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EU Airline Carbon Tax Hurts Climate Change Fight, Claims China And India
By Nigam Prusty
NEW DELHI, Feb 14 (Reuters) - The European Union's move to charge airlines for carbon emissions violates international laws and jeopardises global efforts to fight climate change, the BASIC group of countries, which includes China, said on Tuesday.
From Jan. 1, all airlines using EU airports have come under the European Union Emissions Trading Scheme, and any airline that does not comply could face a fine of 100 euros ($128) for each tonne of carbon dioxide emitted for which they have not surrendered allowances.
In the case of persistent offenders, the EU has the right to ban airlines from its airports - rules that have drawn protest from airlines around the world. China said it would bar its carriers from taking part.
In a two-day meeting in New Delhi that ended on Tuesday, the environment ministers of Brazil, South Africa, India and China, known as the BASIC bloc, said the EU rule ran counter to the idea of "multilateralism" and to the provisions of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change.
"Ministers noted that the unilateral action by EU in the name of climate change was taken despite strong international opposition and would seriously jeopardise the international efforts to combat climate change," they said in a joint statement.
"The ministers recognised the threat of similar unilateral measures being considered by developed countries in the name of climate change in the area of international shipping and expressed their concern."
Foreign governments say Brussels has exceeded its legal jurisdiction by calculating the carbon cost over the whole flight, not just Europe.
Non-EU airlines say the levy is discriminatory.
But in December the European Union's highest court said the EU was acting within the law.
The European Commission has also said it resorted to including all airlines in its scheme only after more than a decade of talks at the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) failed to deliver a global solution to curb the impact of airline emissions.
Increasingly, governments and the EU's executive European Commission are looking to the U.N.'s ICAO to come up with a worldwide scheme. (Writing by Krittivas Mukherjee, editing by Jane Baird)
Also on HuffPost:
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During this unit in art, Make You Mark, we have been looking at line drawings and various types of line techniques. We have looked at different artworks by Vincent Van Gogh and Albrecht Dürer. We have written a comparison of the works both artists had done, and analyzed on their layouts, line techniques, and their similarities and differences. At the end of the unit, after we have practiced different line techniques, we have drawing a picture based on our photos from the field studies.
Our unit question:
“How can we communicate visually?”
Here is the photo I have used for Here is the drawing I have drawn:
my line drawing:
In this drawing, we have been taking our time and choosing our line techniques carefully. I have learned about the decision making in art when you decide the right technique to use. There are many different line techniques we have practiced, such as cross hatching, hatching, stippling, random hatching, and many more. We have practiced these different line techniques during class and experimented with different textures and shadings.
Here are different examples of the line techniques from the YIS art page:
We also have to be careful about the light source in this drawing. For example, the light in my photo comes from the background, so I made the top part of the paper slightly lighter than the parts near. Although I have only used a few kinds of line techniques (textures), the shading have made the drawing realistic. But next time, even with the shadings, I should be using more kinds of line techniques.
There were not many line techniques I have used in this picture, although I have been able to show the shape of each thing by shading. For example the trees, I have showed the shape of the trees, how is it round but it looked too smooth.
Next time when I draw a tree trunk, I will try to show the shape as well as the rough texture of a tree like this picture below:
I think my textures on the wooden path was successfully drawn. I had showed the textures of the path as well as the distances. I have not made the lines too straight, because it would have looked a little unnatural when the lines look too much like it is man made. Also, I have showed the distance of the path by controlling the open space between each horizontal line. When its close, the spaces are larger and when its further away, the spaces are closed together.
This is one of the line techniques I have used to show the wooden texture of the path:
Overall, I think I did great in this project, and I have learned a lot about the different things. Next time when I am drawing, I will need to be careful about such as the value, texture, shape, and the directions of the lines. Because of this unit, I have held my interests in art and I have decided that studying art may be one of my paths ahead of me.
Warning, Do not press the button below.
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October 13, 2010
"Fire is one of the biggest threats to the world's tropical forests, but in general, rainforests will not burn because they are too moist. But logged forests and edge forest can burn," tropical ecologist Susan Laurance, one of the study's authors, told mongabay.com. "We now think we understand why this happens. During the dry season these forests near the edge are drying out increasing their vulnerability to fires, whereas intact rainforests do not dry out over the same period."
The study also found that the age of the deforestation and fragmentation made a difference. Younger edge forests were drier, and thereby more prone to fire, than older edge forests where new trees and plants have begun to grow back perhaps protecting the forests from desiccating winds.
Clearing in Amazon creates forest edges, 2009. Photo by: Rhett A. Butler.
Laurance says the study may point to even larger to date unrecognized impacts happening in edge forests: "[it] suggests that deforestation along the eastern Amazon frontier is influencing local weather but we do not have direct evidence for this and there are so few weather stations in the region there is not any data to say for sure."
According to a 2008 study, every year some 70,000 square km (27,000 square miles) of forest in the Brazilian Amazon are degraded by logging or turned into edge forest. Cattle grazing, large-scale agriculture, and infrastructure are the primary drivers of deforestation in Brazil.
The authors add that their study should have real-world application: "the designers of nature reserves need to account for these largescale effects, including the increasing penetration of desiccating conditions over time, to ensure that reserves are large enough to sustain large core areas of unaltered forest."
This new information also makes it likely that edge forests will be more negatively impacted by climate change, furthering endangering the Brazilian Amazon.
"If climate change increases the risk of drought or just increases rainfall seasonality which is what many scientists suspect will occur, then small and large fragments (2000 ha) will be very vulnerable to drying out," Laurance explains. "This will cause many changes such as the loss of large trees, changes in the forest composition and ultimately complete forest loss from fires. This is actually what is occurring now, and I see so much happening in the short-term I think we need to concentrate our efforts on this moment rather than worry about 100 years from now, when there probably will not be much forest left to worry about."
CITATION: Gaël Briant, Valéry Gond, Susan G.W. Laurance. Habitat fragmentation and the desiccation of forest canopies: A case study from eastern Amazonia. Biological Conservation. 143 (2010) 2763–2769. doi:10.1016/j.biocon.2010.07.024.
Brazil to auction off large blocks of Amazon rainforest for logging
(10/12/2010) Brazil will auction large blocks of the Amazon rainforest to private timber companies as part of an effort to reduce demand for illegal logging, reports Reuters. The government will grant 1 million hectares (2.5 million acres) of logging concessions by the end of the year, according to Antonio Carlos Hummel, head of Brazil's National Forestry Service. Within four to five years, 11 million hectares will be auctioned.
Brazil to launch new deforestation monitoring system that 'sees' through clouds
(10/11/2010) Brazil will launch a new high resolution deforestation monitoring system that will be capable of detecting forest clearing under cloudy conditions.
Logging generates more income than ranching in the Amazon
(10/04/2010) New research conducted by Brazil's Federal Rural University of Amazonia (UFRA) found that logging generates more income from cattle grazing and agriculture in the Amazon provided landowners operate under existing social and environmental laws, reports the International Tropical Timber Organization in its bimonthly update.
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Tim Chrisco, Guest Writer
Your life force is your energy, often referred to as Qi, Prana, or Life Force. There are many names for it, and it is absolutely essential to life.
Many people don’t believe in energy because they can’t see it or touch it. Interestingly though, most everyone feels energy, even if they are not recognizing it for what it is. It’s easy to explain off those feelings as one thing or another, but make no mistake about it, energy is all around us. If it weren’t, then you and I wouldn’t be here. Most people believe that life is nourished and sustained by other ‘physical objects’, such as food, yet, this is not actually how life maintains itself. Energy is the substance that sustains life. Vitamins, minerals, amino acids, proteins, etc. do not sustain life, it is the energy inside of these substances that enables life to exist here. Our bodies are in essence biological machines which run on energy, not dirt. Without energy, there is no life.
Energy is flowing and moving around us all the time, if it were not so, we would not be alive. As a conscious, energetic being you have a unique way of interacting with energy, and your mind consciously controls your energy. When your mind is placed on things outside of you like objects, ideas, events, or people, then your energy leaves your body and follows your thoughts. Conversely, when your mind focuses on your body, you attract and deepen your energy (life force) within your physical structure. This is the essence of many energetic physical arts, such as the ancient practice of Qi Gong.
What does all this have to do with your cell phone?
In the Ted video below Ms. Case suggest that the contents of your cell phone and your computer are actually extensions of your mind. I agree with her somewhat, for, as I mentioned above, where your mind goes, your energy follows. When you call someone on your phone your mind travels and connects with that person.
“Technology is evolving us, as we become a screen-staring, button-clicking new version of homo sapiens. We now rely on ‘external brains’ (cell phones and computers) to communicate, remember, even live out secondary lives. But will these machines ultimately connect or conquer us? “ -Amber Case
If your mind drives your energy and your cell phone puts your mind on objects outside of your physical body, then, is your cell phone stealing your energy? In a sense, yes, especially so if you become obsessed with these devices, and your need to feel connected to them grows out of proportion. Under this principle, it is quite possible you are giving your energy away with these devices when you could be holding on to it.
Cell phones are neither bad nor evil, as they are very useful devices. They simply ought to be used correctly, or more specifically, you need to be conscious of how your mind thinks of them (and their contents). Understanding the relationship between your thoughts and your energy is important if you want to keep your mechanical devices and other parts of your life in balance. Maintaining balance is very important for many things in life, especially for your health and happiness. When your relationship to objects that are supposed to make life better becomes out of balance you can experience a disturbance in your emotional state, your mental state, and/or your physical state.
The most important thing to remember is that you are the director of your thoughts and your life force. Once you have an understanding of how important your energy is, and a basic understanding of how it works to your benefit and to your detriment, then it’s much easier to place the correct amount of emphasis (energy) on the devices that you use in your daily life.
About the Author
Tim Chrisco, LMT, PM NLP, CPT, Certified Qi Gong and Fit-150 instructor, is the owner and editor of Choose Naturally. Tim has been practicing and teaching Qi Gong for nearly 20 years. He currently lives in Austin, Texas where he offers a unique form of body work in which he helps individuals prepare their system for a deeper integration of their soul into their body. You can get more information about Tim’s approach to health and wellness on his website: http://YourOriginalBlueprint.com and you can find all kinds of other great info on Tim’s Fit-150 Austin website: http://Fit150Austin.com
This article is offered under Creative Commons license. It’s okay to republish it anywhere as long as attribution bio is included and all links remain intact.
~~ Help Waking Times to raise the vibration by sharing this article with the buttons below…
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Water Wars in the US Southeast
The semi arid US Southwest has been accustomed to bitter conflicts over water rights, but now years of drought combined with rapid growth have sparked a fight between Georgia, Alabama and Florida over the rights to the use of water from the federal reservoir at Lake Sidney Lanier.
In July, a federal judge ruled that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers erred by putting drinking water for Atlanta before Lake Lanier's mandated purposes: hydroelectric power, navigation and flood control.
The judge gave Congress until 2012 to work out a water-sharing deal among Georgia, Alabama and Florida or most of metro Atlanta will have to scale back water withdrawals to 1970s levels.
Although the severe drought conditions that plagued the Southeast in recent years have lifted, Atlanta's rapid growth continues to strain the demand for water. Atlanta grew by roughly 890,000 between 2000 to 2006, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, the fastest growth of any metro area in the U.S.
Some in Atlanta believe that the court case was a result of envy of Atlanta's growth. Charles Krautler, the director of the Atlanta Regional Commission, complained that, “The only motivation is political. We don’t have as good of spin doctors as they do. It’s easy to point the finger at big bad Atlanta.”
But Alabama Governor, Bob Riley replied that, “Atlanta has based its growth on the idea that it could take whatever water it wanted, whenever it wanted it, and that the downstream states would simply have to make do with less.”
Congress must now approve Atlanta's use of the Lake Lanier water for drinking water in the next three years, which may be a difficult task given that the Florida and Alabama delegations to Congress outnumber Georgia's
Water wars may continue to spread to other parts of the country. In his 2006 book, The Great Lakes Water Wars, Peter Annin looks at the past and present conflicts over the largest collection of fresh surface water on earth which may also become a battlefield for water for parts of the country straining the limits of their local supplies.
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|© CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS 2000|
13.6. Exact orbits and the problem of self-consistency
Many interesting aspects of the theory of orbits relevant to the dynamics of spiral galaxies will not be treated in this book. It is the purpose of this Section to mention at least some key issues that are involved and then to comment especially on the subtle step of moving from the one-particle description to the collective behavior.
13.6.1. Three-dimensional orbits and polar ring galaxies
One important study addresses the properties of orbits outside the galactic plane. Here the basic reference case is that of an axisymmetric potential, with the equatorial plane defined by the galaxy disk. The field is in general significantly non-spherical, because of the presence of the disk, but also as a result of the flattening of the bulge-halo component. Thus, even for the quasi-planar case, we expect out-of-disk orbits to be subject to a "wobble", i.e. a precession. In general, a description of fully three-dimensional orbits requires the use of numerical integrations. Some well known methods of classical mechanics, such as the inspection of the relevant surfaces of section, help to point out the integrability properties of the assumed potential.
These investigations have found at least two important applications. In one study, which mostly addresses quasi-planar orbits, the relation between vertical and equatorial frequencies opens the way to a discussion of bending waves (see Chapter 19), much like the case of epicyclic oscillations properly introduces the analysis of density waves in the disk. Here one point should be stressed since it turns out to set a major difference between bending and density waves. The vertical restoring force on a star just off the galactic plane is due to two contributions. One is associated with the inhomogeneity of the disk and with the spheroidal bulge-halo component; even for a spherical field, at a radial location r on the disk the equatorial force is given by 2r, which translates, by projection, into a restoring force just off the plane Fz(1) 2 z. On the other hand the local disk self-gravity contributes (even in the absence of such a term; see also Chapter 14) by Fz(2) 4 G z. The fact that z in the solar neighborhood exceeds by a factor that is about 101/2 shows that at least in the middle of the optical disk, the local self-gravity term Fz(2) should generally dominate. However, this strong restoring force does not count in the problem of bending waves, because these waves displace the disk as a whole, so that the local self-gravity of a patch of the disk does not act on itself when the patch is displaced from the equatorial plane. The subtlety involved in this point can be rephrased in the following way. With respect to the limit of zero-thickness, a bending wave is intrinsically non-linear. In any case it may be misleading to assign directly a term 2z as the kinematical ingredient to the dispersion relation of bending waves. In contrast, there is no doubt that 2 does place such a role for density waves, as the pioneering work of B. Lindblad first pointed out. These points will be discussed further in Chapter 19.
In a second application, the observation of kinematical properties of either individual objects (such as globular clusters) or of gaseous rings, significantly off the galactic plane, can be used to put a constraint on the underlying potential well of the galaxy (17). Indeed, there exists an interesting class of galaxies with prominent rings (the so-called polar ring galaxies; see Fig. 13.8), for which we have a chance of additional dynamical constraints beyond those provided by the standard rotation curve associated with the motion of the material in the disk. A general working hypothesis in many models of gaseous rings is that they are to be identified with closed orbits (for single particles) associated with the underlying potential. In reality, the dynamics of an observed ring is related to the "settling" of the gas into such an orbit (18), which may involve some non-trivial collective processes. Thus the related problem of diagnostics, i.e. the problem of reconstructing the underlying field from observed orbits, is generally marked by severe ambiguities. The astrophysical problem has an additional source of uncertainty, which is the fact that one generally has a very incomplete knowledge of the orbit under consideration.
Figure 13.8. Optical images of S0 galaxies with "polar rings": from left to right, starting on the top row UGC 7576, A 0136-0801, AM 2020-5050, ESO 603-G21, NGC 2685, ESO 199-IG12, ESO 474-G26, II Zw 73 (from Schweizer, F., Whitmore, B.C., Rubin, V.C. 1983, Astron. J., 88, 909). There are galaxies, such as NGC 3998 (see Knapp, G.R., van Driel, W., van Woerden, H. 1985, Astron. Astrophys., 142, 1), where the polar ring is observed only in HI.
13.6.2. Exact orbits in non-axisymmetric disks
Going back to the context of orbits in the galactic plane, we should mention that while the axisymmetric case is "trivial", the case of non-axisymmetric potentials opens a number of interesting possibilities even in the case where the perturbation is stationary in a suitable rotating frame. (A non-axisymmetric potential stationary in the inertial frame is probably of secondary interest, from the physical point of view.) In general, the orbits that violate the conditions for the guiding center description outlined earlier must be calculated numerically. Indeed large surveys of orbits have been performed, both in the presence of barred or ovally distorted potentials and in the presence of spiral fields (19). The orbits have thus been classified systematically (20).
13.6.3. Orbital response and self-consistency
The simple interpretation of spiral arms as due to a collective crowding of orbits (as B. Lindblad initially suggested) has the major merit of focusing the discussion on the problem of quasi-stationary structures as due to waves (21), with remarkable attention to two-armed structures. On the other hand, such kinematical waves have the obvious shortcomings that they do not take into account the velocity dispersion of stars and, more importantly, that, when the spiral arms are set up, the gravitational field is no longer axisymmetric. We will study later, in Chapter 15, how those difficulties can be overcome. This point naturally introduces the problem of moving from a single particle description to the relevant collective behavior.
In practice, a quite severe problem arises immediately when we address the issue of non-axisymmetric fields. The study of orbits that we have outlined earlier, when thought in terms of a relatively large collection of orbits, is essentially an indication of the response of a specific component (such as a set of stars) to an imposed field. The trapping of stars at the Lagrangian points associated with the potential maxima is rather disconcerting, since the potential theory tells us that the potential maxima should roughly coincide with the density minima. Then the indication is that the orbits would act opposite to (out-of-phase with) the assumed spiral field, in other words that there is little chance that these non-axisymmetric fields would be naturally supported. This puzzling behavior can be partly softened by noting the general property that stars with guiding centers close to the separatrix, i.e. those that are barely trapped, spend a long time away from the trapping point, staying indeed close to the region where their presence would be needed to support the assumed field. This is just a suggestion, which shows that the problem of demonstrating how a field can be supported by the orbits that it imposes is non-trivial. On the other hand, as is recognized in a full analysis of density waves, the physical conditions for the establishment of density waves involve a number of issues (especially for non-barred spiral modes, in particular the dissipation in the gas) that go well beyond the single particle orbits.
In any case a systematic program to see whether stationary non-axisymmetric fields can receive adequate orbital support has been undertaken with a number of interesting results (22). To some extent the issue that is addressed by these investigations is the same as the issue of finding triaxial self-consistent models by direct superposition of orbits, which has led to some notable results in the context of elliptical galaxies (23).
17 See, e.g., Sackett, P.D., Rix, H.-W., Jarvis, B.J., Freeman, K.C. (1994), Astrophys. J., 436, 629 Back.
18 See, e.g., Christodoulou, D.M., Katz, N., Rix, H.-W., Habe, A. (1992), Astrophys. J., 395, 113 Back.
19 See, e.g., Contopoulos, G. (1973), Astrophys. J., 181, 657; Contopoulos, G., Papayannopoulos, T. (1980), Astron. Astrophys., 92, 33 Back.
20 See Athanassoula, E., Bienaymé, O., Martinet, L., Pfenniger, D. (1983), Astron. Astrophys., 127, 349 Back.
21 A more detailed description of this important point can be found in Bertin, G., Lin, C.C. (1996), Spiral Structure in Galaxies: A Density Wave Theory, The MIT Press, Cambridge Back.
22 See Patsis, P.A., Hiotelis, N., Contopoulos, G., Grosbøl, P. (1994), Astron. Astrophys., 286, 46 and references therein; see also Lynden-Bell, D. (1979), Mon. Not. Roy. Astron. Soc., 187, 101 Back.
23 Schwarzschild, M. (1979), Astrophys. J., 232, 236; Schwarzschild, M. (1982), Astrophys. J., 263, 599 Back.
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27 April 2012 | EN
Technologies need assessment, the UN assembly has heard
The conviction that new technologies will solve the world's environmental and social problems has overly dominated early negotiations leading up to the Rio+20 summit in Brazil in June, a UN General Assembly meeting has heard.
Mentions of technology were "almost endless" in the first draft of the outcome document, known as the 'zero draft', according to Pat Mooney, executive director of the Action Group on Erosion, Technology and Concentration (ETC Group), a non-governmental organisation based in Canada.
The message conveyed was that "... as policymakers, there's no longer any need to make policies, all you need to do is let technology sort your problems for you", Mooney told the General Assembly's Interactive Dialogue on Harmony with Nature earlier this month (18 April).
Although the first zero draft has been revised several times since, he said, "there is an assumption of a 'techno fix' for every problem".
This article is part of our coverage of preparations for Rio+20 — the UN Conference on Sustainable Development — which takes place on 20-22 June 2012. For other articles, go to Science at Rio+20
Many leading areas of science and technology (S&T) are converging at the nano-scale, he said, giving rise to a belief that, together, biotechnology, genomics, nanotechnology and synthetic biology could solve various planetary crises, such as food crises, pandemics, limits to growth and peak oil.
Mooney acknowledged that S&T are "critical" to solving problems, but he said the debate leading up to Rio+20 remained too narrowly focused on solving the problem of technology transfer.
"Technology transfer is extraordinarily important, and it's a failing since 1992 [the first Earth Summit, in Rio] that we have not had adequate technology transfer."
But, in addition to this question of 'know-how', it was important to consider the 'know-what' and the 'know-why', he argued.
Calling for an international technology assessment system that could answer these questions, he said: "If you don't have in the UN system the capacity to address those three questions together, collectively, then something's going to go wrong ... and perhaps we are going to get it wrong in extraordinarily expensive ways".
Mooney argued that billions of dollars have been wasted, often by governments, on promising new technologies that have done little for the poor, citing examples such as nanotechnology and agro-biotechnology.
Adequate assessment might have led to better investment decisions, he said.
The International Council for Science (ICSU) — which co-led one of the official contributions to the zero draft — agreed that, while technology has a "huge" role to play, there had been a "fixation" on it in the first version of the zero draft.
"We were quite concerned that there seems to be lots of discussion of technology transfer rather than looking at interdisciplinary research: an overall picture of human society, behavioural change, consumption patterns, economics, is equally important," said Peter Bates, science officer for ICSU.
But he was cautious on the idea of a technology assessment body, saying that safety concerns needed to be balanced against stifling innovation.
Melissa Leach, director of the STEPS (Social, Technological and Environmental Pathways to Sustainability) Centre in the United Kingdom, agreed that there was a need for more technology assessment but said that, rather than this being done in a top-down way, it should involve participation across society.
Assessment should also recognise that most problems require a diversity of solutions, and will not respond well to a single fix, she said.
The second round of the 'Informal-informal' negotiations on the outcome document for Rio+20 continue this week (23 April–4 May).
This article is part of our coverage on Science at Rio+20.
Allan Savory ( Savory Institute & Africa Centre for Holistic Management | Zimbabwe )
30 April 2012
Frankly I have been pointing out that it is simply impossible to address desertification's role in increasing drought and flood despite no change yet in rainfall, poverty, social breakdown, abuse of women and children, violence, cultural genocide and climate change using only technology, fire or resting the land as all mainstream institutional scientists are trying to do - while refusing to consider any other "tool". Livestock properly managed are the ONLY thing that can today address desertification's role in all this as i also explained clearly with the evidence in my keynote to UNCCD in Bonn last year. More information on www.savoryinstitute.com site
All SciDev.Net material is free to reproduce providing that the source and author are appropriately credited. For further details see Creative Commons.
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AMPLE RAINFALL MEANS LESS COLORFUL LEAVES,
SAYS WESTERN CAROLINA'S FALL FOLIAGE FORECASTER
CULLOWHEE – Plentiful precipitation during the late spring and early summer across Western North Carolina's mountains is expected to result in a less spectacular display of autumn colors this year.
That's the official prediction from Western Carolina University's new fearless fall foliage forecaster. Katherine Mathews, an assistant professor of biology specializing in plant systematics, is taking over the duties from longtime prognosticator J. Dan Pittillo upon his recent retirement after nearly 40 years as a faculty member in Western's biology department.
Mathews said she has some big shoes to fill, as Pittillo became widely known as “the Alan Greenspan of fall foliage forecasting.” A faculty member at Western since 2003, she is basing her predictions about the intensity of fall color upon Pittillo's theory that the best fall color is seen after springs with below-average rainfall, when plant growth is stunted by a lack of sufficient water.
“In a nutshell, fall leaf color will not be especially spectacular for the mountains of Western North Carolina and, in fact, for the state as a whole in 2005. Rainfall was light in January and February, and again in May, but was considerably above average from June through August in the mountain areas,” Mathews said.
“Historically, we see the brightest color when we experience periods of dry weather during the trees' growing season. Lack of rainfall stresses the trees, and that stress typically results in more colorful foliage,” she said. “During periods of adequate rainfall, most of the trees' energy goes into production of wood instead of producing leaf pigments that yield bright fall colors.”
That doesn't mean that leaf-lookers will be totally disappointed in the display of fall color, Mathews said. There should be scattered sites where the right combination of factors come together to yield good color.
“Even during an average year, the mountains during the fall season are pretty impressive,” she said.
The biological process that results in the bright hues of fall is well under way. Cooler nighttime temperatures and the change in the intensity of sunlight as summer gives way to autumn contribute to the environmental stresses that induce the decomposition of chlorophyll, the chemical that gives leaves their green color in spring and summer. As chlorophyll breaks down, other pigments – always present in the leaves, but masked by the green of chlorophyll – are revealed.
The annual color show will begin first in the higher elevations of the northwestern sections of North Carolina , typically in early October, and progress southward and down slopes through mid-October and early November. Yellow birches, red sourwoods, red and yellow maples, yellow pin cherries and yellow poplars will be the first colors to show, Mathews said. They will be followed by the yellow and red of oaks and sweet gums, yellow of hickories, yellow and brown of beeches, and a variety of other color shades in the vines, shrubs and smaller trees beneath the forest canopy.
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yellow flower in egypt
hi,,, i was wondering if u can help me in identifying the name of this flower please
Hi Nermin, this is one of my all time favorite little drought smart plants. It's the California poppy, or Eicholtzia, and in its natural habitat (in California) will form huge colonies of free flowering orange or yellow blooms. Whole hillsides will be covered in the flowers in June and July.
These reseed freely, providing the next generation. As annuals, they respond quickly to the perfect growing conditions - a good rain, followed by sunny warm weather will provide these. The flowers open in the daytime, and close at night and on cloudy days.
Best areas to grow them are on the edges of gravel driveways, which provide the perfect place for the seeds to germinate, among the rocks. They are also frequently grown on traffic circles, 'hell strips' alongside the roadway, and in any other challenging sites.
Get the seed pods just before they open up, and put them in a paper bag to finish ripening, and they can be scattered wherever you want to grow the plant - they don't transplant all that well, so see where the plant will grow.
Happy Native Plant Gardening!
Click here to post comments.
Join in and write your own page! It's easy to do. How?
Simply click here to return to Succulent Plant Identification.
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CORVALLIS, Ore. – Nobel Peace Prize laureate Jody Williams will visit Oregon State University April 23-25, where she will encourage Pacific Northwest high school students, teachers and OSU students to create a better world through community service and global action.
Williams will present a free public lecture on Friday, April 23, in the Memorial Union ballroom on campus. Her talk, “When Ordinary People Achieve Extraordinary Things,” begins at 7:30 p.m.
The visit of Williams, who won the Nobel Prize in 1997 for her work to ban landmines, is part of PeaceJam, an international education program that works with Nobel Prize laureates to engage youth in volunteerism. PeaceJam is designed to encourage youths to transform themselves, their local communities and, ultimately, the world.
Williams’ visit is sponsored by the OSU Division of Student Affairs and the Ava Helen and Linus Pauling Memorial Lecture for World Peace.
Three hundred youth, teachers and college mentors will attend the two-day PeaceJam conference April 24-25 at OSU. Forty OSU students will serve as mentors during the conference. The emcee for the conference is Rudy Balles, a gang violence prevention specialist who participated in Rocky Mountain PeaceJam as a teenager, which he says changed the direction of his life.
“Rudy is inspiring,” said Ann Robinson, a student media adviser and campus coordinator of PeaceJam. “Each year we have a chance to give young people global education and then we do everything in our power to feed their passion to create positive change in the world
“This is our sixth PeaceJam and our fifth Nobel laureate,” she added. “The high school and college students personally interact with the Nobel Prize recipient and while they are here, the students will contribute 600 hours in service to a dozen local non-profit organizations in our community.”
Youths from Solano County, Calif., to Whidbey Island Wash., will spend the weekend on campus attending PeaceJam. The Solano County students come from 10 different high schools in and around Fairfield and have expressed a commitment to working toward a more just and peaceful world.
Students will present to Williams the service work they have been doing in their respective communities – part of the Global Call to Action, a movement inspired by the 12 Nobel Peace laureates who sit on the PeaceJam Foundation’s international board of directors.
For more information, go online to http://oregonstate.edu/studentaffairs/peacejam/
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View Full Version : How to make a high glucose shake?
06-06-2004, 11:33 AM
What should I add to a shake to make it have large amounts of glucose, around 100g?
06-06-2004, 11:35 AM
Just use dextrose?
06-06-2004, 11:39 AM
haha right. I completely forgot about dextrose. It is basically glucose isn't it?
06-06-2004, 11:43 AM
Yes, dextrose is short for dextrorotary glucose. In terms of molecular structure it's the mirror image of (l-)glucose. So it's basically the same thing.
Powered by vBulletin™ Version 4.0.6 Copyright © 2013 vBulletin Solutions, Inc. All rights reserved.
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味わわせる often pronounced as
味あわせる? What makes the former form unnatural, and what is the mechanism that changes it to the latter form? In the first place, what it the
-waw- attached to
aji (besides the obvious answer that it is an affix that derives a verb)? Are there other words (inside or outside of Japanese) that follow the same phonological pattern?
I can only speculate that this is a kind of onbin to ease pronunciation. The two medial approximates /w/ are only separated by a vowel. Approximates, also known as semi-vowels, share some similarities with vowels. The reduction of one in rapid speech is small while still understandable. The reduction of the first rather than the second is similar to baai <> bawai, which tries to avoid repeating the same vowel twice.
I would not say that the former is necessarily unnatural. Rather that in spoken language the former takes more effort to say and as such sounds stiff or formal. See above for speculation for the mechanism.
As you already said, it is just an affix that attaches to nouns to derive verbs. Etymologically it is suggested to be 這う・延う, but evidence is minimal. There are both yodan and shimo nidan versions.
If you are asking for other words with the same affix waw-, then yes.
And then there is the nominal forms (cf ajiwai), though the corresponding verbal forms do not seem to exist:
These are more verbal than affix, but for reference, there is also:
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"Galileo got outvoted for a spell," [Texas Governor Rick] Perry said, defending his utter indifference to the overwhelming scientific consensus on climate change. It was one of the most preposterous and audacious quips ever by an American politician whose suspicions about science are notorious and well known.Who's this Galileo and why was he outvoted?
I believe that Perry is not only on the wrong side of this metaphor but that we should be teaching both sides of the the Aristotelian/Copernican debate in our public schools.
Both sides. Let the children decide for themselves which one is right - the eternal word of God or the "opinion" of some unnamed fallible "scientists" who are probably mostly atheists anyway.
Galileo Galilei was an early 17th century astronomer who favored the now-current scientific "theory" (and remember, it's only a theory) that the sun is at the center of the solar system and not the earth.
Which ran him straight into conflict with Scripture. Galileo said that the earth moves around the sun but Chronicles 13:30 says quite clearly:
Tremble before him, all the earth!And this is echoed by in Psalm 96:
The world is firmly established; it cannot be moved.
Say among the nations, “The LORD reigns.”Not only that, but Scripture is very clear that it's the sun that moves. Ecclesiastes 1:5:
The world is firmly established, it cannot be moved;
he will judge the peoples with equity.
The sun rises and the sun sets,The Joshua 10:12 tells us that the sun was the thing made to stand still - not the earth:
and hurries back to where it rises.
On the day the LORD gave the Amorites over to Israel, Joshua said to the LORD in the presence of Israel:Scripture says it's the sun that moves and the earth is immovable. Galileo was wrong, Perry was wrong and scripture is always right.
“Sun, stand still over Gibeon,
and you, moon, over the Valley of Aijalon.”
We should be teaching both sides of the controversy - that's the only way proper science works!
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Malcolm McLaren, the former Sex Pistols manager who is credited with helping form the legendary U.K. punk band, has died at the age of 64 after a battle with cancer. "He had been suffering from cancer for some time, but recently had been full of health, which then rapidly deteriorated," McLaren's spokesman Les Molloy told The Independent. Molloy confirmed McLaren died in New York this morning; his body will be moved to London for burial in Highgate Cemetery. John Lydon said in a statement, "For me Malc was always entertaining, and I hope you remember that. Above all else he was an entertainer and I will miss him, and so should you."
An icon of the punk movement that swept Great Britain in the mid-Seventies, McLaren got his start as a fashion designer who opened up a clothing shop with Vivienne Westwood called Let It Rock. While in New York City to start up a new boutique, he became the New York Dolls manager, a role he held until their breakup in 1976. After working with the Dolls and returning to London, McLaren wanted to start up his own band — the misfit group of punks would later be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as the Sex Pistols.
McLaren recruited three local kids who frequented his Kings Road boutique — now called "Sex" — Glenn Matlock, Steve Jones and Paul Cook, and dubbed them the "Sex Pistols." He first tried out Jones on vocals, but soon found a more suitable provocateur. As Charles M. Young wrote in his 1977 RS Sex Pistols cover story, "One of the regulars at Sex was a kid named John Lydon, who was distinguished on three counts: 1) his face had the pallor of death; 2) he went around spitting on poseurs he passed on the street; and 3) he was the first to understand the democratic implications of punk — rather than pay ten pounds for an ugly T-shirt with holes in it, he took a Pink Floyd T-shirt, scratched holes in the eyes and wrote I HATE over the logo. McLaren stood him in front of the jukebox, had him mouth Alice Cooper's 'I'm Eighteen' and declared him their new lead singer. Jones noticed the mung on Lydon's never-brushed teeth, and christened him Johnny Rotten."
McLaren amped up the new band's notoriety with a stunt that featured the Pistols performing "God Save the Queen" on a barge during the same week of the Queen's Silver Jubilee. McLaren was arrested before the stunt was pulled off, but the single immediately topped the British charts. After releasing Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols, the band embarked on a tour of the U.S. and ultimately split. For years, McLaren and Lydon fought over the Sex Pistols' copyright and royalties in a rift that was never healed.
Later in his career, McLaren became a well-known musician in his own right. His 1983 hip-hop-flavored album Duck Rock produced the U.K. Top 10 singles "Buffalo Gals" and "Double Dutch." A year later, McLaren also had a hit with "Madame Butterfly," a song inspired the opera of the same name. McLaren's "About Her," a remix of the Zombies' "She's Not There," was featured in Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill 2. A punk renaissance man in the truest sense, McLaren was also an author, film producer and reality TV star.
For much more on McLaren and his time managing the Sex Pistols, check out the Rolling Stone stories below:
To read the new issue of Rolling Stone online, plus the entire RS archive: Click Here
POLITICS No Price Big Banks Can't Fix
Picks From Around the Web
blog comments powered by Disqus
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VAPoR is on it's way again to discover more of the world. This time the trip led us to Ny-Ålesund, Svalbard, Norway, were we participate in AMASE. AMASE is the Arctic Mars Analog Svalbard Expedition. To quote from the website, this is the reason for us to go there: "With a unique combination of volcanoes, hot springs and permafrost, the BVC on the Arctic islands of Svalbard is the only place on Earth with carbonate deposits identical to carbonates in the Martian meteorite ALH84001. As such, it provides a unique opportunity to study the interaction between water, rocks and primitive life forms in a Mars-like environment and is an ideal testing ground for instruments under development for future "Search for Life" missions to Mars (such as Mars Science Laboratory and ExoMars)."
VAPoR was originally designed for deployment on the moon, however, we are capable to detected all kinds of astrobiologically relevant stuff and Mars would be a good place to go as well.
This is the view from Lonyearbyen Airport. I arrived around 2PM and had to wait a few hours for the others to show up and the flight to Ny-Ålesund.
This is the town of Longyearbyen
And it's worldfamous Svalbard museum that actually won the Council of Europe
Museum Prize 2008.
Museum Prize 2008.
It is really worth a visit, even though our visit got cut short, because we had to head back to the airport for the last lag of the day - to Ny-Ålesund.
In this plane.....
One seat left of the aisle, one seat right... Really my thing!
I did have the nerve to look out of the window to see this
While Carnegie-Gareth was kind enough to offer up his hand to my death grip
But the result was absolutely worth it.
The town of Ny-Ålesund
Where I stay in the yellow building in the right upper corner.
Approach for landing
And for some first impressions, the (retired) Ny-Ålesund train
And the 11.15 PM (23.15) view on the blue ice glacier across the fjord, which is worth staring at 24 hours a day.
No polar bears yet.....
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Three Boston LGBT Nonprofits Top List on Philanthropedia
Three Boston LGBT organizations have been recognized as top local nonprofits by Philanthropedia, a division of nonprofit information source, GuideStar. Boston Alliance for Gay and Lesbian Youth (BAGLY), Mass Equality, and Massachusetts Transgender Political Coalition (MTPC) ranked fourth, fifth and eighth, respectively on the list of 11, deeming them all "high-impact" equality supporters.
"It’s not just important to support charities but to support the best charities," said Erinn Andrews, GuideStar’s Senior Director of Nonprofit Strategy and Original Chief Operating Officer of Philanthropedia.
This list, which was released in early January, was created by surveying 110 experts in field of LGBT equality, including CEO’s, executive directors, policy makers, researchers, journalists and academics. Once chosen, these experts filled out detailed questionnaires and were allowed to recommend up to four nonprofits, excluding ones they work for, that stand out for their high impact at the local level.
"We’re delighted," said BAGLY Executive Director Grace Sterling Stowell. "I was excited to see BAGLY on the list and also very excited to see MTPC and Mass Equality there because we work so closely together."
"It is such a great honor to be acknowledged that way," affirmed Mass Equality Executive Director Kara Suffredini.
"It’s pretty cool," echoed Gunner Scott, Executive Director of Mass Transgender Political Coalition. "I really wasn’t expecting it."
Philanthropedia, and its parent organization, Guidestar, are dedicated to bringing transparency to the workings of nonprofits, improving the way they function and enabling donors to make educated decisions on which organizations are best for them. They have created top nonprofit and top charity lists for causes from environmental issues and disaster relief to reproductive rights to education to homelessness and everything in between.
"We know that finding the nonprofits that are really having an impact can be daunting," said Andrews. "If you care about LGBT issues, our top experts have highlighted the nonprofits making the most gains for the community."
These top-ranked Boston based nonprofits have all had enormous success both in individual endeavors as well as great collaborative feats. BAGLY teamed up with Fenway Health and JRI Health last year and opened its first sexual health clinic where people under 29 can obtain free HIV and STI screenings.
Mass Equality was a huge proponent of the first-ever statewide bill on unaccompanied homeless youth. MTPC saw great success with their Trans People Speak campaign (previously featured in EDGE), but their biggest victory of 2012 was the passing of the Transgender Equal Rights Bill.
This monumental accomplishment was supported by each of the three organizations above and many other LGBT nonprofits in Massachusetts.
"There are very few LGBT organizations we don’t work with," said Stowell. "Our working so closely helps each group to accomplish goals and carry out missions."
Suffredini agreed, noting that the cooperation with one another is why these NPOs have been so effective and why so many historic firsts have come out of Massachusetts.
"The fact is we all recognize that each organization brings another area of expertise and strength. In this way, we work very well collaboratively," said Scott, who hopes that being on this list will bring more attention and funding to the trans movement which, he said, has long been left out of the greater LGBT movement.
"It shows when you are given resources to do work you really can thrive," said Scott.
Looking forward, MTPC along with Mass Equality and BAGLY will be pushing to further the current Trans Equal Rights Bill by seeking passage of the Equal Access in Public Accommodations Act. This would ensure fair and equal treatment for trans people in hospitals, hotels, retail stores, public transportation, and all other places open to the public.
Suffredini said that Mass Equality will also be focusing, in 2013, on things like stronger anti-bullying laws and LGBT Aging.
"We don’t want the pioneers of this movement to have to go back in the closet," she said. "And working with the partners we’ve worked with, we should be able to get several of these things accomplished."
Stowell, who shares this accolade with the youth and adult advisors that work with BAGLY, said she looks forward to continuing to work with and support LGBT youth.
They also are all hoping that being ranked in the top tier of high-impact local nonprofits will help their respective organizations with reputation and funding. Scott says that MTPC saw an increase in donations the week that the Philanthropedia list was released. He’s hoping that this will continue and that trans activists around the country will be inspired to take action and form their own groups and organizations.
"It’s an important resource and tool for donors to be able to go to GuideStar and see how their money is being put to use," said Suffredini, who notes that 70 cents per every dollar donated to Mass Equality goes directly to the cause. "We’re hoping this will get folks energized."
While BAGLY, Mass Equality and MTPC each have a unique central focus, they all agree that the strong community in Boston and in Massachusetts has aided in the victories they’ve accomplished.
"We’re not as big as New York or Chicago or San Francisco, but we are big enough to have a significant impact," said Stowell. "It really speaks to the strength of the LGBT community in Boston.
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The bridge on state Route 314 (Manor Drive) that spans Swiftwater Creek in Pocono Township is reopening following a project to replace it.
Replaced was a structurally deficient, 33-foot-long, 23-foot-wide concrete T-beam bridge, originally built in 1928, with a 37-and-a-half-foot-long, 33-foot-wide concrete box beam bridge.
The project included reconstructing roadway approaches, new guiderail, installation of new pavement markings and signing, line painting and other miscellaneous construction. Later this spring crews will return to perform the final paving of the bridge roadway approaches.
The project began last May, and during construction Route 314 was closed and detoured between Summit Road and Swiftwater Avenue. The posted detour sent traffic over routes 611 and 940.
Pioneer Construction Company of Honesdale was the general contractor on the $1.1 million project.
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Dying of thirst in South Africa
Africa is a thirsty continent and scarce water resources make it one of our most important commodities – and therefore one of those most open to abuse and manipulation. But it is also a basic human right. For some water equals power, and there was never a clearer example of that than when CLAW, the International Fund for Animal Welfare’s companion animal project in South Africa, started work recently in the desperately poor Syferbult informal settlement.
Who would have guessed that a simple trip to vaccinate and treat pets in a smallish informal settlement of 190 shacks would end up on the pages of one of South Africa’s biggest daily newspapers, in a criminal investigation and with the involvement of the highly influential Lawyers for Human Rights. There are thousands of informal settlements in South Africa where sometimes, as many as 5,000 people may rely on a single tap as their only access to water. In other settlements, like Syferbult, there is no running water at all – just a twice a week delivery by the local municipality to deliver a tank of 10,000 litres of water which runs out within hours. With the arrival of summer, access to water is essential for animals and people alike and it is one of CLAW’s key education concerns that owners know to make sure their pets always have access to drinking water.
Going door to door at Syferbult last week the CLAW team found little evidence of owners providing water to their dehydrated dogs and listless chickens. On confronting a young woman whose dogs were chained and without water, they were astounded to learn she couldn’t afford the clean water being sold by a local municipal councilor. She said those who couldn’t afford the US$.70 cents he was charging for 20 litres of water walked over a kilometer to “steal” dirty irrigation water from a nearby farm. It wasn’t the fact that she couldn’t afford the water that was so astounding – that’s the unfortunate reality for many in this country – but the fact that it was being sold at all. “Illegal and downright immoral,” says Cora Bailey of CLAW. And Lawyers for Human Rights agree with her. Cora tackled the problem head on. The councilor wasn’t home, but his wife was.
After initially denying they sold the water they pump from a borehole in their yard, she finally admitted to it. “It costs money to pump the water,” she said, and told Cora she and her husband were just trying to “help” the community. The US$.70 cents levy was just to cover the cost of the electricity it requires to run the pump. Within a day, The Star newspaper had begun an investigation and discovered that not only was the councilor selling the water illegally, but the water was only authorised for agricultural purposes. The local community had put up with the situation for nearly three years without complaining to authorities because they were frightened of him. The councilor’s was virtually the only potable water they had access to.
Now there is a municipal inquiry into the councilor’s activities and his water selling antics have come to a halt. As for the community they are back to relying on the twice weekly deliveries (the municipality hasn’t responded by offering more regular water drops) or the long wearying walk to fetch water from the farm. And CLAW? They will continue to offer their services to Syferbult but as Cora says: “We’re not sure what to expect. They councilor will be angry that he has lost an income, and the community is afraid of him and his henchmen. “Will we be welcome there again?” In conclusion, you might ask: “Should CLAW have interfered?” One local resident said: “It wasn’t right what (the councilor) was doing, but at least there was water.” But, as an editorial in The Star wrote, it is also the councilor and the municipality’s obligation to provide water to the people and not to exploit their vulnerability. CLAW will continue to lobby to ensure both the people and the animals of Syferbult receive the treatment they deserve. -- CP
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AELE LAW LIBRARY OF CASE SUMMARIES:
Civil Liability of Law Enforcement Agencies & Personnel
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Public Protection: Minors
Officers were entitled
to qualified immunity for temporarily physically separating a twenty-one-month-old
male infant from his mother. The child became entangled in a soccer net,
and was extricated by his mother, who found him not breathing. Officers
summoned to the scene saw strangulation marks on the child and declared
the area a crime scene. The mother was taken away because she kept screaming
threats of suicide. The child died, and the mother sued, claiming that
the officers' actions slowed down the efforts of paramedics to save him.
There was no clearly established due process duty to provide protection
and medical treatment to the child in these circumstances. Cantrell v.
City of Murphy, #10–41138, 2012 U.S. App. Lexis 63 (5th Cir.).
State social workers and agency were not liable for the accidental shooting and death of a child in foster care. Their alleged repeated failure to check the foster home for the presence of unsecured firearms did not "shock the conscience." Additionally, the state agency could not be sued under 42 U.S.C. Sec. 1983 because of Eleventh Amendment immunity. McLean v. Gordon, No. 07-2250, 2008 U.S. App. Lexis 24298, (8th Cir.).
State agency's alleged delay in reporting allegations of sexual abuse of minor to law enforcement could not be the basis for a federal civil rights lawsuit seeking damages for the subsequent alleged murder of the minor by the alleged abuser. This conduct did not create the danger to the minor, who remained in the custody of her mother, who was aware of the allegations of abuse. Estate of Pond v. Oregon, 322 F. Supp. 2d 1161 (D. Ore. 2004). [N/R]
Federal appeals court, in case where estranged husband took and murdered his three minor daughters, in violation of domestic protection order, rules that such an order, when enforcement is required by a state statute, creates a property interest protected by the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Claims against city for failing to enforce order are reinstated, but individual officers were entitled to qualified immunity. Gonzales v. Castle Rock, #01-1053, 366 F.3d 1093 (10th Cir. en banc, 2004). [2004 LR Sep]
Police officer did not create a danger to a child by leaving her at a convenience store after allegedly mistakenly arresting her mother. The child was left with a responsible adult known to her family, and the child was not placed in any actual danger. Under the circumstances, the officer's actions in relation to the child were not objectively unreasonable. Craddock v. Hicks, 314 F. Supp. 2d 648 (N.D. Miss. 2003). [N/R]
Adoptive parents of child could not recover damages against county or county employees based on constitutional claim that they failed to protect the child from physical abuse by the child's natural mother. The governmental defendants did not create the danger at issue or have any special relationship imposing a duty of care, as the alleged injuries occurred when the child was in the care of his natural mother prior to his removal from the home. Robbins v. Cumberland County Children and Youth Services, 802 A.2d 1239 (Pa. Cmwlth. 2002). [N/R]
328:59 California statute imposed mandatory duty on police to investigate reports of child abuse, and to file reports with child protective agencies when the investigation leads to reasonable suspicion of such abuse; complete failure to investigate a report of child abuse stated a claim for "negligence per se." Alejo v. City of Alhambra, No. B130088, 89 Cal. Rtr. 2d 768 (1999).
EDITOR'S NOTE: See also S.S. v. McMullen, #98-1732, 186 F.3d 1066 (8th Cir. 1999), holding that an eight-year-old child, placed back in the custody of her father by state employees despite alleged knowledge that the father associated with a convicted pedophile stated a claim under the "state-created danger" exception to the general rule that the government has no duty to provide protection to anyone from third-party violence.
Back to list of subjects Back
to Legal Publications Menu
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by Jane Ginn
As I’ve been pondering the effects of the populist uprising against the U.S. Congressional actions on the House Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) [H.R. 3261] and the Senate Protect Intellectual Property Act (PIPA) [S. 968] I’ve realized that the trade agreement covering intellectual property and recently signed by the U.S. and seven other countries[i] has been overlooked by many in the information technology (IT) community[ii]. This agreement, called the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) has some provisions that some Internet freedom advocates claim are similar to the concerns raised in the SOPA/PIPA debate.
The voluntary “blackout” of the Internet on January 18th staged by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Public Knowledge, the Free Software Foundation and hundreds of others was intended to demonstrate, albeit using a sledge hammer approach, what a censored Internet might look like. Ultimately, it was intended to mobilize support and grass roots action against Congressional action, which it succeeded in doing, at least in the short term.
The debate on ACTA, beginning with the Doha Round, was conducted in a much more heady environment between trade specialists and technocrats; not one that usually draws much public attention. The U.S. Trade Representative’s (USTR) office makes the agendas and the revised drafts since 2009 from the negotiating rounds on ACTA accessible on their website[iii]; however, many in Europe are claiming that the negotiations were conducted in secret. Protests in Greece, Poland and Slovenia over the past week have stalled European action on the measure and the anti-ACTA rhetoric is heating up. However, giving legitimacy to the claims of secrecy in the USTR, 75 law professors from major universities signed an open letter to President Barack Obama calling for a halt to ACTA due to the lack of public input. What is the truth?
Let’s take a sober look at what the USTR claims ACTA would do.
ACTA was opened for signature on May 1, 2011 by the Government of Japan which functions as the Depositary of the Agreement. Parties who have not yet signed may submit their signatures to Japan. For those who have already signed, the next step for bringing ACTA into force is the development and deployment of national instruments of ratification, acceptance, and/or approval. The agreement will enter into force once at least six of the signatories have national implementation instruments[iv].
In a March 21, 2008 response to a request for comments on ACTA the International Intellectual Property Alliance (IIPA) provided some interesting data on the contributions of “core” copyright industries to the U.S. economy. IIPA argued that these core industries:
These data support the stance the USTR has taken in proactively negotiating the terms and conditions of ACTA. So what are these provisions?
What struck me the most about the language of the agreement was how carefully it seeks to balance the rights and privileges of the various stakeholders. For example in the opening it states:
The Parties to this Agreement[v],
Desiring to address the problem of infringement of intellectual property rights, including infringement taking place in the digital environment, in particular with respect to copyright or related rights, in a manner that balances the rights and interests of the relevant right holders, service providers, and users [emphasis added];
Further, it is specifically aimed at the reduction of organized criminal activity that “undermines legitimate trade and sustainable development of the world economy.” And its purpose is to complement the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS)[vi]. Ratification of TRIPS is a compulsory requirement of World Trade Organization (WTO) membership. As a consequence TRIPS is the key multilateral instrument for the protection of intellectual property rights.
TRIPS does have an enforcement mechanism at the nation-state to nation-state level; however, in recent years the long and cumbersome process required for WTO dispute resolution was not seen to be responsive enough to the needs of border and nation-state enforcement personnel in fighting the exponential rise in global criminal activity. Further, the TRIPS focuses more specifically on what defines copyright terms and the legitimate interests of the rights holders. Specifically it notes that computer programs must be regarded as “literary works” under copyright law and receive the same level of protection.
In complementing TRIPS, ACTA seeks to address the significant economic impact that infringers are having on creative artists and scientists. It establishes the obligations of Parties to the Agreement for setting up civil and criminal enforcement mechanisms, remuneration frameworks, damages treatment, and the rights of enforcement authorities within each nation-state (i.e., Party) to destroy the infringing goods and equipment that had been used to create infringing goods (to be carried out at the infringer’s expense).
ACTA also provides a mechanism for gaining evidence (including seizure), a critical component of the successful prosecution of white collar crime, but one that is giving the anti-ACTA activists heartburn. Further, the provisions relating to import/export also give border and customs authorities’ authorization to act on their own volition, if there are legitimate concerns of suspect goods. This is another provision that anti-ACTA activists have taken issue with, fearing abuse of this authority.
To be fair, ACTA also requires Parties to “provide a security …sufficient to protect the defendant and to prevent abuse [emphasis added].” How this is to be accomplished is left up to each signatory to the Agreement.
What Do The Data Tell Us?
Although popular uprisings against a particular public policy approach make for good news copy, they rarely lead to alternatives that can address the core concern of the policy construct. According to the main supporters of ACTA, what is at risk is the profitability of companies in virtually every sector of the economy.
The October, 2011 report[vii] issued from the U.S. Office of the National Counterintelligence Executive notes: “Economic espionage inflicts costs on companies that range from loss of unique intellectual property to outlays for remediation, but no reliable estimates of the monetary value of these costs exist.” Brian Scott of ResearchCopyright.com did venture to make a guess that “most copyright infringement statistics cite that almost 30 percent of software is pirated in the United States.”
Enforcement actions under U.S. International Trade Commission Section 337 rules may also serve as a surrogate for getting a sense of the magnitude of the problem, at least for U.S. companies that have filed a complaint. The fiscal year 2010 report is provided here: In examing these data, which shows a comparison between 2005 and 2010, there was a general trend showing that IP infringement is on the rise. We can, therefore, conclude that the economic impacts are becoming more and more significant, and are negatively affecting the bottom line for many U.S. companies.
Even with the economic impacts to businesses and the resultant job losses, there is a significant backlash against ACTA in Europe. In the U.S., the concerns appear to be an afterthought of the SOPA and PIPA popular protest, especially given that the U.S. has already signed the Agreement. Nonetheless, it is worth looking more closely at the political underpinnings of these popular uprisings to seek a deeper understanding of why they have appeal to the very people whose job prospects are negatively impacted by actions against ACTA.
The Mismatch of Priorities
I’ve written before about the ideological chasm that exists between the Keynesian economists and the devotees of the Austrian school as articulated by Von Mises. In the field of IT there is a similar chasm: between those businesses that use a proprietary code IP business model (e.g., Microsoft, Adobe, Oracle) and those that use an open source business model (e.g., Netscape (Mozilla), Google, ). The debate is waged over the licensing and use of the source code for computer systems, not over any other aspect of IP as it relates to these businesses. Nonetheless, it represents a significant ideological battle which was characterized by Eric S. Raymond as the Cathedral and the Bazaar (abbreviated CatB); the Cathedral representing the proprietary camp, and the Bazaar representing the open source aficionados. In subsequent essays Raymond has expounded upon the anthropological roots of the open source movement and uses the analogy of the explorer on the frontier as a metaphor for the model. This obviously has a romantic appeal that melds nicely with the populist anti-ACTA movement.
Tied more integrally to the debate between economic camps is the “libertarian” model. This is a political philosophy that holds the freedom of the individual as the basic moral principal of society and eschews government involvement in commercial and private spheres. The anti-WTO movement has been spearheaded by libertarian thinkers who argue that there is a loss of national sovereignty in multilateral agreements with broad enforcement mechanisms. By extension, the anti-ACTA cadre adopts a similar argument when criticizing the secrecy of the ACTA negotiations or denouncing its law enforcement mechanisms.
Many of the peer-to-peer file sharing websites use both the open source and libertarian ideologies to justify what others see as IP infringements. In short, they use business models built on the open source credo.
Science, Technology and the Erice Declaration
In my New “Hot War” article I argued that the Council of Europe’s Convention on Cybercrime could be used as a model for framing international law enforcement authority in the fight against organized cyber crime. The ACTA does just that. As noted above Parties to ACTA are committing themselves to undertaking a broad assault against IP infringement. Unfortunately, the way it is written, it may compel some Parties (nation-states) to place some of the burden on Internet Service Providers (ISPs) for policing their networks. This gets to the crux of the problem that activists have with SOPA and PIPA.
This approach would call for deep packet inspection of Internet traffic. Some analysts claim that this infringes on the goal of net neutrality and that it would run counter to the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) Domain Name System Security Extensions (DNSSEC) project[viii]. DNS adds security to the traditional DNS by protecting Internet resolvers (client machines) from DNS cache poisoning. This is accomplished by adding a digital signature as part of an authentication step in the data encapsulation process (See Figure 1)[ix].
Other technical problems arise with deep packet inspection at the ISP juncture. Many companies are currently evaluating migrating from TCP/IP v.4 to TCP/IPv.6 for increasing security. With IPv. 6 there will be enhanced encryption that will likely render deep packet inspection useless. Similarly, some companies are adopting the Internet Protocol Security (IPsec) suite which includes both authentication and encryption of each IP packet.
It is evident that the framers of the ACTA did not take some of these technical issues under consideration when drafting the language of the Agreement. How they can be reconciled is the challenge that law enforcement agencies will face in the implementation of this Agreement. Perhaps a clue can come from the Erice Declaration.
The Erice Declaration on Principles for Cyber Stability and Cyber Peace, drafted by the Permanent Monitoring Panel on Information Security of the World Federation of Scientists in Geneva was adopted on August 20, 2009. It artfully brings the dialogue back around to the issue of using information and communication technology (ICT) for economic development. It notes that “ICTs can be a means for beneficence or harm, hence also as an instrument for peace or for conflict.” Notably, it calls for a “common code of cyber conduct” and a “harmonized legal framework.” It goes on to call for all “governments, service providers and users” to support international law enforcement efforts against cyber criminals.
In conclusion, I will argue that the problems of IP infringement are real and there are significant economic and employment impacts that accrue from the practice. Beyond ideologies, finger-pointing and retaliatory attacks there must be some common ground for addressing these problems. How can the open source credo help to overcome the genuine challenges facing modern global society in finding balance in the debate?
[i] Australia, Canada, Japan, Republic of Korea, Morocco, New Zealand, Singapore, and the United States – signed the Agreement on October 1, 2011 in Tokyo.
[iii] Since the 5th round of negotiations on July 16, 2009.
[v] “Parties” to the Agreement refers here to the nations that have signed both TRIPS and ACTA.
[vi] Annex 1C of the Marrakesh Agreement Establishing the World Trade Organization negotiated in 1994.
[vii] Foreign Spies Stealing U.S. Economic Secrets in Cyberspace: Report to Congress on Foreign Economic Collection and Industrial Espionage, 2009-2011 (October, 2011).
[ix] The Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) model is a technical model used for standardizing networking started by the International Standards Organization in 1977. It is not related to the open source movement referenced earlier in this article.
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Usborne books have been a steady resource for my homeschool classroom year after year. Not only does my son love the books, but I also love that they are extremely well written. I especially love the books that focus on facts, like the Illustrated Dictionary of Science. This is an excellent resource to introduce research gathering with your homeschooler. The pictures and descriptions are clear and factual, yet written to keep your child's interest.
There are many book that are "IL", or internet linked. I was wary of this when I first purchased Snakes IL for my son last year. My concern about valid and unbroken links was quickly eased. The website had links for quality and timely videos, pictures and stories. There were also links to several snake games. Every link was maintained and easy to follow. My son especially enjoyed how they coincided with each chapter, thus offering extra information for enrichment. Astronomy and Space, Birds, Bugs and Castles are just a few of the internet linked choices Usborne offers. For web savvy homeschoolers and their families this is a major time saving resource for unit studies and information gathering.
Kane-Miller is a new selection of books offered at Usborne's website. These are stories about familiar characters like "Duck" from books such as Hit the Ball Duck. Jack Russell:Dog Detective Mysteries are also featured, and are perfect mystery stories for older readers. All of the books by Kane-Miller are exceptionally well written and are of superb quality.
The selection of Spanish books at Usborne is vast. For the homeschooler who lives in a dual language home, or is learning to speak Spanish this is an added plus. Many students that become fluent in Spanish enjoy getting books like El Castillo Misterioso, or Mystery Castle, to practice comprehension and reading aloud in Spanish.
Kid Kits are another awesome product Usborne offers. Chinese Calligraphy, Inventors Portfolio and Mermaid Things to Make and Do are just a few of the choices for these educational resources. What is nice about the Kid Kit products is that they are comprehensive and well made. Try one out for your homeschool classroom, or any of the Usborne products. You will be happy you did!
Please visit my E-Show at Usborne online!
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HHMI ups investment in college science
Colleges face a number of tough challenges in teaching science today. New fields that blur the lines between disciplines are emerging, and biologists, chemists, physicists and mathematicians are forging interdisciplinary collaborations. Scientists trained to be outstanding researchers need to learn to be outstanding teachers. More minorities must be encouraged to pursue scientific careers.
To help colleges meet these challenges, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) is awarding $49.7 million in grants to 42 baccalaureate and master's degree institutions in 17 states and Puerto Rico. This brings HHMI's investment in undergraduate science to more than $606 million.
The four-year grants, ranging from $500,000 to $1.6 million, support a variety of programs to improve undergraduate science, from new courses in hot fields such as bioinformatics and computational biology, to fellowships for postdoctoral researchers that include teaching experiences, and a mobile teaching laboratory to bring science to disadvantaged and minority students in remote areas.
Although its investigators conduct research at universities and medical schools, HHMI supports science at colleges because they also play a vital role in education, according to Peter Bruns, vice president for grants and special programs at HHMI. "Good science can be done in different settings, in colleges as well as universities," says Bruns. "Colleges are a better learning environment for some students, and they serve underrepresented minorities extremely well."
Undergraduate biology is not well-funded nationally, notes Stephen Barkanic, director of HHMI's undergraduate science education program. "Public and private funders tend to focus their support on research programs, infrastructure, and graduate training, but undergraduate biology tends to be neglected. Smaller colleges and universities, in particular, often are overlooked in the intensive competition for grant dollars."
The new grants encourage collaboration among recipients. Carleton and St. Olaf Colleges in Minnesota, for example, are collaborating with Michigan's Hope College to create faculty teams from biology, the physical sciences, and mathematics who will work together on research and develop interdisciplinary courses and labs.
The grants also support training in teaching for postdoctoral fellows in science. City University of New York Queens College, Occidental College in Los Angeles, and North Carolina's Davidson College, for example, will establish postdoctoral fellowships that provide training and experience in teaching as a component of a strong research program.
Several of the new grants address the ongoing underrepresentation of some minorities in the sciences. Bryn Mawr College and Haverford College in Pennsylvania will bring their strengths in science to a partnership with Philadelphia area schools. Undergraduates and faculty from both colleges will mentor middle- and high-school students, providing laboratory experiences and writing workshops. The colleges also will offer summer workshops for Philadelphia area teacher
In the lower Rio Grande Valley, where the population is 88 percent Hispanic and the unemployment rate is triple the national average, the University of Texas-Pan American will equip a mobile teaching laboratory staffed with scientist-educators to bring contemporary biology to students and teachers throughout the region. And Florida A & M University in Tallahassee, a historically black institution, will develop after-school and summer science and technology programs to attract the mostly African-American students of the Leon County South Side Schools.
HHMI invited 198 public and private baccalaureate and master's institutions to compete for the new awards. They were selected for their record of preparing students for graduate education and careers in research, teaching, or medicine. A panel of distinguished scientists and educators reviewed proposals and recommended the 42 awards approved by the Institute's Board of Trustees on May 4.
Amherst College $1.3 million Barnard College $1.5 million Bates College $1.2 million Bowdoin College $800,000 Bryn Mawr College $1.2 million California State Polytechnic University-Pomona $1.3 million Canisius College $800,000 Carleton College $800,000 City University of New York City College $1.3 million City University of New York Hunter College $800,000 City University of New York Queens College $800,000 College of Wooster $800,000 Davidson College $1.3 million Florida A & M University $1.2 million Grinnell College $1.4 million Harvey Mudd College $1.2 million Haverford College $1.6 million Hiram College $1.2 million Hope College $1.5 million Humboldt State University $1.3 million Kalamazoo College $1.1 million Kenyon College $1.5 million Knox College $1 million Mount Holyoke College $1.2 million Occidental College $1.5 million Point Loma Nazarene College $800,000 Pomona College $1.3 million Saint Olaf College $1.4 million Smith College $1.3 million Spelman College $1.3 million Swarthmore College $1.5 million Trinity College $800,000 Trinity University $1 million Union College $1.6 million University of Louisiana at Monroe $1 million University of Puerto Rico Cayey University College $500,000 University of Richmond $900,000 University of Texas-Pan American $1.3 million Wellesley College $1.2 million Wesleyan University $1.3 million Williams College $1.6 million Xavier University of Louisiana $1.3 million
Source: Eurekalert & othersLast reviewed: By John M. Grohol, Psy.D. on 21 Feb 2009
Published on PsychCentral.com. All rights reserved.
No matter how far you have gone on the wrong road, turn back.
-- Turkish proverb
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American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. Baseball The part of the field that is across from or opposite the side of home plate at which the batter stands, as right field for a left-handed batter.
“As with everything else, Munson was proud of his durability, proud of his better-than-you’d-expect speed, proud of his ability to do the small things, like hitting to the opposite field to advance the runner.”
“Connecting with an uppercut swing, the Angels All-Star crushed it, and the ball flew over the wall in right-center field for an opposite field grand slam.”
“With the count 1–1, he lined another slider foul into the stands along first base—a classic Munson swing, an attempt to drive the ball to the opposite field to increase Rivers’s chances of scoring.”
‘opposite field’ hasn't been added to any lists yet.
Looking for tweets for opposite field.
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Overview | Research | Grants/Awards | Teaching | Publications
Sharon Rounds MD is Professor of Medicine and of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at Brown Medical School and is Chief of Pulmonary/Critical Care at the Providence VA Medical Center. Dr. Rounds is a graduate of Wellesley College and of Tufts University School of Medicine. She trained in internal medicine at the University of California-San Francisco where she was a Chief Medical Resident at San Francisco General Hospital. Dr. Rounds did a Pulmonary/Critical Care fellowship at the University of Colorado where she was a research fellow in the Cardiovascular-Pulmonary Research Laboratory. She subsequently returned to New England where she was an Assistant, then Associate, Professor of Medicine in the Pulmonary Section at Boston University School of Medicine. Dr. Rounds was appointed Associate Professor of Medicine at Brown Medical School in 1987 and Professor of Medicine in 1994. She was Associate Dean of Medicine (Faculty Affairs) at Brown Medical School from 2001-2006.
Dr. Rounds has combined careers in clinical pulmonary/critical care medicine, teaching, and research on the pulmonary circulation. Basic science research interests include mechanisms of endothelial cell injury and effects of post-translational processing on small GTPase function. Her clinical research interests are pulmonary hypertension and factors impairing compliance with therapy of lung diseases. An author of over 100 publications, she has been continuously supported by research grants from the NIH and/or VA since 1981.
Dr. Rounds is Principal Investigator for the Short-Term Training Program to Increase Diversity in Health-Related Research Training Grant awarded to Brown by the National Heart Lung Blood Institute. This grant funds summer research experiences for under-represented undergraduate students in research laboratories at Brown Medical School.
Dr. Rounds is co-Director of the Brown CardioPulmonary Research Training Program, a $2.5 million program that will train young investigators in Cardiovascular and Pulmonary Molecular Pathobiology or Health Services/Outcomes research.
Dr. Rounds is a member of the Executive Committee for the T35 grant to fund summer research experiences for Brown medical students.
Dr. Rounds has served as a regular member of NIH study sectionsRespiratory and Applied Physiology and Lung Biology and Pathology--as well as on various panels and advisory groups. She has served as a member of the VA Career Development Review Committee and the VA Cardiopulmonary Medical Research Advisory Group. Long interested in career development, she has served on study sections for career development grants for the American Lung Association, the VA, the American Heart Association, the NHLBI, the Francis Family Foundation, the American Thoracic Society, and as a member of the NHLBI Instituional Training Grant Review Committee. Dr. Rounds currently serves as a member of 2 Data Safety Monitoring Boards for the NHLBI.
Dr. Rounds has been an active volunteer for the American Thoracic Society and was President in 2004-05. In her work for the ATS, she has been a leader in the Women's Mentoring Program and founded a program for Minority Trainee Travel Awards. She led planning for the ATS centennial celebration in 2004-05. Dr. Rounds has chaired the ATS Scientific Advisory Committee, and as such she was responsible for raising funds, administering, and reviewing applications for a research program totaling $4 Million in 2008-09.
In July 2006, Dr. Rounds became the Chief of the Medical Service at the Providence VA Medical Center.
Download Sharon Rounds's Curriculum Vitae in PDF Format
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Be a Blazer
Follow means check it out, take steps toward it, see where it leads.
Follow means face the fear, take a leap, stick a toe in the water.
Follow means tag along if you’re being led, trust the lead from life, tow the line.
Life may give you 9,014 winks. They mean nada if you fail to follow.
The trick to winks is taking action. Winks won’t work for wimps. Be brave. Be bold. Be a blazer…as in trails, not bad 1980s apparel.
Once you learn to how follow, you’ll learn how to lead your life not just toward, but actually down, its trailblazer-ed happiest path.
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BALASORE: The user trial of Prithvi-II missile in a real-time situation was successful on Saturday. The nuclear capable surface-to-surface missile travelled in the pre-coordinated projectile and achieved single digit accuracy. It had been on a Mobile Tatra transporter-erector Launcher (MTL) and launched from the launching complex - III around 11.05 am from the Integrated Test Range (ITR) at Chandipur.
V K Saraswat, director general of DRDO and scientific advisor to the defence minister termed the mission as 'excellent'. He said the test conducted as part of the operational exercise was a 'copy book' success as the missile met all objectives. A ship located near the target witnessed the final event.
"The missile reached the predefined target in the Bay of Bengal with a very high accuracy of better than 10 metres. All the radars, electro-optical systems located along the coast have tracked and monitored the missile throughout the flight path," he told.
The missile used for the test was picked up randomly from the production lot. Prithvi is nine metres long, one metre in diameter and weighs around 4,600 kg. It uses a single stage liquid fuel dual motor and has been designed to deliver advanced conventional warheads deep into enemy territory. The missile dives at the target at an 80 degree angle.
Defence sources said it has the capability to carry a payload of up to 1000 kg but if the same was reduced by half, the striking range of the sleek missile could be enhanced. It uses an inertial guidance system with reasonably good accuracy and the warhead uses a radar correlation terminal guidance system.
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Storage access and reliability are critical to the success of your data canter -- and the overall success of your business. Sure, servers perform work on business data and network hardware moves it from place to place, but all of that data ultimately "lives" in a storage infrastructure such as a SAN or NAS.
Failed servers or switch modules are easily exchanged, but lost data cannot be replaced and trouble with storage access can cripple application availability -- grinding the entire organization to a halt. The best way to avoid problems and keep storage running smoothly is to apply some best practices to SAN configuration and administration.
Storage configuration tips to live by
Without access to storage, applications simply won't work. So perhaps the most important issue with any storage system configuration is to identify and eliminate single points of failure between the application and disks. This may include redundant network interface cards (NICs) or host bus adapters (HBAs) at each server and storage system, redundant switch ports for iSCSI (Ethernet) or Fibre Channel storage traffic, and even redundant storage systems that are replicated or kept synchronized to each other. Faults at any point should then failover to an alternate network pathway and maintain storage availability.
As physical servers host more virtual machines, it's easy for storage and other user traffic to bottleneck at the network interface. Advance workload testing should evaluate the networking requirements at the server and analyze performance in terms of IOPS and bandwidth for the assortment of workloads planned. It may make sense to redistribute the virtual workloads and ease any traffic bottlenecks at critical servers.
It is also possible to mitigate network bottlenecks by leveraging a higher link speed such as moving to 8 Gbps Fibre Channel or 10 Gigabit Ethernet links. However, since redundant network connectivity is highly recommended for resilience, it can also benefit performance load balancing, allowing multiple pathways to share the total data traffic burden rather than leaving redundant pathways idle until a failover occurs. This is particularly important for virtualized servers that host 10, 20 or even more virtual machines and contend with substantial storage traffic demands.
Another means of easing traffic conflicts is to segregate storage and user traffic. This isn't an issue with traditional SANs because Fibre Channel and Ethernet exist as separate networks. The trick is to isolate traffic in an iSCSI or Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) SAN. Logical isolation is normally achieved by restricting storage traffic to a VPN, but that does nothing to ease bottlenecks. It's more effective to implement separate networks to carry user and storage traffic. This raises the cost of deployment, but pays dividends in security, manageability and performance.
Another factor that should be considered is LUN utilization with SAN configurations. It's generally poor practice to allow all of the virtual machines on a server to access the same LUN in a storage subsystem. Even when there is adequate Fibre Channel or LAN connectivity between the server and storage, multiple VMs simultaneously accessing the same disks can produce some serious performance problems on the storage side. Configure storage to maintain a small VM-to-LUN ratio -- a ratio of 1:1 where each VM is assigned to a separate LUN is probably the most flexible arrangement, and it offers versatile snapshot strategies. Don't forget to leverage tiered storage to balance performance and cost, assign mission-critical VMs to the fastest and best-performing disk storage, and relegate everyday VMs to more economical disk groups depending on your organization's needs.
Fibre channel storage configurations also involve zoning, which basically defines the visibility of each LUN to each server. It's a means of organizing storage and enhancing security, but it can also become a serious problem for virtualization when live migration moves virtual machines between physical host servers. For example, a VM on a certain server may access particular storage LUNs. If the VM migrates to another server (perhaps as the result of automated workload balancing) and the new server does not share the same zoning, the VM may stop functioning on the new server. This presents administrators with a storage management conundrum -- which often results in disabling automated migration features.
Key storage administration practices
Storage administration should always start with a comprehensive performance baseline. For example, establish a baseline when migrating to or implementing a SAN where the SAN is known to be "healthy." Use tools to monitor short-term and long-term storage performance against the baseline. Short-term anomalies in storage performance may be indicative of an unexpected change or fault, and can usually be investigated and corrected as they occur. Long-term storage performance changes are more indicative of growth such as more users, new applications and the varying demands of cyclical business cycles. Attention to long-term performance changes are often used as the basis for storage capacity planning.
Ideally, thin provisioning allows administrators to create LUNs that are logically larger than the physical storage capacity that is allocated to it. For example, an administrator can provision a 2 TB SAN into several 2 TB LUNs for various virtual machines or other non-virtualized applications. It's an important technology and it works well – as long as the LUN doesn't fill up. When this occurs, the application can crash and data loss can occur, so administrators need to manage thinly provisioned LUNs carefully and add more physical storage to each LUN as needed.
Finally, pay attention to factors that demand significant storage. In a virtual data center, one of the biggest culprits of storage waste is the uncontrolled proliferation of VM instances, or virtual machine sprawl. Each new VM requires space for its image along with space for data protection, such as snapshots and off-site data replication.
VM sprawl can quickly deplete available storage resources. Organizations can regulate VM sprawl by limiting the number of IT administrators with authorization to create new virtual machines, and implementing policies and procedures that justify each VM and track its lifecycle.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Stephen J. Bigelow, senior features writer, has more than 15 years of technical writing experience in the PC/technology industry. He holds a BSEE, CompTIA A+, Network+, Security+ and Server+ certifications and has written hundreds of articles and more than 15 feature books on computer troubleshooting. Contact him at email@example.com.
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The 141 R Steamtrain : The classic 2-8-2 "Mikado" steam locomotive was one of a series of 1340 engines, of which only twelve have been preserved today.
Only six in working order today of which the 141 R 840 in France.
Fan of this 141R locomotive, and especially the 840 with his "dress" black and his two thin yellow line (built at Baldwin Locomotive Works to Philadelphie), I wanted to build, but at the scale of the track gauge LEGO®.
First step: the diagram
And the result : a locomotive of 9 studs wide
Views from the front
Views from above
"the only exception to LEGO® bricks, wires of scoubidou and thin metal rods"
Comparison between the MOC and the real locomotive
I search to contact you for your excellent work ont this machine.
I'm a movie maker, and I'm doing a movie for my pleasure about this machine : the 141R840. I would know if you autorize me to insert a few photos of your working with your name in my movie (it's a report in fact).
Can you write me quickly or the most quicky as possible, because, I finish this work in a few weeks.
Your work is very exceptionnal, congratulations for that and I hope you write to me.
Superb effort! This is the best LEGO steam locomotive I have seen so far. I especially like what you have done with the cylinders and rods.
Considering that this was posted nearly two years ago, I wondering if you have made any changes in that time. Also, how is the Garrat coming along?
Your use of small parts and your techniques are truly inspirational. I am not even going to attempt to pick out any favorite parts on this train as every time I look I see something new. Thanks for sharing this with us!
Congratulations to a fantastic steam engine. The model is very impressive and you have really caught the characteristics of French steam locomotives. I particularly like the pistons and the driving mechanism. Your method of creating the round shape of the boiler is new to me - have you found a stable way to connect the tiles here. Thanks also for the extra pictures published on FreeLUG.
Um... good? There's so many little details that caught my eye while looking through your pics! It's obvious that you have some awesome building skills: I'll have to come back later to see your other stuff. Great work!
WOW the best steam engine I´ve seen here! So is it 8 or even 9 or 10 studs wide? My guess is 8 or/and 9 studs... The amount of detail is astounding, it almost doesn´t look like Lego anymore and I mean this in a VERY positive way. It looks really powerful, too - like a beast. Perfect setting/mise en scène together with the signal house! So this is my favorite Lego steam engine so far, and I think it´ll stay like that for a looooong time. Unless you make up an even more impressive one... Steffen
ok, i have to admit here that i'm not into stuff like this, but at the same time you can't ignore something like THIS!!! what a Lego skills you showed over your MOC here, its just very accurate and fully detailed just like the real thing... really we need here at MOCpages some high class work like this! this is how you make it PEOPLE!!! great work man! keep on this level >>> peace.. fofo
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For flexible packaging, it is imperative to blend, dispense and apply the adhesives that laminate films and foils to substrate materials with precision. As well as preventing waste, this helps avoid product loss, machine downtime and packaging failures. Thanks to equipment that ensures adhesive reservoirs remains filled, prevent viscosity-changing evaporation and monitor mix ratios and coat weights manufacturers now can achieve high control levels over lamination processes. Flexible packaging proponents highlight many potential benefits, ranging from the environmental to the aesthetic to accelerating filling. The material used to produce such packaging is typically made by plastic-to-plastic and plastic-to-foil lamination processes using largely, but not exclusively, acrylic or polyurethane adhesives. The adhesives can be solvent-based, solvent-free or water-based, which are usually available in either one-part or two-part formats, hot-melt or radiation-cured.
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Welcome to this week's Christian Carnival, y'all. The Christian Carnival is open to Christians of Protestant, Roman Catholic or Orthodox convictions and hosted by a different blog each week. This week it's the keyboard theologians' turn, so here we go. In a typical host's caveat, my hosting this carnival doesn't automatically mean I endorse everything everyone has to say: Part of the point of the carnival is to be exposed to different points of view, after all. Anyway, have a look around and have fun being informed and challenged.
Carson Weitnauer presents Is Religion Bad for Kids? at Reasons for God.
Richard Dawkins and others claim that religion is bad for kids, even comparing it to child abuse and locking children in dungeons. I look at the evidence and find that these claims are leaps of faith, not supported by the evidence.Janeva asks, Why Evil? over at In Front of God and Everybody.
Carl Ayers gives us Mongergism, Syngerism, and God's Image over at Theological Pursuit.
How does the concept of being created in God's Image affect discussion concerning monergism and synergism? Are we saved or justified on account of faith alone? Is there any sense in which we are saved or justified on account of works? In two posts I seek to lay groundwork to answer that both monergism and synergism have merit.I ask some sci-fi motivated questions about Prosthetic Bodies and Marriage here at Keyboard Theologians.
I recently re-watched the first season of the sci-fi anime series Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex, which raises some interesting issues.Devotional
Jennifer Vaughn takes A Look at Spiritual Awareness Month over at à la mode de les Muses.
Russ White gives us Genesis 3: The Consequences of Sin over at Thinking in Christ.
This final separation is separation from our Creator, God. What is the impact of separation from God? Spiritual death. To be spiritually dead is to be in rebellion against that which sustains you, to choose to live while choosing not to connect to the source of all life. It is a desire to be in the power of God while not being in the presence of God.Over at A Christian Worldview of Fiction, Rebecca LuElla Miller speaks of Pollen.
"Pollen" is an article making an analogy regarding suffering. In particular I looked at James 1:2-3 and 1 Peter 1:6-7.Other
Over at Adventures of a Girl Who Loves Jesus, Michelle is provoked...
Journey with me to the mission field.Ridge Burns considers The Ten Commandments over at Ridge's Blog.
I’ve been speaking all week on the Ten Commandments – twelve lectures on the Ten Commandments. Do you know the problem with the Ten Commandments? They’re convicting. They drive you to the person of Christ. They point you there because you realize there’s know what you can live to the standard of the Ten Commandments.Rob Sisson looks at God's Glorious Provision on InFaith's Mission Blog.
Our God is the God of glorious provision! He provides in the strangest ways, but He always provides.Dustin White at Belzian explores The Sacrifice of Jesus from a Non-Religious Perspective.
Throughout history, we have seen many great individuals sacrifice themselves in order to promote an idea or message they thought would be for the betterment of humankind. Many of these individuals did make great impacts on the world, which had long lasting impacts. Others simply have been lost to the sands of history. One such sacrifice was that of Jesus. Yet, it is also one largely misunderstood, or even denied by various individuals. With a closer, historical look, we can once again see what his sacrifice was, and whether it still effects the world today.Finance
Jocelin at One Money Design talks about How to Talk to Your Elderly Parents About Their Finances.
Talking to our elderly parents or grandparents about money is not necessarily easy. It is admitting to ourselves that they are not doing as well as they could and may need some assistance.Go to the Christian Carnival blogspot page to submit a post for next week's carnival.
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Directed by Philip Gröning. Zeitgeist (US, 2007).
Decent Films Ratings
|?Kids & Up|
Content advisory: Nothing problematic.
Buy at Amazon.com
Into Great Silence (DVD)
From a National Catholic Register review
By Steven D. Greydanus
Philip Gröning’s Into Great Silence is pure cinema at its purest and most exalted. Its achievement virtually defies commentary; a critic has only words with which to illuminate a film, but how can what is wrought in silence be illumined by words?
Filmmakers from Bresson to Tarkovsky to Malick to the Dardenne brothers have sought creative freedom in formal austerity, assiduously stripping away the superfluous and superficial to create space for the essential, the transcendent. Into Great Silence is both a work in a kindred spirit, and an immersion in a divesting of inessentials, not merely as a creative discipline or aesthetic philosophy, but as a total commitment, a way of life, a world unto itself.
The title refers to the discipline of silence observed by many contemplative religious orders, and in particular to the discipline of nighttime silence, which is stricter than during the day.
Into Great Silence is an odyssey, or perhaps a pilgrimage, into a world of such silence: the Grande Chartreuse monastery in the French Alps, head monastery of the Carthusian order, where Gröning received unprecedented permission to shoot in 2002. (A postscript to the film informs us that this permission came more than sixteen years after Gröning first approached the general prior with the proposal — an illuminating insight into the deliberateness of life in this world.)
Gröning stayed with the Carthusians for about half a year, observing in both senses of that word their rigorous way of life, from their discipline of silence to their grueling routine of prayer, work and sleep. Working alone, using only available light, he shot for approximately three hours a day, eventually amassing over 120 hours of material.
The formal rigor of the finished 164-minute film, mirroring the ascetic strictness of the monks themselves, offers none of the didactic or expositional context associated with typical documentaries. No voiceover narration expounds the history of the monastery buildings or the Carthusian order. No captions clarify or introduce us to the events or rituals we see.
No interview footage furnishes psychological insights into the dispositions or motivations of the monks (apart from a single brief homiletical reflection late in the film). In contrast to nearly wordless nature documentaries like Atlantis, Microcosmos and Winged Migration — or for that matter essentially the whole history of silent film — there is no nondiegetic music to provide emotional cues and mood support to the audience.
The result is more than a documentary of monastic life. It is a transcendent meditation on the human pursuit of meaning, on man as a religious and social creature; on the form and function of symbols and ritual and tradition; on the rhythm of work and prayer, day and night, winter and spring.
The silence is not total; the monks must speak, to celebrate the liturgy and other special functions, to accomplish certain necessary tasks, and on weekly outings from the monastery to socialize and discuss their life together. But if the silence is not absolute, it is still the point of reference; it gives meaning to the words, not the other way around. “The symbols are not to be questioned — we are,” says one monk during one of those weekly outings. The monks don’t question the silence, it questions them — and us, if we let it.
For all its asceticism, Into Great Silence is an exquisitely beautiful film. Precise compositions and splendid use of light at times overtly suggest the paintings of Vermeer, while stunning use of the natural beauty around the monastery may evoke Malick or Tarkovsky.
Like the monks’ lives, the film is cyclical and repetitive. Yet there is also movement, direction. Into Great Silence opens in bleak midwinter, amid austerity, frozenness, impenetrability. The silence is so profound you can hear the falling of snowflakes. The monks go about their business, but we see them as outsiders. There is no entering their world.
But there is. A pair of postulants are received as novices and take the tonsure. An eye-opening scene reveals an older monk enjoying a surreptitious bit of fun with some furry friends. There are small signs of life, of coming spring. An icebound succulent clings to life. An elderly monk walks into a snow-covered field and begins shoveling, seemingly at random; eventually we see he is clearing garden beds for planting.
At last there are dripping icicles, melting snow, running water. Spring comes to the mountains. When did we realize that the monks’ lives aren’t so impenetrable after all? Severity and rigor yields to familiarity, fullness, even joy. At last we see the secret of the cloistered life: In rigor and discipline there is freedom and fulfilment.
The film could end there. But it doesn’t. The seasons continue to turn. And yet it is impossible to return to the early sense of severity and impenetrability. The joy of the last hour is sublime. Such is the film’s achievement by this point that one sees the monastery and the very world with new eyes.
There is no short cut to this experience. Like a novice, one needs sheer time to acclimate to this world before one is ready to fully appreciate and embrace it, to experience it aright. Repetition, sameness, even a degree of monotony, is inseparable from what Into Great Silence sets out to illuminate, what it has to offer, for sameness itself is somehow transformed when we have embraced it long enough. I watched the last hour of the film in a different state of mind from the first hour and a half — and I needed every minute of that first hour and a half in order to get into the right state of mind to fully appreciate that last hour.
Ultimately, Into Great Silence reveals itself to be about nothing less than the presence of God. So many spiritually aware films — The Seventh Seal, Crimes and Misdemeanors — are about God’s absence or silence. Here is a film that dares to explore the possibility of finding God, of a God who is there for those who seek him with their whole hearts.
Into Great Silence makes no apology for the monks’ traditional Catholic and Christian milieu. One of the few long sustained speeches in the film is a chanted excerpt from a patristic treatise on the Holy Spirit — a catechesis in Trinitarian theology. The film is punctuated by contemplative intertitles citing Old and New Testament scriptures as well as traditional Christian sources. Two frequently repeated texts suggest the two sides of the monastic experience. On the one hand, self-denial and severity: “Unless a man gives up all he has, he cannot be my disciple.” On the other, the joy of self-abandonment to God: “O Lord, you have seduced me, and I was seduced.” In the film’s lone aside to the camera, a blind monk offers some simple but piercing observations on Christian happiness, abandonment to God’s providential care, and the tragedy of the loss of faith and meaning in the modern world.
Yet Gröning isn’t preaching to the choir; one need not be a Catholic, or even a Christian, to appreciate the beauty and depth the film finds in this way of life. Søren Kierkegaard, not a Catholic, vividly diagnosed the malady and the cure to which this film speaks:
The present state of the world and the whole of life is diseased. If I were a doctor and were asked for my advice, I would reply: Create silence! The Word of God cannot be heard in the noisy world of today. And even if it were blazoned forth with all the panoply of noise so that it could be heard in the midst of all the other noise, then it would no longer be the Word of God. Therefore create Silence.
This film creates silence. Not just absence of noise, but inner stillness.
Another popular quotation, attributed to St. Francis of Assisi, advises, “Preach the gospel at all time; when necessary, use words.” Into Great Silence is the antithesis of a preachy film, yet for receptive viewers of varying creeds — or none — Gröning’s achievement reveals the beauty and power of this most hidden, yet unexpectedly human, world.
Into Great Silence offers an implicit challenge, not so much to the trappings of modernity — modern technology crops up here and there in the monks’ world, occasionally to humorous effect — as to the spiritual disconnectedness and social fragmentation of a world in decay, to the postmodern incapacity for commitment and sacrifice, to the dissonance and haphazardness of life as we know it. It is not for us, perhaps, this life, yet it isn’t something irrelevant or unrelated either. The silence of the monks has something to say to us, if we have ears to hear.
Zeitgeist’s two-disc release of Into Great Silence includes nearly two hours of additional scenes, including a 53-minute Night Prayer video and the segment (promised by Gröning in the Decent Films interview) on the making of the Chartreuse liqueurs.
The segment on the liqueurs is fascinating, although it’s easy to see why Gröning left it out of the film. Early shots of a monk gathering dried plants from a wooden bin are very much in keeping with the rest of the film, but the distillery is a loud modern plant that would have been a jarring intrusion into the monastic experience of the film.
Apparently the discipline of silence doesn’t extend to the distillery. In a surprisingly chatty interview, a monk working there reveals that the secret ingredients of the liqueurs include more than 130 different plants before clamming up: “That’s it,” he says with sheepish reticence. “There is no need to seek to know more. We’re not supposed to tell.”
Other segments include an insightful video statement on the film by Cardinal Paul Poupard, president for the Pontifical Council for Culture, and extended footage of the interview with the blind old monk, emphasizing love of God and neighbor — and disparaging the environmental impact of nuclear power plant accidents (though the aged monk can’t quite remember what the power plants are called).
There is also the kind of background information on the history and spirituality of the Carthusian order that was deliberately left out of the original film.
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Everyone knows that the programmers greatest excuse for slacking off is compile time. Next time your waiting for your software to build burn a few minutes playing the Delphi Cannon Demo! It’s a simple VCL/OpenGL app I wrote in a few short afternoons.
By hosting an OpenGL canvas on top of a standard TPanel I was able to easily integrate a simple windows app with basic OpenGL rendering. This allowed me to create the simple game you see here, and encapsulate it in the easy to design UI of VCL. It works for more than just games too. A OpenGL enables TPanel is great for rendering complex graphs and data processed by your Delphi application!
So enjoy playing the demo, and think about what other things could be done with a faster rendering system attached to VCL controls.
Note, since this demo uses OpenGL you will need compatable video card drivers. These can be obtained by your video card manufacturer in MOST cases. Cirtain cards may need to search for OpenGL compatable drivers, as the manufacturers drivers are not always compliant. Also, if anyone has any questions reguarding the TPanel hosting OpenGL, or about the game itself, feel free to reply to this post.Posted by David Lock on November 20th, 2007 under Uncategorized | 18 Comments »
I’ve always been a little shady on the reason the StringBuilder class was created in dotnet. Obviously it has some advanced string formatting functionality which allow you to create complex composite strings easily, but what else does it provide. The answer to that question came to me when I was debugging our internal translation application written in C#.
We were receiving out of memory exceptions on and off from the app. After analyzing the code by hand for several hours I was still lacking an answer as to why this program swelled to 3 gigs of memory usage. It did store a massive size of string data in string classes, but since the database containing the strings was only 90 megs, it made no sense that string data would be the reason the program was eating memory.
However I had not taken one important thing into account, .Net strings are immutable, and in several places we we’re playing fun games with the strings values to properly format them to the output, calling string functions such as SubString and Trim liberaly. Turns out 2.7 gigs of memory we’re being used by all the intermediate string values as the string mutated to its final output.
The solution here was to use the StringBuilder class. After replacement memeory usage dropped down to 300 megs for the entire program, simply because we were not creating a bunch of invariant strings as we mutated our data.
Moral of the story, when handling string data that you expect to be changing alot in place, or strings that are quite hefty in size, StringBuilder is hands down a better solution, especially if memory use is a prime concern.Posted by David Lock on July 20th, 2007 under Uncategorized | 10 Comments »
So with the release of the roadmaps I can finally divulge to you what’s been cooking in secret for the upcoming release of Tiburon. For those of you who haven’t read the roapmap yet, get ready for a Unicode Delphi. Not only VCL, but also full Unicode RTL support as well. The plan is to upgrade the RTL and VCL to allow existing a new Delphi applications to process Unicode string data with all the existing logic. So here we go, a fully Unicode Win32 Delphi solution for Tiburon.Posted by David Lock on June 12th, 2007 under Uncategorized | 11 Comments »
I expected there to be alot of feedback, but man you guys really surprised me. I didn’t think anyone really read these things :). The good news is alot of you are putting the same two or three big ticket items as your number one requests. The bad news of course being that theres so much other totally valid requests in there that it will take me years to get to it all. Reguardless, I have your feedback now and fully intend to push as hard as I can on product management to make your requests part of the VCL in the future. In case any of you are wondering, heres what came up the most:
Unicode for Win32 - Yeah this is pretty much a no brainer. I myself just had a fun bout with upgrading our internal translation system (for speed, accuracy, and sym ship), and I can tell you not having unicode in Win32 makes things a bit of a pain. I imagine it will be easy convincing the crew that this one needs to be done asap.
ThreadSafe VCL - With the influx of multicore technology into the market I can see the need for VCL to be threadsafe. We will definatly want to take advantage of the shifting architecture of processing power.
Remove Application Main Form - Wow would I love to do that. Unfortunatly I think I’m the only one who does. Being the junior VCL guy means I can make suggestions, but if I went tearing through the codebase to make a major change like that I might be in for it. I will continue to press the team for the removal of this, well, hack.
Thats the major stuff anyway. There were some requests for better databinding, as well as new controls like the ribbon controls. These things are important too, but theres a limit to the amount of work Seppy and myself can get up to inbetween releases. Anyway, thanks for the feedback. We will do as much as we can to keep VCL meaningful and useful in the future.
Well the easy days of working just on internal tooling and processes are over. I’ve been assigned my first real area which you guys actually touch. Luckily enough I’ll have help on this one. I’m to assist Seppy Bloom with VCL, an assignment that I’m diving into with some enthusiasm. It’s going to be treat working on such a useful architecture (we’ll see if thats still my opinion in a few months). With more people working on VCL we can hopefully put in alot of extra features and bug fixing into future releases of the source for you guys. There is alot of work to be done, features to be added, and ideas to be tested and I’m always looking for good feedback. If anyone has ideas for features, lists of bugs, or any other sort of work you’d like to see implemented in future VCL releases, feel free to respond to this post or email me at firstname.lastname@example.org to discuss them. I’d be happy to get any feedback you can send me!Posted by David Lock on May 30th, 2007 under Uncategorized | 111 Comments »
Hey Everyone, I finally got around to posting the source to Turboman on code central. It includes quite a bit of updates from the last binaries I sent out, including as advertised the David I familiar which helps you in battle. Binaries are included as well as resources so if you just want to play the latest game then you should download this as well. Heres the link to CC:
Enjoy fiddling with my code. Go Turboman Go!Posted by David Lock on September 13th, 2006 under Uncategorized | 2 Comments »
In response to screen shot requests I’ve been receiving, heres one of a newly added feature. Now David I’s disembodied head flys a propeller cap about and helps TurboMan by assaulting enemies!
Go David I go!
Uncategorized | 4 Comments »
In a mad rush to be part of the Turbo excitement, I went ahead and coded our very own TurboMan videogame! Go ahead and download it at http://cc.borland.com/Download.aspx?id=24083.
Be advised, it is a work in progress. The current version allows for basic movement and combat, as well as leveling up TurboMan. Hopefully if time permits I can add all sorts of features to TurboMan the Video Game for all of you.
As I move along with development I hope to post all the source, as well as peices of the source which I believe make good game design demos as tutorials to my blog.
Alright everyone, its time to TurboMan!Posted by David Lock on August 23rd, 2006 under Uncategorized | 8 Comments »
Sorry for the complete and utter lack of post, content, and progress on anything related to Delphi, games, or any combination of the two. Time just gets short when they want you to get real work done in the office (the nerve of those people ). However being hard at work on the next IDE is as good for you guys as being hard at work on gaming stuff, probably better. So fear not! My time is still well devoted to making your lives easier.
Due to these restrictions on time I’ve decided to shift gears a bit. Im going to scale back the scope of the game idea, since I have made almost zero game specific program anyway. Not quite sure what direction I’m going to take it. Think “Simpler”. The plan being to still demo some of the game programming techniques I have picked up and/or developed over the years, while reducing the complexity of the game specific code. Short version: same amount of example information wrapped up in a smaller scope game.
When class gets out and I graduate in June I should have some more time to fiddle with non-work related stuff. Expect more demos material then. Till then, cheers.Posted by David Lock on May 5th, 2006 under Uncategorized | 1 Comment »
I’ve completed another simple component which will be used in the development of my SDL.Net game. While loading and rendering textures is not exactly a complex task, especially with the advantages that .Net provides for the loading of image data, it is none-the-less an important aspect to any application that uses 3d rendering.
Heres a screenshot of the latest running.
Get the Source code : http://cc.borland.com/item.aspx?id=23959
The new file is TextureMap.pas, and it includes the following things. The singleton class TextureResource, which loads and manages textures in an instance of any Delphi.Net application. The function DrawTexturedQuad which will draw a quad on the screen with the given texture, and also draw it either masked or unmasked.
A quick overview of how the TextureResource class works. It has only two public functions: get() which retreives the singleton instance, and Texture(String) which retreives the OpenGl ID of the texture. TextureResource stored loaded textures into a hashtable to prevent loading any texture file twice. The first time Texture is called on an unloaded image the texture is loaded and cached. Texture will also generate a masked textured for any file by prepending the filename with MASK.
Take a look into the TextureMap.pas file if your interested. The specifics of loading the image data and generating the textures are fairly well explained in comments in the code.
Also youll notice that in the test code I have a file called GUICore.pas. This is some beta code for doing basic in game gui stuff like button, panels, and windows. Feel free to check out that code too, but its pretty rough and uncommented at this point.
I’ve got some more work to do on the basic GUI stuff, then perhaps Ill be able to get started on some actual game logic work.Posted by David Lock on March 29th, 2006 under Uncategorized | 2 Comments »
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Creativity is one of the central themes of modern business thinking, and those companies that can consistently tap into a creative mother lode — think Job’s Apple, or Branson’s Virgin — become world-beaters while their competitors shrink.
One theory is that the geniuses at the top of these creative dynasties — Steve Jobs, for example — are the wellspring of this creativity. But of course, there are large teams within companies like Apple, and very few of the employees worked directly with Jobs. So, to a great extent creativity in business has to be a distributed characteristic: a sort of emergent property.
Being a student of social networks, I have long suspected that creativity in groups is a function of a balance in the strength of social connections, and I discovered that Brian Uzzi, a sociologist at Northwestern, has dedicated a great deal of time looking into the world of Broadway musicals, using that as a template of creativity in general:
Jonah Lehrer, Brainstorming Doesn’t Really Work via The New Yorker
Uzzi wanted to understand how the relationships of these team members affected the product. Was it better to have a group composed of close friends who had worked together before? Or did strangers make better theatre? He undertook a study of every musical produced on Broadway between 1945 and 1989. To get a full list of collaborators, he sometimes had to track down dusty old Playbills in theatre basements. He spent years analyzing the teams behind four hundred and seventy-four productions, and charted the relationships of thousands of artists, from Cole Porter to Andrew Lloyd Webber.
Uzzi found that the people who worked on Broadway were part of a social network with lots of interconnections: it didn’t take many links to get from the librettist of “Guys and Dolls” to the choreographer of “Cats.” Uzzi devised a way to quantify the density of these connections, a figure he called Q. If musicals were being developed by teams of artists that had worked together several times before—a common practice, because Broadway producers see “incumbent teams” as less risky—those musicals would have an extremely high Q. A musical created by a team of strangers would have a low Q.
Uzzi then tallied his Q readings with information about how successful the productions had been. “Frankly, I was surprised by how big the effect was,” Uzzi told me. “I expected Q to matter, but I had no idea it would matter this much.” According to the data, the relationships among collaborators emerged as a reliable predictor of Broadway success. When the Q was low—less than 1.7 on Uzzi’s five-point scale—the musicals were likely to fail. Because the artists didn’t know one another, they struggled to work together and exchange ideas. “This wasn’t so surprising,” Uzzi says. “It takes time to develop a successful collaboration.” But, when the Q was too high (above 3.2), the work also suffered. The artists all thought in similar ways, which crushed innovation. According to Uzzi, this is what happened on Broadway during the nineteen-twenties, which he made the focus of a separate study. The decade is remembered for its glittering array of talent—Cole Porter, Richard Rodgers, Lorenz Hart, Oscar Hammerstein II, and so on—but Uzzi’s data reveals that ninety per cent of musicals produced during the decade were flops, far above the historical norm. “Broadway had some of the biggest names ever,” Uzzi explains. “But the shows were too full of repeat relationships, and that stifled creativity.”
Uzzi’s work is based on small world theory, originally formulated by Stanley Milgram:
Fred Jones of Peoria, sitting in a sidewalk cafe in Tunis, and needing a light for his cigarette, asks the man at the next table for a match. They fall into conversation; the stranger is an Englishman who, it turns out, spent several months in Detroit studying the operation of an interchangeable-bottle cap-factory. “I know it’s a foolish question,” says Jones, “but did you ever by any chance run into a fellow named Ben Arkadian? He’s an old friend of mine, manages a chain of supermarkets in Detroit. . .”“Arkadian, Arkadian,” the Englishman mutters. “Why, upon my soul, I believe I do! Small chap, very energetic, raised merry hell with the factory over a shipment of defective bottle caps.” “No kidding!” Jones exclaims in amazement. “Good lord, it’s a small world, isn’t it?” (Milgram 1967, p. 61)
We are aware of Milgram’s experiment that led to the notion of ‘six degrees of separation’ to get a letter from a random citizen of Omaha, Nebraska to a stockbroker in Boston, passed along from connection to connection, proving that it is a small world.
Small world networks have two important characteristics: short global separation (six degrees to anyone in the world) and high local clustering (where all the established players on Broadway know each other). And in situations like Broadway plays, all the players form a fully linked clique: they are clustered together for the duration of the play. And of course, Boradway is made up of a large number of these cliques at any time, with some degree of cross-over from one clique to another.
Here ‘s the result of a social scene like Broadway: the more small worldly a scene is, the more links will exists across cliques, so creative ideas will spread rapidly and broadly. (Have you ever noticed how Hollywood will produce two or even three similar movies in the same year?) Secondly, over time, the players increase their connections, and strengthen relationships, leading to high cohesion.
But Uzzi’s empirical examination of Broadway success shows that creativity is linked to a happy middle ground: a high degree of cohesion between many of the players is an advantage, until it grows too large, and then its not. There has to be a tension, a frisson, or outright disagreement — some working through of different perspectives and backgrounds — between those who have been in the clique for a long time, and one or more outsiders. Let’s call this the Sondheim Factor.
The extrapolation to the world of business is direct. Many companies are too chummy, too inbred, and lack the diversity of viewpoints that could lead to real creativity. Companies like Apple have a constant churn, with established developers and business types leaving the company to start new things, and new bright minds showing up with dreams of building the next great thing. Getting the rate of turnover right is one consideration, but at the level of team formation it is more crucial. Injecting random (but high quality) DNA into working teams might be the critical factor to creativity in business, rather than procedural approaches, or simply trying to hire creative people. It may be that the most creative companies are those that look for that sort of tension in teams, that less-than-perfectly aligned not-quite-a-clique dynamic, where creativity arises.
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North Korea approves US envoy’s visit to factory park
SEOUL (Reuters) – North Korea has approved a visit by the
U.S. envoy for human rights in the communist state to an
investment park that has sparked tensions between Seoul and
Washington, a South Korean official said on Tuesday.
The envoy, Jay Lefkowitz, could visit the Kaesong
Industrial Park as early as next month.
Run by an affiliate of the South Korea’s Hyundai group, the
park is located a few hundred meters north of the Demilitarized
Zone that divides the peninsula and is populated by South
Korean companies looking to use the North’s cheap labor.
Lefkowitz has said there could be worker exploitation at
the park, but South Korea has criticized him as being “biased
and ill-informed,” and suggested he visits.
North Korea has sent a message to the South Korean
government accepting the Lefkowitz visit, the South Korean
official said. A date for the trip has not been decided but
U.S. officials indicated it could take place next month.
Seoul sees the project as a model for the capitalist and
communist economies when the two Koreas unite.
U.S. Ambassador to South Korea, Alexander Vershbow, said on
Tuesday the South Korean firms at the park should pay their
North Korean workers directly instead of paying their wages to
North Korean officials, who then are charged with dispensing
This would give the workers a lesson in market economics,
Vershbow said in an Internet discussion with South Koreans.
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Our character education theme for this year is "Cardinal Character". Character
is importatnt. It's who we are when no one is looking. Having good caracter
results in lower discipline referrals, happier and more cooperative students
and grades go up! Unfortunately our children are sadly lacking in many good
role models among the media and sports fields. That is why it is so critical
that we as adults model, speak and practice good character attibutes with our
children. Character is just not important for school, but we need a culture of
character in our community. We hope the business community will support our
endeavor by posting our monthly character words in their place of business or
in their windows. These are the main character traits that we are focusing on
Sept. - Respect
Oct. - Responsibility
Nov. - Compassion
Dec. - Caring
Jan. - Self-Control
Mar. - Courage
Apr. - Cooperation
May - Perseverance
Some things we will be doing to support our "Cardinal Character " program this
year are to get "Showing Cardinal Character" tickets from the teacher when the
students are observed or caught showing good character. The Carinal tickets
will be collect and at the our assemblies we will have a drawing and read how
the students demonstrated good character.
We will be having monthly assemblies where we will interduce the months
character trait through a film clip and a character song and dance. Each
classroom teacher will nominate one student a month who has excelled in
demonstrating the trait of the month. They will be awarded and get a chance at
the assembly to tell how they demonstarted that character trait. Every
morning, we will jump start our day with a "thought for the day" that will be
given over the intercom to start the day on a postive note. Below is our
Lincoln Cardianl cheer.
Lincoln Cardinal Cheer
I'm a Lincoln Cardinal
And I'm proud to say,
I will do my best today.
I'll listen, I'll work,
I'll be fight free.
I'll be the best that I can be!
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Modelling and measuring the wider benefits of learning: a synthesis
(2001) Tom Schuller, John Bynner, Andy Green, Louisa Blackwell, Cathie Hammond, John Preston and Martin Gough
ISBN: 085473 634 4
This review lays the foundations for further analysis of the wider benefits of learning by bringing together diverse strands, some theoretical, some empirical. Part A describes the origins and the scope of the work of the Centre, both generally and with respect to different quantitative and qualitative approaches to modelling and measuring. Part B provides a selective overview of each of five overlapping social domains - and models employed to analyse them - in the context of their relations to learning. The domains are Health, Ageing, Families, Crime and Citizenship. Part C presents an outline of possible directions for further research, picking up on selected methodological issues raised and their implications.
This monograph can be purchased from the Institute of Education bookshop (www.johnsmith.co.uk/ioe).
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you’ve aped Akshay’s physique, but not his level of fitness. Many young people work out or starve themselves so that they can flaunt a waistline as tiny as Anushka Sharma’s or build muscles like John Abraham’s. They survive on one meal a day and take supplements so that they can sculpt their bodies like their favourite star. Over the next year, Bollywood will continue to be the benchmark for what a good body looks like (for men and women). But to know what a good body feels like, you’ll have to do much more.
Mickey Mehta: India’s leading holistic health guru has trained beauty pageant hopefuls, top industrialists, Bollywood stars and big names in fashion. His idea of fitness blends diet, exercise, yoga and Zen philosophies
Celebrities as fitness role models may not be the greatest idea. The current batch of actors like Ranveer Singh, Ranbir Kapoor, Deepika Padukone and Priyanka Chopra have fabulous bodies. But they all look like they’ve been manufactured on assembly lines and I truly question their overall fitness. Are they really fit? Are they content, relaxed, self-secure, self aware and emotionally sound? These are also parameters of holistic wellbeing.
I understand that actors work 20 hours a day and anybody would need some kind of stimulant to survive the media glare 24x7, but taking to dope is not the answer. I know for a fact that actors like Akshay Kumar and Aamir Khan spend hours perfecting their bodies through mind and body training. I’ve trained Akshay and I know that he is one of the most disciplined people I have ever met. His dedication towards overall fitness is what the youth must try and emulate.
What you’ll see on screen over the next year is not all there is to fitness. The impetus should move from the physical self to the entire being. Everyone should aim for soulful wellness, not just physical fitness. They should be at peace with themselves and their self image should be independent of what others think. This is only possible if one loves themselves first because only that will make you disciplined enough to keep at it. You should not worry about fitting into a pair of jeans, but work hard towards developing your overall personality – inwards and outwards.
One celeb trend that is worth following is to focus on the organic and natural. Eat fresh foods like herbs, roots, fruits, vegetables, cow’s milk and ghee, and ditch preserved, packaged versions of the same. Focus on breathing right – inhaling fresh air and exhaling all the negativity out. Even your workout should be organic. Practise yoga and meditation. It will help you get rid of modern-day anxieties. You will feel lighter and better. Don’t just pump weights, fill your body with what is completely natural.
And regardless of what you see the heroes doing on screen and on the red carpet, stop smoking and minimise your alcohol consumption. I see so many film stars drinking Red Bull, aerated drinks and puffing on cigarettes. It’s the very opposite of all the fitness advice they try to give their fans. And stop counting calories; count the wellness within and you will be much happier. Sizes are getting smaller by the day. People are so calorie conscious that they are afraid of eating an extra morsel of anything. That’s making them unhappy. I don’t see the radiance of youth anymore. Eat well, eat right and your body will reward you. And lastly, exercise. Do it every day. Make it a habit, a need that must be fulfilled. Get out of the gym and have fun with your body. Jump, run, stretch, skip, swim, crawl, hang, roll. Do everything you did as a kid and you will see positive effects in weeks. Let 2013 be the year of overall health, not just the hollow Bollywood version of fitness.
Rules of eating in 2013
Never eat by the clock: Your food intake should not be dependent on your office’s lunch hour. Instead eat when you’re hungry.
Portion control: Eat smaller meals but don’t define them by a number. If someone tells you that you have to eat eight small meals, it’s wrong. Eat smaller meals as many times as you’re hungry.
Avoid packaged foods: You already know this – packaged food is high in salt content and preservatives, which are harmful for your body.
From HT Brunch, December 30
Follow us on twitter.com/HTBrunch
Connect with us on facebook.com/hindustantimesbrunch
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|Mass Effect 3|
Lawson is a powerful businessman who was obsessed with securing a way to make his mark on history - namely, by creating a "genetic dynasty". Rather than have a normal family, Henry took his own DNA and doubled his X chromosome to create a daughter, Miranda, whom he ensured would have "desirable traits." Miranda was not the first offspring engineered in such a way, but she was the first one Henry kept. Henry spoiled Miranda growing up, giving her everything she wanted, but there was always a hook, an angle designed to fit his long term plan for her. Eventually, Henry grew dissatisfied with Miranda and used her DNA to create a more ideal heiress, Oriana. Miranda rebelled, taking Oriana and fleeing after a violent shootout with Henry's guards. When Miranda went to Cerberus for protection, Henry withdrew his support for the organization.
Mass Effect 2 Edit
- See also: Miranda: The Prodigal
Though Henry was smart enough to not attempt to come after Miranda while she was under the Illusive Man's protection, he continued to search for Oriana. In 2185, he contacts a childhood acquaintance of Miranda, Niket, and entrusts him to find Oriana. Niket finds Oriana's adoptive family on Illium, and hires Eclipse to capture Oriana. However, this plan is foiled by Commander Shepard and Miranda, and Niket is killed, either by Miranda or Captain Enyala.
Mass Effect 3 Edit
Following Miranda's defection from Cerberus (or death on the Collector Base), Henry renews his support for Cerberus and sets up a base on Horizon, dubbed Sanctuary, capturing hapless refugees and experimenting on them in order to study husks and the effects of Reaper indoctrination to find a way to control them. Henry believes that his work would immortalize himself as the "savior" of humanity. Though he is able to copy the signal that could control the husks, he believes that applying similar techniques on the Reapers themselves will be much more difficult.
Besides performing work for Cerberus, he kidnaps Oriana. However, the Reapers discover his work, due to Henry underestimating the strength of the Reaper signal, and assault Sanctuary. At the same time, Commander Shepard discovers the true face of Sanctuary while tracking Kai Leng. The Illusive Man sends Kai Leng to Sanctuary to retrieve Henry's research data, which Leng does but leaves Henry to die. Abandoned by Cerberus and running out of options, Henry holes up deep in his laboratories and holds Oriana as a human shield, trying to bargain his way out.
When Shepard confronts him, Henry mentions that Oriana tried to shoot him, which he attributes to her elder sister's "poisonous influence". Shepard can either shoot Henry or talk him down, and gain another opportunity to kill him after Oriana has been released. However, if Miranda is still alive, she will kill him. If Shepard fails to talk him down, and does not shoot him, Miranda will still kill him, but will be shot and die shortly after.
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Quebec City, located in the south-east Canada, it is the capital of Quebec, where is the UNESCO’s World Heritage fortification sites of Quebec situated, telling the legend of over three centuries of Québec's military past that was listed as the Historic District of Old Quebec in 1985. It is also one of the oldest cities in North America (founded in ... More>1608). Internationally famed for its Winter Carnival and the Chateau Frontenac, Quebec City absolutely features charm of European mood. The historical sites to visit are highlighted by the Fortifications of Quebec National Historic Site, La Citadelle, Fairmont Le Chateau Frontenac, and Notre-Dame de Quebec Basilica Cathedral. This fortified city is admirable for all visitors spelled by the old European embrace.
Contact Us 24/7 Fill out an online request form or call our Asia Travel Specialists
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News Database Security
Six Healthcare Data Breaches That Might Make Security Pros Sick
Most of the healthcare industry's biggest compromises could have been avoided, experts say
4. Silicon Valley Eyecare Optometry and Contact Lenses: More than 40,000 patients were informed of a breach that exposed their sensitive health and identifiable information after Silicon Valley Eyecare was hit by burglars. The thieves stole the server containing the firm's patient database, which included health information and personally identifiable information, such as dates of birth and Social Security Numbers. The burglars broke in through a window, nabbing the server and a plasma TV; they were in and out within 50 seconds, according to the eye-care center, which recorded the theft on video.
Lessons Learned: Though the server did sit inside a locked room, it was likely visible from the window. The database that sat within the server was password protected, but unencrypted. To prevent these types of breaches from occurring, database stewards need to plan better layers of both physical and logical security. This means storing servers in secure, concealed locations and encrypting data in the machines.
More Security Insights
White PapersMore >>
5. Affinity Health Plan: This spring, Affinity informed hundreds of thousands of customers that it potentially exposed their personal information through the unlikeliest of devices: the office copier. The health insurance company apparently returned a copying machine to its leasing company without checking the information contained on its hard drive after extended use. All in all, the copier compromised 409,000 records.
Lessons Learned: With so many devices in the office connecting to the database and processing sensitive information, organizations must remain vigilant about how data is used and stored -- no matter what the electronic medium. Multipurpose copy machines are a particularly tricky prospect because they can copy and store both digital and paper format files, making it necessary for organizations to develop policies about data retention and to train employees to stick to those mandates.
6. AvMed Health Plans: This year has not been good for AvMed and security. In February, it went public with breach details from a late 2009 stolen laptop incident that it initially said exposed more than 200,000 records. By June, it had upped those figures to 1.2 million records. AvMed claimed in its press releases that the risk of fraudulent use of these records was low, but did not say whether the data was encrypted.
Lessons Learned: Laptops needn't be out in the field to be juicy targets for theft -- they just need to contain enough valuable records to entice thieves. In this case, the two laptops were stolen directly from AvMed's offices. A very large number of healthcare's data breach woes can be pinned to lost and stolen laptops.
Have a comment on this story? Please click "Discuss" below. If you'd like to contact Dark Reading's editors directly, send us a message.
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For many, the name ‘Calvados’ evokes one of the world’s finest spirits, an apple brandy that is enjoyed by people all over the globe but is brewed only in this region. The French department of Calvados, situated in Normandy’s Basse-Normandie region, in fact may take its name either from the Salvador, a ship in the fleet of the Spanish Armada that was sunk in 1558 near Arromaches-les-Bains, or from the calva dorsa (‘bare backs’) grouping of rocks on the coast of English Channel.The region has a long and rich background, and has played an important role in French history, making it a popular destination for those interested in the country’s past. Its most famous son, William the Conqueror, was born in Falaise, and parts of the town’s 12th-century cathedral remain, though it was heavily restored after damage during WWII. William built the two abbeys at Caen, Abbaye aux Hommes and Abbaye aux Dames, and parts of theses, as well as the magnificent medieval castle ramparts, still remain. The region still holds the original Bayeux tapestry, a beautiful embroidered tableau of almost 70 metres in length which depicts scenes of medieval life and evocative images of William’s victory in the Battle of Hastings. Honfleur, one of France’s most picturesque ports, is a sleepy town outside of the busy tourist season. Its colourful harbor, once the mooring site for smugglers’ boats, teems with yachts, and the town itself has rich cultural offerings in the shape of many galleries and museums. Further along the coast stands Deauville, the destination of choice for Parisian gentility escaping the city. Its miles of golden sandy beaches, classy cafes and restaurants, and luxurious casinos give it a unique feel. Off the beaten track is Trouville, a less wealthy town with perhaps greater charm because of its winding streets and family-owned restaurants. No visit would be complete without sampling the traditional local fare. As far back as the 8th century, Charlamagne refers to apple orchards and brewing in this region. Each litre of distilled calvados apple brandy is made from 10 litres of cider produced by the region’s endless miles of orchards. It is aged in French Oak barrels, growing smoother over time, then blended and bottled.
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Australia and Olympic Archery
Australia has been represented in archery at every Olympics since its return in Munich 1972. South Australia’s Simon Fairweather won the gold medal in the individual men’s event at Sydney 2000 nine years after being world champion. In Athens four years later Tim Cuddihy, still a schoolboy, finished third in the same event.
For many years, it was thought that Donald MacKintosh had won Australia’s first archery medal, a gold, in the game shooting event in Paris in 1900. It took almost 90 years for it to be confirmed that the game shooting was in fact a shooting not archery event.
Taylor Worth and Elisa Barnard competed in the men’s and women’s individual events at the 2012 London Olympic Games at the iconic Lord’s cricket ground. Having beaten world number one Brady Allison of the USA to make the round of 16, Worth lost in a sudden death shoot off and just missed out on the quarter finals. Barnard was knocked out in her opening match after the ranking round.
Australia Archery first appeared in the Olympic Games in 1900, was contested again in 1904, 1908 and 1920. After an absence of 52 years, archery returned to the Olympic program in Munich 1972 and events for three-person teams were added in Seoul 1988. Recurve events are the only style contested at the Olympic Games.
Archers shoot their arrows from a distance of 70m, aiming at targets 122cm in diameter, marked with 10 concentric rings.
Points are scored by hitting a target consisting of five coloured rings. The closer the arrow lands to the centre of the target, the higher the score achieved.
The centre ring, or bullseye, measures 12.2 centimetres in diameter, and counts 10 points. The outer ring counts one, and the rings in between increase by one point in value as they near the centre.
Archers, or teams, compete in head-to-head matches in single elimination after being ranked from one to 64, following a 72-arrow qualification round. Matches are 18 arrows at and from the quarter-finals on are 12 arrows. The semi-finals winners decide the gold and silver medals in the final, and the semi-finals losers shoot for the bronze.
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In China, the "little emperors" may have no clothes, at least when it comes to economic risk-taking and being conscientious workers.
That's the finding of a new study that looks at the effects of China's one-child policy on the current generation of young adults in the world's second-largest economy.
China enacted strict rules mandating that families in urban areas be limited to just one child in 1979 in an effort to curb a rapidly rising population. Since then China's economy has taken off, while its population growth has slowed, and wages and living standards have soared.
But China's young people may be in search of security and office jobs now and less likely to become a new generation of stockbrokers, business-starters or high risk managers.
In a paper published in the latest issue of Science, a team of researchers from Australia studied a group of 421 individuals born both right before and right after the implementation of China's one-child policy. They tested them with a series of games involving trading money with each other that measured how trusting they were and how willing they were to go after "winning" transactions.
One of the authors, Professor Lisa Cameron of Monash University, said that the groups of children born after the policy were considerably more risk-averse, less trusting and trustworthy, pessimistic and less competitive than children born before the policy.
The study concluded that "the causal impact of the One Child Policy is to reduce the probability of choosing a risky occupation (defined to include private firm managers, stockbrokers, people who are self-employed or freelancing) by 22.7 percent."
"These were quite large differences," Cameron said from Melbourne, Australia. "It was eye-opening how much more nervous and less trusting they were and implies that these behaviors could have wide-ranging economic and social implications."
The study found that 27% of the children born before 1979 were from single-child families, while 82% of the individuals born by 1983 studied were only children. The subjects were all from Beijing and were better educated than the average citizen, but the authors believe that the results should be similar in other Chinese cities and populations.
And rather than getting better, the study found that as a new generation of children of only children grows up, the effects they found are likely to "magnify" as fewer Chinese grow up with extended families.
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Tomorrow night, at Radio City Music Hall, the NFL will hold it's anuual draft. As we so often like to do, we are providing you with some random facts about the draft for you to share with your friends and family.
The first NFL Draft was held on February 8, 1936 at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Philadelphia. The Eagles had the first pick and selected halfback Jay Berwanger out of the University of Chicago. The Eagles traded Berwanger's rights to the Bears, but since professional football wasn't a very lucrative career at the time, Berwanger opted for a job in a Chicago rubber factory and never played professional football. Side note, Berwanger was the first player to be awarded the Heisman Trophy.
Positions of all the # 1 draft picks since 1936 -
Quarterbacks - 30
Running Backs - 23
Defensive Linemen - 12
Offensive Linemen - 6
Wide Receivers - 6
Linebackers - 3
Defensive Backs - 1 (Gary Glick, selected by Pittsburgh in 1956).
Cities with the highest number of # 1 draft picks -
Chicago - 6 (Cardinals and Bears)
King Hill, Bob Fenimore, Charley Trippi, Tom Harmon, George Cafego, Ki Aldrich
Houston - 5 (Oilers and Texans)
Mario Williams, David Carr, Earl Campbell, John Matuszak, Lawrence Elkins
Buffalo - 5
Bruce Smith, Tom Cousineau, Walt Patulski, O.J. Simpson, Ken Rice
Atlanta - 4
Michael Vick, Aundray Bruce, Steve Bartkowski, Tommy Nobis
Cleveland - 4
Courtney Brown, Tim Couch, Bobby Garrett, Corbett Davis
New England - 4
Drew Bledsoe, Irving Fryar, Kenneth Sims, Jim Plunkett
Tampa Bay - 4
Vinny Testaverde, Bo Jackson, Ricky Bell, Lee Roy Selmon
Detroit - 4
Matt Stafford, Billy Sims, Leon Hart, Frank Sinkwich
Colleges with the most # 1 draft picks -
Auburn - 5
Cam Newton, Aundray Bruce, Bo Jackson, Tucker Frederickson, Ken Rice
Notre Dame - 5
Walt Patulski, Paul Hornung, Leon Hart, Frank Dancewicz, Angelo Bertelli
USC - 5
Carson Palmer, Keyshawn Johnson, Ricky Bell, O.J. Simpson, Ron Yary
# 1 picks who never played for the team that drafted them -
Eli Manning (2004) - Manning and his father Archie stated prior to the draft that he would not play for the San Diego Chargers, who held the first pick. San Diego selected him first and traded him to the Giants.
Bo Jackson (1986)- Jackson was selected by the Buccaneers in the 1986 draft. The Bucs did not want Bo playing baseball and gave him an ultimatum. He ended up signing with the KC Royals. He was able to re-enter the draft in 1987, where he was drafted by the Raiders in the 7th round.
John Elway (1983) - Elway was drafted by the Colts but refused to sign with them, forcing Baltimore to trade him to Denver.
Tom Cousineau (1979) - After being drafted by Buffalo, Cousineau was offered twice the money to play with the Montreal Alouettes of the Canadian Football League. He accepted their offer.
Randy Duncan (1959) - Like Cousineau, Duncan opted to play in the CFL instead of signing with the Packers.
Bobby Garrett (1954) - Garrett was drafted by Cleveland but traded to Green Bay before the start of the season.
Angelo Bertelli (1944) - Bertelli was drafted by the Boston Yanks while he was on active duty with the Marine Corps. He served in the military for four years and signed with the LA Dons after fulfilling his military obligation.
Tom Harmon (1941) - The NFL Bears drafted Harmon, but he opted to play for the NY Americans of the AFL.
George Cafego (1940) - Cafego was drafted by the Chicago Cardinals, never played for them, opting instead to play for the Brooklyn Dodgers (NFL).
Sam Francis (1937) - Drafted by the Eagles, Francis was traded to the Bears prior to the start of the season.
Be sure to check out the draft on Thursday night to see what will be added to the lore of the NFL Draft.
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StartX, Stanford University‘s startup accelerator, launched its latest group of startups Thursday. The companies, which presented to top investors, spanned consumer Internet, medical technology, and even eyewear.
The startups have gone through the three month intensive program, which includes educational seminars, mentorship and advising. The nonprofit accelerator does not invest in the companies. The program is open to applications from startups with at least one team member with a Stanford connection. Besides Stanford students, there are also faculty members, grad students and post-docs in the program. StartX also announced Thursday that it is launching an affiliated program focusing on medical and biotech startups called StartX Med.
Here is a list of companies that showed their wares Thursday:
Gauss Surgical: The startup uses software on the iPad to help surgeons and anesthesiologists monitor blood loss during surgery. The service uses photos to help analyze blood loss. The company, which has raised $800,000 in seed financing, has received its first FDA 510(k) clearance and plans to launch its product this fall. While most medical device companies are very capital intensive, Gauss is not because it is a software company.
Crowd Jewel: Jewelry designers submit their designs and crowds rate them on Crowd Jewel’s website. The company, which is raising a $1 million seed round, manufactures those that are most popular, sells them on the site and gives a royalty to the designer. The company has 3,500 beta testers. Competitors include Stella and Dot.
LessThan3: An online music collection website founded by electronic music affiicanados. Users collect music from different artists and keep them in their individual rooms. Then anyone can come to their room and listen to their collection of music, that plays like a personal radio station. People can also “buy” trophies of musical artists, which are virtual goods. Sounds like a combination of Pandora and Turntable.fm.
Vergence Labs: Creator of computer-enabled eyeglasses called Epiphany Eyewear. The company, which has raised money on KickStarter, enables people to record video from the glasses and share the videos via its own web platform. The glasses also can change the glass instantly to make them into sunglasses. The founders believe eyewear is the next big computer interface.
Genapsys: Produces a small device that does DNA sequencing. In the past genomic diagnostics has been very expensive, using large computers, and takes weeks for analysis. But Genapsys has done ten years of research and has made the cost of a DNA analysis $3,o00 instead of $700,000.
Watchup: iPad-based news video reader curates high quality video. The company believes that television will be delivered increasingly via tablets and other devices, not traditional televisions. Founders are preparing the app’s launch in June.
Roominate makes toys aimed at helping girls learn about science, technology and math. The first product, which has already raised $55,000 in Kickstarter funding, is a twist on the conventional dollhouse which gives girls tools for building a dollhouse with electricity, circuits and wiring. The founders are three current or former female Stanford graduate students in business or engineering.
Appfluence: Productivity software that helps product managers prioritize tasks. The service, which has 40,000 paid customers, works across iPads, iPhones, Macs and PCs.
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East Providence, Rhode IslandEast Providence
is a city located in Providence County, Rhode Island
. As of the 2000
census, the city had a total population of 48,688.
Geography\nEast Providence is located at 41°48'5" North, 71°21'39" West (41.801500, -71.360824)1
According to the United States Census Bureau
, the city has a total area of 43.0 km²
). 34.7 km² (13.4 mi²) of it is land and 8.3 km² (3.2 mi²) of it is water. The total area is 19.33% water.
Demographics\nAs of the census
, there are 48,688 people, 20,530 households, and 12,851 families residing in the city. The population density
is 1,401.8/km² (3,632.1/mi²). There are 21,309 housing units at an average density of 613.5/km² (1,589.6/mi²). The racial makeup of the city is 86.49% White, 5.02% African American
, 0.46% Native American
, 1.15% Asian
, 0.05% Pacific Islander, 2.80% from other races, and 4.03% from two or more races. 1.89% of the population are Hispanic
of any race.
There are 20,530 households out of which 27.1% have children under the age of 18 living with them, 46.3% are married couples living together, 12.7% have a female householder with no husband present, and 37.4% are non-families. 32.4% of all households are made up of individuals and 14.6% have someone living alone who is 65 years of age or older. The average household size is 2.33 and the average family size is 2.99.
In the city the population is spread out with 21.7% under the age of 18, 7.4% from 18 to 24, 29.4% from 25 to 44, 22.6% from 45 to 64, and 18.9% who are 65 years of age or older. The median age is 40 years. For every 100 females there are 86.8 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there are 82.6 males.
The median income for a household in the city is $39,108, and the median income for a family is $48,463. Males have a median income of $34,342 versus $26,423 for females. The per capita income for the city is $19,527. 8.6% of the population and 6.3% of families are below the poverty line. Out of the total people living in poverty, 10.7% are under the age of 18 and 11.0% are 65 or older.
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Friday, July 12, 7:00 - 9:00 p.m.
Gropius House, 68 Baker Bridge Road, Lincoln, Mass.
$25 Historic New England members, $35 nonmembers
Walter Gropius, founder of the German design school known as the Bauhaus, was one of the most influential architects of the twentieth century. His 1938 home showcases the clean, contemporary lines of Modern design. During this evening slide show and house tour, see how Gropius’s innovative lighting scheme comes to life at night. Light refreshments provided.
Registration is required. Please call 781-259-8098 for more information. Purchase tickets now
Members must log in to receive discount.
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What is Type 2 Diabetes?
Diabetes is a condition in which people have abnormally high levels of sugar (glucose) in their blood. There are two main types of diabetes, Type 1 and Type 2.
Type 2 diabetes is by far the more common type of diabetes. It accounts for over 90% of all diabetes cases. Type 2 diabetes was once known as "adult-onset diabetes" but this term is no longer used because Type 2 is on the rise in all age groups, including among children. Type 2 is increasing primarily because more children and adults are becoming overweight and obese.
People with diabetes lose the ability to control the level of sugar in their blood. Sugar rises to excessive levels in the blood because it can't enter the cells of the body - in the usual way and because an excess of sugar is produced in the liver. So, for example, without sugar getting inside the muscle cells, these cells don't have enough fuel to keep the body working properly. The same is true for other cell types throughout the body.
The main feature of type 2 diabetes is the body's resistance to the action of insulin in the cells. This is a condition known as insulin resistance. Obesity may be the single most important factor in the development of insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes.
The National Diabetes Fact Sheet, 2005 from the Centers for Disease Control has a general overview of diabetes.
Additional Information About Type 2 Diabetes
- What is Insulin Resistance?
- What Causes Insulin Resistance?
- How Does Type2 Differ From Type1?
- What is Double Diabetes?
- How Can Doctors Tell the Type of Diabetes a Child Has?
- How Common is Type2 Diabetes in Children and Youth?
- Who is at Risk for Type2 Diabetes?
- HHow Can You Tell if a Child is at Risk for Type2?
- What is Pre-Diabetes?
- What are the Signs and Symptoms of Type2?
- What is Hypoglycemia and Hypergylcemia?
- How is Type2 Diabetes Managed in Children and Youth?
- What Role Does Medication Play in Managing Type2?
- What is the Role of Lifestyle in Managing type 2 Diabetes?
- Why is Physical Activity Important in Managing Type2?
- What is the Impact of Exercise on Blood Glucose?
- How Does Eating Healthy Help in Managing Type 2?
- What are Ways to Help You Cope with Type2 Diabetes?
- Are There Camps for Kids with Type2 Diabetes?
- What are Resources to Help Kids Cope With Diabetes?
Last Updated: Saturday April 20, 2013 13:31:32
This Internet site provides information of a general nature and is designed for educational purposes only. If you have any concerns about your own health or the health of your child, you should always consult with a physician or other health care professional.
This site is published by Children With Diabetes, Inc, which is responsible for its contents.
© Children with Diabetes, Inc. 1995-2013. Comments and Feedback.
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|
19 November 2004
Scotland's biggest health board has announced plans for a major reorganisation, aimed at improving services.
NHS Greater Glasgow said the changes included the merging of three acute divisions – North, South and Yorkhill. It will be responsible for day-to-day services, driving down waiting times and winter bed planning.
The new division will include an acute planning team, which will oversee the current programme of modernisation, including a new £100m children's hospital, the £80m new Beatson centre for cancer treatment, two new hospitals and the reorganisation of services.
The board has said there will be no compulsory redundancies as a result of the shake-up, which is due to be considered in December and implemented next April.
Chief executive Tom Divers said: 'By reorganising, we aim to make better use of our resources to improve services for patients, devolve more decision-making to staff, increase consistency of service and reduce duplication.'
Health boards in Scotland have been under pressure to increase their efficiency. The planned reorganisation of hospital services has led to major public protests over the closure and contraction of facilities.
|
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by Renee Rusler, Park Ranger
The shopping was done. The wagons were loaded. It was time to leave Liberty, Missouri. The missionaries would have to hurry if they were to meet the fur traders’ caravan at the Oto Indian Agency near Bellevue [Nebraska]. Dr. Whitman, Mrs. Whitman, and Mrs. Spalding would travel to Bellevue by steamboat. Rev. Spalding and the rest of the men would travel overland with the livestock, wagons and baggage.
The slower moving baggage group departed on Wednesday, April 27. Dr. Whitman and the women waited in Liberty for the steamboat. One can imagine the missionaries’ surprise and dismay when that next Sunday the steamboat passed them by and refused to stop. Dr. Whitman tried to flag down the boat, but the captain yelled that there was no room. Apparently, the captain hadn’t been told about the travel arrangements that Dr. Whitman had made.
It was 300 miles from Liberty to the Oto Agency. Dr. Whitman and the women would have to find alternate transportation and hope that they had no further troubles. The fur traders’ caravan would not wait for them.
Rev. Spalding had written that his party would wait for Dr. Whitman near Fort Leavenworth [Kansas]. A wagon and driver were hired. But when Dr. Whitman and the women reached Fort Leavenworth, Rev. Spalding’s group wasn’t there! They had changed their minds and decided to continue on to Bellevue without them.
The baggage group had a three day head start. Dr. Whitman and the women would have to travel quickly if they were to catch-up. But, before they left Fort Leavenworth, Dr. Whitman’s group spent Sunday at the nearby Methodist mission. The missionaries strongly believed in keeping the Sabbath and avoided traveling on Sunday whenever possible. So, it wasn’t until Monday, May 9, that they continued their flight to catch Rev. Spalding and after that, the fur traders’ caravan.
Was pausing at the Methodist mission a strategic error? Would the missionaries find each other in time? Dr. Whitman’s group traveled hard for several days. They eventually caught up with Rev. Spalding’s group. On Sunday, May 15, all the missionaries were together. They were just eighteen miles from the Oto Agency. Success was in sight. While the group rested, Dr. Whitman went on ahead to help the Indian agent’s brother who was seriously ill.
While there, Dr. Whitman learned that the fur traders’ caravan had already passed by and was now 25 miles west of the Agency. Dr. Whitman rode out to the caravan. He asked them to wait, but the caravan needed to keep moving. If the missionaries wanted to travel with the caravan, they would have to catch up and keep up.
Would the missionaries reach the fur traders’ caravan in time?
Drury, Clifford M. Marcus and Narcissa Whitman and the Opening of Old Oregon. 1994. Northwest Interpretive Association: Seattle, Washington.
Did You Know?
The tule lodge offers a comfortable place for the people inside. The structure is held up by wooden poles and covered with mats made of tule. Tules are a type of sedge; they grow in marshy areas; and are also called "bullrushes." Tules are stronger than they look. A tule lodge can withstand rain and wind.
|
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|
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|
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| 0.977563
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| 2
|
|American Standard Version (ASV)
||New International Version (NIV)
4 Concerning therefore the eating of things sacrificed to idols, we know that no idol is [anything] in the world, and that there is no God but one.
4 So then, about eating food sacrificed to idols: We know that an idol is nothing at all in the world and that there is no God but one.
|The American Standard Version is in the public domain. (The American Standard Version Bible Online)
||Scripture quoted by permission. Quotations designated (NIV) are from THE HOLY BIBLE: NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®. NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by Biblica. All rights reserved worldwide. (New International Version Bible Online)
|
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|
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| 0.904905
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| 2.140625
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|
The sales rebound comes with risks that are familiar to Detroit. Crank up production too much and carmakers have to sell vehicles at deep discounts. Boost production too little, and companies could run short of vehicles such as pickup trucks. And even if they find the right balance now, automakers are leery of raising long-term costs by adding plants and workers.
Six years ago, Detroit's automakers were losing billions, in part because they had too many plants and workers. And union contracts forced them to pay workers even if plants were shut down. So automakers kept the factories running regardless of whether vehicles would sell in order to cover expenses. They built too many cars and trucks and sold them cheap, sometimes at a loss.
Now, they're doing everything they can to keep costs under control.
Growth is putting the squeeze on Hyundai and Kia factories. But the affiliated companies will build as many vehicles as possible at two U.S. plants before constructing a new factory. John Krafcik, Hyundai's U.S. CEO, says the first choice is to find areas inside the plants that are slowing the assembly lines and fix them, "because plants are expensive."
GM also will try to handle growth by stretching factories, says North American President Mark Reuss. But he thinks the company will have to hire more workers if sales this year reach 13.5 million or beyond.
Auto factories in North America will reach 90 percent of their capacity if sales hit 14 million, says Michael Robinet, managing director of IHS Automotive Consulting, which forecasts auto production.
The lack of factories, though, could cause automakers to run short of pickup trucks this year, says McAlinden.
Detroit automakers, which dominate truck sales, had far too many pickup factories just seven years ago. They have closed eight truck plants since 2005, removing the ability to build 2.25 million pickups a year. With only nine North American pickup plants left, they may have cut too much, McAlinden says.
Last year Americans bought 1.8 million pickups, an 11 percent increase over 2010, as the economy improved and small and large businesses began replacing their aging vehicles. Pent-up demand is fueling the sales. The average age of a truck on U.S. roads has reached a record 11 years.
If sales increase as projected, companies also could run short of compact cars and small SUVs.
It adds up to what could be a challenging but profitable year for the industry, says Schmald Moncrieff, who runs the Michigan parts factory.
"A lot of things are going to start breaking loose all at once," she says.
Copyright 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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If Geneva, Ohio, doesn’t register on your geographic radar, you are not alone. Most Americans probably are not aware this 7,000-person burg 45 miles east of Cleveland even exists. Until now, the city’s primary claims to fame have been professional baseball pitcher Brian Anderson, and the historic "claiming of the moon," announced in 1966. (The "Declaration of Lunar Ownership" stated that "the physical property of the moon shall belong exclusively to the citizens of Geneva, Ohio.")
But the days of Geneva’s obscurity may soon be coming to an end. A great work is now underway in this city, which may well change the face of athletics in America. It’s called SPIRE Institute, and it’s a gigantic, world-class sports/education/training/wellness complex, the likes of which has seldom (if ever) been seen in America.
"There’s not another athletic training facility in the country that could rival what’s in Geneva," said Olympian Michael Johnson, who chose SPIRE as the second location for his Michael Johnson Performance Center (MJP), which opened its Geneva doors in November. "The U.S. Olympic Training Center in Chula Vista, California comes close, but there’s nothing like SPIRE Institute for training all athletes at all levels."
SPIRE Communications Consultant Lisa Levine agrees.
"It’s an incredibly rare mix," said Levin. "We’ve brought in Olympic-grade resources on every level."
Indeed, SPIRE has already received an enthusiastic endorsement from the Olympic leadership. U.S. Olympic Committee Chairman Larry Probst and USOC President/CEO Scott Blackmun recently toured SPIRE and were blown away by it, expressing confidence that the Institute would become a key player in America’s Olympic efforts.
"This is an amazing facility," said Blackmun. "I am 100 percent confident that we will have an important relationship with SPIRE, and SPIRE will play an important role in the success of our athletes moving forward."
The brainchild of Geneva industrialist Ron Clutter and his wife Tracy, SPIRE (an acronym for Sports, Philanthropy, Innovation, Rehabilitation, Education) is an enormously ambitious, multi-faceted project, designed to bring together all the disparate elements of world-class, cutting-edge athletics and performance training under one roof. A breathtaking 750,000 square feet in size, SPIRE is among the largest indoor training and competition complexes in the world.
SPIRE is currently geared toward five sports—volleyball, track and field, swimming, basketball, and soccer—with one more, lacrosse, soon to be added. The Institute boasts a unique array of state-of-the-art athletic facilities, including two indoor regulation soccer fields; a multi-purpose court surface capable of supporting twelve volleyball courts simultaneously; an aquatic center with possibly the fastest swimming pool in the country; an outdoor stadium with 10,000-seat capacity; a 215,000-square-foot track and field complex dubbed "the best in the world" by no less an authority than Johnson himself; and much more.
But as impressive as the athletic component of the institute is, it’s just one spoke of the comprehensive wheel that is SPIRE. A truly holistic conception, SPIRE’s mission is to unleash the "complete" athlete, and to this end, the institute provides facilities and resources for academic excellence, professional nutrition monitoring, and state-of-the-art performance training.
It is in this all-encompassing approach that the unique offering of SPIRE is shown, said Levine, speaking about the institute’s four main components.
"The main crux, the unique element of SPIRE, is that you have all of these world-class elements in one place," he said. "Instead of going to Arizona or Dallas for training, and then flying to California for the nutrition program, you’ve got it all under one roof."
SPIRE boasts some of the most skilled and experienced athletic coaches around, including Olympians like gold medalist Diana Munz (swimming). The volleyball program is run by John Hawks, former head coach of the U.S. Junior National Team. Under Hawks’ coaching, the U.S. juniors recently notched a fourth-place finish at the World Championships in Rio De Janeiro—the highest finish a U.S. team has ever scored at that event. Hawks also led America’s juniors to gold medals at the 2009 and 2010 Pan American Cups, so it is not too much of a stretch to say he’s one of the best youth volleyball coaches in the world.
Hawks oversees a staff of six full-time coaches (plus 28 club coaches), with two "very high level people" dedicated to camps and academy programs. Plans are underway to bring several more coaches on board in the summer timeframe.
Heading up the speed, strength, and agility training of SPIRE volleyball players is Bryan McCall, Director of Michael Johnson Performance (see below), together with his highly-skilled team of assistants.
SPIRE is only the second location in the world of Michael Johnson Performance (MJP), the state-of-the-art performance training technology designed by four-time Olympic gold medalist Michael Johnson himself. The efficacy of the MJP system lies in its high-tech tracking of an athlete’s particular traits, and its ability to customize a tailored approach to each individual’s training using the latest technology.
McCall was hand-selected to be the director of MJP at SPIRE. He believes Michael Johnson’s techniques will be a great boon for volleyball.
"I think MJP is going to be a huge advantage for volleyball at SPIRE, because it gives the coaches more time to focus on the volleyball strategy programming, while allowing us to take over the physical development: increasing speed, jumping ability, stamina, power," McCall said.
One proactive key to the MJP approach is its use of collected data to forestall injuries, thus maximizing an athlete’s playing time.
"We’re looking at injuries. What are the typical injuries (shoulders, backs, ankles) volleyball players get? There’s a detailed process of testing physical ability, but we also want to screen them for potential injury risk as well," said McCall. "It gives us a broad panel of profiling for risk assessment. The good thing about that is it can be cutting edge, because we can bring in technology to help us with these measurements. Now you have this electronic fitness equipment for testing. It’s a lot more accurate and objective."
Through MJP, McCall said, student athletes will get the same training techniques and benefits as the world’s top professionals. "We’re bringing programs that have been used with world-class athletes in Dallas here to SPIRE."
And true to SPIRE’s stated goal of making its programs available across a broad spectrum, MJP offers training not just to collegiate and high school athletes and residential athletes, but also to summer camp participants. So no matter what your current level, you can get the same cutting-edge training the Olympians get.
Michael Johnson himself will be personally involved with SPIRE, appearing at the Institute about six times per year.
The nutrition arm of SPIRE’s diversified program is called SPIRE Fuel. For this crucial piece of the puzzle, SPIRE has partnered with a company called FLIK International, which provides training meals to NFL teams like the New York Giants, New York Jets, and Philadelphia Eagles. FLIK also supplied the food for the 2002 Olympics.
Fuel food is typically fresh, highly nutritious, locally produced, with lots of whole grains and no added trans fats. "Any athlete training at SPIRE will have the same food that the pros eat," said Levine.
And again, it’s not only the SPIRE students who can benefit from Fuel.
"It’s also available to the public," said Levine. "Anyone can swing by and get the food."
Perhaps the most highly-anticipated component of the institute is SPIRE Academy, a residential year-round boarding program for student athletes, which provides high-quality academic education, as well as top-flight training in volleyball, soccer, swimming, and track and field.
The key component of SPIRE Academy is what is known as the "post-graduate" program, which starts in fall 2012. The idea behind the post-graduate program is that kids who have just graduated from high school can opt to attend SPIRE Academy for a year, before moving on to college. By doing so, student athletes can get a full year of world-class training, dramatically boosting their chances of athletic success in college.
"For kids that aren’t necessarily ready physically, or not mature enough, we offer the post-graduate program," said Hawks. "You can take core courses toward your first year of college, without losing a year of eligibility. So there’s a huge advantage for colleges, for kids to come here, get stronger, faster, eat better, get quality training in a great environment, and then go off to college a year older with a couple less classes."
In addition to the post-graduate program, SPIRE Academy also offers additional high school programs, plus intensive weekend camps and week-long training camps (see sidebar).
One message SPIRE emphasizes is its broad outreach. Despite being a world-class, state-of-the-art athletic training facility endorsed by the U.S. Olympic Committee, SPIRE isn’t just for elite competitors; it’s for anyone who wants to become the best athlete they can be.
As its website states: "SPIRE invites athletes at all levels, in all sports, from all backgrounds to join us. SPIRE is for high achieving athletes training to reach their peak, but it is just as tailored to high school students and active seniors, Paralympians and Special Olympians, Wounded Warriors and weekend warriors. Our only criteria for acceptance are a love of sports and a desire to strengthen your mind, body and character."
"We’re trying to help each athlete maximize and reach their full potential," said Levine. "If you want to be an Olympic athlete, we’re going to help you be an Olympic athlete. If you want to be the best player on your team, we’ll help you with that."
Here is what it entails:
For more information about the SPIRE Institute, SPIRE Academy, the various programs and opportunities available, and pricing, visit the Institute’s website at spireinstitute.org
Originally published in February 2012
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Of all of the Egyptian pharaohs, perhaps none can be said to be as productive as Ramses II. Ramses II was the pharaoh who would have one of the longest recorded reigns — sixty-seven years, would fight more battles, and would produce more statuary and construct more buildings than any other ruler of ancient Egypt. He was also the most prolific ruler, having fathered more children than any other king. Often, Ramses II is referred to as the pharaoh of the Exodus. The Egyptian archaeological and textual sources, however, are mute on this subject.
Ramses died in the sixty-seventh year of his reign, probably a few years beyond his ninetieth birthday. In terms of accomplishments, he may be ranked as one of the most important and effective rulers of the ancient world. It was his thirteenth son, Merenptah, who succeeded him.
Here in our galleries, we have several objects related to this king’s reign, such as the colossal head of Osiris with the features of Ramses II (found at Abydos) and the relief of Ramses II smiting an enemy( from Tell el-Retaba)
This eight foot tall seated statue is one of the largest. On stylistic grounds, it is believed this statue was originally carved in the Middle Kingdom (1980-1630 BCE) and later usurped by Ramses II, who added his names in the deep-cut inscriptions on the throne and base.
Penn Museum Object #E635
See this and other objects like it on Penn Museum’s Online Collection Database
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Erika Christensen, NIDA and In the Mix expose the dark side of ecstasy in a new PBS special
E C S T A S Y
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE (New York, NY)
No longer confined to clubs, ecstasy and other drugs like K, acid, and GHB have found their way into schools and homes, and are used by growing numbers of young teens across the U.S. According to the 2000 Monitoring the Future Survey, funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, 1.3 million of the nation's students in grades 8 through 12 have tried ecstasy at least once, and 450,000 are currently using it. The just released Office of National Drug Control Policy biannual report reveals that availability of ecstasy has increased dramatically, sold at high schools, on the street and in malls. The teens who speak out frankly in the new In the Mix special support the findings. James, age 18, "They're still at clubs, but they're just everywhere else, at school, at your house." Ashley, age 16, adds "I did E for the first time when I was twelve because my friend's older brother was doing it, and I wanted to be cool and fit in."
E C S T A S Y, hosted by 18 year-old Erika Christensen who plays the teen addict in Traffic, takes a hard look at the realities of what many teens think is just "harmless fun." This new In the Mix special shows the short and long term effects of ecstasy, ketamine and GHB; explores the devastating personal and social impact experienced by teens now in rehab; and defines the legal penalties for possessing even small amounts of these drugs which are in the same class as heroin and cocaine. The special will air the week of April 14th on PBS stations nationwide. (Check local listings or http://www.inthemix.org)
The word among teens today is that club drugs are not "real " drugs, that they are non-addictive and that using them can't get you into trouble. But according to Dr. Alan Leshner, Director of the National Institute of Drug Abuse, "We do know that an increasing number of people are coming into treatment centers saying, 'I can't get control over my E use,' Now, clinically, that's the definition of addiction." Megan, age 17, admits "I just thought I was going to try it...see what everyone's raving about. And, I fell in love with it."
Dr. Leshner goes on to clearly describe how even moderate use lowers serotonin levels in the brain, which leads to depression. Michelle, 16, describes "I'd get depressed and I'd get high to cover that up, and it was just like a vicious cycle." He also shows how other physical effects can result in seizures and stroke. We then ride along in an ambulance with trained teen EMTs from Post 53 in Connecticut who alert teens why they must call 911 when a friend is having a serious reaction and what to do while they are waiting.
We also ride along with an undercover cop in Miami who has witnessed an increasing number of overdoses and points out that "The manufacturers are going to great lengths to make tablets with logos that appeal to the American youth...and it's effective." The teens agree that it's like any advertising "If someone showed me a bunch of pills...I would take the one that everyone talks about the most."
Viewers see an actual bust of an ecstasy dealer as Westchester D.A. Jeanine Pirro explains what happens after a teen is arrested and the legal penalties for drug possession. Teens describe their experiences in prison and rehab, plus how they are getting their lives back on track and their hopes for the future.
According to Sue Castle, Executive Producer, "In developing the program, we talked with a diversity of teens who stated that ecstasy use is not only widespread, but that it has become the gateway drug to acid, speed and even heroin. They just aren't aware of the potential dangers, and it's so important to get the word out." Justin, age 18, agrees "You never hear (about ecstasy), they don't campaign against ecstasy like they do about crack, heroine, coke, marijuana."
E C S T A S Y was funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA). In addition to NIDA's http://www.clubdrugs.gov/ website, the special will have a companion website on http://www.inthemix.org/ with video clips, full interviews, resources, viewer experiences and more.
In the Mix is the award-winning weekly PBS series for teens that addresses critical issues and provides useful information in a cutting edge format. The series is a production of Castle Works, Inc. and was created by WNYC Radio.
For more information about this special, contact David Beilinson or Sue Castle at In the Mix.
Phone: (212) 684-3940 Email: firstname.lastname@example.org; email@example.com
E C S T A S Y
Hosted by Erika Christensen, the teen addict in the movie Traffic, this special raises awareness about club drugs by showing their dangers, defining the penalties and exposing misconceptions about them.
No longer just used in clubs, ecstasy and other drugs like ketamine, LSD, GHB and crystal meth have found their way into schools and homes as their use grows among young teenagers who view them as "harmless fun." In this special, teens in rehab talk candidly about their common experiences with ecstasy, alone and as a gateway to other drugs, their addiction and the devastating effects on their lives.
We also ride along with an undercover cop on the streets of Miami and see a young ecstasy dealer get busted. Westchester D.A. Jeanine Pirro explains what happens when a teen is arrested and the penalties for drug possession, as teens graphically describe their experiences in prison. Plus we interview Dr. Alan Leshner, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse about the latest research on the short and long terms effects of ecstasy. We ride along in an ambulance with trained teen EMTs who warn about the need to call 911 when a friend has overdosed.
Ralph - 17 : Through ecstasy I messed up, messed up on a lot of stuff. YK, I used to be on a high school football team, I stopped going to practice. "You're addicted to the feeling, you want to get that mental level, so you keep doing more and more."
John - 15 : The way you think on ecstasy is that you're safe from anything. Nothing's going to happen to me, even if I have sex with this person, and you're not going to be cautious at all.
Michelle - 16 : I know people right now, only sixteen years old, and they shake from it...they don't stop shaking.
Justin - 18 : Some people will buy the pure MDMA, the pure ecstasy, and they'll cut it up, and they'll get a pill press, and they'll mix up what they want to mix up, with like speed, anything...then to catch attention, people will put little stamps on it.
Among 8th graders, use of Ecstasy increased to 3.1% in 2000 from 1.7% in 1999. Among 10th graders, use rose to 5.4% from4.4%. And among 12th graders use rose to 8.2% from 5.6%*
* (Source: 2000 Monitoring the Future Survey, funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse)
U.S. Customs seized 9.3 million tabs of ecstasy in 2000 up from 3.5 million in 1999 and 750,000 in 1998 *(Source: U.S. Customs Service)
[News Release Index]
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I guess I have a suspicious mind by nature, but I can't help wondering about the timing of the road diet and the proposal to build a senior center on East Main Street. The road diet idea popped up a couple weeks after it came out that someone wanted to build a three-story assisted-living complex on the same street. Is the city getting ready to make the road easier for all those seniors? What gives?
— Bob P., Medford
There's nothing wrong with a suspicious mind, Bob. We know a lot of people at Since You Asked headquarters who react suspiciously if you even say "Hello" to them in the morning.
We're sure that you're not that bad, Bob, but your suspicions suggest there's some kind of conspiracy theory between the city and the developers of the senior complex.
"Not so," said Cory Crebbin, director of Medford's Public Works Department.
The city has been eyeing many streets that have four lanes, but might be better served with two travel lanes and a center turn lane, he said. In addition, two bike lanes would be installed.
To prove his case, Crebbin cites a 2003 Transportation System Plan to identify 30 streets that could support alternative means of transportation such as bikes.
"We've been working on this for a while, but it's a 20-year plan," Crebbin said.
For the city to qualify for federal and state grants, it needs such a plan to show that it's making an effort to develop alternative methods of transportation.
Also, Crebbin said, the road is extremely unsafe for pedestrians to cross, because if they put their foot out onto the street to signal they want to cross, they could get run over.
With the bike lanes on either side of the street, pedestrians have a chance to step into the roadway without risk of losing a foot — or worse.
By the way, Crebbin objects to the use of the phrase "road diet."
"We think of this more as a way to make the street safer," Crebbin said.
Send questions to "Since You Asked," Mail Tribune Newsroom, P.O. Box 1108, Medford, OR 97501; by fax to 541-776-4376; or by email to email@example.com. We're sorry, but the volume of questions received prevents us from answering all of them.
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The average consumer isn't likely to spend much effort managing home energy. Big power users in businesses, on the other hand, will go out of their way cut down on waste.
Start-up company Tenrehte, based near Rochester, New York, launched its PicoWatt smart outlet at CES two years ago, aiming to appeal to green-minded consumers. The idea is that a sub-$100 Wi-Fi-enabled smart outlet would transmit energy data to an online app which would let consumers save money by scheduling things to run at off-peak times.
Now two years later, Tenrehte has changed its focus to industrial and commercial customers that want to remotely control power-hungry equipment, according to founder and CEO Jennifer Indovina.
The company raised $140,000 in angel seed funding three months ago and is expecting to close a $2 million series A round by next month, she said. With the money, Tenrehte (which is Ethernet spelled backwards) plans to start making thousands of its PicoWatt smart outlets for business customers.
There are already a number smart outlets or simple switches to cut vampire power, but Tenrehte is making a relatively high-end item that it hopes will be a platform for connected appliances and entertainment gear.
"It is literally putting a PC level of intelligence at the outlet--it's not just a cheap switch," Indovina said. "We have visions for PicoWatt to play well with other connected home technologies so we don't want to have to redesign the hardware platform."
The gadget, which runs on an ARM-based processor, costs about $300, and is being tested. A school, for example, is using the smart outlet to turn off smart boards in classrooms, white boards that can capture and store whatever's written on them. Now facility managers can remotely turn off the PC and projector in an ordered sequence, saving money on energy and preventing equipment problems caused by improper shut-down.
The smart outlet connects to a company network and plugged-in devices, such as air conditioners or factory equipment, can be scheduled or remotely operated from a Web site.
At CES this year, networking everyday objects in the home--appliances, thermostats, and entertainment centers--is again one of the themes. This smart home gear should make those devices easier to control and save energy by shutting gear off when it's not needed.
But pitching smart outlets as "green" to consumers is a tough sell, Indovina said. "I just don't think a consumer customer cares about energy data. I think they want (the system) to be intelligent enough to make smart decisions," she said.
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Richmond Unified, the first school district in California to go bankrupt and require a bailout loan, made its last payment to the state Friday - four years early.
District officials, in what is now called West Contra Costa Unified, squirreled away enough money during tough economic times to pay off the $29 million loan made 21 years ago.
The settling of the debt ends two decades of state control over the district, which serves 30,000 students in 50 schools across five cities.
"We're ready to pay you off and get you out of our hair," school board President Charles Ramsey told Torlakson as he handed him the oversize check.
Over the years, the initial bankruptcy and subsequent loan payments devastated the district, costing nearly $19 million in interest payments alone, said school board member Madeline Kronenberg.
"Thousands and thousands of children were unable to get what other districts provided," she said. "Today is independence day."
The district found itself in dire financial straits in 1990 because of mismanagement and overoptimistic economic predictions, Kronenberg said. There never was any evidence of fraud or criminal conduct.
Still, the bankruptcy resulted in an immediate 9 percent pay cut for teachers at the time as well as midyear elimination of elective courses including music and art, the closure of libraries and cuts to athletic programs.
While many programs were later restored as the district's finances stabilized, the budget was still tight as the school board grappled with the nearly $2 million in annual loan payments at a 6 percent interest rate.
In the years that followed, district officials were unable to persuade the state to refinance the debt even as rates for homeowners and other borrowers dropped.
In 2004, teachers and other community members marched to Sacramento to call for modifications to the loan conditions. Denied a meeting with then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, they started a hunger strike.
First-year teacher Wendy Gonzalez was among them, losing 30 pounds in 18 days as she refused food, begging state officials to help the district.
A personal message from civil rights activist Dolores Huerta to the governor's wife, Maria Shriver, pushed the state to cut the interest rate to 2 percent, cutting annual payments and saving the district $5 million overall in interest, district officials said.
Now in her ninth year as a teacher at Ford Elementary, Gonzalez celebrated the final payment Friday.
With the debt off the books, the district will now have about $1.4 million more to spend on its schools each year.
"It means so much to me," Gonzalez said. "I'm hopeful the funds will come back into the classrooms."
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Simply begin typing or use the editing tools above to add to this article.
Once you are finished and click submit, your modifications will be sent to our editors for review.
design and use
Long experience with both motion-picture and still cameras has shown the need for a variety of focal lengths (ranging from ultrawide angle to telephoto) to photograph scenes under the best conditions. To make changing focal lengths more convenient, the lenses have sometimes been mounted on a turret, so that one out of a set of three lenses may be quickly selected. For motion pictures this would...
In variable-focus lenses the focal length can be varied by movement of some of the elements or groups within the lens system. One lens can thus replace a range of interchangeable lenses.
In some microscopes the eyepiece is designed as a portion of a zoom lens, which permits continuous variation of the magnification over a limited range without loss of focus. Such microscopes are widely used in industry.
...the vacuum by means of air locks. Unlike the optical microscope, in which the lenses are of fixed focus and the distance between specimen and objective lens is varied, the electron microscope has variable-focus lenses, and the distance between specimen and objective lens and the separation of the lenses remain constant. The magnification is determined mainly by the value of the current (for...
What made you want to look up "zoom lens"? Please share what surprised you most...
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You may be familiar with our yellow, green and blue Coasthopper buses, but you may not be aware of what a success story they are.
Set up from scratch in 1996 by Norfolk County Council and award-winning bus operator Norfolk Green, Coasthopper was the first regular bus along the fabulous North Norfolk Coast from Sheringham to Hunstanton for many years. The main idea was to reduce car dependency for access to the area, for visitors and residents, and it now provides a valuable and highly regarded boost to the tourism businesses along the coast.
Coasthopper is now one of the fastest-growing bus routes in the UK, and now carries over half a million passengers every year. In summer it runs up to every 30 minutes from Cromer and Sheringham to Wells, and on to Hunstanton with buses every hour carrying on to King's Lynn to meet the trains and buses from and to Norwich and Aylsham too.
Our buses are fully accessible, and low emission. You can see just how much CO2 you can save and help protect this fragile part of the world by looking at the 'go green' page. - if you haven't done so already, come on board and get a better, greener view of the North Norfolk coast, all year round..
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Priest of the Franciscan Capuchin Order, founder of the Irish and the Rhenish Provinces of said order; b. in 1569 at Brettoville, near Armagh, Ireland, according to some; according to others at Moyrath County Meath; d. at Charleville, France, in 1635.
His father was Sir Thomas Nugent of Moyrath and his mother was the Lady Mary, daughter of Lord Devlin. At an early age he was sent to France to receive an education which the Penal Laws denied him at home. Before the age of twenty he obtained the degree of doctor at the Universities of Paris and Louvain and occupied chairs in these two centres of learning, prior to his entrance into religion. He acquired a profound knowledge of Greek and Hebrew, and could speak a number of European languages fluently. In 1589 he joined the Capuchin Flandro-Belgian Province, taking the name of Francis. In due course he was professed and ordained priest. Towards the close of 1594, or the beginning of 1595 he was sent to France to guide the destinies of the French provinces then being formed and established communities at Metz and Charleville. Meanwhile he continued to deliver lectures in philosophy and theology at Paris. In 1596 he went as custos-general of France to the general chapter at Rome, and was appointed commissary general of the Capuchins at Venice. Three years later, being again in the Eternal City he took part in a public disputation in theology at which Clement VIII himself presided. Father Francis maintained his thesis with skill and eloquence, and was enthusiastically awarded the palm of victory.
At the general chapter of 1599 he was relieved of the provincialate and returned to Belgium, where he remained about eleven years. In 1610, at the earnest request of John Zwickhard Archbishop of Mainz, seven friars of this province were sent to establish the order in the Rhine country, and Father Francis was appointed their commissary general. He founded a convent at Paderborn in 1612, and two years later communities were settled at Essen Münster, and Aachen. He also established the Confraternity of the Passion at Cologne, and amongst its first protectors were his two great friends Mgr Albergatti, the papal nuncio, and Frederick of Hohenzollern the dean of the cathedral. In 1615 he began a monastery at Mainz, and Pope Paul V nominated him vicar Apostolic and commissary general with full power to establish the order in Ireland. That country was then passing through a period of terrible persecution, but the Capuchins braved every danger, mingled with the people, and ministered to their spiritual needs. Meanwhile, in 1618 the monastery of Charleville, in Upper Champagne, became a training-school for friars intended for the Irish mission, and facilities for the same purpose were offered by the Flandro-Belgian Province. A fresh band of workers was soon sent to Ireland and Father Nugent was thus enabled to found the first monastery in Dublin in 1624. The Archbishop of Dublin, Dr. Fleming, in 1629 addressed to the Irish clergy a letter commending the Capuchin Fathers specially mentioning "their learning, prudence, and earnestness". Two years later Father Nugent founded a monastery at Slane, in the diocese of his friend, Dr. Dease, who had previously borne public testimony to the merits of the Capuchins. Owing to failing health, he retired in 1631 to Charleville. He is generally credited with having procured the foundation at Lille of a college for the free education of poor youths from Ulster and Meath for the Irish clergy. He died at Charleville on the Feast of the Ascension, 1635. Rinuccini described him as "a man of most ardent zeal and most exemplary piety", and the annalists of the order state that he refused the Archbishopric of Armagh offered him by Pius V, who styled him "the support of the Church and the light of the orthodox faith". He wrote several works, of which the principal are: "Tractatus De Hibernia", "Cursus philosophicus et theologicus", "De Meditatione et Conscientiæ examine", "Paradisus contemplantium", "Super regula Minorum, Expositio Copiosa".
COGAN, The Diocese of Meath Ancient and Modern III (Dublin, 1870) 648; Bullarium Ordinis F.F. Minorum. S.P. Francisci IV, V; NICHOLAS, Bibliothéque de Troyes and Fran. Cap. Mon. (MS., 1643) (Dublin); Franciscan Annals (1886), Nos. 111, 114, 116; BELLESHEIM, Geschichte der Katholischen Kirche in Irland, II (Mainz, 1890), 362-63; PELLEGRINO, Annali Capuccini, I (Milan, 1884), 155-160; ROCCO DA CESINALE, Storia delle Missioni dei Capuccini, I (Paris, 1867), 375-380, 403 sq.
APA citation. (1911). Francis Nugent. In The Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company. http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/11150a.htm
MLA citation. "Francis Nugent." The Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 11. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1911. <http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/11150a.htm>.
Transcription. This article was transcribed for New Advent by Michael L. Mueller. Dedicated to my five sons.
Ecclesiastical approbation. Nihil Obstat. February 1, 1911. Remy Lafort, S.T.D., Censor. Imprimatur. +John Cardinal Farley, Archbishop of New York.
Contact information. The editor of New Advent is Kevin Knight. My email address is feedback732 at newadvent.org. (To help fight spam, this address might change occasionally.) Regrettably, I can't reply to every letter, but I greatly appreciate your feedback — especially notifications about typographical errors and inappropriate ads.
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December 4, 2012 1 Comment
Bread wheat (Triticum aestivum) is a globally important crop that accounts for 20% of the calories consumed by the world’s human population. Major work is underway to increase wheat production by expanding knowledge of the wheat genome and analysing key traits, however due to the large size and great complexity of the bread wheat genome progress has been slow. Now scientists from a number of organisations including the Centre for Genome Research at the University of Liverpool, the University of Bristol, University of California and the US Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Research service have been working to sequence the genome and identify several classes of genes involved in crop productivity. The analysis provides a resource for improving this major crop by identifying variation in useful traits such as yield and nutrient content, thereby contributing to sustainable increases in wheat production.
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Instructions: Print this exam worksheet. Return to the course page using the link below. Read the course material. Enter your answers on this worksheet. Return to the course page and click the link 'Take the Online Test.' Transfer your answers.
1. Which of the following accurately describes marriage and divorce statistics?
A. In the U.S., approximately 85% of adults will marry, and approximately 40% to 45% of first marriages will end in divorce
B. Approximately 25% of couples are divorced within 5 years of marriage, and the average divorcing couple will stay married for approximately 9 years
C. In the 1920's, 1 of 7 marriages ended in divorce, in the 1950's, the divorce rate was 1 in 5, and by the 1990's, almost 1 in 2 marriages ended in divorce
D. Following divorce, 70% of individuals will eventually remarry, and half of those remarriages will end in divorce
2. A World Health Organization and United Nations’ Report indicates that violence against women is “severe, pervasive and worldwide,” and at least one in three women is subjected to intimate partner violence in the course of her lifetime.
3. Approximately one-third of the violent episodes reported in intimate relationships involved men and women being mutually aggressive, with a moderate amount of violence in intimate relationships being initiated by women.
4. For husbands, the risk of child abuse escalates from ____ with a single act of partner aggression in a year to nearly ____ when the incidence of partner aggression occurs once a week.
A. 20%; 85%
B. 15%; 90%
C. 10%; 95%
D. 5%; 100%
5. Each of the following are potential developmental risk factors for intimate partner violence EXCEPT:
A. Early onset of aggressive behavior, including a history of getting into trouble with the law before age 14
B. Low level of education and poor reading comprehension skills
C. History of substance abuse or gang involvement
D. Presence of a developmental psychiatric diagnosis
6. Living together before marriage generally decreases the likelihood of violence, because partners are more likely to leave an abusive relationship if they are not yet married.
7. Family risk factors for violence potential include frequent family conflict and violent behavior, harsh punishment styles, and the absence or loss of family support.
8. A face-to-face interview with a qualified professional in a private setting is the most effective way to screen a woman for domestic violence.
9. When conducting an assessment with distressed couples, it is important to initially foster a therapeutic alliance that conveys:
A. Trust and empowerment
B. Respect and collaboration
C. Safety and empathy
D. Determination and hope
10. The extent, depth and timing of the assessment measures should match the couple's comfort level.
11. Abusive families tend to be more socially isolated, have more rigid patterns of interaction, and:
A. Value family control over individual behavior
B. Are more likely to have authoritarian interpersonal styles
C. Have significantly higher levels of marital and sexual relationship dissatisfaction
D. All of the above
12. Women who are physically abused by a partner rarely discuss these incidents with their physicians, so doctors need to actively seek this kind of information, especially when patients report chronic pain or are overusing the healthcare services.
13. Gender specific groups that focus on anger management procedures and the participants' beliefs in the use of aggression toward partners during conflicts are part of which treatment option?
A. Integrated Multifaceted Community-Based Programs
B. Batterer’s Intervention Programs
C. Conjoint Treatment for Intimate Partner Violence
D. Prevention and Relationship Education Programs
14. Approximately 55% of men who complete group intervention programs for domestic violence remain nonviolent in their intimate relationships, while nearly 30% continue to be severely violent even if they attend treatment.
15. A recommended program for treating couples who have had extramarital affairs incorporates procedures from cognitive behavioral approaches, insight-oriented approaches, and _____________ approaches.
A. Crisis management
B. Stress reduction
D. None of the above
16. When treating victims of domestic violence, steps include establishing and maintaining a therapeutic alliance, collaborating with the client in developing and implementing a safety plan, educating the client about the nature of domestic violence, and:
A. Encouraging optimism
B. Fostering independence
C. Creating expectations
D. Nurturing hope
17. Person-centered therapeutic techniques are recommended when addressing complicated grief reactions in victims of domestic violence.
18. When working with abused children and children who witness family violence, exposure-based interventions and story-telling should be avoided.
19. Which of the following is NOT included in the treatment protocol for traumatized children known by the acronym PRACTICE?
A. Protecting and providing reassurances
B. Relaxation and affect modulation skills
C. Cognitive coping and processing skills
D. Trauma narrative and in vivo mastery
20. The PREP program helps distressed couples by targeting key protective factors such as friendship, commitment, teamwork, fun, spiritual connection and sensuality.
Copyright © 2013 Quantum Units Education
Visit us at QuantumUnitsEd.com!
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Finland’s National Climate Actions
Although Finland’s atmospheric emissions are small in international comparison, the consumption of energy per capita is considerable. Finland’s objective is to achieve a downturn in total energy consumption during the coming decade. The use of energy must be made more efficient, particularly in housing, building and traffic. The intention is also to increase the share of renewable energy – especially bioenergy, wind power and geothermal energy – to 38 per cent.
Visions for Finland’s mitigation measures up to 2050
Finland’s national climate actions are largely based on the framework set by the UN Climate Change Convention, the Kyoto Protocol and the EU.
The EU’s joint emission reduction target of 8% means that Finland must reduce its emissions of greenhouse gases to the 1990 level during the years 2008–2012. This is about 73.5 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalents, or a greenhouse gas reduction of 16%.
The Ministry of Employment and the Economy published the most recent long-term climate and energy strategy for Finland in 2008. The strategy presents concrete measures until 2020 and visions for Finland’s climate and energy strategies up to 2050.
The Government Foresight Report on Long-term Climate and Energy Policy, published in 2009, leads the way towards a low-carbon Finland. It continues the work started by the climate and energy strategy and sets targets especially for a long time perspective. The most important of these targets is to cut Finland’s emissions by 80% from the 1990 level by the year 2050.
Finland also adapting
Finland was the first country to complete a national strategy for adapting to climate change. Published in 2005, the report prepared by the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry assesses the current and potential future impacts of climate change and anticipates the adaptation measures that these impacts will require. The strategy outlines adaptation measures for 15 sectors up to the year 2080 and considers both anticipatory measures and measures responding to the effects of climate change.
Mitigation of climate change and adaptation to it also constitute an essential element of Finland’s development policy. The importance of the climate perspective is underlined in Finnish development cooperation. Together with other EU Member States, Finland is committed to providing financing for climate actions taken in developing countries in both the short and long term. In 2011, Finland’s climate support for developing countries totalled about EUR 62 million.
Also in this site
Content administrator Unit for International Environment Policy
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Saturday, July 19th, 2008 at
Richard Morris recently took some time out to interview the great Linus Torvalds, the founder and creator of our favorite operating system, Linux. The interview is very well put together with both great questions and answers.
Here are two of my favorite Q & A’s with Linus:
RM: ‘Do you think software patents are a good idea?’
LT: ‘Heh – definitely not. They’re a disaster. The whole point (and the original idea) behind patents in the US legal sense was to encourage innovation. If you actually look at the state of patents in the US today, they do no such thing. Certainly not in software, and very arguably not in many other areas either.
Quite the reverse – patents are very much used to stop competition, which is undeniably the most powerful way to encourage innovation. Anybody who argues for patents is basically arguing against open markets and competition, but they never put it in those terms.
So the very original basis for the patents is certainly not being fulfilled today, which should already tell you something. And that’s probably true in pretty much any area.
But the reason patents are especially bad for software is that software isn’t some single invention where you can point to a single new idea. Not at all. All relevant software is a hugely complex set of very detailed rules, and there are millions of small and mostly trivial ideas rather than some single clever idea that can be patented. The worth of the software is not in any of those single small decisions, but in the whole. It’s also distressing to see that people patent ‘ideas’. It’s not even a working “thing”; it’s just a small way of doing things that you try to patent, just to have a weapon in an economic fight. Sad. Patents have lost all redeeming value, if they ever had any. ‘
RM: ‘What part of an Operating system do you think is the most difficult to write?’
LT: That’s actually an interesting question, just because my answer is that it’s never any particular part. Yes, all the details tend to be complicated too, but the real job is to make it all work together. Compared to that, any particular detail you might want to point at may be a technical challenge, but ultimately not anything that really puts people off. For example, one area that we had a really hard time with (and that still causes problems, even if it’s gotten much better) is power management and the whole suspend/resume that people do on laptops. And it was hard not so much because any particular detail was really intractable, but because it touches every single subsystem in the whole kernel (and many out in user land too!), and that was really what ended up making it so challenging.
Read the full interview here.
Popularity: 5% [?]
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The brain discoveries continue...
Brain's white matter -- More 'talkative' than once thought
Johns Hopkins scientists have discovered to their surprise that nerves in the mammalian brain’s white matter do more than just ferry information between different brain regions, but in fact process information the way gray matter cells do.
The discovery in mouse cells, outlined in the cover story of the March issue of Nature Neuroscience, shows that brain cells “talk” with each other in more ways than previously thought.
“We were surprised to see these nerve axons talking to other cells in the white matter,” says Dwight Bergles, Ph.D., an associate professor of neuroscience at Hopkins.
The discovery focuses on oligodendrocyte precursor cells (OPCs), whose main role when they mature into oligodendrocytes is to wrap themselves around and insulate nerves with a whitish coat of protective myelin. The immature cells simply hang around and divide very slowly, waiting to be spurred into action.
To learn more about OPCs that reside in the brain’s white matter, the Johns Hopkins researchers measured activity from individual precursor cells in the corpus callosum, a region of white matter that connects the two brain hemispheres. To their surprise, OPCs were found to have electrical signals produced by the neurotransmitter glutamate, similar to the signals used as the principle means of cell-to-cell communication and information processing in the gray matter. The phenomenon was unlikely, they said, because in the mouse brain, OPCs in the myelin-rich white matter are far from synapses, the points of contact between nerves where glutamate is released.
Theorizing that OPCs might have experienced glutamate in some less obvious way in this area of the brain, Bergles and his team studied nearby nerve cells to figure out where the glutamate might be coming from.
By forcing single nerve cells to become excited one at a time, they discovered that as electrical impulses are carried along the nerves, glutamate is released and causes electrical signals in the OPCs. A further microscopic hunt revealed that pools of glutamate were present in the nerve fibers wherever they touched OPCs. All of the nerve cells in the white matter that released glutamate within reach of OPCs, moreover, had something in common: no myelin insulation.
Normally myelin speeds electrical impulses. Cells lacking the coating fire 20 to 90 times slower than cells coated with myelin. Myelin loss is well known to impair signaling and information processing, causing nerve cells to die and creating such neurodegenerative conditions as multiple sclerosis.
Bergles speculates that this white matter activity his team discovered may help “naked” nerve cells signal nearby OPCs and say “cover me with myelin because we need to replace another cell that has been damaged.”
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9 July 2007
GSA Release No. 07-25
Judith Totman Parrish is New Geological Society of America Vice President
Boulder, CO, USA — Judith Totman Parrish, Professor of Geological Sciences at the University of Idaho, is the new Vice President of the Geological Society of America. She will serve a one-year term beginning 1 July 2007.
Parrish earned B.A., M.A., and M.S. degrees in biology and a Ph.D. in earth science from the University of California, Santa Cruz. Before joining the University of Idaho in 2003, she served as associate dean and professor of geosciences at the University of Arizona. She recently stepped down after a four-year term as dean of the College of Science at the University of Idaho.
Parrish has a long and distinguished record of service with GSA. Before becoming Vice President, she served on GSA's governing Council, the editorial board of GSA's journal Geology, numerous Society standing committees, and a recent strategic planning task force.
"This is an exciting time to serve in leadership of the geosciences," said Parrish. "Climate change, natural hazards, availability of fresh water, and changes in the energy industry are global issues in which the Geological Society of America has an important role to play."
The Geological Society of America, founded in 1888, is a broad, unifying scientific society with 20,700 members from academia, government, and industry in more than 85 countries. Through its meetings, publications, and programs, GSA enhances the professional growth of its members and promotes the geosciences in the service of humankind. Headquartered in Boulder, Colorado, GSA encourages cooperative research among earth, life, planetary, and social scientists, fosters public dialogue on geoscience issues, and supports all levels of earth science education.
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A flowering shrub from the Andean cloud forests made taxonomic history last month. The plant—now dubbed Brunfelsia plowmaniana—had puzzled botanists for decades as they endeavored to determine whether or not it was truly an evolutionary newcomer. When its DNA revealed this to be true, researchers made the unprecedented move to include B. plowmaniana's genetic code in its description as a new species, in the journal PhytoKeys. That decision could open the door to future DNA definitions of new botanical species—and heal a rift in the field of botany.
B. plowmaniana's saga began 30 years ago, when botanist Michael Nee approached ethnobotanist Timothy Plowman at The Field Museum in Chicago with specimens from a flowering shrub collected in the Bolivian mountains. A member of the nightshade family, Brunfelsia are known for their occasionally toxic and hallucinogenic properties, as well as their bright, color-changing flowers.
The particular species Nee presented to Plowman was labeled Brunfelsia uniflora—however, Nee and Plowman questioned the identification. Plowman had studied B. uniflora in the Brazilian lowlands, and it seemed improbable that the same plant had dispersed hundreds of kilometers into the cloud forests. Yet neither botanist was certain: "Plowman didn't know this specimen as a living plant, and I didn't know the Brazilian plant as a living plant," says Nee, now a botanist at The New York Botanical Garden. Convinced of a difference but unable to pinpoint it, Plowman continued to study and revise his writings on the brunfelsia genus until his death in 1989, yet he never solved the riddle.
More than two decades later, molecular biologist Natalia Filipowicz at the Munich Botanical Garden's herbarium reexamined the mysterious shrub. Filipowicz studied specimens from 50 species of Brunfelsia to characterize the genetic variation across the genus. When she reached the presumed B. uniflora of the Andes, she hit upon a set of genes that confirmed Plowman and Nee's suspicions. "Simply put," Filipowicz says, "the new species had unique DNA substitutions in the region that we studied." The substitutions proved that this Brunfelsia species was unique. Filipowicz and botanist Susanne Renner, director of the Ludwig Maximilians University of Munich Herbarium and Munich Botanical Garden, turned to Nee for a new physical description of the plant, and the trio published their description of Brunfelsia plowmaniana, named in honor of Timothy Plowman.
Including Filipowicz's genomic analysis prominently might seem like a logical choice, yet, despite dozens of other species confirmed in a similar manner, their description was a first. In fact, in 1996, the International Botanical Congress (IBC), which determines the code for naming new species, had roundly rebuffed an effort to publish species identification based primarily on genetic analysis. The reaction discouraged many in the field from similar efforts for years.
Why has the acceptance of molecular evidence taken so long? The delay is due in part to a long existing cultural divide in botany: On one side are botanists who work in the field and herbarium (storehouses for dried plants). On the other are those in the laboratory who put plants under the microscope or examine their chemical makeup. Although crossover does exist, increasing specialization has disproportionately given the task of naming a new species to the former group. "Traditionally, the people who work in the herbarium and name the plants never set foot in the lab— and the people in the lab are typically not the ones who name plants because they don't know how to and the rules are so arcane," Renner says.
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Cook Vineyard Weekly Newsletter 10.8.12
Every year it seems one variety out performs the rest. This year is turning out to be just that for the Pinot Noir crop. One could possible say Vintage 2012 is the year of “The Pinot Noir”. The crops are coming in 50% higher above normal with some vineyards producing even higher with great quality.
Why is The Pinot Noir crop so heavy?
Well it can be best explained this way. Normally Pinot Noir has small clusters with small berries, this year the clusters are a bit bigger because the berries are larger. Last year was not a great year for Pinot Noir, which had small yields mostly due to shatter (flowering issues caused by the June rains). This allowed the plant to grow stronger last year because of its light crop. Add this with the great growing season weather could explain the increase in yields.
So far Chardonnay, Cabernet Sauvignon, Syrah, Merlot and Zinfandel are showing higher yields than normal, but nothing compared to the Pinot Noir.
If anyone wants to visit us in the vineyards to learn more about the world of viticulture, please call us at 707.490.8921. Also check our website www.cvmgrapes.com.
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Send a link to this page to your friends and colleagues.
Look for the “CDE”
The Certified Diabetes Educator designation is the gold standard for diabetes educators. Professionals with the “CDE” credential have achieved a level of expertise that is recognized by the American Association of Diabetes Educators. They have completed a required number of patient care hours, passed a comprehensive written exam and participate in continuing education opportunities. Different health professionals including physicians, psychologists, nurses, dietitians, podiatrists and pharmacists can earn the “CDE”. A “CDE” should provide reliable information.
The Good and the Bad
TV isn’t always the most reliable way to get information. Television reporters race to be first to broadcast breaking medical news, often before the medical community reviews the facts. From “high carb” to “no carb” to “low carb” to “good versus bad carb,” television reports frequently contradict each other.
A Virtual Jungle
The Web has thousands of diabetes-related sites. Some are worthwhile, and others use unqualified “experts” to sell their products. Search for sites that are affiliated with well-respected health centers, universities, known experts or groups. Bulletin boards and chat rooms sometimes offer potentially dangerous information given by well-meaning participants. Be wary and always confirm what you learn with a trusted professional.
Hot off the Presses
Quality articles should reveal their information sources. Make sure they are reliable ones, such as universities, diabetes research centers and known experts. Misprints and errors do happen, so be careful; don’t always believe what you read.
Respected diabetes and health magazines and journals list their editorial board members at the front of each issue. These individuals review articles for content and accuracy. They should have expertise in diabetes-related fields, appropriate credentials and ideally be affiliated with a research center, university or respected organization. If their qualifications seem questionable, the facts in the magazine may be as well.
May Be Outdated
Books can be extremely helpful, especially when written by qualified health professionals or published by recognized medical organizations. Be wary of personal stories written by authors whose only qualification is that they have diabetes. These can be inspirational, but they may contain inaccurate or even dangerous recommendations. It takes a considerable amount of time to write a book, so some information, accurate when written, may be outdated by the time it reaches the bookstore shelves.
Reliable information about diabetes can be obtained from many sources. Be cautious and check what you’ve learned with your healthcare team before trying any new suggestions or making any changes to your diabetes self-care.
Jul 1, 2005
Diabetes Health is the essential resource for people living with diabetes- both newly diagnosed and experienced as well as the professionals who care for them. We provide balanced expert news and information on living healthfully with diabetes. Each issue includes cutting-edge editorial coverage of new products, research, treatment options, and meaningful lifestyle issues.
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A major tobacco-industry funded advertising blitz has backfired, with new research revealing the "It won't work, so why do it" campaign persuaded more people to support the plain packaging of cigarettes than oppose it.
The Cancer Council Victoria survey of 2,101 Victorians who recalled the ad campaign found:
- More than eight out of ten (86.2%) respondents said the ad didn't affect their view of plain packaging
- 8.4% of respondents said the ad actually increased their support of plain packaging
- Only 3.9% of respondents felt the ad reduced their support of plain packaging
- Just over half of those surveyed (56.5%) recognised the ads, under the moniker of the ‘Alliance of Australian Retailers', were funded by the tobacco industry.
Quit Executive Director Fiona Sharkie said the study showed the public wasn't falling for the industry's dirty tricks.
"The fact that more people actually supported plain packaging after seeing an ad that was meant to turn them against it really shows how laughable this multi-million dollar campaign is."
"The public isn't buying it. Plain packaging will not cause mass job losses or make the jobs of retailers incredibly hard. Research shows plain packaging will stop young people taking up smoking. That's why it's being implemented and has the industry running scared."
Ms Sharkie said although the public wasn't falling for the ads, it was concerning that just over half of respondents knew the ads were funded by the tobacco industry.
"Alarmingly it's only a small majority of people who know who's behind this campaign, and that's exactly what the tobacco-industry wants. It knows people don't trust it, but hope it will trust this sham front group the ‘Alliance of Australian Retailers'," Ms Sharkie said.
"It's vital more Australians realise who's orchestrating this campaign: it's not shopkeepers, but big tobacco putting profits over saving lives."
The ‘Alliance of Australian Retailers' campaign was first run in August last year, and is currently running on radio and in newspapers. See http://www.australianretailers.com.au/latestnews.html
ph: (03) 9635 5498
mob: 0421 155 028
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Although many towns and cities in Colorado were settled by miners and ranchers, Colorado Springs' appeal was climate and culture.
Known as Little London in its early days, the city was founded by Gen. William J. Palmer in 1871. A Civil War hero and railroad magnate, Palmer influenced much of the state's settlement, but Colorado Springs was his home. It had plenty of "civilized" attractions — opera houses, fine hotels and restaurants.
The city sits at the foot of one of America's most famous landmarks, Pikes Peak, upon whose summit Katharine Lee Bates was inspired to write "America the Beautiful." Tourists still converge on the peak, where they can drive, ride the cog railway or even hike to its 14,115-foot summit.
The city thrives on culture, with its Colorado Springs Philharmonic and Pikes Peak Center for performing arts. But there's much more to attract and hold visitors' attention. There are more than 50 area attractions, ranging from the Pioneers Museum to the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center and the American Numismatic Association Money Museum, nirvana for coin collectors.
One of the nation's three U.S. Olympic Training Centers is located here, and visitors can watch world-class athletes in action. Another top attraction is the U.S. Air Force Academy, an elite military training academy just north of the city. You can visit several areas of the academy, including the Cadet Chapel and the Honor Court.
One of the nation's most fabulous city parks, Garden of the Gods, is nestled in the foothills of Pikes Peak. The stunning red rock formations draw tourists with cameras in tow to capture a perfect shot of the rocks framing the snow-capped peak.
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So many people tell me they want to make their own wine, and while there are a lot of wineries that will let you play with blending, there’s nothing like learning from some of the best. If you’re attending the “Winemaker for a Day” experience, you’ll be working with the pros at Michael Mondavi Family Estate to make incredible California wine, and you’ll go home with two cases of your own creation.
With a robust team consisting of a winemaker (Rob Mondavi Jr.), associate winemaker, production manager, information specialist, and five cellar workers – the estate produces six different brands and more than 25 wines. With all that work, they offer a rare wealth of knowledge.
Here are five winemaking tips the Mondavi team shared with me. Some of these might even come in handy when you taste as well:
- Rinse the glass with a splash of the wine before tasting, as the glass may impart other aromas and/or flavors. And rinsing with the wine itself means it won’t get watered down.
- Always give a minute (or more) between tastes so you have a chance to experience the finish fully. You may discover something interesting later in the finish.
- Keep your palate alert. If you are blending, taste each wine first, and then reverse the order. For instance, if you have five different Cabs to blend, taste through them singly first, one through five, then taste five through one. This way, you won’t have prejudice for or against a certain blend due to carryover.
- Blend the ones you like together to see if they act synergistically, or antagonistically. Compare and contrast. Just remember that those flavors you’re experiencing aren’t linear with wine. For instance, adding twice as much isn’t necessarily going to make something taste twice as good or bad. Try lots of different combinations.
- There is no predicting, but there is forgetting. Above all, take notes.
When you graduate to a more advanced level of winemaking, you’ll also face more challenges. I asked Jeanette Schandelmier, Associate Winemaker & Quality Control Manager at MMFE, what most people don’t realize about the winemaking process, and she offered up some information relevant to winemakers and wine drinkers alike:
“Most wine goes through two fermentations, alcoholic and malolactic. During alcoholic fermentation the sugar is changed into alcohol and CO2 by yeast. During malolactic fermentation, malic acid is changed into lactic acid, diacetyl and CO2. Diacetyl is the chemical that makes butter taste buttery, and, by extension, that makes wine taste buttery. Most Chardonnay goes through malolactic fermentation while most Sauvignon Blanc does not – so no surprise, Chardonnay is often called buttery but not SB.
“Maybe everyone knows, but Cabernet Sauvignon is normally aged in barrels (after both fermentations are complete). But they may not know that here it’s also “SO2’d and topped” monthly. That means every barrel comes down, gets scrubbed, opened, sulfur added, filled to the tippity-top and closed back up. Some bad bugs (bacteria) such as acetobacter, which causes wine to turn into vinegar, is an obligate aerobe. This means if there is no oxygen around, it can’t multiply and wreck the wine. Some other bad bugs hate sulfur. Thus, if you fill up the barrel all the way, no air can get in there, and if you keep the sulfur at the right level as well, no bugs.”
Do you have specific questions for the Michael Mondavi Winemaking team? Post them here or send them to me via Twitter @mindyjoyce
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Pediatrics Plus has acquired LearningRx, a franchise which provides cognitive skills training to children and adults with the purpose of significantly improving brain function.
The affiliation provides an opportunity for the programs to provide the most comprehensive and appropriate services for each client referred and together become the leading learning and pediatric therapy service providers in Arkansas.
"We are very excited to partner with a forerunner of therapy services in the state," said Jenny Caldwell, director of LearningRx. "We will have an even greater opportunity to help children and adults overcome obstacles that affect their ability to learn, develop and, ultimately, succeed in both school and in life.
"By transferring ownership to the Pediatrics Plus team, clients will be able to receive a full range of services at one of the best-equipped facilities in Arkansas," said Kent and Melissa Sorrells, owners of LearningRx. They have owned the LearningRx franchise in central Arkansas since 2004.
Beginning Monday, March 4, LearningRx will relocate to Pediatrics Plus's brand-new 31,000-square-foot building, a state-of-the-art facility that recently opened its doors in November of last year, and has an estimated investment value of $7.2 million. The new facility is located at 1900 Aldersgate Road, and combined will employ over 100 employees. The transition includes the existing LearningRx executive director, training director, and trainers.
"Pediatrics Plus is always looking for new and innovative ways to address the obstacles that children and families face regarding health, development and education," said Amy Denton, owner of Pediatrics Plus. "The acquisition of LearningRx provides us with a different approach for many families, when therapy may not be the answer."
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The numbers are in: The 2012 Olympic Games were not only the most watched television event in U.S. history, with 219.4 million total viewers and an average of 31 million viewers each day; they also set records for online viewing, recording nearly 2 billion pageviews and 159 million video streams of events during the Games.
If reports from independent research firms such as Pew Research hold weight, it's possible that eight out of ten Americans (about 78 percent) "watched or followed Olympic coverage either on television, online or on social networks."
The numbers are impressive, and the Olympics may have had a game-changing effect on the online video space.
What did Olympics streaming do for online video?
Live streaming of the Olympics by NBC Sports led to a temporary shift in what the majority of Americans were watching online.
Online viewers of both live and recorded Olympic events not only shattered previous event viewing records but even set Netflix (Nasdaq: NFLX) back on its heels, for at least one day. According to DSL Reports, Netflix viewing on Sunday, July 29 was down 25 percent.
However, that first Sunday's big drop didn't continue into the week, according to network policy enforcement and analytics provider Procera.
"(W)e are finding that there are regional as well as size variances with the peak Netflix consumption," noted Procera Vice President of Global Marketing Cam Cullen. "An East Coast site showed a significant drop in Netflix peak rates (the totals show are the peak rates for each day). However, a West Coast site showed very little variance in Netflix during the entire Olympics run. The interesting fact about both sites is that the total video consumed across all sites does not increase at all, with all types of video (Netflix, YouTube, HTTP Media Streaming) remaining proportional across all sites."
East coast vs. West coast peak rates, July 22-Aug. 9. (Images courtesy of Procera)
Procera measured usage on specific networks participating in its measurement survey.
For a content provider that takes up well over 30 percent of all U.S. bandwidth, the drop is notable--but it's unlikely that another online video event will challenge Netflix's dominance of the pipes this year or next so dramatically.
How did the numbers stack up?
Some 153.4 million videos and 20.4 million hours of video were streamed across computers and smartphones, doubling the amount of streaming video during the Beijing Olympics. More than 64 million of those videos were live streams, a 353 percent increase over 2008.
By Sunday, Aug. 12, during the closing ceremonies, 9.9 million mobile devices had been verified by NBC--perhaps the most device verifications for a single TV Everywhere event so far, NBC speculated in its official release.
NBC offered free access to some Olympics clips, but authenticated cable subscribers could view the entire event live through either their PC or their smartphone.
Charts provided by NBC Sports.
How people used online video
Procera noted on July 31 that over the first two days of the Olympics, including the opening ceremony, online network traffic peaked as high as 34 percent of several providers' overall bandwidth, while volume soared over 100 percent. However, the number of subscribers jumping onto streaming events didn't increase as dramatically.
"The percentage of subscribers consuming the Olympics streaming from NBC seems to be holding steady at ~2%," Procera's Cullen blogged on Aug. 2. "On several cable networks, Wednesday's peak levels for streaming were 50% higher than Tuesday or Thursday (with the key events on Wednesday being a Michael Phelps-Ryan Lochte matchup and the men's gymnastics completion)."
In an earlier post summarizing the first weekend's numbers, he wrote: "Since we did not see a huge rise in the percentage of subscribers participating in the streaming events, this translates into longer streaming sessions and more sessions for each subscriber."
That early observation appeared to hold true throughout the Games. NBC's final tally of online video viewing noted that users averaged 111.4 streaming minutes per viewer on the Web, and 94.3 streaming minutes per viewer over one of its two streaming apps: Live Extra or NBC Olympics. And PC users spent an average of 30 minutes per visit on NBCOlympics.com, well up from 2008, when 12.3 minutes was the norm.
Will the Games pay off financially for NBC?
Possibly. According to Bloomberg, NBC revised its projected $200 million loss, saying it now expects to break even. Either way, the network will end up ahead of where it was after the Beijing Games, where it recorded a $223 million loss.
NBC says it was the much-maligned tape delay broadcasts to U.S. audiences that brought up revenues, thanks to increased ratings. That's hard to argue, with final ratings in.
NBC paid $1.18 billion for the rights to broadcast the Games in the United States. It shelled out an estimated $100 million in production costs as well, bringing its costs to $1.3 billion. With approximately $1 billion in ads booked by the start of the Games, AdWeek speculated on Aug. 13 that the broadcaster would even see a small profit.
Technology and tectonic shifts
Beyond the raw numbers lay some interesting tidbits about how NBC was able to deliver its online video without melting down the Internet, as some critics predicted would happen. While some viewers complained of slow connections and lag, many had no complaints about the quality of the video being streamed to their PCs or devices.
YouTube's partnership with NBC to deliver live and recorded video streams may have been a coup for the Google (Nasdaq: GOOG)-owned service. It also partnered with the International Olympic Committee to stream events to 64 additional countries in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia. Both presented a huge technical challenge for YouTube, which clearly can parlay that experience into future large-scale live streaming ventures.
IPv4 access vs. IPv6 access (the red sliver at top) to NBCOlympics.com via ISPs monitored by Procera.(Image source: Procera)
Also of interest was Cisco's (Nasdaq: CSCO) efforts during the Games. The manufacturer, whose Videoscape platform was in use by NBC to deliver live and on-demand programming from the event, supplied Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) iPads to key NBC customers who were attending the Games in London, as a way to showcase Videoscape's multiscreen capabilities. The hope, clearly, was that customers--some of whom may have been executives from major cable operators--would get a firsthand look at Videoscape's capabilities.
Online users also accessed the streaming Games via IPv6, Procera noted. "It is interesting to know that a small percentage of the streaming traffic (less than 1%) is IPv6, which is consistent with the levels we saw in the World IPv6 Day in June. The fact that the streaming is available via IPv6 is a big step forward, and the fact that at least some users are consuming video over IPv6 is also a big win."
No matter how one looks at it, online video's part in presenting the Olympics changed from being an accessory to primary television coverage, to an almost-essential part of the viewer's preferred experience.
"This was the beginning of a tectonic shift in TV viewing," wrote Jim Barthold in a FierceIPTV commentary. "Everybody has talked about TV Everywhere but it's been limited to what TV content owners wanted to show everywhere and what platforms were available. The Olympics were, literally, TV Everywhere. They showed that if you sufficiently hype an event and throw it on every available media the public will come and watch."
Will NBC and other content providers take the baton and continue the forward momentum that 17 days of Olympics coverage brought to the online video world? That remains to be seen, but we shouldn't have to wait too long to find out.
The Media Group Inc.
809.268.7920 Dominican Republic Mobile
416.784.5663 Canada Home Office
647.520.7410 Canada Mobilehttp://www.linkedin.com/in/manuelcanalesSkype: manuel_canales
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Genome-wide analysis of microsatellite repeats in humans: their abundance and density in specific genomic regions
BACKGROUND:Simple sequence repeats (SSRs) are found in most organisms, and occupy about 3% of the human genome. Although it is becoming clear that such repeats are important in genomic organization and function and may be associated with disease conditions, their systematic analysis has not been reported. This is the first report examining the distribution and density of simple sequence repeats (1-6 base-pairs (bp)) in the entire human genome.RESULTS:The densities of SSRs across the human chromosomes were found to be relatively uniform. However, the overall density of SSR was found to be high in chromosome 19. Triplets and hexamers were more predominant in exonic regions compared to intronic and intergenic regions, except for chromosome Y. Comparison of densities of various SSRs revealed that whereas trimers and pentamers showed a similar pattern (500-1,000 bp/Mb) across the chromosomes, di- tetra- and hexa-nucleotide repeats showed patterns of higher (2,000-3,000 bp/Mb) density. Repeats of the same nucleotide were found to be higher than other repeat types. Repeats of A, AT, AC, AAT, AAC, AAG, AGC, AAAC, AAAT, AAAG, AAGG, AGAT predominate, whereas repeats of C, CG, ACT, ACG, AACC, AACG, AACT, AAGC, AAGT, ACCC, ACCG, ACCT, CCCG and CCGG are rare.CONCLUSIONS:The overall SSR density was comparable in all chromosomes. The density of different repeats, however, showed significant variation. Tri- and hexa-nucleotide repeats are more abundant in exons, whereas other repeats are more abundant in non-coding regions.
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Universal e-mail plan
Aug 08, 1998 03:29 PM
by M K Ramadoss
Whether one recognizes or not, Internet is revolutionizing the field of
communication. In a recent report in Computerworld, US is planning to
provide a e-mail addresses for all Americans. This is similar to a proposal
made in U.K some time ago. We can look for very unusal opportunities for
communicating with everyone in the world in the future.
Instant communication with large numbers of people around the world.
Extremely low cost of communication.
Increase in the volume of communication.
Increase in the velocity of communication.
Unfiltered/uncensored instant communication.
Ability to present Theosophy to a large number of people at very little cost.
Instant distribution of information about the happenings in one part of the
world to all parts of the world.
Breaking the strangle hold on the communication by established organizations.
Leveling of the field between the haves and have-nots. An individual can
have the same communication power as a multimillion dollar organization.
Leveling of the field for people with a variety of backgrounds and beliefs
Leveling of the field without any discrimination of caste, creed, sex,
color or national origin.
Interested individuals have immediate access to information at no or very
little cost. No admission or donation needed to access information.
Organization which have thrived on controlling the channel of communication
between it and its members, clients, customers will lost the control.
Organizations which have thrived on censoring and editing of the
distributed messages, will no longer be able to do it.
Organizations with large budgets have to compete with poor-man/woman who
are fired with enthusiasm for cause.
Organizations find it difficult to silence its critics.
For some organizations, the very purpose of their existence will evaporate.
Individuals may have to face messages not to their personal liking.
International organizations no longer will be able to limit the knowledge
of the happenings in one country from getting broadcast to all other
Need to read messages not to our personal liking due to their contents or
Look for exciting developments inthe near future,
Clinton backs universal e-mail plan
August 7, 1998 Web posted at: 10:50 AM EDT by Tom Diederich
(IDG) -- The Clinton administration wants all
Americans to have an e-mail address to go
along with their street address and is asking
the U.S. Postal Service to deliver the project's
The idea is to connect physical and electronic addresses
using the nation's Internet "country code" -- the top-level
".us" domain. Then a company or
government agency, for example, could send bills or bulletins to your
electronic mailbox as well as your home.
The administration said the move would
"accelerate and universalize the growth of
electronic commerce," according to the
Every country has a top-level domain. In
many countries, such as Japan, companies
and other organizations incorporate their
nation's top-level domain into their Web site addresses.
The administration is looking ahead to the
day when most Americans have access to
the Internet or at least e-mail from their
homes. "Everybody would have an e-mail
address, and for those who cannot access it
right now, it would be downloaded and sent
to them through the mail" so that they could
use it at a library or other facility with
Internet access, Brennan said.
[Back to Top]
Dedicated to the Theosophical Philosophy and its Practical Application
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The following bibliographies were compiled to guide readers to materials on various Holocaust-related topics. They list only materials that are in the Library’s collection or available via the World Wide Web. They are not meant to be exhaustive. In most cases, annotations are provided to help the user determine each item’s focus, and call numbers for the Museum’s Library are given in parentheses following each citation. Those unable to visit might be able to find these works in a nearby public or academic library as well, or acquire them through interlibrary loan. Talk to your local librarian for assistance.
Latest update: August 1, 2008
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There are so many stark contrasts in the world today. These are times out of which great epics of literature ought to be written but aren’t. Society is too engrossed in drivel like whether badminton players in the Olympics were cheating or not. This summer, the driest in 50 years in parts of the Midwest, the Army Corps of Engineers is dredging deeper channels for the barges on the Mississippi River, which is at an all time low level. Just last year, rainfall in the eastern corn belt was at an all-time high and the Corps was desperately trying to control flooding on the Mississippi.
Weather-related contrasts are occurring here in my own Ohio backyard where it barely rained at all from May to August. Close to our farm stand two cornfields just across a narrow road from each other. One has nearly normal corn and the other (in one of the photos) has drought-stricken corn. I know personally both farmers who planted these two fields and both are very competent. The soil in both fields is the same. Fertilizer applied was about the same. Rainfall was the same. This contrast appears all over the county, all over the state, all over the Corn Belt. What is going on here?
Farmers and farm reporters and this blog have talked the question half to death. Our own local chapter of contrary farmers lists these possibilities for the difference in the two fields: time of planting, depth of planting, corn variety, seed bed preparation, plant population, and prayer. Since the two farmers involved both attend church regularly, I think we can rule out that last factor. Seed bed preparation was about the same, too.
I’ve yet to hear anyone claiming to have the definitive answer to the contrast, but here’s what we think happened…
Find out Gene's hypothesis for the rotten growing season at his blog, The Contrary Farmer.
|Gene Logsdon is the author of, most recently, A Sanctuary of Trees: Beech Nuts, Birdsongs, Baseball Bats, and Benedictions|
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By JACK GILLUM, Associated Press
GEORGETOWN, S.C. (AP) — The rusty stains on Shirley Carter's home are a permanent reminder of her fight with the local steel mill, just down U.S. Highway 17 near the boat docks. No matter how many cans of industrial-strength acid she went through, the red tint on her property never seemed to go away.
In 1998, Carter and her neighbors sued Georgetown Steel, then owned by the company Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney co-founded, Bain Capital. They sought millions in cleanup costs and accused the mill's owners of leaving their historic Southern neighborhood looking like it had been hit by a "chemical bomb."
State officials determined the mill was largely to blame for the pollution. As the lawsuit dragged on for years, the steel mill filed for bankruptcy and the plant ultimately settled with the residents.
In the end, Bain walked away with more than $30 million in profits. Carter got $800.
"That wasn't even enough to paint the house," said Carter, who is a Romney supporter this election.
As a presidential candidate, Romney has pledged to roll back environmental regulations as a way to spur growth. Under President Barack Obama, he recently quipped, "a regulator would have shut down the Wright Brothers for their 'dust pollution.'"
But the story of Georgetown Steel shows how Romney's company thrived under conditions that largely allowed the emissions to continue for years, leaving locals to clean up the mess after Bain left town.
Asked to comment on the Bain legacy in Georgetown, the Romney campaign instead criticized Obama on unemployment and green energy projects. A Bain spokeswoman did not directly address the impact of the plant's emissions but instead said the firm "undertook an ambitious plan" to turn around GS Industries and invested millions of dollars into the company.
The Georgetown saga surfaced in the mid-1990s, when South Carolina environmental officials received complaints from a local resident asking why his boat kept turning red-orange. The phenomenon was more than a nuisance, like ash from a fire, as dust aggressively stained not only nearby boats but cars and homes as well.
The Georgetown residents' complaints came a few years after Bain Capital purchased the Georgetown mill and its sister plant in Kansas City, Mo., as part of a $24.5 million buyout deal. The parent company was later called GS Industries and became one of the largest producers of wire rods.
Bain Capital, a private-equity firm Romney co-founded in 1984, had an impressive track record by then. It would eventually buy dozens of troubled companies and help make them profitable, a skill Romney has trumpeted on the campaign trail as making him more suited to lead the country than Obama.
But amid Bain's profitable ownership of GS Industries, the plant's production had created unsightly byproducts. By the late 1990s, the red dust was so was so ubiquitous that those who lived in rustic, two-story homes near Georgetown's waterfront took to calling it "The Stuff" — a mineral called goethite that's used to make steel.
"Everybody talked about the red dust, The Stuff," said Marilyn Burkhardt, who owned a seven-room bed and breakfast with her husband before leaving town in 2000.
"My husband scrubbed the house probably every other week with a pressure hose," Burkhardt said. It was often difficult for guests to eat breakfast on the deck. "We had to work like crazy. And for what? Just to keep the outsides of our houses clean."
South Carolina regulators placed monitoring sensors around town and compared air-quality results with similar sites in the state capital, Columbia, and in Alabama. In turn, officials wanted to see improvements at the mill and at times cited the plant during Bain's ownership for environmental violations, records show.
They also asked that the mill's emissions "be minimized" and that management review its steel-making process to reduce staining. Indeed, the plant paved its dirt roadways, installed a truck wash and sealed gaps in its buildings to prevent The Stuff from leaking out.
The state report, made available to The Associated Press through a public-records request, said the mill was largely responsible for goethite emissions. Yet the staining continued.
So Georgetown neighbors took the mill to court, with the case growing into a class-action lawsuit covering those who lived within a few miles of the steel mill. At one point, the plaintiffs sought millions of dollars in at least three civil cases, civil filings show.
The federal government has declared goethite a hazardous substance for workers exposed to large quantities each day. It's generally not toxic like arsenic and it doesn't cause cancer like benzene, two pollutants that are regulated by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
In 1999, just as the mill's lawyers asked a local judge to force the plaintiffs to turn over more documents, Romney announced he was leaving Bain to organize the Salt Lake City Olympics. Romney's federal presidential financial disclosures report that he had no active role in Bain after 1999. Several Romney associates recently told the AP that Romney made no managerial decisions after that date, but they also said he kept his formal CEO position and continued to meet with Bain partners. And an AP analysis of regulatory documents between 1999 and 2001 also showed Romney kept up an active role in overseeing Bain-related investments.
Romney stood to benefit financially from his company's investments. And his departure from Bain also came as the balance sheets at GS Industries began to look bleak. Despite Bain's reputation for turning around troubled companies like Staples and Domino's Pizza, the Georgetown plant was in trouble.
In February 2001, the company filed for bankruptcy protection with more than $500 million in debt. Romney has blamed cheap steel from China for the plant's demise, telling Fox News in December that he remembered a few dozen steel mills also foundered.
But as soon as the bankruptcy documents were filed, company lawyers told the Georgetown neighbors that the settlement was on hold. To see any money, they'd have to get in line behind everyone else — including Bain, with its majority ownership share. The steel mill offered to settle the case for $870,000.
By September 2003, as GS Industries was emerging from bankruptcy and after Bain sold the company, a local judge ordered that Georgetown homeowners in the lawsuit receive their money. After attorney's fees, that came to about $113,000, split dozens of ways.
And it certainly wasn't enough to repair the damage, some residents said.
"I had the house cleaned and pressure-washed all the time," said Paul Skoko, who was among those who sued. "Within two years, it needed to be done again. That's when I said, 'That's it. I'm not doing this anymore. It simply costs too much."
Skoko opted to let his house turn a hue of burnt orange-red.
Links to documents at http://apne.ws/NRjdLb
Contact the Washington investigative team at DCInvestigations(at)ap.org
Follow Jack Gillum on Twitter at http://twitter.com/jackgillum
Copyright 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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With President Obama's gun control package laid out on Wednesday, which includes pushing for an Assault Weapons Ban in addition to 23 executive orders for gun control, we should discuss other areas where we might potentially save lives as well. President Obama has often used the term "military-style" assault weapons to describe civilian semiautomatic versions of military firearms. (They are not the same.) Going with this logic, we should also take a look at "military-style" vehicles: namely, sport-utility-vehicles (SUVs).
Many are unaware that the SUV's origins are directly linked to the military. After World War I, the United States military was in need of a rugged vehicle that could serve to transport equipment and be used as a reconnaissance vehicle. Thus, the Jeep was born. From the initial Jeep design, we are now inundated with other military-style vehicles, like the Hummer which is derived from the Humvee.
These vehicles are not needed. Further, they pose serious danger to all Americans as they have become one of the most popular designs of vehicles on our highways and roads today, increasing in market share day after day.
One of the main dangers of SUVs is their tendency to rollover during accidents. According to research in 2008, there were 10,694 deaths due to vehicle rollovers, with 62% of SUV deaths attributed to rollovers. In addition, occupants in SUVs were twice as likely to die from rollover crashes than those of occupants of small cars, with 8,062 SUV occupants dying in 2006 alone.
In addition to the danger to the occupants, SUVs also pose a danger occupants of smaller cars on the road. Studies show that SUV "high-set grills deliver blunt force trauma to the heads of lower-sitting sedan occupants," and in fatal accidents, for every one SUV fatality avoided there are 4.3 small car occupant fatalities.
Another negative consequence of SUVs has always been fuel economy. In our efforts to build a green economy, we must do away with these fuel inefficient "vehicles of war." Of the 2012 large SUVs, even the ones with the best fuel economy meagerly offer just over 20 mpg.
These military style vehicles were designed for theaters of war and have no place on our streets or in the parking lots of our movie theaters, schools, and shopping malls. If we can save only one life, then we owe it to the American people to try. We must demand that our legislators take action to enact a ban on all military style vehicles. This is something we can do today, and, unlike firearms, we don't have that pesky Second Amendment standing in the way.
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1. The Stem Cell
What Is a Stem Cell?
A stem cell is a cell that has the ability to divide (self replicate) for indefinite periods—often throughout the life of the organism. Under the right conditions, or given the right signals, stem cells can give rise (differentiate) to the many different cell types that make up the organism. That is, stem cells have the potential to develop into mature cells that have characteristic shapes and specialized functions, such as heart cells, skin cells, or nerve cells.
The Differentiation Potential of Stem Cells: Basic Concepts and Definitions
Many of the terms used to define stem cells depend on the behavior of the cells in the intact organism (in vivo), under specific laboratory conditions (in vitro), or after transplantation in vivo, often to a tissue that is different from the one from which the stem cells were derived.
For example, the fertilized egg is said to be totipotent—from the Latin totus, meaning entire—because it has the potential to generate all the cells and tissues that make up an embryo and that support its development in utero. The fertilized egg divides and differentiates until it produces a mature organism. Adult mammals, including humans, consist of more than 200 kinds of cells. These include nerve cells (neurons), muscle cells (myocytes), skin (epithelial) cells, blood cells (erythrocytes, monocytes, lymphocytes, etc.), bone cells (osteocytes), and cartilage cells (chondrocytes). Other cells, which are essential for embryonic development but are not incorporated into the body of the embryo, include the extraembryonic tissues, placenta, and umbilical cord. All of these cells are generated from a single, totipotent cell—the zygote, or fertilized egg.
Most scientists use the term pluripotent to describe stem cells that can give rise to cells derived from all three embryonic germ layers—mesoderm, endoderm, and ectoderm. These three germ layers are the embryonic source of all cells of the body (see Figure 1.1. Differentiation of Human Tissues). All of the many different kinds of specialized cells that make up the body are derived from one of these germ layers (see Table 1.1. Embryonic Germ Layers From Which Differentiated Tissues Develop). "Pluri"—derived from the Latin plures—means several or many. Thus, pluripotent cells have the potential to give rise to any type of cell, a property observed in the natural course of embryonic development and under certain laboratory conditions.
Unipotent stem cell, a term that is usually applied to a cell in adult organisms, means that the cells in question are capable of differentiating along only one lineage. "Uni" is derived from the Latin word unus, which means one. Also, it may be that the adult stem cells in many differentiated, undamaged tissues are typically unipotent and give rise to just one cell type under normal conditions. This process would allow for a steady state of self-renewal for the tissue. However, if the tissue becomes damaged and the replacement of multiple cell types is required, pluripotent stem cells may become activated to repair the damage .
The embryonic stem cell is defined by its origin—that is from one of the earliest stages of the development of the embryo, called the blastocyst. Specifically, embryonic stem cells are derived from the inner cell mass of the blastocyst at a stage before it would implant in the uterine wall. The embryonic stem cell can self-replicate and is pluripotent—it can give rise to cells derived from all three germ layers.
The adult stem cell is an undifferentiated (unspecialized) cell that is found in a differentiated (specialized) tissue; it can renew itself and become specialized to yield all of the specialized cell types of the tissue from which it originated. Adult stem cells are capable of self-renewal for the lifetime of the organism. Sources of adult stem cells have been found in the bone marrow, blood stream, cornea and retina of the eye, the dental pulp of the tooth, liver, skin, gastrointestinal tract, and pancreas. Unlike embryonic stem cells, at this point in time, there are no isolated adult stem cells that are capable of forming all cells of the body. That is, there is no evidence, at this time, of an adult stem cell that is pluripotent.
Figure 1.1. Differentiation of Human Tissues.
(© 2001 Terese Winslow, Caitlin Duckwall)
Table 1.1. Embryonic Germ Layers From Which Differentiated Tissues Develop
|Embryonic Germ Layer
Thyroid, parathyroid glands
Larynx, trachea, lung
Urinary bladder, vagina, urethra
Gastrointestinal (GI) organs (liver, pancreas)
Lining of the GI tract
Lining of the respiratory tract
||Bone marrow (blood)|
Skeletal, smooth, and cardiac muscle
Connective tissues (including bone, cartilage)
Heart and blood vessels (vascular system)
Neural tissue (neuroectoderm)
Connective tissue of the head and face
- Chandross, K.J. and Mezey, E. (2001). Plasticity of adult bone marrow stem cells. Mattson, M.P. and Van Zant, G. eds. (Greenwich, CT: JAI Press).
- Slack, J.M. (2000). Stem cells in epithelial tissues. Science. 287, 1431–1433.
Historical content: June 17, 2001
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Finding A Clerkship
Whether you intend to enter private practice, public interest, government service, or legal academia, clerkships are a very good way to start your legal career. Clerkships offer an opportunity to work closely with a judge, learn about the inner workings of the judicial system, and hone your legal research and writing skills. This provides one or two years of practical training and gives you valuable skills and enables you to make valuable professional contacts in the substantive and/or geographical areas in which you hope to practice. In short, a clerkship can be an ideal stepping stone into any legal job.
Thinking about a clerkship? Start planning for it NOW!
AS A FIRST YEAR
- Begin to develop strong relationships with faculty-speak up in class, go to office hours, invite the professor for coffee
- Connect with second and third year students who are applying or have secured a clerkship-talk to them about your interest in clerking and ask how they prepared/wished they had prepared for it
- Reach out to current and former clerks-learn about their judges and court
- Talk to former clerks and to other attorneys at your summer job about clerkships, courts and judges-seek out their advice about courts and judges that would be a good fit for you
- Develop a writing sample
- Consider a judicial externship for your 1L summer. For more information, review our brief guide.
AS A SECOND YEAR
- Build strong relationship with faculty--take additional courses, serve as a research or teaching assistant-get to know them better
- Continue to research courts and judges by reaching out to students, current and former clerks, and employer contacts
- Polish your writing sample
- Meet with the Judicial Clerkship Director for clerkship advising
Stanford's Strong Clerkship Tradition
Stanford Law School has a strong clerkship tradition. Our graduates clerk primarily in the US federal courts at both the appellate and trial court levels. For the past 38 consecutive years, Stanford graduates have clerked for justices on the U.S. Supreme Court. In the state courts, most of our graduates clerk at the highest state appellate court level.
Our Clerkship Community supports and assists current students interested in learning more about judges and courts.
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Randall Terry responded to my post. Here is his email in full:
Your read of history is political.
Almost all of the signers were Trinitarians (except Ben Franklin). Almost all were from an Anglican (Reformed Catholic) background.
To say that the God they were referring to was not the God of the Old and New Testament is a laughable, absurd fantasy...one that could only be constructed in recent times.
The most frequently quoted book in revolutionary literature was Deuteronomy.
The Phrase "the laws of Nature and Natures God" I.e., [sic] revealed Law and Natural Law, shows where they were at. Natural Law is a long and old body of thought from Catholic Philosohpers [sic] (and protestant as well) that speaks of the law written on all mens [sic] hearts...by the Judeo Christian God...the only God.
I have another piece coming out soon, called "CLoning [sic] Thomas Jefferson, and ignoring Dean Addell"
Look for it, you may learn something. You could also get the book, "Defending the Declaration" by Gary Amos. It is a very scholorly [sic] look at the Declaration from the eyes and writings of those who lived then...not now.
Thanks, and Christ's peace be with you,
I won’t reply here to every point he made because most what I disagree with in this reply is already answered in my original post. I will take aim at just a few of his many errors.
First, the claim that “[a]lmost all of the signers [of the Declaration of Independence] were Trinitarians (except Ben Franklin).” Many men signed the Declaration and I certainly don’t know the religious orientation of all of them, but the most important person behind the Declaration—its author Thomas Jefferson—not only did not believe in the concept of the Trinity, but referred to it as “insane.” The other men on the drafting committee included John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman, and Robert. R. Livingston. Our second President, John Adams, was a Unitarian. Unitarianism’s defining feature is that it rejects the Trinity. And of course, Ben Franklin’s deism is well known (and acknowledged by Terry). Alan Dershowitz writes, “The religious views of Sherman and Livingston are less well known, though it seems likely that the former was a traditional Christian, while the latter was closer to Jefferson and had expressed religious views that have been characterized as ‘daring to the point of impiety.’” America Declares Independence, at 70.
One point I often hear apologists for the “Christian nation” idea make (after M.E. Bradford) is that there were only a handful of avowed deists at the time of the founding, the rest professed some type of orthodox Christianity. This is a distortion because, while the overwhelming majority of the founders may have been Christian in *some* sense, a great deal of our most important “Christian” founders were anything but the Jerry Falwell, et al. “born-again” fundamentalist types. Let us not forget, men like Bill Clinton and Howard Dean also are “Christians” in some sense.
And rejecting the doctrine of the Trinity is a good way to measure who is or is not an “orthodox” Christian (most born-again types that I know tell me that if you reject the Trinity, you are not a real Christian).
Let’s see how our first four presidents stack up relating to their views on the Trinity. Both Adams and Jefferson, our 2nd & 3rd respectively, clearly rejected the Trinity.
George Washington’s exact religious views are, in my opinion, not fully settled. One reason why this is so, is because he tended to be very silent about them. His silence is telling: Most “born-again” evangelizers are anything but silent about their religion (just look at how Terry ended his email to me -- any evidence of George Washington ending his letters with things like "Christ's peace be with you"?) Silence, in these matters, is more of a tell-tale feature of someone who either has something to hide, or something that he doesn’t want to wear on his sleeve. And many deists back in the day could not wear their “deism” or any kind of “non-orthodoxy” on their sleeves back then—especially the politicians. Jefferson was positively vilified by the forces of “religious correctness” for his non-orthodoxy. He was called, among other things, a “French infidel” and a “howling atheist.” A prominent reverend campaigning against Jefferson’s presidency stated that if Jefferson were elected, it would “destroy religion, introduce immorality, and loosen the bonds of society.” It thus becomes understandable why if Washington were a deist, as a man of great prudence, he would be silent about it.
So was Washington a deist? One of America’s most distinguished historians of religion, Edwin Gaustad, labeled Washington “a cool deist.” Washington, like many of the “Christian” founders, was well versed in Enlightenment teachings and commonly used Enlightenment terminology in his words. Washington, like Ben Franklin and other deists, characteristically referred to God as the “Grand Architect of the Universe,” and in other ways that could lead one to conclude that he was a deist. See Kramnick & Moore’s, The Godless Constitution, p. 101. In the New York Times, Kenneth Davis writes that, although George Washington attended religious services in the Episcopalian Church, he often left church before Holy Communion which is something that orthodox Anglicans did not do. Davis also thinks that Washington was a deist. I have not yet seen the evidence sufficient to unequivocally categorize him as a deist. But the evidence of his Trinitarianism is sorely lacking.
James Madison, our fourth President, may have been the first one to believe in the Trinity. His religious views appeared to be more conventional than say, Jefferson’s. But Madison was, like Jefferson, a strict adherent to the doctrines of secular government and separating Church & State, believing that the “purities” of both should never be mixed with one another. Now Madison didn’t always live up to this ideal as President. But when, for reasons of expediency, Madison could not keep with his ideals, he realized that this was a failure. For instance, under intense political pressure during the War of 1812, Madison, “recommended, rather than decreed, that religious denominations and societies ‘so disposed’ appeal to God for assistance in the war. There was no suggestion that failure to comply involved any public penalty.” The Godless Constitution, at 106. But Madison later regretted this decision. “In 1832, at the age of eighty-one, Madison conceded that it might not be easy to keep clear the line between religious and civil authority; he himself had problems with his war proclamation, he noted. All the more reason, then, he advised future generations, to take the strictest reading of the separation of church and state, 'an entire abstinence of the government from interference in any way whatever.'" Id.
Madison believed the way he did because he—like Jefferson and others—was a strict disciple of the Enlightenment liberals, particularly Locke—who gave us the “theoretical” or “epistemological” understanding as to why religion belonged in the realm of the “private” or “opinion” as opposed to the realm of “public” or “truth.” Locke and the other Enlightenment philosophers denied the Trinity (this shouldn’t surprise us—the philosophers believed first and foremost that Truth is ascertainable by Man’s Reason, whatever doesn’t comport with Reason cannot be the Truth, and the religious doctrines were true only insofar as they were reasonable. The Trinity was a doctrine that the philosophers had a big problem with on the grounds that it was not reasonable. Hence, Jefferson’s categorizing it as “insane.”) But the teachings of the Enlightenment philosophers were so appealing that even orthodox (Trinitarian) Christians eventually came to accept the Truth of their teachings, even going so far as incorporating Hobbsean—Lockean theory into their sermons.
For instance, John Witherspoon, a founder and former President of Princeton University, is often referred to as a “Calvinist” because he was a Presbyterian minister (and Calvin was the founder of Presbyterianism). He certainly believed in the Trinity. Witherspoon nonetheless was a Lockean. As Walter Berns writes, “Witherspoon could speak unreservedly of ‘natural liberty’ and ‘natural rights’; and of the ‘state of nature’ and like Locke…of its ‘inconveniences,’ inconveniences that caused men to leave it for the ‘social state.’ But in the same lecture he could admonish his listeners and readers to accept ‘Christ Jesus as he is offered in the gospel,’ for ‘except that a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.’ In a word, Witherspoon saw no conflict between the new political philosophy and the old religion, which is to say between the principles set down in the Declaration of Independence and what he understood as orthodox Christianity.” Making Patriots, p. 42. But Berns writes elsewhere that Locke’s state of nature teaching is wholly alien to the Bible. Thus, Enlightenment theory is not a Biblical ideology. At best, it’s perhaps (or not) compatible with orthodox Christianity. But it’s certainly not compatible with an understanding of orthodox Christianity that seeks to use the state to enforce the tenants of orthodox Christianity.
In sum, if our first President even to believe in the doctrine of the Trinity (and I'm still not fully sure that Madison did -- men imbibed in Elightenment theory as Madison was were likely to be highly skeptical of this doctrine) was a militant advocate of the separation of Church & State, this tells us that America was not founded by a bunch of Pat Robertsons and Jerry Falwells. I could write more. I want to talk about Roger Williams and the rationale put forth by orthodox Protestants for secular government. But that will have to come later. I’ve written enough already.
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Arriving just after the Pesach holiday and its celebration of our Divine deliverance from bondage, this week's Torah portion provides the point of it all.
Why were the Jewish people taken out of Egypt, as the Haggadah emphasizes, "with an outstretched arm," with plagues and miracles, and led through a splitting sea? Why were they given the Torah? Why were they set apart?
The second verse of the portion, known as Kedoshim, gives the answer: "You shall be holy, for I, the Lord your God, am holy."
Unlike other sections of the Torah, this digest of 51 separate laws -- which govern everything from prohibitions against idolatry to punishments for illicit relations to preserving portions of agriculture for the poor -- was taught directly by Moses to the "whole Israelite community."
Typically, laws were transmitted from the Almighty to Moses on the condition that he would teach them to Aaron, who would then instruct the people. The change here was necessitated by the content of the message. In the words of the medieval commentator Rashi, this week's portion is unique because "most of the fundamental teachings of the Torah depend on it."
Put simply, the nature of Jewish DNA, of the Jewish ethos, depends upon this central command: Be holy.
From there flow a whole host of individual precepts: Be honest in business dealings; don't be swayed by a bribe or the condition of either party when dispensing justice; don't cut certain portions of a beard; keep the Sabbath.
The Hebrew word for "holy," kadosh, signifies separateness. In the negative sense, it is used in kadeisha, a harlot, whose relations are characterized by their forbiddenness. In the positive sense, it connotes sacredness, a quality of being separate from the profane. We make kiddush to set Shabbat and the holy days apart from the rest of the days of the week. We honor kedoshim, martyrs, for their self-sacrifice.
But in the same way, being holy demands being apart: "You shall not follow the practices of the nation that I am driving out before you," declares the Torah.
Maimonides uses this principle to justify everything from proper worship practices to manner of dress. There's such a thing as a Jewish beard, he explains, and such a thing as a non-Jewish beard.
'Don't Be Embarrassed'
But holiness is not merely a reflection of external appearances. Being Jewish encompasses thinking Jewishly as well.
In his gloss beneath the very first halachah of the Shulchan Aruch, that a person should "strengthen himself like a lion to stand in the morning in the service of his creator," Rabbi Moshe Isserles writes that this requires a certain amount of pride.
"Don't be embarrassed by those people who ridicule you in your Divine service," he advises.
Later commentators qualify this statement, noting that it's not a license to be haughty. What it is, however, is a reflection of the Jewish state of being.
Just as the Almighty is holy and separate, so, too, the Jewish people are holy and separate. The key is to act like it.
Rabbi Joshua Runyan, former news editor of the Jewish Exponent, is the editor of Chabad.org News. Email him at: jrunyan@ chabad.org.
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We hear a lot about wellness tourism these days and people opting out of typical city or beach breaks. They are instead spending their time at spas, yoga retreats, and other places where they can improve the state of their mind, body, and spirit. With personal wellness increasingly becoming an important factor for individuals who desire to take responsibility for their own health, the wellness industry is booming. One of the great benefits of wellness tourism is that it can give people the tools to continue a program of wellness at home after their trip, without paying the high prices it typically costs to attend a spa or retreat for a week or more. One of the major changes people can make at home, to bring wellness into their lives, is to install a steam shower.
Steam showers are a direct extension of wellness tourism, as you can find them in spas and resorts all over the world. They offer individuals a number of short term and long term health benefits – best of all they only need to be used for 15 to 20 minutes a day. Taking a steam shower has been proven to aid in restful sleep and increase the length of REM cycles. Doctors often prescribe steam therapy as an alternative to sleeping pills. Over the course of many centuries, steam therapy has been used for the purposes of relaxation and to create a sense of well being. For people with conditions like anxiety and stress, they can reap great benefits from taking a steam shower. Steam showers induce sweating and therefore aid in the process of detoxification. Steam showers are also excellent for alleviating symptoms of the common cold by clearing nasal passages and reducing congestion.
For those who desire a quality steam shower in their home, a company like ThermaSol who has been in the steam shower business for 50 years, offers an unparalleled level of quality and design. As the leader in the steam shower industry, they offer customers the only 100% digital networked steam systems in the world – the safest and most reliable technology. They go the extra mile, offering customers a combination of quality and value, with standard features like: FastStart™ Technology, providing steam in seconds; whisper quiet functionality; constant steam at a constant rate, meaning no interruptions in steam; all metal controls with advanced PVD lifetime finishes; superior style, including matching controls, remotes and steamheads in traditional and contemporary styles; a lifetime warranty; and all the green benefits of steam.
The trend of wellness tourism has directly resulted in individuals becoming more health conscious in their own homes. With modern steam shower technology, they can maintain and improve their health without paying the high prices of professional services.
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Black Lung: Why Respirators Are Not A Solution
This story is part of an investigation into how federal regulators and the mining industry are failing to protect coal miners from the excessive toxic coal mine dust that causes black lung.
Respirators and other breathing devices may seem useful for protecting coal miners from the dust that causes black lung. But federal law does not permit using respirators as a way of complying with dust exposure limits.
"[Mine operators] must control the dust first and then they can offer respirators to the miners if they choose to wear them," says pulmonologist Edward Petsonk, a consultant for the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health.
Some miners find respirators a burden, including David Neil, who spent most of the 1980s mining coal underground in West Virginia.
"It [would] get so dusty [and clogged] that you couldn't wear it," he recalls. "It was suffocating."
Neil has complicated coal workers' pneumoconiosis, as does Randall Wriston, whose last mining job underground was in 2008. He says he's one of the few miners who wore a respirator.
"I'm finding out now that the respirators that they supplied us with were no good," Wriston says. "You'd be cutting rock [and] ... the heat ... would actually burn through my respirator."
Hundreds of coal miners have sued respirator manufacturers, alleging the devices were defective and did not protect them from coal dust and silica.
"Now add to that the fact that these miners spend eight to 10 to 12 hours ... operating dangerous equipment [and] needing to be able to talk and communicate in a split second," says Petsonk. "You understand that a respirator is just not a meaningful response."
'Controlling The Dust At The Source'
Airstream helmets were once considered a solution to exposure for miners in the dustiest jobs. The helmets pump clean air down across a worker's face, which is behind a plastic shield.
The helmets "may offer some improvement but they are bulky. They are noisy," says Petsonk. Some miners also complain that the helmets impair vision.
"Controlling the dust at the source is always a more efficient approach," he adds.
Bob Glenn, a black lung consultant for the National Mining Association (NMA), believes helmets could be useful as a short-term fix "but then you need to correct the situation. That is, you need to ventilate the mines until you get the exposures low."
Former miner Mark McCowan said he tried to use the Airstream helmets after he was diagnosed with black lung. He wanted to continue working and to limit his exposure to mine dust.
The mine had helmets but "these things were junk. They had dust all over them," he recalls. He was told he could scrape a working one together from the old and unused helmets found in the mine.
McCowan says he took home pieces of the helmets and put one together "but the battery was so old it wouldn't hold up."
Could Personal Dust Monitors Help?
The National Mining Association (NMA), the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) and mine safety advocates focus instead on personal dust monitors (PDMs), which do not provide protection from coal dust, but monitor exposure in real time.
The trade group and the union want federal rules that require every miner to wear them all the time, so they can monitor their own exposure.
"If the PDMs are used across the board like they're supposed to be there's no doubt that we would see less disease," says Dennis O'Dell, the UMWA's safety director.
The Mine Safety and Health Administration's proposed rules include the use of personal dust monitors for certain work positions underground, but not all the time, for every miner.
"A work position does not contract black lung disease, a worker does," says Bruce Watzman, the regulatory affairs director at NMA, the industry trade group.
The industry and the union differ when it comes to using the data from the dust monitors. The union wants sampling to result in citations when dust monitors measure overexposure. The industry says the devices are not yet accurate enough to be used for compliance.
The proposed rules for controlling coal dust do not include use of respirators or helmets.
Source: NPR [http://www.npr.org/2012/07/09/156375910/black-lung-why-respirators-are-not-a-solution?ft=3&f=1003,1004,1007,1013,1014,1017,1019,1128]
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*There is a line of reasoning for every season and, as the seasons change, so too does that line of reasoning. For former rap star turned community activist Luther Campbell, change was inevitable. He’s running for mayor of one of America’s major metropolitan areas, Miami. And that has some people laughing, and some people shook. He tells our Lee Bailey that his political pedigree began to strengthen as soon as he began to care for the less fortunate.
“People who know me from the music industry know that I’m a champion of free speech,” he explained. “I fought with the Supreme Court and won. Along the way it becomes political. You’re forced to be political as far as free speech is concerned. People who know me know that I have always been a community servant. I’ve fought the program and I’m still around after 25 years as well as worked with African American politicians who have worked with us in the community as well as in Miami.”
Though it might not be fair we can’t help but be a little surprised, as is most of the rest of the world. You mean the dude with the girls and the gold chains and that gap in his teeth? That Luke is running for mayor of what?
“It’s no surprise to people the people of Miami,” he explained. “It’s a surprise to the people outside of South Florida because they don’t know the things that I do. I’m not a person who, like a lot of artists, who do things for publicity. I do things because I do it from my heart.”
Things such as?
“I went over to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba in support of the Haitians that were displaced in the war and set out in the ocean. I did that without asking for any publicity. I fought for African Americans to be equal on South Beach I did it without asking for any publicity. I just wanted equal treatment and we worked with the justice department to get them that equal treatment. These are the different things that I have been doing in my community. I’ve worked with Congressman Meeks, school board members, senators. I’ve been doing this for years and it’s no surprise to the people of South Florida.”
Ok then Uncle Luke! The aforementioned actions are nothing to sneeze at and, at least to us, are a clear measure of Campbell’s demonstrated commitment to the people of Miami-Dade County. Here’s what Luke told EURweb.com when asked what specifically motivated him to run.
“I have to say when you have 8 innocent people get killed by the Miami police department (within months of one another) that says to me enough is enough. When you have affordable housing department get taken over by the federal government that says enough is enough. When you look at a transit department and $180 million is missing and it gets taken over by the federal government that says to me enough is enough. I love my city to death and I’ve been working so hard for fair treatment for the people of Miami.”
Several days ago EURweb.com ran a story in which Campbell called out several high-profile superstars for failure get involved in his mayoral campaign, but that doesn’t mean he’s not getting any local help.
“I’ve got quite a bit of support. I’ve got athletes who I have mentored through the University of Miami. People like Warren Sapp, Edgerrin James, Santana Moss. I have support from senators. My main thing is the support of the community. When the cuts happen here in the county the cuts happen to the people who have not been represented. I can tell you 12 different reasons why I’m getting in this race. I just feel like right now it’s time for a change here in South Florida. I feel like it’s time to make it all one Miami, bring it together. It has been separated and divided by special interest groups as well as lobbyists and lobbyists control some of our African American politicians that sit on the county commision right now.”
When Campbell announced his decision to run in January of 2011, derisive and snarky comments littered the blogosphere, but whose laughing now? So, far Campbell’s campaign has been quite successful.
“There’s a total of 11 people in this race and right now I’m tied for second place” he explained. “It’s similar to Obama’s race. Early on, when Hillary was running, most African American politicians were supporting Hillary as well as the churches. In my case, a lot of the churches are supporting me but a lot of the African American politicians on the commission are not supporting me or not supporting anybody at all. They’re just sitting on the fence. At the same time it’s not a popularity contest. I’m 50 years old, I’m all grown up. When I look at my community and I see the same job problems, crime, affordable housing problems, no economic development, the money that was set aside by the Clinton administration being moved over and taken to other neighborhoods, people going to jail for misappropriating those funds, enough is enough. It’s time to get off the sideline and get in the game.”
And what is Luther Campbell’s battlecry?
“My theme is ‘I’m dead serious’. Early on people were asking me if this was a celebrity stunt. That’s what my opponents put out there at first. People would ask me ‘Are you serious?’ and I said I’m dead serious. That became my slogan.”
Unfortunately, as is often the case with cities that have large African American and large Hispanic populations, the citizen’s of Miami have been set against one another for years. Campbell told EURweb.com that one of his primary missions is to change that circumstance.
“The Latin people feel bad about the things that happen in the African American community and how they’ve been taken advantage of by everybody,” said Luke. “That’s what’s driving my campaign. There’s a major divide in this community. For too long it’s been the Latins versus the blacks and it’s time for a change. The people want different. The people of South Florida want different and they’re speaking right now and that’s why they support me.”
And what of the inevitable dirt that opponents are bound to bring up?
“The people that know me, they don’t look at it like the rest of the world, from ’2 Live Crew’. They look at me for who I am and what I represent here in Miami. They don’t have a problem with the girls that were in bikinis that were in the videos because that’s what we see everyday. If we lived in Kansas City, Missouri then they don’t understand it because they don’t have a beach. It’s a big business when it comes to South Florida compared to the rest of the world. As far as the music that I did? Everybody understands there was a time and a place for that. They know that the music wasn’t intended to offend anybody. We live in a free country and that’s the reason why I fought for the First Amendment Rights. People that support me say ‘there was a period for that in his life as an artist. This is a grown man and a community servant.’ There’s no question about my dedication and my service to this community. Whether it was working at the high schools, coming out and doing gang prevention, they know my service. There’s not a question as to whether I’m committed to my community. They know that everybody, at sometime, was a freshman in college. They did things, they had fun, then it was time to grow up.”
They say that politicians must elicit strange bedfellows to get things done, and there’s no stranger bedfellow for Luke than the local church.
“Every church I go to the pastors are very supportive of it,” Campbell told EURweb.com. “Whether I go to my neighborhood church, white pastors, predominantly Haitian congregations they’re very supportive. Every church that I’ve gone to – not only the pastors but the congregations – are very supportive of my campaign. That’s why I’m tied for second right now.”
Campbell is in second place running what he calls a ‘Five Dollar” campaign. The frontrunner is Julio Urbano, a man Luke says is deep in the pockets of lobbyists and special interest groups.
“We don’t want special interest money,” he explained. “I can go get Builder’s Association money right now, I can take lobbyists’ money right now and my account will be well over 300,000 dollars by one phone call. I don’t want that. I feel that if you take that money you owe those people. I don’t want to take any money from people that are looking to take advantage of people in the end. I don’t want the money. I’m going to be running the same type of operation as President Obama and it’s going to be transparent and it’s not going to be any special interest groups and no lobbyists.”
By Campbell’s account Urbano has well over 2 million in his coffers. How does he hope to compete with that?
“You need money to buy name recognition, you need money to buy television ads, you need money to go and create something that’s not there for an individual who has no name recognition. I have that. All I need is flyers, I need to go door to door, go to forums, do town hall meetings, you don’t need money to do that.”
What started as a political side note is getting hot and heavy down in Miami. Luther Campbell for Mayor? Who would have though it? Stay tuned to EURweb.com for more on our conversation with Luther Campbell, Miami’s might-be mayor.
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How Aida Refugee Camp Got Its Name
by Trent Gilliss, senior editor
We met Kholoud Al Ajarma, a Palestinian woman who coordinates the arts and media activities for the Lajee Center, while conducting interviews within Aida refugee camp in the West Bank city of Bethlehem this past March. What a gift to meet her and take her photo, along with many others while working there.
Members of our staff all had different ideas about where she acquired her marvelous English accent; we were all wrong. But now we know. Maybe you’d like to guess? Listen to the audio clip above from this week’s show in which Kholoud tells a charming story about how Aida camp got its name. Submit a comment here, and I’ll post the answer shortly.
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Jan Messent's Knit a Fantasy Story is loaded with great ideas and patterns for creating the scene of any of the Grimm's tale - or others! There is a section of Farm patterns including the buildings, landscape, people and animals. There is an Enchanted Castle with the figures (knights and wizards included!) and animals that go along with it. There is a Magic Forest with all of the wee folk and animals there including Talking Trees, Toadstool House, Leprechaun, Fairies, Elves, Gnomes, Brownies, Goblin, Rumpelstiltskin, Troll, Dragon and Unicorn! The instructions are wonderful, too! This book is 96pps, 8.5" x 11.5" and Paperbound.
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Adults are almost entirely brown. The mink is one of few mammals in which males are larger than females. Males are 27 1/4 inches long and 3 pounds while the largest female may be only 21 1/4 inches long and 2 pounds. Musk glands in the anal region secrete a strong odor considered by many to be more obnoxious than that of either weasel or skunk. This odor is given off particularly during the breeding season but also at any period of intense excitement.
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101 years ago tonight, the grand ship, TITANIC, hit an iceberg and sank. Here is the story of 3rd class passenger, Katie O’Reilly…
From Titanic Rhapsody by Jina Bacarr:
(Wrongly accused of theft, Katie O’Reilly is locked up in a third class cabin belowdecks when the Titanic hits an iceberg.)
April 14, 1912 Sunday 11:40 p.m.
Shutting her eyes tight, Katie bowed her head and prayed to regain her courage. She would need it when they came for her. She’d not shame the name of O’Reilly, whimpering and sniveling like a sorry lass with no faith and no backbone. She was better than that.
No sooner did Katie take a deep breath and begin her prayer when several violent bumps shook her. No, not again. She blinked, not believing it when she slid across the cabin on her arse and saw the rosary beads bouncing about on the floor. She made a quick grab for them, but the ship’s shifting motion put her off balance. She held onto the sink for dear life, her cold fingers knotted around the white porcelain bowl so tight her knuckles turned white.
Then she prayed. By the wings of the holy angels, please, God, help me. Perspiring like she was waiting for her turn in the confessional, Katie didn’t move. Shaking and trembling, believing her only chance was to kneel and say her prayers proper like even if she only had a broken rosary. It was still night, but a shimmer of light blistered overhead from the dying light bulb. Dawn was still several hours away, but she couldn’t go back to sleep. Tossing and turning and now this.
A feeling of dread haunted her that something awful had happened. It made her afraid to think about it, but she must cling to hope. Katie pulled herself up, then looked down. She gasped. A steady stream of water along the floor lapped around her feet. Seeping in from under her cabin door. She froze. Blessed Virgin, is the ship sinking?
And her locked in here without so much as a proper prayer to save her. Lucky for her she’d fallen asleep with her boots and stockings on or they would be as wet as a cow’s hide in a summer storm. Katie looked around for what was left of her mother’s rosary beads, but they’d disappeared under the water. Her fingers tingled from the cold water as she searched the growing puddle on the floor for the black beads. She tried to convince herself nothing was wrong. A loo overflowed, she decided, or the swimming bath. Something, anything. It wasn’t seawater lapping around her feet. Was it?
Her mind reeled as she realized the water was coming in faster and showed no signs of stopping. Frantically she grabbed the broken pieces of the rosary as they floated to the surface, then stuffed them into her skirt pocket. She began to tremble as she pulled her skirts tight around her legs then banged on the door. Calling out for help. She stopped, listened. Nothing. What was to become of her? It was late, no one outside to hear her or come to her aid.
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Agile is not only about the ‘process’ we follow to build software products. Agility is not just achieved by following a method. Agile is also about the behavior we show while creating software products. But agile is certainly also about the software craftsmanshipwe show in building software products.
Good software engineering practices help development people build better software, faster. It makes sure they can spend proportionally more time of a sprint on the complex, creative work of designing, creating, testing and documenting the great piece of working software, than they have to do on manual, repetitive tasks.
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By Crispin Thorold
BBC News, Baghdad
In Gen David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker, the US administration has arguably its strongest leadership in Iraq since the invasion of the country five years ago.
Washington's key leaders in Iraq are due to report back
The commander of coalition forces in Iraq and the US ambassador to Baghdad are both highly educated, with years of service in the Middle East.
In Washington over the next few days they will have to draw on their experience and talents when they give
Congress their latest assessment of Iraq.
But there may be as much attention on the questioners at the Senate Armed Services and Foreign Relations Committees as on the men who are testifying.
All of the main contenders for president of the United States are expected to be in Congress. Senators John McCain, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are likely to echo the main concern of the American people: "When will our troops be coming home?"
Ultimately, the decision will be made by the next president but for now Gen Petraeus will say that he wants to continue to withdraw troops until they reach roughly the numbers that were in Iraq before the American "surge".
That should happen by July, when Gen Petraeus wants to freeze further withdrawals of American soldiers and review security.
The American strategy in the long term is to hand over control of the whole country to the Iraqi security forces. That may take some time.
The limitations of the Iraqi army and police were exposed in the recent fighting with members of the Shia militia, the Mehdi Army.
Shia militiamen have proved a formidable foe in recent weeks
The Iraqi forces, with their tanks, heavy weaponry and the support of coalition aircraft, faced tough resistance from militiamen fighting with machine-guns, mortars and rocket-propelled grenades.
The worst fighting appears to be over, after the Shia cleric Moqtada Sadr, who is the inspiration for the Mehdi Army, called his men off the streets.
This was a tactical withdrawal, not a defeat. The fighters still have their weapons and sporadic clashes continue which could develop into another round of widespread conflict.
The Americans have been keen to portray the fighting in Basra as a breakthrough.
"This was an Iraqi operation conceived, planned, executed by the Iraqi security forces under the prime minister's direction", said Ambassador Crocker at a recent briefing to journalists.
"There has been a lot of discussion on problems in planning and in execution, and that may be perfectly valid.
"But this, nonetheless, is still an undertaking that the Iraqis simply have not been able to embark on before."
One thing the fighting did prove is that the Sadrist movement cannot be defeated by military means alone.
There were many desertions in the Iraqi security forces. A government source says more than 1,000 soldiers and policemen refused to fight.
Instead, American and British forces were drawn into the clashes in Basra, Baghdad and many towns in southern Iraq.
The struggle for Basra was begun by the Prime Minister, Nouri Maliki, who spoke about the need to rid the city of "criminals and outlaws", but it was characterised by many as an ill-advised power grab by the Shia governing coalition against its political rivals in the Sadrist movement.
All of this comes ahead of provincial elections, which are due to be held in the autumn.
The American administration has pushed for the poll, but it may strengthen Moqtada Sadr, rather than weaken him.
Now Nouri Maliki is demanding that the Mehdi Army give up its weapons if it wants to contest the poll.
Despite the intra-Shia fighting, al-Qaeda remains "enemy number one" for the Americans in Iraq.
US soldiers are still backing up Iraqi forces on the ground
Al-Qaeda has faced setbacks since the surge began, but it remains a potent force in the north of the country, particularly in Mosul.
It was in that city that Gen David Petraeus made his name but it is now arguably his greatest challenge.
Since February, the Iraqi army and the Americans have been carrying out military operations against Sunni insurgents.
Many of the gains that have been made against al-Qaeda in other parts of Iraq are a result of a "tribal awakening".
Thousands of Sunnis are now fighting against al-Qaeda, rather than alongside them.
Sunni politicians want these tribesmen to be integrated into the Iraqi security forces.
That is starting to happen but the process has been slowed by the Shia-dominated central government, which remains suspicious of the armed Sunni groups.
From the beginning, the American administration has called for a "political surge" to accompany the increase in troop numbers.
Iraqi politicians have made some progress on issues like the reintegration of Baathists - former members of Saddam Hussein's government - into public life but critical issues like how to distribute oil revenues amongst different communities remain undecided.
A new president
The status of the oil-rich region around Kirkuk is also another potential flash-point.
According to the Iraqi constitution, a referendum on the future of the city should have been held by the end of 2007.
That has been delayed but the Kurds, who believe the city should be under their control, remain determined to push their claims.
This is the complex, often violent, background to the testimony that Gen Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker will give Congress.
The political and security challenges in Iraq are considerable but the general and the ambassador will be positive, if cautious.
These men can only advise the politicians on Capitol Hill about the future involvement of the US in Iraq.
US policy in the country will ultimately be decided by the successor to George W Bush.
And that is why the comments of Senators McCain, Clinton and Obama will be listened to as keenly as those of Gen Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker.
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January 23rd, 2004, 02:30 PM
I'm working in a effect which a have to change a sunny day into night.
This shot contains:
1. A building
2. A lot of people walking in front of this building
3. Some cars stopped on the street in front of the building
4. A sunny day (Blue sky, a bright sun, few clouds in the sky....)
How can I add some lights on the windows of the bulding?
How to take off these cars on the street, without eraser some people?
What kind of operations in "color correction" should I have to do? Just contrast and brightness? Levels?
My file is a AVI 720/486. I am using Combustion 3.0 and Shake 3.0 for this job.
Any help will be great.
January 27th, 2004, 07:03 AM
Hi Carlos. . .
To change the sky color, you can actually use a number of techniques..
You can simply apply a keyer to selct the color white, and stack a color corrector on that. Or, you can apply a Paint Operator and then use your Select tools > Magic wand (much like Photoshop.)
There are more ways.. But these are the most typical.
If you haven't used the Discreet Keyer before, or the Paint Tools, be sure to look through the 13 FREE Tutorials that are included with Combustion. For the Keyer, check out lesson 6, and for paint, lesson 4. These tutorials are on the DEMO CD-ROM, or you can find them here:
To Remove the cars, use a Paint Operator and the Clone tool. Clone will allow you to SELECT a section of the image and then PAINT with the CLONE Image..
As for Keying Tricks, here is a short article for you to read...
" Anyone who has attempted to pull a good chroma key from lousy source footage knows what a headache it can be... Video clips with poor lighting, incorrect blue/green paint, footage with DV-Compression, etc. can ALL contribute to a nightmare......
Greg Niles posted an excellent summary on how to pull green/blue screen chroma keys from that type of tough source material. Greg Niles is an ex-combustion developer who departed Discreet just after the release of Cv2. He had been working with the software since the very beginning: back when it was called paint/effect and before Discreet bought it.
I have edited and summarized his tips below...
The best tip to getting good keys from a poor background is to do multiple selection passes to extract an alpha channel. This means to apply many keys to extract alpha channel layers. The fact is, although this trick is well-known in Photoshop, most people still try to create a "perfect" one-click keys in motion compositing programs. The fact is that the reality of a "One-Click Best Key" RARELY lead to A PERFECT KEY, especially very often given the moving nature of the source material, backgrounds lights and shadows, poor green/blue screen, etc. Although it may work sometimes, most of the time it WON'T.
The trick is not to beat your head against the wall and keep compromising different areas of the key in order find a "magic" number of tolerance vs. softness, but to simply create many spcific keys and stack up their operations when you run into a problem area.
For example: If a key you've created works for the body but not the hair, OR, the background and NOT a TREE in the foreground, then don't force it - leave the settings alone for the body and then create a NEW key specifically for the hair/tree with new settings. Then, stack the keys.
And this is done very easily in combustion. Here's how:
1) Add a Selection operator (Draw Selection works well), and draw around a region you want to key, for example the body.
2) Now add your key (the selection can be done after adding the key, BTW, if you create the selection operator and drag it underneath the existing keyer). Now you can modify the keying parameters, but it will only affect that one region. '
3) To start keying in another region, simply add another Selection, draw the region you want, and add a new Keyer. The new selection will replace the old one by default.
Even the most difficult keys often shouldn't take more than two or three "passes" with this technique. And unlike Photoshop, this leaves you with the option of tweaking any of the the key passes anytime you want, something you wouldn't get with bitmap alpha extraction automatically. You can also tweak and animate the selection regions anytime you want, which is another useful trick.
Note that this is one of the big "secrets" of the VFX pros when it comes to blue/greenscreen compositing - they ALL do things in multiple passes, even when they're using a third-party keyer like Ultimatte or Primatte. The reason why the discreet combustion keyer has the reputation it does is because when you use this technique, you have as much flexibility and can get as good results as a third-party keyer, without spending the money.
Greg goes on to say that he has found a great easy key is to use Channel mode, then use the histogram controls in the matte controls to push the dark areas black and the light areas white while keeping the middle ranges relatively intact. You can pull keys really fast with this technique.
So, to sum up, while the combustion keyer isn't always "one-click" like Primatte and Ultimatte can be, but it works very well in a large variety of circumstances, once you know these key Tips & Tricks. This technique assures that, in those touchy situations where you don't get the perfect key right off the bat, you can still quickly and easily do it. " end of TIP...
As for adding lights: there a few ideas: a) make sure you have a 3D workspace and then you can add additional spotlights and interact the lights with the windows on the buildings, or b) use selections/keyers to apply enhanced brightness to the windows to simulate lighting efefcts....
I hpe that my suggestions help you get your mental juices started...
January 27th, 2004, 07:19 AM
mmmm, mental juice..... http://biphome.spray.se/arvid.b/homergargle.gif
sorry, was unable to resist :)
January 27th, 2004, 07:45 AM
Ya Gotta Love it !
Homer... My favorite !
January 27th, 2004, 07:49 AM
hehe, I can hear homer go "OOohh!" just by looking at that image :D
January 27th, 2004, 11:07 AM
January 27th, 2004, 11:40 AM
rofl, mmm beer.
January 27th, 2004, 01:03 PM
Hum, beer???? :niceone:
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2. (c.) Anniston. Gen. Tyler was buried at Hillside Cemetery in 1882.
3. (c.) Cornwall, England. Noble was born in 1826.
4. (a.) United States Military Academy at West Point. Tyler was a member of the class of 1819.
5. (b.) Woodstock Iron Co. Woodstock might well have been the town name instead of Anniston, had it not been for another Alabama town called Woodstock.
6. (c.) Camp Shipp. In 1899, it housed 10,000 soldiers for the Spanish-American War.
7. (a.) U.S. Steel. The corporation dominated Birmingham until it began to scale back operations in the 1970s.
8. (b.) The Hot Blast. Its first edition was Aug. 18, 1883.
9. (b.) Ty Cobb. By the next year, Cobb was playing for the Detroit Tigers.
10. (b.) Oxford 27, Anniston 7. Oxford won that game in 1920, and it would not win again until 1963.
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- About Us
- Our Work
- Work With MSF
- Public Events
- Press Room
Earthquake Relief Mission Launched in Turkey
Full Cargo of Supplies Under Way
August 18, 1999
New York/Brussels, August 19, 1999 — Four teams from Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) are now assisting in the relief efforts for the earthquake victims in Turkey. Two teams have assessed the most urgent needs in Izmit and Adapazar. MSF plans to set up field hospitals and dispensaries in these cities and is flying in the necessary materials today. An additional team is providing aid in the worst hit suburbs of Istanbul. All teams consist of a combination of international aid workers and Turkish doctors.
MSF has also sent in a nephrologist (a kidney specialist), who has started working with a Turkish colleague and will be joined by five dialysis nurses. Experience treating earthquake victims shows that kidney failure is a major cause of death among those who survive their initial injuries. Crushed muscle tissue releases toxins that quickly cause kidney failure.
The charter plane which MSF is sending today contains medical materials, surgical materials, tents, hospital tents, blankets, and materials for safe water supply and sanitation.
MSF is the world's largest independent international medical relief agency aiding victims of armed conflict, epidemics, and natural and man-made disasters, and others who lack health care due to geographic remoteness or ethnic marginalization in more than 80 countries.
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On October 11, Alhambra Preservation Group honored four Alhambra homes with its annual Heritage Home Awards. Among the awardees was a 1932 Spanish Colonial Revival home located in the city’s historic Midwick Tract. In presenting the award, APG President Christine Olson stated, “We are honored to present this award to the owner of this home in recognition of the loving care and attention that she and her late husband have invested in the preservation of this Alhambra landmark.”
The Spanish Colonial Revival home was built in 1932 by the Foster-Huntley Construction Company of Los Angeles upon land owned by the Huntington Land & Improvement Company. Located just north of the lavish Midwick Country Club, this was land that had been purchased by Henry Huntington for residential development. In keeping with his multi-faceted business model that incorporated transportation, electric power generation and distribution, and real estate development, Huntington’s Pacific Electric Rail Line from Los Angeles to Covina passed just a few hundred yards to the north, with stops nearby at Granada Park, Ethel Avenue and Ramona Convent.
The vacant lot on West Hellman Avenue was purchased from Huntington in 1926 by Frank and Charlotte Roth. The Roths were recent arrivals to Southern California from Chicago—part of a huge wave of migration that more than doubled the area’s population in the 1920’s—the largest influx since the Gold Rush. In Chicago, Frank had been employed as a ticket seller for the Pennsylvania Railway. Their new property overlooked the polo field of the Midwick Country Club. After several years of saving, the Roths had accumulated enough money to begin construction. In 1932, during the depths of the Great Depression, they hired the Los Angeles architectural firm of Foster Huntley, Inc., to design and build the house of their dreams. The project was described in the building permit as a seven-room house and garage of lath and plaster, with stucco exterior and a terra cotta tile roof. The approximate cost to build was $4,000. The Roth family continued to live in this home for nearly 40 years.
In designing the house, Foster Huntley chose to work in the Spanish Colonial Revival style that was so popular during the 1920s and 30s. Many of the character-defining details of that style are visible in this home: the low horizontal massing; the prominent arched window centered in the front-facing gable, with clay vent pipes above; the arcade entry, comprised of two additional arches, one of which serves as a porte-cochere; tall casement windows in the living and dining rooms; a decorative ironwork gate extending across the driveway; and the low-pitched gable roof clad in terra cotta tiles. Today, a newly landscaped front garden features river rock walls and Mediterranean plantings.
Having purchased the home in 1971, the current owner has now lived there longer than the Roth family, for whom it was originally built. While the house is small by current standards, she loves the fact that it is solid and filled with history and character—elements that are often lacking in modern homes. She especially loves the quality of light that streams in through the large living room windows.
Over the years, this homeowner and her husband put considerable work into the house. They remodeled the kitchen and two bathrooms, refinished the hardwood floors, added air conditioning, upgraded the electrical system, and installed new copper pipes. The home was a source of special pride for her husband, who enjoyed sharing photos of their various home improvement projects with friends. So great was this couple’s passion for their home that even a life-threatening illness failed to derail their plans. When, earlier this year, the homeowner’s husband was put on the waiting list for a lung transplant, they painted the exterior and re-landscaped their yard. The homeowner’s hope was that the beautiful new front yard would be the first thing that her husband would see when he returned home from the hospital. Although he did see photos of the work in progress, he never made it home. He died at Barlow Hospital in July—just one day before Alhambra Preservation Group’s letter arrived in the mail, announcing their nomination for a Heritage Home Award. For this proud homeowner, honored with both the APG and Alhambra Beautiful Awards during 2012, this recognition is bittersweet—although, she is certain that her husband is aware of both awards and is, “having a good laugh about it.” In designating this home as a 2012 Heritage Home Award winner, Alhambra Preservation group is proud to recognize, in this couple’s exemplary stewardship of their historic property, a true labor of love.
This is the first article in a four-part series highlighting Alhambra Preservation Group’s 2012 Heritage Home Award-winning residences.
Read Full Post »
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The Blood Covenantby E.W. Kenyon
The New Covenant is often not well understood because the ancient concept of a covenant has been lost in our scientific age. Even the Old Covenant has been reduced to a system of moral laws to be followed. The real blessings of the covenants have been forgotten. In The Blood Covenant, we are reminded of the original meaning of a covenant relationship between two parties, and the covenants of the Bible are reintroduced as God’s methods for restoring His relationship with His people.
- The New Covenant in My Blood — The blood of the New Covenant is easier to understand when compared to the blood covenants of primitive religions.
- The Origin of the Blood Covenant — The blood covenant guaranteed protection, and loyalty. It could turn enemies into friends.
- The Covenant in Africa — Blessings and curses were pronounced over the covenant parties. The blessings represent the privileges granted to the blood brothers. The curses were the penalties for breaking the covenant.
- Jehovah Cuts the Covenant with Abraham — God’s covenant with Abraham is the basis for Judaism and Christianity.
- Abraham’s Sacrifice — Abraham was obedient to the command to sacrifice Isaac because of his faithfulness to the covenant with God and his trust in God to be faithful to that covenant also.
- The Abrahamic Covenant — God protected Israel as a nation because of His covenant with Abraham.
- Israel, the Blood Covenant People — The covenant guaranteed that Israel would be protected from their enemies and from diseases as long as they were faithful to keep the terms of the covenant. The law was given to help them to keep the terms of the covenant. The priesthood was established to provide a way for people to be restored to the covenant when they broke the terms of the covenant.
- The New Covenant — Jesus is the guarantor of the New Covenant.
- Contrast of the Two Covenants — The Old Covenant was a type and shadow of the New. Jesus fulfilled the Old Covenant and set aside its ritual requirements. The New Covenant not only upholds the promises of the Old, but also offers better promises.
- A Study in Hebrews — Under the Old Covenant, sin was covered (atonement). In the New Covenant, sin was put away (remitted).
- The One Sacrifice — The death of Jesus put an end to all the animal sacrifices as well as the annual atonement and scapegoats.
- The Present Ministry of Christ — Jesus is the mediator, the intercessor, the advocate, and the surety of the New Covenant.
- Three Big Words — Remission, forgiveness, atonement.
- The Fourfold Blessings — We have partaken of the divine nature, we are sons of God, we are the righteousness of God, and we have the legal right to use the Name of Jesus.
- Redemption Is by God — Only God could redeem us from the power and bondage of Satan as well as release us from the dominion of Satan.
- Beneath His Feet — The victory of Jesus over sin, sickness, and the forces of the enemy is our victory.
- “In My Name” — We may use the Name of Jesus in prayer to the Father, or we may use the Name of Jesus to command sickness, lack, or demons to flee.
- What the Lord’s Table Teaches — The covenant meal demonstrates the Love of God.
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The new frontier of agricultural equipment is where hydraulics, electronic control, and GPS systems intersect.
Figure 1. TSD's TruPath is an integrated auto-guidance system aimed at the agricultural machinery market, bringing together hydraulics and GPS-based positioning control.
Figure 2. Wheel position is monitored by a Sauer-Danfoss SASA wheel-position sensor to provide feedback to the system.
If the wheel marks in this farm field look so perfect that's hard to imagine an operator being so accurate, you're right. Auto-steering — combining GPS technologies from Topcon and specialized hydraulics from Sauer-Danfoss — allow fields like this one to be sprayed with fertilizer. With GPS positioning, there is no overlap — everything is properly spaced.
"You're going to see, in the next five years, tractors and machinery operating on the farm that have no drivers. Agriculture will be the first robotically controlled industry in the world. We're doing some of that today in the mining industry, a little bit in hazardous areas in construction industries, but the first mass market of that technology will be the agriculture industry," says Ray O'Connor, president of Topcon Positioning Systems, Livermore, Calif. And he should know — Topcon is one of the leading suppliers of the technologies required to make that prediction come true.
The technology O'Connor is relying on to steer those robotic tractors and combines is a combination of satellitebased global positioning (GPS) data and intelligent computer systems put to work via a sophisticated hydraulic system to control steering and other functions. Generically, the technology is called GPS Auto-Guidance, and is marketed under the trade name TruPath by TSD Integrated Controls, a joint venture between Topcon and Sauer-Danfoss.
As close as a centimeter
Here's how the systems work today. The TSD TruPath receiver, Figure 1, processes satellite data to resolve position with repeatable accuracies as close as 1 cm. In addition to the capability of receiving satellite signals, the unit is also equipped with inertial sensors to determine the attitude and acceleration of the vehicle and a microprocessor to plan paths for the vehicle — whether it be straight, curved, or otherwise. The receiver is also equipped with two CAN ports for communication with vehicle sub-systems, most specifically the hydraulics for steering control/feedback to display to the machine operator.
Steering control of the vehicle is a job in itself. The steering system communicates among components via a steering CANbus connecting pieces such as a Sauer-Danfoss PVED-CL actuator and steering valve, as well as other possible sensors, to execute closed loop steering control of the vehicle.
A second CAN communication port is designed to use the ISObus 11783 protocol to interface with a display screen to communicate and receive commands from the equipment operator. These displays can be as simple as a push button display or as complex as a color touch screen computer running an embedded Windows XP operating system. Currently, TSD can offer a range of displays with the TruPath steering systems, ranging from a simple virtual terminal to a high functionality dedicated display, such as the Topcon X20 computer.
The X20 uses specialized software coupled, with the data from the GPS, to create layers of data and information that can form a database known as a Geographic Information System (GIS). The GIS contains both information on work to be performed and data recorded from sensors about work that was performed with the time, location, and specifics on what happened where.
The X20 can replace existing rate controllers for liquid, granular, or injection control systems. Combining the capabilities of these units into a single console removes clutter from the cab and simplifies the operator's task. In addition, the X20 provides the enhanced functionality of automated section control (ASC) with capability to control up to 30 individual or grouped boom sections.
The end result, as Albert Zahalka, vice president of mobile electronics for Sauer-Danfoss sees it, "We can now control the machine all the way from the GPS signal to where the wheels meet the road." In practical terms, that vision translates into a tractor or a combine that literally drives itself, guided by signals from outer space, and controlled by a computer brain. Or, at least that's the goal. Today's reality, though, is just a little more down to earth.
Data from above
One of the advantages Topcon GPS systems offer is the ability to use data from both the 24 U.S. GPS satellites and 17 Russian GLONASS satellites. That means the receiver is virtually always in sight of enough satellites to provide centimeter-accurate positioning. That's not true of other receiver systems, that are limited to either GPS or GLONASS signals, but can't use both. It's one of the reasons why TruPath-equipped tractors and combines can be used around the clock virtually anywhere in the world.
Position data from the Topcon system is combined with GIS data stored in the onboard X20 computer to determine the vehicle's present position on the ground. Inputs from inertial sensors are used to fine-tune this information to accommodate the bumps and shocks inevitably encountered in off-road operation.
All this information is processed by the TSD TruPath receiver to produce control signals delivered via CAN-bus for the Sauer-Danfoss PVED-CL hydraulic steering controller. The PVED-CL controller is mounted on an electrohydraulic proportional control valve that regulate oil flow to the steering cylinders. Wheel position is monitored by a Sauer-Danfoss SASA wheel-position sensor, Figure 2, with feedback directly to the valve. In addition, sensors mounted in the steering cylinders (or externally on the steering cylinders) provide feedback regarding wheel position as they turn during vehicle operation.
"This is an adaptation of the Sauer-Danfoss hydraulic steering system in use on hundreds of thousands of vehicles around the world," explained Michael Gomes, TSD integrated controls' product manager. "We've replaced the driver's eyes and hands with GPS signals and GIS information communicated directly to the PVED-CL steering controller. But, other than that the system really is pretty conventional.
"Think of the EHPS valve as a combination hydraulic flow amplifier that's actuated by a hydraulic steering unit, and a proportional valve actuated by an electric signal all in a single casting. Both functions are available all of the time, but for safety reasons the hydraulic steering unit has priority.
"Unless it's actuated by the operator moving the steering wheel, though, the system runs in steer by wire mode. So, unless the operator manually overrides the system, the onboard TruPath receiver provides the signals to the PVED-CL steering controller that actuates the EHPS valve to guide the vehicle.
"And, of course, the hydraulic system also powers and controls most of the other functions of the tractor or combine as well," continued Gomes. "Using five channels of control signals from the X20, the tractor can selectively apply granulars, liquids, pre-emergence herbicides, and inject anhydrous ammonia — all at independently variable rates from data layers on a GIS map."
The TruPath system will soon be available for OEM installation, and will be offered on tractors built by several European and North American suppliers. As the installed base grows, and users develop confidence in the system, it may be only a matter of time until the breakthrough to a driverless application happens.
Zahalka sees this as a natural outgrowth of a larger trend. "I believe we will, in many cases, eliminate the operator and, in every case, have more control capability."
Why robotic tractors?
Precision agriculture is all about maximizing production while minimizing inputs. One way to do that is to accomplish tasks such as tilling, seeding, and fertilizer application in the most efficient way possible. As equipment gets bigger and wider, that means calculating the most efficient path with a computer and then making sure the vehicle follows it exactly with a GPS Auto-Guidance system.
In practical terms, where a manually steered tractor and an experienced driver might hold pass-to-pass overlap to 20%, a TruPath-equipped tractor reduces that to 3% or less. Since the time spent re-tilling the overlap, and the seed and fertilizer deposited on it the second time around are all essentially wasted, the economics are obvious.
The benefits don't stop there, though. Because the operator doesn't need to steer the vehicle, he or she is able to handle other tasks, like controlling modern variable rate fertilizer application systems to further optimize inputs.
The tractor also can operate at higher speed because human reaction time is no longer the determining factor in avoiding a collision. And, because it's not necessary to be able to see what's ahead, a robotically operated tractor can operate in total darkness as efficiently as it does in broad daylight — extending the workday as long as necessary to get the job done during peak times.
"The next step will be to add vision and other sensors that add value to the machine beyond the capabilities of a person and with the possibility to preserve the safety of human life," said Ivan Di Federico, general manager of TSD Integrated Controls.
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