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Carbonomics is nice in theory but does it add up?
With the debate on the carbon tax getting very emotive it’s essential to understand the economics of the tax and whether it will achieve what it’s setting out to do.
Here the issue is very simple. Will the introduction of a carbon tax lead to a significant reduction in carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions?
Given that the stated objective of a carbon tax is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, it’s clear that the success or failure of the tax will depend on the whether or not a reduction is achieved and at what cost. Understanding the cost of the carbon tax is fundamental to understanding its impact on the consumer, particularly given that it’s the consumer who will ultimately pay the tax.
Since the tax is imposed on certain types of greenhouse gas emissions arising during the production of goods or services, it’s clear that the tax adds to that cost of production and this will be passed onto consumers. As the cost of producing the goods or services goes up, the tax-affected companies will push up the price of the goods or services to consumers.
As the carbon tax increases so does the price of affected goods or services. In fact, the proponents of the carbon tax freely acknowledge that the tax will push up prices to consumers and the Federal Government has even indicated that the tax will lead to increases in the Consumer Price Index which measures inflation in Australia.
What’s the purpose of the carbon tax raising consumer prices? The theory is that the higher prices are intended to lead to a reduction in the demand for those goods or services that generate or give rise to greenhouse gas emissions.
The theory continues that as the carbon tax raises the cost of producing goods or services any company affected by the tax would be looking for ways to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions and its future carbon tax liability.
Now there are several problems with the practical application of the theory. First, a change in consumer demand for goods or services depends on not only the price of the particular goods or services, but also the availability of alternatives for those goods or services. Changing consumer demand or behaviour is easier said than done.
Seeking to change consumer demand through price rises is quite unpredictable as consumers may not be price sensitive regarding certain goods or services. For example, consumers will generally choose to pay higher prices and not reduce their demand for goods or services when it comes to basic necessities, or where there are no or few real alternatives to the particular goods or services.
Quite simply people will still need to buy food, heat their homes or use airlines when travelling around Australia. These are covered by the carbon tax and consumers will simply pay more for these rather than buying less.
In practice, therefore, the price of food, heating and domestic air travel will keep rising to reflect the ongoing rises in the carbon tax and consumers will be forced to pay those higher prices given the lack of real alternatives for those goods or services.
For other goods or services, any reduction in consumer demand and in greenhouse gas emissions will be linked to how price sensitive consumers are to price rises attributable to the carbon tax. The theory is that the higher the price increases attributable to the carbon tax the greater the potential reduction in demand and, ultimately, emissions.
That means that substantial price rises are needed to secure substantial reduction in emissions. The problem for supporters of the carbon tax is that the Federal Government has emphasized that the tax will initially only impose small price rises and this means that any reduction in consumer demand and emissions will also be small and take longer to achieve.
Significantly, if consumers don’t reduce their demand for particular goods or services, then reducing emissions of greenhouse gases in relation of those goods or services will become increasingly harder.
Any meaningful reduction in emissions would then depend on those companies that produce the emissions actually changing their production methods to reduce emissions. The problem here is that if the affected companies are in highly concentrated markets the companies can simply pass the higher costs of the carbon tax onto end users, or more precisely consumers.
Given that consumers may not reduce their demand for the particular goods or services following the imposition of a carbon tax and given that some markets are highly concentrated allowing affected companies to simply pass the tax onto consumers through higher prices, there is a real danger that the carbon tax may not lead to any meaningful reductions in greenhouse gas emissions in key industries.
The problem with ongoing price rises as a result of the carbon tax could even get worse in highly concentrated markets as affected companies may seek to raise consumer prices well beyond any carbon tax-related increases.
A lack of transparency and real competition in highly concentrated markets creates an obvious environment for the few dominant market players to price gouge consumers.
This means that affected companies could actually hide behind a carbon tax to raise consumer prices by an amount beyond that attributable to the tax. Here the carbon tax could be used to justify existing or future rip offs by dominant companies intent on pushing up retail prices to the detriment of consumers.
All in all, unless the carbon tax changes the behaviour of affected companies and consumers in a manner that reduces greenhouse gas emissions in a meaningful way, the imposition of a carbon tax will become just another form of revenue-raising by the Federal Government.
With the carbon tax raising very large sums of money attention needs to quickly turn to how that money is going to be spent. The Federal Government has said that half of the money raised by the tax will go back to households. So for every dollar that households spend on the carbon tax, 50% will be returned to households in varying degrees.
This will mean that households will be out of pocket by at least 50% of the tax paid. This also means that having received compensation households will be less likely to change their demand for goods and services and that will mean fewer reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. This will disappoint those seeking significant reductions in emissions.
Programs assisting industries to develop new technologies to try and reduce emissions will be welcomed, but the development of new technologies will take time and put increasing demands on the revenue raised by the tax.
Then we will have the creation of new government agencies which will take a growing share of the revenue raised by the tax. The growth in government agencies certainly does not reduce greenhouse gas emissions and is likely to increase them as the agencies need to be accommodated and their employees will no doubt need to travel around the country as part of their responsibilities.
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The Badger State is following the lead of Indiana, North Carolina and Kansas, pulling state and federal funding from nine of Wisconsin’s 27 Planned Parenthood facilities, the New York Daily News reports.
According to the newspaper, those nine clinics provide affordable care to about 12,000 uninsured women in the state.
But Planned Parenthood isn’t going down without a fight. The Kansas City Star reports the group took its case to federal court Monday in an attempt to stop Kansas from cutting $300,000 in funding. Last week a federal judge in Indiana ruled that the Hoosier State could not cut off Medicaid funds to Planned Parenthood because it offered abortions. Planned Parenthood of Indiana had been without Medicaid money since May 10, according to the newspaper.
Indiana will most likely appeal the ruling, but if states won’t listen to the courts, maybe they’ll listen to Amy Poehler. The Huffington Post reports the funny actress—and proud Planned Parenthood member—recently sent out a fund-raising e-mail, asking for donations.
“Think back to the first time you went to a Planned Parenthood health center, scared or broke or confused or hopeful,” she writes. “Think about your friends, or your sister, or your daughter, son, niece, or nephew. Think about every person out there who has nowhere else to go, nobody else to count on, nobody but Planned Parenthood.”
Now, wouldn’t it be a shame if those people had nobody at all?
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Spirits were soaring Saturday — and not just because of the wind — as high school diplomas were awarded to 142 graduates of Delta High School.
Graduates, their friends and family members were welcomed by DHS principal Kurt Clay, who said he has been with the Class of 2012 seven years as a principal, beginning with their sixth grade year at Delta Middle School.
Salutatorian Taylor Zunich reflected on the feeling of triumph and accomplishment she felt as a member of the basketball team that made the "Sweet 16" for the first time in Delta High School history. She then issued a challenge to reinforce the building blocks of our nation — family, friends, faith and community — which are beginning to crack.
Graduate Conor Laws introduced the guest speaker, saying teachers have been some of the students' greatest supporters. One who has had unquestioning faith in each and every graduate is Daniel Renfrow, an English teacher at Delta High School.
Renfrow asked the students to consider the past, present and future as he drove home the message, "You are special, valuable people, and I want to help you discover your true worth."
True worth can not be measured by numbers, like grade point averages or salaries. Instead, it's conveyed through hugs, kind words and other acts of caring.
"Take your enormous worth and reinvest it in the world around you," he urged. "Go be great."
Co-valedictorians Courtney Anderson and Brendan Kortz structured their message around Mount Everest, the Louvre Museum in Paris, the pyramids in Egypt and ancient Greece. Like climbing Mount Everest, the graduates will have to make sacrifices if they want to achieve their dreams. At the Louvre, people can pause and appreciate the work of great artists, just as we sometimes need to step back and recognize all we've accomplished. The pyramids epitomize how we can succeed if we meet our challenges step by step and learn to call on others for help, Kortz explained. Finally, the ancient Greeks honored and loved their gods just as we should recognize and appreciate the beloved people in our lives who have supported us, Anderson said.
As Rosie Johnson, a DHS teacher, read the class roll, counselors Shawna Magtutu and Holly Teyler-Crowder listed each graduate's scholarships, awards and plans for the future. Rachel Tallent is attending Valparaiso University in Indiana, "to pursue a career in changing the world." Taylor Zunich plans to become a lawyer. Other graduates are pursuing careers in health care, education, auto mechanics and wildlife management. A barber, gunsmith, master electrician, police officer, journalist and engineer-to-be are eager to embark on the next chapter of their lives.
Seventy-three graduates are bound for a four-year college; 29 plan to attend a two-year college or vocational school. Twenty-two young men and women are entering the workforce, while 15 have joined the military.
Diplomas were presented by school board members Cheryl Hines and Kathy Svenson.
Kurt Clay recognized another "graduate" — assistant principal Bruce Keith, who is retiring after 40 years in education.
In keeping with tradition, tassels were turned from right to left, to symbolizes the transition from student to graduate. As the DHS band played the recessional, the graduates left their seats and formed a line the length of the football field. Then white and green mortarboards filled the air, as the graduates celebrated the beginning of the next chapter of their lives.blog comments powered by Disqus
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Air Source Heat Pumps
Operating in conjunction with a home’s existing heating system, air source heat pumps work by absorbing heat from the outside air.
Capable of extracting heat from the air even when the temperature outside is as low as minus 15° C, heat pumps can deliver heat at lower temperatures over much longer periods, unlike traditional gas or oil boilers.
There are two main types of air source heat pumps, air-to-water and air-to-air systems:
Air-to-water – these types of systems work with your wet central heating system and are particularly good for underfloor heating systems or larger radiators, due to the low heat released over long periods.
Air-to-air – these types of heat pumps produce warm air which is circulated through your home by fans.
How do air source heat pumps work?
1. The heat pumps absorb heat from the air into a fluid.
2. The fluid is pumped through a heat exchanger in the heat pump.
3. The system’s refrigeration system extracts low grade heat.
4. Once it passes through the heat pump compressor, it is concentrated into a higher temperature, which can be used to heat water and your home’s hot water circuits.
Would an air source heat pump be viable for my home?
If you’re interested in installing an air source heat pump, there’s a few points worth considering, including:
- Given that air source heat pumps work best when producing heat at a lower temperature, your home needs to be well insulated for the heating system to be most effective.
- Due to the lower water temperatures required, air source heat pumps perform better with underfloor heating systems compared to radiator-based systems, so you’ll need to take into consideration what type of heating system you’ll be using.
- Air source heating systems can be placed on the ground or, ideally, fitted to a sunny wall. The unit will also need plenty of space around it to get a good flow of air.
- Heat pumps are more financially viable if they are replacing an electricity or coal heating system.
Costs and savings
The installation of a typical air source heating system can range between £6,000 to £10,000 for a detached home.
The amount of money you can save by installing a heat pump system depends on a variety of factors, including fuel prices and what sort of system you are using to distribute heat. Things like temperature setting and learning how to use the system’s controls effectively will also factor in to the savings you can achieve.
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Surprise is often expressed concerning inharmonious medical expert testimony. Doubtless dishonest medical evidence is sometimes heard, but most medical opinions expressed in court are honest, and divergent views between witnesses are dependent on varying degrees of knowledge, and personal experience. The human body and its diseases, possessing but little uniformity, can be variably interpreted by a plurality of honest and intelligent observers, especially in borderland cases in which demarcation lines are vague and indistinct.
Long experience in examining plaintiffs for injury cases inevitably produces skepticism and demands for objective indications, as a high percentage of such cases is, more or less, based on fraudulent claims, fostered and nourished by unprincipled attorneys, unwise friends, and the general desire to extract money from wealthy corporations. Employees have themselves to blame, therefore, for having built a structure inimical to their own interests, while employers may be congratulated on a more benevolent attitude toward
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Robin Gibb, 1/3 of the legendary Bee Gees, cheated on his first wife with (by his estimation) over 100 women. They divorced and he spent two years in bed with a bottle, so depressed he feared he was going mad. This is the same man who so recently fought with everything he had to stay alive for just one more day. What had changed?
We all live in different worlds. One person’s reality may look, taste, and smell quite similar to another’s, but our brains wire meaning and impact with incredible variation. Where/when our realities overlap, we feel safe, accepted, secure. Surrounded by like-minded brains, the world makes sense – cause and effect, social etiquette, cultural norms. But there is only one place where we meet, all of us, on the same plane… emotion.
The artists we remember have the ability, through their work, to draw us into an emotion and keep us there until we feel it is our own. Emotion and intellect is a back and forth evolution of consciousness. Art, whether through colour, words, or music, allows us to engage in this evolution outside of ourselves, protecting our delicate identities and egos. An emotional reaction triggers an opening in our thinking. Suddenly, we have internal permission to change our perceptions of reality, bringing them either more in line with the artist’s vision, or reinforcing an opposing viewpoint.
But what about the artist?
“The real world was just too real – and we didn’t want to be part of normal life. We wanted to create a magical world for the three of us, and the only way we could do that was to lock ourselves away and be creative.” - Robin Gibb
We must not underestimate the emotional intensity and sensitivity needed to create an outside expression of a universal emotional reality. Among those few born with this gift (some might say curse), along with the talents to communicate it, there are fewer still who can touch us independent of time. We call them ‘the greats’ – our ‘geniuses’.
But when a mind can only justify itself by creating its own external reflection, participation in a communal, comfortable reality is an impossibility. To add to the artist’s burden, the energy costs of this constant self-reflection make peace of mind an active, rather than a passive, state of being. The artist requires a certain level of selfishness to preserve these energies and not get sucked into the bottomless emotional demands of a world, which is to them, forever on fire. Those who deny this in-born protection, and claim an artificial selflessness, risk their minds following ‘the rules’, if not their very lives.
Robin Gibb got out of bed and began living more honestly. When an artist accepts himself/herself as the artist and begins to live authentically in their ‘village role’, they are able to surround themselves with people who will support (if not necessarily share) their unique vision of reality. Under these circumstances, the artist can finally give back more than he/she takes. Robin Gibb found Dwina, a liberal-minded woman who gave him the space and freedom to live in a way that fueled his creativity instead of draining it. Even so, Gibb pushed his luck by fathering a child with their maid. Because after all, artist or not, guess we’re all stuck being human.
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FSA Eases Bank Rules to Boost Lending
Capital and liquidity rules for the biggest UK banks have been quietly relaxed in an effort to stimulate lending, a move that puts Britain at the forefront of a global experiment to use bank regulation to moderate the economic cycle.
The Financial Services Authority recently informed banks that they will not be required to hold any extra capital against new UK loans they make that qualify for a funding for lending scheme targeted at increasing money for corporate borrowers.
UK-domiciled banks such as Royal Bank of Scotland , Lloyds and HSBCand UK subsidiaries such as Santander UK can treat that new lending as basically risk-free for regulatory purpose.
London regulators have also stepped back from tough overall capital rules they imposed after the Basel III reform package was adopted. No longer will UK banks be required to achieve and maintain a core ratio equal to 10 per cent of their assets, adjusted for risk by the end of next year.
Instead, individual UK banks have been set numerical targets for capital and have been told their ratio can drop below 10 per cent in the meantime. The absolute number means banks cannot meet regulatory targets by cutting lending and the flexibility on the ratio gives them room to expand lending as demand grows.
The goal is to avoid rapid deleveraging that would harm activity in the economy, Andrew Bailey, head of the FSAs prudential business unit, told the Financial Times.
The FSAs move highlights how the UK is at the forefront of macroprudential oversight in which regulators consider not just whether individual banks are sound but also broader economic and stability concerns. From next year, the combination will become official as the Bank of England runs monetary policy, supervises banks and promotes financial stability.
But other countries may not be far behind. Under the Basel III package, member nations are specifically encouraged to consider imposing so-called countercyclical capital buffers to damp down bubbles.
The FSA has also relaxed liquidity rules to include a broader variety of assets in the buffers that banks must hold in case of a run by depositors or other market crisis. Up to now, only sovereigns and cash were acceptable, but now banks can fill up to 10 per cent of the required buffer with anything the BofE has agreed to accept as collateral.
Taken together, the UK moves are aimed at heading off a severe double-dip recession and making sure that regulation is not choking off the flow of capital to the real economy.
They dont want a double whammy where the banks are more and more solid and the economy isnt moving, said a top executive of one of the banks.
Simon Hills of the British Bankers Association called the eased requirements a beneficial rebalancing...which will help banks and their customers.
Analysts warned that the shift could provide the industry with its first real opening to water down UK standards since the start of the financial crisis. Once capital ratios come down, regulators may be hard-pressed to push them back up again.
It will be incumbent on the [regulators] to demonstrate that this can be done in a way which continues to minimize the risks to financial stability and costs to the taxpayer, said Richard Reid, research director of the International Centre for Financial Regulation.
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Gordon Brown claims a Brit invented the iPod
Grosse Pointe, Surrey?
While talking about the economy during daytime television show, This Morning, Brown let it drop that it was a Briton who in fact invented the iPod.
"Companies will come and locate in Britain if we have the talented people to offer them," said Brown. "People with ideas and innovative things that they can market. You know it was a Brit that invented the iPod. If you've got really innovative things, people will come to your country to locate."
Perhaps Brown was confused about the role of design engineer, Jonathan Ive, a Brit who crafted the casing and packaging of the iPod and many other Apple products. We dare say there's a subtle difference between the house painter and architect. (Let's also ignore that Brown's one example of British ingenuity came from an American company, and that mp3 player sales aren't exactly keeping the US economy primed at the moment.) And even then, Ive ran off to America for a job at Apple in 1992 and currently lives in California.
Brown's historical revision begins at about seven minutes in.
Let's be perfectly fair to everyone. Brits have a long and distinguished history of invention. Here's a somewhat abridged list that Brown could have chosen from:
- Downhill skiing
- Corrugated paper used as liner in tall hats
- Rubber bands
- The Royal Navy
- Smallpox vaccine
Note the glaring omission of the iPod. Quite contrarily, we'd find that device in another list:
Inventions not at all from Great Britain
- Racoon hats
- 1989 Toyota Celica
- The number 0
- Leslie Nielsen
So, there you have it, kids. Hitch your wagon to corrugated paper futures, if you want to prosper in the homeland. Otherwise, it's off to America where you can wrap metal in expensive white cases for a living. ®
I've always found it ironic...
that the British invented the angled deck and fresnel-lens landing system (AKA the "meatball lights") that made it possible to land jets on aircraft carriers...
then they get rid of their carriers, and are now pretty much the only navy in the world NOT using it.
I don't need a coat, I've got a yellow shirt.
ah, but one more thing
The late, great Arthur C. Clarke described a personal audio player small enough to be worn around the neck back in the 1950's or 1960's. So Iguess he scores the MP3 player as well as the comms satellite...
The Scandinavians probably invented the ski, and used it for transport cross-country, but it was the Brits who pioneered ('invented" is a dodgy word) the idea of climbing up a mountain (near Chamonix) just so they could slide down it again.
These days it's only the French army recruits who have to do that, the rest of us can use ski lifts. Bet those boy soldiers just love us for that...
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It’s a busy time for Parliament looking at the Government’s draft national policy statements (NPSs). Our post on 20 January reported on the Transport Select Committee’s look at ports. The week before we were up in front of the Energy and Climate Change Committee looking at the energy NPSs (an hour and five minutes into the session if you want to watch the video).
We stood shoulder to shoulder with other NGOs (Campaign to Protect Rural England, Friends of the Earth and WWF) in our criticism. It wasn’t easy covering six NPSs in an hour, especially as one of the MPs took us rather off piste with an attack on NIMBY NGOs. We’re not trying to stop all development – in fact, much of the energy infrastructure which will be built over the next few years is vital if we’re to move to a low carbon economy.
But we do believe that proper strategic planning, with good community consultation and environmental assessment, is essential to steer development away from environmentally-damaging options.
That’s what we haven’t seen in the draft NPSs, and that’s the message the Committee heard from us. You can see some summaries of the discussion here and here.
We also sent the Committee the report we commissioned on the NPSs’ appraisals of sustainability, hot off the press. We’ll be publishing it soon, so watch this space.
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Staying Healthy and Reducing Transmission
Sexual risk reduction for people living with HIV is important to stay healthy by reducing exposure to sexually transmitted infections that can accelerate HIV disease progression and by reducing exposure to drug resistant strains of the virus. It's also an important step to reduce transmission to new HIV-negative partners (Brown and DiClemente, 2011).
Risk Reduction is Necessary During the Acute Stage When HIV is Highly Transmissible
Acute HIV infection, lasting weeks or months, may account for a substantial proportion of HIV-1 transmission worldwide, though some have argued that acute infection is only responsible for a small percent of new infections (Williams et al., 2011b). Acute infection is a highly infectious stage occurring immediately following infection, yet before a rapid test can detect HIV infection, usually lasting between 7 to 21 days (Cohen et al., 2011b). "Viral burden is particularly high during this brief period, resulting in individuals being highly infectious" (Powers et al., 2008: 560). The efficiency of HIV transmission is directly proportional to the viral load in the transmitting individual (Quinn et al., 2000), i.e., the higher the viral load, the easier it is to transmit HIV. Yet it is difficult, if not impossible, "to quantify risks -- with an appropriate degree of accuracy -- for any specific individual in the 'real-world'" in terms of risks for HIV transmission (Gerberry and Blower, 2011: 1120).
Acute HIV infection usually progresses in the absence of treatment, into a state of chronic HIV infection that can remain relatively constant for years. While this period is associated with a much lower risk of transmission compared with that of acute HIV infection, because the period following acute HIV infection can last a median duration of eight years, the cumulative risk of transmission during these eight years can be substantial (Granich et al., 2009). There is no data to support how to reduce viral load by treatment of patients with acute infection (Cohen and Gay, 2010; Vinikoor et al., 2012) and best practice for the clinical management of acute HIV infection remains unknown (Bell et al., 2010; Hogan et al., 2012). Some have argued that, "in light of recent reports from the HPTN 052 study showing the benefits of early initiation of antiretroviral therapy in reducing sexual transmission rates for HIV infection, the case could be made for antiretroviral therapy as a public health intervention in persons with early HIV infection" (Tossonian and Conway, 2012:11).
Stigma Can Make Efforts to Reduce Transmission Difficult for Women
Non-judgmental, non-stigmatizing interventions to reduce HIV transmission to sexual partners are urgently needed (Collins et al., 2008). Interventions both within the health sector and outside the health sector, for example, those that transform norms, reduce violence against women, promote legal rights, etc, also need to be implemented in order to support safer sexual behavior once someone knows his/her positive serostatus. [See also Strengthening the Enabling Environment]
"I will never get a man here... if I am known to have HIV." --HIV-positive woman in Kenya (Awiti Ujiji et al., 2010)
Women who test HIV-positive report that their male partners often do not want to know that they are positive. One study describes the dilemma faced by some women: "He could not sleep with her if she knew she was positive. She (was)... torn by her dilemma: he refused condoms and she felt she could not insist without disclosure; yet she risked giving him the virus." Women "reflected upon the fact that men seemed unwilling to test but preferred to blame their female partners" (MacGregor and Mills, 2011: 4). Both women and men need to learn how to negotiate safe sex prior to disclosure, knowing when to disclose and how to disclose. Women in one study noted that once they disclosed, no man had stayed with them (MacGregor and Mills, 2011). In another study in Uganda, "the need to provide for children was a particularly strong motivation for women to avoid disclosure" (Allen et al., 2011: 539), as men abandoned or abused partners who disclosed or requested condom use. One cross sectional survey in Cameroon found that HIV-positive women who were not financially dependent on their male partners were much more likely to have used condoms (Loubiere et al., 2009), suggesting the importance of the enabling environment. [See Strengthening the Enabling Environment] Knowing a sexual partner is HIV-negative has been shown to be associated with increased condom use -- a study in Kenya with 3,013 adults found that ART-experienced adults who had HIV-seronegative partners were 17 times more likely to use a condom than ART nave adults who were unaware of their partner's serostatus (Benki-Nugent et al., 2011), with similar findings in the Dominican Republic (Sears et al., 2011).
Transmission can also occur in the attempt to become pregnant: "In the absence of artificial insemination technologies, effectively unavailable in most low- or low-to-middle income countries, conception requires unprotected sexual intercourse; this means risk of either HIV transmission (in serodiscordant couples) or HIV super-infection (in couples where both couples are positive)" (London et al., 2008: 14). [See also Safe Motherhood and Prevention of Vertical Transmission ] Super-infection is when a person gets infected with different strains of HIV, increasing the risk of drug resistance to ARVs. A study in Uganda found that polygamous relationships among HIV-positive partners results in multiple infections, i.e., super-infection (Ssemwanga et al., 2011). One study found that among 20,220 people in the study in Uganda in a general heterosexual population, rates of super-infection occurred at approximately the same rate as HIV incidence (Redd et al., 2012) and another study detected super-infection among Kenyan women (Ronen et al., 2012).
HIV-related stigma contributes to repercussions on relationship stability, affecting the couples' sexual relationship. Some serodiscordant couples identify fear of transmission as a primary concern in their relationships or fear the impact that disclosure will have on the HIV-negative partner (Talley and Bettencourt, 2010; Chen et al., 2011; Kelley et al., 2011). A study in South Africa found that among 413 HIV-positive men and 641 HIV-positive women, stigma and discrimination was associated with non-disclosure and that non-disclosure was associated with HIV transmission risk behaviors (Simbayi et al., 2007).
The Relationship Between HIV and Other STIs is Complicated
Acquiring STIs can accelerate HIV disease progression (White et al., 2006 cited in Brown and DiClemente, 2011) and increase the risks of HIV transmission (Ward and Ronn, 2010 cited in Brown and DiClemente, 2011). According to Brown et al., "infectiousness is high in HIV-infected individuals with a concurrent STI" (Brown et al., 2011a: 441). STIs in those who are HIV-positive may be associated with a faster progression to death. A study between 2001 and 2009 with 303 HIV-positive women with 1,408 person-years in Uganda and Zimbabwe found that STI symptoms were associated with faster disease progression (Morrison et al., 2011). Women who are HIV-positive also have increased risks for certain STIs, such as genital ulcer disease, even after initiation of antiretroviral therapy; one study found an increased risk of Trichomonas vaginalis (Mavedzenge et al., 2010b). A study in Taiwan of 123 HIV-positive patients found repeated infection with STIs since HIV diagnosis (Lee et al., 2010).
Conversely, HIV treatment can also benefit certain STI outcomes. A study found that HIV-positive patients on ARVs with syphilis are less likely to have neurosyphilis and respond better to neurosyphilis treatment (Marra et al., 2012). Among entirely or predominantly ART nave adults, a systemic review found that treating STIs reduced HIV viral load (Modjarrad and Vermund, 2010). Questions have been raised about whether herpes simplex-2 infection, in particular, enables HIV transmission, though recent observational data found no association between HIV transmission with HSV-2. Clinical trials "found no effect of HSV-2 suppression on HIV acquisition and HIV transmission in HIV discordant couples. The biological basis of the relationship between HSV-2 infection and risk of HIV acquisition/transmission requires further study" (Biraro et al., 2012: 1).
Randomized evaluations of different behavioral intervention models, including clinician-initiated communication are needed (Bunnell et al., 2006b). "When discussions of ongoing STD-related risk behavior do occur, they are infrequent and often initiated at the patients request. At best, the lack of these discussions in HIV-related care settings is unfortunate; at worst, it indirectly contributes to escalating rates of STDs among HIV-infected persons and of new HIV acquisition among others at risk" (Hall and Marrazzo, 2007: 518.)
Treatment Can be a Successful Prevention Strategy to Reduce Transmission
The HPTN 052 study has shown that early initiation of antiretroviral therapy (when CD4 counts were between 350 and 550 -- before many would normally be eligible under current initiation thresholds for treatment in most countries) for the seropositive partner in a discordant relationship resulted in a 96% relative risk reduction of HIV transmission to the seronegative sexual partner (Cohen et al., 2011a). The results of this study have led many to recommend the use of treatment as a prevention strategy and WHO has released normative guidance on early treatment for serodiscordant couples (WHO, 2012g).
While this study shows the benefit of treatment for reduction of transmission to the HIV uninfected partner, it is important to keep this study in context. Condoms as well as treatment were used to prevent transmission, with self-reported 100% condom use correlated with prevention of transmission. There are a number of hurdles in successfully utilizing this treatment as prevention approach. For example, getting all HIV-positive people to know their serostatus before they are symptomatic and while their CD4 counts are above 350 in order to access treatment will be challenging and unlikely to result in universal coverage in the near future (Over, 2011). Also of significance in the study by Cohen et al. is that in 28% of the cases HIV transmission occurred from another partner rather than from the HIV-positive partner on treatment (Cohen et al., 2011a), demonstrating that monogamy cannot be assumed in serodiscordant couples (Ambrosioni et al., 2011; Smith et al., 2011; Abdool Karim and Abdool Karim, 2011). Early treatment will not stop transmission from those who are acutely infected but cannot know their serostatus with regular HIV tests (Cohen, 2011b).
"Increasingly, there has been recognition of the need for services to work with couples, rather than just with the individual partners" (Spino et al., 2010: 4). "Although early ART for serodiscordant couples (where one partner is infected) may be feasible in many settings, offering immediate treatment for prevention to all who test HIV-positive is challenging in settings where barely 50% of those medically eligible (based on decline in CD4 cell count [under 350]) are receiving ART" (Shattock et al., 2011: 42). At the same time, it is unclear whether reducing HIV acquisition between sexual partners in a serodiscordant couple will have a major impact on HIV incidence and prevalence (Gray et al., 2011).
"Me, I try to tell the man that, 'In this house we have been found with this problem. We should accept it. I should not point a finger at you. You, too, should not point a finger at me. Just buy your protection.' And so, little by little what he does now is different from what he did in the past." --HIV-positive woman, Malawi (Mkandawire-Valhmu and Stevens, 2010: 691)A recent assessment in Uganda found that voluntary counseling and testing targeting discordant couples is unlikely to have a substantial impact on reducing HIV acquisition among the larger population. The study found that HIV infections before the availability of antiretroviral therapy was 82 out of 9,434 people or 18.3% and after the availability of antiretroviral therapy was 131 out of 13,082 people or 13.7%. Most new infections occurred among people not currently married or among married individuals with a partner of unknown serostatus. In addition, 23.2% of infections pre-ART and 26% post-ART occurred among initially concordant HIV-negative couples in whom the new infection must have been introduced from an extramarital relationship (Gray et al., 2011). "Antiretroviral therapy is by no means perfect and is not the ultimate answer to controlling and ending the HIV epidemic. Adverse events, emergence of drug-resistant viral strains, maintenance of adherence, sustainability and cost are just some of the concerns. However, this is precisely the wrong time to limit access to antiretroviral therapy in resource-limited settings, since we have the tools in hand to maintain or restore health in infected persons and to reduce transmission to their sexual partners" (Hammer, 2011: 562).
"If earlier treatment is expanded... many more people will need to be on treatment in the short term" (IOM, 2011: 3). Reliable point of care for CD4 counts which could be used without laboratory facilities are being developed (Moon et al., 2011; Mtapuri-Zinyowera et al., 2010; Barnabas et al., 2012). Once these point of care CD4 analyzers are reliable and rolled out, testing outside of health care facilities can be more efficiently linked to knowledge of when a particular patient can and should initiate antiretroviral therapy. "An essential question is how a country's health service could maintain antiretroviral therapy in legions of healthy patients with high CD4 cell counts mainly for prevention benefits to partners, when it is not able to initiate and maintain high levels of retention of those with low CD4 counts who need ART for survival" (Padian et al., 2011b: 275).
While the use of HIV treatment as prevention is emerging as an exciting component of scaled up AIDS programs, further research and clarification is needed. A number of mathematical models have demonstrated the potential benefits of treatment as prevention (Mahy et al., 2010b). "The reliability of projections developed from mathematical models is limited by the accuracy of the assumptions on which a model is built and by the realities of implementation. Additional areas of uncertainty range from questions regarding the accuracy of mathematical models used in recent publications to questions regarding the acceptability and impact of massive scale up of HIV testing, and of long-term treatment in people where HIV treatment may not yet [be] medically indicated but is being prescribed to prevent HIV transmission. Many of these questions will be addressed by studies planned or underway" (IAS, 2010: 6).
Further discussion of the use of treatment as a prevention strategy can be found inTreatment as Prevention.
Treatment Alone Will be Insufficient in Reducing Transmission
Though ARV treatment can reduce transmission through reduced viral load (Attia et al., 2009; Vernazza et al., 2008), condom use is still necessary to increase protection for both HIV-positive and HIV-negative sexual partners. "Programs need to link treatment with prevention" (Holmes et al., 2010b: 177). "Given the dramatic effect of ART on viral load, it is reasonable to consider using treatment of individuals infected with HIV as a means of preventing HIV transmission" (Dieffenbach and Fauci, 2009: 2380) and recent results "support the use of antiretroviral treatment as a part of a public health strategy to reduce the spread of HIV-1 infection" (Cohen et al., 2011a: 501). However, "the burden of adding antiretroviral-based prevention to already strained health systems remains to be determined" (Padian et al., 2011b: 271). [See also Prevention for Women]
Treatment cannot replace the use of condoms. The proper use of condoms remains a reliable means of enabling everyone, without knowing the serologic status of their partners, to keep control on protecting themselves and others during sexual intercourse. UNAIDS also argues that reducing transmission is a "shared responsibility," so that everyone shares the responsibility to avoid infection (GNP+ and UNAIDS, 2011). "Treatment should be thought of as a tool providing regular condom users valuable extra safety. Moreover, condoms remain the only way to protect oneself against other STIs" (Bourdillon et al., 2008: 11). Some studies have shown that those on treatment are more likely to use condoms (Kennedy et al., 2010b) and other measures to prevent transmission and other studies, mostly from resource-rich settings (Tun et al., 2004 cited in Cohen and Gay, 2010) have shown the opposite, but most studies have not adjusted for baseline sexual behavior prior to ART (Cohen and Gay, 2010).
Some researchers have expressed concerns that risk behaviors may increase "due to the feeling of safety that ART provides" (Shafer et al., 2011: 671) and increasing HIV prevention efforts both for those who are HIV-negative and for those who are HIV-positive is necessary (Shafer et al., 2011). A study in the United States found that those who believed that having an undetectable viral load reduces transmission risks could be at risk of transmitting HIV due to STI co-infections (Kalichman et al., 2010). Individuals need counseling on the relationship between their CD4 count and the risk of transmission both to sexual partners and in pregnancy in a simple, easy to understand format (Awiti Ujiji et al., 2011). [See also Meeting the Sexual and Reproductive Health Needs of Women Living With HIV and Safe Motherhood and Prevention of Vertical Transmission ] Further, the risk factors for serosorting (condomless sex between two HIV-positive people who are on effective antiretroviral therapy and confirmed low viral loads), warrants more research (Anstee et al., 2011).
Some of the challenges of treatment prevention include missing acute infections, long-term adherence, the possibilities of drug resistance, and the concerns that condom use and other preventive measures would decrease (Shelton, 2011a). Given the unknowns and the inadequate availability of medications, treatment alone is insufficient in reducing and preventing HIV transmission. In addition to antiretroviral therapy "all treatment programs should provide patients with routine risk-reduction counseling, access to condoms and other prevention tools, and other prevention services in their clinical settings" (Global HIV Prevention Working Group, 2008: 23). For additional prevention strategies see Prevention for Women; Prevention for Key Affected Populations and Prevention for Young People.
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For the third time in 18 months, litigation has broken out between anthropologist Brigitte Kovacevich and Vanderbilt University, where she carried out her graduate studies under renowned scholar Arthur Demarest.
Kovacevich filed suit this week against the university, claiming that Demarest, as its agent, has sabotaged her career in several ways because she resisted his sexual harassment. In her complaint, filed in Nashville's federal court and available at this link, Kovacevich accuses Demarest of badmouthing her to the publisher that was bringing out a book she wrote and telling a March 2008 academic conference in Canada that she had plagiarized from him.
Demarest has an international reputation as an expert on the Maya civilization that flourished and then mysteriously collapsed in Central America centuries before the first Spanish explorers arrived. Kovacevich argues that he has used his professional influence to harm her prospects of landing a tenure-track faculty appointment. She is presently a lecturer at the University of Virginia.
Kovacevich first sued Vanderbilt and Demarest in August 2007, making dramatic and detailed charges about Demarest's behavior at a dig site in the Guatemalan jungle. That lawsuit, available at this link, asserted that Demarest had "engaged in repeated unprofessional and outrageous conduct that included burning down the field camp, destruction of artifacts, fabrication of a crime scene, the misappropriation and misuse of Vanderbilt University and government funds, threats against students and assaults of students."
The parties quickly entered talks to resolve the matter, and they agreed on a confidential settlement in January 2008. After the March 2008 conference, however, Kovacevich brought a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Vanderbilt, in turn, sued her for allegedly violating the settlement terms by going to the EEOC. In this week's lawsuit, she says a judge in that case denied Vanderbilt's request for an injunction against her.
The current legal action accuses Demarest of "repeatedly communicating with the University Press of Colorado" to claim that Kovacevich was using drawings in her book without the permission of those who prepared them, a claim she denies.
"Demarest then proceeded to coerce the artist/creator of the images to withdraw permission of use of the images and to request an unreasonable amount of compensation for their one time use, while threatening legal action against plaintiff in Guatemala," the complaint says.
The filing also says Demarest has tried to interfere with the publication by Vanderbilt University Press of a monograph based on Kovacevich's dissertation, as he has been "attacking the quality of the manuscript."
Kovacevich seeks $500,000 in compensatory damages and $500,000 in punitive damages. Richard J. Braun of Braun & Associates in Nashville is her attorney.
Beth Fortune, vice chancellor for public affairs at Vanderbilt, told NashvillePost.com that the university has no comment on the lawsuit at this time.
- ALEX B FRUIN INHERITANCE TRUST; CANDACE F STEFANSIC INHERITANCE TRUST; CANDANCE F STEFANSIC INHERITANCE TRUST; FRUIN, ALEX B TRUSTEE; FRUIN ALEX B INHERITANCE TRUST; STEFANSIC, CANDACE F TRUSTEE; STEFANSIC CANDACE F INHERITANCE TRUST; STEFANSIC CANDANCE F INHERITANCE TRUST
- ROSS, BRIDGETT D
- COOKE, ETHEN LANYARD TRUSTEE; COOKE, ETHEN LEWIS ESTATE
- JACOBS, JESSICA ALEXANDRA; JACOBS, ERIKA BESS
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OK, faithful DailyWorth readers. We want your opinion.
Following is a summary of a slideshow that ran on the Huffington Post last week, with the rah-rah title of:
"8 Jobs in Which Women Make MORE Than Men"
First of all, we're not sure that digging up eight occupations in which women earn more than men—"out of hundreds," as writer Sarah Yin says in the intro—is good news. They could only find eight?
Second, each slide depicts a woman at work, with a caption stating what the average weekly earnings are for women vs. men in that position. Female lab techs, for example, earn $740 per week on average, compared to $723 for men.
Doesn't strike you as a stunning difference? Right. On average, in these eight jobs, women only earn $14.50 more per week.
The job with the biggest wage gap—of $40? Busser.
"They clean tables, carry dirty dishes, refill coffee, replace soiled table linens, etc.," the caption reads.
So then it occurred to us: Maybe a big drag on women's earnings is what you might call Pervasive Financial Delusion Syndrome, in which bad news gets repackaged as good news. The article was well- meaning, yes, but it's not going to help anyone's self-worth to be handed a baloney sandwich all dolled up.
Let's call a spade a shovel already. We'd like you to re-title this story. Submit your suggestions here.
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University of Arkansas Assistant Coach Travis Geopfert takes you step-by-step through the process of identifying and correcting common mistakes in the javelin. Coach Geopfert pinpoints the errors an athlete may encounter and then provides drills and coaching points to correct the errors and improve technique.
Geopfert starts with one of the most overlooked areas of javelin training - flexibility. Geopfert shows you eight upper body flexibility drills to increase not only an athlete's range of motion, but strength as well.
Moving to technique, you will see three of the most common ways to hold the javelin. Using a series of Jav Ball Routines, Coach Geopfert has his athletes demonstrate the correct way to throw the javelin and, in many cases, how to identify technique errors.
Essential runway technique is covered with a simple progression of approach drills. Focusing on perfecting simple and slower 3 to 5 step drills, Geopfert demonstrates Carries, Crossovers, and Penultimates before advancing to full speed approaches.
Geopfert uses simple concepts to show you how to get the most from your throws and how to eliminate the mistakes that cost your athletes distance.
39 minutes. 2013.
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1 February 2006
Water System Unplugs
Ethernet boosts efficiency at growing Canadian burgh and halts expensive quick fixes
By Victor K.L. Wong and Thomas Dunn
The City of Coquitlam sits in the heart of the lower mainland on the west coast of British Columbia, Canada, about 20 minutes from the U.S. border. Its population has more than doubled in the past 20 years. Growing from a handful of homes in the 1970s to more than 9,400 homes and numerous commercial services, the city has become responsible for 500 kilometers of water mains, 400 kilometers of sanitary mains, and 450 kilometers of drainage.
Fast-growing municipalities like Coquitlam face challenges not only to replace tired technologies, but to implement appropriate security measures with those technologies. Monitoring facilities through supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) and adding remote video surveillance and data logging for security at remote sites are at the forefront of such challenges.
With any municipal or industrial growth comes a need to move data from remote locations to a central monitoring facility. That's where Ethernet network environments come in. They use radio instead of cable to provide network connectivity for field radio telemetry unit (RTU) locations. Communications vendors now demonstrate Ethernet networks from 115 KBps up to 1 MBp using spread spectrum radios and 900, 2400, and 5800 MHz radio bands. So industry can cost-effectively manage remote systems with enhanced bandwidth.
New wireless Ethernet network systems are scalable and flexible to ensure organizational network growth, which could work well for a growing city. The solutions also provide easy-to-deploy and easy-to-manage networks that allow remote management and control of network devices to reduce overall management and servicing costs. For SCADA systems, radio products for the 900 MHz band and data rates from 115 to 512 KBps are the most cost-effective.
SCADA on the move
Most municipalities today already have SCADA systems in place, but those using radio communications as the primary backbone face limits through small bandwidths, with only minimal bandwidth for retrieving data logs and applying remote surveillance. With the growing popularity of SCADA systems in larger municipalities for monitoring remote water and sewer facilities, even small towns now use basic remote telemetry devices to monitor alarms and provide call-out to operation personnel.
North American governments and municipalities operating distribution systems use telemetry systems for fresh water, waste water, and storm water. Managed traffic-light control, security, irrigation, lane control, and vehicle location systems use a combination of computer monitoring at central facilities and remote field devices, including RTU and programmable logic controller (PLC) products.
Since 1991, the City of Coquitlam had operated its water and sewer distribution systems using RTUs and radios to provide basic control and monitoring with connections to an 800 MHz trunking system, operating at data rates of 600 bps. The central monitoring facility was running a DOS-based HMI software package, but it wasn't enough. The trunking radios introduced long delays in granting permission to transmit during peak periods.
After years of growing and investing in short-term fixes to minimize delays in trunking radios, re-evaluate telemetry system requirements, and upgrade to intelligent RTUs and a Microsoft Windows-based HMI software package, the City of Coquitlam stopped all expansions with its existing RTU product to determine which RTU option met design criteria needed for future expansion. The RTU products could do data logging, so they were great for flow monitoring stations, increasing data throughput of the spread spectrum product line. But after more trial and error involving recommendations for a license-free spread spectrum for new stations and further investigation and radio tests, the final decision rested with adding Ethernet capability to their product lines.
With Ethernet, the city could supply high-bandwidth data transmission using addressable packets of information to route data between locations, which connect via network cable. Thirty years earlier, this technology didn't easily support long-distance cable runs needed for field RTU use. Fiber-optic cables can move data over longer distances, but the costs are still too high for the amount of data a SCADA system would typically transmit.
Minimizing security issues
Because all wireless data networks offer the opportunity for data interception and insertion, it's impossible to guarantee absolute security in a wireless or even a wired network. But you can minimize those risks by providing layers of security to the wireless Ethernet network. Today's terrorism concerns have led manufacturers to enhance security for door-and-hatch entry alarming by adding video surveillance to better respond to potential threats to reservoirs and pumping stations. Field personnel need to use more and faster information carrying notebook computers and handheld devices. We can't address these problems without more bandwidth in SCADA system communications design.
Using wireless Ethernet in municipal applications, such as those at the City of Coquitlam, could open up new possibilities for integrating data, voice, and video into one single network. Applications might include a combination of traditional SCADA and telemetry services, remote video and surveillance monitoring, and emergency voice services while leveraging existing infrastructures. These applications are possible because of the larger bandwidths a wireless Ethernet system could provide over conventional radio systems.
Some municipal agencies have even reassessed their security readiness and are now installing new or upgraded security and surveillance systems, including wireless video, to help enhance the security system. This is a first step in mitigating damage to a water supply system. Ethernet systems could also piggyback voice data over the radio network using voice-over-Internet protocol. This provides a cost-effective alternative to a traditional telephone network in municipal systems where traditional services are not available or where you might need a temporary voice connection, such as at water reservoirs or watersheds.
Investment pays off
The City of Coquitlam wasn't going to be left behind. Before getting proposals for the new wireless Ethernet data network, the city was already on the wireless bandwagon, having started its video surveillance program using other wireless radio products.
Already, the city is enjoying improved data response time for alarms and analog information. In fact, the city realized the possibility of using video data on this network within the bandwidth limits and will evaluate for remote access to e-mail once they move more water and sewer sites from the old system to the new Ethernet data system. They also anticipate a need for more store and forward repeater sites when they start the expansion. The city will integrate access point radios with new fiber-optic cables, installing them in the next two to five years as part of a hybrid system.
About the Authors
Victor K.L. Wong (email@example.com) is chief engineer, SCADA Systems, at Dayton & Knight Ltd. in North Vancouver, BC, Canada. Thomas Dunn (firstname.lastname@example.org ) is chief technologist, SCADA Systems, at Dayton & Knight Ltd.
Wired or Wireless? You Make the Call.
By Ellen Fussell Policastro
The design to unplug is not a simple question when it comes to Ethernet technology, and it depends who you ask and what your application is. Industry experts say there are pros and cons to wireless and hardwired Ethernet technology. "Hardwired has been around longer, and more people are comfortable with it," said Eddie Lee, Moxa Technologies national product sales manager. There are fewer variables for problems with wired, he said, "but on the flip side, wireless is one of those technologies where there are so many variables that offer newer more efficient solutions."
Wireless is great for saving costs in installation and in its flexibility, said Tim Black, Wonderware's device integration manager. "This will become more prevalent as the technology evolves," he said. Black also believes the increase in wireless use will give manufacturers more flexibility and lower their installation costs, at least after they get comfortable with its reliability. "Just like cell phone technology today, wireless computing and networking will become a standard for many types of applications," he said.
People have been comfortable with wireless for years, but some are still overcoming imperfect technologies from the past, Lee said. "Some people, like the old school plant floors guys, say wireless Ethernet is not reliable for industrial applications," he said. "Yet those same players are now jumping on the bandwagon."
Not so fast. Wired Ethernet is safer, more reliable, faster, and better overall, said Kraft electrical leader Evan Hand. People only use wireless "when costs (long runs or frequent changes) or application requirements (portability) overcome wired advantages," he said. Yet he does admit "there is gradual acceptance for specific applications. I do see it becoming a tool that engineers can use to solve control problems," he said, especially where they need portability or frequent changes.
Black said the advantage of wired Ethernet, at least at the moment, is its higher speed capabilities with a better range. "The faster the rate with wireless, the shorter the distance you must go," he said. "Therefore, I would say in most manufacturing environments, where speed and reliability are key and where disruptions of data flow are intolerable, wired is more prevalent. In SCADA environments that might require flexibility and range, and where speed is not so important, wireless is perfect. There will always be a mix of wired and wireless implementations," he said.
While Hand sees a place for wireless, he still believes most installations will remain wired in the future. "I do see wireless as providing a solution for specific application problems," Hand said. "This includes use in the real-time control network, especially where portability is an advantage." But he said he doesn't think it'll replace all wired connections, "at least not until technology or bandwidth is expanded to allow a lot more traffic on a wireless network," he said. "I think one of the potential roadblocks in large scale acceptance might be tools to implement and secure the wireless network."
Both sides want secure space
What about security? If a food manufacturer is concerned about protecting recipes, "that's different than a general municipality that someone could hack into and turn things on and off," Lee said. "Bringing down a wireless Ethernet network or system at a facility or petrochemical plant by hacking into the network would require a lot more effort than cutting wires." It's more likely events are the result of "disgruntled ex-employees rather than from some outsider trying to hack into the network," he said. "Hardwired systems with passwords are just as susceptible, if not more than, a wireless network," he said. "But you still can't overlook the fact that it's much easier to set off a bomb than take the time to hack into a wirelessly encrypted network."
Hand disagrees. "You have to have physical access to tap into a wired environment. You can attack from a distance with wireless," he said. Plus, wireless has the disadvantage of "susceptibility to denial of service type of attacks without being logged into the network (you could jam the radio frequencies)."
"Even with secured wireless connections, it is easy to gain access to the network," Black said.
Don't overlook cost savings
Lee believes there are advantages to hardwired. "You don't have the additional due diligence of selecting the most appropriate wireless technology," he said. And using hardwired cuts out the confusion. "You have fewer options with hardwired, which only come into play with the actual components you use to transmit Ethernet data, such as hubs vs. switches vs. routers. They're all components of hardwired systems, but you're no longer debating what kind of hardwire. You're just talking about maximizing traffic efficiency and speed within hardwired systems. There are fewer opportunities for hardwired problems and fewer variables for causing network problems."
But if you have the correct technology that would make it reliable for that application, wireless can save a ton of money and labor time for the application, Lee said. "With something as simple as connecting a data network from one facility to an expanding manufacturing facility across the street, to do it hardwired, you'd need a permit to dig under the road, and you'd have to pull conduit. With wireless, it's as simple as setting up a transmitter and receiver and making sure they're within the correct distance," he said. "There's a huge benefit and efficiency of time and money, assuming you have a reliable wireless solution."
Spread Spectrum Defined
Spread spectrum technology is a method of taking data that might normally travel as one message on a single frequency, and breaking it up into small packets (a series of bits containing data, control, and source and destination addresses information). These packets then travel over many frequencies in the band. Actress Hedy Lamarr helped develop spread spectrum techniques during World War II to prevent unauthorized interception of messages. While the military has used spread spectrum in their bands for the past 60 years, it's only been available commercially over the last 10 years. The most prevalent method of using multiple frequencies is by hopping from one frequency to another every fraction of a second until the message fully transmits.
The early 1990s brought a new radio frequency band (between 902 MHz and 928 MHz) called spread spectrum radio communications. Data rates in this band typically operated around 19.2 Kbps, although we still used 9.6 Kbps. RTU equipment operated through serial communications RS-232 data ports with a maximum speed of 57 Kbps, and the limiting factors still resided with the data radio maximum throughputs. Users of spread spectrum radio technology no longer had to license a frequency or pair of frequencies from Industry Canada or the FCC. The often lengthy frequency coordination and assignment period from Industry Canada was no longer a barrier with the use of license-free spread spectrum products. Clients who once had significant delays in data communications on the licensed channels due to data traffic levels and number of remotes could now add more remote stations without sacrificing system performance.
Find more information on wireless and Ethernet at www.isa.org.
The Ethernet Mesh by Kevin Burak and Roland Gendreau
An Overview of Wireless Networks by Matthew N. Anyanwu and Houssain Kettani
Courses on CD
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Six months ago, Deborah Han's laptop died.
Instead of replacing the old machine, the Walnut Creek city planner decided to buy an iPhone 3GS and see how long it would take before she was forced to get a laptop. Six months later, she still hasn't made the purchase.
"I realized that a lot of things that my laptop does, my iPhone could also do," said Han, 29. "It's not as good as my laptop but my work and lifestyle don't require me to look at my laptop that much."
Han is part of a growing group of smart phone users who have shifted more of their computing workload to their mobile device. In most cases, smart phone users can't completely ditch their computers, which are better for bigger tasks like creating documents, editing files and viewing media.
But the rise of the smart phone is reordering the way people compute, allowing people to tackle tasks like e-mailing, document viewing, social networking and light browsing from their handheld. In the process, it's lessening some of the need for a laptop or desktop, both in the workplace and at home.
Devices like the iPhone, BlackBerry and new Android devices pack in the processing power of small computers.
With 3G data access, Wi-Fi support and new full featured mobile browsers, users are able to enjoy a good rendering of a laptop Internet experience.
And with the explosion of mobile applications in the last year, smart phone users are able to rely on tailored programs that make certain tasks easier on a handheld than on a traditional computer.
Allen Nogee, an analyst with In-Stat said a recent survey of smart phone owners found that 35 percent of their data usage came in the home. He said that for many lighter tasks in the home, users are turning to the smart phone rather than booting up the desktop or laptop.
"If they want to browse the Internet or if they want to see a Web link they may pull out their phone and see that before walking over to the laptop," Nogee said. "I think a lot of people are offloading a lot of those laptop tasks to the phone."
A survey by Rubicon Consulting in March found that of respondents who were asked if they often carried their iPhone in place of a notebook, 28 percent of agreed strongly and 29 percent agreed mildly.
Bruce La Fetra, a business strategist for Rubicon said that while PCs will remain essential, the findings are a testament to the progress smart phones have made.
"There's a lot more capabilities in smart phones that we hardly dreamed of a few years ago," he said. "To be able to have a full, high-speed connection where you have the connectivity of being in the office in a small form factor, that's a huge step up."
For many workers, a smart phone allows them to keep their laptop at bay, while they handle many of their daily tasks.
Reaching for phones
Connie Kim Coutain, assistant director of media relations at Santa Clara University, said she has found herself using her laptop and desktop less now that she's armed with both an iPhone and BlackBerry.
Even though she has five computers at home, including a small netbook, it's her smart phones she reaches for first.
"I check both phones first thing in the morning and it's the last thing I do before I go to bed," she said "They're glued to my hips."
He said PC sales have remained steady despite the economic downturn, in part because average selling prices have come down significantly.
Indeed, PC sales still far outnumber smart phones sales, according to IDC. In the third quarter, PC vendors moved 78 million computers compared to 43 million smart phones.
But smart phones are growing at a faster pace. IDC predicts smart phone sales will go from 151.6 million units in 2008 to 334.2 million units in 2013.
PCs still remain more capable devices that serve bigger needs. Ken Dulaney, an analyst with Gartner, said the small screens and keyboards of smart phones prevent users from doing real content creation.
He said even for document viewing, the small screen can be an issue. Gartner has advised its customers to read all their attachments on a PC because of concerns about clients overlooking information when viewing it on a smart phone screen.
He said increasingly the smart phone and PC will settle into more defined roles and will lead to an overall rise in the intensity of computing by users.
Cindi Cheney, owner of CJ Event Management, said her Mac is still essential for doing spreadsheets, preparing documents and doing heavy research. But on any given day, her BlackBerry Curve is her go-to device.
She said more than a year ago, when she had an assistant, she used to rely on her and her computer to correspond with clients. When the economy forced her to layoff her assistant, the BlackBerry took on a much bigger role.
While it handled about a quarter of her communications before, she now turns to it for 75 percent of her correspondence, even when she's sitting in front of her computer.
"It just seems easier for some reason because it's all right there," Cheney said. "It reminds me I have appointments, what e-mail I have, any follow-ups I have to do. Basically, it's an extension of my laptop but it's more portable and easy."
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Thousands of Chicago Public School teachers rally before marching to the Board of Education's headquarters in protest in Chicago on May 23. Teachers say they are upset with contract talks, especially the offered 2 percent raise to work a longer school day this fall.
Many children in Chicago Public Schools will go from having the shortest school days in the nation to some of the longest this fall, a move that some experts say is needed to help push the struggling system ahead in student achievement.
Other school districts are reporting improvement in achievement after extending the school day, and if President Barack Obama and Education Secretary Arne Duncan had their way, all of America's kids would be in school longer with shorter summer vacations.
But one researcher said the perception among policy makers and the public that U.S. students spend less time in school than their peers in other countries is not backed by fact.
“To paint a broad brush is misleading," said Jim Hull, a senior policy analyst at the Center for Public Education in Alexandria, Va. The center is an initiative with the National School Boards Association. "The vast majority of American students are required to go school for as many hours a year as students in most all other countries.”
Still, in Chicago, public school students have the shortest school day — 5 hours and 45 minutes — among the nation's 50 largest districts, according the National Council on Teacher Quality. The national average is 6.7 hours in school. Under Chicago Mayor Rahm Emnauel's plan, elementary schools will move to seven hours and most city high schools will extend their day to 7½ hours, although one day during the week would be shorter by 75 minutes.
“More districts are now looking to break free of the standard school schedule because there are too many students who are not reaching higher academic standards,” said Jennifer Davis, president of the National Center on Time and Learning, a Boston-based nonprofit group dedicated to expand learning time to improve student performance.
School districts across the country are using federal or state funding to extend the school day and/or school calendar, said Staci Maiers, spokeswoman for the National Education Association, which supports teachers and school employees. The NEA has 3 million members.
But Hull said time spent learning in school and time spent studying are two different things.
Students in China, Korea, Japan and India are not required to spend more time in school than most U.S. students, Hull said. According to the U.S. Department of Education, American schools average 180 days on instruction each year. Most nations require between 175 and 180 days of school and/or between 900 and 1,000 hours of instructional time per year, depending on the grade level, he said.
“It should not be taken that time is not important because it is very much so," Hull said. "In the case of Chicago Public Schools, it can be an extremely valuable tool for students who need the extra time."
'We had to do something'
Emanuel and leaders of the Chicago Public Schools hope more time in the classroom will mean better grades and more high school graduates from the nation's third-largest school system.
"Among 10 of the largest cities in the U.S., our students have 22 percent less instructional time than their peers, and 83 percent of our third-graders are not reading at their grade level," Marielle Sainvilus, spokeswoman for the Chicago Public Schools, told msnbc.com. "We had to do something to ensure that our students had the time in class needed to succeed."
Sainvilus said some elementary schools and charter schools in Chicago have added extra time to their school day, but getting all on board has proven to be a challenge.
A longer school day is a contentious issue for Chicago parents, students and the Chicago Teachers Union, which represents 25,000 members.
"I think if it is done appropriately, it could be a great thing,” said Nell Cotton, a mother of two children enrolled in Chicago schools. "We're facing a $700 million deficit in the district and our students don't even have a playground to play in -- how are they going to find the money to extend the day?"
If her 12-year-old daughter Cecilia Cotton had her way, she would nix the plan and head home at 2:15 p.m.
“More school? It’s hard enough already,” said the sixth-grade student. “Getting to school earlier or later is not going to helpful for me or my family. I am not looking forward to it."
The longer school day is part of contract negotiations between the schools and the Chicago Teachers Union. The teachers voted to authorize a strike as early as mid-August, union officials say. Union leaders said the vote provides leverage in the negotiations.
Chicago teachers are upset at Emanuel, whose School Board rescinded a 4 percent pay increase for teachers last year, and who asked teachers at several schools to waive the union contract to work more hours once the school day is extended in the fall, according to NBCChicago.com. The Illinois Educational Labor Relations Board, however, blocked any negotiation attempts with schools, according to NBCChicago.com.
View more videos at: http://nbcchicago.com.
'Keep moving ahead'
While the Chicago schools and the union wrestle, administrators elsewhere are moving ahead on expanded classroom time.
All 25 district schools in the Louisiana Recovery District are operating on an expanded school day, with a standard of 8.5 hours, and most of the 55 charter schools in New Orleans feature a longer day and/or year, according to Davis, of the National Center on Time and Learning.
Willie E. Thompson Middle School and Arthur Hill High School, both in Saginaw, Mich., are just two of the schools that have used federal School Improvement Grants to hire additional staff for its extended learning, according to NEA’s Maiers.
In New Jersey, about 25 school districts could have longer days and school year under a bill being considered by the state’s Assembly Education Committee on Thursday, according to the Newark-based Star-Ledger.
In Phoenix, Balsz School District Superintendent Jeffrey Smith said not only do the district's 2,800 students have a seven-hour school day, but students have more school days than the average U.S. public schools student. Students at Balsz's five schools have classes for 200 days, compared to the traditional 180 days, Smith said. The Balsz district adopted a longer school day and calendar three years ago, Smith said.
“Two of our five schools were failing, and since we extended our year we have seen an incredible growth in our students," Smith said. He said he's seen improvements in grades in math and reading across the district.
"I highly encourage Chicago to keep moving ahead and to keep doing what they plan to do to increase their school hours," Smith said. "We went through these kinds of discussions and everyone has to remember to make decisions benefiting the student. ... Students need longer days and a longer school year to be competitive in our world today. There is no way around it."
More content from msnbc.com and NBC News:
- US military clears up Beltway UFO mystery
- Troubling sign for housing recovery: Foreclosures jump
- Witness says Sandusky threatened him unless he kept quiet
- Metallica helps FBI try to track down killer of Virginia Tech student
- Blinded soldier aims for Paralympic Games in London
- Video: Caught on camera: Toddler tossed during car chase
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In 1837 Paterson township seceded from Essex County, New Jersey. It became the silk production capital of the country when it was incorporated into burgeoning Passaic County. Paterson would eventually stake its claim to several pivotal figures of the 20th century and at one point or another they all called Paterson their home: Lou Costello, William Carlos Williams, Uncle Floyd, Allen Ginsberg, Bert Wheeler, Rubin "Hurricane" Carter, Prince Randian and today's blog topic hero--Mad's Maddest Artist, Don Martin.
At some point in the 21st century an obsessive genius/knucklehead spent too much time compiling the only database that matters. This link is especially for those who need to know right now what the Batmobile with a flat tire sounds like.
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William the Conqueror
Short Biography, facts and interesting information about William the Conqueror of England
during the Middle Ages
Short Biography profile and facts about the life of William the Conqueror of England
The following biography information provides basic facts and information about the life of William the Conqueror King of England:
Also Known by the Nickname: William the Bastard
Lifespan: 1028 - 1087
Reigned as King of England: 1066 - 1087
Date of Birth: William the Conqueror was born in 1028 - his exact date of birth is unknown
Family connections / Genealogy: He was the bastard son of Robert I the Duke of Normandy. William had six daughters and four sons: Robert, who was called Court-hose or Short-legs; William, called Rufus, because he had red and ruddy complexion; Henry, called Beau-clerc or the fine scholar; and Richard who died young
Married: Matilda of Flanders in 1052
Date succeeded to the throne of England: King William I was crowned King of England in January 1067 at Westminster Abbey, London
Date when William the Conqueror died: King William I died at Saint-Gervais near Rouen, France on 9th September 1087
Cause of the Death of William the Conqueror: Riding accident when he fell from his horse
Character of William the Conqueror: Tough, brave, inspirational and religious
Accomplishments or why William the Conqueror was famous: Victory at the Battle of Hastings in 1066. Building great castles in England, including the Tower of London. The Domesday Book. The Bayeux Tapestry. The Norman Conquest and the 'Harrying of the North'. Hereward the Wake
William the Conqueror
The story and biography of William the Conqueror which contains interesting information, facts & the history about the life of William the Conqueror
Timeline of William the Conqueror
Battle of Hastings
The story of King William I of England ( Nickname William the Bastard : )
Duke William of Normandy also known as William the Bastard. He was born in Falaise in 1028 - his parents were unmarried - hence the nickname. His father was Robert I, the sixth Duke of Normandy. His mother was called Herleva who was the humble daughter of a Tanner called Fulbert. William's parents also had a daughter called Adelaide. Duke Robert of Normandy died in 1035 and William the Bastard became Duke of Normandy at the age of only seven years old. William's mother later married the Viscount of Conteville and produced a half-sister to William called Muriel and two half-brothers - Robert and Odo (Odo later became the Bishop of Bayeux who commissioned the famous Bayeux tapestry). In 1052 William married Matilda of Flanders.
Edward the Confessor, the King of England, took refuge in Normandy after the Danes conquered England, he stayed at the palace of William. He was very kindly treated there, and William said that in 1051 Edward had promised in gratitude that William should succeed him as king of England. Edward the Confessor returned to England and took with him Norman friends and advisors. The English nobles led by Harold Godwinson were furious at having so many French at court and Edward was forced to expel them. Harold Godwinson later married Edith the sister of Edward the Confessor.
In 1065 Duke William met with Harold Godwinson who is believed to have pledged a sacred oath of allegiance to the Duke William. Edward the Confessor then dies and Harold Godwinson, the son of Earl Godwin, claims the English throne and is crowned the King of England. Duke William immediately stakes his claim on the English throne and receives support from many of the French nobles. Duke William appeals to the Pope to support his cause. The Pope agrees and sanctions a Holy War, or Crusade, against England.
Duke William gathered an army and a fleet of ships. Many mercenaries flocked to his cause. The fleet lands on the South coast of England at Pevensey on 28th September 1066. There were no English to meet him - not one soldier! The English led by King Harold had just fought off a Viking invasion. William erected one of three pre-built castle he has brought with him at Pevensey and marched on to Hastings.
King Harold had fought off the Viking invasion led by King Hardrada in the North of England. William and his army were waiting for the Normans at the South coast when they received news of the Vikings. Harold and his men had to make a forced march to York, win a bloody battle with the Vikings on 25th September and then make another forced march back to Southern England to meet Duke William on October 14th. The two armies met at Senlac (later re-named Battle). William, clad in complete armor, was in the very front of the fight, urging on his troops. At one time a cry arose in his army that he was slain and a panic began. William drew off his helmet and rode along the lines, shouting, "I live! I live! Fight on! We shall conquer yet!". It was a hard fought fight and King Harold and his brothers were killed. Duke William was victorious and was crowned King of England in Westminster Abbey on 25th December 1066.
The Normans were rewarded with English land. There were various rebellions against King William I and the Norman Conquest, in both Normandy and England and William had to travel between both countries to keep order. His half-brother Odo, Bishop of Bayeux, was made Earl of Kent and became William's Deputy in England and under his instructions the magnificent Bayeux tapestry was completed illustrating the Norman Invasion.
The English rebellions against the Norman Conquest were first led in 1067 by King Harold's mother Gytha but her forces are defeated. In 1068 King William exacted a terrible punishment on the rebels in the North of England referred to as 'The Harrying of the North'- William ordered that all land is laid to waste and thousands of men, women and children are starved to death. The final major rebellion against William the Conqueror and the Norman Conquest was led by Hereward the Wake with Harold's brother the Earl Morcar against the Normans at Peterborough - once again the rebels were defeated and the Norman Conquest was finally complete.
William the Conqueror instituted his strategy for medieval warfare of building castles and went on to build many castles in England including his most famous, the Tower of London. William the Conqueror also left another legacy - The Doomsday Book which was begun in 1086 and contained detailed records of 13,418 settlements in England. The Doomsday Book, which still survives, provides an insight into the medieval life and times of this era. In 1087 King William the Conqueror died in a riding accident when he fell from his horse
Famous Medieval Kings of the Middle Ages - William the Conqueror
Some interesting facts and short biography information about the History, Life & Times of William the Conqueror. Additional details, facts, history and information about the famous Medieval Kings of the Middle Ages and important events during their times can be accessed via the Middle Ages Sitemap and the section detailing the life and times of the Kings of the Middle Ages.
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Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy told reporters that he is concerned that many politically charged issues are coming before the high court. (AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli)
Starting today, the Supreme Court is hearing two monumental cases relating to same-sex marriage, both at a time when public opinion polls show a growing number of Americans support marriage equality.
A Pew Research Center poll released last week found that 49 percent of Americans support gay marriage and took a deeper look at the reasons why.
The Pew data is most applicable to the case before the Supreme Court determining whether California’s Proposition 8, banning gay marriage in the state, is constitutional. The other case deals with the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which officially defines marriage as between a man and a woman and denies federal benefits to same-sex partners of government employees. A Gallup poll released on Friday found that, if it were put to a vote, 54 percent of Americans would cast a ballot to allow same-sex partners of federal employees to receive benefits, while only 37 percent would vote to not allow it. MORE
Jamie Dimon, Chief Executive Officer of JP Morgan. (AP Photo/Anja Niedringhaus)
Earlier this month, the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations issued its report on the JPMorgan Chase “London Whale” debacle and subsequent cover-up of $6.2 billion in derivatives trading losses. Subcommittee Chairman Carl Levin of Michigan pointed a finger not only at the bank but also said that regulators — notably, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency — fell down on the job.”
Last week, former Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation chair Sheila Bair told Bill, “I think it underscores how even in banks that are viewed as very well-managed, there can be major management breakdowns. These actively traded derivatives can generate very, very large losses in a very short period of time [because of] how volatile they are. I think this is all problematic and should inform some future regulatory choices.”
But it seems some members of the House Agriculture Committee aren’t paying much attention to their colleagues in the Senate. They have brought seven bills to the House floor that will weaken federal regulation of derivatives trading. The bills take aim at Title VII of the Dodd-Frank bank reform act — even though Dodd-Frank has not been fully implemented yet.
Why is a farming committee concerned with derivatives? As David Dayen reports in Salon, since the mid-19th century “farmers used derivatives to achieve stability over future prices.” Although derivatives have evolved since the 1850s, futures traders still use them for commodities such as corn and cotton. MORE
Phil Donahue produced the documentary Body of War with Ellen Spiro. (Credit: Ellen Spiro)
I am not sure exactly when the death of television news took place. The descent was gradual — a slide into the tawdry, the trivial and the inane, into the charade on cable news channels such as Fox and MSNBC in which hosts hold up corporate political puppets to laud or ridicule, and treat celebrity foibles as legitimate news. But if I had to pick a date when commercial television decided amassing corporate money and providing entertainment were its central mission, when it consciously chose to become a carnival act, it would probably be Feb. 25, 2003, when MSNBC took Phil Donahue off the air because of his opposition to the calls for war in Iraq.
Chris Hedges (Credit: Dale Robbins)
Donahue and Bill Moyers, the last honest men on national television, were the only two major TV news personalities who presented the viewpoints of those of us who challenged the rush to war in Iraq. General Electric and Microsoft — MSNBC’s founders and defense contractors that went on to make tremendous profits from the war — were not about to tolerate a dissenting voice. Donahue was fired, and at PBS Moyers was subjected to tremendous pressure. An internal MSNBC memo leaked to the press stated that Donahue was hurting the image of the network. He would be a “difficult public face for NBC in a time of war,” the memo read. Donahue never returned to the airwaves. MORE
This blog post original appeared on the Colorlines blog.
Trader Fred Reimer works on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. U.S. stocks rose strongly this week ahead of a decision by the Federal Reserve about whether to push ahead with aggressive measures to boost the economy. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)
As the New York Stock Exchange reached an all-time high this month, you’d think that the good times were back. But that would be incorrect. What happens on Wall Street has very little to do with what’s going on in the real economy. Corporate profits have never been higher, but — excluding the highest earners — real wages are at a 40 year low. With this fundamental disconnect — and political gridlock in Washington — it’s unlikely that our economy will return to health anytime soon.
The good news is that in thousands of communities across America, people are working together to bring about what may be the beginning of a new national economic contract. Where Washington and Wall Street are falling down citizens are banding together, not just to ameliorate the suffering caused by national stagnation, but to launch innovative economic initiatives that might create a brighter, fairer future for everyone. MORE
In her 2012 book, Bull By The Horns: Fighting to Save Main Street From Wall Street and Wall Street From Itself, former FDIC chairwoman Sheila Bair offers dozens of recommendations for reforming our regulatory system to do what it was meant to do. We’ve excerpted three of our favorites.
Sheila Bair testifies on Capitol Hill in 2010. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)
1. Keep the Consumer Agency
I don’t know how anyone can say that we have done a good job of protecting consumers in financial services. Payment shock mortgages with abusive prepayment penalties, fee-laden credit cards, excessive overdraft fees — these are three examples of the types of products where disclosures have been inadequate and the products too complex for consumers to understand what they were getting themselves into. Moreover, the situation is worse with regard to nonbank financial providers, for example, payday lenders and money remitters, who charge fees and interest equivalent to several hundred percent. Similarly, the most abusive subprime loans were typically made by nonbank mortgage originators.
Pre-Dodd-Frank, the Federal Reserve Board had the job of writing the consumer rules for financial products, and its efforts were woefully inadequate. The core problem, I believe, was that the Fed’s responsibilities for monetary policy and safety and soundness supervision always came first. Insufficient attention was given to what was happening to consumers. What’s more, when the Fed did write consumer rules, they were generally lengthy and highly complex, making it difficult for consumers to understand their rights. The complexity and cost of complying with the rules also forced many community banks out of the business of consumer lending.
It is a very good thing that Congress has now created an agency devoted exclusively to consumer protection. I have high hopes that this new agency will work hard to simplify and strengthen consumer protections, while bringing much-needed enforcement of consumer rules to the nonbank sector. People of goodwill can differ on the structure of the new agency. I prefer that a regulatory agency have a board instead of a single director. A board brings a diversity of viewpoints that can help guard against regulatory capture, which is one of the reasons why I believe the OCC — if we keep it — should also be headed by a board. But the continuing debate about the structure of the consumer agency should not impede its ability to carry out its important functions. The agency deserves to have a Senate-confirmed head to lead it. MORE
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nev., center, flanked by then-Sen. Barack Obama, left, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of Calif. speaks at the Library of Congress in Washington to outline their agenda for reform in the wake of the scandal involving former lobbyist Jack Abramoff, Jan. 18, 2006. From left are: Obama, Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., Reid, Pelosi and Rep. James E. Clyburn, D-S.C. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
Center for Responsive Politics
A Center for Responsive Politics (CRP) report released yesterday found that the number of registered lobbyists in Washington has declined from its 2007 peak, and the amount of money being spent on lobbying has declined since 2010. But that doesn’t necessarily mean there’s less lobbying going on in Washington, writes report author Dan Auble.
“[F]ormer lobbyists have not moved far, and they are still likely influencing policy from the shadows,” writes Auble, a researcher who oversees the center’s lobbying and revolving door databases. Auble found that, of the lobbyists who were registered in 2012 but are not registered in 2013, at least 46 percent are still at the same firm, and an additional 15 percent are working within the same industry.
By law, anyone who spends more than 20 percent of their time lobbying is required to register. “The 20 percent threshold for filing is based largely on the honor system,” wrote Auble in a live chat yesterday. “Within a firm, there may be record keeping on an hourly basis, but many lobbyists will be on retainer and simply have to estimate whether they’ve met the limit.” MORE
Health care workers on strike. (Credit: SEIU1199NW)
“Providence Health & Services is a not-for-profit Catholic healthcare ministry committed to providing for the needs of the communities it serves — especially for those who are poor and vulnerable.”
So reads the Providence website. But ask the members of SEIU Healthcare 1199NW what they think of the five-state health care giant’s commitment to vulnerable workers, and they paint a very different picture.
More than 700 union workers went on strike in Olympia, Washington, to protest the nonprofit’s unilateral decision while at the bargaining table to switch employees from an affordable health care plan to a high-deductible plan. These workers at Providence St. Peter Hospital — which include everyone but the doctors, registered nurses and social workers — and the Providence SoundHomeCare and Hospice earn an average of $31,000 annually. MORE
Despite these horrific outcomes, the anniversary of the Iraqi invasion passed with little fanfare in the nation’s capitol. As Peter Baker writes in today’s New York Times, Tuesday came and went “with barely passing notice in a town once consumed by it” in what amounts to a “conspiracy of silence.”
Neither party had much interest in revisiting what succeeded and what failed, who was right and who was wrong. The bipartisan consensus underscored the broader national mood: after 10 years, America seems happy to wash its hands of Iraq. …
President Obama, who rose to political heights on the strength of his opposition to the war, made no mention of it in appearances on Tuesday. Instead, he issued a written statement saluting “the courage and resolve” of the 1.5 million Americans who served during eight years in Iraq and honoring the memory of the nearly 4,500 Americans “who made the ultimate sacrifice.”
In the movie adaptation of their book, All the President’s Men, “Follow the money” was the succinct advice given to Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein by their secret source Deep Throat as they struggled four decades ago to get to the bottom of the Watergate burglary. The scandal ultimately brought down the presidency of Richard Nixon.
Deep Throat’s three words are even truer today; money remains at the root of corruption in government and politics. Efforts to reform campaign finance in the decades since Watergate have been upended, unleashing torrents of cash from undisclosed sources.
Following the money is journalist Matea Gold’s beat. A political reporter in the Washington bureau of the Los Angeles Times and the Chicago Tribune, she says the story of the 2012 elections was the dark money spent to influence the outcome. Moyers & Company senior writer Michael Winship spoke with her at last week’s Lessons of Watergate conference, organized by the citizen’s lobby Common Cause. MORE
Former Senator Russ Feingold speaks at a Common Cause conference to commemorate the 40th anniversary of Watergate.
Although the Watergate scandal and its web of bagmen and illegal contributions led to some new, much needed election rules and regulations, it took 30 years until the McCain-Feingold campaign reform act in 2002 made unprecedented changes to the way elections are funded.
We were “moving in the right direction,” former Senator Russ Feingold, co-sponsor of the McCain-Feingold law, said to Moyers & Company senior writer Michael Winship at Common Cause’s recent conference commemorating the 40th anniversary of Watergate. But the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United decision — which Feingold describes as “lawless, almost absurd” — and other rulings have eviscerated campaign finance reform in America. Nonetheless, Feingold believes that scandal and change will come — that the current system of virtually unlimited and often anonymous campaign monies is not sustainable and “will fall of its own weight.”
Listen to Feingold and Winship’s exclusive conversation here:
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Journal Issue: Drug-Exposed Infants Volume 1 Number 1 Spring 1991
The following are the Center for the Future of Children staff recommendations for policy in response to the problem of drug-exposed infants. An analysis discussing these recommendations follows.
- Pregnant women should receive prenatal care and education about the risks of using drugs, alcohol, and/or tobacco during pregnancy.
- Drug treatment programs should be available for all drug-abusing pregnant women and parents of infants, and these programs should be responsive to other related needs of these families.
- An infant should be considered drug-exposed and in need of some level of intervention if the mother states she has used illegal drugs during pregnancy or if drug exposure is shown through urine or blood tests of the infant. Such tests should be administered only if there is a recent history of maternal drug use and/or medical conditions of the mother or infant indicate that testing is needed for diagnostic or treatment purposes.
- When an infant is identified as drug-exposed, the infant and his/her family should be assessed by health providers (with assistance when necessary from developmental, drug treatment, and other specialists) to determine what intervention, if any, is needed.
- Health and developmental services should be available to all identified drug-exposed infants as needed. Parenting education and other support services should be available to their parents as needed.
- An identified drug-exposed infant should be reported to child protective services only if factors in addition to prenatal drug exposure show that the infant is at risk for abuse or neglect.
- Barriers to child protective services' capacity to meet the requirements of current child welfare laws should be identified and removed. These barriers might include high caseloads, lack of drug treatment and support services for the families, backlogs in the courts, and inadequate numbers of foster or adoptive homes.
- A drug-exposed infant should be removed from the custody of his/her parent(s) only if the parent(s) are unable to protect and care for the infant and either support services are not sufficient to manage this risk or the parent(s) have refused such services. If the parent(s) are not capable of resuming custody of the infant within 12–18 months, despite receiving services to make reunification possible, a permanent, alternative placement should be promptly provided for the infant.
- A woman who uses illegal drugs during pregnancy should not be subject to special criminal prosecution on the basis of allegations that her illegal drug use harms the fetus. Nor should states adopt special civil commitment provisions for pregnant women who use drugs.
- Research should be supported to determine (a) the prevalence of illegal drug use among pregnant women, (b) the relationship between such use and birth and developmental outcomes, and (c) the effectiveness of drug treatment and intervention programs. Special focus should be given to evaluating drug treatment programs for pregnant women and parents with infants for their effectiveness in enabling participants to function as adequate caretakers of their children.
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A TALE OF TWO ARKANSAS
Summary: Two reports on student performance underscore the problem: the state Department of Education has failed to acknowledge there is a problem.
(January 2012) A new student performance report by the Univ. of Arkansas-Fayetteville’s Office for Education Policy (OEP), following surveys from the state Department of Education (2011) and the Policy Foundation (2005-2008) underscore a problem: the department’s failure to admit there is a problem.
The OEP1 report lists Arkansas public schools in the order of their Iowa Tests of Basic Skills results. The survey found 38 schools in Pulaski County, including 23 in the Little Rock School District2 scored less than the 40th percentile. The 50th percentile is the U.S. average on the national test.
Education Department Report Highlights Problem
The OEP report is welcome news to those who support performance measures for Arkansas K-12 public education. Schools whose students consistently score low on national standardized tests clearly have a problem.
Yet only four3 of the 23 Little Rock Schools failed to meet or exceed standards in a 2011 report compiled for the department of Education by the National Office for Research, Measurement and Evaluation Systems at the Univ. of Arkansas-Fayetteville. The report found that 97% of Arkansas public schools, including the other 19 in Little Rock whose students scored less than the 40th percentile are “meeting” or “exceeding” standards.
The problem is that the state Department of Education does not recognize there is a problem with Arkansas K-12 public education. Instead, the department attempts to advance the idea that virtually every public school, including those with low test scores are “meeting” or “exceeding” standards.
There is a better way than denial to address this problem: high expectations.
“For too long,” the Policy Foundation noted in a 1998 report4, “Arkansans have bought the myth that children's social, ethnic, economic, or cultural backgrounds have impaired their ability to effectively learn in our public schools. The excuses, especially among educators, are rampant: They point to minorities, blame single parent homes, and cite low socio-economic backgrounds. Some say rural children are disadvantaged, others comment on inner-city conditions and gangs. These are factors to be sure, but these same educators often overlook that public education has weakened its standards, dumbed down the curriculum, and socially promoted children.” One example: the state Department of Education’s reliance on Arkansas benchmark exams to the exclusion of national standardized tests like the ITBS.
Dr. Thaddeus Lott, a Texas charter school official told Foundation researchers, “It's a myth that if you're born in a poor community and your skin is a certain color that you can't achieve on a higher level.” The truth is that all children can learn when challenged by high expectations.
Markets Aren’t Fooled
Market participants, including businesses and entrepreneurs that make hiring decisions are not fooled by the department’s failure to acknowledge there is a problem. A skilled labor force is a factor of economic production. Enterprises that cannot find skilled workers in Arkansas will seek them in other markets.
Arkansas payroll employment was 1,177,700 (November 2011, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics), a decline of 23,500 jobs since January 2007, despite a national economic expansion that has entered its third year (National Bureau of Economic Research.
1 The OEP findings by Dr. Gary Ritter were published in The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette (Jan. 1, 2012).
2 The Little Rock schools that scored less than the U.S. average and their percentile ranks are (elementary) Meadowcliff and Mabelvale (38); David O Dodd and Franklin Incentive (37); Stephens (36); Baseline and Wilson (34); Bale (33), Washington Magnet (32); Romine Interdistrict (31); Wakefield (30); Geyer Springs (29); and Watson (27); (middle) Forest Heights (35); Mabelvale (32); Henderson (30); Cloverdale Aerospace (26); (high schools) Hall (27); McClellan (26); J.A. Fair (24); and (non-traditional schools) Hamilton Learning Academy (18) and Felder Alternative Academy (9).
3 The four Little Rock schools were Wilson, J.A. Fair, Hamilton, and Felder.
4 “Restoring Public Education’s Academic Mission,” Arkansas Policy Foundation, September 1998.
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The Higgs Mechanism part 4: Symmetry Breaking
At last we’re ready to explain the Higgs mechanism. We start where we left off last time: a complex scalar field with a gauged phase symmetry that brings in a (massless) gauge field . The difference is that now we add a new self-interaction term to the Lagrangian:
where is a constant that determines the strength of the self-interaction. We recall the gauged symmetry transformations:
If we write down an expression for the energy of a field configuration we get a bunch of derivative terms — basically like kinetic energy — that all occur with positive signs and then the potential energy term that comes in the brackets above:
Now, the “ground state” of the system should be one that minimizes the total energy, but the usual choice of setting all the fields equal to zero doesn’t do that here. The potential has a “bump” in the center, like the punt in the bottom of a wine bottle, or like a sombrero.
So instead of using that as our ground state, we’ll choose one. It doesn’t matter which, but it will be convenient to pick:
where is chosen to minimize the potential. We can still use the same field as before, but now we will write
Since the ground state is a point along the real axis in the complex plane, vibrations in the field measure movement that changes the length of , while vibrations in measure movement that changes the phase.
We want to consider the case where these vibrations are small — the field basically sticks near its ground state — because when they get big enough we have enough energy flying around in the system that we may as well just work in the more symmetric case anyway. So we are justified in only working out our new Lagrangian in terms up to quadratic order in the fields. This will also make our calculations a lot simpler. Indeed, to quadratic order (and ignoring an irrelevant additive constant) we have
so vibrations of the field don’t show up at all in quadratic interactions.
We should also write out our covariant derivative up to linear terms:
so that the quadratic Lagrangian is
Now, the term in parentheses on the right looks like the mass term of a vector field with mass . But what is the kinetic term of this field?
And so we can write down the final form of our quadratic Lagrangian:
In order to deal with the fact that our normal vacuum was not a minimum for the energy, we picked a new ground state that did minimize energy. But the new ground state doesn’t have the same symmetry the old one did — we have broken the symmetry — and when we write down the Lagrangian in terms of excitations around the new ground state, we find it convenient to change variables. The previously massless gauge field “eats” part of the scalar field and gains a mass, leaving behind the Higgs field.
This is essentially what’s going on in the Standard Model. The biggest difference is that instead of the initial symmetry being a simple phase, which just amounts to rotations around a circle, we have a (slightly) more complicated symmetry to deal with. For those that are familiar with some classical groups, we start with an action of on a column vector made of two complex scalar fields with a potential of the form:
which is invariant under the obvious action of and a phase action of . Since the group is three-dimensional there are three gauge fields to introduce for its symmetry and one more for the symmetry.
When we pick a ground state that breaks the symmetry it doesn’t completely break; a one-dimensional subgroup still leaves the new ground state invariant — though it’s important to notice that this is not just the factor, but rather a mixture of this factor and a subgroup of . Thus only three of these gauge fields gain mass; they become the and bosons that carry the weak force. The other gauge field remains massless, and becomes — the photon.
At high enough energies — when the fields bounce around enough that the bump doesn’t really affect them — then the symmetry comes back and we see that the electromagnetic and weak interactions are really two different aspects of the same, unified phenomenon, just like electricity and magnetism are really two different aspects of electromagnetism.
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CHS will build nitrogen fertilizer plant in NDFarmers and North Dakota state officials have long discussed the possibility and benefits of a nitrogen fertilizer plant in the state and on Wednesday, Governor Jack Dalrymple confirmed that those talks have yielded a significant result.
By: Lisa Gibson, Agweek
Farmers and North Dakota state officials have long discussed the possibility and benefits of a nitrogen fertilizer plant in the state and Governor Jack Dalrymple on Wednesday confirmed that those talks have yielded a significant result.
“Today, we’re going to announce with CHS (Cenex Harvest States) Inc. the plans to build a $1.2 billion nitrogen fertilizer plant at Spiritwood in North Dakota,” Dalrymple said. “This is obviously great news for all our farmers in North Dakota.”
The facility will produce 2,200 tons of fertilizer per day, which will be distributed by CHS, a farmer-owned cooperative based in Inver Grove Heights, Minn.
It is scheduled to begin operating in 2016. Because CHS already is in the business of distributing fertilizer, the partnership is a win-win, Dalrymple said.
“They represent so many farmers and so many co-ops in North Dakota,” he added. “These people have interests that are completely aligned with our interests in North Dakota.”
The new plant will mean North Dakota farmers can get their fertilizer in-state, instead of relying on outside suppliers.
In the making
Dalrymple said his office has been working to help develop a nitrogen fertilizer plant in North Dakota for some time. It doesn’t take a genius, he said, to figure out that the concept is a valuable one, in light of the amount of nitrogen gas available in the state. Much of that gas is flared off and wasted.
“There’s potential there for some profit to be had,” he said.
The case, he added, is a compelling one.
N-Flex LLC, based in New York, also recently expressed interest in using North Dakota’s available natural gas resource, asking the North Dakota Industrial Commission for $1 million to develop mobile natural gas fertilizer plants in the state. The commission requested more information about the system at its August meeting and might discuss the prospect further, if N-Flex provides the required information.
The CHS fertilizer plant will create even more jobs in North Dakota, which already carries the distinction of having the nation’s lowest unemployment rate. Initially, the plant will create between 100 and 120 jobs, at its location alone.
Dalrymple attributes the state’s low unemployment rate to a number of factors, including its friendly business climate and a state government that doesn’t often interfere.
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Ocean Ecosystems and Resources : Workshop Reports/Summaries
The Division hosts many workshops, symposia, and other meetings that provide information or bring together policy-makers, members of industry, scientists, and the general public to discuss timely issues. Discussions at workshops and other events are often published in workshop summaries, websites, newsletters, and other formats to preserve and make publicly accessible the information or discussions from the event.
Oceanography in 2025: Proceedings of a Workshop (2009)
What research and technology needs, trends, and barriers might affect oceanography in 2025? Scientists, engineers, and technologists participated in a January 2009 workshop, sponsored by the Office of Naval Research, to include the perspective of the research community for U.S. Navy and Marine strategies for the 2025 timeframe. Physical processes of the ocean, including drivers of temperature, salinity, and currents, were emphasized. Specifi... More >>
Recruiting Fishery Scientists: Workshop on Stock Assessment and Social Science Careers (2000)
The National Marine Fisheries Service employs many fishery scientists with diverse skills. The agency finds that the supply of fishery biologists is adequate to meet most of its needs. However, increasing demands on the agency to understand fish populations and the social and economic conditions in fishing communities have created a need for additional experts in the fields of fisheries stock assessment and social sciences. This report provide... More >>
Opportunities for Environmental Applications of Marine Biotechnology: Proceedings of the October 5-6, 1999 Workshop (2000)
The overall goals of the workshop were to examine opportunities for marine biotechnology, to discuss where things stood in the field of environmental marine biotechnology, to envision the field in the future, and to discuss any impediments that might be encountered along the way. Speaker summaries examine the current state of knowledge for each topic and highlighted the research needs in each area. This report also highlights the most recen... More >>
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The publication of the Bodleian catalogue of incunabula has been a turning point in incunabula studies. Professor Dondi will discuss evidence gathered from thousands of surviving 15th-century books used to assess the extent of the book-trade and how it contributed to the economic history of Renaissance Venice.
A reception will immediately follow the program. For more information regarding this event or to attend, please respond to
firstname.lastname@example.org. To view a listing of events, visit
Cristina Dondi graduated from Milan, Univ. Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, in Mediaeval History and Palaeography, and obtained her PhD in History from Kings College London. She worked for 10 years at the Oxford Bodleian Library towards the publication of the 6-volume catalogue of incunabula of that collection, the fifth largest in the world (published in 2005) and was the first Lyell Research Fellow in the History of the Early Modern Printed Book, Univ. of Oxford, Lincoln College. Dondi since has been a member of the History Faculty continuing her research and teaching Italian Palaeography and History of the early printed book for the History and Modern Languages faculties. She is a visiting researcher at the newly founded Centre for the Study of the Book, Bodleian Library.
The Kristeller Occassional Lectures in Western Cultural History before 1800 are made possible by a bequest from the late Professor Kristeller to the Columbia University Libraries.
Columbia University Libraries/Information Services is one of the top five academic research library systems in North America. The collections include over 10 million volumes, over 100,000 journals and serials, as well as extensive electronic resources, manuscripts, rare books, microforms, maps, graphic and audio-visual materials. The services and collections are organized into 25 libraries and various academic technology centers. The Libraries employs more than 550 professional and support staff. The website of the Libraries at www.columbia.edu/cu/lweb is the gateway to its services and resources.
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How to Geotag pictures on flickr
I'l try to go thru all the techniques I know and I've used to add geographical information to pictures, so they can be mapped to an actual point on a world map.
Why flickr ?
Because it's the online service I use to expose my photos to the world. Some of the techniques explained here can be used with other services - but as I don't use them you'll need dear reader to find the tweaks needed.
Using the provided map
Is probably the best solution. You just snap the picture and when you upload it you move it to the proper spot on the map.
- Easy to use
- Some maps are incomplete so you can't geotag that way
- Where do you put the picture , where you where or where the subject was
Using an external GPS source
This requires a little bit more of hardware than your camera - but you will be able to geotag pictures where the map isn't accurate enough (like for say this picture). You'll need your camera, a gps device capable of logging gps coordinates and some software. The software will match pictures and longitudes and latitudes. The way this work is quite simple : each time the gps write a log entry it also logs the time. When you press the shutter button, the camera also records the time. The Piece of software will read both files and do a matching based on those time stamps (I use GPS photo linker on my mac, and heard good reviews from geosetter).
- Not too complex
- Tags anywhere on earth
- More post processing
- cost of the device
- need to think about some extra batteries for the device
Using alternate services
I know of at least two. They both use google maps which is the most accurate maps available for free online (AFAIK). And they will geotag your pictures using the flickr API. These services are http://loc.alize.us/ and http://maps.yuan.cc/. They both use the same data , and I have noticed any differences using those services. I did use use these services because I didn't always have a GPS, or the gps with me.
Last but not least I've just found out a nice way to geotag pictures taken while flying on planes the explanations are here.
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May 10, 2007
The universe is a noisy place – from traffic growling along roads to the random fluctuations in DNA sequences and from the distribution of stars in galaxies to the hissy fit that is electronic noise. One thing all these forms of noise have in common is they are related by the phrase “One-over-f”, the reciprocal of frequency.
A new understanding of “1/f” has emerged from a collaboration between scientists in Norway, Russia, and the USA. Their work could lead to more sensitive sensors and detectors based on semiconductor electronics.
According to materials scientist Valerii Vinokour of Argonne National Laboratory, Illinois, “Finding the common origin of one-over-f noise in its many forms is one of the grand challenges of materials physics,” he says. He and his colleagues have developed a new theory of 1/f noise establishes its origin and lower limit in semiconductor electronics, which could help developers optimize detectors for commercial applications.
Noise is nothing more than timely fluctuations, deviations from the average. In microelectronics, noise is generated by random fluctuations of electrons. Vinokur and his colleagues report in the May 11 issue of the science journal Phys Rev Lett how 1/f noise in doped semiconductors, the platform for all modern electronics, originates in the random distribution of impurities and the mutual interaction of the many electrons surrounding them.
These two ingredients – randomness and interaction – lead to electrons being trapped in a Coulomb glass state in which electrons hop randomly from point to point.
“Our results,” Vinokour explains, “establish that one-over-f noise is a generic property of Coulomb glasses and, moreover, of a wide class of random interacting systems and phenomena ranging from mechanical properties of real materials and electric properties of electronic devices to fluctuations in the traffic of computer networks and the Internet.”
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When I picked her up from the class she asked, "Can we put pictures up on your blog?" Of course! Even from the perspective of a novice seamstress, I thought that this was a fabulous idea for a first project. It is a useful object, that the kids can use even if they ultimately decide that sewing is not for them.
First they traced and cut the fabric. Then they did the seams in a particular order (top and bottom, sides, and on a bias), each step talking about how sewing along the fabric in different directions is be different. The casings on the bias was left for last as the most challenging part. Then ribbon was fed through the casings, and it was done! Her first ever sewing project. See how proud the young seamstress looks?
After this apron the kids are free to choose whatever they want for a next project. I am already hearing plans for a fleece blanket.
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Economic Importance for Humans: Positive
Northern Pintail are one of the most sought after ducks by duck hunters throughout their habitat. During duck season, hunters spend lots of money on hunting licenses, sporting goods and travel arrangements to towns that live near the migration flyways, and add a considerable amount of revenue to towns’ economy.
Positive Impacts: food
No one has provided updates yet.
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Research misconduct and the fallout from such behavior is increasingly common, according to a new report compiled by a company that makes software to detect plagiarism in submitted scientific manuscripts. The makers of iThenticate—software that combs a database, called CrossCheck, with more than 25 million published articles—published the report, which collates previously published research on misconduct and plagiarism, and sprinkles in a few iThenticate customer testimonials.
A couple of years ago, iThenticate helped determine that plagiarism was a far more common occurrence in the scientific literature than anyone expected, and the new report confirms that finding with some standout figures: retractions have increased tenfold over the past decade, 1 in 3 scientists admits to questionable research practices, and $110 million was spent on misconduct investigations in the United States in 2010.
But beyond the regurgitated factoids, iThenticate's own data is a striking illustration of how common plagiarism may be in the scientific community. The report claims that iThenticate identified more than 10 million content "matches" to already-published work in manuscripts submitted in 2011 and 2012. The folks at iThenticate worked up a little infographic containing most of the information.
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The snow and ice have come and mostly gone for now, but city and county crews still are dealing with the aftermath.
Paul Haines, Sequim Public Works director, said that this week and possibly into next road crews will use a street sweeper to pick up about 120 tons of gravel placed on city streets during the storms.
One of the city of Sequim’s trucks spreads de-icer on a street during the Monday snowstorm. Crews used 120 tons of gravel and applied 5 tons of de-icer throughout city limits Monday morning through Wednesday evening. Photo courtesy of the city of Sequim
City road crews worked 200 man-hours Monday morning to Wednesday evening to clear roads and sidewalks. Five tons of de-icer were sprayed on roads and walkways.
Haines said he is proud of the public works staff’s efforts and the community’s efforts in cleaning up sidewalks.
“(The snow) came at a quicker pace than we anticipated, but we quickly caught up,” Haines said.
He said most calls into the city were informational and there were only a few citizens who felt they weren’t being served well.
Haines said Sequim now has a stockpile of 200 tons of gravel and 10 tons of de-icer.
High priority areas for road crews working in the city limits are the freeway overpasses, hills, high traffic areas and school routes, if school is in session.
Now crews are focusing their efforts in downtown Sequim, cleaning sidewalk snow debis into roadways for street sweeper pickup.
City workers joined with Clallam County road crews to buy road supplies and plowed more accessible roads for each other.
Ross Tyler, Clallam County engineer, said Monday was not good for county crews.
“Not only did we get an intense amount of snow but at one point we have five trucks and one had a mechanical breakdown, one was stuck in ditch and another got damaged trying to pull it out,” Tyler said.
“Early Tuesday morning, everything was back online but we played catch up.”
Crews put their emphasis on arterials like Old Olympic Highway, Sequim-Dungeness Way, Woodcock Road and Kitchen-Dick Road, which have high traffic and higher speeds.
Snowplows and graders ran from 5:30 a.m.-5:30 p.m. and spread 10,000 pounds of salt and 2.7 million pounds of sand from Diamond Point to Blue Mountain Road in non-city limits.
Tyler said working in daylight hours is much safer for crews.
“It’s a white-knuckle job,” he said.
“Once they get going, they are like animals. It’s hard to get them to stop.”
Around-the-clock crews don’t run, due to staff reductions in the past five years, Tyler said.
When snow does come, crews place sand beginning at 5:30 a.m. and if it’s icy, they begin about 6:30 a.m.
“If it’s snowing real hard, sand gets covered up by packed snow and just because we are continually sanding doesn’t mean you’ll always see it,” he said.
“Early morning and late afternoons is when we’ll put the most sand on the roads.”
County crews will work into next week to clean up the roads.
Safety crews help out
Steve Vogel, fire chief for Clallam County Fire District 3, said emergency crews were busy the whole week but a majority of calls came in during the storm.
On Monday, Nov. 22, they had 43 calls and 15 on Nov. 23, ranging from car accidents, to falls, to people needing a ride to the doctor’s office.
Vogel said he feels crews were well-prepared.
“We anticipated the snow and were ready to go with full crews and vehicles chained and ready to go,” Vogel said.
He said a majority of car wreck responses on Monday were cars losing control and going off the road.
“People were calling them in as possible vehicle accidents with possible injuries, but we got there and found they were OK,” Vogel said.
Sequim Police Chief Bill Dickinson said officers responded to a number of weather-related accidents, about 15-20, on Monday but saw numbers taper off on Tuesday.
“It’s like people got home and figured it out to stay home,” Dickinson said.
The Sequim Gazette is located at 147 W. Washington Street in Sequim.
Business hours are Monday through Friday from 8:30 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Phone 360-683-3311, or toll free at 800-829-5810. FAX 360-683-6670.
For a complete company directory with contact information please click HERE.
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THE GOVERNMENT has urged ZESCO planners and the Lusaka City Council planning department to synchronise their development plans to have a systematic approach in dealing with issues of vandalism and encroachment.
Mines, Energy and Water Development Minister Yamfwa Mukanga said the re-enforcement and expansion projects would foster trade and investment in the country and warned Lusaka residents to desist from acts of vandalism and encroachment on infrastructure.
Speaking during the ZESCO scooping meeting for the proposed 132KV Ring Reinforcement project in Lusaka yesterday, Mr Mukanga said ZESCO was currently undertaking numerous power system reinforcements and expansion projects across the country at a huge cost to the national treasury.
"Hence, anyone found committing the offence shall be punished accordingly and encouraged ZESCO planners and Lusaka City Council planning department to synchronise their development plans.
He pointed out that upon implementation of this project, service delivery of electricity would greatly improve.
Mr Mukanga said Lusaka has been growing at an average of six per cent per annum in terms of population and this has an escalated rate in business as well.
The Government has developed the Lusaka Master Plan which is mainstreamed in the Sixth National Development Plan, the Millennium Development Goals and the Vision 2030.
Speaking at the same forum, ZESCO chairperson Father Frank Bwalya said the utility company was committed to the implementation of the 132 KV Ring Reinforcement in Lusaka.
Father Bwalya said Lusaka city consumes about 40 per cent of the electricity generated by ZESCO.
He said ZESCO would ensure that the capacity load was increased to avoid unnecessary crises that would retard development in the country.
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Should We Still Teach Students to Write in Cursive?
Reading and writing are fundamental to learning. But as more kids read and write via some sort of computing device — laptop, tablet, cellphone — how we teach those skills is changing, and one significant change is the decision to teach cursive. When it comes to equipping students with “21st century skills,” typing is in, cursive is out.
In part, the disappearance of cursive from the curriculum stems from the Common Core State Standards (now adopted by the majority of U.S. states), which no longer requires cursive as part of language arts and writing instruction. According to the Common Core’s mission: “The standards are designed to be robust and relevant to the real world, reflecting the knowledge and skills that our young people need for success in college and careers. With American students fully prepared for the future, our communities will be best positioned to compete successfully in the global economy.” And the global economy, so the argument goes, requires students to be prepared to type, not prepared to write in cursive.
The global economy, so the argument goes, requires students to be prepared to type, not prepared to write in cursive.
This isn’t to say, of course, that handwriting instruction itself is scrapped. Students will still learn to craft their letters, and plenty of students are still likely to curse the requirements for neat penmanship. But in lieu of requiring students to specifically learn cursive, the imperative now is to teach students to produce and publish their written work by typing and word processing.
Knowing how to type and how to create documents on a computer is obviously important. And for most people, writing in cursive is a rare event. Once touted as more efficient than print, typing is more efficient than either form of writing by hand. And as such cursive may seem like an extraneous skill.
Nevertheless, removing cursive from the curriculum has been controversial. Some have argued that learning cursive isn’t simply about learning how to write efficiently. It’s about learning how to write beautifully. It’s about fine motor skills. It’s about expression. And according to a report in The Wall Street Journal last year, there are a number of benefits to cognition and memory that come from writing by hand.
Some fear that if we stop teaching students to write in cursive, they’ll no longer be able to read cursive either, leaving a swath of written materials that will be undecipherable. Arguably, that’s something historians and archeologists have long faced; whether it’s cursive, calligraphy or otherwise, handwriting has changed immensely over the years.
And without cursive, how will people be able to sign their names, some argue, pointing to the one place where most adults probably do regularly use cursive in lieu of print. Of course, teaching cursive just so we can all add our personalized squiggle to the bottom of official documents probably isn’t an effective use of class time.
So is it time for cursive to go? Or should we retain it as part of the curriculum?
Category: Teaching Strategies
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The Czech president has once again thrown his support behind opponents of Prague’s Pride festivities, which will take place this week.
Vaclav Klaus said last week that he held a “clearly negative opinion” of last year’s gay-pride festival, according to the Czech Press Agency. He has refused to condemn a deputy’s description last year of homosexuals as “deviant” and said it is fitting that the opponents of the event have their views heard.
Several organizations, including the Young Christian Democrats, the conservative DOST (“Enough”) foundation, and anti-abortion groups plan to hold rallies against the 2012 Prague Pride.
Last year Klaus criticized Prague Mayor Bohuslav Svoboda, a fellow member of the conservative Civic Democratic Party, for supporting the parade. In a statement, Svoboda said the festival "has become a part of the standard selection of cultural and social events ... the large civilized cities are offering to [their] residents," according to The Prague Post.
The event, to take place 13-18 August, will show that “Prague has a big, vibrant gay community and that we are a part of the city and of Czech society," according to Willem van der Bas, a spokesman for the festival.
The European Union is mulling increased sanctions on Belarus in response to Minsk’s expulsion of Sweden’s ambassador, the latest step in a diplomatic skirmish over the dropping of free-speech messages into Belarus via parachuting teddy bears, according to Radio Free Europe.
Top EU officials met in Brussels at an emergency meeting 10 August, one week after Belarus’ government refused to renew the accreditation of the Swedish ambassador. Stockholm responded by saying it would not welcome the proposed Belarusian ambassador to Sweden.
The conflict began when a Swedish public relations firm hired a plane to fly into Belarus and drop 1,000 stuffed bears holding signs calling for greater freedom of speech in the country.
Officials made no move at the Brussels meeting to recall EU ambassadors from Belarus, as had been speculated, RFE reports. But Olof Skoog, a Swedish diplomat and chair of the EU Political and Security Committee, said the union would send a “very clear message” to Belarus over the diplomatic breakdown.
“This is not a situation merely between Sweden and Belarus,” Skoog said. “We will be reviewing sanctions, restrictive measures against Belarus later on in the next few months.”
In February, Brussels intensified sanctions on Minsk by freezing assets and instituting travel bans for 21 Belarusian officials. The EU has taken escalating steps against the regime of President Alyaksandr Lukashenka since its brutal crackdown on protests following the December 2010 presidential election. Some prominent opposition figures remain in prison.
Tolib Ayembekov, an opposition fighter during Tajikistan’s 1992-1997 civil war, was the target of a Tajik military operation in the region last month. Authorities accused Ayembekov of running a mafia-style smuggling ring and of being behind the 21 July stabbing death of Major General Abdullo Nazarov, the regional director of the national intelligence agency.
After surrendering along with his followers to police in Khorog, the capital of Gorno-Badakhshan, Ayembekov called on other militants to lay down their weapons, RIA Novosti reports.
After 24 July fighting that killed 30 militants and 17 soldiers, the government declared a cease fire and offered amnesty to all combatants except those involved in Nazarov’s death. On 10 August, two suspects in the case, including a brother of Ayembekov, turned themselves in to police, according to RIA Novosti.
Ayembekov has denied involvement in Nazarov’s murder, which he says Tajik officials are using as an excuse to retake control of the region, Asia-Plus reports.
A credit crunch, deficit spending, high unemployment, and billions of euros in unpaid taxes add up to a crisis in the Croatian economy, the country’s finance minister said last week, SETimes reports.
Still, Zagreb is hoping to avoid a bailout from the IMF, banking instead on stricter tax collection and foreign investment through a privatization drive and efforts to make it easier to do business there, the news site reports.
The government estimates it will save 260 million euros ($320 million) by cutting benefits for public workers and laying off about 5,000 contractors. But even after the cuts, spending is expected to outpace revenues by 900 million euros. Zagreb hopes to narrow that gap by selling a publicly owned bank and insurance company and seeking investments in its energy industry.
Croatia has already cut spending and hiked its VAT rate to 25 percent this year, but analysts say it needs to diversify its economy and introduce flexibility into its labor market to attract more investment. Further, a recent list of delinquent taxpayers showed that 100,000 companies and individuals owe the government a combined 6.6 billion euros, according to SETimes. Last year, Fitch downgraded the country’s credit rating to BBB-, one level above junk status.
A month and a half after inconclusive parliamentary elections, Mongolia has formed a government that is likely to be friendlier to foreign investors than its predecessor, Reuters reports.
The rightist Democratic Party, which won 31 of the 76 seats in the unicameral legislature, will lead a ruling coalition. Party member Norov Altanhuyag was confirmed as the new prime minister last week.
A major issue in Mongolia has been ownership of the country’s gold, copper, and coal mines, which are fueling huge leaps in GDP. The previous government, led by the leftist Mongolian People’s Party, tried to prevent foreign companies from owning majority stakes in the mines and sought to renegotiate existing contracts, putting some investments in limbo.
According to Reuters, investment advisers are hailing Altanhuyag’s installation as prime minister. “The newly established government will welcome foreign investment, we will guarantee them a stable legal environment, [and] we will try to fulfill our party agenda,” one member of parliament told the news agency.
Mongolia is home to nearly 3 million people. It had a GDP of nearly $9 billion in 2011, nearly double the 2009 level, according to World Bank figures.
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Shocking scenes of violence have erupted across the Country today following a controversial decision in the European Court of Human Rights to ban the proposed Bin Laden Celebrations.
A consortium of British based Islamic fundamentalist organisations had sought clarity and support from the Court to be allowed to celebrate Bin Laden Night, an idea thought to have some basis in the British celebration of the jaunty, charismatic and much loved terrorist Guy Fawkes.
Mohamed Al Bashiri, spokesman for the group told assembled press before the hearing that it was about time the muslim community were granted equal rights and allowed to celebrate the life, achievements and overall supremacy of Oussama Bin Laden in the same spirit, with the exception of course of any effigies being burnt that resembled him. Although Mohamed was quick to point out that they would wish to retain the right to burn effigies of anyone who had particularly annoyed the Islamic world that year. Similarly part of the court appeal included a section about the retail sale and use of special fireworks which could come in a variety of designs such as aircraft, bottles, shoes and even print cartridges.
The unanimous verdict of the European Court however to ban any such celebrations on the basis that it would not be fair and dignified to celebrate a person of such standing as Oussama Bin Laden until such a time as he was officially declared to be dead, led to tears, anger, frustration, outrageously loud moans of anguish and despair and of course the obligatory burning of effigies and the EU Flag.
Press Officer and Publicity Advisor for the European Court of Human Rights, Baroness Hilda Schmidt said “After hours of deliberation the court decided that no such event or similar type of celebration would be warranted and justified until such a time as Oussama Bin Laden was officially declared to be dead, we applied the same logic to the appeals for a Gerry Adams Night and the more high profile campaign for a Martin McGuiness Night!” When pressed by assembled journalists if the ruling would be reviewed if Oussama came out and declared himself to be dead, Hilda Schmidt said it would depend upon him confessing his involvement in the actual atrocities attributed to him. “We considered the same scenario in the Martin McGuiness Night claim and ruled that since Mr McGuiness had consistently denied any involvement in any terrorist atrocities then any such martyr status was really not valid, after all Guy Fawkes was stretched on a rack and buggered mercilessly before being hung, drawn and quartered, should Mr McGuiness or Oussam Bin Laden wish to replicate his commitment to their cause then we would of course be delighted” “To review the case, I mean”
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Exclusive: Philippines may ask for U.S. spy planes over South China Sea
MANILA (Reuters) - The Philippines may ask the United States to deploy spy planes over the South China Sea to help monitor the disputed waters, President Benigno Aquino told Reuters on Monday, a move that could worsen tensions with its giant neighbour China.
The two countries only recently stepped back from a months-long standoff at the Scarborough Shoal, a horseshoe shaped reef near the Philippines in waters they both claim - the latest round of naval brinkmanship over the resource-rich sea.
The United States has stressed it is neutral in the long-running maritime dispute, despite offering to help boost the Philippines' decrepit military forces. China has warned that "external forces" should not get involved.
"We might be requesting overflights on that," Aquino told Reuters in an interview, referring to U.S. P3C Orion planes. "We don't have aircraft with those capabilities."
In Washington, State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland declined to comment on the Orion aircraft, but said Washington has long assisted Manila, a formal security treaty ally.
"As part of our longstanding military cooperation, the United States supports the Philippines in enhancing its maritime domain awareness," she told a news briefing.
"We are talking about helping the Philippines be aware of what is going on and supporting our ally in defence of its own security," added Nuland.
Last month, Aquino pulled out a lightly armed coast guard ship and a fisheries boat due to bad weather around the Scarborough Shoal, a group of rock formations about 140 miles (225 km) west of the main Philippine island of Luzon.
The South China Sea is potentially the biggest military flashpoint in Asia, and tensions have risen since the United States adopted a policy last year to reinforce its influence in the region.
At stake is control over what are believed to be significant reserves of oil and gas. Estimates for proven and undiscovered oil reserves in the entire sea range from 28 billion to as high as 213 billion barrels of oil, the U.S. Energy Information Administration said in a March 2008 report.
China, the Philippines, Taiwan, Brunei, Vietnam and Malaysia have competing claims on the sea, but China's claims encompass almost all its waters.
China said last week it had begun "combat-ready" patrols in waters it said were under its control in the South China Sea, after saying it "vehemently opposed" a Vietnamese law asserting sovereignty over the Paracel and Spratly islands.
"We hope the Philippines will no longer issue information that provokes public opinion and avoid complicating the situation," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Weimin told reporters on Monday, responding to the Philippine military's assertion that it could return to the Scarborough Shoal at any time.
On the maritime disputes, Nuland reiterated the U.S. stance that "we want to see this issue negotiated among the stakeholders, we want to see a code of conduct developed."
"WE HAVE A LOT OF NEEDS"
Aquino, whose presidency has seen a cooling of ties with China over the sea dispute, said he had not decided whether to send Philippine ships back to the disputed shoal. He said he had called a cabinet meeting on Thursday to discuss the issue and overall relations with China.
"We'll discuss the whole issue of the relationship with China and I would like to get the advice of my advisers," the 52-year-old president told Reuters in a wood-panelled reception room in the Malacanang presidential palace.
Manila has been looking to its old ally Washington for ships, aircraft, surveillance equipment and other hardware as the United States refocuses its military attention on Asia. Manila has offered Washington greater access to airfields and its military facilities in exchange for more equipment and frequent training.
"The Philippines has demonstrated time and again its interest to preserve the peace and the de-escalation of the situation," Aquino said. "But we don't exist in a vacuum. We would want to see China reciprocate all of these moves that have been done as far as de-escalating the tensions."
The maritime dispute was high on the agenda when Aquino met U.S. President Barack Obama in Washington last month. In August last year, the U.S. Pacific Command made an initial offer to deploy the P3C Orion spy planes to the Philippines and help monitor disputed areas in the South China Sea after China increased its presence and activities near Reed Bank, part of the western Philippines Palawan island group.
The Pentagon offered to share real-time surveillance data with the Philippines while seeking wider access to airfields in its former colony in Southeast Asia.
Despite its professed neutrality over the South China Sea dispute, the U.S. military "pivot" back to Asia is widely seen as a response to China's growing military capabilities. Its shift back to the region may be encouraging smaller nations such as Vietnam and the Philippines to take a bolder stance over the sea dispute, analysts say.
"We have a lot of needs," said Aquino, the son of democracy icon and former president Corazon Aquino.
"For instance the coast watch system - we have 36,000 km (22,000 miles) of coastline. We don't have radar coverage for all of this."
Aquino also said he would not object to an increased "rotational tempo" for U.S. military forces in the country to help train their Filipino counterparts.
Aquino said China should not be alarmed by Philippine efforts to improve its monitoring capability.
"Does the Philippines have the capacity to become an aggressor?" he asked. "By any stretch of the imagination, the Philippines does not. So why should it upset a superpower if we're all reasonable?"
(Reporting By Stuart Grudgings, Manny Mogato and Rosemarie Francisco; Editing by Jason Szep, Raju Gopalakrishnan and Cynthia Osterman)
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On a cool Saturday afternoon at the überhot Garren hair salon in New York City a few masters of fashion were debating something many would call obvious: Which is more likely to tangle—curly hair or straight hair?
The seemingly straight answer, if you will: "When we put a [model] in a wind machine, we can still put a comb through her hair—if it's straight. Curly? Forget it," says Robert Vasquez, a hairstylist who specializes in what his industry terms "difficult" hair.
But what appears, at first thought, to be obvious can become surprisingly fuzzy. "I'm not convinced that curly hair tangles more," says Steven Fernandes, who combs up to 20 manes daily at Garren. "Straight hair is lighter and strands move individually, but curly hair moves as one movement and so is less tangled."
Jean-Baptiste Masson, a young brain imaging researcher at the École Polytechnique in France, recently pulled apart this question as a class exercise in mathematical modeling.
With hundreds of thousands of micro-thin strands colliding in every direction, hair is an unusually complicated system—a set of independent objects working as an integrated whole. And, unlike other systems such as fluids and solids, hair mechanics remains unsolved, with no widely accepted model to explain it. "I needed a problem for my students, and I thought hair is something that could be simplified," Masson says.
He enlisted two hairdressers to count the number of tangles on 212 heads over three weeks. The stylists were instructed to look for true tangles, namely a clump that resisted the draw of a comb but was not a cluster of hair—like a ringlet, or curl.
Based on these criteria, curly hair averages about three tangles per head whereas straight averages more than five tangles. The surprising results, and a mathematical model of tangling, were recently published in the American Journal of Physics.
In Masson's model, it turns out that even though curly strands meet more often than straight strands, the angle at which two straight hairs meet is the angle most likely to lead to tangling.
But there's no particular explanation for why different angles lead to different tangling patterns, argues Alain Goriely, professor of mathematics at the University of Arizona in Tucson, who studies the math of biological systems.
Masson explains that the optimal tangle angle is one that is large enough to hook the microscopic, fishlike "scales" that coat hair cuticles. If this angle is too narrow—meaning the two hairs are nearly parallel—they won't lock.
It turns out that Masson's model predicts the real-world hairdresser data with surprising accuracy.
Masson's "math lesson" has inspired computer scientists like Florence Bertails, an expert in hair behavior at The French National Institute for Research in Computer Science and Control, to consider using models like the one Masson devised to inform her more complicated computer algorithms.
Back at Garren, Fernandes has the last point, "You know what the real issue is? The real issue is fine versus coarse. Curly or straight, fine hair is what tangles. The cuticle is open and puffy, like Velcro—it'll stick to anything."
The others nod their heads dramatically. "Oh yes, that's it," says Vasquez, "dry, fine, chemically treated hair tangles the most."
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This article is more about what is NOT being said than what IS being said about Las Brisas.The article paints a pretty picture of all the "benefits" to Corpus that Las Brisas promises, including "a new pump station and pipeline to transport the water to the north side of the Corpus Christi Inner Harbor ..."But it doesn't mention that it will be up to Corpus taxpayers to spend millions of dollars (billions?) to build a pipeline to bring the water from Victoria to Corpus -- water that we don't need yet.The article says that the new water source will be "an investment that can attract new industry." But what it doesn't say is that, if Las Brisas is built, Corpus will be at or over its limit allowed by the EPA for air pollution, so no other industry will be able to come. Also, where will we find enough water to supply any more industry after Las Brisas uses between "5 billion and 7 billion gallons of water per year"?Then the article says that the new pipeline that Las Brisas builds "would be turned over to the city to own and operate." Due to budget shortfalls, our city can't even keep the Water Garden fountain running! How can it be expected to keep a pipeline running?Again, this article is trying to paint a pretty picture but leaves out most of the details.The truth about Las Brisas is that it will make a few people rich (mostly the Houston-based company called Chase Power) while using up what Corpus has left of clean air and water. After the bulldozers are gone, we will be left with only 80 jobs. Our air will be so polluted that other, cleaner industries will not be able to come here and our water will be polluted so that we cannot safely swim or fish in our bays.Council - read the fine print and vote against giving water to Las Brisas!
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Feels Like: 93°
Feels Like: 97°
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Next, you might walk the grounds to the plantation house and its outbuildings for a tour or instead, you may choose a nature walk that includes overlooks of the former ricefields and marshlands.
Map of Hofwyl Plantation
Diagram of Plantation
Diagram of Museum
Mouse over exhibit for a description
Click on the number for more information.
Visiting the museum offers students many opportunities for deeper understanding of this historic site, it's historic use and its's people. With the inclusion of a diagram of museum exhibits, a sequential description of each and an activity for students to find answers to questions during their tour, we hope to ensure the best learning opportunity for our visitors.
1. Panel describing Hofwyl Plantations historic and geographical setting.
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http://www.gastateparks.org/info/117324
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Linux is a superior audio production platform, and one of its shining stars is the Hydrogen Drum Machine. Hydrogen is an advanced software drum synthesizer that is easy to learn, and yet packed full of great features.
Naturally you must first install Hydrogen, which should be easy because it is included in most Linux distributions. If you enjoy life on the edge you can install the latest development snapshots from Subversion. Ubuntu and Mint users can get the latest development snapshots from PPA (personal package archives), so they are installed via package manager rather than built from source code. See downloads and installation instructions for more details.
For instant gratification, go to Project -> Open Demo and pick a demo to play. This will tell you right away if Hydrogen is finding the correct audio drivers, and if your sound system is working. The playback controls are near the top left, in the row under the menu bar. I'm running version 9.5 on Debian Testing, which is a development version, and not all the demos work. So try several if you don't hear anything.
Figure 1 shows Hydrogen in a new, unnamed session (Project -> New). Let's take a quick tour. On the left you see a stack of rows labeled Pattern 1, Pattern 2, and so on, up to however many there are. This is the Song Editor. Underneath the Song Editor is the Pattern Editor, where the individual instruments are programmed. Click on any of the instrument names (my favorite is the Cowbell) to hear them play.
The Instrument Rack sits to the right of the Pattern Editor. Click the Instrument and Layers buttons to get the same view as Figure 1. This is pretty slick, as it shows you the filename of the instrument sound sample, and you can adjust the gain. It has a circular gain knob, but don't try a circular motion with your cursor because it won't work. The cursor changes to a double arrow which you move vertically, up or down, to adjust the gain.
Now click the Sound library button to see all of the available system drumkits. Mine came with a big batch: Boss, EasternHop, HipHip, Millo-Drums, Roland, TR808, and several more. Right-click on the one you want to use, then left-click Load.
Note also, at the end of the system drumkit list, an option for User Drumkits. You can download more drumkits in Instruments -> Import library, and more are available on the Libraries page. You can even create your own.
Click Pattern 1 in the Song Editor, then drop down to the Pattern Editor to compose Pattern 1. How do you compose? Just click in the grid where you want the beats to play. When Pattern 1 is finished compose Pattern 2, and so on. In Figure 1 I am using the Yamama Vintage Kit. Look to the right of the playback control bar to see the Song and Pattern mode controls-- to preview your pattern, put it in Pattern mode and click the play button. To hear your whole song, put it in Song mode. If you play in Song mode you won't hear anything yet, because you still have to incorporate your patterns into a song. To do this go up to the Song Editor and click in the grid squares. The squares that turn blue indicate where each pattern will play in the song's timeline. Each blue square is one measure. Figure 2 shows how it looks with several completed patterns in the song.
As you can see, composing in Hydrogen is super-easy, and it takes longer to explain than to do. Change the pattern names in the Song editor with right-click -> Properties. In the Pattern Editor there are two little buttons for each instrument, a red button and a green button. Click the green button to for solo play, and click the red button to mute individual instruments.
You can save time in the Pattern editor with auto-fills-- just right-click on an instrument, and use Fill Notes. This menu also has a "Randomize velocity" option, which enlivens the sound so it doesn't sound so mechanical. You can adjust the velocity manually by changing the heights of the vertical velocity bars at the bottom of the Pattern Editor.
The Velocity option is on a drop-down menu that includes Pan, Lead and Lag, and Notekey. Pan controls the stereo imaging by making the sound centered, or stronger to the left or right. Lead and Lag controls whether the notes play exactly on the beat, or in front or behind it.
Notekey is a terrific effect that adds tones to the instruments. To get the hang of using Notekey set up a simple four-beat pattern. Get the playback going, then move the blue and black dots by clicking on the grid. Moving them down creates lower tones, and moving blue and black dots towards each other creates interesting unpredictable chords. Try clicking the Piano button to change the view to Figure 3. Now you have a whole piano keyboard to compose on.
Over in the Instrument Rack click the General button to adjust the properties of each instrument, such as attack, decay, and resonance. Switch to the Layers view to edit the sound samples.
Building Your Own Sample Library
The Internet is full of audio samples to download and use (don't forget to check licensing on anything you want to perform or distribute), and of course you can record and create your own. Many of Hydrogen's audio samples are in FLAC format, which is a good choice because you get the high quality of WAV in a lossless compressed format. If you don't care about saving disk space then WAV works too.
Hydrogen has MIDI support, both input and output, so you can hook up a MIDI controller and play or compose in Hydrogen, and export MIDI files.
The Mixer should open by default in a separate window. It displays the instruments in the drumkit you are using. The arrow buttons for each instrument trigger a single note so you can quickly check volume levels. The little blue LED to the right of arrow buttons blinks whenever something triggers the instruments, whether it's a Hydrogen song or a MIDI controller. The blue LED stays lit when there is no playback, to show which instrument is selected in the Pattern Editor. Below these are the Mute and Solo buttons, and then the Pan knob.
Next are the four FX buttons, which route instruments through the FX rack, which is to the right of the instrument sliders. Zero means no special effects are applied. Each knob corresponds to one FX plugin, in this order:
1 2 3 4
The FX rack controls up to four LADSPA special effects. These are software special effects, and LADSPA should be familiar to anyone doing audio production on Linux. Your distro should include LADSPA bundles, and there are tons of them all over the Internet. First download and install some LADSPA effects, and then select the ones you want to use by clicking the Edit buttons in the FX rack.
Next to the FX rack is Master slider, and next to this are the Humanize, Timing, and Swing knobs. Synthetic drumming oftens sound synthetic. Use these knobs to randomize velocity and timing, to make it sound more like a person is playing.
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One of the most popular vocalists between the end of World War II and the rise of rock & roll in the mid-'50s, Perry Como
perfected the post-big-band approach to pop music by lending his own irresistible, laid-back singing -- influenced by Bing Crosby
and Russ Columbo
-- to the popular hits of the day on radio, TV, and LP. Both his early traditional crooning style plus his later relaxed manner and focus on novelty material were heavily indebted to Bing Crosby
, though Como's
appeal during the early '50s was virtually unrivaled. Born in 1912 in Canonsburg, PA, Como
was working as a singing barber in his hometown when he began touring with local bandleader Freddie Carlone
at the age of 21. By the mid-'30s, he got his big break with Ted Weems & His Orchestra
, who headed a popular radio show named Beat the Band. After the orchestra broke up in 1942, Como
hosted a regional CBS radio show later called Supper Club. The show's success gained him a contract with RCA Victor Records by 1943, and he also began working in Hollywood with Something for the Boys.
Perry Como's real big break came with the 1945 film A Song to Remember. His rendition of "Till the End of Time" spent ten weeks at the top of the charts and became the biggest hit of the year. Como's dreamy baritone worked especially well on ballads, such as the additional 1945-1947 number one hits "Prisoner of Love," "Surrender," and "Chi-Baba, Chi-Baba (My Bambino Go to Sleep)." Hired by NBC for another radio show in 1948, Como crossed over to the emerging medium of television that same year with the Chesterfield Supper Club. The show quickly took off, and eventually earned him four Emmy Awards. In the mid-'50s, Como began to indulge in light novelty fare, the titles often comprising nonsense words -- "Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Doo," "Hoop-Dee-Doo," "Pa-Paya Mama," and "Hot Diggity (Dog Ziggity Boom)." Though he often disliked the songs, they frequently became huge of the road pop.
Como's breezy songs had worked well at the beginning of the decade, but his appeal began to wane towards the end of the '50s, with the emergence of rock & roll and the wave of teen idols. His last number one hit, "Catch a Falling Star," came in 1958. Como was much less visible during the '60s, but returned in 1970 with his first live show in over two decades, and a world tour followed; a single ("It's Impossible") even made the Top Ten in late 1970. Como continued to record LPs and occasional television specials while making scattered appearances during the '70s and '80s. On May 12, 2001, Perry Como died in his sleep at his home in Florida.
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http://www.catcountry995.ca/Music/Artist.aspx?id=3091
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|
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Process which improves the machineability of metals by heating and allowing them to cool slowly, which removes stress and softens the material.
Legal process, which is used by a municipality to expand its territory to include part of an adjacent, unincorporated area. Also, the act of permanently attaching a fixture to a building, thus making it part of the structure.
Valuation on property for purposes of taxation, sewer charges, etc.
Amount the interest rate of an adjustable rate mortgage can be raised or lowered in any consecutive 12-month period.
Total annual interest and principal loan payments required on a loan.
Ratio of annual mortgage payments divided by the initial principal of the mortgage and only applies to loans involving constant payment.
Statement sent to borrower, on a yearly basis, detailing principal remaining on the loan and amounts paid toward interest and taxes.
The rate a borrower actually pays, including interest, points and loan origination fees when expressed as a percentage rate per year. On an adjustable rate mortgage, assumption is made that the loan's index remains the same as its initial value.
The real rate of interest on a loan, which is the coupon rate divided by the net proceeds of the loan. See Effective Interest Rate
Growth rings seen in the horizontal cross section of a tree.
Fixed sums paid, at regular intervals, to an investor.
Annuity where the payments are made at the beginning of the period, either monthly, quarterly or yearly.
Factor used to determine the equal periodic payment; yearly, monthly, etc. associated with a real estate transaction. It is used for both a present value of annuity of future value of annuity.
To eliminate, invalidate cancel, abolish or make null and void, as though it had never existed.
Hollow cylinder shaped drill bit used to cut plugs of wood
Nail with raised rings, for better gripping ability, forged into the circumference of the shank. Used in construction for framing lumber.
Space left in a container over the surface of the contents.
Something that announces. Indicator which is used to show when a condition occurs.
The positively charged electrode toward which current flows.
A pier or square column at the end of a wall.
Prefix meaning in front of something or coming before.
A smaller room leading into a larger or main room. Waiting area.
Small, decorative fixture that is attached on the eaves of the roof of a building to hide the ends of the tiles.
Ornamental palm leaf pattern.
Screen or veil decorating the front of an alter.
Coming before in time, order or development. Situated toward the front.
A smaller room leading into a larger or main room. Waiting area.
Balcony that faces the sun.
Shiny black, compact, hard coal which gives much heat but little flame and smoke.
Science dealing with studying measurements of the human body to determine differences in individuals or groups; used to determine the proper sizing and proportions of objects to be used by people.
Prefix meaning against something or opposite of something.
Substance that slows down a chemical reaction. Opposite of a catalyst, which hastens a chemical reaction.
Time period one expects to own property as an investment.
Communication (usually by letter) informing one party, by the other party, that the terms of the original contract will not be fulfilled.
Inclined in opposite directions. Alternately, formation of stratified rocks sloping downward from each side of a ridge.
Material used to prevent marine growth on ship bottoms or diving apparatus.
Substance with a lower freezing point than water added to a liquid in a cooling system, such as an automobile, to prevent freezing.
Assembly Device, consisting of teeth on hinged pawls, used to prevent the kickback of wood being cut by a power saw, by allowing the wood to be pushed in one direction but not allowing it to move in the opposite direction.
Material that resists magnetism.
Metal, which is sometimes added as an alloying agent to increase hardness in tin or lead. The atomic symbol is SB, atomic number is 51 and the atomic weight is 121.75. A one percent combination with lead is used to sheath electric cables and a ratio of six to seven percent to make the plates in lead-acid batteries.
Substance that slows down the oxidation of oils, fats, etc. to retard deterioration.
A substance used to seal and promote conduction by application to aluminum wiring connections.
Oil used as a wood finish to preserve wood and to impart a sheen, this blend of drying oil and plastic in a vehicle such as mineral spirits is also sometimes used to stain wood.
Overlaying, on a base color, of a semi-opaque color, which is then partially wiped away giving an antique appearance. Application of a certain coating to a ceramic unit then firing it in a kiln to form a hard surface. Alternately, installation of glass.
Preventive device for the back-flow of liquid into a system. Used in sprinkler systems to prevent water from trickling back into the water supply that is feeding it originally.
Iron or steel block on which metal objects are hammered into shape. Tapered on one end to a near point, it is rounded to provide a shaping surface with a flat top.
Tapered bevel siding.
see American Planning Association
and American Plywood Association
Unit of one or more rooms within a multifamily complex of similar units.
A structure with individual apartment units and a common entrance and hallway.
Multi-family housing complex of rental apartments managed by the property owner or a resident manager.
Trade name for APA 303 plywood panel building siding, which can be used as exterior siding by being applied directly to building studs.
Opening, hole, gap. The opening in a camera or telescope, which allows light into the lens.
The highest point of interest, as in a structure.
Stone at the top of a gable or dome, triangular in shape.
Concave curve where the end of a column expands to spread into its base.
Perpendicular line from the center of a regular polygon to any one of its sides.
Instruments, tools materials, etc. needed to perform a specific task.
Calculated and theoretical power (watts) in an alternating current circuit. Apparent power is often grater than the actual power in a circuit because there are losses in the circuit due to the effect of reactance in the circuit. The reactance opposes the flow of AC current, using up some of the power.
Form, facade, attractiveness, curb appeal of a property. Pleasing, more attractive looking property is likely to allow the seller to of real estate to obtain a better price in a shorter selling period.
Lumber divided into industrial, architectural and premium grades, the quality of this lumber is based on its finished appearance.
A taxpayer or representative who appeals to a higher authority.
An attachment to a an object or addition to a structure.
Device or machine for performing a specific task, such as a mechanical or electromechanical device used for heating, cooking, cleaning or cooling.
Generally refers to a form or forms submitted to obtain some type of acceptance or service. Commonly refers to forms and documentation submitted to obtain a mortgage loan, in which instance the information provided details the income, debts and obligations of a potential borrower.
Fees paid to the lender at the time of application for a loan. It may include charges for a credit report, property appraisal, etc.
Device used for spreading a substance.
A decoration made of one material and attached to another as ornamental trim.
To put to a practical or specific use. To spread on a surface.
Division or assignment based on a plan or proportion as in prorating property expenses such as insurance and taxes between the buyer and seller.
Contractual provision requiring apportionment.
Market value of a property or home (real estate) as supplied by a third party, usually a licensed professional.
There are three basic methods of valuing property. (a) The replacement value of property. (b) Comparable sales approach, comparing properties with similar properties. (c) Interest Income that a property will return to the investor. Also known as appraisal method.
Usually done by a professional appraiser or the insurance industry, this is an assessment of property loss, taking into account the quality, quantity and age of a property.
The fee, charged by a licensed professional, to estimate the market value of a piece of real estate.
A profesional organization for licensed real estate appraisers.
There are three basic methods of valuing property. (a) The replacement value of property. (b) Comparable sales approach, comparing properties with similar properties. (c) Interest Income that a property will return to the investor. Also known as appraisal approach.
The detailed written report that shows the value of a property, based on recent comparable sales, in the area. It also includes a description of the property and structures, street address, zoning allowed, assessed valuation and taxes, best use for the property and information about the appraiser.
Professional opinion of the market value of a home or property.
The licensed profession permitted to do appraisals and appear as an expert witness in a court of law regarding the evaluating process as well as giving testimony concerning real estate and market value.
Increase in the value of real estate over a period of time. Expression of gratitude.
Someone who is working under the supervision of an experienced craftsman to learn a craft or trade.
A confirmation of an amount able to be borrowed by an individual, based upon assessment of his ability to repay said loan. Alternatively, an authorization obtained from governmental authorities for a building project to proceed.
Term used to indicate that a particular installation has been found to be in line with regulations, such as the building code, by a governing body. Also refers to a building project that has received all regulatory authorization required for construction to proceed.
More or less correct or exact.
Measure of the annualized compound growth of a real estate investment.
Item which is part of something else and goes with a property and is also covered by the deed.
Structure not belonging to a property but considered a part of it through the use of an easement of common interest.
Measurement of interest rate that expresses the cost of a mortgage as a yearly rate on the loan balance, assuming that the loan is held for its full term. On an adjustable rate mortgage, assumption is made that the loan's index remains the same as its initial value.
A paved area, usually between a driveway and a street. Horizontal piece of trim beneath a window sill. Covering worn to hold tools and protect clothing. Panel behind a sink or lavatory. The front of a bathtub from the rim to the floor.
Horizontal beam, also referred to as the pitching piece, which supports the upper end of a stair carriage or stringer.
Panel wall section between the window sill and the base of the wall.
Semicircular or polygonal projection of a building, at the east end of a church with a domed or vaulted roof.
A thermostat that is submerged in water and is used to control the operation of a specific device.
Large pipe or conduit made for bringing water from a distant source.
Containing water. Formed by the action of water.
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Imagination Playground Visits Queens
Children and parents gathered at the Yellowstone Playground in Forest Hills on July 10 to join in the Imagination Playground demonstration.
Imagination Playground, according to the organization’s Web site, is “a breakthrough playspace concept conceived and designed by architect David Rockwell to encourage child-directed, unstructured free play”.
The concept consists of several blue foam blocks that come in an assortment of shapes and sizes, and small sand and water pools. Children use the blocks and pools to build their own playground experience. The aim is to increase and encourage creativity in children, as well as bring children in local parks together and teach them to work with one another.
Imagination Playground is traveling across the city this summer in what is known as its “Pop-Up Tour”, visiting one park in each borough to demonstrate the new idea. At the Yellowstone Playground demonstration, children were treated to the trademark Imagination Playground experience as well as face-painting, lanyard arts and crafts and games.
The main Imagination Playground park will open in Burling Slip in Manhattan sometime in late July. The park will be complete with the organization’s blue loose block parts, sand and water installations, storytelling and other types of creative entertainment for children. It is a collaboration between the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation and the Rockwell Group.
More information as well as a video tour is available at the organization’s Web site, www.imaginationplayground.org.
|
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|
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Queen's University Muslim Students Association (QUMSA)
What does your club do?:
QUMSA stands for the Queen's University Muslim Students' Association. We act as a focal point for Muslim students to meet for various acts of worship. We also seek to interact with other clubs and members of the Queen’s community and the Kingston community at large. For more information about us please feel free to contact us at email@example.com and find out more about us at www.qumsa.net.
Club contact email: firstname.lastname@example.org
Location of Office: Room 232, JDUC. Our office and musalah are located here.
Club President: Mustafa Mohamad
Number of Members: ~300
What makes your club unique?: (1) To give an opportunity to the members of the association to come in close contact with one another. (2) To strengthen the bonds among Muslim students. (3) To help the Muslim students at Queen's to live according to the Quran, to train them to practice Islam and preserve their identity as Muslims. (4) To provide Muslim students with Islamic literature. (5) To provide opportunities for meeting, discussion, and celebrating collectively, Islamic activities. (6) To make Islam better understood by Muslim and non-Muslim students. (7) To promote friendly relations between the Muslim and non-Muslim students at the university. (8) To provide Muslim and non-Muslim students with qualified speakers on Islam. (9) To provide guidance to new Muslim students in matters of orientation and other pertinent problems. (10) To provide educational help in terms of books, etc., to members.
Other information: Islamic Society of Kingston (ISK)
Categories: Common Interest & Social; Social Issues & Equity; Religious & Cultural Identity; Advocacy
|
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|
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|
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John F. Kennedy said in both his inaugural address and at the time the stamp was issued, "Together let us explore the stars, conquer the deserts, and eradicate disease." Kennedy's invitation and challenge reflected the significance the United States and other nations, eighty of which issued similar stamps, attached to the objective of "A World United Against Malaria."
Its name derived from the Italian for "bad air," malaria has cursed human history for more than 4,000 years. Civilizations had struggled to control it long before 1632, when quinine (cinchona bark) was found to be the first successful treatment.
Malaria has been virtually eradicated in most of North America and Europe thanks to the use of insecticides and environmental management, the very things which have hampered similar efforts in Africa, Asia, Latin and South America.
The 4-cent commemorative Malaria Eradication Stamp was issued March 30, 1962, in Washington, DC. The design depicts the Great Seal of the US and an adaptation of the World Health Organization (WHO) emblem. Charles R. Chickering designed the blue and ocher stamp for the Bureau of Engraving and Printing. All lettering is in sans-serif type, L-type perforations.
The stamp measures 0.84 x 1.44 inches in dimension, arranged horizontally, printed on the Giori presses, issued in panes of fifty with an initial printing of 100 million.
World Health Organization. A Global Strategy for Malaria Control. Geneva: World Health Organization, 1993.
Malaria. (2008). In Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved June 30, 2008, from Encyclopedia Britannica Online.
Postal Bulletin (February 15, 1962).
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CC-MAIN-2013-20
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|
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|
Undesirable vegetation is a ponds primary source of algae problems.
This vegetation may be sub-merged growth (below the surface), emergent (growing from the bottom & visible on the surface) or surface (floating). Different control strategies are required for each instance. Quite often floating plants such as duckweed and watermeal are misdiagnosed as algae problems. In all cases, proper identification of your vegetation is crucial for a successful control program.
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http://www.spsonline.com/sps/services/vegetation-control-0
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|
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| 0.91009
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When people ask me about the Sustainable AmbITion strand of the Make:IT:Happen fund (part of the AmbITion Scotland programme designed and delivered by Rudman Consulting, funded by The National lottery via Creative Scotland) they are often curious about the sort of projects other arts, cultural and heritage organisations have undertaken where digital technologies are used to assist environmental sustainability. To get your creative juices flowing, here are some of the examples I usually share – please add others as a comment to this post as you spot them!
Regional Screen Scotland is in receipt of the first Sustainable AmbITion grant. Screen Machine is an 80-seat, air conditioned and 3D-ready mobile cinema which brings the latest films to remote and rural areas of Scotland. The Screen Machine delivers an important social role in taking new film releases to some of the most rural Scottish communities. Measuring the emissions of a programme will help to raise understanding of the low carbon agenda and also identify how Regional Screen Scotland can help manage and reduce emissions across its portfolio of activity. Digital technologies will be used to gather data from audiences and to create the algorithms and formulas for calculation of the CO2 footprint of audience and Screen Machine journeys.
The amazing new arts, music, cinema and creative industries centre, Mareel in Lerwick on the Shetland Isles, hosted our first 2012 AmbITion Scotland roadshow. On the topic of Glo/cal, the roadshow explored how local and community focussed projects can encourage global participation and engagement through utilising digital tools. Hannah Rudman gave an overview of the topic and opportunities available to the arts, culture and heritage sector through AmbITion Scotland; Gwilym Gibbons, Director of Shetland Arts gave a case study about their work including Mareel; and Lucy Conway founder of Eigg Box explained her vision with Stef Lewandowski (Eigg Box’s Geek in Residence) showing off the first glo/cal art object to be created at Eigg Box – the renowned Data Necklace. A Q&A with online and live audiences finished this great webcast masterclass.
Hannah Rudman overview of Glo/cal and AmbITion Scotland opportunities (Opposite)
Gwilym Gibbons, Director Shetland Arts and Mareel – a glo/cal case study
The latest AmbITion Scotland case study shows the digital development journey of remote artists’ residency centre, Cove Park. I worked with Cove Park, facilitating their change journey, and am thrilled with the outcomes they have achieved through planning and implementing some digital tools; by changing their mindset and growing confidence around working digitally; and by building their own digital capabilities and capacities. They report better operational efficiencies through being able to work virtually, and more easily manage communications with each other, stakeholders and audiences; increased scale, reach, and impact through an improved website and social media strategy; and overall increased accessibility, leverage, legacy and a sense that they are powerfully communicating what it is they do and why!
Overcoming some of the digital challenges of being in a remote Scottish location, they are now in a position to consider how their digital assets can be maximised as artistic production tools and new business models.
The story of how following a simple change management methodology (in this case, The AmbITion Approach which I authored), and undertaking that methodology within the support of a wider programme that encourages professionals to share their success (and failure) stories and case studies, network and learn online and in person, and learn and build collective knowledge online is what I’m keynoting about at Marketing de las Artes this year. Spain’s financial (pink) paper Cinco Dias quotes me as advising cultural organisations to understand what intangible assets they might have (communities of support on social networks, digital content, specific digital demographics, etc.) – exactly the exercise that Cove Park is now in the position to undertake having sorted out their strategy and infrastucture.
The Federation Scottish Theatre‘s Digital Action Research Project came to a conclusion this week, with a showcase of the case studies emerging from the digital experiments undertaken by the five Scottish performing arts companies involved. Funded by The National Lottery via Creative Scotland, the FST’s project has been running for 14 months, facilitated by Hannah Rudman.
Jon Morgan and Hannah Rudman introduce and give an overview of the project:
read on >
Watch this video case study of The Royal Conservatoire of Scotland’s digital development journey. They undertook the AmbITion Approach (designed by Hannah Rudman), beginning the process 2 years ago with AmbITion Scotland. With all changes fully and implemented and embedded in practice by March 2012, they have launched their fantastic new online showcase, broadcast.rcs.ac.uk.
(If you’re considering applying to the AmbITion ScotlandMake:IT:Happen Fund ‘s AmbITion Approach strand, then this video is especially relevant to you!
This is Lesley Anne Rose, Creative Producer of Stellar Quines who, following their AmbITion Scotland experience have really made IT happen for their theatre company by grasping the opportunities afforded by digital technologies. The picture also shows Hamish Allison, Managing Director at Freakworks at the Freakworks Studios in Edinburgh with whom Stellar Quines are working (and also with DCA – Dundee Contemporary Arts) to create a 3D cinema package of their theatre piece, ANA. Read more below!
Other Scottish organisations can now Make:IT:Happen too, by applying for newly available Make:IT:Happen funding to AmbITion Scotland, which supports Scottish arts, culture, and heritage organisations to grasp the opportunities offered by digital technologies. AmbITion Scotland is investing over £400,000 of National Lottery funds provided by Creative Scotland in strategic digital development and Scotland’s arts, culture and heritage organisations are invited to apply for investment to capitalise on opportunities presented by digital technologies.
This case study presented for AmbITion Scotland by Hannah Rudman summarises the development of the Edinburgh Summer Festivals’ API, and its impact on app developers, festival audiences and the festivals themselves. A project of Festivals Edinburgh’s Festivalslab, it was one of the first large scale open data initiatives in the arts, cultural, and heritage sectors and heralded a new wave of sector organisations reassessing the more intangible value of their data and opening it up to each other and different sectors, such as digital and interactive, for new uses.
Monetising Content was the theme of Scotland’s national conference for the digital and interactive industries, Digital 2012. Organised by Interactive Scotland and AmbITion Scotland, Hannah Rudman gives an overview of why the conference is addressing the theme, and introduces the main subject and discussion areas of collaboration, convergence, content experience, and collection of data.
(A collection of content from Digital 2012 of interest to the arts, cultural, creative, and heritage industries is available on AmbITion’s new website).
Asimetrica organised Spain’s first ever national arts marketing conference in Madrid, and I spoke there on the subject of how digital developments can bring huge opportunities for organisational and business model development; increase reach, scale, impact and legacy for audiences; and create new artistic experiences and product: thanks so much to the organisers, the audience, and the fantastic simultaneous translators who have created my first ever talk (with jokes) in Spanish…
Following its initiation at Culture Hack Scotland, this case study video maps the development of a hack into a fully operational mobile site launched by Edinburgh International Book Festival this summer.
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Overview of Issues
The new Congress has convened and is completing its organizational phase, for example not all of the subcommittees related to education have been finalized. The 113th Congress has nine major education measures to rewrite. One of them, the Workforce Investment Act, which includes adult basic education, has been pending since 2004. The other bills include the Higher Education Act, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, and the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA). ESEA has been due to be rewritten since 2007 and was the subject of House and Senate action in the last Congress.
Most observers are expecting that the Higher Education Act will be first to be considered for rewriting as the Pell Grant and Stafford Loan programs both have significant problems. The Pell Grant is a program that will have more people using it than there is money, and the Stafford student loan program’s interest rate is once again scheduled to go to 9%.
The Elementary and Secondary Act, which was last changed in 2001 and became No Child Left Behind, has been the subject of several attempts at being rewritten. Now the Senate, with a hearing on February 7, is looking at how the US Department of Education’s waiver program is going to be impacting any reauthorization attempt. Meanwhile the House is saying that they like what they produced during the last Congress (five bills to replace NCLB).
IRA is working to have literacy professional development included in several of these initiatives (using LEARN Act ideas) and to maintain funding for the Striving Readers Comprehensive Literacy Program.
As mentioned, there are other measures that are scheduled to be rewritten. The Workforce Investment Act, which includes Adult Basic Ed, has been awaiting action for years. It is said to be coming up soon. It would create a change in that states would have more flexibility in how to use the funds. Head Start is also up for being rewritten and as this is happening about 10% of their grantees are re-compete for their funds (this is the second wave of changes). In addition, the National Governors Association (NGA) has created an initiative to support six states to change to have early childhood programs with literacy components. IRA participated in these planning meetings with the NGA.
Gates Interviewed on Education Policy Changes – Measuring Teachers
Funding – Sequestration & Continuing Resolution
The current buzz in DC is that the sequester scheduled to take effect on March 1st will not be stopped. There is little political will to stop it. The assumed Republican drive to forestall the sequestration because it includes a cut to military spending is being watered down by the tea party members who only want to see spending cuts. The other part of the sequester is that there is another spending measure, the continuing resolution, which is scheduled to expire on March 27. Thus, in reality these two issues are being merged into one. It is possible that the sequestration cuts could be partially replaced by adding money into specific programs, by cutting other programs. Or impacting the overall spending levels – the allocations, could change it.
The continuing resolution and the sequester could impact each other if the overall spending levels for areas like education, health, transportation, defense are changed. If the overall spending levels are reduced, then the sequester will be eliminated because the money would have all ready been cut. If this happens then appropriators and/or executive branch managers would then allocate the funds they do have to specific programs. The difference is the sequester hits all programs, a change in the allocation would mean that programs will be impacted differently.
As of right now, the sequester is expected cut to FY 13 funds to education by about 5.1%; but remember this will be from the funds that will be sent to schools beginning on July 1st for the upcoming school year (we are forward funded).
It is also possible that some of the sequesters impact/reduction via lowering allocations could be mitigated by increased revenues. This is part of the agenda of Senator Murray (D-WA) who is chair of the Senate Budget Committee.
One of the things that has been noticed is that the Common Core State Standards are new to someone each day; and if you have been working on them each day for years you are discovering something new each day. The IRA Common Core State Standards Committee has set up a Q & A on the IRA website to help.
To see what others are asking, post a question, or just gather information:
IRA Common Core State Standards Page
Also, watch for a session for state councils at the upcoming IRA Annual Convention in San Antonio, April 19–22, 2013.
Looking for More Training on Advocacy?
The second IRA University of Advocacy course will begin on Tuesday night, February 5, at 8 PM EST, and run for six weeks (five sessions, skipping Tuesday, February 12, as it is the night of the State-of-the-Union address by the President to the Congress). This course will be on the Art of Advocacy. The previous course Pol Sci 101: How it works can be found in the Advocacy section of the IRA website. It is not required that you sit in on all five of the sessions-feel free to “drop-in.”
Also, the summer leadership academy is going to include a significant advocacy element… you will learn so much about making deals you will be smoking cigars in backrooms with the best of ‘em. Look for more information coming out shortly on this IRA event in Minneapolis June 27–29.
January 29, 2013
Rich Long, IRA Government Relations
To follow legislative information on Twitter go to: @rlongliteracy
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Gene spells danger for coffee addicts
A gene that controls how fast your body breaks down caffeine might explain why some people can get away with drinking lots of coffee and others can't, new research suggests.
People with a genetic variation linked with slow caffeine metabolism are more likely to have a nonfatal heart attack, the researchers write today in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
The researchers looked at 4024 people who lived in coffee-rich Costa Rica between 1994 and 2004. Half had had a nonfatal heart attack, and half had not.
They found that slightly more than half had the slow version of the gene while the others had the fast form.
"We found in individuals who had the slow version of this gene, as little as two cups of coffee a day is associated with an increased risk of heart disease," says study author Dr Ahmed El-Sohemy of the University of Toronto.
For those with the slow-acting gene, two to three cups of coffee a day increased their odds of a heart attack by 36%, and four or more cups a day increased the risk by 64%, the study says.
"For those who had the fast version of the gene, there was no increased risk, even with four or more cups a day," he says.
"Surprisingly, what we found was that in individuals under 50 years of age who were fast metabolisers ... consumption of as little as one to three cups a day was associated with a lower risk of heart disease."
Those with the fast-acting gene who drank two to three cups of coffee a day had 22% reduced odds of having a heart attack, but drinking four or more cups a day lessened the risk by 1%, the study found.
"Initially we thought that individuals who had the slow version of this gene might drink less caffeine because it stays in their system longer," El-Sohemy says.
"But what we found is that regardless of the version of the gene that the person had, it did not affect how much caffeine they consumed."
Breaking down caffeine in the liver
The enzyme cytochrome P450 1A2 is responsible for metabolising caffeine in the liver. And variations of the gene for this enzyme can slow down or speed up caffeine metabolism.
"An individual cannot predict whether or not they have the slow or fast version of the gene, because although they can feel the effects of caffeine on the nervous system, they cannot feel the effects on their blood vessels," El-Sohemy says.
Since tests to determine which form of the gene you carry are not readily available and you cannot feel how fast your body is getting rid of caffeine, the study's authors recommended reining in coffee consumption to no more than four cups a day.
Previous studies have offered conflicting findings about the health effects of coffee, and El-Sohemy notes other chemicals in coffee may play a role.
"Of all the studies that have been conducted to date that looked at the effects of either coffee or caffeine on heart disease, none of them have taken into account genetic differences in the ability to break down caffeine," El-Sohemy says.
"We are approaching the era of personalised dietary advice."
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Tip post: full time
Salariu: 1500 - 1800 euro
Data expirării: 12/08/2011
At first our candidates will be charged with the assemble of all wooden stairs, according to technical plans. Afterwards, they may be sent out for the assembly at sites, or will be charges with other responsibilities (eg. Productions of wooden mini-van walls, painting and varnishing.)
- Our candidates need to fulfil all-round carpentry-task. Eg. According to technical plans they need to saw, sand, drill, mill wooden parts. Afterword they need to assemble all parts, onto the main beams (who will be prepared with CNC-milling machines). Candidates need to know how to work with CNC-steered machines. (Machines used: Weinig Unimat 500, SCM, Magic M 80)
- All balustrades and platforms need to be sawed and cutt out.
Sides and edges must be rounded.
- All stairs and parts are a first time assembled in the production hall. Afterwards they are braught to the sites, were they will be anchored into existing constructions.
- SURPLUS: knowledge of painting and varnishing furniture/doors with an airless pistol. Our client may ask our candidates to help out in the paintcabinet! This is however when confronted with a lack of work!
- From time to time our workers need to produce wooden/cardboard walls / anti slip floors for minivans. (Our client has a contract with Car production company Ford, for the production of walls and anti-slip floors for Ford Transit buses.
- From time to time: making interior doors. Milling openings and fitting joints and locks.
Wood used; oak, leaf and rubber wood!
All work needs to be fulfilled accurate, with eye for quality, in a clean manner with respect for collegue, products and machines.
Language knowledge: Communicative English
Others: Communicativ German is also accepted
? Kandidates must be between 30 and 40 years old!
? A lot of experience as a carpenter
? Experience with CNC-steered machines
? Experience with assembly at sites and production of stairs
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After looking at HerrSheisse's impressive Belgian collection and his new addition of his Congo Star, it gave me the idea of starting this thread of "Dirty Medals".
And I don't mean medals that are tarnished or soiled, I mean medals which have a dirty dark sinister history that no amount of polishing will remove.
Now instantly people will post 3rd Reich medals, but a 3rd Reich medal awarded to a cleaner for 5 years service in the civil service is not very dark. E.g. a Nazi Luftwaffe medal I wouldn't consider a fiendish medal where as an SS one would be due to it possibly having a dirty black history.
So I'll start the ball rolling with this one from behind the Iron Curtain in Poland.
Polish "People's Police" medal for "Service and Upholding Public Order".
Like most things when it comes to regimes or governments, if it includes "People" or "Democratic" or "Socialist" in the name then it is most likely the complete opposite.
Quite a sinister medal here as many people were silenced and "dissappeared" during the grey days of the Communist Regime. Issued to a Sargent of the secret police in 1975. Exactly what acts were done to warrant this award?
Established in 1971 to honor the individuals who contributed to maintenance of public order or showed bravery and sacrifice or distinguished themselves in performing the duties to maintain public order. Conferred in three classes: 1st Class - gold, 2nd Class - silver and 3rd Class -bronze. The medal was meant primarily for members of the Civic Militia (Police) and Security Service.
My one is the bronze version, so maybe clubbing a few beatnik long haired hippy students would be enough for this one....
Original award documents and medal pouch.
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AU SOC Professor Montgomery Challenges Junk Food Marketers
Today, about 17 percent of kids are overweight, putting them at greater risk for cancer, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and other serious health problems. Montgomery says the marketing practices of food and beverage giants like McDonald's, Pepsi, and Burger King, are partly to blame.
"This very well could be the first generation that doesn't live as long as their parents," says the SOC professor of public communication, who has built a career advocating for more kid-friendly media.
In 2007, Montgomery co-authored a study with the Center for Digital Democracy documenting how high-calorie, low-nutrient foods are being marketed to youngsters using everything from music downloads to online games to branded social networking sites. The report, submitted to the Federal Trade Commission, recommends a new set of ground rules for the new "marketing ecosystem" of cell phones, instant messaging, and other digital technologies. She also testified before the FTC about the vulnerability of children to digital marketing in a rapidly changing world.
And while Montgomery doesn't think children and teens should be "off limits" to food marketers, she says parents, policymakers, and health care providers need to draw a line in the sand.
"This is new territory, and in many ways, young people are forging the path," says Montgomery, who explores the issue in her book, Generation Digital: Politics, Commerce, and Childhood in the Age of the Internet. "We can't afford to be laissez-faire. We need to ensure that digital media evolves in such a way that it can be a positive force in our children's lives."
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No Such Thing as "Sustainable" Beef, Study Shows.
A recent study conducted by German scientists confirms what common sense already clearly suggests, namely that the resource-intensive process of fattening and killing cows for food spells trouble for the environment even when it's done organically. My top two favorite quotations? I'm glad you asked: (1) "Vegans eat in a decidedly climate-friendly way" and (2) "Anyone who believes that by buying a ribeye steak from an organic store they are automatically contributing to climate protection is mistaken."
Other highlights of the article include a candid rebuke of "greening" efforts in the German government and elsewhere that continue to insulate livestock production from due environmental criticism (because of powerful lobbying interests), and an interviewee who just can't bring himself believe "that the world will come to an end because of cows burping and farting." Greed and denial--always a winsome combination! Möchten Sie es auf Deutsch lesen? Klicken Sie hier. Many thanks to Clayre for the tip on this article!
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The State Food and Drug Administration has issued new regulations that strictly require a pharmacist to be on-duty in drug stores and forbid pharmaceutical franchises from prescribing drugs for other stores in the name of wholesaling, the Information Times reported. In the absence of licensed pharmacists, pharmacies are not allowed to sell prescribed drugs even when customers can provide prescriptions. General Manager of Guangdong Jinkang Pharmacy, Zheng Haotao, said that the new regulations strengthen the function of pharmacists in the selling of prescribed drugs. The current regulations require two licensed pharmacists in each drug store. However, many stores take advantage of the gray area and have pharmacists rotated among several stores. In the absence of the pharmacists, many still sell prescribed drugs to customers in advanced. The pharmacists only handle some of the administrative work afterwards to make the transactions “legal”. Tao Nanping, an official with the circulation department of Guangzhou Food and Drug Administartion, commented that if the new regulation can be executed thoroughly, it will increase pharmacies’ dependency on pharmacists and thus reduce the risk of selling the wrong drugs. Since many drug retail franchises are growing rapidly with increasing bargaining power, the new regulations aim at curbing unsupervised private wholesaling. These franchises now can only supply drugs to medical institutions in the countryside under the regulator’s supervision. Drug wholesaling to other pharmacists outside the franchise is strictly prohibited. Transformations in the medium of operation are not allowed and neither are drug sales in exhibitions nor other public relations events. Zheng pointed out that some gray areas of the new regulations may encourage the behaviours that the regulator aims at curbing. For example, it is said that the promotional strategy of “buy one get one free” is not applicable to prescribed drugs, but in turn, would encourage such promotional activities of non-prescribed drugs instead. Zheng added that the regulations can help to bridge the existing legal gaps and improve drugs' categorization as well as sales management.
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Dead Men Walking in Ohio
By Paul Kopp
Most debates about capital punishment are narrowed to a choice between an approach from either the Old Testament or the New Testament: Do we take an eye for an eye or turn the other cheek?
Last month Sister Helen Prejean, a notable advocate for the abolition of the death penalty spoke at Xavier University. Prejean is best known for her book, Dead Man Walking, which inspired the Oscar-winning film of the same name. The book was an account of her experience in Louisiana as spiritual advisor to Death Row inmate Elmo Patrick Sonnier, whom she accompanied to his execution in the electric chair in 1984.
Prejean, 70, is a Roman Catholic sister of the order of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Medaille. She began her work with Death Row inmates in 1981. She is now working for the Death Penalty Discourse Network in New Orleans, and travels the world meeting with prisoners and speaking out against capital punishment. She talks about her intimate experiences dealing with Death Row inmates and their families, as well as the families of murder victims, in the hope of furthering the public’s knowledge of the process of capital punishment.
“The journey that I try to help people with is first to stand with others in outrage when innocents have been ripped out of our lives by these very violent crimes,” Prejean says.
A link to slavery
Most people haven’t thought deeply about the issue because it’s something that doesn’t concern most people, she says. She also finds that, in general, once people have a more profound understanding of how the death penalty actually works, they are more perceptive to its shortcomings.
When Prejean talks about the death penalty in the United States, she is quick to note that understanding the context of the society which it came from is very important.
“You have to connect it directly with homelessness in America, people without health care,” she says. “You have to connect it with all the systemic things that are wrong, that don’t allow so many people to participate fully in American life.”
Her reasoning focuses not only on the moral argument against execution, but also on inequalities within the political, racial and social climates that keep the system in place.
“Can you picture a prosecutor getting on the evening news and saying, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, one of our valuable citizens was killed last night, a homeless man in the street, and we are outraged about this. We are going to seek the ultimate penalty for the ones who killed this valuable citizen.’ You know you will never hear that,” Prejean says.
Politicians and prosecutors utilize the idea of capital punishment as a campaign tool to show they are tough on crime, according to Prejean.
“It is 95 percent about political symbolism than it is an actual effective way to deter crime,” she says.
Racism, she adds, is also a major factor.
“Eighty percent of executions are taking place in states where slavery was most present,” she says. “The places where people of color live is where the death penalty is going to be most operative.”
Though she knows where the problems with the death penalty begin, and where she feels they should end, the basis of her message is that taking one life for another is not justice, and it does not bring peace to the families of the victims. It only causes them more grief, she says.
Execution is the highest form of punishment in a justice system and culture that have lost touch with humanity, Prejean says.
“When I witnessed that first execution, I came out of the prison and threw up,” she says. “That’s why I wrote the book. People are never going to see this, so we are going to have to bring them closer to it.”
‘Becoming more uncomfortable’
Capital punishment became part of Ohio law in 1803. In 1972 the U.S. Supreme Court declared the death penalty unconstitutional, outlawing the practice across the country. In subsequent years, state legislatures passed death-penalty laws that have been upheld by the Supreme Court.
Ohio lawmakers enacted the state’s new capital punishment statute in 1981. However the state did not resume executions until 1999. In 1991 then-Gov. Dick Celeste commutated death sentences against eight men and women. Since 1999 Ohio has executed 32 exec people by lethal injection.
Ohio’s use of the death penalty as recently received nationwide news coverage due to the botched execution of Romell Broom. Over a period of two hours the executioners failed to find a suitable vein in Broom’s arm, and Gov. Ted Strickland halted the execution. A hearing in federal court n Nov. 30th could decide whether the state will try a second time to execute Broom.
Concerns about the qualifications of the technicians carrying out lethal injections have become magnified by the Broom case. Though guards are trained to administer the poison, some critics say they lack the medical knowledge to do it properly. Dr. Jonathan Groner, professor of clinical surgery at the Ohio State College of Medicine, told the Cleveland Scene, “Ohio is caught in a ‘Hippocratic paradox.’ Those most qualified to help the state in executions – doctors, nurses, practicing EMTs – are forbidden from taking part in executions by
Broom’s was the first Ohio execution called off while in progress, though two other executions over the past four years have been delayed due to similar complications.
The incident has also brought further public attention to the moral issue. Ohioans to Stop Executions (OSTE) issued a statement saying, “No amount of adjustment to the death penalty process can achieve an outcome absent of pain and suffering for victims’ family members, witnesses, corrections workers and the condemned inmate.”
OSTE, founded in 1987, works to educate the public about executions.
“People don’t know a lot about the death penalty,” says Renee Berlon, southern Ohio organizer for OSTE. “The state is split right now. People are becoming more uncomfortable with it.”
Aside from the moral issue of capital punishment are matters of practicality. The death penalty, as practiced in the United States, is a long and expensive process, stretching over an average 10 years, Berlon says. A recent study by the Death Penalty Information Center acknowledged that it’s difficult to gauge how much a death sentence costs, but estimated $30 million per execution. Berlon says most northern states aren’t executing.
Ohio has 135 inmates on Death Row. Kentucky has 35 on Death Row; Texas has 350.
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News in Brief
College Board's SAT Goes Statewide in Delaware
In a bid to raise college awareness and readiness among high school students, the state of Delaware will offer every 11th grader the chance to take the SAT college-entrance exam, free of charge, during the school day.
The state is using $1.8 million from its federal Race to the Top grant to finance the four-year program, according to state officials. About one-third of Delaware’s high school juniors typically take the SAT, education leaders there said. They hope the new campaign will bring that figure to 100 percent.
In addition to its place in Delaware’s college-readiness work, the agreement is noteworthy for its role in the rivalry between the New York City-based College Board, which owns the SAT, and ACT Inc., the Iowa City, Iowa-based company that owns the eponymous college-entrance exam.
The SAT has long been the most widely taken college-entrance test, but the ACT has closed the gap steadily, in part with a bigger array of statewide contracts. With the class of 2010, more students took the ACT than the SAT, according to the traditional method of calculating participation. Just as that juncture was reached, the SAT introduced a new method of calculating its test-taking, which counted a group of students it typically had excluded from the count. By that method, the SAT remained more widely taken than the ACT. ("Few Changes on SAT Posted by Class of 2010," Sept. 22, 2010.)
Five states—Colorado, Illinois, Michigan, Kentucky, and Tennessee—require students to take the ACT, according to company spokesman Scott Gomer. Two more, North Dakota and Wyoming, require students to take either the ACT or ACT’s WorkKeys, a work-readiness assessment. Three more states—Arkansas, Texas, and Utah—offer students the chance to take the ACT free of charge, but don’t require it, Mr. Gomer said.
The SAT, in comparison, has three statewide agreements in operation now, including Delaware’s. Texas offers the test, but it’s up to each school district to opt into that program, College Board spokesman Peter Kauffmann said. Maine requires all 11th graders to take the SAT as part of its accountability system.
Mr. Kauffmann declined to discuss whether the College Board is making a point of securing more statewide contracts.
Vol. 30, Issue 19, Page 4
Access selected articles, e-newsletters and more!
- Chattahoochee Hills Charter School, Multiple Locations
- Round Rock ISD, Round Rock, TX
- Chief of Human Resources
- San Francisco Unified School District, San Francisco, CA
- Amargosa Valley Elementary School, Amargosa Valley, NV
- The Berkeley Institute, HAMILTON, Bermuda
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The most important considerations for a cellulite diet and for your health in general is good nutrition, reduce or eliminate organ meats, heavy dairy, avoid toxins in your food and to drink plenty of water to flush toxins and detoxify your body.
A healthy diet should be high in antioxidants and include adequate raw low glycemic fruits, vegetable, whole grains, fiber at least eight glasses of water a day. Make sure your diet contains sources of Lecithin, such as eggs and consider lecithin granules as a condiment choice.
Essential fatty acids are also important so instead of unhealthy fats like margarine and butter, consider the healthy fats found in hemp, olive, flaxseed, and walnut oils, as well as oil from cold water fish.
Other natural foods and supplements beneficial to treatment of cellulite are grape seed, pomegranate, Q10, vitamin C and magnesium, amino acids, glucosamine, ginger, evening primrose oil, cayenne and kelp.
Cellulite exercises like yoga and deep breathing can help you shape up your self-image, smooth out imperfections, relax and feel good. This type of exercise also helps keep you fit for life.
There are many cosmetic and medical procedures that are thought remove or lessen cellulite such as spa body treatments, skin brushing, dermal fillers, massage and even the extremes of lymphatic drainage, iontophoresis, microdermabrasion, lasers, peels and liposuction.
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DC Prep’s network of schools currently serves 1,100 students in preschool through 8th grade on three campuses. In the 2013-14 school year, DC Prep will open its fourth school - Benning Middle Campus - with 4th grade (the campus will "grow up" a grade each year through 8th grade). DC Prep is free and open to any student in Washington, DC.
Are you interested in learning more about how to enroll your child, or children, at DC Prep? If so, please read on to learn more about the high expectations that DC Prep has for all members of the community – including students, families, and staff. We hope you will join us.
- Student learning is at the heart of all we do. We have an unapologetic focus on academics with an intense learning environment including a longer school day, frequent homework, and focused academic intervention.
- We believe in the power and joy of learning and that all students can excel.
- We emphasize healthy social development and foster a positive learning environment where students are supported to develop strong study habits and to demonstrate the personal qualities of successful students and good citizens.
- DC Prep effectively teaches social skill development grounded in a focus on challenging academics. DC Prep builds a strong school culture – social skills are consistently taught and reinforced across all grade levels and an unapologetic focus on academics balances joy in learning with urgency and rigor.
- DC Prep fosters shared expectations and aspirations between home and school. Frequent informal and formal communication with families, including regular phone contact, quarterly conferences, etc., build trust and parent/teacher teamwork to achieve the best outcome for every student.
Families give DC Prep the strongest endorsement — ranking us a "great school" year in and year out. You will, too!
By all measures, DC Prep is making a positive difference in the lives of its students. Our Preppies’ academic performance far outpaces their peers in other public schools and they are growing as responsible young people in the community.
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Northamptonshire (nôrthămpˈtənshĭr) [key] or Northants nôrth-hăntsˈ, county (1991 pop. 568,900), 914 sq mi (2,367 sq km), central England. The county seat is Northampton. The terrain is undulating agricultural country, devoted to pasture and forests. The principal river is the Nene. The iron and steel industry, which flourished on the basis of local ore from the start of the 20th cent., has dwindled in significance. The county's specialization in boot and shoe production has also withered in the face of competition. The Roman roads Ermine Street and Watling Street crossed the county. In Anglo-Saxon times the area was part of the kingdom of Mercia and was probably organized as a shire in Danish times. In 1974, Northamptonshire was reorganized as a nonmetropolitan county.
The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed. Copyright © 2012, Columbia University Press. All rights reserved.
More on Northamptonshire from Infoplease:
See more Encyclopedia articles on: British and Irish Political Geography
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Recent Autism Studies:
Obesity weighs heavy on everyone, literally. In a recent study done by the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta Georgia it has been found that obesity may be connected to Autism. In the study, women who were obese during pregnancy were 60% more likely to have a child born with Autism. Autism has recently received a boost in research money. While other trends have been found, scientists are trying to pinpoint controllable factors within the disease.
More Medical Advancement:
Alzheimer’s disease has become more detectable thanks to a new image testing radioactive dye. Earlier this April the U.S food and drug administration approved the dye called, Amyvid. The dye identifies brain plaque, which is a cause of Alzheimer’s. By detecting this signs of Alzheimer’s more work can be done in attempts to prevent the disease.
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Microsoft doesn't just want to bring gesture recognition to the Xbox with Project Natal. It also wants the technology in Windows, according to a very good source--Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates.
In an interview with CNET News this week, Gates talked about a world in which depth-sensing cameras such as the one Microsoft is adding to the Xbox allow people to control their PCs, game devices, and televisions. (See a video from the E3 conference below.)
Speaking about all of the technology Microsoft has cooking in its labs, Gates said: "I'd say a cool example of that, that you'll see... in a little over a year, is this (depth) camera thing." Gates said it was not just for games, "but for media consumption as a whole, and even if they connect it up to Windows PCs for interacting in terms of meetings, and collaboration, and communication."
Gates said it is an example where the project started in Microsoft research but is now being commercialized by both the Xbox and Windows units. "Both the Xbox guys and the Windows guys latched onto that and now even since they latched onto it the idea of how it can be used in the office is getting much more concrete, and is pretty exciting."
Using your body to control devices makes a lot of sense, Gates said. "I think the value is as great for if you're in the home, as you want to manage your movies, music, home system type stuff, it's very cool there," he said. "And I think there's incredible value as we use that in the office connected to a Windows PC. So Microsoft research and the product groups have a lot going on there, because you can use the cost reduction that will take place over the years to say, why shouldn't that be in most office environments."
Gates actually dropped the first hint of Natal during his joint appearance with Steve Jobs at the D: All Things Digital conference in 2007
"Imagine a game machine where you're just going to pick up the bat and swing it, or the tennis racket and swing it," Gates said.
Moderators Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher mocked Gates, saying such a technology already exists and it's called the Wii. But Gates disagreed. "No, that's not it. You can't pick up your tennis racket."
He later added, "You can't sit there with your friends and do those natural things," he said. "That's a 3D positional device. This is video recognition. This is a camera seeing what's going on."
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(Number ONCE) An arbitrary number that is generated to provide a unique identification or for security purposes such as when logging in to a network (see initialization vector). The nonce is used only once and not repeated. Although random and pseudo-random numbers theoretically produce unique numbers, there is the possibility that the same number can be generated more than once. However, if a very large, true random number is used, the chances are extremely small. A perfect nonce is the time of day; for example, 12.53 seconds past 5:13pm on 1/18/2012 can only occur once.
Pronounced like the "nons" in "nonsense," nonce is actually an English word that means "for the present occasion or time."
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Statistics plays a large role in sociology and the study of social phenomena. If you attend graduate school, whether for your M.A. or Ph.D., you will be required to take at least one or two courses in statistics. If you enjoy statistics and choose to take more than the required courses, a career as an analyst could be an option for you.
The number of different types of analyst positions open to sociologists is vast. Options include healthcare analyst, criminal justice analyst, educational analyst, management analyst, planning analyst, policy analyst, program analyst, social impact analyst, research analyst, market research analyst, and health outcomes analyst, to name a few.
The specific duties and topics of analysis will vary from job to job and industry to industry. For example, a healthcare analyst will likely analyze claims data from insurance companies to look for trends or abnormalities while a criminal justice analyst will examine prison or crime data and a market research analyst will look at spending habits of consumers.
Skill and Experience Requirements
Besides a deep knowledge and understanding of statistics, you will need to be familiar with various statistics software programs. Some of the most commonly used include SPSS, SAS, and Stata. Individual companies or industries may also frequently use or require knowledge of other programs. An M.A. or Ph.D. is not always required for these positions, though sociology majors with only a bachelor’s degree likely do not have the knowledge of statistics or statistical software programs that most positions require.
The salaries of analysts vary greatly depending on education, experience, and skill level as well as the type of company (private vs. public vs. government) and location/city. You can expect to make anywhere between $35,000 to over $100,000 in an analyst job.
Search for analyst jobs or other sociology careers in your area.
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Red Clay eliminated Choice Transportation for Red Clay Elementary Schools in 2005. Currently Red Clay Choice elementary students are either being transported to and from their Choice school by parents or taken to the feeder bus stop. This could account for what appears to be re-segregation of Red Clay city schools.
So currently Red Clay middle schools and high schools student are using Choice Transportation. Keep in mind there is no Red Clay middle school within the city of Wilmington. Cab is 6-12 but is a selective school based on an audition test. Keep in mind Red Clay does not have a high school within the city of Wilmington. Again rule out Cab.
So the fact is there is not re-segregation of Red Clay City of Wilmington middle and high schools are there are none! Wait! Stop the presses! What happen to Neighborhood Schools in the City of Wilmington? Somebody really go rolled under the bus. Should Red Clay have a city middle school and high school? Is it fair for city kids not to have a neighborhood middle school or high schools? Is it fair for city students to be bused to the suburbs?
No other school district in the state of Delaware provides Choice Transportation! But no other school district has students not assigned to a high school or requires them to complete a Choice application and abide by the choice transportation rules. Is this fair? Does it discriminate?
Red Clay has two magnet schools that are 100% Choice with no feeder pattern. Theses students will get pickup as close to their homes as possible. Is this fair? Does it discriminate?
Let’s dump the word Choice Transportation and replace it with a preferential transportation policy that is no equal to all students.
My guess in the board vote at October’s board meeting will be 4-3 in favor of eliminating Choice Transportation as we know starting fall 2009.
Kilroy’s prediction! No more than 5 or 6 parents will fill out a green slip to oppose the elimination of Choice Transportation. The Delaware Secretary of Education will stand down. No legislator will attend the board to speak against the proposal. I will be there and speak out particularly for those students with no assigned high school and force to Choice which will force parents to drive them to the in feeder bus stop of that choice.
Judging by the lack of perseverance of those wanting full financial transparency the 4 board members voting for the elimination of Choice Transportation has nothing to worry about in fact one will be vote out of office this coming May. So I guess its early pay back!
This issue is not about the board’s concerns with school finances, far from it!
Do make note the board is voting on the district proposal given by Merv at the August board meeting! This is not a board proposal as they were ask to support it by district administrators! added 8:30 pm Mervin B. Daugherty, Ed.D.
Assistant Superintendent for
August 20, 2008
“There will not be an attendance zone assignment to Wilmington High School for ninth grade students. Current eighth graders in the Wilmington High School attendance zone have enrollment options for high school selection but must complete a school choice application by the deadline to be eligible for the options. All Wilmington High School attendance zone students will be guaranteed enrollment in the school selected (Dickinson, A.I.DuPont High or McKean) and will be provided transportation according to the Board-adopted transportation plan for school choice.”
added 8:30 pm
Mervin B. Daugherty, Ed.D.
Again, in my opinon assigned some sudents to a feeder high school and not all does appears to be discrimination. Then to tell those not assigned the must Choice to a high school then comply with choice transpotation that may create great hardship the by forcing parents to transport their children to the feeder bus stop of that choice school in my opinon should be criminal. Put students in limbo status is wrong and appears to be discrimination.
Filed under: Uncategorized
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Some refugees fled Burma after the military’s violent crackdown on student protests in 1988; a few had fled fighting in Kachin State last year. Others said they had come to India to live freely and without harassment from the Burmese military government. All of them talked about returning, though.
∫The Yamuna Clinic occupies the second floor of a faded building in a dusty Burmese neighborhood in west Delhi. A dark cement staircase opens onto a balcony and a waiting room where about a dozen Burmese refugees sit on wooden benches.
Life for Burmese refugees is difficult in India. Because they are not citizens and are different culturally and linguistically from the local population, many are ostracized and persecuted. Travel costs, language difficulties, and the risk of lost wages from missing work prevent many Burmese from accessing healthcare.
In a statement issued on Friday, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano announced that the Obama administration will designate Syria for Temporary Protected Status (TPS), offering Syrians currently living in the US a chance to stay in the country while the Assad regime continues its brutal suppression of the pro-democracy movement.
The Burmese government signed an agreement last week with the International Labor Organization to end forced labor in the country by 2015, but three years is far too long to wait.
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Three universities cooperatively plan for graduate physics degree Three of South Dakota��?s public universities want to jointly offer a new graduate-level degree in physics, building on the national visibility of the state��?s underground science and engineering laboratory at the former Homestake Gold Mine. South Dakota School of Mines & Technology, South Dakota State University, and The University of South Dakota received permission from the Board of Regents this week to prepare a plan for a new master��?s degree in physics. The universities will come back to the board later for final program approval. ��?The high visibility of the Sanford Underground Laboratory at Homestake will lead to recruitment of new, talented students to our state,� said Robert T. Tad Perry, the regents��? executive director. ��?Students in our region will have the opportunity to participate in world-class science taking place at the lab. Being able to offer a graduate degree in physics is a strong complement to the research activities and associated economic development that will occur in South Dakota. ��?The Sanford lab will host some of the world��?s most preeminent physicists,� Perry said. ��?These researchers will need graduate students on site to help them carry out their research and this type of degree program provides that local talent pool.� Officials at the three universities say they plan to reallocate existing resources and apply for other sources of external funding to develop and operate the program. No new state resources or additional student fees are being requested, nor will any additional facilities be needed to sustain the program. It is estimated that 10 to 13 students would be enrolled in the degree program annually once it is fully operational.
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Live Praxis 2 Elementary Education Tutoring Offered Online
Watch our 2-minute Tutoring Info/Help Video for an overview of what to expect in tutoring and how to enroll.
The Praxis 2 Elementary Education: Multiple Subjects test (ETS subtests 5031-5035) encompasses a challenging breadth of material from Reading/Language Arts, Mathematics, Social Studies, and Science, and while you need not be an expert in any of these subject areas, you do need a strong foundational knowledge of a multitude of concepts in order to pass this exam. Because of the broad range of topics covered, many Praxis 2 Elementary Education test-takers find that they have specific knowledge deficits in certain subjects, often because they simply never took classes in those particular subjects. (For example, the science section covers topics from Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Geology, Astronomy, and more. Most non-science majors have usually only taken courses in a few of these areas.) Other Praxis 2 Elementary Education test takers want to improve their subject matter knowledge in all areas of the exam to ensure success.
Whether you want help with a specific subtest or you plan to review for the entire Praxis 2 Elementary Education: Multiple Subjects exam, Private Tutoring is a great choice.
After working through an initial practice test with you and performing an advanced diagnostic, your tutor will create a study program designed to meet your unique needs. You'll review the subject matter areas that will benefit you most, and as you master the core knowledge required to pass, your tutor will coach you through Praxis 2 Elementary Education Practice Tests in which you’ll learn proven techniques for approaching each problem type you are most likely to encounter.
If you are looking for the unparalleled results students achieve with private tutoring, but prefer to receive help from the convenience of home, our Live Online Tutoring is perfect for you.
All our tutors are caring and enthusiastic educators who take pride in helping our clients pass, and all must undergo a rigorous set of evaluations before becoming a Teachers Test Prep tutor, including a full background check, an academic knowledge assessment, and an evaluation of tutoring skills. Only the absolute best tutors make the cut to become Teachers Test Prep tutors.
We are so confident you will be pleased with your tutoring experience that we offer a Private Tutoring Satisfaction Guarantee.* If you purchase a tutoring package and are not 100% satisified for any reason after your first tutoring session, we will give you a full refund on all your remaining sessions.
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CSHL team identifies enzyme that is an important regulator of aggressive breast cancer development
PTPN23 can regulate the SRC oncoprotein; basis for a new therapeutic approachCold Spring Harbor, NY – Researchers at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) have identified an enzyme that appears to be a significant regulator of breast cancer development. Called PTPN23, the enzyme is a member of a family called protein tyrosine phosphatases, or PTPs, that plays a fundamental role in switching cell signaling on and off.When the scientists suppressed the expression of PTPN23 in human mammary cells, they noted a cascade of effects that included the cells breaking away from their anchors; their scattering; and their invasion through extracellular matrix (cells’ mooring in tissue). These are the hallmarks of metastasis, the primary cause of mortality in cancer.
PTPs are able to affect cell signaling as a consequence of their very specific biochemical function: they remove phosphate groups from other molecules. Another family of enzymes, called kinases, does precisely the opposite: its members add phosphate groups, and in so doing, work together with the PTPs to regulate cell signaling.CSHL Professor Nicholas Tonks, who purified the first PTP over 20 years ago, is an authority on phosphatases. He teamed up with CSHL Associate Professor Senthil Muthuswamy, an expert on kinases and breast cancer biology, who is also affiliated with the University of Toronto. They and their colleagues methodically suppressed each of the 105 known PTPs, in a cell culture system constructed to simulate mammary epithelial tissue. The cells were also modified so that the cancer-promoting receptor protein called HER2 (itself a kinase) could be activated selectively. Overabundant HER2 protein (also called ErbB2) is associated with aggressive disease and poor prognosis, and is found in about one-fourth of those who have breast cancer.
To determine the possible impact of PTPs on cancer development in cells expressing activated HER2, the team assembled a library of short-hairpin RNA molecules, or shRNAs, which had the ability to inactivate, one by one, the genes responsible for expressing each PTP. Of the 105 PTPs, they observed that three of them, when suppressed, were associated with increased motility, or the ability of the mammary cells to move freely of one another. The suppression of one of these three -- PTPN23 -- was also observed to cause the cells to become invasive.Part of what makes this finding intriguing is the fact that the CSHL team was able to trace the cause of these effects to specific elements of a complex signaling cascade. And this, in turn, has led the team to identify a potentially powerful new therapeutic strategy in this aggressive cancer type.
They discovered that PTPN23, under normal conditions, i.e., when not suppressed, recognizes and removes phosphate groups from three molecules important in the signaling cascade in breast epithelial cells. These three molecules are called SRC, E-cadherin and β-catenin. Of the three, the key is SRC: it is a type of kinase that, like HER2, is well known to be a cancer-promoter. SRC-induced anomalies in cell signaling have been linked with breast and other cancer types.Tonks, Muthuswamy and colleagues demonstrated for the first time that this particular PTP -- PTPN23 -- acts directly on SRC to inhibit its phosphate-adding activity. But when PTPN23 is suppressed, as in the team’s experiments, SRC is free to add phosphates to other molecules in the cell, including E-cadherin and β-catenin. Normally, these molecules are important in cell adhesion. But when they are phosphorylated by SRC, their ability to function as the “glue” that holds cells to their anchors in epithelial tissue is impaired, and the cells are able to break free. This adds interest to the observation, made by others, that the gene that expresses PTPN23 is located within a “hotspot” on human chromosome 3 (3p21) that is mutated in breast and other cancers.
“Considering the negative effect of PTPN23 on SRC activity, loss of PTPN23 may promote tumor growth and metastasis in breast tumors that are associated with activation of SRC,” the team suggests in a paper on the research published today in the journal Genes & Development.This fine-grained picture of how an absence of PTPN23 can set in motion a chain of events in breast epithelial cells that promotes cancer proliferation in turn suggests the next step in the research. The team tried and was able to reverse the metastatic effects set in train by PTPN23 suppression in these cancer-cell models by introducing a candidate drug molecule called SU6656, which inhibits SRC.
On the theory that PTPN23 regulates the activity of SRC and the phosphorylation status of the E-cadherin/β-catenin signaling complexes to modulate cell motility, invasion and scattering, the team has moved to a new set of experiments in living mice which have been genetically engineered to lack PTPN23. In such animals, they expect aggressive tumors to form. They seek to address these by treating the mice with inhibitors of SRC.“Identification of PTPN23 as a novel regulator of cell invasion in mammary epithelial cells from a loss-of-function screen of the ‘PTP-ome’” appears July 1 in Genes & Development. The authors are: Guang Lin, Victoria Aranda, Senthil K. Muthuswamy and Nicholas K. Tonks. The paper can be obtained online at: http://www.genesdev.org/cgi/doi/10.1101/gad.2018911
Founded in 1890, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) has shaped contemporary biomedical research and education with programs in cancer, neuroscience, plant biology and quantitative biology. CSHL is ranked number one in the world by Thomson Reuters for impact of its research in molecular biology and genetics. The Laboratory has been home to eight Nobel Prize winners. Today, CSHL's multidisciplinary scientific community is more than 400 scientists strong and its Meetings & Courses program hosts more than 8,000 scientists from around the world each year. Tens of thousands more benefit from the research, reviews, and ideas published in journals and books distributed internationally by CSHL Press. The Laboratory's education arm also includes a graduate school and programs for undergraduates as well as middle and high school students and teachers. CSHL is a private, not-for-profit institution on the north shore of Long Island.
Written by: Peter Tarr, Senior Science Writer | email@example.com | 516-367-8455
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A researcher in the Great Britain has unearthed the supposedly lost screenplay for a projected film version of William Shakespeare’s Macbeth, which was to be directed by Sir Laurence Olivier, starring Olivier and his then-wife, Vivien Leigh.
Olivier and Leigh had presented Macbeth on stage in 1955, but financing fell through, and they never got a chance to make the film; more’s the pity. As The Guardian’s Steven Morris writes, “Macbeth was going to be Olivier’s fourth cinematic adaptation of Shakespeare following successful versions of Hamlet, Henry V and Richard III. He and Leigh had starred in a much lauded production of Macbeth in Stratford-upon-Avon in 1955 and Olivier was keen to adapt it for the cinema.
But the project was shelved in 1958, mainly because of financial problems, and Olivier later claimed there were no surviving scripts, only a ’sketch’. Since then the lost project has been seen as a gap in British cinema history and fed into the idea of the ‘Scottish play’ as an unlucky one. More than half a century later, it fell to Jennifer Barnes, a 31-year-old English lecturer from the University of Exeter, to provide some of the answers. She was going through papers for research on Olivier’s film version of Richard III in the manuscripts reading room at the British Library when she came across references to Macbeth scripts.
‘I was going through the catalogues and I pulled up a script and found it was Macbeth. I didn’t believe it because I knew it wasn’t supposed to exist.’ The papers were part of an archive bought for £1m by the library from Olivier’s family in 2000. ‘I guess the people who catalogued them didn’t know how important they were,’ Barnes said.
The screenplay opens not as the play does, with the three witches, but with an image of Macbeth gazing into a pit at a mortally wounded version of himself, ‘his blood colouring the water all around him.’ In the early part of the movie the misty landscapes (Olivier had planned to film on location in Scotland, and the script mentions Inverness, Skye and the village of Scone) provide a stark contrast to the solid castle interiors.
Later the distinction becomes less strong as Olivier envisaged the damp fog invading the enclosed spaces and the greys giving way to reds as the action turns bloody. At times Macbeth and Lady Macbeth morph into the witches and there is one shot in the script in which the Macbeth’s head dissolves and transforms into the witches’ cavern.
The biggest surprise, however, is the loss of part of Macbeth’s ‘Is this a dagger?’ speech. Olivier intended to miss out the opening lines and start the speech halfway through as Leigh’s Lady Macbeth dips her hands in the dead king’s blood. Olivier was not planning to show Macbeth carrying out the murder.
Barnes believes the screenplays shed an intriguing light on the relationship of Olivier and Leigh, which was breaking down by the late 50s. ‘One of the recurring stories was that Leigh was taking away Olivier’s power, making him a lesser man. I think there is an emphasis on the breakdown of the Macbeths’ marriage in the screenplay.’
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Large single-cell molds make one weird robot.
Klaus-Peter Zauner of the University of Southampton, UK, developed a six-legged robot that is remotely controlled by Physarum polycephalum—a yellow slime that inhabits moist places, moves away from light and toward its food sources, bacteria and fungi. The mold, which can grow to be several meters long, responds to its environment through a series of tubes that are filled with cytoplasm.
The nyctophobic robot is controlled by sensors mounted on the top of its body. The sensors connect remotely to six points of mold. Light shining on the robot is detected and replicated on the slime; its reactions to the light (to shy away) gives stimulus telling the robot's legs to get moving.
Zauner and colleagues brainstormed this odd creation while searching for a way to control a robot's movement that could more easily adapt to a complicated environment. Think pre-made biological nanocircuitry. The robot was presented at the Second International Workshop on Biologically Inspired Approaches to Advanced Information Technology, held in Osaka, Japan, on January 26 and 27.—Tyghe Trimble
Physarum polycephalum and its six-legged robot friend.
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As spring brings light and length to our days, our hair begins to come out from under our winter hats. Now is a great time to think treating your hair to a little extra TLC.
Healthy hair is actually more about doing less than about doing more. The loss of your gloss is actually due to the unhealthy practices of over washing, blow drying, and using chemical products. Even the best shampoo washes out the natural oils in your hair, leaving hair dry even after using conditioner. The first steps to healthy hair are wash your hair less, only once or twice a week. Rotate between shampoos to keep things balanced. Use a gentle, non-detergent based shampoo.
A healthy, balanced diet also contributes to both healthy hair and skin. Brushing your hair and scalp massages not only feel good but help to distribute your natural oils and stimulate blood flow to the hair follicles.
Instead of hair conditioner, consider using an herbal hair rinse or herbal vinegar rinse. You can buy an herbal rinse from companies like Honey Bee Holistics, with their Organic Rosemary Hair Rinse for itchy scalps, or a Sage Herbal Hair Rinse from Dragonfly Herbs. However, it’s also easy to make your own with a little patience.
Here’s a recipe for a vinegar hair rinse for dry hair.
1 oz. nettle
1 oz. marshmallow root
1 oz. calendula
Apple cider vinegar
Drops of an essential oil of your choice (peppermint or myrrh is great for dry hair)
1. Fill a quart jar halfway with the herbs. Cover them with the vinegar and cap tightly. Place in a warm spot for 3-4 weeks. Shake it daily to keep the mixture agitated.
2. After 3-4 weeks, strain the mixture through a fine mesh strainer or double cheesecloth. Add the essential oils, rebottle it in a plastic bottle, and store this is your bathroom.
3. Before you take a bath, dilute the rinse with distilled water. For dry hair, dilute 1 part rinse with 6 parts water. After you shampoo, pour the vinegar rinse through your hair, massaging it into your scalp. Rinse with warm water and if you can stand it, cold water too.
You can play with the essential oils in this mix to give it different scents, but I chose peppermint not only for its properties but also because it is invigorating and awakens the senses. You can also use essential oils such as lavender or chamomile for normal hair, or lemon, patchouli, rosemary, and tea tree oils for oily hair.
I encourage you to get your hair out from under that hat, grab a friend, and exchange head massages with a drop of your favorite essential oil. You’ll thank me!
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Ontario recognizes environmental leaders
McGuinty Government Rewards Environmental Excellence
Ministry of the Environment
Four more companies are being welcomed into Ontario's Environmental Leaders program.
General Motors, Fielding Chemical, Nalco and Exhibition Place were recognized today at the Green Living Show for the following outstanding environmental efforts:
- General Motors reduced its total facility greenhouse gas emissions by 49 per cent between 1990 and 2006 while assembling over 12 per cent more vehicles. GM also invested in one of the most environmentally advanced paint systems of its kind for the Oshawa plant.
- Fielding Chemical is the most sophisticated chemical and refrigerant recycling plant in Canada, and is converting 750,000 litres of hazardous waste into a re-usable product.
- Nalco is the world's leading water treatment company, and is reducing electricity use by 20 per cent and making a 30 per cent reduction in hazardous waste generation.
- Exhibition Place is home to the first urban wind turbine and has committed to 80 per cent waste diversion by 2010.
- Ontario’s Environmental Leaders Program is a unique partnership between the government and those companies that promote efficient and environmentally friendly practices.
- There are currently nine members including: Trillium Health Centre, Teknion, Cargill, Rohm and Haas, and Steelcase.
Sustainable and responsible business is good for the environment and the green economy. I commend General Motors, Exhibition Place, Fielding Chemical and Nalco for aggressively greening their Ontario facilities."
General Motors is honoured to be the first automaker admitted to the prestigious OEL Program. We have worked consistently over a long period of time to take significant action to reduce the environmental impact of our facilities and offer customers meaningful and affordable environmental vehicle choices."
Exhibition Place is committed to being a world leader in energy-efficient technologies. Since 2004, Exhibition Place has been actively implementing environmental initiatives to create, conserve and reduce energy consumption across our 192-acre site. We are proud to be welcomed into the Ontario Environmental Leaders program, and thank the ministry for this prestigious honour."
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That's because events tend to throw everybody off their plan. For example, Hurricane Irene ended President Obama's vacation early. And the hurricane's steady deterioration upset the plans of news producers who anticipated something more dramatic for their wall-to-wall coverage.
In a similar fashion, Obama and his advisors predicted the economy would do better — much better — than it has, and those predictions were wrong. The president blames events: the European debt crisis, the Japanese earthquake and tsunami, the political tsunami of the 2010 elections. Some of that is plausible, but the two years of anemic job and economic growth that preceded those events can hardly be blamed on them. And it's that economic performance that has scuttled Obama's plans for an easy reelection in 2012.
That sluggish growth seemed to catch a lot of people by surprise.
My National Review colleague Jim Geraghty has chronicled how, over the last few years, the media have greeted bad economic news by saying it is unexpected. For instance, Bloomberg reported "Sales of U.S. previously owned homes unexpectedly dropped in July." Reuters tells us that "Consumer spending unexpectedly fell in June." And so on.
Many who've been following the trend point to media bias. The press corps, writ large, wants Obama to succeed, argues Michael Barone, so "they characterize economic setbacks as unexpected, with the implication that there's still every reason to believe that, in Herbert Hoover's phrase, prosperity is just around the corner."
I certainly think there's more than a little truth to that. The media get hooked on a story line — hurricanes are getting worse because of climate change, Obama's a pragmatist doing the smartest things to fix the economy — and when the facts contradict the story line, it's, well, unexpected.
But it can't be simply media bias because the experts reporters call for quotes also are surprised. As Geraghty notes, groupthink is a culprit too. The guys on Wall Street use the same Keynesian computer models as the folks in the White House.
There are no more devout members of the cult of expertise than mainstream journalists. They rely on experts for guidance about what is "mainstream" and accurate and what is not. Sometimes, that's fine. Surgeons are extremely reliable sources to explain how a heart attack happens. They're less reliable at telling you who will have one, save in a statistical sense, and even less reliable at telling you when a specific person will have one.
That's because prediction is hard. Experts — in politics, economics, climate — are very, very bad at telling people what will happen tomorrow, let alone next year or the next century. How many of the economists who tell us what to do now failed to see the mortgage debt crisis coming? Nearly all of them.
Philip Tetlock's 2005 book, "Expert Political Judgment," documents that the predictions of even the most credentialed and experienced experts are often worse and very rarely better than random guessing. "In this age of academic hyperspecialization," he writes, "there is no reason for supposing that contributors to top journals — distinguished political scientists, area study specialists, economists, and so on — are any better than journalists or attentive readers of the New York Times in 'reading' emerging situations."
The cult of experts has acolytes in all ideological camps, but its most institutionalized following is on the left. The left needs to believe in the authority of experts because without that authority, almost no economic intervention can be justified. If you concede that you have no idea whether your remedy will work, it's going to be hard to sell it to the patient. Market-based ideologies don't have that problem because markets expect events in ways experts never can.
No president since Woodrow Wilson or Franklin Roosevelt has been more enamored with the cult of expertise than Obama. That none of his economic predictions have panned out is not surprising. What is surprising is that so many people are surprised.
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Mar. 16, 2005 CORVALLIS, Ore. – Hawaiian residents who live downwind from the long-active Kilauea volcano may have elevated risks of adverse health conditions because of high levels of sulfur dioxide and aerosol particulates that drift downwind, according to a new study by researchers at Oregon State University and Hawaii.
During a three-week period of average volcanic activity, the researchers measured the sulfur dioxide level in the Kau district south of Kilauea at 17.8 parts per billion – above the minimal risk level of 10 parts per billion, a guideline set by the U.S. Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry. In comparison, Honolulu – located on another island and not in the path of the Kilauea plume – measured just 1.0 ppb during the same time interval. Measurements taken in Los Angeles during that same period averaged a level of 7.0 ppb.
Results of the study have been published in the March issue of the journal Geology.
"When Kilauea began erupting in 1983, there were a number of studies that looked at emissions directly from the volcano, but they haven't looked at the dispersal pattern, or the long-term associated health risk," said Bernadette M. Longo, a recent doctoral graduate in public health at OSU and lead author on the study. "What we found is some cause for concern."
Sulfur dioxide is emitted from Kilauea as a gas and then it begins to change, forming tiny particles and becoming an aerosol. The particle size gradually grows larger and a visible haze develops.
About 70 percent of the time, the Pacific tradewinds blow the emissions southward, toward the small communities of Pahala, Na'alehu and Ocean View. Yet what monitoring has been done has taken place in Hilo, north of the volcano, and on the Kona Coast, which is on the other side of the island well down the plume's path, Longo said.
Longo said sulfur dioxide gas at elevated levels can cause bronchial irritation and trigger asthma attacks in susceptible individuals. Potential health risks expand to a broader section of the public when the gas turns to particulate matter, she pointed out.
"The particles can affect lung defenses and the ability to clear material out of the lungs," she said. "They can cause bronchitis. And some of the newest research suggests that prolonged exposure to these particles may be associated with cardiac problems."
Longo, who worked for more than 20 years as a nurse before pursuing her doctorate at Oregon State, has surveyed long-time local residents in communities south of Kilauea to see if they have experienced health problems at a higher rate than other Hawaiians. She has compiled that data and hopes to publish a second paper later this year.
Assisting Longo with the study were Anita Grunder, a professor in the OSU Department of Geosciences and an expert in volcanism; Raymond Chuan, a retired physicist in Hawaii who conducted some of the first air assessments of Kilauea in the late 1990s; and Annette Rossignol, a professor in OSU's Department of Public Health and an epidemiologist.
Grunder said effusive basalt volcanoes – like Kilauea or Masaya in Nicaragua – can emit a great deal of sulfur dioxide into the lower atmosphere even when not erupting. By contrast, Washington's Mount St. Helens is a dacite volcano that emits sulfur dioxide primarily during eruptions, and even then injects it high into the atmosphere, where the immediate impact on humans is less.
Kilauea is the top "point source" for sulfur dioxide in the United States, the researchers say.
"They found that sulfur dioxide from Kilauea in the Kau district is concentrated near the coast and is less at higher elevations," Grunder said. "Aerosol concentrations were the opposite; low at the coast and higher at higher elevation. The SO2 can react with moisture in the lungs to create sulfuric acid. If you flush rain through an SO2 atmosphere, you get acid rain.
"Plants don't like it; cars and signs get rusty," she added. "At Masaya (in Nicaragua), when they hang clothes on the line, they can get holes in their clothes."
Grunder said the study has application for millions of people around the world potentially at-risk for exposure to volcanic gas, as well as industrial air pollution.
Longo said the study was conducted during a three-week period in 2003 during which the tradewinds blew in a normal pattern every day, the volcano had average emissions, and it typically rained in the afternoon. In short, she said, the conditions were typical, not extreme.
She found the volcano's plume moves offshore over the ocean at night, and then comes inland by mid-morning. "If that pattern holds – and we need more data to confirm it – we could identify times when it is best to exercise or work in the garden," Longo said, "as well as times when it might be best to refrain from physical activities."
The island of Hawaii does have a monitoring system and a Vog index, the researchers point out, but it is measured only along the Kona Coast, not in Kau. This "volcano-smog" index – Vog is a locally coined term - also is based on aerosol visibility, not SO2.
"Unfortunately, sulfur dioxide is invisible, so people can't see that they are being exposed," Longo said. "One of our recommendations is to establish monitoring in the region directly south of the volcano, not just in the more heavily populated areas."
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Exhibit A: As Joe continued on the skyship to the magical realm, he saw a dragon fly past. It was proof that this adventure was taking him far beyond his sleepy suburb.
Exhibit B: As Joe continued on the skyship to the magical realm, he saw a large beast fly past. The creature had wings that spanned dozens of feet and claws as big as steak knives. Its entire body was covered in scales and as it passed, it snorted a wisp of fire from its nostrils. It was proof that this adventure was taking Joe far beyond his sleepy suburb.
Exhibit C: As Joe continued on the skyship to the magical realm, he saw a large, breathtaking beast fly past. The creature had wings that spanned dozens of feet. They dipped up and down with the wind, shooting waves through the very air. Occasionally, the monster would let its wings billow as it glided. Its claws were as big as steak knives, and they looked to be several times as sharp. Joe noticed their serrated edges and winced at the pain they could cause. The beast’s entire body was covered in sleek, black scales. Each one glinted in the harsh sunlight, and together they pulsated with the creature’s breath. As it passed, it snorted a wisp of golden fire from its large nostrils. The beast was proof that this adventure was taking Joe far beyond his sleepy suburb.
Exhibit A told us that a dragon was there. Exhibit B showed us the details of the dragon. Exhibit C gave a more exhaustive account of the dragon’s traits.
Now, out of context, I’m sure that most people would say that B is the nicest to read. A few would be drawn to C or A, but B gives some nice details on the dragon without going overboard.
It’s in the very description of this blog that I’ll never simply say “show, don’t tell.” That’s not just because the advice is common. It’s also because the advice is often wrong. Think of A as telling, B as showing, and C as purple prose.
I took a random word from A to describe in detail in B. I could have picked fly or proof or adventure or skyship instead. I just happened to select dragon as the word I would expand upon. If I gave every word in the sentence the same attention I gave dragon in B, it would all look like C. Some people think that every detail needs to be conveyed indirectly, the way the word dragon wasn’t used in B. Those people write books that are painful to read.
The length of the skyship journey and the importance of the dragon also factor in. If we’re going to see that dragon again, a description like C might serve to better implant it in the readers’ minds. If the skyship journey is meant to take a long time, the added description can help give that feeling. If the journey is only a minute or two, A is probably best, because more words give the feeling of more time. If you need to add extra length to convey time, one way to do so is to take a word and expand on it the way I did with dragon.
Tl;dr: context is key.
The follower of the day is thejournaladventure, which is a continuous story.
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It’s Saturday morning. Time for cartoons! Or at least it was when I was a kid back in the early sixties. The very first cartoons I watched, however, were actually in prime time! THE BUGS BUNNY SHOW, for instance, premiered on ABC in 1960.
Apparently my parents had no qualms about me watching THE BUGS BUNNY SHOW because they had, themselves, been enjoying Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies for years in theaters! It was a known quantity. My Dad, especially, although then in his fifties, had been a fan of Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck and friends for as long as they’d been around.
In the years since then, of course, parents’ eyes were opened up to see all the gun violence, suicide gags, cross-dressing and back-stabbing in so many of the Warner Brothers cartoons but, in 1960, that was just considered good, clean fun!
THE BUGS BUNNY SHOW took many of the old theatrical cartoons and recycled them into a format of three per episode with all new linking material animated by Warner’s animation department. Even the commercials for Post were new little cartoons!
The opening theme was one of the most memorable in television—“Overture, curtain, lights…” Entitled “This Is It,” the song featured Mel Blanc singing with himself via overdubs as both Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck. In fact, Blanc, long the sole credited voice for the Looney Tunes characters (for contractual reasons) probably got more new work out of THE BIGS BUNNY SHOW than anyone else!
As an impressionable city child, I was introduced via this cartoon series not just to Bugs, Daffy, Elmer Fudd, Foghorn Leghorn, Speedy Gonzalez and a dozen other memorable characters but also to, among others, the concepts of skunks, duck hunting, cats eating birds, Mexican accents and roosters. Oh, and anvils.
As I learned to read, THE BUGS BUNNY SHOW credits also introduced me to the names of the great Warners animators including Friz Freleng, Robert McKimson, and Chuck Jones.
Bugs ran in prime-time with new material for only a couple of seasons before switching to Saturday mornings for what would ultimately be more than a twenty year run on multiple networks with multiple titles, sometimes even zooming to a 90 minute format! There was little new from that point, though, other than animated commercials. Instead, the pre-existing material was recycled in endless variations, over time editing or censoring much of the more “questionable” materials.
Although originally aired in black and white, most of the vintage cartoons had naturally been in color and the new animation was also thus so the show easily transitioned to color by the mid-sixties.
All during this time, those same Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies cartoons were also appearing throughout the country in various local programs and I watched them religiously anytime I saw one!
Perhaps it was because they were never included in the original series but I was never that big on Road Runner and the Coyote. I admire their cleverness with the endless variations on a theme but otherwise, eh.
Bugs Bunny, on the other hand, taught me perseverance. Nothing ever rattled him for more than the length of a seven-minute cartoon. He was nearly always prepared for whatever came along or was quickly able to adapt and deal with a problem. Most of the time, Bugs was calm, clever and determined. I wanted to be like Bugs.
Daffy, on the other hand, served as Goofus to Bugs’ Gallant.
I feel sorry for today’s kids that they aren’t growing up in a world where some variation of THE BUGS BUNNY SHOW is on constantly. As opposed to that “new” LOONEY TUNES show. In fact, although nearly all of the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies are available on DVD, one would be hard pressed to find a single one of the cartoons on any of the hundreds of stations that are out there today.
I feel lucky that I met these great characters when I did. THE BUGS BUNNY SHOW in 1960 probably influenced more kids of my generation than just about any other TV series. I’m glad my Dad loved it, too. We watched Warner Brothers cartoons together for the rest of his life. He’d hate the fact they aren’t on TV anymore.
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Common Lisp the Language, 2nd Edition
Even if a series expression satisfies all of the restrictions above, it still may not be possible to transform the expression into a loop. The sole remaining problem is that if a series is used in two places, the two uses may place incompatible constraints on the times at which series elements should be produced.
The series expression below shows a situation where this problem arises. The expression creates a series x of the elements in a list. It then creates a normalized series by dividing each element of x by the sum of the elements in x. Finally, the expression returns the maximum of the normalized elements.
(let ((x (scan '(1 2 5 2)))) ;Warning message issued (collect-max (#M/ x (series (collect-sum x))))) => 1/2
The two uses of x in the expression place contradictory constraints on the way pipelined evaluation must proceed; collect-sum requires that all of the elements of x be produced before the sum can be returned, and series requires that its input be available before it can start to produce its output. However, #M/ requires that the first element of x be available at the same time as the first element of the output of series. For pipelining to work, the first element of the output of series (and therefore the output of collect-sum) must be available before the second element of x is produced. Unfortunately, this is impossible.
The essence of the inconsistency above is the cycle of constraints used in the argument. This in turn stems from a cycle in the data flow graph underlying the expression. In figure A-1 function calls are represented by boxes and data flow is represented by arrows. Simple arrows indicate the flow of series values and cross-hatched arrows indicate the flow of non-series values.
Given a data flow graph corresponding to a series expression, a constraint cycle is a closed oriented loop of data flow arcs such that each arc is traversed exactly once and no non-series arc is traversed backward. (Series data flow arcs can be traversed in either direction.) A constraint cycle is said to pass through an input or output port when exactly one of the arcs in the cycle touches the port. In figure A-1 the data flow arcs touching scan, sum, series, and #M/ form a constraint cycle. Note that if the output of scan were not a series, this loop would not be a constraint cycle, because there would be no valid way to traverse it. Also note that while the constraint cycle passes through all the other ports it touches, it does not pass through the output of scan.
Whenever a constraint cycle passes through a non-series output, an argument analogous to the one above can be constructed and therefore pipelining will be impossible. When this situation arises, a warning message is issued identifying the problematical port and the cycle passing through it. For instance, the warning triggered by the example above states that the constraint cycle associated with scan, collect-sum, series, and #M/ passes through the non-series output of collect-sum.
Given this kind of detailed information, it is easy to alleviate the problem. To start with, every cycle must contain at least one function that has two series data flows leaving it. At worst, the cycle can be broken by duplicating this function (and any functions computing series used by it). For instance, the example above can be rewritten as shown below.
(let ((x (scan '(1 2 5 2))) (sum (collect-sum (scan '(1 2 5 2))))) (collect-max (#M/ x (series sum)))) => 1/2
It would be easy enough to automatically apply code copying to break problematical constraint cycles. However, this is not done for two reasons. First, there is considerable virtue in maintaining the property that each function in a series expression turns into one piece of computation in the loop produced. Users can be confident that series expressions that look simple and efficient actually are simple and efficient. Second, with a little creativity, constraint problems can often be resolved in ways that are much more efficient than copying code. In the example above, the conflict can be eliminated efficiently by interchanging the operation of computing the maximum with the operation of normalizing an element.
(let ((x (scan '(1 2 5 2)))) (/ (collect-max x) (collect-sum x))) => 1/2
The restriction that optimizable series expressions cannot contain constraint cycles that pass through non-series outputs places limitations on the qualitative character of optimizable series expressions. In particular, they all must have the general form of creating some number of series using scanners, computing various intermediate series using transducers, and then computing one or more summary results using collectors. The output of a collector cannot be used in the intermediate computation unless it is the output of a separate subexpression.
It is worthy of note that the last expression above fixes the constraint conflict by moving the non-series output out of the cycle, rather than by breaking the cycle. This illustrates the fact that constraint cycles that do not pass through non-series outputs do not necessarily cause problems. They cause problems only if they pass through off-line ports.
A series input port or series output port of a series function is on-line if and only if it is processed in lockstep with all the other on-line ports as follows: the initial element of each on-line input is read, then the initial element of each on-line output is written, then the second element of each on-line input is read, then the second element of each on-line output is written, and so on. Ports that are not on-line are off-line. If all of the series ports of a function are on-line, the function is said to be on-line; otherwise, it is off-line. (The above extends the standard definition of the term on-line so that it applies to individual ports as well as whole functions.)
If all of the ports a cycle passes through are on-line, the lockstep processing of these ports guarantees that there cannot be any conflicts between the constraints associated with the cycle. However, passing through an off-line port leads to the same kinds of problems as passing through a non-series output.
Most of the series functions are on-line. In particular, scanners and collectors are all on-line as are many transducers. However, the transducers in section A.2.4 are off-line. In particular, the series inputs of catenate, choose-if, chunk, expand, mask, mingle, positions, and subseries along with the series outputs of choose, split, and split-if are off-line.
In summary, the fourth and final restriction is that for optimization
to be possible, a series expression cannot contain a constraint cycle that
passes through a non-series output or an off-line port. Whenever this
restriction is violated a warning message is issued. Violations can be
fixed either by breaking the cycle or restructuring the computation so that
the offending port is removed from the cycle.
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Portraits of a Muse
Harry N Abrams | ISBN 9780810948150
Hardback – 240 pages
Member’s price: $67.50
Usually ships within 2–11 business days.
"The Marchesa Casati" is a visual biography told through a collection of photographs, paintings and illustrations of the legendary and eccentric socialite Marchesa Luisa Casati. Known for her extravagant lifestyle and strange beauty, Casati was the muse for a number of influential photographers, painters and designers throughout the 20th century. During the first half of the twentieth century, Marchesa Luisa Casati (1881-1957) was Europe's most notorious celebrity. Her eccentric personality and scandalous escapades captivated some of the most influential artists of her time. She was painted by Boldini, sketched by Drian and photographed by Man Ray, among others. Jack Kerouac dedicated poems to her; Fortuny, Poiret and Erte dressed her. She continues to inspire top designers today. "The Marchesa Casati" is a visual biography, telling Casati's captivating life story alongside the art and designs she has inspired, featuring over 150 images. Family photographs, paintings, sculptures and photographs illustrate the artistic and cultural legacy she left behind. This book also includes an introductory essay by acclaimed New Yorker writer Judith Thurman and an afterword by Lady Moorea Black, Casati's granddaughter and only living relative.
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Unknown. For the first time in the 9 years of covering school budget meetings at the school board office, there were no preliminary numbers presented in the first school budget committee for the 2013-14 budget. All five school board members, Ruth Wallace, Kathy Sullivan, John Alderson, Michael Beahm and Scott Swortzel were present.
Dr. Tony Brads began the first school budget committee meeting with a no numbers approach and a listing from the code of Virginia. Va 22.1-9 which states that it is the duty of the school superintendent of every school division to prepare with the approval of the school board a budget to send to the county by April 1. The scenario on the state and local level is so tenuous that the school division is not willing to estimate at this time what the money will be. Though Brads and his team including Brenda Bartee, Sam Foster and Dr. Brian Austin have a preliminary set of numbers for what it will cost to run the school division in 2013-14, the unknowns at this time are too hard to speculate where funding is concerned.
The “Team Botetourt” concept of previous years is not as apparent on the county side as in previous years. With almost flat growth and burgeoning costs to provide paid fire and rescue and a focus on tourism and the sports complex, the schools have dimmed in some of the first strategic planning dialogue in 10 years currently taking place on the supervisor level. The state is proposing a pay raise for SOQ funded positions only, enrollment funding is declining, and federal jobs money is drying up. In a nutshell, there is less money to go around.
Brads covered the budget narrative concisely. While the students of Botetourt are the most important and the education there of, the largest cost is personnel. “We want to remain a premiere school division,” said Brads. He spoke of a pay raise but did not know if it is doable. Other components of the Budget narrative include instructional programming, technology, facilities and operations and support. The proposed STEM Academy at Greenfield Education and Training Center is one of the instructional programs on the planning horizon.
Healthcare for the Division for the first time could top 6 million dollars due to the new health care reform. The schools pay the single provider and there is 87% participation. School retirees on the plan pay the full premium of insurance. Virginia Retirement Service (VRS) continues to be an issue. The schools elected to phase in the five year rate last year. Substitute pay is much less than neighboring divisions according to Jill Green the division HR. The retiree service plan is filling some spots, but may have to be revisited as well.
Lack of wireless infrastructure and white boards for every class room inhibits technology progress as an education tool in a world that is increasingly held in the hands of not only students but workers. “We can use the textbook fund for e readers, but not for infrastructure,” said Brads. In most schools the library and administration areas are the only wireless areas limiting access in class rooms.
Capital improvements like the LBHS roof, a new school in Blue Ridge, the CIP fund, lower enrollment and state funds, lunch prices and school bus replacement are on the laundry list that are not wants but needs and concerns. The next meeting is scheduled for Feb. 28 when Brads said, “Hopefully more numbers will be available.”
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Re:Deciding who got to be a pilot or co-pilot
My father had originally trained as a aircraft mechanic working on fuel and oil cell cobmat repair. During that time the Army Air Corps had a regulation that only college graduates could become pilots. By 1943 they realized that they were going to have serious problems manning all the medium and heavy bombers with only college graduates as pilots. They quickly instigated a program they called "Flying Sergeants" (After the British program) where they would accept enlisted personel to try for pilot training. My father applied and was accepted. The plan to keep their rank as sergant was discarded soon after the program started and it was decided that if you passed pilot training, you were given the rank as a 2nd lieutenant like everyone else. However it was understood that you would not become a command pilot unless you showed exceptional ability. My dad never did become a command pilot, but his command pilot always let him fly and command half the mission and was not one of the "wheels up, flaps up and shut up." command pilots that used their co-pilots to watch engine gauges and little else.
Son of 1st Lt. Richard N. Coyle (1922-1982)
739th bombardment Squadron, 454th (HBG), 304th Bomb Wing, 15th Air Force. co-pilot with Ed Green (command pilot)
San Giovanni Airfield, Cerignola, Italy - Jan 44 until Jul 44
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July 18, 2008
Senator Biden proposes "Justice Integrity Act" to study federal criminal justice disparities
Perhaps because the bill he introduced last week has gotten no press coverage, I only recently learned about Senator Joe Biden's encouraging efforts to examine racial and ethnic disparities in the federal criminal justice system. The basics of the bill are explained in this press release from Biden's office, which starts this way:
U.S. Senator Joseph R. Biden, Jr. (D-DE), Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Drugs, along with Senators Arlen Specter (R-PA), Benjamin L. Cardin (D-MD) and John F. Kerry (D-MA), today introduced the Justice Integrity Act, legislation designed to increase public confidence in the justice system and address any unwarranted racial and ethnic disparities in the criminal process. The Justice Integrity Act will establish advisory groups in ten federal districts, under the supervision of the United States Attorney General, to study and determine the extent of racial and ethnic disparity in the various stages of the criminal justice system; make public reports on the results of their findings; and make specific recommendations to help to eliminate racial and ethnic discrimination and unjustified racial and ethnic disparities.
Thanks to a link from the Sentencing Project, the full text of the Biden bill is available here. Also, a Google search led me to this short letter from the ABA, which expressed strong support for the bill. The ABA letter starts this way:
[The American Bar Association and its members] express our strong support for the Justice Integrity Act, legislation to examine the cause and extent of racial and ethnic disparities in the criminal justice system and to facilitate the development of proposals for reducing or eliminating racial and ethnic bias where it is found. We applaud your leadership in introducing the Justice Integrity Act. It provides a thoughtful approach to addressing this issue of great importance to our justice system through supporting the gathering of facts and generation of proposals for reform at the federal district level.
July 18, 2008 at 04:00 AM | Permalink
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I thought the Sentencing Commission was supposed to be taking care of this...
Posted by: defense attorney | Jul 18, 2008 11:28:07 AM
The high percentage of minorities behind bars is overwhelmingly a function of their crime rate and not bigotry.
Posted by: mjs | Jul 18, 2008 12:42:07 PM
I've always admired and respected Senators Biden and Specter. I would love to see Biden as either president or VP. It's a great challenge that can be resolved for the most part when dealing with the system, but not totally in regards to those working FOR the system.
For instance, how can you show a person his/her biasness when it's unconscious such as in White privilege where Blacks, Whites, and those of other races engage in this type of discrimination unawares?
It's a most beautiful and noble gesture. Those who are part of this reform should be very proud to serve their nation in such a noble fashion.
I'm more than happy with the bar for their position. However, I would like the bar to take action and truly show leadership by sanctioning overzealous prosecutors and judges that fall asleep on the bench during trial with REAL and meaningful sanctions.
We are too technologically advanced today to feed into the politics of fear and hate. Extra legal factors such as race, ethnicity, gender, religion, and life-style should NOT be factors to be considered while sentencing or prosecuting a case.
If legislatures do not seek to preserve the integrity of our system and bring forth positive change where those who are being sentenced KNOW they deserve the sentence, our recidivism rates will continue to increase.
Posted by: Angelina | Jul 18, 2008 3:53:36 PM
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|If you have seen the design, Batphones? For LikeCooler who have not known it.
The Batphones by Matthias Ries.
"Batphones are designed to increase the hearing capability in frontal situations such as watching TV or listening to a speech in the back rows.
Therfor, the ears are being extended to focus onto the speaker(s) and capture a wider amount of sound waves. Being low-tech, that is consisting of just one piece of injection moulded plastic, Batphones are also low-cost and can be distributed as an advertising gift during a speech or a congress for example. "
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| 0.970584
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Haywood gets rolling on methane projectWritten by Bibeka Shrestha
Haywood County commissioners have taken the first step in constructing a more than $1 million methane collection system at two landfills.
After two 4-1 votes, the board this week approved doling out $92,200 to McGill Associates to handle the design and permitting of the system at both the main White Oak landfill and old Francis Farm landfill. Construction is estimated at $600,000 at White Oak and $416,000 at Francis Farm.
The county hopes to score carbon credits for the project by neutralizing the methane that emanates from decomposing trash and is otherwise a volatile greenhouse gas. The carbon credits are a commodity that can be sold to industries seeking to offset their own emissions.
Besides carbon credits, the methane collection has the potential to generate a small amount of electricity. A school bus garage near Francis Farm landfill might easily hook up to this electricity if a generator is put in.
County Manager David Cotton estimates it would take five to seven years to pay off the methane collection system. After that, it would be all profit, he said.
“This is one of the few opportunities that we have to actually have the trash work for us,” said Cotton.
However, Commissioner Kevin Ensley, who was the sole commissioner to vote against the engineering proposal, was not convinced.
“I just don’t know enough about it,” said Ensley. “I got some questions in my mind. I don’t think it’s very good.”
Commissioner Bill Upton disagreed, saying that it was a small risk worth taking, while Commissioner Mark Swanger said installing the methane collection system would be unusually beneficial.
“In this instance, we’re being paid to do the right thing,” Swanger said.
The county hopes to stay ahead of federal legislation that could hurt the county’s chances of earning carbon credits for the project. If the Senate passes the American Clean Energy And Security Act of 2009, the methane system would be mandated and no longer considered voluntary, making it harder to sell carbon credits on the market. Ensley said the uncertainty makes the project “iffy.”
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& I'm equally amazed that you didn't state them before when the question
of relationships between Gen.1 & 2 came up in our discussions.
> I finally found the reference for Cain's excellent book: Dallas Cain
> Creation and Capron's Explanatory Interpretation: A Literature Search,
> Research Report 27, (Hatfield: Interdisciplinary Biblical Research
> Institute, 1985),
> St. Basil in 400 AD held this type of view for day 1. He said that it was
> connected to eternity past and events on that day were not 'fulfilled'
Does this refers to Basil's Hexaemeron? There, in connection with Day 1, Basil
says (p.63 in the Nicene & Post-Nicene Father edition), "The first word of God created
the nature of light; it made darkness visible, dispelled gloom, illuminated the world,
and gave to all beings at the same time a sweet and gracious aspect. ... In an instant
it lighted up the whole extent of the world ...". This doesn't explicitly say that
fulfillment immediately followed command, but neither do I see any language suggesting a
The connection with eternity which Basil mentions (p.64) is the idea that the
"week of one day revolving seven times upon itself" has the character of eternity - kind
of like Plato's idea of time as "the moving image of eternity." I see no idea here of
a delay between command and fulfillment.
Basil does (like several of the fathers) see God's commands following 1:1 as
calling forth powers which he had given to matter when he first created it. AND he sees
the commands for the earth to bring forth vegetation &c as effective not only on that
particular day but for succeeding time, so in that sense the fulfillment of the creative
commands is still going on.
Whiston, a contemporary and friend of Isaac Newton, then
> extended the view by noting that there could be a long period of time
> between the command and the fulfillment of the command.
Even if one grants this there is nothing to suggest any break in the sequence
command-fulfillment-command-fulfillment .... . I.e., God's command "Let there be light"
is fulfilled with light before God commands a firmament. Thus making a long period of
time between command & fulfillment is simply a variation of the day-age interpretation &
doesn't change the ordering of events.
> Capron in 1902 published 'The Conflict of Truth' in which he argued for the
> fulfledged Days of proclamation theory (although it was only a small part
> of the book). The following is from a recent re-write of Foundation, Fall
> and Flood, which a publisher, who approached me, is looking at right now:
> *****************Excerpt of Foundation, Fall and Flood**********
> Capron writes:
> "When we turn to the text, we observe that the history of each of the six
> days is uniformly introduced by the notable words, 'And God said, ? No
> reader, however superficial, can fail to be struck by this remarkable
> circumstance, that God on each day is in the first instance represented not
> to have done something, but to have said something (not to have made
> something, but to have commanded something)?"20
This seems to miss the point that God's command IS God doing something.
God's word does what it says.
> Capron illustrated his view by the following:
> "When we read the 7th verse, 'And God made the expanse,' the question
> naturally arises, 'When did he make it?' To this question almost everyone
> will reply 'On the second day, the day on which the command, 'Let there be
> an expanse' was uttered.' But is it certain that this is the right answer?
> Clearly we are not necessarily committed to it; for the text nowhere
> states, either expressly or by necessary implication, that the effect was
> produced on the day on which the command was given; and if, as we are
> endeavoring to show, the words are added not as part of the narrative
> proper, but by the way of an independent explanation, there is obviously
> still less reason why we should of necessity be obliged to adhere to such
> an interpretation."21
Again, if this is to be any different from the usual day-age theory, one must
rearrange the order of events without, as far as I can see, any justification in the
> Capron applied the Days of Proclamation to the origin of the universe as
> shown by the quotation above. By applying the Days of Proclamation to all
> of Genesis 1, Capron solved the paleontological problems, like plants
> before the sun and insects after the trees. Proclamations don't have to be
> in the same order as the fulfillment. Capron solved the astronomical
> problems because if God created the universe in a process following His
> great proclamation, light had time to travel billions of light-years. With
> Capron's view, there is very little that science can discover which will
> falsify this view. Capron's view makes the Bible true." Copyright G. R.
> Morton, 1995, 1999
> ************end of excerpt************
Certainly IF you can
a) make the creation days long periods, and
b) rearrange the order of commands & fulfillments
then you can get a picture that looks a lot like a modern scientific description. But
then I think you've gotten quite far from Genesis 1 being a description of events as
they actually happened.
I understand the doctrine of creation in relationship with modern science to
mean that space-time and matter were and are called into being by God's Word, and that
the development of the universe and life within it have taken place and are taking place
because of the continual cooperation of God's Logos with the rational patterns (logoi)
present in & with matter by virtue of God's creative acts. That view is a result of
reading Genesis 1 together with other biblical texts with the help of theologians like
Basil, and of looking at modern science in the light of Christian throught. If that is
the essence of what you mean then we have no basic disagreement, but I would not call
this an historical reading of Genesis 1.
> What would make you want to accept such a view? Simply applying the rules
> you yourself laid out. Using your hermeneutic list I would claim that it is
> a reasonable interpretation. You wrote:
> >>> 7) Some important criteria which help to determine whether or not a
> text is "historical" - i.e., a narrative of events as they actually
> happened - are:
> a. Comparison of parallel or corresponding accounts within Scripture
> itself (e.g., the two Genesis creation accounts or the gospels). I.e.,
> internal evidence is to be considered.
> b. Comparison with evidence from extremal sources - geology, archaeology,
> extra-biblical texts. <<<
> Considering as you have already noted, Genesis 1 and 2 conflict (principle
> 7a), if interpreted as a single event, and as we have discussed, science
> gives a different order of creation from the biblical order of creation
> (principle 7b). Because of this, one must either believe in nonhistoricity
> or change the assumption that Genesis 1 and 2 are speaking of the same
> event. There is no reason not to change the assumption that I can see. Do
> you know of a reason to believe that Genesis 1 and 2 are speaking of the
> same event except for tradition?
Certainly as far as life is concerned they seem to be speaking about the same
things - plants, animals, humans. In particular, the creation of humanity is a central
(though not exclusive) feature of both.
> Now, your principle 1 says:'(1) The central and unifying theme of
> Scripture is Christ. We have not penetrated to the heart of a biblical
> text until we have seen its connection with this center. This corresponds
> in a way to the "rule of faith" of the ancient church."
> We can see the need to solve the problem in a way that does not cast doubt
> upon God as the creator. If God is not the creator, then His son probably
> isn't the savior. Genesis 1 is the place where it is proclaimed that God
> created the world. If we say that Genesis 1 isn't to be taken as history,
> then the very statement that God created the heavens and the earth is no
> longer a historical statement. That is why I argue for what I do.
Here, of course, is our basic difference. I don't think that it's necessary to
read Gen.1 & 2 as historical narratives in order to remove doubt about God as creator.
In fact, the popular equation of "belief in creation" with the common ways of reading
these accounts as historical narrative (which I realize you are modifying significantly)
is one of the reasons why many modern people have doubts about creation.
> Given this, the Days of Proclamation is a perfect solution to the problems.
> And the view isn't artificial--it is 1600 years old and has been held by
> very intelligent men in various forms.
It's a solution. I wouldn't say it's perfect & I think it's a stretch to
call it an historical reading of Gen.1, but it's certainly a lot better than some
George L. Murphy
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The expression “ducks in a row” means to be well organized… because as everyone knows, when your ducks are standing in a circle, it means either a) your life is chaotic or b) you’re in preschool playing duck, duck, goose.
But etymologists clearly don’t have their ducks in a row because no one really seems to know the origins of the phrase.
While we use the phrase to describe that person who is on top of it all, ducks in a row was first used to describe:
- the way ducklings follow their mamas in a line
- devices that hold a ship’s keel in place (they need to be in an absolutely straight line - in a row - before ship building begins)
- lined-up wooden bowling pins, which were called “ducks”
Memo to people coming up with catchy expressions: Please put your names on them. We find that iron-on labels work really well.
Meanwhile, whatever the origins of the expression, Cozi is committed to keeping your ducks in perfect order.
Get in the car, book your plane tickets, take the train, sail the seas, or… just follow us on Twitter (twitter.com/cozifamily) for a play-by-play.
*We’re not using bowling pins or live baby ducks. We’re using rubber duckies as they are the most adorable and the least likely to leave eggshells and feathers lying around.
Join the Cozi Family Dinner Club today
Get family-approved dinner recipes each month and members only giveaways! Learn more.
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30 years after made-for-movie jailbreak, man gets parole hearing
PORTLAND, Ore. – A convicted felon will go before a parole board Wednesday morning and ask to be set free. But this isn't just any prisoner.
In 1982, Stephen Kessler crafted a cunning scheme and escaped from the old Rocky Butte Jail in Portland.
A prison guard who was held hostage during that escape passionately opposes setting Kessler free.
The escape rivaled the "Shawshank Redemption."
Six inmates pretended to be priests. Their mastermind, Kessler, was a smart and manipulative bank robber.
And behind the sturdy stone walls in the summer of 1982, Kessler and his cohorts concocted a plan to steal their own freedom.
"July 25. It was a Sunday afternoon, which was fairly quiet in the jail," said Jim Turney, a former Rocky Butte Jail guard, on Tuesday.
Since it was a Sunday, volunteer chaplains walked the cell blocks, preaching peace.
Kessler, 42 years old at the time, turned to violence, overpowering the men of God with a smuggled gun, stealing their clothes before surprising rookie Sgt. Jim Turney in the mess hall.
"My first thought was, 'what the (expletive deleted) is Steve doing in civilian clothes?" Turney said. "I grabbed for the gun. Well, there were three inmates there. Three to one is not good odds. I got knocked down and kicked."
Turney was hurt but not as bad as his colleague.
"The real injustice is to Deputy Irv Burkett who was shot," Turney said. "He lived the rest of his life in a lot of pain – in a wheelchair, in a hospital bed."
Thirty years later, Turney's retired. Kessler, who was captured just a month after escaping, is now a much older man, pushing 70 in the Oregon State Penitentiary.
Turney's not happy that Kessler could be a free man. The prisoner who got the best of him that July afternoon could find his freedom again – this time, the legal way at a parole hearing.
But Turney plans a vehement plea and a five-page speech to stop it.
Wednesday at 10 a.m. will be the first time the two men will see each other since the escape.
If Turney could be one-on-one with Kessler, he would say this to him: "Hey, Steve, what's the deal with the gun? How did that thing get in there? What did we miss?"
Kessler does have a few friends in the right places. One of them is the very same judge who sentenced him after he was captured. The judge wrote a letter to the parole board, saying Kessler should be released and that he's reflected on what's done.
The board won't decide Wednesday. The hearing is a first step.
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50 (corner): This is the third incarnation
of the luxury hotel in Midtown Manhattan, and the
second on Central Park South. It used to be the
San-Moritz hotel, known as "the biggest little hotel in town."
In 1935, it became home to Kurt Weill and Lotte Lenya,
who were fleeing Nazi Germany. Later, in
1941, artist Marc Chagall came here after leaving
Nazi-occupied France. It has
also been home to columnist Walter Winchell
and Yankee star Mickey Mantle. Winchell,
who supposedly lived here rent free in
return for plugging the hotel in his column,
threatened to leave if management allowed
gangster Lucky Luciano to live here; they didn't.
1941 apartment building
designed by Mayer & Whittlesley, built on the site
of the Dalhousie, a pioneering 1884 apartment house.
Gangster Meyer Lansky, an associate
of Luciano's, lived here from 1948-53.
38: F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald
rented an apartment here in 1920-21, where Scott
worked on The Beautiful and the Damned.
36: Singer Al Jolson lived here in 1922,
at the height of his popularity.
30: This hotel, owned by
"Queen of Mean"
Leona Helmsley, was the
site of her house arrest after she
was released from her tax-evasion
prison sentence. She and her husband Harry built
the 46-story hotel in 1971. Previously,
Ethel Merman lived at this address in the 1960s.
This Henry Hardenbergh-designed castle
opened in 1907, replacing an earlier
F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald lived the high
life here in 1922. Frank Lloyd Wright rented suite 223 here
from 1953 until his death in 1959; it was
here that he designed the Guggenheim Museum.
The Beatles stayed here on their first visit
to America in February 1964.
Truman Capote's Black and White Ball was held here
on November 28, 1966. From 1988 until
1995 it was owned by Donald Trump.
The hotel is
the setting of the children's classic Eloise,
and is a setting for innumerable films, including
North by Northwest,
Barefoot in the Park, Funny Girl, Plaza Suite,
The Way We Were, The Great Gatsby,
Network, Love at First Bite, Arthur, The Cotton Club,
Crocodile Dundee, Big Business, King of New York,
Home Alone 2 and Almost Famous.
It was repeatedly featured on Sex and the City
and The Sopranos.
Grand Army Plaza
This plaza, technically a part of
Central Park but really a distinct entity,
is bifurcated by Central Park South, a
layout inspired by Paris' Place de la Concorde.
It honors the Grand Army of the Republic, the
powerful post-Civil War veteran's organization,
comparable to the American Legion.
The southern half of Grand Army Plaza is centered on this fountain,
into which F. Scott Fitzgerald
once jumped "just out of sheer joy,"
It was funded by the will of publisher
--a beyond-the-grave challenge to his rival William
Randolph Hearst, who had underwritten Columbus
Circle's Maine Memorial. The statue in the
Karl Bitter's Abundance,
featuring the Roman goddess
Pomona. Bitter, who had promoted the Place de la Concorde
as a pattern for the Plaza, finished the clay
model for the sculpture the same day he was fatally
struck by a car outside the
Metropolitan Opera House.
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Bulky batteries have long been a thorn in the side of designers trying to miniaturize implantable medical devices. But a new method for powering implants wirelessly could help bring pacemakers and other implantable products down to size.
A team led by assistant professor Ada Poon at the Stanford University school of engineering has demonstrated that it is possible to wirelessly power a cardiac device implanted 5 cm into the chest—deeper than ever thought possible.
Shown are computer models of power delivery to the heart from a 200MHz low-frequency transmitter (left) and a 1.7GHz high-frequency transmitter (right). Red indicates greatest power; blue is least. Image courtesy JOHN HO, STANFORD SCHOOL OF ENGINEERING
The team’s device uses a combination of inductive and radiative power transmission to send radio waves to a coil inside the body. The bigger the coil, the lower frequency the radio waves need to be in order to harvest the same amount of power. But it was previously thought that high-frequency radio waves could not penetrate far enough into the body. Tissues heating increases with frequency, so others who have developed wirelessly powered implantable devices have erred on the side of caution, opting for lower frequency power and hence requiring a bigger device, says John Ho, a PhD candidate in the department of electrical engineering at Stanford and member of the research team. But using mathematical modeling, the Stanford researchers proved that much higher frequencies can be used than initially thought.
The Stanford team proved that it is possible to wirelessly charge an implanted cardiac device using a frequency of 2 gHz. This would allow them to scale their device down from centimeters to just .8 mm in size—smaller than the head of a pin. The battery typically accounts for about half the size of an implantable medical device, so eliminating it allows for the creation of a much smaller device.
“Current devices that are able to power through the chest wall are too big—usually a couple of centimeters in size, and that’s not good for the patient,” Ho says. “If the device is too big, then, for one, you aren’t able to localize measurements.”
The example device the researchers described in a paper published in the journal Applied Physics Letters was a pacemaker, but Ho says the technology could also be used for electrical sensing to treat cardiac arrhythmia or for neural stimulators implanted in the brain.
"Another particularly fascinating application that our research group is working on are tiny devices that can swim through the bloodstream to monitor physiological parameters, deliver drugs, or even perform surgery," Ho says. "It is crucial for such devices to be tiny—this is possible only with wireless powering."
So far, the team’s work has involved proving that such a wirelessly powered implantable cardiac device could work using a computer model. Their next step is to build a prototype and test it in an animal model, which they’re hoping to do by the end of the year.
—Jamie Hartford is the associate editor of MD+DI. Follow her on Twitter @readMED.
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The state’s juvenile detention centers lack trained staff and are wrongly detaining arrested youths, as well as placing children in inadequate facilities, according to a report released last Thursday.
The report, sponsored by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Massachusetts, faulted police departments and probation officers for unnecessarily holding children arrested for minor offenses for long periods of time and placing them with other juveniles accused of more serious crimes.
The report also said that juveniles have limited access to bail magistrates and are sometimes transferred to centers that do not have licensed staff and basic services like showers.
Robin Dahlberg, the primary author of the report, said the Executive Office of Public Safety and Security, which administers locked-down secure centers known as “alternative lock-up programs,” provides little oversight and relies mainly on federal grants for funding. Dahlberg said the state has refused to fund the centers, even as federal funding has decreased from $6.9 million in 2001 to $1.8 million in 2007 and is expected to continue to drop.
“The state has decided that they want to run these juvenile detention facilities on the cheap,” said Dahlberg. “We could end up with some kids who could get seriously hurt. There’s no accountability here.”
Terrel Harris, a spokesman for the Executive Office of Public Safety and Security, declined to comment on the report.
Around 2,000 youths are detained each year in alternative lock-up programs throughout the state. These centers, meant to house “serious and violent delinquents,” serve a number of police departments since none of those departments have their own separate juvenile lock-up centers.
However, the report said recent data showed that half of those detained at these centers were charged with misdemeanors such as minor drug-related offenses, trespassing or disrupting a school classroom. In addition, the report showed that a disproportionate amount of minority youth were being wrongly held.
Dahlberg said that some of the youths accused of minor crimes were being held overnight but should have been released immediately by a bail magistrate to await arraignment at home.
But Bristol County Sheriff Thomas Hodgson, whose office was cited in the report, disagreed.
“That’s the whole point of this. It’s a deterrent,” said Hodgson. “I can’t imagine what four more hours is going to do.”
The report also faulted the Bristol County Sheriff’s Office and the Essex County Sheriff’s Office for operating two juvenile detention centers with poor facilities and with staff not properly licensed to deal with children.
Specifically, the report cited the Bristol County Sheriff’s Office for requiring juveniles to wear white and black prison clothes, which the ACLU said is a violation of state policy.
Hodgson called that ACLU accusation “a non-issue” and said his office requires juveniles to change clothes for safety reasons.
“When they come in, they shower and we take their clothes to check for weapons,” Hodgson said. “This doesn’t have any merit.”
Hodgson said his staff was well-trained and his facilities have earned national accreditation twice.
Paul Fleming, a spokesman for the Essex County Sheriff’s Office, also disputed the ACLU’s claim that the center in Lawrence lacked trained staff.
“Indeed, the people we do have are highly trained professionals, and they do the best they can,” said Fleming.
Fleming said the state asked the Essex County Sheriff’s Office to open the temporary holding center, which serves 63 nearby communities.
Among the measures the ACLU report says are needed for improvement:
• Limit secure pre-arraignment detentions to juveniles who are 14 years old or older and to those youths who are “high risk.”
• Better document why juveniles were ordered to be securely detained.
• Open Juvenile Court on weekends and evenings in large metropolitan areas and provide youth with bail magistrates.
• Move alternative lock-up programs to the oversight of the Massachusetts Department of Youth Services.
• Provide state funding.
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FAIRFIELD COUNTY, Conn. — A bill that will allow residents to register to vote on Election Day and register online has been passed by the state legislature.
Gov. Dannel Malloy said his bill will increase voter turnout and allow more people to vote.
"Despite the pervasive climate across the U.S. to restrict voting rights, Connecticut has moved in the opposite direction — one that ensures the integrity of our electoral process and fair, accessible elections," Malloy said in a statement. "People are the key to our democracy, and this legislation improves participation in the most fundamental way — the ballot box. I applaud the General Assembly's action on this bill.”
The bill is likely to go into effect in 2013.
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Review: antibiotics have a slight beneficial effect on acute bronchitis
QUESTION: In patients with acute bronchitis, do antibiotic drugs reduce sputum production, cough, or days off work?
English language studies were identified in Medline (1966 to April 1998) using the terms drug therapy, bronchitis, and acute disease; the reference lists of relevant articles were reviewed, and experts in the field were contacted.
Studies were selected if they were randomised controlled trials that compared antibiotics with placebo in patients who had acute bronchitis, but no history of chronic lung disease or pneumonia; treatment was given for ≥5 days; and effect sizes could be calculated from the data presented.
Data were extracted on sample size, …
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Learn these skills and keep it off for good
If the pants in your closet span enough sizes to stock a Levi's, the following statement probably rings true: Losing weight is tough, but keeping it off feels downright impossible. Turns out learning how to keep pounds at bay—before you try to shed a single one of them—might be the smartest strategy for staying slim.
In a study out of Stanford University's School of Medicine, researchers divided overweight women into two groups. The first embarked on a standard 20-week weight loss program—healthier eating, more exercise—and also partook in weekly counseling sessions that taught weight-loss skills.
The second group did things a little differently: For eight weeks before embarking on a weight-loss program, participants were asked not to lose weight. Instead, they learned to master a series of sensible weight-maintenance skills, such as tracking daily weight fluctuations and practicing a mindful approach to eating. The women were even asked to spend one week pretending they were on vacation, eating five high-calorie meals and then tweaking diet and exercise to maintain their current weight. (Check out our tips on not gaining like crazy when you're on vacation, too.)
“The focus was to get women away from the all-or-nothing attitude that surrounds dieting,” says lead study author Michaela Kiernan, PhD, senior research scientist at the Stanford Prevention Research Center. “The skills you need for long-term maintenance, day-to-day, are much different.” (And if you're a sucker for gimmick diets, slow down: You should read Do You Really Need a Detox Diet? first.)
And the data backs it up: After one year, women in the second group were significantly more successful at maintaining a healthy weight: They regained an average of three pounds, compared to seven pounds among women in the control group.
“Women often think they need to keep their weight at a single number on the scale, or record every item of food they eat,” she says. “Maintaining weight seems to require an attitude that accepts the body's natural variations, and can handle disruptions to routine.”
To curb your yo-yo cycle for good, Kiernan suggests you master these three skills:
Know your range. Spend a few weeks weighing yourself daily, to note how the number on the scale fluctuates. From there, “set a personal weight range of about five pounds, and monitor your weight with relaxed awareness,” she advises. Translation: Don't freak out when the needle moves a down—or up. Still need convincing? Check out What's Your Ideal Weight for the skinny.
Prep for disruptions. Vacations and holidays often mean less exercise and more indulgent cuisine. Prepare in advance by making subtle tweaks to get your weight “into the lower end of your range,” Kiernan says. “That way, you can enjoy the change in routine rather than worrying about it.”
Avoid food fear. Food journals or meal plans can be helpful during weight loss, but are rarely sustainable longterm, Kiernan says. Instead, work on heeding appetite cues and making “small adjustments” to compensate for indulgent treats. “Overall, this is about enjoying the day-to-day, rather than obsessing over it,” she says.
Published November 2012, Prevention
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Hung Huang is the chief executive of the China Interactive Media Group, a Beijing publishing company. We asked her to write about how people in China are reacting to the United States financial crisis.
About a year and half ago, a book titled “The Currency War” came out in China. It was written by a Chinese graduate student who returned from the United States. The book was anti-Semitic and probably the most fantastic “conspiracy theory” about Wall Street. The basic claim was that the Rothschilds and other Jews wanted to control the world by manipulating the international financial system. The book read more like a script for a James Bond movie than a serious dissertation on Wall Street.
However, it was a best seller in China. A lot of professionals were worried about the popularity of the book, and how it might give the public the wrong impression of the international financial system. Also, it was reported that the book was read by the highest-ranking Chinese government leaders. This actually prompted the magazine Finance to publish a critique of the book, written by a leader of Goldman Sachs in Asia. Unfortunately, more people read the book than the critique.
As the market came crashing down and the subprime crisis became headline news in China, “The Currency War” (also translated as “Currency Wars,” or Huobi Zhanzheng) climbed back up the best-seller list. I was recently at a dinner at the Beijing Hong Kong Jockey Club. A very established lifestyle magazine publisher was recommending the book to people as a way of understanding why the crisis happened.
This is scarier than the crisis itself. First of all, China has just become a serious player in the international financial market. Secondly, our own financial reform is still under way. Therefore, the kind of conspiracy theory offered by “The Currency War” will only increase xenophobia and halt our own financial reform.
Having said that, most Chinese watched with amazement as the United States Congress vetoed the first bailout plan. It seems unfathomable that such a democratic process can actually work against itself sometimes. Such lack of rallying at a time of crisis certainly does not speak positively for the democratic system.
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Bleach , Replacing Silver
I dont know if this is right forum .
But I want to write for the people who have not read my previous posts.
I asked couple of questions to Eastman House and They directed me to
The John M. and Barbara Keil University Archivist and Rochester Collections Librarian
Department of Rare Books and Special Collections
Rush Rhees Library
University of Rochester
Rochester, NY 14627-0055
She is responsible of some of earliest archive papers of Kodak.
I finally reached a technology which I had no idea but may be interested the people about dyeing an slide BW film. It is for 2 color process.
You need to do For both colors the original silver image was bleached with a rehalogenating bleach, and then replaced stoichometrically with another metal compound
All the standard photographic texts will have formulas for all sorts of bleaches. So will the pamphlets of photochemical manufacturers. Dichromate bleaches with added chloride or bromide will rehalogenate image silver.
The interest in final images composed of platinum, palladium, and other metals was of great interest for artistic paper prints in the albumen paper era, late 1800s, and the old formulas are all gathered in Towler's The Silver Sunbeam.
Now the question :
Is there a technique to replace film silver with platin , palladium or gold .
And also smaller sized metals than the film silver ?
Is it tried for film and can there be a advantage ?
Mustafa Umut Sarac
You caannot (or should not) use a Dhchromate bleach for rehalogenizing. You should use a Ferricyanide bleach for this type of process. I know that some metals can be used to replace silver images to give various colored images, and even silver itself can be re-formed to give different colors.
The process itself is very complex if you wish even some degree of color, as it is similar to the original Kodakchrome process but with metals, not dyes.
Is there a profit at replacing metalic content for example better bw result ?
Is it possible to do it with platin , palladium , gold ?
It seems to me very interesting.
Yes. It is common to use a gold toner for color effects and stability. There are many examples of such. Forming Sulfides is a common method as is using the blue toners made by using ferricyanide.
Keep in mind that most toners simply plate or coat the silver, and not replace it.
For up from the ashes, up from the ashes, grow the roses of success!
Sponsored Ad. (Subscribers to APUG have the option to remove this ad.)
Is it possible to tone with platin , palladium to bw film ?
And ı am still looking for replacement silver to platin palladium technology.
And advise is very welcome.
kodak 92 bleach patent and replacing silver to palladium
Ron , I found this for bleaching. Is process toxic or expensive ?
I want to switch to a pinhole anamorphic camera. It produces 6*17 cms bw slides.
Is it possible to bleach the tri x big slide and replace the silver with palladium and get palladium alt process look from the slides ?
SILVER IMAGE BLEACHING PROCESS Document Type and Number: WIPO Patent Application WO/1992/004659 Kind Code: A1 Abstract: A method for bleaching a silver image wherein the image is treated with a first solution comprising iodine and an iodide salt and then the iodine stain is removed by treating it with a second solution comprising ascorbic acid ans sulphite ions. The method is particularly useful for silver images formed by the silver salt diffusion transfer process. More Like This:
JP52133215 NON_SILVER PHYSICALLY DEVELOPING SOLUTION FOR INTENSIFYING SILVER IMAG E
JP60012542 SILVER HALIDE PHOTOSENSITIVE MATERIAL FOR PLATE MAKING AND ITS REDUCTION PROCESS
JP53057832 PHOTOGRAPHIC IMAGE FORMATION
Application Number: PCT/EP1991/001659 Publication Date: March 19, 1992 Filing Date: September 03, 1991 Export Citation: Click for automatic bibliography generation Assignee: KODAK LIMITED EASTMAN KODAK COMPANY BARNETT
International Classes:G03C5/42; G03C11/04 Download PDF:View/Download PDF PDF Help Claims: CLAIMS :
1. A method for bleaching a silver image wherein the image is treated with a first solution comprising iodine and an iodide salt and then the iodine stain is removed by treating it with a second solution comprising ascorbic acid and sulphite ions.
2. A method as claimed in claim 1 in which the silver image to be treated is located on an imagewise exposed and fully processed photographic film or paper or on a printing plate made by the photographic silver salt diffusion transfer process.
3. A method as claimed in Claim 1 or 2 in which the solutions are applied to the silver image using felt tipped pens.
4. A method as claimed in any of claims 1 3 in which the first solution contains from 2 to 50g, preferably from 20g to 45g, of iodine per litre.
5. A method as claimed in any of claims 1 4 in which the first solution contains from 50 to 250 g, preferably from 150g to 200g, of potassium iodide per litre.
6. A method as claimed in any of claims 1 5 in which the solvent of the first solution comprises from 10 to 60% by weight of water.
7. A method as claimed in any of claims 1 6 in which the second solution comprises an aqueous solution containing from 10 to lOOg, preferably from 40 to 80g, ascorbic acid and from 10 to lOOg, preferably from 30 to 70g, of potassium sulphite per litre.
8. A deletion fluid kit comprising the first and second solutions as defined in any of claims 1 2 and 4 7.
9. A deletion fluid kit as claimed in claim 8 in which the solutions are each contained in a felt tip pen.
Description: SILVER IMAGE BLEACHING PROCESS
This invention relates to a method of bleaching silver images and to solutions therefor. The photographic silver halide image forming process is well known. Sometimes it is desirable to retouch the silver image formed thereby and, specifically, it is sometimes desired to remove parts of the image such as unwanted spots. It is known, for example from British specification 2 107 889 that a thickened solution containing, for example, iodine and an iodide can achieve the desired result. A problem with this approach is that a brown stain is produced which is unsightly. In addition the compositions of 2 107 889 are only suitable for printing plates which do not have any gelatin layers. It is therefore desirable to be able to delete the silver image without causing any stain and to delete the silver image in a gelatin- containing layer.
The present invention provides a method of removing silver images without causing any stain. According to the present invention there is provided a method for bleaching a silver image wherein the image is treated with a first solution comprising iodine and an iodide salt and then the iodine stain is ..emoved by treating it with a second solution comprising ascorbic acid and sulphite ions.
The image is bleached rapidly and permanently, there is no stain and the solutions have a long life. The silver image to be treated may be on an imagewise exposed and fully processed photographic film or paper or on a printing plate made by the photographic silver salt diffusion transfer process. Such materials are described in Research Disclosure
Item 308119, December 1989 published by Kenneth Mason Publications, Emsworth, Hants, United Kingdom.
In a preferred embodiment of the present invention the solutions are applied to the silver image using "felt tipped" pens, preferably ones with a fine tip to ensure accurate application.
The first solution, used to delete the silver image preferably contains a mixture of water and butyrolactone. The ratio of aqueous to organic solvent is optimised to provide sufficient water for rapid penetration of the solute into the gelatin layer on the image-bearing material, together with sufficient butyrolactone to obtain high complexing power for silver iodide so that the image is removed in a conveniently quick time. The first may also contain other solvents used alone or in combination including alcohols eg ethyl or butyl alcohol.
The iodide may be provided by an ammonium or alkali metal iodide, eg sodium or potassium iodide. The first solution preferably contains from 2 to 50g, especially from 20g to 45g, of iodine and from 50g to 250 g, especially from 150g to 200g, of iodide ions per litre. The solvent preferably comprises from 10 to 60% by weight of water, the exact figures being dependent on the considerations outlined above.
Preferably the first solution also contains a wetting agent and an acid.
The second solution preferably contains from 10 to lOOg, especially from 40 to 80g, ascorbic acid and from 10 to lOOg, especially from 30 to 70g, of potasium sulphite per litre. The solution is preferably aqueous.
The invention further provides a deletion fluid kit comprising the first and second solutions as
defined above. Preferably the solutions are each contained in a felt tip pen.
The following Example is included for a better understanding of the invention. The words KODAK and PMT are trademarks.
The following solutions were made up:
Iodine 26 g
Potassium iodide 170 g
ETHOQUAD C25 (surfactant) 1 g
Butyrolactone 510 g Water 270 g
Acetic acid 18 g
Ascorbic acid 60 g Potassium sulphite 50 g
Water 1 litre
Each solution was filled into a felt tip pen.
Images were produced using Kodak PMT3 KNP negative paper, exposed on a Kodak Imagemaker Camera and processed in a Kodak 43DT Imagemate Processor onto a variety of Kodak PMT receivers. Images were deleted successfully from the following receivers in an average time of 20 secc"ds.
PMT 3 KRPM Matt receiver paper
PMT 3 KRPT Thin receiver paper
PMT 3 KRPTA Adhesive thin receiver paper PMT 3 KRPG Glossy receiver paper
PMT 3 KRF Receiver film
PMT 3 KRFT Thin receiver film PMT II Metal litho plates
Other materials tried were Kodak PMT II Paper Litho plates and Kodak Pagiset Phototypesetting paper. Images could be successfully deleted from both, but the deletion time was greater than 1 minute.
I have no idea how applicable this would be to what you are trying to do.
This seems to be limited to a certain family of products.
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Prizewinning WINDSCRAPER Facade Makes Energy All Over
The always innovative HWKN was the winner of a competition for the new facade of the Piraeus Tower in Athens, Greece. Their WINDSCRAPER generates wind power all over its facade.
“Changing the Face – The Piraeus Tower” entrants had one limit.
The competition entries were limited by the structure of the existing building. Only the facade could be altered. So HWKN proposes that they will first replace the existing facade with high-performance Sentry Glass for transparency and strength.
Then, the entire building is to be covered with artificial “leaves” like a tree. These cool the building interior in three ways.
“In our concept, the building is equipped with an additional layer of wind energy harvesting technology that serves three main purposes. First, it transforms wind energy into electrical energy using a wind-farm façade that is equipped with power-rod extensions and wind catchers resembling artificial leaves.”
The wind energy generation facade is actually based on proven technology. The architects are not just dreaming up funny looking electricity generators that won’t really generate electricity.
The building’s inhabitants will be able to walk up exterior stairs outside and experience the nearby “wind-harvesting” forest first-hand. (Energy is also saved when stairs are chosen over elevators, and the unique experience provides an incentive to use stairs).
Secondly, in addition to generating some of the building’s energy, the facade also has a psychological effect. It reconnects the building’s occupants with the natural environment, like a tree canopy, generating calming sounds when the artificial leaves move, bringing a sort of “next nature” to the occupants of a high-rise.
Matthias Hollwich, Marc Kushner of HWKN say “research has proven that when people inside of a building connect to the outside world they have a higher tolerance for climate discomfort, effectively lowering the need for excessive cooling and heating”.
The third cooling effect from the artificial leaves is created because they also “act as shading devices, while allowing for a clear view of the sleek curtain wall, generating a new, open and stimulating relationship between the city and the formerly generic tower”.
The Pireaus Tower in the decidedly mundane “before” picture.
“Ever since the first air-conditioning system was installed in 1902″, says HWKN, “our interior world became independent from the world outside. Although this is sometimes called ‘efficient’, sealed buildings completely disassociate us from the natural world, leading to greater energy consumption and pollution, a key component of the global environmental crisis”.
“In order to save us from the imminent ecological catastrophe, strategies of energy efficiency and sustainability must move beyond conservation: we need buildings that harvest the environment for energy, synergizing the building’s performance with natural forces.”
The view from the existing Pireaus Tower does provide the potential for a truly iconic building.
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Research / Agriculture and Forestry
The copper-plated plough
Viktor’s observation that the continued use of an iron plough or of iron implements can result in a decrease in soil productivity, led him to start experiments with other materials such as copper. Since then, experiments have shown that a copper-plated plough even helps the soil to increase its fertility, as well as other positive biological effects. One such effect is that the use of copper results in an increase in the water-content of the soil and thus in an increase in yield.
A series of field trials near Salzburg were initiated by Viktor in the years 1947 1949.
Subsequently, Viktor Schauberger and Franz Rosenberger applied for the following patent in 1950:
Patent Nr. 166644, 25th August 1950, Austrian Patent Office.
1. The agricultural implement is characterised by the covering with copper or copper alloys of those of its active parts that move through the soil.
2. In accordance with Claim 1, the implement is characterised by the facing of these parts with hard copper or hard copper alloy.
3. The process to be employed in the manufacture of the facings for agricultural equipment in regard to Claim 2 is characterised by the facing of the respective parts with copper sheet or the like, which is then hammered after being fitted.
Each year, new tools have been added to the range, in response to popular demand.
For more detailed information about the handcrafted copper garden tools please see practical uses/agriculture and forestry
The Fertile Earth, edited by Callum Coats, Gateway Books, 2000, pg. 185 192.
Viktor Schauberger A Life of Learning from Nature, by Jane Cobbald, Floris Books, Edinburgh, 2006
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January 22, 2009
Next month we celebrate an odd double anniversary—the 200th anniversaries of the births of Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin. Yes, they were born on the same day. And being that history and science are two of our favorite topics at Smithsonian, someone asked: Who was more important, Lincoln or Darwin?
Over the next week or so, we’ll attempt to answer that question. (Newsweek took a swipe at it last summer. Their conclusion? Lincoln.) Siding with Lincoln are two of the magazine’s senior editors, T.A. Frail and Mark Strauss. And arguing for Darwin will be senior editor and blog overseer Laura Helmuth and myself. Who will win?
Please add your own arguments to the comments. Make a convincing case and I might recruit you into our little office blog war.
First up, T.A. Frail:
Lincoln outweighing Darwin, in the historical-grativas department? Darwin outstripping Lincoln? It’s like arguing Lennon/McCartney versus Jagger/Richards. But I think the question is inevitable: when you have giants striding the earth at the same time, they’re going to bump into each other, metaphorically or otherwise.
And I vote for: It depends.
Oh, wait—I meant Lincoln. Yes, Darwin came up with the means to explain life on earth. He exemplified the modern scientific modern. He keelhauled humankind’s understanding of itself on a scale not seen since Copernicus. But his work was about life in the abstract—processes and aeons. I prefer Lincoln because his work was about living—about nations and relations. Like Darwin, his work raised the question of who we are, but in the context of how we were going to get along with one another. Darwin explained how life became. Lincoln set a course for what we could become. I’ll go with that….
Who Was More Important?
- Charles Darwin (54%, 110 Votes)
- Abraham Lincoln (46%, 94 Votes)
Total Voters: 203
Come back tomorrow for the first pro-Darwin argument.
Sign up for our free email newsletter and receive the best stories from Smithsonian.com each week.
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Alternative Fuels And Fuel Additives
Alternative fuels are substantially non-petroleum based fuels, such as biofuels, which include ethanol blends and biodiesel. Federal mandates requiring a significant increase in biofuels production and use have spurred an increase in the number of retail facilities storing and dispensing renewable fuels such as ethanol and biodiesel.
Methyl tertiary-butyl ether (MTBE) and other oxygenates are types of fuel additives. Although widely used beginning in the 1980s through 2005, MTBE is generally no longer used. Fuel additives are added to gasoline during the refining process. MTBE and other oxygenates raise the oxygen content of gasoline and can enhance octane quality and combustion while reducing exhaust emissions.
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I am a new comer here. And I am programming a mid-sized program. Currently, I feel a little bit uncomfortable for the archetecture. Most uncomfortable comes from the transfer of an object everywhere in the program. I have a little background of IOC. So I am wondering whether we can apply IOC in our program to make things better. The scenario is as below:
We want to build a portal program to provide the service to others (one of the goal is the insurance application). We want to make part of the common functionality reusable. So one decision point is to separate the program to two parts, one is the portal (using jsf), and the other is the reusable utility (such as connection pool, caching and etc). The utility classes use a lot of static methods since they don't need to maintain the internal state. And the utility class will be used in other scenarios. So we don't want it know something related to the portal, such as session and request.
The problem comes from the token. The token comes from the SSO (single sign on) feature. That token is used to identify a user's identification. Since the SSO is outside of the web server, so its lifetime is not controlled by the web sever. In order to align the lifecycle of token with the session, we put it to a object (for example, UserConfigInfo). That object is per-session based. When the session is created, the object will be created explicitly by portal side, and then if the session is timeout, the object will be automatically gabage collected.
The problem comes. Since the utility classes does not maintain the state, so the utility class will ask the caller from portal side to transfer a UserConfigInfo object for every call. So basically, every method in utility classes has that parameter. And the only usage of the object is to get the token. I think it is a problem that every method signatures are polluted by a UserConfigInfo object.
I think the problem comes because we do not have a mechnism to make a session wide singleton object. And from my knowledge of IOC, I think IOC can bring that feature. But I don't know whether it is a good scenario for applying IOC and how to apply it effectively.
Could anyone share some insights with me?
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The Freedom of Expression Wall
What does free speech mean to you? Join writers, journalists, activists and people from around the world in creating a public freedom of expression wall.
Get on the wall! Make a hand-written sign, take a picture, and post it to the wall by clicking on “Add Your Photo”. Please include your name and location. (Note: Submissions are moderated. Your picture must show a printed or hand-written sign.)
Scroll down to view map of submissions from around the world.
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