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Work Wardrobe – Shift Dresses
were actually born of the ‘undershirt’ or also known as a chemise. The exposing
of the inner layers of clothing allowed the development of the shift dress,
introduced by the French who pulled out the inner garments and used them as the
and Style Icons
The Shift dress
has been popular throughout the decades, but had a few periods of highlights.
Its silhouette is most iconic of the 1960s “mod” look, when it was worn by such
public figures as Audrey Hepburn, Mia Farrow, and Twiggy.
made a comeback in the mid-1990s when business wear became popular, and at this
time were most often layered over a turtleneck or t-shirt and worn with knee
socks. Since then the classic design has not left the stage.
The shift dress
is still associated with timeless style and sophistication, and is often worn
by First Lady Michelle Obama. The shift dress was previously associated with US
presidency when former First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy adopted it as her own
signature style, paired with pearls, gloves, and a pillbox hat.
Today, the dress
is hugely popular with current style icons, from Jennifer Aniston to Sarah
Jessica Parker, everyone seems to be loving them.
At the office
of the shift dress is key to its popularity. Although shift dresses can come in
various sleeve lengths and hemlines, the classic shift dress is sleeveless,
knee-length, and features a high collar or boat neck
It can be dressed
up or dressed down, and can be adapted to wear in any season. The simple
styling of the shift dress makes it a versatile piece, lending itself to a
variety of fabrics and accessories.
hugely popular with this dress, especially when worn for the office or
business. Due to the short sleeves, it is ideally paired with a blazer or
cardigan, and remains remarkably comfortable. Also, because of its simplicity, it can be paired with
jewelry to give it a unique look.
The fact that
they are not form-fitting and that the waist is not emphasised, they allow
women to move around freely without constraints.
lines of the dress allow for it to be produced in many materials, colours and
prints. For the basic office wardrobe the main choice would be a black, grey or
navy blue version of the dress.
It’s the perfect
dress to wear for a quick shift from desk to drinks.
the shift dress is ideal for anyone who needs to look professional, or works in
an office. Besides that, it is perfectly flattering for any body type.
than hugging the body, it narrows down every shape and size and takes you from
an early morning meeting to cocktail hour with ease.
If you are
looking to upgrade your work wardrobe, a shift dress is a great investment, not
only will you be able to pair it with many items you already have in your
closet, but you will also look great for the job.
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Transport white paper: SMEs welcome outline but warn about financial impact31 March 2011
by UEAPME -- last modified 31 March 2011
UEAPME Transport Forum backs plans to increase sustainability of the sector, suggests support measures for small operators
The European Commission published today its White Paper on Transport. The paper, designed as a "roadmap to a single European transport area", aims to make the European transport system more competitive and resource-efficient. The Transport Forum of UEAPME, the European craft and SME employers' organisation, supports these aims and backs all measures which aim to ensure the sustainability of transport in the EU. However, UEAPME experts warned that this strategy will have a significant financial impact on transport businesses and will have to be carefully combined with support measures to avoid harming European SMEs.
"The Commission has presented a strategy which correctly outlines some of the major challenges which the European transport system will face in a very near future", said Francesco Del Boca, Chairman of the UEAPME Transport Forum. "However, its approach to tackling these challenges fails to take into account that many transport businesses involved in transport of goods are SMEs with strong financial constraints. They have to deal with significant obstacles to investment and without support, for instance in the form of tax incentives and investment support schemes, they will be hit very hard by this strategy."
In particular, the White Paper's proposal to shift a third of road freight onto rail on distances of over 300 km by 2030 needs a reality check. The EU markets for rail and maritime transport will need significant improvements in capacity, opening of markets and interoperability before they become competitive. Before the White Paper's aims in this respect are reached, decision-makers should refrain from all measures to impose further charges on the road transport sector.
UEAPME reminded that the opening of transport markets should always go hand in hand with correct implementation of social legislation, which will ensure a level playing field throughout EU Member States. In this respect the White Paper's actions to promote quality jobs and working conditions are very welcome.
Though the vision for oil-free cities will create employment and growth for SMEs providing alternative mobility solutions, such as those active in sales and repair of electric vehicles, it also brings strong constraints for those operating in logistics or carrying out transport. Improvements to the energy efficiency of vehicles and the use of new technologies to make more efficient use of transport and infrastructure are all measures which will in the long-term reduce costs for SMEs. However in the short to medium term, small businesses will need support to bear the associated expenses.
"SMEs share the European Commission's vision of a sustainable, competitive and safe transport system, but they will need help in achieving it. The recently adopted Energy Efficiency Plan recognises that SMEs have to face obstacles to investment. It is time that the 'Think Small First' principle is applied to the transport sector as well", concluded Del Boca.
The UEAPME Transport Forum is a co-operation platform bringing together small and medium-sized enterprises operating in the transport sector as well as the transport branches of several members of UEAPME, the employers' organisation representing the interests of European crafts, trades and SMEs at EU level.
UEAPME - European SMEs employers' association
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Hot answers tagged karet
Extra watched: to make sure that no water touches it (except while it's being kneaded), because water is needed to start the fermentation process, which would make it chametz. The soul is connected to G-d, like a limb of the body is connected to the heart (for its blood supply) and the brain (for its functionality). "Cut off" means just that - that ...
Rambam, Sanhedrin chapter 19 lists "every thou-shalt-not that has kares and has no death by court and for which one gets lashes" (twenty-one of them, including eating chametz on Pesach). He then lists eighteen sins for which people are "liable to death at the hands of God", implication being that they don't have kares, such as a non-kohen who ate t'ruma.
No. The most severe sins warrant the death penalty at the hands of a Sanhedrin if properly warned etc., such as murder and violating shabbos. I believe a subset of those can warrant Karet if done intentionally but unwitnessed. The next category warrant Karet as a maximum, such as violating Yom Kippur or relations with one's sister. A Sanhedrin could give ...
Only top voted, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible
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Business Tax Incentives
Fuel Cells & Microturbines
What are the tax incentives for fuel cells and microturbines?
These incentives are tax credits for two advanced distributed generation technologies: qualifying fuel cell and microturbine systems. Fuel cells generate electricity through a chemical process. They are somewhat similar to batteries, except fuel must be fed continuously to them. Microturbines are small power generation systems using a gas turbine engine, based on related turbines used in transportation. The credits are available for systems "placed in service" in prior to December 31, 2016.
Who is eligible for the tax incentives?
The credits are primarily for business use of this equipment, although individuals are eligible for the fuel cell tax incentive. Recent legislation extends the incentive to all utilities and telecommunications firms. This credit is permissible against the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT).
What are the incentives and how do they work?
- For fuel cells:
- Credits are for 30% of the cost, up to $3000 per kW of power that can be produced.
- To qualify systems must have an efficiency of at least 30% and must have a capacity of at least 0.5 kW.
- For microturbines:
- Credits are for 10% of the cost, up to $200 per kW of power that can be produced.
- To qualify, systems must have an efficiency of at least 26% and must have a capacity of less than 2,000 kW.
What do I have to do to qualify for these incentives?
To qualify, taxpayers will probably need to have evidence regarding:
- The cost of the system (this includes the power generation system itself and "associated balance of plant components, including, in the case of microturbines, "secondary components located between the existing infrastructure for fuel delivery and the existing infrastructure for power distribution"),*
- The capacity of the system,
- The efficiency of the system, and
- When it was placed in service.
Where can I learn more about qualifying products?
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Texas became the 28th state in the United States.
The first Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA) opened in Boston.
The Constitution of Ireland, changing the Irish Free State into Eire, went into effect.
During World War II, Germany began dropping incendiary bombs on London.
A peace agreement was signed, ending 36 years of conflict in Guatemala.
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19-Aug-2006 -- 50N – 120E Hulunbaier (呼伦贝尔), ]Inner Mongolia (内蒙古), China
Line Hunting Date: August 19, 2006
The 1st Confluence Hunt in the Ultimate Grassland
We were invited for a workshop at Hailaer (海拉尔)city, the capital of Huleunbaier, the most northeastern prefecture of Inner Mongolia. It is an area well known for the vast and lush grassland.
There were two flights a day from Beijing to Hailaer during the summer month. We opted for the early morning fight so we have time to go line hunting. Our flight arrived on time at 9.30 am under overcast sky. By 11 am our local host had a car organized so we took off toward this confluence point about 90 km north based on GPS distance.
The drive toward north followed a well paved highway with wonderful scenery of gentle rolling hills of grassland. After about 100 km of driving, and we took a dirt road toward west after passing a village called Bayi Ranch (八一牧场) with 8 km remaining to the confluence point.
The area we drove through were a mixture of native grassland and large track of wheat fields. After a few turns and twists we stopped on top a hill which put us about 600 meters from the confluence point located on another hill. Unfortunately, it started to drizzle as we started our hike toward the point.
As we got near the hill where confluence point located, there was a large herd of sheep passing through. Just as we reached the confluence point, the herder galloped toward us on his horse. We had a nice visit with this Mongolian rancher, Mr. Bai who lived with his brother is a house not too far from the confluence point. They have over a thousand sheep and pretty much live all year around in this isolated location. In essence, this is his confluence point.
This was a pleasant hunt and gave us a good appreciation of the grassland. A little sunshine would made this a great hunt.
Rating of this hunt :
Degree of Challenge:
1 – can be an easy drive up (1= very easy - drive to the point; to 5= a death march – glad it is over)
3 – Classic grassland of Mongolia (Scale: 1= not interesting at all; 5= take your breath away)
3 – Isolated Mongolian ranching family (Scale: 1=dull; 5= most stimulating)
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The Department of Education has given the go-ahead for the opening of five new primary schools over the next two years - all of which will be multi- or inter-denominational.
Patron bodies Educate-Together and An Foras Pátrúnachta have been asked to open the schools, which will be located in areas of growing population in the Dublin commuter belt area.
This September three new schools will open, with two opening the following year.
Multi-denominational body Educate-Together has been asked to open schools in the Dublin suburbs of Blanchardstown west and Mulhuddart.
Irish language patron body An Foras Pátrúnachta will open one inter-denominational school, geared towards Catholics and Protestants, in Ashbourne, Co Meath.
In 2012 both bodies will open one more school each in the same areas.
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Year One: How Did Obama Do on Foreign Policy?
By one estimate at least, Barack Obama has had the most successful first year of any president in recent history. According to Congressional Quarterly, Obama scored a 96.7 percent success rate in getting his agenda through Congress. Only Lyndon Johnson came close, with 93 percent in his first year. Although Republican opposition to the president was cohesive and frequently strident, the president was able to take advantage of sizable Democratic majorities in Congress—as well as the arm-twisting of Rahm "Art of the Possible" Emanuel—to push through measures to stabilize the economy and extend health care coverage. The president didn't just rely on Congress. As Politifact points out, Obama fulfilled a large number of campaign promises through executive order.
So, given this impressive record, why have I given the president a C- on his first year foreign policy in our new IPS report Barely Making the Grade?
For one thing, unlike domestic policy, foreign policy does not depend heavily on congressional legislation. So, while the president gets high marks for his savvy on Capitol Hill, it's largely immaterial to his record on global issues.
Second, Obama indeed fulfilled a number of his campaign promises on foreign policy—and that was part of the problem. After all, Obama the candidate promised to focus on the war in Afghanistan, and he has done so. He promised to increase the size of the Army and Marine Corps, and he has kept that promise by pushing for a modest but still significant increase in military spending. By keeping these promises, the president has undercut the rest of his agenda. The escalation of war in Afghanistan undermines his overtures to the Muslim world. His increases in military spending strain the overall budget and put the funding of his ambitious domestic agenda in peril.
If you add both to the escalation of drone strikes in Pakistan and U.S. involvement in Yemen, Obama has, however reluctantly, assumed the mantle of a war president.
In the blogosphere at least, some have given the president a failing grade because his foreign policy too closely resembles that of his predecessor. But that is unfair. The Obama administration's first year had several high points. Its early decision to ban torture immediately opened up distance from the Bush years. Its commitment to nuclear disarmament is unprecedented for a U.S. administration. The lifting of the global gag rule that restricted U.S. funding for family planning was a welcome shift in policy. The about-turn on missile defense bases in Poland and Czechoslovakia was a dose of common sense.
Barack Obama has turned out to be the Goldilocks president—not too hot, not too cold but just right in the comfortable center. His middling grade of C- reflects his fundamental ambivalence. Every bold initiative was accompanied by a failure of nerve or follow-through. The "war on terror" is over, but the administration wages practically the same campaign under a different name. We've pledged to pay our arrears to the UN, but haven't yet come in from the cold by signing the treaties on landmines, child soldiers, law of the seas, International Criminal Court, and others. Torture is banned, but extraordinary rendition remains on the books.
Then there's Guantánamo. One year ago, Obama promised that the detention facility would be closed by now. "Now there's talk that the prison will remain open at least through 2010," writes Foreign Policy In Focus (FPIF) columnist Frida Berrigan. "And the proposal to move detainees to a maximum security prison in Illinois superficially retires Guantánamo as a symbol, while retaining the legal problems it embodies. Equally troubling is the administration's expansion of detention facilities in Afghanistan that are almost impenetrable for lawyers and humanitarian groups."
"Give him a break," Obama's boosters say. "It's only been one year!"
Obama certainly needs more time to work on the existential threats facing the planet, such as nuclear weapons and climate change. And no one expected him to turn around the global economy after one year.
But Obama promised bold change, not simply change around the edges. He stretched the definition of what is politically possible when he ran for and attained the highest office in the land. Was it too much to expect that he would continue to stretch that definition, even over the objections of his cautious staff, once he occupied the Oval Office?
There is still plenty of time for bold initiatives. "As the world's biggest emitter of greenhouse gasses after China, the United States could take the lead in climate negotiations by promising to reduce emissions by 80 percent of 1990 levels by 2050," I write in my foreign policy report card. "As the country most responsible for the financial deregulation that threw the global economy into recession, the United States could take the lead by supporting the Tobin tax on financial transactions. As the world's biggest military spender, the United States could freeze and then cut the Pentagon budget, challenging other big spenders to do the same."
On the issue of trade, Obama could throw his weight behind by the TRADE Act, introduced in the Senate by Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) and in the House by Representative Mike Michaud (D-Maine). "The majority of House Democrats support this act," writes FPIF senior analyst Mark Engler in report card on trade. "If passed, it would require a review of existing trade pacts such as NAFTA and the WTO, and it would spell out guidelines for making labor and environmental protections central parts of future trade deals."
Obama didn't fail in his first year, nor did he make the dean's list. He worked hard, but he didn't achieve his full potential. Of course, the successes and the failures of the first year don't rest solely on his shoulders. Great presidents, after all, can't do it alone.
It takes an electorate.
John Feffer is co-director of Foreign Policy In Focus at the Institute for Policy Studies.
The Way to a Just Foreign Policy :: It's time to leave behind old ideas of superpowers. A changing world brings new opportunities for peace and the chance to join a community of nations.
That means, we rely on support from our readers.
Independent. Nonprofit. Subscriber-supported.
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Editor's note: Donna Brazile, a Democratic strategist, is vice chair for voter registration and participation at the Democratic National Committee and founder of Brazile & Associates, a political consulting firm. She was the campaign manager for the Al Gore-Joe Lieberman ticket in 2000 and wrote "Cooking With Grease."
Donna Brazile says the Oscar-nominated "Benjamin Button" and New Orleans celebrate redemption.
(CNN) -- There's an old saying down in my hometown of New Orleans about how to tell the changing of the seasons. I'm not referring to winter, spring, summer or fall, but rather to the aroma of what someone's cooking up fresh and delicious.
Shrimp, oysters, crabs, crayfish -- those are our seasons. It's all a cycle, and before we enter the Lenten season, we gather together to celebrate Mardi Gras.
The parades that began earlier this month won't end until late Fat Tuesday, February 24. This Sunday most of us will come home soon after the Bacchus float rolls down Canal Street, to watch the 81st annual Oscars and root for "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button."
"Benjamin Button" is about transformation and renewal, and one of the film's key characters is New Orleans. Filmed in some of my hometown's most cherished neighborhoods and historic sites -- the Garden and Warehouse districts, the French Quarter, Uptown and the shores of Lake Pontchartrain -- the diversity, spirit and special grace that imbibe the culture of New Orleans also enrich and inform the film.
While we celebrate the film's 13 Oscar nominations, we should also celebrate its contribution to the rebirth of New Orleans and the surrounding Gulf Coast.
Based on a short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald, who chose Baltimore, Maryland, as its locale, the film version of "Benjamin Button" was instead set in New Orleans by Paramount Pictures. Almost four years after Katrina, one of the most destructive and powerful hurricanes to hit our nation's shores, the movie has ushered in a reawakening and refocusing on New Orleans that will help this treasured city move past the tragedy that almost destroyed it.
Like New Orleans itself, Benjamin Button was born old. Literally. While other children played, young Benjamin sat as a wizened old man in a wheelchair among the old folks who accepted him for who he was, not how he looked -- unlike the widowed father who abandoned him to the care of a stranger, a black woman capable of loving Benjamin despite his grotesque appearance and infirmities.
Raised in a rest home, Benjamin grows younger as those around him age and die. He meets the love of his life while both are in their tender years, though they don't become romantically involved until their bodies and emotional maturity are compatibly developed.
As oblivious to his own good looks as he was to his initial ugliness, Benjamin has an innate appreciation for the values many young people typically take for granted -- physical labor, survival despite great obstacles, loyalty.
As Hurricane Katrina wheels itself ever closer to shore, its fierce winds and drenching rain pounding at the window, Benjamin's story unfolds as his now-elderly childhood sweetheart lays dying, listening to her (their) daughter read from his diary, a journal neither had ever before read.
Just as New Orleans is loved and revered for its rich and unconventional cultural characteristics, the tragedy of Katrina has allowed a quixotic renewal -- a rebirth, if you will -- of New Orleans' physical structure while maintaining a reverence for its spirit, historical architecture and traditions, so beautifully captured in the film.
People from all over the country embraced the displaced natives of the Big Easy with open arms until they were able to return home, much like Benjamin's adoptive mother did. Today, New Orleans has the look of a fresh young city complemented with a deep wisdom that only can be gained through near-death experiences.
"The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" stands as an example of Hollywood "doing right," both artistically and with a social consciousness that expended millions of dollars and created thousands of jobs in an area that desperately needs them. This celebrated picture is a reminder to all that supporting American industry is the key to the rebirth of this incredible region.
The scars of New Orleans' recent past are fading as she welcomes the future, dressed to the nines in fancy new lingerie and prepared for a romantic encounter with the future. New Orleans is about redemption and renewal -- as is the most curious case of Benjamin Button.
The opinions expressed in this column are solely those of Donna Brazile.
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Amazing New Mirror Reflects Ambition for Lunar Telescope
A 2-inch diameter flat liquid mirror. It is made of an ionic liquid coated with a thin layer of silver. The reflection of a resolution chart is visible in the liquid.
CREDIT: Omar Seddiki (U. Laval)
Scientists have successfully coated a liquid surface with a thin layer of silver metal, creating a highly reflective mirror that could be used to create mammoth liquid-mirror telescopes on the moon.
Such a lunar observatory could be as wide as football a field, letting scientists peer back to a time when the first stars in the universe were born.
Researchers led by Ermanno Borra of Laval University in Quebec, Canada, applied the silver film layer to the surface of an ionic liquid, a fluid that consists only of charged particles called “ions.” Table salt, if heated above 1,472 degrees Fahrenheit (800 degrees Celsius), melts and transforms into an ionic liquid.
The researchers used a commercially available ionic liquid called ECOENG 212, which has a viscosity between that of water and honey. They applied electric current to silver strands suspended in the ionic liquid while in a vacuum environment. The silver evaporated and “that coats the liquid with a thin reflective layer of metal,” Borra said. “It’s basically the same technique used to coat a glass mirror with aluminum or gold.”
The technique is detailed in the June 20 issue of the journal Nature.
The new silvered liquid remained stable for months, did not evaporate in a vacuum, and its reflectivity rivaled that of the best metal-coated mirrors.
All of these properties, the scientists say, make metallized ionic liquids ideal for use as the lens in a proposed lunar liquid mirror telescope, or LMT, a project currently under consideration by NASA.
Borra and Roger Angel, an astronomer at the University of Arizona who was also a co-author on the study, are major proponents of a lunar LMT, which they say could detect objects up to 1,000 times fainter than even the James Webb Space Telescope, a next-generation orbiting observatory set for launch in 2013. A lunar LMT would be powerful enough for scientists to spot ultraviolet radiation from the very first stars thought to illuminate the universe, they say.
LMTs are much cheaper than glass-mirror telescopes. The 6-meter Large Zenith LMT at the University of British Columbia, which has a liquid mercury metal lens, cost $1 million to build. A comparable glass mirror telescope would cost an estimated $100 million.
A lunar LMT would be much easier to transport to the moon and to assemble once there, its proponents say. The moon's advantage over Earth as an observing platform? No atmosphere to distort the incoming light.
“The mirror is liquid, so you can carry it in a jug on a rocket and take it to the moon,” Borra told SPACE.com. “Then you pour it into a dish…if there is a dimple somewhere in the container, the liquid simply flows to fill it up.”
Whereas a glass mirror has to be tediously ground to the right lens shape, a LMT simply has to be rotated because a spinning fluid forms a bowl-shaped parabaloid perfect for collecting light.
Current LMTs use liquid mercury or gallium for their mirrors. But this approach won’t work on the moon because the sub-zero temperatures there would freeze the liquid metals into useless solid lumps. In contrast, a spinning metal-coated ionic liquid could remain fluid and retain its parabola shape, Borra said.
Liquid metal lenses would also be too “hot” for the kinds of observations scientists hope to do on the moon. “It’s like an incandescent bulb,” Borra explained. “You have a wire running through and because it’s very, very hot, it emits visible light.”
An ideal lunar LMT would have to emit very little radiation of its own. “To have that glow dim enough to observe these very, very faint objects, you need a very, very cold mirror,” Borra said.
Scientists have to create a liquid lens that can remain fluid at temperatures as low as -220 degrees Fahrenheit (-140 degrees Celsius) if they want to build an infrared telescope on the moon. The new silver-coated ionic liquid only remains liquid down to about -144 degrees Fahrenheit (-98 degrees Celsius).
Borra is not worried, though, because there are trillions of possible ionic fluids scientists could experiment with. “It’s a huge advantage because we can fine-tune the characteristics of the liquid we use on the moon,” he said. “It’s a monstrous advantage.”
MORE FROM SPACE.com
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CVSup is a software package for transferring and updating collections of files across a network. It consists of a server called cvsupd and a client called cvsup. CVSup is faster (often by an order of magnitude) and more flexible than traditional network packages such as rdist and sup. In addition, CVSup has special knowledge of RCS files (as used by CVS). Software projects using CVSup to distribute their CVS repositories include FreeBSD, KDE, and (shortly) Postgres.
cvsweb is a visual (WWW) interface for exploring a CVS repository. Its enhancements include recognition and display of popular MIME-types, visual, color-coded, side-by-side diffs of changes, and the ability sort the file display and to hide old files from view. cvsweb requires the server to have CVS and a CVS repository worth exploring.
The Cyrus SASL library is a generic library for easy integration of secure network authentication to any client or server application. It supports authentication via standard plaintext methods as well as CRAM-MD5 and DIGEST-MD5 shared secret methods and KERBEROS_V4 and GSSAPI Kerberos methods. The SASL protocol framework is used by SMTP, IMAP, ACAP, LDAP, and other standard protocols.
Dante is a free implementation of the proxy protocols SOCKS version 4 and SOCKS version 5 (RFC 1928). It can be used as a firewall between networks, controlling outgoing traffic. The package consists of two parts: a socks server and a proxy client that supports socks, HTTP proxies, and UPnP. RFC 1961 (GSSAPI) is supported in both the client and the server. Commercial support is available.
DBIx::Password provides an abstraction layer for password maintenance. It is database independent and only overrides the connect method (so it basically behaves as DBI normally does). You provide a single virtual user name in the connect method and the module determines which database/which user/which password to provide.
Deadman's Redirect is designed to replace whatever is loaded when you click on the Home button in your browser. It is a Web surfer's power tool that can be completely customized, using HTML, to fit the needs of the user. It allows for URL redirection as well as an interface to various search engines through its aliasing system. It also supports user-set aliases with functional arguments, RSS headlines, and a history of all the URLs that pass through it.
Depot is a software management tool providing a simple, yet flexible, mechanism for maintaining third party and locally developed software in large heterogeneous computing environments. Depot integrates separately maintained software packages, known as collections, into a common directory hierarchy consisting of a union of all the collections. This common directory is defined as the software environment. A set of configuration options manages interactions and intersections between collections in the environment. Depot facilitates the introduction, update, and removal of collections in a software environment. Custom environments and complete test environments can be easily created for individual machines or for sets of machines. Collections with unexpected problems can be replaced with previous versions or simply removed. Individual collections or files can be moved from remote filesystems to the local disks of workstations without the worry that the files may become stale. All this is achieved with minimal wasted disk space and administrative overhead.
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Dictionary and translator for handheld
New : sensagent is now available on your handheld
A windows (pop-into) of information (full-content of Sensagent) triggered by double-clicking any word on your webpage. Give contextual explanation and translation from your sites !
With a SensagentBox, visitors to your site can access reliable information on over 5 million pages provided by Sensagent.com. Choose the design that fits your site.
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Lettris is a curious tetris-clone game where all the bricks have the same square shape but different content. Each square carries a letter. To make squares disappear and save space for other squares you have to assemble English words (left, right, up, down) from the falling squares.
Boggle gives you 3 minutes to find as many words (3 letters or more) as you can in a grid of 16 letters. You can also try the grid of 16 letters. Letters must be adjacent and longer words score better. See if you can get into the grid Hall of Fame !
Change the target language to find translations.
Tips: browse the semantic fields (see From ideas to words) in two languages to learn more.
Di Stéfano with the Argentina national team.
|Full name||Alfredo Stéfano Di Stéfano Laulhé|
|Date of birth||4 July 1926|
|Place of birth||Buenos Aires, Argentina|
|Height||1.78 m (5 ft 10 in)|
|Playing position||Attacking midfielder, Forward|
|1946||→ Huracán (loan)||55||(40)|
|* Senior club appearances and goals counted for the domestic league only.
† Appearances (Goals).
Alfredo Stéfano Di Stéfano Laulhé (born 4 July 1926 in Barracas, Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires), born into a family of Italian immigrants from Capri, is a former Argentinian footballer and coach, widely regarded as one of the greatest players of all time. He is most associated with Real Madrid and was instrumental in their domination of the European Champions' Cup during the 1950s, a period in which the club won the trophy in five consecutive seasons from 1956. Along with Francisco Gento, he was one of only two players to play a part in all five victories. Di Stéfano played international football mostly for Spain, but he also played for Argentina and Colombia.
Di Stéfano, nicknamed "Saeta rubia" ("blond arrow"), was a powerful forward with great stamina, tactical versatility, and vision, who could also play almost anywhere on the pitch. He is currently the 4th highest scorer in the history of Spain's top division, and Real Madrid's 2nd highest league goalscorer of all time, with 216 goals in 282 league matches between 1953 and 1964.
In November 2003, to celebrate UEFA's Jubilee, he was selected as the Golden Player of Spain by the Royal Spanish Football Federation as their most outstanding player of the past 50 years. He was named by Pelé as one of the "top 125 greatest living footballers" in March 2004 (in September 2009 he said Di Stéfano was the best Argentinian player "ever"). Di Stéfano was voted fourth, behind Pelé, Diego Maradona, and Johan Cruyff, in a vote organized by the French weekly magazine France Football consulting their former Ballon d'Or winners to elect the Football Player of the Century.
Alfredo Di Stéfano born into a family of Italian immigrants from Nicolosi, near Catania. Began his career at Argentina's River Plate aged 17, in 1943. For the 1946 season he was loaned to Club Atlético Huracán, but he returned to River in 1947. Due to a footballer's strike in Argentina in 1949, Di Stéfano went to play for Millonarios of Bogotá in the Colombian league. He won six league titles during the first 12 years of his career in Argentina and Colombia.
Di Stéfano is best known for his time at Real Madrid where he was an integral part of one of the most successful teams of all time. He scored a club record 216 league goals in 262 games for Real, striking up a fearsome partnership with Ferenc Puskás. Di Stéfano's 49 goals in 58 matches was for decades the all-time highest tally in the European Cup, until it was surpassed by Real Madrid's Raúl in 2005, and Milan's Andriy Shevchenko and Real Madrid's Ruud van Nistelrooy in 2006. Di Stéfano scored in five consecutive European Cup finals for Real Madrid between 1956 and 1960, including a hat-trick in the latter. Perhaps the highlight of his time with the club was their 7–3 victory over Eintracht Frankfurt in the 1960 European Cup Final at Hampden Park, a game many consider to be the finest exhibition of club football ever witnessed in Europe. He was voted European Footballer of the Year in 1957 and 1959.
He moved to Espanyol in 1964 and played there until hanging up his boots at the age of 40.
Di Stéfano's transfer to Spain would prove controversial. The mission to secure the signing of Di Stéfano to Barcelona had first been given to Ramón Trias Fargas, who, besides being a lawyer and expert in commercial law, was the son of one of the share-holders of Millonarios, where Di Stéfano was playing at the time. According to Trias Fargas, Barcelona's own management effectively obstructed the transfer when club president Marti Carreto also involved Barcelona chief scout Josep Samitier in the negotiations. Samitier, in his turn, brought in his Colombian friend, Joan Busquets, to speed up the talks with the Colombian club. Busquets, a director of Millonarios' rivals Santa Fé, seem to have tried more to sabotage the deal than to secure it. After issuing a harsh ultimatum to Millonarios to accept a modest offer for the player he organized Di Stéfano's defection from Colombia when the ultimatum was rejected, despite Di Stéfano owing the club money. River Plate, who owned the rights of the player from 1955 onwards, had accepted the transfer on the condition that Millonarios also agreed upon the transfer, which they, after what they perceived as Busquets' bullying tactics, weren't interested in doing. Trias Fargas' negotiations with the Colombians regarding a transfer sum were also breaking down when Carreto, despite assurances to Trias Fargas that he would pay whatever price Trias Fargas thought necessary, rejected a figure whenever it was agreed between the lawyer and the Colombians. Trias Fargas blamed Carreto claiming Barcelona directors had allowed him to spend $20,000 but Carreto only accepted to offer $10,000 plus the player's debts.
In 1953, Di Stéfano signed a deal with Barcelona and FIFA, who didn't know anything about Di Stéfano having left Millonarios without permission, authorized the transfer from River Plate. The Spanish Federation, however, did not recognize the deal. According to Andres Ramírez, the Spanish Football Federation secretary, both Millonarios (who owned the rights of the player until the end of 1954, according to the agreements reached in the Lima Pact) and River Plate's consent were needed in order for Di Stéfano to sign up with a Spanish club. Indeed Millonarios had reported FIFA the anomalous situation of the Argentinian, so FIFA itself demanded the Spanish Federation to solve the problem. On 13 May 1953, he arrived in Spain to conclude his contract with Barcelona but during the discussions with the Federation, Real Madrid's president Santiago Bernabéu, acting upon the apparent division within the Barcelona management, convinced him to sign for them instead.
During the parallel negotiations between the two Spanish clubs and Millonarios, the Spanish Federation issued a ban on foreign players in the Spanish league. On 15 September, the Spanish Federation made public the decision, which club presidents Carreto and Bernabéu had signed, to allow Di Stéfano four seasons in Spain – two for each team, to be played alternately. The agreement created such a storm of protests by the rest of the Barcelona management and the fans that Carreto resigned a week later. The reasons for Barcelona's decision to let the player go to Madrid are disputed by the two clubs.This incident exacerbated the traditional enmity between the two clubs.
One year after his retirement as footballer, a testimonial match was held on 7 June 1967 and played for a trophy which named after himself. The Alfredo Di Stéfano Trophy or Alfredo Di Stéfano Cup was won by Celtic of Scotland. The trophy was contested in a match between Real Madrid and Celtic at Real's Santiago Bernabéu Stadium in Madrid. The match took place 2 weeks after Celtic's victory in the European Cup 1967. Celtic won the match 0–1, with Bobby Lennox scoring the victory and Jimmy Johnstone stealing the show.
Di Stéfano played with three different national teams during his career: he played six times with the Argentine national team, twice with Colombia (not recognized by FIFA) and 31 times with the Spanish national team. However, he never played in the World Cup Finals.
The first World Cup in which he would have been able to participate was the 1950 tournament. As Argentina refused to participate, Di Stéfano (aged 24) missed his first chance at playing in the World Cup.
He acquired Spanish citizenship in 1956, and played four World Cup qualifying matches for Spain in 1957, but the team failed to qualify for the 1958 World Cup.
In 1961, Di Stéfano (36) who had already won 5 European Cups, helped Spain qualify for the World Cup of 1962. A muscular injury just before the competition prevented him from playing in the finals. He retired from international football afterwards.
After retirement, he moved into coaching. He guided the Argentine clubs Boca Juniors and River Plate to league titles, and won La Liga and the Copa del Rey with Valencia as well as the European Cup Winners' Cup with the side in 1980. He also managed Sporting in the 1974/75 season and Real Madrid between 1982 and 1984. The 1982-83 was catastrophic for Real, they finished second in La Liga and were defeated finalists in the Supercopa de España, Copa de la Liga and Copa del Rey. Madrid were also beaten by immense underdogs Aberdeen in the European Cup Winners' Cup final. Out of five possible trophies, Real Madrid collected five runners' up titles.
Di Stéfano currently resides in Spain. On 5 November 2000 he was named Honorary President of Real Madrid.
On 24 December 2005, 79-year-old Di Stéfano suffered a heart attack.
On 9 May 2006, The Alfredo Di Stéfano Stadium was inaugurated at the City of Real Madrid, where Real Madrid usually trains. The inaugural match was between Real Madrid and Stade de Reims, a rematch of the European Cup final won by Real Madrid in 1956. Real Madrid won the inaugural match 6–1 with goals from Sergio Ramos, Antonio Cassano (2), Roberto Soldado (2), and José Manuel Jurado.
|1.||30 January 1957||Estadio Santiago Bernabéu, Madrid, Spain||Netherlands||1–0||3–1||International friendly|
|2.||30 January 1957||Estadio Santiago Bernabéu, Madrid, Spain||Netherlands||3–0||3–1||International friendly|
|3.||30 January 1957||Estadio Santiago Bernabéu, Madrid, Spain||Netherlands||5–0||5–1||International friendly|
|4.||31 March 1957||King Baudouin Stadium, Brussels, Belgium||Belgium||1–0||5–0||International friendly|
|5.||31 March 1957||King Baudouin Stadium, Brussels, Belgium||Belgium||4–0||5–0||International friendly|
|6.||24 November 1957||Stade Olympique de la Pontaise, Lausanne, Switzerland||Switzerland||1–0||4–1||1958 FIFA World Cup qualification (UEFA – Group 9)|
|7.||24 November 1957||Stade Olympique de la Pontaise, Lausanne, Switzerland||Switzerland||3–0||4–1||1958 FIFA World Cup qualification (UEFA – Group 9)|
|8.||13 April 1958||Estadio Santiago Bernabéu, Madrid, Spain||Portugal||1–0||1–0||International friendly|
|9.||28 February 1959||Stadio Olimpico, Rome, Italy||Italy||1–1||1–1||International friendly|
|10.||28 June 1959||Silesian Stadium, Chorzów, Poland||Poland||2–1||4–1||1960 European Nations' Cup Q|
|11.||28 June 1959||Silesian Stadium, Chorzów, Poland||Poland||4–1||4–2||1960 European Nations' Cup Q|
|12.||14 October 1959||Santiago Bernabéu, Madrid, Spain||Poland||1–0||3–0||1960 European Nations' Cup Q|
|13.||22 November 1959||Estadio Mestalla, Valencia, Spain||Austria||4–2||6–3||International friendly|
|14.||22 November 1959||Estadio Mestalla, Valencia, Spain||Austria||5–2||6–3||International friendly|
|15.||13 March 1960||Camp Nou, Barcelona, Spain||Italy||2–1||3–1||International friendly|
|16.||10 July 1960||Estadio Nacional, Lima, Peru||Peru||1–0||3–1||International friendly|
|17.||14 July 1960||Estadio Nacional Julio Martínez Prádanos, Ñuñoa, Chile||Chile||1–0||4–0||International friendly|
|18.||14 July 1960||Estadio Nacional Julio Martínez Prádanos, Ñuñoa, Chile||Chile||2–0||4–0||International friendly|
|19.||17 July 1960||Estadio Nacional Julio Martínez Prádanos, Ñuñoa, Chile||Chile||1–0||4–1||International friendly|
|20.||17 July 1960||Estadio Nacional Julio Martínez Prádanos, Ñuñoa, Chile||Chile||2–0||4–1||International friendly|
|21.||19 April 1961||Ninian Park, Cardiff, Wales||Wales||2–1||2–1||1962 FIFA World Cup qualification|
|22.||11 June 1961||Estadio Ramón Sánchez Pizjuán, Sevilla, Spain||Argentina||2–0||2–0||International friendly|
|23.||23 November 1961||Santiago Bernabéu, Madrid, Spain||Morocco||2–1||3–2||1962 FIFA World Cup qualification|
|Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Alfredo Di Stefano|
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A Must-Know Guide to Drug-Drug Interactions
Drug-drug interactions can occur when you are taking more than one medication or drug. One medication can interfere with or alter the effects of one or more of the other medications you take.
Such interactions can be dangerous because they can alter the way one or both of the drugs act in the body. They can also cause unexpected side effects. Interactions can increase the action of medications, decrease their actions, or result in a different and less predictable effect from the combination of drugs.
A common misperception is that only prescription medications have the potential to interact with each other. But over-the-counter medicines also may result in drug-drug interactions when combined with prescription medications or with other over-the-counter medicines, vitamins or herbal products.
The following information can help you avoid drug-drug interactions.
Not all drug-drug interactions are alike. Sometimes when drugs interact, the overall effect of one or more of the drugs may be greater than desired.
For example, both aspirin and blood thinners, such as warfarin or Coumadin, help prevent blood clots from forming. Using these medications together, however, may cause excessive bleeding.
With other combinations of medicine, the effectiveness of the drugs may be reduced. For example, certain antacids can prevent many medicines from being absorbed into the bloodstream. If this happens, the medicine may not work as well--or may not work at all.
Keep a list
If you experience any reaction that seems out of the ordinary after taking any medication, consult your health care provider or local pharmacist and make him or her aware of all of the medicines and remedies you're taking. Some herbal supplements can add to the risk of drug-drug interactions.
In fact, herbal products and supplements don’t have to be tested to prove they work well and are safe, and may be dangerous for individuals with certain health problems. The American Academy of Family Physicians recommends that you should be especially cautious about using herbal health products or supplements if you take any of the following types of drugs:
Drugs to treat depression, anxiety or other psychiatric problems
Blood pressure medicine
Drugs to treat diabetes
In the case of a serious reaction, call 911 for emergency medical treatment.
The following steps can help you and your family avoid drug-drug interactions:
Read the label. Be sure you are taking the correct dosage. Know what side effects can occur.
Know the risks. Make sure you know the benefits and the potential risks of medications you take. Look specifically for the section called "warnings" on the labels of over-the-counter medicines.
Ask questions. Talk to your health care provider or pharmacist before taking any new medication. Ask whether it's safe to take the new medicine with other medications, vitamins or herbal products you already take--regularly or even occasionally.
Keep a list of all the drugs you take and share it with your doctors and your pharmacist.
Pick a pharmacy. Use one pharmacy for all of your family's medication needs. Doing so allows your pharmacist to look for and help you avoid drug-drug interactions.
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Feb 23, 2013
At an event to discuss the merits of lifting the ban on women serving in combat units in the U.S. military, a retired Army sergeant said that hygiene issues are not a problem, including menstrual cycles, which she said can be regulated or eliminated by using birth control.
“Women can use hormonal birth control to regulate or eliminate their periods during deployment,” Kayla Williams said in remarks on Thursday at the Center for National Policy in Washington, D.C. “It’s just not that hard.”
Williams and Michael Breen, former U.S. Army officer and executive director of the Truman National Security Project, argued that the new policy would strengthen the military and that hygiene and privacy were not legitimate reasons to oppose the change.
“What about the hygiene issue?” Williams said. “Look, frankly I don’t even know what that means.
This article was posted: Saturday, February 23, 2013 at 8:54 am
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Another Trip to the Creek
Marco was seated at a small table in his grandfather’s modest home in the mountains of Mexico. Each morning Marco would read his Bible at the table mimicking what he had observed his grandpa doing day after day. Marco questioned his grandpa: “I try to read my Bible like you do but it is hard to understand and I do not remember what I have read; so, why should I continue trying?”
With gentle patience and the wisdom of years the old white haired saint picked up a blackened basket that he had used to carry freshly dug potatoes from his garden. “Son, take this basket to the creek and bring me back a basket full of water.”
Eager to please his grand daddy, Marco ran to the near by creek and dipped the dirty basket into the creek and returned. When he arrived the basket was empty. “You must move quicker” the old man said as he sent him back to the creek. Again Marco filled the basket and ran to get the water to his grand father. But upon arrival, there was no water in his basket.
Grand father said, “You have not run fast enough!”
Tired, sweaty, and feeling the uselessness of carrying water in a woven straw basket, the barefoot boy ran his fastest to please his grandpa.
But again, the same result. With exasperation Marco complained, “See it’s not working; this is stupid!”
“Marco,” said his grandpa, “look closely at the basket and tell me what you see.”
Puzzled the boy examined the basket carefully. “It’s clean, all the dirt is gone!”
“Ah, you are correct my son. This is the way studying God’s Word works. As you read it there is much you do not understand or remember. But in the process of the working of God’s Spirit and your continuance, your mind and soul are made clean.”
Jesus has spoken to you and me, “You are clean through the Word which I have spoken unto you.”
As you study God’s Word there are other benefits that come with this one: encouragement, guidance, joy, faith and hope. We here at BBNBI applaud your efforts to study your Bible and we encourage you to make another trip to the creek. Select another course; continue your studies that Christ may continue His purifying work in your life.
Have you written us an email telling what God has done and is doing in your life from your studies in BBNBI? We would be pleased to hear from you. (BBNBI@bbnradio.org)
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But it's the same meteorology as the commonly-heard "Lake Effect" snows in the Great Lake areas.
In this case, you have the strong northeast winds blowing out of the Fraser River valley southwest across the northern Puget Sound and San Juans and then into the northeastern side of the Olympic Peninsula.
As the winds cross the Sound, they pick up a little bit of moisture. As they slam into the Olympic Mountains, the air rises and condenses, dropping its newly-found moisture as snow.
We've heard Port Townsend once received 6 feet of snow over a four day period due to this Strait effect.
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Saint OswaldArticle Free Pass
Saint Oswald, (born c. 604—died 642, Maserfelth, Eng.; feast day August 5), Anglo-Saxon king of Northumbria from 633 to 642 who introduced Celtic Christian missionaries to his kingdom and gained ascendancy over most of England.
Oswald’s father, King Aethelfrith (d. 616), had ruled the two ancient Northumbrian kingdoms of Bernicia and Deira. Expelled from Northumbria upon the accession of his uncle Edwin in 616, Oswald and his brother Oswiu took refuge in Iona in the Hebrides, where they were converted to Christianity.
Edwin was killed fighting King Cadwallon of Gwynedd (in northern Wales) and Penda of Mercia in 633, but the next year Oswald defeated and killed Cadwallon near Hexham (in present-day Northumberland). At Oswald’s invitation, St. Aidan led a group of Irish monks from Iona to found a monastery and missionary bishopric for the kingdom at Lindisfarne. The historian Bede says that he asserted his authority over all the peoples of southern England. The pagan king Penda defeated and killed Oswald at Maserfelth (or Maserfeld, probably near Oswestry, in present-day Shropshire). The dead king was venerated as a martyr of the Northumbrian church, and it was believed that his remains worked miracles.
What made you want to look up "Saint Oswald"? Please share what surprised you most...
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Tip of the Month: Drilling holes in plastic
|Ed Maslin’s tip covers two aspects of drilling a perfect hole in plastic. The first part deals with creating some contrast so you can see what you’re doing; the second is preventing the hole from drifting off-center. |
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It could soon be more difficult for drunk drivers to keep getting behind the wheel on Louisiana roads. Currently, in some cases, repeat DWI offenders are charged only as first offenders. The state legislature is looking to change that in a move strongly backed by law enforcement and prosecutors.
A state board has recently been revived to create a statewide computer system that would keep track of DWI convictions. Police officers would be able to see if a suspect has any previous DWI convictions in any parish before making an arrest.
The goal is to cut down on the number of repeat offenders in Louisiana. In a state that saw nearly 300 alcohol related traffic deaths last year, we believe a DWI tracking system is essential. If the 2011 rate continues, at least 5 people in Louisiana will die because of alcohol related crashes every week. This system needs to be implemented as soon as possible.
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Microsoft confirms patch for Flash in IE10 coming soon
Adobe recently issued an update for the popular Flash Player utility to patch critical flaws that could allow an attacker to run malicious code on the target system. But, if you’re using Windows 8, the version of Flash that Microsoft has embedded in Internet Explorer 10 is still vulnerable. Good news, though—an update is forthcoming to address that problem.
Adobe responds quickly to patch identified vulnerabilities, and most Windows users are conditioned to apply security updates as they’re released, but Microsoft is responsible for updating Flash in its Web browser. Windows 8 hasn’t yet officially launched, though, and Microsoft’s initial response was that Flash would not be updated until after October 26 when Windows 8 becomes available to the general public.
A couple of the flaws addressed by Adobe were given its highest threat warning level, and are associated with attacks that are already circulating in the wild. Last week, Adobe confirmed that Windows 8 users are still vulnerable to these threats.
I asked Microsoft about speculation that a patch is imminent. Yunsun Wee, Director of Microsoft Trustworthy Computing, replied with this statement: “In light of Adobe’s recently released security updates for its Flash Player, Microsoft is working closely with Adobe to release an update for Adobe Flash in IE10 to protect our mutual customers.”
Wee added, “This update will be available shortly. Ultimately, our goal is to make sure the Flash Player in Windows 8 is always secure and up-to-date, and to align our release schedule as closely to Adobe’s as possible.”
Microsoft isn’t the first to embed its own version of Flash. Google’s Chrome browser has had Flash baked in for a couple years now. However, Google has a solid track record of speeding patches to users as fast as—or sometimes faster than—Adobe.
With Flash in Internet Explorer 10, Microsoft has to accept responsibility for addressing issues in a timely manner. Leaving these Flash vulnerabilities open is similar to the situation Apple put Mac OS X users in earlier this year when it was so slow to deploy an update for its proprietary Java implementation.
There is no confirmed timeline for an update from Microsoft, but it’s welcome news that Microsoft realizes the urgency of the situation, and is diligently working on a patch rather than leaving customers vulnerable until the end of October.
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Statistics for occurrence #1 of “General G. J. Wright” in chapter 1.15 of Southern Historical Society Papers, Volume 25.:
...was a noted man in Georgia before it was formed.
Though Colonel William G. Deloney was our Chevalier Bayard, sanspeur et sans reproche, he fell at the zenith of his glory, September, 1863.
Though General G. J. Wright was as brave and gallant as man could be, yet they all were older; we expected much of them.
It was not the same feeling we had for Pierce Young.
As Colonel Baker, of the 1st North Carolina Cav...
† This entity has been selected by the automated classifier as the most likely match in this context. It may or may not be the correct match.
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Collections form the basis of a museum. The museum community has developed professional and ethical standards for the acquisition, record-keeping, and care of collections. In this class, sudents learn about all aspects of collections mangement through working wth the collections at the Atlanta History Center, from acquisitio through deaccessioning.
In the photographs below, students from the summer 2003 class accessioned and photographed artifacts from the Olympics collection, prepared condition reports, entered artifacts into the museum’s data base, and prepared recommendations for packing and storing such unusual artifacts as a sword and large fish and blues musician puppets from the opening ceremonies.
Click on an image below to see students from the summer 2001 class, who were also processing the Atlanta Olympics Collection.
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http://www.westga.edu/pubhistory/index_5928.php
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Density functional theory defines a broad framework that has enabled much progress in understanding the electronic structure and properties of matter. In all of the many implementations of this theory , it has been a challenge to incorporate the effects of electron exchange and correlation. The manner in which this is accomplished defines an approximation to the unknown density functional. Many approximations are not accurate enough to describe tightly bound electronic states, yet sufficiently accurate schemes come at a forbidding computational cost, placing some research out of reach.
Writing in Physical Review B, Xifan Wu, Annabella Selloni, and Roberto Car from Princeton University develop a hybrid-functional method that both determines the electronic structures of insulators with high accuracy and scales linearly with system size. The thrifty plane-wave scheme employs maximally localized electron wave functions (Wannier functions) in real space, which allows the efficient evaluation of Coulomb integrals. The key is that, as physical intuition suggests, in real space most orbitals overlap significantly only with their close neighbors.
The authors calculate the diamond structure of silicon to test their scheme versus a comparable but more costly exact-exchange method, and obtain essentially identical results. They also demonstrate its efficacy in ab initio molecular dynamics simulations of large supercells with as many as 216 atoms. This methodological advance should be particularly significant for the study of liquids and other disordered systems, which require large supercells to capture their physics. – Matthew Eager
For an introduction and historical review, see the complementary 1998 Nobel Prize lectures by Walter Kohn, Rev. Mod. Phys. 71, 1253 (1999), and John A. Pople, Rev. Mod. Phys. 71, 1267 (1999).
A handy summary is found in J. Hafner, C. Wolverton, and G. Ceder, MRS Bulletin, 31 (9) 659 (2006).
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By David Rich
Fifth in a five part series
No. 9: Periodization
Periodization may just be the greatest thing to happen to the weight lifting world. When you know how to properly use periodization, you have unlocked the door that will allow you to overcome any plateau and make progress for years to come.
This is a very complicated science within three smaller subgroups of periodization: macrocycle, mesocycle and microcycle. Basically, periodization means changing up your workout. But how you go about doing it is the tough part. Most people do this by switching to a new workout every month or rotating the days they train each muscle. That is not periodization its "muscle confusion."
Proper periodization will produce amazing results while "muscle confusion" might produce results sometimes. When you use periodization properly you will be working with the other nine growth factors to make changes to your workout so you can continue to make progress. You do this by adjusting your training intensity on daily, weekly, monthly and yearly basis.
Your body needs to adapt to make progress. When you train, there are two directions your body will pull towards: Over-training or under-training. Somewhere between those two in a small area where growth takes place, the "Ideal Training Zone." By properly applying the 10 growth factors you will be able to stay within that ideal zone and continue to make progress until you reach your genetic potential.
No. 10: Training intensity
By training intensity, I mean the effort at which you workout. There are many ways to adjust the intensity of your workout program: changing the amount of reps and sets, rest time, tempo, etc.
For now, I'm going to talk about training intensity as a separate factor. The fact is you're not going to push yourself and apply the same amount of effort into each and every workout and into each and every set. Physically and mentally, you just can't. Some days you may leave the gym feeling totally exhausted while other days you might feel like you hardly even workout out. Knowing how much training intensity to put it depends a lot on you and what stage of periodization you're in, most of the time your training will be between 100 percent all out effort and 70 percent effort.
At times sets will be done to complete failure using drop sets and partial reps, while other times you'll feel like you could have done a few more reps. Knowing what intensity to train at is part science and part you. It takes time to learn how your body responds and adapts to training.
What I've done is create a series a training systems that follow the above 10 growth factors. I didn’t simply give you a temporary program to follow. I gave you an endless system of training that will teach you and allow you to understand these 10 factors.
"Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day, teach a man to fish and he will eat for a lifetime."
David Rich is a personal trainer and model. Visit his web site, FitnessModelBody for more information.
THE QUEST FOR THE PERFECT WORKOUT
• Part 1: Training length and exercise selection
• Part 2: Recovery times and resting between sets
• Part 3: Volume and tempo
• Part 4: Form and repetition
• Part 5: Periodization and training intensity
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Posts Tagged ‘Foreign Policy’
Last October, when our President announced that the U.S. would be sending about 100 of our troops to Uganda, I heard a lot of people asking, “What is the President thinking? How was this in U.S. interest?”
As easy as it is to find fault with our President, Obama was simply following the law. That is right! While Congress has not authorized the use of the U.S. military against Iran, Congress commanded the President to use military forces in Uganda as part of an effort to quash the Christian terrorist organization known as the Lord’s Resistance Army.
Thanks to Sen. Russ Feingold, Foreign Relations Chairman John Kerry, the unanimous consent of the U.S. Senate, and an unrecorded voice vote in the U.S. House, the Congress directed the President to come up with a plan to use the U.S. military in Uganda (see the Lord’s Resistance Army Disarmament and Northern Uganda Recovery Act of 2009).
So if you have questions about why U.S. troops are in Uganda instead of Iran, I suggest that you pose those questions to your Senators, who gave unanimous agreement to this policy.
Join us for a discussion of America’s interests in foreign policy. The book is The Foreign Policy of Self-Interest: A Moral Ideal for America by Peter Schwartz; only 61 pages to chew and savor.
The content of this ARI publication will be supplemented and contrasted with two brief official government statements on America’s interest, which are found in: (1) A National Security Strategy for a Global Age (White House, December 2000; pp. 4-5), and (2) Leading Through Civilian Power: The First Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review (QDDR) (U.S. State Dept., 2010, pp. 9-10).
Objectivists, Democrats, and Republicans all agree that our foreign policy should be rooted in America’s interests, but we do not agree on what American interests and values are.
A recent example of different definitions for the same concepts subverting a public discussion on foreign policy would be the recent US involvement in Libya. According the official articulation of America’s interests found in the QDDR, American intervention in Libya was consistent with American interests, even if President Obama failed to articulate why that was the case.
In the discussion, we will examine:
1) Schwartz’s articulation of self-interest as the basis for understanding America’s interests.
2) How does Schwartz’s position compare to the bipartisan understanding of America’s interest as found in the 2000 National Security Strategy with its hierarchy of vital, important, and other/humanitarian interests?
3) How does Schwartz’s position compare to the Obama Administration’s four fundamental American interests as found in the QDDR?
4) Does the Obama Administration’s four fundamental American interests represent a substantially different understanding of America interests when compared to the bipartisan hierarchy?
5) How could the Objectivist understanding of self-interest influence foreign policy discussions in the presidential election?
6) Is there an opportunity to influence future American foreign policy by correcting the official statement of America’s interests during the development of the 2nd QDDR, to be published in 2014?
DCOS member Jim Woods will be leading the discussion.
Previously savored copies of Schwartz’s The Foreign Policy of Self-Interest may be found on Amazon:
New copies of Schwarz are available at the Ayn Rand Bookstore:
A National Security Strategy for a Global Age (see section entitled “Guiding Principles of Engagement”) is available for free on-line at:
The QDDR is available for free on-line at:
It has been asserted that Ron Paul’s foreign policy is consistent with that of our Founders. Let me list some of the actual foreign policies of the early American government so that supporters of Paul can reconsider whether he is actually consistent with them.
• As an ambassador overseas, John Adams undermined foreign governments by giving aid to revolutionaries; further, he sought to promote American constitutional republicanism as superior to the monarchies of Europe and democratic proposals of French intellectuals.
• As Minister to France, both Thomas Jefferson and James Monroe sought to increase American trade with France in part to weaken Britain. Jefferson offered detailed reforms to French laws that were necessary to rollback intrusive economic regulation.
• American governments consistently made it a matter of policy to obstruct sovereign native tribes’ relations with European powers; manifestations of this policy include: the War of 1812, Jackson’s invasion of Spanish Florida during the Monroe Administration, and a policy of pushing Indians west of the Mississippi that began in the Washington Administration.
• A key policy plank of the Democratic – Republican Party before 1801 was a strong alliance with and preference for post-revolutionary France as part of a policy to expand republican governments in the world.
• As President, Jefferson secured the purchase of Louisiana by advising the French that their failure to transfer New Orleans and navigation of the Mississippi to the Americans would result in war.
• During the Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe Administrations, Spain was under threat of war with America over Spanish West Florida; during the Napoleonic wars, an American invasion of Spanish Florida was considered so as to prevent it from falling into British hands. As President, Monroe invaded Florida twice to suppress piracy and the Seminoles.
• During the Jefferson Administration, the United States engaged in regime change in Tripoli.
• The Monroe Doctrine opposed further colonization by Europeans in the Americas.
• Madison and Monroe both championed colonization in Liberia by freed American slaves.
• During the Jefferson and Madison Administrations, American trade with Britain and France was subject to a series of federal restrictions to prevent such commerce. The stated object of these policies was to compel Britain and France to change their own policies.
I do not find such early American foreign policies to be consistent with an evaluation of a non-interventionist American government that “didn’t pretend to know all the answers” while staying out of other people’s business.
For a study of early American foreign policy, I recommend the following definitive biographers: Douglas Southall Freeman on Washington, C. Bradley Thompson on John Adams, Dumas Malone on Jefferson, Ralph Ketcham on Madison, and Harry Ammon on Monroe. I am looking forward to reading Samuel Flagg Bemis’ volume John Quincy Adams and the Foundations of American Foreign Policy; while it is out of print, it can be found and I have it.
On Jefferson in particular, Malone’s account of his time as Minister to France, Secretary of State, and President demonstrates that Jefferson established principles for American foreign policy that have been consistent to the present.
Foreign policy is just another area in which Ron Paul is anti-Jeffersonian.
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On Sep 21, 2005, at 5:23 AM, Jeff wrote:
> I am interested in how you go about doing a "delayed replication" to
> protect against operator error. We've already fallen victim to that
> situation here.
The long story short is we use the fact that MySQL has the ability to
run the SQL thread and the IO thread of replication separately, and
control them individually. In practice we use cron and a whole bunch
of scripts to stop the I/O thread (the one reading from the master)
most of the time, and manage when the SQL thread replicates... eg at
4:00 cron stops the SQL thread. At 4:01 we start the I/O thread (this
can read a lot of changes very quickly from the master, so only need
a short time to catch up with all the changes). At 4:05 we stop the I/
O thread. Then we wait a few minutes to give ourselves a buffer...
then finally at 4:15 we start the SQL thread.... and repeat the cycle
every two hours.
The upshot is at the small end we are 10 minutes behind (the time
between we stop I/O at 4:05 and the time when we start SQL at 4:15),
and at the long end we are 2 hours behind (at 4:07 for example the
last query that the SQL thread could have executed came from the
master at 2:05).
Our scripts are a little more complicated to marry into our
monitoring system without setting off alerts that replication has
stopped and so on (and of course the machine that runs this speaks to
many masters using many instances of MySQL, so we need to manage this
for every instance of MySQL). We also manage things to allow an
emergency stop by having the scripts do an existence check on a
specific file, and if the file isn't there don't start any
replication processes. We then have a stop script which tells the
instances to stop whatever they are doing and deletes the file. At
that point replication can't resume until we replace the file
manually - we tie that emergency script to a TCP port and hey
presto... in the event of an emergency all someone needs to do is hit
the right tcp port on the server (telnet to it, hit it with a
browser, anything that will cause the port to see some activity) and
all the replication comes to a stop.
Also as part of our 2 hourly cycle we do a lot of binary log flushing
on the slave and the masters, so if we ever need to roll back we can
roll back to a specific point in time and only have to deal with
fixing problems in the logs form that point in time onwards. if an
operator error gets by before we can stop we can go to yesterdays
backup and only execute those binary logs from before the incident,
and then deal with the issue in question.
This process has reduced our downtime in the event of a total
database corruption from four hours to recover from yesterdays data
and be missing everything since, to 30 minutes and be only missing
the data since the last 2 hourly roll over. And it doesn't take long
to dump the last set of binary logs to a text file, find and fix/
remove the corrupting command and apply that whole log into the
database, effectively giving us almost zero lost data and back online
in no time (although when clients are screaming even 30 minutes feels
like an eternity). This is all of course so much better than the four
hour downtime we had before this system.
And there are side benefits... for example backups are easier to do
because the data isn't being changed except for a few minutes every 2
hours. Instead of co-ordinating timing scripts and locking tables and
doing dumps and so on we can do simple file system duplication of the
Best Regards, Bruce
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In order to achieve perfect relaxation, three methods are used by yogis: Physical Relaxation: We know that every action is the result of a thought. Thoughts take form in action. Just as the mind may send a message to the muscles ordering them to contract, the mind may also send another message to bring relaxation to the physical body. The practice of auto-suggestion during final relaxation uses this technique.
Mental Relaxation: When experiencing mental tension, one should breathe slowly and rhythmically for a few minutes. The mind should follow the breath. If at any point, the mind becomes distracted, it should gently be brought back to the flow of breath. Soon the mind will become calm and you may experience a floating sensation.
Spiritual Relaxation: However much one may try to relax the mind, all tensions and worries cannot be completely removed until one reaches spiritual relaxation. As long as a person identifies with the body and mind, there will be worries, sorrows, anxieties, fear and anger. These emotions, in turn bring tension. Yogis know that unless a person can withdraw from the body/ mind idea and separate him/herself from the ego-consciousness, there is no way of obtaining complete relaxation. The yogi identifies him/herself with the all-pervading, all-powerful, all-peaceful and joyful Self, or Pure Consciousness within. This ability comes with the knowledge that the source of all power, peace and strength is in the Self, not in the body. We tune to this by asserting the real nature, which is "I am that pure Consciousness or Self." This identification with the Self completes the process of relaxation.
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May 4, 2012 | By ThinkProgress War Room
4.2 MILLION Private Sector Jobs
Most of the press coverage of today’s jobs report has been focused on the two topline findings — that the economy created a less-than-expected 115,000 jobs last month and that the unemployment rate edged down slightly to 8.1 percent. While these numbers are certainly important, they miss the forest for the trees.
The biggest news today is the economy has now recovered all of the private sector jobs lost since President Obama took office. The Center for American Progress’ Michael Linden explains:
Unfortunately, the news is not nearly so good when it comes to the public sector, where there are currently 607,000 fewer people working than there were when President Obama took office.The chart below tells the whole story. Under President Obama, the private sector experienced a relatively robust recovery, and is now back to where it started when he took office. But due in large part to spending cuts at the state and local level, the public sector continues to shed jobs, and as a result, the overall jobs picture in the United States remains weak.Keep this chart in mind the next time you hear someone rail about “big government” and complain about the slow pace of overall job creation.
The job losses at the state and local level could have been significantly curtailed if conservatives had not rejected a larger (or additional) aid package for state and local governments. Last fall, Republicans, of course, also rejected the president’s jobs plan that would keep hundreds of thousands of teachers, cops, firefighters, and others on the job. What’s more, the deep spending cuts being proposed under the Romney-Ryan GOP budget plan would only dig the hole deeper.
IN ONE SENTENCE: Instead of the GOP plan to slam the brakes on the recovery and go back to the Bush economic policies that caused this mess in the first place, we need Congress to get serious about passing a jobs bill to help the millions of Americans still looking for work.
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Written by Nick Axel
The recent project of Open house by Droog with Diller Scofidio + Renfro is refreshing in the sense that it engages a pervasive condition and experience of the built environment that often goes unthought. The idea of envisioning a ‘future suburbia’ has strongly provoked the attention of architects and the non-architect, better known as the resident. The content of the project has to this date contained a one day event that included a seminar taking place in New York City, polemical installations within the archetypal suburb of Levittown, New York, visionary representations of a potential life in suburbia (1), and a host of online journalism. Open house uses traditional architectural conventions as provocative mediums in order to communicate, what I would like to show, a much deeper and significant concept that is at the root of the project. By employing the potentiality of a service economy, Open house fundamentally works on an ideological level that seeks to change the way we view our contextual relations to the people and goods that inhabit the suburban environment.
While Open house has recently been criticized for not addressing the real issues that face the suburb today (2), I would like to view the project differently. Renny Ramakers responded to this initial critique by asking: “Is design solely a form of crisis management and problem solving? Or can design also offer a different perspective on a problem, without having the aim of solving the problem entirely?” (3). In an allegorical sense, if one is sick, is it the symptoms we should try to mitigate, or the sickness we should try to rid? When facing a problem like either the human body or the built environment head- on, solutions are often quite unknown (take the history of medicine for example). In the contemporary situation of the suburb, design has the critical capacity to work in that exact area of the unknown, possibly addressing the problems themselves. Therefore, instead of dismissing Open house as a rather insensitive art project, I plan to position the project within the suburban terrain in order to map a potential territory for the future of a publicly minded architecture in the United States. As this project is addressing quite literally ‘the masses’, I will do this analysis by viewing the material presented as communicative tools attempting to not only communicate these ideas to the architectural community, but to inspire and convince the people actually living inside the suburbs.
Its scope and intentions have been made clear: “Entering the suburbs, we did not intend to resolve the issues it faces, but rather to explore what value personal service exchanges might offer to suburbia.” Instead of addressing basic issues such as transportation, Open house tries to re-envision what it means to live within the suburb. By “creating jobs”, “encouraging social encounters”, and “playing a psychological role” (4), this project strategically attempts to alter the conditions which gave rise to such initial issues as long transit times, economically inefficient infrastructure, and social fragmentation (5). To respond to Allison Arieff’s question of “Can we discuss the future of suburbia (or the future of anything, really) without being critical?”, the answer that Open house responds with is clearly no, and creatively goes about this criticality in a projective, positivist manner. In order to investigate this form of criticality, it is important to first gloss over the existing context the project is deployed within and acting upon: the suburban ideology.
The platform of the 20th century American suburb is fundamentally based on individualism. Emerging as a response to the urban conditions of the Industrial revolution, the suburb employed the concepts of distance and property to facilitate the creation of an identity. Throughout the evolution of the suburban morphology, its potential for producing a ‘self’ in this sense diminished; as the suburb propagated the landscape, this element of difference literally dissipated. In response to this inherent characteristic of obsolescence the suburb evolved with scientific precision to exploit a commoditized logic of differentiation and continue facilitating this basic notion of the American dream. What we are currently left with is a highly idiomatic, highly complex landscape that is the context for over one half of American people and an even greater percentage of developed land. The basic existential conception of the self that the suburb so profoundly established is a core virtue that the Open house project attempts to reinstate; it highlights latent opportunities to fulfill our basic economic needs with alternative means of establishing community based on intersubjective exchange as opposed to mere commoditized identification.
Levittown, New York stands as a symbol for the suburb, and it is self-consciously polemical that the two firms worked within this village to initiate their project. As the prototype for the post-World War II suburb, it is subsequently a shared reality by a vast number of Americans today. While each house was originally built exactly the same for reasons of economic efficiency, the residents of Levittown were quick to realize the insufficiencies of this logic. Soon after they moved in, many began to modify their houses in order to better serve their specific needs. In fact, with the original inclusion of an ‘expansion attic’ integral to the house’s design, this process was both encouraged and expected (6). Being left explicitly unfinished, the home was literally a means for self-actualization. This relationship one has to their house has effectively disappeared as the modern evolution of the suburb surreptitiously abolished this potential by presenting the house as a finished product. As a semiotic commodity for identification itself, the house no longer possesses the propensity for acting as a medium towards defining one’s being. The plot sizes of Levittown are quite small, and so was the original house. Coupled with the population boom post-World War II, not only was this original element of customization to better serve the resident’s desires, but to address a basic need they had for growth. Throughout the later parts of the 20th century suburban houses grew larger with space itself becoming an incentive for new buyers, providing further opportunities for aesthetic and spatial customization to be integrated into the initial product of the house. As the suburban home became more of a commodity, the concrete relation the individual had to their house was largely negated. Necessity, once fundamental to the suburban zeitgeist, has effectively been taken care of by advanced industrial and capitalist processes. Open house is an attempt to re-engage this spirit under a different set of circumstances.
In more tangible terms, how does Droog & DS+R present what Open house actually is as a project, theoretically, to be realized? There is actually very little that the two firms propose themselves, and the closest we can get to a concrete proposal are sample floor plans by Droog and aerial visualizations by EFGH (Hayley Eber & Frank Gesualdi) with Irina Chernyakova. These graphics represent, in a sense, a utopia; a life with a different ideology, a different social, spatial, and economic relation to the environment. If this project can be seen as utopian, it is important to question its extremity as such. As it is presented, with simply a changed zoning law and some personal initiative (and maybe a bit of cash here and there), the suburban block can be transformed into a vibrant, almost street fair-like, atmosphere. By providing many services within and from the suburb, a sense of a communal environment can be experienced with its foundations in the interdependent relations between neighbors. Aside from the bureaucratic challenges this raises, it would be essential that the residents themselves not only will this situation into being, but would act towards producing the reality. How then does this project work to inspire the adoption of its ideology?
An array of tactics are employed to make this project highly communicable and convincing to a vast array of people, utilizing catchy yet deep slogans such as “DISCOVER YOUR INNER SERVICE PROVIDER”, attractive and simple graphics, and (a degree of) community engagement. But while the communicative means used to present the project are intriguing, there is an essential internal element of communication that threatens to compromise the integrity of the larger aims and potential success.
This new proposed model of suburban livelihood places a strong emphasis on the ability to communicate with our neighbors, simply to be aware of what potential services, communities, opportunities, lie within. If privacy is one of the basic elements of the suburban morphology, a question fundamentally asked by Open house is how do we open ourselves up? Sadly, there are only a few insights into this matter. The most literal and transparent response to this basic necessity of the project is Open house #7, ‘House of Signs’ by The Living. The service of this house is to make signs for everyone else in the neighborhood so that they can effectively represent themselves in this new context. Looking beyond the solution of making each building a decorated shed, Open house #2, ‘Block Pantry’ by Janette Kim and Erik Carver with Gabriel Fries- Briggs, unites service with a form of communication through rapid prototyping of common materials with symbolic and functional forms. A somewhat obvious response to this critique is the internet, but retaining an architectural method to the project, it cannot simply rely on using facebook in an arguably different way to achieve its vision.
While these two installations exemplify ways of addressing this constraint, the constraint itself is quite revealing under further inspection. By necessitating a level of personal advertisement for the success of this new environment, the capitalist process is integrated deeper into the functioning processes of the suburb, truly embedding it from within. This gesture dangerously teeters between ideological liberation and hegemonic enslavement: while presenting an opportunity for a heightened level of independence from the totalizing-yet-fragmented suburban environment, it also risks the further integration of such processes by making one’s entire being a spectacle (7). Ignoring these conceptual risks for a moment, I believe it is important to stress that the inherently interpersonal orientation of all such actions coupled with an economic disposition immanently grounds whatever the effects may be in the lived reality of our environment.
At this point the direction of my analysis can be made more explicit: how would it work? Beyond the critiques of communication, as they can be innovatively addressed with design, how would the reality proposed by Open house perform? In order to respond to this question further, the project’s fundamental vocation of becoming- capitalist is insightful. This foundation is explicitly owned up to when Charles Renfro states “Open house is an architectural outgrowth of a revolutionary re-adjustment of capitalist values, ones which mix with social values.” It is clear that the project intends to adapt the suburban environment to these ‘re-adjusted capitalist values’, and this requires primarily a re-adjustment of the self. What are the implications and consequences of this risk that would need to be subjectively willed upon by each resident?
To project in this manner the existing ideological context in which the project is intervening within must be explicated further. The suburban form is the reification of Marx’s critical object of estranged labor and alienation (8). Its inundation of space and total systematization of life has extensively constituted itself as our new nature based on the ideological principles stated before: distance, property, difference, and commodification. While Marx was theorizing about a struggle in which the connection between the laborer and his product is becoming lost, the contemporary suburban context is devoid of this struggle. As opposed to simply applying resistance to its consequences or searching for solutions to those immediate problems, Open house fundamentally accepts the current state of the suburb as a starting point to look for real solutions. Service is unique to a commodity based economy as service ties itself to a social element. It is partially these social products themselves that are produced by the new system of labor, which is evident in experience-based services such as storytelling, ping pong, or a listening ear. Open house has the capacity to negate basic suburban afflictions by fundamentally altering its context of economic, spatial, and interpersonal relations. By acting in an ideological manner, it provides an immediate framework with which we may conceive a new way to approach the challenges presented by our built environment.
1. Open House 2011 → Welcome to a Future Suburbia. Droog & Diller Scofidio + Renfro. Web. 13 May 2011.
2. Arieff, Allison. "Suburbia: What a Concept." New York Times (blog), 6 May 2011.
3. Ramakers, Renny. "Open House: What a Concept." Droog (blog).
4. Droog. Open House. Droog.
5. Pope, Albert. "Terminal Distribution." Architectural Design 78.1 (2008): 16-21. Print.
6. Hales, Peter Bacon. "Building Levittown: A Rudimentary Primer." Levittown: Building Levittown.
7. Debord, Guy. The Society of the Spectacle. Trans. Ken Knabb. London: Rebel, 2005.
8. Marx, Karl. "Estranged Labour." Marxists Internet Archive.
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In a government-sponsored research project eerily reminiscent of the 2002 film “Minority Report,” the Army’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has partnered with Carnegie-Mellon University to create “an artificial intelligence (AI) system that can watch and predict what a person will likely do in the future.”
In “Minority Report,” a specialized “PreCrime” unit, part of the Washington, D.C. police department, arrests criminals based on the precognition of three psychics. In the near future, DARPA hopes that rather than using psychics, computers will be able to identify and order individuals detained based on their “anomalous behavior.”
Tapping into live surveillance video feeds and using specially programmed software, a new computer system dubbed “Mind’s Eye” will filter surveillance footage to support human operators, and automatically alert them whenever suspicious behavior is recognized.
According to the research coming from Carnegie-Mellon, the security camera system can monitor a scene in real time and sound an alarm if the program determines that illicit activity is indicated. The program would be sophisticated enough to determine if, for example, a person was setting down a bag in an airport because he is sitting next to it or that person has left the bag all together.
The researchers noted that humans are extremely skilled at choosing important pieces of information out of a mass of visual data and making decisions based on both the recorded information and acquired background knowledge. The DARPA project strives to mimic human behavior in picking out important pieces of information from a sea of visual data and make predictions on how people will behave based on their actions under uncertain conditions.
Darpa wants to deploy this software initially in airports and bus stations, and if the pilot program is successful, the software could be installed at every red light, street corner, and public place in America. It could also capture feeds from video conferencing systems, video emails, and other forms of streaming media.
According to Forbes, Carnegie Mellon is just one of 15 research teams that are participating in the program to develop smart video software. The final version of the program is scheduled to be deployed in 2015.
Mark Geertsen, a spokesman for DARPA, said in a statement that the goal of the project is “to invent new approaches to the identification of people, places, things and activities from still or moving defense and open-source imagery.”
The first part of the project involves a program called PetaVision. This initiative is a cooperative effort between Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) and Portland State University with the support of the National Science Foundation. The goal of this initiative is to “Achieve human-level performance in a ‘synthetic visual cognition’ system,” in other words, create a computer program that will duplicate a human’s ability to see and recognize objects, specifically faces. It would incorporate advanced artificial intelligence to identify people and objects in a video feed by looking at their shape, color, texture as well as how they move.
To do this type of advanced computing, the program is being developed on an IBM “roadrunner” supercomputer running one quadrillion (a million billion) mathematical operations every second.
While the initial software is being programmed by humans, the program has the ability to learn as it is being programmed.
According to the Los Alamos National Laboratory, the goal of the project is to recreate the visual functions of the human brain. They already have plans of implementing the second phase of the project which would be to develop a program that would mimic the function of the entire brain.
The second part of the project is another program called Videovor. While little is known about this program, what little information that is available seems to indicate that the program will be used to “summarize” data taken from video cameras.
The most time consuming part of surveillance analysis is looking at the accumulated video intelligence and determining its value. Videovor captures the video feed, analyzes it, and presents a summary of the useful information and events found in the feed.
All this would be done in real time, eliminating the need to wait for results.
The third part of the project is the development of a “geospatial oriented structure extraction” program, designed to automatically render a crude “wireframe” representation of the important events in the video from several angles, eventually eliminating the need for a human to condense hours of video into a few minutes of pertinent information.
This automated approach to video surveillance could one day replace using humans to monitor cameras. With Mind’s Eye installed, the computer system would be cheaper to maintain than human operators and would never need a lunch break or a day off. The computer could monitor every camera in a city around the clock, 365 days per year.
Also, current surveillance systems can only report what has happened in the past, it cannot forecast future behavior. Today, investigators can only see how a car was stolen or person mugged after the fact. This new software is being designed to prevent crimes before they happen.
Buried in the footnotes of the Carnegie-Mellon paper was a reference to P. W. Singer’s book, “Wired for War: The Robotics Revolution and Conflict in the 21st Century.” It is an interesting glimpse into the direction the research team may be taking. The book examines the revolution that is taking place on the battlefield and how it is changing not only how wars are fought, but also the politics, economics, laws, and ethics that surround war itself.
The book talks about the explosion of unmanned systems on the battlefield. It notes that the number of unmanned systems on the ground in Iraq during the Second Gulf War had gone from zero to 12,000 in just five years. The book also notes that these new computer systems will soon make human fighter pilots obsolete. Robotic scouts the size of house flies do reconnaissance work now conducted by Special Forces units and military pilots fly combat missions from their cubicles outside Las Vegas.
However, critics suggest just as there are inherent dangers associated with turning over wars to machines, so too are there dangers associated with turning over national security and the criminal justice system to mechanical watchdogs.
The Mind’s Eye AI system holds a very real danger to individual civil liberties. Critics say relinquishing surveillance and law enforcement to a machine leaves a society open to a future where all activities will be monitored and recorded, in the name of public safety. That surveillance would not be limited to just public venues. As the courts have increasingly limited an individual’s “expectation of privacy,” automated monitoring of human behavior can take on increasingly invasive proportions.
As with so many other government programs, the scope of the Mind’s Eye project can be vastly expanded into areas far outside of its original intent.
Deployment of this project could be a major threat to an individual’s privacy rights and turn a Hollywood script into reality.
Steve Elwart, P.E., Ph.D., is the executive research analyst with the Koinonia Institute and a subject matter expert for the Department of Homeland Security. He can be contacted at firstname.lastname@example.org.
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A radiometer is a way to measure electromagnetic radiation. They've been around for over a century, but you've never seen them like this. Radiometers are sometimes used in science classes to illustrate to students how light can move objects. The energy of the light is able to move the vanes inside the partial vacuum of the radiometer.
Artist (and science geek) Luke Jerram created a beautiful chandelier using radiometers for the Bristol and Bath Science Park in England. The chandelier is activated by the sun streaming thorough the windows, and makes a soft clinking sound as the radiometers spin. via Luke Jerram
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Hi, I have a question about running any Java program. Usually, after compiling the program successfully, I use the v1.3 interpreter to run the program under Command Prompt; for example: java SwingApplication However, is Command Prompt the only way to open and run the program? I was wondering if it's possible to make the program automatically execute and run by double-clicking on a small icon, just like when double-clicking on the small ICQ icon, ICQ program opens up and run. Thanks very much for the help!
Joined: Sep 29, 2000
Create a .bat file or whatever and put the commands to start the app in there. Then you can just double click the bat file.
"JavaRanch, where the deer and the Certified play" - David O'Meara
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PORTAGE | Myers Elementary School Student Council took time to visit residents at Sterling House. It was the students' idea.
During the first half of the school year, these 20 fourth- and fifth-graders had brainstormed a list of service opportunities they wished to pursue. One of their choices was to visit a nearby nursing home to deliver Valentines, bring smiles and swap stories with the residents of Sterling House.
Students circulated around a living room area, interacting with the residents and watching the faces of individuals who were moved as they read their cards. They proceeded to ask the students about themselves and the students did the same.
Additionally during the one-hour visit, groups of two and three were led to some residents’ rooms and greeted them with a “Happy Valentine’s Day.” They were met with everything from hugs to laughter, and one resident even pretended not to know what Valentine’s Day was - before admitting the gag with a smile on his face.
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The Sudan: Year In Review 1998Article Free Pass
Area: 2,503,890 sq km (966,757 sq mi)
Population (1998 est.): 33,551,000
Capitals: Khartoum (executive and ministerial) and Omdurman (legislative)
Head of state and government: President and Prime Minister Lieut. Gen. Omar Hassan Ahmad al-Bashir
In January 1998 the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA), based in southern Sudan, launched a new campaign in its long-running civil war against the government. Both sides claimed victories, but little progress appeared to have been made by either combatant. The main outcome was that food shortages in the south became increasingly severe, and external aid agencies claimed that in order to avert famine in the region, they had to be permitted to fly in more food and other forms of relief.
On May 3 the government responded by permitting additional flights to be made to the Bahr al-Ghazal province, the most seriously affected area, but the SPLA claimed that this was a token gesture to win sympathy immediately prior to new negotiations, which opened in Nairobi, Kenya, the following day. Although neither side appeared to be in a mood for compromise, the meeting did result in an agreement that there should be a referendum on self-determination for the south, though no date was fixed for it to take place and there was a dispute as to the area covered by "the south." The SPLA wanted to extend the definition to include an oil-bearing region that the government, in conjunction with Chinese contractors and other financial backers, was just beginning to develop and had no intention of relinquishing. The government, for its part, gave no indication that it was prepared to waive its insistence upon Islamic law, even in the predominantly non-Muslim south.
An apparently more promising development took place on June 30 when Pres. Omar Hassan al-Bashir signed into law a new constitution. Significantly, it canceled the former ban on political parties, though strict control of criticism of the government remained in force until the day the law was promulgated. On July 15 the SPLA called a unilateral three-month humanitarian cease-fire in Bahr al-Ghazal, and in August the government called a cease-fire throughout the whole southern Sudan to permit relief organizations to send in supplies.
All these hopeful signs were jeopardized when the U.S. destroyed a pharmaceutical factory in Khartoum with long-range missiles on August 20 in retaliation for the bombing of U.S. embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, Tanz., by terrorists. The U.S. claimed to have convincing evidence that the factory had played a key role in the bombings.
What made you want to look up "The Sudan: Year In Review 1998"? Please share what surprised you most...
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We have three 6th grade Science classes and two 8th grade Science classes blogging here from the Pacific Northwest in Chimacum, WA! Sixth graders are learning a bit about Mt Saint Helens, environmental science through fresh water ecology, and physical science this year. Eighth graders are learning about life science this year. Please join us as we learn Science by exploring our world.
Mr. G's Blog Mr. G's Class Facebook Page
my plant experiment!
for the past few weeks we have been doing a plant experiment!,my group did lima beans and we got a lot of interesting facts about them and we learned a lot and we put them on the roof of the school so they could get sun light and we put one with a lot of water and one with less water and it failed because over spring break it rained almost everyday so it added more water and it flooded the lima beans and made them all moldy and rotten and they stunk really bad so, they didn't even grow at all on even a sprout or anything... its kinda a bummer that it didn't work but we made a video about it and its on youtube!!!
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An acquaintance recently sent me to Millard Filmore’s Bathtub, a site about history, education, and ideas for meaningful teaching (as in, going beyond the pointless testing requirements). He thought I’d be interested (and I was), since my day job involves editing children’s textbooks. The part where I criticize their contents goes on only in my head, but it’s nice to know that there’s a teacher out there who’s trying to improve actual education standards — that is, actually teaching.
The first post I read was about the swelling caldera in Yellowstone National Park. For those who don’t know, a caldera is a sort of inverted, underground volcano (in simple terms). When a caldera blows, it doesn’t just scatter ash over hundreds of miles. Because of the magnified force of an underground volcano, and depending on its size, an eruption can completely destroy thousands of square miles. When the Yellowstone caldera goes again, as the Filmore post says, “That day will make Mt. St. Helens’ more recent eruption look like a quiet hiccough.”
Reading about it brought forcibly to mind my 7th-grade earth science teacher’s drilling into her students the fact that the massive forest fires burning in Yellowstone that year were not a problem for the environment (despite making us all a bit wheezy), which knew what it needed. The problem we needed to be concerned about, she said, were the roiling tons of lava hidden beneath Yellowstone Lake, which, when it blew, would pretty much take out the Western U.S. Of course, as she pointed out, there really wasn’t anything we could do about it.
Fun stuff. Okay, I find it fun. But then, I grew up in a place where both the current environment and geological history were an open, active part of everyday life. When I was eight, I scrambled with other kids to get on the Children’s Board of the Museum of the Rockies, where we got to mess around with dinosaur fossil casts and capture the stories of our mountains in learning about the forces that shaped tortured layers of rock.
Believe it or not, this stuff really interests kids. It’s real; it means something. They can touch it. Besides, kids like learning about anything in nature that explodes. Millard Filmore’s Bathtub, while focusing on the teaching opportunities related to news of the swelling caldera, points out some great travel opportunities, whether you’re eight or fifty-seven. Most important, of course, is to go to Yellowstone itself. As he points out, our national parks are woefully under-visited. And most people who visit Yellowstone don’t know or care that a massive underground volcano is what generates the sulfurous hot springs and makes Old Faithful spew.
Beyond that, you can get a sense of geological history by traveling to the outskirts of the devastation caused by the last time Yellowstone blew. Here’s two recommendations from Millard Filmore: “Nebraska, for example, has a state park, Ashfall Beds, containing fossils of animals burned and smothered by hot ash from a volcano in the Yellowstone Caldera (now it’s a National Natural Landmark).” And, “Check out the lava flows in southern Idaho, around Craters of the Moon National Monument in Idaho. Those flows, and their nearby cinder cones, used to be over the hot spot which now makes the Yellowstone Caldera dangerous. How far does lava flow? How much of the U.S. is moved from where it was? Did you know astronauts bound for the Moon actually trained at Craters of the Moon?”
Craters of the Moon used to be one of my favorite places as a kid. (Of course, I had ample time to explore it on my first visit, as the radiator hose blew in my family’s van and we were stuck for a few days, but that’s another story.) It’s so, well, moon-like, that only the biggest double-page magazine spread photo could ever begin to capture its eeriness. And Yellowstone National Park was the backyard of my childhood. The curiosity and interest from treading these places with some knowledge of their weighty millions of years has stuck with me long past youth.
Traveling to places like this sparks the imagination with an immediacy that any number of textbooks, lessons, or Discovery Channel documentaries can never attain.
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Why can’t America seem to kick its heroin habit? According to a new study, it might be because we’re not giving addicts exactly what they want: heroin, in pure, prescription form.
Reported in The New England Journal of Medicine, the study provided either methadone or prescription heroin to a group of addicts who used heroin daily. Six months later, more than two-thirds of the participants who had been given prescription heroin were staying off the street version of the drug. Less than a third of the methadone group had the same success. The idea of such "heroin maintenance" programs, in which hardcore drug addicts are provided free pharmaceutical-grade heroin that they can legally inject at safe, medically staffed clinics, is gaining supporters from all corners: medical professionals, drug-policy experts, and perhaps not surprisingly, addicts themselves.
"Methadone is a welfare check," Bobby says with a hint of disdain. "Yeah, if I'm on the streets I'll go get one, but you don't want to be on welfare your whole life."
Take Tattoo Mike and Bobby Dukes. Both were dopefiends and fixtures on the Philly punk scene. Intricate ink designs spill from their shoulders to their wrists—Bobby Dukes' even climb the sides of his neck. As heroin addicts, they lived chaotic lives. Tattoo Mike was a crazy street-fighting kid in the '90s, adamantly anti-drugs during his straight-edge teens before he rapidly progressed from downing forties of malt liquor to copping dope in the heroin-soaked Badlands of North Philadelphia. Bobby Dukes spent 15 years running with prostitutes, pimps, and hustlers, and living in gutters with hardened homeless men.
Both were on methadone at some point, but it didn't help. In fact, both of them were arrested on drug-related charges for crimes they committed while on methadone. As a result, Bobby went through a harrowing jail-cell detox, and Mike almost wound up doing five to 20 in federal prison. Like a lot of methadone users, the drug didn’t lead them toward abstinence. They experienced short periods of stability, but eventually, their addictions only got worse.
"Sure," says Tattoo Mike, "I was doing OK [on methadone] at first in that I wasn't doing dope, but I was doing Xanax the whole time and at one point I was shooting coke like a fiend."
Both Bobby and Mike used street heroin, cocaine, and black-market pharmaceuticals on top of their daily dose of either "biscuits" or "juice," as methadone in its pill and liquid forms are called on the streets. As such, they were both perfect candidates for prescription heroin. Experimental-scale heroin-maintenance programs have gained steam in Europe, in Canada, and advocates say the time has come to try them in America, too.
"Heroin maintenance is the needle exchange of today," says Ethan Nadelmann, founder and executive director of the progressive think tank Drug Policy Alliance. "Years ago they told us needle exchanges would never happen. But the evidence that harm-reduction methods like heroin maintenance are effective is overwhelming, and evidence eventually overcomes the 'can't be done here' attitude we've faced in the past."
Advocates stress they're not talking about handing out dime bags of dope to school kids. Medical heroin is only for the 15 to 25 percent of addicts who don't respond positively to methadone maintenance. The New England Journal of Medicine study found that in Canada, drug addicts who dropped out of methadone programs were far more likely to complete a heroin-maintenance program where they were provided their drug of choice in a safe, clean environment where they had access to doctors and other social services. As a result, abuse of other illegal drugs and criminal behavior were reduced.
Tattoo Mike says that cheap methadone—he paid less than $12 a day for clinic services—only freed up money for him to spend on other drugs. Both Bobby and Mike agree that the reason addicts on methadone use other drugs and relapse is that while the medication keeps them from getting sick, it simply doesn't get them high. Relapsing on heroin after having dropped out of methadone maintenance had severe consequences for both of them.
"That relapse was horrible," Mike groans. "I wound up getting a gun stuck in my mouth at 4th and Lehigh (in North Philadelphia) over $10." Bobby says that after leaving the methadone program his daily heroin habit soared to three bundles a day. (A bundle is 10 heroin dimebags rubber-banded together for easy hand-to-hand street-corner bulk sales.) Researchers point to this as one reason why having safe alternatives like heroin maintenance for hardcore addicts like Bobby and Mike is so important.
Personally, however, Bobby—who has a penchant for bright-red thrift-store suits, gold fronts, rope chains, pork pie hats, and white leather loafers—isn't entirely convinced that prescription heroin would have gotten him clean. He suspects heroin maintenance programs might have the same problem the methadone maintenance ones did: the prescription, doled out in tightly controlled quantities, wouldn't be nearly as much as he wanted.
"I don't do this shit to get well, man," says Bobby, "I do it to get high. If I was using, I would go to a clinic to get a free wake up, sure, but then I'm gonna steal some shit, cop a bundle, go blow some pins." Pins are Klonopin; the anti-anxiety medication is popular on the black market, especially with methadone users because, in combination, it gives the addict a heroin-like high.
Mike didn't speculate on whether going on heroin maintenance would have kept him on the straight and narrow. He was deeply involved in crime when he left the methadone program for the second time, which makes any treatment program tenuous at best. But he says he still would have given it a shot. "I would have jumped on that so fast," he says. "In fact, my girlfriend at the time had a friend who moved to Holland to get into a free heroin program and we were like, 'Man, we have to get over there.'"
While harm-reduction advocates rightly tout the social benefits of methadone, addicts like Bobby often complain about the miserable experience of being tethered to the volatile environment of a shoddy neighborhood clinic (addicts call methadone "liquid handcuffs") and wonder if medical heroin clinics would address these frustrating issues.
"You got a hundred sick fiends up in the clinic first thing in the morning," says Bobby. "You got three people giving out the juice, then one of the (methadone dispensing) machines breaks down and it's chaos. We got millions of dope addicts; America ain't Holland. How many people are going to be giving the dope out? Because you better have some militia-type shit up in there if you're gonna make a thousand fiends wait on a bag."
Bobby's concerns about the logistical issues of serving the roughly 1,200 to 2,000 addicts in Philadelphia who could qualify for heroin maintenance are shared by Laura Thomas, the Drug Policy Alliance's harm-reduction expert.
"We obviously have significant capacity issues regarding access to substance-abuse treatment in America," she says. "We have to increase the overall capacity of treatment, across all different models. As long as we continue to treat substance abuse as a moral problem that can be solved by 'Just Say No' or just go to meetings we'll continue to have service-access problems." She went on to note that Germany has moved beyond the experimental stage of heroin maintenance and now has workable state-funded programs that are larger than the small sample sizes in some of the research.
Both Bobby and Mike feel strongly about total abstinence from drugs, which they feel is the only thing that eventually made it possible for them to build healthy, productive, working-class lives. At six-and-a-half years sober, Mike has his own house-painting crew in Philly, and Bobby, sober for four years, runs his own furniture-moving outfit in Brooklyn.
"Methadone is a welfare check," Bobby says with a hint of disdain. "Yeah, if I'm on the streets I'll go get one, but you don't want to be on welfare your whole life. I was up to three bundles a day and I got clean. I seen dudes come in worse than me get clean."
Mike agrees. "You see dudes out there who've been on methadone 30 years, all walking to the clinic on a cane. It's kinda sad. There's nothing like the freedom of being clean."
"Everyone has a different path and people need different options," responds Laura Thomas. "And who knows? If heroin-assisted treatment existed then, Bobby and Mike might not have left the methadone program, and they may have been able to reach their abstinence goals that much earlier."
Jeff Deeney is a social worker and freelance writer from Philadelphia. He works with felony drug offenders in the criminal justice system and writes about urban poverty and drug culture.
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In this space in last yearís Highlights issue, Geotimes Editor-in-Chief Sam Adams asked readers to let us know their thoughts on the Highlights: what should be in the print magazine, what should go on geotimes.org. One suggestion was to include articles that looked beyond the scientist to the scientists themselves ó the status of careers in our community. We did that in the February 2001 special GeoJobs issue, which offered reviews of employment trends in the key sectors as well as some alternative career choices.
Is something missing from this compilation? This yearís pages cover 28 disciplines, but we are well aware that we could easily include twice that many. If you feel that your branch of the geosciences is not covered, please let us know. But be forewarned that we might ask you to suggest colleagues who could take on the subject just as these authors have. In several cases, subjects went uncovered not for lack of interest on our part but from the challenge of identifying the right reviewer.
This issue contains more than just Highlights. Most of the other monthly columns and departments are here as well. In Comment, Maryland State Geologist Emery Cleaves makes a strong case for the broad national role of the U.S. Geological Survey and encourages his fellow geoscientists to help make the case to Congress and the administration. In Political Scene, AGI Congressional Science Fellow Katy Makeig provides her perspective on the role that individuals should play in the energy debate. In both cases, as the presidentís proposals move through Congress, geoscientists have important knowledge and perspectives they need to share with lawmakers.
The past few weeks have been eventful ones. We have welcomed this yearís Geotimes science writing interns, whose names you will already see throughout the magazine: Jann Vendetti just earned her bachelorís degree in geology and biology from Colgate University, and Emily Johnson just finished her bachelorís degree in geoscience from Princeton University. Their arrival was timely, coming fast on the heels of staff writer Laura Wrightís departure. She will be pursuing a joint masterís degree in earth science and journalism from Columbia University. We wish her the best of luck.
We also say farewell to our volunteer book review editors who have provided yeomanís service to Geotimes and its readers. Rex Buchanan is an associate director at the Kansas Geological Survey. He has found almost 100 authors to review just as many books, supplying readers with advice and perspectives on the geoscience books being published. We will miss his charm and diligence. We would also like to thank Chris Maples, geoscience department chairman at Indiana University and Rexís fellow editor for the past year. Thank you both!
Finally, we would like to salute associate editor Christy Reed, who was one of a dozen journalists selected for the annual Metcalf Institute Workshop at the University of Rhode Island Graduate School of Oceanography. She was also in a handful of science writers selected for the Science Writing Fellowships Program at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Marine Biological Laboratory.
These people are some of the faces behind the magazine. We hope that
you will enjoy their handiwork. So read on!
Editor Managing Editor
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Want to stay on top of all the space news? Follow @universetoday on Twitter
With just over four hours to go before launch, NASA is 80 percent optimistic that tonight’s Discovery launch will be a go — with the weather holding the only foreseeable wild card. Launch time is 7:43 p.m. local time (EDT) from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.
Unfortunately for east coast skywatchers, a storm system that’s been dumping rain all weekend will obstruct a view of the launch that would otherwise be a beauty, as the shuttle will cruise northeast over the ocean nearly parallel to the shore. Without the clouds, the launch would have been visible as far west as the Appalachian Mountains, and as far north as the southern tip of Nova Scotia.
But Florida’s weather is looking promising, partly cloudy (and 80 degrees at the time of this post) with an 80 percent chance of cooperating with the launch.
7:20 p.m. (EDT) update: With less than a half hour to go, daylight is fading under clear skies in Florida. Earlier, the weather forecast improved from 80 percent to 100 percent favorable for launch. NASA is reporting no problems.
The Discovery crew members are set to fly a new truss segment to the International Space Station and install the final set of power-generating solar arrays, boosting the station’s power capacity and paving the way for doubling the size of the ISS crew from three to six.
The Discovery crew has been bouncing between NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, in Florida, and the Johnson Space Center in Houston since late January; the first launch attempt was scheduled for early February. But four times, managers rescheduled the launch based on their concern following a hydrogen control valve malfunction on the shuttle Endeavour last fall. They wanted to rule out any similar glitches on Discovery.
Things were looking good for the fifth attempt on Wednesday — when skies would have been clear across much of the east coast — but a leak during refueling sent up another red flag.
Understandably, this morning’s fueling was a bit tense. But for three hours beginning at 10:20 EDT, nearly 500,000 gallons of chilled liquid oxygen and hydrogen propellants flowed into Discovery’s external tank without incident.
Two irregularities have been reported so far this afternoon: a bat was found clinging to Discovery’s external tank, and Launch Director Mike Leinbach sent a “red team” to launch pad 39A to manually correct a valve issue that caused a drop in helium pressure.
Neither issue is expected to interfere with launch.
Stay tuned for updates, either to this post or a new one.
LEAD IMAGE CAPTION: NASA’s Discovery shuttle pictured under a full moon on Wednesday, when its fifth launch attempt was scrapped. Tonight marks the sixth. NASA/Bill Ingalls
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Land Contract Program Supports Land Owners Selling to New Farmers
Posted: February 13, 2012
A land contract is an installment contract between a buyer and a seller for the sale of real property, in which complete ownership of the property is not transferred until all payments under the contract have been made. This contract reduces the risk to the seller because land ownership does not change until all payments under the contract have been made. You, the farmer, must meet the requirements for Guaranteed and Direct Farm Ownership programs, and also must be the owner/operator of the farm by the end of the guarantee (or contract). To get all of the details about the land contract program, read the full report at http://www.fsa.usda.gov/Internet/FSA_File/6-flp_r00_a16.pdf. These documents often contain a lot of words and terms new farmers (and often experienced farmers, too) do not understand. Your local FSA office has staff that can talk you through the program and the things you need to know when considering programs.
For the land contract guarantee, “The buyer must provide a minimum down payment of five percent of the purchase price, plan to operate the farm, and be able to project the ability to make the land contract payments.” Therefore, you, the farmer, will have to be prepared with a business plan prepared to show they are able to make payments. (Do not have a business plan? Consider taking the Exploring the Small Farm Dream course offered through Penn State Extension’s Start Farming program.) You will also need to be organized with financial information including a balance sheet and credit report. Your local FSA office can help you prepare and gather these documents.
To find your local FSA office, go here: http://offices.sc.egov.usda.gov/locator/app?state=pa&agency=fsa.
Although FSA offers a variety of financial services to farmers of all experience levels, they offer many services specifically for beginning, transitioning, women, or socially disadvantaged farmers. To begin your search for other grants and contracts available through FSA, please visit http://askfsa.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/1179.
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While the use of drones has rapidly expanded over the past few year, this growth has been matched by rising resistance, opposition and protests. In this final review of the year we take a brief look at some of the opposition to the use of armed unmanned drones over the past twelve months.
The primary location of opposition to the use of armed drones over the past year has been in Pakistan which has been subjected to over 350 US drone strikes since 2002 – almost fifty in the past year alone according to Bureau of Investigative Journalism figures. Opposition to the drone strikes have come from within Parliament and the government where a major cross party national security report in March called for an end to the drone strikes, formal protests have been lodged with the US Ambassador and politicians have even called for US drones to be shot down.
However it has been outside of the Pakistan parliament where the opposition to the strikes has been most visible. Throughout 2011 there were large protests and demonstrations against the strikes and these continued throughout 2012, with for example, tribesmen from Waziristan staged a sit-in outside the Pakistan Parliament in Islamabad in February.
It was cricketer-turned-politican, Imran Khan’s march that drew thousands and garnered international media coverage and encouraged both the Pakistan Prime Minister to speak out against the drone strikes. By the end of the year, the Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari asked the US point-blank in direct face-to-face talks to end the drone attacks. Given that the number of US drone strikes in Pakistan has dropped by a third in 2012, this opposition seems to be having some impact.
In Yemen, however, the number of US drone strikes has substantially increased. While it is much more difficult and dangerous to organise
against drone strikes in Yemen, local human rights groups have spoken out and some protests have taken place. Yemeni journalist Abdulelah Haider Shaye continues to be detained for exposing US military intervention in Yemen and this has received some coverage in Yemen this year.
In the US, there were numerous protests at the various bases connected with drone warfare, especially at Hancock Airfield in New York State. In February 38 protestors were fined or given community sentences after a protest at the Hancock base. In April hundreds of protestors again marched on the base when there were a further 28 arrests and again in June 15 demonstrators were arrested. At the end of the year five of the protestors were sentenced to two weeks imprisonment.
Local drone protest group made a great video of one of the action:
In April four members of Nevada Desert Experience were arrested for protesting at Creech drone base and serving an indictment on the base commander, while nine were arrested following protests at a drone base in California. Two drone protestors were imprisoned following a drone protest at Whitman AFB. Mark Kenney pleaded guilty following the protest and was sentenced to four months, while Brian Terrell and Ron Faust were found guilty following a trial and Brian was sentenced to six months imprisonment.
The wonderful Medea Benjamin, a key individual in the drone resistance movement, focused the attention of the world’s media on the issue when she interrupted a speech by John Brennan, Obama’s Chief Counter Terrorism Adviser.
Here in the UK, in April there were protests and arrests at a drone conference in Bristol and regular protests outside drone factories in Birmingham, Leicester and Brighton throughout the year. A major three-day gathering of the drone industry due to take place in central Bath was moved at the last minute into a secure military base after planned protests gained widespread support.
At the new UK drone base, RAF Waddington in Lincolnshire, Helen Johns maintains her peace camp and several groups have organised protests outside the base during the year. In October, a the Week of Action on drones, protests took place in many places (see photo gallery here).
While it is clear that there is establishment support for maintaining and expanding the drone wars, there are signs (sometimes from some surprising places) that civil society resistance along with legal and political action is perhaps beginning to eat away at this commitment. Onwards.
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Jun 20, Colombo: The Agriculture Ministry of Sri Lanka predicts a shortage of rice in country in the event of a failure of the Yala harvest due to the drought.
A senior official at the Agriculture Ministry told ColomboPage that the rains have failed and the drought conditions in the agricultural areas were getting worse.
He said the country is currently experiencing the worst Yala season and would experience a rice shortage if the Yala harvest fails.
However, the official assured that there was a surplus of paddy in the Last Maha and Yala harvests and the country was not in any immediate danger of facing a rice shortage.
Agriculture Ministry statistics show that while the targeted acreage for cultivation during this Yala season was 494,100 hectares only 348,761 hectares have actually been cultivated.
The harvest is estimated at 1.25 million metric tons.
However, these figures are expected to see a drastic change due to the drought weather conditions experienced in most parts of the country, especially the agricultural areas.
Of the cultivated land, most paddy lands in the Anuradhapura and Polonnaruwa districts have been severely affected by the shortage of water.
According to the Agriculture Ministry, 5,000 hectares of paddy land in the Kurunegala District have been completely destroyed by the drought.
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CPB’s American Graduate initiative has set its sights on targeting dropouts, but another project in public media is zeroing in on “rise-outs” — students who are excited to learn but feel that high school is failing to meet their needs.
The interactive, genre-defying Ed Zed Omega stems from Localore, the Association of Independents in Radio initiative backed by CPB to spawn collaborative, innovative multimedia projects at TV and radio stations around the country. The only Localore project based at a TV station, EZO has no broadcast component. Instead, it deploys actors to breathe life into stories of disenchanted high-school students who are considering dropping out. Created by game designer Ken Eklund, EZO is an alternate-reality game that challenges participants to tell the students whether they should stay in school.
The project, produced in collaboration with Twin Cities Public Television in St. Paul, Minn., is the second in which Eklund has blended elements of reality and gameplay to call attention to a social issue.
In 2007, his game World Without Oil, presented by the Independent Television Service, asked participants to imagine themselves in a world facing a global oil crisis. Through blogs, podcasts, YouTube videos and other online media, World Without Oil’s “players” explored how a catastrophic shift in the world’s energy sources would affect our everyday lives.
Eklund was looking to create another alternate-reality game when AIR paired him with TPT for Localore; both he and the station had applied to participate in the initiative without partners in mind. The designer had been considering a game about education but hadn’t found a hook for one. As a participant in CPB’s American Graduate project, TPT had been exploring stories of dropouts, which suggested narrative possibilities to Eklund.
Education was a suitable topic for TPT, says interactive producer Andi McDaniel. The station’s family and education services department has been growing, and many of its documentaries have included an educational component.
Eklund’s proposal to produce a game was attractive to TPT because, unlike most other Localore projects, it did not emphasize newsgathering. TPT previously produced the statewide news program NewsNight Minnesota but now offers relatively little local news.
By staging an interactive game, TPT hoped to learn how it might engage younger audiences and also take more risks in its programming. “This seemed like a way that we could really open up our process and involve the public more in the unfolding,” McDaniel says.
TPT put out a call for actors, specifying that nonprofessionals were welcome. From more than 50 respondents, the station picked those who talked about their high-school experiences with the most passion and emotion.
Ed Zed Omega’s eight actors range in age from 16 to 31. Only one actual high-school dropout is in the mix; another was homeschooled.
Most of the actors are portraying high-school seniors who are considering dropping out. “I feel very trapped and suffocated. . . . There is a lot more than just sitting in a classroom,” one says in an introductory video on EZO’s website. The project’s name translates to “totally done” (“zed omega”) with education.
Eklund draws a distinction between the EZO students and the students that American Graduate targets — those who face pressures outside of school, such as pregnancy or family problems, that keep them from attending. The students portrayed in EZO are instead “rise-outs,” who want to learn but feel that school is no longer helping them achieve their goals.
As the EZO students struggle with the decision to either stay out of school or return to graduate, they share their thoughts and ask for feedback via a variety of channels: YouTube, Tumblr, Facebook, Twitter, email, a phone hotline and the EZO website. Eklund and TPT want their questioning to spark conversation about whether America’s educational system is preparing students to succeed in a rapidly changing world.
Today’s middle-schoolers will have jobs that haven’t even been invented yet, Eklund says, and schools aren’t giving students a crucial enthusiasm for learning and being creative. He wants EZO’s students to be the equivalent of the boy in “The Emperor’s New Clothes,” who points out something that is obvious to everyone but discussed by no one.
“Ed Zed Omega has been this really cathartic moment where the truth about education is coming out, and also this realization that you don’t need to follow that path if that path is not working for you,” he says.
Eklund and TPT furnished the cast with backstories but no scripts, encouraging the actors to improvise and draw on their own experiences in school as the project unfolds. Real-life experiences have intruded as well. An actor who took a hiatus when his cousin passed away wrote about the death in character upon returning to EZO.
The game’s creators were unsure which elements would prove successful when they launched EZO. It’s turned out that using the actor-students at live, interactive events has sparked some of the most thoughtful discussions.
“The game, and explaining what an alternate-reality thought experiment is, can get bogged down in concept,” McDaniel says. “But if you’re interacting with someone playing a role, there’s no explanation required.”
At live events, the actors have talked for 15 minutes, and the discussions after they leave the room have gone on for 40 minutes, with no guidance needed from Eklund or McDaniel. “It’s easy for adults to talk about teens in a third-person way,” Eklund says. “But when they’re confronted with having that conversation with a teen, all of a sudden it becomes an entirely different discussion, with assumptions laid open for questioning.”
At an event at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, the EZO students invited visitors to walk across a map on the floor that featured islands with labels such as “Standardized Testing,” “I Hate People” and “My 21st Century Job.” Explorers were directed to call a phone number and record their reactions to the islands they stood on.
“One of the things I find myself wishing I had when I was in high school was better orientation — really, somebody along the way who would’ve told me what it was for,” one caller said.
As EZO wraps up, the students will decide whether they’re returning to school. Some have yet to have what may be tumultuous fights about the matter with their parents. In December, the actors will step out of their characters and talk about how the role-playing exercise has affected their views of education.
The project has inspired McDaniel to look for more ways that TPT could use actors to facilitate conversations, as the EZO students have done. Eklund’s improvisational approach to creating and guiding interactive games has inspired TPT to be more nimble, she says, possibly by creating a division within the network that regularly undertakes such projects.
“We don’t want someone to hear about a project like this and think, ‘Really? TPT is doing that?’” she says. “We want them to think, ‘This is part of their mission.’”
TPT will sift through the many calls, comments and letters that it received from the public and posted on its website, then figure out how to package them in some finalized form, McDaniel says.
For his part, Eklund hopes that the ripples created by EZO will influence the ongoing discussion of America’s educational system. Change will come “when people start gathering together their individual complaints and expressing how dissatisfied they are with the system,” he says, “and when they’re ready to support someone with ideas about what the system should be.”
Copyright 2012 American University
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The governors of New York and New Jersey issued a joint statement today, pledging to work together to receive federal aid as their respective states continue to clean up the damage from Superstorm Sandy.
Cuomo unveiled earlier this week that he’s seeking $42 billion from the federal government for rebuilding from and responding to Sandy, as well as prevention measures for future storms. Christie, meanwhile, is seeking $37 billion.
“It is our shared commitment to the people of our states to work in partnership so that our needs are met and we receive as much federal support as possible,” the joint statement today read.
Cuomo, a Democrat, and Christie, a Republican, are both mentioned as potential presidential candidates in 2016.
Here’s their joint statement:
“Our states took a devastating blow from Hurricane Sandy, and our respective cost estimates to restore and rebuild reflect the ferocity of Sandy and the impact to our transportation and utilities infrastructures, our economies, tourism industries and, most importantly, the lives, homes and livelihoods of our citizens. Our economies and infrastructures are inextricably linked and, in many ways, dependent on one another, which is why we share common goals in the rebuilding effort. We will work with our respective Congressional delegations and the Obama Administration to ensure that our states receive federal support commensurate with the damage wrought by the storm and experienced by our residents.
“Our requests also include necessary prevention and mitigation efforts as prudence dictates that we not suffer this great a human or financial loss again.
“It is our shared commitment to the people of our states to work in partnership so that our needs are met and we receive as much federal support as possible.”
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Hybrid technology | Designing the future | Environment | Honda UK
Does all this come at a much greater cost?
Far from it. Honda is committed to making hybrid technology accessible to all. And in addition to using less fuel, there are other savings to be made. Company car hybrids only attract a 10% Benefit in Kind tax and also offer vehicle duty benefits. Plus, all hybrids are exempt from the London Congestion Charge.
Is there an environmental impact in making hybrid vehicles?
We’ve found very little difference in CO2 emissions between making hybrids and making our regular vehicles. And, of course, there’s a huge reduction in emissions when our hybrids are out on the road.
What's next for Honda hybrids?
Expected to go on sale in the US in 2015 - badged as an Acura - the dynamically-styled NSX Concept features lightweight materials and a mid-mounted, powerful V-TEC® V-6 engine. It also includes an innovative, new Sport Hybrid SH-AWD® (Super Handling All Wheel Drive) system for outstanding handling.
"Like the first NSX, we will again express high performance through engineering efficiency," says Takanobu Ito, President and CEO of Honda Motor Co. "In this new era, even as we focus on the fun-to-drive spirit of the NSX, I think a supercar must respond positively to environmental responsibilities."Back
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Dec. 4, 2012 - The Parker app is extremely simple to use… Upon choosing a parking on the map, you can see information such as opening/closing hours and pricing, if available. For select parkings, you also get to know if/when the parking is free or not – handy! Finally, it’s possible to switch to the device Mapping software if you need directions to the parking.
October 11, 2012 – [Parker is] a smartphone app that aims to free you from the tyranny of endlessly circling the block, looking for an available parking space.
June 13, 2012 – With the sensor-enabled Parker™, motorists can see open parking spaces in real time – and if there’s no street parking available it’ll direct drivers to nearby parking lots and garages… Once parked, motorists can use the app’s built-in timer to track how much time is left on the meter, or access walking directions back to their parking spaces.
April 18, 2012 - No more driving around for parking, wasting time, and spewing emissions. This app will make finding a spot a breeze (but it can’t help you parallel park).
March 26, 2012 – The city of Los Angeles, for example, has launched “Parker,” a mobile app that scouts out street parking spaces and lets drivers know where they are available in real time.
March 14, 2012 – Parker is another free iOS app that tells you where the closest spots are in real time. GPS navigation guides you to the open space or a local garage. Garages can also notify Parker of available spaces, enabling users to make advanced reservations.
January 3, 2012 – Well ladies and gentlemen, the answer to everyone’s parking problems has arrived. Earthgarage is proud to announce that the future is happening in the form of a new iPhone app developed by Streetline called “Parker.” And the beauty rests in Streetline’s simple and ingenious design.
October 12, 2011 – But Parker has distinguished itself from local smart-parking apps by emerging as a potentially national program. The app, developed by Streetline, offers real-time availability in parts of D.C., New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Texas, and Utah — and will soon add basic parking facility information for 30 more cities across the United States…
July 7, 2011 – Forget circling a five-block radius waiting for a spot to appear. With this app (currently available for iPhone and Android) you can pinpoint and snag that elusive space. Not only does this save you gray hairs: you also cut down on emissions and congestion.
June 17, 2011 – But for Washingtonians, the extra selling point is that Streetline’s partnered up with Metro to make it easier to ditch your ride at a station. Parker’s packed with info on every Metro lot and garage in D.C., Maryland and Virginia, so you’ll know what to expect in terms of hours, rates and payment methods.
April 26, 2011 – A new iPhone app may reduce the headache of finding parking spaces in downtown Fort Worth.
February 23, 2011 – [Hollywood] is one of the toughest places to find a parking space. But guess what folks? There’s an app for that now.
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Back in April we learned that Russell Crow has been cast in the lead role of Noah in the forthcoming big screen adaptation of the Biblical tale of the Great Flood that destroyed the Earth, which will be directed by Darren Aronfsky. Today we learn a bit more about what to expect from the film. If you are familiar with the story of Noah, then the key elements of the tale should be familiar — God warns Noah that he will destroy the Earth with a flood, Noah builds an ark and tries to save mankind, no one but his family believes him so they collect 2 of every animal on Earth (a male and a female) and load them into the ark to repopulate the planet after the waters secede, the rainbow is the sign of God’s promise never to destroy the Earth with water again. But, in the hands of Aronfsky, Noah’s tale will be much grittier and scarier. Click below for some information about how Aronofsky plans to retell the tale of Noah for a modern audience.
When it was announced that Noah, Darren Aronofsky’s next film, was going to be a retelling of the Biblical figure, it was thought the Black Swan director was tackling a traditional, though surely still fantastical, version of the familiar tale. In fact, Paramount has been officially calling the film a, “close adaptation of the Biblical story of Noah’s Ark.” But it’s not really that close of an adaptation. The last time we checked, and admittedly it’s been a while, the Bible’s Noah was not a Mad Max-style warrior surviving in a pseudo post-apocalyptic world and he didn’t have to face giants with six arms. Darren Aronofsky’s is and six-armed giants he does face. This isn’t a grand, out-of-nowhere revelation, either, it just happens to be something most (ourselves included) haven’t really picked up on or talked about with each new piece of casting. October 2011 saw the publication of the first entry in a graphic novel series created by Aronofsky, executive producer Ari Handel and artist Niko Henrichon, called Noah, For the Cruelty of Men. Here’s a translated description of the series, created to help sell the film to Paramount, from its French publisher, Le Lombard:
His name is Noah. Far from the stereotype of the patriarch that one appends the character of the Bible, he looked like a warrior. He looks like a Mad Max out of the depths of time. In the world of Noah, pity has no place. He lives with his wife and three children in a land barren and hostile, in the grip of severe drought. A world marked by violence and barbarism, delivered to the savagery of the clans that draw their reason to survive from war and cruelty. But Noah is like no other. This is a fighter and also a healer. He is subject to visions which announce the imminent end of the earth, swallowed by the waves of an endless deluge. Noah must notify his followers. If man is to survive, he must end the suffering inflicted on the planet and “treat the world with mercy”. However, no one is listening. The tyrant Akkad, who Noah went to visit in the city of Bal-llim, chased him and sentenced him to flee. After consulting with his grandfather Methuselah, Noah decided to rally to his cause the terrible Giants and accomplish the task entrusted to him by the Creator…
It seems the key concept there is “out of the depths of time.” This isn’t a historical period piece. Noah’s is a story that exists outside of what we know to be, which sounds almost like a Stephen King/The Dark Tower, ‘the world has moved on’ type post-apocalyptic scenario. It may not even be Earthly, it’s all just a vehicle for the Noah metaphor, and that’s fine by us. As for the ‘terrible giants’ mentioned above, Drew McWeeny at HitFix wrote about the casting of Anthony Hopkins as Methuselah and refers to a portion of the script where Noah has to travel through their land, presumably to seek their help, only in the script they’re called Watchers and are, as Drew puts it, “eleven-foot-tall fallen angels with six arms and no wings.”
As a child who grew up in the church, I am pretty familiar with most of the big Bible stories. To be honest, I have always considered the stories in childlike terms … by that I mean, in regards to the Noah tale, I always think about a big boat and a long line of animals being herded into the arc two by two … which isn’t very scary at all. But now, in this context, it makes sense to me that the tale of Noah could be pretty frightening. How horrible must the Earth have been if God was willing to utterly and completely destroy it? That is, according to the parameters of the story. The cities of Sodom and Gomorrah are legendary for their evil and, according to the Bible, are an example of how bad things got on Earth. I have to say … in light of this new info, I’m terribly excited to see what Darren Aronofsky has in store with this film. Some people may scoff at a Bible story being made into a film but I can now see how Aronfsky might be able to take a tale we thought we knew and turn it into something completely unexpected. This sounds very cool, actually. I can’t wait to see and learn more.
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"The Big Move is our plan to tackle gridlock across the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area by building new transit and integrating our transportation system so that it's easier for everyone to get around," said President and CEO Bruce McCuaig. "We already have more than CA$16 billion (US$16.1 billion) invested in projects from The Big Move that are now in progress, but we need to keep moving forward and that's why I'm pleased to unveil the next wave of projects."
The Big Move projects in the next wave include two new subway lines: a Downtown Relief line, improving access to the regional core for residents from across the GTHA, as well as a new extension of the Yonge subway line north to Richmond Hill. Light-rail transit in Mississauga, Brampton and Hamilton will reduce congestion and serve as a catalyst for development across the GTHA. The next wave also includes transformative investment in the GO Transit rail network, including line extensions, more two-way, all-day service and electrification of both GO lines and the Union Pearson Express (formerly known as the Air Rail Link).
"With our plan in place, it's now time for the big conversation about the best ways to pay for this CA$34-billion (US$-34.2 billion) investment," said McCuaig. "Together, let's look to what other world-class cities have done to fund their transit plans and then get the job done here in the GTHA."
The Big Move, adopted unanimously in 2008 by the Metrolinx Board of Directors, was developed through intensive public consultation and collaboration with key stakeholders, municipal leaders and professionals throughout the region.
More than C$16 billion (US$16.1 billion) from all three levels of government have already been allocated to a first wave of projects drawn from The Big Move, the largest financial commitment to transit expansion in Canadian history. Major projects in this first wave are now under construction, including the Eglinton-Scarborough Crosstown LRT, the Toronto-York Spadina subway extension, the Mississauga BRT and the Union Pearson Express.
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Space tourism comes closer to liftoff
For years, when John Spencer talked about tourists taking forays into space, he often was met with giggles or a blank stare.
"The laugh factor on this was really intense," says Spencer, founder of the Space Tourism Society, an advocacy group based in West Los Angeles. But with corporate visionaries pouring millions of dollars into the building blocks of such an industry, Spencer says, few people are laughing now.
"It's happening," he says. "There's a market. There's a waiting line. … Our ultimate goal is: Tens of thousands of space tourists actually leave Earth, go to orbital cruise ships, lunar ships, lunar resorts, and have a great time."
The notion of an ordinary person taking a trip beyond Earth's atmosphere is no longer the stuff of science fiction. Several already have gone, and hundreds more have paid for trips that could begin as soon as next year. Even as NASA's shuttle program is drawing to a close — its next-to-last launch is scheduled for Friday, when the shuttle Endeavour is to begin a two-week mission to the International Space Station— private companies are soliciting passengers for commercial trips to space.
Ten years ago Thursday, businessman Dennis Tito became the first private person to pay to fly in space on April 28, 2001, doling out $20 million to travel on the Soyuz, a Russian rocket, to the International Space Station. Now, space travel is beginning to mirror the airline industry, with its own travel agents, carriers and hubs.
Companies such as Virgin Galactic, founded by billionaire and aviation enthusiast Richard Branson, and XCOR Aerospace in Mojave, Calif., are building spacecraft and selling tickets for suborbital flights that will allow passengers to see the Earth's curvature and experience weightlessness.
Commercial spaceports are sprouting from Upham, N.M., to Kodiak, Alaska. And Space Adventures, the Virginia-based company that since 2001 has arranged eight private trips to the Space Station, has booked one passenger for an excursion around the far side of the moon and has a passenger seat to fill on the first private lunar mission, which could happen as soon as 2014.
The moon-bound passengers also would fly on the Soyuz. Other space aviation companies, some solely with private dollars and others with the help of some government funding, are spending tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars to create vehicles that could ferry tourists into space.
A ticket to ride doesn't come cheap, costing at least $95,000, but space entrepreneurs believe that they can facilitate travel to near space more affordably than NASA and fulfill the desire by some non-astronauts to go beyond Earth.
Stephen Attenborough, Virgin Galactic's commercial director, sees similarities between the growing space travel industry and notions of commercial aviation a century ago, when few people would have believed that plane rides would be commonplace.
"My sense is we're on a very similar path here," he says. "At the moment, most people would assume they'd never go to space. I think they're going to be wrong. … My view of the future is that, maybe in 30 to 40 years, most people who want to go to space will have the opportunity to do it, and that it will be affordable."
Dreaming of space
Branson has made his mark on flight, from starting the Virgin Atlantic airline to being the first to cross the Atlantic Ocean in a hot-air balloon. But he's long set his sights higher.
"I've dreamed of going into space ever since the moon landing when I was a teenager," says Branson. "I assumed that once man had gone to the moon that ordinary people like myself would have that opportunity years ago."
When that didn't happen, Branson took matters into his own hands and registered the name Virgin Galactic in 1991.
The company eventually connected with engineer Burt Rutan, creator of the first privately developed manned space vehicle, dubbed SpaceShipOne. SpaceShipTwo, being created for Virgin Galactic, will be able to carry six passengers 68 miles into the air. Currently conducting test flights in Mojave, the company is considered by some to be the leading contender for becoming the first commercial spaceline in the world. Commercial flights could start by the end of next year.
George Whitesides, Virgin Galactic's CEO, is quick to say, however, that this isn't a new space race. "I'm more focused on building a vehicle that is as safe as possible than I am in flying first," he says.
For the fledgling space tourism industry, perfecting the technology has been only one piece of the puzzle. Pioneers in the field also have had to make sure there's a pool of passengers willing, and financially able, to fly.
A trip to the International Space Station on the Russian Soyuz spacecraft, for example, costs roughly $50 million, according to Space Adventures. A seat on the Lynx Mark II, a suborbital vehicle being developed by XCOR, is a relative bargain in comparison, costing $95,000. Spots on Virgin Galactic's craft go for $200,000 each.
"This is not just about starting a business. It's about hopefully starting a whole new industry, and in order to do that as the leader in the field, we need to do it well, and we need to make money," says Attenborough. When the business started, "There was a lot we didn't know at that point, and one (question) was … whether anybody would really want to take a trip at the sort of prices that we knew we'd need to start the business with."
Plenty did: 425 people have signed up for the journey, putting down roughly $60 million in deposits. "It's the democratization of space, and to put poets in space and artists as well as scientists and movie stars and business people, the results of that I think will be huge and shouldn't be underestimated.'
Producer Dallas Austin has booked his trip and was among a few in early April to fly alongside the Virgin Galactic mothership, WhiteKnightTwo, which landed at San Francisco International Airport— its first time touching down at such a hub.
He's had friends question how safe such a journey would be, and his reply is simple: "There's no way I'm not going into space." Austin says that, for an ordinary person, a trip to space can be life-changing. "You'll really see how insignificant our problems are, to see (the world) from a different perspective.
Test flights next year
XCOR expects by the end of next year to begin test-flying the Lynx Mark I, a two-seat craft, to be followed by the more advanced Mark II, which could start commercial flights in 2013, says spokesman Mike Massee. More space vehicles could follow, he says, "depending on the demand."
Massee wouldn't give a specific figure but says the number of passengers who have paid for the roughly 35-minute trip is in the double digits. It will take a little more than four minutes to travel about 60 miles up in the air, to the edge of space. Then the vehicle begins to re-enter the atmosphere, gliding back home. "What you see at those altitudes is the sky turns dark in daytime," he says. "You can see stars and easily the curvature of Earth. And aside from the visual experience … it's also the ultimate roller-coaster ride."
Boeing, one of the biggest aircraft manufacturers in the world, has a keen eye on space as well. "Part of (our) vision is to become the Boeing commercial airplane of space travel," says John Elbon, vice president and program manager of Boeing's commercial crew program, which is developing a seven-seat commercial space capsule. "We hope to … either operate those vehicles or provide them to other operators to enable commercial access to space."
Private space ventures are looking to take more than tourists into space. Their goal is to carry scientists and cargo beyond Earth as well.
As the shuttle program comes to an end, private companies are looking to fill a new niche. Fifty years after the first human went into space, private companies would take over the task of building and providing transportation for NASA astronauts and others into low Earth orbit, freeing the government to focus its resources on the deeper reaches of space.
Last week, NASA awarded $270 million to four companies, including Boeing and Blue Origin, an aerospace research and development company started by Amazon's founder, Jeff Bezos, to continue developing or creating designs for vehicles that could take over where the space shuttle leaves off, carrying NASA astronauts into near space.
"At this time … we believe we can hand over more of that to a commercial entity with some good oversight and insight from the NASA community," says Ed Mango, program manager for NASA's commercial crew program. "And NASA can focus on even harder stuff, which is going beyond low Earth orbit."
NASA envisions the vehicles being used to transport non-astronauts as well, such as scientists, engineers and perhaps space tourists, though Mango says tourism is not NASA's priority.
NASA "should be trying to find ways by which we can do things in space for a less-expensive price so it helps life back on Earth," says Mango, noting how medical scientists could possibly do research at the International Space Station or another lab.
Spaceports across the USA
Still under construction, but with its first phase nearly complete, Spaceport America will resemble its airport peers with newsstands, gift shops and restaurants, but also have innovative installations, such as, say, a booth where visitors can experience weightlessness.
"A lot of (the installations) will be aimed at motivating and inspiring students in science, technology, engineering and mathematics," says Chris Anderson, executive director of the New Mexico Spaceport Authority. "Like back in the days when President Kennedy challenged us to go to the moon and inspired a generation of scientists and engineers. I'm hoping this will excite people again."
Branson sees his spacecraft as only the beginning. "I think in the very first year … Virgin Galactic will create more astronauts than have been created in the last 70 years," he says. "And then I think from small beginnings, from suborbital flights, (the industry) will grow into orbital flights. From orbital flights, that will grow into intercontinental flights at a fraction of the (time)…. We'll be able to put satellites into space at a much more affordable price than they have in the past. And so I think commercial spaceship companies will bring the cost down of every aspect of access to space."
Tom Shelley, president of Space Adventures, says his company started in 1998 with the intention of arranging trips on suborbital flights. But until that option became a reality, the business focused on simulated space experiences instead, such as a visit to the cosmonaut training facility in Russia, where you could experience the feeling of a moon walk through buoyancy.
But now the sky's the limit, for the public and for the businesses plowing the new frontier.
"It's just exciting," Shelley says. "Somebody may be first, but all these companies are going to win in the long run."
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All data as of 14 December 2010 Download: english ¦ french
Economic benefits of GPEI estimated at US$40-50 billion: A new study released in November in the medical journal Vaccine estimates that the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI) could provide net benefits of at least US$40-50 billion through 2035. More than eight million cases of polio in children will have been prevented, and significant additional humanitarian and economic benefits reaped through 'add on' health interventions (such as Vitamin A). More. New Independent Monitoring Board convenes inaugural meeting: The newly-established Independent Monitoring Board (IMB) convened in Geneva, Switzerland, on 21-22 December 2010, to assess progress towards the attainment of a polio-free world. The IMB was established at the request of the Executive Board (EB) and the World Health Assembly (WHA) to independently evaluate progress against each of the major milestones of the new GPEI Strategic Plan 2010-2012. The IMB, comprised of global experts from a variety of fields relevant to the work of the GPEI, evaluates whether global milestones and country-specific indicators are 'on track', 'at risk' or 'missed', and provides assessments of the risks posed by existing funding gaps. The report from the group's inaugural meeting is expected to be made available mid-January 2011. More. 2011-12 Financial Resource Requirements updated: Against a two-year US$1.86 billion budget, the GPEI faces a US$ 720 million funding gap to fully implement activities to achieve GPEI Strategic Plan milestones. The most significant geographic gaps are in Africa. The full financial situation will be published in a revised Financial Resource Requirements (FRR) by mid-January 2011. More. India and Nigeria report historic lows of polio transmission: With the high season for polio transmission nearly completed, both countries continue to report historic low levels of poliovirus transmission, particularly in key reservoir areas. This presents both national and international opportunities, given that both countries continued to export virus internationally in 2010. In both countries, aggressive mop-up strategies are now being implemented to tackle any residual transmission, and technical staff from polio-free areas of both countries is deployed to support the mop-ups to maximise the impact of operations. UNICEF Executive Director Tony Lake in India: On 8 December, UNICEF Executive Director Tony Lake participated in polio immunization activities in Bihar, and discussed additional steps to eradicating polio in the country with key partners and representatives of the Government of India. Key expert groups convene to evaluate new research projects: The Polio Research Committee (PRC), which helps guide the GPEI's research agenda, convened in Delhi, India, on 15 December to discuss new studies to improve supplementary immunization activity (SIA) operations. At the same time, also in Delhi, a special meeting on mucosal immunity reviewed the current science and future research needs to better understand the role mucosal immunity plays in polio transmission and immunization. Enhanced action urgently needed to address emerging risks to polio eradication: Urgent action is needed in three countries with uncontrolled polio transmission, namely Pakistan (the only endemic country with an increase in cases in 2010), and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DR Congo) and Angola. Virus associated with outbreaks in these areas has spread internationally this year, including to cause a large-scale explosive outbreak in the Republic of Congo. All three countries are currently finalizing emergency action plans for 2011 to rapidly control the situation.
23 cases in 2010 (15 WPV1, 8 WPV3). 31 cases at this time in 2009 (15 WPV1, 16 WPV3).
An aggressive mop-up strategy continues to be implemented in India, in response to residual polio transmission in the country.
Special strategies are also focusing on reaching mobile population groups.
A surveillance review was conducted in east/central Uttar Pradesh, and a communications review in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and West Bengal. In both cases, the reviews determined that the programmes were robust and working at high capacity. Recommendations to further sensitize the approaches were nevertheless put forward.
Mr Chandramouli has been appointed as new Secretary of Health, Government of India. He took office on 1 December.
134 cases in 2010 (24 WPV1, 110 WPV3). 84 cases at this time last year (58 WPV1, 25 WPV3).
30 WPV1 cases in 2010. 29 WPV1 cases at this time last year.
18 WPV3 cases and 4 WPV1 cases in 2010. 57 WPV3 cases at this time last year.
75 WPV1 cases in 2010, 3 WPV3 cases at this time last year.
24 cases of WPV1 reported in 2010, and at least 476 AFP cases pending classification. At least 179 deaths have been associated with this explosive outbreak.
2 cases in 2010. 71 WPV1 cases at this time last year.
Tajikstan: 458 WPV1 cases in 2010. Turkmenistan: 3 WPV1 cases in 2010. Russia: 14 WPV1 cases in 2010. Kazakhstan: 1 WPV1 case in 2010.
6 WPV1 cases in 2010.
32 cases in 2010 (all WPV1 except 2 WPV3 cases in Niger and 1 WPV3 case in Mali): Senegal 18, Mauritania 5, Mali 4, Niger 2, Liberia 2, Sierra Leone 1. 133 cases in 11 countries at this time last year.
The Global Polio Eradication Initiative © Copyright 2010
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Last Modified: Thursday, July 26, 2012 3:33 PM
A fatal crash involving a pedestrian on Sunday marked the fourth for Louisiana State Police Troop D this year, according to a Troop D spokesman.
According to state law, pedestrians are required to walk on sidewalks when they are present and against the direction of traffic.
“When there is no sidewalk,” James Anderson said, “pedestrians should walk as close to the edge of the road as possible so they aren’t close to moving vehicles.”
Anderson said nearly 70 percent of all pedestrian fatalities happen at night.
“If someone is going to be walking, to avoid a pedestrian/vehicle accident they should have on light colored or reflective clothing,” he said. “It’s also recommended that pedestrians carry a flashlight.”
In Sunday’s fatality, 54-year-old Pamela Benniefiel was crossing U.S. 171 at You Winn Road in Moss Bluff when she was struck by a northbound vehicle traveling on 171.
“The walking as close to the edge of the road and against traffic aren’t necessarily applicable in this situation because to was walking perpendicular to traffic to cross the street,” Anderson said. “However, pedestrians should always be aware when crossing any street that even though a vehicle may not be in sight it should be assumed that one could appear at any time.”
Anderson said for drivers to avoid pedestrian collisions, they should be alert at all times while driving.
“Distracted and inattentive driving is the number one cause of accidents in the state of Louisiana,” he said. “Drivers should obey traffic laws and always be alert, and watch for pedestrians at all times.”
Anderson said the accidents that are a result of distracted driving are most common with drivers in the 16-20 age range.
“There are a lot of technological things now taking attention away from the roadway and driving, or there will be friends in the car,” he said. “We see people that just aren’t paying attention all the time and people need to remember that it’s illegal to text and drive.”
Anderson said state law also requires that drivers “make an effort not to hit pedestrians.”
“It’s also a law that pedestrians shouldn’t leave a curb or place of safety to walk in the path of a passing vehicle,” he said. “It’s a shared responsibility for everyone on the road. Four accidents is four too many, we hope to have no more for the rest of the year.”
Posted By: Danielle Edwards Mitchell On: 7/26/2012
Title: We need more sidewalks and better infrastructure in Lake Charles
Bottom line is, we can avoid more pedestrian accidents if the cheap**s city of Lake Charles put more sidewalks in and around the city at leas. ton main
streets and intersections. It never seems to amaze me how many people I see walking and riding bikes
on 5th ave traveling south towards Mcneese St. no sidewalk. On Lake st near Prien Lake Rd I see skaters skateboarding. Again no sidewalk. The list is endless!!! We (Louisiana and more specifically SWLA) are 10 years behind other cities in other states in referece to infrastructure just look at the I-10 Bridge. And lets not mention the roads, they're beyond terrible. And last but not least, whats up with the drainage around here. It rains for two days the whole city be underwater. Stop investing in oil and casinos and invest in infrastructure and education. These politicians got it all wrong!!!!
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Ask the Doctor
Questions about kidney disease? Risk factors? Signs and symptoms? Are you concerned about yourself, a friend or family member? Ask Dr. Spry.
By Tracy Anderson-Haag, PharmD
A question for our transplant recipients: When is the last time you missed a dose of your medications? Can you remember being late taking your medications? Do you find yourself forgetting to take a dose of your immunosuppressive or other medications?
Most transplant patients are taking between 5 and 15 medications daily, with doses due one to four times daily. This is a very complicated medication regimen! It is not surprising that 20-60% of transplant patients report missing medication doses or non-adherence to their medication regimen. Unfortunately, these missed doses or forgotten medications can lead to serious problems in transplant patients including acute rejection, chronic transplant damage and ultimately the failure of a transplant.
With so much at stake, why is non-adherence to medications so common after transplant? There are many reasons. The most frequent reason given for missing medication doses is “I forgot.” Intense medication regimens required after transplant are difficult to manage and remembering to take pills two or three times a day can be a challenge while trying to maintain a good quality of life. Additionally, immunosuppressive medications prevent rejection and transplant patients do not necessarily feel a beneficial effect when they take their medications. In fact, sometimes the side effects of the medications make you feel worse! These medication side effects may include pain or tingling in the hands or feet, tremors, cosmetic changes like weight gain or hair growth or gastrointestinal problems like nausea or diarrhea. Intolerable side effects are commonly blamed for patients missing doses or stopping medications all together. Another concern is cost. Medications to prevent rejection and treat other complications common in transplant patients often carry a high price tag. Patients may be forced to pick and choose which medications they can afford at their pharmacy.
What can we do to improve compliance with medications?
Remember, transplant recipients are the most important player on the post-transplant team. If unable to comply with their medication regimen, outcomes will not be satisfactory for the patient or the health care team. Good communication between the players including your health care providers and social workers can improve patient compliance, outcomes and quality of life
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Aloe Dietary Supplement
Aloe dietary supplements is a common term applied to a specific beverage which is different to aloe drink. It is a dietary supplement made from 100% pure aloe juice. In fact, due to the addition ofsome conserrvants and anti oxidants, it is a 99,6% (or similar value) pure aloe juice into the final product. Other ingredients (may vary from each manufacturer) are ascorbic acid, citric acid, vitamin C and sodium benzoate, but no water, maltodextrin, corn syrup or sugar is added.
Aloe dietary supplement is an excelent product to people suffering from some impair digestion and stomach problems occurred due to smoking cigarettes, drinking coffee, poor eating habits and due to stress. Obviously, the various elements presenting in the aloe plant such as amino acids, minerals, vitamins and enzymes are of full benefit forthe consumer.
categories [ Aloe Dietary Supplement ]
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News Release 075
Herbal Lessons from the Pioneer Days
Volume 37-075 (For Immediate Release)
Contact: Sue Holst
JEFFERSON CITY, MO, MARCH 25, 2009 -- Are you one of the many people who use fresh herbs in your home? In addition to cooking, you might be surprised to learn how pioneers used them. Multiple uses for herbal plants will be shown to the public at a free demonstration Wednesday, April 15 at First Missouri State Capitol State Historic Site in St. Charles. Sponsored by the Missouri Department of Natural Resources, the event will be held from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m.
Herbs were the mainstay of pioneer life. Listen, watch and make things the way they did in Missouri's past. Take advantage of this opportunity to use and identify herbs for cooking and seasoning, medicinal and household purposes, dying fabric and for folkloric devices. Save money by planting your own herb garden; samples of plants and seeds will be available to take home. Bring the kids for herbal milk painting.
First Missouri State Capitol State Historic Site served as the meeting place for the state's first legislators from 1821 through 1826. Today, the governmental chambers and dry goods store have been restored to their original appearance. The historic site is located at 200-216 South Main St. in St. Charles.
For more information on the event, call the site at 636-940-3322 or the Department of Natural Resources directly at 800-334-6946 (voice) or 800-379-2419 (Telecommunications Device for the Deaf). For more information about state parks and historic sites, visit the Web at www.mostateparks.com.
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- About Us
- Our Work
- Work With MSF
- Public Events
- Press Room
One Crises May Hide Another: Food Price Crises Masked Deadly Childhood Nutrition
Time for Refocus at Madrid Food Summit
January 23, 2009
Malnutrition and the food price crisis: Still urgent need to act to prevent child deaths and disability
In April 2008, when riots in many places brought into sharp relief the impact soaring food prices had on disadvantaged communities around the world, UN Secretary- General Ban Ki-moon established a Task Force on the Global Food Security Crisis composed of the heads of the United Nations specialised agencies, funds and programmes, International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank (WB).1 In July 2008, this Task Force released an Action Plan, the Comprehensive Framework for Action. This roadmap contains specific strategies to address both “Immediate Needs” of people facing life-threatening or debilitating food deficits as well as “Long-Term” change to end the vicious cycle of food insecurity. Six months on, it is not clear what real progress has been made:
While the global prices for basic commodities like flour, milk, and corn have fallen back to the levels of end 2006, deaths and crippling lifelong handicaps caused by malnutrition have not decreased in the most affected countries where malnutrition is a recurrent, seasonal phenomenon with only very limited links to global food price developments. The reason lies in the specific needs of very young children for a diverse and nutrient-rich diet.
Every year, during the so-called “hunger-gap” in the months preceding the harvest, families in resource-poor communities cannot afford to provide their rapidly developing young children with an adequate, nutrient-rich diet. Whereas food deficits and lack of access to nutritious food may have negative impact on older children and adults, for young children between six months and three years of age it can be catastrophic both immediately because of the risk of death and illness and also in the long run in terms of poor health, disability and poor educational and development outcomes.
As the malnutrition crisis continues unabated, implementation of the UN High Level Task Force Action Plan remains critical. The gathering in Madrid will have betrayed children in need unless the participants leave with a clearer idea of how the UN Action Plan will be implemented and who will pay for it.
The ongoing crisis of childhood malnutrition
Acute malnutrition is a medical and humanitarian emergency that accounts for 11 percent of the global burden of disease, contributes to the deaths of between 3.5 million and five million children younger than five each year, and leads to long-term poor health, disability and poor educational and development outcomes.2 Just like children, lactating and pregnant women suffer serious consequences if they do not get the nutrients they require.
Acute malnutrition is a phenomenon that at any given moment impacts roughly 55 million children with about 19 million of them suffering from the most deadly form of severe acute malnutrition. According to UNICEF, undernutrition is actually getting worse in 16 high-burden countries, while many more are not progressing towards meeting the Millennium Development Goal target of reducing undernutrition by half between 1990 and 2015.3
While combating hunger depends on having access to food in sufficient quantity, conquering malnutrition also means assuring foods of adequate nutritional quality. There are new proven strategies to treat and prevent the most dangerous kinds of malnutrition – strategies which will take pressure off overburdened health systems in the affected countries. For young, malnourished children, foods rich in nutrients, vitamins, and minerals are essential to survival and development. Without access to a wide range of essential nutrients, nine children will continue to die every minute of causes related to malnutrition.
Addressing Malnutrition: Put national plans and international support behind the Action Plan to be discussed in Madrid.
In order to make a difference in Madrid, government representatives, UN leaders and donors must make a commitment to:
1. Treat all children with severe acute malnutrition by 2012
At any given moment an estimated 19 million children are suffering from severe acute malnutrition. Until recently, treatment of this most deadly form of malnutrition has been restricted to facility-based approaches, greatly limiting its coverage and impact. In recent years, however, great advances in nutritional therapies for this most deadly form of malnutrition have been made: The majority of severely malnourished children can recover rapidly by taking a course of ready-to-use therapeutic food (RUTF) that mothers can provide at home. These energy-dense dairy-containing pastes and biscuits are high-quality foods that deliver the nutrition children need for catch-up growth and to ward off infection. The WHO’s 2007 “Joint statement on the community-based management of severe acute malnutrition” made this treatment a standard policy to which the whole UN system and its member states are supposed to adhere. The number of children treated worldwide has increased from an estimated 260,000 in 2004 to an estimated 1.8 million in 2008. MSF and ACF treated more than 380,000 children during 2006 and 2007. But much more needs to be done to reach the nine out of ten children affected by severe acute malnutrition who remain untreated.
What the UN Action Plan says:
What the UN Action Plan says: “Support management of undernutrition, including therapeutic feeding to treat severe acute malnutrition of children.” (Comprehensive Framework for Action, page 8)
Community-based and outpatient feeding programmes have the potential to save acute malnourished children using RUTFs. Yet, today, nine out of ten children affected by severe acute malnutrition remain untreated. We urge the High Level Task Force to adopt a goal of reaching 100% of children in need by 2012.
Community-based and outpatient therapeutic feeding programmes have the potential to treat acute malnourished children using RUTFs, but now it must become a reality. In the past two years, the treatment coverage has doubled each year. We urge the UN High Level Task Force to adopt an objective of full coverage by 2012.
2. Unacceptable Double Standard: Improve Food Aid Quality
Malnutrition is an issue of diet quality as much as quantity. For young children, the principles of good nutrition are well established. They centre on good maternal nutrition and exclusive breastfeeding for the first six months followed by the introduction of a nutritious and diverse complementary diet containing some animal source foods, such as milk, meat, or eggs while breast feeding is continued. But in the areas most chronically devastated by malnutrition such as South Asia, the Sahel, and the Horn of Africa, many families simply cannot afford to provide the nutritious – and more expensive – food young children need for good health.4 Rural families in these malnutrition hotspots regularly face seasonal periods of food scarcity during the “hunger gap” between two harvests.5 This leads to poor diet variety that particularly affects young weaning children who need rich nutritious foods to assure their healthy development. Many families struggle to survive on a diet of little more than cereal porridges, millet, maize, or rice, a diet that lacks many essential nutrients that young children need.6
International food aid and government food programs can provide an essential nutrition safety net to prevent the immediate and long-term health, educational, and developmental consequences of undernutrition. Children between the ages of six months and three years of age should not have to wait until they are at the brink of death before receiving effective nutritional assistance. But to date many international or national nutrition assistance programmes have had limited impact in preventing the downward spiral into life-threatening malnutrition.
What the UN Action Plan says:
“Assistance can be provided in the form of food aid, vouchers or cash transfers, taking into account the nutritional and dietary needs of recipients.
Scale up nutritional support through safety nets to meet specific food and nutrition needs of vulnerable groups and prevent longer-term health consequences.” (Comprehensive Framework for Action, page 8)
Today, most food aid does not contain nutrient-rich food that responds to the needs of children between six months and three years of age. Donors and governments need to change policies to ensure that food aid and programming meets adequate nutritional standards.
This failure is due to assistance programmes built on foods that are not nutritionally appropriate for young rapidly developing children. The main foods—fortified blended flours made from either corn or wheat plus soya —do not meet the minimum nutritional needs of the most vulnerable children between six and 24 months.7
In other words, programmatic restrictions and cost considerations have created a glaring and unacceptable double standard: people in donor countries would never give their own children the food sent to children in the developing world.
Experts agree that quality needs to be raised
There is growing scientific evidence that current food aid is sub-standard for small children.8 Nutrient fortified milk based spreads (or ready-to-use supplemental foods, RUFs) are an example of a new generation of highly effective nutritional supplements specifically designed to address dietary deficiencies prevalent in high-burden, resource-limited settings.
In Malawi and Ghana, children who received formulations of these products grew better and achieved critical developmental milestones faster in comparison to children who did not.9 MSF was able to show a significant reduction in the incidence of wasting and severe wasting through distribution of RUFs to non-malnourished children in Niger in 2006 and 2007.10
Major agencies start to change food basket
MSF has committed to reforming its own practices to make sure nutritionally appropriate foods for children are included whenever the organisation distributes family rations. ACF is currently implementing a number of projects in countries such as Kenya, Sudan and Myanmar, which aim at improving the quality of nutritional rations for blanket feeding programmes targeting malnourished children.
In addition, some major organisations like UNICEF in Somalia11 and the World Food Programme (WFP) in Burkina Faso are beginning to provide childappropriate supplemental RUFs in the rations provided to families.12 But ensuring that food aid and national food programmes meet minimum nutritional requirements must become the norm, not the exception. To this end, the WHO must move swiftly to issue clear nutritional standards and implementing agencies and national programmes must urgently change the composition of their food aid baskets to ensure that children receive essential nutrients.
3. Provide 2.76 billion Euros annually and create a global mechanism for nutrition
Some agencies and governments are willing to adopt new standards that include adequate food for young children but they depend on the creation of a new initiative to support and fund programmes.
Funding needed to address the crisis of malnutrition has so far not been comprehensively evaluated. Thorough assessments are needed urgently to help governments and donors in budgeting mid- and long-term nutrition programmes. MSF estimates that at least 2.76 billion Euros are immediately needed to treat the roughly 55 million children worldwide most affected by severe acute malnutrition. While seemingly large, such a figure represents a tiny fraction of the sum developed countries are planning to provide in economic stimulus packages in 2009.
What the UN Action Plan says:
“Ensure that emergency needs are fully met, including by scaling up food assistance, nutrition interventions, and safety net programs, (…) to address hunger and malnutrition in the most vulnerable populations.” (Comprehensive Framework for Action, page 8)
So far, funding to address childhood malnutrition has not been committed to the UN Action Plan.
All developed nations as well as Latin American countries such as Brazil or Mexico have shown how malnutrition and the deaths and handicaps associated with it, can be successfully overcome.
The US, for example, allocated 6.2 billion USD in 2008 for the Women, Infants and Children programme which provides more than 8.7 million recipients from disadvantaged families with direct food assistance so they are not condemned to poor health, poor educational outcomes, and lower income earning potential.
Support mechanism needed
So far, despite the UN Action Plan, donor governments and national governments from the 50 most impacted countries have not yet embarked on implementing strategies to eliminate acute malnutrition. One key problem has been the lack of a mechanism to support countries in setting up effective nutrition programmes. For example, if a developing country wants to address HIV/AIDS or malaria, it knows where to go to for both financial and technical support. No such support exists today for malnutrition. Therefore, a support mechanism is needed which could be hosted by an existing institution.
The Millennium Development Goals (MDG) 1 and 4 will never be reached by 2015 without a strong commitment on nutrition in order to reduce child mortality and the number of people currently affected by hunger.
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Payment by results?
Watching the local news yesterday evening, my ears pricked up when an item came on regarding a primary school in the East Midlands that has decided to pay Year 6 pupils £1 for every SATs revision session they attend prior to taking the tests. It was a Grumpy Old Man moment for me (I seem to have these rather more for some reason lately), as this headline seemed to be wrong on so many levels.
My first thought was one of horror at the state of our education system, where league tables have become so skewed that schools and Headteachers are under so much pressure they will resort to trying to entice children to attend revision sessions. We value what we can measure, but everything of value cannot be measured. Results and standards are important, but they are only one measure of the value of a good education, especially for children at the tender age of 11.
At The Elms, as indeed a third of independent prep and junior schools have done, we have moved away from meaningless and unreliable tests. We have many ways of assessing pupils, both summative and diagnostic. Tests to inform where weaknesses lie so that we may adapt teaching to help a child move forward. The SATs boycott last year, with a national review underway this year and the threat of another boycott means that any national comparisons are completely flawed. Yet, some independent schools retain SATs, which does allow them to make all sorts of claims and appear in spurious league tables and newspaper surveys.
One of the biggest benefits we discovered as a school by abandoning SATS was the time and space it provided in our Year 6 curriculum for independent learning opportunities: opportunities for children to be allowed to follow areas of study that really interested them and apply library and ICT skills; opportunities to learn new skills outside the standard curriculum (e.g. cycling courses); opportunities to prepare for a smooth transition into Year 7, experience discovery days at Trent College.
Apart from my concern that this school in the news was placing so much emphasis on testing Year 6 pupils, my other major concern is the message we are giving to children by paying them to revise.
Most schools have reward systems. We at The Elms have a whole host of reward systems that recognise achievement and endeavour. Children earn team stars for good behaviour, sports colours for achievement on the sports fields, book worm awards for reading, music badges for playing instruments and so on. Is this so different from what the school in the news was doing by paying its pupils? I believe it is. To me, one of the joys of leading The Elms is the strong work ethos that all pupils retain, all the way through to year 6. There is genuine pride expressed by the children who wear badges on their blazers. This pride exists whether the pupil is a girl or boy, sporty or bookish. To me, the fact that children show so much appreciation for these rewards, shows that they understand something crucial to their future success, namely that effort brings success, and success brings its own rewards.
I can’t help thinking that the message given to pupils rewarded with payment to work for a test is entirely the wrong message. To me it suggests that seven years of primary education has failed to instil little work ethos into these children, and the saddest lesson of all is that the joy that comes from learning for learning’s sake is overlooked.
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Three species of the Yersinia bacteria, known to cause plague and gastroenteritis, contain a small molecule, called a virulence factor, that the researchers have found modifies host enzymes critical to normal functioning.
"This type of modification has never been seen in cells and presents a new paradigm for how cells may regulate signaling," said Dr. Kim Orth, assistant professor of molecular biology and senior author of the study appearing in the May 26 edition of Science.
"Yersinia is a nasty pathogen that uses an arsenal of virulence factors to cause disease," she said.
When a cell is infected with a bacterial pathogen, it activates a chain of reactions involving enzymes. One enzyme adds a group of atoms containing phosphorus – called a phosphate group – to another enzyme, a process called phosphorylation, which spurs that enzyme to add a phosphate group to yet another enzyme, and so on. These "cascading" events trigger an appropriate immune response.
Yersinia, however, has the ability to prevent its host from mounting the response, enabling the bacteria to survive and multiply.
The researchers found that one of the Yersinia outer proteins, called YopJ, cripples these cascades by adding a small molecule called an acetyl group to two key sites on a host enzyme where the phosphate groups are usually added.
Because the host's enzymes are modified by acetyl groups, they can no longer be activated by phosphate groups, and the enzymatic cascade critical for triggering an innate immune response is not activated.
The internal signaling that YopJ affects is common to many species, from yeast to mammals. In addition, other pathogens that attack animals and plants use proteins that are similar to YopJ.
The research is not geared toward finding a cure for plague, which affects about a dozen people in the United States a year and is treatable with antibiotics. Instead, the scientists are working to find out how the pathogen disrupts the immune system and to understand the machinery critical for stimulating an immune response.
"There are many virulence factors used by bacterial pathogens to co-opt the host signaling molecules," Dr. Orth said. "These virulence factors affect central signaling machinery, and we want to understand how they are doing it."
Understanding the relationship between the pathogens and the hosts will help researchers uncover critical steps in how host cells normally operate, Dr. Orth said.
"The next step is to see whether the addition of acetyl groups to key sites on enzymes during cellular signaling is normal for animal and plant cells, and if so, under what circumstances," said Dr. Orth.
Other UT Southwestern researchers involved in the study were first author Sohini Mukherjee, student research assistant in molecular biology; Gladys Keitany, research assistant in molecular biology; Dr. Yan Li, instructor of biochemistry; Yong Wang, research assistant in molecular biology; Dr. Haydn Ball, assistant professor of biochemistry; and Dr. Elizabeth Goldsmith, professor of biochemistry.
The work was supported by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, the Beckman Foundation and the Welch Foundation.
This news release is available on our World Wide Web home page at http://www.utsouthwestern.edu/home/news/index.html
To automatically receive news releases from UT Southwestern via e-mail,subscribe at www.utsouthwestern.edu/receivenews
Researcher's bio - http://www.utsouthwestern.edu/findfac/professional/0,2356,52806,00.html
Last reviewed: By John M. Grohol, Psy.D. on 21 Feb 2009
Published on PsychCentral.com. All rights reserved.
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Annecy - City of France
Annecy is a city in the Rhône-Alpes region in southeastern France.
Annecy is located between Geneva and Chambéry. Thus its history was strongly influenced by these two towns between the 10th and the 19th century. Starting as the capital of the county of Geneva, after the demise of the counts of Geneva, it became integrated into the House of Savoy's possessions in 1401. In 1444, it was set up by the Princes of Savoy as the capital of a region covering the possessions of the Genevois, Faucigny and Beaufortain. With the advance of Calvinism in 1535, it became a center for the Counter-Reformation and the bishop's see of Geneva was transferred here.
During the French Revolution, the Savoy region was conquered by France and Annecy became attached to the département of Mont Blanc, of which capital was Chambéry. After the Bourbon Restoration in 1815, it was returned to the Kingdom of Sardinia . When Savoy was sold to France in 1860, it became the capital of the new département of Haute-Savoie.
Annecy has hosted the Annecy International Animated Film Festival since 1960.
The École Polytechnique d'Ingénieurs de l'Université de Savoie was created in 2006 from the fusion of the École Supérieure d'Ingénieurs d'Annecy - ESIA and the École Supérieure d'Ingénieurs de Chambéry - ESIGEC.
FRANCE National Bird : Cockerel (alias Red Junglefowl, when not domesticated)
FRANCE National Flower : Iris
FRANCE National Game : Football
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(a) If feasible, pressure relief devices (except rupture discs) must be tested in place, at intervals not exceeding 15 months, but at least once each calendar year, to determine that they have enough capacity to limit the pressure on the facilities to which they are connected to the desired maximum pressure.
(b) If a test is not feasible, review and calculation of the required capacity of the relieving device at each station must be made at intervals not exceeding 15 months, but at least once each calendar year, and these required capacities compared with the rated or experimentally determined relieving capacity of the device for the operating conditions under which it works. After the initial calculations, subsequent calculations are not required if the review documents that parameters have not changed in a manner which would cause the capacity to be less than required.
(c) If the relieving device is of insufficient capacity, a new or additional device must be installed to provide the additional capacity required.
[35 FR 13257, Aug. 19, 1970, as amended by Amdt. 192-43, 47 FR 46851, Oct. 21, 1982; Amdt. 192-55, 51 FR 41634, Nov. 18, 1986]
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You are herecontent / Libya: British attack helicopters to be deployed
Libya: British attack helicopters to be deployed
The Daily Telegraph has learned that Apache helicopters will fly into Libya from a Royal Navy warship, in a joint operation with the French.
As many as 18 British and French helicopters will be deployed to support rebels trying to consolidate gains against Gaddafi’s forces.
The helicopter operation – expected to be supported by Special Forces troops – will take the allies closer still to a full ground operation in Libya.
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Posted 28 September 2008 - 01:31 PM
I believe my younger sister may have some form of narcolepsy, but am concerned with how to approach her about it. Perhaps some of you can offer me some clues. How did you get diagnosed? What information or supportive gestures helped you through the long and often difficult diagnosis? What do you wish people around you had done when getting diagnosed or dealing with the treatments?
Here's a little about what has lead to my concern.
About a year ago, I saw the program, "I woke up in a Morgue" on the Discovery channel, and found some startling similarities between some of the patient's experiences to what my little sister has been struggling with since childhood.
As a child, she had terrible nightmares, would not fully wake up from them, and would often talk or move in her sleep. Back then, it often seemed to be triggered by changes in routine or environment like going to camp or sleeping at a friends house. They were classified as "night terrors", but she could often remember them...images and feelings that recur and haunt her to this day. She would often climb into bed with me in states of great distress.
As a young adolescent, she struggled with an unrelated, external trauma resulting in PTSD, and her sleep symptoms were often attributed to that. Long periods of sleep (days on end), trouble paying attention in school, and depression. She thought it was something she just had to deal with, that it was something just weird and wrong with her.
She has now reached her late 20's, and the PTSD and depression have been successfully treated for many years now, but she is still suffering from the same sleep problems that she did when a child. She still has bouts of terrible nightmares, and periods of time up to a week or more where she sleeps all day. She still talks in her sleep, now even more aggressively (swearing, yelling, tossing and turning), and has a very difficult time waking up or maintaining any kind of schedule. She has tried to go back to school for many years, only to start a semester, and eventually have to drop out due to missing so many classes from her daytime sleeping fits. Her speech and communication skills have also really suffered, and she tends to eat junk food in binges and then fall asleep. She has been tested and does not have diabetes.
I am afraid that these years of a possibly undiagnosed sleep disorder and the affect it has had on her social and academic life have caused so much damage to her self-esteem, and alienated her from others.
She is currently seeing a psychiatrist who specializes in neurology, and has successfully worked with her to treat her depression and PTSD. Now I am concerned about adding another layer to the mix by wanting her to be tested for a sleep disorder, and struggling with how to approach her about it, or what I can do to help her through it. The rest of my family also wants to help, but it has gone on so long, and it is such an underrated issue in society that they are stumped as to how to approach it.
She is a wonderful person...very bright, creative, and funny. After feeling helpless for so many years, I want to do what I can to help her. Your comments and recommendations are greatly appreciated. thanks!
Posted 28 September 2008 - 02:46 PM
I am guessing that others will also post thoughts and comments. While your sister's symptoms do sound like they might be narcolepsy, the only way to find out is for her to see a sleep specialist and to have a sleep study. A Polysomnogram (PSG) will give the doctor a baseline on your sister's sleep. It is an all-night test. She would then stay the next day for a Multiple Sleep Latency Test (MSLT). During that test, she will be asked to lay down in a dark room every 1.5 hours to see if she naps, how fast she naps, and if she has REM in those naps. After doing all of that, the sleep specialist will review the results and decide on a course of action. Only a PSG and MSLT can "show" narcolepsy. There is a "test" for a hormone that many people with narcolepsy are missing, but the hormone (orexin or hypocretin) is only found in the spinal fluid (meaning a spinal tap). And, none of the tests are completely reliable. Having said all of that, though, I would encourage you to recommend a sleep study to her. Even if it is not narcolepsy, the study can help discover what is happening.
You asked how others found out and what they might have wanted people to do for them. Obviously, I can only speak for myself. I had six years of constant doctor trips and tests, trying to uncover what might be wrong with me. While I had signs of narcolepsy earlier in my life, things became problematic in the Fall of 2001. I did have an inconclusive sleep study in the summer of 2004. As a result, I started taking stimulants, but the problems persisted. Sadly, it took me suggesting another sleep study 3 years later to finally get a diagnosis. The nature of this disease is that it is hard to diagnosis. Doctors don't know much about it, and the symptoms are difficult to identify. Seriously, if you want to drive a doctor crazy, tell her or him that your primary symptom is fatigue. The best thing you can do, in my opinion, is just what you are doing. You are not doubting that something is wrong with your sister. Instead, you are looking to help her. Is she resistant to the idea of narcolepsy? If so, you could try to discuss why she is. If not, talk to her and help her find a good sleep specialist (hopefully a neurologist). I would also encourage you to have her read some of the posting on this site. Likely, she will see some similarities to her own conditions.
Good luck! Please continue to post, and let us know what happens.
Posted 28 September 2008 - 06:40 PM
I am referring her to this site, and recommending that she read up on it before she sees her neurologist so she has a sense of what symptoms are important to tell the dr. about, and hopefully she will get to do a sleep study to confirm any possible diagnosis.
Any other responses about what people with sleep disorders found helpful or comforting through this process is still greatly appreciated!
Posted 28 September 2008 - 06:41 PM
Does she loose control of her muscle strength when laughing, or while experiencing strong emotions?
Has she ever told you about waking up and not being able to move?
What part of "I woke up in a morgue" sounded familiar?
Be sure to educate yourself. MANY of us here were mis-diagnosed with a mental problem before properly diagnosed. I won't speak for all of us, but I know I personally wanted to smack every person that had started a sentence off with, "You know your problem is possibly..."
While it's never meant as a personal attack, it can sure seem that way.
Just some thoughts from someone who knows the other side.
Posted 29 September 2008 - 01:48 AM
I am not a physician and do not even play one on TV so nothing here should be taken as medical diagnosis, treatment or advice.
Your sister may not have Narcolepsy. There are more than 80 recognized Sleep Disorders. Many of them are far more common than Narcolesy and some are even more rare. Many of them have similar symptom so that it takes a physician who is specially trained, experienced and Board Certified in Sleep Medicine. It is very possible that she has two or more of these issues.
The Sleep Issues your sister suffered from as a child sounds like Parasomnias. These are a collection of disorders that includes Sleep Walking, Sleep Talking, Nightmares, Sleep Eating, Night Terrors, Bed Wetting, etc. They exist in a sort of Limbo between sleep and wake. These are so common in childhood that they are often considered part of normal development. Episodes can often be triggered by stress such as a change in sleep routine. The person can be so Sleepy from the partial arrousals that they are unable to function properly the day after. They usually taper off and disappear around puberty. That the symptoms are still so strong during her third decade of life is unusual and can be serious. She should talk to her doctors about this and request a referal to a Sleep Specialist for evaluation and possible treatment.
The screaming and cursing could be due to her being cranky from lack of restful sleep. These could also be due to another cause such as neurological problems. Tossing and turning in bed could relate to her Parasomnia or another Sleep Disorder such as Sleep Apnea, Restless Leg Syndrome, Periodic Limb Movement Disorder, etc.
If you are accurate in your description of her sleeping most of the day and night for days to week at a time (getting up only to use the toilet and to eat and drink) then sleeping fairly normal for weeks to months at a time, she could have a Recurrent Hypersomnia such as Kleine-Levin Syndrome. Pesonality changes during episodes is not uncommon. Onset is typically in adolescence and the person often outgrows the disorder but it can persist throughout life. It is more commonly reported in males than females but an exact gender ratio is not known.
She is being treated for PTSD and Depression. One of the symptoms of these problems, and also a side effect of treatment, can be Sleep Disturbances. A Sleep Disorder from another cause can mimic Depression and PTSD. Your sister needs to accuratley report her problems to the treating physicians so that any necessary adjustment to diagnosis, treatment and prescription medicines can be made.
To help her keep track of her symptoms she could keep a Sleep Diary in which she records all of the aspects of her sleep. This includes bed times, wake times, how she felt before and after sleep, quality of sleep, symptoms observed by others while she is asleep, onset of symptoms and their severity, medications and their effects, etc. After several weeks of keeping the diary she may see patterns emerge. Her doctors should be interested in this kind of documentation.
I do not know your sister, or you, or about her relationship with you or other members of the family or friends. I am not in a position to tell you how to approach her to deal with this delicate matter. I believe that you will eventually discuss your findings with her out of love and compassion. You must remember to respect her pride and self respect, it is all that some of us have.
Good luck to you and your sister.
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WHO concerned that new H5N1 influenza research could undermine the 2011 Pandemic Influenza Preparedness Framework
The World Health Organization (WHO) takes note that studies undertaken by several institutions on whether changes in the H5N1 influenza virus can make it more transmissible between humans have raised concern about the possible risks and misuses associated with this research. WHO is also deeply concerned about the potential negative consequences. However, WHO also notes that studies conducted under appropriate conditions must continue to take place so that critical scientific knowledge needed to reduce the risks posed by the H5N1 virus continues to increase.
H5N1 influenza viruses are a significant health risk to people for several reasons. Although this type of influenza does not infect humans often, when it does, approximately 60% of those infected die. In addition, because these viruses can cause such severe illness in people, scientists are especially concerned that this type of influenza could one day mutate so it spreads easily between people and causes a very serious influenza pandemic.
Research which can improve the understanding of these viruses and can reduce the public health risk is a scientific and public health imperative. In order to enable those public health gains, countries where these viruses occur should share their influenza viruses for public health purposes while countries and organizations receiving these viruses should share benefits resulting from the virus sharing. Both types of sharing are on equal footing and equally important parts of the collective global actions needed to protect public health.
While it is clear that conducting research to gain such knowledge must continue, it is also clear that certain research, and especially that which can generate more dangerous forms of the virus than those which already exist, has risks. Therefore such research should be done only after all important public health risks and benefits have been identified and reviewed, and it is certain that the necessary protections to minimize the potential for negative consequences are in place.
In May 2011, the new Pandemic Influenza Preparedness (PIP) Framework came into effect. This Framework was adopted by all WHO Member States as a guide to the sharing of influenza viruses with pandemic potential and the resulting benefits. One specific requirement of this Framework, which pertains to influenza viruses of pandemic potential, and is in keeping with best scientific practice, is for laboratories receiving them through WHO's Global Influenza Surveillance and Response System (GISRS) to collaborate with, and appropriately acknowledge, scientists in countries where the virus originated when initiating research.
WHO recognizes that the scientists who led the work of the new studies received their virus samples from the WHO Global Influenza Surveillance Network (GISN), which preceded GISRS, and before negotiations on the new PIP Framework began. However, now that the Framework has been adopted by all WHO Member States, WHO considers it critically important that scientists who undertake research with influenza viruses with pandemic potential samples fully abide by the new requirements.
Since the PIP Framework represents a major step forward and was agreed upon only after several years of difficult negotiations, WHO stresses that this H5N1 research must not undermine this major public health achievement. WHO will work with Member States and other key parties to ensure scientists understand the new requirements that have been agreed to with the Framework.
For more information, please contact:
Coordinator, Media Relations, WHO
Telephone: +41 22 791 4458
Mobile: +41 79 203 6715
Media Office, WHO
Telephone: +41 22 791 50 99
Mobile: +41 793 67 62 14
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The term “livable streets” first surfaced in 1981. That’s when UC Berkeley urban planning professor Donald Appleyard made it the title of his path-breaking new book on the social effects of cars on cities. But it was the advent of Streetsblog and the livable streets movement 25 years later that brought the term into public view.
The beauty of “livable streets” and of the movement bearing its name is that it unites under one rubric what had long been largely separate concerns — better bicycling, safer walking, affordable transit, inviting public spaces, urban sustainability. The term also recasts a negative as a positive, turning what could appear invasive — “getting people out of their cars” — into something situational: creating streets for people.
Try telling that, though, to the folks at the Manhattan Institute, who this week published a spectacularly retrograde piece, Idle in Manhattan, by one Herbert London, retired academician and one-time NY State Conservative Party candidate for governor. Writing in the Institute’s City Journal, London trots out one canard after another: Londoners “grudgingly” tolerate congestion pricing … “Most bicyclists in Manhattan are delivery carriers” … “In one hour [at the First Ave. bike lane] I counted just two bicycles” … “the mayor[‘s] efforts to control traffic … have only increased congestion.”
It takes about a minute of fact-checking or direct observation to rebut these claims. But what’s striking about (Herbert) London’s diatribe isn’t just its counterfactualism, but its willful ignorance of how livable streets change the way urban transportation systems function.
Pondering the genesis of the Bloomberg administration’s bike lanes and pedestrian plazas, London can’t conceive that the mayor was connecting the dots between physical activity, fighting obesity and downsizing health-care costs. Or had learned from his planning and transportation commissioners about cities in Europe where active transportation (biking and walking) accounted for as many as half of all trips, and workers, residents and tourists alike flocked to the city centers. Or thought it was worth putting a handful of districts on a road diet to see if the maxim that turning more street space over to cars produces more gridlock, could be run in reverse.
No, according to Herbert London, the mayor’s attempt to try out livable streets practices in New York is proof that “the Bloomberg administration has declared war on the automobile.”
Yet the facts show that city drivers aren’t victims of the emerging street paradigm, they’re beneficiaries — not just in Midtown, where car speeds have risen following introduction of the Broadway plazas, but throughout the Manhattan Central Business District.
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Over the Independence Day weekend Anne and I traveled to Des Moines to attend the 80/35 music festival, named for the Eisenhowerian intersection of the two interstate highways in central Iowa. The festival’s name is evidence of the practical common sense and unpretentiousness of its location. While other festivals are named for a garble of fun to pronounce but meaningless letters – Lollapalooza, Bumbershoot, Bonnaroo – this festival’s name is nothing if not utilitarian.
80/35 could be called a third rate alternative music festival. Its headlining acts would find themselves charged with the mid-afternoon task of waking up the dehydrated and sunburnt crowd at most major festivals. Its mid-card and lower-card acts have virtually no name recognition. More precisely, while “third-rate” may describe the drawing power of 80/35 musical line-up, it was actually a charming and well-run musical adventure. 80/35 is situated in a city park that borders a fun little sculpture garden. It does not involve trashing some godforsaken field in the middle of nowhere. And, I’ve never witnessed such courtesy and lack of anti-social behavior within the mob-like anonymity of thousands of young people grouped together. Let’s face it: I’m now at the older end of the spectrum of festival goers and 80/35 indulged my creature comforts.
The highlight of this festival was getting to see two bands I’d never heard before but that had been highly recommended to me. Both of the bands exceeded my expectations.
The first band was the New Jersey punk outfit Titus Andronicus. They opened with “A More Perfect Union,” a complex and mesmerizing song that feels like a homesick ode to their home state. In all honesty, I have no idea about the song’s larger meaning, but the song does seem to play with powerful themes of nostalgia and utopian longing and how these emotions can be used, abused, and even exploited. (Or maybe I was just thinking of Independence Day.) “A More Perfect Union” also contains a wonderful little shout-out to New Jersey’s own Bruce Springsteen.
Titus Andronicus played a long set and dazzled on-stage. While punk rock is known for short and direct, two-minute numbers, Titus Andronicus creates longer songs that somehow manage not to feel watered-down and sprawling. Titus Andronicus had a fantastic stage presence that combined humility with energy and exuberance. The spirited playing of guitarist Amy Klein, who sported a tour T-Shirt of Des Moines’ own indie-group (and 80/35 performer) Poison Control Center, was especially noteworthy. She also happens to have a great blog about indie rock with a little feminism thrown in.
Listen to “A More Perfect Union” by Titus Andronicus
Listen to “Upon Viewing Bruegel's ‘Landscape With the Fall of Icarus’” by Titus Andronicus
The second band I really enjoyed seeing was the folk-rock ensemble Okkervil River. I had never heard their music before this festival, but I knew that their most recent album had received excellent reviews and that they are signed to the Jagjaguwar record label that is known for releasing Bon Iver’s albums.
Everything about Okkervil River was enjoyable and pleasing to the ear. As I listened to them, I couldn’t help but compare them to The Decemberists. However, I found that Okkervil River possesses in moderation all those characteristics that, in excess, make The Decemberists tiresome. Like Colin Meloy, Will Sheff of Okkervil River is dramatic and literary, just not overly so.
Listen to Wake and Be Fine by Okkervil River
Listen to Lost Coastlines by Okkervil River
Other bands I enjoyed seeing perform at the 80/35 Festival included Gold Motel, Pink Mink, and the flamboyant and entertaining dance-rock band of Montreal.
The most interesting performer of 80/35 was actually the festival’s headlining act, Girl Talk. How thoroughly post-modern to have a headlining act at a music festival who does not play any instruments or sing or even write music! So, what exactly is Girl Talk?
Girl Talk is actually the stage name of 29 year old Greg Gillis. Up until a few years ago, Greg Gillis lived a double life in Pittsburgh, PA. By day Gillis worked a biological engineer for a biotech company. By night and on the weekends Gillis flew all over the United States and even all over the world playing his own unique brand of dance music created entirely from samples. His laptop contains thousands and thousands of digital music files containing parts of popular songs. What Gillis does is to create what is known as “mash-ups” by layering two or three or four or five recordings on top of one another. Gillis’ style involves rapidly inserting and removing parts of songs. It never stands still.
It was reported that his most recent album contained samples from 379 different recordings. Over any given five-minute stretch, Gillis may sample from twenty to thirty different songs. Yes, I did mention albums. He has released five albums, each consisting entirely of other artists’ copyrighted material. These albums can be downloaded from his website. (You get to choose how much to pay!) Gillis believes that what he does is covered by the legal principle of “fair use” and has supposedly never faced a lawsuit, which is incredible because he’s sampled over from over 1,000 different songs. Girl Talk has been critically well-received. His releases have appeared on all kinds of best-of-the-year lists and his 2006 album The Night Ripper was included on The AV Club’s list of the best albums of the decade. Gillis has been able to quit his day job. The Girl Talk project, that includes headlining this music festival, evidently pays the bills.
So, what exactly is a Girl Talk concert like? His stage includes a table, a monitor, and his laptop computer. He claims to mix all of his samples live. This may or may not be true. With one hand on his mouse, Girl Talk dances behind his laptop. Every so often he removes an article of clothing. The audience comes on stage and dances right alongside him. There are lights and confetti cannons and beach balls. It is a big dance party. You can see what it looks like here. Or here. Or here. Or here.
The music that Girl Talk samples is mostly hip-hop and rap, top 40, and rock. It is all popular music. In the thirty minutes of his performance that I listened to, Girl Talk sampled from about twenty different hip-hop songs I could not identify as well as songs by Beck, The Ramones, Nirvana, Beyoncé, Tone Loc, Young MC, Miley Cyrus, Kylie Minogue, and dozens more I’ve probably already forgotten about.
You can find a huge number of his recordings as well as “concert” footage on YouTube. Some of his mash-ups are rather famous including his mixing of rap lyrics from Notorious B.I.G. with the music from Elton John’s “Tiny Dancer.” (The joke is that he is mixing something “big” with something “tiny.”) He also mixes “Paint it Black” by the Rolling Stones with an annoying song called “Black and Yellow” by rapper Wiz Khalifa. His vocal samples are drawn very heavily from rap and hip-hop and contain all of the racializations, misogyny, and glamorization of recreational drug use and excessive demonstrations of wealth that are so common within that art form.
Was Girl Talk entertaining? Not tremendously. He was a bit baffling at times. It was about ninety degrees out when he took the stage after the sun had been beating down brutally all day long and he took the stage wearing a hooded sweatshirt and warm-up pants. The sweatshirt stayed on less than five minutes, but c’mon now. His microphone work was astoundingly banal. Before clicking his mouse he grabs a microphone and says, “What is up Des Moines? Right now we are going to party. It is summer and we are outside. I said, it is summer and we are outside. We are going to party right now.” The rest of his microphone work consisting in exhorting the audience to jump or put our hands in the air and every remark of his was peppered with the verbal reminder that this all happening “right now.” The two words “right now” came out of him like some awkward verbal tic.
It is my tendency to look at things and inquire as to their meaning. I may be at fault for assuming that things have meanings. Girl Talk himself would probably deny that there is any meaning to what he does other than getting people to dance and have fun. He denies that he is offering any commentary on music and claims only to sample from music he enjoys. However, if John Cage’s 4’33” means something – (something about performance, something about the relationship between performer and audience, something about silence and whether silence is possible, etc.) – then I think Girl Talk probably means something.
I do think that the audience’s role at a Girl Talk “show” is performative. The audience is invited up on stage and surrounds and even swallows Greg Gillis. Meanwhile, Girl Talk’s role is at once minimalist and maximalist. Clicking a mouse is a fairly minimalist activity however the soundscape caused by this small act is large resulting in several songs piled on top of one another. The idea of the audience being up on stage is indicative of the “cult of self” that dominates American culture. The everyday events in my life deserve to be posted as a Facebook status update. I will tweet my daily activities in real time. Someday I might be the focus of a “reality” television program.
I would further say that Girl Talk is highly performative in the sense his music is probably best enjoyed by people who are familiar with the canon from which he draws and that, as a result, what is actually being observed is our own conscious recognition of the music. If you know none of the songs, it will appear jumbled. To actually enjoy Girl Talk I would argue that you have to enjoy that you recognize the music. Case in point, the loudest ovation at 80/35 came when Girl Talk sampled in a selection from teen pop sensation Miley Cyrus’ song “Party in the USA”. The guitar lick at the beginning of this song is just about the catchiest thing in the world. I’ve never heard this song on the radio. I don’t own any of her music. I would never pay to see her in concert. But this guitar lick is somehow familiar to me. What people at 80/35 – people who also don’t own any Miley Cyrus and paid money to come to this indie rock festival rather than a Miley Cyrus concert – were cheering was not the guitar lick as much as the fact tha they recognized the guitar lick. (There is further irony here. That Miley Cyrus song is about conquering homesickness by recognizing pop music!) I would posit that the more extensive your popular music knowledge, the more likely you are to enjoy Girl Talk.
Finally, I think this music says something about multitasking, short attention spans, and media saturation. There is no development in his music. There is no narrative arc. A song comes in and it is gone 15 or 30 seconds later. A verse and then no chorus, not to mention no second verse or third verse or bridge or solo. I think to enjoy Girl Talk one has to almost feel that there is something too slow about listening to only song at once. Let’s hear Nirvana and 50 Cent. Let’s hear Notorious B.I.G. and Elton John.
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Hydroelectricity is the most used renewable form of energy in the world today providing more than one-seventh of the earth’s population with power. The energy is produced from the gravitational force of the water and has been long used in history. The first half of the 20th century saw an increase in the number of hydroelectric plants not just in the United States but also across the globe. Countries that are blessed with large sources of running water such as Norway, Paraguay and China have the advantage of tapping this reserve to service their domestic and commercial energy requirement. Hydroelectricity is created using several methods the most common of which is collecting water in large reservoirs like dams and letting it pass through turbines to create electricity. The supply of power can be controlled by storing water at two levels or heights. When the energy demand is low, water is
The search for alternative energy sources has now escalated to global proportions. Government agencies, educational institutions and scientists are all working together to look for alternative sources of fuels other than the traditional fossil sources. The direction is to find methods that are environmentally friendly. Most people would agree that the price that’s paid for the latest technology is the progressively increasing demand for fuel. This scenario has lead to the depletion of the some of the earth’s natural resources. The objective now is to reduce the dependence on non-renewable energy like fossil fuels which are available as coal, petroleum oil and natural gas. Using alternative energy sources can bridge the gap between the high demand for fuel and tapping on a resource that will not be so damaging to our planet. This refers to new fuel sources that will not involve burning fossils or depleting the earth’s natural resources.
Given that classrooms all over the country are used at a minimum of 40 hours each week, the accumulated cost for consumption can be overwhelming. Older institutions often occupy large buildings with wide rooms and high ceilings rooms which results in huge energy bills for public schools across all states. By implementing energy-saving measures however, school administrators can help reduce their expenses by thousands of dollars each year. The savings can go a long ways towards helping a school district manage its budget and have enough allocation for school-related needs. Some of the practices that can be done, not just by the school administrators but also by the teachers and students to conserve energy includes: • Designate a point person for all energy management activities. The person will be in charge of evaluating and identifying different areas or units where the consumption of energy is significant. He will also be
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Building the Middle East's First Synchrotron
A multi-national project to build a particle accelerator aims to encourage science and peace
A particle accelerator is tough to build under any circumstance: the precise control of a particle beam requires complex hardware and lots of specialized training. An even greater challenge is building the machine with 30-year-old components, almost no budget, and grand expectations that its existence will bring peace to the Middle East. IEEE Spectrum met with the engineers at SESAME, a synchrotron in Jordan, to see how they're tackling the project.
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Second International Conference on Women in Physics
This conference was held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil from May 23-26, 2005, as part of the World Year of Physics .
World Year of Physics (WYP2005)
Women Physicists Speak Again: Survey of Member Countries
IUPAP International Conference on Women in Physics
This 2002 conference included more than 300 participants from 65 countries.
Women Physicists Speak: IUPAP Member Countries
Women, Minorities, and Persons with Disabilities in Science and Engineering
Online report from NSF provides data on the participation of women, minorities, and persons with disabilities in science and engineering education and employment.
Who Will Do the Science of the Future? A Symposium on Careers of Women in Science
First symposium on women in science ever to be held during the 1999 annual meeting of the National Academy of Sciences.
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|Catechism of the Catholic Church|
IntraText - Text
680 Christ the Lord already reigns through the Church, but all the things of this world are not yet subjected to him. the triumph of Christ's kingdom will not come about without one last assault by the powers of evil.
681 On Judgement Day at the end of the world, Christ will come in glory to achieve the definitive triumph of good over evil which, like the wheat and the tares, have grown up together in the course of history.
682 When he comes at the end of time to judge the living and the dead, the glorious Christ will reveal the secret disposition of hearts and will render to each man according to his works, and according to his acceptance or refusal of grace.
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What aircraft is more emblematic of the Cold War than the SR-71 Blackbird? Museum associate Tracey Austin met Colonel Richard Graham (ret. USAF) at the EAA's AirVenture in Oshkosh, Wisconsin when he was signing the three books he'd written on the SR-71 and his adventures as a pilot and commander of the 9th Strategic Reconnaissance Wing.
She was surprised to learn that he lives right here in the Dallas area! Moreover, he's made a special project of working with the Frontiers of Flight museum to display the SR-71 simulator that's been placed on loan with them.
Colonel Graham offered Tracey a personal tour of the simulator and told her that she could bring a friend. One of the museum directors, Jon, wasted no time in accepting her offer to go see the simulator.
Here, Colonel Graham is showing Tracey the front cockpit of the simulator. As it sits, the simulator could possibly be made operational (all the equipment is there) but a substantial effort needs to take place to hook everything up and get it working again.
Pilots trained in the simulator for 100 hours before flying the SR-71. After that it's only 5 flights in the dual-control version of the Blackbird and you're off to operational missions.
The reel that pulls the pilot's legs back to the ejection seat just before Elvis leaves the building. That, or Col. Graham is interviewing Tracey's legs.
Colonel Graham went over all the systems with a laser pointer and was very detailed in his descriptions. It was a fantastic briefing. He logged 600+ hours in the Blackbird in the seven years he flew it.
Here Jon is seen with the navigator's trainer in the background. The navigator's cockpit is a separate cabinet. One new crew is selected per year and they get individual training before they get "married'. Once formed as a crew they always fly together (unusual)... so much so that if one gets sick the other doesn't fly.
The fabulous J58 continuously afterburning engine. The SR-71 uses ramjet magic such that 80% of the thrust produced is by the ramjet and only 20% by the engine at Mach 3+.
The Frontiers of Flight Museum is also the permanent home of the Apollo 7 capsule.
The three books that Colonel Graham has written are available on Amazon.com.
It was interesting to learn that Colonel Graham is also retired from American Airlines, where he was a pilot. Still active as a Flight Instructor, he prefers teaching primary students... imagine learning the first basics of flying from a former SR-71 pilot!
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We hear the above term a lot, and some suspect that it is derives from the Hadith of the Prophet of Islam (Peace Be Upon Him). However, most are confused as to its origins, given that it appears in a broad mixture of Islamic and Christian teachings. For those of you who cannot read the Arabic الدين معاملة, it roughly means “religion is in the treatment of others”.
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.”
John 1: 1-5, New Revised Standard Version
Lisa Isherwood and Mark Jordan, Dancing Theology in Fetish Boots: Essays in Honour of Marcella Althaus-Reid, SCM Press, 2010.
Argentinian theologian Marcella Althaus-Reid was a pioneer in the field of queer theology. In her books Indecent Theology and The Queer God (both on Routledge), she insistently queried the sexual and gender suppositions of Christianity and theology. In particular, she relentlessly pushed the liberation theology of Latin America, demanding that its vision of social justice for the poor expand to include–even centre–women and GLBT people and the multiplicity of desires and practices involved in sexual subcultures. In the striking introduction to Indecent Theology, she asked if theology had space for female vendors on the streets of Buenos Aires, who sell lemons without wearing underwear. Theologians, she suggests, must remember their own bodies, their own desires: “The Argentinian theologian would then like to take off her underwear to write theology with feminist honestly, not forgetting what it is to be a woman when dealing with theological and political categories.”
Sadly, Althaus-Reid died of breast cancer in 2009, leaving behind not only those two important books, but writing and editing numerous innovative books on feminist, body, liberation, queer and transgender theologies in partnership with Lisa Isherwood on SCM. Fittingly then, Isherwood has, with Harvard theologian Mark Jordan, assembled a collection entitled Dancing Theology in Fetish Boots on that press that not only pays homage to Althaus-Reid’s legacy, but extends it.
For those who have been living under a rock (or worse, been offline), the world is supposed to end today. More accurately, a group of fringe evangelical Christians in California led by Harold Camping have taken to the airwaves on their Family Radio Network to proclaim the imminent arrival of the Rapture on May 21st–the removal of faithful believers of Christ from the earth and the cataclysmic beginning of the destruction of the Earth.
As Christian beliefs go, the Rapture’s a pretty marginal doctrine restricted to evangelicals, accepted neither by the Catholic, Orthodox or mainline Protestant groups. Even for those evangelicals that do believe in the Rapture, the vast majority will think of Thessalonian 5:1-2 – “Now, brothers and sisters, about times and dates we do not need to write to you, for you know very well that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night.” Most Christians know better to set dates for the return of Christ, though many have tried before. The failure of Jesus to show up for one such date set by the Millerite movement in the United States in 1844 was called “the Great Disappointment” for good reason. As the great holy text Battlestar Galactica once put it, “all of this has happened before, and will happen again.”
So this is not a widely accepted or particularly credible form of religious belief, it’s pretty safe to say most people do not believe the world is ending at 6pm tonight. What is more astonishing is the degree with which this apocalyptic story has been taken up by atheists, dominating the news for the past few weeks. Mother Jones reports that Channing’s PR person has fielded 400 interview requests in the past few weeks; bucket lists and music playlists to soundtrack the apocalypse have been posted, and as I write now, the trending topics on Twitter include #rapture #iftheworldendsonSaturday #Harold Camping and a nostalgic apocalyptic throwback in the form of #Y2K. Most of it is mocking, with a sense of incredulity that someone could honestly believe in the end of the world. So why all the fuss?
Denison Witmer’s music is thoughtful and understated and lends itself to rainy days and quiet contemplation. A multi-instrumentalist whose folk music sounds more otherworldly—and less roots-based—than what you’ve heard in the past, Witmer writes songs at once approachable and elusive. His lyrics can be deceptively straightforward at times, only developing more complex layers several listens in.
Witmer’s new album, The Ones Who Wait, to be released on April 26, is no exception. Witmer says that the new album came together somewhat more organically than those past, as he grieved his father’s death and adjusted to collaborator Devin Greenwood’s move to New York City. Though he told me he normally draws themes out of songs he’s created over a period of time, this album came to revolve thematically around the loss of his father without advanced planning. “In some ways,” Witmer says, “this was better for the album because it gave me a sense of pause. I let it show me the direction it was taking rather than the other way around.”
Witmer says that this affected his musical decisions as well. Though he usually writes careful first drafts with a clear sense of which instruments should be used and how the recording should sound, he chose to “[do] a lot of different things with these songs.” The aim was surrender to the creative process without being “too hung up on what we would do with the songs.” Instead, he says, “we worried about that later.” This allowed for a more thoughtful process in which ideas could be tried and tested, and creative possibilities explored more fully.
Every sperm is sacred, goes the old Monty Python song, but it might well be the new motto of the Republican Party in 2011. Since their victory in 2010 midterms, Republican politicians (with a few Democratic collaborators) have launched a dizzying array of ever-more retrogressive attacks on reproductive rights – 351 bills at State and Federal level already this year reports Time. While religiously inflected anti-abortion “pro-life” politics have long been a feature of American politics, what has marked the more recent movements is an intensified push towards defining personhood right from the moment of conception, and an explicit attack on the right to contraception as well as abortion. Ironically given the Christian roots of this movement, the theological implications of these twin moves can themselves be considered irreligious.
In Ohio, there is a new bill attempting to re-define life as the moment in which the fetus has a heartbeat–as early as 18 days. As Mother Jones reports, “attacking first-trimester pregnancies is important for anti-abortion activists because 88% of all abortions occur before 12 weeks gestation.” Hammering the point home, a pro-life stunt saw a fetus “testify” as a legislative witness before the House Health Committee (though amusingly, the heartbeat was difficult to find–the fetus, it seems, took the fifth). Still, the message is coming through loud and clear–from conception, a fetus is a person.
Born in Yemen, Victoria Clark was an Observer journalist in post-Communist Romania and in ex-Yugoslavia during Croat and Bosnian wars. From 1990-1996, Clark was stationed in Moscow. Her latest book is Yemen: Dancing on the Heads of Snakes by Yale University Press in 2010 . Her previous books include Why Angels Fall: A Portrait of Eastern Orthodox Europe, The Far-Farers: A Journey form Viking Iceland to Crusader Jerusalem, Holy Fire: The Battle for Christ’s Tomb, and Allies for Armageddon: The Rise of Christian Zionism. Her personal website is http://www.victoriaclark.co.uk/.
She spoke with Jonathan Mok about her writing, the situation in Yemen, and why the rest of the world ought to pay it more attention.
Jonathan Mok: First of all, before talking your book about Yemen, I noticed that until the last book about Christian Zionism, you wrote about Christ’s tomb, the Crusade and Eastern Orthodox Church. Why did ancient history interest you? Also, including the last book, why was Christianity the main theme of your book?
Victoria Clark: What interests me is not so much ancient history as the profound connections between two of those taboo dinner-party subjects: religion and politics. Exploring those links in the Balkans and the Middle East, where they have been particularly important in the last 20 years, sent me searching as far back as the first millennium for clues about and explanations for the present.
JM: This time, your book focuses on Yemen. Why did you write the book entirely on the history and politics of Yemen?
VC: For two main reasons. First, it was not until 2004 that I noticed bin Laden’s ‘ancestral homeland’ was Yemen, not Saudi Arabia, and a part of the country that was ruled by the British for around a century until 1967. That set me thinking; clearly, there was a time when scores of officials in the British colonial and foreign services knew a great deal about that land and its people. I was amazed to discover how little interest there seemed to be in the country only half a century later and how little had been written about it since the unification of the northern Yemeni Arab Republic with the People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen in the south in 1990, despite the role it seemed to play in the early life of al-Qaeda.
The fact that I happen to have been born in the British Crown Colony of Aden in 1961 – my father was the BBC’s correspondent for South Arabia – also had a good deal to do with my undertaking the project.
JM: You spent a considerable part of the first section on the history of South and North Yemen. They became unified in 1990. Ironically, the unification has not brought peace and prosperity. What do you think about factors contributing to the instability of the country and the failure of the economic and social development of the country?
VC: The unification of the two Yemens was a rushed and badly handled affair. There was undeniably a great deal of popular support for the project founded on an optimistic belief that since they were all Yemenis they must be able to live together in happiness and for ever after with their recently discovered oil wealth. However, little consideration was given to the fact that their histories had made them feel culturally very different. The relative good order of British rule for 128 years followed by a quarter of a century of a home-grown Communist regime has left the southern Yemenis swamped by and unable to compete in the cut-throat market-driven and unregulated world governed by patronage networks that the northern Yemenis inhabit and have lost no time in imposing on the south.
Even more worrying is the fact Yemen may have become a new breeding ground for next generation terrorists and suicide bombers. Why has the country provided a valuable opportunity to Al-Qaeda to nurture young people to be future terrorists?
The simple answer to that question is that al-Qaeda’s recruitment drive and activities have been overlooked because they are only third on the list of the president’s pressing priorities. While Ali Abdullah Salih’s security services and army have been largely engaged with the opaque but costly al-Huthi rebellion in the north-west corner of the country since 2004, southern Yemenis’ struggle to regain their independence has been growing in size and importance since 2006. The latter is the more worrying both to the president and the outside world.
JM: In your book, you described Ali Abdullah Salih, the president of Yemen as a dictator, a corrupt leader. You also depicted him as a leader trying to be a “good boy” in front of the United States in the War on terror. What suggestions would you propose if the United States, the United Kingdom and other countries would like to stop Yemen becoming a terror heaven? What has gone wrong with the current strategy pursued by Washington D.C and Downing Street?
VC: Yemen – poor, corruptly ruled, over-populated, under-resourced, over-armed, traumatised by its recent history – clearly illustrates the role economic and instability factors have to play in explaining youths’ attraction to jihadist ideology. My experience of the country and its people, however, has convinced me that because the West is either losing or has already lost the ideological war, it is time to acknowledge the loss of moral high ground and set about the very, very hard job of regaining it. This will not be achieved by supplying the increasingly unpopular Yemeni regime with more weapons or aid money that can go astray. Real evidence of progress on Israel/Palestine would be a good start.
JM: Ali Abdullah Salih has ruled Yemen for more than 3 decades. What has kept him in power for such a long time?
VC: First, being a tribesman himself, he has (at least until recently) sensibly avoided confrontation and heavy-handedness, and opted instead for compromise, flattery, bribery, divide and rule, cooperation in his dealings with the powerful and armed tribes of the country and other interest groups. Second, he was luckily boosted by the discovery of oil in Yemen in the mid-1980s. Oil revenues are what have given him the wherewithal to rule in the manner of a kind and generous sheikh rather than as a military dictator. The fact that the oil is running out and therefore the regime’s leverage diminishing, accounts in large part for the increased instability in the country.
JM: I would like to turn to Jewish minorities. What would be possible reasons for the increasing intolerances toward Jewish minorities as many of them have fled to Israel?
VC: Very sadly, the tiny remnant of Yemen’s Jewish community, which was mostly located in the northwest of the country, has suffered by most of the Arab’s world’s deep sense of outrage at the manner in which Israel has treated the Palestinians and the US has continued to bankroll and support Israel. Yemen’s Jews are as tangibly absent as they are in parts of eastern Europe; older Yemenis I have spoken with in both south and north Yemen speak very kindly of them.
JM: Equally disturbing me is the women issue. I was shocked to read stories of divorces by a seven or eight- year old girls. I am wondering why child marriage has only become an issue drawing international attention in recent years.
VC: The child bride issue is a shocking one as is the situation of most women of all ages in Yemen. It is complicated however. I met a schoolteacher who had been miserably married off to a hated cousin at the age of 9 and had three children by him by the age of 14, before managing to separate from him. To my amazement she told me she had married off her eldest daughter at the age of 11. When I asked her why, she explained that it was for the best; since the girl had lived with her father since the divorce she had been exploited as an unpaid nanny, tending the half-siblings her father’s re-marriage had brought instead of going to school. Married, she was proud of her own establishment and happy with her husband and she could go to school.
I also ended up feeling sorry for men. The same woman told me that she had found a bride for her son; although he had rejected her on sight, she had forced him to accept her.
JM: Finally, what new experiences did you have when writing a book differing from what you previously published?
VC: The challenge of trying to immerse myself in Yemen and its culture was gigantic and it almost defeated me, I have to say. My main experience of Yemen was an exciting but worrying sense that there was so much more to the place than met my ear or ear. My only hope that in trying to construct a narrative of the country that makes sense to a western audience I have not been too unfaithful to Yemen’s truths and realities.
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Imagine being given a credit card with a seemingly infinite limit, and you never have to pay a bill. That, essentially, is the scenario many data center managers have enjoyed for the last decade or more when it comes to electricity-use oversight. Now, with energy prices climbing and utility capacities at their limits, that bill appears to be coming due.
Data centers have been significant to corporate operations for decades. But the last 10 years have seen their importance rise exponentially, as both consumer-facing retail sites and back office, Web-services-based operations have become critical ingredients in bottomline success. Server-design advances in that same time period have driven hardware prices down and enabled managers to fit more computing power within existing building footprints. These factors have combined to create power-density levels that the facilities’ original designers never anticipated.
Hardware power consumption is the tip of the energy iceberg in today’s data centers. Added servers create enormous cooling loads, with electricity demands that can equal or exceed that of the servers. Combine climbing consumption with skyrocketing utility rates, and you will understand why, suddenly, corporate accountants are beginning to care about their IT departments’ energy costs.
Though it may seem unusual in these days, data center managers remain surprisingly unaware of their facilities’ energy use.
“No IT manager I’ve ever spoken to has seen their power costs,” said Mark Bramfitt, senior project manager in Pacific Gas & Electric’s (PG&E) customer energy efficiency group, who works with companies in the information-intensive high-tech and healthcare sectors. In fact, he said, data center power costs generally are not even included in IT operating budgets. Instead, these expenses are generally wrapped into overall office-facility figures, so IT planners have no way of understanding the energy-use consequences of their data center design decisions.
Green Grid focuses on this lack of information among IT professionals as one aspect of its efforts to improve data-center efficiency. The group was formed in February 2007 by representatives from IT-industry suppliers including HP, Dell, Microsoft, Intel, Sun Microsystems and AMD. Membership now stands at more than 100.
“One of the bottomline issues is the whole idea of awareness,” said Larry Lamers, member of technical staff, Office of the CTO at VMware and Green Grid director. “You’ve got this guy in accounting who pays the bill and an IT manager who doesn’t know how much electricity he’s using.”
One of the first steps for managers seeking to reduce energy costs is to understand exactly where there electricity is going—a boon for contractors experienced in submetering installations, said Larry Vertal, a senior strategist at AMD and a Green Grid board member.
“Near term, there are opportunities already there in submetering work that’s sort of a ‘greenfield,’” he said. “Today, in most data centers, you do not have submetering going on. So you’ve got this really complex system, and all you really know is how much energy the equipment [in total] is using.”
Utilities are ramping up incentive programs, encouraging customers to cut their data centers’ electricity consumption. PG&E, with a service territory that includes Silicon Valley, is leading the effort. But PG&E also is leading a consortium of electric utilities from across the country, providing outlines of its incentive efforts to those utilities interested in establishing their own data center-directed programs.
These incentives are arising as data center construction seems poised for a possible boom. Facilities constructed during the tech bubble of the late 1990s are stretched to capacity, and many organizations are consolidating operations into fewer, larger facilities. For example, Intel recently announced plans to consolidate its 133 data centers to eight high-density operations of approximately 300,000 square feet each. Similarly, HP announced it will be replacing more than 80 of its aging facilities with six new structures.
New data centers offer the greatest opportunities for reducing electricity use because the infrastructure retrofits needed for maximum efficiency improvements in existing facilities are simply too expensive. Issues such as rack arrangements, cooling-plant designs and power-distribution schemes are better addressed in new structures, which also can be planned for scalable future expansion.
Researchers are investigating a number of new power-distribution strategies that could change infrastructure planning even more, including high-voltage AC and DC approaches that may cut efficiency-sapping conversion losses. Staying on top of these and other advances—including the availability of local utility rebates and other financial incentives—can only help electrical contractors interested in pursuing data center projects.
“Then you’re providing a higher level of value to the client,” Bramfitt said, describing the premium services an educated contractor can offer in this high-end sector. “There are contractors in the Bay Area who are doing that, and they’re getting more business than they can handle.”
ROSS is a freelance writer located in Brewster, Mass. He can be reached at firstname.lastname@example.org.
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1. The explanation of a man's way of thinking, actions or thought process, to friends typically, in such a way that does violate sacred, holy, man law, nor the customs of manliness.
2. Also functions as the act of explaining ones feelings or emotions to a woman or man, in a practical, logical, manly way.
John's mansplanation for changing his outfit several times over before hitting the bars, was accepted by both his male and female peers, without derision.
Prices shown in USD.
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The True/False documentary film festival in Columbia, Missouri, at the February-March cusp is usually a hibernation interrupter, but the weather was in the 60s the week before, then dipped down to freezing for film-goers, so this year the fest was more a reminder that it can be chilly rather than a break from chilliness. The cold may have given an argument to global warming deniers, but it had no impact on my pick of the best documentary film for 2012.
It was The Island President, a truly beautiful film by Jon Shenk, and it was about global warming. The tiny nation of the Maldives, an archipelago of 1,200 islands adrift in the Indian Ocean, is being swamped as global warming melts ice caps and changes the currents to cause sea level to rise. The islands are about one and a half feet above sea level with, as the president explains, nary a hill.
When the sun is shining, the Maldives are a sliver of paradise with white beaches surrounded by blue ocean and blue sky. Idyllic except for in tsunami season when much of the island nation is under water.
The film followed the conservation-minded political team of Mohamed Nasheed, elected as the capable and idealistic president of the nation in 2008. At 41 years old, he was the first democratically elected president in their history and followed the regime of Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, who put dissidents (including Nasheed) in prison and tortured them. By challenging him, the entire Muslim nation put their principles on the line.
For the film, Nasheed gave the camera remarkable access to his life, from public appearances at home and abroad to the privacy of his hotel room, his offices and his informal conversations with aides as he grabs a quick smoke by the dumpsters behind the convention center.
His chief environmental advisor, the young Amanath Shauna, takes us along to her typical family home with her mother and sisters. In the Maldives, nobody lives too far from the ocean, and we walk with the women to see that, indeed, the island has eroded in her brief life. Shauna stands on a pile of rocks and remarks that the rocks are now at the oceans edge rather than back on the beach that she remembers.
This is serious business, and these educated policy makers are trying to get attention for the problem. Nasheed points out that, as the Maldives are in danger, all islands and all shorelines are equally threatened. New York City, he says, is also only one and a half feet above sea level. With a little imagination, we can draw a line around all the continents and see the land masses shrinking. To dramatize the situation, Nasheed holds an underwater cabinet meeting, all the participants in scuba gear.
But they are ignored.
The filmmakers follow the action to the global warming conference Copenhagen in 2008, where protesters carry signs designating the conference Hopenhagen. You might remember how that conference ended scientists agreed that climate change could be stopped if we could bring the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to 350 parts per million, but many nations including the United States said they would not impose limits.
The old normal CO2 amount until 200 years ago, before industrialization, was 275 ppm. And, we are now at about 390 ppm. Carbon dioxide can be stopped by burning less carbon-based fuel, like petroleum, coal and wood. Or we can put more carbon into sequestration by planting more trees or burying the carbon dioxide somehow. Nobody is seriously conserving or sequestering, sorry to say. I guess were just waiting for more proof. Still, the film manages to be hopeful. The world community, Nasheed suggests, has given attention to the plight of the Maldives, and all island nations, and promised aid.
While documentary films can shape a complicated story, the demands of the genre mean that filmmakers have to stop shooting and begin editing several months before anyone sees their work. Films that dont take care with editing, and there are a few at every festival, come off as half-finished and confusing. The Island President avoids this error and Shenks crew turns out a polished piece.
But, the problem with documentaries is that the closing credits give the impression that the story is over. And its not. President Nasheed stepped down on Feb. 7, 2012, to protect himself and the nation from a threatened military coup by loyalists to Maumoon.
Weather-wise, 2012 has been a fascinating year with almost no winter anywhere, widespread drought everywhere and what looks like a record-breaking tornado season in the offing. After a few chilly days in each of our usual winter months January, February and March were into that brief spring and by the time you read this it may be in the 90s here in mid-Missouri. In the Maldives, especially, people are dreading the tsunami season.
Margot McMillen farms and teaches English in Missouri. Email email@example.com. See progressivepopulist.blogspot.com.
From The Progressive Populist, April 1, 2012
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HOUSTON—It may seem like smartphone users are always looking down and typing (or tapping) away, but believe it or not, they’re SMS texting less and less.
Research group Chetan Sharma Consulting earlier this week said that in the last four months, SMS texting was on the decline in the United States for the first time ever. That’s because many people are now using apps to communicate, rather than the “old fashioned” text message.
Still, most people use SMS, or short message service, to text. This is the part of your phone bill that usually costs you about $20 to $30 a month. But what if you eliminated this and went "all in" with apps?
Many people are already SMS texting less without even realizing it, whether it be through Facebook messages, Twitter, or Skype.
If you have an iPhone, you already have an app that’s replacing SMS for you automatically, as long as it’s turned on. It’s a feature called iMessage, and it’s blended in with your standard texting app. (Check the Messaging area in your Settings app.) If you’re texting with others who also have iMessage enabled on their iPhone or iPad, then the background of the text will be blue instead of green. When it’s blue, that means the messages aren’t counting against your phone bill’s SMS plan. Instead, these messages are running over the Internet through your data plan or your Wi-Fi connection. You can even disable SMS on your phone so you don’t accidentally rack up charges of $.20 per message in the event iMessage can’t be used. The only downside to this is you can only communicate with those who also have an iOS device with iMessage enabled.
== WhatsApp ==
WhatsApp is a very popular SMS alternative similar to iMessage, but it works on Android, Windows Phone, iPhone, and more. It’s a one-time $.99 download with no monthly cost – unlimited texting over your data plan, video and pics included.
If you’re worried about using your data plan’s bandwidth up, don’t be. It’d likely take millions of text messages monthly to even get into the 100s of megabytes.
The real problem with apps is for parents. It can be more difficult to monitor what’s going on, unlike texts which show up on your phone bill. Here are a few quick tips:
1 -- Enable restrictions on your child’s devices: Yes, you can limit and password protect which apps can and can’t be installed or used
2 – To make it easier to monitor and restrict, limit your child’s device to only one messaging app, and make sure they know the rules and that you'll be watching over them
3 -- Sign up for a monitoring service like Mobistealth; All good monitoring services come with some kind of fee, so make sure you do a Google search to make sure it’s worth it (many of them are garbage) and to make sure it can actually monitor whichever messaging apps your children use
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Released: Sept. 28, 1999
New research shows that crime costs in U.S. have passed trillion-dollar mark
DANVILLE, KY- In a study to be released this week by the prestigious University of Chicago Journal of Law and Economics, Centre College economist David Anderson says that crime may have become the single most expensive -- and wasteful -- aspect of life in America.
U.S. citizens, businesses and governments now are burdened with an aggregate cost of crime that has passed the trillion-dollar mark. From an individual perspective, Anderson says every man, woman and child in this country is burdened each year with about $4,100 in crime costs, whether the person has been directly victimized or not.
The figures represent a tragic level of waste, says Anderson, because the money is not enhancing the productivity of American businesses nor improving the quality of life for private citizens.
The economist also contends that many current approaches to reducing or deterring crime are ineffective. In a series of interviews with prisoners at a medium-security facility, Anderson learned that most of the inmates were unaware of and unaffected by certain types of crime prevention measures.
Anderson concludes that the U.S. should take a more serious look at cost-effective strategies for reducing crime. Among his suggestions: strategic planning in local communities, enhanced law enforcement at the local level, legal reform, education and the development of ethics curricula for elementary, middle and high school students.
Anderson arrived at the trillion-dollar figure after five years of intense research focused on the hidden costs of crime. He began with core figures about annual costs of prosecuting and incarcerating criminals, then doggedly searched for figures about the co-called "hidden" costs of crime: lost wages, personal anguish, expenditures on personal protection devices.
What he eventually learned, says Anderson, confirmed what he suspected: "Our past understanding of the burden of crime revealed only the tip of the iceberg."
While Anderson's article is written in scholarly language for a worldwide network of economists, he can explain the basic precepts by describing a common American crime -- auto theft. When an auto is stolen, says Anderson, the obvious cost is the value of the vehicle itself. Inevitably, though, the hidden costs pile up: wages lost when a family member misses work to file a police report, the cost of police time devoted to investigating the crime, the cost of court proceedings and incarceration if the criminal is apprehended and then convicted. Yet another cost: the family will be more likely to purchase theft-protection devices for future vehicles.
The end result: an auto theft that appears to have an impact of $20,000 on a family can easily cast a burden of $40,000 to $100,000 on society. The burden is shared by everyone in the form of higher insurance costs, higher taxes and a general loss in quality of life.
Anderson cites examples in his article that cut through all areas of American life. Libraries are spending about $28 million per year on theft-detection systems. Medical care for victims of violent crime costs about $2.5 billion per year. Businesses lose about $7.2 billion per year to shoplifters.
Other outcomes of Anderson's research:
· Every incarcerated prisoner represents a lost opportunity for American businesses. The average prisoner might reasonably expect to earn about $23,200 per year in wages. In his prisoner interviews, Anderson concluded that many of the law-breakers had even greater potential because they are risk-takers who, as law-abiding citizens, might have some of the same qualities as entrepreneurs.
· Americans have experienced a dramatic loss in quality of life because of crime, relating directly to a fear of being victimized and agony for those who have become crime victims.
· Americans spend an remarkable amount of time dealing with locks, keys, and security devices because of their fear of crime.
- end -
To contact Prof. Anderson:
Currently on a one-term sabbatical from Centre, pursuing research and serving as a guest lecturer at Davidson College in North Carolina. Phone 704-892-2245. Email: email@example.com
To obtain full text of article:
Request as an Email attachment from Prof. Anderson (firstname.lastname@example.org) OR · Download from: http://papers.ssrn.com/paper.taf?ABSTRACT ID=147911
600 W. Walnut Street
Danville, KY 40422
Coordinator of Public Information: Patsi Barnes Trollinger
Telephone 606-238-5719 · email@example.com
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Paved With Good Intentions
12/28/2012 By: Jen LaMaster
I’m a primary source kind of
gal, and my coursework at Indiana University’s School of Library and
Information Science (and ensuing Masters in Library Science) makes me a killer
on the Google. I decided to read, for myself, the originating document posted
Common Core State Standards Initiative
Web site. Looking over the Introduction (June 2, 2010) and Key
Considerations for the English Language Arts & Literacy in History/Social
Studies, Science and Technical Subjects document, the good intentions of the
document are evident.
Good Intention #1: A
“The Standards are
intended to be a living work: as new and better evidence emerges, the Standards
will be revised accordingly”
You may have read the Washington Post “The
Answer Sheet” post on America’s
Next Education ‘Crisis’ – and Who Benefits. Valerie Strauss looks at who really benefits
from the public discourse in education these days and lands firmly with the
for-profit businesses selling curriculum, textbooks, consulting, and data
warehousing software. The pavement cracks under the cash load. How can a
document be “living” when an entire industry is evolving on a static
document? The textbooks, supplemental Web sites, curriculum pacing guides,
webinars… are all being designed around the Standards created and taken off
life support. Let’s not kid ourselves; the Common Core is not a living document.
It died the day the money fell from the luminous Kentucky Performance Rating for Educational Progress
(K-PREP) data enhanced sky.
Good Intention #2: A Focus
on Results Rather Than Means
“Teachers are thus
free to provide students with whatever tools and knowledge their professional
judgment and experience identity as most helpful for meeting the goals set out
in the Standards”
Contrary to what
some would have you believe,
the majority of teachers I have worked with over the past 20 years have cared
deeply about students, spending long hours planning activities to meet learning
objectives and personalizing experiences
for individual students.
The Goal #3 of the PARCC
framework in Indiana looks simple enough. The test will support these amazing
educators in four ways :
• Instructional Tools to Support Implementation: to provide “content frameworks, sample assessment
tasks and model instructional units.” In other words, a fully canned curriculum
that anyone could dish out to young people
• Professional Development Models: These =include PD on implementation of the new
assessment and interpreting test data.
• Timely Student Achievement Data: This means aligned performance-based assessments
throughout the year.
Training to Support ‘Peer-to-Peer’ Training”: This is to train K-12 educators to use the
instructional tools handed down by the PARCC folks (i.e. the canned curriculum
The Actual Pavement
Here’s the thing: the Common Core Standards are
not bad. As a jumping off point for the living discussion of best educational
practices, I’m really okay with them. The authors of the standards were acting
in good faith, but they never saw the jackhammer of market forces coming to
bear on education. This document will become a rally point for those looking to
make a profit.
In the 45 states and 3 territories
that have adopted the Common Core, the conversation is not about educational
standards. It’s about textbooks, testing, and budgetary concerns for hiring all
those consultants. This isn't about educating children. This isn't about
developing better teachers. This isn't about improving and innovating
schools. This is about making money in for profit companies.
Jen LaMaster is the Director of Faculty Development
at the Brebeuf Jesuit Preparatory School.
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Assistive Technology Services Office
In accordance with the Accessible Technology Initiative (ATI), our goals are to improve the educational outcomes and results for students with disabilities by employing assistive technology to access school curriculum and to increase faculty awareness in providing universally designed course instruction and material.
What is ATSO
Assistive Technology is any item, piece of equipment, product or system, whether acquired commercially or off the shelf, modified, or customized, that is used to increase, maintain, or improve functional capabilities of individuals with disabilities.
The Assistive Technology Services Office (ATSO) is committed to providing students and faculty with the technological resources necessary to ensure compliance to the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) at CSU East Bay. Our services consist of two primary service areas: Student Services and Faculty Services. They include, but are not limited to: student technology assessments, training, EI&T Technical Advice for purchasing VPATS, Assistive Technology Hardware/Software loans, and faculty training.
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- look like a strawberry but taste like a pineapple.
When Pineberrys were first released in the UK people thought they were an April fools joke. People soon stopped laughing when they were flying off the shelves at Waitrose priced at £3.99 for 125g.
do you grow these fruits?
2011 and 2012 all our stock
Brand new for 2013 Framberry plants. Still very rare, not easy to find, and we only have limited stocks for 2013.
How do you grow these fruits?
Exactly like a Pineberry (or strawberry). These fruits are well suited to being grown in or out doors in the UK.
How many Framberry fruits does each plant provide?
Like Pineberry's, they are simple to grow and require no special attention. From year one you will enjoy delicious fruit that will double in productivity year on year. Fruits are slightly smaller than a Pineberry, but this does not effect the taste.
stock for 2013
Web site lovingly designed by www.domain33.com
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Font size: S - M - L - XL
Františkovy Lázně – spa town
History of Františkovy Lázně
The distance between Prague and Františkovy Lázně is approximately 200 km.
Františkovy Lázně is world renowned as a spa. The salutary effects of the springs were known from the 15th century. First, the water was used locally for salutary purposes, later sold all over Germany. In 1700, it reportedly sold more water than all other German spas combined. In the year 1793, the town of Františkovy Lázně was officially founded under the name Kaiser Franzensdorf (Emperor Francis II.'s village) and later renamed to Franzensbad, under which name it became a famous spa.
In 1865 Francis Joseph I. promoted Františkovy Lázně from spa to town.
It was the first mud bath in the world and operated 24 mineral springs, 12 of which are still in operation.
Until their expulsion in 1945 the majority of the population of the city was German and after 1945 the spa resort was nationalized for working class.
In 1991 the spa was in hold of Františkovy Lázně joint stock company, which has rebuilt the spa and transformed to one of the most popular spa in the world.
Františkovy Lázně – links
Last update: 2009-03-30
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CHARLOTTE, NC (WBTV) - Do it right and you'll have fresh vegetables and jams in the middle of winter. Do it wrong and you could be putting your health at risk.
Canning is a great way to hold on to the freshness of the summer months all year long.
Sally McNeill, an Extension Agent with the NC Cooperative Extension in Union County, visited WBTV News Sunday Morning to talk about home canning. She talked about the various types of canners and showed us some different canning gadgets that can be used to help preserve the summer's bounty of fresh fruits and vegetables.
For more information about canning you can visit the following links:
Copyright 2012 WBTV. All rights reserved.
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Life Events and Population Sources
Telephone: +44 (0)1633 455341
Frequency of release: Annually
Geographical coverage: UK
Geographical breakdown: Region
In 2011 there were 6,045 suicides in people aged 15 and over in the UK, an increase of 437 compared with 2010.
The UK suicide rate increased significantly between 2010 and 2011, from 11.1 to 11.8 deaths per 100,000 population.
There were 4,552 male suicides in 2011 (a rate of 18.2 suicides per 100,000 population) and 1,493 female suicides (5.6 per 100,000 population).
The highest suicide rate was seen in males aged 30 to 44 (23.5 deaths per 100,000 population in 2011).
The suicide rate in males aged 45 to 59 increased significantly between 2007 and 2011 (22.2 deaths per 100,000 population in 2011).
Female suicide rates were highest in 45 to 59-year-olds in 2011 (7.3 deaths per 100,000 population).
About this bulletin
This bulletin presents the latest suicide statistics for the UK, England (including figures for regions) and Wales. New figures are presented for 2011 with a back series of data covering 1981 to 2010 to allow comparison. The potential impact of the use of narrative verdicts by coroners on suicide rates at regional level in England, and in Wales, is also presented. A brief discussion of registration delays in relation to suicide statistics is also included.
Information about the underlying mortality data, including details on how the data is collected and coded, data quality and legislation are available in the Mortality metadata and Quality and Methodology Information for Mortality Statistics in England and Wales.
Additional statistics showing suicides in England and Wales occurring between 2001 and 2010, compared with suicides registered between 2001 and 2010, were published as an ad-hoc request on 21/02/2013.
Further ONS releases based on death registrations
Mortality Statistics: Deaths registered in England and Wales (Series DR) is an annual publication containing a range of detailed reference tables, including the number of deaths broken down by cause of death, sex and five-year age group.
The 20th Century Mortality Files are a record of mortality in England and Wales from 1901 to 2000 while the 21st Century Mortality Files are a record of mortality in England and Wales from 2001 onwards.
Injury and Poisoning mortality, England and Wales presents annual data on deaths from injury and poisoning in England and Wales using a matrix of mechanism by intent developed by the International Collaborative Effort (ICE) on injury statistics.
Deaths related to drug poisoning presents the latest figures on drug-related deaths in England and Wales. Figures are presented by cause of death, sex, age and substance(s) involved in the death.
We welcome feedback on the content, format and relevance of this release. User engagement in the health and life events division outlines our approach to user engagement.
These National Statistics are produced to high professional standards and released according to the arrangements approved by the UK Statistics Authority.
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A Totally Unauthorized Reading Group Guide to ‘The Last Lecture’ by Randy Pausch
10 Discussion Questions
The Last Lecture
By Randy Pausch with Jeffrey Zaslow
Source: One-Minute Book Reviews
This guide for reading groups and others was not authorized or approved by the author, publisher or agent for the book. It is copyrighted by Janice Harayda and is only for your personal use. Its sale or reproduction is illegal except by public libraries, which may make copies for use in their in-house reading programs. Other reading groups that would like to use this guide should link to it or check the “Contact” page on One-Minute Book Reviews to learn how to request permission to reproduce the guide.
After learning that he had terminal pancreatic cancer, Randy Pausch gave an upbeat valedictory lecture at Carnegie Mellon University, where he teaches computer science. He called his talk “Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams” and explained in it how he had accomplished most of what he set out to do in life. Enlivened with humor and showmanship, his lecture drew millions of visitors to its posting on YouTube and made Pausch a star on the Internet. His talk also inspired The Last Lecture, a collection of short essays written with Wall Street Journal columnist Jeffrey Zaslow, which became a No. 1 bestseller on the New York Times “Advice, How-To and Miscellaneous” list.
Please note that the page numbers below come from the large-type edition of The Last Lecture (Thorndike, 2008), the only one available when this guide was prepared.
1. When someone asked what he wanted on his tombstone, Pausch said: “Randy Pausch: He Lived Thirty Years After a Terminal Diagnosis.’” [Page 247] If you were to write his epitaph, what would it say?
2. Summing up a theme of his lecture and book, Pausch writes: “We cannot change the cards we are dealt, just how we play the hand.” [Page 32] This is one of many clichés he admits he loves and uses liberally in The Last Lecture. Did he succeed in making any old ideas fresh? How did he do it?
3. Pausch began his lecture “Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams” by saying he wasn’t going to deal with big questions of religion or spirituality, and he sticks to that pattern in The Last Lecture. How does the book benefit or suffer from his decision?
4. The Last Lecture recycles much of what Pausch said in his valedictory lecture at Carnegie Mellon and expands some of it. Should people who’ve watched the talk also read the book? Why? What does the book give you that the lecture doesn’t?
5. Pausch could have called his book The Last Lectures, because he structures it as a series of mini-lectures instead of one long lecture. How well does this technique work?
6. The Last Lecture balances general advice such as “dream big” with specific tips – for example, about how to work well in small groups. “Instead of saying, ‘I think we should do A, instead of B,’ try ‘What if we did A, instead of B?’” [Page 190] Which, if any, of the tips struck you as most helpful?
7. Many cancer patients are bombarded with the advice to “be optimistic” or “think positively.” This approach has led to a medical backlash alluded to in the chapter “A Way to Understand Optimism.” Pausch says his surgeon worries about “patients who are inappropriately optimistic or ill-informed”: “It pains him to see patients who are having a tough day healthwise and assume it’s because they weren’t positive enough.” [Page 249] What is Pausch’s view of this? Is he appropriately or inappropriately optimistic? Why?
8. Many people who have heard about The Last Lecture may be tempted to give the book to someone who has had a devastating diagnosis, or who is perhaps dying, hoping it will provide comfort or cheer. What would you say to them? Is this a book for the living or the dying?
9. The Last Lecture comes from Mitch Albom’s publisher and literary agent and has a small format similar to that of Tuesdays With Morrie. These similarities – let’s face it – could be a kiss of death for some people, especially critics who see Albom as an icon of saccharine and dumbed-down writing. What would you say to someone who didn’t plan to read The Last Lecture because, “One Mitch Albom is enough”?
10. If you were going to give your own “last lecture,” what would you say?
The Last Lecture. By Randy Pausch with Jeffrey Zaslow. Hyperion, 224 pp., $21.95. Published: April 2008.
A review of The Last Lecture appeared on One-Minute Book Reviews on May 30, 2008. If you are reading this guide on the home page of the site, scroll down to find the review. If you are reading this guide on the Internet, click on this link to find it www.oneminutebookreviews.wordpress.com/2008/05/30/.
Watch Pausch’s talk “Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams” and read an excerpt from The Last Lecture at www.thelastlecture.com.
Furthermore: Pausch posts updates on his health at download.srv.cs.cmu.edu/~pausch/news/index.html.
Janice Harayda is an award-winning critic who has been the book columnist for Glamour, the book editor of the Plain Dealer and a vice-president of the National Book Critics Circle www.bookcritics.org.
One-Minute Book Reviews is for people who like to read but dislike hype and review inflation. Totally Unauthorized Reading Group Guides appear on the site frequently but not on a regular schedule. They usually deal with books for which publishers have provided no guides or guides that are inadequate – for example, because they encourage cheerleading for books instead of thoughtful discussion. To avoid missing these reviews, please bookmark the site or subscribe to the RSS feed. If you would like to see the guides continue, it would be extremely helpful if you would link to them.
© 2008 Janice Harayda. All rights reserved.
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Clock ticking as Copenhagen global climate change summit begins
The Copenhagen global climate change summit began Monday with new urgency for a deal, and eyes on China and the US.
Delegates from more than 190 countries today opened what some are calling a historic round of talks on climate change in Copenhagen. But the final chapters remain to be written.Skip to next paragraph
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Not since the 1997 negotiations in Kyoto, Japan have talks on global warming attracted such high-level political involvement. Leaders from some 110 countries, including President Obama, are slated to appear at the end of the conference to help give the meeting a push toward what lead US negotiator Jonathan Pershing calls "a comprehensive, operational Copenhagen accord."
"This conference has already written history," said Yvo de Boer, the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change's executive secretary, arguing that delegates' opening statements indicated that countries "want to deliver a strong ambitious outcome in Copenhagen. This conference will write history. But we need to make sure it writes the right history."
The effort will not be easy, Dr. Pershing added. "There is much work to be done."
Negotiators are working on two deals, running on parallel tracks. One involves a new commitment period for the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, under which industrial countries that ratified the agreement initially promised to reduce their collective greenhouse-gas emissions to 5.5 percent below 1990 levels by 2012, a target they are still hoping to meet. A second commitment period to meet this goal is being discussed by the countries that ratified the protocol. The second, higher-profile track is an agreement that would cover the US – which did not ratify Kyoto – and developing countries, perhaps to be dubbed the Copenhagen Protocol.
The aim is to reach political agreements here that can lead to immediate action on greenhouse-gas emissions control and provide a quick influx of cash to developing countries to help them adapt to climate change and pay for the technologies that could help them leap-frog energy technologies that spew carbon dioxide.
The sums being considered are large: $10 billion a year between 2010 and 2012, then upwards of $100 billion a year out to 2020.
Legally, the boundary between the two is clear. In negotiations, the boundary is blurred. Developed countries are reluctant to further tighten the screws on their emissions unless major developing countries, whose emissions are climbing, come forward with significant emissions-control offers. Developing countries are loathe to take action under an international agreement unless developed countries offer aggressive emissions-reduction plans. This is especially true for the US, which gave the world eight years of what was widely perceived as inaction on the issue.
Poorer nations also complain they're being asked to adopt expensive solutions that will slow economic growth, while economic powers like Japan and the US have already enjoyed the fruits of pumping lots of carbon dioxide (CO2), the principal greenhouse gas. A joint study by the World Wildlife Fund and the climate research unit of German insurer Allianz found that the US pumps the equivalent of 25 tons of CO2 per person a year. China, by contrast, pumps five.
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The OWHL online catalog is “Going Green” at the end of this month. We will be replacing our current integrated library system with a new online catalog and circulation system called “Evergreen.”
The Evergreen Integrated Library System (ILS) was developed in 2006 by the Georgia Public Library Service and has since been adopted by more than 1,000 libraries worldwide. Evergreen’s software is “open source,” which means that the source code is freely available to download and can be modified and developed by anyone with programming knowledge. An open source project is a little like Wikipedia. Its development relies upon the commitment of its user community to add value to the base product and to share those enhancements. In order to avoid chaos, a designated group of people reviews new initiatives, and incorporates those that are of general utility into subsequent “releases” of the software. Individual users or groups may additionally customize their own installations of the program.
Since the OWHL joined NOBLE in 2003, we have used a “proprietary” system developed by Innovative Interfaces, Inc. called Millennium. Three years ago, NOBLE and two other large library consortia in Massachusetts (MVLC, the consortium that includes Andover’s Memorial Hall Library, and C/W MARS, the consortium that includes libraries in the central and western part of the state) received grant funding to study the implementation of an Open Source system. Cooperatively, the three networks selected the software, prioritized improvements and shared training and expertise in order to design a system to meet the needs of their member libraries.
Why Open Source? Open Source is a philosophy that I find very appealing as a professional educator committed to access to information. However, there are many pragmatic reasons why Evergreen is a good fit for NOBLE and the OWHL at this time. These include:
1. Affordability. Proprietary systems are expensive to purchase, and require a commitment to a very expensive annual maintenance agreement. Theoretically, OS systems are “free.” That is, an individual library or group may download and use the software without an explicit payment to anyone. In practice, OS systems have been described as “free as in free kittens, not free as in free beer.” NOBLE and its partners will need to support development work, but will also benefit from development work done by other libraries. The expenses are both predictable and controllable.
2. Transparency. Proprietary systems do not afford access to their code. Consequently, users are not able to make changes to improve system utility. Rather, users request changes from the vender, wait and hope for these changes to be introduced in a subsequent release, and then pay additional maintenance for the new functionality. With Evergreen, NOBLE staff will be able to directly access the system code, and may change it as appropriate.
3. Perpetuity. Library Systems venders often merge and sometimes go out of business. They might also choose to retire systems in favor of new ones. The use of an open source system guarantees NOBLE permanent access to the system.
4. Interoperability. Venders make and control suites of products that are intended to work together. It can be difficult or impossible for users to add additional functionality from an OS product or one supplied by a different vender. In OS systems, developers can construct bridges to permit other products to work seamlessly with the ILS.
5. Localization. Quite specifically, OS permits you to have exactly the system you want, as long as you support the development of those customized features. Our frustration with the limitations of the Millennium system was as important in our adoption of an OS approach as the potential to save money and better control costs. Casson and Ryan
We are excited about Evergreen, and will be happy to answer any questions you might have.
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October 11, 2012
by Lee Smith
On Wednesday, U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta announced that the United States was sending a small contingent of troops to Jordan in the event that the conflict in Syria spreads across the country's border as it has with Turkey. Even if it doesn't, the Obama Administration is right to be extremely concerned with how events in Syria might affect its longstanding and reliable Middle East ally in Amman.
Should King Abdullah II become the next Arab ruler to fall as part of the upheavals that have swept through the region now for almost two years, it will mark another major setback for the United States in the region. For Israel it's significantly worse news. Jerusalem would lose its remaining strategic partner in the region—having already lost Turkey and Egypt—and face a possible nightmare on its longest border, exposing the country's center to attacks from the east that might include Sunni Jihadists or Iranian-trained Iraqi agents.
The beleaguered Bashar al-Assad, longtime rival of Syria, has been doing his share to see that this scenario comes to pass: Leaked Syrian government documents show that Assad, suspicious that Amman was siding with Syria's armed opposition, has been preemptively trying to destabilize Jordan's security. But Abdullah's real nightmare scenario isn't Assad meddling in Jordanian politics—rather, it might just be Assad's fall at the hands of Islamist rebels. A Muslim Brotherhood victory in Syria could put wind in the sails of Jordan's own Brotherhood party, the Islamic Action Front, and perhaps inspire them to add another Arab state, along with Tunisia and Egypt, to their collection.
Protests last week in Amman organized by the Islamic Action Front suggest that popular opinion is turning ever more forcefully against Abdullah. "The turnout was much larger than the 8,000 that the government claims attended," said Hassan Barari, a political analyst at Jordan University. "It wasn't the 100,000 that the Islamists claimed, but something perhaps like 35,000-40,000"—a very large crowd given that Jordan's population is only a little more than 6 million.
Abdullah's response to the protests was to call for elections before the new year and to name a new prime minister. Given that he is tasked with the responsibility of forming the country's fifth government in two years, this is unlikely to calm Abdullah's critics.
"We're in a crisis mode. The state is trying to say that the reform package is good, and the opposition is not convinced," Barari told me. "The elections will lead to an outcome that can't fight corruption, a parliament with spineless people, who can't stand up to the government or the security apparatus. The king missed an opportunity to implement reforms and instead sided with the corrupt ruling elite. My concern is that with this dissatisfaction, some of the opposition may turn violent."
Corruption, rising energy costs, and large refugee populations that have entered Jordan in the wake of the Iraq war and now the Syrian conflict are among the chief problems besetting the monarchy. The White House has pledged an aid package totaling $474 million in 2012, including $356.9 million signed over earlier this month. But U.S. aid isn't going to solve Jordan's fundamental problems.
First, Jordan has virtually no natural resources. For its energy needs, it depends on its neighbors, like Egypt, from where the flow of natural gas has been regularly disrupted ever since Hosni Mubarak's exit in February 2011. "The Jordanians could get the natural gas from Israel," said Robert Satloff, executive director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. "The Israelis would give it to them at cut-rate discounts and there's a short pipeline. But the political environment right now doesn't lend itself to making deals with Israel."
An even more serious issue is that the country's population is divided against itself. The split here is based not on sectarian fault lines, as in Syria and Iraq, but rather on national, geographical, and historical ones. On the one hand are the Bedouins, also known as the East Bankers, who fill the ranks of the military and the security apparatus and other public sector jobs. On the other are the Palestinians who constitute a majority—anywhere from 60 to more than 80 percent—of the population.
It is this divide between the Palestinians and Bedouins that has always made Jordan seem an inherently tenuous project to skeptics. And yet the Hashemites have ruled here since 1921 when the British handed the mandate for the emirate of Transjordan over to Abdullah I, the current king's great-grandfather. The Hashemite monarchy survived not only Abudllah I's death at the hands of a Palestinian assassin but also the bloody 1970 war, Black September, when the well-trained Bedouin forces led by Abdullah II's father Hussein drove Yasser Arafat and other Palestinian factions out of Jordan.
The monarchy has always depended on the Bedouins for support and its ultimate security. But it appears they may have turned against their patron, King Abdullah II. East Bankers have joined the Islamists and independent intellectuals like Barari, forming numerous hiraks, or street movements, replacing traditional patronage networks that have proved incapable of sustaining East Bank communities.
One former senior Israeli official explained that "there have been problems with the Bedouins going back at least a decade"—or roughly since Abdullah's government moved toward privatization and so-called free zones throughout the country designed to attract foreign investment. "The Palestinians were doing well in the private sector, and there was growing resentment among the East Bankers. The Gulf states recognized the problem and tried to get more money into the Bedouin sector and were disappointed it didn't get into their hands. Who knows how the money was spent?"
The paradox is that it is this corruption—and the subsequent popular protest movement—that appears to finally be constructing a national Jordanian identity, even as it is against the king. Still, the opposition is eventually going to find itself at cross purposes, which the regime could use to its advantage. "Everywhere else in the Middle East what people mean by reform is quite clear," says Satloff. "But in Jordan, reform means two contradictory things. To the Palestinians, it means opening up the economy, with more room for private sector to grow. If you are an East Banker, reform means the opposite. It means more government jobs."
Jordan's regional problems are just as daunting as its domestic concerns. "It feels like it's caught between an Islamist Egypt and a potentially jihadist Syria," Satloff said. This is reminiscent of Jordan's situation in the 1950s and '60s when it was caught between Arab nationalist powers in Egypt and Syria constantly trying to destabilize the kingdom, typically by attacking it for its relationship with the United States and its more clandestine ties to Israel.
The Jordan-Israel relationship was further strengthened with the 1994 peace treaty, institutionalizing a significant security relationship that has benefited both countries. For Jerusalem, explained the former Israeli official, "Jordan is the most critical strategic question. Jordan's army is smaller than Egypt's but it faces a longer border." And that border, if open or manned by an unfriendly Arab power, would constitute the majority of the Middle East's access route to Israel.
Over the last two years, the Arab uprisings have posed a number of vital questions for Washington and its allies. Where should the United States step in to intervene, and on whose side? What governments and movements should we engage, and which should we isolate or punish? The reality is that there's little the United States can do at this point to protect one of its most steadfast allies in the region. Perhaps Abdullah will prove creative enough to exploit the weaknesses of the growing protest movement, or broker a new national identity that finally binds the East Bankers and Palestinians together and leaves him on the throne. If not, American policymakers will again be scrambling for answers—and Israeli leaders may find yet another border in trouble.
Lee Smith is a visiting fellow at Hudson Institute and is the author of The Strong Horse: Power, Politics and the Clash of Arab Civilizations (Doubleday, 2010).
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Finding the Information You Need
We understand and support patients' and families' need for information when making decisions about their treatment plan. Whether you want to learn more about your illness, support programs, prevention, rehabilitative and palliative care, or any other aspect related to your diagnosis or care, the Patient Education Resource Room is convenient and comfortable. Inpatients, outpatients, family members, and friends are encouraged to utilize the many services at their disposal, including computer and Internet access, books, brochures, magazines and more.
Easy and Convenient Access
There are two Resource Rooms with access to information and educational materials. The first Patient Education Resource Room is located on the second floor of the Harry and Jeanette Weinberg Building, close to both the outpatient treatment areas and inpatient rooms, so that patients and visitors can take advantage of its vast resources at a time most convenient to them. The second room is on the first floor, located in the Harry J. Duffey Family Patient and Family Services Suite 1210.
A Variety of Resources
- Computer Access
A public use computer with Internet access is available to patients and families, providing a link to the vast array of cancer-related resources on the web.
Titles covering a wide variety of health and wellness topics are on site.
A variety of consumer health journals are available.
- Pamphlets and Brochures
A wealth of easy-to-read pamphlets and brochures span a wide range of cancer-related topics regarding treatment, support programs, emotional and physical well-being, and more.
- Classes, Support Groups, and Special Events
The Patient Education Resource Room is your link to informative workshops to assist in managing diagnosis and treatment. "Ask the Expert" and "Man to Man Prostate Cancer Education Group" are just two of the special programs offered.
- We hope that the Patient Education Resource Rooms will be a valuable guide in helping you find the answers you need.
Disclaimer: All Information provided is intended for your general knowledge only and is not a substitute for medical advice for your specific condition.
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Book Description: One of our most popular charts has now been translated into Spanish! This informative and completely updated chart covers all the major topics for good nutrition and health. It contains excellent descriptions of fats, types of cholesterol, carbohydrates (including the Glycemic Index), protein, and fiber. A table of the benefits and sources of vitamins for various life stages is included.The chart provides visual comparisons of portion sizes of food with other common items (e.g., a cup of pasta is about the size of a tennis ball). Other features include a step-by-step guide on how to read a food label and information on the latest food pyramid.
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Avian influenza in the Netherlands
24 April 2003
Disease Outbreak Reported
Outbreaks of a of highly pathogenic strain of avian influenza virus A (H7N7) have been reported in various poultry farms in the Netherlands since February 2003. Recent cases of the disease in poultry have also been reported in Belgium.
While avian influenza strains normally infect exclusively poultry, Dutch authorities have reported that the H7N7 strain has now jumped the species barrier, causing one death and more than 80 cases of mild disease in humans.
A 57-year-old veterinarian who visited a poultry farm affected by the (H7N7) strain died on 17 April of acute respiratory distress syndrome in the Netherlands. H7N7 influenza virus was isolated from the patient. No other respiratory pathogen was detected in a series of laboratory tests.
The detection of the H7N7 avian influenza strain in humans is the most recent case in which an avian influenza virus has crossed species to affect humans. In Hong Kong in 1997, the H5N1 strain of avian influenza caused its first outbreak in humans, with 18 cases and 6 deaths. In mid-February 2003, again in Hong Kong, the H5N1 strain infected two persons, causing one death.
Since the beginning of the H7N7 outbreak in the Netherlands in late February, there have been 83 confirmed cases of human H7N7. The majority of these cases (79) exhibited conjunctivitis, and 13 of them displayed mild influenza-like illness. Three family members of 2 poultry worker have also fallen ill with a minor respiratory disease, suggesting a possible chain of human-to-human transmission. Affected poultry in the Netherlands are being slaughtered as a control measures. Mass culling of poultry proved effective, in both Hong Kong outbreaks, in preventing further cases in humans.
Close investigation, including tracing of the veterinarian’s contacts, has not revealed any transmission of the disease (in its severe form, as opposed to the much milder conjunctivitis) to other persons. Based on available evidence, WHO concludes that the death is an isolated case, as no efficient human-to-human transmission of the avian H7N7 influenza virus strain has been detected.
In accordance with WHO’s pandemic preparedness plan for influenza, WHO recommends that in countries where initial cases of H7N7 were detected, surveillance and diagnosis of the avian H7N7 virus should be enhanced in humans and susceptible animals (including chickens, turkeys, and pigs).
In addition, countries should initiate specific investigations to increase understanding of possible transmission patterns. Specific personal protection, such as prophylactic use of the antiviral drug oseltamivir for agricultural workers in contact with H7N7-affected poultry, has also been recommended by national authorities in the Netherlands and in Belgium.
WHO advises that persons in contact with H7N7-affected poultry flocks should be on guard for any signs and symptoms of respiratory disease. If symptoms arise, they should consult a doctor, who will then initiate laboratory testing and reporting to health officials.
WHO emphasizes that these heightened surveillance measures will help in the timely detection of any further transmission of H7N7 to humans and to prevent its possible spread.
The WHO Global Influenza Surveillance Network is currently assembling a test kit for H7N7 that will be ready for use in three weeks. As a precautionary measure, the network is also working on the development of a vaccine for H7N7.
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How many movie stars have mug shots in their past?
It might surprise you to learn that quite a few do, although few admit it. Some do but gloss over the circumstances that prompted the unflattering full frontal and profile photos, courtesy of one police department or another.
Here’s one mug shot which surfaced recently.
Hello Everybody. Joe Morella and Frank Segers, your classic movie guys, betting that you — our most savvy audience — had absolutely no trouble identifying the callow-looking face pictured above just from the photo above without first peaking at our headline.
Joe and co-author, Ed Epstein, wrote a bio of Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward sometime back – 1989′s Paul and Joanne — but hadn’t unearthed the above arrest photo of what appears to be a late teenaged Newman. Thus the incident that prompted this shot is not covered in the book.
A little research provides a pretty good idea of how Newman’s mug shot came to be.
The actor came from a reasonably affluent middle class family — his father was a sports goods dealer in Shaker Heights, Ohio, a suburb of Cleveland — and in 1943, at the age of 18, he enlisted in the Navy towards the end of World War II. By 1946, Newman was honorably discharged, and had enrolled at Gambier, Ohio’s Kenyon College on the GI Bill. He was 21 at the time.
Newman always regarded himself as undersized, a frustration since he longed to play college football. (In fact, he actually made Kenyon’s team but only on the practice squad.) Notice that he stands a tad over 5-foot-9-inches in his mug shot. While at Kenyon, Newman also developed the essential skills of heavy duty socializing and beer drinking.
According to Shawn Levy’s Paul Newman: A Life (published 2009, a year after Newman died), The police got the first word: at approximately midnight on Wednesday, October 23, 1946, somebody at the Sunset Club in Mount Vernon, Ohio — the nearest town to Kenyon — summoned the cops to help break up a fight between some local boys and a band of Kenyon football players who’d come into town to slug back beers and chat up girls.
Involved in the melee unbeknowst to the rowdy collegians were two local deputies in plainclothes. The upshot: six students were arrested. One was Paul Newman.
The charges against Newman and three others were later dropped because, according to the prosecutor, they were a part of the resistance only as they were part of the crowd.
But, but, but Newman was kicked off the football team and placed on probation at Kenyon, a college he loved.
If nothing else the youthful indiscretion may have to some extent prepared the actor for one of Newman’s most memorable screen roles, that of Lucas Jackson, the wayward youth who drunkenly vandalizes a small town’s parking meters one night, and is promptly arrested and sentenced to a Florida prison camp. The movie, of course, is 1967′s Cool Hand Luke.
We’ve discovered more mug shots of celebrities, and will be bringing those to you in future blogs. In fact, Joe came up with a brilliant idea: run the jail house photos at the outsets of our five-days-a-week blog, marking the occasion with the designation — Mugg Shot Monday.
So stay tuned for more.
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The rapid growth of the Solar Panel industry has led to many electrical manufacturers working on their own solar panel technologies and many new companies setting up. Some of the brands are well known for producing other electrical goods and some are specialist purely in the solar panel industry.
Here at Solar Pages we have compiled a list of the top manufacturers within the solar industry and a brief synopsis.
SolarCentury are the UK's largest independent solar company. They offer the complete process from design, to manufacture and installation of photovoltaic solar panels and are a supplier to schools, government, industry and homeowners across the country.
Sanyo Solar is a well-established innovator in the solar industry. Sanyo have been producing photovoltaic products for 30 years. Sanyo were the first company to design and produce 20% efficient PV solar panels available in volume to the market. Sanyo do this by their use of HIT solar modules, known as Hetero-junction with Intrinsic Thin Layer. These are hybrid solar panels that use solar cell technology with the thin layer technology together to create maximum efficiency.
Sharp, a well-known player in the electrical industry, offer photovoltaic solar panels to mass markets at affordable prices. This does not mean there is a loss of quality, after all Sharp have been developing their photovoltaic solar panel offering for 50 years now.
Romag are a UK company that has photovoltaic solar panels as a core area of their business. The company specialises in glass processing and their SMT6 range of photovoltaic solar panels are all MCS approved (Microgeneration Certification scheme).
Suntech are newer to the market having been in business for 10 years but in that time have become well established, shipping over 13 million solar panels. Suntech is the world's largest producer of silicon solar modules.
Mitsubishi are an established electrical manufacturer that has over 35 years experience in photovoltaic solar panels. Mitsubishi are proud to use 100% lead-free solder in the production of their PV solar panels and strive to deliver highly efficient systems. Mitsubishi offer some of the more affordable systems, but do not compromise on quality.
Q-Cells are globally one of the largest manufacturers of PV solar systems and have seen significant growth having only been in the market for 12 years. They employ over 200 scientists and engineers that are working constantly to advance their solar technology aiming to bring down the cost of their product but to improve the efficiency at the same time.
SunPower are a US based company, they have a large range of PV solar products for business and residential purchase. SunPower design, manufacture and install their solar technologies and have been in operation in excess of 25 years. SunPower hold the record for the most efficient solar cells at 22.4% efficiency. All SunPower systems come with a generation meter so households can keep track of the energy they are producing.
Yingli produce photovoltaic solar panels known best for their reliability. Yingli manage the production process from manufacturing the cell from silicon to assembling the modules. Yingli has over 11,000 employees with branches in 10 countries globally.
JA Solar are one of the newest companies to market, set up in 2005. JA Solar produce photovoltaic cells that they sell to solar manufacturers worldwide, but also develop and sell their own PV solar systems to commercial businesses and for residential use.
Kyocera have been in the market place for 35 years and pride themselves on completing all production processes in-house giving them 100% control on the delivered product.
First Solar are the largest manufacturer of thin-film photovoltaic solar panels. First Solar have attained the smallest carbon footprint when measured on a life cycle basis of any PV technology. They have also produced the first thin-film photovoltaic system to generate 2GW when measured in a real life situation.
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Zero balancing is a gentle but powerful way of balancing your body’s energy with your body’s structure. Lying on a couch on your back and fully clothed, finger pressure and stretches are used to release tension accumulated in the deep structures of your body.
Zero balancing focuses on a particular group of joints that are involved with the smooth transmission of forces through the weight bearing skeleton, which in effect act as shock absorbers.
Zero balancing improves posture by providing a point of stillness around which your body can relax, giving you the opportunity to let go of unease and pain and experience a new level of integration.
Zero balancing promotes a deep sense of harmony and as a result your body’s’ own natural healing processes are encouraged. It is beneficial for a wide range of people and has extensive application in health care and personal development, stress reduction, pain relief and improving flexibility and posture.
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Nearly $50,000 worth of repairs to the Hydroelectric Dam are being considered by Fort Dodge officials.
The repairs would stop water from flowing through at least one of the broken gates on the dam.
But a long term plan for the dam remains elusive.
''We don't know because things change,'' City Manager David Fierke told the City Council Monday.
As an example of that change, Fierke noted that until last year no one contemplated taking water from the Des Moines River for the city's water supply. But in November of that year, a report indicated that the city may have to take 20 million gallons a day from the river to supply the community and the North Central Ag Industrial Park. Doing that would require doing some work to the dam so that the needed water could be retained. However, Fierke said a more recent analysis indicated that much river water wouldn't be needed.
''It's kind of an ever-flowing thing,'' Fierke said of plans for the dam.
The action now being considered by the council wouldn't address such long-range concerns. Instead, it would stop the flow of water through the dam, creating a bigger pool of water to the north of it.
The dam was built with brackets to hold logs or panels that would prevent water from getting to its gates. The city doesn't have anything to put in those brackets, however.
The council directed Fierke, City Engineer Chad Schaeffer, and John Horrell, superintendent of the John W. Pray Water Facility, to draw up plans for bars or panels to be placed in those brackets. Those plans will then be shown to local contractors who may be interested in creating those barriers.
Larry Beekman, a Fort Dodge welder, has already given the city a $48,000 cost estimate for building the barriers, according to Fierke.
During the Sept. 10 council meeting, Rod Isaacson of 713 Third St. N.W. offered to contribute $1,000 toward repairing the dam. On Monday, Isaacson reported that he has received $4,500 in pledges, including $1,000 promised by Councilman Mark Taylor.
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http://www.messengernews.net/page/content.detail/id/551320/Hydroelectric-Dam-repairs-discussed.html?nav=5010
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The Italian Translation Center provides professional human translation services which are subjected to strict quality control procedures. We keep the turnaround time as short as possible but at the same time ensure a top-class product, saving you time and money.
Below please find some useful facts about Italian:
• Italians is spoken by about 60 million people in Italy, and by some 70 million around the world;
• Italian is the official language in Italy, San Marino and the Vatican City and one of the official languages in Switzerland and Slovenia;
• Italian is written using the Latin alphabet;
• Unlike English, Italian defines everything as being either male or female;
• You have to be very careful with the pronunciation of some words in Italian because it can completely change their meaning;
• Many dialects of Italian are so different from standard Italian that they are considered separate languages, e.g.: Sardinian Continue reading
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Paul Sancya, Associated Press
DEARBORN, Mich. — A chance meeting in an airport lobby between the top executives of Ford Motor Co. and Toyota Motor Corp. has evolved into a deal between the auto giants to jointly develop a gas-electric hybrid engine for pickup trucks and sport utility vehicles.
The companies signed the agreement Monday to share development costs, saying they want to make the technology more affordable for customers and bring it to market faster. Many details have yet to be worked out, but both said their vehicles would remain unique even if they share the same drive systems.
The deal will help both companies meet more stringent fuel economy and pollution standards in the U.S. and elsewhere, while at the same time keeping larger vehicles viable if gas prices continue to rise.
"Trucks and SUVs are indispensable for the U.S. society," said Takeshi Uchiyamada, Toyota's executive vice president for research and development.
The companies aren't sure yet what kind of gas mileage the system will get, but they know that hybrid trucks would help automakers meet U.S. fuel economy standards that require new vehicles to average 56.5 miles per gallon by 2025. Trucks will have lower mileage targets, but still would have to improve to meet the standards.
Neither company would say what vehicles the system would go into, but it was clear they are targeting pickup trucks, which for both are big sellers. Ford's F-Series pickup is the top-selling vehicle in the U.S., and Toyota is still trying to break into the full-sized pickup market with its Tundra model.
Shares of Ford rose 5 cents to $10.04 in afternoon trading, while U.S. shares of Toyota were down 24 cents to $70.46.
Both companies now sell thousands of hybrid cars and trucks worldwide, with Toyota's Prius the world leader in hybrid sales. But they'll have to develop a different system with enough power to haul and tow heavy loads.
Derrick Kuzak, Ford's product development chief, said that although the trucks could have the same engine and transmission, each will be different.
"What makes them uniquely a Ford truck will continue to be there with a hybrid powertrain that we co-develop with Toyota," he said.
Currently the F-150 with a six-cylinder turbocharged engine gets an estimated 16 miles per gallon in the city and 22 on the highway, while a six-cylinder Tundra gets 16 in the city and 20 on the freeway. Both will have to improve if gas prices keep rising and as government fuel economy standards increase.
Kuzak said Ford expects that 10 to 20 percent of Ford's vehicles will have hybrid or electric powertrains by 2020. "This is just a reflection of that plan," he said.
It will take a year for the companies to figure out who will do what research, Kuzak said. After that, they would sign a definitive agreement that would lay out timelines to develop the technology, he said. It will take at least two or three years after that to develop a system, and the companies hope to bring it to market this decade.
The system also would be used in rear-wheel-drive sport utility vehicles, the companies said.
Ford and Toyota also said they will work together to develop standards for the way electronic devices such as smartphones link to cars and trucks. But they would each retain their own touch screens and would have unique systems on their dashboards, he said.
Ford said this is the first time it has worked jointly with Toyota on any project. The company licensed technology from Toyota when it introduced a hybrid system in the Ford Escape SUV in 2004, but now all its hybrids run on technology developed by Ford, Kuzak said.
He said the companies have no plans to share any other components or technologies beyond the agreement announced Monday.
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Events to Honor the Victims Mark Holocaust Memorial Day
Thousands of events and ceremonies will take place in Israel on Thursday, Holocaust Memorial Day. After a siren sounds at 10 AM – at which time Israelis stand at attention, reflecting on the tragedy of the destruction of European Jewry in the Holocaust – events will be held in schools, synagogues, IDF bases, at Yad Vashem, and many other venues.
The main ceremony at Yad Vashem will take place at 1 PM, while Knesset members will take turns reading out the names of the victims. Youth groups will gather at Yad Vashem for a special ceremony later in the afternoon, and the day will be capped by memorial ceremonies at Yad Mordechai, named for the Warsaw Ghetto hero, and Kibbutz Lochamei Hageta'ot [kibbutz named for Ghetto fighters, ed.],Thursday evening.
In Europe, meanwhile, some 18,000 Jewish youths and adults will participate in the March of the Living, a trek which brings participants from the death camps of Poland and Germany, to Israel, where they will arrive in time for Independence Day next week. Leading the March, among others, are Rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau, Tel Aviv's Chief Rabbi, and Israel Police Commander Yochanan Danino. Among a delegation of police attending the March are a number of officers whose parents are survivors.
Among the student groups attending is one from Turkey. The delegation consists of two members 17 and 18 years old respectively. They asked that their names not be published, given the tense situation in their homeland, but they said that visiting the concentration camps was a very moving experience for them, despite the fact that their families, living in Turkey, did not experience the Holocaust firsthand as did the families of most participants in the March.
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Posts Tagged ‘Acupuncture’
Acupressure is being developed in Asia for over 5,000 years and is still practiced today. This is a form of healing that uses pressure on key points on the body, thereby strengthening the body’s own healing power. Today is a successful therapy to relieve emotional stress and disease to stimulate the immune system.
Acupressure acupuncture pressure points with the same. The only difference is that with acupuncture needles are placed at points, while acupressure only finger pressure. When these acupressure points with finger pressure or by giving them needles, muscle tension and improve blood flow needed to help stimulate healing.
Acupressure therapy can help people reduce stress and stress system, increase energy, improve circulation, help improve the degradation of toxic waste, the feeling of well-being and reduce labor market.
Other symptoms such as arthritis, back pain, sciatica, infertility, sinus and respiratory problems, snoring and problems can be aided by an ancient traditional Chinese medicine. These are just some things that acupressure is used to this day.
The concept behind acupressure and acupuncture and other therapies such as shiatsu and reflexology are all based on the concept of a person’s energy or life force. It is a system of belief that life force, also known as known as chi migrate through the body known as meridians together. According to traditional Chinese medicine, there are 20 meridians of the body. It is also believed that the block in the flow of energy in discomfort and disease outcome. Pressing the right place, you can release blocked energy and relieve symptoms.
Incoming search terms:
Weight reduction as well as acupuncture is really a broadly investigated as well as talked about topic amongst conventional Chinese language medication professionals. Chinese language medication may be broadly used within the eastern with regard to a lot more than 5000 many years as well as mostly gaining interest within the western recently. This is actually the Chinese language artwork associated with dealing with numerous health conditions through piercing your body along with locks slim fine needles from specific entire body factors to manage the actual circulation of one’s reviving existence in your body tissue.
Exactly how weight reduction as well as acupuncture function
Laser hair removal goodies the actual mental as well as bodily aspects of excess fat. This impacts the actual bodily working from the entire body as well as mends your brain as well. This can help 1 slim down as well as retains this away over time.
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What are they?
Dark sky lamps are outdoor lamps which utilize shielding in order to minimize light pollution. They are known primarily for their use in that function.
How do they work?
Dark Sky units tend to be a typical lamp, often a spiral CFL, which is contained within a special housing. This housing prevents light from being emitted in any direction except the intended one. They are generally intended to keep light from shining upwards, although there are some units designed to stop side lighting as well.
Where are they used?
Dark sky lamps are used in a variety of situations where the reduction of light pollution is a primary consideration. They generally are designed to prevent light from traveling upward, but they are also used in some applications where light shining horizontally or outward needs to be controlled in order to prevent disruption of the migration patterns of birds and turtles, for example.
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An advanced cooling technology capable of reducing the cooling costs of large data centers by one-third has been developed by researchers from Nanyang Technological University (NTU) and Toshiba.
The researchers are now “test-bedding a new data centre that combines Toshiba’s air cooling technology with NTU’s advanced info-communications technology (ICT),” a news release stated.
Aiming to provide a sustainable solution for the data centers that operate in South-East Asia’s tropical climate, the innovative test-bed is designed around a ‘cutting-edge modular structure’ (that is, container-sized modules that are able to stand alone or be combined with others for more computing power) and with an efficient, tailored cooling system.
The cooling system uses the air outside of the data center for cooling whenever possible. This cuts down greatly on the dat center’s air conditioning needs. Outside air can be used effectively whenever the outside temperature is lower than the overheated temperature inside the data center, but most cooling systems instead use solely air conditioning, which is very expensive.
“Most data centers use air-conditioning to cool their high speed computers round the clock, using re-circulated air regardless of its temperature, thus churning up a huge energy bill, as it takes more energy to cool down hot air.
“The new ICT technologies developed by NTU will optimise the use of computer servers in the data centre by consolidating multiple applications from different servers into one server, then putting the other servers which are not in use into sleep mode, saving both electricity and the energy needed to cool them.”
Data centers, which contain and maintain the “back-end information technology (IT) systems and data stores consisting of mainframes, servers and databases,” usually use 100 to 200 times more energy than conventional office buildings.
The technologies that were used in this test-bed have demonstrated energy savings of up to 40% when they are compared to conventional data centers used in Japan.
Source: Nanyang Technological University
Image Credits: Nanyang Technological University
For the fate of the sons of men and the fate of beasts is the same; as one dies, so dies the other. They all have the same breath, and man has no advantage over the beasts; for all is vanity. - Ecclesiastes 3:19
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The structure of an Alu element. (a) The top portion shows a genomic Alu element between two direct repeats formed at the site of insertion (red arrowheads). The Alu ends with a long A-run, often referred to as the A-tail, and it also has a smaller A-rich region (indicated by AA) separating the two halves of a diverged dimer structure. Alu elements have the internal components of a RNA polymerase III promoter (boxes A and B), but they do not encode a terminator for RNA polymerase III. They utilize whatever stretch of T nucleotides is found at various distances downstream of the Alu element to terminate transcription. A typical Alu transcript is shown below the genomic Alu, showing that it encompasses the entire Alu, including the A-tail, and has a 3' region that is unique for each locus. (b) The Alu RNA is thought to fold into separate structures for each monomer unit. The RNA has been shown to bind the 7SL RNA SRP9 and 14 heterodimer, as well as polyA-binding protein (PABP). It is thought that at least one other protein binds the duplex portion of the RNA structure. (c) In the target-primed reverse transcription mechanism, the Alu RNA (blue) brings the ORF2p to the genome where its endonuclease activity cleaves at a T-rich consensus sequence. The T-rich region primes reverse transcription by ORF2p on the 3' A-tail region of the Alu element. This creates a cDNA copy of the body of the Alu element. A nick occurs by an unknown mechanism on the second strand and second-strand synthesis is primed. The new Alu element is then flanked by short direct repeats that are duplicates of the DNA sequence between the first and second nicks.
Deininger Genome Biology 2011 12:236 doi:10.1186/gb-2011-12-12-236
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The SoCal connection between Scouts and God
Paul Schneider has been a Boy Scout for 11 years. The 16-year-old from Valencia started out as a Tiger Cub Scout in first grade. In fifth grade he became a Boy Scout and, on Sept. 28, 2010, made Eagle Scout.
As a Boy Scout, he earned the Ad Altare Dei (to the altar of God) award through a program that helps Catholic scouts develop a fully Christian way of life in their faith community. It’s organized around workbook chapters based on the seven sacraments: Eucharist, baptism, confirmation, penance (or reconciliation), matrimony, holy orders and the sacrament of anointing of the sick.
“You talk about the sacrament, and then you talk about scouting --- and then at the end of each chapter you kind of relate them both together,” explains Paul about the program mentored by local Catholics. “So we did Bible readings and went over different parts of the sacrament and then related it all to scouting.”
Moreover, last March as an Eagle Scout, he earned the Pope Pius XII award, which is Catholic scouting’s program dealing with life vocations and church ministries. It includes youth-led discussions on current issues facing the church and society as well as a retreat or day of recollection.
“That one was more geared towards high school students, and you talked more about your vocational call,” he points out. “So we brought in deacons and priests and nuns, and then a married couple. And we asked them different question about their vocations.”
Again, the aim was to relate Catholicism and the church today to scouting. The teenager did a report on illegal immigration. For both awards, or “emblems,” scouts must appear before a board of review panel.
Morality and values
“The big thing that these scouting programs did for me is understanding that my faith and my belief in God isn’t just at church on Sundays,” he says. “It’s everywhere. When you see it in a place like scouting, which religion technically isn’t exactly a part of, you see how it relates to every part of your life.
“Scouting has really helped me grow in my own sense of morality and values, more so than anything else I’ve been involved in. We have our Scout law where we say a Scout is trustworthy, helpful, loyal, friendly and all those things that we’re called to be as members of the church.
“And you also spend a lot of time in the wilderness and taking in God’s creation and spending more quiet time being able to reflect on things,” he adds. “So it definitely ingrains those morals into you big time.”
Scouting has really helped me grow in my own sense of morality and values, more so than anything else I’ve been involved in. We have our Scout law where we say a Scout is trustworthy, helpful, loyal, friendly and all those things that we’re called to be as members of the church.
Plus, there’s that last tenant of the Scout Law: A Scout is reverent. Paul says that’s a “big thing” Catholic Scouts focus on. Basically, it’s a kind of respect --- knowing that there’s a time for joking around and having fun as well as a time for seriousness and reverence. And he says in church is where reverence is required the most for “your unbelievable respect for God.”
And when the 16-year-old is asked if being a Scout all these years has made him a better human being, he doesn’t hesitate with his response.
“Definitely,” he says. “I think it’s done wonders for me. It’s opened up a ton of doors. And being around people who have the same morals and desires that you do, and being around adults that you can role model has just been wonderful.
“Scouting has helped my dad and I become so close,” the Eagle Scout also confides. “He’s been a scout master my whole life, and he’s been my confirmation teacher. So, you know, scouting has really been a part of many aspects of my life. And then being able to relate all that to my religion has been a huge deal for me.”
Arthur “Tri” Fritz, director of annual giving for the Los Angeles Area Council of the Boy Scouts of America, points out that many Catholics don’t really know about the close connection between SoCal scouting to not only the Catholic Church but other religions, too. He reports that more than 40 local troops, in fact, are sponsored by parishes and Catholic organizations.
“Scouting itself isn’t a religious organization. We don’t have the backing of any one faith,” he explains. “But the tenants of scouting have always believed that in the development of a young man, faith should be a part of their lives. So it’s actually in the Scout oath that the kids take. They literally say that: ‘On my honor I will do my best to do my duty to God and country.’
“It’s a belief in something that’s beyond you. So many activities and programs of the Scouts deal with something that is beyond just the one person. We talk about service. We talk about service to our community, to our country, to the land that we live in.
“So there are values that are part of our lives that are absolutes,” he notes. “There are rights and wrongs in this world. And scouting as an organization is going to do our best to instill the moral compass that young men should have, especially at these ages. So that they are trained not just in school with English and math, but with a value and ethic system that will provide for them as they go through life.”
Fritz points out that the first religion award given out to a Boy Scout was for Catholic scouting in 1927. Today, there is a National Catholic Committee on Scouting within the Catholic Church as well as a Catholic Committee on Scouting for the Archdiocese of Los Angeles. And last year more than 300 local Scouts earned Ad Altare Dei (ages 13-14) and Pope Pius XII (ages 15-18) or Light of Christ (ages 6-7) and Parvuli Dei (ages 8-10) Catholic emblems.
One of them was Paul Schneider.
“I want to remain in scouting as long as I can, and then, obviously, have my sons be involved in scouting and the church, too,” muses the junior at Hart High School in Santa Clarita. “I think scouting has done unbelievable things for me, and, you know, I can’t thank my dad enough for getting me involved. So nothing would make me happier than to see my sons go the same way that I did.”
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