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General Ulysses Simpson Grant Fry’s restaurant in Luray
From the May 11, 1922 issue of the Page News and Courier.
General Ulysses Simpson Grant Fry, colored, is advertising his restaurant ‘on the hill’ for rent in this issue of the News and Courier. General is prepared to give some real fact and argument about the question, ‘What’s in a name?’ and he concludes that a name is a matter of real importance. Not for moment does he believe that a rose smells as sweet if you give it another name. General knows better than that.
Eighteen years ago , General went into the restaurant business in the colored part of town on the road to the Luray Caverns. Business was not extra good, but one day Fry got a pointer from the late A.L. Jamison, a shrewd businessman of Luray. ‘General,’ said Mr. Jamison, ‘your name should be your fortune. Spell it out fill on your restaurant sign and try its effect on the Yankees who come to see the Caverns.’
General was impressed by this advice, put up his sign in big letters, ‘General Ulysses Simpson Grant Fry Restaurant’ and waited for results. A few weeks later along came a Caverns party from Maine. They halted in front of the restaurant shouted and laughed and yelled for the General. Fry, whose complexion is fully as dark as that of his ancestors of the equatorial jungles of Africa, was for a time afraid to go, vaguely fearing that perhaps his name was going to get him into trouble. Finally, he decided to show himself and stepping out in the road gave the party from Maine a brisk military salute. He was greeted with cheers and huzzas and the entire party filed into his restaurant to be fed. This process has been repeated a number of times in the years that have fled. General says that he has always been careful to give food and service worthy of the great name he bears. His guests always receive the most approved military salute. Probably no soldier in town can give the salute as well as General. In parting with his restaurant business he is in doubt whether he should rent out the name that has brought him prosperity. One thing is sure, if his successor uses that name, he must keep up the reputation of the place.
There is no sham or commercialism about General’s name. he was the first baby in the family after the civil war and his father, Wesley Fry, of Madison county, who was a soldier in the Northern army [likely a private in Co. E, 2nd U.S. Colored Infantry, but possibly Co. K, 64th U.S. Colored Infantry], insisted that this offspring should be named general Ulysses Simpson Grant Fry, and it was done. Wesley Fry was a slave of Mrs. Matt Graves of Madison county, mother of Robert A. Graves of Syria. At first he was sent to the Confederate army as a teamster, later joining the Federals at Culpeper.
General Fry is a good citizen and has cared for the gifts fortune has bestowed upon him. He has combined farming and janitor work with the restaurant business, sleeping from midnight till five a.m. and working the rest of the time. He objects to working on Sunday any longer. He loved the farm and the babbling of the brooks and the rustling of the trees. He is able to quit and is going to quit.
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I am easily enraged by bullshit.
The form of bullshit that I find most frustrating is management speak, the brand of gobbledygook so effectively skewered by Don Watson. Management speak is that gangly amalgam of pop psychology, needless jargon and weasel words that is used to dress up empty, verbless sludge to sound as if it means something. It’s soul-deadeningly ubiquitous, and it sometimes seems as if there’s no escape.
The ABC has been a haven from the ever-encroaching scourge of dead language. No longer.
Today, the Drum published a dense slab of management consultant jargon, an outstanding example of the genre. It was about “sustainability”, a word which apparently posseses a radically different meaning than the word “sustainable”. This could have come from the pages of Watson’s Weasel Words:
If sustainability is fully planned and implemented, it drives a bottom-line strategy to save costs and a top-line strategy to reach new consumers while creating employment. It also drives a talent strategy to get, keep, and develop both employees and network partnerships with the community and stakeholders. It protects nature, without compromising people’s welfare. Combining the SEEC principles can lead any situation positively, because it looks at the whole picture.
The author is apparently the head of a “a strategic advisory that helps businesses create value through sustainability management”. This involves, among other things, informing businesses that sustainability “means operating profitably”, a message I’m sure they’re pleased to hear. I don’t want to be too harsh on the author; she may well have some genuine insights behind that smokescreen of corporate babble, and I’m sure she means well, but I can’t take it anymore.
It occurred to me that “sustainability” has reached the limits of its usefulness as a term, now that it simultaneously seems to mean everything and nothing. This led me to ponder the cycle of ideas and terms, the process by which new concepts or phrases come to rise and fall in our public language.
I think it goes something like this:
- New phenomenon is observed, new perspective advocated or new argument advanced. This leads to the adoption of a new term, like ‘sustainability’, ‘the third way’, ‘Web 2.0’, ‘stakeholder’, ‘corporate social responsibility’, ‘the triple bottom line’, ‘social inclusion’, etc.;
- The new phenomenon, argument or perspective is found useful by academics, who proceed to debate, discuss and study its implications;
- Think tanks or advocacy groups pick up on the academic arguments;
- Policymakers pursue reforms that use the new language, often perverting the original academics’ findings; and then
- Management consultants scoop up the scraps of the now-fading intellectual fashion and sell the jargon to gullible executives and boards.
That’s not to say that these terms don’t retain some important meaning. ‘Web 2.0′, for example, still means something. The move to a more interactive, real-time internet is an important social change with wide-ranging implications. But the considered, important discussions of the concept risk being buried amongst the vapid talk of “leveraging social media to enact corporate missions” and the like.
‘Social exclusion’ (and its corollary, ‘social inclusion’) is another concept that I think is quite useful, despite others’ cynicism. It refers to a broader conception of relative poverty, one that includes material deprivation, but also other kinds of deprivation and exclusion. Again, the concept’s usefulness is in danger of being slowly poisoned by a tendency to stretch its definition and use it serve any political or rhetorical purpose . It is reaching stage 5 of the process of decay.
We’re drowning in bullshit, and I don’t know how to make it stop.
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A popular German newspaper RP published Doris Heimann’s article dedicated to Yakutsk under the title «Jakutsk – kälteste Stadt der Welt. Minus 45 Grad sind normal» (Yakutsk, the coldest city in the world. Minus 45C is regular temp.)
I remember Doris Heimann, Moscow-based RP reporter. She was in Yakutsk two years ago. A year ago she published her story. And only now I digged out her story.
The article is written in German, but thanks to the service translate.google.com it is possible to figure out what it says about:
(RP) The winter lasts from October to May. At the beginning of the temperature drops to minus 45 degrees. In the town in northeastern Siberia, about 240,000 people live in extreme conditions. In the permafrost soil never thaws out properly.
Ice cold in Yakutsk
Stiff frozen fish are like giant Baguette vertically into the baskets of the market traders. On the tables are in front of thick white glass. It is frozen milk that is sold here in portions. The biting cold is so strong that it triggers at each new arrival a coughing fit.
Nura Starostina makes nothing.»Minus 35 degrees — that’s not cold. We used to have here in the winter, minus 55 degrees. «The shopkeeper is based relaxed on their frozen fish. She wears a large fur hat of gray fox, his feet stuck in Filzgaloschen two Fellüberzügen. At the farmers market in Yakutsk, the whole day is traded in the open. No job for wimps: Yakutsk, located in northeastern Siberia is the coldest major city in the world.Approximately 240,000 people live in extreme conditions. The winter lasts from October to May, and in the coldest months of January and February, minus 45 degrees are the norm.
The region of Yakutia in northeastern Siberia, has an area of over three million square kilometers. The distance from the extreme west to the far east is 2500 kilometers. That’s enough for three time zones: Within Yakutia, there are six, seven and eight hours time difference with Moscow.Accordingly, it is sparsely populated: Yakutia has one million inhabitants. Approximately 640 kilometers northeast of Yakutsk is the place Ojmakon. He is considered the «cold pole» of all the populated areas on Earth: The lowest temperature was recorded here, was minus 71.2 degrees.
Six hours does the flight from Moscow, and after the ramshackle Tupolev airline «Jakutia» has landed on a Eisbuckelpiste, one enters a world with special rules.The car engines have to run all the time — in the cold, they do not usually jump on again. Slowly, as in a dream the traffic, sliding over the icy roads, wheels rotate through, slipping on their bus stops. Most Used cars are sedans with the steering wheel on the right side. Their owners have imported over the Pacific port of Vladivostok directly from Japan.You get better with the harsh climatic conditions than the Ladas and Volgas cope.
«Bone Road» connects with the outside world
The only road to Yakutsk with the rest of the world connects, takes 2032 kilometers to the port city of Magadan. Five days need a truck driver for the line — who are still on the road, which threatens to endanger life. There are conditions, like the one subject only to his worst enemy. The Russian czars exiled their opponents in this inhospitable corner. «Lived at the outbreak of the October Revolution in Yakutsk 500 political exiles,» says Vladimir Fyodorov, chief editor of the local newspaper «Jakutia.
Leading Bolsheviks and SRs here spent years of her life. Most of them worked as teachers or lecturers. The main objective was to keep them away from political life. «Compared to the Stalin era was the human,» says Fedorov. Stalin had built in the area around Yakutsk hundreds of prison camps. The Gulag prisoners built the path to Magadan, which is called because of the many victims as «road to the bone.»Furthermore, they toiled in the mines.
For Yakutia is fabulously rich in natural resources. The group «Alrosa» promotes the region diamonds. The precious stones from the ice make up 20 percent of worldwide shipments of rough diamonds from. There are also silver, gold and coal deposits. In a Yakut legend says: When the gods of Yakutia flew, so they got cold hands, that they dropped all their treasures. The Soviet Union was pumping billions into the development of the region. In the 90s, the crisis came, subsidies were completely eliminated. «At that time, many have migrated, where the conditions were too harsh,» said Fedorov. Those who remained, today work. «We do not live arm.»
The residents of Yakutsk do it even with murderous Frost, dress amazingly elegant. «About 3,000 to € 4,000 is needed for the equipment,» says Bolot Botschkarow, a blogger who writes on the Internet about his homeland. The basic equipment includes fur coat, hat and special gloves. «And of course the traditional Unty — the hottest boots of the world,» says Bolot. Inside thick wool felt, without reindeer, decorated with colorful fabric borders. The price for the well-rounded warm and pretty shoes: 300 to 400 euros.
Bolot Botschkarow is Yakut — here are a Turkic-based, its agents, almost half of the population. Mark Schat 60 steps leading down into the basement of the Permafrost Research Institute. Ice crystals forming on the ceiling symmetrical patterns. Just four meters below the surface of the ground is frozen the year around, hard as concrete. Taut it on, turns the whole into crumbly sand. «Permafrost covers 65 per cent of Russia and 98 percent of Yakutia,» says the researcher. In other countries trying to build is not even in this difficult surface. In Yakutsk, there is no choice: All the buildings are on stilts, for each has a hole in the rock-hard ground to be drilled.
Winters are «milder become»
Schat scientists confirmed the observation of market woman Nura: «The winter in Yakutsk have become milder.» With the global warming of the permafrost will be a thin year or two centimeters. In Alaska and Canada, we are not alarmed, in Russia. In Yakutia, the layer is 300 meters to 1500 meters thick. Measured by the loss was not dramatic, says Schat.
The wind drives the snow on the asphalt. The road passes through endless, snowy expanse — rarely meets a car. Twelve kilometers from Yakutsk lies the village Tulagino. Bauer Yuri Fedorov (68) and his wife Ekaterina, eleven cows. To keep warm the barn to lubricate the Yakut farmers manure on the roof and walls — which then freezes into a layer of insulation. Previously, the mansion belonged to a collective farm, the farmers are now self-employed in Tulagino. «Today, we are better,» says farmer’s wife Ekaterina confidently. «In Soviet times there was nothing to buy. If we now successfully operates at, you can afford for something. »
On the snow-covered pasture behind the house are 20 small shaggy horses. «But we do not keep the riding,» says Bauer Fedorov and invites into his house. Inside, a gas heater, log cabin bar exude coziness Bullert — there are fat horses.
P.S. Doris, many thanks for your story.
See more about extreme cold weather in Russia’s Siberian city of Yakutsk and Yakutia’s other areas in posts filed as Cold Weather. Enjoy Siberia!
- A Day After the End of the World in Yakutsk, Russia. 22 December 2012. [photos]
- Dogs playing at -40C in Russia’s Siberian city of Yakutsk
- Driving in Yakutsk (Siberia/Russia) on the 1st day with -41C [video]
- Yakutsk, the World’s Coldest City, Siberia / Russia. Winter Weather Photos.
- Feel the atmosphere of our winter life in Yakutsk, Siberia/Russia
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Some Word – A Gift
Mayy eva mana adhatsva are the words I wanted to share today. Being December, the time where many places in the world there is a giving notion, here is my giving.
From the Gita (which was spoken in December, we have these words, mayy – upon me, eva – certainly, mana – mind, adhatsva – fix. Put this together and it reads like so:
“Just fix your mind on me” God is speaking here in the verse 12.8.
This is a tall order or suggestion – surrender your mind to me. The return is good though. Check this out – the next line , mayi buddhim nivesaya. This means, be intelligent about it. Spirituality doesn’t require blind following. How is surrender of one’s mind intelligent? Well, ultimately putting all our eggs in one basket – into secularism, does not work, it’s dumb. It’s smart to invest into the soul. We are all going to die one day. It’s as blunt as that. It’s the naked truth, the soul is what’s left.
Let’s get back to the return or the benefit. Here we go – one more Sanskrit word, nivasisyasi means,“You will live with Me.” You will get to live with that divine person. Birth and death will be at cycle’s end. So the deal is to “go spiritual” and move to safety and satisfaction. You can take this “sharing of words” as just words if you want, but apply it that at least you’ll feel lighter and more free.
Legs are for walking and words are for contemplating and hopefully for applying. Some years ago in 1995 I contemplated an 8,000 km walk. I applied, it was done. I have no regrets.
Apply yourself, try something, go spiritual. There’s nothing to lose. Live happily. This December, share the gift of the Gita.
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That’s how Canadian Press is reporting on the poll, conducted by Ipsos-Reid for the Historica-Dominion Institute.
“…the Canadian sense of national pride is becoming an in-your-face swagger.”
I’m not sure if this is true. I’ve known patriotic Canadians my whole life, people who have been willing to stand tall and say I am Canadian. Of course for my whole life my better thans have been saying we should just pipe down, not be so loud. We’ve been told that patriotism, at least the in your face style, is an American thing. Bull.
Maybe to our elites who encouraged quiet Canadian pride in social programs like health care, in Canada’s contributions to the United Nations, an in your face patriotism was seen as too American but then again, those people – many of whom populate our elites, our chattering classes, have always defined Canada as what it is not in relation to Americans.
Canadians they will say are more polite than Americans, Canadians are more peaceful that Americans, Canadians are…you get the idea.
Some people have only been able to express their love for this country by taking a shot at the US of A.
I don’t get that. I never have.
My parents chose to settle in Canada. I’ve seen what they left behind. Britain may not be the third world holes that so many people left to come here but I can tell you that given the choice I would settle here rather than Scotland.
Canada is a land that offers an incredible amount of freedom. Yes, we have problems just as every country does and yes there are things I would change in a heartbeat if I had the power – say getting rid of certain parts of the Charter.
But on the whole, and that’s how we must take Canada, on the whole this is a truly blessed country.
I have been blessed to live here my whole life and been blessed enough to travel from coast to coast.
This country is spectacularly beautiful.
The maple leaf was chosen as our definitive national symbol by 59% of people surveyed by Ipsos. I’m not surprised. This spectacular symbol can be found in so many parts of our country.
I grew up in southern Ontario where in the fall the maple trees along the Niagara escarpment would turn beautiful shades of orange and yellow. We’d get hints of red but not big, bright reds. So I was a bit puzzled as to why the maple leaf on our flag was so, so red. Then I spent my first fall in Ottawa.
The stunning view from Ottawa across the river at the Gatineau hills will take your breath away. That’s when I understood the red maple leaf as a symbol.
If you’ve travelled this country then you know that there are breathtaking views everywhere you go.
I’ve marvelled at the sights of the harbour in St. John, NB; the dark grey skies over the Saugenay river in Quebec, the majesty of Lake Winnipeg, the stunning openness of the prairies be it on a farm in southern Saskatchewan or at the foothills of the Rockies just outside of Calgary. I’ve travelled the winding roads of Vancouver Island on my way to Victoria and stood with pride in our major cities straight across the country.
And still there is so much more to be seen.
As you celebrate Canada Day this weekend don’t feel that you need to tone it down and not speak too loudly about how proud you are to be Canadian.
We live in the best country in the world, we shouldn’t be afraid to say it.
And that’s the Byline
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Regardless of whether some investors thought it was a damp squib instead of a moon-shot, the Facebook IPO was a landmark event in Silicon Valley terms — a multibillion-dollar share issue by a company that has become a global behemoth virtually overnight. While that may have given thousands of entrepreneurs and investors big ideas about the future, there are those who argue Facebook’s success has also done something else: namely, changed Silicon Valley culture for the worse. One of the most recent critics to advance this theory is Bill Davidow, a venture-capital veteran who says the social network has altered the values that tech entrepreneurs used to hold dear.
Davidow, who was trained as an electrical engineer, is a partner emeritus at Mohr Davidow Ventures, one of the oldest VC firms in the Valley with about $2-billion in investment funds under management. The author of several books such as Overconnected: The Promise and Threat of the Internet, he also has a long history in the technology sector — including early roles at Hewlett-Packard, General Electric and Intel Corp. Mohr Davidow, which focuses on IT, life sciences and clean energy, has invested in companies such as Brocade Networks, 23andme and Rocket Fuel.
A business based on the exploitation of users?
In a piece he wrote for The Atlantic magazine, Davidow talks about how Silicon Valley culture has changed as result of companies such as Facebook and Google, and in particular how he sees the focus of many companies changing when it comes to the consumer. In the past, he says, large companies like Intel and HP had large customers, and they had to serve them well or risk losing them. Newer Silicon Valley companies are different, he says:
[T]he valley is no longer as concerned about serving the customer, and even sees great opportunity in exploitation. We are beginning to act like the bankers who sold subprime mortgages to naïve consumers.
As giants like Google and Apple and Amazon and Facebook battle for supremacy, Davidow says, their main weapon is the ability to lock web users into their ecosystems and then exploit the data provided by consumers, along with the other elements of this unbalanced relationship. He doesn’t mention it, but a great example of what I think Davidow means is the way that Facebook routinely seems to change the terms of its offerings primarily for its own benefit — including the way it recently made facebook.com email addresses the default for all users without telling anyone.
Would older Silicon Valley companies have treated their customers this way? It’s hard to imagine how — but then, their businesses were very different, in a time before social media took over the world. Davidow argues that this kind of behavior is almost required in today’s environment, since everyone is after the same goal: accumulating as large a user base as possible, so that it can be monetized in some way. If Google can’t generate what it needs with Google+, then Facebook wins — and if Facebook can’t make inroads into mobile, then Apple wins. As Davidow puts it:
When corporate leaders pursue wealth in the winner-take-all Internet environment, companies dance on the edge of acceptable behavior. If they don’t take it to the limit, a competitor will… and when you engage in these activities you get a different set of Valley values: the values of customer exploitation.
If you are not paying then you are the product
The fundamental shift behind what Davidow is describing is that consumers are not really Facebook’s customers — as more than one person has pointed out, they are actually the product that is being sold. Since users don’t actually pay cash for the services they get, they have to pay for them in some other way, and in most cases it’s with the information they provide by using the network. So Facebook devotes huge amounts of its time and resources to figuring out how to get users to share more, and that’s what Davidow sees as exploitation.
Facebook isn’t the only company the veteran VC accuses of doing this: he also mentions how Zynga founder Mark Pincus has confessed to doing “every horrible thing in the book” to get revenues, and bragged about designing “compulsion loops” into products to keep customers engaged. And he slams Apple for building a walled-garden ecosystem that gives it the power to deprive customers of choice — a power he says it exercises aggressively — and Google for having a culture that “condones shamelessly violating consumer privacy.”
Are Davidow’s criticisms just a lament from the old guard about the rise of new firms with different values, or does he have a point about the world that Facebook and Google and Apple have created? Probably a bit of both. But it’s worth considering whether the benefits we get from free services are worth the trade-offs we make in order to get them, and what kinds of incentives the success of Facebook and others are creating for the companies that follow them.
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You can read Human Kinetics e-books on desktop, laptop, and various mobile devices, as long as you have authorized the device or e-reader app to read e-books protected by Adobe's digital rights management (DRM).
Basketball’s best and most comprehensive drill book is now bigger and better than ever! Youth Basketball Drills, Second Edition, contains 160 drills for mastering every essential skill. Authors Burrall and Patrick Paye have outlined drills and variations that cover the entire scope of the game in both offense and defense. The book shows you how, when, and why to use each drill.
The progression of drills will help you develop your team from beginners to advanced players, skill by skill. The essentials of basketball offense and defense are addressed:
Balance and agility
Stance and footwork
When you’re coaching your players, it’s important to start out right. Youth Basketball Drills gives you the know-how and practice tools so you can teach your players the fundamentals they need in order to excel.
Part I Offensive Skills and Drills
Chapter 1 Balance, Quickness, and Agility
Chapter 2 Stance and Footwork
Chapter 3 Ballhandling
Chapter 4 Stopping and Pivoting
Chapter 5 Passing
Chapter 6 Cutting
Chapter 7 Passing and Cutting
Chapter 8 Screening
Chapter 9 Rebounding
Chapter 10 Shooting
Chapter 11 Post
Chapter 12 Perimeter
Chapter 13 Low Post Fakes and Moves
Chapter 14 Team Offense
Part II Defensive Skills and Drills
Chapter 15 Stance and Footwork
Chapter 16 Individual Movement
Chapter 17 Team Movement
Chapter 18 Team Defense
Chapter 19 Team Defensive Stunts
Burrall Paye has been developing young basketball players’ skills for more than 30 years. He is considered one of the game’s best teachers.
Coach Paye enjoyed winning seasons in 36 of the 37 years that he coached. During his career his teams won 64 championships, he was twice honored as State Coach of the Year, and he was named Outstanding Coach by the National Federation Interscholastic Coaches Association in 1985.
Retired since 1996, Coach Paye shares his expertise through his speaking and writing. He has spoken at major clinics in the United States, Canada, Mexico, and Europe. He has written 12 full-length basketball books and hundreds of articles for national basketball magazines.
Paye earned his master’s degree in 1965 from the University of Tennessee. He is a member of the National High School Coaches Association and the Virginia High School Coaches Association. He lives in Roanoke, Virginia, with his wife, Nancy.
Patrick Paye is an assistant basketball coach at Elizabeth City State University, an NCAA Division II member of the CIAA. Patrick has never been part of a losing season as a player or in his 23 years of high school and collegiate coaching. He built two traditionally losing programs into playoff teams and regional champions and holds Northeastern High School’s record for most wins as a coach. Patrick resides with his son, Rylan, in Grandy, North Carolina.
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TV vs. Activity: Key Choice for Kids
Red Rover, Red Rover, send Lucy right over.
Ready or not, here I come!
Simon says, pat your head.
Not so long ago, when school was out and the weather was nice, kids were always outside, climbing trees, swinging or playing games. These days, you're more apt to find kids inside, in front of the TV or the home computer. The average child watches three to four hours of TV every day—leaving much less time for a game of tag or hide-and-seek.
Health experts are troubled by the growing number of young couch potatoes. New studies show that a sedentary child will likely become a sedentary adult, and a sedentary life leads to a host of health problems, from obesity to heart disease.
Children, they point out, need to be active to help them grow and develop properly.
Movement is natural
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) currently recommends that children and adolescents engage in 60 minutes of physical activity every day. The three types of exercise they suggest are: aerobic, muscle strengthening, and bone strengthening.
Aerobic exercise. This refers to such things as brisk walking or running. These types of activities should make up most of your child's 60 or more minutes of physical activity each day.
Muscle strengthening. Push-ups or gymnastics are examples of muscle strengthening exercises. The CDC suggests that children engage in these types of activities at least three times a week as part of the 60 minutes of physical activity.
Bone strengthening. Running and jumping rope are two exercises that can strengthen bones. Three days per week (as part of the 60 minutes of exercise) are also suggested for these activities.
It's important to make children's activities fun and not stressful. Exercise can be whatever your child enjoys and be either team sports (e.g. basketball) or individual sports (e.g. jump rope, golf). Playground activities, running, jumping rope, bicycling (always with a helmet), and swimming are also great choices. Since the goal is to encourage lifelong physical activity, it is important for your child to enjoy whatever exercise is chosen.
The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) indentifies exercise as a key to preventing health problems, such as diabetes, obesity, and high blood pressure. The AAP also describes exercise as a wonderful way for children to reduce their stress.
If you child has a disability
Exercise is important for all children. If your child has a serious medical condition, physical, or cognitive limitations, it is best to check with your health care providers before starting an exercise program. They can discuss any accommodations or special precautions that may need to be considered. There are many places that offer adaptive sports programs for children and adolescents of all abilities. Many times the social interactions and friendships these programs afford are as health-promoting as the physical exercise. Talk with your health provider about recreational programs in your area.
Combo is best
So, what's a parent to do to help children and adolescents get off the couch or away from their computers? To start, it's helpful for adults to rethink their definition of children's activity. Adults tend to mark off their days in neat compartments: exercise at this time, work at that time, play later. Children tend to be more free-form, and need small bursts of activity spread throughout the day.
At home, parents need to have a place where the kids can be active, where they can run, bike, or climb. If that's not possible at home, an alternative would be a public playground, or even a walk around the neighborhood.
For children nine and older, organized sports can be a good outlet, if chosen carefully. Make sure the sport or activity is one your child will enjoy, and one that offers lots of exercise. Just because a child is on a team, doesn't mean that he or she will get much of a chance to play.
It's also important for children to see that their parents are active.
Studies have found that if both parents are active, the children are much more likely to be active. In addition to being good exercise role models, the CDC offers the following ideas for parents:
Do something active with your children every day. It can be as simple as taking a walk together.
Give your children toys or gifts that encourage physical activity, e.g. a soccer ball, bicycle, or basketball.
Go places where the children can be physically active, such as a public park or basketball court.
Develop a family routine that encourages activity, e.g. instead of watching T.V. after dinner, go for a walk.
Always provide the right safety equipment for the sport, such as helmets, wrist pads, or knee pads.
Be certain the sport is age-appropriate. Check with your health care provider about what age to start different physical activities, such as baseball or bicycling.
As parents, you try very hard to protect your children. Making physical exercise a routine part of your children's day is an important and easy way to protect their physical and emotional well-being. So start today--talk to your children about what exercises they enjoy and help them start moving!
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The al-Attarin Madrasa was commissioned by the Marinid Sultan Uthman II b. Ya'qub, Abu Sa'id (r. 1310-31) in 1323 and completed in 1325. It is located in the spiritual centre of Fez, near the Mosque of al-Qarawiyyin. The madrasa's location at the entrance to the spice and perfume market gives al-Attarine, the madrasa of the perfumers, its name.
The Marinid Sultans were prolific patrons of madrasas, which served to promote Sunni teachings during their reign, perhaps meant to counterbalance thriving local Sufi practices. The al-Attarine madrasa, like the other Marinid madrasas of Fez, is celebrated for its rich decorative programme, concentrated in the rectangular arcaded courtyard. The courtyard opens onto a square prayer hall, and is luxuriously ornamented with glazed tile (zellij) dados and pavement, intricate carved stucco ornament on walls and piers, carved and painted wooden arches and cornices, and marble columns. The al-Attarin Madrasa, and the other Marinid madrasas, illustrate the translation of a palatial language of materials and decorations into a religious setting. Though the carved stucco and glazed tile revetment clearly evoke the Nasrid palace of Alhambra in Spain, their highly delicate, almost lace-like, treatment and tendency to ever smaller scale is unique to the Marinid foundations in Morocco.
The contrast between sumptuous ornament in the courtyard and the spartan accommodations for the students at the al-Attarin and the other Marinid madrasas may reflect the multiple functions of these buildings. The madrasas often served as mosques for their respective quarters and as settings for official ceremonies. With the addition of associated charitable functions like guesthouses and waqfs, or endowed properties which supported the madrasa's upkeep, to their primary role as religious schools, the madrasas functioned as important centers of community life. The courtyard, as the most public of the spaces within the madrasa, was therefore the focus of the ornament that would highlight the generous image of the madrasa's founder.
Hillenbrand, Robert. 1994. Islamic Architecture. NY: Columbia UP, 240-251.
Hoag, John. 1987. Islamic Architecture. NY: Rizzoli, 57-59.
Michell, George, ed. 1996. Architecture of the Islamic World. London: Thames & Hudson, 216.
Pickens et al. 1995. Maroc: Les Cites Imperiales. Paris: ACR Edition.
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Narcolepsy is a sleep disorder that causes excessive sleepiness and frequent daytime sleep attacks.
The most common symptoms of narcolepsy are:
1.Periods of extreme drowsiness every 3 to 4 hours during the day. You may feel a strong urge to sleep, often followed by a short nap (sleep attack).
- These periods last for about 15 minutes each, although they can be longer.
- They often happen after eating, but may occur while driving, talking to someone, or during other situations.
- You wake up feeling refreshed.
2.Dream-like hallucinations may occur during the stage between sleep and wakefulness. They involve seeing or hearing, and possibly other senses.
3.Sleep paralysis is when you are unable to move when you first wake up. It may also happen when you first become drowsy.
4.Cataplexy is a sudden loss of muscle tone while awake, resulting in the inability to move. Strong emotions, such as laughter or anger, will often bring on cataplexy.
- Most attacks last for less than 30 seconds and can be missed.
- Your head will suddenly fall forward, your jaw will become slack, and your knees will buckle.
- In severe cases, a person may fall and stay paralyzed for as long as several minutes.
Not all patients have all four symptoms.
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Here's a good one. A hospital not far from the Grumble hospital is holding daily meetings to deal with the 'flu crisis. Not that they have seen a case yet but that does not stop them worrying. The Trust board is worried about how the 'flu might affect them. One of the questions they have been asking is whether or not the current 'flu vaccine will give any protection against swine 'flu. Nobody actually knows the answer to this question. The hospital concerned has 18 doses of the vaccine left. It expires soon so it has to be used. Who should get it? That is the dilemma. If you were to ask Dr Grumble he would say the infectious diseases staff should get it. Or maybe the intensive care staff. Or perhaps they could do the decent thing and offer it to local GPs who are the ones that have to go into people's homes and take the swabs. Any of these would be a reasonable choice. Guess who they decided should be offered the vaccine. Can you believe that they decided that the members of the Trust board should be immunised?
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When you swim in the surf off Seal Rocks, and your family
Sits in the sand
Eating potato salad, and the undertow
Comes which takes you out away down
To loss of breath loss of play and the power of play
Help, help, help. Hello, they will say,
Come back here for some potato salad.
It is then that a seventeen-year-old cub
Cruising in a helicopter from Antigua,
A jackstraw expert speaking only Swedish
And remote from this area as a camel, says
Look down there, there is somebody drowning.
And it is you. You say, yes, yes,
And he throws you a line.
This is what is called the brotherhood of man.
Josephine Miles, “Family” from Collected Poems. Copyright © 1983 by Josephine Miles. Reprinted with the permission of the University of Illinois Press.
Source: Collected Poems 1930-83
(University of Illinois Press, 1983)
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Editors' note: This is a guest column. See Jorge Bauermeister's bio below.
For those heavily engaged in the Internet regulation battle that has been raging over the past year, the next two weeks will be a nail-biting period. Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski recently announced what seems to be a sensible compromise on the issue of Net neutrality, which will work to govern how the Internet pipes are managed.
Genachowski's proposal appears to meet all interested parties in the middle by ensuring the continuation of an open Internet and also providing an environment that enables the growth of the Internet and communications sector to continue at a rapid pace. Continued growth, naturally, is essential to enabling new technologies and services to meet consumer demand and needs.
But instead of plaudits, the chairman is stuck in a tug-of-war between the long-standing proponents of Net neutrality and those skeptical of new regulations and any unintended consequences they may cause. Splits in the commission, which will vote yea or nay this month, mirror the outside fight.
I have been a supporter of light-touch approaches to any sort of Internet regulation, often citing the negative fallout that could result from heavier rules--particularly the approach of reclassifying Internet services under the Title II framework that has governed telephone services since the 1934 Telecommunications Act. Luckily, the Title II approach appears to have been taken off the table, given the recent announcement of the chairman's framework, which maintains rules under the current Title I approach.
Why compromise is good--and where extreme policy goes wrong
As for those who want tough neutrality rules on wireless broadband, I'd advise one to be careful what you wish for. The smartphone revolution has created dramatic new demand for wireless capacity, which is already bumping up against the limits of current technology.
Wireless networks simply can't handle as much data as wired networks and, therefore, the wireless infrastructure and management of mobile networks require a different approach than wired and fixed broadband. We are just at the beginning of a high-growth wireless revolution. Overregulation will stunt its growth, and Genachowski's plan takes into account that reality, leaving room for continued growth while also doing enough to ensure consumer protections on mobile networks.
Advocates of heavy-handed regulation are pressing FCC commissioners Michael Copps and Mignon Clyburn to work for rules that would prevent network operators from offering premium, or "prioritized," services. They say operators might use prioritization to favor their own content service over another company. But Genachowski's proposal addressed that fear with a nondiscrimination rule.
Barring such services would prevent valuable innovation. Imagine that you are part of a company whose sole business offering is videoconferencing, and one of your clients has an important videoconference with a potential client overseas. What would happen if the videoconference stalls midway through the meeting? Your client would look unprofessional, and so would your company. Bottom line: you lose your business.
Likewise, what if a doctor were guiding a surgery via videoconference, and it stalled midway through the operation to accommodate someone five blocks away downloading a TV program? Can anyone justify that occurring? Companies that rely on quality of service must be able to deliver on that, and they are willing to pay for this, as they should be, just as any business would pay for an essential service to its bottom line.
What about on a personal, consumer level, which may apply to "usage-based pricing?" Should a neighbor of mine who streams data-heavy programs all day long pay more for the pipe space he uses? I am only getting online for two hours each night to send e-mails and watch a TV show or two. Should I pay the same amount to subsidize my neighbor's much more robust use? The same principle can be applied to mobile data. AT&T says it now has 7 million customers on one of the usage-based mobile plans it launched a few months ago.
To my astonishment, people often overlook the fact that service providers are businesses as well--and that businesses are responsible for building out the bulk of our Internet today. Everyone agrees that private investment is crucial to the Internet infrastructure, in terms of building new networks and upgrading platforms. After all, it was this private investment that has enabled all of us to have broadband service in our homes, offices, and on phones. This has not come cheaply.
Over the past two years, Internet service providers collectively invested $120 billion. Their investments are essential to driving our slow economy, creating jobs, and improving our Internet experience, from access to networking opportunities to platform availability.
What opponents of differentiated services are asking for is, simply put, to allow certain content companies to skip paying more for the cost of using more bandwidth within the Internet backbone, as they congest a network operated by another company. They have the guts to argue that they spend the same billions of dollars as providers such as Verizon Communications without returns.
Possible outcomes and current state of play
Republican Commissioners Robert McDowell and Meredith Baker have stated publicly that they plan to vote against the chairman's proposal. We can assume that the chairman will vote in favor of his own proposal, leaving the majority votes required to pass the order up to Democratic commissioners Clyburn and Copps, both long-standing supporters of Net neutrality.
While Commissioner Clyburn has been relatively silent on the proposed order, the compromise sounds as if it doesn't go far enough for Commissioner Copps, who says he is committed to a more invasive proposal to reclassify Internet services as telecommunications services under the 1934 Title II framework.
Copps recently remarked during a speech at Columbia University that he is looking for stronger rules over wireless networks, as well as banning prioritization of services--ideas long pursued by groups such as Free Press, Public Knowledge, and the Open Internet Coalition, which favor more extreme government regulation over the flourishing telecommunications sector. Their calls for regulation mirror those of content delivery services, such as providers of streaming video, that depend on more bandwidth from ISP pipes to meet their users' heavy data demands.
So what if the vote passes 3-2? Consumer groups and the companies that continue to invest billions of dollars annually to build out the Internet networks from which we currently benefit should be pleased. In the end, consumers win with this plan in part because the proposal protects an open Internet while ensuring the continued investment Americans need to meet their technological demands. At least in the short term, passing a new rule would enable the commission to move its focus from Net neutrality to the National Broadband Plan, which was created to achieve universal broadband in this country. Even if the rule is challenged in court or on Capitol Hill, it would take the issue off the FCC agenda until those other bodies act.
What if the vote doesn't pass, and Commissioner Copps holds out for the wish of total overhaul of our Internet policy framework? This is a no-win situation, one in which even "public-interest groups" lose. Recent court rulings suggest that the commission lacks the legal authority for Copps' desire to reclassify Internet services under Title II, which would apply to the Internet the same micromanagement rules drafted more than 70 years ago for the old-fashioned monopoly phone system.
If the FCC even attempts this path, it will be met with lawsuits to kingdom come. Additionally, with the House shifting to Republican hands, Congress would likely move to strip the FCC of any authority to move on Net neutrality rules. Thus, the best bet for the continued protection of a free and open Internet is through Chairman Genachowski's Net neutrality order. With this, everyone wins something in the end. Isn't that the way most progress results in the American political system?
The bottom line is that the Net neutrality order up for vote would be a consumer win, as it:
- Protects an open Internet and prevents against discrimination of content.
- Enables reasonable network management to protect consumers against privacy and cybersecurity concerns, as well as support the business of providing and consuming if more robust online experiences, in terms of performance and capacity demands.
- Supports continued innovation and investment in communications technologies, facilitating broadband access improvements and network upgrades, as well as adding related American jobs.
We must look past the smoke and mirrors of the doomsday hypothetical's being thrown around by extreme proponents of reclassification of the Internet. The "what if" and "imagine this" scenarios are doing nothing but harming a best resolution of this complex issue, which lies in compromise.
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Source Newsroom: Dana-Farber Cancer Institute
Newswise — The holidays are almost here and festive food is everywhere. “While these foods are delicious to eat, some have the added bonus of containing cancer-preventing nutrients,” says Stephanie Meyers, MS, RD/LDN, a nutritionist at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston.
Pumpkin isn’t just for pie
Pumpkin can be a holiday staple for many families. And for some, it may be one of the tastiest ways to enhance the body’s own natural cancer fighting ability, notes Meyers. Pumpkins are packed with nutrients called carotenoids, which have been linked to the prevention of colon, prostate, breast, and lung cancer.
Although many people only eat pumpkin when it is made into a pie, it can also be enjoyed in a variety of other ways, including roasted pumpkin, pumpkin soup and high fiber pumpkin muffins or bread.
It’s the bright color that gives pumpkins their rich nutrients – so look for other orange vegetables, like sweet potatoes, carrots and butternut and acorn squash. All are also high in carotenoids.
Meyers stresses, “It is more beneficial to consume carotenoids from whole foods rather than from supplements, because carotenoids in the pill-form do not appear to have the same protective properties.” In fact, that is true of many of the nutrients in foods. Eating whole foods typically provides greater health benefits than taking a dietary supplement.
An Apple a Day
Apples are another food packed with cancer preventing properties, thanks to the nutrient quercitin, which protects DNA in the body’s cells from damage that could lead to the development of cancer. To get the most protection against cancer from apples – eat them with the skin on and not combined with sugar and fats, like in a pie.
Not Just For the Holidays
Meyers reminds her patients that cranberries aren’t just for the holidays and encourages them to eat cranberries year-round. That’s because cranberries contain benzoic acid, which has been shown to inhibit the growth of lung cancer, colon cancer, and some forms of leukemia.
She recommends buying bags of cranberries now, while they are in season and at their nutritional peak, and popping them in the freezer for later. This will help ensure that the berries will provide the highest level of cancer protection whenever cooking with them - all year long.
Color your world
The overall key to finding cancer fighting foods is to look for a lot of color. Look for colorful produce like pomegranates, tomatoes, eggplant, grapes, cherries and turnip. The brighter and richer the pigment, the higher the level of nutrients “You want to load up your plate with as much colorful plant-based foods as you can,” explains Meyers. “Eating a plant-based diet all year long is the best way to help lower your risk of cancer.”
Dana-Farber Cancer Institute (www.dana-farber.org) is a principal teaching affiliate of the Harvard Medical School and is among the leading cancer research and care centers in the United States. It is a founding member of the Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center (DF/HCC), designated a comprehensive cancer center by the National Cancer Institute.
Editor’s Note: Satellite interviews available via remote camera at Dana-Farber studio.
Video also available at dana-farber.org
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Cooking with the Genzyme Recipe: New Players Funding Rare Disease Drugs in Boston
Many people have probably never heard of some of the diseases that venture capitalists and drug company executives are swooning over lately. But regardless of how obscure a rare illness like X-linked hypohidrotic ectodermal dysplasia is, investments in developing drugs for such diseases are growing in popularity.
In Boston, both venture firms and pharma executives are getting in on the act. Third Rock Ventures has funded or formed three biotech startups in Cambridge, MA over the past two years that are developing drugs for rare genetic disorders (which are in some cases called orphan diseases). One of those companies, Alnara Pharmaceuticals, counts among its founders Christoph Westphal, a Cambridge-based executive who scouts for external business opportunities for London-based drug giant GlaxoSmithKline (NYSE:GSK).
These companies are ripping a page or two from the battletested playbook at Cambridge-based Genzyme (NASDAQ:GENZ). The company’s three best-selling treatments are for rare genetic diseases that affect fewer than 10,000 patients each. Still, Genzyme has been profitable because it can command hundreds of thousands of dollars per year for each patient treated with some of its drugs, and for years it has faced very little or no competition in these niche markets.
But the party’s getting more crowded nowadays. New York-based Pfizer (NYSE:PFE), the world’s biggest drug company, inked a deal announced in December to partner with Israel-based Protalix Biotherapeutics to develop and market Protalix’s rival drug to Genzyme’s top seller, imiglucerase (Cerezyme), an enzyme-replacement therapy for patients with Gaucher’s disease. Genzyme’s Gaucher drug brought sales last year of $793 million, way less than Pfizer makes from its top sellers like the heart pill atorvastatin (Lipitor). Despite the smaller markets for rare disease treatments, major pharma companies are investing in them as many of their multi-billion dollar drug franchises face greater competition from generic knockoffs.
“Pharma and bigger biotech players need to … Next Page »
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By KRIS HUDSON
City buses that carry people to and from work each day are attempting an identity change: They want to be trains.
To woo workday commuters, Cleveland and select cities across the U.S. are trying to replace the image of the gritty, pokey, crowded bus by sending sleeker, more spacious and trainlike buses onto certain commuter routes. They are packing these buses with amenities cribbed from the handbook of other cities' commuter rail and light-rail trains.
In part, they hope to attract passengers who don't have to ride the bus to work—people who can afford to own a car and pay for gas and parking, but who will willingly hop a bus. Getting more of these "choice riders," as the public transportation industry calls them, can help fund local transportation and reduce traffic.
The tricked-out buses promise to cut commute times by up to half from regular bus service by featuring routes with minimal stops and, in some cases, bus-only lanes to keep the vehicles from getting stuck in traffic. To further differentiate these buses from their regular brethren, many transit districts have added perks like Wi-Fi and off-bus ticketing for speedy boarding.
Cities even avoid calling the services "buses." Seattle calls its fleet "RapidRide." Kansas City's buses are emblazoned with "MAX" for "Metro Area Express." Cleveland goes by the shortened "BRT" for bus rapid transit. "It's not a bus, it's a rapid-transit vehicle," says Joseph Calabrese, chief executive and general manager of Cleveland's transportation district.
The National Bus Rapid Transit Institute at the University of South Florida estimates that 30 U.S. cities have adopted some form of the fast-bus service, including the Seattle area, which unveiled its first two rapid-transit lines in 2010 and 2011. The concept of rapid-transit bus service originated in crowded cities such as Bogota, Colombia, and Curitiba, Brazil, where bus systems carry millions of riders annually.
The buses' exterior designs were also inspired by trains. "The intent was to really make them look fast" and "different than the standard toaster on wheels," said David Swallow, director of engineering for Las Vegas' Regional Transportation Commission of Southern Nevada, which operates multiple rapid-transit bus routes.
Many of the buses have downward-sloping, aerodynamic fronts mimicking a train. The vehicles' chassis often are adorned with splashy colors to set them apart from regular, local-service buses. Some, such as Cleveland's HealthLine buses, have wheel covers that blend in with the chassis to contribute to the vehicle's streamlined appearance. The buses don't have first-class tickets or quiet sections, as some trains do.
To better speed through intersections, fast-service buses, including those from the Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority, use "signal priority": A transmitter signals ahead to traffic lights to keep green lights green until the bus passes through, or to turn red lights to green as the bus approaches. Cleveland officials also pared the stops on rapid-transit service's 9.2-mile route to 36 from the 108 stops that local buses made on that route. As a result of those and other changes, the average commute time from one end of the route to the other declined to 30 minutes from 45.
To make waiting for a bus less of a head-scratcher, the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority has a smartphone app that allows users to check bus schedules and determine when the next bus will arrive. The Regional Transportation Commission of Southern Nevada's "Ride Tracker" website offers a similar service.
To speed up boarding times, riders on Cleveland's HealthLine bus service, so named because the route passes the Cleveland Clinic and University Hospitals, buy their tickets before they get on the bus from vending machines in glass-walled enclosures at each bus stop. That way, when the bus arrives—every five minutes on average during rush hour—riders can board through any of five doors rather than slowly filing by the driver to pay. The bus' floor matches the height of the curb, so riders needn't scale steep stairs to board.
On board, rapid-transit buses in Cleveland and Las Vegas include a few rows of seats facing inward to the center aisle rather than forward, allowing for more legroom and additional room to move through the bus. The Kansas City area's MAX buses, which serve both cities in Missouri and Kansas, offer two more inches of leg room than regular buses. Express buses in Santa Clara County, Calif., include Wi-Fi service, high-back chairs, footrests and overhead reading lights—essentials for attracting Silicon Valley's techie commuters.
"It speaks luxury when you look at it," said Brandi Childress, a spokeswoman for the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority in San Jose, of the bus service.
But is it enough to entice commuters to forsake their cars?
Kansas City's MAX rapid-transit service along its main route now handles about 6,000 trips daily, whereas regular, local-bus service on that route handled 3,100 trips a day.
"The MAX bus appears to be newer and cleaner" than local buses, said Mick Goodman, a 56-year-old strategic buyer at Hallmark Cards Inc. in Kansas City, Mo., who often rides the MAX bus to work. "It definitely was faster," said Mr. Goodman. He uses the bus several times a week when his 20-year-old son and 17-year-old daughter need to use either of the family's two cars for the day.
Mr. Goodman's bus ride into work is roughly twice as long as driving—an hour as opposed to 30 minutes—because he must take a local bus most of the way before he can transfer to Kansas City's MAX rapid-transit bus. Even so, he says the bus saves him gas money, and Hallmark covers part of the cost of a monthly bus pass for employees.
Annual ridership tallies on Cleveland's HealthLine have increased by roughly 70% since the rapid-transit bus line's debut in 2008 to more than 4.4 million trips last year. In the first eight months of this year, the HealthLine had recorded more than 3 million trips.
On a recent weekday afternoon, many the riders on the HealthLine said they didn't have cars. A few, however, said they left their cars at home in favor of the bus. A one-way fare on the HealthLine costs $2.25, and an all-day pass $5, the same as regular-bus service.
"It's been convenient, and it comes often," Theresa Prince, a 43-year-old environmental services worker at University Hospital said as she rode a HealthLine bus from work one afternoon. "And parking is crazy at the hospital."
Still, bus advocates must overcome a significant stigma. About half—51%—of mass-transit trips in the U.S. are taken on buses, according to the American Public Transportation Association. Yet, buses often are regarded as transportation mostly for the poor.
Commuter rail lines tend to work well for moving suburban, white-collar workers to jobs concentrated in a central business district. Blue-collar jobs other than factory work tend to be more diffuse, requiring a wider network of routes more accessible than rail service.
"There's more of a cachet that goes with rail because those services tend to be in better neighborhoods," said Robert Cervero, a professor of city and regional planning at the University of California at Berkeley specializing in transportation planning.
Some cities see rapid transit as a less-expensive alternative to light rail, though bus systems can't transport as many people. The Kansas City area opened a rapid-transit bus line in 2005 and a second one last year for a combined cost of $50 million after numerous public votes to finance a light-rail system failed. Kansas City planners estimate that light-rail along the area's main, six-mile bus route would have cost at least $250 million. Funding these bus services comes from a mix of local taxes, federal money and fares.
In Cleveland, the cost of building the HealthLine amounted to $200 million. Transit planners estimate that installing light-rail service along the same stretch of Cleveland's Euclid Avenue corridor would cost $1 billion.
Write to Kris Hudson at firstname.lastname@example.org
Corrections & Amplifications
In an earlier version, the American Public Transportation Association was mistakenly identified as the American Public Transit Association.
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What on earth is a Sobokawa buckwheat pillow? Learn more about the unique health benefits of using buckwheat pillows for gentle hypoallergenic head and neck support, and whether this may be a good solution for your needs.
The Sobakawa buckwheat pillow is one brand of pillow filled with buckwheat hulls that's available throughout North America. Manufacturers discovered the benefits of this type of pillow roughly 50 years ago and have been making them ever since.
At first, only the health conscious were purchasing buckwheat pillows, but now that the news has spread about how beneficial they are for getting a good night's sleep, mainstream consumers are also buying them regularly.
The ancient Egyptians were a clever people! They were one of the first people to come up with the concept of a bed and a pillow. They created buckwheat pillows with what they had on hand, which were buckwheat hulls.
They figured out that by filling a piece of fabric with buckwheat hulls, they felt better when they awoke in the morning.
The Egyptians even provided their dead with a buckwheat pillow underneath their head because they felt it would provide comfort for the journey to the afterlife!
As Egyptian history unfolded, the idea of the buckwheat pillow was taken to other countries and soon the idea spread quickly. The people of the Orient have been using buckwheat pillows for several hundred years as well, enjoying great nights of sleep.
What is it about buckwheat pillows in general that make them attractive to consumers? They certainly are a novel idea to most westerners, and so let's look at some of the health benefits of using buckwheat hulls to rest your head on!
Well, it all sounds great and very organic, but what are the downsides to sleeping on a buckwheat hull pillow?
This brand of buckwheat pillow is filled with organic buckwheat hulls, making it an excellent choice for people with allergies. The hulls are washed three separate times to ensure that they're as clean as possible before putting them into the pillow.
Consumers who have used this brand of buckwheat hull pillow also say they've had it for 10, 15, or 20 years and still love it, so it must be a durable product. Other brands of buckwheat pillows claim that theirs will last for 8 to 10 years.
The other great news about Sobakawa brand pillows is that they are less expensive than their competitors. A small pillow runs about $20 and a queen size pillow will cost about $29.99.
The Sobakawa brand also helps eliminate the difficulty of finding a pillowcase to fit the pillow by providing a pillow cover with some of their pillow sizes.
Sobakawa buckwheat pillow products can be found only online now, but is available through several different online retail providers. One other place you might possibly find it is in one of those As Seen On TV retail shops that are scattered around the country.
How does a Sobakawa buckwheat pillow compare to others like it? Consumers who love this brand of buckwheat pillow can't say enough about it.
According to some comparisons, this brand is of lower quality compared to some other brands on the market, but it still holds its own with many happy customers.
You could benefit from using a buckwheat pillow if any of the following symptoms or helath conditions affect you:
A buckwheat pillow might be just the thing to help you get your much-needed rest at night. You could wake up feeling refreshed instead of achy or experiencing pain in the neck or back. It just might be worth a try!
Let's All Sleep Better
Help us to spread the word!
Simply copy and paste this code into your Facebook page or blog. Thank you for sharing!
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QUEEN of the
Netonia Yalte is an unconventional women who builds unconventional homes
BY SUSAN MUSGRAVE
A Wood Rooster, that's how Netonia Yalte, Stackwall Queen of the Queen Charlotte Islands, describes herself. Born in 1945, the Year of the Rooster, she grew up in the Cariboo, but even as a young girl she remembers the Misty Isles, these days known as Haida Gwaii, calling. She was to spend twenty-seven years schooling and labouring in the B.C. and Yukon wilderness, marrying at twenty-three, then, five years later, leaving to wander all across Canada and to eighteen different
countries before ending up on the Islands' shores. She has spent over three decades in this "looking within place". "If you can't look within yourself," she says of the Queen Charlottes, "you don't stick
Twelve years ago Netonia took a hard look around - she was
isolated, with barely enough money to provide for her three young
children - and forced herself to look even further within. She wanted
out of the rut she'd carved; with rats in her walls and the roof
caving in, she needed, at the very least, a shelter for her family.
She was reading a magazine article, "How to Build Out of Rock",
thinking she'd have to start hefting boulders from the beach, when
her friend came by with a book on alternate house building, called
Netonia sees this, now, as Divine Intervention. Though everything
about her house - on Graham Island's east coast, north of Skidegate -
is divine, it is entirely her own invention. She did every bit of it
herself, from digging a well to falling select trees and excavating the roots to make a clearing. Forty-two pick-up loads of wood and a year and a half of hard labour later (she lost her teeth, she says,
because she never had time to stop and brush them) her 1000-square foot, circular, "hobbit-house" (home for four, room for sixteen) stood, as if it had been lying dormant, waiting for her wish, and had
mushroomed out of the earth at her command.
Genius is not a gift, wrote Jean Paul Sartre, but the way we
invent in desperate situations. Netonia began her career as a builder
of stackwall houses (the preferred name for what Americans call
'cordwood masonry' here at home) out of despair and necessity. She is not an exacting person, she says, and she'd had little practical experience in the world of carpentry, though as a child she was
always building - out of sand, mud and sticks - but when she got pregnant she put up a stick cabin, a frame construction, "more of a lean-to", she adds, after considering. Now, having built, or helped
build, nine picturesque stackwall dwellings, and numerous funky garden walls, she is regarded as an Island treasure, a genius by all definitions.
Carl Jung described a house as an extension of the unconscious,"a kind of representation of one's innermost thoughts." Netonia has a relationship with wood as deep as the unconscious, but her approach to building is dauntingly simple. "You go out, gather your materials. Whatever you gather is what you work with. You live it, you live your home. You put so much of yourself into the building, you become part of it."
She exudes such enthusiasm when she discusses her work, it's
contagious. "It's about using your body and doing whatever you are
capable of doing with very simple tools - without being dependent on
the bank and the hardware store. People are talked into thinking they have to build square and use nails. There are those who can't free themselves of that notion."You never see two stackwall houses alike. The possibilities are limitless as to what shapes you can make; when you feel like adding on you don't have to start a new building. It is easy for me to do stackwall. It's my style, my love."
Stackwall has not only given Netonia a way to make a living, but
a purpose in life. When she first started building, Canada had joined
the U.S. fighting in Iraq: Netonia kept picturing the refugees,
envisioning all the homeless people, and she thought, "Someone could sleep here." She, like the rest of us, will one day move on, but the house she built would be there - if not forever - for a very long
time. (The oldest known portion of a stackwall building - made of cypress - still stands in Lebanon and is believed to be 2000 years old.)
These days Netonia gives informal workshops, and has
precipitated stackwall-building bees on the Island, to "help young
people who can't afford a house - so they don't have to get a
mortgage." "Stackwall masonry is 80% preparation," she says. "You
need basic tools: a truck, a power saw (or two), two or three
wheelbarrows, a hoe for mixing, mauls for splitting wood, axes, a
trowel and a lot of free time." Manual labour, not money, is the
chief component when it comes to stackwall construction. The cost is,
in fact, a tenth of a conventional contractor-built house (the same
building code applies as for a log house). If you find your own wood and barter some of your materials, a house can be built for roughly $10 per square foot.
Other necessary ingredients are cement, sawdust (for
insulation), sand and water. Wood, of course - Netonia's favourite
part of the construction - and "other things that add light and
loveliness - bottles and jars, glass fishing floats, whale bones,
shells." The wood has to be dry. She prefers fire-killed cedar, which
is soft, light and plentiful. A forest fire on the Island, eighty
years ago, left the wood "standing cured, brand new, until it is
logged." Stackwall dwellings are largely burn resistant, as fire
won't easily penetrate the end-grain of the wood.
Wood masonry is a wonderful recycling project, Netonia says;
she has become skilled at using whatever materials she has lying
around. She gets windows that are rejects, or glass from the
wreckers. She uses driftwood to frame a window, one end of which might curve down to form the back of a bench-seat, the other extending up to make a shelf on the wall. When she first moved to the
Charlottes the spirits in the drift pieces spoke to her. In Netonia's presence it is easy to see how - the same way the Islands called to her to come and make her home - the driftwood pieces might call out
to her, also, "Choose me! Use me!"
The beauty of stackwall, Netonia says, is that the house is a
living, breathing entity. It breathes from the outside, and from the
inside, too. From a distance it looks as if it has sprung from the
earth. On the inside it is cozy, warm, inviting. (The Seven Dwarves,
in the Walt Disney movie, had a stackwall home, which is no doubt
why, the minute you enter Netonia's kitchen, you feel as if you are a
child again; you want to tiptoe up the twisting driftwood stairs to stretch out on a feather bed and drift.....
Hi ho hi ho, it's off to work we go. There is no time for dreaming (not the kind you do while asleep) in Netonia's world. When she was building her house, she says, people would drop by to visit and would end up working alongside her; it made her realize there is a child in all of us, begging to burst out and get our hands in the mud.
But she works hard - so hard, in fact, it's sometimes a struggle
for others to keep up. "You have to be the type of person who wants
to do physical labour," she says, when I ask if, to do stackwall, you
need to be more of an artist or someone with practical skills. She likens what she does to practicing Tai-Chi. Cutting with a power saw is a balancing act. Stackwalling is her workout for the day, keeps
her fit. "It's a whole body thing. I'm tired down to my toes." Netonia, like many independent Island souls, believes in"busting a few old rules". "We don't have to continue on the path we've been taught as long as it isn't hurting anyone, or damaging the land. I think it's my job to spread the word that we have to break some rules before we can make a positive change in our society."
Go for your dream, she advises. If it's a castle you've always wanted, build it in stackwall!" Her dream is to spend the rest of her days designing and building stackwall, and teaching others how to build, on the Charlottes and further afield. She'd like to travel, off-Island to other, southern islands in the Pacific such as....Vancouver Island.....where there is also an abundance of the materials she needs.
"Everybody loves stackwall," she says, "even if they don't want their whole house made of it." That can't be said about every artistic endeavour on earth, but it says it all about Netonia Yalte's work.
Bio note: Netonia Yalte built Susan Musgrave a stackwall castle on the Queen Charlotte islands last fall. If you want one of your very own you can write to Netonia at:
Box 311, Queen Charlotte City, B.C.
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Guru Nanak(1469-1539):Compared to Buddhism and Jainism, Sikhism is of recent origin. It was founded by Guru Nanak who was born at Talwandi in the Punjab in A.D. 1469. During his life time he visited many sacred places in India, central Asia and Middle East including Mecca. He was well versed in the scriptures of all the major religions including Christianity and Judaism. He preached a liberal path, which is known today as
sikhism, that derived its inspiration mainly from hinduism, but in many ways was a synthesis of both Islam and Hinduism. His teachings in the form of religious hymns are preserved in the Gurugranth Sahib, which is the sacred scripture of the Sikhs. Guru Nanak passed away in A.D.1538 and was followed by a succession of nine gurus whose
names are mentioned below:
2. Guru Angad (1504-52). He is credited with the invention of Gurumukhi.
3. Guru Amardas (1552-74). It is said that he originally started the tradition of Langar, the social kitchen to remove caste distinctions and establish social harmony among his followers.
4. Guru Ramdas (1574-81). He was the son-in-law of Guru Amardas. He founded the city of Ramdaspur, which is now known as Amritsar. The construction of Guru Harminder Sahib (the Golden temple) began here during his time.
5. Guru Arjan (1581-1606). He was the youngest son of Guru Ramdas. He compiled the Adi Granth which is the most important segment of the Guru Granth Sahib. He made Sikhism very popular during his life time and there by attracted the attention of the Mughal Emperors.
6.Guru Har Gobind (1606-45). Son of Guru Arjan, he perfected the dress code introduced by his father and started the tradition of wearing two swords, one signifying his political (amiri) authority and the other his religious (fakiri). He tried to organize the Sikhs and the Hindus against the Mughals for which he had to face the wrath of the Mughal Emperor, Jehangir.
7. Guru Har Rai(1630-1661): He supported Dara Shukoh, the elder brother of Aurangazeb in his conflict with the latter and had to pay dearly for it. His son was held hostage by Aurangazeb and Har Rai could not secure his release.
8. Guru Har Krishan (1661-64): He was the second son of Guru Har Rai, who succeed his father at the age of five under unfortunate circumstances since his brother was taken away as a hostage by the Mughals. The Mughal Emperor summed him also to Delhi and he died shortly thereafter at the age of eight.
9. Guru Teg Bahadur (1675-1708): Though he was able to spread Sikhism to a greater degree, Sikhism also suffered from schism during his time. Aurangazeb executed him for his defiance of the Mughal authority. We are told that when he was in the prision awairing his execution, Guru Teg Bahadur predicted the coming of the Western powers to the Indian subcontinent and the downfall of the Mughals.
10. Guru Gobind Singh (1675-1708):He was the tenth and the last Guru and also the most famous after Guru Nanak. He was born at Patna. Because of the execution of his father, he became the Guru at the age of nine. He organized the Sikhs into Khalsa to oppose the tyranny of the Mughals. He began the tradition of adding the suffix 'Singh' to the names of the Sikhs. He introduced the baptism of the sword, abolished the succession of the Gurus and made the Guru Granth Sahib the symbol of the Guru himself. He spent most of his time opposing the Mughals to whom he lost his two sons and finally he himself was assassinated by a Pathan at Nanded in the present day Maharashtra. Swami Vivenkananda called him rightly "the most glorious hero of
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Hiroshima, 67 Years Later
Sixty-seven years ago, America dropped its atomic bomb on Hiroshima. Yesterday, communities in Japan and around the world came together to remember and reflect. In Hiroshima, Shigeaki Mori and Clifton Truman Daniel met for the first time. Mori was seven-years-old when the bomb was dropped. Daniel is the grandson of President Harry Truman. According to Stars and Stripes:
On Monday, the two men met as Hiroshima marked the 67th anniversary of the Aug. 6, 1945, bombing — Truman Daniel drawn by a longing for reconciliation, and Mori driven by a decades-long mission to identify and honor 12 American prisoners of war who were among the 140,000 fatalities from the blast and its aftermath.
Shortly after tens of thousands of people gathered at the Peace Memorial Park to remember long-dead loved ones, Truman Daniel visited Mori, who spent his own time and money to erect a plaque nearby honoring the U.S. servicemen, whose own families didn’t know for decades they had died when a nuclear bomb was used as a weapon of destruction for the first time.
Meanwhile, over at In These Times, Noam Chumsky contemplates the current nuclear threats, wondering if Iran or India might be the next Hiroshima. "Progress is unlikely unless there is mass public support in the West," he writes. "Failure to grasp the opportunity will, once again, lengthen the grim shadow that has darkened the world since that fateful August 6."
Doves fly over the Peace Memorial Park with a view of the gutted atomic-bomb dome at a ceremony in Hiroshima, to mark the 67th anniversary of the atomic bombing on the city. (Reuters/Kyodo)
A woman prays for the victims of the 1945 atomic bombing, in the Peace Memorial Park. (Reuters/Kyodo)
People release paper lanterns on the Motoyasu river facing the gutted Atomic Bomb Dome. (Reuters/Kyodo)
A student with a painted face participates in a peace rally to commemorate the 67th anniversary of the atomic bombings of the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, in Mumbai. (Reuters/Danish Siddiqui)
Protesters hold placards during a protest outside the Japanese Embassy in Manila to commemorate the 67th anniversary of the atomic bombing by the U.S. against the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. (Reuters/Romeo Ranoco)
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In recent decades, thousands of farms have become economically marginal and have gone out of business. What is not widely known is that this “marginality” has often been the result not of market forces but of government regulation. In particular, governments in pursuit of urban green votes have imposed a vast range of devastating new costs on farmers.
My farm is probably one of the worst affected in Australia, so I can speak about this with some knowledge. “Saarahnlee” is at Shannons Flat in NSW. Our northern boundary fence is the southern boundary of the ACT and its Namadgi National Park.
The farm consists of about 14,000 acres, about 60 per cent of which was cleared before World War II. When I bought it in the 1980s, I had been working overseas to earn the money to buy the place. Unfortunately, I was unable to farm it for some time so extensive regrowth occurred. When I returned to Australia to begin to farm, I found that various laws to preserve native vegetation had been enacted in the meantime, and I was unable to “reclear” the land.
I could have applied for permission to clear, but not only was it unlikely this would have been granted, at that time it would have cost us over $300,000 merely to prepare the necessary farm plan. This was because of the number of different ecosystems present due to the 900 metre altitude variation on the property. There would have been no refund if the plan was rejected. It should be pointed out that under the just-released regulations (December 1, 2005) this cost would now be paid by the relevant department.
The result was that I was left with only 800 acres to farm: not nearly enough to live off and a financial catastrophe. The bank foreclosed on our mortgage and at the moment we are barely hanging on, thanks to the help of our extended families.
I protested to the state government and was told nothing could be done. Our plight has received extensive publicity and it’s worth putting on the record that I haven’t received one message of sympathy from any environmentalist. It appears the Green movement is prepared to destroy the property rights of despised groups such as farmers and devastate their lives in order to achieve its ends.
This is particularly puzzling in our case because the property was always bio-diverse, with full-flowing riparian zones and almost exclusively native grasses on the majority of the landmass. Forty per cent was native forest (and we intended to keep it that way) - predominantly Alpine Ash, Mountain Gum, White Sally and Broad Leaf Peppermint.
We have had to considerably scale down our sheep-breeding program in which, with the help of the University of New England, we were successfully breeding sheep with wool as fine as that currently produced in cruel conditions from “shedded sheep” (i.e. those kept in sheds and starved).
Prior to our select breeding wool project that produced large stud numbers, we built two big dams and a cottage to start a business providing trout fly-fishing. The fish and the facilities were excellent: Rex Hunt made three documentaries at our fishing lodge on Rock Hut Creek.
But then NSW government policy regarding dams and water storage changed (this was in the 1990’s, prior to the recent changes) and suddenly, our fishing business became illegal. We had to shut it down, with the loss of the considerable capital investment we had made with borrowed funds.
With regard to water, over the past 20 years we’ve seen our creeks that flow out of the area protected by native vegetation laws dry up. This is due to a phenomenon known as “interception”. Basically, if you turn grassland into a forest, the growing trees take about half the rainwater that previously went into waterways. This is something the Greens and the Kosciusko National Park people (who forced my ancestors off their high country grazing leases) don’t like to talk about.
Our other serious problem is being adjacent to the badly managed, and inappropriately fenced, Namadgi National Park. One problem is pest animals: I have lost hundreds of sheep to wild dogs from the Park and much of my remaining pasture was eaten by literally thousands of kangaroos during the recent drought.
But perhaps the worst danger from the Park is fire. There has been no burning off in the part adjacent to us (a border of about 11 kilometres) for as long as I can remember. If I stand at the fence, I can see dead timber on the ground to a height of a metre or more stretching as far as the eye can see. This is a holocaust waiting to occur and when it does it will roar through the 90 per cent of my farm that is now forest right up to our house.
Thanks to the native vegetation laws, the cleared farmland that used to provide a barrier between the Park and us is gone. As we saw in the horrific fires of January 2003 in our region, we now have the strange situation where it is illegal for a farmer to cut one branch off a tree and yet national park managers receive no reprimand when two-thirds of their area is destroyed by fire - and that fire runs out of the parks onto private land and into our capital city.
It is a genuine puzzle to me why the general population cannot see how this situation is not only grossly unfair to farmers, but is also completely dysfunctional in terms of the environmental goals it was set up to achieve.
Peter Spencer owns and operates a farm in the high country of southern New South Wales. The farm's main objective is to produce ultra fine wool from breeding Saxon sheep in natural conditions rather than, as now happens in many places, from sheep kept in sheds.
Peter also writes a blog about the destruction of farming from government regulation. You can read it here: peterspencer.id.au.
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This year we lost a pioneer in the search for better treatments for persons with schizophrenia. Over three decades, Gerard Hogarty, M.S.W., professor of psychiatry at the University of Pittsburgh, conducted a research crusade to enhance patients' lives. His creativity was unique, his science impeccable, and his enthusiasm infectious. His particular legacy was the invention and application of novel psychosocial treatments. His seminal studies provided proof that combining specific forms of psychosocial treatments with pharmacotherapy leads to better outcomes than monotherapies. Most incredibly, he did this repeatedly, like no one before or since.
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Bone Spur Explained
A bone spur, also referred to as an osteophyte, is a benign, bony outgrowth that can develop along the edges of a bone. A bone spur can form on any bone but typically they are found at joints (where two or more bones come together). It is not uncommon for a bone spur to develop where muscles, tendons, and ligaments attach to bone.
What Causes a Bone Spur?
Usually bone spurs develop where bone rubs on bone. Some say this is part of normal aging -- the body's way of compensating for worn away cartilage and bone loss, as occurs with osteoarthritis. Essentially, the body tries to form new bone to make up for what has been lost.
Bone spurs also have been tied to inflammatory conditions where inflammation causes joint damage. Besides arthritic conditions, other things can aggravate bone spurs such as being overweight, poor posture, past injuries, and ill-fitting shoes.
What Symptoms Are Associated With a Bone Spur?
Bone spurs do not always produce obvious symptoms. You may have one and not know it. When symptoms do occur, what you experience will depend on the location of the bone spur. A bone spur can be painful. If the bone spur is in a joint, there can be restricted range of motion in that joint.
If the bone spur is in the spine, it can cause pain and lost motion but also it may cause stenosis (narrowing of the spinal canal) and you could experience neurological symptoms from it pressing on a nerve. A bone spur that presses against tendons or ligaments can cause a tear -- for example, in the shoulder, a bone spur can provoke a rotator cuff tear.
How Is a Bone Spur Diagnosed?
A physical examination will tell your doctor if you have lost normal range of motion in the affected joint. An x-ray can actually show if there is a bone spur causing those symptoms.
If necessary, your doctor can order other imaging studies (CT scan or MRI) to determine if there are complications to surrounding structures affected by the bone spur.
How Is a Bone Spur Treated?
Conservatively at first. Pain and inflammation associated with a bone spur is typically treated with one or more of the following: nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, rest, ice, orthotics, and stretching exercises. Depending on the location of the bone spur and if the aforementioned treatments have not produced satisfactory results, a cortisone injection can be considered to tame pain and inflammation. In severe cases, surgical removal of the bone spur may be an option.
Osteoarthritis. Primer on the Rheumatic Diseases.
Published by the Arthritis Foundation. Thirteeth edition.
What Should You Do About Bone Spurs. John Hopkins Medicine Health Alerts. October 19, 2009.
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Though it works on the same principle as a compound bow with wheels and cams, the Compound Crossbow has a unique design. It features a trigger mechanism that holds the string in place until the archer releases its projectile, known as the bolt. A crossbow frame resembles a rifle stock and features a top rail for attaching a telescopic sight. The bolt rests on the rail and is held in place by a retention spring. The limbs function similar to a compound bow, but are much shorter. Before using, read and follow the manufacturer's instructions.
The Recurve is another popular style of crossbow. Similar to the recurve bow, it features limbs that sweep back and forward at the tips, giving it more potential energy. There are no wheels or cams to break and no cables and cable savers to change. Recurve Crossbows are also generally lighter than the compound crossbows. This style also uses a bolt which is held in place by a retention spring. Before using, read and follow the manufacturer's instructions.
Important! Consult local laws on the use of crossbows for target shooting and hunting.
Unloading a Crossbow
The safest way for a hunter to unload a crossbow is to fire the bolt into a suitable target or rock-free ground (avoiding stones and debris). You should carry a practice bolt with a field point and use it for unloading.
Safety first! Do not have your crossbow in the cocked position while traveling to and from your hunting site.
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BUHLER - The three smallest components of Buhler USD 313's proposed bond issue are improvements slated at Buhler High School and Buhler and Union Valley elementary schools.
While their price tags are less than the cost of the bond issue's new grade school and expanded Prairie Hills Middle School, the three schools still would see noticeable changes.
If voters approve the $44.995-million bond ballot June 5, changes that would occur include:
- Buhler High School: $9.924 million would be spent here, removing and expanding the band room, renovating the vocal music room, improving the auditorium, renovating and expanding the vocational-agriculture area, replacing the greenhouse, relocating administrative offices, reconfiguring the media center and classrooms, replacing old roofing and heating, air conditioning and ventilation systems.
- Union Valley Elementary: $4.316 million would be spent at this school in Hutchinson, constructing a two-classroom addition, moving administrative offices, paving parking areas, installing new heating, air conditioning and ventilation, replacing windows and old roofing.
- Buhler Grade School: $4.087 million would be invested here, constructing a new cafeteria and kitchen, relocating administrative offices, paving parking areas, installing new heating, air conditioning, and ventilation, enlarging small classrooms, replacing windows, replacing worn-out roofing and plumbing.
Also, Union Valley, now a pre-kindergarten-through-Grade 3 school, would become a pre-kindergarten-through-Grade 5 school. Once the bond issue projects are completed, USD 313 would have three similar elementary schools, encompassing the same range of class levels.
"Right now, our kids go to Prosperity for 4, 5, and 6," said Union Valley Principal Randy Roberts. Those same students move to a different school - Prairie Hills - for seventh grade, and by ninth grade, they are entering yet another school, Buhler High.
Making all elementary schools run through Grade 5 will ensure that students entering middle school are coming from a similar school atmosphere, Roberts said.
Howard and Helmer Architecture, Wichita, found a common flaw in these three USD 313 schools: the administrative offices were not prominently located to provide security at the entrance.
Moving Union Valley's welcoming area into the middle of the building will make it much more of an inviting area and more safe and secure, Roberts said.
Howard and Helmer also pointed out that it is difficult now to readily figure out Buhler High's main entrance. The renovations will bring the offices up to the front, said USD 313 Superintendent Dan Stiffler, and other changes in the high school will make more efficient use of existing square footage.
Unpaved parking at Buhler Grade and Union Valley will be paved, and separate student drop-off areas will be designated for parents and buses.
That will provide additional safety, Stiffler said.
So why not make the same upgrades to Prosperity and Obee? Makes no sense to build a whole new school on over-priced ground and not logistically located for busing purposes. Kids south of Obee will have an hour added to their day by sitting on a bus. -Vote No Report abuse
Community Tax : 5/21/2012
If the bond passes are the people of this tax ara going to watch their tax dollars be pumped into the economy of other areas? Are we going to see plumbers from Salina, electricians from Wichita....? -Concerned citizen Report abuse
Think it thru : 5/21/2012
The folks of Wichita were 2nd guessing their bond issue once their neigberhood schools abandonded. We haven't even finished paying for the last bond issue which included improvements for Obee and Prosperity. This new plan hasn't been thought out very well. Give me a good plan, and I'll vote for it. -Vote smart Report abuse
Who is this bond for? : 5/21/2012
I don't understand why we are giving Jim Strawn $10,000 per acre for this land for the new school. This school is located next to his housing developments and other land he already owns. He could give the land away and still make a killing. -No Way Report abuse
Vote Yes. : 5/21/2012
Where students in the district will attend school with the new setup with be decided after the bond passes. Please ask questions and/or become educated on the logistics of the bond at www.buhlerbond.com before making claims that are not true. -M.E. Report abuse
Please vote no : 5/22/2012
I understand we are still paying on the last bond issue. Let's pay that off first. Not a good time to increase taxes. Let's wait till economy improves. My taxes are too high now. -concerned citizen Report abuse
just more corruption : 5/22/2012
they will do what they want after the third or fourth time for putting out to vote and its voted down they do what is called bringing through the back door with out a vote... i think this is the second or third time for the bond issue vote -tax tax tax tax payer Report abuse
Facts : 5/22/2012
We aren't able to build or move at Prosperity or Obee because they are land locked and they allready have "mobile units" or mobile homes that are being used as classrooms. Also the district lines will be redrawn hopefully clearing up some of the time issues that someone mentioned above. -Involved Report abuse
Vote NO : 5/22/2012
Concerned citizen you are SO Right! Vote NO! -Buhler alum Report abuse
maybe can't move... : 5/22/2012
but that's NO excuse for not maintaining the properties (schools) that we are still paying for. 313 is out of control and the sheeple will keep giving them more money to waste away...again! -Vote NO Report abuse
Oh my : 5/22/2012
The district already has offers to buy both prosperity and obee therefore they wont just be sitting there. -In the know Report abuse
Land Locked? : 5/22/2012
Offer the neighbors $10,000 per acre and "POOF" no more land lock. The old buildings will be given away or sold to a non tax generating group, leaving us to foot the bill. -Vote NO! Report abuse
In the know, : 5/22/2012
Who are these buyers? Are they going to generate property tax to help pay for the new school? That might change my vote to yes. Otherwise, -No! Report abuse
to all the NOs : 5/23/2012
I'm sorry you felt all your ideas you presented at the bond meetings (which I'm sure you attended every one) were rejected. And sorry that the facts you present are ignored because of the immense amount of time you spent talking personally to all the bond and school members to make sure they knew the true facts as you do. I suggest the best course of action is for all the NOs to run for school board next election to make sure your money and the schools money is used properly as you all know how to do. -it's easy to talk Report abuse
Land : 5/23/2012
Well Obee is surrounded by the airport which is expanding so allthe money in the world wont buy it and prosperity that guy wanted $30000 an acre so like the previous post says please unless you are going to start going to meetings stop speaking like you know. -Schools Report abuse
Schools, : 5/23/2012
Ever heard of eminent domain? I just think we are in too much of a hurry to force this down the tax payers throat. No,I haven't been to the meetings. Lot's of things I haven't attended meetings on that I have voted for. Needs more time and research. -Tax Payer Report abuse
Tax Payer - : 5/23/2012
How much time do you need added to what's already been available to everyone? I can see you all griping even more about the cost if it's done in the future because "if they would have done it in 2012, they could have saved millions. They weren't thinking were they"? All you Debbie-Downers will never be happy. Instead of making small uninformed comments, why don't some of you write a lengthy letter that can be published where you rationalize your misinformation for us to consider. -you'll never be happy Report abuse
Is it true : 5/24/2012
that Strawn wanted $10,000 per acre? If it is he's gouging and it should not be allowed to happen. -local Report abuse
Vote No and Watch the Science Experiments! : 5/24/2012
What science experiments?
1. The Buhler band can simply grow closer together as they expand in numbers and stay in the same, small cramped space. We can see how long it takes for colds, the flu, and other illnesses to quickly spread.
2. Prosperity has water leaks...let's study how long it takes for mold to grow when the water leaks...and how many children actually become sick from the mold!
Really, how much will it affect anyone's education if they have a few weeks of sick leave? Where does our focus really need to be people? Is it the fault of the children that the schools weren't maintained? Should we punish them? How is it that USD 308 passes a bond which allows iPads even down at the kindergarten level and we can't pass a dinky little bond in comparison that will allow our students to have the room they need to grow and succeed in our district. Absolutely pathetic!! -Just My Opinion Report abuse
Too Much : 5/25/2012
When I see the pictures of the schools put out by the campaign, I think people out to be taken to court for abusing our past investments in the district. There is no excuse for the unrepair of leaks and Wray especially should be recalled fron the board because he should know what unrepairrd leaks cost. -FEDUP WITH TAXES Report abuse
New to district : 5/27/2012
I lived in Florida when Buhler tried to pass the last bond. In Florida, our taxes were not as high as they are here, however, that is because education is funded by tourism. We wouldn't have schools here if they were funded by tourism. I have a child at Union Valley and another at Prosperity. In my opinion, the schools need a lot of work! Prosperity is jam packed with portables for classrooms. Both schools look the same as they did 20+ years ago when I went there. Here's how I see it, if you want your property value to increase, vote yes! The improvements that are going to be made will make this a school district that people want to send their kids to. If nothing is done, people may start moving away, or sending their kids to Hutch because they have better facilities and more to offer the kids than Buhler does. You may not have to pay that extra $40 in taxes, but your property value may go down as well. Be smart. Educate yourself on what the plan actually is, and vote yes for the Buhler Bond. Our kids really need it! -Take a tour of the schools Report abuse
Sure lets spend more : 6/2/2012
This economy will not support more and more taxes! Regardless what this is for, schools, low income housing or roads. WE CANNOT AFFORD ANY MORE. HUTCH HIGH IS A JOKE! THESE LIBERALS GOT THEIR WAY IN HUTCH. DON't LET BUHLER SUFFER THE SAME. YOUR JUST GOING TO DRIVE OFF BUSINESS AND NEW PEOPLE INTO THE AREA! PEOPLE ARE LOOKING FOR LOWER TAXES! -SCT Report abuse
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Coordinating the Effort
To Keep the World Safe
The Globe-Guardian is pleased and proud to serve as
the central communications hub for the newly formed Blimp Spotters
Still very much in its infancy, the BSB was
officially launched Oct. 31, 2000, when Brig. Gen. Abnes Carthen, founder
and commander of the organization convened the first general meeting in
Brig. Gen. Carthen's suspicions were aroused earlier
this year, after she saw the familiar Goodyear Blimp over the skies of the
San Francisco Bay area far more often than could be reasonably expected.
She has since been attempting to alert the rest of the country and the
free world about the dangers which may be inherent in these low-flying
denizens of the heavens.
"Fans of sporting events have long been
accustomed to seeing a blimp overhead, perhaps lulling them into a false sense
of security when these airships appear for no apparent reason," Carthen
noted in her keynote speech before the organizational convention. "That may be just what blimp operators want you to think."
Evidence that Carthen is correct in this line
of reasoning was recently submitted to the Globe-Guardian in the form of a
response from a reader of the FutureNews™ story detailing the BSB convention.
"I love blimps, as do all we athletic
types," wrote Steve from Kenosha, Wisconsin. "Great
Carthen has made clear that the BSB is not
currently at war with the blimps, only keeping them under intense
scrutiny. She encourages all citizens of the world to send their blimp
reports and observations to the Globe-Guardian as the BSB undertakes to
assemble what she regards as the "Big Blimp Picture."
If you have seen a blimp or at least suspect
that you have seen a blimp, please complete the report
form and submit it to the Globe-Guardian. Anyone who provides a report
automatically becomes a member of the Blimp Spotters Brigade, earning
advancement through the ranks with each incident sent.
"Do you know what skill it takes to identify a blimp from a
distance?" Carthen questioned a detractor in a recent
interview. "It is not an easy thing to do. First, you must identify the
possibility that it is a blimp -- rather than a Mylar balloon -- then
you must stay with it while walking, working, or otherwise occupying
your time. Others have tried and failed. Blimp spotting is a
high art to which many are called, but few are chosen."
"Become one of the elite few
who are both called and chosen," Carthen concluded. "Eyes to the skies!"
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Military metaphors are hard to avoid when describing the work in Daniela Bota's lab.
Petri dishes become training camps, where cells taken from patients "learn" to attack a patient's brain tumor.
Dr. Daniela Bota is conducting human trials of possible brain-cancer vaccines, an example of a trend known as personalized medicine. She is pictured with images of brain tumors.
MINDY SCHAUER, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER
Patients older than 18 with a cancer type called glioblastoma multiforme who wish to enroll in one of Dr. Daniela Bota’s three clinical trials can call a toll-free number at UC Irvine, 877-827-8839, or send an email to email@example.com.
She is awaiting approval for a fourth trial, involving a vaccine called ERC1671, but it is now available in Europe for patients who wish to travel. The company that makes the vaccine is called Epitopoietic Research Corp.
Then, they are re-injected into the patient to seek out and destroy the enemy.
Bota, a UC Irvine neuro-oncologist, is conducting three separate human trials of brain tumor vaccines, with a fourth on the horizon.
And all four are potentially significant advances in the rapidly expanding realm of "personalized medicine" – drafting a patient's own cells in the fight against disease.
"It's the wave of the future," Bota told a recent visitor to her lab, where the brains of laboratory mice bred to grow human tumors are revealing the tumors' secrets – and their vulnerabilities.
The clinical trial of the training-camp treatment, known as DCVax, is aimed at patients whose brain tumors have been surgically removed.
Parts of the patient's tumor cells mingle in the petri dish with immune cells, known as dendritic cells, strained from the patient's blood.
"We teach the dendritic cells to fight the tumor," Bota said. "They go and interact with the other immune cells. Everybody gets the message."
While follow-up radiation and chemotherapy can extend patients' lives, it typically fails to remove all cancer cells. Beefing up the patient's immune cells just might.
Two other trials target proteins found on the surface of cancer cells. Like a rallying flag, they summon souped-up immune cells to tear the tumor apart.
"Chemotherapy attacks normal cells," Bota said, leading to unwanted side effects, such as memory loss.
Her approach takes sharper aim at tumor cells.
"A majority of patients have almost no side effects," she said. "There's a much better tolerance than (with) traditional therapies."
A fourth trial awaiting approval by the Food and Drug Administration would deploy an even broader arsenal against tumors.
Tumor cells from one patient along with those of three others will be used to arm immune cells with the power to recognize and attack a variety of tumor types – defeating cancer's ability to mutate rapidly and camouflage itself from the immune system.
Earlier this year, Bota received special permission from the FDA to try out the treatment on a terminally ill patient.
"The median survival was probably two months or less," she said, for patients in his condition.
He was treated in March. And the patient is still alive as 2012 draws to a close, despite the cancer that threatened to end his life when the year was just getting started.
"He's largely out-survived his expected survival," she said.
Bota and her fellow researchers are careful to avoid leaping to conclusions based on results from a single patient.
Still, the man's survival is encouraging, and could bode well for the larger trial to come.
UC Irvine's Comprehensive Brain Tumor Program has been growing steadily in recent years, she says, first with Dr. Mark Linskey and later Bota's research partner, neuro-oncologist Jose Carrillo.
More recently, neurosurgeons Johnny Delashaw and Frank Hsu joined the team.
"We're actually becoming one of the biggest vaccine programs in the whole country for brain tumors," Bota said. "We have three very strong brain-tumor neurosurgeons, definitely moving us forward at the speed of light."
She is seeking brain cancer patients for all three trials now under way, and the studies should remain open for the next one to three years.
"If any of those studies give positive results, we'll hopefully have one more gun in the arsenal to be fighting the tumor," she said.
Bota said she hopes to obtain permission to begin the fourth trial by spring. It would become the first trial of the vaccine, known as ERC 1671, in the United States, although it is already available in Europe.
Contact the writer: 714-796-7865 or firstname.lastname@example.org.
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This bodybuilder's record-setting biceps could destroy you9/16/2012
We’re betting nobody picks a fight with Egyptian bodybuilder Moustafa Ismail, at least not once they've seen the photos in this gallery. He’s now the reigning titleholder for the world’s biggest biceps and will appear in the 2013 Guinness Book of World Records. These muscles are a massive 31 inches around — thicker around than many people’s waists. Ismail, the son of an Egyptian wrestler, moved to Massachusetts in pursuit of world-class training facilities; he now trains six hours a day and eats four pounds of meat, four cups of almonds, and three liters of protein shakes to maintain his muscles — which probably don’t get enough of a workout at his day job, pumping gas. [Source]
Would you ever want biceps like that?
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Regarding “Pakistan’s president denies harboring bin Laden” The government of Pakistan is operating with several public faces. The face the United States ( and the rest of the world ) sees is only one of those faces. Inside it”s own borders, Pakistan has several factions that are in constant conflict with each other. Pakistan’s government presents a different face to each of those factions.
What this all adds up to is a situation that is never exactly what it appears to be. The U.S. is 100% correct when it exposes the Pakistan government’s hypocritical approach to being one of our allies. But, it would not be in the best interest of the United States to cut ties with the Pakistan government for obvious strategic reasons. The best thing the U.S. can do, given the situation, is to publicly expose hypocritical behavior by the government in Pakistan whenever it happens.
Over time, this will bring pressure on Pakistan’s government from the people of Pakistan. If anything will change the behavior of Pakistan’s government it will internal pressure.
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, field glasses and binocular telescopes
are some of the oldest optical devices and some of the most common optical sporting good products. If you are a sports fan, an avid outdoorsman, a bird watcher, a hunter or just someone that enjoys an occasional stroll in the woods, a good binocular is a must have item for any household.
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While binocular technology has not changed much in the last 10 years, there are various features and options that can make the selection difficult. We designed our site in a way to make this process easier. Our binocular experts are also available to help you with your next binocular purchase. See our product reviews and blog postings
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Fri August 3, 2012
Tough times for mental health services in McHenry County
In recent weeks, WNIJ has reported on cuts to mental health services in northern Illinois. The situation has especially been felt in McHenry County, which saw its main behavioral health provider close this summer, largely because of delayed state payments.
An estimated 6,000 people received treatment each year at the Family Service and Community Mental Health Center.
Mike LeBlanc is a former client. It was five years ago when LeBlanc suffered a stroke, an event that opened the door to other serious health issues.
“I’ve had multiple traumatic brain injuries from falls because my balance is so poor” LeBlanc said.
Since then, LeBlanc has been on a path toward recovery. He says the treatment he received at Family Service removed a lot of obstacles. The 42-year-old Woodstock resident says his recovery has taken a different path since the center shut down in late June. He credits local officials, namely the McHenry County Mental Health Board, for stepping in and making sure other local agencies and providers could take in the center’s clients.
But LeBlanc says while he’s fortunate to be getting treatment at another location, the Pioneer Center for Human Services, he says the level of service he’s getting isn’t quite the same.
“It’s just a struggle. I go one day a week to Pioneer, versus the two or three that we were going to at Family Services" LeBlanc said.
LeBlanc says he’s not getting the right amount of mental stimulation he needs. He says there’s also the challenge of having to develop new relationships with people at Pioneer.
Julie Gale is another former Family Service client. In addition to being bi-polar, Gale suffers from obsessive-compulsive disorder and panic anxiety. She says the center turned her life around. She says she’s lucky to be able to keep seeing her regular therapist through her private insurance. But she wonders what might happen if her illness becomes too difficult to manage.
“If I were to go into the hospital and then come out of the hospital, if I were to have an episode, I would not exactly know where to go for outpatient therapy. It’s just a feeling of comfort when you know your services are all under one roof like they were at Family Services" Gale said.
Because Family Service took in many people who were uninsured, Gale worries those people will fall through the cracks.
It’s not just former clients trying to adjust in the wake of the closure. Local providers are feeling more pressure.
For example, Families ETC, which provides support to families of children with behavioral challenges, says its waiting list has grown considerably.
Observers say there is a silver lining in McHenry County’s situation, because unlike most counties, it has a special taxpayer funded board that helps coordinate local mental health care.
Sandy Lewis is the board’s director. Following the closing of Family Service, she says they were able to redirect more than $1-million in funding to areas keep some treatment options available.
“Some of that allowed the court services to hire staff directly from family services, so that mental health court staffing and the drug court staffing could continue” Lewis said.
Lewis says they were also able to reach agreements with area providers…to make it easier for them to expand access to care. And Rosecrance of Rockford has set up an office in the Family Service building to help maintain services for former clients.
And while Lewis says they’ve been able to get a handle on the situation for now…they know that haven’t seen the worst of it yet.
“We believe that the number of people from Family Services seeking treatment will increase every month going forward” Lewis said.
Lewis says that’s because some clients didn’t need treatment at the time of the facility’s closure. She says that’s sure to change when medication refills run out, and some patients have another crisis.
Looking beyond the immediate transition, Lewis says a task force is studying the county’s safety net when it comes to behavioral health care…to see if what’s being done is working.
In the meantime, former client Mike LeBlanc is hopeful he can develop a strong relationship with his new provider.
“Once kind of the bugs are worked out…and they get the schedule of activities …and they kind of learn who we are and what our needs are…they’ll be able to provide it. I’m hoping" LeBlan said.
In the coming weeks, WNIJ will take a closer look at the state’s plan to close Rockford’s Singer Mental Health Center this fall. Our coverage will include efforts to save the facility versus what’s being done to prepare for the center’s closure.
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The College of Arts and Science is the intellectual hub of the University of San Diego and home to the Master of Science in Marine Science. Postgraduate education is a vital part of the USD academic community and is uniquely defined by close working relationships between graduate students and their professors in active research.
The Master of Science in Marine Science has been developed by scholars who strive to give students the highest quality of education along with personalized mentoring and support. M.S. students have an opportunity to design experiments or observations that test hypotheses; to contribute new information to a knowledge base; and to learn to write in a way that facilitates scientific exchange. Course work and research are combined, culminating in a written thesis. Students can take advantage of San Diego's rich community of ocean specialists.
The program utilizes not only the excellent facilities at the University of San Diego's Shiley Center for Science and Technology, but those of nearby institutions, such as the Southwest Fisheries Science Center (National Marine Fisheries, NOAA), the Hubbs-SeaWorld Research Institute, and the Leon R. Hubbard Hatchery. USD faculty currently are involved in research in marine geochemistry, climatology, paleoclimatology, hydrology, oceanography, marine biology, locomotion and fluid dynamics, physiology, ecology, and population genetics. Marine Science graduate faculty also work in the areas of bioacoustics, aquaculture, molecular genetics, ecology, and physiology.
The Master of Science in Marine Science degree can serve as a terminal graduate degree prior to entry into the work force, an enhancement of skills for an existing job in a technical area or in education, or a step toward a doctoral degree.
Read the USD Mission and Vision.
Get familiar with the USD Academic Calendar.
Check out current Research and Scholarship.
For more information on academic life in the Master of Marine Science and Environmental Studies program, please contact:
Ron Kaufmann, Ph.D.
Graduate Director, Marine Science Program
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Norks say U.S. is within its missile range
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — North Korea on Tuesday warned that the U.S. mainland is within range of its missiles, and said Washington's recent agreement to let Seoul possess missiles capable of hitting all of the North shows the allies are plotting to invade the country.
|Sure, Pudgy, say whatever the good Uncle General told you to say...|
Seoul announced Sunday it reached a deal with Washington that would allow it to nearly triple the range of its missiles to better cope with North Korean missile and nuclear threats.
On Tuesday, North Korea called the deal a "product of another conspiracy of the master and the stooge" to "ignite a war" against the North. In a statement carried by the
rabid official Korean Central News Agency, an unidentified spokesman at the powerful National Defense Commission said the North will bolster its military preparedness.
"We do not hide ... the strategic rocket forces are keeping within the scope of strike not only the bases of the puppet forces and the U.S. imperialist aggression forces' bases in the inviolable land of Korea but also Japan, Guam and the U.S. mainland," the spokesman said.
|I thought it was already bolstered...|
South Korea's Defense Ministry said Tuesday it had no official comment on the North's statement, but Seoul and Washington have repeatedly said they have no intention of attacking North Korea.
North Korean long-range rockets are believed to have a range of up to about 4,160 miles, putting parts of Alaska within reach, according to South Korea's Defense Ministry. But the North's spotty record in test launches raises doubts about whether it is truly capable of an attack.
It's unusual for the North to say its missiles are capable of striking the U.S., but Pyongyang has often threatened to attack South Korea and the U.S. in times of tension.
|'Spotty' is MSM speak for 'repeated catastrophic failure'...|
Koh Yu-hwan, a North Korean studies professor based in Seoul, said that in the latest case, the North had no choice but to respond to South Korea's extended missile range but is unlikely to launch a provocation, as it is waiting for the results of U.S. and South Korean presidential elections.
Under the new deal with the U.S., South Korea will be able to possess ballistic missiles with a range of up to 500 miles. South Korea will continue to limit the payload to 500 kilograms for ballistic missiles with an 800-kilometer range, but it will be able to use heavier payloads for missiles with shorter ranges.
A previous 2001 accord with Washington had barred South Korea from deploying ballistic missiles with a range of more than 186 miles and a payload of more than 1,100 pounds because of concerns about a regional arms race.
Posted by: Steve White
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In the last of the big storms in March, the winds blew roofing off some of the houses at Arverne by the Sea, smashing glass and generally making a mess of the place. The home of Glenn DiResto, a retired NYPD lieutenant and a leader of his homeowners’ association, suffered some of the most severe damage. A few days after the storm, he is out casing the now-sunny streets, talking to his neighbors, mobile phone at his ear, managing a collective response. He is a little agitated—his Tyvek is exposed, his living-room window shattered. But he is still in love with Arverne by the Sea.
“This really is a town that looks like it’s from the Carolinas,” he says.
In many other parts of the city, this Low Country outpost would be seen as an alien intrusion. But this part of the Rockaways has been so thoroughly swept clean of its old forms (grand hotels in the nineteenth century, tiny bungalows in the twentieth) and so thoroughly failed by its new ones (those glowering modern blocks) that anything remotely resembling dignified housing is embraced. DiResto grew up in the old Arverne, in a house on the bay side about four blocks away, where his father still lives. As a true native, he is one of the few residents who move freely between the two worlds, societies as different as their architecture. If there is any resentment toward the new Arverne, he doesn’t feel it. “If not for this development, there would be no revitalization of the area,” he says. “The people that benefit the most may be the people that don’t even live here.”
And with that, DiResto goes back to another of his projects on that post-storm day: helping draft a new Architectural Procedure Booklet with clearer aesthetic guidelines for the neighborhood. No pink houses breaking the beige-and-gray monotony, no lawns overflowing with gnomes. The goal is stasis, to ensure that Arverne by the Sea will always look as pristine and peculiar as it does right now.
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When redistributing routes into OSPF, there are some default metric (cost) values that are good to remember if no metric configuration exists:
- Use the source route’s cost if from another OSPF process
- Cost is 1 for routes learned from BGP
- Cost is 20 for all other routes
A couple more facts to remember:
External Type 1 OSPF routes have incrementing costs.
External Type 2 OSPF routes maintain the same cost throughout the AS and are the default type when redistributing.
So, for the most part routes will be external type 2 and have a cost of 20 by default unless you are using BGP (say, for either an Internet connection or MPLS configuration), in which case those routes will have a cost of 1. If you are running two OSPF processes and redistributing between them, then the cost is carried over.
But what if you want to manipulate the cost of those routes? Here area few examples on how to go about doing that.
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Power (Dis)Play? Teams In Black Draw More Penalties
Originally published on Thu April 26, 2012 9:21 am
Hockey teams wearing darker-colored jerseys are more likely to be penalized for aggressive fouls than teams wearing white jerseys, according to new research. Teams wearing black jerseys in particular get penalized the most, according to an analysis that may offer a window into the hidden psychological dynamics of the ongoing NHL playoffs.
"Teams that wore black jerseys were penalized more, significantly more, than teams wearing other colored jerseys," said researcher Gregory Webster of the University of Florida, Gainesville.
The psychologist said that teams that wore darker colored jerseys were penalized about two minutes more per game. The finding is based on an analysis of more than 50,000 NHL games over a quarter century. Players spend nearly a million minutes in penalty boxes in those games.
While the link between jersey colors and penalties is correlational, Webster said it's likely to be more than mere coincidence: A 2003 rule-change by the NHL that affected whether teams wore white or colored jerseys for home and away games allowed researchers to conduct a quasi-experiment.
Before 2003, teams typically wore white jerseys at home and colored jerseys for away games. After 2003, teams wore colored jerseys at home and white jerseys for away games. There were some exceptions, but the change in uniforms meant that the researchers could disentangle the influence of the jersey-colors on penalties from the possibility that teams were being penalized more or less depending on whether they were playing in front of a home crowd.
Why The Increase In Penalties?
It is not entirely clear what's driving the link between darker colored jerseys and increased penalties. But Webster said there could be a handful of different explanations.
One possibility is that players wearing darker colored jerseys are more visible on the ice than players wearing white, allowing referees to spot fouls more easily. The trouble with that theory is that players wearing black jerseys in particular got penalized more than players wearing other dark colors — it isn't clear why black would be so much more visible on the ice than other dark colors.
A second possibility is that wearing dark colors somehow makes players more aggressive, which lands them more often in the penalty box.
A third possibility, Webster said, is that players were not doing anything different, but that the referees had unconscious biases against black and other dark colors.
"There is this very strong cultural association that comes through in how we think about colors in terms of white being associated with good and black with bad," Webster said in an interview. "Many of us are raised from childhood with some of these associations. And over time, we develop a kind of cognitive bias. That's been shown time and time again in social psychology."
In an earlier study, researchers at Cornell University also found a similar pattern of increased fouls among NFL teams that wore darker colors. The researchers conducted an experiment where they had high school and college students run two versions of identical football plays, wearing white uniforms in one version and black uniforms in the second version. Referees who later watched the identical version of the plays called fouls more often when the players wore black.
The research is to be published in the May issue of the journal, Social Psychological and Personality Science. Webster's co- authors are Geoffrey R. Urland of Boulder-based Toravner Research and Design, and Joshua Correll at the University of Chicago.
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Disclaimer: It all belongs to JK Rowling. Pensieve scenes are from Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, and Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince (pg 582, Bloomsbury UK edition, 2005).
Reference to Hogwarts Letter line comes from Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (Chapter 4, page 42-43, Bloomsbury UK edition, 1997)
“It’s here! It’s here!”
A five year old James Sirius Potter came running into the kitchen, yelling at the top of his lungs.
His eager hands began to fumble with the envelope. Ginny quickly snatched it out of his hand and held it out of his reach.
“That’s Teddy’s,” she told him, “It’s his
11th birthday party.”
She looked around the busy kitchen, her eyes scanning the many Weasleys and Potters that filled the house.
“Teddy!” she cried, spotting the turquoise head of hair in the living room. He was surrounded by his friends, as well as the younger cousins, who were desperate to be included in the fun,
He came wandering reluctantly over, but as soon as he spotted the letter his face immediately brightened. He eagerly grabbed the letter from her outstretched hand and began to tear it open.
A blonde girl of about eight or nine skipped to his side.
“Is that the letter, Teddy?” she whispered to him.
“Yeah,” he answered, pulling the letter out.
They read it together.
Dear Mr. Theodore Lupin,
We are pleased to inform you that you have been accepted at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.
Victoire couldn’t read any more. She ran away, pushing through the crowd, not wanting Teddy to see her cry.
James, who was still lurking in the wings, beckoned to Rose and Albus. Rose got gingerly to her feet, took Albus’ hand firmly in her own. The two three year olds ran over to them and together they looked at the letter. They
understood what it meant, even though they couldn't read the words on the page.
“I don’t want you to leave, Ted,” James said, “Who’s going to teach me quidditch?”
“I’m not going until September,” Ted sighed, “It’s only April.”
Rose clung to him and started crying.
“Please don’t go, Teddy,” she cried.
“I have to,” Ted smiled kindly at her.
“Please?” Albus insisted.
“Okay, guys,” Harry gently pried Albus and Rose away from Teddy’s waist, “Let’s give Teddy some space.”
The three children suddenly found an avid fascination with the birthday cake, which Grandma Molly was icing, and immediately lost all interest in Teddy.
Harry smiled kindly at Teddy.
“Is that it?” he asked him, looking at the letter.
“Yeah,” Teddy grinned happily, and his excitement was undeniable.
“Shall we go for a walk?” he asked.
Teddy nodded, and together they went out through the kitchen door.
Teddy seemed very subdued, and Harry looked at him in concern.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, “Are you nervous?”
Teddy shook his head, “No,” he answered truthfully.
“Then what is it?”
Teddy didn’t reply. Harry sighed.
“You know, your mum and dad both went to Hogwarts.”
Teddy brightened up, “Really?”
“Yeah,” Harry grinned, “Your dad and my dad used to be best friends.”
“I know,” Teddy smiled, “You’ve told me.”
“And I’m sure that once you’re there you’ll make plenty of new friends.”
“Pete and Isaac already got their letters.”
Teddy, Pete and Isaac had been friends since they were five, ever since the days when they would tease Victoire, and play hide and seek in the forest, and go racing through the wheat fields. Pete was the grandson of Teddy’s grandmother’s friend, and Isaac was the son of one of Ginny’s friends from her Hollyhead Harpies days. They had been inseparable ever since they had met, and now that they were all off to Hogwarts they would undoubtedly become even better friends.
There was a quiet, friendly pause as they walked along the edge of the garden wall.
Teddy finally spoke up, “What do you think they’d
He didn’t need to specify who ‘they’ were.
“I think they’d tell you how proud they are,” Harry said.
Teddy smiled, but he still looked concerned.
“I wish they were still here,” he murmured.
Harry put an arm gently around him and they stopped.
“I know,” he sighed, “I wish they were here too.”
“It’s not fair,” he muttered, “James, Al and Lily have you and Ginny. Vic has Fleur and Bill. Everyone has a mum and dad, except me.”
Harry felt a pang of sadness. Something in Teddy’s voice, the distinct sound of loneliness, reminded him of how he used to feel when he was his age. He was desperate to know his parents, just as Harry had been dying to know his
“Tell me more about them,” Teddy asked him.
Harry was suddenly struck by an idea and he smiled.
“Better,” he said, “I can show you.”
He offered his arm to Teddy.
* * *
“What is it?” Teddy asked Harry.
They were standing in the empty Auror’s office. It was a Sunday, so everyone was at home, meaning that Harry could apparate there without disturbance. Teddy stared at the glass sink that stood before them, the water in it shimmering and glistening in a way that was so entrancing that he could barely take his eyes off it.
“It’s called a pensive,” Harry told him. Teddy watched as he put his wand to his temple, and began to draw out a long silvery thread. He placed the thread into the water, and it dissolved.
“What does it do?” Teddy asked.
“Put your face into the water and see,” Harry said, “I’ll do it with you.”
He took Teddy’s hand and together they dipped their heads into the water.
Teddy gazed around him as the Auror’s office dissolved, and transformed into a darkened office.
There was a tank sitting on the desk, with a strange, lizard like creature swimming around inside the murky water.
There was a man sitting beside the desk. The first thing that Teddy thought as he surveyed the man was how tired he looked. Tired and ill.
"Recognize him?" whispered Harry, nodding towards the haggard man.
With a jolt Teddy recognized his father. He looked so old, worn out by years of struggle.
Suddenly through the door came a thin, scrawny boy, not much older than Teddy himself.
"Who's that?" Teddy whispered to Harry.
"Three guesses," Harry smirked.
Teddy took in the messy dark hair, the round glasses, the green eyes.
"Is-is that you?" he asked.
Harry nodded, "Your dad was my favorite teacher at Hogwarts."
"Why does he look so tired?"
Harry sighed, "Teddy, you know that your dad…well he was a werewolf."
Teddy nodded uneasily.
"Well, it used to exhaust him. The years of being shunned by that society had take the fight out of him. The only time I saw him truly happy was when he was with your mother."
Teddy beamed, "Is she coming now?"
"Not yet," Harry said, "I'll show your mum you now."
Once they had come out of the pensive, Harry extracted another memory and together they dived again into the silvery depths.
This time they were in a hospital. A group of people stood surrounding a bed.
Teddy peered towards the occupant. Bill, Victoire's own father, lay there, looking younger, but decidedly more damaged. His face was bloody and ripped.
A beautiful blonde girl sat there, gazing at him with adoring eyes.
"Is that Fleur?" Teddy asked.
"Yes," Harry said, "And there's me, and grandma, and your uncle Ron, and your aunt Hermione."
Teddy followed Harry's finger around the room. But his eyes fell on two people at the end of the group. Somehow they were detached from the others, as though they were only aware of each other.
"That's your mum and dad," Harry murmured, but somehow Teddy already knew.
Teddy couldn't stop staring. They were perfect.
Both looked tired, exhausted, wearied. Teddy's mother's hair was mousy brown, unlike so many of the pictures in which her hair was a bright, bubblegum pink.
She looked weak, but the fire in her eyes as she grasped the front of his robes was undeniable.
"I don't care. I've told you a million times," she said.
It was the first time Teddy had heard his mother's voice. It struck a note within him that was pure and sweet.
His parents looked at each other, fiercely loving and full of hurt. There was something resolved in the way they looked at each other. As though all their problems had been leading up to this moment, and this was the turning
He felt as though he was aching all over.
"Time to go," Harry murmured, after what felt like an hour of staring at them, and together they burst out of the pensive, and into the aurora's office.
"That was the day your mum and dad got together. They got married a month later, would you believe."
Teddy smiled at Harry. But instead of feeling satisfied, feeling like he finally knew his parents, he only wanted more. He wanted to touch them, feel them, talk to them. Seeing them in the past, who they were and what they
were like, was wonderful, but it was like being allowed to taste delicious food and not being allowed to swallow it.
It only made him desperate to know more.
“Where have you been?” Ginny cried, as Harry and Teddy appeared in the living room, “Everyone’s waiting for the cake!”
Teddy stood around as they all lit the candles, and sang him happy birthday. One person wasn’t there though, and it was the one person he most wanted to talk to.
Once everyone had had cake, and the many, many relatives and friends had hugged and kissed him goodbye, Teddy was finally free to find her.
He found her sitting at the bottom of the garden, and he could see immediately that she had been crying. She was slowly pulling out blades of grass, and rubbing them meaninglessly between her fingertips.
“Hi Vic,” Teddy sat down beside her. She looked up at him, glaring.
“What?” she snapped.
“Are you OK?” he asked pointlessly. Of course she wasn’t OK.
“No,” she answered simply.
He knew why, so he didn’t ask. He began to pull out grass blades.
“I have to go, Vic,” he sighed.
“Whatever,” she muttered.
“Come on, Vic,” he murmured softly, “Talk to me.”
“Just go away,” she snapped, “I don’t want to talk to you.”
“No,” Teddy retorted.
“I said go away!”
"Can I tell you a secret?"
Her willpower slowly deteriorated and she looked at him. She loved Teddy's secrets. And she loved it when he only confided in her.
"Yes," she muttered.
"Harry took me into that bowl that lets you see memories," he said.
Victoire's enormous blue eyes widened, "Really?"
"He took me to see my parents."
If it was possible her eyes widened even more, "Did you talk to them? What were they like?"
Teddy hung his head, "I didn't talk to them. It was just a memory. Harry's memory."
Not his. He would never have a memory of them.
Sometimes, he screwed his eyes tight shut and held his breath, hoping for some magical revelation, in which he, as a newborn baby, would remember his parents watching over him. Needless to say, it never worked.
Victoire did the only thing that she could. She placed a warm hand over his.
"Do you know, some people think that when people die they still like to watch over the people they love. I bet your mum and dad are watching you right now."
Teddy gave her a sad little smile. It was a childish dream, one he used to believe in. But not anymore.
Victoire wasn't fooled by his silence, "Well, that's what I think, even if you don't believe me."
They were silent for a bit, dragging up more grass blades, their whole bodies immobile except for the quick movement of their fingers, which were slowly being stained by the green.
Victoire looked up and gasped.
"What?" Teddy frowned.
"Don't move," she whispered reverently, pointing to something on the sleeve of his jumper.
Teddy looked down carefully. A white butterfly sat clinging to the wool, it's buttery wings flickering every now and then.
"I told you!" Victoire cried, laughing happily.
Teddy frowned, "Told me what?"
Victoire murmured, "White butterflies are old spirits, like angels watching over you and bringing you good luck."
Teddy would have scoffed, but to his surprise a second white butterfly landed beside the first.
Victoire beamed at him.
The butterflies sat there, slowly moving their wings back and forth, but without flying away.
"I bet they're proud of you, now that you're off to Hogwarts," she said.
Teddy nodded, gazing at the butterflies.
"Hi mum and dad," he whispered, so that only Victoire could hear.
A/N: Yay for the second chapter! I've got a firmer grip on the plot now, so hopefully updates will be more frequent. :) Let me know all of your thoughts!
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Banks make billions by charging people overdraft "protection" fees. The Center for Responsible Lending says that banks took in about $24 billion in 2008; estimates for 2009 are well over $30 billion.
New federal rules take effect on July 1 that will require you to actively accept overdraft protection (ODP) from your institution for ATM and debit-card transactions. Here's what you need to know.
The fine print
Some banks are changing their policies before the new laws take effect. Has yours? It can be tricky to figure out, because there are three types of overdraft protection, according to Ky Tran-Trong, a lawyer for the Federal Reserve Board in Washington, D.C.
- One is an overdraft line of credit, which is like a credit card linked to your checking account for ODP purposes. The interest rate is usually sky high.
- Another is an automatic transfer from your savings. Your bank may or may not charge a fee for this service.
- The last is a cushion of, say, $200 that the bank provides, if your ATM or debit-card transactions exceed your account balance.
Under the new laws, you have to agree to the ATM and debit-card overdraft. But you still may have ODP in some other form. (P.S. bounced check coverage is separate; look into that as well.)
Don't swipe and pray
Call your bank to learn what sort of overdraft coverage you have—and read all the notices your bank sends. It's up to you to choose whether you want any overdraft protection at all. It's smarter and cheaper to be your own source of protection—by knowing what's in your account, setting up an automatic transfer from savings or simply keeping a cash cushion in your account.
Tell us what your bank is doing with overdraft "protection," and how you plan to protect yourself and your money.
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Bridge Lake, which is attached by a channel to Big Chub Lake, was surveyed since rainbow trout are able to get to the lake through the channel.
Sendek said the Eagle Lake strain of rainbow trout — which have their left pectoral fin clipped prior to planting — comes from California. The Michigan steelhead strain — which have their right fin clipped — comes from Thompson Hatchery near Manistique.
Surveying is done at night with a small crew of fisheries biologists and technicians aboard a Jon boat equipped with a generator, lights and wand-like electrodes hanging from booms attached to the bow. About 250 volts of 4- to 6-amp DC current is passed through the water between electrodes, stunning fish and causing them to float belly up to the surface. The crew collects trout with nonconductive landing nets, to keep the crew from receiving the shock.
After fish are counted, measured, weighed and scraped for a scale sample (to determine age), they are released back into the lake. Mortalities in shocked are rare, according to Pat VanDaele, fisheries technician.
“Gill nets were used in the past, and we found (shocking) is a more efficient method of surveying,” said VanDaele, adding gill nets kill the fish they trap.
Shock surveying has a range of about 10 feet from the boat. The boat’s captain maintains a slow course along the shallow edge of the lake as the netters single out the trout from other stunned marine life, such as sucker, northern pike, panfish, bass and the occasional mudpuppy. The stunned fish and other creatures not netted recover shortly after the shock radius passes.
The survey is in its third year of a five-year study of the growth and survival rates of planted rainbow trout and is funded primarily through the sale of fishing licenses. Planting will continue this year at each previously planted lake, and rainbows also will be planted for the first time in Bridge Lake.
A state-wide halt on the production of certain fish species at DNR hatcheries to combat viral hemorrhage septicemia (VHS) will not affect the production of trout, according to the DNR.
Data collected is entered into the DNR’s fish collections system, which contains statewide data on fish surveys.
To obtain information on the survey, call the Gaylord DNR office at 732-3541.
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Recently I downloaded and tried the ‘Silverlight SDK for Bing’. The SDK includes a very cool application with it, which basically demonstrates some of the new controls from View Control Toolkit and some of the advanced data metaphors shown in the Bing search component. Here is how the application looks :
with search results . . .
The most interesting stuff that I found in the SDK is the View Control Toolkit, which includes many reusable controls for Silverlight for overall enhancing the visual metaphors. Below are some screenshots of those views :
- StackView : This is very similar to a Listbox but the cool thing in StackView is that it has a build in vertical blind-style animation for each item, which fires in sequence as the items are added.
- TileView : This control also has a cool seek-from-origin style animation for each item, which fire in sequence as the items are added.
- CloudView : This view displays the results with dual axis, one being Relevance and other is configurable based on data type. CloudView also provides a simple magnification function so that items can be magnified when clustering occurs
- BandCloudView : This view enhances the cloudview by providing a configurable vertical and horizontal axis and an extensible model using flexible data binding and sorting. The difference between CloudView and BandCloudView is that in CloudView, items are arranged free form across a fluid Cartesian surface. In BandCloudView, items are arranged in vertical bands based on granular division. Items in each band are arranged horizontally within each band as if each band were a horizontal list. It also has a cool item animation, which animates the items from the center of the view at data binding time.
The crux of all the animations in all these views is the “MultiView” control which essentially is a stack of MultiView Panel controls which animates panels into views.
The SDK also includes a detailed help on all the components with examples in both C# and VB. So to get started first you would need to create a Bing AppID, then download the Source Code and change the AppID in the SearchEnvironment.cs file - line 105 and get silvery binged :-). . . . .
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- what they are
- the landscape today
- pros and cons
Charters - What They Are
Charter schools are K-12 schools that are public schools receiving state education dollars (although they can, like regular public schools, accept private donations). The difference between regular and charter schools is that charters are do not have to follow all rules and regulations that apply to regular public schools. In exchange for this freedom, the charter law in their state asks for some type of accountability measures and outcomes as set by the school’s charter. However, they do have to meet the educational standards of the state or district in which they are located.
Charter law dictates what governmental entity they are accountable to and who authorizes their charter. Charters usually have a “sponsor” which is generally a local school board, state education agency, university or other entity.
Depending on charter law, a charter school can be opened by anyone, an individual or a non-profit/ for-profit organization. They cannot charge tuition. They do have to take state tests although they are usually exempt from other testing (like district testing). The general length of time for a charter varies but is usually between 3-5 years.
Their enrollment is open to all (although I have not been able to ascertain if you must live in the city they are situated in to apply - I think this is the case). If the school is oversubscribed, then a lottery is held.
Charters tend to be smaller schools, usually less than 200-300 students and exist largely in urban areas. Charters tend to be more racially diverse than regular public schools and to enroll slightly fewer special needs/ELL students than the average school in their area. They are overwhelmingly non-unionized (but the trend seems to be going towards some kind of unionization).
Where do they get their money? From WikipediA:
In many states, charter schools are funded by transferring per-pupil state aid from the school district where the charter school student resides. Charters are, on average, receiving less money per-pupil than the corresponding public schools in their areas. Though the average figure is controversial because some charter schools do not enroll an equal number of students that require significant special education or student support services. Additionally, some charters are not required to provide transportation, and nutrition services.
Charter schools receive about 22 percent less in per-pupil public funding than the district schools that surround them, a difference of about $1,800. The report suggests that the primary driver of the district-charter funding gap is charter schools’ lack of access to local and capital funding.
Meaning, charters are not able to access local levy funding, either for operations or capital use. The issue of facilities is quite large for charters as they must pay for facilities as well as the educational needs of the students they serve. There has been a move in several states to try to allow charters to access to local funding.
Just to be clear, there is one pot of state education money and districts receive their share based on their enrollment. Money follows the student. If the student leaves a regular public school, the state money follows him/her to the charter school.
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The vascular "age" of obese children is like that of middle-aged adults, based on the amount of plaque build-up. More >
Fighting the Fad - Low Carbohydrate/High Protein Diets
Dr. Saltzman is Assistant Professor of Medicine, Director, Obesity Consultation Center, and Chief, Division of Clinical Nutrition, Tufts-New England Medical Center, and Scientist II, Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging, Tufts University School of Medicine, Boston.
Within the past three years, Dr. Saltzman has been a consultant for Ortho-McNeil and has been on the Speakers' Bureau for Roche and Abbott Pharmaceuticals.
There is no denying it — Americans are fat. A shocking two-thirds of Americans are now classified as overweight or obese.(1) Even worse, they are getting fatter. According to a 1999 survey, 44% of women and 29% of men currently were trying to lose weight.(2) While it is clear that losing weight is difficult, keeping lost weight off is even more so. Approximately 85% of those who do manage to lose weight will return to their original weight within five years.
It comes as little surprise, then, that weight loss diets are all over the media and the bestseller list. Many of these diets call for significant changes in the proportion of dietary macronutrients — that is, carbohydrates, protein, and fat — we eat, as compared to the "average" U.S. diet. Among the most popular are programs that call for drastically reduced consumption of carbohydrates — the so-called "low carb" diets.
Let's look at what we know about the theory behind these diets, as well as what research studies say about their benefits and safety.
The Goal: a Balance between Energy Intake and Energy OutputIn order to change body weight, we must create an imbalance between energy intake and energy expenditure; that is, we must burn more calories than we consume. There are three main types of energy expenditure. The first is called resting energy expenditure (REE); this is the number of calories we burn when our bodies are at rest. Believe it or not, REE accounts for approximately two-thirds of our daily expenditure of calories. Exactly how many calories we burn through REE is determined by an individual's proportion of lean body mass to fat. Leaner, more muscular bodies burn more calories while at rest than do bodies with less muscle and more stored fat. The second is called the thermic effect of feeding (TEF), or the amount of calories expended during food intake, digestion and absorption; this accounts for approximately 10-15% of daily energy expenditure. Finally, there is energy burned up through physical activity (Figure 1), which accounts for the remaining 15-20%.
The Components of Energy Expenditure.
The amount of calories we eat is influenced by many things, including hunger and emotional factors, as well as environmental factors such as food availability and social norms. Many dietary factors also influence food intake, (Table 1).
Dietary Factors that Influence Energy Intake
We can look at dietary macronutrient composition in two ways: either as an absolute amount of each macronutrient — for example, x number of grams of fat — or as the percentage of our total energy intake (i.e., calories) supplied by each macronutrient — for example, fat consumption as x % of total calories. When we speak of a percentage of total dietary consumption, it is important to remember that any reduction in carbohydrate — without a reduction in overall calories — will necessarily mean an increase the percentage of fat and/or protein in the diet. In order to assess the effects of a low percentage carbohydrate diet, therefore, we also have to take into account the effects of increasing the percentages of other macronutrients.
No comments have been made
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Recent College Graduates Face Unemployment Rate of Almost 9 Percent
3:30 minutes (6.4 MB) Download
Post secondary education, such as a college degree is more important than ever in an increasingly competitive job market. The jobless rate for recent high school graduates sits at 22.9 percent while 31.5 percent of high school dropouts do not have a job.
But while the numbers are dramatically better for college graduates, a Georgetown University publication shows unemployment rates for those who have recently graduated with a Bachelor’s Degree are still very high
And that is prompting new approaches by students and department heads.
Skeleton in ULM's Radiologic Technology Lab; Medical Technicans and those Trained in Medical Technologies with Some Experience Contend with Unemployment Rates of Just 2.1 Percent
Skeleton in ULM's Radiologic
Technology Lab; Medical Technicans
and those Trained in Medical Technologies
with Some Experience Contend with Unemployment
Rates of Just 2.1 Percent
College students are now getting ready to hit the books as the new academic term gets rolling after the holidays.
But some must be wondering if it’s worth the effort. As a whole, unemployment rates for new university graduates hover just below nine percent, but some subject majors fare better than others.
And so some students are planning to forgo their favorite subjects.
University of Louisiana at Monroe freshman, Vladimir Jakovljevic, says he’s willing to trade passion for pragmatism.
“We all need money and we need to work and to make our existence and everything. So, yeah a job is kind of like the most important thing.”
He hasn’t declared a major yet, but he’s looking for something with a payoff.
“Economics, or some kind of business; maybe finances, and I’m also considering mass communication. I heard it’s easy to find a job with that major.”
Communication sits at a 7.4% unemployment rate for new graduates.
That’s a little better than the average, but ULM’s interim director for career connections, Roslynn Pogue says Jakovljevic’s other choices could offer him an even better shot at a job.
“More than likely it’s going to be more of your business majors and so forth, your banking, financial services – areas of that nature.”
Some students are fortunate enough to love high demand vocations and don’t have to compromise.
Sophomore William Walding is pursuing a radiologic technology degree; those trained in medical technologies with some experience contend with an unemployment rate of just 2.1 percent.
“Of course that’s a big deal – jobs and stuff. I have already interviewed for some student worker programs in hospitals. And it’s a very strenuous job, but there’s hospitals all over the country and they always need new workers and there’s always new technologies and vaccines coming out. The health field is always growing. It’s never going to stop.”
ULM’s Associate Dean for the College of Arts and Sciences, Michael Camille, says the university is aware of job market trends, and has adjusted curricula accordingly.
“We always like to think that we’re offering the right courses and we are attractive to future employers.”
But some say practicality should not be divorced from students’ passion for subjects they love.
For example, English majors wrestle with an unemployment rate of 9.2 percent, but English professor Jack Heflin says separating students from subject areas they are passionate about could have unintended consequences.
“If we don’t give students a general education and they find themselves pigeonholed in a profession that they don’t like maybe we end up with a culture that is one dimensional, or two dimensional; they don’t think in rounded ways, they don’t think in critical ways.”
But some professions may be hard-pressed to attract new students. The grimmest job prospects for recent graduates belong to architects, with unemployment numbers of nearly 14 percent.
Karl Puljak is Louisiana Tech’s director of the graduate school of architecture – he says the difficulty plaguing the profession parallels the weak economy.
Although recent master’s degree graduates fare considerably better than undergraduates with a 7.7% unemployment rate, Puljak says Tech’s master’s architecture program could see a period of adjustment.
“It’s an opportunity for us as a program and as part of our students’ entry into the profession to reassess things that we are doing currently.”
Puljak anticipates a rebound for the profession as a whole as the economy improves, but whether an improved job market will allow students to once again begin choosing to follow their academic passions rather than less-interesting, more job-friendly majors remains an open question.
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February 15, 2012
(Reprinted with permission)
by: Jon Wells
The Hamilton Spectator
Thursday, November 10, 2011
“I’ve had a good life, a good journey. How could I be upset? It’s liberating to know that it is what it is.” Shirley Elford spoke those words about a year ago, knowing that time was not on her side. Diagnosed with terminal ovarian cancer in January 2008, the renowned glass artist never stopped reminding her family and legion of friends that she did not fear death. The life expectancy for that form of cancer is three to five years.
Shirley prepared for it, hired a funeral planner, joked that sometimes it felt odd to organize a party for which she would not be present. And yet, befitting an east end girl who used to work on her dad’s construction sites, she fought death every step of the way, calling upon her reserves of physical and spiritual courage, and receiving experimental cancer treatments for which she paid out of her own pocket.
The battle ended, shortly before noon Thursday. Family gathered at Shirley’s sid e at Juravinski Cancer Centre when she died. She had turned 68 in August.
Shirley Elford lived many lives. The daughter of Margrit and Bill Sinclair — Bill was a prominent Hamilton builder — she married Gerry Elford in 1963, when she was 19. They had two daughters, Ann and Arlene.
At 23, Shirley went back to school, to the Dundas Valley School of Art, where she took every course they offered over 13 years. Then she studied glassmaking at the Ontario College of Art and Sheridan College.
She fell in love with the physical and creative demands of glassmaking; the hum and heat of the oven, shaping the glass in any direction her imagination took it. Nearing middle age, her career took off. She opened a studio in Hamilton, and eventually was picked to redesign the Juno Award. She personally made 1,000 Junos over the years. Her other works ended up in collections around the world, and were presented by the city to visiting luminaries including Bill Clinton, Elton John, Bono, Prince Edward and Christopher Reeve. But her greatest artistic legacy was her angels. In 1990, inspired by her mother’s passing, and the tragic death of a toddler in a house fire, Shirley created a glass angel design that was elegant and uplifting. By the end of her life, she had made about 9,000 of the angels. She believed that every one of them possessed a piece of her mother, and the toddler, and that each angel found its way to the right owner, to inspire and comfort.
In addition to her artistic career, Shirley served myriad community causes, promoting awareness for mental health and ovarian cancer, volunteering for charities and Theatre Aquarius. She sat on the board of directors of the Ticats and was presented with an honorary degree from McMaster.
Her personality was always much younger than her years. Into her 50s she easily mingled socially and creatively with up and coming young glass artists. One of these protégés was Paull Rodrigue, who runs Rodrigue Glass studio in Dundas. Shirley asked him to make the glass urn where her ashes would rest. Paull spoke with her last weekend. She sounded better than she had in awhile, but also quite tired. “She put up a long fight — it’s just hard when you lose people like that,” he said Thursday, his voice weak. “She always gave back to her community. My greatest memory of her is her laugh, and her jokes.” And then, speaking of Shirley’s angels, he added: “She was clearly a mirror image of her work.”
In recent years, Shirley lived by herself in a cosy condo in the east end. Husband Gerry suffers from Alzheimer’s and lives in a home in Owen Sound, near one of their daughters. He is no longer able to recognize family, but could on occasion recognize Shirley.
Living in Hamilton allowed Shirley to receive regular treatment at Juravinski Cancer Centre — she spoke glowingly of her care there — and to keep up her schedule, which included a yoga class downtown three to four times a week that she loved attending.
Her yoga classmates, she said last year, “come by and hang with me, help me laugh, help me get better. You have to laugh every day. Laughter is good.”
She experienced some close calls during her cancer fight before finally succumbing. She nearly died around Christmas 2009, but a new treatment, and her will, pulled her through.
Hot Topic: Shirley Elford
Last year, Shirley was asked: Did she fear anything?
“The loss of my grandchildren would absolutely terrify me. But the rest, no. I’m not afraid to die. I have a deep spiritual belief that there’s a force that takes care of me. Cancer has taught me a lot about life. I feel that every day is a gift.”
Through the ups and downs of the battle, her outlook never changed. Friends said she maintained a “no crying” rule in her presence. Her quirky sense of humour and manic energy for her art and the community never seemed to abate.
She went on a Las Vegas vacation not too long ago and even wondered about giving skydiving a shot.
And Shirley returned to her friend Paul’s glass studio to make more angels. She seemed to bask in the heat of the oven, as though it was a kind of life force.
“If they send me to hell, I’m used to the heat,” she said, laughing. “But I don’t think I’m going there, though.”
It took her many years before she had pursued her artistic calling. She felt it had always been there, inside her, but she just needed to find it.
Discovering glassmaking had been her “Ah!” moment, she said.
Shirley agreed that many people go through life never experiencing that moment.
“That’s right — and I’m not finished yet. There might be another ‘ah!’ moment for me. Maybe death is the final one. But I still think I have a few more before I get there.”
Shirley leaves her husband, Gerry, daughters Anne Elford and Arlene Sokalski, brother Bud Sinclair, sister Elaine Lymburner and grandchildren Michelle, Jayson, Matthew and Evan.
This article was written by Jon Wells and made available by The Hamilton Spectator to GAAC for distribution to our members. GAAC would like to thank them for sharing their moving tribute to a great Canadian artist. To view the original article visit http://www.thespec.com/news/local/article/623271–an-angel-spreads-her-wings. You can also see Jon Wells’ award-winning profile of Shirley Elford from December 2010. Readers were invited to talk about the Elford angels in their lives. Read their stories, here.
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|From the very formative days of our life, we
are educated, first by our parents, then our teachers enter the equation,
we learn from our peers and our workmates.
Our education is ongoing and never ending, for those who are members of the NFCA your association is another step in the process of that education.
You have made a decision to become a Coach and you must be aware of your responsibilities, to yourself, your family, and the players you coach, the coaching staff you are a part of and the coaches within the association that you are part of.
Remember we are here to help you become the best coach you can be, not to introduce insurmountable hurdles that will deter you from coaching for the rest of your life.
The Football Coaching Certification Process The following is the process of certification as produced by the NFCA, it has been structured to help, not hinder your progress through all levels, each level runs into the other and is a natural progression.
NFCA BASIC REQUIREMENT MODULE
The Basic Requirement Module (BRM) is the first stage of the NFCA's education program. The aim of the BRM is to ensure that all coaches in or preparing to enter the profession will have been provide d with the material that enables them to apply general coaching principles and teach basic football rules, skills and tactics in a safe and competent manner.
Coaching responsibilities, Communication Skills, Teaching and learning principles, Basic offensive skills Basic defensive skills Introduction to special teams Tactics, Practice scheduling Safety Officials and the Rules The BRM is a home study course to be completed by the coach and then returned to the NFCA office for assessment. The coach receives a book entitled "The rookie coaches football guide" and a worksheet. The book is resource material for the worksheet. Upon completion the coach will receive a certificate verifying that the coach has completed the BRM. BRM costs £15.00 this includes your membership to the NCF (National Coaches Foundation) which also includes a Third party liability insurance.
Note : At the NFCA AGM in November 1993 it was decided unanimously by the membership that, "upon becoming a member of the NFCA, that a member must take and complete the BRM within twelve months of joining
Level Two Positional Coach
To achieve level two you will be expected to complete the following modules and one positional module of your choice.
a. Warm-up and stretch.
c. The responsibility of the Coach.
e. Lesson plan.
f. Care and prevention of injury.
g. Rules relevant to position.
A log book of coaching sessions must be kept and will be used in your assessment. You will also be expected to demonstrate your coaching abilities and will be asked to perform Three assignments which will be monitored by an assessor.
Level Three Co-ordinator
To achieve level Three you will be expected to complete all modules in either Special Teams, Defense or Offense and also Team play for that particular role. A practical assessment is not required for this level but you will be required to produce your coaching log book. If you are not a co-ordinator for a Team at the time of sending in your module you will be required to provide a co-ordinators lesson plan.
Level Four Head Coach
To achieve level Four you will be required to have passed Two of the Three co-ordinator modules. You will also be required to produce your Log book.
Email the Executive Director, Craig "Chip" Buttery for more details
Source books :
Play Football the NFL Way by Tom Bass this is available from NFCA office Tel no 01642 649009. Cost £15.00
Football Coaching Strategies - this is available from Human Kinetics Tel no 0113 2781708 Cost £12.95
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Australian court OKs logo ban on cigarette packs
CANBERRA, Australia – Australia's highest court upheld the world's toughest law on cigarette promotion on Wednesday despite protests from tobacco companies that argued the value of their trademarks will be destroyed under new rules that will strip all logos from cigarette packs.
The decision by the High Court means that, starting in December, tobacco companies will no longer be able to display their distinctive colors, brand designs and logos on cigarette packs. The packs will instead come in a uniformly drab shade of olive and feature graphic health warnings and images of cancer-riddled mouths and blinded eyeballs. The government hopes the new packs will make smoking as unglamorous as possible.
British American Tobacco, Philip Morris International, Imperial Tobacco and Japan Tobacco International are worried that the law will set a global precedent that could slash billions of dollars from the values of their brands. They challenged the new rules on the grounds that they violate intellectual property rights and devalue their trademarks.
The cigarette makers argued that the government would unfairly benefit from the law by using cigarette packs as a platform to promote its own message, without compensating the tobacco companies. Australia's constitution says the government can only acquire the property of others on "just terms."
British American Tobacco spokesman Scott McIntyre said the company was disappointed in the court's decision, but would comply with the law.
"Although the (law) passed the constitutional test, it's still a bad law that will only benefit organized crime groups which sell illegal tobacco on our streets," McIntyre said in a statement. "… The illegal cigarette black market will grow further when all packs look the same and are easier to copy."
Jonathan Liberman, director of the McCabe Center for Law and Cancer, told reporters outside the court that the ruling would inspire other countries to take the same measures against tobacco companies.
"It shows to everybody that the only way to deal with the tobacco industry's claims, saber rattling and legal threats is to stare them down in court," he said.
"It's a fantastic decision for public health in Australia," he added.
The court withheld its reasons for the judgment on Wednesday. They'll be released later this year.
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1. Choice of major does not impact in any way whether a FS course counts for Foundational Studies (i.e. major based restrictions have been lifted--students may take a FS course in their major and have it meet a Foundational Studies requirement).
2. Course sequencing (also known as program-based substitutions) may not be used to meet FS requirements.
3. Students who complete the University Honors’ curriculum will have met the following FS requirements:
Social and Behavioral Science
Fine and Performing Arts
Ethics and Social Responsibility
Upper Division, Integrative Electives
4. Students who have an SAT verbal score of 650 or above (or the ACT equivalent) and complete GH 101 and GH 201 as part of the University Honors’ curriculum have met the freshmen composition requirement.
5. Student who have an SAT Math score of 650 or above (or the ACT equivalent) have met the Quantitative Literacy requirement.
6. Students must have an SAT Math score of 430 or above (or the ACT equivalent) to place directly in the Quantitative Literacy course.
7. Students with an SAT Math score below a 430 (or the ACT equivalent) must take a math placement test before enrolling in a Quantitative Literacy. Students who earn a Maple TA score of 7 or above may enroll directly into MATH 102.
8. Students must take a math placement test to enroll in a FS designated mathematics course (a MAPLE TA score of 12 or above is required to enroll directly into MATH 115 and MET 215).
9. To meet the Non-Native Language requirement students must do one of the following:
a. Four courses in high school in a single or multiple non-native languages, including American Sign Language, with a grade of C or better or (FL 150 and FL 100 respectively),
b. Two courses at ISU in a single or multiple non-native languages (see policy below) or,
c. Two course, from an accredited college or university, in a single or multiple non-native languages, including American Sign Language or,
d. Completion of English as a Second Language curriculum
10. Students who took non-native languages in high school, but did not take four courses in a single or multiple non-native languages earning a C or better may take the language placement test at ISU to see if they can place into a non-native language class at a higher level. If they take the higher level course and earn a C or better, they will have met the requirement.
11. Students with a certified learning disability must work with the Languages, Literatures, and Linguistic department and the Student Academic Services Center to meet the Non-Native Language requirement.
12. Students, who have completed armed military service basic training (including reservists), have met the Health and Wellness requirement.
13. Students may also meet the Laboratory Science requirement by taking any two laboratory science courses from two different science disciplines.
14. To receive UDIE credit for a study abroad experience, students must sign up for IS 398 (0 credit hour course).
15. A student enrolled in an Indiana State University online degree program who demonstrates that he or she was unable to enroll in an online course to meet a FS requirement for two consecutive terms may petition to substitute another FS studies course to meet the requirement.
16. A course from another university may receive FS credit if it has been designated as the equivalent of a FS course at ISU or it was designated as a GE course at the university from which it is being transferred and it meets the learning objectives of a FS requirement. Once enrolled as a full-time student at ISU, students are bound by the FS requirements.
17. Students who have earned an AA or AS degree (please note AAS are excluded from this policy)at an accredited regional campus have met all of the Foundational Studies requirements except for:
Junior Level Composition (one class)
Ethics and Social Responsibility (one class)
Integrative Upper-Division Elective (three classes or other permitted substitutions)
If you have any questions, please contact Dr. Linda Maule at Linda.Maule@indstate.edu or at
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Geniemove >> Transport articles >> Revolutionizing Bridge Rehabilitation
Revolutionizing Bridge Rehabilitation
The Ontario Ministry of Transportation's Materials Engineering and Research Office is currently testing an innovative new method of corrosion prevention that has the potential to transform modern bridge rehabilitation. For decades, the MTO and other jurisdictions have used cathodic protection to arrest the corrosion of reinforcing steel within bridge decks. The implementation of new sacrificial anode systems could dramatically improve and simplify the rehabilitation of some structures suffering from corrosion.
MTO is responsible for 2,500 bridges located throughout the province, and is constantly working to ensure proper maintenance measures. The deterioration of concrete bridge decks, caused by corrosion induced by the use of de-icers, has always been a primary concern to bridge personnel. Cathodic protection (CP) has proved to be an effective tool in the fight against corrosion. The theory of CP is to apply sufficient electrical current to the surface of the reinforcement so that corrosion does not occur. In order for CP to function properly the reinforcement must be continuous (electrically connected); this is normally the case for structures with black steel reinforcement. For structures constructed with epoxy-coated reinforcement, the reinforcement may or may not be continuous depending on the condition of the coating. If not, the reinforcement is made continuous before CP is applied. There are two types of CP systems: impressed current, in which an external source of AC power is required to provide electrical current to the embedded reinforcing steel through an anode placed on the concrete surface, and sacrificial anode systems, in which electrical current is generated by the potential difference between the anode and reinforcing steel, and no external source of current is required. Since 1974, only impressed current systems have been installed in Ontario bridge decks.
Impressed current systems require an uninterrupted AC power supply and ongoing monitoring and maintenance if they are to provide effective corrosion protection. This requires dedicated personnel and has significant ongoing operating costs. The recent development and commercial availability of new sacrificial anode technologies prompted the MTO to install and evaluate three new sacrificial anode systems to determine their potential for future ministry use.
Three trial systems were installed in September 2003 at the North Otter Creek Bridge on Highway 9, in Southwestern Region. The anodes were installed by the anode suppliers' representatives to ensure proper handling. The three proprietary systems utilizing zinc anodes - Galva shield mesh and strip anodes and a Galvostrip anode - all operate on the same principle: two dissimilar metals are electrically connected and current flows from the more "active" metal to the more "passive" due to the difference in their electrical potential. In these systems, electrons pass from the more active zinc metal of the anodes to the less active steel of the reinforcing bars. This arrangement polarizes the steel and protects it from corrosion.
A previously conducted survey to assess the condition of the North Otter Bridge indicated that 88% of the concrete deck had readings suggesting a high probability of corrosion; this made it an ideal demonstration site for the new sacrificial anode systems. Multiple element probes (MEPs) were embedded in the concrete deck to evaluate the performance of the sacrificial anodes. The early readings, although preliminary, are encouraging. More than sufficient current was being supplied by each of the anodes to meet the criteria generally accepted as indicative of effective corrosion protection. Monitoring will continue over a 4-year period, at the end of which the Concrete Section will prepare a report including evaluation and recommendation of the sacrificial anodes for future ministry use.
Based on their potential to reduce the costs of long-term monitoring and system maintenance and to enhance the durability of Ontario's bridges, sacrificial anode systems may eventually replace impressed current systems as the standard for cathodic protection throughout the province.
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- Mission Statement
- Organizational Structure
- Our Focus on Existing Priorities
- Our Focus on New Priorities
- The President’s Management Initiatives
- Management Controls, Systems, and Compliance with Laws or Regulations
- Followup to the Inspector General’s Recommendations
- Forest Service’s Financial Highlights for 2003
- Forest Service’s Performance Highlights for 2003
- 2003 Forest Service Performance Indicators and Trends
- Validation, Verification, and Limitations of Data Sources
Management's Discussion and Analysis
Forest Service’s Performance Highlights for 2003
The key performance areas for the Forest Service executive leaders are Mission Results, Business Results, Civil Rights, Homeland Security, and the NFP. Significant FY 2003 accomplishments are addressed in these performance areas. In addition, trend and performance information regarding the Forest Service performance indicators immediately follow this discussion.
Accomplishments Toward Mission Results
The mission of the Forest Service continues to be clearly linked to the overall mission of the USDA, and more specifically to the USDA’s Natural Resources and Environment (NRE) Mission Area. Many of the policies initially discussed, developed, and proposed with the Under Secretary, Council of Environmental Quality (CEQ), OMB, and with the Department of the Interior (DOI) were finalized in FY 2003 and are now being implemented. These include significant progress implementing the Healthy Forests Initiative announced in August 2002.
On the legislative front, the Forest Service worked with the Administration to get stewardship contracting authority enacted. The Healthy Forests Restoration Act (H.R. 1904) was approved in the House and the bill has moved out of committee in the Senate. Forest Service administrative accomplishments include:
- Established two categorical exclusions for priority fuel treatment and forest restoration projects.
- Revised the Forest Service administrative appeals process to expedite appeals of forest health projects.
- Implemented guidance developed to facilitate Healthy Forests Initiative projects that involve endangered species.
- Implemented guidance from CEQ to improve environmental assessments for priority forest health projects.
Other accomplishments in this area include:
- Identified the four major threats to the national forests and the Nation’s forest lands as fires and fuels, invasive species, loss of open space, and unmanaged recreation.
- Worked with USDA and the Administration to develop an understanding of the serious forest health/forest fuels situation with high potential for catastrophic fires, resulting in a commitment by the President to address these issues through the Healthy Forests Initiative.
Accomplishments Toward Business Results
Among the Forest Service’s highest priorities is leadership’s attention to the business and financial operations and systems of the agency. In FY 2002, and again in FY 2003, the Forest Service received an unqualified (“clean”) audit opinion on its financial statements.
The Forest Service revised its 5-year strategic plan in its 2003 update to the Strategic Plan for fiscal years 2004-2008 that focuses on outcomes to achieve sustainable resource management and addresses the four major threats, noted above. This update sets agency goals and objectives for fiscal years 2004 through 2008. As a subset of this document, a strategic plan for the entire Business Operations program was developed that describes performance expectations for all administrative staffs and programs.
The Forest Service is continuing its efforts to ensure progress towards achieving performance accountability. In 2003, the agency developed a comprehensive plan to implement a PAS. As of FY 2003 year-end, the agency completed an assessment of existing processes and systems related to the budget, performance, and accountability. The Forest Service also began an effort to develop a consolidated set of activities linking objectives and performance measures, from the Strategic Plan for Fiscal Years 2004-2008 (updated in FY 2003), to the agency’s budget. The PAS is scheduled for initial implementation in FY 2005, for budget execution and reporting purposes, and for full implementation in FY 2006, incorporating budget formulation.
A pilot is currently underway in Region 10 (Alaska) to develop a set of operational level measures to support budget and strategic plan integration. In support of the President’s Management Initiatives, the Forest Service continues to implement competitive sourcing and business process re-engineering through the A-76 process. The Forest Service has also developed and implemented a strategy for cost containment on large wildfires.
Accomplishments Toward Civil Rights
The agency’s commitment to Civil Rights continues to be demonstrated by performance and follow through. All senior executives are held accountable for meeting goals in civil rights. Forest Service Leadership reviews all GS-14 and above personnel selections for the degree of outreach and the presence of qualified candidates on certificates that would contribute to diversity at those upper grade levels. Civil Rights goals are clearly displayed in the strategic plan and the Business Operations Strategic Plan. The Civil Rights budget is linked to the strategic plan and the annual performance plan.
Other FY 2003 accomplishments include:
- Established a Tribal Relations Coordinator.
- Launched a leadership development and succession-planning program.
- Resolved informal EEO complaints at a rate of 52 percent.
- Received a per capita filing rate of 0.4 percent (USDA’s per capita rate is 0.6 percent) for formal complaints.
- There was a significant decrease in formal complaints filed in FY 2003—149 formal complaints filed compared to 207 formal complaints filed in FY 2002.
- Through September 30, 2003, 84 formal complaints were closed by settlements or withdrawals. This continues a positive trend that began in FY 2002.
Accomplishments Toward Homeland Security
The Forest Service supports the Administration’s objectives regarding homeland security. FY 2003 accomplishments include the completion, training, and implementation of the Continuity of Operations Plan for Forest Service national headquarters and implementation of actions called for in the Occupant Emergency Plans.
The Forest Service is a key participant with USDA, the Department of Homeland Security, and other Federal Government security agencies on border issues, as well as antiterrorist contingency planning and exercises.
Also, the agency is in the process of implementing the necessary actions, as identified in the security assessment of Air Tanker Bases and Regional Aviation facilities. The Major Management Challenges and Program Risks section of this report includes more information on these actions.
Accomplishments Toward National Fire Plan
With more than $226 million budgeted for hazardous fuels treatments in 2003, the Forest Service treated approximately 1.4 million acres of NFS lands. Approximately 1 million of these acres are in the wildland-urban interface area. Forest Service Chief Dale Bosworth personally serves as Chair of the Wildland Fire Leadership Council, providing leadership for completion of interagency performance measures to improve accountability and communication of NFP accomplishments.
Progress continues to be made in each of the five components of the NFP—firefighting, rehabilitation, hazardous fuels treatment, community assistance, and accountability. Initial attack continues to be an accomplishment highlighted by once again achieving a 98.4-percent success rate as a result of making additional resources available on Federal lands, as well as other jurisdictions.
Also in 2003, 14 National Firewise Communities workshops have been held throughout the country. Since 2000, more than 30 workshops have been held for over 3,500 participants, including homeowners, builders, fire departments, emergency managers, realtors, planners, American Red Cross, and others in over 1,000 communities and in 48 States.
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Why are priests celibate?
Celibacy is one of the most widely recognized characteristics of a Roman Catholic priest. But though it is well known, celibacy itself is often misunderstood.
Technically, celibacy is the commitment not to marry. In the Latin (Roman) Catholic Church, it is a prerequisite for ordination to the priesthood. The candidate must freely assume this obligation publicly and for life. Because church teaching reserves sexual activity to marriage, celibacy also requires abstinence.
Celibacy, however, was not always a requirement for ordination. In biblical Judaism, being married and producing offspring was an expectation. St. Peter, for example, had a mother-in-law (Luke 4:38), and St. Paul's instructions regarding ministers included bishops and deacons being married only once (1 Timothy 3:2, 12).
Throughout the first centuries of Christianity, clergy continued to get married, though marriage was not required. It was not until the turn of the first millennium that the church started to canonically regulate clerical marriage, mainly in response to clerical abuses and corruption. Of particular concern was the transmission at the death of a clergyman of church property to his wife and children. The Council of Pavia (1018), for example, issued regulations on how to deal with children of clergy, declaring them serfs of the church, unable to be ordained and barring them from inheriting their father's benefices (income connected to a church office or parish).
In 1075 Pope Gregory VII issued a decree effectively barring married priests from ministry, a discipline formalized by the First Lateran Council in 1123. Since then celibacy has been required of Roman Catholic priests, though the Catholic churches of the East have continued to allow priests to marry before their ordination.
Current church teaching sees celibacy as a gift that God bestows on those who are called to the priesthood. Among the church's arguments in defense of celibacy is the example of Jesus, which must be reflected in the life of a priest. Through celibacy the priest mirrors the love that Christ has for all, a love that the priest, unattached to spouse and children, can also extend.
At the same time, celibacy is not a revealed truth but a church discipline. In the United States, for example, about 100 Episcopal and Lutheran married ministers who converted to Catholicism have been ordained as Roman Catholic priests. Their acceptance illustrates that the obligation of priestly celibacy is not essential to the priesthood. A more universal change in this discipline would require Catholics to rethink our understanding of the priesthood, though it could also offer new gifts to the church and the world.
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Pets don't come with an instruction manual but pet owners often have questions regarding pet behavior. Whether you're a first time pet owner or a seasoned pet parent, questions will arise. We have two great resources to help!
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The mission of Pet Behavior Aid is to increase the retention of companion animals in their homes in Asheville and Western NC through education and training programs for people who have dogs or cats, animal shelter and rescue workers, and the general community. Their professional trainers can consult with you regarding your petís challenging behavior issues like jumping, barking, scratching and more. For more information, contact firstname.lastname@example.org or call (828) 707-0644. Visit their website: www.petbehavioraid.org
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Let it be known, I like Jane Austen. But lately I've been forced to accept that maybe she was just a little bit wrong. But she was mostly right.
It was dear Sister Jane who penned the fatal words, "any single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife." She never really explains why a rich man would want a wife though, does she?
In my years of modern-day dating experience, the men with a good fortune are too busy working to earn that fortune to take the time to date. And that is why if you want a Mr. Darcy, you have to be a Miss Bennett.
But before we get too far, let's back up to what it is that dear Brother Brigham Young, did not actually say. “Any unmarried man over the age of 27 is a menace to society.” No, this line is not true at all. (Steve Young incorrectly quoted him many years ago, and the rumor has taken wings ever since.) However, Elder George Q. Cannon did say, (and rather correctly)-
“Our boys, when they arrive at years of maturity and can take earn of a wife, should get married, and there should not be a lot of young men growing up in our midst who ought to be, but are not married. While I do not make the remark to apply to individual cases, I am firmly of the opinion that a large number of unmarried men, over the age of twenty-four years, is a dangerous element in any community, and an element upon which society should look with a jealous eye. For every man knowing himself, knows how his fellow-man is constituted; and if men do not marry, they are too apt to do something worse. Then, brethren, encourage our young men to marry, and see that they are furnished employment, so that they can marry.”
Let's repeat that last line, “encourage our young men to marry, and see that they are furnished employment, so that they can marry.” This makes me think Elder Cannon would agree with Jane Austen. A man must need a fortune of some sort in order to marry. It is true men, if you want to get married, you are going to have to have a way to support your family. Stop acting like women are so demanding because they expect you to be able to provide. The end.
Which brings me to those dear single brothers who are not so young, but are above the age of 31, who should by this point in their lives be somewhat firm in their employment (all political reasons for unemployment aside)- What is your problem?
We, as a culture, joke around about our short courtships, and tease couples that are quick to get married because they just can't wait any longer than three months for sex. The exception to this cultural joke and rule is apparently all of the men over 31 who are too busy “seeking their fortunes.” Apparently all of these Mr. Darcys-in-disguise can wait, and wait they will.
Enter Elizabeth Bennett
I've yelled at men enough in this column, telling them to buck up, get over themselves, and to ask a girl out for a change. But today, I'm pointing my finger at the women. Ladies, Jane Austen would not approve. At all.
Do you think Elizabeth Bennett would really condone letting a man not take notice of you? Heaven knows her mother would gladly set you up a good excuse to run into him, or get sick and be forced to spend the night at his house. (And far too many of you are employing this technique. May I remind you, Mrs. Bennett was not a loveable or admirable character. Take note!) Lizzie would not do such things. A modern-day Miss Bennett would be forthright and tell a man what she wants.
Miss Bennett is not intimidated by Mr. Darcy. She tells him what she thinks. She is honest in every way. She is polite to Mr. Collins (and haven't we all had a few Mr. Collins in our lives?), and yet firm with him when the situation requires it. And when a woman of high-esteem incorrectly accuses her by stereotype, she shuts her up. She is quick to forgive (even though I'm not sure that Mr. Wickham deserved it). And she is quick to love and support (because some of us are Charlotte Lucas, and not filled with fanciful ideas).
Why are we not all taking more cues from Elizabeth Bennett?
If You Want a Mr. Darcy, You Have to be a Miss Bennett
One of my favorite things about Miss Bennett is that she manages to achieve our favorite LDS saying of “being in the world, but not of it.” She is aware of the mores of her social surroundings and place in the world, but she rises above them. Plus she has incomparable wit which is neither sarcastic or condescending. Oh that we could all have her tongue.
But this all begs the question, would a modern-day Lizzie be the kind of woman to make the first move with a man? Would she call him first? Would she ask him out? I say yes.
She likely would have accomplished a good education, and maybe even have a good solid career. She would not have waited around unnecessarily for life to come to her. She would go out and embrace it, and possibly travel extensively. She was a strong woman who did not wait for others to bring good things into her life. Because of those traits that I believe she would have no trouble picking up the phone and inviting a nice man to join her for dinner, a show, or a hike. She would not have played silly games. She would have just made it happen!
In a fun literary comparison I am sure will irk some of you, if you ask me, Scarlett O'Hara is the anti-Lizzie. A modern-day Scarlett would have four baby daddies, and be on welfare, always complaining that her problems were the fault of someone else, and fail to realize that her problem is that she always thought a man was the answer to her problems, and didn't take real control of her life.
So ladies, I encourage you to be a modern-day Miss Bennett. Go out there, be strong, be smart, and make things happen- including making the first move with a good man. After all, if he has a good fortune, he may be too busy earning it to notice you. Go make him notice you (in a good way, and preferably not in a way involving draperies that will be mocked by Carol Burnett).
Get Erin's latest novella, “The Agency,” on Amazon or Barnes and Noble for just $3.99!
Erin Ann McBride is a writer, dreamer, blogger, and a social media addict. Equal parts Mary Poppins, Carrie Bradshaw, and Mother Theresa, she goes where the wind blows, writes about relationships and dating, and is devoted to serving others.
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I think one thing that really distinguishes a quality make from a poor-quality one is the hem. To me, a hem should be as discrete as possible and not detract from the rest of the garment - unless the hem itself is a design feature, of course!
In my opinion, hems should be totally invisible wherever possible. Sometimes time/cost constraints prevent this happening and in ready-to-wear and you will often see a machined hem. That is fine on many garments - casual wear, knits, and lightweight fabrics that can't be blind hemmed for instance. The Ruby Slip, upon which blind hemming would be nightmare, features a narrow double folded hem which is very discrete:
A hand-rolled hem could also be used, but it takes a lot longer to do!
For more tailored garments, I don't like to see any stitching on the outside as it generally looks cheap. As usual there are always exceptions - sometimes stitching is part of the design, sometimes there is no hem at all!
In manufacturing we use a blind hemmer which can sew a skirt hem in about a minute. This machine sews a chain stitch on the inside, catching a thread or two from the outer fabric to secure the hem up. You know the ones - a small area comes undone and then the whole lot unravels really easily! Blind hemming should be totally invisible, but in reality you quite often see poor quality work where the take-up stitch is visible from the outside of the garment.
There are several ways of sewing a hem by hand - slip stitching, catch stitching - but each of these can leave an unsightly ridge on the outside, especially after a few presses. By using a catch stitch between the layers a visible ridge is avoided. It is a bit fiddly until your fingers learn the right position to hold the fabric, but once you've done a few you'll never look back!
I snapped a few shots while hemming my Turquoise Tartan skirt:
I am hemming the skirt from left to right, but the needle lies right to left - a bit counterintuitive until you get used to it! Take a 3-4mm stitch inside the hem allowance:
Draw the thread through, then pick up a couple of threads from the body of the skirt about 3-4mm apart. The secret is to pick up two threads rather than one, as it distributes the weight of the hem more evenly and minimises any indentation on the outside:
The stitching is done about 5mm inside the hem allowance - I've pinned the edge back here so you can see it:
I space the stitches from 6mm to 10mm apart, and this usually depends on my patience - some fabrics are much easier than others. The closer the stitches, the less likely you are to put a heel through them while getting dressed - ask me, I know! In fact, you can take a backstitch in the hem allowance every few cm to make it extra secure.
Two more things - the stitching should remain at a slightly loose tension, so the hem 'floats' - like the above photo. If you pull the thread tight it will cause indentations on the outside. And second - if you have a heavy fabric, an initial row of stitching done at mid hem level will relieve stress on the upper layer of stitches, and prevent them causing indentations on the outside because of the weight of the hem.
Here's the right side of my hem - if you look at the white line, my pick-up stitches lie in there somewhere - totally invisible!
This fabric was great to work with, others can really test your patience!
From the wrong side I pressed the hem fold flat, but a light press over the hem stitching is all that is necessary. After all that work we don't want a pressing impression to ruin it all!
How do you sew your hems - do you use a blind herringbone stitch too? Are you a hem snob like me, or do you take shortcuts at the finish line? And has anyone tried a blind hem stitch on their sewing machine - does it work very well? My Elna Supermatic has a blind stitch cam and I haven't tried it out yet!
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The Arab Spring (and its troublesome aftermath in Egypt); intervention in Libya; nonintervention in Syria; drone military operations in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia; the influx of unwanted immigrants and walls of exclusion; and selective applications of international criminal law - all draw into question the most basic of all ideas of world order: the sovereignty of territorial states, and limits to that sovereignty.
Also at issue are the closely related norms of international law prohibiting intervention in the internal affairs of states and affirming the fundamental right of self-determination as an inherent right of all peoples. These rules of order were acknowledged by the United Nations' charter, which prohibited the organisation from intervening in matters "essentially within domestic jurisdiction" and affirmed self-determination.
At the same time, as Ken Booth provocatively pointed out almost 20 years ago, that one of the great failings over the centuries of the Westphalian framework of world order - based on the peace treaties of 1648 which concluded the Thirty Years' War and are treated as establishing the modern European system of territorial states premised on the juridical ideal of sovereign equality - was associated with sovereign prerogatives.
Booth showed that respect for sovereignty had, as a major effect, the providing of a sanctuary for the commission of what he called "human wrongs", that is, non-accountable and cruel abuses of persons subject to territorial authority. The great wakeup experience, at least rhetorically for the liberal West, was the non-response at the international level to the lethal internal persecutions in Nazi Germany during the 1930s. The responses after World War II, mainly expressed via international law, consisted of the Nuremberg and Tokyo trials of surviving German and Japanese leaders, the adoption of the Genocide Convention, and the negotiation and approval of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR).
Double standards on human rights
These were well-intentioned gestures of global responsibility that were suspicious when adopted: Nuremberg and Tokyo standards of individual accountability for crimes were only imposed by the war's victors upon its losers, exempting from accountability those responsible for the terror bombings of German and Japanese cities and the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki; the Genocide Convention included no mechanisms for enforcement; the UDHR was only endorsed in the form of a non-binding "declaration" - a signal of the lack of intention to seek enforcement; and the legitimacy of the colonial structures of foreign rule was not questioned until effectively challenged by populist uprisings throughout the formerly colonised world.
In passing, it should be observed that the West never respected the sovereign rights of the peoples of the non-West until it was forced to do so - whether it was European colonialism that extended its reach throughout Africa and Asia, or the assertions of US hegemony over Latin America beneath the banner of the Monroe Doctrine.
This was accompanied by a refusal to extend the Westphalian writ of mutual respect for sovereign rights beyond the Euro-American regional domain until the imperial order began to crumble after World War I. First, the US' "Good Neighbour" policy seemed to reaffirm sovereignty for Latin America, but only within limits set by Washington, as Cold War-era covert and overt interventions later confirmed. Secondly, following World War II, a variety of nationalist movements and wars of national liberation broke the back of European colonialism as an acceptable political arrangement, and the idea of sovereign states was globalised formally, although not geopolitically.
But the world has moved forward in pursuit of global justice. Or has it? On the one side, human rights have matured beyond all expectations, and to some degree exert a general moral and political force subversive of national sovereignty by validating a higher law that exists above and beyond the legal order of the state.
This subversive thrust is reinforced by the development and institutionalisation of international criminal law; enforcement of accountability claims against such pariah leaders as Slobodan Milosevic and Saddam Hussein, as well as lesser tyrants; the establishment of the International Criminal Court; and arrest warrants for the likes of Sudanese president Omar al Bashir and Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi.
And, perhaps most significantly, the rise of respected international NGOs has created a somewhat less selective pressure for implementation of human rights norms, but one still weighted towards political and civil rights given priority in the liberal democracies of the global north, and against the economic, social, cultural, and collective rights of primary importance to developing societies in the global south.
And yet, these moves towards what might be called "humanitarian globalisation" at the expense of sovereignty are too often subordinated to the realities of geopolitics. That is, the application of legal standards and the assertion of interventionary claims remain one-sided: the West against the rest, the North against the South, the strong against the weak. Even the supposedly globally-oriented human rights NGOs devote most of their attention to non-West violations when it comes to alleged infractions of international criminal law.
Selective law and morality tarnish the integrity of law and morality that presuppose fidelity to principles of equality and reciprocity. This makes challenges to sovereignty suspect, but are they also worthless, or, as some argue, worse than worthless?
Liberal versus critical perspectives
There are two contradictory modes of response. The liberal answer is to insist that progress in society almost always occurs incrementally, and doing what is possible politically is better than throwing up one's hands and doing nothing. So long as targets of intervention and indicted leaders are given fair trials, and are convicted on the basis of the weight of the evidence, such results should be affirmed as demonstrating an expanding global rule of law, and serving the interests of global justice. The fact that the principal states intervene at will and enjoy impunity in relation to international criminal law remains a feature of world politics, and is even given constitutional status at the UN in the form of the veto power granted to the five permanent members of the Security Council.
The critical response argues that such double standards contaminate law, and make it just one more instrument of power. The authority of law depends on its linkage to justice, not power. To enforce prohibitions on the use of aggressive force or the commission of crimes of state only on the weak and those on the losing side of war is implicitly to grant the moral and legal high ground to the richest and most dangerous political actors. It provides a humanitarian disguise for abusive behaviour in a post-colonial global setting. It also provides pretexts for disregarding the dynamics of self-determination, which is the lynchpin of a system of sovereign states detached from the hierarchies of geopolitics.
In a world beset by contradictions, there are only hard choices. There seem to be three kinds of situations that somewhat transcend this tension between liberal and critical perspectives:
- a severe natural disaster that cannot be addressed by national capabilities, such as the Asian tsunami of 2004 or the Haiti earthquake of 2010;
- acute or imminent genocide as in Rwanda in 1994, where a small international effort could have averted the deaths of hundreds of thousands; and
- a mandate to act issued by the UN Security Council, as is currently the case in Libya.
In each instance, there are risks and unanticipated effects. Especially worrisome is the recent pattern of authorisations of force issued by the Security Council. In the 1991 Gulf War, to some extent the sanctions currently imposed on Iran, and now the Libyan intervention, the mandate to use force has been stretched beyond the limits specified in the language of authorisation.
In the Libyan case, Security Council Resolution 1973 was built around the emergency protection of civilians, but converted operationally and openly by NATO into a mandate to achieve regime change in Tripoli by dislodging the Gaddafi leadership. Nothing was done to reassert UN control over the scope of authority granted.
Be wary of hard power
What can be done? We have little choice but to cope as best we can with these contradictions, especially when it comes to uses of force on behalf of what is labelled "humanitarian intervention" or "the right to protect". I would propose two ways to turn the abundance of information into reliable knowledge, hopefully thereby engendering greater wisdom with respect to global policy and decision-making.
First, acknowledge the full range of realities in international life, including the absence of equal protection of the law: that is, judging claims and deciding on responses with eyes wide open, and with a reluctance to act - except in extreme cases.
Secondly, presume strongly against reliance on hard-power resolutions of conflict situations, both because the costs almost always exceed the estimates of those advocating intervention, and because, during the past 60 years, military power has rarely been able to shape political outcomes in ways that are, on balance, beneficial for the society on whose behalf the intervention was supposedly taking place.
When it comes to severe human rights abuses, somewhat analogous considerations apply. In almost every instance, deference to internal dynamics seems preferable to intervention from above, while soft-power interventions from below are to be encouraged as expressions of emergent global democracy. Victimisation should not be insulated by notions of sovereignty, but nor should self-determination be jeopardised by the hypocritical moral pretensions of hegemonic states. This is admittedly a delicate balance, but the alternative is to opt for extremes of passivity or activism.
In effect, to the extent possible, challenges to sovereignty should take the form of soft-power tactics of empathy as identities of persons around the globe become as globalised (and localised) as markets. The recent furore aroused by Freedom Flotilla II is illustrative of an emerging tension between the role of sovereign states in defining the contours of law and morality and that of popular forces mobilised on behalf of those unjustly suffering and neglected by the world of states.
Ideally, the UN should act as a mediating arbiter, but the UN remains a membership organisation for sovereign states. It is generally hostile to the claims of global civil society, however well-founded. One attractive proposal to endow the UN with a more robust mediating role is to establish some form of global parliament, perhaps building on the experience of the European parliament that has evolved in authority and political weight over the decades.
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Other articles in Analysis
Two, One- No State 23 May 2013
Educational Apartheid & Social Inequity 22 May 2013
America Honors Its Worst 19 May 2013
65 Years of Palestinian Nakba 18 May 2013
LGBTQ exclusion of anti-capitalism 16 May 2013
Buckling to Bigotry 14 May 2013
|Timothy V. Gatto|
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Date of Original Version
Communication, Control, and Computing, 2009. Allerton 2009. 47th Annual Allerton Conference on , pp.121-127, Sept. 30 2009-Oct. 2 2009
Abstract or Table of Contents
This paper investigates the performance of task assignment policies for server farms as the variability of job sizes (service demands) approaches infinity. The Size-Interval-Task-Assignment policy (SITA), which separates short jobs from long jobs, has long been viewed as the panacea for dealing with high-variability job-size distributions. A very recent paper showed that this common wisdom is flawed: SITA can actually be inferior to the much simpler greedy policy, Least-Work-Left (LWL), for certain common job-size distributions, including many modal, hyperexponential, and Pareto distributions. The above finding leads one to question whether providing isolation for short jobs from long ones is inherently bad, or whether it is just SITA's strict isolation of short jobs that sometimes leads to poor performance. To answer this question, we consider a much more flexible policy, which we call "Cycle-Stealing" (CS). The CS policy is very similar to LWL, in that short jobs can go to any queue, but it still provides short jobs isolation from longs (one server is reserved for short jobs). While CS has many of the same properties as LWL, including high utilization of both servers, we prove, surprisingly, that, for high variability job sizes, CS performs poorly whenever SITA performs poorly. This result suggests that the notion of isolating short jobs from long jobs, under high variability workloads, is sometimes simply not the right thing to do.
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It’s been almost two and a half years since the last DJ TechTools key detection software comparison. Times have changed and the software has moved on, so we took a fresh look at the capabilities of Mixed in Key, Rapid Evolution, and Beatunes- and we also discuss whys and wherefores of musical key, too. Ready to see which software won this time?
THEORY FOR DUMMIES (BY A DUMMY)
First, a crash course in music theory for DJs without any extraneous tangents. This might be tough!
A musical key is a group of notes that play well together, and in western major and minor scales there are seven notes out of a total twelve per scale. Major scales work by starting with a note – this note is called the tonic, and becomes the name of the key – and moving up the semitones in the following steps: 2, 2, 1, 2, 2, 2, 1. Minor scales start with the tonic and move up the semitones in this manner: 2, 1, 2, 2, 1, 2, 2 (there are a few special rules for different types of minor scale that involve differences when moving back down the notes, but for now this will suffice).
The scale pattern is always the same, so some keys play almost the same notes even though they focus on a different tonic (move up seven semitones to see this; only one note will be different between the two keys and it will be due to where available sharp/flat semitones throw the pattern). Because of the cyclical nature of moving through tonics – eventually you will come full circle – keys can be placed on a circle which indicates which keys are most similar, and this circle is called the circle of fifths. This is true not only for the major and minor scales independently, but there is also a relationship between a major and minor scale which share most notes.
The Camelot wheel gives the twelve tonic scales a number, so that rather than having to remember the relationship between scales one can simply look for numbers – in the heat of the moment this is a simpler way to think about key relationships than memorising the circle of fifths.
The only way to find a key is to dissect a song and distinguish the notes that are playing. A good musician can do this by ear; in much the same way that learning to beatmatch tunes your brain to be able to distinguish different rhythm metres in isolation, training can enable you to separate pitches (if you have true biological perfect pitch and train yourself to recognise pitches as note values you can know a key almost instantly, whereas most of us aspire to a well honed sense of memory based relative pitch). You can also always play along with a song on a keyboard until you find the selection of notes that don’t clash and derive the key that way.
Computers can analyse audio files and pull apart the notes too. The reason for all this theory is to help you understand how to interpret the results that computer software comes up with and understand how relevant they are. Considering the above, you should be able to understand how the following can throw a computer (or indeed a human) key detector off the scent:
- If a song does not use all the notes in any key, then its key might be ambiguous. Whilst a huge amount of songs are chord based and thus use all notes in a key, a lot of electronic music uses very little melodic content. A song that only has three notes could (depending on the three notes used) be any number of keys, and the only real way to secure which is correct is to identify the tonic.
- It is possible for a song to be composed – entirely unintentionally – in more than one key by a producer who noodles without any attention to music theory. It’s not uncommon for a song to drift around a section of the circle of fifths throughout the course of a song, because it’s not particularly jarring to do so in many cases it often goes unnoticed.
- It is possible for a song to be intentionally composed to change keys conspicuously. Key changes are a way of changing the mood of music, and many artists use this as a tool in their songs.
If a track has a key change in it, it will be impossible for a key detection programme to tell you what key the track is in for what should be obvious reasons. However if there is a little key drift or perhaps a small section of atonal (not in key) audio, we might hope that the software would have a punt at the most likely to be compatible. Similarly whilst we could forgive a key detection programme for not being able to conclusively tell us a key where one isn’t clearly defined, we’d hope it could be somewhat accurate in its guess of the tonic.
Let’s take a look at the three DJ key detection software options we’re comparing today:
- Mixed in Key is the most well known of all the key detection software. It runs on Zplane’s Tonart key detection algorithm (Zplane make the Elastique realtime timestretching/pitching algorithms used by many major software, from Ableton to Native Instruments; although not Serato, who use their own). Tonart’s also used in Djay and a few lesser known alternatives for native key detection. We’re testing version 5.
- Rapid Evolution is the only free offering of the three here, and whilst the stable version is still at v2, today we’re going to test the public beta (58) of version 3.
- Beatunes is another commercial alternative that not only finds key but is capable of a bunch of other housekeeping. We’re testing version 3.
Why haven’t we included Mixmeister, as we did in 2009? Put simply, I don’t feel it’s particularly relevant at this point in time. It’s been more or less blown out of the water by Ableton Live, Traktor, et al, and buying a fully fledged, $200 piece of software simply to extract key information from it seems ridiculous.
Okay, so the test. From a broad but realistic pool of genres and styles I selected 50 tracks, cranked the accuracy sliders on the software up, and let them get to work. To ensure that the results of the software are being compared to accurate real world results I brought Mark Davis, creator of the Camelot Wheel and one of the major proponents of harmonic mixing, on board. Mark determines the keys of songs manually, and guarantees his results are 95% accurate; he has amassed a jaw dropping database of over 55,000 key matched tracks over 20 years of research and sells the database in book form (with regular electronic updates and an electronic search) from harmonic-mixing.com.
Key Showdown Results (click the link for the full test as a PDF)
Mixed in Key 5: 42%
Time taken: 5 minutes
Good at: Looking good, detecting key and giving camelot values
Not so good at: Being affordable – it’s the most expensive option on test.
Time taken: 4 minutes
Good at: Integrating with iTunes and doing a load of housekeeping above and beyond key detection
Not so good at: Camelot mode – it doesn’t exist. It’s also the least accurate at our test tracks.
Rapid Evolution: 42%
Time taken: 7 minutes
Good at: Detecting key for free!
Not so good at: Having a good interface.
If you have a massive library, key detection software can be a huge timesaver. The 2008 MacBook used is starting to show its age, but as you can see it handled the task with ease and time taken was simply not an issue for any of the software on test. As long as the software gets most right, you’ll be able to weed out the ones it messed up on or couldn’t detect and do those manually, or pay someone like Mark Davis to tell you. At $20 for 100 tracks from Mark – that’s 20 cents per track – you’re getting decent value for money if you’re not confident finding the keys yourself. If what you want isn’t in the database, though, you’ll have to wait until a listening session to get your custom choices recorded.
As for which key detector is the best, the numbers don’t lie. Beatunes was the quickest (although as mentioned there’s barely anything in it), Rapid Evolution and Mixed in Key were jointly the most accurate, and while Rapid Evolution’s free – MiK has a much nicer user interface. Those are probably the three selling points vying for your attention (excepting Beatunes’s inability to detect Camelot key), so if you’re determined not to pay then it’s worth giving Rapid Evolution a run through because it gets the job done. When all’s said and done though, for the one off payment versus the lifetime of easier use, Mixed in Key gets our vote. Just remember that nothing beats a well trained human.
More info on each software:
See the results of our 2009 Key Detection Software Smackdown!
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'That certain artists and composers are of the same generation doesn't always mean that there is a significant link between them. But Goya and Beethoven share the sense of being possessed by inner demons. They also share an awareness of humanity at its most squalid and disreputable—particularly in the context of war," observes Sir John Eliot Gardiner. A revolutionizing exponent of the music of Claudio Monteverdi and Johann Sebastian Bach as well as Ludwig van Beethoven, Mr. Gardiner is the founding music director of the Monteverdi Choir and the period-instrument Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique. Having discovered his profound interest in relationships between art and music during an informal conversation earlier this year, I arranged for us to resume this discussion at London's National Gallery during his organizations' Beethoven Tour, a venture complemented by the Orchestre's white-hot new CD of Beethoven's Fifth and Seventh symphonies, recorded live at Carnegie Hall last year. From Wednesday through Nov. 20, the choir and orchestra are taking that tour to the U.S., with programs featuring two of Beethoven's most spiritual works—the Ninth Symphony and the Missa Solemnis.
The previous night, I heard their revelatory account of the latter at Barbican Hall. The splendid choir and soloists rose mightily to the challenges of Beethoven's craggy, complex vocal writing. And the orchestra's blazing period-style trumpets, magnificently sonorous horns and trombones, dark-hued woodwinds, incisive timpani and gut-strings imparted almost speechlike textures to this beseeching music that underscored its disquieting pessimism.
Thus we start our National Gallery visit by discussing Beethoven vis-à-vis Francisco de Goya's satirical 1798 painting "A scene from 'The Forcibly Bewitched,'" in which a timid priest frantically refills an oil lamp he's been told he must keep burning if he is to stay alive. Though the grotesque little priest seems comical, Goya paints him engulfed in menacing darkness that suggests the political climate of Goya's Europe.
"Both Goya and Beethoven endured a tumultuous era of widespread warfare and social upheaval—the French Revolution, Napoleonic wars, the Peninsular Wars in Spain," Mr. Gardiner notes. "And both were scarred by it. Goya vents this in the macabre fantasy here and in other works like 'The Disasters of War' prints. Beethoven expresses it in the Missa Solemnis. During Napoleon's bombardment of Vienna in 1809, Beethoven cowered in a cellar, covering his deafened ears to preserve what little hearing he still had. That he was haunted by this terrifying experience is reflected by the Missa's desperate quest for peace and remission overwhelmed by doubt. It is especially apparent in the Agnus Dei movement, usually a comforting passage in musical settings of the Mass, but which Beethoven charged with skepticism. He writes it in the dark key of B-minor, dashing the hope for peace by the martial timpani and the sense of incipient warfare or removal of divine benevolence.
"Imagine what it must be like to be deaf yet to hear in such blistering detail all those sonorities in your head. So, I think that if Beethoven had seen this Goya painting he would have said, 'I too am possessed like that.'"
Our conversation touches on Mr. Gardiner's forthcoming book on Bach, scheduled for British publication next September. "It's less a conventional biography," he explains, "than a series of 14 contextualizing approaches to Bach through the music." For instance, one chapter explores "the family ramifications and what it meant to be a Bach, while comparing Europe's parallel musical dynasties at the time: the Bachs in Germany, the Scarlattis in Italy, the Bendas of Bohemia and the Couperins in France. Another chapter . . . investigates Bach's relationship to Martin Luther and the complexity of the religious element in Bach's music. And on it goes."
Lucas Cranach the Elder (1472-1553), Luther's close friend and portraitist, is a painter Mr. Gardiner identifies with Bach. "Cranach is so much part of Lutheran iconography that he's an inescapable part of Bach's heritage, and Bach must have been introduced to his work during his years in Weimar, where Cranach's house still stands."
Cranach's "Cupid Complaining to Venus" (c. 1525) uses pagan imagery to present a Lutheran moral that Bach would have recognized. The winged child of the goddess of love protests being stung by bees while stealing a honeycomb. A Latin inscription in the upper right reads, "life's pleasure mingled with pain."
"I always feel the plague and the Dance of Death hovering in the background of Cranach's work," Mr. Gardiner says. "And death plagued Bach throughout his life. He was orphaned at 9, and as an adult lost 10 or 11 of his 23 children, not to mention his first wife. Bach so wonderfully evokes the concept of the Dance of Death in his Easter cantata, 'Christ lag in Todesbanden,' based on Martin Luther's eponymous hymn of the Resurrection and the struggle between life and death."
Related to this theme, Caravaggio's powerfully emotional "The Supper at Emmaus" (1601) is a painting whose resonance, for Mr. Gardiner, embraces Bach, Beethoven and Caravaggio's contemporary Monteverdi. Caravaggio depicts the post-Crucifixion episode, in St. Luke, when an apparent stranger sups at an inn with two of Christ's disciples. As he blesses the bread, the disciples recognize him as Christ. To the two disciples Caravaggio adds a bemused innkeeper.
"By means of sharp light and shadow, gesture and illusion, Caravaggio re-creates the sheer wonderment of a miracle. At the center is this beardless, tranquil stranger whose hand raised in benediction almost reaches out beyond the canvas to the viewer. The two disciples react so differently to their sudden awareness—the one on the right with his outstretched arms seems ready to embrace Christ. The disciple on the left stares at Christ's face and is ready to spring from his chair in astonishment and joy. Meanwhile the puzzled innkeeper can't understand what's going on."
The disciples' excited gestures are those of everyday people, I note. The whole composition embodies realistic shock. Everything around the calm central figure is off-balance; shadows are exaggerated as if caused by a flash of light, a fruit basket teeters at the table's edge. Hands balloon out of proportion—fingertips oversized, arms foreshortened. Caravaggio confronts us with a silent emotional explosion that transcends even the most eloquent speech.
"You certainly find this emotion in Monteverdi," Mr. Gardiner says. "Consider the moment in his opera 'Orfeo,' when Orfeo learns of Euridice's death and responds with a single word, the soft, anguished cry, 'Ohimè [Alas].' Yet over a century after Monteverdi's day Caravaggio's emotion resonates strongly in Bach's cantatas for the second and third days of Easter, especially the wonderful Road to Emmaus Cantata VI, 'Bleib bei uns.' And this epochal, iconoclastic work anticipates Beethoven, indeed all those subversive composers who would not follow the rules."
Mr. Scherer writes about classical music and the fine arts for the Journal.
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2 people favorited this theater
Completed six weeks ahead of schedule and opening on 26th January 1934, the vast Regal Cinema with 2,553 seats in stalls and single balcony cost £95,000. A full stage was provided behind the 50 foot wide proscenium and was often used for pop concerts and opera! Such stars as Ronnie Hilton, Cliff Richard and The Beatles all appeared here.
A Conacher 22 unit organ with illuminated console, designed by Reginald Foort, was installed with the organ pipes housed in the space above the proscenium.
Three years after opening it was acquired by Associated British Cinemas(ABC) on 8th November 1937, and became their major cinema in the area – they owned 4 others in the city at various times.
In 1959 a new projection suite was constructed at the rear of the circle and on reopening the cinema became the ABC.
The richly decorated auditorium was however ruined in 1976 when it was rebuilt as five smaller cinemas seating 569, 346, 261, 166 and 96.
In 1989, amid talks of closure the ABC was renamed Cannon. After some company confusion as to which Cannon property (the group also owned the Cecil Cinema – now known as Cannon Classic) was to close with both being offered for sale at some point, the 5-screen Cannon (ex Regal Cinema) closed 29th June 1989.
Talks of conversion to a rock venue or conference centre came to nought and this fine old cinema was never used again. It was in a very poor condition – part of the roof had collapsed and the brickwork became sodden and porous.
The next and final attraction was to be a wrecking crew, which completed its work in January 2004.
Just login to your account and subscribe to this theater
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Clay amended soilless substrates increasing water and nutrient efficiency in containerized crop production /
Abstract (Summary)Owen, Jr., James Stetter. Clay amended soilless substrates: Increasing water and nutrient efficiency in containerized crop production. (Under the direction of Drs. Stuart L. Warren and Ted. E. Bilderback.) Current management practices in containerized crop production maximize plant growth by supplying adequate or excess nutrient and water inputs. In the United States, nursery production input use efficiency remains ? 50%, in part, because of the inert softwood bark used as a primary component of soilless substrate. One technique to increase input use efficiency would be to engineer a substrate that increases nutrient and water buffering capacity of the substrate. Clay may be such a component. Clay has been used in the past to generically describe an inorganic mineral aggregate to amend a peat- or bark-based soilless substrate that increased water and nutrient buffering capacity. Industrial mineral aggregates with various chemical composition, aggregate size, mineralogy, and temperature pretreatment have been used effectively as chemical absorbents, fertilizer carriers, or barrier clays to contain heavy metals. Experiments herein were conducted to determine which physical and chemical attributes of industrial mineral aggregate could increase input use efficiency in containerized crop production and at what amendment rate plant growth and water and nutrient use efficiency are maximized. Field experiments were conducted using Cotoneaster dammeri C.K. Schneid. ‘Skogholm’ as an indicator plant for growth, net photosynthesis (Pn), stomatal conductance (gs), and mineral nutrient content. Plant were potted into 14 L containers in a pine bark based (PB) substrate with known physical properties and grown for approximately 120 days in 2002, 2003, and 2004 on outdoor facilities in Raleigh, NC that allowed for collection of effluent and influent, which was used to calculate a water budget. In the laboratory, effluent NO3-N, NH4-N and dissolved reactive P (DRP) were quantified to determine effluent daily concentration and cumulative content which allowed for calculation of nutrient budgets. In 2002, a bentonite palygorskite industrial amendment with contrasting particle size and temperature pretreatment was evaluated for its effect on growth, and water and nutrient use efficiency. Substrate amended with a low volatile material (LVM) amended substrate leached 35% less dissolved reactive P (DRP) than the regular volatile aggregate amended substrate. In addition, a 0.25 to 0.85 mm aggregate amended substrate required 11 L less water applied per container when compared to 0.85 to 4.75 mm aggregate amended substrate. In 2003, 0% to 20% (by vol.) rate of the 0.25 to 0.85 mm LVM palygorskite bentonite mineral aggregate were compared. Plant growth and Pn increased curvilinearly and linearly with the maximum occurring at 12% and 11%, respectively. Container capacity and available water (AW) increased linearly with increasing amendment rate, whereas, unavailable water and air space decreased linearly with increasing rate of mineral aggregate. Water use efficiency of productivity and gs was maximized at 11% clay amendment rate. Plant elemental nutrient content of P, K, Ca, and Mg increased when PB was amended with clay. In 2004, cotoneaster was grown in PB amended with 11% (by vol.) sand or 0.25 to 0.85 mm LVM palygorskite bentonite clay mineral aggregate. The PB amended with sand is representative of a typical industry substrate. Treatments included a leaching fraction (LF) of 0.1 or 0.2 and P fertilization rate of 1.0x or 0.5x. Pine bark amended with 11% (by vol.) clay increased AW 4% when compared to sand amendment. Water use efficiency and plant growth increased if PB was amended with clay rather than sand. Plant content of all macro-nutrients, with the exception of N, increased when PB was amended with clay versus sand. Reduction of LF from 0.2 to 0.1 decreased effluent DRP concentration and content 8% and 64%, respectively. A PB substrate amended with 11% (by vol.) 0.25 to 0.85 mm LVM palygorksite-bentonite clay mineral aggregate can grow an equivalent plant with half of the water and P inputs.
School Location:USA - North Carolina
Source Type:Master's Thesis
Keywords:north carolina state university
Date of Publication:
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|Step six of the construction process is where the tile and coping are installed. The waterline tile is installed around the perimeter of the pool. Tiles used today can be manufactured of glass, stone, or porcelain. The tile shown here is porcelain. After the tile is installed, then the coping is installed.
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About the Cover
Our cover design by John Pickard features “Woman with Tobacco Leaves, Charlotte, North Carolina” (c. 1947) by photographer Rosalie Gwathmey (1908–2001).
Rosalie Gwathmey was admired for capturing the hardship of life in black southern communites with an artist’s eye for composition and form. “We all know,” she said, “that if the language isn’t eloquent, no one bothers to finish the story.” She studied with Paul Strand at the Photo League, and exhibited her work at the Museum of Modern Art in 1946.
In 1955, she abruptly threw away all her negatives and became a textile designer. Fortunately, she donated prints of her work to the New York Public Library. In 1994, bookseller Glenn Horowitz gave a solo exhibition of her work from these prints, and revitalized interest in Gwathmey’s work by distributing a catalogue.
The Photo League was established by Paul Strand and Bernice Abbot in 1936. This group maintained darkrooms, meeting rooms, and gallery space. They also offered classes and published Photo Notes journal. Because of its broadly social outlook, the Photo League was listed by the U.S. Attorney General as subversive in the late 1940s and membership declined. The League closed its doors in 1951.
This photograph has been reproduced by permission of the Columbus Museum of Art in Columbus, Ohio, from their Photo League collection. The acquisition of this photograph was made possible with funds provided by Elizabeth M. Ross, the Derby fund, John S. and Catherine Chapin Kobacker, and the Friends of the Photo League. 2001.020.057.
Cover research by Anna Duke Reach.
W. S. Merwin: Then and Now
In 1953, with support from the Rockefeller Foundation, The Kenyon Review awarded its first fellowships. These were intended to identify superlative younger writers and free them from the struggle to put food on the table and a roof over their heads. (This in the days before the widespread institutional patronage of creative writing programs.) No strings came attached—fellows could live where they chose, publish their work as they chose—though many expressed their thanks and admiration by offering their exceptional work to John Crowe Ransom for inclusion in KR.
The fellow in fiction that first year was Flannery O’Connor; in criticism, Irving Howe. The 1954 fellow in poetry was William Merwin. The company was very good indeed, and continued as such for four more years until funding expired. Later, Flannery O’Connor would say, “I wanted to write stories and had stories to write, I felt free to write them, thanks to the fellowship.”
Nearly a lifetime later, W. S. Merwin, one of those early KR fellows, continues to produce work of extraordinary grace, elegance, simplicity, resonance. He offers four new poems in this issue, and a personal essay as well, a memoir describing his decades-long project of reclaiming land left waste by generations of industrial pillage in Hawaii. His labors have nurtured a palm forest that will be deeded to public use after his death.
More of Mr. Merwin’s work in The Kenyon Review archive from across these five decades is featured right now on KROnline at kenyonreview.org. I invite you to visit.
From the early years of his career and the KR fellowship, through years in France and elsewhere, we have come nearly full circle. It gives me great pleasure, great joy to announce that W. S. Merwin will receive the 2010 Kenyon Review Award for Literary Achievement. He makes his own appreciation of that connection explicit in a letter: “I loved Professor Ransom’s letter. . . . And the link with him, and the few letters, were a great part of my happiness at receiving the grant, and are part of my pleasure in the present Award for Literary Achievement.”
Mr. Merwin will receive the award at our annual dinner on November 4, 2010, at the Four Seasons Restaurant in New York. The next day he will travel with us to Gambier for the Kenyon Review Literary Festival. In addition to meeting with students, he will offer the Sutcliffe Memorial Lecture on Saturday evening, November 6. My colleagues and students are eager—as am I.
— D. H. L.
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Planning for Streaming Media
Whether it's an extension of videoconferencing or an IPTV-based in-house video network, streaming media is now essential to many AV installations. How do you go about choosing a platform?
Pick just about any form of enterprise communications—digital signage, training, collaboration—and if it doesn't already involve video, it will soon. So says a recent Gartner Group survey, whose respondents expect their video usage to more than double in external communications and digital signage.
"YouTube has created an appetite," says Ted Gessesse, VBrick System's Online Streaming Service (VBOSS) product manager.
It's a trend that highlights why streaming video skills are increasingly important for AV pros. Besides needing IT and networking skills, success also requires understanding streaming's unique characteristics and how they determine what to look for when comparing one vendor's streaming solution to another's.
For example, there are myriad ways that end users consume video. Thanks to the proliferation of broadband cellular networks and tablets such as the iPad, it's increasingly likely that many streams will be going over a wireless connection and out to a handheld device. So one thing to look for when comparing different vendors' streaming products is how they handle situations when, say, some viewers are using a desktop PC on a corporate LAN, while others are watching on an Android tablet from a café Wi-Fi hot spot, and still others are on an iPhone over cellular.
Moreover, the Apple iPhone and iPad can't handle Flash, while Windows Media doesn't work well on other handheld devices. These kinds of variables must be front-of-mind when determining the platform that best supports a client's video end points.
"You need to be able to support to the full contingent of devices because that's where your audience is," says Dave Stoner, CEO of ViewCast, which makes Niagra streaming media appliances and encoders for delivering video to broadband networks and mobile devices in multiple formats, resolutions, and bit rates. "The whole idea of this technology is to reach people where they are."
"We have sensors that look at the connection you're coming in on to offer you the right kind of video," says VBrick's Gessesse. "You don't have to do just 150kbps because you're limited to what iPhone users can handle."
It's helpful if the platform also can make adjustments on the fly in order to ensure the best possible viewing experience as conditions change. "So if my bandwidth drops or my device's CPU gets busy with some other application, it will drop back in the stream I'm receiving and pick one that's a lower bit rate so the user experience can be maintained at the level that the customer expects," Stoner says.
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NEC Electronics Introduces Compact SoC That Supports 24x DVD writing Speeds
NEC Electronics Corporation today announced that it has developed a System-on-a-Chip (SoC) product integrating all the functionalities needed for DVD writing and reading on a single chip. The new product named SCOMBO 8 is a SoC for supporting DVD Drives equipped in PCs and home write/read appliances and has following features: (1) Integrates DVD drive control logic, synchronous DRAM, and flash memory all in a compact 14mm square flat package; (2) Delivers industry's fastest 24x DVD writing; (3) Lowers power consumption during DVD writing at 8x speed to 0.8W, reducing by 50 percent compared to the previous products.
The new product allows DVD drive manufacturers to reduce external components by 20 to 30 percent and facilitates low-cost system development with less than 100 materials. The market for CD-ROM, DVD, Blu-ray, and other optical disc drives for PCs is estimated at about 300 million per year. DVD drives account for about 80 percent of this market, with steady growth expected in the years ahead.
NEC Electronics launched a SoC with built-in DVD reading and CD write/read functionality for PC optical disc drives. Since then, the company has continuously worked to expand its product lineup, selling a cumulative 180 million products in the SCOMBO series by December 2008.
Optical disc drives in the PC market can be divided into two types, according to the height of the drive case: half-height drives or slim drives. In half-height drives, users expect higher writing speeds, while in slim drives they expect lower power consumption. In addition, users of both types seek to cut their bill of materials costs by reducing the number of components on system boards.
The new product meets all of these requirements by delivering integrated functionality, higher writing speeds, and lower power consumption. The main features of the SCOMBO 8 are as follows:
- Industry's smallest package combining the functionality required for DVD drivesThe new product integrates functionalities such as servo control circuit that controls the optical pickup, data modulation/demodulation circuit, digital read channel function, and write strategy circuit. It also provides analog circuits to process the output signals of the optical pickup, CPUs, and a serial ATA interface all on a single chip. In addition to these control circuits, the new product also includes 16 Mbit SDRAM and 16 Mbit flash memory, all in a compact 14mm square package. The new product is the world's smallest SoC to integrate these functions all in a single package.
In addition to the smallness of the package itself, SCOMBO 8 also allows users to reduce the number of components required to develop the system by 20 to 30 percent, bringing the component count to below 100 and delivering substantial savings in mounting surface and total system cost.
- Industry's first DVD controller to support 24x DVD recording By adopting BiCMOS process, both analog and digital circuits can be optimized by implementing high-speed bipolar process into analog circuits and implementing CMOS process with outstanding power quality into logic circuits. As a result, these advances make it possible to achieve 24x DVD writing for the first time in the industry.
- Reduced power consumption during DVD 8x recording by 50 percent (compared to company's previous products)The product has a number of improvements, including lowered internal voltage from 1.5V to 1.0V achieved through 90nm process, and optimized functional blocks including the CPU. These improvements enabled the new product to reduce power consumption during 8x DVD writing by 50 percent (0.8W) compared to the company's previous SCOMBO products.
NEC Electronics believes the SCOMBO 8 to play a significant role in digital AV equipments and plans to market this product actively in fields of optical disc drives with DVD write/read control functionalities.
Pricing and Availability
The sample price of the new product is US$10 per unit. Mass production is scheduled to begin in March 2009 with approximately 1000,000 units and expected to reach 4000,000 units per month by March 2010. Pricing and availability are subject to change.
Further Reading: Read and find more press releases at our PR index page.
Do you get our RSS feed? Get It!
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Authors at Utah Legislature Watch have posted numerous articles in the past about Utah Legislators Ethics. This year will be no exception since even before the session begins, there is already continued talk about ethics reform.
Last week the Deseret News published an article about a bill that has come out of committee on ethics reform. the bill proposes the formation of an independent panel which would serve as a clearning house for complaints against legislators.
The proposal, allowing private citizens to initiate complaints, would bring in an independent voice to ethics enforcement on Utah’s Capitol Hill for the first time. Currently, only sitting lawmakers can bring allegations against their colleagues and the complaints are judged solely by other legislators meeting behind closed doors.
Utahns for Ethics in Government is not entirely satisfied wtih this bill, however. The group is currently working on a citizen’s initiative that would overhaul the ethics process. The article quotes member Kim Burningham,
“We still have some major concerns” regarding transparency and fairness, “We believe in a lot more openness.”
Other ethics adovcates are on board with the initiative such as Utahns for Ethical Government. There continues to be debate between these groups and legislators regarding the language and “loopholes” in the initiave. The few comments to the D-News article so far allude to legislators being nervous about handing things over to the citizens.
As well they should be. It’s time for the people to oversee the activities of their employees, the state legislators, to ensure transparency in Utah’s government.
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As reported 63 years ago in The Columbia News, Sept. 26, 1940:
The Parent-Teacher Association of Harlem met on Thursday afternoon of the past week for the first time since the opening of the school year, with the president of the association, Mrs. W.A. Winn, presiding.
An audience of 40 ladies and gentlemen heard the outline of the program for the coming year, which has for its principal project the obtaining of a lunch room for underprivileged children of the school.
Professor O.A. Henderson, superintendent of the school, reported on the cost of a new stove, the plumbing necessary to equip the lunch room, and an estimate of the cost.
Under direction of the county extension service, 84 bales of cotton will be made into mattresses for low-income families. A building is being constructed to house the plant and machinery which for a very small sum will be made available to the workers. There have been 850 mattresses signed up for by needy people.
Soldiers to duty
As the country prepares its defenses, more and more of the former servicemen are recalled to active duty. This week finds Chief Gunner's Mate J.O. Marshall, United States Navy, retired, back on the active list. He left Saturday for Chapel Hill, where he will report to the professor of naval science and tactics, Naval ROTC Unit, of the University of North Carolina, for active duty.
The Leah High School will sponsor a barbecue supper Oct. 4, 1940, for 50 cents per person. Immediately following the barbecue, the "Cotton Blossom Minstrels" will be presented in the auditorium. Admission is 15 cents and 25 cents. The public is cordially invited.
Home ec meeting
The Home Economics Club of Evans High School met in the home economics classroom Sept. 13, 1940. Officers were elected to carry out the work of the coming year, as follows: President, Lila Mae Hensley; vice president, Edith Adams; secretary, Margie Gibbs; treasurer, Forest James McDonald. The club selected a song, flower and cub name.
When the business session was over, introduction of freshman followed. Those initiated were: Margaret Barton, Forest James McDonald, Frances Hall, Geraldine Johnson, Juanita O'Neal and Ernestine Sprouse. After the initiation the FFA boys and Home Ec girls had a wiener roast.
"Health" was the general theme for discussion at a recent meeting of the Home Demonstration Council held at Central School. Interesting speakers on the subject presented a program with was most helpful to those present.
The devotional, referring to the spiritual health of the body, was given by Mrs. G.B. Pollard of Appling.
During a short business session, plans were made to complete the $50 scholarship which was procured to aid some worthy boy or girl in this county in securing an education. The funds will be given to the University of Georgia which will assume all responsibility of its use.
The Columbia County News-Times ©2013. All Rights Reserved.
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High-tech simulators may provide a thrilling virtual experience, but they cant reproduce the sensations of Dollywoods down-home thrill ride.
|Dollywood’s Timber Tower propels riders skyward, where they may revolve around the attraction’s central axis, pivot to less than 30° from the ground, plunge back toward the ground, or any combination of these. Hydraulics provides the high force an precise control required for many of the motions.|
Ride simulators are great for providing a virtual adventure that stimulates the senses. Participants see, hear, and sometimes smell a virtual environment enhanced by carefully orchestrated motion that is precisely choreographed with the visual program.
As closed-loop motion control has evolved, ever more sophisticated simulators have been introduced to feed the public’s continuing hunger for the latest and greatest attraction. Plus, because they are often less expensive to operate than traditional rides, take up less real estate, and often pose less risk of liability than traditional rides, ride simulators have been popular with theme park owners as well.
However, successful theme parks must contain a variety of new attractions to keep customers coming back year after year. Roller coasters and simulators may be considered headline attractions, but the dozens of other traditional rides at amusement parks accommodate thousands of visitors every day. Many are seeking an alternative to waiting an hour in line for a two-minute roller coaster ride, while others prefer traditional fixed rides over the virtual experience of a simulator.
Thrills from multi-axis motion
Among the newest major attractions at Dollywood, Pigeon Forge, Tenn., is Timber Tower, a fixed ride that opened in 2006. Designed and built by Huss Maschinenfabrik GmbH & Co. KG, Bremen, Germany, Timber Tower is the first of its kind in North America. A 27-ft diameter passenger gondola carrying as many as 40 people rises 65 ft skyward before it plummets downward. The tower pivots to 30° from horizontal and features dual rotation — the gondola rotates at up to 11 rpm around the tower itself, and the ride base also rotates.
Timber Tower plunges passengers almost within reach of a sawmill blade, a bear cave, a water geyser, a beaver dam, and a treacherous log jam. Of course, all of these sights fit in perfectly with the backwoods theme of Dollywood.
|A view of the base of the Timber Tower during testing shows one of the piston rods that pivots the massive tower. To conserve energy, pressurized fluid is routed to the rod end of a cylinder when low force is needed, thereby reducing the amount of pressurized fluid needed. When higher force is needed, pressurized fluid flows into the cap end of the opposing cylinder.|
Although Timber Tower is the first ride of its kind in North America, it’s not the first in the world. Huss previously designed and built El Volador for Bellewaerde theme park in Belgium. Apart from visual adornments, El Volador and Timber Tower are identical. They share the same hydraulic, electrical, mechanical, and structural design. El Volador is styled after a legendary bird, whereas Timber Tower conforms to Dollywood’s setting in the Great Smoky Mountains.
All the right moves
In both cases, riders experience multiple axes of motion. One moves the gondola up and down the axis of the tower, a second spins the gondola around the center axis of the tower, a third tilts the tower more than 60° from vertical, and a fourth rotates the base so the tower can pivot in different directions.
As with all amusement park attractions, safety is the tip priority. But a main challenge for this attraction is coordinating all the motion of the multiple axes, not the least of which is pivot control of the tower. Tower pivoting is controlled by a pair of opposed hydraulic cylinders. Each cylinder is positioned on opposite sides of a pivot point near ground level, so as one cylinder is extending, the other is retracting. This presents the formidable task of positioning a cantilevered beam with a heavy load at the beam’s free end.
A fully loaded gondola weighs thousands of pounds, so a 93-ton counterweight aids control and reduces the amount of energy. Not surprisingly, then, energy conservation becomes an issue. The attraction’s drive requires 120 kW, which does not include power for lights, so designers at Huss kept an eye toward energy-conserving techniques.
One of these technique reduces the amount of high-pressure fluid needed by the cylinder drive. Maximum cylinder force is needed only when the tower is near the end of its arc — when maximum acceleration and deceleration occurs. When the tower is near the midpoint, momentum is high enough that it does not need full hydraulic force from the cylinders to maintain motion. When maximum cylinder force is needed, pressurized fluid is routed to the cap end of a cylinder. But when lower force is needed, pressurized fluid is routed instead to the rod end of the opposing cylinder. This reduces the volume of high-pressure fluid required, which saves energy.
Proprietary cylinder design
Huss engineers commissioned a Bosch Rexroth Dutch subsidiary in Boxtel, Netherlands for the delivery of the entire hydraulic and electric drive and control technology for Timber Tower, El Volador, and four other incarnations of the attraction.
|This hydraulic integrated circuit (HIC) consists of cartridge valves, subplate mounted valves, accumulators, and other components integrated into a compact assembly that can easily be tucked away within the bowels of the machine. This form of stealth design makes the hydraulic system almost invisible, which is essential for equipment used in the entertainment industry. Refer to the article beginning on page 40 for more information on HICs.|
Marc Mulders, project manager at Bosch Rexroth in Boxtel, explained that the ongoing project design and construction combined the expertise of multiple business units. “In addition to components, we also offer complete one-stop solutions. Thus, we were able to gear the entire drive and control system to stringent TV safety requirements and construct and install it accordingly,” said Mulders.
Even though this equipment is not subjected to the heavy shock, vibration, and other challenges of many industrial applications, it is not without its challenges. For example, amusement park attractions typically must operate continuously for 12- to 14-hr days, seven days a week for months on end. The equipment must also operate within a wide range of temperatures and weather conditions.
Engineers knew they needed more than a chrome plating typically used on piston rods. Consequently, they decided to use cylinders with Ceramax coated piston rods manufactured at Bosch Rexroth B.V. in Boxtel. The Ceramax application process allows for fine-tuning of layers to specific application demands. Each layer is applied with advanced processes like plasma spraying and high-velocity oxy-fuel spraying, which produces clean, hard, and dense coatings with a fine, homogeneous structure.
Several different mixes of ceramic or metal matrix materials can be applied, depending on requirements for wear, corrosion resistance, and service life. Introduced in 1989, Ceramax rod coatings have been applied to more than 14,000 hydraulic cylinders in operation in a wide range of demanding applications.
See it in action
Ride manufacturer Huss Maschinenfabrik Gmbh coined the term Topple Tower to describe the various versions of the ride described here as Timber Tower and El Volador. Huss has built six of these rides, which are all essentially the same ride, with different visual adornments to adhere to a theme. For example, the top of the tower may have the head of an eagle, dodo, or other bird, a dragon, or giraffe, or simply take on the theme of a falling timber.
To view a video, go to the Huss website at www.hussrides.com, click on Family Rides, then Topple Tower.
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Guest Blogger: Swagel: Reducing GSE Dividend Payments Would be a Gift from Taxpayers to Private InvestorsPosted by on May 12, 2011
Today at The Bottom Line we welcome a guest blogger, Phillip Swagel. Phillip is a Professor of International Economic Policy at the University of Maryland and a former Assistant Secretary for Economic Policy at the Treasury Department. His blog post is on the importance of Treasury continuing to require Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to make dividend payments to taxpayers.
A reduction in the dividend payments that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac make to the federal government would serve no policy purpose and amount to a gift from taxpayers to the investors who owned Fannie and Freddie when the firms required a $150 billion taxpayer bailout. It is important to return Fannie and Freddie back to private hands in the future and have market participants rather than the government as the main provider of housing finance. But there are ways to do this that do not involve a windfall for the old shareholders, who were appropriately wiped out when the two firms went bust.
The federal government now stands behind the financial obligations of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the two government-sponsored enterprises involved with housing finance that were placed into conservatorship in September 2008. Taxpayers are on the hook for their losses, with some $150 billion committed so far to make good on the government backstop.
Taxpayers effectively own these two companies. As part of the agreement with the firms when they were put into conservatorship, the U.S. government gained control of 79.9 percent of the common stock, and received preferred shares with a 10 percent dividend payment in exchange for capital injections to maintain a positive net worth for the two firms. With $150 billion of taxpayer capital injected already, the 10 percent rate means that Fannie and Freddie make huge dividend payments each year.
The 79.9 percent figure for the common stock component was chosen because an 80 percent stake would have triggered government accounting rules that put the firms’ assets and liabilities onto the public balance sheet. This is mainly a symbolic distinction, since the terms of the so-called “keepwell” agreements made between the firms and the Treasury mean that the government covers the firms’ net gains and losses even if their assets and liabilities are not formally on the public balance sheet. Still, a concern in the fall of 2008 was that market participants and rating agencies might not understand the situation and respond poorly to $5 trillion of GSE obligations coming onto the federal balance sheet—even those these obligations were matched by nearly an equivalent value of assets and taxpayers had committed to cover the difference between assets and liabilities regardless of whether these were formally on the federal balance sheet.
In recent quarters, the large dividend payments on the government-owned preferred shares have given rise to the seemingly unusual situation in which Fannie and Freddie are now profitable in their operations but usually still make net losses because of the payments to the government. As a result, the two firms take more government capital in order to turn around and pay some of the money back to the Treasury as dividends. As discussed by Daniel Indiviglio of The Atlantic [LINK = http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2011/05/fannie-needs-another-85-billion-from-taxpayers-but-freddies-okay/238618/], Freddie actually reported a profit in the first quarter even including its $1.6 billion quarterly payment to the Treasury, but the firm notes that this profit situation is not likely to continue into the future. Fannie needed another $8.5 billion from the Treasury, including money to cover its $2.2 billion quarterly payment. The dividend payments appear to be crushing the firms and preventing their return to profitability.
This is by design. The steep payments on the dividends make it so that the remaining 20.1 percent of GSE common shares and the pre-conservatorship preferred shares have no value because the GSEs will never earn high enough profits to redeem the government’s preferred shares. This is both intentional and appropriate. Fannie and Freddie were deeply insolvent in September 2008 when they required a bailout. With the housing market weak and credit markets strained in the fall of 2008, Treasury did not want to put the two firms into receivership and wind them at that moment, but it also wanted to make sure that the equity holders of the firms received nothing. The preferred shares accomplish this while not crossing the accounting threshold. Fannie and Freddie shareholders have not been abused—they got exactly what happens to shareholders of insolvent firms: a loss of their investment.
Some people want to reduce these payments or take other steps to the advantage of the owners of the common shares. In an April 11 letter to Committee Chairman Bachus and others [LINK = http://nader.org/uploads/gse.pdf], for example, Ralph Nader decries the treatment of common shareholders, including the delisting of the firms’ shares. Others note that a lower dividend rate would allow Fannie and Freddie to build up retained earnings rather than relying on additional government capital to keep them solvent.
But reducing the dividend would simply transfer value from the government to pre-conservatorship shareholders. This would be a pure gift from taxpayers to investors, without a public policy rationale.
There are better ways to restore Fannie and Freddie to private hands in the future that recoup as much of the bailout as possible without providing a windfall to investors. One approach would be to split the firm into two companies each. So-called “good companies” would have clean balance sheets with the valuable assets of Fannie and Freddie’s computer systems and networks through which to acquire mortgages from originators throughout the United States. These would be profitable firms and perform the socially valuable tasks of securitizing and guaranteeing conforming mortgages. The legacy mortgage-backed securities (MBS), guarantees, and debt would remain with the two “bad companies,” which would continue to have their net worth kept positive by the Treasury while their assets and liabilities run off. The 79.9 percent share of common stock and the $150 billion of senior preferred shares held by the Treasury would likewise remain with the bad firms, which in turn would own the two new good firms.
The separation of Fannie and Freddie into "good" and "bad" firms would in effect leave the government providing a ring-fence around the legacy assets and liabilities. The two good firms could then be sold back to private investors as profitable companies with clean balance sheets and functioning business systems. Taxpayers would realize all of the proceeds of these two IPO’s, because these funds would go to the bad firms and thus to the government as dividends on the Treasury preferred shares as the old Fannie and Freddie are wound down. Even so, it is unlikely that the proceeds of the public offerings of the two good firms would recoup all of the $150 billion in taxpayer money paid out to stabilize Fannie and Freddie. The remaining net loss after the initial public offering and including any additional future capital needed to stabilize the firms would constitute the overall cost of the GSE bailout.
Since the government is not likely to recoup its investment in the firms, this means that pre-conservatorship common and preferred stockholders will realize no value from their holdings. This is appropriate, since the two firms were deeply insolvent when they were put into conservatorship. This differs from the situation with AIG, where AIG was illiquid but not insolvent and thus pre-crisis shareholders will come out with some value, even though for holders of common stock this value will be greatly diluted by the government stake acquired in the rescue of that company. Again, this is an appropriate distinction to make between AIG on the one hand and Fannie and Freddie shareholders on the other. The GSEs were insolvent while AIG was not.
It is vitally important to move forward with GSE reform to ensure that the U.S. housing market is supported by private capital rather and so that the securitization and guarantee functions performed by Fannie and Freddie benefit from private sector incentives and innovation. While an eventual path for GSE reform is discussed, it is equally important to avoid taking steps that transfer value from taxpayers to private investors without appropriate compensation. This would be the effect of proposals to reduce the dividend payments made by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac on the capital invested in the two firms by the United States Treasury.
Phillip Swagel is a professor of international economic policy at the University of Maryland School of Public Policy. He was formerly Assistant Secretary for Economic Policy at the Treasury Department from December 2006 to January 2009.
As a guest, his views do not necessarily reflect the views of Members of the Committee.
The opinions expressed below are those of their respective authors and do not necessarily represent those of this office.
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It’s well known that pre-diction is fraught with peril, especially when it’s about the future. But if the future is past, then analyzing predictions about that past future is like an unwrapped present. (Tense yet?) A friend recently sent me an article from the December 1900 issue of the Ladies’ Home Journal, in which one John Elfreth Watkins, Jr., listed a series of predictions for the year 2000. (See www.tinyurl.com/3yuaxx for the complete list.) Let’s look at some of those prognostications now that 2000 is as gone as Watkins.
“There will probably be from 350,000,000 to 500,000,000 people in America.” A bit on the high side of our current population of about 304 million. But not a bad estimate, especially given an American population in 1900 of a mere 76 million. Still, Watkins was way off the mark by then predicting that Nicaragua and Mexico would seek admission to the Union after the Panama Canal was finished. Actually, if Mexico did join the U.S. the fence some Americans want to build on the Latin American border could be reduced from about 2,000 miles down to only the approximately 400 border miles that Mexico shares with Guatemala and Belize. It’s called thinking outside the boundaries.
“There will be no C, X or Q in our every-day alphabet. They will be abandoned because unnecessary.” A quixotic notion.
“Mosquitoes, house-flies and roaches will have been practically exterminated.” Unless “practically exterminated” meant pragmatically slamming a shoe heel on the insects, this one is obviously way off. As is:
“Rats and mice will have been exterminated.” I didn’t even kill the cartoon-cute little house mouse I found jumping around in my sink a few weeks ago. (I didn’t let it move in with me rent-free either.) And if you’re ever bored waiting for a New York City subway, you can pass the time playing find-the-rat-on-the-tracks. (Although somebody usually wins inside of 10 seconds.)
“Ready-cooked meals will be bought from establishments similar to our bakeries of to-day.” Correct. “Food will be served hot or cold to private houses in pneumatic tubes or automobile wagons.” Partly correct—hot food is delivered cold by automobile wagons. “The meal being over, the dishes used will be packed and returned to the cooking establishments where they will be washed.” A bachelor’s dream that is, alas, unrealized. Fortunately, in 1904 some genius invented the paper plate.
“There will be no street cars in our large cities.” Mostly true, with the notable exceptions of San Francisco’s trolleys and Boston’s Green Line. Although anyone actually waiting for a Green Line train might indeed conclude that they no longer exist. “All hurry traffic will be below or high above ground when brought within city limits. In most cities it will be confined to broad subways or tunnels, well lighted and well ventilated.” Granted, the lighting and ventilation are good enough to play find-the-rat-on-the-tracks. “Cities, therefore, will be free from all noises.” Rendered erroneous by the then unforeseen invention of automobile sound systems with super bass subwoofers. And by legions of pedestrians yelling into cell phones.
“The trip from suburban home to office will require a few minutes only. A penny will pay the fare.” For two bucks, I can go the 12 miles between the Bronx and midtown Manhattan during the morning rush in only a little over an hour. (“Hurry traffic” is less a description than a fervent prayer.)
“Automobiles will be cheaper than horses.” Mostly true, with the notable exception of Frolic N My Dreams, which became worthless to me by finishing dead last in the sixth race at Aqueduct on December 2.
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Features A polish heart in Lithuania
Poles in Lithuania are a minority who want to strengthen their identity. They are now demanding to have their names spelled correctly in official records.
Published in the printed edition of Baltic Worlds page 8-9, Vol II:III-IV, 2009
Published on balticworlds.com on februari 19, 2010
The Poles of Lithuania are like the Russians of Latvia and Estonia. They are tolerated but not loved. And as always in Central Europe, a minority problem has its roots in history. The historical conflict is mostly about Wilno, as the Poles term the Lithuanian capital Vilnius.
When Lithuania first became independent, between the two world wars, Poland incorporated Vilnius. Lithuanians have not forgotten this, nor how they were denied freedom in their own historical city. This, more than fear of cultural competition, probably underlies the law forbidding Lithuanian Poles to use the original Polish spelling of their names in passports and other official documents, or to put up Polish-language street signs.
In the latest census, in 2001, only about 235,000 people or 6.7 percent of the population identified themselves as ethnic Poles. With a majority of 83.5 percent, ethnic Lithuanians are culturally and politically secure, which explains why the minorities (Russians make up 6.3 percent) were granted citizenship and the right to vote when Lithuania gained independence in 1991.
And yet there are problems.
In September 2009, Lithuania’s Supreme Administrative Court upheld a lower-court ruling forbidding languages other than Lithuanian on street signs. The municipality of Salcininkai was told to remove non-Lithuanian (Polish and Russian) street-names. Fines can be imposed on any municipality that does not respect the court’s ruling.
Most Poles live in the south-eastern Soleczniki/Salcininkai region, not far from Wilno/Vilnius. The area borders on Belarus and was once part of a Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth which stretched from the Baltic to the Black Sea. When Marshal Jozef Pilsudski declared Poland’s independence in 1918 and annexed Wilno in 1922, it was part of his dream to revive the original medieval Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, which the Grand Dukes had ruled from the Castle in Vilnius.
The fact that Pilsudski chose Wilno as the final resting place for his heart shows the symbolic importance that his dream gave the city. Pilsudski’s heart is buried next to his mother’s grave in the Polish Military Cemetery. She had given birth to him in 1867, just outside Vilnius.
The Nobel Laureate Czeslaw Milozs (1911–2004), who grew up in Wilno/Vilnius, is the most famous Polish writer to spring from the cultural-historical landscape created by Lithuania’s Polish-speakers. Polish national poet Adam Mickiewicz (1798–1855) also studied and worked in Wilno/Vilnius, when Lithuania was part of the Russian Empire. Mickiewicz and Milozs were very far from being insular Polish nationalists. In their view, borders should not divide people along ethnic lines. Rather, they saw borderlands as areas of multicultural diversity, the kind of diversity that had existed in the old Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.
This may be one reason why, on August 23, 1987, Lithuanian dissidents chose to stage a groundbreaking, retrospective protest against the Molotov Ribbentrop-Pact at the Mickiewicz statue close to the bank of the river Vilnia. The event is seen as marking the birth of the Lithuanian independence movement.
But many Lithuanians have unhappy historical memories of a Commonwealth in which the Poles constituted the upper class and the Lithuanians made up the peasantry, speaking a dialect which was not welcome in Polish-dominated Catholic churches. These memories came alive during the independence movement, and the most radical Lithuanian nationalists exploited anti-Polish sentiments. Thus, the Polish minority fought for autonomy in a new country where Lithuanian was becoming the sole national language.
As is often the case, the struggle against the suppressor brought the two rival groups together, in a common defense of freedom against the greater evil. But political discord followed, particularly when local Polish mayors declared a particular region autonomous. Their Polish nationalism clashed with an equally strong Lithuanian nationalism, as enforced by Vytatuas Landsbergis’s leadership.
By the early 1990s, this had created strained relations between Lithuania and Poland. After Landsbergis left office the tension eased significantly. But one very concrete sign of a persistent, underlying conflict is that Lithuania and Poland have, for many years now, failed to connect the two countries’ electricity power grids. This causes problems for Lithuania, as the Ignalina nuclear power station was closed towards the end of 2009.
In day-to-day life, there is little Polish-Lithuanian friction to be seen — or heard, for that matter. Many inhabitants of the multicultural Vilnius master the languages of the three large ethnic groups: Lithuanian, Polish, and Russian.
But the Lithuanian Poles’ Union has recently staged protests, requesting EU assistance to obtain the right to use the original spelling of Polish names in official documents, to use Polish in public life and to have street signs in Polish in areas where Poles are in the majority. According to Lithuania’s new president, Dalia Grybauskaite, the country does not currently violate ethnic minorities’ rights; nevertheless, she has hinted at possible improvements.
When former Polish Prime Minister Jerzy Buzek, now Speaker of the EU Parliament, visited Vilnius in October, Grybauskaite said that Lithuania might consider giving Poles the right to write their names in Polish on official documents. Buzek welcomed the pledge and asked Polish protesters congregated outside the presidential palace to show patience. When one demonstrator claimed that Poles have not experienced freedom in Lithuania for two decades, Buzek told him not to exaggerate and pointed to how much things had changed in the last 25 years.
Subsequently, Lithuania’s Minister of Justice said that the Constitutional Court’s ruling on spelling of names in fact leaves room for Lithuania to accept as legitimate names spelled according to the person’s own language.
One example of things that have changed was the democratic presidential election of 2009, when a Lithuanian citizen of Polish descent stood as a candidate. The candidate’s name was Waldemar Tomaszewski — or Valdemar Tomaševski, as the name was spelled on the ballot slip. Tomaszewski, who leads the minority party, received 4.7 percent of the votes cast. In the parliamentary elections of 2008, his party won 4.8 percent of votes and three of out of 141 seats. ≈blog comments powered by Disqus
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By Dr. Spencer Price
Objectivity – it is the absolute bedrock of science. There is no notion, idea, hypothesis, concept, principle, axiom, maxim, theory, or law more fundamental to science than objectivity. In fact, in the absence of objectivity, science does not exist. Call it what you want, but it ain’t science.
So what happens when scientists in general lose their objectivity? They become anything but scientists – beach bums, flower children, Birkenstock-wearing granola munchers, bearded recluses in self-imposed exile from the outside world. A sad thing indeed.
Dr. Spencer Price
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||This Egyptian work is currently in the public domain in Egypt because its copyright has expired pursuant to the provisions of Intellectual Property Law 82 of 2002. The 2002 law, which repealed Copyright Law 354 of 1954, was not retroactive, meaning that works which had already fallen into the public domain in 2002 remain out-of-copyright in Egypt.
In order to be hosted on Commons, all works must be in the public domain in the United States as well as in their source country. Egyptian works that are currently in the public domain in the United States are those whose copyright had expired in Egypt on the U.S. date of restoration (January 1, 1996) pursuant to the provisions of the old 1954 law which was in effect at the time.
|Type of work
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||Copyright has expired in the U.S. if...
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||published prior to 1987
||published prior to 1981
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||the author died prior to 1946
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||published prior to 1946
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||published prior to 1963
||published prior to 1946
Certain types of Egyptian works (official documents, stamps, works of national folklore) should use specific license tags instead of this generic tag.
- This template will categorize into Category:PD Egypt.
- Non-retroactivity of the 2002 law
The non-retroactivity of the 2002 law is mentioned in the Special 301 Report on Egypt issued on February 18, 2010 by the International Intellectual Property Alliance, which states that "there is no provision in the Code ensuring that pre-existing works and the objects of neighboring rights (including sound recordings) receive full retroactive protection as required under TRIPS Articles 9.1 and 14, and Berne Article 18" (p. 181). After checking the issue with a copyright lawyer, Arabic-speaking Commons administrator Tarawneh also confirmed in July 2007 that the new law was not retroactive.
- Definition of non-creative works
The 1954 law provided for a shorter term of protection for "works of photography and audiovisual works that are not of creative character and merely consist of a mechanical reproduction of manāzer." The Arabic word manāzer (مناظر) is generally translated as scenes, although it can have several other meanings, as evidenced by its definition on Wiktionary. See this page for similar situations in other countries where shorter terms of protection are applied to so-called simple photographs.
- Term of protection for Type A works
Non-creative photographic and audiovisual works were only protected for 15 years from publication under the 1954 law (Art. 20, § 1). Works published prior to 1981 were thus in the public domain on the URAA date (January 1, 1996). Works published prior to 1987 were in the public domain on the date of entry into force of the new Egyptian Intellectual Property Law (June 3, 2002).
- Term of protection for Type B works
The general term of protection under the 1954 law lasted for 50 years after the author's death (Art. 20, § 1), including for works published posthumously (Art. 22). Any work whose author(s) died prior to 1946 was thus in the public domain on the URAA date (January 1, 1996), regardless of its publication date. The new Intellectual Property Law 82 of 2002 retains this 50-year p.m.a. term of copyright protection (Art. 160).
- Term of protection for Type C works
The term of protection for anonymous and pseudonymous works under the 1954 law lasted for 50 years from the date of first publication (Art. 21). All such works published prior to 1946 were thus in the public domain on the URAA date (January 1, 1996). The new Intellectual Property Law 82 of 2002 continues to protect anonymous and pseudonymous works for 50 years from the date on which they were published or made available to the public for the first time, whichever comes first (Art. 163).
- Term of protection for Type D works
Works whose copyright was held by a legal person
were protected for 50 years from publication under the 1954 law (Art. 20, § 2
). This term of protection of 50 years from publication was only applied to collective works made under the direction of a legal person; collective works made under the direction of a natural person
received the ordinary term of protection of 50 years p.m.a.
, the copyright holder being granted all of the author's rights (Art. 27
). The new Intellectual Property Law 82 of 2002 contains similar provisions for collective works, whereby the term of protection lasts for 50 years p.m.a.
if the copyright holder is a natural person, and for 50 years from the date of publication or public availability (whichever comes first) if the copyright holder is a legal entity (Art. 162
). These provisions apply "provided that the contributions of the participants in such work are integrated in the general objective set by that [natural] person or legal entity, in such a manner that it is impossible to distinguish the individual contribution of each" (Art. 138, § 4
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On Cross Validated there is a great question about best introductory books for bayesian statistics. Also, Jeromy Anglim blogged recently about use of JAGS, rjags, and Bayesian Modelling, with some very nice collection of tutorials relevant to the above question. Lots of those resources are single-shot tutorials, covering just some limited scope of programming and modelling.
In terms of resources that cover a broader range of topics with some background information and coding tutorials, only two sources stand out from the list:
Michael Lee and Eric Wagenmakers Course in Bayesian Graphical Modeling for Cognitive Science, and
- free and aimed at the beginners, but it's a bit rough (looks like a draft, which authors kind of confirm on their website).
John Kruschke Doing Bayesian Data Analysis: A Tutorial with R and BUGS.
- I can't check (cause' someone stole it from my library), but opinions about it are highly positive.
Those two books could potentially hit the spot in terms of sufficient coverage of basic needs for beginner bayesian acolyte.
What else do you advise as a simple, practical, compact, and thorough introduction to bayesian modeling for a cognitive scientist?
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|Home > Life in Japan > Travel|
Friday, Aug. 3, 2007
WALKING THE WARDS
TAITO WARD PART II
Home to the outsider
By KIT NAGAMURA
Western Taito Ward is a paradise for nonconformists who stray off the beaten track. Throughout the incense-scented alleys of Yanaka, and across the parklands of Ueno, it's hard to miss the area's preponderance of "strays"; tourists, artists and the homeless who, with a surprising number of cats, all wander this quintessentially shitamachi (downtown) neighborhood.
The Asakura Choso Museum in Yanaka, a 5-minute stroll from JR Nippori Station, is an excellent place to begin getting the lay of the land, literally and figuratively.
Fumio Asakura (1883-1964), known as the father of modern Japanese sculpture, designed his own residence and studio, which now houses the museum. Displays feature the artist's bronze sculptures, notably "Toki no Nagare (Flow of Time)," a classic work that captures the supple flesh and nonchalant balance of a young woman, and expressive likenesses of some of the 15 or so stray cats Asakura looked after. Many visitors, however, come primarily to study the museum's architecture. The black ferroconcrete atelier visible from the street sequesters inside a breathtaking home in the sukiya (traditional aesthetic) style, arranged around a courtyard garden and spring-fed pond.
From the atelier's lushly planted roof garden, it's a delight to join several of Asakura's sculptures in gazing out over the greenbelt of Yanaka's temples and numerous wooden buildings that somehow survived both the Great Kanto Earthquake (1923) and the bombings of World War II.
Not even the encroachment of commercialism from the south has swamped the old-fashioned spirit of kaiwai (tightly knit community) that characterizes Yanaka. Modest contemporary residences sidle up to wood-frame stores selling antiques, Japanese sweets, rice crackers and handicrafts such as woven baskets and paper lanterns. Isetatsu, purveyor of Edo-style chiyogami (woodblock-printed paper) since 1864, showcases its decorative papers with a clean simplicity that honors the quality of the traditional product.
Mixing old beauty with new ideas is one of Yanaka's special charms. For example, dip into exhibits at SCAI, an avant-garde gallery in a former, two-century-old bathhouse supposedly frequented by Nobel Prize-winning novelist Yasunari Kawabata (1899-1972). The nearby community design center Yanaka Gakko also aims to preserve and teach traditional crafts, and you can pick up an artistic map of the area there. Even without a guide, though, you'll stumble on artistic installations everywhere in Yanaka.
At event cafe Sankenma, an 80-year-old wooden home with an open tatami area and seating for guests, I discovered the entrance blocked by a virtual curtain of little plastic bags, pendulous with colored liquid and rubber balls. Behind the bags, I found a party, with two yukata-clad artists handing out drinks and chatting with customers. Bag-concept artist, Sayaka Ishizuka, and printmaker Yuka Takane, both 27, turn out to be members of Dekoboko House, a small artist collective based in Shonan, on the coast in Kanagawa Prefecture. They rent Sankenma for shows several times a year. "People here clearly love their neighborhood," said Kei Maruyama, 25, another of the group, "so there's a lot of spirit here."
There's a lot of spirits, too, in nearby Yanaka Reien Cemetery. Meander among the cats — there seems to be one for every headstone — to find the tomb of writer Higuchi Ichiyo (1872-96), that of Japan's last shogun, Tokugawa Yoshinobu (1837-1913), and the final resting place of Taikan Yokoyama (1868-1958), a painter credited with modernizing Nihonga, or Japanese-style painting on silk. The Memorial Hall there (open Thursday. through Sunday. from mid-August) displays Yokoyama's work and lifestyle in his former Ikenohata home, just south of Yanaka.
Drifting toward Ueno, the din and dust of high-rise developments clanging into existence, plus a summertime whiff from Japan's oldest zoo made me want to make a beeline back to Yanaka. But luckily, Shinobazu Pond offered relief, both comic and cooling. There, fleets of turtles watch flotillas of swan boats plying the waters on the west side of Bentendo Temple, dedicated to Benzaiten, goddess of arts and wisdom. East of Bentendo's man-made promontory, the pond itself all but disappears in summer (despite its name, which suggests "unconcealable") beneath a blanket of floppy-leafed lotus plants. An enthusiastic employee at Ueno Zoo, one of its volunteer "Meet the Hippopotamus" crew, urged me visit the pond at dawn, when, she said, "the lotus blossoms make sounds — pop, pop, pop — as they open."
Since opening as a park the 1620s, Shinobazu has at turns been surrounded by a horse racetrack, filled and tilled as post-World War II farmland — and narrowly missed being converted into a sports arena. Today, homeless people wander the circumference, quietly stroking cats and handfeeding sparrows, gazing benignly at tourists trolling the Ueno Summer Festival Events (through Aug. 5) for snapshots of lanterns bobbing in the breeze.
The most convenient route uphill from here is through the Inari Fox Shrines (don't miss the tiny one in a grotto) leading to the main building of the Gojo Shrine. From there, keys to Ueno's history are to be found left and right.
After Ieyasu Tokugawa moved Japan's political capital from Kyoto to Edo in 1603, in 1625 his successor, Hidetada, decided to build Kaneiji, a temple meant to protect the city's northeast corner, the one Buddhists believe most vulnerable to evil spirits. An impressive pagoda from the former, vast temple complex survives today in the zoo, near the elephant enclosure.
A third Tokugawa shogun, Iemitsu, built Ueno Toshogu Shrine (1627) to honor his ancestor, Ieyasu. Ornate in vermilion and gilt, and notable for its sando (entrance walkway) flanked with rows of somber stone lanterns, Toshogu is a rare surviving Edo Period structure. In late afternoon, you are likely to share the otherworldly, gold-flecked interior of this designated national treasure with little more than shadows.
By the mid-1800s, the last Tokugawa shogun was prepared to hand over the capital to young Emperor Meiji. However, diehard Tokugawa supporters resisted and made an ill-fated stand at Ueno. In the fires of this battle, nearly all the ancient structures were razed. Then, not long into Meiji's reign that began in 1868, samurai warriors smarting at their loss of dignity and social status found a leader in Takamori Saigo, who led the doomed Satsuma Rebellion of 1877. A statue of Saigo, a large-eyed and robust figure walking his dog, can be seen near the park entrance.
Ueno has seen many additions since being designated a national park in 1873. There's the zoo with its celebration of pandas, and Japan's oldest and largest collection of arts, antiquities and archaeological relics in the three facilities comprising Tokyo National Museum, along with a Smithsonian-like spread of other museums and academies.
But at the end of the day, if you are moved to stray from cultural pursuits, the hurly-burly of Ameyokocho awaits, tucked under the Ueno-to-Okachimachi train-track arches. Once a thriving postwar black market in ame (sweets) among other sought-after items, plus a play on the word "American," the market thrives today with good-natured barkers hawking squid, shoes, cosmetics, clothing and foodstuffs.
In this neck of the woods, it's all good, clean and deviant fun!
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It's a classic case of little interest
The World Baseball Classic got underway today (Did any of you insomniacs happen to catch the 4:30 a.m. first pitch between Japan and China?), and I'm tempted to say, "What's the point?"
Naturally, I do know the point. But what kind of a "Classic" is this from our point of view when the United States outfield consists of Ryan Braun, Adam Dunn, Shane Victorino, and Curtis Granderson? And if Albert Pujols is the best player in the world, why isn't he suiting up for the Dominican Republic?
Insurance. That's why.
I'm all for international competition. You put a basketball team with "USA" on the front of the jersey and I'm there. It has been my astonishingly great privilege to have seen America's best perform in Barcelona, Toronto, Atlanta, Athens, Indianapolis, San Juan, Sydney, Tokyo, and Beijing, among other venues. Even better, from a competitive and emotional standpoint, are the fierce battles waged by countries other than the USA. Nationalism is a powerful force.
It is for the rest of the world, anyway. For whatever reason, Americans have become curiously unresponsive to the idea of international team competition. The idea that America has lost its primacy in the world of international basketball never had the resonance I thought it might. This is the game we invented (OK, Dr. James Naismith was a Canadian, but he came up with the basketball idea right here in the Springfield YMCA), but when Argentina started us on the downward slope with that defeat of the US team in the 2002 Worlds in Indianapolis, nobody outside of those directly involved seemed to care very much.
But the rest of the world took it very seriously.
The rest of the world takes all international competition very seriously. The World Cup is the biggest and most prestigious sporting event in the world. Olympics? Nah. They're nice, but for most of the world, they're a solid No. 2, and even then, we're talking strictly about the Summer Games. When you start talking Winter Olympics, you're writing off Africa, South America, and a huge chunk of Asia. Australia will give you a skier or two, and a couple of long-track speedskaters, but that's pretty much it.
The World Cup is a different matter. I guarantee you that despite all the sour economic news that dominates the conversation in every corner of the globe, when that Cup competition gets underway next year in South Africa, those countries fortunate enough to have qualified will be fixated on their national football teams as long as they are alive. Meanwhile, competition for one of those precious 32 spots galvanizes the population, even now.
The World Cup is one competition that works, simply because everyone concerned wants to make it work. Players routinely leave their club teams for national qualifying games, no questions asked. There are no conflicts with any national leagues once the Cup year rolls around. The Cup comes first.
So right away we have a problem with this World Baseball Classic. The timing stinks. Our teams are concerned with a proper preparation for the upcoming baseball season. The WBC is distasteful to our teams on more than one level. For one thing, there is the fear of injury. Secondly, there is the fear of injury. And then you always have the fear of injury.
Team USA manager Davey Johnson is boldly proclaiming his team to be the favorite, but within the American baseball world, his enthusiasm approximates the sound of one hand clapping because it is a given that most executives and managers in baseball hope the US gets eliminated quickly. Forget national pride. These people are far more concerned about themselves. They just want all their players back, healthy and ready to go.
I said the timing stinks, and it does, but when exactly would be a good time for the Americans? Can you imagine an NHL-like two- or three-week break in the middle of the season? I can't. Some people say it would be better to do this in some warm-weather spots at the end of our season. And what team would like its pitchers to participate then? So that will never happen.
There is a huge difference between basketball and hockey teams engaging in spirited international competition and baseball teams doing the same. Once you get beyond the general wear-and-tear factor, the huge difference is there is nothing in either winter sport that equates to a baseball pitcher. Goalie? You get two or even three quality goalies, alternate them, and it's no big deal.
Pitching is always a big deal.
In theory, a serious eight-team tournament featuring the US, Japan, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Venezuela, South Korea, Puerto Rico, and Canada would be a very enticing spectacle. There are bragging rights at stake for each of those clubs. Six of those eight countries (I know Puerto Rico is an American commonwealth, but it's a distinct country in the world of international sport) contain the names of every active major award winner. Cuba's place on the world baseball stage has been firmly established. South Korea is an evolving baseball power that will prove to be a tough out in this tournament.
In some mythical proper time and place, with all the very best players involved, that would be a very worthy sporting exercise.
Instead, we have the WBC, which has been padded with no-hopers such as China, Italy, and South Africa to come up with the nice round number of 16. That would be like the NCAA Tournament filling out the final three at-large spots with club teams. So the WBC cannot be taken seriously on that basis alone.
But neither can it be taken seriously when so many of the best players aren't participating. We actually have a guy on the US pitching staff most average fans don't know. Quick. Joel Hanrahan. Who's he play for?
Answer: the Nationals.
Who are the best American-born closers? A short list would surely include Joe Nathan, Brad Lidge, and Jonathan Papelbon. Nathan was going to play, but he had to bail because of an injury, and the other two are tucked out of harm's way in their training camps.
I could go on. Once you get beyond Jake Peavy and Roy Oswalt, our starters are very uninspiring (Jeremy Guthrie, Ted Lilly). Roy Halladay? Cliff Lee? Josh Beckett? Unavailable.
Other teams have their own problems. I already mentioned Pujols. Venezuela can't get Johan Santana, which Hugo Chavez is probably blaming on the Americans. But seriously, folks, the whole thing is off the track.
But even if we did have optimum circumstances, and everyone did have its best players, the US included, I suspect the American sporting public would still be yawning. I don't know what it is, but we have become frighteningly insular.
Correct me if I'm wrong.
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John Allen wrote:
> Kevin Philp wrote:
>> Timothy Murphy wrote:
>>> On Thursday 30 April 2009 09:27:46 Frank Murphy (Frankly3D) wrote:
>>>>>>> I want to setup a mail-server later in the summer,
>>>> for my website(s) *ath frankly3d dhot chom
>>>> (to save size on my web-space)
>>>>>>>>>> Sorry to show ignorance, but what exactly is a mail-server?
>>> Do you mean that people can send email directly
>>> to whoever@*ath frankly3d dhot chom ?
>>>>>> If so, what is the advantage of this?
>>> Why not just collect email with IMAP or whatever
>>> from your ISP or place of work?
>>> Surely that does not use much web-space?
>>>>>> Again, if you are talking about sending email too,
>>> what is the advantage of running your own smtp server
>>> as opposed to nominating your ISP as smart host?
>>>>>>>>>>>>> Lots of reasons you might want to do this. You could use a local mail
>> server to spool mail before sending it to our ISP, you could use
>> transfer your incoming mail from the ISP to your own mailserver and
>> run it through spamassassin, clamav or whatever - gives you a chance
>> to clean it up and you don't have to wade through endless spam. Maybe
>> just a good learning experience. Generally you need a basic mail
>> server even to pick up system messages.
>>>> On the downside you have an extra service to protect which is facing
>> the big bad world.
>>>> From my limited experience of running a small mail server. We run
>> postfix, its easy to set up, has a nice webmin module to help the
>> configuration and has a good security record. Exim is more
>> complicated but more flexible. Others kicking around which you will
>> hear about but probably should avoid are qmail (seems unsupported)
>> and sendmail (the grand-daddy of mail servers). I am not sure what
>> CentOS defaults to but its probably postfix or exim in which case the
>> default will be a good choice.
> I think CentOS defaults to sendmail (yuck)
>> -- Sent via my own mail server :)
>>In that case remove it and go for Postfix - unless you want to learn
Sendmail for strange reason.
Nice Linux Journal article http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/4241
and some CentOS specific stuff
These articles suggest CentOS uses Postfix - I have never used it so I
am just reading the pictures.
-- Sent via my own Postfix mail server :)
Maintained by the ILUG website team. The aim of Linux.ie is to
support and help commercial and private users of Linux in Ireland. You can
display ILUG news in your own webpages, read backend
information to find out how. Networking services kindly provided by HEAnet, server kindly donated by
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used with permission. No penguins were harmed in the production or maintenance
of this highly praised website. Looking for the
Indian Linux Users' Group? Try here. If you've read all this and aren't a lawyer: you should be!
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YUBA COUNTY OBITS
~ W ~
EDMUND TAYLOR WILKINS, M. D.
Obituary - from unknown source - submitted by Larry Seaton, transcribed by Kathy Sedler from original copy, no corrections
[Note: * Read by Dr. L. F. Dozier, of the Napa State Asylum, at the meeting of the Association of Medical Superintendents of American Institutions for the Insane at Washington, May, 1891. For portrait see frontispiece (not included in copy).]
Dr. Edmund Taylor, Wilkins, * who fell a victim to influenza, February 10, 1891, was born in Montgomery County, Tennessee, October 20, 1824, and was the son of Dr. Benjamin and Jane Taylor Wilkins.
He received his collegiate education at that most ancient, with one exception, of American literary institutions, the old William and Mary College, founded in 1692, and located at Williamsburg, the early capital of the Commonwealth of Virginia, and from which he graduated in 1844. After leaving college, the object of this sketch turned his attention to the cultivation of the soil, and was for several years engaged in raising cotton in the States of Mississippi and Louisiana, and afterwards conducted a sugar plantation at New Iberia in the latter State.
Like many other enterprising spirit of that day, he soon became deeply impressed by the glowing accounts and excitement consequent upon the discovery of gold in California, and in March, 1849, took passage on the schooner St. Mary, from New York, for the Pacific Coast, by way of Cape Horn.
After a most tedious voyage, filled with irritating delays and great peril, and extending over a period of nearly a year, the small craft on which he sailed cast anchor in the bay of San Francisco.
Dr. Wilkins made a short stay in San Francisco - then a village of rude huts, constructed of rough boards and canvas, but now a beautiful young city of three hundred thousand population and magnificent prospects - providing himself with the proper tools, provisions, etc., necessary for life and labor as a miner in the far interior mountains, which he reached in the spring of 1850.
His first effort at mining, and it seems his last as well, was in the attempt to turn the Trinity River from its course by means of a dam, constructed of sand-bags. This proved unsuccessful, and having spent the summer, and all his available means, in this fruitless effort to compel the river to "give up its hidden treasure," he abandoned the mines and the occupation of mining forever.
In 1853 he returned to his native State and attended one course of medical lectures at the Memphis Medical College, after which he sold his sugar plantation in Louisiana, and returning to California in 1854, purchased land in Yuba County, near the town of Marysville, and again turned his attention to farming. In 1855, he married Miss Matilda P. Brandler, of Virginia, who bore him three children, and died in 1867. He was married a second time, to Miss Camilla Price, of Missouri, in 1877, who also died, in 1889, without issue.
Finding farming unprofitable, Dr. Wilkins concluded to adopt medicine as his life's work, and taking a second course in the Memphis Medical College, graduated and took his degree from that institution in 1861. On receiving his diploma and returning to California, he left his farm and made his residence in Marysville, then the most flourishing inland town of the State, and devoted himself entirely to the study and practice of his profession, and in the course of his reading gave some special attention to the subject of insanity.
The Legislature of 1870, having authorized the Governor to appoint a Commissioner to compile all accessible information as to the construction and management of asylums, and the different modes of treating the insane, Dr. Wilkins was chosen for that important mission, and entered at once upon its execution. He visited some fifty of the principal institutions in the United States and Canada, then crossing the Atlantic, spent the greater portion of two years in travel, and inspected during that time about one hundred asylums in Great Britain and on the continent of Europe. The results of this mission are embodied in his report, made to the Executive Department upon his return to California, which was published in book form, and distributed to the various organizations of public charity, and to many individuals in the different States in the Union, because of the many valuable charts contained in it, giving the plans and specifications of the best asylum buildings then in existence, or being constructed, and other important information gathered by his interviews with the more distinguished al enists of European nations, as well as those of our own country, as to the various methods of treating and managing the insane.
It was but natural, in view of the experiences and observations of his late mission, that Dr. Wilkins should be selected as one of the Commission to locate a site and adopt plans for an additional asylum, provided for by the Legislature of 1872, and in the following year, with his confreres of the board, located the "Napa State Asylum for the Insane."
Being the moving spirit in this matter, his excellent judgment and good taste are alike manifest, for in all the essentials necessary and most desirable for an institution of the kind, it has no superior, if indeed an equal, in the world - beauty of scenery, combining mountain and valley; its accessibility both by rail and water transportation, and convenient proximity to the flourishing town of Napa; salubrity and delightful characteristics of climate; purity and abundance of water supply, furnished from mountain streams, through permanent works and by gravitation entirely; exceptional and almost perfect natural facilities for sewerage and ventilation; while for grace of outline, convenience and solidity of construction and ornate finish, the building itself is a model of mechanical skill and architectural design.
Dr. Wilkins was elected Resident Physician of the Napa Asylum in March, 1876, and had he lived five years longer, would have completed his fifteenth year as its superintendent. Having been so conspicuously and intimately connected with the projection of this institution, the selection of the site, the adoption of plans for building, and all the preliminaries for its completion, it became at once his pride and special pet, and he entered upon the administration of its affairs with a feeling of parental affection. With a zeal and enthusiasm which seemed untiring, he bent his efforts to develop its material resources and add to the rare beauty of its natural surroundings, by embellishing its grounds in calling to his aid the best skill of the landscape gardener. And to-day the grand pile, erected at a cost of a million and a half dollars; with its valuable appurtenances of extensive and permanent water works; of fields for grain; of ample pasturage, made perpetual by a system of irrigation; of extensive orchards and vineyards, and abundant acreage for the growing of vegetables; with its magnificent avenue of approach, more than a quarter of a mile in length and one hundred feet in width, bordered by tall trees, flowering shrubs and variegated plants, and flanked on either side by a graveled walk, arched by an unbroken vista of lapping boughs; with its immediate environments of drive-ways, of winding walks, of grassy lawns, of brilliant flower beds, of sheltering arbors and cosy retreats; and all shaded and protected by splendid trees; this magnificent property stands at once an enduring monument to the generous charity of the State of California and the untiring labor and fertile brain of Dr. Edmund T. Wilkins.
As a man, his many good deeds, his noble, manly virtues, his pure and unostentatious life, combined to make him many friends and to endear him to all.
As a citizen, he was broad in his views and full of enterprise, always alive and progressive, and ready to counsel and assist in all that was calculated to advance the material prosperity and moral happiness of the community in which he lived. As a philanthropist, his spmpathies [sic] were as broad as humanity, and no sufferer ever applied to him without enlisting them - his charities were only limited by his means, and he was a friend to all men.
In the death of Dr. Wilkins, this Association has lost a loyal member, who though prevented by long distance from taking part in its deliberations and proceedings as often as he otherwise would have done, yet he entered with hearty sympathy and deep interest into the work before it, and for those constituting its membership and engaged in this great specialty, he entertained the highest regard and most kindly feelings. In his death the State in which he lived and labored has lost a valuable citizen and a faithful steward of the great and important trust so long reposed in him. His immediate associates, who alone can correctly estimate the real worth and many virtues of the man, have lost a genial, courteous and kind friend; while to the thousands of helpless ones who have been committed to his care, he was as devoted as a kind father to his helpless children. L.F.D.
BACK TO OBITUARIES MAIN PAGE
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Obamacare, or the Affordable Care Act as it is officially known, was supposed to make health insurance cheaper and easier to get. But thanks to a raft of new regulations, taxes and mandates put in place by the law insurance premiums are increasing faster than before the law.
And small business owners, as well as individuals who purchase their own health insurance (such as this humble blogger) are the hardest hit:
Particularly vulnerable to the high rates are small businesses and people who do not have employer-provided insurance and must buy it on their own.
In California, Aetna is proposing rate increases of as much as 22 percent, Anthem Blue Cross 26 percent and Blue Shield of California 20 percent for some of those policy holders, according to the insurers’ filings with the state for 2013. These rate requests are all the more striking after a 39 percent rise sought by Anthem Blue Cross in 2010 helped give impetus to the law, known as the Affordable Care Act, which was passed the same year and will not be fully in effect until 2014.
In other states, like Florida and Ohio, insurers have been able to raise rates by at least 20 percent for some policy holders. The rate increases can amount to several hundred dollars a month.
The proposed increases compare with about 4 percent for families with employer-based policies.
Back in November I interviewed a spokesman for Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Dakota, and he intimated that North Dakotans will likely be on the hook for similar premium hikes. The estimate for individual health insurance policies is a 75% – 100% increase, as well as a 15% increase for group policy holders.
The reaction, from some quarters, will be to blame greedy insurance companies for these rate hikes. But let’s remember that Obamacare mandates a greatly expanded sort of coverage. Insurance companies can no longer deny coverage to people who are already sick. Insurance companies must also cover many things that weren’t traditionally covered on many plans such as vision, dental and contraception.
Like these areas of coverage or not, nothing is without cost. Mandated expanded coverage means higher prices. What Obamacare has done is remove the ability of those purchasing insurance to save money by being more flexible with what they do and do not want covered.
And the big lie was, they called this the Affordable Care Act. Nothing could be further from the truth.
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fellow travelerArticle Free Pass
fellow traveler, Russian poputchik, originally, a writer in the Soviet Union who was not against the Russian Revolution of 1917 but did not actively support it as a propagandist. The term was used in this sense by Leon Trotsky in Literature and the Revolution (1925) and was not meant to be pejorative. Implicit in the designation was the recognition of the artist’s need for intellectual freedom and his dependence on links with the cultural traditions of the past. Fellow travelers were given official sanction in the early Soviet regime; they were regarded somewhat as experts who were filling the literary gap until the eventual emergence of a true proletarian art—one by and for the proletariat that would be free of all bourgeois influence. In the 1920s some of the most gifted and popular Soviet writers, such as Osip Mandelshtam, Leonid Leonov, Boris Pilnyak, Isaak Babel, Ilya Ehrenburg, and members of the Serapion Brothers, were fellow travelers. The period during which they dominated the literary scene is now regarded as the brilliant flowering of Soviet literature. They were bitterly opposed by champions of a new proletarian art, and by the end of the decade the term came to be practically synonymous with a counterrevolutionary.
Outside the Soviet Union the term fellow traveler was widely used in the Cold War era of the 1950s, especially in the United States, as a political label to refer to any person who, while not thought to be an actual “card-carrying” member of the Communist Party, was in sympathy with its aims and supported its doctrines.
What made you want to look up "fellow traveler"? Please share what surprised you most...
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Henry Ford. Creative force behind the automobile, altering American industry and transportation and allowing us to get the heck away from each other.
Mark Zuckerburg. Creative force behind social networking, altering American industry and communication and allowing us to get the heck closer to each other in ways that we never believed possible (Facebook does a better job at making me hate people and things that I thought I only might hate; it rarely works the other way around, though, bizarrely.)
These men are on opposing sides of the entrepreneurial spectrum, with Ford embracing solitude and Zuckerburg loving being all up in everyone’s junk. But an interesting tidbit of news brings both together in front of Facebook’s IPO on Friday. (Or at least the industry Ford helped create.)
General Motors is the third largest advertiser in the country, behind Proctor and Gamble and AT&T, so it’s a pretty big deal that GM has decided to pull its paid advertising from Facebook. The automaker has been unable to determine the effectiveness of the ads (GM spends $10 million of its $40 million Facebook budget on advertisements), and will instead focus on the content it uploads to its company pages on the social networking behemoth.
This is not the best news for Zuckerburg, as Facebook is trying to raise billions in Friday’s public offering. When a pillar of American business begins questioning the viability of handing money to Facebook for its advertisements, investors have to wonder just exactly how Zuckerberg will monetize the website and all that data they get from us.
Ah, the weird intersections of American zeal, capitalism and digital technology.
Instead of only posting to Facebook about needing or wanting a new car, let CarWoo! help you buy one!
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ROCHESTER, NY.- George Eastman House International Museum of Photography and Film
announced a major gift to the museum the historic archive of Technicolor dating from 1915 to 1974. The donation includes rare cameras, documents and drawings, photographs, printers and processing machines, corporate records, and other important materials that represent the history of Technicolors groundbreaking contributions to motion pictures. This collection joins the Eastman Houses current Technicolor holdings of early research papers, technology, and the worlds largest collection of Technicolor camera negatives, including The Wizard of Oz and Gone With the Wind.
Many of the iconic films of the 20th century were photographed and presented in Technicolor, and this archive is the cornerstone piece in the study of color in motion pictures, said Dr. Anthony Bannon, the Ron and Donna Fielding Director of George Eastman House, the countrys third largest film archive and worlds largest technology collection. The importance of this collection and monumental donation cannot be overstated.
Technicolor, a trademark for a series of color film processes, was established close to a century ago with the goal of bringing natural color to motion pictures. Technicolor has played a significant role in the film industry, progressing through several color transfer methods. From 1927 to 1974, Technicolor films were the industry standard, with the year 1932 to 1955 marked as the Glorious Age of Technicolor, featuring the three-strip dye transfer system used in the production of many classic Technicolor films.
Technicolor is proud to announce the gift weve made to George Eastman House, to preserve our corporate collection put together by Dr. Richard Goldberg, said Joe Berchtold, head of Technicolors Creative Services division. This commitment will ensure the history of Technicolors three-strip process as well as two-color before it will be preserved with full integrity.
Goldberg, now retired, was the last head of the Technicolor Research Division and is heralded as one of the greatest color scientists in motion picture history. Eastman House worked with Goldberg to identify, clean, and catalog the materials for acquisition and preservation. Goldberg has taught classes in color technology for Eastman Houses L. Jeffrey Selznick School of Film Preservation and was a personal friend of the late Jeffrey Selznick, co-founder and namesake of the school.
The museums existing Technicolor holdings include the historic collection of films, totaling more than 3,000 reels, as well as important documents from Technicolor pioneers, such as Kalmuss letters and notebooks detailing the earliest processes; the diaries of Leonard Troland, Technicolor chief engineer; and the papers and letters of Dr. John Andreas, former head of Technicolor Research Department.
The Eastman House collection also includes a two-color camera dating from 1922 one of only three known examples plus a three-strip model D camera from 1939, one of fewer than 20 that survive.
Combined with the existing George Eastman House archive of Technicolor papers, including those donated by our founder, Dr. Herbert Kalmus, Berchtold noted, the Technicolor collection will provide future generations access to the insight surrounding the many inventions and innovations Technicolor has provided the motion picture industry over the past 95 years.
The Technicolor collection has been successfully relocated from Los Angeles to Rochester, with the transfer and storage of this collection supported by a grant from the Packard Humanities Institute. The Eastman House estimates the collection will be open to the public as soon as researchers complete itemizing, cataloging, and researching the artifacts.
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Cancer collaboration could someday help dogs and their humans
Posted May 7, 2012; 12:00 p.m.
When Olga Troyanskaya's dog Jessy fell ill in early 2006, the vet had painful news. "The doctor told me she had less than a week to live," Troyanskaya said.
Troyanskaya sought a second opinion with a dog cancer specialist, with an unexpected result: The appointment launched an innovative research collaboration to learn more about cancer, possibly leading to new treatments for dogs like Jessy and humans as well.
At the appointment, Troyanskaya, a computational biologist at Princeton University, got to talking with Jessy's canine oncologist, Karin Sorenmo, head of the small animal oncology service and an associate professor of oncology at the Ryan Veterinary Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania.
The two researchers discovered that they share a goal to learn about how to understand and treat cancer. Troyanskaya was interested in the genes involved in cancer; Sorenmo wanted to explore the mechanisms of cancer to find new ways to treat her patients, most of them well-loved pets.
"A collaboration seemed like a unique way to look at the question of cancer progression," said Troyanskaya, an associate professor of computer science with a joint appointment in the Lewis-Sigler Institute for Integrative Genomics at Princeton.
It is also a way to help dogs like Jessy, she said. For years, Jessy was Troyanskaya's canine collaborator, accompanying the scientist to the lab where she'd station herself next to her owner's desk.
Relying on a comparative approach
After months of conversations while Jessy was treated with chemotherapy, Troyanskaya and Sorenmo started a collaboration between their two laboratories, which are located about 50 miles apart.
Sorenmo provides samples of tumors that she has extracted from her canine patients during surgery and Troyanskaya analyzes the genes in the tumors.
All of Sorenmo's patients developed cancer through natural processes, just as humans do. She treats them with the same types of therapies humans receive, including radiation, chemotherapy and surgery. She and her colleagues examine each extracted tumor, noting its size and other attributes, but now with the Princeton collaboration, Sorenmo can learn much more about the cancers she treats.
Computational geneticist Olga Troyanskaya of Princeton University (left) and Karin Sorenmo, a veterinary oncologist at the University of Pennsylvania Ryan Veterinary Hospital, pose with Sorenmo's dog Ruby. The two scientists are collaborating on a study to explore genetic factors contributing to mammary cancer growth in dogs being treated at the hospital, with the goal of enhancing the understanding of cancer in both dogs and humans. (Photo courtesy of Olga Troyanskaya)
The study of naturally occurring cancer in animals, and its application to human cancer, is called "comparative oncology." Sorenmo is a leader in this emerging field. Comparative oncologists recognize that much can be learned about cancer by comparing animals and humans.
"Dogs get all the same cancers that humans get," said Chand Khanna, director of the Comparative Oncology Program at the Center for Cancer Research, which is part of the U.S. National Cancer Institute. "With dogs, we can ask many questions that one cannot ask in mouse preclinical models of cancer and cannot answer in human clinical trials."
Troyanskaya and Sorenmo are looking for answers by studying a type of cancer that poses a high risk for both dogs and humans: mammary cancer.
Mammary tumors are the most common kind of tumor in female dogs that have not been spayed. Breast cancer is the most commonly diagnosed cancer in women, striking one in eight women during their lifetime.
Yet not all dogs or women succumb to the disease: In some individuals, the tumors are benign and grow slowly over years, while in others the cancerous cells grow rampantly and eventually kill. Troyanskaya and Sorenmo hope to learn more about why this is so.
Canines are helpful in the study of mammary cancer for another reason: Each female has eight to 10 mammary glands, making it possible to study several tumors — each arising separately from the other and therefore genetically unique — in one individual. Studying separate breast tumors in humans is usually not possible because it is rare for a woman to develop more than one spontaneous tumor in the breast.
By studying different tumors isolated from a single dog, the investigators can hone in on gene signatures related to tumor development without having to subtract out gene signatures from the rest of the body. "In humans, a lot of times the variability is so large across individuals that it completely masks any signal of progression-related variability between the tumors," said Troyanskaya. "With dogs, you can look at tumors at different stages of cancer progression in the same genetic background, within each individual."
Evaluating genetic signatures
At Princeton, Troyanskaya's team has begun evaluating the tumor samples to look for genetic signatures that may be correlated to the progression of mammary cancer in dogs. This type of genome-wide search became possible with the sequencing of the canine genome in 2005.
To evaluate the genes in the tumors, Troyanskaya's group, which includes molecular biology graduate student Dmitriy Gorenshteyn, isolates the genetic material in the tumor samples. The investigators look at which genes are turned on, or "expressed," and which are turned "off." They try to tie the resulting gene expression pattern to tumor attributes such as rapid growth.
Several studies of gene expression patterns have been conducted for human breast cancer, but this is possibly the first such study of canine mammary tumors. Nor have comparisons between the gene expression patterns of human and dog tumors been made.
The dog genome provides special challenges because dog breeds have different genetic variations. Using statistical methods, the researchers have already started identifying the canine equivalents of human genes based not only on their sequence, but also on their functions in the body. "The vast majority of dog genes have a corresponding human gene," Troyanskaya said.
An expert in combining computer science with biology, Troyanskaya has developed computer programs that can sort through the data generated by the genome-scale gene expression studies to detect patterns of gene expression that correlate with increased tumor size. The team, which includes quantitative and computational biology graduate student Jonathan Goya, plans to follow up the gene expression studies with a search for other abnormalities such as extra copies of genes, known as copy number aberrations, and changes in protein levels. Eventually the group hopes to link genetic pathways to the progression of a tumor from a harmless overgrowth of cells to a deadly spreading malignancy.
When being treated for cancer, Jessy, Troyanskaya's dog, brought the Princeton researcher and Sorenmo together, launching their ongoing research collaboration. (Photo courtesy of Olga Troyanskaya)
Providing care to shelter dogs
At the beginning of the collaboration, Sorenmo collected samples of tumors that she surgically removed from Penn vet clinic patients, typically pet dogs from comfortable homes. But it nagged at her that homeless dogs were not able to get similar care.
Stray dogs are also the least likely to have been spayed, and the resulting hormone levels put them at much greater risk than spayed animals of developing mammary tumors.
To help homeless dogs, Sorenmo started the Penn Vet Shelter Canine Mammary Tumor Program in 2009 to provide cancer treatment to dogs living in shelters. "The shelter program is a way to provide high-quality care for some of the neediest dogs, while helping to further our knowledge of both canine and human breast cancer," Sorenmo said.
Under the program, which is funded by family foundations, shelter dogs are treated for cancer free of charge. Dogs that are later adopted continue to obtain follow-up treatments at no cost to the owner. Lisa Hertzog, a resident of Reading, Pa., has adopted two dogs participating in the program. "It is really a rewarding experience," she said. "The dogs are really loving, and they give back so much more than what you give them."
Since beginning the collaboration with Troyanskaya, Sorenmo and her colleagues at Penn have operated on more than 60 shelter dogs. Studies of these samples are already starting to reveal factors that may help clinicians predict the progression of the tumors.
Gaining support from dog lovers
Despite its advantages, comparative oncology — which involves pets rather than laboratory animals — is not yet a mainstream approach to studying human cancer. To fund her initial studies, Troyanskaya received funding from Princeton's Project X, a fund set up by businesswoman and philanthropist Lynn Shostack to support pioneering and speculative projects.
Further help came this January from 2 Million Dogs, a new foundation dedicated to finding cures for canine cancer. Its founder, Luke Robinson, walked 2,000 miles from Austin, Texas, to Boston in 2008 to raise awareness of canine cancer and build a grassroots network of dog lovers and cancer researchers. He met Sorenmo on his walk through Philadelphia, and the foundation awarded its first grant to the collaboration between Sorenmo and Troyanskaya. In January, 2 Million Dogs presented a $50,000 check to the researchers to help them purchase the laboratory supplies for the study of genes involved in canine cancer.
"This work is incredibly important to anyone who has had a loved one, whether dog or human, who has had cancer," said Robinson, whose dog Malcolm died of cancer.
Through the work funded by 2 Million Dogs, Troyanskaya and her team hope to find gene expression patterns that govern the transformation of a tumor from a benign to malignant state, contribute to tumor growth and govern metastasis. The investigators anticipate that their studies will be a starting point for developing diagnostic methods that veterinarians and doctors can use to predict whether a newly discovered tumor will grow slowly or rapidly. They also hope to identify novel pathways that could serve as targets of new drugs to treat cancer.
Troyanskaya's faithful laboratory assistant and canine companion Jessy succumbed to cancer six months after beginning her treatment. But Troyanskaya is optimistic that the collaboration that emerged from Jessy's illness will provide a lasting legacy. "We have the potential to contribute new findings that could lead to better cancer diagnosis and treatments for humans and for our dogs," she said.
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This project will investigate the ways in which journeys of discovery have featured in children's literature, and how children's literature has affected perceptions of exploration. Two studentships are offered. It is envisaged that one will focus on the period 1750-1875 (SEL01) and that the other will concentrate on 1875 to the present (SEL02), although this arrangement is flexible. The successful candidates will spend two years working in the Children’s Literature Unit in Newcastle and one year at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich. The Museum’s uniquely rich collections will ensure that these PhDs can investigate not only how maritime and polar exploration has been represented in children’s literature, from Gulliver’s Travels to Northern Lights, but also how these representations have contributed to the construction of a culture of exploration in Britain.
Click here for more information.
published on: 25th April 2008
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In addition there are so many ways in which an individual may successfully promote her or his business via smart phones. By using these numerous types of options, it can be hard to choose a place to start. The following tips will give you get moving.
Do not randomly message your clients just for the sake of contact. Always make certain that what you’re messaging them about is applicable and important.
And if you are serious about making your own apps, view this short video to learn how to do it properly from scratch: youtube.com/watch?v=t6k2JCtxcCY
You should know what your clients must know their desires and targets so that you can market them correctly.
It can be hard to generate a mobile site that is certainly attractive and appealing. It is advisable to employ a professional website designer with experience with mobile websites.
Recruit friends to examine every ad you distribute to make sure it is actually in working order.
They just might pass it on to their friends and increase the reach of your respective mobile marketing reach.
The most beneficial mobile marketers begin small and after that expand their services. You ought to operate this too. Utilise all available resources to improve your disposal.
You may have people not as receptive as you wish, but in any event customer input is way too valuable never to garner it at every opportunity!
While mobile marketing can be employed in gaining new customers, it is essential to develop campaigns that really work across multiple platforms. Should your marketing efforts don’t work on each of the popular devices; you risk the possibility of losing customers because of technical issues.
And if you are clueless about android app development, view this clip to learn how to do it for your business: youtube.com/watch?v=hi8mSlFP0n0
Remember that it is hard to view and navigate a mobile phone or some other mobile devices.
Make certain you add mobile users will see directions for your store on their own phone. It is actually becoming more common for anyone to work with their cellphone to find. Check how the maps and clear on all mobile phones and work properly with mobile searches.
You should be testing your campaign for any defects in functionality before launching it.
Be clear about what you would like to complete with mobile advertising campaign. Understand specifically what you would like to complete within your mobile advertising campaign.
You should use learning and playing launch an incredible mobile campaign. Pay attention to what your clients want and act accordingly.
If you really want to mount an effective mobile advertising campaign, only send them high quality offers. This makes certain that your viewers will never get annoyed through your messages.
You need to give some to acquire a lot. These incentives may be anything form weather alerts to local events. Coupons are a good way to offer consumer activity.
Try putting some quizzes and games into the mobile marketing strategy. A lot of people will answer a quiz question that may be shipped to their phone via text. The quiz or trivia game may be used to obtain feedback and reviews relating to your products from customers and this will entertain them.
This is the best way to generate buzz about your company and acquire people sharing information regarding your products.
Using this method you happen to be using is one thing your customers information they are thinking about and would like to read.
Mobile marketing is an extensive subject! Each business has unique needs, and no single marketing plan will suit everyone. The things that work for one might not work for other. Make use of the tips out of this article to get started on experimenting and discover your personal marketing success.
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Recently I came across a blog post Scotland May Split with the United Kingdom on the blog Enduring Sense. This short post about the results of the Scottish Parliament elections in May contained the following sentence -
'This Party ran on a platform that included calling a referendum to determine if Scotland will remain part of England or become an independent country.'
I submitted a comment and received a reply from the author in which he wrote -
'Thanks for your clarification on the status of England and Scotland.'
The following is the comment which I submitted -
'...to determine if Scotland will remain a part of England...'
That is factually incorrect. Scotland is NOT part of England and NEVER has been. This post shows that there is a clear misunderstanding about what the United Kingdom actually is. The following is a brief history of it from the so-called Union of the Crowns in 1603.
'on 25 March 1603, James VI of Scotland became James I of England. It was a purely personal union. There were still two kingdoms, each with its own parliament, administration, church and legal system.'
SOURCE: 'Scotland: The Shaping of a Nation' by Gordon Donaldson, p.46, ISBN 0 7153 6904 0, Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 74-15792.
It was James who first used the term 'Great Britain' to describe his combined kingdoms of Scotland and England. By this time Wales was already part of the kingdom of England, initially through the Statute of Rhuddlan in 1284 then more formally by a statute of the parliament of England in 1536. What unites the 'United Kingdom' is the fact that the same person is the monarch of three kingdoms - Scotland, England and Ireland. In relation to Scotland the term 'United Kingdom' first occurred in the Treaty of Union in 1707 which established, as from 1 May 1707, the 'United Kingdom of Great Britain' (Article I). In 1801 it was expanded to include Ireland in the 'United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland'. Following the creation of the Irish Free State in 1922 it became the 'United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland' in 1927. As well as being a descriptive term of the territory of which it is comprised, 'United Kingdom' is also an abbreviation of the formal name. When Scotland regains its independence the 'United Kingdom' will continue, as it did between 1603 and 1707, until the people of Scotland decide otherwise in a referendum in an independent Scotland.
Scottish independence is often referred to as being a case of secession. It is, in fact, incorrect to use the words 'secede' or 'secession' with regard to Scottish independence. For a secession to occur the parent country, which with regard to the current constitutional status of Scotland is Great Britain, would have to continue, albeit in a modified form - that would not be the case. The country of Great Britain was created by the joining of the kingdoms of Scotland and England through the Treaty of Union in 1707. When Scotland regains its independence that treaty will effectively be DISSOLVED and Great Britain will CEASE to exist.
'In contrast, Lane says, Scotland cannot break away like Ireland as it was 'one of the basic building blocks of "the United Kingdom of Great Britain"' (Lane 1991: 146). Without Scotland there is no 'Great Britain' and without Great Britain there is no 'United Kingdom'.'
SOURCE: 'SCOTTISH INDEPENDENCE: A Practical Guide' by Jo Eric Murkens with Peter Jones and Michael Keating, p.109, ISBN 0-7486-1699-3.
I would appreciate it if you would submit a post which clarifies the actual status of Scotland in relation to other parts of the 'United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland' for the benefit of your readers.
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The thyroid is a gland in the neck that produces hormones that help to regulate metabolism. Metabolism refers to the body reactions that control how the body uses energy. Hypothyroidism is a condition in which the thyroid makes too little thyroid hormone and body functions slow down. Symptoms of hypothyroidism include tiredness, feeling cold, constipation, hoarse voice, changes in hair and skin, heavy menstrual periods, and weight gain. Thyroid disease is usually easily treated with a drug that contains a synthetic version of the thyroid hormone thyroxine. However, a normal thyroid gland produces both thyroxine and triiodothyronine. Some doctors believe that it is better to treat hypothyroidism using a combination of drugs containing synthetic versions of both hormones than with those containing synthetic thyroxine alone. Previous studies of this issue have had conflicting results, perhaps because they did not always use combinations of synthetic hormones that matched the amounts of hormones produced by a normal thyroid gland.
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GovTrack’s Bill Summary
We don’t have a summary available yet.
Library of Congress Summary
The summary below was written by the Congressional Research Service, which is a nonpartisan division of the Library of Congress.
Border Enforcement Security Task Force Act of 2011 - Establishes in United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) a Border Enforcement Security Task Force (BEST) program to enhance border security by addressing and reducing border security threats and violence by:
(1) facilitating collaboration among federal, state, local, tribal, and foreign law enforcement agencies to execute coordinated activities in furtherance of border security and homeland security; and
(2) enhancing information-sharing among such agencies.
Authorizes the Secretary of Homeland Security (DHS), acting through the Assistant Secretary for ICE, to establish BEST units after considering:
(1) whether the area where the unit would be established is significantly impacted by cross-border threats;
(2) the availability of federal, state, local, tribal, and foreign law enforcement resources to participate in the unit; and
(3) the extent to which border security threats are having a significant harmful impact in the area and in other jurisdictions.
Authorizes the Secretary, in order to provide federal assistance to the area so designated, to:
(1) obligate such sums as are appropriated for the BEST program;
(2) direct the assignment of federal personnel to that program; and
(3) take other actions to assist state, local, tribal, and foreign jurisdictions to participate.
Directs the Secretary to report on the effectiveness of the program in enhancing border security and reducing the drug trafficking, arms smuggling, illegal alien trafficking and smuggling, violence, and kidnapping along and across U.S. borders.
House Republican Conference Summary
The summary below was written by the House Republican Conference, which is the caucus of Republicans in the House of Representatives.
No summary available.
House Democratic Caucus Summary
The House Democratic Caucus does not provide summaries of bills.
So, yes, we display the House Republican Conference’s summaries when available even if we do not have a Democratic summary available. That’s because we feel it is better to give you as much information as possible, even if we cannot provide every viewpoint.
We’ll be looking for a source of summaries from the other side in the meanwhile.
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Classroom Grants Available for May Street Elementary
Teachers at May Street Elementary are invited to apply for educational grants in an amount between $50 and $100 for use in their classrooms. In a collaborative effort, Asbury United Methodist Church and Our Redeemer Lutheran Church plan to award three to six grants this year. These grants are our way of supporting our teachers and valuing our students during this time of tight school budgets.
The main selection criterion is that the grants be used in a way that will directly impact children in the classroom setting. For example, grants may be used to purchase classroom supplies, to buy books for the classroom, or to enable a class to do a special project. Grants may be used this school year or for the 2012-13 school year.
Please submit completed applications to your school principal by Tuesday, May 1, 2012. Recipients will be notified by May 15, 2012.
Asbury and Our Redeemer would like to publicly thank
- Rosauers Super Market
- and Walgreens
for their donation of supplies to this year’s fundraiser for educational grants.
Asbury & ORLC
supporting our schools
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What is AJAX?
People are always looking for ways to create their websites dynamic and interactive. Most of the time, they ‘usually’ ask google, find this, find that, etc… and when they find what they are looking for, all they do is Copy/Paste, test, and if it works, then boom! they are done. If it doesn’t work, then the cycle repeats, until it does. At least, that’s what I used to do in past. This tends to happen very often when creating interactive websites using jQuery and AJAX. So honestly, how many of you know exactly What is AJAX? Today I feel like writing a little more about what is ajax and how it works.
What does asynchronous refer to?
Asynchronous refers to events that are happening on the background independently of the main application flow. These events do not disturb the flow of the application, allowing the continuation of it’s normal process. A fairly good example of this happening is in your Facebook home page, when all of a sudden, without refreshing your browser window, you notice that there are new status feed updates from your friends. ( Although I did notice, and think many have as well, how they do implement this. If you haven’t then, try leaving your facebook homepage on the browser without moving your mouse for about 1 minute. After that minute, just move your mouse from one point to another, and all of a sudden, you will see the feeds get updated. ) I’m assuming they are using some jQuery mousemove or something similar for this to happen. So what happens there is, facebook sends your profile information ( or your user id ) to their servers. Their servers then look for your friends list, grab their newly added status, return the result to the browser and then add them to your wall so that you can see. All of that, without pressing that refresh button.
So you see, AJAX allos you to update a web page asynchronously on the background by exchanging simple, and small amounts of data. Some more examples of pages using AJAX is: Youtube, Gmail, Google Maps, StackOverflow and many more on the web.
So you are still asking yourself, What is AJAX? Well, I’m going to ask for forgiveness, as I have no art skills, but the following image should help you just a little bit.
AJAX, you see, is based on internet standards. It uses a combination of the following to accomplish it’s goal:
- XMLHttpRequest Object(Modern Broswers and IE7+)
- ActiveXObject (IE6 and below)
- XML (Returned results)
- JSON (Returned results)
- HTML (Returned results)
These standards are browser based, making them platform independent. It doesn’t matter where you program this in, as long as you have a browser, then this ‘should’ work. All you would need is a server with the application files, and the browser should do the rest.
Another advantage using AJAX would be a better user interactivity. This could be named the most obvious benefit of using AJAX, and why web developers and webmasters are using AJAX more and more every day. AJAX simplifies the flow of an application, thus making it have quicker interaction between user and website since pages are not reloaded for content to be displayed. This activity can be simplified, since the loading times can be reduced from websites.
The advantage above opens up for this next advantage, which you can call it, smoother navigation on a website. While using AJAX, users will not have the need to use the refresh nor the back button, thus, allowing quicker response from the server.
Everything that has an advantage, will most likely have disadvantages, and AJAX surely has some that I will mention.
Even though the back and refresh button are not needed while navigating a website with AJAX, these two buttons can become useless. This is due to the fact that, AJAX ‘navigating’ does not change you URL, so if you were in the middle of a process, and have no direct URL to where you were, then this might be bad. In some cases, the use of Hijaxing is used, which is the use of hashing url (#) at the end.
The last disadvantage I want to point out would be the SEO factor. Since there are no SEO Friendly URL’s, then search engine tend to bypass your application, and it would appear as if that part of your site does not exist.
Before coding your AJAX website, make sure you think of the listed disadvantages and obviously many more. Remeber, when creating a website, you have to think on customer/client satisfaction, not your own. You have to always think of all, and I mean ALL common browsers, including IE6.
If you have trouble creating AJAX website, or forms, here is great website that can help you with creating ajax forms, even with admin areas within minutes. That way, instead of worrying about all the validations, and making sure it works on every browser, you can worry about other things, like project completion. Click here for AJAX Forms!, and find out how easy this can be.
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In February, Coal India said it remained on track to meet its supply target for the year.
"We are not pursuing any new coal project," Arvind Misra, India Resources managing director, was quoted as saying by The Economic Times. "We have decided to get out of coal for the time being due to inordinate delays in getting mining leases."
The India-focused Australian mining company, after successfully reviving the Surda underground mines of Hindustan Copper in 2007, is actually the only foreign contract miner allowed so far to operate in India. The coal-hungry nation had attracted a number of foreign companies such as Thiess of Australia's and mining major Kopex from Poland, but these have yet to materialise.
India Resources secured a contract in October 2011 to develop a captive coal mine of Prism Cement in Madhya Pradesh.
India's mining reputation has been spoiled by procedural delays and allegations of corruption.
Meanwhile, India's wealthy has been silently gaining assets into Australia's real estate sector, apart from the usual investments into metals and minerals.
"In the last six to nine months, there has been a lot of private investment into Australia because it is seen as a safe-haven," analyst Paul Dowling told Reuters News.
Silverneedle Hospitality, owned by Indian philanthropist Nadathur S Raghavan, who is also co-founder of software company Infosys Technologies, just purchased a A$57 million worth hotel in Brisbane. This follows its acquisition of 60 hotels in Australia and New Zealand.
Aside from attractive commercial property prices, Indians believe so much in Australia's stable economy.
Researcher Paul Guest said total returns in Australia continue to be highest among all countries in Asia, what with a 10 per cent growth forecast annually, outstripping even that of Japan's 9 per cent and South Korea.
Also noteworthy was Australia's comparatively stronger economic performance compared with its Western peers, Mr Guest added.
And with India, which has more than 7,000 millionaires, analysts surmise it could put as much as $30 billion into Australia within five years, the report said.
To contact the editor, e-mail:
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|Crown Point, NY|
Description: Located at a site steeped in rich history, the Crown Point Lighthouse today serves as a navigational beacon and as a monument to the exploration of Lake Champlain.
A windmill was the first structure built at the site around 1737 by the French, as part of Fort St. Frederic, but it was blown up in 1759, when the French relinquished the fort to the British. Using the French fort as a foundation, the British built their strongest defense on Lake Champlain, Fort Crown Point. Remains of part of the outer fort, The Grenadier Redoubt, can be seen today, just south of the lighthouse.
During the Revolutionary War, Fort Crown Point was surprised and taken by a detachment of “The Green Mountain Boys” under the command of Seth Warner. On the same day, Ethan Allen took Fort Ticonderoga, located ten miles south of Crown Point. The British eventually took Fort Crown Point back and held it until the end of the war.
A sister to the Point Au Roche Lighthouse and the Windmill Point Lighthouse, the Crown Point Lighthouse was a 55-foot octagonal limestone tower connected to a wooden Cape Cod style cottage. The one and a half story dwelling had a kitchen, pantry, dining room, and parlor on the first floor and three bedrooms on the upper. The lighthouse, which was first activated for the opening of navigation in 1859, was built by O'Neal and Ellis of Malone and Champlain, NY with a subcontract to S. W. Clark & Co. of Willsboro Point for the blue limestone to build the tower. Trapezoidal windowpanes encased the lantern room, from where a fifth-order Fresnel lens beamed a fixed white light at a focal plane of eighty-three feet.
And as such, the Crown Point Lighthouse faithfully served for over 50 years.
Samuel de Champlain discovered the lake on which his name would be bestowed on July 4, 1609. A few years before the tricentennial of this event, the states of New York and Vermont each established a commission to determine fitting events to celebrate Champlain’s discovery. The resulting festivities commenced at Crown Point on Monday, July 5, 1909 with a sham battle, an address by Governor Charles E. Hughes of New York, Indian pageants, and fireworks. Over the next four days, events were held at Ticonderoga, Plattsburgh, Burlington, and Isle La Motte. Among the many dignitaries of note who witnessed parts of the celebration was William H. Taft, President of the United States.
Besides planning the week-long celebration, the commissions from New York and Vermont also desired to erect a suitable and permanent memorial to Champlain. One suggestion that appeared in a local newspaper’s Letters to the Editor was to convert an existing lighthouse into a memorial. The lighthouses at Windmill Point and Split Rock appeared to be the early front-runners for conversion, but it was the Crown Point Lighthouse that, with the blessing of the Lighthouse Service, was eventually selected in 1910. With $50,000 in funds left over from the celebration, work on the memorial to Champlain and the exploration of the lake began.
On the side of the memorial facing the water is a sculpture, crafted by American Carl Heber, depicting Champlain flanked by a crouching Huron Indian and a French soldier. The sculpture was cast by the Roman Bronze Works in Brooklyn, while the monument was designed by Dillon, McClellan, and Beadel.
The French donated a bronze bust by Auguste Rodin to be incorporated in the monument. At the dedication of the bust on May 3, 1912, the president of the visiting French delegation remarked “The United States is raising a monument to a Frenchman, and France sends you, through us, her tribute of gratitude. Once more, the two great democracies are thinking and acting in unison.” The Rodin is mounted on the memorial below the sculpture of Champlain.
The official dedication of the completed monument, presided over by President William H. Taft, was held on July 5, 1912 and featured remarks by John A. Dix, Governor of New York, and Colonel William C. Sanger.
In 1926, the navigational function of the Crown Point Memorial Lighthouse was assumed by a skeletal tower erected near the water's edge and control of the lighthouse was turned over to the State of New York. The tower stood sixty-seven feet above the water's surface and, powered by acetylene, had a characteristic of a half-second flash followed by two seconds of darkness. A battery of ten tanks at the base of the tower stored a year's worth of gas.
With the completion of the nearby bridge at Crown Point, the usefulness of the modern light was short-lived, and in 1931 the tower was relocated to Windmill Point where it was used to aid anti-smuggling activities. At its new home, the light was paired with a similar one on Rouses Point and used by the customs service to sweep the narrow channel in search of smugglers trying to sneak liquor into the area in violation of Prohibition.
The keeper’s quarters attached to the memorial lighthouse was eventually removed after the property was conveyed to New York State. In 2004, Governor George Pataki, speaking at a press conference held at the Crown Point Pier, announced that the state would be "providing $730,000 from the State Environmental Protection Fund to fix this historic covered pier to make sure it is handicapped-accessible and at the same time, to restore the historic lighthouse ... that has been such an incredible symbol of Crown Point." The funds will be matched by federal Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF) monies. The restoration of the lighthouse should be completed in time for the quadricentennial celebration of Champlain's historic voyage.
Located just south of the Highway 17/903 Lake
Champlain Bridge in the Crown Point Public
Campground and across the street from the Crown Point State Historic Site. The lighthouse is owned by the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation. Grounds open, tower open in season.
The lighthouse is owned by the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation. Grounds open, tower open in season.
Pictures on this page copyright Kraig Anderson, used by permission.
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Making resolutions, like exercising more or eating better, are a common tradition, but unfortunately, most people don't keep the resolutions that they make on New Year's Eve.
Kids are even less likely to keep or even make resolutions.
Did your kids make any resolutions for this New Year?
If they did, how about helping them keep them?
One thing that can help, especially if they haven't even started making any resolutions, is to get them to choose small things to do, so they will be more likely to achieve their goals.
So instead of making a resolution to exercise every day, how about making it to exercise an extra 15 minutes a week?
That resolution should be easier to keep and after a few months, your kids will be exercising most of the week.
Some other resolutions you might consider making with your kids can include:
- Eating one extra vegetable each week.
- Eating one extra fruit each week.
- Drinking one less soda or fruit drink each week.
- Drinking an extra glass of milk each week.
- Eating one less snack each week.
- Reading one extra chapter in a book each week.
- Watching 15 minutes less TV each week.
- Playing 15 minutes less video games each week.
Parents can make any of these resolutions too. Another good one for parents is to spend an extra 15 minutes a week playing or reading to their kids, etc.
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CONCORD, N.H. (AP) — A few years ago, students in Dartmouth College's introductory engineering class invented a bicycle wheel to help young children maintain their balance. A recent challenge for the current class? Tipsy college students.
When professor John Collier learned that Dartmouth President Jim Young Kim planned to visit his class, he decided to have students show off their problem-solving skills by attacking a social problem instead of an engineering dilemma. Binge drinking — defined as consuming five alcoholic drinks in two hours for men and four drinks in two hours for women— was an obvious choice, given the national initiative Kim launched last spring aimed at reducing excessive drinking on college campuses. And it was a topic that students had plenty of experience with.
"They leapt at it," Collier said. "They came up with a ton of really interesting things."
The students were divided into groups and asked to work on one of four problems related to binge drinking. They had an hour to evaluate the problem, come up with solutions and rate each one based on how well it met the specifications of the problem, including whether a solution would work well for different age groups and genders.
One target was a practice known as "pre-gaming," in which students drink in residence halls before going out for the night. The students came up with an idea to create a freshmen-only facility that would include the social elements of fraternities and sororities — games, music — without the alcohol.
"The sense was you've got this real problem of students wanting to go to fraternities, but they're underage and they're nervous about it, so they tend to sequester themselves and imbibe," Collier said.
Another group proposed getting student emergency medical workers involved in helping fellow students determine when an intoxicated friend needs medical attention. The student EMTs already help out at athletic events, Collier said, and could be an asset in social settings as well.
Last spring, Dartmouth launched the National College Health Improvement Project, a learning collaborative focused on measuring what works to reduce binge drinking on one campus and sharing it elsewhere. The project will bring together teams from 32 campuses to share their experiences and help one another test strategies back home.
It makes sense to approach the problem from a public health perspective given that close 40 percent of college students engage in binge drinking, Kim, a doctor and humanitarian known as a leader in the global fight against HIV/AIDS and other diseases, said in announcing the project in May.
Dartmouth sophomore James Kennedy said he didn't expect to be talking about binge drinking in an engineering class, but the exercise made sense given Kim's focus on the issue. He was part of the group that focused on pre-gaming, and said it was interesting to dissect the reasons why students engage in the behavior.
Though not every problem can be solved through engineering, Kennedy said the process students are learning — for example, identifying any biases implied in the statement of a problem — can be applied to all kinds of problems.
"It's really more about a technical way of listening and responding, and justifying every decision you make," he said. "And having students acting as engineers looking at the problem I think is a really good way to do it. ... It's a really unique intersection."
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Working together to transform care (TCAB)
Leading-edge quality improvement techniques help transform patient care at pilot sites across MUHC
Photo on top of page: Mina De Palma, Assistant Nurse Manager and Bruno Iannuzzi, a patient attendant on the Montreal General Hospital’s in-patient psychiatric unit. Middle photo: Proud members of the TCAB team on the Montreal General Hospital’s in-patient psychiatric unit. Bottom photo: Patty O’Connor, MUHC Director of Nursing and Chief Nursing Officer.
What has car manufacturing have to do with patient care? Quite a lot actually. Manufacturers like automotive giant Toyota have pioneered quality improvement techniques such as Toyota Lean Process which is now an industry standard. Last year, the MUHC launched a quality improvement initiative, in collaboration with the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, based on Toyota Lean. The initiative is called Transforming Care At the Bedside (TCAB) and it aims to radically change the way patient care is delivered at MUHC hospitals.
“The healthcare sector has now started to adopt quality improvement methods from the private sector – and where we have, it has been a great success,” says Patty O’Connor, MUHC Director of Nursing and Chief Nursing Officer. “At the MUHC, we took a unique step by involving patients in the process, right from the start, so we could understand what improvements were needed from their perspective. Over a dozen patient representatives recruited from the MUHC Patient Committees now work with the clinical teams on the TCAB units, meeting weekly to test improvements.”
Five wards were chosen as pilot sites for TCAB. One of these, the Montreal General Hospital’s in-patient psychiatric unit, was included despite the challenges of quantifying results on a mental health unit because staff there was so enthusiastic about the TCAB concept.
“One key aim was to help nurses on TCAB pilot sites spend more time actually delivering care,” O’Connor explains. “Studies of major hospitals found nurses often spend only a fraction of their precious time at patients’ bedsides.”
The problem? Antiquated design of facilities and outmoded ways of doing things. Environments where medication and supply rooms are centralized in only one location on inpatient units require staff to waste time walking long distances for equipment or supplies. Often, however, simple changes can result in measurable improvements.
Rapid cycle improvements are key to process
At the heart of the TCAB initiative is the concept of rapid cycle improvements – small, quickly adopted changes in process, executed and assessed using a methodology known as PDSA (Plan-Do-Study-Act). Using the PDSA approach, staff set measurable goals, define the changes they want to make, implement them and then measure the results. Process changes are then adopted, modified or discarded. The approach is both simple and powerful.
“Our ‘favourite’ PDSA cycle involved development of an interprofessional admission process for patients,” says Mina De Palma, Assistant Nurse Manager on the Montreal General Hospital’s in-patient psychiatric unit. “In the past, on admission, patients were interviewed one-on-one by a physician, then by a social worker, an occupational therapist and a nurse. Not surprisingly, from the patient’s perspective there was a lot of wasted time and repetition. Also, information was not necessarily shared among all the caregivers. We decided to change the admission process so that patients met with all their caregivers at once. “
Results were phenomenal. Time required for admission dropped from over four hours to one hour. Team communication improved significantly and most importantly, patient satisfaction doubled, as patients felt that they received more complete information regarding the interdisciplinary care plan.
Other PDSA cycles involved relocation of linen and centralizing equipment storage. “We found we could save significant time by making simple changes in where laundry or equipment was kept,” says Bruno Iannuzzi, a patient attendant on the Montreal General Hospital’s in-patient psychiatric unit. “Staff had shorter distances to walk, and everyone knew exactly where equipment was. It made a great difference.”
Results from all five units were positive, and phase two of the initiative is now underway. “Our overall aim was to redesign care processes to respond better to the real needs of patients and families,” says O’Connor. “We are steadily moving towards that goal.”
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Note: This page refers to a past version of the course. You can also consult the current course web page.
This is a level 8 taught course in the School of Informatics, suitable for first-year undergraduate students. The course provides an introduction to representing and interpreting data from areas across Informatics; treating in particular structured, semi-structured, and unstructured data models. For further details see the course catalogue entry.
Lectures: 11.10-12.00 Tuesdays and 14.00-14.50 Fridays in Appleton Tower during Semester 2. Tuesday lectures are in Lecture Theatre 3 and Friday lectures are in Lecture Theatre 1. You are strongly advised to attend all lectures.
The course blog carries information about the content of the lectures, tutorial work, references and further discussion of background material.
The most effective way to contact either the lecturer or teaching assistant is by personal email, from your University email address. However, many questions are better posed on the course blog.
Alex Simpson holds drop-in office hours for Informatics 1 students at
11.30–12.30 on Thursday mornings in IF 5.25 (Informatics Forum).
(Office hours held in Weeks 1, 4-5 and 7-12 of Semester 2 only.)
Tutorials: The course has 9 tutorials. These are held weekly on Tuesdays and Wednesdays in Weeks 3–5 and 7–12 inclusive. If you are ill or otherwise unable to attend one week then email your tutor, and if possible attend another tutorial group in the same week.
Links Tutorial groups
Tutorial exercises: These are released on the Tuesday of the week preceeding the tutorial. Tutorial exercises should be attempted in advance of tutorials. You should take your workings and solutions to tutorials for discussion.
Coursework assignment: The coursework assignment is a marked exercise, based on recent exam questions.
Informatics 1: Data & Analysis is part of the first-year programme for all undergraduate degrees in the School of Informatics. During semester 2, students should also be taking Informatics 1: Object Oriented Programming. Please see the following links for more information.
Slides: These will be placed online as the course progresses. Last year's slides are a good resource if you want to read ahead in the course.
Videos: Lectures have been video-recorded, with videos available online. You can also view the lectures from 2010 and 2011.
Note: Because of a data-entry error in the scheduling information, a few of this year's lectures mid course are missing due to the wrong lectures having been recorded in their place.
Examination: Your grade for Inf1-DA is based on a two-hour written examination at the end of the year. The paper follows an approximately similar format each year, and past papers are available online.
The exam is scheduled for Tuesday 8 May 2012, 09:30–11:30 in the Playfair Library. Please check the search link below to confirm all of your exam times.
Revision office hours: Alex Simpson will hold drop-in revision office hours from 11.30–12.30 in IF 5.25 (Informatics Forum) on Tue 24 and Thu 26 April, and on Tue 1 and Thu 3 May.
Previous Years: The web pages for previous incarnations of the course include slides, reading material, and tutorial exercises.
Informatics Forum, 10 Crichton Street, Edinburgh, EH8 9AB, Scotland, UK
Tel: +44 131 651 5661, Fax: +44 131 651 1426, E-mail: email@example.com
Please contact our webadmin with any comments or corrections. Logging and Cookies
Unless explicitly stated otherwise, all material is copyright © The University of Edinburgh
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Sometimes the best ideas for goat management and housing are stumbled upon accidentally. In fact, one of the best goat shelters I have ever found was just that, an accidental discovery.
We had several dogs and provided them with an inexpensive "igloo" hut for shelter from rain or cold. These igloo huts are available at any Wal-Mart or most animal care/farm and feed stores. When I fenced part of the former dog yard for the goats, I left the igloo hut in without even thinking about it. At the time our dogs weren’t using it anyway.
The first time I learned the goats liked the dog house was when I went out to check on my new mom and her three babies, then two days old. I looked out of the kitchen window-and, in a sudden panic, thought the babies were gone!
Frantically I rushed out to check on them, but Sugar, the doe, didn’t seem upset at all. I saw no signs of blood or foul play. Finally I leaned over and looked in the dog house, and there they were-all cuddled up, warm and cozy, despite the near freezing weather outside. Because the plastic dog houses are small, they contain the body heat and help keep in the warmth for the babies born in the dead of winter better than a large shed could.
As the kids got older and were moved from the birthing shed into the main herd, they continued to use the dog house as a private club. They found the igloo a great escape from the older goats who were eager to establish dominance in the herd. When chased, the kids simply ran into the house at times of conflict. Once out of sight, out of mind, the older goats forgot to pursue them. It was comical to see the young kids peeking out to see if the coast was clear. The dog igloo also made a great place to hide out for an undisturbed nap. I found it also worked to feed the kids separately in there by pushing their feed way in the dog house where the older goats couldn’t reach them and their chow.
I have found the dog house to be a particularly important tool if one has purchased young stock from another herd. The home herd goats are not welcoming in the beginning and even try to keep the new goats out of the larger shed. This past year I purchased three young goats and they did not use the shed for many weeks. They slept together in the dog house and had their own little herd separate from the main herd for quite some time.
As they got older, watching them disentangle themselves and tumble out of the dog house was like watching a miniature car full of clowns spill over at a circus.
The goat igloo became a source of entertainment for my goats after they reached about five weeks of age. They began jumping on top of the house, using it as the hill in "King of the Hill" games. Every late afternoon the echo of little hooves hitting the top of the dog house was standard noise in our valley.
We now have a dog house in each of three goat pens with a total of nine babies using them. We have chairs between the two pens so we can watch their antics for entertainment. It is a difficult feat for a young goat to master gravity enough to jump on a slick, slanted surface-and stay there while several other goats are trying to do the same thing. These houses encourage exercise, and contribute to playtime fun. I believe it is important to keep healthy goats from becoming bored and these dog houses go a long way towards accomplishing that task.
I also currently use one dog house as a temporary shelter for young bucks. I put them in a field to separate them from the herd until three month of age. Each dog house is big enough for two or three bucks, and ideal for that two-to-four week period after they have been weaned but before they go to market.
Using the huts also allows me to graze off an undeveloped, overgrown field without having to build a permanent goat shed.
Moving the bucks who are going to market into a new field also gives them a little more time before having to be wormed. I try to make sure the bucks who go to market at three months don’t get wormer or antibiotics. If they, or their mom while nursing them, has had antibiotics, this field gives them the required withdrawal time.
We purchased the dog igloos two years ago and they still look as though they will last forever despite their daily beating. They are made of hard plastic and there are no moving parts which can be broken off. The house has a separate floor, but walls and roof are one piece.
One drawback we had found is that occasionally the goats will get heavy enough to roll the dog house over (we live on a hill). By the time they get big enough to do this, they no longer sleep in the house due to their size, so I put several heavy rocks in the bottom to keep it from rolling. This keeps the house steady for several more months of play.
The funniest sight I have ever seen is a very pregnant doe who crawled into the dog house, rump in the air, udder bulging, and got stopped in the doorway by her massive size. She had to slowly inch out backwards to escape. I’m so glad I didn’t have to go pull her out.
Goats are naturally curious and a dog house contributes to their intellectual stimulation, always important within a goat herd. It also makes a great affordable shelter.
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With earthquake damage to property in California estimated to cost $3.9 billion a year over the next few decades, seismologists are targeting areas of greatest risk. Part of their effort is educating the public on why understanding the geology under a building could make the difference between eating seismic surf or riding the waves out.
The Mines and Geology Division of California’s Department of Conservation, which in September released its calculation of the future cost of earthquakes, has been systematically mapping California in 60-square-mile sections. The maps show where landslide zones and water-saturated, sandy soils — soft soils known to undergo liquefaction when shaken — are a threat. The seismic hazard maps cover more than 120 cities, including communities in Orange, Los Angeles, Santa Clara, San Francisco, Ventura, and Alameda counties.
[Two important geologic factors that affect the level of shaking experienced in earthquakes are (1) the softness of the surface rocks and (2) the thickness of surface sediments. In these images of the Los Angeles Basin, the lowest layer shows the depth of sedimentary basins and the middle layer shows the softness of near-surface rocks and sediments. The top layer combines this information to predict the total amplification expected in future earthquakes. The orange areas are the “hot spots” where this amplification is anticipated to be highest. Courtesy of the Southern California Earthquake Center.]
Taking the maps one step further, the Southern California Earthquake Center (SCEC) of the University of Southern California recently published a study identifying “hot spots” where these soft soils might shake the most.
Los Angeles, one of the hot spots, sits on a virtual bowl of Jell-O. The deeper the sediments, the higher the relative amplification of the shaking during an earthquake. “We compared where the sediments are very shallow with where the basin is very deep and found the amplification can go up by a factor of two,” says SCEC director Tom Henyey. Beneath downtown Los Angeles, the siliceous shale reaches a depth of four miles. On the flanks of the basin, sediment depths peter out toward the mountains.
But the risk to residents depends on where an earthquake strikes. “Because we don’t know where the next earthquake is going to be, we had to do an average,” Henyey says. The study used computer predictions of earthquakes, based on past fault behavior, and the geologic idiosyncrasies of local sites to quantify the extreme hazard areas. The researchers keyed in on two important factors: a soil’s ability to transmit shear waves, which measures its softness level, and the depth of the sediments above hard bedrock.
The SCEC study follows an earlier analysis of earthquake probabilities throughout California. The next phase will combine the amplification predictions with models of earthquake probabilities. The hot spot in Los Angeles extends in a trough-like fashion from near the Coliseum Complex down toward Anaheim, Henyey says. Other watch zones include a section of the north end of the San Fernando Valley, where soft soils might be deeper than soils beneath Los Angeles.
For some in the field the report is reassuring. “They took conventional wisdom theories in seismology and put some meat on them,” says Arthur L. Lerner-Lam, associate director for geophysics and geology at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. “In the long run it pays to have a general idea of what the shallow structure will do to amplify ground motion and so this is a useful study,” he says. “But its greatest impact will be in public awareness.”
Seven years ago, on Jan. 17, 1994, the magnitude-6.7 Northridge quake claimed the lives of 57 people and caused more than $20 billion in damage. In the early morning hours, the temblor crumbled houses and apartment buildings and cracked apart a section of the Santa Monica Freeway and the Antelope Valley Freeway overpass. Deep sediment exacerbated the shaking damage in Santa Monica while denser, shallow sediment left freeways and homes closer to the epicenter unscathed.
The SCEC report appeared in a special issue of the Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America published Jan. 28, and is part of a multiphase study with the long-term goal of identifying every hot spot associated with a potential earthquake. Large basins and valleys are generally most susceptible. Public officials may find the report useful for determining where structures would benefit from retrofitting, Henyey says. “If you’re sitting in the middle of a basin or you’re sitting on certain kinds of soft soils you may want to think about doing additional engineering design to improve the structure’s performance in earthquakes.”
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Q: Some of our association residents leave food and water out for feral cats. The cats are a nuisance, and we want them to leave. How can we keep residents from feeding them? —Phoenix
A: Feral and stray cat populations have been rising across Arizona. The housing crisis has created an increase in foreclosed and abandoned properties. Owners of foreclosed properties often move into smaller homes, apartments that do not permit pets or a relative's house, forcing some owners to abandon these so-called "foreclosure pets" in their former neighborhoods. If these cats aren't spayed or neutered, the stray cat population in your association can explode.
Associations can expect good Samaritan residents to attempt to care for stray animals. Most people don't want to see animals starving and suffering, which is why feeding bans aren't effective ways to control homeless cat populations. Associations don't have the tools to stop residents from feeding the strays either. We counsel clients to consider trap, neuter and return (TNR) programs to control nuisance homeless cats.
TNR is the gold standard for the humane management of stray and feral cat colonies. These programs stop the exponential colony growth. The association should notice a drop in the number of feline nuisance complaints from residents. Associations often tap into volunteer resources and community programs that support animal welfare to implement TNR. Most major cities have feral cat welfare organizations and animal control resources to assist planned communities. In Phoenix, Maricopa County Animal Care and Control has endorsed TNR as the preferred method of cat population control. The county agency has more than 20 years of documentation showing trap-and-kill population control programs do not work. According to the agency, "The trap, neuter and return of feral cats is a proven, humane method of feral cat population control."
The public does not like animal cruelty. Feeding bans are a hot-button issue in the animal welfare community. Associations perceived as having inhumane or cruel rules regarding homeless cats risk becoming the targets of community outrage and animal rights' groups. Associations also should be careful they don't violate any animal cruelty laws. In our experience, a successful TNR program will enhance community pride and contribute to the positive image of the association. Consider reaching out to your local animal control agency to discuss the feasibility of TNR in your community.
Lydia Peirce Linsmeier is an associate attorney for Brown Olcott in Phoenix.
Have a question for our guest experts? Submit it online! Selected questions will be featured in an upcoming issue of Common Ground™.
Or, you may write to "Ask the Experts," Common Ground™, 6402 Arlington Boulevard, Suite 500, Falls Church, VA 22042. Fax: (703) 970-9558. E-mail: commonground(at)caionline.org. Due to the volume of questions we receive, we regret that we cannot reply to each one individually.
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Memphis Grizzlies Charitable Foundation
The Memphis Grizzlies Charitable Foundation was established to make a profound impact on the community and help organizations to fulfill their missions. The Foundation promotes its family of partnerships, community outreach and myriad resources to add value to each monetary contribution.
The Foundation also fosters collaboration among organizations for the more effective delivery of opportunities to urban youth through mentoring, sports and education programs. Foundation history and mission.
The Grizzlies Foundation can provide you with information on Memphis area mentoring programs, how to contribute as a mentor or in some other way, and how to start a mentoring program. If you have any questions, please send us an email.
The Memphis Grizzlies Charitable Foundation is announcing the donation of $300,000 in new grants to 12 Memphis nonprofit organizations Thursday, Dec. 10 from 8-9:30 a.m. at STREETS Ministries on 430 Vance Ave. during their annual Grizzlies Foundation Partners Recognition Breakfast. Full story.
Memphis Mentoring Partnership joins Grizzlies Foundation
Effective September 2008, the Memphis Grizzlies Charitable Foundation became the new home for the Memphis Mentoring Partnership. An affiliate of MENTOR, the National Mentoring Partnership, MMP offers training, program support and resources to raise the quality of mentoring throughout Memphis and Shelby County. Members represent businesses, faith-based organizations, nonprofits and volunteers committed to providing young people with mentors in our community.
Read more about the contributions and activities of the Memphis Grizzlies Charitable Foundation.
The Grizzlies Foundation also helps to make a difference in the lives of others through the following initiatives. Find out how you can get involved.
- TEAM UP Youth Mentoring Initiative
- Memphis Mentoring Partnership
- Honoring Our Military Families
- Partner Support
If you have any questions about the Foundation, please send us an email
Memphis Athletic Ministries
MAM runs year-round youth sport programs that emphasize teamwork, sportsmanship, and fair play. The purpose of MAM is to use organized athletics to mentor youth in order to reduce destructive behavior, improve health, increase academic performance and grow spiritually. MAM has six locations throughout urban Memphis which offer a variety of programs to attract youth. While MAM is best-known for its huge recreational basketball leagues, they also utilize golf, flag football and soccer programs to attract youth.
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Guide in Niseko
It is the live broadcasting picture from Niseko roadside station “Niseko view plaza”
HOME > About Niseko | Overview of Niseko
Overview of Niseko
The Overview of ‘Niseko’
‘Niseko (nisekoan)’ is an Ainu word meaning ‘(river which runs around the bottom of) a sheer cliff’.
About the origins of ‘Niseko’
The word ‘nupuri’ also comes from the Ainu language and means ‘mountain’. ‘Niseko-Annupuri’ - where the ski slope is located - means ‘mountain with a (river which runs around the bottom of a) sheer cliff’. As the name contains the word for mountain it is not called ‘Mt. Niseko-Annupuri’.
Though many place names in Hokkaido are rooted in the Ainu language most of them are written using kanji characters. It is said that though the Japanese who settled in Niseko during the Meiji period (1868-) recorded the Ainu place name using the kanji script it didn’t catch on and the katakana script came to be used instead.
History of the town name
In 1963, the Niseko-Annupuri area was designated ‘Niseko - Shakotan - Otaru Kaigan Quasi-national Park’. At this time,the national railway station (now JR) was still called ‘Kaributo Station’ and as a result moves were made to change the name of the gateway to Niseko to ‘Niseko Station’.
However, as the national railway company was reluctant to change the name to one written in the katakana script, efforts swung towards renaming the town and, in 1964, the town of ‘Niseko’ was born.
Geography and Climate
Enjoy the seasonal beauty of Niseko
A field of sunflowers bathes in the summer sun
Niseko Town (42°52’ N and 140°48’ E) is located in the west of central Hokkaido almost in the centre of Shiribeshi Subprefecture. It lies in a gently undulating basin with the 1,898m Mt. Yotei in the national park to the east and the 1,309m Mt. Niseko-Annupuri in the Quasi-National Park to the north.
Flowing through the town is the Shiribetsu River ? the cleanest river in Japan (2004) ? whose tributaries include the Konbu, Niseko Anbetsu and Makkari rivers. The area has an inland climate with an average temperature of 6.3°C and, in winter, the town can see snow accumulate to a depth of as much as 200cm.
Industry and Culture
|Agriculture||Around 200 households farm 2,000 hectares of land with an annual production of just under three billion yen. Main crops include potatoes, melons and asparagus, particularly well known for their quality and taste, and rice, tomatoes and lily bulbs. With Niseko’s distinctive characteristics being used to promote agriculture and through the improvement of profits, furthering of environmentally friendly ‘Clean Agriculture’ and support for direct farm sales, the agricultural industry is experiencing a period of revitalisation.|
|Tourism||The Niseko district has areas designated as both National and Quasi-National parkland and is a year-round tourist resort blessed with scenic countryside reflecting the beauty of all four seasons. Summer invites visitors to try outdoor sports such as hiking, canoeing and rafting while in winter they throng to the large ski resort for its world-famous, top-quality snow and winter sports. The area is also dotted with many hot springs of differing mineral content and offers plenty of accommodation such as hotels and B&Bs each offering its own personal touch.|
|Culture||Located at the foot of Mt. Yotei is the well-known Arishima area - farmland that was first cultivated by the father of the famous early twentieth century author Takeo Arishima. Takeo let his tenants use the land free of charge and his legacy of ‘mutual aid’ lives on in Niseko to this day. In 1977, to celebrate 100 years since his birth, the Arishima Takeo Memorial Museum was built on the original site of the farm. As the museum plays a central role in the dissemination of local culture, it receives many visitors.|
The origins of konbu Onsen
Konbu literally translates as ‘kelp’ and there are various explanations as to the origin of the name ‘Konbu Onsen’. One opinion holds that the name was taken from the nearby mountain known as ‘Konbu-dake’. This mountain is referred to in the Ainu language as ‘Tokonpo-nupuri’ which translates into Japanese as ‘chiisana ko(n)bu yama’ (lit. little hump mountain) and hence the name ‘Konbu-dake’.
Another opinion is that, as the area was located where the Shiribetsu and Konbu Rivers merge, had a long history of producing agricultural products and was relatively close to Isoya, a village on the coast of the Japan Sea blessed with an abundance of marine products, the name might have come about after the Ainu brought marine products such as konbu inland to trade for agricultural products. As there were no roads at that time, it is said that konbu was fastened to the trees to guide their way back.
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