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NEWTOWN, Conn. (AP) — A group of bicyclists plans to pedal to Washington to press Congress to enact gun restrictions following the killings of 20 children and six educators at a Newtown elementary school.
The News-Times reports that the bicyclists, including three from Newtown, plan to leave Newtown on March 9 and arrive in Washington three days later.
Sandy Hook resident Monte Frank, whose daughter was a student of teacher Victoria Soto, one of those killed on Dec. 14, is credited for the idea for the nearly 400-mile ride. He says the goal is to push for what he calls common-sense gun safety legislation.
The cyclists, known as Team 26, are competitive and professional riders and will be led by a Newtown police officer and cruiser.
Copyright 2013 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Did you like this article? Vote it up or down! And don't forget to add your comments below!
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Plourde Family Genealogy Forum
An interesting note. When couples were married they and wedding attendees were asked to sign the Marriage Register. In most cases there were no signatures, only a note stating that they could not sign. However, when Antoine Mignault and Marie-Elmina Plourde married there were a series of signatures in the Marriage Register as follows: Elmina Plourde, Hermine Mignault, Baptiste Plourde, Julie Plourde, Thecle Plourde, Eugenie Plourde, Thomas Bouchard, and Alphonse Lebrun. The priest was N.H. Theriault. Notice that her sisters signed their maiden name even though they were married. It appears that all knew how to write.
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As spring arrives gardeners will inevitably return to their yearly cycle of making their yards look beautiful for another season. It’s the perfect time for those of us with a green thumb to be thinking about the most eco friendly ways we can garden.
- As spring arrives gardeners will inevitably return to their yearly cycle of making their yards look beautiful for another season. It’s the perfect time for those of us with a green thumb to be thinking about the most eco friendly ways we can garden. There are many ways to be environmentally friendly in your yard. Here are five tips to get you started: 1) Build that compost pile. Nothing helps your plants more than a generous heaping of compost. Buy yourself a compost bin–lacking that, even an old plastic garbage can with a few holes poked into it for air circulation will do. Add your kitchen scraps and yard waste, wait for a few months, and enjoy some black gold. You’d be amazed at how much garbage you will keep out of the landfill simply by composting it and returning it to nature. 2) Use rainwater barrels. Rain is easy to take for granted, but we sure miss it in our garden when we suffer a dry spell. Why not collect rain water when it’s in abundance during a storm and save it for the day you’ll need it? That’s exactly what rainwater barrels do for you. You can set them up under your gutters, and they can collect up to sixty gallons of rain depending on their size. Then, when the skies are blue and there is not a cloud in sight you can release the water through your hose and right to your plants when they really need it. 3) Use drought-resistant landscaping. It’s not just about cactus and succulents. There are lots of plants out there that thrive without much water, many of which flower beautifully. There are books out there that give drought resistant plant suggestions; pick one of them up and see which ones might be a good fit for your garden. The less water your garden needs, the less water you waste. 4) Feed the local wildlife. Creating a local wildlife sanctuary is very eco friendly. You can easily build a hospitable garden for your birds by making available birdhouses, fountains, and food available for them. Likewise, you can plant flowers that readily attract hummingbirds and butterflies. What could be more beautiful than watching 5) Use LED grow lights. Many gardeners like to start their seedlings indoors, and will often use very energy-intensive metal halide or high pressure sodium lamps. Instead, they should use LED grow lights, which use up to 80% less energy than the other lamps while delivering the same results. They come in both blue and red varieties, offering the full spectrum needed for a plant’s entire life cycle. Following these guidelines helps to ensure that your garden is maintained in the most earth friendly way possible. There are many other ways to do that too. All you have to give thought to is how you use water and energy, how well you recycle waste, and how close to nature your garden is as a habitat for the local wildlife. Devlin Gerson writes about earth friendly products at EcoVillageGreen.com, where you can also read more about using LED growing lights for your garden . http://ecovillagegreen.com/2010/04/led-grow-lights-come-down-in-price-offer-full-spectrum-energy-efficiency/
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Mysterious blue eyeball may be from squid
This Thursday, Oct. 11, 2012 photo made available by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission shows a giant eyeball from a mysterious sea creature that washed ashore and was found by a man walking the beach in Pompano Beach, Fla. on Wednesday. No one knows what species the huge blue eyeball came from. (AP Photo/Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, Carli Segelson)
Published Friday, October 12, 2012 9:47AM EDT
Last Updated Friday, October 12, 2012 4:56PM EDT
A mysterious blue eyeball that washed ashore in Florida may belong to a squid or swordfish, a scientist said.
The eyeball, which is the size of a soft ball, was discovered Wednesday morning by a man taking a stroll on Pompano Beach, north of Fort Lauderdale.
“It was very, very fresh,” Gino Covacci, who discovered the eyeball, told Florida’s Sun-Sentinel on Thursday.
“It was still bleeding when I put it in the plastic bag,” he said.
He stored it in his refrigerator until he could notify the local authorities.
Officials at the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission launched an extensive study to determine the eye’s species of origin and posted a photo of it on its Facebook page to encourage followers to share their own theories.
On Friday, Heather Bracken-Grissom, an assistant biology professor at Florida International University in Miami, said she has been conferring with her colleagues about the organ after seeing photos online.
She said its likely origin is a deep sea squid or a large swordfish.
According to Bracken-Grissom, the lens and pupil are like those in a deep sea squid's eye, which can be as large as soccer balls and dislodge easily.
The waters off the coast of southern Florida abound with large sharks, tuna, swordfish and whales.
With files from The Associate Press
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London — Following Archbishop Desmond Tutu's decision to pull out of this week's Discovery Leadership Summit in Johannesburg, the Office of Tony Blair released the following statement:
"Obviously Tony Blair is sorry that the Archbishop has decided to pull out now from an event that has been fixed for months and where he and the Archbishop were never actually sharing a platform.
"As far as Iraq is concerned they have always disagreed about removing Saddam by force - such disagreement is part of a healthy democracy.
"As for the morality of that decision we have recently had both the memorial of the Halabja massacre where thousands of people were murdered in one day by Saddam's use of chemical weapons; and that of the Iran-Iraq war where casualties numbered up to a million including many killed by chemical weapons.
"So these decisions are never easy morally or politically".
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Five Business Tips From The Beatles
I am an ardent Beatles fan. Thus, when Come Together – The Business Wisdom of The Beatles (Come Together) was released, my hopes were high for a great read. Unfortunately, I was a bit disappointed.
Despite the book’s shortcoming, it contains a number of insightful lessons for budding entrepreneurs. Of the 100-business “lessons” articulated in the book, I highlight a few below which I feel are the most relevant and impactful for entrepreneurs.
Beatles Business Lessons
My primary complaint with Come Together is the authors’ attempt to divine 100 meaningful business insights from the Beatles’ career. Although successful entities, including the Beatles, have much to teach entrepreneurs, 100-lessons is about 80 too many. Some of the examples are patently obvious (e.g., (i) drugs are bad, (ii) no matter how much success you have, you are not invincible, (iii) have fun, and (iv) negativity is a weakness) and others only relate to the Beatles in a tangential fashion.
In the list below, I have compiled some of my favorite lessons from Come Together, combined them with a few of my own Beatles inspired startup tips.
1. What’s Your B7?
The Beatles consistently walked a challenging line between creating innovative art which remained imminently accessible. They differentiated their product with subtle, unconventional techniques, such as the use of the B7 chord in I Want To Hold Your Hand.
After alternating very conventional C and D chords, John plays a B7th chord at the end of the line “I think you’ll understand.” For years, the note was improperly scored as a B-minor chord, because that was the conventional note one would expect following a C and D chord progression.
As the Come Together authors note, the instability caused by the unexpected and unorthodox use of the B7 chord is, “interesting and pleasing to the listener.” One strange chord is immaterial in isolation. However, the Beatles consistently differentiated their products by deploying surprising, adventuresome chord progressions throughout their career. At the end of this section, the authors challenge the reader by asking, “What is your B7? You and your competitors are probably using the B7 in all the conventional ways. Don’t be afraid to add a little instability, a little mystery…” to your company’s products and their underlying value propositions.Continued on the next page
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What Has Been the Lasting Damage?
by Adam S. Posen, Peterson Institute for International Economics
Op-ed in Eurointelligence
September 21, 2009
Adam Posen is Senior Fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics and a member of the Monetary Policy Committee of the Bank of England. The views expressed here are solely his own, and not those of the Bank, the MPC, or any of its staff.
The major economies seem to be on their way to economic recovery. But how much of and how long a recovery should we expect? The question is key to setting monetary policy as well as wage and price expectations going forward. This comes down to the assessment of economic potential, the average rate at which we can expect a national economy to grow in real terms sustainably without causing inflation or deflation. Economic potential is difficult to measure even in normal times. Coming out of the worst financial shock in 70 years complicates the assessment considerably.
We have to assess how much lasting damage the crisis has done to our economies. The shock was primarily demand driven, resulting from the financial panic and increase in savings—that is why the policy response of fiscal and monetary stimulus was both appropriate and effective. But the shock still could have done lasting damage both to aggregate supply, the base level of capacity from which our economies will grow once the slack is taken up, and to the trend rate of growth going forward. I fear that it has indeed done such damage, particularly to the latter.
As on many things to do with macroeconomic policy, the United States and the European Union are divided on how to think about this. At a conference I co-organized at the Bank of Italy this month, two American economists gave rather optimistic assessments. They saw the US economy as quite flexible, the share of the financial sector in the US economy to be reallocated to other uses quite small, and the functionality of the financial system for allocating real investment to be relatively unimpeded. Hence, they thought there was plenty of room for demand to run hot, and even for greater stimulus policy, before the slack in the economy was taken up—they also thought that there would be no lasting damage to US trend growth.
A number of European participants in the conference disagreed. Even in the continental economies where the financial sector had not grown so large, there was concern that aggregate supply had shrunk. This would mean less room for catch-up growth (and for stimulative policies) to run and slower growth going forward. The need to reallocate labor and capital across sectors—say from construction to exports in Spain and the United Kingdom, but also away from autos in Germany and France—loomed large. So did fears of what distortions and costs rising government deficits would impose.
This difference arises partly from experience, as my colleague Jean Pisani-Ferry points out. In Europe, growth shocks have tended to be persistent, meaning that recessions had lasting negative effects, whereas in the United States, the economy has tended to bounce back fully after recessions. While that certainly is true of the past, I am not so sure that the difference will be as stark this time. In fact, the convergence across the Atlantic may arise as much out of the United States showing more persistent difficulties coming out of this recession than it did coming out of past recessions, as it will from Europe rebounding better.
On the positive side of the convergence towards full rebound, labor flexibility has certainly increased meaningfully in most of Western Europe. That should speed reallocation across sectors and lead to lower increases in long-term unemployment. The clear commitment by all European governments to reverse temporary fiscal measures, as well as the well-anchored inflation expectations throughout the European Union, is a major improvement over the past. This will bring rewards in terms of limiting the lasting damage to European potential.
The factors that are likely to lead to slower growth as a result of the crisis are daunting, however, and are relatively more applicable to the United States than in past recessions. First, a lot of human and financial capital has been lost or foregone due to the crisis. Some of this investment was specific to sectors—residential construction, financial services, auto production—that cannot be expected to return to the share in the economy or the rapid growth they displayed earlier this decade. People will have to adjust to working in new fields, and find employment in those fields. The capital investment available in those fields to make those people more productive will lag as well.
Second, the financial sector is unlikely to do a terribly good job of allocating financing to new uses and newer businesses for a while. Not only will banks be rebuilding their balance sheets and raising capital, which will restrict lending, but also banks and other funders are likely to make poor choices at the margin about whom to lend to until their government guarantees are reduced and their capital restored. Appetite for riskier investments will be low, putting some brake on innovation. And the sea change in public debt levels for the United States as well as the greater awareness of coming health care costs will crowd out some private investment for at least a few years.
It is worth noting that US potential output growth was already noticeably declining by 2007, prior to the crisis. Fewer women and immigrants were joining the labor force, and productivity growth had slowed, perhaps due to the diminishing returns from applying IT in the economy with nothing to take its place. Europe was doing no better, its productivity had gone up significantly only in privatized industries during the past decade, according to European Commission and European Central Bank analyses. The idea that anything coming out of this would reverse those trends seems to be a stretch. That the crisis will worsen the strains on employment and postpone our next technological leap seems much more likely. I fear the European views about the lasting damage from the crisis will prove right on both sides of the Atlantic.
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Hex KB is a two player game, played on the board shown in Figure 1. There are two red border segments, two blue border segments, and a "portal" (explained below) highlighted in green. The two players, designated Red and Blue, take turns claiming unoccupied cells on the board, one cell per turn, by adding stones of their own color to the board.
[Technical note (totally non-essential for learning the rules of the game): The "KB" stands for Klein bottle, an unusual, four dimensional shape. The Hex KB board is a Klein bottle, or more precisely, a Klein bottle with a hole in it. The hole perimeter is divided into four segments, alternating in color between red and blue, and is stretched outward, flattening the Klein bottle and forming an outer perimeter. The topology of Hex KB is investigated in Hex KB Topology.]
Draws cannot occur in Hex KB. Mark Steere designed Hex KB in March 2009.
The two "portal frames" (highlighted in green) are considered to be coincident. So when you place a stone on a portal
frame cell, you must also place a stone on the corresponding cell in the
corresponding portal frame while it is still your turn. Although you have placed two stones during your turn, you have only claimed one cell since the two portal
frames and the cells within them are coincident.
In Figure 2 Red claimed the first cell of the game - a single cell represented by two red stones. Now it's Red's turn to claim another cell.
SIMPLE CONNECTING PATH
A path of like-colored stones that connects the two border segments of the stones' color, and which doesn't pass through the portal is a "simple connecting path". See Figure 3.
SINGLE TRANSIT CONNECTING PATH
A connecting path that passes through the portal once is called a "single transit connecting path". See Figure 4.
DOUBLE TRANSIT CONNECTING PATH
A connecting path that spirals through the portal twice is called a "double transit connecting path". See Figure 5.
A loop of stones that passes through the portal is called a "portal loop". In Figure 6 a closed path (loop) of blue stones passes through the portal.
BORDER SEGMENT CELLS Cells in a border segment can be used as part of a path of stones which are the same color as the border segment.
Figure 7 shows a red portal loop which includes red border segment cells.
To win, you must meet at least one of the following three criteria:
1. SIMPLE CONNECTING PATH
Red has won with a simple connecting path in Figures 8a and 8b, passing through the portal net zero times in both cases. (The blue stones have been omitted for clarity.)
2. PORTAL LOOP AND SINGLE TRANSIT CONNECTING PATH (TWO PATHS TOTAL)
Red has won with a portal loop and a single transit connecting path (two distinct paths) in Figures 9a and 9b.
3. DOUBLE TRANSIT CONNECTING PATH
Red has won with a double transit connecting path in Figures 10a and 10b.
Hex KB has an interesting geometric property. If the board is completely filled with red and blue stones
(in any proportion of red stones to blue stones), there will always be a winning solution in one color but never in
both colors simultaneously. See if you can determine the winning color in Puzzle A.
Feel free to publish this rule sheet, and to program the
game of Hex KB for online or offline play. No licensing fee or royalties are
expected. However please donít change the name or the rules, and please
attribute the game to me, Mark Steere. My other games can be found at
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Connect to share and comment
Former Haitian President Artistide, exiled in South Africa, says he's ready to help Haiti rebuild. Mandela's wife urges Africans to help Haiti. Police and journalists clash over a news interview promising crime during the World Cup. Hearings on Eskom's rate hike end after three years. Internet usage is over ten percent for the first time. The Food and Allied Workers' Union is planning an anti-Coke campaign. Obama is the apparent reason for a rise in African tourism. And the ANC releases "day-glo snakeskin" jackets for party members.
Top News: Former Haitian president Jean Bertrand Aristide, who has been exiled in South Africa since 2004, told reporters in Johannesburg that he was ready to return to Haiti and help the country rebuild from the devastating earthquake. “As far as we are concerned, we are ready to leave today, tomorrow, at any time to join the people of Haiti, to share in their suffering, help rebuild the country,” he said at a news conference, tears streaming down his face. However, it is not known when or if he will return. Aristide, Haiti’s first democratically elected president was ousted in a popular revolt and now lives with his wife and two daughters in Pretoria.
South African rescue teams travelled to Haiti to help with relief efforts, while a campaign called Africa for Haiti, backed by Graca Machel, the wife of Nelson Mandela, urged Africans to get involved with the rebuilding of the shattered country.
Police clashed with journalists in a dispute over a TV news report in which two self-confessed criminals, whose faces were concealed, threatened to rob and kill tourists during the World Cup this year. The ETV report ignited a storm of controversy in South Africa and drew harsh words from the country’s police chiefs . Authorities are using apartheid-era laws to demand that the journalists involved identify their sources to police, a move that received support from the ruling African National Congress party. However, the subpoenaing of ETV journalists was criticized for infringing on press freedom. One of the two men from the news report was arrested and another man, who ETV said helped to set up the interview, committed suicide.
World Cup organizers are hoping that offering easier ways for South Africans to purchase World Cup tickets will boost flagging ticket sales for games involving African teams. Football fans in South Africa have complained that current procedures for buying tickets, either online or at bank branches, are too complicated because many people don’t have Internet access or live far from banks. South Africa’s World Cup chief Danny Jordaan expressed concern that few locals were buying tickets for South African national team Bafana Bafana, and said that for the first time in World Cup history the host country is not topping the ticket sales list.
South Africa’s national parks authority announced that it would start military patrols in Kruger National Park, which is world famous for its wildlife, after poachers killed 14 rhinos in the first two weeks of this year. Rhino poaching is on the increase in South Africa. The animals are killed for their horns, which are usually used in traditional medicines in Asia or for ornamental purposes.
Money: Public hearings on state-owned power utility Eskom’s proposed rate hike of 35 percent a year for the next three years came to a close. The price increase has been widely opposed in South Africa, with everyone from business leaders to human rights groups warning that it will hurt the country. Meanwhile, Eskom’s recently ousted chief executive filed a suit against the energy supplier for R85 million, but said he would settle for his job back.
Internet usage in South Africa passed the 10 percent mark, or 5 million users, for the first time. The number of Internet users grew by 15 percent last year, from 4.6 million users to 5.3 million. A range of factors are cited for the record growth, including a new undersea cable to South Africa and more competitive packages being offered by large Internet service providers.
The Food and Allied Workers’ Union said that it is planning an anti-Coca-Cola campaign, focused on its sponsorship of the World Cup, after unsuccessful wage talks with Amalgamated Beverage Industries, the soft drinks division of South African Breweries (SAB). Some 2,500 ABI employees have been on strike for more than a month.
Travel industry experts said that the World Cup and the “Obama effect” are boosting tourism in Africa. Africa was the only continent to see an increase in tourism last year, with the number of international tourist arrivals rising by 5 percent, compared to a fall of 4 percent worldwide, mainly attributed to the economic crisis and swine flu.
Elsewhere: South Africa’s World Cup organizers are furious at a British company advertising anti-stab vests for fans attending the soccer championships in June. Organizers are sensitive about the suggestion of violent crime at the event. The company’s website quotes crime statistics on South Africa, which has one of the highest murder rates in the world, and says that the vests can be customized with team colors or slogans. A local World Cup spokesman said that the vests were an “abominable money-making ploy using fear tactics.”
Football legend Diego Maradona, visiting South Africa, shrugged off security fears and praised the country’s World Cup preparations.
The ANC released a range of leather jackets for its party members in neon green, yellow and black, including a gaudy design described as “day-glo snakeskin” and another that resembles a marching band uniform. In a poll by the Independent Online, 86 percent of respondents said they would not buy a jacket.
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LONDON, Dec. 11 (UPI) -- Though Scotland is rich in renewable and conventional energy reserves, a single U.K. market may be more beneficial for all, the British energy secretary said.
Scotland plans a referendum for independence on 2014. The Scottish government maintains it could support itself financially in large part though oil and natural gas developments in the North Sea.
Scotland is one of the world leaders in renewable energy growth. In September, Edinburgh said there may be 24 billion recoverable barrels of oil and natural gas in the North Sea, worth an estimated $2.4 trillion.
British Energy Secretary Ed Davey, in an article in The Scotsman newspaper, writes the government in Edinburgh has "seized the opportunity" in conventional and renewable energy resources.
Davey, however, said the British government has helped play a key role in Scotland's success.
"Some argue that Scotland's energy resources alone are a guarantee of prosperity," he writes. "But I disagree."
A united kingdom, he writes, is a stronger market where the Scottish government can reach a broader consumer base for its resources.
"Independence raises fundamental questions about the future of our single energy market and our U.K.-wide incentive schemes, which the Scottish government must answer," said Davey.
|Additional Energy Resources Stories|
SAN ANTONIO, May 20 (UPI) --BP has take "a significant step" toward selling a California oil refinery and regional retail networks to Tesoro Corp. after getting U.S. federal approval.
WASHINGTON, May 20 (UPI) --Commercial space activities may soon utilize a NASA launch pad at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida that was designed for the Apollo space program.
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Dáil Éireann - Volume 613 - 01 February, 2006
Written Answers. - Marine Safety.
Mr. Costello Mr. Costello
140. Mr. Costello asked the Minister for Transport if, in view of the recent series of maritime disasters, he has made a decision to provide an emergency towing vessel to provide extra protection for mariners and the Irish coast in general; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [3135/06]
Mr. Cullen Mr. Cullen
Mr. Cullen: The importance of providing emergency towing vessel facilities, ETV, to protect our coasts has been recognised, including the possibility of sharing such services with the UK in relation to the east coast. However, the very significant costs involved has meant that, in the context of other marine emergency response priorities, it has not been possible to date to put permanent ETV arrangements in place. I have therefore asked the Coast Guard to look again at this issue and advise me on suitable options having regard to associated costs and benefits.
Dáil Éireann 613 Written Answers. Marine Safety.
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For this post, I’m going to concentrate on a comma issue that can cause problems for writers. The rule I’m speaking of is the one that states nonessential elements should be separated from the rest of the sentence with commas before and after the element in question.
Unlike most other comma issues, this one involves making a judgement call, which can be a little scary. Before you can be sure if you need to use commas to set it apart from the rest of the sentence, you have to determine if the element is essential or nonessential to the meaning of the sentence.
The way you can do this is to ask yourself if the meaning of the sentence would clearly change if you remove the element in question. If you add an element to a sentence and it does not really affect that sentence’s fundamental meaning, you know that the creature you are dealing with is nonessential to the sentence and, therefore, needs to be set apart from the rest of the sentence with commas before and after.
Lucy, who is John’s sister, is planning on meeting us out for coffee later.
In the above sentence, the fact that Lucy happens to be John’s sister has nothing to do with the fundamental meaning of the sentence, which is that she is meeting us for coffee later.
The man who arrested her is my brother-in-law.
In the above sentence, the phrase in the center of the sentence, “who arrested her” is an essential piece of information that would change the whole meaning of the sentence if we removed it.
So, as you can see, even though it does require a little bit of judgement, it really isn’t all that difficult to make the distinction. The main thing is just to be aware of the rule. If you keep it in mind, it won’t sneak up and bite you.
Also, I thought it only fair to tell everyone that today is the day that my family is getting together to move my brother and his family into they’re new home. Because I’ll be helping them move most of the day, I might not be the most responsive to comments until later on. I just wanted to mention this and apologize in advance. I don’t want anyone out there in WG2E land to think that I’m ignoring them.
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It is important to be aware of what the common symptoms are for children with ADHD if you are a parent. If a child does have ADHD, then something needs to be done about it, and qualified help from a medical professional needs to be sought. That is the best way to help your child deal with this disorder; otherwise your child will be at a disadvantage in school and in life. The symptoms of this disorder can easily fool many parents though. So often ADHD symptoms can appear to be normal children behavior. The difference between ADHD and the average child behavior can luckily be observed by the parent over time. Today, we’ll talk more about this subject and give you three ADHD symptoms in children so you’ll have more awareness.
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Published October 29, 2012
Banks must ensure safety and soundness of their systems
Tony Chew, director and specialist adviser to MAS discusses the urgent need for banks to boost their defenses in response to the various technology risks of today.
Date: Oct 29, 2012
Author: Tony Chew
Categories: Data & Analytics, Operational Risk & Security, Regulation, Risk & Performance, Risk and Regulation, Technology & Operations
Keywords: The Asian Banker, DataWorld 2012, Tony Chew, MAS, Rope Trading, Standard Chartered Bank, HSBC, Technology Risk, Data Mingling, TRM, Big Data
The banking system can be likened to a heart in the body. The heart pumps oxygen rich blood to all parts of the body sustaining life and keeps the body health. Now the banking system in terms of its function is very similar to a heart. It pumps money to all parts of the economy, facilitates and promotes industrial development, commerce, trade and productive investments. We need a robust…
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BINH HUNG, Vietnam -- First off, don’t call it an orphanage. It is a “social center,” which happens to be the home for 45 parentless children, as well as the setting for another 140 poor area children who come daily for schooling.
Next, forget all those Oliver Twist images of abused, hungry children pounding on tables asking for food. While meat, fish and vegetables are equally shared and portioned for the children at the center, there is an “all you can eat” policy for soup and rice.
And forget the locks on the doors, images out of a Dickens’ novel. This center has an open gate policy. “You want to make it out on the streets on your own, feel free. … Need a quarter or two in change to get you started, here it is,” Mary Nguyen Nhu Tha, a 44-year-old, ten year fully professed Sister Lover of the Holy Cross, explained.
“Some of the children feel the need to leave, to try it out on their own, to live on the streets for a bit. I say to them, ‘here’s an extra shirt and pants. Go and try it,’” Tha said with a chuckle, unable to contain her spirited laughter. “They come back in a day or two, shirt and pants dirty and looking for food. It’s usually boys being boys.”
Tha has been living with and working among the children of Binh Hung Social Center for the past seven years – with hardly a vacation, except for an occasional retreat, she says, not a hint of complaint in her voice. She says she thoroughly enjoys the children, who she describes as keen on self preservation, meaning cunning.
Catholics in Vietnam are forbidden to run private schools or hospitals. But “social centers” for homeless children is another story. Vietnamese women religious congregations are running dozens, if not hundreds all over the country.
I happened into the Binh Hung center around dinner time and children were eating their food – not at long tables – but informally in the courtyard, sitting in small groups with friends their same age. The children here run in age form two to 19.
The children go to classes and are are taught by some highly motivated women. Four women religious and other assorted volunteers make up the staff. Some notebooks are donated by the local government authorities. But pretty much all the other educational needs come from the sisters’ congregation.
Years back, when the center was first established, the women had to go out persuade families to bring their children in for education. Many families who live in the area are immigrants from the countryside, and children begin work at a young age, often doing petty commerce on the streets.
“At first we had to compensate parents for the loss of income when their children came to school,” Tha explained. “But after a while they began to see the value of the education we were providing and they began to bring their children to the center to sign up for classes.”
There are a dozen computers in the computer room. Tha says computer education begins at eight years of age.
As I wondered around the center after dinner most of the children were sitting on the floor in one room watching a cartoon on a TV set fixed at a cartoon television channel.
No one asks to grow up parentless. But for one reason or another all of the children at the center find themselves in the unfortunate situation.
Their stories wrench the heart. That said, the women religious who are filling in for parents here appear to understand these children’s special needs. They masterfully mix child psychology and love to support their nurturing efforts.
By the time these children get through their teens they will have high school diplomas or technical skills to make it out in the world on their own.
And if things don’t quite work out the first time they leave, well, the Sisters of the Lovers of the Holy Cross are there at the social center waiting to provide even more support.
[Tom Fox is NCR Editor.]
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The following HTML text is provided to enhance online
readability. Many aspects of typography translate only awkwardly to HTML.
Please use the page image
as the authoritative form to ensure accuracy.
Prudent Practices in the Laboratory: Handling and Disposal of Chemicals
nor is regulated as hazardous. If these different types of waste are combined, then the total must be treated as hazardous waste, and the price for disposal of the nonhazardous portion increases markedly. When safe and allowed by regulation, disposal of nonhazardous waste via the normal trash or sewer can substantially reduce disposal costs. This is the kind of waste segregation that makes economic as well as environmental sense.
It is wise to check the rules and requirements of the local solid waste management authority and develop a list of materials that can be disposed of safely and legally in the normal trash. This includes waste that is not regulated because it does not exhibit any of the hazardous characteristics (ignitability, corrosivity, reactivity, or toxicity) as defined by EPA and is not listed as hazardous. The common wastes usually not regulated as hazardous include certain salts (e.g., potassium chloride and sodium carbonate), many natural products (e.g., sugars and amino acids), and inert materials used in a laboratory (e.g., noncontaminated chromatography resins and gels).
7.B.8Disposal of Spills
Most chemical spills can and should be cleaned up by laboratory workers themselves. In general, these are spills of known composition that do not involve injury, do not represent a fire or personal hazard, and are less than 1 gallon (or less for very toxic materials). Regulations allow laboratory workers to clean up such spills, although it is advisable that they have training to handle spills and adequate equipment to carry out the cleanup safely. Outside help, properly trained, should be requested if there is any doubt about the ability of the laboratory personnel to clean up the spill safely. But once help is requested from outside the immediate spill area, specific personnel training requirements and other regulatory control may apply.
General guidelines for cleaning up spills are as follows:
Assess the potential hazard presented by the spill to personnel within the work area as well as within other parts of the facility and the outside environment.
Remove possible sources of ignition if the spilled material is flammable:
Turn off hot plates, stirring motors, and flames.
Shut down equipment in the area that could increase danger.
Secure the area so that no one will walk through the spill or interfere with the cleanup efforts.
Choose appropriate personal protection devices:
Always wear protective gloves and goggles or a face shield.
If there is a chance of body contact with the spill, wear an apron or coveralls.
Wear rubber or plastic (not leather) boots if there is a chance of stepping into the spill.
Wear a respirator if there is danger of inhalation of toxic vapors, though only when proper training has preceded its use.
Note that protective devices must be chosen carefully to be appropriate for the anticipated hazard. Often training is appropriate or required (e.g., with respirators) prior to their use.
Locate a spill control kit or other appropriate absorbent and cleanup supplies.
Confine or contain the spill:
Do not let any of the spilled material enter the sewer system, for example, through a floor drain.
Cover the spill with an absorbent material; paper towels may be appropriate for small, unreactive materials.
Sweep up or in other ways collect the absorbed materials and place them in a container that can be securely closed.
If the spilled material is an acid or a base, use a neutralizing material; sodium bicarbonate is commonly used for acids, and sodium bisulfate for bases. Spill control kits are commercially available for the cleanup of many kinds of chemical spills. (Chapter 6, section 6.F.2.1 , has further information on spill control kits and spill absorbents.)
Dispose of the absorbed spill appropriately as hazardous or nonhazardous waste.
The ultimate destination of waste is usually a treatment, storage, and disposal facility (TSDF). Here waste is held, treated (typically via chemical action or incineration), or actually disposed of. Although the waste has left the generator's facility, the generator retains the final responsibility for the long-term fate of the waste. It is imperative that the generator have complete trust and confidence in the TSDF, as well as in the transporter who carries the waste to the TSDF. In some cases the destination of waste is a recycler or reclaimer. The procedures for preparing and transporting the waste to such a facility are similar to those described above. (See section 7.B.3.)
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Tiger Orchid, Grammatophyllum Speciosum, Blooms At Brooklyn Botanic Garden (PHOTOS)
share this story
A rare occurrence is taking place right now at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden in New York City. The garden's tiger orchid (Grammatophyllum speciosum) is blooming for only the third time in 13 years.
The garden's website reports that the current bloom is quite stunning. Their orchid, which weighs 300 pounds, is "producing a magnificent display of 17 flower spikes and hundreds of yellow-and-brown-spotted blossoms."
This year's tiger orchid bloom is expected to produce between 850 and 1,700 flowers in total, hundreds more than the two previous blooms. Brooklyn Daily reports that a new fertilizer is responsible. Orchid curator David Horak said, "The amount and quality of the flowers is more than likely from the new fertilizer."
According to Gothamist, the plant has gained 100 pounds since 2008, and is now 12 feet in diameter. Brooklyn Botanic Garden says that even in the wild in Southeast Asia, tiger orchids only bloom "reportedly once every two to four years."
Check out the pictures below for a glimpse of the tiger orchid's blossoms. If you're in the New York City area, the orchid is expected to remain in bloom for about another month.
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I am a Corpus Christi native, but I currently reside in Michigan. My fiancé and I recently visited the new La Palmera mall. My fiancé walks with crutches. When we went to the mall, I had him stay in the car while I went in search of the customer service desk. I asked the lady for a wheelchair. In return, she asked me for $20. I was stunned. A paper sign, in a really tiny font, explained, “$20 for wheelchair rentals. If wheelchair is returned 30 minutes after borrowed, we will return your money.”
OK, 30 minutes to walk around the mall. You can’t do anything in the mall in 30 minutes. Also, what are you going to do if the chair doesn’t get returned in 30 minutes, keep my money?
Come on! $20 for a rental! Maybe it was because I was by myself, and in asking for a wheelchair it looked kind of funny. But to make my fiancé walk that entire distance is just out of the question. Not everyone who comes to the mall has money for a rental and to still buy something. The mall should make things a little more convenient for people with disabilities.
Kayla Wuest, Holland, Mich.
– – – –
No price on life
I have read two or three letters concerning doctors going into an MDVIP practice. Insurance companies and Medicare will not pay for a lot of wellness tests that could point to a problem developing. Some of the yearly money will be used for yearly tests to hopefully allow patients to live longer and healthier lives. Also, any place that you travel in the U.S. you will be able to see any doctor in the MDVIP network as quickly as you can your local doctor.
The fact that these doctors are going into this type of practice doesn’t preclude someone without insurance from getting health care. Memorial Hospital and a clinic provide that service.
One of these doctors has been my physician over 20 years and I have received excellent care, but in the last few years it has been a little more rushed because he has more than 2,500 patients. He wants to give quality care and can only see so many patients a day. My husband has been his patient for three years. His previous doctor failed to diagnose high blood pressure and a carotid artery that was 95 percent blocked. Both of these problems were caught on the first visit. You can’t put a price tag on a life.
– – – –
All about timing
This is not my first rodeo in the quest for good concert seats. I fully realize it is all about timing when scoring other than the “nose bleed” seats.
That said, last Saturday’s 10 a.m. start of ticket sales for the Elton John concert was a joke. I’m set on U.S. Naval Observatory Atomic time and have learned over decades of practice exactly when to “refresh” seconds before ticket sales begin. For this concert, the final result was seats located at the extreme end of the venue. The same price seats in Austin provide a better view and were still available Sunday.
So where are the tickets for our local concert? Just go to eBay. I did. Within hours of the Corpus Christi concert sellout, you could find $80 seats for only $300 being sold from just about anywhere in the USA, mostly outside Corpus Christi.
Ticketmaster and eBay have become the single greatest obstacle in purchasing local tickets for a reasonable price. Maybe American Bank Center should provide some preference to the local community. Why do I have to buy a ticket to a local concert from Wisconsin or pay $140 for one lousy seat?
– – – –
City pride needed
Community pride could ease the negativity surrounding our city issues such as building demolition, bike trails, potholes, an inept congressman, the economy, lack of city and county services, etc. Not everyone is in a bad mood. Some of our high school football coaches are elated that our teams do not have to play two San Antonio schools, namely Judson and Wagner, as they are “powerhouses.”
Playing ranked teams is considered an excellent opportunity for team improvement. This brings much-needed spirit and gets the community involved. Most football games are attended by less than 200 fans while Buccaneer Stadium has seen 20,000 for several Ray/Miller games.
Not so long ago Carroll High School was led to dismal win/loss records by coach Butch Gilliam. Enter Jim Slaughter, Bill Boy Bryant and Vin Smith. In one season, these coaches went 13 and 1. During their tenure, they had an amazing 55 wins and 7 losses against many “powerhouses,” but just as important, the city displayed community pride. Corpus Christi prompted Wichita Falls football coach Tugboat Jones to exclaim, “I hope we never meet those Corpus Christi teams again.” His team lost back-to-back state championships to Ray and Miller, the only teams from the same city to ever win the highest classification in the football-crazy state of Texas. Now that is pride!
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July 3, 2002 By Jim McKay, Justice and Public Safety Editor
Initial Compstat meetings found New York's finest analyzing statistics from the most serious crimes and plotting them electronically on a computer screen to determine patterns and trends. A cluster of dots in a particular location alerted officers to a string of murders, rapes or robberies.
Since then the Compstat (computer statistics) program has taken over the New York City Police Department. "Compstat itself is a mover of the entire agency," said Garry McCarthy, deputy commissioner of operations.
McCarthy describes the program as a mechanism to hold people accountable, an information-sharing forum, an information-gathering forum and an educational forum all in one. It has evolved to become a general business-management tool for the agency.
The program originally focused on seven major crime categories, but now records information on more than 700 of what officials call "performance indicators." These indicators measure the performance of the agency and identify areas where improvement is needed.
As it did initially, Compstat still tracks the major crimes, including murder, rape, robbery, felony assault and grand larceny. Now the program also tracks shooting incidents and tracks arrests by bureau and arresting officer.
The program reaches further by tracking relatively minor crimes, including prostitution, panhandling, excessive noise, public drinking and a multitude of other minor violations, which are fed into a computer and analyzed.
In fact, nothing is outside the scope of the program as officials keep track of police overtime, allegations by citizens of police abuse, even things like how quickly it takes to get a police vehicle back from repair, and maintenance of police buildings. Commanders log deficiencies in building maintenance to detect trends then invite the folks from building maintenance to a Compstat meeting to discuss the trend.
"We figure that things like morale impact on the ethics of the officers," McCarthy said. "Therefore, we work on morale by working on the condition of the station houses where the officers work."
All the information goes into reports called Compstat books. These collated reports are comprised of data forwarded from each of the 76 precincts in the state that are analyzed by McCarthy and the rest of the Compstat Unit, which consists of about 25 officers. Each of the reports is available on a citywide database.
There are two groups that make up the Compstat Unit. McCarthy heads a staff of about 15 that analyze statistics. There is another group of up to 10 people that work for the commissioner and help gather statistics for the Compstat books. Additionally, there are three to five officers in each precinct who help with the collection of information.
The Compstat Book
Compstat helps develop the four principles that govern the agency: timely and accurate intelligence; rapid deployment; effective tactics; and relentless follow-up and assessment.
All of the information gathered and analyzed is used to facilitate those four principles.
All of the information that comprises the Compstat book helps the Compstat Unit determine trends or deficiencies within each precinct. It is then determined which precinct commanders will be called into a Compstat meeting to discuss what can be done about any problems.
"I'll kind of script the entire Compstat meeting and then sit down and go over the whole thing with the chief beforehand," McCarthy said. "He'll make some changes, add some things he wants to do. We've been doing this for two years so we're pretty hand-in-glove.
"It's a strategy session, it's an information sharing-session and it's an accountability session," said McCarthy. "We're accountable to the public for our statistics because each one of those statistics is a person."
The data on each precinct is separated
You may use or reference this story with attribution and a link to
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NASA Helps Break Guinness World Record for Biggest Astronomy Lesson
A full-scale model of the James Webb Space Telescope model was on display from March 8-10 at the South by Southwest Interactive Festival in Austin, Texas.
CREDIT: NASA/Chris Gunn
With their eyes turned up at the Texas night sky, NASA and 526 space fans have set a new Guinness World Record for the largest outdoor astronomy lesson in Austin.
The huge group gathered on the lawn of the Long Center for the Performing Arts at the South by Southwest (SXSW) festival on March 10 to learn about how astronomers use light and color to understand cosmic objects, from the moon to distant galaxies.
"Astronomy awakens the natural curiosity and awe in all of us," Frank Summers, an astrophysicist from the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore, said in a statement. "Many people think that astronomy and physics is only complicated math equations. They don't recognize how natural it is and how much they already know."
Summers and Dan McCallister, an education specialist at STScI, used colored filter glasses to show how light can be broken down into its different wavelengths. They explained how certain wavelengths are selected for specific studies of an astronomical object. In the background of the lesson was a full-scale model of NASA's next giant space observatory, the James Webb Space Telescope, which is the size of a tennis court and as tall as a four-story building. The real space observatory is slated to launch in 2018.
Sunday's event was organized by NASA, STScI and Northrop Grumman, which are all involved in the Webb Telescope mission. It was intended to highlight how amazing space telescope pictures help answer big questions about the universe.
"Astronomy tries to answer the questions that everyone wonders about like, 'how did we get here?'" Alberto Conti, an astrophysicist and Webb Telescope innovation scientist at STScI, who was also at SXSW, added in a statement. "Astronomy showcases the physical laws of nature. It shows all of the processes. You can learn a lot about physics and nature by studying it."
The record for the largest astronomy lesson was previously held by Mexico, which hosted a similar event including 458 participants, organized by Juarez Competitiva, on Oct. 14, 2011.
MORE FROM SPACE.com
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Dec. 14, 2011
Metro, Sound Transit team up to give riders more reasons to take transit across the SR 520 Bridge
Convenient and affordable options can make swapping tolls for transit easier for thousands of commuters
With tolling on the State Route 520 Bridge set to begin Dec. 29, King County Metro Transit and Sound Transit are reminding commuters that there has never been a better time to leave the car at home and save money.
Tolls for driving round trip across SR 520 during the highest demand periods on weekdays will total more than $1,800 annually. With that additional cost on top of vehicle operating costs and parking, savings from riding transit can easily top $4,000 annually. Riding transit and owning one less car can save around $14,000 annually.
The Seattle area already ranks fourth in the nation for saving money by taking transit according to the latest monthly Transit Savings Report conducted by the American Public Transportation Association (APTA). Commuters can visit APTA’s transit savings calculator to determine their annual savings, adding daily toll costs to the parking field.*
There have never been more alternatives to driving solo across the SR 520 Bridge. Over the past year, Metro and Sound Transit have increased daily bus service in the SR 520 corridor by 20 percent – that’s a gain of about 6,500 seats and more than 130 additional bus trips [see map] serving riders on either side of the bridge.
This service has contributed to a 15 percent jump in daily ridership on the bridge so far this year. That means more people are choosing to ride instead of drive alone, making travel easier for everyone.
And peak period transit ridership is expected to grow by additional 15 percent following the start of tolling. Metro and Sound Transit buses currently carry about 18,000 riders across the SR 520 Bridge each weekday.
“These actions are all designed to help maximize the number of people using transit to relieve congestion through this vital travel corridor,” Metro General Manager Kevin Desmond said. “The ridership growth we’re seeing also confirms how important transit has become.”
”Taking transit not only eliminates the stress of rush-hour driving, but the ‘green’ way to go also puts money back in riders’ pockets,” Sound Transit Deputy Chief Executive Officer Celia Kupersmith said. “Commuters can skip the costs of tolls, gas, and parking by joining the growing number of people who are choosing transit to get to and from work.”
Metro’s new RapidRide B Line between Bellevue and Redmond is providing additional bus connections on the Eastside, including connections to routes that cross SR 520. The B Line offers 10-minute service during peak weekday travel periods, and every 15 minutes during most other times of the day.
Employers are also partnering to help boost transit usage by offering employees incentives such as subsidized transit passes, hosting transportation events so employees can find their best bus route or carpool and vanpool partners. Metro is assisting employers by offering free assistance in creating or expanding programs that allow employees to work from home.
And commuters now have an additional tool at their disposal to leave the car at home and avoid paying tolls. Metro’s new online “Seat Finder” service will make it easier than ever to get matched with an existing vanpool. There are already more than100 vanpools that travel across the SR 520 Bridge to work sites each day.
Many of these transit service improvements were made possible through a partnership with the Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT) and U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT) to better manage congestion on SR 520. The improvements, along with tolling, employer incentives, real-time travel information and strategically located signs that display next bus arrival times, are expected to make the SR 520 commute faster, more convenient and reliable for both transit riders and vehicles.
WSDOT estimates commuters will see an overall 20 percent reduction in congestion in the corridor during peak travel periods.
With the arrival of tolling, look for more information about expanded SR 520 commuting options over the next few weeks. In addition to information posted at selected park-and-ride lots, mailers will be widely distributed to households in the SR 520 corridor. Those flyers are scheduled to arrive in mailboxes after the holidays. Or you can check out the Get You There website for current information on options and incentives.
Riders are also encouraged to check out which transit park-and-ride lots have space during the periods they plan to commute. Some lots can fill up quickly in the morning so riders should plan accordingly and have a back-up plan if tolling causes increased demand at their park-and-ride. Commuters may find that catching the bus in their neighborhood or biking, walking, vanpooling or vansharing to a park-and-ride are also good options.
You can learn more about all the options for traveling in the SR 520 corridor by visiting Metro and Sound Transit's websites.* For example, with the approximately $1,800 annual cost of peak-hour tolls combined with the costs of driving 20 miles round trip each day each day in a car that gets 24 miles per gallon with $3.60 per gallon gas and paying $10 daily for parking, driving will cost approximately $4,200 more than riding transit.
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Little is known about this painting. It is thought to be unfinished, as it was left rolled up in Nicholson?s Swiss studio after he returned to live in England. However the work reveals something of the artist?s working processes. The ambiguous mass of pencil lines in the large shape to the left of the painting would likely have been developed into one of Nicholson?s characteristic still lifes with overlapping outlines. The two vertical shapes at the bottom of the painting may be table legs. Similar works of the late 1950s show still lifes arranged on tables - a Cubist-influenced composition to which the artist often returned.
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Niccolò Bonfadini is a young photographer living in Monza, in the northern part of Italy. Since he was a child he has always been fascinated by Nature. Some years ago he discovered his passion for photography and since then he has started traveling intensively with his camera. For him nothing is more fulfilling that being out in the wilderness witnessing a sunrise or a starry sky. Photography motivates him to get out into Nature more often, experiencing conditions and places that he wouldn’t probably have witnessed otherwise. Recently he has started collaborating with a group of talented photographer for the “Wildvisions Nature Photography” Project.
In one of Bonfadini's recent series titled “Sentinels of the Arctic”, the photographer captured images of snow covered landscape in Finnish Lapland during last winter where temperatures ranging from -40 to –15 degrees centigrade can completely engulf trees in solid ice.
“That morning I slept in my tent to watch the sun rise from the top of a hill; an eerie mist was forming around the trees, enhancing the mysterious atmosphere”, said Niccolò Bonfadini.
One of his pictures was selected as a photo of the day published at APOD-NASA, a project run by NASA along with the Michigan Tech University.
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Attributes of a Health Literate Organization
This paper describes 10 attributes of a health literate organization, that is, an organization that makes it easier for people to navigate, understand, and use information and services to take care of their health.
The ABC’s & 123′s of Diabetes Care
This toolkit, developed by the Vanderbilt University’s Diabetes Center in the United States, includes over 24 chapters that can used in educating patients with diabetes (with a focus on the literacy and numeracy demands of managing diabetes). The toolkit has been designed to improve educational interactions between diabetes providers and their patients. Diabetes educators could work through parts of the toolkit with their patients. The toolkit helps unpick the literacy and numeracy demands of diabetes and will help educators identify where patients might be having problems.
The AHRQ Informed Consent and Authorization Toolkit for Minimal Risk Research
The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) has developed the Informed Consent and Authorization Toolkit for Minimal Risk Research to facilitate the process of obtaining informed consent and Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) authorization from potential research subjects. This toolkit contains information for people responsible for ensuring that potential research subjects are informed in a manner that is consistent with medical ethics and regulatory guidelines. Download as a PDF (300KB).
Skilled for Health – Health literacy curriculum
Skilled for Health (SfH) is a cross-cutting British Government–voluntary sector initiative between the Department of Health (DoH), Department for Education and Skills (DfES) and ContinYou. It provides adult education programmes with a curriculum (which needs to be adapted to New Zealand and our learners). A great platform for health literacy programmes. (You will need to register to download SfH resources on the website.)
The Health Literacy Environment Activity Packet: First Impressions and Walking Interview
This packet draws directly from the guide created by Rudd and Anderson (The Health Literacy Environment of Hospitals and Health Centers), and is a revised version of the First Impressions section. A simple, yet easy-to-use and detailed guide to assess hospital and clinical environments.
The Health Literacy Style Manual
This guide (105 pages) is a resource to improve and develop applications, notices, and other print materials related to government health programmes with a focus on health literacy.
The Health Literacy Environment of Hospitals and Health Centres
This National Center for the Study of Adult Learning and Literacy (NCSALL) study guide (166 pages) and the review tools found within it offer an approach for analysing literacy-related barriers to healthcare access and navigation. The guide is designed to assist hospital or health centre employees to consider the health literacy environment of their facilities and find ways to reduce demands and better serve their patients.
Quick Guide to Health Literacy
This guide (36 pages) from the United States Health and Humans Services is a great initial document into health literacy, designed for government employees, contractors and community partners working in health care.
Making Health Communication Programmes Work
This U.S. guide (262 pages) from the National Cancer Institute looks at the use of health communication to influence and inform individual and community decisions. The report is very comprehensive, and outlines how to implement a health communication programme and the stages of the process. There is also a large section on pretesting materials.
Designing Print Materials: A Communications Guide for Breast Cancer Screening
This guide (67 pages) is a useful resource about building and improving print materials developed by the International Cancer Screening Network, with ideas that can be transferred to other public health programmes.
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Rwanda has been ranked highly in terms of economic development and other aspects including social welfare of its citizens in the past few years. A lot has been said and critics seem not to understand why the development seems to continue unshaken despite many hardships that Rwanda shares with other African countries.
It is possible that the government’s decision to push women to competitively vie for government offices could be the secret behind it all. This is due to the fact that women accomplish a lot in their work as will be shown, something that other countries have failed to realize.
There is no any other way this kind of development can be explained. It is just eighteen years since Rwanda came from a devastating genocide which left it on its knees. Many had labeled it a failed state, but it rose from there to be a wonder and a model in Africa due to its extraordinary ways of doing things.
In Rwanda’s 2008 elections, women won 45 out of 80 parliamentary seats, making Rwanda the first country in the world where women make up the majority in parliament.
Rwanda’s 2003 constitution reserves 24 parliamentary seats (30%) for women, but due to empowerment, women were able to Win an additional 21 seats. This shows the prominence of women in Rwandan society today.
Like I pointed out in the beginning, more striking than the percentage of Rwandan women in parliament is what they have been able to accomplish since coming into office. The genocide left many women widowed and without rights. They were not allowed to own property or even open a bank account.
Women in parliament drafted a new bill to give Rwandan women rights to land inheritance and more provisions for family protection. Additionally, Rwandan women in parliament successfully moved rape into the most severe category of crimes committed during the genocide.
They have been behind most of the legislation that have brought Rwanda to the forefront in ensuring economic stability and social welfare.
The women’s ability to combat poverty, hunger and disease and to stimulate development that is truly sustainable cannot go unnoticed.
All these elements put together bring out the argument that the reason why Rwanda is moving ahead so fast is the fact that it has allowed the mothers (women) who really understand everyday issues that affect society to not only be involved politics but to hold some of the highest offices in the land. And this is what makes Rwanda tick.
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What is the ideal wine serving temperature? Should you move your wine from the cellar to the fridge before serving it? Should only white and rosé wines serve chilled? These are the question we are addressing in this article.
Different wine serving temperature
The serving temperature is an important element too often overlooked. The wine characteristics and aromas are at their best when served at certain temperature (usually lower than the ambient temperature) but keep in mind there are other factors such as the type of grape and its region of origins that plays a role in determining the temperature.
Red wines should be served at temperature between 11 ºC (~ 52 ºF) and 18 ºC (~ 64.5 ºF) while white and rosé wines should be served between 10 ºC (~ 50 ºF) and 14 ºC (~ 57 ºF). No wines should be served at temperature above 20 ºC (~ 68 ºF).
The principle is simple, young or fruity wines are served at lower end of the range of temperature. Aged or tannic wines will be served around the higher end.
Sparkling wines should be served at temperature between 8 ºC (~ 46.5 ºF) and 10ºC (~ 50 ºF).
Reaching and maintaining the wine serving temperature
Depending on your fridge settings, you should be able to reach those lower temperatures by putting your wine bottle in the fridge and removing it a hour to thirty minutes (depending on the temperature you are targeting) before serving it. You can use a wine thermometer to control your wine temperature if you want more precision.
However, once you started serving the wine, you may want to use a bucket with fresh water and ice to maintain the temperature during the wine service.
To chamber your wine (meaning bringing it to room temperature), you just take it from your cellar and leave it on the counter or table. During a hot summer day, you may need a bucket with fresh water and some ice to bring the wine to the desired temperature.
Some bottles may have the ideal wine serving temperature on the back label. When buying your bottles, you may want to ask for advice about their serving temperature. You can also keep in mind the simple principle we discussed in this article, if you are still unsure, serve the wine a few degrees below room temperature. But remember, at the end of the day, you are the one who should enjoy the wine so experiment with your wines and find your palate’s favorite temperature.
How do you determine, reach and control your wine serving temperature?
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Where and how will climate change first affect large numbers of American voters? Answering that question may be crucial to the global efforts to protect the earth’s climate. The tsunami of stupidity and science denial that has washed over Washington won’t be held back by earnest calculations of long-run risks, or by the potential inundation of remote island nations, or by the news that polar bears and other iconic species are endangered.
While climate change may seem remote, the water crisis in the Southwest is all too immediate. Recent years of drought have reached critical levels, threatening to curtail agriculture and even the normal patterns of urban life throughout the region. Even if today’s climate remained unchanged, water use in Arizona, California, Nevada, New Mexico and Utah would more than double over the next century, just from population and income growth.
In a recent study, Elizabeth Stanton and I show that the changing climate will make a bad situation worse, increasing the Southwest’s water consumption by an additional one-third of today’s level of use. There is simply no way to get that much water; the region’s rivers and rainfall aren’t going to grow. Ocean desalination is expensive, energy-intensive, and environmentally controversial. Groundwater, which makes up the water deficit today, is bound to run out at some point; it is being used far beyond its recharge rate in California and Arizona, and probably elsewhere as well. There are two different estimates of California’s current groundwater reserves; the state would need three times the more optimistic estimate in order to make it through the next century.
Solving the water crisis will require reductions in water use. Nevada and Utah are the top two states in per capita residential water use today. Extensive conservation and efficiency measures will be needed, reshaping urban water use, improving irrigation methods, and cutting back on the region’s lowest-value crops, which are worth less than the water used to grow them.
It gets much harder to solve the water crisis when it gets hotter: we found that climate change could add as much as $1 trillion to the costs of water scarcity for the five Southwestern states over the next century. As Americans start to experience mounting costs of climate change in this and other areas, spending money to reduce carbon emissions will look like a bargain by comparison.
So here’s a message from planet earth to our newly elected Congressional “leaders:” You’ve made it clear that you’re not planning to protect the climate because of what’s happening to polar bears, or the islands that are sinking beneath the waves, or even because you care about the lives of your great-grandchildren. But you’ve got to take action anyway; controlling climate change is crucial if you want people to have reliable water supplies in the Southwest. This isn’t the only way that you’ll feel the impacts of climate change in years to come – but it could be the first big one.
Read the full study, “The Last Drop: Climate Change and the Southwest Water Crisis” at the Stockholm Environment Institute.
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It's early 2009. You've just witnessed that global solar photovoltaic capacity jumped almost 70% year over year -- a high-growth sector. Even more encouraging is that solar electricity is becoming price-competitive to established fossil fuels and nuclear power, making it a huge potential disruptor to an aging industry. Looking for a top dog, you single out First Solar (Nasdaq: FSLR ) . Not only is the company one of the largest solar players, but also has technology that allows it to produce a solar cell much cheaper than its competition. You invest.
Fast-forward to today, and you're looking at a 90% loss in share value.
What happened, and what should you take away from this lesson?
An ill industry
Many things went wrong for First Solar. It admitted that its solar technology experiences higher failure rates in hot climates, forcing it to increase the amount it set aside for warranties. A very public and political bankruptcy of Solyndra, which received a $500 million federal loan, brought a dark cloud over the future of the industry. And European governments that are struggling in a rough economic climate have cut incentives for installing solar cells. These issues alone might have been manageable, but the larger issue has put First Solar in its deathbed: commoditization.
The deadly disease
To most consumers today, a solar panel is a solar panel, with the only difference being the price. In other words, solar panels are now commodities. China's solar industry has boomed with help from over $30 billion in government subsidies, and this has produced a glut in the market. According to GTM Research, the global solar industry will have the capacity to build 59 gigawatts by the end of the year, but there will be demand for only 30 gigawatts. Accordingly, the price for panels fell 50% in 2011, crimping margins for panel producers. The U.S. instituted new tariffs on Chinese solar panels to help bolster prices, but this move might be too late for major bankruptcies in the industry.
The story of solar panels is not too different from many other products that can be mass-produced and offer nearly identical features across brands. Televisions, computers, and cellphones are just a few examples, with respective losers like Sony, Hewlett-Packard, and Nokia.
How can you avoid companies that are bound for this kind of value destruction? Look closely at brand and management.
The power of a premium brand
Consumers will pay for quality and what purchasing a product says about them. For commodity-like products, quality can be equal across companies, but marketing can push consumers to one brand over another. Take Apple (NYSE: AAPL ) . According to a SquareTrade report, Apple laptops had a 17.4% chance of malfunctioning over three years, whereas Asus, Toshiba, and Sony laptops all had a lower failure rate. Even so, Apple bests its competitors in perceived reliability in the annual PCWorld survey. This gap between actual and perceived performance can be attributed to marketing. Even if Apple computers don't perform as well, consumers don't see it that way and happily pay up for an Apple laptop. This gives Apple a 30% profit margin, while other laptop makers languish around single digits.
If you can't beat 'em
There are commodities that can't be branded, however, but still offer excellent business models. This is because of great management. Take Nucor (NYSE: NUE ) , which produces steel. Nucor's organization includes a relatively flat hierarchical structure, performance-based incentives, and pride in never laying off an employee due to a poor economy. With great management and culture, Nucor was able to squeeze a profit margin of 4.3% in 2011, compared to competitor Steel Dynamics at 3.3%. It also helps that Nucor shipped over 20 million tons of steel in 2011, compared to Steel Dynamics shipping just over 5 million tons. With better sales and lower costs, poorly performing competitors are squeezed out of an industry and the winners gain more scale, further lowering costs.
Can we predict if a new industry like 3-D printing will become commoditized? Profit margins at 3D Systems (NYSE: DDD ) recently peaked during the second quarter last year at 24%, and have since fallen to 8%, and its competitor Stratasys (Nasdaq: SSYS ) has also recently trended downward:
SSYS Profit Margin data by YCharts.
Fool colleague Alex Planes also writes on the threat of 3-D consumer commoditization:
MakerBot was selling inexpensive consumer 3-D printers when the Cube was just a gleam in 3D Systems' eye, and the start-up is committed to the open-source model. Thousands of MakerBots have been bought since 2009, and the company's Thingiverse already is what 3D Systems hopes its Cubify community will become -- a repository of designs made by loyal users. Shapeways is another 3-D printing design community with quite the selection of designs. One open-source 3-D printing concept, the RepRap, is a self-replicating printer that can effectively print new versions of itself, or at least most of itself. If that's not a threat to the big players, I'm not sure what is.
Really, it's up to management and marketing to ensure the success of these companies. If the brand continues to hold value and that value can be translated into higher margins, companies will succeed. If commoditization is inevitable, efficient management can produce returns even in a heavily commoditized industry.
Apple's premium brand isn't all it has going for it. Get the whole scoop by reading the Fool's new premium research report on Apple. For one stock pick that has very little chance of becoming a commodity, read our free report: "Discover the Next Rule-Breaking Multibagger." This highlights a company following in the footsteps of a proven profitable model.
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As genealogists researching American ancestors, one record set we focus on is census records. Now we tend to think of this mostly in terms of the U.S. Federal Census but most genealogists are also aware there are state and territorial census records as well.
But the government wasn't the only entity counting its population, some religious groups have also taken a census. One example is this counting of Quakers in 1828, available from the Family History Library on microfilm.
Quaker Census of 1828: Members of the New York Meeting, the Religious Society of Friends (in New York, Ontario, Vermont, Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Quebec) at the time of the seperation in 1828.
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The Anatomy of Conducting Thursday, August 13, 2009
“Gesture is the genesis of sound. Gesture, the conductor's technique, is the frame-work by which we evoke the sounds we hear and wish to hear from our ensembles.†- James Jordan
Both instrumental and choral conductors will benefit from the insight contained in the DVD The Anatomy of Conducting: Architecture & Essentials. This insightful master-class includes tools such as multi-angle video demonstrations and state-of-the-art motion capture animation, allowing conductors to closely study the gesture of renowned conductors James Jordan and Eugene Migliaro Corporon. Revolutionary graphics show the skeletal movement of each conductor in real-time to give conductors an in-depth and accurate picture of body mechanics and architecture. By delving into the physical process of the conducting gesture, one can discover a wealth of new knowledge and apply it directly to your work with a performing ensemble.
In his introduction to the accompanying workbook, Jordan says “Learning conducting technique is not unlike learning any other skill-based activity. No matter how experienced we are, there is always the need to stay in touch with the basics. While many will believe that the DVD and workbook are for beginning conductors, this DVD can be a regular refresher of the basics for even the most experienced conductors.â€Â What a wise sentiment! Whether new to the field or a seasoned music professional, we are sure that your conducting (and your ensemble) will benefit from the lessons contained in The Anatomy of Conducting.
For this and more conducting resources, call us at 1-800-42-MUSIC.
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Is it possible that the term “leader” has lost its allure, its freshness.? Is it time to dump it and move on to a more meaningful term that has not as yet been blemished by organizational theory and practice — something more hip, with a little more pizazz? That’s where Umair Haque is choosing to “lead” us — on a magical mystery tour of terminology and semantics. But there is some truth in his offering.
Blogging for the Harvard Business Review, Umair Haque launches in by condemning the leadership of world leaders; in his words, ” This relationship isn’t working out…We’ve tried to make it work. But it’s not us — it’s you (really)”. To this extent, I agree — many of those in positions of leadership are just not getting the job done. And it’s embarrassing. In this global society, every failure, every demolition is a condemnation of the capitalist principles we have been dumping on the rest of the planet.
After a great deal of careful thought about leadership as a concept, Mr. Haque suggests that the problem is “leadership itself”. In his view, rather than continuing with a “relic of 20th century thinking”, we should be “rebooting” leadership — coming up with a new way of managing people and institutions.
Haque suggests that the way we define leadership and the way we allow individuals to execute it is the problem. Let me present an alternative interpretation. The problem is not that leadership is obsolete; the problem is that the concept is in fact too advanced. There are still many who are oblivious of what leadership means in spite of the masses of literature on the subject. Just as our religious teachings and writings espouse love for humanity, there are those who will subvert their intent via convenient misinterpretation. There are others who chose an expeditious path or fear the loss of control that they feel would accompany embracing true leadership. Leadership concepts seem clear enough; still leaders, due to ignorance or for personal reasons chose to abandon the game plan.
Following are summaries of Umair Haque’s arguments:
- Leadership skills were developed for a 20th century economics; the skills are not timeless. He provides a couple of definitions of leadership that seem to support his view. Really? Leadership IS a timeless concept. There have been leaders well before the 20th century and there will be leaders long after. Leadership is a concept that continues to be redefined as the times dictate. Most recently, the internet has created a need to re-examine how we can lead in a networking environment.
- Leaders do not lead. Large emerging organizations create a need for someone to be a leader — specifically to navigate the politics of being a leading organization. The role he describes is more of a manager of complexities. There are individuals “lucky” enough to be the heads of organizations that were “lucky” enough to be every successful. We have incorrectly assumed that these are great organizations with great “leaders”. Being in the right place at the right time does not make someone a leader; leadership is earned just as respect is earned. Still, there are organizations that experience success because of leadership. And there are examples of this success cited in Mr. Haque post. In fact, I was fortunate enough to work for a leader who worked the leadership principles with excellence. And because he did his organization thrived.
- Leaders are employed to lobby for and help sustain dying organizations that would serve society best by dying a gracful death. I agree. There are individuals who fill this role and who are retained for this purpose. However, I question whether these people are in fact leaders. Calling someone a leader does not in fact a leader make.
- Since our institutions and organizations are in fact broken and outdated, our greatest challenge is not leadership but “building” better organizations. Calling those who run our organizations by a different label isn’t going to change the quality of leadership or buildership. In my mind, we still simply don’t get it. Further, what Haque is suggesting is a redefinition of what leadership means. Since we must address the challenges of the day, this is a healthy process.
- Leadership is the art of becoming, well, a leader. Constructivism, in contrast, is the art of becoming a builder — of new institutions. Like artistic Constructivism rejected “art for art’s sake,” so economic Constructivism rejects leadership for the organization’s sake — instead of for society’s. I think it is healthy to continue to find new ways to look at the world and refine our thinking. I think a number of the principles identified in this post are worthy of inclusion in a revised definition of leadership; just as Bill Murray continued to relive Ground Hog Day until he understood the message and got it right, humanity will continue to experience disintegration and disunity until we get it right. Still inventing a new term simply does not address the issue. For a person to lead, they must understand the principles of leadership and commit to understanding and executing the principles. The people Hague is talking about in his article simply are not leaders. Haque provides a list of individuals he calls either leaders or builders. In my model, there are those who lead successfully in a particular way and there are those who lead for the purpose of building. Further, in this list, there are some who are still trying to make their case as leaders who build (Obama) and those who have no business in a list of leaders (Palin).
- The 21st century doesn’t need more leaders - nor more leadership. Only Builders can kick start the chain reaction of a better, more authentic kind of prosperity. What we need are more leaders who understand leadership and have the commitment to work it; I agree that “builders” are a critical part of this definition of leadership.
- Finally, Haque provides an arbitrary and convenient set of principles of constructivism. For example, in his first principle he implies that leaders don’t learn from experience. I think that true leaders would disagree with this belief. I could spend a complete post examining these rpinciples.
I like that fact that Mr. Haque is starting a consultation on this issue. He is quite right in assuming that many individuals that we call leaders are in fact failing to lead. He is also right in stating that these people are in key positions and their lack of quality leadership has contributed to the deterioration of our institutions. However, twinning the concept of leadership with these absent landlords of leadership is problematic.
Put the blame where it belongs — not on the concept, but on the individuals failing in their responsibilities. Continue to refine the definition of what leadership means by adding ideas such as inclusivity, unity and the good of all.
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Q: are goldfish bowls bad for your fish?
Ive been reading about goldfish,and it says your not supposed to keep them it bowls.Is this true?
Update:My fish are living happily in a 10 gallon tank.Nobody has eaten anybody(I just got 2 really small ones)With plenty of rocks,and a plant.
Mar 20, 2010
I think that most people who use the bowls do not use air pumps, filters, heaters and other aquarium supplies, so the bowls will not stay as clean. "Dirty" water could/would be harmful to your goldfish, so you would have to more closely monitor the conditions in the bowl.
Goldfish CAN be kept in bowls, but that doesn't give them much space or very desirable conditions. Therefore, their life expectancy MIGHT be decreased. BUT a clean bowl is better than a dirty aquarium!
Thumbs Up: 1 |
Mar 20, 2010
If you keep a goldfish you can use a bowl. The trick is keeping the water clean and healthy. Goldfish produce a lot of ammonia and other wastes in the water so you need to use a filter. A bowl is fine but it doesn't give a lot of space to your goldfish. Goldfish can grow and get pretty big if you give them space and they will live longer in better conditions.
Thumbs Up: 0 |
Got a question about your pet? Get the answers you need from Zootoo's community of pet experts and owners.
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Related: Environmental Science
LESSON PLANS AND ACTIVITIES
Click on a lesson plan or activity name to learn more about it
/ National Geographic Xpeditions
The Polar Regions are frequently neglected in discussions of the environment, but they shouldn't be. The environment of the Polar Regions is particularly susceptible to human impacts such as pollution and the depletion of the ozone layer. Moreover, the effects of global warming on the Polar Regions are likely to have major repercussions in the rest of the world.
/ NOAA Ocean Service Education
How does an ecosystem recover from a major one-time insult such as an oil spill?
As you will learn from this Discovery Story, the answer is not simple. It isn't easy to determine whether a particular area of shoreline has recovered from oiling during a spill, or how to expect it to look when it has.
This lesson includes links to many other oil related lesson plans. For more about NOAA Ocean Service Education, see here: http://oceanservice.noaa.gov/education/welcome.html
Cynthia Cudaback / The Ocean and You
A kit you can create to help your students understand the impacts of the Gulf Of Mexico oil spill. Easily contained in a box so clean up is easy...as compared to oil spills in real life! For more information, please see http://OceanAndYou.com
/ Wild BC
In this activity students are encouraged to consider how climate change could impact them personally and how changes may affect their regions. Students will analyze the roles of organisms as part of interconnected food webs, populations, communities, and ecosystems, assess survival needs and interactions between organisms and the environment, assess the requirements for sustaining healthy local ecosystems evaluate human impacts on local ecosystems. For more information: http://wildbc.org/index.php/programs/climate-change-education/
/ Wild BC
Students will use and describe how a variety of objects provide metaphors for why climate change is occurring and the impacts resulting from it. Students will demonstrate the ability to interpret metaphors, describe the factors contributing to climate change and make connections between human behavior and environmental changes. For more information: http://wildbc.org/index.php/programs/climate-change-education/
This group game is designed to help students explore the various aspects of global climate and to learn how human activity may affect climate. Student groups will be responsible for making decisions about activities that may impact global climate. Students will be able to identify the various human impacts on the environment. Students will be able to explain how lifestyles may be altered to become more favorable to the environment. Students will examine the role of individual decisions and their impact on the natural environment.
This activity explores the potential for climate variability and change to trigger more frequent occurrences of El Nino, and the impacts that could result. Students will access information at remote sites using telecommunications. Students will identify impacts by reviewing past El Nino events. Students will analyze the data collected and predict what the consequences could be if, as some scientists predict, climate variability and change could create a permanent El Nino.
EPA / Environmental Protection Agency
Students will be introduced to the concept of climate change and the greenhouse effect. Students will learn the common sources of greenhouse gas emissions that humans generate. Students will create a Global Warming Wheel Card which will enable them to see how their own actions generate greenhouse gas emissions and contribute to global warming. Students will learn ways that they might reduce their individual, family, school and community’s production of these gases. For more information:
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Setting up a merchant account
To accept credit or debit card payments directly online, you'll have to set up an Internet merchant account.
There are nine banks that currently offer Internet merchant accounts. These are referred to as merchant acquirers or acquiring banks - see the page in this guide on how to find a bank to process your online payments.
Even if you already have a merchant account for face-to-face transactions, you will still need one specifically to accept online payments.
Card users will visit your internet shop to order your goods or services, make payments and the funds will usually be available after three or four working days in your bank account.
Beware of fraud
Online card payments are classed as "card-not-present" transactions, because you can't physically check the card or the cardholder. If a transaction proves to be fraudulent, the money will be reclaimed from your bank account - this is known as a chargeback. Even if a cardholder-not-present transaction is authorised by the cardholder's bank, this doesn't necessarily guarantee payment.
Acquiring banks will charge for their services. There may be a sign-up fee of around $200, and day-to-day charges may be a fixed fee in the case of debit card transactions or a percentage of each transaction for credit cards.
In addition, where you are using a payment service provider, they will levy charges for their service.
If you don't meet the requirements for a merchant account, or it's not cost-effective for your business, you can consider using an online payment-processing company or an online shopping mall to handle card payments for you.
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TOKYO -- By the time the All Nippon Airways Dreamliner 787 touched down at Narita International Airport late Saturday afternoon -- some 11 hours after leaving San Jose -- it was clear to most on board the sold-out inaugural flight just why airlines around the world remain committed to the newest aircraft from Boeing despite a string of glitches.
For one thing, the plane flies on 20 percent less fuel than other jetliners, allowing airlines like ANA to begin service to mid-size airports like Mineta San Jose International. And for another, the experience of traveling on the Dreamliner is visceral. Throughout the trip passengers snapped photos of the aircraft. And one, wearing a Dreamliner T-shirt, raced around taking
Midway into the flight -- about 5 p.m. San Jose time -- the aircraft's windows, which are significantly larger than those on other jetliners, began to glow with a soft green-blue color. The electronic-shades allow passengers to change the tint of windows with the push of a button, creating an effect similar to sunglasses. Even the toilets are technologically advanced: they close and flush with a wave of a hand.
The engines are quieter. The blue-hued ceilings are higher than anyone can reach. Indeed, the most striking aspect about the aircraft is the spacious feeling.
"It seemed like the NBA designed this," said Silicon Valley Leadership Group CEO Carl Guardino, who played an instrumental
Seasoned travelers noted that the 787's increased cabin pressure and higher humidity made the flight less wearing on their bodies. And the plane provides a quieter, less bouncy ride. Passengers don't have to raise their voices to be heard over the roar of engines.
Still, the flight across the Pacific hit pockets of turbulence -- and its highly anticipated San Jose departure on Friday occurred on the day the FAA announced it would launch a "review" of recent problems afflicting the 787, including an electrical fire on a Japan Airlines Dreamliner in Boston earlier this week. But the maiden voyage at 40,000 feet was as uneventful as a trip to the library, though a lot more fun.
The experience of floating some 5,500 miles across the ocean on the industry's most technologically sophisticated aircraft calmed the nerves even of anxious air travelers.
"The boarding was smooth, the takeoff was smooth -- the (new San Jose) airport lounge was beautiful and relaxing," said Patrick Bray, a technology consultant who makes regular trips to Asia from the Bay Area but nonetheless experiences a knot of anxiety in his stomach before every departure.
"These things eased my anxiety," he said.
And ANA's reputation for great service was on display: flight attendants were constantly in motion, bringing food and drinks to passengers. The galley in the back of the plane is something of a mid-flight gathering place for restless travelers, who can sip drinks, from vodka to apple juice, or nibble on light snacks.
"The service is like, 'What-else-can-I-do-for-you?'" said Marc Casto, president of San Jose-based Casto Travel, which handles corporate travel accounts for many Silicon Valley companies.
Some passengers boarded flight NH 1075 to experience first-hand a small piece of aviation history: San Jose International is the first Bay Area airport to have a scheduled Dreamliner flight. Others came along because of ANA's reputation for exacting service -- and patience with small children. And there were travelers simply happy to grab a cross-Pacific flight that originated out of their home airport.
"It's very convenient for those of us who live in the San Jose area," Mimi Suwa, a Los Gatos resident, said after waking from a comfortable nap five hours into the flight. She travels to Japan two to three times a year to visit family.
Being able to leave home at 10 a.m. for a 11:45 a.m. international flight made all the difference, she said. compared to the times she flies out of San Francisco International. "On Highway 101, the traffic is so busy and thick," Suwa said. "This was great."
Friday's flight was the beginning of ANA's five-day-a-week route between San Jose and Tokyo, which the airline expects to expand to a daily service in coming months. San Jose officials hope it will lead to more international departures from the city's airport, which received a major makeover a few years ago just as the U.S. airline industry went into a financial nose-dive, leading to carrier consolidations and dramatic reductions in service.
For San Jose and ANA, the flight was much more than bubbly drinks and an attentive crew. Officials, from city hall to the corporate world, have committed to doing all they can to ensure the success of the new service, which ANA took a significant risk to launch. If the route is a success, the airport could land additional routes to such cities such as Shanghai, Seoul, Frankfurt and London, as well as a host of East Coast cities, they say.
"There is a tendency in the industry to always play catch-up," Casto said. "I strongly believe others will follow suit."
The flight, which began with a crisp bow from flight attendants and a soft rumble of the engines, ended with a gentle touchdown on the other side of the globe. And the plane with some 158 passengers pulled up to its gate early.
Contact John Boudreau at 408-278-3496; follow him at Twitter.com/svwriter
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Obama Orders Continuation Of Illegal CIA Renditions
Human Rights Watch: Illegal kidnapping and imprisonment
under Bush = "basic violation", illegal kidnapping
and imprisonment under Obama = "legitimate"
One of president Obama's first actions in office was to sign
an executive order securing the continued practice of secretly
capturing, transporting and imprisoning so called "enemy
combatants" it has been revealed.
orders issued by Obama just two days into his tenure,
the CIA still has authority to carry out what are known as renditions,
secret abductions and transfers of prisoners to countries that
cooperate with the United States, the Los Angeles Times reports.
"The Obama administration appears to have
determined that the rendition program was one component of the
Bush administration's war on terrorism that it could not afford
to discard." writes Greg Miller.
A minor provision within one executive order states
that instructions to close the CIA's secret prisons "do
not refer to facilities used only to hold people on a short-term,
transitory basis", meaning that some so called "black
sites" can remain open.
Though former CIA officials have admitted that
rendition is mostly unproductive, an administration official
told the LA Times anonymously: "Obviously you need to preserve
some tools -- you still have to go after the bad guys. The legal
advisors working on this looked at rendition. It is controversial
in some circles and kicked up a big storm in Europe. But if
done within certain parameters, it is an acceptable practice."
(Article continues below)
The black sites hit
the headlines in late 2005 when U.S. and foreign
intelligence officials blew the whistle on the CIA's practice
of hiding and interrogating "al Qaeda" captives at
a Soviet-era compound in Eastern Europe.
The secret facility was revealed to be part of a covert CIA
prison system, set up after 9/11, that at various times included
sites in eight countries, including Thailand, Afghanistan and
several democracies in Eastern Europe, as well as a small center
at the Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba. The Washington Post refused
to name the European countries involved after pressure from
senior U.S. officials.
Horror stories of brutality
and psychological torture of detainees at the secret
prisons emerged soon after.
rights lawyers, as well as The
European Parliament have declared rendition illegal
under international law. In late 2007, the U.S. House voted
to end CIA renditions, however, the prohibition was never passed
in the Senate.
Claude Moraes, a British Labour MEP who was part
of the European committee investigating CIA renditions, said
it was hard to criticise Mr Obama because he had
"god-like status at the moment", adding: "We
should be pleased he has closed Guantanamo and acknowledged
the existence of the secret CIA prisons. But if he's going to
complete the change, he must see that rendition is part of the
package. I have heard testimony from people who have clearly
been tortured in Egypt and Jordan. To deposit people in those
prisons still speaks volumes about American foreign policy."
The "god like status" that Mr Moraes
speaks of is highlighted by the response of Human Rights Watch,
the global oversight organization. Despite vehemently
opposing Bush-era secret detentions facilities
and torture tactics HRW seemingly supports Obama's
decision to allow rendition to continue.
"Under limited circumstances, there is a legitimate place"
for renditions, Tom Malinowski, the Washington advocacy director
for Human Rights Watch, told the Los Angeles Times. "What
I heard loud and clear from the president's order was that they
want to design a system that doesn't result in people being
sent to foreign dungeons to be tortured..."
Illegal kidnapping and imprisonment is abhorrent when George
W. Bush is the cowboy commander in chief but if the new messiah
says it's OK then that's just dandy huh?
So much for last month's headlines that read Barack
Obama’s new CIA boss signals end of waterboarding and
Of course, as evidenced recently by several researchers and
journalists, Obama's much lauded declaration to "ban"
torture and his commitment to close down detention facilities
are chocked full of
loopholes and hidden
clauses designed to allow such practices and premises
to be continued.
As writer Tom Eley has pointed out, Obama's
orders leave torture, indefinite detention intact.
The orders signed by Obama do not undo the Bush administration’s
attacks on constitutional and international law... They do
not challenge the supposed right of the president to unilaterally
imprison any individual, without trial and without charges,
by declaring him to be an 'enemy combatant... Nor do they
end the procedure known as 'extraordinary rendition...
They do not affect the hundreds of prisoners - 600 at the
Bagram prison camp in Afghanistan alone — incarcerated
beyond the barbed wire of Guantanamo...
On the question of so-called 'harsh interrogation techniques,'
i.e., torture, Obama’s orders leave room for their continuation...
White House Counsel Gregory Craig told reporters the administration
was prepared to take into account demands from the CIA that
such methods be allowed...
Obama announced the creation of a task force that will consider
new interrogation methods beyond those sanctioned by the Army
Field Manual, which now accepts 19 forms of interrogation,
as well as the practice of extraordinary rendition...
Furthermore, as reported by Brian Ross of ABC news, If Guantanamo
is ever closed, the US government intends to will ship alleged
terrorists caught up its international dragnet to other
secret American-run prison camps.
If Obama were truly committed to ending the legacy of torture
and secret detention, he would authorize the prosecution of
those officials responsible, all the way up to the top. Instead,
he has said he will
do no such thing.
Perhaps the president has been taking advice from Rep. Silvestre
Reyes (D-TX), chairman of the House Intelligence Committee,
who last December said that the continuation
of the CIA's illegal practices "might be necessary".
In the words of Constitutional law professor Jonathan Turley,
Obama has set out a stall that indicates he is quite willing
ownership of Bush's war crimes by looking the other
way on torture and rendition.
Of course, this is all part of the glorious CHANGE, that we
were promised. Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed hit the nail squarely on
the head in his excellent article, Obama:
While around the world, Obama’s measures were interpreted
as completely reversing the Bush administration policies of
torture, extraordinary rendition and secret prisons –
starting with the declaration of the complete closure of Guantanamo
Bay – deeper inspection of the details of his Executive
Orders suggests, unfortunately, that cries of joy are slightly
Obama’s public disavowals of torture do not actually
represent the end of the systemic practice of the CIA’s
traditional interrogation techniques, conducted without public
scrutiny for decades. Rather, they portend a sheepish return
to secrecy – or in other words, a return to the obvious
recognition that open declarations of covert US practices
such as torture as official policy are detrimental, not conducive,
to US hegemony.
The end result was a successful re-configuration of the public
presentation of US military intelligence practices, coupled
with nominal legal caveats permitting them to continue relatively
unimpeded – essentially a giant PR exercise. Meanwhile,
the vast post-9/11 domestic national security apparatus denying
habeas corpus, undermining due process, and facilitating mass
surveillance as well as intrusive social control powers brought
in by the Bush administration was not repudiated, but retained.
No where else is the false left/right political paradigm more
evident than here. The illegal and brutal practices of the secret
U.S. intelligence apparatus date back decades, they did not
arrive with George W. Bush and they will not depart with him.
These policies are part of a more overarching expansion of
global empire, demanded by the establishment classes who continue
to crave the wealth and power that the expansion of the military
industrial complex provides.
It is for this purpose that the U.S. economy and its people
are being churned up and used as fuel by the very same elite
responsible for elevating Obama to the top of the political
Obama recognises this and his actions have proven one of two
things, either he is powerless to stop it or he has no intention
of stopping it.
Can we still torture? Yes we can!
Can we still carry out extraordinary rendition? Yes we can!
Jones LIVE, A Fourth Hour Of Streaming TV Now Added To The Infowars
Click here to get your subscription today!
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As Species Vanish, Taking Up a Mission to Protect Birds and Beasts
August 3, 2012
Writing for The New York Times, Lisa Foderaro explored Dr.Cristián Samper's decision to helm the Wildlife Conservation Society after serving as director of the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C.
Speaking about this opportunity, Dr. Samper said, “I’ve spent the last 30 years of my life studying wildlife, and many of the cloud forests that I once did research on are now gone — literally,” he said. “When I go back to the field, I see an incredible loss of species. Part of my decision to make this career change is that I feel I can’t be a bystander. This is an opportunity to protect and conserve these species.”
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Is it better to buy a real or artificial Christmas tree?
We do not recommend artificial trees because, although they can be reused, they are derived from non-renewable, petroleum-based plastics.
If you prefer a live Christmas tree, consider buying a small one that you can keep for several years, transferring it to a larger pot when necessary. Norfolk Island, Aleppo, Japanese Black, Italian Stone or Canary Island Pine will all live in a city, but Monterey pines are not a good choice. Keep your tree outside in a shady spot for a week before bringing it inside. Position it near a window for sunlight but away from heat sources. Water once a week but check soil every few days in case it needs more water. Do not plan on keeping your tree inside for more than four weeks.
Christmas tree farms exist for the purpose of growing trees for cutting. This four to six year crop cycle provides wildlife habitat, filters pollutants and generates oxygen. When choosing a tree, grab a branch with your thumb and index finger and slide down the branch. Few needles should come off in your hand. Make a fresh cut off the bottom of the trunk and then place the tree immediately in water. Choose a tree stand that holds a gallon of water – which it will soak up within the first 24 hours. Place away from heat sources such as heaters, radiators and televisions.
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3 Types Of Filters For Your Home.
The desire for clean, pure water is a basic human need – one which drives the billion dollar bottled water industry. With the public becoming increasingly aware of the environmental damage that drinking bottled water is causing, there has been a high demand for clean alternatives for home use. Some communities, such as Rockland, Maryland, are even considering banning bottled water completely.
One factor that has helped influence this is the rise of home filters. These transform your plain tap water into a fountain of freshness, providing a valuable alternative to bottled water. If you are not convinced that it’s necessary to start looking for home filtration systems, it’s a good idea to examine the cost of bottled water.
Nearly half of all bottled water originates from municipal water sources in the United States, yet it costs 500 times as much as tap water that comes from the same source. The high price associated with this industry also includes plastic’s environmental impact. It takes approximately 1000 years for each plastic bottle to biodegrade, with millions tossed into landfills each day. In addition, a large amount of oil is used for every bottle’s production and distribution.
There are now a number of choices that you can make when it comes to providing clean, pure water for your home – without the environmental damage. This is an easy and cost-effective way to make your home a little greener.
1. Home Water Coolers – One of today’s top choices is a filter that attaches directly to your water mains. These automatically filter your water, and can also act as an instant boiling water tap.
2. Pitcher Filters – If you’re on a budget you can invest in a filter jug that can be refilled with water and left in your refrigerator. Another benefit of choosing this option is that it is portable, so you can have distilled water on the go.
3. Faucet Filters – This option is similar to a home water cooler system, because it attaches directly to your sink for clean water on demand. You must change the filters more frequently, however.
With a wealth of options on the market, there’s no reason not to enjoy fresh filtered water from your own home without the wasteful impact of using plastic bottles.
Guest Post by Robbie Reddy.
I think this little product is pretty cool. Just give it a gander and make your puchase soon!
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With our young soldiers marching off to war all around us and returning home with not only visible injuries, but the many you can’t see, I began to consider Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, or PTSD, as it was viewed in the past. And it became a pivotal plot point in my upcoming book BLOOD LANCE, my medieval mystery with protagonist Crispin Guest, a disgraced knight turned detective in fourteenth century London. A knight from Crispin’s chivalric past, Sir Thomas Saunfayl, pulls Crispin into his difficulties that are quickly spiraling out of control. Sir Thomas is accused of desertion and must fight for his life in a judicial joust. Desperate to ensure his victory, he has paid a fortune to lay his hands on the Spear of Longinus, a religious relic he believes will give him invincibility on the lists, and he hires Crispin to find it.
The idea of knights possibly suffering from PTSD fascinated me. I wondered if throughout history, in the days before modern artillery, combatants suffered from it. After all, it is a malady that manifests once a soldier returns home to “normal” life, and many soldiers and knights were away from home for years and years. Even though there is little in the way of discussion about it in old documents because of the cultural and sociological differences between then and now, I didn’t suppose it was a modern phenomenon, though we have given it fancy modern names.
In World War I, they talked of being “shell shocked” from the nature of the new style of warfare where soldiers huddled in trenches while being barraged by exploding shells. By World War II it was called “battle fatigue.” General Patton famously slapped a soldier suffering from this. “Battlefield stress” is yet another term.
|Battle of Courtrai|
But in the Middle Ages it could only be recognized as a failure on the part of the soldier and labeled as cowardice. Interestingly enough, some parchment was given to the problem of cowardice. The idea--then as now--was to train the soldier so thoroughly that the “flight” part of the natural “fight or flight” response would be eliminated. Drill, discipline, and group bonding went a long way toward shaping the mind (though the medieval foot soldier wasn’t drilled in the sense of practicing formations, not like their ancient ancestors in Greece or Rome. It was an impracticality. They had to rely on the discipline of the knights, those in the front lines, to form strategies for the foot soldiers to follow. However, infantry was able to save the day over the mounted knight many a time, including in the battle of Courtrai in 1302 and Bannockburn in 1314).
Instilling a greater fear in one’s commander than in the enemy also proved optimal. In ancient China, for example, generals would maneuver their armies in such a way as to make retreat impossible thus forcing the advance as the only option. Religious fervor, too, offered a standard under which one could fight while also offering ultimate rewards if death should strike.
There was a reason for rallying the troops before a battle with a stirring speech. From ancient Greece and probably before, generals and kings gave battle orations meant to bond, to encourage, and to remind the men of their reasons for fighting and for their ultimate rewards if they succeeded. Think of the St. Crispin's Day speech in Shakespeare’s Henry V. I don’t know about you, but it makes me want to take up arms!
Combined, this is what made up the “band of brothers,” where even the general or, in some instances, the castellan of a fortress, feels close to his men in a way that defies the social classes.
Still, even with all this training and discipline, with the subsequent shame in society associated with cowardice, there were certainly soldiers and knights who succumbed to the rigors of war. A knight on a horse could flee a lot easier than a man on the ground, and there were instances where generals insisted the knights dismount in order to make fleeing more difficult. Early flight of the knights lost many a battle, including King Stephen’s battle at Lincoln and Robert Curthose’s battle at Tinchebrai. Are these instances of cowardice as we might understand it, or of a man cutting his losses and getting the heck out of there?
Battle stress manifests itself in running away in the face of battle, sleeplessness, irritability, irrational anger, mood swings, and thoughts of suicide. Sir Thomas in this piece suffers from these symptoms and can’t understand why. All his training and discipline failed him in the face of the constant barrage of the battle royale. What’s a knight to do? As he said, they can’t all be Crispin Guests.
My new medieval mystery BLOOD LANCE will be released Oct 16 in hardcover, e-book, and audiobook. See a series book trailer and discussion guides for all my books at www.JeriWesterson.com
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I was wondering what people is doing in order to compile their iPhone applications optimizing them for maximum speed rather than size or the tradeoff speed versus size.
You should always, always profile your code before making any blanket assumptions about what is good or bad for your particular app. Shark is really nice and is able to use the hardware performance counters on your device to tell you lots of low-level details about how your application is running.
On iPhone 3GS, compiling for Thumb-2 doesn't incur the performance penalty that the older Thumb instruction set does (it has native floating point, in particular). See this other question for some additional details.
You can produce binaries with more than one instruction set in them
In many cases, optimizing for size is also a good way to optimize for speed: by squeezing your code size, it may fit better into the CPU's instruction cache, avoiding fetches to memory. This helps more often with frequently executed tight loops.
No. 1 tip - know your storage classes. Doing something like indexOfObject on an array can be incredibly expensive and you can usually avoid those situations by using a different storage class or organising your data differently. The performance tools can help you find these situations.
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Eggs pack a powerful little punch! Not only are they cheap to buy, easy to cook, and an important ingredient in all my favorite foods like cookies and brownies, but they are extremely good for us.
In the past eggs have gotten a bad reputation due to the fact that they can contribute to high cholesterol and heart disease. While you should double check with your doctor, most reports say that as long as you limit your egg intake to no more than one a day, or a few a couple of times per week, they will not harm you. Besides, it is only the egg yolks that affect cholesterol in any way – you can still go nuts eating egg whites. This is also some good advice if you are really trying to watch your waistline – eat one egg yolk for every 2-3 egg white. You won’t even notice the difference in taste! You still need to consume some of the egg yolk though because the yolk contains choline – which has been proven to reduce the risk of breast cancer and help with the nervous system. The only other foods that contain choline are liver, wheat germ, cauliflower, and some milk – so our best, and yummiest, bet to get this nutrient is from egg yolks.
Eggs also have incredible health benefits that help the eyes – it can reduce both cataracts and macular degeneration. They also help to benefit the skin from the inside out – being high in minerals and vitamins such as Vitamins B12 and D.
Eggs can be a wonderful addition to your skincare routine to use as weekly masks or treatments. Egg whites make a wonderful, tightening mask, while egg yolks applied to the skin can help to heal some mild to moderate acne. Using the gooey part inside the eggshell – called the eggshell membrane – is fantastic when added to a cut or irritation on the skin to soothe and heal it.
At only 68 calories for a whole large egg, eggs are a staple to keep in your refrigerator. Eat some for your breakfast and your body will thank you – hard boil a few and eat them as snacks throughout the week or whip some up in a scramble with a side of toast. Apply some topically and your skin will thank you – relax tonight in front of your favorite movie with some whites around your eyes. And this weekend – be sure to hard boil and decorate some for an egg-stra special Easter egg hunt with your loved ones.
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Preserving Idaho's historic places through collaboration, education, and advocacy.
In a Harper’s Magazine article of 1974, L.J. Davis noted that “if things go on as they are, Boise stands an excellent chance of becoming the first American city to have deliberately eradicated itself.” Davis was referencing the recent wave of demolitions, which had washed over the city. Under the guise of “urban renewal”, these demolitions had robbed Boiseans of dozens of historic structures, and had cut a swath through the downtown core that is still visible today. Much of this destruction was the result of the Boise Redevelopment Agency’s misguided attempt to build a massive downtown mall complete with shopping, parking, and an absence of historic character or distinction.
But Davis went on to note that the citizens of Boise were beginning to notice the loss of their cultural heritage. He remarked that “Boiseans are an amiable, even-tempered people…not long ago, though, a great many of them made the common discovery that cars were parked where their childhoods used to be, that their city was in serious danger of ceasing to exist, and that directly in the path of the bulldozers lay virtually all that remained of their architectural heritage. It made them mad as hell.” In describing the nascent historic preservation movement in Boise, Davis was describing grass roots efforts to save the remainder of the downtown core. He was speaking of individuals such as Joan Carley and Mary Lesser who in 1972 banded together with others to form the Idaho Historic Preservation Council (now Preservation Idaho), a statewide nonprofit organization dedicated to the protection of Idaho and Boise’s heritage.
For 40 years, Preservation Idaho has worked to protect historic places of significance to Idahoans. Though at times limited in its ability to affect real change outside of the Treasure Valley, Preservation Idaho has worked across the state in small ways and large to preserve the architecture and history that makes Idaho unique. Read some of those stories, but know that we cannot continue this effort without your help. Consider joining, donating, or volunteering for the organization and make a difference in your hometown or across the state.
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ost Web services created with Visual Studio.NET are written in a managed language such as C# or VB.NET, which has security benefits. Managed code can help mitigate security threats such as buffer overruns, and with code-access permissions the programmer can limit the code's capabilities to prevent attackers from using it for malicious coding.
However, after security reviews of numerous Web services during the past year, I have noted two critical mistakes that VS.NET Web services designers make. Both relate to the connection between the Web service and the database servers, such as SQL Server and Oracle.
The bad news is these mistakes occur equally in Java applications, ASP applications, C++ applications, and Visual Basic applications. The good news is they have easy fixes, which I will present in this article.
Mistake #1: Using the Sysadmin Account to Connect to the Database Server
Just about every SQL sample I see for a Web service has code that connects to the SQL database as the sysadmin. It is a very common mistake. Think about it; how many times have you seen a connection string like this:
strConnection = "data source=DBServer;uid=sa;pwd="
The user identity that connects to the database is sa
(SQL Server's sysadmin account), and the
password is empty. I'm not even going to insult your intelligence by telling you how bad having no password is. For
now, I'll address the sa
The principal of least privilege, a very important security maxim, dictates that you use an account that has only the
necessary set of privileges to perform a task—and no more. So if your application queries a couple of tables and
perhaps updates another table, why do you need sa
to do this? Sure, sa can query and update
tables, but it also can do much more that you may not want it to. It can delete any table in the system, call any
stored procedure, adjust all data in every table, define new databases, and so on. So you absolutely should not use
to perform simple queries and updates. It is much too powerful. It can do anything to the
database, and a flaw in your application may leave your data vulnerable to attack.
Apply the principal of least privilege when connecting to the database. It takes a little more time to program an account with only the necessary privileges but it'll also take much more time for an attacker to compromise your data. Also, don't store connection strings in the application itself. Pull the data from an external source. Not only is it more secure but it also is more maintainable.
Mistake #2: Handcrafting SQL Statements
Look at the following, seemingly innocuous code:
strSQL = "select sum(cost) from sales where id='" + id + "'";
Do you have code like this? At a Writing Secure Code presentation I conducted at the recent Microsoft Professional Developer's Conference in Los Angeles, 80 percent of the approximately 500-person audience claimed they did. The problem with this code is that it provides the user's variable id, opening the door for an attacker to "piggyback" SQL statements in the variable.
For example, an attacker could set the id variable to the following:
1' drop table sales --
This builds the following code:
where id='1' drop table sales -- '
This code will perform a query looking for any rows where id = 1, which may or may not exist. The sales table is then dropped or, more plainly, deleted. The "--" at the end of the input comments out any other data in the SQL query that the flawed code built, which increases the probability of the input being valid SQL that executes without failing.
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The Business: Worried that the boom in the U.S. economy could fizzle even as the new millennium is uncorked? Then savor the bouquet of a business that's sure to make every year a vintage year: a purveyor of distilled spirits, wine, and beer based in one of Texas's fastest-growing counties. Although this large company is 15 years old, its sales have increased by nearly 70% since 1996, when the owner decided to diversify into wholesale liquor distribution to local restaurants. Three retail outlets and a 4,600-square-foot warehouse are leased, but the sale includes some pricey assets. The new owner would get nearly $1 million worth of (liquid) inventory and more than $500,000 worth of equipment, including three industrial-size coolers and a state-of-the-art computer system that updates inventory and sales daily. One caveat: The buyer will have to ante up $1,000 for three new licenses because the seller's licenses, in accordance with state law, do not transfer automatically with the sale. The current owner is retiring for health reasons, but his three store managers and most of the other 18 employees should be willing to keep this party hearty.
Price: $3.75 million
Outlook: This company's prospects look as rosy as, well, a tequila sunrise. That's because its potential customer base is growing as fast as the county in which it does business (and according to the most recent U.S. statistics, each year the average adult consumes roughly 2 gallons of distilled spirits, 32 gallons of beer, and 3 gallons of wine). Thanks to Texas's somewhat quirky licensing regulations, this retailer/wholesaler can sell its libations anywhere but ship them only within city limits. While that restriction leaves the prospects for Internet sales high and dry, it doesn't dampen the outlook for local sales growth, since residents of nearby "dry" or "partially dry" cities are generally willing to handle their own pickups. The best way a new owner could spike this sales brew? Intensify the marketing effort of the company's wholesale business, which now serves about 80 accounts.
Price Rationale: Although this deal may be a bit pricey for some shoppers' tastes, it's valued fairly according to current standards, which call for liquor stores to sell for three to five times monthly sales (which are about $570,000), plus the value of inventory (about $1 million) and the liquor license in states where it's transferable (which doesn't apply in this case). That suggests a price range of about $2.7 million to $3.8 million, with the sale probably closing at the higher end, since the wholesale business, although it brings in lower margins, has growth potential.
Pros: Although liquor-consumption rates aren't growing, this company's customer base is. Toast that!
Cons: You'll wind up with a severe hangover if your wholesale business doesn't grow fast enough to justify a bar tab this big. -- Jill Andresky Fraser
|Gross Revenues||Recast Earnings*|
*Before interest, taxes, depreciation, and owner's compensation.
Inc. has no stake in the sale of the business featured. The magazine cannot confirm the accuracy of financial or other information offered by the seller. Inquiries should be directed to Eric White, Empire Business Brokers, at 972-378-6999.
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Aug. 12: Where's The Evidence That Says Forefoot Running Is Better Than Heel Running?
EVERY ONCE IN A WHILE YOU GET LUCKY. Two months ago, on the day (June 14) when the NYTimes published an article about running camps, particularly those offering advice on Pose and Chi running, I walked into the office of a Harvard paleoanthropologist with a biomechanics background and a big interest in running form. Dr. Daniel Lieberman and his University of Utah colleague, Dennis Bramble, got their 15 seconds of fame several years ago when Nature magazine published their cover story "Endurance running and the evolution of homo." In it, they argued, that we humans couldn't have evolved into the big-brained homo sapiens that we are without running.
On the day of my visit, Lieberman and an undergraduate student had just finished analyzing the foot strike of a barefoot runner. The movement of his feet puzzled Lieberman. The guy landed on his forefeet, then drifted backward to the heel, then moved forward again to the forefoot for pushoff. This seemed like a lot of extra movement, and not the efficiency Lieberman had expected.
Yet a fair number of people have recently been telling us to run on our forefeet. Dr. Nicholas Romanov's Pose running came along first. More recently Danny Dreher and his wife have been teaching something they call Chi Running. I've met Romanov, a swell guy. I haven't met Dreher, but have heard from a reliable source that he's good people too. Nonetheless, I find it hard to find support for their claims. The way I look at it, slow runners run on their heels, and really fast sprinters run on their forefeet (expending huge amounts of energy to stay up there), and the rest of us fall somewhere in between (but mostly on our heels for distance running).
Several research reports haven't been kind to the Pose camp. A couple of years ago, Tim Noakes's lab in Cape Town gave a small group of runners 7.5 hours of instruction in Pose running. They also did before/after video and other analysis. The major outcome seemed to be that the Pose runners began taking shorter strides, not something that would improve your running economy and speed. You can read the abstract here.
More recently I've heard from a San Diego State graduate student named Tsuyoshi Yoshino about an unpublished study that he conducted. He had 10 experienced runners do 7 weeks of barefoot running, which he considers essentially the same as Pose and Chi running. He also studied them pre-and post-, being sure to include oxygen consumption changes. Result: The runners consumed more oxygen, not less, when they switched to barefoot running, even though they weren't wearing cumbersome oxygen-expensive shoes. Again, their strides grew shorter.
To be fair, the Pose and barefoot running did produce changes in biomechanical and ground reaction forces. These could improve injury patterns, if that's what you're after. Or they could produce more injuries. Who can say? But, as my running partner Terry, a mechanical engineering Ph.D., notes: "You can't make forces go away. You can only move them around. That's a sophomore engineering principle."
Last week, a mostly Japanese research team published results of their study of 415 runners' footstrikes at a big half marathon. Nearly 75 percent of all the runners were heel-strikers. Even among the 50 fastest, who were averaging 5:00 minutes per mile, the heelstrike percentage fell only to 62 percent. Forefoot strikers? Just 2 percent. You can read the abstract here.
I don't think the debate is over, and the outcome completely decided. But the forefoot-landing proponents have their work cut out for them.
[What do you think about the forefoot-rearfoot debate? Have you tried changing your running form? Has it made a difference? Please make a Comment to describe your experiences.]
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The Ticket to Work and Work Incentives Advisory Panel
Welcome to the Web site of the Ticket to Work and Work Incentives Advisory Panel. We are pleased to have you visit and we hope you will find it a great resource for information about the Ticket to Work and Work Incentives Improvement Act of 1999 and its implementation.
The Ticket to Work legislation established the Advisory Panel within the Social Security Administration to advise the President, the Congress and the Commissioner of Social Security on issues related to work incentive programs, planning and assistance for individuals with disabilities and the Ticket to Work and Self-Sufficiency Program established under this Act. We have an important role to play in the implementation of this very significant law, which provides the greatest opportunity for America's citizens with disabilities to return to work.
We are a bipartisan group of twelve private citizens, four of whom were appointed by the President, four by the Senate and four by the House of Representatives. We represent an excellent cross-section of individuals with diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds and with diverse experience and expert knowledge as recipients, providers, disabled veterans, employers and employees in the fields of employment services, vocational rehabilitation and other disability related support services. (SSA)
Type of Resource:
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The Fort Sumter War memorial in the center of Lownsdale Square in downtown Portland was the location for a noontime event commemorating the 150th anniversary of the beginning of the American Civil War on April 12, 1861 with the shelling of Fort Sumter in Charleston, South Carolina. F.W.Krone, co-founder of NW Historical Perspectives and Events, led the opening benediction and the subsequent moment of silence held to honor the soldiers and civilians who died in the Civil War.
A reading of the roster of names of Civil War veterans followed, from records of battle-weary soldiers who later moved to Oregon to raise families and live out their lives in peace. Office workers visiting the plaza on their lunch break, tourists and those who came specifically to look at the Fort Sumter Memorial had their Civil War and Oregon-related questions answered by volunteers from Northwest Historical Perspectives and Events.
The Fort Sumter Memorial was a 1906 gift of two decommissioned field howitzers to the City of Portland from leading citizen and Civil War veteran, Colonel Henry Dosch. NW Historical Perspectives and Events took the initiative to hold this ceremony because they conduct historical research on all things related to Oregon, and work to preserve endangered heritage sites including pioneer cemeteries and memorials.
In the decades following the war's end, Oregon became home to over 15,000 Civil War Veterans who helped to make our state grow and prosper. All commemorative Civil War dates with Oregon connections hold great significance to us all, and are prime opportunities to learn more about the unique and rich history of our state.
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Providers look for a level playing field
OMB has not decided how to resolve inequities in the 1932 Economy Act
- By Jason Miller
- Feb 18, 2007
Over time, we will have big problems because the Economy Act limits our ability to smooth out the cost curve associated with infrastructure upgrades.' Doug Bourgeois, National Business Center
It's been more than a year since public-sector providers of human resources and financial-management shared services called attention to inequities in the Economy Act'which, they say, handicap them in competing with the private sector.
And despite congressional interest and suggestions from federal experts, the Office of Management and Budget still is undecided about how to solve this problem.
While administration officials contemplate why agencies still must work within rules established in 1932, public sector SSPs'namely the Agriculture Department's National Finance Center, the Health and Human Services Department, and the Interior Department's National Business Center'are left wondering if they can compete with private-sector providers.
'[The Economy Act rules are] holding back our planned expansion of services on the human resources side,' said Doug Bourgeois, director of NBC, which is a shared-services provider for both financial management and human resources. 'We are severely constrained in the ability to add new services to fully meet the entire scope of the HR Line of Business function service offering.'
And NBC is not alone in feeling constrained. NFC and HHS both have said that the Economy Act limits their bid and proposal dollars, and their marketing efforts [GCN, March 6, Page 1].Rules for billing
The 1932 Economy Act governs how agencies buy services from one another. Congress updated the act in 1988, but the tenets remain basically the same: Shared-services providers can charge agencies only for services provided, and they cannot spend funds they do not have or extend the availability of their money by transferring it to services for another agency.
Additionally, NBC, NFC and HHS, unlike the other SSPs, cannot retain earnings from year to year, meaning they start each Oct. 1 with a zero balance and cannot easily plan for normal business activities such as marketing, refreshing technology or hiring personnel to meet customer demands. These SSPs also cannot budget revenues below costs, because then they would be in violation of the Antideficiency Act, which states that agencies cannot spend money they do not have.
Of the eight public-sector shared-services providers, four are affected by the Economy Act.
This, according to experts, puts those four SSPs at a disadvantage when competing for work against the other four SSPs that have a working capital fund or use franchise funds, which lets them retain earnings for systems modernization work or, basically, whatever else they need. And it makes it difficult for NBC, NFC, HHS and the Defense Finance and Accounting Service to compete against private-sector companies, which have more substantial budgets.
'I don't think we will wake up one day and say the Economy Act killed us today,' Bourgeois said. 'Over time, we will have big problems because the Economy Act limits our ability to smooth out the cost curve associated with infrastructure upgrades.'
Bourgeois added that he thinks OMB officials understand the situation, but that correcting it is not among their highest priorities right now.
An OMB spokeswoman said the September version of the FM LOB's Migration Planning Guidance identified system modernization funding as an outstanding issue. And OMB 'is still evaluating the question of modernization funding. Our goal is to help ensure that a level playing field exists for all federal and commercial shared-service providers.'
This indecision comes despite promises from OMB controller Linda Combs to look at all options during a congressional hearing last summer.
One solution, besides trying to get congressional approval, is to use the E-Government Fund to stake a modernization fund for the four SSPs.
One former government official said OMB could use the E-Gov Fund once, and then the fund could go away. 'The E-Government Fund is for development of IT initiatives,' the former official said. 'You need a more flexible mechanism to do this and wouldn't need both this working capital fund and the E-Government Fund to operate.'
Another way would be to use the $40 million from excess Federal Acquisition Service fees the General Services Administration has requested from Congress the last three years for a working capital fund or something similar.
OMB's spokeswoman said there currently is 'no plan to use the E-Gov Fund to help SSPs under the Economy Act'
Bourgeois said that, while OMB decides on the best way to solve the issue, NBC is planning an approach to obtain necessary approvals.
'OMB has indicated they may look at ... rationalizing how franchise funds work,' he said. 'We have plans on how we will provide [new] services. [But] it places the burden of infrastructure investments on a single or small group of customers.'
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Desperate Scots summon supernatural aid in their 1745 war for independence, and create even more chaos.
Winter, 1745. Scotland is losing a war for independence. The advancing British army has orders to leave no survivors. In desperation, Robert Maxwell and his fellow soldiers beg for supernatural aid from the daione sìdhe—faeries exiled by humans to a parallel plane of existence. Their plea is answered, but in exchange, the sìdhe demand a permanent reversal of the banishment and unlimited access to the human world.
Their assistance gives the Scots a temporary advantage, but the tide soon shifts. Robert is unsure which is a greater threat to his family: the hostile British army, or the group of faeries who seem determined to take over his homeland.
With no way to return the sìdhe to their own world, Robert realizes the humans will have to learn to live alongside them. He and the Scottish leadership turn to Marian Cameron, a patriotic but flighty teenager with rare psychic abilities, and talented pamphlet-writer Ina Bruce.
Opposing their efforts to create harmony between faerie and humans is Alfred Grayson, a government official whose job is to “civilize” Scotland by replacing discontented farmers with wealthy English landowners—and to investigate the mysterious new rebel forces.
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Sometimes, the tiniest newspaper story is a window on something vast. Like the chimney in Mary Poppins: if you creep into the little aperture, it leads to a huge secret world.
A story I read last week, headlined "Black women 'more confident in their bodies'", was just a few paragraphs long. I only noticed it because it was illustrated with a photo of Michelle Obama in a rather fabulous little pencil skirt and cardigan – just my cup of sartorial tea.
The brief attendant story reported that a survey (commissioned by the Washington Post) had found black women have more self-esteem than white women – "even", breathed the paper in amazement, "if they weigh more".
What? No! Even if they weigh more? There are women whose confidence isn't tied directly to other people's opinions of their arses? Can this be possible? Next week: Lord Lucan found on unicorn farm, surrounded by people who think the postal service has improved over the last decade.
In the survey, 67% of "overweight" black women said they had high self-esteem, compared with only 41% of "average-sized or thin" white women.
This raised an interesting and complex idea. People have long complained that women of colour are under-represented in the "beauty" industries. In TV advertising, on billboards, at fashion shows, in women's magazines, you just don't see them. They rarely play romantic leads in films, either; Octavia Spencer's best shot at glory was playing a maid. Hattie McDaniel must have been rolling her eyes in the grave.
I don't think it's possible for me to give less of a toss about fashion (as anyone who's seen my clothes will readily agree), but even I feel a bit sad, as I flick impatiently through 19 pages of advertising at the front of a glossy magazine in the hope of finding an actual article before the dentist tells me he's ready, that all the girls are white.
You see the odd black model and I use the term advisedly: there's an occasional fuss about some new Eritrean signing with a "bizarre and compelling look", but these fashion mags and catwalks otherwise offer an overwhelming array of towering white replicates, each sullen white glare indistinguishable from the next.
I think we've reached general agreement (and when I say "we", I don't include creepy fashion designers with their ponytails and spangly trousers) that this is weird and wrong, that black women should be more visible in all media and especially the women's market.
But now it turns out that, hidden from glossy scrutiny, black women have managed to not get screwed up. They like themselves! They don't feel fat! They're getting on with life and worrying about other things entirely! The bigotry in fashion, cosmetics, advertising, TV and Hollywood hasn't damaged black women, it's saved them! They'd be mad to keep campaigning for greater visibility in Vogue or light entertainment, now it's clear that absence has made a lovely free space for them to form their own healthy self-image.
Let's be honest: white women are kidding themselves if they think they're represented in these media either. I share about as much genetic material with Julia Roberts or Heidi Klum as I do with a tree frog. But somehow, white women have been tricked into thinking that's how they should look, if they weren't such miserable failures – while black women, by the simple mechanism of being a different colour, have spotted the obvious and stayed sane.
Crawling further up the chimney of what was basically an extended picture caption to a Michelle Obama photo, I googled the full original survey.
Of black women, 68% said it's "very important" to have a successful career, and 62% that it's "very important" to have free time to pursue other interests – compared with 45% and 55% respectively of white women. So the white women care less about working and about stretching their minds in other ways, presumably because they're so damn busy trying to stay thin.
Meanwhile, 52% of white women think it's "very important" to be in a romantic relationship, compared with only 44% of black women. Basically, black women seem to be about 300 miles further down the road of liberation than their paler sisters. This chimney was, like Bert the sweep's, truly "a doorway to a place of enchantment".
Despite being more laissez faire about the whole work thing, 51% of white women said they experience stress "frequently", compared with only 40% of black women. If you (black, white or any other racial mix) aren't starting to get the message about this magic world where work and hobbies matter more than dieting and dating, then splash yourself with cold water, close that matchmaking website and read the figures again.
It's not that the black women in the survey are ruthless individualists, pursuing professional glory and solo fun to the exclusion of all else; the other telling statistic is that 74% of them consider "living a religious life" to be important, compared with 57% of white respondents. Some might say that this figure alone explains their greater confidence, lower stress and different priorities.
But the happier body image, at least, must have a lot to do with being ignored by (and thus disconnected from) the media mainstream and its impossible beauty ideals. Discovering that these black women seem to hold all the secrets to a happy and ambitious life, one's first instinct is to be even more furious about their under-representation. Let's get these good examples out there for us all to see! But it's a Schrödinger's Cat problem: the figures suggest that, once everyone starts looking, the priorities change and the peace of mind is killed off entirely.
This survey says more about the dangers of the media than anything that's come out of the Leveson inquiry.
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Bugs on your Christmas tree? Here’s how to get ‘em off
By Staff Report -
Nov 30, 2006
BOUTTE - Your pre-cut Christmas tree may be crawling with bugs, but don’t worry, says an expert - they’ll probably stay put on the tree, and even if they don’t, you can suck them up in a vacuum cleaner.
But whatever you do, don’t mist your tree with bug spray. It’s flammable and the residue could turn your holiday display into a fire hazard.
“Every Christmas tree can harbor insects, mites, or spiders,” says James Stimme, of the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture.
“Some summer bugs may remain on the tree into winter and could become active after being exposed to the warmth inside the home.
“Although many will stay on the tree, a few may be attracted to sources of light, including windows. But none of these accidental introductions are a threat to your home, its contents, or occupants.”
Preventing introduction of these "pests" into your home is the best, and easiest, plan. Mechanical tree shakers, available at some retail lots, are useful in removing some insects from the trees.
Vigorously shaking the tree before bringing it into your home will serve the same purpose, and will also remove any loose needles.
Bird nests, although considered decorative by some people, may contain bird parasites such as mites and lice. They should be removed by hand if not dislodged by shaking.
Any egg masses on the trees, including those of praying mantids and the gypsy moth, should also be removed.
Aerosol insect sprays are flammable and should NOT, under any circumstances, be sprayed on the Christmas tree.
Insects occurring on the tree should be left there until the tree is removed. Any that collect on ceilings, walls, or windows can be elminated with a vacuum cleaner.
Here’s a rundown of the bugs you might find on some trees: aphids, bark beetles, mites, praying mantids, psocids, scale insects, pine tortoise scale and striped pine scale, spiders.
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" The lot has fallen unto me in a fair ground: Yea - I have a
goodly heritage. " Psalm 16
There follow the random reflections of one retired farmer from
the southwest region of the Parish. Facts are facts but
interpretation is opinion. Please feel free to disagree.
During World War II everything was sacrificed: money, men and
materials. At the end the country was bankrupt and exhausted.
The euphoria following the General Election of 1945 faded into
five years of austerity. Bread, unrationed during the war,
became rationed. As late as 1951 coupons were still required for
The need for home grown food had resurrected British agriculture,
but money had not been invested in the workers cottages. I
inherited six cottages without indoor sanitation, hot water or
electricity. They had not been painted for twelve years or more.
The only electricity on the farm until 1954 was an ancient
generator for the house. Labour was cheap and plentiful but of
my nine employees only one had a car.
“ God made the country,
Man made the town. " Cowper
This is only a half truth. Our Iron Age forebears would not
recognise our landscape. Man has transformed it to meet his own
needs for food and livelihood.
In living memory West Woods have been felled and replanted.
Boreham Wood is half its earlier size. The area west of Glass's
Wood, below the communications tower, was downland and thorn
scrub where pigs were kept. It is now under cultivation,
although part of it has recently been planted with trees.
Landscape evolves in response to economic pressures.
" Change and decay in all around I see." Cardinal Newman
During the war food production was much needed and well
rewarded. A ploughing up campaign converted acres of permanent
grass meadows and downland to arable production.
In the 1950/1960 era, ley farming was the approved method of
rotation. Land that had been in crops was sown with grass seed
mixtures for cutting or grazing. Grants encouraged farmers to
plough up these short-term leys after three years. The balance
of payment deficit meant that arable farming was favoured.
In the fifties spring barley would have been the dominant grain
crop. Winter wheat followed ploughed-up grass, and winter oats
were a useful break crop because they have a different disease
pattern. However farmers respond to economic pressures just like
other businesses. The EEC decided to subsidise oil seed rape,
and soon the countryside was awash with livid yellow,
sickly-smelling rape fields. A change of tack at Brussels and
the delicate blue of linseed appeared, only to disappear when
the subsidy was cut.
Yields of all cereal crops have greatly increased. Even in the
sixties 30 hundredweight per acre would have been a decent crop
of wheat. Nowadays farmers are disappointed if they don't get
over 60 hundredweight per acre. The same percentage increase
would be true of other crops. This is largely due to improved
varieties of seed and to better weed and disease control.
Larger, more expensive and ever more powerful machinery has
resulted in fewer farm workers. Farming units have become larger
and contractors have filled the gap left by the shrinking labour
The most dramatic change has been the decline in dairying. In
1952 there were dairy herds at Hillside Farm and Dene Farm in
Lockeridge and at South Farm and Shaw in West Overton. All these
have disappeared and Peter Smith at Fyfield is the sole milk
producer in the parish. There are many causes for this decline,
mostly economic. EEC quotas were imposed that made it difficult
for farmers to increase production, then Brussels, aided by our
government, abolished the milk marketing board. As a result,
supermarkets used milk as a loss leader to kill the doorstep
trade, and then squeezed the producers and the dairies that
supplied them. The producer price of milk today is lower than it
was ten years ago and cheaper than bottled water.
On top of this, BSE closed the profitable markets in bull calf and
cull cow exports which have not been recovered. Mercifully Foot
and Mouth disease has not hit the parish seriously since 1957.
Breedwise, the British and Holstein Friesians have almost totally
eclipsed the other dairy herds. Of the beef breeds Herefords and
Aberdeen Angus have given way to polyglot herds with Charolais
and Limousin amongst their ancestors.
The Future: Hopes or wishful thinking.
" Old men and comets have been reverenced for the same reason:
their long beards and pretences to foretell events. "
As from 2005 the Common Agricultural Policy will take a new
turn. Production subsidies are out - acreage payments are in, so
guesswork is even more difficult than usual. I can only hazard a
few tentative predictions.
Arable producers will come under pressure from the regenerated
farms of Prussia, Hungary and Poland, new members of the EU,
whose cost structure will enable them to undercut British
farmers. We have the advantage that our wetter climate leads to
higher yields but our costs are also higher because we have to
dry our grain before storage. The world wheat surplus means that
cost of production rather than volume of crop is what matters. I
would predict that arable farming will be limited to more
fertile soils than we have in our parish, and that much of our
existing acreage will revert to grass.
I sincerely hope that dairying will improve. Liquid milk, as
opposed to milk products is not easily imported and sooner or
later the supermarkets may have to raise their prices above the
cost of production.
I have always been encouraged to go for quality and not quantity,
but the price differential was never enough to compensate for
the loss of yield. I fear this will continue to be the case
despite the assistance given to organic farming. Most consumers
are forced to buy on price.
Genetic Modification is the current great debate. If America, Asia
and Australia all adopt GM food and thereby undercut Europe,
sooner or later Europe will cave in, unless health worries are
Global warming could mean that maize becomes a cash as well as a
forage crop. If there were more tax concessions vinyards could
reappear, particularly on less fertile and hilly farms.
Finally farm size will continue to increase, diversification
likewise, and farm labour continue to decline. With ever
increasing costs and decreasing reserves of fossil fuels, our
government should perhaps consider more seriously such
alternatives as fuel from oil seed rape and wheat. Experiments
are already advanced on the Continent and would need little in
the way of capital investment compared with the unsightly,
inefficient, bird-chewing wind machines to which it is at
present addicted. Why no help for Short Rotation Coppice?
The future will be determined by politics and economics.
still have a balance of payments deficit.
still have not totally repaid the American post-war loan which
bailed us out.
The Third world still has millions starving and an increasing
population, yet farmers are paid to 'set-aside' their arable
Politicians have a long way to go before this Alice-in
Wonderland situation is resolved.
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As another school year begins, parents and students will be stocking up on the latest tech accessories and back to school essentials. According to a survey conducted by Wakefield Research, while students ages 18 to 24 are most interested in purchasing laptops and televisions, tablets, smartphones and speakers are at the top of their lists
Posts Tagged ‘back to school’
The first day of high school is fast approaching, and while you may be fully stocked up on binders, notebooks, pencils and pens, don’t forget to pick up a few tech toys to help boost productivity and have a little fun! Logitech has a number of products that are sure to come in handy for
Students of all ages worldwide are gearing up to head back to school within the next month. Whether you call it elementary school or junior high, second form or middle school – young students face many transitions as they head back to the classroom, and one of these changes may be working more with tablets.
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When it comes to trust in politics, David Cameron should sweat the small stuff
By Peter Hoskin
Follow Peter on Twitter
There’s a small item in today’s Sun that ought to make big waves. It concerns the subsidised food and drink in Parliament, and how certain politicians are working to block price rises. Apparently, MPs are insisting that the costs remain frozen, for reasons including that, “breakfast in the Commons would cost more than ‘nearby commercial venues’”. That means fillets of sea bass for £3.50 and glasses of white wine for £2.35 from here on in, all funded by the taxpayer to the tune of £6 million a year. Take that, commercial venues.
Stacked against a debt burden of £1.4 trillion, that £6 million may not add up to much – but, symbolically, it’s important. Not only is it an affront to the unsubsidised general public, at a time when supermarket prices are rising and wages stagnating, but it’s also a reminder of the pocket-lining tendencies that contributed to the expenses scandal. After Chris Huhne’s resignation, you’d think politicians would be especially alive to that little ideal called ‘trust’. Sadly, not all of them are.
Of course, Mr Cameron can’t always act against an unyielding Parliament. But he can use the prime ministerial bully pulpit to speak out against politicians’ most egregious habits and to shame the perpetrators. Besides, if he doesn’t do it, you can be sure that Nick Clegg will. As the next election approaches, the Lib Dems are likely to cast themselves as the ones fighting the system from within, as they have done so in the past. It would be unwise to allow them a free run across that ground.
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Podcasts & RSS Feeds
Wed March 6, 2013
Mo. House backs measure aimed at child sex abuse
Missouri House members have given first-round approval to a proposed constitutional amendment aimed at helping child sex abuse prosecutions.
The measure would let prosecutors introduce evidence of past crimes to corroborate a victim's testimony or to demonstrate someone has an inclination to commit the alleged crime. Such evidence would be limited to prosecutions of sexual crimes that involve a victim younger than 16.
Supporters say federal courts and many states allow that type of evidence. The Missouri Supreme Court previously has ruled it violates the state constitution.
In January, a Missouri child sex abuse task force recommended the constitutional amendment.
House members endorsed the proposal Wednesday, and it needs another vote to move to the Senate. Ultimately, voters would decide its fate.
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Nashville gay rights activists are planning to toast the overturn of the U.S. military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy Tuesday night, as the repeal of the controversial President Bill Clinton-era law officially goes into effect.
Congress and President Barack Obama took action in late 2010 to abolish the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy, which prohibits openly gay, lesbian or bisexual citizens from performing military service.
New measures, allowing gay and lesbian service members to be open about their sexual orientation, become law Tuesday, Sept. 20. The Tennessee Equality Project –– organized to advance gay civil rights –– is hosting a party Tuesday to celebrate the occasion at Nashville’s Canvas on Church Street. The free event begins at 6 p.m.
On hand will be military servicemen who support the repeal of “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell.”
“I have plenty of gay friends in the military,” said 25-year-old Lt. Tim Busch, a Fort Campbell product, who has fought in the war in Afghanistan and plans to attend Tuesday’s event in Nashville. “I know plenty of [gay] military members –– past, present –– who have fought, some who have died. I feel that it’s justice now to say that they’re actually a member of the military.
Busch said the military’s longtime “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy forced gay members into “a closet.” He said the new law allows gay military members to be who they are.
“It’s not a crime to be a gay,” he said. “It’s not a crime to be lesbian. It’s not a crime to be bisexual. But, it was in the military.”
In a U.S. Department of Defense press release, Pentagon press secretary George Little said the department is ready for the repeal. He said nearly all service members have taken training associated with the overturning of the law.
Chris Sanders, chairman of the Tennessee Equality Project’s Nashville chapter, said the repeal of "Don’t Ask Don’t Tell" offers something to celebrate considering Tennessee’s track record with the gay community. During the most recent legislative session, for example, Gov. Bill Haslam signed into law a bill that nullified Metro’s nondiscrimination policy that pertained to city contractors.
“Given the political climate in Tennessee, we get very few victories,” Sanders said. “This is a victory for all of us in the United States, and it certainly affects many people in Tennessee who either are currently serving or would like to serve one day.”
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By CLAIRE REGAN and JILLIAN JORGENSEN
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- Borough residents who will have to elevate their homes after Hurricane Sandy have visions of unsightly wooden “stilts” and concerns about the aesthetics of their neighborhoods.
But a drive through some of the New Orleans neighborhoods that have bounced back after Hurricane Katrina proves that’s not necessarily the case. There are options for elevating, and New Orleans homeowners got creative when lifting their homes off the ground.
Some put garages underneath their living spaces. Others used siding, complete with windows, to conceal the elevation. Homes that were raised only three or four feet off the ground used brick facades to hide their height, or lattice — sometimes covered in ivy — to mask empty space beneath the structure.
And plenty of homes that aren’t sky-high feature steps leading up to a classic southern front porch.
Seven years after Katrina, there are pockets of neglect in many New Orleans neighborhoods. But there is also rebirth and a return to normalcy.
The homeowners of New Orleans can inspire Staten Island’s storm victims with their creativity and perseverance. Â
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'Well,” said my friend as we toured the A Bigger Splash exhibition at Tate Modern, “it was clearly a lot more fun to do than to look at.”
We were contemplating a film showing writhing, naked bodies splashing each other with paint, in the Sixties heyday of action painting. I remember the times rather dimly – the Sixties were like that – but I seem to recall the Arts Lab in Drury Lane staging events in which naked girls daubed with paint writhed on sheets or canvases laid out on the floor. Here was proof I didn’t hallucinate the whole thing.
Her remark raises the question of artistic expression: is it simply more fun to do it yourself, rather than looking at an accumulation of other people’s work? What the action paintings show is how the impulse towards movement and spontaneity took shape. Clearly at the start of something big, early efforts tend to look modest. But it must have felt great at the time. Imagine firing guns into bags of paint… no one had done that before. It must have been as exciting as when the plein air artists first set up their easels in the forest of Fontainebleau.
There’s nothing to stop us all having a go. The sight of someone with a sketch pad leaning on a harbour wall always gives me an itch to fetch out my own pencils. The activity is totally absorbing and there’s nothing more rewarding than that.
The same goes for music. Everywhere, small groups of people gather in front rooms to play quartets together and emerge fulfilled from a few hours of music-making. Plainly such people aren’t going to play at the Barbican, but it doesn’t matter – the doing is the thing.
And the doing has blossomed in recent years. Now there are annual sing-along versions of the Messiah where you turn up with your score, align yourself with kindred voices, and give the entire work a vigorous going over. People emerge with seraphic smiles. I even know of a Bach’s B Minor Mass done on the same principle. The singers gave it their all, but said afterwards that it felt like running a marathon. None the less, just doing it filled them with joy. And with Christmas nearly upon us, we can all give voice… in the local carol concert.
My home insurance is due for renewal and I am reading it with a particularly beady eye. The reason? My house was recently flooded, not from water pouring through the front door, but rain over-spilling the roof drain and pouring into the bedroom. It was repaired and monies recouped. However, the next issue of my policy included a new clause exempting the insurers from covering me should any such catastrophe happen again. It did. And I paid up out of my own pocket.
I see people on television standing in flooded homes, bewildered that the rivers have risen once again and their houses are flooded for a second time. I wonder: how will their insurance policies be affected? Clearly, the excessive flooding will hit the insurance industry hard and they may well want to raise all our premiums. And this at a time when funds are short. As if having sodden carpets wasn’t bad enough.
In the early Seventies, I interviewed E F Schumacher. He had just published his book Small is Beautiful. At the time we considered it rather out on a limb in terms of the current politics. “One day,” Schumacher explained to me, “Europe will be made up of small states: Brittany, Aragon, Wales and so on.” I expressed amazement, but my scepticism was misplaced. Some parts of history are now running his way: Scotland, the Basque country and now Catalonia are all behaving exactly as he predicted.
Who will go next, I wonder? Flanders? Southern Italy, perhaps? Such tendencies make the EU in-or-out debate seem rather old-fashioned and simplistic.
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Telling stories: the uses and misuses of communicating for change
Tell me a fact and I'll learn. Tell me a truth and I'll believe. But tell me a story and it will live in my heart forever. Indian Proverb
Stories matter. The first session of the Climate Communications Day for journalists and media specialists at the UN Climate talks in Durban focused on the importance of telling stories to get the right messages out. A good story has accurate information, but – crucially – it also has a personal angle. The trick, to quote Randy Olson, is getting fact and emotion together to tell an engaging story. How the story gets told depends on what needs to be communicated, who we are talking to, and what medium we are using.
Men practice an oral testimony interview during workshops in Karachi, Pakistan (see Article 4 of PLA 63) Photo credit: Panos, London
I was reminded about how our stories change depending on who we’re talking to when watching a play put on by teenagers at my local youth club on Friday night. If they were speaking to their parents, then they were more economical with the truth, and more cautious about how much information they gave away. If it was to their friends and they needed advice and support, they were likely to be more truthful. Sometimes they exaggerated aspects of the story for dramatic effect. Sometimes they got caught up in fantasy.
If the storyteller can distort their own story, as those teenagers did, then telling other people’s stories is open to even more misrepresentation. We bring our own subjectivity, our own cultural perspective and our own agenda to what we are trying to convey.
When we are telling stories to inspire social change, we need to go back one step and ask some questions. Whose stories are we telling? Whose voices are we hearing? And how have these stories been generated? Good communication is a two-way process.
To engage the public and have an impact on those who are involved in policy decisions, we need real stories, told by people in their own words. Participatory communication opens spaces for different ideas, stories and experiences to be told and heard, and for different realities to be shaped. It generates information that is complex, nuanced and context-specific. It recognises, values, and elevates local knowledge and can empower people to bring about lasting social change. Through participatory processes, information which favours the interests of the powerful is challenged.
But even when participatory processes are considered to have been carefully followed and have had an empowering impact locally, the messages coming out from those processes can still be misinterpreted and misused. Our own biases, personal or organisational, guide what we hear, what we decide is relevant and how we understand and convey the message. The demand for results-based evidence, for example, can determine how stories are selected, interpreted and even chosen to re-emphasise an organisation’s strategy or policy messages.
A process which involves people’s engagement and enables their voices to be heard has participation at its core, whereas one that is concerned with the quality and packaging of the final product will prioritise this over the methodology used to make it. There is an inherent tension between these two communications objectives.
Some key questions we might want to ask before telling other people’s stories are:
- Whose stories and perspectives are we using when we take that information to a different audience and put it in a different context?
- How can we decide whose experiences and analysis should have influence?
- How do we know that we really understand the meaning of what they say?
These are some of the themes examined in the recently published issue of Participatory Learning and Action: How wide are the ripples? From local participation to international organisational learning, guest-edited by Kate Newman and Hannah Beardon.
When a pebble is thrown in the water, it has a visible impact - or splash - and then the ripples spread out, getting less defined as they lose momentum. Equally, local knowledge generated through participatory processes can have a strong local impact, but this may dissipate the further away from the source it goes.
Contributors to this special issue of PLA relate their experiences of working for international non-governmental organisations and explore the challenges and opportunities for knowledge generated through participatory processes at the grassroots level to influence learning in these organisations. The issue gives insights into how this information can and should be used to inform good development practice and policy going forward. We hope that you will share your reflections on how widely the ripples of your own participatory practice flow.
Nicole Kenton is the co-editor of the Participatory Learning and Action series.
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One of the hallmarks of evangelical Christianspeak is a term upon which our patron saint, Billy Graham, has built his career - it's the word "saved". You might recognize its usage in popular phrases such as, "Are ya SAVED tonight?", "When did you get saved?" and (my favorite) "That guy needs to get saved". It is, in fact, such a ubiquitous stand-in for describing evangelical Christians that a satirical movie by Brian Dannelly could lampoon us (rather successfully) under that simple monosyllabic banner. To be a Christian is to have been "saved". The more doctrinally fastidious would be quick to point out all of the corresponding components to that past event, to be sure - namely, present sanctification and future glorification; but generally salvation should be regarded as a past-tense fact. Sanctification is a term that belongs to the outworking of that past fact, and glorification is a term that belongs to the consummation of it.
It might strike you as strange, then, that in comparison with today's evangelical terminology that the word "saved" is in considerably modest circulation within the pages of the New Testament. Not only is this the case, but to the chagrin of the more dogmatically inclined, the salvation terminology of the Bible doesn't comport with the rigidly chronological categorization everyone is so familiar with (justification, sanctification, glorification). In fact, the Biblical word "salvation" speaks primarily not of a past event, but a (certain and secure) future hope (cf. Mt. 10:22, Ro. 13:11, 2 Tim. 2:10, Heb. 9:28, 1 Pet. 1:9). The lesson here is that theologians, even very good theologians, use Biblical words differently than the Bible uses that same terminology. This isn't because they're doing something evil or underhanded, but because they are trying to draw together all of the diverse strands of Scripture into one discernible whole - and that can be very helpful. But if people don't understand that the Biblical writers themselves didn't mean exactly the same thing these theologians mean by these words, it can result in confusion - and even more often that that, contention.
Before listing some passages to prove that point, though, it's important to notice that the Biblical passages which contain those words most familiar to systematic theology - words like justification, sanctification, adoption, regeneration, etc. - are not the only passages in the Bible which speak to those theological topics. Justification, for instance, deals with concepts of judgment, wrath, righteousness, law and covenant. Studying about justification, then, means more than just looking up every time the word shows up in the Bible. It means rooting out the concepts attached to that word. But more to the point, once you do find all the occurrences of these words, you need to know that they aren't even used the same way in every passage. The word "sanctification", for example, doesn't mean the same thing in 1 Co. 6:11 as it does in 1 Co. 7:14. That's an incredibly important point. It means that not only do theological words (like justification, sanctification and glorification) not mean the same thing in the Bible as they do in systematic theology - but they don't always mean the same thing even in the Bible itself.
With those caveats out of the way, and getting back to the issue at hand, once you begin looking up words like "salvation", "justification" and even "glorification", the time line mentioned above unravels. In fact, every term used by systematic theologians to describe our salvation - all of them - have an “already—not yet” pattern. Whatever saving activity is being described, it is generally (and variously) presented as beginning at a point in time, carried through the present and brought to final fulfillment or realization at the end. Numerous passages could be listed, but I'll list just a few - notice in the passages selected how the word differs both from usage in other passages listed and from common theological currency among Christians.
Salvation is past (Eph. 2:8), present (1 Co. 1:18) and future (Mat. 10:22).
Redemption is past (1 Pet. 1:18), present (Col. 1:14) and future (Eph. 4:30).
Regeneration is past (Titus 3:5) and future (Mat. 19:28, Rev. 21:5).
Forgiveness is past (Jn. 20:23), present (1 Jn. 1:9) and future (Mt. 18:34-35).
Adoption is past (Eph. 1:5) and future (Ro. 8:23).
Justification is past (Ro. 5:11), present (Ro. 6:7 - "freed"= lit. justified) and future (Mt. 12:37).
Sanctification is past (1 Co. 6:11), present (Ro. 6:22) and future (1 Thess 5:23 - see also 2 Thess. 2:13).
Glorification is past (Ro. 8:30, i.e. proleptically), present (1 Pet. 1:8) and future (2 Thess. 1:10-12).
Much carnage has resulted among Christians because of the fundamental failure to ask what someone means by the words they're using. So the next time the theologically meticulous and doctrinaire among us (yeah, I'm included) are tempted to take someone to task for their theological imprecision, we can ask ourselves whether it's wise to indict the New Testament writers along with them.
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As used in this chapter, unless the context requires a different meaning:
“Acupuncturist” means individuals approved by the Board to practice acupuncture. This is limited to “licensed acupuncturist” which means an individual other than a doctor of medicine, osteopathy, chiropractic or podiatry who has successfully completed the requirements for licensure established by the Board (approved titles are limited to: Licensed Acupuncturist, Lic.Ac., and L.Ac.).
“Auricular acupuncture” means the subcutaneous insertion of sterile, disposable acupuncture needles in predetermined, bilateral locations in the outer ear when used exclusively and specifically in the context of a chemical dependency treatment program.
“Board” means the Board of Medicine.
“Healing arts” means the arts and sciences dealing with the prevention, diagnosis, treatment and cure or alleviation of human physical or mental ailments, conditions, diseases, pain or infirmities.
“Medical malpractice judgment” means any final order of any court entering judgment against a licensee of the Board that arises out of any tort action or breach of contract action for personal injuries or wrongful death, based on health care or professional services rendered, or that should have been rendered, by a health care provider, to a patient.
“Medical malpractice settlement” means any written agreement and release entered into by or on behalf of a licensee of the Board in response to a written claim for money damages that arises out of any personal injuries or wrongful death, based on health care or professional services rendered, or that should have been rendered, by a health care provider, to a patient.
“Nurse practitioner” means an advanced practice registered nurse who is jointly licensed by the Boards of Medicine and Nursing pursuant to § 54.1-2957.
“Occupational therapy assistant” means an individual who has met the requirements of the Board for licensure and who works under the supervision of a licensed occupational therapist to assist in the practice of occupational therapy.
“Patient care team” means a multidisciplinary team of health care providers actively functioning as a unit with the management and leadership of one or more patient care team physicians for the purpose of providing and delivering health care to a patient or group of patients.
“Patient care team physician” means a physician who is actively licensed to practice medicine in the Commonwealth, who regularly practices medicine in the Commonwealth, and who provides management and leadership in the care of patients as part of a patient care team.
“Physician assistant” means an individual who has met the requirements of the Board for licensure and who works under the supervision of a licensed doctor of medicine, osteopathy, or podiatry.
“Practice of acupuncture” means the stimulation of certain points on or near the surface of the body by the insertion of needles to prevent or modify the perception of pain or to normalize physiological functions, including pain control, for the treatment of certain ailments or conditions of the body and includes the techniques of electroacupuncture, cupping and moxibustion. The practice of acupuncture does not include the use of physical therapy, chiropractic, or osteopathic manipulative techniques; the use or prescribing of any drugs, medications, serums or vaccines; or the procedure of auricular acupuncture as exempted in § 54.1-2901 when used in the context of a chemical dependency treatment program for patients eligible for federal, state or local public funds by an employee of the program who is trained and approved by the National Acupuncture Detoxification Association or an equivalent certifying body.
“Practice of athletic training” means the prevention, recognition, evaluation, and treatment of injuries or conditions related to athletic or recreational activity that requires physical skill and utilizes strength, power, endurance, speed, flexibility, range of motion or agility or a substantially similar injury or condition resulting from occupational activity immediately upon the onset of such injury or condition; and subsequent treatment and rehabilitation of such injuries or conditions under the direction of the patient’s physician or under the direction of any doctor of medicine, osteopathy, chiropractic, podiatry, or dentistry, while using heat, light, sound, cold, electricity, exercise or mechanical or other devices.
“Practice of behavior analysis” means the design, implementation, and evaluation of environmental modifications, using behavioral stimuli and consequences, to produce socially significant improvement in human behavior, including the use of direct observation, measurement, and functional analysis of the relationship between environment and behavior.
“Practice of chiropractic” means the adjustment of the 24 movable vertebrae of the spinal column, and assisting nature for the purpose of normalizing the transmission of nerve energy, but does not include the use of surgery, obstetrics, osteopathy or the administration or prescribing of any drugs, medicines, serums or vaccines.
“Practice of medicine or osteopathic medicine” means the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of human physical or mental ailments, conditions, diseases, pain or infirmities by any means or method.
“Practice of occupational therapy” means the therapeutic use of occupations for habilitation and rehabilitation to enhance physical health, mental health, and cognitive functioning and includes the evaluation, analysis, assessment, and delivery of education and training in basic and instrumental activities of daily living; the design, fabrication, and application of orthoses (splints); the design, selection, and use of adaptive equipment and assistive technologies; therapeutic activities to enhance functional performance; vocational evaluation and training; and consultation concerning the adaptation of physical, sensory, and social environments.
“Practice of podiatry” means the prevention, diagnosis, treatment, and cure or alleviation of physical conditions, diseases, pain, or infirmities of the human foot and ankle, including the medical, mechanical and surgical treatment of the ailments of the human foot and ankle, but does not include amputation of the foot proximal to the transmetatarsal level through the metatarsal shafts. Amputations proximal to the metatarsal-phalangeal joints may only be performed in a hospital or ambulatory surgery facility accredited by an organization listed in § 54.1-2939. The practice includes the diagnosis and treatment of lower extremity ulcers; however, the treatment of severe lower extremity ulcers proximal to the foot and ankle may only be performed by appropriately trained, credentialed podiatrists in an approved hospital or ambulatory surgery center at which the podiatrist has privileges, as described in § 54.1-2939. The Board of Medicine shall determine whether a specific type of treatment of the foot and ankle is within the scope of practice of podiatry.
“Practice of radiologic technology” means the application of x-rays to human beings for diagnostic or therapeutic purposes.
“Practice of respiratory care” means the (i) administration of pharmacological, diagnostic, and therapeutic agents related to respiratory care procedures necessary to implement a treatment, disease prevention, pulmonary rehabilitative, or diagnostic regimen prescribed by a practitioner of medicine or osteopathic medicine; (ii) transcription and implementation of the written or verbal orders of a practitioner of medicine or osteopathic medicine pertaining to the practice of respiratory care; (iii) observation and monitoring of signs and symptoms, general behavior, general physical response to respiratory care treatment and diagnostic testing, including determination of whether such signs, symptoms, reactions, behavior or general physical response exhibit abnormal characteristics; and (iv) implementation of respiratory care procedures, based on observed abnormalities, or appropriate reporting, referral, respiratory care protocols or changes in treatment pursuant to the written or verbal orders by a licensed practitioner of medicine or osteopathic medicine or the initiation of emergency procedures, pursuant to the Board’s regulations or as otherwise authorized by law. The practice of respiratory care may be performed in any clinic, hospital, skilled nursing facility, private dwelling or other place deemed appropriate by the Board in accordance with the written or verbal order of a practitioner of medicine or osteopathic medicine, and shall be performed under qualified medical direction.
“Qualified medical direction” means, in the context of the practice of respiratory care, having readily accessible to the respiratory care practitioner a licensed practitioner of medicine or osteopathic medicine who has specialty training or experience in the management of acute and chronic respiratory disorders and who is responsible for the quality, safety, and appropriateness of the respiratory services provided by the respiratory care practitioner.
“Radiologic technologist” means an individual, other than a licensed doctor of medicine, osteopathy, podiatry, or chiropractic, or a dentist licensed pursuant to Chapter 27 (§ 54.1-2700 et seq.), who (i) performs, may be called upon to perform, or who is licensed to perform a comprehensive scope of diagnostic radiologic procedures employing equipment which emits ionizing radiation and (ii) is delegated or exercises responsibility for the operation of radiation-generating equipment, the shielding of patient and staff from unnecessary radiation, the appropriate exposure of radiographs or other procedures which contribute to any significant extent to the site or dosage of ionizing radiation to which a patient is exposed.
“Radiologic technologist, limited” means an individual, other than a licensed radiologic technologist, dental hygienist or person who is otherwise authorized by the Board of Dentistry under Chapter 27 (§ 54.1-2700 et seq.) and the regulations pursuant thereto, who performs diagnostic radiographic procedures employing equipment which emits ionizing radiation which is limited to specific areas of the human body.
“Radiologist assistant” means an individual who has met the requirements of the Board for licensure as an advanced-level radiologic technologist and who, under the direct supervision of a licensed doctor of medicine or osteopathy specializing in the field of radiology, is authorized to (i) assess and evaluate the physiological and psychological responsiveness of patients undergoing radiologic procedures; (ii) evaluate image quality, make initial observations, and communicate observations to the supervising radiologist; (iii) administer contrast media or other medications prescribed by the supervising radiologist; and (iv) perform, or assist the supervising radiologist to perform, any other procedure consistent with the guidelines adopted by the American College of Radiology, the American Society of Radiologic Technologists, and the American Registry of Radiologic Technologists.
“Respiratory care” means the practice of the allied health profession responsible for the direct and indirect services, including inhalation therapy and respiratory therapy, in the treatment, management, diagnostic testing, control and care of patients with deficiencies and abnormalities associated with the cardiopulmonary system under qualified medical direction.
This law has been modified 25 times since it was first created in 1958. Those modifications are cataloged by “The Acts of Assembly,” a state publication, by year and chapter. Those modifications that can be read on the General Assembly’s website will be linked accordingly. Those modifications are as follows: in 1960, chapter 268; in 1966, chapter 657; in 1970, chapter 69; in 1973, chapter 529; in 1975, chapters 508, 512, ; in 1977, chapter 127; in 1980, chapter 157; in 1986, chapter 439; in 1987, chapters 522, 543, ; in 1988, chapters 737, 765, ; in 1991, chapter 643; in 1994, chapter 803; in 1995, chapter 777; in 1996, chapters 152, 158, 470, 937, 980; in 1998, chapters 319, 557, 593; in 1999, chapters 639, 682, 747, 779; in 2000, chapters 688, 814; in 2001, chapter 533; in 2004, chapter 731; in 2007, chapter 861; in 2008, chapters 64, 89; in 2009, chapters 83, 507; in 2010, chapters 715, 725; in 2011, chapters 121, 187; in 2012, chapters 3, 110, 168, 213, 399.
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The Case of the Neutron Star With a Wayward Wake
This wide-field composite image was made with X-ray (blue/ROSAT & Chandra), radio (green/Very Large Array), and optical (red/Digitized Sky Survey) observations of the supernova remnant, IC 443. The pullout, also a composite with a Chandra X-ray close-up, shows a neutron star that is spewing out a comet-like wake of high-energy particles as it races through space.
Based on an analysis of the swept-back shape of the wake, astronomers deduced that the neutron star known as CXOU J061705.3+222127, or J0617 for short, is moving through the multimillion degree Celsius gas in the remnant. However, this conclusion poses a mystery.
Although there are other examples where neutron stars have been located far away from the center of the supernova remnant, these neutron stars appear to be moving radially away from the center of the remnant. In contrast, the wake of J0617 seems to indicate it is moving almost perpendicularly to that direction.
One possible explanation is that the doomed progenitor star was moving at a high speed before it exploded, so that the explosion site was not at the observed center of the supernova remnant. Fast-moving gusts of gas inside the supernova remnant may have further pushed the pulsar's wake out of alignment. An analogous situation is observed for comets, where a wind of particles from the Sun pushes the comet tail away from the Sun, out of alignment with the comet's motion.
If this is what is happening, then observations of the neutron star with Chandra in the next 10 years should show a detectable motion away from the center of the supernova remnant.
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BARRINGTON, Illinois (August 15, 2005) -- No matter whether a person has a mild, moderate or severe case of rosacea -- a red-faced, acne-like disorder affecting an estimated 14 million Americans -- it can be devastating to one's social life, often making it difficult to appear in public or establish new relationships because of its effect on personal appearance, according to a new survey conducted by the National Rosacea Society and published in Rosacea Review.
In the survey of 660 rosacea patients, 86 percent of respondents with severe rosacea reported it had inhibited their social lives and 67 percent with moderate rosacea were also affected, compared to 38 percent of those with mild cases.
Of the respondents with severe rosacea, 74 percent reported they had avoided public contact or canceled a social engagement because of the disorder's effect on their facial appearance, and 65 percent had even found it difficult to establish new relationships.
In addition, 42 percent of patients with moderate rosacea and 18 percent with mild rosacea reported canceling social engagements because of a flare-up and 44 percent and 19 percent, respectively, found establishing new relationships difficult.
Seventy-three percent of respondents with severe rosacea reported being the subject of stares, misconceptions, rude comments or jokes because of their skin condition, while 63 percent of those with moderate rosacea and 37 percent with mild rosacea reported these reactions from others.
"The results of this survey underscore the importance of long-term care to prevent rosacea from getting worse," said Dr. William James, professor of dermatology at the University of Pennsylvania. "Beyond its physical effects, this is a chronic disorder that calls for ongoing attention because of its potential social consequences, as well as its impact on many people's emotional and professional lives."
Rosacea is a chronic disorder that usually first strikes between the ages of 30 and 60 as a flushing or redness on the cheeks, nose, chin or forehead that comes and goes. As the condition progresses, the redness becomes more persistent, small dilated blood vessels may become visible and bumps and pimples often develop. In severe cases, the nose may become red and swollen from excess tissue, and in many individuals the eyes also become irritated, a condition known as ocular rosacea.
Adding to the potential embarrassment is a common misconception that the flushed face and swollen red nose experienced by many rosacea sufferers are the result of heavy drinking. However, while alcohol may aggravate the condition, the symptoms may be just as severe in a teetotaler.
"When I was a teacher, the school principal made nasty comments about my complexion and even asked if I was drinking. I do not drink alcohol and never did," one survey respondent commented, while another said, "I don't have a social life anymore." Another respondent lamented, "It has impacted my career path negatively," while another commented, "It prohibits me from being the real me."
Despite its devastating social effects, many rosacea sufferers falsely assume that, like teenage acne, their complexion problem will eventually go away by itself. Fortunately, medical treatment and lifestyle changes can bring the unsightly symptoms of rosacea under control, and nearly 70 percent of all survey respondents said effective therapy had improved their social lives.
Anyone who suspects they may have rosacea is urged to see a dermatologist for diagnosis and appropriate treatment.
For information and educational materials on rosacea, write the National Rosacea Society at 800 S. Northwest Highway, Barrington, Illinois 60010, or call its toll-free number at 1-888-NO-BLUSH. Information and materials are also available on the society's Web site at www.rosacea.org, or via e-mail at firstname.lastname@example.org.
The National Rosacea Society is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization whose mission is to improve the lives of people with rosacea by raising awareness, providing public health information and supporting medical research on this widespread but little-known disorder. The information the Society provides should not be considered medical advice, nor is it intended to replace
consultation with a qualified physician. The Society does not evaluate, endorse or recommend any particular medications, products, equipment or treatments. Rosacea may vary substantially from one patient to another, and treatment must be tailored by a physician for each individual case. For more information, visit About Us.
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This news is a week old but I saw some fascinating news on browser marketshare in China via Global Times: Chinese browsers are putting the heat on Internet Explorer.
Microsoft’s Internet Explorer (IE) browser, which once dominated the Chinese Internet world with 96 percent of the market, has seen its share shrink to 57.8 percent due to the growing popularity of domestic brands.
It’s the lowest level in Microsoft’s history in China as domestic brands such as Maxthon, Tencent TT and Qihoo360′s 360 Secured Browser now account for 31.1 percent of the country’s browser market, according to data by iResearch.
The 360 Secured Browser‘s share has increased 50 percent from each previous quarter for three consecutive quarters, with its market share currently at 8.4 percent, iResearch said.
I have more questions than when I started reading this article such as:
- What is “domestic” Chinese about browsers (Maxthon, TT Browser, Green Browser, 360 Secured, etc.) that are powered by the Trident layout engine used in Internet Explorer, which is designed, developed and distributed by Microsoft Corporation from Redmond, Washington, USA?
Japanese browser wrapper providers like Lunascape and Sleipnir also claim to be “Japanese” when similarly the core layout technology of those browsers is made by Microsoft or Mozilla or Webkit (Apple/Google). There is nothing “Japanese” about those browsers except the “chrome.”
- If you add up the 57.8% that IE has, and the 31.1% that the Trident-based Chinese browsers have, you end up with 88.9% or basically 89% of the Chinese market uses the Trident layout engine. So clearly it is still a struggle for a Webkit or Gecko based browser to gain market share in China if the majority of the web pages are probably coded for IE. Once Trident-based browsers lose more than 15-20% share, web compatibility usually stops becoming an issue.
-What makes 360 Secured Browser more secure than other browsers? Are there real security features that 360 Secured has that other browsers do not? Or is it merely marketing?
- What makes the Chinese users so different that Firefox is “culturally different” and therefore harder to use for Chinese users when Firefox is often very popular in just about every other country across the globe?
There is so much about the China market that is unique for many reasons, be it at the network level where the main networks in the country (China Netcom, China Unicom, Chinese university network) do not peer, or the Green Dam Youth Escort, or the Golden Shield Project. But even at the browser level, China’s Internet market is quite different than any other.
I’d welcome your thoughts on what makes the Chinese market interesting and unique and what Mozilla should do to better address the China market.
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Broward County is WasteWise!
Broward County Employees Take Waste Reduction Survey
Don't Dispose . . . Compost!
Broward County Government joined the United States Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) WasteWise program. WasteWise is a successful EPA voluntary partnership program that seeks to reduce solid waste through innovative waste prevention and recycling techniques. The program asks that we do what we can to prevent waste, use only the material needed to get the job done, recycle, and buy recycled products.
Although participation in the program is voluntary, Broward County takes its participation very seriously. Broward County government is committed to reducing greenhouse gas emissions from government operations and through the work of the Climate Change Government Operations Workgroup, the County implements projects to reduce energy, fuel use and waste.
For more information about the Broward County WasteWise Program contact the Pollution Prevention, Remediation and Air Quality Division at 954-519-1460.
Photo Above: The Waste Reduction Committee is proud of its WasteWise Certificate
County Employees Take Waste Reduction Survey
As an effort to measure the future progress of the County’s waste reduction efforts and also be able to effectively focus on reduction areas, the Waste Reduction Committee is evaluating the County’s current waste prevention, recycling, and buy-recycled initiatives.
County Employees' opinion is important to us and will assist in identifying current waste generation, storage and disposal methods at the workspace as well as to identify opportunities for better practices to reduce the amount of money spent on waste, and in turn, reduce the County’s generation of greenhouse gases. Approximately 600 County employees took a Waste Reduction Survey to help us to achieve our goals.
The Committee raffled 50 dollars cash among all the County employees that participated in this survey. Also, the first 25 people that responded to the survey received a “Waste Reduction Kit” Gift Bag that included a reusable bag filled with cool environmentally-friendly goodies.
Waste Reduction Kit Gift Bag
Survey $50 Prize Winner
View the survey results
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Don't Dispose... Compost!
Composting is the process of creating organic material that can be used as a soil amendment or as a medium to grow plants. As organic matter decomposes, nutrients are released into the soil in a form that plants can use. It is a way to recycle yard and kitchen waste: A critical step in reducing the volume of garbage unnecessarily sent to landfills for disposal.
This summer, the Waste Reduction Committee in conjunction with NatureScape Broward launched a Composting Campaign Revolution: Don’t Dispose…Compost! at the Government Center West (GCW). Kitchen areas and break rooms at the facility are now furnished with colorfully labeled compost collection bins for:
• raw fruit and vegetable scraps
• coffee grounds and filters
• tea bags
• apple cores
• banana peels
Never compost animal fats like meat, grease and cheese. Collected food waste is being added to the Garden composter in the Butterfly Garden at the Government Center West and the final nutrient-rich soil compost is to be used to fertilize the flowers in the garden. The compost bins and the composter are managed by volunteers. Employees may bring unwanted compostable goods and dispose of them directly into the garden composter. For more information on how to get involved, please contact WasteWise@broward.org.
Approximately 85 gallons of food waste were collected during the first two months of the program implementation.
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Say what? Things I haven’t learned in library school
07/11/2011 § 27 Comments
I’m halfway through my MLIS program, yet there are still countless words and concepts that I’m not confident I actually understand. I feel like a fundamental vocabulary lesson is missing from most of my core intro classes — and I don’t think it’s all going be covered by the time I graduate. There are all these acronyms and buzzwords in libraryland, and while I might know what subject they’re related to, I have no idea what exactly they mean. Is that acronym a standard, a guideline? What words are interchangeable, and what words aren’t?
For example, none of my core classes actually explained the difference between a library and archive. Since I’m focusing on archives, I can tell you the difference — but how many non-archives students can?
So let’s help each other out! What fundamental vocabulary words are missing from your classes? Ask in the comments, and hopefully someone else will answer. Do your part and answer someone else’s question too.
I’ll start — is there a difference between a persistent identifier and a digital object identifier? Digital curation and data curation?
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Lunar Roundup: Hopping, Running, and Rolling
Welcome to this week’s Lunar Roundup! A power rankings-style look at who & what’s been “awesome!” over the last seven days of the Google Lunar X PRIZE.
Omega Envoy scored yet another big partner, while Moon Express talked about the importance of competition; TechNewsDaily took a good look at Hopper technology; JURBAN made an entertaining video; and our own Nathan Wong tackled the challenges of the lunar surface.
The top five highlights of October 16th-October 22nd:
1) On A Roll!
For the third straight week, Omega Envoy has announced a new partner for their mission to the Moon. This time, it’s the British space-tech company RAL Space!:
“'It is very exciting to have RAL Space as the first international partner that will be working with us on the mission,' said Earthrise Space Inc.’s President and Founder, Ruben D. Nunez. 'Getting from Earth to the Moon can be quite the challenge and with their expertise, we will reach our destination on the lunar surface.'" - Press Release
Here’s a fun look at RAL’s space test chamber:
Moon Express sat down for their team summit interview, where they talk about the importance of competition for getting people engaged with space:
TechNewsDaily published a great article about hopper technology (now being used by Moon Express after their acquisition of team Next Giant Leap), and it’s advantages vs. rovers:
"Rovers are very good at doing neighborhood science and exploration," Cohanim said. "Hoppers can fly from one neighborhood to another."
Here’s a video from Draper about the hopper and testing:
5) On the Surface!
Our own Nathan Wong posted part 2 of his series on the tech obsctacles of the PRIZE, this time taking a look at 7 primary challenges of a mission on the surface of the Moon!
I’ll be rounding these up on a weekly basis, so keep an eye here for all the most awesome developments.
For the full skinny on everything that happens, follow the official feeds for team blogs, team social, and team videos!
And if you have any favorite stories that I didn’t post here...share ’em in the comments below!
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Allotment garden keeps on growing
Every year the Sunriver Allotment Gardens get a little more fertile, prolific and diverse. This year, volunteers planted 58 fruit trees and more are planned for the near future.
The Sunriver gardens are a true success story. From the original ideas put forth by the Sooke Food CHI (Community Health Initiative) the garden has grown to encompass a community. People of all ages come together to plant, learn and share their experience and their seeds. The first 50 garden plots were snapped up quicker than a seal on a salmon and no one could have predicted the success of the project.
Now, two years later, the volunteers are building espalier-style supports for the fruit trees, which will allow them to grow horizontally rather than vertically.
Glen Thelin and his apprentice Dave Nagy are putting time in at the garden in between other gardening jobs. The two of them were putting posts in by hand for the espalier.
“I donate a lot of time here,” said Thelin, who was obviously enjoying the sunshine last Wednesday afternoon.
The fruit trees include a number of varieties of apple trees, some plums and pears and cherry trees. There will also be some varieties planted from cuttings from heritage trees in the Sooke area. Volunteers have planted potatoes on the unused berm and squash in between the small fruit trees. The potatoes will be donated to groups like the local food bank.
Phoebe Dunbar was at the garden along with Emily Moreland, puttering and doing whatever needed doing. Moreland is the garden mentor and is there on Sundays and Wednesdays sharing her knowledge and advice.
Dunbar said there is always room for volunteers and they can come to the garden and pitch in with a multitude of tasks. or just check out the gardens. Often there are plots which some can no longer deal with and may be available for another avid gardener. Raised beds built for those with mobility issues are also often available.
“Just come down for tea,” said Dunbar. “Check it out.”
For those who want to learn more about composting, the Victoria Compost Education Centre will be holding a free public workshop on Saturday, June 18 from 1-3 p.m.
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One of the series I’m writing on my lifestyle design blog is about logical fallacies. I love the mental rigor of analyzing what is said for accuracy, clarity, and truth. And fallacies abound.
When I see a logical fallacy come up in the media or discussion, I like to use it as an example of real fallacious reasoning. And in a political season, this is far too easy. I have a lineup of fallacy posts just waiting to be completed.
Yesterday I set about to complete my post about the ad hominem fallacy. I had written a post about the tragedy of the presidential election — in response to another post that employed the relative privation fallacy. I only had to wait for comment number two for the ad hominem attacks to kick in. So I decided to finish the ad hominem post with this very timely example.
I wanted to link to the ad hominem comment in the political post from the new post, but for the life of me I couldn’t figure out how to go about it. I know there are plugins that add a comment permalink button — which would give me the needed info. But I didn’t want to add a plugin. I know that if you have been to a post with comments and read the comments, your next page load will jump to the last comment you read — assuming your cookies are in place and all that — and the URL will include the last comment number. But I had read past that comment and there were other new comments elsewhere on the site, so I was unsure how to find the correct number for the comment I wanted to link to.
After that, I looked in the comments section in the dashboard and couldn’t see anything. I searched the web for some time. Without inserting php into the site — which I thought was overkill — I couldn’t see an easy way to grab this needed number.
Finally I gave up the quest and, instead, decided just copied the text from the comment and refer to it. Here are the steps: [click to continue…]
Looking forward to working from home? Here are some tips to get you out of the office and on to better things.
Structure Your Day
Working from home is a dream come true for many. Just saving the commute time can be a life saver. But avoiding office politics and time wasters put you way ahead of the game.
But there is a downside. Without someone looking over your shoulder, the temptation to fiddle the day away can be strong. Too many snacks, too many bathroom breaks, power naps, office futzing, television, and even social networking can take a huge bite out of productivity.
While working with your moods can be a huge advantage of the autonomy working at home provides, most people still find having some sense of structure gives a push to actually get things done.
Take some time to make out a work schedule for each day. First add in any regularly scheduled meetings or events. Then add a lunch or break time to eat, stretch, and rejuvenate. Last, add in the big blocks of time to work on your projects. 3 Work at Home Productivity Secrets continued
Working from home has many advantages. But dealing with a health issue while keeping your business inning smoothly can be a huge challenge. Working for long hours, sitting at a desk and banging away on a keyboard can be hazardous to your health. Yes, pro bloggers, your slippers and cocoa lifestyle might not be the best for your health.
One way to protect your business, reputation, and livelihood is to look for the root causes of pain and difficulty so that you can correct them and get on with the business of your business.
Inflammation is a leading cause of pain. If you suffer from inflammation related health problems — arterial, digestive, muscles, or joint problems — consider trying Nopalea. It’s a wellness drink derived from the fruit of the Nopal cactus. Protect Your Health, Protect Your Business continued
On April 7th, my husband and I found ourselves in the emergency room of Utah Valley Regional Medical Center with our 11-year-old son, Samson, who was gravely ill. Unbeknownst to us, his appendix had ruptured “some time ago.”
Two days earlier he had come in from the playing soccer in the backyard to tell us he didn’t feel very good. What looked like the flu was much, much more serious.
I spent nearly two weeks living with him in the intensive care unit. Then he came home for a couple of days and ended up back in surgery for a partial bowel obstruction. He finally came home (hopefully for good) on April 29.
After the first, very long night, I ran home for a couple of hours (while Sam stayed with him), to shower, change, and grab some things. One of the first things I packed was my computer. I’m blessed that, as a professional blogger, I can work anywhere there is an internet connection. So, other than the overwhelming concern for my boy, my work wasn’t really impeded. I could attend to him whenever he needed anything, and still setup blogs, provide consulting, complete customization, and keep up with correspondence when he was sleeping. Dealing with Illness When Working from Home continued
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In the recent years, many retailers have made tremendous investments in iPhone apps development and other mobile apps. These apps while play a crucial role in the growth of online retailers they appear to be posing a serious threat to many bricks and mortar businesses.
With the growth of mobile apps the consumers are increasingly finding the best deals via the web and mobile applications – such as iPhone apps and Android apps – while using bricks-and-mortar for investigating the product. “Showrooming is a major headache for retailers, with recent research showing 71 percent of shoppers compare prices in electronics stores and 49 percent of online customers have visited a store to learn more about a product, and then bought it online, per Mr. Hayward. (Tode, 2012)“
This is a growing trend amongst consumers who seek to find the next best deal. With new smartphones and tablets this process has made it easier for consumers do so. New apps have simplified search by scanning a bar code. After the bar code is scanned the mobile app searches the internet for the best prices.
Companies looking to cut down on showrooming for the internet should develop apps. Apps are the new bridge for companies and consumers to connect. With consumers having an app of a particular company the greater chance the consumer will purchase a product or service through that company. “Additionally, store associates should be encouraged to approach in-store shoppers who are using their smartphone to compare prices and try to assist the shopper with guidance that goes beyond price (Tode, 2012).” This customer support can also appear on the store app if an associate is not available.
This is why apps are the future for consumers and businesses; to bridge the gap and to help cut down showrooming.
By Laith Hasan
Contact Us today to bring your mobile app or game development idea to life.
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God often reveals the plans of the enemy to intercessors, so they can stand against them in the Spirit and prevent the evil from occurring. God is showing them something that will not happen, if they are doing their job. These revelations can be scary, so intercession is not for the fainthearted.
God is showing them something that will not happen, if they are doing their job.
These revelations can be scary, so intercession is not for the fainthearted.
Intercessors should guard their revelations carefully and not hand them around casually (Matt 7:6).
Intercessors should share and test their revelations with other intercessors who are strong enough to handle the revelation.
When these revelations are circulated widely among Christians, they create confusion within the church. Even if the intercessors do their job and prevent the event from taking place, the enemy uses it for evil by inspiring fear.
A revelation given to inspire intercession has several characteristics that can be confusing to other Christians.
They usually do not take place, so Christians assume the revelation was wrong, without understanding that it was not fulfilled, because the intercessors did their job.
They are sometimes symbolic. Ezekiel saw the sun, moon and stars going dark. This was not fulfilled literally, but was a description of Egypt’s Pharaohs being defeated by the Emperor of Babylon (Ezekiel 32:7). Intercessors need to be skilled in interpreting these symbolic messages.
Intercessors are often called to pray against evil attacks that God does not want to happen. In this situation, the revelation they receive, will not include a call to repentance, or specify conditions that must be met to prevent its fulfilment, as that is is not the purpose it was given.
God does not give guidance about how to live through the evil events he reveals to intercessors, because he does not intend them to happen. When these revelations get into the hands of other Christians, they get confused, because they do not know what to do. The revelation is there with nothing around it.
Most of the revelations received by intercessors will be things that God’s wants to do. They will happen if the intercessors pray seriously. Intercessors will need to be skilled in discerning between things that God wants to accomplish and the plans of the enemy that he wants thwarted.
The role of prophet and intercessor sometimes merges in one person. When this happens, the person should be very careful to be clear about what they are doing. When they receive a revelation about the future, they should seek guidance from God about whether is for the prayer closet or the prophetic platform. They should also sort out if it is something God wants to do or a plan of the enemy that he wants to foil.
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The Wall Street Journal has a story about Vermont and subprime loans:
…For the past five years, as home loans went to even Americans with poor credit and no proof of steady work, Ms. Todd couldn’t get a mortgage in spite of her good credit and low debt. Vermont banks told the self-employed landscaper that her income stream was unreliable. The 32-year-old changed careers, taking a permanent job as a teacher, to boost her chances.
Stratospheric consumer borrowing is a worry for policymakers but so far it’s been nothing but good news for Canadian banks, which have enjoyed a string of outsize profits driven largely by retail lending.
Toronto-Dominion Bank and Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce reported results Thursday, both ahead of analyst expectations, even as the Bank of Canada voiced its sharpest warning yet on overextended households and the potential for a housing bust.
Toronto-Dominion Bank has just come off one of its most profitable years ever. Its shares have nearly regained the ground they lost in the financial crisis and the country’s second-biggest bank is riding high on the Canadian consumer’s apparently insatiable appetite for debt. But how much longer can it go on? TD chief executive Ed Clark recently sat down with Financial Post reporter John Greenwood to talk about the shaky state of household finances, the frothy housing market and what it all means for the banking sector.
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This is an example of a soup I made up on the fly. Much as with the bean corn lime soup, you begin by sautéeing celery and onion:
I used a combination of canola oil and butter. When it was fried to my satisfaction, I added water and a wide variety of green frozen veggies:
I used broccoli, peas, spinach, kale, green beans, and zucchini and cooked ‘em. Then I threw in some Better than Bouillon and green spices (parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme, yes really, plus dillweed – and salt and white pepper, which are not green, but what can you do? I would have added chives but it did not occur to me.)
Now to mess with the texture. Again, like the bean corn lime soup, this soup is thickened with a purée of its ingredients. I ladled some of the liquid and vegetables into the beaker for my hand blender and blended them.
Added back to the soup, it made a delightfully thick and chunky consistency out of what was previously water with vegetables floating in it.
Just to make this all even healthier, I added a handful of soy flakes (textured vegetable protein). I didn’t reconstitute them first – I let them pull their hot liquid out of the surrounding soup as I stirred them in and it continued to cook.
Then, because I thought of the name “cream of green”, I turned it into a cream soup by – predictably enough – adding cream to it.
It’s not that pretty a soup, I will admit, but it tastes really good.
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When an extension has been successfully build, there are three ways to use it.
End-users will typically want to install the module, they do so by running
python setup.py install
Module maintainers should produce source packages; to do so, they run
python setup.py sdist
In some cases, additional files need to be included in a source distribution; this is done through a MANIFEST.in file; see the distutils documentation for details.
If the source distribution has been build successfully, maintainers can also create binary distributions. Depending on the platform, one of the following commands can be used to do so.
python setup.py bdist_wininst python setup.py bdist_rpm python setup.py bdist_dumb
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PRESS RELEASE: Next Mars Mission Enters Final Phase Before Launch
NASA’s Mars Atmosphere And Volatile EvolutioN (MAVEN) mission has passed a critical milestone, Key Decision Point-D or KDP-D. The project is officially authorized to transition into the next phase of the mission, which is system delivery; integration and test; and launch.
“The spacecraft and instruments are all coming together at this point,” said Bruce Jakosky from University of Colorado, the MAVEN principal investigator. “Although we’re focused on getting everything ready for launch right now, we aren’t losing sight of our ultimate objective—getting to Mars and making the science measurements.”
MAVEN will be the first mission devoted to understanding the Martian upper atmosphere. The goal of MAVEN is to determine the role that loss of atmospheric gas to space played in changing the Martian climate through time.
The key decision meeting was held at NASA Headquarters in Washington on Sept. 10 and chaired by NASA’s Science Mission Directorate.
“I’m incredibly proud of how this team continues to meet every major milestone on schedule on its journey to Mars,” said David Mitchell, MAVEN project manager at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. “Being ready for the start of system level integration and test is critically important to ultimately being ready for launch on November 18, 2013.”
KDP-D occurs after the project has completed a series of independent reviews which cover not only technical health of the project but also programmatic health (schedule and cost). KDP-D represents the official transition from Phase C (development stage) to Phase D in the mission life cycle. During Phase D, the spacecraft bus is completed, the science instruments are integrated into the spacecraft, spacecraft testing occurs, everything ships to Kennedy Space Center for integration into the Atlas-V rocket, and the MAVEN mission launches (late next year).
The next major review for the MAVEN team is the Mission Operations Review in November 2012. This review assesses the project’s operational readiness and its progress towards launch. The project will continue to work with its partners to deliver all instruments in the next four months.
The MAVEN spacecraft will carry three instrument suites. The Particles and Fields Package, built by the University of California at Berkeley with some instrument elements from CU/LASP and NASA Goddard, contains six instruments that will characterize the solar wind and the ionosphere of the planet. The Remote Sensing Package, built by CU/LASP, will determine global characteristics of the upper atmosphere and ionosphere. The Neutral Gas and Ion Mass Spectrometer, provided by NASA Goddard, will measure the composition and isotopes of neutrals and ions.
MAVEN will launch during a 20-day period from November to December, 2013. It will go into orbit around Mars in September 2014, and, after a one-month check-out period, will make measurements from orbit for one Earth year.
MAVEN’s principal investigator is based at the University of Colorado at Boulder’s Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics. The university will provide science operations, build instruments, and lead Education/Public Outreach. NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, manages the project and is building two of the science instruments for the mission. Lockheed Martin of Littleton, Colo., will build the spacecraft and perform mission operations. The University of California-Berkeley Space Sciences Laboratory is building instruments for the mission. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., provides Program management via the Mars Program Office, as well as navigation support, the Deep Space Network, and the Electra telecommunications relay hardware and operations.
To read the original NASA release, visit:
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She was a young woman who’d grown up in an abusive family. Like so many others, she re-created her familiar home environment with a series of abusive partners—bearing children from a number of them. She easily grew frustrated and irritable. Feeling desperate one day, she made a life-threatening suicide attempt and was hospitalized.
He was a middle-aged man who had built and run a successful business for decades. The business came on hard times, he went into bankruptcy, and his wife left him. He too felt desperate, made a very serious attempt on his life, and also was hospitalized.
In both cases, the serious suicide attempts resulted in a general-hospital stay, followed by transfer to a psychiatric facility. Each patient was diagnosed with a mood disorder, then treated with psychiatric medications—lots of medications. Each was discharged on multiple antipsychotics and antidepressants, a couple of benzodiazepines, gabapentin, and an antihistamine (presumably for additional sedation and anxiety relief).
Within weeks of hospital discharge, each patient showed the adverse effects of these medications: akathisia, parkinsonian signs, substantial weight gain, decreased libido, lipid and glucose abnormalities, and more. The mood-disorder diagnoses seemed questionable to me. More, the cognitive and affective side effects of these complex pharmaceutical regimens made it hard to disentangle preexisting symptoms. The out-patient doctors were challenged in their attempts to establish a therapeutic rapport and help these troubled human beings find new coping strategies in difficult circumstances.
So often what I see around the country is superficial, knee-jerk psychiatry. Harried doctors assume a serious suicide attempt must mean a mood disorder—which is often, but not always true. And a mood-disorder diagnosis (even Depression NOS) and psychiatric admission “demand” medications—often many.
How did we get to this state? Everyone loves to hate insurance companies—except their shareholders and senior executives. Most of us complain about DSM-3 and -4 (and in about a month -5). And medical educators know that Psychiatry often fails to attract the best and brightest medical-school graduates: we don’t get enough respect, our patients are stigmatized, managed care forces us to do short visits, our compensation is low among specialties, etc.
It’s all true. But somehow people in crisis deserve a little time with a knowledgeable, thoughtful professional, who can blend neuroscience with social and psychological dynamics, who brings compassion and wisdom to the clinical encounter. Psychiatry in 2013 has powerful tools. Let’s find a way to employ them with care.
-Alan J. Gelenberg, M.D.
Editor, Biological Therapies in Psychiatry
Shively/Tan Professor and Chair, Psychiatry, Penn State University
Editor-in-Chief, Journal of Clinical Psychiatry
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The old Chickasaw Cession survey maps in the Itawamba County courthouse show the Natchez Trace route as it appeared when the surveyors mapped out the Chickasaw Cession during 1834. Back then the ancient road was labeled as The Old Natchez Road. The story of the Natchez Trace is a fascinating story of the frontier South. It is the story of circuit riding preachers, missionaries, bandits, land pirates, soldiers, slaves and settlers. It is also the story of the Chickasaw, Choctaw and Natchez Indians.
The heaviest use of the Old Natchez Road was from 1800 to about 1825 by men known as "Kaintucks," who floated down the Ohio and Mississippi rivers with their goods to Natchez and returned north on foot using this old trail from the 1700s that was developed into a Federal road shortly after 1800.
The old 1834 survey maps of what later became Itawamba County in 1836 show this old road in detail. One such small section of a map (illustrated above) shows The Old Natchez Road and also Factor’s Field along the road. Old Factor’s Stand was a resting place in the heart of the Chickasaw Nation where travelers could obtain room and board on their trek between Natchez and Nashville.
During 1811, Samuel Hastings Stackhouse traveled down the Natchez Trace to Natchez. On Monday, November 25, 1811 he wrote the following about the area of Old Factor’s Stand: “Start early. Continues raining during the fore part of the day. Stop at the Old Factor, a respectable Indian who takes his name from being the principal manufacturer of homespun in the nation & appears to have a large settlement… After baiting our horses proceed on. Observe the country tolerably well improved, Indian plantation every few miles. Arrive at the Big Town which formerly contained many buildings but is now hardly anything more than an extensive prairie with some scattered huts, the Indians having left the town for situations better adapted to agriculture… The two last days we pass through considerable pine barren & over several large streams of water. Some that we have crossed today we calculate to be the head waters of the Tombigbee1…”
The following year, Reverend John Johnson (born January 7, 1783 in Louisa County, Virginia, moved to Tennessee during 1803, married Susannah Brooks, died April 8, 1857), a Methodist-Episcopal circuit rider and missionary in Ohio, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee and Mississippi rode through what later became northwestern Itawamba County, spending the night near Old Factor’s Stand near Twenty Mile Creek. He was headed from Natchez to Nashville where he had overseen the Natchez Circuit during the previous year. He wrote in his journal: “I have this day swam my horse 5 times, bridged one creek, forded several others, besides the swamp we had to wade through. At night we had a shower of rain – took up my usual lodging on the ground in company with several Indians2.”
Further information about Johnson’s journey is found in a letter he wrote from Natchez to family in Nashville on November 28, 1811. Telling of his journey to Natchez he wrote: “Dear Mother, Brothers and Sisters: - I must write to you collectively, as I cannot individually. It is with pleasure I inform you that I enjoy health of body, and in some degree, quietude of mind; and that we had a safe and somewhat comfortable journey to this place. We came through with post haste, occupying only nine days and seven hours in coming through the nations. Came forty miles or upward each day. Our horses performed the journey well. We reached the Territory on Wednesday, the 20th instant. I find it easy to speak of, but very tedious and tiresome to make a journey of five hundred miles. The road is far better than I expected to find it. The friendly clouds poured down one heavy shower of rain upon us in the wilderness, and but one. The Indians are very kind and friendly; sold us corn at $1 to $1.50 per bushel. I think the Indians are far better than some of the whites who are among them3…”
The story of Old Factor’s Stand in the area that later became Itawamba County is but one story told along this old Federal road connecting Nashville to Natchez during the frontier days of the Mississippi Territory in the old American southwest.
1Carolyn F. Castor, “Travel Diary of Samuel Hastings Stackhouse, 1811,” Early Southwest Mississippi Territory, http://www.natchezbelle.org/sw/diaryintro.htm (accessed March 30, 2009).
2Nostalgiaville Publishing, “Images from Nostalgiaville: Mississippi – Natchez Trace Parkway,” Nostalgiaville, http://travel.nostalgiaville.com/Mississippi/mississippi.htm, (accessed March 30, 2009).
3Susannah Johnson, Recollections of The Rev. John Johnson and His Home: An Autobiography (Nashville, TN: Southern Methodist Publishing House, 1869), 70.
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At Dscoop 2013, SGP Board member Martine Padilla will share the reasons why big brands are seeking more sustainable print, and what the print community can do about it. Padilla will provide concrete steps that printers can take—starting immediately—to help position themselves as sustainability leaders in the eyes of major brands.
The session will be held Saturday, February 23 at 1:00pm at Gaylord Opryland, Nashville.
SGP is a non-profit organization providing sustainability certification in the graphic communications industry. The organization promotes reducing the environmental impact and increasing the social responsibility through sustainable green printing practices. To receive SGP Certification, print facilities go well beyond compliance with applicable local, state, and federal laws. They establish sustainability management systems, implement best practices, and commit to continuous improvements in sustainability. Certified facilities are also required to report on progress annually.
For more information about the SGP Partnership, the SGP Patron program, or the SGP certification process, visit www.sgppartnership.org.
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OHIO VALLEY — After a relatively safe Christmas holiday, motorists are being asked to help bring a safe end to 2012 according to a news release by the Ohio State Highway Patrol.
The Patrol is asking motorists to help bring a safe end to 2012 by not driving impaired, buckling-up and keeping their focus on the road. Last year in Ohio, eight people died in OVI-related crashes between Christmas and New Year’s. This is down from 15 in 2009 and 14 in 2010.
During this year’s two-day Christmas Holiday reporting period of 12 a.m. December 24 through 11:59 p.m. on December 25, five people were killed in traffic-related crashes, with three deaths attributed to impaired driving.
Those traffic fatalities were in Hamilton County in the southwest portion of the state, Licking County in central Ohio, and Fulton and Lucas counties in northwest Ohio.
Southeast Ohio saw a relatively low number of traffic incidents over the Christmas holiday, with 45 incidents in Meigs County and 47 in Gallia County. Incidents throughout the state include things such as aggressive driving, crashes, safety belt, operating a vehicle under the influence (OVI) and suspended license.
Franklin County has the most incidents handled by the Ohio State Highway Patrol over the Christmas Holiday with 225. There were 5,351 incidents statewide in the 48 hour period.
“We are seeing positive results from the hard work of our troopers on the road everyday removing impaired and dangerous drivers from the roadways,” said Colonel John Born, Patrol superintendent.
Year-to-date troopers have made an additional 944 more OVI arrests than when compared to the same time period last year- preliminary data shows OVI-related fatal crashes down 18 percent.
“Party hosts and drivers have a shared responsibility to prevent alcohol-related crashes,” according to Brian Newbacher, Director of Public Affairs, AAA East Central. “Hosts need to plan how they are going to approach the challenging situation of a guest who is inebriated but plans to drive home. Preparation can prevent an awkward and potentially deadly situation,” he explained.
The public is encouraged to continue using #677 to report impaired drivers and drug activity.
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Impact of climate change on agriculture and food security.
Climate change will profoundly affect agriculture worldwide. Food security in many countries is under threat from unpredictable changes in rainfall and more frequent extreme
weather. Farmers in poorer countries with harsh climate conditions will likely be most affected.
A review of recent scientific literature underlines that the most effective strategy to adapt agriculture to climate change is to increase biodiversity. A mix of different crops and varieties in one field is a proven and highly reliable farming method to increase resilience to erratic weather changes. And, the best ways to increase stress tolerance in single varieties are modern breeding technologies that do not entail genetic engineering, such as Marker Assisted Selection. In contrast, there is no evidence that genetically engineered (GE) plants
can ever play any role to increase food security in a changing climate.
Food security and climate change
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A Lawyer's Take on Embargos and InjunctionsBooks
As many of you know, in "real life", I'm an intellectual property attorney, so I've done some work on issues similar, although not exactly like, the injunction/embargo situation we Harry Potter fans currently find outselves in.
And in the past few days, I've read a lot about freedom of the press, and a number of editorials and posts saying things similar to what FilmJerk said - that "to date, no other form of media entertainment -- film, music, television, or otherwise -- has ever attempted such an aggressive and vicious legal movement against the mere opinions and details of its content."
But that's not technically the case. Back in the 1970's, "300 words quoted in a magazine article from approximately 30,000 words in President Gerald Ford's manuscript of his memoirs was not fair use." Also, 200 words quoted from the unpublished letters of J.D. Salinger in an unauthorized biography was deemed not to be fair use." (PubLaw)
Order of the Phoenix is, at this point in time, still an unpublished work under copyright law definitions. While it's been printed and shipped in sealed boxes to vendors around the world, a work is not published until it's been distributed by the owner of the copyright to members of the public; accordingly, OoTP needs to be treated as an unpublished work, and the Ford case, as it's a Supreme Court ruling, has precidential value on the current situation.
While the Court determined that news reporting was favoured under fair use laws in the US, "the fact that a publication was commercial as opposed to nonprofit is a separate factor that tends to weight against a finding of fair use." Thus, the Court, in determining that The Nation's publication was not fair use, focused on the Nation's stated objective of scooping the forthcoming book. Further, there is, per Ford, a higher level of protection for a work of fiction than there is for a fact-based work. Since OotP is a work of fiction, the information in the work merits a higher degree of protection even than the memoirs in Ford obtained.
Now, the Daily News reported this morning that the suit alleges that the paper published "excerpts and details" from the book. While a paraphrase of the text in the form of details is likely not actionable as copyright infringement, if excerpts were published in the paper (and as we haven't read the book yet, we don't actually know if they were), and if those excerpts were longer than "short phrases" (which are not protected by the Copyright Act) then an argument can be made that the publication constituted copyright infringement, under the statute and the Ford rules.
Obviously, this is not a situation that happens often - but the Ford case clearly shows that while this situation is rare, it's not unprecedented, and Scholastic and JKR have this to support their copyright infringement allegations.
Accordingly, while I think that FilmJerk makes some good arguments in favour of freedom of the press, we at TLC, as Melissa and BK have already said, have decided to take an approach to the spoilers published in the Daily News, as well as reviews by people who've read the book despite the embargo, which errs on the side of caution.
And we'll all know what happens within the next 36 hours or so anyway...
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Determining Your Dependency Status
When you apply for financial aid, your answers to certain questions determine whether you're considered dependent or independent for financial aid purposes. If you are considered a dependent student you must report your parents income and assets as well as your own. If you are considered an independent student, you report only your income and assets (and those of your spouse, if you're married).
For financial aid consideration, Federal regulations state that you must meet at least one of the following requirements to be considered independent from your parents:
- You were born before January 1, 1990.
- You are married.
- You will be working on a master’s or doctorate program.
- You are currently serving on active duty in the U.S. Armed Forces for purposes other than training.
- You are a veteran of the U.S. Armed Forces.
- You have children who will receive more than half of their support from you.
- You have dependents (other than your children or spouse) who live with you and who receive more than half of their support from you, now through June 30, 2014.
- At any time since you turned 13, both of your parents were deceased, you were in foster care or you were a dependent or ward of the court.
- As determined by a court in your state of legal residence, are you or were you an emancipated minor.
- As determined by a court in your state of legal residence, are you or were you in legal guardianship.
- At any time on or after July 1, 2012, did your high school or school district homeless liaison determine that you were an unaccompanied youth who was homeless.
- At any time on or after July 1, 2012, the director of an emergency shelter or transitional housing program funded by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development determine that you were an unaccompanied youth who was homeless.
- At any time on or after July 1, 2012, the director of a runaway or homeless youth basic center or transitional living program determine that you were an unaccompanied youth who was homeless or were self-supporting and at risk of being homeless.
Dependency Override Appeal Process
Federal law provides that, under very limited special circumstances, you may submit your FAFSA without parental information. Not all situations are considered a special circumstance. The following are situations that would not be considered special circumstances:
- Your parents do not want to provide their information on your FAFSA
- Your parents refuse to contribute to your college expenses
- Your parent do not claim you as a dependent on their income taxes
- You do not live with your parents
Examples of special circumstances where you may apply for a dependency override may include:
- Your parents are incarcerated
- You have left home due to an abusive family environment where there has been a complete breakdown in the family unit. This would include a history of documented emotional or physical abuse
- You do not know where your parents are and are unable to contact them (and you have not been adopted)
- Psychological or physical disorders that have caused extreme dysfunction in the family unit
If you believe you have a special circumstance that would make you independent, you may apply for a 2013-2014 Appeal for Independent Status by completing and returning the following form with supporting documentaiton to the UMass Dartmouth Financial Aid Services Office.
What type of documentation is required?
- A personal letter from the student detailing the special circumstance
- Letters from 3 professionals, who are familiar with your situation (high school officials, clergy, physicians, therapists, social workers, etc)
- Legal documents, court records, and police reports may also be submitted with your appeal
How will your appeal be reviewed?
- Two or more financial aid administrators will review your confidential appeal
- Any decision rendered from UMass Dartmouth applies to the current award year only and only to UMass Dartmouth
- The federal government has given financial aid administrators the option to use professional judgement for extenuating circumstances, and their decision is considered final by the U.S. Department of Education
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Safe Catering is FSA Northern Ireland's food safety management guide. It has been developed with help and expertise from the food industry and local authorities. This guide will help catering businesses to produce a food safety management plan based on HACCP principles and to keep records appropriate to their business.
HACCP means Hazard Analysis Critical Control Points. This is a process that helps you look at how you handle food and introduce procedures to make sure the food you produce is safe to eat.
HACCP involves the following seven steps:
- identify what could go wrong (the hazards)
- identify the most important points where things can go wrong (the critical control points – CCPs)
- set critical limits at each CCP (e.g. cooking temperature/time)
- set up checks at CCPs to prevent problems occurring (monitoring)
- decide what to do if something goes wrong (corrective action)
- prove that your HACCP Plan is working (verification)
- keep records of all of the above (documentation)
Your HACCP plan must be kept up to date. You will need to review it from time to time, especially whenever something in your food operation changes.
You may also wish to ask your local Environmental Health Officer for advice.
Remember that, even with a HACCP plan in place, you must comply with all requirements of current food safety legislation.
The Safe Catering Guide (Issue 4) was updated and re-issued in 2007. It is provided as five pdf files.
PDF files are fully printable documents and are used for downloading and printing large documents from the site. To read them you will need a copy of Adobe Acrobat Reader which is available free of charge.
Adobe has also produced a plug-in enabling the blind to read PDF documents. It is called Acrobat Access plug-in and can be found on the Adobe website
Download Acrobat Access plug-in
If you have problems opening .pdf documents within your web browser, you can download the files to your own computer.
If you wish to download the file please follow this procedure:
- place your cursor over the link
- click the right hand button of your mouse (PC only)
- select 'save target as' from the drop down menu
- choose a location on your computer to save the file
- Click the 'save' button
You will now be able to open the document in Acrobat Reader on your own computer.
A link to the previous version of the pack (Issue 3) is provided at the bottom of this page. Any person using issue 3 will be able to download the pack and relevant forms from this link.
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Fairfax County is very trendy when it comes to parenting ideas. The contentious school board race, where voters will choose a new slate of members Nov. 8, is part of a hot national debate about parental involvement. Or, more specifically, about how much parents should be involved in school decisions.
In Fairfax, a sort-of popular uprising against the current school board and school administration was prompted, in part, by a draconian disciplinary policy that left students and parents feeling helpless.
“The community gets no input. We sit and listen,” a frustrated activist told The Post’s Robert McCartney for a column he wrote this past weekend about the schools race.
Such sentiments are also part of a much broader debate that has been simmering for months across the country and has flared in recent days with some cross-publication sniping.
The background: As part of the schools reform movement, national groups such as Parent Revolution have begun fighting for new and far more expansive parental control in schools. One of the favored, and most controversial, tools is called the Parent Trigger.
If you haven’t heard of it, the so-called trigger is legislation that allows parents in poor-performing districts to basically takeover a school. In California, the first state to adopt the policy, parents could have the right to fire teachers, turn management over to a charter board or even close a school. Other versions have been adopted in Connecticut and Texas and are being considered elsewhere.
Earlier this month, education historian and Brookings Institution senior fellow Diane Ravitch condemned triggers and suggested they are surreptitiously promoted by the charter school industry: In her Education Week blog she urged parents to understand that “collaboration is not the same as ownership. The school belongs to the public, to the commonwealth. It belongs to everyone who ever attended it (and their parents) and to future generations. It is part of the public patrimony, not an asset that can be closed or privatized by its current constituents.”
Ben Austin, the executive director of Parent Revolution, later countered in a HuffPost Education piece that there is no conspiracy and that a trigger “is a simple, yet potentially transformational law that gives parents real power over the educational destiny of their own children.”
Here at The Post, Mark Phillips, a San Francisco State University professor and education columnist wrote for Valerie Strauss’ Answer Sheet blog that parental voice is important in school reform, but: “Rather than creating a learning community and a feeling of mutuality, the trigger approach will create further divisiveness and a split between teachers and parents. It will create conflict, not mutuality.”
In Fairfax, no one is talking trigger. Still, the specific issues of that sprawling school system fit into the larger framework of the battle.
Are the schools intended to benefit currently enrolled students (hence small class sizes should be a priority) or the broader community (so programs such as ESL can be expanded)? How are limited resources divvied up?
And who makes these decisions? Professional school officials or specific parents or some combination of the two?
What do you think? Should parents’ opinions be more strongly weighted by public school districts? Are trigger laws a good idea or a dangerous precedent?
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Monday, 22. August 2011
In the debate on reducing the national debt, members of Congress have focused on two options–tax increases and entitlement cuts—both considered unhelpful to restarting a stalled economy. Congress seemingly has forgotten that it has another option for reducing the debt: eliminating waste, fraud and corruption in government programs. Perhaps, Congress knows that the success of such a plan would correspond with the effectiveness of whistleblower protections—protections it has been reluctant to provide to the thousands of whistleblowers who hold security clearances.
Insiders are critical to identifying government waste, particularly in agencies, such as the Department of Homeland Security, where much of the information is classified and not available for public review. But, insiders are vulnerable to retaliation from managers embarrassed by their disclosures. The Obama administration has been particularly aggressive toward whistleblowers, launching criminal prosecutions against several of them.
Most Americans would be surprised to know that thousands of federal workers with ordinary jobs–food safety, for example–are required to have security clearances even if they may never handle a classified document. Agencies pay dearly for the necessary background investigations. But, they just can’t seem to pass up the opportunity to give themselves an end run around civil service laws. Steve Kohn, of the National Whistleblowers Center, writes:
A 1989 law was supposed to protect federal employees who expose fraud and misconduct from retaliation. But over the years, these protections have been completely undermined. One loophole gives the government the absolute right to strip employees of their security clearances and fire them, without judicial review. Another bars employees of the National Security Agency and the Central Intelligence Agency from any coverage under the law. And Congress has barred national security whistle-blowers who are fired for exposing wrongdoing from obtaining protection in federal court.
Knowing that they are vulnerable to retaliation, few federal employees are inclined to report wrongdoing. Nevertheless, they are required to report wrongdoing.
Every employee takes an oath or affirmation, required by Article VI of the U.S. Constitution to “support the Constitution.” Since 1884, employees have taken this expanded version of the oath, described in the U.S. Code (Title 5, Chapter 33).
I, [name], do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God.
Incredibly, through court decisions and Congressional foot-dragging, civil servants tasked with defending the Constitution are forced to do so with an abridged set of Constitutional protections, particularly with regard to free speech and due process—essential elements for holding a government accountable.
Civilian federal employees also must adhere to the federal code of ethics (Executive Order 12674, as amended). It states, in part:
“Employees shall disclose waste, fraud, abuse, and corruption to appropriate authorities.”
The code also directs that employees “shall protect and conserve Federal property and shall not use it for other than authorized activities.” This is important because agencies tend to treat classified information as government property, although it’s more accurate to say that a representative government holds information in trust for its citizens.
Sometimes, classified information contains evidence of waste, fraud or corruption, documents abuses of human rights, or it exposes negligent handling of national security. In such cases, classifying the information was illegal. Executive Order 13526 forbids classifying information to hide violations of law, inefficiency, or administrative error or to avoid embarrassing officials.
An employee who encounters classified evidence of wrongdoing therefore is compelled to ask, “Which of the applicable laws has priority?” Agencies provide little or no guidance to employees for dealing with the moral hazard dumped in their laps. Think of it as a ticking black box with protruding wires in several colors. Does one pull the blue wire, the yellow or the red? Pull the wrong one and your career explodes.
If the Executive Branch publicly discusses whistleblowing at all, it acknowledges only the confidentiality obligation as if no other obligations exist. President Obama’s comments about disclosures of classified information attributed to Bradley Manning are illustrative. “We’re a nation of laws!” the President declared. “We don’t let individuals make their own decisions about how the laws operate.” No, the government forces individuals to make their own decisions.
The outcomes of conflagrations involving whistleblowers and their agencies often are vitally important to society as a whole. But, in most cases, the public is a passive observer. Society’s moral burden and fate rest on the whistleblower who must foot the legal costs of holding an agency accountable, gambling the savings of a lifetime on a system where the odds of the winning are about 2%. If the disclosure involves classified information, the government will assert a “state secrets privilege” and instruct courts not to hear evidence against it. In the case of former FBI translator Sibel Edmonds, the government went even further, retroactively classifying information released three years earlier.
“That’s how grotesque the privilege has become,” says Jonathan Turley. Turley, who teaches law at George Washington University, points out that the “state secrets privilege” is not stated in the Constitution or in any statute, but, has the official blessing of the U.S. Supreme Court.
It began…with United States v. Reynolds, which began with a crash of a plane that belonged to the Air Force, but was – resulted in the deaths of three civilian contractors. When their families sued, the government refused to turn over critical information from the crash site. They said to a series of courts, ending in the Supreme Court itself, that that report contained very sensitive national security data and information; that, indeed, American lives and security would be put at risk if it was disclosed.
The Supreme Court fashioned out of Reynolds what we know today as the state secrets privilege, and that privilege allows the government to seek dismissal not just of cases against it, but even cases against third parties where the government can come into a case and say, you just can’t litigate this issue because we have national security interests at stake. (Jonathan Turley)
Years later, when the Reynolds report finally was released, it was “absolutely devoid of sensitive material,” says Turley. “What it was full of was evidence of clear negligence on the part of the government.” Imagine how much negligence one could find in the other documents government classifies—77 million in 2010, alone?
Logically, employee responsibilities assigned by the Constitution should have greater weight than a confidentiality agreement in the way that an order from a division head overrules that of a branch chief. The Constitution is the supreme law of the land. But, that is not the impression created by the court’s decision in U.S. v Reynolds.
In another case, Garcetti v. Ceballo, the Supreme Court gave agencies carte blanche to retaliate against employees who report problems as they conduct their official duties. The majority opinion argued that employees in those situations “are not speaking as citizens for First Amendment purposes.” Actually, those employees are doing something even more important: speaking on behalf of Americans who cannot speak for themselves because they don’t have access to government information.
Issues like these came into play in the case of Thomas Drake, a whistleblower at the National Security Agency. Drake observed problems with a computer system designed for gathering and analyzing intelligence. He believed the government’s decision to adopt that system in lieu of another wasted nearly a billion dollars, violated Constitutional law, and cause critical delays. Drake believes the alternative system could have detected the 9/11 hijackers in time to prevent the attacks.
Drake tried going through administrative channels and working with Congress to get the problems addressed, but government covered them up instead. Drake says, “I was faced with a crisis of conscience. What do I do—remain silent, and complicit, or go to the press?” Drake was working without guidance or a safety net.
He researched the relevant legal statutes and concluded that if he spoke to a reporter about unclassified matters the only risk he ran was losing his job. N.S.A. policy forbids initiating contact with the press. “I get that it’s grounds for ‘We have to let you go,’ ” he says. But he decided that he was willing to lose his job. “This was a violation of everything I knew and believed as an American.”
Imagine Drake’s shock when the government later charged him with ten felonies, including espionage. Critics accused the Department of Justice of overreaching and, indeed, DOJ dropped the felony charges on the eve of trial. Judge Richard Bennett rebuked DOJ for its actions, noting that “Drake had gone through ‘four years of hell’ that a citizen shouldn’t endure.”
J. William Leonard, former director of the Information Security Oversight Office, found the government’s conduct so outrageous that he filed a complaint requesting punishment of NSA and DOJ officials who classified a document he says contained no secrets.” “Now that the Justice Department is seeking to imprison government workers for leaking classified information to the news media, Mr. Leonard said, it is especially critical to make sure that only genuine secrets are protected by law (New York Times).”
In requiring federal employees to “defend” rather than simply adhere to the Constitution, the framers did something rather extraordinary: they deputized every federal employee to apprehend violators. The framers’ efforts are being thwarted, however, through government’s increasing use of the state secrets privilege.
Without the checks on abuses that whistleblowers provide, corruption will grow unabated, making government more costly but less efficient. That would have negative consequences for everything, from public health to national defense to the economy. Congress must get busy and pass a bill restoring due process and free speech rights for whistleblowers. It must include strong reprisal protections for all whistleblowers, including national security whistleblowers. At a 2008 conference on whistleblowing, David Colapinto summed this up memorably, saying, “Whistleblowers who work for the federal government are entitled not to better whistleblower protections but the best whistleblower protections.” And for everyone’s sake, that can’t come too soon.
Linda Lewis is a policy analyst with degrees in emergency management and geosciences. Her experience includes 13 years as a policy analyst and planner for the U.S. government. During that time, she brought attention to serious deficiencies in government preparedness prior to the disasters that confirmed her analyses. Those included emergency communications (9/11 terrorist attacks), federal assistance (hurricane Katrina) and decision making (Columbia shuttle disaster).
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Obama calls for further reforms in Burma
London, Nov 19 (ANI): US President Barack Obama has urged Burma's leaders to continue the reform process, saying more progress is needed in the country.
Obama has begun a historic visit to Burma, the first by a sitting US president.
The visit is intended to show support for the reform process put in place by Burmese President Thein Sein since the end of military rule in November 2010.
According to the BBC, speaking in the Thai capital, Bangkok, on Sunday, Obama said his visit was not an unqualified endorsement of the Burmese government.
"I don't think anybody is under any illusion that Burma's arrived, that they're where they need to be," the report quoted him, as saying.
"On the other hand, if we waited to engage until they had achieved a perfect democracy, my suspicion is we'd be waiting an awful long time," he added.
According to the report, Obama will spend only a short time in Burma and will not visit the capital, Nay Pyi Taw.
Instead his time will be spent in Burma's commercial capital, Rangoon, meeting both Thein Sein and the leader of the opposition, pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi.
Obama will also give a speech at Rangoon University, at the heart of pro-democracy protests in 1988 that were violently suppressed by the regime, and is expected to announce an aid pledge worth 170 million dollars. (ANI)
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You might not think you’re directly connected to rainforest destruction and slave labor. But you probably are, and a compelling report this week from Greenpeace connects the dots.
It’s called “Driving Destruction in the Amazon.” It highlights how steel used to make thousands of everyday products can often be tied to the clear-cutting of forests to make charcoal that fuels iron ore smelters.
It isn’t just an environmental problem; it’s a major human rights problem. That’s because many charcoal operations are run with slave labor.
The Greenpeace report builds on work already underway to confront charcoal slavery by Free the Slaves and our frontline partners in Brazil. You can see their award-winning work in the FTS documentary “Partners in Action.”
Brazil has one of the world’s most aggressive anti-slavery initiatives, including special SWAT squads to liberate slaves, a Dirty List that quarantines businesses convicted of slavery, and a National Pact signed by major companies who pledge to avoid slavery-tainted products and raw materials. This week’s Greenpeace report underscores why such aggressive action is needed.
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The purpose of a business oriented website is to act as a gateway for potential business opportunities. Green Planet has established itself as website design firm repute and credibility. The technical team here is comprised of seasoned design professionals who transform your ideas into a dynamic online Public relations portal.Our solutions are market-centric and designed to serve the objectives of your business. Since the business environment is highly fluctuating, our websites architecture are flexible enough to handle any scale up needs or to incorporate any new features.
Commerce is at the center of the Internet economic revolution. eCommerce has established itself as the new way of doing business .
What is eCommerce?
E-Commerce or Electronic Commerce (EC) is the process of conducting business transactions in a virtual economic environment – through the internet. Every business needs a dynamic store at a right location and in the eCommerce environment, the requirement for a successful business is dynamic website which is capable of handling all business transaction. This is where Green Planet comes into picture – it transforms your business vision into an online reality.
Content Management System (CMS)
Content is being generated at a furious pace and as a logical fallout, Content Management has become an enterprise wide issue to be handled with a sound strategy
A CMS (Content Management System) can be perceived as a hybrid technology of website maintenance and document management system – The delivery, addition, modification or deletion of new or updated content can be achieved simultaneously from different points. Web is being ruled by the introduction of new content every second and in this situation, if we are burdened with a monolithic structure. The management of content should be flexible and systematic.
Custom Web Development
The DNA of every website and business is different. It needs a tight collaboration between the business owner and the designing team to create a custom solution for the enterprise
Green Planet perceives your website as a powerful marketing tool which complements the traditional marketing while building a long term relationship with your customers
Your website should..
* Deliver a targeted and effective message about your company, products and services
* Provide user friendly navigation so that your target audience can find the information that they need without scratching their heads
* have the capability of user interaction so that they feel empowered to become a part of the business process
Online Community and Social Networks
Social networking between the customers, business owners and service providers has become the backbone of Internet economy. The utilization of Social network has become indispensable for the Business owners.
Making their entry as a platform for people to get together and form online communities, social networking portals have rapidly evolved into functional market platforms that facilitate business collaborations and intelligent leads on the web.
Social networking systems can be used to create professional as well as niche social networks. Networking means marketing in this digital age of instant deals and transactions. Millions of potential customers are surfing the web every second. How do we get their eyeballs on our site?
Forum & Bulletin Board Systems
Interactivity and user communication has become the mantra of a successful business site. Internet forums have become more of a necessity than just another additional feature.
The advent of Social networking and discussion forum systems have transformed the way viewers interact with your website. Forum System have a great synergy with the business process – They can be used to involve customers in your business, create a meaningful conversation around a product or service or to generate completely unique business ideas. Green Planet specializes in creating dynamic Forum system websites for both Business and personal use.
Once the enterprise class website is up and running, the consistency and the uptime of the system is dependent upon a well oiled maintenance process.
Websites are continually being revamped in order to adapt to the business needs. This needs a system administration process in place which can handle day to day maintenance issues as well as emergency issues without any hiccups. Preserving the sanity of the system is a huge task particularly if you have frequent updates.
The technical staff at Green Planet can handle all the maintenance hassles while you can concentrate on other strategic issues.
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Quarry Rehab Plan Gets Residents' Take
Public testimony on Millington Quarry's plan to prepare spent quarry for future is detailed and specific.
Residents who offered their opinions on the Millington Quarry's so-called rehabilitation plan for the future of the deeply quarried property off Stonehouse Road offered detailed suggestions at Tuesday's Planning Board meeting — and they have more to say.
Resident Bill Allen, also a former Township Committeeman, read three parts of his own plan envisioning how the quarry land might be prepared to someday house a neighborhood on the banks of a recreational lake. However, he also asked the board of a couple of hours to present a plan to move fill from the south side of the quarry to build up a more gradual incline for cliffs that would run along a proposed 50-acre lake on the property.
Allen said the "two to one" slope he would like to see on the north side of the lake still is fairly steep but — and he held up a geometric shape to show the 63 degree cliff he said would tower above the lake as in the quarry's plans — "This, on the other hand, is a killer." He said his plan would involve moving four million cubic yards of material aroud, but not involve bringing additional fill into the site.
Following discussion and a denied request for a synopsis of what he plans to say, the board agreed Allen can return to present his continued testimony at a meeting on Oct. 2.
But hearing that, Millington Quarry's attorney, Michael Lavigne, asked for an earlier hearing date, and noted that the quarry's plan has been before the Planning Board already for 12 hearings before first being presented last November.
Lavigne said that some planning board's limit testimony to about a half-hour for each speaker — but Board Member Anne Parsekian, who was chairing the meeting, said the board had not yet done so.
Parsekian said the board has a full agenda for September. Continuation of public hearings on a plan to build a 4,200-square foot mosque on Church Street in Liberty Corner is scheduled to be continued at the Sept. 4 meeting.
During Tuesday's testimony, Allen called for a return of the quarry's soil expert, Joseph Sorge, to answer additional questions about the possible leaching of contaminants from soil previously trucked into the quarry. Using the quarry's own test data, Allen said that levels of contaminants in a test well on part of the property appeared to be rising in concentration, which was well above DEP guidelines.
He added that the level of concentration roughly aligned with concentration of substances in nearby soil.
Lavigne reminded Allen that the township's own consultant, Dr. Jennifer Wollenberg, had testified that the soil on the property now, even without some sort of remediation, presents no harm to humans, although she had suggested the installation of an additional test well.
Allen also expressed scepticism that the quarry's plan to keep the public from the cliffs over the lake with a fence, dense foliage and buoys in the lake would be foolproof.
Allen also suggested that the Planning Board recommend to the Township Committee — which has the final say on whether to approve the quarry's latest rehabilitation plan, which is supposed to be updated every three years — that perhaps the meadow area that could support future homes should be left as bare rock rather than importing soil at this time.
That would avoid the issue of how much soil would be needed until a specific development plan might be presented, he said in presenting his reasoning.
However, both Lavigne and the board's attorney, Stuart Koenig, objected that the town's ordinance specifically requires the rehabilitation plan to leave the quarry in a condition with ground cover that could support vegetation.
Upon hearing Allen's other suggestions about how a residential development that might contain townhomes could be built by a recreational lake with a pier, Lavigne protested he began the hearings last November by specifying that this plan is not an application for a residential development.
Allen wasn't the only resident to testify on Tuesday.
Resident Suzanne Quigley of St. Nicholas Way off Valley Road testified that when the quarry was in full operation, quality of life in the area suffered greatly as trucks heading to the quarry every morning starting at 6 a.m. cracked windshields, created dust and noise, and required moving a school bus stop off Valley Road.
She said the neighbors' quality of life has improved since the quarrying operation was scaled back and the end of the quarry's life nears.
The evening's testimony began with Lavigne questioning resident Jeff Cappola, also presented to the board as an expert on the basis of his long involvement with property redevelopment and some development projects in New Jersey.
At the previous meeting, Lavigne challenged Cappola's qualifications to testify as an expert on behalf of the public, both due to his training and what he said is Cappola's lack of neutrality.
Cappola said he had worked on many projects that involved bringing soil into construction sites.
Although he admitted that the work sites with which he was involved often accepted soils with some contamination at redevelopment locations that admittedly had some contamination of their own, Cappola said it is almost impossible keep all contamination out of a site such as the quarry.
"This is New Jersey," Cappola said. "No way where you had commercial or industrial activities are you going to get uncontaminated [soil]." he said.
Cappola said that if fill is brought in to pad and smooth steeply quarried areas, it should only come from "virgin" locations, meaning other quarries in the area.
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Question: Is there a book you find particularly inspiring?
Dan Gilbert: I wish I had more time to read fiction. I don’t have as much time to read it as I might, so I’m the wrong person to ask about the most exciting novel ever written. But I certainly know that the work that Phillip K. Dick inspired me 25, 30 years ago in ways that I still find myself reflecting on. Phillip K. Dick at that time was, of course, a genre science fiction writer now recognized as a great American writer. But in his novels, reality was constantly working and bending. And what we were constantly learning was the nature of reality is how your brain constructs it. And the slightest change in the way your brain works can make a great change in the reality around you. That was a lesson never lost on me, and one that I think is probably the underlying lesson of scientific psychology.
Recorded on: 6/12/2007
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US employment figures released today show a slowdown in the pace of new jobs growth, with just 155,000 extra non-farm payroll positions created in December. That does mean that new jobs are still being created, of course, but with the fiscal cliff deal looking more and more like a poor fudge every day, the country's debt still going up at a frightening rate, and months of bitter wrangling ahead over public spending cuts there is little in the way of light on the horizon for the American economy.
Could 2013 be the year that it all comes crashing down? Will a huge debt and prolonged political gridlock cause America's lenders to lose confidence in the ability of the world's biggest economy to pay its debts? Could this even spark a run on the dollar? Perhaps these worst case scenarios are not so likely, but there is every chance that US growth could slow down to a standstill - or even go back into negative territory.
I'd love to get 'the wisdon of the crowd' on this one - what is your prediction for the US economy in 2013?
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D.C. Taxi Company Settles Tank Violations with EPA
The Yellow Cab Company of D.C., Inc. has settled an EPA complaint alleging violations of environmental regulations designed to prevent fuel leaks from underground storage tanks.
In a consent agreement with EPA, Yellow Cab agreed to pay a $34,190 penalty. The alleged violations involved three 12,000-gallon underground storage tanks at the companys facility in Washington, D.C.
EPAs complaint cited Yellow Cab for not adequately being able to detect fuel tank releases, not providing corrosion protection on metal piping, and not demonstrating its financial responsibility for cleanup and compensation in the event of a fuel leak.
These violations were discovered in an EPA inspection held in October of 2003, as well as through the companys responses to followup information requests.
Yellow Cab removed and permanently closed the three tanks at its facility. The District of Columbias underground storage tank management division issued a letter of permanent closure to Yellow Cab in August.
As part of the settlement, Yellow Cab neither admitted nor denied liability for the alleged violations, but it has certified that it has removed and permanently closed the three tanks at the facility, in accordance with the federal and District requirements.
With millions of gallons of gasoline, oil, and other petroleum products stored in underground storage tanks throughout the United States, leaking tanks are a major source of soil and groundwater contamination. EPA and state underground storage tank regulations are designed to reduce the risk of underground leaks, and thus avoid the costs of major cleanups.
More Like This
- EPA Settles With American Samoa Seaside Service Station
- EPA Takes Action to Protect Groundwater from Petroleum Contamination
- EPA Takes Legal Action Against Western New York Gas Stations
- West Virginia Settles Alleged Regulations Violations
- EPA Settles With Guam Office of Civil Defense for Underground Storage Tank Violations
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Energy suppliers Npower have announced some of their gas customers will be eligible for a refund.
Consumers who used the services of Npower in 2007 and paid too much for their cheap energy are set to receive a payout of between £1 and around £100 after Consumer Focus worked with the company to come to a fair outcome.
The consumer watchdog lobbied for reimbursement for customers affected by the change in the way Npower applied its charges for the first block of higher-priced gas units that households pay, after it was found that the energy suppliers did not communicate the changes effectively to their users.
Primary block units are the first gas units to be used each month and are charged at a higher rate to help the company pay for the fixed costs of supplying cheap energy to households.
Some 1.8 million people will be affected by the outcome, which will see Npower refund £63 million for gas payments, excluding VAT and interest.
The company apologised for the "complexity of the changes we made [which] caused confusion" and said it will be contacting all affected customers in the next two months.
If you want to find out more about your energy options and how you could save up to £468 in minutes, click here.
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Across the East China Sea, west of Japan and its ongoing crisis, sits the growing Qinshan nuclear power plant, where four new pressurized-water reactors are under construction in addition to the five already operating on-site. The Qinshan addition is one of 20 new nuclear power plants undergoing construction or approved for construction in China today, part of a bid to increase the nuclear share of China's electricity-generating capacity from less than 2 percent to 5 percent. That means China is building nearly half of all the nuclear reactors under construction worldwide, according to the World Nuclear Association.
"Now in China we have 13 nuclear power reactors in operation," said Zhang Guobao, former vice chairman of the National Development and Reform Commission—the government agency charged with setting energy and industrial policy—via a translator during a visit to NDRC headquarters in Beijing this past November. "In comparison with countries like the U.S.A. and France, this number is very small, [but] we are first in the world in the construction of new nuclear reactors."
China's newly released five-year plan requires that China source 11.4 percent of its energy needs from other than fossil-fuel—at least 43 gigawatts of that to come from nuclear alone—up from slightly more than 8 percent now. Further, Chinese officials have announced plans to explicitly cap China's total energy use at four billion metric tons of coal-equivalent by 2015; they also have drafted a "New Energy Industry Development Plan" that would invest amore than $750 billion in "new energy," which includes nuclear, in the next decade.
But the accident at the Fukushima nuclear power plant in Japan following the magnitude 9.0 earthquake and subsequent 14-meter-high tsunami on March 11 has given cause for concern. A State Council meeting chaired by Premier Wen Jiabao has put a halt to new nuclear construction and approval. "We will temporarily suspend approval for nuclear power projects," the State Council said in a statement following a meeting on March 16. "Safety is our top priority in developing nuclear power plants."
That will be temporary. "China's energy mix is dominated by coal," explained Guobao, who retired this year. "In the near future it is our priority to increase the proportion of nuclear and renewable energy in our energy mix."
China's currently operating reactors deliver nearly 11 gigawatts of electricity—or more than half the amount delivered by the nation's notorious Three Gorges Dam alone. And China is building 25 more reactors. "By 2020, installed [nuclear] capacity could reach over 70 gigawatts," Guobao said, although the current five-year plan for nuclear is to boost it from 10 to 50 gigawatts by 2015.
But that would still be only a fraction of the electricity produced by burning coal. "For the foreseeable future, coal will continue to take up a big part of our energy mix," Guobao said.
Nuclear with Chinese characteristics
China's new nuclear future is a mix of its own and foreign reactor designs. China has or is building heavy-water reactors from Canada, "evolutionary" pressurized-water reactors from France, pebble-bed reactors tested in South Africa, and even is working on reactors that would use molten salt for cooling and thorium for fuel. China has become the nuclear industry's living laboratory for new reactor designs and the learning that comes from actual construction.
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Disunion follows the Civil War as it unfolded.
Disunion follows the Civil War as it unfolded.
Both commanders desperately wanted control of the town, then just nine years old. Halleck believed “Richmond and Corinth are now the great strategic points of the war, and our success at these points should be insured at all hazards,” while Beauregard warned the Confederate high command, which was then fixated on Virginia, “If defeated here we will lose the Mississippi Valley and probably our cause.”
Why Corinth? What made this dot on the Mississippi map so vital?
Railroads. Corinth sat at the junction of the Memphis and Charleston Railroad and the Mobile and Ohio Railroad, two of the Confederacy’s main arteries: the Mobile and Ohio penetrated the Deep South all the way to the Gulf of Mexico, while the Memphis and Charleston Railroad was the only direct line in the Confederacy from the Atlantic seaboard to the Mississippi River. The loss of Corinth would play havoc with Confederate lateral communications; a Federal army astride the Memphis and Charleston railroad would compromise the security of Chattanooga, Tenn., the gateway city to the Confederate interior.
As crucial as it was, Corinth lacked one vital military necessity: potable water. Sluggish streams and swamps ringed the town, which one Southern general called a “sickly, malarial spot fit only for alligators and snakes.” On paper, there were over 100,000 Confederate soldiers in Corinth, but by mid-May 1862, nearly half of the men were either absent or too sick to fight. Desertion was rampant; entire companies spilled out of town.
Beauregard’s most reliable ally was Henry Halleck’s timidity. Despite the importance of his objective, Halleck took weeks to reach Corinth, while making it clear that he wanted to avoid another major battle. Espousing the 18th-century military theory that seizing “key strategic points” was more important than destroying enemy armies, he kept his forces closely concentrated and enjoined his army commanders to avoid a general engagement at all costs and to entrench at every halt. Beauregard also benefited from a seven-mile long, semicircular line of Confederate entrenchments beginning a mile and a half east of Corinth and running first to the north, then west.
Halleck’s force was divided into three armies: the Army of the Ohio, under the similarly cautious Maj. Gen. Don Carlos Buell; the Army of the Mississippi, under the aggressive and insubordinate Maj. Gen. John Pope; and the Army of the Tennessee, which Grant had led at Shiloh but now only nominally controlled. Halleck, seeing Grant as a threat to his designs on overall command in the West, wanted him out of the way, and knew he could take advantage of the Grant’s vulnerability after his near-defeat at Shiloh. But he also knew Grant enjoyed too much support in Washington to dismiss him outright, so Halleck elevated him to the meaningless position of second in command, while frequently bypassing his army command to issue orders to Grant’s subordinates. In his memoirs, Grant recalled of the Corinth campaign, “I was little more than an observer.”
Grant wandered the camps aimlessly, often spending entire days lying on a cot in General Pope’s tent. He talked of resigning, but a friend of Pope and Grant, Brig. Gen. William T. Sherman, dissuaded him. The days wore heavily under the sultry Mississippi sun, and Grant found it hard to maintain a dignified silence. He told a friend that he felt as useless as “the fifth wheel to a coach.” Once, in May, Grant suggested a flanking maneuver that might accelerate the pace of Halleck’s painfully slow advance. “I was silenced so quickly that I felt that possibly I had suggested an unmilitary movement.”
The ritual of marching two or three miles a day and then losing a third and sometimes a fourth day to entrenching with no opposition exasperated nearly everyone. “General Halleck is one of those old fogy commanders with more caution than spirit,” an Illinois private recorded in his diary. A Yankee sergeant was at a loss to understand the delays; he said the only Southerners the federals saw were sickly deserters.
A frustrated General Pope finally acted to end the “sauntering along.” Although recent rains had pounded the roads to paste and flooded the countryside, Pope pushed his army 12 miles in two days. On May 3 he attacked the 4,500 Confederate defenders of Farmington, Miss., just two miles short of the Corinth earthworks. The rebels fled in wild confusion, and Pope sent a division southward to tear up the Memphis and Charleston Railroad. But instead of bringing forward the rest of his forces to follow up Pope’s success, Halleck ordered his refractory subordinate to withdraw four miles and entrench. Then as now, war correspondents traveled with the armies. After Farmington, the press pilloried Halleck as a “vacillating coquette … who lags rather than keeps pace.”
As Halleck inched nearer, Beauregard’s army grew feebler. “We became starved skeletons, naked and ragged rebels,” said a Tennessean. “The chronic diarrhea became the scourge of the army. Corinth became one vast hospital. Our troops were in no condition to fight. In fact, they had seen enough of this miserable yet tragic farce. They were ready to ring down the curtain, put out the footlights, and go home.”
Beauregard was also ready to close the curtain on Corinth. On May 25, he called his chief lieutenants together to discuss the propriety of a retreat. There really was little to debate; all agreed it was only a matter of time before Halleck’s anaconda tactics crushed them. A battle or a siege not only would end in defeat, they reasoned, but might also annihilate the principal Confederate army in the Western Theater.
Beauregard covered his nighttime withdrawal on May 29 cleverly. In order to give the impression that reinforcements were arriving, he ran empty trains in and out of Corinth, ordering the soldiers to cheer each time a train neared the front. After the Confederates abandoned Corinth, Halleck made a half-hearted pursuit with a fragment of his force. By June 9, the Confederates held a new line at Tupelo, 52 miles to the south. Broken in health, Beauregard left the army to recuperate, neither asking for nor receiving permission to take leave.
Grant, who was convinced Corinth could have been taken in two days if Halleck had moved promptly after Shiloh, now saw an unprecedented opportunity. “After the capture of Corinth a movable force of 80,000 men, besides enough to hold all the territory acquired, could have been set in motion for the accomplishment of any great campaign for the suppression of the rebellion. But the work of depletion commenced,” he noted sadly. Halleck dispersed his armies and adopted a defensive posture. Had Halleck pressed on, Grant said, “The positive results might have been a bloodless advance to Atlanta, to Vicksburg, or to any other desire point south of Corinth in the interior of Mississippi.” Instead, the War in the Western Theater would drag on for three long and bloody years.
Peter Cozzens is the author of 16 books on the American Civil War and the Indian Wars of the American West, including “The Darkest Days of the War: The Battles of Iuka and Corinth.”
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Help! My son's betta Rock N Roll is the tiniest, sweetest little fish ever and he is really not doing well. He had been ill for several months with chronic SBD-like symptoms and took a sudden turn for the worse a couple of months ago. I thought he was dead at one point, and he seemed to be suffering so much that I considered euthanizing him. He miraculously recovered, though, when we lowered the water level in his tank and raised the temperature and has been thriving for the past two months or so.
Earlier this morning, I found him lying on the bottom of the tank. I could see his gills barely moving. I put some pellets in to see if he would eat them, but he didn't. He swam around weakly a couple of times, but never very far and always coming back to rest on the bottom after a few seconds.
Remembering how much lowering the water level helped before, I have lowered his water level to maybe 1.5 inches of water. When I did that, he did manage to come to the surface a couple of times but was still refusing food. I also laid a silk plant on its side nearby so he could rest on it if he wanted to. I figured I would give him some time to rest/recover but he is still in pretty much the same condition and I don't know what to do.
He was fine last night - swimming around vigorously and ate around 8 p.m. when my son fed him. There is nothing visibly wrong with him - he looks the same as always. The only thing I can think of is I suspect that my son may be forgetting a good number of the morning feedings because now that it is summer vacation, he is still asleep when I leave for work and I am not here to remind him to feed the fish, so maybe because he is so tiny (he is literally half the size of all the other bettas we've had) he is weak from lack of food.?
Anyway, here is all the basic info - if anyone has other thoughts about what might help this poor little guy, please share!
What size is your tank? 2.5G
What temperature is your tank? 82 F
Does your tank have a filter? N
Does your tank have an air stone or other type of aeration? N
Is your tank heated? N
What tank mates does your betta fish live with? None
What type of food do you feed your betta fish? Hikari Micro-Pellets (he is very tiny and could not tolerate the Bio-Gold)
How often do you feed your betta fish? twice a day, 7-10 micro pellets per feeding
How often do you perform a water change? 2x/wk
What percentage of the water do you change when you perform a water change? 50/100
What type of additives do you add to the water when you perform a water change? API stress coat, Epsom salt (1 tsp/G for chronic SBD)
Have you tested your water? NO If so, what are the following parameters?
Symptoms and Treatment
How has your betta fish's appearance changed? Hasn't
How has your betta fish's behavior changed? Very lethargic, laying on bottom of tank, occasionally moving but not much
When did you start noticing the symptoms? This morning
Have you started treating your fish? If so, how? The only thing I have done so far is lower the water level (this has helped him in the past)
Does your fish have any history of being ill? Yes - chronic SBD and a similar episode of illness to this one a couple of months ago
How old is your fish (approximately)? got him about 10 mos ago
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Trabian Shorters has a long history of creating and running innovative networks for the public good. As Vice President of Communities for Knight Foundation since 2007, he is responsible for making informed and engaged communities in 26 large and small cities across the US.
He is responsible for the Knight Community Information Challenge (KCIC), a field-leading initiative to get hundreds of foundations to support local news and information. He is the principal behind Knight’s ground-breaking Black Male Engagement (BMe) work which focuses on thousands of black men as catalysts for positive local action. The Communities Program portfolio includes over $300M in active grants and endowments.
Trabian came to Knight Foundation from Ashoka, the world’s premiere organization for finding, funding and networking social entrepreneurs. As director of Ashoka-US, Trabian raised funds to support over 70 US Ashoka Fellows, vetted 17 himself and served on the executive leadership team.
Before working with networks of social entrepreneurs and philanthropists, Trabian created a technology network in partnership with AOL Time Warner, Microsoft, Fannie Mae and the Meyer Foundation. Technology Works for Good (now 501cTech) helps nonprofits to use technology to serve more people better and faster. For this Trabian was nominated by AOL to be a Smithsonian Institution Laureate for innovations in technology delivery.
Trabian is one of the original organizers of the AmeriCorps National Service proposal; vice chair of DonorsChoose.org; a coach for New York University ’s Program for Social Entrepreneurship; and the proud first grandson of Kennis and Irma Lee Hutchons.
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The best way to grasp the depth of the devastation on Japan's northeast coast is to go for a drive. The mess of crumpled cars, mangled houses, and a seemingly endless swirl of worldly possessions stretches on, block after block, town after torn up town. Pulling into Ofunato, a once picturesque fishing village surrounded by mountains and a temperamental sea, a woman walking with a floral sun umbrella strolls past low-rise buildings that have been gutted like the creatures this place has caught and sold for centuries.
Down the street, a stone's throw from hulking fishing boats that were tossed inland, Yuko Shida surveys what's left of her bakery and second floor apartment. When the 98-foot tsunami started spilling into Ofunato, Shida dashed up a nearby hill, the water licking at her heels. She points to the last bits of bread left from that horrifying Friday in March, hanging in a bag from the bones of the ceiling. While she talks, her husband and son, Yugi and Masatoshi, pick through the debris, searching for anything they can salvage. "Don't come in here, it's not safe," Yugi Shida warns.
Like thousands of others on Japan's northeast coast, the Shidas are facing the daunting task of rebuilding their lives. "It's difficult to say if we can continue," Shida sighs. Difficult, or muzukashii, is an oft-used word in the Japanese language, but its utterance is even more frequent among the survivors of the tsunami. It's also what the Shidas' neighbor, Michiko Takahashi, says when asked to guess when she'll ever have a home again. She knows one thing for sure, though. "All the people in the town say they don't want to live here anymore," she says in front of the skeleton of her apartment. "They want to live on higher ground."
This week, Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan has promised to build safe, eco-friendly homes throughout the ravaged northeast, away from the reach of monster waves. But before that can happen, crews have to haul away the debris. And because the tsunami chewed up and spat out vast chunks of Japan's Pacific coast, the cleanup process could perhaps be even more difficult than the rebuilding itself. Untangling the mess of metal, wood, and concrete will take many, many months. "The Kobe earthquake in 1995 generated 20 million tons of debris over an area of 50km," says Kyoto University environmental engineering professor Nagahisa Hirayama. "Here we are talking of nearly 27 million tons over 500 kilometers." Once roads are cleared, the debris has to be hauled away to temporary sites, separated, and either reused, recycled, or scrapped. He says the task will take years, but is not insurmountable. "People need to realize it's not impossible to manage such an amount of debris, especially if everyone pitches in the recovery effort."
But in many places, from Sendai and up the coast to Ofunato, the job looks all but impossible. Though some roads have been cleared, which helps with transporting people and supplies, that process itself has only magnified the mounds of dirt and debris that need to be hauled away. In some spots, heavy machinery claws away at piles of rubble that were once homes and businesses; in others, the smell of tons of seafood being scooped up from bayside storage facilities hangs in the early spring air.
The activity tapers off at sunset, when the light makes the landscape of these towns and villages appear almost post-apocalyptic, eerily similar to photographs from Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. In the town of Rikuzentakata, flattened cars are scattered about like neglected toys. A railway line is twisted up like a ribbon. Eviscerated buildings stand somewhat proudly next to their weaker, crumbled counterparts. Here and there you'll find a photo of a couple getting married in traditional Japanese dress, or a group picture of a school class smiling on a sunny day. Estimates suggest the sea inundated three quarters of this place, killing one-in-ten of its 20,000 residents. Here survivors, crammed into evacuation centers, say they're relying on elected officials to give them their lives back. "In order to rebuild, we need to imagine what the ideal Rikuzentakata will look like," says Takeharu Chiba, who lost his mother, sister, nieces, nephews, and neighbors to the tsunami. "The government must help us."
Prime Minister Kan has vowed to give those affected by this disaster their lives back, but he can't say when that will happen. Kan is planning to convene a national council before the one-month anniversary of this disaster to figure out a way forward. Until then, the thousands of Japanese who were touched by this catastrophe will have to live in temporary housing, with relatives, or move on. Sanichi Niinuma, a sushi chef in Ofunato, has made the painful decision to leave the fishing town his family has called home for seven generations. "I would like to rebuild, but it's not like people are going to be eating sushi here for a while," he says, standing on the remains of his restaurant. "I plan to go somewhere else. All I need is a knife. Once the situation has returned to normal, I want to come back to start again."
With reporting from Miguel Quintana
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Excerpted from BSA Troop Committee Guidebook
Copyright 1990, Boy Scouts of America, ISBN 0-8395-6505-4
Let's take a look at how a troop functions.
In order to support the troop's operation, you will need to know
The Scoutmaster is the adult leader responsible for the image
and program of the troop. The Scoutmaster and his assistant
Scoutmasters work directly with the Scouts. The importance of the
Scoutmaster's job is reflected in the fact that the quality of
his guidance will affect every youth and adult involved in the
The Scoutmaster can be male or female, but must be at least 21
years old. The Scoutmaster is appointed by the head of the
The Scoutmaster's duties include:
- Train and guide boy leaders.
- Work with other responsible adults to bring Scouting to
- Use the methods of Scouting to achieve the aims of
- Meet regularly with the patrol leaders' council for
training and coordination in planning troop activities.
- Attend all troop meetings or, when necessary, arrange for
a qualified adult substitute.
- Attend troop committee meetings.
- Conduct periodic parents' sessions to share the program
and encourage parent participation and cooperation.
- Take part in annual membership inventory and uniform
inspection, charter review meeting, and charter
- Conduct Scoutmaster conferences for all rank
- Provide a systematic recruiting plan for new members and
see that they are promptly registered.
- Delegate responsibility to other adults and groups
(assistants, troop committee) so that they have a real
part in troop operations.
- Supervise troop elections for the Order of the Arrow.
To fulfill his obligation to the troop, the Scoutmaster, with
the assistance of the troop committee, recruits assistant
Scoutmasters to help operate the troop. Each assistant
Scoutmaster is assigned specific program duties and reports to
the Scoutmaster. They also provide the required two-deep
leadership standards set by the Boy Scouts of America (there must
be at least two adults present at any Boy Scout activity). An
assistant Scoutmaster may be 18 years old, but at least one in
each troop should be 21 or older, so he or she can serve in the
Types of assistant Scoutmasters include:
The Scout troop is made up of patrols. A patrol is a grouping
of six to eight boys who work together. Each patrol elects its
own boy leader, called a patrol leader.
The new Scout patrol is composed of new members who
have not entered the seventh grade.
The experienced Scout patrol is for those boys who are
age 12 and older.
Venture patrols are made up of boys who are age 13 and
older who want more challenging high-adventure experiences.
Varsity teams are made up of boys who are age 13 and
older who want team sport activities.
Both Varsity and Venture Scouting activities may include the
participation of girls, but the young women may not register as
crew or team members. When girls participate in Venture and
Varsity activities, a woman 21 years of age or older must be
present along with the adult male leader.
The Troop's Youth Leaders
The troop is actually run by its boy leaders. With the
guidance of the Scoutmaster and his assistants, they plan the
program, conduct troop meetings, and provide leadership among
Junior Leader Positions
- Senior patrol leader - top junior leader in the
troop. He leads the patrol leaders' council and, in
consultation with the Scoutmaster, appoints other junior
leaders and assigns specific responsibilities as needed.
- Assistant senior patrol leader - fills in for
senior patrol leader in his absence. He is also
responsible for training and giving direction to the
quartermaster, scribe, troop historian, librarian, and
- Troop Historian - collects and maintains troop
memorabilia and information on former troop members.
- Librarian - keeps troop books, pamphlets,
magazines, audiovisuals, and merit badge counselor list
available for use by troop members.
- Instructor - teaches one or more advancement
skills to troop members.
- Chaplain Aide - assists in troop religious
services and promotes religious emblems program.
- Junior assistant Scoutmaster - a Scout 16 or older
who supervises and supports other boy leaders as
- Patrol leader - gives leadership to members of his
patrol and represents them on the patrol leaders'
- Assistant patrol leader - fills in for the patrol
leader in his absence.
- Venture crew chief - leader of a troop's Venture
- Varsity team captain - leader of a troop's Varsity
- Troop guide - advisor and guide to the new Scout
- Den chief - works with a Cub Scout den as a guide.
- Quartermaster - responsible for troop supplies and
- Scribe - the troop secretary.
The Patrol Leaders' Council
The patrol leaders' council, not the adult leaders, is
responsible for planning and conducting the troop's activities.
The patrol leaders' council is composed of the following voting
members: senior patrol leader, assistant senior patrol leader,
patrol leaders, troop guide, Venture crew chief, Varsity team
The troop's activities are selected and planned at the annual
program planning conference. The troop's yearly plan is then
submitted to the troop committee for approval. The troop
committee either approves the plan or makes alternative
suggestions for the patrol leaders' council to consider. At its
monthly meetings, the patrol leaders' council organizes and
assigns activity responsibilities for the weekly troop meetings.
The troop committee interacts with the patrol leaders' council
through the Scoutmaster.
Prepared by Jeff L. Glaze.
Additional Resources: Troop Example Organization Presentation (from
http://www.pembroketroop105.org/forms.aspx and used with permission
with thanks to David Skolnick, ASM, Troop 105, Pembroke, MA). Author
The presentation contains slides for an emergency response call tree, a troop organization chart, and a troop committee organization chart.
(The troop example organization presentation also is posted in the forms section of our troop website http://www.pembroketroop105.org/forms.aspx.)
The troop charts match the organizational layout presented in Scoutmaster I/II/III training.
The emergency response tree matches the recommendations that our troop has received from the Red Cross.
Take a look at the Boy Scout Oath, Law,
Motto and Slogan which set the standards for Boy Scouts. You
may also want to take a look at the History
of the Boy Scouts of America.
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