest, and put their views at heart of the information; collect baseline data to measure progress. After that, connect it with the big crowd. Finetune options with citizens, and with experts such as doctors, around the world, and find ways to weight options and vote on preferences. Drummond imagines a fantasy coalition of gaming companies, social media and reality TV to engage interest. After all, more people vote in those arenas than in national elections. He cites examples of pieces of this working: Kenya Open Data monitors data on projects in Kenya to make sure they deliver results. And of course, there is Ushahidi, which collects data about emergencies via text and mobile phones. “Citizens on the edge of a network are empowered,” says Drummond, “because the grassroots level forces openness.” In the spirit of that openness, he sates, “I’ve got an agenda.” It’s an agenda driven by concern over long-term trends, which suggest a growing population and growing consumption, which will lead to competing over natural resources.
We are the cavalry Drummond asks us to look at the G20 meeting in Mexico last week, or the Rio+20 summit last week — “both, if we’re honest, a bust.” The world leaders, he says, “can’t get it done, they need our help, they need a cavalry, and it’s not going to come from Mars, it’s going to come from us.” He ran a campaign called “Make poverty history.” Many made fun of the idea, and he agrees it was naive. But he shows a graph showing that extreme poverty, people living on less than $1.25 a day, is on a strongly downward trend. Again, there are 5,000 fewer children dying every day. (In the Q&A afterward, Chris Anderson points out that that effect is huge, but is entirely invisible and not talked about. Drummond agrees, and wishes these results were more widely known.) Sure, says Drummond, it gets harder, with the remaning poor increasingly located in fragile post-conflict states, but he thinks it is possible. “I’m sure that with technological, political and campaigning innovation combined, working as one — we can get this job done.”
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Knock, knock: Qeexo’s technology can tell the difference between your fingertip, nail, or knuckle on a touch screen.
As smartphones skyrocketed in popularity, we got used to using our fingertips to navigate their touch screens with pokes, taps, swipes, and two-finger pinches. There’s more to our fingers than just the tips, though, and a startup called Qeexo aims to take advantage of this with technology that can differentiate between fingertips, nails, and knuckles.
The San Jose, California-based company’s technology, called FingerSense, can be used to do things like bring up a menu of options (akin to right-clicking on a mouse) on an e-mail with the knock of a knuckle, or enable new kinds of controls in games. Currently in talks with phone manufacturers, Qeexo hopes to have FingerSense installed in smartphones within a year.
Qeexo was spun out of Carnegie Mellon University, where it began several years ago as a research project of computer-human interaction graduate students Chris Harrison and Julia Schwarz. Harrison has already gained notice for his work in touch-screen technology—at Disney Research, he helped develop Touché, which can make nearly anything a computer-input device (see “Innovators Under 35: Chris Harrison, 28”).
Initially, the idea that morphed into Qeexo was meant to be used for detecting different types of styluses used on a large touch screen—a surface built by modifying a large, backlit Ikea table.
The project got them thinking about how such technology could be used to differentiate between different parts of the finger on a smartphone screen. Poking and swiping have been common on these devices since Apple released the first iPhone in 2007, but certain functions that should be easily pulled up across multiple apps—such as copying and pasting—have remained clumsy, so it seemed ripe for innovation.
“We don’t go around the world poking at it,” Harrison says. “I couldn’t even get out of this room if all I could do was poke.”
They shrunk down and refined their technology, packing it in a prototype they made by modifying a Samsung smartphone.
Qeexo’s technology relies in part on an acoustic sensor that can capture the sounds—mechanical vibrations—made by different types of on-screen touches from the different parts of a finger. Software on the phone, which has been trained with multiple people to tell the difference between various touches, uses information gathered by the acoustic sensor, along with data like where the touch occurred and how big it was, to make an educated guess about how a person is touching the screen.
I met up with Harrison and Schwarz in San Jose, where they showed me demos of several apps built to showcase their technology on the aforementioned Samsung smartphone. A drawing app allows you to draw with the tip of a handheld stylus, erase with its opposite rubber end, smudge the picture with your finger, and knock twice with your knuckle to bring up a new page. A photo-viewing app allows the user to knuckle-tap on an image to pull up a menu with options to do things like print, e-mail, or delete that photo.
Their version of the popular game Fruit Ninja requires the user to knock with a knuckle to crack a coconut, squish berries with a fingertip, slice bananas with a nail, or tap the screen with two knuckles simultaneously to clear a bunch of fruit at once. It was tricky to get the knack of all the different touches—I’m a Fruit Ninja whiz, but even I had a hard time with the modified game. Still, the technology worked quite well—for the most part, it accurately and speedily identified each touch.
But it may be a while before such technology is common.
Creative Strategies analyst Ben Bajarin says people are still getting used to using touch screens and multi-touch functions. He also points out that a number of parties will have to participate for something like FingerSense to become popular—not just handset makers and Qeexo itself, but software developers, too.
“It just takes time for ecosystems like that to develop and get on board. I’d say a few years at a minimum, but we’re probably looking at longer than that,” he says.
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In 1983, when John Sculley was 43, he had a choice. He could remain head of Pepsi-Cola Co. and jockey with several other executives to be named successor to then-PepsiCo Chief Executive Donald Kendall in a typical corporate executive shootout. Or, as Apple's Steve Jobs put it to him then, he could give up selling "sugar water" and "come with me and change the world."
Sculley's choice would prove life-changing for both Jobs and the East-Coast soda executive. He took the gamble to join Apple as its CEO, never knowing that Jobs, then 28, himself wanted the job, but had been denied it by the Apple board due to his temperamental nature and relative lack of managerial experience.
What began as a close and happy partnership degenerated into an irreparable business dispute. Jobs left Apple in 1985 only to return 12 years later after Sculley had been fired for refusing to license Apple's operating system and subsequent management nearly bankrupted the company. Since then, Sculley has been making personal investments in private, new ventures.
FINS talked to Sculley, 71, about the time in his career he calls "the experience of a lifetime," his meteoric rise at Pepsi, the satisfaction of taking risks and what he's up to today.
Janet Guyon: What are you doing now?
John Sculley: I am a mentor to several entrepreneurs who are building very successful private companies and I am helping them as advisors as they build their companies. All of them are in companies that are at transformational moments. My role is largely to help them understand their opportunities and risk by seeing the business in more than one way.
I invest in these companies personally and act as a rainmaker, helping them by opening doors, recruiting talent and closing deals. I focus on opportunities in health care, financial services and Internet-based businesses. I look for opportunities that are poised for a transformation of their sales channel to create a better customer experience.
It is the most fun and the best time I have had in my life. I don't have to manage any of these companies -- being the executive in charge is incredibly stressful even in the most successful companies. Being a mentor allows me to take a deep dive into what is important, but without the responsibility of making the decisions and actually running the company.
JG: Did you have mentors? Who were they?
JS: I had mentors, but mentors are very different today than they were in my era. They weren't nearly as involved and hands-on as a good mentor is today. Mentoring in the past was looking at someone as a role model and saying "I want to be like that person."
Mentoring now is much more of a day-in-day-out friendship and conversation, so it's entirely different.
There is no bright line for me between work and fun. Most people my age are retired; I just don't have any interest in being retired. But I also have no interest in being the chief executive officer.
One of my first principles is, I only do business with friends. One thing I learned in business is you have to be able to trust people and friendship is an outcome of trust.
The advantage of being a mentor now is I don't have any other agenda, I don't want anybody's job. I never think about superimposing my vision on a CEO I'm mentoring.
JG: Let's go back to 1983, when you made the decision to go to Apple. Many people on the East Coast thought you were crazy to give up the chance to run PepsiCo and move to Silicon Valley, which was much less developed than it is today.
JS: Let me give you some context.
I had graduated from Wharton and I was the first MBA that Pepsi ever hired. I joined Pepsi when it had under $600 million in revenue, it was still a very small company. I was put into jobs that I wasn't really qualified for because the Pepsi management bench was very thin. It was like a high-wire act experience because I didn't know what I didn't know. But these were great opportunities for me and I managed to succeed.
So I became head of product development in my twenties and we developed the first plastic bottle. I became vice president of marketing when I was 30. Then I became head of the U.S. company-owned soft- drink bottling plants.
But my real interest was working in an entrepreneurial-type business.
So I asked to be transferred from heading the U.S. sales and marketing operations to a start-up business, which was called PepsiCo Foods International. My job was to build the Frito-Lay business outside the U.S. That was the best job I had at Pepsi, until I was brought back in 1978 and made CEO of Pepsi-Cola Co., the soft drink subsidiary. I loved international business and never really wanted to come back to head Pepsi-Cola in the U.S.
After five years, we had passed Coke as the largest selling consumer packaged goods company in the U.S. and I still longed to get back to something more entrepreneurial.
So when I was contacted by Gerry Roche of Heidrick & Struggles about Apple, I was very intrigued. The timing came at a moment when I was thinking of what I wanted to do next.
The other context is I had seen one of the first spreadsheets developed for an Apple II computer after being invited to Harvard Business School to talk to a class about the Pepsi Challenge. When that product was commercialized in the early 1980s, I bought every Pepsi bottler an Apple computer and told them they could have it for free as long as they sent us their sales reports on a floppy disk every week. This greatly condensed the time it took us to get sales reports.
And that was about all I knew about personal computers when I was recruited to Apple.
JG: How were you thinking about Apple from a career perspective? Did you think that would build your career?
JS: What has always driven me is curiosity. While I knew very little about personal computers, I became very curious about why Steve Jobs and other bright people thought that PCs were going to change the world.
I have always been a risk taker. I like being on the edge of change. I think there are different kinds of executives. There are those who are really great managers. I'm not one of those. I've always tried to recruit people who are better managers than me.
I am an idea-driven person. So I found the challenges of Apple particularly intriguing. What they needed was someone who could keep the Apple II computer, which was a cash machine, commercially alive for three more years because Steve Jobs was still a year away from introducing the Macintosh. In 1983, Apple was outsold by each Atari and Commodore by 2-to-1. The IBM PC had been introduced a year-and-a-half earlier and was gaining momentum.
Keeping the Apple II alive didn't require someone to know much about computer technology, it required someone who knew something about how to market and sell a near end-of-life product.
There are moments of transformation in one's career. When you seek alignment between your own interest to grow and be transformed and you get the opportunity to play a key role in an industry that is in the process of transforming. This was one of those key transformational moments.
JG: You said you aren't a great manager. What makes a great manager?
JS: Really good managers want to turn one-off projects into as much of a routine process as they can. I am a project-centric leader. I like to work on projects and solve tough problems. Whereas a really good manager will say, "How do we replicate the processes so that when a problem comes up like this again we can routinely solve it?"
That is a very different skill set. It takes both to run a successful company.
I always tried to complement my creative problem-solving skills with people on my team who had more process and management skills, so as a team we were very successful. It's important to understand what you are really good at and weak at so you can fill out the leadership team with all the needed talent to be successful.
JG: Was it the right move to go to Apple?
JS: I was fascinated with what was going on in Silicon Valley. I was the first corporate executive recruited from outside the industry. There was very little movement from the East Coast. And it was unprecedented for someone to come to a high-profile Silicon Valley company without a technical background.
On the one hand, it was hugely stimulating, it was a great learning process working with Steve Jobs.
But I wasn't conscious until years later how skeptical people were that I would last. There were actually bets that I wouldn't last at Apple for more than a year because they felt the cultural change was too hard to make.
I never regretted making the move. I would have wondered for the rest of my life what I would have missed. It appealed to all the things that were important to me: small teams, transformational moments, learning entirely new businesses.
I was never recruited to be the visionary for the products. That was Steve's role.
JG: What did you think your role was?
JS: I saw Apple in a market-share battle with companies like IBM. Just as I had been in the cola wars at Pepsi and we did very well, now I was joining the PC wars where we would be the first technology company to market and sell a technical product like we would a consumer product.
What I didn't really understand at the time was that tech products go through dramatic life-cycles, that products which are successful one year can go out of business the next year. That building a successful personal computer company is as much about building a platform that will attract the best software application developers as it is about selling cool designed PCs.
The majority of time I was at Apple, I was basically focused on delivering the same kind of performance metrics that I delivered at Pepsi. So, for example, when I joined Apple we had just achieved $570 million of revenue in 1982 and we were No. 3 in market share. When I left Apple in 1993, we had reached $8.3 billion in revenue, Macintosh was the No. 1 selling PC hardware product in the world, Apple was the most profitable PC hardware company in the world and we had $2 billion of cash.
What I didn't appreciate was that in a tech company there are entirely different metrics that are even more important, like what is the life-cycle of the tech platform you are on? Will there be a game change in the industry that would make obsolete what you are doing?
JG: So the key to success is really knowing your business?
JS: The lesson is you can only understand something when you understand it more than one way. Market share, cash flow, strength of balance sheet, these things are very measurable.
Another way to understand a tech company is through the lens of its technology and where it stood in terms of its patent profile, its business model, and new breakthrough changes in alternative technology approaches.
There is a very thin line between success and failure. Companies that are wildly successful today can be victims of their success only a few years later. You have to have a plan that will not only lead you through success but will help you deal with the challenges when you get in trouble and find yourself on the wrong side of the line between success and failure. In the tech world, you are constantly exposed to changes you have no control over.
JG: Were you a mentor to Steve or was he a mentor to you?
JS: We were learning from each other. He was learning from me about "experience marketing," how to sell consumer products, how you run a much bigger company and how you recruit people from outside your industry.
I was clearly learning from a visionary genius how he created incredible products. Everything he did was about creating magic. That is his great gift.
JG: Two years after you came to Apple, Steve left after the board removed him as head of the Macintosh division. How was it for you when he left?
JS: My assumption when I joined Apple was Steve and I would be partners and he would be the visionary.
When I was alone at the top, that was not something I had ever expected. I had to turn to other people to do things that Steve could do instinctively. I didn't have the natural instincts of how to create computer products that Steve did.
After Steve left, we continued to follow his first principles that you build products that start with the user experience and they must be complete end-to-end systems. It was still about magic.
I tried to follow his principles. And not licensing our software platform was an important principle as it gave us the ability to build better PCs and make trade-offs between hardware and software, often giving us a two- or three-year time advantage over competition.
JG: You haven't spoken to Steve since you left Apple, or rather, he hasn't spoken to you.
JS: It is still a very painful story because we were not just business colleagues, we were good friends. We spent a tremendous amount of time together.
I think the separation was driven by Steve being in a real funk because the Macintosh, which he developed, was failing in early 1985. His vision was ahead of its time, the power of the microprocessor wasn't enough to do what he wanted to do and Mac sales were falling off.
We were still very dependent on the profits of Apple II. I felt we had to push profits of Apple II and Steve wanted to lower the price of the Mac to get sales up. We went to the board to decide.
The board made a decision and they asked Steve to step down as head of the Macintosh division. He still remained as chairman of the board.
But that was an incredible blow to the man who created the product, he was extremely hurt and pained by it.
To me, coming from corporate America, I was used to people being moved from job to job, because that's how it worked. Professional executives were reassigned, terminated, promoted all the time.
That's not what you do with founders of companies.
Steve and I had a legitimate difference of opinion. But the emotional blow of the board asking him to step down from his role leading the Mac division was incredibly hurtful to him. I didn't fully appreciate how painful that had to have been.
In hindsight, I think the board could have played a better role mentoring both of us. We might have been able to come up with a solution.
JG: What did Steve do then?
JS: He went off on sabbatical and some months later he came back and resigned from the company and took five executives with him and started the NeXt computer company.
I appreciate more today that Apple was never just a business to Steve. Apple is Steve Jobs and Steve Jobs is Apple. That was entirely different from anything I had experienced coming out of Pepsi.
So that has gone on for 25 years and we have not had contact.
JG: Have you reached out?
JS: In the past I tried, and he never had any interest in re-engaging. He clearly blames me.
JG: How would you handle a situation like that today?
JS: It is almost impossible for a young executive who wasn't in business in the early 1980s to understand how different cultures were, how different communications were, how different organizations were from what we know today.
Companies then were run hierarchically. The way they ran was almost exactly the way they looked on an organizational chart. People only had the information they needed to do their jobs, there was no email, cellphones or personal computers.
Corporate America was not only large and structured, but extremely competitive. People were being measured and competed with one another all the time.
My experience was coming out of the East Coast and a corporate structure.
Steve was a guy willing to create his own rules and a genius at creating his own industry. I had never met anyone like that before. I only have more and more admiration for Steve as time goes on.
I wish Steve and I hadn't had a falling out. I wish I had gone back to Steve and said, "This is your company, let's figure out how you can come back and be CEO." I wish I had thought of that. But you can't change history.
JG: You often call Steve a visionary. What makes a visionary CEO?
JS: Visionary CEOs need permission to fail. But they also need to be so in touch with internal details that they can quickly recognize when something isn't working and then have the leadership talent to adjust in-flight. Unfortunately, successful CEOs usually live in a bubble with people telling them what they want to hear. Successful CEOs often become victims of their own success. It's so easy to misinterpret why you are successful. Good luck is incredibly important.
Visionary CEOs are also optimists, they have incredible curiosity. They never give up. If they fail, they try to learn from the experience and start again.
JG: What would you tell someone coming out of Wharton now?
JS: Go work for a private company and look for an industry which is attracting really bright, talented people who you will compete with and who you will also learn from.
Look for companies that have identified a big, juicy problem to solve and have turned it into a noble cause.
Private companies are small and their only reason for being is to innovate. Large companies exist to scale, so middle managers are empowered to say "No," but not to say "Yes."
And the companies might not be in the U.S. I think a lot of the future will happen outside the U.S., in Asia or in South America.
There wasn't such a choice when I got out of business school, there wasn't venture capital or start-up companies.
If I were graduating today, I would never have gone to work for a large corporation, even one the size of PepsiCo.
Write to Janet Guyon at email@example.com
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The 39-year-old McLean man who jumped in front of a packed train at Clarendon station on the Orange Line a week ago remained alive Monday, hospitalized in intensive care with critical injuries including head trauma and broken bones.
He is one of 24 people who have been hit by Metro trains in suicide attempts since January 2009, according to agency figures. At least three others have jumped to their deaths from Metro parking garages in the past two years.
|The American Association of Suicidology says the best intervention comes before a person heads to the subway. The group urges friends, family and co-workers to take seriously warning signs that include:|
|» Increased alcohol or drug use|
|» No reason for living or lack of sense of purpose|
|» Anxiety, agitation, unable to sleep or sleeping all the time|
|» Withdrawal from friends, family and society|
|Call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline's toll-free number, 800-273-TALK (8255), for direct help or guidance on how to intervene.|
Metro, which has become a target for people who want to end their lives, has started training workers on how to intervene before suicidal riders get to the tracks. It also plans an outreach campaign to help distressed riders. But it has been slow to begin such efforts, despite promising to reach out two years ago and setting aside $250,000 for the work.
In September 2009, after two teens killed themselves days apart, Metro said it planned to partner with a regional coalition of suicide prevention groups to stop a spike in deaths first reported by The Washington Examiner. Yet it changed plans and missed various deadlines.
In September 2010, the board of directors approved $250,000 to be spent on prevention efforts, approving a one-year program with two one-year options.
This summer, nearly two years after the initial pledge, the agency began training workers. Metro has trained about 160 station managers and train operators out of about 960 workers in those positions, said spokesman Dan Stessel.
It also plans to post suicide hotline numbers in rail stations next year, he said.
The training teaches workers to pay attention to riders pacing back and forth, looking nervous or sweating, walking close to the edge or checking out the station, then coming back again.
Metro is trying to accelerate the training to get more of the frontline workers through the two-hour session, Stessel said. It also hopes to include the prevention training in the re-certification classes that rail workers take every two years.
"If someone is determined to do harm to themselves, there's nothing you can do to stop them," he added. "That said, we hope the training will lead to intervention."
Some train operators and station managers have been able to save riders' lives. One station manager stopped a man on Christmas Eve in 2008, convincing him to climb back onto the platform from the tracks.
The suicide attempts -- and deaths -- have untold costs for Metro, its riders and its workers. In the short term, the attempts delay thousands of commuters as happened last Tuesday when rail service was shut down on the Orange Line at rush hour. But they also frequently traumatize the train operators whose trains hit the riders, plus the medical workers and clean-up crews, with some needing counseling and medical leave.
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Physics Update residential courses occur three times a year in various university physics departments around the UK and are aimed at specialist physics teachers. New teacher, Richard Wood, shares his experiences of the most recent course.
“Having just finished my PGCE and found my first job, I attended my first Summer Physics Update course at the University of Bristol from 8 to 10 July. Unsure of what to expect, what I actually found was a fantastic opportunity to gain ideas and share experiences on physics teaching.
The structure of the weekend centred on a number of lectures interspersed with workshops, with pre-dinner talks on the Friday and Saturday evenings. The lectures were on a variety of topics including: sudden phase changes, the science of volcanoes, Isambard Kingdom Brunel, and the science of taste and flavour. My personal favourite was the talk by Dr Diane Aston, from the Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining, giving vivid demonstrations of innovative materials such as shape memory alloy and jet engine turbine blades (I’m a sucker for jet engines!).
The hands-on workshops also provided excellent opportunities for encountering new resources or teaching ideas. Dr Matthew French, from Clifton College, led a session on the uses of liquid nitrogen. This workshop included superconductors and provided a demonstration of levitation that I had wanted to see again ever since I first saw it on Tomorrow’s World in the 1980s.
Dr Neil Downie provided demos of several experiments, several of which would be ideal for a science club project, for example, making bazookas from vacuum cleaners and plumbing pipes. The workshop on the Science Enhancement Programme’s resources demonstrated the use of some of their specialist equipment. The fourth workshop showed us the possibilities of putting cosmic ray detectors on the roof of our schools.
Which was the part I enjoyed most? The TeachMeet session: where many teachers shared their own classroom ideas with the rest of the group. I’ll be sharing some of mine next time! I enjoyed myself thoroughly and took away a great number of resources, new ideas and new contacts and will certainly be attending the next one.”
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It's the Clark Kent of oxide compounds, and - on its own - it is pretty boring. But slice europium titanate nanometers thin and physically stretch it, and then it takes on super hero-like properties that could revolutionize electronics, according to new Cornell research. (Nature, Aug. 19, 2010.)
Researchers report that thin films of europium titanate become both ferroelectric (electrically polarized) and ferromagnetic (exhibiting a permanent magnetic field) when stretched across a substrate of dysprosium scandate, another type of oxide. The best simultaneously ferroelectric, ferromagnetic material to date pales in comparison by a factor of 1,000.
Simultaneous ferroelectricity and ferromagnetism is rare in nature and coveted by electronics visionaries. A material with this magical combination could form the basis for low-power, highly sensitive magnetic memory, magnetic sensors or highly tunable microwave devices.
The search for ferromagnetic ferroelectrics dates back to 1966, when the first such compound - a nickel boracite - was discovered. Since then, scientists have found a few additional ferromagnetic ferroelectrics, but none stronger than the nickel compound - that is, until now.
"Previous researchers were searching directly for a ferromagnetic ferroelectric - an extremely rare form of matter," said Darrell Schlom, Cornell professor of materials science and engineering, and an author on the paper.
"Our strategy is to use first-principles theory to look among materials that are neither ferromagnetic nor ferroelectric, of which there are many, and to identify candidates that, when squeezed or stretched, will take on these properties," said Craig Fennie, assistant professor of applied and engineering physics, and another author on the paper.
This fresh strategy, demonstrated using the europium titanate, opens the door to other ferromagnetic ferroelectrics that may work at even higher temperatures using the same materials-by-design strategy, the researchers said.
Other authors include David A. Muller, Cornell professor of applied and engineering physics; and first author June Hyuk Lee, a graduate student in Schlom's lab.
The researchers took an ultra-thin layer of the oxide and "stretched" it by placing it on top of the disprosium compound. The crystal structure of the europium titanate became strained because of its tendency to align itself with the underlying arrangement of atoms in the substrate.
Fennie's previous theoretical work had indicated that a different kind of material strain - more akin to squishing by compression - would also produce ferromagnetism and ferroelectricity. But the team discovered that the stretched europium compound displayed electrical properties 1,000 times better than the best-known ferroelectric/ferromagnetic material thus far, translating to thicker, higher-quality films.
This new approach to ferromagnetic ferroelectrics could prove a key step toward the development of next-generation memory storage, superb magnetic field sensors and many other applications long dreamed about. But commercial devices are a long way off; no devices have yet been made using this material. The Cornell experiment was conducted at an extremely cold temperature - about 4 degrees Kelvin (-452 Fahrenheit). The team is already working on materials that are predicted to show such properties at much higher temperatures.
Explore further: Promising doped zirconia
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Last name: Spering
This unusual surname is of Anglo-Saxon origin, and is a patronymic form of the surname Spear, which derives from the Olde English pre 7th Century personal byname "Spere", originally denoting either a tall, thin person, or one skilled in the use of the hunting spear. In part it may also have been a metonymic occupational name for a maker of spears. Early recordings of the surname from this source include: Walter Speare (Somerset, 1185), and Henry Spere (Lancashire, 1246). Nicknames were given in the first instance with reference to a variety of personal characteristics, such as physical attributes or peculiarities, and also to habits of dress and occupation. The Olde English suffix "ing", when attached to a personal name, means "sons, descendants" or "dependent men of". In the modern idiom the patronymic forms of the name appear as: Spiring, Spering, Sperring and Spearing. On December 18th 1552, Richard Spering, an infant, was christened in Whittington, Gloucestershire, and on September 8th 1677, Mary, daughter of Thomas Spearing, was christened in Evenlode, Gloucestershire. A Coat of Arms granted to the Spearing family is a silver shield with three pellets in fess between two red bars dancettee, the Crest being a ship under sail proper on a globe. The first recorded spelling of the family name is shown to be that of Agnes Spiryng or Spiring, which was dated October 31st 1539, marriage to Nicholas Bowerman, at Trull, Somerset, during the reign of King Henry V111, known as "Bluff King Hal", 1509 - 1547. Surnames became necessary when governments introduced personal taxation. In England this was known as Poll Tax. Throughout the centuries, surnames in every country have continued to "develop" often leading to astonishing variants of the original spelling.
© Copyright: Name Origin Research www.surnamedb.com 1980 - 2013
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Oregon lighthouses are the longest standing legacy of the state's maritime history. They have weathered more than a century of ferocious storms. Their lights continue to shine brightly, guiding mariners through treacherous waters. The men and women who tended the lights seldom received recognition for their efforts. Many times storms forced the keepers to turn the prisms by hand until the first rays of morning light when repairs could be made.
Seven of Oregon's lighthouses are open to the public, thanks to the many volunteers, public agencies, Native American Indian Tribes and non-profit organizations who are preserving this heritage. We will also visit interpretive and discovery centers along the way. Our guided tour of Oregon lighthouses will give you only a glimpse into their historic past. The rest is for you to discover.
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December 16, 2011
Fermilab to Build Illinois Accelerator Research Center
Batavia, Ill. — A new accelerator research facility being built at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory will bolster Illinois’ reputation as a technology hub and foster job creation.
The Illinois Accelerator Research Center (IARC) at the Department of Energy’s Fermilab will provide a state-of-the-art facility for research, development and industrialization of particle accelerator technology. The design and construction of IARC is jointly funded by DOE and the State of Illinois.
"In Illinois we understand the importance of investing in cutting edge technologies, which not only boost our economy, but also secure our role as a major competitor in the global marketplace," said Governor Quinn. "The best minds in the world are right here, and today we are investing in our future by ensuring that the latest groundbreaking particle research activities will continue to come from Illinois."
A major focus of IARC will be to develop partnerships with private industry for the commercial and industrial application of accelerator technology for energy and the environment, medicine, industry, national security and discovery science. IARC will also offer unique advanced educational opportunities to a new generation of Illinois engineers and scientists and attract top scientists from around the world.
Located in the heart of the industrial area of the Fermilab campus, IARC will house 42,000 square feet of technical, office and educational space for scientists and engineers from Fermilab, DOE’s Argonne National Laboratory, local universities and industrial partners.
"The IARC facility will help fuel innovation by developing advanced technologies, strengthening ties with industry and training the scientists of tomorrow," said Dr. William F. Brinkman, Director of DOE’s Office of Science, one of the speakers at today’s groundbreaking. "The Department of Energy welcomes the opportunity to partner with the State of Illinois and looks forward to seeing IARC come to fruition."
The superstars of the particle accelerator world are the giant research accelerators such as the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland and Fermilab’s Tevatron, which was permanently shut down in September. Behind the headlines, about 30,000 accelerators are at work around the world in industry, medicine, security, defense and science. All the products that are processed, treated or inspected by particle beams have an estimated annual value of more than $500 billion.
Today’s particle accelerators address many of the challenges confronting our nation in the areas of sustainable energy, a cleaner environment, economic security, health care and national defense. The accelerators of tomorrow have the potential to make still greater contributions. Other nations are already applying these next-generation technologies to current-generation issues, and challenging U.S. leadership in accelerator innovation. The U.S., which has traditionally led the world in the development and application of accelerator technology, now finds its leadership threatened.
"A focused effort and strengthened partnerships between government and industry are required for the United States to remain competitive in accelerator science and technology," said Fermilab Director Pier Oddone. "IARC will greatly enhance accelerator research and innovation at Fermilab and strengthen our capability to host new international projects. We will also broaden our economic impact on Illinois by working with industry and universities on advanced R&D with many commercial and scientific applications."
The Illinois Jobs Now! capital bill provided $20 million to the Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity to fund a grant for the design and construction of a new building that will form part of the IARC complex.
"The IARC facility positions Illinois at the forefront of the world-wide effort to develop cutting-edge accelerator technologies," said Warren Ribley, Director of the Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity, another speaker at today’s groundbreaking. "It also reinforces the Quinn Administration’s commitment to supporting innovation in Illinois, as well as the creation of 200 high-tech jobs in addition to construction jobs."
The DOE is also providing $13 million to Fermilab to refurbish an existing heavy industrial building that will be incorporated into the complex, adding 36,000 square feet of specialized workspace.
More information about the Illinois Accelerator Research Center is available at: http://www.fnal.gov/pub/IARC
To learn more about the applications of particle accelerators, visit: http://www.acceleratorsamerica.org/
Fermilab is a national laboratory supported by the Office of Science of the U.S. Department of Energy, operated under contract by Fermi Research Alliance, LLC.
The Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity raises Illinois' profile as a global business destination and nexus of innovation. It provides a foundation for the economic prosperity of all Illinoisans, through the coordination of business recruitment and retention, infrastructure building and job training efforts, and administration of state and federal grant programs.
DOE’s Office of Science is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the Unites States, and is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, please visit the Office of Science website at science.energy.gov.
|last modified 12/16/2011 e-mail Fermilab|
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MI Districts Join Renewable Energy Purchase Initiative
- By Dian Schaffhauser
Clean Green Energy (CGE) announced that eight more high school districts in Michigan's Upper Peninsula have signed long-term power purchase agreements for integrated renewable energy systems at their schools as part of the Project EverGREEN Schools program. That makes a total of 16 schools in the region participating in the goal to introduce renewable energy into schools. The latest additions are Iron Mountain Public Schools, Brimley Area Schools, DeTour Area Schools, Pickford Public Schools, Rudyard Area Schools, Mid-Peninsula School, Munising Public Schools, and North Central Area Schools.
CGE is a group of companies that collaborate to design and develop renewable energy projects that may involve wind, solar, storage, efficiency, demand-side management, and other technologies. CGE's typical practice is to own, install, maintain, and operate the system at the customer's facility and sell all electricity to the school's facility at or slightly below existing retail rates. Schools incur no capital costs.
"The Project EverGREEN Schools program provides a hands-on learning experience teaching energy literacy to our students and community," said Iron Mountain Public Schools Superintendent Dennis Chartier. "Our graduates will be better prepared to face the challenges of diminished resources and capable of finding solutions through renewable energy generation/distribution and efficiency options. CGE makes this all possible by reducing our costs and providing student scholarships."
Project EverGREEN Schools was a program created by CGE and transferred last fall to Partners GREEN (Group for a Renewable Energy Efficient Nation), a nonprofit organization that provides formation and resources on renewable energy, energy efficiency, environment, and climate literacy in the school sector.
Dian Schaffhauser is a writer who covers technology and business for a number of publications. Contact her at firstname.lastname@example.org.
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16. Those that refuse to place the Sage aloft in the Intellectual Realm but drag him down to the accidental, dreading accident for him, have substituted for the Sage we have in mind another person altogether; they offer us a tolerable sort of man and they assign to him a life of mingled good and ill, a case, after all, not easy to conceive. But admitting the possibility of such a mixed state, it could not be deserved to be called a life of happiness; it misses the Great, both in the dignity of Wisdom and in the integrity of Good. The life of true happiness is not a thing of mixture. And Plato rightly taught that he who is to be wise and to possess happiness draws his good from the Supreme, fixing his gaze on That, becoming like to That, living by That.
He can care for no other Term than That: all else he will attend to only as he might change his residence, not in expectation of any increase to his settled felicity, but simply in a reasonable attention to the differing conditions surrounding him as he lives here or there.
He will give to the body all that he sees to be useful and possible, but he himself remains a member of another order, not prevented from abandoning the body, necessarily leaving it at nature's hour, he himself always the master to decide in its regard.
Thus some part of his life considers exclusively the Soul's satisfaction; the rest is not immediately for the Term's sake and not for his own sake, but for the thing bound up with him, the thing which he tends and bears with as the musician cares for his lyre, as long as it can serve him: when the lyre fails him, he will change it, or will give up lyre and lyring, as having another craft now, one that needs no lyre, and then he will let it rest unregarded at his side while he sings on without an instrument. But it was not idly that the instrument was given him in the beginning: he has found it useful until now, many a time.
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Prime Minister David Cameron was on Friday reported to be considering a BBC-style Royal Charter to create an independent press watchdog in the wake of the Leveson report whose key recommendation — a statutory regulatory mechanism — has been rejected by the government.
A Royal Charter, it is thought, would ensure that the new body is completely independent of the newspaper industry as its terms cannot be altered without the government’s approval. It would also protect the press from government interference — as in the case of the BBC.
Royal Charters have been used to establish a number of independent institutions including the Bank of England and various Royal Colleges.
Downing Street said the government was considering “a range of options” to make sure that the public had confidence in a new regulator.
“What we want to achieve is a proper independent regulator which commands the confidence of the public”, said the Prime Minister’s official spokesmancommenting on a report in The Daily Telegraph.
At a meeting with Editors, Mr. Cameron warned them that the government would be forced to act if they did not come up with a credible alternative to the Leveson proposal. The “clock is ticking away,” he told them.
Within hours, the Editors announced that they had agreed on a broad framework for an independent regulator that would meet 40 of Lord Leveson’s 47 recommendations.
“The editors of all national newspapers met yesterday and unanimously agreed to start putting in place the broad proposals — save the statutory underpinning — for the independent self-regulatory system laid out by Lord Justice Leveson,” they said in a statement after a breakfast meeting described by one Editor as “historic”.
“What happened this morning was really quite remarkable. I’ve never seen anything like it in my time as a journalist,” Chris Blackhurst, Editor of The Independent, told the BBC, stressing the spirit of cooperation in which the meeting was held.
Details of the proposed mechanism were not known but, according to The Guardian whose Editor Alan Rusbridger was among those who attended the high-profile meeting, the “agreement in principle is to create an independent body, with a chair appointed by a board — a majority of whom are separate from the press”.
“The proposed body will have the power to handle complaints, direct corrections, initiate investigations, levy fines of upto to £1 million and, if the government can play its part, run a cheap libel and privacy tribunal system that takes over the functions of the court,” said the paper.
Victims of media abuses, however, insisted on full implementation of the Leveson report — as did the opposition Labour Party and the Prime Minister’s coalition partners, the Liberal Democrats.
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SCALGO has reorganized its software packages portfolio, while also introducing significant new functionality, such that the portfolio now includes software packages SCALGO Model, SCALGO Topology, SCALGO Hydrology and SCALGO Utility. The software packages have successfully been used to process terrain data sets with more than 50 billion data elements on a normal desktop computer.
SCALGO Model is used to construct raster and TIN terrain models from massive terrain points. SCALGO Topology can be used to analyze and simplify the topology of massive raster terrain models, and SCALGO Hydrology contains tools to perform basic hydrological modeling on massive raster terrain models. SCALGO Utility can be used for efficient manipulation and conversion of massive terrain and point data sets.
All SCALGO software can be run through a standalone graphical user-interface or from within ArcGIS and also include an ArcGIS viewer that allows for easy visualization of the output of many of the SCALGO modules.
Information about SCALGO technology, products and services can be found at http://scalgo.com. Future information about SCALGO products and services can also be received directly through Twitter and Facebook.
Illustration showing a section of the result of computing the volume of depressions (including depressions inside depressions) using the SCALGO Topology Depression Mapping module on a high-resolution 13000km² raster terrain model. Each cell in a depression is marked with the volume of the depression below the cell. In this figure green cells have high volume, yellow cells medium volume and red cells very low volume. The map can be used in a rough risk assessment where the value in each cell indicates the volume of water that needs to flow to the depression before the cell is under water. The raster elevation model has been hydrological conditioned using the SCALGO Utility Burn module to add buildings and cut bridges and the SCALGO Topology Topological Simplification module was used to remove spurious depressions. The figure also shows the river network as computed by the SCALGO Hydrology Flow Accumulation module.
Scalable Algorithmics (SCALGO) was founded in 2009 with the mission to bring cutting-edge massive terrain data processing technology to market. The SCALGO technology is based on more than two decades of basic and applied research on I/O-efficient and geometric algorithms at Center for Massive Data Algorithmics (MADALGO) at Aarhus University in Denmark and at Duke University in the US, in collaboration with industry LiDAR and environmental GIS application experts. Software based on the technology can handle much larger terrain data sets on a normal desktop than most current software and thus it eliminates the need for accuracy-decreasing data thinning. The use of novel mathematical and algorithmic techniques also means that the software works provably efficient on all input data sets, delivering a completely specified output without the use of cumbersome workflows such as those introduced by data tiling. SCALGO is involved in multiple research projects and offer special pricing for academic institutions. SCALGO also offers special non-commercial pricing for national, regional and local governments.
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A breathing machine (ventilator) is usually needed to send pressure to the lungs to keep the baby's lung tissue inflated, and to deliver more oxygen. Pressures and oxygen levels are slowly reduced. After being weaned from the ventilator, the infant may continue to get oxygen by a mask or nasal tube for several weeks or months.
Infants with BPD are usually fed by tubes inserted into the stomach (NG tube). These babies need extra calories due to the effort of breathing. Infants may need to limit fluids, and may be given medications that remove water from the body (diuretics) to keep the lungs from filling with fluid. Other medications can include corticosteroids, bronchodilators, and surfactant.
Parents of these infants need emotional support, because it can take time for the disease to get better, and the infant may need to stay in the hospital for a long time.
Infants with BPD may need oxygen therapy for weeks to months after leaving the hospital. It is very important for all infants with chronic lung disease to receive enough calories as they recover. Many will need tube feedings or special formulas.
It is very important to prevent your child from getting colds and other respiratory infections, such as respiratory syncytial virus (RSV).
A simple way to help prevent RSV infection is to wash your hands often, especially before touching your baby. It's important to make certain that other people, especially caregivers, take precautions to avoid giving RSV to your baby. The following simple steps can help protect your baby:
Insist that others wash their hands with warm water and soap before touching your baby.
Have others avoid contact with your baby if they have a cold or fever. If necessary, it may be helpful for them to wear a mask.
Be aware that kissing your baby can spread RSV infection.
Try to keep young children away from your baby. RSV is very common among young children and easily spreads from child to child.
Do not smoke inside your house, car, or anywhere near your baby. Exposure to tobacco smoke increases the risk of RSV illness.
Parents with high-risk infants should avoid crowds during outbreaks of RSV. Moderate-to-large outbreaks are often reported in the local news and newspapers to provide parents with an opportunity to avoid exposure.
The drug palivizumab (Synagis) is approved for the prevention of RSV disease in children younger than 24 months who are at high risk for serious RSV disease. Ask your doctor whether your child is at high risk for RSV and if he or she needs this medicine.
Babies with BPD get better slowly over time. It's possible for infants to need oxygen therapy for many months. Some infants with this condition might not survive. Some children are left with long-term lung damage.
Babies who have had BPD are at greater risk for repeated respiratory infections, such as pneumonia, bronchiolitis, and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) that require a hospital stay. Many of the airway (bronchiole) changes in babies with BPD will not go away.
Other potential complications in babies who have had BPD are:
If your baby had BPD, watch for any breathing problems. Call your health care provider if you see any signs of a respiratory infection.
To help prevent BPD:
Prevent premature delivery whenever possible. Certain pregnant women can take the medication betamethasone to help prevent RSV in their newborns.
The health care provider should take the baby off breathing assistance early, if possible, and use a substance that helps open the baby's lungs (surfactant).
Cowie RL, Murray J, Becklake MR. Disorders of the intrathoracic airways. In: Mason RJ, Broaddus VC, Martin TR, et al, eds. Murray and Nadel's Textbook of Respiratory Medicine. 5th ed. Philadelphia, Pa: Saunders Elsevier; 2010:chap 44.
Dudell GG, Stoll BJ. Respiratory tract disorders. In: Kliegman RM, Behrman RE, Jenson HB, Stanton BF, eds. Nelson Textbook of Pediatrics. 18th ed. Philadelphia, Pa: Saunders Elsevier; 2007:chap 101.
David C. Dugdale, III, MD, Professor of Medicine, Division of General Medicine, Department of Medicine, University of Washington School of Medicine; and Denis Hadjiliadis, MD, Assistant Proessor of Medicine, Division of Pulmonary, Allergy and Critical Care, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA. Also reviewed by David Zieve, MD, MHA, Medical Director, A.D.A.M., Inc.
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I’m sure that any keen readers out there are following the campaigns against library closures which are going on across Britain, as library users desperately try to highlight the vital role their libraries play in their communities before it is too late. I live in Oxfordshire where the closure of 20 public libraries is threatened, and have been following the UK wide proceedings with some interest. I think my favourite campaign so far has been the library in Stony Stratford, outside of Milton Keynes, which simply invited the users of the library to take out their entitled allocation of books in protest – with over 24 hours to go to the date of the protest the entire library had been emptied. Not that it’s just books that libraries provide.
Have a look at what the author Phillip Pullman and Nicky Wire of The Manic Street Preachers had to say on the subject, they say it better than I can, but I think we should all be vocal about this important subject.
I watched The Beauty of Books on BBC 4 last night. There were copies of ancient bibles which had been safely held in churches and libraries for over a thousand years. Image that, a thousand years. Empires have risen and fallen, worlds been discovered, space travel invented and these books have quietly existed alongside all of that telling the story explicitly or implicitly of the people who made them. Who will look after these resources and this knowledge if we close our libraries?
What will happen to the millions of books they contain?
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Roger Nelson's formal credentials are in the respectable field of experimental psychology, but the project he has been working on since 1998 would make plenty of scientists cringe. Nelson heads the Global Consciousness Project, which is based on the theory that emotionally charged world events will cause blips in the output of random-number generators scattered around the globe. He and his colleagues believe they have already documented that effect in the aftermath of Princess Di's death, the 9/11 attacks and, more benignly, in the wave of international optimism that seems to settle over the world each New Year's Day. The simple electronic devices that generate the random numbers, he argues, may be picking up some sort of planetwide field of consciousness.
Nelson would have a tough time getting this stuff published in a major journal like Science or Nature. But he doesn't have to, thanks to an organization called the Society for Scientific Exploration, or S.S.E., which held its annual meeting outside Gainesville, Fla., last week. The location--a Best Western overlooking Interstate 75--wasn't quite so lavish as the conference centers where neurologists or physicists routinely meet. Yet that didn't seem to matter for the hundred or so researchers who came to hear learned talks on, among other things, consciousness physics, astrology and parapsychology. Here, and in the society's Journal of Scientific Exploration, such topics are standard fare, alongside research on reincarnation, UFOs and near-death experiences. Pretty much anything that might have shown up on The X-Files or in the National Enquirer shows up first here.
But what also shows up is a surprising attitude of skepticism. "We get plenty of nonsense," admits Charles Tolbert, an astronomer at the University of Virginia and the S.S.E.'s president. "Sometimes you know just five minutes into a talk that it's absurd. But you also hear things that make you think." Like Tolbert, many of the scientists here are on the faculty at major universities, and were doing fine at conventional research. But sometimes that gets boring. "I was plodding along, adding a little to a large body of knowledge," says Garret Moddel, an engineering professor at the University of Colorado. "Doing experiments on parapsychology is a lot more interesting and potentially much more important."
At the back of their minds, those researchers always remember that the scientific establishment has a long history of scoffing at big, implausible ideas that ultimately turned out to be correct: the assertion that the Earth orbits the sun, the idea that brain-wasting diseases are caused by misshapen proteins, the proposition that hand washing can prevent doctors from transmitting disease, the claim that continents can drift across the surface of the world--all these and more were scorned at first.
While S.S.E. members know that scorn doesn't prove that a controversial idea is right (people laughed at Darwin, after all, but they also laughed at Bozo the Clown), it doesn't prove an idea is wrong, either. "What we do," says Nelson, "is give everyone a respectful hearing. If we think a speaker is doing bad science, we consider it our duty to criticize it. We get our share of lunatics, but they don't hang around long."
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Nearing the end of the Italian summer. Those of us who haven’t been there the whole time, all of August, have missed the miracle of summer in Italy. It is a special time when the world lets down its hair, puts the socks and the long pants and the ties in the drawer, and heads for a stretch of solitude, by a stream or by a sea, in search of a moment outside the compressed container of daily life.
And summer life responds. Tomatoes are bursting with flavor and their quintessential redness. Squashes are showing their stretch marks, as if their birth gives birth to another unique creation, which, in the hands of a food lover, will be not just another side dish. Watermelon slips into salads, appears in evening surprise fruit platters, shows up on the kitchen counter as if magically transported from another dimension. All of life is dancing and singing by the edge of the coastline.
Along a small strip of land in Tuscany, near Grossetto, a politician commits young men and women to pack their swimsuits and head to lands to protect people from each other. No more fear of the jellyfish or the sunburn, September’s reality calls. Minefields need to be cleared, towns need to be guarded, women and children must be cared for, their fragile bodies dangling from the line like so many beach towels.
It is becoming hard to imagine a holiday season of wine-selling with these unresolved items. It’s not like we can just redo the menu for the fall, rewrite a wine list, and everything will be OK.
Yesterday, in one of the offices I fall into, a high-level manager, says this: “Holiday time is upon us”, speaking of the march to Christmas and New Year. Yes, we will sell lots of red wine and Champagne, cordials and Cognac, beer and water, from all over the world. One holiday ends, and another looms. One war doesn’t end, yet a handful flare up, spring back into life, like the zucchini and the tomato. Another conflict pops up like the watermelon on the counter. It’s the stuff of life and the people in it. The cycle, the endless pattern of birth and death, seasoned with the salt and pepper of love and hate.
In ancient times, the wine trade often helped to fund someone’s dream to conquer a land far away. Today, that glass of Pinot Grigio or Sangiovese tamps down the daily anxiety after a day of hearing the chatter, the drums, the endless beating of the drums, near and far. And the jets, landing, taking off, flying low, dropping leaflets; buy my wine, read my blog, follow my dream. Read my lips.
Something seems to have fallen off track.
And yet the Italians take one more plunge into the Adriatic, grill one more fish over the open fire, draw one more bottle of wine from the rack, wish one more wish for love and peace and the hope for another summer in Italy.
Room to Read
Adopt a Minefield
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In the managing of public buildings such as office buildings, shopping centers, hotels, shopping and visitor safety of others is the highest priority. A small error in the treatment of this problem can cause a fatal disaster. The most common incident that happens to these buildings is fire. This is because the use of high voltage electricity through the construction. In addition, passengers can also contribute to any incident that could cause a fire. Therefore, providing an exit sign simple but reliable is very important. This sign occupants and visitors from other hard to find a way out every time you fire or other unforeseen incidents.
In fact, there are options, designs and technology for exit signs. So someone who is reliable to use. If you are a property manager, surely choose the product that provides energy savings. In addition, the product must be reliable in terms of brightness, visibility and sustainability. ExitSigns.com online site is a provider of the EXIT SIGNS to adopt the most advanced technology of it. This site offers a wide range of options from which use Thermoplastic LED technology.
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Pregnancy is a wonderful and complicated part of life that so many women go through, yet not all completely understand. Most women successfully make it through their pregnancies and end up having strong, healthy babies, but this isn’t true in all cases. In many other cases, the babies come out weak and unhealthy, and this is usually due to insufficient nourishment for the baby. It’s the mother’s to learn about all the necessary nutrition for the baby and then to make sure that she gets it when it’s needed.
Vitamins are one of the best and only ways to ensure that you and your baby get the nutrition that is needed during this time of growth and development. Pregnancy is such an important part of the baby’s life, and the choices a mother makes during that period can affect the baby in many ways. In order for the baby to develop properly, it needs to have all of many vitamins and minerals. Some of the necessary vitamins include:
Taking vitamins is important, yes, but even more important is how and when you take them. How you take them is important because it determines how much you get out of them. Taking them with food or a drink can be good, helping to reduce morning sickness and increase absorption. Following the directions on the container or bottle is usually the best way to ensure that you are taking them correctly
When you take them is also important. It’s important to start taking vitamins long before you actually get pregnant. If your pregnancy is planned, taking prenatal vitamins can certainly increase the odds of you getting pregnant. Vitamins are still important after your initial pregnancy stages and through the entire duration.
Make A Habit
Lots of people have a hard time taking vitamins, not because they particularly dislike taking them, but rather because they simply forget. It’s not such an urgent thing for them to think about (especially during pregnancy) and so it gets lost among all the other concerns, plans, and thoughts. If you want to ensure that you’re faithful with your vitamin taking, then make a habit and routine out of it. Set an alarm to a time every day where you will always take your vitamins. After a while, it will become second nature to you.
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South Africa - ARI treatment
ARI treatment (% of children under 5 taken to a health provider)
Definition: Children with acute respiratory infection (ARI) who are taken to a health provider refers to the percentage of children under age five with ARI in the last two weeks who were taken to an appropriate health provider, including hospital, health center, dispensary, village health worker, clinic, and private physician.
Source: UNICEF, State of the World's Children, Childinfo, and Demographic and Health Surveys by Macro International.
Topic: Health Indicators
Sub-Topic: Disease prevention
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Millenium Development Goal 5: Improve maternal health
Target: Reduce by three quarters, between 1990 and 2015, the maternal mortality ratio
The antenatal period is an important time for reaching pregnant women with a number of interventions essential to their health and well-being and that of their infants. Every region made progress in coverage of antenatal care for women at least once during pregnancy. In the developing world as a whole, the proportion of women receiving antenatal care increased from 60 per cent in around 1995 to 75 per cent in around 2005. Many of these women, however, attend fewer than the four antenatal care visits recommended by UNICEF and the World Health Organization.
Source: UNICEF global databases, 2007. Trend analysis is based on a subset of 67 countries with available trend data for around 1995 and around 2005.
UNICEF, Progress for Children, A World Fit for Children Statistical Review, 2007, New York, December 2007.
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Scientists at UC San Francisco say they have found a more precise way to turn off genes, a finding they believe will speed research discoveries and biotech advances and may eventually prove useful in reprogramming cells to regenerate organs and tissues. The strategy borrows from the molecular toolbox of bacteria, using a protein employed by microbes to fight off viruses, according to the researchers, who describe the technique in the current issue of Cell.
Turning off genes is a major goal of treatments that target cancer and other diseases. In addition, the ability to turn genes off to learn more about how cells work is a key to unlocking the mysteries of biochemical pathways and interactions that drive normal development as well as disease progression.
“We've spent energy and effort to map the human genome, but we don't yet understand how the genetic blueprint leads to a human being, and how we can manipulate the genome to better understand and treat disease,” explained Wendell Lim, Ph.D., a senior author of the study. Dr. Lim is director of the UCSF Center for Systems and Synthetic Biology, a Howard Hughes Medical Investigator, and professor of cellular and molecular pharmacology.
The new technology developed by the team of UCSF and UC Berkeley researchers is called CRISPR interference, which “is a simple approach for selectively perturbing gene expression on a genome-wide scale,” noted said Lei Stanley Qi, Ph.D., a UCSF systems biology bellow who was the lead author of the Cell study. “This technology is an elegant way to search for any short DNA sequence in the genome, and to then control the expression of the gene where that sequence is located.”
The technique will allow researchers to more easily and accurately trace patterns of gene activation and biochemical chains of events that take place within cells, added Dr. Qi, and will help scientists identify key proteins that normally control these events and that may go awry in disease.
Unlike conventional RNA interference techniques, CRISPR interference allows any number of individual genes to be silenced at the same time, he continued. “In addition, it acts more crisply, if you will, by not turning off untargeted genes the way RNA interference techniques do.”
Another methodology, RNA interference, blocks the messenger RNA that drives protein protection based on the blueprint contained within a gene’s DNA sequence. By preventing protein production, RNA interference may be used to get around the problem of difficult-to-target proteins, a frequent challenge in drug development.
But CRISPR interference acts one step earlier in the cell’s protein manufacturing process, said Jonathan Weissman, Ph.D., a Howard Hughes Medical Investigator and a UCSF professor of cellular and molecular pharmacology, who is another senior author on the work.
“The horse has already left the barn with RNA interference, in the sense that the RNA message already has been transcribed from DNA,” he explained. “With CRISPR interference, we can prevent the message from being written.”
CRISPR (an acronym for ‘clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats’) is a system that bacteria use to defend themselves against viruses. CRISPR acts like a vaccine, incorporating bits of genes from viruses. Bacteria can reference this library of virus genes to recognize and attack viral invaders.
Dr. Qi and colleagues used a protein from this system, called Cas9, as a chassis into which they can insert any specific RNA partner molecule. The selected RNA serves as an adaptor that determines the target anywhere within the genome. “Targeting the machinery to new sites is extremely flexible and quick,” said Dr. Qi.
The research team was able to get the system to work in mammalian cells as well as bacterial cells, and is working to improve its efficiency in mammalian cells, including human cells. The team aims to couple the Cas9 chassis to an enzyme that will enable the technology to turn genes on as well as off.
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noun pl. mouths
- the opening through which an animal takes in food; specif., the cavity, or the entire structure, in the head of any of the higher animals which contains the teeth and tongue and through which sounds are uttered
- the mouth regarded as the organ of chewing and tasting
- the mouth regarded as the organ of speech
- a person or animal regarded as a being needing food: six mouths to feed
- the lips, or the part of the face surrounding the lips
- a wry expression of the face; grimace: now only in the phrase
- any opening regarded as like the mouth; specif.,
- the part of a river, stream, etc. where the water empties into another body of water
- the opening into the earth of a cave, volcano, tunnel, etc.
- the opening of a container, through which it is filled or emptied
- the front opening in the barrel of a gun
- the opening between the jaws of a vise, etc.
- the opening between the lips of an organ pipe
- the opening in a flute across which the player blows
ME < OE muth, akin to Ger mund < IE base *menth-, to chew > Gr masasthai, L mandere, to chew
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Bone Tumor Identified in 120,000-Year-Old Rib of Neandertal
From Famous Cave Excavation Site of Krapina in Central Europe
PHILADELPHIA, PA, June 2013—The first-known definitive case of a benign bone tumor has been discovered in the rib of a young Neandertal who lived about 120,000 years ago in what is now present-day Croatia. The bone fragment, which comes from the famous archaeological cave site of Krapina, contains by far the earliest bone tumor ever identified in the archaeological record. Details of the tumor confirmation, announced by an international research team led by Penn Museum Associate Curator and Paleoanthropologist Janet Monge, is available in a research paper, "Fibrous dysplasia in a 120,000+ year old Neandertal from Krapina, Croatia," in the online scientific journal PLOS ONE.
Joining Dr. Monge on the research team were Morrie Kricun, Department of Radiology, University of Pennsylvania; Jakov Radovcic and Davorka Radovcic, Croatian Natural History Museum; Alan Mann, Department of Anthropology, Princeton University; and David Frayer, Department of Anthropology, University of Kansas.
Bone tumors are exceptionally rare finds in the evolutionary fossil and archaeological records of human prehistory, with the earliest known instances, before now, dating to 1,000 to 4,000 years ago. Primary bone tumors are rare in modern populations, thus, finding a tumor in a fossil so old is a unique discovery.
From a u-CT scan and an X-ray, researchers identified a fibrous dysplastic neoplasm—today, the most common form of benign bone tumor in humans—located on a Neandertal left rib fragment that measured 30 mm (4 ½ inches) long. Judging by the size of the rib fragment, at the end of the rib that joins to the vertebrae, the rib belonged to a young male Neandertal, probably in his teens. Though he died young, and fibrous displasia is a developmental disorder of bone, there are no other known fossils that can be attributed to this individual, and there is not enough evidence to determine if this was or contributed to the cause of his death, according to Dr. Monge.
The confirmation of this tumor, Dr. Monge believes, may have implications for scholars studying the relationship between Neandertals and modern humans. "This tumor may provide another link between Neandertals and modern peoples, links currently being reinforced with genetic and archaeological evidence. Part of our ancestry is indeed with Neandertals—we grow the same way in our bones and teeth and share the same diseases."
About the Kaprina Archaeological Record and Past Research
Paleoanthropologists continue to debate the exact relationship between homo sapiens, or humans today, and Neandertals—an extinct species who lived throughout Eurasia from as early as 600,000 years to as late as 30,000 years ago. One of the most important early Neandertal sites was discovered in modern-day Croatia in 1899, when Dragutin Gorjanovic-Kramberger, Director of the Geology and Paleontology Department of the National Museum and Professor of Paleontology and Geology at Zagreb University, alerted by a local schoolteacher, first visited the Krapina cave and noted cave deposits, including a chipped stone tool, bits of animal bones, and a single human molar. Beginning that year, and continuing through six years, Gorjanovic-Kramberger and his associates completely, and for that era, carefully, excavated the cave. By 1905, Krapina had yielded more hominid remains than any other site known at the time.
In the 1990s, the Penn Museum was invited to study the radiographic images of the famous Krapina Neandertal fossil bone collection. The team identified 874 human remains, representing more than 75 individuals—the largest such collection of Neandertal remains from one locale. Looking for signs of pathology, disease, and weakness in a group of hominids long thought by many to have "died out" in classic Darwinian survival-of-the-fittest style, the team's ultimate diagnosis was surprising: these Neandertals were in large part a robust, healthy people. The researchers, Janet Monge among them, shared the results of their studies in a 1999 book, The Krapina Hominids: A Radiographic Atlas of the Skeletal Collection, published by the Republic of Croatia.
Not among the skeletal fossils, however, was the rib now identified as having the bone tumor. At the time of the Krapina excavations, it was mistakenly identified and placed in a faunal collection. In 1986, it was discovered by TD White (University of California, Berkeley) and N Toth (Indiana University, Bloomington) and preliminarily identified as a pathological specimen by M Kricun and J Monge in 1999. It was not until scholars could employ u-CT scans and analysis that the exact nature of the pathology was identified.
About the Penn Museum
The Penn Museum (the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology) is dedicated to the study and understanding of human history and diversity. Founded in 1887, the Museum has sent more than 400 archaeological and anthropological expeditions to all the inhabited continents of the world. With an active exhibition schedule and educational programming for children and adults, the Museum offers the public an opportunity to share in the ongoing discovery of humankind's collective heritage. www.penn.museum
Photo: Krapina rib fragment (120.71) with tumor and a healthy rib fragment from Krapina (120.6). Photos of bone courtesy L. Mjeda (Zagreb).
New BIOMOLECULAR aRCHAEOLOGICAL Evidence
Points to the Beginnings of Viniculture in France
* * *
9,000 Year Old Ancient Near Eastern “Wine Culture,” Traveling Land and Sea,
Reaches Southern Coastal France, Via Ancient Etruscans of Italy, in 6th-5th Century BCE
PHILADELPHIA, PA June 3, 2013—France is renowned the world over as a leader in the crafts of viticulture and winemaking—but the beginnings of French viniculture have been largely unknown, until now.
Imported ancient Etruscan amphoras and a limestone press platform, discovered at the ancient port site of Lattara in southern France, have provided the earliest known biomolecular archaeological evidence of grape wine and winemaking—and point to the beginnings of a Celtic or Gallic vinicultural industry in France circa 500-400 BCE. Details of the discovery are published as “The Beginning of Viniculture in France” in the June 3, 2013 issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). Dr. Patrick McGovern, Director of the Biomolecular Archaeology Laboratory at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology and author of Ancient Wine: The Search for the Origins of Viniculture (Princeton University Press, 2006) is the lead author on the paper, which was researched and written in collaboration with colleagues from France and the United States.
For Dr. McGovern, much of whose career has been spent examining the archaeological data, developing the chemical analyses, and following the trail of the Eurasian grapevine (Vitis vinifera) in the wild and its domestication by humans, this confirmation of the earliest evidence of viniculture in France is a key step in understanding the ongoing development of what he calls the “wine culture” of the world—one that began in the Turkey’s Taurus Mountains, the Caucasus Mountains, and/or the Zagros Mountains of Iran about 9,000 years ago.
“France’s rise to world prominence in the wine culture has been well documented, especially since the 12th century, when the Cistercian monks determined by trial-and-error that Chardonnay and Pinot Noir were the best cultivars to grow in Burgundy,” Dr. McGovern noted. “What we haven’t had is clear chemical evidence, combined with botanical and archaeological data, showing how wine was introduced into France and initiated a native industry.
“Now we know that the ancient Etruscans lured the Gauls into the Mediterranean wine culture by importing wine into southern France. This built up a demand that could only be met by establishing a native industry, likely done by transplanting the domesticated vine from Italy, and enlisting the requisite winemaking expertise from the Etruscans.”
Combined Archaeological, Chemical, and Archaeobotanical Evidence Corroborate Discovery
At the site of Lattara, merchant quarters inside a walled settlement, circa 525-475 BCE, held numerous Etruscan amphoras, three of which were selected for analysis because they were whole, unwashed, found in an undisturbed, sealed context, and showed signs of residue on their interior bases where precipitates of liquids, such as wine, collect. Judging by their shape and other features, they could be assigned to a specific Etruscan amphora type, likely manufactured at the city of Cisra (modern Cerveteri) in central Italy during the same time period.
After sample extraction, ancient organic compounds were identified by a combination of state-of-the-art chemical techniques, including infrared spectrometry, gas chromatography-mass spectrometry, solid phase microextraction, ultrahigh-performance liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry, and one of the most sensitive techniques now available, used here for the first time to analyze ancient wine and grape samples, liquid chromatography-Orbitrap mass spectrometry.
All the samples were positive for tartaric acid/tartrate (the biomarker or fingerprint compound for the Eurasian grape and wine in the Middle East and Mediterranean), as well as compounds deriving from pine tree resin. Herbal additives to the wine were also identified, including rosemary, basil and/or thyme, which are native to central Italy where the wine was likely made. (Alcoholic beverages, in which resinous and herbal compounds are more easily put into solution, were the principle medications of antiquity.)
Nearby, an ancient pressing platform, made of limestone and dated circa 425 BCE, was discovered. Its function had previously been uncertain. Tartaric acid/tartrate was detected in the limestone, demonstrating that the installation was indeed a winepress. Masses of several thousand domesticated grape seeds, pedicels, and even skin, excavated from an earlier context near the press, further attest to its use for crushing transplanted, domesticated grapes and local wine production. Olives were extremely rare in the archaeobotanical corpus at Lattara until Roman times. This is the first clear evidence of winemaking on French soil.
The Broader Picture
For nearly two decades, Dr. McGovern has been following the story of the origin and expansion of a worldwide “wine culture”—one that has its earliest known roots in the ancient Near East, circa 7000-6000 BCE, with chemical evidence for the earliest wine at the site of Hajji Firiz in what is now northern Iran, circa 5400-5000 BCE. Special pottery types for making, storing, serving and drinking wine were all early indicators of a nascent “wine culture.”
Viniculture—viticulture and winemaking—gradually expanded throughout the Near East. From the beginning, promiscuous domesticated grapevines crossed with wild vines, producing new cultivars. Dr. McGovern observes a common pattern for the spreading of the new wine culture: “First entice the rulers, who could afford to import and ostentatiously consume wine. Next, foreign specialists are commissioned to transplant vines and establish local industries,” he noted. “Over time, wine spreads to the larger population, and is integrated into social and religious life.”
Wine was first imported into Egypt from the Levant by the earliest rulers there, forerunners of the pharaohs, in Dynasty 0 (circa 3150 BCE). By 3000 BCE the Nile Delta was being planted with vines by Canaanite viniculturalists. As the earliest merchant seafarers, the Canaanites were also able to take the wine culture out across the Mediterranean Sea. Biomolecular archaeological evidence attests to a locally produced, resinated wine on the island of Crete by 2200 BCE.
“As the larger Greek world was drawn into the wine culture, “ McGovern noted, “the stage was set for commercial maritime enterprises in the western Mediterranean. Greeks and the Phoenicians—the Levantine successors to the Canaanites—vied for influence by establishing colonies on islands and along the coasts of North Africa, Italy, France, and Spain. The wine culture continued to take root in foreign soil—and the story continues today.”
Where wine went, so other cultural elements eventually followed—including technologies of all kinds and social and religious customs—even where another fermented beverage made from different natural products had long held sway. In the case of Celtic Europe, grape wine displaced a hybrid drink of honey, wheat/barley, and native wild fruits (e.g., lingonberry and apple) and herbs (such as bog myrtle, yarrow, and heather).
About the Penn Museum
The Penn Museum (the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology) is dedicated to the study and understanding of human history and diversity. Founded in 1887, the Museum has sent more than 400 archaeological and anthropological expeditions to all the inhabited continents of the world. With an active exhibition schedule and educational programming for children and adults, the Museum offers the public an opportunity to share in the ongoing discovery of humankind's collective heritage. Penn Museum website: www.penn.museum.
The Penn Museum in Philadelphia Presents Summer Wonder Series,
Family-Friendly Programs Featuring Music, Dance, Storytelling, and More
Wednesday Mornings, 11:00 am–12:00 pm, July 3 through August 21
For the most updated information on programs offered at the Penn Museum, and for online pre-registration (optional or required for some programs) visit the Museum's website: www.penn.museum/calendar.
Black Bodies in Propaganda: The Art of the War Poster
Opens at the Penn Museum June 2, 2013
* * *
PBS History Detective Host Tukufu Zuberi Curates Unique Collection
of Propaganda Posters
An Outdoor Concert Series Showcasing Global Music
Wednesday Evenings at the Penn Museum
Philadelphia READS! Community Night Wednesday, April 10 at the Penn Museum
Kicks off a Month-Long Children's Book Drive
The Science of Conservation and Preservation Takes Center Stage
at a Philadelphia Science Festival Signature Event
Seventeen Partnering Organizations Join to Offer a Behind-the-Scenes Perspective
at the Penn Museum Wednesday, April 24, 5:00 to 8:00 pm
Shake Your Sekere!
Saturday, March 2, 1:00–4:00 pm
Runs Weekly July 1 through August 23, 2013
For the most updated information on programs offered at the Penn Museum and for online pre-registration (optional or required for some programs) visit the Museum's website: www.penn.museum/calendar.
Anniversary of Founding Celebrated With 12-hour Open House 10 am to 10 pm Thursday, December 6, 2012
Museum Launches Online Excavation Timeline, Publishes Special Expedition Magazine Issue, as Part of Celebration
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Lawrence Brothers camp sheds light on bright topic By David Lias
Plain Talk Twenty-four students wrapped up an intense week July 18 learning just about everything they may want to know about light. The theme of this year��?s Lawrence Brothers Science Camp, held on The University of South Dakota campus, was light and vision. The camp is designed for students entering seventh, eighth and ninth grades. ��?We have a theme every year,� said Sally Stoll, a Vermillion Middle School science instructor who helps with the camp each summer. A broad theme is chosen each year that includes aspects of physical science, chemical science, life science, mathematics and the health sciences. ��?We rotate the theme each year, so that the kids who are eligible can come to the camp for three years and not repeat the same activity,� Stoll said. This year��?s camp attracted kids from all over South Dakota, and several out-of-state locations. ��?This is our seventh year of holding the camp,� Stoll said. Attending a camp with light and vision as its theme meant young people learned about the inner-workings of a telescope, and learned what causes the leaves of a tree to change color in the fall. They received lessons about the eye and the science of sight. Part of their education in this area was provided during a field trip to the Prairie Eye Clinic in Vermillion, with lessons from local Dr. Cindy Johnson Brown, local optometrist. They also took part in activities that show the chemistry, physics, biology, physiology and mathematics of light and vision. The camp began in 2002 through a generous donation from the John and Amy Bowles Lawrence Foundation and support from The University of South Dakota Foundation. ��?We also have many scholarships that we award,� Stoll said. ��?Anybody who can come to this camp because they are eligible grade-wise, that is, what grade they are in, can request a scholarship and we��?ve honored every request.� Students live on campus in dorms while the camp is in session. Their counselors are USD honor students. ��?We always try to something fun in the community, and we usually do the same thing every year,� Stoll said. ��?We took the kids swimming, bowling and to a movie, and during the last night, the kids and the counselors plan a party and spend time together on campus.� The goal of the camp each year is to inspire students and give them hands-on opportunities to conduct experiments designed to challenge them and teach them that science is fun. The more relaxed activities each night helped the students unwind after each day that was packed full of lessons and experiments. ��?The students are actually doing some activities that are real hands-on,� Stoll said. The camp offers challenges to both the students and the instructors. ��?It��?s difficult, at times, to talk to kids about something that they don��?t know about,� she said. ��?And to get their attention is really difficult. Middle school kids all come with different abilities.�
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Author Notes: "Eat neither garlic, nor onions, for thy smell will betray the peasant in thee" Don Quixote admonishes his squire, Sancho Panza. Garlic, or Allium sativum, a member of the lily family, has been cultivated for thousands of years. Pliny the Elder praised it as a remedy for a host of ailments from asthma to insanity - though he also warned excessive use caused flatulence. French biologist Louis Pasteur praised garlic's qualities as a disinfectant and recent studies have backed long-held beliefs that compounds in garlic reduce cholesterol levels in the arteries and thus protect the heart. At one time despised in some countries as a poor man's spice, garlic is now an indispensable ingredient in so many cuisines.
The arrival of the new season garlic, in its wet (green) and wild (also known as Ramps in the US and Ramsons in the UK) forms, is a brief spring treat.
I love to use wild garlic in a quick and simple pasta dish and this recipe is so easy that you can take the time to make your own fresh pasta for it. Bought pasta is fine but fresh, not dried, works best. - EvieSS
Serves 4 as a starter or 2 as a main course
- 100g (4oz) '00' flour
- 1 large egg
- A pinch of salt
- 1 teaspoon olive oil
- A little polenta to prevent sticking
- 50g (2oz) unsalted butter
- A large handful of ramps, well washed and cut roughly
- Put all the ingredients except the butter and wild garlic in a mixer, or use your hands, to mix until everything holds together.
- Either change to a doughhook and knead for 2 minutes or knead the dough on a work surface by hand for 10 minutes. If you use a machine, knead the dough by hand for a final half minute (the warmth of your hands finishes it off perfectly). You will now have a smooth firm dough. Wrap it in cling film and allow to rest in the fridge for at least half an hour.
- Bring a large pan of water to the boil and salt the water generously.
- Feed the pasta dough through the pasta machine on its lowest setting. Fold the dough and repeat 3 more times. Increasing the setting by one mark each time, feed the dough through the machine once until you reach its highest setting (if you are as short of kitchen space as I am you'll want to cut your rolled pasta in half part way through the rolling to make it more manageable, so you end up with 2 sheets of pasta). Pass them through the tagliatelle cutter and mix the pasta strands with the polenta until your are ready to cook it.
- Boil the pasta for no more than 3 minutes and while it is cooking heat the butter in large pan and add the garlic leaves, salt and pepper. Cook for one minute then take off the heat. Add the drained pasta. Mix in a tablespoon or so of cooking water to loosen slightly. Serve with lots of grated parmesan.
- This recipe was entered in the contest for Your Best Spring Alliums
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Efficient cash and liquidity management will involve centralizing cash within a single entity, on a country, regional, or even global basis.
The movement of cash between entities and between countries will create complex tax considerations, so that all loans and rates of interest applied must be at arm’s-length pricing.
The cash centralization is normally arranged with the group’s bankers who can offer a notional pooling or a physical movement of cash.
Interest payable on the balances arising from the cash centralization or from the overall funding structure of the group can be subject to withholding tax (WHT), which may be reduced to zero by tax treaties or may be reclaimable through a variety of mechanisms.
The Basis for Taxation
Taxation is highly dependent on the specifics of the companies concerned and the tax jurisdictions to which they are subject. Nonetheless, there are sufficient structural similarities between countries so that background generalizations can be made, although the specific rules and tax rates vary over time and will need to be verified with local tax experts.
Tax is initially assessed on the basis of each legal entity in isolation, but various allowances exist that enable operations to be examined from a group or subgroup perspective.
The legal grouping of companies, the managerial grouping, the accounting grouping and taxation group may each be on a different basis.
Taxable profit is not calculated in the same way as accounting profit. The latter may be generated using IFRS (International Financial Reporting Standards) or local GAAP (Generally Accepted Accounting Principles) using cash accounting or some taxation specific rules.
Efficient liquidity management for an international group involves making best use of the cash resources existing or being required or generated across the group.
In order to manage the daily flows of cash across the group there are normally efficiencies to be gained by centralizing cash flows within a central entity for each country or region, or, if practical, globally. The consequent movement of cash around the group, whether buying and selling goods between companies, or lending cash backward and forward, have significant tax consequences, made complicated by the interaction of different national and international rules.
Tax is therefore a major issue in the selection of a treasury center location. Areas set up specifically to attract treasury may be located in tax environments where local taxes are low and where there is special treatment of foreign earnings. They will be located in countries with extensive tax treaties, and there will be no WHT on interest earned or paid, or on income from dividends. These locations should also enable the repatriation of profits without tax deductions. Note, however, that in common with many business decisions, tax is not the only factor. Issues over staff availability and retention, proximity to management and major investors (for example, in London) are equally important factors.
- Page 1 of 4
- Next section Transacting with Connected Parties
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Welcome to the Department of Natural Sciences!
Natural Sciences houses Biology, Chemistry, and Physics. Currently, the Department offers Associates in Science (AS) Degrees in Biology and Environmental Science. Faculty are actively involved in research in Biology, Chemistry, and Physics both on and off campus. Students interested in the Natural Sciences are encouraged to conduct research projects under faculty supervision. The Department of Natural Sciences is committed to providing an interactive learning environment that incorporates the lived experience, to providing extracurricular venues that enhance student learning, to integrating a hypothesis-driven research component into the science curriculum, to diversifying the natural sciences by increasing underrepresented minority participation, and to encouraging students to pursue advanced degrees in the Natural Sciences.
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Home > Deposit Insurance > International Deposit Insurance > Guidance for Developing Effective Deposit Insurance Systems
Guidance for Developing Effective Deposit Insurance Systems
adverse selection - The tendency for higher-risk institutions to opt for deposit insurance and lower-risk institutions to opt-out of deposit insurance when membership in a deposit insurance system is voluntary.
bank runs - A rapid loss of deposits precipitated by fear on the part of the public that a bank may fail and depositors may suffer losses.
benchmark - A standard or rule to which other items or processes can be compared.
blanket guarantee - A declaration by the government that all deposits will be protected.
bridge bank - A temporary bank established and operated to acquire the assets and assume the liabilities of a failed institution until final resolution can be accomplished.
coinsurance - An arrangement whereby depositors are insured for a portion less than 100 percent of their deposits.
conservatorship - The legal procedure provided by statute for the interim management of financial institutions.
contagion effect/systemic risk - The spread of bank runs to multiple financial institutions.
corporate governance - The processes, structures, and information used for directing and overseeing the management of an organization .
debt management - The control of maturities and timing of issuance for securities by business or government.
deposit payoff - A resolution method for failed institutions that involves the reimbursement of deposits and the transfer of the bank's assets to a receiver for liquidation.
depositor preference - The granting of preferential treatment to depositors such that their liabilities must be paid in full before remaining creditors can collect on their claims.
differential premium/risk-based premium - A levy on an institution assessed on the basis of that institution's risk to the deposit insurer. .
disclosure - A fact, condition, or description that is revealed clearly and publicly..
ex-ante funding - The accumulation of a fund in anticipation of the failure of insured institutions.
ex-post funding - The assessment of premiums after the failure of an insured institution to provide funds for the disposition of the failed institution.
financial safety net - Comprises the deposit insurance function, prudential regulation and supervision, and the lender-of-last-resort function.
flat-rate premium - A premium assessed at a uniform rate across all insured institutions.
forbearance - To grant an extension of time to certain distressed institutions from minimum regulatory requirements.
internal-control systems - A system of objectives and controls designed to provide for the safeguarding of assets and the reliability of financial records.
least-cost resolution - A procedure that requires the deposit insurer or other designated entity to implement the resolution alternative that is determined to be less costly than all other resolution alternatives, including the liquidation of the failed institution.
lender-of-last-resort function - The provision of liquidity to the financial system by a central bank.
limited-coverage deposit insurance - A guarantee that the principal and the interest accrued on protected accounts will be paid up to a specified limit.
mandate - The set of official instructions given to an organization to perform its tasks.
market discipline - A situation where depositors or creditors assess the risk characteristics of a bank and act upon such assessments to deposit or withdraw funds from the bank.
moral hazard - The incentive for increased risk-taking that is present in most insurance contracts and arises from the fact that parties to the contract are protected against loss.
netting arrangements - In some countries, the reduction of an accountholder's insured deposits by the amount of outstanding loans in a failed institution. In other countries, the reduction of an accountholder's outstanding loans by the amount of deposits above the coverage limit.
open-bank assistance - A resolution method in which an insured bank in danger of failing receives assistance in the form of a direct loan, an assisted merger, or a purchase of assets.
paybox - A deposit insurer with powers limited to paying off the claims of insured depositors.
purchase-and-assumption transaction - A resolution method in which a healthy insured institution purchases some or all of the assets and assumes some or all of the deposit liabilities of a failed institution.
rebate - The return of part of a payment, representing some deduction from the full amount previously paid.
receivership - The legal procedure for winding down the affairs of an insolvent institution.
recovery rate - The ratio of net collections to the book-value of an institution's assets.
regulatory discipline - The establishment of regulations covering, for example, the establishment of new banks, minimum capital requirements, qualifications of directors and managers, business activities, and risk-management systems that help prevent excessive risk-taking by insured institutions.
reinsurance - The assumption by another party of part or all of the risk held by the deposit insurer.
resolution - The disposition plan for a failed institution.
resolution costs - For a given resolution method, the sum of the expenditures and obligations incurred, including any immediate or long-term obligations and any direct or contingent liabilities for future payment, net of recoveries on assets of the failed bank.
risk-minimizer - A deposit insurer with powers to reduce the risk it faces.
set-off - The netting of an accountholder's assets and liabilities in a failed institution.
subordinated debt - A debt instrument that ranks lower than another instrument in the priority of its claim on the issuer's assets.
supervisory discipline - Actions taken to monitor the performance of banks, require that banks take corrective action promptly, and close nonviable institutions.
systemic risk - Risk associated with the general health or structure of the financial system that would have serious adverse effects on economic conditions or financial stability.
too big to fail - The practice of protecting uninsured depositors, creditors, and others from loss when large banks fail.
working capital - The current funds available to administer the deposit insurance function.
workout - The making of special repayment arrangements in light of likely or actual default on a loan.
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The mini-judokas abruptly cease rolling around like play-fighting puppies at the coach's command and clear the floor for the serious business. Six adult men in blue or white robes step on to the patriotically coloured judo mats. At their centre is an athlete who has just made Palestinian sporting history.
Maher Abu Rmeileh is the first Palestinian to qualify for the Olympic Games on merit. Under rules exempting developing nations from having to reach the qualifying standard, Palestine is sending a team of four – two swimmers and two runners – to London this summer. But the 28-year-old judoka is a late addition, having only learned of his unique achievement a few weeks ago.
With sweat dripping down his face on a scorching Jerusalem afternoon, and the broad grin that rarely leaves his face, Abu Rmeileh recalls the day he got the call from the Al Quds club, where he trains. "They said 'come now and bring sweets'. That was all. Then when I got here, they told me I was going to London. I was in shock, I didn't believe it."
The International Olympics Committee's decision rested on Abu Rmeileh's success at the world judo championships in Tokyo in 2010.
"At the beginning of this year I hoped I would qualify [for the Olympics] but as the months went by I lost hope," he says. "But the word 'impossible' is not in my dictionary."
His participation in the Olympics will be the culmination of 21 years of practising judo, initially accompanying his judoka father, Shafik, at whose scarf shop in Jerusalem's Old City alley ways Maher works each day before heading to the Al Quds club in the east of the city to train. "My father had a lot of hope in me. It was also his dream to represent Palestine at the Olympics, and now he is fulfilling his dream through me."
Abu Rmeileh trains for at least two hours a day, seven days a week, a programme which is intensifying in the run up to the Games in the UK. The club, which has about 20 judoka, the youngest of whom is five, charges no fees, relying instead on volunteers and donations. "There is no bar to poor families," says the club's head, Numan Dkeidek.
Discipline and commitment are required, but, says Abu Rmeileh, the rewards are great. "Judo is one of the most beautiful and one of the most practical of sports. It is a big part of my life."
He will compete in the under-73kg category, which eliminates the possibility of a politically delicate encounter with Israel's main judoka hope, Arik Zeevi, who is in a heavier class.
Abu Rmeileh will not be drawn on issues concerning the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, preferring to focus on his achievement so far and the task ahead.
"I'm very proud to be the first Palestinian to qualify. The feeling is indescribable. It means we can send a message to the world that we are as capable as any other country."
His two sons, aged six and four, will watch their father on TV from their East Jerusalem home. "I will encourage them to take up judo too, but they are a bit young now. I'm very happy I will be going as an ambassador for the Palestinian people. I will be carrying the Palestinian flag. It means a lot to us." He hopes to do well, but "it is enough for us to be able to tell the whole world that we Palestinians exist".
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The 24 hours news digital sphincter spasm continues to slather us all with lots and lots of thoughtless thinking and careless conjecture. Think what might happen if… I think… Most Americans think… I think I’ll have another beer… What is the NRA thinking… The United Nations thinks… I think Dancing with the Stars is on tonight… Most of our representatives in Washington think… No wait, I think we ought to scratch that last one. Most of our representatives do not think much past the next “So You Think You Can Smile!” audition.
Why are we still thinking about things?
I think there’s no place for guns in schools!
- We know that Utah allows guns in schools.
- We know that Utah is still waiting on its first mass school shooting.
- We know that over 200 colleges and universities already allow lawful concealed carry on campus.
- We know that none of those institutions have suffered catastrophic attacks like the ones in Newtown, Columbine, or Virginia Tech.
- We know that all mass shooting incidents in the past 50 years, except one, have happened in areas where guns are not allowed.
I think it’s a bad idea to arm teachers!
- We know we don’t want to force all teachers to be armed. We simply want those who choose to defend themselves and their students not to lose that fundamental right when they enter school property.
- We know that Israel has had some percentage of armed teachers since 1974.
- We know that most Israeli schools have armed security.
- We know that is has kept their students safer in perhaps one of the most dangerous neighborhoods on planet earth.
- We know that attacks on Israeli schools have been attempted by trained terrorists, not cowards that almost always end their own life as soon as they are challenged.
- We know that challenging these cowards immediately almost always stops them immediately.
I think we shouldn’t have to live in a world where people have to have guns.
- We know that we do in fact live in a world like that.
- We know that there are sick and evil people out there.
- We know because we hear about them on the news every single day.
- We know they continue to do evil things regardless of laws.
- We know that the very definition of “criminal” is one who breaks laws.
- We know that burying our heads in the sand and hoping things will be better because they should be will not save one single life.
I think that some sort of gun ban is a good idea.
- We know the last one didn’t lower crime at all.
- We know that crime didn’t increase when it expired.
- We know that there is not one example of gun control policy lowering violent crime.
- We know that the most recent countries to implement drastic gun control have suffered serious increases in violent crime.
- We know that women are 2 times more likely to be raped in the UK than in the US.
- We know that women in Australia are 3 times more likely to be raped than women in the US.
- We know that total murders in the UK have increased since the gun ban took effect in January 1997.
- We know that in only 1 year have there been fewer murders in the UK after the handgun ban than before the handgun ban.
- We know that the UK has a violent crime rate 3.5 times greater than that of the US.
- We know that folks in the UK are having serious discussion about banning kitchen knives because the guns bans have not reduced crime.
- We know that banning kitchen knives will make English food even worse.
- We know that one definition of insanity is trying the same thing over and over again, but hoping for a different result.
I think magazines ought to be limited to 5 rounds.
- We know that law enforcement officers, military personnel, and citizen survivors of gunfights have found that hyped-up bad guys don’t necessarily feel compelled to stop doing what they’re doing after 5 shots have been fired towards them.
- We know bad guys doing bad things don’t travel alone.
- We know more and more bad guys are wearing body armor to protect themselves against unarmed or lightly armed victims.
- I know that if my home is invaded in the middle of the night that I will want a 2,530,371 round magazine handy. And a couple of spares.
- We know that our soldiers have complained that actual Assault Rifles don’t have enough power to reliably stop enemy combatants.
- We know that limiting magazines to some arbitrary capacity based on perceived need is about the stupidest suggestion ever.
I think we need to address gun violence!
- We know we need to address violence. Not gun violence. Violence.
- We know we are not somehow better off or morally superior if we are killed with a knife, bat, or fist as compared to a gun.
- We know we are equally dead no matter what the cause.
- We know that the term “gun violence” is a deliberate attempt to misrepresent and mislead from the very real, and hard to solve, issues of societal evil.
- We know that violence is a difficult thing to solve so people tend to want to take shortcuts in order to consider things “fixed.”
I think you’re crazy if you think more guns is the answer to violence!
- We know that record numbers of Americans are buying guns for protection.
- We know that there are almost 300 million guns in the United States.
- We know that violent crime, measured by the FBI as incidents per 100,000 people, has fallen 50% in the past 20 years.
- We know that murder, measured by the FBI as incidents per 100,000 people, has fallen 54% over the past 20 years.
- We know that these massive and steady decreases in crime have happened while more and more Americans are buying guns.
- We know that simply blaming guns is deliberate shirking from the harder problem of addressing the real causes of crime.
I don’t think anyone needs a high-powered Assault Weapon!
- We know that there is no such thing as an assault weapon.
- We know that if you ask an “assault weapon ban” proponent what an “assault weapon” is, that they will not be able to tell you.
- We know, again according to the FBI, that many times more murders are committed with simple beatings than rifles of any kind.
- We know that banning mythical “assault weapons” will not stop murders by beating.
- We know that banning mythical “assault weapons” will not save lives. The largest mass murders ever had nothing to do with mythical “assault weapons.” People do bad things with or without mythical “assault weapons.”
I think armed citizens are going to act like vigilantes and cause even more harm!
- We know that lawfully armed citizens are among the most law-abiding groups of people measurable.
- We know that the crime rate for concealed carry permit holders is 14 times less than that of the general population.
- We know that lawfully armed citizens are 5 times less likely to commit a violent crime than the average citizen.
I think I have an irrational fear of guns and want a simple and immediate fix to the problems of violence.
- We know. We want to continue to reduce violence also.
- We know there is no simple fix.
- We know that we don’t fear guns. They’re just tools that protect someone from crime and/or violence between 1 and 2.5 million times per year – just in the US.
- We know that we kind of like the direction of the crime trend over the past 20 years and want to continue that. We just want to be smart about how we do it.
It’s time to stop thinking about what might happen.
It’s time to know what does happen.
P.S. I know I’m going to vomit if I hear one more talking head tell me what they think without considering what we already know.
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Librarian: C. Bruckner
Hours: 8:15 a.m. – 3:45 p.m.
The Washington Park School Library is the center of the school in a number of aspects. The library is located centrally within the school and is a popular place for all students in grades, K-8 to visit. Students use the library with their classroom teachers and also visit to check in and out books on their own. The library is the site for a number of meetings and events throughout the year, including host of the new Great American Opportunities magazine fundraiser and the annual Scholastic Book Fair.
The Washington Park School Library is continually working to update the collection and make it more relevant to its students. The library uses an electronic system (Follett Circulation Plus) to circulate books, catalog new books, and manage our student borrowers.
The library is also working to involve students in library operations. Currently, the life skills classes volunteer in the library. These students shelve books and generally assist the librarian.
The “Prexie Swap Club” returns for the 2010-2011 school year. This is an ongoing program for students in grades, K-8. Students may bring in their used books from home in exchange for another used book brought in by one of their peers. Students may participate in the program during their homeroom time or during their designated library time.
Washington Park Library’s goal is to meet the information literacy needs of all students in grades, K-8. Please let us know how we can help your student in any special way.
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NATIONAL GAMBLING IMPACT STUDY COMMISSION
THE HONORABLE VIVIAN BURDETTE
CHAIRPERSON BURDETTE: Good morning.
CHAIRPERSON JAMES: Good morning.
CHAIRPERSON BURDETTE: Good morning, Madam Chair James and Commission members for allowing me the opportunity to be here today. I am Vivian Burdette, Tribal Chairperson for the Tonto Apache Tribe in Payson, Arizona. The Tonto Apache Tribe was federally recognized in 1972 with 85 acres we began calling home. What matters to our people is the importance of sharing our resource and lending a helping hand to one another. We worshipped in a small one light bulb church. Here we gathered to strengthen our faith. Our needs were simple and we accepted a way of life that existed on reservations throughout Central Arizona. Unemployment was high, education was low and medical facilities were far.
The federal neglect of the Indian nation was extremely evident. Funding for badly needed projects on the reservation was scarce and difficult to obtain. Still we remained strong, determined and concerned, held together by our families and our faith.
I am here today because I believe in self-sufficiency of the Indian nation. Tribal government gaming has provided a means of self-sufficiency. It has created jobs on the reservation and indirectly created jobs in the community and it has also increased revenue and economic activity throughout the state. Tribal government gaming services serves the same purpose and should be reviewed in the same manner as the state lottery or parimutuel wagering.
Nationally five percent of gaming revenues are derived from Indian gaming, leaving a large revenue portion for Las Vegas, Atlantic City and state lotteries. Throughout the nation only 33 percent of 557 reservations do not use gaming to support their tribal function. Only a small portion of the tribal gaming operations raise enough to generate income and the majority of the Native Americans still live below poverty level.
On the Tonto Apache Reservation the Mazatzal Casino currently employs 267 non-tribal members. The current unemployment rate on our reservation is less than five percent compared to 70 percent in 1992. Due to the increase of employment opportunities, the overall crime rate for Payson has dropped three percent. The Mazatzal Casino utilizes local business thus helping sustain themselves during the slow winter months. Medical insurance has been provided for 161 non-tribal families and all Tonto Apache tribal members which is 108.
The elderly are provided with daily meals. There is a youth program, day care, playground, education fund and a gymnasium for our reservation. We have a tribal social worker, a tribal substance abuse counselor and a counselor employed by the casino on the premises.
There are just a few of the economic goals which the Tonto Apache Tribe has accomplished from the positive impact of Indian gaming to solidify an economic future and insure the substance and operate our tribal government with less federal assistance. Our dream of self-sufficient is becoming a reality and we are thankful for the progress we have made. We look forward to the future with which Indian gaming can provide for us.
As always there are those who look for and dwell on the downside of any situation. Admittedly there can be problems associated with this form of industry. Gaming addiction is obviously at issue. However, addiction comes in many forms. Any form of addiction is a concern in any community. Unfortunately we cannot remove all the addictive elements present in our daily lives. Eliminating Indian gaming in Arizona would not remove the addiction of gambling.
We do feel that the resources are available for sufficient dealing with the issue that can arise. Counseling is available for tribal members and the number for Gambling Anonymous is posted throughout the casino. Unfortunately the local charity of Gambling Anonymous has dissolved due to lack of participants. Persons admitting a problem with gambling can be barred from the establishment upon request and are referred to an association which assists them with their problems. We urge people to gamble responsibly.
A close watch is kept on the tribal community based on information from the tribal social service department. There has been no significant increase in alcohol related incidents on the reservation as a result of gaming. Substance abuse is limited to a few persons and is not a result of gaming. The crime rate and juvenile delinquency rate is at its lowest. Indian gaming has made a positive impact on our lives. In this community and in this state we have been given a definite sense of accomplishment and pride. We have something to strive for and to grow with to improve and most of all something to pass onto our youth. We will be passing on a new improved way of life consistent of higher standard, higher education and self-sufficiency.
Again, thank you for giving me the opportunity to express the views of the Tonto Apache Tribe on this issue. Enclosed for your review are some fact sheets containing important additional information. If you have any questions I, at this time, will answer them.
CHAIRPERSON JAMES: Thank you.
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Nitpick: Repetitive Music
I know I’m not the only who believes video game music is absolutely fantastic. Whether you own an official soundtrack from a game or not, you can’t deny the power that comes from the thrilling tunes that pop up when you’re engaged in combat or the somber tunes that resonate with you when witnessing a sad moment. Music is an important aspect of a video game and without it, many facets of the game would feel somewhat empty and devoid of personality. Simply put, music tends to heighten a player’s emotional response of a given situation, like the ones I mentioned above. So what exactly about music do I want to discuss on Nitpick this week? It’s the tunes that pop up again and again and again.
Many games have themes. If you’ve played games like Halo 3 or Kingdom Hearts, you’ll often notice that many tunes sound eerily similar. It’s a tactic that’s employed to create various pieces for various situations. For instance we have multiple types of the Halo theme song. One is slow perhaps for a death scene and then another we have the loud, blasting anthem version. Of course these two aren’t the only two types of the Halo theme that exists in Halo 3. The soundtrack is actually littered with more than five different types of the main theme, and more of other types of tunes.
Normally I’m all for alternate renditions of the same same melody. If the song is good then why create something entirely new. This is especially true if the song that is remade into multiple versions is the game’s main theme. It’s understandable that the composer and the developers want to emphasize the musical theme for the game numerous times. Having said that, there’s a point where it’s absolute overkill. This point varies from person to person, however, the fact remains the point does exist. So what exactly is so bad about overused melodies? It loses its personality, emotion, and consequently, life.
I don’t want to bombard you with rhetorical questions all day so I’ll get straight to the point: each piece of music has its own distinguished trait. Take for example “To Zanarkand” from Final Fantasy X. You can easily tell what type of instrument is the focus for this tune. In addition, it’s not hard to also tell why this song was created. The mellow melody and the slow pace of the tune automatically tells its listeners that there is something dramatic set in motion. As the song quickly speeds up into various successive pacing of the keys on the Piano you can almost hear that there is something that it’s desperately trying to do. It wants to tell a story. Coincidentally so, if you’re familiar with this piece then you might remember the two-line monologue of Tidus in FFX: “Listen to our story. This may be our last chance.”
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So you have a group of eager listeners interested to know more about this idea called Christianity. What do you do now?
Enter Bespeaking.org. A website “gratefully dedicated to those preparing to speak at Christian Union ‘Lunchbars‘.” If, like me, your idea of a lunchbar was a long table hosting more lunch options than a Starbucks barista attending to your coffee needs you may be wondering what all this is about. It turns out, a lunchbar is a format – typically employed by students – for laying on free food and then providing a talk.
Bespeaking has the tips, ideas and wisdom to guide you through the set up and application of these lunchbars. The ideas travel further than the University setting and may be useful to you in your environment so have a look. The subtle humour alone is worth the visit.
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The Federal Communications Commission in the US has expanded the right of consumers to keep the same, familiar phone number when switching to a new telephone company. The order will give consumers the opportunity to choose a telephone service provider based on quality, price and service.
The FCC has made clear that the obligation to provide local number portability extends to interconnected VoIP providers and the telecommunications carriers that obtain numbers for them. The action is, in part, a response to numerous complaints by consumers about their inability to port numbers to or from interconnected VoIP providers.
The order clarifies that telephone companies may not obstruct or delay number porting by demanding excess information from the customer’s new provider, and specifically concluded that LNP validation for a simple number port should be based on no more than four fields. The FCC has also tentatively requested that it requires the industry to complete simple ports in 48 hours.
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During the course of 2011, the .fr-registry (AFNIC) applied some new rules to their registrars. This meant every existing .fr-registrar had to re-apply to be able to remain a registrar and had to go through some tests and verifications in order to remain officially accredited by the registry. The dead-line for this was actually begin 2012, but some registrars still haven’t completed their accreditation tests or simply choose to terminate their registrarship.
Once a registrar-contract has been terminated, all domain names previously managed by that registrar have to be moved to an other registrar. The .fr-registry has chosen to simply give the domain name portfolio to any other .fr-registry that asks for this. The first other .fr-registrar to apply for taking over the portfolio of a .fr-registrar who stopped operation their registration business, will be handed over the domain names. Some rules apply for them to follow, but this does mean that some .fr-registration might find their .fr domain name suddenly managed by a registrar they have never heard of. Maybe even one that isn’t easy to reach or that might not even have a website in French.
It currently isn’t known how many domain names are involved in this. The first domain name portfolio’s will be handed out the 22′d of May. More news follows…
Posted under Uncategorized
This post was written by admin on May 16, 2012
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Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott sent a strongly worded letter warning United Nations-affiliated “elections monitors” that if they fail to obey state law by going in or even near a polling place, the UN-linked observers risk criminal prosecution and serious penalties. The international observers, he added, have absolutely no jurisdiction to interfere with voting in the Lone Star State.
The UN partner known as the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) came under fierce criticism across the country in recent days after it announced plans to deploy “elections monitors” throughout the United States to observe the November election. Among other efforts, the international observers are being charged with seeking out conservative groups and jurisdictions allegedly engaged in “voter suppression” activities. Mostly, analysts say, the supposed concerns are about voter ID laws.
When news of the controversial scheme exploded and became a national scandal this week, activists slammed the organization and ridiculed its half-baked plans, as well as the far-left groups calling for international observers in the first place. Responding to the uproar, state Attorney General Abbott warned any monitors who are supposed to be deployed in Texas that they must follow state elections law. Otherwise, they could end up in jail.
“The OSCE’s representatives are not authorized by Texas law to enter a polling place. It may be a criminal offense for OSCE’s representatives to maintain a presence within 100 feet of a polling place’s entrance,” the state attorney general said in his letter to the organization’s mission chief, adding that elections and monitors, including OSCE representatives, are governed by the Texas Election Code.
Click here to read the entire article.
Photo: In this July 25, 2011 file photo, Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott talks with the media as he leaves the Tom Green County Courthouse, in San Angelo, Texas: AP Images
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Each of the questions given below consists of a question followed by three statements. You have to study the question and the statements and decide which of the statement(s) is/are necessary to answer the question.
What is the speed of the train?
The train crosses a signal pole in 18 seconds.
The train crosses a platform of equal length in 36 seconds.
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Toronto is pretty flat, but it’s no prairie. Perhaps that’s why the Prairie style didn’t catch on. While it’s not surprising that a style so closely associated with the US Midwest wouldn’t make a large impact here, it is surprising that within a place like Toronto, where eclecticism was and is often the order of the day, the Prairie style wasn’t at least experimented with. Frank Lloyd Wright (1867-1959) is one of those architects that almost everyone has heard of, and it was under his leadership that the Prairie style matured during the first three decades of the 20th century.
Emanating from his Oak Park, Illinois studio, the style was characterized by its strong horizontal character, long gently pitched roofs, eaves extending well beyond the exterior walls, and open plan that seemed to hug the ground. In this regard, the influence of the flat prairie landscape is clearly felt. The style had its strongest manifestation in Chicago, but even nearby Buffalo can boast an impressive number of Prairie-style buildings. Toronto wasn’t as fortunate.
There is, however, one lone example of the style in Toronto (that I’ve found), and it’s worth noting. Situated within a sea of neo-Tudor and Colonial Revival houses in Deer Park, the McNamara House at 50 Heath Street West is in a league all its own. Built around 1920, the house is unusual: it has a flat roof, deep eaves, and is painted solid white. Emphasis is placed on geometry and the massing of rectangles and squares. It does not rely on historical references. Provincially speaking, the McNamara House isn’t alone. By historical fluke, the Ottawa area can boast the largest number of Prairie-style buildings in the country, thanks entirely to the work of one man: Francis Sullivan (1882-1929). Sullivan apprenticed under Wright and while operating a private practice in Ottawa from 1911-1916, he built some of Canada’s best (and only) Prairie-style buildings. The Connors house, Lansdowne Park Horticulture Building, Church of Sainte-Claire de Goulbourne, and the public library in Pembroke are all his work and reflect Wright’s influence.
Though an anomaly in Toronto, the Heath Street house and the Prairie style in general seem to have inspired a new generation of architects in the 1950s, this time in the form of Ranch-style houses (to be discussed in a later article). Scattered across Toronto’s inners suburbs, these houses reflect the influence of the Prairie style. The McNamara house can take comfort in this, adrift in a sea of Georgians and Tudors.
Editor’s Note: This post is an ongoing column exploring various architectural styles in and around Toronto. Spacing writer and heritage architecture consultant Thomas Wicks will look into the history of that style, the people behind it, and where in Toronto examples can be found.
McNamara House (Toronto) photo by Shannon Kyles
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Are narcissists more addicted to Facebook than everybody else? Do visible tattoos hurt your chances of landing a job? Are breakups more traumatic when initiated online?
These questions and many more were addressed during this week's annual student research day at California State University, Dominguez Hills, where dozens of undergraduate students presented the findings of their projects to a panel of professor judges.
Thursday's event at the Carson campus featured about 100 presentations, many of them advertised by colorful titles that defy stereotypes about the dryness of academia.
"What's all the hype? The effects of 3-D movies on our emotions." "Risky business: How going online changes your risk-taking behavior." "Dumb luck vs. the dragon: Why China could have reached the Americas before Columbus."
The all-day event had a contemporary feel, with a large proportion of students delving into the largely uncharted waters of social media and its effects on society.
Ludivina Vasquez, a psychology undergraduate student, has been studying the link between Facebook and narcissism. (Her title: "I can't help falling in love ... with me.")
"Narcissistic personality disorder is when a person has an inflated sense of self-importance," she explained to her audience of about a dozen people, most of them students. "They tend to be oblivious to other people's needs."
Her theory: Because Facebook tends to promote superficial
Using the results of a survey taken by nearly 300 people, she indeed found a correlation. Ditto for people with depressive traits. But Vasquez also found that people with avoidance-disorder tendencies - that is, people who often avoid socializing due
Some of the conclusions turn conventional wisdom on its head.
In one project studying generational differences in multitasking, psychology majors Mike Kersten and Murat Arikan found that 20-year-olds can no better read a book while talking on the phone - or watch TV while surfing the Internet - than their baby-boomer elders.
In another, titled "How is social media use related to academic performance?", communications major Justin Lewis concluded that heavy social media use doesn't seem to get in the way of studying.
In his survey of about 100 students, 65 percent reported using social media for at least three hours every day. (More than a third said they used social media for nine or more hours daily.) Yet 63 percent had a GPA above 3.0.
Lewis, a former teacher of struggling community college students, said he often overheard colleagues blaming students' heavy use of Facebook for their poor performance. He was skeptical.
"I just felt it was too much of a crutch to lay the blame on social media alone," he said. "It had more to do with each student's willingness to learn and interest in the subject."
Of course, these are budding researchers, which means they haven't fully bloomed. As with any discipline, undergraduate students in this realm often still have a few dues to pay.
Mark Carrier, chairman of the university's psychology department and the event's coordinator, said the most common mistakes have to do with delivering the oral presentations.
"Students speak too quickly or too slowly," he said. "Preparing for the conference gives them a chance to work on their timing."
Not infrequently, the methodology of the studies is flawed. For this reason, the professor-judges taking notes in the back of the room on Thursday doubled as coaches who provided constructive feedback as a coda to most of the presentations.
At this week's event, they had both praise and criticism for student Hugh Leonard, whose research concluded that tattoos seem not to significantly reduce a person's chances of landing a job.
In his study, 60 survey takers looked at photos of potential job applicants with or without tattoos and rated them on traits such as perceived trustworthiness and competency.
But, as the judges noted, the survey takers were students. In the real world, prospective employers and tattooed job seekers are often separated by a generation gap.
At least one of the students is about to be published in a prestigious journal. Saira Rab's study looking at whether people learn more from 3-D presentations will soon be published in the International Journal of Environmental and Science Education.
She's also been quoted in Men's Health Magazine for work pertaining to 3-D movies conducted under the supervision of Carrier.
Among her findings: the added dimension is really more of a distraction than an enhancement. Viewers filling out a survey also reported headaches and vision problems.
"You feel less attentive if you're watching 3-D movies as compared to 2-D movies," she said after her presentation Thursday. "It wasn't what they say it is."
Men's Health summed it up with this headline: "Why 3-D Movies Suck."
About 25 winners will be culled from Thursday's contest. They will advance to a statewide contest that includes student researchers from across the CSU system. Last year, of the 18 first-place finishers statewide, two were from Dominguez Hills.
Follow Rob Kuznia on Twitter at http://twitter.com/robkuznia
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In-Home Systems: Utilizing RO and NF Elements
According to the Water Quality Association (WQA), more than 15 percent of American households now have an in-home water purification system utilizing either reverse osmosis (RO) or nanofiltration (NF) membrane technology. These systems are used to purify water from multiple sources including ground water, surface water and even brackish water.
Innovations in membrane technology, which has been used in major industries and hospitals, are driving the industry into the home. Under-the-sink water purification systems are now more cost-efficient and easier to install than ever. By incorporating RO elements, these systems are a reliable means for purifying drinking water.
Historically, membrane elements were too expensive and inefficient for residential use. However, synthetic materials have been responsible for a lower cost and increased reliability, making them a more practical solution.
RO Elements in In-Home Systems
RO membranes are designed to act as an ultra-fine filter in order to reject solids as small as one angstrom in diameter. No other filtration method can achieve this level of purification.
In water treatment, the membrane is permeable to water molecules but is not permeable to molecules of dissolved solids such as salt. Reverse osmosis effectively removes these salts, bacteria and even viruses.
Traditional RO membranes date back to the 60s when they were constructed of cellulose acetate and required pressures greater than 600 pounds per square inch (psi). Those antiquated membranes removed as much as 95 percent of the solids from water. The tremendous amount of energy required by these systems made them impractical for in-home use.
The WQA lists undersink and countertop residential systems, known as low pressure RO systems, as those systems with water feed pressures of less than 100 pounds per square in gauge (psig).
In addition to removing between 95 percent to more than 99 percent of dissolved salts, RO membranes also reduce bacteria passage as well as the passage of bacterial byproducts by 99.5 percent or better. RO also removes silica and total organic carbon (TOC) from incoming water. These often are important additional considerations. Other contaminants RO membranes can remove include arsenic, nitrates, lead, mercury and fluoride. In addition, RO membranes reduce odor, color and foul taste.
NF Elements in In-Home Systems
NF membranes do not remove the level of dissolved solids that RO membranes do and are not used as widely in in-home systems. Instead, NF technology is found more often in municipal water treatment plants. NF membranes are designed to reject solids larger than one nanometer (10 angstroms) in diameter with molecular weights above 200. In exchange, they are capable of working at much lower pressures than RO systems, reducing the amount of energy they need.
About the Author
Jon Goodman is global marketing manager for FilmTec membranes. FilmTec is a wholly owned subsidiary of The Dow Chemical Co.
RO Elements: Low Energy Membranes
In 1977, The FilmTec Corp., which is now a wholly owned subsidiary of The Dow Chemical Co., introduced the first low-energy element, FILMTEC FT 30, that could effectively eliminate 98 percent of dissolved solids, utilizing pressures as low as 150 psi. Over the following 23 years the process has evolved to provide an even higher level of rejection, eliminating more than 99.9 percent of all dissolved solids in industrial systems. Reverse osmosis membranes typically are incorporated as part of a whole, home filtration device that also includes carbon filters and micro screens. Howeverm it is the reverse osmosis technology that cleans the water down to the molecular level .
A new generation of FILMTEC NF elements have been designed only to remove specific contaminants while permitting the passage of other desirable molecules. For example, in Paris there are more than 9,000 FILMTEC NF membranes removing atrazine from river water but leaving magnesium and calcium in as part of the local health requirement.
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CC-MAIN-2013-20
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http://www.wqpmag.com/home-systems-utilizing-ro-and-nf-elements
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s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00040-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
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en
| 0.944607
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Looking for a Christmas tree that’s green in spirit as well as appearance?
- Try the Internet: Search “Organic Christmas Trees in …” and fill in the name of your state or county.
- Buy local. Even if you can’t find a pesticide-free grower, you may find a local one. Most Christmas trees come from Oregon or North Carolina; if you can get a tree that’s grown closer to home, you’ll save energy, help reduce climate change, and minimize the extra pesticides that are sometimes applied before trees are shipped long distances.
Don’t Forget to Recycle!
Get some great tips on recycling your Christmas tree from Iowa State University.
What About Artificial Trees?
- When Swedish researchers compared a locally grown, live cut tree to a full-size plastic tree, they found that the real tree used about a fifth of the energy (assuming that the plastic tree would be used for ten years).
- Most artificial trees are made from environmentally toxic PVC.
- Christmas trees can grow very well on soils that are inhospitable to other crops.
- A single acre of Christmas trees produces enough oxygen to support 18 people, while absorbing carbon dioxide.
If you do buy an artificial tree, plan to reuse it for many years. If you have an artificial tree you want to replace, donate it to a community center, nonprofit organization or other charity that can continue to use it.
Why not buy a live tree and plant it after Christmas?
You can do this with great success. The major disadvantage is that you can only keep the tree in the house for about a week before it needs to get in the ground. Other tips:
- Dig the hole for the root ball now, before the ground freezes.
- Buy a tree that is big enough to enjoy for Christmas, but light enough that you can easily move from the house to your yard.
- Keep the root ball watered until you get the tree planted, then continue to water as you would any newly planted tree.
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<urn:uuid:b90232e0-03d1-4b6b-8e57-200b80f8d8c3>
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CC-MAIN-2013-20
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http://www.biggreenpurse.com/en/www.transfairusa.org/content/about/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=114&Itemid=317
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s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
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en
| 0.934484
| 425
| 2.890625
| 3
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ALPS - Analyzing and Modeling Transitions of Common Property Pastures in the Swiss Alps
The common property pastures in the Swiss Alps provide significant services to the mountainous regions, such as income sources for farmers and tourism industry, protection from soil erosion, water-run-off, landslides, and high biodiversity. These services are highly dependent on continuous management of the alpine pastures. In Switzerland, most alpine summer pastures are common property and have been managed by local governance systems since the Middle Ages in order to avoid over-use of the scarce resources. Societal changes, like industrialization, rapid economic growth, and new agricultural policies, induced major transitions of the pasture management system, which led to abandonment of marginal land or intensification of productive areas ensuing reduction of biodiversity on the long-term.
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<urn:uuid:25901e51-4212-4ca8-b007-bbd6b66bbfa5>
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CC-MAIN-2013-20
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http://www.geographie.uni-muenchen.de/department/fiona/department/sozialgeographie/forschung/forschungsprojekte/alps/index.html
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s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
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en
| 0.928306
| 165
| 3.75
| 4
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