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A digest of important news from sources selected by our local editors. Delivered weekday mornings.
More than 70 New Mexico businesses, nonprofits and governments have pitched in a massive training effort to teach state residents how to perform a new form of Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation.
The businesses and others are sponsoring Project Heart Start New Mexico, an effort that aims to train 10,000 New Mexico residents in the new form of CPR in a single day. The new CPR, Compression-only Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation, does not involve the mouth-to-mouth aspect of the traditional method and is easier to perform, said Project Coordinator Dorothee Hutchinson.
The mass training effort has been pushed by Albuquerque cardiologist Dr. Barry Ramo and the New Mexico Heart Institute Foundation. It will offer simultaneous CPR training in 11 cities, including Albuquerque, Las Cruces and Santa Fe, on Saturday, June 23.
“Many citizens may not choose to do CPR on a person having cardiac arrest because they fear doing it wrong or because of the mouth-to-mouth aspect,” Ramo said in a prepared statement. “The new CPR is going to change that and change the lives of New Mexicans.”
The project includes the efforts of more than 100 volunteers across the state who have helped coordinate the one-day training session. In addition, it will involve more than 600 facilitators, who will conduct the training sessions in the 11 cities.
Those sponsors have made cash as well as in-kind contributions to the effort, Hutchinson added.
Each location will have three one-hour training sessions starting at 9 a.m. on June 23. All participants will watch a short video by Ramo on the importance and ease of the new CPR, Hutchinson said. After that, the more than 600 trainers will begin instructing the attendees.
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The Boy Who Lived also helped breathe new life into the struggling publishing industry. Even before Harry Potter became one of the most successful movie heroes of all time, the Potter books were turning countless people into readers. But that's not all they did.
J.K. Rowling's book series about the boy wizard who's destined to confront the monster who killed his parents caught people's imaginations. Potter became an addiction, in a way that few television shows or movies ever can. And in the process, Harry Potter changed the publishing industry, and the way we think about books, forever.
Pottermania photos by Stuart Wilson, Lawrence Lucier, Stephen Chernin and Ethan Miller/Getty Images.
So here are some of the ways that the Harry Potter books changed publishing:
Potter got adults reading again.
Seriously, everybody talks lately about how Potter got children into reading. But what about adults? The Potter series got grown-ups who hadn't picked up a book, or prose fiction of any length, in years. They became vital watercooler discussion material in offices around the world, and any adult who didn't want to seem hopelessly out of the loop had to buy into Pottermania. The more recent adult obsessions with books like Hunger Games all started with Harry. A.S. Byatt, writing somewhat disapprovingly about the popularity of Harry among adults, speculated in 2003:
Ms. Rowling, I think, speaks to an adult generation that hasn't known, and doesn't care about, mystery. They are inhabitants of urban jungles, not of the real wild. They don't have the skills to tell ersatz magic from the real thing, for as children they daily invested the ersatz with what imagination they had.
But I think Byatt was selling the imaginative strength of the Potter books, and their value as a gateway drug, short. With Potter, adults who had not exercised their imaginations, in the way that only a book can really facilitate, were suddenly given a workout. Grownups who had switched themselves off from the imaginative possibilities of fiction were suddenly reconnected. Speaking of which...
Potter helped create the huge niche of young adult novels
As we've written about before, a lot of the most interesting, most challenging storytelling right now is happening in young-adult novels. Including genres that are far from Harry's wheelhouse, like dystopian and post-apocalyptic futures. The Potter books helped to prove that books aimed at middle-grade and young-adult readers could gain a sizeable audience, of all ages — and that they could deal with fantastical and speculative topics. As Tamora Pierce told Malinda Lo in 2009:
Publishers discovered with Harry [Potter] that kids will read a lot of fantasy, and they'll read big books. And rather than just publishing books like Harry, they just started to publish fantasy and take chances on unusual fantasy. So we are really having a golden age.
Just by themselves, the Potter books forced the New York Times to add a children's bestseller list, because they were crowding out other titles on the regular bestseller list. Potter was "a gateway book" for a lot of young readers, Michael Fox with the Joseph Fox Bookstore in Philiadelphia told the Philadelphia Inquirer.
They brought book cosplay into the mainstream
Cosplay has been with us since the dawn of civilization, probably — but cosplay based on a book property, rather than a movie, TV series, comic book or cartoon, is arguably a bit rarer. You could probably go to any science fiction convention, going back decades, and see people dressed up as characters from Philip Jose Farmer novels or whatever. But the idea that people dressing up as characters from a book series would become a public phenomenon, at bookstores, at Halloween or whenever, is pretty extraordinary. And yet there are plenty of press photos of public Hogwarts cosplay, going back to well before the first movie came out. Which brings us to...
The "release date party" phenomenon
People do all sorts of hullaballoo for a movie's release, including premiere parties and red carpets (and probably Satanic rituals.) But book events have been pretty low-key affairs, even for books aimed at younger readers. The idea of having a giant party, in bookstores all over the world — and opening at midnight before the release date, to let everybody buy the book early — was pretty revolutionary. It helped people treat books more like events and less like things that just sort of emerged into the world. And this especially helped smaller independent bookstores, which were struggling to compete with larger sellers like Amazon that offer deep discounts. Independent bookstores had to offer something that Amazon couldn't — and cool celebrations were a big part of that.
Harry Potter helped bring a new generation to fan-fiction
A lot of people got into writing fanfic as a result of Harry Potter, and some of the most ambitious fanfic projects of the past decade or so have involved expanding the world of Hogwarts and adding new depth to characters like Snape and Draco Malfoy, among others. A lot of writers have transitioned from writing Potter fanfic into creating their own successful young-adult book series, helping to expand the huge list of authors who were inspired or launched by Potter.
The books showed that a series could grow up with its readers
As Dana Gioia told the Newshour in 2007:
I think that's almost unique with this series, that someone has written a series of books in which the characters age as the readers age, and as the level of the difficulty of the books increases with the age of the readers.
The books become longer and more complicated, and the characters get darker and the issues they deal with get more tricky. The idea that a book series could take for granted that its readers were growing up along with it was new, but is sure to gain some imitators.
Pottermore could create a new model for e-book sales
J.K. Rowling's website Pottermore was a huge letdown when she finally announced it — we were all expecting an MMO, or a new Potter book, or maybe a digital Hogwarts with online classes. But Pottermore could still change the way big authors sell e-books. The site is basically a sales platform for the e-book versions of the Potter books, bypassing iTunes and Amazon.com, with a digital watermark to (slightly) discourage piracy. (But no DRM, hurray!) But to get you to come to the site and hopefully buy new copies of the books you already have in physical format, Rowling is offering tons of immersive content, including a digital Sorting Hat and Wand Chooser, and tons of newly written material about Hogwarts. You can follow Harry's journey from the first book onwards through a series of "moments" (with new illustrations) that let you join Hogwarts as Harry does. Even if this site winds up being a bit of a disappointment, it will probably sell a ton of e-books, and prove that publishers don't need to go through the main existing retail channels, for a property with enough buzz.
Additional reporting by Gordon Jackson.
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Computer science professor Errin Fulp works with graduate students Brian Williams (center) and Wes Featherstun (far right), who worked this summer at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory developing a new type of computer network security software modeled after ants.
Ants vs. worms
Computer security mimics nature
In the never-ending battle to protect computer networks from intruders, security experts are deploying a new defense modeled after one of nature’s hardiest creatures — the ant.
Unlike traditional security devices, which are static, these “digital ants” wander through computer networks looking for threats, such as “computer worms” — self-replicating programs designed to steal information or facilitate unauthorized use of machines. When a digital ant detects a threat, it doesn’t take long for an army of ants to converge at that location, drawing the attention of human operators who step in to investigate.
The concept, called “swarm intelligence,” promises to transform cyber security because it adapts readily to changing threats.
“In nature, we know that ants defend against threats very successfully,” explains Professor of Computer Science Errin Fulp, an expert in security and computer networks. “They can ramp up their defense rapidly, and then resume routine behavior quickly after an intruder has been stopped. We were trying to achieve that same framework in a computer system.”
Current security devices are designed to defend against all known threats at all times, but the bad guys who write malware — software created for malicious purposes — keep introducing slight variations to evade computer defenses.
As new variations are discovered and updates issued, security programs gobble more resources, antivirus scans take longer and machines run slower — a familiar problem for most computer users.
Glenn Fink, a research scientist at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) in Richland, Wash., came up with the idea of copying ant behavior. PNNL, one of 10 Department of Energy laboratories, conducts cutting-edge research in cyber security.
Fink was familiar with Fulp’s expertise developing faster scans using parallel processing — dividing computer data into batches like lines of shoppers going through grocery store checkouts, where each lane is focused on certain threats. He invited Fulp and Wake Forest graduate students Wes Featherstun and Brian Williams to join a project there this summer that tested digital ants on a network of 64 computers.
Swarm intelligence, the approach developed by PNNL and Wake Forest, divides up the process of searching for specific threats.
“Our idea is to deploy 3,000 different types of digital ants, each looking for evidence of a threat,” Fulp says. “As they move about the network, they leave digital trails modeled after the scent trails ants in nature use to guide other ants. Each time a digital ant identifies some evidence, it is programmed to leave behind a stronger scent. Stronger scent trails attract more ants, producing the swarm that marks a potential computer infection.”
In the study this summer, Fulp introduced a worm into the network, and the digital ants successfully found it. PNNL has extended the project this semester, and Featherstun and Williams plan to incorporate the research into their master’s theses.
Fulp says the new security approach is best suited for large networks that share many identical machines, such as those found in governments, large corporations and universities.
Computer users need not worry that a swarm of digital ants will decide to take up residence in their machine by mistake. Digital ants cannot survive without software “sentinels” located at each machine, which in turn report to network “sergeants” monitored by humans, who supervise the colony and maintain ultimate control.
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Vicaksana, Rudolf Yosef Raka (2004) The Revelation of truth thrugh the three main characters in Eugene O'Neill's the iceman cometh. Bachelor thesis, Petra Christian University.Full text not available from this repository.
The arrival of Hickey always delights all inhabitants of Harry Hope?s saloon because they expect Hickey would give them free drink. However, this time, Hickey has given up drinking because he has found out the way to face the truth. He then urges everyone to do the same. Since Hickey, Larry, and Parritt are the main characters of the play, in this thesis, I am interested in revealing what their illusions are. Furthermore, I am interested to know the ways Hickey reveals the truth about himself, Larry, and Parritt. Finally, I am interested to know the results of the revelation of truth. In doing the analysis, I use literary approach and literary tools such as characterization, plot, and conflict. I analyze that each character has the illusions that they live with. Then the truth about Hickey, Larry, and Parritt are revealed and they have to live with the truth. I conclude that Hickey, Larry, and Parrit tend to see death as the only solution to each of their problem because they have lost their courage to go on living, so that it can be said that they are in the state of spiritual death.
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|Date Deposited:||23 Mar 2011 18:48|
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Dozens of people have been killed by a cold snap gripping Ukraine.
The country's Health Ministry says at least 83 people have known to have died from the cold, with most victims found on the streets.
Temperatures have plummeted to minus 23 degrees, and heavy snow is covering most of the country.
A three-day traffic jam left motorists trapped, and over 500 people have needed hospital treatment.
Over a hundred people died last winter from the cold in Ukraine.
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In a new video presented on his web site, Neal Adams puts forth an observation and an argument that should well put to rest any further consideration for the Pangea continental formation, as presently postulated by the scientific community. Because, however, the issue revolves around a learned academic elite which supports countless other unfounded whimsical theories in many areas of science - and because this community wields the academic clout to discredit those who question the often inconclusive theories it puts forth - it's not entirely likely that we can expect, anytime soon, serious consideration given to Adams' most recent observations. Absurd as it may appear, it will take some time before the simple logic of a fundamental law of physics, such as Adams argues, pierces the snobbish academic mentality, governed by an elitist core who often behave as cowardly opportunists - and unabashedly parade as researchers and discoverers of modern science.
Adams' premise points to the shift of the center of gravity of an Earth in which all its continents are joined together on one side of the globe - while the other side is covered by oceanic water. Taking into consideration the density ratio between 2-3 miles deep ocean water on one side ofthe Earth, while the other side is comprised of solid granitic and basalt rock - also rising an average of 1/2 mile above ocean level, Adams shows that the center of gravity of the spinning Earth would thus shift towards the more dense side of the joined Pangea continents. A spinning Earth, he notes, half covered by deep sea water, would cause the water to shift and spread towards the Pangea island, in order to attain a balance of its mass across the entire spinning globe.
The video shows a very basic occurrence, well known in the laws of physics, that even common people accept and understand. As the water shifts towards the Pangea island in order to attain a balance of mass with the center of gravity, a large section of the ocean floor would become revealed as an island - while a similarly large area of the Pangea island would become covered with the displacing water. Though the most learned of scienctists would not even need conduct an experiment in order to validate this premise, it does appear bewildering that no geologist nor physicist have yet been known to make this observation, during the nearly century-long lifespan of an apparently impossible Pangea theory within the declared laws of physics by which our planet is governed.
Sam Warren Carey, once a pioneer of plate tectonics theory, who later proposed Earth expansion in place of Pangea, was ridiculed and ousted from mainstream science for his observations of the difficulties arising from Pangea. While the scientific community continues to bury its head in the sands of belligerent ignorance, true pioneers of simple logic and basic principles of physics and geology, such as Neal Adams and others promoting Growing Earth theory, are left with the task of re-educating and rediscovering the basic model for the creation and development of our universe. In an age where the present hierarchies have betrayed not only the people - but also their own professional trust, it is perhaps fitting that a comic book creator, artist, writer and theorist, takes the lead to spearhead a new age of scientific discovery.
The simple premise of Neal Adams' new video exposes the scientific community's pomposity in clinging to outdated, outmoded and physically impossible theories. A change is needed within the halls of power in order to put a stop to the enormous waste of the peoples' resources - spent on a lazy, elitist, proud and cowardly scientific academia - which continues to blindly lead the blind with a false pretense of holding the keys to knowledge.
Only when the people raise their voice in discontent of this situation, will the scientific community be forced to reconsider its shameful century-long misreading of the evidence before it - and the outrageoous waste of misdirected public funding of scientific research and development, based on the somewhat embarrasing misconceptions and theories it supports.
View Neal Adams' Impossible Pangea video.
Comment on this article.
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At least a third of medicines available in some parts of the developing world could be fake
Priya Shetty explores the tools and partnerships that help the public health community counter the threat of counterfeit medicines.
Counterfeiting is as old as industrialisation. For as long as the idea of intellectual property or branding has existed, counterfeiters have schemed to cheaply mimic products for profit.
Far from being merely a nuisance, counterfeit medicines can cause serious illness and even death.
The trade in counterfeit drugs has grown into a global industry worth billions of dollars, targeting mostly developing countries [see Table 1]. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that 10–30 per cent of the medicines on sale could be fake in the developing world; the proportion is probably higher in some parts of Africa, Asia and Latin America.
But public health experts believe poor regulatory and surveillance systems in the developing world mean the problem is even more widespread than it seems. This has spurred the global health community into action, with agencies including the WHO and Interpol launching initiatives to fight drug counterfeiting.
Country, year of detection
Anti-diabetic traditional medicine (used to lower blood sugar)
Contained six times the normal dose of glibenclamide (two people died, nine people hospitalized)
Fake versions discovered in 40 pharmacies lacked sufficient active ingredient
United Republic of Tanzania, 2009
Viagra and Cialis (for erectile dysfunction)
Fake versions smuggled into Thailand from an unknown source in an unknown country
Xenical (for fighting obesity)
Fake versions sold into the US via websites operated elsewhere, but contained no active ingredient
United States of America, 2007
Table 1: Counterfeit drug detections
Adapted from
Blurred boundaries, clear risks
A key challenge in tackling counterfeiting lies in subtle differences between fake and substandard drugs.
Many fake medicines are dummies deliberately created to resemble genuine drugs. Often they are utterly devoid of any active ingredient — but sometimes they may contain harmful or poisonous chemicals.
Substandard drugs do have some medicinal value, but may contain far lower doses of the active ingredient than they should. They are usually the product of negligent manufacturing and poor quality control rather than malicious criminal activity.
But both fake and substandard drugs have an immediate impact on patients who don't receive the treatment they need. And more so in the case of substandard medicines, they can also have the disastrous side-effect of increasing resistance to treatment for serious diseases.
For instance, if a patient with malaria takes antimalarial drugs that contain a weak dose of the active ingredient, the malaria parasite will only be partially cleared from the body. The parasites that remain will be those that have resisted the drug. When these multiply and go on to infect new individuals, drug resistance spreads.
Pills that contain a weak dose of antimalarial fuel drug-resistant disease
To complicate matters further, legal definitions of counterfeit medicines are often so broad that they include generic drugs. Generics are non-brand versions of pharmaceutical drugs that are produced cheaply either after the brand exclusivity has expired, or through special licensing laws. Millions of people rely on inexpensive generic drugs to fight potentially fatal diseases such as malaria or HIV/AIDS. Counterfeiting laws that blur the boundary with these essential drugs can seriously threaten access to life-saving medicines.
Why is counterfeiting flourishing?
There are several reasons why counterfeit drugs are most common in developing countries.
Many rural areas have few pharmacies or health clinics, and the ones that exist are often open only irregularly. Many people buy drugs in non-regulated outlets, such as markets, which are more likely to trade in counterfeits.
Fake drugs are often sold more cheaply, appealing to poor people for whom cost is a huge barrier to the healthcare they need. And often, both stolen and 'knock-off' goods are widely and openly sold in markets in countries such as Thailand — so counterfeit drugs may be mistaken for stolen, and therefore cheap, genuine medicines.
The dismally poor legislative and regulatory framework monitoring drug quality and sale in developing countries also allows counterfeiting to thrive. Even when counterfeiters are caught, the penalties tend to be far lower than for smuggling heroin or cocaine, for instance.
Fake drugs are often sold cheaply in markets, making them an attractive option for poor people
Meanwhile, globalisation eases the way for counterfeiting, spreading distribution networks and making them more complex. As a result, drugs are harder to track. And it is no surprise that the Internet has made selling counterfeit drugs far easier, both in developed and developing nations. The European Alliance for Access to Safe Medicines suggests that over 60 per cent of prescription medicines sold through the Internet are fakes.
Advances in technology have also made high-quality labels and packaging relatively easy to produce, and pharmaceutical chemicals cheap to mass-produce.
How to spot a counterfeit
There are sometimes very obvious telltale signs of counterfeiting — faulty spelling, for example, incorrect packaging or tablet size.
Yet counterfeiters are fast becoming better at replicating genuine drugs correctly, and are increasingly sophisticated when mimicking specific anti-counterfeit measures such as brand logos. This has pushed manufacturers to enhance anti-counterfeit technology (panel 1).
Panel 1: Anti-counterfeit technologies
Medicines can be marked in ways that make it easy even for consumers to identify fakes. For instance, packets and bottles can have tamper-evident seals. And like banknotes and credit cards, medicines can be marked with embossed graphics, or holograms — security inks that change in colour according to the angle they are viewed at.
These are usually identifiable only to the supplier or distributor, not the consumer. They make use of invisible inks that can be detected in UV light, digital watermarks that encode data in graphics, anti-scan designs that reveal a watermark when copied, or inks imbued with specific micro-encapsulated odours.
Manufactures can use 'lock and key' systems, applying specific biological or chemical tags, such as DNA, that are not detectable by standard analysis and can only be revealed by specific reagents. Other forms of tagging can include silicon dioxide micro or nano tags, applied to the surface of a pill, that emit a unique light signature.
Track and trace labelling
In this system, each pharmaceutical package is uniquely labelled either with a barcode or some other non-sequential unique number. The label should then be read at the final point in the supply chain, when a pharmacist dispenses medicines to a consumer. This helps to ensure drugs are genuine and not past their expiration date. A more complex system is radio frequency identity (RFID) tagging, in which the tag is an antenna with a microchip. This means that the data can be read at a greater distance and do not need to be scanned like a barcode.
Adapted from
Who is fighting the counterfeit trade?
In 2006, the WHO set up the International Medical Products Anti-Counterfeiting Taskforce (IMPACT). This Taskforce has been leading international action, offering guidance on how to strengthen legislative and regulatory frameworks. Through IMPACT, the WHO has joined forces with regulatory agencies such as Interpol (panel 2) to uncover counterfeit operations.
Panel 2: Interpol: Chasing counterfeits across the world
In 2010, Operation Pangea III, coordinated by Interpol and IMPACT, collated data from 45 participating countries and uncovered a vast network of counterfeit drug sales on the Internet. The operation revealed 694 websites engaged in illegal activity, 290 of which have now been shut down.
Customs seized over 1 million counterfeit pills worth a total of US$2.6 million. These pills included antibiotics, steroids, anti-cancer, anti-depression and anti-epileptic pills, as well as slimming or food supplement tablets.
This success followed on from Operation Storm II, carried out earlier in 2010, which targeted eight countries across South-East Asia: Cambodia, China, Indonesia, Laos, Myanmar, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. That led to the seizure of 20 million fake medicines including antibiotics, anti-malarial and birth control tablets, anti-tetanus serums, aspirin and erectile dysfunction drugs. Over 100 pharmacies and illicit drug outlets were shut down.
The Medicines Transparency Alliance (MeTA) — launched in 2008 with support from the UK Department for International Development (DFID), the WHO and the World Bank — has set up multi-stakeholder forums to examine every aspect of the medicines supply chain in seven pilot countries: Ghana, Jordan, Kyrgyzstan, Peru, the Philippines, Uganda and Zambia.
Counterfeiting seriously infringes on intellectual property, and since patents for medicines tend to be held by drug manufacturers, they are heavily involved in fighting the trade in fake drugs.
In some cases, the only way to detect a counterfeit drug is through chemical analysis. Since the pharmaceutical industry has a vested interest in quickly detecting fake drugs, several companies have sent mini-labs around countries in Africa and Asia (especially China) to assess the quality and ingredients in drugs.
The pharmaceuticals industry has also formed an alliance called the Pharmaceutical Security Institute (PSI), which counts 21 R&D-focused drug manufacturers as members. PSI works with the WHO and Interpol to exchange information on counterfeiting operations.
Some scientists are very concerned about a new treaty to combat counterfeit drugs, the Council of Europe's Medicrime Convention. Signed in December 2010, this treaty criminalises the manufacture and trade in counterfeit medicines and contains a definition of counterfeiting so broad that most generics could come under its banner.
The foremost of these is inter-country collaboration, since much of the trade in fake drugs occurs across national borders. Pharmacies, hospitals and other points in the supply chain need to keep lines of communication open and to exchange information.
And the entire medical supply chain will need to be tightened to eliminate loopholes in surveillance and monitoring. Legislation will also need to be updated and clarified to keep pace with the scale of the problem, and to provide a sufficient deterrent to criminal activity.
Finally, the global health community and national governments will need to engage with consumers so that patients understand the importance of buying medicines through regulated outlets.
But for any of these initiatives against counterfeit drugs to work, countries need a strong dose of political will — enough to strengthen the legal regulatory framework, improve education and invest in technologies that can detect counterfeit drugs and prevent further damage to public health.
Journalist Priya Shetty specialises in developing world issues including health, climate change and human rights. She writes a blog, Science Safari, on these issues. She has worked as an editor at New Scientist, The Lancet and SciDev.Net.
All SciDev.Net material is free to reproduce providing that the source and author are appropriately credited. For further details see Creative Commons.
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Wages In The Philippines
Singapore-Philippines Business & Management Consulting Services.
A Nov. 27-30 SWS poll, the results of which were made exclusive to BusinessWorld, had 18.1% of the respondents — or an estimated 3.4 million families — claiming to have gone hungry in the last three months because they lacked anything to eat.
This was up from the 2010 low of 15.9% (3.0 million families) recorded last September and — given the 21.2% in March and 21.1% in June — was slightly below the 19.1% average for the year.
It was also four points over the 12-year average of 13.7%, the SWS noted, but still far from the record high of 24% hit in December 2009. The record low is 7.4%, hit in March 2004. Some 9.2 million families or 49% of the respondents, meanwhile, considered themselves poor, barely changed from September’s 48%. Over a third — 36% or an estimated 6.7 million households — considered themselves food-poor, down from 38% previously.
…Government officials blamed higher food prices in the last quarter of 2010 and noted the need to deliver on promises to reduce poverty.
…As of November 2010 the median poverty thresholds for poor households were P15,000 in Metro Manila, P9,000 in the rest of Luzon, P8,000 in the Visayas and P5,000 in Mindanao. The median food-poverty threshold, meanwhile, hit a new high of P9,000 in Metro Manila, breaking the previous P8,000 record. It was at P4,000 for both the rest of Luzon and the Visayas, and at P3,000 in Mindanao.
In Metro Manila, the SWS said the median poverty threshold of P15,000 was barely above the P10,000 in 2000 even though the Consumer Price Index (CPI)had risen by over 60%. The P15,000 is equivalent to only P9,096 in terms of 2000 purchasing power and is a throwback to living standards 15 years ago, the SWS added
Stats from the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) tell us a daily minimum wage earner in the Philippines should be getting anywhere from P367-P404 in the National Capitol Region (NCR). Now, there’s no rocket science in noting that these daily minimum wage workers will on an average of 24 working days per month Monday through Friday earn between P8,808-P9696 per month ($199-$219 U.S. dollars per month).
Reflecting back on the numbers (in bold above), it’s pretty simple to see that yes, the poverty level is set to increase, the numbers of families going hungry will increase. If a person today is making P8,000-10,000 per month he essentially is even more impoverished, or his standard of living is even less then a worker of 10-15 years ago.
So how do things get better?
First, the belief of being a low-cost producer or working with minimal margins for an SME (which naturally means you will pay your people low) is only a temporary business strategy. More importantly, here’s why it does not make sense.
When you do a job cheap for someone, then they pay you on terms-what happens with your operating expenses and cash flow? They become very minimal or you find yourself in negative numbers.
Here’s a very basic example. You do a job for $150,000, your operating expenses are $50,000 per month. If your client pays you everything in a month, great-you are up $100,000. Although let’s say your client pays you $50,000 over 3 months (90 day terms). Essentially, you made nothing.
Now, being a low-cost producer may have worked before. Although with technology that is ever changing and getting better, the SME that cannot break old or outdated ways, old mindsets, old managerial styles will be just a memory. When businesses select a low-cost producer strategy, set poor terms, select poor clients, mismanage funds, do not apply technology in terms of equipment for processing and infrastructure, more then often I find this is a business that does not pay employees well. How can they when they do not improve themselves and how can they keep up with companies fast approaching that will pass them by.
The first step in increasing wages is to increase efficiency in your business.When you increase efficiency you find savings. And, instead of putting that savings back into the business, put it in your employees by means of differentiation. Why employees and not the business?
When you re-invest in employees, you give them incentive to do a better job, to learn another skill, to take on new responsibilities, to grow. In short, you saved capital and got a better employee without spending anything. I hear all the time how increasing an employees pay will cause a company financial distress. I tend to disagree.
The distress raising salaries will cause is not on the business-it is on managers and owners to think. Owners and managers of SMEs are often set in their ways and often do not plan becoming very short-sighted. I can go on and on, but the long and short of it all is this.
When you become more efficient you find new capital. When you put that capital in your employees, your business gets a lift without spending anything. And to sweeten it all, when you pay your employees more, you set your business up for more savings when it comes to tax incentives.
The rule of thumb is when you set your margins and wages at a minimum-you will at best get the minimum in terms of good customers and good employees. And that equals no to slow to low growth. When that happens an owner of an SME will more then likely forever be chained to-and a prisoner of their business. Ironically, this was perhaps the same business which was supposed to allow personal and financial freedom.
A business should not solely run on the back of low paid employees. It should be run on the brains and wit, the vision and the know-how of its owners and managers.
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Marie Tharp Fellowship in the Earth, Environmental, and Ocean Sciences
The Earth Institute / Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University invites applications for the Marie Tharp Fellowship 2012-2013.
This fellowship is part of a greater EI/LDEO effort at promoting the advancement of women scientists at Columbia University.
Eligibility: This award is open to junior and mid-career scientists in the earth sciences. Postdoctoral scholars are not eligible. Faculty and scientists at Columbia University are not eligible. Applicants should have obtained their Ph.D. at the time of application.
Details: This is a 2-3 month fellowship providing up to $25,000 for research
carried out at Columbia University.
Applications deadline: March 31, 2012.
About Marie Tharp: Marie Tharp was a pioneer of modern oceanography. She came to Columbia in 1948 to the Lamont Geological Observatory (now Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory) where she began work on mapping the ocean floor. Years later, satellite images proved her maps to be accurate. Her work is still a foundation for research and education in the ocean sciences.
Contact: Kuheli Dutt at email@example.com
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Reader comments are listed below. Comments are currently closed and new comments are no longer being accepted.
One of the big problems with these clashes over history is a relative lack or difficulty to get to any of the hard evidence. For instance, article asserts that Molotov called fighting nazism a "crime". Can anybody provide a link or any information as to the sources of this assertion?
"Murder of 7 mln Ukrainians" would qualify as a genocide, wouldn't it? But the Author is avoiding the word. So who is really afraid of Russians?
A comment from north of Gulf of Finland.
Mr. Snore and many Balts a right to show the Soviet Union for what it was - ruthless dictatorship that killed millions of people. Like Zakka wrote Stalin also killed russians. But it was not the baltics that came to Russia, killed and deported its people, was it? And even if Hitler was aweful for Germany as well, modern day Germans have no problem denouncing Hitler or his policies. When will Russia face it's history?
And for Soviet Union saving the Baltics from collaboration with nazies? Please - does Ribbentrop pact ring a bell? The Soviet Union and nazies made a deal who gets what. And Finland hapily did not "enjoy" the Soviet protection. Yes, we were allies with nazi Germany and that includes some things that one can not be proud of (like giving 8 foreign jewish refugees to the germans who executed them), but overall we did survive better than the Baltics did. And even now the Sovi...sorry, Russian pressure on Baltics is shameful.
There are too many things put together, that need to be disentangled when looking at the collaboration between Nazi Germany and Bolsevic Russia.
If one looks on wiki will see this being said about Nazism:"Nazism, commonly known as National Socialism, (German: Nationalsozialismus), refers primarily to the ideology and practices of the Nazi Party under Adolf Hitler; and the policies adopted by the government of Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945, a period also known as the Third Reich. The official name of the party was Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (NSDAP) — “National Socialist German Workers’ Party”. The Nazis were one of several historical groups that used the term National Socialism to describe themselves, and in the 1920s they became the largest such group. Nazism is generally considered by scholars to be a form of fascism, and while it incorporated some elements from the political left, it formed its most solid alliances on the political right."
Basically, if we take out the arianism hue, ideologically Soviet Union and Germany were good cousins. More than that, the structure of power in both countries were identical, with one supreme ruler having absolute control over the realm. So there were all the reasons in the world for these guys to gang together. At least in respect with Poland they were caught in bed together before.
BTW, the Baath Parties in Syria or Iraq are, ideologically speaking (without the arianism/racism component) the Arab correspndents of Nazism, Arab Social Parties.
So on the long run, what happend was that associating the collective ideals (a more fair society) with the atrocities perpetrated by some dictators, these ideas were themselves demonized. Just look at the ideological war that US is carrying in Iraq. Part of it at least. They wanted de-baathification, taking out the idea of a social society. Thank heavens for the Scandinavians. But then the neo-liberalism push (is just a meme like all others, trying to reproduce and perpetuate), by extending itself too much, will bring back some of the social values promoted by socialism and we can all live like the scandinavians, not denying the private property, but not cornering and making life miserable for those without. And not endangering the future.
The problem recently with criticisms of historical civil rights abuses by several global powers, notably China and Russia, has been those countries proponents inability to separate history from current events. So many times these people dismiss criticisms of Maoist China or Stalinist Russia by citing the U.S. in Iraq, blah blah blah, etc. The US and Europe have certainly had their own issues with civil rights and imperialism. The difference is that these countries have been willing to admit their faults in the past, and are willing to discuss their current shortcomings. Attempting to deflect criticisms of your own problems by citing other nations' problems only stunts what needs to be honest examinations of your own countries histories.
To be clear that I am not just denigrating China and Russia, Japan also seems to be unwilling to discuss fully its atrocities from World War II. The United States has for a long time had an internal dialogue about past mistakes such as slavery and jim crow and the detention of Japanese Americans during World War II. We still have other internal issues to deal with, but approaching these issues through an open, fair-minded process, lead by a free press, is the right way to go.
The Opportunist:Thank you for your new information, which I had never heard of. However, I'm interested in the time-frame. Is it possible that the military cooperation between the two was a layover of cooperation between the Soviet Union and the Wiemar Republic? After all, the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact was signed August 24, 1939 and WWII started with the invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939 so one full week of formal prewar cooperation couldn't really be significant to Hitler's preparations.Cedrins:"This opinion has been echoed by students of the period, who have tended to interpret the Nazi-Soviet Pact as the product of a long germination process. As newly released documents show [documents not available to Kennan in 1960], however, this is misleading: Stalin only threw in his lot with Hitler at the last moment... Far from carrying out the purges to assist his foreign designs, Stalin sacrificed Russia's bargaining position abroad to the overwhelming imperatives of his domestic holocaust." - Brendon, Piers. The Dark Valley: a panorama of the 1930's (Vintage Books: New York, New York, 2000) pg. 672
re: "nationalist hoodlums"Funny how Economist writer's political pet peeves get into even otherwise impeccable article. Is "nationalist" the defining aspect of those effigy burning protesters? One would think that "pro-Kremlin" or "pro government" is...re: "standards of modern civilised society"The apologists and "seekers of nuance" are so predictable in their unwillingness to concentrate on Soviet Russia, the crimes committed in the name of communism, and instead trying to talk about (I'm combining two comments here) the "champions of freedom" -- presumably Western -- not being "particularly shining beacons" themselves. Yet what differentiates the two is not only the sheer scale of crimes committed by the Soviet state in the past, but the attitude of the states and people towards history today. One does not see attempts by the British PM to treat the end of colonial empire as "geopolitical catastrophe", one does not see the attempts to propagandize government sanctioned, whitewashed history of colonialism, racial discrimination, etc.
Stalin's USSR and Hitler's Germany had one main thing in common. Both believed in a dominant government, with little to no freedom for the people. Which is the complete opposit of the ideals of Western Democracies, although we have a tendency to flirt with big government power under the guise of "helping" people.
An unfortunate feature of this situation is that many of the criticisms of the Soviet regions (and very just criticisms too - the regime was atrocious) end up being framed as criticisms of Russia and Russians (quite ironic this is too - there were never all that many ethnic Russians in the upper echelons of the Soviet Union). This not only gives fodder to the nationalist halfwits currently running wild in Russia, but also pours salt on historic wounds (rather than healing them) by leaving the majority of innocent people feeling unjustly accused.On a side note, by the standards of modern civilised society, few countries were particularly shining beacons of liberalism in the early 20th Century (from colonialism, to racial discrimination, to the treatment of women, or religious minorities, or whatever else). Now, of course the stupidity/barbarism/cruelty in one country does not excuse even more egregious examples of the same in another. However, to claim that any two countries at the time could never really get along because one was inherently good and the other inherently evil is frightfully naive.
This is a laughable attempt to paint nazism and communism as ideological fellow travellers. My guard was up when I read the author's eloquent but meaningless comparison of Nazism's basis in false biology and Communism's with false biology. The same could be said about any two disparate political systems. Later, comparing the style of propaganda artwork is simply laughable. I could just as easily paint the United States or the European Union as similar to totalitarian regimes except in style, subtlety and sophistication of modern propaganda techniques. Do not our modern champions of 'freedom' practise social engineering from restricting dissident speech down to anti-smoking initiatives and nanny state laws? Do we not see heavy handed policing, middle-of the night police raids, long-term imprisonment without trial or even formal charges, arbitrary suspension of constitutional rights, widespread networks for spying on our own citizens, etc.?
Also, it takes some talent to keep a straight face while drawing conclusions of similarity based on the USSR's and nazi Germany's sometime diplomatic agreements when far more embarrassing examples abound with our aforementioned champions of 'freedom', including dealings with Iraq for years after their use of poison gas on their own citizens, arming the Afghan militants and close relations with countries such as Indonesia under Suharto, Phillipines under Marcos, Chile under Pinochet, and others too numerous to mention scattered across South America, Africa and Asia. An extraordinary double standard.
Zakka wrote: "Being part of Soviet Union allowed Lithuanians and Latvians not to be written in history books as a close Nazi allies."That's unutterably silly. Neither Latvia nor Lithuania existed in 1941, when the Nazis got here. Both had been occupied by the Soviets -- Nazi allies -- in 1940 (and Zakka anyhow apparently has trouble even naming or differentiating between Baltic states -- Lithuania didn't have a Legion; Estonia did). There were some Balts who committed heinous war crimes. But declaring subject nations "close Nazi allies" is ludicrous.
Just few facts in the first year of soviet occupation 1940-41 we in Latvia had ~10000 death penalties , ~50000 people (mainly intelligence)in animal wagons were deported to Siberia almost every Latvian family lost member. Edvins Snore has made a great job to show Europe and the hole world a little side of communistic regime.
Thiago Buchert wrote: "The Soviet Union throughout the 1930's tried desperately to ally with Western Democracies..."I think George F. Kennan put it best:"The fact is that Stalin's Russia was never a fit partner for the West in the cause of resistance to fascism. Russia herself was, throughout these years, the scene of the most nightmarish, Orwellian orgies of modern totalitarianism. These were not provoked by Hitler's rise. They originated [...] in 1932, at a time when Stalin did not yet have any proper understanding of the Nazi danger. This internal weakness of the Soviet regime [...] lay in Stalin's own character. It was this that caused him to fear an intimacy with Hitler's opponents no less than he feared the military enmity of Hitler himself."(George F. Kennan, _Russia and the West under Lenin and Stalin_. Boston: Little, Brown, 1960.)http://lettonica.blogspot.com/
Thiago Buchert,While your argument on a whole appears cogent, I would have to disagree with your third paragraph on Nazi-Soviet collaboration. Indeed, there is an abundance of material to evince that Stalin repeatedly attempted to secure an alliance with the west, but at the same time Stalin, once he had obtained an alliance with Hitler, had no scruples revealing documents and diplomatic requests from the west for a future West-Soviet alliance to Hitler. Now that might just be a watermark of Stalin contentment with the agreement, yet still Stalin bolstered the agreement further through mutual assistance. Nazi technicians were sent into Russia to work in secret tank construction factories, showing the Russians all the techniques necessary for building armor of Panzer grandeur – that which could repel shells from enemy tank fire. In exchange, Germans conducted training throughout Russia and Ukraine, creating a mighty force capable of executing the transgressions of the holocaust. Testing grounds, outside of Germany – and most importantly outside of the Versaille Treaty - allowed the Nazi's to asses and gauge their sinister devices. These included “Lipetsk (aircraft), Kasan (armored vehicles), and Torski (code named Tomka; war gas).”(1) For the German army, this meant that troop levels could reach above the 100,000 ceiling, as set by the Versaille Treaty. Ironically enough, the exchange of technologies and strategies proved deleterious for both sides, however, it still obscure the spotlight of criticism on Stalin's cooperation with Hitler. Interestingly enough though, Stalin for a time played the role of leader of nationalities at many of the Soviet congresses. 1) http://www.jstor.org/pss/2146497
Dictators, such as Hitler and Stalin, succeeded mainly because the first thing both did was to get rid of the independent journalists. It is for a good reason that dictators always remove those who criticize the government's loony policies, without fear or favour (as is the motto of the Economist).I am looking forward to seeing the film made by the Latvians and I hope that the healing process for all the small Baltic countries will continue, the more they learn about the events during the 50 years of occupation. These countries would benefit from a man like Nelson Mandela for the South Africans. Anyway, what is most important for the free western countries to do, is to respect and cherish their civil liberties which are guarded only by the investigative journalists.
Many a time have people made the same mistake and with the persistence of a stubborn child we will do it again. Promoting hatred is a slippery road, the first step towards crimes like that of Hitler's or Stalin's. It is high time we became mature in our judgements and emotions and stopped witch-hunt.
It's definitely important that the crimes of Stalin's Soviet Union are brought to bear, particularly the ethnic cleansing and the holodomor. I wrote a thesis on the artistic similarities between the art of Stalin and Hitler too. But to say that the entire history of the Soviet Union sunk to the depths of Stalin and Hitler would not be correct. If you want to continue with the idea of art, you could clearly see that the art under Lenin was at the same level as that in NY and didn't have the oppressive patriarchal and nationalist overtones of Stalinist or Nazi art. When famine hit Lenin's country he opened up his country to outside aid to stop it and loosened his more socialist agricultural policies as seen in the NEP.Also I don't think the history on the Soviet-Nazi alliance is accurate. The Soviet Union throughout the 1930's tried desperately to ally with Western Democracies, particularly Britain, against Hitler but they seemed to prefer him. This could be seen in Stalin's aiding of the Republican side of the Spanish Civil war with the belief that the West would jump in too, as well as the meeting with Lord Halifax. The Nazi-Soviet pact was a last resort effort, which can be seen in its later date. Actually, the Western Democracies signed a non-aggression pact with Hitler (Munich-1938) before the Soviet Union did (Molotov-Ribbentrop-1939).Of course the difference is the west didn't use the opportunity to occupy any territory like the Soviets did in the Baltic, Finland and Poland. Another thing to add to the other side of the argument is that Hitler would never have come to power without Stalin's help! He deliberately told communists in Germany that the main enemy was not Hitler's SA but rather moderate socialists so while Stalin was fighting Rosa Luxembourg types, Hitler came to power.It's also somewhat ironic that Russian's wouldn't criticize Stalin since Stalin wasn't Russian.
It's world-wide known that joining Soviet Union was a great opportunity for some Baltic republics to be forgotten (and so forbidden) by their Nazi collaboration, as they became famous as the most efficient Jew-killing machine. Being part of Soviet Union allowed Lithuanians and Latvians not to be written in history books as a close Nazi allies. So, i think it's an awful idea a Latvian filmmaker to stimulate nationalistic stereotypes based in a suspicious historic interpretations, in particular the Stalinist regime in 2nd World War (and post war) circumstances.
The Russian people was a victim of Stalin as much as other people under Soviet rule at that time. It's stupid to point Russian as responsible for Stalinist atrocities even in a suggestive way. Stalin's regime grew due to isolation and confrontation with western super-powers, many of which didn't oppose German Nazi regime growing as they thought it would be a convenient military barrier against Soviet communists. The guilty for that monstruous violence is spread all over Europe.
I do condemn the all the stupid waves of Russian nationalism, as well as the racist organizations that are growing in Russia. But that's not reasonable to associate these recent phenomenons with Stalinist past. It's an unfair confrontation with the generations that suffered under Stalinist violence and Hitler's aggression. Don't forget that in spite of such suffering they could win the Nazi army and contributed for the European peace with much more sacrifice than other people in the world (about 28 million Soviet people died as a consequence of 2nd World War - we should never forget that!!!!). So I think that The Economist should not recommend its readers to waste time watching such ideological nonsense made by a passionate Latvian nationalist film-maker that seems to ignore the real world history.
Dear Sponsors at the European Parliament! Please give me some money, and I will make you an even better horror film with at least two billion people killed by Russians. The world must know the truth.
Horror of communist atrocities will, hopefuly, find itself a place in world's consiousness on a par with nazism. Consider the horror of "Holodomor" where millions of Ukrainians starved to death in an organised Soviet campaign.That many Russian still want to overlook/diminish/glorify Stalinist regime is both horrible and surprising. Russian people as individuals suffered much under Stalin. Why they are so often unsympathetic to suffering of Latvians, Ukrainians, Poles, Lithuanians, Estonians and many other nations?
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A New York court has dismissed Amazon's lawsuit over a law that required the online retailer to collect taxes from New Yorkers even though it didn't have a physical presence in the state.
The law, enacted back in April by Governor Patterson, forced Amazon to collect and remit sales and use taxes if they had an affiliate seller inside the New York State. This helped the State government bypass a 1992 Supreme Court decision that allowed interstate commerce to be untaxed.
Amazon filed the lawsuit in May, claiming that the law was vague and unconstitutional. While Amazon wasn't against collecting state taxes, it was against dragging all its affiliate sellers into what it felt was a bureaucratic mess. And it kind of is!
As Eric Schonfeld of TechCrunch wrote back then:
The law, as written, is just a bad law. And it would set a dangerous precedent. Not because New York State shouldn't try to collect the $50 million in estimated uncollected sales taxes owed to it. But because the law is tortuous in the way it attempts to do that.
A marketing affiliate is not part of Amazon. If I put some Amazon book recommendations on the side of TechCrunch , set up an affiliate account, and readers click through and buy those books, that does not make TechCrunch part of Amazon. It is a marketing arrangement. Just like someone who sets up an AdSense account does not work for Google.
The only retailers exempt from reporting sales tax are those who earn less than $10,000 in sales. To save trouble, Amazon could just drop them as soon as they hit the $9,999 mark. That in turn would dampen e-commerce, leading to less tax revenue for the state and then everybody loses! Thanks Albany! [Channel Register via Gothamist]
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Proliferating anti-access weapons and non-state actors bristling with advanced armaments will complicate U.S. military intervention overseas, according to the results of a major U.S. Army war game.
The “Unified Quest” game, held last week at the Army War College at Carlisle Barracks, Pa., thrust players into dual war games where American troops faced state and non-state actors, as well as a slew of complicated issues ranging from failing states to humanitarian crises and weapons of mass destruction.
“We were able to achieve some success in terms of using different approaches to getting into denied areas,” said Brig. Gen. William Hix, director of the Concept Development and Learning Directorate at the Army Capabilities Integration Center. “But we did find that in order to sustain and build momentum in those operations, we were hindered because we remain dependent or overly reliant on ports and airfields.”
Players were also dismayed by the conflict between the operational imperative to gain access ashore and the need to understand the byzantine human mosaic of political and tribal loyalties in the game.
“Speed matters,” Hix said. “But the other side of time is gaining knowledge. One blue commander struggled with understanding the human dynamics in his area. That takes a lot of time unless you can anticipate where you will be going.”
Another challenge was cyberspace. In one scenario, U.S. forces faced a relatively open society where American troops could remotely penetrate that nation’s network and disrupt its command-and-control apparatus. But the other scenario featured a closed society, so American troops had to maneuver on the ground to access the network. Complicating the matter for field commanders was their authority to disrupt enemy networks.
“We could get into their systems, but often, to have operational effectiveness and the ability to leverage this, we did not have the authority to act outside of our area of operations,” Hix said.
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Applications running in the background while the mobile is carried in the pocket have to send keep-alive messages every now and then to keep their connection with a server in the network from timing out. Examples are e-mail push services, instant messengers, etc. These keep-alive intervals could be anywhere from a couple of minutes to half an hour. As the mobile is in Cell-PCH state, the keep-alive response is received very quickly and the mobile can indicate to the network right after the keep-alive exchange via the fast dormancy mechanism that it wants to go back to a more battery efficient state. No need to linger around in a more battery consuming state as it is unlikely any more data exchange will follow.
For such background message exchanges, the connection could be set to the RRC Cell-DCH state and here, Fast Dormancy has an additional plus for the networks as there are limits to how many users can be kept in Cell-DCH state simultaneously. So in addition to saving battery power it helps the network to remove idle connections from the air interface. Another option is to use the Cell-FACH state for such quick message exchanges, which might be sufficient for the few packets exchanged for the keep-alive, especially if the Forward Access Channel (FACH) uses the fast downlink shared channels, a feature of CPC.If the user is quickly moving from cell to cell, the downside of the Cell-PCH state is that in each new cell, a Cell Update message has to be sent. This can be countered, as is already done in some networks today, by setting the device into URA-PCH state which only requires a Cell Update message at URA (UMTS Registration Area) boundaries.
You won't find a lot of iPhone posts on this blog but this one I had to do as I've read that the new iPhone OS (4) in addition to some multitasking support has two interesting features built in that I wanted to have on my devices for years now:
A couple of days ago I rumbled about some 3GPP specs having become so large that they become almost unmanageable in their word version and creating a PDF document out of them takes ages. One reader left a comment that pretty much fixes the issue for me and I guess his info is of wider interest: ETSI provides PDF versions of the specification documents in short order after they have been published. The 3GPP specification web pages even contain a link to the corresponding ETSI pages. The only thing you need to do to get access to the ETSI version is to register once. A great tip, thanks very much!
To try it yourself, have a look here for example and click on the link on the right next to the version of the document you are interested in.
Apart from much higher speeds, one of the advantages of UMTS networks compared to GSM is that voice and packet switched data can be transferred simultaneously. That comes in quite handy, for example, if you are stuck in a long conference call, as you can still send and receive e-mails and do other things when the conversation touches topics which are not in your area of interest. In GSM this is not possible in most networks.
Many years ago an enhancement was standardized in 3GPP, though, referred to as Dual Transfer Mode (DTM) to catch up with UMTS. Nokia and other manufacturers have supported this extension for years but I have never seen a network that would actually support it. Then, earlier this year I read in a support forum that an operator in the UK has activated DTM. Needless to say I was very much looking forward to my next trip to the UK to try it out.
It has taken half a year but I finally made it to London and gave it a try. Very nice it works as designed. While in a voice call, I get data rates of around 120-140 kbit/s which is only slightly less (one EDGE timeslot I presume) compared to data transfer rates while no voice call was ongoing. Well, done, I hope it's a growing trend!
One of the things currently hotly debated in the industry is how to fix a current shortcoming of 3G UMTS networks, switches between different mobile device activity states on the air interface. The topic has many facets but it's possible to put the pieces together because 3GPP is pretty open about the standardization process as all documents are out in the open and available to everyone. That doesn't only include the specification documents but also all change requests and also discussion papers. This significantly helps to understand the issues different parties have with a topic. For this post I am going to draw heavily on them while also explaining my own opinion.
So what's this all about?
Actually, it's about two things: The UMTS air interface knows several activity states that are known as Cell-DCH, Cell-FACH, Cell/URA-PCH and Idle. When transferring data, the mobile is usually in Cell-DCH state and uses high speed channels to transmit and receive data (HSDPA, HSUPA). That's great but even if no data is sent and received, e.g. while the user reads a web page, it still requires a lot of energy on the mobile device's side to keep the connection going. On the network side, it's also a waste of resources to leave a mobile in Cell-DCH state when it is not transmitting data as there are only so many mobiles that can be assigned a high speed channel at a time. So both sides have an interest to move a connection to another state while it is not needed. In most networks today, a connection is moved to Cell-FACH state, which requires less energy and supports more users. Here, however, data throughput is very low and the amount of energy required on the mobile's side is still significant. Consequently, if there is an even longer inactivity time, e.g. 30 seconds, the network then puts the connection in Idle state in which the physical connection is removed while the IP address is kept.
So, what's wrong with that?
From the mobile device side this behavior can be very inefficient as a lot of energy is wasted before the Idle state is reached, especially when only background applications such as e-mail clients and instant messengers every now and then contact a server to remain reachable. As a consequence a number of of manufacturers have come up with a scheme that is referred to as Fast Dormancy. As described in this document, a mobile uses a "Signaling Channel Release Indication" message to trigger a release of the air interface connection when it thinks it is no longer necessary. So instead of waiting for the connection to be put into Cell-FACH and finally into idle, it can trigger a release to idle immediately. This significantly increases battery lifetime and if it is done in a reasonable way, it has no impact on today's networks as they would put the connection into Idle anyway, just a bit later. If for some reason, however, this functionality is improperly used, the air interface starts to oscillate between the states which is very inefficient for both the mobile, as a lot of power is required, and also for the network, because a lot of signaling is required between the Radio Network Controller, the base station and the mobile device to switch between the states.
The problem with the Idle State
While the Idle state is ideal for saving power on the mobile device's side, there is a big downside to using this state: When there is renewed activity it takes around 2.5 seconds before data can be exchanged again, something that is quite noticeable to the user. A solution to this is not putting the mobile device in Idle state but rather in the so called Cell- or URA-PCH state. From a mobile point of view, the Cell-/URA-PCH state is quite similar to Cell-FACH with the major difference being that the downlink does not have to be observed continuously. Only the paging channel must be checked every now and then to make sure incoming IP packets, phone calls or SMS messages can be received. In other words, the energy required to remain in this state is similar to the energy required for maintaining the Idle state but the signaling connection remains in place. When the mobile wants to transmit data again, it can immediately go to Cell-FACH state as there is no need to establish a signaling connection, perform an authentication procedure, enable ciphering, etc. This significantly reduces the time it takes before the first packet can be sent as described here. For the network, the advantage is that much less signaling is required for returning the device to a full Cell-DCH high speed state compared to doing the same from Idle.
Fast Dormancy and Cell-/URA-PCH
The issue with todays Fast Dormancy described above is that in case a network uses Cell-/URA-PCH, these states are not reached as the mobile triggers a complete release of the signalling connection. Hence, while the mobile device saves the maximum amount of energy, the network can not take advantage of the signaling reduction of the Cell-/URA-PCH states. Also, the mobile device can't benefit from the fast return to service times described above. From a mobile point of view, the current fast dormancy behavior being applied when there are only background applications is still preferable to waiting for the network sending it to Cell-/URA-PCH state as a lot of energy is wasted waiting for the network to make the decision. It should be noted at this point that the network is not slow in making the decision, it's rather intentional to ensure a good user experience to only have a user plane latency due to the state switching when absolutely necessary.
The Fix For Everything
So while today's fast dormancy implementations work well and do not have a negative impact on networks as most do not (yet) use the Cell-/URA-PCH states, things are o.k. for the moment. However, if network operators in the future decide to use the Cell-/URA-PCH states, the current fast dormancy implementations will become counter productive. As a result, a new mechanism has been specified in 3GPP TS 25.331 Release 8.10.0 (see chapter 8.1.14). Instead of just releasing the signaling connection when it desires the mobile has to wait for the expiration of a network configured timer (T323). Once the timer expires, the mobile can send a signaling connection release indication message with a new parameter that indicates "UE requested PS data session end". At this point the network can then decide to do nothing, to release the mobile to Idle or to put the connection into Cell-/URA-PCH state.
Network operators probably like this new mechanism as control over the air interface is returned to the network. Mobile devices also benefit from it as instead of going to Idle, the network can also put them to Cell-/URA-PCH state and hence, the latency when returning to a fully active state is much shorter than from the Idle state.
It's even possible to implement both fast dormancy approaches in a mobile. The availability of a value for timer T323 in the system broadcast of a cell can be used as a criterion to decide whether to use today's fast dormancy in case T323 is not present in the system broadcast or to use the new mechanism in case it is found. An elegant and backwards compatible solution with benefits for everyone.
From my point of view today's fast dormancy implementation does not harm networks as most have not activated Cell-/URA-PCH states yet. For the future, the new 3GPP Release 8 feature further improves on today's functionality and is backwards compatible. A win-win situation for everyone involved.
The Paris metro remains an interesting research location for me as especially during rush hour you can easily experience what congestion does to a network. Even with Opera Mini it's difficult to use the network at such times as you can almost see individual bits trickling in. Anyway, so I was wondering for a long time just how many cells they have in the metro to get an idea of the effort invested and the capacity available.
Recently I had the time and opportunity to dig a bit deeper. One line number 12 I've been looking, each metro station is covered by its own cell. By extending the coverage into the tunnels, handovers for voice calls and uninterrupted web browsing works most of the time. In other words, once cell has to absorb the load generated by all people currently waiting for a metro plus the traffic generated by the people in the metro trains currently in the stations or the tunnels.
That's an important first indication of the capacity deployed but a second parameter to come to a conclusion is more difficult to obtain: The number of carriers deployed. Unfortunately, that can't be seen with publicly available methods such as using AT commands that give you the current cell-id whenever it changes. So that part remains a mystery for the moment.
But capacity seems to be sufficient for voice calls, as all call attempts I made on the trip resulted in a connection. So no blocking here. The GPRS / EDGE side of the network is another story though. While speeds are good during non rush-hour times, the PS side is totally overloaded when people go and come from work. So either there are not enough timeslots available or some of them are taken for voice calls. Again, difficult to tell.
But one thing is good to know: With one base station per metro station, it is much easier for network operators to increase capacity if they wanted to compared to a situation in which a single cell was used for much longer parts of the underground network. But please don't bother adding a GSM TRX or two, just add 3G to the mix as other cities have already done to fix the issue for good.
I am just sitting in a café enjoying a late breakfast working on some stuff on my netbook. Instead of being connected over 3G I use the local Wi-Fi hotspot and a VPN for security. Not that I don't like using the 3G macro network but this way I don't have to plug in a 3G USB stick. But then, this comes at the expense of slower speeds as the Wi-Fi hotspot seems to be connected to a slow ADSL line with 'only' 2 MBit/s in the downlink direction and a couple of hundred kilobits in the uplink.
I just noticed this when sending an e-mail with a large file attachment as it took a couple of minutes for it to trickle through the line. I was tempted to stop the data transfer and use the 3G stick instead. With HSUPA and uplink speeds of 1.5 MBit/s it would have been much faster. But then, too much work to reorganize (...), so I just put the transmission into the background and continued working on other stuff in the meantime.
There we go, now hotspots aren't necessarily always faster anymore compared to the macro network.
Back in December 2007 I wrote a post on the term 'dumb pipe' that was starting to make the round and spreading negative emotions around the topic that in the Internet world, networks are transporting data while Internet based companies are actually getting the service revenue. I can understand where this twist came from but suggested that there is another way to look at it:
In an article by Chris Anderson, he pointed out that fact that most services on the net are pretty specialized and are hence on 'a long tail' and don't really make very much money at all for the service provider. However, for those enabling the services, i.e. the networks, it very well generates money. When applied to network operators, long tail services provide the incentive in the first place for people to go online and spend money for connectivity. At the time the term 'long tail enabler' started to emerge in my mind and I have used it ever since when somebody mentioned the 'dumb pipe' to offer an alternative way to look at it.
Obviously, the term 'long tail enabler' is a bit clunky to explain to someone who's not heard of the 'long tail' concept before. Now Dean Bubley over at Disruptive Wireless has come up with the term 'happy pipe' and part of what he means with this goes in my direction. I very much like the term as it contrasts a wording with a very negative spin with a wording that has a very positive spin.
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In the course of building a new country following the oil boom, Saudi Arabia has imported millions of hired labourers over the years. The law dictates that the workers have to be under the sponsorship of local Saudis. While many of these workers enjoyed a trouble-free stint during their contracted period of employment, others were less fortunate.
This is the story of Ahmad, a Bangladeshi national. This was his second visit to the country. During his first stint, he was employed by a five-star hotel when he was approached by a Saudi businessman who offered him a position with his company at a much higher salary. The Saudi told him he was in possession of more than 100 labour visas from Bangladesh and if Ahmad wanted to get the job, then he would have to resign and return to Dhaka to process his new employment visa.
A father of two young daughters, Ahmad realised the opportunities and the financial blessings of this new offer and accepted without much hesitation. He left his previous place of employment, returned home and soon returned to the kingdom under the Saudi gentleman's sponsorship.
As Ahmad relates: "When I arrived, my sponsor made me work in his office for the first two days. Then he abruptly told me that he needed me to work around the house. I told him that regardless of my qualifications, I would be willing to work anywhere and on any job as long as my salary remained the same.
"For the next six months, I worked as a domestic helper around his house, driving him and his family, cleaning the house and doubling up as a gardener and a guard. I was beginning to get perturbed and anxious, not because of the nature of the job I had to do, but because he had yet to give me any portion of my salary.
"During this time, my father passed away and the only consolation I received from my employer was that this was the fate for all of us.
"When the six months were over and with my family in dire financial straits, I went to him once again and demanded that he pay me my salary for the past six months. He told me that he would, as soon as he returned from Switzerland where he would be vacationing with his family. He promised me he would be gone for only two weeks and would settle accounts upon his return.
"And besides, what was I so concerned about. Wasn't he feeding me and providing me with accommodation? I explained to him that my family was getting desperate and with Eid approaching I wanted to do something special for them. ‘After I come back', he assured me. Perhaps it was my faith in the goodness and honesty of Saudis that had kept me going for so long.
"Those were very difficult and lonesome days, especially after hearing my wife telling me that my two young daughters were the only ones without new clothes for Eid. With my father dead, there was not enough money to go around. But there was not much I could do except feel less of a man, incapable of meeting my family's needs.
"He and his family returned after six weeks of vacation and not two weeks as he had told me earlier. When I confronted him, he apologised, saying he could not pay me my past dues now as he had spent a lot of money during his trip. ‘Europe is expensive, you know' was his reply to my pleas.
"He then told me that if I was unhappy and wanted to transfer to another sponsor I would have to pay him 10,000 riyals (Dh9,794) for a release! If I couldn't come up with the money, he would turn over my passport to Jawazaat (Passport Department) for deportation. I was petrified. From where would I get this money?
"I have to tell you that this discussion absolutely shook my faith in the honesty and integrity of Saudis. To take advantage of poor people like me, he and many others prey on our trusting nature, not thinking for a minute about our obligations to loved ones back home.
"With desperation overcoming me I ran away, my passport still in his possession. I had my Iqama (residency document) with nine months validity and managed to secure another job. They pay me my dues on time. But I have learned since then that my Saudi sponsor did indeed turn over my passport to Jawazaat. And every moment I live in fear that one day he would walk in as a customer and turn me in.
"Why don't you take your case up with the Labour Court," I suggested, managing with great difficulty to hold back my fury and disgust at the loathsome actions of such Saudis who manage to openly flout labour laws and exploit workers to the point of slavery, and get away with it.
"Who will listen to my story, Mr Tariq? I am just a poor Bangladeshi and he is a connected Saudi. The authorities would immediately put me in shackles and deport me on the next flight home."
By Tariq A. Al Maeena
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How To Use Calculation Fields In Microsoft Access
Wed 23rd March 2011
What is a calculation field?
Suppose you have an Access database with a table called TblStaff showing details of all staff such as name, post, salary and date of birth. You decide to award all staff a 5% bonus. You could add another field called BONUS to the table, and then manually type in all the bonuses. However you might make a mistake, and this is no fun if there are many staff records in the table. Also if you change your mind and decide to make the bonus 6% you have to do the whole thing again. A better way to do this is to use a calculation field.
A calculation field is an extra field which calculates a value from one or more existing field. However you cannot add a calculation field to an Access table. But you can add a calculation field to a query. So first we'll create and save a query called QryStaff using all the fields from the original staff table. If you run the QryStaff you will see all the original staff data just as if you're viewing the TblStaff. Now switch QryStaff back to query design view.
A first example calculation: Staff Bonus
We decide to give all staff a 5% bonus and want to add a calculation field to our query to show this. Our extra bonus field will show the calculation [SALARY]*.05 which is the original salary times 5%. In query design view, in the lower part of the display, select the top cell in first empty column to the right of the existing fields. In this cell type SALARY*0.05 and then click into the next cell down. Access will add the square brackets round the word "Salary" because it recognizes the name as an existing field in the query. Save the query.
Then run the query, and voila, you'll see the extra field showing the bonus value for each member of staff. To complete this exercise we want to a label "BONUS" to this new field. So return to query design view and click into the same cell with the calculation, and carefully move the insert point to the far left of the cell. Then type "BONUS:" without the quotes, but with the colon. Save the query and run it again - now you'll see the new label on the calculation field. Now you can close the query. If you change any of the salary figures in the original TblStaff and run the query QryStaff again, you'll see all the updated bonuses, as a query will always uses the latest data from the underlying table.
A second example calculation field: Staff age.
This calculation is not essential to understand a calculation field, but it's an interesting one anyway and is often used in calculations. If you have a date of birth field, e.g. DOB, then you can work out each person's age by subtracting DOB from today's date. In Access today's date is calculated by DATE() in the calculation field. So if we use DATE()-DOB for the calculation we'll get age. Dates in Access are actually stored as whole number (of days from 1 Jan 1900), so the result of our calculation will be each person's age in days! To calculate age in years we divide the calculation by 365.25. The .25 is to allow for a leap year.
So now the calculation looks like (DATE()-DOB)/365.25 in the calculation field. However this will give each person's age but with lots of decimal places after the number. In reality if a person is aged 20 and 8 months, their age is still 20. So we complete the calculation by using INT which shows only the whole number from the calculation. Lastly we add a label AGE. So the completed calculation looks like AGE:INT((DATE()-DOB)/365.25) without any extra spaces. Note there are two open brackets after INT.
To create this in our query QryStaff, open the query in design view, and choose the top cell in the next empty column in the lower part of the display. Now type in the complete calculation AGE:INT((DATE()-DOB)/365.25) and click one cell down. We do this to ensure Access detects the existing field names in the calculation and square brackets them, and also to check that we have typed the details correctly. If there are any typing mistakes Access will prompt you with an error message. Hopefully the typing is correct and there are no error messages. Save the query and run it. You should now see each member of staff's age. Changing any DOB in the original table and running the query again will result in the updated age.
Hopefully this article has given you an insight into how to create calculation fields in an Access query. If you then base any forms or reports on the query rather than the table, then the calculations will show in the form or report. Want to learn more about Access? A really effective way is to attend a training course. There are lots available and the best ones are hands on and can really help you boost your Access skills.
Original article appears here:
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Seventeen years ago, the Utah Senate met in (what else?) a closed-door and illegal meeting to thwart gay-straight alliances in public high schools.
On Wednesday, the Utah Pride Center announced it will file a friend-of-the-court brief encouraging the U.S. Supreme Court to strike down the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) and California’s Proposition 8.
Both have been declared unconstitutional in lower federal courts. DOMA denies gay married couples joint tax filing, Social Security survivor payments and countless other federal benefits available to wedded straight couples.
Prop 8 is a ban on same-sex marriage approved by voters — and supported by the Utah-based LDS Church — after California had a brief period in which gay couples could marry (and remain married today).
Both are relics of a time when anti-gay sentiment was much more rife than today. Polls now show more Americans than ever have embraced the idea that gay marriage not only does no harm to straight marriage but also offers stability and protection for all of society.
I need only look to my married gay friends and relatives to know that, while many had years of living and loving together, marriage was the moment when all that trust solidified into equality under the law in the increasing number of states that allow it.
Utah has been hostile to gay rights for decades. Political and religious figures have tried to undercut initiatives as innocent as protecting the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community from housing and employment discrimination.
To its credit, the LDS Church, after long discussions with gay activists, endorsed Salt Lake City’s anti-discrimination ordinance, and some Utah cities and counties have followed the capital’s lead.
But Utah Pride wants more, and it should. Attorneys Paul Burke, a Democrat, and Brett Tolman, a Republican and former U.S. attorney for Utah, have teamed up to write the brief, which is due by the end of February.
"The brief will argue that the United States Supreme Court should recognize that laws affecting the LGBT community should be subjected to heightened judicial scrutiny and … will argue that [the court] should recognize a federal right to marriage equality," Burke said in a news conference Wednesday.
Tolman added: "It is a monumental moment. I think it is a crossroads in our history that we will look back at as another opportunity for individuals to stand up and be counted on civil equality."
Given Utah’s history — the 2004 amendment to the Utah Constitution to ban same-sex marriage, a sex-ed curriculum that bars "advocacy of homosexuality," a ban on same-sex adoptions, the inability of same-sex couples to enjoy the legal benefits given to their straight counterparts — it stands to reason that the high court should cover all the legal bases in deciding the two cases before it.
But, as Tolman said, the court is "wily" and could avoid the ultimate issue of marriage equality, leaving states with a "patchwork approach that in the end will discriminate against individuals — Utahns and others."
As of Tuesday, 41 entities — including the U.S. Council of Catholic Bishops and the National Eagle Forum — had filed amicus briefs supporting Prop 8 and DOMA.
Given Utah’s conservative political atmosphere, I have no illusions that anything regarding gay marriage will change anytime soon. But the high court could change that. It will hear arguments on DOMA and Prop 8 in March and is expected to issue its rulings in late June.
I’m not the praying type, but I do hope with all my heart that the justices will understand that gay equality is the civil rights movement of our time and will rule not to the right, but for equal rights.
Copyright 2013 The Salt Lake Tribune. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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Nanoscientists go on a roll
Sep 7, 2000
It has been a good week for nanoscience and technology with three major developments being reported. Physicists in the US have built a microscopic transistor that contains a "bouncing" carbon-60 molecule. The device could have important applications in nanotechnology. Meanwhile another team of scientists from the US has discovered that carbon nanotubes could prove to be the best heat conductors known to man. Finally, researchers in Germany and the US have succeeded in producing a spherical carbon molecule containing just 20 atoms. This is the smallest possible "fullerene", as these carbon molecules are called.
Whereas the carbon atoms in a graphite sheet are arranged in hexagons, the fullerene form of carbon includes both pentagons and hexagons. The first fullerene to be discovered, carbon-60, contains 12 pentagons and 20 hexagons and is shaped like a football. Now Paul McEuen's group at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the University of California at Berkeley has fabricated a single-molecule transistor based on a carbon-60 molecule bouncing between gold electrodes (H Park et al. 2000 Nature 407 57).
The transistor uses a process known as vibration-assisted tunnelling. For current to flow through the transistor, electrons must tunnel across the gaps between the carbon-60 molecule and the electrodes. To tunnel onto the molecule, an electron in the source electrode must have precisely the correct energy to occupy the lowest energy level in the molecule. However, if the electron has extra energy that is equivalent to the vibrational energy of carbon-60, it can still tunnel onto the molecule by using this surplus energy to set the molecule in motion.
The Berkeley team believe that, under certain conditions, a single electron is transferred between the electrodes during each cycle of the carbon-60 oscillation. Since the frequency of the vibration is quantized, it follows that the current flowing through the transistor is also under tight control. The device, in effect, acts like an "electron turnstile". This control could be used to measure electric currents with extreme accuracy.
Carbon nanotubes are made by rolling up sheets of graphite to create hollow cylinders of pure carbon. These nanotubes have remarkable properties: they are incredibly strong and can behave either as semiconductors or conductors. Now Alan Johnson of the University of Pennsylvania and co-workers have discovered that nanotubes also conduct heat extremely well (J Hone et al. 2000 Science 289 1730). The heat is conducted by low-energy phonons, which can be thought of as quanta of sound waves. The electrical properties of nanotubes have been extensively investigated and found to be consistent with the electrons being confined to the one dimension of the tube. However, similar confinement of phonons has not been observed until now.
The results also show that the remarkable heat conduction properties of nanotubes extend to larger "bundles" of tubes. The bonds between individual nanotubes are extremely weak, so the phonons do not scatter into adjacent tubes. Unfortunately, this weak bonding between tubes also means that "ropes" formed from the nanotubes are likely to be relatively weak.
Finally, Horst Prinzbach and co-workers at Albert-Ludwigs-University in Freiburg, Germany and Boston College in the US have produced minute quantities of the smallest possible fullerene, carbon-20 (H Prinzbach et al. 2000 Nature 407 60). The molecule, which consists of 12 pentagonal rings, was previously thought to be too unstable to exist. Prinzbach and co-workers have created both the fullerene form of carbon-20 and a bowl-shaped isomer which may improve our understanding of how fullerenes form.
About the author
Edward Conway is an undergraduate physics student
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In August, the front cover of JID (Journal of Investigative Dermatology) displayed an image of the three-dimensional structure of a skin protease, and the September issue had immunofluorescence photos showing the location of transglutaminases in hair. While it is not surprising that photographs of proteins expressed in the skin and hair should be displayed on the front page of an international journal for research into skin biology, the facts that they came from two publications of L'Oreal research and that all these proteins are involved in epidermal differentiation are not only worth noting but also deserving of a few words of explanation.
Epidermal differentiation: this is a key stage in the establishment of the skin's barrier function and hair shaft formation.
The stratum corneum, the outermost layer of the skin and the part that provides a barrier between our bodies and the external environment, and the hair shaft, the part of the hair follicle that emerges from the skin to provide us with our head of hair, represent in both cases the culmination of the process of keratinocyte differentiation. Several families of proteins play an active part in the various phases of differentiation, each with a specific role to play. Among these, the proteases are fundamental to desquamation, or the elimination of corneocytes from the surface of the epidermis, and the transglutaminases play a part in the reticulation of the proteins that will form the horny outer layer of the skin and the hair shaft.
A new aspartic acid protease specifically identified in the skin
SASPase - short for Skin ASpartic Protease - is a protease expressed specifically in the granular layer of the human epidermis. The identification of this protein in late-phase epidermal differentiation is a first - it had never been previously described.
The discovery and nature of this protein was a source of many surprises for researchers. Dominique Bernard, manager of the "Skin and Surface Aspects" section in Life Sciences points out: "We were surprised first of all to discover a new protein in the epidermis that plays a part in desquamation and then to find that the protease could be an unwanted target of antiviral treatments". This is because the nucleotide sequence of this protease is very similar to that of retroviruses and one of the questions currently being asked is whether it might be that at some time in the past the human genome captured and integrated the gene of the retroviral protease or whether on the reverse could be true, that a retrovirus assimilated this ancestral human protease into its own genome.
The similarity between the human and retroviral protease sequences would provide an explanation of the side effects for the skin of antiviral treatments, especially Indinavir (an HIV protease inhibitor): the skin dryness and hair loss observed during treatment could in fact be linked to the destruction of this protease in the patient's epidermis.
The team is now seeking to modulate the expression of this protease whose function is probably to help establish the barrier function of the epidermis.
D. Bernard*, B. Méhul, A. Thomas-Collignon*, C. Delattre*, M. Donovan* and R. Schmidt*. Identification and Characterization of a Novel Retroviral-Like Aspartic Protease Specifically Expressed in Human Epidermis. The Journal of Investigative Dermatology125 (2), 278-287
Expression of Transglutaminase 5 in the human hair follicle
* L'Oréal Recherche
While Transglutaminase (TG) 5 had been identified very recently in the epidermis by researchers at the University of Rome, it had still not been observed in the human hair follicle. That is now the case, thanks to the "Hair Care, Quality and Color" team led by Bruno Bernard, working in conjunction with the aforementioned research workers in Rome.
As Sébastien Thibaut, the article's first author, explains: "The primary goal of our project was to establish a parallel between epidermal differentiation and the hair follicle's differentiation programs". These researchers have shown that of the TG family, TG2 is ubiquitous (it is found everywhere), TG1 and TG5, specific to the stratum granulosum, are found in the inner root sheath of the hair follicle, and TG3, specific to the stratum corneum, is expressed exclusively in the hair shaft.
The authors have focused discussion primarily on the complementary relationship between the TGs in the hair follicle and on TG5, which plays a key role in the physiological balance of the skin and hair. According to Sébastien Thibaut: "TG3 is also a very interesting case. This enzyme, whose use we have patented, is expressed specifically in the hair shaft. It is a key enzyme in the building and keratinization of the shaft. By influencing its activity, we can imagine numerous possible applications, perhaps - why not? - a modulation of the rigidity of the hair shaft".
Sébastien Thibaut*, Eleonora Candi, Valentina Pietroni, Gerry Melino, Rainer Schmidt* and Bruno A. Bernard*. Transglutaminase 5 Expression in Human Hair Follicle. The Journal of Investigative Dermatology 125 (3), 581-585.
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It’s one of the best-kept secrets in the federal government.
Information about polygraph screening is so guarded by the agencies that use it that job applicants who are tested are urged not to tell anyone. The news media are denied basic information, such as how many government employees are screened, because it’s “sensitive” and could jeopardize national security.
Researchers are told they can’t get studies about how it works. Even the National Academies, the organization set up to advise the federal government on scientific matters, faced stiff resistance when it reviewed polygraph testing. As a result, the academies compared the polygraph profession to the “priesthood keeping its secrets in order to keep its power.”
“It’s a siege mentality,” acknowledged Gordon Barland, a retired federal polygraph researcher who supports polygraph screening but also pushed for greater transparency on some of the data.
Many of the 15 agencies that rely on polygraph testing for job applicants and employees say they’re protecting screening methods from spies or terrorists who might figure out how to infiltrate the government. An unknown number of government polygraph studies remain classified because of this fear. But critics and even some supporters say the federal government should be more open about its programs given the growing use of polygraph screening and the continued scientific controversy over it.
Barland, one of the most prolific government polygraph researchers, asked government officials to publish several classified studies on polygraph screening that he participated in. They declined.
Other government researchers who’ve pushed for publishing such studies also have been turned down, Barland said. Some have left the government in frustration. Researchers and academics generally think it’s essential for studies to be published and peer reviewed. Barland said the government would have benefited from publicizing several of the studies because they demonstrated that polygraph screening worked, but he blames labor unions and civil libertarians for making polygraphers gun-shy.
“They don’t want to give critics any more ammunition,” he said.
Job applicants and employees also are denied the recordings of their polygraph screenings and the charts that polygraphers relied on to determine whether they’re lying. If they want any other records about sessions, they have to file open records requests. Nonetheless, documents often are withheld or redacted for national security reasons. The information is so guarded that people who are polygraphed are urged to “maintain confidentiality” and not to tell co-workers, relatives or friends, documents obtained by McClatchy show.
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For those who are interested with Forensic Science, you should look for Forensic Science Colleges - a resource that will give you information about forensics courses. In order to help police to solve crimes, people need to learn the formal skills they need to have a job in the field.]
Unlike other cultures, our Filipino culture does not accord suicides by public figures one clear and definitive meaning. Thus the message of a Filipino dying in public by his own hand often ends up being contested, improvised and twisted by various interested parties. And so it is with the tragic death of General Angelo Reyes. Did he put a bullet through his heart in an ultimate admission of personal responsibility for whatever wrong he had committed? Or was his willful termination of his own life a sublime act of protest to assert his innocence against unfair yet unremitting persecution?
The death of someone like Gen. Reyes who served our country for most of his life deserves our respect, prayers and reflection. This is a tragedy to one person, to his family and to many who believed and admired him for his personal, professional and public life. For his fellow Filipinos that Gen. Reyes left behind, his chosen timing and manner of exiting the public stage and this mortal world challenges us to seek some meaning and purpose from such a tragic loss. We, former senior government officials, choose to see the death of Gen. Reyes in the light of the principle that public office is a public trust.
1. We find no honor in a death without meaning to the welfare of our nation.
Gen. Angelo Reyes took his own life in the midst of an investigation that exposed the corruption within the command structure of our military, corruption that had tainted him. For whom did Gen. Reyes die? If he died to escape the consequences of his involvement, or to put a lid on further revelations, or worse, to become a sacrificial lamb for all others more tainted than he, his was not an honourable death. The smug faces of unpunished corruption that visited his wake only further dishonour him. If, on the other hand, his death inspires our leaders to finally clean up the corrupt system in the military that ensnared him, he might yet be the last soldier to die in our people’s war against corruption. Gen. Reyes may have died by his own hand, but in truth, corruption killed him. As we pray for the forgiveness of his sins, we hope that his blood spilled on his mother’s grave will begin the cleansing of his beloved AFP, the government he protected and the nation he served.
The death of Reyes should not be wished upon anyone, not even the Garcias, the Ligots, and other alleged recipients of military graft, or even their alleged real protectors. That would be unchristian. But perhaps these lost souls in the people’s war against corruption should be reminded that moral death is as tragic as physical death. And the suffering will be much longer.
2. The investigation into high level corruption in the military should continue.
Gen. Reyes’ death could not and should not be blamed upon our legislators, no matter how hurtful their statements may have been. While more civility and courtesy could mark our congressional investigations, and invited “guests” to these proceedings could be treated better by their “hosts”, it must be clear by now that these legislative inquiries serve a vital function in democratic governance. Thus far, the truth about high level corruption has obviously and apparently not been brought forth by agencies charged with this function. Neither the police, the NBI, the Ombudsman, nor the courts have shown any talent nor interest to bring forth to our people the truth about corruption at the highest levels of our government.
Despite their rantings and distractions during these public hearings, our senators and congressmen have been able to put names, faces, numbers and dates to the corruption that every citizen knows infects our officialdom.
We continue to regard George Rabusa and Heidi Mendoza as heroes in our people’s war against corruption. They have nothing to be ashamed about in this tragedy. Mendoza has apparently always been honorable in the discharge of her functions, while Rabusa had to confront and acknowledge his own sins in order to retrieve his own lost honor by finally telling the truth.
We ask Commodore Rex Robles and the others who have special knowledge of the facts concerning corruption in the military that they pay their respects to Gen. Reyes by coming out with the truth, rather than expecting others to do their work for them. Truth telling is the responsibility of everyone who knows the truth.
3. Ombudsman Merceditas Gutierrez must go.
The Ombudsman can no longer sustain her pretense that moves to oust her are merely partisan efforts by the critics of Gloria Arroyo. There is nothing partisan about our people’s nearly universal desire to have a new beginning in the Office of the Ombudsman. The whole nation wants its government to move along the tuwid na daan and this incumbent Ombudsman is one of the biggest boulders on their way. Everybody wants this boulder out. She no longer has any excuse for trying to stay.
We remind the Supreme Court, and other lawyers, that in deciding the case on the impeachment of Merceditas Gutierrez, their final responsibility is not to search for arcane legal principles that would find fault in the effort, but to join the Filipino people in ridding ourselves of this boulder along our path towards a righteous and just Philippines.
The death of Gen. Reyes reminds us that corruption kills. Most often, it kills poor Filipinos with hunger, disease, disaster or crime because the money meant to help or protect them was stolen. It kills soldiers whose bullets ran out, whose guns fail, whose trucks ran out of gasoline, whose aircraft crashed due to poor maintenance, all because someone stole the money for their needs. Sometime, corruption kills those that partake of its evil fruit.
The death of Gen. Reyes is finally a reminder that public office is a public trust. Those who occupy public office shall be held accountable, by our laws when possible; by public opinion, when necessary; by history, eventually; or by individual conscience, ultimately.
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The Mountain Pass
by Muhammad Alshareef
When you were growing up, did you grow up under the shade of a mountain? There weren't too many mountains where I grew up, but when I was young visiting Egypt, many of the buildings did not have elevators. And some of those buildings were up to 9 or 10 floors high.
So, if one wanted to make it to the top (the relatives always lived on the 8th floor, go figure), one could never take it one step at a time. One had to gather their garment, take a deep breath, close their eyes, and charge up ... two and three steps in one bound. (I know you must be breathing hard just thinking about it.)
In Surah Al-Balad, Allah teaches us about the mountain pass that must be climbed in our lives. And this way of climbing that I've just described is very close to how Allah wants us to overcome this mountain pass – hard and strong! But wait ... what mountain pass? Allah explains:
[The mountain pass] is the freeing of a slave / Or feeding on a day of severe hunger / An orphan of near relationship / Or a needy person [grasping the dirt] in misery / And then being among those who believed and advised one another to Sabr [patience] and advised one another to Rahmah [compassion] / Those are the companions of the right (Al-Balad 90/11-18).
When we look over the institutions that 'care' about the welfare of American society, we seldom see Muslim run shelters for the homeless. We seldom find Muslim run soup kitchens for the hungry of our society. When a husband beats his wife mercilessly, does she run to the Muslims or does she run to the kuffar?
Dear brothers and sisters, caring about our society is not meant to be a public relations stunt. It is from the core of our deen, a core message that is repeated all throughout the Qur'an. And it is the way and example of our Prophet sal Allaahu alayhi wa sallam; an example which he left for us to emulate.
The topic for today is about taking responsibility of our society; it’s one of the principal messages of Islam!
In Surah Al-Haaqah, Allah couples the disbelief of the kaafir with the fact that he does not encourage the feeding of the poor:
Indeed, he did not used to believe in Allah, the Most Great / Nor did he encourage the feeding of the poor (Al-Haaqah 69/33-34).
In Surah Al-Mudaththir, we are given an interview with the wretched of hellfire. Listen to the reason they arrived there:
They said, "We were not of those who prayed / Nor did we used to feed the poor" (Al-Mudaththir 74/44-45).
In Surah Al-Fajr, Allah describes the ungrateful arrogant:
Nay, you do not honor the orphan / And you do not encourage one another to feed the poor (Al-Fajr 89/17-18).
And in Surah Al-Maa'oon, a surah we recite quite often in salah, Allah characterizes those who have strayed from His path:
Have you seen the one who denies the Recompense? / For that is the one who drives away the orphan / And does not encourage the feeding of the poor (Al-Maa‘oon 107/1-3).
The respected Shaykh Ja'far Idrees, was once commenting on these verses. He mentioned that these verses were all revealed in Makkah and then he said, "How many Muslims were in Makkah at that time? There were only handfuls. These verses were not directed to Muslims taking care of Muslims exclusively. They were directed to Muslims taking responsibility for the entire society!"
When RasulAllah sal Allaahu alayhi wa sallam received the first revelation from Allah, he raced home shivering in fear. Khadijah consoled him, covered him as he wished, and listened as he spoke of his fright. Listen carefully to what she said to our Prophet sal Allaahu alayhi wa sallam to console him:
"Allah will never disgrace you. You unite your relatives and you bear the burden of the weak (of our society). You help the poor and the needy, you are honorable to all guests and you bear harm in the path of truthfulness."
This was his character, sal Allaahu alayhi wa sallam, before and after becoming the Messenger of Allah.
Growing up in the prairies of Canada, there was almost no location a Muslim could buy meat slaughtered in the name of Allah. So my father would go out to the farm and bring back a freezer full of chicken to sell to the community.
My father may not recall this, but one brother became Muslim in our area and he related this to me. He said, "When I embraced Islam, the entire community kept telling me about the what (they thought) was the most important thing in Islam: to eat halaal shiken. Everyone kept lecturing me about it and then they would leave. Your father was the only one who actually took me outside and gave me some halaal meat to take home to my family. I never forgot that."
What have we sincerely done as a collective community for these Americans? I'm not speaking of workshop lectures here and there. What have we done to help them and to show them – in action, not in empty words – the mercy that Islam teaches us?
The upper class of Makkah once found Allah's Messenger sal Allaahu alayhi wa sallam with the poor and weak of society – notice that these were the ones who stood at his side; he did not brush them away in his da’wah. There sat with him Bilal, Suhayb, Ammar, and Ibn Masood, may Allah be pleased with them all. Abu Jahl said to him, "O Muhammad, if you wish for us to sit with you then you must first expel from your presence such slaves!" Then Allah revealed the verses:
And do not expel those who call upon their Lord morning and afternoon, seeking His countenance. Not upon you is anything of their account and not upon them is anything of your account. So were you to expel them, you would then be of the wrongdoers (Al-An'aam 6/52).
In a heated debate between the Roman king Heraqle and Abu Sufyan, Heraqle asked Abu Sufyan who was following Muhammad. Was it the weak of society or the eminent? Abu Sufyan, not a Muslim at that time who was trying to seize any chance to put down Muhammad, said, "Only the weak follow him."
Heraqle replied, "Such are the followers of true prophets."
RasulAllah sal Allaahu alayhi wa sallam would go out to the corners of the city and visit the elderly 'aunties'. Someone may ask, “Why did he not delegate Sahaabaa to go on his behalf? Surely he was much too busy to set aside time for these visits.”
The answer is that these visits to the elderly and weak were much more valuable than dozens of conferences and lectures. They meant much more than pamphlets and booklets. This mercy allowed knowledge of Allah to enter hearts that would not have been found in khutbahs.
How far have we strayed from this Sunnah of Al-Mustafa sal Allaahu alayhi wa sallam?
Today, in our local region, there are 25 different Alcoholics Anonymous 'halaqas' advertised! Twenty-five in just one day in this specific region, that does not include the night 'halaqahs'! On Sunday there will be 16 daytime classes, 27 at night, 43 in one day in one region! There are even AA 'halaqahs' for the deaf!
Let us not allow ourselves to believe that we do not have enough Muslims to carry out our mission. Dear brothers and sisters, we have enough to stuff an amusement park like Six Flags. We have enough, but are we working together as a community for the sake of Allah? What have we done for Islam and what have we done for these people?
In our recent DC conference, Dr. Ingrid said something very profound which I would like to mention here. She said that she did not enter Islam because she thought Islam had liberated women – a popular theme in our Islam awareness lectures. She said that she did not enter Islam because she thought Islam had the greatest civilization – another popular topic in our talk. Her path of Islam began when she recognized and accepted her relationship with the one true God, Allah.
It was mentioned in the seerah narrations that there was once an elderly woman who fled Makkah with a heavy load of her things because of the befalling tribulation that, in her mind, was the work of Muhammad sal Allaahu alayhi wa sallam. An honorable man saw her with the heavy load and offered to help. She was very grateful but made a condition:
"Don't talk to me about Muhammad and we will get along just fine. Because of him there is no peace and there is trouble in my mind."
They traveled together. As the time passed she spoke to her companion about the evil that Muhammad had brought. "He's misleading all the weak ones, and the poor ones, and the slaves. They think they've all found wealth and freedom following his ways."
When they arrived at their destination, she thanked her companion and realized that she had not asked his name.
"What's that? Pardon my hearing but it's funny ... I thought I heard you say your name was Muhammad."
“Ash hadu an laa ilaaha illa Allah, wa ash hadu anna Muhammadan RasulAllah! If you are Muhammad then take me take me back, for it is in you that I can only hope for peace."
In the Musnad of Imam Ahmad, it is narrated that a man came to Allah's Messenger and complained of a heavy heart. Allah's Messenger sal Allaahu alayhi wa sallam said to him, "Wipe the head of the orphan and feed the poor."
The ‘ulama of the past understood this message of Islam. When Ali ibn Al-Husayn rahimahullah died, those who were washing his body found themselves staring at his back's deep bruises. They inquired about this and were told, "Not too many knew, but he would go out in the middle of the night, carrying on his back flour. He would stop at the doors of Madinah's needy and feed them."
Feed the hungry so that Allah will feed us on a day when we will be in most need of His, subhaanahu wa ta'aala, mercy.
Growing up in North America, in our Sunday school there was a Hadith that caught the attention of our class. It was the hadith of the men who came to Umm Al-Mu'mineen Aisha radi Allahu anha, asking her about the character of Allah's Messenger sal Allaahu alayhi wa sallam. She said concisely, "His character was the Qur'an."
Myself, and others in our class, did not understand this hadith. We thought, how could surahs like Surah Al-Lahab be the character of the Prophet?
I have slowly come to realize why we could not understand Aisha radi Allahu anha’s statement. It was because we did not understand the Qur'an.
Today I am going to make a bold proposal to those who are involved in da'wah. It is a proposal that we remodel our da’wah efforts to sincerely – for the sake of Allah – help the society that we live in. Let us help the hungry, help the homeless, help the downtrodden, help the illiterate, help the abused, and help the scared ... help each and everyone that we can.
If we truly adopt this da'wah mission, a mission which Islam requires of us, I pray to Allah ta'aala that we will have much more success in bringing Islam to the American people than ever before.
One of the sisters in our tafseer class wrote a du‘a and with it I conclude:
"The one thing that I can say that I have truly learnt from this tafseer course was the Aqabah, the mountain pass. Close your eyes and just run for it. May Allah help me implement it in my life and may Allah make your Aqabah easy for you, in sha Allah."
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2 and 3 Year Olds English
Teaching young children English (1-3 year olds) is a fun and challenging experience. Children at this age have a lot of energy, so they can be a lot of fun. However, it is a special challenge to harness that energy and focus it on the English lesson.
My style of teaching young children is to incorporate a lot of songs, dances, flashcards, visuals and movement in general. I also mix this up with book reading time, and other activities that give the children a rest like coloring or passing around objects in a circle and saying the name. There are many things you can do.
Below are some suggestions and links to songs, lesson ideas and
more to get started. If you have any suggestions/ideas for me please
send me an email and
let me know.
Teaching Children with Songs: Below are my favorite songs to use in class with 2-3 year olds. Click on the link to be directed to the page with the free song download. For more info on why I like these songs for this age group, please read below. Please note that some of the links will direct you to my other site freeabcsongs.com:
Try out the new Easy Warm Up Songs for Little Kids like Happy/Sad and Go/Stop.
check out Dream English TV for teaching
tips videos for your young students. There are also song videos
your students can watch and learn English! Learn how to use Flash
Cards, Game ideas, dances for the songs, warm up ideas and more!
2. Let's Count 1 to 10: This song is so simple that even 1 year olds can quickly pick up the dance. I have teaching suggestions and a video on the Dream English Let's Count 1 to 10 page, where you can also download the song for free, click here to check it out. Again, I recommend the free numbers coloring sheets at MES English.
3. One Fish: Once your students get really good at Let's Count 1 to 10, I recommend this simple counting song. Kids will enjoy counting fish and cats. There are coloring sheets and matching flashcards to go along with this free download. Click here to go to the One Fish Song page.
4. It's a Dog: Children love animals, so this is an easy fun song for them. For It's a Dog lesson ideas, the free song mp3 download flashcards (dog flashcard pictured above) and more click here.
5. Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes: A classic song, simple and kids just love it! I always start off by teaching the body parts by pointing to them and saying the name, then we sing! This song is a free download on my other site freeabcsongs.com to check it out click here.
6. London Bridge is Falling Down: Some times its good to take a break and just do something simple and fun with the kids, and this song is great for that. The traditional way to play this song is have two people (probably teachers or parents) hold their hands together like a bridge, and the children walk under it. When the verse ends with "my fair lady!" the bridge "falls" and you can hold onto the students who are under your arms. Of course, be careful! to check out this song, click here.
7. Hello Song: This is a great simple song to get your class started! Click here to go to the Hello Song page.
8. Goodbye Song: This song has a lot of actions, so it is fun for the kids. Starting at 2 or 3 years old, the children can definitely sing the song. It may sound difficult at first, but with repeated listening they can sing it! Check out the Goodbye Song.
9. What's Your Name? This is a really fun and easy name song, with only a few lyrics and a place for the kids to say their own name. Even if they can't quite say, "my name is...." they can at least fill in their own name. Catchy, I have had kids hear it once and start singing it after class to their Mom's! Check it out here.
Coloring: Coloring is a great activity you can do with young children. Before we start, I always review all the colors, and have the children ask for what color crayon they want by saying, "blue, please" etc. Dream English has coloring sheets on the It's a Dog Page and the Color Song page. I also recommend the free coloring sheets from MES English.
Plans: There are so many different ways to teach this age,
and it really depends on your situation. Are you teaching with the
parents in the class as well, with 3 or 20 kids... all situations
are different. Please check out these lesson plans to get you started!
I highly recommend the Dream English Special Download Packs if you are teaching young children. There are over 45 Songs to get your little ones singing in English! For more information, please click here.
you like this page and song, please tell a friend!
|Home Page Free Songs Free Chants Shop Blog Reviews About Contact Tell A Friend|
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When Hippocrates said "the physician treats but nature heals," he was describing the human body's natural tendency toward minimizing illness and creating optimal health. As we know, however, the body needs a little help at times. Alternative health practices can support the physical body in its natural propensity toward healing by applying very effective remedies.
In this article we present powerful natural treatments for three health conditions that frequently affect children: asthma, head lice, and pink eye. Orthodox medical doctors and the drug conglomerates won't be overly thrilled that you know these natural treatments; they have no way of patenting or monetizing these cures. The Asthma Remedy
Asthma is a serious (if not frightening) disorder in which the airway becomes inflamed, resulting in wheezing, loss of breath, and tightness in the chest. About 15 million people in the U.S. suffer with asthma and there are more than half a million hospitalizations resulting from this disorder.
The prevalence of asthma has been increasing for every age group affected. Children have the highest increase; over the last ten years the rate of asthma in children has increased by over 90%. Parents with asthmatic children will know that the quickest remedy for an asthma attack comes from medication, but there are times when a child's inhaler is not available.
There are two natural ways to treat an asthma attack which relate to the soothing effect that warm liquid has on bronchial tubes. First, try some hot soup which can soothe the bonchials. However, the second remedy can be more effective since it includes a warm liquid with an additional ingredient: caffeine. Coffee or tea, with caffeine, can open airways similar to the way inhalers do, so try this during an asthma episode if no medication is available. The Pink Eye Cure
Before 1938, patentable antibacterial drugs had not been developed, so colloidal silver was the primary "medicine" for fighting infections in the U.S. It is quietly used today as a cleaning agent in water tanks, by airlines for in-flight water purification, and by NASA to sterilize water on the Space Shuttle. Why? Colloidal silver has been found to destroy about 650 viral, bacterial, and fungal "bugs."
One independent laboratory conducted research to determine the effectiveness of a colloidal silver manufactured by a company called Earthborn Products. This silver was applied to both normal and resistant strains of staphylococcus aureus bacteria and incubated at 37 degrees centigrade. The staph cultures were killed in just four minutes! Also, research at the Upstate Medical Center at Syracuse University (N.Y.) found that "silver works on a wide range of bacteria without any known side effects…"
Pink eye (pinkeye) or conjunctivitis is a highly contagious ailment in which the conjunctiva or membrane that covers the eye is infected by a virus or bacterial infection. Although harmless, the challenge is to keep infected family members from contaminating those around them. This challenge, however, has been met with colloidal silver.
Many people are successfully treating their pink eye by applying one or two drops of colloidal silver in their eyes, twice a day. In fact, Dr. Evan M. Kansas reported in Science Digest (1978) that he experienced "instant success" using colloidal silver with immune compromised patients. One example he gave was a patient's pinkeye that was totally resolved in less than six hours after topical treatment! The Head Lice Cure
Mom and dad, if you're tired of "nit picking," then pay attention. About ten million people in America are afflicted with head lice and their eggs, or "nits." The head louse lives in human hair fairly close to the scalp where it feeds on human blood. Female lice lay about 10 eggs per day and the babies, or nits, hang-on to strands of hair with amazing tenacity.
Getting rid of head lice is a three-step process. You must kill all the live lice, check for and remove all the nits by combing and manual nit picking, and you must do a thorough job of cleaning the infested person's belongings and home environment.
Doctor Lawrence Schachner of the University of Miami School of Medicine has found what he believes is the best, fastest natural remedy for head lice yet: petroleum jelly. This cure works not by poisoning the lice (like the prescription drugs available), but by smothering them. Dr. Schachner recommends slathering petroleum jelly on your child's scalp and hair in the evening before bed. Then put a shower cap on the child and let him sleep the night with the cap on. By morning, the lice and knits are smothered. The down side? Children must do repeated shampoos to remove the petroleum jelly, so their hair may look oily for a while.
By Robert Fioravante
All rights reserved. Any reproducing of this article must have the author name and all the links intact.
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Policies and Guidelines
The following are policies and guidelines for the Department of Disabilities, Aging and Independent Living.
- Background Check Policy (July 2009)
Performing background checks on individuals who work with vulnerable people is a component of preventing abuse, neglect and exploitation. This policy describes when a background check is required, what the components of a background check are and what is done if a background check reveals a potential problem.
- Certificate of Approval for Proposed Projects by Designated Mental Health Agencies
and Developmental Services Agencies
Vermont Designated Mental Health and Developmental Services Agencies planning new projects are excluded from Certificate of Need (CON) review under Vermont law 18 V.S.A. § 9435(b). The review and approval authority for these agencies has been delegated to the Commissioner of the Vermont Department of Mental Health (DMH) and the Commissioner of the Department of Disabilities, Aging and Independent Living (DAIL). The approval for projects proposed by Designated Agencies is known as a Certificate of Approval (COA). The procedures for applying for a Certificate of Approval are incorporated in the COA application packet below. The application packet includes by reference the required financial tables which are also listed below. When a Designated Agency applies for a Certificate of Approval, the completed application and related financial tables will be posted to the DMH COA web page for public review and comment.
Division Policies and Guidelines
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Extension is a partnership between state, federal, and county governments to provide scientific knowledge and expertise to the public. The University of Florida (UF), together with Florida A&M University (FAMU), administers the Florida Cooperative Extension Service.
At the University of Florida, Extension is located in the Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences (IFAS), along with the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences (CALS) and the Florida Agricultural Experiment Station, and is called UF/IFAS Extension.
The University of Florida's Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences (UF/IFAS) is a federal, state, and county partnership dedicated to developing knowledge in agriculture, human and natural resources, and the life sciences and to making that knowledge accessible to sustain and enhance the quality of human life.
UF/IFAS Extension encompasses thousands of Extension faculty members, scientists, educators, administrative staff, and volunteers, all working to provide solutions for your life. Nick Place, Ph.D., is the director of UF/IFAS Extension.
The Extension Administration Office is responsible for the management and direction of the Florida Cooperative Extension Service. This office is staffed by the Dean for Extension / Director, Florida Cooperative Extension Service, the Associate Dean for Extension / Associate Director, the Assistant Dean for Extension / Agricultural Programs, and their support staff.
As part of its duties, the Extension Administration office allocates the budget for Extension programs to County Operations, Research and Education Centers, and Departments for the purpose of developing and disseminating educational materials and programs derived from university-based research. The Administration office also oversees In-Service Training and manages the State Major Programs and Design Teams.
For more information about the people of Extension Administration, please visit our Faculty & Staff page.
The Extension Faculty Advisory Committee (EFAC) serves as a forum for the Dean for Extension to discuss items of concern to the organization. Committee members are also encouraged to identify system-wide issues for discussion. The advisory committee meets on a quarterly basis.
For a list of current committee members, please visit our EFAC page.
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Seems like just a year ago a 14-percent sanitary sewer rate hike went into
effect in the Town of Chesterton.
Actually, it was just a year ago.
Which means that the time has come for another biennial rate study.
At the Utility Service Board’s meeting Monday night, President Larry Brandt
said that he does not know at this point what conclusion the upcoming rate
study will reach. But he can guess. “We need to get locked and loaded for
that battle when it comes,” Brandt said. “Because the cost of things is not
going down. I’m expecting the study will show the need for another
By consensus the Service Board instructed Interim Superintendent Mark O’Dell
to ask contracted rate consultant H.J. Umbaugh & Associates to begin that
In related news, the Service Board took receipt from O’Dell of the 2009
•The Utility under-performed the total projected revenue of $3,546,000 by
$123,694 or 3.48 percent.
•But it out-performed the total projected commercial sales of $2,800,000 by
$169,138 or 6.04 percent. “So there was more growth in town than expected,”
•The Utility under-performed the total project operating revenues of
$2,480,175 by $187,071 or 7.54 percent.
•It finished the year with a deficit of $93,975, compared to a projected
surplus of $2,060. Among the higher than expected line items were sludge
removal, which cost $18,370 or 61.23 percent more than the projected
$30,000; chemical, which cost $5,019 or 3.4 percent more than the projected
$59,000; and workman’s compensation, which cost $16,622 or 66.22 percent
more than the projected $10,000.
•In 2009 Chesterton used 59.50 percent of its allotment at the wastewater
treatment plant; Porter, 63.66 percent; the Indian Boundary Conservancy
District, 77.60 percent; and the plant as a whole, 60.48 percent of its
capacity. Brandt suggested the possibility that the plant may hit 85-percent
capacity well ahead of the anticipated 20-year lifetime of the recently
completed expansion project.
•In an incredibly wet year—with 42.67 inches of recorded rain—a total of
3,427,336 gallons of sewage were bypassed into the Little Calumet River.
“Last March”—with 4.6 inches of rain on top of snow melt—“killed us,” O’Dell
noted. “God, what a bad spring,” Brandt said.
•The plant treated a total of 1,015,415,000 gallons last year, compared to
1,030,034,000 in 2008, an increase of 1.43 percent.
In other business, the Service Board voted 4-0 to approve the write-off of a
total of 70 uncollectable balances totaling $3,052.52 on sanitary sewer
accounts for sold properties.
Member Scot McCord was not in attendance.
Many of those are for deceased individuals, Clerk-Treasurer Gayle Polakowski
said. But some are also for builders which have gone out of business.
After a lengthy discussion about the feasibility of trying to collect some
of the unpaid balances, members agreed just to write them all off but to do
a better job collecting in the future. In particular, they discussed the
possibility of asking the Town Council to amend Town Code to allow the
Building Commissioner to refuse the issuance of building permits to any
builder in arrears until he’s made good on his debt.
Check to the
Meanwhile, the Service Board voted 4-0 to dispatch a manual check in the
amount of $91,667 to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the Utility’s
25-percent match for the earmark secured by U.S. Rep. Pete Visclosky, D-1st,
for the Porter Ave. sanitary sewer re-line project on tap for this year.
By votes of 4-0, the Service Board re-elected Brandt to the presidency and
Member Jim Raffin to the vice-presidency; re-appointed Utility Clerk Donna
Simmers to the secretariat; and re-appointed the firm of Harris Welsh &
Lukmann to counsel.
Member John Schnadenberg took a moment at the end of the meeting to ask
Simmers whether there is any likelihood of the Utility’s establishing
on-line payment capacity.
Simmers said that, as one of the bond projects slated for this year, a new
billing system should be up and running by the end of 2010, and that this
system could, at some point, be retrofitted for on-line payments.
For his part Raffin had a shout-out for the Street Department. “With all the
snow, it kind of amazes me how we just keep rolling along with very little
interruption in our lives because the Street Department moves it so
efficiently off the roads,” he said.
Schnadenberg, wearing his Street Commissioner’s hat, acknowledged the
compliment but noted that he and his men have a lot of help from other
departments’ employees, notably the Utility’s and Park Department’s. “It’s
cross-training and a lot of town employees are involved in that,” he said.
“They deserve the praise,” Member Andy Michel said. “They’ve earned it, they
deserve it. Thanks again everyone.”
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What We Do Every Day
P. O. Box 902, Hudson, New York 12534
What We Do Every Day
Momma and newborns saved - 23 Feb 2010
A nice lady in Coxsackie, NY, noticed an abandoned cat in the woods behind her apartment complex foraging for food over a few days. After making pre-arrangements with Animalkind, the kind lady set a humane trap in the woods and trapped the kitty. The poor kitty was highly pregnant and scared. The lady brought the trap and caged cat to Animalkind.
We set her up in a quiet space and she started to purr right away. She allowed us to pet and calm her and her eyes said, "Thank you!" She was *very* hungry.
We could not have the cat spayed since she appeared to be right before birth.
The very next day she gave birth to three sweet little kittens and all she wants to be is a mom! (breakfast in bed for the kitties, of course, as in the photo!)
She and her babies are safe and warm. Thanks to your support, we are able to help kitties like this Mom, who had no one who cared.
More mom's and kittens coming in. This sweet tiger mom gave birth after one day at Animalkind.
PLEASE - we need fosterhomes!!
If you have a spare room and can help fostering until they are ready for their forever homes - please contact us ASAP!
Updated 11 Mar 2010Still *more* mom's and kittens coming in !!
This sweet Maine Coon momma had no place to go with her kittens.Animalkind badly needs foster homes until the kitties are ready for adoption.
Can you help?
Please help us raising the kittens and care for this mom,
donate today or sponsor one of the little sweeties
Please donate to Animalkind NOW,
Return to What We Do Every Day
| Home | Action Alerts | Activities | Adoptable Animals | Happy Adoptions | Successful Adoptions | Articles | Cat Facts | Donation | Events | Feral Cats | How Can I Help? | Letters | Links | Lost Companion Animals | Photo Gallery | Rainbow Bridge | Stories | Videos | Volunteer |
Contact us at:
Animalkind Inc.is a not-for-profit welfare, protection, rescue, rights organization dedicated to the compassionate care and humane population control of abandoned, feral and stray cats in Hudson, New York (Columbia County) and the surrounding area. We promote non-lethal prevention of an unwanted litter or litters of kittens through trap, spay, neuter, release (return), (tnr, TNR). An altered cat or kitten is released into a managed colony. Felines living in such colonies are assured kind daily care. Adoption to homes providing love and care for cats and kittens is encouraged. We also provide low or no cost spaying and neutering assistance to low income pet owners and help increase public awareness and education through the media, special events, and publications to promote compassion, respect, and kindness towards all animals.
This site is hosted and maintained by:
The Mary T. and Frank L. Hoffman Family Foundation
Thank you for visiting all-creatures.org.
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by Ryan Singer, October 5 2004
The biggest challenge for web designers is the unthinkably huge number of possible ways to solve any given problem. We usually don't think of this because we have our habits and traditions to fall back on, but there are literally billions of possible pixel combinations for each page we make.
There is a better way to manage this vast complexity than by making big decisions up front and hoping for the best. To make better sites — sites that are functional, beautiful, and "usable" — we have to break our design problems up into small independent chunks based on the real issues within our requirements. Christopher Alexander, who came up with this stuff, calls these chunks patterns.
I'm going to show you how to sidestep your habits and assumptions and use patterns to make better design decisions. A lot of fancy stuff has been written about patterns. To be simple and clear in this introduction, I'll just call them chunks.
Start by making a list of all the specific bits that must fit together for the web page to succeed as a whole. By "bits" I mean any kind of design consideration. So this includes what info the page should get across, what actions it should support, important attitudes of the users, and so on. Do not prioritize, group, or categorize. If you start by grouping and organizing you'll just end up with your original habits and preferences in the end.
Here are the bits for a "My Account" page that I recently designed:
Do this on paper if you're working on your own. It's faster.
Some bits affect each other (like 7 and 12) while others are pretty independent (1 and 9). Some bits will work out better if you think of them together and some bits will be the same regardless of the others. Put the bits into chunks based on whether they impact each other — not based on any conceptual or graphic ideas.
A: 1, 10
B: 2, 9, 10
C: 3, 10, 11
D: 4, 10
F: 6, 10
G: 7, 12
Let's look at C for example:
3. My (current user) info
10. Any user can edit anything except other user's info
11. Changing password is most likely action
The password (11) is part of the user info (3) and this can all be edited (10).
Notice we're not building down from our assumptions. We're building up from what we know for sure.
Decide which chunks are most important from a functional perspective. In other words, decide which chunks matter most to people.
It isn't necessary to reorder the whole list. Just figure out which chunks are the most important and group them loosely:
Most important: C, A, G, E
Necessary: B, D, F
Nice to have: H
Since we grouped all the directly related bits into chunks, we can design the chunks independently without worrying about conflicts. This idea is the heart of Alexander's patterns (which I'm calling chunks). You can get them right on their own and then fuse them together.
Start with the high priority chunks and move down:
The blinky lines around G satisfy 12 by showing that it should stand out. ("12. People might come here to change search preferences").
This chunk can be duplicated for each additional user.
Notice how the above sketches use scale and weight to show priority. These decisions will guide you in the next step.
After the chunks are sketched, piece them together into a whole. Think about the constraints that went into the sketches. Think about priority. Think about balance. Do your design thing.
Here I did two phases. First the rough layout:
Does this remind you of a wireframe?
Next I did a loose sketch to guide my HTML prototype:
When you build the real thing you sometimes see that what worked on paper just isn't quite right on screen. In the final design I shifted the Company data (A) around for better balance and switched the sidebar (E,F,H) from the left to the right. I could tweak these chunks independently because they were designed independently. Have a look at the result:
In this article I treated patterns in a very simplified way, as chunks. You might be wondering well what are patterns then? Patterns play a significant role in architecture, urban planning, and recently software design. In all of these cases a pattern is a way of dealing with a system of interacting forces. When you find that you often design a sidebar for helpful notes, details and references, you're using a pattern. The interacting forces are the requirements of those little bits and how they relate to the main content, and the sidebar is the best way to deal with them.
For more on design patterns, see the links below or Google away.
Discuss this article on Signal vs. Noise.
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HOME | LAWS | ORGANIZATIONS | CASES | LEGISLATION | HEADLINES
Pennsylvania - Homeschoolers' Religious Freedom Case Can Proceed
Westmoreland County Court of Common Pleas Judge William J. Ober ruled on August 6, 2004 that a lawsuit challenging Pennsylvania's homeschool law may proceed.
Dr. Mark and Maryalice Newborn challenged the law under Pennsylvania's Religious Freedom Protection Act and the U.S. Constitution.
The defendant, Franklin Regional School District, had moved to dismiss the complaint, arguing that the Newborns had experienced insufficient harm to warrant judicial relief. Judge Ober categorically rejected all of the district's arguments.
The Newborns are represented by Home School Legal Defense Association Chairman and General Counsel Mike Farris, who argued the case on July 30, 2004. "Religious homeschoolers are over-burdened in Pennsylvania," said Farris. "Today's ruling is a significant first step toward relieving that burden."
Pennsylvania's homeschool law is one of the most restrictive in the nation. Homeschool families must provide detailed curriculum, submit to regular testing and have the homeschool program reviewed annually by certified teachers and by the district superintendent.
The Newborns are a family of seven who have been homeschooling for 11 years due to their sincere religious conviction that they, not the state, are responsible before God for their children's education.
According to the recently enacted Religious Freedom Protection Act, state officials are required to remedy substantial burdens imposed on a person's religious faith by any state statute. If the officials refuse to relieve the burden, the RFPA provides that the Courts of Common Pleas may order them to do so. The RFPA defines "substantial burden" as any law that "compels conduct or expression that violates a specific tenet of a person's religious faith."
"Dr. and Mrs. Newborns' religious convictions are shared by thousands of religiously-motivated homeschoolers in Pennsylvania and across the country," said Farris.
The school district must now file a response to the Newborns' complaint.
| Other Resources|
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The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, one of the National Institutes of Health, has awarded a contract to the University of Washington to use systems biology approaches to comprehensively analyze and model the virus-host interactions and cellular response networks that are induced or altered during the course of acute respiratory virus infection.
This new research program will be led by Dr. Michael Katze, UW professor of microbiology and associate director of the Washington National Primate Research Center. Katze will head a multidisciplinary team of researchers from the UW, University of Wisconsin-Madison, University of North Carolina, Oregon Health & Science University, and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, Wash.
The team will receive about $17 million over five years for the development of computational models of the host response to H5N1 avian influenza virus (“bird flu”) and severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) associated coronavirus, two highly pathogenic respiratory viruses that represent significant threats to human health and the global economy. These models will be premised on the acquisition of large datasets through high-throughput genomic, proteomic, and metabolomic technologies, using samples from a variety of biological model systems.
The goal is to generate predictive models that can be experimentally validated in an in vivo setting and which will reveal whether influenza and SARS viruses use common strategies to regulate cellular signaling circuitry and evade antiviral defenses. In addition, these large datasets, as well as the modeled interpretations, will be made freely available to the research community via the Internet, thus providing powerful resources for other scientists exploring viral diseases.
Systems biology provides global views, or models, of the vast numbers of molecular components and interactions that make up complex functions inside living things. The UW research program is unusual in that, in addition to the traditional simple cell culture models, it will also use mouse and nonhuman primate infection models. These animal models will allow researchers to study disease-relevant complexities, Such information is likely to help translate findings into new clinical initiatives, including new targets for therapeutic intervention. Understanding the initial, innate, antiviral response also has potential in developing alternative vaccine strategies, where such early signals are exploited to induce more robust adaptive immune outcomes.
“This program is distinctive in its comparison of different respiratory viruses and the incorporation of animal models,” said Katze. “There are few antiviral drugs available and none that work against diverse types of viruses. It would be extremely beneficial to have information that could lead to the rational design of a drug that could be used against a range of different viruses.”
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http://www.washington.edu/news/2008/10/16/national-institute-of-allergy-infectious-diseases-awards-uw-nearly-17-million-for-systems-biology-research-on-emerging-respiratory-viruses/
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| 2.046875
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How The Art Market Has Changed Since The 1980′s
I constantly hear of people using the weakening of the art market in the 1980’s as an excuse to not invest in art. Well I am here to tell you that the current art market is nothing like the art market in the 1980’s and here’s why:
-Globalisation: The globalisation of the art market has provided a far more stable and viable market than was available in the 80’s.
-Technology: The availability of information on art and the art market to a global audience means that people are far more knowledgeable and willing to invest in art. The internet has also allowed artists to expose their work to a world wide audience creating greater interest and demand
-Knowledge: Mistakes were made in the 80’s especially by those setting up art funds who didn’t utilise the appropriate amount of expertise from art market professionals instead relying primarily on financial experts who didn’t understand the workings of the art market well enough.
-Contemporary Art: The art market is currently being driven by contemporary art as opposed to the art market of the 80’s which was driven by more classical art. There are only a certain number of old masters to go around but the contemporary art market is continually providing new, fresh, exciting works all the time.
-Corporate Backing: Some of the worlds largest financial companies such as UBS, Deutsche Bank and Macquarie are all putting large amounts of money and effort into the art market. Would these global companies be actively be involved in the art market if they thought it would be destructive to their business in any way, I don’t think so.
So as you can see there is no point in comparing the current art market to the art market of the 1980′s. I am not saying that the huge boom will continue at its current rate but I think that there is enough evidence to support the view that the positive momentum of the art market is sustainable.
**Nicholas Forrest is an art market analyst, art critic and journalist based in Sydney, Australia. He is the founder of http://www.artmarketblog.com, writes the art column for the magazine Antiques and Collectibles for Pleasure and Profit and contributes to many other publications.
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A Smart Start For Your College Career
Submitted on June 26, 2012 at 2:28 PM
Volunteer State Community College is offering a new way to go to college. “College Reinvented” streamlines the college-going process to make it easier, while providing a clear path forward. Fast Track and Freshman Experience Track programs have an easier registration process, an established schedule of classes and extra academic support to help students succeed. Several classes in the tracks will be held with the same group of students. Group learning means that students can work together and help each other along the way. Tracks are simply the days and times these classes will be held. They also outline the path forward for the next semester.
The Freshman Experience Tracks are brand new this fall. Fast Track programs have been popular for several semesters. The differences between Fast Track and Freshman Experience Track programs are simple. Fast Track programs are accelerated, helping students achieve their goals quickly. They are also career-oriented certificates, which are measures of academic achievement useful in the career fields. Freshman Experience Track programs are designed to be an easier way for new students to get started on a college degree. Classes are taken at the same speed as traditional classes, but with added ease in registration and all of the extra academic support. There is a commitment required from students. They must commit to attend classes and participate in program activities.
The Freshman Experience Track programs are offered in several academic areas including Pre-Allied Health, transfer programs and Learning Support. The tracks are held on different days of the week to fit in with the student schedule. Fast Track programs are offered in Criminal Justice, Early Childhood Education, Logistics and Office Management Technology.
Seating is limited, so students are encouraged to act now. Interested students should contact Kristi Huffine, the Fast Track and Freshman Experience Track Coordinator, at firstname.lastname@example.org or 615-230-3619.
For more information visit: www.volstate.edu/reinvented
A service provided by the Office of Public Relations.
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The purpose of this report is to record the occurrence of diabetes mellitus in one of identical twins, the growth and development of both twins and dextrose tolerance studies of the nondiabetic twin. Because diabetes is rare in twins, especially in childhood, the opportunity to study a nondiabetic twin seldom presents itself. The present study is the first of this type to be described in the literature.
REPORT OF A CASE
Mildred and Helen S. were born at the Bronx Hospital June 20, 1930. The first child, Mildred, was born at 7: 50 a. m., by vertex presentation, weighing 5 pounds 4 ounces (2,381 Gm.). A second sac was then found. This was ruptured, and the second child, Helen, was delivered by breech extraction ten minutes later. Her birth weight was 5 pounds 9 ounces (2,523 Gm.). Only one placenta was delivered. The children developed normally until the age of
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Occupational, public and environmental radiation protection is a major challenge in the industrial applications of ionising radiation, both nuclear and non-nuclear, as well as in other areas such as the medical and research area. As is the case with all nuclear expertise, there is a trend of a decreasing number of experts in radiation protection due to various reasons. Therefore, maintaining a high level of competencies in this field is crucial for the future application of ionising radiation and to ensure the protection of workers, the public and the environment. A sustainable Education and Training (E&T) infrastructure for Radiation Protection is an essential component to combat the decline in expertise and to ensure the continuation of the high level of radiation protection knowledge in the future.
Such infrastructure has to be built in such a way that both the initial training (hereafter referred to as “Education”) and the unceasing maintenance of the level of competencies (hereafter referred to as “Training”) are available. Education is mainly provided by the universities leading to the legal recognition of the diplomas they deliver. On the other side, Training is usually the task of “training providers” such as Research Centres, Competent Authorities, and so on…
In particular, a recent study has shown that a wide variety of national approaches for E&T of the qualified expert, as required in the European Basic Safety Standards, exist in the EU Member States, the New Member States and the Candidate States. The development of a common European radiation protection and safety culture and, based on that, the mutual recognition for radiation protection courses and the acquired competencies of radiation protection experts becomes a real need. The harmonisation of E&T is a good starting point. Moreover, harmonisation will favour the mobility of workers and students throughout the European countries.
The main objectives of this project are:
- to better integrate existing education and training activities in the radiation protection infrastructure of the European countries in order to combat the decline in both student numbers and teaching institutions;
- to develop more harmonised approaches for education and training in radiation protection in Europe and their implementation;
- to better integrate the national resources and capacities for education and training;
- to provide the necessary competence and expertise for the continued safe use of radiation in industry, medicine and research.
These objectives will be reached by the establishment of a European E&T network in radiation protection which will:
- assess training needs and capabilities;
- identify the potential users and their future involvement in order to insure the sustainability of the network;
- launch a consortium of universities with the aim of create an European Master in Radiation Protection;
- review the scientific contents of E&T activities;
- explore the effectiveness of on-the-job training and identify options for additional programmes;
- propose recommendations for the recognition of courses and competencies of radiation protection experts;
- make recommendations for revising the current European Radiation Protection Course (ERPC) to include a system for credit points and modern educational tools, such as distance learning;
Two characteristics of this project need to be stressed on:
- the wish for promoting a “bottom-up” approach instead of the more usual “top-down”;
- the decision for developing a modular structure as well for the Education as for the Training programmes.
The main deliverables of the ENETRAP project are:
- the proposal for the establishment of a universities consortium;
- the delivery of a pilot session for the training in radiation protection;
- the recommendations to the EUTERP platform regarding the recognition of this training, especially for the qualified experts.
More information about the ENETRAP II project can be found at: http://enetrap2.sckcen.be/
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Occupy Wall Street: The Party’s OverIN Occupy Wall Street
In my first OWS post I stated that the OWS movement is truly non-partisan. Frank Rich, among many other cultural commentators has noted that both OWS and the Tea Party emerged out of frustration with the status quo in government today. Tea Partiers and Occupants share a belief that politicians have gone too far in putting corporate interests ahead of the interests of the people who elected them.
But the big difference between the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street (yeah, yeah, I know there are other differences as well) is that the Occupants have no intention of mounting a candidate for office.
And why would they? Unlike the Tea Partiers, who can point with disgust at the Democratic President at the helm of the power structure and believe that they could do better, the Occupants actually won the last Presidential election.
I remember the visceral euphoria you could feel among young people in NYC immediately after the 2008 Obama election. I was at a Decemberists concert at Terminal 5 the night after that election. The crowd was electric with thousands of 20- and 30-somethings chanting and cheering and passing around Obama cutouts. They had such hope, such joy in having had their voices heard, at having prevailed in the election.
But three years later, the crowd at Zuccotti Park looks a lot like the crowd at that Decemberists concert (though in fairness, OWS is a more diverse crowd, in terms of age and race, than the Decemberists crowd), but they are completely disillusioned. They won and life still stinks.
They know that backing another candidate in the traditional system will yield similar results. Whether on the Right or on the Left, politicians in America are so indebted to the corporate interests that both fund their campaigns and lobby incessantly, that the voice of the people no longer matters in government.
This is probably the single most important conversation to be having out of Occupy Wall Street. The corporate money that has funded traditional Republican and Democratic campaigns distorts our democracy in practice. In order to keep the money rolling in, viable candidates (those who have the funding to run a successful campaign) necessarily must put their corporate benefactors ahead of the citizens who, ostensibly, elect them.
America has been discussing campaign finance reform since the 1860s. But the system has remained more or less the same, with tweaks: Candidates raise as much money as they possibly can from whatever sources they can. Historically reforms have included changes to rules around disclosures and limits on campaign contributions.
However, this is not how elections are funded in much of the free world. In other democracies, elections are much shorter than they are in the U.S., campaigns are publicly funded, donations are anonymous, and funds are distributed equally among candidates for campaigning, in an attempt to level the playing field and allow for truly “free” speech. (You can read summaries of some other campaign finance systems on this Library of Congress website.)
Many traditional “Democrats” feel let down by the Democratic Party; just as many “Republicans” feel that they are no longer represented by their traditional party. But independent and third-party candidates don’t have the muscle and funds to compete effectively in the current campaign environment.
One of supporters of OWS who has commented here before mentioned that he voted for Ralph Nader in the last Presidential election, because he truly wanted to vote for change. But most people I know put their votes behind a traditional Democratic or Republican candidate so as not to “waste” their vote.
True campaign finance reform may be the impossible dream in America. After all, the reform would have to come from a Congress deeply invested in the existing system. For all our belief in progress and positive change, are we a country so bound to tradition that we are unwilling to walk away from a tradition that is no longer serving the original ideals our country was founded upon?
For real change to even begin to happen on an institutional level, voters of the Left and Right would have to work together outside of ideology, in the spirit of radical pragmatism, towards an unprecedented landslide referendum that couldn’t be ignored in the halls of existing big government. What is the likelihood of that happening?
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A defensive nervous system has a hard time adapting to novelty and filtering out extraneous information. What this means: when you put your shirt on in the morning, you feel it going on, maybe briefly noticing the texture of the silk or wool or cotton, and then your skin adapts to it and the sensation of your shirt on your skin no longer registers in your conscious awareness. Your nervous system is filtering it out, since it is not relevant. This way, your conscious awareness can focus on other things.
A defensive system, on the other hand, would constantly be sending messages: This shirt is itchy! This shirt is bugging me! The label is scratching my neck! The seams on my socks are rubbing my toes and causing huge, oozing, bloody blisters, I just know it! My jeans are too stiff! My underwear is too tight! The label on my panties is poking a hole in my back! My pencil is bugging my thumb! The teacher's voice is drilling a hole in my head! It's too noisy in this cafeteria, I can't eat! The food looks and smells disgusting! Oh, no, someone is getting too close to me, what if he wants to hit me, I'd better do something quick! Oh, no, the teacher is going to use chalk on the blackboard, what if it squeaks! The smell of finger paints is making me sick! The gym teacher is talking, but I can't figure out what she's saying over the rest of the shouting, and it's too loud in here anyway! What's that coming toward me! I hate playing basketball, it's dangerous!
It's challenging to pay attention and participate when your nervous system is constantly bombarding you with messages like that. I liken it to having a fever, when lights are too bright, everything feels scratchy, voices and sounds are too loud, and all you want to do is go home and put a blanket over your head. For a sensory defensive child, every day feels like that. When the sensory information that is bombarding them becomes too much to handle, one way of coping is to just tune out and shut down. If the child's teacher says that the child is often staring out the window, doesn't seem to understand what is being said, can't follow directions, wants to play by herself, hides in the corner, and rarely joins in during groups or at the playground, preferring instead to sit on the sidelines, this may be what is happening.
If a child is a chronic mouth breather or a shallow breather, this can also cause problems with attention and learning. A brain that is starved for oxygen is not one that is primed to pay focused attention. When we are anxious, our breathing tends to become shallow, and when we breathe shallowly, we tend to become anxious. If you don't believe me, try some shallow panting for a minute and notice the chemical reaction that results. An anxious child in chronic low level fight or flight mode is not in an optimal state for learning.
Children who have low trunk tone, are chronic slumpers, or who lay their bodies on their desks and have a hard time sitting up or sitting still, can have attentional problems because they don't have enough strength or energy to sit in one place for a long time. They are using up the energy they should be focusing on the lesson just to stay upright.
Low trunk tone also affects the fine motor coordination of the eyes, because they don't have a stable base of support from which to function. If you are struggling to see what you are doing, it is very difficult to sustain attention to close work.
Imbalances in neurotransmitters and brain chemistry can definitely affect a child's ability to focus. So can structural problems in the body.
Other factors that can affect a child's ability to attend include diet, food sensitivities, sleep patterns, elimination habits, and allergies.
In a future post I'll talk about referrals I make to specialists who treat these issues.
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Auditory stream biasing in children with reading impairments
Reading impairments have previously been associated with auditory processing differences. We examined auditory stream biasing, a global aspect of auditory temporal processing. Children with reading impairments, control children and adults heard a 10 s long stream-bias-inducing sound sequence (a repeating 1000 Hz tone) and a test sequence (eight repetitions of two pure tones of 1000 and 1420 Hz in an XYX-XYX pattern) with a variable delay interval (from 0.09 to 8 s) between the two sequences. Reading-impaired children had a significantly lower proportion of streamed responses than control children and adults. Streamed responses in reading-impaired participants differed according to their musical experience, but musically experienced reading-impaired participants were still significantly different from musically experienced controls. Reading impairments are associated with global differences in auditory integration, and musical experience needs to be considered when investigating auditory processing capabilities. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
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By Osama Diab
The power of an idea proved stronger than tanks, water cannons and bullets.
Thursday 16 February 2011
When I saw images of Tahrir Square’s peaceful-but-angry protesters gathering in the hundreds of thousands, I involuntarily linked them in my mind to images of police mistreatment of citizens, such as a man with one foot inside a public bus and the rest of his body hanging out, risking his life to go home. I knew that among these protesters were Egyptians who spent a big chunk of their lives waiting patiently in line for subsidised bread. I knew among them were mothers who had lost their sons, sunk in ships in an illegal and desperate attempt to seek a better life on the other side of the Mediterranean.
When I saw the protests in Tahrir Square, pictures of Khaled Said’s fractured skull [warning: exremely graphic image], of Emad Elkebir being sodomised with a cane by a police officer, of protesters being kidnapped by plain-clothed National Democratic Party thugs sprang to my mind. I remembered doctored pictures, state TV lies and the massive media outlets funded by our money to act as the propaganda arm of former president Mubarak’s regime. I remembered waking up every single morning of my life to Mubarak on the first page of the al-Ahram state-run newspaper on our breakfast table.
When I saw the anger, frustration, determination, resilience and great hope in a better future in the eyes of protesters, I also remembered what those who dreamed of change had to face other than state-security intimidation – except until a few months ago, those who have dreamed of change were scattered, unconnected, unorganised and weak.
These millions of people trying to pull down the Mubarak dictatorship have been told that political idealism is one thing and political reality is another. Political idealism in this battle was represented by protesters camping in Tahrir, driven by the desire for fresh political change, democracy, restoration of their dignity and a better future for their kids. They were armed with nothing but faith, sheer determination and great courage.
Political reality favours short-term, fake stability at the expense of freedom, human dignity and social justice.
For a long time, political idealists were accused of being naive. The power of their ideas – of liberty, freedom and justice – has always been underplayed. Ending the Egyptian dictatorship seemed like a mission impossible. It wasn’t a fight against one man, but against all Arab dictatorships, Israel and the United States, which all had vested interests in keeping Mubarak in power.
This scepticism was completely justified. Mubarak’s authoritarian infrastructure was a brilliant combination of three things: military loyalty, horrifying state security and intelligence apparatuses, and a ruling party of billionaire businessmen who help with funding this whole process of maintaining the status quo in return for “economic favours”. What is more, all this was internationally backed due to Mubarak’s good friendship with Israel – or, better said, Mubarak’s unquestioned obedience to Israel.
Amid all these challenges, how did peaceful protesters, armed with nothing but a love of dignity, freedom and social justice win this battle against political realism, despite the arrests of its members, the torture and killings? How did the mighty state security force collapse in a matter of a few hours? How was a cabinet of wealthy businessmen dismissed in a matter of days? How did one of the world’s worst dictators fall in just 18 days?
It’s because the power of an idea proved much stronger than the power of tanks, water cannons, bullets, batons, tear gas and Molotov cocktails. When the idea is right, it can prove more resilient than an out-of-its-mind police state, which wouldn’t hesitate before running over [warning: extremely graphic footage] peaceful protesters with ugly armoured vehicles.
I salute those who turned one of the world’s strongest men into one of its weakest, as well as those who did not favour a fake stability imposed by the heavy hand of brutal security over a stability driven by social equality and political freedom. But, most importantly, I salute those who gave their lives so that others can enjoy a better one.
This article first appeared in the New Statesman on 14 February 2011.
Facebook comments (Chronikler comments below)
Tags: al ahram, arab, citizen, democracy, dictatorship, dream, egypt, egyptian revolution, equality, freedom, israel, khaled said, mubarak, national democratic party, tahrir square, united states
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Support for HPV vaccine pilot programmes approved for eight developing countries
Geneva, 4 February 2013 – More than 180,000 girls in eight developing countries are set to receive protection against the leading cause of cervical cancer thanks to human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccines funded by the GAVI Alliance.
In an announcement made on World Cancer Day, the Alliance confirmed that Ghana, Kenya, Lao PDR, Madagascar, Malawi, Niger, Sierra Leone and Tanzania will become the first countries to receive GAVI support to start HPV vaccine demonstration programmes.
The demonstration programmes will give each country the opportunity to test their ability to put in place the systems that would be needed to roll out the HPV vaccines nationally and to inform their decisions. Unlike most other vaccines, which are administered to children under the age of five, HPV vaccines are given to girls aged nine to 13.
“Introducing the HPV vaccine in developing countries is the start of a global effort to protect all girls against cervical cancer,” said Dr Seth Berkley, GAVI CEO. “Of the 275,000 women who die of cervical cancer annually, 85% live in the world’s poorest countries. Cervical cancer is one of the leading cancer killers of women in the developing world.”
By 2015, GAVI plans to support more than 20 countries to vaccinate approximately one million girls with HPV vaccines through pilot projects. By 2020, more than 30 million girls are expected to have been vaccinated in over 40 countries with GAVI support.
Seven of the eight selected countries will begin introducing HPV vaccines this year targeting girls aged 9 to 13, mainly through schools but also community health programmes to reach girls who do not go to school. Ghana, Kenya and Sierra Leone are likely to be the first to begin administering HPV vaccinations in early 2013 with Tanzania planning to start next year.
GAVI-eligible countries which already have systems in place for national rollouts targeting adolescent girls can apply for funding without undertaking demonstration projects.
Introducing the HPV vaccine in developing countries is the start of a global effort to protect all girls against cervical cancer
Dr Seth Berkley, GAVI CEO
In some countries cervical cancer now kills as many women as childbirth, claiming a life every two minutes. Without changes in prevention and control, cervical cancer deaths are expected to increase to 430,000 each year by 2030, virtually all in developing countries. Immunising girls before sexual initiation – and before exposure to HPV infection – is a key strategy to preventing cervical cancer. Vaccination against HPV is only effective before the person is infected with the virus.
"It is imperative that young women and girls be protected against cervical cancer, the leading cause of cancer deaths in women in our region," said Hon. Catherine Gotani Hara, Minister of Health of Malawi. "Given that most women in Africa often lack access to screening and treatment services, the HPV vaccine is our best hope at protecting girls against this deadly disease. We applaud GAVI's commitment to make the HPV vaccine more accessible and affordable to Malawi and other low-income countries."
Half a million doses
UNICEF, a key GAVI partner, will procure the vaccines following a competitive tender process that is currently being completed. Merck and GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) are currently the only two manufacturers who have prequalified HPV vaccines.
GAVI has been working with vaccine manufacturers to secure the most affordable price for HPV vaccines. To date, one manufacturer has announced an indicative price of US$ 5 per dose, a 64% reduction on the current lowest public price. GAVI expects to secure a lower price for procurement of HPV vaccines, vital to the sustainability of current and future programmes.
One of the challenges to effectively delivering HPV vaccines is that many developing countries do not offer routine health services for girls in the 9 to 13 age group. Other challenges include identifying the appropriate target group, engaging with those at highest risk who may not be easily reached, and preventing a sexually transmitted cancer-causing infection that is minimally symptomatic or asymptomatic.
Learn by doing
The eight countries approved for GAVI support will “learn by doing” in order to make an informed decision on whether to expand their programmes nationwide and potentially build capacity to do so.
Initial experience in offering HPV vaccinations through schools in Africa, Asia and Latin America has been encouraging.
The introduction of HPV vaccines in developing countries also provides a window of opportunity to strengthen other adolescent health services, exploiting synergies with nutrition, HIV, sexual and reproductive health.
Professor Ian Frazer, creator of the HPV vaccine, welcomed GAVI’s announcement. “I am very pleased that GAVI is standing firm in its commitment,” he said. “Today’s announcement of country approvals for HPV pilot projects is another big step forward to ensuring that girls living in developing countries enjoy the same access to HPV vaccines as girls elsewhere in the world.”
GAVI is funded by the following governments, as well as private, corporate and foundation donors: Absolute Return for Kids (ARK), Anglo American plc, Australia, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Brazil, Canada, The Children’s Investment Fund Foundation (UK), Comic Relief, Denmark, European Commission (EC), France, Germany, His Highness Sheikh Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Ireland, Italy, JP Morgan, Japan, 'la Caixa' Foundation, LDS Charities, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Other private donors, Republic of Korea, Russian Federation, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, United Kingdom, United States of America.
Click to view the full donor list.
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Culture and community need stories
by Carle Steel
The Sâkêwêwak Storytellers Festival
MacKenzie Art Gallery and the Artesian
March 29 - 31
On the back of the Canadian 20 dollar bill, there's an illustration of a Bill Reid sculpture of a canoe overfull with characters from Haida mythology. Beside it, in tiny, bilingual type, reads a quote from Gabrielle Roy:
"Could we ever know each other in the slightest without the arts?"
It's a quaint thought now, in Stephen Harper's Canada, where when money talks it certainly doesn't say that. Especially in Reid's British Columbia, where the provincial government cut arts funding by 90 per cent with no political consequences.
These days, very few governments in Canada really care if we know each other in the slightest. Yet as arts advocates, we keep coming back with the same lame-ass argument for support for the arts. We often frame it in terms of our story, usually involving some sort of chafing solitude, domestic or political.
Not that our stories aren't good - we just have trouble expressing their worth to those in power. So we pull out statistics, drop names (Richard Florida, blah blah blah, Richard Florida) and impotently protest each small attack on our cultural institutions.
But these are our stooories, we cry. It's who we are.
Here in Saskatchewan, the arts are faring better than most places. It could be that our stories are more easily framed and understood. If so, it's due in part to the richness of First Nations' contributions to this great pool of narrative we call home.
From powerful myths and legends to post-contact tales of dread, when Aboriginal artists pull out a story, they don't fool around.
The Sâkêwêwak Storytellers Festival devotes itself to honouring all those stories. Featuring artists, performers, traditional knowledge keepers and academics, the Storytellers Festival will take a go at hashing out the stories around the negotiation of Treaty 4 and its meaning in today's social, spiritual, economic and political context.
"They say we are all Treaty people, but we're not," says Janice Acoose, a literary theorist and one of the speakers at this year's festival. A member of the Bird clan from Sakimay First Nation, she doesn't buy the 'we're all in it together' trope of modern education about the treaties.
"You don't carry a Treaty card and I do. It sets me apart," she says. "I wouldn't say we are all Treaty people, but I would say we all have responsibilities as a result of those treaties."
Those responsibilities go beyond what modern Canadians usually assume to be the extent of the trade of land for goodies out of Her Majesty's bounty and benevolence: reserve lands, five bucks every year, health care, education, and certain tax exemptions. It also includes the responsibility to respect First Nations people's right to practise their cultural traditions, which until recently was not respected (to put it mildly) by early Canadian governments, which, among other things, kept Indian reserves under virtual lockdown until the 1960s.
Against this historical backdrop, Acoose says First Nations people have a spiritual responsibility to themselves under the treaties: the duty to recognize their ancestors by carrying indigenous knowledge, culture, and spiritual traditions to future generations, and to retain the connectedness among families and clans that was so important to people pre-contact.
As a young mother, Acoose recognized that she had failed to live up to this part of the bargain.
"When my son was in university and he was learning about literature and heard some of our myths, he said, 'Mom, how come we didn't have stories when we were growing up?' It devastated me when I heard that," she says. "But he was right."
Acoose, who was raised in residential school, says though she had memories of stories and a basic understanding of Anishinabe language, she didn't have the political strength or formal education to articulate those stories to her children.
Acoose went on to become the first Aboriginal person to graduate with a doctorate in English in the province and has made it her life's work to carry those stories into the future.
BIG BROWN BLOBS AND OTHER PROBLEMS
Acoose reads another right between the lines of Treaty 4: literary sovereignty. "We have the right to name ourselves, affirm our beings, to interpret our own stories, to write and speak our own stories, to carry into them our own system of relations."
That's not to say others can't talk about those stories, says Acoose, but it's vital that First Nations people be heard above the din of white society and its ways of studying things.
All stories are political at their most basic level, Acoose says. "If you define politics as just meaning 'I am', set against somebody else who says 'I am', then whoever's voice is stronger is the one whose voice is heard."
In the world of literary theory, the measuring stick for the correct interpretation of Aboriginal stories and mythology is still based on white knowledge. The danger in that kind of interpretation reaches into a bigger kind of politics.
"We have become 'natives', nice brown native Canadians. We don't have culturally specific things that our kids understand anymore," says Acoose.
First Nations stories risk being incorporated into what she calls the Big Brown Blob - the kind of image of a nice, uniform native literature. There is no singular 'native literature', she says, there are only literatures, plural. "We come from many cultures and traditions and ways of life, even within the area of Treaty 4."
"It's the job of the literary theorist not just to say, 'this is a really interesting story,' but to acknowledge and interpret stories from a culturally specific perspective," she says.
The power of this kind of examination goes far beyond the university setting.
"As academics we can make connections to our community through political issues like treaty."
These connections and stories are something Acoose feels bound by her ancestors to embody and protect.
"I am my relations," she says.
For a full list of festival programming visit www.sakewewak.ca.
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With apologies to M. Scott Peck.
You know them, as do I. They are the people who have become so used to lying to get what they want that they actually believe their own lies and think you’re the one that's crazy for not believing them also. I know a few people like this. I was even married to one.
There are some people that put the cart in front of the horse; the conclusion is made first, then the premises are twisted to fit that conclusion.
Self-serving ideas are formed—to justify what they want--and these ideas become “fact” to them. Then, when those who have the horse-cart thing in the correct order try to show them that their cart is missing a wheel, has a hole in the bottom, or is made of rotting wood, they shut their ears and say “la-la-la-la-la.”
Or maybe a situation occurs, maybe an argument or maybe one of adversity, in which both you and that person participated.
When the person recounts the story, however, the pertinent facts are missing. Or, even if the facts do appear in the recount, they are so twisted that you don’t even recognize that it’s the same event. They are twisted, of course, in that person’s favor and to make you look like the bad guy.
Though you were there too, you find yourself wondering if maybe it was you who forgot what really happened. But only for a moment. Then you realize who or, rather, what you are dealing with.
You point out the “forgotten” facts to the person. Even if they still have a sliver of honesty left in them to acknowledge that they got the telling of the facts wrong, they will still make everything your fault.
“I did this because I know that you would have, too.” This, without giving an example of when you did the same thing.
“I did this because you did this.” The “this” will turn out to be something totally innocuous or even something that the two of you had agreed upon at the time. You throw up your hands.
They want whatever it is they want, the truth be damned. Their wants override any notions of honor, fidelity and morality.
You know what these people are called. Sociopaths.
I will admit to exhibiting some sociopathic behavior in my younger days. But, at some point, I realized that I was hurting people. At some point, I grew up; perhaps after bearing the brunt of others’ sociopathy. And it is a matter of growing up. After all, what are little babies but cute little bundled-up squalling psychopaths?
Beware of these people, these babies that have grown taller, but have never grown up. Some will merely become a blip in your rearview mirror—if you’re fortunate. It’s the ones that won’t go away, the ones that have the power to affect change for the worst on a large scale that are the problem. You have to keep an eye, or perhaps something more lethal, on these.
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Natural Gemstones have been treasured since ancient times and come in an amazing variety of colors, shapes, and sizes, and are purchased today for their aesthetic or symbolic value. When used in engagement ring settings, natural gemstones make beautiful alternatives to diamonds, or gorgeous side-stone accents that enhance a center diamond.
Precious colored gemstones are classified into different groups, species, and varieties. Of the 4 C’s, Color is the most important factor in valuating natural gemstones—color is evaluated according to hue, tone, and saturation. Another important factor in determining a gemstone’s value is Clarity. In some precious gemstones such as emeralds, inclusions are almost always present however, and clarity is less important to determining overall value.
Although natural gemstones are evaluated according to the 4 C’s, the process is slightly different than it is for diamonds. Many gemstones are heavier and bear a higher specific gravity than diamonds. Or, conversely, they are lighter per carat than a diamond of equal carat weight. As a result, a one-carat precious gemstone may appear smaller or larger in size than a one-carat diamond. As with diamonds, however, as carat weight increases, so does the price of the gem. Also, natural gemstones are commonly cut differently and deeper than diamonds. They are typically cut with more weight in the bottom to bring out the intensity of their color and some stones such as sapphire are generally shaped into ovals or cushions to retain maximum weight.
James Allen offers a range of high-quality natural gemstones: blue sapphires, pink sapphires, yellow sapphires, rubies, and emeralds—available in a range of hues and prices to meet any budget.
James Allen’s beautiful collection of high-quality sapphires are extremely durable— they have a hardness of 9 on the Mohs scale of mineral hardness. Yellow sapphires tend to have fewer inclusions than blue and pink varieties, although pink sapphires are the rarest and most valuable of the sapphire colors. Blue sapphires, on the other hand, are the most popular and traditional choice of sapphire.
When it comes to rubies and emeralds, James Allen offers an amazing array of choices. Because pink sapphires bear so many similarities to rubies, many people have a hard time deciding which one is right for them. A James Allen customer service representative can help you determine which precious gemstone is best for you.
Browse the James Allen natural gemstone collection gallery using the advanced selector tool, and learn more about gemstones at the James Allen Education Center.
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- About Us
- Contact Us
Frequently Asked Questions
Our mission is "To supply goods and service to patrons (on a cooperative basis) in a manner which enhances agriculture and the communities we serve and its members."
A cooperative is a company that is owned and controlled by its customers and operated for their benefit. (This compares with a private company that is stockholder owned and controlled.) Customers of Federated Co-ops gain ownership by doing business with the company and earning patronage. Patronage—the profit earned on the customers' business—is paid out partly in cash and partly in equities retained to operate the company. These equities are returned to the customer at a later date, as provided in the co-op's bylaws. Just one dollar of equity purchases a share of stock in the cooperative and a vote at the annual members meeting. Members elect the board of directors, who then hires the general manager of the cooperative.
You need not be a farmer to buy from Federated Co-ops or to become a voting member. Just open an account and begin doing business at any of our locations.
Several co-ops merged over a period of years to form Federated Co-ops. These were largely farmer co-ops. Today, however, there are many non-farmers living and working in our market area, which was once rural farmland. Our customers are white- and blue-collar workers, and town and county residents, as well as farmers. As a cooperative, our mission is to supply goods and services to all of our customers. As residential customers moved into our rural farmland, we adjusted our service to meet the needs of these patrons as well.
Our core businesses are agronomy and energy. Most co-ops got started selling power fuels to farmers. A natural extension of that business was to provide propane for home heat to both farmers and non-farmers. Later, as use of crop nutrients and crop protection products grew, cooperatives entered the agronomy business. Today, co-ops also provide genetically modified seed to protect plants against weed and insect pests. While energy and agronomy are Federated Co-ops’ core businesses, the co-op has responded to a growing demand for lifestyle products by converting space at its ag centers to retail and by building country stores. These retail outlets offer feed products for horses and other companion animals, tack, bird seed and feeders, power tools, and outdoor clothing. The co-op also operates a handful of convenience stores and one lumberyard.
Along with three other co-ops and Land O’Lakes® Purina Feeds, Federated owns 10% of Munson Lakes Nutrition (MLN), a feed manufacturer at Howard Lake, MN. MLN supplies bulk feeds to our customers who are livestock producers and bagged feeds to Federated Co-ops’ Country Stores. Federated Co-ops is also the majority owner of M.I.K Trucking, which transports energy and agronomy products from rail and pipeline terminals to Federated bulk plants or direct to the customer. In addition to the above, Federated Co-ops has marketing relationships with Askov-Finlayson Co-op (Askov, MN) in propane, with Centra Sota Cooperative (Buffalo, MN) in agronomy, and with Sunrise Ag Co-op (Buckman, MN) in propane.
Big compared to what? We’re not as big as the nationally owned propane companies with which we compete, and we’re not as small as some neighboring agronomy companies that have difficulty affording the technology and expertise to serve their farmer-members. Members of Federated Co-ops currently enjoy the best to two worlds. The co-op continues to maintain a local presence in the communities it serves, giving customers a face to go with the voice over the phone. And because it’s a cooperative, our members have a voice in how the company is operated. At the same time, through planned growth, Federated Co-ops has achieved an economy of scale that allows it to operate efficiently, to purchase in quantity, and to absorb some risk for its members. As an example, we own and operate a rail terminal at Cambridge, MN, which allows us to bring in and store propane by tank car, when pipelines are out. Because of our size, we can employ experienced staff to maintain a safety program that benefits both our customers and our employees. We can operate a truck fleet necessary to bring propane to our bulk facilities from a distance during times of short supply. We can also afford specialized equipment and technology required to better serve both farm and non-farm customers. Finally, our current size allows us to be profitable and maintain financial strength, which is necessary to continue serving our members.
It begins with those words because the essence of our business is our employees serving their friends and neighbors—the people who own this company. Our employees have more than a business relationship with our customers. Because we live in close proximity, our contact is not limited to business. Our families participate in school, church, and community events together. We genuinely care about each other and take personal interest in each other’s lives. In an impersonal world of big-box stores, this sets Federated Co-ops apart.
They think of quality and good value. Rather than supplying low-grade, economy products and services, Federated Co-ops presents its customers with trusted brands that are safe and durable, delivering good value for their money. That’s why the second part of our Brand Vision is “Products you Trust.” But, quality is more than well-made products. It is also consistent employment of people with the knowledge and expertise to tell our customers how to get the best results from these products. Turnover rates among Federated Co-ops employee groups are well below industry averages, assuring a continuity of customer relationships that is priceless.
Since we’re locally owned by the people who do business with us, we’re not going to pick up and leave as soon as the economic winds change. Furthermore, Federated Co-ops is financially strong. In today’s economic turmoil, that’s reassuring to our customers who are now pre-paying farm inputs and energy products. Their money is safe with us. There is great security in knowing this company will be able to meet the needs of its customers because we have a firm financial foundation and because our purpose is to serve our customer-owners for as long as they need us. That’s the origin of the third part of our Brand Vision, which is also our Brand Promise: “Value for Life.”
Products we handle, like propane and ag chemicals, have an inherent danger. What measures does Federated Co-ops take to keep employees and customers safe?
Training, training, training. With our size, we’re large enough to have a safety director to oversee training and make sure we are consistent. With our low turnover, we train people and they stay with us. They have the knowledge they need, on a long-term basis, to handle the products we provide. Even with training, new employees may not have the experience necessary to handle these products safely. Long-term, well-trained, and seasoned employees are the safest at handling dangerous chemicals. Federated Co-ops nurtures a culture of safety and has committed to spending money for safety equipment, safety training for our employees, and hiring the personnel necessary see that our training and safety policies are carried out.
The three tenets of our Brand Vision set us apart: People who care. Products you trust. Value for life. But the biggest and most important of those is our high-quality employee group. They’re local, they’re knowledgeable, and many of them have worked for Federated Co-ops for years. They really do care, because the customers they serve are their friends and neighbors. In addition to the tenants of our Brand Vision, our financial stability sets Federated Co-ops apart from the competition. This, and the fact that we are a cooperative, means we should be around to serve our customers-owners for many years. We’re not driven exclusively by the bottom line and apt to leave the area or exit the businesses we operate as soon as economic winds change. We’re here to meet the needs of our customers, while staying profitable so we can continue to serve.
We have roots in the early 1900's, when farmers and residents of rural Minnesota formed cooperatively owned companies to market their dairy products and assure themselves a reliable source of feed and fuel as well as groceries, machinery, lumber, trucking, and even funeral services. At least 24 local cooperatives (one founded as early as 1907) joined together in several mergers over the years. A final merger in 2001 formed Federated Co-ops, Inc., headquartered in Princeton, MN. CAP Trico Oil and Propane of Cloquet, MN has joined this union in 2007, making Federated Co-ops, Inc. the 18th largest U.S. propane supplier. Below is a list of co-ops that merged over the years, eventually forming Federated Co-ops, Inc:
- Farmers Co-op Creamery, Milaca, MN (later renamed Mille Lacs Ag Service and headquartered at Pease, MN)
- Farmers Cooperative Association, Princeton, MN
- Kanabec County Cooperative Oil Association, Mora, MN
- Ogilvie Co-op Exchange
- Hinckley Co-op Feed Mill
- C-A-P Cooperative Oil Association (later known as C.A.P. Propane Plus, Kettle River, MN)
- Trico Cooperative Oil Association (later known as Trico Oil & Propane Cooperative)
- Mille Lacs County Cooperative Oil Association
- Pine County Cooperative Association, Pine City, MN
- Pine County Farmers Exchange
- Braham Co-op
- Rush City Co-op
- Hinckley Co-op Stores
- Federated Co-ops, Inc of East Central Minnesota (later called Federated Propane)
- Isanti County Cooperative Association
- Princeton Cooperative Association, Princeton, MN
- Isle Cooperative Oil Association, Isle, MN
- Chisago Lakes Cooperative
- Central Rivers Cooperative
- Polk County Co-op, Osceola, WI
- C.A.P.-Trico Oil & Propane Cooperative, Cloquet, MN
- Wright County Co-op, St. Michael, MN
- Benton County Co-op, Foley, MN
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Republicans in Congress were just barely able to extend for 90 days funding of nationally important transportation projects. The only conclusion is that the GOP has become, collectively, a fifth column traitor against our future economic health.
From the Economist:
The Treasury has just published a white paper full of reasons to favour additional investment. Even if you are sceptical of the utility of fiscal stimulus qua stimulus, now seems like a very good time to undertake much more investment than normal. As the Treasury paper points out, very low interest rates and high unemployment mean that the odds of crowding out private spending and investment are much lower than normal. Cheaper than normal capital and labour also imply that taxpayers will receive a better deal on spending than would typically be the case. The cost-benefit calculus on infrastructure investment has shifted toward doing more of it, or at least squeezing more expected investment into the present period. Other research, like the new Brookings paper by Brad DeLong and Larry Summers, also indicates that the bar for greater investment should be lower. Given the potential that unemployment will become increasingly persistent as time goes on, the value of government spending that reduces joblessness—even temporarily—is higher than may be appreciated. Any projects that seemed like good ideas in general, and there are a lot of them, look like really, really good ideas now.
And yet Congress has struggled mightily to keep even existing spending going. The nation’s primary transportation-funding law expired in 2009. Normally a wholesale replacement or reauthorisation would follow that expiration; Congress has instead repeatedly extended the old law while bickering over how to come up with money to replace the increasingly meagre take from the nation’s petrol tax. The latest extension is set to expire, and legislators are arguing over what to do next. They might extend the measure again—for 60 to 90 days. Or they might stonewall themselves into a temporary shutdown of all federally funded projects.
Inaction is absurd and embarrassing, especially since funding is the primary (though not the only) source of disagreement and the costs of borrowing and unemployment (and the likelihood of a decent return on infrastructure investment) indicate that just borrowing the money to spend on new roads and rails would be a reasonable course of action. If ever there should have been a policy so obviously sensible as to attract bipartisan support, more money for infrastructure was it. Right now, when it comes to partisan politics, sensibility’s got nothing to do with it.
Beezer here. How else to figure it? Big oligopolies in Banking, Fossil Energy, Agriculture and Health Insurance are funding Super PACs which daily bombard us with propaganda about how they still need subsidies and protections against competition. Tea Partiers and Libertarians are so disgusted with our government’s inability to help ‘We the People,’ they’ve paradoxically joined forces with the oligopolies–the very forces that bribe our government to insure our government serves the wealthy oligopolies instead of the general population.
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Due to a technical issue, some works listed as on view may not be at this time. We apologize for any inconvenience. Please contact 212 423 3618 with any questions or concerns.
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b. 1882, Reggio Calabria, Italy; d. 1916, Sorte, Italy
Umberto Boccioni was born on October 19, 1882, in Reggio Calabria, Italy. In 1901 he went to Rome, where he studied design with a sign painter and attended the Scuola Libera del Nudo at the Accademia di Belle Arti. In Rome he and Gino Severini learned the techniques of divisionist painting from Giacomo Balla. Boccioni traveled in 1902 to Paris, where he studied Impressionist and Post-Impressionist painting. He participated in the Mostra dei rifiutati in 1905 and in the Esposizione di belle arti in 1906, both in Rome.
Following a trip to Russia in 1906, Boccioni visited Padua and then moved to Venice, where he spent the winter of 1906–07 taking life-drawing classes at the Accademia di Belle Arti. In 1907 he settled in Milan. In 1909–10 Boccioni began to frequent the Famiglia Artistica, a Milanese artists’ society that sponsored annual exhibitions. During this period he associated with Carlo Carrà and Luigi Russolo, and met the poet Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, who had published the first Futurist manifesto in February of 1909. In 1910 Boccioni participated in the formulation of the two Futurist manifestos Manifesto dei pittori futuristi and Manifesto tecnico della pittura futurista. He, Carrà, Russolo, and Severini signed the first, and were joined by Balla in signing the second. That same year Boccioni’s first solo exhibition was held at the Galleria Ca’ Pesaro in Venice.
In the fall of 1911 the artist went to Paris, where he met Pablo Picasso and Guillaume Apollinaire through Severini. Boccioni’s paintings were shown with those of Carrà, Russolo, and Severini in the first Futurist show in Paris, at the Galerie Bernheim-Jeune in 1912. The exhibition then traveled to London, Berlin, and Brussels. In 1912 Boccioni began concentrating on sculpture, and his Manifesto tecnico della scultura futurista was published. From 1912 to 1914 he contributed articles to the Futurist publication Lacerba. In 1913 the artist showed sculpture and paintings in a solo show at the Galerie de la Boétie in Paris, and his sculpture was included in the inaugural exhibition of the Galleria Futurista Permanente in Rome. His book Pittura e scultura futuriste (dinamismo plastico) appeared in 1914. In July of 1915 Boccioni enlisted in the army with Marinetti, Russolo, and Antonio Sant’Elia. He suffered an accident during cavalry exercises in Sorte near Verona, and died on August 17, 1916.
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Edited for the differences portion of the question:
For the most part, TKD is TKD is TKD. A front kick in WTF looks like a front kick in ITF looks like a front kick in ATA, etc. Differences in execution are relatively minor, even if you go from TKD to a Karate flavor, the techniques are pretty much the same. The differences between TKD and Karate are the emphases placed on various techniques. TKD in general tends to favor more leg techniques and less hands, while Karate is more towards the hands. Where the TKD flavors differ majorly is in forms and tournament sparring rules. WTF uses TaeGuk, ITF uses Palgue, ATA uses Songahm form sets, WTF sparring requires a fairly heavy hit while ATA sparring is light contact. It's not a huge difference in the tools, but in the application of said tools.
There is a chance that Karate could be included in the Olympics. Golf and Rugby are on the slate for the 2016 Rio Olympics. They changed the rules slightly, in that there are 25 "Core" sports, and room for 3 rotating sports. The rotating sports can be included or removed from the program by a simply 2/3 majority vote among IOC voting members.
After each Olympics, the IOC gets together and decides the inclusion or exclusion of sports, which is where the lobbying and confirmation of Olympic eligibility and all of that occurs. It's covered in Chapter 5 of the Olympic Charter (Last revision in 2010 or 2011, IIRC.) I think the earliest karate could be included now would be the 2020 Games.
Where I would see Karate being different from TKD, and thus meriting inclusion is if they modeled it after a NASKA event, and had such things as creative/extreme forms, breaking and weapons competitions.
As far as the differences in techniques, remember that you are seeing a limited set of techniques that are designed to score points according to the rules. (Like boxing, that uses head gear for Olympic bouts.) TKD schools do teach the other techniques, but it's hard to score points in WTF style sparring using those techniques, so you rarely see them in competition. In that sense, yes, there is a divergence. You can find WTF tournament schools that place a heavy emphasis on tournament styles, and "traditional" TKD schools that don't support tournaments much and place a different emphasis on techniques used.
One interesting rule change for Olympic TKD (In the whole anti-concussion movement in sports in general) is that head contact now only has to make contact to score a point, which is a big downgrade from the contact needed previously. I have not found whether this change is in effect for the Olympics only, or if it will be continued after the Games are over.
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SymptomsBy Mayo Clinic staff
There are four major dissociative disorders defined in the current edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DMS), published by the American Psychiatric Association:
- Dissociative amnesia
- Dissociative identity disorder
- Dissociative fugue
- Depersonalization disorder
Signs and symptoms common to all types of dissociative disorders include:
- Memory loss (amnesia) of certain time periods, events and people
- Mental health problems, including depression and anxiety
- A sense of being detached from yourself (depersonalization)
- A perception of the people and things around you as distorted and unreal (derealization)
- A blurred sense of identity
Dissociative disorder symptoms (depending on the type of disorder) may include:
- Dissociative amnesia. The main symptom of this condition is memory loss that's more severe than normal forgetfulness and that can't be explained by a medical condition. Amnesia that comes on suddenly following a traumatic event, such as a car accident, is rare. More commonly, you simply can't recall traumatic periods, events or people in your life, especially from childhood.
- Dissociative identity disorder. This condition, formerly known as multiple personality disorder, is characterized by "switching" to alternate identities when you're under stress. In dissociative identity disorder, you may feel the presence of one or more other people talking or living inside your head. Each of these identities may have a unique name, personal history and characteristics, including obvious differences in voice, gender, mannerisms and even such physical qualities as the need for corrective eyewear. There also are differences in how familiar each identity is with the others. People with dissociative identity disorder typically also have dissociative amnesia.
- Dissociative fugue. The main sign of this condition is creating physical distance from your real identity. For example, you may abruptly leave home or work and travel away, forgetting who you are and possibly adopting a new identity in a new location. People experiencing dissociative fugue may be easily able to blend in wherever they end up. A fugue episode may last only a few hours or, rarely, as long as many months, and then end as abruptly as it began. When it lifts, you may feel intensely out of sorts, with no recollection of what happened during the fugue or how you arrived in your current circumstances.
- Depersonalization disorder. This disorder is characterized by a sudden sense of being outside yourself, observing your actions from a distance as though watching a movie. The size and shape of things, such as your own body or other people and things around you may seem distorted. Time may seem to slow down, and the world may seem unreal. Symptoms may last only a few moments or may come and go over many years.
When to see a doctor
If you or someone you love has significant, unexplained memory loss or experiences a dramatic change in behavior when under stress, talk to a doctor. A chronic sense that your identity or the world around you is blurry or unreal also may be caused by a dissociative disorder. Effective treatment is available for these conditions. Seek medical help.
If you or your child experiences abuse or another traumatic situation, talk to a doctor as soon as possible. Early intervention and counseling may help prevent the formation of dissociative disorders.
- Dissociative disorders. In: Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders DSM-IV-TR. 4th ed. Arlington, Va.: American Psychiatric Association; 2000. http://www.psychiatryonline.com. Accessed Nov. 30, 2010.
- Maldonado JR, et al. Dissociative disorders. In: Hales RE, et al., eds. The American Psychiatric Publishing Textbook of Psychiatry. 5th ed. Arlington, Va.: American Psychiatric Publishing; 2008:665. Accessed Nov. 30, 2010.
- Simeon D. Dissociative disorders. The Merck Manuals: The Merck Manual for Healthcare Professionals. http://www.merckmanuals.com/professional/sec15/ch197/ch197a.html. Accessed Nov. 30, 2010.
- Dissociative identity disorder. Sidran Institute. http://www.sidran.org/sub.cfm?contentID=75§ionid=4. Accessed Nov. 30, 2010.
- Hall-Flavin DK (expert opinion). Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minn. Dec. 7, 2010.
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As one prominent member of the open source community and I were discussing last week at OSCON, it’s human nature to occasionally take important things for granted, and not give them the attention that they deserve. Such is the case, in my opinion, with the application management situation in the Linux and, to a lesser extent, Solaris worlds. It’s my belief, as I mentioned to folks from Sun and the OSDL last week – and Red Hat the week before, that both of these operating systems have a significant advantage over Windows in the application management department. To explain why, let’s do a Q&A.
Q: Before we get into the why, can you explain what you mean by application management? The term seems to mean different things to different people.
A: True enough. For my purposes here, I’m simply defining application management as the ability for an end user (of any type, desktop or server, test or production) to procure, install and manage an application that sits on top of the OS. That could be anything from end user note taking, PIM or office productivity applications to higher end database, web or application servers.
Q: Ok – given that definition, how do Linux and Solaris have an advantage over Windows?
A: Well, to answer that let’s first look at the application management process for Windows. First off, the process is distinct as one might expect for Microsoft applications versus non-Microsoft applications. For the latter, software is procured, either through physical media or download (often hunting through pages of sites to find the actual download), and installed via some form of installer software. Typically, this software registers itself with Windows and is centrally removable via the Add/Remove Programs facility that the operating system provides.
But from that point forward, Windows as an operating system does little, if anything, to assist in the ongoing management of that software. Patching, application updates, and other modifications to the installed applications are essentially left to the user, the application provider, or third party software to manage. For Windows applications, the situation is somewhat improved, as much (but not all) of the Microsoft portfolio can be managed on an ongoing basis via the Office and Windows Update web services.
Application providers have begun to realize the impact of this and are scrambling to provide their own update facilities; Firefox may be the most notable recent example. But the fact of the matter is that a great deal of Windows based applications provide no such facility, and as a result become out-of-date, and worse, may become vulnerable due to a lack of security patches. Anyone who maintains computers for friends and family, or servers for the home office or small enterprise likely knows what I’m talking about.
Further, end users seeking software functionality without an idea in mind of the application they want to use have no way, in Windows, for seeking potential solutions. At that point its consultants, or maybe Google. It’s not possible, for example, to query Windows and say, “I need an SSH client – what do you have available?”
In short, the application management solutions for Windows are barely adequate in the case of Microsoft packages, and even less so with the volume of non-Microsoft software written for Windows.
Q: With you so far, but how are Linux and/or Solaris any better?
A: Well, its mostly because both have evolved over time an infrastructure that streamlines the discovery, installation and ongoing management of applications. Ironically, this is likely a result of the fact that the typical installation for Unix based operating systems (./configure, make, make install) is more difficult for non-technical users than simply clicking on a .exe file in Windows.
Let’s take Linux first, as it has in my opinion the more sophisticated application management options at the present time. I’ve written on several occasions in the past (see here or here) about Gentoo’s Portage, which essentially is a package/application management application at the heart of the distro that leverages a massive, community maintained library of applications available for the platform. You simply tell Portage what application you want, and it will
- Determine what other applications are needed
- Download them all for you
- Install the application and its dependencies
- Allow you to update and/or remove them as necessary via a central database
Need Apache? It’s in there, with multiple versions. MySQL? Ditto. (see inset picture) Need an SSH client or library? A quick query of Portage turns up over 20 SSH related tools. Virtually anything you might want is in there, or will be soon.
Gentoo is certainly not the only distribution with such a facility, of course. Most distros that I’ve worked with have some equivalent functionality; Debian and Ubuntu share apt-get, Fedora has yum, NLD/SuSE has Red Carpet, and so on. The concept then is hardly a unique one; the differences in the individual implementations seem to be first in the granularity and functionality of the tool involved, and second in the size of the application library behind the tools.
And speaking of library size, that brings us to Solaris. Solaris and its open-source instantiation OpenSolaris do not have as yet – with the exception of efforts like Schillix – a sizable community of different Solaris distributions (though Jonathan Schwartz did speak positively of the this possibility at OSCON). While they lack variety there, however, they have at their disposal a tool similar to Debian’s apt-get called pkg-get, which leverages the library of Solaris-compatible applications maintained by the folks at Blastwave.org. Compared to the library behind a facility like Portage, however, the Blastwave library is relatively small (
some 300+ applications, last time I checked Dennis Clarke wrote in to provide a number of 1100+ applications in the Blastwave library, which is supported by my unofficial count of 1115 applications as of this morning – taken from here. Thanks for the update, Dennis. As for the original comparison of libraries, I did a similar check on packages.gentoo.org at the same time and received a count of 9928, so I believe the point still stands. It’s important to note, however, that Gentoo has been around a lot longer and therefore should be expected to have the more sizable library.).
Q: But isn’t there the possibility that these application management facilities will compete with commercial versions, such as the Red Hat network?
A: Great question. The answer, in my opinion, is no. Here’s why:
- I accept as a given that community maintained libraries will always be more comprehensive and long tail-ish than commercial equivalents
- I further accept as a given that big commercial entities would prefer to pull their version of, say, MySQL from a commercial network versus a library maintained by individuals without commercial needs in mind
- I accept as likely that commercial ISVs would prefer to work with commercial networks
In short, I think there’s an excellent opportunity for commercial and community networks to function seamlessly side-by-side, each serving different needs and having different strengths. For example, I spoke with Red Hat two weeks ago about updates to the Red Hat Network and recommended that they provide hooks or APIs from yum into the network. Either network by itself is incomplete, in my view. Commercial networks will always lag non-commercial ones in terms of application breadth and depth, and non-commercial networks are unlikely to be perceived as a viable basis for higher end enterprise needs.
Q: So what’s the catch?
A: The catch, at least as far as Linux is concerned, is that each individual distribution is effectively creating redundant libraries. This means that at least some of the effort poured into the distributions mentioned above is wasted effort. Because each distribution infrastructure operates differently (e.g. source code for Gentoo, versus RPMs for Fedora) every distro needs to repackage the individual applications for their own Linux flavor. Thus far this has proved to be sustainable – it’d be difficult to argue against the strength of the Debian or Gentoo libraries – but it also seems clear that if, in the longer term, a standard packaging mechanism could be developed and shared amongst the various distributions that’d be a big time saver for the individual communities.
In this respect, Solaris/OpenSolaris would seem to have something of an advantage in that they can solve this problem before different packaging systems proliferate by annointing the preferred approach. Maybe there’s room for both pkg-get and Portaris, but having a standard package format would be hugely benefical I think. That point is important, because I’m not saying any one of the package applications – apt-get, Portage, Red Carpet or yum should be adopted universally; rather I’m saying that having them all operating off of the same package structure – and therefore, library – would be ideal.
Q: Do you think it’s realistic that the different distributions can agree on a standardized method of distributing packages? Isn’t that what RPM was for?
A: No, and yes. I don’t think that at least in the short term its feasible that all of the different distros can coalesce around a single way of doing things; they’ve evolved to meet their own needs, their are backward-compatability and dependency issues to consider, and then there are the sea of existing packages. But I don’t think this is necessary. As to the second question, yes RPM was designed by Red Hat I believe at least in part to solve some of these very problems. And because it enjoys widespread commercial support, this might be a format to look to as far as standardization goes – particularly given its adoption within the LSB. The format is just part of the solution, not the solution itself.
Q: Why don’t you think it matters that the Linux distros can’t agree on a single format?
A: Because the larger distributions are doing just fine maintaining their own libraries at the moment. All of those mentioned here have very vibrant application ecosystems served by their different application management systems. As it stands right now, it’s easier to maintain a complex application portfolio with respect to updates and patches on Linux or Solaris than it is on Windows. As alluded to above, however, I do believe that Linux and potentially Solaris should market this strength more aggressively than they have in the past.
Q: In what respect?
A: When I talk about Portage to people, their eyes tend to glaze over and they start fidgeting. When I show it to them, however, they get it right away. The fact that, with a single command, I can update every application on my machine – or any subset I choose – is immensely interesting to technologists who appreciate the difficulty in maintaining applications over the longer term. Because its boring to talk about, however, it’s my opinion that many Linux advocates have largely ignored the value of the functionality – particularly given the lack of a Windows equivalent.
To be clear, however, I’m not recommending that Linux trumpet a “forest of applications” message. As Asa apparently noted during his OSCON keynote (missed it), the sheer volume of choices within Linux can serve as a deterrent to potential adopters. Instead the focus should be on maintaining the applications you need, longer term. Take Ubuntu as an example; this distro makes choices for the user (GNOME, Firefox, and so on), very much in the Firefox style of keeping things simple. But the apt-get infrastructure underlying Ubuntu can make maintaining that selection of applications very easy, while simplifying the process of dropping in a new application or two when necessary.
Q: Could Windows offer similar functionality?
A: They undoubtedly could, but several factors argue against it. First, the sheer volume of Windows applications is overwhelming. Maintaining that massive a library of applications would be difficult, even for a sizable community. Not impossible, but difficult. Second, it’s unclear to me how adept the Office/Windows Update infrastructure would be at managing non-Microsoft packages and applications. I frankly don’t know whether or not they have or could add that capability. Lastly, the model works well for Linux and probably for Solaris because they don’t have the same ambitions as Windows, feature/function-wise. There would seem to be more applications that competed with features in Windows than in Linux or Solaris, which would seem to dampen any enthusiasm by Microsoft for such an effort. All that said, however, could Microsoft offer more of a commercially oriented network, featuring its own products and certain tight partners? Certainly.
Q: Where might such an effort to standardize application management reside?
A: Unclear. Well, for OpenSolaris I’d expect it to start with the CAB. In the Linux world, which as mentioned seems to be trucking along fine without it, I can see different opportunities for different parties (might help the non-commercial folks gain weight as a more unified institution when competing against the big two, for example). For macro level conversations, however, I’d imagine some combination of the LSB and OSDL would have to be involved. When I spoke with them, the OSDL recommended the LSB. Irrespective of whether Linux addresses this on a cross-distro level, however, the advantage is still one that should be pressed.
Q: Any last thoughts?
A: Just that I believe that its important for commercial entities to acknowledge the community in these sorts of efforts. There are hundreds of PMC’s and devs out there busting their asses to bring users such as myself an outstanding end user experience. Rather than investing time and effort into competing with these communities, why not try and understand how to work alongside them, leveraging the different strengths each party brings to the table?
Update: Corrected the number of available applications within the Blastwave.org library, per comments from Blastwave’s Dennis Clarke. Provided a fixed Gentoo library number while I was at it. Appreciate the feedback, Dennis.
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According to an analysis of the language used on Twitter,
have found that users of the social networking site tend
to form into "tribes".
Those who use certain words are overwhelmingly more likely to
communicate primarily with others who use similar words, argues
Vincent Jansen who published the report. Those "tracer" words are
often based on political interests, ethnicity, work and
For example, the largest group in the analysis frequently used
the words "nigga", "poppin'" and "chillin'". This group was also
the most tight-knit, sending 90 percent of messages to other
members of that group.
Jansen added: "Interestingly, just as people have varying
regional accents, we also found that communities would misspell
words in different ways. Justin Bieber fans have a habit of ending
words in 'ee', as in 'pleasee'."
The findings suggest that social media users join communities in
the same way humans have historically self-organised, contradicting
the belief that users share everything with everyone.
The research was published in
open-access journal EPJ Data Science.
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Last week I reviewed the Me To You (Tatty Teddy) CD and mentioned there wasn’t a crop tool and that although there were options for square project templates, some of the background papers I wanted to use were rectangular on the; All Occassions CD. Well I had a play and found a solution. So today I’ll share a tutorial for how to make square paper from the rectangular one supplied.
You Will Need
- A computer and a mouse or graphics tablet.
- Me To You CD with Docrafts digital Designer installed on your computer.
This is simple, promise, it only looks long as I’m writing EVERY step. Just in case this is your first time with the program.
- Double click on your Docrafts designer to open the program
- Open your blank square page or blank square card by clicking on it from the on screen list
- On the right you see your discs, choose one and click on it. From the list of items on the disc, choose background papers. Pick the one you want to use and drag it onto your project.
When you first bring on a paper it is often larger than your project. Notice the brad like buttons on the corners and edges of the paper, you use these to alter the size. To stop the design on the paper (or image, the same goes for them too), from distorting you need to drag from a corner, any one will do. Lets use the top left corner to keep it simple. Drag by clicking on the ‘brad’ and while holding the mouse button down, move toward the right.
If your background paper is rectangular and you want a square then do the following.
- Say you want to keep a white border around the card and the paper is a mat. Drag the corner to reduce the background paper’s size. You will need to move the paper around on your project, until you have it lined up with the top, the left and the right hand edges.
- Click on the OPTIONS tab. (It’s on the top right of the screen.)
- At the bottom of the list in the options tab is a section called COLOUR OPTIONS.
- Click on the DOCRAFTS DIGI PUNCH ( It has a little butterfly on it).
If your Digi punch and other buttons are grey and don’t work. You just need to select your paper again first. Do this by just clicking on your paper, on your project, then the buttons will work
- After clicking the DIGI PUNCH button a new window will open. From the list choose BASIC SHAPES
- From the shape images, click on the square. It will have a blue box round it when you have clicked on it.
- Click on SELECT
There is now a pink square on your background paper, this is the punch. It will be in the top left of your paper.
- Look for the ‘brads’ in the corners of the punch and drag the bottom right corner down to the right. Do this until the right edge of the punch meets the right edge of your paper. As long as you didn’t move the punch from its starting point, this will now give you a perfect square.
- At the bottom of the page you will see the following buttons; Cancel, Inside, Outside, Done,
- Click on INSIDE then DONE
There you have it square paper
Hope that helps you Check out the Digital Docrafts site for their own tutorial videos.
Best wishes and thanks for reading, see you soon.
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"What Are You Looking At?: The Surprising, Shocking, and Sometimes Strange Story of 150 Years of Modern Art," by Will Gompertz
If you've ever stood before a painting or sculpture and said "Huh?" or "Excuse me?" or "My kid could do that!" — then BBC arts editor Will Gompertz has written the perfect book for you.
A former director of London's Tate Gallery, Gompertz has an uncanny knack for making difficult art (and ideas) easy, and doing so without jargon.
In "What Are You Looking At?" he starts from the premise that almost everybody has trouble immediately comprehending work that possesses what the late art critic Robert Hughes memorably called "the shock of the new." Even Sir Nicholas Serota, his old boss at the Tate, admitted to being confounded on occasion, he reports.
"It doesn't matter if you are an established art dealer, a leading academic or a museum curator," he writes. "Anyone can find themselves at something of a loss when facing a painting or sculpture that is fresh out of an artist's studio."
His solution is to place the particular work of art or artist into the long narrative arc of art history — in other words, through education comes enlightenment. And so he offers a lively, witty account of the major moments and movements of the past 150 years of that history, from Edouard Manet's in-your-face naked harlot "Olympia" to Damien Hirst's pickled shark.
Some readers may long for a few footnotes and a bibliography, yet it's clear that he really knows his stuff.
Bottomline: This user-friendly guide is aimed at the millions of participants in today's global modern art market who "suspect, in their heart of hearts, that it's a sham" — but find that it's not cool to say so.
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Letta Mbulu ask’s ‘What’s wrong with groovin?’ I say nothing at all…Posted: November 2, 2010
Letta Mbulu (pronounced “let-ah” “em-boo-loo”) is a South African jazz and soul singer, who was born and raised in Soweto, but left for the United States in 1965, because of apartheid. You can find an excellent little biography of her here: http://www.dougpayne.com/lmbio.htm
She is an incredible artist with a voice that embodies the fire and spirit of women for me. The picture above represents such confidence and power. The photo is also the cover of her 2nd album Free Soul. I love that she chose to use a younger photo of herself in African clothing, despite the issues she was having getting radio play and record sales in the US. I was reading the blog I linked above, and it said that radio stations refused to play music from her first album because they were afraid “that no one would understand the words (the Bossa Nova and the British were as multi-cultural as American radio was willing to get back then). As a result, hardly anyone ever heard the record and, worse, sales were slight.” I imagined that it was incredibly difficult in the 1960′s as an African Woman artist in the US to make a living off of your art. That is why I love that her response was not too to adapt to US culture, and change herself and her art, but to produce another album of African music that also represented her as a beautiful African woman. The title of the album, Free Soul, also reflects that spirit of the fiery independence and creativity of women. Letta never got the mainstream success or recognition that she deserved, but that is often the case in this country when you stay true to your art and message.
Letta Mbulu is also important to me because my friend, sister, and comrade in struggle, Ms. Julia Wallace, introduced her to me. She played me Letta’s song “What’s Wrong With Groovin”, and I instantly fell in love with Letta’s voice, and the chills it sent down my spine. When Julia played it for me she said the song represented the soundtrack of her life, and that made me think deeply about the song, because I think Julia’s life reflects the strength, determination, creativity, passion, and love of a revolutionary woman. She has dealt with serious challenges in her life, yet has this beautiful spirit about her, and dedication to the people and struggle that inspires me everyday. The song is amazing and represents this beautiful force that I think embodies my comrade sister so I am internally thankful for her sharing it with me.
When I listen to ‘What’s Wrong With Groovin’ I feel this power radiating from Letta’s voice and the content of her lyrics that represents a woman trying to get free despite the restraints placed on us in this world. Her voice is so raw as she belts out the lyrics in such a fierce and wild way, yet she is in control. It is so unique and beautiful, but also a force.
I relate to it a lot as a woman, who, let’s just say, has been labelled aggressive or intimidating at times. I definitely have those traits, and a large part of it is due to the conditions I was raised in. I was forced to grow up early in order to survive, and in many ways that hardened me. I had to toughen up to protect myself from conditions within my home, as well as the objective conditions in the world I lived in, which isn’t kind to poor women of color like myself. I have always felt like there was this force within me that could be used positively and creatively, but I haven’t always known how to do that effectively. Often I would unleash this force in wild ways that had bull in a china shop effects with my interpersonal relationships. That said, I have been reflecting a lot over that the last year and trying to learn and grow as a woman and love this force within me, and also know how to use it for growth, inspiration and liberation. Letta’s music, and this song in particular, represents this journey and growth within myself; a journey that I share with the countless fiery women in this world who dare to survive and struggle, and produce amazing art that sustains us all.
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Traveling on Muni’s light-rail lines is never exactly smooth, but it’s particularly bumpy on the N-Judah.
The line, which carries passengers from Ocean Beach to the Caltrain station on Fourth and King streets, was involved in 84 collisions between 2008 and 2011, making it far more accident-prone than the five other Muni train lines.
Click on the photo at right to see a graphical breakdown of accident rates on the N-Judah and Muni light rail vehicles.
On average, there is some sort of accident or derailment on the line every 13 days, according to data collected by The SF Examiner.
The route’s 84 collisions were 26 more than the next closest line, the M-Ocean View, which was involved in 58 accidents during that period. The safest line was the K-Ingleside, which had just 26 reported accidents, less than one-third of the N-Judah’s total.
Transit activist Greg Dewar, who publishes the N-Judah Chronicles blog, said the N is particularly troublesome for several reasons, including its path through dense neighborhoods.
“It could be something as simple as a double-parked car, or a vehicle running an intersection where it thinks it has the right of way,” Dewar said. “Sometimes accidents happen simply from people being stupid.”
Recent collisions attest to Dewar’s comments. Last March, a car ran a stop sign on 24th Avenue and smashed into an outbound train. Three months later, an operator failed to notice that a pantograph — the piece that connects trains to their overhead power supply — was broken. The pantograph snapped, pulling down power lines and creating massive delays on the line.
The N-Judah carries more people and requires more service than any other Muni line, which is one reason it has so many accidents, said spokesman Paul Rose of the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency. He said the agency is seeking ways to make the line safer, and he noted that accidents have dropped for the past three years.
“The safety of our passengers is paramount to everything we do,” he said. “We’re constantly looking for ways to increase safety for our passengers throughout the system.”
Supervisor Carmen Chu, whose district includes a portion of the route, said Muni could improve its boarding procedures to make sure there are fewer pedestrian-related accidents.
She also said it is imperative for Muni to keep training its operators to ensure they know how to travel busy neighborhoods without any problems.
For N-Judah passengers, accidents are just a way of life.
“The train constantly gets interrupted to the point where we have to get off and find another one,” said rider Liza Heider. “I don’t know what’s going on half the time, I just know that there is always something going wrong.”
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I have seen people in the gym wrapping their lower belly in plastic foil. They claim it burns the fat in that area faster.
I wonder if this is actually contributing to a faster loss of belly fat, and if it is not harmful to wrap your body in plastic foil - not letting it breathe in that area whilst working out ?
I'm having second thoughts, because it is the principal of a sauna, i think. Sauna does not burn any fat as well, it makes you lose fluids, more than fat. Allthough I can see some sense in burning fat faster because the area underneath the foil gets hotter.
Is there anyone who could provide me with some information from a scientific point of view ?
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CHAPEL HILL, NC — Scientists from University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine and Interleukin Genetics, Inc. announced today findings from a large clinical study to evaluate the role played by genetic factors in the worsening of osteoarthritis.
The study, which was part of the Johnston County Osteoarthritis Project, showed patients with X-ray evidence of knee osteoarthritis who inherited a specific pattern of genetic variations in the interleukin-1 receptor antagonist (IL-1Ra) gene were almost twice as likely to progress to severe disease as other patients. Results from the study, which followed 1,154 patients for up to 11 years, will be presented this week at the World Congress on Osteoarthritis in Brussels, Belgium.
The study, led by Joanne Jordan, MD, MPH, the Herman & Louise Smith Distinguished Professor of Medicine and Chief, Division of Rheumatology, Allergy, and Immunology at the Thurston Arthritis Research Center at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, is the first of its kind to include both African-Americans and Caucasians, as well as inclusion of genetic, radiographic, serologic, physical and functional examinations of its participants.
“The strong association shown in this study between progressive OA and the IL-1Ra gene variations, as well as the body of previous related published research, might suggest that this IL-1Ra genetic information could be tested as a tool to identify high-risk patients for participation in clinical trials for the development of a much-needed disease modifying OA drug,” Jordan said.
Interleukin Genetics previously reported variations in the gene for IL-1Ra are strongly associated with severe knee osteoarthritis and this clinical study validates the company’s earlier findings and other previous studies that have implicated the anti-inflammatory protein IL-1Ra in progression to severe disease.
Although osteoarthritis (OA) is the greatest cause of physical disability in the U.S., there are currently no drugs approved that modify the disease progression. One of the challenges to development of new drugs in OA has been the lack of tools that predict which OA patients are more likely to progress to severe disease, thereby making clinical trials more complicated and expensive.
According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Osteoarthritis was ranked among the top 10 most expensive medical conditions to treat. In 2005 alone it cost $34 billion, with joint replacement surgery absorbing most of the cost.
“Drug development for OA has been challenging, in part due to the difficulty of enrolling patients who are likely to exhibit disease progression during the study. There appears to be strong potential to use the IL-1Ra genetic patterns to select for clinical trials patients who are more likely to benefit from an effective drug,” said Ken Kornman, Chief Scientific Officer, Interleukin Genetics. “A genetic test also would have strong clinical utility for physicians to better manage patients who will more likely progress to a severe form of the disease and require surgery.”
The 1,154 subjects in the Johnston County Osteoarthritis Projected, which is directed by Jordan, were monitored for a period between 4 and 11 years to study initiation or progression of osteoarthritis. Subjects at the start of the study were analyzed for genetic markers that predicted those subjects who remained stable and those subjects who progressed to severe osteoarthritis, as measured radiographically. Nine genes were found to be associated with osteoarthritis progression, with the strongest prediction of progression from combinations of gene variations in the gene for IL-1Ra.
Iinterleukin-1 (IL-1) is one of the key chemicals involved in cartilage and bone destruction, and on specific genetic patterns in the naturally occurring inhibitors of that are predictive of IL-1 and of OA progression. The study demonstrated that three specific genetic patterns commonly found in the osteoarthritis population are strongly predictive of different risks for progression of osteoarthritis once it has been diagnosed.
Media contact: Tom Hughes, (919) 966-6047, email@example.com
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USDA's announcement last Friday that a head of cattle had thrown a positive test for the presence of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) was considered an "inconclusive" result. The animal, which had been evaluated using a rapid test from BioRad, a California company, gave a positive result, which triggered the ag agency to send tissues to its National Veterinary Services Laboratory in Ames, Iowa for further testing.
While USDA officials expressed confidence in a press conference Friday night that the in-depth test would show a negative result, some question how sensitive those rapid tests are and whether USDA should be so confident. In a story reported on the Web by The New Scientist the writers point out that the testing program targets animals showing BSE-like symptoms and the rapid tests are very sensitive aiming to catch any possible infected animal.
USDA does not provide information on the odds of the rapid test being positive and the European Commission, which tested the BioRad product before its use in 1999, never published the data. But industry sources told The New Scientist that BioRad throws a false positive at a rate of about one in a thousand in initial tests. BioRad is used in Germany and Belgium to test cattle.
In Europe and Japan, if a cow's brain initially tests positive using the BioRad product, the animal is tested twise more. Only if one of those repeated tests is also positive are the tissues sent for further testing. The false positive rate after that repeated testing is even lower, about one in 100,000. The Japanese report that in tests of 1.5 million cattle, they've seen more than 100 false positives.
The cattle industry, like USDA, will be waiting with great anticipation for the Ames test results later this week. Those could arrive as early as Wednesday. We'll keep you posted.
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Arlington City Council to discuss dog licenses, software purchase at work session
By ADAM RUDNICK
Arlington Times Reporter
June 10, 2010 · 2:34 PM
ARLINGTON — Keeping Fido licensed in Arlington could soon get more expensive.
On Monday, June 14, the City Council will be discussing whether it will raise the city's existing dog licensing fees.
The city is proposing dog owners with unaltered canines pay a $20 annual fee, regardless of the sex of the dog, while owners whose dogs are spayed or neutered pay a $10 annual fee.
Currently, dog owners pay a $5 annual fee for each non-neutered male dog and $10 for each non-spayed female dogs.
The new city fees would also include annual fee categories for altered dogs owned by senior citizens ($5) and altered and microchipped dogs ($5).
If approved in its current form, the city would also increase license late fees from $5 to $10, as well as hike its fee for replacing city-issued dog tags from $1.50 to $5.
Dog licenses generate a small amount of revenue for the city, according to a memo issued by Kristin Banfield, city of Arlington assistant administrator and spokeswoman.
Banfield said that the city is projecting to collect approximately $2,000 under the new fee structure.
The city spent more than $25,500 on animal control expenses in 2009, prompting officials to sign a new contract with the Humane Society of Skagit County.
That contract is expected to cut those costs to about $7,100 for 2010.
Up until earlier this year, the city had contracted with the Everett Animal Shelter.
According to the memo, officials issued 85 lifetime licenses and 46 annual unaltered licenses in 2009. No replacement tags or late fees were charged.
The city's dog licensing fees have not changed in the past 10 years, Banfield said.
Also on the June 14 workshop agenda, the Council will provide direction on whether the city should purchase a new computer software accounting program.
Jim Chase, the city's financial director, is recommending that the Council authorize the city to purchase the $41,728 system, which could also be used at the city's airport and cemetery offices.
Chase said in a memo that some challenges with the city's old program have come up during the department's switch from bi-montly to monthly utility billing.
Customers began receiving those monthly utility bills earlier this month.
Chase said that 61 cities in Washington state use the program being proposed for purchase.
The company that wrote the city's current program, which was purchased in 1992, is no longer in business.
The Council work session will take place at 7 p.m. at the Arlington City Council Chambers (110 E. Third Street).Contact Arlington Times Reporter Adam Rudnick at firstname.lastname@example.org or 360-659-1300 Ext. 5056.
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AR Philosophy >
Animal Testing Index >
School Labs - Index
New law says it's OK to cut dissection lab
But with computers, many students haven't had to.
By Kristen A. Graham
Inquirer Staff Writer
Long a rite of passage in most high school biology classes, dissecting animals is now officially optional in New Jersey.
Gov. Codey last week signed a bill that says public school students "may refuse to dissect, vivisect, incubate, capture or otherwise harm or destroy animals" as part of instruction. Alternative education programs must be provided, and pupils may not be discriminated against if they refuse to dissect.
New Jersey joined 10 other states, including Pennsylvania, in allowing students who find dissection objectionable to refuse without penalty.
The measure does not faze Kelly Rosas, who in 10 years of teaching biology, anatomy and physiology at Delsea Regional High School in Franklinville has presided over the dissection of hundreds of bullfrogs and fetal pigs.
During that decade, just two students at the Gloucester County school have refused to dissect. Forcing them to do something they found objectionable or failing them was never an option, Rosas said.
"One girl was Muslim and said she couldn't touch the pig. The other girl's father had just passed away. They didn't know why, and they were doing an autopsy," Rosas said. "I wrote library passes and told them to do research for a paper."
As more districts adopt sophisticated technology in the classroom - virtual-dissection computer programs, for instance - the debate about dissection has grown louder. Some schools have moved away from live dissection entirely.
Like many other area schools, Maple Shade High School has used computers to supplement real dissection, not to replace it.
New Jersey's law will hardly change things, said Rich Keegan, vice principal and supervisor of the science department.
"We've prepared to discuss alternatives, just in case, not because of the new law but because students have objected to dissecting occasionally. It's for religious reasons, or they say they'd be repulsed by the experience," he said.
At Maple Shade and at Haddon Heights High School, students strongly opposed to dissecting never had to participate, principal David Sandowich said.
With the new law, "we'll approach it more formally, but it's never been a major issue," he said, adding that students who objected came along only every few years.
That has been the experience of Rosas, the Delsea teacher, who yesterday led her second-period anatomy and physiology class in virtually dissecting a frog, a warmup to picking up scalpels and doing the real thing this month.
"The tools are very touchy. Make sure you double-click," Rosas said, pausing to direct the enthusiastic gut-peering of Jeff Hird and Vinnie Pannone.
At the next computer, Danielle Yurchak was a little queasy. "Dissecting is gross," she said, moving her mouse and frowning at the screen. "Eew! I cut open the brain!"
She has had practice in dissecting from 10th-grade biology, but said that even though she probably wouldn't use the freedom the new law provides, she was glad it's there.
"I don't like to look at my own blood," Yurchak said, "but I do want to see the spinal cord."
Laura Dixon is a junior at Washington Township High School and a lifelong animal lover. For her, the law means new freedom.
So even though nursing might be in her future, she had resigned herself to not scheduling anatomy and physiology in 12th grade. That class, she said, requires the dissection of a cat.
"It'll really affect my senior year that this bill has passed," Dixon said. "If I know I definitely have an alternative, I'll definitely take the class."
Janine Motta, a staffer at the New Jersey Animal Rights Alliance, said her organization had worked with a number of students who did not want to dissect and teachers who did not want their students dissecting.
"There were times when the school was amenable to giving them a replacement," Motta said, "but there were times when they just had to do it, period. Without this bill, the burden was on the student to come forward. Now the burden is on the school."
Pennsylvania was a leader in the dissection alternative movement, passing its law in 1992.
Pete Vreeland, head of the science department at Upper Merion Area High School, said students know they have the right not to dissect. Still, he orders plenty of frogs and worms.
But the advent of Web sites like
www.froguts.com have made teaching much richer, he said.
"There's even an online operation you can do at one site," Vreeland said enthusiastically. "You can opt to see either a diagram or a picture from the surgery. You can play with the tendons and the kneecaps."
Still, he said, there is no substitute for the real thing.
"If a student really wants to be a candidate for a science program, to go into medicine,
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Batch documentation and execution
Batch record documentation preparation.
Manufacturing documentation is a basic requirement for all phases of clinical development. 21 CFR Parts 211.186 and 211.188 describe master production and batch production records, respectively (7). The stated purpose of
the master production record is to "assure uniformity from batch to batch." Although the record assurance is important for
a commercial validated manufacturing process, it does not necessarily apply to clinical-development batches. Material properties,
manufacturing scale, and quality target product profile frequently change from batch to batch. Therefore, batch production
records are the appropriate documentation for clinical trial supplies. Batch production records for Phase 1 materials should
- Name, strength, and description of the dosage form
- A complete list of active and inactive ingredients, including weight or measure per dosage unit and total weight or measure
- Theoretical batch size (number of units)
- Manufacturing and control instructions.
These minimum requirements are consistent with the FDA Guidance for Industry: cGMP for Early Phase Investigational Drugs, which requires a record of manufacturing that details the materials, equipment, procedures used and any problems encountered
during manufacturing (2). The records should allow for the replication of the process. On this basis, there is flexibility
in the manner for which documentation of batch activities can occur, provided that the documentation allows for the post execution
review by the quality unit and for the retention of these records.
Batch documentation approvals.
Review and approval of executed batch records by the Quality unit is required per 21 CFR Part 211.192 (7). This review and approval is required for all stages of clinical manufacturing. Pre-approvals of batch records
should be governed by internal procedures as there is no requirement in CFR 21 that the Quality unit pre-approves the batch record (though this is highly recommended in order to minimize the chance
of errors). Indeed, Table I shows that pre-approval of batch records by the Quality Unit is practiced by all 10 companies that participated in the IQ
Consortium's drug-product manufacturing survey related to early development. Batch records must be retained for at least 1
year after the expiration of the batch according to CFR Part 211.180, but many companies keep their GMP records archived for
21 CFR Part 211.130 requires inspection of packaging and labeling facilities immediately before use to ensure that all drug products
from previous operations have been removed. This inspection should be documented and can be performed by any qualified individual.
Although line clearance for bulk manufacture is not specifically mentioned in the CFR, it is expected that a room clearance be performed. At a minimum, this clearance should be performed prior to the initiation
of a new batch (i.e., prior to batch materials entering a processing room).
During the early stages of development, final dosage form release testing confirms product quality and support establishment
of hold times later in the clinical development. There is no requirement to establish hold times for work in process in early
development. Specific formulation and stability experience, which is usually limited at this stage of development, should
be leveraged to assess any substantial variations from expected batch processing times. The data gathered from these batches
and subsequent development can be used to help establish hold times for future batches. (Exceptions to this approach may include
solution or suspension preparations used in solid dosage form manufacturing, where procedures typically govern allowable hold
times to ensure the absence of microbial contamination in the final product.)
Changes to raw materials, processes, and products during early development are inevitable. It is not required that these changes
be controlled by a central system but rather may be appropriately documented in technical reports and manufacturing batch
records. Any changes in manufacturing process from a previous batch should be captured as part of the batch record documentation
and communicated to affected areas. The rationale for these changes should also be documented as this serves as a source for
development history reports and for updating regulatory filings. The authors recommend that those changes that could affect
a regulatory filing be captured in a formal system.
Process parameters should be recorded but do not need to be predetermined because processes may not be fixed or established
in early development. Given the limited API availability in early development, a clinical batch is often the first time a
product is manufactured at a particular scale or using a particular process train. Therefore, process changes should be expected.
Process trains and operating parameters must be documented in the batch record but changes should not trigger an exception
report or CAPA. Changes should be documented as an operational note or modification to the batch record in real time. Such
changes driven by technical observations should not require prior approval by the Quality unit, but should have the appropriate
scientific justification (via formulator/scientist) or the appropriate flexibility built into the batch record to allow for the changes. This documentation
should be available for Quality review prior to product disposition.
Calculation of yield.
Actual yields should be calculated for major processing steps to further process understanding and enable optimization of
processes. Expected yield tolerances are not always applicable to early development manufacture. At this stage of early development,
when formulation and process knowledge is extremely limited, there may be no technical basis for setting yield tolerances
and, therefore, this yield may not be an indicator of the quality of the final product.
In-process controls and R&D sampling.
In-process tests and controls should follow basic requirements of GMPS to document consistency of the batch. For capsule products,
these requirements may include capsule weights and physical inspection. For tablet products, compression force or tablet hardness
and weights should be monitored together with appearance. R&D sampling, defined as samples taken for purposes of furthering
process understanding but not utilized for batch disposition decisions, is a normal part of all phases of clinical manufacturing.
In early development manufacturing, a sampling plan is required for in-process control tests, but not for R&D samples. However,
for the purpose of material accountability, R&D sampling should be documented as part of batch execution. For these samples,
testing results may be managed separately, and are not required to be included in regulatory documentation.
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Prices and availability are subject to change from the time and date that you print this page.
5/18/2013 1:39:00 PM. For Customer Service, please call 800.933.9904
A Hole is to Dig by Ruth Krauss
A hole is when you step in it you go down
A hole is for a mouse to live in.
And, of course, a hole is to dig.
This is the funniest book of definitions you'll ever read!
- Author: Ruth Krauss
- Illustrator: Maurice Sendak
- 48 pages
- Ages: 4-8 years
- Delivered lickety split in 5-7 business days
At The Land of Nod, nothing is more important to us than providing safe, high-quality products to you and your family. We believe that kids’ products should be able to handle everything kids throw their way (literally and figuratively). That’s why all of our products have an 18-year quality guarantee. And, hopefully, your kids will no longer be sleeping in bunk beds by then.
Water you doing in my house?
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Jamaicans of African ancestry
|Notable Jamaicans of African ancestry:
|Approx. 2.8 million
76.3% of the Jamaican population
|Related ethnic groups|
Jamaicans of African ancestry are citizens of Jamaica whose ancestry lies in the continent of Africa, specifically West Africa. Up until the early 1690s Jamaica's population was relatively equally mixed between white and black people. The first Africans to arrive came in 1513 from the Iberian Peninsula after having been taken from West Africa by the Spanish and the Portuguese. They were servants, cowboys, herders of cattle, pigs and horses, as well as hunters. When the English captured Jamaica in 1655, many of them fought with the Spanish who gave them their freedom and then fled to the mountains resisting the British for many years to maintain their freedom, becoming known as Maroons.
Between 1500 and 1800, some eleven million Africans were moved to the Caribbean. They were captured by war, as retribution for crimes committed, or by abduction, and marched to the coast in "coffles" with their necks yoked to each other. They were placed in trading posts or forts to await the horrifying six to twelve week Middle Passage voyage between Africa and the Americas during which they were chained together, underfed, kept in the ship's hold in the thousands packed more like sardines than humans. Those who survived were fattened up and oiled to look healthy prior to being auctioned in public squares to the highest bidders.
Enslaved Africans mostly came from the Akan, Bantu, Igbo, Fon along with the Yoruba, Efik and "Moko" people. Field slaves fetched £25- £75 while skilled slaves such as carpenters fetched prices as high as £300. On reaching the plantation, they underwent a 'seasoning' process in which they were placed with an experienced slave who taught them the ways of the estate. Although the initial slave traders were the Portuguese and the Dutch, between 1750 and 1807 (the year in which the British Empire abolished the slave trade), Britain "dominated the buying and selling of slaves to the Americas". Shipbuilding flourished and manufacturing expanded: the "process of industrialization in England from the second quarter of the eighteenth century as to an important extent a response to colonial demands for rails, axes, buckets, coaches, clocks, saddles...and a thousand other things"
Atlantic slave trade
|Region of Embarkment, 1701—1800||Amount %|
|Senegambia (Mandinka, Fula, Wolof)||1.8|
|Sierra Leone (Mende, Temne)||3.5|
|Windward Coast (Mandé, Kru)||5.2|
|Gold Coast (Akan, Fon)||28.9|
|Bight of Benin (Yoruba, Ewe, Fon, Allada and Mahi)||11.2|
|Bight of Biafra (Igbo, Ibibio)||34.5|
|West-central Africa (Kongo, Mbundu)||14.5|
|Southeast Africa (Macua, Malagasy)||0.1|
The Atlantic Slave Trade began in the 15th century when the Portuguese took hold of land near Gibraltar and soon encountered Africans, whom they quickly took as prisoners. By mid-century, the first public sale of these prisoners was held. By 1455 Portugal was importing close to 800 African slaves a year. Sugar cultivation began in the Azores islands, and as the demand for sugar grew, so did the demand for slaves to work the fields of sugar cane. By the 16th century, other countries wanted a piece of this action and the competition for the sugar and slave trades began.
By 1700 Jamaica was awash with sugar plantations and Jamaica's population consisted of 7,000 English to 40,000 slaves. The sugar industry grew quickly in Jamaica—in 1672 there were 70 plantations producing 772 tonnes of sugar per annum—growing in the 1770s to over 680 plantations. By 1800, it was 21,000 English to 300,000 slaves, which increased to some 500,000 slaves by the 18th century. In 1820 there were 5,349 properties in Jamaica of which 1,189 contained over 100 slaves. Each estate was its own small world, complete with an entire labour force of field workers and skilled artisans, a hospital, water supply, cattle, mules and horses as well as its own fuel source. Each plantation fueled the wheels of British mercantilism. Sugar, molasses and rum were exported to England for sale and ships were financed to return to Africa and collect more slaves in exchange for trinkets and transport them to the West Indies as a labour source. This became known as The Triangular Trade. Money was not left in England's colonies, the financing came from Mother England, and to Mother England the profits returned.
Sugar Estates
A typical sugar estate was 900 acres (3.6 km2). This included a Great House where the owner or overseer and the domestic slaves lived, and nearby accommodation for the bookkeeper, distiller, mason, carpenter, blacksmith, cooper and wheelwright. With the exception of the bookkeeper, by the middle of the eighteenth century, skilled black slaves had replaced white indentured servants in these posts. The field slaves' quarters were usually about a half mile away, closer to the industrial sugar mill, distillery and the boiling and curing houses, as well as the blacksmiths' and carpenters' sheds and thrash houses. In addition, there was a poultry pen and a cattle yard along with a Negro hospital. Some estates, if large enough, had accommodation for an estate doctor. Estates had estate gardens and the slaves had their own kitchen gardens as well as polnicks provision grounds found in the hills, which were required by law from as early as 1678. During slavery, however, slaves kept pigs and poultry and grew mangoes, plantain, ackee, okra, yam and other ground provisions. . The cultivation of these lands took on greater proportions as plantations were abandoned when the island faced increasing competition from Brazil, Cuba and beet sugar, a loss in labour after emancipation in the 1830s as well as the loss of protective trade duties after the passage of the 1846 Sugar Equalization Act in England.
The workforce on each plantation was divided into gangs determined by age and fitness. On average most estates had three main field gangs. The first was made up of the strongest and most able men and women. The second, of those no longer able to serve in the first, and the third, of older slaves and older children. Some estates had four gangs, depending on the number of children living on the estate. Children started working as young as 3 or 4 years old.
Significance of sugar
To a large extent, Jamaican customs and culture were fashioned by sugar. According to John Hearne (1965), for two hundred years sugar was the only reason behind Jamaica's existence as a centre for human habitation. For centuries, sugar was Jamaica's most important crop. Jamaica was once considered the 'jewel' in Britain's crown. In 1805, the island's peak of sugar production, it produced 101,600 tonnes of sugar. It was the world's leading individual sugar producer.
The cultivation of sugar was intricately intertwined with the system of slavery. This connection has set the course of the nation's demographics since the 18th century when slaves vastly outnumbered any other population group. The descendants of these slaves comprise the majority of Jamaica's population. They have influenced every sphere of Jamaican life and their contributions are immeasurable.
As Jamaican slaves came from Eastern, Central, and Western Africa, many of their customs survived based on memory and myths. They encompassed the life cycle, i.e. a newborn was not regarded as being of this world until nine days had passed and burial often involved libations at the graveside, and the belief that the dead body's spirit would not be at rest for some 40 days. They included forms of religion in which healing was considered an act of faith completed by obeahmen and communication with the spirits involved possession often induced by dancing and drumming. African-based religions include Kumina, Myal and Revival. Many involved recreational, ceremonial and functional use of music and dance. "Slaves," Brathwaite explains, "danced and sang at work, at play, at worship, from fear, from sorrow from joy". They recreated African musical instruments from materials found in Jamaica (calabash, conch, bamboo, etc.) and featured improvisation in song and dance. All of these customs and many more such as the Christmas street parades of Jonkonnu, were misunderstood and undervalued by Europeans with the exception of the political use of drumming to send coded messages from plantation to plantation.
Drumming of any kind was therefore often banned. Jamaican music today has emerged from the traditional musical forms of work songs sung by slaves, the ceremonial music used in religious services and the social and recreational music played on holidays and during leisure time. The cramped housing space provided to the slaves, which limited their dwellings (often made of wattle and daub) to one window and one door, meant that very little other than sleeping took place indoors. Life, as in Africa, was lived communally, outside. Similarly language, as in Africa, is considered powerful particularly naming. Brathwaie (1971) gives an example of a woman whose child falls ill and wants her name to be changed, believing that this would allow her to be cured. Language is certainly an area where African retention is strongest. Jamaicans today move between Patois a creolised English and standard English. Jamaican patois was born from the intermixing of African slaves and English, Irish, Welsh, Scottish sailors, slaves, servants, soldiers and merchants. The African slaves spoke many dialects, and given the need for a common tongue, Jamaican patois was born. It has been in use since the end of the 17th century by Jamaicans of all ethnicities and has been added to by the, Chinese, Indians, Lebanese, Germans, and French who also settled on the island. Some words also indicate Spanish and Taino presence in Jamaican history. Many of these traditions survive to this day, testament to the strength of West African culture despite the process of creolisation (the intermingling of peoples adjusting to a new environment) it encountered.
Jamaican Patois
Jamaican Patois, known locally as Patwa, is an English–African creole language spoken primarily in Jamaica and the Jamaican diaspora. It is not to be confused with Jamaican English nor with the Rastafarian use of English. The language developed in the 17th century, when slaves from West and Central Africa were exposed to, learned and nativized the vernacular and dialectal forms of English spoken by their masters: British Englishes (including significant exposure to Scottish English) and Hiberno English. Jamaican Patwa is a post-creole speech continuum (a linguistic continuum) meaning that the variety of the language closest to the lexifier language (the acrolect) cannot be distinguished systematically from intermediate varieties (collectively referred to as the mesolect) nor even from the most divergent rural varieties (collectively referred to as the basilect). Jamaicans themselves usually refer to their use of English as patwa, a term without a precise linguistic definition.
Notable Jamaicans of African descent
See also
- Rucker, Walter C. (2006). The river flows on: Black resistance, culture, and identity formation in early America. LSU Press. p. 126. ISBN 0-8071-3109-1.
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he folly of Fitzpatrick.
* Chapter vii -- In which are concluded the adventures that happened at the inn at Upton.
* Chapter viii -- In which the history goes backward.
* Chapter ix -- The escape of Sophia.
BOOK XI -- CONTAINING ABOUT THREE DAYS.
* Chapter i -- A crust for the critics.
* Chapter ii -- The adventures which Sophia met with after her leaving Upton.
* Chapter iii -- A very short chapter, in which however is a sun, a moon, a star, and an angel.
* Chapter iv -- The history of Mrs Fitzpatrick.
* Chapter v -- In which the history of Mrs Fitzpatrick is continued.
* Chapter vi -- In which the mistake of the landlord throws Sophia into a dreadful consternation.
* Chapter vii -- In which Mrs Fitzpatrick concludes her history.
* Chapter viii -- A dreadful alarm in the inn, with the arrival of an unexpected friend of Mrs Fitzpatrick.
* Chapter ix -- The morning introduced in some pretty writing. A stagecoach. The civ
A very interesting novel having a fantastic storyline. A great experience.
Sometimes called the first novel in the English language.
So interesting, I dare you to read it.
A good read. Brings the 18th century to life in the same way that Dickens does the 19th century. Characters are diverse with most aspects of human frailty.
|
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School will be starting soon evoking memories of new shoes, fresh notebooks, the smell of classroom paste – and LICE. There is the dreaded official notice from the school: It has come to our attention there has been a confirmed incident of lice in your son/daughter’s class . . .
Last year my granddaughter came home from school scratching. Soon, so was my daughter, my step-daughter and ME! I had taken a nap with Ruthie and woke up with the tiny vermin a few days later.
First there is panic. The stomach-sinking yuckk factor. I was so skeeved out that vanity went out the window. I took a kitchen stool to the backyard and had my husband give me a very, very short haircut. It actually looked good in a prisoner-of-war sort of way. I washed with green, smelly lice shampoo. I slept for a week with my head coated in olive oil, covered with a shower cap. My husband said he woke up every morning hungry for salad.
After two years of “confirmed incidents” at my granddaughter’s school, her mom is an expert lice checker. The eggs, like teeny tiny pearls, attach to clean hair more easily than dirty, The lice themselves can actually jump off the “victim” onto a bathroom mat. (So there’s screaming involved when you find them.)
There are all sorts of products available on the market: from organic to toxic and home remedies (like olive oil and mayonnaise). There are even businesses solely devoted to lice removal with catchy names like The Hair Fairies and Lice Busters.
Having lice is an altogether humbling experience. And an economic leveler. Lice can be found in suburban schools. In the densest inner city schools. In the poshiest private schools. But a pediatrician we know managed to put a positive spin on it: “Getting lice means that your child has friends.”
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Now, the truth is finally revealed regarding Holmes's exploits involving the Titanic, his rematch with Irene Adler, the childhoods of both Holmes and Watson, and such figures as Ida Tarbell, P.G. Wodehouse, and James McNeil Whistler.
From the gritty streets of nineteenth century London, the loyal and courageous Dr. Watson offers a tale unearthed after generations of lore: the harrowing story of Sherlock Holmes's attempt to hunt down Jack the Ripper.
(P)its the sleuth of Baker Street against the Butcher of Whitechapel--the archfiend Jack the Ripper. (This book) gives readers a Holmes possessed of greater and more disturbing depths than the one they thought they knew.
Commissioned by and written with the approval of the estate of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle...(this book) blends detailed history and thrilling suspense while giving perfect cadence to the verbal discourse between Holmes and Watson.
In 1889 London, writer Oscar Wilde finds the corpse of a male artist's model in a house used by men for assignations. Wilde later returns with friends Robert Sherard and Arthur Conan Doyle, but the body has vanished, the room cleaned, and the police declare that nothing has happened.
Two German cowboy brothers, Gustav (Old Red) and Otto (Big Red) Amlingmeyer, have been reading the adventures of Sherlock Holmes in magazines and take on the roles of the master detective and his sidekick, Watson, when an albino cowboy turns up dead in a locked outhouse.
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Bike 911, Cycling 101 and Maintenance 101 will rotate March through October covering different topics that Cycle Therapy customers and the public can attend.
The classes will be taught by Cycle Therapy expert mechanics.
The first clinic, Cycling 101, will take place Saturday at 8 a.m. Cycling 101 has two components — a class and a ride to practice what was learned in class. Cycling 101 is geared for newer riders who want to learn about ride etiquette, safety on the road, proper clothing and bike form.
The second part of the class will be a ride along the Ridge Ferry Trail, weather permitting.
Maintenance 101 is ideal for those cyclists who like to work on their bikes but have questions about the best way to clean it, derailleur adjustments, change cables, identify shifting issues and brakes.
Bike 911 is in its second year and is a very popular class with women and those who need help learning how to change a flat tire and tube.
Bike 911 focuses on the basics of removing wheels, tires and tubes, patching the tube and reinstalling the tire to get the rider back on the road or trail.
All classes are $10 and must be prepaid by the Wednesday prior to class. Checks may be mailed to Cycle Therapy, but no credit cards will be accepted over the phone.
If bikes have been purchased from Cycle Therapy in the last year the class is free. To RSVP for the classes email email@example.com or call the shop at 706-235-4866.
THIS YEAR’S CYCLE THERAPY BIKE CLINIC SCHEDULE
SATURDAY — Cycling 101, 8 a.m.
APRIL 1 — Maintenance 101, 6:30 p.m.
APRIL 20 — Bike 911, 9 a.m.
MAY 4 — Cycling 101, 8 a.m.
JUNE 1 — Maintenance 101, 9 a.m.
JUNE 24 — Bike 911, 6:30 p.m.
JULY 13 — Cycling 101, 8 a.m.
AUG. 3 — Maintenance 101, 9 a.m.
SEPT. 7 — Bike 911, 9 a.m.
SEPT. 30 — Maintenance 101, 6:30 p.m.
OCT. 19 — Cycling 101, 8 a.m.
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|Uploaded:||May 28, 2010|
|Updated:||May 28, 2010|
Well, I have a special treat for all you music lovers out there. I have been getting flooded with requests to do a tutorial on “how to draw Lil Wayne”, step by step. I started getting asked to do this famous rapper ever since the artwork sketch made it to number one in the artworks top 50. The drawing was done by 'Artistperson95', and he did a really fantastic job. Not only does his sketch look like Lil Wayne, the shading and everything was nicely done too. This tutorial is going to be exactly what you guys need to help you draw your own Lil Wayne sketch. But before we begin, lets talk a little about this rapper shall we? First off, his real name isn't Wayne at all, its Dwayne. Dwayne Michael Carter Jr. to be more exact. He was born on September 27, 1982, and he was raised in Hollygrove New Orleans, Louisiana. From birth to about the age of eleven, Dwayne lived as a regular youngster could live, coming from Hollygrove. I say this because this area of New Orleans is home to the Hollygrove Bloods. It's still uncertain whether or not Lil Wayne was ever a part of the gang, so I will not even give false information about his life if I have no clue if it's true. I can tell you though that Mr. Dwayne Carter was in fact a straight A student. What led him to start rapping, was the fact that he never felt that his smarts was being utilized to the best of his abilities. Instead of proving his smarts through a report card, he decided that rapping is a good way to express himself the way he wanted to, on a 'no holds bared' type of manner. Anyway, Dwayne's career took off at the extremely young age of eleven. At that point he met with Bryan Williams, who is a rapper, and who is also the owner of 'Cash Money Records'. Before the ripe old age of eleven, Carter actually wrote his first rap song when he was only eight years old. I guess you can say that he was one determined little kid. After leaving several messages on Mr. Williams answering machine, Bryan decided that he would take on little Dwayne Carter, and mentor him as he helped him build a rapping career for the talented young lad. Still, at the age of eleven, Dwayne recorded his first collaboration with another rapper called B.G. The name of the album was 'True Story', and his co-rapper was three years older than he was. At just thirteen years old, Lil Wayne accidentally shot himself in the chest with a .44 hand gun. It wasn't long until he became a member of the band “Hot Boys” in 1997. He was a rapper along with Juvenile, B.G., and Turk. After he rapped a few songs, while with the Hot Boys, his name still wasn't that well recognized. In the years 2000 to 2002, he followed up with the album Lights Out, but that failed to go anywhere. Before 2002 rolled around he was shot in the chest yet again, but this time it wasn't by his own hand. Instead, he was shot by a few groupies who fired two shots through the tour buses window. 2002 brought the third installment of another album by Lil Wayne called “500 Degreez”. Like it's album before it, it too didn't meet the expectations he was hoping for. I guess you could say that his career didn't start to take off until 2004, that's when Lil Wayne started to take on his signature look, and rapping style. Before “We Are Young Money”, he was featured on various songs, on the albums of other artists like Leona Lewis, Kid Rock, Lloyd, Usher, Cassie, Akon, and many, many more. Nowadays he is known as being part of Young Money, and they are famous for their recent hit single “Bedrock”. Right now, the current artists on the label consists of Lil Wayne, Drake, Mack Maine, Nicki Minaj, Tyga, Gudda Gudda, Jae Millz, Lil Chuckie, Lil Twist, Shanell, T-Streets, Short Daw, and Cory Gunz. Maybe in the near future I'll do some more of the Young Money crew. But for now, let's just start out with this lesson that will finally show you “how to draw Lil Wayne”, step by step. My advice for this tutorial, be patience, take your time, and don't start the sketch unless you intend to finish the sketch the same day. I will be back later with a lot more drawing fun. Have fun, and have a happy drawing day!
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If Western Australia's iron ore miners thought they had seen the worst of the price slump which sent shockwaves through their industry two months ago they had better think again because "the mother of all market disconnections" is pointing to a second wave of price falls.
What's happening is that global steel production has fallen sharply, taking the steel price with it.
But, at the same time as the world's steel mills are seeing future years of below-trend demand for their product the price of iron ore has been rising.
In the simplest possible terms this is an equation which does not compute for a very simple reason. Iron ore is used for only one purpose -- to make steel.
When will the penny drop is anybody's guess, but mine is that the second wave of price falls will arrive before Christmas, triggering a fresh round of cost-cutting and project delays.
Deeply entrenched miners with the lowest costs, and that essentially means BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto, will ride out what looks like the arrival of the correction which has been forecast by cautious analysts for the past two years.
Higher-cost miners and those carrying excess debt, such as Fortescue Metals Group, will struggle unless they can get their costs down quickly.
Big new projects with multi-billion dollar price tags will also face additional hurdles, primarily from nervous bankers who will demand to see proof that the project can be built on time and on budget, that it can service its debts for a long period of low iron ore prices, and that its ownership structure is rock solid.
Most closely watched on all of points is Gina Rinehart's proposed Roy Hill project which is fast approaching a period of critical decision-making just as the market turns against it.
Raising doubts about the outlook for the iron ore price might seem unusual after the recent recovery from around $US90 a tonne to $US114/t, a rebound which helped the share prices of miners rise, and Fortescue secure additional funding to undertake its essential cost-lowering expansion program.
But, what no-one has yet been able to explain is the disconnection between the iron ore price and the steel price, or explain how the iron ore price can stay above $US100/t if growth in global steel production has effectively stalled (which it has), and a wall of additional iron ore is hitting the market courtesy of new and expanded projects built in expectation of the price staying "stronger for longer".
Two significant developments in the iron ore industry over the past 48 hours include a report published by the World Steel Association which has cut its global steel consumption forecast for the current year to 2.1 per cent, a significant fall on the 3.6 per cent growth forecast made in April, and a sharp fall on the 6.2 per cent expansion in steel demand enjoyed last year.
In other words, as the global economy slows, demand for steel slows - which leads to that rather obvious question about how can iron ore demand and price rise as its only market moves alarmingly close to stall speed.
The second development occurred in Sydney this morning when the chief executive of Gina Rinehart's Roy Hill project, Barry Fitzgerald, skipped a speaking commitment at the Mines and Money conference.
His place was taken by general manager of external affairs, Darryl Hockey. Conference organisers told the audience that Mr Hockey's boss couldn't attend the event because he was in negotiation with bankers who it was hoped would provide the debt financing component of the project.
What was not made clear by Mr Hockey was how much debt Roy Hill is seeking, despite an opening remark from a conference organiser that Mr Fitzgerald was no show because he was seeking $9 billion from the banks and other financiers.
Mr Hockey's response to that number, the highest debt figure attached to Roy Hill so far, was that it should not be reported because it "might not be correct".
The audience was left hanging as to what the real debt figure might be, but it was also left in no doubt from the tenor of the presentation that Roy Hill is facing the same head winds as all Australian resource developments; rising costs, higher taxes, falling commodity prices and the threat of union militancy.
Despite those problems, Mr Hockey said early work at Roy Hill was continuing, including work at the mine site, on the railway route, and at Port Hedland.
However, in terms of financing it seems that the timetable is being dragged out with finalisation of negotiations with banks not expected until the first half of next year, and a final commitment to the full-scale development of the project possibly delayed until mid-2013.
It would be unfair to say that Roy Hill is encountering serious problems, but it would be equally true to say that the ambitious project is being buffeted by a dangerous combination of high costs, a difficult funding environment, and lower commodity price.
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Last Modified: September 13, 2012
Tretinoin belongs to a class of drugs known as retinoids. Retinoids are drugs that are relatives of vitamin A. Retinoids control normal cell growth, cell differentiation (the normal process of making cells different from each other), and cell death. This occurs during embryonic development and, in certain tissues, later in life. In APML, the cells are "stuck" in an immature form, making thousands of copies of this immature cell that cannot function. Tretinoin causes the cells to get "unstuck" and mature. This can slow or stop the growth of cancer cells.
Tretinoin comes as a capsule to take orally (by mouth). It is typically taken twice a day for up to 90 days. The dose is based on your body size.
There are a number of things you can do to manage the side effects of Tretinoin. Talk to your doctor or nurse about these recommendations. They can help you decide what will work best for you. These are some of the most common side effects:
This is a syndrome resulting from the changes tretinoin causes to blood cell production in patients with leukemia. Symptoms of the syndrome include: fever (temperature >100.5), sudden weight gain and/or swelling, low blood pressure, bone pain, and fluid build up around the heart, lungs, and chest, causing shortness of breath or difficulty breathing. The symptoms typically occur after 7-12 days on the medication. This syndrome is treated with high doses of IV steroids (like dexamethasone). Your healthcare providers will monitor for these signs or symptoms, but it is also important for you to tell your doctor or nurse promptly if you experience any of these symptoms.
This is also called hyperleukocytosis. Generally, it does not cause any problems, nor does it require stopping the treatment. Your healthcare provider will monitor your white blood count during treatment.
Headache is the most common side effect associated with tretinoin. It most commonly occurs several hours after the dose. Your doctor or nurse can recommend over-the- counter medications to treat the headache. These headaches tend to occur around the time of the medication and resolve before the next dose. If your headache is persistent or severe, notify your healthcare provider right away. There is a very rare side effect of tretinoin that is associated with severe, persistent headache.
There are things you can do to help nausea and vomiting. There are many effective drugs that will prevent, eliminate, or lessen the severity of nausea and vomiting, just ask your doctor which is best for you. In addition, dietary adjustments may help. Avoid things that worsen the symptoms, try antacids (milk of magnesia and calcium tablets, like Tums), saltines, or ginger ale to lessen symptoms. Read the Nausea & Vomiting Tip Sheet for more suggestions.
These include muscle aches, fever, chills, and feeling tired.
These include dryness, itching, rash and cracking, dry lips. You should use a moisturizer on your skin and lips, but avoid moisturizers with perfumes or scents. Your doctor or nurse can recommend medication if itching is bothersome. If your skin does crack or bleed, be sure to keep the area clean to avoid infection. For more suggestions, read the Nail and Skin Care Tip Sheet.
While on cancer treatment you may need to adjust your schedule to manage fatigue. Plan times to rest during the day and conserve energy for more important activities. Exercise can help combat fatigue; a simple daily walk with a friend can help. Talk to your healthcare team and see OncoLink’s section on fatigue for helpful tips on dealing with this side effect.
Exposure of an unborn child to this medication could cause birth defects, so you should not become pregnant or father a child while on this medication. Effective birth control is necessary during treatment, even if your menstrual cycle stops or you believe your sperm is affected.
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A Hundred Verses from Old Japan (The Hyakunin-isshu), tr. by William N. Porter, , at sacred-texts.com
MOTHER, for thy sake I have been
Where the wakana grow,
To bring thee back some fresh green leaves
And see—my koromo
Is sprinkled with the snow!
Kwōkō was raised to the throne by the Fujiwara family, when the mad Emperor Yōzei was deposed; he reigned A.D. 885-887, and is said to have composed this verse in honour of his grandmother.
Wakana, literally 'young leaves', is a vegetable in season at the New Year; a koromo is really a priest's garment, but is used here for the Emperor's robe.
In the picture we see the Emperor gathering the fresh green leaves, and the snow falling from the sky.
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December 15, 2010
The government in Colombia has to choose between guarding its unique ecosystems or boosting its economy with mining. The decision could exhaust or recast Colombia’s long, agonizing armed conflict.
August 29, 2010
A look at the water, sanitation and hygiene challenges faced by one the world's fastest growing megacities: Dhaka, Bangladesh, where thousands of people die each year from waterborne diseases.
August 21, 2010
After decades of isolation, the U.S. Naval Base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, has become a de facto nature refuge. What will this mean for the base’s post-detention future?
July 19, 2010
For the better part of 15 years the Yukon River Chinook salmon stock has been in significant decline.
July 2, 2010
China has more wetlands than any country in Asia, and 10 percent of the global total. They are crucial to life and environment -- and rapidly disappearing.
March 14, 2010
As jittery investors have sought safe-haven investments in gold during the recession, the metal's price has soared on world markets.
November 30, 2009
African farmers already struggle to grow sufficient maize, which is a thirsty, fertilizer-hungry crop. What will happen as the climate changes and the population grows?
November 20, 2009
Across the globe, many young adults and children worry about the potentially catastrophic effects of climate change.
October 25, 2009
The pipeline across Chad and Cameroon that ExxonMobil built with World Bank help has residents chafing at promises unmet.
September 18, 2009
Kashmir, the ruggedly beautiful mountainous region that lies along the India-Pakistan border, was long known as 'paradise on earth,' but in recent decades it has been more like hell.
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Summer’s relationship with fat loss is a rough one. Barbecues and pools usually mean bathing suits, and for someone who is on the path of fat loss, their anticipation is based on their judgement of their own progress, usually negative.
For the more opportunistic though, summer is a motivator to reach health related goals, as well as the perfect environment for primal eating.
The Primal Blueprint eating plan, or what some may know as the related eating pattern, the Paleo Diet, is an eating pattern based around meats, vegetables, and fruit primarily. It is based on certain affirmations also [Source],
- 80 Percent of Body Composition is based on diet, or what food and drink you consume
- lean body mass is the key indicator of health; it is the muscle and non-fat tissue of your body
- excess body fat and excess insulin are related and both bad
Within the primal philosophy is the central goal to be free of the physical limits which excess body fat and excess insulin cause. To do this efficiently, Mark Sisson, and others who have contributed to the philosophy in their own unique ways, studied the past of human digestive history, Paleolithic ancestors of humans, to record and research how the human digestive system and human nutrition adapted.
Grains and agriculture go back in history as far as 11,500 years, according to researchers, and an eating pattern based on meats, fruits, vegetables and their specific contents and ancestors goes back much further, because before agriculture, getting nutrition meant getting what was available. What was available was animals, and trees and plants with vegetables and fruit, similar to primal eating.
I’m not a doctor, but It just so happens that Primal Eating could be a way to avoid excess insulin, because of the lack of grains and starch, and presence of vitamins, minerals, and nutrition in meats, vegetables, and fruit. Without the large flood of carbohydrates and resulting wave of insulin, insulin receptors are likely to not become over-stimulated over a long period of time, avoiding ineffective and in-receptive receptors, also known as insulin resistance.
Insulin resistant receptors cannot receive and allocate nutrients, and because of this scenario where glucose is left circulating, more insulin hormone is produced and more and more their receptors become resistant. Body fat, being an organ of storage, eventually receives the calories unable to be delivered by other insulin receptors. And as more and more calories are stored in fat, new fat cells are created and the cycle continues.
The Primal Eating Plan prioritizes protein, which comes from a Greek root meaning “of prime importance”, because of its role in cellular repair, cellular health, and muscular growth and maintenance. There are varying sources and opinions on the quantity of protein an individual “should” take in everyday, but among sources which I read and trust, it is generally accepted that 1 gram of protein per pound of lean body mass (LBM) is a good aim, while recommendations range from .8 grams per pound of LBM to 1 gram per pound of mass. These are good ranges to just keep in mind when thinking of what to eat on a weekly basis and what major foods to consider at the grocery store.
Lean body mass is calculated by determining your body fat percentage and total weight, and subtracting that body fat percentage in pounds of total mass from total mass. The number of pounds left over after body fat pounds have been subtracted from total weight is lean body mass, or the muscle and non-fat tissue of the body. There are various professional services available, which should be researched first, that can help determine these numbers for an individual.
Fat is also of prime importance within the Primal Blueprint eating plan. Dietary fat plays an important role in every process of the body, being necessary for brain health, where it constitutes estimates of 60-70 percent of the brain, necessary for cellular generation, and necessary for organ and hormonal health. Fats do provide 9 calories per gram, which is where the notorious “fat makes you fat” arose from, among other chemical reactions within the body. But with an individual gram of fat’s nine calories, comes nutrition necessary for the aforementioned functions, necessary fat-soluble vitamins, and satiety that limits excess caloric consumption and “sweet tooth” expenditures.
Carbohydrate may come off as the enemy of all things healthy in preliminary discussion of the primal eating plan, but further reading, discussion, and research will explain the importance of even carbohydrate in the diet. It is not carbohydrate that is the enemy, it is the excess of it, and the consequential unique reactions of its excess (possibly insulin resistance) that are of concern. Additionally, it can be said that there tends to be an unhealthy nature trait that correlates with high amounts of carbohydrate in a food, although the same may be said of fat in some instances, and correlation is not causation.
Sugary cereals and synthetic vitamin bread do not constitute the type of carbohydrate categorized under primal eating, but, fruits of many types that deliver unique nutrients and unique taste and refreshment, and vegetables that require little complimentary spices to bring out taste and deliver nutrients and satiety are categorized as primal or paleo.
There are of course other fundamental principles of the primal blueprint eating plan and primal plan in general, such as moving and exercising in a way that maximizes time spent in the gym and muscles used during exercise, and attaining not just enough sleep, but restful sleep, and managing stress by valuing hard work and achievement. These are topics of information which I find of interest and recommend, and which are discussed within the Primal Blueprint Eating Plan,similarly the Paleo Diet, and at Mark Sisson’s popular and resourceful Mark’s Daily Apple. Mark Sisson has a primal cookbook & grocery list, which can be checked out to help deliver better understanding for Primal Eating.
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We're giving you a smoothie recipe, but think of it as a starting point. Use any combination of fruit, yogurt, and juice that you have in the house, and your kid likes -- we promise it'll be delicious, easy, and you'll know what's in it.
- 1 very ripe banana (fresh or frozen)
- 1 cup frozen berries, such as strawberries, raspberries, or blackberries (about 6 ounces)
- 1/2 cup or 1 (6-ounce) container plain, vanilla, or lemon lowfat yogurt
- 3/4 cup orange juice or apple juice
- 2 ounces soft tofu, optional
- 1 to 2 tablespoons honey, or to taste
Put everything in a blender and puree until smooth. Divide between 2 vacuum-sealed containers.
Copyright (c) 2008 Television Food Network, G.P., All Rights Reserved
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“Women agonize… over cancer; we take as a personal threat the lump in every friend’s breast.”
—Martha Weinman Lear, Heartsounds
- More women die of breast cancer every year than any other cancer except lung cancer
- Breast cancer is the second most commonly diagnosed cancer in women
- Although a woman’s chances of getting breast cancer doubles if she has a close relative (mother, daughter, sister) who has had breast cancer herself, 70-80% of women diagnosed with breast cancer have no history of the disease in their families
October is National Breast Cancer Awareness Month, dedicated to educating and raising awareness of breast cancer, preventing cancer, and the importance of early detection that saves lives. The international symbol of breast cancer is a pink ribbon, first adopted by Susan G. Komen for the Cure in 1991.
Each October, fundraising events are held in many communities in the U.S. and internationally, including the Avon Walk for Breast Cancer, and the Komen Race for the Cure. This year (2011) is the 25th anniversary of National Breast Cancer Awareness Month. You can help by participating in events, volunteering, making a donation, or helping organize a fundraiser at your company or in your area.
Greeting Card Universe’s diverse artist community offers greeting cards for cancer survivors, cancer patients, and their families and supporters, as well as thank you cards for doctors and nurses so you can send a heartfelt message of encouragement and love, as well as a smile, to someone who needs it.
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On the New York side of Lake Champlain sits the little town of North Elba. Outside of the town is the homestead of American anti-racist revolutionary John Brown. When I lived in Vermont, I made a trip across the lake one May Day to commemorate the man whose actions against slavery did more than all the words written to force the US to end that diabolical practice. The homestead is a National Historic Landmark now, yet in his heyday Brown was reviled by many of his countrymen, north and south. He was admired and respected by many others. For those few that might be unaware, John Brown’s raid on the Federal Armory in Harper’s Ferry, West Virginia was the spark that lit the raging inferno that became the United States Civil War. If the Civil War is the defining moment in the history of the United States and the historical moment that virtually every major domestic political moment since then hearkens back to, then the Harper’s Ferry raid is that history’s moment of apocalyptic creation. The raid itself failed due to miscommunication and misplaced hopes, but its place in history stands with the battles at Lexington and Concord that began the American colonists’ war for independence from England.
Naturally, volumes have been written about John Brown, his life, dreams, anti-slavery escapades and the culmination of it all–the raid on Harper’s Ferry, his trial and execution for treason. From WEB DuBois’ biography to the fictionalized tome titled Cloudsplitter by US author Russel Banks, the number of words written about Brown rival those written about the man that history knighted to carry the war against slavery to its ultimate end, Abraham Lincoln. One of the best of these works is the recently republished The Old Man: John Brown at Harper’s Ferry by Truman Nelson. First published in 1973, when elements in the New Left had taken on Brown’s mantle in their attempt to end US imperialism and racism by setting off bombs in buildings and black liberation fighters were being hunted down by the federal government and its allied forces, Nelson’s work focuses solely on the raid in Harper’s Ferry and its aftermath.
It is a riveting story told in a captivating narrative that takes the reader into that small town in the West Virginia mountains. The physical details are here–the planning, recruiting, purchase and smuggling of arms, and the training. So is a discussion of the political philosophy behind Brown’s endeavor. It is a simple philosophy and one still worth striving for–a nation without slavery and with equal opportunity and choice for all. The Old Man describes a nation splitting apart. Anti-slavery legislators attacked in Congress by men whose very lives are bound to the practice of the bondage of other humans. Men who would never consider breaking a law tired of waiting for the political system to end slavery deciding to fund Brown’s insurrection. The Christian churches split between those who would use the Bible to justify slavery and those whose interpretation forces them to conclude that enslaving other humans is the work of Satan. Financial interests looking after their own interests who care little about the morals of slavery but only about the money that can be made by supporting it or ridding the nation of it.
Through it all, John Brown’s terrible swift sword remained true. He saw slavery as the abomination it was and understood the northern capitalists who did not align themselves with the abolitionists to be the opportunists they were. His vision of a post-slavery United States did not see the black man or woman as a lesser being but as a genuine equal. This was something that was even beyond the thought process of many abolitionists. Yet, it mattered not to Brown. Some called this madness, yet it was merely the single mindedness of a man with a just mission. Compromise rarely extended to Brown’s approach and never to his principles. Nelson tells us that he was not unreasonable, just certain of his reason for being on earth.
The raid on Harper’s Ferry was to be the first salvo in the fight to free the slaves. Indeed, in a harbinger of the coming War Between the States, it was future Confederate General Robert E. Lee whose unit was sent to quell the Harper’s Ferry insurrection. Despite the arrest of Brown and most of his co-conspirators and their hanging, that raid served its purpose. The foul institution of slavery was wiped from the United States. We continue to deal with its legacy. As the recent refusal by a federal appeals court in Georgia to commute Troy Davis’ death sentence and the ongoing mockery of justice known as the trial of the San Francisco 8 continues in California make clear, the bonds of slavery have been removed, but the forces that represent the slavers’ legacy have not disappeared. As for the meaning of John Brown’s armed attempt to free slaves in Harper’s Ferry, it continues to prove its meaning to the oppressed in the United States.
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This was the high light of my Asheville trip. I didn't know that America's largest home was in this town, and when I found out that it was I could not miss it for the world. Anticipation grew as we drove in trough the entrance. We passed through a beautiful arched stone gate and drove for about two miles in before reaching the visitor center. Just the drive had turned out to be more than I expected.
After purchasing the $38 ticket to get in we had to drive another 4 miles to the parking lot near the Biltmore mansion. I could not believe the vastness of the land and that one family owned this. It was way too much to take. Winding roads lead to forest areas, meadows, and small bridges. Anticipation was growing even more. After leaving the car in the parking lot we had to walk through this path to the house. It seemed like a never ending thing to get to this house.
After less than five minutes of walking through trees you come to the side of the road and as you take a peak through the plants you can see the iron gates open for cars to go in. This was it, I was finally going to see it.
And there it was, the Biltmore House in all its grandeur. This was the creation of George Vanderbilt more than 100 years ago. He was the youngest son of Cornelius Vanderbilt "The Commodore," who made his wealth with a line of 100 steamboats and later increased his business in the railroad industry.
Unlike his father and brother William Henry Vanderbilt, George was interested in cultural qualities such as learning, art, and travel. It was on one of his trips to the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina when he found the land where in 1889-1895 he would build a working estate that would sustain itself and benefit the community. This estate would feature acres of gardens, parklands, and managed forests and would be called the Biltmore Estate.
As you can see from these pictures the architecture is amazing. But it gets better and better. Unfortunately when you go into the house to take the self tour of most of the house you are greeted with a sign that says "NO CAMERAS." What a bummer, there was so much to look at inside. Have never seen so much splendor and grandness in my life.
Of course, being the bad boy that I am I snuck a few pictures here and there while inside. These images will be part of the next post. For now enjoy the outside of this house.
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The eight hour engine change (in the field)?
by Jim Attrill
The place is RAF Wildenrath, Germany, and the time is early 1971. The people are the personnel of No. 4 Squadron, the first Harrier squadron to be assigned to NATO. As the Harrier had been sold to the RAF and to NATO as an aircraft that could operate from temporary grass airfields, it was up to us, as the first RAF Germany Harrier squadron, to prove that the concept could work in practice. We had originally gathered some practical experience working with No.1 Squadron while we were at RAF Wittering, an exercise which was like the blind helping the blind as we were all new to the aircraft and its systems. The advantage we did have is that all of us had been on the technical courses for the aircraft at Hawker Siddeley and we engine fitters had been on course at Rolls-Royce Bristol Engine Division at Filton. As an aside, this last course was the best I ever attended, partly because it was very interesting and partly because they fed us every day in the director's dining room, even the non-NCO's (I was a Junior Technician at the time).
So early 1971 was taken up with learning about the Harrier generally, and getting used to the new things that we were expected to do and the new equipment we had to use. All our ground equipment was painted matt NATO Green. This was fine until some bright person realised that it had been bright yellow for a reason, so reflective strips were applied to stop us tripping over the stuff in the dark. Our transport also became green, which gave the place a rather 'Army' look compared to a normal RAF camp. Many of us went on truck driving courses and tests; I somehow missed out on these and remained a Land Rover driver only. We were issued with the normal NBC gear, funny at first but not so funny when you have to wear it. As a spectacle wearer I was told I would be issued with a set of glasses that would fit inside my gas mask. In the meantime I could not wear my normal glasses with my mask, so could do nothing at all with the mask on. We were issued with army-style combat clothing, which we all liked as it was more comfortable than the standard scratch issue clothing. Unfortunately at first we only had one set each which became a problem later, when we had to wear it for weeks at a time. We were even sent to a real army 400 meter firing range to fire SLR's, just like the pongoes! To everyone's amazement I came second out of the squadron firing at long ranges, while at the normal RAF distance of 25 meters I was hopeless.
So eventually the big day came when the powers that be decided we would have our first exercise "in the field". The white had been painted out of the roundels on the Harriers (but they were still mostly in shiny paint), we had tents, stoves, cooks, bottlewashers, TACR1 Land Rover fire engines, camp beds, sleeping bags and a gun each. So off we went, in convoy - to the other side of the airfield! The Harriers were put in revetments which had been made for Canberras in the '50s, instead of in the trees. Some had camouflage nets draped over them for that "warlike" look. Because it was so close, we cheated and towed our power sets there, though in practice they would be chained down in the back of a Bedford MK. Nobody had visualised the difficulty of getting these power sets of about two tons each into the back of the truck (and out again afterwards). Our tractor was confiscated as we could hardly be expected to drive it to Hamburg or wherever we were supposed to be.
And then our problems started. Firstly, unlike RAF personnel in the past, we were expected to lug a L1A1 SLR around with us all the time. Having no ammo made it a bit lighter, but the things are a pain in the neck. Also some bright person thought to enliven the proceedings by hitting the gas alarm every time an aircraft flew over, at which time we had to don full NBC clothing and wear gas masks. As we were next to the Wildenrath main runway, it was difficult to get much done, especially in my case, and that of the other visually deprived people. We had NATO observers, mainly commissioned officers of many nationalities including our own. They had the power to declare us "dead" if found without a gas mask or whatever, but soon found out that we would all rather be "dead" anyway and the squadron would have ground to a halt. So a few blind eyes were turned.
You may ask "so what has this to do with the 8 hour engine change (in the field)?" I am just trying to show the level of disorganisation that we had got to by early on Monday morning of the exercise. Another bright idea someone had was to split the ground crew into "teams" consisting of a mixture of various tradesmen under command of a Senior NCO of any trade. Each team had a radio, and we were taught elementary radio procedure. We were then expected to rush from one revetment to another and refuel and re-arm the Harrier we found there. Oh, I forgot to say that we had all been trained as armourers, at least as far as re-arming the aircraft. Even the aircrew were trained in simple tasks suitable to their intelligence such as refuelling and checking the oil. I had "trained" some of them in this and we all came to the conclusion that horses were better left to their own courses. It was all shades of 2 TAF in 1944/5 and maybe some of the planners had been there (just joking of course).
And then it happened. The "8-hour engine change" had been the bane of our lives ever since HS tried to prove to the world that the Harrier engine could be easily changed. They changed one with a crack team of mechanics in 8 hours, though there was no record of the aircraft flying immediately after. We were convinced that they had rushed the job, leaving off some of the more difficult wire locking and maybe other steps. I suppose a good team could actually do an engine change this quickly, but here we were up against the greatest design fault of the Harrier (and for all I know it is still the same): there are not enough inspection panels in the bottom of the fuselage. This means that a dropped spanner or nut (or even a shoe) can be impossible to remove, resulting in the engine having to be lifted out (again... again... again...). I personally had been involved in the marathon 3 week engine change at No. 1 Squadron the year before, where the engine went in and out like a yo-yo until everyone concerned was thouroughly sick of seeing it. The problem there was compounded by the fact that by the time the engine had been changed, most of the airframe had been "cannibalised" to keep the others going. Anyway, I digress.
For those who do not know how an engine is changed on a Harrier, it is a relatively easy procedure, though a bit strange. Firstly the whole aircraft is lifted up on trestles under the fuselage. The wing is removed. This sounds difficult but it is only held on by four bolts and a couple of fuel and electrical connections. We used to lift ours off using the "air-portable crane" of which more anon. Then the electricians and engine fitters would undo all the connections various, normally with one fitter underneath and two or three on top. The engine trunnions are basically two large bolts. The engine would be lifted out using the crane as for the wing. As they say in car manuals "reassembly is the reverse of removal". Then you do a full engine/nozzle test, followed by an air test. Sounds easy, yes? But there we would be with spanners tied to our overalls with string, waiting for the dreaded "clink clonk clink clonk" noise of a spanner or nut falling to the bottom of the fuselage. Then out would come the plastic hammers and we would knock the skin until we heard where the offending piece of hardware was sitting. As there were few panels underneath we would hope that it would be retrievable. As a left-hander with rather thin arms, I was often called in to try and solve this problem. But in many cases we would have to undo that which we had so laboriously achieved and start all over again. Most depressing.
Well, on this famous day the Powers had decided that we would prove that we could change an engine "in the field". We were on concrete, hardly a field, but we were doing this outside, a procedure unheard of in the RAF. To make things worse, we were not allowed to cheat by bringing our crane from the hangar. Instead, they gave us a crane in a box, brand new. This crane is actually a good piece of equipment, basically a square monocoque made in sections and held together with quick-release pins. It is light and easy to move about, having large wide tyres for use on grass (not that we ever did that). Two people winding on handles can winch an engine in and out. Overall, we much preferred the effort to calling the MT yard for a crane and driver.
So, we start putting the crane together. Initially this was fun, rather like Christmas. We end up with a big pile of bits and bolts. I presume there was some sort of manual/instructions. Anyway, someone had put the one together that we had in the hangar, so it couldn't be too hard. Now I must digress (again) into the nature of our jobs and the tools with which we worked. Although we were called "fitters" we were not actually allowed to "fit" anything. We were basically component changers. If a component did not fit, no attempt was made to make it fit, because either it was the wrong part, made incorrectly, or being fitted incorrectly. 'Fitting' parts would bring Murphy's law to the fore with parts being fitted upside down or backwards with detriment to safety. For this reason, our tool kit consisted of lots of spanners, socket sets, screwdrivers and special tools for various things. Tools like hammers were frowned on though available and anyone going near an aircraft with a file or a hacksaw would have most likely been shot at dawn. But this crane did not want to go together at all. And we would no sooner have figured out what part went where when the gas alarm would go off and we would have to charge away with our guns and gas masks to "defend" the area.
The NATO observers, who had been observing us, eventually got bored at all the swearing and cursing and left us to go and annoy someone else. By this time we had discovered that the only way to avoid interference by the Powers calling us up on the radio, was to delegate the role of radio operator to myself. As a smoker, I had discovered that answering any call while crumpling cellophane in the microphone and saying "hello hello I can't hear you", and turning the volume down while transmitting obviated any silly calls. By this time we were having a serious sense of humour failure with those sitting in a tent and "controlling" us. Luckily they were a long way away so could only send the occasional messenger with new batteries for the radio. Even a new radio which also didn't work very well. Well, I was an engine fitter after all.
The whole engine change exercise was doomed to failure from the start, for one reason. The HS employees who merrily changed an engine which didn't need changing were aware that they were taking part in a selling exercise for their own company (and protecting their jobs, eventually). We could see no reason to "change" a perfectly good engine just to keep some unnamed people happy. We certainly weren't and it was getting worse. By late afternoon we had finally succeeded in bludgeoning the crane together. So we got ready to take the wing off. We were secretly hoping that someone would put a stop to this idiotic exercise at this point.
The NATO inspectors reappeared, looking at their watches and looked quite pleased. They though we were putting the wing back on! When we told them that it had taken the whole team all day to put the crane together they looked rather disappointed and went off to tea or wherever they go to.
For the rest, I don't remember much. We worked away at getting the engine out, gas masks and all, and eventually did so. At about this point (maybe on Wednesday) we were assailed (literally) by some other Power's bright idea. As we had these guns and things, we would have to defend ourselves against a real assault.
There we were, merrily pretending to work, as by this time we had decided that this "engine change" was going to go down in the annals as something never to be repeated. (We had also heard via the grapevine that the pilots would not wish to air test it even if we did get it done.) It was now raining and our NBC clothing, already ripped and greasy from use as overalls, was now quietly shredding itself into the interior of the Harrier's engine bay. I was underneath the fuselage, connecting or disconnecting something or other, when there is the sound of gunfire. I looked out and was instantly shot dead by a whole lot of what we later found out were Belgian paratroopers.
And so to Friday. We eventually got the wing back on and towed the rather bedraggled looking Harrier back to the hangar. I went to bed and slept for 26 hours. The words "engine change in the field" were never uttered again. I think the powers learnt from that exercise that even an exercise has to be "real", so we always went out into fields in Germany after that. If we had had to change an engine out there in a wood I am certain we would have done it well.
Actually it didn't really matter as the aircraft would have had to be towed back anyway as the PSP arrangement for ground-running the Harrier was found to be unsafe and unusable. We used to joke about towing a Harrier home down the public roads, and it would have been possible in an emergency. After all, in a later exercise we used a bit of unopened autobahn as a runway with the Harriers parked at the pumps. Wonderful camouflage, but that's another story..
© 2003 Jim Attrill Cpl A. Fitt (P) 4 Squadron RAF 1970-73
If you have any comments about this article, Jim can be contacted via our Message board
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Far from being just an accessory, mobile phones are starting to be used to collect data in an increasing number of disciplines.
When Martin Lukac felt a small earthquake rattle his Los Angeles apartment, he immediately thought of the mobile phone lying on his desk. Two weeks earlier, he had programmed the phone to capture readings from its built-in accelerometer, a sensor originally intended to support features such as games. Now, Lukac — a doctoral student in computer science at the University of California, Los Angeles — transferred the phone’s data to his computer and saw the readings plotted as a series of tell-tale spikes. Success! His phone had become a mobile seismometer.
Read the whole article on Nature, here.
Contiki can now post directly to Twitter from wireless sensors; Tmote Sky motes. More information here. Also, you can always follow us @WSNBlog on Twitter!
The 2009 International Workshop on Pervasive Multimedia Sensor Networks (PMSN’09) will be held in conjunction with the 7th IEEE/IFIP International Conference on Embedded and Ubiquitous Computing (EUC-09), August 29th-31st, 2009, Vancouver, Canada.
Given the development of low-cost imaging sensors, CMOS cameras, sensitive microphones, PMSN have been proposed and drawn lots of attention from the research community. PMSN are a new and emerging type of sensor networks that have the potential to enable a large class of applications: assisting elderly in public spaces, multimedia surveillance networks, target tracking, environmental monitoring, and traffic management systems. (more…)
ACme is an open source hardware and software platform that enables wireless energy/power measurement and control of AC devices. The ACme node fills the gap between inexpensive LCD watt-meters (e.g. Kill-A-Watt) and expensive networked enterprise energy monitors. The ACme network is an IPv6 based mesh network that enables direct IP communication with individual ACme nodes.
For more information about the ACme platform, please click here.
With the explosive proliferation of mobile communication and wireless computing devices, the scalability property is becoming an increasingly popular and important issue in wireless communication research, as it has been recognized as one of the key features for supporting pervasive networking scenarios.
The International Journal of Communication Networks and Distributed Systems (IJCNDS) has a call for papers for a special issue on “Scalable Wireless Neworks”.
The aim of this special issue is to bring together the state-of-the-art research contributions that address the major opportunities and challenges of scalable wireless communication and networking, with emphasis on the design, analysis and evaluation of new techniques and novel application scenarios.
Specific topics of interest and CFP are available here
Paper submission due: 1 October, 2009
Notification of acceptance: 15 January, 2010
Camera-ready version due: 1 March, 2010
ISPN’09 was held last month in San Francisco. The conference featured two interleaved tracks, the Information Processing (IP) track, and the Sensor Platforms, Tools and Design Methods (SPOTS) track. Each of which selected best paper awards.
The former one had two nominations: one best paper award and a best student paper award, which correponded to: Secure and Highly-Available Aggregation Queries in Large-Scale Sensor Networks via Set Sampling by Haifeng Yu (National University of Singapore) and On Hierarchical Routing in Wireless Sensor Networks by Konrad Iwanicki et al (VU Amsterdam), respectively.
On the SPOTS track the award corresponds to Monitoring Heritage Buildings with Wireless Sensor Networks: The Torre Aquila Deployment by M. Ceriotti et al (Bruno Kessler Foundation / University of Trento / TRETEC)
Check out our previous post from EWSN’09 and go figure who made two awards in a row this year!
Congrats to all the authors for the good work.
We are happy to share with all our readers worldwide… wsnblog has turned 3 years old today! With 814 posts covering papers, conferences, job offers, products and other developments from the WSN scientific community and the industry. Probably turning it the most complete source of news in this topic on the web today?
Cheers to all!
The WSNBlog team.
The CISTER/ISEP Research Unit has a Research Position available for a Senior Researcher to work in WSN. The successful candidate is expected to coordinate and primarily execute the activities of CISTER in the ARTEMIS funded project EMMON. The scope of the project is large scale wireless sensor networks’ communication protocols and data aggregation methods.
This position is for a three year contract. Salary will be 2.650,00€ per month (after taxes). CISTER research facilities and expertise offer an excellent research environment for leveraging research skills. The unit is located in the Polo Universitario in the nice city of Porto, Portugal.
See responsibilities, other benefits and application procedure here.
Within the context of the Karbon footprinting demonstrator and in an effort with Episensor and Tyndall, CLARITY have started monitoring the energy consumption and people activity of several parts of its premises at UCD and DCU.
Data streaming in real time is available online in XML format (data rate is about 1 packet per minute and needs to be refreshed to see updates)
The overall aim of the Karbon Footprinting demonstrator is to provide a opportunity for small to medium scale carbon footprinting. In brief, a wide range of sensor technologies will be used to measure and analyse the energy consumption, activity, and waste management profiles of individuals and groups of individuals in both home and small-office environments.
The Karbon Footprinting Demonstrator will provide a platform collaboration across a number of different groups within the core CLARITY CSET, as well as providing an opportunity for existing and new partners to participate in a substantial development opportunity.
For more info about the Karbon Footprinting, send an email to email@example.com
For more information click here
The ZigBee Alliance, a global ecosystem of companies creating standardized wireless solutions for use in energy management, commercial and consumer applications, today announced it will incorporate global IT standards from the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) into its specification portfolio of low-power wireless networking standards. This move will expand the growing portfolio of successful ZigBee specifications and should further advance the rapid growth of Smart Grid applications that have widely adopted the proven ZigBee Smart Energy public application profile.
By incorporating IETF standards, ZigBee Smart Energy products will enhance their application capabilities with native IP support, allowing seamless integration of Internet connectivity into each product. ZigBee members will also benefit from the knowledge and experience contained in IETF standards for large scale network addressability, security and IT integration, further building on existing expertise from developing the world’s leading technologies in the area of reliable, low-cost wireless sensor and control networks.
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The delay has been attributed to various reasons including delivery schedule of certain components from Russia and the ongoing protests in Kudankulam against the nuclear power plant.
The total expenditure on the project till September this year has been Rs 14,122 crore.
As per the original plan, the first unit was to be commissioned in December 2007, which was revised to mid-2010. This was further revised to September 2011 when the anti-nuclear protests broke out in Kudankulam.
The first Inter-Governmental Agreement for setting up two 1000 MW light water reactors was signed between India and the erstwhile USSR in 1988.
A supplement to the agreement was signed with the Russian Federation in 1998. The ground breaking for the Kudankulam project took place in September 2001 and the first pour of concrete took place in March 2002.
NPCIL and Russia's Atomstroy Export formally inked a deal for building two more civil nuclear reactors of 1,000 MW each at Kudankulam last year.
A total of 12 Russian nuclear power reactors are expected to come up in India of which six would be built between 2012 and 2017.
Source- Economic Times
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The reason potential lead poisoning is a common reason for product recalls is that even at very low levels of exposure, it can cause, among other problems, reduced IQ, learning disabilities, behavioral problems, and stunted growth. At high levels of exposure, it can cause mental retardation and even death. (See the National Safety Council’s Lead Poisoning factsheet for more info.)
Even though Alex doesn’t have any of the recalled wooden Thomas trains, I became concerned since he plays with a huge number of metals toys made in China (mostly Bob the Builder Take Along vehicles). (See The Consumerist’s Chinese Poison Train series for more on the connection between product recalls and China.) So I took Alex in to have his lead levels tested, and I’m happy to say that the results were normal (as his pediatrician assured me they would be). I’m glad to have the peace of mind, but I learned yet again that I worry a lot more than I need to (and it was no picnic doing the blood draw, let me tell you!).
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Bournemouth Reform Synagogue was founded in 1947 as the Bournemouth New Synagogue, a break-away from the Hebrew Congregation in the town. The split met with fierce opposition from the Hebrew Congregation who at the time refused to share the cemetery. There have been a number of rabbis in the community over the last sixty years, the longest-serving being Rabbi David Soetendorp who held the post from 1972 to 2005, when he was succeeded by Rabbi Neil Amswych.
Bournemouth Reform Synagogue is a member of the Movement for Reform Judaism, and shares similar goals. It seeks to be welcoming to everyone for social activities, educational programmes, for support or for spiritual nourishment. It seeks to respond to the needs of individuals who need a combination of both tradition and modernity, and says that it believes that "a healthy community is one that prays, socialises, learns, plans and grows together.
BRS is one of the many communities responding to a major difficulty of Reform Judaism - "the question of religious authority with the resulting difficulty of setting limits to a liberal religion. A centralised model of religious leadership under Rabbi Soetendorp was responsible for significantly growing the community in size, and in drawing people into the community. However, as the community continues to grow it is clear that a new model must being employed in order to meet new needs, and the model employed is similar to some Reconstructionist communities in America, in which the community comes to make important public decisions after a long process of education. Other elements from Reconstructionist thought have influenced some of the changes in the community of note. For example, Mordecai Kaplan wrote that "the only element in Judaism which is both permanent and distinctive is the survival and enhancement of the Jewish People In order to achieve that survival and enhancement, a process of community-education had to be started, since "if the role of the Jewish community is to help every Jew attain self-fulfillment, it can do so only by providing for him at every stage of his development the knowledge and insight he may need to solve the major problems that confront him as a Jew in his personal life. As a result, the Foundations course was established for adults in 2005, and in 2006 became a partially online course for those who live far away from Bournemouth. While, of course, community-led decisions have always been a part of every British Reform community, BRS is one of the communities that has employed a model in which the Ritual Forum, re-established in 2005, advises the Rabbi and Council of ritual decisions after long discussions that can sometimes take place over a period of months.
Under Rabbi Soetendorp's leadership, the synagogue published two volumes of "Emet" - booklets that told stories of individual members, being years ahead of the now recognised need to tell individual stories as part of the community's growth. This model was expanded upon by Rabbi Amswych who will ask on the Kabbalat Shabbat (Friday night) service often ask members to share the things that they are thankful for from the week that has been, and the things that they are looking forward to in the week to come. By ritualising story-telling the number of people attending services on a Friday night has doubled.
The synagogue has been led by five ministers over its sixty-year history: Rev. Charles Berg (1948-1953), Rev. Stanley Solomons (1953-1969), Rabbi Harold Vallins (1970-1972), Rabbi David Soetendorp (1972-2005) and Rabbi Neil Amswych (2005-present day).
Bournemouth Reform services are in both Hebrew and English. The synagogue aims to be egalitarian by encouraging members to participate in relevant mitzvot (commandments) regardless of gender. The Friday evening (Shabbat) service is usually more fluid with a story as the central focus, while the Saturday morning (Shabbat) service has a choir and has the Torah reading and its exposition as the central point.
The synagogue has been using the 7th edition of the Forms of Prayer siddur since its publication in 1977. From time to time, services are led from the draft 8th version, known as Iyyun Tefillah, and the community is likely to make a decision on which siddur to use closer to the publication date of that 8th edition.
Many decisions regarding community customs are made at the synagogue's Ritual Forum which meets monthly and which is open to all synagogue members. Recent decisions of the Ritual Forum can be accessed from the synagogue's website.
An essential part of the social life at Bournemouth Reform Synagogue is the Day Centre held on a Monday lunchtime. The Day Centre brings together Jews from all denominations across Bournemouth, and is a place for entertainment, good food and socialising. In 2006, the Day Centre celebrated it's 25th anniversary. It is still one of the least expensive day centres across the country.
Bournemouth Reform Synagogue is the largest Progressive community in Dorset and often holds events that link up with the South Hampshire Reform Jewish Community, and smaller communities in Salisbury and on the Isle of Wight. An important part of the outreach by the community is achieved by the synagogue website, created in January 2007, which includes a member chat room for individuals across the South Coast to discuss Jewish matters. Other outreach work includes interfaith activities, such as the 2007 Interfaith Seder, and school visits (either to the community or by community representatives such as Rabbi Neil Amswych, Student Rabbi Jenny Goldfried Amswych, or educators from the community).
The religion school at Bournemouth Reform Synagogue is called "Kol Shofar" and it brings Jews to Reform Judaism from toddlers up to teenage years. In 2006, Rabbi Neil Amswych created the Foundations Course which was designed to teach about matters that lie at the heart of being a Reform Jew. There were sessions three times a month - two Wednesday evenings and one Shabbat afternoon. In 2007, the two Wednesday evening sessions were moved online, so that the Foundations course could be accessed by more people. The website also contains an "Ask the Rabbi" page, a Torah Thoughts page with commentaries on most weekly portions (as well as occasional sermons), and also includes online courses, such as the course for 2007 entitled "Why do Bad Things Happen to Good People?"
Following the name of the community - Gates of Righteousness - Bournemouth Reform Synagogue has a history of social action. Under Rabbi David Sotendorp's guidance, the community was very prominent in the campaign to free Soviet Jewry in the 1980s. Under the guidance of Rabbi Neil Amswych, the community's social action has recently focused on environmental concerns, both locally and globally. Visitors to the synagogue website are also directed to internet charity sites where surfers can give to charity for free.
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Meister On “The Hidden Cost Of Coffee”
Coffee people are buzzing today over Sprudgie Award winner Erin Meister’s brand new article over at Serious Eats. Using the breadth of her knowledge and experience with Counter Culture Coffee, Meister breaks down the true price of buying, roasting, and retailing coffee in this modern day and age. Articles like this are especially important education tools for the new-to-coffee enthusiast, family members, and the generally curious public. Here’s a lil’ excerpt:
Roasting green coffee comes with its own share of financial burdens that include maintaining year-round stock both off- and on-site; keeping up-to-the-minute tabs on quality and quantity; hiring, training, and retaining highly skilled professionals to command the roasting machines; devising blends and coffee profiles; and doing the actual labor of lifting, sorting, blending, and cupping coffee after coffee, all day long.
(Did I mention that coffee beans shrink during roasting, too? That loss must get factored into their price as well.)
Not only all of that, but no roasting company runs on caffeine alone: A team of people do the officey things that are required when running any business. Consider personnel needs for any company of modest size: Warm bodies are needed to answer phones and take orders; put the roasted coffee into bags and those bags into boxes; design those bags and boxes in the first place; print shipping labels or manage local deliveries; handle account payment and paperwork; write paychecks and answer benefits questions; and handle IT hiccups—among other things.
Oh, and then there’s the rent of the building, the utilities, the maintenance on the machines, the office supplies, the packing and printed material, the taxes, the marketing, the trash removal…
Read the full article here via Serious Eats.
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|Born on 17 July 1834,
Philip was the son of David Wise Daily and Mary
(Shirley). He married Melissa C. Morton on 02 Feb
1879 in Clark County, Indiana.
served as captain in the Civil War under General
Walter Q. Gresham. He died not long after on the
20th of October.
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Sebastopol, CA--Nature provides us with an infinite variety of patterns, from those found in living things: in the foliage of plants, for example, or in the structure of plants themselves, and in animals--to those created by the actions of physical laws: the formation of crystals, ripples on a pond, or lines limned in stone by the play of water and wind. It's not surprising therefore that architects--of buildings or software--follow nature's example by making use of patterns in their own creations.
J2EE Design Patterns (O'Reilly, US $39.95) by William Crawford and Jonathan Kaplan explores the patterns that underlie effective software designs. As Crawford and Kaplan explain, a design pattern is a way of describing recurring solutions to common, recurring problems. From a programming perspective, they say, "a pattern provides a set of specific interactions that can be applied to generic objects to solve a known problem."
"Design patterns describe best practices and effective, proven solutions to what are often fairly intractable problems," explains Crawford. "They allow programmers to communicate effectively with each other, creating a common language for describing potentially complex subjects and reducing ambiguity. Knowing that an approach has worked successfully in the past, programmers can avoid duplicate effort and feel more confident."
"J2EE Design Patterns" is about the fusion of design patterns and enterprise design. Rather than create a conventional patterns catalog, the authors have chosen to introduce these patterns in a narrative style, while keeping each section sufficiently distinct so that readers can easily focus on the patterns themselves. Underlying themes of scalability, extensibility, and reliability flow through each chapter. Their goal is to give the reader a set of patterns that build on each other. By presenting the patterns in the larger context of J2EE applications, Crawford and Kaplan hope to foster a more complete understanding of effective Java Enterprise architecture.
"Readers will be able to look at an enterprise development project in light of its most important considerations and make effective tradeoffs between timeliness, scalability, performance, and reliability," says Crawford. "They'll be able to get off and running much faster with actual development and avoid common missteps along with way."
"J2EE Design Patterns" covers such topics as:
Presentation tier patterns
Business tier patterns
Interaction between the business tier and the presentation tier
Patterns for concurrency
Patterns for enterprise messaging
Antipatterns, or mistakes that have become patterns themselves
Many of the patterns in this book focus on extensibility, scalability, flexibility, and performance--all areas of concern to J2EE developers. Some patterns will be new to readers and some will be familiar. But whether readers have seen the patterns before or not, "J2EE Design Patterns" is unique in showing readers how to apply them in real J2EE applications.
J2EE Design Patterns
William Crawford and Jonathan Kaplan
ISBN 0-596-00427-3, 350 pages, $39.95 US, $61.95 CA
O'Reilly Media spreads the knowledge of innovators through its books, online services, magazines, and conferences. Since 1978, O'Reilly Media has been a chronicler and catalyst of cutting-edge development, homing in on the technology trends that really matter and spurring their adoption by amplifying "faint signals" from the alpha geeks who are creating the future. An active participant in the technology community, the company has a long history of advocacy, meme-making, and evangelism.
PRESS QUERIES ONLY
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Jharkhand, a Goldmine of Mineral Resources
Jharkhand is a newly formed state of eastern India; it borders with Uttar Pradesh and Chhattisgarh in the west, Bihar in the North, Odisha in the south and Indian state of West Bengal in the east.
Jharkhand is known as a mining and industrial heaven of India with Jamshedpur, Bokaro and Dhanbad as the highly industrialized cities of eastern India. Jharkhand is endowed with thick forest, mines and natural beauty. That is the reason, it is considered to be a wealthy state with skilled workforce, abandoned mineral wealth and forestry produces.
Its cover of thick forests is the natural habitat of a big number of tigers and Indian elephants. The meteorological department calls it the Chhota Nagpur plateau. Jharkhand is the origin of various rivers such as Koel, Damoder, Brahamani, Kharkai and Subarnarekha. Known for its rich flora and fauna, it is home to various national parks and the zoological gardens.
Jharkhand's population is 27 million with a good "male to female ratio." Around one third of its population is tribal. There are as many as 35 primitive tribal groups in Jharkhand.
Jharkhand has seen a lot of migration from the neighboring states of West Bengal and Bihar majorly for employment. In this ancient state, tribal communities do not follow Hinduism; they have their own spirituals beliefs called as Sarna.
As discussed earlier Jharkhand is the goldmine of minerals and ores such as iron ore, copper ore, mica, coal, bauxite, manganese, fireclay, china clay, lime stone, kainite, graphite, chromites, uranium, thorium, asbestos, gold, silver and yemenite. In the production of some of these minerals and ores, Jharkhand ranks among top three states of India.
Despite its huge industrial growth and minerals resources, the people are still poor and the civic infrastructure and amenities in the state are substandard. It is largely because of the poor governance and corruption in politics. Annual per capita income is also very low. Jharkhand has 22 districts and it is run by a state government based in Ranchi, which is assisted by a lobby of IAS officers.
Religions and Language
After sweeping colonization, followers of others religions such as Hinduism, Islam and Christianity also settled here, but tribal faith Sarna is still growing. Bhojpuri, Hindi, Bengali, and Urdu are the major languages spoken, whereas the tribal people also speak Kharia, Paharia, Bhumij, Mundari, Santhali and Ho. Some of the Dravidian languages such as Oraon and Korwa are also spoken here.
Last Updated on : 20th March 2013
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Agence France-Presse is reporting that Indian runner Pinki Pramanik, a member of her country’s gold-medal winning 4×400 relay team at the 2006 Asian Games, “was remanded in custody for 14 days” as she’s about to stand trial for allegedly raping her female partner. But according to the supposed victim, Pinki’s not a lesbian—she’s a man!
“Pinki poses as a woman but is actually a man,” the victim was quoted as saying in Friday’s Calcutta Telegraph. “She would assault me regularly and raped me several times.”
But the former world-class athlete tells a different story. “She has brought false charges against me as I refused to give her 300,000 rupees ($5,400),” Pramanik told reporters from the back of a police van. Sounds like this could be India’s answer to the John Travolta massagecapades or Justin Bieber’s “first time”—another case of someone exploiting a celebrity for a big payoff.
Or is it? “We don’t know whether it was a case of being male physically or hormonal change over a period of time which can happen,” Athletics Federation of India secretary C.K. Valson told the Press Trust of India news agency. The AFP also notes “Gender controversies are often caused by Congenital Adrenal Hyperplasia (CAH) when females have male physical characteristics or Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome (AIS), when someone is genetically male but their genitals may appear to be female.” And here I thought AIS was an insurance company…
In any case, this tabloid-selling saga isn’t bound to affect India’s chances for a medal in London. Pramanik retired from competition in 2007.
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The goal of this Bird Photography community forum is to promote good bird photography practices with an emphasis on learning, education, creative expression, composition and mastery but not at the expense of the subject. We want to give members the opportunity to express and share their work and by providing this guide as the operating parameter, our intent is to include photographers as a necessary and positive, artistic and documentary group within the scope of birding.
It is the desire of this website to ask members to act responsibly and ethically in the pursue of bird viewing and photography activities. Although it has been unstated and assumed until now, the following guide will now come into effect as the criteria for member participation. Principles of Ethical Field Practices
The following practices promotes the well-being of the location, subject and photographer. Every place, plant, and animal, whether above or below water, is unique, and cumulative impacts occur over time. Therefore, one must always exercise good individual judgment. It is this website's belief that these principles will encourage all who participate in the enjoyment of nature to do so in a way that best promotes good stewardship of the resource.Environmental: knowledge of subject and place
Social: knowledge of rules and laws
- Learn patterns of animal behavior--know when not to interfere with animals' life cycles.
- Respect the routine needs of animals--remember that others will attempt to photograph them, too.
- Use appropriate lenses to photograph wild animals--if an animal shows stress, move back and use a longer lens.
- Acquaint yourself with the fragility of the ecosystem--stay on trails that are intended to lessen impact.
Individual: expertise and responsibilities
- When appropriate, inform managers or other authorities of your presence and purpose--help minimize cumulative impacts and maintain safety.
- Learn the rules and laws of the location--if minimum distances exist for approaching wildlife, follow them.
- In the absence of management authority, use good judgement--treat the wildlife, plants and places as if you were their guest.
- Prepare yourself and your equipment for unexpected events--avoid exposing yourself and others to preventable mishaps.
- Treat others courteously--ask before joining others already shooting in an area.
- Tactfully inform others if you observe them engaging in inappropriate or harmful behavior--many people unknowingly endanger themselves and animals.
- Report inappropriate behavior to proper authorities--don't argue with those who don't care; report them.
- Be a good role model, both as a photographer and a citizen--educate others by your actions; enhance their understanding.
The Principles of Ethical Field Practices has been adopted in whole from the original published resource located at: http://www.naturephotographers.net/ethics.html
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French officials have ordered extra security around the country and at its embassies around the world after a satirical magazine published cartoons ridiculing the Prophet Muhammad. NBC's Michelle Kosinski reports from Paris.
France said it would temporarily close its embassies and schools in 20 countries Friday after a satirical magazine in Paris published insulting cartoons of the Muslim prophet Muhammad, a move it fears will add “fuel to the fire” of global tensions over an anti-Islam film.
The French government, which had urged the weekly not to print the cartoons, said it was shutting embassies and schools as a precaution on Friday, when protests sometimes break out after Muslim prayers.
“We have indeed decided as a precautionary measure to close our premises, embassies, consulates, cultural centers and schools,” a Foreign Ministry spokesman told Reuters. Riot police were also sent to the offices of the weekly magazine, Charlie Hebdo.
Arab League Secretary-General Nabil Elaraby called the drawings outrageous but said those who were offended by them should "use peaceful means to express their firm rejection".
Tunisia's ruling Islamist party, Ennahda, condemned what it called an act of "aggression" against Muhammad but urged Muslims not to fall into a trap intended to "derail the Arab Spring and turn it into a conflict with the West".
In the northern Paris suburb of Sarcelles, one person was slightly hurt when two masked men threw a small explosive device through the window of a kosher supermarket. Police said it was too early to link the incident to the cartoons. One small local Muslim group filed a legal complaint against the weekly but there were no reports of reaction on the streets of France.
The acting head of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood said French courts should deal with the case as firmly as it dealt with a magazine that published topless photographs of the U.K.'s Duchess of Cambridge.
The publication came amid widespread outrage over a crude, provocative film, made by anti-Islam campaigners in California, that mocked the Prophet and ignited days of deadly protests including an attack in Libya in which U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens was killed.
The front-page cartoon had the figure in a wheelchair saying "You mustn't mock'' under the headline "Untouchable 2," a reference to a hugely popular French movie about a paralyzed rich white man and his black assistant.
Charlie Hebdo's Paris offices were fire bombed last November after it published a mocking caricature of Muhammad.
Many Muslims consider any representation of Allah or Muhammad offensive.
From Northern Africa to Indonesia, protesters – sparked by outrage over an anti-Islam film produced in the U.S. – march in sometimes violent demonstrations. NBC's Jim Maceda reports and msnbc's Rula Jebreal and TIME's Bobby Ghosh offer analysis.
French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius criticized the magazine's move.
"Is it relevant and intelligent in this environment to add fuel to the fire? The answer is no,'' Fabius told France Info radio. "I'm very worried... and when I saw this I immediately issued instructions for special security precautions to be taken in all the countries where it could be a problem.''
The government has called for restraint over the cartoons, restating the principles of free speech in France and urging those shocked by the images to take action through the courts.
Muslim leaders in France, which has Europe's largest Muslim population, have appealed for calm.
Salafist Muslims in Paris have already called for a protest this Saturday at Trocadero, near the Eiffel Tower, against the California-made film.
According to reports citing local officials in Afghanistan, a female suicide bomber attacked a minibus near Kabul, killing at least nine people in what may be the deadliest act of retribution over an anti-Islam film produced in the U.S. NBC's Richard Engel reports.
However, French authorities have refused to authorize any demonstration.
A small group of about 100 were prevented by riot police from approaching the U.S. Embassy in the center of Paris last Saturday.
French Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault said the authorities had rejected a request to hold a march.
"There is no reason for us to allow conflicts that do not concern France to enter our country,'' Ayrault told RTL radio.
Muslim Brotherhood: Respect beliefs of others
Muslim leaders criticized the magazine’s cartoons as another Western insult to their faith and urged France's government to take action.
"We reject and condemn the French cartoons that dishonor the Prophet and we condemn any action that defames the sacred according to people's beliefs," the acting head of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party, Essam Erian, said, according to Reuters.
Erian added that the French judiciary should deal with the issue as firmly as it had handled the case against the magazine, Closer, which published topless pictures of Britain's Duchess of Cambridge, the wife of Prince William.
"If the case of Kate (the duchess) is a matter of privacy, then the cartoons are an insult to a whole people. The beliefs of others must be respected," he told Reuters.
Erian also spoke out against any violent reaction from Muslims but said peaceful protests were justified.
Mahmoud Ghozlan, spokesman for the Muslim Brotherhood, welcomed French government criticism of the cartoons but said that French law should deal with insults against Islam in the same way as it deals with Holocaust denial.
"If anyone doubts the Holocaust happened, they are imprisoned, yet if anyone insults the Prophet, his companions or Islam, the most (France) does is to apologize in two words. It is not fair or logical," he told Reuters.
In Lebanon, leading Salafist cleric Sheikh Nabil Rahim said the cartoons were extremely insulting and could lead to more violence.
"Of course it will anger people further. It will raise tensions that were already dangerously high," he said, according to Reuters.
He accused those involved of trying to provoke a clash of civilizations, not dialogue. "We will try to keep things managed and peaceful, but these things easily get out of hand. I fear there could more targeting of foreigners, and this is why I wish they would not persist with these provocations."
An official in Egypt's Coptic Orthodox Church said the move was a deliberate provocation. It showed "some international powers" wanted violence to escalate in Egypt so that the country would not develop economically, the official, who asked not to be named, said without elaborating.
Reuters contributed to this report.
More world stories from NBC News:
- Democracy declined worldwide in 2011 with Arab Spring at risk, watchdog says
- 132 inmates tunnel out of Mexico prison near US border
- Fresh anti-Japan protests erupt in China
- Islamist militants attack Egypt security headquarters in Sinai
- NBC's Ayman Mohyeldin in Benghazi answers questions about attack
- In Niger, child marriage on rise due to hunger
- Pope tells Christians in Beirut: 'Be peacemakers'
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1457 - The first written record of Golf when it is banned, along with football (soccer), by the Scots Parliament of James II because it has interfered with military training for the wars against the English.
1502 - With the signing of the Treaty of Glasgow between England and Scotland, the ban on golf is lifted.
James IV makes the first recorded purchase of golf equipment, a set of clubs from a bow-maker in Perth, Scotland.
1513 - Queen Catherine of England, in a letter to Cardinal Wolsey, refers to the growing popularity of golf in England.
1527 - The first commoner recorded as a golfer is Sir Robert Maule, described as playing on Barry Links (near the modern-day Carnoustie).
1552 - The first recorded evidence of golf at St. Andrews.
1553 - The Archbishop of St. Andrews issues a decree giving the local populace the right to play golf on the links at St. Andrews.
1567 - Mary, Queen of Scots, seen playing golf shortly after the death of her husband Lord Darnley, is the first known female golfer.
1589 - Golf is banned in the Blackfriars Yard, Glasgow. This is the earliest reference to golf in the west of Scotland.
1618 - Invention of the feathery ball.
King James VI of Scotland and I of England confirms the right of the populace to play golf on Sundays.
1642 - John Dickson receives a license as ball-maker for Aberdeen, Scotland.
1659 - Golf is banned from the streets of Albany, New York - the first reference to golf in America.
1682 - In the first recorded international golf match, the Duke of York and John Paterstone of Scotland defeat two English noblemen in a match played on the links of Leith.
Andrew Dickson, carrying clubs for the Duke of York, is the first recorded caddy.
1687 - A book by Thomas Kincaid, Thoughts on Golve, contains the first references on how golf clubs are made.
1724 - "A solemn match of golf" between Alexander Elphinstone and Captain John Porteous becomes the first match reported in a newspaper. Elphinstone fights and wins a duel on the same ground in 1729.
1743 - Thomas Mathison's epic The Goff is the first literary effort devoted to golf.
1744 - The Honourable Company of Edinburgh Golfers is formed, playing at Leith links. It is the first golf club.
The City of Edinburgh pays for a Silver Cup to be awarded to the annual champion in an open competition played at Leith. John Rattray is the first champion.
1754 - Golfers at St. Andrews purchase a Silver Cup for an open championship played on the Old Course. Bailie William Landale is the first champion.
The first codified Rules of Golf published by the St. Andrews Golfers (later the Royal & Ancient Golf Club).
1759 - Earliest reference to stroke-play, at St. Andrews. Previously, all play was match.
1764 - The first four holes at St. Andrews are combined into two, reducing the round from twenty-two holes (11 out and in) to 18 (nine out and in). St. Andrews is the first 18-hole golf course, and sets the standard for future courses.
1766 - The Blackheath Club becomes the first golf club formed outside of Scotland.
1767 - The score of 94 returned by James Durham at St. Andrews in the Silver Cup competition sets a record unbroken for 86 years.
1768 - The Golf House at Leith is erected. It is the first golf clubhouse.
1786 - The South Carolina Golf Club is formed in Charleston, the first golf club outside of the United Kingdom.
1788 - The Honourable Company of Edinburgh Golfers requires members to wear club uniform when playing on the links.
1810 - Earliest recorded reference to a women's competition at Musselburgh.
1812 - Regulations of Game of Golf adopted by the St Andrews Society of Golfers on Friday, 1 May 1812.
1820 - The Bangalore Club is formed, the first club outside of the British Isles.
1826 - Hickory imported from America is used to make golf shafts.
1829 - The Calcutta Golf Club (later Royal Calcutta) is formed.
1832 - The North Berwick Club is founded, the first to include women in its activities, although they are not permitted to play in competitions.
1833- King William IV confers the distinction of "Royal" on the Perth Golfing Society; as Royal Perth it is the first Club to hold the distinction.
The St. Andrews Golfers ban the stymie, but rescind the ban one year later.
1834 - William IV confers the title "Royal and Ancient" on the Golf Club at St. Andrews.
1836 - The longest driver ever recorded with a feathery ball, 361 yards, is achieved by Samuel Messieux at Elysian Fields.
1842 - The Bombay Golfing Society (later Royal Bombay) is founded.
1844 - Blackheath follows Leith in expanding its course from five to seven holes. North Berwick also had seven holes at the time, although the trend toward a standard eighteen had begun.
Golf History and Tradition
by David Stirk
Explores the possible origins of the sport staring with ancient Rome, and moving through all the significant events and developments of the sport. With biographies on significant golfers. More information:
The New Encyclopedia of Golf: The Definitive Guide to the World of Golf--Courses, Champions, Characters, Traditions
by Malcolm Campbell
An illustrated reference book including the history of the game, Championship Courses of the World, the evolution of the Golf Ball and Club design, the Hall of Fame section with golf legends and today's stars, championship records, developments in the women's game, and the top golf architects and designers of the modern game. More information:
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One Step Away From Cyber Pearl Harbor, Hiroshima
Russia & India Report
June 8, 2012
One step away from a cyber Pearl Harbor
The world’s most powerful state admitted using cyberweapons
On 1 June, the world woke up to a new era. The world’s most powerful state admitted using cyberweapons. This might be the most important arms news since the first nuclear attack on Hiroshima in the mid-twentieth century or the first ICBM launch.
On that day, The New York Times published a lengthy article, with reference to unnamed sources, discussing U.S. use of cyberweapons to undermine nuclear facilities in Iran. The program of cyber attacks, begun in the Bush administration and code-named Olympic Games, has been accelerated by President Obama. The attack plan became public after the combat malware, which was later given the name Stuxnet, escaped Iran’s Natanz enrichment facility and was sent around the world on the Internet because of a programming error.
Experts tend to disagree as to the scope of the malware’s efficiency; however, it was reported that Stuxnet temporarily disabled nearly 1,000 of the 5,000 centrifuges Iran was using at the time to purify uranium. The U.S. Administration considered this a satisfactory result, because Iran’s nuclear effort was set back by 18 months to two years.
More details of the operation are available in David Sanger’s book “Confront and Conceal: Obama’s Secret Wars and Surprising Use of American Power,” published on 5 June.
Technically, the United States has already acknowledged developing and using cyberweapons. For instance, in May, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced that the government services had hacked Al Qaeda’s Web site and made substantial changes to its content. This was the first formal acknowledgement of the U.S. government’s involvement in cyber attacks. However, essentially it was a trick worthy of a rooky hacker.
The article published by The New York Times suggests a totally different level of using computer technologies for military purposes. “It appears to be the first time the United States has repeatedly used cyberweapons to cripple another country’s infrastructure, achieving, with computer code, what until then could be accomplished only by bombing a country or sending in agents to plant explosives.”
The FBI’s investigation into the leak of classified data to The New York Times shows how serious things really are. For their part, some high-ranking republicans led by Senator John McCain accused Obama of deliberately divulging classified information to look stronger during the election campaign. According to McCain, the president “is trying to boost his re-election chances while undermining national security.” The White House has denied McCain’s claims, but not the New York Times revelations.
Incidentally, the U.S. is pondering a new computer security bill, which is necessitated by both real challenges and the fact that key infrastructure facilities in the country are privately-owned, but America’s national security depends on their stable operation. These include power grids, air carriers and, naturally, the New York Stock Exchange.
Former CIA Director and current Defense Secretary Leon Panetta once said: “The next Pearl Harbor we confront could very well be a cyber attack.” This is the essence of the problem, not the election maneuvers or classified data leaks. A cyber attack might mean war.
“The United States made a statement not long ago that a cyber attack may be interpreted as an act of war against the U.S., giving sufficient reason to retaliate employing all the means it has,” Gennady Yevstafyev, retired lieutenant general of the Foreign Intelligence Service, said in a comment.
It should be noted that the notions of cyber attack and cyber war are still undefined in international law; they are still in the “grey zone.” “It is very hard to identify the source of a cyber attack, especially if we have a superpower with a huge technological potential and complete superiority over its enemy, which does not have sufficient means to find and identify the source of attacks. This situation is currently made use of by modern aggressors in cyber space,” Yevstafyev says.
In order to prevent tragic outcomes, the expert insists on beginning international discussions in order to come to an agreement on the rules of conduct in cyber space. “The sooner the international community elaborates a strategy and tactics to address these issues, the better, because the things happening now should be regarded as hostilities,” Yevstafyev says.
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http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2012/06/11/one-step-away-from-cyber-pearl-harbor-hiroshima/
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en
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Skip to Main Content »
Here in Mexico our hard working cooks are responsible for providing three meals each day for our children. Our kitchen staff is extremely dedicated to the well-being of our children here and preparing meals that are delicious and nutritious is a top priority for our kitchen staff and our children are very appreciative of our hard working cooks. One of the favorite meals our cooks prepare is for example “chilaquiles” which is a dish of fried tortillas covered with “salsa verde” (green salsa) and then topped with cheese. Please help us provide a monthly salary for one of our very dedicated cooks! Still needed: 6 Units
Zucchini (20 kilos)
Lentils (10 kilos)
Carrots (25 Kilos)
You have no items in your shopping basket.
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http://www.mygoodshop.org/int_en/food/cook-salary.html
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en
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Check It is a program that I built in Max/MSP that has many functions. First, there is a three-oscillator synth with a programmable sequencer. Each oscillator has its own filter, and a delay is applied to the output signal. Presets are available for all of the settings.
The next window is a drum machine-style sequencer that can trigger samples locally or from the looper window. Each sample has its own parameters that can be set in this window. The sequencer can be set to values based on groups of 4. There are 16 programmable presets for this sequencer.
The looper window contains all of the components necessary to load/record/edit/stretch/loop sound files. While it has only 2 visual wave representations, there are six buffers into which files can be loaded. These files can then be triggered from either this window or the sequencer window. This window can function in either the ‘time stretch’ or ‘original time domain’ parameters. The time stretching is done via FFT analysis.
The final window is the controller window. From this window, the user has access to all of the important functions of the software. Each window’s main functions can be manipulated through the various sections in the control window, and a main control section, featuring DSP output is provided.
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http://colinzyskowski.com/?page_id=205
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This is a story about a girl who lived in a museum. Once upon a time, there was a girl named Opal. She decided she was going to run away. But where? Then she knew where she was going. To the Natural History Museum. Then she packed her bags and left for the Metro train. So she got on and read. Then she got off and went into the Museum.
Last Thursday my daughter took a field trip with her second-grade class to the Natural History Museum. She asked if she could take a notebook with her to write down what she saw. Lately she has been stretching her character a bit, trying on the props of an older girl, an older girl who might write in notebooks while standing in a museum. I said of course. I always give way when I see her stepping into a new and slightly oversized part.
The night after the field trip I snuck a peek into her composition book and saw that she had written the story above. You might be more startled than I was. I recognized the story as that from a book she'd recently read, and the name of the character as that in another. Those two stories now live in her story. They also live in this story of Georgia writing a story about going to the Natural History Museum while going to the Natural History Museum.
Whether we realize it or not, we make every story we ever hear our own. In that way, stories never end.
Thus was made clear the second ingredient in my personal program to cultivate childhood creativity.
Ingredient Number 2: A Story
Some stories come in books, that's true. Some come at bedtime. Some come to second-graders riding in school buses. But stories are not always stories. Sometimes they are paintings or photographs. Sometimes they are songs or poems. Sometimes they are beads on a string. Stories begin with just anything.
Stories beget stories as life begets life.
Our children are more sagely aware than we are that life is a story. Best not to take the story so seriously, because nothing we make up is as true as the original. Besides, we can always start over again.
I'm making up a story about creativity this week. Here's what got me started.
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http://mommazen.blogspot.com/2008/04/turning-page.html?showComment=1207686600000
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The three-volume set of materials describes and presents the results to date of a federally-funded project to develop Pashto-English and English-Pashto dictionaries. The goal was to produce a list of 12,000 basic Pashto words for English-speaking users. Words were selected based on frequency in various kinds of oral and written materials, and were to be accompanied by grammatical and other information needed for use in sentences. The 3-year project at Peshawar University (Pakistan) involved development of a million-word corpus and frequency lists derived from it. The final report includes: (1) a description of the project and its progress over 3.5 years; (2) information on compilation and structure of the textbase and frequency lists; (3) detailed description of the dictionary entries, orthography and pronunciation of the Pashto alphabet, dictionary abbreviations, and Pashto grammar; (4) Pashto-to-English dictionary samples in working draft, two-column format, and WordPerfect band format; (5) English-to-Pashto dictionary samples in working draft and two-column formats; and (6) two computer-generated and coded frequency lists, in separate volumes. (MSE)
1 - Available on microfiche
Office of International Education (ED), Washington, DC.
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CC-MAIN-2013-20
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http://www.eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/search/detailmini.jsp?_nfpb=true&_&ERICExtSearch_SearchValue_0=ED347841&ERICExtSearch_SearchType_0=no&accno=ED347841
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en
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MEXICO CITY – Mexico’s government has submitted Congress a balanced-budget plan for 2013 based on spending cuts and gross domestic product growth of 3.5 percent.
Finance Secretary Luis Videgaray outlined the plan after presenting it to lawmakers Friday, telling reporters it fulfills newly inaugurated President Enrique Peña Nieto’s promise not to run a deficit in 2013.
“It proposes that public indebtedness not be the engine of economic growth and that (2013) not be a year in which government liabilities increase,” Videgaray said, calling the decision necessary to “guarantee competitiveness and job creation.”
The budget is based on 3.5 percent GDP growth in 2013, a figure in line with economists’ projections and the slowdown abroad, particularly “in our neighbor to the north (the United States),” he said.
The secretary said the growth forecast takes into account the “risks that the situation in Europe implies and the fiscal situation in the United States.”
The GDP forecast represents a slight drop relative to the projection of a nearly 4 percent expansion of the Mexican economy this year.
The budget also predicts an inflation rate of 3 percent, an oil price of $84.90 per barrel and oil output of 2.6 million barrels per day in 2013.
Videgaray said it includes a “cross-cutting” crime-prevention program that will align the resources and actions of different offices in health, sports, recreation and other areas “to act in high-priority zones where decisive government action is needed.”
An austerity decree will be published Monday in the Official Gazette “that implies a thorough analysis of the entire federal public administration to detect areas of overlap that can be reduced or eliminated,” he said, adding that the goal is fulfill Peña Nieto’s pledge for the government “to do more with less.”
The budget will next be analyzed in congressional committees and is expected to approved before year’s end, legislative sources said.
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Since 1991, Miss Sissi is produced by the Italian lamp producer Flos. Already created in 1988 by the Popstar of Design – Philippe Starck, Miss Sissi is included in the range of products called “Good Goods” which composed for a catalogue of the mail order business La Redoute. In addition to t-shirts, teddy bears, kayaks and gas masks, Miss Sissi belongs to the “non-products for non-consumers” which Starck wanted to offer for “a moral market of the future” like a “political tool which aims directly at the heart of consumption.” Right after designing Miss Sissi, Starck said about the table lamp: “It was not me who created it, it was all of us.” The form language of Miss Sissi stresses anonymity and functionality and is thus a pretty good example of “non-design”. “In times where the trend on the market goes to far too complicated lamps with a narcissistic design, I thought, it would be necessary to regain the idea of an archetypical, small lamp like it is in all of us. The result is Miss Sissi. The usage of synthetic material facilitates the mass production and ensures that Sissi is affordable for everyone. As Sissi is a model of non-design, its conception arose from our collective memory. The table lamp spreads direct light and diffuse light. Light corpus, diffuser and diffuser holder are made out of injection molded, painted polycarbonate (UL-94 V0), the light's socket ensures stability with included sinker. On and off switch is regulated at the two-branch cable.
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<urn:uuid:784a5085-fb37-46ad-9693-8fac1fa09193>
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CC-MAIN-2013-20
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en
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Statue: Burlington House - Titian
Site: Burlington House (12 memorials)
W1, Piccadilly, Royal Academy
This building is commonly known as the Royal Academy (of Arts). The wings of the building are occupied by a number of learned societies, known collectively as the "Courtyard Societies". The Reynolds statue is in the centre of the courtyard, the Artists Rifles plaque is to the right of the entrance porch, and the students' plaque to the left. The other 9 memorials are statues ranged high up, along the facade of the building. Left to right: Phinias, da Vinci, Flaxman, Raphael, Michelangelo, Titian, Reynolds, Wren, Wykeham, with the first and last on the inside of the wings of the building.
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<urn:uuid:f3eaf0f3-6bb7-4dea-919c-82d01c7f0357>
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CC-MAIN-2013-20
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http://www.londonremembers.com/memorials/burlington-house-titian
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en
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Lightworks Video Editor Goes Open Source
The Lightworks video nonlinear editing program will be released as Lightworks Open Source in the fall of 2010.
Lightworks is targeted primarily at professional video editors, thus isn't well known publicly. The nonlinear editing solution (NLE) was acquired August of last year by the EditShare company, whose core products are multimedia storage and backup solutions. Releasing Lightworks under a free license would thus help EditShare in finding a community willing to further develop and add extensions to the product.
According to EditShare's press release, a free download of Lightworks should be available in the third quarter of 2010. The software would then be accessible to developers to build add-ons and plugins. An online marketplace will also provide commercial opportunities. When Lightworks is to go completely under a free license, and which license, is still to be decided.
not open sourcefrom EditShare:
Please remember as well that the process of going Open Source is not something that happens overnight. Before passing Lightworks code over to Open Source developers, there's the massive task of preparing the software, legally and technically.
Wrong, i can happen overnight. Legally what? Is this project open source or not?!? Technically you have a bunch of programmer working on this software to clean it up etc... but the open source community can work for you. I don't get it. You are using FFMPEG, QT, all this would be a piece of cake to port to linux...
They say that near middle of 2011 they will release the code... let's see and wait.
Vendor D-Wave scores big with a sale to NASA's Quantum Intelligence Lab.
Many package updates and Steam integration highlight the latest from the Mandriva-based community Linux.
Richard Stallman calls for the W3C to remain independent of vendor interests.
The new release supports nine architectures, 73 human languages, and zero non-Free components.
Fedora developers release the first alpha version of Fedora 19, known as Schrödinger’s Cat, for general testing. The final release is expected in July 2013.
ack is a grep-like, command-line tool that has been optimized for programmers to search large trees of source code.
New features in SUSE Studio 1.3 include enhanced cloud integration, VM platform support, and lifecycle management.
The Linux Foundation recently announced that the Xen Project is becoming a Linux Foundation Collaborative Project.
Open source version of LiveCode is now available for developing apps, games, and utilities for all major platforms.
OpenDaylight is an open source software-defined networking project committed to furthering adoption of SDN and accelerating innovation in a vendor-neutral and open environment.
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<urn:uuid:ca40682f-b8eb-41de-835d-24c8d1330c63>
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CC-MAIN-2013-20
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http://www.linux-magazine.com/Online/News/Lightworks-Video-Editor-Goes-Open-Source
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en
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The ARES-EVF design (patent pending) is based on the original Meissner concept and elongates the sample within a confined space by expelling the sample with rotary clamps. Instead of the rotary clamps, two cylinders are used to wind up the sample; one cylinder is rotating, the other measuring the force. In order to wind up the sample equally on both sides, the rotating cylinder moves on a circular orbit around the force measuring cylinder while rotating around its own axis at the same time (Figure). Since the force measuring cylinder is fixed in space it can be directly coupled with the torque transducer of the ARES. The full rotation of the mobile cylinder is generated by the ARES actuator. As such the force measurement is decoupled from all the moving parts and consequently friction and inertia contributions are not affecting the material response, namely the force signal.
The ARES transducer measures a torque. The force at the sample can be easily calculated from the measured torque divided by the cylinder radius. The strain rate applied is the velocity at the cylinder, divided by the sample length, which is equivalent to the separation of the center axes of the two cylinders. The velocity is given by the product of the angular rotation speed Ω(t) and the cylinder radius. Since the sample is elongated at both ends, the Hencky rate applied by the actuator is the product of angular rotation speed and cylinder diameter divided by the distance of the two cylinders.
click here for the product note APN002 on EVF technology
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<urn:uuid:fadca80b-f850-40c7-8e0d-7760756894ff>
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CC-MAIN-2013-20
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http://www.tainstruments.com/(A(wLHetQ-jcQ-QuSUugvGLINxrOq8stwpgOQUaDS8ZbwxYDi6cfkf2s6h0Fd4V92qybUzJMArZVmNG27kg6xlYKmiMIJiA1IZcouY1zkdOsCWCwGzQOhRQCDXwWckbcQTptTQGDorctIqAXkntcxyqkgPGKKqq4q1Yl8EFv7xIoedk7hIX0))/main.aspx?id=190&n=1&siteid=11
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Employment centre, France. Photo: M. Crozet/BIT
Labour markets are, therefore, having to deal with changes which are not only limited to the risks associated with the unpredictable economic and financial environment but which are also, more importantly, of a structural nature. In the light of these changes, activation programmes are needed more than ever if the requalification of the workforce is to succeed. And yet, when taking into account the budgetary impact of the crisis on social security (particularly in terms of pressure on expenditure), the rising number of job seekers calls into question the sustainability of increasingly costly programmes which become less effective as the guarantee of securing employment fades.
The role of activation programmes
Activation measures have two main characteristics:
The impact of these strategies on unemployment is due, on the one hand, to the fact that they ensure that unemployed workers participate in services linked to employment and, on the other hand, to the possibility of countering the disincentivising effect that benefits may have by imposing obligations to participate in activation programmes, by ensuring that entry conditions are respected and by threatening the imposition of temporary sanctions (OECD, 2010).
The Scandinavian activation model tested by the crisis
Sweden, Finland and Denmark implemented activation policies at the beginning of the 1990s. They were initially piloted on the more vulnerable sectors of the population, such as young people, immigrants and the long-term unemployed, and gradually extended to all unemployed workers (Bonoli, 2010).
The Scandinavian model has managed to combine economic growth with social protection and so make “flexicurity” an expression synonymous with successfully combining adaptability to a changing international environment with a social protection system capable of protecting individuals from the more direct consequences of this structural change. However, the pressures on governments today to reduce social budgets and the general impact of this new context on activation programmes should not be underestimated:
The crisis, however, has also highlighted a much deeper problem: the strong dynamism these measures imply – which enables workers to change jobs more frequently and which, more importantly, enables employers to lay off workers without having to make redundancy payments or create a social plan – has led to the constant scruting of worker productivity. Under these conditions, some “groups” of workers are increasingly excluded from the labour market (Daguerre, 2006; Sereni, 2009).
In fact, with the emergence of an ageing society, where one third of the population is over 60 years of age, senior citizens will become increasingly marginalized if activation programmes fail to target the particular needs created by this new demographic context. More generally, these programmes should form part of a new “management of ages”, in other words, a new way of addressing an ageing population still able to work.
Furthermore, the growing prevalence of a highly productive economy in an increasingly globalized and competitive world has added to the vulnerability of young people entering the labour market for the first time and increased pressure on this new economically active population to enhance their general skills and knowledge. Activation measures should therefore be accompanied by improved access to higher education, continued professional development and “social investment policies”: targeting child poverty and guaranteeing children living in poverty better conditions for learning could help to reduce exclusion and create a better-trained, qualified and flexible workforce, which is able to meet the needs of a highly productive economy.
So as not to lose sight of the original idea which underpinned activation programmes (the retraining of the workforce without breaks in employment or unemployment), these measures should be included in proactive and preventative social security policies. They should be adapted to meet the current socio-economic context and, in so doing, increasingly target those sectors of the population which are at risk, such as older workers, the mentally handicapped and young people entering the labour market for the first time.
Experience has shown that we must at all costs avoid allowing those who lose their jobs to enter the vicious circle of dependence and fall into the trap of unemployment, whether through the payment of disability benefits or pre-retirement pensions. Professional re-integration programmes are thus even more important, particularly for the most vulnerable. A more preventive approach emphasizing activation should facilitate both increased integration into the labour market and greater employability, mainly through investments in education, training and orientation.
Bonoli, G. 2010. The political economy of active labour market policy (RECWOWE Working paper on Reconciliation of Work and Welfare in Europe). Edinburgh, Reconciling Work and Welfare in Europe. < http://www.socialpolicy.ed.ac.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0010/39268/REC-WP_0110_Bonoli.pdf> (consulted on 18.05.2010).
Daguerre, A. 2006. «Les politiques de retour à l’emploi aux Etats-Unis, en Grande-Bretagne et en France». Critique internationale 2006/4-6, No 31, p. 69-94. < http://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/2005/06/DAGUERRE/12554> (consulted on 13.05.2010).
OECD. 2009. Tackling the jobs crisis: the labour market and social policy response: Theme 2: Maintaining the activation stance during the crisis (Background document – OECD Labour and Employment Ministerial Meeting). Paris, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. < http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/54/48/43766121.pdf> (consulted on 18.05.2010).
Séréni, J.-P. 2009. La social-démocratie à l’épreuve: Les parts d’ombre du paradis danois. < http://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/2009/10/SERENI/18225> (consulted on 13.05.2010).
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A little boy, a little girl, little toy car, or pretty curl;
"Don't think you're ready? Just give it a whirl."
What have I learned from my parent's so dear?
What have they taught me from being so near?
One thing for sure that I'll never outlive...
Is when Mother taught me always to give.
Assigned a talk at the young age of three;
One that has left an impression on me:
"I had a little smile, and I gave it away, to make someone else happy, you see?
But, what do you know, at the end of the day? That smile came right back to me."
She had me memorize every last line Told me it would be a very good sign
Said it would help me all through my life.
reduce by struggles, lessen my strife...
You know, looking back, I agree with her now.
Everyone smiles if you just show them how.
So, thanks alot Mama, & you Papa too;
I'll try to teach all this message so true...
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