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Planning Your Activities and Designing an Exercise Program
Cinda Hugos, MS, PT, Oregon Health and Science University
The following article is an edited excerpt from the live VA satellite broadcast program on Fatigue and MS that aired in April 2005. The program was transcribed, reviewed and edited for the MS website by James Hunziker, MSN, ARNP.
Exercise can be challenging
Learning the best way to exercise after developing a life-changing disease like MS can be challenging. One patient described it this way: “I got a new doctor, and she put me right with a therapist. I thought, ‘Oh, this is dumb. I don't want to go.’ The therapist asked me to put together a diary about what I did during the day and when was my worst time for fatigue. I told her that I experienced fatigue all the time. She asked me to keep the diary for a few weeks and check back in with her.
I did keep the diary for a few weeks. And when I went back and read it, I realized there was a pattern as to when my peak time for getting stuff done, and when I was just too tired to move. So I looked at my diary and started planning my day based on the times when I had a lot of energy. I realized that it was a tool I could use - it worked for me.”
Many people have found an activity diary to be a very useful tool. When you keep an activity diary for three to four days in a row (and during periods where you are doing regular activities), you start to see patterns of what you are doing. Once you see these patterns, you can change your activities so during your times of energy, you do activities that require energy and during your low energy times, you do things that do not take a lot of energy.
When you get into a habit of doing things in a certain way and then you get a diagnosis of multiple sclerosis, it forces you to do some things differently. It can be difficult to recognize that you have to change the way you do things. It can be difficult to change life habits, and that is where health care professionals fit in - helping people through that process of change by directing them, and showing them that there are different ways to do things. It is jarring enough to be diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, let alone all of the changes that are going to have to take place in people’s lives.
When a person has decreased energy, setting goals, then prioritizing these goals is a very effective way of getting what is important done. Priority setting is typically based on the list of what needs to be done, what you would like to do, and what would be nice to do. The activities that are ticked off on any particular day are determined by the energy level of the day.
So how do you go about identifying what a goal ought to be? It should be something realistic, that you can achieve, and it should be specific. The more specific it is, the easier it is to tell if you have achieved it. It should also be something that can be done independently. You should not have to rely on other people to achieve this goal, and you should write it down so you can review it regularly. One activity that should usually be included to help maintain function, (even if it was not a habit before) is exercise.
Exercise is important for a number of reasons. Exercise can help minimize some general health diseases such as cardiac disease and diabetes (as well as others) that can affect people with or without MS. It is also important in helping to minimize the impact of some of the problems that MS causes, such as weakness. If you can maintain your strength and ability to move about, then you are going to minimize the impact of some of the other problems.
People with MS are at risk of becoming deconditioned. Exercising and participating in a regular exercise program can help prevent this. It is definitely one of the recommendations of the National MS Society fatigue guidelines, and emphasized in their fatigue and MS video series. For it to be effective, you have to be committed to doing it, and doing it regularly.
Health care providers need to be aware of disease-specific issues when recommending exercise that is appropriate for people with MS. Fatigue is often a major issue when considering endurance or cardiovascular-type (aerobic) exercises, and choosing an appropriate exercise plan can be a challenge. Typical methods of exercise for MS patients (as well as others) include walking, jogging, riding an exercise (or street) bicycle, or swimming.
If people are having difficulty walking, often a safe exercise program is using an exercise bicycle. The advantage of an exercise bicycle is that when people become fatigued, they are still at home and do not have to figure out how they are going to get home.
As MS progresses, it is common to have to shift to a different mode of exercise. Some people have to make this shift early on. They might have initially been a jogger and they no longer have the energy to keep jogging and need to explore other exercise options. Because it is easy to get into patterns and it is hard to change things on your own, it can help to have a professional evaluation. The VA system has a wonderful system of health care providers that are available to Veterans, and most Veterans have access to physical therapists.
It is generally recommended that people should exercise aerobically three to five times a week. This includes people with MS. As the goal, the duration of aerobic exercise should be 20 minutes or more of exercise each day. Unfortunately, because fatigue is a major MS symptom, starting out exercising at 20 minutes per session is usually not very realistic or possible.
Often people need to start out at three to five minutes at a time. Some will ask, "Is it even worth doing if I'm only doing it three to five minutes?" The answer to this is that you have to start somewhere, so you start with what you can do and then you build on success, and build on success and slowly increase your exercise time. Most people cannot jump from three to twenty minutes in one exercise session. An alternate approach is trying two 10-minute sessions, which can be very beneficial.
The plan should be to start with three to four minutes, next increase from four to five minutes, and then from five minutes to seven minutes, etc. Remember, you can remain at those periods for as long as you need to until you are ready to go up to the next level. Exercising can help the psyche as well – and it is not just the physical aspects. Exercise endorphins, which are chemicals our bodies produce, that make us feel good are released during exercise. So there are physical and emotional benefits to exercising.
You will hear many answers to the question “how hard should I exercise”. The “gold standard” is to monitor your heart rate, but this does not always work with people with MS. Some people find that MS causes numbness and tingling in the fingers and it is hard to feel a heart rate. If this is an issue, we generally recommend that you exercise to a level where a conversation can be held while still exercising. If you are having trouble carrying on a conversation, then you might be exercising a little bit too hard and need to slow down a bit. If you are able to converse without difficulty, then you probably are not exercising hard enough.
As you get stronger, you will want to increase the amount of exercise you do. One relatively painless way to get more exercise is to slowly increase the distance you park from a store (or other destination) each time you go. This will allow your body to strengthen itself while doing everyday chores. If you normally use a disabled parking pass, try parking in non-disabled spaces that are just a bit further away. You will find that you may be able to walk further as you gain strength. Of course, you can always use the disabled parking spot when you are trying to conserve your energy for the day.
This walking can be counted as exercise, although a planned, structured exercise program is best. Keep in mind that unstructured exercise tends to wear you out, and then you are at risk for not being able to participate in an activity that might be more important to you later in the day.
Budgeting your energy is important. An example of budgeting your energy is if you have an important meeting at work, you might choose to park your car close to the entrance of the building to conserve your energy. If you need to be fully alert in the meeting, then you would want to conserve your "parking lot energy" for the energy that you will need for the business event. Walking a greater distance another day would make more sense.
People with MS need to be very careful about how they spend their energy and wisely choose their activities.
When people with MS exercise – in fact when anyone exercises – we get warm. For people with MS, heat can be a big issue, because it causes more fatigue. Doing strenuous exercise can be more of a problem for people with MS because often the ability to sweat – a body cooling mechanism – does not work normally. For some people, MS can affect the ability to properly sweat and to reduce overheating while exercising.
In fact, people with MS can become overheated with little to no exercise. For example, they can experience becoming overheated when out in the sun. There are a number of things you can do to help make up for the lack of (or reduction in) sweating that we do not typically think about. One method to prevent overheating is to dress in light clothing or layers of clothing that you can peel off as you warm up during the day. Another strategy is choosing to do your exercise in a cool room or environment to help with cooling your body down. If the rooms that you are living in are not cool, you might want to try to maintain a cooler temperature at least in the room where you exercise. Some people have used circulating fans to help cool their bodies during exercise. Having a cool beverage that you can take sips of now and then will really help keep you cool as well. If you swim as part of your exercise, try to swim in a pool that maintains a cooler temperature.
Another refreshing tip is to have a water spray bottle handy to spritz yourself as needed. In addition to helping you feel more comfortable, if you are someone who does not sweat normally (or enough), the spray/misting bottle will help provide artificial sweat and help cool your body down.
We have covered a lot of information in this article, with many tips that can help make exercise become (or remain) part of your life. You may want to consider asking your provider about a referral to a physical therapist for help developing an exercise program that is specific for you. Exercise can become part of your life with just a few modifications. VA medical centers are staffed with physical, occupational, and recreational therapists that can help you design an appropriate program to help you “live with MS” more effectively.
For a DVD of the entire satellite broadcast program send an email to Marsha.firstname.lastname@example.org
Date posted: September 2007
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Methought I Saw my Late Espoused Saint (Sonnet 23) Questions
Bring on the tough stuff - there’s not just one right answer.
- Why does the poem start by describing the speaker's vision using a series of similes, rather than directly describing the vision itself? What is the effect of this strategy upon our understanding of the vision of his wife?
- Did the speaker actually see his wife? How can you tell?
- Why does the embrace between the speaker and the vision fail? Why is this the moment the speaker wakes up?
- Do you agree with people who think Milton is the speaker of this poem? Why or why not? How does this belief change our interpretation of it?
- Why does the speaker, a Christian, choose to describe his vision using similes from Greek mythology and the Hebrew Bible at the beginning of the poem?
Next Page: Best of the Web
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BATH, Maine (NEWS CENTER) - A piece of sea-faring history sailed into Bath on Friday. The sailing ship Gazela Primeiro docked at the Maine Maritime Museum this afternoon, after a trip from Newport, R.I.
The 177-foot ship is said to be the oldest square-rigged vessel still sailing in North America. The ship was actually built in Portugal in 1901, and was used for fishing doe cod on the Grand Banks until 1969.She is now owned by the Philadelphia Ship Preservation Guild. Her design is what sailors call a "Barkentine - square rig sails on the front or foremast, and schooner-type sails on the other two masts toward the stern.
The ship will be open to visitors at the Maine Maritime Museum in Bath on Saturday and Sunday. She will then set sail for Halifax, N.S.
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What a difference apostrophe placement makes. Had it been "Summers' Curse" I'd be worried Larry was going back into government.
If you're an FT subscriber here's the gated version. Otherwise...
From the Financial Times via CNBC:
Five Reasons the Summer Curse May Strike: Gillian Tett
In recent days, several of America’s largest investment groups, such as Fidelity and Northern Trust, have been discreetly reviewing their staff holiday plans. The reason? Right now, with the summer heat rising, the mood in the financial markets seems relatively calm.
But the issue worrying some investment firms is what might be called the “summer curse”; precisely because trading volumes tend to be so thin in the summer months, and senior hands are away, markets can go completely haywire if something does go wrong.
And this “summer curse” is not a theoretical issue. Just think of 1998 (the Russian crisis and Long-Term Capital Management hedge fund implosion); 2007 (the mortgage securities and money market freeze); 2008 (the Fannie Mae “jolt”, which led to the Lehman Brothers disaster); or, for that matter, think back to how markets were rocked last year by the eurozone crisis and the US debt ceiling dramas.So could this summer be sticky, once again? Personally, I have a nasty feeling that it might, given that the markets are seeing the collision of at least five unwelcome issues:● The eurozone. This week, markets have rallied, amid relief over the latest eurozone rescue plan. But, as Larry Summers, the former Treasury secretary, told the Aspen Ideas festival last weekend, the latest plan has only bought the eurozone “a bit more time” to sort out the longer-term structural woes – and it remains crucially unclear, as ever, whether it can do this. Meanwhile, funding costs for Italy and Spain are unsustainably high, and there is mounting evidence of economic pain (witness the record high unemployment data this week). Investors could well panic again if there are more signs of banking stress or fresh evidence of political discord. Watch out, for example, for the run up to September’s Dutch elections; this could highlight rising levels of bailout fatigue and political extremism – even in the supposedly “sensible” Netherlands....MORE
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Politicians and Economists, please, stop doing complicated math. Economic policy is simple. You have been too quick to dismiss ethical questions. The justifications for your policies are idealistic, and their consequences are detrimental. You claim to hold in your heart the wellbeing of all people, but your actions speak to the contrary. This essay is an attempt to confront contemporary economic ideals.
Is it fair that 2 people are rewarded differently for the same work? Take for instance a man and a women performing the same task for different wages. Most of us agree this is unfair on the principle that the value of the labor should correlate with its rewards, rather than with any trait of the laborer.
Let's examine another example: 2 people, neither of whom does any work but their rewards differ greatly. That is to say, neither of them performs any labor in exchange for wages. One of them, homeless, capable, but socially exiled. The other, a business owner, who doesn't manage her own business, but regularly collects profits.
Based on the measure of their labor, the homeless person's situation, when compared to that of the business owner, is unfair. The only possible justification is that the current situation is the result of a previous situation that was fair and this is, in fact, the most common response from a contemporary capitalist when pressed. Let's examine the capitalist argument.
They imagine that before the homeless person was homeless, or back when the business owner was also homeless (I'm not sure which they would prefer as their idealized starting point), the two people made decisions that resulted in this disparity. Ignore, for the time being, that conditions were never equal, a fact that single-handedly defeats the capitalist argument, and consider the influence of luck in determining a person's success.
Luck is only ever fair when both parties agree to the chances, as in gambling. Since both parties did not agree to the luck system, we can only hope that the luck evens out over time and does not too greatly reward those who are the first to be lucky. Unfortunately, there is a tendency in most networked systems, of which society is one, for the rich to stay rich and the poor poor, so to speak.1 Luck would be fair if it evened out, but the same amount of bad luck affects poor people far worse. For instance, a medical bill makes up a much larger percentage of a poor person's income. Even if initial conditions were equal, the capitalist system is imbalanced towards the first to be lucky, namely those born into wealthy first-world nations.
At its base(pun), the capitalist argument is appealing to an idealistic concept that has never once existed in the real world: Equality of Opportunity. If measuring actual equality is as simple as adding and subtracting, then we can think of this as the calculus of equality. Equality of Opportunity is almost a measure of change in wages, rather than the simple measure of wages, but is actually far more complicated. We must measure not the actual change in wages, but a person's potential to change their wages based on effort. And since not all people can increase their wage by the same flat amount with equal effort, the equality must be found deeper in the cycle. It would be difficult enough to measure whether people's wages are changing by equal amounts, but now we have to measure how quickly their ability to change their wage changes. The fact that the system tends towards maintaining current structure amplifies the problem. To calculate whether or not equality of opportunity has been achieved would require an infinitely deep calculus.
Despite the impossibility of even knowing when we have achieved equality of opportunity, this concept continues to be used to justify the economic policies. Of course, there are other more malicious forces actually driving policy, but equality of opportunity is the stated theoretical underpinning.
Let me recap the capitalist justification for present inequalities: In the past, both people started in the same place and made different decisions, resulting in their current wage difference. This is a blatant lie since, in actuality, the initial conditions were not equal. Instead, we hope for some kind of fairness in motion, but it doesn't take a genius to notice that poor people have fewer opportunities.
Now briefly consider the alternative to economic equality calculus. Calculating the difference between two peoples' incomes only requires subtraction. Admittedly, this does not measure fairness but it gets quite close, within 1.5% of fair by some estimates.
In a society with true equality of opportunity, and without any scaling of the rewards for superiority,2 the wealthiest person would be less than 1.5% wealthier than the poorest person. As a measure of DNA, all humans are 98.76% similar, from you universe's perspective, not human is more than 1.5% more capable than any other. True, the fastest runner might be more than 1.5% faster than the slowest, but from an objective perspective, outside the human race, both people have 10 fingers, 10 toes, and can learn to talk. Being fast now pales in comparison to the skills they share in common.
What about differences in motivation? Here comes what should be the only controversial idea in this entire essay: all humans beings are sufficiently motivated to play a role in a health society. A person's motivation is likely more a product of nurture rather than nature, and this works against the argument that all people have equality of opportunity. There is plenty of evidence to show that socio-economic status affects a person's mindset and quality of decisions.3 This is a portion of the tendency for the poor to stay poor.
The cool thing about motivation is that, since it is greatly affected by nurture, we can somewhat control that variable. The simplest and best way is to regulate inequality. Inequality can be factually measured and controlled. Now we must make a decision.
In principle, our society can be one of two kinds: egalitarian or non-egalitarian. If you decide that you favor a non-egalitarian society, and are thus arguing that wealth differences should be scaled to reflect personal differences, then it is up to you to draw and justify an arbitrary line between equality and inequality. Remember though that, whatever complicated system you devise, distributing all goods equally would likely be within 1.5% of fair.
Finally, a much simpler argument against inequality: Humans are naturally emotional and unlikely to hear a logical explanation of why they cannot have what you hold. Inequality, fair or not, will result in violence.
It is out of pragmatism that I recommend an economic system based on equality. Instead of being idealistic, I ask you to legislate based on reality and vote for what will realistically reduce violence. I am willing to accept a 1.5% deviation from fairness as the cost of eliminating nearly all violence in the world. Why do complex math to calculate equality of opportunity when simple equality is not only easier, but works better?
1 = "Linked: How Everything Is Connected to Everything Else and What It Means" by Albert-Laszlo Barabasi.
2 = Scaling would be a situation in which the difference between people are multiplied to increase the gap between most and least capable.
3 = Check out The Equality Trust or "The Spirit Level" by Richard Wilkenson and Kate Pickett.
Thesis = Calculating equality of opportunity, the stated goal of economic theory, is mathematically impossible. Actual equality is brutally simple to calculate, easy to control, and correlates exceptionally well with quality of life for all people.
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School of Radiologic Technology
UnityPoint Health - Des Moines is committed to its educational programs in radiologic technology. The School of Radiologic Technology contributes to IH-DM's primary goal of providing the best possible healthcare to patients. This ensures the delivery of quality service when meeting the needs of the patients and communities they serve.
Click on the links below to explore our educational offerings!
- Radiologic Technology (RT) Certificate Program
Are you looking for an exciting career in the medical field? The RT program is a two-year, full-time program educating students in all aspects of general radiology. Students will learn to use state-of-the art equipment and ionizing radiation to produce diagnostic images in order to aid in the diagnosis and treatment of illness and disease. Through an articulation agreement with DMACC, students have the option of pursuing an Associate in General Studies degree.
- Online Computed Tomography (CT) Program
Are you a radiographer ready to advance your skills? The CT program is a two-semester program designed to provide busy registered radiographers with the opportunity to enhance their medical imaging skills without spending weeks in the classroom. Through an intensive online program, students learn to produce CT images to aid physicians in the diagnosis and treatment of illness and disease.
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In DCHA Gold Standards II, production and performance guidelines for heifers from 6 months of age to freshening, one of the areas covered is "Vaccinations and Parasite Control." With the weather becoming more spring like in southern areas, it's a good time to focus on pinkeye and its prevention.
The November 2010 issue of Veterinary Clinics of North America Food Animal Practice is devoted to diseases and abnormal conditions of the eye; about half of the issue considers eye diseases of cattle.
The condition commonly identified on the farm as "pinkeye" can be:
1. "infectious bovine keratoconjuctivitis" or IBK, is due to an infection by Mycoplasma boviculi or Chlamydophila spp or other Moraxella spp. The primary agent M. bovis, is spread primarily by the face fly (Musca autumnalis). Other bacterial species also have been found to cause IBK.
2. "listerial keratoconjunctivitis and Uveitis," otherwise known as "silage eye," is due to an infection by the Listeria monocytogenes. Listeria infections are fatal in 25% of human cases, most of which arise from food contamination. Listeria causes encephalitis, abortions and septicemia in both cattle and people. In recent years, Listeria has been identified as the source of eye infections in cattle. The primary source of Listeria bacteria that infect the eyes of cattle is silage, thus the common name "silage eye."
3. Bovine Ocular Squamous Cell Carcinoma (cancer of the eye) may affect less than 1% of a herd up to over 30% of a herd consisting exclusively of Hereford cattle with white eyelids living in areas that are subject to higher than average amounts of sunlight. If detected early, many cases can be cured with a simple removal of the 3rd eyelid (which is often the first part of the eye that is affected).
4. Physical injury, which often is followed by bacterial infection.
Prevention of "pinkeye" must thus be directed at controlling each of these factors. Moraxella boviculi is present everywhere. To the extent that the bacteria is spread by flies, the frequency of the disease can be reduced by fly control. In an article entitled "Infectious Bovine Keratoconjunctivitis: A Review of Cases in Clinical Practice" in the November 2010 issue of Veterinary Clinics of North America Food Animal Practice, Dr. Dominic Alexander of the University of Cambridge notes that treatment of IBK can often be very effective if detected early.
Injecting antibiotics (not labeled for treating pinkeye) directly into the eyelid is commonly practiced, but the procedure is controversial and should not be attempted without consultation from your veterinarian. This method is more difficult and potentially more dangerous to the animal than other options, and relapse of infection often occurs if the infection is advanced. Tests have been done with other antibiotics, without clear success.
Finally, systemic treatment is often administered, with oxytetracycline being the only drug labeled fo use in pinkeye. Other therapies might be used, but you need to consult with your veterinarian and -- in custom-rearing facilities -- dairy owners, before adopting other treatments modalities. Dr. Alexander recommends that bacterial cultures be taken and subjected to microbiological analysis for drug sensitivity before administering any systemic antibiotics.
Vaccines labeled for Moraxella boviculi are available, but the effectiveness of these vaccines is questionable. Dr. Alexander reports that these vaccines are not approved for use in the U.K. An article edited by Dr. Duane Murphy at Purdue University explains why these vaccines are not effective, and suggests that a better approach is to control the fly population. This article appears on the Purdue University website. In this same article, Dr. Murphy also recommends the use of bacterial cultures in making a decision about what antibiotic to administer.
Treatment protocols vary by geographic region. Always consult with your veterinarian and nutritionist for specific recommendations for your operation.
For more information visit the Dairy Calf & Heifer Association website.
Source: Roy Williams, DCHA Communications Committee Member and Leadership Class Member
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GUIDE TO EAST BAY CREEKS
People have begun to appreciate the ecological and aesthetic values of streams and to understand better how and why they function. With this knowledge, they are pursuing improved stewardship of our East Bay creeks that incorporates appearance, recreation, and habitat values with the function of the old-fashioned technological fixes.
However, a challenge remains — the condition of any stream is a direct expression of the condition of the stream's watershed. A perfectly natural stream can exist only in a perfectly natural watershed. Since an urbanized watershed is not natural, the stream in an urban watershed must be to some degree managed. And the degree to which a stream can be kept nearly natural depends on the ongoing cooperation of the citizenry throughout the watershed.
A crucial step in preserving the remaining natural stream courses is recognizing the variable nature of streams. To adjust to this, we must preserve enough open space for a meandering main channel within a floodplain. Certain communities are now creating riverside parks that can accommodate moderate floods.
However, for these riparian parks to be attractive and safe for recreation, and for them to provide wildlife habitat, they must have clean water. Through both individual and group action, society must dedicate itself to preventing toxic and sewage pollution, stopping erosion, and favoring percolation of rainwater over surface runoff.
In heavily urbanized areas like Berkeley and Oakland, most creeks are already buried or channelized and are hemmed in tightly by development. Here, plans must focus more on restoration. Due to the amount of development that already exists, complete restoration often isn't realistic — all that concrete did solve some very real problems that any restoration project must address. The question then becomes to what degree we can restore creeks to their natural state.
Some people advocate what they call daylighting, digging up buried creeks. A small portion of Strawberry Creek was daylighted in 1982, creating Strawberry Creek Park. In downtown Berkeley, creek activists and the city's Downtown
Plan are calling for restoring another segment of that creek. In other areas, communities are working to protect and restore the fragments of open creeks that still exist.
As communities begin improving their creeks, it becomes necessary to distinguish between mere landscaping and true restoration. Often, projects try to make up for what is lost by creating alien replacement landscapes. Planting non-native trees and grass, and extensively paving people-space and waterways do not restore the function of the stream ecosystem.
The aims of the stream restoration movement are more integral, approximating what existed naturally, with equal emphasis on appearance, function, and the diversity of habitat. Restorationists work to bring back pools, riffles, floodplains, low-flow channels, and native Streamside vegetation — all expressions of the way a creek interacts with the landscape to create habitat. Key to achieving this is balancing runoff to the stream with the stream's capacity to carry water, and balancing erosion throughout the watershed with transport and deposition of sediment.
Creek restoration in urban settings must focus not only on practical and ecological benefits but also on social benefits. When people work together to create neighborhood parks along their creeks, as they are doing in places like Courtland Creek in Oakland, they strengthen human as well as wildlife communities. Creekside trails promote foot travel between the hills and flatlands. Similarly, as people begin identifying pollutants and checking sediment levels, everyone begins to understand the ecological ties between upstream and downstream.
One thing many communities must consider is that, in certain circumstances, while restoring a creek might appear expensive, it turns out that not restoring a creek can cost even more. A traditional engineering solution to erosion or flooding involves channelizing, removing trees, and building culverts. This is costly, averaging about five million dollars per mile. On the other hand, where land is available for a natural floodplain, a non-structural restoration approach costs between $2,000 and $100,000 per mile.
Moreover, restoration can provide dramatic economic benefits beyond the cost savings. Studies have shown that open, natural, aesthetic streams greatly increase property values. Many communities, such as Napa, San Luis Obispo, and Ashland, Oregon, have found that their restored waterways have increased tourism. These projects provide opportunities for inner city youths to earn money and pride working in conservation corps crews restoring urban streams.
--Sarah Pollock & Ann Riley
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University of Pennsylvania
Positron Emission Tomography (PET): Present and Future Technology
PET is a powerful imaging tool that is being used to study cancer, using a
variety of tracers to measure physiological processes including glucose
metabolism, cell proliferation, and hypoxia in tumor cells. As PET has grown in
the last several years, it has become clear that improved lesion detection and
quantification are critical goals for cancer studies. The performance of these
tasks will be described and related to the physical characteristics of PET
instruments. Data correction methods will be described as well as techniques for
fully 3D iterative reconstruction.
Although overall performance of the current generation of PET scanners has significantly improved, there are limitations especially for heavy patients where attenuation and scatter effects are increased. We have therefore begun investigations of new scintillation detectors, scanner designs, and image processing algorithms in order to overcome these limitations and further improve performance. In particular, we are studying scanner designs that would incorporate scintillators with improved energy and timing resolution. Improved energy resolution helps to reduce scattered radiation, and improved timing resolution makes it feasible to incorporate the time-of-flight information between the two coincident gamma rays into the image reconstruction algorithm, a technique that improves signal-to-noise. Results of recent experiments and computer simulations will be shown to demonstrate these potential improvements.
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T. R. Smith, comp. Poetica Erotica: Rare and Curious Amatory Verse. 192122.
By Tibullus (c.5519 B.C.)
(From Book I. VI; translated by John Percival Postgate, 1912)
LOVE, thou dost always meet me with smiling visage to draw me on; but after that, poor wretch, I find thee frowning and angry. What hast thou to do with me, cruel boy? Is there great glory to a god in laying snares for a man?
For the net is spread to take me; now cunning Delia clasps a gallant covertly in the hush of night. She denies it, indeed, and on oath; but tis hard to believe her. Thus touching me, too, she denies every hour to her husband. Poor wretch, it was I who taught her the ways of tricking her watchers, and now alas! by my own craft am I sore bestead. Then learned she how to frame excuses for lying alone, and then how to turn the door without a sound from the hinges. Then did I give her juices and herbs to erase the dark signs which the teeth in loves communion imprint upon the flesh.
And thou, the unwary mate of a faithless wife, watching me with the rest that she may never sin, and take care that she talk not much or oft with young men, nor use nods to deceive thee, or recline with loose robe and bosom bare; and see she take not wine on her fingers and trace signs on the tables round. Have thy fears when she goes out often, or if she say that she would witness the rites of the Good Goddess which no male must go nigh.
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28 May 2012
The classes were a huge success
Parents and children from Cloan nursery in Drumchapel have visited Glasgow Caledonian University (GCU) for the last of four healthy eating classes funded by the university’s share of profits from the successful centenary edition of the Glasgow Cookery Book.
With the children dressed in miniature aprons and chef’s hats decorated in the distinctive checkered pattern of the Queens College, they worked with their parents and grandparents to create healthy banana and raspberry muffins, make ‘fruit faces’ and take part in a vegetable tasting session.
The Cook and Eat project was part of GCU’s widening participation and community engagement initiative the Caledonian Club. The project, which ran throughout May, was funded by £4000 from book sales and private donations collected by GCU’s Queens College Fund.
The Glasgow Cookery Book – a collection of recipes which started life as a college cooking textbook – was reprinted in 2010 to mark the book’s centenary year.
The Queens College and Glasgow Polytechnic merged in 1993 to form GCU, and the Queens College fund was established to support community-related university programmes and student initiatives.
Caroline Kernaghan, 49, brought her granddaughter, Grace, 4, to the cook and eat project.
Caroline said: “The healthy eating focus lets the kids know that this kind of food can be tasty and it doesn’t always have to be full of sugar. Sweets are not the answer to everything. Coming on to the university campus makes the children realise that nothing is too far away. It lets them know they can accomplish anything. “
Parent Cindy Miah, 32, brought her three-year-old son Kyle McBride, 3.
She said: “He isn’t into fruit and veg but he’s trying it today which is a bonus. It’s great for him. As for me, I’ve learned how to cook a lot more. Someone taught me how to chop properly, which was great.”
Rachel Hyslop, Caledonian Club Development Officer, said: “By offering the Cook and Eat project to parents, we can reinforce the importance of cooking for health and wellbeing and engage parents in the Caledonian Club.”
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Alcohol and tobacco
Although tobacco use has been proven to increase the risk of oral cancer, people who use both alcohol and tobacco are at an especially high risk of contracting the disease. Scientists now believe that these substances synergistically interact, increasing each other's harmful effects.
Alcohol abuse (when defined as more than 21 standard drinks in one week) is already the second largest risk factor for the development of oral cancer. More than 30 years ago, a study focusing on heavy alcohol consumption as a significant factor in the development of cancer also found that in Utah, a state whose population is approximately two-thirds Mormon, incidences of oral cancer were less than that of other western states. In fact, the rate was less than the nation as a whole. This is likely due to the Mormons' religious beliefs requiring them to abstain completely from alcohol and tobacco.
Alcohol's effect on the mouth may be the key to understanding how it works with tobacco to increase the risk of developing cancer. The dehydrating effect of alcohol on cell walls enhances the ability of tobacco carcinogens to permeate mouth tissues; additionally, nutritional deficiencies associated with heavy drinking can lower the body's natural ability to use antioxidants to prevent the formation of cancers.
Oral surgeons at UT Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas say they have found statistical evidence to support these claims. Some studies have even indicated that cirrhosis of the liver due to alcohol intake, may be associated with an increased risk for oral cancer. Patients with cirrhosis often develop a smooth, glossy appearance to the oral mucosae (tissues of the throat and mouth) that may be caused by liver-induced cellular changes such as increased cytoplasmic acetaldehyde content. The actual mechanism for this occurrence, and the relationship to the development of a cancer, is still poorly understood, but warrants further investigation.
A major difficulty in the study of tobacco and alcohol as risk factors is that most oral cancer patients have used both products. Further research is necessary to determine the relationship between oral cancer, alcohol use and tobacco use. However, it is widely accepted that eliminating the use of oral tobacco, and reducing or eliminating your intake of alcohol, will immediately reduce your risk of developing oral cancer. In fact, within 10 years your risk for oral cancer should be as low as any other non-drinker/non-smoker.
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Established in 1984 by Johnny Valdes, Johnny Air Cargo (JAC) pioneered the industry in providing speedy, reliable delivery of packages between the United States and the Philippines.
From Counting Beans to Selling Beans
Johnny Valdes started as an accountant with one of the top accounting firms in the Philippines during the early 70’s. He was assigned to the United States in 1974 as an auditor for Coopers & Lybrand through their employee exchange program.
Although Johnny had the background and training of an accountant, he was always an entrepreneur in spirit. After living in a Filipino-American community for many years, Johnny began to recognize the need for many products and services that were not provided by mainstream marketers in the U.S. His knack for identifying new opportunities encouraged Johnny to start his own businesses.
Between 1980 and 1983, Johnny sold pre-packed vegetables and food products catering to Filipino-Americans as well as Asian restaurants and retail shops in the New York metropolitan area.
An Idea That Carries Weight
While residing in the United States, Johnny traveled back to the Philippines frequently. In the early 1980s, the postal service in the Philippines was extremely inefficient and unreliable. It took several weeks for packages to reach their local destinations and many were lost or damaged in transit. Consequently, Johnny was asked by fellow Filipinos in the U.S. to deliver packages to their relatives with each trip home. Eventually, Johnny was carrying so many of these packages or “padala” to the Philippines that he had to begin charging for the excess baggage weight.
This gave Johnny the idea to start a Philippine parcel service to meet a need that is unique to the Filipino culture: Filipinos abroad wanting to carry on the tradition of gift-giving or \"pasalubong\" as a way of sharing with their loved ones back home, coupled with the Filipino appetite for fine, imported goods. The need for \"padala\" works both ways: Filipinos in the U.S. appreciate the value of Philippine-made clothes and shoes, native foods and native handicrafts.
In 1984, Johnny established Johnny Air Cargo (JAC), becoming the first door-to-door courier service between the United States and the Philippines serving Filipino-Americans. The business was initially operated from Johnny\'s residence in Queens with only one full-time employee and a driver. A rapidly growing Filipino-American community in the New York metropolitan area—with a sizeable segment in the medical profession—enabled Johnny\'s home-grown business to prosper.
Johnny Air Cargo\'s reputation for fast and efficient service spread quickly by word of mouth. Thus came the need to open more branches in the United States and in other areas throughout Philippines.
In 1987, Johnny Air Cargo, Inc. was incorporated and began expanding its business to commercial accounts. One of Johnny’s major achievements was landing the accounts of the Philippine General Consulate Office and the Philippine Mission to the United Nations in New York. Soon afterwards, Johnny began to acquire other corporate accounts like Gelmart, Inc., Natori Corporation, BPI, Jaguar Philippines and Sari-Sari Store, to name a few. JAC also began providing express parcel service for a growing number of Filipino Overseas Workers (OFW), and Filipino immigrants in New York, and eventually in Los Angeles, San Francisco
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Environmental Fear-Mongering Ruins Water Assessment
Review of Last Call at the Oasis, edited by Karl Weber (Public Affairs, 2012), 272 pages, ISBN- 978-1586489786
Last Call at the Oasis is the book version of the fear-mongering movie of the same name. It is an amazingly bad presentation of groundless assertions of water scarcities occasionally interrupted by a few good chapters written by intelligent analysts presenting useful ideas. Accordingly, I cannot recommend Last Call at the Oasis.
However, the book does provide a useful opportunity to clear up some popular misconceptions about water issues, which I will do in this book review. Reviewing this book also gives me a chance to recommend an article I have written on water supply in this issue of Environment & Climate News, which points to some very positive water-related developments on the horizon.
Water Realities or Absurdities?
At the very beginning of Last Call at the Oasis, editor Karl Weber shows what a fool he is. The opening chapter, misleadingly titled “Water Realities,” should have been titled “Water Absurdities,” as nearly every paragraph is fraught with fallacies and lies. The chapter absurdly asserts Las Vegas is doomed due to water scarcity, the nation is running out of water, and pesticides and fracking solutions are causing rampant water pollution. Weber additionally claims human-induced climate change will make all these fictional problems worse.
In subsequent chapters, two contributors argue we must stop eating meat to preserve water supplies and save the environment. A third contributor, Robert Moran, claims water pollution is getting worse by the day, despite overwhelming evidence that water is becoming cleaner.
Moran writes, “There is a common assumption that we can develop natural resources on a large scale without significant environmental impacts. We need to lay that myth to rest once and for all.”
Wow! We can achieve technological advances in nearly every area of technology, but we cannot develop the earth’ resources without messing them up? Sadly, Moran’s statement reflects the antihuman assertions of most of the book’s contributors.
In case readers might be inclined to consider this an ideologically neutral book, Weber inserts a section in which the environmental activist group Natural Resources Defense Council lectures readers on “Ten Simple Ways You Can Help Protect Our Water.”
A Welcome, Strong Chapter
Sadly, the book’s environmental radicalism overshadows a few excellent discussions. For example, Robert Glennon contributes an excellent chapter called “Diamonds In Disguise.” Glennon’s correct premise is most water shortages are caused by the low value we place on water. We would solve many of our water concerns if we priced water in accordance with market demands, Glennon observes.
Many of the worries expressed in Last Call at the Oasis are simply fictitious. Some water concerns, however, are legitimate. Free market economics and technological advances offer a great deal of promise in solving these problems. You can read more about some of these potential solutions in “Water’s Growing Value Will Generate More Accessible Supply,” in this issue of Environment & Climate News.
Jay Lehr, Ph.D. (email@example.com) is science director of The Heartland Institute.
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Google has done an admirable job of providing web apps that lots of people use every day. Gmail is firmly ensconced as a leader in web-based email, Google Reader provides easy RSS feed access, and Google Docs allows users to create word processing documents in their browser windows and share them with other users.
As Google’s Android operating system has picked up in popularity, the search company has created mobile app versions of its web services. The Android version of Google Docs has so far been somewhat underwhelming, but over time, Google has pushed out more and more updates to increase the functionality of the app.
The latest update to Google Docs brings lots of the features enjoyed by web users to its mobile counterparts. For one, the tablet experience of Google Docs has been reworked to be more robust and easier for users. The primary change for tablets is a new layout that makes swiping through document quick and intuitive, giving users more control over what they’re looking for and taking advantage of the larger screen space afforded to Android tablets.
Another major change is probably one of the most requested for Google Docs: offline mode. That allows users to tag certain files and save them to a mobile device’s local storage. Since Google Docs is web-based, normally users need an Internet connection to stream documents to their devices or computers. Saving is also done on Google’s servers automatically. With offline mode, users can save documents for when they can’t access the Internet, then upload changes when they get back to a Wi-Fi connection. PC and Mac users have long enjoyed offline mode capabilities, and now mobile users get the benefit of it, as well.
Google Docs also enjoys some mobile-only features that make it a handy thing to have on-hand no matter what device you’re carrying. Using your smartphone or tablet’s built-in camera, you can take a photo of a document and Google Docs will convert it to editable text in the app – effectively scanning it and making it available instantly. The app also taps into your Contacts list on your device, making sharing documents with most anyone you know a snap as well.
Like all of Google’s apps, Google Docs is free in the Android Market. If you intend to use your mobile devices for word processing work, it’s an app you’ll want in your library, especially now that Google has optimized it for tablets.
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If you work in digital design, you already know that establishing a successful web presence means reaching people on Apple mobile devices, and a critical element of that is having an eye-catching Apple iOS icon.Cienpies Design/Shutterstock
As web viewing shifts more and more from PCs to handheld units, the main way people are are getting to content is by clicking those little square icons that fill up the homescreens of iPhones and iPads the world over. Everyone with a website or blog is learning what app developers have long known: for millions of users, the iPhone and iPad icon is your public face. Like the picture we put up alongside an online dating profile, if it’s unattractive we won’t be getting many clicks.
iPad and iPhone icons are also increasingly the way people bookmark websites. (Read more about it here.) If you don’t provide one of these images, a screenshot of your homepage will be used by default, and nobody wants to give up precious home screen real estate for that. People really do care how their homescreens look, especially iPhone users who tend to be a more fashionable lot. Why not give them something nice? Do it for the fans.
So let’s not put this off any longer… Let’s make an icon.
Four Frequently Asked Questions About iPad and iPhone Icons
1. Does it have to be a square with rounded corners?
YES. One of the things we love about Apple is their cool interface design, and some small degree of standardization is the price we pay for it. That said, the only real limitation we’re facing is that our artwork must fit inside a square. That is because our icon will be resized and reformatted automatically to fit into various parts of the Apple interface which uses squares. (For a run-down on this, visit Apple’s Human Interface Guidelines site.)
2. Does my iPad and iPhone icon have to have that glossy highlight on it?
NO. If you want to create your own lighting effects or prefer a flatter look for a particular icon, you can tell Apple not to apply the gloss, which leads us to…
3. How do I post it on my site?
Simply place a 1024×1024 pixel image file in the root directory of your website named either ‘apple-touch-icon.png’ (if you want the gloss) or ‘apple-touch-icon-precomposed.png’ (if you do not) – easy! Apple devices will look for this file and import it automatically. If you want to apply different icons to different pages or vary the design for the many different sizes in which it will be displayed, you can do that, too. For those who want a little more control, the various options are covered here.
4. How should I approach the design?
Choose a color palette and imagery that are consistent with the site to which the user is directed upon clicking your icon. There is nothing more jarring for a user (or more likely to increase your bounce rate) than making someone think they have ended up in the wrong place. So make sure there is some stylistic connection between icon and landing page. A cute puppy on a pink background might not be the best choice of icons for a black and red website for a mixed martial arts gym with photos of guys kicking each other on its homepage – even if that puppy is your dojo’s mascot.
Want to find a template? There are many beautifully rendered icon backgrounds available in Shutterstock’s library. If you are pressed for time you could just pop a logo onto one of these backgrounds. Here, we’ve gone with a nice set by Kolopach.Kolopach/Shutterstock
Advice for Designing iOS Icons
Keep it simple. Remember, the icon will be resized, so even though it needs to be beautifully rendered at larger scales, it also needs to be legible at smaller ones. For instance, a cloud reader app icon should probably have a cloud on it. A tire store site should probably use a picture of a tire. An icon is like the sign a business puts out by the road to catch the eye of people driving by. It must communicate its intention in an istant. A big, iconic image that describes your site or app is always the best way to go.
Avoid text. While a single letter or a few initials can work, these icons will be scaled down to as small as 29×29 pixels for Spotlight searches. Also, Apple will display the title of your site or app with system text under the icon anyway, so don’t feel you need to put text into the icon.
Use a well-rendered illustration rather than a photo whenever possible. Simply cropping a photo rarely works well for these icons. For inspiration, check out this excellent gallery of icons: You will see that many of these, while perhaps based on photographic assets, have been reworked to look like illustrations. The majority, however, actually are original art made from scratch.
Step by Step: From Vector to Icon
Not a professional illustrator? No worries – Shutterstock has tons of great resources. Include the term “vector illustration” in your search, and see what comes up. For instance, a search for “soccer ball vector illustration” yielded this image, from B Stofko:B Stofko/Shutterstock
You could take a ball, place it on a background that evokes a court or athletic field, add a drop shadow, and frame it with one of those prefab icon backgrounds.
From Photo to Icon
If, for some reason, you must use a photo, consider applying filters and effects so it will look more like an illustration.
A quick tutorial:
For this, we will use the icon background file above (Shutterstock Image ID: 93586144), a photo of a foot on a soccer ball (Shutterstock Image ID: 38232166), and an illustration of a soccer field (Shutterstock Image ID: 63555124).
1. In Photoshop, start by cutting your subject out of the background.
2. Adust the Shadows/Highlights to make the lighting less naturalistic and more idealized.
3. Reduce the level of detail with the Reduce Noise filter.
4. Use the burn tool to accentuate the contours.
5. Make a selection from the subject, and on a new layer behind it, apply a black outline.
6. Lock the layer and paint different colors along the outline it appears too dark.
7. Bring in an illustrated background image.
8. Move over to Adobe Illustrator and paste in the Photoshop image. Select the shape that defines the interior and use it to mask the imported image.
Remember to output your image at 1024×1024 pixels. It used to be 512×512, but with the introduction of Apple’s Retina display, they have raised the bar for screen resolution.
That’s it. Now you are fully compatible with the Apple iOS.
At least until the new iPhone comes out.
You can create a special prompt asking iPhone and iPad-using visitors to your site if they’d like to add your icon to their home screen.
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The more modern an office space, the more useful it will be. This is about productivity, which is why it is important to update the space from time to time. Everything from replacing the windows and adding curtains to including electric heaters and rearranging the furniture will give an office a much needed facelift. The following are some times for how to modernise your office space.
Look at the Space
Clutter is the root of all even when it comes to an office space. This is why it is important to rearrange the space to make it as open and airy as possible. Windows should not be blocked, and it should be easy to navigate around the space. Similarly, the smallest details count: adding a plant, dusting a shelf, and washing the curtains. To modernise a space, the floor-plan or layout of the room needs to be functional and clear. This ensures people are not overwhelmed or overstimulated when they enter a space.
Look at the Furniture
It is important to update furniture, too, when it comes time to modernise an office space. This means replacing a desk that is over ten years old, scratched, and just not adding any aesthetic value to the office. This also means thinking about the look and feel of an office chair, details like wall hangings and rugs, and to think about the amount and type of light coming from a desk or floor lamp. Every detail counts when shaping the look and feel of an office space. This is why it is important to update the furniture when looking to modernise the space.
Today, there is a host of technology to help people stay on top of their game. To modernise an office, one needs to make the most of such technology. Why not invest in the best printers, copiers, and computers? Why not even think about including a sound system in the office so that folks can enjoy music? Everything from fax machines to new phones can really make a difference.
Let the Light In
Windows are everything to an office. The more light that comes into an office, the more modern and attractive the space will feel. If windows are more than a decade old, hard to open or close, or just not very attractive, then it is time to replace them. This will make the space more energy efficient, can change the look and feel of a room, and can make the space seem more modern and welcoming. Similarly, think of the curtains and blinds used in a space. These should not look outdated, dirty, or rundown.
Think of the Heating and Cooling
People want to be comfortable when they are working. This is where electric heaters and air conditioners come into play. Such items can be turned on when it gets quite hot or cold outside. Thus, one will never have to type with their gloves on or sweat through their clothes. Comfortable people are happier and more productive.
By taking a good hard look at the office, slight changes can truly modernise it. This makes it easier to complete basic tasks, and it will change the look and tone of the room. The best offices are those that are well-lit, comfortable, uncluttered, and make it easy to make calls or complete projects. We live in a modern world. One's office should reflect this.
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ZDNet's David Berlind got some time with Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web. Topics covered include the Semantic Web (see also: Microformats), mashups, and the benefits of open standards versus proprietary development environments such as Flash and Silverlight.
"We wouldn't have had the Web," Berners-Lee says, had it started as bunch of competing solutions. And as the mobile Web gains momentum, with its closed access devices (mobile phones), we're in danger of a platform fragmentation that could put a damper on innovation. "We must keep an open interface platform. The … Read more
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Zero Hedge made some interesting points about the nation’s economy and the welfare system. I won’t simply cut and paste the post he put effort in producing, so I’ll include some of his findings pulled from various agencies. I recommend reading his post.
- For increasingly more it is now more lucrative – in the form of actual disposable income – to sit, do nothing, and collect various welfare entitlements, than to work.
- The single mom is better off earnings gross income of $29,000 with $57,327 in net income & benefits than to earn gross income of $69,000 with net income and benefits of $57,045.
- For every 1.65 employed persons in the private sector, 1 person receives welfare assistance
- For every 1.25 employed persons in the private sector, 1 person receives welfare assistance or works for the government.
- 110 million privately employed workers; 88 million welfare recipients and government workers and rising rapidly.
John Hinderaker at Power Line states the obvious.
We are constantly told that it is difficult to find any state or federal spending that can possibly be cut. This suggestion is, I think, ludicrous. Let’s start by cutting welfare, and cutting it deeply. Not only because it is wasteful, but because by devaluing work it threatens to cripple not merely our economy, but our culture. An America where you are better off cashing welfare checks than working is an America that cannot long survive.
Here is a chart from the Heritage Foundation that breaks the myth that we have a revenue problem. We have no such thing. We have a spending a problem.
I’m looking forward to the so called "balanced approach" in dealing with the fiscal cliff. But I won’t hold my breath.
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Golan Heights: Five keys to understanding the dispute
Weekend clashes along the Israeli-Syrian border between Israeli forces and pro-Palestinian protesters put the spotlight on the Golan Heights, a Syrian territory that Israel has controversially occupied for more than four decades. Here are five keys to understanding the dispute.
Location and status
The Golan was part of Syria until 1967, when Israel captured the territory in the Six-Day War (the same war in which Israel captured the West Bank and Gaza). Israel has occupied the territory ever since. Syria insists that any peace agreement with Israel include the return of the Golan Heights.
Separating the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights and Syria is a United Nations demilitarized zone with more than 1,000 UN peacekeepers. The UN Disengagement Observer Force (UNDOF) was put in place in 1974 (following the 1973 war between Israel and Arab neighbors Egypt and Syria) to prevent a resumption of hostilities along the border.
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The Huffington Post is jumping into the green side of the journalism world with a new site called HuffPost Green. Obviously, this is a very crowded genre of the web world, so it will be really interesting to see what they bring to the table. The specifics are a little hazy, but it looks like a great deal of their content will come through a partnership with Discovery’s Planet Green and Treehugger.com. From the release,
“HuffPost Green will focus on eco news and trends–from style and eco-conscious celebrities to green lifestyle tips and the latest scientific findings and expert analysis,” a release from the company explained, hinting that we will likely see photos of Leonardo DiCaprio with his shirt off in addition to the latest grim findings on climate change. “The section will also feature advice on sustainable investing and highlight eco-friendly businesses and sustainable business sectors such as renewable energy, green building, recycling and organics.”
Hey, if they can get Leo with his shirt off, we’re sure success isn’t far behind!
Look for the new site to launch June 4th.
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As we increasingly live our lives digitally, the chance of our information being compromised, stolen and used for nefarious purposes is escalating. You may have heard of hackers and cyber terrorists, but there’s a whole ecosystem of cyber criminals and a sort of taxonomy security experts have come up with to describe them. Security software vendor AVG has helpfully outlined those categories in a piece from its Australia/New Zealand “security evangelist” Lloyd Borrett.
Know Your Enemy:
In the early days of computers, ’hackers’ were white hat good guys who tried to do no harm and hacker was a benign term. Hackers illegally accessed computers to learn more about them, or to find security holes in the computer or the network to which it’s attached. They did nothing malicious, used their skills for good purposes and took pride in the quality of hacks that would leave no trace of an intrusion. Today’s white hat hackers are typically computer security experts, who specialise in penetration testing and other security testing methodologies to ensure that a company’s information systems are secure.
During the early 1980s the lay of the land changed and we started to see the rise of ’crackers’. This refers to a person who intentionally accesses a computer, or network of computers, for evil reasons – typically, with the intent of destroying and/or stealing information. Today these bad guy crackers are sometimes referred to as black hats, or mostly just hackers.
Usually, both hackers and crackers have very advanced computer and networking skills allowing them to develop scripts or programs to help them attack computer systems and networks.
Hacking tools can sometimes fall into the hands of ’script kiddies’, who often use them randomly and with little regard or perhaps even understanding of the potentially harmful consequences. These script kiddies usually have very limited computer skills and can be quite immature, trying to effect large numbers of attacks in order to obtain attention and notoriety.
We typically use the term ’cyber criminals’ to describe those who use the Internet in illegal ways, or to facilitate illegal or fraudulent activities.
More specifically, cyber criminals are the people trying to put malware onto your system so that they can obtain valuable information such as credit card and bank account details, user names and passwords. This is identity theft and those responsible will either use the information to defraud someone, or sell it on to someone else who will.
Cyber criminals are also scammers and phishers who try to con you into giving them money. They might claim to need your help to transfer large amounts of money, or that you’ve won a prize in a lottery you never entered. Sometimes it’s the promise of an inheritance from a wealthy relative you’ve never heard of.
Some cyber criminals illegally distribute software, music, movies against copyright laws. They might even sell illegal forms of pornography. Typically their activities are entirely profit motivated, though in the cases of cyber bullying and cyber grooming the motivations lie elsewhere.
Not all cyber criminals have sophisticated computer and networking skills. Today, the vast majority of cyber criminals simply use the malicious tools and kits marketed for profit by those creating them.
In effect, most cyber criminals are simply up-to-date script kiddies, but now they’re motivated by profit, not notoriety. For about US$400, almost anyone can buy appropriate scripts and after about four hours of working through the instructions, be fully set up as a cyber criminal. Scary stuff.
People trying to illegally obtain information about companies or government organisations are known as ’cyber spies’. Typically when the attack is against a business it is profit driven, while when it’s against government organisations it is espionage.
People who carry out blackmail via the Internet are ’cyber extortionists’. For instance, threatening to release confidential information if an individual or company does not pay a large amount of money. Cyber extortionists may put in place a distributed denial of service attack (DDoS) against the web site or network of a business and demand payment to stop the attack. They might trick you into downloading and installing malware/scareware/scamware, for example rogue anti-virus software, and then demand payment in order for it to be removed.
Relatively new on the scene are ’cyber activists’ who use the Internet as a fast and cheap communications tool for their public movements. They may be involved in cause-related fundraising, community building, lobbying and organising public demonstrations. One example is Iranians using Twitter to organise mass protests in 2009.
Of course, one man’s freedom fighter is another man’s terrorist, so we also have ’cyber terrorists’. These are cyber criminals who use the Internet to destroy computers or disrupt Internet-connected services for political reasons. Just like a regular terrorist attack, cyber terrorism typically requires highly skilled individuals, a lot of money to implement, and detailed planning. An example is when hundreds of DDoS attacks in 2007 virtually took down the Internet in Estonia.
It seems that many countries, including the USA and China, have decided that the Internet is a valid tool to fight a war against their enemies. While the Internet can be used to greatly enhance military and economic power, it also presents a soft underbelly to present and future adversaries. Thus governments are recruiting and training ’cyber warriors’ to use the Internet for offensive attacks, and to protect us from such attacks by others. Sad, but true.
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The Hate That Hate Produced
|The Hate That Hate Produced|
Clockwise from top left: Mike Wallace, Malcolm X, Louis Lomax, Elijah Muhammad
|Produced by||Mike Wallace
|Narrated by||Mike Wallace|
|Release date(s)||July 13–17, 1959|
|Running time||Five half-hour installments|
In 1959, Wallace and Lomax were television journalists for News Beat, a program on WNTA-TV in New York. Lomax told Wallace about the Nation of Islam, and Wallace became interested in the group. Lomax, who was African American, was given rare access to the organization. Accompanied by two white camera operators, Lomax conducted interviews with the Nation's leaders and filmed some of its events. The Hate That Hate Produced was broadcast in five parts during the week of July 13–17, 1959, and was repeated several days later.
The program
The Hate That Hate Produced began with a narration by Wallace:
While city officials, state agencies, white liberals, and sober-minded Negroes stand idly by, a group of Negro dissenters is taking to street-corner step ladders, church pulpits, sports arenas, and ballroom platforms across the United States, to preach a gospel of hate that would set off a federal investigation if it were preached by Southern whites.
The cameras cut to a scene of Louis X (later known as Louis Farrakhan) indicting "the white man" for his crimes:
I charge the white man with being the greatest liar on earth! I charge the white man with being the greatest drunkard on earth.... I charge the white man with being the greatest gambler on earth. I charge the white man, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, with being the greatest murderer on earth. I charge the white man with being the greatest peace-breaker on earth.... I charge the white man with being the greatest robber on earth. I charge the white man with being the greatest deceiver on earth. I charge the white man with being the greatest trouble-maker on earth. So therefore, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I ask you, bring back a verdict of guilty as charged!
Wallace returned to tell the audience:
The indictment you've just heard is being delivered over and over again in most of the major cities across the country. This charge comes at the climax of a morality play called The Trial. The plot, indeed the message of the play, is that the white man has been put on trial for his sins against the black man. He has been found guilty. The sentence is death. The play is sponsored, produced, by a Negro religious group who call themselves "The Muslims".
During the course of the program, Wallace told viewers more about the Nation of Islam, which he described as "the most powerful of the Black supremacist groups". The documentary included footage of the University of Islam, a school run by the Nation, where, according to Wallace, "Muslim children are taught to hate the white man". It also showed portions of a large Nation of Islam rally, while Wallace told viewers that the organization had 250,000 members, a tremendously inflated number.
The Hate That Hate Produced included interviews between Lomax and Elijah Muhammad, the leader of the Nation of Islam. When Lomax asked him whether he was preaching hate, Muhammad answered that he was just teaching truth. Muhammad said he believed black people were divine and white people were devils. He also said that Allah was a black man.
The program also included Lomax's interviews with Malcolm X, the Nation of Islam's charismatic spokesman. Lomax asked him if all white people were evil, and Malcolm X explained that white people collectively were evil: "History is best qualified to reward all research, and we don't have any historic example where we have found that they have, collectively, as a people, done good." When he was asked about the Nation's schools, such as the University of Islam, Malcolm X denied that they taught black children to hate; he said they were being taught the same things white students were taught, "minus the little Black Sambo story and things that were taught to you and me when we were coming up, to breed that inferiority complex in us."
At the program's end, Wallace asked for support for black leaders who were "counseling patience and the relatively slow operation of legal measures". He said it was necessary to make the United States a nation that was truly "indivisible, with freedom and justice for all".
Public reaction
The Hate That Hate Produced shocked many of the millions of people who watched it. Most white people had never heard of the Nation of Islam before, and many were stunned to learn that some black people had such strong feelings toward white people. For many white viewers, it was the first time they learned there was a radical black alternative to the Civil Rights Movement.
Some African Americans could not believe that black people were saying such things out loud, but more than a few agreed with it. The number of people attending Nation of Islam meetings increased significantly, and the group's membership doubled to 60,000 within weeks after the broadcast.
The Hate That Hate Produced catapulted Malcolm X to national attention. Although he had rarely been mentioned in the mainstream press before the program went out, Malcolm X soon became a frequent participant in television debates on race-related issues and one of the most sought-after speakers on college campuses across the United States.
Modern analysis
Recent commentators generally feel that The Hate That Hate Produced was biased against the Nation of Islam. One writer said "its title reflected its severe view". Others have described it as "marked [by] a tendency to caricature", "blatantly one-sided", and a "piece of yellow journalism".
One of the first things Wallace said about Muhammad and Malcolm X was that they had served time in prison, a statement that seemed designed to call their leadership credentials into question and suggest the organization itself was criminal. Wallace referred to "this disturbing story" and used phrases such as "black supremacy", "black racism", and "gospel of hate" to frighten the white audience, critics say, and no effort was made to balance the presentation.
In his book White Violence, Black Response, Herbert Shapiro criticizes Wallace's opening comments that the Nation of Islam "preach[es] a gospel of hate that would set off a federal investigation if it were preached by Southern whites." He noted that some Southern whites—including state and local elected officials—did in fact preach such a gospel of hate, but the federal government had done almost nothing to stop their hate propaganda. Shapiro also argues that Wallace confused the Nation's rhetoric that condemned white people with a specific plan for violence against white people.
- Joseph, Peniel E. (2006). Waiting 'til the Midnight Hour: A Narrative History of Black Power in America. New York: Henry Holt and Company. p. 21. ISBN 0-8050-7539-9.
- Clegg III, Claude Andrew (1997). An Original Man: The Life and Times of Elijah Muhammad. New York: St. Martin's Press. p. 125. ISBN 0-312-18153-1.
- McPhail, Mark Lawrence (2002). The Rhetoric of Racism Revisited: Reparations or Separation? (2 ed.). Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield. p. 175. ISBN 0-7425-1719-5.
- Lincoln, C. Eric (1994). The Black Muslims in America (3 ed.). Grand Rapids, Mich.: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing. p. 1. ISBN 0-8028-0703-8.
- Banks, Adam Joel (2005). Race, Rhetoric, and Technology: Searching for Higher Ground. London: Routledge. p. 52. ISBN 0-8058-5313-8.
- Joseph. Waiting 'til the Midnight Hour. p. 22.
- Clegg. An Original Man. p. 126.
- Lincoln. The Black Muslims in America. p. 69.
- Verney, Kevern (2006). The Debate on Black Civil Rights in America. Manchester: Manchester University Press. p. 118. ISBN 0-7190-6761-8.
- Banks. Race, Rhetoric, and Technology. p. 54.
- Shapiro, Herbert (1988). White Violence and Black Response: From Reconstruction to Montgomery. Amherst, Mass.: University of Massachusetts Press. p. 469. ISBN 0-87023-578-8.
- Shapiro. White Violence and Black Response. p. 468.
- Bush, Rod (2000). We Are Not What We Seem: Black Nationalism and Class Struggle in the American Century. New York: New York University Press. p. 172. ISBN 0-8147-1318-1.
- Rickford, Russell J. (2003). Betty Shabazz: A Remarkable Story of Survival and Faith Before and After Malcolm X. Naperville, Ill.: Sourcebooks. p. 119. ISBN 1-4022-0171-0.
- McCloud, Sean (2004). Making the American Religious Fringe: Exotics, Subversives, and Journalists, 1955-1993. Chapel Hill, N.C.: University of North Carolina Press. p. 61. ISBN 0-8078-5496-4.
- Miller, Douglas T.; Nowak, Marion (1977). The Fifties: The Way We Really Were. New York: Doubleday. p. 209. ISBN 0-385-11248-3.
- Turner, Richard Brent (2003). Islam in the African-American Experience (2 ed.). Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press. p. 197. ISBN 0-253-21630-3.
- Baldwin, Lewis V.; Al-Hadid, Amiri YaSin (2002). Between Cross and Crescent: Christian and Muslim Perspectives on Malcolm and Martin. Gainesville, Fla.: University Press of Florida. p. 281. ISBN 0-8130-2457-9.
- Leeman, Richard W. (1996). African-American Orators: A Bio-Critical Sourcebook. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press. p. 413. ISBN 0-313-29014-8.
- Joseph. Waiting 'til the Midnight Hour. p. 24.
- Pearson, Hugh (1995). The Shadow of the Panther: Huey Newton and the Price of Black Power in America. New York: Perseus. p. 23. ISBN 0-201-48341-6.
- Banks. Race, Rhetoric, and Technology. p. 51.
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Lift Ev'ry Voice Festival
|Country and Region||United States — Massachusetts|
|Type of Festival||Dance, Drama, Literary, Music|
|Location of Festival||Towns throughout Berkshire County, Massachusetts, USA|
|Festival Contact Information|
Lift Ev’ry Voice is an arts and heritage festival that celebrates African-American history, culture and traditions throughout the US. The events that take place in towns throughout Berkshire County in Western Massachusetts involve numerous arts organizations: Barrington Stage Company, the Berkshire Museum, Berkshire Theatre Festival, Chesterwood, the Clark Art Institute, the Colonial Theatre, Jacob’s Pillow, the Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center, Mass MoCA, Tanglewood, and other renowned cultural venues in the Berkshires.
|Festival Dates||June 19 - July 23, 2011|
The first edition of the festival takes place in summer 2011. The events celebrate African-American culture and heritage in the Berkshires of western Massachusetts. Entitled Lift Ev’ry Voice, after the beloved “black national anthem” Lift Ev’ry Voice And Sing by James Weldon Johnson, once a summer resident of the Berkshires.
The African-American community of the Berkshires region of western Massachusetts has a rich and impressive history, from the Revolutionary War heros to NASA astronauts. Best known as the birthplace of W.E.B. DuBois, the Berkshires were also home to Elizabeth “Mumbet” Freeman, the first slave to successfully sue for freedom, Reverend Samuel Harrison, chaplain to the acclaimed 54th regiment in the Civil War who successfully fought for equal pay for black soldiers, Jazz Age photographer James Van Der Zee, and writer James Weldon Johnson, among many others. The cultural institutions of the Berkshires have led the way in presenting African-American artists and performers from Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, built on the site of an Underground Railroad station, to the Lenox School of Jazz at the Music Inn in the 1950s. African-American history in the Berkshire region can be explored through self-guided tours along all or part of the Upper Housatonic Valley African-American Heritage Trail, in the book African-American Heritage of the Upper Housatonic Valley, or by visiting http://www.africanamericantrail.org.
Opening Day Celebrations 2011:
- Sunday, June 19
- The Lift Ev’ry Voice festival kicks off on Sunday, June 19th with a free community Juneteenth celebration, the first ever in the Berkshires, and an evening performance of Craig Harris’ God’s Trombones at the Colonial Theatre, both in downtown Pittsfield, the largest city in Berkshire County. Juneteenth commemorates the end of slavery in the United States and is recognized as a legal holiday in 37 states. Former Sweet Honey in the Rock vocalist Evelyn Harris will perform, along with the Youth Alive Step Dance & Drum Team, gospel singer Lamar Robinson, world music performer Appollo Nzima, and others. Food and other vendors plus family activities will also be featured at the outdoor event, which will be held on the grounds of the Polish Community Club at the corner of Center and Linden Streets from 12 noon to 5pm on Sunday, June 19th, rain or shine. Lift Ev’ry Voice’s opening day continues with an extraordinary lineup of trombone players performing at the Colonial Theatre in Craig Harris’ rollicking opus God’s Trombones, inspired by James Weldon Johnson’s celebrated book,God’s Trombones: Seven Negro Sermons in Verse, published in 1927. Both the book and the composition were created in large part in the Berkshires, the latter in residencies at Mass MoCA and Williams College. God’s Trombones will be performed at 7pm at the Colonial Theatre, located at 111 South Street in downtown Pittsfield. Tickets are $10-$25 with a special family ticket available for two adults and up to 3 children for $65. Advance tickets are recommended and may be purchased online at http://www.thecolonialtheatre.org or by calling 413-997-4444.
Other highlights of festival:
- Wednesday, June 22
- Kickoff of the Berkshire County Massachusetts 54th infantry trail and book at Chesterwood
- Saturday, June 25
- Earth, Wind & Fire at Tanglewood
- Saturday, July 2
- Youth & Family Hip Hop Dance Party at Mass MoCA
- Thursday, July 7
- Pearl Primus talk & performance at Jacob’s Pillow
- Friday, July 8
- A tribute to the Negro Leagues at Wahconah Baseball Park
- Saturday, July 9
- A tribute to the African-American elders of the Berkshires at Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center
- Saturday, July 16
- Aint I a Woman, a community musical about African-American women leaders in history in Great Barrington
- Sunday, July 17
- A day with topiary artist Pearl Fryar at the Mount
- Friday, July 22
- Hip hop artist Talib Kweli at the Colonial Theatre
- For more information on all of these events and many more can be found online at http://www.liftevryvoice.com.
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[rspec-devel] Stories vs. examples
pergesu at gmail.com
Wed Nov 7 13:23:18 EST 2007
On Nov 7, 2007 6:15 AM, David Chelimsky <dchelimsky at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Nov 7, 2007 2:04 AM, Matthijs Langenberg <mlangenberg at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Would this also mean that the guy writing the story is defining the
> > functional part of the GUI?
> > Since it's the most outer layer of the system, would that be described in a
> > story first?
> > Like: "Given a user and a form with a button, when a user clicks the button,
> > then the world should come to an end."
> There should likely be both interaction stories like that AND business
> rule stories, like the one Dan uses in
> http://dannorth.net/2007/06/introducing-rbehave. If every story takes
> you through every step, they all become too big IMO.
I still haven't quite made up my mind about this. At this point, I'm
expressing interactions in stories and business rules in specs. I
don't really like Dan's account example - it's either too low-level
for my taste, or isn't quite low-level enough :)
Here's the account class as I would probably write it (completely
I could be picking nits here, and Dan and I just have a different
design style. If I give an object a command, then I expect it to do
its work or fail hard. So for the "savings account is overdrawn"
scenario, I'd need to work at a higher level or use the object in more
detail. When doing Rails apps, I would just have a scenario where the
user submits a form, and the next page displays an error message and
the balances are unchanged.
I'm not certain of what to do if it's not a Rails app. I might use a
higher abstraction such as a BankService which protects the user from
dirty exceptions. So the transfer step might be
@transaction = bank_service.request_transfer @savings, @checking, 50
@transaction.error.should == "You do not have sufficient funds"
and then we'd still have the steps that verify the account balances
Of course, now is the point where I admit that I think that's a
needless abstraction, and doesn't feel very OO to me. But maybe you
reach a point where you do need to wrap it up like that. I would much
@savings.transfer_to @checking, 50 rescue nil
again later verifying that the balances weren't touched.
So what am I getting at here? Right now, I generally only use stories
at a very high level. That means I perform an action from the user's
point of view, rather than telling an object to do something. In this
case, I would have a spec that defines when #can_transfer? is true and
when it's false, and that #transfer_to blows up when the account
doesn't have sufficient funds. It's really a design detail though,
and one that should be hidden from the user.
However I mentioned that I'm on the fence about all of that. The key
question is why am I writing code that isn't driven by a story?
Specifically, if the only interaction point is a controller action,
why do I need code that raises an exception instead of just silently
failing? The reason is that a controller action is never the only
interaction point. In a Rails app I happily open up console and use
my business objects. I need them to be more informative when
But, that's a business process, and needs to be captured in a story.
So basically this all boils down to me wondering if I need to move
more stuff - particularly interactions with business objects - into
More information about the rspec-devel
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The truth about global warming. Click here
Okay... it's a cycle. It gets colder, warmer, colder.... the hole in the ozone layer gets bigger, then smaller, then bigger. Right now, the planet is cooling back down, but the seasons are happening a little later each year. The hole in the ozone is closing again.
The huge ass gorilla sitting in the middle of this is the fact that people have only been able to measure a lot of this stuff for less than 75 years. That's less than a single lifetime. Let's compare the lifetime of this rock to a single lifetime. We have the rock, which is what, supposed to be 40 million years old, or was it 4 billion years, or something like that (the supposed age of this small ball changes more times than my ex changes her mind), vs 75 years. Methinks these scientists need another few thousand years of data to even formulate the first three words of a theory.
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In 2011-12 (April-March) India produced around 540 million tonnes (mt) of coal. This was 1.36% more than the that produced in 2010-11 (April-March).
Of the 540 mt, Coal India accounted for around 436 mt or a little over 80%. The balance was produced by Singareni Collieries Company and a host of other small companies.
This wasn’t enough to meet the demand for coal in India. Hence, 99 mt of coal was imported, primarily from countries such as Australia, Indonesia and South Africa.
India’s coal import has been growing significantly over the years (as can be seen from the table here). What also comes out clearly is that during 2003-09, the cost of the import grew at a much faster rate than the quantity. This was the period when the international prices of coal were rallying and touched $190 per tonne in mid-2008.
Why this was not par for the course
This would have been par for the course if India did not have enough coal reserves, as in the case of oil. (We don’t have enough known reserves of oil and hence we don’t produce enough to meet the demand. So we import oil).
But as numbers from the Geological Survey of India (as on April 1, 2012) indicate, India has 293.5 billion tonnes (bt) of coal reserves. These reserves are referred to as geological reserves and are for valid for a depth between 0.9 metres and 1,200 metres.
Not all of these reserves can be mined. Open cast mining of coal typically goes to a depth of around 250 metres below the ground whereas underground mining goes to a depth of around 600-700 metres.
The quantity of coal that can be extracted is referred to as extractable reserves. P.C. Parekh, a retired IAS officer in a presentation, puts the extractable reserves at around 60 bt. (You can access the presentation here). Another expert this writer spoke to said this number could be significantly higher.
But that’s beside the point. What this clearly tells us is, unlike oil, India has enough coal to mine.
Given this, India should not be importing the nearly 100 mt of coal that it did during the last financial year.
So, why is India not able to mine enough coal?
The simple answer is that Coal India, which is the biggest producer of coal in the country, is not able to produce enough. One look at the table clearly proves that. Click here for table.
Why coal blocks were given away for free
During 2004-12, the total coal produced by Coal India increased by 17.5%, or at a minuscule rate of 2.3% per year. The slow increase in the production fell short of the demand growth, as during the period energy needs surged with India becoming the second fastest growing country in the world. A study published in 2011 shows that coal is used to meet 40% of India’s energy needs against the global average of 27%.
Adding to the import cost was the spurt in global commodity prices during 2004-09 as China expanded at a breakneck speed. Global coal prices shot up as China gobbled up commodities from all over the world.
The international price of coal, which was at a little over $20 per metric tonne in mid-2003, rose to around $40 per metric tonne in mid-2005 and then to around $190 per tonne in mid 2008.
Given these reasons, the government felt that there was a need to look beyond Coal India. In fact, the inability of Coal India to produce enough coal was the main reason why The Coal Mines (Nationalisation) Act 1973 was amended with effect from June 9, 1993, to allow the government to give away coal blocks for free.
The Economic Survey for 1994-95 points out the reason behind the decision. “In order to encourage private sector investment in the coal sector, the Coal Mines (Nationalisation) Act, 1973, was amended with effect from June 9, 1993, for operation of captive coal mines by companies engaged in the production of iron and steel, power generation and washing of coal in the private sector.”
The total coal production in the country in 1993-94 was 246.04 mt, up 3.3% from 1992-93. The government understood the production growth was not going to gain greater momentum anytime soon because newer projects were hit by delays and cost over-runs.
“As on December 31, 1994, out of 71 projects under implementation in the coal sector, 22 projects are bedevilled by time and cost over-runs. On an average, the time over-run per project is about 38 months. There is urgent need to improve project implementation in the coal sector,” the economic survey of the government noted in 1994-95.
Even though the decision to give away coal blocks for free came into effect in 1993, nothing much happened until 2004. But after that the government went into an overdrive to give away coal blocks for free.
Between 2005 and 2009, the government gave away 149 coal blocks for free. For Indian companies, which were scrambling for the fuel to meet their growth aspirations, it also made sense to have direct access to domestic coal during the period as the international prices were ruling high.
But, as it has become clear now, giving away the coal blocks for free did not solve the problem. As per the audit report by the Comptroller and Auditor General of India, as many as 86 blocks were supposed to produce around 73 mt of coal as on March 31, 2011. In reality, however, only 28 blocks started production and their total output was just around 34.6 mt.
Why Coal India output is capped
Coal India has probable reserves of around 18.9 billion tonnes, but is still unable to expand production at a higher rate. Why, seems to be the question nobody is asking.
Had I been a television journalist, I would simply attribute it to Coal India’s inefficiency, as is the case with most public sector companies.
But the truth is a lot more complicated than that, and, to a large extent, explains why the government’s decision of giving away coal blocks for free hasn’t worked.
India’s coal reserves are largely concentrated in the middle of the country in the states of Jharkhand, West Bengal, Odisha, Madhya Pradesh, Chattisgarh and Maharashtra. There are some reserves in the Northeast as well but they are, at the best, minuscule.
The trouble is that the states with the biggest coal reserves are also dealing with the Naxalite problem. Hence, operating in these regions is not very easy.
A lot of the coal reserves are also in regions categorised as forest areas and getting clearances from the state governments is not easy. What also has not helped is that the Ministry of Environment and Forests, which gives the overall environment clearance, is not known to be very efficient.
“Our 168 projects are pending environment and forest clearances at the Centre and State levels. Sixty-seven of these projects are greenfield and we are unable to make any investment in these. Remaining are ongoing expansion schemes, which too have been stalled,” NC Jha, then Chairman of Coal India, had told The Times of India at the beginning of the year.
But these are small issues. The biggest problem facing Coal India is the acquisition of land. The right to property is not a fundamental right in India. And over the years, the government has acquired land forcibly from the citizens of this country at rock bottom prices.
In Ranchi, where this writer grew up, original landholders have still not been paid after their land was acquired to set up what was then one of the biggest public sector units in the country. Attempts are rarely made to rehabilitate those who gave up the land. The homes built for them are not livable, to say the least, in most of the cases. Hence, people are reluctant to hand over their land, their only source of income.
The government’s attitude has only politicised the issue. Hence, the state governments are not interested as they are likely to lose votes if they use force to acquire land.
Due to these same reasons for giving away coal blocks for free has not worked and will not work. Of the 195 coal blocks that the government has given away for free, 193 are in Jharkhand, West Bengal, Odisha, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Maharashtra.
All these states have a Naxalite problem and that will affect the private and other government players as much as it has been impacting Coal India. The government’s environmental policy and the land acquisition policy continue to remain in a mess.
What also does not help is the fact that the expertise required to get a coal mine up and running is largely limited to Coal India. Mining coal is not exactly as easy as digging a tube-well.
In order to get a block up and running, companies need to prepare a mine plan, carry out the environmental impact study (EIS) of the area etc. The EIS essentially looks at what the current environment of the area is like, how mining coal will change that and what can be done to ensure that the current environment can be maintained.
For Coal India, this planning is done by its subsidiary Central Mine Planning and Design Institute (CMPDI). Such expertise is very difficult to find in the private sector.
Coalgate is not a problem that emerged overnight. It is a problem created by the various Congress governments (given that the party has ruled the country for the most part since independence) over the years. This led to the Congress-led UPA government giving away coal blocks for free to ensure that India produces more coal. But that is a problem that remains and will remain.
Most of the data regarding coal production in India unless otherwise stated has been sourced from Provisional Coal Statistics, 2011-2012, Coal Controller’s Organization, Ministry of Coal.
(Vivek Kaul is a writer. He can be reached at email@example.com)
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I am interested in this Human Child Learning, in 2 parts.
Sounds simple. Children learn through observation, imitation, and would follow steps or instructions to complete a simple task. But what is involved here? Imitation and copying accurately are a huge part of our learning development as a human – that is also the way how we learn language and how we interact with objects, through observation, copying, and practicing in education and learning.
Children also learn through activities, games and projects, based on the Montessori education principles - a Constructivist or “discovery” model, where students learn concepts from working with materials, rather than by direct instruction (wikidpedia).
How about adult learning? Do adults learn in similar ways? It seems that adults learn through observation and copying of actions or demonstrations, as is obvious in sports, dancing, cooking and playing games. So those acts of imitation is still relevant, in education, with some basic cognition (reasoning) at the early stages of learning quite similar to that of children learning. Adult learning would be more complex, as shared in my previous post here and Rita’s post here. Here Maferarenas illustrates how she learns with the Personal learning Environment.
Under Andragogy as developed by Malcolm Knowles, there are six assumptions about adult learning:
1. The need to know. What is to be learnt and why learning is important here.
2. Self concept. The learners are responsible for their decision. The ownership of learning and self direction is important. This would be context dependent.
3. Experience. Such experience would be based on active participation, constructive activities and collaboration among the learners.
4. Readiness to learn.
5. Orientation to learn. These need to be contextualized, and experimental in basis. Adult learners would then reflect, generalize the theory and principles behind and test it in real life to see if works.
6. Motivation – extrinsic and intrinsic motivation.
To what extent are these assumptions applicable in today’s adults’ learning?
Here I am re-posting my previous post on Reflection of Theory and Practice of Learning:
I am interested in reading Heli’s post on Learning Theories: Recent discussion.
She made me smile, when sharing her background, as I also realised that I came from a different background – engineering, education, and logistics, but found connected to her and Jenny too like an “everyday chat” in the blogosphere.
I learnt English whilst I was young, but still it wasn’t my mother language, so I would like to say to Heli: you are not alone in your expression of thoughts in a language other than your own I reckon I just need to strive hard to share in English in my blog, or twitter/FB. I think I understand how Heli feels, especially when it comes to the vocabulary for use in composing blog posts, and those critical literacies – syntax, pragmatics, semantics etc required when searching for information, and reflecting on experiences and observations. Are those critical literacies also important in her mother tongue – Finnish?
About learning theories, I did find it interesting to explore the trends after my learning in a number of teacher training courses for decades. I remembered my “old days” of teaching where as a teacher, I had to prepare a lesson plan for every lesson, and had to respond to every surprise visit by the inspector in charge during my In Service Course of Technical Teachers’ Training. The one that I found most interesting at the time was cognitivism, where teachers were expected to develop teaching strategies throughout the curriculum and lesson planning. So, an understanding of the learning theories was required in the teacher training and examination, but I reckon that it was the application of them in our daily teaching and learning that made the difference. Moreover, it was the reflection of what worked and what didn’t that stimulated me to rethink about the significance of a particular learning theory in practice. The students were also expected to learn both independently and collectively, through individual assignments, and group projects. So students had to learn their critical thinking skills through individual thinking and reflection, and collaborative inquiry.
So is a learning theory useful for a particular learning context? How would it help me and the learner in learning the content? How about the process of learning involved? These are the realities of teaching and learning even at this digital age.
It seems good to focus on one or two particular learning theories – like behaviorism, cognitivism, constructivism or connectivism and see how they would make a difference to my teaching and learning.
Behaviorism could make a difference in teaching and learning when we use it wisely. Here are some of my learnings (adapted from ideas in various readings):
When you want to change people’s behavior, use warmth and kindness instead of push and pull, and openness and cooperation will be your reward, especially in teaching and learning online or networks. Why? We respond more cooperatively when approached with a smile and a handshake, or an appreciation than when subjected to indifference, frowns and put downs, sarcasm, or destructive comments and criticisms. If we as teachers or learners don’t treat others (teachers, our learners or co-learners) with warmth and respect in the networks or online, they’ll go elsewhere, or just won’t be connected with us. So inability to relate positively to teachers, other colleagues and learners could be a severe cultural handicap when teaching or learning online. This may be a challenge for teachers and learners who may have been educated under the authoritarian school of thoughts, where discipline and disciplinary controls are strongly emphasized.
I think positive reinforcement would still be important in supporting adult learners in their learning journey, as most adults would consider positive and constructive feedback a motivating factor for them to compose blog posts and reflect upon. This also explains why many bloggers would like to receive comments from their readers or bloggers, as these comments could be perceived as good incentives for them to continue their blogging and learning with others.
Cognitivism could be used in various settings, including the classroom structured learning and informal online learning. Here individual, independent learning could be achieved through PLE/N based on reflective journals on blogs, and through the acquisition of metacognition skills, learners could achieve higher levels of deep learning through the practice and reflection process.
Constructivism seems to provide a useful framework when knowledge is co-constructed with others through the mediation of technology or networks. This may involve the use of tools of Web 2.0 or Learning Management Systems (LMS) in teaching and learning. Here individuals would be encouraged and supported to share ideas and participate in the forums or blog visits and comments. My recent experience with its use have been the Moodle forum discussion, where I could post resources in the Moodle, and allow students to be engaged in forum discussion. There have been favorable responses from students on the use of Moodle as a teaching and learning resource and discussion platform.
The application of Social Constructivism and Situation Learning Theory (i.e. Community of Practice) provides exciting platforms for learning to happen in communities where learners could participate as legitimate peripheral learners or active core learners depending on their comfort levels, interests and capability. I have participated in some COPs and found that there were both great rewards and challenges when involved in COP.
Great rewards include the sharing of common purpose, and development of capabilities together with other members of the community. My learning and participation as a Committee Member of the Logistics Association of Australia further helped me in appreciating the importance of community work and how the practice as professional logisticians would make a difference to the community. My involvement in CCK community and networks (the course, FB, twitter etc.) also broadens my perspectives and learning extensively throughout the last two years.
Above photos: from Flickr
Great challenges in COPs however include the inactive participation of community members, and the lack of cohesion with the community. This may likely be due to the divergent interests of community members, rendering it rather difficult to have any “consensus” views in the vision and mission for a community throughout the lifespan of the community. Also, the autonomy of the community members may be “sacrificed” if the goals of community go against to that of some of the individual community members. The tensions amongst members of a community also arise when power relationships develop, leading to indecision and confusion in implementing actions within a community.
So, what is unique with Connectivism? Connectivism seems to work best when learning in a networked learning environment, where the goals of the teacher and learners may be to navigate, co-construct and grow the learning networks so as to facilitate and support learning with the learners. Here PLE/N provides the tools and media for learner, experts of diverse background to be connected to various information sources, and to filter the information which are relevant to the teachers, experts and learners. My experience in blogging and forum discussion reinforces its use in tackling complex problems and projects, where cooperation and collaboration with others are important in the learning process. It could also be used in play as illustrated here by Carmen.
I have already used the metaphors of elephant in sharing the differences amongst instructivism, constructivism and connectivism here.
At the end, it is the learner (me inclusive) who would provide us with the feedback of the values each theory and application could add to his/her learning.
So much for the meandering.
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The article is about how as our capitalistic society grew in america it made it easier for homosexual people to "come out". As the United States economy and industry grew the structures of families changed and marriage was not as much of a necessity as it was in prior years. This change in the society allowed for homosexuals and women to earn a wage equal to a family wage in the past and therefore allowed them to be independent of one another. After WWII, women had to go back to their domestic roles. They had already, during the war, been able to be independent from men. Thus, after the war was over the women felt as if they should be independent of the men still. Prostitution, was the "working class" for women and gave them an opportunity to be totally independent and able to survive on their own. Laws, didn't allow prostitution but our capitalistic society would say that anything that makes money and can support a person is good for society.
Do you think that capitalism is to blame for the changing society values? If so, do you think that capitalism is wrong? If no, what other benefits has capitalism provided for us today?
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The Census won’t count it. The IRS won’t tax it, at anywhere near full freight. What is it? It’s enough, all by itself, to keep grand fortunes constantly soaring.
By Sam Pizzigati
Can we start the century over?
Economically, new Census Bureau income stats released last week suggest, our 21st century so far rates as the worst century in American history. We are hurtling backwards — at an alarmingly rapid rate.
The typical American household income, $53,164 in 2000 after adjusting for inflation, stood at just $49,445 last year. Incomes for the typical working-age household — under 65 — have dropped over 10 percent since 2000.
The number of Americans living in poverty, meanwhile, is rising. In 2000, 11.3 percent of Americans rated as officially poor. Last year, 15.1 percent fit the poverty definition — under $22,314 for a family of four — and almost half those in poverty, 44.3 percent, had incomes less than half the poverty threshold.
What about households at the other end of the income spectrum? The annual Census Bureau figures on incomes at our tippy top have never been particularly helpful. Census statisticians, to protect the confidentiality of the households they survey, “topcode” income categories — at $1.1 million.
The Census income survey doesn’t count ‘capital gains,’ the profits from the sale of stocks, bonds, and other assets.
We know, as a result, exactly how many American households made under $10,000 last year or between $50,000 and $60,000. But we have no clue, from the annual Census figures, how many made over $5, $10, or $20 million.
The even bigger shortcoming with the annual Census stats: The Census income survey doesn’t count “capital gains,” the profits from the sale of stocks, bonds, and other assets. Capital gains just happen to make up the single biggest category of income America’s super rich pull in every year.
In fact, as the Washington Post reminded us last week, capital gains make up nearly 60 percent of the income that goes to America’s 400 highest-earning taxpayers. Since the early 1990s, over 80 percent of all capital gains have gone to America’s richest 5 percent — and almost half to the richest 0.1 percent.
None of this capital gains income shows up in the new Census income figures released last week, the prime reason why the Census data show the average income of America’s top 5 percent, adjusted for inflation, down over the past decade, down even more sharply than incomes in America’s statistical middle.
Top 5 percent households took home an inflation-adjusted $320,000 in 2001, according to the Census figures out last week, and only $288,000 in 2010.
But these totals bear only a passing resemblance to the sums households in the top 5 percent have actually been raking in. We know that for a fact, thanks to statisticians at the IRS. Their IRS annual reports do include capital gains income.
In real life, preferential treatment for capital gains serves to make the super rich ever richer.
What sort of difference does this inclusion make to America’s income picture? A quite substantial one.
Between 2001 and 2008, the IRS stats show, the top 5 percent’s share of America’s national income rose from 31.99 percent to 34.74 percent. The Census Bureau annual data have the top 5 percent share, for these same years, falling from 22.4 percent to 21.5 percent.
A distressing irony lurks in all these numbers. The Census Bureau doesn’t count capital gains income. The IRS doesn’t tax it — at anywhere near the tax rate that applies to ordinary income. In real life, this preferential treatment for capital gains serves to make the super rich ever richer.
The world of professional baseball offers a particularly vivid example. In 2010, all Major League players will pay a 35 percent tax on any salary over $373,650. Any Major League owner who sells his franchise this year, by contrast, will pay just a 15 percent tax on the capital gains mega millions he makes on the sale.
That’s not, of course, the fault of the IRS. Over the past three decades, Presidents and members of Congress, both Democratic and Republican, have opted to lower the capital gains rate — and kept it low.
Still, capital gains only make up part of our national inequality story, and the latest Census figures, even without any capital gains data, do have important inequality stories to tell.
One such story: According to the new Census stats, the nation’s income divide between households at the 95th percentile — that is, households making more than all but the nation’s top 5 percent — and households at the 20th and 50th percentiles has, in modern times, never been higher.
Back in 1968, households at the 20th percentile made an inflation-adjusted $18,251. Households at the 95th percentile that year took home $156,316. In 2010, 20th-percentile households had incomes only slightly higher, just $20,000. The much more robust 2010 income at the 95th percentile: almost $181,000.
Overall income inequality, the new Census Bureau annual income report concludes after presenting stats like these, definitely “is increasing.”
Much, much faster, unfortunately, than the Census stats show us.
Sam Pizzigati edits Too Much, the online weekly on excess and inequality published by the Washington, D.C.-based Institute for Policy Studies. Read the current issue or sign up at Inequality.Org to receive Too Much in your email inbox.
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- For Teachers
I would like to know the difference between 'Talk' and 'Spoke'. When to use them and how they work.
Thanks in advance
Guys, Any answers
You could have searched the forums:
speak vs talk
Hey thanks for the reply. I did search in the forum before bringing this up, but i wasnt able to find it. I am sorry if i troubled you.
Don't worry, you did not.
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A companion animal’s unconditional love imparts the gifts of healing and camaraderie for people living with a terminal disease. Offering companionship, diversion, love, and a reason to get up in the morning, companion animals also provide scientifically established health benefits.
Link to document in PDF format to display Fair Housing Act Law about “Right to Emotional Support Animals in “No Pet” Housing“
In most housing complexes, so long as the tenant has a letter or prescription from an appropriate professional, such as a therapist or physician, and meets the definition of a person with a disability, he or she is entitled to a reasonable accommodation that would allow an emotional support animal in the apartment.
Request an exception to the landlord’s no pet rule
If one needs an emotional support animal to ease the symptoms of a disability (as defined above), he or she should request a reasonable accommodation, in writing, from the landlord, manager or other appropriate authority. The request should state that the tenant has a disability and explain how the requested accommodation will be helpful. In addition, the tenant should include a note from his or her service provider, such as a doctor or therapist, verifying the need for the support animal (see sample letter, below, as an example). Note that the tenant need not disclose the details of the disability, nor provide a detailed medical history.
Sample letter to be completed by a professional:
Dear [Housing Authority/Landlord]:
[Full Name of Tenant] is my patient, and has been under my care since [date]. I am intimately familiar with his/her history and with the functional limitations imposed by his/her disability. He/She meets the definition of disability under the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Fair Housing Act, and the Rehabilitation Act of 1973.
Due to mental illness, [first name] has certain limitations regarding [social interaction/coping with stress/anxiety, etc.]. In order to help alleviate these difficulties, and to enhance his/her ability to live independently and to fully use and enjoy the dwelling unit you own and/or administer, I am prescribing an emotional support animal that will assist [first name] in coping with his/her disability.
I am familiar with the voluminous professional literature concerning the therapeutic benefits of assistance animals for people with disabilities such as that experienced by [first name]. Upon request, I will share citations to relevant studies, and would be happy to answer other questions you may have concerning my recommendation that [Full Name of Tenant] have an emotional support animal.
Should you have additional questions, please do not hesitate to contact me.
Name of Professional
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Amy Wax posted her latest manuscript, “Engines of Inequality: Class, Race, and Family Structure” (forthcoming in 41 Family Law Quarterly 567 (2007) on SSRN. Here’s the abstract.
* * *
The past 30 years have witnessed a dramatic divergence in family structure by social class, income, education, and race. This article reviews the data on these trends, explores their significance, and assesses social scientists’ recent attempts to explain them. The article concludes that society-wide changes in economic conditions or social expectations cannot account for these patterns. Rather, for reasons that are poorly understood, cultural disparities have emerged by class and race in attitudes and behaviors surrounding family, sexuality, and reproduction. These disparities will likely fuel social and economic inequality and contribute to disparities in children’s life prospects for decades to come.
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SAN JOSE, Calif. Seeking to reduce the power in data centers, SiCortex Inc. Friday (Sept. 14) claims to have demonstrated the first high-performance computer powered solely by a team of bicyclists.
The computer, called the SC648, conducted genomics analysis at a rate of billions of calculations per second while being powered by a team of 8-to-10 bicyclists riding generator-equipped bicycles, according to SiCortex (Maynard, Mass.).
The SiCortex computer was powered by bicyclists from the Jax Racing team, riding eight Trek bicycles producing an average of 260 watts each.
The bicycle-powered SC648 is carrying out an advanced genomics computation from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. ''The application analyzes and compares the genomes of hundreds of potentially-related insect pests to determine which are the most-closely related and to uncover heretofore undocumented species,'' according to the company. ''New species can require changes to existing international trade agreements and put domestic crops at risk.''
The company demonstrated the feat at the Wired Magazine NextFest at the Los Angeles Convention Center. The system hopes to solve a major problem: energy usage in high performance computing.
"For every high-performance computer in use today, society could benefit from a hundred of them," said John Mucci, SiCortex' CEO, in a statement. "But unless we retire the current power hogs, we will never get there in a sustainable way. Today's demonstration dramatically illustrates what can be achieved when we focus on addressing these power issues. We hope other companies will join with SiCortex and focus on new approaches to solving the power problem."
SiCortex was formed by a handful of veterans from Digital Equipment. Its chairman is Ethernet pioneer Bob Metcalf.
The company is developing high-end servers. The startup has taken the radical path of developing an ASIC that might have lower power, size and cost than competing X86 CPUs, yet runs Linux and MPI.
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Nothing beats garden-fresh produce – it’s healthy eating of the affordable kind! What’s more, your chemical-free homegrown harvest can be preserved beautifully for months or even used as home décor. (How many grocery store veggies can make that claim?)
4 Step Food Garden
It’s true: No matter where you live or how small your garden, you can learn how to successfully grow your own veggies and herbs!
Preserving fruits, veggies and herbs not only saves you money, it’s a wonderful way to enjoy your harvest long after the growing season!
Who says edibles are just for eating? Use them to decorate your home, as well as fill your tummy!
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As I may have mentioned before, the Occupy (fill in city) folks are winning.
Oh, the odd, would-be activist judge may rule against them. Liberal city fathers may send in the cops to roust the "grungy hippies" (see: Denver cops for snarky SMS updates). The occasional enlightened college president may even send in the pepper spray. And Democratic politicians, from here to Washington, are apparently worried about the dangers posed by urban camping.
This is not surprising. Americans traditionally embrace the idea of protest, but they're rarely as keen on the idea of the protesters themselves.
But if you listened to Barack Obama's speech the other day in Osawatomie, Kan. — where he made his case for progressivism — you couldn't miss the Occupy influence.
This was a speech that Obama hopes will help define the terms of his re-election campaign. The focus was income inequality and middle-class shrinkage. Obama spoke of the increasing difficulties now of moving from poverty to the middle class, even, presumably, for those children willing to work as janitors.
It's not that there are too many rich people. If you haven't noticed, Democratic politicians seem to like rich people. The issue is why the rich seem to be growing ever richer while, for decades now, the middle class has struggled to break even. When the 2008 bubble burst, the ugly truth was revealed. It's just taken some time — a long, long time — for Obama to settle on how to make the argument.
In the speech, he said the American "basic bargain" has been broken and must be repaired. It's an old bargain, a very American one, in which hard work and effort are rewarded. This may, in fact, be the most critical infrastructure issue of our time. Obama called it a "make or break" moment for the middle class, which is certainly how he wants to frame the campaign.
This was the narrative that Obama couldn't seem to find for the first three years in office. It's certainly the one that liberals have been waiting for. This wasn't Obama the compromiser, but that may be because this speech wasn't about legislation. It was about the competing theories on the left and right on how to address the economic slowdown.
It's no easy matter fixing the economy or ensuring that anyone prospers. The problems are deep and arguably structural. They go beyond fixing the debt or raising tax rates for the rich. The question of income inequality isn't about morality, for our purposes, but about how to make the economy work. It doesn't work unless the middle class works.
There are competing theories. And the 99 to 1 theory has hit a nerve. Republicans, meanwhile, are stuck blocking a payroll tax cut for 130 million people because they need to need to stand up against a surcharge on income over $1 million for the top 0.2 percent of earners. No wonder Obama has an audience.
In this one, he channeled Teddy Roosevelt, the kind of Republican who didn't think child labor laws were "truly stupid." TR gave his square deal speech in Osawatomie in 1910. Obama also channeled Elizabeth Warren, the populist political star of the day. And he prettied up the language of the grungy Occupiers:
"We simply cannot return to this brand of 'you're on your own' economics if we're serious about rebuilding the middle class in this country. We know that it doesn't result in a strong economy. It results in an economy that invests too little in its people and in its future. We know it doesn't result in a prosperity that trickles down. It results in a prosperity that's enjoyed by fewer and fewer of our citizens."
It was TR-style progressivism that helped open the way for the successful American middle class. And Obama asked if Americans have "collective amnesia" and want to return to the low-regulation Bush era.
Republicans have had a grand time saying that Obama blames Bush for everything. The point is well taken. You win or lose presidential campaigns on the economy. If you blame yourself, you don't usually keep the job. But the argument now is how to move forward. Newt Gingrich will have to defend his advice to Freddie Mac. And Mitt Romney will have to explain how being a corporate raider is really about creating jobs.
It was interesting to see Romney's reply to Obama speech, saying Obama "seeks to replace our merit-based society with an entitlement society. In an entitlement society, everyone receives the same or similar rewards, regardless of education, effort and willingness to take risk. That which is earned by some is redistributed to the others ... ."
The only winners, Romney said, "are the people who do the redistributing — the government."
As one pundit noted, it sounds like a vision of East Germany in the 1960s. The argument now — as the Occupy people know too well — will be on how to come in from the cold.
E-mail Mike Littwin at email@example.com.
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(Ashlee Rezin/for RedEye )
Chicago's vegetarians are following in the footsteps of the gay community by hosting their first annual "Veggie Pride Parade" at noon this Saturday, June 2.
The parade, which leaves from the corner of Columbus Drive and Balbo Ave. and travels throughout the loop hopes to celebrate the vegetarian lifestyle and raise awareness about healthier, more ethically conscious diets.
A similar parade has been held annually in Paris since 2001, and the trend slowly spread across Europe over the last decade until it reached the United States via the Veggie Pride Parade held in New York City in 2008.
In 2009, Los Angeles held its first parade, and earlier this year thirty-five-year-old Jessica Stowe of Rogers Park and a group of fellow vegetarians in the city decided it was time for Chicago to join the party.
"The main idea in initiating this event is that we have seen other cities having veggie pride parades, and Chicago being a fairly vegetarian-friendly city, we thought we should have a parade to showcase that," Stowe said. "A parade is a great way to celebrate our cause and show everybody that this is important."
Stowe expects between 500 and 1,000 attendees this year, but she hopes attendance will continue to grow as the parade becomes a recognized annual event.
She said the typical American diet is high in cholesterol and promotes unethical farming practices, and she hopes the parade can help change some people's minds about proper diets.
For more information about how to get involved, go to chicago.veggiepride.com.
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- v. Simple past tense and past participle of prove.
- adj. established beyond doubt
“Whereas Belgium, having refused to accept the proposals made to her on several occasions by Germany, is affording her military assistance to France and Great Britain, both of which Powers have declared war upon Austria-Hungary, and whereas, as has just been proved (_no indication as to how or when it has been proved_),”
“The term proved to be crucial for the diagnosis and treatment of minds and bodies of people.”
“The only thing Hillary's PA squeeky win proved is that there are a lot of racist, old, uneducated morons in that state.”
“P.S. We have chosen twelve trustees, all of whom are members of our church, whose names are specified in the title; the title proved and recorded in the S.cretary's office of this island.”
“P.S. -- We have chosen twelve Trustees, all of whom are members of our church, whose names are specified in the title; the title proved and recorded in the Secretary's office of this island.”
“During this time, he purchased a farm in Addison, it is supposed of Ira Allen, a brother of the redoubtable Ethan Allen; but the title proved, as so often happened, with the early settlers to be defective.”
“Once again the title proved popular enough to force a sequel, which, unfortunately, was let down by the fact that the series had become a little repetitive.”
“Upon expansion this term proved to mean something uncomplimentary, a daughter of Mars, a young soul and pertaining to some lowly plane in the astrological cosmos.”
“None of this was White's fault, who once again proved that she is both a pro and an extremely good sport.”
“Panels and sleep again proved more attractive than parties to me.”
Looking for tweets for proved.
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REAL TOLERANCE BEING STRANGLED
On the 18th of this month, 1,000 enraged Sikhs stormed the Birmingham Repertory Theatre, throwing eggs, smashing windows, injuring three police officers, attempting to climb onto the stage, and successfully halting the production after it had played for 20 minutes. "Behzti," Punjabi for "dishonor," had aroused the mob's ire because the playwright, Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti, had placed its rape scene in a Sikh temple. Ms. Bhatti, herself a British-born Sikh, had resisted local pressure to move the incendiary action to a religiously neutral setting like a community center.
The upshot: Score one for yahooism, zero for law. Reluctantly, the Birmingham Rep canceled the run, for neither the theater nor the police could guarantee the safety of audience and staff. Determined to defend free speech, a second Birmingham company volunteered to stage the play instead, only to withdraw the offer at the request of the playwright, now in hiding after receiving several death threats.
Even more distressing than the triumph of shattered plate glass is the rhetoric to which this conflict has given rise--and not only from conservative Sikhs, but from leaders of the Catholic Church. The views of Harmander Singh, spokesman for a Sikh advocacy group, were echoed by numerous British television news guests for days: "We are not against freedom of speech, but there's no right to offend."
Oh, but indeed there is. Freedom of speech that does not embrace the right to offend is a farce. The stipulation that you may say whatever you like so long as you don't hurt anyone's feelings canonizes the milquetoast homily, "If you can't say anything nice. . .." Since rare is the sentiment that does not incense someone, rest assured that in that instance you don't say anything at all.
The concept of religious "tolerance" seems to be warping apace these days, and we appear to forget that commonly one tolerates through gritted teeth. It is rapidly becoming accepted social cant that to "tolerate" other people's religions is to accord them respect. In fact, respect for one's beliefs is gradually achieving the status of a hallowed "human right."
I am under no obligation to respect your beliefs. Respect is earned; it is not an entitlement. I may regard creationists as plain wrong, which would make holding their beliefs in high regard nonsensical. In kind, if I proclaim on a street corner that a certain Japanese beetle in my back garden is the new Messiah, you are also within your rights to ridicule me as a fruitcake.
The fact that we have to be free to outrage one another is potentially in conflict with a law that soon will be put to the Commons that would add "incitement to religious hatred"--punishable by seven years in prison--to the equally dubious legislation already on the British books banning "incitement to racial hatred." Laws that prohibit incitement to illegal action seem defensible enough. But with this and similar "hate crime" legislation, are we not on the way to classifying hatred itself as a crime? And while we are at it, should we not then criminalize envy and narcissism for also being antisocial states of mind? Moreover, what is the difference between "incitement to hatred" and "incitement to fierce dislike"? Or "incitement to mockery"?
The spokesman for the Roman Catholic Bishop of Birmingham applauded the cancellation of "Behzti" last week, intoning that "with freedom of speech and artistic license must come responsibility." But the familiar "with rights come responsibilities" line is standard-issue blarney for, "It's all very well to hold rights in theory, so long as you don't choose to exercise them." Making this case all the more pointed, even the right of a woman to criticize her own religion has been trammeled.
Apparently contemporary "tolerance" does not merely allow others to practice whatever goofy or incomprehensible religion they like--and sometimes with a rolled eye--but surrounds any faith with a hands-off halo of sanctity, so that whatever is sacred to you must also be sacred to me. Disquietingly, this halo in Britain may be enshrined into law. Worse, today's exaggeratedly deferent brand of tolerance is driven by a darker force than mere let's-all-get-along multiculturalism, and that is fear. In the post-9/11 world, we are arriving at an unspoken understanding that zealots in our midst must not be offended, lest in their indignation they do something horrible.
In Birmingham this month, "they" did do something horrible, vandalizing private property, issuing death threats, and bullying a theater director of integrity into violating his own beliefs--which, being secular, apparently count for little. Meanwhile, Britain's Channel Four has promoted its "Shameless Christmas Special" with billboards parodying "The Last Supper," in which Jesus, if you'll pardon the expression, is drunk as a lord. Some Christians find the ads in poor taste. I may admire the campaign as droll; the pious may pontificate about how much they deplore it. Now, that is free speech.
Killer vacuum attacks Scotsman: "An Aberdeen man has won more than 10,000 pounds in compensation from vacuum cleaner outfit Dyson after one of the manufacturer's machines attempted to total the 59-year-old ... Norman Grant told Aberdeen Sheriff Court how on 3 March 2002, as he was trying to tackle 'high cobwebs' at his home, the hose extension 'suddenly knocked him down his stairs.' Grant suffered wrist and head injuries in the incident, exact details of which are not forthcoming. Grant came face-to-face with the homicidal machine for a second time when he went to court to plead for damages. In the event, he settled for a unnamed sum understood to be in excess of 10,000 pounds."
Christmas stupidity : "Christmas is a joyous holiday, and joyous people tend not to behave like Torquemada. By my rough calculation, 99.87 percent of Christians who say 'Merry Christmas' to people who aren't Christian do so because they're trying to be nice. And, by my equally rough calculation, 97.93 percent of people who take real offense when they're on the receiving end of such Yuletide wishes are trying to be a pain in the -- uh, well, they're trying to be a pain. Let's put it this way. If you were in Morocco (and a non-Muslim) and someone said to you, 'Have a nice Ramadan,' you'd probably say thanks respectfully and leave it at that. But some people are aghast that, here at home, someone might say 'Merry Christmas' to them without first making sure they're Christians."
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IT'S only when you've visited a couple of indigenous communities that you realise just how different life in these places is to anywhere else in Australia. Fishermen probably get to see more remote communities than most other Aussies, simply because there's often good fishing around these areas.
Like many other keen anglers, I've fished in the NT, FNQ and the Kimberley over the years. Each time I've visited the north of our country I've been impressed with the harsh beauty of the landscape and the fantastic sportfishing available. But I've also been acutely aware that these lands and waters are home to an ancient culture. For instance, it's difficult to sit in a cave in the east Kimberley surrounded by rock art that was painted thousands of years before the pyramids were built and not get at least some sort of inkling that Aboriginal people have ties to this land that us white fellas can't really comprehend.
It's equally difficult to face up to the misery many indigenous people now suffer, especially when you drive through a community like Maningrida, near the Liverpool River in Arnhemland, and witness scenes of degradation and filth – ruined houses, rubbish everywhere, feral kids and people stricken with alcoholism, violence, obesity and diabetes.
I don't pretend to have any answers to the issues facing so many indigenous Australians. That said, I find it hard to accept that in Australia in 2012 there exists a social and cultural divide that results in black kids forced to live in conditions that would be completely unacceptable in mainstream Australia.
The worst thing is that in many cases this sort of squalid existence is generational – these kids living in communities now will probably grow up and bring their own children into a world equally as harsh as the one they're now struggling with. This is a depressing thought and one that anyone with even an ounce of compassion finds hard to deal with.
But there is light at the end of the tunnel. And the positive aspect in this particular case is that fishing is playing a pivotal role in providing hope and opportunity for indigenous youth. Last year Fisho visited the Tiwi College, a school based on Melville Island, north of Darwin in the NT. Melville, along with nearby Bathurst Island, is owned by the Tiwi people. These islands are well known to anglers as providing excellent sportfishing opportunities for species such as barra, jacks, black jew, threadfin, mackerel and reef fish. The first ever fishing lodge in Australia, Barra Base, was established back in the 1980s at Port Hurd on the western side of Bathurst Island. Barra Base is currently being redeveloped and will relaunch early next year as Bathurst Island Lodge. More recently, Melville Island Lodge and the Johnson River Camp have made names for themselves as world-class sportfishing operations.
The development of the Tiwi Islands as a serious sportfishing destination is largely the brainchild of Mike Baxter, a keen angler and businessman who in recent years has specialised in eco-fishing tourism. Baxter recently sold Melville Lodge to the Tiwi people and is currently working with the Tiwi Land Council to develop a new operation known as Tiwi Islands Adventures.
During a recent visit to Melville Island, TIA chairman Andrew Tipungwuti told Fisho that the islanders saw sportfishing tourism as a way to sustainably utilise their resources while also being a future employment option for their young people.
This ties in with the aims of the Tiwi College, which under the direction of principal Ian Smith is well on the way to providing generations of Tiwi kids with the skills to make a good life for themselves in the modern world while retaining the cultural ties that are so important to their identity as Tiwi islanders.
Fisho's Jim Harnwell and Tiwi College principal Ian Smith.
The Tiwi College, which is supported by government funding and sponsorship from organisations such as cricket star Matthew Hayden's The Hayden Way, offers Tiwi youth much-needed stability and structure, thus enabling them to maximise their learning abilities. Unfortunately, this sort of stable environment isn't always available to them at home so an outside operation like the Tiwi College is the only viable option for these kids to attain the skills they need to live the sort of productive and happy lives that all other Australians expect as a right.
Most of the school's curriculum is based on providing students with the life skills needed to gain employment in various Tiwi enterprises, which currently include forestry and port development. According to Andrew Tipungwuti, the fishing lodges are also earmarked as providing potential job opportunities for young Tiwis in fields such as catering, boat driving, maintenance, housekeeping and possibly guiding.
"We know, however, that we need to maintain the level of service and professionalism the lodges currently offer. We need to ensure that we can maintain that before any of our young people can expect to be working in these places," Tipungwuti said.
Mike Baxter organised the inagural Melville Challenge with Fisho last year. The basic premise was that a team of Fisho writers would instruct Tiwi College students on basic sportfishing techniques and introduce them to the sort of gear and tackle used by clients at the lodges. This tackle was donated by the Australian tackle industry.
The 2011 Melville Challenge was deemed a great success, attracting interest from indigenous media such as the National Indigenous Times as well as mainstream media such as the NT News.
Fishing World publisher/editor Jim Harnwell presents Melville Lodge manager Mick Chick with a commemorative photo marking the inaugural Melville Challenge. The picture, snapped by Fisho writer Peter Zeroni, highlights some spectacular aerial Spanish mackerel action. Check out the September issue for more fantastic images of big macks getting serious air!
The 2012 Challenge was organised along much the same lines, with Fisho writers and editors giving a short presentation to the assembled students and distributing tackle generously donated by Rapala (pliers, lip grippers and hats), Shimano (spin and baitcaster combos) Frogleys Offshore (Atomic Plazos and Gamakatsu jig heads), Halco Tackle Company (hard-bodied lures), JM Gillies (tackle trays and lure packs) and Platypus (monofilament and braided lines plus trace materials).
Most Tiwis fish for food with handlines or a spear but judging from the interest shown in the "white fella" gear we've given the kids at the college it's highly likely that at least some students will develop an interest in building a career as a professional fishing guide.
If even one Tiwi College student heads down that path, it will be a great achievement and a really positive development for the school, the islands and the lodges.
Fisho is proud to be part of this program and as editor I'd like to thank Mike Baxter and Andrew Tipungwuti from Tiwi Islands Adventures for inviting us to get involved. I also wish to thank Aku Valta from Rapala, Shimano's John Dunphy, Platypus' Stewart McPherson, Pat Levy from JM Gillies, Michael Starkey from Frogely's Offshore and Halco's Tim Carter for so generously donating the tackle and gear we distributed to the Tiwi College kids.
If you'd like to find out more about the Tiwi Islands, check out tiwiadventures.com.au and tiwicollege.com.
THIS how-to video from Nomad Sportfishing Adventures features some of the most incredible giant trevally surface strikes ever filmed...
"this photo was in a magazine about 4 years ago vic fishing i think it was"
peter dalgleish on The mother af all KG...
"Nice story Chloe. When is the video out?"
Sam on Chloe's memorable Sydney catch
"That's wierd - I rang them as well - the person I spoke to said (from my notes) that Wallis Lake is in Region ..."
Dave at Sea on OPINION: Fishing rules r...
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Want to stay on top of all the space news? Follow @universetoday on Twitter
Why is the sunset red? Awesome question. The most basic answer is that light is refracted by particles in the atmosphere and the red end of the spectrum is what is visible. To better understand that you have to have a basic understanding of how light behaves in the air, the atmosphere’s composition, the color of light, wavelengths, and Rayleigh scattering and here is all of the information that you need to understand those things.
The Earth’s atmosphere is one of the main factors in determining what color a sunset is. The atmosphere is made up mostly of gases with a few other molecules thrown in. Since it completely surrounds the Earth it affects what you see in every direction. The most common gasses in our atmosphere are nitrogen(78%) and oxygen(21%). The remaining single percent is made up of trace gasses, like argon, and water vapor and many small solid particles, like dust, soot and ashes, pollen, and salt from the oceans. There may be more water in the air after a rainstorm, or near the ocean. Volcanoes can put large amounts of dust particles high into the atmosphere. Pollution can add different gases or dust and soot.
Next, you have to look at light waves and the color of light. Light is an energy that travels in waves. Light is a wave of vibrating electric and magnetic fields and is a part of the electromagnetic spectrum. Electromagnetic waves travel through space at the speed of light(299,792 km/sec). The energy of the radiation depends on its wavelength and frequency. A wavelength is the distance between the tops of the waves. The frequency is the number of waves that pass by each second. The longer the wavelength of the light, the lower the frequency, and the less energy it contains. Visible light is the part of the electromagnetic spectrum that our eyes can see. Light from a light bulb or the Sun may look white, but it is actually a combination of many colors. Light can be split into its different colors with a prism. A rainbow is a natural prism effect. The colors of the spectrum blend into one another. The colors have different wavelengths, frequencies, and energies. Violet has the shortest wavelength meaning that it has the highest frequency and energy. Red has the longest wavelength and lowest frequency and energy.
In order to put it all together, we have to look at the action of light in the air of our planet. Light moves in a straight line until it is interfered with(gas molecule, dust, or anything else). What happens to that light depends on the wavelength of the light and size of the particle. Dust particles and water droplets are much larger than the wavelength of visible light, so it bounces off in different directions. The reflected light appears white because it still contains all of the same colors, but gas molecules are smaller than the wavelength of visible light. When light bumps into them it acts differently. After light hits a gas molecule some of it may get absorbed. Later, the molecule radiates the light in a different direction. The color that is radiated is the same color that was absorbed. The different colors of light are affected differently. All of the colors can be absorbed, but the higher frequencies (blues) are absorbed more often than the lower frequencies (reds). This process is called Rayleigh scattering.
Long story short,, the answer to ‘why is the sunset red?’ is: At sunset, light must travel farther through the atmosphere before it gets to you, so more of it is reflected and scattered and the sun appears dimmer. The color of the sun itself appears to change, first to orange and then to red because even more of the short wavelength blues and greens are now scattered and only the longer wavelengths(reds, oranges) are left to be seen.
We’ve also recorded an episode of Astronomy Cast all about the Sun. Listen here, Episode 30: The Sun, Spots and All.
NASA Space Place
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http://www.universetoday.com/77115/why-is-the-sunset-red/
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From the day BART’s tracks first powered on in 1972, the public rapid transit system has been synonymous with its magnetically striped cards, available in sky blue, pea green or pale red.
That familiar pneumatic chink as you insert the card into the terminal gate is as much a part of the BART experience as the stainless steel cars or the roar of the rails inside the cabin while traversing the Transbay Tube.
For children, seniors and purchasers of the high-value monthly paper tickets, Jan. 1, 2012, will be the day to begin forming new memories. On that date, paper is out, and the plastic Clipper Card is in.
Over the course of December — the extra effort started in November – BART and the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC) are pushing a public awareness campaign to alert riders that the agency is transitioning to the reloadable plastic Clipper card after the end of the year.
From then on, the monthly green tickets for seniors and red tickets for disabled and youth riders will only be sold in a limited number of retail locations, and none of those are in the Mission District.
The My Transit Plus machines at the Embarcadero, Montgomery, Powell and Civic Center stations will become the only option for buying these tickets in San Francisco. Otherwise, the Customer Services Center at Lake Merritt will have red and green tickets for purchase in-person or by mail. The full-fare paper tickets — the familiar blues — will be available at BART ticket machines indefinitely, according to the commission.
Although this move has generated some controversy, riders who qualified for the three paper tickets will still receive their discounts through Clipper youth and senior cards. According to Clipper’s website, these cards are specially encoded to automatically calculate the discounted cash or monthly pass fare each time you use them.
The Clipper card was introduced by the MTC in June 2010 as a method of seamlessly connecting all eight transportation systems in the Bay Area. Since then, each agency has steadily transitioned to Clipper. BART started its transition away from discounted paper tickets in August 2011, according to BART Communications Officer James Allison.
MTC chair Adrienne Tissier said in a press release that the Clipper card’s autoload feature makes travel easier. With autoload, customers set up their cards so that when the balance falls below $10, the card will be recharged with a new amount.
Allison agreed that autoload will ease BART travel. “No longer will [BART riders] have to worry about having a number of tickets with a remaining value of 20 cents or so,” he wrote via e-mail.
Clipper also eliminates some of the quirks associated with the paper tickets, according to Allison — chief among them the threat of magnets. Magnetic purse enclosures can damage the magnetic strips on the paper tickets, he wrote.
Clipper cards can also be used to pay for parking at the BART station lots, Allison said. According to the Clipper website, to use this feature you must first sign up for an EZ Rider account through BART’s website.
Data collected by the MTC shows that Clipper is quickly catching on with metro transit riders. The number of active Clipper cards in circulation among all participating agencies grew at the rate of more than 7,000 per week this fall.
According to the commission, as of November, 42 percent of all BART trips were paid for with Clipper cards. The number of Clipper boardings on BART averages 157,000 per day — the second highest, behind MUNI at 335,000 weekday boardings.
For students and seniors who want to make the switch to Clipper, BART is conducting a series of in-person sign-up events at BART stations in November and December, along with participating ticket retailers and senior centers. Riders who visit one of these events can pick up a free adult, senior or youth Clipper card in person, as opposed to ordering one from the Clipper website, where it costs $5.
Applications for the discounted cards can only be submitted in person. Students and seniors making the switch must do so either at one of these events or at a participating Clipper customer service center.
San Franciscans can sign up for Clipper cards at the Clipper kiosk at the Embarcadero BART station, the Ferry Building, the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency’s customer service center at 11 South Van Ness, and the SFMTA’s Presidio sales kiosk.
Akit, from the blog Akit’s Complaint Department, who has written extensively about Clipper, thinks people who believe Clipper makes transit easier are due for a reality check.
In a post on Nov. 18, Akit reported, among other issues, a problem with autoload. Because the feature requires Clipper users to register a personal debit/credit card, they must keep track of their BART spending or risk having the card blocked for insufficient funds.
“If for some reason your card gets blocked (even by accident), your card is unusable for a number of days until the system can resolve it,” he wrote.
Akit recommended that BART, Clipper and the MTC allow passengers to purchase the special cards without the autoload commitment at any Clipper ticketing machine (including Muni metro’s machines), BART ticketing machine or Clipper card vendor.
Allison offers one more advantage for the seniors, youth and disabled who must make the switch by Dec. 31: Once a customer sets up a Clipper account, they no longer have to make special trips to buy more tickets.
The next sign-up event in San Francisco will be held on Tuesday, Dec. 27, from noon to 6 p.m. at the Clipper customer service kiosk at the Embarcadero BART station. Similar events will be held until Jan. 6, 2012.
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CC-MAIN-2013-20
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My son was lucky enough to receive this old schoolhouse chair as a gift from his great grandmother a couple of years ago. He's getting old enough to want to sit at his desk to color and read so I decided we needed to really make it fit his room, his likes, and his personality with a little makeover.
You can see the chair in this photo from his room makeover a couple of years ago.
For this project you will need the following supplies:
3M TEKK Protection (eye & respiratory)
Spray paint in your color of choice
My wooden chair only had a light coat of stain so I used the 80 grit sandpaper to give it a good all over rub down. This will give the primer something to stick to. If there had been a heavier stain or paint I would have used a lower number grit sandpaper to remove it.
Remember, with sandpaper, the lower the number the more coarse the paper.
After wiping the chair down with a damp rag, its time to paint!
Start with a coat of spray primer.
After it dries, sand lightly with the fine 180 grit sandpaper and apply a second coat of primer if necessary.
Be sure you are working outside or in a well ventilated area.
I tend to do a lot of my spray painting in my potting shed because of the amount of wind we have around our house. So I am always careful to take the proper protection. Eye and respiratory safety are a must for this project.
Once the primer has dried completely, lightly sand it again with the 180 grit so you will be working on a smooth surface. Spray a light coat of paint. Applying several thin coats of paint rather than 1 or 2 heavier coats will prevent dripping of the paint. Be sure to lightly sand between each coat of paint.
While the paint is drying, prepare your fabric to go on the chair.
I decided to create my own fabric using an image from RLHyde on Flickr of a pile of assorted Spiderman comic books.
I used the freezer paper printing process to run muslin fabric through my home printer.
I measured and trimmed the fabric to fit on my chair.
Once the paint is 100% dry, use decoupage to attach the fabric to the chair.
Apply another coat of the decoupage on top of the fabric to seal it.
Add a coat of spray sealer all over the chair and you're done!
I'll show you how to make the chair start to finish in this video tutorial.
The best part about the chair is, of course, that my son adores it!
Disclosure: This post is a sponsored post paid for by 3M DIY, but the ideas and tutorial are my own.
This post is brought to you in partnership with 3M DIY. Learn how to work smart and be prepared at 3MDIY.com.
Content and/or other value provided by our partner, 3M DIY Starts Here
Follow 3M DIY on Facebook, 3M DIY on Twitter, and 3M DIY on YouTube.
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Russia Must Drop Assad Before Talks, U.S. Official Says
A meeting of world powers to discuss ending the conflict in Syria won’t happen unless Russia first agrees that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad must be replaced, a U.S. State Department official said.
United Nations Special Envoy Kofi Annan is seeking to convene a June 30 gathering in Geneva to persuade major powers and neighboring states to support a political transition to end the Syrian conflict, which has claimed more than 10,000 lives, according to human rights groups.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton spoke with Annan from her plane en route to Helsinki for the start of a three-nation tour that includes Russia, and it was unclear if the meeting on Syria would take place, a U.S. diplomat told reporters traveling with Clinton on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.
Annan wants to include foreign ministers from the five permanent members of the UN Security Council -- China, France, Russia, the U.K., and the U.S. -- plus representatives of the European Union, the Arab League and regional states including Turkey, Qatar, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Iran, according to a June 25 letter Annan wrote to Clinton. Syria wouldn’t be represented.
Annan proposed the conference in Geneva after a monitoring mission he led was suspended in the face of continued warfare. That has put at risk the future of the mission, which is up for renewal July 20.
The team of about 300 observers won’t be able to resume their work because conditions have become too dangerous, UN peacekeeping chief Herve Ladsous told the Security Council yesterday, according to a UN diplomat present at a closed-door briefing.
The move to include Iran in the proposed conference is complicating efforts to end the crisis. Russia said such an international conference would be deficient without Iran, and foreign ministers should lead it.
“The ministerial level is the minimum necessary to try to reverse the current situation,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, who’s indicated that he would attend, told reporters yesterday in Jordan.
The U.S. doesn’t “think that Iran has a place at the table” because it is “aiding and abetting the Assad regime on the ground in the murdering of its own people,” State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said yesterday at a press briefing in Washington.
The Obama administration regards the Russian move to include Iran as an attempt to protect longtime ally and arms client Assad without being blamed for blocking Annan’s effort to negotiate an end to the crisis, said two U.S. officials who asked not to be identified to discuss the administration’s internal deliberations.
Clinton has no interest in attending a Geneva conference that includes Iran and she believes is unlikely to add to the pressure on Assad to surrender power, the officials said.
“We want to make sure that if we do this, it’s not going to be an empty meeting; that it’s going to actually produce results for the Syrian people,” Nuland said at the press briefing yesterday.
Clinton and Lavrov will “continue the discussion” on Syria when they meet June 29 in St. Petersburg, Russia, Nuland said.
The danger that the crisis could escalate rose yesterday in the aftermath of the June 22 downing of a Turkish warplane by Syrian forces.
Russia sides with Syria’s version of events: The plane violated Syria’s airspace, and Syria didn’t know its identity. Intercepted radio communication among Syrian authorities “clearly demonstrates” that Syria was “fully aware of the circumstances and the fact that the aircraft belonged to Turkey,” according to a June 24 letter Turkey submitted to the UN Security Council.
The incident has drawn Turkey deeper into a 16-month conflict that risks spilling into the rest of the Middle East. Turkey, which shares its longest border with Syria, said it’s ready to open fire on any Syrian forces that approach its territory and are deemed a threat.
“As dictators fighting for survival often do, Assad may have overplayed his hand,” said George Lopez, a former United Nations sanctions investigator who’s now at the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana. “Turkey’s response that it has changed its military rules of engagement along the border means it has become a more sensitive flash point.”
The downing of the F-4 Phantom jet shows Assad poses a “clear and present danger” to Turkey, as well as to the Syrian people, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan told lawmakers from his party in Ankara yesterday. “Any military element that approaches the Turkish border from Syria in a way that may pose a risk or danger will be viewed as a threat and treated as a military target.”
Erdogan’s more bellicose tone comes after Syrian security forces have carried out frequent operations against opposition forces near the border area. Turkey shares a border of more than 800 kilometers (500 miles) with Syria.
President Barack Obama and top American military officials remain opposed to U.S. military intervention in Syria, according to the two U.S. officials. Both said the calculus could change.
The rising tensions on the Syrian-Turkish border or increased human-rights abuses by the Syrian military and allied militias could prompt a move to create a secure enclave inside Syria for opponents of the regime, the officials said.
Such a move would require establishing a no-fly zone above and around the enclave, and that in turn would require a broader campaign to destroy or neutralize Syria’s air defenses, which one of the officials said are more formidable than the ones NATO faced in Libya.
To contact the editor responsible for this story: John Walcott at email@example.com
Bloomberg moderates all comments. Comments that are abusive or off-topic will not be posted to the site. Excessively long comments may be moderated as well. Bloomberg cannot facilitate requests to remove comments or explain individual moderation decisions.
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This report presents a wealth of research opportunities in food and agriculture microbiology. The backdrop for these research opportunities is a world of microorganisms teeming with threats and benefits to abundant, healthy food and associated environments. Threats come from microbial pathogens that perpetrate a wide range of plant and animal diseases, destroying agricultural productivity. The constant spread and evolution of agricultural pathogens provides a continually renewed source of challenges to productivity and food safety. Pathogens continue to cause harm once food has left the farm, causing spoilage, and in some cases poisoning and diseases of humans and animals. New vulnerabilities are generated for agriculture by global movement of agricultural products, trading policies, industrial agricultural practices, and the potential for malicious releases of pathogens by “bioterrorists.” In addition to the threats, benefits also come from the many microorganisms associated with, or introduced into, our food supply where they serve important roles in bioprocessing, fermentation, or as probiotics.
Science and technology emerging from microbiology research can help meet these challenges to food and agriculture. Knowledge of microbial pathogens will lead to tools for surveillance and disease prevention. Beneficial microbes may find uses in protecting agriculture, preserving food, enhancing the value of food products and providing general benefits to health and well being. Complex interactions among microbes and agricultural systems must be better understood to facilitate the optimal use of beneficial microorganisms and maximal control of pathogens.
Opportunities in microbiology research are the gateway to sustaining and improving agriculture and food production, quality, and safety. Multidisciplinary research must be undertaken to capitalize on advances in different disciplines, such as genomics, nanotechnology, and computational biology. Research into the interactions of animal and plant hosts with pathogens and beneficial microbes is essential to preventing disease and encouraging mutualistic interactions. On a more holistic scale, interactions occurring among organisms within a microbial community require study so that a healthy balance between the highly managed ecosystems of industrial agriculture and the unmanaged ecosystems of the natural environment can be achieved. Finally, research is critical to determine why pathogens continue to emerge and where and how newly developed technologies should be put to use.
Barriers to seizing these research opportunities must be overcome. The lagging priority of food and agriculture research will be reversed as funding programs and research institutions recognize its importance and improve resources, infrastructure, and incentives accordingly. Endeavors, such as long-term research projects and the banking of diverse microbial specimens, require support so that a foundation of future innovation and discovery is established and sustained. A decline in the number of young scientists entering the fields of food and agriculture research will have to be reversed with funding and fellowship opportunities to provide a highly trained core that will carry out the research of the future. Regulatory hurdles impose stringent processes for research on certain organisms, but are viewed as out of step with actual hazards and must be revised consistent with scientific assessment of risk. Changes that are needed will have to be advocated by scientists, research institutions, professional societies, non-governmental institutions, and companies that are committed to food and agriculture.
This report offers recommendations for research priorities and identifies barriers to a strong food and agriculture research agenda.
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CC-MAIN-2013-20
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http://www.asm.org/index.php/colloquium-program/browse-all-reports/91339-research-opportunities-in-food-and-agriculture-microbiology
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|
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|
The intention of LFS is to provide a basic system which you can build upon. There are several things, about tidying up the system, which many people wonder about once they have done the base install. We hope to cover these issues in this chapter.
Most people coming from non-Unix like backgrounds to Linux find the concept of text-only configuration files slightly strange. In Linux, just about all configuration is done via text files. The majority of these files can be found in the /etc hierarchy. There are often graphical configuration programs available for different subsystems but most are simply pretty front ends to the process of editing the file. The advantage of text-only configuration is that you can edit parameters using your favorite text editor, whether that be vim, emacs, or anything else.
The first task is making a recovery diskette because it's the most critical need. Then the system is configured to ease addition of new users, in Creating a Custom Boot Device, because this can affect the choices you make in the two subsequent topics—The Bash Shell Startup Files and The vimrc Files.
The remaining topics, Customizing your Logon with /etc/issue, The /etc/shells File, Random number generation, Compressing man and info pages, autofs-4.1.3, and Configuring for Network Filesystems are then addressed, in that order. They don't have much interaction with the other topics in this chapter.
This section is really about creating a rescue device. As the name rescue implies, the host system has a problem, often lost partition information or corrupted file systems, that prevent it from booting and/or operating normally. For this reason, you must not depend on resources from the host being "rescued". To presume that any given partition or hard drive will be available is a risky presumption.
In a modern system, there are many devices that can be used as a rescue device: floppy, cdrom, usb drive, or even a network card. Which one you use depends on your hardware and your BIOS. In the past, we usually thought of rescue device as a floppy disk. Today, many systems do not even have a floppy drive.
Building a complete rescue device is a challenging task. In many ways, it is equivalent to building an entire LFS system. In addition, it would be a repitition of information already available. For these reasons, the procedures for a rescue device image are not presented here.
The software of today's systems has grown large. Linux 2.6 no longer supports booting directly from a floppy. In spite of this, there are solutions available using older version of Linux. One of the best is Tom's Root/Boot Disk available at http://www.toms.net/rb/. This will provide a minimal Linux system on a single floppy disk and provides the ability to customize the contents of your disk if necessary.
There are several sources that can be used for a rescue CD-ROM. Just about any commercial distribution's installation CD-ROMs or DVDs will work. These include RedHat, Mandrake, and SuSE. One very popular option is Knoppix.
In addition, the LFS Community has developed its own Boot CD-ROM available at ftp://anduin.linuxfromscratch.org/isos/. A copy of this CD-ROM is available with the printed version of the Linux From Scratch book. If you download the ISO image, use cdrecord to copy the image to a CD-ROM.
In the future, the build instructions for this CD-ROM will be presented, but they are not available at this writing.
A USB Pen drive, sometimes called a Thumb drive, is recognized by Linux as a SCSI device. Using one of these devices as a rescue device has the advantage that it is usually large enough to hold more than a minimal boot image. You can save critical data to the drive as well as use it to diagnose and recover a damaged system. Booting such a drive requires BIOS support, but building the system consists of formatting the drive, adding grub as well as the kernel and supporting files.
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http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/blfs/view/6.0/postlfs/config.html
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|
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Association ou organisation à but non lucratif
Dernière mise à jour: 23 janv. 2013 04:47:41
WHO WE ARE:
Baan Dada is a Children's Home and community economic development center located on the Thailand/Burma border. Baan means "house" in Thai and Dada is Sanskrit for "brother." Baan Dada is home to approximately 60 disadvantaged or orphaned children. The children's home was started in an effort to protect the growing number of orphaned and disadvantaged children in the area. Sangklaburi borders Burma (Myanmar) where many refugees and migrant families moved to this area due to poverty, disease, and political repression by the Burmese military Government. Baan Dada is now home to almost 60 children.Baan Dada started in 1994 as an agriculuture project, but quickly transformed into the community service project that it is today.
Baan Dada s a project of the Neohumanist Foundation.
Our main objective is to empower the children through education, formal and non-formal. They are encouraged and taught many skills, from playing musical instruments, sewing, fixing motorbikes, art, languages and technical skills. The children are taught to respect all people, creatures, religion and to practice vegetarianism. This is based on the Neo Humanist's philosophy "love for all created beings in this world".
The home also provides jobs for single Mothers, and local families who help care for the children, assist with farming, construction and weaving projects. Baan Dada is an independent community based project that supports the people in the surrounding areas. It has initiated several community services, and livelihood projects.
The home is proactive in helping itself. We are doing this by selling hand-drawn cards and bookmarks by the children, planting rubber trees for future harvest, and performances by the children of cultural dancing and music. Of course, we also welcome support from volunteers and donors!
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CC-MAIN-2013-20
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http://fr.idealist.org/view/org/332M4BmFHb2Jd/
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|
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| 0.959265
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|
Application of the Silicon Semiconductor Phonograph Cartridge
After reviewing the circuitry currently used by a number of phonograph manufacturers, the author proposes circuit designs to exploit the capabilities of the semiconductor unit which was introduced to the industry last November. The suggested circuits achieve higher output, reduce component cost and indicate the possibility of direct drive of the output stage.
Click to purchase paper or login as an AES member. If your company or school subscribes to the E-Library then switch to the institutional version. If you are not an AES member and would like to subscribe to the E-Library then Join the AES!
This paper costs $20 for non-members, $5 for AES members and is free for E-Library subscribers.
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| 0.926206
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| 2.0625
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Assisted suicide advocate Jack Kevorkian, known as “Dr. Death” for helping more than 100 people end their lives, died early on Friday at age 83, his lawyer said. Kevorkian died at Beaumont Hospital in Royal Oak, Michigan, where he had been hospitalized for about two weeks with kidney and heart problems, said Mayer Morganroth, Kevorkian’s attorney and friend.
Kevorkian, a pathologist, was focused on death and dying long before he became a defiant advocate, crossing Michigan in the rusty Volkswagen van that carried his machine to help sick people end their lives. He launched his assisted-suicide campaign in 1990, allowing an Alzheimer’s patient to kill herself using a machine he had devised. He beat Michigan prosecutors four times before his conviction for second-degree murder in 1999.
Kevorkian was imprisoned for eight years for second-degree murder and was paroled in 2007. As a condition of his parole, he vowed not to assist in any suicides. He was convicted after a CBS News program aired showing a video of Kevorkian administering lethal drugs to a 52-year-old man suffering from debilitating amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig’s disease.
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<urn:uuid:52639c5e-cb96-440b-a893-bea0679bd819>
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CC-MAIN-2013-20
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http://blogs.reuters.com/faithworld/tag/kevorkian/
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The severity of the situation prompted our initiative to integrate community-based
prevention and care efforts once effective drugs became available. In 1995-1996,
we introduced zidovudine to our prenatal-clinic formulary. Prior to this,
a majority of young women who came to this clinic declined free VCT services;
however, once this effective method of preventing mother-to-child transmission
became available, more than 90% of women offered these services accepted them.
In 1998, we launched the "HIV Equity Initiative" in order to complement prevention
efforts with ARV treatment for infected individuals who would have died, in
our opinion, without these drugs. Because measurement of CD4 cell counts and
viral loads is not available in rural Haiti, a clinical algorithm—based
on criteria that include the nature and frequency of opportunistic infections,
weight, neurologic status, and severe hematologic abnormalities— is
used to identify those patients in greatest need. Currently, some 200 of the
more than 2100 HIV-positive patients followed in our clinic receive ARV therapy.
To ensure adherence, use of ARVs is supervised by community-based health workers,
called accompagnateurs, who visit patients daily
(this strategy is termed directly observed therapy [DOT]-HAART).17 The
program also provides a modicum of financial and social support to ensure
adequate nutritional intake for both the patients and their families.
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|
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| 0.926421
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|
Christian Morality and Test Tube Babies, Part One
- Wednesday, February 11, 2009
In the first place, human dignity is compromised by the artificiality of the IVF technology. The absolute separation of conjugal union and the sex act from the process of conception creates a new and artificial process of human reproduction--one that demands technological intervention at virtually every stage, from the collection of the sperm and eggs, to the actual fertilization, to the implantation of the embryo in the uterus.
This puts human agents in control of human destiny in a manner that overthrows natural limits. Theologians have debated this issue with intensity. Karl Rahner, the most influential Roman Catholic theologian of the century, believed that "there is really nothing possible for man that he ought not to do." On the other hand, Protestantism's Karl Barth, the father of "neo-orthodoxy," warned that this would lead to a "dreadful, godless world;" one he could foresee in Aldous Huxley's Brave New World.
Clearly, God has placed natural limits upon our creaturely power and authority. Humans seem intent upon exceeding those limits in every sphere, and the rapid developments in biotechnology threaten to transform the understanding of what it means to be human. As Barth argued, human identity has been inherently related to parenthood and the conjugal bond. What does it mean to think of humanity severed from this parental relatedness?
The new technologies of IVF underline the extent to which the modern mind has reduced human reproduction to a technology rather than a divine gift, mystery, and stewardship. As Oliver O'Donovan argues, the biblical language reminds us that we are begotten, not merely made. This is not a semantic irrelevancy. Our language betrays our understanding of the meaning of human procreation.
Children are not the products of a technological process, like common consumer commodities, but are the gifts of a loving God whose intention is that children should be born to a man and a woman united in the bond of marriage, and as the fruit of that marital bond realized in the conjugal act. They are neither by-products of the sex act nor mere "products" of our technological innovations.
Paul Ramsey warned that we would be "de-biologizing" the human race by the use of these technologies. While we sympathize with couples unable to achieve conception by means within natural limits, these limits remain. "We ought rather to live with charity amid the limits of a biological and historical existence which God created for the good and simple reason that, for all its corruption, it is now--and for the temporal future will be--the good realm in which man and his welfare are to be found and served."
Ramsey's warning against the "messianic positivism" of these new technologies is a corrective to those who believe that this is merely a Catholic concern. Protestants, too, have historically recognized the intrinsic relatedness of parenthood to the conjugal bond and the act of marital sex as the design of a loving and merciful Creator, who imposed limits for our good.
IVF technologies threaten those limits in others ways as well. The IVF revolution has opened unprecedented opportunities for eugenics and the genetic manipulation of the embryo. Experiments on human embryos now involve the transfer of genetic material and offer the potential for genetic manipulation both before and after fertilization.
The technologies of IVF compromise the marital bond and threaten the integrity of the family. The use of donor sperm is unacceptable, for it brings a third party into the marital bond. The same is true for the use of a donor egg. A married couple should not invite the biological contribution of a third party--known or unknown. While the fertilization of the egg occurs in a laboratory (thus avoiding adultery), the marital bond is compromised by the use of another man's sperm or another woman's egg.
Beyond this, the use of IVF to allow unmarried women and lesbian couples to achieve pregnancy outside marriage and heterosexual relatedness is a direct rejection of God's intention in the creation of humanity as male and female, and the limitation of sexual relatedness and procreation to a man and a woman united within the marital covenant. IVF is welcomed by radical feminists and lesbian activists as a technological marvel which promises freedom from male involvement, except as sperm donors. This is one specter of the "godless world" against which Barth warned.
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By: Deirdre Sullivan
You can get that warm, fuzzy holiday feeling and make a few bucks by responsibly ditching all the excess stuff you accumulate, particularly at this time of year.
Before you cast off, sort out
This video by home organizer Alejandra Costello demonstrates her system for organizing items you wish to donate, sell, return, or exchange. You designate an area in the home — preferably near an exit -- for the stuff you don’t want to forget to take out the door with you. What we really liked best about this video is that she includes tips for keeping your downsizing efforts on track.
Hazardous household materials
Sure, we all know where to recycle stuff like soda cans and water bottles, but what about dicey items like medications, paint thinners, or asbestos?
Earth911.com, along with its free app iRecycle, is one of the best sources for finding acceptance centers that handle household hazardous waste. Just enter the type of junk you need to unload, like compact fluorescent light bulbs (did you know they have traces of mercury?), along with your ZIP code, and it provides the nearest recycling center to you.
Learn more about stuff that’s considered household hazardous waste, by watching this hilarious Canadian video made for the city of Toronto.
If you want to recycle appliances, cameras, computers, and TVs, Best Buy Recycle will take them, no matter where you bought them originally. The retailer charges $100 to pick up old appliances like TVs if you’re not also having a new Best Buy item delivered to you. It says it destroys CPUs to protect your data privacy. And the recycled bits and pieces become raw materials manufacturers can use to make everything from appliances to park benches. Check out the video:
If you want to sell your current smartphone or Mac gadget quickly, Gazelle.com will give you an instant estimate and a free shipping label. Plus, you can take comfort knowing that Gazelle believes in reusing products first before trying to recycle them.
FYI, while the company does protect your privacy by destroying SIM cards and erasing personal data found on devices they receive, Gazelle recommends you remove your SIM card and delete any personal information on your device before sending it in.
The best way to get rid of junk mail from accumulating at home is to stop it from being delivered in the first place. By creating a free account at Catalogchoice.org, you can banish catalogs and assorted marketing items from your home forever. Plus, their MailStop Browser extension for Firefox lets you opt out of mailing lists in real time when you shop online.
Lastly, if you’re willing to pay $35 a year, CatalogChoice will also prevent data brokers from selling your info to other direct marketers. You can check out the endorsement the National Wildlife Federation gave this service.
We all know how quickly kids outgrow their stuff. Once Upon a Child buys gently used clothing, toys, and baby gear. It won’t accept items that have been recalled or don’t meet their safety standards. To find a store location near you so you can swap your items for cash or trade for things your kid currently needs, visit their website.
Discover Books matches second-hand books with people who want them. It uses a proprietary software system to try to find a new owner for your old reads through an online retailer, or tries to donate it to an organization that supports literacy. Plus, if Discover Books can’t find a book a new home, it's sent to a recycling center to begin a fresh life as something else. To see how this organization supports children's literacy efforts, check out this video.
Places that buy books outright other than textbooks are becoming increasingly rare. Cash 4 Books pays you for books it wants, plus covers the cost of shipping to their distribution center. Just go to their site and type in the ISBN numbers of the books you plan to sell. Check out the video here to see how this process works.
FYI, if you really want to cut down on your carbon footprint, try donating your books to local libraries, schools, and hospitals. Or build your own free library in your front yard and let passersby help themselves.
Household linens, cleaning supplies, and old cars
If you have old towels, blankets, heating pads, cleaning supplies, and even a car you need to get rid of, consider donating to a local animal shelter like the ASPCA. Every shelter has different needs, from canned dog food to office supplies. But the items we listed are often animal rescue organizations’ top need. To find a local shelter near you, go to the ASPCA site.
Do you need a kick in the pants in order to donate? Check out this happy ending in this video:
Additional ways to part with your stuff
Donate, trade, or sell: Krrb.com is an alterative to sites like eBay, Craigslist, and Freecycle. Krrb makes it fairly simple to buy, sell, rent, trade, or even give your stuff away. Plus, the site offers a republish function that reposts your listings from Etsy, Craigslist, or eBay to Krrb with one click. They also have an iPhone app so you can find stuff for sale right in your neighborhood:
Krrbin' On The Go - Our Editors Take A Spin On The Krrb iPhone App from Krrb on Vimeo.
Charity thrift shop locator: TheThriftShopper.com makes it a cinch to find charity thrift stores in your area by entering your ZIP code. Plus, many of the listings include the shop’s website, so you can learn more about each organization before deciding where to donate.
Visit HouseLogic.com for more articles like this. Reprinted from HouseLogic.com with permission of the NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF REALTORS®
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Title reads: "Joan of Arc day in London".
M/S of Officers and men of Free French forces in courtyard of Wellington Barracks, buglers play fanfare while they salute. They are gathered to observe French tradition, the feast of St Joan of Arc. M/S of Admiral Muselier handing flags and pennons...
Cuts (out takes, rushes) from HONOUR TO THE MARTYR MAID in G 1339.
Annual harvest field service in village of Domremy - Joan of Arc's birthplace.
Joan Brunton, aged 11, swims from Dover to Deal in under 3 hours.
11 year old Joan Brunton is presented with a Cup for swimming 11 miles from Dover to Deal.
Joan Brunton, aged 11, gets in training for swimming the English Channel. Dover, Kent.
Procession in France in honour of Joan of Arc.
12 year old Joan Brunton reaches Ramsgate after swimming from Dover and beating record. Kent.
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Articles and Speeches
The rise of humanism and secularism in IranMaryam Namazie
Speech given at the British Humanist Association conference held during
June 10-12, 2005
* Iranian New Year in March is a celebration of the first day of spring. This is obviously not an Islamic holiday and one that had initially been banned by the Islamic Republic of Iran and denounced as pagan over the past years but to no avail. On the last Wednesday of every year (called Chahar Shanbeh Suri), people come onto the streets, build bonfires and jump over them - a ritual from pre-Islamic times to basically receive the warmth of the fire for the upcoming year. This year, there were reports of Korans being burnt in the bonfires!
* On March 8, International Women's Day, a day not recognised by the Islamic regime, which has its own Islamic women's day, men and women gathered in the streets to celebrate. There were a large number of reports of women pulling off their veils and setting them alight.
* In February on Ashura, the tenth day of Moharram which is a month of mourning in the Shia calendar and especially important because it was the day that imam Hussein (a grandson of Mohammed and the third imam) was killed, there are often scenes of men and boys out on the streets, self flagellating with chains and even beating themselves with the edges of swords. It is a scene from the Middle Ages with bloodied men and even children parading through the streets. During this month, it is even illegal to wear bright clothing in Iran. But this year, young men and women came out onto the streets, blasted rock music and danced!
I want to remind you that these astonishing examples are taking place in a country where it is illegal to listen and dance to rock music, remove or even 'improperly' wear the compulsory veil, and mix with the opposite sex, let alone to speak, organise, associate, etc. freely. In all the examples I gave, there were also clear expressions of opposition to the government. For example on International Women's Day, the slogan of 'neither veil nor submission' was heard across the country - the same slogan used in mass protests in Iran when the government initially imposed compulsory veiling over two decades ago.
What's most interesting is that these examples are not isolated incidents but are fast becoming a norm. People, particularly the youth, are using every opportunity - from one of the 'holiest' days of mourning to a football match win on June 9 to the upcoming so-called presidential election in Iran to express their human desire to live in the 21st century free from religion and superstition.
I can imagine that for some these examples may sound extreme and shocking in its opposition to the current state of affairs. If it happened here in Britain, it would immediately be labelled 'racist' and 'Islamophobic' [though a critique of religion or any belief has nothing to do with racism], and even 'incitement to religious hatred' - allegations often flung at those of us in exile who speak out against Islam and political Islam. But in Iran, a deep-seated hatred of Islam and its government is a reality, and even an inevitable necessity.
This reminds me of a recent discussion that has taken place in the Guardian about the 21st century atheist where Dylan Evans has criticised Jonathan Miller and Richard Dawkins for being 'virulently anti-religion', saying they are old atheists and that new ones should value religion. Salman Rushdie appropriately responds by saying that in some parts religion is not a 'polite set of rituals' or a dead religion like Greek mythology where one can enjoy reading it and gives examples of where this is not the case.
In Iran, too, Islam is a state power, which has executed over 100,000 people in two decades, slaughtered an entire generation, and actually stones people to death for sex outside of marriage with the law even specifying the size of the stone to be used. In the 21st century, it hangs people from cranes in city centres, and won't even allow choices in dress and music. In Iran, we're talking about a situation where Islam and its state have been imposed by sheer brute force and violence. It is, therefore, natural and rational to respond to the situation with an anti-Islamic backlash. As the late and eminent Marxist and humanist, Mansoor Hekmat has said: '…when you come face to face with movements, which threaten freethinkers like Taslima Nasrin with death, you are obliged to once again refer to the Koran and say that this reaction is feeding from a well, which exactly formulates all this backwardness. The Koran could have been a historical book like many other historical books; people could look at it and not show much sensitivity but when a movement makes it the banner of a contemporary political struggle, then people are forced to take its banner from it, review it, look at it …and discredit it.'
The backlash and opposition in Iran is at its essence strongly humanist, secularist and modern. You can see it clearly in the examples I have given but also in a much more deep-seated way - in rational, popular, and spontaneous acts and the establishment of hundreds of organisations outside government structures and restrictions that are non-religious and purely for the defence of the human being via reliance on human will. For example, there are children's organisations in many major cities in Iran calling for a secular education, an end to corporal punishment, child abuse and punishment, differentiation between parental and children's rights and even exerting pressure on the Islamic regime to announce an end to the execution of minors. In practice, when 15 year old Zhila Izadi was arrested and flogged for allegedly having sex with her brother, for example, a committee was formed in her defence; people visited her, supported her and intervened on her behalf with her family.
In all of these, there is an immense sense of solidarity and daily acts of intervention on behalf of humanity - whether it be to rescue someone being arrested for 'improper' veiling from the clutches of the pasdaran or revolutionary guards or collecting support for the victims of the Bam earthquake with the stated purpose of helping especially because the government was not.
Again, don't forget we are talking about a country that has been under Islamic rule for 25 years; a country that has been labelled Islamic by the media and western states day in and day out; a country where half the population are between 14 and 24 and were born under Islamic rule! And still - not only have they not been Islamicised as government officials often complain - but are actually going on an anti-Islamic offensive.
In countries like Iran I think you can often see the real state of affairs by statements made by people affiliated with the government or those who were in the inner sanctum and now want to save their hides. Mohsen Sazegara, for example, a member of Khomeini's inner sanctum, who helped write the regime's constitution and set up the notorious pasdaran - revolutionary guards - is now speaking of secularism in this issue's New Humanist magazine! Aghajari speaks of 'Islamic humanism'. If you read their statements carefully you see how they attempt to co-opt people's language and desires but in fact only to save Islam and they say as much.
But it is to no avail. If I can quote Mansoor Hekmat again: '…mullahs would at one time come and get paid to read religious sermons and go. They had a role in society. But when they come to the fore, organise society based on their views, turn their internal moralities into external laws for all to observe and we see all of their filth everywhere, then it's not possible just to permit them to go back into their previous hole. When the wave sets off and people's anti-Islamic offensive begins, then Islam cannot retreat to its position and stance of two decades ago.'
You also have diehards, such as Ayatollah Hamedani who mention humanism and secularism but in a different context saying: 'The spreading of prostitution and evil things… and the propagation of crazy ideas such as secularism, liberalism and humanism are part of our enemies' plans to sow disunity in society.' But the enemy is society itself, completely home grown, courtesy of the Islamic Republic of Iran; a direct result of naked, bare theocracy.
Of course you can see humanism in other countries in the Middle East, basically because human beings are humanists at heart when you scratch the surface but it is in Iran where it has gained momentum and is significant and historically unprecedented.
We are watching history in the making.
Iran a place where a defeated 1979 revolution has been labelled an Islamic revolution by official journalism; an Iran, which has been a pillar of political Islam over the past two decades is now today at the crossroads of a social, political and cultural upheaval against Islam and political Islam and for humanism, secularism and modernism.
Several decades ago, the Islamic Republic of Iran kick-started contemporary political Islam and religious revival. Today, what is taking place in Iran will kick-start a humanist, secularist revival in Iran and across the Middle East. Its effects will be felt across the globe and in the west - adversely affecting Sharia courts in Canada and Britain to the deceptive notion of Islamophobia as racism and child veiling in Europe.
It is crucial to for people everywhere to recognise and unequivocally defend this movement.
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What does it take to make a science center sustainable, adopted by its community, and defended by its community? In Born of Place: The Key to Institutional Sustainability, a panel composed of Don Weinreich, partner, Ennead Architects; Sarah George, executive director, Natural History Museum of Utah; and Eric Siegel, director/chief content officer, New York Hall of Science, explored the proposition that a cultural institution’s success depends on its ability to define, understand, and root itself in its community. Museums can be a safe place for dangerous dialogue
George shared perspectives gleaned through the exploration, development, and founding of the Natural History Museum of Utah in Salt Lake City. She mentioned the importance of developing constituencies by reaching out to schools, the business community, elected officials, donors, and electors. She also discussed the effectiveness of having others in the community speak on your institution’s behalf, particularly business leaders and key officials. Being ready for surprises, listening to those around you, and avoiding overpromising and/or raising expectations unrealistically are also lessons to be learned.
An institution must partner with its constituencies and develop programs and buildings that sustain relevance and grow increasingly vital over time. Siegel also discussed the renovation and reconstruction of the New York Hall of Science’s facility in Queens, New York, as some of the core buildings were built for the 1964 World’s Fair.
Both the Natural History Museum of Utah and the New York Hall of Science partnered with Ennead on their construction needs. Weinreich shared step-by-step explanation and analysis of the processes Ennead followed in the construction of a wholly new museum for NHMU and the reconstruction needs of New York Hall of Science. The insights he provided gave a much clearer picture into the full scope of these processes, from interview and presentation of ideas through to execution.
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Gregory Barker: To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland what assessment has been carried out of the effectiveness of abolishing the Disabled Facilities Grant means test for children in Northern Ireland.
Mr. Spellar: The abolition of the Disabled Facilities Grant (DFG) means-test for parents of children with disabilities came into effect from 16 February 2004. It is therefore too early for any assessment of effectiveness to be carried out. The working group which was set up to look at the matter considered the potential impact of the abolition in terms of cost to the Government and numbers who could be helped by the abolition. It was estimated that 2530 applications for DFG are withdrawn each year due to the high contribution.
Mr. Spellar: The exact number of people "living rough" is unknown. However, a survey early this year estimated that between 20 and 30 people who frequently use Housing Executive funded Outreach services could be regarded as "living rough". The survey did not, however, attempt to determine whether they were statutorily homeless or not. This is a very small percentage compared the number of households on the Housing Executive's waiting list registered as homeless which at 31 March 2004 stood at 5,287.
Lady Hermon: To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland if he will make a statement on the status of the Safe Sports Grounds funding made available for essential health and safety work to stadia in Northern Ireland; and how much funding has been made available (a) in each of the past three years and (b) since January for this purpose.
The Interim Safe Sports Grounds Scheme ended in March 2003 and the Sports Council for Northern Ireland is currently planning development of a new Sports Grounds Development Programme, the main purpose of which is to address the long-term health and safety deficiencies of major sports grounds in
13 May 2004 : Column 488W
Northern Ireland. Government funding made available for the health and safety work to Northern Ireland stadia in each of the last three financial years.
|Financial year||Amount made available|
Llew Smith: To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland how many farms in Scotland, comprising what land areas and in what locations, have restrictions applied to them in respect of land use as a result of the residual radioactivity from the Chernobyl nuclear accident.
Mrs. McGuire: This is a devolved matter within the responsibility of the Scottish Executive, who are advised by the Food Standards Agency. However, the following table from the Food Standards Agency shows the number of farms in Scotland, their location and area of land covered by restrictions on the movement of sheep as a result of the residual radioactivity from the Chernobyl nuclear accident. There have been no restrictions on land use as a result of the Chernobyl accident.
|Number of Farms||14|
|Land Area (hectares)||16,300|
Llew Smith: To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland what discussions he has had with the Secretary of State for Transport in respect of the breach of the air exclusion zone around the Chapel Cross nuclear plant this year; and what steps have been taken to improve air security around the plant.
|Fixed lines||Mobile telephones|
Ms Walley: To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland whether his Department plans to contribute financially to the establishment of the second phase of the Central Point of Expertise on Timber.
Mrs. McGuire: I refer my hon. Friend to the answer given by my hon. Friend the Minister for Environment, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, on 10 May 2004, Official Report, column 31W.
|Number of Officers assaulted|
Mr. Paul Marsden: To ask the Secretary of State for Transport (1) what research his Department has conducted into car-sharing schemes; and if he will place copies of such research findings in the Library;
(2) what plans his Department has to provide guidance for local transport plans relating to car-sharing schemes.
Mr. McNulty: Research into the effectiveness of car sharing and other travel plan measures was published in 2002 in "Making Travel Plans Work: Research Report", copies of which were placed in the Library.
Last year, the Department commissioned research into the influence of soft factors on travel demand. The final report, which will include a chapter on car sharing, is expected to be completed shortly and copies will be placed in the Libraries of the House.
Following a commitment made in the Government's Response to the Motorist's Forum Report on car sharing and car clubs on 3 December 2002, Official Report, column 72WS, the Department has commissioned research into best practice in setting up formal car sharing and car club schemes in closed communities. From the research, we will provide new guidance for local authorities, schools and employers on the effective implementation of car share schemes. The research and guidance is expected to be completed in October and copies will be placed in the Libraries of the House.
Mr. McNulty: There are high occupancy vehicle (HOV) lanes operating in two local authorities in England: two lengths of HOV lane in Leeds totalling 1.5 km and four lengths totalling 1.9 km in South Gloucester.
Mr. McNulty: The HOV lanes on Stanningley Road in Leeds are included as one of the case studies in the Bus Partnership Forum's Resource Pack "Bus PriorityThe Way Ahead" published by the Department in September 2003. This reports the results of an evaluation of the HOV lanes carried out by Leeds City Council.
|Next Section||Index||Home Page|
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Profile: Fatah al-Islam
Fatah al-Islam emerged in November 2006 when it split from Fatah al-Intifada (Fatah Uprising), a Syrian-backed Palestinian group based in Lebanon.
But it first came to prominence in 2007 when it began fighting the Lebanese army from its stronghold in the Nahr al-Bared refugee camp near the northern port city of Tripoli.
More than 400 people, including civilians, died in three months of clashes between the two sides before the Lebanese army took control of the camp.
All but 30 of Fatah al-Islam's estimated 200 fighters were killed in the clashes, some reports said.
The violence, which also caused more than 30,000 Palestinian refugees to flee the camp, was at the time Lebanon's worst internal strife since the 1975-1991 civil war.
Fatah al-Islam in Lebanon
- 2006: formed in a split from Fatah al-Intifada
- 2007: fought Lebanese army in a refugee camp - more than 400 people killed
- 2007: blamed for attack on UN peacekeepers
- 2008: accused of bombing campaign against police
- 2010: leader Abd-al-Rahman Awad killed
Since the battle at the refugee camp, the group is believed to have been behind a 2007 attack on UN peacekeepers monitoring the southern Lebanese border with Israel.
It was also blamed for a campaign of bombings in 2007 and 2008 targeting Lebanese police around Tripoli.
Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon are often a haven for armed groups. Lebanese security forces do not enter the camps, only guarding their perimeters.
But it is unclear to what extent the group has rebuilt its strength after Nahr al-Bared.Al-Qaeda
Fatah al-Islam was formed by Palestinian militant Shaker al-Abssi.
Abssi is believed to be the original connection between Fatah al-Islam and al-Qaeda.
He was a close associate of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the former leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq, with whom he allegedly helped plan the assassination of a US diplomat, Laurence Foley, in Jordan in 2002.
The two men were later sentenced to death in absentia for the crime.
Abssi said that his group has no organisational links to al-Qaeda, but agrees with the Sunni Islamist militant group's aims and ideology of fighting and killing non-Muslims.
Fatah al-Islam's statements have also appeared on Islamist web sites known for publishing al-Qaeda statements.
Lebanese authorities believe Abssi escaped the Nahr al-Bared camp the day before it was stormed by the army.
He has not been seen or heard from since, he was presumed to have fled the country, and is now said to be dead.Sharia
After Abssi's disappearance, the group announced they had elected Abd-al-Rahman Awad as its leader, but gave no further details.
Awad was killed in a hail of bullets at a checkpoint in August 2010, while travelling with an aide under a false identity in the Bekaa valley.
The group's leaders said Fatah al-Islam has two main aims: reform of the Palestinian refugee community in Lebanon in line with Islamic Sharia law, and confronting Israel.
The group also aims to drive the US and its interests out of the Islamic world.
The Lebanese government has linked Fatah al-Islam to the Syrian intelligence services. Syrian officials and Fatah al-Islam deny the connection.
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Robot can provide steady hand for some surgeries
July 1, 1996
Web posted at: 8:30 a.m EDT
From Correspondent Rusty Dornin
MOUNTAIN VIEW, California (CNN) -- It takes a steady hand to be a surgeon, and researchers are finding that robots can help.
Researchers at NASA Ames Research Center in California are developing a robotic probe to pinpoint the location of brain tumors. The probe has its advantages. (782K QuickTime movie)
"It causes less damage to the brain because it's a smaller probe, and you would be able to get to precisely where the tumor is rather than overshooting and undershooting it," NASA researcher Robert Mah explained.
Doctors now insert probes manually. During surgery, the brain swells and the tumor can shift. There is the danger of hitting an artery.
The robotic probe has a pressure sensor and can determine the difference between normal and unhealthy brain tissue.
A 3-D picture tells surgeons how close they're getting to the tumor.
"When it encounters something different like an artery, it would stop and let the surgeon decide what to do next," Mah said.
For some neurosurgeons the probe offers an extension of the senses, but there is doubt whether a robotic sensor is better than human touch.
"My touch is very complicated," said Dr. Gary Heit, a neurosurgeon. "I feel temperature. I feel nuances of pressure and shades of vibration. And it's hard for an instrument to duplicate that."
Testing in space
But neurosurgeon Russell Andrews, one of the probe's developers, said doctors can always use more accurate sensing devices.
"For a surgeon to say my hands are better than any machine is just living in the 1960s -- if not earlier than that," he said.
Researchers aim to test devices such as the probe during lengthy space flights. If an astronaut were injured on a long trip, doctors on Earth could help a medical specialist on the spacecraft guide the probe.
"The robot would actually go in there and start phase one of the procedure, and whenever it encounters anything that is beyond safe limits it would stop," Mah said.
Such a scenario is not expected to happen anytime soon. For now, researchers are testing the device on blocks of tofu. The probe could be tested on a person later this year.
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PBS KIDS and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting Join National STEM Video Game Challenge
Challenge encourages students and educators to build original games in support of
STEM – science, technology, engineering and math – learning
ARLINGTON, VA, November 16, 2011 – PBS KIDS and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) are participating in the 2012 National STEM Video Game Challenge. Inspired by the “Educate to Innovate Campaign,” President Obama’s initiative to promote a renewed focus on science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) education, the Challenge is an annual competition to motivate interest in STEM learning among America’s youth by tapping into students’ natural passion for playing and making video games.
The 2012 Challenge features four entry categories: Middle School, High School, Collegiate and Educator. Within each category, PBS KIDS and CPB are challenging participants to develop educational games for children ages 4-8 that focus on specific math curriculum skills. Contestants can find insights and more information about the challenge on PBSKIDS.org/stemchallenge, including resources that help guide game production for young children and interviews with top PBS KIDS game producers.
The Middle School and High School winners will each receive laptops, game design software packages and other tools to support their skill development, and youth sponsoring organizations will receive cash prizes and educational software. A prize of $10,000 will be awarded to each of the winners in the Collegiate and Educator categories.
There is a growing body of research that highlights how making games fosters the development of critical STEM skills, including problem solving and digital media literacies. “Inspiring young people through hands-on creation and experiments to engage in science, technology, engineering and math is what we are all striving to do,” said Rob Lippincott, Senior Vice President, Education, PBS. “We are excited to provide our well-researched curricular frameworks, which will help contestants keep focused on core educational skills while creating their games.”
The Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop and E-Line Media launched the 2nd annual Challenge in partnership with the Digital Promise, a new initiative created by the President and Congress, supported through the U.S. Department of Education. Entries will be accepted from November 15, 2011 through March 12, 2012 at www.stemchallenge.org. At the end of the competition, the winning games for the PBS KIDS and CPB track will be featured on the PBS KIDS Lab and PBS LearningMedia websites.
PBS KIDS and CPB are participating in the 2012 National STEM Video Game Challenge as part of the Ready To Learn Initiative, a grant program managed by the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Innovation and Improvement.
“Our Ready To Learn team and local public television stations around the country are working together to improve educational outcomes for students by engaging young people and educators in the process of creating video games that are both entertaining and educational,” said Debra Sanchez, Senior Vice President for Education and Children’s Content at CPB. “Our goal is to empower students to apply 21st century skills and encourage greater interest in STEM-based learning.”
The Ready To Learn Initiative supports the development of innovative educational television and digital media targeted at preschool and early elementary school children and their families, including over 40 new educational online games, which are now available at PBSKIDS.org/lab. Its goal is to promote early learning and school readiness, focused on serving children who live in poverty. In addition to creating television and other media products, the program supports activities intended to promote national distribution of the programming, effective educational uses of the programming, community-based outreach, and research on educational effectiveness.
About PBS KIDS
PBS KIDS, the number one educational media brand for children, offers all children the opportunity to explore new ideas and new worlds through television, online and community-based programs. For more information on specific PBS KIDS programs supporting literacy, science, math and more, visit PBS.org/pressroom, or follow PBS KIDS on Twitter and Facebook.
CPB is a private, nonprofit corporation created by Congress in 1967 and is steward of the federal government’s investment in public broadcasting. It helps support the operation of more than 1,300 locally-owned and operated public television and radio stations nationwide, and is the largest single source of funding for research, technology, and program development for public radio, television and related online services.
The contents of this release were developed under a grant from the Department of Education. However, those contents do not necessarily represent the policy of the Department of Education, and you should not assume endorsement by the Federal Government.
The project is funded by a Ready To Learn grant (PR/AWARD No. U295A100025, CFDA No. 84.295A) provided by the Department of Education to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
Carolyn Evert, 360 Public Relations, 617.585.5790; firstname.lastname@example.org
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Passports & Visas
A happy holiday begins with an up-to-date passport and it is your responsibility to ensure that all of your travel documents are valid and accepted in the country of travel. Below is some useful information on the our top destinations and the documents that are required for entry.
All Irish citizens aged 16 years and over must have a ten-year passport and for those under 16 years, a five-year passport is required. This includes infants.
The Passport Service have introduced a new biometric passport which will be issued upon application for a new or replacement passport. It is recommended that you leave at least 12 weeks prior to departure to apply for a new or replacement passport and make sure you read all of the literature provided with your application to avoid disappointment over your photo or other requirements.
Some overseas countries have an immigration requirement for a passport to remain valid for a minimum period after the date of entry to that country. If your passport is in its final year of validity you are advised to check the requirements of your destination before you make your final travel plans.
Passports For Children
All children, regardless of age, must obtain an individual Irish passport in their own name. However, parents' passports issued before 1 October 2004 on which children have been included remain valid and do not need to be replaced. Children who are included on a parent's passport issued before 1 October 2004 may continue to travel to most countries up until their 16th birthday along with that parent, providing the passport is still valid. There are, however, some exceptions which include, but are not limited to, the United States, Greece, France, Spain, Portugal, Cyprus and Bulgaria, which require that all passengers regardless of age, have their own full, valid passport. If you are in any doubt, please contact the embassy or consulate of the country concerned before you travel and remember that it is your responsibility to have the correct documentation for travel.
New USA Entry Requirements
With effect from 12 January 2009, US Customs & Border control have implemented new requirements for entry into the USA, called Electronic Systems for Travel Authorisation (ESTA). We have provided some very important information that you must read before travelling.
USA ESTA Entry Requirements
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BRIDGEPORT -- There was a time when the late architect Victor Civkin's modernist homes were considered so odd, so not New England, he had to fight to finance construction of his own home in Fairfield.
"We couldn't even get a mortgage from the bank because it was too strange," recalled Rena Schine, of Stratford, Civkin's 80-year-old daughter.
Sixty years later, those once weird buildings are considered treasures worth preserving. And Civkin, who died of a massive heart attack in 1968 at age 69, is viewed as a trailblazer of exterior and interior designs now taken for granted by 21st-century homeowners.
In Bridgeport, city and state officials are on the cusp of honoring Civkin by designating one of his homes -- 93 Mayflower Drive -- as a historic property. If the City Council acts on the request, the red, two-story structure with white trim will be spared from any future attempts to alter the outside.
"Not that you can't do anything, but you're expected to do things keeping with the historic character of the house," said Mark Halstead, the Fairfield architect spreading a greater appreciation for Civkin in Connecticut, especially Fairfield County, and other states where his work has stood the test of time.
"A lot of great modernism went to the wrecking ball because it was over the top," Halstead said. "Civkin sometimes went to the line of over the top, but not over."
Halstead's hope is the historic designation will also inspire future owners of 93 Mayflower Drive to preserve the modernist touches of the interior as well -- the front door that allows views of most of the first floor, the L-shaped living/dining room, the corner fireplace and corner windows.
According to Halstead's research, published in 2010 in a 56-page book on the architect, Civkin was born in Ukraine. He immigrated to the United States in 1922 and settled in Chicago, the home of modernism.
Civkin's career received a boost in 1932 when he was hired by General Electric to work in its new kitchen planning department, which marketed the modern, efficient kitchen with built-in appliances to the nation.
Civkin's work for GE led the family to move to Ohio, then New York -- where he designed the inside of the GE pavilion at the 1939 World's Fair -- and finally, Connecticut. Civkin worked at GE's recently demolished Bridgeport plant and built a home and studio at 12 Ermine St. in Fairfield, which preceded 93 Mayflower Drive as a historic site.
Schine said her father's success with GE was ironic considering he could not cook.
"He was the worst in the kitchen," she laughed. "I don't know where he got to be the one to design an efficient kitchen."
Halstead never abandoned full home design with GE, but focused solely on his private practice after leaving the company in 1953. He designed more than 400 houses nationwide, including about 100 in the Fairfield County area. He also designed businesses such as Junior's Drive-in in Bridgeport.
Halstead fell in love with Civkin's work long before he learned about the man. Born and raised in Bridgeport, Halstead often rode his bike along Fairfield's Sky Top Drive, a 1950s modernist neighborhood peppered with Civkin's work.
He had also admired 93 Mayflower Drive, which was built in 1947 atop stone foundations on a slope at the corner of Brooklawn Avenue.
"It, to me, is a marriage of the purpose of the house with the form of the house, the form of the house with the landscape," Halstead said. "That house can't go anywhere else but right here. It's a very successful design. It fits perfectly."
The Mayflower property also marks the point in Civkin's career when the architect established "his own brand of modernism," Halstead said.
Halstead eventually befriended Marie Madeleine and Estelle LaChance, sisters whose family had purchased the property in 1967 and who continued living there as adults. Then he began researching Civkin, which led him to Schine.
The effort to preserve 93 Mayflower Drive began a few years ago with a conversation with Marie Madeline LaChance, who fretted about its fate should she move; Estelle had since passed away.
"They rode it through the horrible times when modernism was castigated," Halstead said.
Stuart Sachs, chairman of the Bridgeport commission, said 93 Mayflower Drive is the first modern home to be preserved in the city. Other historic properties date back to the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries.
"The importance of recognizing some of our assets deals not with only age but uniqueness," Sachs said.
In the meantime, a potential wrinkle arose.
As she had feared, LaChance had to put the property on the market before the process for creating the historic district was complete. She did so quietly, without a "For Sale" sign, seeking buyers who loved the home the way she had it.
LaChance's Realtor found Jacqueline and Richard Sienkowski, formerly of Norwalk, who bought the house the day they toured it. The couple is pleased with the pending historic designation and has lived there for about eight weeks.
"It had very clean lines and not one shutter. This reminded me of something I'd see in the Hollywood Hills," Sienkowski said.
She loves how Civkin designed the entrance, which opens on a large living room to the left and a hall on the right heading straight into a bedroom.
"You see the whole house standing in this space," Sienkowski said. "It envelops you and makes you feel very warm."
Schine said that is a hallmark of her father's work.
"You come in and the space is open and bright and embracing," she said.
The bedroom is filled with corner windows that look out on the backyard. Civkin, according to Halstead, had no use for "hundreds of little panes to be washed."
Schine said Civkin would be very pleased with his homes being honored and she is glad to see him validated and appreciated.
"I still don't see them as historic," she said. "To me, they're still modern and fresh and attractive."
email@example.com; 203-414-0712; http://twitter.com/blockhart1
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CAREER AND TECHNICAL EDUCATION
Twenty-first century workers are faced with rapidly changing work opportunities that require all of us to have a greater variety of career and technical skills to survive and succeed in the career changes we are likely to encounter. Members of the business and corporate communityalso have expressed concern about the lack of workplace skills among some of the young employees they hire.
Structured Learning Experiences (SLEs) are an integral part of both instructional and career and technical education programs. SLEs provide students with opportunities to explore career interests at work and community sites, make career decisions and prepare for postsecondary careers. DOE regulations require that SLEs be designed as rigorous activities, integrated into the curriculum and linked to the Core Curriculum Content Standards (CCCS). SLE student activities have identifiable educational goals that are high-level and an important part of the curriculum, plus incorporate links to career, technology and academic standards. SLEs give students opportunities to both demonstrate and apply a high level of academic attainment. There are a variety of SLEs that include paid and unpaid experiences, depending upon the goal of the SLE and child labor regulations. SLEs include, but are not limited to: apprenticeships; career and technical education student organization activities; community service; community-based instruction; cooperative education experiences; internships; job shadowing; school-based work experiences; senior year options; service learning; structured agriculture education; vocational assessments; volunteer activities; and the work experience career exploration program (WECEP). All teachers supervising SLEs complete a training program required by DOE. This includes courses on federal and state child wage and hour laws, regulations and hazardous orders, the OSHA 10 general industry certificate program and a course on designing and implementing SLE student training plans. Nearly 1,000 teachers have participated in the required training. http://www.nj.gov/education/voc/sle/resource_packet.pdf
Career and Technical Student Organizations (CTSOs) are also an integral part of career and technical education instructional programs. These organizations provide students with the opportunity to enhance their employability by developing their occupational and leadership skills through a variety of activities, such as conferences, award programs and competitive events. Activities are conducted at the local, state and national levels. CTSO programs and competitive events reflect current standards and competencies for the occupational education programs they serve. Teachers infuse the organization’s activities into the instructional programs, enhancing the real-world connection to the academic studies. CTSOs are also a valuable tool for implementing the CCCS. The organizations are co-curricular and promote leadership, personal growth and career success among their members, while instilling in them the values and ideals of citizenship, volunteerism, patriotism and cooperation. In addition, they provide professional development opportunities for teachers and advisors as part of their activities.
The department has focused its attention on partnerships among business, school districts and institutions of higher education to create career and technical education programs for students interested in pursuing certain careers.
More information is available via the Office of Career and Technical Education.
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Ethnology & History
Ethnology is the branch of anthropology that analyzes aspects of contemporary human cultures and societies, both in terms meaningful to them, and comparatively across space and time. History, at UAMN, is the study of the non-Native activities and objects found in Alaska.
The Ethnology Collection includes over 13,000 objects made and used by Alaska Natives (Inupiaq and Yup'ik Eskimos, northwest coast and Athabascan Indians, and Aleuts) from the 1800's to the present. The collections hold artifacts from nearly every one of the 229 Federally Recognized Tribes (Alaska Native villages), and from all of the cultures represented by the 20 distinct Native languages in Alaska. In addition, objects from Siberia, Canada, and Greenland serve as comparative examples of other circumpolar people. Exceptional collections include basketry, clothing, household items, dolls, and subsistence tools.
The History Collection has over 3,000 objects of Western manufacture representing Alaska's history from the Russian American period through the present. Notable collections include firearms, gold extraction technology and equipment, mountaineering gear, and household items, as well as Leonhard Seppala's sled dog racing trophies and Ben Eielson's airplane.
The collections are available to researchers upon appointment and for loan to other institutions.
Senior Collections Manager: Angela J. Linn, M.A.
Curator Emerita: Molly Lee, Ph.D.
The Ethnology & History department is actively seeking volunteers! See the link under Current Projects to learn how you can gain valuable experience working with museum artifacts while having a flexible schedule. No prior experience required - we'll provide the professional training.
Caring for Your Collections
Click here to learn how you can preserve your own collections for future generations.
Donating Your Collections
Click here to learn about the benefits of donating your collections to the UAMN ethnology & history department.
AKEthnoGirl on Wordpress
Ethnology & History collections manager, Angela Linn, has started a blog! Head over to Wordpress to experience another perspective on the behind-the-scenes life of a museum collections professional.
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How does God handle our attempts to honor Him when we’re not quite sure of what He’s expecting from us? Will we be acceptable as long as we’re sincere? Let’s take a lesson from a very early example:
In Genesis 4, we are introduced to a man who sought to bring to God something he personally valued. Cain was a tiller of the ground, in contrast to his brother Abel, who was a keeper of flocks (Genesis 4:3). The crops brought forth by the sweat of Cain’s brow were the first thing he thought to offer to God. It makes sense, doesn’t it? There is debate about whether God had already communicated to them about what He desired in the form of sacrifice. But one way or the other, this first attempt to please God with what each brother desired to bring Him sheds a lot of light on how God deals with worship attempts that are “right on target” and those that aren’t.
Notice that Cain was the first to bring an offering to the Lord. He wasn’t trying to “one-up” or compete with his brother – he was sincerely seeking to please the Lord. It says that the Lord “had regard for Abel and his offering.” The Hebrew word for “regard” literally means “look toward.” The offering that Abel gave got God’s attention, as it were. But it says that “for Cain and for his offering He had no regard.” Try to picture it in your mind. God is a parent who is aware that His two children have each come to Him, saying eagerly, “Father, I brought you something!” Cain arrives first… and God doesn’t look in his direction. Abel arrives next and God smiles, showing appreciation for the gift.
Wait a minute, though… how is that fair? If Cain is a tiller of the ground, what does God expect? Here is the key. God gives Cain a chance to understand in verses 6 and 7:
“The LORD said to Cain, ‘Why are you angry, and why has your face fallen? If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is for you, but you must rule over it.’”
The reason God did not show appreciation for Cain’s offering is that He desired something else: an offering from the flock. The neat part about this is that God did not condemn Cain’s offering… He just didn’t accept it. This becomes very applicable to every generation that would follow Cain: we do not show love for God when we only offer to Him what WE would desire or expect. We demonstrate true love for God when we take the time to find out what it is HE desires and expects! What would have happened if Cain had said, “Ooooh, I get it. Okay, Father!” and came back with an offering of sheep? This is profound, ladies! This is why I get frustrated when people say that worshiping with a band up front is simply a matter of our preference, or that we can assemble to worship on Saturday if it’s more convenient for us than on the first day of the week as we find in Scripture. If we do not “do well” (a.k.a. learn from our error instead of continuing in error), sin is sneaking up on us because we are seeking to meet our own expectations and not God’s. Not a big deal? What about Cain? Let’s take a look at Cain’s response and see if we can learn why this is such a big deal:
“Cain spoke to Abel his brother. And when they were in the field, Cain rose up against his brother Abel and killed him.” (4:8).
Why did this happen? It was the proof: Cain’s first error provided a moment of decision for him. He could either humble himself and correct his error, choosing to make the necessary changes to honor God, or he could become defensive and not change. “But why isn’t my offering as good as Abel’s? That isn’t fair!” It’s very clear how quickly we become the “victims” when we are not accepted “just as we are.” When we are expected to make a change, the positive aspect of improvement is forgotten when we choose to look at it with Cain’s attitude. Notice that God did not reject Cain – His words in verse 6 make this evident: “If you do well, will you not be accepted?” This is future tense! God rejected his worship, but was not denying him the opportunity to do the right thing. Rather, He was showing how willing He was to accept him if he learned from his mistake.
We know the rest of the historical event. Cain killed his brother Abel. It was the proof of God’s statement – if we are unwilling to learn from an honest mistake, sin is the next step in the natural progression. Consider it a practical psychology lesson from God.
This is the lesson: be teachable. Do not view correction, rebuke, or even gentle reproof as a rejection of who you are. If we play the victim and choose to remain as we are, we display Cain’s attitude – the attitude that says “This is just the way I am! I shouldn’t have to change anything about myself!” Blatantly refusing to change who we are to conform to our Creator’s expectations is the launch pad for all kinds of sinful behavior. Attitudes like this are the reason we have so much pain to deal with in the world. Cain bore a punishment that was painful to him; God pulled everything he cherished out of his life and made him a fugitive. Eve lost a son, and her words in verse 25 show that Cain’s actions hurt more than just himself: “God has appointed for me another offspring instead of Abel, for Cain killed him.”
We should not be surprised when we learn we are not perfect. God doesn’t condemn us for not being perfect – the purpose of the Scriptures is to help us identify imperfections so we can correct them. God helps us in our walk with Him, testifying about when we do the right thing and pointing it out to us when we do not. Here’s the application: when you read God’s Word and you discover an attitude, action or behavior in your life that is contrary to what you read about God’s expectations, don’t play the victim and get defensive or argumentative! Choose to make a change. Be proactive. Listen to His favorable statements about those who did well. Choose to imitate them and enjoy the blessing of acceptance.
“By faith Abel offered to God a better sacrifice than Cain, through which he obtained the testimony that he was righteous, God testifying about his gifts, and through faith, though he is dead, he still speaks.” – Hebrews 11:4
By Keeley Rollert
Keeley and her husband David are current students at the Bear Valley Bible Institute of Denver. They are planning to graduate next year. Find this and other great posts on her blog at http://wifeofapreacher.wordpress.com.
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Cayin A-50T integrated amplifier Measurements
The Cayin A-50T has two output transformer taps, 4 ohms and 8 ohms, and two modes of output-stage operation: Triode and Ultralinear. I performed a full set of tests in each mode from both sets of output taps, but discuss only a representative selection here. Before performing any measurements, I checked the bias on each of the four output tubes; it varied from 322mV to 332mV, all well within the recommended range.
The maximum voltage gain into 8 ohms was lower than usual for an integrated amplifier. Even in the higher-gain Ultralinear mode, it was 32.5dB from the 8 ohm tap, 30.6dB from the 4 ohm tap. Triode mode reduced the gain from both taps by 2dB. This won't be an issue with modern line-level sources, such as CD players. The low gain, however, meant that even in the worst case, with the input shorted but the volume control set to its maximum, the Cayin's signal/noise ratios (ref. 1W into 8 ohms) were excellent, at 68dB (unweighted, wideband) and 98dB (A-weighted). All modes and taps preserved absolute polarity. The input impedance was a little lower than specification, ranging from 74k ohms at 20Hz to 59k ohms at 20kHz, but these figures are still usefully higher than average. Channel matching was excellent, but channel separation (not shown) was good rather than great, at >70dB L–R and >80dB R–L below 2kHz.
As is usual for a traditional tube design, the A-50T's output impedance was high. Even in the optimal condition of the 4 ohm tap in Triode mode, this was 1.6 ohms across the band; from the 8 ohm tap in Ultralinear mode, it was a very high 3.3 ohms. As a result, the modification of the amplifier's frequency response by the interaction between this source impedance and the modulus of impedance of the loudspeaker load was large, at ±2dB with our standard simulated loudspeaker from the 8 ohm tap in Ultralinear mode (fig.1, magenta trace). Even with the 4 ohm tap in Triode mode (not shown), the response variation was an audible ±1dB. But into resistive loads, the Cayin's small-signal response was commendably flat, with a high-frequency rolloff that didn't begin until well above the audioband (fig.1, red and blue traces). As a result, the A-50T's reproduction of a 1kHz squarewave was superb for a tube design (fig.2). This amplifier obviously uses well-engineered output transformers, though in the worst case—8 ohm tap into higher impedances—a trace of a well-damped ultrasonic resonance can be just seen with a 10kHz squarewave (fig.3).
Fig.1 Cayin A-50T, Ultralinear mode, 8 ohm tap, frequency response at 2.83V into: simulated loudspeaker load (magenta), 8 (red), 4 (blue) ohms (1dB/vertical div.).
Fig.2 Cayin A-50T, Triode mode, 8 ohm tap, small-signal 1kHz squarewave into 8 ohms.
Fig.3 Cayin A-50T, Triode mode, 8 ohm tap, small-signal 10kHz squarewave into 8 ohms.
With only a pair of EL34 tubes per channel, the A-50T is not going to be a powerhouse. But taking the clipping point as our usual 1% THD+noise point, the amplifier did more than meet its specified output powers—35Wpc (15.3dBW) in Ultralinear mode, 16Wpc (12dBW) in Triode mode—with the output transformer matched to the load in Ultralinear mode or set to half the load impedance in Triode mode. Figs.4–7 show how the THD+N percentage changes with output power with each of the four operating mode/tap combinations. That the A-50T uses a low amount of loop negative feedback is revealed by the way the measured distortion increases linearly with power, though this is more evident in Triode than in Ultralinear mode. Distortion levels are generally higher in Triode mode, but this mode does appear to maintain its performance with loads that are increasingly lower than the nominal transformer tap value.
Fig.4 Cayin A-50T, Ultralinear mode, 8 ohm tap, distortion (%) vs 1kHz continuous output power into (from bottom to top at 10W): 4, 8, 2, 16 ohms.
Fig.5 Cayin A-50T, Ultralinear mode, 4 ohm tap, distortion (%) vs 1kHz continuous output power into (from bottom to top at 10W): 4, 8, 2, 16 ohms.
Fig.6 Cayin A-50T, Triode mode, 8 ohm tap, distortion (%) vs 1kHz continuous output power into (from bottom to top at 10W): 8, 16, 4, 2 ohms.
Fig.7 Cayin A-50T, Triode mode, 4 ohm tap, distortion (%) vs 1kHz continuous output power into (from bottom to top at 10W): 8, 16, 4, 2 ohms.
With high impedances, operating the Cayin in Ultralinear mode (which I note was BJR's preference) gives distortion levels that, other than in the top octave and below 100Hz, are more typical of a solid-state design. Again, however, the amplifier in Ultralinear mode can be seen to be increasingly nonlinear as the load impedance drops, particularly from the 8 ohm tap (fig.8). In Triode mode, the Cayin is less linear overall, but again the rise in THD at the frequency extremes is evident, to levels that, with the lowest loads, might have audible consequences (fig.9).
Fig.8 Cayin A-50T, Ultralinear mode, 8 ohm tap, THD+N (%) vs frequency at 2.83V into: 16 (blue), 8 (red), 4 (magenta), 2 (green) ohms.
Fig.9 Cayin A-50T, Triode mode, 8 ohm tap, THD+N (%) vs frequency at 2.83V into: 16 (blue), 8 (red), 4 (magenta), 2 (green) ohms.
However, the actual distortion is composed almost entirely of the relatively innocuous low-order harmonics (fig.10). At low frequencies, the third harmonic predominates in Ultralinear mode (fig.11) but is the same level as the second harmonic in Triode mode (fig.12)—but the odd-order harmonics drop rapidly in the midrange, leaving the second the dominant harmonic, even in Ultralinear mode (fig.13). With the reduction in linearity in the top octave and above, it was not surprising to find that the A-50T didn't fare particularly well in the demanding high-frequency intermodulation test (fig.14). It is fair to note, however, that this graph was taken with the amplifier operating at a power level just below visible clipping on the oscilloscope screen.
Fig.10 Cayin A-50T, Triode mode, 8 ohm tap, 1kHz waveform at 1W into 48 ohms (top), 0.105% THD+N; distortion and noise waveform with fundamental notched out (bottom, not to scale).
Fig.11 Cayin A-50T, Ultralinear mode, 4 ohm tap, spectrum of 50Hz sinewave, DC–1kHz, at 10W into 4 ohms (linear frequency scale).
Fig.12 Cayin A-50T, Triode mode, 4 ohm tap, spectrum of 50Hz sinewave, DC–1kHz, at 10W into 4 ohms (linear frequency scale).
Fig.13 Cayin A-50T, Ultralinear mode, 8 ohm tap, spectrum of 1kHz sinewave, DC–1kHz, at 10W into 8 ohms (linear frequency scale).
Fig.14 Cayin A-50T, Triode mode, 8 ohm tap, HF intermodulation spectrum, DC–24kHz, 19+20kHz at 9W peak into 8 ohms (linear frequency scale).
I was impressed both by the Cayin A-50T's build quality and by its measured performance, though it definitely works best when the nominal loudspeaker impedance is equal to or greater than the output transformer tap used. Despite its affordable price, it obviously uses well-engineered output transformers. In a sense, it represents what a tube amplifier from the Golden Age would perform like if it were made using modern materials and parts, yet it costs less in today's devalued dollars than classic tube amps cost 40 years ago.—John Atkinson
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I grew up in a very nuclear family, so the idea of not knowing my father was never an issue. The recent press over Leicester Bryce Stovell, the man claiming to be basketball star LeBron James father got me thinking about the paternity process.
But first, here is the latest in LeBron’s case: Stovell claims that the results of the paternity test he recently took were falsified by James and his mother, Gloria, and that James’s committed fraud and misrepresentation in an effort to conceal the identity of James’ father. Stovell further alleges that his character was defamed by James’ comment, “I want to be a better father than mine was.”
This is not your typical paternity dispute (neither is this one involving deceased Chess champion Bobby Fischer being exhumed from his grave to determine whether he is the father to a nine year old Pilipino girl) in that paternity tests usually involve the mother or child seeking the test in order to establish a relationship, child support, custody and visitation rights, adoption, inheritance, and other parenting issues. In this case, it is the father wishing to establish the biological relationship and also seeking millions of dollars in damages for being denied access to his “son.”
A paternity test is essentially a DNA test to prove beyond a legal doubt that by taking samples from the child and the father that there is a biological relationship. States vary as to the standard they require but the test is the same. Paternity tests claim 99% accuracy and can be completed in a couple of days, plus both before birth and after death.
In a recent study conducted by LegalMatch, there was as much interest in determining paternity as there was contesting paternity. This is not too surprising as this can be a very costly issue for both parties and there is a lot at stake. Highly emotional, the paternity test can serve as the final adjudicator in the issue of fatherhood.
Reading these various articles and cases surrounding paternity, I am still amazed how far technology has come. The fact that we can test a baby in the womb or exhume a dead body to establish paternity is quite a feat and can hopefully serve to answer the important question of fatherhood.
In the case of LeBron James, I think it is a shame that Stovell has only come forward after James has made millions of dollars and been raised by his single mother. One aspect of paternity that I do like hearing about is the increase in companies granting father’s paternity leave in the same way mothers take maternity leave. I think this is a great trend and one that seems to be gaining momentum.
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The latest science, described in the World Bank report “Turn Down the Heat,” indicates that we are heading toward a 4° C warmer world, with catastrophic consequences in this century. While carbon dioxide (CO2) is still the No. 1 threat, there is another category of warming agent called short-lived climate pollutants (SLCPs). Mitigating these pollutants is a must if we want to avoid the 4° C warmer future.
The main SLCPs are black carbon, methane, tropospheric ozone, and hydrofluorocarbons. They are potentially responsible for more than one-third of the current warming. Because SLCPs have a much shorter lifetime in the air than CO2; reducing their emissions can create almost immediate reduction of global/regional warming, which is not possible by reducing CO2 emissions alone. According to one U.N. report, full implementation of 16 identified measures to mitigate SLCPs would reduce future global warming by about 0.5˚C.
In this blog, we will focus on one SLCP – black carbon. Black carbon is a primary component of particulate matter (PM), the major environmental cause of premature deaths globally. As a climate pollutant, black carbon’s global warming effects are multi-faceted. It can warm the atmosphere directly by absorbing radiation. When deposited on ice and snow, black carbon reduces their reflecting power and increases their melting rate. At the regional level, it also influences cloud formation and impacts regional circulation and rainfall patterns such as the monsoon in South Asia.
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Franklin Survey Co., Philadelphia, 1948
The maps below exhibit a visual representation of the population and development increase in the Wynnewood township from the turn of the century to the years following the second World War.
All maps courtesy of the Lower Merion Historical Sociery, Bala Cynwyd, PA
J. L. Smith Atlas, Philadelphia, 1900
G. W Bromley & Co., Philadelphia, 1926
The town of Wynnewood is part of the Lower Merion Township which is one of many townships in Montgomery County. It is located northwest of Philadelphia and is one of the closest communites to Center City. Historically, towns in Lower Merion existed as self-sufficient farming communities. Around the early 1880's, development of the townships in Lower Merion began with the construction of homes for the elite and sprawling estates. Wealthy Philadelphians commissioned well know architects to build fashionable summer retreats. Although the Philadelphia railroad first established tracks in Montgomery County in 1834, it wasn't until 1870 that the railroad company began catering to commuters, adding frequent stops along the main line. The convience for commuters enabled the railroad to significantly influence the development of residential suburban communities. The Pennsylvania Railroad implemented a strategy, encouraging business and summer resorts built along the mainline. The townships developed into what are sometimes referred to as "bedroom communities", since the majority of inhabitants lived in Montgomery County but relied on Philadelphia commerce for employment. Many homeowners had one home in the city and another larger "country home" in the suburbs. By the turn of the century, towns along the main line in Montgomery County comprised the most famous suburban area in America. The social standards of these suburban towns attracted the rising middle class of Philadelphia professional males and their families, yet continued to appeal to the elite by reinforcing rigid social stratification. Suburbs along the main line also attracted shopkeepers, artisans, tradesman and a lower class of domestic servantry to support the demands of wealthier inhabitants.
As the twentieth century progressed, Philadelphia main line communities experienced an explosion of building and development as a result of the population boom post WWII. By 1954 Montgomery County was made up of fully developed residential communities with their own commercial segments. Contributing factors to the growth of main line communities after the war included the rise of suburban employment, increased availability of automobiles, as well as liberal mortgage insurance rates, converting average middle class citizens to suburbanites, who could not have afforded to leave the city 30 years prior. Suburban communities northwest of Philadelphia remain a popular place for Americans to live. Presently, Philadelphia Main Line districts are among the weathiest suburban communities in the nation. Wynnewood in particular contributes significantly to the gross income of Montgomery County and continues to be a financially exclusive neighborhood.
Toll, Jean Barth and Michael J. Schwager. Montgomery County; the Second Hundread Years. Montgomery County Federation of Historical Societies. 1983. pages 327, 898-899, 902-903, 1429.
Wynnewood Railroad Station, Wynnewood & Penn Roads, Wynnewood, Montgomery County, PA. (since destroyed HABS Photo: PA-6144, 1933)
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RETNOWATI, YIYIN (2010) AN ANALYSIS OF TEACHING LEARNING ACTIVITIES OF "LOOKAHEAD 1" OF ENGLISH. Other thesis, University of Muhammadiyah Malang.
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In this study the researcher was interested in analyzing the teaching learning activities of “Look Ahead 1” of English textbook for Senior High School students Published by Erlangga. In detail this study is intended to analyze: 1) the teaching learning activities of listening 2) the teaching learning activities of speaking 3) the teaching learning activities of reading 4) the teaching learning activities of writing and 5) the most varieties in the teaching and learning activity among the four language skills. . A descriptive research was used as the design of the study. The data source of this study is the English textbook “Look Ahead 1” for the first grade written by Tn. M. Sudarwati, Eudia Grace (2007). The finding of this research shows that the listening activities are: filling in the blanks and answering the question, completing the conversation, listening and pronouncing the word, listening a narrative text with filling the blank and answer the question, listening the conversations and the following questions, listening to the cassette to fill in the blanks and answering the question, listening with read a conversation and answering the questions, listening an instruction and filling the blanks. The speaking activities are: telling the past experience, making role play based on the dialog, completing the dialogue in pair, practising the dialog, practising and performing the dialog, answering the questions based on the picture, and making a short conversation based on the situation. The reading activities are: reading the recount text and answering true or false question, filling the blanks and answering the question, matching the words, completing the instruction based on the picture, reading the descriptive text and answering the question, and reading the dialog and answering the question. The writing activities are: writing a short story based on the pictures, writing an imaginative narrative, writing past experience, working with partner and writing the sentences, writing the procedures from the previous picture, and writing a summary of the previous story. The most varieties in the teaching and learning activity are: listening activities, there are eight activities that were found in this textbook. This textbook is interesting because the activities in this textbook are varieties, authentic, relevant with the student, and not many difficult words were found in this textbook.
|Item Type:||Thesis (Other)|
|Subjects:||L Education > L Education (General)|
|Divisions:||Faculty of Teacher Training and Education > Department of English|
|Depositing User:||Rayi Tegar Pamungkas|
|Date Deposited:||23 May 2012 06:57|
|Last Modified:||23 May 2012 06:57|
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Economics is a subject you learn by doing. Foundations of Economics breaks the mold of a traditional text and becomes a practice-oriented learning system. Each chapter uses a Checklist to focus students’ attention on the most important key concepts. A discrete section introduces each of these core concepts and is immediately followed by a Checkpoint, a full page of practice that applies the concept. The result is a patient, confidence-building approach that prepares students to use economics in their lives, regardless of what their future career will be.
AP® is a trademark registered and/or owned by the College Board, which was not involved in the production of, and does not endorse, this site.
Our fully digital programs and ebooks provide cutting-edge online instruction with a seamless transition from the textbook, allowing students to complete assignments, access videos and activities, and take online tests and remediation.
Pearson encourages 21st century learning by infusing the core subjects and themes throughout our programs—Life and Career Skills, Learning and Innovation Skills, and Information, Media, and Technology Skills. The ultimate goal—to ensure that every child is prepared for the 21st century with skills like critical thinking, problem solving, creativity, innovation and global competence.
With Pearson’s interactive whiteboard-ready resources, students become more active and collaborative classroom learners and teachers are able to deliver memorable lessons, engage all types of learners, and reduce class preparation time.
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Most Active Stories
KRWG.ORG-The Region's Home Page
Mon November 26, 2012
Next: Elephant Stone
Originally published on Mon December 17, 2012 8:41 am
Though the shock value of dropping a sitar into Western pop music has decreased since George Harrison's Hare Krishna days, the metallic, resonant drones of the instrument can still take a normal pop song and twist it into something unexpected. Rishi Dhir, sitarist, bassist and founding member of Elephant Stone, takes full advantage of the juxtaposition.
In "Heavy Moon," amid the more conventional sounds of electric organs, stomping drums and vocals that recall a strident Elliott Smith, Dhir's sitar traces a winding path that folds back on top of itself in a continuous loop. Many attempts to incorporate traditional Eastern instruments into Western pop or rock music sound sloppy and cobbled-together, or even teeter on the edge of cultural tourism. Elephant Stone avoids this by cleverly employing the sitar as a textural sound rather than a more prominent melodic one. It's not an entirely new approach, but one the band has honed to an art.
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Cirrhosis (say "suh-ROH-sus") is a very serious condition in which healthy tissue in the liver is replaced with scar tissue. The scarring keeps the liver from working as it should. For example, the liver may stop making clotting factors, which can lead to bleeding problems. Bile and poisons may build up in the blood. The scarring can also cause high blood pressure in the vein that carries blood to the liver.
Adam Husney, MD - Family Medicine & W. Thomas London, MD - Hepatology
How this information was developed to help you make better health decisions.
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UTSA group hosts Nov. 1 screening of film on Haiti human rights abuse
By Adi Pavlovic
Student Writer, College of Liberal and Fine Arts
(Oct. 31, 2005)--The Progressive Student Organization, a UTSA student organization, and the Haiti Action Committee will host the screening of Kevin Pina's new documentary, "Haiti: The Untold Story," at 7:30 p.m., Tuesday, Nov.1 in Main Building Room 0.106 at the 1604 Campus. The screening is free and open to the public.
The film chronicles human rights abuses by the Haitian police and the July 6, 2005, massacre by United Nations forces of civilians in the Port-au-Prince slum of Cite Soleil. The documentary has been described as "53 minutes of human rights hell in Haiti."
- La Prensa Foundation is newest member of UTSA Lone Star Society
- UTSA alumna Jordan Kaufmann wins $50K for new stent-graft start-up
- UTSA begins new way-finding sign installation this summer at Main Campus
- USA Today: UTSA long jumper Tyler Williamson rescues three-year-old boy
Kevin Pina, an independent journalist and filmmaker, is associate editor of The Black Commentator and Haiti special correspondent for Flashpoints. He is founder of Haiti Information Project (HIP) and currently resides in Haiti.
Pina's film work includes "El Salvador: In the Name of Democracy" (1985), "Berkeley in the Sixties" (1990), "Amazonia: Voices from the Rainforest" (1990) and "Haiti: Harvest of Hope" (1997).
HIP is a nonprofit alternative news service providing coverage and analysis of breaking developments in Haiti. The organization has shown the Haiti documentary across the United States and Canada with the goal of sparking debate and interest in the Haitian crisis that is stirring.
Since the ouster of Haitian President Jean-Bertand Aristide, thousands of followers of Lavalas Family political party, which promotes democratic reform, have been killed or exiled by the United States-installed government of Gerard Latortue. U.N. services have occupied the country, relieving United States, French and Canadian forces in order to stabilize the situation.
For more information, contact Nancy Ayon at (210) 843-6726.
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This article (Part 1) deals with “The General Stock Market in 1958” and “Results in 1958.” The next article (Part 2) will cover a typical investment situation and address the “current” investment environment (i.e., at the time the 1958 letter was written).
Please note that I don’t plan to summarize the entire first part of the 1958 letter, or repeat insights that were already covered in my previous articles. Rather, I plan to focus on a few quotes that highlight new and/or important investment ideas and wisdom. With that disclaimer out of the way, let’s jump in.
THE GENERAL STOCK MARKET IN 1958
Here are a couple of quotes that I found interesting in this section on “The General Stock Market in 1958.”
This passage makes it sound like speculation had entered the markets in 1958. Buffett didn’t know how long the speculators would stick around, or if their numbers would grow and push prices up, but he did believe that it was “valid to say that the longer their visit, the greater the reaction from it.”
“During the past year, almost any reason has been seized upon to justify ‘investing’ in the market. There are undoubtedly more mercurially-tempered people in the stock market now than for a good many years and the duration of their stay will be limited to how long they think profits can be made quickly and effortlessly. While it is impossible to determine how long they will continue to add numbers to their ranks and thereby stimulate rising prices I believe it is valid to say that the longer their visit, the greater the reaction from it.”
“…I do believe that wide-spread public belief in the inevitability of profits from investment in stocks will lead to eventual trouble.”
Buffett states that “almost any reason has been seized upon to justify ‘investing’ in the market.” This statement makes it sound like many market participants (perhaps blinded by greed) were desperately trying to convince themselves that it was reasonable or prudent to invest in the stock market. However, a cold, hard look at the facts would have probably dissuaded these individuals from investing in this speculative market.
This passage is cautionary in its tone. It implies that investors should scrutinize the facts and reasoning for making an investment and come to their own conclusions/decisions (and not just take investment cues from the price action of the market).
This passage also seems to hint at the fact that investors need to be extra cautious in their analysis and decision-making when they are dealing with popular or widely-held investments.
RESULTS IN 1958
According to the 1958 partnership letter, the Dow-Jones industrial average had an overall gain of 38.5% in 1958. The letter goes on to say:
Below are a couple of observations:
[i]“The five partnerships that operated throughout the entire year obtained results averaging slightly better than this 38.5%. Based on market values at the end of both years, their gains ranged from 36.7% to 46.2%. Considering the fact that a substantial portion of assets has been and still is invested in securities, which benefit very little from a fast-rising market, I believe these results are reasonably good. I will continue to forecast that our results will be above average in a declining or level market, but it will be all we can to do keep pace with a rising market.”[/i]
1) At least one of the partnerships underperformed the Dow in 1958 (i.e., had an overall gain of 36.7% versus 38.5%). This is only noteworthy because you don’t often see Buffett, in his partnership days, underperform the averages. However, the average result of the partnerships was actually slightly better than that of the Dow.
2) Even though a “substantial portion of assets has been and still is invested in securities, which benefit very little from a fast-rising market,” the “five partnerships that operated throughout the entire year obtained results averaging slightly better than this 38.5%.” This is an impressive result. It almost sounds like the partnership’s portfolio of generally undervalued securities did well enough in 1958 to offset the underperformance of its other securities that didn’t benefit as much from the fast rising market. But that’s just my interpretation. It’s always possible that there’s another explanation for the partnership’s 1958 performance.
Anyway, thanks for taking the time to read my thoughts on Part 1 of the 1958 Buffett partnership letter. I hope you’ll join me for Part 2 of the letter.
Links to other articles in the Buffett Partnership Series:
Next article: Buffett Partnership Letter Series – 1958 (Part 2)
Previous article: Buffett Partnership Letter Series – 1957 (Part 2)
Introduction: Buffett Partnership Letter Series
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Ask SCORE: The Three Most Important Things Good Finance Can Provid
The Three Most Important Things Good Finance Can Provide
The Basic, Intermediate and Advanced Tools for Success
By Richard Walton, Assistant district Director for SCORE
What are the three most important things that an understanding of organizational finance can provide? The answers do not include providing more money or enabling higher salaries, although these results may occur as a result of successfully managing the 'big three'.
Here they are, in order from the most basic through the intermediate, and finally to the most advanced.
First, Breakeven Analysis. This is the calculation of the point where revenues equal costs and is calculated with three variables. They are fixed costs (rent, salaries, insurance, etc.), variable costs (materials for production, labor, etc.) and product prices, (making the assumption that the firm sells more than one product). The breakeven point is calculated by first deducting variable costs from selling prices to yield the contribution margin (also known as gross profit in accounting speak). The resulting margin (calculated as a profit margin per dollar of sales) is then divided into the fixed costs to yield the amount of revenue needed to break even. Example: Variable costs are .75 Cents of the sales dollar. Fixed costs at $15,000 per month. $15,000 divided by .75 is $20,000. Revenues equal costs when sales are at least $20,000 monthly. Anything above that figure is a profit, anything below it, is a loss, assuming of course that costs remain the same.
This calculation enables the firm to plan to make a profit and thereby stay in business. They either increase revenues or reduce costs, if they are below the breakeven point.
Second, Ratio Budgeting. This is the process by which each cost element is measured against revenue and its percentage of revenue is determined. This is done after the breakeven point is calculated. When revenues decline, management must maintain the ratio through cost reduction is each cost category in order to avoid losing money. Similarly, when revenues rise, the percentages must be maintained in order to produce a profit, since any revenues above breakeven will yield a profit, but only if costs remain in the same percentage relationship with revenues. Rather than look at individual dollar costs when cuts need to be made (as in the case of declining revenues) the real task is to maintain the percentage relationship or ratio of costs to sales in order to avoid losing money. This has been a major concern of financial managers in the recession.
Finally, Goal Directed Cash Flow Management. Cash flow management is normally considered to be attempting to match available income to necessary costs. But in a declining business, this is nearly impossible, and in a business where revenues are rising having extra cash usually means increasing salaries. But Cash Flow Management has to take into account the non operational activities of the firm which include financing and investing. Financing is the management of debt, where investing is the management of assets to produce revenue, such as machinery. Goal Directed Cash Flow Management takes each of these requirements into account in order for the business to successfully manage both its debts and its investments. Each period must include a requirement to set aside revenues for debt reduction if the firm has borrowed money. It is not a sustainable practice to merely account for operating expenses. Finally, investment activities need to be part of cash flow calculations as a means of business growth in the future. Making funds available to replace assets that are wearing out, or to obtain new capital equipment to expand the productive capacity of the firm are essential ingredients of long term sustainability and growth. Without them, the business cannot grow.
The three tools we have presented here, Breakeven Analysis, Ratio Budgeting, and Goal Directed Cash Flow Management are the key financial tools to help businesses grow and prosper, and along the way as an added bonus, these tools will enable a more proactive stance toward borrowing money in that they will show a lender that you can manage your profitability even in a down turn, and also provide the means of paying back a loan.
Mr. Walton teaches Entrepreneurship and Quality Management at Frostburg State University. He is also Assistant District Director for SCORE, Western Maryland, and the President of ERMACORP, a Hagerstown based Management Consulting Firm. He may be reached at 301-462-9850, or by email to Richard@ermacorp.com.
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As the second season for Arabs Got Talent kicked off few months ago, one judge had been causing more than his fair share of buzz.
Many have compared Ali Jaber to Simon Cowell, the straight-talking, and sometimes a little too blunt, judge of the UK version of the show; but Jaber is also known for his fast, undisputable slam on the disqualifying button for ‘violent’ talent acts.
Jaber’s firm stand against violence is without any doubt a matter of principle, but it could also be the reaction to a deep scar from his youth: Lebanon’s civil war.
Recently, a picture of Jaber in what appears to be a war scene has widely circulated on the net.
The Lebanese media man said he didn’t know about the existence of this photo until last year.
Commenting on it Jaber said: “The picture was taken during the Lebanese civil war, in the eighties, as I was volunteering with the Red Cross. We had helped in the evacuation of a family trapped in a building in the Caracas neighborhood of Beirut, and the photo was taken at that time.”“
Group TV director at MBC, Jaber proved high consistency in his stands and opinions during the show. Violence was always a no-no, but meanwhile, his encouragement of more original and not necessarily popular form of arts remained unchanged as well.
In an interview with Al Arabiya, Jaber said he is not afraid of violence, but he determinedly and undeniably rejects it in all its forms.
Ali Jaber, originally from the Southern Lebanese City of Nabatiyeh recalls, “our house was bombed several times by the Israeli army and I, myself, was injured three times by gunshots.”
During Lebanon’s civil war (1975-1990), Jaber had already made up his mind when it comes to violence. He rejected it since then, and volunteered within the Red Cross.
“But you have to understand, he said, we are the war generation; we are all influenced in one way or another by the deadly conflict that shook our country”
In an attempt to explain the high numbers of views and the somewhat triumph of violent acts amongst Arab audiences, Jaber said that usually “action” is sought after everywhere. “Just notice the Box Office movies all over the world”, he added. “People love daring and violent scenes”.
But the main difference, according to Jaber, is that Arab society looks at the male figure from a ‘macho’ point of view. “Man is sometimes defined by his lack of emotions in our societies, which in my opinion, is naive”, Jaber said.
“For me, a man is filled with emotions and sensitivity “.
Jaber also raised some concerns towards Lebanon’s new generation and the current unsteady situation in the country.
“I am worried, he said, that this generation looks at war with a certain romanticism, as if they can’t wait to carry arms. Maybe because some parents talk about the war with nostalgia, which I find completely irresponsible as it creates a desire in their children to tell stories about themselves too in a war. “
“Today, it is mostly our generation, the war generation, which stands against the conflict, because we know the harm it can cause. I just hope the young people are smart enough not to live it, but to learn from it”
Arabs Got Talent, the Arab version of the “Got Talent” British TV format debuted in 2011 on MBC4, a channel part of MBC group, the largest broadcaster in the Arab world.
The show proved very successful and highly popular in the region; the contestants rapidly became stars, or sometimes ‘big fail’ protagonists of widespread jokes.
The judges, singer Najwa Karam, actor Nasser Al Qasabi, who are already famed superstars, and journalist Ali Jaber, soon became household names in the entire region.
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A campaign to crack down on people selling counterfeit tobacco is gathering pace, as the focus moves to targeting workplaces in Nottingham.
Since the campaign began last June, almost 44,000 cigarettes and 11 kilograms of rolling tobacco have been seized from private and retail premises.
The campaign is being carried out by Nottingham's Trading Standards, who have received over 70 phone calls from the public, which has led to the issuing of 24 search warrants.
– Alex Norris, Portfolio Holder for Community Safety
The sale of illegal tobacco is not a victimless crime like some people may think. This type of trading can have a negative impact on Nottingham’s retailers who are working within the law.
The use of illicit tobacco can also have even greater health risks as the products are not produced in a regulated environment and their ingredients are often unknown.
– Lisa Hoole, Public Health Manager for Nottingham City
Twenty eight per cent of people in Nottingham city currently smoke which is significantly higher than the national average – and we have set a challenging target to reduce this to 20% by 2020.
The ongoing success of the Fake tobacco campaign can help us towards achieving this aim.
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FREDERICK, Md.—An award-winning documentary that tells the story of the 1929 women's air derby will be shown March 20 at 7 p.m. at Hood College to mark Women's History Month.
"Breaking Through the Clouds: The First Women’s National Air Derby" follows 20 pilots on their nine-day flight across the country from Santa Monica, Calif., to Cleveland, Ohio, and recounts some of the friendships and close bonds the women developed that belies their competitive spirit. It will be screened in Hodson Auditorium in Rosenstock Hall, followed by a question-and-answer session with the filmmaker.
The documentary was written and produced by Hood alumna Heather A. Taylor, who spent more than 10 years researching and writing the story. It features archival film from the derby, as well as interviews with such legendary female pilots as Elinor Smith Sullivan, Patty Wagstaff and Julie Clark. Others interviewed for the documentary include aviation historians and friends and family members of the participants. More information about the documentary can be found at www.breakingthroughtheclouds.com.
The film premiered in Frederick in 2010 during the Women's Air Race Classic. Since then, it has received the prestigious Combs Gates Award from the National Aviation Hall of Fame. It also won the David Ponce Award as best documentary of the festival at the Chagrin
Documentary Film Festival; the Utopian Vision Award from the Utopia Film Festival; and Best Documentary DMV at the REEL Independent Film Extravaganza.
The presentation is co-sponsored by Hood's communication arts and women's studies programs, the departments of English and history and the office of multicultural affairs.
For more information, contact Donna Bertazzoni, professor of journalism, at email@example.com, or call (301) 696-3743.
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NEW DELHI: Navy is confident India will have two full-fledged aircraft carrier battle groups (CBGs) by 2015 or so despite slippages in ongoing refit of the 44,570-tonne Admiral Gorshkov in Russia and construction of the 40,000-tonne indigenous aircraft carrier (IAC) at Cochin Shipyard.
"We are definitely looking at deploying two aircraft carriers by the middle of this decade,'' said assistant chief of naval staff (foreign cooperation and intelligence) Rear Admiral Anil Chawla on Wednesday.
Navy, in fact, can stretch the operational life of India's solitary aircraft carrier, the 28,000-tonne INS Viraat, for another 10 years if the need arises, said Rear Admiral Chawla, who himself has commanded the 50-year-old warhorse.
Interestingly, the naval tableau for the Republic Day parade this year has scaled down models of INS Viraat and the new MiG-29K maritime fighter jets India is acquiring from Russia as the main highlights.
But the depleting number of INS Viraat's Sea Harrier jump-jets, down to just 11 now, remains a source of worry. The 45 MiG-29K fighters, contracted from Russia for about $2 billion, are meant for operation from Gorshkov and IAC.
The first CBG will be centred around Gorshkov, rechristened INS Vikramaditya, which India will now get in early-2013 under the fresh $2.33 billion deal inked last year.
The second CBG, in turn, will be around the IAC, whose keel was laid in February 2009. "We hope the launch of IAC can take place by end-2011,'' said Rear Admiral Chawla.
But if there is a further delay in the IAC, which is slated for delivery by 2015, INS Viraat will fill the gap. Having recently undergone an extensive modernisation refit with new weapons and sensors, INS Viraat will remain battle-worthy for some years to come.
With accompanying destroyers, frigates, submarines and different aircraft centred around the carriers, nothing projects power better than CBGs. The US, for instance, has as many as 11 CBGs to deploy around the globe, giving it the capability to strike almost anywhere.
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This is probably correct.
Still, in some documents the town of Geilo was called "Quislingstadt" by the Germans, according to Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten. I haven't found any other sources for that. Sorry, reference is Norwegian.
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Video: How to find a middle school
Video: A guide to private schools
By Hank Pellissier
How far must parents go to get their children a decent education? In some cities, it can require navigating a bureaucratic obstacle course or calculating daunting admissions odds. In Motor City, where school system trouble has long resembled a multicar pileup, it can take much more — even a modern day judgment of Solomon.
Detroit mother Cheryl Lynn Pope can attest to the massive effort parents must make. She pulled her own daughter from an underperforming school — and worked to get her into a more challenging environment. She also watched her cousin make the ultimate sacrifice: Surrounded by failing schools, she transferred guardianship of her two children to her sister so they could attend better schools in their aunt’s neighboring town.
In the Detroit Public School system (DPS), only 62 percent of high school students graduate. How can parents prevent their children from ending up in an educational dead-end? As Pope’s experience suggests, it’s difficult. And recent news isn’t making it any easier.
Facing a massive $327 million budget deficit, DPS has recently gone into red alert mode. In February 2011, Michigan officials ordered DPS to reduce its expenses by closing half its schools — from 142 to 72 — by 2012-2013. The restructuring is expected to cause severe overcrowding: Class sizes will jump from 35 to 62 in high schools, from 35 to 45 in middle schools, and from 17 to 31 in K-3.
DPS has tried numerous strategies to improve its services: A uniform dress code with mandatory identification badges was instituted in 2007, and the popular new parent resource centers offer comfortable community gathering spaces with computers, libraries, play areas for children, and workshops for adults. Nonetheless, the quality of education in Detroit is in a quagmire — GreatSchools rates the city a 2 out of 10.
The good news? The enrollment process is simple and the journey to the district office offers an architectural treat. DPS is located on five floors of the Fisher Building — an ornate 1928 Art Deco skyscraper and national historic landmark constructed with 40 varieties of gleaming marble. DPS has all the forms and information there that you'll need. Applying to schools consists of listing your three top choices on an open enrollment questionnaire.
If you want info online instead, you'll find the user-friendly DPS website has easy-to-follow enrollment instructions as well as contact phone numbers, a map, a list of the district's schools, required documents for enrollment, scholarship applications, a parent's guide, and a school orientation kit. An adjacent web page has additional information for new students, transfer students, and special needs students.
Beware: Some of the website's enrollment information is misleading or outdated. For one, it implies that student enrollment only occurs at the schools. In reality, many parents enroll their children over the summer at one of the eight parent resource centers. Also, the website touts Detroit's “open enrollment," suggesting that there are no geographic requirements for enrollment. In fact, most of the schools are neighborhood-zoned. When you carefully read the details, you find that: "Enrollment preference will be given to students who live within the boundary of a school."
Some families avoid the neighborhood schools because the non-zoned schools with open enrollment tend to be superior, especially in the upper grades. Neighborhood high schools send only a small number of graduates to universities, whereas the open enrollment alternatives are much more successful. For example, in 2009 the neighborhood Ford High School (GS rating 1) only had four students even apply to the University of Michigan system, whereas college preps Renaissance High (GS rating 7) and Cass Technical (GS rating 6) had 73 and 130 applicants, respectively. Another neighborhood high school, Southeastern (GS rating 2) — with a student body of 2,147 — didn't have a single student apply to the public university.
Non-neighborhood schools are listed here, but be warned, they achieve superiority partly because they’re more selective. Four "examination" schools require students to qualify for enrollment by doing well on a placement exam, and 11 "application" schools ask parents to complete an application prior to their selection process. Many of these institutions offer specialty disciplines, such as communication, performing arts, music, cultural studies, visual art, and foreign language immersion. Additionally, DPS also has a "schools of choice" list that provides registration info and scholastic themes for 40 schools that it claims "generate improvement on all levels." We recommend that you use this resource, but make sure the schools you want will still be open in 2012.
While DPS offers a wide variety of schools to choose from, excellent choices are somewhat limited. Dozens of Detroit schools earn a GreatSchools’ rating of only 1 or 2 out of 10. There are, however, some schools which garner high ratings, such as Bates Academy (GS rating 9), Renaissance High School ( GS rating 7), Chrysler Elementary (GS rating 7), Cass Technical High School (GS rating 6), Martin Luther King, Jr. Education Center (GS rating 6), or Thirkell Elementary (GS rating 7). Several additional schools have ratings of 7 or 6.
Detroit has charter schools, but the majority of charter schools are severely underperforming. Sixteen out of the 23 that GreatSchools rates have a score of merely 1 or 2, and only one is rated higher than 4. The lone exception is Edison Public School Academy (GS rating 6). The charters boast that they comprise "one-third of the best schools in Detroit". However, this means very little. There are 54,000 children enrolled in charters - more than one third of the student population in Detroit. Proportionally, this suggests that charters aren’t outperforming traditional schools, but merely keeping pace with DPS overall. If you decide that you do want your child to attend a charter, inquire at each one about its respective application process. Some accept students via examinations, others are lottery based.
What if your child can’t get into any of the best public and charter schools? If you can afford the expense, you might want to explore nearby private schools. The offerings vary widely from Catholic institutions like Holy Redeemer and Most Holy Trinity to Detroit Waldorf, Open Door Montessori, and Friends School in Detroit. For any of these institutions, it’s wise to research their philosophies before you approach them to make sure your belief systems are compatible. Like the charters, religious and other private schools have their own individualized application processes, with different due dates and entrance requirements.
In the end, Cheryl Lynn Pope found a happy ending for her daughter, as did her cousin who gave up guardianship to provide a better education for her kids. Pope says transferring her daughter to another institution was relatively easy. Her daughter now attends Chrysler Elementary School (GS rating 7), a school with a student-run newspaper, yearbook, and multimedia publishing options for aspiring writers.
"Chrysler's focus is journalism," explains Cheryl. "The kids actually write and publish books. My daughter is a two-time author. She’s contributed to two books."
No doubt Motor City’s bumpy road to a good education will make some parents look for a way out of town. Literally. You can apply for an out-of-district transfer for your child — to enroll them in an adjacent community with more successful schools — but obtaining one isn’t easy. Desperate parents may go to great lengths to give their child a chance to escape a DPS education, but there are no simple solutions.
One route to superior schooling is to buy or rent your home in a nearby suburb. Bloomfield Hills (GS rating 10) is tops in this category. It has a low crime rate, and one of its high schools - International Academy — was ranked #2 in the nation by US News & World Report. Of course, home prices there are more than 10 times the cost of dirt-cheap Detroit ($705,600 instead of $66,100) but you’d definitely leave your parental guilt behind. Birmingham (GS rating 10) has housing that's much more affordable (average home costs $195,900) but slightly more crime; Northville (GS rating 10) has similar crime rates, but housing is pricier at an average of $245,600. An affordable option might be Royal Oak (GS rating 8) with excellent middle schools and a more affordable average house tag of $115,600.
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- Solutions & Services
- Knowledge Sharing
- Educational Services
- Why OCI Training?
- Transitioning to OO
- Course Catalog
- Public Events
- Private Events
- Lab Facility
- Technical Communication
- Educational Services
Case Study: CORBA Implementation Migration
Global telephony system test equipment and management systems supplier.
OCI helped the client migrate from a proprietary implementation of CORBA to open source products, with equivalent functionality, enhanced flexibility, improved standards compliance, and substantial cost savings by eliminating recurring license fees. OCI provided architectural guidance, training, implementation and testing support throughout the project.
The client contacted OCI when their existing proprietary CORBA vendor began raising support rates and forcing customers to upgrade to a newer version. The client's software required substantial modernization to move to the newer version, which was based on the latest CORBA specifications. Since code modernization was needed anyway, the client chose to drop their vendor and port their software to an open source CORBA solution with zero licensing fees. The client selected TAO (C++) and JacORB (Java), and chose OCI to help them with both the modernization of their code base and the migration to open source products.
OCI had previously guided clients through migrations from proprietary CORBA implementations to the open source TAO and JacORB products, and had developed a road map to assist with such migrations. Using this road map, we analyzed the client's code base and determined the best approach for a successful migration, while at the same time improving the portability and flexibility of their code. We developed and executed a migration plan with the customer that included:
- Training classes for the client's development team to upgrade their CORBA programming skills
- A pilot migration of a portion of the client's application to validate the migration approach
- Development of a new, open source "object repository" service to replace a proprietary feature on which the client's code base depended (thereby minimizing changes to the application code)
- A partitioning of migration activities between the client and OCI that allowed OCI to focus on CORBA implementation details and the client to focus on the details of their application code
- On-going consulting and support to ensure a successful migration
As a result of OCI's involvement in the project, the customer successfully migrated their software from a technically obsolete version of a proprietary CORBA product to modern, open source alternatives. Benefits to the customer included:
- Elimination of recurring license fees
- Escape from vendor lock-in
- Improved application code portability
- A more open and flexible architecture
- Application developer skills upgrade
- An extension of their product's useful life
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Here is a researcher pointing out that social media is just another outlet and your "presentation of self" in the new media is just like every other aspect of yourself, i.e. you are what you are and people can quickly identify what kind of person you are. With social media you can't control the impression you give people. With the omnipresence of social media and the kinds of digital clues of what you are about means that you can no longer "control" your presentation of your image.
I find the discussion around 4:00 into the video the most fascinating. The idea that when we lived in small communities we were "just ourselves" but as we moved into mass society we were anonymous but with the ability to control our "presentation" of self. But now with the new social media, we have lost control of the ability to manage the presentation so we are returning back to the small community world of just being ourselves.
Here's the Wikipedia write up of what Sam Gosling, the professor of psychology at UT Austin is stating in the above video clip: "The question of whether social-networking sites lead to accurate first-impressions has inspired Sam Gosling of the University of Texas at Austin and David Evans formerly of Classmates.com to launch an ambitious project to measure the accuracy of first-impressions worldwide (YouJustGetMe.com)."
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(a) In addition to disaster prevention measures as included in the state, local, regional and interjurisdictional disaster plans, the Governor shall consider on a continuing basis steps that could be taken to prevent or reduce the harmful consequences of disasters. At his or her direction, and pursuant to any other authority and competence they have, state agencies, including, but not limited to, those charged with responsibilities in connection with floodplain management, stream encroachment and flow regulation, weather modification, fire prevention and control, air quality, public works, land use and land-use planning and construction standards, shall make studies of disaster prevention-related matters. The Governor, from time to time, shall make such recommendation to the Legislature, political subdivisions and other appropriate public and private entities as may facilitate measures for prevention or reduction of the harmful consequences of disasters.
(b) At the request of and in conjunction with the Office of Emergency Services, the divisions of energy, natural resources and highways and any state department insured by the Board of Risk and Insurance Management shall keep land use and construction of structures and other facilities under continuing study and identify areas which are particularly susceptible to severe land shifting, subsidence, flooding or other catastrophic occurrences. Such studies shall concentrate on means of reducing or avoiding the dangers caused by such occurrences and the consequences thereof. Note: WV Code updated with legislation passed through the 2012 1st Special Session
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STATE ANIMAL Morgan Horse No. 42 of the acts of 1961, effective March 23, 1961, designated the Morgan Horse as the official State Animal. The forebear of all Morgan horses was a rugged little stallion which belonged to Justin Morgan of Randolph, a late-18th-century teacher of singing and penmanship and a composer of some renown. From this exceptional horse sprang a new breed which traditionally could outdraw, outrun, and outtrot" any other horse. By the mid-1800's, the Morgan horse had proven its many virtues throughout the expanding nation. Today, the Morgan breed, still bearing the unique traits of its Vermont sire, is one of the favorite saddle, family and endurance breeds in America. -------- from Office of the Secretary of State, Vermont Legislative Directory and State Manual, Biennial Session, 1993-1994, p. 14. Image produced from a photograph by Arthur Griffin.
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Biologically Inspired Multi-Processor
Materials Fee $10
Day/Time: Saturday, April 22 11:00 AM (90 minutes)
Location: Workshop PavilionBuild a circuit that uses preprogrammed (and reprogrammable) microcontrollers to signal human-cell-style, using concentrations, not logic. We provide the chips, you bring your own socket board, hookup wire, and batteries. The application we build will connect sensors (knob or light) to control sound (Morse code pitch and tempo) and will include an extra computer programmed as a "scope" to watch the others work.
Cunningham & Cunningham, Inc
I'm an EE and CS graduate who has been borrowing from the emerging field of systems biology for years. My favorite style of design is to build new things out of old parts by connecting them in unexpected ways. I am the inventor of Wiki, where I "misused" the web's forms capability to make a new kind of social experience.
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THE revelation that some lamb curries are actually made with beef will only increase the call for our food to be more strictly regulated.
IN the wake of the horse meat scandal, we desperately need assurances that what’s on our dinner plates is safe.
But a veil of silence by the food safety watchdogs highlighted by the Sunday Mail today does nothing to alleviate concerns about what we’re eating.
More than a third of curry restaurants are using fake meat in a disgraceful food fraud that cheats customers. Instead of lamb, we’re getting cheap cuts of beef.
But the Scottish Food Enforcement Liaison Committee have refused to reveal the guilty restaurants.
By failing to name and shame them, the watchdogs are being complicit in a scandal that, in the view of food hygiene expert Hugh Pennington, is worse than the horse meat fiasco.
We should not be left in the dark about whether our local restaurant is one of those run by
opportunistic owners fleecing customers.
And neither should good-quality restaurants be penalised for the sins of the rest.
The Scottish Food Enforcement Liaison Committee’s role is to co-ordinate food law enforcement and sampling by councils.
They are supposed to be part of the process to restore our confidence in food after a succession of health scares.
But their silence only makes us more suspicious.
Push out the pen pushers
WHILE the elderly lie for hours in hospital wards waiting for a bed, it’s spend, spend, spend for the bosses of another public watchdog.
Healthcare Improvement Scotland are supposed to monitor safety in the country’s hospitals.
Instead, they seem more interested in spending all their budget in a bid to justify their existence.
Last month, they were at the centre of a scandal over waiting lists at Dundee’s
Ninewells Hospital and a “whitewashed” inspection report.
In a bid to hide what’s really going on in the NHS, the revelation that 35 patients had been left on trolleys and in wheelchairs waiting for a bed was changed to “some” patients.
Healthcare Improvement Scotland were set up just two years ago to ensure that NHS hospitals are safe and clean.
But after the Ninewells cover-up, they have shown themselves to be not fit for purpose.
It’s time the organisation were shut down and there was more focus on making hospitals safer, instead of pen pushers dreaming up ways to blow spare cash.
Healthcare Improvement Scotland’s chief executive Frances Elliot quit days after the row over the report was raised in the Scottish Parliament.
Her former colleagues should follow her.
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This article is one in a series to assist in the setup, troubleshooting, and maintenance of Cisco Small Business products.
Q. What are the factors that affect voice quality on SPA3000?A.
Voice Quality perceived by the subscribers of the IP Telephony service should be indistinguishable from that of the PSTN. Voice Quality can be measured with methods such as Perceptual Speech Quality Measurement (PSQM) (1-5 - lower is better) and Mean Opinion Score (MOS) (1-5 - higher is better).
This table displays speech quality metrics associated with various audio compression algorithms:
Factors that Affect Voice Quality
- Audio Compression Algorithm
Speech signals are sampled, quantized, and compressed before they are packeted and transmitted to the other end. For IP Telephony, speech signals are usually sampled at 8000 samples per second with 12-16 bits per sample. The compression algorithm plays a large role in determining the Voice Quality of the reconstructed speech signal at the other end. The SPA supports the most popular audio compression algorithms for IP Telephony: G.711 a-law and -law, G.726, G.729a and G.723.1. The encoder and decoder pair in a compression algorithm is known as a codec. The compression ratio of a codec is expressed in terms of the bit rate of the compressed speech. The lower the bit rate, the smaller the bandwidth required to transmit the audio packets. Voice Quality is usually lower with lower bit rate. However, Voice Quality is usually higher as the complexity of the codec gets higher at the same bit rate.
- Silence Suppression?
The SPA applies silence suppression so that silence packets are not sent to the other end in order to conserve more transmission bandwidth. Instead, a noise level measurement can be sent periodically during silence suppressed intervals so that the other end can generate artificial comfort noise that mimics the noise at the other end using a CNG or comfort noise generator.
- Packet Loss
Audio packets are transported by UDP which does not guarantee the delivery of the packets. Packets may be lost or contain errors which can lead to audio sample drop-outs and distortions and lowers the perceived Voice Quality. The SPA applies an error concealment algorithm to alleviate the effect of packet loss.
- Network Jitter
The IP network can induce varying delay of the received packets. The RTP receiver in the SPA keeps a reserve of samples in order to absorb the Network Jitter, instead of playing out all the samples as soon as they arrive. This reserve is known as a Jitter Buffer. The bigger the Jitter Buffer, the more jitter it can absorb and the bigger the delay it can introduce. Therefore the jitter buffer size should be kept to a relatively small size whenever possible. If jitter buffer size is too small, then many late packets may be considered as lost and thus lowers the Voice Quality. The SPA can dynamically adjust the size of the jitter buffer according to the network conditions that exist during a call.
Impedance mismatch between the telephone and the IP Telephony gateway phone port can lead to near-end echo. The SPA has a near end echo canceller with at least 8 ms tail length to compensate for impedance match. The SPA also implements an echo suppressor with comfort noise generator (CNG) so that any residual echo will not be noticeable.
- Hardware Noise
Certain levels of noise can be coupled into the conversational audio signals due to the hardware design. The source can be ambient noise or 60Hz noise from the power adaptor. The SPA hardware design minimizes noise coupling.
- End-to-End Delay
End-to-end delay does not affect Voice Quality directly but is an important factor in determining whether subscribers can interact normally in a conversation taking place over an IP network. Reasonable delay figure should be about 50-100ms. End-to-end delay larger than 300ms is unacceptable to most callers. The SPA supports end-to-end delays well within acceptable thresholds.
The Cisco Support Community is a forum for you to ask and answer questions, share suggestions, and collaborate with your peers.
Refer to Cisco Technical Tips Conventions for information on conventions used in this document.
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Members of the Academy of Eating Disorders (AED) are available to comment on the Female Athlete Triad and the International Journal of Eating Disorders article.
The Female Athlete Triad is the combination of disordered eating, absence of menstrual periods, and bone loss that can affect girls and women. The Triad is especially prevalent in elite athletes struggling with eating disorders. Worldwide, 1% of girls suffer from anorexia nervosa, 1-13% of girls suffer from bulimia nervosa, and a potentially greater number struggle with disordered eating that does not fit into either category (This group is what we now call Eating Disorders Not Otherwise Specified). As many as two out of three college athletes report disordered eating and girls and women with Olympic ambitions may engage in unhealthy weight control strategies in a misguided attempt to improve performance. For example, a recently published study of elite Norwegian athletes (Torstveit & Sundgot-Borgen, 2005) found that 4.3% met criteria on all three of the Female Athlete Triad components and that the number was substantially higher when two of the three criteria were met. For example, 26.9% of the Norwegian athletes met criteria for disordered eating and menstrual dysfunction and 10.2% had disordered eating and low bone mass.
The new position statement from the Olympic Committee comes right as we move into the winter Olympics and provides an important reminder about the health of female athletes.
The International Olympic Committee's Medical Commission, which is the sport governing body at the highest level of sport competition, has confirmed: 1) the seriousness of the medical and psychological consequences of the Female Athlete Triad; 2) the need for specialized approaches to its identification, management, treatment, and prevention based on issues that are unique to the sport environment; and 3) the health of the athlete takes precedence over athletic performance.
The full text of the Olympic Committee Medical Commission Working Group "Women in Sport" Position stand on the female athlete triad can be found at http://multimedia.olympic.org/pdf/en_report_917.pdf.
Article: "Practical Use of the International Olympic Committee Medical Commission Position Stand on the Female Athlete Triad," by Roberta Trattner Sherman and Ron A. Thompson, International Journal of Eating Disorders; Published Online: February 9, 2006 (DOI: 10.1002/eat.20232).
The Academy of Eating Disorders is an organization comprised of professionals dedicated to the best-practice, evidence-based care of individuals suffering from eating disorders. The AED supports the Olympic Committee in highlighting this very real risk to our Olympic level and recreational athletes.
Last reviewed: By John M. Grohol, Psy.D. on 21 Feb 2009
Published on PsychCentral.com. All rights reserved.
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While you may not think of seeing a board-certified dermatologist to have your ears pierced, Dr. Jochen feels strongly that by providing this service, he is helping to ensure patients’ safety, performing the procedure in a more sterile environment than retail operations can offer and reducing the risk of infection.
It can happen in an instant. A once beautifully-pierced ear becomes an unsightly torn ear lobe. An ear ring tangle with hair or fingernail, a child’s grabbing hands, or some other injury can damage the tender ear lobe tissue which is comprised of skin and fat. The wear and weight of loop and dangling earrings over time can make the hole larger. Sometimes it takes only the smallest tug to tear the lobe.
Dr. Timothy Jochen expertly performs ear lobe reconstruction and says that once repaired and sufficiently healed, patients can pierce their ears again if they so desire. Sometimes the ear can be reconstructed with an earring stud in place to retain the piercing.
The simple outpatient procedure takes about 15 minutes and is performed with a local anesthetic to numb the ear lobe. The sutures will dissolve in a few days. Depending on the extent of the injury, immediate repair may be an option or the patient may need to let the wound heal before surgery is recommended. Even in the case of lost tissue, the ear lobe can be reshaped to look proportional.
To prevent the possibility of a tear, always remove earrings before taking sweaters and shirts off, and take earrings off when around young children.
The nasolabial folds are the deep folds which run from the side of the nose to the corner of the mouth. As we age, they often become more noticeable, although younger people with fatty cheek pads may also have prominent nasolabial folds.
While dermal fillers have become a popular and effective way to “plump up” nasolabial folds in patients with moderately prominent folds, a procedure called nasolabial fold excision is another option, particularly for severe nasolabial folds in mature patients with thicker skin.
Nasolabial fold excision is performed under local anesthesia along with oral or intravenous sedatives to relax you. Dr. Jochen will excise (surgically remove) the nasolabial folds from the face and suture the treated areas with tiny hairline stitches.
You will be instructed to keep your treatment area as immobile as possible for a week to 10 days to encourage proper healing. If your body tends to form keloids (thick, irregular scarring caused by excessive tissue growth at the site of an incision or wound), this procedure may not be appropriate for you.
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At a recently held meeting of the National People’s Congress in Beijing, China’s leaders unveiled a dramatic long-term plan to integrate some 400 million countryside dwellers into urban environments by concentrating growth-promoting development in small and medium sized cities.
In stark contrast to the neglected emphasis placed on infrastructure development in the United States and Europe, China spends around $500 billion annually on infrastructural projects, with $6.4 trillion set-aside for its 10-year mass urbanization scheme, making it the largest rural-to-urban migration project in human history. China’s leaders have mega-development in focus, and realizing such epic undertakings not only requires the utilization of time-efficient high-volume production methods, but also resources - lots and lots of resources. It should come as no surprise that incoming Chinese president Xi Jinping’s first trip as head of state will take him to Africa, to deepen the mutually beneficial trade and energy relationships maintained throughout the continent that have long irked policy makers in Washington.
The new guy in charge - who some analysts have suggested could be a populist reformer that empathizes with the poor - will visit several African nations with whom China has expressed a desire to expand ties with, the most prominent being South Africa. Since establishing relations in 1998, bilateral trade between the two jumped from $1.5 billion to 16 billion as of 2012.
Following a relationship that has consisted predominately of economic exchanges, China and South Africa have now announced plans to enhance military ties in a show of increasing political and security cooperation. During 2012’s Forum on China-Africa Cooperation meeting, incumbent President Hu Jintao served up $20 billion in loans to African countries, which were designated for the construction of vital infrastructure such as new roads, railways and ports to enable higher volumes of trade and export. In his address to the forum, South African President Jacob Zuma spoke of the long-term unsustainability of the current model of Sino-African trade, whereby raw materials are sent out and manufactured commodities are sent in.
Zuma also stated, "Africa's past economic experience with Europe dictates a need to be cautious when entering into partnerships with other economies. We certainly are convinced that China's intention is different to that of Europe, which to date continues to attempt to influence African countries for their sole benefit." Xi’s visit highlights the importance China attaches to Sino-African ties, and during his stay, he will attend the fifth meeting of the BRICS, the first summit held on the African continent to accommodate leaders of the world’s most prominent emerging economies, namely Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa. The BRICS group, which accounts for around 43% of the world's population and 17% of global trade, is set to increase investments in Africa’s industrial sector threefold, from $150-billion in 2010 to $530- billion in 2015, under the theme "BRICS and Africa: partnership for development, integration, and industrialization".
With focus shifting toward building up the continent’s industrial sector, South Africa is no doubt seen as a springboard into Africa and a key development partner on the continent for other BRICS members. Analysts have likened the BRICS group to represent yet another significant step away from a unipolar global economic order, and it comes as no surprise. As Eurozone countries languish with austerity cuts, record unemployment and major demand contraction, the European Union in South Africa's total trade has declined from 36% in 2005 to 26.5% in 2011, while the BRIC countries total trade increased from 10% in 2005 to 18.6% in 2011. The value and significance of the BRICS platform comes in its ability to proliferate South-South political and economic ties, and one should expect the reduction of trade barriers and the gradual adoption of economic exchanges using local currencies. China’s ICBC paid $5.5 billion for a 20% stake in Standard Bank of South Africa in 2007, and the move has played out well for Beijing - Standard has over 500 branches across 17 African countries which has drastically increased availability of the Chinese currency, offering yuan accounts to expatriate traders.
It looks like the love story that has become of China and Africa will gradually begin shifting its emphasis toward building up a viable large-scale industrial base. Surveys out of Beijing cite 1,600 companies tapping into the use of Africa as an industrial base with manufacturing's share of total Chinese investment (22%) fast gaining on that meted out to the mining sector (29%). Gavin du Venage, writing for the Asia Times Online, highlights how Beijing’s policy toward Africa aims to be mutually beneficial and growth-promoting, “Chinese energy firm Sinopec teamed up with South African counterpart PetroSA to explore building a US$11 billion oil refinery on the country's west coast. Refineries are notoriously unprofitable, with razor-thin margins. Since South Africa has no significant oil or proven gas reserves itself, the proposed plant would depend on imports, and would have to serve the local market to be viable. The plant will therefore serve the South African market and not be used to process exports to China. This is only the latest of such investments that demonstrate a willingness by Chinese investors to put down roots and infrastructure in Africa. It also shows that China's dragon safari is about more than just sourcing commodities for export.”
Indeed, and Beijing’s dragon safari is loaded with a packed itinerary, with Mao-bucks flying everywhere from Tanzania and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, to Nigeria and Angola. Xi Jinping will also grace the Angolan capital of Luanda, where China had provided the oil-rich nation with some $4.5 billion in loans since 2002. Following Angola’s 27-year civil war that began in 1975, Beijing played a major role in Angola's reconstruction process, with 50 large-scale and state-owned companies and over 400 private companies operating in the country; it has since become China's largest trading partner in Africa with a bilateral trade volume at some $20 billion dollars annually. Chinese Ambassador Zhang Bolun was quoted as saying how he saw great potential in further developing Sino-Angolan relations and assisting the nation in reducing its dependence on oil revenues while giving priority to the development of farming, service industries, renewable energies, transport and other basic infrastructure.
Chinese commercial activities in the Democratic Republic of the Congo have significantly increased not only in the mining sector, but also considerably in the telecommunications field. In 2000, the Chinese ZTE Corporation finalized a $12.6 million deal with the Congolese government to establish the first Sino-Congolese telecommunications company, while the Kinshasa exported $1.4 billion worth of cobalt to Beijing between 2007 and 2008. The majority of Congolese raw materials like cobalt, copper ore and a variety of hard woods are exported to China for further processing and 90% of the processing plants in resource-rich southeastern Katanga province are owned by Chinese nationals. In 2008, a consortium of Chinese companies were granted the rights to mining operations in Katanga in exchange for $6 billion in infrastructure investments, including the construction of two hospitals, four universities and a hydroelectric power project, but the International Monetary Fund intervened and blocked the deal, arguing that the agreement between violated the foreign debt relief program for so-called HIPC (Highly Indebted Poor Countries) nations.
China has made significant investments in manufacturing zones in non-resource-rich economies such as Zambia and Tanzania and as Africa’s largest trading partner, China imports 1.5 million barrels of oil from Africa per day, approximately accounting for 30 percent of its total imports. In Ghana, China has invested in Ghanaian national airlines that serve primarily domestic routes, in addition to partnering with the Ghanaian government on a major infrastructural project to build the Bui Hydroelectric Dam. China-Africa trade rose from $10.6 billion in 2000 to $106.8 billion in 2008 with an annual growth rate of over 30 percent. By the end of 2009, China had canceled out more than 300 zero-interest loans owed by 35 heavily indebted needy countries and least developed countries in Africa. China is by far the largest financier on the entire continent, and Beijing’s economic influence in Africa is nowhere more apparent than the $200 million African Union headquarters situated in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia - which was funded solely by China.
China’s deepening economic engagement in Africa and its crucial role in developing the mineral sector, telecommunications industry and much needed infrastructural projects is creating "deep nervousness" in the West, according to David Shinn, the former US ambassador to Burkina Faso and Ethiopia. During a diplomatic tour of Africa in 2011, former US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton insinuated China’s guilt in perpetuating a creeping “new colonialism”. When it comes to Africa, the significant differences in these two powers' key economic, foreign policy strategies and worldviews are nowhere more apparent. Washington has evidently launched its efforts to counter China's influence throughout the African continent, and where Beijing focuses on economic development, the United States has sought to legitimize its presence through counterterrorism operations and the expansion of the United States Africa Command, better known as AFRICOM - a outpost of the US military designated solely for operations on the African continent.
During an AFRICOM in 2008, Vice Admiral Robert T. Moeller cited AFRICOM’s guiding principle of protecting “the free flow of natural resources from Africa to the global market,” before emphasizing how the increasing presence of China is a major challenge to US interests in the region. Washington recently announced that US Army teams will be deployed to as many as 35 African countries in early 2013 for training programs and other operations as part of an increased Pentagon role in Africa - primarily to countries with groups allegedly linked to al-Qaeda. Given Mr. Obama’s proclivity toward the proliferation of UAV drone technology, one could imagine these moves as laying the groundwork for future US military interventions using such technology in Africa on a wider scale than that already seen in Somalia and Mali. Here lays the deep hypocrisy in accusations of Beijing’s purported “new colonialism” - China is focused on building industries, increasing development, and improving administrative and well as physical infrastructure - the propagation of force, which one would historically associate with a colonizer, is entirely absent from the Chinese approach.
Obviously, the same cannot be said of the United States, whose firepower-heavy tactics have in recent times have enabled militancy and lawlessness, as seen in the fallout of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's 2011 bombing campaign in Libya with notable civilian causalities. As Xi Jingping positions himself in power over a nation undertaking some of the grandest development projects the world has ever known, Beijing’s relationship with the African continent will be a crucial one. While everything looks good on paper, Xi’s administration must earn the trust of their African constituents by keeping a closer eye on operations happening on the ground. The incoming administration must do more to scrutinize the conduct of Chinese conglomerates and business practices with a genuine focus on adhering to local environmental regulations, safety standards and sound construction methods. The current trajectory China has set itself upon will do much to enable mutually beneficial economic development, in addition to bolstering an independent Global South - a little less red then how Mao wanted it, but close enough.
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The prototypical character of the HOM_pavilion can be broken down into three main categories: materials and fabrication, reproducibility, and socio-cultural impact.
MATERIAL AND FABRICATION
Two main reasons make this pavilion a prototypical structure: innovative use of materials generally associated to traditional uses, and experimental construction techniques. Cement and fibre-cement are often perceived as “poor” and “heavy” materials whose qualities do not go well with the fabrication of complex geometries and high-end constructions. Not only is the HOM_pavilion going to demonstrate that elegant shapes can be easily built in cement, but also that cement can be an extremely light material by pushing the thickness of the structural elements to their limits. By adopting the so-called “file to factory” approach, the fabrication process itself becomes experimental. The HOM_pavilion will actually be quite unique in applying these new methods of production to cement and to architectural scale. In fact, “file to factory” manufactory processes are often utilized by other sectors of the construction industry such as the car and the boat industry. The result is a cheaper prefabricated structure that can easily be transported and assembled.
REPETITION (future use)
The material and formal properties of the HOM_pavilion can fit a series of future uses ranging from residential, commercial, to leisure. The shape of the roof is such that allows light to penetrate from above creating dramatic effects. This character could become very important in residential infillings where is often difficult to get proper lighting conditions (see as a precedent Caruso St. John’s Brick House in London, 2001-4). For the same reasons, HOM_pavilion could also house a kindergarden which could also take advantage of the playful landscape provided by the undulating roof. Because of its fabrication concept, HOM_pavilion could also become an ideal structure for temporary programs that need to be quickly put in place and that often have to struggle with limited budgets. These could be: temporary markets, festivals, art exhibitions, temporary stand of a concrete company in a trade fair, structure for outdoor events such as concerts or theatrical plays, etc.
One of the aims of the HOM_pavilion is to activate the public space in Homerton to bring life in a rundown area of London. To activate the local community they have to fully participate in local projects. Workshops with local schools can create a form of LOCAL ENGAGEMENT with future users and clients of the area, and create a form of local appropriation. One way of doing this is to clad the building completely or partially in fibre-cement and inviting school children to help texture the panels. The skin becomes a local wrap with hands of a generation shaping its surface.
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The subject line is originally by Jean Cocteau.
"Mon oreille est un coquillage Qui aime le bruit de la mer"
(=My ear is a shell who loves the sound of the sea)
NarrabeenI've loved looking at waves and hearing sounds since childhood. The sounds of waves are bit similar to the blood flow in a mother's womb. Could be...the unconscious memory takes me to a sea to listen to it.
Looking at ships is another fun. Retired, still working, etc, etc. Each ship tells her life long story. Quite interesting and wonder why a female gender is applied to a pronoun for a "ship" in English. Who started to call a ship in an elegant(?) manner? A romantic soul? Or simply because a sailor projected his desire onto a ship during a long journey without a girl? Imagination always amuses me.
In the afternoon, sketching in light is nice. Feeling a soft breeze, I always smile at the sea in a wharf. Silent. Quiet and peacefull.
DrummoyneFriends, when you come to Sydney, visit beaches and wharfs and enjoy serenity.
Have a nice weekend!
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Exhibition Preview: Ansel Adams: Photography from the Mountains to the Sea, National Maritime Museum, London, until April 28 2013
© The Ansel Adams Publishing Rights Trust
Ansel Adams is perhaps the forefather of the sort of iconography we associate with the dramatic landscapes of the Yosemite National Park.
The American established an almost supernatural understanding of light from his beginnings during the 1920s, and went on to become one of the most influential photographers in American history. Coveted by major institutions even Jimmy Carter commissioned Adams to take his first official Presidential portrait.
He’s hardly unknown in Britain, but this is a relatively rare exhibition of his large-scale works, featuring more than 100 original prints which have never been shown on UK shores before, loaned from the National Maritime Museum at the Peabody Essex Museum in Massachusetts.
They include his first photograph (at the age of 14, capturing a pool at the 1915 World’s Fair), three American Trust murals noted for their supersize innovation and his favourite work, Golden Gate before the Bridge, which hung above the very desk where he perfected his technical genius.
Ponds, rivers, icescapes, rapids and geysers encapsulate his eye for the monumental.
- Open 10am-5pm. Admission £7/£6. Follow the museum on Twitter @NMMGreenwich.
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Powerful Techniques for Teaching Adults
March 2013, Jossey-Bass
Other Available Formats: E-book
This book is designed as a practical resource that reviews some of the most helpful approaches and exercises that teachers use when working with adult learners. Written in an accessible style, with numerous examples of practical applications scattered throughout the text, the book does not assume any prior experience with adult learning theory or adult educational history and philosophy on the reader's part. The book invites the reader into a conversation about some of the major challenges and problems involved in teaching adults, a conversation which draws on the author's long history of working with adult learners to describe how to understand and respond to these same challenges and problems.
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If you are familiar with Tom & Jerry, Pink Panther, Mickey Mouse and Bugs Bunny, then I am sure you had an awesome childhood.
In 1980′s there were no specific channels for cartoon movies but nowadays there are many cartoon channels dedicated for kids e.g, Cartoon Network, Pogo, Disney and many others.
Today’s post is dedicated to some famous cartoon characters that were part of our life in our childhood.
The Pink Panther
The Pink Panther was the leading character of the famous cartoon series “The Pink Panther Show” that was inspired by the famous series of comedy films “The Pink Panther”.
The original series of films was featuring a French Police Detective.
The Pink Panther show was also famous for its beautiful instrumental theme music. Without any doubt, The Pink Panther was one of the most popular cartoon character among the people of all age groups.
Tom & Jerry
Another series of cartoon films featuring Tom cat and Jerry mouse.
In this cartoon series, the sweet clashes between Tom and Jerry were shoot in such a way that this series is still a state of art and liked by all group of ages.
Sometimes, they both used to get unite to beat their enemies. The Tom and Jerry are still in limelight as they are still being filmed in cartoon movies.
Tom & Jerry Show was named as the greatest show of all time by the Time Magazine in 2000.
Mickey Mouse was one of the most popular cartoon characters that were created by Walt Disney.
Along with Jerry Mouse (Tom and Jerry Show), Mickey is another mouse that has become a Hero for the children.
With red shots, white gloves and yellow shoes, this black mouse has taken the Walt Disney Company on top in terms of Annual Revenue.
Another of the Walt Disney characters, Donald Duck was featuring a duck that was famous for his unexpected behavior, his innocence and sincerity.
His voice and speaking style was the most famous of all cartoon characters.
The Donald Duck has earned many honors i.e one of the 50 greatest cartoon characters of all times and is on top of all Disney characters to appear in the maximum number of movies.
Tweetie Pie, was one of those cartoon characters that was most liked by the girls.
It was featuring an orphan Yellow Canary bird that was found by Sylvester (A character in the same movie) on a cold night and he captured the bird in a cage to save Tweetie Pie from a cat.
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The war in Irak does not concern Israel. However, its repercussions in the Middle East influence the Jewish State and threaten its security.
January 27, 2006
Saddam's Smoking Gun
By Ira Stoll
The New York Sun
The man who served as the no. 2 official in Saddam Hussein's air force says Iraq moved weapons of mass destruction into Syria before the war by loading the weapons into civilian aircraft in which the passenger seats were removed.
The Iraqi general, Georges Sada, makes the charges in a new book, "Saddam's Secrets," released this week. He detailed the transfers in an interview yesterday with The New York Sun.
"There are weapons of mass destruction gone out from Iraq to Syria, and they must be found and returned to safe hands," Mr. Sada said. "I am confident they were taken over."
Mr. Sada's comments come just more than a month after Israel's top general during Operation Iraqi Freedom, Moshe Yaalon, told the Sun that Saddam "transferred the chemical agents from Iraq to Syria."
Democrats have made the absence of stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq a theme in their criticism of the Bush administration's decision to go to war in 2003. And President Bush himself has conceded much of the point; in a televised prime-time address to Americans last month, he said, "It is true that many nations believed that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. But much of the intelligence turned out to be wrong."
Said Mr. Bush, "We did not find those weapons."
The discovery of the weapons in Syria could alter the American political debate on the Iraq war. And even the accusations that they are there could step up international pressure on the government in Damascus. That government, led by Bashar Assad, is already facing a U.N. investigation over its alleged role in the assassination of a former prime minister of Lebanon. The Bush administration has criticized Syria for its support of terrorism and its failure to cooperate with the U.N. investigation.
The State Department recently granted visas for self-proclaimed opponents of Mr. Assad to attend a "Syrian National Council" meeting in Washington scheduled for this weekend, even though the attendees include communists, Baathists, and members of the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood group to the exclusion of other, more mainstream groups.
Mr. Sada, 65, told the Sun that the pilots of the two airliners that transported the weapons of mass destruction to Syria from Iraq approached him in the middle of 2004, after Saddam was captured by American troops.
"I know them very well. They are very good friends of mine. We trust each other. We are friends as pilots," Mr. Sada said of the two pilots. He declined to disclose their names, saying they are concerned for their safety. But he said they are now employed by other airlines outside Iraq.
The pilots told Mr. Sada that two Iraqi Airways Boeings were converted to cargo planes by removing the seats, Mr. Sada said. Then Special Republican Guard brigades loaded materials onto the planes, he said, including "yellow barrels with skull and crossbones on each barrel." The pilots said there was also a ground convoy of trucks.
The flights - 56 in total, Mr. Sada said - attracted little notice because they were thought to be civilian flights providing relief from Iraq to Syria, which had suffered a flood after a dam collapse in June of 2002.
"Saddam realized, this time, the Americans are coming," Mr. Sada said. "They handed over the weapons of mass destruction to the Syrians."
Mr. Sada said that the Iraqi official responsible for transferring the weapons was a cousin of Saddam Hussein named Ali Hussein al-Majid, known as "Chemical Ali." The Syrian official responsible for receiving them was a cousin of Bashar Assad who is known variously as General Abu Ali, Abu Himma, or Zulhimawe.
Short of discovering the weapons in Syria, those seeking to validate Mr. Sada's claim independently will face difficulty. His book contains a foreword by a retired U.S. Air Force colonel, David Eberly, who was a prisoner of war in Iraq during the first Gulf War and who vouches for Mr. Sada, who once held him captive, as "an honest and honorable man."
In his visit to the Sun yesterday, Mr. Sada was accompanied by Terry Law, the president of a Tulsa, Oklahoma based Christian humanitarian organization called World Compassion. Mr. Law said he has known Mr. Sada since 2002, lived in his house in Iraq and had Mr. Sada as a guest in his home in America. "Do I believe this man? Yes," Mr. Law said. "It's been solid down the line and everything checked out."
Said Mr. Law, "This is not a publicity hound. This is a man who wants peace putting his family on the line."
Mr. Sada acknowledged that the disclosures about transfers of weapons of mass destruction are "a very delicate issue." He said he was afraid for his family. "I am sure the terrorists will not like it. The Saddamists will not like it," he said.
He thanked the American troops. "They liberated the country and the nation. It is a liberation force. They did a great job," he said. "We have been freed."
He said he had not shared his story until now with any American officials. "I kept everything secret in my heart," he said. But he is scheduled to meet next week in Washington with Senators Sessions and Inhofe, Republicans of, respectively, Alabama and Oklahoma. Both are members of the Senate Armed Services Committee.
The book also says that on the eve of the first Gulf War, Saddam was planning to use his air force to launch a chemical weapons attack on Israel.
When, during an interview with the Sun in April 2004, Vice President Cheney was asked whether he thought that Iraqi weapons of mass destruction had been moved to Syria, Mr. Cheney replied only that he had seen such reports.
An article in the Fall 2005 Middle East Quarterly <http://www.meforum.org/article/755> reports that in an appearance on Israel's Channel 2 on December 23, 2002, Israel's prime minister, Ariel Sharon, stated, "Chemical and biological weapons which Saddam is endeavoring to conceal have been moved from Iraq to Syria." The allegation was denied by the Syrian government at the time as "completely untrue," and it attracted scant American press attention, coming as it did on the eve of the Christmas holiday.
The Syrian ruling party and Saddam Hussein had in common the ideology of Baathism, a mixture of Nazism and Marxism.
Syria is one of only eight countries that has not signed the Chemical Weapons Convention, a treaty that obligates nations not to stockpile or use chemical weapons. Syria's chemical warfare program, apart from any weapons that may have been received from Iraq, has long been the source of concern to America, Israel, and Lebanon. In March 2004, the director of Central Intelligence, George Tenet, testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee, saying, "Damascus has an active CW development and testing program that relies on foreign suppliers for key controlled chemicals suitable for producing CW."
The CIA's Iraq Survey Group acknowledged in its September 30, 2004, "Comprehensive Report," "we cannot express a firm view on the possibility that WMD elements were relocated out of Iraq prior to the war. Reports of such actions exist, but we have not yet been able to investigate this possibility thoroughly."
Mr. Sada is an unusual figure for an Iraqi general as he is a Christian and was not a member of the Baath Party. He now directs the Iraq operations of the Christian humanitarian organization, World Compassion.
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November 29, 2005
Our Troops Must Stay
America can't abandon 27 million Iraqis to 10,000 terrorists.
BY JOE LIEBERMAN
Democratic senator from Connecticut
Opinion Journal, Wall Street Journal
I have just returned from my fourth trip to Iraq in the past 17 months and can report real progress there. More work needs to be done, of course, but the Iraqi people are in reach of a watershed transformation from the primitive, killing tyranny of Saddam to modern, self-governing, self-securing nationhood--unless the great American military that has given them and us this unexpected opportunity is prematurely withdrawn.
Progress is visible and practical. In the Kurdish North, there is continuing security and growing prosperity. The primarily Shiite South remains largely free of terrorism, receives much more electric power and other public services than it did under Saddam, and is experiencing greater economic activity. The Sunni triangle, geographically defined by Baghdad to the east, Tikrit to the north and Ramadi to the west, is where most of the terrorist enemy attacks occur. And yet here, too, there is progress.
There are many more cars on the streets, satellite television dishes on the roofs, and literally millions more cell phones in Iraqi hands than before. All of that says the Iraqi economy is growing. And Sunni candidates are actively campaigning for seats in the National Assembly. People are working their way toward a functioning society and economy in the midst of a very brutal, inhumane, sustained terrorist war against the civilian population and the Iraqi and American military there to protect it.
It is a war between 27 million and 10,000; 27 million Iraqis who want to live lives of freedom, opportunity and prosperity and roughly 10,000 terrorists who are either Saddam revanchists, Iraqi Islamic extremists or al Qaeda foreign fighters who know their wretched causes will be set back if Iraq becomes free and modern. The terrorists are intent on stopping this by instigating a civil war to produce the chaos that will allow Iraq to replace Afghanistan as the base for their fanatical war-making. We are fighting on the side of the 27 million because the outcome of this war is critically important to the security and freedom of America. If the terrorists win, they will be emboldened to strike us directly again and to further undermine the growing stability and progress in the Middle East, which has long been a major American national and economic security priority.
Before going to Iraq last week, I visited Israel and the Palestinian Authority. Israel has been the only genuine democracy in the region, but it is now getting some welcome company from the Iraqis and Palestinians who are in the midst of robust national legislative election campaigns, the Lebanese who have risen up in proud self-determination after the Hariri assassination to eject their Syrian occupiers (the Syrian- and Iranian-backed Hezbollah militias should be next), and the Kuwaitis, Egyptians and Saudis who have taken steps to open up their governments more broadly to their people. In my meeting with the thoughtful prime minister of Iraq, Ibrahim al-Jaafari, he declared with justifiable pride that his country now has the most open, democratic political system in the Arab world. He is right.
In the face of terrorist threats and escalating violence, eight million Iraqis voted for their interim national government in January, almost 10 million participated in the referendum on their new constitution in October, and even more than that are expected to vote in the elections for a full-term government on Dec. 15. Every time the 27 million Iraqis have been given the chance since Saddam was overthrown, they have voted for self-government and hope over the violence and hatred the 10,000 terrorists offer them. Most encouraging has been the behavior of the Sunni community, which, when disappointed by the proposed constitution, registered to vote and went to the polls instead of taking up arms and going to the streets. Last week, I was thrilled to see a vigorous political campaign, and a large number of independent television stations and newspapers covering it.
None of these remarkable changes would have happened without the coalition forces led by the U.S. And, I am convinced, almost all of the progress in Iraq and throughout the Middle East will be lost if those forces are withdrawn faster than the Iraqi military is capable of securing the country.
The leaders of Iraq's duly elected government understand this, and they asked me for reassurance about America's commitment. The question is whether the American people and enough of their representatives in Congress from both parties understand this. I am disappointed by Democrats who are more focused on how President Bush took America into the war in Iraq almost three years ago, and by Republicans who are more worried about whether the war will bring them down in next November's elections, than they are concerned about how we continue the progress in Iraq in the months and years ahead.
Here is an ironic finding I brought back from Iraq. While U.S. public opinion polls show serious declines in support for the war and increasing pessimism about how it will end, polls conducted by Iraqis for Iraqi universities show increasing optimism. Two-thirds say they are better off than they were under Saddam, and a resounding 82% are confident their lives in Iraq will be better a year from now than they are today. What a colossal mistake it would be for America's bipartisan political leadership to choose this moment in history to lose its will and, in the famous phrase, to seize defeat from the jaws of the coming victory.
The leaders of America's military and diplomatic forces in Iraq, Gen. George Casey and Ambassador Zal Khalilzad, have a clear and compelling vision of our mission there. It is to create the environment in which Iraqi democracy, security and prosperity can take hold and the Iraqis themselves can defend their political progress against those 10,000 terrorists who would take it from them.
Does America have a good plan for doing this, a strategy for victory in Iraq? Yes we do. And it is important to make it clear to the American people that the plan has not remained stubbornly still but has changed over the years. Mistakes, some of them big, were made after Saddam was removed, and no one who supports the war should hesitate to admit that; but we have learned from those mistakes and, in characteristic American fashion, from what has worked and not worked on the ground. The administration's recent use of the banner "clear, hold and build" accurately describes the strategy as I saw it being implemented last week.
We are now embedding a core of coalition forces in every Iraqi fighting unit, which makes each unit more effective and acts as a multiplier of our forces. Progress in "clearing" and "holding" is being made. The Sixth Infantry Division of the Iraqi Security Forces now controls and polices more than one-third of Baghdad on its own. Coalition and Iraqi forces have together cleared the previously terrorist-controlled cities of Fallujah, Mosul and Tal Afar, and most of the border with Syria. Those areas are now being "held" secure by the Iraqi military themselves. Iraqi and coalition forces are jointly carrying out a mission to clear Ramadi, now the most dangerous city in Al-Anbar province at the west end of the Sunni Triangle.
Nationwide, American military leaders estimate that about one-third of the approximately 100,000 members of the Iraqi military are able to "lead the fight" themselves with logistical support from the U.S., and that that number should double by next year. If that happens, American military forces could begin a drawdown in numbers proportional to the increasing self-sufficiency of the Iraqi forces in 2006. If all goes well, I believe we can have a much smaller American military presence there by the end of 2006 or in 2007, but it is also likely that our presence will need to be significant in Iraq or nearby for years to come.
The economic reconstruction of Iraq has gone slower than it should have, and too much money has been wasted or stolen. Ambassador Khalilzad is now implementing reform that has worked in Afghanistan--Provincial Reconstruction Teams, composed of American economic and political experts, working in partnership in each of Iraq's 18 provinces with its elected leadership, civil service and the private sector. That is the "build" part of the "clear, hold and build" strategy, and so is the work American and international teams are doing to professionalize national and provincial governmental agencies in Iraq.
These are new ideas that are working and changing the reality on the ground, which is undoubtedly why the Iraqi people are optimistic about their future--and why the American people should be, too.
I cannot say enough about the U.S. Army and Marines who are carrying most of the fight for us in Iraq. They are courageous, smart, effective, innovative, very honorable and very proud. After a Thanksgiving meal with a great group of Marines at Camp Fallujah in western Iraq, I asked their commander whether the morale of his troops had been hurt by the growing public dissent in America over the war in Iraq. His answer was insightful, instructive and inspirational: "I would guess that if the opposition and division at home go on a lot longer and get a lot deeper it might have some effect, but, Senator, my Marines are motivated by their devotion to each other and the cause, not by political debates."
Thank you, General. That is a powerful, needed message for the rest of America and its political leadership at this critical moment in our nation's history. Semper Fi.
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By TODD LEWAN
The Associated Press
Saturday, January 26, 2008; 12:16 PM
-- Here's a vision of the not-so-distant future:
_Microchips with antennas will be embedded in virtually everything you buy, wear, drive and read, allowing retailers and law enforcement to track consumer items _ and, by extension, consumers _ wherever they go, from a distance.
_A seamless, global network of electronic "sniffers" will scan radio tags in myriad public settings, identifying people and their tastes instantly so that customized ads, "live spam," may be beamed at them.
_In "Smart Homes," sensors built into walls, floors and appliances will inventory possessions, record eating habits, monitor medicine cabinets _ all the while, silently reporting data to marketers eager for a peek into the occupants' private lives.
In truth, much of the radio frequency identification technology that enables objects and people to be tagged and tracked wirelessly already exists _ and new and potentially intrusive uses of it are being patented, perfected and deployed.
Some of the world's largest corporations are vested in the success of RFID technology, which couples highly miniaturized computers with radio antennas to broadcast information about sales and buyers to company databases.
Already, microchips are turning up in some computer printers, car keys and tires, on shampoo bottles and department store clothing tags. They're also in library books and "contactless" payment cards (such as American Express' "Blue" and ExxonMobil's "Speedpass.")
Companies say the RFID tags improve supply-chain efficiency, cut theft, and guarantee that brand-name products are authentic, not counterfeit. At a store, RFID doorways could scan your purchases automatically as you leave, eliminating tedious checkouts.
At home, convenience is a selling point: RFID-enabled refrigerators could warn about expired milk, generate weekly shopping lists, even send signals to your interactive TV, so that you see "personalized" commercials for foods you have a history of buying. Sniffers in your microwave might read a chip-equipped TV dinner and cook it without instruction.
"We've seen so many different uses of the technology," says Dan Mullen, president of AIM Global, a national association of data collection businesses, including RFID, "and we're probably still just scratching the surface in terms of places RFID can be used."
The problem, critics say, is that microchipped products might very well do a whole lot more.
With tags in so many objects, relaying information to databases that can be linked to credit and bank cards, almost no aspect of life may soon be safe from the prying eyes of corporations and governments, says Mark Rasch, former head of the computer-crime unit of the U.S. Justice Department.
By placing sniffers in strategic areas, companies can invisibly "rifle through people's pockets, purses, suitcases, briefcases, luggage _ and possibly their kitchens and bedrooms _ anytime of the day or night," says Rasch, now managing director of technology at FTI Consulting Inc., a Baltimore-based company.
In an RFID world, "You've got the possibility of unauthorized people learning stuff about who you are, what you've bought, how and where you've bought it ... It's like saying, 'Well, who wants to look through my medicine cabinet?'"
He imagines a time when anyone from police to identity thieves to stalkers might scan locked car trunks, garages or home offices from a distance. "Think of it as a high-tech form of Dumpster diving," says Rasch, who's also concerned about data gathered by "spy" appliances in the home.
"It's going to be used in unintended ways by third parties _ not just the government, but private investigators, marketers, lawyers building a case against you ..."
Presently, the radio tag most commercialized in America is the so-called "passive" emitter, meaning it has no internal power supply. Only when a reader powers these tags with a squirt of electrons do they broadcast their signal, indiscriminately, within a range of a few inches to 20 feet.
Not as common, but increasing in use, are "active" tags, which have internal batteries and can transmit signals, continuously, as far as low-orbiting satellites. Active tags pay tolls as motorists to zip through tollgates; they also track wildlife, such as sea lions.
Retailers and manufacturers want to use passive tags to replace the bar code, for tracking inventory. These radio tags transmit Electronic Product Codes, number strings that allow trillons of objects to be uniquely identified. Some transmit specifics about the item, such as price, though not the name of the buyer.
However, "once a tagged item is associated with a particular individual, personally identifiable information can be obtained and then aggregated to develop a profile," the U.S. Government Accountability Office concluded in a 2005 report on RFID.
Federal agencies and law enforcement already buy information about individuals from commercial data brokers, companies that compile computer dossiers on millions of individuals from public records, credit applications and many other sources, then offer summaries for sale. These brokers, unlike credit bureaus, aren't subject to provisions of the Fair Credit Reporting Act of 1970, which gives consumers the right to correct errors and block access to their personal records.
That, and the ever-increasing volume of data collected on consumers, is worrisome, says Mike Hrabik, chief technology officer at Solutionary, a computer-security firm in Bethesda, Md. "Are companies using that information incorrectly, and are they giving it out inappropriately? I'm sure that's happening. Should we be concerned? Yes."
Even some industry proponents recognize risks. Elliott Maxwell, a research fellow at Pennsylvania State University who serves as a policy adviser to EPCglobal, the industry's standard-setting group, says data broadcast by microchips can easily be intercepted, and misused, by high-tech thieves.
As RFID goes mainstream and the range of readers increases, it will be "difficult to know who is gathering what data, who has access to it, what is being done with it, and who should be held responsible for it," Maxwell wrote in RFID Journal, an industry publication.
The recent growth of the RFID industry has been staggering: From 1955 to 2005, cumulative sales of radio tags totaled 2.4 billion; last year alone, 2.24 billion tags were sold worldwide, and analysts project that by 2017 cumulative sales will top 1 trillion _ generating more than $25 billion in annual revenues for the industry.
Heady forecasts like these energize chip proponents, who insist that RFID will result in enormous savings for businesses. Each year, retailers lose $57 billion from administrative failures, supplier fraud and employee theft, according to a recent survey of 820 retailers by Checkpoint Systems, an RFID manufacturer that specializes in store security devices.
Privacy concerns, some RFID supporters say, are overblown. One, Mark Roberti, editor of RFID Journal, says the notion that businesses would conspire to create high-resolution portraits of people is "simply silly."
Corporations know Americans are sensitive about their privacy, he says, and are careful not to alienate consumers by violating it. Besides, "All companies keep their customer data close to the vest ... There's absolutely no value in sharing it. Zero."
Industry officials, too, insist that addressing privacy concerns is paramount. As American Express spokeswoman Judy Tenzer says, "Security and privacy are a top priority for American Express in everything we do."
But industry documents suggest a different line of thinking, privacy experts say.
A 2005 patent application by American Express itself describes how RFID-embedded objects carried by shoppers could emit "identification signals" when queried by electronic "consumer trackers." The system could identify people, record their movements, and send them video ads that might offer "incentives" or "even the emission of a scent."
RFID readers could be placed in public venues, including "a common area of a school, shopping center, bus station or other place of public accommodation," according to the application, which is still pending _ and which is not alone.
In 2006, IBM received patent approval for an invention it called, "Identification and tracking of persons using RFID-tagged items." One stated purpose: To collect information about people that could be "used to monitor the movement of the person through the store or other areas."
Once somebody enters a store, a sniffer "scans all identifiable RFID tags carried on the person," and correlates the tag information with sales records to determine the individual's "exact identity." A device known as a "person tracking unit" then assigns a tracking number to the shopper "to monitor the movement of the person through the store or other areas."
But as the patent makes clear, IBM's invention could work in other public places, "such as shopping malls, airports, train stations, bus stations, elevators, trains, airplanes, restrooms, sports arenas, libraries, theaters, museums, etc." (RFID could even help "follow a particular crime suspect through public areas.")
Another patent, obtained in 2003 by NCR Corp., details how camouflaged sensors and cameras would record customers' wanderings through a store, film their facial expressions at displays, and time _ to the second _ how long shoppers hold and study items.
Why? Such monitoring "allows one to draw valuable inferences about the behavior of large numbers of shoppers," the patent states.
Then there's a 2001 patent application by Procter & Gamble, "Systems and methods for tracking consumers in a store environment." This one lays out an idea to use heat sensors to track and record "where a consumer is looking, i.e., which way she is facing, whether she is bending over or crouching down to look at a lower shelf."
The system could space sensors 8 feet apart, in ceilings, floors, shelving and displays, so they could capture signals transmitted every 1.5 seconds by microchipped shopping carts.
The documents "raise the hair on the back of your neck," says Liz McIntyre, co-author of "Spychips," a book that is critical of the industry. "The industry has long promised it would never use this technology to track people. But these patent records clearly suggest otherwise."
Corporations take issue with that, saying that patent filings shouldn't be used to predict a company's actions.
"We file thousands of patents every year, which are designed to protect concepts or ideas," Paul Fox, a spokesman for Procter & Gamble, says. "The reality is that many of those ideas and concepts never see the light of day."
And what of his company's 2001 patent application? "I'm not aware of any plans to use that," Fox says.
Sandy Hughes, P&G's global privacy executive, adds that Procter & Gamble has no intention of using any technologies _ RFID or otherwise _ to track individuals. The idea of the 2001 filing, she says, is to monitor how groups of people react to store displays, "not individual consumers."
NCR and American Express echoed those statements. IBM declined to comment for this story.
"Not every element in a patent filing is necessarily something we would pursue....," says Tenzer, the American Express spokeswoman. "Under no circumstances would we use this technology without a customer's permission."
McIntyre has her doubts.
In the marketing world of today, she says, "data on individual consumers is gold, and the only thing preventing these companies from abusing technologies like RFID to get at that gold is public scrutiny."
RFID dates to World War II, when Britain put transponders in Allied aircraft to help radar crews distinguish them from German fighters. In the 1970s, the U.S. government tagged trucks entering and leaving secure facilities such as the Los Alamos National Laboratory, and a decade later, they were used to track livestock and railroad cars.
In 2003, the U.S. Department of Defense and Wal-Mart gave RFID a mammoth push, mandating that suppliers radio tag all crates and cartons. To that point, the cost of tags had simply been too high to make tagging pallets _ let alone individual items _ viable. In 1999, passive tags cost nearly $2 apiece.
Since then, rising demand and production of microchips _ along with technological advances _ have driven tag prices down to a range of 7 to 15 cents. At that price, the technology is "well-suited at a case and pallet level," says Mullen, of the industry group AIM Global.
John Simley, a spokesman for Wal-Mart, says tracking products in real-time helps ensure product freshness and lowers the chances that items will be out of stock. By reducing loss and waste in the supply chain, RFID "allows us to keep our prices that much lower."
Katherine Albrecht, founder of CASPIAN, an anti-RFID group, says, "Nobody cares about radio tags on crates and pallets. But if we don't keep RFID off of individual consumer items, our stores will one day turn into retail 'zoos' where the customer is always on exhibit."
So, how long will it be before you find an RFID tag in your underwear? The industry isn't saying, but some analysts speculate that within a decade tag costs may dip below a penny, the threshold at which nearly everything could be chipped.
To businesses slammed by counterfeiters _ pharmaceuticals, for one _ that's not a bad thing. Sales of fake drugs cost drug makers an estimated $46 billion a year. In 2004, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration recommended that RFID be incorporated throughout the supply chain as a way of making sure consumers get authentic drugs.
In the United States, Pfizer has already begun chipping all 30- and 100-count bottles of Viagra, one of the most counterfeited drugs.
Chips could be embedded in other controlled or potentially dangerous items such as firearms and explosives, to make them easier to track. This was mentioned in IBM's patent documents.
Still, the idea that tiny radio chips might be in their socks and shoes doesn't sit well with Americans. At least, that's what Fleishman-Hillard Inc., a public-relations firm in St. Louis, found in 2001 when it surveyed 317 consumers for the industry.
Seventy-eight percent of those queried reacted negatively to RFID when privacy was raised. "More than half claimed to be extremely or very concerned," the report said, noting that the term "Big Brother" was "used in 15 separate cases to describe the technology."
It also found that people bridled at the idea of having "Smart Tags" in their homes. One surveyed person remarked: "Where money is to be made the privacy of the individual will be compromised."
In 2002, Fleishman-Hillard produced another report for the industry that counseled RFID makers to "convey (the) inevitability of technology," and to develop a plan to "neutralize the opposition," by adopting friendlier names for radio tags such as "Bar Code II" and "Green Tag."
And in a 2003 report, Helen Duce, the industry's trade group director in Europe, wrote that "the lack of clear benefits to consumers could present a problem in the 'real world,'" particularly if privacy issues were stirred by "negative press coverage."
(Though the reports were marked "Confidential," they were later found archived on an industry trade group's Web site.)
The Duce report's recommendations: Tell consumers that RFID is regulated, that RFID is just a new and improved bar code, and that retailers will announce when an item is radio tagged, and deactivate the tags at check-out upon a customer's request.
Actually, in the United States, RFID is not federally regulated. And while bar codes identify product categories, radio tags carry unique serial numbers that _ when purchased with a credit card, frequent shopper card or contactless card _ can be linked to specific shoppers.
And, unlike bar codes, RFID tags can be read through almost anything except metal and water, without the holder's knowledge.
EPCglobal, the industry's standard-setting body, has issued public policy guidelines that call for retailers to put a thumbnail-sized logo _ "EPC," for Electronic Product Code _ on all radio tagged packaging. The group also suggests that merchants notify shoppers that RFID tags can be removed, discarded or disabled.
Critics say the guidelines are voluntary, vague and don't penalize violators. They want federal and state oversight _ something the industry has vigorously opposed _ particularly after two RFID manufacturers, Checkpoint Systems and Sensormatic, announced last year that they are marketing tags designed to be embedded in such items as shoes.
Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, says, "I don't think there's any basis ... for consumers to have to think that their clothing is tracking them."
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Written by Stacy K, Contributing Writer
What is water kefir?
Water kefir is a lacto-fermented beverage made with water kefir grains and sugar water. It is easy (and relatively quick) to make, and provides an abundance of probiotics to improve digestive health.
Water kefir grains are not grains at all, but rather "bacteria and yeast existing in a symbiotic relationship" (as noted by Julie of Cultures for Health.) The term grains really just describes their appearance.
Because the grains feed on sugar, the resulting beverage is not overly sweet.
Water kefir is often bubbly and has a reputation for being a natural alternative to soda pop.
Is water kefir different from dairy kefir?
Yes. Water kefir grains and dairy kefir grains are two different things. Dairy kefir grains are whitish in appearance and generally clump together, they feed on lactose and grow well in milk.
Water kefir grains do not clump together, and are clear and translucent. They often take on the color of the beverage or type of sugar used in the culturing process. For example, my kefir grains have a browinsh tint due to the fact that I use sucanat in my sugar water mix.
It is possible to convert dairy kefir grains to make water kefir, but it is my understanding that they will not last as long as true water kefir grains, which will multiply indefinitely.
Where do I find water kefir grains?
If you have a friend who makes water kefir on a regular basis, chances are they will have extra grains at some point. Mine were almost doubling with each batch!
There are a number of places online to purchase water kefir grains. I bought mine from Cultures for Health and have been extremely happy with them (like I said, they were doubling with each batch. They are very healthy grains)! The Kefir Lady sells both fresh and dried kefir grains (I have not purchased from her myself as yet).
While it is possible to buy fresh grains, my preference is to get dehydrated ones (unless I were to get them from a local friend). The reason for this is that life is often hectic and fresh grains need to be dealt with immediately, while dried ones can wait until you are ready. It would be disappointing to spend money on grains only to lose them due to unforeseen circumstances surrounding their arrival in the mail!
How to rehydrate water kefir grains
When purchasing dehydrated kefir grains, they will look like this:
Most grains come with instructions for rehydration, which generally involves soaking the grains in a sugar water mixture for a few days. The grains I purchased from Cultures for Health required 3 to 4 days of soaking.
To make the sugar water mixture for rehydrating dissolve 4 to 6 tablespoons of sugar in 4 cups of water and let cool to room temperature. Pour into a glass jar and add the dehydrated grains. Cover with a tea towel or coffee filter and secure with a rubber band. Let sit until grains are plump (no longer than 5 days).
Once the grains are rehydrated, they should look like this (if you use white sugar they will have a lighter color):
During the rehydration process, 2 tablespoons of dried grains plumps up to approximately 1/3 cup!
Once this process is complete you are ready to make water kefir!
How to make water kefir
Making water kefir is not an exact science.
The general idea is to dissolve sugar in water and allow the grains to ferment in this mixture for one to three days. Once fermented, remove grains and drink kefir as is, or add flavoring (in the form of fruit of juice) and allow to ferment for another day. It is during this second ferment that kefir often becomes very bubbly (but not always).
The amount of sugar, type of sugar, length of fermentation, and type of flavoring can all vary.
Here is a step-by-step of how I usually prepare water kefir:
:: In a pot, on the stove top, dissolve 1/3 cup of sugar in 1 cup of water*. Allow to cool a little then add 3 cups of water. Pour this mixture into a 1/2 gallon mason jar and add another 1 1/2 to cups of water (so the jar is filled close to the shoulder or 6 cup mark).
:: If the water is room temperature, add 1/3 cup of water kefir grains.
(Some people choose to contain the grains is a muslin tea bag, which makes removing them from the jar easy. However, I found the grains did much better when allowed to float freely.)
:: Add 4 drops of liquid minerals.
(This step is optional, but highly recommended. Water kefir grains thrive on minerals and I notice a difference when I don't add them.)
:: Cover with a tea towel or coffee filter and secure with a rubber band.
:: Leave in a warm place to culture for 24 to 72 hours. The longer you leave it, the less sweet it will be (the grains eat the sugar!).
:: Taste the water kefir each day to see if the it has reached your desired level of sweetness. Once it has, strain out the grains by placing a plastic strainer over another mason jar and pouring the kefir through it:
Be sure to use a plastic strainer as metal is reactive and not recommended for use with kefir grains.
Store the grains in a sugar water mix in the fridge or use them to begin a new batch of water kefir.
Once the grains have been removed, I like to do a second fermentation.
The second fermentation is a great time to add fruit (fresh or dried) or fruit juice for extra flavor. I often add a cup or so of grape or cranberry juice. (I'll give some other options below.)
Instead of using a towel or coffee filter to cover the top, place plastic wrap over the mouth of the jar and then the lid. This will keep out the air and allow bubbles to form.
Leave the water kefir covered for another 24 to 72 hours. Then strain out any fruit pieces and pour into a clean container or bottle.
Store in the fridge.
I have used the same basic method to make a larger amount of water kefir. In fact, I use the same amount of kefir grains, 1/3 cup, but dissolve 3/4 cup of sugar in 2 cups of water, then pour into a gallon size jar and fill to the shoulder with water. (I learned this from a post at GNOWFGLINS.)
It is possible to place the kefir grains directly in juice or sugar water containing dried or fresh fruit. If you have extra grains, then I would suggest experimenting with these methods, but when just starting out I highly recommend keeping the grains in sugar water only. This way they will not be compromised before you have any extra stored away.
To make fruit juice water kefir: Place 3 Tablespoons of kefir grains in 1 to 2 quarts of juice (preferably organic). Cover as directed for the first fermentation and allow to sit for 24 to 48 hours. Strain and enjoy!
Cream soda: Add 3 teaspoons of pure vanilla extract to 2 quarts of water kefir after straining. Increase (or decrease) amount of vanilla to your taste.
Add raisins, dried figs, or whatever takes your fancy!
How to store kefir grains
If you need to take a break from making water kefir, the grains may be stored in the fridge for up to two weeks in a sugar water mixture. Dissolve a 1/2 tablespoon of sugar in a 1/2 cup of water. Cool. Add grains and sugar water to a clean, airtight container. Keep refrigerated.
What type of sugar should I use?
I use sucanat because it is less processed than other sugars and still contains minerals, which the kefir grains love! If the sucanat flavor is too strong for your taste, try using organic sugar, or half organic sugar and half sucanat.
*A note about water
Since kefir grains love minerals, it is important to use water with a high mineral content. Spring or well water are the best options.
If it is necessary to use tap water, remove the chlorine by boiling the it first.
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